Enoikoawn got back in his hovercraft, the supple leather satchel wrapped around his back. The team on Verkael had been working night and day on creating a full set of implements using the measurements he had taken while he kept the aliens busy discussing extraction methods and he would soon be back at Enodreiwn's. He looked forward to showing them the travel litpadds and the wigs and outfits that would allow them to board the regional hovercraft.
The suns rose on another beautiful day. Enoikoawn pressed on the gas pedal slightly more than usual, mindless of the area he was traveling in. He knew it like the back of his hand. As a result, he didn't see the large hovercraft that took off from the ground soon after he flew over, banking left when he did, veering right when he did, and otherwise following his flight path while staying well in the distance.
xx
"What the hell, Jon?!"
Archer looked at Trip on the viewscreen. That was a hell of a 'hello, how are you'. He guessed that meant Trip knew.
The engineer was fuming. "How come nobody bothered to tell me that T'Pol has been missing all these months?! There I am like a fool thinking that everything is going fine with you guys, only to find out you lost T'Pol?!"
Archer narrowed his eyes at Trip, noting the angled neck of a contraband Romulan ale bottle right by the engineer.
"Are you drinking on duty, Commander?" he asked. Attack was the best defense, and besides, it might buy him some time to come up with answers.
"You bet I'm drinking and I won't be on duty for weeks." Trip was starting to slur "That's about the only thing that keeps me from taking this scow over and pushing it to warp 5.5." Trip looked around him then back at Jonathan. "I'm on my way to Dalgort." He said by way of explanation.
Archer's stomach dropped to his heels. Now what did Trip do? "Does Starfleet know?" he hazarded.
The man on the viewscreen chuckled. "Starfleet, my parents, T'Pau, Soval, everyone I could reach."
Archer winced. There was no fury like an engineer misled. He could only imagine the political fallout. "And Starfleet let you go?" Archer went on.
"Let me go, provided my with transport, this snail of a ship I'm on right now" Trip looked around him with something akin to disgust "We were almost done anyway, all that was left was the testing, and they agreed they didn't really need me for that. Plus I was not in the mood." Archer nodded, thinking to himself Starfleet must have decided getting the engineer away from the engines was the safest for all concerned.
"I'm not going to be of much help, Starfleet has us in the Daramind quadrant, about as far from Dalgort as they could without losing us altogether." Archer explained.
Trip looked at him almost unkindly, and Archer realized that the engineer's brain was far from fogged by the drink. "No, but you're going to tell me everything that happened, from the top" he said "if only because I'm your best friend" Trip smirked as he said it, obviously feeling the label may no longer apply "and you don't want me to go stark mad from unsatisfied curiosity while I wait for this… ship… to get me there."
"How long till you get to Dalgort?" Archer wondered if he should tell Trip that Plox was already there.
"Another couple weeks." Trip frowned "now tell me what happened."
"It's kind of a long story" Archer started, seeing Trip nod in reply. Something suddenly came to him and he narrowed his eyes at Trip "How did you find out?"
The engineer sighed "T'Pol."
"So she's alive?!" Archer bit his lip, he wished he had been a little less obviously delighted. This time it was Trip's turn to look at him with narrowed eyes.
"What do you mean 'she's alive'? What the hell has been going on? You didn't know?" the engineer's brain was firing in all directions.
"We weren't sure" Archer confessed. "But you know where she is?!" the story could wait, they needed to alert Starfleet.
Trip cut him short as if he were reading his mind. Hopefully not something he had picked up along the way. "I do, as does Starfleet and everybody else I've talked to over the last few days." A muscle worked in Trip's jaw, then he sighed and stretched, forcing himself to settle back in his chair "I can tell this is going to be a long story. Better make it good."
xx
Enoikoawn stepped off the hovercraft, started down the path to the main chambers. He knew Enodreiwn would have spotted the hovercraft from one of the litholes. He knocked on the front panel and proceeded down the main tunnel, hardly waiting for her to invite him in. She was in the eating chamber, standing behind the table where she and the aliens had been sharing a meal five days ago, the rests of the second meal before her. The aliens were not there. He expected they would come out once she had confirmed he had brought what he had promised.
Enoikoawn unstrapped the satchel from his back, handed it to her. She took out the clothes and the wigs, neatly stashing them on top of the personal items gathered in a well-ordered pile in the corner. Then she took out the litpadds and put them on the table. As she was going to pick one up, they heard the front panel burst open and then the sound of running down the tunnel. Enodreiwn grabbed the litpads just as three Nint black guards rushed into the eating chamber, arms pointing at them. From the sounds reverberating in the chamber, another half-dozen were making their way in.
"What are you doing in my house?!" Enodreiwn would never know where she found the courage to stand to the guards. The leader turned to her, invisible behind his mask.
"We believe you are harboring dangerous aliens."
She scoffed, motioning with her chin to Enoikoawn "That's as close to an alien as you'll find here, and I am not 'harboring' him, as you say."
Enoikoawn looked at her in surprise, without saying anything. Didn't she realize the guards were going to be poring over every last inch of the compound, that they would find the aliens? But Enodreiwn seemed mindless of the danger. She grabbed the rests of her meal and put them away, then sat down, arms crossed and mane raised, waiting for the guards to be done. Enoikoawn looked for the litpadds that had been on the table but couldn't find anything. Enodreiwn had last had them but her hands were empty. He hoped the guards had not already swiped them. If they had, he was a dead man.
The leader turned to his guards, pointing at Enoikoawn. "Take him, on suspicion of being an accomplice!" Enoikoawn started protesting, was cut short by a baton thrust in his flank. They walked him away, doubled in pain.
Two hours later, the dozen guards were towering in the eating chamber and in the central chamber, dwarfing everything in the house, including its owner. One of the guards handed something to the leader, who grabbed it and rushed over to Enodreiwn, shaking it by her head. Enoikoawn looked but couldn't make out what it was.
"What is this?" the leader bellowed. Enodreiwn briefly closed her eyes. It was the tunics the aliens had worn. She should have put them in the disposal unit but she had a habit of holding on to anything that could be reused in any way on the compound.
She shrugged "Where did you find these, they're not mine." Her mane flattened completely as a sign of her disinterest.
The leader smirked "They were in your shed on your property. You're going to tell me you don't know how they got there?"
Enodreiwn looked straight at him, baring her upper teeth "They are not my clothes and the shed is not part of the main building. Wild animals are always coming to the shed."
"Wild animals don't wear these" the leader snarled in response.
"I don't even know what they are" she retorted.
The leader's mane rose slightly "They were the clothes worn by the aliens when they escaped from jail. As you know. And you're going to tell us where they are."
Enodreiwn chose not to answer. The leader talked to her "We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, it's up to you." When she still didn't answer, he motioned to the guards. "See what else you can find here."
Enodreiwn stood where she was, behind the eating table, as she heard the guards violently ransacking her home. There was the noise of furniture being tumbled over, the smashing of litglass, she felt them throwing all her neatly arranged decorations across the chambers, mindless of where they fell.
Two guards came in the kitchen, started aggressively rummaging through everything in sight. One of the guards picked up the pile of her belongings in the corner, threw everything on the floor without finding anything suspicious, unaware that the wigs and the pieces of clothing he was stepping on were not Enodreiwn's, had been meant for the aliens.
Another guard shoved her roughly out of the way, started opening the cabinets with the food items in them. She bristled as he grabbed her bag of grain cakes, but he was only looking to see if there was anything behind it, and he shoved the bag back in the cabinet. The invasion didn't take long but it felt like forever. Finally, one of the guards spoke to the leader, who had been waiting in the eating chamber the whole time. "We didn't find anything, sir."
The leader nodded. Enodreiwn breathed easier. Until she saw him come to her and it dawned on her that there were more ways to make things difficult for her than to lay shambles to the inside of her house.