T’Pol quickly looked him up and down, then raised a critical eyebrow. “I’m gratified to see that you are already wearing your dress uniform, Captain. However, I would have recommended that you don it while the room’s lights were activated.”
Archer sighed and tugged at the buttons that fastened the uniform’s somewhat constricting white collar. “Very funny, T’Pol.” He turned toward the mirror, from which a very tired and nervous‑looking man stared back. “It’s not like I wear one of these every day, you know.”
“Indeed.”
“Does it reallylook that bad?” He turned back toward her.
She set the suitcase down and approached him. “Stand still,” she said as he silently endured the indignity of allowing her to finish straightening his slightly skewed collar. Just as she finished, her communicator beeped, and she backed up a few paces to take the incoming message.
Archer retrieved his padd and returned his attention to its display while fervently wishing that he’d stayed in his quarters aboard Enterpriseto finish preparing his speech. The comforting presence of Porthos, as well as the absence of a multitude of hero‑worshipers just outside his door, would have gone a long way toward calming his frayed nerves. And the ever‑loyal beagle wouldn’t have even consideredoffering him any unsolicited sartorial critiques.
He doubly regretted having left the ship after he heard T’Pol’s next utterance: “Captain, Commander Tucker’s parents have just arrived.”
Charles Anthony Tucker, Jr., had always been tall and broad in the shoulders, not at all given to putting on excess weight. But after Lizzie’s unexpected death nearly two years earlier, his frame had become much sparer, almost gaunt. Since he hadn’t wanted to look as though his apparel had come from a tent and awning company, he’d had to buy all new clothes a few months after the Xindi attack.
Today he felt certain that he’d soon have to replace his entire wardrobe yet again.
During their nearly four decades of marriage, Charles’s wife, Elaine, frequently told him that he had the face of a man who loved to laugh. He wished he could still be that man, if only for her. If he could, then perhaps he might be able to do something about the deep lines of pain and stress that stood out in sharp relief across Elaine’s once smooth and porcelain‑like features.
But Charles had never felt less like laughing than he did today. He and Elaine had come to Candlestick Auditorium, after all, essentially to bury the younger of their two sons–even though there was, of course, no actual body to bury, thanks to the “burial in space” clause Trip had written into his will.
Just as there had been nothing to bury after Trip’s sister Lizzie had been at the wrong place at the wrong time when those damned Xindi had come calling, dealing death from a calm blue springtime sky….
Charles vainly forced himself to consider that much younger version of himself who so loved to laugh. But instead, all he could really focus on was how much that man had lost during the past couple of years. Thank goodness we still have Albert,he told himself, though the thought did little to assuage his grief. Albert had declined Archer’s invitation to meet with him today, explaining that he preferred to stay away from the day’s ceremonies. He’d said he preferred to grieve in his own way, with his husband, Miguel, and their own small nucleus of friends and loved ones. Charles looked forward to seeing their only surviving child again soon, but wished with all his heart that the circumstances could have been different.
He entered the narrow but brightly illuminated conference room alongside Elaine, who gripped her small handbag so hard that her knuckles whitened until they made a perfect contrast with her somber black dress. They both continued standing as they faced the man who had guided them through the auditorium’s vast backstage labyrinth, the sympathetic‑looking male Denobulan who had identified himself as Phlox, the chief medical officer on Enterprise–and as one of Trip’s closest friends. The Denobulan’s startlingly blue eyes gleamed with unshed tears, making him appear so distraught that Charles’s heart went out to him.
“I’m sure you did everything you could to save him, Doctor,” Elaine said, just as Charles was about to say something very similar. He hoped that the doctor would at least take whatever comfort he could from their absolution.
“Thank you, Mrs. Tucker,” said Phlox, though he suddenly looked even more distraught than he had before. “But when you’ve treated, saved, and lost as many patients as I have…” He interrupted himself briefly, as though trying to gather his thoughts, or perhaps reining himself in for fear of saying too much. After taking a deep breath that he let out almost as a sigh, he resumed: “Well, let’s just say that no physician can ever be completely above second‑guessing himself–particularly if the patient is someone to whom the doctor feels close.”
The room’s single door opened again, admitting a man and a woman, both of them displaying somber expressions. The latter was a tall, attractive Vulcan dressed unexpectedly in a Starfleet uniform; a neatly aligned trio of rectangular rank bars on her collar identified her as a commander. The Vulcan woman clutched a small suitcase at her side.
Commander T’Pol,Charles thought, recalling her image from numerous news vids, as well as the many times Trip had mentioned her during his correspondences home. Although there were many things, of course, that his son had left unsaid, Charles always had the impression that Trip had been rather sweet on T’Pol, or perhaps vice versa. When the news services reported that the terrorist John Frederick Paxton had created a human‑Vulcan hybrid infant using DNA from both Trip and T’Pol, Charles had found his dashed dreams of grandfatherhood suddenly rekindled, which surprised him after the terrible blow Lizzie’s death had dealt the whole family. Of course, fate had quashed those hopes with finality when it decided to take Trip from them as well as Lizzie.
Charles immediately recognized the grim‑faced, somewhat taller human standing beside T’Pol as Jonny Archer, to whom Trip had first introduced both him and Elaine some twenty years earlier, though neither Charles nor Elaine had seen him very much at all during most of the last decade or so. Though he was smartly turned out in a formal blue‑and‑white Starfleet dress uniform, the captain seemed to have aged quite a bit since he’d last seen his face on the compic, about two weeks ago. Charles supposed that between the Xindi crisis he had already endured, the recent Coridan tragedy, and the large role the media had credited him with in the formation of the Coalition of Planets, this man must almost literally be carrying the weight of entire worlds upon his wide shoulders.
Archer extended his right hand, and Charles shook it numbly as Phlox began making introductions all around. Then Charles tried to make the Vulcan hand sign for T’Pol in lieu of a handshake–he was proud that he understood at least that much about Vulcan culture–but gave up when he realized that the gesture was slightly beyond his ability.
“Thank you for your letter, Captain,” Elaine said, shaking the captain’s hand and offering an almost courtly nod to T’Pol. “I guess I really wasn’t expecting something so uplifting after you called us with…the news about Trip.”
A distraught expression very much like the one he’d seen Phlox display crossed Archer’s face like a bank of dark storm clouds. “I’m so sorry about this, Gracie. It’s not the kind of letter a captain ever wants to have to write. But I felt I owed it to you both, as Trip’s commanding officer. And as his friend. You both deserve to know how heroically your son died.”
A sudden upwelling of tears rose, poised on the edge of Charles’s lower lids, like a dam about to break. Archer’s face looked distorted, viewed through a prism of grief. Charles closed his eyes so that all he could see was Trip’s smile. Trip as an infant, an eight‑year‑old, a teen, a young man. All he could hear was Trip’s laugh. All he could think was that it was good to know that his son had made so many wonderful, loyal friends during his far too brief life.