“And you and Doctor Janith-Lau have helped me to see… that there are other ways to fight. That perhaps the worthiest battle is the one we wage with ourselves.” On the table before her, her fists clenched. “Horatio… lost that battle. He surrendered too easily to blind faith… to a narrow definition of what we were allowed to be. I don’t want to make that same mistake, sir. I don’t want to surrender to my own assumptions.”

Kirk smiled at her. “I respect your choice, Portia, and I wish you well. But I still feel it’s Starfleet’s loss. You are far more than most people expected of you.”

She nodded. “Most… except Rakatheema. I may not have trusted his intentions… but he saw that we could be more. He fought to give us that chance… and he died for it. We owe it to him to achieve the spirit of what he sought for us, if not the specifics.”

“I’m sure he would be proud to see that.”

Bertram looked unsure of himself. “That play Horatio loved… that he took his name from… there was that man who said, ‘This above all—to thine own self be true.’ ” He shook his head. “That’s all I ever wanted to do. Just be what I was born to be. But now I think… maybe Shakespeare was wrong?”

Kirk smiled. “Shakespeare wrote that man, Polonius, as a fool. That speech showed his shallowness, his obliviousness in giving advice that he didn’t understand or follow.” He chuckled. “A friend of mine, Rhenas Sherev, once told me that she thought Polonius’s fatal mistake was that he was a character in a tragedy who believed he was in a comedy. He thought Hamlet was mad with unrequited love rather than grief and vengeance, and so he died because he failed to understand his world and his role within it.”

Bertram was still confused. “So… what does that mean?”

“It means that… you should strive to be true to yourself… but you shouldn’t assume you already know who you really are, or how you fit into the world around you. It’s through the striving that you discover your true self.”

Portia turned to take in Kirk and Chandra. “That goes for you too, you know. Starfleet. You need to figure some things out about what you truly are—peacemakers, warriors, or something in between.”

Kirk returned her gaze, acknowledging her insight. “I’ve been seeking that answer for most of my life. I still haven’t found the answer. I think maybe it has to change as the galaxy we live in changes.”

She considered that for a moment. “Maybe. But maybe it’s by making the right or wrong choices that we change the galaxy.”

He smiled at Portia. “It just may be at that.”

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