The Final...- Pt. 3

The Final Mission

Part Three

by Aquila

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Paramount owns the Star Trek universe.

Summary: A sequel to Starfleet Engineering

Category: Alternate Universe

***************
==

The full moon left a trail of diamonds on the stream that ran below the cabin. The landscape of boulders and cacti was shadowed and brooding like his thoughts. The tequila bottle at his feet was half full, but not near enough empty to erase the anger that kept him awake at three in the morning.

A night owl hooted as his prey scurried through the undergrowth. Trip saluted in the direction of the sounds.

“Be wary little beast. Watch the sky. Ya niver know when trouble might descend, changin’ yer life forever.”

Impulsively, he threw the bottle into the night, taking satisfaction from the shattering of glass that followed. He stumbled to the hammock, stretched across a corner of the porch, falling in like a sailor returning from shore leave.

The swinging of the hammock fused with the tequila induced whirling of his brain. He spiraled down, out, in and down again. Hastily he rolled to hang his head over the side. He heaved the contents of his stomach onto the floor below, then passed out.

==

“For the love of Gandhi, Trip”

Jonathan Archer’s eyes teared at the smell of stale vomit and unwashed man.

“What the hell has gotten into you?”

The body in the hammock did not move, so Archer made himself at home. He rooted about in the small galley for a bucket, which he filled from the stream. As noisily as he could, he swabbed the porch deck. Trip slept on.

The admiral had traveled all night alerted by Councilor Phoebus that their friend needed a friend. Archer hadn’t seen Trip in this condition since? Since Enterprise had returned from the mission in the Delphic Expanse.

His growling stomach inspired Archer. The smell of cooking food should wake him up. While the stove heated up, Archer beat some eggs and sliced some bacon. The slices of bread he cut he inserted in a wire grill to toast on top of the stove. Why his friend insisted on a device as archaic as a cast iron stove, he would never understand.

A speckled enamel coffee pot was filled with water and ground coffee. Trip had taught him to make coffee like the cowboy’s on the Western Frontier. When was that mused Archer? Our first camping trip together, that’s it. Must have been nearly forty years ago?

==

Trip’s nose twitched, then his stomach heaved. The motion of his dry retching caused the hammock to swing, which made him feel worse. Responding with an animal instinct to stimuli he rolled out of the hammock, landing on the deck with a thud.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Good morning, Professor Tucker.”

Trip cracked one eye open.

“I must be hallucinatin’.” He squeezed his eyes shut in disbelief.

“Nope,” Archer waved the iron frying pan about under Trip’s nose. “It’s me, pal. And I’ve cooked breakfast. Just the way you like it. Eggs over easy, beans warmed through, bacon crisp and the toast just this side of burnt.” Jonathan had delivered the menu in a perfect imitation of Trips southern drawl.

“Jeez,” Trip rolled over. “Go away.”

Archer had had enough. In a command deck voice that he had not used for years, he shouted, “Get your butt into breakfast, Tucker, but you had better be washed and shaved before you sit down.”

Years of Starfleet discipline propelled Trip toward the wash house, doubled over and groaning, but on the move.

==

“You are sixty-one years old.” Archer reminded Trip as they sipped their after breakfast coffee sitting on the porch steps. “Behaving like a first year cadet? What’s got into you?”

“How did you know I was here?” Trip said to distract his friend.

“Phoebus called me.” Archer paused. “He said that you needed a friend right now.”

“That’s all?”

“That was enough.”

==

They had spent the day making repairs. It had been over a year, since Trip had lasted visited the cabin. Archer oiled the door hinges. Trip replaced a broken pane of glass.

Two old men, feeling like youngsters again, climbed to the roof to check the chimney for weather damage. Without consciously communicating, the two men made themselves comfortable on the shake roof, their arms resting on their knees as they basked in the sun.

“This is about T’Pol, isn’t it?”

Silence hung between them, shimmering in the sunlight with memories and regrets.

“When I was released from rehab, I came here.” Trip waved his arm. “I bought the land with my first Starfleet pay. Didn’t tell anybody about it, not even my family.”

Archer kept silent.

“The rehab doc had prescribed physical exercise, regular sleep and time for me. So I came here, to build the cabin I had always planned on.” Trip grinned. “I remember the day that she arrived like it was yesterday. I was on the roof then too.”

==

“Good afternoon, Commander.”

Trip looked down from his perch on a roof rafter. The sound of his hammer had masked her arrival.

“T’Pol?” He dropped the hammer in surprise.

“I have disturbed you.” She turned to go.

T’Pol,” he cried out in exasperation. “Ya only just got here, don’t go. Ya arrived unannounced. I’m entitled to be a little surprised and forget my manners.”

“You have no communication device, Commander. I could not announce my arrival.” She watched him swing down, lithe and graceful. His physical coordination appeared to be on the mend.

“And I didn’t tell anyone where I would be, either.” He came to a stop before her, grinning. “I’m glad to see ya, T’Pol.”

==

“And I was,” Trip assured Archer. “I didn’t know it until that moment, but I had missed her, while I was recuperating.”

“No one from the crew was permitted to see you. Did you know that?” Archer wondered if his friend had felt abandoned by his ship mates.

“T’Pol explained it to me that night.” Trip searched for the words. “I hated you, Malcolm, Hoshi, even Travis, when I got out of rehab. You hadn’t come to see me. You hadn’t written. Thirty years later I still don’t understand why they made me off limits.”

“You didn’t hate T’Pol?” Archer was curious.

“I never expected her to visit me.” Trip admitted. “So no, I didn’t feel hatred.”

“We had a lot to thank her for, didn’t we?” Archer realized for the first time in three decades. “She was the common thread that bound us together.”

“We did.” Trip pursed his lips. “I remember the first time she suggested that I communicate with you – after rehab that is.”

The revelation that it had taken more than one suggestion came as a surprise to the admiral.

“She had been with me for a month.”

Archer’s jaw dropped open.

“Yeah, she arrived and never left. I didn’t ask her to stay. She didn’t ask if she could. She just set up camp.” Trip changed the subject. “Did ya know she was handy with tools? Quite the little carpenter.”

“No, no I didn’t.” Archer felt as if the earth’s axis had shifted 45 degrees.

End of Part Three

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