“Thank you, Doctor,” Archer said, then watched the doctor’s back as it retreated from the antechamber. Turning toward T’Pol, the captain favored the Vulcan with a wry grin. “You’d better get out there. You don’t want to miss me screwing this thing up.”
T’Pol looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “I’m going to remain down here, if you don’t mind.”
“You never liked crowds, did you?” Archer said, smiling. Padd still in hand, he turned toward the stairs and began ascending them while trying to construct an emotional levee to contain the rising tide of nervousness he was feeling. They’re waiting for me out there!
T’Pol spoke behind him. “You look very… heroic.”
Archer paused on the staircase in mid-step, allowing this rare compliment from the usually stoic Vulcan to wash over him. He turned back toward her and stepped back down into the antechamber.
He stood face-to-face with T’Pol, not wishing to trivialize the moment by smiling or joking about it. Although he knew it went against everything he understood about Vulcan propriety, he gathered her into a warm but platonic embrace. He wasn’t certain, but it seemed to him that she was trying to return the hug, at least insofar as a Vulcan could consent to making such an apparent display of emotion.
The embrace lingered for a measureless interval until Archer heard the ocean-tide noise of the crowd rising again. They were still waiting for the day’s first speaker, perhaps checking their chronometers and wondering what had become of him.
As he gently separated from her, he remembered the note that Trip had entrusted to him- a note that Archer hadn’t looked at and whose contents Trip hadn’t explained. He reached into his coat and extracted the single folded sheet, wondering whether it contained a final farewell- and if he’d see his oldest friend ever again.
Archer wordlessly handed her the note, then withdrew a few paces as she unfolded the paper and read its contents, her unlined face betraying not the slightest reaction as her dark eyes absorbed Trip’s message.
Then something unidentifiable, and perhaps even worrisome, passed behind T’Pol’s dark eyes.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come up and watch the speeches?” Archer asked.
She nodded. “Thank you, Captain. I am quite certain.”
Archer nodded silently, then walked back to the steps that led up to the dais.
It’s finally showtime, he thought, his heart racing as he ascended the steps yet again. He mounted the stage and strode onto the dais, clutching his padd nearly hard enough to shatter it.
And as he tried vainly to take in the impossible hugeness of the audience, Archer decided he’d much rather face a dozen bloodthirsty, d’k tahg-wielding Klingons.
Fifty
Wednesday, March 5, 2155
Candlestick Park, San Francisco
AS T’POL OPENED THE DOOR to Archer’s dressing room, apprehension and eagerness struggled within her even more vehemently than the debates between Sessinek, T’Karik, and Surak that her mother T’Les had told her about so often during her childhood.
She was greeted by a young-looking male Vulcan who sat in the small room’s single chair as if he had been waiting for her to arrive. The first peculiarity she noticed about him was his rather prominent brow ridge.
The second was his voice.
“Hello, T’Pol,” he said. Although his face was unfamiliar- unless, she thought, she had glimpsed it once before in a dream- his voice, though altered, was unmistakable. After all, very few Vulcans had ever picked up an Alabama-Florida accent.
“Trip?” In spite of what had been written on the extremely surprising note the captain had delivered to her- an apparently genuine handwritten message from Trip Tucker that purported to have been written today- she could scarcely contain her surprise at seeing him.
A sheepish grin spread itself across the man’s face, confirming his identity as conclusively as had the sound of his voice. “Maybe I dreamed it, but I’m pretty sure I told you we weren’t going to lose touch,” he said. “By the way, that Starfleet uniform looks really good on you.”
He approached her and gently took the folded white sheet of paper she still carried between her suddenly nerveless fingers. “Mind if I take this back? I have to keep the fact that I’m still alive a secret. From most people, that is.” He folded the sheet again and tucked it into a pocket inside his black traveler’s robe.
It occurred to her then that the instinct she had experienced immediately after Trip’s “death” now stood vindicated. Her early, and apparently illogical, conviction that Trip- along with the mind-link she’d shared with him before their romantic entanglement had dissolved- had indeed somehow survived had been borne out. She was dumbstruck for a seeming eternity, until she found the one word that best expressed her bewildered state of mind:
“Why?”
His smile faded, and a look of intense regret colored his now uncannily Vulcanoid features. “The Romulans were about to perfect a new warp seven-capable spacedrive. Somebody had to infiltrate the project and stop them. Somebody who already had some close-up familiarity with their technology.”
“And did you succeed in stopping this project?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “You know, I’m still not completely sure about that. I guess we’ll all find out soon enough. I can only hope I did a better job on that front than I did in preventing their attack on Coridan.”
“The devastation on Coridan Prime would have been far worse had we not warned them. I assume you had something to do with enabling us to do that.” She paused, then added, “You were Lazarus.”
Trip nodded. “I warned Captain Archer about what the Romulans were planning for Coridan as quickly as I could. I wasn’t quite quick enough, though. But I keep telling myself my warning made some sort of difference anyway, just so I can get to sleep at night. Sometimes it even works.”
“So out of all the possible candidates in Starfleet, Starfleet Command selected you to infiltrate the Romulan Star Empire.”
“Yes. But it wasn’t exactly Starfleet Command. It’s a covert ops bureau buried deep inside Starfleet Intelligence. In fact, Starfleet Command would probably deny even knowing about it.”
“Deceit,” she said, her voice edged more sharply than she had intended. “How very human.”
“Oh, come on, T’Pol,” he said, his brow furrowing. “Humans sure as hell don’t have a monopoly on deceit.”
“Vulcans do not make a habit of lying, or of concealing the truth.”
“Then you folks must be quite a bit better at it than we are. But even Vulcans get caught sometimes in the middle of a whopper. Do I have to remind you about the Vulcan operatives who were secretly spying on the Andorians on P’Jem? Or how your former fearless leader V’Las set up those terrorist attacks last year, then tried to pin ‘em on T’Pau and the other Syrrannites?”
Including T’Les, my mother, she thought. T’Les had died during that terrible time.
Though Trip’s words stung her, T’Pol carefully schooled her mien to maintain its best display of Vulcan equanimity. There was no point in continuing to argue the point; she knew that he was right. Nevertheless, she still felt incensed- illogically, she had to admit- that he had deigned, whether under orders or not, to keep concealed from her something as important as the faking of his own death. She stared at him in silence, not trusting herself to speak again until she succeeded in calming her roiling emotions, or at least in centering herself somewhat.
“You should have taken me into your confidence,” she said at length, finally breaking the silence that had begun to stretch awkwardly between them.
“You’re probably right, T’Pol. And I’m sorry.” His eyes glistened with regret, and she was startled when she realized that her own eyes were waging a struggle of their own against a rush of unshed tears. “Probably”?
“Who else knows?” she said aloud.
Tears finally began running freely down his cheeks. “Malcolm. Phlox. The captain.”<
br />
Only those with an operational need to know, she thought, understanding but still somewhat resentful. And angry. And hurt.
“I’m so sorry, T’Pol.”
Still battling her own emotions, she said, “I am… gratified that you survived.”
“Gratified, but also damned pissed off,” Trip said, smiling through his tears.
“Vulcans do not experience such base emotions.”
“Horse apples they don’t.”
“I certainly hope no one else sees you in this emotional state,” she said, though in truth she wasn’t eager to let anybody see her anytime soon either.
“What, are you afraid I’ll give Vulcans a bad name?” Trip said, chuckling at his own comment as he wiped at his still-flowing tears with the heels of both hands.
T’Pol stood watching him, feeling awkward and inadequate to do anything to comfort him, or herself for that matter. Her arms felt like useless vestigial appendages, so she clasped her hands behind her back to keep them out of her way. She wondered how he would react if she were to initiate the same sort of affectionate human embrace to which Captain Archer had spontaneously resorted only a few minutes ago.
Then, as she studied his overwrought face, a fundamental realization struck her: He had said he had been sent into the Romulan Star Empire as an infiltrator. Therefore Charles Tucker now wore the face of a Romulan.
And the face of a Romulan was all but indistinguishable from that of a Vulcan.
“Your… appearance suggests that Romulans and Vulcans are kindred species,” T’Pol said once she’d found her voice again.
“Looks that way.”
Oddly, her emotions began to calm now that she had an external problem of some importance with which to occupy her mind. “Does Captain Archer know?”
“I’m sure he’ll figure it out once he’s a little bit less preoccupied.”
“Of course,” she said, nodding, training her attention back upon the core of Trip’s surprising revelation. “If the Romulans truly are a throwback to the warlike, colonizing period of our ancient ancestors, then all the Coalition worlds are in grave danger. The Romulans will never stop attacking us voluntarily.”
“I know,” Trip said.
At that moment T’Pol understood with immediate, heart-breaking certainty that he intended to go back among them, and probably quite soon. She could sense from the resolve in his voice that it would not only be useless to try to talk him out of it, but also that it would be dangerous to the Coalition should his mission be interrupted or delayed.
And there was another grave danger as well, one that could not only disproportionately affect her homeworld, but might also shatter the entire alliance if it wasn’t addressed properly.
“The Coalition will be fragile for a long time, Trip, even after the delegates sign the Compact,” she said.
“I figured that kind of goes without saying,” he said, regarding her with evident curiosity. “What exactly are you getting at?”
“I speak of Vulcan’s… evident kinship with the Romulans. Should this secret ever get out, the other Coalition members- even Earth- will distrust us. The Andorians would almost certainly demand our withdrawal from the alliance, or else abandon it themselves. Even if the Andorian-Vulcan war that would almost inevitably result didn’t directly involve Earth and Tellar, it would render the entire Coalition more vulnerable than ever to Romulan conquest.”
Trip seemed to be listening with what T’Pol regarded as an appropriately Vulcan degree of sobriety- so long as one overlooked his tear-streaked cheeks, and his greenish bloodshot eyes.
“Looks like we’ve both done the political math the same way,” he said after she’d finished making her case. “Don’t worry, T’Pol. Your people’s secret is safe with me. And I’m just as sure it’ll be safe with my… associates here on Earth. And with Captain Archer, too. As far as I know, that’s everyone else who’s seen the dirty family linen. I’m sure it’s going to be kept strictly off the record.”
She gathered Trip’s meaning clearly, despite his often perplexing human metaphors. Relief swept through her, like the cooling winter nightwinds that blew so infrequently across the desiccated sands of Gol.
“And your secret is safe with me.” She felt certain that there was no way she would voluntarily reveal to anyone what had actually become of him. Being officially dead was his best protection, considering the dangers inherent in interstellar espionage, and the consequences, should his true fate and activities be revealed, were too grave to be contemplated.
He grinned again. “I know, T’Pol. And I think I finally came to understand that when I was in Romulan space and thought I was going to die there….
“I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”
He approached her closely then, put his arms around her, and gathered her in for a kiss. Though surprised, she did not resist, and even found herself reciprocating.
Nearly as soon as it had begun, the kiss was over. “So long, T’Pol. I’ll see you again after this Romulan business is finished. I promise.”
Then he turned, headed for the door, and was gone.
T’Pol stood in the tiny dressing room for several minutes, stunned and silent, alone with her thoughts and her regrets. So much still remained unsaid between them, though she supposed that neither of them had any real need to hear any of it spoken aloud by the other. After all, the vestige of their mind-link still remained.
She knew that the only constructive- and logical- thing she could do was to look forward, hoping, if not entirely believing, that their paths would indeed cross again someday.
But she was also logical enough to know that no one could entirely avoid taking at least an occasional backward glance.
Reaching into the small hip pocket on her uniform, she extracted a tiny gleaming metal bracelet and raised it nearly to eye level. The dressing room’s bright lights immediately brought out its finely etched inscription:
Elizabeth T’Les Tucker.
Her dead infant daughter, and Trip’s, named for Trip’s dead sister and T’Pol’s dead mother. Created with test tubes and incubators by a craven Terran criminal, the child’s remains now lay buried on Vulcan, though she wasn’t born there, nor anywhere else, strictly speaking. T’Les was buried under those very same sands as well.
Whatever else she could have been or might have become, little Elizabeth now represented the vanishingly small chance that T’Pol and Trip might have had for a future together.
Silently, T’Pol put the bracelet away.
Then she allowed herself to weep once again, this time for everything that might have been.
Archer found the air in the open-dome stadium damned cold, despite the relative thickness of his dress-uniform jacket. Standing under an overcast sky, his heart was lodged firmly in his throat as he stood at the podium, facing countless thousands of people hailing from no less than nineteen planets, including Earth. Addressing them, as well as the cameras that would carry his words to billions more, was a daunting prospect, to say the least.
And a lot of these people consider me a hero, dammit! he thought, cursing himself for his continued nervousness. He looked up from the lectern that concealed his padd, imagining all the faces that he couldn’t see clearly in the enormous, faceless crowd, while focusing his gaze on the nearest rows. These were filled with luminaries of numerous species, and many of them would affix their signatures to the historic Coalition Compact later today.
He felt buffeted by the intense pressure of their eyes and their expectations: Admirals Black and Gardner from Starfleet Command; Captain Erika Hernandez, Archer’s one-time lover and current counterpart aboard the Starship Columbia NX-02; Prime Minister Nathan Samuels and Interior Minister Haroun al-Rashid of Earth; Ambassadors Soval, Solkar, and L’Nel, and Minister T’Pau of Vulcan; Ambassadors Thoris and sh’Rothress of Andoria, as well as Shran and his new bondmates, Shenar, Vishri, and Jhamel; Ambassador Gral of Tellar; and various members of the press, most of whom were equi
pped with head-mounted imaging equipment.
All of it trained squarely upon him, like some mass-media firing squad.
Archer scowled involuntarily when he noticed Travis’s old flame, the covert Starfleet Intelligence operative Gannet Brooks, sitting among the ranks of the journalists. The press- including the estimable Ms. Brooks- had picked up and run with certain unauthorized remarks made off the record by someone in Nathan Samuels’ office concerning Archer’s Monday conversation with the prime minister about the Coalition delegates’ reluctance to take military action against the Romulans, despite their having attacked Coridan Prime. Although both Archer and Samuels had been ducking interview requests ever since the story had broken- Archer had offered only a neutral but calculatedly surly “no comment” in response to every question the press had hurled his way in public- many among the press seemed convinced that Archer intended to bang the drums of war from the lectern today.
He remained just as convinced as ever that the Romulan threat simply wasn’t going to go away, at least not without a great deal of military “encouragement.” But a declaration of war was the last thing he wanted this day to be about.
Though he couldn’t see any members of his crew, Archer tried to draw strength from the knowledge that Malcolm, Travis, Hoshi, and Phlox were here somewhere pulling for him, probably along with anyone else from Enterprise for whom Lieutenant O’Neill had authorized shore leave.
Of course, his crew would expect eloquence from him, too. It’s too damned bad Starfleet Academy doesn’t really offer elocution classes for captains, he thought, recalling the observation Malcolm had made a couple of days earlier.
His gaze swept over the nearby Vulcan contingent, settling quickly on Soval, who was watching him with his usual reserved expression, though Archer thought he spied a fair amount of curiosity on the diplomat’s face as well. How could he flounder on the dais right in front of Soval? For years, the Vulcan ambassador had considered Archer an unworthy failure, until he’d finally won Soval over following the Terra Prime crisis.
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