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By Root 173 0

and raised the blast door. The bridge had dumped power to a monitor down there so they could restore the antimatter containment field. Sonya had been rather nonplussed to see how close they had all come to blowing up, especially since—had Riker and Data not arrived when they did—the field would have collapsed when she and Kieran were still crawling around in the drive section. Everybody had a story to tell of what they were doing when the filament hit, from Troi taking command of the bridge after Monroe’s death, to the captain being stuck in a turbolift with three children, to Lieutenant Mahowiack riding herd on a group of teenagers who were suddenly trapped in a lightless, sealed-off holodeck. But the story on everyone’s lips was the fact that Keiko gave birth to a baby girl—and Worf, of all people, was the midwife.

Soon enough, they were en route to Starbase 67. Geordi threw a partry in Sonya’s honor, at which the only drink available was hot chocolate. Sonya groaned, and so did everyone else when Captain Picard showed up to wish her well. He even gamely took a sip of hot chocolate, and left without a drop on his uniform, to Sonya’s relief and everyone else’s disappointment.

Upon arrival at the starbase, Sonya and Kieran said their good-byes in his cabin. Kieran had been very supportive—until today. His usual flippancy was muted; he kept putting off letting her leave until she had to force herself to return to her quarters so she could clear them out. When she went to the airlock to disembark, her hastily packed duffel bag over her shoulder, he was waiting for her.

“This is it, then?” he said. It was the same thing he’d said six times in his quarters.

“Kieran, please, I need to go. The Oberth is waiting for me.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to hold you up, I just wanted to say good-bye.”

Sonya was going to say that they’d done that, but one look at his face made her realize how cruel that was. Kieran wasn’t very good at saying good-bye. She thought it was in part due to his father dying while he was away at the Academy, though she figured that might have just been her own amateur diagnosis. Either way, she couldn’t begrudge him getting one last farewell.

And she was going to miss him.

Kissing him gently on the cheek, she said in a quiet voice, “Take care of yourself, Kieran.”

With that, she walked past him, and went down the gangway, refusing to let herself turn around one last time. If she did, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to resist his wide, pleading brown eyes.

EPILOGUE

Captain’s log, stardate 53122.9. Our new first officer, and the new head of the da Vinci’s S.C.E. team, Commander Sonya Gomez, is reporting for duty today—and about damn time, too. With the Dominion War over, I’m looking forward to going back to less perilous missions like the one that claimed Commander Salek at Randall V. From everything I’ve heard, Salek’s replacement should live up to her predecessor’s high standards.

The ships just keep getting smaller, Sonya couldn’t help but think.

Of course, when one’s career begins on a Galaxy-class vessel, almost everything is a come-down in terms of size, but each subsequent vessel she’d served on, from the mid-size Oberth to the compact Sentinel, had been smaller than the last, and the Sabre-class da Vinci was the smallest of all of them.

She hadn’t any intention of leaving the Sentinel, even with the promotion to commander, but she was also specifically requested by Captain David Gold of the da Vinci, based on recommendations from Admiral Ross’s office that apparently included the kind words of the legendary Montgomery Scott. With that much brass behind it, Sonya could hardly turn the assignment down, especially since it meant supervising, not just an engine room, but a mobile Starfleet Corps of Engineers team that went out solving the galaxy’s problems. It was a great opportunity.

Gold had no engineering background of which Sonya was aware. However, he’d been in charge of the da Vinci for several years now, ever since its assignment to the S.C.E., after a well-regarded tour commanding