Denebris Freeport, 29 June 2157. 1710 Hours Earth Standard Time.
He knew he was in trouble the moment Phlox entered his ready room.
The doctor paused at the open doorway and fixed Trip with a dark scowl that looked odd on his normally jovial face. Two hours had passed since Tucker had awakened in Sickbay with T'Pol's name on his lips and had made his way to the bridge against Phlox's wishes, and nearly an hour since Trip had last seen the Denobulan. Tucker leaned back in his chair at the doctor's approach, wincing slightly at the twinge of pain that lanced through his abdomen.
"You need to rest," Phlox declared without preamble. He crossed his arms and frowned, and Trip gave him an annoyed look.
"I've tried," Tucker replied sharply as he turned his attention back to the reports on his desk. "I can't."
"Captain." The doctor's voice was soft. "You can't keep doing this. Your body needs to recover and if you keep pushing this hard, you could reinjure yourself." Phlox's voice hardened. "And reinjury could lead to death."
"I can't feel her, Phlox," Trip said quietly. He slumped forward, dropping his head into his hands as pain and grief and exhaustion conspired against him. Never before had he felt this old and tired. "It's like I have a hole in my mind where T'Pol is supposed to be..."
"She's still alive, Captain," Phlox stated confidently. Somehow, he had managed to come around the desk without Trip being aware of it. "The bond is still active even if you can't currently sense her. Distance is the most likely reason you can't connect with her right now."
"You don't know that!" Anger exploded from him hot and fast, and Trip glared fiercely at the doctor. Phlox opened his mouth to respond but Tucker continued over him. "She could be dead right now and I'd never know..." The fury dwindled away into grief, and his head sank even farther into his hands. "She could be dead," he repeated softly.
"Trip." The Denobulan's voice was firm, and the feel of his hand on Tucker's shoulder was as unexpected as his form of address. Normally, Trip would be grinning broadly; he had been trying for years to convince his longtime friend to unbend and actually use the nickname, but now he was too confused, too grief-stricken, too pained to really notice. "We've been over this before. If Commander T'Pol were dead, you would know it. The bond is only active when both parties are alive and well."
"Between Vulcans, yeah," Tucker muttered as he pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to ward off a headache. "But I'm not a Vulcan. For me, it could be different. It could be like..." He paused in momentary reflection before continuing. "It could be like a comm signal. I'm transmitting but there's nothing there to receive."
"Bridge to Captain Tucker." Lieutenant Devereux's voice echoed through the ready room, preventing Phlox from responding, and Trip hit the transmit button on his desk comm-panel without hesitation.
"Tucker here."
"Sir, Commander Eisler is returning to Endeavour. He wants to meet with you ASAP." Hope started to well up within Trip, and he fought the urge to jump to his feet and head for the door. From the expression on Phlox's face, Tucker suspected that the doctor wouldn't approve.
"Send him to my ready room once he arrives. Did he say what it's about?"
"No, sir," Devereux replied.
"All right." Trip paused for a heartbeat. "And get me a status report from Hess on the repairs." He hated pestering his ChEng, but he desperately needed to know what was going on. Phlox had already flatly forbidden him from even visiting the engineering deck and, even with the extra personnel that Hess had drafted from the civilian scientists, Trip knew that Anna Hess was working with a skeleton crew.
As it was, every single department aboard Endeavour was already operating with less than the normally required crew. The decision to refit the ship as a mobile R&D platform had come with the realization that an Enterprise-class starship already had limited crew space and couldn't handle such a significant increase in personnel; the addition of a platoon of MACOs for the Expanse mission had proven that. Starfleet Command, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to halve the serving crew to make way for the civilian scientists brought aboard, not even taking into account Trip's rather vocal complaints about the hazards of trying to operate a starship with such a significantly reduced crew. At the time of Endeavour's original deployment, there had been one hundred and twenty-five trained enlisted personnel, forty of which were Security Force, and fourteen officers; the refit had reduced the standard crew to a mere sixty-five enlisted, twenty of whom were security troopers, and eleven officers. It was nothing short of a scheduling nightmare.
The sixty civilians brought aboard answered directly to Doctor Laleh Jalali, a computer and sensor specialist who held a civilian rank equivalent to lieutenant commander; the rank existed more for the scientists' internal pecking order, as noneof them were in the chain-of-command or allowed to interfere with shipboard operations. Unsurprisingly, the crew transition wasn't a smooth one. There had been some incidents early on when the scientists complained about the stringent policy of cross-training, and the Starfleet crew complained about what they perceived as special treatment for the civilians, but the integration had gradually begun taking place. T'Pol's presence in the research labs and Trip's own contributions toward warp theory had actually helped the transition a little bit; though Tucker still found it amusing that several of the civilians continued to dismiss him as a simple-minded hick because of his accent.
Ironically, it was many of those very civilians who were instrumental in establishing the rapid pace of repairs aboard Endeavour. Without the same sort of doctrinal training in engineering that Hess' teams had received, the scientists that had been drafted to assist had made suggestions that led to the discovery of a more efficient and faster way of effecting the necessary repairs.
The comm line went dead after Devereux acknowledged the command, and Tucker glanced up at Phlox. The doctor had moved back to the spot on the other side of Trip's desk.
"You need rest," Phlox repeated as if they had never been interrupted. Trip frowned as Phlox continued. "I don't think I need to remind you of Starfleet order one-oh-four."
"Section C," Tucker finished grimly as he again leaned back in his chair. "You'd do that to me?"
"If you keep pushing yourself like this, yes." The doctor fixed him with an unyielding look, his eyes unblinking. "You'll be no good to Commander T'Pol if you pass out from pain, or if I'm forced to relieve you medically." Phlox suddenly smiled. "Please don't make me involve security."
Trip couldn't help himself. He laughed.
"Remind me never to buy a car from you," he smirked at their private joke. His mirth faded quickly, however, as he glanced at the PADDs scattered on the desk in front of him. Phlox seemed to notice his distraction.
"Status reports?" the doctor asked and Trip sighed.
"Condolence letters," he corrected. "For Petty Officers El-Hamdani and Sharett." Glancing up again, he frowned at the doctor. "I've been trying to figure out what to say to their parents beyond the usual stuff but ... I barely even knew either of them." He looked away. "I didn't want to know them..."
It was an admission that he'd made only once before, to T'Pol, and it was one that continued to bother him. For the first time, he truly understood why Jon had isolated himself so effectively during the Xindi mission. Nothing was quite as difficult as the knowledge that he, as captain, was expected to put the mission ahead of the personnel; and sometimes, that meant sending people to their deaths. Even now, Trip found himself struggling with the knowledge that at this moment, he was technically putting the needs of the mission behind the needs of the crew. Black had even pointed that out, here in this ready room, when he had asserted that Trip's relationship with T'Pol was the driving reason behind their current actions. In part, Tucker knew that the admiral had been correct – he needed T'Pol and would do whatever it took to recover her. But Black hadn't been prepared for the cold logic of Trip's arguments for recovering the missing Vulcan: If Orions had taken her, the next step in that line of thinking was that they would either sell her to the Romulans or ransom her back to Starfleet. And when the admiral had still balked, Trip had fired his final broadside.
"If I give the order for my people to ignore you, Admiral," he had asked calmly, "who do you think they'll listen to?"
And, with those words, Tucker knew that he had made a lifelong enemy in the admiral.
The door chime abruptly brought Trip out of his moment of reflection, and he responded instantly.
"Enter," he ordered. Lieutenant Commander Eisler, still wearing his black combat armor, walked through the open doorway with an air of grim satisfaction about him. He nodded once at the now-seated Phlox before offering a battered-looking PADD to Trip.
"We have it, sir," he declared as he shifted slightly. "It was an Orion smash-and-grab. That's the warp signature of the ship responsible."
"How did you get this?" Trip asked, already cycling through the data on the PADD. Giddy excitement was racing through his veins.
"Planetary authorities picked up some locals that they suspected to have links with the Orions." Eisler rolled his neck slightly, causing it to pop loudly. Phlox frowned at that. "They let me take a crack at the prisoners."
"Hope you didn't kill anyone," Tucker commented wryly.
"No, sir. Not this time." Before Trip could think about that comment, the lieutenant commander gestured to the PADD and continued. "One of the locals was the Orions' eyes and ears on Denebris. When he got word of your presence, he contacted the interceptor."
"My presence?"
"Yes, sir," Eisler replied, once more grim. "You and Commander T'Pol were the targets." That was information that Trip hadn't wanted to know. Eisler continued, "Apparently, the commander of this Orion interceptor – one Harrad-Sar – has been lurking in this sector for nearly a month waiting for Endeavour to make an appearance somewhere."
"Harrad-Sar?" Phlox asked, surprise in his voice. Trip exchanged looks with the doctor.
"You know him?" Eisler's eyes darted between the two, and Tucker nodded.
"We've had dealings with him a couple of times in the past. He tried to capture Enterprise at least twice." Trip looked up at his tactical officer. "How did this local know I was here? We haven't exactly been advertising our presence."
"A member of the Vissian crew sold the information, sir."
Conflicting emotions warred within Trip, and he focused on keeping his 'captain's face' intact. He supposed that it made a sick sort of sense that a Vissian had sold him out; the incident with Charles had led to something of a continuing internal problem within the Vissian culture, and the already rare Cogenitors had begun demanding better treatment. Part of him was glad that Charles' death had actually had some meaning, but another part, the emotional part that bound him to T'Pol, growled with fury that that a Vissian had been responsible for his mate's abduction.
"Pass that on to Admiral Black," he ordered Eisler, his voice sounding calmer than he felt. "I'm sure that the Vissians might want to know about their security failures." He offered the PADD back to the lieutenant commander. "You've already given this to Ricker?" Eisler nodded. "Good. What news there?"
"She's working on it with Lieutenant Hsiao right now, sir. They should have the interceptor's trajectory and probable course in a matter of minutes." The tactical officer straightened slightly. "Sir, I'd like to request that we begin drilling the STAB teams for a combat insertion."
"Granted."
"Engineering to Captain Tucker." Lieutenant Commander Hess' voice cut off whatever else Eisler was about to say.
"This is Tucker. Give me some good news, Anna."
"All boards are green, Captain." Trip could hear the smile in her voice. "Endeavour is one hundred percent and ready for action."
"Captain?" Eisler asked softly, gesturing to the comm panel, and Trip gave him a nod. "Engineering, Eisler. We need maximum warp for extended use. Can you provide?"
"Why, sweetheart," Hess' voice mocked over the comm line, "I thought you'd never ask." The tactical officer's expression hardened slightly even as he shifted uncomfortably, and Trip found himself smiling. He'd never quite been able to figure out the nature of the relationship between Eisler and Hess; Anna flirted constantly with him but neither seemed to take it seriously. Which was surprising, Trip mused, given Eisler's vocal disdain for officers who acted unprofessionally. If Tucker didn't know of Hess' orientation, he'd suspect that she was sweet on Rick.
"Warp factor six is available," the chief engineer declared proudly. "We're rigged and ready for action down here."
"Damn fine work, Anna," Trip said into the comm panel. "Stand by for warp." He released the transmit button and looked up at Eisler. "Rick, get us moving."
"Aye, Captain," the tactical officer replied, briefly straightening to a position of attention before about-facing and heading for the door. He was issuing commands to the bridge crew before the ready room door had closed. "Sound general quarters and rig for warp speed. This is not a drill."
The door closed behind him and Trip gave Phlox a broad grin.
"You need to rest," the doctor said and Trip sighed.
Moments later, the ship's ambient sounds changed as they broke orbit, and Endeavour went to warp.
