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The Engineer’s Guide to Teenage Heart Repair
Fatherhood is a mystical thing.
Babies are clamorous, malodorous, tyrants. They thwart every plan and consume every resource, offering nothing but potential in return.
And yet.
From the moment they draw breath, we love them because they are ours. The connection is primal, immediate, and absolute.
Liam Shaw is thinking of his two daughters as he stares out the window into Spacedock Bay 12 where his newest baby is in the process of being born- or reborn, at least: The U.S.S. Titan-A.
She doesn’t look like much at the moment. Her hull is marred with carbon scoring. The ship’s starboard nacelle is stripped down to the spaceframe, and Liam has a list six screens long of systems that are offline or marginally functioning. The Titan’s former Captain’s cowboy antics clearly pushed the great lady to the edge of what she could handle and then further still, but Liam is already in love. He once served as Chief Engineer on the Luna class prototype, the 80101. There is no one in the fleet better qualified to bring the legendary ship back to her former glory. When Starfleet offered Shaw the opportunity to oversee the refit, he leaped at the chance.
The Titan project was originally conceived as a simple upgrade but has gradually expanded to the point that Starfleet is proposing to scrap the original plans and do a frame-up rebuild instead. The latest set of schematics is sitting on Liam’s desk for review in advance of a visit from the Fleet Engineer. Shaw is twitching to pore over every centimeter of the design, but his human children need him today. Their mother, Vanessa, is off-world for work, and it is Liam’s turn to make sure the girls have dinner and finish their schoolwork before heading off to bed. He lingers at the window watching the DOTS swarm around the hull of the vessel for a few more minutes before dashing to catch a shuttle back to Earth.
The streets of Bergen, Norway are dark by the time Shaw reaches the snug, yellow house in the Bryggen Wharf district that his family rented for its easy commute to Vanessa’s work in Paris and shuttlepad access to Spacedock. Golden light is pouring out of the ground-floor windows. As he approaches the door, Liam can hear one of the holo programs that Fiona, his youngest, loves blaring into the street, so he knows that his girls are safely home.
“Fi?” He calls as he walks through the door. “Bonnie?”
“Hi, Daddy!” Fiona says, popping up from her seat on the ground in front of the couch. Her school PADDs are strewn carelessly across the floor. A bowl of ice cream is melting on the coffee table next to a plate of potato chips.
“Hi, Monkey.” He gives his ten-year-old a quick hug. “Did you practice your cello yet?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she says, even though the cello is nowhere to be seen. She favors him with an angelic smile before plopping back onto the ground and returning her attention to the holoset.
“Where’s your sister?”
“Upstairs.”
“Bonnie?” He calls out the name of his older daughter again, but there still isn’t any reply.
“She won’t come out,” Fiona says in a matter-of-fact tone, never taking her eyes from the holoset. “Her life is over.”
Liam’s expression darkens. “What? Why?”
Fiona sighs wearily and takes a slurp of her juice. “You know Daddy…the Boy.”
The Boy.
Liam closes his eyes and rubs his temples.
Captain Shaw has been trying and mostly succeeding to ignore that his teenager has embarked on her first romance. Five weeks ago he sent his smart, level-headed daughter off to school and she came back dotty for a gangly-limbed, floppy-haired, Parrises Squares player: Michael Aoki. Since that day, Bonnie has been seemingly incapable of discussing anything else.
Vanessa has mostly convinced Liam to hold his tongue and let the flirtation run its course. He gritted his teeth through bringing Mike along on a family hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro and even allowed- against his better judgment- the pair of teens to go to London unchaperoned for an afternoon, but he’s never bothered to hide his lack of enthusiasm, much to Bonnie’s distress. She pleaded with him that very morning for permission to bring Mike home for dinner.
Liam pales as a thought crosses his mind.
“Mike isn’t here is he?”
He moves automatically toward the staircase. His blood starts pumping faster as he imagines all the slow, painful ways he will murder this young man if he laid one finger on his little girl.
“No, Daddy,” Fiona says, a smug smile on her plump lips. “Bonnie got dumped.”
The first thing Liam feels is relief, but that emotion is swiftly followed by a pang of remorse and then concern. “Bonnie!” he calls for a third time. This time, he doesn’t expect an answer. He mounts the stairs two at a time, stopping outside the blonde wood door of his eldest daughter’s room. He can hear her crying on the other side of the archway, and it takes all his self-control to knock before wrenching the handle.
The door doesn’t budge.
“Go away!”
Liam frowns at the locked door and counts before losing his temper. “Bonnie- we talked about locking the door. If you’re not going to come out, you need to let me in.”
“No!”
“Skipper, you know the rules.”
“I don’t care! My life is over!” Bonnie sobs in reply.
Liam swears under his breath and decides that it is past time to apply some engineering to the situation. He kicks the door, hard. Bonnie squeaks in surprise when it flies open and crashes inward against the wall.
The bubble of temper that was growing in Liam’s chest bursts immediately when he sees his little girl’s face. Her eyes are puffy, and her cheeks are wet. It’s obvious that she’s been crying for a long time.
“Christ,” Shaw mutters under his breath. He hesitates in the doorway. “Fiona told me what happened. I’m sorry, but it’s probably for the best…” He gives her what he hopes is a reassuring look. “Mike was a dumbass anyway.”
This gains a reaction, albeit not the one he was hoping for. Bonnie stiffens indignantly. “Mike is not a ‘dumbass’! He’s perfect!” she insists passionately and then bursts into a fresh spate of tears.
“Well, perfect or not- you need to come downstairs to eat your dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then I guess it’s time to start your homework.”
“I don’t care about school!”
Liam’s patience is wearing thin. “Bonnie, you’re being ridiculous. No sixteen-year-old boy is worth this much drama- especially not this one.”
“But Daddy, I LOVE HIM!” Bonnie declares, flinging herself face-first onto her pillows and dissolving into a fresh round of sobs.
Liam runs his hand through his hair and thinks longingly about the whisky locked downstairs in the kitchen cupboard.
Of all the times for Vanessa to get called to the ass-end of space.
“You don’t love him, Bonnie,” he says with a weary sigh but decides not to press the issue. He’s experienced enough to know when to make a tactical retreat.
Fiona is blessedly (and atypically) docile that night, eating her dinner and finishing her schoolwork without a fight. Liam decides to leave her sister alone and hope for the best.
At first, it seems that his patience is rewarded. A good night’s sleep seems to do the older girl a world of good. Bonnie is quiet but calm at breakfast. By the time Shaw kisses his daughters goodbye and heads for the shuttle stop he is convinced that the storm has passed and throws himself back into his work.
The Chief Shipwright beams up from San Francisco to talk about the new proposal. Liam is taking him on a walkthrough of the current Titan when his communicator chirps.
“Shaw here.”
“Captain, this is Lt. Susilo. I’m sorry to interrupt. You’ve had several calls from your daughter’s school. They couldn’t reach Mrs. Shaw.”
Liam rolls his eyes, wondering what sort of trouble Fiona has managed to find herself in this time. His youngest child is not bad-natured or mean, but she is high-spirited and has a talent for mischief. Since the move to Earth, Liam and Vanessa have already attended three parent-teacher conferences.
“Tell Uken that Vanessa is off-world. I’ll have to call him this evening.” Liam replies, “And you can let him know Fiona will be grounded until her mother gets home.” He expects that will be the end of it.
The Lieutenant’s reply is confused. “Mr. Uken, sir? I’m sorry. It’s a woman who keeps calling- from Olvikåsen Videregående school. She said she was calling about Bonnie.”
Liam stiffens. Suddenly, he’s paying 100% attention. Bonnie has always been “a natural leader”, “the reason that I got into teaching” and “a joy to have in class.” She’s never so much as missed a recess for talking too much. His mind is instantly whirling. Could she be hurt? Has this “Mike” character done something to her?
“They said she didn’t show up for classes today.”
“Didn’t show up?”
“No, sir. They wondered if you kept her home?”
The concern must show on his face because the shipwright waves Liam away, acknowledging that the Titan can wait. Captain Shaw tells Lieutenant Susilo that he did not keep his daughter at home and that he’ll provide the school with an update as soon as he has it before springing into action.
It’s probably a technical misappropriation of fleet assets to use the Titan’s sensors to confirm that Fiona (or her communication tag, at least) is sitting in Mr. Uken’s secondary classroom exactly where she is meant to be, and- more worrisome- that Bonnie’s isn’t registering at all, but Liam declares it a diagnostic and doesn’t care. It’s even more clearly against Starfleet regulations to use the transporters for non-official purposes without prior authorization. Ordinarily, Shaw is a stickler for the rules, but his calls to his daughter’s communicator ping back unanswered and there is no chance that he is going to wait in line for a shuttle and the thirty-minute commute back to the surface.
Shaw rematerializes in front of the house in Bergen and decides to search Bonnie’s room for clues before retracing her steps. He’ll interrogate Fiona as a last resort.
Liam takes the steps two at a time. Bonnie’s door is battered and slightly askew from his forced entry the night before. He pushes it open and steps inside. His eyes scan the room. He’s not sure what he’s looking for because he has no idea what happened. Did someone grab Bonnie on the way to school? Was there an accident? Did she try to run away with that ridiculous boy?
His eyes catch on a glimmer of metal on the bedside table. He steps forward to see if it is the missing communicator pin, only to be startled by a sudden sniff from the jumble of blankets on Bonnie’s unmade bed.
“Bonnie!” He wrenches back the coverlet.
Liam is equal parts furious and devastated when he sees his daughter’s tear-streaked face.
“What the hell are you doing here, Bonnie?” His nerves are still too jangled to stop himself from firing off the angry question. “You had me worried sick.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she answers in a tiny voice. Her body is crumpled into a ball and she looks gray and miserable. “I just couldn’t face going to class and seeing…him. Can’t I please stay home today?”
Liam hesitates. He doesn’t want to reward Bonnie’s poor decisions. On the other hand, it hurts to see her suffering so much. He wishes that he knew what to do. Other fathers always seem so wise.
Automatically, his mind travels back to the first time he ever held his daughter. He remembers her as a tiny baby looking into her bright blue eyes and thinking I haven’t made any mistakes yet…
There have been so many since then! The fact that the failures are unintentional doesn’t lessen the sting and doesn’t help that he’s painfully aware that Bonnie has been competing for his attention with Starfleet almost since the day she was born. She was barely a day old before he had to leave her to return to his Command Officer training course.
Maybe it’s Bonnie’s turn to come first.
“Get dressed,” Liam says after a pause. “Let’s go grab some breakfast. You didn’t have any dinner last night. You’ll feel better when you’re cleaned up and have some food in your stomach...after that, we’ll talk about what to do next.”
Bonnie nods glumly, all her rebellion spent. Thirty minutes later, they are at an all-night diner in Manhattan sitting in front of twin stacks of buttery pancakes. Liam tucks into his with gusto, while Bonnie pokes listlessly at her food with a fork.
Liam allows the silence to linger for as long as he can stand it, but there’s only so much of his daughter’s sadness that he can take.
“I promise it’s going to get better, Baby. I know you don’t want me calling him dumbass- but if Mike can’t see that he’s passing up the best girl in the galaxy…I don’t know another word for it.”
He reaches across the table and gives her hand a squeeze.
Bonnie’s eyes glitter dangerously, but she manages to hold in her tears. “I’m not though,” she says in a small voice. “I’m not pretty and funny like Fiona. I’m boring.”
Liam’s face darkens. “That’s bullshit. If someone told you that…they’re as stupid as Mike.”
Bonnie swirls her utensils in melted butter. “They don’t have to tell me…It’s obvious.”
“Skipper-!”
“I don’t have any friends since we moved here. Mike was the only person who paid any attention to me.”
Liam feels a pang of conscience. Vanessa’s job is portable, and Fiona has never met a stranger in her life. It has been easy for Liam to ignore how hard it must have been for Bonnie to leave her friends on the U.S.S. Ashland after eight years.
“Well, you’ve got your Old Man.” He reaches across the table to steal her uneaten bacon, pops it into his mouth, and then stands up from the table. “Come on. If we’re going to play hooky, we need to get a move on.”
Bonnie looks hopeful for the first time all day. “You mean I don’t have to go back to school today?”
“I guess one day isn’t going to hurt anything. Is there anything, in particular, you want us to do until your sister gets home?”
“They don’t need you back at Spacedock?”
Liam thinks briefly about the stack of unanswered messages in his office and the Shipwright waiting for him on the Titan but forcibly clears his mind. “Your mama is going to lose her mind when she finds out I let you cut class- I might as well get some fun out of this too.”
“Maybe it could just be our secret.”
“We’ll see.” Liam is deliberately non-committal. “Now…” he drops some credits onto the table to pay for their meal and stands up from the booth. “Where are we headed?”
Bonnie shrugs.
“In that case, I know just the place!”
“Do you want to ride one?”
“Daddy! I’m too big!”
“What do you mean?” Shaw pauses outside the queue to enter the corral of blue Nimbusian horses and waits for his daughter to join him. “They were always your favorite! You used to beg for rides!”
“Sure- when I was five! Besides, riding animals seems a little…barbaric, doesn’t it?”
“They’re holograms, Bon.”
Shaw growls and sighs in defeat. The trip to Islands of Magic is less successful than he envisioned. His memory is full of images from trips to the amusement park in years gone by: Bonnie in pigtails chasing wood sprites through a field of giant dandelions; Bonnie in a Tutu and tiara sliding down the back of a fire-breathing dragon; Bonnie begging to ride the Nimbusian horses again and again until he and her mother were both at their wit's end. Of course, his daughter is correct. That happened years ago. She’s no longer a rosy-cheeked toddler whose hurts and heartaches can be soothed away with a cookie and a kiss.
Liam is frustrated and running out of ideas, but it’s not in his nature to give up. He approaches the problem the way he was trained: systematically working through potential solutions as though they are a diagnostic checklist:
Pep talk: Fail.
Food: Fail.
Fun Distraction: Fail.
“We can go somewhere else.” He pauses to allow Bonnie a chance to offer her own suggestions. “I heard there’s a place in London where-“
Shaw can’t finish the sentence before Bonnie bursts into tears again.
“Christ.”
“M-Mike took me to L-London,” she sniffles while Liam tries to position his body between his daughter and the curious looks of the other Islands of Magic patrons.
Stare all you want, he thinks. Your time is coming.
“I’m sorry baby we can just-“
“Susilo to Captain Shaw.”
Liam is interrupted by a summons from his communicator badge. He swears under his breath before slapping it in response.
“Yes?”
“Sir, Fleet Command is asking if you had a chance to sign off when the latest spec sheets they sent up. They need them ASAP. The Admiralty board is meeting at 1800 today to make the final approvals.”
Typical, Shaw thinks. Starfleet spins their wheels for literal years about making a decision on the Titan retrofit and then the one day that he has other plans is when they decide to make the project a priority.
Shaw glances over at Bonnie, who is bravely staunching her tears. She squares her shoulders and stiffens her spine, already resigned to letting him go again.
“It’s OK, Daddy,” she says gently.
But it isn’t.
“Sir?” Lieutenant Susilo’s voice presses for an answer.
Liam is still working up the courage to tell the Admiralty to pound sand when his mind summons another memory of Bonnie. In this one, she is even younger than when he brought her to Islands of Magic.
Suddenly, he knows what to do.
He presses his communicator again. “If they need it that fast, I don’t have time to wait on a shuttle back. Tell Spacedock control I have two to beam up from my location directly to the Titan Transporter Room.”
“Aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Susilo says. “Stand By.”
Bonnie’s eyes go wide as saucers.
“Two to beam up?”
Liam takes her hand. “Want to meet your baby sister?”
Life as a Fleet Brat has been hard on Bonnie, but space has always been her home. The teenager’s face lights up with its first genuine smile of the day at the prospect of visiting Spacedock. Less than five minutes later father and daughter materialize on the transporter pad.
“This looks a little sketchy,” Bonnie says after looking around the Transporter Room. It has already been stripped down to its most basic components. A transparent force shield is the only barrier between the place they are standing and the zero-gravity vacuum of the shipyard.
“She’s not a beauty queen yet,” Liam agrees with a chuckle. “Her last tour was a bit rough, and now Starfleet is talking about stripping her down to the space frame and rebuilding the Titan as a Constitution III.”
“Why not just start from scratch?”
“The cost, mainly. Some materials can’t be replicated- at least, not without more effort than it is worth. The DOTS are going to strip out her guts and store them to repurpose in the redesign. We’re keeping the warp core and the nacelles. There’s going to be an upgrade, of course, but the fundamentals will remain the same…those are the official reasons…if you want my personal opinion- I think it’s because the Admiralty is a bunch of sentimental old bastards who don’t like thinking up new names.”
“Or maybe just superstitious.” Bonnie lays her hand on a piece of the exposed frame. “She feels lucky.”
The edge of Liam’s lip quirks upward. “You could be right, Baby.” He brushes a kiss on the top of Bonnie’s head. “I need to go sign off on the plans they sent up. Give me a few minutes and then we’ll poke around, OK?”
They make a quick stop at Liam’s office and then head back to the Titan again.
The tour is a bit of a shambles. The ship is like Swiss cheese. Liam does his best to make a coherent pass through the main operation areas, but they keep running into empty spaces and dead ends. Main Engineering, however, is fully intact.
“It’s beautiful!” Bonnie exclaims, moving toward the thrumming warp core like a moth drawn near a flame.
“I used to bring you to Main Engineering on the Shackleton when you were little and wouldn’t settle down. It always put you right to sleep.”
“I bet the engineers loved having a screaming baby around.”
“A perk of being the first officer- they couldn’t stop me.”
Liam stands back and watches as Bonnie moves from the core to one of the auxiliary panels.
“That’s the-“
“Antimatter containment regulator monitor.” Bonnie supplies before he can finish, she glides her slender fingers reverently over the polished panel before moving to the next component and this is the relay control and inducer/transducer inflection access.”
Liam arches a brow. “I’m impressed. How do you know so much about warp drives?”
Bonnie flashes a grin. “My dad taught me.”
Liam feels about twelve feet tall.
“I didn’t know you soaked so much up.”
Bonnie shrugs. “Some kids memorized dinosaur names. Warp core components were my thing, I guess. I have been brushing up a little recently though. I want to be ready for my Academy entrance exams next year.”
Shaw is stunned.
“You want to go to Starfleet Academy?”
“Of course, Daddy!” Bonnie laughs as if he’s being ridiculous. “When I grow up, I want to be just like you.”
Liam slips his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and holds her until she starts to squirm.
Bonnie twists her lips. “Do you remember when they did that cold start of the core on the Ashland?”
Liam frowns and nods. The restart- necessitated by a containment leak- was one of the most harrowing events of his career and certainly not something he’ll ever forget. He still breaks out in a sweat when he thinks about how close he came to losing the ship and his family along with it. However, he purposefully kept the reason for the repairs from his girls, so he doubts that’s the motivation behind Bonnie’s question.
“What about it?”
“Do you remember when you took me and Fiona down to the core when all the service panels were still pried off? We used paint and put our handprints on the back of the dilithium reaction chamber where no one would see them. You always said it was the heart of the ship. I wonder if they’re still there.”
Bonnie is momentarily lost in her thoughts, but Liam glances over his shoulder.
“I think there’s still a working replicator in the break room.”
Bonnie is confused. “Daddy?”
“This ship needs a heart too.”
“Are we allowed?”
“Who’s going to stop us?”
The look on Bonnie’s face is more than enough justification for breaking yet another regulation. Besides, after more than thirty years of living by the book, Liam figures he’s due.
Shaw sends Bonnie to fetch the paint and a damp rag to clean their hands while he finds a spot on the backside of the reaction chamber that’s cool enough to touch and pries off the outer shielding.
Bonnie selects blue for herself and Liam takes yellow.
“You first,” she says.
Captain Shaw smears his palm with sticky paint and then lays it against the exposed paneling.
The heart of the ship.
The description feels particularly apt as his skin presses down against the smooth surface. He can feel the vibrations of the core like a living pulse traveling along the metal and through his hand. He wriggles his fingers to make a good impression and then pulls away and cleans his hand.
“Now you.”
Bonnie copies her father’s actions. She coats her hand in vibrant sapphire-hued paint. Then, instead of making a print next to Liam’s, she places her palm print directly on top of his the blue completely encircled in yellow so that it forms a single shape.
“Now, no matter where the Titan goes we’ll always be together.”
“You’re planning to come with me, I hope!”
Bonnie shakes her head. “I’ll be in school Daddy.”
It stuns him to realize that she’s right. If Starfleet moves forward with the new design Bonnie will be nearly twenty years old by the time the Titan is space worthy again. Captain Shaw’s daughter is far closer to a fully grown woman than the precocious toddler that lives in his mind. Someday very soon she will embark on a life of her own.
He’s not ready to let her go.
Something of his distress must show on his face because Bonnie quickly wipes off her hand and then snuggles back against his chest.
“We still have a little time.”
They both know that it’s not nearly enough.
Bonnie and Liam stand together quietly until a gentle chime from the chronometer reminds them that they need to leave if they’re going to catch a shuttle back to Earth to be home when Fiona gets out of school. Bonnie gives her father a peck on the cheek and turns toward the door.
“I had fun today, Dad.”
“Me too, Skipper.” He catches her hand and gives it a squeeze. “I really am sorry about Mike.”
Bonnie merely shrugs. It’s clear that her broken heart is finally on the mend.
“It’s OK. And you were right, by the way. Mike is a dumbass. He doesn’t even know the difference between a matter-antimatter warp drive and a singularity propulsion system.”
“Well, we certainly can’t settle for that.” Liam stops just outside the shuttle stop, suddenly serious. “Bonnie, you’re amazing. Someday, somebody is going to realize that and treat you the way you deserve.”
She shrugs.
“Maybe, and maybe not…but I can’t imagine loving anyone as much as I love you.”
THE END