“Yes?” Vaughn said, looking first at Prynn, and then back out the windows.

“I can keep us low and take the shuttle between them at our current altitude,” Prynn said, “or I can ascend and split them higher up.”

“Why would we fly higher if we didn’t have to?” Vaughn wanted to know.

“Because if we go in low,” Prynn explained, “we’ll have to pass through a divide between the mountains that’s about two hundred meters wide.”

Vaughn slowly nodded his head. Traveling at speed through such a narrow channel, he knew, would leave very little margin for error. “Can you do it?” he asked, peering over at Prynn to judge her response. For the first time, she returned his gaze, a confident expression on her face.

“Yes,” she said seriously. Then, as though remembering that she wished to conduct all contact with him in an exclusively official manner, she added, “Sir.” No animosity or anger entered her mien, only a sense of simple professionalism.

“Then do it, Ensign,” he told her, careful to keep the pain he felt from sounding in his voice, instead treating her as she obviously wanted to be treated. I can’t fault her for that,Vaughn realized; Prynn was giving him precisely what he had demanded from her. The rest, he could only hope, would come in time.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and she turned her attention back to her panel. She tapped at various touchpads on her console, her movements fluid and unrushed, as though she were playing a delicate instrument. The beeps and chirps from her console sounded almost like a melody. Vaughn could feel no changes in the shuttle’s flight, but when he consulted his panel, he could see them on the sensor displays.

As Chaffeeneared the two mountains, Vaughn looked up through the windows. The two peaks seemed to rise above the shuttle like twin giants. The sharp, severe appearances of crags and tors loomed above the shuttle like unspoken threats, promising an unforgiving reception in the event of a piloting mistake. Chaffeeraced toward the area where the two mountains came together, and for just a moment, Vaughn reconsidered his decision and thought about ordering Prynn to take the shuttle higher.

But then it was too late. Chaffeeroared into the chasm between the two huge masses. The sheer rock walls on either side of the shuttle rocketed past, their surfaces a blur. Vaughn heard more electronic tones as Prynn continued to adjust their course. He waited for Chaffeeto emerge from its difficult route, and as the seconds passed, the flight between the mountains seemed to take too long. The image of the chasm dead-ending flew through Vaughn’s mind, the shuttle slamming into the cold rock face at such speed that there would not even be time to realize that death was at hand.

But Prynn would have consulted the scans of the chasm, and if the sensors had not provided a clear picture, if their erratic functioning had not allowed her to see all that she had needed to see, then she would not even have proposed their current course. Vaughn knew that, having great respect for Prynn’s piloting abilities, including whatever judgments those skills required of her. By all accounts, including his own limited observations, she numbered among the best in Starfleet.

Gradually, the shuttle began to shimmy. As the trembling increased, Vaughn examined the sensor displays for the reason. Had an energy discharge from the clouds struck them, as one had struck Defiant,or had Chaffeesuffered some system problem? Vaughn grabbed the edge of his console with both hands, steadying his gaze and allowing him to see the readouts. A strong wind funneled through the chasm, he saw, no doubt buffeting the shuttle and causing its shaking.

And then, in an instant, the shuttle steadied. On either side of Chaffee,the chasm walls fell away, and the shuttle flew out into open air. Below, several smaller peaks rose up, but they were set widely apart, allowing the shuttle to skim through them with ease.

Vaughn peered over at Prynn. Not for the first time, he saw her mother in her—in her delicate but intense features, but also in her temperament. Like Ruriko, Prynn would do what needed to be done, regardless of the personal consequences.

“You’re an excellent pilot,” he told her quietly.

She looked over at him, and for one brief moment, Vaughn felt a sense of connection— personalconnection—with her. Her eyes seemed to clear, and her expression to soften, and he had the sense that she had let go of all that had come between them. He so regretted what he had done, and now might finally be the time to beg for her forgiveness.

But in the next instant, Prynn’s walls had gone back up. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and she looked back down at her console. Vaughn watched her a moment longer, thinking of what he could possibly say to reach her, but then he turned back to his own panel. With an effort, he let it all fade from his mind, concentrating on the sensor readings laid out before him. He and Prynn sat that way for long minutes, the silence keeping them apart.

As Chaffeeeventually neared the end of the mountain range, scans indicated a city ahead. The shuttle had passed several already along its route, all of them devoid of life. Most of the cities had revealed the manner in which they and their inhabitants had fallen, if not the reasons for their demise. One city had consisted of nothing but the blackened husks of buildings, burned and left standing like some charred monument to death. Another had been filled from one end to the other, and beyond the metropolitan limits, with ground vehicles, all pointing away from the city as though the entire population had attempted to flee at once, and then been trapped together in their panic. Another had evidently been under siege, battlements raised along its outskirts in defense against a fleet of military-looking vehicles surrounding it; both the attackers and the attacked had been battered in apparent mutual annihilation. Strangely enough, there seemed to be no indication that the pulse had been the cause of any death or destruction.

The shuttle cleared the last of the mountains and flew in over foothills. The city spread out on the plain beyond, a large, modern collection of buildings that stretched for kilometers. Vaughn consulted the sensors and read no life signs. “Can you bring us in lower?” he asked Prynn.

“Yes, sir,” she said. She nosed Chaffeedownward, leveling off as the shuttle cleared the edge of the city.

Vaughn peered through the windows and saw only stillness. As with the other cities they had passed, scans put the age of this one at hundreds of years, but unlike the others, there were no indications of what had happened to the people who had dwelled there. The buildings looked worn by time and wind, but stood relatively intact. The city appeared untouched by any sort of destruction, and unaffected by any mass exodus. Vaughn could easily visualize entering any of the buildings below to find it looking as though somebody still lived there. Would there be any indications that the inhabitants had abandoned their homes, or that they had been driven out? Or would they appear to have been there one moment, and then unaccountably gone the next? Or would we find the remnants of bodies?Vaughn asked himself, his thoughts running, as they seldom did, to the morbid. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind, but instead, another thought bloomed: all the inhabitants who had lived in the city below were still there, dead by their own hand.

Vaughn gripped the side of his console and took a deep breath. He had to get hold of himself; such thoughts did not serve him or the mission. He looked over at Prynn as she calmly piloted the shuttle. “Take us back up,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Prynn acknowledged, and she quickly pulled Chaffeeback up to the altitude at which they had flown around the planet. Vaughn watched as the ground retreated below, and he felt unexpectedly pleased as the shuttle rose. Concentrating on his odd feelings, he was surprised when Prynn spoke again. “What happened on this planet?” she asked.