Behind Blue Eyes
By Thalia Drogna
But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
– Behind Blue Eyes, The Who
Trip left Darwin a couple of hours later after they had thoroughly gone over the mission specifications, taking his little black box of tricks with him. Another thing that he thought he wouldn't ever need again, but for some reason he'd kept the jamming device, and as the Colonel always said, you can leave Special Projects but it won't ever leave you. One of the first lessons that he'd learnt was don't talk about anything unless you can be sure that no one is listening in. So in order to make life easier and being an engineer, he'd built himself a jamming device. He was pretty sure that it blocked out any attempts at listening in and had put it through some extensive testing. When he'd been told that Colonel Darwin was going to be coming to Enterprise he'd pulled it out and made sure it was still up to date.
Everyone thought Malcolm was paranoid, but if they'd known some of the thoughts that Trip had they would have realised that Malcolm didn't even come close to Trip's level. Many people had commented on how easily Trip made friends with some of the aliens that he'd met, no one had ever wondered why he went out of his way to get to know them. They just assumed that he was the friendly type. In fact he was more working to the mantra "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" because in his experience aliens usually turned out to be enemies. Every bit of information he gathered he stored away for future use.
The only problem was that he was naturally outgoing, he did like to make friends, and occasionally that became a liability. The cogenitor had been a classic example. It had started out as an attempt to learn more about the Vissians, as usual the Captain had welcomed them with wide-eyed enthusiasm. Trip played his part well, equally wide-eyed, but studied his potential enemy at the same time. Everything had been going well, he'd befriended the Vissian Engineer and his wife, but when he'd met the cogenitor he'd let his sentimentality take over and all he could do was watch as his good intentions turned to ashes. Another death on his hands.
He really wanted to go and see T'Pol and talk the whole thing through while having a neuropressure session. He never would have believed it but she was by far the easiest person to talk to on Enterprise and the two of them now shared a strong friendship, perhaps more than that. His sleep had been seriously disrupted lately, ever since they'd got word of Colonel Darwin coming to Enterprise. However, T'Pol was a Vulcan and of all the people on board she was the one person he could never, ever tell about Special Projects. He could just imagine what her reaction to Special Projects would be and he wondered if she'd ever speak to him again. Why did this all have to happen now when the two of them had been getting along so well.
There was no doubt in his mind that he was as the Colonel had said "going soft" and for that he at least partly blamed Archer and the crew of Enterprise. These people were his friends. Genuinely his friends. Archer had saved his life more than once now. Lieutenant Reed, who hadn't been taken in by his charm routine to begin with at all, had stopped him from sacrificing his life when it looked as if they were going to die in Shuttlepod One. Malcolm had called him his friend and coming from the quiet, reserved Lieutenant that had meant a lot to him. So gradually they'd managed to puncture the armour that he'd built up around himself and he'd almost forgotten about the dark world of the Special Projects Unit.
There were no friends in the Special Projects Unit. You relied on the other members of the Unit but he would never have called them friends. After he'd accepted Colonel Darwin's offer of a special project, he'd been shipped out that afternoon to Mars Colony where he hooked up with the rest of the unit. His old Engineering division had been told he'd been seconded to Mars Colony Research Facility and that was what was going to appear on his Star Fleet record. He told the same thing to his family and friends and let them know that he might be out of contact for a while.
Special Projects wasn't a large unit, there had been ten of them in all, including their newest member. He was the only non-MACO member and they didn't let him forget that he was the outsider. These weren't just any MACOs either, these were the best of the best. Each had been handpicked for their speciality. There was Carter, the weapons expert, Didier, xenolinguist, Arroya, the infiltration expert, Fenner, the pilot, Kanatova, their medic, Rush, the explosives expert, and Dempsey, the intelligence specialist. They were all crack marksmen and top of their class when it came to combat. Without exception they were some of the hardest bastards that Trip had ever come across, and that included the three female members of the team.
He remembered that first mission like it was yesterday. They hadn't been told where they were going when they left Mars colony but they knew it was going to take three months to get there. That was how long they had to make sure that Trip was ready to face what they were going out to do. Once they were on their way, Darwin had given a briefing about what they could expect and it had finally sunk in just what Trip had got himself into.
Trip didn't enjoy those three months, if he wasn't training with the MACOs then he was reading up on everything that Star Fleet knew about alien engineering. Special Projects didn't carry any dead weight, everyone had to be able to fight in any given situation. He was sure that the other members of the unit took special pleasure in making his training sessions as hard as possible, but he wasn't known as Tough-as-Nails-Tucker for nothing.
One particular training session had been in hand to hand combat and he was being taught by Major Darwin and Captain Ellen Hathaway, the Captain who had been in the bar with the Major that night in the 602 Club and was the unit's second in command. Captain Hathaway was a black belt in karate and an expert in six other forms of martial art. She was the hand to hand combat expert on the team and could even beat Major Darwin in a fair fight apparently.
The MACOs had very particular forms of style which they taught and it drew from several different forms of fighting. Trip was doing his best, but he wasn't naturally a fighter so it was taking him a bit of time to pick up the basics. He remembered Darwin and Hathaway demonstrating the moves and then he tried them out.
"You cannot hesitate," said Darwin. "If you do then you've lost the advantage. I can assure you that your opponent will not hesitate to kill you given the opportunity, so you must do the same."
Hathaway was graceful in her technique and certainly didn't hesitate. Trip was clumsy and really found it hard to get used to the idea that he might be required to kill.
"This is Special Projects you're in now, Lieutenant," said Darwin, "not bloody Star Fleet. We're not leaving this until you get it right."
"I thought you said I had a nice right hook," retorted Trip.
"You do, Lieutenant, you do, but nice won't cut it. I demand perfection from my men and that includes you."
Trip spent the next three months being bruised and sore from all the training but by the end of two months he was competent. By the end of the third month he was giving Hathaway a run for her money, even if she still ended up winning their bouts. And he was damned glad of all the training when they reached their destination.
The Nausicaans had been preying on the shipping lanes for some time. It was an annoyance for the Earth cargo ships that made their way slowly through the star systems to their destination. The Nausicaan raiders would appear out of nowhere, attack the ship, steal the cargo and then disappear again. Recently however intelligence had got word that the Nausicaans were using a new ship, it was faster, had more fire power than their other ships and had been identified as a Andorian light cruiser. It was also causing havoc and was far more dangerous than the Nausicaan's previous tactics.
Special Projects had been sent out to deal with the problem in their own particular way. Rather than simply destroying the Andorian ship, they were going to steal it, without the Vulcans discovering what they were doing. If the Vulcans ever found out about Special Projects then they could say goodbye to that alliance. The MACOs couldn't get the ship out on their own though, they needed someone who knew what he was doing with a warp engine, and only a trained engineer would be able to do that. Hence they needed Trip.
As Darwin explained it, the plan was simple. The Nausicaans had a base of operations from which they launched their ships to raid the cargo vessels. It was built into a medium sized asteroid. The MACOs were going to steal the captured Andorian ship and then destroy the Nausicaan outpost, that way the Nausicaans wouldn't even know to come looking for the lost ship and they'd have sorted out the problem of the raids on the cargo vessels too.
Everything went according to plan for the first part. They entered the base successfully without raising any alarms and then split into two teams, one under Major Darwin's command, to plant explosives on the outpost's generator the other under Captain Hathaway's command to get the ship ready to leave. Trip of course went with the second team who made their way silently to the docking bay. Even though they carried weapons they wanted to avoid using them if possible because of the noise it would make. If the station was alerted to their presence there was no way ten MACOs could steal the ship from the hundred or so Nausicaans that were on the outpost.
The ship they were stealing wasn't big, it was only meant to take a crew of twelve and could easily be run by half that number. However it had big guns for its size and an engine which was supposedly capable of warp four. It was also much better guarded than their information said it would be. At least ten Nausicaans stood around the ship with weapons held firmly in their claw-like hands. Hathaway indicated to the team to take them down by circling around behind them. So far Trip had stayed out of the fighting, letting the experts take the lead, but now they were outnumbered he was needed to pull his weight and put all of his training into practice.
Trip manoeuvred towards his target and hit the Nausicaan in the throat, killing the alien instantly before he'd even realised that Trip was there. It was the first life that he'd ever taken, but he didn't have time to dwell on that. He took his second target down in the same efficient manner and made his way to the entry hatch. He pulled out an electronic lock picking device that he'd built for the occasion, he'd put it together after studying the Nausicaan locks Star Fleet had come across so far. It cycled through all the combinations until it found the correct one and the hatch snapped open. He signalled to his team mates that he was in.
"Tucker and Didier, find the engine room and get this thing working. When Didier's given you enough to be going on, we need him on the bridge," said Hathaway. All Trip needed was for Didier to identify the labels on the controls and then the xenolinguist would be doing the same thing on the bridge for Hathaway so that Fenner could pilot the ship.
"Yes, Ma'am," said Trip.
"Get going," said Hathaway. Didier led the way at a run to the engine room. Just as they arrived the ship shook.
"What the hell was that?" asked Trip.
"Good question," said Didier. "Didier to Hathaway," he said into his communicator.
"Hathaway here. We felt it too. Be ready to get us out of here quickly, I'm guessing something went wrong," said the Captain.
"Corporal, I hope your Andorian is up to scratch," said Trip.
"So do I," muttered Didier. "Let's get to work."
It didn't take them long to identify the controls that Trip needed, then Didier left him to figure out how to work the engine. Trip had never seen an Andorian engine before in his life and his reading hadn't exactly prepared him for it. All he had to help him was some schematics and an Andorian crib sheet from Didier for basic engineering terms. Luckily even alien engines had to have the same basic controls as the ones he was used to, that combined with his experience of solving engineering problems and his instincts were enough to get it up and running.
"Tucker to Hathaway, we're good to go," said Trip into his communicator.
"Glad to hear it, the Major's incoming and he has Nausicaans on his tail. They got into a fire fight after they planted the explosives," said Hathaway.
"I'll be ready," said Trip. The next thing he knew they were taking off and he had his hands full with the engine and other systems. They felt the thud of an explosion as the outpost behind them was destroyed. It wasn't until much later that he found out what had happened to the other team. They'd been planting the explosives as planned when a guard detail had stumbled upon them, Arroya had been stabbed and Darwin had carried her all the way back to the ship while fighting off the Nausicaans. He had set off some of the explosives early to cover their retreat, that in itself had been extremely dangerous but it had done the trick. Kanatova said that Arroya was going to be fine but it had been touch and go as to whether she was going to make it at one point.
When they were clear of the outpost Darwin came to find Trip in the Engine room.
"Everything under control, Lieutenant?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," replied Trip. "I need to do some more work to understand some of the finer points but I'll get us home."
"Captain Hathaway tells me that you held your own out there," said Darwin.
"I did what I had to," said Trip. "I guess it was worth it for this. She sure is a beauty," said Trip gazing at the warp engine which thrummed in front of him.
"Yes, she is," replied Major Darwin.
"I don't suppose they'd let me keep her," joked Trip.
"Well, maybe we can swing something," replied Darwin and Trip hadn't really believed that he'd meant it.
It was while they were taking the ship home that Trip suddenly found himself accepted as part of the team and invited to poker games. The Special Projects Unit didn't accept new members easily but somehow Trip had managed to integrate himself successfully and Darwin was damned if he knew how. Perhaps it was Trip's infectious enthusiasm for the new engine and his professionalism on the outpost that had proved his worth to the MACOs, but Darwin just suspected it was because Trip was innately likeable.
Trip had assumed that the ship would be going back to Star Fleet Research and Development, but Darwin had other ideas. They couldn't let the Vulcans know that they had the ship so they couldn't take it apart at R and D because then the Vulcans would wonder where the ship had suddenly come from. They could work on it in secret, but they still wouldn't be able to use what they learnt. Darwin decided that Special Projects could make the best possible use of the ship, so it became their transport and of course they needed someone to keep it running. Darwin had invited Trip to stay and he had agreed. According to Darwin he'd only just broken Trip in and he didn't want to have to go to all the trouble of doing it again with someone else. So Trip became a permanent member of the Special Projects Unit and there wasn't a day that went by that he didn't wish that he'd walked away after that first mission.
Archer had asked Reed to find out everything that he could about the Special Projects Unit. Reed had protested at being asked to break into classified files and also at being asked to spy on a fellow officer. However Archer's argument that it was for the safety of Enterprise had appealed to the security officer in Reed and so he had agreed.
It had taken him the best part of a day to crack the codes he needed to get into the classified files and then to find anything at all on the Special Projects Unit. What he did find shocked him to his core. He took his findings to Archer.
"Special Projects was a MACO black ops unit," said Reed, handing Archer the padd with all the information which he had collected on it. "They took the jobs that no one else would do. Mostly search and destroy. Assassination of alien dignitaries who were unfriendly to Earth. Taking out alien bases of operations, that sort of thing. They were working in complete isolation, orders being passed down from high up in the government. Each member of the unit was hand picked by Colonel Darwin for their expertise in their area of speciality. If they were ever discovered then the government would disavow all knowledge of their actions."
"And Trip was part of this?" asked Archer with disbelief as he scrolled down the padd.
"Yes, and I'd say he's been lying to us for years about his combat abilities and probably a fair few other things. I can't find out details of individual missions, just broad indications, and I'm still not sure why they needed him, but he's listed as part of the unit until it was disbanded."
"Lieutenant, we're talking about someone I've known for over ten years," said Archer.
"I don't think that we can say that we know Commander Tucker anymore," said Reed.
"He's one of the most upstanding, open people I've ever met," said Archer.
"I think we have evidence to the contrary," said Reed.
"I'm sorry, Malcolm, I'm just finding it hard to reconcile the Trip Tucker we know with the man that worked for a black ops unit," said Archer. "A unit which killed anyone that got in its way." He flicked on the com system. "Archer to Commander Tucker."
"Tucker here," came the reply.
"I want to see you and Colonel Darwin in my ready room in five minutes," said Archer, his voice devoid of emotion.
"Aye, sir," came the reply. "I'm on my way."
The two men arrived together.
"Captain, Malcolm," said Trip, "what can I do for you?"
"You can tell me why, Trip," said Archer, his anger barely hidden.
"Why what sir?" asked Trip, genuinely confused.
"Why you joined Special Projects, why you kept this information from me and why the hell I have an ex-special forces Colonel on my ship!" shouted Archer.
"Captain, that information is classified," said Darwin.
"If I hear that word again then I will throw both of you in the brig," said Archer. "We know that Special Projects was a black ops unit, doing jobs that couldn't be given to anyone else. We know the sort of things that entailed. Now answer the damned questions."
"I recruited Commander Tucker because he was the best in his field as well as being young enough to train. I was impressed by his determination and intelligence, and his record spoke for itself. We needed an Engineer because we were stealing a ship," said Darwin.
"Stealing a ship?" asked Reed.
"Yes, it was Andorian," said Trip. "She had a warp four engine."
"You stole a ship from the Andorians?" asked Archer.
"Well actually we stole it from some Nausicaan raiders," said Trip. "Anyway the how and where aren't important."
"Why didn't you tell me about Special Projects?" Archer accused.
"Because I knew what your reaction would be. I'm not proud of what we did, of what I did, but it happened and I have to live with that every single day. But with the Vulcans holding us back at every turn it was the only way we could operate. If anyone had ever discovered what we were doing then there would have been hell to pay," said Trip.
"Trip, how many Nausicaans died for that ship you stole?" asked Archer, quietly.
"I don't know the exact number," replied Trip.
"One hundred and twenty three," said Darwin.
"We destroyed the outpost," said Trip. He could still see the faces of the two Nausicaans he'd killed in his dreams sometimes.
"And how many other missions like that were there?" asked Archer.
"Maybe a dozen," said Trip.
Archer looked at the man he had considered to be his best friend up until a few hours ago. "I don't think I even really know who you are, do I?" asked Archer.
Guilt weighed heavily on Trip's shoulders. He looked at Malcolm still sitting in the corner and then back at Archer. "I'm sorry, sir, there just wasn't any other way."
"If Commander Tucker had told you about his work for Special Projects then he would have been breaking confidentiality," said Darwin.
"All you had to do was tell me that you did some classified work. Instead you lied," said Archer. "Why are you here Colonel?"
"I told you, Trip is the only other person who has experience of what we believe is on Deneb IV," said Colonel Darwin.
"It was our last mission, before the unit was disbanded," said Trip.
"Let's just say that it didn't exactly go according to plan," said Darwin. "And the less you know about this the better. If the Vulcans start asking questions then I'd prefer if you weren't put in the position to be able to answer them."
"He's right, Captain," said Trip. "You really are better off not knowing."
"I can see that I'm not going to get anywhere with this now, but this isn't the end of this. I want answers and I will get them. You're all dismissed," said Archer and he pointedly turned back to his screen.