5 Captain's Table (NF) by Peter David

Author:Peter David [David, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780743455787
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2002-08-22T23:00:00+00:00

The Blame

I WALKED STRAIGHT into Kenyon's quarters and told him that he should relieve me of my position.

He was sitting in a chair in the middle of his quarters, just sitting there as if it were a command chair. He didn't move from his spot, but instead simply fixed a gaze on me like an owl in a Starfleet uniform. "Why would I want to do that?" he asked. Again, he didn't sound surprised or stunned or anything. He sounded crushingly, frighteningly normal.

"Because I fell into the trap that I should not have fallen into, sir," I told him flatly. "You needed me to be honest with you. You needed me to tell you everything that was going through my mind. The fact of the matter is that I wanted to tell you not to allow them to go down. I wanted to fight you on it every step of the way. You needed to hear me say that, and I ... I let you down. I was reluctant to contradict you because of ..." I hesitated.

"Because of her," he finished. "You didn't want to risk embarrassing me in front of my daughter."

"More or less, sir. You ... you gave me the opportunity to tell you what I really thought. You did so repeatedly. I should have ignored the dynamics of the interpersonal relations I was witnessing and gone with my instincts ..."

"And your instincts said that the regs should have been ignored."

"Yes, sir. That's right sir."

"Don't worry about it, Calhoun." His voice sounded faint and distant.

"Don't worry about it?" I was pacing the room. "Captain ... I was supposed to watch out for your best interests. And I fell into the same trap that everyone else here does. I went too easy on you. I didn't present enough of a challenge. I let you down, and her and him down, and now they're dead because of it."

"What are you looking for, Calhoun? Absolution?" He gestured in the air several times as if he were tossing holy water on me. "I give you absolution, my son. Go. Go and sin no more."

"Captain, I ..."

"Calhoun, it's not your fault." His tone had changed, become more confident, even conversational. "The captain is the final decision maker on the ship. If I'd been of a mind to violate regs, or second-guess my brother and daughter, I would have done so without your endorsement. By the same token, if and this happened to be the case I hadn't been convinced that ignoring both the regs and their wishes was the proper way to proceed, not a hundred Mackenzie Calhouns could have convinced me otherwise. Calhoun, it's ... Calhoun, look at me."

I was mortified. I felt an actual stinging in my eyes. I hadn't cried in years, not since the death of my first victim, and I was not about to start bawling at that point. I managed to pull myself together and turned to face my captain.

"Calhoun ... what these people did, these Dufaux .

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