Disclaimer: Star Trek is not my property. No profit made.
The following story is a response to The Delphic Expanse's March 2011 History Challenge, in which participants were randomly assigned a historical period and were asked to write a fic somehow set in that period. I was assigned "The Tudor Court", and this alternative to "Storm Front" is the result. Some dialogue is adapted from "Storm From" by Manny Coto. It will heavily feature Archer, Trip, T'Pol and Malcolm, and it will contain a TnT romance.
Captain Jonathan Archer closed his eyes, but he still couldn't escape the fact that he was out of time, once again. All he had to do was inhale the foul London air, ripe with the smells of livestock, sewage and far too many unwashed bodies to be reminded of his situation.
He opened his eyes, and before him he saw the rich carpet which lined the street in front of his feet. He had been told to make sure no part of his boot touched the carpet. He glanced over at Silik, who had taken human form and was dressed in head-to-toe black, save a stiff white collar around his neck.
No, not Silik, thought Archer, Sir Steven. Sir Steven was the name Silik had been using since he had landed in this time and place.
Archer sighed, looking down at his own ridiculous outfit. He had a similar collar, which itched terribly, but his clothing was bright blue and embroidered with gold. Silik had insisted that black clothes, such as the ones he wore, would not be appropriate for a prosperous sea captain.
Archer shook his head. Had it been only days ago that he had destroyed the Xindi weapon? He had thought to be dead after that, and he considered the possibility that he was. To punctuate that theory, Archer glanced up at a nearby gate and the rotting head of some unfortunate person which was impaled on a spire.
This could very well be hell.
But Silik insisted Archer wasn't in hell. Silik claimed they were on Earth, centuries before Archer's birth. And, more than that, Silik claimed they were on the same side. In fact, he had pretty much convinced Archer of that.
A commotion down the road interrupted his thoughts. A large party of humans, dressed in clothes even more elaborate than Archer's, proceeded down the road. Silik nodded at him. Both of them had their eyes on two men who stood across the road from them.
The large party of people approached, and as they did, Archer saw the woman who was at the center of the group. She was a tiny woman, with flame red hair that tied back behind a velvet cap. She wore a red silken gown and white collar, both so large that they looked as if they could swallow her. Her skin was pale, almost porcelain-like, and she was young. He had always thought of this woman as old, with a painted face to hide her age. The woman walking among the crowd and greeting people was in her twenties and clearly healthy, and although she wasn't pretty, her long face had a striking elegance.
Archer watched as she knelt to accept a bouquet of flowers from a little girl, dressed in rags, who had curtsied deeply. The woman's face, which had been as placid as T'Pol's, broke in to a smile as she thanked the child.
Suddenly, the two men across from Archer opened their cloaks and produced weapons. The weapons appeared to be pistols of the period, but Silik had warned Archer that they were particle weapons.
Archer and Silik each pulled out weapons of their own, true to the time but tweaked with 23rd Century know-how, and they fired at the assassins. Both assailants fell quickly, their own weapons falling, unfired but still pointing at the queen, whose eyes were wide with shock.
She had made a gesture to her guards, and they moved toward the fallen men, who had transformed into reptilian Suliban as they died. Hopefully, everyone would simply think they had plague. At least, that's what Silik had insisted would happen.
The queen approached.
"Kneel, idiot," whispered Silik.
Archer dropped to his knees with a flourish he had learned when he had been an extra in a high school production of Hamlet. Silik was next to him, doing much the same.
The queen stepped close to both of them, an expression of shock and terror on her face. Archer saw that her hands trembled as she clutched one in the other on the front of her dress. She trained her eyes on Archer and he looked up and straight at her for a moment. Their eyes met, and before he could help it, Archer smiled at her. To his shock, she briefly smiled back before her guards spirited her away.
A black-clad man, with a black beard, who had been one of the many with the queen, lingered.
Archer and Silik, now on their feet, each bowed curtly to him.
"Sir Stephen," he said, "You did well to identify the assassins and stop them. Perhaps the queen will listen to her wise counsel regarding her safety."
Silik nodded. "Sir Francis Walsingham, may I present Captain Jonathan Archer. He brought me the intelligence regarding the conspiracy against her majesty."
Archer took a hard look at the stern fellow before him. He didn't know who the guy was, but he guessed that the man was the queen's Malcolm. He had a look, both in his expression and stance, that said "Chief of Security" or whatever the Renaissance equivalent of that post.
"Well, Captain Archer," said Sir Francis, "I'm sure her majesty will want to reward you for your courage."
Archer glanced at Silik. If Silik was right about the temporal results of saving the queen from the assassins, they wouldn't be around long enough for Archer to be rewarded, which he instinctively knew would be a good thing.
T'Pol stood silently and still in the quiet of sickbay. From the various scans, the position of the stars and Daniels's ramblings, they had deduced that they were orbiting Earth circa the year 1560. T'Pol understood little of how or why they had been transported there, but Daniels had been insisting that unless Archer completed his mission that there would be no future for any of them to go back to. This confused her, since Archer's mission to destroy the Xindi weapon had been successful, at the cost of his own life.
"Portions of Daniels' body have aged at a dramatic rate. In some areas, the tissue is over a hundred years old. Yet, other sections have been reduced to an almost fetal stage," said Phlox as he examined Daniels.
She stepped closer. She had never seen a humanoid with such damage to his body remain alive. "Do you have any theories as to what caused this?"
"It's not any kind of infectious organism, at least, nothing that shows up on my medical scanner."
"Will he survive?" she asked.
"Frankly, with his amount of cellular chaos, I'm surprised he's still alive. I doubt he'll live more than 24 hours," replied Phlox grimly.
T'Pol stared at the patient, who was clearly in agony. She was currently in command of a vessel that was exiled centuries out of its own time. Her only hope of returning her crew home was this dying and delirious man.
"He very well could be responsible for our being here. He could also be the only hope of getting back to our own time. It is imperative that I speak with him."
With that, she turned on her heel and left. Her mind raced. She thought of the other crew, the one that had been trapped back in time. Would she be forced to lead a crew of temporal exiles?
As she headed toward the bridge, she ran into Commander Tucker...Trip, who had been so angry when they had discovered themselves out of time.
"I'm sorry about earlier," he said, without preamble, "I was just ready to get home."
She sighed. "We all were. I had hoped to visit Vulcan. It's been a long time since I've been home."
Trip sighed. She thought for a moment he might say something more, something personal. But his expression changed, and he began to speak of the business at hand.
"Malcolm's detected some delta radiation emissions on the surface that shouldn't be there. By coincidence, they are emitting from his home country. He wants to go down and investigate."
T'Pol nodded. "We'll see what intelligence we can gain from Daniels, and then I'll send Mr. Reed down. You'll need to go, as well. You will be most useful in tracking and understanding the source of the radiation."
Trip nodded. "We're limited in who we can take to the surface. Malcolm thinks we'll need to blend in. So, we can't take Hoshi or Travis or anyone member of the crew who would stick out in Merry Old England at this time...but you can pass, I think. Mal says women at this time all have long hair and wear hats on top of that."
T'Pol thought for a moment. If Captain Archer were here, he would not have left the reconnaissance to subordinates. She would go and find out what she could.
Suddenly, Phlox appeared in the corridor.
"Daniels is awake, and he wishes to speak to you, Captain."
T'Pol acknowledged the doctor with a nod, and she turned back toward sickbay, with Trip following. Daniels looked terrible, but he was sitting up and fiddling with the instrument.
"Archer succeeded in what we needed him to do," wheezed Daniels, "Silik brought him here to stop the assassination of Elizabeth I of England. He did that, but the timeline isn't restored. Our futures still don't exist."
T'Pol and Trip locked eyes. An emotion surged forth, and she could not suppress it. Hope.
"Captain Archer was brought here?" asked Trip, emotion evident in his voice. "Daniels, you smug son of bitch, you better not be lying."
Daniels did not react, his attention on his instrument.
"Silik brought him here? How do you know?" asked Malcolm.
Daniels weakly pressed some buttons. "Mine enemy's enemy is my friend. An ultra-radical faction within the Temporal Cold War intended to wipe out the Suliban Cabal and the Federation, filling the vacuum themselves. Neither the Cabal or the Federation wanted that. They were going to stop the formation of the Federation by killing Elizabeth I of England and holding back the Protestant Reformation and the English settlement of North America, pushing back the Enlightenment by several centuries. The assassination didn't happen, but the timelines aren't restored."
Daniels gasped, pressing more buttons and continued. "Here's the history as it is. You've got to find Archer and Silik, and you've got to make history like it is in your database on Enterprise. Not like this."
He slowly handed the device to Trip as his eyes fluttered. Trip held the device and looked at it before looking back at Daniels, who started to convulse.
"I'm going to have to ask you both to step aside," said Phlox, "I need to work."
Trip and T'Pol obeyed, heading out of sickbay with Trip still clutching Daniel's device.
