T’Prynn was gone.

Mount Selaya, Vulcan

2349 Old Calendar

Conducted by several robed masters under the watchful eye of T’Rukh, Vulcan’s barren co-orbital world, the internment ceremony had been befittingly solemn. Vaughn also found the entire affair to be parsimonious and efficient. T’Prynn would have been pleased. Judging from the stoic expressions borne by the dozens of assembled family members and colleagues, it was easy to believe that Vulcans entirely lacked the concept of mourning.

Thanks to his long association with T’Prynn, Vaughn knew better.

Ruriko squeezed his hand tightly throughout the brief ceremony. She looked diminished, smaller in some way. Vaughn didn’t try to restrain the tears that rolled down his cheeks as the vial that contained T’Prynn’s mortal remains was interred in a family crypt beneath the ruddy, sunbaked sands of Gol.

After the funeral party and the guests had dispersed, Vaughn and Ruriko walked along a flat expanse of red-and-ocher Vulcan desert, watching the sun grow huge and orange as it began to sink over the horizon. The sunset painted the sky with every color on the pallet from scarlet to salmon to deep purple.

It wasn’t until an hour after the planet had slipped into night’s embrace that Vaughn noticed that he and Ruriko were still holding hands.

Together, they looked up at the eternal stars. In his mind’s eye Vaughn saw T’Prynn raise an ironic eyebrow. Had she been standing here, Vaughn thought, she might be tempted to comment that he and Ruriko would make a lovely couple.

Vaughn turned from the stars and looked into Ruriko’s eyes. She was watching him expectantly. Damn,Vaughn thought. It’s always the one you didn’t see that gets you.

San Francisco, Earth

2349 Calendar

Vaughn and Ruriko returned to Starfleet Headquarters for a day-long debriefing session immediately after their return from the Monac System. They had delivered Veruda’s computer worm, on target and on schedule. The countermeasure program—three years in the making, following the defection of Dr. Cren Veruda to the Federation—had entered the Cardassian grid at the Monac shipbuilding facility and had propagated itself via subspace relays before anyone detected it. As far as Starfleet’s premiere A.I. experts could determine, the artificial intelligence with which the Cardassian Union had been tying together its offensive and defensive capabilities was now completely inert.

Three years fraught with a series of difficult assignments now culminated in this balmy San Francisco Sunday afternoon. And Vaughn found himself—astonishingly—with nothing to do except stroll through the Golden Gate Park Arboretum, Ruriko at his side.

Ruriko paused to admire a rhododendron nearly as large as her head. She closed her eyes as she inhaled the flower’s fragrance. Vaughn smiled, admiring her long black hair, her delicate porcelain complexion. It was hard to believe that the first time he had met her she had been surgically altered to pass as a Cardassian torturer.

How things change.

Ruriko straightened and gazed deeply into his eyes. As though she’d read his mind, she said, “I’ve come to a decision, Elias. I’m not taking any more field assignments. At least for a while. I want to get back into nanotech research full time.”

She regarded him expectantly. Did she hope he might drop out of the field as well? It certainly would make sense; he was nearly twice her age, after all. But Vaughn wasn’t certain he knew howto quit.

“Is this about what happened to T’Prynn on the Ktarian mission?” Vaughn asked.

She nodded. “It’s sobering to get a demonstration about how vulnerable we all are. That even Vulcans aren’t immortal.”

“She knew the risks. We all do, or else we wouldn’t sign on.”

“But nobody can count on luck, Elias,” she said with a rueful smile. “Your ass-brained philosophy notwithstanding.”

He took a deep breath, sensing what was to come. “Is this about settling down? Getting married?”

Her laugh reminded him of the serene fountain that burbled quietly in the arboretum’s center. “I know you too well to ask you to do that, Elias. Besides, I didn’t say I wanted to retire permanently. I just need a few years away from the job.”

He frowned, suddenly worried that she was slipping away from him. Or vice versa. “A few years away. To do what?”

“I want to have a child,” she said, taking his hand. “With you.”

Vaughn was poleaxed. He nearly fell over.

Then he thought about it. A child. Theirchild. What an affirmation of life creating and raising a child would be. For the first time he could recall in decades, he felt tongue-tied.

“Let’s talk,” he said, even though he knew that words were no longer necessary.

Toscana, Earth

2355 Old Calendar

“How’s my birthday girl?”

“Daddy!”

The late Commander T’Prynn’s namesake launched herself at Vaughn’s legs, grabbing hold with a strength that nearly sent both father and daughter sprawling across the lawn. The air was redolent with marigolds, zinnias, and fruit punch, the sounds of happy children aloft on a gentle breeze. Five candles burned on the cake on the backyard picnic table.

Little Prynn disengaged herself from Vaughn to chase Danilo, the neighbor boy. Ruriko approached Vaughn, greeting him with a wide smile, though she couldn’t conceal her curiosity about his most recent assignment, out among the Orion crimelords. He smiled. There would be plenty of time to bring her up to date later.

Right now, whatever he could spare of himself belonged to little Prynn. Vaughn was delighted to see that he had beamed in soon enough to catch the bulk of the proceedings. Although the piñata was already spent and in pieces, candles remained to be blown out, yellow cake had yet to be served, and a goodly heap of ribbon-bedecked gifts remained tightly wrapped.

An urgent hail came in on Vaughn’s combadge. He breathed a silent curse. Why didn’t I just ditch the thing?

Ruriko noticed, scowling. But he knew she understood. He stepped away from the children to answer the call.

He braced himself to tell them that he couldn’t interrupt little Prynn’s special day.

But the call was from Admiral Presley’s office. There was a coup brewing on the Elaysian homeworld.

But it’s Prynn’s special day.

The planet faced imminent political upheaval, a threat to the lives of tens of thousands of people, with the potential of spilling over into adjacent sectors. Countless people were in jeopardy.

Countless strangers. Prynn is my flesh and blood. And she needs me.

According to Admiral Presley, the mission couldn’t wait. Starfleet’s brass were counting on Vaughn’s expertise. Once more unto the breach, dear friend….

He glanced at Ruriko. How he envied her ability to simply walk away from it all. He watched Prynn, still chasing Danilo through the yard, the epicenter of a sudden squall of childish laughter.

Prynn. On her special day.

Duty. Indispensability. The lives of complete strangers.

He sighed and signaled that he’d be ready to beam out in five minutes. Long enough to explain, at least a little bit, about what he had to do. And where he had to be for the next few weeks.

Prynn will understand,he told himself. Just as Ruriko had understood half a decade earlier, when duty had placed parsecs between them on the very day little Prynn had come into the world.

U.S.S. T’Plana-Hath

2369 Old Calendar

Commander Vaughn sat alone in his quarters. Before him on the desk the images of Prynn and Ruriko smiled at him from a holocube. Ruriko’s hair was streaked with gray now, but she’d lost none of her beauty, her smile had lost none of its wattage. And Prynn, now a grown woman, was definitely favoring her mother.