“The intruders were trying to get to Shran and Theras,” Archer said to T’Pol. “Trip tried to stop them. He got caught in some kind of plasma explosion.”

Two of Phlox’s medical technicians–Garver and Stepanczyk–rushed into the chamber, even as T’Pol’s voice issued from the communicator. “The intruders are no longer aboardEnterprise . Their ship is pulling away.”

“What about Shran and Theras?” Archer asked, although he already knew the answer. After all, the reason the “pirates” had come aboard had absolutely nothing to do with Enterprise’s two guests from Andoria.

“Still aboard, Captain. Commander Tucker’s gambit appears to have succeeded in discouraging them.”Had her voiced quavered ever so slightly when she’d said Trip’s name?

“Pursue them, but do notengage,” Archer shouted. “Archer out.”

Phlox began barking orders to his med techs, even as Trip put on an award‑winning performance for their benefit. He really did seem to be in great pain, as well as unable to breathe properly.

“The plasma was superheated,” Phlox said to Archer, counterfeiting a sense of rapidly rising alarm. “It thermalized his lungs.” He turned urgently to one of the techs. “Initialize the hyperbaric chamber.”

Archer approached the side of Trip’s biobed. Between gasps, the engineer said, “Sorry about the rifle butt…” He trailed off, his breath apparently beginning to fail him.

“I know, Trip,” Archer said. “Just take it easy. Everything’s all right.”

Trip suddenly began to wheeze violently, as though he could no longer breathe at all.

“We need to get him into the chamber! Now!” Phlox shouted. With Archer’s help, the Denobulan and his med techs moved Trip onto a gurney, and then slid the gurney toward the open and waiting cylinder of the hyperbaric chamber.

As they slid Trip inside, Phlox saw the engineer offer a weak smile–and perhaps an almost imperceptible wink–to Archer.

I hope the techs didn’t see that,Phlox thought as he pressed the button that closed the door and sealed off the airtight chamber from the rest of sickbay. He turned and regarded Captain Archer, who hadn’t returned Trip’s smile.

They both knew that in faking his death, Trip had changed whatever remained of his life forever.

And theirs as well.

Although he was reeling from the news, Travis Mayweather knew he still had a job to do, and he did his best to focus on it. Ten minutes ago, they had lost the trail of the pirate vessel when it entered a dense cloud of asteroids, planetesimals, and assorted other space debris that orbited an uncharted, unremarkable F‑type star. Enterprise’s polarized hull plating was holding up under the barrage, but the ship was taking a battering.

“I still can find no trace of the intruders’ vessel, Captain,” T’Pol said, sounding grimmer than at any other time he could remember.

Mayweather couldn’t even imagine what she must be feeling right now, after absorbing the terrible news of Commander Tucker’s sudden death. Feeling? Is she evenallowing herself to experience her emotions right now? Or is she just using her Vulcan training to lock them away?

“Keep searching,” Archer said from his command chair, his tone and manner grave as well.

The ship pitched to one side as something large and solid collided with the polarized hull plates. “Sorry, Captain,” Mayweather said, not turning from his post. “We’re flying almost blind here.”

Almost as if on cue, the forward viewscreen lit up brightly, illuminating the interstellar flotsam and jetsam that surrounded them. Mayweather knew what it was even before T’Pol verbalized it for the entire bridge. He had seen enough accidents in space while growing up on space freighters to recognize a catastrophic collision.

“I’m showing a warp‑core explosion approximately four hundred thousand kilometers ahead,” T’Pol said. “The energy pattern is consistent with the warp signature of the intruder’s vessel.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mayweather saw that Archer had stood up from his chair and approached the helm controls.

“Take us in slowly, Travis,” he said quietly. “That hadto be them. They probably shut down their engines while they were hiding from us, then got creamed by an asteroid. Let’s confirm the wreckage.”

“Yes, sir,” Mayweather said. He half hoped to find escape pods somewhere in the region surrounding the late pirate vessel’s mostly vaporized remains.

The possibility that Commander Tucker’s killers might have died an easy death didn’t sit well with him at all.

Thirteen

The early twenty‑fifth century

Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana

JAKE STIFLED A YAWN behind one hand.

“You’re bored?” Nog asked, surprise in his voice.

Jake turned to his old friend and grinned. “Not at all, just tired. Between the sound of the rain, the warmth of the fire, the wine, and my age, I’m fighting the sandman.”

Nog tilted his head to one side. “Is that another hewmon cultural idiom, or some other reference I shouldunderstand but don’t?”

Jake smiled again. “It’s from an old Earth myth. The sandman was the king of dreams. He’s the reason when you wake up you have little bits of grit in the corners of your eyes.”

Nog’s expression was one of simultaneous enlightenment and befuddlement. “Ah, I remember now. And he also brings women the men of their dreams. Like in that song I heard some of the female singers perform back at Vic’s. But I don’t ever have ‘grit’ in my eyes when I wake up.”

“Humans often do,” Jake said. The mention of Vic made Jake nostalgic for the old days. Some years back, Quark had given him a copy of Vic’s holodeck program; he had only played it a dozen times or so since, usually when he wanted to get into an old‑timey mood for his writing. Vic didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t activated often, or at least if he did, he didn’t chide Jake about it too much. Still, it would be nice to visit Vic’s again, Jake thought.

“So, what do you think now?” Nog asked, gesturing toward the two small holo‑imagers whose two extremely divergent narratives about Commander Tucker they’d been watching.

“It’s very strange,” Jake said. “Parts of the story are familiar, but just interpreted differently, and placed five years earlier. It’s like the story behind the story.”

“Don’t they say that history is written by the conqueror?” Nog asked.

“The victor. Though either word works about as well as the other.” Jake ran his hand over the short, gray hair at the back of his head. “What’s so strange about this is that Charles Tucker was one of the better‑known martyrs of the proto‑Federation, and yet the commonly accepted details of his death are nothing terribly heroic. If anything, the standard ‘bad guys invade the ship’ scenario makes both him and Captain Archer look sort of unprepared, and makes Enterprisesecurity seem so lax as to be laughable.”

“Maybe we’re going to find out that Tucker’s role in early Federation history was more pivotal than we knew,” Nog said.

Jake nodded sagely and reached for his now nearly empty wineglass. “The other thing that’s really unusual about the revised version is the way Section 31 is depicted. It’s smaller than we know it actually became, but the bureau seems to have an almost noble agenda…or at least as much nobility as a spy organization can have.”

“Maybe the morality of it is colored by what happened to Earth in the Xindi attack of 2153,” Nog offered. “Not to mention Terra Prime. And it’s not like I supported Thirty‑One at the end, but we know that every government in the galaxy has its own spy network. It’s not like this was the only one, for poverty’s sake.”

Jake laughed. Another thought suddenly occurred to him. “What about the parts of the original history that centered on Rigel X, with Shran’s daughter being rescued from her kidnappers, and the theft of the Tenebian amethyst, and so on? Is all of that a complete fabrication?”