Oh holy cheese! I was all set to offer my review from my feelings on Leone's mom (... Um... Um... Yeahhhh...) and how glad I am that Charity was staying with her (Charity seems like good people), then you DROP this bomb on us at the end of the chapter??? And by a Vulcan, too, so it's all the more shocking for its starkness??? Oy! I'm floored! *hustles over to Chapter 2*

Oh boy, is there anything worse than having your own mother suddenly come out of retirement only to become your de facto boss? Alright, so it might not be quite that straight forward either but then of course this is one complicated family anyway.

While the matriarch returns to the lime light, her daughter is reassigned. Something tells me that Krystine is in no state to carry out an assignment of high political importance. So that's probably not going to go well.

And then there is the youngster of the family who has his own troubles with his kind-of but not really girlfriend who has only just learned of a falsehood he has been perpetrated for years. It might be innocent enough but I can kinda see why she would be a little peed of about it.

It's tough being a Leone.

This again was a nice bit of scene-setting and character building.  I may not be as intimately familiar with these characters as some, but I'm getting to know them.  The tension between Krystine and Angeline was palpable, as was the awkward exchange between Dom and Teelis.  Lots more to both relationships, I'm sure.

Just want to give a shout out here to the accurate portrayal of how things work in the service, and in the Navy specifically.  As a retired LCDR in the reserves, I appreciate the nods to promotion ceremonies and minimum time in rank.  An interesting tradition though, at least when I was in, was that you got your increase in rank insignia from a friend or fellow officer who had been promoted beyond that rank, and therefore no longer had need of those lower insignias.  I can nremember passing along my old 'bars' to more junior colleagues, and presiding over several swearing in ceremonies, both for enlisted and more junior officers.

But I digress.  It'll be interesting to see where these multi generations of Leones wind up, and if any will be able to step out of the shadow of their more famous, and higher-ranking parents and earn merits in their own right.  It already seems that many of their colleagues take them at face value, even if they themselves don't.