forefinger touched the white tip of a wing feather. “And there.” He keyed up a photo of a young woman. Hunter blinked in surprise. It was her great-aunt, perfectly recognizable. She had been almost as elegant and dignified at that age as she had been well into her eighties, when Hunter first met her. Kirk touched the feather in the photograph: a long one, the span of a hand, with a white tip.
“You see what I mean,” he said, nodding toward Hunter’s feather, which, though red, was black-tipped, barely the length of her thumb, and far different in shape.
“Either you’ve got a crappy book, or you missed some spots,” she said. “Wearing one of the primaries just means the eagles have accepted you as a reasoning adult being.” She stabbed at the reader keyboard, brought back the first picture, and traced her finger along the eagle’s crest, which looked darker red through being formed of black-tipped plumage.
“What I wear is a crest feather. It means ... it’s too complicated to explain everything it means. The eagles accept me as a friend.”
Kirk looked at her. “One of the eagles gave you the feather?” He sounded rather stunned.
Hunter scowled again. “That’s right—good gods, what did you think it was? A trophy?” She was repelled by the idea of injuring one of the magnificent, totally alien, gentle, fierce beings. “They’re as intelligent as we are. Maybe more so.”
Kirk sat down slowly. “I think I understand now,” he said. “I apologize. I jumped to conclusions, and I was wrong. Will you accept my apology?”
Hunter nodded curtly. But her dislike began to ease, for she too had jumped to conclusions, and she too had been wrong.
The next day, at Hunter’s court-martial, the senior platoon commander slowly but surely and irrevocably destroyed his credibility with his superiors. Freedom of religion was a touchy subject with Starfleet. They were committed to it on a theoretical basis, but, practically, it was difficult to administer. Aside from the sheer number of belief systems, the rituals ranged from virtually nonexistent to thoroughly bizarre. So when a stiffnecked undergraduate with his first minor command proved himself guilty of harassing a pantheist whose disruption consisted of wearing a feather in her hair, they showed him very little sympathy at all.
Though she often could have got away with it, Hunter never claimed a religious exemption for her other nonconforming behavior. She succeeded in acting as she thought right, and as she wished, through a combination of fast moves, of giving not a damn about demerits, and of pure, solid, unimpeachable excellence in her performance.
She put aside old memories as she materialized on the transporter platform of her own ship. Her senior weapons officer nodded a greeting to her and tossed his long blond hair back off his forehead.
“Hi, Ilya,” Hunter said. “All quiet?”
“I have no complaints,” he said, in his clipped, controlled voice. But a moment later, when they passed the aft viewport, he added, “Except one.”
What?
“Hunter, I would like that damned monster ship off our tail. It makes me very nervous.”
Hunter glanced out the port at the Enterprise , orbiting behind and above them. She laughed. “Ilya Nikolaievich, they’re on our side.”
Mr. Sulu was not above imagining himself truly commanding the Enterprise , not merely the random high- ranking officer of a crew of all of twenty people. Mandala Flynn had beamed down with the last four security officers, to honor her promise to buy their dinner. Sulu hoped he could join her later.
On the darkened bridge, he slid into the captain’s seat and gazed out the viewscreen. The Enterprise was oriented so that, with respect to the ship’s gravitational field, Aleph Prime loomed overhead, a huge shining Christmas tree ornament set spinning, to Sulu’s eyes, by the ship’s motion around it; and then, framed by space and multicolored stars, Aerfen hung suspended. Aerfen, Minerva, grey-eyed Athene, defending battle-goddess.
“’In such likeness Pallas Athene swept flashing earthward,’” Sulu said aloud.
“Hunter toEnterprise , permission to beam aboard?”
Sulu started, feeling the blood rush to his face, but of course she could not have heard him quoting Homer aloud on the bridge of a starship, no one could have heard him; he was all alone.
“ Enterprise, Sulu here, permission granted, of course, Captain.” Sulu called for someone to relieve him, on the double, and hurried to the transporter room.
Hunter glittered into reality. Sulu knew instinctively that she would despise effusion. When she stepped down from the platform, he took her outstretched hand and said his name in response to her own introduction. But he bowed to her as well, just slightly, perhaps a breach of Starfleet protocol, but a gesture of respect in his family’s traditions. She was not as tall as he expected—he had put her in his mind as some overwhelming demigod or giant, and he was rather relieved that her physical presence was not quite what he had imagined. Her hand was hard and firm, with traces of callus on the palm, and a long angry scar that led up the back of her hand and disappeared beneath her shirt cuff at the wrist. Her silver vest made her shoulders gleam, as if she wore armor.
“Mr. Sulu,” she said. “I’m pleased to meet you. Jim spoke of you with a great deal of regard.”
Sulu could not think of anything to answer to that; he was too surprised and flattered. “Thank you,” he said, finally, lamely. “Captain Kirk hasn’t returned from Aleph Prime yet, Captain Hunter. May I show you to the officers’ lounge?”
“That would be fine, Mr. Sulu.”
They got into the lift, descended, and walked down a long corridor. The Enterprise seemed deserted, haunted, surreal, with its crew on liberty and its lights dimmed.
“It isn’t shown off at its best right now,” Sulu said apologetically.
“Never mind,” Hunter said. “A ship like this doesn’t need much showing off.”
They chatted about Aerfen and the Enterprise until they reached the lounge. Sulu offered her a drink, or a glass of wine, which she declined; they ended up both with coffee, sitting over a port with a view of deep space, still talking ships.
“That’s a nasty gash on Aerfen ’s side,” Sulu said. “I hope there wasn’t too much damage.”
Hunter looked away. “Not to the ship,” she said. “I lost two good people in that fight.”
“Captain—I’m sorry, I didn’t know ...”
“How could you? Mr. Sulu, no one volunteers for this particular assignment without knowing the risks.”
She appeared, suddenly, very human and very tired, and Sulu’s regard for her increased. To fill the silence, because he did not know what to say, he got up and refilled their cups.
“Where are you from, Mr. Sulu?” she asked when he returned. Only a hint of tightness in her voice betrayed her. “I feel like I should be able to place your accent, but it’s so faint I can’t.”
“It isn’t so much faint as a complete muddle. I lived in a lot of different places when I was a kid, but longest on Shinpai.” He used the colloquial name without even thinking.
“Shinpai!” Hunter said. “Ganjitsu? I’ve been there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sulu said. “I know. I remember. No one there will forget for a long time.” It was his turn to look away; he had not meant to tell her anything about himself or the debt he and a lot of other people owed her, and now he realized why.
I’m afraid she’ll say it was nothing, he thought. I’m afraid she’ll shrug it all off and laugh at me.
“Thank you, Mr. Sulu.”
He looked slowly back at her. Shadows across her face obscured her gray eyes.
“In this career—you must know—you sometimes come to feel like everything you do, the conflict, the friends you lose, it’s all for the glory of some faceless, meaningless set of rules and regulations. And that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter a damn. It only matters when you know it makes a difference to a person.”
“It made a difference,” Sulu said. “Never think it didn’t make a difference.”
Jim Kirk had to put down the awkward boxes of bioelectronic crystals before he could get out his communicator.
“Couldn’t you at least have had this stuff delivered, Mr. Spock?” he asked.
“Of course, Captain, but I thought you would not wish to stay at Aleph Prime for several more days.” Kirk grumbled something inarticulate and flipped open his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise .”
“ Enterprise. Sulu here, Captain.”
“Mr. Spock and I are ready to beam up, Mr. Sulu.”
