Chapter Text
Escape from authority - thievery - Martians - more illegal actions - an opportunity to advance knowledge
They were not expected to be a flight risk. Which is why he could do it. He knew he was lucky in that. It helped that they thought he was one Tyler Leighton, the fuss they would kick up over the Kelvin Baby was simply not worth it. So Thomas had supported his claim, and the crew of the USS Intrepid had been far far too distracted to wonder why they didn't look much alike. Or perhaps the hungry eyes and taught skin over bone was all they saw when they looked at JT and his children. So JT had taken advantage. They did not see him, they saw a starved waif too sick and weak to cause trouble. He was careful not to let on that, better fed than he'd been in weeks, JT was more than capable of trouble.
They had all been interviewed, separately. All the children without parents got an extra interview. Starfleet had rescued over six hundred people in all and were struggling to place the intact families, let alone the orphans. JT's children were just sixteen of these.
He would have to make sure they went to good homes. He knew he couldn't take them all with him. Starfleet might let a few of them escape but would not forget seventeen disappearances. So JT would ensure that proper care was taken of his children. Fortunately he had access to a powerful server. The USS Intrepid.
It was ridiculously easy to see the nurses logging in to the display computer. So each night JT would slip over to the display and log in. He had to dart back to his bed every half hour when the nurse on night duty came around to check the incessant beeping of the instruments all the Survivors were attached to. The beeping was more irritating than the nurses though. Finding the names of the relatives or foster homes his children were slated for was simple enough. The data wasn't even well protected. He had to resist an urge to improvise more firewalls, but he was out of practice and it would raise alarms. In between the nurse patrol JT tried to look into these adults. The regular interruptions by the nurses grew more frustrating, he should be grateful for the care. He wasn't. The information he could find on the adults who would be guardians for his children was sparse and inconclusive. The Federation wouldn't give children to people with records, but lack of an official record did not make a person an appropriate caregiver. JT would know. So he looked for the habits such people had, JT was familiar with these too. Yet there was not nearly enough data for JT to be certain.
This uncertainty posed a problem. His sixteen children were being spread across the galaxy. The greatest bloc, seven, were staying on Terra, but that left nine of them as far flung as Planet Q and Rakosa V. Unable to spin a satisfactory solution JT drew Thomas and Amy quietly aside. They were the closest to him in age. Thomas was steady and meticulous, Amy was more like JT but had anger instead of guilt. When JT had been getting food, Thomas had carefully tried local plants, he'd found five that were human-safe. It had helped when JT no longer had access to Kodos' food stores. Then Amy had joined JT on more dangerous raids for food. It was how they lost 'Leazar, those raids.
JT explained who each of them would be sent to. Tom was going to live with a second cousin he had met twice on Planet Q and Amy was being fostered on Terra. JT was meant to be going with Thomas as his brother Tyler. He did not mean to stick around for that to happen. He didn't look nearly enough like Thomas or the dead Tyler and it couldn't last.
Curled up in a knot on Thomas' bed they whispered their plans. They all had dreams beyond the next meal now and the three of them worked them out in hushed voices. First was how to look out for the other fourteen children. Amy, staying on Terra with a foster family, was the logical choice to keep in contact with the six others also slated to live on Terra. It took Thomas a bit of convincing but he was certain that he could keep in touch with all eight other children who like him, would be spread across Terran colonies. Established ones. Not new ones like Tarsus IV. JT would stay in touch with Thomas and Amy. He was also to watch for signs of abuse, it went unspoken, but all of them knew JT would be watching over his children.
To properly care for his children JT could not have an adult monitoring his activities, and he could not be sent back to his uncle. He had the resources, chips stolen from Kodo's computers. Like a proper tyrant Kodos had insisted on controlling everything about his people, including their bank records. JT would be putting whatever this money totalled into his children, it would keep him off the streets too. And he could earn money in other ways if he needed.
With the care of his children seen to JT asked if they knew what they would be doing. Thomas was already certain. He was set on going into Agri-Science empirical research would suit him and there was nothing he was more passionate about than ensuring food supplies. JT agreed that this was also where he had been hoping to make a difference. Make it so no more children were put through a Tarsus. Amy was conflicted. Her first thought was of getting into politics to make sure there were the checks and balances in place to bring rescue sooner and her second was to go into healthcare so she could rescue people directly. Thomas thought politics would be better as it was further reaching. JT told the eighteen year old that she need not stick to a single career.
Amy and JT were sent back to their own beds when the USS Intrepid dimmed the lights in the makeshift ward. Tomorrow the three of them would tell the other children what would happen and how to stay in contact. The young ones wouldn't understand why they would be sent off to be raised by strangers, but this was not a battle JT could win. Not outright. They would have to sneak around the edges again. Let Starfleet think they would placidly let their lives be controlled and put everything in place so they could leave for their own lives whenever they chose.
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So when they were shipped down in shuttles JT had already said his goodbyes to his children. In the chaos of the Terran starport JT reeled back from the heaving mass of people. The other Survivors and even the Villagers had all stopped as well. It was a shock to see the crowds. It was horrible to recall that last crowd, of four thousand souls. JT shook himself and thought of his plan. He had to learn about crops and make sure this could not happen again. So with the other ex-Tarsus he followed the officer assigned to them and they stepped into the seething masses.
It was the simplest thing to step away from their group and let the crowd take him. The sensation of people pressing around him was no longer familiar, but he did remember how once he'd been able to use crowds. They had been comfortable and safe, a means of escape. Now they made him dizzy and breathless. He was well practiced at pick-pocketing though, better than he'd been before Tarsus.
The credits went to an automated ticket booth and he was on the next flight to Mars.
The stale smelling Short-Range had uncomfortable seats but as JT watched Terra disappear he finally felt free. From the chatter of a tour group JT learnt inane facts about his destination. He was headed to the domed city of Eurydike on the western edge of Valles Marineris, a mining city settled for the varied mining around the Tharsis Bulge. Apparently four cities had been lost after terraforming reactivated the volcanic activity in the area and Eurydike was built as close as the Terran government would allow civilians to live. What did grab JT's attention was the presence of a prestigious mining university. Not exactly the focus he was after, but surely they could not only have lectures on volcanoes.
They did not. Arriving from Terra there were no customs lines so JT followed the noisy tour group to their first stop at Eurydike Uni. After following several likely looking youths JT and found himself in the library. They had courses on everything. Eurydike's strengths lay in geology and mining but with the poetry department a not too distant third. JT was more interested on the well-reviewed course in soil dynamics. Soil surely was a huge part of Agri-science, but he couldn't simply turn up if he wanted to complete the course. This was a little more difficult.
He had some idea of what he would need to do and the rest, well it would follow logically. He could not be Tyler - escaped Tarsus survivor. Who was meant to be heading to Planet Q with Thomas. But neither could he be a Kirk, returning to the care of his Uncle was something to be avoided at every cost. So he would have to be someone else, and have enough paperwork to prove he really was this person. He had unknowingly laid the groundwork back on Tarsus. The stolen chips from Kodos' computer system. He'd hoped to use them in proving his guilt when this came to trial. That was when he was still expecting rescue before it was too late, still hoping. He still had those credit chips, tucked into the kit bag Starfleet had issued each of them.
Kodos had liked to know and control everything about his people, this meant he had all sorts of useful details. Like bank ident information. JT had not dared touch this while on the Starfleet vessel. Now he did. He brought out the chips and plugged them in. He didn't need to hack through Kodos' firewalls, he knew the password. Kodos liked to share. JT knew from his Winona's rare stories that Starfleet and the Federation took a while to move on declaring people dead and securing their assets to be bequeathed. So he set up two trust funds putting Thomas as the beneficiary of one and Amy of the other. Then he began bouncing cash through the set-up he had made to keep uncle Frank away from his own bank. Not the one Winona dropped her salary in, the one JT had set up to keep his pocket money in. Sam had taken him to do it after JT had learned about banks in class. Frank had drained it for the petty cash only weeks later. JT had acted to secure against Frank with the pure fury of an indignant child, throwing his efforts into researching how to keep money safe.
Now he used that knowledge to cash in from Kodos' Dogs and the dead Villagers. He was going to leave the money of those executed and those who had not survived, but morality would not save his children. He took that money too. Not all of it, but enough and all of it he channelled through Kodos' accounts first.
Half went to the two trust funds, the rest he spread around accounts and investments. He sent Amy and Thomas a message with how to access the trust funds and explained how they were set up to support the education and lives of his children. He had set up the investments and other accounts under the uninspired name of Tiber Riley. He made Tiber months older than he was and so the newly fifteen year old began applications to the Soil Science course. He stayed late into the night cycle at the library, still on ship time and with endless loose ends to tie up.
Tiber used the backdoor he had left in the USS Intrepid to find a suitable family to attach himself to. It would be more realistic to have a broken home so he found a man already in the penal system with a history of domestic and other violence, now Tiber had a father. There was conveniently a sister too, on a mining ship over Barradas III nicely isolated from news of her estranged imprisoned brother and his new son. Tiber forged guardianship papers and edited a couple of pictures of him with his new aunt. He put her name on his applications and made an email account for her. For the history of his birth mother he found a Riley who had lived and died on Eurydike, she would do for a cursory background check. Tiber was even satisfied that she had blond hair. She had two remaining relatives an aging father and a half-brother through her mother. The aged relative was easy, Tiber had a few pictures of him, his new mother and grandfather edited together. A blonde haired mother, a blue eyed grandfather, named Tyler, how very neat, he could be named after the aging man. That is what he would tell people in any case.
With a family in place to absorb scrutiny Tiber send his application forms. Along with these he sent beautifully written letter from his new aunt asking the board to consider Tiber's application despite his youth. There was his academic record to straighten out.
His own was spotty and it seemed somewhat more immoral to fudge his grades than say stealing money from people who had supported a tyrant. So he compromised. Eurydike had several excellent schools and many more run of the mill ones. Tiber had his history jump around these, never quite being expelled or gaining a black mark, but obviously showing something was up. He made his grades as near to what he had been getting those first months on Tarsus, but he made sure to have only just have completed each year, being apparently pulled out and absent for several tests. These he correlated with teachers' notes about suspected abuse, angry words from his father and a single hospital visit. He made this go back all the way to when his own old injuries started. Then he improved things. Within a month of his father's imprisonment and his aunt taking full guardianship his grades were steady and as brilliant as everything had first seemed on Tarsus.
---
Eurydike had a little over five and a half million people. Finding single room apartment close to the uni was easy, renting it in his aunts name was a little more difficult, but Tiber managed. He had napped on the university campus, waking to the refracted light through the dome. For the next week Tiber filled in his time shoring up his background and waiting for the uni administration to contact him. When they did it was to ask for an in-person interview with Tiber. The email, directed to his aunt, indicated both of them would be welcome. Tiber carefully implied that he was, in his aunt's opinion, very keen to prove that he could do this without her.
So he turned up to the interview neatly dressed and even appropriately nervous. Albeit not for the reasons his new identity should be. Though, with a father like he had gained it wouldn't be too surprising that meeting adult males was distressing. With this analysis running in his mind Tiber was ushered into an office that would be bright if it weren't for the clutter. Ms Davis gave him an automatically condescending smile, Tiber bristled and when she made an inane opening statement he jumped to the point.
"It is not typical that an applicant is interviewed." Blinking tinted irises at him Ms Davis nodded. She seemed to gather herself together and gave a firm agreement. "Am I too young to be accepted, if so please tell me and I will apply elsewhere. I have talked this through with my aunt and while she prefers that I stay in Eurydike if staying here will limit my education she will agree to my applying elsewhere."
"Well no. We have taken students younger than fifteen before, but we like to ensure that our younger students are ready for university life." She hedged. Tiber waited, he could sit still and silent for hours when he needed. She broke first, moving her desk clutter about. "I am going to ask some personal questions," she trailed off, Tiber nodded. She wasn't a psychiatrist like the one he had spoken to on the USS Intrepid, Tiber guessed she had training as a councilor. The questions were many but he had prepared and was suitably awkward when avoiding explaining why his father was in prison. He managed to drum up smiles when talking of his aunt and began mimicking Thomas when asked to describe what career he wanted. Ms Davis was nodding along. The condescending edge to her smile had faded to be replaced with mixed pity and indulgence. Tiber's acceptance letter followed three days later.
---
One week in to three papers on Soil Sciences Tiber found he had an excess of time. He didn't socialise with the other students and they didn't know what to do with the child in their class. His flat was tiny and easy to keep neat. He had food for a month stored, a ready bag packed and spent his evenings fleshing out his fake background, messaging Amy and Thomas, and reviewing his classes. This last just reinforced what Hoshi had told him on Tarsus. Thinking of her words Tiber logged in to his uni profile and browsed his options. While it was true few of the courses were completely aligned with where he wanted to take his understanding of crop plants there were many that would complement it.
So he sent an email to Ms Davis explaining that he had been talking with his aunt about how he was enjoying the Soil Science course but not feeling very challenged by it and would she mind if he added a few papers from some complementary courses. She would not. So armed with the approval of his academic adviser Tiber signed up for Genetics 101, Microbiomes, Sociology 103 and Level 1 Mathematics.
The next weeks were better, his mind was busy absorbing the lectures and catching up on the ones that overlapped. He spent the evening on his PADD completing a correspondence course on Crop Science, Soil Management and Biology 101 at Deianeira university on Planet Q. With this and tracing his children Tiber was exhausted enough to sleep soundly for hours at a time.
This pleasing pattern continued until his lecturer had in Mathematics had him do the course work for all three levels offered at Eurydike, and Tiber spend an invigorating week working through it. Apparently this started a trend, even Ms Davis got involved. Each week he was offered - with firm insistence that he refuse the moment he wanted to - the chance to complete all the internally tested work for a course. Thrilled with the option of speeding up his academic career Tiber jumped at each chance and with courses all but eliminated from his schedule each week found this turn less and less exhausting.
Unfortunately when his brain was not occupied with new information it liked to replay events from the last three years. So to compensate he took more courses with both Eurydike and Deianeira University.
He had only been at Eurydike for four months when he made a mistake, he mentioned one of his Deianeira courses to Ms Davis. Feeling it would be worse to cover this up when she could easily access his faked record, Tiber explained about taking courses in subjects more aligned with hid goals at a separate university. Ms Davis frowned and muttered and chewed on her stained lip, she did that when Tiber did something unexpected.
She had sent him off leaving Tiber to worry over his actions and wonder if he should have spun the tale differently.
Four days later Tiber was called to her office again. Ms Davis was still chewing the lip, though today it was stained a lurid blue to match her stained irises. She sat him down, she always insisted he should be seated when she spoke to him. Apparently she had contacted Deianeira University about his courses there and had been corresponding with a representative from that university. It took a while before she circled to the point. Ms Davis, several of the lecturers here and the representative from Deianeira Uni wanted him to apply for scholarships to prestigious science orientated universities across Federation space. Ms Davis insisted that Tiber must discuss this with his aunt before giving his reply. So Tiber dutifully agreed and left to write his aunt's enthusiastic response to this opportunity for her precious nephew.
It took four weeks to organise and another three weeks of being left in quiet rooms to complete examinations and essays for the myriad of scholarship applications. The replies came in a trickle. Ms Davis began to beam at him in a most unsettling way, not helped by her recent choice of yellow iris tint. Tiber tried to order his preferences for the acceptances he had been offered. Several were conditional and a few of the negative replies encouraged him to reapply when he had attained a greater age. Ms Davis found these last more offensive than the outright negatives, she did insist that he not choose until all the replies were in. So after almost seven months at Eurydike she finally sat down with him to argue through the pros and cons of the Universities that had offered him placement.
She needn't have bothered, they both knew which one Tiber would be taking. It was not a common thing for the Vulcan Science Academy to offer placement to a human.