“No problem,” Rachel said. “I didn’t mean to jump. My name is Rachel McCullers.”
He grinned and held out his gloved hand, but pulled it back when it became apparent that he couldn’t shake her hand from the roof’s edge. “Hello, Rachel McCullers. I’m Michael Kenmore. But you can call me Mike. I tend the garden, trim the trees, and generally keep the orchard at bay for the lady of the house.”
“Ambassador T’Pol?”
Kenmore nodded. “You know her?”
“Only by reputation,” Rachel said with a small shake of her head. “But I’m hoping to get a little bit better acquainted. I’m a journalist from the Federation News Service. Since this year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Federation, I’ve spent the past several months tracking down and interviewing all the surviving senior officers of the pre-Federation Starfleet’s first warp-five-capable starship: Enterprise NX-01.”
“You mean you’ve interviewed almost all the surviving senior officers, don’t you?” Kenmore said.
Rachel nodded. “You’re right. I shouldn’t count my stories before they’re filed. Ambassador T’Pol is the last holdout on my list of people I want to interview before Federation Day Twenty-Five.”
“You’re a very determined woman, Miz McCullers. Unless I’ve miscounted, Federation Day Twenty-Five is tomorrow.”
“Your calendar is correct, Mister Kenmore. You should see the preparations they’ve been making at Times Square. I’m surprised that the Vulcans aren’t making a bigger deal about this.”
Kenmore laughed. “Determination, beauty, and a sense of humor, too. The Vulcans aren’t known for putting on fireworks displays or throwing ticker-tape parades.”
“I don’t know about the rest of it, Mister Kenmore, but I will plead guilty to being determined. I figure that since I’ve already discussed tomorrow’s milestone with Doctor Sato at her home on Tarsus IV, and even landed a face-to-face interview with President Archer on the same subject—right in the Nathan Samuels Room of the Palais de la Concorde, no less—then I ought to be able persuade a Vulcan diplomat to let down her hair and reminisce a little bit about the past and speculate about the future. I still have nearly a whole day left to complete the set.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kenmore rested his chin on his hands as he lay on his stomach near the roof’s edge. “You’ve left one name off of that list of yours, haven’t you?”
Rachel frowned. “I don’t think so. Unless you’re one of those conspiracy nuts who believe that Commander Tucker faked his death, went underground to work for a clandestine spy bureau that nobody can find any trace of today, and won the Earth-Romulan War single-handed while operating behind enemy lines.”
The man perched on the rooftop seemed impressed by her logic. “When you put it that way, I guess it all does sound pretty silly. Everybody knows that Tucker died in a scuffle with pirates, right before they signed the Federation Charter. Or maybe it was the Coalition Compact. I forget which one.” He paused and shook his head as though trying to dispel his internal confusion. “Anyway, I guess we ‘conspiracy nuts’ are a dying breed these days. And it’s just as well, I suppose.”
Rachel’s neck was beginning to stiffen from having to crane her neck back so far in order to carry on this conversation. “Mister Kenmore, do you think the ambassador might spare a few moments of her time?”
He shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out, Miz McCullers. Knock on the door and ask. Good luck.” With that, he dropped out of sight, presumably to return to his arboreal labors.
After rolling the kinks out of her neck and shoulders, Rachel continued following the pathway that led to the front door. She gently touched the chime switch on the door’s keypad.
The door opened a few moments later, and a young woman who couldn’t have been any older than nineteen or twenty appeared. She was clad in a white semiformfitting civilian suit, her dark, lustrous hair arranged in the bowl-shaped style that was so typical on Vulcan. And although she had a Vulcan’s characteristic upswept eyebrows and pointed ears, there was something exotic about her—something that seemed to be other than Vulcan—that Rachel couldn’t quite identify.
“May I help you?” the young woman said.
Resisting an ingrained impulse to extend her hand, Rachel kept her arms at her sides and said, “I certainly hope so. I’m Rachel McCullers of the Federation News Service.”
The young woman’s eyes narrowed in evident suspicion. “Then you must be here to speak with my mother.”
Rachel finally placed the young woman’s face, though she hadn’t seen any up-to-date images of it for the past several years, at least. The girl had the same delicate patrician features as her mother.
“You must be T’Mir, the ambassador’s oldest child,” Rachel said.
“I am Ambassador T’Pol’s elder offspring,” said the young woman, making a pedantic show of correcting Rachel’s admittedly sloppy usage.
Rachel made a mental note then and there to revise T’Mir’s estimated age downward from “nineteen or twenty” to “snotty teenager.”
Another voice, this one male, spoke up from inside the house. “Who’s at the door, T’Mir?”
“No one you know, Lorian,” T’Mir said as she met Rachel’s gaze squarely, still yielding no ground at the open door.
That’s got to be her younger brother, Rachel thought. He’d have to be about sixteen now. Then she saw Lorian walk into view.
The pair couldn’t have looked more unalike. Her hair was straight and dark brown, her skin was olive, and she was dressed in white. His blond hair was tousled, his complexion was fair, and he was dressed in black. Both had pointed ears, but Lorian’s eyebrows lacked the distinctive Vulcan angularity.
The boy reminded Rachel rather forcefully of the conspiracy theories that Kenmore had broached. For many years she had made a second career out of lancing such cultural carbuncles and had often debunked the tale in which Charles Tucker not only survived his fatal encounter with the pirates but had also had secretly moved to Vulcan afterward to marry T’Pol. Today, only that particular conspiracy’s few surviving true believers remained convinced that both of T’Pol’s children were the hybrid products of this apocryphal union, rather than the result of the ambassador’s eventual reconciliation with a former husband named Koss, years after Commander Tucker’s death.
“Did you make an appointment to see my mother, Miz McCullers?” T’Mir asked as her brother vanished, evidently as easily bored as any human teenager.
Rachel shook her head. “No, but not for any lack of trying. I was passing through, so I thought I’d drop in to ask the ambassador if she wouldn’t mind briefly sharing her reflections about the past and the future on the eve of such an auspicious occasion.”
“Auspicious,” T’Mir repeated. “A celebration of an arbitrary number of revolutions of a planet sixteen light-years away from here. A milestone that was calculated using a calendar that in no way meshes with that of Vulcan.”
Rachel flashed what she hoped was her most persuasive smile. “Exactly, yes. Federation Day Twenty-Five. My readers would like to know how the past quarter century has affected the ambassador and what she expects the next twenty-five Federation Standard Years to bring.”
T’Mir turned away for a moment, as though consulting someone else within the house who was out of Rachel’s line of sight. The ambassador, presumably.
When T’Mir once again faced Rachel, she said, “As it has always been, my mother has nothing to say.” The girl started to close the half-open door. As she pushed it, however, the bottom of the door evidently struck her foot and bounced off, momentarily widening the aperture.
For an instant, Rachel got a view of the dining room. Ambassador T’Pol sat at a table, her posture almost regal as she dined on a bowl of Vulcan berries of some sort. Opposite her was Lorian, who was in the process of sitting down before a meal that Rachel couldn’t identify.
Between mother and son sat the human ma
le who had spoken to Rachel from the roof, seated at the head of the table as though he were a typical Vulcan pater familias.
Then the door slammed shut.
Long-debunked conspiracy theories swirled once again through Rachel’s head. Wouldn’t it be great, she thought, if one of those crazy stories turned out to have been true all along?
“Happy Federation Day, Ambassador,” she said quietly to the closed door. “And to you, too, Commander Tucker.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With his newest outing in the Star Trek: Enterprise line, the author must once again recognize the contributions of the legions of others who enriched the contents of these pages: Andy Mangels, who collaborated with me on three earlier Enterprise volumes, as well as on numerous other tomes; my editors past and present (Marco Palmieri, Margaret Clark, Jaime Costas, Emilia Pisani, and Ed Schlesinger), and John Van Citters at CBS Consumer Products, for their unflagging support and assistance; the kind and indulgent folks at Northeast Portland, Oregon’s New Deal Café (née the Daily Market and Café), where much of this volume was written and revised; and the entire Star Trek internet community and all the tireless compilers of indispensable wikis, whose multitudinous and serried ranks defy enumeration here.
For providing unending supplies of continuity Easter eggs and/or inspiration, thanks are also due to my fellow Pocket Books Star Trek fiction writers, including, but not limited to: Diane Carey (whose novel Battlestations! contributed the Vulcan place names Jia’anKahr and Lyr T’aya); Keith R. A. DeCandido (for creating T’Maran of Vulcan, among many other things); Diane Duane and Peter Morwood (whose novel The Romulan Way introduced the Romulan forebear S’Task and the Romulan underworld location Areinnye); David R. George III; Jeffrey Lang; David Mack (whose Vanguard novel Harbinger gave me Ambassador L’Nel of Vulcan); S. D. Perry; Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (who deserve special recognition for their work on many fine fourth-season episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, from which arose the continuity that led to the events of this novel and its four predecessors); Susan Shwartz and Josepha Sherman (creators of the eminently quotable Romulan Commander Amarcan, whose Axioms were cited in Vulcan’s Heart before they popped up here); Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore; Christopher L. Bennett (whose U.S.S. Titan novel Orion’s Hounds introduced the term “cosmozoa” to the Star Trek literary universe); S. D. Perry (again) and Robert Simpson (whose story “Allegro Ouroboros in D Minor” in The Lives of Dax anthology debuted the syn lara, or “Trill piano”); Jeanne Kalogridis, aka J. M. Dillard (whose Star Trek V: The Final Frontier novelization set the standard for katra storage and debuted the ancient Vulcan warrior-goddess Akraana, whose name appears more than once in these pages); Anne Crispin, whose novel Sarek originated Vulcan’s lanka-gar bird; Jean Lorrah (whose novel The Vulcan Academy Murders introduced the ancient Vulcan warrior-goddess T’Vet, who is still known on twenty-second-century Romulus); Michael Jan Friedman (whose serialized novel Starfleet: Year One introduced United Earth President Lydia Littlejohn); John Takis (for introducing Skon’s future wife T’Rama in his short story “A Girl for Every Star” [Strange New Worlds V]); and Della Van Hise (whose 1985 novel Killing Time debuted the Romulan underworld deity Bettatan’ru).
Recognition should also go to John Winston Ono Lennon (1940–1980), whose song “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” contained the line that inspired T’Pol’s advice to Jonathan Archer in Chapter One; Dylan Thomas (1914– 1953), whose poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” helped keep Captain Archer’s morale up during this novel’s climactic battle; John A. Theisen, author of FASA’s TOS role-playing game module, The Starfleet Intelligence Manual: Agent’s Orientation Sourcebook; L. Ross Babcock III and John A. Theisen (again), authors of FASA’s The Romulan War RPG module (both modules reference the Battle of Prantares); Tammy Moore, for suggesting the distinguished name U.S.S. Cowpens for one of Starfleet’s ships of the line; C. S. Forester (1899–1966), whose 1962 novel Hornblower and the “Hotspur” inspired one of Archer’s major wartime strategic directives; Kenneth Hite, Ross A. Isaacs, Evan Jamieson, Steven S. Long, Christian Moore, Ree Soesbee, Gareth Michael Skarka, John Snead, and John Wick, for creating the name of the Confederacy of Vulcan, the Vulcan place name Han-shir, and the namesake of my Romulan “Year of D’Era” calendar, in the Last Unicorn Games RPG module The Way of Kolinahr; Geoffrey Mandel, for his ever-useful Star Trek Star Charts, which kept me from getting lost in the galactic hinterlands on countless occasions; Michael and Denise Okuda, whose Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future (1999 edition) remains indispensable even in this modern age of ubiquitous wikis; and Mike Burch of Expert Auto Repair, whose skillful maintenance of Andy Mangels’s car earned him a billet as Enterprise’s current chief engineer.
Copious gratitude accrues as well to: writer-producer Mike Sussman, whose name inspired the Vulcan martial art known as Suus Mahna and who created the biographical information, seen peripherally in “In a Mirror, Darkly,” that forever entangled the destinies of Hoshi Sato and her future husband, MACO Major Takashi Kimura; Eric A. Stillwell, whose name became attached to a fictional Starfleet captain in the Enterprise series finale, a tradition that continues in this volume; Original Series scenarist Dorothy (D. C.) Fontana, who created the Vulcan death-god Shariel that Trip mentioned in Chapter Twelve; the entire cast of Star Trek: Enterprise, with special attention to Scott Bakula (for leaping into not one, but two, of science fiction’s most compelling and conflicted heroic roles) as well as Connor Trinneer and Jolene Blalock, whose portrayal, respectively, of Charles Anthony “Trip” Tucker III and T’Pol created a classic portrait of truly star-crossed lovers; Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991), for originating the universe in which I get to spend so much time playing; all the readers and fans who have stuck with me throughout Trip’s long, strange, um, trip; and lastly, though never leastly, my wife, Jenny, and our sons, James and William, for their long-suffering patience and unending inspiration.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael A. Martin’s short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and he is the author of Star Trek: Typhon Pact—Seize the Fire, Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many, and Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War—Beneath the Raptor’s Wing. He has also coauthored (with Andy Mangels) several Star Trek comics for Marvel and Wildstorm as well as numerous other works of Star Trek prose fiction, including: Star Trek: Enterprise—Kobayashi Maru; Star Trek: Excelsior—Forged in Fire; Star Trek: Enterprise—The Good That Men Do; the USA Today bestseller Star Trek: Titan—Taking Wing; Star Trek: Titan—The Red King; Star Trek: Enterprise—Last Full Measure; the Sy Fy Genre Award– winning Star Trek: Worlds of Deep Space 9 Volume Two: Trill—Unjoined; Star Trek: The Lost Era 2298—The Sundered; Star Trek: Deep Space 9 Mission: Gamma Book Three—Cathedral; Star Trek: The Next Generation: Section 31—Rogue; Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers #30 and #31 (“Ishtar Rising” Books 1 and 2, re-presented in Aftermath, the eighth volume of the Star Trek: S.C.E. paperback series); stories in the Star Trek: Prophecy and Change, Star Trek: Tales of the Dominion War, and Star Trek: Tales from the Captain’s Table anthologies; and three novels based on the Roswell television series. Other publishers of Martin’s work include Atlas Editions (producers of the Star Trek Universe subscription card series), Gareth Stevens, Grolier Books, Moonstone Books, the Oregonian, Sharpe Reference, Facts On File, Star Trek magazine, and Visible Ink Press. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and their sons, James and William, in Portland, Oregon.
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Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War Page 31
