The Ring of Truth-Part 12

Fix the Finale Fic

The Ring of Truth

By Evalyn A.

Rating: G

Disclaimer: All belongs to whoever inherited the franchise -- not mine, though they really really don’t deserve it now .

A/N: Moving on from TATV – for those of you who insist it’s canon … well, read on.

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Chapter 12

Tucker clasped Brodeur’s hand as he prepared to board the last evacuation vessel at the launch bay. “It’s been an honour, Mister Brodeur,” he said.

Brodeur frowned at him. “I expect to see you here in one piece when I get back, Chief, and don’t leave a mess for me to clean up either.” He turned to T’Pol, and in a surprising gesture, took her hand and placed a gentlemanly kiss on it. “I know Vulcans don’t generally appreciate this kind of thing, T’sai T’Pol, but somehow I get the feeling you’ve acclimatized pretty well to our foibles.” He glanced sideways at Tucker and then back at her. “You make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“I have considerable practice at that,” T’Pol replied dryly. “Thank you, and we will see you in a few hours.”

Brodeur nodded, and paused for a moment to look over the launch bay, as though he were giving it a final farewell. He then turned and boarded the vessel, the final two security personnel boarding behind him. Tucker and T’Pol retired to the control room. As the doors opened and the ship departed, Tucker sighed and punched in the sequence to close the doors and repressurize the bay.

He gave one last look out the launch bay windows past the icy crags on Europa’s frozen surface, at the rapidly dwindling light reflecting from the surface of the evacuation vessel as it departed.

One small ship remained, a maintenance vessel, big enough for the two of them, just. It had no capability for interplanetary travel; if they had to use it to evacuate, it would just get them into a stable orbit around Jupiter to await rescue. Neither one had discussed the fact that if evacuation was necessary, the vessel could well be too slow to escape the shock wave. There was no other option.

“Shall we begin?” T’Pol enquired gently, sensing his wistful mood.

“Yeah, let’s get to it,” he replied. They walked without speaking down the halls that seemed to echo their footsteps eerily now that there was no one remaining within the station but them. They entered the central chamber, and both paused for a moment to contemplate the immense, pulsing ring of energy that had activated with the last stage.

“Okay,” Tucker said. “I’ll position the charges, and you configure the detonators.” Their plan was crude, but they had little time for elegance. They had identified five locations that appeared to carry critical energy flows, between various components of the device. Each was shielded, but the explosive charges they planned to use had enough energy to overcome the shielding, and destroy the energy transmission matrix within, hopefully without having enough energy to destroy the functional, connected components of the alien device nearby.

That part of the plan was simple enough. What they could not predict was how their tampering with the device might affect other connected systems, for massive amounts of energy flowed within – despite the fact that the device appeared capable of far more than it should with the energy it had, that energy was still enough to level the station and everything within thousands of metres.

It was clear that the main body of the device constituted the energy reactor that would power the giant transporter when it activated. The transporter consisted of two parts: the long-range portion, that would bring the pattern matrix of whatever it was designed to transport from vast distances; and the short-range portion, that would pluck the atoms needed to complete the reconstitution from the moon within which it was lodged. The transporter itself was directly connected to the reactor, while the transmission array was remotely located some hundreds of metres away. This much they had ascertained.

However, there were two other unconnected systems that undoubtedly served other subsidiary functions that had not yet been identified. But Tucker was convinced that no one would have gone to all the trouble to build this device without designing into it some sort of self-defence systems. Following the logic the device’s designers had used to trigger it in the first place, namely the presence of significant high-energy human technological activity in the outer planets of the solar system, it was likely that the self-defence systems would not engage until sufficient activity triggered them here. And Tucker figured that blowing off a few charges in the vicinity of the device was a pretty likely trigger.

They worked with a minimum of discussion, as usual each feeling the other’s intentions without asking. They had the charges in place and the detonators programmed within twenty minutes. It was now a question of waiting till they received the signal that the evacuation vessels had reached a safe distance.

They sat in the command centre for a few minutes without speaking; in unspoken acquiescence, they had dimmed the lights to give an illusion of intimacy.

“We’ve got four hours, minimum,” Tucker pointed out. “Like something to eat?”

“I am not hungry,” T’Pol replied, without elaboration.

He sighed. “Neither am I, but it’ll pass the time, and maybe it’ll help in the crisis to have a bit of food in us.” He departed, and returned a few minutes later with a selection of somewhat edible foods from the dispensary. T’Pol accepted his selection for her without comment, and they ate for a while in companionable silence.

“You know,” Tucker said suddenly, waving his fork, “maybe by blowing this thing up we’ll just be proving to them that we’re as dangerous as they think we are.”

“Perhaps,” T’Pol replied. “But any intelligent species would recognize the apparent threat that this facility would imply, and would arrange for some form of communication to indicate otherwise if they so desired. The absence of any such indication, and the manner in which the facility was hidden, does not imply friendly intentions.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it,” he agreed, and finished his meal without further comment, then watching as she finished hers more slowly, with small, careful bites.

After she put down her utensils, he said. “Want to play ‘What if’?”

She frowned slightly. “I do not know that pastime.” When she first knew him, she would have assumed that this was a frivolous attempt to waste time. However, she now knew that his sometimes apparently superficial conversation often hid a much deeper intent.

“I start by saying something like – what if you’d never been posted to Enterprise? Where do you think you’d have ended up?”

This type of activity was unusual for a Vulcan; while speculating over possible outcomes in the future had obvious benefits, reanalyzing events from one’s personal life was much less common, when there appeared to be no obvious lesson to be learned. However, she humoured him. “I would have remained on Earth, likely ending up in some sort of diplomatic role. I had, even by that time, formed an attachment to humans, although I had not yet recognized it. Since postings to Earth were not particularly prized, there would have been little competition had I chosen to stay. I might have been ambassador, some day.”

He grinned, “Maybe you still will.”

“I doubt it,” she replied. “I have burned a great many bridges.”

“Still,” he said, “I like the idea of you replacing Soval. We could have met anyway, hmm? Okay,” he continued, “your turn.”

After a momentary pause, she offered, “What if you had decided to remain on Columbia instead of returning to Enterprise?”

“Oooh,” he winced. “That one’s nasty.” He leaned back, his hands behind his head, and poked his tongue into his cheek. “I don’t know. I don’t think I would have stayed for long. It wasn’t home, not like Enterprise. Probably would have ended up back on Earth in the warp development program eventually.”

“In which case I would have met you there, when I returned to become ambassador,” she added smoothly. “For I doubt I would have remained on Enterprise once you were gone.”

He leaned forward and smiled. “You wouldn’t?”

“I did not possess any particular devotion to space travel,” she admitted. “I had not pursued it as a career, it was thrust upon me by a series of events … I remained on Enterprise because it was an interesting place to pursue my scientific career, but also because of her Captain, her crew, and of course you, although I did not care to admit it.” She paused, remembering her conflicted feelings at that time. “When you left for Columbia, everyone changed.”

“Changed? What do you mean?” He looked startled, as though he had never truly considered how his departure might have affected the crew of Enterprise.

“The Captain was introverted and short-tempered. Mr. Reed, I believe now, blamed me for your departure, and treated me rather coolly. Despite Mr. Kelby’s best efforts, engineering was not a particularly pleasant environment. Dr. Phlox kept scrutinizing me as though I were a specimen he was observing to see whether it would sprout wings.” She frowned slightly as she recalled just how uncomfortable she had felt, knowing that despite Trip’s denials, he had left because of her, and Phlox knew it; he had undoubtedly been waiting for her to have some sort of breakdown. She suppressed a sigh. “And … I had not realized just how much I depended on you for social interaction.” After a moment, she continued, “I was lonely.”

He took her hand, and rubbed it gently, as if to make up for his unconscionable absence that time seven years ago. “God, so was I. I could hardly make myself get up in the morning, knowing that I wouldn’t see you. I thought that once I was gone, I could stop thinking about you, and get on with things. But I just ended up thinking about you all the time … daydreaming, imagining conversations with you … but I guess they weren’t all imaginary, hmm?” He stopped to remember, for a moment. “Anyway, I guess you figured out that I’d pretty much given up on the idea of being away from you, it was just making things worse.”

“It was the bond, of course,” she murmured. “Its purpose is to keep Vulcan mates together.”

“Partly I expect it was,” he agreed. “But you know, I wonder if I could have stayed away from you for long anyway. Always took quite a few kicks to the head from a girl I was soft on before I’d really give up - a bit of a glutton for punishment, I guess. And you were a once-in-a-lifetime kinda thing,” he admitted, giving her hand one final squeeze. “All right, my turn again.” He leaned back and squinted at her for a good minute, before apparently steeling himself. “What if Koss hadn’t let you out of the marriage?”

She was unable to hide her dismay. “Trip, that is unfair.”

“There’s no unfair in this game, that’s the point,” he replied. “But you for sure don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to,” he conceded. “And if you don’t want to go there, I guess that’s okay. But I guess what I was really asking, is, what would have happened? Because we were bonded already then, weren’t we?”

She nodded, at a bit of a loss. “I do not know. I am unaware of any case in which a woman has been bonded to another man before her wedding; normally it could not happen without the woman knowing, and then, of course, the marriage would have been refused.” She shook her head. “The bond would have revealed itself in time, I think, if I had remained on Vulcan with Koss, away from you. And if I had not …”

“If you’d stayed on Enterprise, but married to him, you mean?” Trip prompted.

“I do not care to think of it,” she said, closing down the line of inquiry. She did not wish to reveal to Trip what would have happened when Koss entered his pon farr, and the possible outcome had she and Trip been bonded at the time, which would have almost certainly ended in someone’s death, likely her bondmate’s.

He could tell that she was disturbed, and decided to let it drop. “Okay, never mind then. Have you got another one?”

“Trip, I recognize your intent was to provide some distraction as well as the opportunity for us to perhaps get to know one another better, but …”

He sighed. “All right. What do you want to do?”

“We could spend some time reviewing the secondary system data,” T’Pol suggested. “As you pointed out, we know little enough of the other portions of the device; we might still find some piece of information that would help.”

“You’re such a romantic,” he said dryly. As she began to protest, he silenced her. “No, you’re absolutely right. I guess I was just being silly.” He reached over to the nearest monitor and punched up the limited schematics they had available on the secondary systems.

“Wait,” she said, putting her hand over his. “It was not a silly idea, Trip. I am not yet fully comfortable with how an intimate relationship should work,” she conceded. “It was helpful. But I feel like we must be doing something, not just waiting to see if we will die. I do not want to die now, not when we have just found each other.”

He took her hand in his, and studied it for a moment. Then, suddenly determined, he stated, “We are not going to die. We’re going to spend the next few hours studying every last detail of this thing, and we’re going to beat it. And when this is all done, we’re going to take a nice long vacation somewhere where they’ve never heard of transdimensional aliens, or Klingons, or Romulans, or Ring-builders,” he waved at the glowing torus below them, “and we’re going to spend some time just you and me, getting to know each other. Deal?” He looked her directly in the eyes, as if daring her to disagree.

“Deal,” she replied after a moment. He leaned forward to give her a brief peck on the lips, and then turned back to his monitor, all business again.

**********

The hours until Brodeur notified them that the evacuation ships were in position sped by far too quickly. T’Pol was sure they had looked over such a small fraction of the data that it could not possibly have made any difference. “Perhaps we should take a few more hours,” she suggested, her anxiety threatening to surface. “We have not reviewed nearly enough …”

“It’ll have to do,” Tucker replied grimly. “We can’t afford to wait. It could happen any time.”

She nodded, stifling her indecision. “Very well.”

They retreated from the command centre back to the launch bay. They had configured the monitors in the launch bay as remote monitors for the central core and all of the monitoring systems in the command centre. This was the compromise on safety they had agreed to with Brodeur; although they would not themselves evacuate the facility, they would trigger the detonation from as close to their escape route as possible.

Tucker opened the clothing lockers, and they both donned EV suits that would provide them a few minutes of additional protection from fire and radiation if things went wrong.

“Read me?” Tucker asked through the comm. system.

With no difficulty, t’hy’la, she replied mentally, and he smiled at her as he felt her thought tug at him.

“All right, then, let’s do it. Hold on tight.” He punched the screen. There was no delay – the charges detonated with a concussion that caused the ground to kick beneath them as the station briefly left its moorings off the icy surface. They both staggered briefly but remained upright. Recovering, they both attempted to follow the readings that streamed across the monitors in front of them. Not surprisingly, the monitors within the central core had blacked out; they could not see directly what had happened.

“So far, so good,” Tucker muttered. “The energy flow has stopped. The chamber has breached though, we’ve lost atmosphere.”

“The energy flow has stopped,” T’Pol agreed, “but it is building up here.” She pointed to one of the readouts. “There must be a source of stored energy we did not identify, and there is now nowhere for it to go.”

“Damn,” Tucker said through his teeth. “How did we miss that? How much is there?”

“Unknown,” T’Pol replied. “The levels are not yet unsafe, but if it continues, there will be enough energy to potentially cause a secondary explosion within perhaps fifteen minutes.”

“How big an explosion?” he asked, frantically punching numbers into his PADD.

“Big enough,” she replied, tersely. “But it might still stop.”

“And it might not,” Tucker said grimly. “We need to find a way to dissipate it.” Although they had likely disabled the device, it was still crucial to preserve as much of it as possible, in order to obtain the most possible information on its builders. And fifteen minutes was quite possibly not sufficient time for them to achieve a safe distance regardless. Their best course was to stop the secondary explosion.

“The only way would be to route it out,” T’Pol stated. “And while that might not cause an explosion, there’s still enough energy there to melt the entire core area, and a good part of the ice mantle of the moon.”

“We can send it up, though,” he pointed out.

“Into space?” she queried. “How?”

“I’m working on it,” he replied. “Come on, we’ve got to be there before we can do anything.”

She followed, hampered by her EV suit, and clumsily climbed after him onto the small, motorized cart they had positioned there for a rapid return if needed.

Halfway there, they encountered the bulkhead doors that had closed when atmospheric containment had been breached. As T’Pol manually defeated the automatic controls, Tucker quickly drove their cart through; resisting the inward rush of air, T’Pol managed to close the door behind them. Less than a minute later, he stopped outside the door, unable to drive closer due to the debris from the door, which had blown out. There was only dim emergency lighting within and an ominous green pulsing glow.

They climbed over the shattered door and briefly surveyed the scene using their emergency lights.

The charges had been effectively placed, causing minimal damage to the adjacent parts of the giant torus, which were effectively shielded. The human-built structures had not fared so well; the windows into the command centre had also been blown out, the floor had heaved from the concussion, and the roof of the chamber had five scorched holes in it through which the dark sky above could be seen. Finally, one small portion of the ring glowed a sickly green, pulsing slowly but with a slight increase in frequency and brightness that was perceptible even during the few seconds they took to observe it.

“What is your plan?” T’Pol asked Tucker. He was silent for a moment.

“We’ve already got the holes we need,” he replied, indicating the damaged roof. “All we have to do is direct the energy that way.”

After another moment, she asked ominously, “You do not have a plan, do you?”

“I’m still working on it,” he admitted.

The truncated device in front of them continued to pulse with increased frequency. T’Pol examined her remote monitoring device. “The energy buildup is increasing exponentially,” she said, managing to keep her voice steady. “We have less time than I predicted.”

“How much less?” he asked, feeling her anxiety even without hearing it in her voice.

“We must leave. NOW,” she said grabbing his arm.

He hesitated, and then ran after her. They climbed onto the cart and Tucker gunned it towards the launch bay. T’Pol jumped from the cart as they reached the bulkheads, to hit the manual override. Just as the doors opened, the floor buckled again beneath them, knocking T’Pol to her feet and toppling the cart sideways, throwing Tucker onto the floor beside it.

The rush of air through the bulkhead doors pushed against the cart as it lay tilted on its side; for a moment, T’Pol watched in a daze as the cart teetered and then tipped over onto Tucker with a crash. T’hy’la! she cried out wordlessly, but received no answer.

Attempting to steady herself against the inrushing wind, she crawled across the floor to him, where he lay pinned beneath the cart. The full weight of the cart lay on his legs below the knees. He was motionless and pale. Additionally, she could see a hole in his suit at the thigh, just above where the cart had him pinned; as she watched, blood began to ooze out the hole, spattering into the vacuum that was forming around them.

The Vulcan equivalent of adrenaline coursed through her veins. Suddenly she felt clear-headed, calm, purposeful. She extracted the patch kit from her suit pocket, and applied it to the hole. It sealed, despite the bloody mess about it, just as it was designed to do. She checked his air supply. It would suffice for now, she could top it up later if necessary from her own. Then she stood, and with a strength she would not have believed she possessed, she picked up the cart and placed a piece of debris from the floor beneath it; it held long enough for her to pull him out before collapsing again. Momentarily exhausted, she looked behind them. She could see a red glow now in the dark distance, not a good sign. There was potentially still enough oxygen flowing around the core through the open bulkhead to sustain a further fire or explosion.

Pulling herself up again, she dragged him out through the bulkhead doors, fighting against the inrushing wind. On the other side, she quickly hit the control, and the doors closed. Momentarily, she leaned against the doors in exhaustion and relief as the wind stopped. Hopefully, the absence of further oxygen would delay any subsequent explosion.

After a moment, she picked Tucker up and threw him over her shoulder. It was not the most secure method of carrying him, for although her strength was more than sufficient, his greater size and the bulk of the EV suit made it difficult to balance. Nevertheless, with grim determination, she strode down the corridor towards the launch bay.

There had been a few less than optimum moments when she feared she would drop him, injuring him again, but she had successfully negotiated the final few turns with her bondmate draped over her shoulder. The launch bay was already nearly depressurized, and the atmosphere generators would be working some time before they could replace the lost air. She laid Tucker gently beside their escape pod, and punched the door open. She carried him within, laying him in the co-pilot’s seat and strapping him down.

Another rumble shook the floor of the launch bay. There was no time to do things properly. She punched the power up sequence and remotely activated the bay doors without bothering with total depressurization. The rush of the remaining air tugged the pod towards the bay doors even as she activated the thrusters. She activated the main drive while they were still within the launch bay, scorching the floor. Brodeur would not be happy with her, she thought distractedly, as she skimmed the pod past the still opening launch doors.

As the craft pulled away from the surface of the moon, she began to count silently, pushing the drive past the red line, her eyes glued to the craft’s sensor readout. As she reached twenty-one, the sensors hysterically registered a disruption of massive proportions. The pod bucked and yawed, as the moon beneath them objected to the injury caused by her thoughtless visitors. T’Pol’s view ahead was obscured by ice crystals that suddenly surrounded her, flying past at breakneck speeds.

Although she could not see it, she could imagine the sight. The explosion and subsequent fire would have heated the icy surface of Europa well past the boiling point of the frozen water that formed its crust. As the crust boiled off, it revealed the liquid ocean that lay below, heated by the tidal action of Jupiter upon this uniquely aqueous moon. The entire facility would have sunk beneath the water, further heating the ocean. Massive quantities of water were boiling off now, shooting out into space, freezing again into ice moments after leaving the surface.

Not enough momentum from the escaping gases to significantly disrupt Europa’s orbit. But plenty to cause significant damage to a vessel caught in their midst, that had not yet escaped her minimal gravity well, and was not designed to withstand any form of significant atmospheric encounter. Her fingers danced over the thruster controls, as she attempted to stabilize their trajectory. The sensors bleated out yet another warning, and her eyes widened. Before she had time to react, a wave of energy hit the pod so hard she could feel the shell crack around them even through her EV suit. The pod tumbled and as it pulled apart, her final thought before the blackness hit her was of him. Together, till death, telsu.

Part 13 (The Conclusion)

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A whole mess of folks have made comments

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! ANGST!!! Cliffies make me pout (*pout*). They better not die, that would just be mean. Great stuff, though, as always! :)

Oooooooo, good stuff! Love this chapter, action packed and full of confessional goodness! :)

Oh.My.God! What a cliffhanger!

No more sleeping for you, no, no, no. Get up and WRITE! Please!

Holy frak. This is outstanding and I CANNOT wait for the next chapter. Everything flows perfectly - the words, the action, the emotion. Excellent!

Whoa! I love the rapid-fire chapters we've been getting. Not to mention such wonderful chapters one after another!

And this chapter? Great stuff. I so hope your muse is still feeling energetic!

Evil Cliffy, more please.

Okay... I'm hyperventilating. My heart is racing, and the lunch I just wolfed down so I'd have time to read this on my lunch hour is in an undigestible lump in the pit of my stomach. Suspense. You're very good at it, you know. Whew!

Oh, that was awesome! Great work. But it stopped at a most evil spot. ;) Can't wait to find out what happens next.

I was so excited to see this posted! Oh my, you are good. Waiting most impatiently for more.

Evil cliffy - I hope you gonna update very soon!