by Diane Carey
Archer weighed the two options, then picked T’Pol’s direction. She was the only one who had ever been here before. He made the bet and pointed. “Come on!”
As the four of them headed toward an obscured shape with two lights that might indeed be the shuttle, Archer bent against the wind, endured the sweat freezing on his cheeks, and brought the communicator up, flipping it as he ran. “Lieutenant Reed, this is Archer! Come in!”
“zzzzzzkkkkkggggaaazzzk.”
“We’re up on the roof! You need to get up here as quickly as possible! Where are you? Emergency evacuation! Reed!”
The communicator buzzed frantically. Someone was definitely trying to get through to him. Where were they? How deeply had they wandered into that steamy maze?
The storm was getting worse. The landing deck was turning into a skating rink. Archer fell twice, Tucker once, and the women stumbled into each other like skittering ducks before the shuttlepod took shape before them in the white fume.
Unintelligible sounds continued to burst from his communicator. He left it open, hoping to hear something that would give him a clue he could follow somehow to get Reed and Mayweather out of the complex, and all of them away from these attacks.
Suliban soldiers appeared only seconds after Archer and his shipmates skidded onto the frozen deck. Time seemed to crawl when a blast rocketed past him.
The wind began to clear. Blowing snow flattened into a sea, and the docking platform opened before them—empty! The obscured shape had been nothing but an approach shield!
“Great!” Hoshi blurted.
“Like I said,” Tucker shouted, “it’s over there!”
Another blast of weapons fire sliced the air. Archer ducked and ordered, “Weapons!”
They had to cross the deck again. And now the Suliban had found them! Even in the now-rising snowstorm, Archer caught a glimpse of his determined counterpart, the one Suliban who wouldn’t be put off, and whose resolve gave substance to the others behind him.
But there was distance between them. Archer was resolved, too, and worked to use the blowing snow as a shield. If it could obscure a whole platform, then he could make it obscure his team.
“Down! Get low, everybody! Form a single file!”
He tried to imagine what the Suliban would be seeing. Lower—lower—and keep moving steadily. Sporadic movement would gain more attention.
They kept searching for the shuttle, this time following Tucker through the storm of snow and weapons fire, firing all the way. Deep red plasma bullets streaked across the platform toward the place where the Suliban shots were coming from. Though the Suliban were moving toward them, Archer sensed they were being held back by his and Tucker’s shots. T’Pol was more reserved, taking shots more carefully, but she, too, was succeeding in driving them back. Hoshi was just skittering like a bird across the ice, intent on their target. She had a weapon, but she also knew she was of little use with it. Probably smart to let the trained officers handle that detail, Archer noted as the moments rushed past.
His single-file trick was working. Suliban shots were going wild behind them. Then they corrected their error forward, and the team was forced to scatter. Hot blue beams cut between them, driving them away from each other.
A darkened form, sheeted and blistered with ice, suddenly flashed with blue energy before them. The shuttle pod! The Suliban weapons fire lit up the skin of the pod and gave the Starfleet team a clear beacon to safety.
T’Pol circled around Archer and pounded on the shuttle window. Why was she doing that?
The emergency hatch began to crack open, popped out a few inches, and swung wider. Air gushed with equalization and temperature change.
Archer tried to reach the shuttle, but a crackle of blue energy raked the hull and drove him back into the swirling snow. His face and hands were numb with cold now. Where was Hoshi? He’d lost sight of her!
The Suliban were closing in. He knew that without even looking. He’d be doing the same thing.
“Hoshi!”
“Captain?” her voice was weak, but not far.
Shivering now, he forced his legs to keep moving away from the shuttle and toward her voice. Behind a wall over there, Tucker was firing steadily at something he could obviously see. The cover gave Archer time to find Hoshi in the roiling white storm. Without saying anything, he took her arm and pulled her along back the way he had just come.
Where were his footprints? He had just come this way, but the trail was already erased.
A mechanical roar directly overhead shook him to his boots. He pushed Hoshi down and tried to see what new method of attack the Suliban had invented. An aircraft—an alien craft launching from the port! Only its running lights showed through the blowing snow. Its great gush of thruster exhaust caused a frozen hell down here.
Archer pulled his eyes away from the transport over head and squinted through the miasma toward the place where the Suliban shots had come from.
They’d stopped. The Suliban were driven down by the thruster exhaust. But the exhaust did one favor here and executed a problem over there—T’Pol was directly under the exhaust. The force knocked her off her feet and blew her across the deck. She had been near the shuttlepod and now she was way over there, shifting and dazed, alone, unarmed.
The Suliban soldiers and their leader rose out of the exhaust stream as the big ship moved away from the pad. They saw T’Pol. A clear target.
“Get to the ship!” Archer shouted at Hoshi over the wind.
Luckily she wasn’t the heroic type and did as he ordered.
Archer thrust himself up on his aching legs and made himself obvious. He snapped his pistol up just as the Suliban leader noticed him. Without looking for cover, he ran furiously across the tarmac, directly toward the Suliban, firing as he ran.
One of the Suliban was struck by a lucky shot—lucky only because most of his plasma bullets were being sucked sideways by the wind vortex on these open flats. One more down.
The leader and the other soldier took cover. Archer reached T’Pol’s weapon, scooped it up without missing a step, and kept on with his direct assault.
“Go!” he called to her.
“Enterprise needs its captain!” she called back. “Give me the weapon!”
“I said, go!”
To her credit, she hesitated another moment. During that moment he struck her with a look so forceful that she must have realized she wouldn’t be changing his mind. This was no time for a discussion.
Archer broke the contact, raised the second weapon, and began firing both as T’Pol ran behind him toward the shuttle.
He glanced back to gauge her progress and saw the shuttlepod hatch open again for her. Reed was reaching for her! Archer spotted Mayweather warming up the helm. They were already aboard!
A flush of relief numbed Archer’s whole body. His team was intact!
As Reed pulled T’Pol inside, Archer moved backward toward the shuttle, firing constantly. The pistol in his left hand began to cool. Losing power!
The Suliban leader waved his hand. The Suliban broke apart from each other, forcing Archer to divide his target. The leader had figured out what to do, a simple but effective maneuver.
Archer was closer to the shuttle now, close enough for a good leap if he could only turn around, but he had to keep shooting. He aimed slightly to his left at a moving form.
From his right, a blue shot streaked in. His leg folded under him, burning and quivering. A moment later, the blinding pain struck full out.
A tangle of movement confused him. Reed, right over head, firing into the snow!
Trip Tucker appeared at his side and pulled him through the hatch. Archer did everything he could to save himself and them from further torment, but he could barely think over the searing pain in his thigh. His thoughts piled together. Nothing made sense. He dug his shoulder into Tucker and accepted the support from his friend, who could do nothing for him, not here, like this.
“The starboard thr
uster’s down!” Mayweather spat.
“Ignore it.” T’Pol, almost excited. “Take us up.”
Hoshi’s face appeared in his closing periphery. She looked small, distant.
“Open a channel.” T’Pol again.
The surge of acceleration made Archer’s mind swarm like bees in the sky. The lower half of his body sizzled, as if he were being fried in a skillet. He tried to move, to sit up—
“Sub-Commander T’Pol to Enterprise.”
“Go ahead,” the voice on the com responded.
“We’ll be docking in a few minutes. Have Dr. Phlox meet us in decon.”
“Acknowledged. Is someone wounded?”
Archer tried to speak, to protest that he could stand, work, take them back to the ship, and go on with their mission to find Klaang … the Klingons … he had to …
“Your pitch is too low. Bring the nose up.”
The pod rocked and turned in the wind. The port nacelle struck a branch and skidded into the snow. No, it was sand …
“It’s okay. You’ve almost got it. Try again.”
The ship skittered on the sand and rose over open water, airborne again, wavering.
“I can’t do it!”
Dad, I can’t keep the ship in the air! Why can’t I do it right?
“Yes, you can. Take her up, straight and steady.”
The ship skidded into a sand dune, bruised and lifeless.
“Damn!” Archer gushed.
Dad came to his side.
“You can’t be afraid of the wind,” he said. “Learn to trust it.”
Archer turned and looked up onto the dune. T’Pol stood watching him and his father as they worked the model ship and tried to make it fly. What was she doing here?
“The captain is injured,” she said. “I’m taking command of the Enterprise.”
Dad didn’t seem surprised. Why not?
CHAPTER 11
“YOU’RE NOT IN COMMAND YET. DON’T GET AHEAD OF yourself.”
“The captain is incapacitated. My action is logical.”
“That’s what you think.”
Trip Tucker shed his wet field jacket and dumped it on the hangar deck beside the scarred and steaming shuttle-pod, leaving him in a clammy, snowcaked uniform. He watched with dismay as the medics disappeared into the turbolift with the captain on an antigrav gurney. Things weren’t supposed to be this way. Who would design a scenario like this? The captain incapacitated two days into the mission?
What kind of bolt had struck him? The wound had been chewing away at itself all the way back here, as if burning from the inside out. Tucker’s innards twisted at the memory of it, of Archer’s face as consciousness faded, giving the only relief from what must’ve been torture.
He wracked his mind for signs that the whole episode had been a trap engineered from inside this ship. Had T’Pol given Archer false information about the Klingon’s activities? Everything stemmed from her. Now she was an inch from making the next command decisions.
“He saved your life,” he told her. “You owe him a buffer zone. Give him time to come out of the sedatives they just gave him.”
“Dr. Phlox is working on the wound,” T’Pol said. “The captain will see to himself, as we all must. Command responsibility is now mine. Even you cannot dispute it.”
“Watch me. I’m going to check on the captain.”
He started toward the exit.
“You haven’t been scanned for contaminants,” T’Pol called. “Tucker! The safety of the rest of the crew!”
That stopped him. Damn, it did. He couldn’t much comment on her responsibilities if he didn’t oblige his own.
“Hell, all right …”
“Is this really necessary?”
Tucker shifted his feet uneasily as he and T’Pol stood side by side in the decon chamber, still in their wet uniforms, now bathed in ultraviolet light.
Dr. Phlox was here instead of sickbay—probably a good sign for the captain.
“The other scans were negative,” he said. “You two, unfortunately, were exposed to a protocystian spore. I’ve loaded the appropriate decon-gel into compartment B.”
Tucker groaned and began to strip out of his uniform. Beside him, T’Pol did the same.
“Tell Mr. Mayweather to prepare to leave orbit,” T’Pol said to the doctor.
“How’s the captain?” Tucker bluntly reminded, insisting that she not forget the weight of what she was about to do.
“I’m treating his wound,” Phlox said.
“Will he be all right?”
“Eventually.”
A metal slat slid shut, cutting off Tucker and T’Pol from the rest of the ship. They each turned to a locker, opened it, and deposited their contaminated uniforms inside. Tucker tossed his in. T’Pol used the hook.
Tucker stripped down to his shorts. T’Pol had some sort of a cropped T-shirt top on as well as her underwear. She opened compartment B and pulled out two beakers of gelatin, deep blue and gooey.
Without comment she turned to him, handed him a beaker, and they began spreading the goop on each other. The phosphorescent gel glowed in the ultraviolet light, turning them both into Halloween characters.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Tucker began, “but aren’t you just kind of an ‘observer’ on this mission? I don’t remember anyone telling me you were a member of Starfleet.”
“My Vulcan rank supersedes yours,” she said.
He bristled. “Apples and oranges. This is an Earth vessel. You’re in no position to take command.”
“As soon as we’re through here, I’ll contact Ambassador Soval. He’ll speak to your superiors, and I’m certain they’ll support my authority in this situation.”
Tucker clamped his lips. If she made the call, this mission was over.
“You must really be proud of yourself. You can put an end to this mission while the captain’s still unconscious in sickbay. You won’t even have to look him in the eye.”
“Your precious ‘cargo’ was stolen,” she said irritably. “Three Suliban, perhaps more, were killed, and Captain Archer has been seriously wounded. It seems to me this mission has put an end to itself. Turn around.”
“Let’s say you’re right,” he went on, reining in his combativeness just long enough to get this out. “Let’s say we screwed up, just like you always knew we would.
“It’s still a pretty good bet that whoever blew that hole in the captain’s leg is connected somehow to the people who took Klaang.”
“I fail to see your point.”
“Captain Archer deserves the chance to see this through. If you knew him, you’d realize that’s what he’s about. He needs to finish what he starts. His daddy was the same way.”
But he never got to finish. That was your fault, too, you people.
“You obviously share the captain’s belief,” she said, “that my people were responsible for impeding Henry Archer’s accomplishments.”
At least Tucker knew he wasn’t being too subtle.
“He only wanted to see his engine fly. They never even gave him the chance to fail. And here you are, thirty years later, proving just how consistent you Vulcans can be.”
They fell silent as each took a towel and began wiping off the blue gel, now that it had set into a film.
“Tell you the truth,” Tucker continued after a few moments, “we don’t know why you’re here. There’s nothing to ‘observe,’ so who stuck us with you? But you notice we accepted you. Nobody’s been giving you dirty looks, ’cept maybe me once in a while. That’s how we silly humans are. We trust first, and ask each other to come up to it. Maybe you don’t.”
T’Pol pulled the congealed film from her lips and cheeks, and revealed soft puckering around her eyes. Worry? Guilt?
“You know nothing about me,” she protested without much enthusiasm.
Tucker grunted with the irony of her statement. “Funny, isn’t it? We trust you anyway. Odd, silly humans … You can follow along behind eve
ry Vulcan who came before you, but I don’t hold much for that kind of life. I wonder if you’ve got the steel to go off on your own. Maybe … The captain must seesomething in you, or he wouldn’t have accepted you in his command line. He didn’t have to do that, you know. What do you think he saw? Youth? Grace?”
“Those aren’t command traits,” she said. This time her voice was very quiet.”
“Hell, no, they aren’t,” Tucker shot back. “Not even your ‘Vulcan’ rank is enough to get you what you’ve got here. You wouldn’t have it if Jonathan hadn’t given you the chance you’re denying him. We’re ‘only’humans … but we gave you the same trust we give each other. Now the captain’s asking you to return it. You got the guts?”
She didn’t respond. She had cut herself off from the conversation.
Tucker reached into another locker and pulled out a fresh T-shirt. “I guess we’ll see,” he said.
The ship was flying now. Pretty against the sky.
Jonathan Archer opened his eyes, gritted his teeth against a sudden shot of pain, and looked down at his legs.
He was lying, partially reclined, on a biobed. Dr. Phlox was at work on his thigh wound, removing what looked like a disembodied liver from the leg.
Underneath the liver, the wound was reddened, but sealed.
“Very nice,” Phlox commented. “Very nice. Your myofibers are fusing beautifully!”
Archer moved his arms and flexed his neck muscles. “How long have I been …”
“Less than six hours. I thought it best to keep you sedated while the osmotic eel cauterized your wound.”
Phlox appreciated his glossy little pet, then deposited the thing into a pot of fluid.
Archer looked at the creature, now happily swimming around, and reserved judgment. “Thanks.”
He started to ask about the landing party—was everyone else all right? But Trip Tucker and T’Pol entered, answering part of his question here and now.
“How’re you doing, Captain?” Trip asked immediately. Relief showed in his face to see Archer awake and lucid.
“That depends,” Archer said. “What’s been going on for the last six hours?”