Star Trek and all its intellectual property is owned by Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.
This story been beta-read by VesperRegina, to whom I offer my sincere thanks, as always.
"Bridge to Captain Archer."
It was the call he'd been expecting, to notify him that the Starfleet ships had finally cleared Klingon space. The news that the three Birds of Prey that had seen Enterprise and Columbia off the premises had turned around and left without a word was equally unsurprising; civility would have been an ask too much, considering it had probably been almost more than Fleet Admiral Krell could stomach to let the enemy ships escape at all.
Right on cue, the intraship communication chirped. "Columbia to Captain Archer."
"Archer."
The familiar face of Erika Hernandez appeared on his monitor screen. Her expression was somber, though there was both affection and resignation in her gaze.
"I guess it's time to head back for the official launch," said Columbia's captain wryly; their rescue run had been completely unscheduled, but would probably be written into the records as a trial flight. "And for you it's back out to the boondocks."
"We have a few things to sort out first," Jon answered heavily. "Sorry you're going home minus your new chief engineer for a while."
She shrugged. "If he hadn't done such a great job of getting Columbia ready to go, you and Enterprise would be history. But however brilliant a guy is, he'll only work his best if he's happy. I think he's where he belongs."
Well. That was one of the things that had to be sorted out. Because even now he hadn't a clue why the hell Trip had left in the first place – and until that particular mystery was solved, he couldn't regard the situation as resolved at all. Officially, Trip was still a member of Columbia's crew – until, or unless, he requested a transfer back to Enterprise, as Erika believed he would.
There was more than one issue that was still unresolved on board his ship. But Erika would know that as well as he did.
"Don't forget, you owe me dinner next time we meet up." She straightened resolutely in her chair, and her eyes twinkled at him. "Better start saving now."
"I never said I'd let you choose the restaurant." He made an effort to return the smile, but felt as though it was no more than a contortion of the muscles of his face – one that dragged at the cranial ridges on his forehead, which still hadn't quite disappeared.
The twinkle disappeared. She watched him sympathetically. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not really." With a sigh he straightened the pile of PADDs in front of him. "Take care of yourself, Erika."
"Same to you, Jon." Her mouth softened into the smallest suggestion of a blown kiss, and then she leaned forward and cut the connection.
Just occasionally it still seemed weird to him that a ship as huge as the NX class could move without a sound; that all the power in those great twin nacelles could drive a starship at superluminal speeds in absolute silence. At any moment now Columbia would dart away on her new bearing, heading for home and all the last touches before her official launch; but here on Enterprise, so close that when you looked out the viewing port it seemed you could stand on the saucer of one and hit the other with a thrown tin can, not so much as a quiver of the superstructure would betray the fact.
He touched the power button on the monitor, and the screen darkened instantaneously.
With a sigh that was so deep it could have been fetched up from the bottom of his lungs, he put his elbows on the desk and rested his face in his hands. He was so tired he almost didn't flinch from the feeling of the ridges on his brow.
Sleep. It was well past time he was asleep; damn, his whole body was exhausted, and he wanted nothing more than to roll onto his bed and find oblivion. But he knew all too well that the minute he lay down he'd start thinking….
What the heck had gone wrong? Had it been something he should have foreseen, could have prevented? He'd had the flagship of the Fleet under his command, with a crew that was the best a man could ask for: the crew who'd pulled off the impossible against the Xindi.
Had that been part of the problem? Had that cursed mission demanded too much of them, created flaws like stress fractures in the ship's command structure that time had worsened until finally the load became too great to withstand? He knew how much it had taken out of all of them, god knew he was in the best position of all to know; sometimes even now he relived the damn thing in his dreams, woke sweating and trembling in some nightmare scenario plucked from his memories.
Of them all, perhaps only Phlox had emerged unscathed – or at least it seemed so, but for all the Denobulan's air of boundless good nature, Jon had learned over the course of the voyage that even the doctor's people had their own specters, their own flaws. If Phlox bore scars, they would be well hidden from view.
Travis, maybe, had suffered the least. Jon was glad for that: his helmsman's youthful optimism was a reminder of what he'd set out with himself, and he knew firsthand how painful a process losing it was. Nevertheless, the experience had gone far towards making Travis Mayweather the sort of man who'll sit in his own command chair one day. That thought would have been a more cheerful one if all sorts of suspicions over the Romulans' plans weren't souring Jon's guts; he'd sat up late several nights talking the thing over with Erika, who believed as firmly as he did that this business with the drone ships was the prelude to big trouble, but getting the bigwigs at Starfleet to see that was a different matter altogether. If he was right, though, being the captain of a starship might soon be a completely different role to that in which he'd started out.
Hoshi had borne up better than he'd ever have expected. She'd matured so much over the past few years. But though she was a far cry now from the scared little girl who squeaked when the deck plating quivered, he wondered how well she'd gotten over the experience she'd endured at the hands of the Xindi reptilians. He knew himself how brutal, how downright terrifying they could be, and he hadn't been subjected to hours of invasive interrogation for specific information. His torture at their hands had been more for their gratification than edification. They'd just wanted him to feel helpless in their hands, to listen to them gloating over Earth's downfall. He couldn't imagine how it must have been for a young woman to endure their grasping hands, to have them bending over her rasping their endless demands for the launch code, to be subjected to whatever goddamned devices they'd used on her before they'd finally succeeded in breaking her.
She'd recovered well, externally. The marks on her lovely face had faded, and she seemed as professional and cheerful as ever. But she was no longer the half-child who'd run to him complaining the stars were going the wrong way. She'd face her memory demons alone, courageously, and deal with them.
Trip – well, he was going to have to find the time for a long talk with Trip when the engines were back to full par. Right now the Floridian was utterly absorbed in inspecting every element of his domain with jealous zeal, setting right what had gone so disastrously wrong in his absence. Not that it was Kelby's fault; he'd done his best, but he simply didn't have the instinctive feeling for the ship's engine that Trip did. Nevertheless, he'd been promoted to Chief Engineer when Trip left; if the expected transfer request did materialize – a request that Jon certainly wouldn't decline, assuming he'd been able to straighten things out between himself and Trip in the meantime – Kelby was bound to feel even more resentful than he did already. And if Trip didn't decide to come home, Enterprise would be left with a Chief Engineer who felt himself second-best, who would be unsure of his own abilities and decisions, and who knew full well that his captain and crew felt nothing like the confidence in him than they had in his predecessor. Because the brutal truth was that if it hadn't been for Trip doing what couldn't be done, the ship and everyone aboard her would now be a scattered trail of interstellar debris.
T'Pol.
Now there was a mystery.
His experiences on Vulcan had given him a lot of insight into his XO's previously unguessed-at depths, and indeed those of her people. Carrying Surak's katra around in his head, for however short a time, had been a unique experience that was bound to have ramifications. Maybe, if he ever got around to having the time to really think about it, he'd grasp all the ways in which it had influenced his thinking ever since; but time was always a scarce commodity in a starship captain's life at the best of times, and he still had that cold feeling in his guts that if events were headed in the direction he thought they were, it would very shortly become a whole lot scarcer.
Nevertheless, he still knew that something had wrought deep changes in T'Pol. Changes that he needed to understand, because they affected his relationship with her and her position as XO of the ship. Changes that could yet influence the course of events aboard Enterprise. Just lately, the suspicion that … something … was going on between her and Trip had gotten stronger and more persistent. Oh, he'd had inklings of it for a while, but the notion had always been so incredible that he'd managed to dismiss it as a flight of fancy. A Vulcan and the most emotional man on the ship? 'Chalk and cheese' didn't come anywhere near it.
Well, it would go a long ways towards explaining Trip's flight from Enterprise. Jon knew Trip well enough to guess that his friend would find unrequited love utterly unendurable in the confines of the ship. But it didn't explain why T'Pol had – yes, drooped during his absence. You couldn't put a finger on it, of course; there hadn't been the slightest failing in her efficiency levels. She was far too disciplined for that. But nevertheless, there had been something. Something that should – indeed must – be addressed. Not to mention his own far from simple reaction to the idea, which was another thing he'd have to address – sooner or later.
Whenever he had time.
Right.
Which brought him squarely to the one problem he couldn't put off till he had time to deal with it.
Malcolm.
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