Chef withdrew, presumably to get whatever refreshments he was about to serve, as the man and the woman both rose and took turns making introductions and shaking Archer’s hand. T’Pol took a step backward, not eager to encourage either of the humans to attempt to touch her. The gesture wasn’t one of revulsion; being a touch-telepath like the vast majority of Vulcans, T’Pol simply regarded the unbidden physical touch of a stranger as an intolerable intrusion. Fortunately, neither of the outpost’s leaders appeared to have taken offense at her reticence.
Once the introductions were completed and everyone had taken their seats around the table, T’Pol said, “If your injuries are causing you discomfort, our sickbay is at your disposal.”
A deep frown creased the hard face of the MACO woman, who had introduced herself as Colonel Manetta Lundy. “Thank you, Commander. But your sickbay is a bit crowded now with people who have real injuries. Once your medics have taken care of them, we’ll be happy to have our hangnails seen to.”
“Same goes for me,” said the civilian male, who had called himself Yutaka Shima. He turned a hard glare in Archer’s direction. “In the meantime, we’ll try not to dribble blood onto your fine table linens here.”
T’Pol refrained from replying, and observed that Archer was doing likewise as Chef reentered the room bearing a large metal platter heaped with bread, vegetables, meat, and pitchers filled with cold water and Terran fruit juices. The contrast between the immaculate white table settings with the ragtag condition of two of the diners suddenly became both stark and absurd in T’Pol’s eyes. But whatever fault she might have found in their manner, the obvious toughness of these humans and their tenacity in the face of almost certain death struck T’Pol as anything but absurd.
Chef exited once again and Archer made an expansive gesture toward the food. “Go ahead and eat, please. We can debrief you about the Romulan attack later, if you prefer.”
Yutaka Shima merely eyed the rice, steamed vegetables, and Terran animal flesh on his plate for a long moment, as though he were grappling internally with temptation. “I thought the last thing I’d ever eat would come out of one of those damned emergency ration packs,” he said at length.
“Shima, those were all my people had to eat after the Romulans knocked out the power systems,” Colonel Lundy said, scowling at the contents of her own plate. “And e-rats are all we MACOs are going to eat for the duration of the crisis. At least the ten percent or so of us who are still able to eat anything.”
Although Archer neither flinched nor winced at the colonel’s almost accusatory tone, T’Pol thought he seemed to deflate ever so slightly.
“Colonel, I’m sorry,” the captain said very quietly.
Lundy pushed her plate brusquely toward the table’s center, forcing T’Pol to lunge forward to prevent Chef’s floral centerpiece from toppling over and dumping water everywhere.
“Frankly, Captain, I’m not interested in hearing how sorry you are,” the colonel said, folding her arms before her. “Just see to it this food gets to some of those civilians out in the corridor.”
Archer frowned. “Care to decide which ones?”
Lundy scowled. “Excuse me?”
“Were there any particular individuals in the multitude we just rescued that you had in mind?” Archer said, speaking softly but matching the colonel’s scowl with a hard glare of his own. “Or are you just making a grand gesture? Look, Colonel, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am about what happened to the outpost, but—”
“And again, Captain, I don’t want to hear it,” Lundy said, interrupting.
T’Pol was about to interject something about common courtesy when Shima spoke up. “Manetta, I wouldn’t mind hearing just how sorry the captain is.”
Archer sat in silence, facing the unblinking stares of the two bedraggled outpost leaders, though it must have felt like a fusillade from Enterprise’s forward phase cannons.
Silence descended upon the room until the captain broke it. “What exactly are you trying to say, Mister Shima?”
“I think you understand perfectly well what we’re saying, Captain,” Shima said, pushing himself back from the table. “We called Starfleet for help as soon as we knew we were under attack. But you took your goddamned sweet time getting here, didn’t you?”
Archer’s stony manner might have impressed a Vulcan master. “Starfleet’s resources are spread rather thinly, Mister Shima. Particularly now. I’m sure Colonel Lundy is well aware of the logistical realities of interstellar defense.” He nodded in Lundy’s direction.
“Oh, and I’m sure she’d be good enough to explain them to me,” said Shima. “And that will make everything right, won’t it? Please do us all a favor, Captain, and spare us the patronizing lectures.”
Lundy seemed both cooler and more disciplined than her civilian counterpart, if no less angry. Her eyes locked upon Archer, she said, “I might be just a lowly frontier ground-pounder to Starfleet, but I’m well aware of this: Enterprise is one of the two fastest Earth ships now in service. And neither of those fancy warp-five ships were fast enough to do anything about the Romulans before the attack, when it might have done some good.”
“Even if Starfleet had a dozen NX-class ships ready to fly right now, it wouldn’t be enough,” Archer said, his patience apparently fraying around the edges. “Starfleet can’t be everywhere at once, Colonel. Any more than your MACO forces can.”
Lundy seemed to take this in thoughtfully while Shima fumed in silence. “Maybe Starfleet doesn’t deserve all the blame,” the MACO leader said as she turned and extended an accusing finger in T’Pol’s direction. “After all, the Vulcans had a hand in this, too.”
“Pardon me?” T’Pol said, not at all certain she had heard the colonel correctly.
“Some crimes are pretty hard to pardon, Commander,” Shima said, almost growling the words.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Archer said through gritted teeth.
“Something I might call complicity,” Lundy said. “Or simple negligence, if I could afford to be charitable about it. Either way, it amounts to the same thing: our orbital sensors picked up a Suurok-class vessel on the outskirts of the Tarod system.”
“There was a Vulcan military ship nearby at the time of the attack?” Archer said, his brows rising.
Lundy nodded, her mouth drawn into a grim slash. “There was. And it could have reached the planet in plenty of time to engage the Romulans before their dirty work was done.”
Although T’Pol found this news surprising, she also found that it hadn’t left her at a loss for words. “The initial reports from the outpost described a fairly large Romulan force. It is likely that one ship could not have stood against it. Even a Suurok-class vessel might have been overwhelmed.”
“Maybe,” Lundy said. “Maybe not. We still don’t know how much of the Romulans’ success against us was overwhelming force and how much was the simple element of surprise.”
“In any case, it would have been nice to have our alleged Coalition allies at our backs,” Shima said. “They might have made a huge difference in the outcome of the attack.”
The temperature in the room seemed to be dropping rapidly, forcing T’Pol to suppress a shudder. “Or they might simply have been destroyed by a superior force,” she said evenly.
“Well, it’s all academic now, isn’t it Commander?” Lundy said, her gaze radiating hostility and her brow nearly as crumpled as that of a healthy Klingon. “We’ll never know what would have happened because our loyal Vulcan allies tucked tail and ran about thirty seconds after we hailed them. How the hell are you going to answer for that, Commander?”
“All right,” Archer said, his tone growing low and dangerous. “Whatever hardships you’ve both endured, whatever decisions the Vulcans on that ship may have made—I’m not going to sit here and let you use my first officer as a piñata. I’m not going to tolerate any more of this... Vulcan bashing aboard my ship.”
Archer’s words
hung in the air. The two other humans at the table seemed transfixed as the moment stretched. T’Pol knew that there had been a time not so very long ago when Jonathan Archer was the last person she would have expected to defend a Vulcan. Only a scant four Earth years earlier, the captain had frequently accused the Vulcan government of deliberately retarding Earth’s efforts to explore the galaxy. But a great deal had happened during the intervening years, not least of which was Archer’s brain having played host, however briefly, to the living katra of Vulcan’s most revered leader.
“No one is bashing anybody, Captain,” Colonel Lundy said in a frosty tone. “We have merely pointed out that our Vulcan ‘friends’ were derelict in their duties under the Coalition Compact’s mutual protection clause, if not directly involved in the attack.”
Archer rose from his chair. “I swear to you, Vulcan could never have been involved in anything like this,” he said, speaking with a degree of restraint that T’Pol doubted he could have managed had Surak himself not shared his cranium for a time. “On my honor as a Starfleet officer.”
Lundy laughed bitterly, her face a mask of incredulity as she, too, stood and pushed her chair back behind her. “Your ‘honor,’ Captain? I doubt that’s worth much more than half a pre-U.E. Australian dollar.”
Although T’Pol didn’t understand the reference completely, she understood that currency dating back to the time before all of Earth’s disparate nation-states had confederated beneath the aegis of the United Earth government had to be all but worthless today—a fact that was consistent with the present demeanor of her captain, whose hands were balled into fists at his sides.
Moving with as much quiet grace as she could muster, T’Pol also rose to her feet. Although she was doing her utmost not to appear aggressive or threatening, she readied herself to undertake a quick series of harmless but immobilizing V’Shan moves in the event the colonel were to allow her obviously violent emotions to get the better of her.
Before Archer could respond to the colonel’s harsh words, Shima rose as well. “Maybe you ought to ask the crew of the Kobayashi Maru exactly what your ‘honor’ was worth to them, Captain,” he said, glaring at Archer after casting a contemptuous glance at his untouched plate. “Thanks for the banquet, by the way,” he added before stalking toward the door. Lundy wasted no time following him.
“I don’t understand,” T’Pol said, puzzled by their guests’ refusal to partake of a table stocked with perfectly wholesome—not to mention badly needed—food. “Where are you going?”
Shima disappeared through the hatchway, favoring T’Pol with neither a reply nor a backward glance.
“Out into the corridor,” Colonel Lundy said, pausing momentarily in the open hatchway. “There’s got to be some e-rats floating around here somewhere.” And with that she followed Shima.
T’Pol found that she was still staring incredulously at the hatchway several seconds after it had closed, leaving her alone with the captain.
He continued standing in place, looking profoundly sad.
“Most illogical,” she said at length.
Archer shook his head, and finally found his voice. But the anger she had heard in it earlier had vanished, replaced by a deep weariness.
“No, T’Pol. It’s not illogical at all.” He dropped heavily into his chair at the table, prompting T’Pol to retake her own seat.
“But they should be eating and recovering their strength,” she said. “Particularly after what they have just endured.”
The captain made a brief sound that T’Pol identified as a chuckle, though she could detect no humor behind it. “They’ll take care of themselves, by and by. But they’re leaders first. And being a leader means that the people you’re responsible for have to be your first priority. Those two just aren’t up to sharing a boat ride with Jonah right now.”
“Jonah?” T’Pol said, her confusion escalating. “Boat ride?”
Archer sighed and assayed a wan smile. “Let’s just say I’m not exactly perceived as a good luck charm at the moment.”
T’Pol began to contemplate the irritating human penchant for speaking in opaque metaphors when she noticed the faraway look in Archer’s eyes. It was a look she had seen often over the past four days.
Being a leader means that the people you’re responsible for have to be your first priority, she thought, recalling Archer’s words.
“You are considering again what you regard as your failure to save the Kobayashi Maru,” she said, not asking a question.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Is there really another way to consider it, T’Pol? Other than as a failure?”
She tried to ground herself emotionally before replying, so as not to respond to the captain’s intensity the way a Vulcan lyre’s passive strings tended to vibrate in sympathy when the main ones were plucked. “Perhaps not. Particularly if you insist on discounting your success in saving the lives of everyone aboard Enterprise. I trust I need not remind you that Starfleet Command has not overlooked that success. And as you yourself pointed out to our guests, Captain, we are only a single ship.”
He looked no more encouraged than he had before. And his forlorn expression prompted her to wish, against all logic, that she could offer him something other than empty platitudes. The fault lines of stress she saw on his forehead and in the muscles of his cheeks and jaw seemed nearly intense enough to pull him apart. That small flash of insight made her wonder whether she had finally spent enough time among humans to begin to understand their peculiar predilection for metaphor, simile, and analogy—even as it made her ponder humanity’s apparently rather dim prospects of mustering sufficient unity to meet the escalating Romulan threat.
They must find that unity, she told herself. Colonel Lundy and Mister Shima notwithstanding. With the certainty of gravity, she understood that the only alternative would be the sundering and scattering that her own people experienced during the brutal wars the ancient Vulcans fought during the time of Surak.
And the fate of the ancestors of those who even now march beneath the raptor’s wing.
FIVE
Columbia NX-02, near Alpha Centauri
“THEIR TRACTOR BEAM has locked onto us, Captain,“ Lieutenant Karl Graylock said. The chief engineer’s German-accented words were muffled more than usual by the still balky shipboard comm system. “Hull stresses are staying within the error bars... so far. I’ve got my repair teams deployed preemptively, though. And Major Foyle and his MACOs are standing by to assist. Just in case the tractor tears our bumpers off.”
“Good work, Karl,” Captain Erika Hernandez said, brushing a few stray strands of her straight black bangs away from her eyes. Apart from her slightly unruly hair, she tried to set a textbook example of command comportment for her bridge crew, sitting ramrod straight in the chair at the center of Columbia’s busy A-deck nerve center. Four days after a Romulan sneak attack had left the starship crippled and adrift, the discipline of preserving appearances had become more important to morale maintenance than ever before.
“Keep the hatches battened down and tell our friends we’re ready to go home,” she said.
Hernandez’s exec, Commander Veronica Fletcher, stepped toward the captain and came to a stop alongside the command chair. “Back to Earth, to lick our wounds,” the fair-haired young woman said quietly in her New Zealand twang. “And we have to accept a tow from the Vulcans, no less. We’re never gonna live this down.” She shook her head ruefully.
Hernandez allowed a grim smile to cross her lips. “Maybe. But I’ll wager that the Vulcans have a hell of a lot more to be embarrassed about right now than we do.”
Fletcher’s brow crinkled like a dented hovercar fender. “How do you figure? We just discovered how easy it is for the Romulans to sneak right up onto the human race’s back porch. That’s a pretty damned mortifying thing, if you ask me.”
“Granted,” Hernandez said, nodding in concession to her exec’s point. “But we weren’t the ones whose ships got hijacked a
nd turned into Romulan weapons.” Not eager to encourage her second-in-command’s tendency to accentuate the negative, she refrained from adding the word “yet.”
“I suppose that particular badge of shame would have to go to the Vulcans,” Fletcher said. “Still, I don’t see anybody sneaking up on them.”
That’s the nature of sneaking, Hernandez thought. Nobody sees ’em—until after they come up out of the weeds. Aloud, she said, “I think we can count on Starfleet and the MACOs to do everything possible from here on in to make sure humanity doesn’t get caught with its collective pants down again.”
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise) Page 6