"Mariner's log, stardate 59853.6. Arrgghhh. It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to admit this, but Boimler was right about why the Cerritos was ordered to head under subspace silence to a spot that's not even on the frontier of known anything. Yes, Bradward, we're following up on a touchy one from Those Old Scientists days. I hope you're happy to add a Preserver planet to your list. But, ugh, they always turn out to be Vulcans but primitive and superstitious, or some freakin' bullshit that Starfleet Command covers up with bullshit about 'parallel planet development'. Even if this turns out to be a planet that Kirk and Spock visited, danggit, I have to live with Boimler being right. Call me a space whale, because that sours the milk. Wait, am I making Boimler into Geordi in that analogy? Back up..."
* * *
T'Lyn reports from the Bridge science console. "Long-range sensors find no abnormal radioactivity in the planet's atmosphere."
Boimler comments from his seat beside the Captain's chair, "When the Enterprise visited, the planet's civilization was comparable to 20th-century Earth. I guess they made it this far without nuking themselves."
From her side of the Captain's chair, Mariner observes, "The planet was ruled by one government at the time. Maybe they didn't have anyone to nuke."
"Any more details, Lieutenant?" asks Captain Ransom.
"Difficult to discern at this range, Captain. That ion storm we noted is exhibiting particularly strong tetryon harmonics."
Mariner grouses, "Always science getting in the way of other science." She resolutely maintains the professional appearance that T'Lyn's voice sounds the same to her as it did before that night on the Velara III mission.
"Captain," T'Lyn announces, "they may not have used nuclear weapons upon themselves, but they did have many satellites to launch, and a great deal of carbon to burn."
* * *
A round of machine-gun fire splinters the Jeep's side mirror, and Mariner jerks the wheel in the other direction, and then a mortar shell explodes to their right, blasting the windscreen with sand, and Lavinia screams as fragments of desert rock slice across her.
"And this is why I fucking hate Preserver planets!" Mariner screams. They crest a rise and hit air for a split second before crashing into the ground again. "It's either Vulcan but superstitious, or Earth in the 21st century except comms are down and you're driving the fury road with the fucking Roman army up your ass!"
More machine guns. She swerves them around a boulder. Another blast from some kind of shitting rocket-propelled grenade.
"Antonius, you OK back there?" Shit shit he's just a beardless boy how the fuck do we get into these situations and how the fuck do we get out—
T'Lyn reports, her voice unflappably Vulcan, "He remains unharmed."
Mariner takes a chance on gunning it straight across level ground to open up distance. She'd counted three vehicles behind them when they'd peeled out.
"Where do you think the other Jeep is?"
Alaric leans toward her from the backseat. He'd be driving if they had happened to pile into the Jeep from a different direction. "Rendezvous is about three leagues on the far side of the arroyo. But we'd still be outnumbered." An hour before, Mariner had seen him garrotte a centurion and kick a slave-trainer to death without flinching. She values his judgment right now.
"They're gaining again," T'Lyn calls out.
"Anything we got that can make some distance without screwing the PD?" Mariner shouts back.
"Doubtful but possible."
"Next time we steal something with armor," Mariner quips.
"Arroyo's up ahead," Lavinia yells over the engine and the desert wind.
"Can we jump it?" Mariner asks, and T'Lyn raises herself for a better perspective, and a blast of heat and concussive force hits them all, and the windscreen is spattered with green—
"T'Lyn!" Mariner screams. Her head snaps back and her eyes take in a nightmare of arterial spray, and then she has to look forward again as the Jeep hits a fucking rock and nearly tips—
Antonius is screaming too, wordlessly, and their world is smoke and ashes—
"Full speed," Mariner hears T'Lyn say. "Jump it."
She hears the first phaser shot and the explosion, and their wheels have left the ground, and she hears the second phaser shot while they are midair over the arroyo, and the third just as they hit the desert on the far side, and she finally looks back.
T'Lyn's lethal logic grips her at the same time that she is clambering around the driver's seat.
That last volley must have been some kind of fragmentation weapon. A jagged shard of metal is sticking out of T'Lyn's chest where a human heart would be.
"Babe, come on," Mariner says. "Work with me."
"Need remove—healing trance," T'Lyn sputters around her own blood. "Pull, then pressure."
"Both sides," Mariner realizes.
Alaric understands and finds the entrance wound on T'Lyn's back.
The shard is slick. Mariner wipes it with her sleeve and grips with hands that she orders not to shake.
"Pull," T'Lyn says once more. And Mariner pulls.
The wound gurgles green. Alaric compresses her from both sides. "Can you still drive?" he asks.
Mariner touches the fingertips on T'Lyn's right hand, leaving them stained green. "Yeah," she says. She is frozen a second longer. "Cerritos strong, babe." And then, demanding one more impossible thing from her body, she slams herself back into the driver's seat and guns the engine.
Mariner wraps herself in a scratchy wool blanket as she sits before the scanty fire. The thermal blanket from their Starfleet kit, she has saved for T'Lyn, draping it over and tucking it around the Vulcan woman as she lies, unmoving, in her healing trance. Mariner knows, in the encyclopedia, xeno-bio homework sense, that Vulcans can recover from bad, bad injuries in this state. She knows that when a Vulcan shuts out the world and reorients their entire metabolism around repairing a wound, it's going to look a lot like death. Perhaps a Vulcan observer could take that knowledge and do nothing but act appropriately for the circumstances, untroubled. But right now, Mariner feels very human.
Here, beneath the desert stars, T'Lyn's sleep is too close to death, and Mariner can only clutch at her knowledge and try to turn it into hope and tell herself resolutely that she will not have to grieve.
"Hey," Boimler says, sotto voce, as he sits beside her, pulling his own wool blanket around himself. "How is she?"
"No change," Mariner reports. "Any progress punching through with comms?"
Boimler shakes his head. "Ion storm plus Kessler syndrome still equals a motherfucker." The choice of words is not like him, but it's apt. "Rutherford is going to try again after an hour of shut-eye."
"Good," Mariner says, abstractly. "Don't risk burning out the circuits we do have by jury-rigging them while half braindead."
"Antonius is asleep," Boimler tells her. "Poor kid."
"Kids are resilient," Mariner says, dully.
"I think I figured it out," Boimler says, "the deal with the shrine over there." He nods briefly towards the traveling shrine of this tiny encampment. "When the Preservers brought the ancestors of these people from Earth, I think that included both early Christians and also worshippers of Egyptian deities. We don't usually think of them overlapping, but festivals to Isis went on until, like, the 400s. I think that here, Isis fused with the Virgin Mary. What they call syncretism. And her son, Horus, a solar god, fused with Jesus. The ankh and the cross, the sun and the son."
"That's great, Boims."
"Hey, just trying to be a little Starfleet under the circumstances. Understanding of culture, pursuit of scientific and historical truth, and all that, right?"
"Strange new worlds," Mariner quips, "where we see humanity get the chance to do all its mistakes but worse. Where we try to boost our comms using stone knives and bearskins, while our friend..."
"While she lies injured," says Alaric, "after she fought in your defense and ours." He wears the leather jerkin that serves both as armor of last resort and as chest-binding. Just one of the many kinds of human not welcome in Rome. In an earlier age, perhaps—Mariner doesn't pretend to know the history there—but not now, on this world where Rome has run to its extremes, to the limits of social control.
"Sir," Boimler says. "We thank you for your hospitality."
"I regret I only have so little of the ancient charity to offer," Alaric replies. He has named himself for the king of the Visigoths who sacked Rome in the year 410. History, smuggled from the data banks of the SS Beagle that crashed so long ago, and treasured by the dissidents of Rome ever since.
Those who have not died in the arena, that is, or in the desert that Rome has created.
"The Romans like to say," Alaric observes, "that hard times create hard men. That a society holding discipline over the slave class instills a noble discipline of the mind. They believe in the truth of the Imperium. As for myself, I found truth in spilling Roman blood. Their law is ultimately nothing but power, and for an instant I had more power than they. Now," he gestures around them, "the desert offers us hard times. But I believe that if we turn too hard, we will surely die."
"I fought in a war up there," Mariner says, and then runs out of words.
"Get some rest," Boimler advises. "I'll take the watch and wake Rutherford when it's time." He adds, gently, "Be with T'Lyn. We'll get out of this."
Mariner tries to find a spot and a position that are comfortable enough to lie in, comfortable enough that she might let the exhaustion carry her off for a little while. "Hey, Alaric," she says. "I was born in a place called San Francisco. How about you?"
"A town called Anchises."
"You have a best memory of Anchises?"
"Cutting my own hair the first time." He pauses. "Learning that the sun is a star, close at hand. Climbing higher and higher trees with my friend Quintia. And your best memory of San Francisco?"
"We moved away so soon... My happiest memory of the city is when I returned. My first day at Starfleet Academy."
"Anchises is gone," Alaric says, with reluctance but without flinching. "One day, you will have to show me San Francisco."
"Deal," says Mariner.
She does not remember falling asleep, but she wakes to the light of dawn and the whirr of a transporter.
"Mariner!" Tendi has beamed down with the medical team. "Are you... and..."
By the time Mariner can sit halfway up, Tendi has run her tricorder over T'Lyn. "Stable," she says. She taps her combadge. "Tendi to Cerritos. One injured requires immediate medical transport."
Everyone is bustling around Mariner. She hears Boimler say, "Oh, I needed that," and sees him clutching a cup of hot coffee. Behind her, she hears T'Lyn and Tendi vanish in the transporter beam.
"Their friend T'Lyn was hurt the worst," Alaric is saying to someone in a blue uniform, and Security Chief Shaxs is offering his hand. She accepts and pulls herself to her feet.
"Sir," she says. "The away mission encountered complications, sir. Per my best available information, I believe the area secure. No sign of pursuit by hostile forces for several hours before we met Alaric's group and made camp here, sir. Lieutenant T'Lyn severely injured during our escape. Other personnel and civilians suffering minor injuries and probable under-nourishment, sir."
Rutherford hands her a cup of hot coffee. It tastes like home.
"And Alaric's group is...?"
"Sir, they resist occupation, sir."
"Listen, kid," Dr. T'ana tells her. "The Vulcan healing trance is some strong shit."
"Can't you... do more for her?"
"Mariner, her body has already encapsulated the smaller bits of shrapnel. She's working on patching up the big hole. The Vulcan healing trance depends on a lot of brain-body coordination. If I go in and muck about, it could cause neural feedback, and the last thing we need is an unbalanced Vulcan brain on the ship. Again. The best thing to do is pump in all the nutrients she'll take, so her body has all it needs to do what it's gotta. We're watching her vitals, and we'll take care of her. Cerritos strong, kid."
* * *
Mariner pauses outside the door to the Captain's ready room, and so Boimler stops beside her. He gives her a quizzical look.
"Stand tall on the carpet," Mariner tells herself under her breath. "Make Sito proud." She nods to Boimler. "All right. Full impulse ahead."
Jack Ransom is at his desk. This is evidently not a conversation he wants to have while lifting weights. She feels Boimler get nervous at the sight.
The doors close behind them.
"Computer, lock ready-room doors."
"Doors locked," confirms the ship's computer.
"Lieutenants Boimler and Mariner," Ransom begins. "I have read your report. Will you confirm you are aware that the refugee leader Alaric has requested asylum in the Federation for himself and his people?"
"Yes, sir," Boimler says.
"Yes, sir, Alaric informed us of that before we left the planet's surface. Sir."
"And, Lieutenant Mariner, will you confirm that Lieutenant T'Lyn discharged a hand phaser on the planet's surface, destroying three vehicles and killing their occupants?"
"Sir, I stand behind all the statements in my report, sir."
Ransom rubs a hand over his chin and his cheek. "One problem at a time," he says. "Lieutenant Mariner, would you please quote for us Section 1(b) of General Order One?"
"Sir, 'No interference with the social, cultural, or technological development of said planet,' with 'said planet' being a pre-warp civilization, sir."
"Lieutenant Mariner, do you believe the actions taken during your escape to be in accord with General Order One?"
Deep breath.
"Sir, yes sir."
"Please elaborate, Lieutenant."
"Sir, I understand Lieutenant T'Lyn's logic during the moment of crisis. Dead men tell no tales. Sir. Lieutenant T'Lyn discharged a hand phaser three times, in defense of herself, of me and of three civilians, including an adolescent. She left no survivors because the logic of the situation allowed no half-measures, sir."
"You say you understand that logic?"
"Sir. As technically the ranking officer on the scene, it would have been my responsibility to order T'Lyn not to fire, had I been aware of her intention to do so. I believe this makes me responsible, morally and by Starfleet code, for any violation of General Order One that may have been committed. Sir."
"And if you had been so aware, would you have given that order?"
"Sir. No, sir. I would have fired the phaser myself, sir, had it been in my hand. Because I am not Vulcan, I might have missed. But I would have fired, sir."
The ready room falls silent.
Ransom says at last, "Regarding the refugee leader Alaric's request for asylum... Lieutenant Boimler, could you perhaps outline why we might have a situation on our hands?"
"Sir, begging the Captain's pardon, sir, but as a humanitarian matter, the case seems clear." He swallows. "I can find no means within myself to argue against it, Captain, sir."
"If it were one person," Ransom says, "or one family, compassion would rule the day... but Alaric is asking us to evacuate an entire side of an armed conflict. That alone would be seen as interfering in the course of a pre-warp civilization. And, to boot, your report indicates that Alaric and his people would wish to smuggle future dissidents off the planet, on an ongoing basis. What do we do, drop them off a runabout with a transporter and an engineering crew to keep it running?"
"Sir," Boimler says. Ransom nods, and he continues. "The planet has already been contacted by the Federation. First by the SS Beagle, and then by the Enterprise under Captain Kirk, sir. Precedent suggests a less strict interpretation of General Order One when a civilization lacks warp capability but is already aware of interstellar life. Sir."
"The planet's civilization has been trying to eradicate all traces of that first contact since it happened," Ransom points out.
"Sir," Mariner speaks up. The Captain nods. "The ruling class of the dominant polity has tried to eliminate all traces. Dissident groups have kept them alive. We should not confuse the priorities of the ruling class of a slave society for the planet overall. Sir."
Ransom raps his knuckles on his desk.
"Sir," Boimler says. "If I may suggest... We should speak to Security Chief Shaxs about this. I believe that his friends in the old Bajoran resistance would welcome Alaric's people as kindred spirits. They could help them settle on Bajor, or on Deep Space Nine... Outside of the Federation proper, sir, and not using Federation technology. Even a half-decrepit salvaged Cardassian shuttle from the Occupation would be able to carry refugees off a planet at this stage. Sir."
"Have you spoken with Shaxs about this?"
"No, sir," Boimler says. "I speak per my own beliefs, sir."
"Hmmm." Ransom taps hs knuckles again. "Lieutenant Mariner, your evaluation of Lieutenant Boimler's proposal, for the record?"
"Sir, I believe it is viable. And that it would be in accord with Starfleet code. And, sir, I wish to state for the record that if we are to err, we should do so in the direction of compassion, sir."
"So noted." He takes a deep breath, and lets it out. "Lieutenant Mariner, for failing to maintain awareness during a combat situation in which you were the ranking officer, you are confined to quarters until further notice. Lieutenant Boimler, return to duty. And send in Security Chief Shaxs on your way out. Computer, unlock doors. Dismissed!"
"Sir, yes sir!" they say in unison.
Mariner has almost reached the Bridge turbolift when Boimler snags her by the arm. "'Dominant polity'?" he asks.
She holds back the tension giggles until she is alone in the turbolift, and then she drops all composure and laughs until it hurts.
* * *
Mariner does training kata in her quarters, again and again, trying to think of nothing. She blasts Klingon acid punk and Tellarite diss tracks. She barely hears the comm alert.
"Computer, pause. Mariner here."
"Boimler here. Just passing along the word that Shaxs has arranged to detonate the warp core over Rome, metaphorically speaking. And he's teaching Antonius to spar on Holodeck 2."
"Thanks for the news, Boims. Mariner out. Computer, resume."
* * *
Somehow she must sleep, because the comm alert wakes her.
"Eurgh. Mariner here."
"Lieutenant Mariner," says Captain Ransom, "T'Lyn is awake and wishes to see you. Report to Sickbay immediately."
"On my way, sir! Thank you, sir!"
* * *
Mariner tumbles through the Sickbay doors just as T'Lyn is saying, "I believe the remaining fragments can be removed laparoscopically as an outpatient procedure."
"Kid, anything that frees up a bed in here before the Parrises squares tournament."
"Oh my goodness T'Lyn I was so worried and that night in the desert you looked like you were dead and it was awful and I am just so happy to see you right now."
"Your presence is agreeable," says T'Lyn.
"Babe, let's be agreeable forever," she says, clutching T'Lyn's hand with both of her own.
"Do you need me to sedate her?" Dr. T'ana asks T'Lyn. "Because I could totally sedate her. Got the hypospray right here."
T'Lyn replies, "An understandable impulse. But that will not be necessary." She pauses and places her free hand on top of Mariner's. "Interesting. I had expected my thoughts to be occupied by filing my report and justifying my actions under Vulcan and Federation law. Yet I seem to be unable to focus on those concerns."
"Oh, babe, the day I've had... It's more of a mess than I let myself know until we beamed back here, but we might just get through it OK."
Dr. T'ana is running a medical tricorder over Alaric. "Congrats on the personal asylum and good luck organizing what you have to do next. Hope you like hasperat. Can't stand the stuff myself. Give me a roast Betazoid sandwich any day." She sets the tricorder back on her instrument tray and picks up a long tool with something chip-shaped attached at the tip. "And this little bastard," says Dr. T'ana, "is a subdermal hormone regulator. Primary function, to kick your chromosomes in their molecular asses. You've read the informed-consent padd? Good. The short version, since Starfleet paperwork doesn't highlight the key points: Menses will stop. Expect hair where you don't have it now. If you lose it up top, we have a hypospray for that. You might have to change your workout routine to be jacked where and how you want. You might hit a phase where you'll be so horny you're tempted to fuck a dom-jot cue. Use lubrication. If it suits your fancy later, pick out a dick on the holodeck and we'll fix you up."
Alaric says, "I had expected there to be more... procedure involved."
"Kiddo, this is the blood-and-guts room. Ain't no time for that. Now show me those abs so I can stab some Starfleet gender tech into you."
* * *
Mariner is distracted enough that she fails to notice Ransom catching up with her in the hall. "Unofficially," he says, and she jumps just a bit, "Mariner, you two said the right things and got to the answer that conscience demanded. Carry on, co-First Officer."
* * *
"Boimler might be late," Rutherford tells them at their table in the mess hall.
Mariner is incredulous. "For taquito night?!"
"He and Alaric were..."
"Oh," Mariner says. "Oh, that's dicey. A casual bang with somebody on a gender journey is the kind of bang that doesn't stay cazsh. Learned that when I boffed a boy J'naii. And definitely learned it when I boffed a girl J'naii."
T'Lyn approaches the table and offers her extended fingers for a Vulcan kiss. Mariner reciprocates as T'Lyn sits in the booth beside her. "Has my girlfriend been sharing anecdotes about her unorthodox sexual escapades? Again?"
"You've got good ears on you, babe."
"Fascinating. Your volubility appears to increase with proximity to taquitos."
Rutherford looks suddenly struck with curiosity. "Wait, did you introduce a whole species to the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity?"
T'Lyn says, in her unperturbable Vulcan tone, "Single-handedly."
It takes a full three seconds for the joke to land for Mariner, but when it does, it hits her between the eyes and she goes momentarily blank.
"Hey guys!" Tendi bubbles her way up to them. "Where's Boimler?"
Tendi steps into T'Lyn's quarters to find her seated in her environment tent with Mariner. The controls are set for a mild day on Mount Selaya or a dry summer heat in the Sierras. "You called?" Tendi asks. The doors swish shut behind her.
"Good evening, science bestie," T'Lyn greets her.
"Evening, Tendi," says Mariner. "We've got a question for you."
"Fire away," Tendi chirps, sitting cross-legged in front of them.
"The ceremony of kunn-ut-voff-ik-vit-sin," T'Lyn says, "involves a mind meld. The best translation into Standard would be marriage consummation, but that of course does not capture all the nuances of the Vulcan term."
"Of course," Mariner comments.
T'Lyn continues, "In the time of Surak and before, kunn-ut-voff-ik-vit-sin was traditionally performed in front of witnesses. Relative to her cultural background, Mariner is... uniquely comfortable with displays of intimacy in company. We are given to understand that this is far from unknown on Orion. I would find it... agreeable if you were able to take tricorder readings of a rare phenomenon, as you are my science bestie. Would you wish to observe the kunn-ut-voff-ik-vit-sin of a Vulcan and a human?"
"Oh. Oh, you guys, congratulations! And yes, of course, yes! I'll take readings across all the spectra, I'll bring the best neuro-scanners on board—we'll have a full physio-imager—redundant T-220 medical tricorders—oh, this is so exciting, my awesome friend and my science bestie are getting mind-meld-married!" She springs forward to glomp the two of them together in a hug.
"I expected our offer to be received with more dignity," T'Lyn observes.
"I didn't," says Mariner. "OK, so, Tendi, the traditional beverage isn't exactly beer, or tea, or kombucha, but it's in that zone, a hot infusion of multiple plants that involves fermentation to, like, kill the bacteria in bad drinking water because on ancient Vulcan they took what water they could get..."
* * *
The physio-imagers detect the lingering traces of the wounds that Mariner and T'Lyn have received in battle, on planets alien to them both and in the depths of space.
Mariner and T'Lyn kneel facing each other in a room lit only by a clay oil lamp and the portable LCARS terminal on the floor beside Tendi, who is kneeling to face both of them.
D'Vana Tendi, Mistress of the Winter Constellations, is not without a sense of ritual when the occasion calls for it.
"As your ancestors drank from a chalice of glass fused by sandfire," Tendi says to T'Lyn, "long before the day of the first kohlinar, so too do I drink today, in witness of your kunn-ut-voff-ik-vit-sin." She lifts the chalice with both hands and sips, delicately. The experience of novel flavors, unexpected yet enjoyable, plays subtly on her countenace. She turns to Mariner. "As your ancestors dreamt of the stars, as they learned through pain to choose peace, as they sought knowledge and discovery while preserving the worthy ceremonies of their past, so too do I drink today, in witness of your kunn-ut-voff-ik-vit-sin." She sips again, and then passes the chalice to Mariner, who takes a heady, two-handed, deliberate gulp and then hands the glass vessel to T'Lyn, who finishes the dark liquid inside.
For the second time, T'Lyn's fingers seek out the reach centers in Beckett Mariner's face. Now there is no crisis to manage, no threat to their survival or to the ship, only a future that neither understands and that neither wishes to discover without the other. This time, T'Lyn does not stop at the edges of Mariner's mind, with soothing her physiological stress and consciously projecting a sense of calm.
They both keep their eyes open, incapable of not witnessing each other.
"My mind to your mind," says T'Lyn. "My thoughts to your thoughts."
"Your mind to my mind," says Mariner. "Your thoughts to my thoughts."
"I find what you call love among my passions," says T'Lyn, her voice growing quieter but no less intense.
"In our union," says Mariner, even more quietly yet with equal intensity, "your passions become our strength."
"For your pain, I provide solace..."
"For your pain, I provide solace..."
"In your beauty, I find rest..."
"In your beauty, I find rest..."
"Let us be joined..."
"Let us be joined..."
"And never parted..."
"And never parted..."
"My love," breathes T'Lyn.
"T'hy'la, ni var, t'hy'la," whispers Mariner.
"Ashayam," they whisper together as their eyes finally close.
* * *
It transpires that Orions, too, can cry for joy.
"You guys are the best," Tendi says softly, tearily, as Mariner and T'Lyn sleep in each other's arms.
* * *
In the shuttle bay, Boimler is handing tools to Rutherford as the latter works on the isolinear circuits of the shuttlepod's starboard nacelle.
"It's a shame that we're so far away from Mariner's family, and not on course to get closer any time soon."
"That's what subspace radio is for," Rutherford observes. "Tachyon dosimeter?"
Boimler hands him the tool from the toolbox.
"Yeah. And it's not like Mariner would be unwilling to have a second party when the opportunity does arise."
"Heh. Stem-bolt pliers?"
"Here you go. Well..." Boimler taps his combadge. "Boimler to T'Lyn."
"T'Lyn here."
"Rutherford and Tendi and I have been thinking..."
* * *
"Lieutenant T'Lyn to Captain Ransom."
"Ransom here."
"Is this an appropriate time to make a personal request, Captain?"
"Sure, I can curl and talk at the same time. What's on your mind, Lieutenant?"
"Sir, it is my understanding that, since the days of Earth's wooden sailing ships, along with the responsibilities of their rank, captains have had one privilege in which they take joy...."
Their lips separate as the crowd applauds. Their fingers remain linked. They turn to the audience and bow.
Do you see how close Boimler and Alaric are sitting? T'Lyn says inside Mariner's head.
Stop thinking about Boimler while kissing me, Mariner telepaths back.
As ever, my love, your wit is admirable and undiminished.
"Thank you, thank you all," Mariner says, not trying to avoid sounding giddy. Maybe the resistance leader and the goof with the brave heart really do work for each other. I see rough nights ahead after Alaric leaves for that Bajoran ship. Her eyes seek out her parents on the viewscreen. They're not trying to avoid tearing up. She has to think back a long time to remember the last time they both looked so unreservedly happy.
T'Kel and Suvatri have also videoed in to see their daughter. They watch without perturbation. If they had disapproved, they wouldn't be here at all. And hey, Mariner will take that. She'd have taken T'Lyn without it, too.
Another invitation had come back from Vulcan with regrets that they could not attend in real time, and a list of personally recommended honeymoon destinations on Andoria. And a promise that they'll have a place to stay in ShiKahr.
I concur, T'Lyn thinks. On all points. Perhaps we should provide a distraction in the form of what humans might call wacky hijinks?
Took the words right out of my brain, ashayam.
"There is now," T'Lyn announces aloud, "a ceremony from an Earth culture that we believe is worthwhile to perpetuate."
They transfer their Vulcan kiss to their opposite hands so that they can turn to the table behind them. Each picks up a bouquet of flowers, whose golden petals turn a deep violet-red as the two women touch them.
"Betazoid chameleon roses," Boimler whispers to Alaric.
"Garnishes," Dr. T'ana whispers to Shaxs.
T'Lyn and Mariner face the stars. Engineering prodigy and Mistress of the Winter Constellations, bearing 145, T'Lyn thinks.
Understood, Mariner thinks back. Prepare to launch in three, two, one...