by Andy Mangels
And thought wistfully once more about home, and everyone he’d yet again left behind.
Epilogue
The early twenty-fifth century
Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana
“WOW. IT STILL SEEMS pretty damned unbelievable, Nog.” Jake moved his wineglass to the table beside his antique chair. The low fire crackled occasionally in the background, though the sound of rain pattering against the roof and the windows mostly drowned it out.
Nog drained his own glass, then set it down on the hearth beside his chair, next to the now-empty bottle. “So, are you saying you don’t believe it?”
“I didn’t exactly say that, Nog. The document claiming to be Commander Tucker’s own sworn testimony—verified by a scan of his retina-pattern taken in the middle of the twenty-third century, no less—makes this stuff pretty hard to dismiss.”
“That one pretty much clinched it for me, too,” Nog said. “So why is it still unbelievable to you?”
“It’s not,” Jake said with a thoughtful frown. “I’m just saying it still comes as a huge surprise to discover all this new information about somebody whose life and death were as well documented as Tucker’s.”
Nog nodded. “Too bad he didn’t find a way to head off the whole Earth-Romulan War.”
Jake shook his head. “I think having grown up as the son of Ben Sisko gives me a little bit of perspective on this sort of thing, Nog. At the end of the day, Commander Tucker wasn’t a superhero; he was just a chief engineer with a knack for spying. Besides, as nasty as that war was, the Federation we know today rose out of its ashes. The Federation might never have come about at all without the six-year gestation period that began with the signing of the Coalition Compact.”
“And I might be chasing latinum slips and dabo tokens somewhere in the Ferengi Alliance to keep myself in fine wine and tube grubs. Good point.”
Jake shook his head in bemusement. “I still have to wonder why the standard history places Trip’s supposed ‘death’ six years after the date when it actually, uh…didn’t happen. If you know what I mean.”
“Misdirection,” Nog said. “Maybe somebody—Section 31, most likely—figured that the big brushstrokes of Commander Tucker’s life would be easier to hide if they were left out in plain sight and attached to a date in Federation history that everybody knows. That way, anybody who tries to find out the real truth behind Tucker’s life and non-death is liable to start digging in the wrong place entirely.”
Jake nodded. “Everybody knows a lot more about the early Federation than they do about the Coalition of Planets that came before it.”
“Exactly. That’s the grave you bury the treasure in—the one you know nobody is interested in digging up.”
“It’s all so damned strange,” Jake said, drawn inexorably back into the mystery of Commander Tucker’s life and death and life. “Charles Tucker living on under various aliases, for decades and decades after his ‘death.”’ He knew, of course, that they still had to go through a lot of material concerning Tucker’s surprisingly lengthy latter period to discover the details of what he’d been up to during the entire span of those times. “It’s like finding out that Abraham Lincoln was still alive during World War I, fighting against Kaiser Wilhelm.”
“Do you think the evidence might have been faked somehow?” Nog asked.
“Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on both our parts,” Jake said as he slowly shook his head. “Or maybe it’s just the wine. But I really think this all holds together a bit too well for it to be fake, with the possible exception of the stuff that claims to be told from the Romulan viewpoint. And I’m willing to chalk that up to artistic license on the part of the historian, who would have needed to fill in the occasional gap here or there with some educated guesswork of his own. But so far I really can’t see a fatal flaw in any of the rest of it. It’s almost as though we’ve been reading Commander Tucker’s private diary.”
“That’s my thought, too, especially after experiencing the, um, racy parts,” Nog said. “And after examining all the corroborating documentation. Anyway, this new take on Archer-era history holds together for me a lot better than the standard version does—you know, with Captain Archer’s whole command crew not receiving a single promotion, even after having served together aboard the NX-01 for ten years. Or Archer’s dog somehow not having aged a day during that entire time. Or Archer’s famous Big Speech at the ’Stick, which makes a lot more sense now in the context of the post-Coridan disaster era than it does in the post–Earth-Romulan War time-frame where most of the histories place it. Or the pirate ship that could barely manage warp two somehow catching up to Enterprise, which had to be traveling at nearly warp five when—”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Nog,” Jake said, holding up a hand as he interrupted. He rose from his chair, ignoring the pain that stippled his lower back as he moved toward the hearth to stir the fire with one of the iron pokers he kept there. The rejuvenated flames sparked and immediately began to spread their renewed warmth through his entire body.
“But there is one thing that still really bugs me about this whole business,” he said as he returned to his chair. “I find it very weird that we’ve apparently had Tucker’s official death date completely wrong all these years. I know that history is littered with a lot of small errors that everyone eventually accepts as fact after enough time goes by. But I have to wonder if this particular discrepancy was really that type of innocent mistake—or if it happened because of somebody’s deliberate plan.”
“Who knows?” Nog said, shrugging. “Maybe somebody recorded the date wrong deliberately, just to make it that much harder to uncover the real story of Charles Tucker.”
“Or maybe it was done purposely by someone who hoped that someday, a pair of old codgers with nothing but time on their hands would notice that one inconsistency—and then follow it all the way down to the bottom of this mystery.” Jake grinned.
Nog returned the grin, displaying rows of uneven, sharpened teeth. “No wonder you’ve fallen so in love with writing whodunits these last few years.” But the Ferengi’s smile collapsed a moment later into a far more thoughtful expression. “Seriously, Jake, we may have a problem on our hands, now that we know what we know. We have a serious decision to make.”
Jake nodded, understanding. “Do we go public with this stuff? Or do we keep it to ourselves?”
“You were a news writer before you became a novelist,” Nog said. “I think I can guess which way you’d decide.”
Jake nodded. “And you’d be right.” Every one of his journalistic and writerly impulses screamed for the need to publish this discovery, regardless of whether or not he got any share of the credit.
At least he wanted to see it published, if all the supporting documentation really would bear up under close scrutiny. And the bright light of sobriety tomorrow morn- ing, he thought, contemplating the empty wine bottle on the hearth ruefully.
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, Jake. At least, not yet.”
“Why?” Jake asked, perplexed. “Nothing here is classified, otherwise you couldn’t have shared it with me.”
“Do you like westerns, Jake?” Nog asked, the question seeming to have come out of what Benjamin Sisko probably would have described as ‘left field.’
“Westerns? As in novels? Like Louis L’Amour, or Larry McMurtry?”
“No, westerns, as in movies,” Nog said, his features suddenly animated by a renewed burst of youthful energy. The sight made Jake pine momentarily for those carefree days they had spent together causing innocent trouble on Deep Space 9’s bustling Promenade, under Constable Odo’s ever-watchful eye.
“Westerns,” Nog continued, “as in John Ford, the twentieth-century hew-mon flatvid director. I got interested in his work during the war, when I was convalescing at Vic’s apartment.”
Jake remembered those days very well indeed. The high points, like the Allies’ retaking of DS9, or the final victory at Card
assia Prime, had been stratospheric; the lows, like the murder of Jadzia Dax, or the incident at AR-558 that had cost Nog his leg, had been abysmal.
But Nog had been discussing flatvid cinema rather than reality, and Jake wasn’t sure that he could recall the particular films Nog was referencing. “I’m waiting patiently for what you’re saying to start making some sense to me, Nog.”
Nog shook his head in mock despair. “Jake, don’t you remember the ending of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?”
Understanding finally dawned upon Jake when he realized that he did recall that particular film—especially its ending, which he’d found a good deal more memorable than most other entries in the western genre.
“‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,”’ Jake quoted.
While he had to concede that Nog had a point, he still wasn’t entirely convinced that the newly unearthed Tucker files ought to be hidden away indefinitely. Or just which of the many legends associated with the Earth-Romulan War and the subsequent founding of the Federation needed protecting the most. After all, there was still so much more they both had to find out, particularly regarding Commander Tucker’s specific activities during those times, and across the many subsequent decades through which he’d apparently lived.
After a lengthy pause, Jake finally came to a decision. “All right, Nog. I’ll agree to decide not to decide anything. At least until we both learn a lot more about the fact and the legend both. That okay by you?”
“That’s okay by me,” Nog said, grinning.
The rain outside continued its irregular tapping against the windows. Dawn was several hours away.
Nog reached into his pack. Jake half expected him to extract a second ancient bottle of wine, along with a corkscrew as old as Commander Tucker himself.
Instead, the Ferengi pulled out another data chip and handed it to him.
“So,” Jake said, turning the translucent plastic cylinder over and over between his fingers. “What exactly happens next?”
A grinning Nog once again activated the holo-imagers built into his padd, so that both of them could find out for themselves.
Acknowledgments
While any errors and fubars contained herein are the sole responsibility of the authors, we cannot neglect mentioning our debt of gratitude to the many others whose contributions either to the Star Trek universe or to our personal lives have greatly enriched the contents of this volume and others: Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, whose original teleplay for the Star Trek: Enterprise series finale “These Are the Voyages…” provided our initial jumping-off place; Pocket’s own Margaret Clark and CBS’s Paula Block for their long-suffering patience; Mike’s wife, Jenny, and their sons, James and William, for both long-suffering patience and inspiration; the online linguistic scholar(s) who assembled the vast Rihannsu language database found at http://atrek.org/ Dhivael/rihan/engtorihan.html, for furnishing various Romulan time and distance units, Romulan numerals, and word roots that helped us create several Romulan proper names; Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen, whose assistance in the construction of idiomatic Klingon phrases was invaluable during the writing of our 2005 Star Trek: Titan novel The Red King, and whom we also somehow neglected to mention on that volume’s acknowledgments page; Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, for originating yet another Romulan unit of time for our current tome, as well as for unwittingly furnishing us with an obscure Vulcan diplomat, whom we stole from their 2006 Star Trek: Vanguard novel Summon the Thunder; Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, for supplying the original Old Romulan name for the capital city of Romulus, and for shaping the canonical story arc that immediately precedes the time-frame of this book (“Terra Prime”), along with Manny Coto (“Demons”); S. D. Perry, whose novel Star Trek Section 31: Cloak anticipated Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens’ canonical revelations about Section 31’s distant past; Heather Jarman, for doing the bulk of biocultural spadework on the details of the four Andorian (and by extension Aenar) genders, as well as for establishing some nifty Andorian mythology (in Paradigm, her Star Trek: Worlds of Deep Space 9 novel) that we just plain stole (sorry, Heather, but I swear it wasn’t nailed down); David Mack, for the inspiring image of the Burning Sea of Coridan he provided in his recent Star Trek: Deep Space 9 novel Warpath; Geoffrey Mandel, for his Star Trek Star Charts, which supplied a few handy place names which we left scattered between here and Romulus; Keith R. A. De-Candido, Susan Shwartz and Josepha Sherman, whose novels Articles of the Federation and Vulcan’s Heart enabled us to hide a historical Easter egg or three within these pages; Franz Joseph and the team of Rick Stern-bach and Michael Okuda, whose respective reference manuals Star Fleet Technical Manual (1975) and Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (1991) provided Trip with some very serviceable technobabble at precisely the right moment; the gifted astronomical software mavens at SPACE.com Canada, Inc., whose Starry Night Backyard program enabled us to portray authentic lunar phases in all night scenes set on Earth, both in this volume and in its predecessor, Last Full Measure; Connor Trinneer, for breathing life into Charles “Trip” Tucker in the first place; and the legions of Trip fans out there who were happy to see us reinterpret canon, spit in the Grim Reaper’s eye, and seek out and exploit every available loophole on Trip’s behalf.
About the Authors
ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today bestselling author and coauthor of over a dozen novels—including Star Trek and Roswell books—all cowritten with Michael A. Martin. Flying solo, he is the bestselling author of several nonfiction books, including Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Characters and Animation on DVD: The Ultimate Guide, as well as a significant number of entries for The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes and for its companion volume, The Supervillain Book: The Evil Side of Comics and Hollywood.
In addition to cowriting several more upcoming novels and contributing to anthologies, Andy has produced, directed, and scripted a series of over thirty half-hour DVD documentries—and provided other special features—for BCI Eclipse’s Ink & Paint brand, for inclusion in DVD box sets ranging from animated fare such as He-Man, She-Ra, Flash Gordon, and Ghostbusters to live-action favorites such as Ark II, Space Academy, and Isis.
Andy has written hundreds of articles for entertainment and lifestyle magazines and newspapers in the United States, England, and Italy. He has also written licensed material based on properties from numerous film studios and Microsoft, and over the past two decades his comic-book work has been published by DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse, Image, Innovation, and many others. He was the editor of the award-winning Gay Comics anthology for eight years.
Andy is a national award-winning activist in the Gay community, and has raised thousands of dollars for charities over the years. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his long-term partner, Don Hood, their dog Bela, and their chosen son, Paul Smalley. Visit his website at www.andymangels.com.
MICHAEL A. MARTIN’s solo short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has also coauthored (with Andy Mangels) several Star Trek comics for Marvel and Wildstorm and numerous Star Trek novels and eBooks, including the USA Today bestseller Titan: Taking Wing; Titan: The Red King; the Sy Fy Genre Award-winning Star Trek: Worlds of Deep Space 9 Volume Two: Trill—Unjoined; Star Trek: Enterprise—Last Full Measure; 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; stories in the Prophecy and Change, Tales of the Dominion War and Tales from the Captain’s Table anthologies; and three novels based on the Roswell television series. His work has also been published by Atlas Editions (in their Star Trek Universe subscription card series), Star Trek Monthly, Grolier Books, Visible Ink Press, The Oregonian, and Gareth Stevens, Inc., for whom he has penned several World Almanac Library of the States nonfiction books for young readers. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and their sons James and William in Portland, Oregon.
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Andy Mangels, Star Trek: Enterprise: The Good That Men Do
