The Expanse - J.M. Dillard [23]
Archer smiled faintly; in his expression, she saw both sincere gladness that she was coming along—and deep concern over her safety.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.
With Commander Tucker beside him, Malcolm Reed watched with keen interest as a quartet of crewmen wheeled in a weighed-down cart bearing four sleek, shining, and incalculably deadly torpedoes. The sight made Reed swell with an odd pride: Enterprise would now be better able to defend herself, no matter what she encountered.
The four crewmen were met by others, who helped lift the first of the heavy weapons and carefully insert them into the aperture of a freshly installed launch tube.
Reed felt a surge of satisfaction at the metallic sound of the torpedo sliding neatly into firing position. He turned to Trip Tucker.
“Photonic torpedoes,” he said by way of explanation. Tucker had missed the briefing on the new weapons—understandably, of course. “Their range is over fifty times greater than our conventional torpedoes.”
Normally, Tucker would have been drooling over the sight of any new technology added to engineering or tactical. In fact, he would have been all over the torpedoes, asking rapid-fire, excited questions, insisting on helping the others to load them into the launch tubes, just so he could put his hands on them—but today, he merely stared with disinterest at the weapons and said nothing.
Concerned, Reed tried to provoke a reaction by providing further tempting details. “And they have variable yield. They can knock the com array off a shuttlepod without scratching the hull ... or put a three-kilometer crater into an asteroid.”
Tucker released a silent sigh and gazed briefly away, distracted. “How long’s it gonna take to reconfigure the tubes?” Instead of being excited about the refit, he seemed bored and rather irritated by the fact that this would only waste more time. Reed understood; no doubt the Commander was eager to be under way, after so much time on Earth having nothing to do but think about the tragedy.
“We’ve got three teams working on it,” Reed offered quickly. “They promise me it’ll be done well before we leave spacedock. But I’m going to have to start integrating them into the power grid.”
Tucker digested this in silence, then said curtly, “Let’s go.”
They moved out into the corridor, stepping around the occasional crew member refitting a circuitry panel or bringing in new equipment.
Reed waited until they were out of anyone’s earshot before bringing up a tender subject. It was one that had been troubling him for some weeks; he was beginning to worry that perhaps his friend needed help in dealing with his loss. Reed wanted to do something, but he had been lucky enough not to have experienced real grief; he had no idea what Trip might be going through, only that it was terribly difficult.
But he did know that it was best for a survivor to commemorate the death, to acknowledge it. Save for the single visit to Florida—a visit that had lasted only minutes before an overwhelmed Trip had to return to the ship—the Commander hadn’t so much as mentioned his sister’s name. And that, Reed knew, was not good.
He cleared his throat, then said delicately, “Is there going to be some kind of ... service?”
Trip reacted swiftly, turning toward Reed as though he were a wasp who had just stung him. “For Lizzie?”
Reed nodded, silent.
Trip looked away and started walking faster; his lips pressed together so tightly they paled, and then he said, with barely restrained anger, “If you’re talking about a funeral ... it’s kinda pointless when there’s nothing left.”
For his friend’s sake, Reed persisted gently. “I guess I’m talking about a memorial.”
Trip let go a dismissive huff of air. “My sister wasn’t big on memorials.”
“I read there was a day of remembrance for all the victims a couple of months ago. ... I’m sorry you missed it.” There; he’d said it. He had been worried about Tucker ever since the