Kobayashi Maru - Michael A. Martin [18]
Thanks to Trips protracted absence, her memories of their brief time together had become as irrepressible as they were bittersweet. And the fact that the last year had brought her more than enough reason to grieve apart from Trips departure hadnt helped; she had lost her mother, TLes, during a raid against the Syrrannite sect at Vulcans Takarath Sanctuary, then had faced the death of Elizabeth. It didnt matter that her infant offspring had been a cloned hybrid created with her and Tuckers DNA by the rogue geneticists of the Terra Prime separatist movement; little Elizabeth had nevertheless been their child. And now both TLes and Elizabeth were interred beneath the broiling sands of Vulcan, on the grounds of the rebuilt sanctuary.
TPol had not been back to Vulcan since the funeral ceremonies for Elizabeth, only a few months ago. Trip had been with her then, his arm still immobilized in a neurotherapeutic sling to treat the wound hed received during the fight against the Terra Prime terrorists. TPol had pushed him away at first, fighting the pain that had threatened to bring all of her carefully suppressed emotions surging to the surface. But their mutual loss of little Elizabeth had eventually brought them closer together in spite of her reticence.
What they had attempted to build between them afterward was torn asunder a short while later, when Trip had taken an assignment for a covert Earth intelligence agency that was connected in some remote fashion to Starfleet. In order for him to infiltrate the Romulan Empire, he had been forced to fake his own death, with the aid of Captain Archer, Doctor Phlox, and Lieutenant Reed. TPol had not been told the truth until later, when Trip visited her on Earth, just prior to Archers speech at the signing of the Coalition Compact.
Trip had given Archer a note for her, and she had subsequently met him in a chamber underneath the stadium where the signing ceremony was being held. There, she had learned of his mission, and had seen that he had been surgically altered to resemble a Vulcan. It was only during their talk that she realized that if he was actually supposed to be a Romulan infiltrator, then the old stories of Romulans and Vulcans being kindred species must be true.
Oddly, TPol found herself unsurprised by the revelation; from past experience, she knew that Vulcan history was teeming with secrets, and that the Romulans were not the only Vulcanoid race to have become separated from the ways of its forebears. The Syrrannite sect had had it easy compared to what she had learned about the Frislen decades agoand about other races, during the time since.
That knowledge of the connection between the Romulans and the Vulcans carried with it an awful burden, however; if the secret connection between the Vulcans and the aggressive Romulans were ever made public, the distrust of other Coalition members toward Vulcan could split the fledgling alliance apart, thus rendering all of its members more vulnerable to dissension from within, attacks from without, and war from either direction.
Trip had assured her that the secret of the Romulan-Vulcan connection would be safe with him, and that as few others as possible would learn of it. Archer had since discussed the matter with TPol, having come to many of the same conclusions that she had. But they hadnt discussed it as much as they might have before Trips “death, even if Archer had taken obvious pains to leave both Phlox and Reed out of those particular discussions.
Having once worked as an intelligence operative for the VShar, TPol fully understood the need for subterfuge and secrecy in espionage, but she nevertheless couldnt deny that her exclusion from the initial plan to fake Trips death had created a fracture in her relationship with Archer and the others. She had sacrificed everything to join the crew of Enterprise, even resigning her position in the Vulcan High Command. What more could she have done to prove her loyalty to Archer? Shed always admired the captain, even if she did sometimes disagree with his often