The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [173]
Jake shook his head in bemusement. “I still have to wonder why the standard history places Trip’s supposed ‘death’ six years after the date when it actually, uh… didn’t happen. If you know what I mean.”
“Misdirection,” Nog said. “Maybe somebody- Section 31, most likely- figured that the big brushstrokes of Commander Tucker’s life would be easier to hide if they were left out in plain sight and attached to a date in Federation history that everybody knows. That way, anybody who tries to find out the real truth behind Tucker’s life and non-death is liable to start digging in the wrong place entirely.”
Jake nodded. “Everybody knows a lot more about the early Federation than they do about the Coalition of Planets that came before it.”
“Exactly. That’s the grave you bury the treasure in- the one you know nobody is interested in digging up.”
“It’s all so damned strange,” Jake said, drawn inexorably back into the mystery of Commander Tucker’s life and death and life. “Charles Tucker living on under various aliases, for decades and decades after his ‘death.”’ He knew, of course, that they still had to go through a lot of material concerning Tucker’s surprisingly lengthy latter period to discover the details of what he’d been up to during the entire span of those times. “It’s like finding out that Abraham Lincoln was still alive during World War I, fighting against Kaiser Wilhelm.”
“Do you think the evidence might have been faked somehow?” Nog asked.
“Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on both our parts,” Jake said as he slowly shook his head. “Or maybe it’s just the wine. But I really think this all holds together a bit too well for it to be fake, with the possible exception of the stuff that claims to be told from the Romulan viewpoint. And I’m willing to chalk that up to artistic license on the part of the historian, who would have needed to fill in the occasional gap here or there with some educated guesswork of his own. But so far I really can’t see a fatal flaw in any of the rest of it. It’s almost as though we’ve been reading Commander Tucker’s private diary.”
“That’s my thought, too, especially after experiencing the, um, racy parts,” Nog said. “And after examining all the corroborating documentation. Anyway, this new take on Archer-era history holds together for me a lot better than the standard version does- you know, with Captain Archer’s whole command crew not receiving a single promotion, even after having served together aboard the NX-01 for ten years. Or Archer’s dog somehow not having aged a day during that entire time. Or Archer’s famous Big Speech at the ‘Stick, which makes a lot more sense now in the context of the post-Coridan disaster era than it does in the post-Earth-Romulan War time-frame where most of the histories place it. Or the pirate ship that could barely manage warp two somehow catching up to Enterprise, which had to be traveling at nearly warp five when—”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Nog,” Jake said, holding up a hand as he interrupted. He rose from his chair, ignoring the pain that stippled his lower back as he moved toward the hearth to stir the fire with one of the iron pokers he kept there. The rejuvenated flames sparked and immediately began to spread their renewed warmth through his entire body.
“But there is one thing that still really bugs me about this whole business,” he said as he returned to his chair. “I find it very weird that we’ve apparently had Tucker’s official death date completely wrong all these years. I know that history is littered with a lot of small errors that everyone eventually accepts as fact after enough time goes by. But I have to wonder if this particular discrepancy was really that type of innocent mistake- or if it happened because of somebody’s deliberate plan.”
“Who knows?” Nog said, shrugging. “Maybe somebody recorded the date wrong deliberately, just to make it that much harder to uncover the real story of Charles Tucker.”
“Or maybe it was done purposely by someone who hoped that someday, a pair of old codgers