Gardens of the Desert

by merisunshine36

Summary:

Twenty years after Nero changed the course of history forever, the residents of New Vulcan risk becoming a casualty in the struggle for power between a still-reeling Federation and the Romulans, who have just discovered how to harness the power of red matter.

Notes:

This fic was cowritten along with lindmere. Thanks to our wonderful beta, sail_aweigh, our artist, ladymac111, and our mixer, nextian!

This story is the sequel to The Light of Distant Skies, although all you need to know from the first installment is that Spock is married to Uhura as well as a Vulcan woman in order to satisfy cultural and political pressure, and that they are involved with the Teslau project, an initiative designed to increase the Vulcan birthrate in order to stave off population decline.

Warnings: Secondary character death, violence, discussion paralleling the autism debate

Denarian Cargo Ship Kulaat Beng
2279.132

There are many kinds of nothing. There’s a difference between nothing and zero, between a void and a vacuum, between space without energy and space without matter.

In his 50 years in Starfleet service, Christopher Pike has learned to appreciate all sorts of nothing, but he’s never seen a nothing as significant as this one. Because in this seemingly empty parsec of space there used to be--clearly visible to Starfleet telescopes, even deep inside Romulan space--a planet. A little more than a month ago, a routine scan had reported on the planet, unoccupied and unimportant and unmistakably gone--no collision, no debris, no nearby celestial bodies to take the blame. Just a planet that was there, and then not there.

And a hell of a lot of suspicions.

Pike’s been hoping for the worst of these to be proven wrong ever since he volunteered for this mortally dangerous mission. Now his hands are gripping the arms of the captain’s chair hard enough to leave permanent imprints, and he’s willing First Officer T’Lak to hurry up with the damn results, already. She’s unexcitable, precise, circumspect, and all those other Vulcan virtues, and Pike has never appreciated any of them less.

After an eternity and a half, T’Lak swivels her chair around and straightens her uniform shirt.

“Captain Pike, I have completed my preliminary assessment.” Four other heads whip around in unison.

“Please continue, Mr. T’Lak,” Pike says, keeping his voice level, as if each passing second isn’t compounding their risk to a heart-stopping degree.

“As we have only one other data set to which to compare it, it can hardly be considered conclusive.” She stops and bites her lip, the Vulcan equivalent of extreme agitation.

“Of course,” Pike says, giving her the courtesy of patience.

T’Lak was at the Academy when the Destruction happened, and lost her whole family along with her promised bond-mate. She was the first to volunteer for this mission, even though she’s young by Vulcan standards and has a safe posting on the U.S.S. Leakey, a science vessel. Jim Kirk, now Science Fleet Admiral, considers her captain material--for the science fleet. It’s one of the many, many things he’s likely to be pissed about when and if Pike makes it back to San Francisco.

T’Lak lays her palms on her knees and focuses on her hands. “Captain, I have determined with an 82.5% confidence that the spatial disruption patterns and energy signatures present in the immediate vicinity are sufficiently characteristic of those found following the destruction of Vulcan to impute the same origin.”

“I understand you, but I’m going to ask you to state your conclusion explicitly, for the record.” Pike is already thinking of all the hearings, all the debates sure to result from this most unwelcome news. The data is already streaming to the Federation, deeply embedded in a series of mundane messages of the sort to be expected from the Denarian trader they’re pretending to be. But T’Lak is a promising physicist, and her on-the-spot assessment will carry added weight.

“Very well, sir.” She rises and clasps her hands behind her back. “It is my assessment that the energy signatures detected in this vicinity are unlike those of any other known particle decay in this dimension, except for one.”

“And what is that one?”

Pike knows what she’s going to say, but even so, the act of speaking it aloud changes things.

“Red matter.” She sits back down, but her spine is, if anything, more rigid than before.

“Thank you, Mr. T’Lak.” He swivels around to the comm station, just two meters away, to give T’Lak a bit of privacy. “Lt. Kort, encode the Bridge recording from the last two hours and dispatch it under my signature.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And now, unless anyone has any objections, let’s plot a course for Starbase 23 and get the hell out of here.” There’s a kind of group exhalation; Kanayurak, who’s filling the role of both helmsman and navigator on the small bridge can hardly lock in the coordinates fast enough. Pike doesn’t have the heart to remind them that the most dangerous part of the mission is still ahead. It’s possible, though unlikely, that they escaped attention; possible, and likelier, that silent watchers are waiting to see what the little Denarian vessel is up to and respond.

It only takes half an hour to end Pike’s suspense.

“Romulan vessel approaching at 472 mark 6, captain. We’re being hailed.” Laaven, the comms officer, is a Tellarite with twin passions for French wine and Romulan culture. He’d joked with Pike when they shipped out that the mission might be his only chance to meet a Romulan in the flesh.

“Answer them, Laaven.”

It’s easy to fake voice and visual transmissions, which is why Starfleet has gone to the added length of creating an artificial persona modeled on an actual Denarian. When Laaven speaks, his words are translated into the raspy syllables of a short-tempered merchant.

“This is the Denarian trader Copious Fortune, Star Empire Merchant License 37285,” Laaven says, giving the literal translation of the ship’s name, though Pike prefers to call it the Good Luck.

The reply is clipped. “Denarian vessel, state your business.”

“We’ve completed delivery of a cargo of produce and spices to Unroth VI and we’re going home,” the simulated Denarian says with simulated impatience.

There’s an extended pause during which Laaven and Kort exchange looks, and Kort raises her crossed fingers in what’s become the universal gesture of Shit, I hope this works.

“We have no record of any such delivery, Fortune. And you are in restricted space.”

“I have an identification, captain,” Kort says. “It’s a Hawk class Bird of Prey.”

Of course. Ten times their size and with more than a hundred times more firepower than necessary to obliterate their little vessel. Not a bunch of Imperial functionaries looking to confiscate a cargo and line their pockets, but a military vessel responding to a security breach, probably eager for information but not likely to take chances.

“Tell them we’re sorry but our star charts show this as free space. Say that we’ll vacate immediately.”

Kort relays the message, looking as apprehensive as Pike feels. Another long pause.

“Be that as it may, Fortune, we require visual inspection to verify your identity. Disable all shielding and set your transporter to receive. Any resistance will be met with deadly force. End communication.”

Well, Pike thinks, there it is. A scenario they’d rehearsed, as the Romulans tended to be shoot first and ask questions later. A scenario with only one possible outcome, which everyone on board had agreed to when they were in a conference room on Earth and it was easier to be brave.

“All right, then. Tell the Romulan vessel to approach and be ready to board in 5 minutes. Amaruk,” Pike says, using Kanayurak’s first name. “Enable self-destruct. Keep the cloak on the engines until the last second so they don’t see us powering up.”

He meets the eyes of each of his crew. They’re all so young. Pike himself is hardly an old man, but he’s counted the last 20 years as borrowed time. His first life had died on the Narada; he’d boarded as a doomed starship captain and been carried off as someone whose possibilities had narrowed and expanded at the same time. He owed that life to Jim Kirk, whose commitment to peace with the Romulans got him kicked off his beloved ship--a peace that Pike has now well and truly torpedoed with this mission. He thinks of Jim now with uncomplicated love, and hopes his judgement won’t be harsh.

He thinks of Aune, too formidable to call “girlfriend,” too independent to let him call her “wife.” The last time he’d proposed she’d laughed and said, Wait until we have nothing more interesting to do.

He thinks of his family, and the families of the crew, and of folded flags and memorial ceremonies and no bodies to bury, and has no interest in thinking about it any more.

Last he thinks about Darcy, his old Golden Retriever, curled up on the hearth at his friend Erik’s house. She’d gotten used enough to Pike leaving and coming back that she’d usually just lift her head and give him a thump of her tail when he exited with a bag over his shoulder. This last time, though, she’d whined; Pike had petted her and talked to her for a good 10 minutes, because he’d always been convinced she understood Standard. He had still been able to hear her whining after he shut the door.

“Bird of Prey approaching, sir,” Kanayurak says.

“Very good.” Pike walks to the main console and punches in a few codes with fingers that only tremble a little. “Engage auto-destruct sequence, Pike Alpha 9952 Gamma Epsilon.” There’s no natural-language computer on this ship, just an acknowledging trill. “Kanayurak, tell me when they’re 30 seconds away.”

“Yes, sir.”

There isn’t time for a speech. They’re scared, and in a few minutes it won’t matter any more, but they’re splendid, courageous people, and they deserve the best he can give them.

Pike pulls his uniform straight and pastes his most genial smile on his face. “It’s been an honor serving with all of you. This mission may do more for the the survival of the Federation than anything that’s happened in the last decade. You should all be extremely proud. Whatever happens next--” He pauses, and meets T’Lak’s eyes. “Well, we’ll all find out together. Thank you all.”

“Thank you, sir,” T’Lak says, and reaches out her hand. He takes it and holds it.

“Bird of Prey at 40 seconds, sir.”

“Understood.” His finger hovers over the button. All he’s done in his lifetime, and it’s come down to this.

He squeezes T’Lak’s hand and remembers the worst nights after his injury, how it felt to reach his hand down in the dark and feel Darcy’s warm, living body, stroke her silky coat, and know he wasn’t alone.

I’m sorry, old girl, Pike thinks, and pushes the button.You were looking out for me until the very end.

Seconds later his atoms return to the universe.

+++++

Joanna McCoy has never been a morning person, but on New Vulcan she rises early to walk to work before the searing heat puts her thermoregulator into overdrive and the thin, scorching air makes her throat feel like she’s inhaling warp afterburn. In the pink pre-dawn, the low, buff-colored skyline of Uzh Shi'Kahr, with its countless blocks of identical prefabricated dwellings, looks soft, even beautiful.

Beautiful? she thinks. I’ve been here too long.

She’d loved studying astronomy at the Academy, survived if not thrived on the obsessive competition among all the students there, and then run headlong into the reality of spending the next 40 years or so at a ground station or a starbase--that is, if the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire didn’t destroy each other first.

Two bad options, but the nice thing about having ready access to space ships is that it creates a lot of possibilities, especially when your dad has connections to half the galaxy. Joanna likes to think that Winona Kirk would have taken her onto the Teslau Project even without her dad pulling a few strings, and she’s certainly been working hard to convince Winona that she’s useful. Whether New Vulcan is better than a starbase on Nowhere Prime is something she hasn’t yet decided.

As she passes Okuh Khu’rak, the eighth spoke-like road leading to the center of the city, she hears footsteps behind her. A few moments more and they overtake her.

“Moi racha,” says the voice beside her in greeting. In the dim light she makes out a Vulcan man, youngish by the look of his unlined face. “Are you going to Market?”

The Market occurs every sixth day, on the eastern outskirts of the capital city. Joanna goes from time to time, but finds it a depressing affair. Food production and distribution is centralized; a small amount of water is reserved for personal use, and those who don’t drink all of their allotment raise salad vegetables, fruits and other luxuries in cube gardens. The quantities are small and the prices high, but it would be rude to say so.

“No, osu,” she says. “Not today. I’m going to work.”

“Ah. And where is ‘work’?” Now Joanna is a little alarmed; it’s polite--if over-friendly, by Vulcan standards--to do a bit more than greet a stranger, but it’s positively un-Vulcan like to express so much interest in one.

“I work for--I’m, uh, a researcher,” Joanna says, thinking at the last minute of Starfleet security training.

“Surely there are enough Vulcan scientists already? Do they really have to be imported from--” he gives her a closer look “--from Terra? You are human, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Joanna would welcome an excuse to turn off the ring road, but the ninth spoke is still 50 meters away. “But there’s no shortage of work that needs to be done, is there?”

The stranger is not puzzled, as most Vulcans seem to be, by rhetorical questions. “Indeed. In this we are in perfect agreement. I wish more Terrans felt as you do, and more of my people as well.” With that, he turns and smiles at her, shocking her down to her toes. “By the way, I am Rh'vaurek.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Rh'vaurek.” Joanna has no desire to give this man her name.

“Yes,” he says. “Likewise. And now, if you will excuse me, I do not wish to be late to Market. I've developed a taste for favinit since my arrival, and the growing season is terribly short.”

Without seeming effort, though the sun is beginning to rise and send its first scorching beams onto the gravel road, the man doubles his pace and is soon far ahead of Joanna.

Joanna may not be piloting a starship on a fast track to command; in fact, she’s very plainly a research assistant working in a fertility clinic on a backwater planet. She’s quite sure, however, that she’s the first in her graduating class to meet a Romulan.

 

+++++

 

Winona ducks through the doorway of Spock and Uhura’s home to the small courtyard out back. The sheer number of carefully arranged desert plants back there are a testament to the patience of their owners, each one flourishing despite the colony's ongoing shortage of water and other key resources. A light breeze ruffles her hair, foreshadowing that turning point between day and night in which the sun reluctantly cedes its grasp over the land.

She finds Uhura curled up in a chair, her nose buried in a PADD as Spock and Saiehnn's twin girls make mischief in the corner. At the moment, they’re studying a small lizard-like creature with all the focused concentration of two engineers confronted with a cracked dilithium crystal.

Uhura welcomes her with a warm embrace. She's bypassed traditional Vulcan clothing in favor of a diaphanous garment that brings to mind Earth's desert traditions, a choice that suits her well. Like the plants she tends, she's had to adapt. Winona sinks into the chair next to hers and gratefully accepts a glass of whatever cool beverage Uhura is having; even after nearly five years here Winona hasn’t quite gotten used to the way the heat relentlessly leeches every bit of moisture from her body.

"How are the little ones?" Winona asks by way of greeting, recalling distant memories of Jim and Sam as she watches the two girls whisper to each other.

"They were tested again a few days ago.”

“Again?” Winona says, taken aback. At this rate, they'll have to set up a special wing at the hospital just for the two of them. “What’s the verdict this time?”

“T'Sura is still essentially psi null towards anyone except her sister. Saiehnn once said that her efforts at telepathic communication were like a raw subspace datastream--colors, sounds, idea fragments, but no meaning. If her abilities don't manifest soon, we're not sure that any of the local schools will admit her."

Winona's heart goes out to the three of them. Saiehnn knew that this was a possible side effect of the hormone therapy she'd endured in order to carry Spock's children to term, but it had seemed so remote at the time that she’d deemed it a reasonable risk. It turned out to be one of those things that was an acceptable hypothetical but a difficult reality.

A faint smile lights up T'Sura's face as her sister Saavik presses small hands to each of her round cheeks, presumably sharing some joke or story that was probably funny only to the two of them.

"How's Spock taking it?"

"Like you'd expect," Uhura says with a grimace. "The last thing he wants is for them to go through the same things he did as a child. He spends hours every day researching, talking to anyone he can find with a background in telepathic healing. Some nights he forgets to eat. Saiehnn, on the other hand--she’s taking it all in stride. If you ask her, T'Sura is no different from any other Vulcan child.”

"Except for the part where she’s one-quarter human and the product of billions of credits in science funding. But I can't say I'm surprised," Winona says, tilting her head in thought. "Most of her life was spent on Earth and the colony. She's not going to carry the same ingrained cultural expectations as someone who grew up on Vulcan."

"True," Uhura responds, before going silent again. She lets her eyes fall shut and presses the glass to her face with a small sigh.

Winona's work keeps her busy enough that she doesn't come to see this growing family as often as she should, but even with months between visits she can tell that something isn't sitting well with Uhura. And she'd bet next month’s water allotment that it has nothing to do with T'Sura, even. A small frown has taken up permanent residence in the corners of Nyota’s mouth, and the forceful personality she built her career upon seems to have all but vanished.

"So, Spock's having a time of it, Saiehnn is good, but what about you?" Winona probes gently. She's old enough to be Uhura's mother, and the listlessness on display here remind her immediately of her own son's bouts of introspective moodiness.

"Me?” Her eyes widen slightly in surprise. “Well, Joanna McCoy’s been a delight to have around and she loves visiting the twins. The teaching is still rewarding, personally and ,surprise surprise, even academically. It's really fascinating, the way these children interact. They speak the most interesting patois of Standard and English. Maybe I'll get a paper or two out of it with all this free time I have on my hands now. Jo’s always telling me how much her work--"

"Stop," interjects Winona, holding a hand up in the air. "I love Jo, but I didn't ask about her. And I didn't ask about your teaching, either. I asked about you."

Uhura buys time to come up with an answer by refilling both their glasses. "Fine, I guess. Tired. Old. I mean, look at my hair." She yanks on her long ponytail, which is liberally streaked with gray, and wrinkles her nose.

Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of the twins. T'Sura has the lizard balanced on her shoulder, where it's nearly invisible against olive green cloth of her dress.

"Look, Aunt Nyota,” says Saavik, “the animal's skin changes color as a defense against predators."

Winona crouches down to look Saavik in those big, dark eyes that are a direct legacy from her father. "I wonder if you'd change colors if we put you in that shrub over there."

Saavik and T'Sura exchange one of those long-suffering looks that all Vulcans seem to come equipped with the moment they leave the womb.

"Our species does not require defensive coloring, Lady Winona, as on this planet we are the apex predator." She turns back to Uhura. "We require nourishment. May we have something to eat?"

"Only if you promise to sanitize your hands as soon as you get inside. And if I find that lizard in your bedroom later, there’ll be no holovid time for the next three days!" Uhura yells after them, although they’ve already disappeared from view.

It takes Winona a moment to convince her knees that they're ready to bring her back into an upright position. "Am I ever glad that I was finished with this 30 years ago. Although some days I can't help but think that Jim stopped aging at five."

Uhura’s eyebrow quirks upward slightly, one of the many character traits she's picked up from Spock over the years. "Really, now? Seventy-two isn't that old these days, and from what I've read, Sarek's swimmers aren't necessarily out of the race yet, either. Don't you want to try? We can do it, we have the technology."

Warmth rises to Winona's face in silent acknowledgement of the fact that her relationship with Sarek is the colony's worst kept secret. Winona's settled enough into her independent lifestyle that they still keep separate addresses, although Sarek has been dropping increasingly unsubtle hints about how logical it would be for her to give up her tiny flat. But that does nothing to keep local shop clerks from giving them knowing looks when they're out together, or to prevent the Vulcan Science Academy from addressing invitations for their various annual functions to the both of them. Winona is a bit irritated at the presumption, but after a scandalous cross-species marriage, the loss of his home planet, a son with multiple wives, and two genetically manufactured grandchildren, local gossip rolls off of Sarek’s mind like water from a duck's back.

"I wouldn't pass up some nourishment myself." Winona says, changing the subject. What's for lunch?"

"A healthy blend of fresh grains and vegetables that are high in fiber and vitamins, with fruit for dessert."

Winona tries and fails to keep the grimace off her face. Uhura laughs, her teeth a bright flash of white in the rapidly encroaching darkness.

"Barring that, I make a mean vegetable protein cacciatore."

+++++

“What do you think? Would it look better if we put the cross tabs in the upper right, and the scatter plot in the middle?” Joanna McCoy waves at the screen in front of her and the panels rearrange, a beautiful dance of statistics and their representations that makes her feel like she knows what she’s doing.

“I do not believe the Review Board is concerned with appearance, but with the data themselves.” Saiehnn says. “In any case, you have mislabelled the X axis, there.” Joanna follows Saiehnn’s slim finger as she leans in close and flushes with more than embarrassment.

Joanna thinks of herself as a good statistician, but it’s one thing to do charts for an Academy project and quite another to do them for a Vulcan policy council, especially under the eye of a Vulcan--a beautiful Vulcan who possesses more than her share of her people’s cool, unsparing frankness.

“Oh, right. Um, sorry. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with putting the best spin on the figures that we can, is there?”

Saiehnn gives Joanna a long, steady look, long enough for Joanna to be transfixed by her eyelashes. “Rotation is unlikely to address the fundamental error in your calculations. I advise you to start from the beginning and proceed with more deliberation. In the meantime, I will attempt to anticipate possible objections and consider what our response should be. Should you require my help, I will be in my office.”

Saiehnn turns with a rustle of her long, blue work shift and vanishes into her office with a decisive click of the latch. She leaves behind a scent like orange blossoms and the complete destruction of Joanna’s ability to concentrate.

It’s way past the point that Joanna can chalk it up to collegial respect, or hero worship, or even an innocent crush. She had plenty of those during her Academy years, more than actual relationships in that nest of charismatic overachievers. But falling in just-might-be-love with a doubly married woman is a new level of screw-up, and Joanna has no idea what to do about it. She could leave Vulcan, but she likes the work, dividing her time between helping the Teslau Project (and Saiehnn) with administrative support and teaching science to its fearsomely bright progeny.

Joanna feels at home here and, more importantly, useful; more so than she did pretending to care about deep-space astronomy when the galaxy seems to be about to burst into flames. Starfleet would have been happy to send her, even without her father to pull strings. It’s impolitic to say so, but arid and almost featureless New Vulcan, with its constant resource shortages and tense politics, is an unpopular posting. And then, as her father had said, there are all the damn Vulcans.

Joanna can deal with the Vulcans just fine; there’s only one that’s really causing her trouble. She turns back to her station and tries to pour her impossible longing for Saiehnn into a 3D scatter chart.

The morning wears on, and Joanna drinks three cups of coffee, each worse than the last. She’ll have the stomach of a bureaucrat when she gets home, if not a bureaucrat’s patience.

“Oh, that’s good--those are the aggregate population projections, aren’t they?” Joanna’s nearly jumps out of her chair when she hears Winona Kirk’s voice from over her right shoulder.

“Yeah.” Joanna steps a little to the side so Winona can lean in, which she does, with a friendly hand on Joanna’s shoulder. “I used the Vai Ba’Tak projections for Romulan immigration. Even though it makes the 20-year forecast a little less impressive--”

“--It’s better not to be any more politically incendiary then we have to be. No, I quite agree.” Joanna gives Winona considerable credit for agreeing to use the Vai Ba’Tak’s research, as she has plenty of professional reasons to dislike the Vulcan traditionalists and their dogmatic opposition to Teslau. “But oh,” Winona says, running a hand through her gray-blonde hair, “how I wish we had another month. There are a hundred factors that could be affecting the psi status of these kids, but everyone’s going to blame the hormone treatments and want to cut the funding just as we’re dramatically improving on the number of live births.” Winona’s voice rises, and Joanna casts a nervous glance at Saiehnn’s door. “This is supposed to be a planet of scientists. Why is it so hard to get everyone to focus on the science?”

Joanna shrugs, feeling useless. She sympathizes with Winona. In the last five years she’s done exactly what Starfleet asked her to do: triple the number of Vulcan children being born while navigating the nightmarish complexity of Vulcan culture and tradition. But success and failure are equally fraught on this trying, turbulent planet, and poor Winona has ended up in between: succeeding in the letter, but not the spirit.

But Winona is not a Kirk for nothing. After a moment or two she breaks into a smile. “You know Jim’s due in tonight on the Carson? He was here at the beginning, so he wants to receive the interim report in person.”

“Lucky you have an in with the Science Fleet Admiral.”

Winona tosses her curls and laughs. “As if that’s ever helped me before. I’ll be lucky if he turns up for the presentation; I’m sure his social calendar’s already full. But Sarek and I are having a dinner tomorrow night. We’d love to have you, if you’re free.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Joanna says, and means it. The Enterprise crew are her second family, and like most of the project staff she’s hoping for a surprise wedding, although unlike most of the staff, she hasn’t bet credits on the day. In her mind she hears her father’s voice, dripping with wicked anticipation: Jim’s been calling that Vulcan ‘brother’ for years; let’s see if he means it.

+++++

"Computer, next image," commands Uhura. After the barest hesitation, the small screen she and T'Sura are seated in front of produces an image of a young human girl wearing a slight frown, with tear tracks running down her face.

They're practicing emotional identification, a lesson crafted especially for T'Sura under the individual development plans developed to cater to the needs of the Teslau children. T'Sura, like all of the Teslau children, is performing at the same level as her peers in all the traditional academic areas--math, science, reading comprehension. But there's an unspoken worry that they'll begin to fall behind once they enter the traditional Vulcan educational system, whose traditional teaching methods rely heavily on a minimum level of assumed psychic ability. This week they're covering human expressions, which is easy enough, but the database they've built contains testing material with images of Vulcans and Betazoids as well. Uhura would like to see it expand to include sample data from races on all Federation planets, but for now they've settled on representation of the races most common on the colony.

A tiny wrinkle appears between T'Sura's eyes as she tries to divine the answer. "Angry?" she asks the computer.

The computer produces the low, flat tone it uses to indicate when a student is incorrect. Uhura tries and fails not to feel frustrated. For the average Vulcan, empathic sensitivity and the ability to read physical cues are inextricably linked. During the brief period spent in arms as an infant, the average Vulcan child learns to associate subtle alterations in facial expression and vocal pitch with the emotions received via direct physical contact. Uhura knows that Spock and Saiehnn regret letting T'Sura use Saavik as a psychic crutch of sorts for so many years--when the twins are separated, it's almost as if T'Sura is navigating her way through the world with the lights at ten percent. Everything is dimmer, harder to make out.

T'Sura's displays no visible disappointment at the incorrect answer, but her eyes drift over to where her sister is on the other side of the room at work with Vesko, who is both a Teslau parent and an early proponent of the project within the scientific community. Uhura wishes she could let the twins help each other, but they have to learn how to function as two independent people. There's no guarantee they'll still be on the same planet thirty years from now, much less in the same household.

She gives T'Sura a small smile and ruffles her hair, which earns her a miniature eyebrow tilt.

"Keep working at it. I'll come back in a few minutes, okay?"

"The curriculum you have prepared appears insufficient to compensate for their natural deficiencies," comes a voice from behind her. Uhura recognizes it immediately.

"T'Pau," she says, and gets to her feet to greet the elderly woman. She's as stiff and unyielding as an oak, both in physical stature and mental temperament. When Vulcan disappeared from the skies, what little liberal feeling T'Pau held towards Starfleet vanished with it. Now, as the leader of the Vai Ba’Tak movement, she holds no official position, but is deeply influential as the keeper of the flame of Surak. Uhura has noticed that Surak, like so many great, dead leaders in Earth history, always seems to be on the side of the person quoting him.

T’Pau gives the children a long, steady glance, which is all she needs to fully convey her disappointment.

As annoying as they were, Uhura would almost prefer having this conversation with one of the curious onlookers who had come to stare at the children when the school first opened. Most of them had been elderly, but every now and then a few adolescents would stop by and just stare silently into the windows. It had only taken a few weeks for Winona and Vesko to formally ban visitors from the center. Only T'Pau, who wields as much political and social clout as all the Teslau staff combined, is largely immune to such restrictions.

"Commander," she says, by way of reply. Uhura can't recall a single time when T'Pau has called her by name. It's not that they're enemies, per se, but she's felt more warmth standing in a desert at midnight than T'Pau has ever sent in her direction.

"The Vulcan Science Academy gave full approval to the proposed curriculum for these children. If you would like to make a complaint, you should take it up with them." Uhura learned long ago that it was easier to deflect an argument onto someone else rather than get into it with T'Pau.

"I have, but I thought it prudent to voice my concerns to you as well. You are, after all, their teacher."

T'Pau's expressionless face made all the more unnerving because of the craggy lines carved into her face over the years. Uhura doesn't know what she expects--she has no intention of just throwing up her hands and closing down the whole operation, as much as some factions would like her to.

"They never should have been born," T'Pau says, as calmly as if she were offering Uhura tea.
"They cannot even function at the minimum level necessary for participation in society.This entire initiative was a grave mistake."

Uhura closes her eyes and just fumes silently, her short nails boring holes into the palms of her hands. Vesko is watching them carefully from across the room, poised to come over at any second. Uhura longs for her assistance at the same time she wants to do this by herself; she'll do herself no favors by proving that she can't hold her own here.

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask that you leave, T'Pau. The children have much to learn, and unannounced visitors distract them from their work."

T'Pau raises her chin in defiance. "This experiment will not go uncontested, Commander. You have my word."

++++

“James, I recommend that you eat your farr-kahli promptly; it is best enjoyed while still chilled.”

Sarek addresses Jim with the seriousness of a cook as well as a Vulcan High Council member. Jim looks down at his large helping of blue-ish, algae-like vegetable and musters up a smile. Joanna and Uhura exchange glances, and Joanna tries not to laugh; Jim may possess famous charm, but he’s never learned to be a diplomat. Joanna’s mostly content with a diet her friend Hana calls “moldy with occasional bursts of fire,” especially since it’s supplemented by Starfleet with shipments of often random Terran foodstuffs; her team is currently obsessed with dipping peanut crackers in mayonnaise.

Jim shovels a forkful of farr-kahli into his mouth with a hero’s resolve, and Joanna sees Winona’s shoulders relax a fraction. As far as Joanna knows, Jim and Sarek both like and respect each other, but Sarek is entertaining at his own home, and Vulcan pride is a fragile thing these days.

“There’s been a lot of construction since I was here last time,” Jim says after finally swallowing. “The Academy annex, the new apartment blocks--very impressive.”

“Yes, and the expansion of the Romulan colony,” Sarek says. “I am interested in your opinion of it, James, since you have been outspoken on the Romulan matter.”

Joanna feels tension blow in like the hot wind out of the dry hills.

“An interesting topic, Sarek, but can’t it wait?” Winona says, refilling her water glass for the third time. “I have a hundred questions about what’s going on at Starfleet. Practically speaking, that has a lot more impact on us here than a few hundred Imperial expatriates.”

“I disagree.” Saiehnn has put down her fork and drops her hands in her lap. Though they’re hidden beneath the table, Joanna guesses she’s got them interlocked; it’s what she does before she says something she suspects will be unwelcome. “With respect, Commander, the presence of Romulans on New Vulcan is without precedent in Vulcan history, at least since the Separation. Whether they are here because of a sincere desire to follow the teachings of Surak as the High Council has concluded, or to spy and establish an outpost for conquest as Starfleet believes--in either case, I believe the consequences to be profound.”

Spock, who’s been staring straight ahead through this recitation, turns abruptly to his father and says, “Saiehnn is not a Reunificationist.”

“And what if she were?” Uhura says, throwing her napkin on the table. “The family isn’t required to share the same political beliefs, are we?”

“I neither expect nor desire such orthodoxy,” Sarek says. “Any opinion is welcome in this house so long as it is informed by reason. The Vai Ba’Tak’s opposition to Romulan immigration may be xenophobic at its heart, but in this one matter I agree with them: reunification with Romulus would mean the end of Vulcan civilization. No other conclusion is logical. As I know Saiehnn to be a logical being, I know it is impossible for her to be a Reunificationist. Thus, it is not necessary to say so, my son.”

There’s a long pause during which Joanna watches Saiehnn watching Sarek, trying to guess what’s going on behind her dark, glittering eyes. It’s Saiehnn’s mind that Joanna loves--not just for its brilliance, but because she seems to have a passion for uncomfortable truths. It appeals to Joanna, who’s spent the last five years since her Academy graduation trying hard to care about the things she’s supposed to care about--science and Starfleet and the fate of the galaxy. She thinks of Saiehnn, with her two famous spouses and difficult children and has fantasies of rescuing her, though Saiehnn is the last person who’d ever be in need of rescue.

The awkward silence is broken by Jim’s communicator beeping. He pulls it out of the pocket of his civilian dress trousers and plunks it on the table.

“Sorry,” he says. “Thought I’d turned the damned thing off. It does remind me, though, of a hilarious story about Admiral Zengaat.”

“Share it with us,” Winona says. “Please.”

Sarek rises a little stiffly and begins to clear the plates. Joanna, being the youngest there and useless at diffusing the tension, feels she should help; she looks at Winona, who nods and smiles.

“Sure,” Jim says. “Well, the Admiral loves vintage Romulan ale and keeps a bunch of it in his secured wine cellar, which is the worst-kept secret in the ‘Fleet. So he arranges to get Anna Aroso, who’s captain of the Exploradora, to pick up a shipment for him on Starbase 12. It’s twelve casks worth, labeled as Risidic oil, which of course is ridiculously flammable. So Aroso picks it up personally in her shuttle--”

Jim’s voice fades as Joanna walks into the kitchen, though it’s half indoor and half outdoor like a traditional Vulcan kitchen. Joanna has seen holos of Sarek’s estate on Vulcan, a large, low, architecturally striking building set among pale pink hills. Now the Vulcan liaison to the Federation lives in a prefabricated four-room building of little charm or distinction except for the terrace where they’ve been dining. For this evening, he’s dismissed his small house staff to wait on his guests himself, an honor that makes Jo feel more than usually self conscious.

Sarek walks in a moment later with a stack of plates and beings to scrape them into a recycler with such gravity that it softens the grievance Joanna might have had with him over Saiehnn.

“I wish you to know, Lieutenant, that there is no discord in my family,” he says, back still to her. “If there were, we would certainly not have displayed it before our guests, as it might cause them distress.”

“Of course, sir.” Joanna’s grateful he can’t see her flushing. She wants to tell him not to worry, but isn’t sure how to say it.

“Your own father, I believe, is fond of vigorous debate?”

“You could say that, sir.”

“As are we. There are some subjects, however, that are not suitable for recreational argument.” He opens a low cabinet and pulls out a box. “Ah. Here is the next course, which is a--” Sarek pauses “--’German chocolate cake’ brought from Earth by Admiral Kirk. He informs me that it is made from the seed pods of Equatorial plants and a large quantity of sucrose. I am sure it will be quite...exotic. May I ask you to carry it to the table?”

Joanna does, feeling keen anticipation of her portion of sucrose.

“--Of course, she had no choice but to light it, and next thing you know, there’s a giant fireball.” Jim mimes an explosion with his long fingers. “The Exploradora picked it up from space, and Aroso got stuck with the bill for the fire crew.” Jim wipes his eyes, looking affably boyish as he leans forward, elbows propped on the table. Everyone is laughing, or at least everyone who isn’t Vulcan; Spock looks indulgent, and Saiehnn confused.

“What’s the moral of the story?” Uhura asks. “Never do an admiral a favor?”

“And if you do, insist that he pay up front.” Joanna catches what might be a wink aimed at Uhura. “Ah ha, the cake! Mom, I picked it up at Esther’s on Lombard, and that lady Kate that works the counter--”

Jim’s communicator goes off again--this time, a chirp like an angry bird, indicating an emergency override. Jim has it flipped open in a matter of seconds.

“Kirk here.”

“Sorry to bother you, Admiral, but we received a message for you. It’s coded SSC3.”

“Understood. Route it to Councillor Sarek’s comm link--” he turns toward Sarek “--if that’s all right with you?”

“Certainly,” Sarek says, inclining his head.

“Kirk out.”

Everyone at the table except Sarek knows that Security Code 3 is used for emergency personal communications--almost always bad news, especially on deep space missions. All of Jim’s family, and those he counts as family, are around this table; Joanna wonders who else might--

Jim hears her sudden intake of breath as he rises to go inside. He drops a hand on her shoulder, and she feels the warmth, reassuring as if it could really protect her from disaster.

“I’m sure your dad’s fine, Jo.” She tries to nod. “I’ll let everyone know what’s up as soon as I find out myself.”

Vulcans being Vulcans, they expect the cake to be served anyway. Joanna does the honors, even though her hand is trembling a little and her own piece, when she tastes it, seems gummy and tooth-achingly sweet. She knows the bakery where Jim bought it; it’s one of her dad’s favorites, where they used to go sometimes on Sunday mornings when she was still a cadet. She pokes at the slice of cake with her fork and wishes with all her heart that they were back there now.

After a few minutes of silence, Jim appears in the doorway, looking so pale that for a heart-stopping moment Joanna’s sure her worse fear has come to pass.

“It’s okay,” Jim says, a little breathless. “Bones is fine; I just talked to him. It’s bad news, though.” His fists clench a few times and then he looks at them all, clear eyed. “Christopher Pike is dead.”

Winona gasps; Spock lowers his head.

“In what manner, Jim?”

“He was coming back to Starbase 9 after a couple of days of leave. The runabout he was in, suddenly depressurized and was lost with six other crewmembers.” Jim runs a hand through his hair. “There’s an official investigation underway, but it seems like a pretty straightforward case of structural failure.” He sags a little against the door frame.

“It’s hard to believe something like that could kill Chris Pike,” Winona says. “But we’re fragile creatures, even the strongest of us.”

There’s a long pause, during which Joanna is a little ashamed of herself for mainly feeling relief. She’d only met Admiral Pike a few times, but she liked him, by looks and reputation--a man of Winona’s age, with the sharp eyes and an easy swagger she could imagine Jim having when he got older.

“Well, then,” Winona says, picking up her glass. “We should drink to his memory. Jim, can you say a few words? You knew him best.”

There’s a scrape of chairs as they get to their feet. Jim takes a few steps forward and looks around blankly, like he’s forgotten where he is. His eyes linger on Spock’s, and then he shakes his head.

“No. No, I’m sorry. I really can’t,” he says, and walks out--not through the house, but down the dry path that leads to the road and, beyond that, to the barren hills.

+++++

“Spock, oh--” Winona Kirk opens the door of her small house in a two-piece sleeping garment, though it does not appear as if she has retired to bed. “Come in.”

Spock does so, experiencing an unpleasant sympathetic nervous system response to the artificially chilled air. His own house is kept at a temperature Nyota terms a compromise--too cold for him and Saiehnn, too warm for her.

“As the Admiral is meeting with Minister T’Shar tomorrow, I wished to know if I he required a briefing. Sarek was prepared to provide one before Jim’s hasty departure from--”

Winona stops him with a raised hand. “It’s all right, Spock, I don’t need an excuse, although he might. And he’ll be glad you came, even if he doesn’t say so.”

Spock nods. He considers Jim’s propensity to mourn in private to be Vulcan in character if not in practice, as it is generally accompanied by a large amount of self-blame.

Jim is in sitting in Winona’s small common room in the near-dark, long legs stretched out, still in the tunic he wore to dinner, though it appears carelessly unfastened.

“Mom, go to bed.”

“I believe she already has.” Jim’s shoulders hunch in surprise, but he doesn’t turn around, only glances over his shoulder at Spock.

“Is this what passes for night life around here?”

“The Science Academy runs classes around the clock, due to the shortage of classrooms. I am sure there is a lecture in progress, if you wish to attend one.”

This prompts a soft grunt of laughter from Jim, who knows that Spock is capable of using humor when it serves a purpose.

“I know why you’re here, and I appreciate it, but I’m fine.” He gathers in his legs and turns to look at Spock. “I’ll just mope around for a while; mom’s used to it. Then I’ll pull myself together because I have a lot of work to do. Chris made me his executor, among other things. I’m thinking about adopting his dog. And maybe taking over military operations of Starfleet. But definitely probably keeping the dog.”

Spock walks to the window with measured steps, hands clasped behind his back. “Starfleet has already asked you to take this role?”

“Not in so many words, but Nogura commed me a half hour ago to offer his condolences. Laid a lot of heavy stuff on me about Pike’s legacy, how he knows we had our disagreements but managed to stay close. You can be sure that if there’s an afterlife, Chris took a slug of Scotch every time Nogura said something about the bonds forged in battle, blah blah blah.”

Spock hears Jim flop back into his chair, temporary burst of energy exhausted.

“Yet Admiral Nogura opposed your promotion, or so you believe.”

“Oh, I know he did. He likes me personally but he thinks I’m soft on the Romulans. Unfortunately for him, they need a consensus candidate to replace Chris, and I’m the closest thing there is. Bones says the Admiralty is freaking out because they’re afraid the Romulans will test us the minute they find there’s nobody at the big wheel. I’m kind of surprised Starfleet went public with the news so quickly.” Jim’s fingers beat a silent tattoo on the arm of the chair. “Too many people in on the operation to keep it quiet, probably.”

“To what ‘operation’ do you refer?”

“For fuck’s sake-do you really think Christopher Pike could have died in a runabout accident? When was the last time you heard of a runabout suffering catastrophic failure, let alone with a Fleet admiral on board?” Jim hunches forward, lines of tension visible in his body. “I know him, Spock. Whatever he was doing, it was something that he wouldn’t have felt comfortable ordering anyone else to do. Something risky, something that could make him or the Fleet look bad if it went balls up.” There is a long pause. “Something I would have done in that position. Which, you know, I wasn’t.”

Now, Spock thinks, they have come to the crux of the matter.

“And so you have constructed a scenario in which Admiral Pike died because you alienated yourself from the military branch of the Fleet?”

“If you’re going to read my mind, could you at least be more elliptical about it?” Jim puts his fingers to his temples.

“I assure you, I have not attempted--”

“I know, not literally. But it’s weird that you can still know me so well. Haven’t I changed at all in the last five years?”

“In your essential characteristics--no, you have not.” Spock moves to stand closer, but does not touch him. “I am not the only one to have made this observation. It is perhaps for this reason that your performance in your current role has been described as, and I quote, ‘surprisingly competent.’ ”

“Ouch.”

“It is also a fact that in the years since you accepted command of the science fleet, the Federation has drawn closer to war with Romulus, rather than the opposite.” Spock keeps his voice neutral, though he is well aware the words will sting.

“And this is your idea of consoling me?” Jim looks faintly amused.

“I have never known you to be content with platitudes. This is the truth of the matter, but it certainly not your fault. Starfleet would have given you command of the military fleet, but only if you had agreed to Federation policy that you regarded as not only confrontational, but on occasion, reckless.”

“I could have made it work. I always have before--what would have been different? There are still admirals there who think I never should have been given the Enterprise.” The mention of the Enterprise has a predictable effect; Jim slumps back into his chair, hands on his knees, palm up, as if in appeal.

“Short of going back in time, there is no way to be certain. Knowing the consequences of our actions gives us false confidence in our ability to change them to a more favorable outcome. And yet on this very planet, there lived a man who had lived one permutation of our future, and yet refused to say anything about it.”

“Spock,” Jim says, and something in the tone tells Spock he means his future self.

“Yes. Do you think he was wise, or foolish?”

The question hangs in the air, and Spock contemplates--not for the first time--whether he himself would have had the forbearance not to reveal information that might have saved planets full of people or, at least, a wife or a friend.

“That’s philosophy, Spock, and I don’t do philosophy. But I’m certain of this--if Ambassador Spock had given the Federation the secret of red matter, no matter with what good intentions, we’d be thinking about using it now. And whatever I had to do with putting a stop to the research program--that, I don’t regret.”

“And Admiral Pike disagreed. He supported a research program, for strictly defensive purposes.”

There is a long pause during which Spock is in suspense about how Jim will receive the conclusion to which he has led him. But Jim reaches out to catch the fabric of Spock’s tunic sleeve between his fingers. The contact is sufficient for Jim’s mind to flare brightly against his own, like the fireflies of Earth in the darkness.

Jim’s is one of two human minds he has grown to know well enough to have a sense of its interior architecture: it is not an obscured and tangled mass of patterns in search of external agency, like that of most humans. Nor is it branching, linear structures with assigned probabilities, like that of Vulcans. Jim’s mind is a curious hybrid, able to discern much from insight, but deriving confidence from the urgency of life-or-death decisions.

“Thank you,” Jim says. At this moment, no other acknowledgement between them is required.

He leaves Jim alone in the small, dark room, and tries not to be be embarrassed when Winona stops him in the hall, kisses the air a millimeter from his cheek and whispers the same words.

+++++

Joanna wakes up late, still a bit groggy from wine and food. Peeking out through the thermoshield shutters into another cloudless, razor-sharp morning, she feels the weight of Admiral Pike’s death return with her memories of the night before. She’d hardly known him well, but he’d been a fixture of her childhood, and of her rapidly receding youth. As for what his death portends, Joanna would rather not think about it.

She makes it to the clinic without encountering any inquisitive Romulans. As a number cruncher and report filer, Joanna speaks with few patients, but from her station she can see them file in and out: Vulcan women of indeterminate age, serious as Saiehnn but lacking what Joanna persists as considering her inner fire. A fertility clinic should be a cheerful place to work, but the burden of necessity overlays what she gathers is already a pretty utilitarian approach to procreation. In her head, she can hear Saiehnn’s voice saying The bloodline of Surak must be preserved, and then she turns back to work and mentally away from thoughts of Saiehnn and Spock and procreation.

Joanna’s easing herself into the day by rechecking birthweights when there’s a sudden, blinding flash like lightning with no sound. Everything turns to white bright heat for a second and then it’s gone.

A sharp pain goes through her, searing into her joints. The room spins around her and she grabs for the edge of her desk and misses, hitting the floor with a jolting thud as she loses track of which way is up.

The pain ebbs and is replaced by a wave of nausea as her ears ring with afterecho of a loud, electronic buzz that seems to come from all around her. That much is familiar: the sound of electronic equipment dying. She braves the nausea enough to turn her head and sees through the sparkles in front of her eyes that above her that the huge panel display has gone blank.

She thinks about the stories she was raised on, bold decisions and incredible odds and logic and intuition and saving the day. She believed it was something that could be learned, which is why she went to the Academy. Now the something she got all that training for has happened, and she’s lying on the floor, helpless, not able to control her own muscles, let alone save anyone or anything else.

Unknowable minutes pass and no one comes. Finally she makes an executive decision to roll onto her side and manages to struggle to a sitting position without losing her breakfast or the direction of the ceiling. She’s incongruously embarrassed to find she’s lost bladder control, and relieved that today of all days she’s wearing a long Vulcan tunic.

“Jo!” A figure appears in the door, sending a fizz of alarm down her brittle nerves. A moment later she realizes it’s Winona, on the floor beside her, trying simultaneously to give her a hug and check her with a tricorder. “Sweetheart, are you all right? You’re awake, that’s good. No, don’t try to get up--just lie here for a bit and rest. I’ll be back for you; I’ve got to see to the others first.” She runs a cool hand over Joanna’s forehead and smooths her hair, which Joanna realized belatedly had been standing straight up.

“What others? Did this happen to everyone? What was it?”

“Too soon to say.” It’s bad; that much, Joanna can tell.

“Let me help. I’m fine, I can--”

Winona pushes her gently back toward the floor. “No, sweetheart. Not now.”

“What about Saiehnn? And Uhura?” But Winona is already disappearing through the door.

Many long, fretful minutes later, a pair of male Vulcans in healer’s green insist on putting Joanna on a stretcher, though by the time they arrive, her muscles are feeling like something other than jelly. She thinks she’s in pain but the messages to her brain are jangled and confused. She can tell by the set of their mouths that the healers won’t answer questions, so she closes her eyes as they load her into a transport bound for the Quadrant 2 Healing Center.

She drifts off, or so she supposes, because her next vision is of the blurry face of the healer, leaning in close enough that she can see the pupils of his dark eyes.

“She is conscious?” says a voice from somewhere beyond her peripheral vision.

“Yes,” says the healer. “So it appears.”

“I advise you sedate her. Humans are predisposed to experience shock, which can further damage their already fragile constitutions.”

The healer nods and reaches for a hypo. I’m not fragile, Joanna wants to say, but as her lips form the words, the healer’s angular face turns to cotton wool, and disappears.

+++++

There are a few moments after Uhura first regains consciousness when she can hear everything around her but see nothing, and she wonders if she's on her way out or if she still stands a chance to live. Clamping down on the natural urge to panic, she remains and conducts a silent inventory of all her moving parts. She's relieved to find them all in working order with the exception of a stabbing pain that originates at the base of her neck, radiating up and out to her teeth.

Uhura's vision clears up after a few seconds. She's trapped beneath something large and unyielding, in a triangle shaped wedge of space that makes a Jeffries tube seem roomy by comparison. When the blast happened she'd been at her desk reviewing the curriculum for the day; it's likely a section of the wall. Uhura is oddly grateful for the cheap pre-fab construction materials used for the education center. Rather than crumbling, the whole room just tilted over like a house of cards.

Her immediate is concern the children. Classes had yet to start today, so the educational center is empty for the most part. But at any given time there will be a few clinicians seeing to expectant mothers and pediatric visits for the new little ones. Uhura’s chest goes tight thinking of them, and she braces her arms against the unyielding slab in a futile attempt to get it out of the way. If the breach of security means that the perpetrator is still on the premises, it might be best for her to stay quiet. But how long would she have to wait here before someone finds her?

“Uhura?” comes a muffled voice from above.

“I’m in here,” she says, keeping her voice level. She’s been through worse than this.
The air is filled with a grinding noise from above as the wall begins to move; she has to squeeze her eyes shut to keep from being blinded by all the dust. It fills her nose and lungs, making it difficult to breathe.

The narrow band of light above her widens slowly until its large enough for a face to peer in. It’s Saiehnn, and she looks immaculate as always, not a hair a hair out of place.

“Are you injured?” she asks, voice perfectly level.

“No, I’m fine,” she takes a few deep breaths of clean, too-warm air. “The twins?”

“They are with Vesko at present, and are uninjured. We were on the lower levels; they were sufficiently far enough from the explosion that they remain intact."

She offers Uhura her arm and begins to pull her up slowly, careful to avoid aggravating any injuries she might have. At first contact, the amount of empathic data she’s subjected to sends her reeling. She and Saiehnn are not intimate, either as friends or as lovers, and instances of touch between them are rare. An overwhelming sense of fear, and panic, and not again buffets the bit of shielding Uhura’s been able to conjure up over the years until Saiehnn remembers herself and lets go.

Uhura has enough leverage at this point that she pushes her way out from beneath the wall and sits in an upright position. For the first time, she gets a good look at the damage. It’s not as bad as she’d imagine, given the sound and the pressure that emanated from the blast center. The other half of the wall she was under remains upright, and the other three escaped with no more than a faint spiderwebbing of cracks.

Saiehnn watches Uhura for a moment. The steadiness of her gaze is an unsettling contrast to the inner turmoil Uhura felt only seconds ago. Saiehnn opens her mouth, then shuts it again and just wipes her hands down her skirts.

Uhura closes her eyes and tries to ignore the massive headache that pulses in time with her heartbeat. “We’re all okay, Saiehnn. Spock wasn’t even in the building.”

Saiehnn's shoulder's settle a little from the stiff pose she'd been holding them in. “This time, yes. But what of the next time?”

 

+++++

When Joanna opens gritty eyes, blinks, and sees her father, she feels disappointed, because she’s clearly still unconscious. The healer must really have knocked me out, she thinks, but smiles anyway, because her father wearing his Starfleet uniform but looking amiably rumpled, and he’s looking down at her with that watery I love you so much it hurts look that she remembers from earliest childhood.

“Good morning, baby girl,” he says, and squeezes her hand.

“Hi, daddy.” It’s a dream, so she indulges--squeezes his hand back and then holds on to it, looks at him long enough that she notices the hound dog circles under his eyes.

“You gave me quite a scare.” He clears his throat. “Thought I’d sent you somewhere safe. Should have realized by now that there’s no such place.”

“You’re really here. When did you get here? How?”

“Oh, the usual way. I hitched a ride with some Security mucky-mucks who came in to investigate the--” He pauses and runs a hand over his face. “Well, they had you knocked out for quite a while. Tried to sedate me, too; apparently it’s the standard treatment around here for troublesome humans.”

“I’m sure it’s just because they’re busy.” She notes the medical tricorder at her father’s hip; of course he’d be eager to help. “How bad is it?”

“No fatalities. Uhura got a nasty bump on the head, but she’ll be fine. Winona was off with Jim and Sarek. Everyone else is pretty much in the same boat as you: unpleasant neurological effects, but no permanent damage.” He leans forward and runs a hand through her hair. “No damage at all to that big, beautiful brain. It’s good to see you, baby girl.”

It’s good to see him, too; good to know there’s someone who’ll travel across a large swath of galaxy to come to her bedside, to make sure she’s all right. Some day she may outgrow that feeling, but it hasn’t happened yet.

“What was it? Do they know? Why would somebody do this?”

“It was an electromagnetic pulse; they found a gizmo called a flux compression generator at the site. Don’t quote me on that, by the way; Jim told me, but none of this is official yet.”

“I’m an astronomer, dad. I don’t know what that is anyway. And I kind of slept through Intro to Warp Physics.” That gets a lopsided smile out of him.

“Me, too, but it’s got nothing to do with warp drives. Apparently they’re used by the Romulans to create the artificial singularities that power their ships.”

“Romulans?” Jo half sits up in surprise, feels a wave of nausea, and lies right back down again.

“Whoa, there. You’re not going anywhere. Yeah, Romulans. There’s a nest of ‘em living right next door to the city, isn’t there?”

“Yes, but why attack us? Why now? The project’s been going on for four years.”

“Jim thinks it may have something to do with Admiral Pike’s death--the mouse pulling the cat’s tail, to see if it’s awake. Starfleet’s put Jim in charge of the investigation, since he was already planetside. But don’t worry about that now; you need to rest up now so you can argue with me later about bringing you home.” He kisses her forehead, but it does nothing to ease her troubled thoughts.

“Wait. You said nobody was seriously hurt. Does that include Saiehnn?”

“She’s just fine. Better than the rest of you, actually; she was on one of the lower levels of the building. You like her, do you? I’ve found her a pretty tough nut to crack.”

“I do, dad. I really, really like her.” It’s a childish expression of her feelings, but it stops her father dead.

“Oh no, baby girl. Please tell me you don’t--”

“You’d have to get to know her to understand. She’s an amazing person, and--” Joanna knows she’s damning herself with each protest, so she gives up. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just did.”

Her father gives her that little patronizing smile that she finds so annoying from older adults. “It happens at your age, I know. But innocent or not, she’s another man’s wife, and another woman’s, when it comes to that. If it’s just infatuation, then I guess there’s no harm in it, but if not--you’re setting yourself up for some serious heartache. Trust me, I know.” He kisses her again, and now the gesture seems a little patronizing, as if he’s trying to soothe the little girl she no longer is. “Well, we’ll get you off this rock and off to somewhere with some beings who don’t have icewater in their veins, and you can find someone who’ll love you the way you deserve to be loved.” Joanna wants to ask what deserving has to do with it, but doesn’t.

Her father pats her hand and gives her a smile before he draws the curtains around her bed, and she feels reassured and confused and frustrated. What she has on New Vulcan may not have been much, but it’s hers--it belongs to her and to Winona and Saiehnn and all the expectant parents and all the children who owed their existence to a brave and risky decision to try something new. No one should have the power to take that out of their hands--not Starfleet, or scheming Romulans, or even her own father.

+++++

Uhura has developed a number of new skills as a parent, including something akin to precognition, so it’s distressing but not exactly a surprise when little Sovan falls flat on his face. The two-year old has been tottering around the Physical Skills Course with a stubborn determination that would please his parents but makes his teacher nervous.

She rushes over to see if he’s hurt, still bracing herself, after all this time, for tears and wailing that never come. Sovan’s lower lip trembles, his heavy little brows draw together, and she wants to say Oh, just go ahead and cry already.

“Whoa there, little fella.” Uhura looks up and sees Leonard McCoy, medical tricorder at the ready, closing the distance with a few long strides. “That was a first class fall. Let’s see what you did to yourself.”

“I am not injured,” Sovan says distinctly, to Leonard’s evident surprise.

“Doctors don’t like it when you try to do their jobs, young man. Let me see that knee or I’ll have to call the Federation Medical Association on you.”

Leonard uses the regen on Sovan’s scraped knee while the boy frowns down at him.

“There you go, good as new.” Leonard visibly checks himself from clapping the boy on the shoulder as he runs back to the start of the obstacle course.

“Sovan, where are your manners?”

“Thank you, Healer,” Sovan says, inclining his head gravely.

“You’re very welcome.” Leonard packs his medkit away with a chuckle. “I’ll be damned if this isn’t the quietest playground I’ve ever seen. It’s spooky.”

“Beats the alternative, especially before I’ve had my second cup of coffee.” She accepts a bristly kiss on the cheek from Leonard along with a breath of his cologne, not immune after all these years to his Earthly charm. “How’s Jo feeling? Len, I’m so sorry--you know I’d never have suggested she come here if I’d thought there was any danger.”

“Oh, I know, and I don’t blame you or Spock or Winona; the galaxy’s a dangerous place these days. I’ll admit that for the first day or two I wanted to take her home and lock her in the attic, but I’m getting over it.” They walk toward a bench under the broad eaves of the school building, the only shade against the harsh rays of the early morning sun.

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Leonard continues. “I have a favor to ask. Jo’s taken the bombing in her stride but she’s got a bee in her bonnet about the Romulan thing. Apparently she met a Romulan colonist a few days ago and all she can think about is why they’d attack a bunch of innocent women. I told her that people are capable of things in war that they’d never consider otherwise, but that’s not a good enough answer, apparently. It’s the McCoy coming out in her. To tell you the truth, I’m glad to see it; she was always a good kid, but kind of passive.”

“I’m glad you’ve noticed the change. It’s a hard life here, but I think it’s brought out the best in Jo, even if she doesn’t realize it yet. So what’s the favor?”

“Well.” Leonard huffs out a sigh. “She’s decided she wants to visit the Romulan colony and confront the man she met. I don’t know why she thinks she’ll get a straight answer, but that’s what she wants.”

“That’s not uncommon among survivors. Even the kids ask me questions about the Romulans, and about Nero. They think I have some unique insight because I was there at the Destruction, and of course I don’t. But knowing there’s a reason might make her feel safer about the whole thing.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Leonard takes a swig from the water bottle that, good doctor that he is, he’s got clipped to his belt. “Anyhow, the favor is that I have no idea what’s up with that Romulan colony, but I know I don’t want her going there alone. You’re still in the ‘Fleet, technically at least--I assume you’ve got your service phaser and communicator?”

“I sure do.” They’re in a lockbox at home and probably need servicing, but she’s got them.

“Jim says he’ll give you coverage from the Carson. If anything happens, all you have to do is pull the plug and beam out. But it would make me feel ten times better if you’d go with her.”

“No problem,” Uhura says, and feels something long dormant stir inside her: the butterfly heartbeat of anticipation that always preceded a mission. “I’d be glad to.”

+++++

Uhura and Spock watch Joanna fiddle with the fastening on her phaser holster until Uhura can't stand it anymore, and reaches out to arrest her motions with a firm hand. Uhura had been party to McCoy's occasional grumbling about his daughter's dismal scores in marksmanship, but this is the first time she's ever witnessed Joanna's relationship with her firearm in person. Joanna flushes, obviously embarrassed to be schooled on something so basic in front of two fairly prominent Starfleet officers.

"Something tells me you haven't touched your phaser since you set foot on the colony. Watch," Uhura says, undoing the fastening on her own to make it easier to demonstrate. The part of her that's been living with toddlers wants to just do it for Joanna, but she holds back. "Tab A, into Slot B." The motions come back to her easily even though it's been four years since she last picked it up.

"I took the minimum number of combat courses necessary to graduate," Joanna confesses.

"It is fortuitous that you have not had an occasion which required the use of your weapon," says Spock. "It is seldom as simple as taught in your training."

They practice a few more times until Uhura is satisfied that Joanna's got a handle on it. When she's finished, Uhura reaches out and gives it a sharp yank to make sure it's secure, then nods and declares them ready to set off.

The look on Spock's face as they leave the house is less than encouraging. He hasn't said anything against this mission, but a thoughtful silence has hung about him all morning like a depressing shadow.

"We'll be fine," insists Uhura, a little annoyed at the thought that she's lost her edge. He touches a finger to her cheek, and she can feel the slow curl of his anxiety, but also the strength of his faith in her.

"I don't know why officers in non-combat zones have to have phasers anyway," Joanna grumbles as the drab landscape rolls past the window of their shuttle. They didn't want to be conspicuous while en route to the settlement, so they're making use the rudimentary public transportation network. "Doesn't that kind of spoil the illusion that we’re only out here for exploration and peacekeeping?"

"If everything goes as planned, you shouldn't have to touch your phaser save for when you take it off at night." Uhura smiles to herself, remembering the number of "peaceful" missions that had ended with her running for her life. "But trust me, if the time comes when you need it, you'll be happy it's there."

They arrive at the colony a little after the evening meal, a time deliberately chosen to catch residents when they were settled in for the day, but before the sun sets. It's a little disconcerting to see so many Vulcanesque faces staring at them, bold and direct, as they pass into the commercial center of the little residential outpost and head toward the inn that intelligence has told them should be suitable for their needs.

"Hello, cognitive dissonance," Joanna mutters under her breath. Uhura can't help but agree.

They settle in before setting off for the local watering hole, as good a place as any to start an investigation. After talking things over with Jim, they've decided that she and Joanna are going for the direct approach. There's no reason in pretending they're here in any capacity other than as official representatives of Starfleet; their human physiology would give them away in a second.

The bar is crowded and messy, not at all like the fastidious little cafes that Vulcans prefer. A thin film of dust clings to everything, including the glass the bartender hand her. Uhura orders something light, made from the pureed pulp of one of the desert plants found in abundance on the colony planet. It's neither Vulcan nor Romulan in origin, but something entirely new that's apparently become popular everywhere. And while not as susceptible to poetic notions as she once was, Uhura likes to think that one day, the two cultures will be able to share more than just similar taste in beverages.

The bartender hands Joanna a bright orange drink that she peers at curiously before taking a cautious sip.

"What is that?" Uhura asks.

"A Flaming Sunset," Joanna winces, her eyes watering. "They definitely got the flaming part right."

"Remember, you're on active duty now," Uhura says, staring pointedly at her drink. Joanna's an adult, she's not going to tell her she's allowed to have it. But she doesn't want to be responsible for an incapacitated person in the middle of a barfight, either. "You're not Jim--don't do anything that might leave you compromised in the event things get hairy."

"Ah. Right." Joanna looks mournfully at her drink before pushing it away.

"Joanna?" says a voice from behind them.

Uhura feels guilty that her hand drifts to her phaser when she turns to greet the newcomer. They've no indication that these people are directly responsible, but the bombing has set her on edge.

Their interloper is rather plain as far as Romulans go, with a simple dark tunic and an institutional-looking haircut that makes him seem more Vulcan than anything else. Not that Uhura is an expert on Romulan personal grooming. Or maybe his look is intentional, to enable him to better fit in with the Vulcan populace. She sighs inwardly--all this guessing will get her nowhere. More importantly, how the hell does he know who Joanna is?

"Rh'Vaurek," Joanna breathes. She looks more than a unsettled that he's recognized her.

"You are wondering how I know your name," Rh'Vaurek replies, a smug smile playing about the corners of his mouth.

Uhura can see Joanna's father in her as she replies, "Yeah, I am," without the slightest hesitance.

"You forget that you are famous--or perhaps I should say infamous--for your work with Teslau, Joanna," he replies, leaning on her name for emphasis. "Many a subspace transmission has made it across the galaxy with your name and likeness attached to it."

"Rh'vaurek," Uhura says, interrupting a conversation that's going nowhere fast. "How did you know we'd be here?"

"I know who you are, Commander Uhura" he replies. "I assumed it would be a matter of time before they sent someone out here to investigate us. Will you tell me how long it will be before we're forcibly removed, or will it be a surprise?"

Joanna's eyes go wide with concern. "No, Rh'vaurek, it's not like that at all."

A number of curious eyes have turned on them at this point. And while Uhura is all for an involved citizenry, they really don't need to have this conversation in public.

"Is there somewhere private we can take this?" Uhura is suspicious at the ease with which they've located Joanna's contact, but if there's going to be a confrontation, there's no sense in walking away from it.

"Of course," he says with a nod. "Follow me."

He brings them to a narrow back room, the walls piled high with storage containers. The heat inside is like a physical presence weighing down on them, heavy and unyielding. In the center of the room are a few chairs and a table made from the same cheap-quality construction materials that everything was made of back when the first colonists were settling in. Things are starting to look up on the Vulcan side of the tracks--more imported goods, things made from locally-sourced construction materials. Going by the available physical evidence, even that small bit of economic prosperity hasn't made it to the Romulans yet.

"Rh'vaurek, I need you to tell us everything you know about the bombing," Joanna says, getting right down to business. Uhura envies the ease with which she settles into the flimsy chair. She's comfortable with the realities of colony life in a way that Uhura never was.

"You assume I know anything about it at all."

"You haven't seen anyone suspicious coming or going? Anyone who didn't look as if they belong here?"

Rh'vaurek gives them a weary look. "Commander Uhura, Lieutenant McCoy--we're a colony of political dissenters, any of whom would be imprisoned or executed for entering Romulan space. We are not in the habit of making social calls."

The lights flicker and fade, plunging them into darkness. Uhura's hand immediately goes to her phaser, her spine a line of tension. A few groans can be heard drifting in from down the hallway in the few seconds before a generator kicks in and the festivities resume.

"We've lost a number of our engineers lately," Rh'vaurek says, gesturing to the light overhead, "and we're facing difficulties in maintaining adequate repairs to our power facilities."

Joanna shakes her head and frowns. "But there are a number of opportunities out here for independent work, new systems development...you should have your hands full."

"We're a small outpost on a colony whose residents look on us with suspicion." The corner of Rh'Vaurek's mouth turns up in a smirk. "The opportunities we have here are nothing compared to what Starfleet can offer them, especially if you're willing to play at being a Vulcan."

"Since when do the Romulans care about what Starfleet thinks?" Joanna mutters.

"Since the Federation lost its most important ally, of course. The destruction of Vulcan has divided us. There are many who call for us to seize upon this advantage, while others have doubts. The Federation has its fair share of enemies, but it also has many friends."

Joanna's expression sours. "Which side are you on?"

Rh'vaurek merely allows his lips to curl up in a smile "Preferably, the one that wins."

"I suppose the real question is, since when does the Federation need Romulan Engineers so badly that they're recruiting from an outpost colony?" asks Uhura. Like most military entities, Starfleet isn't averse to making use of the technological advances of its neighbors, whether friend or foe. But there's only one kind of Romulan-originated technology that would be enticing enough to the Federation to merit poaching Romulan scientists, and the last Romulan to make use of it is long dead. It just doesn't add up--Rh'Vaurek must know something that he's not telling. Uhura just needs to figure out what.

"The flux compression generator," says Jo, breathless. "You don't think that they--"

"We don't think anything, yet." Uhura warns. She can see Joanna's mind running off to unwarranted conclusions already. Uhura has been a member of Starfleet for more than half her life now, and she can't bring herself to think that Starfleet would go so far as to sacrifice civilians just to make the Romulans look bad. They do a good enough job of that themselves.

Uhura deliberately cuts off her own negative train of thought. "Is there anyone other than yourself who can corroborate this story? An eyewitness, or..."

"Rh'vaurek, please," Joanna begs. "If we can't prove that a Romulan didn't plant the device, we could have a war on our hands."

He draws a thumb across his lower lip and tugs at it thoughtfully, then pulls a stylus from the folds of his tunic. Uhura hands him her PADD, and he draws a quick sketch of what he believes to be the device used in the attack. His fingers leave greyish smudges on the screen. "I was a communication systems engineer myself, but from what I hear about the blast, the object you're looking for will look something like this. I only know one person here who has that level of familiarity with weapon systems."

"Well, who is she?" Joanna is practically vibrating with anticipation.

"Commander T'Rehu. But she disappeared, about two months back," Rh'vaurek's eyes slide over to the doorway. "I prefer to deal in fact rather than in rumor, but a few have stated that she left to work with the Federation on something more interesting than small weapons technology."

"But why just disappear like that? She's a free citizen of the colony," Joanna insists.

"T'Rehu has shamed her people by acting in concert with the Federation. It's an act of treason, and more than sufficient grounds for execution." Rh'vaurek pushes his chair away and stands, careful not to knock over any of the storeroom's precariously balanced wares. "I have already spent more time speaking to you than is appropriate. We must continue our conversation tomorrow."

Uhura nods, her mouth tight. "Until tomorrow, Rh'vaurek."

"Until tomorrow, Commander. Remember, our little outpost here is small. While I do not doubt that we would do our utmost to defend it, it would take relatively little firepower to destroy it all. I advise you to operate with the utmost discretion."

 

++++

The sun bakes away the little bit of coolness that settled into the earth overnight hours before Uhura and Joanna rise for the day and make their way out of the city center and through various hastily-constructed buildings to the residential part of town. Everything is designed to be as economical as possible, there are little surplus resources focus on infrastructural niceties such as paved walkways and street lighting.

The streets of the colony grow increasingly wider as they pass through the tightly-structured homes of the initial colonists and work their way out to the newer arrivals, more secure in their ability to protect themselves out here. The only navigational clues they receive are from the map provided by Rh'Vaurek, a simple graphic with only a few identifying landmarks. Uhura resists the temptation to adjust her utility belt as a steady trickle of sweat crawls down the small of her back. It's been some time since she was out of doors in anything other than the layered dresses that are customary on Vulcan; they're much cooler than the synthetic fabrics that make up the uniforms of Starfleet.

The door to the squat structure that serves as Rh'vaurek's quarters sits wide open. Uhura's own residence looks like some kind of opulent palace in comparison--inside there's little more than a screened-off sleeping area, a table, and a few chairs. A large, multilegged insect skitters across Uhura's foot and disappears inside. A chill passes over her that has nothing to do with the temperature, and she puts an arm out to prevent Joanna from advancing further. A few agricultural tools sit in one corner, an efficiency kitchen in another. It's oddly quiet.

"What is it?" Joanna hisses, curious.

"I think someone else already paid a visit to your friend," Uhura replies. She has her phaser at the ready as she pushes aside the little privacy screen, and comes face to face with Rh'vaurek's motionless body sprawled out on his sleeping cot. His eyes are wide open, and a trickle of blood stains the corner of his mouth. Joanna makes a little choked-off noise behind her.

"It must have been a surprise," Uhura say. This was supposed to be an easy investigative mission, in and out again with enough information to go off looking for their next clue. Rigor mortis is already setting in; whoever did this is long gone by now. "No Romulan would allow someone to invade their home like this without a fight."

"Computer, lights," says Joanana, keeping the command simple. Even on the Vulcan section of the planet, the computers that control home electronics are a far cry from the sophisticaed systems back on Earth. On and off is sometimes more than they can manage.

The wound site is an ugly burn directly through the chest. Congealed green blood stains the dark fibers of his tunic. Joanna immediately pulls out her tricorder and begins scanning the body, all traces of her earlier shock pushed to the background.

"Well, looks like our mystery is solved," she says. She hands it over to Uhura, who sees nothing out of the ordinary.

"There's nothing here."

"Exactly--Romulans usually carry disruptors; if one was used as the murder weapon, the antiproton particle density would be off the charts." Joanna stands again and returns the tricorder to her holster.

Uhura holsters her phaser with a frustrated sigh, taps her foot against the pitted rock that makes up the floor. This is turning out to be uglier than even she thought it would be. "Because a disruptor didn't kill Rh'vaurek--a phaser blast did."

+++++

At Uhura’s insistence, Joanna spends the night at her house; Jim has gone back to the Carson for the night. She checks in with her father to assure him she’s not dead and doesn’t mention that someone else is.

She sleeps badly and wakes with the sun already up in the sky and a dry-mouthed late-for-work feeling, only to realize that her office has been functionally destroyed. She’s got vital information obtained from a dead witness to present to an admiral, and she’s under the same roof as the woman she’s secretly in love with. She feels rootless and alive and important, and Uhura ruins it a bit by handing her a cup of hot tea and saying, “I ran your shirt through the sonic; it was a little stinky. And your dad is wondering, and I quote, ‘when the hell he’s going to get to visit with the daughter he came halfway across the God-damned galaxy to see’.”

“Soon,” Joanna says with a laugh. “Let’s give the information to Jim, and then I can deal with my dad.”

They catch up with Jim between a Council meeting and an event at the Science Academy. Joanna catches sight of his dark blond head above a gaggle of Starfleet officers, about to disappear into the Academy’s main administration building.

“Admiral!”

The functionaries turn to look; one moves to block Jim and another reaches for his phaser. It occurs to Joanna that running pell-mell into an Admiral in a public place might not be the smartest idea, but at least it’s not the most dangerous one she’s had all day.

“Jo, aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” Jim looks puzzled, and then catches site of Uhura behind her. “Uhura?” His glance takes in her tight, un-Vulcan black pants and her phaser on her hip. “Aren’t you on administrative leave?”

“She wanted to go to the Romulan colony. Dr. McCoy asked me to go along with her. ”

“Go to the-- That’s crazy,” he says, but he looks rather pleased.

“I had a feeling the Romulans weren’t responsible, and I was right. We talked to Rh’vaurek, one of the leaders, and he was murdered right in front of us.” The words tumble out; she a little breathless and feels like she can’t talk fast enough. “It was a phaser--”

“Wait!” Jim’s command is sharp; the functionaries have fallen silent. “Let’s not discuss this here. I have a meeting that I can’t skip, but I’ll be in touch. Uhura, I’m relying on you; if anything happens to her, her father will skin us both alive.”

Joanna watches him leave, still vibrating with the need to tell. Just before the group vanishes, one of officers turns to give her a considering look, and she thinks about the long, silent reach of phaser blasts.

+++++

Joanna complains to Uhura about people not taking her seriously over a lunch of pok tar, but within the hour, Uhura gets a coded message from Kirk summoning everyone up to the U.S.S. Carson.

It takes some time for Joanna to convince her father that she’s well enough to beam up, as he’s convinced that a transporter will tax her in some way that a long, hot walk among Romulans did not. Saiehnn, Spock, and Winona beam from different locations so as not to draw attention to themselves; an unknown enemy, Jim reminds them, should be treated as omnipresent.

It’s been a year and half since Joanna has been in uniform or on a starship, and the Carson, though it’s a Newton-class science vessel of modest size, looks sleek and glossy. Walking its cool, blue-carpeted corridors, Joanna realizes how her eyes have adjusted to the sun-blasted rust and brown of New Vulcan.

Jim meets them in the transporter room and leads them to a conference room. Joanna watches crewmembers’ spines stiffen as they pass by and reminds herself that the easy familiarity she enjoys with Jim planetside is not appropriate here, on a flag officer’s ship.

They settle into plush chairs around the conference table and Joanna feels like she’s dropped into one of her father’s Enterprise stories: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Uhura, sitting in the ready room of a starship ready to save another planet.

“Sorry for the unnecessary drama about getting aboard,” Jim says. “We’re here at the urgent request of Lieutenant McCoy, who’d like us to consider an alternate theory in the bombing. It’s your dime, Lieutenant.”

Five chairs pivot toward her, leaving her surprised and dry-mouthed. “Uh. Thank you, Admiral. I don’t--I don’t really have a formal presentation or anything. But I visited the Romulan colony this morning with Commander Uhura, and I’m convinced the colonists weren’t responsible for the bombing. In fact, the Romulan we made contact with was murdered after telling us about a number of defections to the Federation. It seems the Federation may have been recruiting spies or double agents from the colony.”

“A serious charge,” Spock says. “I assume you have proof?”

“Yes, sir.” A year of getting grilled by Vulcans at staff meetings is standing her in good stead. “I’ve submitted a preliminary list of names, and Commander Uhura got the Romulans to agree not to prepare Rh’vaurek’s body for burial until his death is investigated.”

“Well done, Lieutenant. That does, however, not alter the fact of the Romulan device found in the wreckage,” Spock says. “I presume you have another conjecture for how it got there, other than being placed in the building by a Romulan?”

“Not exactly.” Joanna flushes a little. “But it’s just a Romulan device, right? That doesn’t mean a Romulan put it there. Security’s been over weeks of surveillance vids and there were no Romulans going in or out.” She feels that she’s finding her footing now. “Someone else could have obtained the Romulan device and planted it, to incriminate the Romulans.”

“You say that no Romulans were observed on camera,” Saiehnn says. “May I ask how you visually identify a Romulan?”

Joanna’s mouth goes slack. Of course, Romulans look exactly like Vulcans; it’s only their clothing and certain mannerisms that set them apart.

“I. Uh.” Think fast, don’t look stupid, her brain urges, making her do the opposite. “Maybe--”

“All visitors to the Teslau project site are bioidentified on the way in and out,” Winona says, coming to her rescue. “If a Romulan had passed herself off as a Vulcan, she would have had to create a false identity and maintain it for months.”

“Not an impossible undertaking, in order to achieve a military objective,” says Spock.

“No, but we also do individual genome sequencing and genetic analysis,” Winona counters. “I think we can rule out undercover Romulans.”

“An inside job, then?” Jim says. “Someone who hates the project enough to do the Romulans’ dirty work for them?”

Winona frowns and fidgets with her PADD. “T’Pau unloaded on me the other morning about how the whole project was a massive affront to Vulcan identity, but I can’t see her being willing to injure Vulcan women. The Vai Ba’Tak abjure violence.”

“Maybe the injuries were an accident,” Joanna says. “An EMP device causes a lot of damage, but it didn’t kill anyone. Jim-- I mean, Admiral, Engineer Kanu said the position of the device in the building magnified the damage. So maybe the EMP discharge wasn’t supposed to be so powerful.”

“Or maybe they just didn’t care,” her father says. “Everyone knows you can’t say boo to a pregnant woman and not expect there to be consequences.”

Uhura, who’s been tapping away on her PADD with her long fingernails, looks up from the jumble of schematics scrolling by. “The Romulan we spoke to this morning was ex-military. He said rigging one of these EMP devices to a portable fuel source and a timer would be a lot of trouble and very bulky--hard to smuggle, hard to hide. What I don’t get is why the bombers didn’t go for a simple explosive. Why go to such lengths to use such a distinctive device--”

“--Unless you were trying to pin it on the Romulans. Exactly.” Joanna slaps her hand on the table, startling Saiehnn and getting a couple of amused eyebrows from her father and Jim. “They might as well have stamped the Eagle of the Tal Shiar on it.”

“Your argument is persuasive, Lieutenant,” Spock says. Joanna has enough experience with Vulcans now to know she’s not being patronized. “But until we can explain how the device was introduced into the Teslau building, we have no way to track it to its point of origin and therefore no basis for speculating on a motive.”

“I suppose you’ve considered the obvious, Jim,” Winona says. “That the device was beamed into the building? There’s no transporter block.”

“We already checked the logs of the five transporter pads on Vulcan. There’s nothing matching the morphology in the buffers, and believe me, this thing is quite distinctive.”

“The public transport sites on Uzh Shi'Kahr are not the only ones in range,” Saiehnn says. “I know of at least one other.”

“Yes?” All eyes are now on Saiehnn; Joanna’s have never been off.

“The transporter on this ship.”

Joanna feels her heart skip a beat; her eyes dart to Jim, but he’s wearing an indulgent expression: Vulcans and their passion for precision. She can see him start to shake his head--

“I know,” she says quickly, not sure what she’s going to say afterward. “I know it’s really unlikely, but wouldn’t it make sense just to check? I mean, it would prove that you’re being thorough, that you’re not showing favoritism.” She halts, a little breathless, aware that she’s just implied that Admiral Kirk could reasonably be thought careless or biased.

“You tell ‘em, baby girl,” her father says into the silence.

Jim, nonplussed, shrugs and taps his comm badge to call down to Engineering. Joanna is surprised not to hear Scotty’s voice, but of course he’s off on the Excelsior. Her feelings are conflicted; she doesn’t want to be right, but she also doesn’t want it to look like she’s grabbing at any crackpot theory to exonerate the Romulans, despite the fact that she knows, knows that the colonists aren’t responsible.

The suspense builds over long minutes. Just as her father’s offering to get out a deck of cards, Engineer Kanu comms back.

“Sir, we transported something with the morphology and mass matching the flux compression generator schematic three days ago. It went down with a load of equipment to the Teslau building.”

Jim’s formidable eyebrows draw together, and the set of his lips promises rolling heads later on. “And nobody bothered to check the shipment against the manifest?”

“We were getting around to that, sir. We usually purge the buffers and file the reports after we leave orbit.” His voice moves into a more desperate upper register. “We’re a science vessel, Admiral.”

“Anybody ever hear of a simple inventory?” Joanna’s father grumbles.

Jim, however, is looking much more pleased. “So the suspect object’s still in the buffer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then,” Spock says, “it will be possible to reconstruct it, given some phase matter and a bit of time.”

“Nothing you can’t handle, then?”

“Not at all,” Spock says. “This is, as the engineer noted, a science vessel.”

“Good.” Jim swivels around to Joanna. “Lieutenant, I appreciate your insight and the intelligence that you and Uhura picked up in the Romulan colony. But since it seems we might have a suspect on board--” he taps his comm badge. “Security, escort Lieutenant McCoy to VIP quarters and put a double guard on the door.”

“Admiral!” Joanna stares in disbelief as her father nods approvingly. “Please let me help, I can--”

“Saiehnn should go, too,” Uhura says. Joanna’s protest dies on her lips.

“It’s just for a little while, Jo.” Jim smiles at her, but there’s a crease of worry between his eyebrows. “A precaution; I wouldn’t let anything happen to you on my ship. Besides, you’ll be in good company.”

 

+++++

The room clears out quickly. Everyone sets off in twos and threes, energized by a renewed sense of purpose now that they have something to do rather than just sit around and make aimless speculation. Joanna gives Uhura a jaunty salute before the conference room door slides shut behind her and Kirk, a good an indication as any that she's looking forward to the work ahead of her.

Eventually, Uhura and Spock are the the only two left in the room, a move she assumes was deliberate on his part since he now has a not-insignificant task on the horizon. She takes a moment to hang onto the silence that fills the room as it empties out; they haven't had much of that since they relocated to the colony, what with Spock spending most of his time navigating the bureaucracy of the colony and Uhura spending her time at the Teslau clinic with the children.

Uhura starts a little when she feels his fingers come into contact with the back of her hand, sending a curl of warmth into the pit of her stomach just like always. She adjusts her chair so she's facing him directly.

"This won't be over in a day or two," she muses. "If they can't find a way to pin the flux compression generator on the Romulans, they'll find something else."

His face takes on that preternaturally composed state, the one that's too perfect, and she knows that he's keeping information from her. She doesn't press him for it.

In the end, he just curls his fingers around hers, lets out an exhalation of breath so faint it can hardly be called a sigh. "Indeed. The destruction of my home planet has knocked the political balance of the entire Federation from its course. It will take a great many years before it is righted again."

She foresees the conversation wandering off into a direction she never intended, one full of philosophizing and reminiscence. It's a habit he picked up from so many years with Jim, the way they follow each other around in ever-wider circles of rhetoric yet somehow wind up at the same conclusion. Uhura, on the other hand, has always been direct with him from the start.

"My reassignment period is coming up next month," she says, her chest hollow with anticipation. They haven't been apart from each other for more than a few months in years, a span of time that has narrowed to days since the twins arrived. "I'm going to offer my services to Jim on whatever vessel he's posted to next, if he'll have me. It's been ages since I've done any serious work with Romulan dialects but I'm sure I can pick it up again if I..." Uhura catches herself dragging her fingers nervously back and forth across the touch screen, and clenches them into a fist. "I can't stay here, on this planet, anymore," she finishes in a rush.

I'm going insane is what she really wants to say, or maybe even something ridiculous and emotional like, I miss humans. But she bites her tongue. She's stated her intentions; that will have to be good enough.

"You are aware of the shortage of labor on the colony at present," he begins, carefully not meeting her eye. "The people of Uzh Shi'kahr place a great value on your services. As do I."

Uhura snorts. "Yeah, I'm sure they'll all miss how I corrupt the youth with my Human education methods." She tilts back in the chair and stares at the rivets in the bulkhead above her until Spock reclaims her attention by saying her name at a volume so low that she can barely hear. The disappointed look he gives her makes her uncomfortable and flushed with warmth all at once. It's as if they've been going back in time instead of forward, and they're back in the hanger again, when their tempers ran as hot as the attraction felt for one another.

"Saiehnn and I do not hold this opinion. Vesko would attest to the same, as would others, I assure you."

"Okay, yes, you're right." She pushes her chair back, away from the table and away from her obstinate husband. "But it doesn't change my decision. You've found a place that fulfills you, Spock. Don't I deserve the same?"

Spock settles back into his chair, his mouth tight around the corners. He doesn't respond.

+++++

The VIP quarters on the Carson aren’t as luxurious as those on a starship, but they’re enough to make Joanna feel that she shouldn’t touch anything--anything except the irresistible bed with its green-and-gold velveteen bedspread. She dangles her feet off the edge while she talks to Saiehnn who, true to form, has found the stiffest and most upright chair in the room. It’s delicious and frightening to be alone with her--locked away with her, in fact.

“I do not understand what progress we can hope to make before Spock reconstitutes the device,” Saiehnn says, though her presence speaks louder than her skepticism. “Admiral Kirk is no doubt supervising the investigation and interrogation of the crew.”

“Of course. But that doesn’t mean we can’t go through the mental exercise, especially since we know as much about the political situation on New Vulcan as anybody here. A Romulan device was beamed down from this ship--a ship with no Romulans on board--to damage but not destroy the Teslau Project building. Who got it on board, how was it powered up, and how was it beamed down?”

“Inductive reasoning.” Saiehnn seems to be placated. “Very well. You propose to work backward, hypothesizing a sequence of events, thus narrowing the possibilities.”

“It’s that or play chess.” Saiehnn gives her what she swears is a skeptical look. “You’re right; I’m definitely better at conversation.”

+++++

Uhura has met plenty of worms and traitors in her 20-year career, and Engineer Kanu is her least favorite kind: self justifying, passive aggressive, and worst of all incompetent--so poorly trained by his masters that he veers between an implausible cover story and flat denial depending on who’s talking to him.

“You say you received orders to charge the flux compression device and beam it down, but you won’t say from whom.” Uhura keeps her eyes focused on her PADD. “You say it never occurred to you not to follow these orders, even though you were delivering a device with enormous potential destructive energy to a civilian facility.”

“Yes,” Kanu says, pouting into his crossed arms.

“You’re either a complete idiot or lying. Since they don’t let complete idiots in the engine rooms of starships, I’m going with the latter.”

Jim moves into Kanu’s field of vision. He’s been pacing with his head down, listening while Uhura interrogates Kanu, mostly quiet, and giving the man serious jitters if he has any brains at all. Jim’s not intimidating in the conventional sense; he carries very little physical threat in his thin frame, and he’s made a career out of being underestimated. But once he’s set on a course of action, he’s relentless in its pursuit.

“He won’t protect you, you know.” Jim’s voice is hard and a little too loud; the corners of Kanu’s eyes twitch.

“I don’t know who you mean.”

“He was willing to risk the lives of innocent people,” Jim says, as if he hasn’t heard. “If he can do that, he can throw you away without a second thought.” Jim catches her eye, his own barely visible between narrow slits of dark lashes. She has no idea who Jim’s referring to, but she doesn’t need to.

“He’s right, you know. I’ve seen it happen before. But Starfleet believes in second chances. If you turn him in--”

“Starfleet?” Kanu says in disbelief. “It’s Starfleet that I’m trying to protect, from the likes of both of you. I don’t get it--I was raised on stories of the Enterprise; it’s one of the reasons I came out here in the first place. But now look at you.” He flicks a glance at Jim. “Driving a school bus for scientists. And you? Holding babies for the Vulcan. Shit, if that’s what 20 years of--”

Uhura doesn’t get to hear any more of Kanu’s editorializing because Jim gives him a good whack on the base of the skull, hard enough to deliver a point but not to damage.

“Commander Uhura is a recipient of the Medal of Valor, and you’re an asshole who’s about to do 20 for treason.” Jim says. “Apologize to her.”

Kanu glares at him, slightly cross-eyed. “I won’t-”

“You will.” Jim looks down on the crown of his head from his full six feet in height, eyes cold. “Because you’re going to need all the friends you can get, and even though I’m pretty sure I hate you, you could be useful to me. More useful than you are to him.”

“Who?” The contempt in Kanu’s voice is starting to wear thin.

“Admiral Cartwright.”

It’s all Uhura can do to stifle a gasp; Kanu, less guarded, lets his chin drop and gapes at Kirk while his brain recalculates its limited options.

“Commander Uhura.” His voice is flat, braver than a mumble, but without the bluster Jim’s just thwacked out of him. “I didn’t mean to imply--”

“Oh yes, you did.” She gets up, kicks her chair away, and stands shoulder to shoulder with Jim. “You know what would make me feel a whole lot better? If you told us everything. Right now.”

+++++

“But assuming hardcore anti-Romulans in Starfleet staged the whole thing, what would be the point--to get rid of the colony? What kind of threat could it possibly be?”

Joanna is lying back on the huge bed staring at the ceiling, because it’s less distracting than staring at Saiehnn, who’s unwound far enough to remove the outer layer of her complicated dress.

“Does the rest of the Federation truly understand the difference between the Romulan colonists and the Star Empire?”

“You mean, is one bunch of Romulans as good as another when it comes to stirring up hostility?” Joanna rolls onto her side. “Do you think anyone at Starfleet’s really that cold-hearted--attacking and injuring pregnant women to make the Romulans look bad?”

“Much can be justified in self defense. Nero believed he was saving Romulus.”

“I know,” Joanna says, and feels pointlessly guilty, the way she does every time Saiehnn alludes to her past. “I’d just like to think better of the Federation.”

The silence that stretches out should be uncomfortable for many reasons, but it isn’t. Saiehnn walks to the viewport and looks down on New Vulcan, beige and featureless and moonless, and Joanna can’t resist any longer. She doesn’t move from the bed; it’s easier to drift on the unreality of a post-adrenaline crash, the weirdness of her surroundings, and Saiehnn’s face, glowing in the ship’s running lights.

“How do you do it, Saiehnn?” she asks softly. “Why aren’t you ever bitter or angry about what happened? And how do you face an entire life of knowing you’ll never get back what you had--” Joanna swallows. “Of never getting what you want?”

Saiehnn turns to face her, eyes sharp and unflinching. “If you believe I will never receive it, then you are clearly wrong about what I wish. Or perhaps you believe you can provide it yourself.”

Even in her most sentimental moments, Joanna has never deceived herself, although it makes what follows a confession instead of a declaration. “Of course not. I just want to know that you’re happy, in whatever way you can be. That it isn’t just duty that keeps you with Spock and Uhura. And I want you to know--” It takes all of Joanna’s strength not to reach out to Saiehnn. “I want you to know that your happiness is important to me, if that helps at all. Because I care about you. Because I love you.”

Whatever’s in Saiehnn’s eyes at that moment, it isn’t contempt.

“Yes,” she says. “I know.”

“You do.” It doesn’t matter whether Saiehnn is a telepath; she’s a keen observer. Joanna would have noticed, if she hadn’t been so enamored of her selfless, doomed love.

“Yes. I have observed for some time that you sought out my company. I have also discussed it with Nyota, who received confirmation from your father.”

“You discussed it?” Joanna’s mortification is transmuting into anger. “Little Jo McCoy has a crush on Spock and Uhura’s wife, whatever shall we do? Like that?”

“You are young and far from home.” Saiehnn’s tone verges on sympathetic, which makes it worse. “Human emotions are malleable at such times. As it caused me no injury, I saw no reason to take action, except that I anticipated that our parting might cause you distress.”

“What parting?”

“The Teslau project will in all likelihood be discontinued. The results have been equivocal at best, and the attack will focus attention on it that is unlikely to be positive.”

“But that’s unfair!” Joanna knows how she sounds, how it makes a lie of her protestations to maturity, but it is unfair that on one of the first days of her life that she felt competent and useful that everything should be pulled away. “What about the kids--who’s going to teach them? What about the parents? What about you?”

Saiehnn’s gaze drops, only for a second; it’s fortunate that Joanna has become such a keen student of Saiehnn’s body language, or she might have missed it. “I am sure I will find other ways to serve the cause of Restoration.”

“God damn it.” There’s a stronger curse in her throat, but more than a year on Vulcan has given her a built-in filter, even now. “You can’t convince me there’s nothing you want for yourself. I don’t care if it’s not me, but it must be something. Nobody is that selfless.”

Saiehnn opens her mouth as if she’d like to argue but realizes it would be paradoxically egotistical. “If I wish anything, it is to have freedom of choice. Unfortunately, I do not; the decisions that govern my life were made when I was still a child.”

“But who says you have to follow them?” Joanna aches to touch her, to let her feel the force of Joanna’s own desires and ambitions--half-formed, unclear, full of fruitless human longing as they are. “A baby’s obligations to its parents stop the day it’s born. That’s what my father says.”

“It is not so with us. If we reject the legacy of all that is gone before, then we are no longer Vulcan.”

“Then be something else.”

Saiehnn looks truly startled.

“Human malleability is indeed remarkable. Yet you cannot be a rock or a tree. Nor can you be a Vulcan.”

“I think I could if I wanted to. I’m pretty sure Rh’vaurek could. At least he was willing to try.” Thinking of Rh’vaurek blasted body, Joanna summons the courage to take Saiehnn’s hand in her own. It’s hot and dry, alien and lovely. “I want to have his courage. I want to be around people who don’t believe in limitations. I thought you were one of them, Saiehnn. I still think so, but I want you to want things for yourself.”

Saiehnn does not remove her hand; instead, the fingers curl lightly around Joanna’s own. “There is much that I would wish to be different, if I could freely choose.”

Joanna feels tears start to her eyes; it’s that beautiful, and Saiehnn is radiant in her indecision. “There,” she says, stroking her hand lightly. “It really isn’t that hard.”

+++++

“Cartwright.” Uhura keeps repeating his name, hoping it will start to make sense. She remembers him as an intense and dedicated captain, a military prodigy of an admiral, hero of a dozen skirmishes with the Klingons. “Did you guess, or did you know?”

Jim’s sitting in one conference chair with his legs stretched out in another, a flap of his admiral’s tunic undone, like a partygoer after a long night. “Kanu served with him on the Bonaventure. That’s how these things usually go if you’re not a career rat; bonds forged in battle, and all that. And Cartwright hasn’t been in my fan club since I backed the Antarion Treaty. You have to admire it, in a way; either I’d be here to validate that the Romulan colonists were behind the attack, or I’d trace the device back to this ship and look like an idiot for letting it happen on my own vessel. Lance was always a hell of a strategist. Now I’m going to ram all that strategy up his tailpipe and make sure he never puts on a Starfleet uniform again.”

“So that’s the plan? Turn everything over to Starfleet?” Uhura’s perched on the edge of the conference table, swing her legs back and forth to dispel what’s left of the adrenaline. “How can you be sure the conspiracy doesn’t go up any higher than Cartwright?”

“I can’t; hence the vulgar analogy. You put a stick of dynamite up a tailpipe, the whole fucking thing explodes.” He kicks at the table leg. “God fucking damn it. Chris Pike picked a hell of a time to die. I have no idea what’s going on in San Francisco any more.”

“You don’t think he--” Uhura pauses, because Jim’s feelings about Pike, while not exactly sentimental, are at least familial.

“I wish I could say I had no doubts, that I know he’d never authorize hurting civilians. I don’t want to think he could. He believed in the loyal opposition; shit, he even wanted me to take the Excelsior, so I could keep on charming everyone with my borderline-insubordinate ways.”

“And why didn’t you?” Uhura’s heard the story before from his own lips, but she wonders if the answer has changed.

Jim gives a snort and looks sullen, recalling a side of him only the Bridge crew ever saw, the enthusiasm that was only ever depressed by death and betrayal, both of which he’s had in the last few days.

“I didn’t trust myself. In life and death situations, the possibilities narrow to where the ethics get pretty fucking clear. But playing the long game, I could have ended up like Cartwright. Whatever it was that Pike had that kept his head on straight, I don’t have that.” He gives a tight smile. “Crazy, unpredictable Jim Kirk, controlled chaos. I’m a useful tool in the right hands, but I’m not a leader. Not in the way that I’d have to be.”

Uhura considers her next words carefully, because when Jim’s in one of these moods he’s as likely to shut down as take a swing at the person sitting next to him. She half wishes that Spock were here, but Spock’s always been indulgent with Jim, assuming with Vulcan naivete that Jim’s moods were a necessary side effect of his massive enthusiasms.

“I think that’s an excuse.” She keeps her voice neutral, as if they’re discussing the Federation elections. “You believe Pike had some kind of magical moral compass he could consult? There’s no such thing. It’s hard for everyone to know they have to live with the consequences of their decisions.”

His brows lower; he’s skeptical, maybe a little annoyed, but he’s not angry. “Hmm. You arranged it pretty well for yourself, though, didn’t you? Teaching, raising the next generation; unimpeachable, even if it bores you out of your damn mind.”

“You think I’m holding babies for Spock, too?” She aims an almost-not-mock kick at him. “I’m an outworlder married to one of Vulcan’s favorite sons, raising two kids with three parents on a planet where the biggest luxury item is water. If you think that’s easy, excuse me, but up yours, Captain.” Her scowl slides into a grin. “I mean, up yours, Admiral.”

“It’s okay, old habits die hard.” Jim’s looking a bit more cheerful himself. “I didn’t mean to imply your life was easy, it’s just--the narrowed options thing, you know.”

“I know what you meant. I won’t deny it; New Vulcan is insular and preoccupied with survival. The Vai Ba’Tak may spend time debating whether k’thia permits the consumption of monocellular organisms, but everyone else is more worried about whether Councillor Sepan is going to vote for a second Market Day. Basically, New Vulcan is a small town populated by obsessive-compulsive geniuses with photographic memories. And I won’t deny that I miss this--or at least, that I miss all of us serving together. I’m not sure the Starfleet I remember exists any more.”

“Me, neither.” He gets to his feet and offers her a hand as she slides off the desk, feeling the cold metal against the back of her thighs, a sense memory from another time. “Only one way to find out; throw the grenade and see what floats to the surface.”

She lets her hand rest on his shoulder for a moment longer. “For a suspected pacifist, you sure are full of grisly metaphors.”

“For a schoolteacher, you sure like an excuse to strap on your phaser.” He means it as a good-natured joke, at least until he gets a good look at Uhura’s face.

“I want to ask, you know,” he says quietly. “I want to ask like you wouldn’t believe, for you to come with me. But it wouldn’t be fair, would it? To so many people, but especially to you.”

It won’t hurt just to hear what he has to say, she tells herself, and that’s how she knows she’s already made the decision. But for her to live with herself, he’s got to prove to her that Starfleet needs her as much as--more--than the Colony, than her family.

“Go ahead,” she says. “Take your best shot.”

Jim grins, warming to the challenge. It turns out that what Starfleet has to offer is quite a lot.

+++++

South of Uzh Shi'Kahr, the low hills give way to a flat-bottomed valley, a vestige of a time when there was running water on this planet. As light refracts through the hotter air close to the burning rock, it appears silver and slick, reflective, like still water. Like the still surface of the Voroth Sea, Spock thinks, and wonders--not for the first time--if this is why his father selected the location for his home. The family villa at Raal was a masterpiece of classical architecture, blending seamlessly into the red rock, uniting sea, earth and sky. It is gone now, of course, along with the rock and sea. Only the sunlight remains, the visible radiance of 40 Eridani reflecting off its two remaining planets.

Spock has long since ceased trying to prevent himself from falling into these well-worn patterns of thought. It is easier to let them run their course, to pass through his mind and out into figurative space, as he does during meditation. For a moment he allows himself to be fully present in the memory of Raal, to contemplate what he had and did not have, during his brief life on that planet.

“My son.” Sarek appears in the doorway, holding two glasses of ka’sak. Spock takes one from his hand and raises it in a gesture of respect.

“Health and long life to you, father.” They each drink and Spock feels a familiar discomfort settle over him. Though their relations have greatly improved in the years since his mother’s death, Spock does not forget that the role of a Vulcan parent is to guide a child’s mind with constant correction, and that his father had applied this principle with diligence. “I presume you wish to discuss the investigation into the Teslau matter.”

“This is a worthy subject for discussion,” Sarek says, with a slight inclination of his head. “You may know that James has asked me to file a formal complaint with the Federation as a way of increasing political pressure to purge the corrupt elements from the Starfleet leadership. This I have agreed to do, as I believe it will ultimately benefit Vulcan.”

“Jim does not believe his own influence to be sufficient,” Spock says, relaxing slightly. This topic has been very much on his mind as well.

“No, and in this, I believe he is wrong. However, I did not summon you hear to speak of James. I have a private matter to discuss with you, my son.”

This statement revives Spock’s concern.

“Yes, father?”

Sarek runs a fingertip around the rim of his glass, a curiously purposeless gesture. “Marriage, as you know, is among the most sacred of all Vulcan traditions. Marriage, and the bond that precedes it, is the structure upon which we build our commitment to non-violence.”

Nonplussed, Spock quickly reviews his recent behavior as a husband and finds nothing wanting. “I trust that I have always shown the greatest respect for that institution.”

“Indeed.” Sarek moves to stand behind Spock but does not look at him, keeping his gaze instead on the bare hills, where the lowering sun glows like a dying fire. “You have fulfilled your obligation to continue the line of Surak. I have, however, a different obligation: to set an example as a leader of our world and a representative of the living memory of Vulcan.”

“Have you not fulfilled this obligation as well?” Spock hopes his reference is sufficiently elliptical. Sahn’pel, Sarek’s second wife, had died shortly before Spock and Uhura had arrived on Vulcan.

“Marriage is not an achievement; it is a state, and one which male Vulcans are ill advised to forswear until they are advanced in years.” Now Spock must suppress a slight dilation of the blood vessels in his face; he has never discussed the time of madness with his father, and has no wish to do so.

“I presume, then, that you plan to marry again?”

“I do.”

It is not unexpected; Spock had, in fact, wondered when his father might take another wife, although the fact that his union with Sahn’pel had been childless had raised uncomfortable questions.

“And the name of she who is to be my mother?”

Sarek comes as close to smiling as Spock recalls ever seeing. “She is Winona Kirk, of course.”

Spock experiences a curious sensation, similar to falling. He grabs at the balcony railing to steady himself. Sarek looks taken aback.

“Surely this is no surprise. You know that Winona and I have spent a great deal of time in each other’s company. She is a woman of good character, highly intelligent, and respected in her profession. Moreover she is the mother of James, your close associate.”

“On the contrary, I have nothing but regard for her. But I naturally assumed you would select a Vulcan mate.” His father continues to look at him impassively, and Spock is annoyed at his obtuseness. “As I have done. As so many others have done, for the survival of our species and culture.”

“You found an elegantly logical solution to reconcile your obligations and your personal desires, it is true. Yet you must know that it is controversial in many quarters. There are those who regard Saiehnn as your true and only wife. I cannot allow this to be the case with Winona.”

“And yet it is acceptable for Nyota?” Spock makes no effort to control his anger. “Our arrangement, however logical, has been difficult for all three of us, Nyota most of all. She left her homeworld and her commission in Starfleet to raise our children in conditions that may at best be called inhospitable. I have subjected her to all this because I believed it was my duty to Vulcan. And now you take a wife of your choosing and will have no other, and you tell me that it is out of obligation?”

“Nyota is fully capable of choosing her own path,” Sarek says, a hard edge to his voice. “As your mother was. As Winona is. Through their choices I have learned much about human adaptability, and it is this example I wish to place before our people. My son, our civilization is dying a slow death. It may seem beyond the reach of any one individual to prevent that. And yet it has happened before, in the time of Surak, when we almost destroyed ourselves through passion and ignorance.”

“Then you support Reunification, after all?”

“Why must it be one or the other? No, I do not support Reunification, as I have learned not to trust to the clemency of the victor. True change, I believe, comes only with necessity and pain; again, I point to our own history.”

“Admiral Kirk believes that the Romulans desire peace as much as we do, but that their culture provides no framework in which it can be sought honorably. He believes we can show them the way.”

Sarek gives another half-smile. “James takes human empathy to its logical conclusion; he believes that his own capacity for change is present in all sentient beings.”

“You disagree?”

“No, but I would be unwilling to wager the survival of the Federation on it. Yet Vulcan must adapt and find a path forward, lest we become as a species under glass, something to be studied and put back on the shelf.”

“What of the aspect of khul-ut-shan that speaks to the preservation of diversity?”

“The universe is far from perfect. As Surak said, khul-ut-shan as it exists in our minds is but a shadow of its real form. I serve it in my own way, and I am proud of what I have achieved.”

“To what specifically do you refer?”

Sarek joins his first two fingers and brushes them against the back of Spock’s hand. It is the closest he has come to touching Spock in many decades, and he feels the brush of his father’s mind like the passage of a great ship.

“To you yourself, my son. You are a child of two worlds and the only one of your kind. I trust you shall not be the last.”

I never wished to be a symbol, Spock thinks, and then thinks of his own children.

Sarek holds his gaze for a moment but says nothing, finally taking the empty glass from Spock’s hand and disappearing into the house, leaving Spock alone with his thoughts and the first stars of evening.

+++++

Winona casts an eye around her office at the Teslau Center for the last time, checking to make sure that nothing is left behind. Not that she has much to take with her--a few PADDs, a mug made by one of the Teslau mothers, a sweater for the nights that she was kept late and the desert cold crept into the walls.

If she wanted, she could wait until everything settles down again. But at 72, Winona isn't too keen on the idea of twiddling her thumbs while Starfleet slowly siphons off the funding for Teslau each year until it ceases to exist altogether. There's a cushy research position waiting for her at the VSA; perhaps she'll have the opportunity to find some smart kid she can nudge towards the idea of revisiting the heaps of data they've collected. They haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the raw data acquired on those few children who possessed enhanced telepathic ability. `

"Computer, lights off," she says, her voice ringing loudly in the silence.

Winona makes a point of taking her leave formally from the few full time staff they have on board there. She'd notified them all as soon as she made her decision, but still, her breath gets a little caught in her chest when she says goodbye. They politely pretend not to notice as they offer formal regrets at the news of her departure. Whether or not they're all sincere, she can only guess.

There's a heaviness in the air that hangs over everything, working its way into the silences that used to be filled with children's voices. Classes are on hold indefinitely; the High Council deemed their continuation unsafe until such a time when they can guarantee the safety of the children. And who knows when that will be.

Vesko's office is last on her list. When she arrives, she's greeted by the rise and fall of soft conversation coming from inside. It falls to a stop when she sets foot into the doorway.

"You may enter, Commander Kirk."

T'Pau, Winona thinks. She's bit stunned to see her at all, a sentiment that rapidly curdles into bitterness.. She's probably come to gloat over the figurative and literal rubble that's been made of Teslau. Her anger rises hot and fast under her collar. Who does she think she is, anyway--Winona has never needed special clearance to enter the offices of her own staff members.

Winona clears her throat, nods to politely first to T'Pau in deference to her status as the eldest female in the room. "Good evening, T'Pau, Vesko. What brings you to the clinic today?"

T'Pau's expression shifts subtly. "You are angry with me," she says, a questioning rise at the end of the statement.

Vesko makes a hesitant motion forward from her position next to the windowsill. A long crack runs down the window, one of the many small repairs on hold for the moment due to the shortage of workers and the long list of high priority construction projects in the city.

"Winona," Vesko says, moving to intercept the argument that they can all see on the horizon, "T'Pau has come to offer congratulations on your appointment at the Academy. I am sure you will find the position a suitable match to your skill set."

That makes Winona feel a little embarrassed, but it doesn't quell her suspicion entirely. The day T'Pau makes a visit solely for the purpose of socialization is the day Winona signs up as a trader with the Orion Syndicate.

"I supposed you're satisfied, then," Winona says wearily. "The Vai Ba’Tak have achieved their stated aim, after all. Teslau is effectively finished."

"I gain no pleasure from senseless violence." T'Pau replies, sharply. That strength of personality within her that has bent entire governments to her will is like a palpable force in the air. "The attack brings no benefit to the people of Uzh Shi'kahr. I anticipate that in the long term, the Federation will shift its focus away from the colony and toward the Romulan threat, whether it is real or a fantasy."

"You don't think the Romulans are responsible?" Winona says, caught off guard.

"That remains to be determined," she replies, easily dodging the question. "It is also irrelevant. Teslau was destined to meet with failure from the moment it was conceived."

"The project succeeded in its stated aims," interjects Vesko. "The adaptation of the teachings of Surak was one step in the evolution of our people; Teslau was to be the next."

"Surak has taught us that where fear walks, anger is its companion." T'Pau looks pointedly at the cracked window. "Every star has a number of years in our skies before it burns itself out. It is your fear of the natural progression of our race that has brought us to this point."

Winona scoffs. They live in a world where the laws of physics are bent to their will on a daily basis, and she wants to draw the line at giving population replacement a little nudge in the right direction? "Are you saying that you would let Vulcan die rather than have a few of you who are different?" She takes a deep breath and uncurls her fingers from where the nails were cutting into the skin of her palms. "The science here was new, untested--we would have gotten it in a few more years, I know we would have."

"At what cost?" T'Pau demands. "If we cannot communicate, one mind to another, we are no longer Vulcan. Do tell me, Commander Kirk. What number of children with mothers who cannot speak to them, or fathers can not touch them, would be sufficient to justify your cause?"

From the corner of her eye, Winona spots Vesko, who holds herself terribly still. She's no doubt thinking of her own children, whose psychic abilities are so accelerated that they are drawn into a mind meld instantaneously upon contact with another individual. Winona's own thoughts go to T'Sura, who at her young age already shows a growing reluctance to interact with her peers outside of the Teslau center.

"I don't have an answer for you, T'Pau. But I know that we at least had to try. "

There's something undeniably weary about the way that T'Pau looks at them. "Yes. I thought as much."

+++++

Spock finds Jim at the Federation’s semi-permanent headquarters on New Vulcan, where the Admiral has been given a small, plain office that at least has the distinction of a door. The building itself is as bland and steeped in human geometry as any of the others constructed by the Federation Authority for New Vulcan. That the buildings are starting to show signs of age in the harsh climate is a visible reminder of exactly how long it has been since the settlement of New Vulcan, while sheer number of humans working in the building demonstrates too clearly that the promise of rapid revival has not been met.

“Can you spare a moment? I wish to speak with you briefly,” Spock says, observing Jim’s temporary desk, cluttered with a half-dozen PADDs, a half-finished cup of coffee, and a small wooden box.

“Sure, sit. I’ve got something I need to talk to you about, too, but I can’t promise it’ll be brief.” Spock notices that Jim is not smiling.

“Perhaps it concerns the same matter.”

“Won’t know until you tell me.” Spock sees unaccustomed challenge in Jim’s direct, blue gaze.

“Very well. I have spoken with my father, who wished to convey his intention to--” Spock pauses, and Jim leans forward.

“Lodge a complaint with the Federation? Yeah, I know, and I can’t tell you how important I think it is. It’s going to make it awfully hard for the Committee of Inquiry to think it’s just Jim Kirk being a holier-than-thou ass again.”

“It is uncharacteristic of you to care about others’ opinions,” Spock says, a little thrown off. “But it is his intentions concerning your mother of which I wish to speak.”

“Oh, that.” The absent smile finally breaks out across Kirk’s face. “I probably had the same conversation with mom. It’s kind of cute that they wanted to ask our permission first.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“That I was delighted, of course. Wait--did you think I’d be upset?”

“I hoped not. Yet your mother did not remarry after the death of your father, and it has been many years.” Spock has an unpleasant memory of his own illogical feelings when witnessing Sarek’s marriage to Sahn'pel.

“Not that many years,” Jim says, running a hand through his thinning hair. He has been alive, of course, for the exact number of years that his mother has been a widow. “But apart from making my mom happy, it’s going to make us family--you and me and Uhura. How could I not be pleased with that?”

“You are generous, as always, in your construction of events.”

“You mean I’m a hopeless optimist. Well, in this case I think it’s a safe bet. This Teslau thing has turned into a mess. Starfleet’s likely to keep it going for long enough that they can’t be accused of giving into terrorism, and then mothball it. Why should Winona get pushed around by annoying Starfleet brass like me when she can be here, among her own people?” Spock raises an eyebrow in question. “You know--scientists.”

“Then she intends to give up her commission?”

“Hand over the phaser, keep the pension. Sounds like a good deal to me.” Kirk picks up the coffee cup, sniffs at it tentatively, and takes a swallow. “Less than a day old is probably safe, right? I really hope I can make it to the wedding; Vulcan weddings are great. Has Sarek picked an executioner yet?”

“No plans have been made because they are not formally betrothed. Sarek will, however, expect both his sons to be there.” The word produces an alteration in Jim’s mood, which was veering toward the lighthearted.

“Oh, right. Vulcans consider bonds by marriage to be the equivalent of family ties. That’ll be novel. I’ve never had a father to piss off before.” As he speaks, he runs his finger lightly along the top of the wooden box on his desk, as if to brush off the dust.

“Sarek is--” Spock pauses, unable to easily summarize everything he has learned about his father. “He is a typical Vulcan father in many ways--demanding to the point of harshness, by human standards. Yet he is capable of surprising leaps in--I hesitate to call it logic; vision might be more precise. And he is a great admirer of human culture. As you are its embodiment, at least in its better aspects, I believe Sarek will consider you a most satisfactory addition to the family.”

“Thanks. I’ll do my best to live up to that.” Jim’s smile now is warm and genuine; Spock feels himself responding, as he always has, both on the level of personal affection, and to his captain, who does not make idle promises.

“Now, you wished to tell me something as well?”

“Yeah.” Jim slumps a bit, sighs out a little whuff of air, and pulls the wooden box toward himself with both hands, as if he is determined to confront something unwelcome. “Bones brought me this. It’s Pike’s. He left it with Bones a while back, to give to me in case something happened. That’s not unusual in itself; humans can be pretty sentimental when it comes to death and parcelling out their stuff. But he’d already made me his executor, and you better believe the chain of custody on an admiral’s personal effects is pretty tight. So I figured that there had to be something in here he wanted me to see.”

Jim flips the lid of the box open, and it bangs against the desk with a hollow thud. Spock avoids looking at its contents.

“Go on and look. It’s nothing personal. I mean, it’s all personal, but nothing he’d be embarrassed to have you see. You were friends with him longer than I was, after all.”

Spock considers the truth of that statement as he peers at the box. It appears to be the usual ephemera that humans accumulate through their lives, like the magpie birds of Earth that gather shiny objects: a pair of ancient-looking cufflinks, a few comm badges, pieces of paper, a handful of memory cubes, and a crude metal model of a starship that appears to be of the Deep Space Scout type. Jim brushes it lightly with his fingertip.

“I was going to go for the memory cubes first, but this caught my eye. It’s the Kelvin.”

“May I ask how you know?” The model appears to have no markings on it, save a few small holes.

“Long story. Anyway, Chris would’ve known this would catch my eye, and that I’d pick it up. Lucky, because it’s got a biometric lock, and it opened when I touched it. Like magic. Like something from an old story.” Jim fits actions to words, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, close to his face, scrutinizing. With a tiny click and a sigh, the miniature saucer section opens, and Spock peers in.

“It appears to be some type of nanodevice,” Spock says.

“You’re right. It’s a recording device, and what it recorded was Pike’s personal logs. There are hundreds of hours, but I figured the last ones would be the most interesting, huh?”

Jim’s words are a bit too rushed and hectic for Spock’s comfort. It cannot have been easy, listening to the words of a dead man to whom he had been so close, never minding what they said.

“And what did they reveal?”

Jim meets Spock’s eyes with effort. “Pike was involved in a secret intelligence initiative. Only the highest levels of Starfleet knew about it, which, interestingly enough, didn’t include me. But Chris trusted me; in the end, he trusted me, even though we’d had our differences about the Romulan matter.” Jim places the device in his open palm and drops his hand, along with his gaze, to the desk. Spock feels it would be rude to notice the shine of moisture in his eyes, though he himself is hardly unaffected. “He trusted us both, at the very beginning. I feel like this is his last order, Spock, and I want to do the right thing. But it’s not just a ship this time. Not even Earth.”

“No? What is it, then?”

“Oh, nothing we can’t handle.” Jim’s eyes are still bright, but now he is smiling. “Just the whole damn galaxy.”

The look in his eye, the tone in his voice--mischief where others would see horrifying danger, as if he were a child and the risk of death were an unearned treat--Spock’s heart responds to Jim as it always has. But Jim has remained the same, and Spock is now a different person.

“I regret that I cannot--” he begins.

“I know, I know,” Jim says quickly, ducking his head, hiding his disappointment. “You have obligations here. I get it. But I can’t help wanting what I want. Between you and Uhura, you make me feel like Mephistopheles.”

“Like that devil of Earth, you are not offering us anything that we do not already desire.”

“That may be true--” his voice trails off, and he rubs his hands together, restless. “Spock, I did make Uhura an offer. I won’t apologize for it; there’s going to have to be a purge after this Teslau thing, and we’ve been losing officers anyway, between the border skirmishes and the fact that a lot of people are expecting to get our assess handed to us by the Romulans. If news about his last mission gets out, there’s going to be an exodus, and I need good people. Great people. So I offered Uhura command of the Astarte.”

Spock is rendered momentarily speechless, not least of all at the thought that it only now occurs to him that this something his wife would both excel at and wish for.

“As she has both extensive experience on the Enterprise and technical and linguistic skills, she would be a fine choice.”

“Oh, please. If the thought doesn’t terrify you, you’re not--” Jim pauses.

“Human? A loving husband?” Spock can sit still no longer, and rises to pace--a bad habit, but one he will not curtail now. “I have tried to be these things and as always, I find them difficult to reconcile with being a good Vulcan. The truth is that besides the Vai Ba’Tak, and those old and set in their ways, there are few who would remain on New Vulcan if presented with an honorable alternative. I have every reason to wish to go with you and Nyota.”

“Every reason?”

“I stand corrected. I have my children, and Saiehnn, to keep me here.” At this moment, the thought does not comfort him as it should. “Jim, Nyota has been unhappy here for some time. I cannot leave, and I gain nothing by persuading her to stay.”

Jim places his hands, palms open, on the desk, a gesture of openness, or perhaps surrender. “You know me, and how I work. I don’t take risks with other people’s lives lightly, but when I have a job to do, I work with the tools I’m given.”

“Of course,” Spock says, trying with all his discipline not to feel like he has lost a battle. “I expect nothing less.”

+++++

Taking on T'Sura and Saavik for an afternoon of babysitting isn't a pleasure that Winona indulges in often, but with Sam and Aurelan's children parsecs away, it's certainly one she misses. There's no overstuffed bag of toys or list of frantic instructions, just a single PADD and a three-dimensional puzzle, which all three parents repeatedly assure her are more than enough to keep the occupied for the next few hours. Winona, however, is skeptical, and has picked up a few educational learning tools over the years that come highly recommended by some of the parents she's come into contact with. They all look more like instruments for torture rather than amusement, but Winona is doing her best not to judge. Her refrigerator is stocked with her secret stash of imported Terran foods, once of the small luxuries she intends to introduce the children to, as befits her role of surrogate grandmother.

"Rumor has it that this might be the last time I drop them off here," Uhura says, her expression coy.

"Vulcans are terrible gossips in their own way, aren’t they?" The children duck behind her legs and disappear into her flat. She's been on her own for so long now--it would be a lie to say that there wasn't a small amount of apprehension involved in folding herself into another person's life, especially one as important as Sarek.

"Admit it, he makes you happy," Uhura says, laughter in her eyes. "I can tell."

A smile and a shrug is all she'll give away--she's picked up a number of personality quirks from her partner-to-be, and a certain degree of emotional dissembling is just one of them. "So, you're headed back into the black--how does it feel?"

"Good--and bad. Strange." A shadow passes over Uhura's face. "I think Spock is coming around to the idea, but it's taking a while. Longer than I thought I would, to be honest."

Spock and Saiehnn are staying on the colony with the children, at least for the foreseeable future. The work of chipping away the domestic resistance to anything that isn't an exact replica of life on old Vulcan is an uphill battle, and they're still standing at the foot of the mountain.

Winona gives Uhura's shoulder a squeeze. "Don't forget that Spock's a stranger here, too. He's up to his ears in politics not only because he wants to be, but because he has to. His real friends, well--they're probably few and far between. I probably don't have to tell you this, but, he's going to miss you."

Winona can see the hesitation written all over her face. Both Uhura and Saiehnn have put up remarkably well, what with standing on the dividing line of Spock's affections for all these years. But she must have a lot of faith in her marriage to take off to the other side of the galaxy, where she'll be out of touch with her young family for months at a time, if not years.

A crash sounds from somewhere in the direction of the bedroom, followed by an ominous silence. Winona's ears perk up, but she doesn't hear any crying, so it can't be that bad. On the other hand, hold it a minute--the twins probably wouldn't shed a tear if you were holding their feet to a fire.

Winona smiles at the pained expression on Uhura's face. "Well, I can't tell you what you'll run into out there, but I can say that I'm sure you won't miss this part at all."

+++++

"Good weather today," says Uhura, looking out of the shuttleport window. The station at Uzh Shi'Kahr is still tiny--people aren't exactly banging down the doors to get here.

"You call this good weather? I call it torture," replies Kirk, a grimace on his face. He turns to Joanna, who tagged along for the send-off. Kirk has done his best to rally her to the spacefaring cause in the past few weeks, although Uhura isn't so sure how successful he'll be. Joanna is her father's daughter after all, a landlover to the core.

"You sure you don't want to come with us, Lieutenant? The ship is climate controlled for the comfort of you and twenty-seven other species onboard."

Joanna wrinkles her nose, then shakes her head. “I’ve requested transfer to the Starfleet base at Uzh Shi'Kahr. I think Sarek will put in a good word for me. He said he liked the data visualization stuff I did for Teslau.”

“Lies!” McCoy says, appearing behind her. “She’s cooking something up with the Romulans. No, not anything like that,” he adds, seeing Uhura’s expression of shock. “Some kind of cultural exchange. What culture, I ask you? Duelling? Assassination techniques?”

“It’s not like that at all! Romulus is an ancient culture, with--” The rest is lost as the two McCoys walk onto the Carson’s shuttle together.

“If he can keep her talking, we might be able to take off with both of them,” Jim says.

“Jo’s not going anywhere,” Uhura says. “It’s strange, but she’s settled in the best of all of us.”

“Resilience of youth. Or stubbornness of McCoys, one or the other.” When Uhura can’t quite bring herself to laugh, Jim stops trying. “And she had the least to hold her back. She loves her family, but she’s at the age where she has to make her own place in the universe.”

“Then what does that say about me? That I’m going through a second childhood?”

Kirk makes a noncommittal noise, trying and failing to look innocent. "You said it, not me".

"Sometimes I wonder if Joanna's taking the right approach with the Romulans. I still can't believe that they're pursuing the development of--” She doesn’t speak it aloud, not even here; the Romulans’ possession of red matter is a highly classified secret. “Not after the destruction it's already created." Uhura remembers the sight of a hundred cracks spreading across the viewscreen of the Enterprise as that gaping mouth threatened to swallow them whole. It never fails to send a chill down her spine.

"If you look at it from their perspective, it's a strategically sound decision. Starfleet has yet to return to its pre-Narada strength, and Vulcan never will. If we wanted to maintain our position as king of the mountain, we’d be looking into ways to develop it ourselves."

Kirk is keeping his expression perfectly still, which makes Uhura suspicious. He's always worn his emotions on his sleeve. "Well, are we?" she asks, and is almost afraid to hear the answer.

"I'm glad to say that the answer to that question is no. Old Spock may have given us enough information to destroy Nero, but that was all he gave us."

"But it had to have come up among the brass at some point."

"It did." The corners of his mouth tilt up into a wry smile. "I fought it every step of the way."

Uhura tightens her grip on the window railing. When Kirk argues with Spock, it's merely the first step on their path to eventual agreement. But while Uhura respects him, she's never quite seen eye-to-eye with Kirk, and she suspects it's the same here. Kirk has done a lot for New Vulcan. But he's never had to watch Saiehnn sit up late at night trying to piece together the history of her family, trying to conjure a legacy for the twins out of the few pieces of oral history that survived. On those nights, Uhura keenly feels the need to have someone to blame.

"Do you ever regret it?"

Uhura's attempt at prevarication doesn't fool Kirk in the slightest. He shakes his head firmly, all traces of his usual warmth disappeared.

"Not once. Who's to say we would stop at simply threatening them? Once it's out there, there's no turning back."

"And yet we expect to them to drop their weapons and turn tail at the sight of us?"

“They don’t know we haven’t developed--it. In fact, I have it on good authority that Romulan spies returning home from the colony here are confirming our own weapons program. They’re telling the Star Empire that Teslau was a convenient distraction, and that Old Spock’s hermit routine was just that, a cover.”

“Good lord.” Uhura’s going to need to recalibrate her mind for the multi-layered deceptions of galactic politics. “How long can we keep bluffing?”

"A good long while, I think. No one can resist the Kirk charm.” He nudges her with his shoulder. "Not even Romulans. Are you gonna tell me you're not excited?"

"I can hardly wait," Uhura replies, and is surprised to realize that she means it.

Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Spock and Saiehnn, with the twins in tow. They attempted to leave for the station all at the same time, but the twins had waylaid them with their most recent round of investigations into the viscosity of breakfast cereals at various temperatures.

Uhura squats down to the ground where T'Sura is standing next to Spock, one hand on his trouser leg for comfort.

"Behave for me, okay? No more experiments at the table."

She gifts each of the girls with a series of kisses on each cheek, an experience that they bear with remarkable stoicism. The thought that they might be twice this size the next time she gets to touch them makes her heart twinge a little.

"Your safety will always be foremost in my thoughts," Spock says, keeping his voice low enough that only she can hear.

Uhura's afraid of what she'll say if she opens herself up right now. There's no telling which of the jumble of emotions jockeying for supremacy in her mind is going to win. So she just gives his forearm a squeeze and says, "I hope that's the Vulcan for, 'I'll miss you, too.'"

+++++

Uhura takes a sip of a dead man’s Scotch and tries to relax. The fire is pleasant, and Christopher Pike’s old dog is silken and drowsy under her hand. But Uhura still expects the admiral to appear at any moment, asking what the hell a cadet is doing sleeping in his house and helping herself to the contents of his liquor cabinet.

The house is Jim’s now, and the suggestion that she stay here until she found a place of her own was generous and thrifty but, in practice, distinctly creepy. The ancient wood creaks with wind and rain and often for no reason at all. Uhura, waiting at the pleasure of Starfleet Command for her commission, has far too much time to think about the dry winds and blazing sun of New Vulcan.

This morning, on their daily comm, Spock told her that Saiehnn was pregnant with a child conceived without any Teslau medical wizardry. Since then, Uhura’s put great effort into being happy for them, even though it’s the final nail in the coffin of any hope that Spock might agree, at the last moment, to a new commission in Starfleet. His days of dramatic appearances on the bridge are gone; he’s committed now, quite literally with his blood, to the slight hope of rebuilding Vulcan. In the private corners of her mind, the ones she hasn’t shared with him, Uhura sometimes hoped that the Destruction had at least eased Spock’s aching need to be a better and more perfect Vulcan. But all it had done was give Spock a new Vulcan, one he could help to shape--not in his father’s image, or his future self’s, but in his own. And now Spock will have a mostly Vulcan child with his fully Vulcan wife. Well, she thinks, it’s not my responsibility now to try to make him happy.

It’s not as if her own future is any clearer. They could well be doomed, the lot of them-- playing a shell game on the table of the galaxy, drawing it out until they find peace or a better weapon. Uhura’s not afraid of death, not really; it’s the uncertainty that sets her fingers drumming on the wooden arm of the old easy chair.

“I just wish I knew what would happen,” she says aloud, because the silence is driving her crazy.

Pike’s old dog raises her head and gives a hopeful whine, not understanding, just glad for now to hear a human voice.