Broken Bow - Diane Carey [5]
“Sorry ...” Tucker kneed the controls and the pod stiffened to a more stable position.
Archer pressed forward in his seat and craned to look out the viewport. “Great. You scratched the paint.”
Tucker took a breath to make his presence known, but the com chirped and cut him off. He tapped the button. “Orbital Six.”
“Captain Archer? Sir?”
Oh, well, they’d found him. Arched leaned back. “Go ahead.”
“Admiral Forrest needs you at Starfleet Medical right away.”
He looked at Tucker, but the engineer just shrugged.
“Very well,” Archer called to the com. “Ask him to stand by. I’m on my way.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Tucker was still looking at him, even though he was also now spinning the pod out of the presence of Spacedock and heading toward the planet. “Who’s sick?”
Archer shrugged. “It can’t be personal. Everybody I care about is up here.”
“Come on, John,” Tucker sighed. “Don’t be bitter. Not today.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not. It’s just the truth. A little truth never—”
“You and the truth. Can’t we have a little old-fashioned social disguise from our captain? Fool us some? Lull us into complacency?”
Archer laughed again and dropped a hand on the engineer’s arm. “Tucker, you are plenty complacent enough! Speed up, will you?”
“But the approach vector limit here is—”
“They can give me a ticket. Whatever Forrest’s got, I want to get it over with and get back here while the getting’s good.”
“That’s a lot of gettin,’ Captain. I’m on it! Hang on!”
“Trip! Holy—!”
“Who was chasing him?”
“We don’t know. They were incinerated in the methane explosion, and the farmer’s description was vague at best.”
“How did they get here? What kind of ship?”
“They were using stealth technology. We’re still analyzing our sensor logs.”
“I’d like to see those logs.”
“The Klingons made it very clear. They want us to expedite this.”
“It happened on our soil.”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“Ambassador, with all due respect, we have a right to know what’s going on here!”
“You’ll be apprised of all pertinent information.”
“And just who gets to decide what’s pertinent?”
Jonathan Archer knew exactly what was going on before he ever entered the ICU at Starfleet Medical. There were five voices—Admiral Forrest and that other funny little admiral who always reminded him of Grandpa’s golf partner ... Admiral Leonard was his name. Commander Williams as well. The other two—well, he knew Ambassador Soval’s voice well enough, curse him, and the other was clearly a Vulcan, too. That snooty tone of voice, the precise diction, and the shield of parentlike solemnity—Archer almost made an unpleasant sound, but decided to just walk in instead. Probably the same effect.
He was still in civilian clothes, but he didn’t care. If they wanted formal, they could invite him to a dinner party, not demand that he interrupt his shakedown inspection to visit a sick—
What the hell was that?
Big, that’s what. And noticeably hairy. And toothy. The massive humanoid form was hooked up to just about every contraption this place had to offer. Life support? Was it dead?
“Admiral,” he spoke directly to Forrest and made eye contact with the other two humans, deliberately leaving out the two Vulcans, who now gazed at him with mixed disapproval.
“John, I think you know everyone,” Forrest mentioned, whether it was true or not.
“Not everyone.” Archer studied the big sick guy through the isolation window.
Admiral Leonard tried to help. “He’s a Kling-ott.”
“A Klingon,” one of the Vulcans corrected.
Archer looked at the Vulcan, picking up an underlying joy in correcting a human admiral. Now he remembered this one. Ambassador Tog? Tos?
He started to say something, possibly rude, when a movement behind the two Vulcans caught his eye. Another Vulcan. A woman. Wasn’t anybody going to introduce her? Or were the Vulcans so advanced that courtesy didn’t involve women?
He decided their protocol was their own problem, and put his attention back with the Kling-On.
“Where’d he come from?”
“Oklahoma.”
“Tulsa, right?” Archer moved closer to the