The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [8]
T’Pol nodded slowly. “I am aware that some members of the crew are... uncomfortable with the outcome of the Kobayashi Maru affair. Unfortunately, some of those individuals have decided to apply for reassignment.”
Archer scrolled the padd’s display until it showed the names of the authors of the two most recent reassignment requests, then handed the device to T’Pol. Although her Vulcan demeanor was usually as impermeable as Enterprise’s hull plating when polarized, T’Pol’s eyes widened in incredulity when she saw the names.
“You must not have been aware that Travis Mayweather and Hoshi Sato have just joined the ranks of the uncomfortable,” Archer said. “Dismissed, Commander.”
Holding the padd, T’Pol quietly exited the ready room, leaving Archer alone with his thoughts. He sat heavily in his chair and picked up the framed photograph, ignoring the stack of papers beside it as it tipped over, partially spilling onto the deck. Trip Tucker was holding a duranium-reinforced fishing rod in one hand, with his other arm around Archer’s shoulders. A huge marlin, Trip’s catch of the day, hung above the pier in the background.
Good times. Simpler times. Far better times than these.
I saved my crew, he thought. But at what cost?
THREE
Three days earlier
Gamma Hydra sector, near Tezel-Oroko
CHARLES TUCKER BRACED HIMSELF for the inevitable impact, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. The little escape pod’s proximity alarms set up an earsplitting wail as the comet fragment lumbered inexorably toward the forward window that he could no longer see. He felt certain that no amount of luck or skill could enable him to evade the looming kilometers-long chunk of ice and rock.
Trip tried to focus past the pain of the blows and scrapes and bruises he had taken during his escape from the Romulan ship—a vessel he had sabotaged before dragging its unconscious commander along with him into the nearest escape pod—but without much success.
He decided to concentrate instead on a comforting mental image of T’Pol, confident that his aches and pains would soon enough no longer be an issue.
Why the hell is this death thing taking so goddamned long?
A faint sensation suggestive of columns of ants marching across his skin offered a partial answer to that question. He opened his eyes in time to see the front of the escape pod crumple like so much paper toward him, around him—and through him—even as a curtain of deep blue light intruded, washing away the linked inevitabilities of mass, gravity, and inertia. His nervous system on autopilot in spite of himself, he raised his insubstantial arms protectively before his equally ethereal face.
Transporter beam, Trip thought as the escalating brightness of the indigo nimbus all around him reached a momentary blinding peak, briefly turning the lightless frozen interior of the comet fragment through which he now tumbled into a multicolored crystalline kaleidoscope before fading away into imperceptibility on retinas grown too intangible to catch any light whatsoever.
The bluish illumination returned abruptly an instant later—as did the inevitabilities of mass, gravity, and inertia. The escape pod chair in which he had been seated had not materialized beneath him, and he found himself dumped unceremoniously onto the hard, unyielding surface that he immediately recognized as the broad, round stage of a transporter, albeit one that looked far more advanced than the similar though smaller unit he had used on numerous occasions during his tenure as Enterprise’s chief engineer.
Trip lifted his head groggily, sniffing at the air; it was breathable, but thinner and hotter than he was used to. In the absence of the transporter’s light show, Trip saw another figure, a man whose appearance was as Vulcan—in point of fact as Romulan—as Trip’s own. He lay sprawled unconscious across the stage beside him, a wound on his temple slowly oozing dark