Silk whispers over my skin. It feels... different.
I look in the mirror, repress the urge to wriggle, to shift the fit of the robes. I should look good... in theory, I know I look good. I have seen... almost myself... in robes like this before. My Mirror Universe duplicate, in her scarlet robe edged with gold. She may have been a megalomaniac, but she certainly looked good.
I am the same as her... physically. Except for one point, of course. I reach up, touch the scar on my face. My mirror double had no scar.
Perhaps that's a good thing. That scar is part of me, not her, no matter what it looks like. I straighten my back, take an experimental pace towards the mirror, trying to look... I don't know... composed, elegant, self-confident.
Absurd, I think. I'm confident enough, every day - I am a Starfleet Admiral, projecting confidence and authority and leadership is part of my job, and I do my job well. But, of course, when I'm doing that, I'm in uniform, not scarlet and gold Tholian spider silk....
And I have, usually, tools and weapons and armour in my transporter buffer, and my combadge to call my ship - well, I have communications, now, at least. My hand goes to the gold bangle at my left wrist. Commercial-grade wrist comm, and stylish enough not to clash with the outfit... but not much, compared with my combadge, or the phaser pulsewave in my hands, the sharp staticky feeling in my antennae from a personal shield around me -
I shake my head. I don't need these things. I need the communicator, and I need stylish, smart, civilian clothes. And, right now, that's all I need. Right now -
I check the time, on the data stalagmite in the corner of my quarters. Right now, I have maybe five minutes to reach the transporter room, or I'm going to be late.
I get a few glances from passing crew members as I make my way along the corridors. My sandals make an unaccustomed sharp clacking sound on the deckplates as I walk. Flimsy things, those sandals, but they match the robes... I could hardly wear Starfleet-issue boots, could I? Lieutenant Jenro is at the console in transporter room two. He makes no comment on my appearance, just checks the coordinates, and nods confirmation as I step onto the pad -
Blue light sparkles around me, and I am down.
I breathe in, deeply, and look around the quayside. To one side of me, the water, and an old-fashioned Earth sailing ship, masts outlined against a fading dusky sky. The air is cool, by Earth standards - quite comfortable, for me in my thin spider silk robe. To my other side is a long building with artfully dilapidated-looking walls and a high, pitched roof. This part of Earth gets cool enough to see snow, sometimes. The building looks crude, functional and industrial - it was, I gather, a warehouse once. Since the twenty-first century, though, it has housed one of the finest restaurants on the planet, instead.
A voice behind me says, "Hello, Tylha," and I turn.
"Osrin. Hello."
Osrin Corodrev smiles at me. "Dressed to kill, I see." The handsome thaan is wearing a midnight-blue formal business suit, himself; he looks elegant and confident and commanding. Osrin Corodrev. Technically, my great-grand-uncle; an Andorian genetic augment, bred as a weapon by his insane father, kept for decades in suspended animation while the Nausicaans used him and his fellow augments as agents against the Federation - now, liberated, and his own person at last. I've met him a few times since I set him free, and - in spite of his origins - the person he's become is... not a bad one.
"You're looking pretty sharp yourself," I tell him, and I offer him my hand. His smile broadens as he takes it. His father was a miserable self-hating runt of a man, and he edited his child's genome to breed an almost textbook example of a good-looking thaan. It occurs to me, as we walk together to the restaurant's entrance, that - apart from my scars - we look like one half of a charming foursome. The humans might even think of us as an attractive couple. Well, humans don't understand Andorians, never have.
Inside, the place is quiet and simply furnished, a picture of understated good taste. A real human server, not a hologram, shows us to a table - I notice some heads turning among the other diners; they seem to be all human.
"I heard about this place when it celebrated its four hundredth anniversary," says Osrin as we sit down. "That's quite some going, and it still has a great reputation. The cuisine is - kind of traditional, for this part of Earth. But, well, it appeals to me."
"I can understand that," I say, studying the menu. "After all, you know about my tastes in human music, yes?" I don't know if he's heard that my tastes in human music once helped save the galaxy. Or if he'd believe it, if he heard it. I'm still not sure I believe it. Damn Q and all her self-righteous continuum, anyway. "Anything you recommend?"
"I'd start with the seafood terrine," Osrin says. "And I'm having the frikadeller for the main course. Ground meat dumplings, pan-fried... a local speciality. Outstanding."
I nod. "Sounds good to me. And, maybe some local fruit drinks? I won't insist on tunnel wine."
"Go native all the way," says Osrin, "it's the best way." Then, in a lower, more serious voice, he adds, "Thanks for this, Tylha."
"For what? You're taking me out to dinner, remember?"
"Well, I'm glad you're giving me the chance." He gives me a rueful smile. "A quiet evening, out, away from crises and panics and everything...."
Osrin works, now, for the Interstellar Disaster Relief Agency, and in the aftermath of the Iconian war, they are stretched as far as Starfleet itself. "True enough, we've both spent too much time lately sprinting between disasters!" I smile back at him, painfully aware, for once, of the stiffness of the right-hand side of my face. "Not much chance of disasters here, though. Unless they burn the - what was it? The frikadeller?"
"No chance of that. These guys are the best," Osrin assures me. He signals a discreetly hovering server, and we make our choices.
The food is good. This part of Earth, a little peninsula some way to the east of Holst's home country of Ingalan, has a whole new culinary tradition - maybe I'm biased, but it seems better, to me, than traditional Ingalish cooking. And Osrin, when he sets out to be a pleasant dining companion, is good at it. Of course, we can't steer the conversation entirely away from the war and its aftermath - we're both too bound up in it to avoid talking shop - but, even there, we manage to find a lighter side, now and then.
Like, for example, when the conversation turns to the desperate final stages... and Osrin mentions the front man for Temporal Investigations, Lieutenant Crey. "Oh, yes," I say. "The lightweight."
"The... lightweight?" Osrin raises his eyebrows at me.
"Not my choice of terms. Ronnie Grau's. Philip Crey was displaced eighty-some years in time, in the Bozeman incident. Ronnie, though, got herself time-warped three times, and for a total of more than two centuries. So she sent some very indignant memos to Temporal Investigations, asking why an important post was given to, as she put it, 'that freaking lightweight'."
Osrin laughs. "I take it that didn't get her the job?"
"You know Ronnie. Actually, I would trust her with the fabric of the space-time continuum. But public relations? Not a chance."
"I've never actually met Ronnie Grau. If she lives up to the stories you tell about her -"
"Oh, she does. She definitely does."
The frikadeller, accompanied by some unfamiliar but not unpleasant Earth vegetables, lives up to its reputation, too. Afterwards, a sweet fruit-based dessert, and then coffee, an Earth drink like Andorian katheka. Osrin accompanies his with a liqueur, called something like "konyak". I don't.
"You don't drink at all?" Osrin asks. "Alcohol, I mean?"
"Occasionally. Very occasionally. I enjoy a drink, but... I'm not too keen on what it does, if you drink too much."
"No," says Osrin, thoughtfully, "no, I suppose that wouldn't be your style at all. You're a very controlled sort of person. Most of the time, anyway."
"Is that a bad thing?" I prop my elbows on the table, put my chin in my hands, and study his response.
"I've seen you angry, remember," Osrin says.
"Oh, you think you have," I say. "I was low a litre and a half of blood when we first met. When I'm at full strength, then I'll show you angry."
Osrin holds his hands up in mock surrender. "No need! I'll take your word. But you don't just do angry, surely?"
Oh, now. Now, I have to think very carefully about what I say next. Because good food and pleasant conversation and the handsome thaan before me are having an effect, and they might make me say something like... "What else would you like to see?" I ask.
"Well," says Osrin with an honest-to-goodness grin, "now there's a question." Then his face turns deadly serious, and he leans a little way forwards, and his voice drops. "You're a very interesting shen, you know that, Tylha?"
I don't say anything. I just try to give him a cool, controlled, noncommittal smile, and try to hold my antennae very still, so they don't betray the sudden pounding of my heart.
"I mean it," Osrin says. "You're brave, and you're principled, and you're talented. And those things... well, you know how I spent most of my life. People with principles... I've not seen enough of those. But I like them."
"Keep talking," I say. "I like what I'm hearing."
A quick flash of smile. "And it doesn't hurt that you're... well, you look good enough in a Starfleet uniform, but tonight -"
"Even with -?" I raise one finger to my right cheek.
Osrin shakes his head. "I never even noticed it."
Our eyes meet, and I hold his gaze. There is a challenge in it, a challenge which must be met... a challenge that maybe I want to meet -
A discreet electronic chime cuts through the air - and through the moment. I curse, and reach for the comms bangle.
"It's mine, I think." Osrin pulls a sour face. He yanks a tablet communicator from his tunic pocket, looks at the panel, and swears softly. "Damn it. Koneph." His chan-partner. A nice enough guy in his own right... nice enough, maybe, to be my chan-partner too? I mull that one over, while Osrin walks off a little way to take the call. It's the sort of thing... that will take a lot of mulling, I think.
I don't know. This is a side to my life that - I've just not thought of. For such a long time. When did I think about it? The raw young cadet I was, with the messed-up face and the lost homeworld, was never one for dating - and since my Academy days, life has been one long series of breathless crises. When was the last time I went on a date? - if that's what this is. I think that's what it is....
Osrin comes back to the table with a forbidding look on his face. "Damn it," he says, as he sits down. "Just one evening without an urgent problem, is that too much to ask?"
"What's the matter?" I ask him. "Can I help?"
He looks uncertain. "I don't want to worry you -"
"Osrin. Starfleet, remember? We're here to be worried."
He bites his lip, looks away from me, out of the restaurant's big glass window. The evening has turned to night, and I can just make out Earth's moon, its gibbous face shining through the masts of the sailing ship at the quayside. It ought to be... romantic.
"It might be one for the Diplomatic Corps, anyway," Osrin mutters.
"I know Diplomatic Corps. Hell, I'm a member in good standing myself. Ambassadorial credentials and everything. Osrin. What's the problem?"
He takes a deep breath. "Kon's heard from our people on Gimel Vessaris. We still keep in touch." Osrin's fellow augments, now mostly making a living on my former homeworld. "The Nausicaans are making demands. They're claiming the planet is legitimately their territory after all - they've issued demands for the colonists to leave."
My back, and my antennae, stiffen. "That's not true. They have no right -"
"They're claiming differently, apparently. Kon's asking if the colony can get Starfleet or Imperial Guard protection, if - if the worst comes to the worst."
"Damn straight it can." Things are passing through my mind. "We picked up a Nausicaan ship recently, asking for asylum. It was part of the initial raid on Gimel Vessaris - we have its data cores on file, we have all their records. If there was anything legitimate about the Nausicaans' claim to that system, we would know." I push myself away from the table and stand up. "Give me Koneph's comms code, and I'll have a detailed evidence summary for him no later than this time tomorrow. And I'll talk to the Klingon Imperial Liaison, and put some pressure on there, too. This thing is going to go away, Osrin. Be sure of it."
A plan of action is forming in my mind. I know what to do, what data I need from the Yasan T'o's computer core, who to speak to, where to deliver a firm diplomatic protest.
All at once, I am back on solid ground.
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