Jdehn worked the controls for the ramp to her ship. A hot breeze stirred her purple skirt around her boot tops. She had put aside her usual ship suits and worn something more "respectable" to the memorial. Mekhi had done the same, if that hard, overbuilt body could ever look less aggressive, even in the simple blue shirt and pants.

"Do you think--" Arik asked, taking a couple steps ahead of Mekhi as he did so. "Do you think we totally cocked that up?"

He meant the memorial. Funny, on the way there, Jdehn felt connected to Vulcan for the first time. It wasn't just that place, out there somewhere. It was the planet one of her parents had been born to, where he or she had been a child. In her mind's eye, she had pictured some little girl who looked vaguely like her, growing up under this sky, going to school, and talking to friends. Being with a family. And then, her mother grew to be a new adult who went out to the stars. The way she had.

Now, after the memorial, the only connection she felt was... Romulan. And she didn't dare picture that little Vulcan girl anymore.

Rationalizing that it might have been a little Vulcan boy didn't help.

"Let it go," Jdehn said, feeling like something she'd scrape off the landing gear. "We tried. And the people at the end, right before we left--"

"We didn' leave. We ran off," Mekhi mumbled.

"Well, anyway... they seemed okay about us being there."

The ramp lowered and she walked up halfway, turning to say something else when she looked over Arik's head and smiled. She had almost forgotten about Spock. She hadn't really gotten the chance to talk to him before. At the memorial. The sad truth was that his standing at that haunting place served as another reminder of her life on Hellguard.

Actually, of her life right after Hellguard and all the years since then, when she had spat insults at the Vulcans.

Why?

Because she had been a stupid hurt kid who had found out what parents were and that neither of hers had wanted her.

Vulcans bore the brunt of her lashing out over that. They were within easier reach than the Romulans. Only her pain mattered, and it ran deep and raw.

Until she had gone to the memorial. And saw things at last through her Vulcan heart.

With the embrace of her ship only a few steps away, however, Spock became the leader of that rescue party again and she could smile at the sight of him.

He stood in the midst of the other small freighters resting in the open air bay so that friend of his, Kirk, could catch up. For some reason, the human didn't wear a uniform but a two-toned gray tunic. She knew he was in Starfleet, but had yet to see the man wear anything but regular clothing.

"I don't know if Spock mentioned it," Kirk called out as they drew closer, "but we hoped we could ask you a couple questions."

"'Bout what?" Mekhi asked.

The Starfleet captain sized that up -- who could blame him after the restaurant? -- but it looked like Mekhi didn't mean anything by it. He just stood there, relaxed and waiting. Maybe even he behaved when Spock was around.

Maybe that was why Spock was the one who answered. "Our investigation into the guilty party behind the disease has led us to a time discrepancy on the day of your arrival. Not to mention the matter of the medical team being called to the ship."

"What do you mean?" Arik asked.

"Look," Jdehn interrupted and waved a hand towards her freighter. "Why don't we go inside? It'll be more comfortable."

Her pleasure over Spock thanking her for her hospitality was nothing compared to his looking over the bulbous, dull gray ship with its flat sensor arrays and hatches. "Katarin freighter class. Mark seven series."

Of course Spock knew such things. "That's exactly right, sir."

"You have named it the Independent, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"The sir is unnecessary, Jdehn. If you will, call me Spock."

"I - thanks." She started to feel a lot better, and gestured for him to precede her. Then she remembered Kirk and stood aside for him too. She almost forgot that Mekhi and Arik still stood outside. Her pon farr lover jogged up the ramp, grinning ear to ear.

The Independent wrapped its cool, dark and utilitarian atmosphere around her. It was good to be home again.

She called for half lights and motioned for everyone to follow her up the one passage jutting off the tiny crew area. Like any freighter, her ship was one compact space after another, saving all its room for cargo bays and its systems. Its colors amounted to nothing more than shades of gray except where an exposed circuit or indicator flashed some bright blue, red or other gaiety. Jdehn was one of those spacers who took in the downright dull of her ship's looks and saw a belle of the stars. She considered the Independent to be like her: no great beauty, not the ugliest thing you ever saw, and in character and function, a damn sight better than all right.

Even with the cramped corridor, slim Arik had enough room to slip past the others so he could catch up to her and lean close to tease.

"Look at me, Spock! I got a ship, Spock!" he whispered in her ear. "I'm Captain Independent, Spock!"

She jabbed him playfully in the side. "Shut up, you idiot."

Mekhi, on the other hand, simply walked onto the small bridge and leaned against a console. His being quiet just had to be because Spock was here. That or Phase II had really taken the wind out of his sails. It certainly had done it to her.

Jdehn plunked down into her pilot's seat. "So, what did you want to ask?"

Spock folded his hands behind him and remained standing near the bridge's hatch, but Kirk neatly sized up the console near him before he hitched a hip onto its edge. She leaned over and flicked a few controls, shutting down that panel anyway, just to be safe. He smiled with the understanding of a seasoned spacer.

All the bridge controls were actually one long console that wrapped around half the small room with systems and equipment rooted in the bulkhead on either side of the hatch. Small indentations in the large board and seats in front of each position formed three slightly sectioned stations. She routed all functions to where she sat as the pilot, shutting down all other posts; then hit another control to raise the viewscreen revealing a narrow, rectangular port that let in more light. Otherwise, the bridge was lit by low level overheads and the console indicators.

She loved its intimacy.

Kirk answered her. "From what we gathered, you initially planned to land at the orbital station and meet the Science Academy team in the station's Sickbay."

She was suddenly struck by how much he reminded her of someone who had fostered her for a awhile. A man and his wife who had thought they were so well equipped as humans to handle the torn, emotional Jdehn. But their fantasy fell beneath the reality of her psychological baggage, and she had to move on.

"Uh--" She tried to think back before the haze of the mock pon farr. Easier said than done since just about everything from the landing to now was a blur, except for the restaurant and the memorial. The more she tried to focus, the harder it got.

Arik's forehead screwed up with concentration while Mekhi just stood there looking back. Great, when she needed him to talk, he shut up.

"Yeah... that's right. They said they didn't want us going down to the planet until they found out if we got the disease or not. They said the Sickbay tests would show them enough to figure that out."

Kirk nodded. "All right. You landed and told station control you were headed for Sickbay. You lowered the ramp but then contacted Control again saying you needed to make minor system repairs."

She butted in. "We landed early, so I didn't make us late by fixing things right away."

Kirk shot a look to Spock who flicked up an eyebrow. He turned back to her. "But you were late for meeting them."

"Well, maybe a little. I don't know what the big deal is, saying it's a 'time discrepancy'."

"Because it was thirty minutes."

She blinked at him. She couldn't think of anything else to do.

"Thirty three point five seven to be exact," Spock stated.

"That's why the medical team came to your ship instead of meeting you at Sickbay. But you later reported you were on time."

Arik stared at her, wide eyed and as stupidly as she felt.

"Okay, I wondered why they changed that and came to the ship."

Spock explained. "They attempted contacting you, but received no reply. They came to the ship to investigate."

"They contacted-- nobody commed me," Jdehn protested. "If they had, I would've told them what was going on."

But he said, "We verified their comm logs. Their first attempt happened 15.43 minutes after your landing. They received no reply, not even from the Independent's automatic signal acknowledging the contact."

She almost interrupted, but Spock gestured for her to let him finish.

"They received the same silence on each of their three consecutive tries. The deck officer then reported you had raised the ship's ramp. They came to investigate. After two attempts to reach you, you once more lowered the lamp."

"I remember that part. I guess the time got away from me when I was making the repairs."

"Do you have an explanation as to why you do not remember their attempts to contact you?"

No, she didn't, and that was scary. She remembered needing repairs and thinking how much it worked on her nerves to actually be on Vulcan -- any part of Vulcan, even an orbital station. The repairs had been minor stuff, but she put off seeing the medical team for as long as possible. Her stomach had spun when she thought about facing them: the first Vulcans since her lessons on protecting her mind, when she had spat at the teacher that it was the last Vulcan thing she was ever going to learn. "Well... no... but I probably just shut the thing off. Or something fried it."

Kirk leaned forward. "Could you check that?"

Spock added, "Perhaps your maintenance logs?"

She answered, dragging the word out, "Sure."

Like most independents, most of her logs were in her head. She wasn't Starfleet or some other big outfit; she kept what the ports required for her to dock and that's it. When Spock stepped closer and offered to help her search, she prayed she had recorded the repairs from the other day.

A knot of tension formed behind her eyes.

She started punching at a few controls, hoping that if she hunched forward, Spock couldn't see how iffy her records were. "Uh... you know, Arik and Mekhi mighta heard them trying to get hold of us."

Arik shot her a look at being made the scapegoat. She gave an apologetic shrug.

Kirk, meanwhile, picked up on her suggestion. "Can you tell me what you were during while Jdehn fixed the ship?" he asked Arik and Mekhi.

Mekhi spoke with some of his old attitude. "Waited."

"Waited where?"

"By the ramp. I was ready to go."

Arik said he was at the same spot.

"Just waited? For that whole time?"

"Didn' know it was goin' to be that long, did I?"

Jdehn glanced up and caught Kirk taking a breath. Mekhi would try the patience of a saint.

"No, you didn't," Kirk said after a beat. "What I meant was, did you stand the whole time at the ramp? Or did you maybe get tired of standing there and move away? Perhaps checking in with Jdehn?"

Thanks to whatever piece of luck that watched over space rats like her, Jdehn found a list of repairs and what parts she needed to replace in ship's stock. "Hot damn!" she said in way of a prayer of thanks. Sheepishly remembering who stood next to her, she swapped her relief for a big smile.

Spock only lifted an eyebrow as if used to this sort of behavior. No wonder they said Saavik hung around him for so long.

They also said he and Saavik weren't talking now.

She didn't give that thought, or why a part of her pushed to fill that empty spot with Spock, too hard of a look. "Found those repairs," she said. "Took a little bit. But it's my ship, so my way of keeping logs."

He nodded and asked if she would bring up the schematics for those areas.

Mekhi ignored them and laced his fingers behind his head. "Ok, yeah. I got bored."

When he said nothing else after a beat, Kirk encouraged him. "And you did... what about it?"

"Walked around."

"Walked around where?"

"'Round the ship."

"You didn't leave it? Did you come up here or go down to the engines where Jdehn was?"

"Just 'round."

"Did you hear the station control paging the ship?"

"No. I -- no. I dunno."

Spock looked up from the console. "Captain, ship communications register the station's contacts."

They both looked down at her. "Jdehn?"

She blew out a breath. "I didn't get 'em. I mean, the ship didn't tell me -- well, you know what I mean. But I'm still checking if the comm panel blew out down in the engine room."

After all, she had crewed the flight herself. Equipment wore down, accidents happened, especially on a hard working freighter with limited resources. She hadn't checked the comm system down there in ages. More important things -- like the engines -- got her daily attention.

Kirk asked Mekhi again if he had heard it, but even though he asked it as just another question, the half-Romulan snapped.

"I said no!"

The Starfleet officer somehow kept his patience. Jdehn gave him credit for that. "You didn't hear it or you didn't answer it?"

"Look, how am I knowin' what the comm sounds like? I'm just ridin' this bird. It ain't mine." He rubbed at his neck, his eyes squeezing shut.

Kirk got up from the console and walked over to him. "Mekhi, are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine. Just got a headache."

Jdehn added without thinking about it, "You're not the only one." That knot behind her eyes got worse as she dug through the schematics. It spread behind her eyes and became a pressure battering against her skull like it would crack the bone to break free. Her ship's inner workings, which she knew better than her own name, was turning into a struggle.

"Jdehn?" She glanced up at Spock's concern. "You have grown pale."

And her hands on the controls trembled.

"It's just been a bad day." And it was still only morning. She snapped off the screen. The lack of light should ease the headache.

It didn't. "I don't find a thing keeping that comm panel from working."

"But you still don't remember the station calling you?" Kirk asked.

"No, I don't. I don't know why. I remember--" Something had made her lean into the panel for a better look. Yes, that was right. She had leaned in and--

The knot of tension in her head shot tendrils all through her skull, pulling everything in tight. She winced with the pain. Both Kirk and Spock said something to her, but it took too much effort to make sense of their noise. Her ears even hummed with the agony and she was getting nauseous.

She nearly shouted over it, trying to hear herself over the painful static. She wanted to vomit. Her vision eclipsed down a tunnel, transporting the room far away. "I found something while I did repairs. I got closer for a look and then--"

The pain just as suddenly cleared. The answer blossomed in its place.

"I got hit with a surge. It must've blacked me out." Oh, the relief from the headache was wonderful! She slumped back in her chair and her grip on the arms eased. Her skin was clammy from sweat. Sweat! Say anything else about her being half-Vulcan, it still meant she could take a lot of heat. Not to mention, her basic biology resisted her losing any moisture. But she sat here sweating.

Still, it made the air circulation cool and lovely. She thought happy thoughts about a shower.

"You were not wearing protective clothing?" Spock asked.

"I know, stupid thing to do, but I was wearing gloves until-- yeah, I needed to get my hands into someplace tight, so I got rid of the gloves."

Kirk still stood over by Mekhi. "Can we see the part that surged?"

He was making that knot come back. He had better not make that come back or so help her, she didn't care if he was Spock's friend, she was gonna--

"I scrapped it. What's it matter anyway?"

Spock answered, "The repairs you have in your logs are not systems which would give a power surge."

"Look," she snapped, despite the even way he spoke, "I know I blacked out. Maybe I didn't list everything, but I know it happened. I blacked out and woke up feeling fried. I didn't hear 'em before, but I got the call to lower the ramp and I did it."

Kirk looked at Spock and it bugged her that he didn't look any different. Probably because again she had lost her temper while everyone else was as calm as could be.

Well, maybe not everyone. Mekhi smirked, but even that was tiny instead of his usual attitude. And yeah, he was pale, like her.

"Like you said," Kirk spoke. "You were there and we weren't." Mekhi's smirk faded away when both Spock and Kirk focused on him. "You still don't remember hearing any system on the ship signal? Did you hear Jdehn?"

"I said no."

Jdehn was sure Mekhi had finally gotten to even Spock, but Kirk held up a hand and after a pause, turned to Arik. "Can you help us at all with this, Arik?"

"I've been thinking about it ever since Jdehn started talking--" He got that look like his brain chewed on his stomach.

"And?"

His eyes shifted from Kirk to her. With what? Agony over not answering the comm panel or were headaches hitting anyone with Romulan blood?

She answered for Arik in a snarl. "And he knows nothin'. None of us do. We can't help. OK?"

He gave her a weak, but at least sincere, look of thanks.

Until Kirk reminded them, "We're trying to find who is attacking you with this disease."

Arik's face turned into a sea of guilt. Mekhi's looked the same for a second, and then turned to anger, which matched how Jdehn felt. Kirk was completely right, and that made it worse.

So she snapped even harder. "What does me not hearin' the med team got to do with it?"

Spock answered. "It occurred to us that at least one member of the responsible party managed to board your ship and attack you."

Dammit! That made sense.

Jdehn rubbed her hands over face. The sweat no longer felt cool, but grimy. A dried stain caking her skin.

Someone was trying to kill her. Had she actually forgotten that?

She had nothing to say that wouldn't be utterly stupid, and she had said enough dumb things. But Arik and Mekhi shut up too, so the ugly silence just played on.

At last, Kirk said something. Maybe he knew how bad they felt; he sounded it. "Is there any chance you were attacked? Could someone have set off that power surge?"

She couldn't look up. She'd feel more like an idiot if she actually had to look at someone in the room. "No. I didn't hear or see anybody, and my ship cams are clear."

She knew that for a fact; she had run through them already when she shut down the Independence the other day.

"If I may," Spock began. "Would you allow me to search the security files?"

She almost argued, but either was too tired or knew he was right or both. She leaned back from the console, and he worked quickly on accessing the files and sending them to the Science Academy. She scanned them again as they went by.

"Uh–" Arik shifted in his baggy brown tunic (He really needs to learn to dress better. He makes me look like a fashion plate, Jdehn thought) and then dared a glance somewhere in Spock's vicinity. Somehow, this got his chin up and he faced Kirk with a little more strength now, then just as suddenly -- was that a blush? "The thing is, when Mekhi wandered off, I sat in one of the jump couches back there and... Well, I fell asleep. I didn't wake up until the doctors came up the ramp."

She sighed to herself. She sure picked the time to mother an old lover. Clearly, Arik wasn't one she was going to walk away from without a backwards glance.

Mekhi shrugged. "Who cares? I stretched out too. Nothin' else to do 'sides waitin' around."

Mekhi sticking up for someone: Jdehn had seen it all now.

Kirk went to put his hand on Arik's shoulder -- probably as a way to say don't worry about sleeping through everything -- and he was smart enough to hold off for a second until Arik saw the hand coming.

"I think that's all we have for now. Thank you for answering our questions."

Of course Arik, out of the three of them, pointed out, "You're actually helping us so..."

Kirk smiled. "We'll need your help again. Meanwhile, you might want to have the hospital give you a physical, find out why you're all having those headaches."

Arik made some sort of groan over going back to the hospital, even with the line of sweat gleaming on his face; Mekhi's upper lip curled, and Jdehn couldn't stop a sharp, "Not me."

Spock argued, "You are still pale, Jdehn. As is Mekhi and Arik. Perhaps you left the hospital too soon or merely need additional rest."

Why'd he have to be so nice? She couldn't argue with his nice.

"I meant," She fumbled for an excuse and ended up using a real one. Imagine that. "I'm lifting off tomorrow. I got a job and I can't let it go. I lost one coming here and now the spacers I was using for tomorrow took other flights. I gotta dig up a crew today and make that job. I got a year before -- well, before I get really sick, but if I lose that job tomorrow, I got nothing to get me into that year."

"Ask Saavik," Kirk said.

He could not have said that. "What?" she asked.

But when he spoke again, it sounded just the same. "Ask Saavik. She doesn't have to return to her ship this next year. She's available and experienced."

Jdehn was shaking her head as soon as he repeated the 'Ask Saavik' part. "No way. Sorry if it sounds rude, but no. Not her."

Of course, she couldn't get away with just saying that.

"Why not? You said you needed extra hands to do this job. Why not her?"

What was he, Saavik's booking agent or something?

"Look, this is a working freighter. It's not Starfleet. It's a whole other game. The systems, the way work goes, everything. Working your ship doesn't mean you can fit that into a job here."

Kirk didn't quite believe that, it was obvious, but he couldn't argue against her.

And then Spock ruined it. "Saavik has freighter experience." Even Kirk turned on that one. "She once informed me that she would choose to book passage on freighters, instead of traveling on passenger craft, in the days before she was fully commissioned. Especially if the freighter needed to take longer in reaching the same destination. At times, such passage entailed working with the freighter crew."

Figures. Frankly, Saavik popping up like this with citizenship, blowing up Hellguard, and whatever other wonderful thing she had going was starting to tick Jdehn off.

She had picked the 'nicer' reason to say earlier. Now: "OK, I confess. The real reason is like this. I don't like my 'fellow hybrids' around me in general. Yeah, Arik's an exception, but you don't got to look at Mekhi. He don't like me either." She leaned forward in her chair and jabbed her finger down at the deck. "But what I really don't need is one of them coming on my ship and playing a game of "alpha female". The Independence is mine! I'm captain here. And I'm not butting heads with someone who doesn't get that. I don't need it and the ship can't run that way."

"Do you think," Kirk said, "I am... was any different when I ran my ship?"

Jdehn flopped back in her seat, chewing on the inside of her lip. He doesn't get it.

"You're right. Saavik, by her nature, is not a follower. But if she couldn't follow orders or if she disrupted a ship's routine because she had an attitude about not being the leader, someone would have thrown her out of Starfleet on her first day. And I'd never would have let her on Enterprise. Neither would Spock."

Jdehn glared at him, and he held up a hand asking to finish his point as if she had spoken out loud. "Just consider it. It is your ship, you are the captain, but it'd give you an experienced hand besides yours and Arik's."

Because she was aggravated, she snorted with disdain. "Arik's not a shipper. And even if he was, he's not going."

Kirk shot a look in his direction. "I thought the two of you--"

Arik grinned that honest, friendly smile that sparked his whole drab look with light. Jdehn smiled herself seeing it, but that didn't change things. "We're not together. That was for Phase II. It was --- for the moment. Now the Independence and me gotta go. You know how it is."

She meant it in general, that Kirk understood how some people were just this way; but when he jerked back at her comment, she wondered how she could have bothered him. From what she had heard about him, he was the same as her.

Arik, the sweetheart (I am going to miss him.), spoke up. The way he was so clearly all right with everything supported her point that he felt no different about their being over than she did. And he made the point so naturally, so unconsciously, that everyone knew it was the truth and not him covering up hurt feelings.

She had a little tender spot for him and always would. They got through that insane time together, and she'd forever be thankful for that. But it was time to move on now, for both of them.

"I got my own plans anyway," Arik said. "In fact, I'm the one who's been trying to talk to Saavik. So, Jdehn, if you're gonna ask her to come along, just give me my shot first."

Jdehn shrugged. "She's all yours. Good luck." The way Kirk and Spock stared at her made her rise up in one last defensive bout. "See, Saavik can't crew with me anyway. Arik's got plans for her and he had 'em first."

Spock lifted an eyebrow and watched Arik for a bit. So did Kirk, like they wondered what those plans were.

"Not that people asked me," Mekhai mumbled, "but I'm stayin' too."

He gave no reason, and if the others were like Jdehn, they didn't care. Still, Jim Kirk said they could use his help before he asked her, "When is your departure time?"

"Soon as possible. Anything to get away from this planet."

She immediately cringed catching Spock once more in her peripheral vision. She had insulted him. Yeah, some Vulcans would never get over Hellguard; neither would she. And she wasn't going to forgive her Vulcan parent for not somehow making sure Hellguard hadn't happened to him. Or her. But when was she going to grow up and stop beating up someone like Spock over it?

Kirk was giving her an odd look. She gave him credit for trying to understand, but he should have saved the effort. The whole thing was a mess that made no sense.

But he wasn't confused; he hadn't liked Spock and his planet getting insulted. "If that's the way you really feel, I'm surprised you came here at all."

She avoided looking at anyone, especially the tall, lean form standing next to her, knowing exactly why she had come.

Because Vulcan had paid all the bills in her childhood, had even gotten her started in shipping. Despite all her lashing out at Vulcan, she was well aware of how much they had done for her. If it had been her on that Symmetry team, she'd have spaced the whole lot of the hybrids. All the fighting, demanding, ingratitude and hassle... yep, she'd have shoved the entire kit and kaboodle out the airlock.

All the years of cursing them... Jdehn put that guilty thought away, but when Vulcan contacted her over the disease, it rose to the surface. She swore she didn't have the disease, she had no symptoms, but she found she had a sense of right and wrong. If her showing up and letting them did a few scans helped out in some way, it was the least she could do.

"Obligation," Spock said.

"Conscience," she replied. She hoped he believed her.

They were leaving with one last comment on reaching her if they had any more questions. "And if you need us," Kirk asked, "we can be reached through the Science Academy."

Then they were gone.

Mekhi watched her, not saying what they all knew. She had blown it.

"Shut up," she told him.