It's been years, he told himself. Years. And she would look different down here anyway; this wasn't where she belonged. San Francisco was a beautiful city, its beachfront scrupulously terraformed to aesthetic perfection; but no matter how idyllic her surroundings on Earth, she was never meant to be trapped on solid ground. She was supposed to be in space, testing mankind's limits among the stars. Somehow, back when she'd been in her element, he'd never stopped to think of what would happen when she was inevitably surpassed by the march of progress.
Decommissioned.
It was of course the logical thing. Starships were in production now that far surpassed the NX-01's daughter ships, and the ship he'd charted the stars with all those years ago was an antique now.
As was he. Malcolm glanced down at his thin hands with a wry smile that had gained more than a touch of bitterness in the last twenty years since the decommissioning of his beloved ship. He had never again left the Solar System after that, partly because of Starfleet's damned bureaucratic snobbishness that thought someone who'd seen as much action as he had shouldn't see any more of it, and partly by choice. He'd been offered the chance once, but he'd turned it down. Some days he regretted that. On days like today, he wished he had gone with T'Pol on her Vulcan science vessel. In the end she hadn't returned. None of her crew had.
But that had been well over ten years ago.
The second Enterprise had been commissioned on the one-year anniversary of Jonathan Archer's death five years ago, which was also the anniversary of Henry Archer's completion of the Warp 5 engine. Sometimes Malcolm wondered if that had been an accident. It had been, investigators had determined, nonetheless an accident for its shocking tragedy. Malcolm had never been so convinced.
He'd never pictured himself as the last one left. Well – technically there were Hoshi and Travis left, but he hadn't heard from either for years. For his intents and purposes, he was the last.
Absently, for the first time in a very long while, he wondered about Harris. His former employer had fallen off the grid too, or at least off Malcolm's grid. After the Enterprise NX-01 had been decommissioned, Malcolm had half-expected to hear from Harris, offering to take him back. He'd been half-inclined to accept the offer. But the anticipated invitation had never come, which was more galling than Malcolm had expected. Apparently the Section had no taste for what even the softer side of Starfleet considered damaged goods. Malcolm laughed quietly and mirthlessly. Whatever he was now had been integrally shaped by the Section itself. Perhaps they didn't want to deal with their own messes. Perhaps they felt his time on the Enterprise had compromised him.
And perhaps they were right. Starfleet medical certainly agreed. They'd declared him unfit for duty that might place him in "high-stress situations…"
Given that he was essentially a war hero in the eyes of the world, Starfleet bureaucracy couldn't simply be rid of him. Instead they'd put him at desks, behind computer monitors, even in classrooms. Anywhere they could conveniently be rid of what he'd become in their employ, all while still able to drag the image of what they wanted him to be out into the spotlight anytime it suited their purposes.
Malcolm didn't begrudge Starfleet their treatment of him. He'd spent his entire life working for the organization, and it represented everything worthwhile that he still had left. If Starfleet wanted to use him as their posterchild and stuff him in an office in between photoshoots, then so be it. Besides, he suspected that half the problem was that they simply didn't know what to do with him. He had a unique and valuable skill set that no semi-military organization in its right mind would want to waste, but at the same time he wasn't medically qualified to serve in a full capacity. It left Starfleet in an awkward and untenable position, and it only made sense, for so many reasons, that they would tend toward the side of conservatism when it concerned the health of an officer.
And yet still there were times when he wished Starfleet medical would pack up all of its good but unhelpful advice, along with its innocent naivety of what war really was, and have itself a good look at the long black scar running the length of Florida. He suspected that if he were ever to express this view as firmly as he wanted to it would only confirm what Starfleet doctors already thought.
The transport pulled to a stop and Malcolm, drawn from his reverie, glanced out the window and caught his breath. She was different down here, just as he'd known she would be; but she was no less majestic for that. Framed against a backdrop of ordinary cityscape, she towered over everything around. It had never occurred to Malcolm to think of the Enterprise as big back when she'd been their home out in space; in fact, as a home to dozens of humans, a few aliens, and various animals, she had often seemed uncomfortably small. But by comparison to her planetside siblings, the shuttles that flitted around her hull to give visitors a close-up look, the Enterprise overpowered the scene. A bubble of pride welled up in Malcolm's chest. His ship had lost nothing of her grandeur despite the relative ignominy of her current role as a public museum.
"We're here, mate," the driver of the transport grunted, a bit bad-temperedly. Malcolm dropped a few credits absently onto the seat and disembarked without taking his eyes off his ship. There was, he decided, something slightly sad about seeing her so far from her home, regardless of the splendor that she retained on Earth.
Malcolm slipped inconspicuously into the queue waiting in the lobby to enter the museum proper through a security checkpoint. A shame that such measures were needed, though the retired Chief of Security in him approved strongly of the precaution. Any place where the public gathered en masse ought to have screening; and a museum honoring the birth of large-scale human exploration of space needed it more than most. In the past few decades, human involvement with alien species had grown exponentially, particularly since the foundation of Jonathan Archer's United Federation of Planets. An irony that this innocuous blue-and-green planet should form the keystone of that grand body – for the Earth itself was hardly united, least of all on the matter of alien relations. From the growth of interspecies relations had also sprung a small but ever-increasing body of dissenters. Paxton's rebel group, Terra Prime, had been only a symptom of the problem. There were always those intent on opposing the march of political and social progress; the religious extremist groups of yesteryear had morphed to the xenophobic factions of today. A museum such as this would be the ideal target for such a radical trying to make a statement. Despite the fact that he hadn't been security in decades, Malcolm remained subtly watchful as he entered the line of impatient visitors. Imminent terrorist threats were far more often noticed first by alert bystanders than by security, and though rationally he expected no such danger, training and experience refused to let him sink into the self-oriented stupor of most of the people around him.
He kept his head down as the queue moved slowly forward. He was sure that the museum had some kind of pre-check security station for distinguished visitors, but he wasn't here as Malcolm Reed, retired Tactical Officer of the very ship forming the capstone of this museum. He was just one of many anonymous visitors, come to pay his respects to the shadows of the past. The fact that this happened to be his past was for the moment irrelevant. All the same, he'd have to be cautious. He wasn't keen on being recognized, and remaining unknown in a place that was practically slathered with his name and face would prove an interesting challenge. Still, he wasn't overly concerned. The Malcolm Reed that dwelt in the halls of the museum would no doubt be the Malcolm of years ago – and he had changed. Yes, he was different, just as his ship was different now. There would be precious few pictures of an almost sixty-year-old Malcolm Reed. That was not what the public wanted to see. They wanted to see the full complement of the NX-01 in their youth and glory, to read the plaques and remember these men and women as the bold, vibrant heroes who had defeated the Xindi – not as the lingering remnants of their past lives.
"ID, please," the security guard said tiredly, barely looking up at Malcolm. She was young – in her late twenties, perhaps. Her face was tired. This hadn't been what she'd expected when she went into the security business, Malcolm supposed. She'd thought that security meant doing something worthwhile – protecting someone, fighting for something. Instead she had been dumped into a back-end desk job doing nothing but scanning IDs all day. No doubt the novelty of the museum had worn off quickly in the everyday drudgery of the job itself.
Malcolm's ID gave the guard pause. He noticed her slight double-take as she looked more carefully at the identification card, then back up at his face. Malcolm gave her a small smile.
"Shh."
Her surprise gave way to amazement. This was something novel, Malcolm thought, a story to tell the coworkers during slow days. She had actually seen the famous Malcolm Reed – !
"Thank you, miss." Malcolm accepted his ID back from the guard. She stood respectfully from her stool as he did, careful not to attract attention by the movement.
"Welcome back, sir," she said quietly. Malcolm felt oddly touched by her brief greeting. It was good to be back – and yet, he wasn't truly back. He never would be. Space was closed to him.
As he approached the entrance to the Enterprise itself, Malcolm had to force back unanticipated nerves. He couldn't say exactly why he should feel anxious – perhaps he was somehow concerned that the Enterprise wouldn't live up to his expectations. Or perhaps he wouldn't live up to hers.
A poster on the wall just before the arched doorway caught his eye, and he stopped to read it, more to procrastinate his entrance than for any other reason. It gave a brief description and history of the Enterprise, which he read much more thoroughly than was warranted, given that all the information on it was intimately familiar to him. Finally, when he couldn't think of a plausible reason to continue his delay, he stepped through the enlarged hatch and into the Enterprise.
The entrance led straight into Engineering. The room was filled with people examining the consoles and replica engine, and for a brief but glorious moment the two decades melted into nothing and Malcolm was standing in Engineering as it had been, listening to the sound of the ordered chaos directed by the raised voice of Commander Charles Tucker; feeling the throb of the powerful warp five engine; seeing the crew moving about their jobs, navigating around both each other and the natural obstacles of the engine room as they did. Then the memory died away and Malcolm was staring across the room at the framed photograph of the Chief Engineer, and though Trip had been dead for decades he could still hear the echoes of his friend's voice in his mind.
Malcolm crossed the room to read what the museum had to say about Charles Tucker III. There was an interactive screen below the photograph. Malcolm browsed slowly through the information that the monitor offered. Trip's personnel file was there, accompanied by a biography, more pictures, and information about the technological advancements he'd helped develop. That was it. The entire life of Charles Tucker, reduced to a dozen paragraphs and a list of inventions. It was the fate of history to fall flat onto a page and dry up like fruit left out in the sun, but Malcolm hadn't expected the words to sound quite so dead. But that was fitting, he supposed, because Trip was dead; and when after a few minutes of racking his brain he couldn't come up with anything better than the shriveled words in the display, Malcolm moved on.
The turbolifts were still in good working order, but the volume of visitors had necessitated the installation of staircases leading between the floors to supplement the lifts. Malcolm climbed slowly through the floors, pausing for a look around the armory. All the weapons were fakes now, of course, but the layout had been preserved so well that he could almost imagine that he was stopping in for a quick check on his crew before heading up to the bridge. He dared not stay too long, for although the pictures in the armory were, as he'd predicted, images of his thirty-some-year-old self, someone who looked closely and had a touch of imagination would stand a good chance of recognizing him. Besides, this was one biography he wasn't interested in. Malcolm felt that he was familiar enough with his own life to not benefit from reading it off a computer screen.
He prowled through Sickbay on his way up to crew quarters and was pleasantly surprised to see that several of the replica cages actually held small living creatures. He wasn't educated enough on the species Phlox had actually kept to say if any of these were actually the same, but one or two of them wriggled and screeched in a convincingly familiar manner. It gave him a touch of warm delight until he noticed a child tapping hard on the side of one of the screeching cages and realized that these animals were not kept by a caring and understanding doctor, but by impersonal museum curators who probably didn't give a damn how many people slapped and prodded and poked at the occupants of the replicated cages. The small joy of seeing Phlox's creatures soured in his stomach and he left quickly.
The crew quarters held more biographies, and no sign of life. They had long been stripped of any personal effects, which apparently the museum had not deemed important enough to replicate. Malcolm felt no particular attachment to the bare rooms and moved through them quickly. Even his own quarters were little more than a set of blank walls. He would not even have recognized them except for their location and the label outside. He didn't bother entering. There was nothing left of himself to find within this room. It had been stripped of anything that could hold a shred of meaning left over from the years he had lived in it.
Out of nostalgia, he took the turbolift to the bridge. He had to wait in line again to do so. Through the now-transparent viewscreen, the San Francisco Bay spread itself out, shimmering gently in the late-afternoon sunlight. The sight of such a distinctly Terran landscape through the viewscreen of the Enterprise itself was somehow unsettling. Malcolm dutifully inspected the consoles, trying to blend in with the tourists around him. All of the consoles had been altered – security reasons, perhaps, or to make the Enterprise look more technologically advanced than it actually had been? Malcolm didn't think his ship needed any augmentation to make it impressive. He crossed through the short hallway into the Captain's ready room, which was at the moment empty. Here was the memorial to Jonathan Archer – being the Captain, he had several displays devoted to his biography. There was even a picture of Porthos in a corner of the room. Archer's collection of sketches of the USS Enterprise, in each of its conceptions since the original ship that had borne that name, were conspicuous only in their absence. Too valuable, Malcolm thought, for an unguarded display. Yet another room scalded of the life that had happened here. Was it really in this same room that Archer had arrested him as a traitor? Malcolm shook his head slowly. In this same room, yes – but it was not the same room at all. This place was a bare prison to the memories it held. To the public it was just another curiosity, but it gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He left the bridge quickly but wandered restlessly through the hallways, reluctant to leave after such a perfunctorily short visit to his beloved ship. Despite her changes, both internal and external, she was still his and he hers. Surely there was something left here, even if he hadn't found it yet.
Lost in thought, Malcolm leaned against a wall and watched the crowd around him, idly scanning the faces. He wouldn't see anyone he knew, most likely – it would be too much of a coincidence for another of the remaining crewmen of the Enterprise to visit her on the very same day. All the same, he felt a sort of responsibility to know about the kind of people that now walked the halls of his ship.
Out of the corner of his eye, Malcolm saw Trip Tucker walk around the corner.
Shock spiked sharply into his chest, freezing him for a split second before he could get his breath back. He looked at the corner again and the adrenaline surge dropped away as quickly as it had come. A monitor screen just below eye level was playing a video. It was Trip – a recording of an interview he'd done shortly after his return from the Xindi mission. That was all. Malcolm blinked to clear his head. His mind was playing tricks on him.
He'd seen this interview before – live, in fact. It was no more real now than it had been then: a scripted thing, with both Trip and the interviewer knowing beforehand what was to be asked and what the answers would be. This was the only kind of interview Archer had allowed, and when Trip had tried to duck out of it Archer had threatened to order him. The Captain had known better than to throw Trip before the public eye to be grilled about the Xindi mission on live television. It could not possibly end well, for reporters were all too good at poking their sticky questions into the personal side of things, as they had done all too often with Archer himself; and oh, there was a hell of a personal side to Trip's story of the Xindi. And so Archer himself had stood in the way of all the questions that the media wanted answers to, and in doing so he had unwittingly declared Trip incompetent to handle his own personal matters. The insult had of course been unintentional and even well-meant, but it had not gone unnoticed by Trip. He'd gone along with the Captain's wishes. Instead of answering the questions about how did you feel and did you want to kill them, he'd talked about the technological side of the mission. The safe side. Another dead remnant of Charles Tucker, playing on loop on the wall of the ship that had once been so alive with the people behind these empty faces and words.
It was time to go, Malcolm decided. He'd been wrong – the Enterprise this ship might be, but his ship she was not. There was nothing left; his ship had succumbed irrevocably to mankind's march of progress.
Charles Tucker III waited around the corner until Malcolm had gone. He kept his body angled away from the flow of people around him, so that even if Malcolm should walk past he would be unlikely to notice. Why should he notice a dead man, after all? Still, it had been a close call. For just half a second, Malcolm had seen him. Fortunately – or rather, in fact, by design – there had been a wall monitor nearby playing some recording of Tucker. That made for good cover.
Cover or no, Harris wouldn't be happy with him taking such a risk. Whatever Malcolm was now, he had once been a Section operative and was therefore dangerous by default. His training might have fallen into disuse in the past two decades, but Malcolm was an observant man and no fool. Following Malcolm here had unquestionably been a stupid thing to do. Tucker was not sorry that he had done it, though he wondered at his own motives. He hadn't come here to reveal himself, of course, and there seemed little to be gained by stalking a former coworker around the very ship where they had once worked. Curiosity, perhaps. Malcolm had been searching for something, and Tucker had wondered if he would find it. A poor excuse.
His personal comm device vibrated slightly with a new message. Trip read the text.
Thirty minutes. You know where I am. H.
Duty called, and there was neither time nor reason for Tucker to dissect his reasons for wanting to see Malcolm again, if only from a distance. He let a slight smile pull at the corners of his mouth. Yes, those had been the good old days; but these were the better days, better for their lack of the childish sentiment for which Malcolm had vainly searched this ship. No doubt Malcolm would leave the museum dissatisfied without knowing why. Tucker would leave with a purpose. Harris saw to that.
A/N: I usually ignore the Star Trek books, but since I'm a shameless scavenger of ideas I stole Section 31 Trip from them.