Set Fire...: For Whom the Bell Tolls (III)
Sleep had not returned to the beleaguered engineer. Laying in the bunk, awash in his own sweat, twisting and turning, he had tried his best to honor the doctor's order; but left alone, in the darkness of the smelly room, his thoughts preyed upon him with vengeance. Dead memories playing across his mind, with the weight of a hundred laden dreams, rest was not becoming; righteous indignation and unholy ire warred within, neither granting quarter, forcing him to his feet as he stalked the small quarters, barely aware of his surroundings.
With time to go, he could stand it no longer; needing to latch onto something, anything, to take his mind from his waking nightmares, he departed the room, furtively glancing both ways as if Phlox might be lurking outside the door. Damn it all anyway, he thought, placing the blame succinctly upon the physician. I'm an engineer. This is my ship. The best thing I can do for myself…is to do my job.
Stopping at a console, he pulled up the latest repair assignments, and his sagging eyes raised upward with surprise. Malcolm was in the cartography lab—and the imaging sensors were reporting malfunctions. That's simple enough, Trip reflected, understanding that he needed to stay out of engineering until his requisite time had expired. It was a short walk—made longer by a nonfunctioning lift—to the core of the starship, but as he moved, a mission in mind, his breathing began to loosen up; it felt good, felt right, to be back on duty.
The hatchway clanked open roughly, yet again another victim of the battle at Azati, revealing dimmed lighting within; and Tucker heard, rather than saw, the two occupants of the room. The first, as expected, was Malcolm; the tactical officer was standing over the main console, punching controls, watching as a three-dimensional image of a Sphere flickered in and out of existence, its lines wavy and undefined.
There was no warning.
Trip stiffened in alarm as the second voice spoke. It was Degra. The arch-criminal, the genocidaire, the very architect of his sister's death and Earth's doom. It was blasphemy.
Malcolm's head moved about quickly, taking stock of the engineer's entrance. "Commander," he intoned immediately, a sharp warning audible; it cut through the rage in Trip's ears even as his hands were balling into fists. "The captain asked me to share our data on the Spheres with Degra."
"Did he?" Tucker's voice made his disagreement clear as he eyed the primate, sending pointed glares of distrust and hatred across the small space. "As you can see," he added curtly, "we're still trying to fix our imaging sensors in here. That pounding your ships gave us did a lot of damage." Inching into the room, sidling over to the controls, he stayed close to the scientist. "But then, I suppose you Xindi believe that first contact consists of surprise attacks."
Degra flinched back, his hooded eyelids raising upward.
"Commander Tucker." Malcolm's voice was firm, nearly harsh, as the tactical chief sought to redirect his colleague's attention; Reed had not been expecting this surprise appearance—had not prepared for it, and had not envisioned it occurring with only himself present—but he moved firmly, knowing that the captain would tolerate no ill-will blowing from the engineer. And neither will I, Malcolm appended, agreeing with Archer's sentiments. "Can you try resetting the optical subprocessors?" he suggested; it was a simple task, one that Reed could do on his own, but it would suffice.
"Yeah, Malcolm, of course." Trip's tone did not match the easygoing nature of his words; and if it were possible, as he turned, one eye rotated back to watch the Xindi scientist. "Ya know, when we got in past your detection grid," he continued, unable to stay silent, "we got a look at that weapon you're building. I must admit, it's an impressive piece of engineering." Letting out a low whistle of mock appreciation, as if from one designer to another, he went on. "But then, it'd have to be, to blow up an entire planet."
The wavy lines of the holo-display failed to clear; and Malcolm held back a curse word, uncertain if it was intended for his comrade or for the malfunctioning technology. "Commander," Reed cut in sharply, tightly on the heels of Tucker's last word; the human engineer looked at him, but with a baleful glare of anger, hatred, and fear. With a moment of silence set, Malcolm took a breath. "Try increasing the data resolution."
"Of course," Trip replied, seeming nonchalance undergirded by the venom lacing his words. "Try this." As bidden, the wavy lines cleared up, resolving the image into a nearly-clear Sphere.
With no distractions left, Trip folded his arms across his chest, and turned a grievous look to the lonesome Xindi in the compartment. "You know," he said, the falsified composure still intact, "I'd be fascinated to see the telemetry from the first probe you sent. What with all the advanced quantum physics going into that weapon, I'm sure the computer simulations failed to be anywhere near as exciting."
Degra gripped his own body more tightly, nestling back into a corner of the compartment; shooting a gaze at Reed, the lieutenant raised a silent hand: let me handle this, he said.
"And boy," Trip went on, "you must've been pretty damn excited! I mean, that beam cut one helluva swath through Florida." Seizing upon the flash of blankness on Degra's face, Tucker pressed in. "Or didn't you even bother to learn the names of the places you destroyed? They're all Earth, they'll are human, so they're all the same to you, aren't they?"
Moving slowly, Malcolm now moved quickly, inserting himself between the duo. "Commander!" Reed growled, the sound erupting from the back of his throat. "That's enough!"
Trip's dark eyes fell upon the Lieutenant. "Is it?" he asked, his answer clear. "I don't think so, Malcolm. You see, I don't think your friend here actually saw the destruction he caused. I don't think he saw a single house burn down, or a single person be vaporized. I don't think he's returned to surveil the damage, to see the Scar. I don't think he even bothered to estimate the dead, Malcolm!" His tone rising in fury until it culminated, Trip was near Malcolm's face, screaming down at the shorter man.
Malcolm glared upward, his footing strong, his backbone unyielding, his hands readying into fists. "Commander, stand down!" he barked. "On the captain's orders!"
Trip swallowed hard, but his screed was spent; taking a step back, his posture sank, deflating from within.
Waiting an extended moment, Malcolm turned to the scientist. "Degra, can you wait for me in the corridor? I have—a couple final repair matters to discuss with Commander Tucker."
"Of course, Lieutenant." With aplomb—and surprising grace—the Xindi exited the small compartment, doors uncomfortably clanking shut behind him, the two humans both watching for the final clang.
"Just what in the hell do you think you're doing, Malcolm?" Trip shot out of the gate first, exploding with ire as he spoke. "You're sharing sensitive information with our enemy!"
"I'm doing my job, Commander, and following my orders from the captain!" Rank may have privileges, but Malcolm would no longer hold back. "We have an opportunity here to make a friend, but you seem intent on killing our chance!"
"A friend?" Trip blinked furiously, disbelievingly, scoffing at the notion. "Degra designed their damned weapons in the first place! He can't wait to kill the rest of humanity!" Waving with his arms, the engineer encompassed the Enterprise. "How can everyone be so naïve? Degra, Berezi, Jannar—they're simply playing us for fools until they can launch that weapon!"
"You speak with so much certainty, Commander!" Malcolm shot back. "How do you claim to know their thoughts and motives? None of us know what's going on in their heads! We can't! What we can see is that they are here, today, listening and talking to us! It's a God-given opportunity, and one that we have to pursue."
"He killed seven million people, Malcolm!" Trip exclaimed. "How much more proof of his motives do you need?"
"And what do you propose?" Malcolm turned slightly, backing away, even as his voice rose. "That we go off in a fit of vengeance, kill Degra, and die in a fiery but futile effort to destroy the weapon? We have one chance here, and only one chance. Degra, Berezi, Jannar—they're showing signs of remorse and doubt. If we can convince them to hold off, we can save Earth, but this is the only route forward! Damnit, we need to win their trust, not vindicate their enmity!"
"Why aren't they trying to win our trust?" Trip retorted angrily, his voice expressing disbelief. "It's not like we're the mass murders!"
Malcolm let his eyelids sag closed for a moment as he felt the throbbing within his mind. "If you don't understand the precarious nature of our situation, Commander, then recognize this: the captain has given his orders, and we are Starfleet officers. And our faith in Jonathan Archer matters now, more than ever."
Letting out an all-too-human sigh, Phlox settled back in his office chair, feeling the comforting springs buttress his weight and ease his burden. Medical charts lined the computer monitor before him, but as they scrolled past his eyes, he only blinked, scarcely aware of the data they revealed; for little of it was new to him, little was not imprinted within his prodigious memory, and little was not beyond his immediate ken. And what little would transpire…his team of medics was outside, in the main compartment, tending to the wounded. They had no emergency cases; and his make-shift crew would alert him of any change in status that required his attention.
Sickbay was, for once, relatively calm, experiencing a reprieve from the waves of casualties that had struck over the previous week with such relentlessness. The stream of minor injuries, the nature sustained from operating in a stricken starship, had slowed as the crew adjusted and the worst of the dangers were cleared; and his medical team was operating at a high level, their skills honed by battlefield experience, able to handle the routine sort of cases without the direct attention of the doctor.
Not that it did the physician much good. For in the abeyance of emergency, his thoughts turned to more challenging matters, the kind that did not lend themselves to hopeful resolutions.
One person's wonder drug is another person's poison, Phlox reflected, recalling the defining maxim of xenoneurobiology. It was a highly-specialized field, but one that held particular interest for the Denobulan; fascinated by the delicate workings of biochemistry, and its relationship to neuropsychiatry, he was one of a small conclave within the Interspecies Medical Exchange to hold the accreditation. And a biochemical that is completely innocuous in one humanoid, if not outright beneficial, is utterly debilitating in another.
The neuroactive compound in question, the one that had caused T'Pol's mental implosion, was a simple formula known on virtually every warp-capable world as a highly-effective but non-addictive pain reliever, used in abundance for centuries for mild aches, pains, and fevers with few to no side effects. But in Vulcans—somehow, in Vulcans—it became quickly and dangerously toxic, plugging a particular neuroreceptor and creating a radical imbalance in the biochemistry of the victim, replete with all of the emotional and mental effects of a psychotropic substance.
Highly addictive, breaking the physical and mental dependency could be fatal; and even if withdrawal were properly managed, the damage caused could be irreversible.
"Doctor!" Turning his head at the summons, Phlox felt a surge of hope with the promise it contained; per his instructions, Ensign Demir had spent the previous hour carefully adjusting T'Pol's medications, bringing her out of a healing rest and neutralizing the synaptic suppressants that had kept her body immobile. After several days on her back, several critical days of rest and recovery, it was time to get her upright and on her feet; a need to benefit her atrophying muscles, as well as bolstering her dejected mood.
Moving eagerly, Phlox rose to his feet and left the small office; it was a short stroll across the medical ward. Giving the medical readouts a quick glance—there was little of new information that he couldn't glean simply by looking at the patient—a wide grin split his face, looking down on the small woman. She was shrunken, the victim of her days in the bed, but she returned his gaze, eyeing the physician with a look of uncertainty.
"Commander T'Pol!" Phlox spoke brightly, encouraged by the awareness gleaming within her eyes. "How do you feel?"
She hesitated for a moment, and then waited another moment; the question perplexed her, the answer uncertain. "I feel…" Unable to settle on the right words—unable to express herself—she wondered at the request, several responses coming to mind, all seeming somehow inadequate. "My head hurts," she finished lamely.
"That's no surprise," Phlox replied, his tone calm and reassuring. "Your brain chemistry is still unsettled. Give it a few more days, and the headache should clear away. It's time," he added encouragingly. "Do you think you can sit up for me?"
"I can…try," T'Pol answered, the honesty escaping her mouth unbidden. "If you could?"
"Of course." With a gesture, Phlox gave an unspoken command to Demir. "Try rolling onto your side first, T'Pol, and swing your legs over the side of the bed. We'll help you sit up. Now…" With four hands assisting, the maneuver was carefully completed. "How are you doing? Light-headed? Dizzy? Nausea?"
"Just irritated," T'Pol muttered; and she cringed instantly, regretting the words. "I apologize, Doctor. That was rude and uncalled for."
"Don't think twice about it." Understanding, Phlox gifted another smile. "I've heard worse from my patients." Shifting his gaze, he looked at the medical readouts; her blood pressure had dropped slightly, but there was no other significant change.
"Doctor, I…" Searching for the words, uncertain of how to express herself, T'Pol felt into her own mind, feeling lost; a trail of a thought emerged, a seeming dissonance, something that did not resonate correctly. Incoherent, it took an extended moment for her to identify what was missing. "I can't…sense…anyone, Doctor." The world around her was somehow lacking a dimension.
"Ah, yes." Phlox nodded gingerly, understanding T'Pol's meaning; while Vulcans weren't true telepaths, in the sense that they couldn't read the thoughts of others—at least, not in the absence of a physical connection—the Vulcan mind did experience the presence of others as a sort of white noise in the background. "Don't worry about it; I gave you a neural suppressant to help relieve the pressure."
"I…" T'Pol glanced around sickbay, her head moving in a jerky fashion. She felt—there's that word again—like she had…tunnel vision, she decided. The familiar forms and images were still around her, but they lacked substance, depth, a sense of reality to her; as if a Potemkin village of human lore, a two-dimensional form in a three-dimensional mind.
Her mind swirling, unable to find its purchase, she looked down at the floor, and it seemed to shift beneath her; moving closer, then farther away, then spiraling before fading in and out. The floor is still there, her base logic told her; the problem is my perception of it. If I focus, if I concentrate, it will steady in my mind. But as she sought to iron her thoughts, the more the floor wavered, until her logic finally surrendered, acknowledging that the effort was futile; she broke her gaze, returning her attention to the Denobulan. He, at least, was standing steady, unmoving, a firm point in space upon which she could orient herself.
"There's no need to rush." Phlox reached out a hand, offering his stability to the Vulcan. "Why don't you take a few minutes to catch your balance?"
Because it shouldn't take a few minutes to catch my balance, her mind screamed back, furious at her inability to function. Stifling the audible retort, she pushed herself to the edge of the bed in one jerky move; and she gasped aloud from the effort, the world suddenly swimming around her, and she choked back a wave of bile rising upward.
"Take it slow," Phlox added, grasping her left shoulder; Demir offered a firm grip on her other side, and the physical contact helped to steady T'Pol's mind; closing her eyes for a moment, feeling the stabilizing presence of the two beings, she focused upon them like candles in the night; the dizziness subsided, the distortions of her vision bleeding away, and T'Pol sensed her reeling mind start to slow back down with stark relief.
Here we go, she thought gingerly, and pushing herself off the bed, she let her feet catch her as she dropped the remaining distance to the deck. Two pairs of strong hands helped hold her upright, supporting a vital part of her weight as her balance swirled again; the world tilted and careened around her, and she fell backwards, only to be caught but the supportive arms of her crewmates.
"Don't worry." Phlox's voice expressed a quiet confidence. "We have you, T'Pol. You're not going to fall."
Nodding—her head moved roughly, but it was clearly a nod—T'Pol acknowledged their support, unwilling to trust her voice with the recognition. Tentatively, slowly, thinking consciously through the motion, she lifted her right foot; and bringing it forward, she planted it centimeters ahead on the deck, feeling the shock in her body as she caught her weight upon it. Her leg holding steady, she brought her left foot forward. There, she thought, experiencing satisfaction at such a simple task. I did it. I can do it.
"Well done!" Phlox kept his grip steady, but eased up slightly as T'Pol's feet firmed up beneath her.
Fighting with vertigo, T'Pol refused to look downward; she focused across sickbay, at a point roughly eyelevel, allowing the room to straighten and hold steady around her. This time, with less hesitation, she raised a foot again, and moved forward several more centimeters. I'm doing it.
I can do this, she thought, but T'Pol's balance wavered, threatening to betray her.
A chorus of curses flowed through Trip's mind as he surveyed the damage; wondering just how his staff had managed to miss the warning signs as he watched the red letters flashing, the words "system failure" blinking at him unremittingly, he swore silently, feeling unrelenting ire warring with the intense exhaustion within. As if I needed one more thing to fall apart, he growled to himself, realizing yet again that he alone was holding the Enterprise together. I can't believe that Phlox made me sit out so many hours.
Look at what happened.
Having barely left the cartography lab when the Enterprise shook violently, impelled by the force of a new explosion, the engineer beat a path to the bridge, staggering his way along quaking deck plates. He could hear—he could feel—he could sense—the starship threatening to come apart at the seams around him, and moving as quickly as he dared, propelled by the urgency of disaster, he had reached the briefing alcove at the rear of the bridge only moments behind Travis and Hoshi.
The young navigator glanced over briefly, acknowledging the engineer's arrival, before looking back at the wall monitor. "It's the starboard warp plasma conduit," Travis confirmed, raising his voice over the turbulence of shuddering bulkheads. "It's venting straight into space."
"How is that possible?" Trip shook his head, disbelieving the dire news; for on the list of dangers on board a faster-than-light starship, a ruptured plasma conduit was among the most severe. Without functioning plasma conduits—the warp engines would be dead. Again.
And if they couldn't seal the leak, the superheated plasma would eventually melt away the surrounding materials, leaving a gaping hole in the outer hull that could not be repaired; the Enterprise, already mortally wounded, would no longer be able to hold its own atmosphere against the vacuum of space.
"The diagnostic sensors were offline," Malcolm observed, slipping quietly into the alcove. "We just got them back online—and they immediately went red."
"What can we do about it?" Hoshi gave a shrug of her shoulders as she looked at the others, seeming to say, I'm not an engineer; as the linguist, she was comparatively in the dark about the technical systems of the starship. Though I'd like to see you three try to decipher an alien language, she thought, offering an out-of-place smile that seemed to baffle Travis.
"We don't even know how bad it is," Malcolm commented. Raising a hand, he pointed at the display. "We can extrapolate from the change in pressure, though, and it looks like a sizable hole has been blown clean into space."
"We can't get any of the external ship's sensors oriented onto it, either," Travis remarked. He, too, shrugged; they're offline, he acknowledged, the unspoken explanation clear to everyone. "We won't know how much damage was done without shutting off the plasma flow completely, and giving the conduit time to cool off."
"The flow regulators…here and here," Malcolm added, pointing to the junctions in the interior of the Enterprise. "Normally, we could just shut down the main plasma feed."
"But we can't get anywhere near them." Trip spoke sourly, angrily, nearly ready to lash out at the console with a fist. "There's way too much debris in the way. It would take hours to cut our way through."
"I don't know that we have a choice, Commander." Malcolm replied with firmness, but his temper, too, was frayed. "We have to shut off the flow somehow."
"Yes," Trip answered curtly, glaring at the tactical officer. "The manual cut-offs outside the ship."
"Commander!" Travis interjected immediately, speaking a note of unhesitating alarm. "Those cut-offs are nearly on top of the leak! You know how dangerous that is!" Punching in a short series of commands, he modeled an image of the hull. "The team would only be meters away from a raw warp plasma fire, Commander. And we don't know how big that fire actually is."
As if in answer, the Enterprise quaked again, shuddering from the force of a secondary surge in the plasma flume; the foursome reached out, grabbing the console and each other to keep their feet. "If we don't get control of that leak, and fast," Trip replied, his voice shaking with the explosion, "the fire will spread to the warp reactor itself! I know the dangers of going outside, Ensign, but we just don't have the time to deal with that debris!"
Pulling himself back upright, Malcolm gritted his teeth, and forged ahead. "Maybe we should wake the captain, Commander, and get his orders."
Trip's eyes shot darts at the dark-haired officer. "The captain's resting, Lieutenant, and I'm in command until he returns. I can handle this decision, even if you're scared to."
"With all due respect, Commander," Malcolm snapped back, "going out there is too dangerous! The EV team would be killed before they can shut off the flow!"
"You're comparing that risk to the certainty of the reactor blowing apart!" His ire rising, Tucker swung a hand into the console, punctuating his words with force. "We don't have a choice in this!" Pausing, letting out a breath of furious air, he went on. "My crew can do this. I can do this. It'll be tough…but we're the best of Starfleet."
As the heated atmosphere hung stagnant over them, Travis spoke up again. "At least ask for a volunteer, Commander."
Almost immediately, Malcolm interjected. "There's no need."
Trip's eyes rotated back to Reed with fury. "What do you mean?"
"I'll do it," Malcolm answered, locking in the gaze. "I'm not allowing anyone else to go on this suicide mission, Commander. If you're going to order this, I'll do it myself."
It always looked larger from the outside.
Ordinarily, it was a sight of beauty, an amazing piece of artwork to behold. Emerging from the airlock, looking around, the hull of the Enterprise stretching out in every direction, not ending so much as curving away, falling into the stars at the near horizon; the boldness of the starship set against the panoramic view of the endless farscape, a testament to humanity's voyage into the great wonders of the next beyond.
But not today; for today, as Trip Tucker surveyed the wreckage of the Enterprise, seeing it in stark relief, he realized just how precarious their grip on life was in the unforgiving, frozen depths of the cosmos.
I can't believe we're even holding together, he thought, his eyes telling him more than a scanner ever could. The story of battle surrounded him; the plating of the once-bold flagship scorched with dozens of black, carbonized streaks, each a meter wide and many times as long. Every step of the way, the tritanium sheeting—where it still lay intact—was dented and beaten; some spots microscopically, and others deep enough to kneel within, a cubbyhole on top the hull. Stepping over a smaller divot, he had to circumnavigate the larger depressions, for fear that the hull plates had been fatally weakened.
And interspersed across the hull were the true signs of the Enterprise's flirtation with death—over a dozen hull ruptures in eyesight alone, the edges ripped ragged with carbonized blackness, revealing the ship's duranium superstructure to the prying eyes of space. Visible within some were the blue fires of emergency forcefields, holding the breach against the emptiness of the void; others, however, remained open, their contents long since evacuated outward, walled off from the remainder of the starship by interior bulkheads.
Cringing involuntarily, Trip stared down into one of the breaches. He peered closely, focusing into the dimness inside, and could just make out a faint light deep below; he was looking down through the ceiling of what had once been someone's crew quarters, now just a pile of wreckage and debris. Looking back up at the stars, he offered a silent prayer to the Great Bird, hoping that no one had been in that room during the battle at Azati.
And there—for it was not difficult to see—was a massive, fiery plume of warp plasma, erupting upward from a gaping hole in the sheeting; billowing far over his head, farther around than he could embrace, Trip almost pictured the heat melting the edges of the tritanium away even as he eyeballed the damage.
Malcolm, too, stood several paces away, exchanging only the curtest of instructions with the engineer as his eyes followed the spire of superheated ejecta upward; burning at millions of degrees, measured by any temperature scale, he gave it cautious berth, keeping his distance even as he felt the air in his EV suit begin to warm up. Getting too close would cause him to melt, to literally melt, before his constituent atoms were vaporized and blown outward on the gusting winds of heat; it was the sort of hellfire that only Vesuvius could design, but it was here, and Malcolm gulped.
Trip interrupted with a pointed hand, indicating a semi-intact hull plate several meters to the left side of the plume. "Over there," he ordered roughly, his own voice slurring as he started to heat up. "I'll have to talk you through the cut-off sequence." The engineer did not look at Reed.
Malcolm nodded, the movement lost in the rigidness of the suit. "Where are you going to be?"
Trip pointed in the other direction, to the right side of the fire. "The second valve is on the other side. We have to shut off both, so I'll get that one while you work on the first one." Tucker waited for only a moment before continuing. "Time's wasting, Lieutenant. Get moving."
Gladly. Reed had little intention of taking a second longer than necessary; it was only the intense, frozen stillness of deep space that was even keeping him alive, the near-zero depths bleeding off the heat of the plasma with an intricate tango dancing between the two. Shuffling his feet, testing his footing, Malcolm moved as quickly as he dared; and arcing widely around in a quarter-circle, he approached the indicated hull panel.
Easy now, Malcolm told himself, bending down as best he could in the inflexible suit; perplexed for a moment, he finally let himself fall forward, catching his weight on his knees. The release panel, roughly a foot square, lay before him. With a gloved finger, he pressed the first release trigger, and it popped out easily.
The second trigger failed to move.
Damnit. The alerts in his suit were already turning yellow as the internal temperature rose, but the trigger would not give way; he pressed on it, then pounded on it, then did his best to punch it, but all was futile. With little option, Reed looked up, attempting to find the engineer on the far side of the plasma flume; but Trip was all but lost behind the furnace, unseen, his progress unknown.
"We need to open the emergency bypass ports first," Trip announced, his voice sounding small in the comm channel. "You can't close your shutoff valve until I release the pressure from the secondary lines."
Hearing the words, Malcolm grunted, and continued hitting the release trigger. It's all academic if I can't get this bloody panel open, he thought. Hell, everything's academic then.
"The exhaust vents are open," Dragović, in the confines of main engineering, confirmed the next step for them. "EV team, you're a go to open the bypass."
Malcolm blinked furiously, trying to clear the sweat from his eyes; it was already pouring down his face, onto his body, coating his skin with a sleek sheen. "Commander!" he called out, giving way to the inevitable. "I have a problem here!"
Shit almighty, Trip groaned, wondering for a moment just where he had come up with the curse. Despite his bravado, he knew the risks they were taking, standing so close to the flaming inferno; and they could ill afford, could not afford, any delays.
Delays are fatal.
"What is it?" he asked harshly, his temper rising with the heat inside his suit. Already uncomfortable in the extreme, with too much left to do before returning to the pseudo-safe confines of the Enterprise, his stomach was starting to recoil with induced nausea; and he altered his gaze, staring off into space, trying to focus on the absolute chill of the darkened emptiness.
"The panel won't open," Malcolm answered. "The heat's warped the tritanium." There was a clear note of blame in his voice, accusing the engineer of not foreseeing the possibility; and Tucker swore again, knowing that he should have brought an engineer for the task.
"All right, Lieutenant, just…" Trip spoke slowly as he ran through options in his mind, settling upon the quickest application of brute force. "Use your plasma torch," he commanded, barking out the order. "Just rip off the panel and send it into space. We can live without the damn thing." Grunting as he reached down, feeling the need to hurry his own portion of the task, Tucker pulled up on the first control lever with the best of his leverage and strength; it moved but slowly, unwilling to give more than a centimeter, taxing him the incredible heat with the added effort of releasing the bypass interlock. "I'll be there in a minute!" he called out, the words coming rough, barely able to articulate a coherent voice.
Malcolm's head was threatening to float away, his thoughts barely present, as he nodded in confirmation, not cognizant that the engineer could not see his movement; and he closed his eyes, willing away the nausea, chills rattling his bones even as the sweat ran down him in torrential sheets. Still on his knees, reaching into his tool kit, he withdrew a standard plasma torch; it took precious seconds to activate the device before he could point the miniature flame at the panel, slicing through the recalcitrant sheeting.
Dizzy, his thoughts starting to fade, Reed focused on cutting a straight line, aware that his precision was lacking; and he watched, desperately, as it progressed half-centimeter by half-centimeter, taking far too long as he slowly hunched forward, the environmental controls in his suit screaming in overtaxed agony from the proximity of the far-greater plume before him.
The bypass release valve gave way at last, giving up the battle with one final graceful surrender that sent Tucker backwards onto his posterior.
"The bypass shunts are open," Dragović confirmed from within the Enterprise, his voice sounding small and distant; nearly lost, swallowed up by the roar in Trip's ears, he concentrated to make out the words, repeating the syllables as he made sense of them. "The pressure's bleeding out. You're a go to close the shutoff valves, EV team."
Some feat that is, Trip thought grimly, turning his head for a moment; from his vantage point, he could see the now-open exhaust vents at the rear of the saucer, spewing the raw warp plasma out like a jet of fire. Contained as such, it would no longer jeopardize the ship…but we no longer have warp engines.
And this time, it's not a simple matter of stealing a warp coil. The Enterprise was dead, subdued to impulse power, stranded in the depths of the Devil's Expanse, the deed almost done as the engineer closed the first set of cutoff valves.
"Commander Tucker to Lieutenant Reed."
"Main bridge to Lieutenant Reed. Respond immediately, Lieutenant."
"Lieutenant, please respond. What's your status?"
"Commander Tucker, can you get a visual on Lieutenant Reed?"
"Give me a minute, Travis, he's on the fire side of the plasma fire." His own body battling the heat, Trip lifted one magnetic boot, then the other, his eyes wavering between his feet and the horizon of the hull. Somewhere, ahead, was Malcolm; Malcolm, who he had so recently accused of being the fool for the Xindi, of betraying humanity with naivete; Malcolm, his friend, who he had so willingly brought out here, and exposed to lethal danger.
And Malcolm, who was not responding, who—in the hazy distance, around the pyre—was wavering, his body unfixed, even as he struggled to cut away the jammed sheet of metal covering the vital cutoff valve.
"Travis!" Trip called out, his own words raspy and ill-defined as he staggered forward, catching each foot before the next. "What are Malcolm's readouts?"
"The temperature in his suit is over forty-four degrees!" It was Hoshi joining the conversation, providing the deadly news. "His biosensors are reading critical!"
In his own heat-induced daze, Tucker tried to swear, but nothing came to mind; and he vowed that he'd find a curse later. "Malcolm!" he shouted out, hoping to see a flinch of recognition from the lieutenant. "Get back to the airlock now!"
"Bridge to sickbay!" Travis added in on the open channel, summoning the doctor from belowdecks. "Report to the main airlock! Medical emergency!"
"Malcolm!" Trip raised his voice as best he could, reaching out forward, Reed only distant paces before him. "Report to the airlock now, damnit!"
"I'm almost finished." Malcolm's words were barely audible as he hovered, swaying, over the panel, his torch continuing to slice the sheet of tritanium away from the hull. "I got this, Commander." Watching as his torch completed the last couple centimeters, no longer aware of his own connection to the tool, Malcolm vaguely saw the access panel blew off with the tiny chemical explosions embedded in the release triggers; and the sheeting drifted off in front of him, where it crossed into the plasma plume.
A nanosecond later, it was no more.
"Forty-six degrees!" Hoshi announced with alarm, heightening the already-palpable sense of panic. "Now or never, Commander!"
"This is Phlox." Another voice intruded into the conversation, this one calmer, but no less hurried. "I'm at the main airlock. Please move with alacrity, Commmander."
The news sent sharp jolt through Trip's spine; and finding the strength to straighten his legs, he shouted out again. "Lieutenant!" Ever closer, only a few meters away, he was almost there; Tucker could almost touch Malcolm, and striving forward, he pressed his feet to move quickly.
"I'm sorry, sir!" Malcolm replied faintly. "You're breaking up!" But it wasn't the comm channel failing Reed; his own auditory senses, and the receptor pathways in his brain, were beginning to short out, no longer functioning as intended, sounds no longer being recognized by his mind. Cocooning him in deafening silence, with only the groan of his own belabored thoughts, Malcolm reached downward to release the cutoff valve; but it moved before him, then divided into two, then multiplied into four, and then he thought, whose hand is that out in front of me? For it was his, but it wasn't.
"Lieutenant!" Trip shouted yet again, a mere pace away. "Move! That's a damned order!"
"I can do this," Malcolm whispered, the words not picked up by the comm channel; and with the last of his concentration, he pulled on the lever, shifting it into the closed position.
"The cutoff valves are closed," Dragović reported. "The flume will die out soon."
"Okay, Malcolm!" One last step, and Trip reached out, grabbing the lieutenant. "You did good work, Malcolm! Malcolm?"
Reed was floating above the hull plating, anchored only by his magnetic boots, his arms drifting aimlessly around him; and as Trip gripped his friend, he saw that Malcolm's eyes were closed, his mouth slack, and no movement was left within.
It was the longest walk of Trip Tucker's life as he plodded, heavily, his own body exhausted, across the hull plating back to the main airlock; the only reprieve being the generosity of weightlessness, allowing Malcolm's bulk to sail forward on inertia under the unsteady control of the engineer.
Barely a minute—it seemed far longer, while seeming to pass in an instant, as time lost impact—to cover the distance, and corralling his comrade, Trip stuffed them both into the airlock, his head faint as he tried to recall the procedure for sealing the outer hatch. It slammed shut, the latches catching, and an echo beyond his ears told him that air was beginning to circulate.
"One more second, Commander." It was the doctor, the reliable Denobulan, standing in wait, his tense voice nonetheless speaking with encouragement; and Trip nodded, unseen, taking solace in Phlox's readiness.
The inner hatchway opened, and the pregnant pause came to sudden life.
"Grab him!" Phlox shouted out, crossing the threshold to catch Malcolm as gravity took effect; by his side, Demir was moving rapidly, his shoulder beneath the armpit of the slumping lieutenant. Unconscious, Reed's weight fell fully upon the doctor and medic; unspoken commands, honed in battlefield experience, passed between the pair as they maneuvered the heft onto a waiting stretcher.
"Get the suit off and strip him down! We need to bring his core temperature down!" At the barked command, the medical team moved, hands flying deftly to disassemble the bulky EV suit; cast aside to a corner, the undersuit was torn apart. "I have a pulse, but no respiration!" Phlox's voice carried overhead as the medical team began moving the stretcher down the corridor, taking the corner as fast as they dared, disappearing from sight as the sounds grew faint.
Leaning against a broken bulkhead, his outer, solid-core suit thrown off, Trip slumped forward, the adrenaline leaving in the wake of the medical team; drenched in sweat, gasping for air, he could barely breathe, his panic no longer subdued beneath the desperation of command. His thoughts racing—unable to settle on any coherent word—his emotions spiking with anxiety, he couldn't even look up, dependent on the wall for strength.
And the second disaster set in.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Jonathan Archer shouted, having materialized during the immediate crisis. Burning with greater anger than Trip had ever seen in the captain, Archer's words exploded upon the engineer, hitting with concussive force. "Were you trying to kill my tactical officer? Or were you trying to kill my chief engineer?" Bending down, his hands on his knees, the captain tried to eye Trip directly. "That's sure as hell what it looks like, Commander! Damnit, Trip, I trusted you to handle command for a few hours! And you had to pull a stunt like this? What the hell were you thinking?"
Tucker groaned softly, his eyes sagging closed, unable to find any words.
Archer, however, wasn't finished. "I trusted your judgment, Commander. You should've realized that sending people out there could easily be fatal! But you didn't stop to think, did you?" The words cut sharp, cut hard, cut deep as Archer built up steam. "We could've accessed the systems from the interior, without any of the danger to the crew! But instead, you dragged Malcolm out there, right next to a plasma fire!"
Raising his head, just slightly, Trip opened his eyes to see the rage in Archer's. "Captain…" His voice was hoarse, rough, the single word hard to discern.
"Save it, Commander." Archer stood up straight, staring down at the wretched engineer. "You're relieved from duty. I'm confining you to quarters for a minimum of twelve hours of rest." The captain's voice quieted, but the anger remained unyielding. "I don't know what's happened to you, Trip, but you're no good to anyone like this."
Wrongs darker than the dead of night.
It was an old Earth phrase, and it plagued Trip's thoughts as moved down a ravaged corridor, a corner of his eye still taking note of broken systems and repair needs that he would not be able to attend to. Left unchecked, unattended, the Enterprise would never regain itself; their mission would end, here, in the blackest retreats of some unnamed depths of the Expanse, unable to save Earth from utter destruction.
While he was confined to quarters.
But—it was a critical thought—whose wrongs was he lamenting? Am I the architect of my own plight? For it had been his decision, his actions, that had endangered Malcolm; and what had been the source of his recklessness? Had it been, truly, concern for a ticking disaster? Or had it been my own anger with Malcolm, that led me to take such chances with his life?
He paused, turning his head, as if looking at a blown conduit; and felt the firm pressure of a hand pushing into his back. "No delays, Commander," Rostami stated. "Captain's orders."
"Of course, Ensign," Trip replied, barely audible. "I just…it doesn't matter, I guess." It would be someone else's problem; and perhaps the captain was right. Perhaps, in his state of mind, others were better qualified to handle such matters on board the Enterprise.
And if not, they would all die.
Trip began moving again, no longer mentally cataloguing the damage around him; his task was over, his battle finished, the verdict incomplete. A deep, cautious sense of fatigue was growing within him, threatening him with the sleep of depression.
But he had within him one last flare of anger, and it only needed the appropriate trigger to set it off.
"Commander Tucker!" A new voice called out, speaking eagerly, hailing Trip from down the short intersection; looking in the general direction, he saw Jannar appear, the arboreal moving quickly to cover the distance. "I heard about Lieuetenant Reed," Jannar stated. "I hope he'll be okay."
Are you damned serious? Trip's hands clenched into fists as he saw red, rage flashing forward at the councilor. "What's one more dead human to you?" he snarled furiously, the passion of a hundred sleepless nights peaking within him.
"Commander!" Rostami interjected from behind, speaking in warning, but Trip was beyond listening, bitterness and animosity fueling his vehemence.
"You had no problem killing seven million of us!" Trip exclaimed. Stepping forward, he crossed the remaining gap, sending the arboreal staggering backward in alarm. "But you can't stomach one more?"
"That's enough, Commander!" Rostami bellowed, moving rapidly to intervene.
Silent in the face of the acrimony, Jannar's face was split with an expression of fear. "Talk to me, Xindi!" Trip shouted. "Tell me how you can kill us from a distance, but not up close!" Unchecked, his own passion overwhelming him, Trip reached forward and gave the arboreal a firm shove, sending the councilor back with shock.
Almost simultaneously, Rostami grabbed Tucker's shoulder, spinning the engineer around, and landed a fierce fist on Trip's jaw, knocking Tucker to the ground.
Jonathan Archer stifled a yawn, for sleep had come far too briefly to relieve the unrelenting stress weighing upon his body and the pounding pressure throbbing in his mind.
He, too, was a wreck, barely able to function, but duty called; his first officer and science officer was confined to sickbay, barely able to stand on her own feet, days—or weeks—or longer—away from returning to her post. His second officer and chief engineer was restricted to quarters for an extended rest. Next in line, his tactical chief was laying in sickbay as well, with at least a full day of recovery needed under the doctor's tender and watchful care.
How long had it been? Time passed, almost immaterial, not quite registering in his deprived mind as he shifted his thoughts, a new task at hand. Standing in the cartography lab, the overhead lights dimmed, a holographic display filled the room. "We've found fifty-nine Spheres," he commented, each one indicated by a pinpoint in the air.
"Fifty-nine?" Degra responded with surprise, glancing back at the captain. "We've found seventy-eight." His face was shadowed by the glow, his eyes hooded and dark. "At last count, at least. We keep finding new ones."
Archer closed his eyes momentarily as he held back a groan. "Seventy-eight?" The alien devices kept appearing anew, as if materializing even as the Enterprise continued its search.
Degra smiled with apology. "We've had more time to explore than you," he offered in response. "The first distortions appeared over a generation ago, Captain, and we've been searching since then." With a gracious shrug of his shoulders, he continued. "You've accumulated a phenomenal amount of data in the short time you've been here."
"We could do more if we shared our data." It was a suggestion; it was a chance, a hope, that the Xindi scientist might reciprocate. "Maybe, together, we can come up with a complete map of the Spheres and the distortions."
"I can't make that decision on my own, Captain,' Degra replied softly. "Jannar and Berezi would have to agree, and frankly, they're not sure that they can trust you yet."
"I understand." Archer spoke carefully, picking his words as he went. "But I am approaching you with full honesty and disclosure, Degra. We're not holding anything back here."
"But you have in the past," Degra replied curtly. "You speak of honesty, Captain, but your own past actions have shown an impressive facility for deception."
"Yes." Searching for a response, Archer could find none beyond the simple admission, recalling the artifice his crew had created months earlier; tricking Degra into believing that the human captain and Xindi scientist had escaped a reptilian prison together. "It wasn't the best way to earn your trust."
"Probably not," Degra snorted, his disdain clear. "I have to wonder what would have happened if you had been straightforward with me from the start, Captain. Perhaps we could have saved each other a lot of time, and a lot of effort."
"And some death," Archer added quietly. "For both of us."
Degra twisted his head in the peculiar Xindi form of a nod. "Yes," he acknowledged. "I realize what your people think of me, Captain, as the arch-murderer of humanity. I can't say I blame for it," he added, speaking bitterly at his own actions. "I didn't relish causing those deaths, and I don't look forward to causing any more. Frankly, you have been less than honest with me; but I am here, nonetheless, and willing to listen."
"I appreciate that," Archer replied, uncertain of what to say.
"You should," Degra retorted. "I'm taking quite the chance in trusting you, Captain. But I'm not a murderer…not by choice, anyway." The self-anger was evident in his tone, expressing the hatred for his own actions. "If there is any chance to resolve this conflict without more death, I am willing to take that chance." He paused for a moment, looking away, before continuing. "But I'm not convinced that your people are willing to do the same."
I know. How to express it? In the shadows, Archer closed his eyes to think over his words. "Yes," he acknowledged again, unable to avoid the obvious, unwilling to avoid the evident. "I heard what Mr. Tucker said to you earlier, and I heard about his run-in with Councilor Jannar." He let out a deep breath, forging onward. "I can't adequately apologize for it, and I won't try. All I can say is that he doesn't speak for me."
"No," Degra shot back. "If I thought he did, I wouldn't be here."
"We're both taking chances here, Degra," Archer replied. "Humanity's fate is at stake, just as much as the Xindi. But I firmly believe the best, and only, hope for both our peoples is the path of friendship and peace." Clasping his hands together, he mirrored his words. "It's not just because we have a common enemy. I believe there is a future of unity for humans and Xindi alike, where we live as one and prosper together. And it starts here, with you and me. Yes," he added, smiling broadly, "I'm asking you to take a chance. But isn't the future worth it?"
"You speak eloquently," Degra allowed. "But I'm afraid that I'm not the one you need to convince, Captain."
"Then help me convince the others," Archer replied firmly, putting forth the instrumental request; the crux of his argument, it came down to this, the central point. "If I'm going to sway Jannar and Berezi, I'll need your help."
"I'm only one man," Degra replied, the doubt evident. "I'm not sure that I can be the voice you need, Captain."
Now, Archer smiled broadly, feeling the hard ground beneath his feet. "My people have a saying," he answered. "One man cannot summon the future: but one man can change the present."1
"And my people have a saying," Degra replied thoughtfully, eyeing the human with care. "It only takes one person to set fire to the rain. Visionaries are a thousandfold, Captain; but you may just be that one person with the grit and determination to make your vision a reality."
Wish I was too dead to cry/My self-affliction fades…
His head bowed, his ire spent, his anger fused with the weariness of a thousand exhausting hours of fury, Trip Tucker gave no more fight as he stepped across the broken threshold of the doorway, one foot falling before the other, entering the makeshift crew quarters that would be his cell. In the end, as he stood before captain's judgement, stripped down and naked in the eyes of his crewmates, the engineer had asked for only one thing, one allowance, one condition: that he be allowed to return to his own room, his own bed, his own comfort and surroundings.
Stones to throw at my creator/Masochists to which I cater…
The reproach stung in ways that he could not express, could not imagine; for his closest friends had turned on him, betrayed him, conspired against him, but in the end, it was because he had failed them. The captain had trusted him with command; had trusted him the security of the Enterprise and the safety of the crew, and in his rush, he had nearly killed Malcolm. Malcolm, another of his friends; Malcolm, another friend with whom he was not speaking, another friend whose trust he had forsaken.
You don't need to bother/I don't need to be…
The room, untouched by repair crews, was a maze of debris; the computer consoles were blown out, the plasticine edges jagged and unrefined, the floor crunchy beneath his feet. A beam dangled from the ceiling, and he moved underneath it carefully; adjusting his eyes to the dim lighting, with only the distant light of stars illuminating the small space, he began to pick familiar shapes out of the shadows that seemed to befall him from every direction, growing and looming over him like so many nightmarish imprecations.
I'll keep slipping farther…
He had requested his own quarters for a reason, and it had nothing to do with the comfort and familiarity.
Stumbling across the room, his feet shuffling in despondency, he neared a certain bulkhead; like so many others, it contained a panel, hiding a cubby of circuitry within. In the darkness, he probed with his fingers, and carefully removed the panel; and reaching in, careful to avoid the sparking wires, he gratefully found the bottle he had stored away was still intact.
But once I hold on/I won't let go 'til it bleeds…
How many years had it been? Some events in life are so monumental that they paradoxically fade into the past, a distant memory in the mists of yonder year. And, oh, how he had thrived! He had built a career, he had made friends, he had made a new family in Starfleet and on board the Enterprise, finding a stability and grace in life that he had once sought. The future…had been bright and promising, an upward march for the young man, the possibilities limitlessness and the hopes unbounded.
Wish I was too dead to care/If indeed I cared at all…
The human mind can only take so much.
Everything he knew, everything he valued, everything he believed in, had been stripped away from him over the previous ten months, leaving him a hollow man amid a sea of growing storms, the tumult battering him until he was drowning. Unwilling to cry for help, he was given a lifeline; but she, too, had turned on him, admitting that she had merely been using him for her own experimental desires.
She, too, left him in the seas, the waves pounding him and driving him under, no one understanding the danger as he did.
Never had a voice to protest/So you fed me shit to digest…
Sinking to his knees, he rolled his body over, leaning against the fractured bulkhead for support; and lifting the bottle up, he held it before his eyes, analyzing it carefully, the liquid within plying him with intense fascination. It would be so easy…one sip, and he could slip away, escape it all, be free from the chaos and catastrophe, feeling the deadening of his own mind; and he craved it, longed for it, wanting to abscond from the reality of his life more than anything he had ever wanted.
For life offered him nothing more; it was simply misery compounded upon misery, hatred upon hatred, agony upon anguish. And for that, he had no more reserves of energy left.
I wish I had a reason/My flaws are open season…
The bottle offered him solace, it offered him relief, it offered him calm, it offered him escape from the realities of his existence; and as he lifted it up, the brim fitting neatly between his lips, he paused for but a moment as he made the decision to throw away the last decade of his life. All that he had accomplished, all that he had done, all that he had known…it seemed so futile, so insignificant, just a contrived artifice worn upon him like a straitjacket.
For this, I gave up trying/One good turn deserves my dying…
In his mind, he knew that he had always sought something else; that he had never been truly content, had always been restless, searching for answers that were not forthcoming. And now, he realized, he had been chasing ghosts all along, the unsought reward of a life devoid of answers, empty of contentment, driven to succeed by the fear of failure.
You don't need to bother/I don't need to be…
And it tasted so good, that first sip, as it touched his tongue, breathing the forgetfulness of a thousand tear-stained regrets. Running down his throat, it permeated his existence, wrapping him in warm embrace; and he let his head sag backwards, his eyes closing, as the influence settled upon him. It was like an old friend, an old understanding, an old grace, calming his senses and soothing his nerves, easing his pains and ending his miseries with enrapture.
I'll keep slipping farther…
Memories surfaced in his mind, the recollections of youth and age, stories untold and tales unheard by others; he basked in success and ranted in failure, the two intertwined, the latter slowly growing as the darkness set in. The room, already small, was closing around him; the starlight fading away, his world reduced, the thoughts grew larger before him, the past becoming his reality.
Memories fade, blurring into echoes, as the drink sets in, taking grasp deep within the mind; and with each desperate swallow, he let it overtake him, numbing his soul with the soft onset of nothingness. His body drifting away, no longer a substance of matter, he felt no longer, the blessed, final cradle of stillness amid the void of life.
But once I hold on/I won't let go 'til it bleeds…
A small part of him, a reservoir somewhere within, an iota of resistance, tried to push back, to tell him that this was not okay; but it, too, died with a feeble gasp, suffocating under the weight of his despair, unable to lift the heft of a man who simply no longer cared enough to fight for his own life.
Wish I'd died instead of lived/A zombie hides my face…
Death, death, and more death was falling around him; it was the inevitable consequence of existence, a terminable disease of reality, and he could deal with it no more. There was only one end to his suffering, one promise of peace, and he was at last ready for it; reaching out, he asked for it to come, to ease his transition, to take him upon the final journey.
Shell forgotten with its memories/Diaries left with cryptic entries…
For what did he have left to offer? Embittered, distrusting, lashing out at his friends, endangering his comrades, he was a liability to their mission. The bravado was gone—the man who proclaimed that he, alone, could keep the starship together—was shattered, the pieces immaterial, beyond repair. Someone else could take his task—someone else who wouldn't falter, who wouldn't misjudge, who wouldn't get his own crew killed.
And you don't need to bother/I don't need to be (I don't need to be)…
The fire within burned slowly, but it burned inevitably, growing to consume his surroundings, his being, his existence upon the soothing flames, a soft touch of embers so unlike the pyre of the plasma eruption; it warmed up, eased his soul upon the soft breeze, wafting him towards a distant light that seemed just beyond his reaching tendrils of remaining consciousness.
I'll keep slipping farther…
Another sip, another swallow, and the bottle slipped from his hands, falling on the debris-strewn carpet of his cell, but it spilled no liquid; the dram within was drained, emptied, consumed. With nothing left to drink, with nothing left to give, with nothing left to contemplate, he let his body slowly sag to his right side, slinking ever downward until he lay, horizontal, on the floor, curled up as the poison began its work within him. His eyes closed, his ears baffled, the darkness enveloping and complete, he was no longer running; at true peace for the first time, accepting of his fate, he embraced the impending finality with the crying relief of a long-tortured soul.
But once I hold on/I'll never live down my deceit.2
Like it or not, Archer was back on the clock.
"Captain?" Travis tilted his head slightly, trying to catch Archer's attention. The two were walking corridors, checking up on repairs, and doing their personal best to not injure themselves on dangling debris; a pathway of sorts was cleared throughout the Enterprise, but the hallways were still a jungle of metal beams, shattered bulkheads, and blown conduits.
"Hm?" As if lost in thought—not wanting to admit that he was nearly asleep—Archer caught the navigator's gaze. "Sorry, Ensign," he replied, smiling slightly, the effort taking far too much energy. "You were saying?"
"I spent the last hour in the weapons bay," Travis repeated. He hesitated; the news would not be good. "The torpedo tubes are beyond salvage, Captain. We still have a few torpedoes…but the best we can do is throw them out an airlock."
"I see." It was bad news; Archer had grown accustomed to bad news. "Travis…" He spoke slowly, tiredly, not wanting to say the words, but they came to him, the remaining question the foremost on his mind. "Perhaps it's easier if you tell me what is repairable."
"Yes, sir." Unlike the others—somehow, from some deep reserve, Travis was finding a source of energy and strength; and now, he squared his shoulders, a task to perform. "We can still travel at impulse."
"No warp?" Archer knew the answer; he had to ask.
"Captain…" Travis moved his hands about. "We're venting the raw plasma out through the emergency vents and into space. We have no supplies to repair the conduits—and we'd have to purge the whole plasma system, for at least a week, in order to rebuild them."
"I see." Archer closed his eyes, willing the pounding between his temples to slow, if only for a moment; wondering how the news could get worse, he instantly cursed himself, knowing better than to tempt fate.
"Phlox to Captain Archer!" The physician's voice carried across the intercom with uncommon force, snapping Archer's remaining instincts awake; the tone was urgent, alarming, announcing a critical situation.
"Archer here! Report!" Slapping the nearest comm panel, he replied with alacrity, keeping his words concise and short.
"Medical emergency! Please report to Commander Tucker's quarters!" Beeping off before Archer could respond, the channel closed just as quickly, but the captain was already moving at a trot down the corridor, engaging as fast as he dared. It won't do much good to twist ankle, he emphasized to himself, or brain myself on a duranium beam, consciously forcing himself to slow down and take caution amid the tangle, but he was beyond alarmed; the last time he had seen Trip, Archer had gone off on a brutal rant, accusing the engineer of exposing Malcolm to near-fatal harm, and then relieving Tucker of duty—the only thing that was holding the commander together.
The quarters were only a deck away, and Archer covered the distance in under a minute; far from the quickest responder, a medical team was already gathered outside the doorway, a stretcher cleared and nearby. At the captain's shouted command, they made way for him to enter.
As he stepped inside, the world around him screeched to a halt, frozen in slow movement, as the chill rain down his body.
Trip's quarters were an unrevised mess of battle damage; dirt and grim still hung in the air, with a solitary emergency light tied to an exposed beam in the ceiling. Beneath the anemic glow, itself pale and yellow, a medic stood to one side, barking orders into a communicator, preparing sickbay for the medical emergency.
But it was the scene on the floor that hit Archer with the blow of a thousand fears.
Trip lay, unconscious, on his back, clearly not able to survive even to the medical ward; Phlox kneeling, straddled, across the human's chest, two palms planted firmly on Tucker's sternum, the doctor counting in rhythm as he applied precise pressure to the heart. Trip's head was obscured; only visible was the back of another medic, arched over Tucker's face, pumping two-second bursts of air from a ventilator into the commander's starving lungs.
Archer stayed, rooted, in the doorway, unable to move, unable to think beyond a silent prayer to an unseen power, his crisis management skills finally giving way. Looking around frantically, hopeful for any sign, his eyes roamed about, searching the room; and then he noticed, centimeters from Trip's right hand, the empty fifth of Skagaran whiskey.
And Archer could only watch, powerless, as a booted foot kicked the bottle away.
1 Star Trek: TOS, "Mirror, Mirror"
2 Stone Sour, "Bother"