The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [58]
“Hello, Charlie,” Archer said.
The older man put one hand up and turned to yell over his shoulder. “Gracie, it’s Jonny on the line.” A pause, and then he yelled, “Jonny Archer!” A few seconds later, a middle-aged woman pulling a housecoat around her shoulders appeared on the screen with Charlie.
“Lordy, you haven’t changed a bit!” Elaine said, smiling. “Must be some alien mojo working to keep you young.”
Archer struggled to keep his composure in the face of such a pleasant greeting. Besides, he knew a polite lie when he heard one, just as he knew how he really looked in the mirror. “Thank you, Gracie. You look as fantastic as always.”
Charlie Tucker craned his head from side to side, peering at Archer- or rather, around Archer. “Where’s our boy? He couldn’t make it to the call?”
Archer gulped, and blinked hard. “Mr. and Mrs. Tucker… there’s no easy way for me to tell you this, but earlier today, Trip—”
Elaine Tucker let out a shriek, her happy countenance crumbling. “No! Don’t tell me…”
Charlie put his arm around his wife’s shoulder, drawing her in, muttering something to her that the Tuckers’ audio pickup didn’t quite catch.
“I’m so sorry to have to tell you,” Archer said, his voice low.
Charlie looked toward him across the monitor, his lower lip trembling. “Is he gone, or just injured?”
Archer felt his own eyes welling up with tears. “He’s… gone, sir.”
Charlie looked away, his lips tightening inward and outward. “Was he doing something heroic?”
“Yes, he was,” Archer said. “He was saving me, and the ship. And quite possibly a lot more than that.” This felt less like a lie than the rest of it, but Enterprise’s captain still felt his stomach tying itself into knots over having to deceive the Tuckers.
Elaine let out a deep sob, then shouted something unintelligible through her crying. Charlie pulled her in tighter, and looked back toward the screen.
“All right, Jonny,” he said, his voice quavering. “We… we, um… we need some time to make some sense out of this. Please… uh… forward the details to us, and we’ll be in touch.”
“I understand, and I will,” Archer said. “I want you to know that he was the bravest and best friend I’ve—”
The screen abruptly went black before he could finish. Even though he had lost his father when he was young, and as Enterprise’s captain had lost both Starfleet crew members and MACO troopers, Archer could only imagine the grief the Tuckers must be experiencing now. First their daughter Elizabeth had been killed in the Xindi attack on Earth two years ago, and then, only a couple of weeks ago, their sole grandchild- Trip and T’Pol’s daughter, also named Elizabeth- had died.
And now, as far as they know, Trip is gone, too. But their pain is a lie this time… a lie made necessary by other lies and secrets and subterfuge. He hated the Romulans for driving them to this. More than he had ever hated anything, even the Xindi, he hated them, these faceless creatures from the other side of space.
Archer struggled to regain his composure and tamp down his feelings. He still had to call Trip’s brother Albert. He recalled that Albert and his husband Miguel also lived in Alabama, not far from Charlie and Elaine. He hoped they’d be able to help the Tuckers cope with their latest dose of grief.
Grief caused by the lie of Trip’s death, which we designed and executed so very carefully. Archer wondered what Trip would do once he was free again to resume his old life, if that were ever to happen. Would he find the emotional barriers erected by Section 31’s lies as easy to break down as they’d been to construct?
T’Pol reached for the small framed photograph on Trip’s desk. The image was of him scuba-diving in Earth’s Caribbean Sea. Below him was a manta ray, its flat form belying the danger posed by its venom-tipped tail.
She studied the picture for a moment, recalling Trip’s talk of taking her diving. Having grown up on arid Vulcan, T’Pol had had little