The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [165]
The second was his voice.
“Hello, T’Pol,” he said. Although his face was unfamiliar- unless, she thought, she had glimpsed it once before in a dream- his voice, though altered, was unmistakable. After all, very few Vulcans had ever picked up an Alabama-Florida accent.
“Trip?” In spite of what had been written on the extremely surprising note the captain had delivered to her- an apparently genuine handwritten message from Trip Tucker that purported to have been written today- she could scarcely contain her surprise at seeing him.
A sheepish grin spread itself across the man’s face, confirming his identity as conclusively as had the sound of his voice. “Maybe I dreamed it, but I’m pretty sure I told you we weren’t going to lose touch,” he said. “By the way, that Starfleet uniform looks really good on you.”
He approached her and gently took the folded white sheet of paper she still carried between her suddenly nerveless fingers. “Mind if I take this back? I have to keep the fact that I’m still alive a secret. From most people, that is.” He folded the sheet again and tucked it into a pocket inside his black traveler’s robe.
It occurred to her then that the instinct she had experienced immediately after Trip’s “death” now stood vindicated. Her early, and apparently illogical, conviction that Trip- along with the mind-link she’d shared with him before their romantic entanglement had dissolved- had indeed somehow survived had been borne out. She was dumbstruck for a seeming eternity, until she found the one word that best expressed her bewildered state of mind:
“Why?”
His smile faded, and a look of intense regret colored his now uncannily Vulcanoid features. “The Romulans were about to perfect a new warp seven-capable spacedrive. Somebody had to infiltrate the project and stop them. Somebody who already had some close-up familiarity with their technology.”
“And did you succeed in stopping this project?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “You know, I’m still not completely sure about that. I guess we’ll all find out soon enough. I can only hope I did a better job on that front than I did in preventing their attack on Coridan.”
“The devastation on Coridan Prime would have been far worse had we not warned them. I assume you had something to do with enabling us to do that.” She paused, then added, “You were Lazarus.”
Trip nodded. “I warned Captain Archer about what the Romulans were planning for Coridan as quickly as I could. I wasn’t quite quick enough, though. But I keep telling myself my warning made some sort of difference anyway, just so I can get to sleep at night. Sometimes it even works.”
“So out of all the possible candidates in Starfleet, Starfleet Command selected you to infiltrate the Romulan Star Empire.”
“Yes. But it wasn’t exactly Starfleet Command. It’s a covert ops bureau buried deep inside Starfleet Intelligence. In fact, Starfleet Command would probably deny even knowing about it.”
“Deceit,” she said, her voice edged more sharply than she had intended. “How very human.”
“Oh, come on, T’Pol,” he said, his brow furrowing. “Humans sure as hell don’t have a monopoly on deceit.”
“Vulcans do not make a habit of lying, or of concealing the truth.”
“Then you folks must be quite a bit better at it than we are. But even Vulcans get caught sometimes in the middle of a whopper. Do I have to remind you about the Vulcan operatives who were secretly spying on the Andorians on P’Jem? Or how your former fearless leader V’Las set up those terrorist attacks last year, then tried to pin ‘em on T’Pau and the other Syrrannites?”
Including T’Les, my mother, she thought. T’Les had died during that terrible time.
Though Trip’s words stung her, T’Pol carefully schooled her mien to maintain its best display of Vulcan equanimity. There was no point in continuing to argue the point; she knew that he was right. Nevertheless, she still felt incensed- illogically, she had to admit- that he had deigned,