“He certainly was…” Demora shrugged. “…larger than life.”

Harriman surprised himself by smiling. “Yeah,” he said, “he was that.” Sulu smiled too, and the moment helped him. But still, the reality of his father’s death remained—would alwaysremain. It seemed incomprehensible that Blackjack no longer existed. It seemed wrong.

He reached both hands up to his face and wiped with the tips of his fingers at his closed eyes. Fatigue washed over him like a wave, trying to carry him away. I need sleep,he thought, and knew right away that running from this would be no answer.

“Do you want to go back to the ship?” Demora asked.

He did, but he said, “No, we have to meet with the admiral.” It occurred to him that this was why Mentir had wanted to see him right away. “I’m all right,” he said.

“You’re not all right, John,” Demora said gently. “But you will be.”

Harriman looked at his friend and saw her deep concern for him written across her face. He tried to reach inside himself, into his emotions, to define all that he felt—or at least understandall that he felt. There were so many different emotions: anger at his father for having driven a wedge between them, and for having treated him not as a son, but as a subordinate; guilt for not having worked harder—or worked at all, really—to mend their relationship; frustration for not having insisted on seeing his father after the accident.

Ironically, for all of the Starfleet officers who had supposedly died during the mission, it had been Blackjack who really had. Although the mission had been successful, there had been things that had gone wrong: Vokar and five others staying aboard Tomed;the Romulans interpreting the Universetrial as the testing of a new weapon and not a new drive; and the explosion, more powerful than expected, slamming into Ad Astra.In another sardonic twist of fate, it had been Blackjack who had first proposed the Universeruse. He’d foreseen being able to use the event to maneuver Azetbur, to cause her to proclaim that the Klingons would side against the aggressor in any hostilities between the Federation and the Romulans. Harriman had then found a way to use the test as a means of delivering him and the special ops team into Romulan space, proximate to an Imperial Fleet vessel.

None of that really mattered now, though. What really mattered was that his father was gone. And of all the complex emotions churning within him, Harriman found that what he felt more than anything else was simple sadness.

“John,” Demora said, and Harriman looked up at her, not realizing that he had dropped his head as he’d lost himself in thought. “I spoke with your father before I took the Enterpriseto Foxtrot XIII.” Harriman blinked, startled. Demora had said nothing to him about ever having visited Blackjack.

“We didn’t have much time,” she said. “He was very tired. But he told me…he told me that he loved you, John, and that he was sorry.”

Harriman’s jaw set, and the muscles in his face tensed. A tightness formed behind his eyes. He inhaled deeply, feeling his nostrils flare. He could not believe how quickly Demora’s words—his father’s words—had affected him.

“I loved him too,” he said, his voice now a whisper. He moved forward, back into his friend’s embrace. He hugged her for a long time, holding tightly to what he had not lost.

Epilogue: Designs

Elias Vaughn gazed through the viewing port in the conference room, his eyes drawn to the line of shimmering objects that had once been Algeron III. Though strikingly beautiful, the polychromatic fragments, born of a devastated world, reminded him of Foxtrot Sector, its thirteen asteroids smashed into oblivion. And like one domino toppling another, the memory of Foxtrot Sector forced him to recall that last moment with Renka Linavil. Two months afterward, Vaughn could still feel her flesh yield as he thrust the knife into her body.

Behind him, he heard the murmur of excited conversation as people arrived in the conference room. In his mind, though, he heard the flat thud that the subcommander’s body had made when it had fallen, lifeless, to the deck. He automatically tried to bury the memory, but then fought the instinct, knowing that he had to deal with this in order to overcome it.

Vaughn turned and scanned the room. Commander Gravenor and Captain Harriman talked with each other over in a corner, he saw; Vaughn and the commander had assumed their roles as envoys again, and the captain had been invited to the treaty signing by Federation Ambassador Paulo Endara. In addition to Endara, Vaughn recognized several of the dignitaries present—including Ambassador Kage, General Kaarg, and Senator Vorex Ontken—as well as a couple of the functionaries who’d recently begun to appear in intelligence briefs—Merken Vreenak and Ditagh.

It had been in such a brief, one from six years ago, that Vaughn had learned the name of the woman he had killed aboard Tomed.After returning from the mission, he had found numerous reasons to review old intel, refusing to admit to himself his true motivation. The tagged photograph he had located had originally arrived at special ops from an Yridian operative, from images captured at a military summit. Younger, and with her face not contorted by rage, Linavil cut an attractive figure.

From there, Vaughn had sought other information about her. More recent intelligence had revealed that she had been instrumental in promoting and then carrying out the occupation of the Koltaari, and that, like Vokar, she had favored war with the Federation. But he had also learned that Linavil had graduated at the top of her class from the prestigious R’Mala Military Academy, that she had competed and placed in voraantcompetitions on Romulus, and that she had a sister and niece living on Terix II. When he had discovered that her parents had died a decade ago, he’d been pleased to know that they would not experience the misery of dealing with their eldest daughter’s death, or at least with her disappearance.

It had been at that point, when Vaughn had practically rejoiced that Linavil’s parents were no longer alive, that he’d realized his emotional state had veered significantly off course. He had gone to Commander Gravenor, asking to be relieved of his field duties, but she’d encouraged him instead to see one of the counselors assigned to special ops. Vaughn had agreed, and in the month since then, he had grown more able to cope with having taken a life, and even with the likelihood of having to do so again. He no longer obsessed over finding out the details of Renka Linavil’s life, but tried to bear in mind the wrongs that she had wrought in the universe. Vaughn would have preferred to have brought her to justice—rather than having killed her—for whatever crimes she had committed, but naïve as it might be, he still believed in doing battle against evil.

What remained most troublesome now were the visceral memories of the confrontation: the sound Linavil’s flesh had made when he’d torn off the tip of her ear, the resistance to the knife entering her body, the heat of her blood on his hands. Vaughn knew that he could overcome his fixation on these terrible recollections, and the distress they caused him. But he also knew that it would take time for that to happen—far longer than it had taken for his physical injuries to be treated and to mend.