Chapter Nine - Necessary Lies

"Crewman," T'Pol said sharply, momentarily overcoming her aversion for physical contact to shake Egawa's shoulder. He pried his eyelids open and regarded her with something less than full attention. Even through the thick material of his jumpsuit, T'Pol could feel the heat of his body, way higher than human normal, scorching her hand. She suspected that it was sheer duty keeping him conscious. Had she had the leisure of pondering the situation, she might have been impressed. "Stay with me, Crewman."

"I don't think I could run away from you if I tried, sir," Egawa murmured absently.

T'Pol felt a frisson of fear. Egawa was nearing delirium now, having missed the point of this very common human expression. She doubted that she could carry him the rest of the way. It would take all the strength she had left to get herself where she needed to go.

She had no idea where the captain was, and, logically, they had no more time to search. He would not leave you behind, a small, nagging voice reminded her, harkening back to her very first mission with the obstinate, illogical captain. He risked his life to save you, despite his contempt for you and your race, and was wounded for his efforts. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the voice. She knew what she had to do, what Archer would expect her to do: get her crewman to safety. Egawa was her mission now; she had to get him aboard that pod somehow.

Together, they had followed the symbols written on what turned out to be a makeshift map, the scrap of fabric pushed into Egawa's hands by one of the aliens. The writing was barely legible, but the marks had corresponded to notations above doors and at junctions throughout the laboratory. Egawa had fought to stay alert, laboriously dragging his bulk through the air shafts using his elbows, too weak now to even raise himself to his knees. His fever heated the air in the narrow tunnel. Every so often, he would mutter under his breath, words that by their rhythm and rhyme scheme seemed to be nursery songs, a cadence, perhaps, to keep himself moving forward. The sound scraped her already abraded nerves, but she had called on her diminishing Vulcan control to keep her from forcibly shutting the human's mouth.

Gradually, she had become aware of a cold draft, a sharp wind hitting her own overheated skin. It had taken longer than it should have to conclude that they were approaching the terminus of the air shaft, a vent to the outside. And where there was a breeze, there would be atmosphere. T'Pol began to consider for the first time that the laboratory-prison in which they were confined might be located on a planet, not in the belly of a ship or on a space station. She had not been completely successful in suppressing a twinge of hope when she had seen the small one or two person vessel waiting like a gift on a bare patch of dirt not more than twenty meters away.

T'Pol poked her head once again out of the stuffy air vent for a count of three, swiveling to take in the entire empty courtyard, and then ducked back. She would have to take the chance that there were no cameras or alarms to alert whatever aliens still remained in this prison, or if there were, that she could get the escape pod up and running before security arrived. The pod itself, a squat oval of dense, dark metal, sat unattended on an otherwise empty launch pad, as if forgotten. There were no tethers or clamps that she could see.

A piece of fabric identical to the one she held in her hand caught her eye. It was jammed in the left bottom corner of the pod hatch. More instructions? she thought, and allowed herself to hope that it contained directions for operating the alien craft. But why would this alien, whoever or whatever it was, assist in their escape? The nagging voice was back, taunting her with doubts. Why won't you even consider the possibility that this could be a trap? Perhaps this was yet another experiment. She sat back on her heels.

"Sir," Egawa's voice was weak but firm. "Sir, you can't hesitate. I don't know why that thing gave me a map to get out, or allowed me to come and find you. But it did. You give me the order to move, and I promise you, sir, I'll be right behind you."

"I was not hesitating, Crewman. I was considering the options."

Eyes closed, he made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort. "Yes, sir."

In her mind, T'Pol ran through the steps, picturing each movement: Sprint approximately fourteen paces to the pod. Throw the hatch, help Egawa climb in. Close hatch. Ignite engines, accelerate.

She'd worry about the destination later.

It took three tries before she was satisfied that Egawa understood the plan. He nodded impatiently, obviously ready to get on with it, and wiped his palm on his trouser legs. She could feel his muscles tense in the crowded space, gathering himself to explode from their hiding place. Then his hand gripped her arm lightly. "Sir?" Egawa's voice was steady and calm. "I think the captain will understand why we're leaving him behind." T'Pol didn't respond. "But I just wanted to say that I'm sorry I couldn't protect you both."

"You've done your duty well, Crewman. And for the record," she added, "I am ordering you to evacuate." She felt his tension ease incrementally, and wryly reflected that her years aboard a human vessel had affected her in odd ways. When had preventing a human's wholly illogical feeling of guilt become important to her?

T'Pol took a moment to find her center, steadying her breathing and clearing her mind of all extraneous thought. Her focus narrowed to that tiny ship, almost within touching distance. On her quiet order, they moved swiftly and as one across the small patch of frozen ground, directly into the teeth of the frigid wind. T'Pol vaulted herself through the open hatch, then one-handedly yanked Egawa up by his arm into the craft. Counting down from thirty in her head, she slammed herself into the only chair and surveyed the controls. Egawa snatched the bit of material from the floor and closed the hatch. She ran her eyes over the symbols, oriented herself with the control panel, and fired up the pod. "Hold on," she commanded, and opened the throttle.

Later, T'Pol would admit privately that it had taken all her physical and mental control to remain conscious as the tiny pod achieved orbit. Folded into the uncomfortable pilot's chair, she felt the sudden pressurization pushing against her lungs. Black spots swam before her eyes as she struggled to catch any oxygen she could. There was no time to manage the navigational controls, to check heading or attitude or speed. She simply held on to the edge of the seat as the alien craft hurtled itself into the black.

She could barely lift her head to check on Egawa, but she could hear him groaning as he lay on the deck less than half a meter away from her. Illogically, she was more concerned about his labored breathing than about the very real prospect of following a doomed trajectory into the nearest star.

Gradually, though, the pressure eased, although the artificial gravity was at least half-again Enterprise's normal, and T'Pol was able to rise from the chair. She knelt beside Egawa, who was now coughing painfully. "Crewman," she said, her voice sounding hoarse, "I need to get control of this vessel. Hold on." Fighting her way back to her seat, she found that she could only manipulate the cabin's atmosphere, and adjust its gravity.

No matter how she tried, she could not alter the course of the craft. She wrestled back the frustration and fear, and schooled her features. "It appears that this vessel's course is already set," she informed Egawa. He gave a single, non-committal hum, and she turned to find him folded into a tiny alcove, peering at a dim console. "Crewman?"

Egawa rubbed his eyes, then went back to hunting and pecking with his forefinger. "I'm pretty . . . sure this is a . . . communication console. . . ," he gasped. "There's . . . some sort of . . . beacon - I can't . . . seem to shut it . . . off."

T'Pol allowed herself to channel her human crewmates for a moment, envying the fact that their language, unlike Vulcan, contained myriad words designed to express pure frustration. She used a few under her breath, experimentally. Maybe they did help, if only a little bit. It was surely no coincidence that they were again traveling in an alien spacecraft with a destination they could not control. Perhaps something worse than scientific experimentation awaited them at the end of the journey this time. How could she not have seen that this was a trap? Why had she not listened to that logical voice, the one telling her that their escape was too easy, too serendipitous? The empty corridors, the abandoned pod – she was a Vulcan, and Vulcans did not believe in luck or coincidence.

Nor did they believe in useless optimism, she reminded herself, as Egawa rested his head in his hands for a moment. The human was clearly on his last ounces of strength, and it would only be a matter of time before she discovered which would kill him first: the fever, the lack of food or water, or, possibly, asphyxiation when their oxygen supply ran out. Unless, of course, their alien captors came looking for them. It was illogical to worry about his imminent death, she knew, since there was very little she could do to prevent it, but she felt her pulse race each time she glanced over to find his condition deteriorated that much more. "Crewman?" she said again, trying to prod him back to full consciousness. "I am scanning to determine our location. Please continue to monitor whatever frequencies you can find."

He half-smiled and nodded briefly, keeping up the pretense that either one of them believed that they would be rescued. "Yes, sir."

She busied herself with her scans, trying to find one star pattern she recognized out of a thousand scattered clusters as the pod continued along its mysterious, pre-programmed path.


"When are you going to talk to Gardner?" Reed asked again, as soon as the pins and needles sensation had subsided.

Trip shrugged as he stepped down off the platform. Chief Engineer or no, he was never thrilled to actually use the transporter. His scientific mind acknowledged that it was almost one hundred percent safe for human use; they hadn't had a real malfunction since the earliest days of Enterprise's mission, and he had no problem manning the controls for other people. His superstitious gut made him avoid the spot where Quinn Erickson had re-materialized and quickly died after fifteen years in transporter limbo. "I'll get to it," he said over his shoulder as he headed down the corridor. The slightly chilly recycled air felt wonderful after the oppressively muggy heat of Carah Shon.

Reed persisted, following behind after dismissing the transporter engineer. "Commander, sooner or later you're going to have to inform Starfleet that the captain and the First Officer are missing. It's been over a week."

"What are they gonna do, Malcolm, from fifty light years away? The best case scenario is they tell us to keep looking. That's what we're doing anyway. The worst case is they give us another day or two, tops, and declare the cap'n and T'Pol 'missing, presumed lost.' Well, I'm not ready to give up yet. I can wait a little while longer for a field promotion, and so can you." He stalked down the hall.

Stung by the implication that he was giving up too easily, Reed followed quickly. "Commander!" Trip stopped, but didn't turn around. Reed took in the slump of Trip's shoulders and softened his tone. "Look, Trip, all I'm saying is that Starfleet has the right to know what's going on. Even if they sent Columbia to give us a little back up – "

"Malcolm," Trip interrupted, "Columbia's got her hands full patrolling the Romulan hot spots. Sending her out here would leave the civilian fleets almost defenseless. Besides, if Starfleet sends Columbia, that's just asking for a war. Darala isn't the most rational person we've ever met, remember. She's all but thrown us off her planet and kicked us out of the system. Two starships in orbit, she'll consider that an aggression against The People and then it's on. We need her cooperation if we're ever going to find the cap'n and T'Pol."

"In my opinion, the last thing we need is Darala's cooperation," Malcolm replied. "Darala's been lying to us since day one. This whole thing has been one long dog-and-pony show. She wanted to get rid of Arat Atanoma, so what better way than to serve him up as the culprit and have him executed?"

"That's a hell of an accusation, Malcolm."

"Yes, well, then try this one on for size. We know that Darala got herself into hot water with Atanoma after her little show. The People are nothing if not . . . insular, but Darala's got this curiosity about humans. She wants to know what we're like. So she indulges herself with the captain, who's a bit more of a gentleman about it than is strictly reasonable. He goes along with it, out of politeness, or diplomacy, or some chemical assistance, whatever. But then she gets a little more than she bargains for: it triggers a backlash, her lover doesn't just get upset - he turns around and joins the opposition. Then the shuttle blows up, kind of, sort of, but not really, and we show up demanding answers. Now she's got to get rid of him before he blows the whistle on their little relationship or passes on any pillow talk secrets. And suddenly all roads lead back to Arat and his cousin, Jin Sava. Very convenient."

"You think she planned the whole thing? Not just kissing off Arat but actually trying to get rid of the captain and T'Pol?"

Sighing, Reed replied, "Honestly? No. But I do think she takes advantage of every little thing she can. She may not have known about the kidnapping scheme, but she certainly did nothing to come to Arat's defense when he was caught in the middle of it. She could have come clean, at least about her part in this whole thing, the minute we confronted her with the surveillance video. But no, she just let that guy get taken into custody and interrogated, knowing that it would be the end of him. Problem solved, and her secret's safe. I just don't think Dr. Fenree got the memo that she wasn't actually supposed to get a confession out of him before he died."

Trip winced. He wasn't ready to deal with the memory of watching a person being tortured to death. He started walking again, this time at a slower pace. "The real mystery, Malcolm, is where they took our people. Arat or no Arat, there was a plan in place to make it look like that shuttle went boom. Our people were taken somewhere, and for some particular reason. And I think if we find those missing Vya, we find T'Pol and the captain and Crewman Egawa. I want to check in with Hoshi and Travis, see what they have for us. Then we need to sit down and figure out what we do now." He ran a hand through his sticky, sweaty hair and ruefully fantasized for a second about the cool, soapy shower he'd been promising himself for three days now. That would have to wait. "There are too many questions we don't have answers to for us to contact Gardner, Malcolm. I'll do it as soon as I have something concrete to tell them."

In the end, the transmission to Starfleet Command would have to wait for other reasons. No sooner had Trip checked in with the Bridge crew and sat down behind the desk in the Ready Room, than Hoshi commed him.

"Sir, there's a transmission coming from The World." Her voice had the familiar tension that meant she wasn't talking about a routine message.

"I'll be right there."

Long strides took him back to the Bridge in about ten seconds. By that time, Hoshi had deciphered the message and cued it up on audio. "It came through highly encrypted, and on this odd frequency," she said.

"Let's hear it."

The voice was unmistakably Shevon's, but strained and rushed. "I have information," she said, "I cannot transmit again." Then there followed a series of numbers, another code, Trip supposed, but the pattern of the sequence seemed familiar somehow.

"What–" he began.

"Coordinates," Travis supplied quietly from the navigation console, pulling up a longitude/latitude map. "Looks like it's kind of on the outskirts of the capital, but nowhere near any of the landing facilities."

Trip met Reed's eye. "Transporter." Reed nodded and sprinted off into the lift.

"Can you send a message back, acknowledging? I need her not to move from that spot."

Hoshi nodded. "I can send a little blast – like that," she tapped a few keys, "so she knows we heard her. Hopefully, she'll stay put for just a minute."

They stood in silence, waiting. Trip resisted the urge to drum his fingers on Hoshi's console. She hated that. He had no illusions as to what would happen to the aide if she were caught communicating with the humans, personae non gratae as they were. "Come on, Malcolm," he muttered under his breath.

Hoshi's comm. beeped. "Commander," Malcolm said crisply, "we have a guest."

Trip let out a breath. "Bring her to the Briefing Room, Malcolm," he directed. "I'm on my way."

Maybe now, finally, they would catch a damn break.


First things first. "Did anybody follow you?"

"I was as careful as I could be," Shevon answered. "I didn't know who else to trust." She laid a recorder on the table, and everyone in the room understood at once that, should she be caught now, she would be tried and executed as a traitor to The People. Whatever information was on that device was not meant for human ears.

Trip studied her for a moment, then rose to press the comm. "Tucker to the Bridge."

"Mayweather here, sir."

Trip made a mental note to assign someone to relieve Travis. He didn't think the helmsman had been off duty for more than an hour at a time since the captain had disappeared. "Prepare to take us out of orbit, Travis."

"Aye, sir. Heading?"

Trip eyed Shevon, then replied, "Stand by. I'll get back to you on that in a minute." He closed the connection. "Okay, I'm all ears."

The alien woman paused, then picked up the small apparatus. Trip recognized it as her people's version of a padd, a translator/recorder/data analysis device that he had not seen her without since he'd been on The World. With obvious trepidation, she switched it on and placed it back on the table gently.

As Hoshi translated the words into Standard English, the recorder yielded its information. A transmission, a set of coordinates, a rendezvous time and place. The instructions were chilling in their simplicity: You are to dispose of the subjects. You are to have the product ready when I arrive. Leave no trace.

"Where did this transmission originate?" Reed asked quietly.

Shevon twisted her fingers together in her lap, a gesture of distress that humans and The People seemed to share. "It came from inside the Great Hall, the secret room." She dropped her voice, as if afraid of being overheard even here, miles above The World.

"Whoa, wait," Trip said, holding his hands up. "I thought it was impossible to intercept anything said in that room. Geren Liaison specifically said that it was impervious to eavesdropping."

Trip was pretty sure Shevon's expression, had she been human, would have said, Oh, please. But she was trained for diplomacy, so she merely commented, "It would be foolish to have a safeguard that you yourself could not defeat." She picked up the recorder. "This is not the only transmission to be sent on this frequency. I retrieved two others, as well. Whoever sent them tried to erase them, but, . . ." She trailed off, manipulating the controls of her device. A 3-D map appeared in the space above the table.

"But data's never really lost," Hoshi supplied, bending closer to the holographic display, "if you know where to look."

"Precisely," Shevon replied absently. "The first transmission was long distance. I do not have the ability to determine its final destination. Somewhere toward the far edge of the system, I would guess. But the second was short-range." She traced a finger in a small arc from Carah Shon outward. The tip of her finger stopped just inside a grainy-looking cloud. "It was received here."

Trip frowned, and walked quickly over to a wall-mounted computer screen. "Look at this." He called up and played the recording of the diplomatic shuttle, supposedly carrying T'Pol, Egawa, and the captain, entering the pink mist and disintegrating in a short burst of blue flame. "There's your remote signal," he said.

"Sir," Hoshi put in, "this last transmission was sent on exactly the same frequency as the first, and probably to the same place." She made the same tracing motion on the display, and the line of the third message corresponded exactly with the first. "Someone on the World is calling all the shots."

Dispose of the subjects. Trip was already moving toward the comm once again. "How long ago was that third transmission sent, Shevon?"

"Less than two hours, by your time. I didn't know what else to do but to contact you immediately."

"Tucker to Bridge. Take us out of orbit, Travis." Trip rattled off the heading. "Best speed, until I tell you otherwise."

"Aye, sir," Travis responded, with the voice of a man relieved to be in action once again.

Shevon radiated the color of nervousness, even fear, as she stood uncertainly in the center of the conference room. Trip made a concerted effort to slow down, to tamp down the impatience screaming through him. Forcing a calm smile, he gestured to a seat at the large table, and took a seat opposite the Carah Shon woman. Malcolm sat beside him, trying to look harmless, while Hoshi gave quiet support on the visitor's left.

"Is anybody going to miss you anytime soon, Shevon?"

"No one will think to look for me until after the rains end, tomorrow morning." She glanced up at Trip. "Although it's unlikely now that I can ever go back home. I have betrayed my people, and I have no defense." A wave of green washed over her, and Trip interpreted it as deep, deep sorrow.

Trip knew better than to promise her asylum, having learned his lesson the hardest possible way, but he reached over and placed his hand on top of hers. "We'll do everything we can, and I know the captain will too, when he gets back."


The unfamiliar motion of the craft caused an uncomfortable sensation of vertigo, which T'Pol tried mightily to ignore. More difficult to block out was the muttering and whispering emanating from Crewman Egawa. When she finally rose against the heavy, dark atmosphere and made her way across the tiny deck, she found him staring fixedly at the dimly lit communication controls. He seemed to be carrying on a conversation with himself, none of which made any sense to her.

"Mr. Egawa," she prodded, and shook his shoulder.

He turned to her with a glazed expression. "They don't ever warn you," he mumbled hoarsely. His eyes were rimmed with red, his lips dry and cracked. She could hear every breath searing through his lungs. "Nobody ever gets it."

"Crewman, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"

He struggled to draw air. "Olympus is too far, I think." His body convulsed as a hacking cough overtook him. He seemed almost too weak to fight it. "The gods don't really laugh, you know; they sigh."

"Crewman – Jamey, you need to hold on for a while longer. Enterprise is on her way." T'Pol was past any shame now; she knew enough about the humans with whom she had served for so long to offer some hope of rescue, however false, as a way to keep the man from giving up completely. Vulcans do not lie, except when they do. She hoped that sheer stubbornness was a widely shared human trait. "Jamey, you must continue working on the beacon. That's an order."

Egawa groaned, "No, thanks, I'm not hungry." He gripped her forearm hard for a second, before his eyes rolled back and he slumped to the deck.

T'Pol fumbled around at his wrist for a pulse. Even without a medical scanner, she knew Egawa was dying. She sat back on her haunches and wiped her perspiring brow with the back of her hand. Suddenly the helm seemed too far away to reach, and what would she do if she got there, anyway? She stifled a cough and wrapped her arms around herself. She must have knocked the craft's thermostat off-line; she felt uncomfortably cold and clammy. Enterprise wasn't usually this chilly. She'd have to bring the matter up with the captain when she saw him next.

She lay down, pressing her cheek to the freezing deck plate. It seemed odd not to have the captain here at her side. Most disasters and away missions gone wrong usually involved him somehow. It was just as well, she thought. She liked the silence. If Archer were here, he would only spend their last moments talking, talking, talking.

They all talked too much. Even in her dreams, as she drifted on clouds of fever for moments or hours, she could hear the insistent human voices calling her, Come in, come in, come in . . .

The invitation was hard to resist. She hoped that, wherever they were, it was at least warm there.