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"The Forgotten Time II: Ashaya"
Rating: R (for occasional language) Author's Note: All Vulcan words are my best try from the Vulcan Language Database. This story takes place between Kir’Shara and Daedalus —circa January 2155. Chapter 13 T’Pol ignored the quiet, impatient fear wriggling in her stomach, forcing herself to lie still, as an orderly refilled her water glass. There was no point in asking this menial person if she had any messages. She had already tried that. Twice. The illogic of her recent vexed behaviour concerned T’Pol somewhat, but she refused to engage in a one-sided question-and-answer with herself over the normalcy of her emotions. She was Vulcan. They were all abnormal. She may as well forget about it. Trying to push pointless fears away was difficult, as there plenty of fresh ones willing to rush in and fill any void she made. Meditation was impossible in the hospital room. Her body was nearly immobile with its various aches and pains, the drugs that treated them flowing thickly through her veins. The sheets were scratchy and any part of her that wasn’t sweating feverishly was freezing cold and clammy. For some reason, there was a large clock on the wall directly above the foot of her bed; T’Pol tried closing her eyes to avoid its hideously slow measure. But, finding it equally sickening to continually peek and find almost zero time passing, she finally left her eyes to wander to the clock as they would. Hours passed in a haze. * * * “Aren’t you listening to me? I said, I don’t CARE if there’s an incident!” Archer shouted at the viewscreen, his voice carrying easily through the thin ready room door…to the ears of the raptly listening bridge crew beyond. “You don’t want us in your precious no-fly zone, fine! I’ll transport, like we did for Trip and Koss.” P’Lek started to respond, but the captain simply raised his voice, cutting across the other man loudly: “Send me your preferred arrival coordinates, and make them somewhere in front of whichever hospital you’re holding T’Pol at. If I am not talking to her in the next ten minutes, you will definitely be dealing with an incident.” Archer paused for a tiny second, laughing through his lividity, his voice abruptly adopting a dangerously friendly tone: “And if y’think I’m kidding… just try me. Try me.” He leaned down close to the monitor, his face filling P‘Lek‘s screen. “Because I would LOVE IT!” P’Lek stared at the human man’s red, perspiring countenance and heaving demeanour. The elderly Vulcan swallowed, the skin under his chin trembling like a wattle. “I’ll—I’ll see what I can do,” he quavered, before stabbing nervously at his console and breaking the connection. Archer turned to his ready room window with a Shran-like grunt of impatience, watching the planet below and trying to catch his breath. Within five short minutes, he received a meek page from Hoshi. A message from the surface. Collecting himself, the captain ran his hands through his hair, sniffed, and cleared his throat, before stepping out onto the bridge. As he emerged, no one quite met his eye: each crewmember suddenly very busy with an important, time-sensitive task at their workstation. Hoshi passed him a PADD with transport coordinates on it. “Thanks, Hoshi,” Archer said, taking it. His voice was very slightly hoarse from all the yelling. “No problem, sir,” Hoshi said, with a small, sly smile. “And if I may say so, sir?” she requested respectfully, “You kick ass, sir.” Archer regarded her with a surprised and gratified sort of frown. “Why, thank you Hoshi.” “You’re welcome,” she replied cheerfully, getting back to work. The captain glanced around at his busy staff, nodding to himself in sudden gruff approval as he entered the turbolift. The doors swished closed and he was shunted swiftly toward the transporter pad—to go retrieve the one of them who was missing. * * * Soval walked slowly, his hands behind his back. Archer tried not to hurry, matching the older man’s measured pace, though he was impatient to finally see T’Pol. “I did not expect to see you today, Captain,” Soval commented. “Nor I,” Archer replied. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.” Soval’s face came as close as it ever did to smiling. “Hardly. My duties are…somewhat lighter than they used to be. I was working in my new garden when I received the call from the Vulcan ‘government’—such as it is. Though I am no longer officially ambassador to Earth, it seems that nobody else wants to deal with you, Captain.” “Huh,” Archer responded, not disturbed in the least. “I wonder why that would be.” “A mystery, I am sure,” Soval offered. They stopped outside the ward they had been directed to by the receptionist downstairs. Soval nodded briefly, indicating that the captain should go on without him. Archer frowned slightly. “I hope you’ll stop in and say hello to her. I think she’d appreciate seeing you, Soval.” The older man inclined his head, strangely grateful for the friendship of this peculiar crew of explorers. “Perhaps I will bring her some tea.” “She’d like that,” Archer said, smiling. “See if you can find her any mint.” Soval’s eyebrows lifted in mild surprise. “Mint? Now you have given me something to do while you visit.” His mind ticked over the possible strings he could pull to find a packet of mint tea within a short span of time. Archer smiled to himself, leaving the Vulcan man deep in thought, and walked through the large ward doors, which silently swished aside to allow him entry. A nurses’ station faced him immediately upon entering the area. Two slim young workers sat at the desk: one male and one female, with identical short black haircuts. At the doors’ opening, they glanced up from their unhurried work to briefly examine the visitor, exchange a dispassionate glance, and return silently to their tasks. Archer stepped forward and leaned his arms on the chest-high edge of the front desk. “Hi,” he said, in his friendliest first-contact voice. Neither looked up. Finally, the male nurse finished inputting some data into his computer and turned deliberately to face the captain. “How may I direct you?” Archer found himself startled at the youth of the sitting man’s face, now that it was tipped upward to address him. He looked no older than sixteen; but a serious, dark, joyless kind of sixteen. The captain pegged him at maybe thirty for a Vulcan. It seemed all the menial jobs on Vulcan were filled by youthful interns on their eventual way up to much better things. Archer supposed, that with two centuries of time to fill, it probably made sense to be a go-getter. But just once in his life, he’d like to see a sullen young Vulcan with no plans except to throw his life away. There didn’t seem to be as many of those among the Vulcanish youth as there were on Earth, somehow. The dark young man blinked up at the strange, grizzled human man before him and waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts sufficiently to become capable of speech. He had dealt only rarely with humans during his short life, but he had read many books regarding their emotional ways and dull, brutish intelligence. It seemed the works were well-researched. Archer spoke. “I’m looking for Commander T’Pol. She was brought in this morning.” “And you are?” the young man asked neutrally, blindly tapping the keys of his computer with shocking speed as he accessed her files. “Her commanding officer,” Archer replied, as if the nurse was himself somewhat slow on the uptake. Neither appreciated the irony, as each man was unaware of the other’s thoughts. “Room eight,” the nurse finally offered, somewhat reluctant to allow anyone past his guardpost. “She is listed as stable, but her visits are to be limited to ten minutes. I will be along when your time is up.” Archer smiled creasingly, as always left bemused by his dealings with T’Pol’s people. “Thanks.” The nurse didn’t respond, as no response was necessary. He simply got back to work. Archer wandered down the right hall, shaking his head in bemusement, but not upset. He was too glad to have finally gotten down here. The corridor was smooth, buff-coloured, and spotless. He passed a few silent, plainly-dressed medical personnel, all of whom offered him only the briefest of glances. Finally he found himself in front of a door with a large number ohkuh, the Vulcan eight, painted on it. Archer was momentarily caught by the stark stylism of the calligraphed numeral. Someone had inked it, large and smooth, in a shade of paint only one or two levels deeper than that of the buff beige door itself. Except for the fact that the door was broad enough to admit a stretcher, and there was a small oblong window set vertically within it, he would almost have thought the hall and its fancy, muted numbers could belong to an elegant hotel. He glanced quickly through the window to ensure that his memory of Vulcan numerals was as accurate as he hoped, before just barging in. Through the thick glass, T’Pol reclined, half-sitting in the adjustable bed, her eyes closed, cheeks pale and muddy. Archer was startled at the flop his stomach did upon finally seeing her. Taking a deep breath to dispel any maudlin emotions he knew T’Pol would appreciate no more than a pink parasol, he hit the door release firmly. T’Pol immediately stirred at the soft swish of the door admitting her visitor. Her hearing had been damaged during the explosion, but the Vulcan neuro-otologist who had visited earlier had managed to restore her tympanic membranes to near-perfect capacity again. She blinked a few times in the dim light of the room, and felt a rush of sudden relief burn through her as she processed the sight of her captain seating himself backward on one of the short, straight visitors’ chairs. Archer hitched the chair close to the bed and simply sat for a moment, looking at his Science Officer, and satisfying himself that she truly had somehow survived a Romulan disruptor overload that had torn a new window in T’Les’ living room wall and deconstructed a Suliban agent into his constituent parts. Except for her ghastly pallor, she seemed unharmed. Though, the captain noticed with some small dismay, her eyes seemed unnaturally full and shiny. He attempted to ignore this for her sake, knowing how she hated to be seen when she was having trouble maintaining her habitual dispassion. “Hey,” Archer finally said, reaching out and squeezing her ankle through the thick blankets. She didn’t lift her head from the pillow, but simply looked at him with glad, intense eyes. “Hey,” she replied scratchily back. “Are you okay?” the captain asked. “How is Trip?” she asked, ignoring his question. “He’s…the same. But Phlox is working on him. They’re both up there in orbit. Trip and Koss.” At the mention of her ex-husband’s name, T’Pol made a small involuntary face. Archer watched her, searchingly. She seemed different, somehow. He leaned forward and spoke seriously. “Are you okay though? T’Pol?” “I will be fine,” T’Pol assured him. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. The captain scrutinized her for a moment longer. “Cause, I’ve gotta say…y’look terrible,” he finally said, smiling a little. The joke was for his sake, to relieve his own tension, but he was shocked when T’Pol’s mouth jumped momentarily into a small, rueful smile. “Thank you,” she replied modestly, examining his haggard face carefully in her own turn. “You look as if you’ve been shouting at Vulcans all night.” “Now, how did you guess that?” Archer asked rhetorically. “We followed your instructions—I hope, anyway. That paramedic wasn’t making much sense, but he seemed pretty adamant that he knew what you wanted him to tell us. You really seem to have made quite an impression on the young man. He contacted me himself, directly through the hospital’s comm system, and then resolutely refused to get off the channel. Even when the Vulcans threatened him with charges of treason.” Archer smiled as he described the young medic’s dedicated zeal. “The kid really went to bat for you. I finally met him downstairs.” The captain looked at the floor, laughing. “I think you may have a suitor on your hands.” T’Pol smiled that strange, sad, small smile again. Almost like a light flickering. “He is too late,” she informed him. “I am already married.” “Well, not anymore,” the captain reminded her. “You’re a free woman again. So, give him a few years….who knows?” He laughed again quietly at the memory of the moon-struck youth. T’Pol just looked at him. “What?” Archer asked, smiling. “Trip and I got married.” She said it simply, too tired to beat around the subject. Archer stared, the smile slipping slowly from his face. He got up and went to the window. There was a tree outside with some pretty birds in it. When he turned back to face T’Pol again, his hands were on his hips, and a laugh was in his voice. “I have been up shouting at Vulcans all night. I’m sorry,” he shook his head smiling, “it sounded like you said, ‘Trip and I got married.’” His pre-prepared chuckle died on his lips when T’Pol simply closed her eyes and sipped some water, unflapped by his seemingly crazy slip of the ear. “I did,” she confirmed quietly, after draining the small cup. Archer automatically walked across, took the cup from her and refilled it. Handing it back, he took a fresh cup for himself and poured it full, wishing it was something stronger than tap water. The pitcher shook a little as he replaced it on the side table. Standing, the captain swigged some of the tepid liquid, his dry throat thanking him, and then he resumed his backward chair by the bed. T’Pol silently watched her commanding officer attempting to digest the news she had dumped upon him. Archer frowned to himself, as though at a particularly knotty warp field equation, and then he peered deep into his water cup as if the solution might lie at the bottom. Finally, he settled on a good question to head up the thousands that were buzzing in his brain, demanding answers. He squinted up at T‘Pol. “How’d you even have time t’—I mean, you got divorced, and later that same day, you got attacked…twice, they say. You only left the ship twenty-six hours ago. How do you find time for a wedding ceremony and chicken wings in there?” T’Pol looked vaguely nauseated. “I do not eat chicken.” Archer wasn’t put off. “You know what I’m saying.” He waited for her response. T’Pol wasn’t ready to explain everything yet. She didn’t even know how much she could explain. Daniels? The other—dead—version of herself? The Trellium? She finally spoke, eyes closed, voice leaden in her throat. “It is…a long story.” “It would have to be,” Archer agreed readily, realizing, as he watched her exhausted face, that the story would have to wait. He regarded his sphinx-like first officer with a mixture of awe and protectiveness. Her closed eyelids were sooty with fatigue, but the rest of her face and neck were appallingly pale against the beige of the gown they’d put her in and the darker beige of the sheets. Yet Archer knew that she was stronger than he would ever be. And a faint aura of this indomitable strength hung about her always—even when she was brought low by circumstance, as now. A faint hint of envy wisped through his brain, deepening the respect he already held for her. Abruptly he realised that, though they had worked closely for years, he still had no way to guess what was going through her enigmatic mind. He couldn’t even begin to try. T’Pol opened her eyes to find her captain watching her, the lines on his carven face softer than she’d ever seen them. “Trip’s going to be okay,” Archer said in a certain voice. T’Pol nodded, the shine in her eye finally beading to a tear that slipped quickly down her cheek. Her captain’s mouth tightened with compassion and he silently handed her a tissue. The nurse from the station at the front of the ward tapped briskly on the door’s window. Archer left T’Pol to compose herself, went to the door, and opened it. “Your time is up,” the Vulcan nurse blandly informed him. He handed Archer a hot mug of tea. “You can leave this with her before you go.” Careful not to spill any liquid from the brimming cup, the captain carried the tea to T’Pol’s side table. “Here, I think Soval found you some mint tea. I’d let it cool a little though; it’s pretty hot.” T’Pol had wiped the tear from her face, but Archer could see the unshed ones in her eyes, waiting for him to leave. He pushed the tea close to the bed so she could reach it, and straightened. “Get some rest,” he ordered kindly. “I’m going to go see about getting you out of here.” “We need to bring someone else with us,” T’Pol informed him, her hoarse voice whittled to a whisper now. “A priest named T’Saru. I am uncertain of her whereabouts, but someone should be able to find her for you. I believe she is the only one who can successfully separate Trip and Koss.” The captain’s head spun at the myriad possible explanations for the bizarre events of the last few hours, but he knew he’d just have to wait. “T’Saru,” he repeated. “Okay. I’ll find her.” “Thank you, Jonathan,” T’Pol said. Her voice tightened to almost nothing. “For everything.” Jonathan Archer smiled and reached out to put a sad hand lightly against her face. He nodded at her, holding her eye for a moment, and then swiftly left the room. * * * Soval had not only pulled strings to acquire mint tea, he also had found some way to obtain their passage off the surface on a small government shuttle. T’Pol’s attending physician at the hospital had refused her permission to use the transporter so soon after a synthetic blood transfusion. “It seems even pariahs have their contacts,” the silver-haired Soval had said self-deprecatingly when the captain thanked him for arranging their flight. The pair stood in the blinding sun on the landing pad near the hospital. Archer looked around, squinting violently in the yellow light. “Y’know I always forget my sunglasses when I come here. Occupational hazard of living most days in space, I guess.” Soval inclined his head, his face comfortable in his homeworld’s glare. “I can see how it would be a difficult item to recall on so infrequent a basis. I shall endeavour to have a pair available for when next you visit.” “Thanks.” Archer smiled and shook the other man’s hand. He didn’t doubt that, should he find himself under the hospitality of the older man again, a pair of sunglasses would be unobtrusively provided. T’Pol had already been carefully loaded onboard by a new female medic who seemed to consider the notorious woman her own special charge. Then, her duties fulfilled, the medic exited the hatch and waited nearby to watch the small craft take off and return her new heroine to the stars from whence she had descended. Exploration was indeed a noble art, the rash young woman decided, making small, logical adjustments to her future career plans. Physicians were in great demand in the space program. Surely her parents would see the reasoning behind her new thoughts. The youth of Vulcan were, at times, easily impassioned. And all of the various young medical personnel who had come into contact with the infamous T’Les’ infamous daughter, T’Pol, over the course of the day, were either revulsed or fascinated by the woman. In fact, T’Pol had been surprised at how many belonged to the latter group, and how few to the former. The teachings of Surak were washing over her dry planet like water, T’Pol realized with some gratification. Her mother would have found it most agreeable. The small craft lifted off smoothly and their Vulcan pilot expertly manipulated his controls so that they swiftly shot through the atmosphere toward the heavens. T’Pol eyed the third passenger. T’Saru seemed to sleep peacefully, her eyes closed, her hands folded over her stomach. The priest Archer had magically produced hadn’t stirred when T’Pol had entered the small craft, but T’Pol could sense an alertness to the elderly woman’s ear and nostril that made her suspect that she was only appearing to doze. The magnificent curve of the planet suddenly became clear as they approached orbital altitude. The opaque reddish sky turned a brilliant black, and all the sunsets of the world conglomerated into the reddish haze at the edges of the inverted, inky bowl of sky. 40 Eridani A, the star responsible for Vulcan’s kiln-like deserts, blazed in the blackness. It seemed oddly impotent out there in the distance—robbed of the planet’s inflaming and diffusing atmosphere, the star seemed powerless to touch them. T’Khut hovered, seemingly nearby, her large face turned so that only a brilliant, curved slice gleamed—sickle-like—against the velvet nothingness in which it hung. Within moments they were at their destination. The craft slowed smoothly as it approached the great silent ships circling, ghostlike, the planet below. Enterprise’s launch bay doors spun sickeningly into view, highlighting violently the artificiality of their small habitat, as the Enterprise seemed to barrel-roll before them, the pilot lining up their craft with the docking bay. Suddenly, the pilot jumped, startled by a body that had just thumped against the windshield, rolling up and away over their shuttle with no resistance at all. The pilot cut power and checked his sensors. Archer hadn’t noticed anything, absorbed as he was in the pattern of the carpet. But T’Pol had been staring straight out the window, watching Enterprise creep slowly closer, impatient to get T‘Saru to sickbay. She had seen the limp, sack-like thing as it clumped against their craft and flopped up away out of sight again. She rose shakily to her feet and made her way to the cockpit. The young pilot looked up at her. “There seems to be a body outside,” he informed her with mild interest. T’Pol looked over his shoulder at the bioscanner. Though not nearly as good at recognising dead persons as living ones, the sensors could still identify a body via markers such as bone density and haematological makeup—if it was fresh enough. “A dead Andorian,” T’Pol said quietly to Archer as he approached the front of the craft to see what the commotion was. “What the hell?” he responded, starting as the pilot expertly turned the craft and the body floated peacefully into view again. The shuttle slowly approached. “We are equipped with a tractor beam. Shall I retrieve the body?” the pilot enquired professionally, as if corpse-retrieval was a normal part of his routine. “Looks like the Andorians don’t want him, poor bastard,” the captain commented dryly. “We may as well stick ‘im in our Sickbay while we’re figuring all this out.” “Do you think he is one of the Sel’Tior?” T’Pol asked, as the pilot locked his tractor beam onto the man’s inert form and set him dragging along next to them in their resumed course for Enterprise’s docking bay. “Who knows?” Archer replied. “The way Shran runs his ship, that guy could be on work detail right now.” T’Pol agreed, merely arching a slim brown to communicate her harmony of sentiment. She felt light-headed again and took a seat. T’Saru had opened her eyes during the recent activity, but still said nothing. There was nothing that required saying. T’Pol eyed her for a moment before finally speaking to the woman she hadn’t seen since childhood, except in someone else’s recent memory. “Thank you for coming.” T’Saru tilted her head slightly at the thanks. “A human custom,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Nonetheless,” T’Pol replied. “I wish to let you know that I am grateful for your assistance. My mother always held you high in her esteem.” “Unlike her daughter,” T’Saru said, finally speaking aloud. T’Pol felt her cheeks heat slightly as she remembered her youthful disapproval of the woman, decades ago. “However, the blunders of youth must needs be forgiven by the old,” T’Saru continued neutrally, simply stating facts. “It is youth’s nature to blunder. Just as forgiveness is the particular province of the elderly.” T’Pol simply nodded at this strange bit of wisdom, unable to think of an appropriate response. The rest of the docking took place in silence. * * * Archer stepped out of the sleek Vulcan craft and walked over to the inert Andorian who was lying on the shuttle bay deck several feet away. Malcolm and an ensign whose name he could never seem to remember were already hovering over the body, having rushed up in curiosity as soon as the room repressurised. Bucket? Barrel? Malcolm looked up as the captain approached. “Getting in a little target practice?” he asked, somewhat revulsed at the limp pile of flesh and clothing huddled on the launch bays spotless, painted deck. Bearnall. That was it. “We just scooped him up,” Archer responded. “He looks like he fell out an airlock somewhere. You and Ensign Bearnall grab an anti-grav cart and get this thing up to Phlox’s morgue. And for God’s sake, cover him up with something.” “Yes, sir,” chirped Ensign Bearnall, taking advantage of the opportunity to get away from the pale blue, pop-veined thing on the floor, without looking too cowardly. He rummaged in a storage locker in the back of the bay, looking for a tarp, and giving the other two men plenty of time to grab the corpse’s thawing, slick hands and boots and heave it onto a nearby anti-grav cart. The cart belonged to Engineering, not Sickbay, and was designed for cargo not comfort. However, the Andorian was in no position to complain. Bearnall trotted back up with a dark blue tarp, only slightly paint-stained, and soon the body was nicely tucked out of sight. Malcolm reached a hand up to assist T’Saru down the ramp and then again for the shockingly pallid T’Pol, who emerged after her. He held T’Pol’s arm for a moment after she gained the decking, not certain she wouldn’t swoon to the floor. Her synthetic blood transfusion had left her skin a pale, ghostly shade of mint. Trying to remind himself that Vulcans were supposed to be green, Malcolm looked into her haunted eyes. “Are you all right, Commander?” he asked in a concerned British undertone. “I will be,” she said, meeting his gaze. Malcolm nodded, seeming to understand her mood. “Let’s get you up to Sickbay,” he said briskly. “I dare say he misses you.” T’Pol’s skin prickled involuntarily at the oblique reference to Trip. Commander Reed was Trip’s best friend, other than her. What things had they spoken of during those years she’d held herself stoically apart? Those long silent weeks after one particular evening, when she wouldn‘t speak to him? After their horribly short-lived stint as parents? Firmly banishing illogical musings, T’Pol leaned gratefully on Malcolm’s supporting arm, vowing to change her attitude—somewhat—in support of her new husband. It wouldn’t do for the crew to think she had him hostage in some kind of man-trap. As they began walking, Malcolm leaned in and spoke confusedly out of the corner of his mouth. “Did you say something, Commander?” T’Pol hurriedly contained her thoughts and glanced up at him with a bland eyebrow. “I don’t believe I did,” she replied evenly. Malcolm shook his head as if his ear was bothering him. And walking together, they exited the launch bay and joined the strange procession to Sickbay—Ensign Bearnall reluctantly leading the way with his floating bier. * * * A replacement lieutenant now stood in the technician’s booth, depressurising the bay again and clearing the Vulcan pilot for takeoff. Busy with the many discrete steps to launching a ship from the bay, the lieutenant didn’t notice a lone, slight figure slip down from the high roof of the sleek Vulcan craft and press itself against the side of the small ship. The lieutenant sent the pilot launch clearance. The pilot powered up and rose a few inches off the decking before aligning carefully with the centre of the doors and speeding cleanly through them. The lieutenant surveyed the empty launch pad before him, and, satisfied, reactivated the force field and closed the bay doors, repressurising the room as he did so. He briskly notified the bridge that launch was complete. And finally due to take a meal in the mess hall after working a harassing double-shift, the lieutenant logged off the workstation. He exited the technician’s booth and turned to secure the door. * * * A lone figure slid slimly through the vent in the lofty ceiling. An instant later, Launch Bay 2 was finally empty, save for the one lieutenant, who slumped oddly against the foot of the booth door. |
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