A/n: So I keep getting a pile of hits on this story, but I have no idea if y'all like it! If you have a sec, I'd love any sort of feedback - what you like, don't like, etc. :D And, hope you enjoy this chapter!

"Jim—thank God." Holly rushed across her room to meet him as he entered her quarters. "No one will tell me anything—security has been escorting me around all morning."

Kirk asked in flat tone, "Is it fixable?"

"I don't know. I'm trying, although I've never seen it so bad before." Holly watched him uneasily. "Jim, what is going on?"

He gestured for her to have a seat, so she settled down on the edge of the bed. Kirk grabbed a chair and sat a few feet from her. She shifted anxiously.

"I need to know where you were last night." He locked his gaze with hers.

She hesitated. She surmised that the Chronos crew were going to come under fire soon—all the minor suspicions that had been circulating recently suddenly appeared to have truth to them. She still refused to believe Jem, Kryst or even Dal were directly involved, but there was no longer any doubt that someone was intentionally causing issues. Lying about her whereabouts would only make it worse.

"Holly," Kirk prodded firmly. "Where were you?"

"I… worked in the sick bay all day. Afterwards, I was in the rec room with Jem, Kryst and Dal. I went to bed, and I couldn't sleep. So I got up to walk around. Eventually I was tired enough I went back to bed." It was all true, she just conveniently omitted the part where she found McCoy.

"Anything else?"

She swallowed and realized he already knew.

"I… stopped at sick bay. Doctor McCoy was there and we talked."

Kirk chuckled. "You're as bad a liar as he is."

"We kissed, once…" Her chest felt tight with worry. "I'm sorry."

"Hey, nothing to be sorry for there," he said. "I've been telling him for weeks to make a move."

Holly stared at him, surprised. "You… did?"

"I did." His smile faded and he was all business again. "Well, now that we got that out of the way. I have some questions to ask."

"Jim…"

"It's Captain Kirk." His tone wasn't cold, but it made her even more uneasy. This wasn't a chat between friends—this was serious.

Holly suddenly felt like crying and bit the inside of her cheek hard to try and stop herself. She hadn't been accused yet—there was no reason to be upset.

"I have several members of my crew combing through access logs and security footage as we speak. They are going to discover who the mole aboard my ship is, once and for all. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

She swallowed. She still felt off-kilter by this whole thing, but knew she was innocent. She had nothing to hide.

"Ji– Captain, I don't know what to tell you." She replied and took a breath. "I have had nothing to do with any of the problems or damage that have occurred since we were rescued. I'm sure your logs will show that."

"Are you working with one or more of your friends?"

"No."

"Do you have information regarding one of the others in reference to the attacks on Engineering?"

"No."

"Do you have any reason to sabotage this ship and stop its progress to Earth?"

"No."

"Do any of your friends?"

"Not that I know of, sir."

He eyed her critically and she held his gaze fiercely.

Please Jim, she thought. Please believe me—I'm innocent, and so are the others. She wasn't about to accuse any of his crew in the matter, but she wondered if she and the former Chronos crew were being framed.

"What are your skills?"

"What?" The question caught her completely off guard.

"What are you best at—what did you do back on Chronos?"

She blinked at him. He knew this already, so why was he asking? She answered anyways.

"Mechanics and bio-science. I made repairs on the ship and took care of the warp drive."

"Anything else?"

"Well, I… I helped out with other duties, but that—those were my job."

"What about Jem?" Kirk leaned back in his chair.

"She was the medic, mainly. She also did some piloting, she helped Charlie with plotting courses… She made stuff—she was good at just putting things together and making whatever we needed. Like medical salves or engine sealant, or meals when we didn't have the right ingredients, whatever."

"And Kryst?"

Holly frowned. They'd had this conversation, and she said as much.

"Humor me."

Holly continued, "Kryst fixed things, like me, in the engine room. He's good with all kinds of tech, though, not just mechanical stuff. He cooked, he cleaned—we all did."

"Dal?"

"I don't know—everything. He piloted primarily, but he'd help me sometimes, or Jem, or Kryst, or Charlie with whatever we were doing. He was handy with explosives. He was good with tactics and logistics, strategy. He got us out us out of a jam more than once—he used to be in the military, so he… he seems to know a lot about everything." She grimaced a little—Dal tended to rub her inexperience in her face at times.

"Now, I know this is going to be hard," Kirk softened his tone considerably. "But, Holly I need you tell me exactly what happened the day the Chronos went down."

Holly clenched her jaw briefly and after a moment, nodded. It was easier than when she'd recalled it all for McCoy, though still painful. When she finished, she only shed a few tears.

Kirk stood abruptly. "Thank you for your time." When he reached the door, he turned to her. "You are to be confined to your quarters until further notice."

The door slid shut with a soft whoosh behind him. There was a loud, low beeping noise and the panel beside her door light up with red lights, indicating she was locked in. Feeling jittery and raw, Holly held it together for a few seconds before she buried her face in her pillow and began to cry softly.

"We are looking through all the access logs and security footage on this ship. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

Jem's smooth, dark features were completely impassive. "No, sir, I do not."

Kirk figured she would be the most difficult to question, and he was right. His gut feelings about people weren't foolproof, of course, but he'd come to rely on his instincts because they often proved right. He was completely split when it came to Jem, however, and chalked it up to her being an alien. Was so calm and cool because she was innocent and therefore had nothing to hide? Or because she was an extremely good liar?

He asked her questions similar to the ones he'd asked Holly, alternating between giving her ample time to come up with an answer, other times snapping them out like rapid-fire, trying to test her response. She was very good, however, and didn't vary her answers. He tried to double back and contradict her, trap her, but she maintained her story.

By the time he left the room, he was still undecided.

Kryst was easier to read than Jem, but not by much.

"This is bullshit," Kryst huffed, slamming his fist on the table before him. "Is this because our ship blew up, so now we're blowing up yours?"

"You have to admit it's pretty suspect."

"Right, because trying to nearly kill ourselves, in order to get rescued, and then proceed to blow up the goddamn rescue ship makes so much sense!"

"It looks more like someone is after that drive. Want to tell me why that is? What's so important about it?"

Kryst swore repeatedly and hit the table again. "It's just an engine! How the hell should I know why it's so important? I'm not the one trying to blow it up!"

He was erratic and had a temper, Kirk learned, and he tried to use that to his advantage. The red-headed man alternately accused his fellow Chronos members as being the culprits and then defended their innocence. Even as Kryst was red in the face shouting about his own innocence, however, Kirk couldn't read if the urgency in Kryst's voice was because he was desperate to believed or was close to being caught. Something was off but he didn't know what. It could be anything from Kryst's being guilty to him simply reacting poorly under duress. The area in between was too wide, so until Kirk got something more concrete, he would have to wait.

Dal, surprisingly, was the most forthcoming. His run down of his crew mates' specialties was similar to Holly's, and he even gave Holly more credit than she had for her skills in the engine room. Given his surly and bitter demeanor, it was surprising to hear him almost boasting about the others.

When Kirk asked him about the drive, or why someone would be after it, Dal sighed heavily, suddenly looking years older in a moment.

"We signed all kinds of papers to ensure we never divulged the exact details."

"You won't come under fire for breaking those contracts," the Captain assured him. "Not from me, and not from Starfleet—I'll see to it personally. But I have to know what is so important to the person trying to do this."

Dal nodded slowly, contemplating. "I suppose," he growled a moment later. "Under the circumstances, I don't really have a choice."

To be true, Kirk genuinely didn't know what to expect as an answer to his question. He had lots of theories, ranging from logical to sensationally ridiculous, but what Dal said next, floored him—he hadn't been expecting that.

"It contains time travel data."

Kirk blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Time travel data. As in the kind of data, that is procured during a time travel event…?"

The captain stared. He'd heard of time travel of course, but Nero and his Red Matter had been a one-off, a freak of nature. That had been dealt with. So, what was the man across the table telling him? Were there more instances of time travel? Had the Chronos crew experienced them too?

"I know what you're thinking," the older man almost chuckled and Kirk nearly blurted No, you have no idea before Dal continued. "The team that assigned us to the Chronos gathered every scrap of data they could find in relation to an event several years ago, in which a massive Romulan ship appeared from a wormhole and proceeded to destroy a number of ships. They didn't tell us this, mind you—this is stuff I only learned from Charlie eight months into the mission. He hadn't told anyone else.

"He wasn't given further details, so neither was I, and he wasn't even supposed to tell me." Dal grunted. "See, there had been two missions before us that never came home. Ironically named ones too, if you ask me."

"What were they called?"

"The Alke—the first one—means prowess and courage. The second one was the Tyche—means fate, fortune and chance."

"And Chronos?"

Dal smiled in a rather unsettling way. "God of time." He let that piece of information sink in a little before he went on. "There was no trace of the first ship after a few months, so they sent out the second one, and it disappeared even quicker. Rather than waste all their precious trained Starfleet officers, they recruited a bunch of civvies for the third mission, and then had just a few officers aboard to run things.

"By that time, they'd made some break-through with the tech, and they had high hopes for our little bucket of bolts. See, what the drive does is create a dynamic force field around the ship that allows us not to get sucked in, providing we don't get too close. But a lot of the fancy new stuff you find on ships nowadays went berserk when they turned that drive on. So through trial and error, they found a bunch of old parts that would do the job without disrupting."

Kirk was amazed as he listened. He'd noted aboard the Chronos how eclectically put-together it seemed. Scans hadn't been able to determine how the old the ship was because of interference from the drive.

"Our mission was to get as much data from as many worm holes, black holes, singularities, whatever you want to call 'em. But more than that, we were supposed to seek out worm holes like that Romulan one. We were to find them, get close, and get data."

"But you said the data contained time travel data—if you only got close, but didn't go through, how did it pick up readings that occurred during a time travel event?"

"A probe," Dal answered. "Twice we came upon a singularity that matched the readings we were supposed to be hunting for. We tossed a probe in, sucked up the data, and high-tailed it outta there. I 'spect somewhere in the future or past they've found our space junk—the probe was built to break apart and disintegrate after 8 hours, see."

Kirk's mind was spinning with all this new information. No wonder someone wanted their hands on the drive, if it contained data about the inner workings of a time travel anomaly. But then why destroy it?

McCoy was in Kirk's ready room waiting for him when the captain arrived. Kirk collapsed into his chair with a heavy sigh.

"Well?" said the doctor.

"I believe her," Kirk said after several long moments of silence. "She says she didn't do it and I believe her."

"What about the others?"

The captain sighed again, running his hand through his golden hair. "I have no clue. I can't decide between any of them. Or all of them."

"You think they're in this together?"

"I think it's a possibility. I just don't know how or why."

"But you said you believed Holly didn't do it—they can't be in on it all together then, unless you mean all of them excluding Holly?"

"I believe she didn't do the deed herself. That doesn't mean she didn't help in some way."

McCoy frowned but nodded in understanding. Until she could prove otherwise, they had no choice but to consider that.

At that moment, an urgent page sounded for Kirk. He pressed the intercom in his room. "Kirk here."

Chekov sounded like he was bursting when he replied. "Keptin Cork, sir! We have ze logs from ze back-ups, and I zink I know who it waz!"

Kirk and McCoy exchanged uneasy glances.

"We'll be right there."

It was late evening when they came to get her.

Holly had been worried sick, pacing and crying, getting angry, exhausting herself all over again. She was dying to know what was going on, but the only contact she'd had with anyone had been when a security detail had opened a small panel at the bottom of her door and slid in a tray of food. She'd downed the tall glass of water, but hadn't touched the rest.

Her heart leapt when the door opened and Kirk entered, but she stopped dead when she saw the cloudy expression on his face. Her mouth went paper dry and though she suddenly had trouble speaking, she managed to ask one question.

"Who?"

"You had better come with me."

A/n: Thank you for reading!