The Captain's Daughter

  “What do you want from me, Dad?!” Demora shot back. “I said I screwed up! I said I was sorry! How many ways am I supposed to apologize, huh? What do you want me to do, throw myself on a sword because I made a mistake?”

  “I want you to realize how much the concept means to me, and why I’m so angry and disappointed that you’ve lived half your lifetime with me without truly understanding it! I’ve tried to conduct myself with that philosophy my entire adult life, and it means nothing to you! Nothing! Honor is why I’m still here! Because I took responsibility for you, which was the only honorable course open to me!”

  And it was at that moment that Sulu suddenly realized he’d said the wrong thing. Because Demora took a step back as if she’d been slapped. Her face looked cold and dark, and in a voice that cut to the heart, she said, “I thought you stayed because you loved me. Because you wanted to be with me, not because you had to be.”

  Sulu, one of the most accomplished tactical officers in Starfleet, suddenly found himself on the defensive. “It was both, Demy,” he said.

  She glared at him, the affectionate diminutive not having the desired effect. “I don’t think it was both. I think it’s just what you said it was.”

  “They go together. There’s a poem: ‘I could not love thee dear, so much, loved I not honor more.’”

  “To hell with poetry.” She pointed a trembling finger at the wall of portraits. “And to hell with them! You care more about a bunch of dead people than you do about me!”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is!” She stomped her foot. “You should have just dumped me at that place up in Washington and been done with me!” And she stormed off into her room.

  * * *

  “Sounds like a problem,” said Uhura.

  Sulu looked at her image on the screen. Uhura was on Mars at the moment. As a lark, she had taken a brief leave of absence from Starfleet to take a job on a broadcast station on Mars’s capital of Ares City.

  Sulu was speaking via direct link to her home. “So what do I do?” he asked.

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Well . . . you’re a woman.”

  “Sulu! That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” She flashed that high-voltage smile of hers.

  “I’m not sure what to say to her.”

  “Tell her you know she’s sorry, and you respect her feelings.”

  “I don’t know if that’s going to be quite enough. What’s the best way to let a female know you love her?”

  “Vertically or horizontally?”

  He gave her a dour look. “Vertically. Horizontally, and we’re playing out a Greek tragedy.”

  “Just tell her, Sulu.”

  “She might feel I’m just saying it to try and mend fences.”

  “Are you?”

  He paused. “Of course not.”

  At that, Uhura paused. “Sulu . . . a suggestion. Protestations of love that are preceded by hesitancy are not the most convincing. ‘Do you love me?‣ ‘Ummmmm . . . yes.‣ You see how that can be a bit off-putting.”

  “I know.”

  “Talk to the girl. More important . . . listen to the girl.

  Reassure her. Just . . . work your way through it. You’re dealing with a budding teenager. The explosions you get from matter and antimatter combining are nothing compared to parents clashing with adolescents. Understood?”

  “Understood.” He nodded.

  “Good. Now go make peace with your daughter. After all, she’s the only one you’ve got.”

  He nodded as Uhura’s picture blinked out. Then he rose, walked down the hallway, and knocked on Demora’s door.

  “Yeah?” came from within.

  “Demora. I want to talk.”

  “Who is it?”

  He glanced heavenward for strength. “It’s your father.” There was silence for a moment. Then the door slid open and Sulu walked in.

  Demora was lying on the bed, head propped up on her hands. Out of reflex, Sulu glanced at the pillow. No tearstains. Well, at least they were past that part.

  “Demy,” he began.

  “I want to be in Starfleet.”

  He still had his mouth open. It was left hanging that way for a moment before he remembered to close it. “Pardon?”

  “I said I want to be in Starfleet.”

  He cleared off some scattered clothes from a chair and sat. “Since when, may I ask?”

  “Since for a long time. But . . . because of two things. First . . . because even though it was fake, still . . . when I was sitting at the helm of the Enterprise,” and she made quotation marks with her fingers around the word “Enterprise,” and continued, “I felt as if I . . . belonged there somehow. And I was thinking about what it would be like to really be up there, out there . . . trying to help people, or explore space . . . I think it’s an incredible way to spend your life.”

  “It is,” he sighed. “And . . . the second reason?”

  “Because,” she said evenly, “I want to make you proud of me.”

  He stared at her. “That’s not necessary. I mean . . . I’ll be proud of you no matter what you do.”

  “I know. But I think I want to do this.”

  “Well, fortunately enough, it’s not like this has to be decided today. It’s food for thought at the moment. But I . . . appreciate the gesture.”

  She went to him then, and they embraced. He’d never felt closer to his daughter than he did at that moment.

  And since he didn’t see the sadness in her eyes, he didn’t realize that he’d never been farther away.

  Chapter Twenty

  “HE STOLE THE Enterprise?”

  She stared at Janice Rand. They were in a park, seated on a bench, and Janice gestured for her to keep her voice down. When Demora had gotten out of school that day, Janice had been waiting for her. She’d met Janice a couple of times in the past, had brief and pleasant chats with her. None of those casual social interactions, however, had remotely prepared Demora for anything like this.

  Demora was fifteen years old. The growth spurt had kicked in a couple of years earlier, as her father had long predicted. She was a half a foot taller, and her body no longer could be mistaken for preadolescent, even if she’d been clothed in a potato sack. Her face had also lost the babyish look, and now had the sculpted features of a striking young woman. Now, though, Janice was worried that the teen was on the verge of an apoplectic seizure that would preclude her ever seeing sixteen.

  “He stole the Enterprise?” Demora said again. This time she managed to keep her voice to an appalled whisper. “What do you mean, stole. You can’t just steal a starship. It’s . . .”

  Clearly she was having trouble fully grasping the notion. It was hardly surprising, considering the hellacious past couple of months they’d had. She’d heard chapter and verse about the routine training mission that had turned into a duel to the death with a twentieth-century madman named Khan. She’d remembered the blood draining from her face as Chekov had described (over Sulu’s protestations) their nail-biting escape from the Genesis torpedo . . . an escape made only at the cost of Mr. Spock’s life.

  Maybe it had all been too much for him. Her father was out of practice for such life-and-death struggles.

  “We can say it was stress,” Demora said quickly.

  Rand stared at her, confused. “What?”

  “Stress. You know. After that training mission, and Spock’s death . . . then he found out that they were planning to decommission the Enterprise, and he just . . . snapped. Temporary insanity.”

  But Janice was shaking her head. “Demora, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t just some impulse thing. It was carefully planned.”

  “You mean he planned out a whole—”

  “It wasn’t just him.”

  “It wasn’t.” Demora paused a moment, her face clouding. “Let me guess: the usual suspects.”

  Rand nodded. “It had something to do with Spock . . . and with Dr. McCoy. I?
??m still a little hazy on the details. . . .”

  “Oh my God,” said Demora, her face in her hands. “But . . . but how? You can’t just waltz into spacedock and leave with a starship. Shouldn’t someone have tried to stop them?”

  “Someone did try. Captain Styles of the Excelsior. But the Enterprise got away.”

  “Got away? From the Excelsior? How did . . .?” Her face went ashen. “They . . . they didn’t fire on it, did they? Didn’t get into a fight . . .?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. They just . . .” Rand cleared her throat. “They broke it.”

  Demora stared at her, not sure she’d heard right. “I beg your pardon?”

  “They broke it.”

  “How do you break a starship?”

  Janice waved her hands in exasperation. “They shot the hamster running on the little treadmill that makes it go. I don’t know what they did! They broke it. The Excelsior went about ten meters and then the engines conked out. Captain Styles isn’t real happy about it. Made him look like a fool. They’re already calling him Styles Without Substance. No, not happy at all, that one.”

  Birds overhead, recognizing Demora as a customary easy touch for food, settled down near her. “Scram!” she shouted and shooed them away.

  “Okay,” she said after a moment, “okay . . . maybe this won’t be so bad. No property’s been really damaged. No one’s been killed. Maybe this is salvageable. If . . . if Dad and the others just . . . just bring the Enterprise back . . . considering their record, maybe this can all go away. They just need a real good lawyer. Maybe that Cogley guy . . .”

  Then she saw that Janice was shaking her head. “No Cogley?”

  “That’s not the problem. The problem is bringing back the Enterprise.”

  Demora’s voice was deathly cold. “What . . . happened to the Enterprise.”

  “They broke it,” said Rand.

  “You mean broke it like shooting the hamster?”

  “I mean broke it like into a million pieces. Admiral Kirk blew it up.”

  Demora, feeling ill, put her head between her legs. “Why did he blow it up?” she asked, her voice so faint that Janice could barely hear it.

  “I don’t know. I’m sure he had a reason.”

  “Of course he had a reason. The reason was to drive me insane!”

  Clearly she was making no attempt to keep her voice down anymore. Passersby in the park glanced her way briefly and then hurried on about their business.

  “Where’s Dad now? Is he okay? He . . .” Suddenly she was struck by the horrible thought that maybe this was a long, labored way of breaking the news to her gently. . . .

  “He’s fine,” Janice said quickly, patting her on the hand. “I swear, he’s fine. He’s on Vulcan.”

  “Vulcan? What’s he doing on Vulcan?” “I’m a little confused on that part myself. Believe it or not . . . I think he’s there with Spock.”

  “With Spock? Spock’s dead.”

  “He . . .” Janice fished for words and couldn’t find any good ones. “. . . he got better,” she said.

  Demora stood. “I’m going home now,” she announced. “I’m going home . . . I’m going to crawl under the blankets . . . and when I wake up, I’ll find out this was all an insane dream.”

  “Close. You’ll go home and pack your stuff, and then you’re coming to my place.”

  “Your place? Why?”

  “Because the message your father managed to get out to me said that’s what he wanted. Demora . . . you have to understand. Sulu, the admiral, all of them . . . they’re criminals now. Wanted fugitives. They’re under protection by the Vulcan Council, but they can’t budge from the planet without risking immediate arrest.”

  Demora couldn’t believe it. She felt as if her world had tilted at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “It’s not the kind of circumstance that allows a genuine freeflow of communication, you know? Sulu was able to get a brief message out to me, slipping it through Communicore. But that’s the best he could do, and it’s not likely we’ll be hearing from him again until this whole business is settled.”

  “Which will be . . . when?”

  “I don’t know,” said Janice Rand, not recalling a time in her life when she’d felt quite this helpless.

  “All . . . all right. All right, Janice. I’ll get my stuff . . . I’ll lock up the apartment . . . and I’ll room with you. If that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine,” said Janice. “Really.”

  Demora stood, shaking her head. “I don’t understand why . . . or how . . . he could have done this to me. I just don’t.”

  “Actually . . . he asked me to relay something to you. Something he said he hoped would help you understand. He said to tell you that it was a matter of honor.”

  Demora sighed. “Yes. I had a feeling that’s what he’d say.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  THE END OF THE WORLD was nigh, and Demora Sulu knew beyond any doubt that she was going to die alone.

  Janice wasn’t there with her. This, in and of itself, was nothing unusual. Rand’s days had been more busy lately since she’d been transferred to Starfleet Command. It had meant longer hours, but a step up in responsibility. And she did usually get home while Demora was still awake; indeed, oftentimes Demora would have dinner waiting for her. The situation made Janice laugh occasionally as she wondered just exactly who was supposed to be taking care of whom.

  But Janice hadn’t been home for nearly sixteen hours, and Demora . . . along with everyone else on the planet . . . was painfully aware why.

  Pictures of the Probe had been broadcast across all Earth bands. Demora had had trouble taking it seriously at first; it reminded her of nothing so much as a giant pecan log. “Give me a fork and a really big glass of milk, I can take care of that thing no problem at all,” she’d said.

  But there were no jokes now, no amused observations. No safety.

  No hope.

  It had drawn closer and closer to Earth, its reason a complete puzzlement. It didn’t seem to want to destroy anything. On the other hand, it didn’t seem inclined not to destroy anything. It just . . . was. Speculation was that it seemed to be searching for someone or something, although Demora was damned if she could figure out what it was. In that respect, the Probe was like a small child tearing apart a room while searching for something. Even if the object (whatever it was) was eventually located, the result was a trashed room.

  And Earth was on the verge of becoming a trashed planet.

  She couldn’t see it in the skies overhead, for it hung above the Earth’s atmosphere. But she felt as if she could sense it. Sense its presence, its power. She heard it screech with a noise that chilled her. In response, the Earth seemed determined to tear itself apart.

  Janice Rand, Demora knew, was busy coordinating Earth’s emergency operations at Starfleet Command. A fat lot of good that was going to do. The Probe couldn’t be slowed down or stopped. It was like a force of nature, and confronting it was like standing on a shoreline and spitting at an incoming tidal wave.

  Demora hadn’t wanted to die in Janice’s apartment. Because when all was said and done—despite it having been Demora’s place of residence for three months—it was still Janice’s apartment. She wanted her home. She wanted to be in her place.

  So that was where she had headed. It hadn’t made tremendous sense when viewed with a dispassionate frame of mind. She was leaving one apartment to brave the wind, the rain, the trembling of the Earth’s crust beneath her feet, all for the purpose of getting to . . . another apartment.

  The only thing it accomplished was making her feel—rightly or wrongly—that she was doing something. Making some sort of headway, indulging in some sort of activity that was, ultimately, preferable to simply waiting around for the end. If (when) she died, at least she could say to herself, “I didn’t die in someone else’s home . . . I died in my own.”

  It was cold comfort, but when your planet was being shaken apart by
a lethal probe, you took what you could get.

  She went to the bay window and looked out. In the distance was the Golden Gate Bridge. She could see the waves crashing against it, getting higher and higher, and it seemed only a matter of time before the entire span came crashing down. And there she stood, helpless and alone.

  And all she could think about was her father.

  Part of her was relieved for him. She knew the trajectory of the Probe very well from the news reports, and was aware that it had passed nowhere near Vulcan. So he was safe. Hiding away in exile, with the Federation Council making pronouncements against him and his friends, and now they were going to have the last laugh. His accusers were trapped on Earth, and he was high and dry on an alien world. He was going to survive and, after all, what good was served if both of them died?

  And the other part hated him. Hated him with a passion.

  She looked at the photographs and representations of his ancestors . . . hers, too, of course. They stared at her with varying degrees of sullenness and inscrutability, and she felt a rage building up inside her.

  All that talk about honor. About family. About commitment. And in the end, in the final analysis, what had it meant? What had any of it meant?

  “Damn you,” she whispered, and then she practically screamed, “Damn you!”

  She ran to the wall and, her fingers curved into claws, she ripped at the pictures. She tore them off the wall, sending them flying everywhere. Her heart pounded against her ribs, and she yanked so violently that she sent herself tumbling over a chair and crashing to the floor. She lay there curled up, sobbing, feeling like a child again as she tore at the shag carpet with her fingernails.

  “You abandoned me, you son of a bitch!” she howled, even though her voice couldn’t even be heard above the crashing of the water outside. Rain was pouring down in torrents. It was becoming impossible to see anything at all.