by Diane Carey
The captain smiled. “Now, George.”
“Rob, she’s a veterinarian!”
April shook his head. “George, she’s the perfect choice for this mission. She’s a stable, steady ally when the situation gets stressful, and she already knows me well enough that I don’t have to explain myself in order to get the right action, and that’s just what we’ll need. It’s the same reason I chose you for my exec. I don’t want to work with strangers. Not on this mission, not with this ship.”
Whether or not his doubt showed, George couldn’t tell. With no way to argue a point he preferred not to discuss at all, he fell silent under April’s gaze.
“What’s this you’ve got?” April asked, changing the subject. “Oh, a letter home. How charming.” He reached out without the slightest regard for privacy, which was becoming less and less available, and plucked the envelope from George’s hand. “I think this is one of the things I like best about you, George.”
George gazed at April’s shoes. “It’s one of the things I like least about myself,” he admitted.
“Really? What brings this on?” April asked sympathetically.
“Nothing,” George muttered.
“Needing to go home for a while? I can arrange it after we get back. No problem.”
Those words didn’t hold the promise of solution that George expected they might. Instead, there was little more than another sinking feeling, a drained hope.
“Won’t that help?” April finally asked.
George shrugged. “When I’m home, the tension gets focused,” he [79] said slowly. “At least when I’m in space, the boys have a fantasy to cling to.”
With a fatherly nod, April said, “I understand.” He tapped the letter against his palm. “I’ll see that this gets out for you, if you like.”
George looked up abruptly. “Now? What about security? Starfleet’s managed to keep a black hole around this project. You don’t expect they’re going to let something like that get through, do you?”
“Oh, if command status doesn’t offer a few advantages, what good is it? I’ll pipe it through to the spacedock before we leave, and they’ll funnel it back to Earth. I doubt even starbase security will find anything subversive about a letter to two little boys in Iowa.”
In spite of the callous front George had put up, he felt a warmth rise in his chest. “That’s damned generous of you, Rob.”
April fanned the letter between them and clapped George’s arm. “Not at all, George. Not at all.”
Chapter Seven
[82] Hand-me-down regrets. They fell off the page like petals from a dying flower. He’d never seen them before, in those days so far past, when the letters had meant other things to him. Things that seemed magnified now, from this different perspective. Somehow time had failed to gild the memories brought back by these handwritten words. There was something different here, something ten-year-old eyes hadn’t been able to see.
The letters were a kind of unconsummated love—the deepest kind of all because all its hopes remain forever intact, unspent.
He knew that sensation too well today. His father’s face had faded in his memory, and even these letters failed to call it back entirely. Instead of the masculine face he expected to see as his eyes scanned these curled pages, he saw a drably dressed Englishwoman rather out of place herself, or out of time, and he saw himself plunging in emotionally where he didn’t belong.
“Anybody aboard?”
The familiar roughness of that voice rustled through his memories. He let the letters drop to his thigh and leaned his head back on the loft door. “I might’ve known.”
“Anybody up there alive?”
Kirk turned his head slightly toward the sound and furrowed his brows. “What do I get if I don’t answer?”
“Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” came the response, along with the creak of the loft ladder.
“From you? No thanks.” He turned just in time to see the frost-blue eyes and animated face of interference itself pop up over the edge of the loft.
“Your mother said you were up here,” McCoy said as he maneuvered his thin frame around the top of the ladder and strolled through the hay, wiping dusty hands on his trousers.
Kirk frowned. “Last I heard from you, you were in orbit. What are you doing down here?”
McCoy’s brows arched. “Just passing through.”
“Nobody’s ever just passing through Iowa, McCoy.”
The brows went up even higher. “Well, I am.” He rearranged his long legs and sat down on the opposite side of the doorway as though he couldn’t help it that his loft door was on the same farm as Kirk’s loft door.
Kirk leered at him, not surprised at his audacity. “I knew I could [83] count on you to come up here and cheer me up, especially if I ordered you not to.”
Dependably, McCoy changed the subject. “What’re those?”
Kirk looked down at the yellowed piles of old-style Starfleet stationery and notepaper and wondered if there wasn’t some way he could pretend they were something other than what they were. “They’re letters.”
“To whom?”
“To me. Sam and me.”
“From?”
“From,” he answered slowly, still stalling, “from our father.”
McCoy leaned back, hanging one leg over the edge. “And I thought you were up here alone.”
McCoy was nervous; Kirk could tell. Nervous and hiding it. Something had dragged him here, albeit unwillingly, as surely as a magnet drags a paperclip. A caution hovered over them, as though McCoy had expected to be verbally whipped for the intrusion, as though he still thought that might happen.
Kirk looked down at the letters again and knew McCoy was watching him. It was like having his own private Geiger counter; someone whose attention almost always came in direct proportion to some other emotion—concern, curiosity, guilt.
Guilt ...
“How old were you then?” McCoy asked.
“This batch came the summer I was ten.”
“That would’ve been twenty-one eighty ... eighty-two.”
“Eight-three.”
“And your father was about the age you are now? About thirty-four? Thirty-five?”
Kirk eyed him, knowing perfectly well what he was doing. “Give or take a year,” he said evasively.
A light breeze came across the cornfield and ruffled the papers in his hand, as though to draw him back. He looked at the words for a second time. Back then, all those years and experiences ago, he’d thought his father was trying to let him down easy about spending the summer at Starbase 2. Now, perhaps the interpretation had to be different. Perhaps his father had been experiencing something entirely other than the message his sons got from the letters. Perhaps he had been realizing what it was he left behind—wife, sons, the human side [84] of modern existence. At the time, it had only seemed disappointing to little Jim. Back then, the feelings had been those of a ten-year-old kid.
Now, the feelings were his father’s. He’d grown into them.
“When I was a boy,” he began, his own voice a shock in the silence that had fallen, “I was so proud of him ... he was head of security for a whole starbase. It sounded like a kingdom to me then.”
There was a faint shuffle in the hay. “And now?”
“Now I see an undercurrent of boredom. I never saw it before. These letters are more apologetic than I remembered. It’s shaded, but I can see it now. I don’t think he shared the pride in himself that I had in him.”
“Sounds familiar,” McCoy muttered.
“And some of it was my fault.”
“Oh, this I’d like to hear,” McCoy shot back. “Let me get comfortable. How do you figure it was your fault?”
“I was always bothering him to let us come to the starbase, maybe even live there. It must have made him feel neglectful of us. I didn’t realize what I was doing to him.” He squinted as the sun broke from around a small cloud and struck the bright paper, making it appe
ar suddenly new. Even through the clouds of time. “In a way, I’m jealous.”
“Of your father?”
“At least when he did come home, he had somebody to come home to. The glory and excitement wears a little thin when you realize what you’re paying for it, Bones. My father had a family. I don’t even have that. I should’ve realized that a long time ago.”
McCoy played with a bit a hay, to avoid looking up at the sandy hair and hazel eyes filled with regret. “Jim, we’ve all got enough to be sorry for without counting should’ves,” he said quietly. “History abused us,” he went on. “It’s the price we pay for being able to travel through time in two directions instead of one. It would be wrong to let the past shrivel the future too.”
The sun moved in the sky, slowly, ignorantly. Clouds made sleepy turns. Neither man looked at the other.
“It’s the ship, Bones,” Kirk said, in a tone softly accusatory, like a witness to a murder who’d suddenly realized what it was he saw happening in the dark of night. “It’s her fault. It’s a sacrifice of any personal happiness, this drug called a starship.” He paused. “And I’ve made a decision.”
[85] This time McCoy did look up, but any prompting clogged in his throat. His lips parted, but nothing came out.
Kirk gazed out over the sunstruck corn. “I’ve lived the starship’s life for her. It’s time to live my own. It’s time to take what I’ve got left, and get out.”
PART II
These Are the Voyages
Chapter Eight
THE RAZE was in simulated night. In the “morning,” they were scheduled to search a fleet of merchant cargo runners. Dry duty, yes.
Idrys divorced herself from plaguing thoughts of the Field-Primus, or tried to. He was a self-assured man. He seemed to know his future, seemed to have some time-earned understanding of how governments and people change like unstoppable tides. Yet she had seen in t’Cael’s eyes a frustration that kept him forever trying to stall the changes, and forever suffering the agonies of never quite succeeding. Finally he was the victim of the changes.
She would welcome the sight of her own quarters tonight. The military austerity would be comforting. The unadorned walls and muted colors would remind her of nothing, and that would bring fleeting peace.
The peace might have stayed with her had she not been stricken by the unwelcome appearance of Antecenturion Ry’iak coming out of the turbo-lift just as she was going in. Idrys pressed her lips tight against a bitter grin; his forehead was colored by a verdant bruise with t’Cael’s signature on it. She liked that very much. Certainly it was prideful to wear one’s own medals of victory, but it was that much more pleasing when the enemy was forced to wear the medals of his defeat.
“Commander,” he greeted.
[90] “Antecenturion,” she returned. “I’m surprised to see you up so late, after so full a day.”
He bristled at her reminder of the day’s humiliations. When he actually smiled and cocked his head with pleasure at his own words, Idrys felt her own pleasure drop away.
“Surprises are part of our duty, Commander,” he said. “You should be ready for them.”
With an infuriating nod, he strode away.
She watched him leave, but couldn’t tell where he was headed. Why was he so pleased with himself? T’Cael had thoroughly cowed him. Where did this sudden return of smugness come from?
Perhaps it was his youth, she suggested to herself. Still, she knew better. He was up to something and he was too inexperienced and unprofessional to keep from giving himself away. He hadn’t been able to resist gloating. Yet, if she had him tracked and he ended up doing nothing, she could be accused of dissolution and removed of her command.
She stood in the corridor, weighing her options, feeling the spider’s web was thickening.
Ry’iak almost giggled as the panel to the cramped auxiliary bridge slid closed against his shoulder blades. He inhaled the recirculated air as though it gave him power.
The officer on duty turned and grew as cold as his helmet when he saw the Praetor’s eye, for he knew what the visit meant.
“The Senate’s regards, Subcenturion,” Ry’iak said, twisting out a smile.
The subcenturion only managed a nod, knowing perfectly well that the greeting was a reminder of Ry’iak’s power; the Senate would never pass its regards to a lower officer.
“It is my time,” Ry’iak reminded.
Another nod.
Ry’iak moved to the control panel. “I will need a screened communication dispatch, direct to ch’Rihan system, in the cypher I gave you for the Supreme Praetor’s alcazar, speed boosted and under code.”
The subcenturion rose stiffly. “It’s ready, sir. Time will be limited. You have until the blue mark. If you go beyond the mark, the bridge will be notified of the dispatch, and we will both be fodder.”
Ry’iak smiled his smugness. “Don’t feel you’re being disloyal, [91] Moyu. Loyalty to the Praetor takes precedence over loyalty to a Field-Primus who has shamed us all with his pacifism.”
The subcenturion tried to absorb the complex ethic. “Primus Kilyle is hardly a soft kind, sir. He’s a sovereign provincial Praetor in his own right and I do fear him.”
“Oh, wisely so,” Ry’iak placated. “But even he has crutches that can be kicked away.”
Dubious, the subcenturion lowered his eyes and escaped from the auxiliary bridge, leaving Ry’iak alone for the precious minutes he would need to effect his subterfuge.
His eyes narrowing with a sinister joy, Ry’iak lowered into the seat and began tapping out his message.
Simulated morning slipped in almost unnoticed. A few more crewmen were on duty; the small ship’s interior lights were slightly brighter. Already a hulking cargo vessel dwarfed the fighter-flagship, and a boarding party had been dispatched to search for contraband. Nothing would be found.
The Raze, though tiny against the large brown bulk of the carrier, was still intimidating. Despite the size difference, the bird-painted flagship could easily destroy the entire cargo vessel.
That fact meant little to the bridge crew as they went through the motions of monitoring the routine search. Only when the Praetor’s eye joined them on the bridge did mundane duty gain a touch of spice.
For a very carefully measured amount of time, Ry’iak looked out the main viewer at the carrier’s hull, which stretched out into space close enough to touch. Most of the carrier was still out of view simply because of the docking position. Monitors across the bridge displayed different views of the big ship, a placid cow awaiting permission to enter the feeding yard.
Ry’iak waited until Subcommander Kai couldn’t stand it anymore and glanced at him. Then he issued a calculated sigh.
“Isn’t it a pity,” Ry’iak began, “that officers of your caliber must be reduced to such ... busybody duty. Soldiers diminished to maidservants.”
“Duty is duty,” Kai said self-consciously, refusing to look at the antecenturion. “All is glorious in the name of the Empire.”
“If it comforts you,” Ry’iak agreed. He moved closer. “But to be the minions of disgrace ... I sympathize.”
[92] “These inspections are necessary,” Kai said, forcing himself to sound strong.
“A Praetorial Swarm reduced to territory snooping? Such waste.” Ry’iak shook his head. “To be an animal sniffing at the hindquarters of another animal ...”
From the master engineer to the bridge centurion to the navigational technicians, the bridge crew glanced uncomfortably at each other. Ry’iak made sure they all heard, his voice just loud enough to stitch disaffection together like a garment’s threads, and tug it tight.
Kai drew his shoulders in and gripped the controls of the subcommand console. “We’re protecting our space from smugglers and pirates.”
“Protecting? Against ships that aren’t allowed to carry armaments? Perhaps you think of it as a challenge ... but then, perhaps you’ve spent enough time here to know more about innerspace
dangers than I.” He leaned on the console, maneuvering into a position that forced Kai to see his face. “Or perhaps you’ve attained your goal already. To be subcommander of a ship in an imperial Swarm is a worthy thing. I can see why you might be comfortable with it.”
Kai dug his fingers into the console controls’ spongy grips. His nose wrinkled at the stench of Ry’iak’s words. He felt the eyes of the bridge officers from beneath the pointed browplates of their helmets. Empathy, anger, pity, bitterness—all ran like snakes at their feet.
His legs began to ache; he was stuck in this position, bent over the controls; if he turned, the crew would see his face.
“It’s a good thing this ship has the authority of the Tricameron behind it,” Ry’iak said, flexing his shoulders and gazing out the main viewer. He raised his voice now that he had the crew’s attention. “Smugglers and pirates have to be intimidated.”
Kai’s eyes screwed shut.
The bridge crew exchanged another collective glance, each officer feeling the weight of his rank insignia—or perhaps, the lack of weight. On the cramped, low-roofed bridge, a faint heat rose. Each crewman felt the closeness of the next.
The bridge entrance panel sighed open and Idrys strode to the command seat. Conversation fell away. Not until she reached the command module did she notice Ry’iak standing half hidden behind a structural rib. She stopped short and stared at him. Only by a cultivated self-discipline was she able to break the glare and pretend to turn her attention to the cargo ship. What was he doing here so early?
[93] “When will the inspection be complete?” she asked, lowering herself into the hard command seat.
Kai cleared his throat. “The inspection team is on its way back to airlock now, Commander.”
“Good. Prepare to detach. Authorize passage for the carrier into home space. When the team returns, I want to see a list of cargo.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Be sure the commander of the carrier—” she began, then stopped.