by Andy Mangels
He couldn’t allow that. How many times had he already put his life on the line for the ideals of Starfleet, for the future of his family and friends? How many times had he put everything on the line for her, Enterprise, his ship?
He felt her even now, in this claustrophobic enclosure, her engines humming almost imperceptibly, a vibration that was nearly always present but that had long ago become nearly as familiar to him as the sound of his own breathing. For the past four years, the warp drive’s gentle but ever-present oscillations had given him comfort, helping him drift off to sleep during most night cycles; the occasional absence of those vibrations frequently led to insomnia, and to extra late shifts in engineering until Trip felt things had finally been put right again.
Soon he would be very far away from the comfort of those engines. He would have to take reassurance instead in the knowledge that he was protecting all of this. For now, he thought. I’m coming back. I’ll be aboard Enterprise again. I’ll be with my family again. Laugh with my friends, tell her that I do want to find a way to make it work…
How can I not do this?
“No response, Doctor.” It was of the med techs, Garver this time.
I’m coming back, Trip told himself again. Back from the dead, once all this Romulan madness is finally over and done with.
If it could ever be over and done with.
“Phlox!” Archer again, just outside the chamber.
“I’m so sorry, Captain,” Phlox was saying in tones that dripped with grief. “He’s gone.”
A pause. Then Phlox spoke again: “Computer, record that death occurred at nineteen hundred and thirty-three hours, fourteen February, 2155.”
Feeling unaccountably calmed by the knowledge that the deed had finally been done, Trip opened his eyes. He looked up again at his reflection, which looked bizarre and funhouse-distorted in the curved, too-close metal ceiling of the chamber. He could see that the Denobulan physician had certainly managed to make him look gruesome, in spite of the haste with which he’d had to work. A large, livid burn snaked down his neck, and a profusion of other wounds and smudges covered both his flesh and his torn uniform.
So this is what it’s like to be dead, he thought, really trying on the idea for the first time. Funny. Doesn’t hurt quite as much as I thought it would.
Or maybe it hurt far worse; after all, he’d always assumed that dead people couldn’t feel pain, or anything else for that matter.
A ratcheting noise near his feet interrupted his reverie. The chamber door opened and sickbay’s bright lighting flooded into the relative darkness inside the tube. He shut his eyes quickly, and felt the pallet on which he lay slowly move out of the chamber. He held his breath, pretending to be dead, just incase someone other than Phlox, Malcolm, or the captain happened to be present. He wondered how long he could pull it off.
The pallet’s movement stopped.
“It’s all right to breathe now, Commander Tucker,” he heard Phlox say. “Everyone here knows the truth.”
Trip brought his hand up to shield his eyes from sickbay’s bright overhead lights, and moved to sit up. He felt someone place a hand behind his back, and knew it was Malcolm, just from the slight smell of his aftershave.
His eyes adjusting as he blinked, Trip saw that Archer was pacing in front of him. Malcolm was standing next to the table as Trip swung his legs down to stand on the deck.
Phlox put one hand on Trip’s shoulder, turning the engineer toward him. “This will hurt a little bit,” he said, reaching for the horrible fake burn at the side of Trip’s neck. He pulled it off, along with what felt like a few layers of skin.
Trip winced. “Did everything go okay?” he asked, looking over to Archer and Reed as he rubbed the sore spot. Glancing toward sickbay’s entryway, he saw that Phlox had stretched a white privacy curtain across the transparent aluminum doors that separated the ship’s infirmary from the rest of E deck.
Archer sighed. “As well as can be expected. I have a monster headache, but we’ll take care of that shortly.” He rubbed the spot on the side of his head where one of the “pirates” had clubbed him.
“We’ve got to get you off the ship now,” Malcolm said. “Enterprise is going to pursue the pirate ship any moment. I’ve taken measures to make sure that we don’t quite catch them.”
Phlox held up a pile of garments. “Get into these, Commander, quickly. Where you’re going, you won’t want to have any trace of Starfleet on your person. And we’ll need your uniform for the…burial.”
Trip undressed quickly. “Try to make sure there aren’t too many broken hearts, please?”
Malcolm managed a slight smile, but Trip could see that there was little humor behind it. “Actually, there will probably be widespread relief among the crew, especially in engineering. They’ve always said you were a tyrant.”
“I’ll do my best, Trip,” Archer said. “I’ll contact your family personally.”
Trip was soon dressed again, in a nondescript utilitarian brown jumpsuit.
“The materials I pumped into you while we were trying to ‘save your life’ were actually several wide-spectrum inoculants,” Phlox said, handing him an enzyme-infused medical wipe to clean the burn smudges away. “It’s unlikely you would have ever before encountered the pathogens they protect against, but you’re venturing into unknown territory now. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Trip turned to Phlox. “Thanks, Doc. For everything.”
Phlox nodded, his eyes almost as grief-filled as though Trip had actually died.
Trip moved over to Malcolm, taking a device that his friend offered. “This is how they’re going to lock onto you,” Malcolm said. “And it contains the only codes you’ll be able to use to communicate with us, if you need to. Wipe them as soon as you have them memorized.”
Trip put one hand on Malcolm’s shoulder, and stuck his other hand out. They shook hands, looking into one another’s eyes.
“Thank you, Malcolm. I’m sorry you won’t be with me on this mission.”
Malcolm smiled grimly again. “Just remember the first rule of being a spy: Don’t fall for the girl. They’re always working for the bad guy.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Trip said, turning toward Archer. He held out his hand again, but was surprised when the captain pulled him into a bear hug instead.
“I’ve known you too long,” Archer said. “You come back to my ship. That’s an order.”
“I will,” Trip said. “You just make sure you do your part to save the galaxy while I’m gone.” He felt his eyes watering, and pulled back from the embrace.
Trip stepped to the center of the room and depressed a button on the device Malcolm had given him.
“It’s been a pleasure and an honor serving with you all,” he said. “This isn’t a good-bye, though. Just a ‘see you later.’”
Even as the words were still leaving his lips, he felt the unnerving tug of the transporter, and the eerie sensation of momentary freefall that accompanied it.
Like a Valkyrie, the beam carried him off to his next life.
It had been three hours since Trip had materialized aboard the “pirate” ship, where he had finally met the men who had been paid to “raid” Enterprise.
Wungki was the captain’s name, and he was scarcely any friendlier now than he’d been in the corridors of E deck, where he had played the role of the head “pirate.” He had apologized, however, for having been so rough on Captain Archer. Captain Wungki’s crew of eight consisted entirely of mercenaries, all of whom seemed willing to work for just about anyone capable of paying them.
That meant that they tended not to ask questions, and therefore were likely to be counted on to be discreet. “You’re not the first person whose death we’ve helped fake,” Wungki had said with an ugly smile, immediately after Trip’s arrival on his ship. “There was a Betazoid man once, whom we helped ‘kidnap’ from his own wedding. Actually, it was a rescue.” He snorted. “That was a tough assi
gnment, given those people’s empathic talents. And the fact that everybody there was naked really distracted my men.”
Trip nodded as though he knew what Wungki was talking about. He assumed the Betazoids were some race he’d not yet encountered, though he had no idea why they would be naked at a wedding, nor whether or not he would find a nude Betazoid wedding party distracting.
Wungki’s crew had avoided capture by Enterprise through a sort of bait-and-switch operation. They had apparently been carrying a smaller, decommissioned vessel in their cargo hold, which they set to self-destruct via a remote signal, and then released into space. They had then landed their primary vessel in a large crater in the asteroid field Enterprise was searching, and shut down all unnecessary power, using some form of dampening device to hide their life signs and residual energy emissions. Trip had attempted to learn more about the dampener, but it seemed that the crew wasn’t eager to share their secrets; most of his questions had been rewarded with silence.
Now, with almost three hours having passed since the detonation of the decoy ship, Wungki and his crew finally felt safe enough to power their systems back up and venture out into open space again.
Despite all the excitement he had crammed into this very long day—or perhaps because of it—Trip now found himself sitting on a hard bench in a smelly alcove, on the point of dozing off. With Wungki’s crew manning all the shipboard stations, he had essentially nothing to do other than sit in an alcove, waiting. He had no reports to read, and he was stuck among a crew that wasn’t about to give him access to their computer system, even to look for entertainment.
He awoke with a start when someone shoved him.
“We’re within range of your contact,” one of the more grotesque-looking mercenaries said. “We’ll be beaming you over as soon as he gives us the signal.”
“Oh, thanks,” Trip said, shaking his head to clear the fog away.
Minutes later, after a barely acknowledged good-bye to the mercenaries, he felt a transporter beam shimmer around him for the second time in one day. For an instant, he was amazed at how nonchalantly some people seemed to be using transporters these days; even Enterprise’s crew had come a long way toward trusting the devices over the past four years, when at first they had been used mostly to move parts, tools, or other inanimate material on and off the ship.
He materialized on a small pad in what appeared to be a vessel barely larger than a Starfleet shuttlepod.
A lithe woman, her long black hair pulled back into a ponytail behind her, sat at what appeared to be the ship’s helm, which was crammed into a small cockpit area. Trip’s mind flashed on Malcolm’s warning about women for a moment, until she turned around.
It was not a woman but a man, apparently of Southeast Asian descent. The man stood and approached Trip, moving with an almost sinuous grace.
“Hello,” he said, his voice a deep basso. “I’m Tinh Hoc Phuong, field operations, currently assigned to the Romulan theater of operations. Glad to finally meet you.” He held out his hand. “Welcome aboard the Branson.”
Trip shook the other man’s hand. “Charles Tucker, uh, Commander, Starfleet. But most people just call me Trip.”
Phuong smiled. “Not anymore they don’t.”
Trip was a bit taken aback, but he tried his best to maintain his composure. “Yeah, well, I haven’t quite gotten used to being dead just yet.”
“I disappeared off the sensor grid three years ago,” Phuong said. He gestured to a small alcove to Trip’s right. “You want some coffee, or something to eat? We’ve got a long flight ahead of us.”
“Sure,” Trip said, moving over to the alcove, where he saw shelves bearing various prepackaged foodstuffs, all arranged in an efficient manner. There was also a tiny kitchen area, with a small sink, and a few nozzles and buttons built into the counter area.
“The green button on the left is for coffee,” Phuong said as he crossed back his ship’s flight controls.
“So, where’s our first stop?” Trip asked. It struck him then that this voyage could take him to a nearly infinite list of possible destinations, virtually all of which would probably be completely unknown to him.
“Adigeon Prime. Not very far from territory claimed by the Romulans.”
Trip didn’t immediately see any cream or sugar in the kitchen alcove as he picked up one of Phuong’s cups and filled it from the spigot under the green button. Guess I’ll just have it black, he thought as he carried his beverage to the forward section. He sat in the copilot’s chair next to Phuong’s seat, and found it comfortable.
“We meeting someone there?” he asked, gratified that he had at least heard of Adigeon Prime prior to today.
“No other bureau operatives, if that’s what you mean. Just the people—or whatever they are—who’ve been hired to help us get our mission fully under way.”
“So, if you don’t mind my asking, you said you disappeared three years ago. Is that how long you’ve been working for Section 31?”
Phuong looked at him inquisitively. “Section 31?”
Trip felt a cannonball of dread drop into his stomach. Had he somehow been tricked and kidnapped by someone other than Harris’s spy organization?
Almost instantly, the other man nodded. “Oh, you mean the bureau. I get it. Article Fourteen, Section Thirty-one of the Starfleet Charter. Catchy name.”
Trip relaxed slightly. “Bureau of what?” This was definitely something that Malcolm hadn’t briefed him about.
“Of nothing. Even though we’re authorized to operate by the Starfleet Charter, we don’t exist—at least not officially. So, it’s just ‘the bureau.”’
Trip looked down into the nut-brown depths of his coffee, feeling decidedly uneasy about his radically changed circumstances. Although life aboard Enterprise had always had its dangers, the interstellar espionage business seemed a good deal more hazardous by comparison. He couldn’t forget what had happened to Malcolm last year when the Klingons had kidnapped Phlox. Malcolm, acting on Section 31’s orders, had sabotaged Enterprise to slow down Captain Archer’s rescue efforts. The incident might well have ended Malcolm’s career but for Archer’s decision to protect his armory officer rather than having him court-martialed.
Now Trip was growing concerned that the cloak-anddagger bureau might just bury him as well and as thoroughly as it had buried Phuong. After all, Phuong had apparently been operating undercover for three years already. Remaining “dead” for such a long stretch of time didn’t appeal to Trip.
“Having second thoughts?” Phuong asked, looking over at him. “Everyone does.”
“Mmmm,” Trip grunted noncommittally.
Phuong let out a heavy sigh. “I understand. I was a diplomat, in another life. Not top-level, so you’d never see me at the really world-shaking interstellar functions, but close enough to the top to know who all the players were. I guess that’s why they recruited me.”
Trip looked sideways at the man in the pilot’s seat. “This is my first…assignment.”
The other man smiled again. “Oh, I know. I’ve read your file. I probably know more about you than some of your friends do.” He grabbed a padd that had been sitting to the immediate left of his instruments, and handed it to Trip. “Read this, then we’ll be even. It’s my whole boring life story, up to and including what I’ve done for the last three years.”
And I wonder how much of it is true? Trip thought. He wasn’t sure he trusted Phuong, but the man seemed disarmingly honest. An odd trait for a spy.
“Before you get too far into it, I just wanted to say that I read your reports on the Romulans’ use of cloaking technology,” Phuong said. “Actually, I’ve read all your reports on the Romulans and their technology. I can even quote them back to you if you want.” He put a finger to his temple. “Near-photographic memory. Comes in handy when circumstances in the field force you to purge your data to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. Anyhow, I was impressed. The analysis you wrote about the Romulan
s’ telepath-driven droneship program was fine, meticulous work. I volunteered for this mission because I wanted to work with you.”
“Thanks,” was all Trip could think of to say.
But Phuong apparently wasn’t yet finished dispensing praise. “Having you along on this assignment—a trained engineer who’s already seen Romulan tech up close—makes me think we stand a real chance of putting the Romulans’ warp seven program out of business. Or maybe even of grabbing it for the Coalition.”
Despite himself, Trip felt a small smile break across his lips. Whether Phuong’s words were mere flattery or were sincere, the fact that Section 31 had paid so much attention to his warnings reassured him that they did indeed take the Romulan threat seriously—unlike Admiral Gardner, who couldn’t even be bothered to lock his own back door against the coming hordes.
Maybe sometimes the powers that be really do need somebody guarding that back door for them, he thought. Whether they know about it or not.
He set aside his apprehensions, at least for the moment. Being able to believe that he truly was in the right place, doing the right thing—even briefly—was a small comfort after the maelstrom of a day he’d just had, and the cataclysmic changes he’d just introduced into his life.
But it was comfort nonetheless.
Now feeling relatively at ease, he began familiarizing himself with the layout of the Branson’s controls, which he recognized right away, thanks to his Starfleet training. The Branson was a small Rutan-class trading vessel, of a type that hadn’t been built since the late 2130s. Designed to support a maximum of six people and to carry several tons of cargo, the Rutan s had a top range of perhaps fifteen light-years, and were notoriously slow.
