“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Kirk said, even though, on some level, he had always known that he would.

“Your intentions don’t really mean much, do they?” Antonia said. “Because you think it’s more important for you to go back to Starfleet than it is not to hurt me. You told me that you would never go back. You promised me.”

“I promised that we wouldn’t have a long-distance, part-time relationship,” Kirk said, defensive despite knowing what he was doing to this woman that he loved-that he loved, but not enough.

“No,” Antonia said. “You promised me that you wouldn’t go back to Starfleet.”

Kirk raised his arms and then let them fall back to his sides. “At the time, I meant that,” he said. “I really didn’t believe that I’d ever want to do something like this, but things change.”

“That doesn’t make your promise any less of a lie,” Antonia told him.

“I didn’t lie,” Kirk bristled. “I believed what I told you at the time.”

“A promise isn’t something with a time limit on it,” Antonia said. “What good does it do for somebody to promise one thing one minute that they believe and intend to live up to, if in the next minute they decide that they’ve changed and so now the promise no longer applies?” She strode over to where she’d dropped her robe and bent to pick it up. When she stood back up, she said, “You can rationalize this any way you want to, but you lied to me.”

Though he knew it would do no good-he’d always known it-he said, “I can be back in Idaho every night.”

“I know you mean that right now,” she said, “but ‘things change.’” She spat the last words back at him, a rebuke that told him she would never again trust him. “One day you’ll come home from Starfleet to tell me that Harry’s offered you the command of a starship.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Kirk said.

“Sorry,” Antonia said, “but your promises don’t carry a lot of weight with me anymore.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Kirk said, walking toward her, wanting very much to find a way to ease Antonia’s pain. “We can…” The notion of marriage had actually risen in his mind, though he refrained from saying so on the off chance that she might accept.

“We can what?” Antonia asked. “Get married? That’s just a label if there’s no promise to back it up.” She looked down at the robe in her hand for a moment, then threw it back down on the floor and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Kirk asked.

“I’m leaving,” she said from the doorway. “Don’t come after me, don’t try to see me, don’t try to contact me.” She thought for a second and then added, “I’ll move my things out of the house when you’re away during the day at Starfleet.” She said nothing more, but she also didn’t turn and walk away. She stared at him, and Kirk realized that, amidst her hurt and disappointment, some part of her wanted him to protest, to do something that would keep them together. At that instant, Kirk understood that there were things that he could say to Antonia that would begin to put this incident behind them, that would indeed save their relationship.

He said none of those things. Instead, he told her simply, “I’m sorry it has to be like this.”

“You should be,” Antonia said quietly, seeming to deflate before his eyes. Then she turned, took two steps, and started down the stairs. Kirk listened to her footfalls, then heard the front door open and close.

He felt terrible for what he had done, but there had been no choice in the matter. His mistake hadn’t been in returning to Starfleet, but in getting involved so seriously with Antonia in the first place. He had lost sight of the fact that true love had already passed him by and that it would not come his way again. For that, Antonia had paid a hard price.

Kirk never saw her again.

THIRTEEN

2293

Even as the airpod skimmed evenly past fields that looked as though they had until recently been filled with wheat, Scotty sat at an auxiliary panel, checking engine performance. Habits become nature, Jim Kirk thought, recollecting the old Chinese proverb. As though he needed additional proof of the maxim, Chekov sat to his right at the forward console, working the navigational controls. “I thought you were waiting for an exec position to open up,” Kirk said, looking at Pavel. Then he pointed over at Scotty and added, “And I thought you retired from engineering.”

“Ach,” Scotty scoffed in his Gaelic way. “I retired from Starfleet. I’ll always be an engineer.”

“What was I thinking?” Kirk said with a smile. It surprised him how good it felt to be with his two old friends. When he’d made the decision to leave the space service, he’d believed that the time had been right. The Enterprise had been decommissioned, many of his command crew had been ready to go their separate ways, and politics had more than ever insinuated itself into his job, but he’d also felt that he’d needed, in some regard, to get on with his life.

That hadn’t been the first time that Kirk had reached such a point. He’d stepped away from Starfleet once before, retreated to his property in Idaho, and ended up becoming involved with Antonia for two years. He hadn’t found whatever he’d needed at that time, but neither had he found it when he’d gone back to the service.

And so Kirk had decided to try again. After retiring this second time, he’d begun filling his days and nights with many of the activities that he hadn’t had the opportunity to pursue over the years. Doing so had entailed journeying to various unique locations throughout the quadrant, and doing so as a civilian had proven different and interesting in and of itself.

Kirk had enjoyed all that he’d done during the past months, and he fully expected to feel the same about orbital skydiving today. After he’d learned that Scotty and Chekov would be joining him for the Enterprise-B launch tomorrow, he’d decided to invite them along today for his unusual exploit. They’d agreed to survey the landing site this morning, and they would greet him there later in the day for his touchdown.

Their presence in the airpod right now, and the satisfaction Kirk found in simply being with them, underscored how much time he’d spent alone since he’d begun his retirement. He had stayed by himself intentionally, believing that he needed to separate from his old life in order to determine how best to move on from here. But lost amid his frenetic schedule and the solitude he’d sought for self-reflection, he hadn’t realized how much he missed his old friends.

He did now.

Kirk turned and peered out through the forward viewport. In the early morning light, a dirt path passed below the airpod, with freshly reaped fields slipping by on either side of the small craft. Ahead, he saw a slight rise, and atop it, a pair of tall stone markers. “Is that it?” he asked Chekov.

“I think so,” Pavel said, consulting a readout on his panel. “Yes, that should be the western perimeter of the landing zone.”

“Excellent,” Kirk said as the airpod began up the gentle slope. Chekov slowed the craft as they approached the markers, bringing it to a floating stop once they arrived there. “How large is it?” Kirk asked.

“Approximately two kilometers square,” Chekov read from his instruments.

Kirk nodded. “Why don’t you take us to the center of the area?” Chekov operated his controls, and a short time later, he once more brought the craft to a stop, this time setting it down in the panic grass. Kirk stood up, leaned on the console, and peered out left, center, and right. “Doesn’t really look like much, does it?” he said.

“I don’t suppose it has to,” Chekov said, standing up beside him and gazing out.

“It wouldn’t make a bit of difference if this field was made out of Kerlovian foam or cast rodinium,” Scotty said, suddenly appearing between Kirk and Chekov. “If you don’t execute reentry just right, either one would leave you a puddle of flesh.”