Tucker stared at him, worried. “All by yourself?”
“ ‘It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.’ A Cubano said that! And I know there are others who will join me. Others who feel like I do—like I thought we did.”
The agent studied the engineer’s face carefully. This was no drunken fantasy; Ruiz genuinely planned to stir up the very kind of trouble that Harris had warned Tucker against creating. “Listen,” he said to his friend. “I understand why you wanna do this. I swear, I do. We’ve both lost people. We don’t want to see others suffer. But . . . you gotta choose your battles, man. This one—well, if you took it on, you wouldn’t be on the Federation’s side.”
“Yeah? Well, so what? What are they gonna do about it?”
Tucker grabbed his arm. “Listen. It won’t go well for you if you don’t drop this.”
Ruiz stared at the hand on his arm, then at Tucker’s face. “Are you . . . are you threatening me?”
“No, I—” He realized what he’d been doing—how easily he’d fallen into the habit of veiled threat and intimidation. How could he talk that way to a friend? He remembered the look in Jonathan Archer’s eyes when they’d interrogated that Xarantine pimp last year. The pimp hadn’t been the only one afraid of what he might do.
“Look,” he went on in what he hoped was a friendlier tone. “I’m just trying to look out for your safety. You need to know that what you’re thinking of doing could be dangerous in more ways than you realize.”
Ruiz jerked his arm free. “And you’d tell them, wouldn’t you? Be the good little spy boy. I shoulda known. You just used me. Pretended to be my friend.”
“No. I didn’t have to make friends with you to do my job. I did it because we connected.”
“But you’d still throw me to the wolves. Well, fine!” Ruiz punctuated it with a roundhouse punch so sloppy that Tucker could’ve blocked it with ease. But he didn’t try, and ended up on the floor with his jaw throbbing. “Tell them to give it their best shot!” Ruiz went on over the ringing in his ears. “You know where I’ll be.”
The bouncer came over, ready for trouble, but Tucker held up his hands in an appeasing gesture and let himself be escorted out. He didn’t try looking back at Tony Ruiz. He no longer deserved the privilege of calling himself the man’s friend.
Freighter Harryhausen, outbound from Sauria
T’Pol found him in their shared mindspace that night. “It has been some time,” she said tentatively, her figure in stark silhouette against the white space that Trip currently lacked the will to embellish with his own mental imagery. “I had been growing concerned.”
Trip stood where he perceived himself to be, a few paces before her. “I’ve been far away,” he said. He fidgeted. “I still am, for the moment, but . . . I guess I needed you tonight.”
With the invitation given, it was no time at all before she was in his arms, or so his mind interpreted the comfort and love he felt from her now. “Can you tell me?” she asked.
He just held her for a while, soaking in her warmth against him. Finally he said, “I thought I was doin’ some good, T’Pol. I thought that justified all the compromises, the lies . . . the sacrifices. Now I’m not so sure.”
“You are no longer convinced that Section Thirty-one acts in the best interests of the Federation?” She kept her tone neutral.
“That’s just it,” he said. “Protectin’ the Federation is all that matters to them. So much so that . . . maybe they’re forgetting about protecting what it stands for.”
He pulled back just enough to face her. “Is that all we are?” he asked. “Just a place, a bunch o’ planets and governments and, and resources to protect? Can you defend a nation without defending its soul?”
She held his gaze. “I once believed so, when I served the High Command. My time on Enterprise showed me I was mistaken.”
He took her implied meaning. As a result of those experiences, she had resigned from the Vulcan High Command . . . and eventually played an active role in its dissolution.
Could he follow her example? Could he even survive the attempt?
“I don’t know,” he told her. “Section Thirty-one isn’t that bad.”
“Neither was the High Command, when I joined it. Corruption spreads.”
“But maybe there’s still time. Maybe if I stay in, I can fight the corruption, keep them on the right path.”
“Or you could succumb to that corruption. If you make too many compromises to remain, however noble your justifications, you will lose too much of yourself.” He felt her hand stroke his cheek. “I have no desire to lose you, Trip. For my sake, if nothing else—get out while you can.”