Captain Amina Sasine tilted her champagne flute and sipped the 2306 vintage Dom Pérignon. The effervescent, pale golden liquid gave off a crisp, fresh bouquet, and its complex taste blended more flavors than she could possibly identify, though she felt certain that Demora Sulu could provide a lengthy discourse on the sparkling wine’s notes and accents, on its hints and undertones, on its structure and finish. Sasine could only declare for sure that she heartily enjoyed the prestige champagne. “I know we say it every year,” she told her husband, Admiral John Harriman, “but that woman really knows her wines.”
Across the small, square table, John took a sip from his own glass. His eyes twinkled, reflecting the two candles that the restaurant’s waitstaff had placed on the white tablecloth. John had recently shaven the goatee he’d worn for the previous couple of years, and the result softened his face. Not just softened, Sasine thought. He looks younger. Seven years older than John—six and a half, really—Sasine had occasionally felt self-conscious about their age difference, not because she’d ever perceived any disparity between them, but because, when they’d first begun seeing each other, he’d looked not seven years her junior, but seventeen—or more. Fortunately, his graying hair had gone some way into narrowing that superficial gap.
John offered a hum of appreciation as he put down his champagne flute. “We always say Demora knows her wine because it’s true.”
A friend to Sasine since the two had served together aboard Enterprise around the turn of the century, and a friend to John for even longer, Sulu had first given them a bottle of wine fifteen years before, when the couple had celebrated the one-year anniversary of their becoming romantically involved. That tradition continued annually until the two married. For their wedding, Sulu presented them with a magnum of Elestor sparkling wine from Alpha Centauri, and she had sent a double bottle of bubbly every year since. That year’s anniversary gift arrived several weeks earlier on a shipment from Earth, which they found especially thoughtful, considering how far in advance the starship captain must have had to plan it: Enterprise hadn’t been inside the Federation for eleven months.
Sasine settled her glass down beside her appetizer, a savory mushroom and leek galette, one of her favorites among Georges’ dishes. The proprietor and chef at Sur Le Mer Coucher, Georges Rochambeau prided himself not only on his gourmet cuisine, but on the elegant, romantic atmosphere he provided his patrons. Weeks prior, Sasine had reserved the table tucked into the far end of the dimly lighted dining room, where a beautifully patterned and textured wall met the outer, transparent bulkhead, which provided a breathtaking view of the spectacular Helaspont Nebula, a sprawl of blues and indigoes and violets. In truth, as commander of the space station, Sasine realized that she enjoyed a certain prestige and privilege, and that she needn’t have made a reservation so far in advance—or even made one at all—but she preferred to conduct herself like any member of the community, eschewing the power of her position.
She gazed across the table at her husband, so handsome in his dark, sophisticated suit. Sasine smiled as she realized that he’d chosen a tie that matched the vibrant colors of the nebula. “I can’t believe it’s been eight years already,” Sasine said.
“Eight years married, and eight years together before that,” John said. He shook his head in his own apparent disbelief. “And yet, in some ways, it seems like we just met.”
“In some ways,” Sasine agreed. “But it also seems like we’ve been with each other forever. I can’t really remember what it’s like not to have you in my life.” Sometimes, when Sasine recollected something she’d done or someplace she’d traveled before she’d even met John, she recalled him being with her, she could picture him at her side, even though she knew that hadn’t been the case.
“I guess we both married the right person,” John said.
“I guess so.” Sasine took another bite of her galette, then eyed her husband’s appetizer. “How’s yours?”
“Delicious,” John said. “The dressing is amazing.” He had a frisée salad with a white truffle vinaigrette.
“May I?” Sasine asked, even as she reached across the table and speared a sprig of the curly endive. After popping it into her mouth and cooing over the flavors, she said, “Would you like to try mine?”
“No, thanks,” John said. “Hey, do you have any word yet on when we might get away?” For the better part of the prior two months, they had been attempting to schedule leave together around their anniversary, with little success. John had just returned a few days earlier from Denobula, where he’d conducted an inspection tour of Starfleet vessels in the sector, and the day after next, Sasine would host a trade summit on the station, although she’d at one point thought she might be able to sneak away during the meetings.
“No, but it won’t be soon,” Sasine said. “The trade summit begins the day after tomorrow, and it turns out that the Gorn will be sending representatives after all, so Starfleet Command really wants me here. After that, you’ve got the Exploration Committee on Tellar, and Admiral Mentir just moved up the test-bed schedule, so by the time you get back, we’ll already be into the Ambassador-class trials.” Sasine didn’t know about the prudence of Starfleet conducting assessments of its next-generation starship prototype on the brink of Tzenkethi space, but she imagined that Command considered it a viable means of preemptively facing down the confrontational Coalition.
John puffed out his cheeks in an exaggerated sigh. “No rest for the weary,” he said. “Well, at least we’ve got tonight and tomorrow.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Sasine said, and she raised her glass once more. She really did find it remarkable that she and John had been together for so long. When it had begun, it seemed a relationship unlikely to last for any length of time. They initially had to conduct it across a great many light-years, with Sasine assigned as the first officer of a space station and John the captain of a starship. Fortunately, Enterprise put into Starbase 23 a fair number of times during those years, and later, after she took command of Foxtrot XIII, to that outpost. They also experienced good fortune in arranging for simultaneous leaves, which they used to visit quite a few memorable destinations. They dove at Suraya Bay on Risa; danced the night away in Jennita on Pacifica; swam in Devil’s Pool, at the edge of Victoria Falls, on Earth; toured Lingasha, the unusual land-based city built by the aquatic Alonis; hiked the Azure Peaks on Betazed; explored—and got lost in—the Cleary Labyrinth on Onelia IV; and viewed the rings of Saturn from the Space Needle on Titan. They invariably returned exhausted from their shared vacations, but also energized by the time spent with each other on, as John put it, “another Sasine-Harriman adventure.”
But then after the Tomed Incident . . .
John had never spoken much about what had taken place in Foxtrot Sector when a Romulan admiral had attacked the Federation, wiping out thirteen populated outposts along the Neutral Zone, as well as U.S.S. Agamemnon. The Enterprise crew barely escaped the devastation, but more than four thousand Starfleet officers did not. Already at the brink of war with the Romulan Star Empire, the Federation avoided open hostilities only when the heinous act convinced the Klingons to side with the UFP.
Not long after the destruction of virtually the entire Foxtrot Sector, John had chosen to resign his position as a starship captain—and he’d even considered going further than that and leaving Starfleet completely. Instead, he ended up with a promotion in rank and the posting of his choice. He naturally selected Helaspont Station, where he and Sasine could finally enjoy their relationship on a predominantly day-in, day-out basis. They’d wed, and had lived together happily since then.
It didn’t take a great deal of insight to understand John’s motivation, Sasine thought. Just prior to her assignment to Helaspont Station, she had commanded Foxtrot XIII. The outpost had been the first wiped out by the Romulan vessel Tomed, the Ivarix-class starship turned into a devastatingly effective weapon when containment about the singularity that drove it was lowered while the ship traveled at warp.
Had all of that happened just weeks earlier, I would have been killed. Although John had never explicitly tied the events in the Foxtrot Sector to his choice to leave Enterprise and relocate to Helaspont, she nevertheless understood that such a connection existed. He could no longer abide the possibility that the dangers of their careers would one day steal them from each other. By renouncing his starship command, he foresaw a life that they could live mostly together.
John lifted his flute of champagne and tapped it against Sasine’s, producing a light, musical ring. “Here’s to life on the edge of the nebula,” he said.
“To the nebula.”
“Which, it strikes me, is a lot like you,” John said. Sasine saw another twinkle in his eye, something distinct from the reflection of the candles flickering on the table. “Luminous, vibrant, and beautiful,” he whispered to her through a smile. “Enhancing every day and brightening every night.” Even sixteen years after he first pressed his lips gently to hers, he could still make her heart race.
“I bet you say that to all the space station commanders,” Sasine teased.
“Just you,” John said. “Only you. Always you.”
Sasine reached her free hand across the table, and John did the same. They interlaced their fingers, and a memory rose in her mind so swiftly that she nearly reeled from it. It had been a moment on the very first night she and John had seen each other personally, not at the small theater on Starbase 23 where they’d taken in a film, but at the bistro afterward, where they’d shared a late supper. They had been speaking about relationships, and she’d described what she hoped one day to experience by raising her arms and entwining the fingers of her right hand with those of her left.
And we have that, Sasine thought, marveling at what they’d found in each other. Prior to John, she’d had several serious romantic relationships, a couple of them lasting a few years. But none of them came close to what John and I have. Before they met, Sasine could not have imagined spending her life with the man of her dreams, but after sixteen years, she could not imagine living without him.
“So what shall we do with our one night and one day before the trade summit?” John asked. They set their glasses down and disentangled their fingers so they could continue with their meal.
“It’s not like we can get anywhere and back in that time,” Sasine said. On the frontier of Federation space, the nearest inhabited system floated light-years distant, too far for a day-plus round trip on one of the station’s standard shuttlecraft.
“What if we used one of the new warp shuttles?” John asked, as though reading her thoughts—a not uncommon occurrence between them. Starfleet Operations had recently posted two high-warp shuttlecraft to Helaspont Station, primarily for the purposes of ferrying dignitaries and carrying small but important shipments to and from the starbase.
“I think Operations and Command would take a dim view of us expropriating one of their Mercury-class shuttles for our own private use,” Sasine said—although the notion actually did appeal to her.
“We could say we’re field-testing them,” John suggested with a wry grin.
“Uh-huh,” Sasine said. “Those shuttlecraft are my responsibility, but if you want to use your superior rank to order me . . .”
“Right,” John said. “Any man who claims higher rank in a marriage will lie about other things too.”
Sasine scoffed at her husband’s joke. “Perhaps a long walk in the arboretum, then.”
“That sounds nice,” John said. “We could watch a movie too. We just received a few twentieth- and twenty-first-century films from Earth, plus there’s Dreams Together Fall, the Tholian work that somehow leaked out of the Assembly.”
“I hear it’s impenetrable,” Sasine said, “but I’d be fascinated to see what a Tholian movie even looks like.”
“So would I.”
They planned the rest of their day as they continued eating their appetizers. The moment they finished, their server, Javier, appeared to clear away the plates, and a moment later, Chef Rochambeau emerged from the kitchen and stepped up to the table. “Bonsoir, Captain, Admiral,” he said, bowing his head to both officers. Rochambeau cut a hale and hearty figure, dressed in chef’s whites and wearing a toque blanche atop his graying hair. He had a wide, doughy face and a pencil-thin mustache. “I trust that your appetizers were satisfactory.” His words veritably dripped with his thick Gallic accent, almost a caricature of Sasine’s own light French pronunciation.
She and John both greeted the chef warmly. “The galette was splendide,” Sasine said. “As always.”
“Ah, bon, bon,” Rochambeau said. “Your entrées will be out shortly. I wanted to wish the two of you joyeux anniversaire de mariage, and to thank you for allowing me to honor you with a special meal.” After Sasine had made the reservation to celebrate their anniversary, Rochambeau had contacted her to ask if he could have the privilege of creating their menu for them. She had agreed at once, thanking him and noting only the particular bottle of champagne that she and John would be bringing with them.
“The honor is ours,” John said. “We’ve been looking forward to this for weeks.”
“It is my hope that the memory of my food will remain with you for years,” Rochambeau said. He could not have displayed a greater sense of confidence, though Sasine could attest that his abilities in the kitchen justified his self-assurance. “For madame, I have prepared eggplant gratin with saffron—”
“Pardon,” said Javier, returning to the table. “I am sorry to interrupt, but Ensign Bartels from the operations center would like to speak with you, Admiral.” Though the space station’s comm system functioned inside the restaurant, Rochambeau had received special dispensation to allow its use only in emergencies. Bartels crewed the communications station during beta shift, so Sasine imagined that John had received an incoming transmission from Starfleet.
While Rochambeau looked dismayed by the disruption of the meal he had specially prepared, John stood from his chair. “Thank you, Javier, and excuse me, Chef,” he said. He gazed across the table at Sasine with an expression she had both seen before and offered to him, a look that acknowledged the choices they had made in their lives and the responsibilities of their positions, as well as the love they shared, ultimately untouched by any of it except in the most surface of ways. John reached across the table, took her hand in his, and squeezed it. “I’ll let you know what’s going on, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. I love you.”
“I love you.”
John left the table, crossing the dining room and disappearing from view near the host stand. Sasine returned her attention to Rochambeau. “You were saying, Chef?”
“Yes,” Rochambeau said, recovering his poise. “For madame, I have prepared . . .”
Sasine smiled appropriately as the chef described the entrées he had created for the anniversary meal, but she paid little attention to the details. Instead, she wondered what had called her husband away. She feared that the night and a day they intended to spend together before the trade summit had just been stolen from them.
♦ ♦ ♦
Admiral John Harriman slipped into his office atop the main cylinder of Helaspont Station. The overhead lighting panels automatically activated as he entered, illuminating the room to match the soft glow of the starbase’s simulated evening. He reached for the control panel to the right of the door, intending to bring up the lights fully, but then he decided to leave them as set; perhaps, depending on the message he’d been sent, he could salvage his state of mind, and therefore the rest of the night with his wife. Given the conditions of the incoming transmission, though—priority one, eyes only—he doubted that he would be able to get back to Amina anytime soon.
Another anniversary interrupted, he thought. He and his wife seemed to have a knack for it. During one of their celebrations, the risk of a reactor breach had developed, causing the evacuation of the station for more than a week. On another of their special occasions, a trident-shaped Tzenkethi frigate unexpectedly came calling at the starbase. And then there was the time that my negotiations with the Pyrithians threatened to devolve into a shooting war before lunchtime.
Harriman smiled. He knew that it didn’t help matters that he and Amina found so many reasons to observe various dates: their first meeting, back when she’d come aboard Enterprise as his second officer; their reentry into each other’s lives—for good, it would turn out—when she briefed him at Starbase 23 on the specifics of a secret mission into the Romulan Empire; their first social outing, which they liked to call The Night of the Perfect Kiss; and, of course, their wedding day. That list didn’t even include their birthdays. They both enjoyed having so many different events to commemorate, but Harriman recognized that it also increased the chances of something disrupting their festivities, especially given the nature of their postings. As the commanding officer of Helaspont Station, Captain Amina Sasine had more responsibilities than any three starship commanders, and Harriman’s own assignment as admiral-at-large kept him more than a little busy.
Which is just Starfleet Command’s way of teaching me a lesson, he thought. Although the commander-in-chief, Admiral Margaret Sinclair-Alexander, had maintained that she completely understood Harriman’s decision to step away from starship command after the Tomed Incident, several other admirals had objected, citing the service’s investment in him and the relative rarity of wholly qualified and capable captains. Pushed to accept command of another starship, Harriman instead submitted his letter of resignation directly to the c-in-c. He didn’t intend his departure from Starfleet as a threat, but the next time he spoke with Sinclair-Alexander, she claimed never to have received the document. She did, however, offer him a promotion in rank and the position of admiral-at-large. Though such a posting would require occasional travel—Sometimes more than occasional, he lamented—it also came with the privilege of selecting his own base of operations, which in turn allowed him to make a home with his wife. He had accepted the commander-in-chief’s offer, and he’d lived on Helaspont Station with Amina ever since.
Harriman crossed his relatively spartan office—the antithesis of his wife’s, which she filled not only with work-related materials, but also artwork, photographs, and other personal memorabilia. He kept only a hologram of Amina on his desk and a few images on the walls. He had handsome renderings of the starships on which he’d served—Laikan, Hunley, Sojourner, and Enterprise—as well as the one on which he’d been born, Sea of Tranquility.
The admiral passed between the sofa to his left and his desk on the right. He stood at the transparent outer wall and gazed at the impressive view. The beautiful indigo form of the Helaspont Nebula provided a spectacular backdrop. Below him, a crossover bridge reached out from the center of the starbase’s large, central section to one of its two smaller, adjunct cylinders. The station’s crew utilized the pair of outlying structures as docking facilities, as well as centers for civilian establishments and services. At the moment, two starships—U.S.S. Kazanga, a science vessel, and U.S.S. Marvick, an engineering support craft—were docked at the Sea of Marmara arm of the base, in addition to an Andorian cargo transport. He knew that several other civilian ships had docked on the opposite side of the station, at the Aegean Sea arm.
Harriman longingly regarded the Sea of Marmara, where Amina still sat in the restaurant, finishing their commemorative dinner without him. He really hoped that he could get back to her before too long. When the operations center had contacted him about the message, he hadn’t asked his aide to come into the office, but as the minutes dragged on, he wondered if he should have brought Lieutenant San Luis in; somehow, Juan always managed to speed things up and get things done. Without him, Harriman thought, I don’t know if I could’ve held on to this position for so long.
A few minutes later, just as he considered contacting operations to ask about the delay, the communications panel on his desk chirped. “Ops to Admiral Harriman.”
He quickly moved behind his desk and sat down, where he tapped at the communications-and-computer interface. The Helaspont Station emblem—a stylized epsilon over a silhouette of the starbase—disappeared from the screen, replaced by the image of Ensign Bartels. “Harriman here,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“I’m sorry for the wait, Admiral,” Bartels said. “The transmission required a heavy level of decryption. The message is now available, keyed to your biometrics.”
“Thank you, Ensign. Harriman out.” The admiral closed the channel, then called up the incoming transmission. After voice-print and retina scans, he read the source of the message: Enterprise. Wondering what his former first officer wanted, he started playback. The image of Demora Sulu did not appear on the screen, though, but that of her own first officer, Xintal Linojj. As she identified herself—though she needn’t have, since she had served as Harriman’s second officer for four years—he noticed that she sat in the captain’s office. He also saw, to his horror, that she had been dismembered, that her right arm ended in a silver cuff just below her shoulder. He felt immediate concern for both Demora and Xintal, former crewmates whom he still counted as his friends.
“Admiral, I’m contacting you for Captain Sulu,” Linojj said. She then related a tale about the Enterprise crew finding a world that had experienced an asteroid strike and the impact winter that ensued—a world with an industrial but pre-warp society that appeared to have somehow escaped their planet. In the course of studying the absent civilization, three officers, including Demora Sulu, passed through what they later determined to be a one-way portal to another location, possibly to another time, possibly to another universe.
Another universe, Harriman thought, pausing the message. He remembered his own experience with Demora—What? Twenty years ago? After a covert mission into Romulan space, the two of them had been inadvertently thrown into another universe. He recalled those days in the warp shuttle with her, the terrible sense of isolation they shared, despite having each other to lean on, their sorrow and feeling of tremendous loss. They had eventually escaped what could have been a lonely fate, but Harriman had thought at the time that their return home had mostly been the product of mere good fortune. He still thought that.
Harriman resumed the message. Linojj detailed the way the Enterprise crew communicated with Demora through the portal. The first officer talked about how the device had lost power, temporarily cutting them off from their captain. “Once we restored the portal’s function by carrying it from the planet’s surface up into space, we sent another probe through it, carrying a message to the captain and the other stranded officers. We provided the orbital coordinates for the device. When one of the shuttlecraft arrived on the other side of the portal and we looked through its forward viewport, though, we did not see Captain Sulu—not Demora Sulu, anyway; we saw her father.”
Hikaru is alive? Harriman thought. He had difficulty believing it. Starfleet had lost contact with the elder Sulu’s ship, Excelsior, more than a decade earlier. After enough time had passed, it had been assumed destroyed with all hands. Harriman had attended the memorial, and he’d comforted Demora about the loss of her father. That he had been found alive must have astounded her and made her so happy.
“Demora’s father held up a padd against the port, and we read its scrolling message; it told us the story of the Excelsior,” Linojj went on. “Long before the Enterprise arrived at Rejarris Two, the Excelsior crew had a catastrophic encounter with the portal. The ship ended up passing through it, but was crippled beyond repair. The crew had abandoned Excelsior before it was ultimately destroyed, and they ended up on an uninhabited world, with no means of getting home—or even of knowing where they were. They survived as best they could.”
Poor bastards, Harriman thought. He knew how terrible it had been simply to be faced with the possibility of such an existence. How much worse to actually live it.
“Then, after eleven years, the Excelsior crew received a message in their only remaining escape pod that still had any power,” Linojj said. “It was from Captain Sulu—Demora—as she searched the planet for the people who had constructed the portal and presumably escaped through it. The Excelsior crew attempted to reply to her message, but couldn’t, so they used their escape pod to track her down. When they found her, though, she and her two crewmates had just been attacked by native wildlife. One officer was killed, and Demora suffered life-threatening injuries; according to what the Excelsior crew told us, she is currently in critical condition. The Excelsior’s chief medical officer doesn’t know how long she can keep her alive without access to a sickbay to treat her.”
The irony did not escape Harriman. For Hikaru to be missing all these years, but still alive, and then for Demora to end up finding him, but to be so badly injured . . .
“Demora is unconscious, and there’s no guarantee that she’ll survive her injuries,” Linojj said. “Before she lost consciousness, she told her father to have me contact you. She wanted me to tell you that she confirmed an ‘Odyssey solution.’ ” Linojj stopped and looked away for a moment, as though gathering her thoughts. “The Enterprise crew have been working on trying to figure out how the portal functions so that we can find a means of bringing all those lost Starfleet personnel home. So far, we’ve made no progress. We would request that Starfleet Command send us help from the Corps of Engineers, but we’re on the cusp of Tzenkethi space; we can’t just move in a massive research team.” Linojj shrugged, an awkward gesture with her missing arm. “Admiral . . . John . . . I don’t have any idea what Demora meant, or even if her words can be taken seriously, considering her condition at the time she said them. I researched Odyssey in the library-computer and found nothing but a reference to an ancient human literary work.”
Linojj could find nothing on the star that he and Demora had dubbed Odyssey because Starfleet did not know it by that name. Regardless, Federation charts marked the entire region around it as hazardous to navigation. The star’s effects—like his and Demora’s covert mission into the Romulan Empire—remained classified at the highest levels of Starfleet Intelligence.
“John, there are five hundred and sixty-five members of the Excelsior crew still alive on a desolate world, and they’ve been marooned there for eleven years. Even if we can find a way to get them back, it’s going to take time . . . maybe a long time . . . and definitely more time than Demora has left. If there’s anything you can do . . . or if you even just know something that could help us . . .”
It seemed to Harriman that Linojj wanted to say more, but he didn’t know what else she could say. She had a terrible problem, impossible for her to solve, and so she desperately searched for any possible answer, no matter how unlikely. He couldn’t blame her. He couldn’t blame her at all—even though he wanted to.
“Please let me know, John,” Linojj finished. “I hope you and Amina are well. Enterprise out.”
The message ended, Linojj’s visage replaced by the Helaspont Station insignia. Harriman thought about playing it again, but he really had no need to do so. He had no way of knowing if he could save Demora Sulu and her father and the surviving members of the Excelsior crew, but he could try. More than that, he knew that he had to try.
“Damn,” he said in a whisper. He deactivated the interface. Beside it sat a framed hologram of Amina. A candid shot, it had been recorded at the wedding of two of their friends—a wedding at which he had officiated and she had performed a reading. In it, Amina wore a flattering black gown, and at the moment the image had been captured, she had her head thrown back, laughing through her beautiful smile. It was his favorite holo of her, since it so perfectly depicted who she was. He loved her more than he ever thought he could love anybody, and yet, from one day to the next, his love for her only grew. It seemed impossible, but then, wasn’t that what love was supposed to do?
Harriman stood up and glanced through the outer wall of his office, toward the Sea of Marmara arm of the station. He wanted to go back to the restaurant, back to Amina, so that they could enjoy their anniversary celebration. It hurt him that he couldn’t do that. And it hurt him even more that the life that he knew, the life that he had built together with Amina, might have just ended.
Harriman picked up the framed hologram of his wife and marched out of his office.
♦ ♦ ♦
Sasine stood in the doorway that led from the living area of their quarters into the bedroom. She watched for a moment as her husband extracted clothes from his closet and stowed them in a duffel. It saddened her that not only wouldn’t they have time to take leave anywhere near their anniversary, but it appeared that the one night and one day they’d counted upon being able to spend together might not materialize either.
“What’s happened?” she asked. John jumped, startled. He evidently hadn’t heard Sasine enter their cabin. That’s never a good sign, she thought. John is usually so observant. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” John said. He walked over to Sasine and kissed her, then wrapped his arms around her body. “I’m sorry about dinner.” After he had left the restaurant, she’d continued with her meal. As a matter of course, she didn’t mind dining alone, but she would have preferred to share their anniversary dinner with her husband. Still, she understood the dictates of their positions and accepted the reality that their duties sometimes interfered with their personal lives. She had certainly been required to leave John by himself on any number of occasions.
“It’s fine,” Sasine said, waving away the apology. “We should both be accustomed to it by now.” Not long after John had left the restaurant, he’d contacted Javier and asked him to inform Sasine that he would likely be unable to return there that night. Not wanting all of Georges’ kind efforts to go to waste, she finished her meal—a deliciously tender eggplant, layered with a Gruyère cognate, spiced with basil, and topped with a saffron custard, followed by strawberries drizzled in dark chocolate and Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge. “I really think it’s Chef you need to ask to forgive you,” Sasine said lightly. Though Rochambeau hid his emotions well, Sasine knew that Georges had to be disappointed that his specially prepared dinner had not been enjoyed in the way he’d envisioned. Sasine departed Sur Le Mer Coucher with a promise to Chef that she and John would dine there again very soon.
“He may never let me back in the place.”
Sasine shrugged. “Georges might not mind shunning a Starfleet admiral, but I think he’ll be careful not to take issue with the commanding officer of the space station that hosts his restaurant.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” John said. “Sometimes I forget how formidable you can be.”
“Does that mean I need to find a way to remind you?” Sasine taunted.
“Oh, no, believe me, I remember.” John took her by the hand and led her out of their bedroom and into the living area. They sat down on a sofa beneath a wide port that looked out onto open space, the stars glistering like jewels in the night. “I need to tell you what’s going on.”
“I already know about the Cassiopeia,” she said. “Ops contacted me after I left the restaurant.” The beta-shift duty officer, Lieutenant Esther Freemantle, had notified her that Admiral Harriman had rerouted a nearby starship to Helaspont Station. The Constellation-class Cassiopeia, designated NCC-2531, would arrive at the starbase within eighteen hours. “Is there anything you need from me, other than one of my docking bays?”
“Actually, there is,” John said. “I need to disembark almost all personnel from the Cassiopeia, except for a skeleton crew.”
The request surprised Sasine. “Assuming that means you’ll keep twenty or thirty officers aboard, you’re still talking about Helaspont providing accommodations for more than five hundred personnel.”
“I know you’ve got the trade summit beginning in two days, so it won’t be a simple matter,” John acknowledged.
“No,” Sasine said, already trying to work out the logistics in her head. “I don’t know why you need a starship with a skeleton crew, but wouldn’t it be possible to utilize either the Kazanga or the Marvick?” As soon she asked the question, she realized that John would already have asked it himself.
“The Kazanga is a science vessel, and the Marvick is a support craft,” John said. “I need a ship that’s larger and faster.” He paused, then added, “I also need one with more firepower.”
Sasine didn’t like hearing that. Rather than respond as a wife concerned about her husband’s safety, she continued to speak as the commanding officer of Helaspont Station. “How long will the Cassiopeia’s crew be here?” she asked.
John shook his head. “I don’t know.” The reply seemed out of character for him, since he normally took a detail-oriented approach to his duties.
“Can you at least give me an idea?” Sasine asked. “A week? A month?”
“Perhaps longer,” John told her quietly. “Potentially much longer.”
“ ‘Much longer’?” Sasine blurted, her reaction more that of a wife than of an officer.
“All I can tell you is . . . maybe,” John said. “I honestly don’t know.”
John’s answers had begun to alarm Sasine, and so she took refuge in her role as a Starfleet captain. She stood up from the sofa and paced across the room. “Admiral,” she said carefully when she turned around, “removing most of a starship’s crew and relegating them to an indefinite period of shore leave is an act that typically requires the involvement of Starfleet Operations.”
“I’m aware of that, Captain,” John said, without rancor. They had long ago learned how to conduct their professional relationship in a manner divorced from their marriage. “But on the edge of Tzenkethi space, contacting Starfleet Command about this situation, enduring the inevitable debate, and then waiting for a decision would take far too long. As an admiral-at-large posted to Helaspont Station, the needs of Starfleet in this region dictate my movements and missions. I have a great deal of autonomy.”
“I know,” Sasine said. “I know, but . . . with all due respect, sir, the imprecise reassignment of a Constellation-class starship and most of its crew is an action at the very limits of your authority.”
John looked at her for a long time, his face a mask. She could almost always tell what he was thinking, but that time, she couldn’t. She hoped that he didn’t think that she’d overstepped her bounds as a captain . . . or as his wife. Finally, he said, “What I’m doing may be beyond the limits of my authority.” He stood up. “It doesn’t matter. I have to do this.”
Do what? she wanted to know, but she couldn’t ask. She trusted that John would tell her all that he could. She waited.
“Amina, please come here,” he said gently, motioning toward the sofa. “Let me tell you what’s happened.” Sasine crossed the room and they sat down together again. He took her hands in his. “I received a message from the Enterprise.”
“From the Enterprise?” Sasine said. “I thought Demora was out in unexplored territory.”
“She is, but not all that far from Tzenkethi space, just a few days from here at high warp,” John said. “Except that I didn’t hear from Demora; I heard from her first officer, Commander Linojj.”
Sasine experienced a sinking feeling. “Has something happened to Demora?”
“Yes,” John said, and Sasine could see the pain in his eyes. She felt the same emotion. “She’s been badly injured. She’s received medical attention, but she needs the support of a sickbay to have any chance of survival.”
“And obviously the Enterprise can’t provide that for some reason,” Sasine concluded. “That’s why you’re commandeering the Cassiopeia.” She offered her words as observations, not as questions.
“In part, yes,” John said. “Demora and two of her crew were unintentionally thrown onto an unpopulated, undeveloped planet in another universe. They arrived there after traveling through a portal that functions in only one direction.”
“Do you intend to abandon the Cassiopeia and send it through the portal, then?” Sasine asked. “So that Demora’s crewmates can somehow get her aboard in order to get her to the ship’s sickbay.”
“I do plan to get Demora into the Cassiopeia’s sickbay,” John said. “But there’s more to it than that. There’s something else that’s happened. It turns out that eleven years ago, the Excelsior also passed through the portal.”
“Demora’s father?” Sasine asked, feeling her eyes go wide.
“Hikaru Sulu,” John said. “He and almost six hundred of his crew have been stranded on that empty planet for all of that time. They’ve lived a rugged existence, and they need to be rescued.”
“Which is why you require a larger starship,” Sasine said. “You want to provide a place for them to live.”
“Yes,” John said. He glanced down for a moment, and he squeezed her hands when he did. When he looked back up, Sasine saw that his face had hardened—not in anger, but in an attempt to hold his tears at bay. She had been with John for sixteen years; she knew when something affected him. “I’m bringing the Cassiopeia to provide medical care for Demora and a home for the Excelsior crew. But I also mean to bring them back home.”
“But if the portal operates in only one direction . . .” Sasine let the question fade on her lips. John’s use of the word bring brought her up short. He’s going to take the ship through the portal himself.
“The Enterprise crew believe that there may be a way to reverse the direction of the portal’s flow,” he said. “Regardless, another solution exists.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Sasine said.
“I’m afraid that I can’t say more. It’s classified, but once I take the Cassiopeia through the portal, I may be able to bring Demora and her father and everybody else home safely.”
“John, you said you may be able to bring them home.” Sasine deserted her position as a Starfleet captain and stepped fully into her role as a wife. “That doesn’t sound hopeful.”
“I am hopeful,” John told her. “It’s true, though, that nothing is certain.”
“What happens if the prospective solution fails?” Sasine asked, clearly following what John told her, but unwilling to accept the implications. “Does that mean you’ll be trapped in another universe?”
John could only nod his head.
“Can’t somebody else take on this mission?” Sasine asked meekly, already knowing the answer, but having to ask anyway. “Somebody without a spouse?”
John threw up one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t know if any such person exists who has possession of the classified information needed for this mission. But even if there is, how could I ask another person to take a risk I’m unwilling to take myself?”
It was Sasine’s turn to look down. She gazed at their hands, at the marvelous contrast between his flesh and hers, pale and dark, yin and yang, two halves of a whole. She didn’t even realize she’d begun crying until a tear dropped onto her husband’s hand. “What about me, John?” she asked in a whisper. She raised her head and peered at him. “What about us?”
“Amina, you know I love you,” he said. “I think I loved you even before we ever met. In my heart, I knew who you were, the fullness of your heart, the depth of your mind, the music of your laughter. I knew all that about you and more, and I had only to find you. And I did.”
“We found each other,” Sasine agreed, smiling through her tears.
“We found each other, and I don’t want to lose you,” John said, almost pleading with her, as though she planned to take on the mission and he wanted to stop her. “You mean more to me than anything else.”
She squeezed his hands. “If that’s so, then how can you do this? How can you take this chance?”
“Because I have to do this,” John said. “As far as I know, nobody else can. Even if somebody could, they might not be able to reach Demora in time to save her.” He reached up and wiped away Sasine’s tears. “Demora and I have been friends for more than a quarter of a century. Hell, I served with her aboard the Enterprise for eighteen years. That’s even longer than you and I have been together.”
“Demora is my friend too, but she doesn’t mean to me what you do.”
“I’m not saying that Demora is more important to me than you are,” John said. “But she was a fine officer in my crew, she served with distinction and loyalty, and she literally saved my life on more than one occasion. I have to do this because it’s the right thing to do.”
“I know,” Sasine admitted, both to John and to herself. “But how can it be the right thing if it takes us away from each other?”
“I don’t know,” John said. “I just know that we don’t do the right thing because it’s easy or convenient or what we want. We do the right thing because it’s the right thing. If I don’t do this, then I’m not the man you fell in love with anyway.”
Sasine examined her husband’s face, searching for a solution she knew she wouldn’t find. After a moment, he leaned forward and took her in his arms. They held each other like that for a long while.
Then John finished packing.
♦ ♦ ♦
Harriman sat at the desk in his office, studying his after-action report of the first mission he had ever undertaken with Demora Sulu for Starfleet Intelligence. He also pored over SI’s response initiative. It had taken sixteen hours for them to reply to his request and transmit the encrypted files to Helaspont Station from their nearest black site.
The admiral had hoped to find something of value to assist him with his upcoming mission aboard Cassiopeia. As he reviewed the material, though, he found no detail that he didn’t already recall from his and Demora’s encounter with the star they had called Odyssey. Starfleet Command had designated the region off-limits to space travel. Presumably because of the star’s proximity to Romulan space, or perhaps because of the tremendous risk, no attempts had been made to study the phenomenon.
At least, there have been no attempts that I’m authorized to know about, Harriman thought. Regardless, so far as he could tell, no other known contacts had ever been made with the mysterious star. Of course, anybody who did experience the effects of Odyssey might never have returned to our universe so that they could report it.
Commander Linojj had said that Demora wanted the admiral to know that she had “confirmed an Odyssey solution.” But what does that mean? From what Linojj had told him, Demora and two of her crew had been marooned with a pair of planetary shuttlecraft on an empty world. If that world actually orbited Odyssey, then Demora would have been able to attempt a return herself. That seemed unlikely to Harriman, both because Demora hadn’t made such an attempt, and because in none of the universes to which they had traveled did the star possess any planets.
Harriman therefore wondered how Demora could have confirmed anything about Odyssey, other than the simple fact of its existence. She couldn’t, he realized. She could only look to the right part of the sky and verify the color and magnitude of the star there. She would have no way of knowing whether or not the conditions that she and Harriman had encountered still existed—or if they had ever existed at all in that universe.
The admiral checked the time, then closed the files and deactivated the communications-and-computer interface on his desk. Cassiopeia would arrive at Helaspont Station shortly, and he would have to have a difficult conversation with the ship’s captain. After that, he would depart the station, prepared to find out if Odyssey really did exist in Demora’s universe, and whether it could send them all back home.