The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [129]
“However, if I remain at your side, I can aid in the defense of both Enterprise and Earth. I needn’t remind you that the Romulans have shed significantly larger quantities of human blood than they had at the time I made my initial promise to seek out and persuade T’Pau.”
He put up a hand. “You don’t need to remind me. Neither Enterprise nor Earth is likely to survive for very long should the Romulans get the upper hand in this fight. Right now, getting Vulcan into the war looks to be our best hope. And you are hands-down the best candidate for the job.”
The first officer stood in contemplative silence for a long time after he finished. She clasped her hands behind her back and began to pace very slowly across the small office, apparently lost in thought. Finally she came to a stop directly in front of Archer and looked him straight in the eye.
“Logical,” she said. “I will direct Lieutenant O’Neill to transport me to Vulcan once we reach orbit.”
Had she not been a Vulcan, the captain would have succumbed to the temptation to give her a bear hug. Somehow, he restrained himself, contenting himself with a moment of wistful regret: Too bad she wouldn’t change her mind about letting me throw a little going-away party in her honor.
But considering the dismal state of morale aboard this ship ever since the Gamma Hydra mission, maybe that was for the best.
Going-away parties sometimes bore far too close a resemblance to wakes.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Late in the month of Tasmeen, YS 8764
Tuesday, February 10, 2156
Vulcan’s Forge, Vulcan
T’POL WAS STILL SILENTLY upbraiding herself even as Enterprise’s primitive transporter finished the uncomfortably slow task of restoring her body’s solidity, retrieving it particle by particle from the device’s tightly collimated matter stream.
Now she stood in an open, rust-colored plain, with only the hood of her robe to protect her from the searing rays of red Nevasa. She inhaled deeply of the warm, dry, appropriately attenuated air, which wasn’t bestirred at the moment by even the slightest breeze. Under the vault of a ruddy, early-afternoon sky the towers of SkiKahr rose like sentinels guarding the western horizon. She knew that she might have eliminated an hour or more of hiking time had she selected a beam-down location closer to the city’s government district. That choice, however, might have attracted undue attention to her mode of transportation—as well as to the fact that by making this stopover at Vulcan, Captain Archer was “bending” Admiral Gardner’s order that Enterprise return to the Sol system without delay.
T’Pol pulled a communicator from one of the pockets of her civilian traveler’s robe and flipped the small device’s antenna grid open.
“T’Pol to Enterprise. I have arrived safely.”
“Acknowledged,” came Archer’s subdued reply. “Good hunting, Commander. Everyone here hopes we’ll see you again soon. Enterprise out.”
I am home, she thought, tucking away the communicator. As she began walking toward Vulcan’s capital, she wished that her homecoming could have occurred under more tranquil circumstances. The residue of the emotional turmoil stirred by leaving Enterprise, however temporarily, made it difficult to derive any satisfaction from her arrival.
Continuing to punish herself for her weakness, however, was a far more easily achievable goal.
Before she had debarked from the Earth starship, she had demonstrated weakness, first by trying to convince Jonathan Archer to release her from her promise to return to Vulcan. And she had followed that up with an act of emotional profligacy, when she had caught herself staring longingly down at the world of her birth as it slowly turned beneath Enterprise, taking in the entire daylit hemisphere from a lofty vantage point only a few hundred kilometers from T’Rukh, the world with which Vulcan shared its orbit about bright Nevasa.
Her gaze had been held by Vulcan