Breakdowns

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  The woman who answered the door was, unlike the house, bigger than Gomez had been expecting. She had only seen Christa Duffy on a viewscreen, with nothing to really give her scale, so she hadn’t been expecting someone so dauntingly tall. Of course, Kieran wasn’t exactly short, either, and he had to get it from somewhere.

  “Sonya! It’s good to finally meet you!” She immediately drew Gomez into a hug that was, in its own way, as all-encompassing as one of Belinda’s. “You’re as beautiful as Kieran said.”

  Tears welled up in Gomez’s eyes. “So are you.” Christa had the same kind brown eyes, the same warm smile, and the same mousy brown hair as her son, though the latter was flecked with gray (“Less than you’d expect,” Kieran had said once, “but more than she’d like”).

  After breaking the embrace, but still clutching to Gomez’s arms, Christa said, “I’m so glad you came.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner, but I needed—”

  Letting go of her arm with one hand that she held up in admonishment, Christa said, “I understand. Besides, plenty of people have been here. Kieran’s sister Amy has been by so much she might as well move back in. Some of your crewmates have been by, and some of your old friends from the Enterprise, including that nice Mr. O’Brien and his family.”

  Gomez smiled. Why does it not surprise me that the chief stopped by?

  “And I got a very nice letter from Fabian Stevens before he went off on a trip somewhere.”

  That made Gomez flinch. She hadn’t even thought about Fabian. He must be hurting in his own way as much as I am. To her shame, she realized that she not only didn’t know where he had gone for his trip, she didn’t even realize he had gone on one in the first place. In fact, she didn’t have the first clue as to where any of her surviving shipmates were. Vaguely she recalled P8 Blue saying something after the service about bringing her larvae home, but aside from that…

  “And of course, Captain Gold is here now.”

  Were Christa not still holding her arm, Gomez might have stumbled. That bastard is here?How dare he show his face in this house?

  “He brought the Federation Medal of Honor they gave Kieran, and—Oh, but where are my manners? Come in, please. Let me show you the house.”

  Christa tried to lead her in, but Gomez started to move backward. “Maybe it’s best if I—”

  Then the captain himself appeared behind Christa in the doorway. “Gomez. Good to see you. I was starting to get worried.”

  Just standing there, like nothing happened.“I don’t have anything to say to you,” she said coldly.

  Gold flinched, as if he’d been slapped. Good, Gomez thought.

  Christa looked back and forth between the two of them. “Am I missing something?”

  “If you are, Ms. Duffy, so’m I. Gomez, what’s the—”

  As they had with Belinda in the attic, the words suddenly came pouring out of Gomez’s mouth. “It’s all your fault! You killed him, you son of a bitch, and then you have the gall to show your face here!”

  “Gomez—”

  “You murdered him! He wanted to marry me, and you killed him, and you wouldn’t even tell me!”

  “Marry you?”

  Gomez had no idea whether it was Gold or Christa who had made the exclamation, nor did she care. “I will not stay here with you, so either get the hell out of this house, or I’m leaving.”

  “I’ll decide who stays in my house, Sonya, if you don’t mind,” Christa said with a steely tone.

  Realizing she’d overstepped herself, Gomez quickly said, “I’m sorry, Christa. I didn’t mean—”

  “To tell a woman who just lost her son how to run her own house? To insult a guest of that house?”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “My son is dead, Sonya. It wasn’t enough that I had to bury my husband, now I’ve buried my son. You don’t know what that’s like, nor how much you need family and friends who understand at a time like this.”

  I know now, Gomez thought, but wisely did not say aloud. “You weren’t there, Christa, you don’t know what he did.”

  “He didn’t do anything Kieran didn’t ask to do,” Christa said.

  That brought Gomez up short. “What?”

  In as gentle a voice as Gomez had ever heard Gold use, the captain said, “Duffy volunteered to disarm the device. And he knew full well what that meant.”

  “No. You’re lying. He wouldn’t have done that. He asked me to marry him.”

  “As God is my witness, I had no idea. He didn’t tell me that.”

  Gomez turned and ran into the yard, screaming, “You’re lying!”

  She ran around to the back of the house, all the way to the big oak that was the centerpiece of the large lawn, collapsing onto the well-manicured grass and leaning against the massive tree. At waist-height, she could see some bark scarring—a remnant of a German shepherd named Alexander, the so-called “Houdini dog” of Kieran’s youth. They could, of course, have repaired the bark, but Kieran had asked to leave it there as a memento of Alexander’s many escapes from his tether to that tree.

  To her lack of surprise, Gold had followed her. He was dressed, she noted, in civilian clothes that only served to add to the grandfatherly mien he usually carried. All the better to fool you with, she thought.

  “I’m not lying, Sonya,” he said.

  She looked up at his blue eyes, which were, maddeningly, filled with sorrow and compassion. He had never called her by her first name before that she could remember.

  “Even if he did volunteer, how could you—”

  “Let him? It was his job, Gomez. Yes, you two were a couple—and more than that, apparently, if he actually popped the question—but that had nothing to do with my decision, or his volunteering. I took a helluva gamble even letting you two have that relationship. But I assumed that you were professionals and understood the risks of what might happen. If you did, then what the hell are you complaining to me for? And if you didn’t, then I question whether you belong in Starfleet.”

  Gomez wanted to object, to ask how he dared to question her commitment to Starfleet—but she found she could not. He’s right, she finally admitted to herself.

  “He didn’t tell you he proposed?”

  Gold shook his head. “He came to me with his farkochte plan to stop Wildfire after you gave me your farkochte plan for getting the engines restarted. You came up precisely once in the conversation. You know what he said? ‘Don’t tell Sonya.’”

  Tears now streaked from Gomez’s eyes. “Why didn’t he—”

  “He said you had enough on your mind. Which, considering you were about to run the world’s fastest warp-core installation and startup, was not an irrelevant concern.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “Why did he—”

  Unbidden, Belinda’s words came back to her: “I don’t think you ever met a decision you didn’t like—and didn’t stick with.” More words from the previous day: “You didn’t say yes, so he didn’t have anything to live for.”

  And something Geordi La Forge said on the Enterprise over a decade ago: “You’re awfully young to be so driven.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Frowning, Gold asked, “What is it?”

  “He thought I refused.” Gomez felt like a black hole had opened in her stomach. Her breaths came shallowly. “It’s my fault. I didn’t give him an answer right away, and he assumed that meant no.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, sir, it isn’t.” Gomez clambered to an upright position. “I’ve always been—well, decisive. When I decided to go into Starfleet, I didn’t rest until I qualified for the entrance exams. At the Academy, I was determined to be on the Enterprise, so I made sure I was the best. When I met Kieran, I was the one who made the first move, and when I got the promotion and the transfer to the Oberth, I was the one who broke it off. For that matter, us getting together again after Sarindar was my decision.” She looked away. After spendi
ng the last several weeks hating this man for something that was, in fact, her own fault, she found herself unable to look him in the eye. “When Kieran proposed, I couldn’t give him an answer. I was indecisive. He must’ve interpreted it as a negative answer, and—and he volunteered to die instead.”

  “Gomez, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  She looked up sharply at Gold, who was regarding her with an expression that reminded her frighteningly of the one her father used to have when she and Belinda got themselves into trouble as kids.

  “Yes, Duffy volunteered for the suicide mission, but he was the only one who could perform it. He had started the deactivation sequence of the Wildfire device back on the Orion; if anybody else went, they’d have had to start from scratch. It’s pretty damned unlikely that anyone else would have made it. Hell, the only other people who knew the codes were me and Corsi, and neither of us were in any shape to do so.”

  Involuntarily, Gomez looked down at Gold’s left hand. The doctors on the Mjolnir, the ship that rescued the da Vinci after they escaped Galvan VI’s atmosphere, had given him a perfect biosynthetic hand that looked just like the old one, but at the time of the mission, Gold had been literally crippled. As for Corsi, she had still been partially paralyzed.

  “Besides, if Duffy hadn’t done it, he still would be dead. And so would the rest of us. The engines didn’t come online until after the point of Wildfire’s detonation. You, me, Duffy, Stevens, Corsi, Blue, Ina, Wong, Lense, and the rest of us would be bits of protomatter making up whatever it is Galvan VI would get turned into by that damned thing—and so would the Ovanim.”

  Gold put his artificial left hand on Gomez’s shoulder, and reduced his tone to a near whisper. “Sonya, Kieran didn’t do what he did because he wanted to die. He did what he did because he wanted you—and everyone else on the ship, and the Ovanim—to live.”

  Now Gomez did look David Gold in the eyes. What she saw was a man in tremendous pain for the losses he suffered. She knew that he blamed himself as much as she blamed herself—maybe more so. But he also knew what a fool’s game that ultimately was.

  “It’s easy to assign blame,” he said. “It’s hard to go on living. It’s been my impression that Commander Sonya Gomez is the best there is at doing what everyone thinks is hard and making it look easy.”

  Do I want to do that? Do I want to go back to the da Vinci without Kieran—and with constant reminders of his death around me? It would be easier to just go home and write up that transfer request. No one would think ill of me.

  In her mind, she heard Belinda’s voice: “Make a damn decision, already, Ess!”

  “I’ll have to go on living, then,” she said.

  “Good. Now let’s go back inside. There’s an old woman in there who had to bury her son. Having done that myself all too recently, I know this isn’t a good time for her to be alone.”

  Gomez saluted. “Yes, sir, Captain.”

  He smiled, apparently understanding what she meant by the anachronistic gesture.

  “Apology accepted, Gomez. Let’s go.”

  Chapter

  5

  The next several days were a whirlwind of activity for Gomez and Gold both. They had twenty-five vacancies to fill—in addition to those who died, Lieutenant Ina Mar had requested a transfer and Medtech John Copper opted to retire. The surprise, Gomez had thought upon reading Ina’s transfer request, is that she’s the only one. As for Copper, he’d been making noises about retiring for as long as Gomez had been on the da Vinci, so that wasn’t much of a shock, either.

  The last time a member of the command staff died in action, Gold had left it to Captain Scott to recommend a replacement—he suggested Gomez—and both captain and first officer were happy to solicit another recommendation from Scotty to replace Duffy.

  Even with fobbing replacing Kieran off on someone else, Gomez found that Gold’s prediction was holding true: It was hard. Every requisition, every upgrade, every crew replacement was a reminder of what they had lost—of what she had lost.

  Is it going to be the same? She’d been on the da Vinci for almost a year, yet the place felt as much like a family as her own home. More, sometimes, she amended, thinking of Belinda and mami’s latest spat.

  In fact, Gomez had spent most of her time leading up to the da Vinci’s relaunch at Gold’s house in New York. They were able to do their jobs as efficiently from there as from Starfleet Headquarters, and it enabled them to do so away from the hustle and bustle. They both made regular trips to McKinley Station, particularly Gomez, making sure that the upgrades that she and Kieran had been talking about for months were being integrated. Gomez was especially glad to see that several modifications were based on Kieran’s ideas for the Roebling, the ideal S.C.E. ship he’d been designing in his spare time. In addition, the computer was getting a massive upgrade courtesy Soloman’s designs, which the Bynar—having returned from a mission to Vrinda with Carol Abramowitz and Bart Faulwell—was also overseeing personally.

  Yes, it was hard, but it was made easier by doing much of the work from the Gold-Gilman residence. After weeks of barely eating, Gomez found that working proximate to Rachel Gilman’s kitchen enabled her to make up for that, with interest. I think I’ve gained a kilo a day since we came back from Portland.

  One afternoon, Scotty contacted them with his recommendation for a new second officer. “Also, you’ll be happy to know that the da Vinci ’ll be ready two days ahead of schedule.”

  “Good,” Gold said.

  Scotty shook his head. “Good isn’t the word for it, lad. In my day, it’d take six months to do a repair job like she needed, not a few weeks—and we probably would a just scrapped the lot and started from scratch.”

  Gold snorted. “‘Your day,’ hell. Five years ago.”

  Gomez smiled wryly. “Nothing like fighting a war against a technologically superior foe to motivate you to improve your repair efficiency.”

  “Aye, more’s the pity. In any event, I think you’ll like the lad I’m recommendin’. He’s a Tellarite, name’a Mor glasch Tev. He’s as good as they come.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Gold said.

  “I know that name.” Gomez thought for a moment, then the memory came bubbling to the surface. “Isn’t he the one who wrote that monograph on methods of penetrating cloaking shields last year?”

  “Aye, and the one on miniaturizin’ transporters.”

  “Sounds like a winner,” Gold said.

  They discussed some other business, then Scotty signed off. Rachel Gilman then came in from the hallway—they had been working in the study upstairs.

  “So how soon before you sally forth again?”

  “In three days,” Gold said.

  “Perfect. I have an idea.”

  Gomez smiled. Rachel having an idea usually meant that said idea would be implemented, one way or the other.

  When she gave her idea, Gomez’s smile widened further.

  * * *

  The day before the da Vinci was to be released from McKinley Station, Gold tethered Freser to the dogwood in preparation for several arrivals. He and Gomez had sent out messages to the remaining fifteen Galvan VI survivors who were remaining aboard the da Vinci, and one by one, they all beamed or shuttled or walked up to the house in the Bronx.

  Freser tried desperately to leap about, but the leash was intact. Obviously, Gomez thought with a pang of sadness, he’s not a Houdini dog like Alexander.

  Some were dressed in uniform—like Soloman, who had beamed down from McKinley after giving the new computer a final once-over. Others were in civilian garb—like Carol Abramowitz, who had come straight to the Bronx from her trip to Pacifica. Both she and Bart Faulwell were looking especially pleased with themselves as they listened to Fabian Stevens tell of his adventures doing a cargo run with Domenica Corsi and her father. Wonder what Fabe’s gonna say when he finds out the species of our new second officer, Gomez thought, and only wincing a litt
le at the thought of Kieran’s replacement.

  Very few were listening to Fabian, however, as they were either pestering Pattie Blue with questions about the rather historic rediscovery she’d made on the Nasat homeworld of a sentient, plant-based species living on the planet’s surface, or pestering Robin Rusconi about her rather bizarre experience with an interdimensional portal on the moon.

  Before long, though, Gold called the “meeting” to order. Which, in practical terms, meant that everybody stood on the lawn and faced Gold as he addressed them.

  “We’ve been through hell and back—almost literally. A lot of good people gave their lives. Other ships have survived disasters like this only to see the remaining crew split up, sent to the nine winds. But that’s not the way we do things around here. We’re the S.C.E., after all, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that, when we see something that’s broken, we not only fix it, we make it better. I have every faith that you’ll do the same for the da Vinci tomorrow when we take her back out.

  “But we’re also a family—a big family, and believe me, I know from big families.” Several people chuckled at that. “And I was reminded of something recently. In times like this, families come together. So I’ve brought you all here today, on the eve of our going back out into space, to reassure you of that, and to invite you all to join me in celebrating our lives. We’ve had time to mourn our losses—it’s time we started moving forward. Now before we take this party inside, I want to deal with some business.”

  That was Gomez’s cue to step forward with the large box that Starfleet Command had sent. “Promotion time came and went while we were in drydock,” Gomez said, “so we’ve got a few to take care of.” She reached into the box and pulled out a hollow rank pip. “First of all, to Nancy Conlon, I hereby promote you to the rank of lieutenant junior grade, and also officially give you the position of chief engineer of the da Vinci.”

  Conlon had stepped forward to accept the pip, but stopped short at the second part. “What? You’re making me chief? Sir, I’m flattered, but—”