Chapter
1

Commander Sonya Guadalupe Gomez was glad her shore leave had come to its inevitable end. It wasn't that she hadn't had a good time on Recreational Station Hidalgo, it was that she had had almost too good a time. Her body was sore from dancing and her head a bit achy from imbibing liquids that were definitely not made with synthehol. As she threw her belongings into a small knapsack in preparation for the da Vinci's arrival that afternoon, she glanced over at the bed in her small tourist quarters. She had slept alone the entire week, but not for lack of the opportunity to do otherwise.

She had spent much of her shore leave with Tobias Shelt, a dashing, live-by-his-wits trader who had made showing her a good time his own personal mission over the last seven days. Together they had taken in all that Hidalgo had to offer, which wasn't all that much compared to a modern, sophisticated pleasure center. Gomez had chosen Hidalgo over someplace like Risa for two reasons: first, her parents had met on the station a few decades back and kept nagging her to go there, and second, the station had been preserved in pretty much the same condition as it had been when her parents had been there, and it had been quaint and old-fashioned even back then.

That meant food slots rather than replicators, that meant com units on the walls rather than a combadge communications link, that meant entertainment that was live rather than holographic, and most important, it meant a break from the cutting-edge technology Gomez faced every day as an engineer assigned to an S.C.E. ship.

Gomez had met Tobias Shelt her first evening on the station when she was moping over the fact that her original plan called for her to be sharing this vacation with Wayne "Pappy" Omthon. She had intended to spend her next leave with the owner of the freighter Vulpecula ever since they spoke shortly before Captain Gold's granddaughter's wedding on Earth. Unfortunately, the Vulpecula's last cargo damaged the ship and Wayne was currently on Lissep engaged in a massive legal and mechanical hassle to get his ship fixed and get the client who did the damage to pay for it.

Of course, she didn't find this out until she had already arrived at Hidalgo and found a harried but very apologetic recorded message from Wayne explaining the problem.

Things looked up immediately when she met Tobias. He was polite, gentlemanly, and not at all insistent on the bedroom being a part of how they spent their time together. An old-fashioned guy to go with an old-fashioned station. He was attractive, interesting, made her laugh, and was clearly waiting for some sign from her before he took the relationship further than dinner and dancing. Why, Sonya thought, didn't I give him that sign, or just drag him back to my cabin? Ten years ago I would have. Even five. Even two.

Her packing done, Gomez double-checked around the cabin to make certain she hadn't left anything behind, wondering while she did so if all the grieving and growing she had done since the death of Kieran Duffy had forced her to leave so much of herself behind that she wasn't even the same person anymore. She'd been having those thoughts ever since their odd adventure with parallel universes on Deep Space 9 and she briefly encountered an alternate Kieran.

It made it damn near impossible to know what to do with poor Tobias.

A loud chirping suddenly sounded, breaking her reverie and doing nothing to reduce the ache in her head. Gomez recognized the archaic beep as the sound of the wall-mounted communicator. She walked over to it and flipped the On switch. The burst of static that came out turned the minor throbbing in her temples into a full-blown headache.

The static died down for a moment and a soft, officious voice confirmed her identity, then asked if she would hold on for a moment. Static filled the room again, making Gomez wonder if she had time before the da Vinci arrived to stop by the medical suite for a headache cure.

"Commander Gomez," a strong, feminine voice said, "I'm Director Jerifer of Recreation Station Hidalgo." There was no static, but a sudden silence spoke to Gomez of a communications malfunction. Then there was static again, and then Jerifer was back on, her words barely audible. "The station has been experiencing a series of unexplained malfunctions, including in communications."

Gomez flipped the return switch. "I hadn't noticed," she said. The communicator went dead again. She waited, and Jerifer's voice came back on. "Could you come up to control and take a look at our communications array? You're S.C.E., right?"

Gomez sighed. The da Vinci was due to pick her up in a few hours anyway, so getting back into harness a little ahead of time wasn't all that much of a problem, and she would rather work than think right now anyway. "Sure!" she said loudly, hoping Jerifer could hear her.

"What?" Jerifer said.

"Sure!" Gomez repeated loudly. "I'll bring my kit."

"Thank y…." Jerifer's voice began, but was drowned out by static. Gomez turned the communicator off and headed for the door, her knapsack on her shoulder. She punched the antique door switch, and the door opened—then, as she tried to walk through it, closed again. Another push of the switch, the door opened and closed very quickly, then opened partway, then closed, then finally opened and stayed that way.

Well, isn't this lovely, Gomez thought. Her head pounded.

It took longer than Gomez had anticipated to reach the control room. The trip there had been more than a little stressful on a couple of levels. The lighting in the corridors had kept switching between blinding brightness and total darkness, turning the corridors into surreal strobe-lit tunnels that made it more than a little difficult to find the turbolift; and when Gomez had finally found it, the voice commands were nonfunctional, as was the wall communicator. She had been about to step out and ask someone where the control room was when Tobias Shelt stepped in.

"Hi," he said to her, and flashed her a wide happy smile. "I was just looking for you. Today's your last day, right?" Gomez saw his face fall as he picked up that she had her knapsack with her. "Sonya," he said in a sad, scolding tone, "you weren't leaving without saying good-bye?"

Copyright © 2005 by Paramount Pictures