Disclaimers, etc. in Chapter 1.
Author's Note: Thanks so much for the reviews!
"How's it working out?" the captain asked.
T'Pol and Rivers looked up from the Andorian warp coil assembly they were currently fitting into place. The Andorian engineer who had supervised its transfer to Enterprise looked on, scowling, arms folded; clearly, she was no fan of Shran's decision to give it to them. A MACO stood nearby watching the proceedings and another stood at the hatch; this time Archer had let Reed detail a team to shadow every Andorian on board.
"It has not posed any significant difficulties so far," T'Pol reported. "Ensign Rivers believes we will be able to begin a test start in less than thirty minutes."
"Good. Are you going to be needed for that?"
T'Pol glanced at Rivers, who shook his head. With Lieutenant Hess likely to be incapacitated by her injuries at Azati Prime for some time to come, the young man had been pressed into leadership of Engineering and was performing to acceptable standards, although he was of course no Commander Tucker. "I don't believe so," she said.
"Come see me when you can," Archer said, and left.
The captain had broken the news about Earth first to his senior officers, and then to his crew – the latter in one large gathering in the shuttle bay. He had charged them with supporting each other through their losses, even as they moved on to their next steps: getting warp drive back on line, getting repaired and resupplied, and finding a way to help the remaining traces of Humanity escape ongoing threats from the Xindi and the sphere builders.
"It's the sphere builders who are our true enemy," Archer had declared. "They are the ones who manipulated the Xindi into destroying Earth. They believed we were the biggest threat against them. And they were right. We're still their biggest threat. Because, even now, we must find a way to stop them from transforming the galaxy we know into something in which life like ours cannot survive. Unless we stop them now, we can never hope to rebuild Humanity and regain what we have lost."
The reality, of course, was that the Humans could never regain what they had lost. (It also seemed certain that not even conveniently time-traveling saviors could save their planet, since all of Daniels' equipment had disappeared from the locked quarters where it had been kept.) Still, most of the crew seemed eager to grasp the hope Archer had offered them. She had once again been impressed with their resilience.
Since then, T'Pol had been dividing her time between engineering and marshaling the data they had accumulated to attempt to persuade a skeptical Shran and his officers about the threat the spheres and their makers posed to their mutual civilizations.
She stepped into the captain's ready room now, wondering what new assignment he would give her and whether this one would require listening to more thinly-veiled Andorian insults.
He looked up, smiled tightly, and said, "Once warp drive is functional, I want you to take Enterprise to North Star, hopefully meet up with Trip again, and make that planet our new base of operations."
She stared at him, quite taken aback. It seemed to her the captain had developed a regrettable penchant for absenting himself from Enterprise at key moments. "And you?"
"I'm going with Shran. His science and tactical officers agree with your suggestion that destroying Sphere 41 should significantly disrupt the sphere network."
"I have not as yet developed an acceptable protocol for destroying it."
"We'll figure something out."
"In that case, I should go with you."
Archer sighed. "Ideally, yes. But I don't entirely trust the Andorians to get the job done. If we don't succeed, you'll have to give it another go. But get the ship and crew into better shape for it first. And leave some of the crew behind. There are too few Humans left in the universe to risk all of them."
"What if the settlements on North Star have already been destroyed by the Xindi?"
Archer's face turned stony. "Then the crew would be even safer. I doubt they would see any reason to return."
"Conversely, if they haven't discovered it yet, our presence might draw their attention."
He frowned. "There are no perfect solutions, T'Pol. Maybe you can help defend them. Bottom line, if we don't defeat the spheres, that settlement is doomed anyway." He got up and walked to the window, looking over at the Kumari. "Maintain communications silence – that might help keep the Xindi off your back." He turned around and tugged down his uniform. "You will know soon enough if we are successful."
"Captain," she said. "I am not certain I am the best individual to lead a Human crew under these circumstances. Nor do I feel I am particularly suited to negotiating with the Humans on North Star when we arrive."
"Trip should already be there. He'll help you."
"We had only the Illyrians' word that he would be left there. Even if they intended to, that system lay within a dangerous sector of space; their ship could easily have been damaged or destroyed in the interim." These were the things she told herself daily, in a somewhat irrational attempt to prevent an impractical degree of despair if and when it turned out that Trip was truly lost.
Archer cocked his head and regarded her curiously. "Then rely on Malcolm," he said. "And Hoshi. She has good instincts when it comes to diplomacy. But I trust your judgment. I'll rejoin you when I can."
She noticed that he didn't look at her as he said that. Perhaps he also thought it unlikely that anything short of a warp core breach could destroy a sphere.
Would Shran agree to sacrifice his ship for the greater good?
She considered confessing to the captain that he should not trust her judgment – that she was still struggling in the aftermath of her Trellium-D addiction. She considered telling him that his crew and Humanity needed his leadership now more than ever, and that he must not throw his life away.
But she kept silent. It was true that the sphere builders must be stopped, and it was unlikely that anyone but Archer could persuade the Andorians to do what must be done.
Also, she very much wanted to know if Trip had made it to North Star after all.
x x x
Trip got up while it was still dark, carefully lit and hung an oil lamp, and began his morning duties: distributing the feed, raking out the soiled hay, forking in the fresh stuff. What would T'Pol think if she saw their Chief Engineer shoveling horse shit for a living? He snorted softly at the thought.
She had been in the dream he woke from that morning, her eyes big and soulful, telling him that they would meet again soon. Stupid subconscious. Clearly it didn't know when to stop torturing him.
Dreams aside, he was settling into his new routine. He paid for all his meals, plus a bath and laundry services once a week at a local boarding house run by a widow. He slept in an empty stall of the stable where he worked. Mr. Brady liked having someone on the premises at all times, and Trip preferred a bed roll on clean hay to the crowded dormitory options available to poor working men.
MacReady had said he could stay with him as long as he wished, but MacReady also kept asking Trip questions he either couldn't answer or didn't want to answer.
Chief among them: Where is Enterprise? Why hasn't anyone from Earth shown up here yet?
How to explain the Expanse to one of these people? How to explain the Xindi? The captain had elected not to, and after living here for over a month, Trip respected that decision more than he had at the time. Their paranoia about aliens was already bad enough. The other fellows at the widow's dinner table had only recently speculated, for example, that T'Pol must have been an agent of Satan.
"She had pointed ears," one said, with a significant look.
"All Vulcans have pointed ears," Trip said. "You gonna tell me she comes from a whole planet of Satan's agents? Billions of Satan's agents?"
"Billions?" the man said, looking blank.
"Thousands upon thousands," Trip translated. "A whole planet full of them. And her people don't believe in Satan. They believe in logic."
"What do we all know about Satan?" one of the men countered. "We know that he's good at fooling people. Maybe he's fooled you, too, mister."
"She sure was a purty thing, that pointy-eared gal," another man said, with a toothless grin. "I'd let her fool me if she wanted."
"That's why Satan made her purty - to fool you more," the first one said. "You got to watch those purty women. Alien or human. They're all agents of Satan."
The men had all laughed at that. Widow Jonson, who couldn't have been a day over forty-five and would have still been considered 'purty' in Trip's world, stonily attended to the table as the men merrily moved on, slotting the other females of the town into various categories: good, hard-working, God-fearing women, women who got the vapors if they had to do any work, women who were so mean they wouldn't give a starving man a crumb from under their table, women who wanted to get ahead by driving their men like bluenoses, women who thought they were too good for you, and their favorite category: women who knew how to make a working man happy.
"And thank God for 'em," one of the men said, winking at Trip. "You been to see Bertha yet?"
"Bertha?" Trip said, noting Mrs. Jonson's disgusted frown.
"Well worth half a day's wages," the man said. "Well worth it. Who needs a wife when you've got Bertha? Especially if we have Widow Jonson here too, to cook us our meals and wash our clothes? Isn't that right, Mrs. Jonson?"
She scowled and turned her back on them. The men all laughed again.
That had actually been one of the tamer conversations. These men, who were mostly all scraping by on day wages and drinking any money they had left over, often complained viciously about the "Skags." To them it was an offense against nature that those "Skag droppings" were being educated now. And it was a real shame none of those people had been lynched lately. They were going to start getting ideas! The worst thing was, the Sheriff was humoring them instead of keeping them in line!
The reality, as far as Trip could see, was that the Skagarans still worked nothing but menial jobs and suffered sneers and harassment daily. Changes to anti-Skagaran laws had been debated but had not won passage. If Bennings hadn't been so generally disliked, MacReady had told Trip, he'd have been elected the new Sheriff by now.
Trip did what he could to set a better example. He would tell them that on Earth they had learned they could never achieve peace and justice without embracing equal rights for all - for women, too, he sometimes noted, which scandalized these fellows, too. But he didn't push too hard. He knew that most of the townsfolk – hell, even the Skagarans – distrusted him.
After all, he might just be in thrall to that pointy-eared devil woman.
Which was truer than they knew, he thought, and sighed. MacReady had asked far too many questions about T'Pol, too. How'd an alien gotten to be an officer on their ship? How'd a woman gotten to be an officer on their ship? Why did she wear long underwear in public? Did he know he sometimes said her name in his sleep?
Yep, he was definitely better off in the stable.
The other thing MacReady asked too many questions about how he'd come to be with the Illyrians. First of all, there was the difficulty of explaining that without making his captain and crew – and himself - look pretty damned bad. Then there was the fact that he simply didn't want to have to think about that time at all. The Illyrians hadn't trusted him, so he'd been housed in a solitary cell in their brig with nothing to do but think. After a couple of weeks they began to let him out to work on menial tasks for a shift or two, then put him back in. The captain, on the rare occasions they met, treated him with chilly politeness, but some of the other crewmen – and they were all men – took the opportunity to push, shove, beat, threaten and generally humiliate him whenever they were sure they wouldn't get caught. One of his guards in particular had been never missed an opportunity to tell him all the various ways in which he might be killed. "Oh, we'll get justice from you one way or the other, don't you worry," he'd say. "Just when you think you're going free ... boom!"
Trip still flinched if someone got too close without warning.
"So why haven't your people come back for you at least?" MacReady had asked just the other day.
"Maybe if you people hadn't wrecked the equipment we left you, I could tell you," Trip had snapped. He'd tried fixing it his very first day there, but someone had stripped almost all its parts – probably for the metal. He'd tried to amplify his own communicator, which the Illyrians had returned to him, but that would only work if a ship were already in the system, and not behind any large objects either.
He still tried it once every morning and once every evening, before he went to bed. There was never an answer.
He finished his early morning rounds with the old grey mare, Maggie, who wouldn't mind if he leaned his head up against her for a little comfort as he worked. "You're my best girl now, aren't you, Maggie?" he said, and patted her flank.
She chomped her oats.
Maggie wasn't really his best girl, though. Some stubborn part of Trip was still holding out for the Vulcan in his dreams, even if the Vulcan in his dreams was the same Vulcan who'd backpedaled in a panic after their one dalliance.
In hindsight, he shouldn't have let her get away that. He should have pressed his advantage. After all, it had taken her less than 24 hours to remind him about neuro-pressure. He was the one who'd turned coy on her then, trying to flush her out, or maybe just trying to get even. Damned fool. He should have gone for the neuro-pressure. He probably could have mentioned any random female on the ship in an entirely offhand way and they'd have been kissing again within minutes.
But now? Even if they were trying to come get him, they would have had to rebuild that warp coil from scratch. They'd have anomalies to go around, and murderous Xindi to dodge. Not to mention a planet to save.
Logically, it wasn't going to happen, not anytime soon.
Logically, it would probably never happen.
But he kept waiting anyway.
To be continued
