Track Two: “Why Don’t You & I”

“…and that’s the situation on Pacifica, where the annual regatta gets underway tomorrow. Now, entertainment news, and the story that simply will not sit still: the Federation tour that has broken every booking record on ninety-three worlds and counting.”

The FNN studio gleamed in blue and silver, and anchor Sylvia Ront turned to her second camera with the practised smile of a woman who had read the words “Warp Five Forward” aloud more times this month than she had said her own name.

“If you have somehow spent the past year in cryostasis, here is what you missed. Five young performers, one starbase-sized wave of hysteria, and a tour so oversubscribed that tickets for the Colludia Two date reportedly sold out in four minutes and nine seconds. Warp Five Forward have gone from playing student venues on Cestus Three to becoming, according to the Bureau of Culture, the most-streamed musical act in Federation space. And tonight, an FNN exclusive that has their fandom, the self-declared Forward’ers, in absolute meltdown: has one of the band finally been caught with his guard down? We go live to our Entertainment Correspondent, Danel Rhoss, at Brahms Station in the Avalon System. Rhoss?”

The feed cut to a Bajoran man standing in a crowded promenade, the sweeping curve of a starbase concourse rising behind him, and a small crowd already gathering at the edge of his shot.

“Sylvia, thank you. Sources aboard Brahms Station have confirmed multiple sightings over the past two days of Theo McCallister-Reyas of Warp Five Forward here at the station, and, crucially, he has not been alone. Now, longtime Forward’ers will know the family history: Theo is the son of two of Starfleet’s most celebrated officers, James Preston McCallister and Karyn Reyas of the USS Odyssey, names our viewers will remember from the last three years of Starfleet operations in the Delta Quadrant, especially in leading the end to last year’s conflict with the Vaadwaur. And here is where it gets interesting, Sylvia, because just days ago, McCallister senior was promoted to Rear Admiral aboard this very station.”

“So the theory is a family occasion.”

“That’s the respectable theory: that Theo slipped away mid-tour to celebrate his father’s promotion. But it does not explain our exclusive footage, and I want to warn our viewers, it is adorable.”

The footage rolled: grainy, taken at a distance across a promenade restaurant. A tall young man in civilian clothes, dark curls unmistakable, laughing at another young man across a candlelit table. A second clip, the pair walking the concourse hand in hand. A third, brief and slightly obscured by a passing Tellarite, of a kiss that sent the studio graphics into a frenzy of hearts.

“So the fuller theory, Sylvia, is both at once: a proud son visiting for his father’s big day, and a young man in love using the one place in the sector the Forward’ers can’t easily follow, a working fleet yard, for a secret romantic rendezvous away from the cameras. As for the mystery man himself, nobody has a name. A junior officer? A civilian contractor? All we can say is that he is tall, dark-haired, apparently very funny, judging by the laughing, and currently the envy of several billion people.”

Danel turned, gesturing his camera operator towards the onlookers, and thrust his microphone at a young Denobulan woman wearing what appeared to be multiple separate items of tour merchandise featuring the Warp 5 Forward band and their logos.

“I think it’s beautiful,” she declared, welling up. “Theo sings all those love songs, and now he gets to live one. As a Forward’er, that’s all any of us want for him. I’m so happy. I’m devastated. I’m so happy.”

A young Trill man beside her shook his head slowly, dark spots flushing. “I’m gutted. Completely gutted. I had a plan, you know? Attend enough concerts, catch his eye during the acoustic set. Statistically, it could have happened. And now he’s off the market, and I have fifty-eight ticket stubs and nothing to show for it.”

“He was never going to notice you, Deven.” The Denobulan woman shot at her friend.

“He might have noticed me.” The Trill countered.

Danel reclaimed the microphone with the practised diplomacy of a man who had conducted many such interviews lately. “Strong feelings here on Brahms Station, Sylvia, and it doesn’t stop with Theo. The rumour mill has the whole band paired off this season: Harren Stail was linked to no fewer than three holo-drama stars last month, all denied; there’s a persistent story about Payn Lian dating the Bajoran First Minister’s daughter; and Luris Tomren, when asked last week if there was anyone special in his life, told reporters he was, and I quote, in a committed long-term relationship with the applause. Make of that what you will.”

“Rhoss,” Ront pressed, leaning forward, “we have been caught out before. A few months ago, half the quadrant was convinced Theo had joined the Cestus Three Olympic training programme, and that turned out to be his brother Henri, swimming and playing water polo for Pike City. Can we be certain this is not another case of mistaken McCallister?”

“We can, Sylvia. Henri McCallister-Reyas was confirmed yesterday, travelling with his Pike City teammates to Colludia Two, presumably to watch his brother perform.”

“And is there not a third son? Could this mystery romance simply be him?”

“Sylvia, our understanding is that the unknown third McCallister-Reyas son is a cadet at Starfleet Academy, and cadets, as we all know, do not get shore leave like this.” Rhoss allowed himself a smile. “No, this is Theo. Back to you.”

“Would passengers for the USS Aquitania please proceed to airlock ninety-three. The Aquitania is now boarding for Colludia II, calling at Bynaus, Archer Station, Risa…”

The queue at airlock ninety-three had opinions about how quickly it was moving, and Alfie McCallister-Reyas, sunglasses on and duffel over one shoulder, was mostly grateful it was moving at all. Beyond the viewport, the Olympic-class liner waited at her moorings, a great pale whale of a ship with its primary spherical hull and rows of stateroom windows, the words STARFLEET AUXILIARY running proudly along her flank.

“Two thousand passengers,” Jordan read off the boarding display, his fingers laced through Alfie’s. “Three restaurants. A promenade deck. Multiple holosuites. Babe, this is going to be the most relaxing stretch of our entire lives. Several days at high warp with absolutely nothing to do, and then however long we want of beach at the other end.”

“You said that about our time on Talveya.”

“I stand by it. I found our time with the Talaxians and Ocampa soothing.”

At the hatch, a stewardess in Starfleet Auxiliary gold was checking manifests, and Alfie watched the woman’s eyes travel from the PADD to his face, stall, and widen by a fraction that three years of cadet training had taught Alfie to notice.

“Welcome aboard the Aquitania, Mister… McCallister,” the stewardess began, with a pause before the surname that had a whole sentence folded inside it. “It’s an honour, Theo. Truly.”

“It’s Alfie, actually,” Alfie replied pleasantly, and kept walking, because the alternative was a conversation, and the queue behind them would have opinions he didn’t want to engage with.

The stewardess, undeterred, fell into step alongside them with the gliding persistence of someone trained in customer service. “Of course, sir. Absolutely, sir. Discretion is everything on this route, we quite understand.” She gestured to the pair of them, hands linked, and beamed. “And may I say, you two make an adorable couple. When we saw the passenger list, well, the crew took a small liberty with the captain’s approval. We’ve upgraded you to one of the first-class staterooms. Deck nine. The good deck.”

“That’s really kind,” Alfie answered, “but we’re bunked in with our friends, and honestly, we’re happy where we…”

Jordan’s elbow arrived in his ribs with the smooth precision of a docking clamp. “Babe,” he murmured, in the reverent tones of a man who had just heard the words first class spoken aloud, “we should take the first-class cabin.”

Which was how, ten minutes later, the two of them came to be standing in Stateroom Twenty-One, a space roughly twice the size of the Astra’s bunkroom itself. Soft lighting glowed from coves in a ceiling high enough to echo. Actual carpet, deep enough to lose a boot in, ran wall to wall beneath furniture that had never once been replicated: two long sofas arranged around a low table already bearing a fruit basket and a chilled bottle of something Bajoran origin, a dining nook by the viewport, a desk nobody would ever use, and, through an archway, a bed of huge classy proportions, made up in linen so white it looked theoretical, with a small mountain range of pillows arranged against the headboard. The viewport itself ran the width of the far wall, framing the drifting lights of Avalon Fleet Yards, and a discreet door stood open on a bathroom containing both a sonic shower and, gleaming beneath its own porthole, an enormous sunken bath.

The stewardess helped them set their bags down as though they contained relics, paused at the door, and pressed a hand to her chest.

“I just want to say, sir,” she confided, voice dropping to a low whisper, “I am a huge fan of your work. Enormous. That’s all I’ll say. Discretion.” She bowed herself out.

Alfie stared at the closed door. “My work,” he repeated. “What work? I once got a commendation for a warp core simulation. Unless our cadet service records have been shared with Starfleet Auxiliary?”

“Clearly our fame has travelled,” Jordan reasoned, already face-down among the pillows.

The other cadets found them within five minutes, which was roughly how long it took for word of the upgrade to spread among eight cadets as they boarded their transport. They came as a flood: Athena first, because Athena was always first, with Brook at her shoulder; then Jib, whistling one long descending Bolian note of appreciation at the ceiling; Beatrice and Lillia together; Jameel drifting in behind his sister; William with the wounded expression of a young man whose brother had somehow fallen upward again; and finally Parker, quiet at the back, taking the room in the way he took most things in, thoroughly and without comment.

“This is obscene,” Athena declared, in a tone that suggested deep approval.

“There are two sofas,” Brook observed. “Who needs two sofas?”

“There’s a dining nook,” Beatrice reported from the viewport. “They could host the next Khitomer Accord summit in here. A small one. Nine delegates, easily.”

Jib had already located the bathroom, and his voice floated back through the archway, hollow with awe. “There’s a bath. An actual bath. It has jets. It has a porthole. You can look at the stars from the bath.”

“It’ll be Alfie’s dad’s promotion,” William concluded, prowling the room like an auditor. “Think about it. Alfie’s dad is made rear admiral; it’s probably all over the news feeds, and then his son’s name shows up on the passenger manifest. Some purser wants to impress the new admiral by looking after his boy. That’s the only explanation.” He picked up the fruit basket, read the card, and set it down with narrowed eyes. “There’s a card. It says with our compliments. Jordan, we live in a bunk room. There are ten of us in a bunk room, and there is a card that says with our compliments.” He looked around, arithmetic visibly happening behind his eyes. “You know what, we’d all fit in here. Easily. Two on each sofa, we could get some camping beds by the viewport, Jib can go in the bath. We give up the bunk cabin and just live here. It’s the logical redistribution of resources.”

“Seconded,” Jib called from the bathroom. “I volunteer for the bath.”

“Absolutely not,” Jordan said, into the pillows.

“Actually,” Lillia mused, folding her arms and considering the bed through the archway with the air of a scientist reaching an unwelcome but important conclusion, “as much as I would love to live in this room, I think we should all reflect on what we’re being given here. That is a very large cabin. That is a king-plus bed, possibly an emperor. And it is several decks and one very thick bulkhead away from all of us.” She let that settle. “Which means that for the next few days, none of us has to lie in our bunks listening to these two attempting to be discreet while being intimate in a single bunk and failing. As they do. On the Astra. Regularly.”

There was a moment of respectful silence, the kind normally reserved for memorials.

“Blessing in disguise,” Brook agreed solemnly.

“The bulkhead is load-bearing,” Beatrice added. “I checked.”

“We do not…” Alfie began.

“You do,” came the reply, in remarkable unison, from six directions at once. Parker, by the door, said nothing, though something that might have been the beginning of a smile was ruthlessly suppressed.

“The worst part is the shushing,” Jameel reflected sadly. “You can hear the shushing. The shushing is louder than the thing being shushed.”

“Out,” Jordan commanded, lifting his head at last. “All of you, out. My fiancé and I need to settle into our first-class suite.”

The groan was immediate, communal, and deeply practised.

“Settle in,” Jib echoed, emerging from the bathroom. “Is that what you’re calling it now? At least you don’t need to shush one another!”

“Dinner is at nineteen hundred,” Brook warned them, herding the others out ahead of him. “All of us, in the main restaurant, we booked the big table. Table eighty-six, don’t make me come and find you. And I am begging you, do not spend the entire afternoon sharing that sonic shower.”

“Seconded,” Athena added with a shudder, pausing in the doorway. “I still haven’t recovered from that time on the Astra when I walked into the communal shower room at zero-four-hundred. I have seen things, Alfie, that no amount of Klingon painstick torture can unsee.”

“You were supposed to be asleep,” Alfie protested, ears going pink.

“I was supposed to be a lot of things; one of them was not seeing you pushing Jordan up against a sonic shower wall that we all use!”

“There is no version of this,” Beatrice remarked to Lillia as they went, pitched precisely loudly enough, “where those two are ready by nineteen hundred. I’ve seen Alfie take forty minutes deciding on a shirt when Jordan isn’t even in the room.”

Lillia’s laugh drifted back through the doorway, and then Jameel leaned in, one hand on the frame, purple curls falling across his face, and fixed the two of them with a look of profound solemnity.

“Remember to use protection,” he intoned. “I love you both, but I am far too young to be godfather to any Jalfie babies.”

Jordan seized the nearest pillow from the mountain range beside him and sent it across the room at a velocity the Academy basketball team would have graded highly, where it struck nothing but the closing door, and then, at last, Stateroom Twenty-One was quiet, and it was just the two of them, the hum of a great ship making ready to sail, and the lights of the fleet yards sliding slowly past the viewport as the Aquitania slipped her moorings for Colludia.

The main restaurant of the Aquitania occupied the forward curve of deck seventeen, a great sweep of white tablecloths and low golden light beneath a ceiling engineered with holographic projections to resemble an open starfield. Table eighty-six had been booked, and table eighty-six was where the cadets were heading, right up until a maître d’ intercepted them with a bow and the words “this way, please,” and led them instead up three shallow steps to a raised alcove near the viewports, partially screened by a trellis of some flowering Betazoid vine, where a long table was laid for ten with more glassware per setting than any of them had ever been trusted with.

“This isn’t table eighty-six,” Brook noted.

“It is tonight, sir,” the maître d’ replied smoothly, and withdrew.

They were still redistributing themselves around the table when Alfie and Jordan arrived, together, unhurried, and, remarkably, on time.

“Well, well,” Beatrice observed, checking an imaginary chronometer. “Nineteen hundred precisely. I owe Lillia a dessert.”

“We can be punctual,” Alfie defended, taking his seat.

“You can now,” Jameel agreed warmly, pouring water with the serenity of a man about to commit a crime.

“Amazing what a private stateroom does for efficiency. You two must have played ‘docking procedures’ very quickly. In fact, that must be the fastest turnaround in the history of the Academy. They should study you both. Write it up for the Starfleet Engineering Journal. Rapid docking procedures.”

“Jameel.”

“Record time from arrival to departure,” he continued, undeterred by Alfie’s attempt to tell him off, “with full systems check and both crew showered and dressed so well.”

“I hate all of you,” Alfie announced pleasantly, unfolding his napkin.

“You don’t,” Lillia countered, and he didn’t.

The teasing rolled on through the first course, and so did the noticing, because there was a great deal to notice. The bread arrived warm and kept arriving. A holographic waiter materialised to describe, at length, a sparkling Bajoran spring wine vintage he insisted they sample with the ship’s compliments. Somewhere behind the trellis, the rest of the restaurant dined at a polite distance, and the cadets, one by one, clocked that the service reaching their alcove was of an entirely different order from the service reaching anyone else.

“I’m just saying,” Athena remarked, tearing a roll in half, “this whole ship has decided we matter, and I want to know why—even our cabin. Have the rest of you processed the cabin? Because that is not the cabin we booked. We booked one large bunk room, ten berths and a shared washroom, which is standard Auxiliary transit accommodation. What we have got is a suite. Separate bedrooms off a shared lounge. The girls have taken the big one, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Beatrice and Lillia confirmed together.

“Will and Parker have the twin by the viewport, and the three idiots are in the other one.”

“We prefer the term ‘the lads’ cabin’,” Jib corrected with dignity.

“Two double beds and Jib’s snoring,” Brook clarified. “It’s swanky, though, is my point. Compared to the Astra, it’s a palace. There are towels folded into the shape of a targ. Somebody folded a towel into a targ for us. Why?”

“It’s not just the rooms,” Alfie added slowly, glancing towards the trellis and the restaurant beyond it. “On the way here, people kept looking at me and Jordan. Not glancing, glaring. Proper glaring and smiling at us. Then some of them decided to wave at us. A group of teenagers by the turbolift doors asked to take a selfie with us. An actual selfie. Jordan said yes before I could ask why.”

“They seemed nice,” Jordan reasoned. “And you photograph well.”

It was at this point that an older human woman in the immaculate Starfleet Auxiliary dress uniform approached the table, silver-haired and straight-backed, with the unmistakable bearing of someone who had run the hospitality of starships since before any of them were born. The service around them parted for her, which told them her seniority before her introduction did.

“Good evening. I’m Chief Steward Okonkwo, and I wanted to look in on you personally. Is everyone settled? Is the accommodation to your liking?”

A chorus of genuine thanks went around the table, and she absorbed it with a small nod.

“I’m so pleased. When we realised we would be looking after such an important VIP and his entourage, I was only too happy to ask the captain to approve the changes. It’s not every crossing we’re given the chance.”
Ten cadets looked at her with ten entirely blank expressions, each privately wondering which of the others had a secret.

And then Chief Steward Okonkwo turned to Alfie, folded her hands, and, before their eyes, became slightly younger and considerably more nervous.

“I do hope you’ll forgive me, and please do say no, but I promised the crew I would at least ask. Would you do us the very great honour of performing later? Nothing formal. Even one song.”

Alfie blinked. “Performing?”

“Singing,” she clarified, glowing. “Whichever you’d enjoy. Your cover of ‘Hopelessly Devoted To You’ is a particular favourite of mine, I confess I’ve worn it out, and my granddaughter adores ‘You’re Still The One’. She’ll simply die when she hears you were aboard.” The words were gathering speed now. “Do you have your guitar with you? If not, the replicators can produce one, or, oh, we could generate a holographic grand piano, like the one you played at Wembley Stadium on Earth. I saw the recording. What am I saying? Everyone saw the recording.”

The silence at the table had acquired a texture.

Okonkwo caught herself, and both hands rose in gentle horror. “And now I’m being terribly improper, ambushing you at dinner, of all places. Forgive me. Please, enjoy your meal, and forget I asked. Discretion.” She inclined her head to the table. “Gentlemen. Ladies. Anything you need, at any hour.” And she was gone, back down the steps, pausing only to realign a fork on an empty table out of pure instinct.

Every cadet head at the table rotated towards Alfie.

“What,” Alfie asked, glaring at the tablecloth, “was that? Wembley Stadium? I’ve never even been to Wembley Stadium on Earth. What is happening on this ship? Are we in some sort of parallel universe? Do we need to go to Starbase Eighty?”

Nobody answered because most of them were now doing what Alfie did next: looking outward, past the trellis, at the restaurant beyond, where the truth had been sitting all evening, waiting to be noticed at a dozen tables; diners were stealing glances at their alcove. A Rigelian family whispered over their menus. A young Andorian couple two tables away had angled their PADD with the practised innocence of people absolutely taking a photograph.
Jordan leaned across the gap to the nearest table, where a Denobulan couple were making a heroic effort to appear absorbed in their soup.

“Excuse me. Sorry. Quick question. Why does everyone keep looking at him?” he gestured with his thumb towards Alfie.

The Denobulans exchanged the delighted glance of people who had been hoping to be asked. “Because we all know who he is,” the husband confided, smile widening to Denobulan proportions.

“He’s Theo McCallister,” the wife added in a stage whisper. “Warp Five Forward.” She looked Jordan up and down with warm approval. “And you’re the mystery man. The secret lover. The one he has kept away from all of the fans. I think you’re very handsome, and very lucky, if you don’t mind me saying. You make an adorable couple. Everyone thinks so.”

“I…umm…that’s…thank you, but no,” Jordan managed as he spluttered out his response, unable to make sense of what they were saying to him. “First of all, engaged, not dating.” He held up Alfie’s hand and his own as evidence of the two silver rings. “Second, that’s not Theo. That’s Alfie.”

The couple chuckled with the gentle patience of the thoroughly unconvinced. “Of course it is, dear, and congratulations!” The wife murmured. “We saw the FNN report too.”

“The what report?”

Parker had already moved. Quiet as ever, he had lifted a PADD from the sideboard behind him, and his fingers ran across it at top speed to find Warp 5 Forward coverage. He set the PADD down in the middle of the table, screen up, and let it play.

“…has one of the band finally been caught with his guard down? We go live to our Entertainment Correspondent, Danel Rhoss, at Brahms Station…”

The cadets crowded in. The footage rolled: the candlelit dinner, the concourse, the kiss, the frenzy of hearts. Sold out in four minutes. Most-streamed act in Federation space. Ninety-three worlds. The Forward’ers. Ten faces lit blue by the screen, and Alfie’s at the centre of them, watching his own last week on Brahms Station being narrated to the galaxy as somebody else’s romance, watching the scale of something that had apparently happened to his brother, to his family, to his own face, while all of them had been on the far side of the galaxy having no idea whatsoever.

“That’s us,” Jordan breathed. “That’s our anniversary dinner from the other night. I’m a mystery man. Babe, I’m the envy of several billion people.”

“Theo,” Alfie repeated faintly, still staring. “The band. It’s… this big? Since when is it this big? He said they were doing well. He said gigs, plural. He said it was going well! He didn’t say anything about concerts at this magnitude!”

“Keep calm,” Athena advised, low and even, with a captain’s daughter’s instinct for a situation about to get away from someone. “Keep your voice down, keep smiling, and do not announce anything to this restaurant.”

“I’m not going to deceive anyone about who I am,” Alfie whispered hotly.

“Babe.” Jordan took his hand with enormous tenderness and the moral seriousness of a hostage negotiator. “Think about the first-class stateroom. Think about the bath. It has a porthole, Alfie. I am not losing that porthole.”

“Strategically,” Jameel offered, leaning in, purple curls catching the candlelight, “nobody is asking you to lie. You simply say nothing. And if anyone asks you to sing, you look gently tragic and tell them you’re resting your voice for the next big concert. It’s even true. There is a concert. You will be resting. Technically flawless.”

“That’s the most dishonest technically true thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s only until Colludia,” Brook reasoned. “A few days. Then Theo turns up, the confusion resolves itself, and we all laugh about it.”

Jordan gazed at Alfie for a long moment, at the sunglasses folded by his plate, at the face currently worth ninety-three worlds of hysteria, and shook his head slowly with the air of a man reassessing his life choices.

“You know,” he mused, “it’s occurring to me that I may be marrying the wrong McCallister brother.”

The punch to his arm from Alfie was gentle, immediate, and entirely deserved, and around them the restaurant sparkled on, full of people delightedly not looking at Theo McCallister and his adorable fiancé, while several billion citizens of the Federation remained, for a few days more, magnificently wrong.