by Dave Stern
Trip didn’t want to be around when he woke up. He didn’t want to see that face change, to see Ferik have to absorb the tragic news about Neesa. Part of it was a genuine concern for the man’s emotions.
Part of it was that he didn’t think he could go through that all over again himself.
He thought of her now, as she’d been the first time he’d seen her, back aboard Eclipse, in the decontamination chamber. On the command deck, after his initial, failed attempt to repair that ship’s reactor. The first time they’d kissed, in his quarters. Their aborted kiss in the launch bay. He missed her. He’d said good-bye once, and managed it not at all well. He’d hoped to do better the second time around.
But he’d never had the chance.
Trip had been the one to pull her from the rubble of C-430—knelt there, holding her hand, feeling the warmth seep out of it, as Phlox tried desperately to restore the spark of life. He’d sat with her awhile longer, even as the doctor gave up, moved on to Duvall, and then Lee.
He’d walked with the gurney all the way down to sickbay, and stood by her side even as he received news about the captain, and the boy, and the ship, and the first angry communication from Makandros when the general learned Duvall and her son had been aboard Enterprise.
Malcolm had finally pried him away from Neesa’s side some hours later, gotten him back to his cabin, and handed him a stiff drink.
Trip had talked, then. Reed had listened—until very, very late in the evening.
“Initial signs are encouraging.”
Trip looked up. Phlox had entered the chamber. The doctor pointed to a schematic on the diagnostic screen concerning Ferik, a schematic that for all the sense it made to Trip, might just as well have been in Greek. “You’ll note here, and here”—Phlox gestured—“the increasing percentage of C-ketolin, which is indicative of memory formation.”
“So when’s he going to wake up?”
“Well.” Phlox folded his arms across his chest.
“The brain is an unbelievably complex organ, which we have spent the last two days traumatizing, albeit to therapeutic ends. I can assure you there is no obstacle to his regaining consciousness, save his own body’s healing processes.”
“So, you don’t know?”
Phlox frowned. “I believe that is what I just said.”
Just then, at the other end of the room, the sickbay doors opened. Lieutenant Royce from Eclipse entered.
Royce had been a frequent visitor to Enterprise the last two days, to see Ferik. Now he was here to bring the man back home.
“Tucker. Doctor Phlox,” Royce said, entering the chamber. “How is he?”
“He is well.” Phlox frowned. “I would still recommend leaving him here for at least another twenty-four hours, though. To be sure the tissues have healed sufficiently.”
“We don’t have twenty-four hours, Doctor. No one does.” He cast a particularly meaningful glance at Trip.
Phlox frowned. “Perhaps I am not expressing my concerns candidly enough. I don’t feel it’s wise to move Ferik at the moment. Not wise as in dangerous. Potentially lethal.”
“So is life.” Royce again looked meaningfully at Trip. “Especially since it seems like we’re about to go to war. Absent any last-minute miracles.”
“Is that a reference to the boy?”
Royce smiled. “If you like.”
“Don’t give up on him yet.”
“It’s not him we’re giving up on, Tucker.”
Trip rolled his eyes. “You can’t honestly think we’d deliberately prevent you from talking to him.”
Royce’s silence was answer enough.
Trip sighed. There was no point to this argument.
“Let’s get you a gurney to move him,” Phlox said. “From what you’re saying, Lieutenant, this area could well become a war zone in not too short a time.”
Trip nodded, then moved to follow—
And a hand closed on his wrist. He almost jumped clean out of his skin.
The commander looked down and saw Ferik, eyes wide, staring up at him.
There had been no miraculous transformation.
It wasn’t as if the Ferik who listened, sitting gingerly on the edge of the diagnostic cot while Phlox examined him, while Trip and Royce explained what had happened to Trant and him, was a completely different person. Just as Trip had thought, just as he’d told Neesa herself barely two days ago, the man who woke seemed, in speech and manner, to be much the same as the one he’d been at the start of Phlox’s treatment.
But there were differences, subtle but telling ones. In his eyes—the way they stayed focused on whoever was speaking to him. In his facial expressions—the way he reacted instantaneously to what was being said. And in his voice, when he spoke after the three of them had finally finished asking their questions and relaying the tragic news.
“I can’t believe it.” Ferik looked up at Trip. “How could this happen?”
“I wish I had an answer for you.”
“The answer is war, Ferik. We’re at war.” Royce put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “How do you feel? Can you walk?”
“Easy, Lieutenant.” Phlox frowned. “I do not want to put too much stress on Ferik’s system.”
“No,” Ferik said. “Let me try.”
And before Phlox could say another word, Ferik hopped down from the bed and took a few steps. Awkward ones, at first, with a hint of the somewhat shambling gait he’d had before the procedure.
He reached the far end of sickbay and turned.
And as he started back toward them, his stride smoothed out, his back and shoulders straightened, and he smiled. It transformed his face. Trip, for the first time, saw a hint of the man he must have been fifteen years ago. The man who Trant had fallen in love with.
“Satisfied, Doctor?” Royce asked.
Phlox frowned. “No.” He picked up a hand scanner and ran it over Ferik. He studied the results a moment, then nodded.
“All things considered, you seem in good health. I would urge prudence, however, in your physical activities over the next few days. And, here.” Phlox handed him a flimsy. “This is a summary of the procedures I performed, with some suggestions on medications that may aid the healing process.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“You’re welcome.” Phlox bowed slightly. “I am sorry for your loss as well, sir. Doctor Trant seemed to me an excellent person, as well as an outstanding physician.”
“I…appreciate that.” The man’s words were still hesitant, Trip thought, but now it seemed a hesitation born not of confusion, but consideration—the difference between a mind searching for a word temporarily misplaced, rather than one whose meaning was lost entirely.
Ferik turned to Trip.
“I remember you. We were friends, I think.”
“We were.” Trip held out his hand. “Good-bye, Ferik.”
“Good-bye…”
“Trip. My friends call me Trip.”
“Trip, then.”
They shook.
“I’ll stick with Tucker.” Royce stuck out his hand to Trip. “Good-bye. For real this time, I suspect.”
“I think so too. Take care, Royce. Tell the marshal thanks again from me and Hoshi. For everything.” He met the man’s eyes. “And tell him not to give up on the boy yet.”
Royce nodded, then turned to Ferik. “Ready?”
The man gave his assent, and the two of them started across sickbay.
Just as the corridor doors were opening, Phlox called out from behind Trip.
“Lieutenant Royce, one moment.”
The doctor retreated into his office and emerged a moment later, a carryall in one hand. He crossed sickbay and handed it to Royce.
“What’s this?”
“Doctor Trant’s effects. I intended to give them to you the other day, and quite forgot.”
“You should have these.” Royce passed the carryall to Ferik, who opened it. Trip caught a quick glimpse of what was insi
de—a bracelet, a belt, her medical scanner—before Ferik closed it up again.
All at once, something tugged at Trip’s consciousness.
It kept tugging, all the way out of sickbay and into the turbolift.
It took him until the lift doors opened to deposit him on the bridge to realize why.
He stood there, unmoving, for a long moment. Picturing the items in the carryall again. The bracelet, the belt…
The scanner he’d given Trant.
Then he pictured her, in the last few seconds of her life, as she turned away from Leeman Sadir, lying in bed in cabin C-430, and spoke.
“Some interesting results.”
Those were her last words, as she studied the scanner she’d just used to examine the boy, giving him a complete, thorough physical. The results of which might very well still be in that scanner’s memory. The results of which just might include a detailed genetic work-up.
“Commander?” Carstairs was looking up from his station, looking across the bridge at him. “Is everything all right?”
“I don’t know,” Trip said, and headed for Archer’s quarters.
Twenty-Four
“YOU’RE SURE ABOUT THIS?” Archer asked.
“That they’ve got the scanner—absolutely. Whether or not they’ll look at the data, whether it has the kid’s genetic work-up…” Trip shrugged. “No way to know.”
The captain couldn’t believe it. All the trouble he’d taken to make sure no one would spot the resemblance between himself and Lee…
And now Trip was telling him that the Guild had incontrovertible proof that the boy was one hundred percent human in their possession.
He felt like screaming.
“Damn it.” The captain turned to his chief engineer. The two of them were in Archer’s quarters, Trip sitting in the chair next to the captain’s workstation, Archer now pacing the small room.
“Worst-case scenario,” he said. “The data’s there, and they find it. What happens next?”
Trip shook his head. “These are good people, sir, the Guild. I spent a lot of time with them. But…they’ve been fighting for almost a decade. Barely staying alive. You can bet if there’s a way that information can help them, they’ll use it. Kairn more so than Guildsman Lind, maybe, but—”
“I understand.” Archer didn’t know that he wouldn’t do the exact same thing in their shoes: use the fact that Lee was human to discredit him in front of the rest of the Council. Except…
“They won’t do anything yet. Even if they have found the data. Because right now, they need the boy to use against Elson,” Archer said, thinking out loud. “But after that…”
“Exactly,” Trip nodded. “After that they won’t need him at all.”
And if it suited their purposes, they’d expose him. Force him out. Or, what was even more likely, the captain realized, they’d blackmail him. Threaten him with exposure, but keep him in power. Make him their puppet, just as Duvall had feared.
“And we have no way of knowing if any of this’ll come to pass,” Archer said.
“No. And it ain’t like we can ask ’em about it, either.”
Both men were silent a moment.
This changed things, Archer realized. Complicated them tremendously. If the boy did what they were asking him—met with Makandros and Kairn, took his father’s place on the Council—he could be walking right into a trap. A potentially deadly one. The captain couldn’t let Lee charge down that path blindly.
“Sir?”
The captain looked up to find Trip staring at him questioningly.
“You’re not thinking about telling him, are you?”
“You read my mind.”
“You can’t do it, Captain. Learning that he’s not Sadir’s son—that could send the kid into hiding. Running away from everything—Makandros, Kairn, the Council—entirely.”
“Isn’t that his decision?”
“Not right now, sir.” Trip looked him in the eye. “Right now, it’s yours.”
Archer sighed.
Trip was right, of course. A war was brewing—a system was at risk. Stopping that war, saving lives, had to take priority over the truth. Even if it meant sacrificing the boy.
Didn’t it?
The com buzzed.
“Archer here.”
“Carstairs, sir. It’s the Hule again.”
Archer turned to Trip. “Let’s play it safe. You remain the liaison for now.”
“So we assume they haven’t found the data.”
“That’s right.”
Trip nodded and keyed open the channel. “Tell the general I need five minutes.”
“Five minutes, aye, sir. Bridge out.”
His chief engineer stood.
“Makandros isn’t going to sit around forever, waiting for the kid to make up his mind.”
“I know,” Archer said. “See if you can stall him just a little while longer.”
Trip nodded and left. The captain took the chair he’d vacated. Ship’s status reports were still up on-screen—he’d been in the middle of reviewing them when Trip had arrived with this latest bit of bad news. There was a list of completed systems checks, and next to it, a second list of those that remained to be done. Everything was on or ahead of schedule—a few more hours of work, and Enterprise would be back to full readiness.
Not that they had anywhere to go at the moment. And that reminded him…
Archer keyed in a quick series of commands. The workstation monitor cleared, then filled with an image from one of the science labs—T’Pol, Brodesser, and two of the crew from Daedalus whose names he hadn’t gotten, all gathered around a table on which rested a partially disassembled subspace beacon.
Archer opened a channel.
“Hard at work already, I see,” he said.
At the sound of his voice in the lab, everyone looked up. T’Pol said something to Brodesser and moved closer to the screen.
“Captain, I assume you are interested in learning what progress we have made.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“We are about to begin modification of the beacon’s carrier wave. In addition, an examination of our computer records has already provided the Denari outpost’s transmission frequency. I would estimate within another twelve to fourteen hours, we will be capable of sending a test signal.”
“Which will be your universe’s Hubble Constant,” Brodesser called out, without looking up from the beacon. “That’ll go a long way toward determining whether or not you’re talking to the right Denari.”
“Sounds like you’re making progress.”
“We are,” Brodesser replied.
“Indeed.” T’Pol lowered her voice, leaning closer to the screen and obscuring the others behind her. “Captain, I am still uncomfortable being away from the bridge at such a critical time, particularly given your absence as well. Professor Brodesser is fully capable of supervising—”
“T’Pol.” He cut her off quickly. “What you’re doing down there is at least as important as what happens on the bridge. Maybe more so.” Being safely back on Enterprise had certainly lessened the sense of urgency about returning home—the ability to eat, drink, and breathe without feeling sick was a big plus—but their supplies weren’t going to last forever. “We have to find a way to get that sensor data.”
She nodded with obvious reluctance. “Yes, sir. However, if anything arises that requires my presence—”
“I promise we’ll contact you. In the meantime…”
“Yes, sir. Back to work.”
“That’s right.”
He smiled, and closed the channel. At almost that same instant, the screen’s status bar began blinking.
It had been two hours to the minute since he’d left Lee to get some sleep. Time to wake the boy up and get a decision out of him.
One way or the other.
Trip drummed his fingers impatiently on the armrest of the command chair.
“I have the Hule for you now, si
r,” Carstairs said, looking up from the com station.
“Put ’em through.”
Trip rose and waited for Makandros’s face to appear on the viewscreen before him. He’d had a hard time reestablishing contact with the Denari vessel—a lot of com activity going back and forth between Hule and the other ships in the DEF/Guild fleet, Carstairs had said. Maybe so, Trip thought, but he wouldn’t be surprised if at least part of the delay was Makandros giving him a little bit back, a little taste of what it felt like to sit around waiting.
Trip sympathized with the general. He was a little tired of waiting around himself. Not that he didn’t have sympathy for the captain’s position too—it had been hard enough for Trip to deal with a Brodesser who wasn’t really Brodesser; he couldn’t imagine what Archer must be going through—but he was anxious to have this over with, one way or the other. Enterprise was keeping a whole armada of ships waiting on them. And speaking of waiting…
Where was Makandros, anyway? The viewscreen was still dark.
“Ensign?” Trip asked, turning to Carstairs.
“Sorry, sir. They said a few seconds. Let me—”
Right then, the screen came to life, showing him Hule’s command deck.
But Makandros wasn’t there. Instead, the center chair was occupied by a woman Trip had noticed in the background during his previous conversations with the general.
“Where’s General Makandros?”
“He is otherwise occupied. I am Colonel Briatt, in temporary command of Hule.”
“Colonel. Commander Tucker, in temporary command of Enterprise.”
“I know who you are. What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Trip frowned. “The general tried to contact me before.”
“No doubt to inform you that the fleet is breaking up. Consider yourself hereby informed.”
“Breaking up?”
“Re-forming into smaller, more maneuverable squadrons. In the event we are attacked, this will give us greater tactical flexibility in our response.”
Trip’s gaze went to Ensign Duel at the science station.