The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [90]
Phuong blanched. “You’re saying you think he’s some sort of Vulcan-Romulan double agent?”
“Looks that way to me. Anyhow, I don’t trust him. There’s no knowing whose side he’s really on.”
“There’s no way to really know that about anybody, especially in this business,” Phuong said. “The question is, what does he know about you?”
Trip shrugged again. “As far as I can tell so far, only what we want him to know.”
Phuong drained his Romulan ale in a single quaff, making Trip wince involuntarily in sympathy. “Regardless of the espionage activities of Ch’uihv- or Sopek- we don’t really have a good alternative to trusting him. He’s still our only link to Doctor Ehrehin. We’ll just have to treat Ch’uihv with a great deal of caution.”
Trip shook his head resignedly. “Caution. Good idea. Now, why didn’t I think of that?”
Now it was Phuong’s turn to sound irritated. “Look, Ch’uihv represents a breakaway Romulan faction that wants to assist Doctor Ehrehin in defecting to Vulcan before the Romulan military can catch up to him.”
“We hope,” Trip said. “Ch’uihv’s people could just as easily be planning to use Ehrehin’s technology for their own purposes- which could pose just as big a danger to Earth as the Romulan military does.”
Phuong set his empty glass down on the tabletop with a loud clatter. “We have to take Ch’uihv at face value. Because if he isn’t for real, then we’re probably both dead already- along with all the worlds of the Coalition, which will fall one by one to Romulan fleets powered by Ehrehin’s new stardrive.
“But only if we fail.”
Or if we’re just plain wrong, Trip thought, then drained his own glass, stoically ignoring the blazing sensation as the bright blue stuff burned its way down his gullet like the sea floor sinking into a fiery subduction zone.
Though he didn’t like it, Trip knew that Phuong was right. Regardless of whether or not Ch’uihv- or Sopek- proved trustworthy, there really was no choice at all other than to trust him. But that didn’t mean that they had to trust him blindly.
Remembering that, Trip thought, just might give us the upper hand.
Twenty-Five
Thursday, February 20, 2155
Enterprise Nx-01
AS THE SLEEK TORPEDO CASING was launched into space, the majority of Enterprise’s crew who had assembled in Shuttlepod One’s launch bay stood silent, while some wept or sniffled. At the forefront of the crowd, near Captain Archer and the other command staff, T’Pol neither cried nor sniffled, nor even felt the strong need to suppress the emotions that were no longer battling within her.
The feelings that had so wracked her mental disciplines when she had been in Trip’s quarters had given way to an almost preternatural calm. She had wondered at first if she were in shock, but earlier in Trip’s memorial service, when she had touched the smooth surface of his metal coffin, another thought had sprung into her mind.
For some reason she couldn’t properly identify, touching the torpedo casing had given T’Pol a gnawing disquiet, a suspicion that something was not right. But the precise nature of that something, however, remained frustratingly obscure to her.
Now, as Trip’s casket drifted away into trackless space, T’Pol wondered idly if the decision to jettison his remains here, so far from his native Earth, was really what Trip would have wanted. But when she had brought this objection to the attention of Captain Archer and Lieutenant Reed, they had both assured her that the action had been taken to honor one of Trip’s final requests. Apparently he had indicated in his will that he’d wanted to be interred in deep space, among the stars, should he happen to die in the line of duty.
Oddly, not only was Archer adamant about following Trip’s wishes, he also seemed particularly intent on carrying out the memorial ceremony and services quickly, weeks before Enterprise was due to return to Earth. It seemed to T’Pol that the logical course of action would have been to wait until Trip’s remains could be taken to Earth, so that his family, friends, and colleagues