Star Trek: The Original Series - 162 - Shadow of the Machine by Scott Harrison

like me to play them for you?”
    “Definitely not.” Sulu was in no mood to be answering a lot of questions about Susan and the baby at this time of night, even if they were well meaning.
    Sulu padded down the hallway, heading for the living room, when he stopped suddenly outside an open door. The lights were off, but the shutters on the windows must have been open, for moonlight spilled into the room, throwing a spotlight upon the only piece of furniture that currently occupied it.
    He hesitated, looking away toward the hall table, the coat stand, the closet—anywhere, as long as he wasn’t looking at that thing sitting on the floor in there.
    Sulu glanced back in through the doorway again. It was still there.
    A voice inside his head was screaming, Do you really want to be doing this? I mean, now, of all times?
    He knew it was a really bad idea even as he reached out and placed a hand on the door, pushing it open the rest of the way.
    When the overhead lights flickered on, revealing the half-finished nursery, Sulu was almost blinded by the whiteness of the newly painted walls. The last time he’d been here, this had still been what Suze called the laundry room.
    Laundry room. Yeah, right.
    It always made him smile to hear her call it that. Susan liked to give names to everything. There’d been nothing in the room except for a cleaner and an old fold-out table; there was little room for anything else.
    But the room looked different now, bigger, definitely cleaner. Susan had been busy while he was away.
    Standing dead center was the crib, the one her parents had given them as a gift not long after Susan had told them she was pregnant. There was a teddy bear sitting inside.
    Sulu reached in and picked up the toy. He sat down on the bare nursery floor, with his legs crossed and his back against the front panel of the crib.
    That’s when the tears came.
    For a while he just sat there, with the bear in his hands, letting the tears come. Sulu thought that if he tried to stem them, he’d just burst like a dam and he’d only have to go through it all again. Most probably in a hospital, in front of Susan, and that’s the last thing either of them needed right now. Susan would be tired and emotional too; she needed his support.
    And the baby. She needed to feel that they were there for her. She wouldn’t understand it, not on any conscious level, but instinctually, she’d know.
    Sulu lifted his head from the crib and stared up at the smooth, featureless surface of the ceiling. It too was newly painted, white and gleaming, just like the walls.
    He knew that he wouldn’t be able to close his eyes and sleep, not tonight. If he did, then all he would see would be that tiny, fragile baby lying motionless in the incubator. The only indication that she was alive, that she was fighting for her life, was the steady, almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest.
    She needed him.
    Susan needed him.
    And in two weeks he was going to leave. Board the Enterprise and disappear out of their lives for five years.
    Did that make him a bad father? A bad husband?
    His mama, Demora Sulu, had been the first female Starfleet officer to be given command of a starbase. It was a newly installed one, located near the Romulan Neutral Zone.
    One night his mother had come home a very different woman, Sulu remembered. She was ecstatic and excited. They had always been proud of Mama, especially his papa. But that night there had been something else, something that Sulu could feel mixed in with the joy and celebrations.
    At first Sulu had not understood what it was; not until much later did he realize that his mama had been frightened. Terrified, even. Not for herself, or for the two hundred plus people that would be serving under her, but for her family—especially for Hikaru.
    His mama had stepped out onto the porch and watched him play for a while, one hand resting on the railing, the other cradling what his parents used to call a “grown-up