Prynn lifted her eyes and met Vaughn’s gaze, letting the tension and ire drain from her. “Yes, sir,” she said, her tone even, responding to him as though he had just ordered her to take the ship to warp.

“Do you understand me?”

“I do, sir, yes,” she said, and then risked adding, “and you’re right.”

Vaughn’s eyes held hers for a long time. He can go either way,she thought. He could believe what she had said, or he could think she was only telling him what he wanted to hear. She pushed the thoughts away, for fear that they would appear on her face. She piloted herself now, and her emotions, and she had never confronted a more difficult test of her flight skills. She fought the controls to keep her course straight and true.

Vaughn relented. “Good,” he told her. “I’m glad.” He turned and headed for the door. She did not turn her head, but allowed herself to slump slightly. She felt completely drained of energy. She heard the door slide open, but Vaughn’s footfalls stopped before they reached the corridor. “Prynn?” he said, and the command in his voice had gone. Regardless, she stood up and turned, facing him across the room.

“Sir?”

“I amsorry,” he said. “For everything.”

“I know,” she told him. He regarded her for a moment more, and she hoped he would not say anything else. Finally, he turned on his heel and left. The door slid closed after him.

He’s sorry,she thought, staring at the closed door. For everything.And she found that she believed it, believed that Vaughn was indeed sorry for all that had happened. But it’s not enough,she thought. It will never be enough.

Part Two

To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,

“ULYSSES”

7

The universe is filled with unimagined wonders.

Elias Vaughn stood in the aft section of Defiant’s bridge, thinking this as the clatter of refit and repair work surrounded him. Several of his alpha-shift command crew—Bowers, ch’Thane, and Prynn—worked at their respective stations, confirming the modifications and repairs to their equipment. Half a dozen other technicians from Nog’s engineering team sat, stood, and lay all around the bridge, their hands buried inside the ship’s infrastructure. Nog himself was not present, though Vaughn occasionally heard his voice over the comm system as he called up from engineering, coordinating efforts with his personnel on the bridge. The electronic squeals and quavers of diagnostic sequences filled the room like an atonal symphony, with the thuds and clanks of equipment being moved, along with the many voices, providing accompaniment.

Vaughn studied a monitor in the aft bulkhead of the bridge. He watched as a bright green line drew a rough ellipse on the black screen, weaving through white pinpoints that represented stars, and beginning and ending at a blue disk designated BAJORAN WORMHOLE/GAMMA QUADRANT TERMINUS. This marked the course Defiantwould take on its three-month mission. Vaughn had spent hours plotting various routes through unexplored sectors, attempting to maximize the number of civilizations and interesting celestial objects the crew might encounter, while keeping the ship as far from Dominion space as possible. He had solicited feedback from Colonel Kira, as well as from Science Officer ch’Thane. He had even spoken with Quark—in general terms, and without providing any of the proposed courses to him—about what he had heard regarding the various sectors under consideration. Quark had professed to being delighted to help the station’s new executive officer, but had also managed to elicit a promise from Vaughn to bring him back something “worthy” in return.

All told, little was known about the areas Defiantwould be traveling. Before contact with the Dominion had made such voyages impossible, explorers from the Alpha Quadrant had managed to chart only a relatively small volume of the Gamma Quadrant. Federation astronomers had carried out some rudimentary star charting, of course, and several reports and rumors about various trading factions had come to light, but not much more than that. In the end, Vaughn had decided on a course that would take Defiantthrough areas with both a large number of main-sequence stars and some identified celestial rarities—a dual binary system here, a cluster of brown dwarf stars there.

The port door to the bridge whispered open, and Vaughn looked over to see Ensign Roness enter. The tall, svelte blonde carried a padd in one hand and a spanner—a blue, two-pronged tool with an elongated handle—in the other. She paced over to the flight-control console, where she conferred with Prynn. Roness would function as the beta-shift conn officer during the voyage. Right now, Vaughn had assigned her the task of collating the refit and repair data for Defiant.

Vaughn tapped a control below the display, and a series of red arcs appeared at intervals along Defiant’s course. The arcs, looping away in both directions from the green ellipse at various points, symbolized the paths of the probes the crew would launch throughout the mission, a supplement to the readings taken from the ship. As best he could, Vaughn would see to it that he and his crew learned as much as possible during their expedition. With luck, they would discover marvels.

From the time he had been a boy, gazing up at the night sky on Berengaria VII, Vaughn had apprehended the vastness of space. And with the enthusiasm and credulousness of youth, he had readily envisioned himself traveling the great expanses in search of wondrous beings and places. He had learned all he could about Earth’s eminent explorers—Leif Eriksson, Ferdinand Magellan, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Neil Armstrong, Jonathan Archer, and so many others—and dreamed about the days when he would join their ranks. Back then, he could not have known that circumstance and a talent for intelligence would long deny him the opportunity to explore.

Now, a year past his centenary birthday, Vaughn recalled the aspirations of his childhood. It amazed and gratified him that they had somehow endured, despite his casual disregard of them through the decades. He looked at the representation of the path Defiantwould take beginning six days from now—at the path hewould take—and renewed his belief that the universe would never exhaust its treasures.

“Sir?” a woman’s voice said behind him. Vaughn turned to Ensign Roness. She no longer carried the spanner, but she still held the padd in one hand.

“Yes, Ensign?” Vaughn said. He tried to remember the officer’s first name—he was still getting to know the crew—and thought Tildaand Gretabefore recalling that it was Gerda.