Chapter 2: Meet & Greet

Jonathan Archer left the posh house in one of the ritzier parts of San Francisco feeling morose. Becoming a Starfleet Captain had been a life-long dream, ever since he had started playing with starship models as a little boy. But now, forty years later, the price was excruciatingly high. Minutes ago Erika and he had come to the conclusion that their relationship was no longer sustainable.

Truth be told; It had been her doing the reasoning, while he fought tooth and nails not to cry and to keep up the façade of agreeing with her. In reality he just wanted to run, hide somewhere, and pity himself while sobbing into his beer. Heck, he didn't even have a beer to sob into. But such thoughts were of course way too unseemly for the son of Henry Archer, who had finally been cleared for taking command of the first vessel propelled by his late father's engine.

There were times during which he thought, the thing would never fly. If it wasn't for A.G.'s help to steal the NX-Beta and Trip's genius to get the early engine prototype through all the additional Vulcan prescribed tests after A.G had blown up NX-Alpha, the engine would still wait to break the warp three barrier. Without Maxwell Forrest keeping him out of the clutches of Starfleet's terriers, like Admiral Black, he would not be looking at his first command now. Instead, he would probably be in a holiday resort for cockroaches, in a Penal Colony on some of the Alpha Centauri outposts.

But it had cost him the relationship with Erika. He was now a Captain and she remained a Commander, which could lead to problems with the fuddy-duddys at Starfleet Command, all because of the stupid no-fraternization regulations. As if grown people weren't able to keep private and duty-related things separated – this wasn't High school. Loudest among the defenders of the no-frat policy was of course Black, who was so damn conservative, it was a minor miracle that he used PADDs instead of parchment scrolls and carrier-pigeons.

He took his communicator out of his pocket and flipped it open, a bit more forcefully than absolutely necessary. A chirp announced that the device had connected to the pre-programmed code. His conversation partner announced his name as a greeting.

"Hi Trip, it's Jon. Do you have an hour or two?" he said, looking around if any people would end up unwilling eavesdroppers.

"Sure. You don't sound like you're too well. Everything okay?"

"Let's say I could use a beer or twelve. Care to share some?" he asked back, changing direction towards Trip's Starfleet provided home, which was not too far.

"Every time, where are you? Need me to pick you up?"

"Not necessary Trip, I'm in the area. Be there in fifteen."

Not only do they bust my sorry arse back to Lieutenant, Malcolm thought. No, my very first task as a newly-minted crew member of a ship that isn't even properly nailed together yet, is to provide a taxi service from Brazil for an Ensign. She does look awfully nice though. He looked at the PADD with the service record again. Her face was perfect in every single way. Having grown up in Malaysia he had a preference for cute Asian women. And this Ensign Sato was beyond cute.

The last thought brought him back to the grim reality though. No matter how gorgeous she was, the difference in rank automatically put her off-limits and it was all academic anyway. Describing his success with the females of the species as less than stellar would be a ridiculous understatement. Scoring a shag or two here and there wasn't the problem. All it took was to hint nebulously at the fact that he was some sort of secret operative – that got every pair of knickers wet in a bloody hurry.

But as soon as the reality of dating an operative hit home, mainly the fact that he took off for weeks to kill someone to death, who had probably just looked at Harris cross-eyed, it was usually over in an instant. The lady folk were just too damn demanding these days. They sought for a supermodel, who was good at house chores, didn't need sex any more than once or at most twice a month and told them they're the most beautiful creature in the quadrant – even if they looked like Quasimodo on a bad day.

Whatever happened to partners just making each other's life a bit more complete without expecting or even demanding the impossible from each other? He was rattled out of his mental ruminations by the com message from Manaus approach control, which cleared him to fly his shuttle on a straight-in approach course to Manaus Spaceport. That would save him at least half an hour and straight-in arrivals were usually parked close to the terminal, too.

Trip woke up, feeling like he had been run over by a truck. Damn it all, it had certainly gotten late, but Jon had needed the talk with a good friend. That it was fueled by an entirely unsuitable amount of beer was a lamentable, but insignificant detail. The hangover was bad, but today's work would mainly consist of checking and re-checking the installation of EPS components, something he could do without speaking to people or being spoken to too much, so it wasn't all bad and Jon would spend most of his day touring the ship anyway, so what the hell, a guy can get sloshed once in a while, can't he?

"Morning," John grumbled and Trip had to bite his lip to avoid laughing at Jon's clumsy attempts to get off the couch, where he had crashed last night. "How bad are you feeling?"

"Manageable," Trip shot back. "But that's really a question that I should be asking you."

"I'll manage, too," Jon said, rubbing his forehead. "Got a lot off my chest. Sorry for loading it all off on you."

"Don't be ridiculous, Jon," Trip waved the sentiment off. "That's what friends are for. And you know I wouldn't miss a chance at having a really good excuse for a beer. Although it could have been at least half a dozen less."

"Roger that."

"Excited about the first day as the skipper?" Trip asked.

"Sort of; Anything you can tell me about the senior crew?"

"Pretty much the best of the best," Trip said. "Your XO is the groggy one you're looking at. Science is not decided yet, same goes for CMO. Security chief and tactical officer is a British guy called Reed, Lieutenant. He's apparently some sort of former spook. His service record can be summarized in one word: 'classified'."

"Great; really great."

"Don't moan just yet. The guy apparently hits whatever he shoots at. Undefeated Academy shoot'n champion in every year he took part and on top of that in every weapons category. Some people from his team told me, his party piece was opening a bottle of beer from across the shooting range with single stun blast, without damaging it."

"Okay, so he can shoot things," Jon admitted. "Is he available already?"

"Got his papers yesterday," Trip said and started to pour them some coffee to jump-start their battered bodies. "I've sent him to Brazil to pick up Hoshi Sato, the coms officer."

With interest he noticed Jon's eyes going wide a bit upon mentioning the young Ensign. He'd only seen her picture in the service record, and he could tell she was a beauty. Jon definitely seemed to know her, but he continued as if she was as unknown to his friend.

"She's some sort of language wunderkind, apparently. According to her academy file she learned no less that 32 languages in just the four years on the academy. Wrecked the curve in every class she attended. Still holds the point's records on math, cryptology, linguistics and xeno-linguistics exams. We got ourselves a little genius there."

"So, if I'm to believe that, Starfleet is fresh out of genii, because they will all be on my ship."

"You know what they say about genius and insanity... ," Trip hinted vaguely, before remembering the biggest news. "Speaking of madness: Starfleet News."

It was good to hear Jon laugh.

"In about 4 hours," he explained, looking at his watch. "You'll get a visit from a Subcommander T'Pol. She'll be stationed as a Consultant on the ship."

"Okay, now they do not only crank up the test plans at the last minute and wreck our schedule. Now they even want to put a damn spy on my ship? I'm not putting up with that. I'll have to talk to Max about that."

Trip waited silently for Jon's rant to be over. It didn't take a psycho-analyst to work out that Jon had some issues with Vulcans. He was pacing the living room, mumbling to himself. Jon seemed to have noticed his silence and looked back at him.

"You're not going to say anything?"

"Jon," Trip ventured carefully. "I think it's not that bad an idea. We're getting to places where not even the boomers have been yet. Unless we want to get out and smash into every asteroid there is, we need star charts from the Vulcans. I can't read them and I doubt you can."

"I've never even tried."

"See?" he continued. "It's only temporary, too. Our first LD flight test will be to Vulcan and back. We're supposed to drop her off at home. If Hoshi Sato is as good as they say, she'll have the charts translated by then."

"Guess we can manage," Jon admitted. "But how does she fit in with the crew?"

"There's nothing in the regulations that forbids assigning her temporarily as Science officer, is there? You cannot put her in the chain of Command, obviously, but she could handle the science console."