“I know.”

She turned his chin upward so that he was looking her in the eye. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m functioning,” he said. “But I’m not happy about it.”

“You should take some time off. Go back to Luna and see your family. I’m sure they’d love to see you.”

“Some of them, maybe,” Reyes said. Noting her stare of gentle reproach, he added, “It’s eight weeks there and eight weeks back. Starfleet’s not going to grant me a four-month bereavement leave…. I asked.”

Stroking her fingers through the gray brush-cut behind his receding hairline, Desai said, “I’m sorry, Diego.”

“Nothing to be done about it.” He added with a rueful grin, “I knew space was a big place when I took this job.”

“It just seems unfair, is all,” she said.

“Sure it is—but what isn’t?” Reyes reached forward and picked up the bottle of wine on the table. He examined the label. “The ’51 Brunello Riserva,” he said. “Very nice.”

“It was that or the Chateauneuf-du-Pape ’41,” Desai said. “But I figured with tandoori chicken—”

“You made the right choice.” He untangled her arms from his neck and gently kissed the palm of her left hand. “And so did I, when I fell for you.”

She perched on his left thigh, half-lit in the candlelight. “Does thinking about her make it better or worse?”

“I’m not sure.” Reaching his arms around her, he began tearing the foil off the bottle of wine. “Right now, the hurt doesn’t change much, whether I’m thinking about it or not. At this point, I have to make an effort not to think about her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I was just wondering if focusing on good memories might help.” Lowering her head, she shook it in denial. “That’s foolish, I guess. Ignore me, I’m just a lawyer—I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Thinking good thoughts probably can’t be any worse than beating myself up for not being there,” he said. “Hand me the bottle opener?” Desai leaned over and grabbed the small air-needle cork remover, then handed it to Reyes, who pushed it through the cork and began carefully pumping air into the tiny pocket of space beneath it. “It’s funny, but ever since I learned Mom was sick, I’ve been fixated on a Spanish lullaby she used to sing to me when I was a boy.” The cork popped free. He set it aside and gestured to Desai to snag a pair of glasses. “She only kind of sung it—her voice when she was putting me to bed was half a whisper. I don’t even remember the words anymore…just the sound of it. A song sung just for me.”

“Do you even remember what it was called?”

“No idea,” Reyes said. “Mom used to talk about teaching it to Jeanne, but somehow there was just never time.”

“Well, you were only married to her for eleven years,” Desai teased. “You think these things happen overnight?”

“I think Mom was just waiting for me and Jeanne to have kids. If Jeanne had gotten pregnant, I think she and Mom would’ve found the time.” At the mention of children and pregnancy, Reyes noticed that Desai looked away, subtly distancing herself from the topic. He wondered if there was something in Desai’s past that made it a sore point. Closing the subject, he said, “Anyway, I doubt my father would know what the song was. He was never much for sentimentalism.”

Desai put the two glasses within easy reach. One at a time, he tipped each glass at a slight angle and filled its lower third with the deep-crimson, complexly aromatic Montalcino. He handed one glass to Desai and lifted the other for a toast. “To those who are gone but never forgotten.” Their glasses clinked with a delicate chiming sound, and he savored the layers of flavor in the wine. Desai finished her sip first, then reached down and picked up his notes for the memorial address.

“For tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I presided over a couple funerals aboard the Dauntless,” he said, “but paying respects for an entire ship and her crew…that’s a duty I haven’t had before.”

She put down his notes. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

“It’s not my speech I’m worried about,” he said. “Tomorrow I’m going to say a lot of high-minded things about courage, and justice, and why we’re all out here risking our lives. It’s going to be inspiring, if I say so myself.” He took another long sip of his wine. “I just want to convince myself it’s as true as I’m saying it is.”

Desai kissed him tenderly on the lips, then touched her forehead to his. “You will,” she said. “You made a believer out of me, and I’m a lawyer—I don’t trust anybody.”

Tim Pennington wasn’t sober yet. It had been nearly four hours since he was evicted from his own apartment. The warm numbness of his buzz had passed, however, leaving behind only severe halitosis and the woozy feeling of walking on rubber legs.

He lingered on Fontana Meadow, listening to the gurgling of the fountain and wallowing in the solitude. Then the dome of artificial sky rapidly brightened with a new ersatz dawn. Alpha shift would start soon. Station personnel would report to their regular duty stations.

That’s my cue. He headed for the turbolift.

Minutes later he stepped off on to level five, near the station core. He found the office he was looking for, then sequestered himself in a small maintenance nook a few meters away. Standing with his back to the wall, he faced the door and waited, taking shallow breaths and listening for footsteps.

Precisely fifteen seconds before 0800, he heard the crisp clack of boot heels on metal deck flooring. He held his breath.

T’Prynn arrived at the door and entered a security code on the digital keypad next to it. The door opened. She stepped halfway in, then paused in the doorway. With her back still turned to him, she said, “Are you coming in, Mr. Pennington?”

So much for the element of surprise.

Prying himself out of his corner, he plodded toward her office. She stepped in and waited on the other side of the door until he was close enough for the sensor to hold it for him. He hesitated, then dragged himself inside.

Even before the door closed, the heavier gravity pulled his feet to the deck. Dry heat attacked his skin like a hydrophage. The inside of her office was mostly dark, just a few spills of red light on the walls and a harsh white overhead above her desk. Like many other Vulcans whose rank afforded them such privileges, T’Prynn had altered the environmental settings of her personal workspace and, Pennington assumed, her living quarters to emulate the climate and gravity of her native Vulcan.

It took him a few moments to acclimate himself to the new conditions. T’Prynn used the time to take a seat behind her austere, curved desk. She sat in a relaxed pose, resting her arms at her sides. Aloof and apparently unfazed by his impromptu appearance on her doorstep, her voice was as seductively husky as it was cold. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“I came to say…‘Congratulations.’ ”

One eyebrow lifted, turning her mien curious. “For what?”

“Don’t be so modest,” he said, laying bare his sarcasm. “Taking all that real intelligence and dressing it up to look fake? That was brilliant.” Without betraying any reaction, she got up from her chair. He pressed on. “Reeling me in with the anonymous tip? Nice touch.” T’Prynn unlocked a wall panel for a narrow storage compartment as Pennington’s rant gained momentum. “Oh, but your masterpiece—your pièce de résistance—had to be making up an entire person to vouch for all those lies, so that I’d have someone to trust.” She glanced at him as she opened the panel. His spiel built toward a crescendo. “What utter genius! Sending me a walking, breathing, flesh-and-blood lie to convince me that all the other lies are true…I confess, Commander, my hat’s off to—”

She pulled a familiar-looking duffel bag from the storage nook and tossed it in a clanking heap at Pennington’s feet. “One of the facts of life aboard a brand-new starbase,” she said, walking back to her desk, “is that not all the onboard systems are fully functional right away. Like the garbage incinerators, for instance.”