Chapter
2

Sonya Gomez sat in the attic of her parents’ house in Vieques, staring at a lump of clay.

The attic had been converted to a studio for her mother, Guadalupe Gomez, when they moved in thirty years ago. Sonya rarely came up here after the accident when she was ten years old that ruined one of her mother’s most important commissions. In fact, that incident had led to rampant speculation as to the efficacy of Sonya’s later chosen career as an engineer.

Now she stared at the clay, wondering if it were some kind of metaphor for the shapeless mess her life had become, or if she were just being too philosophical.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the ring.

The only light in the attic came from the setting sun through the small window, but it reflected off the diamond, briefly blinding Sonya.

Damn you, Kieran.

Why did he have to propose? Why did he have to die right after he proposed? Why did Starfleet have to test their damn super-weapon on a planet with a life-form on it?

Sonya had gone to the memorial service Starfleet held for the entire crew of the Orion and the twenty-three who died on the da Vinci at Galvan VI. Aside from Ensign Tony Shabalala, who was still on bedrest after suffering severe burns, the survivors of the da Vinci were all there. But Sonya didn’t speak to any of them. She just sat stoically through all the speeches and ceremonies. In fact, she hadn’t said a single word to any of her crewmates since Dr. Lense officially pronounced Kieran Duffy dead in the shuttle bay.

Least of all Gold.

Her thoughts already dark, they grew darker as she thought of David Gold, a man she had once admired, callously sending Kieran into the atmosphere of Galvan VI knowing full well it was a one-way trip, and then not even doing her—the first officer of the ship, never mind the fact that she and Kieran were lovers—the courtesy of telling her until it was far too late.

The service, held on the grounds of Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco on a depressingly sunny day, had been a decent Starfleet ceremony. Admiral Ross delivered a eulogy that managed to be poignant despite its necessarily generic nature, given that he had to memorialize over two hundred people. In a touch Sonya would no doubt someday come to appreciate more than she was capable of doing right now, Captain Scott—in his dress uniform and kilt—played “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes after the eulogy.

Throughout the service, all Sonya could think of was Kieran proposing, and her own indecision.

A squeaking sound followed by the slam of wood on wood heralded the opening of the trapdoor from the second floor of the house, light from the hallway streaming into the workshop in a V shape. A moment later, Sonya’s older sister Belinda popped up into the attic like an old jack-in-the-box.

Here you are. We were getting ready to send out a search party. Dinner’s ready.”

“I’m not hungry.” Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears, but she found she didn’t care enough to try to modify her tone.

Belinda climbed the rest of the way up the attic ladder and stood before her younger sister. Though they both shared the same hazel eyes, jet-black hair, and sharply defined cheekbones that, as their mother had put it, was the hallmark of the Gomez women, they were aside from that a study in contrasts. Sonya was short and lithe, where Belinda was tall and stocky. Sonya kept her hair long, where Belinda’s remained close-cropped. Sonya’s face was angular, Belinda’s round. Plus, Belinda always wore bright primary colors—usually several at once—where Sonya tended toward more muted earth tones in her civilian garb. At present, Belinda wore a bright blue-and-white linen jacket over a red silk tank top and matching red linen pants. For her part, Sonya was dressed in a simple brown one-piece outfit, mostly because she couldn’t be bothered to put any thought into what she was wearing—or, indeed, into much of anything else.

“You’re already too skinny, mija. If you don’t get downstairs and eat something, you’re gonna waste away to nothing.”

Normally this was the part where Sonya would point out that she had only turned out so skinny because Belinda kept stealing her food when they were growing up, but she didn’t have the energy to engage in the usual family banter.

“Just start without me, okay? I need to be alone.”

“Ess, you’ve been alone for a week now,” Belinda said. They’d been calling each other “Ess” and “Bee” since Sonya was a toddler and couldn’t pronounce her sister’s full name, so settled for the first letter. “Mami and papi might be willing to let you sit and sulk as long as you want, but I’m sick of it. I want my sister back, not this mopey—”

“I’m not in the mood, okay?”

Putting her hands on her hips, Belinda said, “No, it isn’t. This ain’t you, Ess. You don’t mope. I know you and this guy were close—”

“He proposed.”

Belinda’s entire face seemed to freeze. “What?”

Sonya pulled the ring back out. “He wanted to marry me. He proposed right before we went to Galvan VI. Then—then everything went to hell, and—”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything,” she muttered.

“What?”

“I never gave him an answer, Bee. And then he had to go on that damn suicide run, and I never told him and I never got to say that I loved him and I couldn’t say good-bye and—”

The words tumbled out of her mouth so fast she couldn’t keep up, and then, finally, she broke down. All the tears she had held in check since the da Vinci left the Galvan system burst forth.

She wasn’t sure when her sister pulled her into the hug, but she welcomed the embrace, sobs convulsing her as she took solace in her older sibling’s arms, her tears staining the blue-and-white jacket.

“I’m sorry,” Sonya finally said, leaning back so she could see Belinda’s face, but not quite breaking the embrace.

“You kidding?” Belinda grinned. “I’m ecstatic! This is the most emotion you’ve shown since you got here. I was starting to think you were replaced with an android or something. Doesn’t that happen to you Starfleet guys all the time, getting replaced with android duplicates?”

“Changelings more often these days,” Sonya said with a small smile, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

“Androids, changelings, sentient moss, whatever. I can never keep that stuff straight.”

“That’s why you didn’t last as a news reader.” Among Belinda’s many abortive attempts at a career was a stint as an onscreen anchor for the North American regional feed of the Federation News Service.

Drawing herself up in mock haughtiness, Belinda said, “I didn’t last as a news reader because I got tired of the office politics at the FNS.”

“That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, right, Bee?”

“Damn right, Ess.” She grinned again. “Damn, mija, it’s good to hear you talk like yourself again. I missed you.” She got up, pulling on Sonya’s arm. “Come on.”

Sonya resisted the tug. “I don’t really feel like dinner.” She hadn’t been able to stomach much food since Galvan VI.

“The hell with dinner, you and I are going to walk to Punta Mulas.” Before Sonya could object, Belinda added, “And I’m not taking no for an answer. If you won’t go, I’ll send mami and papi up here and they’ll eat in front of you.”

“I—I can’t. Not to Punta Mulas. Let’s go to the beach, instead.”

Belinda winced. “No, not the beach, Ess. There’s always tourists there, and they all want my autograph.”

Snorting, Sonya said, “What, there aren’t tourists at the lighthouse?”

“Not as many, and they’re too busy gaping at the lighthouse.”

“The beach, or I take my chances with mami and papi.

Sighing overdramatically, Belinda said, “Fine, the beach, then, as long as I get you out of this damn attic!”

*    *    *

The sand felt warm between Sonya’s toes as she and Belinda walked in companionable silence along Sun Bay Beach, each holding their shoes while they walked on the sand. Like the house, the beach was on the southern end of the island. Located just to the east of the main island of Puerto Rico, Vieques boasted several magnificent beaches, but Sun Bay was considered the finest, with its beautiful, crystal-clear water and tilted palm trees, providing just enough shade to keep the Caribbean sun from being too intolerable.

I always meant to take Kieran here, but we never got around to it. The only vacation they’d been able to take since they got back together again on the da Vinci was that all-too-brief leave on Betazed between the Enigma Ship encounter and the construction of Whiteflower—the latter of which was cut off in order to answer the Orion’s distress call at Galvan VI. On Betazed, they had had a lovely picnic in a grassy park. Sonya didn’t think she could stand going to the similar park around the Punta Mulas lighthouse just at the moment. At least the beach didn’t have any specific connotations that might remind her of Kieran.

Belinda finally broke the silence. “This was the same guy you dated on the Enterprise, right?”

Sonya nodded. “It was going really well, too. I felt so—so good around him. It’s weird, when we dated on the Enterprise, it was always—nice, but nothing spectacular. After I went over to the Oberth, we didn’t see each other for years. I hardly ever thought about him—though when I did, I really missed him. Then I was assigned to the da Vinci, and there he was. Same goofy smile, same good heart. But now I was his CO. I thought it was going to be hard, but then we went on our first mission together to Maeglin, dealing with the Androssi for the first time.”

“The Androssi?”

“Long story. Suffice it to say, we got out of it, barely. But Kieran and I worked perfectly together. It was like we were back on Geordi’s team on the Enterprise again. And then, after Sarindar…” She trailed off. Sonya hadn’t told the family about Sarindar.

Sure enough, Belinda asked, “What happened on Sarindar?”

“A lot.” She shook her head. “It’s funny, I’ve faced death almost every day since I joined Starfleet. Each posting I served at had an element of risk—on the Sentinel, we were on the front lines of the war half the time—but it wasn’t until Sarindar that I actually felt like I was going to die. It was after that that Kieran and I started getting serious again. It was wonderful—and the work was better, too.” Sonya stopped walking right in front of one of the angled palm trees, bent from years of being blown by tropical winds. “We made a good team, on and off duty. And then…” She leaned back against the tree, the breeze blowing through her curly black hair.

“He proposed.”

Nodding, Sonya repeated, “He proposed. And you know what’s driving me craziest, Bee? I don’t know what my answer was going to be.”

That caused Belinda’s hazel eyes to go wide, and her jaw to fall open, her mouth in an O. “You didn’t know? You couldn’t make a decision?”

“No, I couldn’t. What’s the big deal?” Sonya asked, confused by her sister’s shock.

“Ess, this is you we’re talking about.”

“I know that.”

Belinda shook her head. “Remember when you were six and you wanted a cat, and papi said that you could only have one if you helped him convert the attic to mami’s studio? Every day, after school, you helped papi out, doing everything you could, because you wanted that damn cat.”

Sonya smiled at the memory of Blanco, the gorgeous white Persian they’d gotten when Sonya turned seven. Blanco wound up staying with Belinda after Sonya went to the Academy, finally dying at the ripe old age of twenty-three a few years ago.

“Remember when you were ten and you said, ‘I’m gonna join Starfleet and be an engineer’?”

“Vaguely.” She wasn’t sure that it was when she was ten, but she knew that she’d had the urge to join Starfleet since she was a little girl.

“You spent the next eight years living, eating, breathing, and sleeping Starfleet’s entrance exams. You did everything you could to guarantee, not only that you’d get in, but that you’d be at the top of your class. So when you announced in your third year that you were going to be posted to the Enterprise just like your friend Lian was, we all knew that was where you were gonna wind up.” Belinda frowned. “What is it?”

“Sorry,” Sonya said in a small voice. She had flinched at the mention of Lian T’su, a year ahead of Sonya at the Academy and one of the first friends she had made there, who had gone on from her posting on the Enterprise as an ensign to a fine career culminating in the captaincy of the Orion—and a nasty death at Galvan VI.

Belinda went on. “I don’t think you ever met a decision you didn’t like—and didn’t stick with. I wasn’t surprised you made chief engineer so fast, or that you were so good at it. You were meant to command.” She grinned. “Not like your bratty older sister.”

At that, Sonya smiled. Besides her brief time in front of the camera as an FNS anchor, Belinda had been, at various times in the last decade and a half, a sculptor like her mother, or, rather, not like her mother, as she was awful at it; a soccer player, until a knee injury forced her out of professional play; a deep-sea diver; an actor; a transporter technician; and now a soccer coach.

“But you’ve always been the one to jump in feetfirst, to make a decision and stick to it. So what happened?”

Sonya shook her head. The sand suddenly felt cold between her toes. “I don’t know.”