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Like everyone here who has decided to stay, Keller remains phlegmatically hopeful about the future. “Things will calm down around here eventually,” he told me. “Unless the Romulans really do blow Heliopolis to Kingdom Come.”

I actually found it encouraging to hear this sentiment coming from someone who’s seen humanity at its worst.

“If the killer is still here, we’ll get him,” Keller promised me, or perhaps himself. “After all, he can’t keep this up forever, can he?”

And neither can the Romulans.

This reporter believes that, like Sergeant Keller, we need only believe in ourselves, stand firm, and embrace the darkness, because daylight will come.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Tuesday, February 10, 2156

Enterprise, en route to Earth via Vulcan

ARCHER FELT THE DECELERATION through the soles of his boots even as Ensign Leydon’s voice came across the ready-room intercom, brisk and businesslike.

“We’ve just entered the 40 Eridani A system, Captain. I’m keeping station within the bounds of the system’s Kuiper belt. Ensign Camacho reports Shuttlepod One prepped and ready to go.”

“Thank you, Ensign. Continue on an in-system course and enter a high, transporter-range orbit around Vulcan.” Both Archer and T’Pol had agreed that it was best not to tie up any of Enterprise’s auxiliary craft, which Enterprise might need at a moment’s notice in the event of a surprise Romulan attack.

Leydon took her new orders in stride. “Aye, sir. Altering course.”

“Be ready to resume course for Earth after we reach Vulcan,” Archer added. “And go to maximum warp once we’ve cleared the system. Archer out.”

Sixteen and a half light-years from home, he thought, rising from the chair behind his cluttered desk. After a long homeward journey, he was anxious to get busy with the ongoing defense of Earth and its settlements all across the Sol system.

But first, he had to see his executive officer off on her voyage home.

The door chime sounded before he’d gotten halfway to the ready room’s sealed entrance.

“Come.”

The hatch slid open, admitting T’Pol. Once the aperture had closed behind her, assuring their privacy, she said, “You’re putting me off the ship.”

T’Pol’s bald assertion took Archer aback, the lack of affect behind it rendering it somehow more intense than if she had shouted the words in anger.

After pausing for a handful of heartbeats to recover his equanimity, he said, “T’Pol, I didn’t redline Enterprise’s engines for nearly seven months—and let the Cygneti treat me like a twentieth-century cocktail waitress so I could keep redlining the engines—just to make you walk the plank.”

“Nevertheless. You have ordered me home.”

He offered a smile that he hoped she’d find reassuring. “Try to think of it as a working vacation, T’Pol.”

“With the dangers the ship will be facing, it is clear that you need me at your side.”

“You agreed right after Tarod IX that you were the one member of this crew with the best chance of persuading T’Pau to get off the sidelines of this war.”

T’Pol stepped closer. “You could have simply made it an order.”

“I think we both know this has to be voluntary,” he said at length.

“But T’Pau may refuse to see me. You’ll note I have yet to secure a firm appointment on her official meeting calendar.”

Archer shrugged. “Your meetings with T’Pau may have to be entirely unofficial, then.”

T’Pol looked doubtful. “Administrator T’Pau, like most Vulcans, is not known for conducting business in an ‘unofficial’ manner.”

Archer couldn’t help but chuckle slightly at that. “Administrator T’Pau ran the very revolution that put her government in power. You may be surprised at how flexible somebody with a skill set like that can be when push comes to shove.”

“The chance of that appears slim to me.”

“ ‘Slim’ is a hell of a lot better chance than ‘none,’” Archer said.

“True,” she said, nodding. “But should I fail to secure a meeting with T’Pau—or if I succeed in meeting with her but fail to