The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [135]
Ehrehin reeled his gaze back in from the middle distance where he seemed to do his deepest thinking, then stared at Trip with large, soulful eyes. “Cunaehr or not, you have been kind to me, whoever you are.”
“You can call me Trip.” He started to extend a gloved hand, but stopped himself, remembering that Vulcans, being touch telepaths, disliked being touched. He decided to assume that their cousins, the Romulans, might have similar habits.
The old man nodded, an awkward maneuver in the bulky pressure suit. “Very well, Trip. I will see what I can do about assisting you in getting this vessel up and running again.”
For the very first time, Trip began holding out a real hope that Ehrehin would voluntarily offer to protect the billions of innocents who lived on Coridan Prime, as well as Earth and the rest of the Coalition worlds. The notion buoyed Trip’s spirits greatly, because he knew it meant that he might soon have the opportunity to return from the dead to see his parents, his brother, T’Pol, and the rest of his Enterprise family again.
Trip glanced again at the pilot’s console, where the blip that represented Valdore’s doggedly pursuing ship was growing dangerously close to its quarry.
“We’d better get busy, then,” he said, then rose from his seat and headed for one of the tool kits he’d seen earlier in the aft section, moving as quickly as his bulky environmental suit would permit.
Forty-One
Friday, February 21, 2155
Enterprise Nx-01
SHRAN STOOD AT THE FOOT of the biobed, feeling an overwhelming sense of familiarity as he watched Jhamel sleep. Other Aenar were resting throughout sickbay, while some recuperated in the makeshift medical facilities in Enterprise’s two shuttlepod launch bays, or in hastily rearranged crew quarters; the ship’s guest cabins were still uninhabitable because of the hull breach sustained during the recent battle.
Enterprise was currently hurtling toward Earth at top speed, so repairs, and a return to Andoria for the Aenar, would have to wait. Archer had apparently already jeopardized his command by undertaking the mission to rescue the Aenar, but Shran felt sure that the compassionate human leaders would forgive him.
He studied the face of the beautiful zhen who lay on the biobed, heartened to see her condition had visibly improved, even in the last six hours. With the nutrients and medications Jhamel and the other Aenar had taken in since their rescue by Enterprise, they were beginning to lose their color once again. Excepting the bluish highlights she normally had, the only rose-colored portions visible on Jhamel’s skin were the fatigue-generated wrinkles and pouches around her eyes.
He looked over to the neighboring beds, where Shenar and Vishri both slumbered, thanks to some sedatives and dream suppressants provided by Doctor Phlox. He wondered idly how the three surviving bondmates of Jhamel’s shelthreth group would get along in life now. Without Theras, the thaan of the group, they would be unable to reproduce. Given the declining population on Andoria, and the even sharper decline of the Aenar people’s numbers, the loss of any member of a potentially fertile shelthreth quad was unutterably horrible and tragic.
Because of that tragedy, he took small comfort in the fact that nearly every one of the other Aenar had been rescued, with the exception of the one who had run afoul of a transporter malfunction… and, of course, Theras.
He realized only now how completely he had misjudged Theras. I was as blind as he was, Shran thought, but in a completely different way. The gentle Theras, who had seemed to be such a melting icicle throughout the entire abduction ordeal, had instead shown himself to be the furthest thing from a coward that Shran had encountered among the Aenar. He had overcome his very nature, the pacifistic ideals by which he had always lived, in order to help free his fellow Aenar.
Shran had never enjoyed apologizing, but he sincerely wished for a chance to do so to Theras. He’d treated Theras abominably; he