The bulkheads of Terminus Station are new and clean, but unlike those of any other station that space has to offer. A fascinating mix of multiple traditions has gone into its construction. The clean Federation lines and bold style is there, but so too is the morose Cardassian architecture. There are other flourishes too; the other species with a claim in the Gabriel Border Zone. But in a corner of the station's public promenade, in a quirky misshapen knot born of battle repairs slowly metastasised into permanent feature, the verisimilitude of the Federation and the Ashalla Pact is on full display. To the bartender, one old, careworn human with deep lines and sinking jowls, there isn't any other way he'd want it.
Right now he serves an Amarkian, a high-ranking officer at that who purposefully left the rank tabs back on the Hilindia. At his left elbow is the executive officer of the CDF Trager, long the most effective thorn in Federation sides. A set of Goshawnar enlisted hoop and warcry it up in the corner of the room long flutes of some viscous ferment raised aloft. A rather different Goshawnar, though, a slick-feathered political operator straight from Rha Lodkhan leans against the bar, sneering at his countrymen disdainfully. A Konen and a Betazoid play cards in a wicked game of bluff and double-bluff on a level the human barkeep is literally incapable of following. All this and it isn't even happy hour at Lance's Last Mistake, the favourite haunt of those in the know on Terminus Station.
Everyone who meets the barkeep, the eponymous Lance, knows him as a quiet man, but a man of unusual anecdotes and hard-won wisdom. A man whose advice is sought by passing merchanters, crews Pact and Federation, and station staff. But he'll tell any who ask the truth as he see's it. He's a blind old fool who thought he knew better than everyone else and watched it all burn around his ears. And that the worst fate of all is to get to sit back and watch as someone put the lie to everything he ever believed in.
No wonder the Klingons envy their war dead. Lance Cartwright sure envied his old conspirator General Chang from time to time. Usually after every Federation accession, or around the fifth glass of Konen brandy. There are worse fates than dying before you have to see yourself proved utterly wrong, he knows that now. And yet how sweet it is to watch the service his hubris nearly broke survive its harrowing before its political masters and now emerge, thirty years later, stronger than it ever was before. A Federation now so broad in its bonds of brotherhood that it could even afford a little patch of undiscovered country to a disgraced man trying to find his place in a galaxy that had left him behind. They sentenced him to twenty-five years, and now he can say that he deserved every day of them. Now the former Admiral Cartwright looks to have his little peaceful patch among those whom he still understands in his heart - those who ply the stars, and a chance to mend a soul betrayed only by itself.
-
It looks so different from down here. It's the atmosphere, supposes a man looking out over the Parisian dusk. It stirs things up, refracting into degrees the light that always seemed so clear when he was a man who trod the decking over an interstellar vessel. When he was appointed by the Council it was less to the command of a fleet and more as a glorified janitor to sweep up the shattered glass-shards his predecessor had left strewn across all four damned sectors of the Federation, such as it was at the time. The fleet was listless, bewildered. It should have been an unprecedented era of exploration, yet it had been all Solomon Rogers could do to stop one faction or another from letting it slip through the Federation's fingers. The politics in the time after the Khitomer Accords, by the great bird of the galaxy, what a time to be alive. What a miserable, turgid time. That he was appointed at all had been a wonder. Even now he still wonders back to the influence of the then junior Councillor Jorlyth sh'Arrath who broke open the voting blocs that would have stripped Starfleet of all independence and indeed, military capacity. Who then saw it handed to himself.
He still refuses to consider it a mistake on his part, but his time on the Council taught him much. No, he wasn't wrong, but he can see now how it all looks so different from down here. It's easy to slip into the political battle as the ends rather than the means. To think that the daily cut and thrust is the purpose of your job. You do your best to keep your fellow Hawks from that trap. It isn't easy, of course. Many of his old core colleagues in the Council were still there when he was fired, and didn't they fume to find out that one former Admiral Rogers has no intention of politely retiring to the antechamber of history to wait out his days. Well, he let them fume. He had more to say, and his maiden speech as a Councillor before this august body spared few and exonerated fewer.
And why should he spare the reputations of Councillors? How much of Kahurangi's success is due to the platform he laid. He brought the fleet back together again, reminded them that they have a purpose, that exploration, the pursuit of peace, and the protection of home, all give them a raison d'etre unbroken by the treason surrounding the Khitomer Accord. The fact that he could hand Kahurangi a functional fleet at all in the face of ongoing Council interference is proof that he was a far better Commander, Starfleet than the popular wisdom credits him with. Could he have gone on to have her success if allowed to continue in the role? Well, maybe not. Kahurangi was a brilliant leader, and Rogers has never let his frustration blind him to that. From his advocacy on Mars he saw first hand the things Kahurangi achieved.
Yet there is still some envy. If only his time didn't come right after Cartwright and then the rule of the Commissioners. If only this Earth atmosphere wasn't so blinding.
-
Across the globe and far from the beaten path the air is crisp and cold. There is a freshness and a purity scarcely known elsewhere in the world. There is a valley like a secret world apart from time where the craggy peaks plunge into the crystal-like lake surface while the green tree-tops crowd the far shore. In one corner of the picturesque lake there is a humble little house among rocks and a natural wading pool. An old woman sits next to the lakeside with a line cast into the lake, so clear she can watch the fish as they each take their turn to assess the offering on the hidden hook and then idly swim away. Above the surface of the water, however, the only other living creature that Vitalia Kahurangi can see is the cat curled up next to her.
All the hard service, the long hours, the highs and lows, she put it all in without grumbling, pursuing something greater than herself. Her smile is comfortable on her face among the well-earned lines and peaceful eyes. Now in her eighties and closing in on ninety, she knows that she still has years to go with modern medicine. Years of peace, a peace she did as much as anyone in the last century to bring about. Some already call the 24th Century the century that she made, the Kahurangi Era. What tosh. It hardly matters though. She has run her race and given to the Federation everything of herself it could use. In its turn the Federation has given to her these golden years and this little corner of the world to enjoy them in. A quiet return to Aoteroa to fish and consider her memoirs is all that she needs. When the Federation calls she can still answer, like when she hit the media circuits around the time of the Licori War. But she gives no thought to rushing off for a political career.
For there is no wealth like that of a satisfied mind.
-
Somewhere else on old earth, another set of mountains looms comfortingly. In their shadow two figures stare up at the nighttime skies to watch the stars wheel their way across the heavens from the hood of a beat up old hover utility, one bright and young and the other old and wise. The younger one will point to star clusters and has a list of questions as infinite as the universe around them. The older one just smiles and tells her niece about all the wonders that can be found among those stars, and maybe every now and again she'll leaven it with some of the terrors. Both are Sousa women, an indomitable line, but one of them is a name known to billions upon billions of sentients, scorned and hated by some, loved by many, and even dreaded by a few. Today, the other may as well be a phantom as far as the galaxy knows. But Valentina Sousa is certain that one day her niece will stamp her own mark upon the universe.
A mark that will exceed her own, she is certain, as she shares her love of space and poetry, and her warning to stay aboard ship until they have to physically crowbar you off. Carmel, her niece, soaks it all in. In a way, it is Carmel joining the nightly stargazing that helped Valentina realise the breadth of what she has accomplish. When she retired the Arcadian War was so close to mind with its constant struggles. The battles with the Licori and even the struggles with the Vulcans. It is one thing to win, quite another to be right. Some may subscribe that might makes right, but that is never the Starfleet way. No phaser battery ever conceived can turn wrong into right with mere nadions. Yet the years are kind and now Sousa can look upon her time with pride in all respects. She built on the work of those before her, and branched out in new ways. And those who came after have continued the path. So now she reclines beneath the stars that mean so much alongside the next generation.
She has been retired for ten years and the nighttime starfield is not one whit less beautiful than when she first returned.
-
You cannot reach the age of Hikaru Sulu in as hazardous a career as he has followed without more than one's share of empty chairs at empty tables. Gone but never forgotten, those tables echo with memories and words that still bring themselves to mind in the quiet moments when day is done and sleep beckons and the veil of the world is thinnest. They say there are old Captains, bold Captains, but no old, bold Captains, yet to you it seemed as though it is everyone but the bold Captain who would close their final chapters early, until even Kirk disappeared. Yet now he sits among the empty chairs and empty tables. He carry this silently, manifested in the familiar nods of those who know the roads he travels.
Yet there are empty chairs where the wounds are all too raw and the knife is far too keen. Where the mystery doles out the cruellest of hopes. Where did Demora go? What happened to the S'harien?
A civilian research cruiser is hardly something that normally likes to go this far afield, but Sulu is nothing but well connected, and there are tokens a father will cash and call a bargain that others would blanch at the thought of. A quantum singularity that came and went. A smattering of debris, like a fine dusting. "We're being pulled in."
That it should come to pass that the cruellest thing the service he loves can do to him happens nearly two years after retirement. So many of those he knows are lost with no final resting place. Kirk vanishing into space, Scotty and his ship disappearing never to be heard from again. It seems to him from time to time that the luck that saw his career as young d'Artangan is vampiric in nature. He remains while those around him do not die but vanish into the mists. But this time, here, with his own flesh and blood, Hikaru Sulu is not content with the empty chair by his side.
-
The dust billows blindingly across the room as groaning figures push aside the shattered building materials and try to figure out what in the blazes has happened to their day at work. Ruby-red beams lash out of the smoke as if it weren't there, and anyone carrying a sidearm slumps bonelessly into sleep. As the dust clears, a Public Security Directorate official scabbles up to her knees, looking around to try to find whatever tool or weapon could come to hand. But the dust from the first explosion is fading, and as she looks up she knows the safe house is far, far beyond defending.
Yet the nature of the assault strikes her as wholly absurd. Clearly elderly Andorians stride purposefully into the room, wearing unmarked uniforms and carrying a mix of phaser carbines that must be sourced from across the known galaxy. Yet despite their well-seasoned ages they are all sharp and on the ball, make their way with casual ease. Others enter the room, not just Andorians. A Rigellian, an Amarki, a Honiani, a few others; all of them share the one characteristic - being easily into the last quarter of their species' natural lifespan.
But when one last figure steps out into the middle of the now policed and secured safehouse, the PSD official blanches.
Shey ch'Tharvasse shoulders his phaser rifle and gives a broad, toothy grin. "Hello, girls, I'm back!"
Watching on from the all-encompassing computer network, a Singer recognises the man and screams red bloody murder at the Singer known as Tallael.
