The Expanse - J.M. Dillard [5]
Carlo, all elbows and knees, and Trip had flipped his lid when he found skinny Carlo in a liplock with his little sister behind the movie theater.
Hey, he’d yelled, as he grabbed the kid by the shoulder and pulled the two lovebirds apart. Why don’t you go pick on someone your own age?
Lizzie’d been furious. Hey, leave him alone, Trip.
Get out of here! Trip had shouted, ignoring his sister, and Carlo obeyed, taking flight.
He and Lizzie had fought like the dickens then—he wasn’t sure who was madder at whom, but all of his protective big-brother instincts had come to the fore that day.
Tucker grinned at the memory. Funny, how back then two years had made poor frightened Carlo seem like a sophisticated man of the world, out to take advantage of his baby sister. Of course, knowing Lizzie, it was hard to say who was taking advantage of whom. Lizzie had always insisted she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Didn’t Trip trust her?
Trip trusted her, all right; no one had a sounder head on her shoulders than Lizzie. It was the guys he had the problem with. Being a guy himself, he knew they were up to no good.
Tucker’s reverie had been interrupted then, when a call came, asking him to report to the conference room immediately.
Trip entered and found the Vulcan Science Officer T’Pol, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, Doctor Phlox, Hoshi, and Mayweather, all standing around the table.
Standing, not sitting and talking casually. The expressions—save for T’Pol’s, of course, which was always blandly passive—were all grim. Something major was up, and it wasn’t good.
“What’s going on?” Trip asked.
“The Captain wants to talk to us,” Reed said somberly. His British accent seemed even more pronounced than usual—as it often did when he was worried or tense about something, a fact Trip had learned over the course of their friendship.
“About what?”
The linguist and communications officer, Hoshi Sato, was petite and delicate-boned, her long dark hair pulled back at the nape of her neck. Her brow was frankly furrowed with concern. Travis wasn’t surprised; she’d always been a bit of a worry-wart, although after logging some experience aboard Enterprise, she’d learned to loosen up quite a bit. “He’s speaking to Admiral Forrest ... it’s about the third time in the last hour.”
“Something’s obviously up,” Trip said.
Even Doctor Phlox’s normally cheery demeanor had vanished. “I can’t remember the last time he asked me to join the senior staff for a briefing,” the Denobulan said, clearly perplexed. His brow, too, was lined ... and edged with small skeletal ridges, all the way around the orbital socket. A receding hairline made them all the more noticeable—at least, in Trip’s opinion.
“Maybe it has something to do with—” Reed began, but broke off at once as Archer walked into the room. He had a decade and a few inches in height on Trip, but was still lean and fit, younger-looking than his forty-odd years.
Everyone turned toward him.
Trip knew at once that someone had died. More than one person, in fact; many more.
Archer’s expression was beyond grim; it was the face of a man trying to digest something which could not be comprehended. It was the face of a man overwhelmed by the news he was about to relay. Trip thought at once of his mother’s expression, at the instant she had been forced to tell Trip’s dad that his brother had been killed.
“There’s been an attack on Earth,” Archer said, his voice hoarse, nearly a whisper. He was looking directly at his staff, yet at the same time seemed to be staring at a distant point far beyond them, at a sight too horrific for words. The Captain paused for a long moment, as though he could not find further words to explain what had happened.
Trip heard the surprised gasps around him, but he could focus on no one other than Archer. “What do you mean, attack?” he demanded. At the same instant he asked the question, he felt an odd pricking sensation on the back of his neck, an odd instinct that he was about to hear news that would