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Lieutenant Malcolm Reed sat quietly in the hard chair, blinking slightly as a gleam of sunlight pried through the window and plucked him out of shadow.

It was noticeable that he made no effort to draw any closer to the other man in the room. He and his father had long since abandoned any pretence of affection, and not even at this pass would he play the hypocrite.

The offices were silent, save for voices at some distant remove. He stared at the faded oil painting on the wood-panelled wall opposite him, but didn't see it. His mind was too full of strategies and briefings, the desperate plans for an upcoming war from which he might well not return.

The events of the last day or so ran through his mind more as an unwelcome distraction than as something that affected him closely. He simply didn't have time to allow it to be real. Perhaps one day, when all this was over, it might matter. He was dimly aware that it would – a good deal more than he'd have expected it to. But not now. He had too many responsibilities weighing him down to spare the attention for his own personal concerns.

Come to think of it, he certainly didn't have the time to be sitting here doing nothing in this silent, dusty London office. What could possibly be said that mattered so much that he had to be summoned out of war preparations to hear it?

The tradition of honouring a dying person's last request was probably as old as humanity. Especially when the dying person was your mother. She'd known when she dictated the message that he wouldn't make it home in time for a personal farewell, and the funeral would wait. He had enough clout to ensure that. If he was still alive afterwards, he'd attend it. If not, it would go ahead without him. Unless, of course, circumstances allowed for his body to be brought back to Earth, in which case they'd make it a double ceremony. Twice the floor space for dancing on, if Stuart Reed's spinal deterioration hadn't been so bad he could hardly stand, let alone dance. Though he might make some kind of token gesture, even so. If bitterness could act as a stimulant, he'd bloody well do the polka around the cemetery.

Mary Reed obviously hadn't been as dim as she'd always made out. She'd known who to route the message to so that it couldn't be ignored. Captain Archer could still move him around like a piece on a damned chessboard, ignoring his protests like he always had. Git.

So whether he liked it or not, Starfleet had found that it could spare him for two days. And here he was, puzzled and distracted and wrathful, staring at a bloody oil painting while thousands of miles away his ship was being readied for war and his personal oversight of everything to do with the weapons systems was missing. Hell, damn and blast it all. He could just imagine one of the Romulan centurions taking time off to sit around looking at a painting while his warbird was being readied for the fray. Oh, yes. Not.

Finally. He heard approaching footsteps and the door opened. In this place he'd expected someone along the lines of Mr Tulkinghorn from Dickens' Bleak House, but the young man who entered looked incongruously cheerful, although he quickly composed his face into the gravity appropriate when dealing with the recently bereaved.

"Commander Reed. Lieutenant Reed," he greeted them, and introduced himself.

Sensing unerringly that unless ruthless measures were taken a great deal of time would be taken up with totally unnecessary platitudes, Lieutenant Reed interrupted at this point.

Possibly even here in these dusty offices something of the sense of mortal danger had penetrated; possibly even here the insignia of a Starfleet officer registered as an indication that the wearer thereof had other concerns that could only be put off for a very short time. Possibly the glare communicated something that even a solicitor's clerk could not fail to understand. The gist of his text was short and to the point, and requested that the recipient be the same.

At any rate, the pleasant young clerk paled slightly, and was so thoroughly unnerved that he forgot the formalities and obliged both of his hearers by getting to the heart of the matter more rapidly than he'd surely intended.

The deceased had, it seemed, left a vid-recording. Her instructions had been precise. As a result of which, her husband and her son were now present in the same room – however reluctantly – in order to watch it.

The data chip was in an envelope, which had been in a locked drawer.

Lieutenant Reed looked at the writing on the envelope as it was torn open by the clerk. Faded and spidery, it was still recognisable. He wasn't much in the habit of keeping mementoes, but he'd take that with him afterwards.

There was something else in the envelope too. He saw part of it as the chip slid out. An old photograph. He recognised the curve of a black and white umbrella. Weird; he didn't even remember one of them being in the house. Still, to judge by the quality of what he could see of the print, it must date back to before he was born.

The pleasant young man activated the computer screen on the desk in front of him and inserted the data chip. There was nothing else on it. He gave the order to play the recording, and left the room.

Disbelief. Rage. Joy. So many emotions that he thought his head would burst.

Not his. I'm not his. I'm not his! I'M NOT HIS!

The photograph. If he hadn't believed before, he'd believe it now. There was his mouth, his hair. The eyes were virtually identical, though it was long enough now since he'd smiled like that, if indeed he ever had. The face, a little broader, though the chin was close enough. A clever, kindly face, grinning impishly from under the umbrella. He'd been standing in a park somewhere, to judge by the trees.

"Dad!" he whispered.

Time would have been when he'd have spared a glance for the man who could have held that title, if he'd wanted it. But 'Dad' had never been Stuart Reed's idea of a relationship. The ridicule that his son had to endure at school when the rest of his classmates found out he referred to his father as 'Sir' had been just one of the lessons that had been deemed necessary to harden the runt up to life's little realities.

Habit, however, is strong. A gasping sound tore his chained gaze from the photograph he was now clutching.

The man opposite had finally drawn his eyes from the computer monitor. His chest was heaving. His almost diabolical glare took in his supposed son and the photograph with equal venom. "Well, that's a relief! It certainly explains a few things – you never were a Reed, after all!"

The chains of years fell off him as the long-buried hatred ignited. He almost exploded from the chair. "Yes, sir, and I've never been gladder of anything in my life!" he spat out. "She played you for a fool, though, didn't she? She put a cuckoo in your bloody nest and you reared it. Well the only thing I wish is that she'd told me years ago. I could have spared myself all this time of wondering why I didn't feel a bloody thing for you except loathing!" He snatched up the envelope and put the photograph back into it with aching care. "Well, you may or may not know I've got a war to fight. And if we win, and if I come back from it, I'll see you at the funeral, if you still feel like turning up for it. And after that, you can go to hell!"

Disregarding the screeched curses that were his only reply, he strode to the door. As he jerked it open, however, he paused. "Oh, there is one thing I have to thank you for though. You taught me how to hate. And when I'm in the middle of that war, every bloody Romulan we come across will have your face. I'll blow their ships to hell and send every man jack of them to Kingdom Come. Even if we have to plough Enterprise though every bloody ship in their fleet to do it, we'll win!"

The echoes of the door slamming behind him went from one end of the building to the other. Faces peered nervously out of doors at him as he marched down the corridor, almost weeping with relief and anger and incredulity. He had a flight to catch. And more information to process than he could possibly deal with right now. A name that perhaps one day he could put more than a face to. Maybe at some point he'd get his head around it all, but right now his ship needed him, and that was the lodestar that he had to follow. That was where he belonged.

They had a war to fight.

And win.

The End.

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