“Is this about what happened to T’Prynn on the Ktarian mission?” Vaughn asked.
She nodded. “It’s sobering to get a demonstration about how vulnerable we all are. That even Vulcans aren’t immortal.”
“She knew the risks. We all do, or else we wouldn’t sign on.”
“But nobody can count on luck, Elias,” she said with a rueful smile. “Your ass-brained philosophy notwithstanding.”
He took a deep breath, sensing what was to come. “Is this about settling down? Getting married?”
Her laugh reminded him of the serene fountain that burbled quietly in the arboretum’s center. “I know you too well to ask you to do that, Elias. Besides, I didn’t say I wanted to retire permanently. I just need a few years away from the job.”
He frowned, suddenly worried that she was slipping away from him. Or vice versa. “A few years away. To do what?”
“I want to have a child,” she said, taking his hand. “With you.”
Vaughn was poleaxed. He nearly fell over.
Then he thought about it. A child. Theirchild. What an affirmation of life creating and raising a child would be. For the first time he could recall in decades, he felt tongue-tied.
“Let’s talk,” he said, even though he knew that words were no longer necessary.
Toscana, Earth
2355 Old Calendar
“How’s my birthday girl?”
“Daddy!”
The late Commander T’Prynn’s namesake launched herself at Vaughn’s legs, grabbing hold with a strength that nearly sent both father and daughter sprawling across the lawn. The air was redolent with marigolds, zinnias, and fruit punch, the sounds of happy children aloft on a gentle breeze. Five candles burned on the cake on the backyard picnic table.
Little Prynn disengaged herself from Vaughn to chase Danilo, the neighbor boy. Ruriko approached Vaughn, greeting him with a wide smile, though she couldn’t conceal her curiosity about his most recent assignment, out among the Orion crimelords. He smiled. There would be plenty of time to bring her up to date later.
Right now, whatever he could spare of himself belonged to little Prynn. Vaughn was delighted to see that he had beamed in soon enough to catch the bulk of the proceedings. Although the piñata was already spent and in pieces, candles remained to be blown out, yellow cake had yet to be served, and a goodly heap of ribbon-bedecked gifts remained tightly wrapped.
An urgent hail came in on Vaughn’s combadge. He breathed a silent curse. Why didn’t I just ditch the thing?
Ruriko noticed, scowling. But he knew she understood. He stepped away from the children to answer the call.
He braced himself to tell them that he couldn’t interrupt little Prynn’s special day.
But the call was from Admiral Presley’s office. There was a coup brewing on the Elaysian homeworld.
But it’s Prynn’s special day.
The planet faced imminent political upheaval, a threat to the lives of tens of thousands of people, with the potential of spilling over into adjacent sectors. Countless people were in jeopardy.
Countless strangers. Prynn is my flesh and blood. And she needs me.
According to Admiral Presley, the mission couldn’t wait. Starfleet’s brass were counting on Vaughn’s expertise. Once more unto the breach, dear friend….
He glanced at Ruriko. How he envied her ability to simply walk away from it all. He watched Prynn, still chasing Danilo through the yard, the epicenter of a sudden squall of childish laughter.
Prynn. On her special day.
Duty. Indispensability. The lives of complete strangers.
He sighed and signaled that he’d be ready to beam out in five minutes. Long enough to explain, at least a little bit, about what he had to do. And where he had to be for the next few weeks.
Prynn will understand,he told himself. Just as Ruriko had understood half a decade earlier, when duty had placed parsecs between them on the very day little Prynn had come into the world.
U.S.S. T’Plana-Hath
2369 Old Calendar
Commander Vaughn sat alone in his quarters. Before him on the desk the images of Prynn and Ruriko smiled at him from a holocube. Ruriko’s hair was streaked with gray now, but she’d lost none of her beauty, her smile had lost none of its wattage. And Prynn, now a grown woman, was definitely favoring her mother.
And she was wearing a Starfleet cadet’s uniform. Today, Vaughn recalled, was to be her first day at Starfleet Academy. Searching his soul, Vaughn realized that he felt somewhat ambivalent about his daughter’s career choice. Was she flattering him? Trying to emulate him? Or was he simply upset by yet another reminder that his inability to say no to Starfleet had made him an absentee father? Vaughn never had any doubt that Ruriko understood him, or had at least learned to love him in spite of whatever grave character flaw kept returning him to the field.
Vaughn reached out and touched the image of his daughter. How he longed to talk to her. To congratulate her for passing the Academy’s stringent entrance exams. To offer her periodic encouragement and sympathy over the next four grueling years.
If only this mission didn’t require subspace radio silence.
Ruriko, who had always been more than just the job, had been able to walk away from the field. Vaughn knew that he could not, at least not until death or senescence made the question moot.
He sincerely hoped that Prynn would take after her mother in that regard as well.
Uridi’si,
2369 Old Calendar
Vaughn stood on the bridge of the U.S.S. T’Plana-Hath,beside the captain’s chair—the chair that his departed friend T’Prynn might have occupied by this point in her career, had she lived. On the viewer, Uridi’si’s two suns had just risen above the planet’s limb, painting the oceans every imaginable shade of green and blue.
Captain Sotak turned his chair toward the tactical officer. “Is the A.I. still contained within the planet’s magnetosphere?”
The young woman at the tactical station displayed the no-nonsense attitude Vaughn had come to regard as typical of Vulcans who’d had little experience around humans. “The subspace jamming satellites are functioning normally, Captain. The U.S.S. Valkyrie,orbiting at antipodes, confirms this as well. The cyberentity cannot leave the planet’s magnetic field lines. At least, not via subspace channels.”
“Very good,” Sotak said, swiveling his chair toward Vaughn. “Commander, this is your mission. How would you like to proceed?”
“We need to destroy the physical substrate the A.I. is using to run its computational cycles,” Vaughn said. “Have your engineers found a way around the force field the thing has thrown up around itself?”
“Negative,” Sotak said. “Not without compromising the safety of the several hundred people who are trapped inside the mining station dome.”
Vaughn silently cursed the mining station’s force fields, though he understood well the need for such strong defenses so close to the Cardassian border. Orion pirate raids were also a recurring problem in this sector.
But he also knew that the situation was far from hopeless. “Commander Tenmei has been working on an alternative way around the A.I.’s defenses, Captain.”
The turbolift whooshed open at that moment, depositing Ruriko onto the bridge. She was back in uniform for the first time in two decades, now that Prynn had emptied the nest by enrolling at Starfleet Academy. Vaughn could see that the job and its accoutrements still fit her well. Except for the gray in her hair and the stiff-collar design of her uniform, it was as though the intervening years had never occurred.
Ruriko took her place beside Vaughn and the captain. “After all these years it’s hard to believe that we’ve got to take down Cren Veruda’s A.I. all over again.”