Of course, I had plenty of it the last few weeks,he thought with a happy smile. He had returned to the Carthagefrom his honeymoon less than a week ago, and he missed Lwaxana terribly.
Garrett added, “I wish more people were intermingling.”
“The food could perhaps have been arranged differently, Commander,” Vaughn said.
“Really?” Garrett said with the pleasant, small smile that the entire complement of the Carthagehad learned to fear. “I wasn’t aware that catering was a skill cultivated by Starfleet special operations.”
So that’s who he is,Troi thought.
Vaughn shrugged. “No, but observation is. Not that any of these people are inclined to talk to each other socially in any case, but by keeping the different foods so far apart, you guarantee that each nation will stay near the food and drink they’re most comfortable with.”
“Yes,” Troi said, “but if we put the Klingon drinks near any of the Cardassian food, it’d probably cause a chemical explosion.”
Garrett let out a small exhalation that might have been a laugh. “Mr. Troi raises a good point. Excuse me.” She went off to speak with one of the Federation delegates.
“Have you ever had allirapunch, Lieutenant?” Troi asked after an uncomfortable pause.
“No.”
“Then you’re in for a treat. Come with me.” He led the older man to the Federation table and scooped some of the punch into a glass for Vaughn.
“I take it you enjoyed your honeymoon?” Vaughn asked.
Troi almost dropped the glass. “Uh, yes. How’d you—?”
Vaughn came very close to smiling. “I could try to impress you by telling you that I saw the wedding ring, and I know that Vance Haden would only allow that kind of bending of the uniform code if you were recently married, and also observe that you have the glow common to a newlywed—but the fact is I read your service record on my way here.”
Suddenly, Troi grew nervous, even as he handed Vaughn his punch. Why is a special ops goon checking my service record?
This time Vaughn really did smile. “Relax, Lieutenant—I read everyone’sservice record.” In fact, Troi was relaxed—but, he noted, Vaughn was finally starting to do so. “The note about your recent marriage just happened to stick in my head, is all. I met your wife once a few years ago. She’s quite a woman.”
Troi’s face split into a huge grin as he said, “Yes, she is. I’m a lucky man.”
Vaughn held up the glass. “To the happy couple.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Troi then suited action to words. The punch wasn’t as good as what they’d had at the reception on Betazed, but that was fresh, not replicated.
“Not bad,” Vaughn said. “A bit acidic for my taste, but quite pleasant. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Not just for that—for defusing that little contretemps between me and the commander.” He took another sip. “I suspect that my presence here is a bit of an annoyance.”
He wasn’t kidding about being observant,Troi thought as he grabbed a carrot and a stalk of celery. “So why areyou here anyhow?”
“To be a bit of an annoyance,” Vaughn said dryly. “We may be allied with the Klingons, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to do something so silly as trust them. There’s too much bad blood there, going all the way back to Broken Bow.”
Troi smiled at that. The first aliens to land on Earth and make contact with humans were the Vulcans in the twenty-first century, who did so after Zefram Cochrane’s famed Phoenixwarp-speed flight. The second was a Klingon, who crash-landed ninety years later in an American cornfield and blew up a silo. Both, in their own way, set the tone for future relations—the former as a valued ally in forming the Federation, the latter as an implacable enemy until very recently.
“And considering that the last time we made peaceful overtures to the Cardassians they used it to sabotage our relationship with Legara IV, Starfleet Command is concerned about them as well.”
A new voice said, “And heaven forfend we disregard the concerns of Starfleet Command.”
Troi turned to see a white-haired Trill dressed in a brightly colored tunic and pants that made Lwaxana’s outfits look almost subdued. “You must be Ambassador Dax,” Troi said, offering his hand. “Ian Troi.”
Dax tilted his head quizzically. “Troi? You mean you’rethe one who succeeded in roping down the infamous Lwaxana?” He returned the handshake with his right hand, after moving a large Klingon mug to his left.
Troi wondered what it was Dax was choking down, and how, exactly, he did it. Just from here, the smell was enough to put Troi off his allira.“I wouldn’t call it ‘roping down,’ sir, more like going along for the ride.”
“Aptly put,” Dax said with a hearty laugh. “You have my respect, Mr. Troi. From all I’ve heard, Lwaxana is quite a woman. I’m sorry I missed the ceremony.”
“We tried to keep the guest list down to a manageable few thousand,” Troi said wryly. “Plus, of course, my side of the family.”
Another laugh. “Such a wonderfully open-minded people, the Betazoids. Literally, if it comes to that. Was it a proper ceremony?”
Troi nodded. “Of course. Betazoids don’t have a nudity taboo—what would be the point, really? Their concept of privacy is a lot more fluid than ours in any case, being telepaths and all. I was worried that I’d be self-conscious during the wedding, but I barely even noticed—either that I was naked or that everyone around me was as well. There was a—purity to it, I suppose you could say. It was very refreshing.”
Vaughn finally spoke. “A rather philosophical attitude for a science officer.”
“I find that science works better with philosophy behind it, Lieutenant,” Troi said with a smile.
“Indeed it does,” Dax said. “You might be able to learn something from this one, Vaughn.”
Pointedly ignoring the comment, Vaughn turned to Troi and said, “Actually, Lieutenant, one of the reasons why I remembered your service record in particular was because you were the second human I came across serving on this ship who was married to a Betazoid.”
Troi sighed loudly. Here we go again.“Yes, it’s true, I’ve done it all just to suck up to Commander Garrett.” He said the words with a grin on his face. It led to another of Dax’s hearty laughs, and something resembling a smile from Vaughn. “Seriously, it’s a complete coincidence that both the commander and I married Betazoids. That hasn’t stopped half the crew from giving me a hard time about it, of course. But actually I met Lwaxana while I was stationed on Betazed. I was part of the team that upgraded their orbital defense system. We met, we fell in love, I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her—”
“And so you proposed?” Dax said with a grin.
“No.”
That prompted another laugh from Dax. “What stopped you, man?”
Not actually looking at Dax, Vaughn said, “Not all of us act on every impulse that pops into our heads, Ambassador.”
Troi noted the frown that Dax gave Vaughn at that comment. Before Dax could reply to it, Troi said, “The problem was that I had no interest in abandoning Starfleet, and she couldn’t really leave Betazed. But when the project was over, there wasn’t a Starfleet position available for me on-planet. I was transferred here to the Carthage,and I waited six months to see if the feelings were just as strong if I was dozens of light-years away.” He smiled. “They weren’t. They were stronger.”
“So thenyou proposed?” Dax asked.
“Didn’t have the chance to.” Troi shook his head ruefully. “That’s the problem with telepaths, they never give you a chance. I had it all planned out. I had arrived on a shuttle that landed on Betazed in midafternoon. We were going to go straight to our favorite restaurant on the coast, and I was going to do the whole bit—getting down on one knee, giving her the ring. So what happens? The moment I stepped off the shuttle, she said, ‘Of course I’ll marry you, my darling boy,’ and she kissed me right there in the spaceport.”