“…all passengers continuing on to Denobula Triaxa, Mellstoxx, and Kyban, please remain on the craft.”

Szarka caught about half the cards that went flying off the table as Ixabi awakened with a jolt. She had been operating under a glossy veneer of moral self-assuredness for the entire length of their trip so far, but as she watched Ixabi clutching her knee where she’d hit the table, a single pang of guilt finally trickled out.

“What happened?” Ixabi asked, frantically rubbing her leg. “We’re supposed to be on Betazed in three days! Did we miss our connection? What happened??”

She leapt out of her seat and hit her knee. Again.

“Orunë!” Szarka held her hands up in a placating gesture. “Calm down, chill out, I’ve got it all under control.”

“Ro-bin told me that she would inform you of our itinerary change on our first day of travel,” said Qsshrr as she crept down the aisle towards the pair. The effort of remembering to use her crewmates’ given names was still evident in the strange emphasis that came through on her vocalizer.

“Should I get you some ice for your knee?” Szarka asked, half standing and ready to make her escape.

“Qsshrr can get me the ice!!” For a moment, the entire compartment was quiet as the scattered passengers observed that, yes, that reverberating growl had indeed come from the tiny passenger hunched over in the aisle.

“I shall indeed go procure ice,” said Qsshrr, her vocalizer tuned low as she skittered away.

Szarka gulped as Ixabi lowered herself back into her seat, eyes locked on Szarka with a ferocity that was too personal to be compared to a hunter and its prey. “You planned this?”

“Of course I planned this!” said Szarka, fidgeting with the cards. “I didn’t just board the wrong passenger liner!”

Her feigned exasperation melted immediately under Ixabi’s glare. Time to correct course towards sincerity. “You’ve clearly been dreading your visit home. I know for a fact that you only planned it out of guilt for being away so long, and for missing the whole invasion thing.”

Ixabi kept frowning, but Szarka could see the tightness easing slightly from her muscles. “That may be true,” said Ixabi, “But it doesn’t mean I can just skip out on those plans.”

“Of course not! But unfortunately, your inept coworker accidentally loaded you onto the wrong passenger liner!” Szarka shrugged. A rock-solid defense as far as she was concerned. Case closed.

Ixabi slumped, but still clung to her frown. She dug her fingers into her temples. “How did I not know you were planning this, though?”

“Hey.” Szarka finished fiddling with the cards and slammed the deck on the table, hopefully loudly enough to scare away Ixabi’s self-effacing thoughts. “I am very good at lying. Especially to myself. You would have had to do some purposeful digging to figure it out.”

Ixabi let her arms fall to the table, and Szarka could tell by the look on her face that her battle against the circumstances was nearing its end. “Next time I DO visit, though, my parents will know that I was avoiding them!”

“They would have been able to tell how much you didn’t want to be there on this trip, anyway,” said Szarka as she started dealing. “We’re just kicking that can even further down the road. Or, you can let me train you up in the fine art of self-delusion.”

Ixabi picked up her cards and hummed skeptically. “I think I might do too much of that already. So, where are we going?”

“Kyban,” said Qsshrr, as she returned with a pack of ice on her carapace. “I was greatly looking forward to exploring the rivers of the Valley of Song on Betazed, but Ro-bin assured me that there would be rivers worthy of exploration on Kyban as well.”

Szarka wondered if anyone else was as impressed as she was with the ability of Qsshrr’s vocalizer to express such a clear tone of skepticism. “I mean, it’s an M-class planet. There’s gonna be rivers, right?”

Ang stirred as his PADD lit up in a bright blue-white that kicked through his eyelids. The subspace lag of the messages he sent to Rurj’ once again brought to mind a homing beacon, their brief missives following one another ever more rapidly as the distance between them diminished.

Rurj’: You will find me standing taller than when you left, 
for all the foes I have crushed under my heel to be with you again.

Ang: I’m not going to become embroiled in any bloodfeuds when I land, am I?

Rurj’: My leave of absence went unchallenged, so no, not this this time. 
But I’m disappointed that you are not taken with my romantic hyperbole.

Ang: I am very taken! But I’m feeling too nauseous to be poetic right now.

Rurj’: Is the flight that bad?

Ang: It’s more that I haven’t seen you in ages and I’m worried that something 
awful is going to happen to keep this losing streak going.

Rurj’: I will not allow that to happen! If the Klingon Defense Force cannot 
stand in the way of our reunion, then nothing in this universe can!

Ang: Fair point. I think I feel a little bit better now.

Rurj’: Good. Set your mind and your heart at ease, and rest assured that soon 
we shall meet on the icy peaks of Kyban.

Ang smiled at his PADD, and basked in its illumination until it faded into sleep mode. Perhaps he would do the same.

He had been dozing for less than a minute when an alarm went off in his brain and he jolted awake. With clumsy keystrokes, he turned his PADD back on and re-read the last message.

“Icy?”

Zamora woke up slowly, shifting in her seat as she tried to remember where she was. She squeezed her armrests and her brain finished booting up, and opened her eyes. Ah, right.

She touched the button behind her right ear and turned her auditory implants back on, gratified that the noise of dozens of conversations had been replaced with steady hum of the ship’s engines. The cabin was dimmed, and she probably ought to get back to her bunk for some proper sleep, but she had a feeling that Charev had also succumbed to a nap.

The figure in the window seat certainly appeared to be asleep, but she noticed that his dark eyes were open and he was grinning. At her.

“What’re you smiling at?” she muttered.

“The most beautiful woman in the galaxy,” said Charev, as if the answer were obvious.

“Ugh!” Zamora rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t hide the pleased grin that crept over her face, nor could she resist tangling her fingers with her husband’s and squeezing his hand. “I already married you 39 years ago. Flattery won’t get you any higher upgrade than that.”

Instead of his usual deep belly laugh, Charev’s smile grew even wider. Zamora narrowed her eyes, and her grip on his hand grew uncomfortably tight. “I know that look… What’ve you got planned on this trip that you haven’t told me about? You know I hate surprises.”

This time there was a belly laugh. “I know you love surprises no matter how much you put on your show of protesting, and I know that even if you didn’t, you’d make an exception for these three.”

Zamora leaned forward in her seat and brought Charev’s hand up to her chest, her eyes growing impossibly wide. “No! The kids are gonna be there? I thought they had to work!”

“They do,” said Charev, whose seat groaned as he shifted to face Zamora. “But we’ve managed to figure something out. You know they’ll always make time for you.”

Zamora dropped his hand, grabbed his head, and kissed him hard enough to put their wedding day to shame.

“I’m so glad you’re so terrible at keeping secrets,” she said as she came up for air, but as she was leaning in for round two, she halted. “Wait. We’re not sharing rooms, are we?”

“No, no!” said Charev, shaking his head as vigorously as he could in Zamora’s grip. “We have our own room.”

“Good.”

It had been ten minutes since Bohkat had pretended to fall asleep, and the Bolian in the seat next to him was still talking. It had been five minutes since Bohkat had muttered, “I’m obviously asleep,” and still, the talking.

“…and that’s why I’ll never travel on a Rigelian freighter again, because if you tell me that your lavatories are built to handle Bolian physiology but they fall apart due to a single Bolian with food poisoning, then your facilities aren’t actually built to handle Bolian physiology, are they? And when they demanded that I compensate them, I had to get the magistrate involved…”

He gripped the armrests, clenched his jaw, and decided that it was all Anand’s fault that he was in this situation. He was, after all, the one that had insisted that Bohkat spend some time off the ship.

Except, actually, it was a different Anand (and a Burakgazi) who had plied him with sushi and made him promise to get out of his comfort zone before his next mission. And he had made that promise, which was foolish, but not so foolish that he could justify going back on his word.

Now here he was, stuck next to a Bolian who wouldn’t shut up, because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by switching seats.

He told himself that it shouldn’t be a big deal, that he’d just happened to hear from Qsshrr that his colleagues were all headed to Kyban. Why shouldn’t he go to Kyban, too? Surely, the planet was big enough for all of them. Even this passenger freighter–the one he’d seen Qsshrr in the boarding area for–was big enough for all of them.

And Bohkat would prove that by getting all the way to Kyban without a single one of his crewmates spotting him.

So he pretended to snore.

“…and thank goodness for transporters, right? The wait times can get pretty bad during peak season, but it’s still so much faster than a shuttle when you factor in the boarding process. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine traveling all the way to Betazed and being forced to choose between seeing the Opal Sea or seeing Janaran Falls, could you?”

“WHAT?” Bohkat sprang up like a trap and leaned halfway into the Bolian’s seat. “What. Did you say?” he asked, without blinking.

“…nothing,” rasped the Bolian.

Bohkat leaned forward and punched his finger into the screen of the nearest computer panel, the one embedded in the seat in front of him. The grunts of complaint did not deter him as he struggled with the interface and finally managed to pull up the freighter’s travel route.

FINAL DESTINATION: BETAZED

Bohkat shouted the only word that came to mind.

“Sir, there are children in this cabin.”