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Chapter 1
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The others turned to look at Lieutenant Damiko Matsubara, as she stood with the club in her hand and looked around with disbelief at the hole she was asked to challenge.
"No," Captain Leonard Thorpe remarked, without breaking a smirk. "This is a real golf hole, the seventeenth hole at a golf course called Sawgrass, in Florida. The course still exists, and people still play this very hole on the real course. This is no holographic creation, like some other holes." The other two in this group, Lieutenant Commanders Henrietta Vorwoorts and Rodall Dewuchun just stood further back and together watched this unfold.
"Really?" the science officer replied. She turned back to look what she faced. "I mean," she said, "in the middle of this pond out there is an island, and the green-and the pin-is on the island, and the tee is here on the land. I've got to hit the ball so that it lands on that island. What are the odds of it not bouncing or rolling off the island and into the water?"
"That's the challenge of golf," Thorpe remarked.
"But I've never done this before," protested Matsubara. Before coming on board the Athena, she had never really heard of golf, and now she found it was the game played quite a bit on this ship, at least on the holodecks and on the putting surface and virtual driving range that had been set up in one of the lower decks in the engineering hull. She also knew that Thorpe was among those that played it, although she seemed to remember that during their time in the Academy, when she got to know him, he never had anything to do with golf. He must have picked it up along the way somewhere, and now she found herself becoming part of it. She had spent some time with the captain on the virtual driving range, and with the holographic golf instructor, to at least learn a proper swing and some of the other fundamentals. The first time they were out on a course, or even a holographic representation of a course, she was presented with this hole. Maybe it was an initiation ceremony of some kind, she thought.
"It's not that hard," the captain continued. "Remember what I showed you the past couple of days, the training sessions and all."
"Are all the holes this tough?"
"Not necessarily, though each hole can be challenging in its own way," Thorpe remarked. "At the tournament, I think the holes will be more conventional. They won't give us a holographic version of the course to practice on."
"Because that would be cheating?" Matsubara asked.
"Yes," Thorpe remarked.
"I still think this is silly."
"Trust me, once you get a few holes played, a few rounds in, you'll be hooked. It's that kind of game. It looks simple, but it can be maddeningly difficult, and no matter how good you become, you can always get better."
"But it's just a tournament."
"I hope to win it."
"Even with a rookie like me?"
"Well," the captain continued. "The rules for this tournament do state that in the foursome, one player must be new to the game, and another person must be an alien. Rodall is the alien."
"And I'm the rookie."
"Yeah," Thorpe said, as he took another gaze at the island green on this course, normally the seventeenth hole in the real course, but the first one they were playing. All the other holes were holographic representations of some of the most famous holes in golf. The next one was the fourth hole at Pebble Beach.
Knowing what she did about hand-eye co-ordination and this kind of strength in Odonans, Matsubara said, "I'm surprised that they allow Odonans to take part in it."
"Actually," Vorwoorts added, "They don't let Vulcans play."
"By all rights, Vulcans would not want to play this game."
Vorwoorts, standing behind the first pair and listening in with her occasional comment, could not contain her own grin and suppressed laughter. She finally said, "We ought to have the computer generate the crowd."
"The what?" asked Matsubara, turning back to look at the tactical officer.
"Back in the days when there was professional golf," Vorwoorts explained, "the gallery, the group of fans who were watching this particular hole, would cheer and chant and try to distract the players so that they would put the ball into the water, these being highly-paid and highly talented professional golfers."
"You're telling me that at one time, people played this game for money, and not only that, that people actually would walk around a golf course like this one and watch the players play?"
"It was a big thing at one time."
"Wonders never cease," Matsubara remarked.
Thorpe finally said, "Damiko, we'll go easy on you this time. No crowd."
"Thanks." She was about to get a club from her bag when a thought crossed her mind. "At this tournament... is there going to be a crowd?"
"A small one, fellow crewmembers mostly."
"Oh."
She took out a three-iron from her bag, and approached the ball as it sat on the tee. She had been practicing with Thorpe and learning from the holographic instructor in order to develop a golf swing. It looked to be much easier than it was, she knew. It looked like nothing more than standing on some ground and taking a swing at the ball, but she found that it took a little practice-actually a lot of practice-not to hit the ball so that it went left or right. Going left or right here would not be a very good thing, since that would surely put the ball in the water. She was also thinking of trajectory. If the trajectory was too low, then the ball would surely hit the green and bounce right over the island and into the water. If the trajectory was too high, the ball could bounce high and then go off in any direction. What she needed to know was how soft the ground was, because that would determine the bounce the ball would take.
"What's taking you so long?" Thorpe asked.
"I'm thinking."
"In golf, you don't think. You just do."
Matsubara decided to go with the high trajectory. She faced the ball, carefully gripped the club in the manner she had been instructed to, and pulled it back, constantly going through the checklist of details that was supposed to be instinctive to more accomplished players. Her mind went through all the tricks, such as keeping the shoulder in, the legs straight and using her body and not just her arms in the swing. She hit the ball with some force, and put a lot of loft into it. Much to her surprise, the ball went unexpectedly straight. She watched as it sailed over the water and came down towards the centre of the island, where, somewhat charitably, the pin had been located on this occasion. The ball hit the ground about four metres from the pin, bounced forward once, and then had enough english on it to roll backwards, towards the cup... and in.
"I got the ball into the hole on the first swing. I presume that's a good thing?" Matsubara remarked, innocently, standing there not fully sure what she had done.
Vorwoorts had quite a different reaction. She said, "Okay, who rigged this program?"
The others just feigned innocence, until Dewuchun laughed, and then the captain could not contain himself either. The engineer rapidly regained his composure, and said, "I swear that this program is authentic, and has not been modified in any way."
"What's going on?" Matsubara remarked.
Just then, Thorpe heard his commbadge chirp. Although the four were in typical golf attire from the early twenty-first century, they still had their commbadges on, since as senior officers on the Athena, they were always on duty. The captain tapped the badge, and said, "Thorpe here."
"Johnson, sir," she said, her voice rather firm. This, Thorpe knew, meant that something significant had come up, since otherwise, his first officer, Nadine Johnson, would not contact him in the middle of this. "Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we've just received a distress call from the colony on Charamand. Something serious and in a way mysterious has come up."
"I'm on my way," Thorpe said. Whatever relaxing moods the four might have had being off duty and in a replica of a warm, sunny day in Florida were suddenly gone. They were once more Starfleet officers, on a ship a long way from home and in the middle of a war zone. "When we get the chance," he said, facing the others, "we'll resume this program. Computer, save the program with the current score and configuration." After the machine beeped, he added, "End program." The sunny skies, the expanse of green and the water and the island hole all disappeared, leaving behind only the four and the real objects they had brought onto the holodeck, their golf clubs-and one small white ball sitting against one of the holodeck walls.
Moments after leaving the holographic golf course, the four officers, back in uniform, stepped onto the bridge of the starship Athena. The second-shift officers had been manning the bridge, and right now, Thorpe saw no need to replace them with the first-shift officers, despite the situation developing on Charamand. Even if the emergency was pressing, Thorpe knew that even at top speed, the Athena was a day and a half to two days from Charamand. His first officer was acting as the duty officer on this shift, so she sat in the centre seat. For now, she stayed there.
"What's the report?" Thorpe asked, as he stepped down to the middle level of the bridge.
Johnson began, "We got a report from Charamand that states that everything living in one of the villages there, Adamsburg, has basically vanished off the face of the planet." Turning back, she said, "Lieutenant Torin, display the image that was broadcast to us on the main screen." The science officer complied, switching the image on the screen from the normal view of moving stars to an aerial view of the village of Adamsburg. The village and all of its buildings were still there, apparently untouched, since what was missing was all the vegetation. In a neat circle, of approximately sixteen kilometres centered on the edge of the village, all vegetation was missing. They could see the ground, and the structures built by the colonists, but the trees and the grass and the gardens and all other signs of life were gone. Johnson continued, "Some event happened there, around dawn, local time, and all contact with the village was lost. When a search team arrived, they found this. Within that circle, there is no life whatsoever. Every piece of vegetation, every insect, every earthworm underground, as well as the people, their pets and livestock, all vanished."
"What could possibly cause that?" Matsubara remarked, as she came down to the middle level of the bridge and stood beside the captain. Everybody on the bridge had immediately come up with the same idea, that this was a new weapon being displayed by the Dominion in its on-going war with the Federation and the Alpha Quadrant alliance of races. The image they were watching had been taken from an aircraft flying around the site, so the view rotated as they watched. Such views did not reveal much additional information.
"The authorities at Charamand don't know," Johnson eventually answered. "The officials there do not have access to a lot of advanced sensor equipment, especially for an unexplained phenomenon like that. They're also a little uneasy at entering the damaged zone itself. The planet is a relatively small mining colony."
"Could it be caused by the Dominion?" Vorwoorts asked.
"Unlikely," Thorpe replied. "That doesn't look like any kind of weapon the Dominion could make. In addition, Charamand is a long way from the front lines."
Johnson added, "The authorities reported no spacecraft in the vicinity of the planet at any time during this."
"How many people were there?"
"Adamsburg apparently was home to around fourteen to fifteen hundred people."
"Oh man," Vorwoorts sighed.
Dewuchun asked, "Could it be that the colonists might have come across some kind of alien artifact? I'm not terribly familiar with the place. Many of the uninhabited planets we come across and settle on had often been settled on by other races previously."
"I don't know if that's true with Charamand," Matsubara remarked. "It's listed as being some kind of mining colony. I'm not sure of the planet's history."
"Nevertheless, we'll have to go and take a look," Thorpe finally said. Deep down, Thorpe knew that mysterious threats like this one made him uneasy, and a part of him did not want to send the Athena to investigate it. Whatever struck Adamsburg could strike more of the settlements on Charamand, and could also pose a risk to the ship. However, he had an obligation to investigate this and determine what had happened, so that the loss of the settlers would not be in vain. At worst, he would have to order the evacuation of the entire planet, something he did have a measure of authority to do. Whether or not he had the means was another question entirely. Thorpe also had to admit to the curiosity factor that was present. Unless the reasons behind this act were purely malevolent, he wanted to know why it had happened, and what could be done to prevent it from happening again. "Set course for Charamand, best speed."
"Already done," Johnson remarked.
"Arrival time?"
"One day, fourteen point six hours," replied pilot Sandra Ochi, from the flight control console at the front of the bridge.
"Very well..."
The senior officers assembled in the conference lounge at the rear of the bridge, although it was late in the day. Normally the third shift was coming on duty and the first shift officers were looking towards getting some sleep. That was not going to happen right away on this day. Because the distress call had come in during the watch of the second shift, science officer Jules Torin had been given the assignment to research the planet and to present the information to the senior officers. Although they had all heard of the planet, and were aware that it was a mining colony and approximately where it was located, none of them had ever been there and they never had an opportunity to concern themselves with the planet since their time in the Academy when it rated a mention in their stellar cartography courses.
He started with the obvious. "The planet is a mining colony," Torin started, as he looked over the other officers. He would not admit this, but he hated doing this kind of presentation, since it made him feel like being in the Academy all over again. Then, such presentations had not been easy, and they still were not easy now, since he was all too aware of all those eyes watching him. He found himself fighting back the nervousness as he stood in front of the viewscreen, which was showing a map of the planet. It had the usual class-M combination of a surface that was two-thirds water, and the rest being a jumble of continents. Based on the map itself, the planet was unremarkable. "The planet is an unusually rich source of various metals that are rare elsewhere, especially molybdenum, rhodium, palladium and some other rare-earth elements, all valuable to us. The current population is just over a hundred thousand, mostly humans. The main occupation is mining and metals processing, along with some agriculture and support services. The settlements are located primarily in one long rift valley in the northern continent." Torin zoomed in the map to the desired location, showing what looked like a long, but shallow rift valley in a continent where the topography was otherwise flat to gently rolling. The locations of the settlements, including their names, were displayed on this map. Adamsburg, Thorpe noticed, was somewhat more remote from the others, and located at the end of the string of settlements.
"Now, we're not the first ones to have settled on this planet," Torin continued. "We have evidence of at least three other races, at various times, having settled on this planet, although their presence has been much like ours, small and geared to mining. The largest alien presence was approximately two and a half to two million years ago, but we don't know what race. Archaeologists have examined the sites, but could not identify any of the races that had settled the planet previously. What we've found of writing and inscriptions do not match anything known to us."
"Were any of the settlements, especially Adamsburg, built near any of the alien ruins?" Johnson asked.
"No. All the villages on Charamand were built in locations far removed from the archaeological sites, mostly because the other sites had been mined out of the easily-recoverable materials."
"But there's a chance that whatever happened to the people of Adamsburg was caused by the presence of a device possibly left behind by a previous occupant of the planet?"
"That is a reasonable assumption," Torin replied. He found that he was sweating and was irritated by it. "I guess that's what we're going to find out."
"So they are sure that there had been no alien presence in the rift valley where our settlers are?"
The science officer replied, "Well, they can't be absolutely sure. When the planet was settled, they tended to avoid those areas previously occupied. They knew that the more easily accessed metals had already been mined out. The rift valley was also somewhat contained so that we could introduce our biology to it. The mining is primarily underground, in deep shafts, since the valuable deposits that were found here were not close to the surface, but deep underground."
"I see," Thorpe started. "About Adamsburg itself, what was its primary concern?"
Torin zoomed in the map further, showing a city-plan view of the village. It was not that much, actually. In the centre were the commercial buildings, and surrounding that were the residential buildings. The mines were actually about four kilometres from the village itself, and consisted of the mine, a power supply, and an ore processing facility. An elevated railroad linked the mine and its facilities to the spaceport in the capital, Charamand City, where the processed ores were shipped to factories throughout the Federation. Passenger rail and road links, as well as a transporter system, linked the village with the others. "The mines at Adamsburg primarily processed rhodium and palladium, as well as some terbium, neodymium, europium and other more common metals, the latter used primarily on the planet only. Unlike some of the other settlements, the miners in Adamsburg actually used some of the more advanced high-impact phased boring mining technology."
"Could that have contributed in some way to what happened?"
"The people on Charamond don't know. The technology is safe with the elements they were mining. According to the information I have, they have not opened any new mines or expanded significantly the mines they have. Work is slow there since if they mine too fast, the supply will exceed demand and they'll end up stockpiling the metals. For that reason, they're not under pressure to move quickly, and so I don't believe they'd take risks."
"I see," Thorpe started. "In other words, the planet is a somewhat out-of-the-way world, vital in a sense to the overall economy of the Federation, but in a small way. The people lead a somewhat harder life than most-since mining, even with advanced technology is not completely easy nor completely safe." The other screen in the room continued to show the circle, the "void zone," as Thorpe was beginning to think of it, around Adamsburg. Thorpe found himself looking at that. It appeared that the centre of the void zone was much closer to the centre of the mine than to the centre of the town. "Any ideas? Speculation?"
"Obviously," Dewuchun remarked, referring to the images, "the miners must've stumbled upon some kind of alien artifact."
"That seems likely based on what we know, but what the artifact did... why?"
"For all we know," Matsubara remarked, "it might have been an alien mining device."
Dewuchun added, "Considering how deep the device was, since it seems that the mines at Adamsburg are deep, the device might have been there for a long time. It could be, perhaps, malfunctioning. It could have originally been designed to keep all unwanted life off of the planet. Alternatively, it could have been a mass waste handling device, considering that only organic material was destroyed."
"Destroyed how?" Doctor Ger Psakolaps asked. "Was it converted into energy, or broken down into constituent elements? What exactly happened?"
"So many questions," Thorpe remarked, "and so few answers. First of all, this device-if that is what we're dealing with-could well have been put there by one of the predecessor groups that settled the planet. The archaeologists are pretty sure sentient life never evolved there, and so the device would have been placed there by an off-world species. Thus, it is possible that something similar might have occurred before."
"Strangely," Dewuchun started, "as I'm hearing all of this, I seem to recall hearing about something similar, but I can't place it right now."
"Did it happen on an Odonan planet?" Vorwoorts asked.
"I'm not sure."
"Then that's the first thing to pursue. We need to know if this is something new or something that has been seen before, even if the prior situation was never explained or resolved. Matsubara, I want you to check the databases, and link with a Memory Alpha relay station if necessary, to see if there's any record of something similar, even if only approximately or even on somebody else's historical record. Other than that, we're not going to get more information until we arrive at Charamand, or unless they transmit more information to us."
"Nothing has been sent to us so far," Vorwoorts reported. "They decided to stay out of the affected area, and let us handle it."
"Probably a wise move on their part..."
It was not long before Matsubara had her information. Captain Thorpe sat in his quarters, simply reading a book before turning in for what he anticipated would be a short night's sleep. A long day would follow, since he was expecting himself and his senior officers to be on the bridge when the Athena arrived at Charamand. To avoid tossing and turning in bed thinking about what had happened there and what fantastic explanation they could find for the event, Thorpe decided that if he read some of this book before heading to bed, he would have the book on his mind, and not the day's events. At least he could hope that would be the result. In the past, that strategy had not usually worked, but he kept trying.
When the door chime sounded, he said, almost by instinct, "Come."
Matsubara walked into the room as the doors slipped open. She was carrying a padd, clutched against her chest as was her custom. She walked into the sitting area of the quarters, where she saw the captain seated and holding a hardcover book on his lap. "What are you reading?"
"Palavar," the captain said.
"Oh man," Matsubara remarked. "I recall reading that in school." Without even being asked, she sat down beside the captain on the small sofa.
"Actually, this is the fictionalized account of the man. It's still pretty fascinating, how a man could appear, in Ethiopia in his case, and claim to be a new prophet of god, to spread the word of god in a technological era. The hatred, the derision, directed at him was quite intense, and yet, he did not waver in his beliefs."
"I still remember that line, how the Moslems said it was heresy that god would send another prophet, and then Palavar condemned them by asking how dare they speak for god. There was something about that line. I paraphrase it poorly."
"Yes, it's a line that stands out. I recall the line from when I first read it. I don't know now if he said it before or after he entered Mecca, which I believe was after it was rebuilt after being destroyed by the Israeli nuclear weapon. I haven't got there yet."
"Before."
"Thanks," Thorpe said as he closed the book and put it on the side table. Then he turned back to duty as he added, "I gather this is not a social call, not if you came with a padd."
"No, I came with the results of my research. What happened on Charamand has happened before, and the situation is so similar that I have little doubt it was the same kind of device, built, perhaps, by the same race."
"Where and when did it happen?"
"Sixty-one years ago, on the Odonan planet of Norg." That, Thorpe thought, would explain Dewuchun's partial recollection.
Thorpe took the padd from the science officer, and scrolled through the rather meagre contents of the file. In essence, all the information available was that, for an unexplained reason, a mining community on some remote, lightly-populated planet vanished without a trace. An Odonan starship did the same thing that the Athena was preparing to do, to investigate what happened. "According to this," the captain said, "the entire population of the town, twelve thousand in all, was lost, as were two officers from the ship. They were never recovered."
"But the implication was that they went somewhere, that they were not simply killed."
"A giant transporter?"
"That's the implication, although I can't be sure."
"But a transporter to where?" Thorpe asked.
"That I can't answer," Matsubara said, as she looked over the contents herself. "I'm also not sure of the role that the ship played. It appears that the Odonans have not fully disclosed what happened at Norg, including what was done by the investigating ship, the Prodakh." "I believe that was the ship commanded at the time by Colonel Chan's mother, Counselor Chiang." "Yes, that's it. Apparently, they had an away team of four members that entered the artifact, and two did not return. I get the feeling that one of the two that survived actually went to the other side, and somehow got back. However, any line that says that clearly has been deleted." "I see," Thorpe said.
"Unfortunately, this is heavily censored. There's a lot here that hasn't been said. I think that the Odonans have classified what happened on Norg, and they have let this information out perhaps in case it should happen somewhere else. By accessing this information, we might tip them off."
"That's possible." Matsubara skipped to the end of the data, and showed Thorpe the current status of the planet Norg. "The Odonans were forced to abandon it, and closed that planet to all approaches. It's marked as a closed world, and nobody is allowed to approach. It's not even listed as class M anymore, and it appears that... something happened to render it uninhabitable."
"Personally, I'd never heard of Norg before."
Thorpe shut off the padd and put it on the side table as well He remained seated with Matsubara beside him, looking forward and trying to think how to proceed with this new information. Finally, the woman asked, "Are you concerned?"
"I'm worried. If this is similar to what the Odonans dealt with, then what they learned might help us avoid the mistakes that the missing away team made."
"We should contact them. Maybe they'll give more information if they realize that this phenomenon has repeated."
"That I can't be sure of," Thorpe remarked. "But at least we'll know to approach this very carefully, and not take chances. If this is true and one did go to the other side-whatever that is-and come back, I'd like to talk to him, since it means that the people of Adamsburg might not be truly lost."
The conversation soon turned, as they put out of their minds the situation they were approaching because they could do nothing about it now. Thorpe could have contacted the Odonans for more information on what happened at Norg, but given the distance, they would not be able to have a conversation because of the time lag. On a starship, the crew got used to the simple fact they could not really begin to solve a problem they had to deal with until they arrived at the problem. Until that time, it was better not to fret or worry over the event and its causes unduly.
Matsubara turned to look at the captain-and her friend from their days in the Academy, which was how she was seeing him now-and asked, "So, how do you think things have gone so far?"
Thorpe hesitated for a moment, saying, "Now, there's a question out of the blue."
"Yeah, perhaps. The situation on Charamand will occupy us full-time shortly. Dwelling on it now will not do a thing to help us."
"You are, of course, right, but still..."
Matsubara grinned, and asked, "You haven't answered my question."
"About how things are going?"
"Yeah. Is this where you envisioned yourself being one day?"
Thorpe looked around the quarters, the captain's quarters. He was the commanding officer of an impressive starship, and although the Dominion War was on-going around him, he really did not feel that the war involved him personally. The Athena was not a fighting ship, but an exploration ship. Even so, where he was now was not fully where he once expected to be. "Yeah, you could say that, to some extent. I would have to admit that I never thought you'd be here with me, though."
"Really? Isn't that what the captain of a starship can do, get the crew he wants? I mean, upto that time, our relationship-our friendship, if you will-had not really gotten out in the open. You actually convinced Captain Berricks that I would be the right science officer on a ship like the Athena."
"But it didn't take long for him to realize what I had done, and then it was too late."
"Unfortunately, the Borg attack on Earth, and the death of Captain Berricks followed soon after that."
"Yes, true," Matsubara replied. "At least you did keep your promise."
"What promise?"
"That when you'd get your own ship, you'd have me on board as a science officer."
"Really?" Thorpe asked, as he again looked around. "I made no such promise."
"Don't you remember?"
"No."
Matsubara cleared her throat, and explained, "It was during that field trip to Antarctica. It something like fifty below outside, and we were huddled together, and you mentioned something about a planet that was like this, and how one day we could explore it together."
Thorpe hesitated for a moment, and said, "Well, we might have expressed a desire to one day explore together, or it might've been a wish. I don't think as a cadet, I was thinking too much about putting together a command crew. Come to think of it, I seem to remember something about such a planet. Do you remember the name of the planet?"
"It started with 'X.' Of that, I'm pretty sure."
"Xerxes VIII," Thorpe finally said.
"Yes, Xerxes VIII. You said that was where your father had his survival training in his days in the Academy."
"I don't remember telling you that at that time."
"You don't remember? Remember I was surprised that the Academy would abandon cadets on such a world for survival training."
"Yes, the year after my father was there, twenty cadets died when something went wrong during their training. After that point, the Academy did not use Xerxes VIII anymore. I guess that I had always wanted to go to the planet, and see what it was like."
"Yeah, and you said that if something like that happened again, you wouldn't abandon me. You would make sure I was never abandoned on a world like that."
"I really said that?"
Matsubara said, somewhat smugly, "Yes, you really said that."
Thorpe just laughed a little, as he replied, "I think back then, I said a lot of things, impulsive things, rash and youthful kinds of things."
Matsubara almost had this hurt expression on her face. "You don't mean it?"
The man just hesitated. As a captain, he knew that a situation might come up one day when he would be forced to leave behind a crewmember, simply because recovering him was impossible, or would result in too great a cost to the crew. Captains sometimes had to order people to their deaths, either through an action or even inaction. He just hoped that he never would face such a situation, and he especially hoped it would never occur with his science officer. Sitting in his quarters like this, with the woman seated beside him, it was hard to fully accept that he was the captain and she was a subordinate officer. Right now, in these quarters, at this moment, they were just two friends, two very good and close friends who talked often about a future both in Starfleet and after it. Someday, Thorpe knew, there would be a time after Starfleet. He just could not see himself ever sitting behind a desk doing whatever it was that admirals did. At this very moment, he and Matsubara were equals, and did not have to think of responsibilities and duties. It was always on the back of Thorpe's mind that one day the true hierarchical relationship between them could lead to the very situation that he was dreading. Through the history of Starfleet, there were a large number of cases of commanding officers in relationships with subordinate officers, and some of those relationships started before they got into that position. Thorpe had read some of the reports, and wished he could talk to some of the officers involved. He wanted to know how they dealt with the fear that he had, that one day he would have to send Matsubara into a situation that put her at risk. Maybe it would be accidental, or maybe he could never have anticipated the chain of events that would lead to the undesirable situation. Maybe, someday, he would have to leave her behind. He wondered how he would react. Could he do it? Could he live with himself afterwards? It was not easy.
The woman finally spoke up, saying, again, "You don't mean it?"
"What?" Thorpe said, his mind jolted back from its string of thoughts.
"You were lost there."
"Was I?"
"Thinking of the distress call from Charamand?"
"That's part of it."
Teasingly, Matsubara said, "You still haven't answered the question. Would you leave me behind?"
"Are you expecting a simple yes or no answer?"
"Well, that would be nice."
"And you know I can't answer it that way."
Matsubara thought about that for a moment, thinking about her own concerns with her relationship with the captain. She knew, and she had the feeling the crew knew, that the relationship was not somehow improper because it started when they were both cadets, and both equal with no idea of what was to come. It was... different, but somehow, Matsubara wondered about how the relationship might be perceived by others. She was always concerned about favouritism, and that Thorpe might issue orders differently because of the relationship, and her association with him. She hated that. She hated any implication of favouritism, which was why she went to such lengths to keep the relationship subdued, more on the level of friends than lovers, although deep in her mind it was always more than just friends. Leaning over, she kissed the man briefly, and then stood up, saying, "We'll, I'd better get going. I can't let the rumours start by staying in your quarters too long, and besides, we both need sleep. Tomorrow could be a long day."
"Agreed."
For now, the question was left unanswered.
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