After she was nearly consumed by her grief, Desai somehow found the will to move on with her life. For a time she’d even taken a new lover; nothing serious, at least for her—an unsought dalliance to fill the void of physical intimacy, companionship she’d permitted herself to dull the ache of Diego’s absence. After all . . . he was dead.
And then he turned up alive. What am I supposed to do with that?
And how did it change anything, really? Diego remained a convicted criminal and a fugitive from Starfleet justice—and for all she knew, he was complicit in recent acts of theft and sabotage aboard Vanguard. There was nowhere in the Federation he could set foot without being placed under arrest. Desai could see no way to alter any of that, or envision a future that allowed them to be together.
More hull metal sailed past. The breach in the station grew wider, exposing the deeper wounds that had been inflicted upon its core.
What the hell am I doing here?
The bosun’s whistle of the station’s comm system cut through her contemplations. “Ops to Captain Desai.”
She sighed, as much in relief as in annoyance. She had come to this unused observation lounge hoping to figure out certain things in quiet and solitude. But with anything remotely resembling clarity remaining stubbornly elusive, Desai actually welcomed the interruption. Without taking her eyes off the Omari-Ekon,she thumbed the wall-mounted intercom next to the viewing window. “Desai here.”
“Rana, it’s Cooper,”answered Vanguard’s first officer. “The admiral wants to see you in his office immediately.”
Of course he does.Diego’s replacement as base commander had been none too happy about being maneuvered into allowing Ganz back inside Vanguard’s protective shadow, but the Shedai artifact the merchant prince had offered in exchange for safe harbor had made it impossible for the admiral to refuse. The fact that Diego had done the actual maneuvering only made it worse, especially since he was shielded from extradition by the Orions’ thorny relationship with the Federation. Desai’s romance with Reyes was no secret, and she knew it was only a matter of time before Heihachiro Nogura would demand to have words with her. The wonder is that it took him this long to get around to it.
“On my way,” Desai said, and signed off. She thumbed the channel closed, but her gaze lingered on the Omari-Ekon.
He’s over there somewhere,she imagined, searching the lighted dots along the ship’s upper half. Maybe he’s even looking up at the station for some sign of me.She considered the distance between her and Diego. It wasn’t far. It felt like light-years.
• • •
“Sorry I haven’t been around,” said Ezekiel Fisher. “I’ve been meaning to visit more often, but it hasn’t been an easy time around here. Seems like this place is always attracting the wrong sort of attention. Tholians one day, Klingons the next, and now the Shedai have ripped into us like—” Fisher stopped, raising his hand. “I didn’t come here to make excuses. I don’t visit enough, that’s the bottom line. I’m going to work on that. But I’m here now, because something’s happened that I knew you’d want to hear about. Our old friend has beaten the odds again, Hallie. Diego’s alive.”
The flowering dogwood made no reply, but not once in the past two years of ever-less-frequent visits to Fontana Meadow had Fisher expected one. His one-sided conversations with Hallie Gannon, here at the tree Reyes had planted to memorialize the captain and crew of the Starship Bombay,always went unheard; Fisher had no illusions about that. Such rituals were for the living, not the dead.
Fisher took a moment to appreciate the breeze that wafted across the meadow. The convincing illusion of an open blue sky and sunlight was no small miracle, of course, nor the expansive plain of genuine green grass or the groves of trees that disguised the false horizon. Vanguard’s groundskeepers did a masterful job tending the station’s terrestrial enclosure, but as far as Fisher was concerned, the real magic of this place was the breeze— randomized gusts of cool wind that caught you by surprise and made the place seem real in a way that nothing else did.
Fisher smiled. “Had a hunch you’d like hearing that,” he told the breeze. “It’s not exactly the sort of news most people around here are celebrating, but I’ll take it. I’m a little worried about Rana. Ever since Diego resurfaced, she’s been finding excuses to avoid me. I know better than to take it personally, but still . . .”
Fisher’s gaze shifted to the brushed metal plaque set into a rough slab of stone beside the tree. The polished silver inscription stood out against textured gray:
IN PROUD MEMORY
U.S.S. BOMBAY, NCC-1926
“OUR DEATHS ARE NOT OURS; THEY ARE YOURS;
THEY WILL MEAN WHAT YOU MAKE THEM.”
Many of the two hundred twenty-four names listed below had been little more than strangers to Fisher. Some he’d met in the normal routine of his duties as Starbase 47’s chief medical officer, but the Bombay’s infrequent and always-too-brief returns to base had made it difficult to know most of them socially, and that failure weighed upon Fisher now, deepening the hole in his chest.
“I’ve missed you, Hallie. I know Diego misses you too—now more than ever, I suspect. God knows there were times in the last couple of years when he would have valued your good advice. Sometimes I think things would have turned out differently for all of us . . . if only you had been here.”
“Doctor Fisher?”
Fisher turned, startled. Standing at parade rest a respectful distance away was Haniff Jackson, Vanguard’s chief of security. “Lieutenant. Something I can do for you?”
“I apologize for the intrusion, Doctor, but Admiral Nogura requires your presence in his office immediately.”
Fisher’s eyebrows went up. “And he needed to send you to deliver the message? How’d you even know where to find me?”
Jackson shrugged. “I volunteered. This is the only place on the station out of earshot from the nearest intercom . . . and it’s the only place you go without your communicator.”
“Should I be worried about how you would even know that?”
“Just doing my job, sir.”
“And a helluva job it is,” Fisher said, casting a wistful glance back at the dogwood tree before returning his full attention to Jackson. “Lead on, Lieutenant.”
Fisher knew better than to try to cajole Jackson into telling him the reason for Nogura’s summons; if the young man were at liberty to divulge that information, he would have offered it back on the meadow. That Jackson hadn’t required him to pick up his medkit on the way ruled out a medical emergency, but the normally talkative Haniff had little of anything to say on the turbolift ride up to the command tower, and that in itself troubled Fisher . . . as did the dour faces that greeted him in the operations center. This is not good.
As Jackson escorted him into Nogura’s office, it surprised Fisher to learn it wasn’t the admiral waiting inside, but Rana, looking as if she had just risen from one of the guest chairs. Her pale brown face, framed in shimmering, straight black hair, reflected Fisher’s own growing uncertainty.
Jackson exchanged a cordial nod with Desai, which Fisher pretended not to notice. “The admiral should be along shortly,” the security chief said. Then he added, “I’ll be right outside the door if you need anything.”
Fisher murmured thanks and waited for the door to close before he turned to Desai. “Did he just warn us not to try leaving?”
Desai’s brow furrowed as she sank back into her seat. “It’s probably best if we don’t jump to any conclusions. I take it you’re as much in the dark as I am?”
“Without a candle,” Fisher said, smiling as he took the unoccupied guest chair next to Desai’s. “Though I will say it’s nice to see you, stranger.”