The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [51]
“So, what do you think now?” Nog asked, gesturing toward the two small holo-imagers whose two extremely divergent narratives about Commander Tucker they’d been watching.
“It’s very strange,” Jake said. “Parts of the story are familiar, but just interpreted differently, and placed five years earlier. It’s like the story behind the story.”
“Don’t they say that history is written by the conqueror?” Nog asked.
“The victor. Though either word works about as well as the other.” Jake ran his hand over the short, gray hair at the back of his head. “What’s so strange about this is that Charles Tucker was one of the better-known martyrs of the proto-Federation, and yet the commonly accepted details of his death are nothing terribly heroic. If anything, the standard ‘bad guys invade the ship’ scenario makes both him and Captain Archer look sort of unprepared, and makes Enterprise security seem so lax as to be laughable.”
“Maybe we’re going to find out that Tucker’s role in early Federation history was more pivotal than we knew,” Nog said.
Jake nodded sagely and reached for his now nearly empty wineglass. “The other thing that’s really unusual about the revised version is the way Section 31 is depicted. It’s smaller than we know it actually became, but the bureau seems to have an almost noble agenda… or at least as much nobility as a spy organization can have.”
“Maybe the morality of it is colored by what happened to Earth in the Xindi attack of 2153,” Nog offered. “Not to mention Terra Prime. And it’s not like I supported Thirty-One at the end, but we know that every government in the galaxy has its own spy network. It’s not like this was the only one, for poverty’s sake.”
Jake laughed. Another thought suddenly occurred to him. “What about the parts of the original history that centered on Rigel X, with Shran’s daughter being rescued from her kidnappers, and the theft of the Tenebian amethyst, and so on? Is all of that a complete fabrication?”
“Well, given that Shran didn’t have a daughter at this point, I’d say that’s probably a ‘yes,”’ Nog said. “But it might also be some sort of amalgamation of other events. After all, for years we’ve been watching some holodeck programmer’s version of these people’s lives, based on records and logs; things we now know have been tampered with.” He paused and grinned at Jake. “Maybe something interesting happens in the Rigel system in this version as well.”
Jake regarded his friend with a suspicious eye. “Just how far ahead did you watch this?”
Nog grinned and leaned forward, his nimble fingers moving toward the holo-imager controls he’d left sitting on Jake’s ancient wooden desk. “Not much further. So, let’s see what happens next.”
Fourteen
Friday, February 14, 2155
Enterprise Nx-01
WHEN CHARLES ANTHONY TUCKER III was a teenager, he and his friends had dared each other repeatedly to open a hatch door on a grain silo, but Trip had actually been the one who had taken the challenge. He hadn’t been paying close enough attention in science class to judge the pressure such materials in a container of that size might be under, and was thus half buried by the flood of grain that spilled out before he could even retreat three steps. If his brother Bert and their friend Bill Hunt hadn’t been quick to pull him out, he might well have been entombed on that long-ago day.
Since that time, Trip had been in more than a few tight spots, but none of those had been quite as suffocating as the grain incident.
Until now.
After the pallet on which he lay finished retracting into the hyperbaric chamber, the oval-shaped, airtight door near his feet closed. Its motion was silent, yet forceful enough to make his ears