“Oh, hell, no,” Alastair said.

“Alastair,” Isabel said, admonishingly.

“You thought my toast was going to be long and boring and full of politics,” Alastair said. “The gloater in chief here will positively outstrip your expectations of me.”

“Dad does have a point,” Catherine said.

“Then you say it, dear,” Isabel said to her.

“Indeed,” Brandt said, clearly a little hurt at having his toast proposal rebuffed. “Regale us with tales of the people you’ve met and crushed in the last year.”

“The hell with this,” Wes said, and reached for the mashed potatoes.

“Wes,” Isabel said.

“What?” Wes said, spooning out a heap of potatoes. “By the time you figure out who’s toasting what, everything will be dry and cold. I have too much respect for Madga’s work for that.”

“I’ll make the toast,” Hart said.

“Ho!” Brandt said. “This is a first.”

“Quiet, Brandt,” Isabel said, and turned her attention to her youngest. “Go ahead, dear.”

Hart stood, picked up his glass of wine and looked over the table.

“Every year, whoever makes the toast gets to talk about the events in their life from the last year,” Hart said. “Well, I have to say this has been an eventful year. I got spit on by aliens as part of a diplomatic negotiation. My ship was attacked with a missile and almost blew up around me. I got a human head delivered to me by an alien as part of another, entirely different negotiation. And, as you all recently learned, I helped zap a dog into unconsciousness as part of a third negotiation. All the while living day to day in a ship that’s the oldest one in service, sleeping in a bunk that’s barely wide enough for me, rooming with a guy who is either snoring or passing gas most of the night.

“If you think about it, it’s a ridiculous way to live. It really is. And, as has also been pointed out to me recently, it’s a way that doesn’t seem to hold much of a future for me, assigned as I am to a low-ranking ambassador who has had to fight her way to the sorts of missions that more exalted diplomats would turn down as a waste of their talents and abilities. It does make you wonder why I do it. Why I have done it.