But the Romulans? No. I will believe such tales when they come from the mouth of one I can trust. Never will such a mouth belong to an agent of Imperial Intelligence.
Chapter 23
U.S.S. Carthage
“When you gonna be home ’gain, Daddy?”
The plaintive tone in his daughter Deanna’s voice made Ian Troi’s heart break. It had only been a few months since he’d last gotten home to Betazed—and that only because Captain Haden had found an excuse for the Carthageto be in the sector—but to a seven-year-old, a few months was an eternity.
“Soon, Durango, I promise,” he said, using the nickname he’d given her during one of their joint readings from Troi’s large collection of Westerns. “Daddy has to finish another mission on his ship, and then we’ll all be together again, okay?”
Deanna pouted. “Okay,”she said, not sounding in the least bit happy about it. “Why do you have to be far away all the time?”
“Because Daddy’s doing what he loves.”
“Don’t you love me and Mommy?”
His heart broke all over again. “More than you could ever know, Durango. And when I come home, you’ll see just how much.” He smiled. “I may even have a surprise for you.”
At that, Deanna’s black eyes widened. “A surprise? Really? What’ll it be?”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?”
“I guess.”Deanna didn’t sound convinced. But this was one area where Troi would never give in. After years of being unable to surprise his wife, thanks to her telepathy, he took great joy in being able to at the very least surprise his children, at least until they developed telepathic skills of their own as teenagers.
Assuming that at least one of them lives that long.The thought fell into his head unbidden, and he banished it quickly, along with the image of poor Kestra’s face that accompanied it.
“I can’t stay on too much longer, Durango, so why don’t you put Mommy on, okay?”
“Can we readCowboy Ralph again when you come home?”
Troi sighed. The Cowboy Ralphadventures by a twenty-second-century hack writer named Ernest Pratt were Deanna’s favorites—and also by far the worst in Troi’s extensive collection. Does she like Zane Grey or Larry McMurtry? No, she goes for Ernest Pratt. There’s no justice.However, he gamely said, “Of course we can, Durango. Now put Mommy on, okay?”
A smile brightened the seven-year-old’s face. “Okay, Daddy. I love you!”
“I love you, too!”
Deanna ran off, her black curls bouncing, and Lwaxana’s lovely face filled the screen a second later. “I’m sorry, dear one, but I couldn’tbear to read thatCowboy Fred any longer. So she’s been a bit deprived of her precious Eastern books lately.”
Troi laughed. “It’s Ralph, and they’re Westerns.” Sometimes Troi was convinced that his wife deliberately misremembered things in order to draw attention to herself. Of course, everything about Lwaxana was designed to do that. “And it’s not a problem. I’m just glad she still likes them.”
“Is it true that you’ll be coming home after this assignment?”
“Captain Haden’s approved my leave. But they need me for this one—we’re going back to Betreka.” He smiled. “It’s actually like old home week. We’re ferrying Elias to Raknal V.”
“Dear Elias. How is he?”
“We haven’t picked him up yet, but I’m sure he’s fine. Of course, I haven’t seen him since—”
“That reception on Babel ten years ago, wasn’t it? That was such a lovely time. Elias can be quite the gentleman when he isn’t being all special-operations stuffy.”
Troi closed his eyes, counted to ten in Greek, and then said, “Of course.” In truth, they had both last seen Elias Vaughn at Kestra’s funeral, but Troi had long since given up trying to get Lwaxana to cease her attempts to eliminate all evidence of Kestra’s existence. She had erased all her journals from the day she learned she was pregnant with their first daughter until after the funeral, would not speak of her, nor acknowledge any event connected with the girl. Troi found it maddening and frustrating—and an impediment to his own ability to grieve—but after seven years, he had surrendered to the inevitable. To try to address it now would only lead to an argument. Troi had never won an argument with Lwaxana in his life—which put him in company with the rest of the universe—and fifteen years of marriage had taught him that it was better to avoid the issue altogether.
She’ll deal with it when she’s ready, and not a minute before.In the meantime, both Troi and their valet, Mr. Xelo, had kept a few mementoes of Kestra hidden from Lwaxana for when that day finally came.
And Deanna deserves to know about her sister,he thought, before her telepathy develops and she yanks that knowledge out of my head.
Lwaxana said, “You should ask Elias to come with you when you visit. It would be wonderful to see him again, and he could meet Deanna.”
Not bothering to point out that he met Deanna at Kestra’s funeral, Troi simply said, “That would be nice. I’ll ask him.” Besides, Deanna was an infant then. “Given his usual work schedule, it’s as likely as not that he won’t be able to, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.” Glancing down at the time stamp on the screen, Troi noted that he’d already gone over his allotted personal comm time by three minutes. “I need to go, love.” He smiled. “You know how much I miss you?”
“Of course I do,imzadi ,”she said with a mischievious grin. “I wouldn’t be much of a telepath if I didn’t.”
“Oh, right. Explain to me again how your telepathy works over subspace?”
“You can be such a killjoy, Ian Andrew Troi,”Lwaxana said with a smirk.
“So how much doI miss you?”
“As much as I miss you.”
For a moment, they simply locked eyes. Troi took in every line of her face, every facet of her beautiful smile and her lovely dark eyes.
Then, finally, he said, “I have to go. Be well, imzadi.I’ll see you soon.”
“Not soon enough.”
Reluctantly, Troi cut the connection. The screen embedded in the wall of his quarters went dark.
“Bridge to Troi.”
Troi sighed. Can’t I just bask in the glow of my family for a few more minutes?But it was not to be. He knew what was involved when he took his oath after graduating the Academy. Despite everything, though, he couldn’t bring himself to resign his commission. He was happy in Starfleet—it was where he belonged. One of the advantages to being married to a telepath was that Lwaxana understood that implicitly—in fact, she probably understood it better than he did—and wouldn’t hear of him resigning, and settling for a job he wasn’t as content with in order to make his family happy. “When the time is right,” she had said once, “we’ll know it, and then we can be a family together. For now, it’s right that we be a family apart.”