“That’s all for now. Tell Neil and the boys I miss you all, and I hope to visit you again on Mars very soon. Take care, and write back when time allows and the mood strikes. Love, Dad.”

He tapped a few keys on the data slate and transmitted the letter into the station’s queue for outgoing comm traffic. In a few hours it would likely meet with the approval of the censors and be on its way to Mars, one of thousands of messages bundled in a massive burst of unclassified data traffic leaving Vanguard. In a matter of hours, Jane would get the message, maybe at home or in her office between patients. Unlike his sons, Ely and Noah, Jane had followed him into medicine, though she had pointedly declined a career in Starfleet in order to open her own private practice in the rapidly growing Martian city of Cydonia. It was there she had met her husband, Neil, and where they were raising their sons, James and Seth.

As always, thinking of his children and grandchildren made him smile. That’s a good way to end the day, he decided. He got up from the couch and shambled stiffly off to bed. Tomorrow would be busy; he needed all the rest he could get.

The Starship Sagittarius was coming home.

Anna Sandesjo lay in her bed. A tangle of scarlet sheets covered her lap. Her hands were folded on the pillow behind her head, beneath her splayed mane of cinnamon-hued hair. The scratches on her back were deep and fresh.

It was still early, before 0600 station time. At the foot of the bed, Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn was getting dressed. The lithe Vulcan woman donned her red minidress in movements slow and graceful, a stark contrast to the frenzy of attention she’d shown Sandesjo the evening before. T’Prynn’s every motion captivated Sandesjo’s attention.

“Did you sleep well, my love?” Sandesjo asked, even knowing that T’Prynn—who had tossed and turned for the past several hours in the throes of night terrors—would lie to her.

Pulling back her long sable hair and tying it into a ponytail, T’Prynn replied flatly, “My rest was adequate.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and began putting on her boots.

Sandesjo sat up and let the sheets bundle in her lap. Watching T’Prynn prepare to leave was always difficult for her; it was a reminder of loneliness. “Do you have to go so soon?”

With one boot on, T’Prynn reached for the other as she replied over her shoulder, “Yes.”

“Because of the Sagittarius.”

“Yes,” T’Prynn said.

News of the scout vessel’s return to Starbase 47 had been buzzing for a couple of weeks. The ship’s recall from a remote area of the Taurus Reach had been ordered not long after the destruction of Palgrenax. Though ship movements continued to be classified for members of the general public and personnel with no need to know, Sandesjo’s assignment as a senior diplomatic attaché to Vanguard’s ranking diplomat, Ambassador Jetanien, afforded her access to a variety of otherwise off-limits items of interest.

Standing up, T’Prynn smoothed the front of her minidress and turned to face Sandesjo, all dignity and poise: cold, composed, and aloof. At times like this, Sandesjo felt less like the Vulcan woman’s lover and more like a stranger. “Thank you for allowing me to spend the night,” T’Prynn said.

“Perhaps you’d let me spend a night in your quarters sometime,” Sandesjo said, her tone blatantly suggestive. “Unless you’re ashamed to be seen with me.”

Subtly lifting her left eyebrow, T’Prynn said, “Shame is not a factor. The heat and gravity in my quarters are configured for Vulcan comfort. I think you would find them…unpleasant.”

“Don’t be fooled, my love,” Sandesjo said with a flirtatious leer. “Just because I look human doesn’t mean I’m as fragile as one. Qo’noS has its share of heat.”

T’Prynn stepped over to the dresser and collected her communicator, which she tucked onto her belt. “I’m sure your Klingon physiology would bear the temperatures admirably,” she said. “The aridity, however, might prove rather uncomfortable.”

“I think I can handle it,” Sandesjo said. To her dismay, rather than continue their repartee, T’Prynn started to move toward the door. “Don’t go,” Sandesjo blurted out. As soon as she said it, she regretted having done so; it was a grossly unprofessional expression of desire and weakness.

Slowly, T’Prynn turned and regarded Sandesjo with a stare of clinical detachment. “Why do you wish me to remain?”

“I always want you to stay,” Sandesjo said. “You never do.”

Raising her steeply arched eyebrows, T’Prynn replied, “An extremely illogical statement, Miss Sandesjo. You—”

“Anna,” she interrupted. “Why don’t you ever call me Anna? I think we deserve to be on a first-name basis, don’t you?”

In a surprisingly sharp tone, T’Prynn shot back, “If we do, then perhaps you would prefer I called you by your real name, Lurqal.”

Hearing T’Prynn speak her Klingon name left Sandesjo momentarily shocked silent. Though Sandesjo’s true identity had been known to T’Prynn for nearly a year, until now the Vulcan had never uttered it aloud. Suppressed by years of living under her cover identity, that name sounded foreign to Sandesjo. She had submerged so deeply into her cover that she had come to think of herself as Anna Sandesjo rather than as Lurqal.

Finally recovering her voice, she said, “If, when we are…alone together, you wish to call me Lurqal, I would not object.”

After considering that for a moment, T’Prynn said, “Is our relationship the cause of your current distress?”

“Yes, it is,” Sandesjo said, relieved to be able to speak plainly and without the qualifying preambles of diplomatic discourse. “Though I’d really like to know what our relationship is, exactly.”

Cocking her head slightly, T’Prynn asked, “What aspect of its nature eludes you?”

“I don’t know,” Sandesjo said. “All of it? You’ve been sharing my bed for months, but I still don’t know what to call you. My girlfriend? My lover? What am I to you? Just another intelligence asset? Something else? Or am I just your whore?”

The conversation seemed to make T’Prynn uncomfortable. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and lowered her head. “You are not my ‘whore,’” she said, then looked up. “But defining our relationship is complicated. There are…professional issues to consider.”

“Such a nice way of putting it,” Sandesjo said bitterly. “Did you start sleeping with me to turn me into a double agent? Or was that just an added perk?”

Unfazed, T’Prynn answered, “Did you become a double agent out of principle or because I had exposed you as a spy? Were you motivated by love, lust, or self-preservation? I am not the only one whose motives in this matter are suspect.”

Stung, Sandesjo looked away for a moment. Turning back to face T’Prynn, she said, “I just want to know how you feel about me.” As T’Prynn began to answer, Sandesjo recognized the tell-tale signs of a verbal evasion taking shape. She threw aside the sheets, got out of bed, and moved quickly toward the Vulcan woman. “And don’t you dare tell me you don’t have emotions, or that they don’t matter to you.” Standing naked in front of T’Prynn, Sandesjo leaned close to her and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “I see the hunger in your eyes when you come to me at night. I feel the fire in your kisses, the wild part of you that takes me by force…dominates me…possesses me. You burn for me just as I burn for you.”

With a haughty and dismissive mien, T’Prynn said, “If you are so attuned to my inner life, why ask for my declaration?”

Sandesjo turned her head slightly, so that her lips barely brushed T’Prynn’s as she said, “Because I love you.”

She leaned forward to kiss T’Prynn, who pulled back and then stepped away, haltingly at first, then quickly, until she was out of the bedroom, out of the apartment suite, and gone beyond Sandesjo’s reach.