The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [79]
“That is a logical assumption,” T’Pol said.
Archer frowned in his first officer’s direction. “So wouldn’t those drugs also disable Shran’s link with Jhamel?”
Theras shook his head. “Only death itself can interrupt such a profoundly deep connection.”
“Then it’s a pity I’m not an Aenar,” Shran said. “If I were, I suppose I could telepathically trace Jhamel and the others straight to their exact location via this supposed mind-link, whether the slavers had drugged them or not.”
“It’s a pity that I cannot test that idea with my own deep link to Jhamel,” Theras said sadly. “But if you were an Aenar, Shran, I think you probably could do just that.”
“But if I were an Aenar,” Shran said, hostility audible in his voice, “I’d have been captured right alongside you and everyone else the Orions took, because I wouldn’t have been able to put up enough of a fight to stop it.”
Theras quailed before Shran and even took a step backward. And although Archer sympathized with Shran’s obvious and justified frustrations- his ongoing inability to rescue Jhamel had to be hard for him to take, particularly now that he’d been informed that he possessed a mental connection to her that was tactically useless- he couldn’t allow the Andorian to get away with taking those frustrations out on the gentle Aenar any further.
“As I recall, Shran, the fight you put up didn’t end up making all that much difference, as far as the Orions and their business partners are concerned,” Archer said, stepping toward Shran. He hoped his body language was communicating the wordless pick-on-somebody-your-own-size message he intended to convey.
Perhaps because he wasn’t a bully by nature, Shran seemed to receive the message without comment or complaint. He merely fumed in silence, his antennae lancing forward in undisguised but undirectable anger. Now that’s the Shran we’ve all grown to know and love so much these past few years, Archer thought before turning toward Theras.
Malcolm Reed, who’d been sitting in silence at his starboard station until now, chose that moment to speak up, raising the very question that Archer had been about to ask: “Theras, why haven’t you mentioned Shran’s mind-link to Jhamel before now?”
“I suppose I never considered it relevant,” Theras said, turning so that his glassy eyes pointed in the tactical officer’s direction. “It had always seemed to me merely a personal oddity, and certainly nothing to worry about. Since I have always trusted Jhamel’s judgment, I had no reason to resent either her or Shran because of the link. And because Shran lacks sufficient esper capacity to even consciously sense the mind-link’s presence, I could think of no practical way to use it to aid in our search. So I assumed that it wasn’t noteworthy enough to talk about.”
“That’s because it wasn’t,” Shran said flatly.
“Perhaps,” T’Pol said. “Or perhaps not.”
“You have something?” Archer said. He couldn’t help but notice that her reserved exterior was being betrayed by the slight olive flush that had risen in her cheeks. For a Vulcan, it was the equivalent of shouting “Eureka!”
T’Pol turned toward her science console and began punching in strings of commands with a dexterity that would have put the most nimble blackjack dealers on Risa to shame. “I’m not entirely certain yet, Captain.”
“Forget certainty,” Archer said, approaching her console and watching over her shoulder as she worked. “At this point, I’m willing to settle for wild speculation.”
“Very well, Captain. Shran can’t use his mind-link with Jhamel to locate her. Correct?”
“So I keep hearing. Endlessly,” Shran said as he came up beside Archer, also clearly curious about T’Pol’s emerging hypothesis.
T’Pol turned her chair slightly so that she could look up at both Archer and Shran. Addressing the Andorian, she said, “I believe it may be possible to use your link to Jhamel as a means of actually locating her- by using some outside assistance.