Enterprise: Broken Bow Page 4

  Then she spotted him lurking in the back of the room. Her youthful face screwed up with concern. The captain never showed up without a reason, and that meant she would be leaving with him. She knew it, he could tell, but he could also see protest rise in her almond eyes. She would try to talk him out of whatever was about to drag her away.

  Archer watched her. She was already disappointed, upset, just from seeing him here. Her right eye got a little tighter.

  He’d hoped to ease her distress a bit with his Hawaiian shirt, a kind of peace offering, but not much of a disguise. Was it working? Big flowers and uncaptain-like colors, jeans and tennis shoes? About as passive as wardrobe could get. Archer rubbed his hands and tried not to appear as self-conscious as he felt. The shirt he liked, but interrupting a class wasn’t so pleasant. He felt like a tardy kid.

  “Keep trying,” the young lady said to her chanting pupils. She kept her eyes on Archer. “I’ll be right back.”

  As if stepping through a looking glass, she came out of the classroom and skewered him with a pure glare. “You’re not here, are you, sir? Not here.”

  Her voice was musical and happy despite her annoyance. Archer smiled. “Well,” he said, “you’re here, so I had to come h … ere.”

  “Outside, please.”

  Outside was a jungle garden. For all its wildness, it was, in fact, artificial. Everything here was native to Brazil, but had been brought here and nurtured in this domed university under controlled environments. The eerie part was how real it all looked. The only telltale element was the smell. No rot.

  “I need you,” he stated bluntly as she stepped out before him on the constructed pathway.

  “You promised,” she moaned. “I took this job because you promised I could finish. There are two more weeks before exams. It’s impossible for me to leave now.”

  Archer managed not to groan at her flimsy excuse. “You’ve got to have someone who can cover for you.” He avoided commenting that it was just a foreign language class and she might have to rearrange her priorities to a more galactic mentality. No, probably not the thing to say right now.

  “If there were anyone else who could do what I do,” she said, “you wouldn’t be so eager to have me on your spaceship.”

  She had him there.

  “Hoshi,” he began, but didn’t finish quickly enough.

  “Captain, I’m sorry. I owe it to these kids.”

  He almost laughed, though managed to keep from it again. Kids? She was hardly a crone herself. And there were other things at work besides devotion to this particular cluster of students, who would be scattered far and wide in a matter of weeks.

  “I could order you,” he attempted, just to see what kind of a rise this would get.

  “I’m on leave from Starfleet, remember? You’d have to forcibly recall me, which would require a reprimand, which would disqualify me from serving on an active vessel.”

  He shrugged. “I need someone with your ear.”

  “And you’ll have her. In three weeks.”

  This angle was all wrong and wouldn’t work, Archer knew. She was a sweet and benevolent person, intelligent and clever, but she was lousy at lying, and this was a lie. Nobody was quite this irreplaceable. There were plenty of teachers out there who could gargle in front of a group and get them to repeat it. This wasn’t the first time she’d put him off. She was afraid. They both knew she didn’t want to go out on an experimental ship on a mission that could turn dangerous on a whim. Hoshi wasn’t the pioneer type.

  How could he broach the reality? Tell her she was right to hesitate? He wanted to open up and reassure her that being scared of scary things wasn’t the same as being a coward.

  Except for one thing. She wanted to be out there speaking languages, not down here teaching them, and he knew it. Time for the heavy artillery.

  From his breast pocket he took a small device and clicked it on, letting a stranger’s voice speak for him—a Klingon voice, speaking the garbled ancient language never heard on Earth before a few days ago.

  The tension left Hoshi’s brow. Something else replaced it. “What’s that?”

  “Klingon. Ambassador Soval gave us a sampling of their linguistic database.”

  “I thought you said the Vulcans were opposed to this!”

  “They are. But we agreed to a few compromises.”

  Hoshi fell silent and listened to the recording gacking and gleching and k’tonking merrily in Archer’s hand. Archer kept his lips clamped on any encouragements. He had to give her something worth being scared for. She didn’t want to teach—she wanted to do. Teachers were always the last to use new information. Hoshi would want to be the first.

  Yes, yes?

  She was leaning a little closer to his hand. “What do you know about these Klingons?”

  “Not much,” he tempted. “An empire of warriors with eighty polyguttural dialects constructed on an adaptive syntax—”

  “Turn it up.”

  The Klingon voice got louder. What a language. Sounded like this guy was throwing up.

  “Think about it. You’d be the first human to talk to these people,” he trolled. He lowered his voice, hunched his shoulders, and leaned toward her. “Do you really want someone else to do it?”

  Her eyes flickered like butterflies. She backed off a step, then two, and looked at him without turning again to the speaker in his hand. “Why are you rushing me?” she asked. “What do you really want?”

  “I want people around me who I already trust,” he admitted.

  “Because? The mission’s so simple … deliver a sick man home. Why do you need to trust anybody the way you’re saying?”

  He shifted on his feet, wobbling into a perfectly formed fern, and decided that if he could force her to be honest, then he should be, too.

  “Because something’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s happened yet,” she said. “What could be wrong?”

  Archer gazed down at the little device, its alien voice of the unavoidable and complex future.

  He clicked it off.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “TRIP, DOESN’T ALL THIS STRIKE YOU AS TOO MANY THINGS going wrong?”

  Charlie Tucker frowned at Jonathan Archer’s question as the two of them peered out the small ready room’s viewport at this side of Spacedock. “What difference does it make what I think? What do you think?”

  “Don’t parry. Just tell me.”

  “Well, you rushed us into readiness and we’re still not ready, but that meant cutting a lot of corners … things are bound to tangle some—”

  “This much?” Archer settled on the edge of his desk. “Doesn’t this strike you as excessive? Something going wrong with almost every shipment of ordnance of any kind? Messages garbled, timelines confused, shipments misdirected—maybe I’m just being overly cautious.”

  “Paranoid, you mean?”

  “I want it to work, Trip.”

  Tucker smiled briefly. “Well, I think we all want that, Captain. Although I can’t speak for our science officer.” He paused, weighing his words. “Since when do we have Vulcan science officers?” he said at last. Tucker’s complaint was more of a moan, and there was much more to the statement than he was saying outright. Vulcans who hadn’t earned a place at the top of the team. Rank she hadn’t earned, trust she hadn’t earned, on a ship she’d never touched, dealing with science her people won’t share—a perfect perch from which to keep even more secrets.

  So Archer gave him the bald truth by way of an answer. “Since we needed their starcharts to get to Qo’noS.”

  Seeming almost in physical pain, Tucker rolled his eyes. “So we get a few maps … and they get to put a spy on our ship.”

  His disdain was justified, to Archer’s mind, which made this all the worse. They were selling rank and influence at a pretty low price, on top of the plain risk of a randomly appointed executive officer. Bad judgment, and he couldn’t pretend it was anythi
ng less.

  He looked away from Tucker, out at the bright Spacedock, which would no longer protect them after today. He felt cheapened, as if he’d bent too far backward, and the people feeling the ache were his crew.

  “Admiral Forrest says we should think of her as more of a ‘chaperone,’” he attempted. Pathetic. Fancy words couldn’t massage the gift of authority to someone who didn’t deserve it. If anything happened to him, nobody would be taking orders from a “chaperone.” The figurehead could very quickly go to supreme power and the crew would be obliged to obey. And he had told Hoshi he only wanted people around whom he trusted. What would he say to her about this?

  “I thought the whole point,” Tucker rasped, “was to get away from the Vulcans.”

  “Four days there, four days back, then she’s gone. In the meantime, we’re to extend her every courtesy.”

  Trip Tucker groaned low in his chest. “I dunno … I’d be more comfortable with Porthos on the bridge.”

  Archer smiled sorrowfully at the idea, and searched for something that might give Tucker a boost. He was interrupted before he began by the door chime. His spine snapped straight. “Here we go … come in.”

  No time to let the red flush go out of his face or the burn out of Tucker’s eyes.

  There she was, coming in from the bridge on which she didn’t really belong. As if to rub in the insult, she was wearing a Vulcan commissar’s uniform. Or would it be worse if she were wearing a Starfleet uniform?

  She offered Tucker not so much as an elevator glance, and handed a padd to Archer. “This confirms that I was formally transferred to your command at 0800 hours. Reporting for duty.”

  He took the padd and gave it a cursory once-over, because she expected him to. He took the moment of silence to listen to the steam coming out of Tucker’s ears, and hoped it would wane. When he looked up at T’Pol, her nose was wrinkled, her neck stiff, and her eyes shifting back from a brief shot around the room.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh, I forgot.” He glanced at Tucker, then over to the couch, where Porthos lay sleeping with three of four paws in the air and his snout off the edge of the cushion. “Vulcan females have a heightened sense of smell … I hope Porthos isn’t too offensive to you.”

  He pushed an inflection on the word “females,” just enough to prickle her if she could be prickled. The Vulcans were always prancing about how they had heightened this and heightened that, so he winged her with one. His goading seemed to ease Tucker’s posture. The engineer relaxed some and took joy in this discomfort for the pretender.

  “I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations,” T’Pol announced.

  Tucker perked up. “I took a shower this morning … how’bout you, Captain?”

  T’Pol eyed Tucker, and held her breath as long as she could.

  “I’m sorry,” Archer began, pausing just long enough for her to think he might be apologizing for stinkiness. “This is Commander Charles Tucker the Third. Sub-Commander T’Pol.”

  Tucker jabbed his hand out toward her. “Trip. I’m called Trip.”

  T’Pol took a slight breath. “I’ll try to remember that.”

  Oh, enough. Archer allowed himself an annoyed sigh and plunged into the core of Tucker’s very legitimate problem with all this.

  “While you may not share our enthusiasm for this mission,” he said to T’Pol, “I expect you to follow our rules. What’s said in this room and out on that bridge is privileged information. I don’t want every word I say being picked apart the next day by Vulcan High Command.”

  If she happened to be insulted, he declared to himself and silently to Tucker, then her irritation would be due payback for her rudeness. The Vulcans prided themselves on their social decorum, but they were among the most discourteous people Archer had ever met. Truly sophisticated people treated others with more respect just as a matter of course, until given much better reasons otherwise than the Vulcans possessed. Humans had certainly demonstrated that Earth wasn’t going backward, wasn’t standing still, and wouldn’t be impeded by snobbery, so why not help? Like Hoshi, the Vulcans didn’t want to take any risks. Unfortunately, they also wanted to act superior about their own reticence.

  Archer didn’t feel like letting them anymore, and he finally had the influence to make good.

  “My reason for being here,” T’Pol began, feeling the pressure, “is not espionage. My superiors simply asked me to assist you.”

  “Your superiors don’t think we can flush a toilet without one of you to ‘assist’ us.”

  “I didn’t request this assignment, Captain,” she went on, “and you can be certain that, when this mission’s over, I’ll be as pleased to leave this ship as you’ll be to have me go.”

  She flinched suddenly. Porthos had moved off the couch and was at her leg, sniffing her knee.

  “If there’s nothing else …” she said stoically.

  “Porthos!” Archer scolded—but he had waited five seconds longer than he would’ve with anyone else on the business end of that soppy nose.

  The dog cast him a glance, then moved back to his couch.

  “That’ll be all,” Archer said.

  T’Pol seemed for a moment to be unsure whether he was addressing her or the beagle. Good.

  Over there, Tucker had sidelined himself, with his arms folded and his shoulder blades pressed against the viewport, and said nothing as T’Pol turned and left the ready room, heading to the bridge, which she now had a legitimate right to occupy.

  The door slid shut. The ready room fell to silence, except for the faint whirring of the vents with a gush of fresh air. When Archer turned, Tucker was watching the vent port with an accusatory glower.

  “What do you think?” Archer asked.

  “I think I ought to lube that fan.”

  “About her, Trip. What do you think about T’Pol?”

  “I think she likes us as much as I like her, and welcome to it.”

  Archer eyed him, Tucker eyed back, and after a moment they both blurted, “Sir.”

  Archer laughed, and was relieved when the engineer finally did, too. They were stuck with the situation, and began here and now to make the best of it. Command didn’t mean everything necessarily went Archer’s way. This was one of the examples of how the new ship and this whole mission really weren’t all his yet. He hadn’t proven himself. The ship hadn’t. Maybe later both would have the influence to tell offensive interlopers and political hacks to find some gravitons and go fly a kite. That time hadn’t come. He made a silent vow to himself and to Tucker that it certainly would.

  “You think she’s really a spy?” he asked.

  “Probably,” Tucker said. “If you think she’s not going to go back to whoever and tell them how we handled ourselves, then you’re more naive than I know.”

  “No, I’m kinda hoping she does that, actually.”

  “Me, too. Do I think she’s here to steal technology or sabotage the ship or screw us over somehow to botch the mission … well … no, I don’t guess I figure that. Yet.”

  “It’s not enough of a mission to botch,” Archer agreed. “We’re delivering a guy from here to someplace else. Returning a Klingon national to his home space. It’s a gesture of good will, and also to show what we can damned well do on our own, with or without anybody else’s favors.” He reached down to scratch Porthos on the top of his head, in the little bump where the dog brain was kept, and wished himself the same kind of peace. “The Vulcans may be queasy about helping us, but I honestly don’t think they’re out to hurt us. I don’t think they’d actively wreck our advancement, once we prove we can get there—”

  “Maybe you’re naive after all,” Tucker interrupted.“How many times have you heard them say how we’re ‘not ready’ to go out into the galaxy, or how they’re waiting for us to ‘prove we’re worthy’ of the company of others, and all? What if they don’t think we’re ‘worthy’ yet and they decide
to slow us down some for our own good? I mean, John, I’d be lying if I told you that woman doesn’t make me nervous, being here all of a sudden, out of nowhere. Serving as a senior officer! Why would she have to be a senior officer if they just want to keep an eye on us? Don’t think there’s nothing to that. I’d be peekin’ over my shoulder if I was you.”

  Archer’s expression changed. He felt his face grow tense. “Is that a serious recommendation? You think my life could be in danger?”

  “With her in that position and the Vulcans thinking we’re bad news, hell, yes. Vulcans can be just as devious as anybody, and you’d have to be a sponge to think they couldn’t.”

  Archer nodded charitably. “No, any intelligent being can deceive. It goes with the braincase. Sue me if I’d rather think better of them till proven otherwise.”

  “Not me. I’ll look over your shoulder for you.”

  “But if we don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, then we’re doing to them what they do to us, always assuming the worst. I’m not ready to do that yet.”

  “Guess I’m not as nice as you.” Tucker shook his head. “You don’t know her, John.”

  Archer sank onto the couch next to his dog, without really relaxing. “No, I don’t know her. Not yet.” Then a surge of conviction struck him, and his eyes flicked up to meet Tucker’s. “But, Trip … she doesn’t know me either.”

  With a sigh, Tucker indulged in a grim, daring smile. “Not yet.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE SPACEDOCK OBSERVATION DECK WAS AWASH WITH dignitaries, invited guests, officers, ambassadors, muckety-mucks, and would-bes. Starfleet brass rubbed elbows with Vulcan emissaries, clusters of pundits, power-grabbers, and publicity wonks, all here on a day’s notice. Some showed obvious signs of jet lag and more than a little confusion at the sudden acceleration of launch.