The bartender returned with Fisher’s brandy. “That sounds like a good reason to stay, not to leave.”
Desai said nothing. Instead, she reached into her sleeve and drew out a data card, holding it out to Fisher between two fingers.
Fisher accepted it, a puzzled look forming on his face. “What’s this?”
“Hallie’s voice,” Desai said. “All her official logs below top secret, from her days on the Dauntlessto her captaincy of the Bombay,declassified for your exclusive access.”
For a moment Fisher was speechless. Then his expression hardened. He set the card down on the bar between them and slid it toward her. “Take it back.”
“Don’t worry, there’s nothing from her personal logs; I wouldn’t violate her privacy.”
“Even so.”
“Why?” When Fisher failed to form an answer, Desai said, “Zeke, she was your friend. You miss her.”
“I’ve lived a long time, Rana. I miss a lot of people. And I carry them with me. But this . . . I spend too much time as it is talking to ghosts. If I start listening to them—”
“Fish,” Desai said, “that’s not what this is.”
“What is it, then?”
“Maybe I haven’t lived as long as you, but I do know what it’s like to lose people I love . . . and what it is to be haunted by them, to feel at times like there’s nothing I wouldn’t give to have one more day with them. I can’t give you one more day with Hallie, Zeke. But what I can give you is a slightly bigger perspective on who she was, in her own words.” Desai put her fingers on the data card and pushed it back under Fisher’s hand. “You can get to know her all over again.”
Fisher’s hand slowly closed around the card, gratitude and sadness streaming from his eyes. “Why are you leaving, Rana?”
She turned back to her wineglass, took another sip. “It’s time.”
“Is this about Diego?”
“Of course it is,” she admitted, seeing no point to evading or equivocating. “I love him, Zeke. But when he needed me most, I was powerless to help him. Every time he needed me, I was powerless. And just when I finally accepted it and began to move forward, he came back. He’s so close at this very moment that I should be able to walk the distance separating us. But I can’t. I’m still powerless . . . and I no longer have it in me to stay here just so I can be a witness to whatever happens next.”
Fisher‘s kind eyes were devoid of judgment, as always. It made things easier. But only a little.
“You know,” he said at length, “I once heard Diego offer someone advice about bridging impossible divides. You want to hear it?”
“No,” Desai said. Then she set down her unfinished drink, kissed Fisher tenderly on the cheek, and walked away without a backward glance.
Diego Reyes thought he had long ago gotten over just how big Vanguard truly was, but seeing it now, from a narrow window angled up toward the primary hull, the station seemed more immense than ever. He had to hand it to Ganz: the fat bastard had made it seem as if he’d selected this stateroom at random, but there was little doubt in Reyes’s mind that the self-styled merchant prince had intended for Reyes to always have a spectacular view of everything and everyone he had lost.
Reyes watched as the work to clear out the compromised sections of Starbase 47’s starship bay continued, but if his armchair assessment was right, Isaiah Farber and his engineers were nearing the limits of what they could achieve on their own. They would need to call in help soon, if it wasn’t already on its way.
The door chimed. Reyes tried to ignore it, but on his visitor’s third attempt, he got so sick of hearing the insipidly ethereal tones all he could think about was making them stop. “What is it?” he snapped.
One of Ganz’s women entered, carrying a tray of food and drink. Not another Orion, but even in the low lighting he could tell she was as shapely and diaphanously attired as all the others, and she moved with a similar sensuality. The pheromones are just as bad, too.Reyes didn’t spare her more than a glance. “Compliments of Mister Ganz, sir,” she purred.
Yeah, I’ll bet.“Leave it and get out.”
He heard her take her time setting down the tray, obviously in no hurry to leave. “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can offer you this evening, Mister Reyes?”
Irritated, Reyes looked at her again . . . and this time he saw what Ganz had wanted him to see. The height, the caramel complexion, the shimmering black hair, and the big brown eyes that were half closed in invitation.
You son of a bitch.
With deliberate effort he turned back to his view of Vanguard, fixing his eyes on the lighted rectangles just below the saucer. “I said get the hell out.”
This time she departed, her task accomplished.
Diego Reyes continued staring up at the station long into the ship’s night. He could almost imagine Rana standing at one of those viewports, searching the Omari-Ekonfor some sign of him. The distance between them wasn’t far. It felt like light-years.
THE STARS LOOK DOWN
David mack
For Ripley,
my beloved feline companion of eighteen years:
requiescat in pace.
“. . . Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.”
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
The events of this story take place in early 2268, approximately two months after the end of the novel Star Trek Vanguard: Precipiceand shortly before the events of the original-series episode “The Tholian Web.”
FEBRUARY 2268
1
“Dammit, Bridy,”Cervantes Quinn pleaded via the communicator, “don’t do nothin’ stupid.”
Bridget McLellan—Bridy Mac to her friends—ignored her partner’s advice. She drew her phaser, aimed at the master control panel for the Klingon research facility’s main generator, and fired. Her weapon’s scathing blue beam sliced through the array of buttons, levers, and displays. The slagged console spat sparks and belched smoke. An alarm blared over the compound’s PA system and was followed by a guttural male voice barking orders in Klingon. She lifted her communicator and smiled. “Too late.”
“Goddammit, lady, you love to make my life difficult.”
“It’s a living. Be at the gate in ninety seconds.”
“Already on my way, darlin’.”
Bridy sprinted past a spreading wall of fire that had been ignited by her forced entry moments earlier, winced as flames licked at her face, and bashed open the door ahead of her with her shoulder. Disruptor blasts sliced past her close enough to singe her hair. She tumbled to cover behind the low retaining wall of the landing outside the operations shack’s entrance, at the top of a short flight of stairs. She snapped off a shot without aiming, firing down the stairs and stunning a Klingon soldier who had been standing between Bridy and her escape route. She scrambled past him as he collapsed to the ground.
Energy pulses crisscrossed the Klingon research compound, but most of them weren’t aimed at Bridy—they were converging on the biomechanoid alien artifact around which the base had been constructed. The massive device, which to Bridy resembled a terrifying, four-fingered hand whose talons were plunged into a slab of obsidian, crackled with blue lightning as the shimmering energy being trapped within it struggled for freedom.