A Boy on Arcturus ((Hackett/Philip))
Philip’s fingers felt numb around the datapad as he clutched it, staring at the words that streamed across it.
...was killed in action in a skirmish with batarian pirates on the border of the Terminus systems. His body will be given internment with honors at Arcturus station in the presence of his wife Hannah and son Philip on 15 March…
Philip swallowed, shut his eyes, tried to process the news with something like equanimity...and failed. Tears were squeezing out under his closed eyelids. I’m not gonna cry… he thought petulantly, as if thinking it could make it so. Dad wouldn’t’ve cried. He would have…
Really, he didn’t know what his father would have done. Terrence Shepard was a man known for his technical prowess but not his warmth, and Philip had not seen him for almost six months anyway; with both parents on border patrol, he’d been living on Arcturus Station and getting into as much trouble as a fifteen-year-old boy could think up on a military base.
Six months since he had seen his father...and now he’d never see him again.
The grief rose in his throat and choked him and he started to his feet, bursting forward off the bench he’d been occupying, barreling directly into a navy admiral walking the other direction.
“Sorry, sir,” Philip muttered thickly, his eyes flicking up to meet the older man’s gaze. Hackett -- they’d met once or twice before during Philip’s stay on the station. “Wasn’t...wasn’t looking where I was going.”
