Chapter 10: Call an interstellar Uber

T'Pol looked at the group of humans gathered round the situation table. Had the discussion not been so serious, it would have been a fascinating study of human body language. The Captain stared dead ahead, almost defiantly refusing to drop his eyes, daring those collected to judge him for his decisions. The rest of the officers kept their eyes resolutely on the situation table with the occasional sideways glance at each other. Only looking up if they had to speak. The body language of regret, of disbelief. T'Pol herself was the only one not affected by the mood around the table, but that didn't mean she agreed with the Captain's course of action.

"We can't risk tipping them off. We have to take them by surprise. That'll reduce the losses on both sides. We'll disable their ship as quickly as we can, beam over, extract the warp coil and get out, hopefully without any casualties." The Captain finished and turned to Travis "Set a course."

T'Pol watched as everyone turned to take up their assigned tasks. As Commander Tucker went past her she grabbed his hand. "Trip." She said softly.

Trip looked down at their joined hands with wide eyes. She made a point of never touching him when they were in public spaces and only called him by his nickname when they were in her quarters. He had a sneaking suspicion that she even thought of him as 'Commander Tucker' when they were on duty and 'Trip' when they were in private. He could tell by the look in her eye that she didn't like the Captain's plan. Hell, it's not like she was alone there. No one who was at that meeting had ever thought they would one day be planning an act of piracy, including the Captain, but the fate of Earth was on the line.

"Do you agree with the Captain's planned course of action?" She asked him quietly.

He gave a sigh and folded his arms across his chest. "Do I think it's a great option, no. Do I want to become a pirate and strand some perfectly nice aliens alone in dangerous space, no. Do I want to miss that meeting with Degra and condemn Earth to certain destruction, also no."

"Surly there is another way that doesn't require us to compromise our principles. We don't need to get the whole ship to the rendezvous, just the Captain."

Trip raised his eyebrow and cant his head mockingly. "Oh, well, in that case we'll just call an interstellar Uber. I'm sure the price will be very reasonable, provided he doesn't want to take Porthos."

T'Pol gave him a blank look in return. "I don't know what that is?"

Trip looked at her with surprise. "It's a company that used to exist around 100 years ago, they haven't operated for years but the name has entered the lexicon, kind of like google."

T'Pol looked equally blank "I don't know what that is either."

Trip snorted with laughter and had to admit he enjoyed the release of tension from genuine amusement. "Google was a search engine from the early twenty-first century, it was so popular that the term 'google' literally came to mean searching for something on the internet. Uber was a ride sharing company. Kind of like a taxi service but using private cars. Basically if you owned a car you could put yourself on the database and the Uber app would connect you with people who wanted a ride somewhere but didn't want to pay inflated taxi prices. Now, the word pretty much means getting the equivalent of a taxi ride from a private citizen" Trip told her. "Would you like to hear about Sellotape and Band-Aids now." he quipped.

T'Pol had a fleeting thought that she should find out about Sellotape and Band-Aids, for the sake of future reference, but she had just had an idea that took precedence. "Not right now, I must speak with the Captain immediately." She said as she turned and walked away from him.

Trip looked surprised at her sudden departure. "What? Why? He asked to her retreating back.

She turned and gave him an enigmatic look. "I believe that we should 'call an Uber' for the Captain." She said without a hint of irony. "Don't worry, Porthos will not be accompanying him." she finished just as dryly, but Trip was pretty sure that part was a joke.

Later

'I never would have believed that we would have obtained a warp coil this way' thought Captain Archer as he looked at the alien over the view screen.

"We were lucky Captain, they are known to carry spare warp coils on all their ships. The use of the sub-space vortex is quite damaging to warp engines so it is standard to have at least one spare on board. But they have agreed to trade us one" The alien told him.

"Thank you for negotiating that for us, Degra. Do you think the Reptillians will mind that the warp coil they gave you is going into an Earth ship. He asked.

"I don't intend to ever tell them Captain Archer and I suggest you don't either." Degra responded. "I will come across to your ship to discuss the next step with you."

As it turned out, the 'Uber' idea T'Pol had conceived of three days before was to negotiate with Illyrians to transport the Captain, with the required data for Degra on PADDs, to the liaison point. Archer had been reluctant at first not wanting to risk alerting the Illyrians to the possibility of a raid by showing how desperate they were. T'Pol, however, had all but insisted that the ethical choice was the logical choice and he had noted the relief of his senior staff that they had an reasonable alternative to piracy. As it turned out the Illyrians were quite agreeable to transporting the Captain in exchange for trellium and scientific data on the spheres and anomalies. It also seemed that the fact that the Enterprise had offered to help the Illyrians earlier, despite its own dire condition, had engendered quite a lot of good will with the aliens.

There had been some intense discussions with the senior staff about who should accompany him, with all the officers believing they were each essential to the mission. In the end Archer had put his foot down. Trip and Reed were needed on Enterprise to continue repairs and T'Pol was needed as acting Captain. So Archer had selected Hoshi, for her communication skills, one of Trip's engineering staff to assist the Illyrians with their repairs, and Major Hayes and another MACO for security. T'Pol had seemed strangely insistent that the second MACO be Corporal Cole, Archer hadn't been aware she knew the Corporal that well. For some reason, just as strangely, Trip had been amused by T'Pol's selection.

"We seem to have had some success." Captain Archer told T'Pol and Trip over a sub-space communication later that day. "Degra was impressed by the evidence and he's arranged for us to meet the Xindi Council in three days time."

"Where does the council meet, Captain" T'Pol asked.

"I've just transmitted you the coordinates, it's nearly twelve light years from our current location, but Degra has also given me the coordinates of a sub space corridor, only half a light year from here, that will get us there in time" He told them.

Trip reviewed the data and looked outraged. "Captain, are you saying you're planning to do this without us? We're still stuck here with no warp coil, it would take us weeks to get to that sub-space corridor."

"Believe it or not Trip, Degra is on his way to meet you with a Reptillian warp coil, which we purchased off them with some trellium." He replied, laughing at the irony of it.

"I find it hard to believe that the reptillians were willing to trade with humans, Captain." T'Pol said. "How did you negotiate the purchase?"

Archer laughed again. "I didn't, T'Pol. Degra negotiated on our behalf. He told them it was for Illyrians. It seems they've been more useful to us that just as an interstellar taxi service."

"Indeed, Captain." She responded. "I assume the Illyrians have no objections to transporting you to the corridor and waiting there for Enterprise? It will take us a minimum of 2 days at warp 3 to get to these coordinates from our current location."

"Honestly T'Pol, I suspect they couldn't be happier. So far from this exchange they've received several kilos of trellium, the free services of an engineer and a linguist for 3 days, an impressive amount of data about the spheres and the anomalies, and they've had two very positive first contacts. I think they'd take me all they way back to Earth if I asked."

" that won't be required." responded T'Pol.

"Hopefully not," Archer replied. "But it's nice to have some friends out here. See you two days."

T'Pol ended the call and reflected on the improved mood of the Captain. It was fortunate that her discussion with Trip, three days before, had resulted in the idea of requesting the Illyrians assistance in transporting the Captain to the rendezvous point. She had been noticing signs that the Captain was struggling to come to terms with the ethical ramifications of many of the difficult decisions he had made in the expanse. It was gratifying to know that she had prevented him from being burdened further.

She looked at Trip, who was sitting at the computer terminal in the Command Centre, reviewing the specs for the warp coil Degra was delivering to them. His eyes were red rimmed, his hair greasy and limp, there was dirt all over his face and uniform. Even the skin on his face seamed to sag a little as if he were too tired to hold the flesh to his bones. She moved behind him and started to manipulate some neuro-pressure points in his shoulders.

"That feels nice darlin, but I can't afford to sleep right now." He reached up and placed his hand over hers, squeezing affectionately.

She sensed his emotions through the contact, fatigue, worry about the Captain, grief for lost colleagues, simmering anger against the Xindi. "When did you last sleep?" She asked

"Uh, I don't know. I caught a couple hours, maybe last night, maybe this morning." He didn't take his eyes of the monitor as he spoke. He took his hand away from hers and started transferring data to some PADDs that were lying on the desk.

She resumed working the pressure points in his shoulders. "Manipulation of these nodes will invigorate you and reduce stress, but will not induce sleep." She told him. "But you do need sleep. Once the new warp coil is installed you should rest. I will order you if I have to." She was breaking her own rule touching him when they were on duty. But his need was great and she had a duty to her mate as well.

Trip chuckled humourlessly "I'm sure you will. But after I'm done with this I need to do some work on deck C in preparation for tomorrow. I also have to write that damn letter to Crewman Taylor's parents." He began to rise and she dropped her hands.

He turned and faced her putting a hand up to her face and gazed intently into her eyes. "We have a couple of days before we rendezvous with the Captain. Just let me get these urgent things out of the way then I will report to your quarters, front and centre, and you can neuro-pressure me into a coma." He pressed a gentle kiss on her mouth and she leaned into the kiss. It had been a very long three days since they were last intimate, she had missed him.