“Mr. Frane has made an intriguing suggestion,” Tuvok said. “At his request, Lieutenant Pazlar has widened her planet search to include K- and L-Class worlds that might be amenable to reasonably achievable terraforming efforts.”
Will nodded, and Troi saw at once that he grasped Frane’s reasoning even as she did. “To encourage the Neyel refugees to work cooperatively with their former slaves, rather than falling back into their old habits of exploiting them.”
“Where in the Sol system does Starfleet Command intend to relocate Vanguard in the meantime?” Troi asked.
“Perhaps the asteroid colony can be placed in high Earth orbit in its original L-5 position,” Akaar said. “The Neyel are humans, after all. Or it could be set in orbit around one of the Jovian or Saturnian moons.”
Frane smiled broadly, though he still seemed unaccustomed to such facial gestures. “Saturn’s moons intrigue me most, I think. Titan, for example, sounds like a nice place to get comfortable for a while.”
Will smiled at that, and turned back to Akaar. “Speaking of Titan,Admiral,” Will said. “When can we resume our original mission to explore the Gum Nebula?”
“Very soon, after you have stopped at Starbase 185 for repairs, and an inspection by Admiral de la Fuega. I caution you, Captain: she is tough.”
Will’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Coming from you, Admiral, that’s saying quite a bit.” The huge Capellan responded with the subtlest of smiles.
Troi noticed then that Frane, his tail absently switching back and forth behind him, was looking with evident curiosity at the top of Will’s desk. “What’s this?” he said, pointing at the dog-eared book that lay open there.
“It’s a journal, written by one of my ancestors,” Will said, crossing back to his desk. “He was a soldier, and a survivor. I’ve carried his life story with me on every deep space assignment I’ve drawn since I graduated from Starfleet Academy. It has always served to remind me that no matter how far away from my homeworld I traveled, I had a commitment to survive.”
Will closed the book carefully and carried it back to a broad wooden bookcase beneath a gold trombone and a bizarrely convoluted Pelagian wind instrument. He set the book gingerly on its display easel, right between a pair of U.S. Civil War–era Colt pistols. “At least long enough to get it back to the planet where Old Iron Boots Riker’s bones are buried.”
Frane continued staring at the book in wonder, and Troi sensed that he was all but overwhelmed by an emotion very akin to reverence.
Akaar rose from the sofa and approached Will, then beckoned Troi and Tuvok to approach as well. Lost in thought, Frane did not appear to have noticed.
“I have spoken with Dr. Cethente,” Akaar said in hushed tones.
“So have I,” Will said, nodding. “He says we can’t know for certain whether or not we really saved Neyel space from nonexistence.”
Akaar nodded, then trained his hard, dark gaze squarely upon Troi. “The question is: Should we tell Mr. Frane?”
“There’s no need, Admiral,” Frane said, still gazing in wonder at the book. He played absently with the elaborate bracelet on his wrist. Recalling what Will had told her of the bracelet’s significance to Frane and his ancestors, she completely understood his fascination with Thaddius Riker’s diary.
The Neyel turned to face them. “Auld Aerth existed as nothing more than a legend for centuries, as far as we Neyel were concerned. It was unreachable, unknowable, except in the realm of fables and stories.
“Oghen has been destroyed, and perhaps other key worlds of the Neyel Hegemony have died with it. Maybe allthe Neyel places are gone. That is reality, and we must face that. We Neyel have been thoroughly punished for our past sins. Just howthoroughly is now a matter perhaps best left to fable and legend.
“But we endure. Enough of us, at least, to rebuild and create something worthier than fear and empire and conquest. And perhaps that is reality enough.”
Troi sensed at once that everyone present agreed completely with Frane’s sentiments. She could only hope that a majority of the people inside Vanguard were capable of seeing the universe the same way he did.
That,she thought, would be victory enough.
Chapter Twenty-one
U.S.S. TITAN,STARDATE 57053.2
“I t is good to see you, my husband,”T’Pel said from the small monitor screen before Tuvok. “At last.”
Seated behind the desk in his quarters—which was illuminated at the moment only by a pair of meditation candles, the light of the monitor screen, and the distant, glittering pinpoints visible through the window—Tuvok recognized the almost chiding tone that underlay his wife’s otherwise calmly delivered words.
“I regret that I have not taken the opportunity to contact you before now,” he said evenly. Even as he said the words, he found them inadequate; he silently reprimanded himself for not making more of an effort to call home sometime between his rescue from Vikr’l Prison and Titan’s accidental detour to the Small Magellanic Cloud.
“I quite understand, my husband. My sources inside Starfleet informed me of your extended captivity on Romulus weeks ago. News of your subsequent…disappearance arrived only yesterday.”
Tuvok couldn’t help but wonder if Akaar had been among T’Pel’s Starfleet “sources.”
“I am gratified that your most recent absence was not nearly so protracted as the last one,”she said.
“As am I, my wife,” he said. Imprisonment and yet another accidental voyage to a remote region of space had made him more conscious than ever before of the brevity and fragility of life. “And I wish to take steps to ensure that we never again have to endure such a prolonged separation.”
“Have you decided to leave Starfleet again?” she asked, regarding him expectantly.
He told her his idea.
Ranul Keru stared into the mirror, then winced as he touched the scar on his chest. The spanner had stabbed deeply into him; according to Dr. Ree, his injuries would have killed him instantly had his internal organs been arranged precisely identically to those of a human. Keru considered himself extraordinarily lucky that Titan’s first voyage had only left him with a nasty scar, three missing days because of his coma, and some very bittersweet memories.
Although Dr. Ree had offered to fix the scar tissue, Keru wanted to keep it. It was visible now when he was shirtless, but eventually the hair they’d shaved off his chest would grow back again and cover most of it. It was a wound that he had earned,and one that would remind him not only of his own mortality, but of the gains and losses inherent in his job. He considered it almost a badge of honor.
He’d been determined from the start never to lose or sacrifice a member of his security team—as Lieutenant Commander Worf had done years ago back on the Enterprise—and thus he had trained his people hard, working them to the top of their potential and demanding still more beyond that. And yet, circumstances had led to his own injuries and coma, the loss of Feren Denken’s arm after the prison rescue mission on Romulus, and more recently, the choice he had made on Oghen that had resulted in T’Lirin’s death. He was aware of the curse of wearing security gold—their job was to put themselves in harm’s way, after all—but he had never expected things to go so badly so quickly.
He closed his eyes and once again saw the bottomless stein of bloodwine that still haunted some of his dreams, frothing and bubbling malevolently. He recognized it now for what it was: not just his anger and resentment toward Worf for killing Hawk, but also his fears that he, Keru, would also turn into something he hated.