Blackened (2): The Unnamed Feeling

by jtm1848

The Enterprise encounters the Osaarians, and Archer has a choice to make.

– THE UNNAMED FEELING –

It isn't easy concentrating on sensor telemetry with a dog shooting puppy eyes at you.

Or so Captain Archer decided as he stole a glance down at Porthos, his ever-faithful companion. The beagle sat on the floor of the captain's ready room, eyeing the captain mournfully with pleading eyes.

Porthos had taken to space travel better than virtually anyone Archer had ever seen—something to do with the steady thrum of the engines and the low-grade heat that radiated from the deck plates, the captain supposed. As much as the canine enjoyed accompanying a landing party to a grass-filled meadow, Porthos seemed to enjoy returning to the soothing embrace of the Enterprise at the conclusion of every mission.

Animal behavioralists can list hundreds of situations where an animal's senses detect minute fluctuations around them—shifts in atmospheric pressure, a change in magnetic fields, the immeasurable shift of a rock hundreds of kilometers underground—any of which could cause a canine to become uneasy and nervous.

And sometimes, Archer thought, the dog is simply trying to sucker you into a belly rub.

Noticing that he had the captain's attention, Porthos whined again and shuffled a couple centimeters closer. "Not now," Archer replied. "When I'm done with this report." He shifted his attention back to the padd.

Moments later, Archer heard a faint thud, and Porthos broke into a soulful howl, causing the captain to frown. Maybe it is more than an itchy belly.

"Come here," Archer said gently, setting down the padd. Porthos broke into a happy, tongue-dangling face and eagerly trotted over to his best friend. Archer leaned back, leaving his lap open, and the beagle happily leapt up, his rear feet scrambling for purchase.

"What's the problem, Porthos?" Archer slid his hands under the floppy ears and gave the canine a vigorous rub. "Is something spooking you?"

Porthos simply yipped in response.

Puzzled, Archer recalled the soft thump that had precipitated the howl, and glanced around, looking for a source.

There. A book had fallen from the shelf. Except it shouldn't have.

…

It had not been a good week in engineering.

No matter what "Trip" Tucker tried, the intricate systems of the Enterpriserefused to function smoothly. Hundreds of diagnostics had been ran; equipment was disassembled, reassembled, cleaned and polished; technicians had crawled through every meter of access tube and conduit; and still, the ship was plagued by an endless supply of inexplicable power surges, equipment failures, and short circuits.

And none of the problems seemed to have a cognizable cause.

"Commander?"

Trip banged a fist against the plasticine sheeting of the deuterium pre-firing chamber. He had just spent several hours trying to track down a glitch in the chamber's software that was causing the chamber to overheat, and right when he thought he had it, the glitch disappeared.

"Yes, Crewman," Tucker said calmly, forcing his equilibrium to return. "What is it?"

"I have the diagnostic report on the warp intermix ratios." His subordinate offered a padd for analysis.

Trip suppressed a sigh and took the padd. Scanning it quickly, he spotted a problem. "This can't be right." He looked up at the technician. "Did you run a diagnostic…on the diagnostic program?"

According to the padd, the ratio of deuterium and anti-deuterium mixing in the warp core was not a strict 1:1. But if that was the case, the ship would've blown up.

"Yes, sir." The technician fidgeted. "Twice, sir."

"Okay." Trip rubbed his forehead as he thought. "Here's what we'll do: we'll pull out the intake sensors from the manifold and check them individually for malfunction. It's the only remaining possibility."

…

Feeding time came and went in Dr. Phlox's menagerie, and without second thought, Phlox returned to his medical duties. The Enterprisehad seen a spurt of physical injuries during their week in the Delphic Expanse—broken bones, sprained joints, the occasional concussion or two—nothing serious enough to challenge the doctor's skills, but frequent enough to keep him from the more routine tasks that went into maintaining a sickbay.

Lost in his work, Phlox didn't notice the ruckus until his bats started squawking madly.

Frowning, the doctor got up from his desk and went to investigate.

He peered inside the bats' cage, and nearly had to yank his head back to avoid having his nose bitten. The bats were going berserk; Phlox had never seen anything like it before.

One by one, Phlox checked the other animals in his assembly, and found varying degrees of unusual behavior in every one. Way too many to be a random fluke; something was stirring up the animals, making them uneasy and alarmed.

The doctor grabbed a mediscanner and held it in the air, slowly moving the delicate sensor from one cage to another. The readings changed slightly—each animal secreted a little differently, giving off faint aromas and odors—but otherwise, the readings checked out as normal. There were no foreign bodies; no unusual changes in the atmosphere; in a word, nothing.

But the phenomenon was real; that much Phlox knew. His animals simply didn't act this way, absent a triggering cause, and it wasn't a stretch to imagine that the animals were sensitive to something undetectable by an ordinary mediscanner.

Phlox's diagnostic skills jumped into action as he considered the premises. The uproar had begun with the bats—and bats could sense quantum instabilities.

…

Only a week into the Expanse, and we're already eating leftovers, Hoshi thought as she analyzed her plate. If asked, Chef would explain that the need to carry as much food as possible restricted the variety; he had to prioritize low-mass, high-nutrition items. That much meant little to Hoshi; growing up, her traditionalist grandparents had emphasized classical Japanese cuisine, which had evolved to satisfy the nutritional needs of a large population on an island with scarce arable ground.

But even there, we had variety. Hoshi pondered the meatloaf, made from the remnants of last night's taco fest. As a side dish, she had something that looked too much like a curry-infused rice wafer.

And to her shock, Hoshi's tray shot upwards from the table, flipping over in midair and dumping its contents across the mess hall. With a resounding clang, it struck the ceiling above and held fast, defying the interests of gravity.

As Hoshi shook off her surprise—and her dinner—she noticed that the other occupants of the room were similarly staring up at the ceiling, where every mess tray held fast.

…

Walking down the outer ring of D-deck, Sorenson noticed with amazement that the corridor floor seemed to be bulging upwards, like a ravenous mole was tunneling a path through the deck plates.

Stunned, she barely had time to jump aside as the fast-moving bulge ripped past her.

Porthos howled again, unleashing the soulful yowl directly in the captain's left ear, and as Archer attempted to clear his head of the echoing bay, the world around him seemed to ripple, as though a passing wave were disturbing the surface of space-time.

On the corner of his desk, the wave flung his coffee mug high into the air, where it tilted over to pour out the cooling beverage.

And it hung there suspended, the mug on its side, and a streak of brown liquid silently still.

...

With three steps, Captain Archer reached the bridge, with the nervous Porthos trotting at his heels. "Report!" he ordered, over the siren scream of a dozen alarms.

"We're getting reports of anomalies from all over the ship," T'Pol replied. With the captain's arrival, she had already shifted back to the science station—come to think of it, Archer realized, she probably stayed there the entire time. T'Pol could command the bridge from the science console; she couldn't conduct her analyzes from the command chair.

"The warp field's fluctuating," Travis Mayweather added momentarily. The young helmsman was fiddling madly with his controls, trying to stabilize the engines of the starship.

"Archer to Engineering." The captain's voice lacked the urgency of an emergency hail; it had the 'been-there, done-that' feel that revealed a recurring problem.

The chief engineer replied a moment later. "Tucker here, Cap'n! Half the plasma relays have reversed polarity!"

"How can that—" Archer cut off the question. "Can you fix it, Trip?"

"We're trying!" Trip's tone was more resignation than anything. "Request permission to do an emergency shutdown, sir!"

"Do it, Trip!" Archer ordered, trusting his engineer's instincts.

With a thundering howl, the massive warp drive shut down, sending the Enterprise skidding back into normal space. The inertial dampeners, not designed for such a maneuver, struggled to keep up. Everything not strapped down—or clinging magnetically to the mess hall ceiling—flew forwards, and the captain found himself splayed over the helm console. A jabbing pain in his side told Archer that he'd be spending the next hour in sickbay.

Naturally, Porthos had scarcely moved; his claws were latched firmly in the cushioned seat of the command chair.

And then the lights went out, followed by the emergency back-ups, plunging the bridge into darkness.

"I think it went smoother this time," Malcolm Reed observed wryly.

…

"You're sure that it's just bay two?" Archer asked Malcolm as the two men jogged, side-by-side, down the starboard side of D-deck. The captain felt the stinging bite of an icicle with every breath.

"That's what they reported, sir," Malcolm replied, showing no sign of being winded. "Cargo bays one and three were unaffected."

"When did it start?" Inputting a low-level security code, Archer led the way into the access passageway.

"About ten minutes ago," Malcolm answered, following along. "They entered the bays to inspect them as soon as the lights came back on, and noticed it then."

"Any injuries?"

"Ensign MacFarlane got banged up, but sickbay listed his injuries as 'minor.' Speaking of which…"

"Yes, I'm reporting to sickbay as soon as we're done here," Archer replied crossly. "Hoshi's timing me from the bridge. You're sure it's not just a problem with the grav-plating?"

"You know as well as I do, sir, that the grav-plating is almost impossible to break. There's no working parts; just graviton-enhanced sheet metal. Besides, it didn't sound like a problem with the grav-plating."

"Well, let's see." Archer stopped gratefully as they reached the doorway, and as he stepped through, he was halted by an alarmed voice.

"Stay right there! Oh, Captain, sorry, but—stay right there!" It was Ensign Wing.

The contents of the cargo bay were plastered to the right-hand wall.

A second later, with a rumbling thunder, the crates shot away from the wall and latched onto the left-hand side of the bay.

Archer looked up at the heavy containers thoughtfully. "You're right. That's not the grav-plating. Is it some weird magnetic effect?"

"Some of those crates weigh several hundred kilos a piece," Malcolm replied doubtfully. "It would have to be a powerful field—and it's completely localized within this room."

"Anything volatile in those containers?"

"We would've known by now, sir," Malcolm answered sardonically. "The bay's manifest lists primarily food supplies."

"I suppose we'll be having a lot of scrambled eggs for dinner, then." Archer silently congratulated himself for topping Malcolm's dryness. "Ensign Wing, seal the cargo bay until—this—settles down." He indicated the juxtaposed crates with a wave of his hand, and winced with the motion. "If you need me, Malcolm, I'll be in sickbay."

As Archer left the cargo bay, he heard another thundering stampede behind him.

…

"Try it again!" Trip shouted across the engineering bay from his perch atop the scaffolding at the foot of the warp reactor. "Power her up to five percent!"

The monitoring sensors in front of him stayed steady as the manifolds opened, allowing the low-power flow of deuterium and anti-deuterium plasma to enter the intermix chamber. The reaction initialized smoothly, and Trip watched with satisfaction as the sensors continued to provide strong readings. The chamber hummed softly before him.

"We're looking good!" he shouted out to the assembled engineers. "Bring the injectors up to ten percent!"

The technicians manning the respective injector stations eased the plasma flow upwards in choreographed unison, careful to not unbalance the flows. From the injectors, the charged plasma roared through the induction coils and then the manifolds, finally coming together in a carefully-controlled explosion.

Powerful arcs of blue light shot outwards from the intermix chamber, crackling through the air with deadly spite. "Shut it down!" Trip yelped. "Shut it down!" The hum came to a sudden halt.

Trip took a second to collect himself before speaking. "Anyone injured?" When no affirmative response was forthcoming, he issued his orders with resignation. "Barker, pull the sensor logs from the manifolds and the chamber and send them over to the cubby! Chang and Safiya, shut down the injectors, purge the system, and then crawl into the manifolds with sonic toothbrushes! Make sure that there's not even a speck of dust screwing them up!"

Pausing in his orders, Trip clambered down the half-level ladder. "Look lively, people! I know we've done this before, but we'll keep doing it until this blasted thing works right!" And who knows when that'll be, he added mentally.

"Trip!" The captain's voice caught Tucker's attention, and the engineer turned as Archer entered through the main hatchway. "Do you have a couple minutes?"

"At the rate we're going?" Trip retorted irritably, but noticing the lingering attention of a couple of his technicians, Tucker let the comment drop. "Sure, Cap'n, but I don't have any good news for you." He couldn't help but notice that the upper portion of the captain's coveralls were off, sleeves wrapped around Archer's waist; a mass of medical tape was affixed to the captain's right rib cage.

"No success, I take it?" Archer asked.

"We can't even figure out why it's not working," Trip replied with frustration. "It's—do you remember your basic warp mechanics, Captain?"

"I may have come through the ranks as a pilot, but I knew what I was flying," Archer replied dryly.

"Of course." Trip's voice was doubtful. "The warp field is powered by a matter/anti-matter reaction, right? Now, the theory isn't that difficult—to maintain a stable reaction, you need to inject equal amounts of matter and anti-matter with equivalent physical properties. As long as everything is equal, one unit of matter will react with one unit of anti-matter, completely destroy both, and release power without causing a massive explosion." Archer nodded in understanding.

"Our problem is that everything is equal—and yet, we're still getting an unstable reaction! We've double—we've triple-checked everything! I've sent people down every centimeter, from the storage pods to the manifolds, looking for anything that could be altering the properties of the fuels. And there's nothing, Captain. Everything's working right."

Archer, not trusting his torso, pivoted on his feet to look at the intermix chamber. "So if everything's working right—"

"The only remaining answer is that something in the laws of quantum physics is wrong. Which is impossible: at the individual level, subquantum particles are wild and unpredictable, but en masse, they behave according to set constants. At least—" And this was the critical part. "At least, as far as anyone knows. Maybe something in these anomalies is changing the quantum strata of space."

"So what do we do about it?"

Trip shrugged melancholically. "Re-write the laws of quantum physics? We barely understand the current laws, and they took two centuries! Our best chance is to get away from these anomalies."

"Somehow, I don't think we'll have that choice," Archer demurred. "What about tactical systems?"

Trip looked at the captain with surprise. "Are you expecting problems?"

"Sitting in the Expanse with no warp drive?" Archer replied, smiling. "It's only a matter of time."

Trip nodded in acknowledgment. "I'd have to take a couple people away from the engines, but we can get them up and running in a couple hours."

"That's fine," Archer agreed. "Make the weapons your first priority." He turned to leave, but had one last thought. "Oh, and Trip? Don't forget the motto of Starfleet Engineering."

Trip's exhausted face broke into a laugh as he recalled the highly-unofficial motto. "'We do the impossible before breakfast.' Aye-aye, Cap'n." He snapped off a precise, old-fashioned salute. Favoring his injured right side, Archer replied with an awkward, left-handed response, before turning and leaving engineering.

Back to work, Trip thought, feeling the familiar irritation welling back up. Like it or not, he needed to find a solution, or the Enterprise wouldn't be going anywhere. "Where's Isaac Newton when you need him?" he asked himself absently, before the recognition hit like a lightning bolt. Isaac Newton—the laws of gravity. If the subquantum gravimetric constant is no longer constant—"Safiya!" Tucker barked at the first technician he saw. "Go down to the storage pods and test the gravimetric constants!"

"Sir? What good would that do?"

"Just do it! I have an idea!" I might know the problem, he silently amended. As for a solution—I don't have a clue.

…

"Ah, Commander T'Pol!" Doctor Phlox exclaimed brightly as the Vulcan entered sickbay, tucked away in the dead center of E-deck. "Thank you for coming so quickly!"

T'Pol looked around cautiously. "I am not intruding on any medical emergencies, am I?"

"No, no, Commander," Phlox answered. He waved T'Pol back into his office. "We had a few cases of broken bones, some internal bruising, a couple concussions—nothing too complicated. We're holding two crewmembers for observation, but the others have been discharged."

"I'll be sure to provide a favorable report to the captain. Is that everything?"

"Of course not, Commander. I thought you'd be interested in this." With carefully-concealed resignation, T'Pol entered the off-set office and looked at the display on Phlox's desk monitor. "The pigmentation is far more colorful than I would have suspected," Phlox remarked.

T'Pol peered at the medical data closely, not sure what to look for. "What is so interesting about a cellular analysis?" she asked finally.

"Ah, this isn't an ordinary cellular analysis," Phlox replied with a tinge of pride. "These are Xindi epithelial cells, taken from the corpse they found inside the crashed probe. It's taken me quite a while to reconstruct the DNA chains, but the results are amazing!"

T'Pol ran the data strings through her head, mentally translating them. "They look like scales," she observed.

"Precisely! When I'm finished constructing the physiological profile, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Xindi was a base-reptilian!"

"That would be of scientific interest," T'Pol replied blandly. "The Vulcan Science Directorate has several theories for the relative scarcity of sentient reptilian species, compared to primates, arboreals, aquatics…avians…even insectoid species seem to have higher rates of sentience. Is this everything you wanted, Doctor?"

Phlox wheeled his chair back. "Do you have any siblings, Commander?" he asked, seemingly apropos of nothing.

T'Pol's eyebrow rose in acknowledgment of her confusion. "No, Doctor. Why do you ask?"

"Commander Tucker had a sister," Phlox commented in response. "She was killed in the attack."

"I am aware of that."

"He's having difficulty dealing with the loss."

"It's to be expected."

Phlox sighed and leaned forward, confidentially. "It's affecting his sleep, T'Pol. I've been giving him sedatives, but that's not a long-term solution. It's not even a particularly-good short-term solution."

"I'm not sure I understand," T'Pol admitted, wrinkling her brow. "Do you want me to provide counseling for him?" It was an odd suggestion on its face—a Vulcan providing emotional counseling—but T'Pol knew that Vulcan counselors had had considerable success, when paired with the right human patients. At the same time, it also took the right Vulcan. "I am not qualified to provide such assistance."

"No, that's not what I'm suggesting," Phlox answered. "Counseling would be the best treatment, but I'm the closest person on the ship to a licensed therapist. I don't often question the captain's command decisions, but I do wonder…would Commander Tucker have been better off staying on Earth? This mission seems to be exacerbating his state of mind, not healing it…"

"Doctor," T'Pol prompted.

"Oh? Yes, of course." Phlox shook his head to clear the stray thoughts. "I believe the commander would benefit from Vulcan massage therapy. I checked your service file, and you are qualified to perform it."

"Vulcan massage therapy does have a proven record of success at reducing stress and inducing restful sleep in human patients," T'Pol confirmed slowly. "And I am the only Vulcan on the Enterprise, and thus the logical choice."

"But…" It was Phlox's turn to prompt.

"Commander Tucker and I…do not get along well," T'Pol admitted. "I am not certain that he will be receptive to the idea." It wasn't a particularly intimate process, but the therapy did involve a certain level of vulnerability.

"T'Pol," Phlox said gently, "we owe it to him to try our best."

"Very well." T'Pol could find no logical reason to decline. "Have him come to my quarters this evening."

Phlox's look was not quite satisfied, and his hedging response told why. "There's just one problem," he admitted. "I suggested this to Commander Tucker earlier today, and he was less than enthusiastic."

T'Pol had to pause to sort it out. "If Commander Tucker isn't interested," she said finally, "why did you ask me at all?"

Phlox looked at her thoughtfully. "Because, between the two of us, we ought to be able to convince him otherwise."

T'Pol suspected that she had walked into a trap, but she couldn't find an elegant exit. "If you can—arrange—to get him to my quarters, I will attempt to convince him of the benefits of massage therapy. If that is all?" she added quickly.

"Of course, Commander." Phlox smiled broadly. "And thank you."

…

"Captain, I'm picking up a vessel at two-seven-three-mark-three-two, range…eight million kilometers," Malcolm Reed reported suddenly from the tactical console. It had taken the Enterprise the better part of a day to limp away from the anomaly, enough time to rotate the watches back to the alpha-shift officers.

In a beat, Archer was up from his command chair, as though he could see the ship merely by leaning in closer to the viewscreen. "What's their heading?"

"Undetermined," Malcolm replied immediately. He clarified a moment later. "It looks like they're holding position."

"Is it possible that they're having the same engineering problems we are?" Archer asked. He took a hopeful step forwards. "They might've pulled over to conduct some repairs."

"That would be a hasty speculation," T'Pol replied archly. "And one unsupported by our readings. I am detecting no energy signatures that would indicate a vessel undergoing repairs."

"Captain, I think the commander's right," Malcolm added. He ran his scans again as he spoke. "I'm picking up a slight variance in their position. It looks like they're adrift, sir."

Archer frowned. "Hail them, Hoshi."

Ensign Sato input the commands and, tilting her head, listened to her earpiece for a response. "No response, sir," she reported finally. "I'm not even detecting an emergency signal."

That was it, then: to every measure at their disposal, the unknown ship was completely dead.

But as long as the data banks were intact, it could provide a trove of information.

"Set an intercept course," Archer ordered, coming to his decision promptly. "What's our best speed, Travis?"

"We can get up to one-half impulse in an emergency," Travis averred, "but engineering requests we keep it at one-quarter otherwise."

"At one-quarter, that means—" Archer paused to run the math.

Travis beat the captain to the answer. "Approximately five and a third minutes, sir."

"Set a course, Travis," Archer ordered. "Take us in." He turned to the rear of the bridge. "Any biosigns?"

"None, Captain," T'Pol answered. She alone showed no signs of trepidation. "I can't detect any atmosphere aboard. It appears as though the vessel's gravity is out as well."

Archer, weighing the report, frowned. "Any sign of what happened, Malcolm?"

The tactical officer took a second to respond. "I'm reading several hull breaches, sir," he answered. His tone carried a hint of unease. "I'm also reading some carbonized scorching on the hull, but I can't tell if it's from weapons fire or some natural phenomena."

…

"Have you spent much time in gravity boots, Corporal?" Archer asked McKenzie as he pulled on his own heavy boots. He made a point to look at her face, ignoring the exposed midriff beneath her short undershirt; the captain had yet to figure out what idiot at Command had made women's tunics so short, with the utterly gratuitous flashes of flesh it caused. He wasn't a prude, by any means; but it just…didn't seem necessary.

"Yes, sir," McKenzie replied promptly. She had pulled an EV jumpsuit from the locker and was in the process of stepping into it. "I did a six-week tour on Jupiter Station. Some of the outlying portions didn't have grav-plating yet." Sliding her arms into the sleeves, she pulled the snug suit around her torso.

"How about the rest of you?" Archer asked the other three MACOs, who were in various stages of donning the extravehicular clothing. The captain had his own suit fastened, and was securing the seals of his boots.

"Only in simulation, sir," Kemper answered first.

"Same here, sir," Hawkins replied next. "But I have passed every rating on it."

"Just remember to walk normally," Malcolm spoke up, advising the younger noncoms. "The boots are designed to mimic a perfect one unit of gravity. You don't want to get preoccupied with your footwork." The lieutenant went silent as Archer eased the life-support breastplate over Malcolm's head.

"Sensors weren't able to tell us much," Archer said, continuing the mini-briefing as he fastened the breastplate's clasps. "We don't know what we'll find—but we're not in a rush, so don't hesitate to be cautious."

"We're looking for anything that can tell us what happened." Malcolm, passing along the assist, lowered a life-support unit over Hawkins' head. "And don't forget, don't rely on the sensors—just because we didn't pick up any biosigns doesn't mean that no one's alive over there."

…

As the shuttlepod approached the alien vessel, Malcolm could only think that his original assessment had been spot-on. The ship, roughly half the size of the Enterprise's saucer, was adrift in the vacuum of space, mummified in the absolute coldness of the interstellar medium. It was, to every appearance, a derelict.

Jagged hull breaches were visible from the shuttle's windows, but Malcolm knew he would have to get in closer, with a scanner, to determine the cause. The holes could have been caused by weapons fire, or the passage of several micrometeors; they could also have been caused internally, by any number of engineering or structural calamities. He could also see the carbon scoring along the exterior of the hull, but without closer analysis, that too was inconclusive. There were simply too many possible explanations.

The captain, taking a rare turn at the pilot's controls, brought the shuttlepod around in a gentle flip to orient its airlock with an access hatch on the abandoned vessel, and the Starfleet technology latched on firmly to the inoperative port. With a terse nod, Archer left the controls and led the team into the alien ship.

It was dark, Malcolm noted immediately. The primary lighting was out; any computer panels that may have glowed were offline. Even the emergency lighting—if there was any—was not functioning. Even the ultimate backup—metal sheeting glowing with what little heat remained—had failed, as the heat had bled out into space.

With twin beams of light coming from the torches on his helmet, and another affixed to the scope of his phase rifle, Malcolm slowly swept the corridor, trying to acclimate himself in the sterile, still blackness of the vessel. The ship looked beaten; the corridor walls appeared to be bloody and bruised, like the maintenance teams had long ago given up on trying to keep the vessel clean. With a momentary surge of vertigo, Malcolm realized that he was walking on one of the walls; the floor of the corridor was to his left, the ceiling to his right.

In the steady beam of lights radiating forward from the team, he saw a boot floating slowly by, crossing the light path and then vanishing instantly in the deep darkness. Along with it came several small tools and pieces of equipment, drifting, undisturbed, ever since the ship had met its calamitous end.

As the team moved forward slowly, fanning out to survey the vessel, Malcolm stepped down onto the floor of the corridor and turned back, bringing him face-to-face with the wall he had been standing on. The lights of his helmet glared brightly now, shedding great detail on the scarring before his eyes, and with a free hand, he waved his scanner unit over the bulkhead.

"Weapons fire," he noted, reading the tell-tale decay signatures embedded within the charcoal streaks. There was a remote chance that the damage could have been caused by engineering equipment; in many cases, the technology was similar, but the seemingly-random blast pattern only made sense when treated as the result of a firefight.

The steady clunk of gravity boots was the only sound in the ship—at least, the only sound traveling to Malcolm's ears, along with the open comm channel linking the members of the boarding team. The slow resonance was momentarily interrupted by Kemper, who grunted loudly with the exertion of pushing open an uninviting hatchway.

Kemper's sudden gasp drew the air from Malcolm's lungs, and the tactical chief wheeled about, scanning the passageway with the tip of his rifle. It was nearly impossible for anything to be alive on such a wreck, but in the depths of space, one never quite knew…

"Stand down," Archer called out over the comm channel, and lowering his weapon, Malcolm relaxed slightly. The immediate danger past, the team clustered to see what had surprised the MACO.

It was a corpse. Alien; different; a humanoid face covered in green scales, looking remarkably like an avocado. It leaned forward in the hatch, its head down, its arms drooped to the side. It was most definitely dead.

Kemper had recovered quickly, and was now scanning the corpse. "No external injuries," he reported. "No obvious cause of death." And there were candidates aplenty.

Archer recognized that they wouldn't learn much from it. "Let's find the bridge," he ordered. Perhaps the command center would give them a few clues.

…

"We counted seventeen bodies," Archer told T'Pol as he pulled off his protective gloves. He threw them into the corner of the Enterprise's locker room; a crewmember would stop by later to sterilize the EV suits. "Most of them died when their atmosphere vented, but a handful were killed by particle weapon."

His eyes blurred for a second. "It was like a ghost ship over there, Commander," he added, realizing that the Vulcan would have little appreciation for human ghost stories. "Pale bodies, floating overhead in the midst of blackness…I kept expecting one of them to come to life." The vessel's bridge had been the worst, holding nine corpses in suspended animation. "What's our status?"

"There is little to report," T'Pol admitted primly. "Ensign Sato believes that she has the subspace transceiver working steadily. Commander Tucker reports little progress in Engineering."

"Archer to Mayweather!" T'Pol helped pull the suit back from the captain's shoulders as he hailed the bridge.

"Mayweather here, Sir."

"Resume our previous course. One quarter impulse," Archer added with a flickering look of exasperation.

"Understood." A chime signaled that the channel was now closed.

T'Pol turned to assist Kemper with his suit, but continued to speak to the captain. "It might be wise to complete repairs before we head deeper into the Expanse," she suggested. "Repairs will go more quickly if we stay at station-keeping, and if we were to encounter any more anomalies—"

"Those people have been dead for less than two days," Archer countered. It had been a lucky find; one of the corpses still had live bacteria buried within its intestinal tract, allowing them to date the remains. Otherwise, the vacuum and coldness would have made it far more difficult to date the cellular degeneration. "Whoever attacked them could still be in the area—and with half our systems offline, I don't particularly want to find out." He kicked his boots into the corner. "Once we have some distance, I'll bring the ship to a stop and give Trip a chance to repair the engines."

"Of course, Captain," T'Pol demurred, accepting the authority—and the logic—of Archer's commands. She turned to the others. "Please upload your scanner readings to the main computer as soon as possible."

…

Archer paused on the bridge just long enough to detail Malcolm to the command chair before he was out the other door, and into his ready room. It wasn't that he didn't want to be on the bridge, or was trying to avoid it; but his day had begun fourteen hours earlier, with a nervous dog who wouldn't let him sleep. Giving in, the captain had reported to the bridge in the middle of gamma shift, and started his day with a mug of coffee.

A mug of coffee that still hung, suspended, over his desk, tipped on its side with a stream of brown sludge attached to it.

Irritated, Archer snatched the mug from mid-air and, with a satisfying, solid thwack, slammed it down on his desk. The solidified liquid, connected by molecular bonds, trailed the mug downward like taffy, where it slowly re-coagulated on the hard surface.

Sighing, Archer fell back into his chair and swung his feet up on the desk, leaning backward to catch a moment of rest. Porthos, he knew, was taken care of; the pup did spent many daily hours in sickbay with Phlox. The arrangement, based on Phlox's unrestrained curiosity and care for animals, had the added advantage of the doctor's medical degree; Phlox had assured the captain that he could formulate a neural blocker that would ease the canine's discomfort. No doubt, Archer thought, that Porthos is snoozing away right now, happy as a—well, happy as a snoozing dog.

The captain closed his eyes, noticing—quite randomly—that the darkness was nothing compared to the derelict vessel. He consciously forced thoughts regarding the ship's status from his head; he had a solid crew, working hard at their assigned tasks, and they would alert him if something required his attention. Instead, he realized that he had something all-to-rare for a ship's captain. A moment of peace.

Cautiously, Archer ran through the agenda in his head, checking each item off as he went; he reached the end with nothing left for him to pursue. Two years together had brought the ship's crew together into a closely-functioning unit. He was far from superfluous…but for this precious moment, nothing called for his immediate attention.

He let his thoughts drift back to Earth. He had grown up on the northeastern seaboard of North America, and during his father's lengthy—and necessary—absences tending to the warp five project, Jonathan had explored the seacoast from the hull of a single-sail catboat. It was a basic craft, utterly unremarkable and unrefined, the design dating back to the first days of sailing; during his father's time at home, the two of them had built the boat by hand, troubleshooting the engineering as they went.

Sure, there were days—weeks—seasons at a time when the small sailboat couldn't travel beyond the sheltered harbors into the choppy, storm-strewn waters of the winter months, but enough coves and inlets existed to keep Jonathan on the water. But when the storms cleared, and the skies turned blue—every summer, the two Archers hit the deep waters and sailed across to Nova Scotia, with nothing more sophisticated than a hotplate to cook the fish they pulled from the sea.

The screeching howl of the tactical alert sirens drove Archer from his reverie, to his feet, across the short hallway, and onto the bridge.

"Report!"

"We have a vessel coming in fast." Malcolm was too busy at his console to look up.

"They're at three thousand meters and closing!" Travis added with alarm.

"Their weapons read hot, sir!"

"Defensive systems?" Archer, still on his feet, leaned over Malcolm's station to watch the readings for himself. The unknown craft was coming in on a clear-cut attack vector.

"We only have one phase cannon, and it'll only be good for a couple shots," Malcolm reported tersely.

"Hoshi! Can you hail them?" Archer barked across the bridge.

The communications chief focused intently on her earpiece, then shook her head. "No answer!" she barked back.

"Two thousand meters!" Travis added. "Brace for weapons impact!"

…

Trip knew something was happening—the tactical alert sirens gave that much away—but he wasn't expecting a boarding party. When he heard the tell-tale whine of transporters, his attention was focused on the deuterium induction coils, costing him critical seconds in response time as the aliens materialized in the core of main engineering.

Even without seeing them, Trip could pinpoint the location of the intruders; the shrillness of weapons fire resounded across engineering from the proximity of the antideuterium injector assembly. Unarmed, Trip ducked beneath the support legs of the warp reactor, easing himself forward for a view; on the floor in front of him lay one of the technicians, a blackened circle of burnt uniform centered on the man's chest.

Trip heard, rather than saw, more shots ring out, and the sounds of engineering indicated the target: frantic footfalls dashed down the outer scaffolding above, cut short by the violent thud of a heavy weight hitting the alloyed struts. Trip cursed, his voice unheard over the noise; for practical reasons, he had banned weapons lockers from the bay, but now his crew found itself defenseless against the intruders.

He rolled forward, underneath the protective umbra of the reactor, to get a better view of the aliens; he counted three pairs of heavy boots, and possibly a fourth—they didn't stay still long enough to get a sure count. Squirming forward, he scanned his eyes upward; he saw the standard two-arm, two-leg, one-torso build that nature seemed to favor everywhere. The intruders were clad in some form of body armor, but their heads were free; and each one carried a hefty rifle.

As three of the attackers kept guard, watching the engineering bay for signs of movement, the fourth removed the bulkhead paneling beneath the injectors. Keying in the access code—how the hell do they know it?—the alien released the injector assembly from its crib, and with both hands, pulled the five injectors out, distributing them among the raiders to carry.

…

Two more raiders materialized behind Ensign Wing in the cargo bays, dropping him with a solid thwack at the base of his spine. Even as the man was hitting the floor, the raiders were on the move; handheld scanners waved over the crates of the bay, stating—in general terms—what the contents of each were, and without hesitation or the need for communication, the two aliens began shifting the heavy crates and slapping transponders onto selected units. The targeted containers immediately disappeared in the transporter shimmer.

With choreographed movement, the two aliens slid into the next cargo bay to repeat the process.

…

Midway down D-deck, Lieutenant Reed and Captain Archer received a message from Hoshi saying that another raiding party had materialized in the starboard armory; making a running judgment call, the two senior officers altered their path and dropped down to E-deck, where they joined up with two scrambling MACOs and dove into the upper level of the weapons bay.

Down below, a team of four raiders were stockpiling weaponry in the center of the floor, moving with an economy of precision and ease that bespoke much experience. Even at a glance, Archer could recognize that the hand-weapons had already been cleared out; and two of the aliens were in the process of attaching an electronic device to a torpedo rack.

One of the MACOs—Private Kemper, the captain realized—let loose a punishing beam of red energy from his phase pistol, striking an alien in the chest and tossing him into a bulkhead with rattling force. Under the cover of Kemper's fire, the three others dashed forward along the catwalk, maneuvering for a closer, protected firing position.

As the spurts of deadly energy spat back and forth across the armory, the raiders fell back behind protection of their own; the human crew would not risk striking the photonic torpedoes with their phase pistols, and the aliens intuitively recognized the safety shield at their disposal. Thus unable to return fire, the crewmembers had to duck behind protective structural beams, impotent to stop the invaders.

Glittering light echoed around the armory as the stockpiled weapons vanished in a transporter beam, causing Archer to curse angrily; in a single second, the Enterprise had just lost three-quarters of its hand weapons. "Do you have a stun grenade?" he whispered towards Malcolm. It was a risk, but one he was ready to take.

As the grenade arched over the railing and into the air, the marauders disappeared in swirling light.

"Move! Move! Move!" Malcolm barked, urging on the MACOs, who were already on their feet and dashing forward. Kemper reached the inclined stairs first, and forgoing the risers, he tossed his legs over the railings, sliding down to the deck below; Mahoney came next, then Malcolm, and Archer brought up the rear. Trying to imitate the gymnastics move, Archer reached the bottom in pain; gotta leave the agility moves to the younger guys, he reminded himself as he gingerly favored his strained left hamstring.

Malcolm, dashing forward, checked on the watch officer, who was lying on the deck insensate; a firm pulse under the neck indicated that the officer was alive, but unconscious. Satisfied for the moment, Malcolm turned his attention to the security board, promptly pulling up an intruder schematic.

"How many?" Archer barked, limping his way toward the console.

"Two in cargo bay three, four more in main engineering!" Malcolm reported with alacrity, and glancing backward, he caught the captain's nod and unspoken order. "Woods!" He indicated the second MACO. "You're with me, to engineering! Kemper, secure the armory!" And the captain, he added silently.

…

The pile of engineering equipment grew and shrank before Tucker as the raiders shifted to secondary items and the primaries were transported out. The deuterium injectors had vanished first; followed by a tank of emergency coolant, and then an EPS flow regulator. With resistance temporarily gone, the aliens were systematically sweeping engineering.

Trip rolled over on his back and shimmied down the length of the reactor core, his brain scanning every system for something that could be converted into a weapon. He was still opposed to the idea of including weapons lockers in the engineering bay; but next time, he thought angrily, I'll make sure Starfleet includes SOMETHING—anesthezine gas, maybe. That would knock them out, without disrupting the power systems.

…

"They're trying to download the database!" Hoshi reported immediately, as the computer noticed the intrusion and reported it to her console.

T'Pol wasn't even in the command chair yet. "Can you identify their location?" And before Hoshi could answer, "Lock them out!"

…

With a piece of alloyed piping in his hand, Trip crept down the coolant conduits on top the reactor, watching his footfalls carefully to avoid making any telltale noise. Below and in front of him, he could see all four raiders; three were busy moving about engineering, collecting various sundries, while a fourth stood off to the side, checking the monitor readouts on the induction coils.

Weighing the heft of the pipe—it was light, but would do the job, Trip judged—he readied himself to jump down on the fourth alien.

He may have made a noise—or it could have simply been serendipity—but the alien seemed to notice that he was under observation. Grabbing his rifle, the raider left the station and began scanning the bay, looking for the human that they had not yet neutralized.

On top, Trip followed the raider around the front end of the reactor and down the other side, along the deuterium induction assembly, and when he judged the moment to be the best, the engineer leapt down, cracking the pipe at the base of the alien's neck.

The alien staggered for a second, but kept his feet and spun around. Trip let loose with a vicious, back-handed swing that connected with the raider's ribs, and as the alien hunkered over, Trip brought the pipe down with anger-fueled force against the alien's head.

The remaining three raiders, caught on the wrong side of the reactor core, fired a few surprised shots underneath the struts as Trip dashed up the ladder to the control platform, relying on the few seconds of speed and surprise. Reaching his target, he fired the ignition sequence of the core—the still-unrepaired core—and, as he expected, bolts of blue and white lightning shot out from the reactor as the excess, ionized matter sought a target. One raider crumpled to the ground, struck in the chest; the other two evaded the deadly light, but crouched down, unable to move.

Coming in the back way from the deuterium injector room, Malcolm Reed and Private Woods chose that moment to arrive. Sizing up the situation quickly, they sent shots of phased energy underneath the reactor.

From his vantage point, Trip saw the futility: the raiders vanished in the brilliance of a transporter beam.

He shut off the ignition sequence and leaned against the reactor casing, his adrenaline-fueled burst of energy dying off.

…

Moving at a limping run behind Private Kemper, Archer reached cargo bay three and pulled the hatchway open, allowing the MACO to hit the deck rolling. But Archer heard no sign of weapons fire, and the depressing spurt of realization swept over him.

Lowering his own pistol, Archer stepped into the cargo bay. There was nothing there: no intruders…and no cargo.

…

"Commander, the alien ship is moving away," Travis reported. "They're jumping to full impulse."

"Pursue them," T'Pol answered calmly.

Travis shook his head. "I'm not getting a response from engineering, Commander," he replied. "We're not moving anywhere for now."

…

"How are they?" Captain Archer asked as he limped into sickbay. He was relieved to note that the atmosphere was relatively calm; for having just fought with a boarding party, the crew had come through mostly intact. Of course…Archer's heart dropped as he saw a body covered entirely a sheet.

"Increase his anaprovaline by fifty milligrams," Phlox told the nurse before he turned his attention to the captain. "Stable," he reported. "The aliens' weapons weren't that harmful, but we do have a couple patients with extensive burns. I'd like to start them on regeneration therapy as soon as possible, but the imaging chamber was damaged in the attack. I've already called for a repair team." As per the captain's standing orders, sickbay had a priority on damage-control and repair teams; the technicians were undoubtedly already on their way.

Archer nodded his approval. "How many casualties?" he asked. His eyes drifted back to the covered body.

"It's Crewman Fuller," Phlox answered softly, not wanting to alarm the other patients. "He was gone before we could get to him. Three others were seriously injured, and a dozen or so that we treated and released back to their quarters." The physician gave a pointed look at Archer. "I'll need to take a look at your leg, Captain."

"Of course, Doctor." Archer gestured to the last patient: it was one of the aliens. "What about him?"

"A few internal injuries," Phlox answered. "Commander Tucker whacked him pretty hard; I'll need to keep him under observation."

"You can observe him the brig," Archer replied darkly. "I'm going to need some answers from him—how soon will he wake up?"

"A few hours." Phlox was uncomfortable with the thought of moving a patient to the brig, but the injuries weren't that severe. "Captain, you might be interested to know that I recognize his species. He's Osaarian."

The name meant nothing to Archer, but the implication was clear. "He's not from the Expanse?"

"Not originally," Phlox confirmed. "They're not from our local neighborhood, but if memory serves, their homeworld is on the outskirts of the Klingon Empire."

"He's a long way from home, then," Archer said thoughtfully. "Let me know as soon as he wakes up, Doctor."

"Of course, Captain. Now, about your leg—"

Phlox was cut off by the doors hissing open, revealing both the repair team and Commander Tucker.

"I need to duck out for a moment, Doctor," Archer said, catching his engineer's eyes. He raised his hands in preemptive defense. "I'll be right back in after I talk to Trip."

"See that you are, Captain," Phlox replied firmly. The Denobulan turned his focus to the repair team.

Archer led Trip into the corridor before he spoke. "How bad is it?"

Tucker's face was grim. "They made off with three photonic torpedoes, a case of phase rifles, two dozen stun grenades, half our food stores, and that's just what we've verified so far. Cargo bay's three been stripped to the bulkheads."

"How's engineering?"

"That's the worst of it, Captain. They took every one of our antimatter storage pods. All we've got left is what's in the main reactor."

"How long will that last?" Archer kept his voice low. "A month?"

"If we're lucky," Trip answered harshly. "After that we're out of gas."

…

Archer stifled a private groan as he read the three-sentence report on T'Pol's data padd. And that was three sentences from a Vulcan. It usually took a Vulcan twice that long to say they didn't know anything. "This is all you've got?" he asked instead, looking up at his first officer.

"The Vulcan High Command has not had much contact with the Osaarians," T'Pol replied evenly. She had joined the captain in his ready room to provide the brief report. "They are reputed to have a large merchant fleet, but there are no reports—verified or otherwise—of piracy. This behavior seems to be quite unusual for them." Her expression gave no hint of the perplexity she was experiencing.

"Any luck tracking their ship?"

"Not yet," T'Pol replied. "They've found a way to mask their ion trail. I believe that, with further study, we'll be able to detect it, but I cannot state with any certainty whether that will occur before their trail dissipates beyond recovery."

"For a people with no history of piracy, they've gotten pretty good at it," Archer observed. "Keep looking." He frowned minutely; it was beyond difficult to read a Vulcan, but his instincts told him that T'Pol had something else on her mind. "What is it, Commander?" he asked at last, prompting her along.

"It appears they've adapted their weapons and engines to compensate for the anomalies," T'Pol stated. She knew that her recommendation was logical; it was her respect for the captain that made her hesitant. "They won the first encounter," she said at last. "It is probable that, if we track them down, they will best us again, and we will only cause further damage to the Enterprise. We should consider other alternatives." Her point made, she stood silent, waiting for the captain to deliver his determination.

"Cut our losses, you mean?" Archer asked rhetorically as he weighed her words. "But what alternatives do we have? Sit around and wait for our antimatter to run dry?"

"The Enterprise is capable of gathering and processing new supplies of antimatter," T'Pol countered. "Our other supplies can be replenished elsewhere as well. There is no logic in risking the ship on a mission that seems to be fueled by vengeance, rather than the considered interests of the ship and crew."

Archer leaned forward. The words bit harder than he cared to admit. "T'Pol, if we let them go, it'll simply encourage other pirates to attack us."

"Captain…that sounds like a rationalization."

"That is my decision, Commander." Archer felt something harden inside of him. "We're going after the pirates. Keep working on a way to detect their trail."

…

The Enterprise's brig, located on F-deck, was tucked neatly between the armory bays and the anti-matter storage pods—an odd juxtaposition, but on any starship, space was at a premium. When the ship had first launched, it did not even have a brig; serious disciplinary issues were rare in Starfleet's ranks, and the idealistic minds behind the Enterprise's construction expected to encounter peaceful, friendly species from across the galaxy.

The brig wasn't added until the emergency refit just before the Enterprise departed for the Delphic Expanse, and the design engineers chose to locate it on the one deck that routinely had armed crewmen standing watch; if a prisoner managed to escape from confinement, Lieutenant Reed's tactical personnel could respond instantly, and if that was somehow insufficient, the MACOs used a physical training bay on F-deck as their base of operations. Few, if any, prisoners would get very far.

Tucked inside a converted mechanical closet, the brig consisted of two cells lying side-by-side, each approximately two meters by three; transparent aluminum separated the cells from each other, as well as from the guarded anteroom. It was here that the captain, following his summons, arrived post haste.

With a firm nod of acknowledgement to the guard, Archer stepped up to the transparent wall and punched open the intercom. "Stand up!" he barked angrily, seeing the prisoner lying on the cot. "I know your injuries weren't severe. Stand up!"

"Why?" the prisoner replied languidly, stretching his arms above his head. "I'm comfortable where I am."

"I have a dead crewman!" Archer snarled through the comm system.

"And I didn't kill him." The response was matter-of-fact.

"No," Archer admitted heatedly, "one of your friends did. But I don't have one of your friends! I have you instead, so get up and look at me!"

Slowly, like a feline departing from a treasured sunbeam, the prisoner stretched his limbs, extending his arms and legs upward and outward before slowly rolling over the side of the cot onto his feet. As Archer did a slow burn, the prisoner strolled forward, pausing again to stretch his sore muscles in full view of the irate captain.

Archer's breath shorted momentarily as he got his first full look at the prisoner's face. It was disfigured; it looked like someone had streaked a paintbrush over the alien's features, leaving his face marred from ear to ear. "Do you have a name?" Archer asked.

The prisoner stared silently at the captain.

"You're going to help me find your ship," the captain stated irately. "After I've recovered what they stole from me, you and your colleagues will be free to go."

"What makes you think I'd be interested in such an offer?" the prisoner answered dryly. "Or that I'd be foolish enough to trust your word on it?" He sauntered, slowly, towards the front of the cell.

Archer gritted his teeth. "If you don't agree, you'll be spending eternity in this brig."

The prisoner's eyes swept up and down the captain, as if sizing up his enemy. "If I do agree, I'd spend eternity dead. I'll think I'll stay here."

"I could make it very unpleasant on you," Archer barked in threat.

The alien chortled. "I don't think so, Captain. You don't strike me as the type who can torture another man. You're far too civilized for that."

Already, the interrogation was not going as Archer had planned. "I need what was stolen from me," he retorted. "There's too much at stake to allow your life to get in the way!"

"And what are you going to do, Captain?" The prisoner folded his arms across his medical tunic. "Put a disruptor pistol to my head and shoot me? That's not your only problem." He leaned closer to the comm speaker, as if sharing a confidence. "That ship far outpowers your own. If you went anywhere near it, you'd have more than one dead crewman, and you wouldn't get your supplies back anyway."

"I'm offering you your freedom." Archer struggled to suppress the infuriation in his voice.

"But my own captain wouldn't be much interested in having me back, would he?" The alien answered quietly, in contrast to Archer's ire. "Not after I told you where to find him."

"You've masked your ion trail." Archer shifted to a different vector. "How?"

"My captain's a very clever man," the prisoner replied, sotto voce. "You have to be, inside the Expanse. You're new to it, aren't you? It shows," he added scornfully. "No veteran of this wasteland would make the mistakes you make."

"Just how long have you been in the Expanse?" Archer's curiosity bested his frustration.

"Long enough to resort to desperate measures," the alien replied, as if imparting great wisdom. "We weren't always raiders—but we were willing to do whatever was necessary to survive. I don't recognize your species, Captain, but I do recognize your timidity; we were like you, when we first arrived."

"What happened?" Archer's voice also dropped to a whisper.

"We came looking for trade routes, and discovered that we were trapped," the alien answered. "After a few encounters with other raiders, we realized that we had to resort to piracy ourselves. But like you, we weren't prepared to kill, or torture; we nearly starved to death before we learned to discard that civilized shell. For some people, it takes great time to descend into terrified barbarity." His voice became cold. "Other people do it over the course of a crisp fall morning. Which are you, Captain?"

Archer's face hardened as he backed away from the comm. "I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to find your ship," he answered. "If that ends up causing me remorse, then it's something I'm willing to live with."

"Are you, now?" The alien's voice shifted into a mocking tone. "Can you bring yourself to beat a defenseless man to death, just for some information? Do you lust for the look of fear in his eyes when he realizes that his life rests in the hands of a madman? Could you sleep at night, knowing that you betrayed every principle you claim to stand for?" The prisoner snorted disdainfully. "You don't have it in you, Captain, and we both know it, so why don't you dispense with these tough-guy charades?"

"I need that information!" Archer snarled. His hands balled into fists. "Of course, I'd rather not have to coerce it from you! But if you leave me no choice, then I will! The offer's still on the table—information for your freedom. But you will tell me how to find your ship, voluntarily or otherwise!" Hopelessly infuriated, Archer pivoted away from the transparent barrier and stormed out of the anteroom. When he rounded into the corridor, he paused and slammed a fist into the bulkhead.

Behind him, the prisoner chuckled again, and lay back down on the cot, content that he was in no danger.

…

Despite the late hour, Commander T'Pol was on the bridge when Archer stepped out from the turbolift, working steadily behind the science console. It was a piece of differing development that had taken the captain awhile to get accustomed to; Vulcans possessed far greater stamina. Through experience and error, Archer had slowly adjusted to finding T'Pol hard at work through the late hours of the night.

The rest of the bridge crew had, thankfully, rolled over into the night watch: Travis' place behind the helm was filled by Ensign Hutchinson, and Hoshi's comm station was manned by Crewman Sorenson. Rahimi stood watch at tactical, but Archer knew that Malcolm wasn't actually off-duty: the tactical chief was down below working on the weapons systems.

"What have you found?" Archer asked T'Pol as he stepped towards her station. The Vulcan's summons had pulled the captain from his late dinner to the bridge, and he was curious—and hopeful—to see what she had found.

"I've found a way to modify the sensors to detect the Osaarians' ion trail," T'Pol replied without preamble. As Archer hunched over her, watching closely, she brought a sensor display onto the primary monitor, and highlighted a barely-discernable trace. "However, they appear to have gone deeper into the anomaly."

Between the good and bad news, Archer's stomach had done a backflip. "What's the report from engineering?"

"Commander Tucker reports that we can proceed at a top cruising speed of point-seven-five impulse. However, if we travel deeper into the anomaly, the gravimetric distortions will get worse. We lack sufficient data to predict how long the impulse drives will last before suffering further damage."

While he weighed the science report, Archer glanced across the bridge at Rahimi. "What's the status of tactical?" he asked T'Pol.

"Hull plating is online," T'Pol answered. That alone was great news: by polarizing the metal-alloy hull, the Enterprisewas capable of sustaining far more weapons fire. "The armory promises to have the phase cannons working within the hour."

"What about the torpedoes?"

"Unknown," T'Pol replied. "The tactical crew is having difficulties modifying the guidance systems to compensate for the anomalies."

"But the launch systems themselves work?" Archer asked in clarification. "We can fire a torpedo?"

"Yes, Captain. Although I am uncertain what good that would do in the absence of—"

Archer tapped the monitor's controls and, as he pulled up the decay rate of the ion trail, made his decision. "Feed the coordinates of the ion trail to the helm, and take us after them at best possible speed," he ordered.

"Captain," T'Pol whispered quietly, "may I remind you that pursuing the Osaarian ship into the distortion will increase our risk of catastrophic damage?"

"I know, T'Pol," Archer replied, equally quiet. "But we need our supplies back—and if we're lucky, we can sack that damned ship and find out how they survive in this anomaly." He knew they had little choice; less than a month into the Expanse, and they were already facing the end of the road…and as much as Archer hated to even think it, perhaps their prisoner had a point. To survive in the Expanse was going to require a degree more of cold-bloodedness and a degree less of humanity.

…

As Trip's head hit the pillow, his eyes fell shut and his thoughts congealed into the ghostly netherworld of haunted sleep. Images and pictures flashed through his mind, flickering like a static reel of bad memories and endless assaults upon his sanity, punishing him with a pregnant fear of irrational terror, lights and colors dancing in his memory.

Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight

Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
We're off to never-never land

He saw Elizabeth, the youthful girl of old, his constant companion through the wretched years of their childhoods. He saw the little girl hiding beneath his bed; he saw the child crawling out the window at night, desperate to gain separation from their home, only to be pulled back in with the coming of dawn.

Now I lay me down to sleep
Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray the lord my soul to keep
Pray the lord my soul to keep

If I die before I wake
If I die before I wake
Pray the lord my soul to take
Pray the lord my soul to take

He saw the young woman she had become, struggling against their shared nightmares. He saw her on her graduation day, decked out in the honor robes, having pushed herself upward to obtain an advanced degree. He saw her sitting on the stoop of the house she designed for herself, a sleepy one-person rambler that was, bizarrely enough, bedecked in violet.

Hush little baby don't say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beasts under your bed
In your closet in your head

Exit light
Enter night

Incongruously, she turned to Trip, standing at the street corner; with a bright smile, she waved at him, excited that her big brother had finally obtained a leave from Starfleet.

Trip was frozen in place; his arms would not move, his legs immobile, and he opened his mouth to scream. No sound emerged.

A brilliant beam of light bore down on Lizzie as she jumped up from her chair, eager to run up and greet him.

"Elizabeth! Lizzie, you've got to get out of there!" The words came to Trip's throat with a howling rush, fighting the shrill tempest of the beam as it obliterated the world before it. "Elizabeth, please! Get out of there!"

…

The mess hall lights were subdued for the night in duplication of Earth's diurnal cycle when Malcolm crossed the open threshold, covering an exhaustive yawn with a hand. Like the rest of the day-side crew, he had been on duty since the Enterprise first foundered in the anomaly early that morning; and now, as the late hours slowly merged into the wee hours of the night, he was still far from done in the armory bays. But Dr. Phlox was pacing the ship, ordering the day crew off-duty for a few merciful hours of rest, and even the captain was not immune from the doctor's medical orders.

"Black tea, hot," Malcolm ordered as he placed a mug beneath the nozzle of the beverage dispenser. Obediently, the machine hummed into action, trickling out a stream of hot, black liquid into the waiting receptacle, and as Malcolm pulled the mug back out, he let the steam waft into his face, where it satiated his blurry eyes.

Feeling marginally stronger, Malcolm turned and surveyed the room, looking for the best place to sit. Even at this hour, the mess was half-full, mostly with crewmembers trickling off from the day-long marathon, but the lieutenant saw one face that seemed out of place.

"Commander," Malcolm said in casual greeting as he pulled out a chair next to Trip. The tactical chief would've expected Tucker to either be in engineering or be dead asleep; but instead, Trip sat at the mess table, surrounded by a total of seven padds and two half-empty cups of coffee. A noticeable glean of old sweat coated the engineer. "Have you finished rewriting the physics books yet?"

"Well, let's just say that I won't be taking home a Nobel Prize anytime soon," Trip answered with surprising bite. "Intuitively, I know what the problem is, but all the texts say it's impossible—so they don't give any hint of what to do about it." Tiredly, Trip let the padds clatter on the table. "I'm a practical engineer, Malcolm, not a theoretician. And there's not even a theory for this stuff."

"A few hours of rest might do you a world of good," Reed observed as he sipped his tea. The liquid was hot and pungent, just the way he liked it.

"No kidding," Trip snorted. "But I can't wind down enough to go to sleep. Whenever I try—I have visions of…warp field equations, dancing in my head. The only way I'll get any sleep is by solving this problem first."

"Can't Phlox do anything to help?" Malcolm asked, alarmed by the burgeoning pattern of obsessive behavior in his friend.

"The doc's given me shots a few nights now," Trip answered. "But he's threatening to cut me off if it becomes a habit."

"Ah." Malcolm sipped his tea noncommittally. "Have you heard that Fuller didn't make it?"

Tucker nodded morosely. "Yep." His expression said more than his words.

"Considering all the hostile aliens we've met, I suppose we're lucky that we haven't lost more people," Malcolm added, staring into his tea. He swirled the cup once. "We've only been in the blasted Expanse for a week, and we've already lost our first person."

"We lost seven million, Malcolm," Trip replied, devoid of tone. "What's one more?"

Malcolm looked closely at the engineer. "It's no reason to get cynical."

"Every species we run into seems to be gunning for us," Trip retorted, regaining a little fire. "Exploration of the galaxy was supposed to usher in a new era of peace, remember? Instead, all we get for our troubles is an alien race that we've never heard of that wants to utterly annihilate humanity."

"What do you suggest we do?" Malcolm countered. "Tuck tail and hunker down on Earth? Or would you rather go about the galaxy, subjugating every race that might ever be a threat to us?" Is it possible to do both simultaneously? Malcolm wondered.

"Don't be facetious, Malcolm," Trip replied, his face scowling. "Don't you remember history? Both of those routes would only doom us in the long run."

"So what are you suggesting?" Malcolm pressed.

"I'm not suggesting anything," Trip replied irritably. "I'm just saying, if we somehow manage to survive this, what comes next? Another alien race that wants to destroy us? Then another? Even if we win, we lose. Whether we succeed on this mission or not, humanity seems to be riding a one-way ticket to endless war."

…

Captain's Log, June 20, 2153. We've been tracking the Osaarians' ion trail through the night. There's still no sign of their vessel, and the trail is dissipating rapidly.

…

"The trail ends about twenty thousand kilometers ahead," Travis announced with bright-eyed precision. The day crew was back on duty, and Ensign Mayweather, for one, was eager to get to work.

"Any sign of a ship?" Archer asked, glancing over Travis' shoulder.

"Nothing, sir," Travis reported momentarily. "This is odd, sir: the trail drops off suddenly, rather than fading out."

Archer's brow frowned as he looked back at T'Pol, who had stayed on for her fourth straight duty shift. "Analysis, T'Pol?"

"It is curious." T'Pol's voice was muffled slightly by her hooded viewer. "The trail resumes after another seventy thousand kilometers."

"Put it on screen," Archer ordered, and Hoshi switched off the starfield display to show the sensor schematics. The readings were spectacularly…uninformative; a false-color image of the ion trail extended upwards from the bottom of the screen, vanished instantly, than reappeared towards the top.

"Shall I alter course?" Travis asked.

"Not yet," Archer replied cautiously. "T'Pol, why would there be such a large gap?"

"Unknown at this time, Captain," the Vulcan replied. "I have insufficient data to forma hypothesis."

Archer kicked himself mentally; he knew he had worded the question poorly. "Speculate, Commander," he ordered.

T'Pol withdrew her face from the viewer and tilted an eyebrow at the captain. "Given the sharp drop-off, the most logical assumption would be that something is blocking our sensors."

"Captain, I think I have something," Malcolm interposed excitedly. "The particle decay rates don't line up! The first trail is at least nine hours old, but the second trail was left less than an hour ago!"

"On screen!" Archer ordered as he weighed the discovery. With the input of a command, Hoshi called up the decay rate analyzes on the main viewscreen; sure enough, there was an eight-hour difference, when it should have taken less than thirty minutes to travel across the empty segment.

"It's as if they stopped inside of there for something," Travis added, his eyes shining. "And why would pirates stop somewhere?"

"To stash their booty," Malcolm finished. "And that would explain why it's shielded!"

"We don't know what's in there," Archer stated harshly. His crew was getting ahead of themselves, and his sharp tones brought them back. "Bring weapons online, Malcolm. Travis, take us in to where the first trail ends, maneuvering thrusters only. Hoshi, switch the screen to visual. Sit on those sensors, T'Pol; I need anything you can give me."

Travis inputted the navigation commands and eased the Enterprise forward, slowly and cautiously, towards the massively blank area in front of them. On the screen before him, it showed up as deep black, absorbing any wavelength of light that entered; with their proximity, the blackness more than covered their viewing arc. The helmsman had to rely on his sensor readings to navigate in to the perimeter.

"Five hundred kilometers," Travis reported. It was the minimum safe distance, and his report gave the captain a chance to veer off, but Archer declined. "Take us forward, straight and steady," the captain ordered, and with warring sensations of eagerness and trepidation, Travis pushed the starship forward.

As the Enterprise crossed the invisible plane, the ship shook slightly from the turbulence, and the lights flickered several times. As Travis kept his focus on the pitch controls, he followed the reports behind him with one ear.

"Power's fluctuating!" Malcolm shouted out. "Forward plating's down!"

"Microfractures are forming on the outer hull," T'Pol added in the muted, Vulcan equivalent of a shout.

"Keep going, Travis," Archer murmured. The captain stood by the helm, one foot up on the console's leg, leaning forward with his starship.

With nary a bang, the vessel slid through the perimeter, disappearing from visible space.

"Ho-ley shit," Travis breathed as he saw the sight before them. It was a massive, artificial sphere, looming before them on the viewscreen, and unbidden, Travis brought the Enterprise to a dead stop.

"Tell me something!" Archer commanded as he slowly straightened up, in awe of the construct. They were close enough to visually detect the various plates that formed the outer surface of the Sphere. Each one was easily the size of the Enterprise. What the hell IS that thing?

"It's approximately nineteen kilometers in diameter," T'Pol reported a second later. That put it at the size of a large asteroid—although no asteroid was that perfectly round. "It seems to be constructed entirely of a single alloy."

Archer's attention turned to tactical. "Any signs of defensive systems?"

"I'm not detecting any response to our arrival," Malcolm replied. "But if they wanted to destroy us, I don't think it would take long—if they have the power to generate that cloaking field, they could knock us out with one shot!"

"Whoever built the Sphere went to a great deal of trouble to conceal it," T'Pol added.

"Take us in closer, Travis," Archer ordered. "According to those ion trails, the Osaarian raiders spent over eight hours here; I want to find out why. Any luck scanning the interior?"

"No, Captain," T'Pol responded. "Our sensors are being deflected by the outer surface."

"There's no indication of a communications array," Hoshi added. "And I'm not detecting anything that resembles a comm signal."

"See if you can find the front door, then," Archer commanded. "Travis, bring us in closer and assume a standard orbit."

The bridge fell into momentary silence as the Enterprise closed in on the mysterious Sphere.

"I'm detecting what appears to be a portal," T'Pol said suddenly. "Bearing twenty-two degrees north."

"On screen," Archer ordered, and Hoshi shifted the sensor view. It looked—like a pair of giant sliding doors, the captain realized. Apparently, some architectural standards were the same, no matter the race. "Can we fit the Enterprise through?"

"No, sir," Travis answered quickly. "But a shuttlepod should fit easily."

…

With Travis at the controls, Shuttlepod One slid in towards the portal of the Sphere.

"We've cycled through the standard frequencies," Lieutenant Reed reported from one of the two co-pilot seats. Along with Malcolm and the captain, three MACOs rounded out the complement of the shuttle. "Nothing seems to be triggering a response."

"Hang on, Malcolm, I'm getting a transmission from Hoshi," Archer replied from the other co-pilot's seat. "Did you find the locking mechanism?"

"On the lower right side," Malcolm answered.

"Hold our position, Travis," Archer ordered. "Malcolm, I'm transferring a transmission burst to your controls. Hoshi says to keep it on a tight-beam." It would be easier to simply fire a phase cannon at the lock, but the shuttle was not equipped with weaponry; and the Enterprise's targeting scanners, while good, were not that good.

"Transmitting," Malcolm reported, tight-lipped, and a second later, the portal doors slid open. "That's one for Hoshi," he murmured.

Travis ran his checks quickly. "There's no indication of any ships, sir. I'm reading sufficient space to maneuver the pod."

Archer peered through the front screen, but could make out little in the darkness ahead. "Take us in, Travis."

The shuttle's running lights provided the only luminosity inside the Sphere; around them, the interior of the machine existed only in various degrees of spacious blackness, with ever-so-dim pinpoints of light hinting at the size of the complex. Travis eased the shuttle forward, relying on instrumentation readings only, and slowly, the shuttle ground to a halt. "I'm having problems getting sensor readings, Captain," Travis announced a moment later.

"The interior seems to be coated with some sort of sensor-absorbent material," Malcolm confirmed. Even with that, a pilot as skilled as Ensign Mayweather could usually fly by visual only; but the inside of the Sphere was too dark to allow it. "I'm reading an energy bleed from all around us. If these are the masked readings…I'd estimate that there's enough energy running through here to power a dozen cities!"

"What the hell is this thing for?" Archer murmured, perplexed by the growing mystery.

"Captain, I'm getting a hit!" Travis announced suddenly, cutting off the awe. "It's on a relative bearing of…two-thirty-four-mark-one-ninety-three!"

Archer squinted his eyes, but the effort was futile. "I thought the Sphere's materials were sensor-absorbent." It was more of a question than a statement.

"They are, Captain," Malcolm confirmed. "This looks like—like a recent addition, not an original part of the Sphere. As if the raiders added their own machinery to the pre-existing structure."

"It looks like a storage module!" Travis added, excited. "Maybe thirteen meters long, by three tall and three wide."

"There's a good chance they have a breathable atmosphere," Malcolm observed.

"And if not, we have life support gear." Archer had left his own console to study the sensor logs on Travis' monitors. "Do you see that docking port, Ensign?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take us in."

…

Despite the excitement, Travis moved the shuttle at a cautious crawl across the interior of the mysterious Sphere. The blackness around them was all-pervasive; a support beam or control platform could suddenly emerge from nothingness, leaving them with only a handful of meters with which to maneuver away. His fingers worked the thrusters closely, jetting the pod into areas of relative emptiness; but on at least three occasions, Travis had to bring the shuttle to a dead stop while he plotted the next several meters.

Finally, after almost a quarter hour of apprehensive piloting and nervous anticipation, the shuttle reached the out-of-place storage module, and Travis brought the craft about in a graceful 180º arc to align the airlock/docking apparatus on the shuttle's ceiling with that of the module. The resounding thud of the magnetic clamps and the hissing circulation of the airlock announced that their connection was firm.

The first team in, made up of Malcolm and Woods, entered the airlock wearing standard-issue EV suits and life support gear before closing the hatch behind them; until they could verify the atmospheric status of the module, it would be treated as a vacuum. Crammed tightly in the narrow tube, the two men raised their arms upward, opened the external hatch, and each focused a laser torch on the module's docking port.

The Osaarian alloy proved to be of little consequence, and within a minute, the laser torches had sliced through, granting the boarding team easy access to the storage module beyond. Malcolm pulled himself through first, floating gently into the openness until the low-grade magnetic field in his boots made contact with the wall; Woods followed a moment later.

"Reed to Archer," Malcolm called out, opening the intercom channel. "We're all clear, sir. I'm reading a breathable atmosphere—a little heavy on oxygen, but we should be fine." The lieutenant took his own advice and slid open the protective faceplate of his suit; a couple deep breaths verified that the life support precautions were not necessary. "There's no gravity although, Captain."

"Understood, Malcolm," Archer replied. "Fan out and begin the search. I'll send the next team through."

The next team, consisting of Archer and Kemper, didn't have to utilize the airlock controls to equalize atmospheric pressure; as such, they arrived much more quickly, clad in EV bodysuits, but without the heavy headgear or the life support breastplates. The third MACO, Hodgkins, followed behind them, leaving Travis in command of the shuttlepod.

"Spread out," Archer ordered, gesturing around them. The lengthy module was roughly half-filled with nondescript crates of every shape and size. "Make sure you check every crate. Keep open comm links."

Malcolm leveraged open the lid on the nearest crate. "A hit on the first try," he growled with disgust. "They're not going to run out of stem bolts anytime soon." The lid floated off in the gravity-null air as Malcolm moved on to check the next crate.

The team fanned out, but the intercom channel tallied their progress through the storage unit; momentary grunts of effort announced when a crate resisted access, and curses of anger meant any one of a dozen things. Occasionally, a voice would announce a new find. "Phase rifles!" and, "EPS tubing!" Then there was, "Starfleet ration packs!" followed by three others saying, "They can keep those!"

Process continued slowly down the length of the module, speed limited both by the sheer quantity of crates to examine and the slow nature of movement in the gravity-null environment. Captain Archer, with a ready data padd, had begun cataloguing their finds, one onerous crate at a time, when Hodgkins' excited voice summoned the captain. "I've found something, sir!"

Pushing off with enough force to sever the magnetic link, Archer let himself drift down the length of the module, threading his way through the crates as he went. Hodgkins was nearly to the end of the module, and the captain found him studying a computer terminal.

"Over here, sir," Hodgkins called out, and as the captain glided to a halt, the MACO lit up the computer screen. "I'm pretty sure it's a cargo manifest, Captain."

Archer looked at the chicken scratch on the screen. "How's your Osaarian, Private?" he asked wryly. "See if you can download it; we'll give it to Hoshi to work on. Good work, Private."

The captain tilted his head in the general direction of the shuttlepod. "Archer to Mayweather!" he called out.

"Mayweather here, sir," the young ensign replied instantly.

"Contact T'Pol and tell her to outfit the other shuttlepod with a second search and recovery team," Archer ordered. "And have her detail a cargo team to handle the receiving end. I think we hit their treasure trove."

…

Reclining in his ready room chair, Captain Archer made a vow to himself: as soon as possible, he would arrange for a cot to be placed in his office. He hadn't even seen the inside of his quarters for over a day and a half; his rest had come in snatched packets of minutes crammed between emergency summons.

"Captain, am I intruding?" T'Pol's prim tones did intrude, but Archer let himself rock forward and plastered on a weak, welcoming smile. "Come in, Commander. How's the recovery effort going?" The captain himself, after spending several hours transferring bulk cargo back to the Enterprise, had eventually departed to attend to other ship's business—and his growling hunger.

"The search teams have found nearly eighty percent of our stolen cargo," T'Pol reported, not bothering to consult the padd in her right hand. "We've recovered approximately seventy-five percent of our antimatter."

Archer grimaced, but he knew it was good news: seventy-five percent was a helluva lot better than none, and he had expected that the raiders would take some of it for immediate use. "It's probably running through the reactor of that Osaarian ship," he observed. "How's Trip doing with the engines?"

"Commander Tucker reports that he's ready to try initializing the drive, but would like to put some distance between us and the Sphere first."

Archer's brow furrowed. "Why is that?"

"The Sphere appears to be located at the heart of the gravimetric anomaly," T'Pol stated. "I have been—conducting scientific surveys of the Sphere."

His curiosity alert, Archer leaned forward on his desk. "What have you found?"

"Chronological scans indicate that it's nearly a thousand years old." T'Pol fidgeted slightly, indicating that the scan results were far from conclusive. "The structure contains seven fusion reactors, but only three are still operational."

"Who would build a massive, overpowered Sphere, and leave it dangling in the middle of the Expanse?" Checking himself, Archer raised his hands and rephrased the question. "Any idea what is was designed for?"

"I do not have a logical hypothesis at this time, Captain," T'Pol replied. "If, by 'any idea,' you are inquiring about any speculation…the Sphere's proximity to the heart of the anomaly may be coincidental, but the two may also be connected."

"Bridge to Captain Archer." Hoshi's disembodied voice intruded on the intercom.

Archer turned slightly to hit the comm panel. "Go ahead."

"Sir, can you come to the situation room? I found something you'll want to see."

"On my way, Hoshi. Archer out." The captain closed the channel and stood up, rapidly crossing his office to the doorway. "Take as many scans as you can," he told T'Pol as she fell into step behind him. "I want to know if it is a coincidence, or if the two are related."

They were on the bridge before Archer finished speaking, and he led the way to the rear alcove at an eager half-trot. On the wall monitor, Hoshi had posted a display that—well, Archer admitted, it still looks like chicken scratch.

"Captain, Commander," Hoshi acknowledged formally, and without further bidding, she pointed to the screen. "When I was translating the cargo manifest, something caught my eye. It listed a secondary computer core, taken from an unspecified vessel, but look at the markings on this scan of it."

She highlighted a particular portion of the screen. "See that ideography? We've seen it before—it was on the Xindi probe that crashed on Earth."

…

"Your ship attacked a Xindi vessel!" Archer barked through the transparent aluminum of the Enterprise's brig. "I want to know everything you can tell me about them!"

The prisoner, reclined on his cot, didn't even deign to look at the captain. "Xindi?" he said with a vocal shrug.

"You heard me!" Archer snarled. "Tell me about them!"

The prisoner snorted. "I don't remember a species by that name. But then again, we're not in the habit of asking names."

Archer glared menacingly through the divider. "You had better remember them. Your manifest said you took their ship less than two weeks ago!"

The prisoner glanced up at Archer for the first time. "What manifest?"

"The manifest we—" Archer caught himself. "It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you know who they are!"

The prisoner sighed loudly. "What did you say the name was?"

"The Xindi." Archer's teeth ground in irritation. "Tell me what you know about them."

Slowly, ever so slowly, the prisoner rolled his body off the cot and stood up, eyeing the captain from a distance. "And when did you say this was?"

"Two weeks ago."

The prisoner sauntered forward at a languid pace. "Can you tell me anything more about them?"

Archer felt as though the interrogation was slipping away. "They may have been reptilian."

"Ah, the reptiles." The prisoner let the words dangle slowly. "I remember them."

"Where are they now? Did you leave them stranded, like us?" The prisoner answered Archer's questions with a disdainful snort, leading the captain to a cold realization. "You destroyed them?"

"They resisted," the prisoner replied. "Far better than you, by the way. These 'Xindi' of yours—they have spirit. They left us with no choice." His body reached the transparent barrier, but he kept moving forward, until his face was centimeters away from Archer's.

"Where did they come from?" Archer demanded.

"Now, how would I know that?" The prisoner smiled graciously. "I told you, we're not in the habit of familiarizing ourselves with our victims."

The captain's irritation was threatening to overwhelm him. "Just tell me whatever you know!" Archer snarled.

"I know that they put up more of a fight than you," the prisoner replied insouciantly. "But you'll learn. If you survive."

Growling, Archer punched open the door of the brig, sending the prisoner staggering backwards in surprise. Moving quickly, Archer entered and grabbed the alien by the collar, leveling a phase pistol at the man's head.

"Empty threats from an empty man," the prisoner replied mockingly, recovering his equilibrium. "Do you really think I'd be so foolish as to fall for your bluster? Maybe, after a few years in the Expanse—then you might have the coldness to actually follow through with your futile bullying. But today?" The alien smiled sweetly. "You don't have the courage."

…

"I'd like to plant a fist in his face!" Archer snarled angrily as he paced around sickbay, chased by the Denobulan responsible for repairing the captain's re-aggravated hamstring. "Hit that insufferable bastard until he tells us what he knows!"

"So why don't you?" Trip encouraged, his own face cloaked with anger. "We need to teach him a lesson about screwing around with humanity!"

"May I remind you that there is no justification for believing that the prisoner is withholding information?" T'Pol was present as well, rounding out the quickly-called meeting of the Enterprise's top command staff. "His claims are logically consistent."

"How can he not know more?" Tucker hurled back. "He's been in the Expanse long enough; he's had to have heard of the Xindi by now! Who knows what he's holding back from us!"

"Supposition and assumption are not a legitimate basis for action," T'Pol replied in calm contrast to the engineer's irate fury.

"You have it backwards, T'Pol!" Trip replied, on the offensive. "Your assumption that he knows nothing isn't a justification for inaction! We can't take the risk of letting him escape with critical information!"

"So what would you have us do?" Phlox joined the debate with ire of his own. "Beat the prisoner until he tells us something? And what if he doesn't have anything to tell us? Would you just keep beating him?"

"Such an approach would only elicit lies," T'Pol added, determined to calm the emotional quotient of the heated room. "He would tell us anything to end the interrogation."

"That wouldn't be an interrogation!" Phlox countered furiously, unhappy with the Vulcan's characterization. "Beating someone? That's torture, pure and simple!"

"No one's suggesting torture, Doctor," Archer said, intervening with alarming composure. "It would be more of a—vibrant physical interrogation, that's all."

"You can't evade torture by playing semantics with the term!" Phlox retorted, shocked at what he was hearing. "Torture, by any name, is still torture!"

"Well, under the circumstances, we should think about it!" Trip shot back. "Our survival is on the line here—this isn't the time to be worried about meddling rules and regulations! Every option needs to be on the table!"

Phlox looked at the engineer with astonishment. "Is that all torture is to you?" he demanded. "A matter of relative morality, wrong in some circumstances, but fine in others? Some things are wrong, Commander, regardless of the situation!"

Tucker stared at the doctor with contempt. "Maybe you'd feel differently if the Xindi were threatening Denobula instead!"

"He's not even Xindi! He's not even the enemy!" Phlox refused to yield a centimeter, but astutely let the underhanded barb slide. "He's someone who might know something about them, and that's it!"

"What if we don't physically harm him?" Archer spoke up again, his sudden composure continuing to unsettle the doctor. "What if we only made him think we would hurt him? We could—put him in an airlock, and bleed out the air. That way, we could release enough to knock him out, but stop before it kills him!"

Phlox rotated to stare at the captain. "That's still torture! You're arguing a difference of degree, that's all!"

"Captain, you can't seriously be considering this!" T'Pol's own control shook under her indignation. "Even if you lay aside the morality of it, we have no reason to believe that our prisoner has any awareness of the Xindi beyond a single, fleeting encounter, in which he never even learned who they were!"

"And we have no reason to believe that he doesn't!" Trip fired back.

"We have his word—which is more than you've offered, Commander!"

Sickbay fell silent for a moment as T'Pol's words hung in the air.

"The Xindi are already threatening the survival of the human race," Phlox added quietly. "Don't hand them your humanity on a silver platter!"

Am I ready to take that step? Archer pondered the question, turning it over before his mind's eye. The prisoner himself had seemed to understand the necessity of taking harsh action, and the captain had a duty—a duty to his ship, to his crew, to his planet, and to his people.

His duty dictated the answer.

…

The screaming sirens of tactical alert summoned Archer from his tasks and sent him down the corridors and up the lift, limping his way to the bridge, somehow moving at a dead run. Around him, the rest of the crew scrambled to general quarters, filling the ship with the well-trained flow of its crewmembers, the majority departing the mess hall; the siren came in the middle of the dinner hour.

"Report!" Archer demanded as the lift deposited him on the bridge. He stumbled towards his command chair, feeling unusually old; his knitting ribs caused deep spurts of pain whenever he took a deep breath, and running…it was a battle between his ribs and his hamstring for which would beat him first.

"Something's passing through the cloaking field!" The second-shift tactical officer, Ensign Rahimi, provided the report even as she vacated the post, allowing Malcolm to assume his usual position. Elsewhere on the bridge, Commander T'Pol and Ensign Sato were still at their duty posts; and the lift doors opened again, disgorging Ensign Mayweather. The young man leapt over the inner railing on his way to the helm.

"Bring us about, head-on!" the captain barked, forgoing his usual energetic gallantry in favor of staying in his chair. "Can we get an ID?"

T'Pol was a moment quicker. "It's the Osaarian raider, Captain!" she answered. "Their weapons are hot!"

"Malcolm, status on our weapons?"

"Three of the front torpedo tubes are online, and one of the aft tubes," Reed responded loudly, fighting with the shrill siren. "Phase cannons at one-half. Permission to kill the noise!"

"Granted!" Archer shouted back. The sirens had been screaming long enough to do their job, and the sheer noise interfered with battle communications.

"Captain, they're firing!" T'Pol's warning came half a second before two torpedoes struck the Enterprise, causing the starship to shudder.

"Open a channel, Hoshi," Archer ordered, and he summoned the stamina to keep his voice steady. "This is Captain Archer. You may have noticed that our weapons are online this time! You're outgunned, so stand down!"

A sweeping run of particle-beam fire provided the answer.

"Bring us about in a firing pattern, Travis! Malcolm, take your shots when you get them!" Under Travis' steady hands, the vessel maneuvered around for a strafing run.

"They're moving off, sir!" Travis announced a moment later. "They're heading back through the cloaking field!"

"Malcolm, analysis!" Archer demanded. He gripped the arms of his chair tightly.

The tactical chief didn't disappoint. "They're not retreating, sir! They're using the cloaking field as a tactical barrier!"

"Stay on their trail, Travis!" Archer ordered. He refused to cringe as a gut-wrenching turn piled pressure onto his fractured ribs. "Take us through the field!"

"Aye, sir!" Travis answered, followed quickly by "Another fifty meters!" And then, with a vehement shaking, "We're through the field! Enemy vessel dead ahead!" Without waiting for orders, Travis brought the nose of the Enterprise to the side, avoiding a collision with the Osaarian vessel. It was less than a hundred meters away.

The Enterprise shook with another barrage of energy blasts, and returned fire, planting two photonic warheads in the dead center of the Osaarian craft.

A billowing explosion of fire and smoke resounded from over Malcolm's head, and the lieutenant ducked instinctively, protecting his hair from the flames. "Forward hull plating is offline!" he reported seconds later, as he scrambled back to his post.

"We need some distance, Travis!" the captain ordered. The rocking of the bridge shook Archer in his chair, and he clung tightly, trying to minimize the impacts of his torso.

"I'm reading a hull fracture on E-deck!" Hoshi shouted, as the reports of battle damage flowed into her station.

"They're re-entering the cloaking field!" T'Pol added, her voice eerily calm.

"Malcolm! Target their entry point with the phase cannons!" Twin shots of red energy lanced out from the Enterprise, drilling through the cloaking barrier.

"That got their attention!" Travis announced, pulling data from his navigational sensors. "They're coming back out!"

"Keep our weapons locked, and fire when they're clear!"

"Captain, I'm reading transporter signatures!"

Shit! "Malcolm, deploy your teams!"

…

The two security guards standing watch in the anteroom of the brig jumped to their feet as they heard the telltale materialization sequence of transporter beams, and the world exploded before their eyes.

The chemical grenade, beamed in seconds before the assault team, detonated on cue, blowing a gaping hole in the sealed doors and showering flaming debris within and without the anteroom. The force of the explosion, and the chemical heat, triggered instant fires in the corridor, rapidly sending up a thick cloud of black, eye-clogging smoke, and the primary lighting shorted out, plunging the corridor into the harsh glow of emergency lights; the black smoke fought with the white lights, casting the area into a bizarre monochromatic contrast.

Behind the grenade came four Osaarian raiders, decked out in battle armor and breathing gear, toting massive energy rifles. They swept the anteroom quickly, encountering no resistance; the two humans lay crumpled on the floor, unaware of the hell that had exploded around them.

As two of the raiders ducked inside the flaming control room, the other two took up sheltered positions at the entrance. Three MACOs arrived in the corridor outside, a split second too late to catch the raiders uncovered; the humans ducked behind cover of their own, and a furious firefight ensued, neither side gaining the advantage.

Inside, one of the Osaarians attached a small device—no larger than a golf ball—to the transparent aluminum barrier of the cell, and triggering the detonation sequence, he paused to cover his ears. Working on a sound pulse, the device went off, its high-pitched waves shattering the structure of the aluminum glass, leaving a jagged circle in the middle of the door. With his foot and his rifle butt, the raider smashed out the remaining glass.

The prisoner, astutely standing back during the breaching of the cell, now came forward and accepted a small transponder from the raider. Activating it, first the prisoner, then the four raiders, disappeared in columns of light.

As the weapons fire vanished, the MACO team advanced down the corridor and into the control room, stepping lightly around the flames erupting from deck plates and bulkheads, but there was nothing they could do. The prisoner was gone.

…

"Captain, the raider is pulling away!" Travis shouted from his post. The din of battle had continued to grow. "Sir, they're jumping to warp!"

Archer slumped back in his chair. The Osaarians were gone.

…

Due to a vagary of evolution, Denobulans do not routinely sleep; instead, once a Denobulan year they go into a brief hibernation cycle, packing their rest and recuperation into an intense, four-day slumber. (Denobulans are also prone to using hallucination as a recuperative device, but that's a different story.)

Thus, Doctor Phlox was still in sickbay, logging in his fortieth hour on duty. The serious injuries from the second battle with the Osaarian raiders had thankfully been confined to the two guards from the brig; other, minor injuries were reported from around the ship, keeping the doctor busy for several hours attending to the usual montage of bruises, cuts, and fractured bones. The two guards, however, both lay on biobeds in artificial healing somnolences, under the watchful eye of the medical staff.

Commander Tucker entered the twin doors, a few minutes later than usual. At a glance, Phlox could tell that the engineer was exhausted; Trip's face was drawn and pale, his eyes bloodshot and hollow, and he walked with a slight shuffle.

"Commander!" Phlox greeted Trip warmly. "How are you feeling?" The answer was a little obvious, but Phlox wanted to go through the usual routine; no sense in indicating that something was up.

"Tired," Trip replied shortly. He ran a wearied hand through his hair, leaving the follicles standing on end. "You said you'd give me something to sleep?" His tone was marginally rude, but it was a rudeness that Phlox associated with overtiredness, and thus the doctor took no offense.

Phlox tsked a bit as he punched the commands into the pharmacological synthesizer. The machine whirled softly as it combined the raw atoms into the appropriate medicine and injected the results into a hypospray.

"Here you go, Commander," Phlox said as he discharged the medicine into Trip's veins. "This should do the trick—for now," he emphasized. "But sedatives are not a long-term solution."

Trip grunted. "But smashing those bastards is."

Phlox let the comment slide; there was no sense in arguing ethics with someone who was physically and emotionally wore out. "If you wouldn't mind doing me a slight favor?" he asked inquiringly.

Trip nodded. "Sure, Doc."

Phlox grabbed a padd from the console and extended it towards Tucker. "I promised T'Pol that I'd take these scans to her quarters, but I still have quite a bit of work to do here." Truth was, with two patients in intensive care, Phlox would only leave sickbay for a medical call, so there was at least some truth to his words.

"No problem, Doc," Trip answered. He took the padd and waved it in farewell. "Thanks for the shot."

As the commander vanished out the doors, Phlox turned and opened an intercom link. "Sickbay to T'Pol."

"Yes, Doctor."

"Commander Tucker is on his way to your quarters. He believes that I just gave him a sedative, but it was only a placebo."

"Understood, Doctor," T'Pol replied curtly. "I shall endeavor to maintain your subterfuge."

Phlox couldn't help smiling—the placebo shot was the least of his subterfuge. "He could greatly use your assistance, Commander."

…

Trip rounded the corridor, tapping the padd against the palm of his hand. He had briefly scanned the contents of it; as third-in-command, there was little that he was not cleared to see. And if the data had been about the Xindi…curiosity warred with bloodlust, but the end result was the same. He skimmed through the contents, and recognizing them to be relatively insignificant, promptly forgot the contents.

Truth was, at the moment, not a lot was lodging in his mind; he had a couple hours of restive sleep the night before, and for a couple weeks prior to that, Trip had been relying on sedatives to get him through the night. While the drugs were effective at knocking him out, the artificial chemicals did not provide the deep, restful sleep that his body and mind so desperately needed; and when he did achieve REM sleep, his dreams were haunted, sending him crashing to a wakeful fit and destroying any hope of rest.

Trip rang the doorchime for T'Pol's quarters, and the Vulcan opened the door a moment later. "Sorry to drop by so late," Trip said by rote. "Phlox said you were expecting this data." He handed her the padd, and T'Pol laid it down on her desk.

"Thank you," T'Pol replied properly, and she gestured inward. "Please, sit down."

Without really thinking about it, Trip followed the suggestion as if it were a command. As he settled into the proffered chair, the engineer's mind was startled into conscious realization; he felt…calmer, somehow, as though tension were draining away. With a jolt, he realized that he had never been in T'Pol's quarters, and wondered if her room had always been this relaxing; soft candlelight glowed from the bureaus, and a hint of jasmine floated in the air, completely masking the familiar odors of the starship.

"I don't think I'd be very good company right now," Trip said apologetically. T'Pol—usually prim and proper, carrying herself like a rigid board—was contributing to the sense of serenity in the room. Her posture was relaxed, with the gracefulness of a dancer; her eyes bespoke an air of compassion. And she wore a pair of silk pajamas which revealed the softness of her skin…Trip snapped his mind back before it drifted away in inappropriate thought.

"The best judge of that is the person you are visiting," T'Pol observed. "Would you care for a cup of tea? It's decaffeinated."

"I—sure," Trip stammered. He took the warm mug from T'Pol and let the aroma waft into his nasal passages; he recognized the soothing blend of kava tea. "The Doctor just gave me a sedative, but this sure tastes better." It was a weak joke, but fit the circumstances. "So how about you, T'Pol? Am I the only victim of insomnia?"

"To my knowledge," T'Pol replied. "But I am not privy to the medical concerns of the crew."

Trip leaned forward, continuing to cup the mug. "If you don't mind me asking—" T'Pol nodded in permission. "How do you do it? I mean, how do you put everything aside to rest at night?"

T'Pol paused, as if in thought. She discarded the literal Vulcan response—which would begin with an extended description of her people's increased stamina and lessened need for rest, and went with an answer far more conducive to present needs. "Vulcan science encourages us to cure the root of our sleeplessness, rather than the symptoms," she answered.

Trip snorted. "I've heard that before. Before we left Earth, people kept telling me that I should go into counseling—but I'm telling ya, T'Pol, it's a bunch of crap. All I need is to punch one of those Xindi bastards in the face."

T'Pol sat down on her bunk, across from Tucker. "But that is not currently an option," she noted.

"And don't I know it," Trip grumbled. "So—what's the answer?" He felt odd asking the Vulcan for advice, but the atmosphere of her quarters seemed to channel a sense of trust.

"Have you considered massage therapy?" T'Pol asked carefully. "Lowering the physical stress and tension in the humanoid body will help you rest."

Trip cringed at the suggestion; he had never gotten into alternative medicine, despite the vast body of evidence supporting its effectiveness. Plus…it was still T'Pol. Their relationship may be cordial, but it was a long way from the degree of vulnerability involved in massage treatments.

"I don't know, T'Pol," he answered doubtfully. "It just doesn't sound right for me. Besides, the sedatives seem to work fine."

"The Doctor will not continue to dispense the drugs," T'Pol replied flatly. "It is time to explore alternatives."

Trip's initial shock gave way to anger, then acknowledgement. He knew, intellectually, that Phlox considered the sedatives to be a temporary measure, and Trip understood why; it was still something different to hear it put so bluntly.

Trip looked into the eyes of his fellow officer, and was astonished to see a glimmer of feeling in the passionless orbs. He could not recall ever seeing T'Pol's emotions like that—still cloaked and hidden, but the tiny beam forced its way through, shining forth from her.

If she can do it, so can I, Trip decided. "All right, T'Pol. What do I do?"

…

Phlox had to blink his eyes in adjustment as he left the corridor and entered the Enterprise's new command center. While the hallway outside was only semi-lit, with the twilight glow of ship's night, the command center was nearly opaque with darkness; it was the incongruent glow of starlight that highlighted the captain's form in the center of the room.

On top of the central desk was a stellar projector. A classic tool of astronomy, the technology had been upgraded repeatedly over the centuries; where once the projector could only generate a starmap on the interior of a dome, holographic advances now allowed the tool to display a truly three-dimensional starmap within the room. No other lights, no other panels, shone; the command center had taken on the feel of a stellar cartography lab.

Phlox's companion felt no such awe at the raw beauty of the pinpoints of light. With a mind only for the familiar scent of his best friend, Porthos bounded forward eagerly, leaping into Archer's lap before the captain could even respond. The beagle's tongue—in many ways, the most dangerous part of a dog—shot out gleefully, giving the captain a sloppy kiss.

The doors slid shut behind Phlox, sealing him in the darkness, and he stepped forward tentatively. "Is it all right if I join you, Captain?"

"Of course, Doctor." Archer was using both hands to hold Porthos away from his face, but the ecstatic, squirming pup kept fighting forward. Phlox could just barely make out the captain's smile. Happiness is a warm puppy sitting on your lap, Phlox thought, recalling the ancient words of wisdom.

"Just thought I'd stop by to return Porthos," Phlox said conversationally as he pulled out the second chair and sat down. He took a second to survey the stars. "They don't look familiar."

In no hurry, Archer waited a beat before responding. "This is what Hoshi pulled out from the Xindi computer core," he said. "There's still a lot of holes in it, but Travis thinks it maps about a third of the Expanse."

"That's significantly good news," Phlox replied. Indeed, after seven weeks in the Expanse, this was their first useful find; ironic that it came about as a result of a marauder attack…But then, Phlox knew, that's the way that life works. "Have you figured out where we're going next?"

Archer gently raised his dog in the air, swept the beagle's rear legs out, and lowered Porthos back down in a resting position on his lap. "Not a clue," Archer admitted. "Not one clue."

Phlox let a few minutes of companionable stargazing go by before he spoke again. "I hear that engineering has a solution for our warp drive problem."

"More of a partial solution, really." Archer smiled in the darkness. "It consists primarily of staying away from the gravimetric distortions." He tapped the projector controls, and several blurry lines appeared. "We were able to modify the sensors to better detect the disruptions. With time, we ought to be able to plot warp-safe paths."

Archer glanced warily at the doctor. "Did you make the arrangements with Trip and T'Pol?"

Phlox nodded, unseen. "As far as I know. T'Pol agreed to the plan, and I just sent Commander Tucker to her cabin. I'll have to get an update from her tomorrow."

"Listen, Phlox," Archer began hesitantly. "About the things Trip said earlier, about interrogating our prisoner—"

"Don't worry about it, Captain," Phlox replied graciously. "I know what kind of strain he's under—what kind of strain he's putting himself under. But I do have to ask something."

Archer said nothing, so Phlox continued. "Are you sure it was a good idea bringing him along?"

"I was," Archer harrumphed. He let the comment hang for several beats. "Now? I don't know."

"Captain, I'd like to ask you something personal."

Archer sat up straighter, disturbing Porthos. It was an unusual request from the doctor, but one that Phlox more than deserved. "What is it, Doctor?" As he spoke, the captain lifted the dog away from his face.

"Your decision in sickbay," Phlox replied hesitantly. "To not—torture the prisoner." Phlox kept his gaze forward, surveying the pinpricks of light surrounding them. "Why?"

Archer snorted. He took his time before answering. "Being human is about a lot more than just survival, Doctor," he said finally. "It's about a code of ethics, a sense of morality. It's not just a question of survival." His voice flashed with slight anger. "It's a question of what are we surviving as. To save our lives at the cost of our souls…" he shook his head, the movement invisible. "Some things just aren't right, Doctor, no matter the circumstances."

The points of light glimmered before him. "But to be fair, Doctor, this time it was easy. That prisoner—there was very little chance that he was withholding useful information. If we changed the situation…say, if it was the Xindi engineer who was building the second weapon, and he refused to speak…" Archer's voice trickled off. "I just don't know. I'd like to believe that my morals are strong enough, but…I just don't know."