Hoshi was certain she must be the only person still up on the ship. Not that she wasn't exhausted and would like nothing better than to conk out on the floor of the ready room. But Hannah had promised her warp in another eight hours and while that was immeasurably better than the initial estimate, that was still another eight hours with Archer not knowing where his ship or crew was. On top of the twenty or so hours he had already spent in the dark. If she could just find a way to boost their range and get to his communicator…
The beep of the door almost made her fall off her chair, and she realized she must have fallen asleep while she was thinking.
"Enter."
She smiled when she saw Malcolm. Smiled even more than she noticed he was bearing two cups of steaming tea. Not being the only one burning the midnight oil made for a strange kind of comfort, but she'd take it.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked. She knew he was still trying to figure out what the two agents had been doing in Nausicaan space. They were not talking but Malcolm was going to find out one way or the other. He would ferret it out even if it killed him.
"I have an idea, but trying to build a rationale. Do you know anything about the Nausicaans?"
Hoshi gave a short guttural chuckle. "No, my knowledge is only language-deep. Why do you ask?" Sometimes her best role was to ask questions, make him see things from a different angle that the one he had been pursuing. He could get stubbornly stuck on his point of view, not realizing there were many other realities, each as valid as the one he was aiming for. She had come to think it was a typical male trait.
"I don't know much about them but I thought they were mostly into piracy. I don't know why pirates would chase two men in a shuttle." Reed's mind was going over the Nausicaan he had encountered, it was always about gain.
"And…?"
"The ships we encountered that were so intent on getting rid of our friends" he lingered on the word 'friends', part of him thinking they perhaps should have left well-enough alone and rid themselves, rid him, of a headache, "it's surprising, what did they have to gain."
"Perhaps they were not pirates. Perhaps they were policemen." Hoshi was busy blowing the steam off her cup. She looked up to see Malcolm staring at her with saucer-wide eyes. "What?" she said, wondering if this was déjà vu all over again. Malcom turned on his heels and exited the ready room without another word.
Hoshi sighed. What had she said this time that set his wheels turning. She really wished he would be a little more considerate when that happened.
She turned back to her journals, somewhat energized by the interaction. If she could solve Reed's problems, well, then perhaps she could come with a brilliant answer to her own. She went back over things from the top.
Now what was she trying to do. She was trying to expand the range of their communication server and boost its power so that she could actually make contact with Archer through its itsy bitsy tiny communicator. The journals went at length about how one could piggy-back off an existing comm buoy and build a domino relay from one buoy to the next until the signal bounced to within the sought range. Not a great signal, slow and static-prone, but a handshake of sorts. Great, except she didn't have comm buoys available. There was the one not far from them, and then after that the next one was light years away. The Federation comm interface was a good idea that had swiftly fizzled out. The codes that Wygdeld gave them were for one-time only access.
Hoshi pushed back from her chair in frustration. She started visualizing the network of buoys she didn't have. All she needed was two in the middle and they'd be done.
She would never know how she come by the idea that propelled her out of her chair and made her literally run all the way to Travis' quarters. Poor Travis. Well, not quite, he was part of the crew and she needed him. His captain needed him.
Travis was still blinking the sleep off his eyes when she left his quarters. He would meet her in the ready room in fifteen minutes. First she had to wake Hannah up and grovel for daring ask her something else on top of the engines. But Travis had seen eye-to-eye on her. If they needed buoys where there were not, they would simply install simplified relays of their own. Travis would be piloting the shuttle, more maneuverable than the ship, that would allow them to position exactly the hastily assembled comm buoys, their only purpose being to amplify and direct the sound signal generated by the antenna array that he would be attaching to the first buoy.
Better than twirling their thumbs for eight hours.
xx
The incessant beeping of his communicator finally broke through the fogs of sleep clogging Archer's brain. He groped around for the communicator that he had set next to him on the bed, unable to locate it in the dark. Finally his fingers encountered a boxy and hard substance and he grabbed the device.
"Archer here." His voice was muffled by the pillow. Part of him wondered what could have happened for Trip to reach out so early. Unless it was one of his crewmembers. Jolted by a rush of adrenaline at the images swirling through his mind of his crew beaten and bloodied, Archer focused on the voice talking through the communicator, trying to place it amidst the heavy static garbling half the words.
"…ptain…[skrrg]…shi …[skrrg]…oo…[skrrg]…id"
"Hello?" The static was thick enough to cut through with a knife. Archer focused his entire body on the sound, imagining the communicator on the other side trampled on the street by a vengeful crowd. Whoever was on the other side was talking very slowly, enunciating each word, some phonemes coming across more clearly than others. It was a woman.
"…Catain…[skrrg]…iss …[skrrg]…iss…[skrrg]…sshi …[skrrg]…doo…[skrrg]…oo …[skrrg]…read"
"Hoshi?" Archer blinked, afraid his confused mind was misunderstanding who was talking.
"…[skrrg]…ess!"
"Hoshi, is that you?!"
"…[skrrg]…ess!"
"I don't know if you can hear me, but the reception here is very bad. Any way you can boost the power?" On Enterprise, Hoshi looked in frustration over at Travis. Archer's voice was coming in and out but they were able to understand most of what he was saying. She leaned closer into the headphones.
"…[skrrg]…no. …[skrrg]…It …[skrrg]…ill…[skrrg]…get bett …[skrrg]… Weer… [skrrg]…way"
"You're on your way to Luspypso?" It was somewhat of a wild guess.
"…[skrrg]…ess!"
"Can you hear me?"
"…[skrrg]…ess!"
"Is Enterprise all right?"
"…[skrrg]…ess!"
"Okay, it's easier if I tell you what's going on. You won't be able to come to Luspypso, there's a quarantine around the planet. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying. It's a virus called… let me see RushLipar or something. We're immune but these people need an antidote. Can you ask Phlox to look into it?"
Archer stopped, thinking of something else. "When will you be here?" He quickly checked himself. There was no way he would understand the answer. "Forget that. Call me again in an hour. Perhaps I can hear better. Remember, tell Phlox we need an antidote. Got that?"
"…[skrrg]…ess!"
Archer flipped the communicator shut, thinking that perhaps he should have thrown a 'no' question here and there and make sure Hoshi was hearing what he was saying. He flipped the communicator open again. Trip and T'Pol didn't have anything better to do, stuck in a hotel room. They wouldn't mind the interruption.
xx
"Are you sure he said RushLipar?" Phlox asked Hoshi again. She nodded. "Yes, Travis was with me and I made a tape of the call. Not that you can hear much of it other than the static."
Phlox considered, looking at his medical database. Archer was not the most knowledgeable when it came to scientific terms, he had seen him struggle to remember a fairly easy medical term.[1] There was no such thing as a RushLipar virus, but he had found the R'shurr Leipa disease in the database, and the coincidence was too strong. He would just bet that's what Archer had meant to say. And that was the Nausicaan name for the disease, they were close to the Nausicaan space sector.
"And he said they were immune?"
"Yes, he said 'we're' immune."
That nailed it for Phlox. R'shurr Leipa couldn't survive in iron-based blood. "I'll let you know what I find, but it's going to take longer than an hour. I'm not familiar with the virus, I will have to call on the Interspecies Medical Exchange databases, I may have to ask for an expert opinion."
"Do whatever you need to, Doctor. The connection was so bad, I really have no idea what's going on down on the planet surface. Hopefully we can hear more next time."
xx
"I have a feeling they're not going to bring food today." T'Pol felt a rush of irritation at the mention of food. It was illogical but so was Trip's fixation on it.
"So eat some l'lieoihs!" she snapped, realizing as soon as she said it that she was snapping.
He turned to her in surprise. "Hey, are you alright?"
She avoided his gaze, looking away and down. "I beg forgiveness. There is no offense in your seeking to satisfy your nutritional needs."
Trip closed the gap between the two of them, careful not to touch her. If she was having trouble controlling her emotions, the worst thing he could do was overload her synapses by adding his feelings on top of hers. "Hey, it's okay." He said. He was so close that he could feel the warmth of her skin even through the thermal suit. "Being prisoners in our hotel room in the middle of a pandemic with what's going on outside is not what I had in mind either."
He wasn't getting anything through the bond, whatever was bothering her was being kept real close to the vest. He saw T'Pol close her eyes. When she opened them they were clear and it even felt like the warmth emanating from her skin had cooled somewhat. "I will be fine." She said. Then pointing at the wallpadd with her chin "How is the construction proceeding?"
Trip turned to look at the wallpadd while T'Pol stayed rigidly upright behind him. Since early on in the morning, when Jon had awakened them with news that he had made contact with Enterprise, all the news channels had been locked on the red sands outside the Ahrijht city centers, showing in the distance the swift assembly of row upon row upon row of white fabric tents. As the newscasters had explained, these were containment camps, being prepared to house the thousands of aliens present in and around Ahrijht. What they hadn't explained was how the aliens were supposed to go from the city centers to the new city in the sands, but construction was going at a fast clip. Obviously the Iustreans had plenty of experience setting up temporary structures on the surface of the desert.
"How many do you think they're building?" They had only been at it a few hours but already the rows spread out over the horizon in all directions.
T'Pol checked her tricorder. "There are about one hundred and ten thousand aliens in and around Ahrijht on an average daily basis. Most of them have already been exposed to the virus. Assuming the government is preparing for a 90% morbidity rate and high fatalities, correcting for expected deaths and multi-member families, they would need thirty-five thousand units. At the peak." She looked up. "It seems they have assembled over six thousand tents already. They will be done with the construction in approximately nineteen point seven hours."
Trip nodded. Approximately, yes. They were basically prisoners in their hotel room and they were going to be exchanging their comfortable jail for a tent in the desert, the stuff of nightmares as far as he was concerned. He didn't do so well in desert conditions. From what he could see, the tent city coming out of the sands had no facilities, communal or otherwise. It could be because the government figured this was a temporary resettling, or it could be that nobody was going to be alive long enough to need them. Trip found himself hoping the Luspypso government was actually planning to use the camps, that this was not some kind of con game to keep the Iustreans satisfied and the aliens quiet. One way or another it didn't make him feel warm and comfy.
But they had no choice. Several of the crewmen had reported scenes of unbearable violence against aliens. T'Pol had uncovered that certain specific defense pheromones were triggered by the presence of fatally sick individuals, which in large enough quantities, as would happen in a crowd, induced a killing frenzy in otherwise friendly Iustreans. That mechanism underlay the shocking killing they had first seen on the wallpadd. How the behavior had spread to aliens was a point of some contention but it had. The crewmen had seen aliens torn limb by limb by a writhing, seething crowd, who then went back to a placid state as if nothing had happened. None of the news channels had commented or reported on these killings. Archer and Trip could not comprehend the alien-ness of the Iustreans and were unable to decide whether the killings were being hidden to avoid a negative portrayal of the Iustrean culture or to avoid the spread of violence. T'Pol was definite that the government was carefully trying to defuse the anger against aliens and that the containment camps, as horrible as they were, were a logical preventive measure.
Trip was less than sanguine about the containment camps for another reason. By lumping all aliens together, sick or not, the authorities were creating the perfect conditions for contagion. Humans were immune to the disease but T'Pol didn't have the benefit of iron-based blood to protect her and he worried that given enough exposure even Vulcans could fall victim to the virus. They needed to get her off the planet as quickly as possible. As much as he tried to hide his concern, he couldn't prevent his thoughts from skirting back to the issue. "Do you think this thing will spread to the other regions of Luspypso?" So far, there had been no indication of another locus of infection.
"The sands of Ahrijht are extremely high in iron minerals. That could act as a natural filtration mechanism against the virus. Though it would not prevent its spreading through person-to-person contact."
"So we have no idea." Trip concluded.
T'Pol cocked her head to the side. Wasn't that what she had just said?
xx
"When are we arriving at Luspypso?" It was rare to see Dr. Phlox on the bridge, and Hoshi almost did a double-take.
"We are not, Doctor. There is a quarantine ring around Luspypso. We'll be twenty-five thousand miles away, out of transporter range." Hoshi was also not used to seeing the Denobulan doctor without his customary grin. She glanced over at Reed then back at Phlox. "But we can talk to them now."
She had been calling Archer every hour or so and the static had finally lessened enough that they could have a two-way conversation. It didn't look good. The contagion was rampant and the crew was for all instances and purposes prisoner on Luspypso, the Iustreans dangerously aggressive against everything that reminded them of the alien origins of the virus. "We don't know when we'll be able to recover our people. Other ships from other worlds are in the same situation. Everyone's monitoring what's going on."
Phlox was staring fixedly at the screen. "Doctor?" Hoshi asked. He and shook himself as if she had been talking from a long way away. "Yes, yes. Can I see you in your ready room, Captain. I think it's preferable if Lieutenant Reed joins us as well."
xx
"Alright, you two" Reed's eyes were flashing with anger "I'm about done with the guessing game. We have an emergency situation, something much bigger than anything you were concocting in Nausicaan space. And this time you could actually make out like heroes."
Wygdeld got up and approached the glass. Reed was not surprised. He knew he'd be interested. "What's in it for us?"
Reed's mouth curled back over his teeth. Harris must really be scratching the bottom of the barrel to hire agents these days. In Reed's time, such blatant mercantilism would never, ever, have been seen.
Unless these were chumps were of such poor quality as agents that they were completely expandable and that's why Harris had sent them to deal with the Nausicaans. Typical Harris. They had been selected because they were not supposed to make it back. Enterprise was supposed to arrive too late but just in time to make an official record about how Federation Executive Wygdeld and Freeholder Yonde were now, regrettably, space dust, not to actually save them. For the first time, Malcolm was glad they had saved the unsavory characters. Anything that thwarted Harris' plans was a good thing in his book.
"You've already got what's in it for you" he growled back. "You're still alive." He took the meanest expression he was capable of, one he had spent years perfecting in front of his bathroom mirror, when he was a small kid and an easy target for bullies. "For the time being."
Wygdeld couldn't prevent his Adam's apple from marking his sudden swallowing. "You can't kill us. Harris would get your skin." It was obvious most of it was puffery.
"Really?" Malcolm wryly smiled. "You didn't stop and wonder why it was we almost didn't get to you in time?" He could tell Yonde was unsettled and Wygdeld was trying to think real fast. That was good. He needed them to start doubting everything, everything. And at the same time he couldn't afford to have them know how much Enterprise needed their help, the anxiety that was animating everyone on board, the two men their Hail Mary pass to avoid millions of death and perhaps get their crew back.
"You know what, forget about it, I don't think you're up to the task." That was the hardest line Malcolm had had to deliver. Hoshi had made him repeat it again and again until the intonation was right, until he could say it with without feeling they could hear his heart beat in his chest. She was the poker player on board. He turned around to leave.
"Will you let us go if we help you?"
Malcolm's back was turned to the men and they couldn't see him looking upward in a silent prayer of thanks. He would venerate Hoshi later, in the privacy of her bedroom. When he was allowed back in.
He turned back around. "We could consider it."
xx
"I'm sorry." Phlox's tone was grim. T'Pol looked at the bathroom door but Trip was still in the shower.
"You have done nothing that you need to apologize for."
"If I hadn't pulled out M-2552 and you had gone with the science teams, you wouldn't be at ground zero of the infection."
"Doctor, as much as we try to predict the past based on the present, it remains that no one can foresee the future. We do not know that for a fact."
"How are you doing?"
"As I told the Captain and Commander Tucker, I am not showing any symptoms."
Trip came out of the shower, he thought he had heard voices. T'Pol was on her communicator, talking with someone who was not Archer. His heart leapt with joy when he recognized Phlox's voice. Enterprise was back in range. He knew they couldn't make it all the way to the planet, but knowing they were in the area was a boon to the soul.
"Phlox!"
"Commander, glad to hear your voice. Based on the decibel level, I take it you are not sick."
Trip laughed. "Good thing Humans can't catch this thing." He stole a glance at T'Pol, he didn't want to ask Phlox in front of her whether she could. The last thing he wanted to do was alarm her.
"Actually" Phlox's voice was serious "technically, Humans do catch the R'shurr Lleipa virus, but the virus can neither survive or replicate in Human DNA." Phlox was trying to sound as nonchalant as he could. "Tell me, Commander, did you have any symptoms of a possible fever over the past few days? Night sweats, bad dreams, that kind of thing?"
Trip raised his eyebrows at T'Pol. He had completely forgotten about it. "Funny you should say that, doctor, I did have really weird dreams a couple of days ago." He was talking to T'Pol in explanation. "Back at the Ulaih Ruins."
"I see. And when was that?"
Trip thought for a moment. "That's easy, that was the day after we arrived. When I thought I stepped on one of those hummingbirds and killed it. The innkeeper told us they don't land unless they're already dying and T'Pol disposed of the bird. "
There were a couple of heartbeats of silence. T'Pol looked almost bored with the conversation. Phlox sighed. "I see, Commander Tucker. Thank you. We're trying to get a supply of vaccine from Sari'Loman. That's the system on the other side of Nausicaa where we think the disease originated. I'll be back in touch if I have anything new to report."
Phlox hit the off-switch, sighing. T'Pol knew but she didn't want to let them know. Given the current heightened emotions on Luspypso, being sick and being an alien would be a double death sentence. She could jeopardize all of them. He would have to follow her lead until Trip and Archer were back on Enterprise. And then he could tell them. Not something he was looking forward to.