The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [22]
“Even if Starfleet had a dozen NX-class ships ready to fly right now, it wouldn’t be enough,” Archer said, his patience apparently fraying around the edges. “Starfleet can’t be everywhere at once, Colonel. Any more than your MACO forces can.”
Lundy seemed to take this in thoughtfully while Shima fumed in silence. “Maybe Starfleet doesn’t deserve all the blame,” the MACO leader said as she turned and extended an accusing finger in T’Pol’s direction. “After all, the Vulcans had a hand in this, too.”
“Pardon me?” T’Pol said, not at all certain she had heard the colonel correctly.
“Some crimes are pretty hard to pardon, Commander,” Shima said, almost growling the words.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Archer said through gritted teeth.
“Something I might call complicity,” Lundy said. “Or simple negligence, if I could afford to be charitable about it. Either way, it amounts to the same thing: our orbital sensors picked up a Suurok-class vessel on the outskirts of the Tarod system.”
“There was a Vulcan military ship nearby at the time of the attack?” Archer said, his brows rising.
Lundy nodded, her mouth drawn into a grim slash. “There was. And it could have reached the planet in plenty of time to engage the Romulans before their dirty work was done.”
Although T’Pol found this news surprising, she also found that it hadn’t left her at a loss for words. “The initial reports from the outpost described a fairly large Romulan force. It is likely that one ship could not have stood against it. Even a Suurok-class vessel might have been overwhelmed.”
“Maybe,” Lundy said. “Maybe not. We still don’t know how much of the Romulans’ success against us was overwhelming force and how much was the simple element of surprise.”
“In any case, it would have been nice to have our alleged Coalition allies at our backs,” Shima said. “They might have made a huge difference in the outcome of the attack.”
The temperature in the room seemed to be dropping rapidly, forcing T’Pol to suppress a shudder. “Or they might simply have been destroyed by a superior force,” she said evenly.
“Well, it’s all academic now, isn’t it Commander?” Lundy said, her gaze radiating hostility and her brow nearly as crumpled as that of a healthy Klingon. “We’ll never know what would have happened because our loyal Vulcan allies tucked tail and ran about thirty seconds after we hailed them. How the hell are you going to answer for that, Commander?”
“All right,” Archer said, his tone growing low and dangerous. “Whatever hardships you’ve both endured, whatever decisions the Vulcans on that ship may have made—I’m not going to sit here and let you use my first officer as a piñata. I’m not going to tolerate any more of this... Vulcan bashing aboard my ship.”
Archer’s words hung in the air. The two other humans at the table seemed transfixed as the moment stretched. T’Pol knew that there had been a time not so very long ago when Jonathan Archer was the last person she would have expected to defend a Vulcan. Only a scant four Earth years earlier, the captain had frequently accused the Vulcan government of deliberately retarding Earth’s efforts to explore the galaxy. But a great deal had happened during the intervening years, not least of which was Archer’s brain having played host, however briefly, to the living katra of Vulcan’s most revered leader.
“No one is bashing anybody, Captain,” Colonel Lundy said in a frosty tone. “We have merely pointed out that our Vulcan ‘friends’ were derelict in their duties under the Coalition Compact’s mutual protection clause, if not directly involved in the attack.”
Archer rose from his chair. “I swear to you, Vulcan could never have been involved in anything like this,” he said, speaking with a degree of restraint that T’Pol doubted he could have managed had Surak himself not shared his cranium for a time. “On my honor as