Captain David Gold sat down behind his desk and ran a hand through his hair, thinking, This is why it’s so white. He had nothing but respect for his crew, and he loved his ship. But the da Vinci bounced all over space like a pinball, it seemed. Anyplace there was a problem, he got the call. Didn’t every ship have an engineer or two on board? he wondered. Does S.C.E. have to handle every little thing?

He knew that being indispensable was preferable to the alternative. But no sooner had they picked up Soloman, Carol Abramowitz, and Bart Faulwell from their sojourn on Keorga than Captain Montgomery Scott was sending them out on yet another emergency call. Gold had stepped off the bridge and into his ready room, because Scotty had specifically asked to speak with Gold in private. And, though he didn’t yet know why, Gold knew that the only reason for that would be because there was something singularly unpleasant about this assignment.

“Screen on,” he said when he felt ready to hear the news.

His viewscreen blinked on. In a moment, Scotty’s face was before him. But the usually garrulous S.C.E. liaison wasn’t wearing his typical smile. “Good,” he said, “you’re sittin’ down.”

“Yes,” Gold replied. “Why does that matter?”

“‘Cause I’m sendin’ you on a mission, even though the da Vinci is the last ship in the fleet I’d send if I had any choice,” Scott said.

“Where?”

“The Kursican system. More specifically, the Kursican Orbital Incarceration Platform.”

Gold narrowed his eyes. “That’s a prison station, no?”

“That’s correct,” Scotty confirmed. “They’re havin’ a wee problem.”

“Why would you not want to send us? Not that I’m looking for a reason to go, but we’re relatively close right now—and I stress ‘relatively,’ considering they’re practically in the Delta Quadrant.”

“That’s why I am sendin’ you—time is definitely of the essence, and you’re the closest S.C.E. crew I’ve got. As for why I would rather not—there’s a personal reason.”

Gold didn’t like the sound of that. But he knew the decision had been made. He paused long enough to tell Ensign Wong over the intercom to have the da Vinci change course for Kursican, warp nine. Then he turned back to Scotty’s image on the viewscreen. “What’s the nature of the ‘wee problem’?” he asked.

“The prison—they call it the Plat—has gone completely haywire,” Scotty explained. “It’s slipped its moorings. There’s been no communicatin’ with it, so they don’t know what’s happened. Its stabilizers are shot. It’s spinnin’ and bouncin’ like a tennis ball in a tornado, the way I hear it, and its orbit is degrading rapidly. Somethin’ isn’t done soon, it’s likely to enter Kursican atmosphere and slam into something. And there are a lot of folks on that planet—it’d be hard to drop a platform that big and not land on someone’s head.”

“And the Kursicans are doing what?” Gold asked. “They can’t bring it under control remotely?”

“They’ve tried. Between you and me, I don’t think they’ve tried that hard. They seem not to care much about what happens to the folks onboard the platform—far as they’re concerned, it’s the dregs of Kursican and her sister planets. But when the thing comes down on them, they might sing a different tune.”

“Still,” Gold said. “It seems like they ought to make some effort on their own behalf. They’re not even a Federation planet, for that matter. We’re involved why, exactly?”

“You’re right, they’re not. But they’re under consideration, and we happen to have an ambassador—name’s Uree, a Deltan—who’s out there now. In fact, he’s on the Plat. That’s our justification. We’ve asked the Kursicans if they mind us steppin’ in, and they’ve given their blessing. If nothing else, we’ve got to see if we can get him off alive.”

“Good,” Gold said. “I’m starting to see the picture. One thing, though. Why not the da Vinci? What’s this personal reason you spoke of?”

“Because, David,” Scotty said, his voice somber, “one of the prisoners on the Plat is a gentleman named Augustus Bradford. I believe you know him.”

Know him? Gold thought. Now there’s an under-statement. He hadn’t heard the name in years, but he’d never forget it….

David Gold and Gus Bradford had entered Starfleet Academy the same year. They had become close friends. After the Academy, they’d both served on the Gettysburg, under Captain Mark Jameson. Gus in particular had idolized Jameson, and Gold had to admit that, back then, the captain had seemed like the real thing. He was courageous, he was smart, he was not afraid of making hard decisions, and more often than not, he made the right ones. He was already justifiably famous in Starfleet for his negotiating skills, with his success on Mordan IV being the feather in his cap. When Gus heard they were being assigned to Jameson’s ship, he had literally danced for joy.

But Jameson hadn’t been quite the negotiator he had claimed to be. Decades later, the truth about what happened on Mordan IV had come out. Both Gold and Bradford had moved on by then; when the story spread, Gold had contacted Bradford and they’d spoken about it, and about the disgrace that had come to Jameson late in life.

Jameson had been dispatched to Mordan IV because Karnas, the son of an assassinated tribal leader there, had captured a starship and threatened to kill its passengers and crew unless Starfleet gave him the weapons he felt he needed to avenge his father’s death. Jameson got the ship back intact, saving the lives of sixty-three people, and he was hailed as a hero for his efforts. But what Starfleet didn’t know—until years had passed and millions had died—was that Jameson had given in to Karnas’s demands. He had given Karnas the weapons he wanted. Knowing he’d violated the Prime Directive by doing so, Jameson tried to fix things by giving the planet’s other tribes the same weapons he’d given Karnas, thereby maintaining the balance of power.

What he had really accomplished, though, was to give Mordan IV the means with which to destroy itself. A civil war began, which lasted for forty years and came close to wiping out everyone on the planet. Decades later, now a retired admiral, Jameson was brought back to Mordan IV on board the U.S.S. Enterprise. Having taken a restorative drug to counter the effects of the Iverson’s disease that wracked his body, Jameson learned that Karnas had lured him back to the planet to punish him for his long-ago actions. He managed to negotiate a release for captive Federation representatives by turning himself over to Karnas. But it was already too late for Jameson—the drug he had taken killed him, and, at his wife’s request, he was buried on Mordan IV.

Gus had been different after that. Gold had always stayed in touch with him—he had been Bradford’s best man when he married Anita, and Bradford had stepped into a synagogue for his first time when Gold had wed the lovely Rabbi Rachel Gilman. Gold had become godfather to the Bradfords’ daughter Deborah, and the two families had often socialized and even traveled together. But learning of Jameson’s betrayal of his principles, and his forty-year concealment of his crimes, had turned Gus sour somehow. It was as if, having idolized the man so much, he couldn’t deal with the truth about him. That conversation twelve years ago, on hearing the news of Jameson’s death, had been the last time they’d spoken. All of Gold’s later attempts to contact him had been rebuffed. Gus had left Starfleet, even left Anita. The last Gold had heard, through the grape-vine, he’d moved out of Federation space altogether.

Which meant it was perfectly plausible that he’d ended up in the Kursican system, Gold realized. He also realized that Scotty was looking at him questioningly. “Sorry,” he said. “A little reminiscence.”

“I understand, David. I’m sorry to have to spring this on you.”

“No, it’s not a problem,” Gold said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Do you happen to know what he’s in for?”

“There’s a political movement, mostly centered around humans who settled on the planet Val’Jon, opposed to Kursican or the other planets in the system joining the Federation. Apparently they went beyond polite disagreement to violent action. Kursican authorities rounded up the ringleaders, and Bradford was one of them.”

“Well, that sounds right,” Gold said. “He went there to get away from the Federation, after all.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Don’t worry about me, Scotty,” Gold assured him. “I liked Gus Bradford once. But that was long ago, and there’s a lot of water under that particular bridge.”

“All right, then,” Scotty said. “There’s one more thing you ought to know, though.”

“What’s this, the other shoe?”

“More or less. Someone else is on the station—just went there to visit her father, according to Kursican authorities—arriving on the same shuttle as the Federation ambassador.”

“Not Deborah,” Gold said, remembering the brown-haired little girl who used to climb on his knee and beg for stories.

“Aye. Deborah. And her son Benjamin,” Scotty confirmed.

“Gus Bradford is a grandfather?”

“These things happen,” Scotty said. “You ought to know that better than most.”

Gold glanced at an array of images phasing in and out of visibility on his desk in random order. Family photos. Scotty was right, of course—Ruth, one of his many granddaughters, was about to provide him with the latest in an even larger number of great-grandchildren. The only thing surprising about Bradford having a grandchild was that Gold hadn’t heard about it. “I suppose they do. No matter, Scotty. We’re on our way. We’ll keep the thing in space where it belongs, and we’ll rescue anyone on board that we can. Whether or not their name is Bradford.”

“I know you will, David. I just wanted you to be warned before you got into it.”

“I appreciate it, Scotty,” Gold said.

Scott signed off then. Gold immediately went to the bridge. Just now, he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts.