Broken Bow - Diane Carey [4]
“Sure. ‘Shut the heck up—’ ”
“Sir!” they finished together. Their laughter rang through the cramped cockpit. Sounded good. They didn’t hurry to stop.
Archer held his gaze on his younger friend a few moments longer than necessary. Tucker was trying to be nonchalant about the new ship’s imminent launch, but the veil was thin. He was just as excited as Archer, but Archer didn’t feel obliged to hide his near-giddiness at just being here, skimming across this ship, at this time in history. The two weren’t quite nine years apart in age, and between Archer’s boyishness and Tucker’s pretending to be a grown-up at least half the time, Archer figured that put them pretty close. Of all the newly assigned crew, they’d been together the longest, from the design stage to fitting-out of the new warp-speed ship. The new ship hovered above them in Spacedock, as comfortable as an eagle in its aerie, being tended, coddled, and preened by devoted minions in extravehicular suits, none quite as consumed with wonder as the proud captain himself.
“I wish Dad could’ve seen this. ...”
At his side, Tucker let his bright grin soften to a misty understanding. “Everybody does, John. Some things just aren’t gonna come out fair. I don’t think anybody in Starfleet’ll ever quite forgive the Vulcans for stalling.”
“The worst part is how they pretend they didn’t,” Archer commented drably, “as if we’re too silly to know the difference. I’ve been waiting thirty years for them to open up, and it’s never really happened. They just keep dangling that carrot.”
With one hand on the helm controls, Tucker held out the other palm and said, “But look what we’ve done anyway. There she is!”
Archer smiled, heartened, and drew a deep breath. “Yes, there she is. ...” He gazed for a moment at the underbelly of the meaty, stubborn-looking ship’s wide saucer section, then turned a grateful regard to Tucker. “With you around, who needs a ship’s doctor?”
“We do.” Tucker whirled the inspection pod around sharply as they came to the neck section and speared downward toward the nacelles. Beneath, the planet Earth gleamed mightily in a sheen of sunlight that made Spacedock glitter. The old Earth and the new ship moved together through the solar system that had given them both life. Magic!
“The ventral plating team says they’ll be done in about three days,” Tucker offered when he saw where Archer’s eyes were leading.
“Make sure they match the color to the nacelle housings.”
“Planning to sit on the hull and pose for postcards?”
“Maybe.” Archer smiled again, and sighed happily. “God, she’s beautiful. ...”
“And fast! Warp four point five on Thursday!”
Archer shivered with awe. “Neptune and back in six minutes! Let’s take a look at the lateral sensor array.”
Before the last syllable was out, the pod vectored ninety degrees on its port seam and spun aft, dropping fifty feet like a stone. Only at the last second did Tucker wheel out of the fall.
Archer closed his eyes and swallowed a moan. These stupid utility pods—smaller than they had to be, and definitely faster than they had to be.
“If I didn’t know better,” Tucker chided, “I’d say you were afraid of flying.”
“If I’m afraid of anything,” Archer said, “it’s the scrambled eggs I had for breakfast.”
“Pretty soon, you’ll be dreaming about scrambled eggs. I hear the new resequenced protein isn’t much of an improvement.”
Archer skewered him with a meaningful look. “My number one staffing priority was finding the right cook. I think you’ll be impressed.”
“Your galley’s more important to you than your warp core. That’s a real confidence builder!”
“You’re a great engineer, Trip, but a starship runs on its stomach. Slow down—there. Those are the ports that buckled during the last test. They need to be reinforced.”
Tucker released the controls, picked up a padd and a stylus, and scribbled notes to himself, checking the numbers on the hull plates and poking the identifiers on a schematic of the section that came up on his padd. With one passion competing with another, the pod drifted sideways and—
Ponk—struck the body of