Season Six

by EnlightenedSkye

The crews of the Enterprise and the Maelstrom adapt to ever-changing circumstances as the Romulan War rages on. [January 2157 to January 2160. 25 episodes. Fully episodic, so each chapter is a stand-alone story. ATP, Troshi, Malcolm/OC, P/C. Rated T throughout. Direct sequel to Season Five. In progress]

9. Episode 9: This Chosen Darkness

A/N: Welcome back! Thanks for the encouragement - I'm glad folks enjoyed our time warp back to the '80s. Hillbilly Trip absolutely lives in my head rent free. In the words of the great fic writers of old, anything you recognize I don't own, and anything you read, I make no money from.

As with our Betazoid stories, I had the pleasure of going back and watching a bunch of Orion episodes. Some are referenced here, including DS9 5x17 A Simple Investigation, 6x15 Honor Among Thieves, and 7x11 Prodigal Daughter. This episode leans pretty heavily on the ensemble cast.

This is a trigger warning for suicide in the fourth scene for the Enterprise crew.

Next time: Captain Hernandez gets her own A-plot, with Enterprise giving the assist. I feel like we were definitely robbed of a Columbia-centric episode back in the day. Also, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportions. This episode definitely leads into the next, in that a lot of your questions will be answered.

Season Six

Episode Nine: This Chosen Darkness

Maelstrom First Officer's Log, March 2nd, 2158: Well, after an entire year poking around the Alpha Quadrant, we're finally heading back towards the front lines. That doesn't mean we won't hit a couple hundred road blocks along the way…

---

The corridors were eerily quiet and the turbolifts were empty. Because she'd seen many a morning like this on the Columbia and then on the Maelstrom, Julia knew exactly what it meant.

The calm before the storm.

Admiral Gardner's call to action had arrived as inconspicuously as any other, but the moment it came through on a priority channel, she and Trip knew they had an incident on their hands. Following their exploits on Bajor, he sounded almost recalcitrant to give them another assignment of such import, but seeing as they were the only NX stationed in the sector at the time, he had no choice but to let them in on the action.

A critical shortage of dilithium crystals had originated from a series of targeted attacks on the mines of the Coridanite homeworld, and seeing as the other major Coalition stronghold in the Deneva system had been obliterated months ago, they had no other choice but to make a deal with the devil.

United Earth's would-be trade partners, suspiciously enough, were already close at hand on Bracas V. The Bracasians were shrewd and practical, and their economy largely revolved around tourism or selling the treasures of other cultures to the highest bidder. They would turn a blind eye on damn near anyone mooring on their shores with the right kind of persuasion, a moral failing of which they fully intended to take advantage.

Now with the moment of action at hand, the Maelstrom stood down at a tactical advisory, the emergency lights flashing yellow overhead. They were more than an hour out at maximum warp, but that didn't stop the crewmen from hunkering down, whispering over rumors of what their mission might entail and making silent appeals to their deity of choice that they might escape with their lives.

Julia preferred to maintain a casual detachment - though her head swam and her heart beat in time with her footsteps, she forced herself to maintain the steadfast, steely calm her instructors had drilled into her head back at STC. Serene, yet alert. An undisturbed ocean of calm, but prepared to act at a moment's notice.

She listened to her instincts, the inner rhythm that so often took her exactly where she needed to be.

Today, it took her to sick bay, where she found Dr. Yuris hard at work.

"This will not take long, Corporal," he assured his patient, all the while rummaging around in his cabinets. "An adjustment with the osteotractor, and then several weeks of physical therapy…"

"That won't be possible. I'm needed on this mission." Saben spoke carefully, emphatically, so his words couldn't be misconstrued. His companion didn't seem the least bit impressed by the strained faces he was pulling, but remained at his side anyway, holding the affected limb into his chest.

Yuris reemerged with a whalebone shape instrument, which he proceeded to tune and calibrate to his specifications. As he turned to one side, she caught a glimpse of the phase pistol clipped to his belt. The idea that their resident Vulcan would prefer to be armed in times of crisis hit her like a punch to the gut, but she didn't have much time to consider it. He leaned in, pressing the articulations into his sensitive collarbone, and stated in no uncertain terms: "You should have thought of that before sparring this morning."

"Kemper wanted to make sure we were warmed up," he said, gritting his teeth as his companions formed his arm into the splint. "I maintain that I was set up."

She didn't look nearly apologetic enough. "You'll be fine, Saben. Stop being a child."

"I am not being a child," he hissed, shooting invisible daggers into her forehead. They were picking at each other again, in that good-natured, familial way that had taken some time to return since Bajor. "You dislocated your knee during the Ohniakian mission back in 2150. Where's the sympathy?"

"I've also been impaled, degloved, and set on fire." Alira paused, catching her eye from across the room. She smiled, but didn't let up on her target. "And stabbed fourteen times, half of which were from you. So if you don't mind…"

"This is going to hurt," Yuris advised. He was summarily ignored.

"What even were you doing in the MACO gym this morning?"

"Blowing off some steam, same as you."

"And you just had to try that one move on me. Kemper was there too. Why am I so special?"

"You're not. Don't flatter yourself."

"You're stone cold, Taxa."

"And don't you forget it."

"What I wouldn't give for an ounce of your..." The rest of his riposte was lost to a rather girlish shriek as Yuris set the bone. Her concern for him set aside, Alira was struggling to hold in her laughter.

"I told you it was going to hurt," he said plaintively. The doctor finally noticed she was standing there and moved to accommodate her, preparing her weekly booster of hormones and testosterone blockers. Their routine was well established, so much so that he knew exactly what she needed before she even opened her mouth.

All the while, Julia could feel Saben's eyes on her; when she finally met his gaze, it gave her cause to smile. Although precious few had witnessed the treacherous depths that lay beneath, she had to admit this facade was captivating enough for her to momentarily set all of that aside.

"Did you come to watch me suffer, Commander?"

Despite all she knew, despite all that she'd seen, his voice was still smooth as the finest whiskey. It burned all the way down.

The doctor returned with a flexible shoulder brace, which he tossed at his patient, then retreated to her side, pressing the hypospray to her neck with the utmost care. She offered her thanks, then said: "I'm sure that comes later. In the meantime, you're needed in the wardroom."

And just like that, the spell was broken. He slid off the end of the biobed without further complaint, exchanged a few furtive words with Yuris, and then followed both of them into the corridor.

This time, they passed several MACOs en route to A Deck, one of which passed a phase rifle into Saben's waiting hands. He slung the protective strap over his shoulder like it was nothing, allowing it to batter against his back. Alira said something cautionary about being careful, though he scarcely reacted, choosing to power through the pain rather than admit his discomfort even for a second.

It was unsettling how much they had in common. Scary, really.

"Is this where your mural's going to be?" Somewhere in the middle of the section, Alira turned on her heels and pivoted away from them, gesturing to a blank space of wall with her arms wide. She nodded and treated her to a warm smile, but said nothing.

Captain Tucker had requested that each member of senior staff come up with a winning idea to boost crew morale in the aftermath of Bajor; indeed, it was a misinformed sentiment among the lower decks that they'd squandered their chance to win over the Kai and First Minister over some petty diplomatic squabble. That was well and good enough - even though they now knew of Captain Hernandez's indiscretions, they'd been sworn to secrecy, and practically threatened by the admiralty with bodily harm should they let it slip.

Alira was certainly shaken from her brush with death. She'd shuffled off the mortal coil for a little over five hours before an encounter with the Prophets in the Celestial Temple. There she'd come across the Hoshi from their reality, who sacrificed her pagh with the added assurance that her work was not yet done.

In a way, they'd all been privy to her spiritual awakening. She was keen to tell anyone who asked that Denobulans didn't have an established pantheon of gods, but her crisis of faith led her to seek council all over the ship. She'd learned the five precepts of Buddhism from her second, celebrated Shabbat with Novakovich and friends plenty of times, and had poured over a copy of the Kir'Shara at their doctor's insistence. The latter seemed to make for a winning combination, and before any of them really knew it, she was meditating with Yuris multiple times a week.

Her demeanor shifted, but only ever so slightly - Alira was still the boisterous, outgoing, and free-wheeling officer they'd grown to love, but in times of crisis, she was more even keeled and slower to anger. It was anyone's guess what went on behind closed doors during their sessions, but every time she showed up for duty in the morning, the weight of the universe on her shoulders seemed just that extra little bit lighter.

Trip, of course, had suggested they bump movie night up to twice a week, which was met with mostly positive reception. Hoshi, who was having difficulties adjusting to a quantum reality that wasn't her own, resolved to bring back the long-standing tradition of ladies' night from the Enterprise. While Julia was excited as any to paint her nails and gossip, there was a part of her soul which felt woefully neglected by the dirge of their daily routine.

It was a hobby she'd maintained since she was quite small. Her closet was filled with painted canvases, animals and flowers and landscapes set against multicolored sunbursts. Travis had told her repeatedly just how talented she was. Saben had slid in on the chair behind her to wrap his arms around her waist and nibble at her ear, whispering that she put some unfamiliar Denobulan master to shame. But she hadn't believed any of them, not until her request to get underway was approved.

Suggestions came from all over the ship, and she worked off of photographic references, moments from duty and missions and nights out carousing in the sweet spot, creating a beautiful memorial to their found family for all to see. Julia knew it was a feeble and fruitless attempt to create something permanent in a place where everything else seemed so transient, to grab hold of the fabric of life with both hands while she still had a chance. Still, it kept her busy, and she found herself spending all of her free waking hours making sketches and mapping out exactly how she'd design her mural. It wasn't enough, but it would have to do.

Anything to keep herself out of Saben's arms, which as of late felt more like a vice than a comfort.

"I'm no artist, but I'm willing to keep you company while you paint." It was going to be a momentous undertaking, and for once, she didn't mind one of their resident Denobulans sitting right beside her chattering about everything and nothing.

"Me too," Saben promised, just as they stepped into the turbolift. "At any rate, it'll be a lot more relaxing than the floor is lava."

That had been Ethan's morale-improving suggestion, and the trend had spread throughout the ship like a particularly well-crafted rumor. A day didn't go by where she didn't find herself scrambling for an elevated surface, any elevated surface, and last week her search had been so desperate that she'd launched herself at Commander Kelby's back, sending them both tumbling towards the ground.

Once she and Trip had wandered into the armory and bellowed out the requisite phrase at the top of their lungs, just for the privilege of seeing Taxa's brigade scatter, climbing atop consoles and straddling torpedo launchers. The woman in charge had been standing on the second level at the time, so she'd been forced to abandon her PADD and jump a nearly three feet vertical to seize the rim of a maintenance hatch, holding on for dear life by her fingertips until the all clear was called.

"Someone's a sore loser," Alira replied, and it might as well have been true. The MACOs were surprisingly the worst at the game, being way too strategic for their own good. Just last night, Saben had accidentally overturned an entire table on the mess hall trying to beat everyone to it, covering a half dozen crewmen in their meals.

The doors opened, issuing them onto the bridge, and they moved through the situation room, taking great care to skirt the science crewmen mustering there.

"I know how to pick and choose my battles." The second before she reached for the door controls, he stepped into the threshold, and issued her a silent challenge. "As you know."

Something flashed behind her eyes, sharp and seething, but it was gone in an instant. Together they went to join the madding crowd.

Trip scarcely noticed them come in; he was deep in conversation with Hoshi. "Are you saying a diplomatic option is off the table?"

"If by that you mean convincing them to help us out of the goodness of their hearts, then yes." She slid the PADD she'd been examining across the table, and he studied it with great interest. "Involvement with the Coalition meant all signatories had to swear off trade with them. Naturally, the Coridanites weren't too happy, but they knew better than to turn down our protection."

"Not to mention that Jon was a wanted man," he mumbled, coming to the same conclusion as the rest of them. Trip knew for a fact that it weighed heavily on him, just as the Klingon bounty had years ago.

The corners of her lips tightened in a grimace - it was obvious Hoshi didn't intend to mention that at all. She beckoned to them, and Julia took her seat at the head of the table, their resident Denobulans falling into parade rest to either side of her.

Lights dimmed, attention shifted. A slight nod from the captain was all the encouragement they needed.

"What you're about to hear is classified information pertaining to a mission undertaken by our Infantry Specials Ops envoy cell in the sixteenth month of…"

"Sometime in 2152," Taxa concluded, reaching forward to activate the screen behind them. It was soon filled with an aerial map of Verex III, a planet the former crewmen of the Enterprise knew all too well. She glanced up, doing the mental math to convert the date into something they could understand. "August, I think."

Travis leaned forward into her line of sight, his brows furrowed with concern. "Are you sure we're supposed to be discussing this right now?"

There was a silent insinuation there, in that everyone knew the Supreme Commander, her half-mother and occasional nemesis, would be incensed if she found out she was spreading state secrets. The purely incredulous look he was dealt conveyed all of her indifference and more.

"For the sake of this briefing, it's important that everyone knows there are actually eight cartels operating out of Orion." The view shifted, revealing eight different seals set in a circular formation. Saben indicated two near the top. "They work regionally, for the most part, all taking part in the same kind of activities. Arms dealing, extortion, piracy, racketeering, and the like."

"We'll be dealing with the Syndicate today, but we've been fortunate enough to spend some time undercover with the Compact, their closest ally." Trip wanted to ask exactly how they'd managed to pull that off - they would've been playing the long game for sure, and risked horrific punishment if caught. Thankfully, they'd inserted visual aides for their benefit, and their mastery of disguise was absolutely unparalleled.

"How long, Taxa?"

"Six months," she answered quietly, then pulled up a different headshot of a young Orion woman with a curly mop of red hair. A wave of dread hit her with force, turning her stomach in knots. "We were chasing down a net-girl. They're a different kind of operative, forced into slavery by outstanding debt - instead of physical contact, they trade in brain space and memory, and wear a permanent data port underneath one ear."

The next image was the same individual knocked unconscious, with a little trail of blood curling out of her mouth. Julia forced herself to focus on the circular metallic device secured to her neck.

"Infiltration wasn't easy. I won't lie to you, this is the most deep undercover I've ever gone. They employ telepaths to screen new members…"

This attracted Kemper's attention. "Betazoids?"

"Betazoids," Saben confirmed. A few too many things were starting to make sense. "She was a messenger, sending codified marching orders across the sector. We excised her implant at the processing station on Verex III and left her behind in the care of other operatives before escaping. As far as we know she's still alive, but if she knew what was good for her, she won't tell a soul what's happened."

"And just why is that?"

A data chip, short and rectangular, was up next. It was marred by smoke and blood, and though they dearly wondered what was on it, they knew better than to ask. "Because any agent would rather die than betray the Syndicate."

Honor among thieves. Trip had to say he wasn't surprised.

"Which leads us to our mark." Alira took one step to the side, casting a skittering glance towards the screen. The image was grainy and out of focus, as if taken by a security camera, but they could easily make out greenish skin and long, dark hair. "Embedded in her subconscious was the mark of her owner, one Jelora Tendi. As far as we can tell, she calls the shots quadrant-wide."

There was an unsaid question there, but at the moment, none of them wanted to be the first to ask. He watched their expressions warp and shift, and then went for something else entirely.

"So you knew her?"

"Sure did."

"Like you knew First Monarch Kaitaama?" It was an indelicate way to go about it, but he needed to know if their mission was compromised before it even began.

Saben snorted, ducking his chin towards the ground. She startled before fixing her eyes on him once again. "No, but she's agreed to meet with us, and that's better than we'd ordinarily deserve. It's clear she thinks she has something against us."

"Does she?"

"Shouldn't matter," Saben asserted, then turned back towards the screen, his face and shoulders falling into the shadows. Seconds later, they all understood why.

---

"Ever seen snow like this?"

"Plenty of times," Hutch replied automatically, though his voice was slightly muffled in the access panel he was repairing. His hand shot out, and Anna duly handed him her hyperspanner. "Back home in Minnesota, we used to get a whole meter over one weekend."

Kov attempted to rise to his feet, but stumbled in the snow and almost fell face first into the cold metal surface before them. He saved himself with an outstretched hand, then leaned into it, feigning casualness. "I've seen better."

"Have you now?"

He nodded sagely. "After graduation from officer's training, my roommate took all of us to Lake Tahoe…"

"I can't believe they talked you into that." Anna laughed, then pulled off her insulating gloves, flexing her fingers experimentally. By now, the cold had started to seep into her bones, and seeing as the blinding twin suns were teasing the horizon, they had very little time before the world descended into darkness and they genuinely risked freezing to death. "Kov, that class trip is infamous. During mine, I wound up dancing naked on a table wearing nothing but a scarf and a pair of ski boots."

"Me too!" Hutch reached backwards once more, only to be availed by a brisk high five. He craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Malcolm, who had been standing guard in silence for a suspiciously long time. "What about you, sir?"

He shook his head. His eyes were trained on the horizon, ever vigilant, the snow surrounding him not even blemished. As the snow continued to fall, he stood still as a statue, allowing the flakes to settle atop his hood and against his dusky eyelashes. There was no denying he was cold, that he was trembling, that his teeth were chattering so loud he was sure they could all hear it, but all the same, he remained unmoving.

Scans revealed nothing, but he had to heed his instincts, the hairs that were standing up on the back of his neck.

After a moment, he registered what Hutch had said, and managed a wry smile. That was the night he first got together with Chris, when they'd been young and idealistic with their entire futures ahead of him. Together they'd sat in the corner, laughing and people watching, indulging in one too many hot toddies for their own good. As everyone else settled in for bed, they'd snuck into the hot tub, and from then on all rational thought had ceased.

Ah, Lake Tahoe. He remembered it well.

"Pretty uneventful," he lied, then set his focus on a bit of gossip they might appreciate. "I'm pretty sure that's the holiday where Ensign Taxa drank her company commander under the table."

It was adorable, really, and more than a little endearing how he insisted on referring to his wife by her rank within the confines of his duty hours. She had blurred his rough edges and opened him to the ways of love, but some habits died hard.

"From what I heard, he deserved it." Anna switched the panel she'd been working on into diagnostic mode, then started what she dearly hoped would be the last round of maintenance checks. She remembered hearing all about how the man made her life a living hell in the accelerated tactical program, how he'd constantly berated her and accused her of being there to sleep her way through the barracks. Alira swore up and down that if she ever saw him again, she wouldn't hesitate to deck him.

Despite the laughter in her eyes and her persistent smile, she absolutely believed her.

"Maybe we should start using her old nickname from STC." Hutch groaned, then slowly righted himself, brushing off the snow that had accumulated on the back of his jacket. Finally, he located the right turn of phrase somewhere in his memory. "Blondie, was it?"

"Not if you want to keep your teeth," he advised. Subconsciously, he reached for his communicator to check back in with the Enterprise, a motion which didn't go unnoticed by their chief engineer.

"We're almost done," she promised. "I'd give it an hour."

"An hour?"

"Half an hour, tops." Anna caught the look of consternation he threw over his shoulder, but didn't allow it to affect her. It was a stunning stroke of bad luck which led to their presence in the woods that afternoon, and if they didn't complete a thorough repair job, they would find themselves right back here, more than likely freezing their asses off.

The Coalition subspace communications relay on Artonia IV was a relic of when the Imperial Guard had occupied that world some three hundred years ago; geographically, it was one of their most remote beacons, being in a far-flung corner of a sector in a rather unremarkable part of the quadrant. The locals were quiet and reverent, perfectly in tune with nature and the inherent rhythm of the universe, and they'd taken great care not to disturb anything as they beamed in and out, to not violate any of their religious observances in a desperate bid to ensure the front lines could call home if they needed to.

Though the Commodore had stressed that time was of the essence, she'd allowed herself to marvel over the ancient hunk of metal sitting in a clearing surrounded by flourishing evergreens; many of the switches and buttons were hand-carved with fishbone-shaped Andorian characters, and every screen was shattered in at least one place, lending a flickering glow over the controls they were desperately trying to debug. With the sun setting, time was of the essence, not only for their mission, but also for their survival. The Prime Minister had explained this to them slowly, carefully, in no uncertain terms, and had double and triple checked they understood the risks involved.

The forests of the Artonian homeworld were ancient and primordial, made of one single organism that spanned the length of half the planet. Every tree and flower and bush they saw was interconnected by a complex root system, every rushing river and babbling stream flowing into the other.

It was also sentient.

Anna got the sense that the locals lived in symbiosis with the forest - in their cultural dossier, she read that it was common practice to retreat there to seek guidance from the nature spirit. All the same, none of them ventured into the woods without the protection of a ceremonial amulet, a glowing blue stone that presently hung around all their necks. Without it, the roots and the limbs would reach out to them in a bid to integrate their consciousness with the hivemind, and in due time, the Prime Minister assured them, they would become one with the trees, and their flesh would begin to sprout saplings.

It was believed that the creature could sense and prey upon those of impure heart and deed. Apparently, before a politician could ever take office, they were cast into the woods to survive the night in the open without protection. Even if they weren't devoured alive, it was surely an effective enough intimidation tactic, because the normally unflappable Lieutenant Commander Hess was shaking in her boots.

Twice she caught a glimpse of a branch moving on its own accord, extending out to them, tangling into her hair and caressing her cheek before letting go. All the while she trembled with fear, knowing the organism was watching them with the intent of finding its next meal, but whether it be due to her own ability to detect when a mission was about to go south or her certainty that she wouldn't pass the morality test if given the chance, Anna was sure they'd overstayed their welcome.

The wind howled through the trees in that moment, ruffling the leaves and pine needles and sending a soft down of snow raining down over their heads. It was accompanied by what sounded like a rush of voices.

Kov reflexively reached for his phase pistol, then pulled back, noticing how the branches near his head began to stir and shake. Each of them had been told over and over that this was how the creature communicated, that no one had managed to decipher its language, that there was no need to worry, that no, Ensign Singh's team most certainly wasn't allowed to investigate any further. All things considered, they should have been trying their best not to agitate the bloodthirsty beast around them and over them and underneath them, but his reaction had been involuntary. For that, she didn't blame him.

It felt like the eyes of eternity were upon them, and not for the first time, Anna felt very insignificant and tremendously small.

"Are we done?" Malcolm asked, testing the waters, his voice unbearably terse. Though he couldn't see it from his vantage point, she nodded.

"Five minutes."

It was improbable, bordering on impossible, but she was determined to make it happen. Hutch nodded and stepped on the nearest railing to hoist himself atop the transmitter, rubbing frost from the upper console. Forsaking all else, she bit her penlight between her teeth and set to work.

The sunset arrived more quickly than any of them realized, and the snowfall picked up, shrouding the horizon in a cloud of impenetrable white. Her fingers slid and skipped over the controls, and she eagerly slid back into her gloves, slapping her palms against her thighs in a futile bid to work some feeling into them.

Meanwhile, Malcolm was having some difficulty raising the Enterprise, even though he was standing only five meters from an active transmitter. All he received on the end of the line was static, and that was enough for dread to start to climb upwards from his chest into his throat anew. The machinery within the ancient behemoth kicked up a notch, rotating and clunking over itself, making much more noise than it ever had before.

At some point her tricorder shorted out, and she punched a few buttons before nearly throwing the thing in frustration. Something was burning away in her gut, and she was almost certain it was anxiety, though she didn't - couldn't - know for sure until the inevitable happened.

Metal underneath Anna's hands inexplicably heated and conveyed an electrical charge, sending her falling back from the point of contact and sprawling out across the snow. She sank down by several centimeters, feeling the cold stuff seep into the gap between her parka and the insulated pants she wore over her uniform, then cursed her rotten luck, perhaps with a touch of premonition of what was about to happen.

Hutch slid to the ground and offered her his hand, which she gratefully accepted. The wind whispered through the trees once more, carrying forth another indecipherable message, and as one, they trained their eyes towards the heavens, bathed at once in the blue and purple tones of the approaching night.

The subspace beacon sparked and shuddered to a halt, and it was then she remembered that they were twenty kilometers from the nearest habitable settlement, that their communicators didn't seem to be working, and all of a sudden this previous living and breathing forest seemed eerily silent.

Anna's heart was pounding so hard she was certain Hutch could hear it. If he could, he gave no indication, resting a hand in the middle of her back and gently nudging her forward into the center of a rapidly forming circle.

She wanted to protest, to tell them that she could protect herself, that all things considered, Commander Reed should be in the middle, but whatever she was about to say died on her lips the moment she caught the expressions of the two other members of their away team.

Malcolm was wide eyed and tense, his shoulders all but resting in his ears, one free hand tucked into his belt where his phase pistol was clipped. Kov was equally as terrified, though he was doing well enough to hide it, years of meditation etched into his face like stone.

There were no people or animals anywhere around, and with the dense cloud cover indicative of an imminent snowstorm, the forest was all but cloaked in total darkness. The only bit of illumination came from the ground, and in the absence of every other visual stimulus, it was almost unbearable. Eyes watering, stomach clenching, air burning her lungs, Anna forced herself to listen. To wait.

When the next indication arrived, it came to them in the unmistakable sound of the safety being clicked off of a phase rifle somewhere in the undergrowth.

"Run," Malcolm intoned, his voice rumbling in his chest like thunder.

"Sir…"

"I said run!" The three of them complied, kicking up their heels and forging through the snow as if their life depended on it.

Because it probably did.

The huntsman gave them about three seconds worth of head start before unleashing holy hell upon them, and in the stillness of the night, their own private peace was shattered irrevocably.

---

When they infiltrated the enemy's base of operations all those weeks ago, the last thing Rachel expected for herself was waiting hand and foot on the First Consul.

Her first proper glimpse of T'Leikha was under the guise of a reprimand - they'd just sneaked into the situation room as they discussed dropping dekyon particle fields like land mines along established Coalition patrol routes. Simon had dropped something, alerting the assembled Romulans to their presence, and she'd called to them from across the room. At first they were terrified that they were going to be found out, that she was going to strike them down where they stood, but she soon realized the reality was something far worse.

T'Leikha was in need of a new personal assistant. She'd killed the last one just yesterday for insolence, and seeing as she believed every hybrid defector to be interchangeable, Rachel was just as good a choice as any other.

Simon was less lucky - he was sent back to his work assignment, leaving her alone in a completely different section of the ship. It wasn't a question as to whether she could handle it (she definitely could) but it was always their intention to stay together. Moments before he was sent away, he cut her a Look, which she took to mean that for as long as they were apart their nighty rendezvouses would continue.

Meanwhile, she would need to bide her time.

The First Consul was a formidable woman, inscrutable, her power and determination absolute. Chairman Solan had made a wayward remark about the strength of her ambition, and everything she'd seen had been consistent with that observation. She surrounded herself by beautiful things and took tremendous care to maintain her appearance - at least once a day, Rachel found herself standing behind her vanity reading out daily reports while she brushed her hair and adjusted her uniform, the form fitting gold-and-purple tunic and skirt set that she took was reserved for the highest ranking officers in the Romulan military.

Her reprimands were always searing, and her eyes were sharp and discerning and seemed to peer down to the depths of the soul. She often saw T'Leikha reduce a grown man to tears, and she'd killed soldiers where they stood for the smallest of infractions. She relished hearing her victims beg, kept duty and the advancement of her career above all else, and craved control like air and water.

If she wasn't so unspeakably terrified of her new boss, Rachel might have admired her.

Simon, as it turned out, wasn't having the best time, though his latest discoveries proved fruitful. He described how he was tasked with preparing Betazoid prisoners who were next in the telepresence unit, systematically starving and weakening them until they were too feeble to fight when they administered a hypospray of the neurogenic virus. While the Romulan centurion set the parameters of the device and directed it towards the right coordinates, he and the other hybrids would strap their unwitting prisoner onto a medical slab, trying their best to ignore how they trembled and wept and begged to be spared.

It was a sight to behold, or so he claimed, to watch the telepresence software invade their minds and control their synapses against their will - once the research station or cargo ship or interceptor or what have you was destroyed and their assignment was complete, they would trigger a rapid viral cascade that accelerated the damage and killed them within minutes.

Simon was almost gleeful explaining how they would thrash and scream before falling limp against their restraints and lapsing into unconsciousness. He would then tote them across the deck and pitch them into the incinerator. Invariably, they'd have a new assignment minutes later, and they'd venture into the holding cells, seizing the prisoner closest the door and dragging them to their doom as the rest helplessly looked on.

Rachel was almost positive the Betazoids had to be aware of this - from the cargo manifest in T'Leikha's personal files, she knew they'd managed to kidnap several thousand members of the Fourth and Fifth House, which was far too many for the government to cover up. In Commodore Archer's classified personal logs (which even the Section was privy to on occasion) he'd expressed concerns that the temporal agent Bran Audet was actively conspiring to thwart an eventual mass extinction event of his people at the hands of the neurogenic virus. This made it a powerful bargaining tool, and so he hadn't hesitated to procure a sample for himself.

In the darkness of the maintenance hatch where they always met, he'd shown her a test tube of iridescent green liquid, and she'd had to fight the bile rising in the back of her throat.

For the most part, her days were consumed with tending to T'Leikha's every whim. She fetched every meal, set every appointment, and sat in the back taking notes during every meeting. About a month after she entered her service, she was lucky enough to see the Praetor himself over subspace; he was a wizened man, one burdened by experience, but also one suffering tremendously with Tuvan syndrome, a degenerative disease that affected the mind and body. He had made several bad calls as of late, including ordering the fleet to unleash the Loque'eque virus upon the Haakonans, a gambit which ultimately failed to gain them any ground.

There were rumblings of deposing him, especially between Chairman Solan and Admiral Valdore. Both were too ambitious for their own good, but if D'Deridex were to meet his untimely demise, it would be T'Leikha who would ascend to power while a special election was conducted among the Senate. Everyone knew this, especially her, and from the moment she rose to the moment her head hit the pillow, she was armed to the teeth with a disruptor and a knife.

Save for the moments she was working or berating her staff, T'Leikha's existence was a lonely one. From the profile the Section had provided on her, Rachel knew that she was all alone in the world, with no spouse, children, or immediate family. She was surprisingly quiet and thoughtful, yet ruthless in her application of logic; occasionally, she would think aloud, mulling over her choice of troop deployment or the next system to attack. While she never initiated a conversation unless it was to dole out an order - and she had certainly never asked for her opinion - Rachel tried her best to steer her in the wrong direction by the use of nonverbal cues alone. Invariably, she would arrive at a decision, and in the dead of night, she would submit her findings back to Starbase 1, piggybacking off of a carrier wave sent deep into the Alpha Quadrant to their forces stationed there. Long and Harris never replied, but from the morning briefings, wherein they detailed exactly how the enemy always seemed to anticipate their next move, she knew they received it.

One evening as she helped the First Consul undress for bed, her thumb caught one of the pins holding her mask in place and almost dragged it down. T'Leikha tensed up exactly as she did right before decapitating someone in the middle of the hallway during a busy duty shift, but thankfully didn't act on it, moving the piece back into place and continuing to sit in silence. Rachel weighed the consequences of the one question she truly wanted to ask, wondering if it was worth her life, but ultimately decided she needed to know.

"Why do we cover our entire faces?" The Romulan officers, especially, never took off their masks in the presence of the hybrids. In all actuality, she knew the answer, understood it had to do with keeping everyone isolated and distant, preventing alliances and friendships from forming among the lower decks. Their keepers were keen on preventing them from talking amongst themselves, and she'd seen several soldiers receive a beating for whispering in the mess hall. The world of a defector was one of soul-crushing silence, and by now she'd almost gotten used to it.

"Because we are so much alike," she replied, locking eyes with her in the mirror. Like Chairman Solan, like Captain T'Pol, they were bright and green and positively captivating, with the kind of tragic beauty that made her wonder exactly what lay underneath. "I cannot help but see my own shortcomings reflected in you."

Talk about a backhanded compliment, she thought, but all the same, she couldn't help but think that this was the first time she'd heard the woman be vulnerable. Rachel said nothing, reaching over to retrieve the ornate dressing gown slung over the coat rack and draping it over her shoulders. T'Leikha slowly withdrew and sat in her overflowing plush armchair where she usually took her ale, looking as unbothered and resplendent as a queen of antiquity.

"Besides, if I were to order one man to kill out of ten, I would not want the others to see his face, to recognize him in the streets a decade from now as we all live on Romulus as free and equal citizens." The way her voice slightly pitched up at the end made her think there was no way she could truly believe that. Rachel began to tidy up, doing her best to avoid eye contact.

"Would you kill for me, Sarva?" She almost startled, dropping the stack of PADDs she'd been carrying, but saved it at the last minute. At her silence, she repeated: "Would you do it without question?"

As long as it suited my aims, she wanted to reply, but kept her mouth shut. "Of course."

"Good," T'Leikha cooed, then made a dismissive gesture towards the door. "Contact the capitol. Let the Praetor know his presence is warranted at logistics command immediately."

There was definitely, positively, absolutely no misinterpreting that, and for a moment she stood there, trying not to gape. To her credit, she immediately saluted, clenching her fist diagonally across her chest, then turned to leave, blood roaring in her ears in one long, unbroken refrain.

---

"You know, there's one thing I'm still not clear about."

"Fire away."

"I…" Trip trailed off, then reached behind him to accept the proffered phase pistol, clipping it to his belt. "Will we have to worry about pheromones? I thought all Orion women…"

"Most self-medicate with chemical suppressants," Alira assured him. She was having to maintain a wide stance to avoid falling over as they negotiated the upper atmosphere of Bracas V in Shuttlepod One, one hand wrapped around the railing running the length of the ceiling. Because they were about to wander into a potentially hostile situation, they'd opted for a one-to-one ratio of diplomatic to tactical staff, and if the sheer size of the arsenal they brought was any indication, Taxa, Saben, and Kemper were planning on taking no quarter.

"That's weird, because the Orions we encountered years ago…" Trip could tell that Travis was refraining from calling it like it was, that the three women had come only one well-timed phase rifle shot from taking over the ship. Even men who were in relationships at the time had trouble resisting them, and the female contingent of Enterprise had endured days of nausea and bad headaches. The only ones seemingly unspared had been himself and T'Pol; at the time they'd been bonded, an attachment which lessened and dissolved over time. Trip would be lying if he said he hadn't agonized over maintaining control - the last thing he ever wanted to do was make a fool of himself in front of their would-be trade partners, or even worse, be unfaithful to the woman he loved.

Julia's smile was small and sad, but she did manage to look back at him, twisting all the way around in the copilot's chair. "You know, that's probably by design."

"Oh," he intoned, and though he knew it must've sounded ridiculous, he couldn't help but repeat it. "Oh."

A small probe drone emerged through the cloud cover mere meters off their port bow, and Travis cursed, banking the craft hard to the right in an attempt to avoid it. The cylindrical object disappeared off the viewscreen a second later, but he remained tense, with a vice like grip on the joystick and one eye turned towards the radar.

It was Saben who finally breached the silence, reaching forward to give their COs the body alarm their tactical officer insisted they wear on away missions. They were bulky, cumbersome, and none too subtle, but because the device had saved his life once before on the Andorian ice cutter Sevarin, Trip was all too willing to partake. He turned his chin back towards his companion. "Ensign, do you remember Shaarel?"

"How could I forget," she mumbled, and it was clear she meant to leave it at that. But when she caught Trip's eye and realized the depths of his curiosity, she acquiesced to the inevitable. Heaving a massive sigh, she took a seat next to him. "When we were teenagers, our parents took us to this military ball for Infantry officers and their families…"

"We lived right across the hall from one another. My mother and her father were in the same border patrol detachment." Saben furrowed his brows and exhaled slowly through pursed lips. "This must've been 2080, or 2081…"

"2081. Anyway, the Supreme Council was hosting the Orion government at the time to negotiate a deal, and several cartels were represented, including a well-known trader." The way in which her tone warped around those words let him know exactly what she was thinking - though certain factions on United Earth had kept slaves in the past, the Denobulans never had. He had a feeling the notion was just as horrible and tragic to her as it was the rest of them.

"Female operatives in the Syndicate are known to disguise themselves as enslaved persons to infiltrate allied and enemy ships…"

Kemper's hands paused over the zippers and closures of his tactical vest. "Are you saying that's who we had on the Enterprise all those years ago?"

"There's no doubt," Saben replied, deathly serious for a moment. "Though those are few and far between. You know, one of the few ways a family can get out of a debt from a cartel is to sell one of its members. That's what they do, they get these poor people over a barrel and tell them they have no other choice. Women and men, young and old - sometimes they draw straws to determine their fate."

A lump of dread was forming in Trip's throat. He knew exactly where this was going.

"One of the men there was trying to sell them by the night. Now, don't get me wrong, sex work is perfectly legal on Denobula. The difference is…" Saben trailed off, searching for the right words.

"They sell their services willingly," Travis said carefully, not taking his eyes off the viewscreen. They broke through the clouds over a well-lit city landscape, ornate geometrical structures and squat split-levels stretching as far as the eye could see. He banked right and headed away from downtown, making a beeline for the less policed industrial sector.

"Exactly. As you can imagine, he wasn't getting any takers, except…"

"My mother caught a glimpse of one of the girls, and I remember she was just so upset. Our parents were whispering back and forth, and the next thing I knew we were on our way back to the hovercar with her in tow." Alira paused, struggling to pull her hair back in a bun, pulling with more force than was necessary. "Captain, she was terrified. She was weeping and begging us not to hurt her. I swear to you, I'll never forget it as long as I live."

"We took her to buy some warmer clothes and then out to dinner, and she told us all about how she'd been treated, these horrible, awful things. I remember she took my father's hand and told him we were the first people to show her mercy, that she would never forget our kindness."

"I'm sure she never will," Julia leaned back in her chair to reassure them. "And her spouse, and her children…"

"Ma'am," Saben interrupted, wanting to make one thing abundantly clear. "She wasn't much older than we were at the time."

Trip suddenly felt like he was going to be sick, and knew he wasn't the only one.

"She spent the night at our family compound. Saben and I distracted her by playing games and singing silly songs, and I just remember all the adults in the family gathered around the kitchen table, working away on their PADDs…"

"My household pitched in as well. To pay her father's debt, it cleared all of us out, but I swear to you it was so gratifying to see the look on her face when my mother returned home with her certificate of emancipation." Saben was clearly lost to his reverie, because he reached up to flex his shoulder experimentally, turning this way and that to work through the pain. Trip felt like asking him if his injury was going to be a problem, but knew it wasn't anywhere near the right time.

"Did she go home?" Kemper's question was innocent enough, but was met with a raised eyebrow and look of sheer consternation.

"Sergeant," Alira began slowly. "Would you?"

All things considered, he suspected he wouldn't.

"She lived with us for a few months, at which point her family heard what happened and attempted to contact her. They even showed up in our building," Alira continued after a moment of pause, watching out of the corner of her eye as Travis circled over a public airstrip in a rather desolate neighborhood. "My mother reached out to her cousin on Dekendi III, who was able to get her into the science academy there. As far as we know, she flourished."

"As far as you know?"

"Orions certainly don't live as long as Denobulans. We found her obituary over subspace a few years back. She taught biology at a small Tellarite colony school for decades. She had a family. By all accounts, she was happy." Alira finally managed to wrestle her hair into something passable and slid her fingers through the last loop of the elastic. She sat forward and clasped her hands together, indicating the matter was closed, implying she was thinking the exact same thing they all were.

And to think the Syndicate had been perfectly comfortable depriving her of a life well lived.

"We've got company," Kemper announced somewhat rhetorically, as together they watched the soldiers waiting below grow closer. He'd hoped to have at least a few minutes to review the plan, but it was now clear someone else was trying to call the shots.

In combat, as well as in negotiations, it was important to maintain control at all times. Sometimes, he wondered if he was the only one who remembered that.

"A thousand liters of warp plasma, three deuterium injectors, and an EPS framework," Trip mumbled, then stood, leaning over Julia's shoulder. "Do you think it's going to be enough?"

Julia eyed him warily. Truthfully, she didn't want to tell him what she thought of their chances.

They were much closer now, mere seconds from touching down, and could easily make out the semicircle of armed Orion men standing around their leader. Each of them were green-skinned and bald, wearing knee length-pleated skirts and tall boots, with leather straps crisscrossing their bare chests and knotting at their mid-backs, where a second plasma rifle stood armed and at the ready. By contrast, the woman standing before them seemed so small, though she was covered from ankle to chin in the same flexible, matte black material her guards were in, loosely formed to her body in a utility jumpsuit. Her dark hair was loose and curled to the shoulders, and even from a distance, the menacing glint in her eye was unmistakable, like a fire burning through the stillness of the night.

As the landing legs came down and the impulse engine shifted into idle, Saben and Travis both rose to their feet and reached for the hatch, only to collide in a rush of muffled apologies and feeble attempts to avoid eye contact.

"I'm sorry, Corporal. If you…"

"Sir, I insist…"

Alira sighed raggedly and slid between them, punching the release with an open hand. In this hemisphere, it was the middle of the summer, and the oppressive heat nearly bowled them over. She didn't hesitate, stepping down to the tarmac and turning this way and that to assess the strength of the Orion contingent.

Never let it be said that they didn't come prepared - though they were trying their best to be subtle about it, there were a half dozen more armed guards waiting in the wings, weapons cocked. Carefully, she set aside her phase rifle and allowed it to slide around to her back, indicating she wasn't a threat.

Of course, she still kept her diverter shield strapped to her wrist and her plasma baton tucked in a pocket. But they didn't need to know that.

Kemper soon joined her, then Saben, and together they formed a protective line in front of their officers. The moment she laid sights on Trip, Jelora smiled, then closed the distance between them, the click of her boots on the pavement lending rhythm to the purposeful swaying of her hips.

"Captain Tucker," she began, her voice low and melodious. "You brought a lot more crewmen than was necessary. And weapons."

"As did you," he countered, and her expression softened. She snapped her fingers, and a man stepped forward, bowing his head in deference. Alira's mind was spinning, reminiscing about how the crew of the Caileph had treated her in the opposite quantum reality as she moonlighted as the Supreme Commander. The similarities were definitely there, and quite painfully obvious.

Jelora made a big show of scrolling through her PADD for the proper details, perhaps implying just how many transactions she had to get through that day, underscoring that her time came at a premium. The servant who had assisted her took one step back into the darkness, but on the way his profile caught the floodlight, just enough to where they could make out a mess of dark hair and glimmering, onyx eyes.

Betazoid.

"We thank you for doing business with the Orion Syndicate," she said carefully, finally locating the entry and handing it over. There it was in black and white, a perfect transcript of the conversation she'd had with Admiral Gardner, one that was conducted on a priority channel under the utmost secrecy. "It isn't often that we have such an illustrious client as Starfleet."

"I should think that says more about you," Julia replied. A ripple of tension moved through the crowd, knowing full well their profits had plummeted since every Coalition member world had agreed to avoid trading with them. Even the Coridanites, their most staunch allies, had turned their backs on the disreputable (though technically neutral) pirating organization, which definitely had to hurt. "Do you have what we agreed upon?"

"Three hundred A-grade dilithium crystals as promised." She gestured broadly, but the presumed cargo container was nowhere to be found. At Trip's bewildered expression, she continued: "They are back at my center of operations. Have dinner with me, and you can inspect the merchandise."

Out the corner of her eye, Alira saw Saben stiffen, and knew exactly what he was thinking. They had faked their own deaths to get out of the cartels the first time, but it was perfectly within the realm of possibility that Jelora had done a little investigating, that she'd noticed what the escape pod of hers went missing, that she knew exactly who they were and why they were really here.

The idea of that sent shivers down her spine.

"We don't have time for pleasantries," Julia shot back, ever sharp and to the point.

"Then I don't have time for you. I assure you, Captain, I can provide your crew with all means of diversions." She reached out and curled her finger around the shoulder strap of the nearest guard's rifle holster, then pulled him closer. "You, Denobulan. If you want him, you can have this one tonight."

"I…" She blanched, taking in the man's expression, glassy-eyed and reverent, as though he was fully resigned to his fate. The overhead lights caught him in profile, and she realized he was wearing a neurolytic restraint under one ear, no doubt keeping him compliant to her every whim.

"I know about your species," she challenged. "And that it's the middle of one of your mating seasons. Don't tell me you've lost your appetite."

There were so many things wrong about that statement, but she wasn't going to fight it here. Digging her heels in, she met her gaze with fortitude. "I'm working."

"Pity." She released him and then turned, propping her hands on her hips. Jelora set her sights on an arched gateway at the very end of the complex, then cast a fiery look over her shoulder. "He comes with my highest recommendation."

She lead them to a nearby warehouse, which seemed perfectly boarded up and disused from the outside, but revealed an endless expanse of finery within.

Plush red carpeting covered every square inch of the floor and tapestries lined the walls, no doubt detailing magnificent triumphs of Orion history. A dining table sat recessed into the floor, several steps down from the ground level, covered in rich silken napkins and a mixture of gold, silver, and latinum utensils. Honest-to-God candelabras seemed to be the only illumination in the room, set intermittently on high pedestals, making the room even more unbearably hot than it already was.

It occurred to Trip that Jelora was nothing more than a raven, gathering shiny objects by any means necessary, cutting shady deals and pausing to admire her reflection in the eyes of the enemies she subjugated.

He would have been disgusted by her, if they didn't need her now more than ever.

Servants were hard at work plating their meal, and the three of them hesitantly took their seats. Alira began to sweep the perimeter, scanning for incendiary devices and nudging open curtains with the barrel of her rifle. At one point, she passed a man standing nearest what she assumed to be the kitchen, and rocked from foot to foot as a sudden wave of exhaustion overtook her.

Phlox had told her all about this, and she and Saben had felt the effects of a disrupted hibernation schedule wrought by Orion pheromones firsthand during their time undercover. It was enough to tell her an operative was close at hand, one intent on disrupting the course of their mission.

She turned, and all of a sudden, there she was, sidling up to the table dressed in little more than a few strategically placed bolts of fabric. Undulating and swaying her hips to the beat of an unheard drum, she leaned over to whisper something in Travis's ear. Across the way, Kemper stopped in his tracks, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

A sudden loud noise broke whatever spell she had them under; stepping into the main atrium, she realized that their first officer had reached for whatever utensil happened to be closest at hand at the time, in this case an ivory-handed serrated knife, and drove it into the wooden table mere centimeters from Jelora's hands.

Travis and Trip startled, slightly embarrassed, then ducked their heads towards the ground. To her credit, Julia seemed perfectly unbothered, though her eyes conveyed the boiling rage within.

"No dancers," she ground out softly, so there could be no room left for ambiguity. This was a cheap ploy to manipulate their negotiations, and it would not stand.

Jelora studied her for a moment, really scrutinized her, and for a split second Alira thought the standoff was about to erupt in a firefight. Saben was standing just behind her, hand resting on the place where she knew his plasma baton was hidden. She met his eyes and followed them towards the end of the room, where the guards remained lined up against the walls, their expressions perfectly blank.

The Betazoid on the end was doing his best to hide it, but they'd both spent enough time tinkering with stolen Romulan disruptors to recognize one when they saw it.

Finally their host clapped her hands, and the woman dashed away from them into the darkness, moving as if the devil himself was on her tail. Without preamble, she wrenched out the knife Julia had plunged into the table and began to tuck into her meal, some unknown red meat mixed with a purplish root vegetable.

There was a moment of silence, and then Trip tested the waters.

He would go on to desperately wish that he hadn't.

"So how does someone get involved in this line of work, anyway?"

"Through my father," she said nonchalantly, nodding towards the wall, where a rather serious portrait of a glowering Orion man was mounted. "I took over when I was nineteen. Naturally, his men weren't too eager to fall in line, but that was easily remedied."

Jelora turned her chin ever so slightly and tapped the side of her neck where an implant would be, then took an indulgent swig whatever green liquor was in her crystal goblet. The away team was almost hesitant to eat or drink anything, and Trip was sure she was picking up on that.

"We've heard a lot about you," Travis blurted out, only to be treated to a wide-eyed and horrified expression from their first officer. Desperate to remedy the situation, he added: "Your business acumen. Your tactical skills. Your…"

"Ethereal beauty?" She suggested, winking rather ostentatiously. This time, the invisible daggers set in Julia's eyes were turned towards her.

"I was going to say clever fiendishness." Realizing how ridiculous that sounded, Travis made an honest attempt at a laugh. "Or something like that."

"I'll take it. More wine, Mr. Tucker?"

He cast a skittering glance towards Kemper, then back towards Saben, and they got the silent cue almost instantly, closing in on the table centimeter by centimeter. Shaking his head, he said: "Listen, Miss Tendi, I think it's plainly obvious you don't intend to follow through with this deal today."

"Why do you say that?" She sounded innocent, perfectly affronted, though they knew it was all an act.

"Word around the sector is that you've been making threats against the Coalition. To borrow a turn of phrase, that you'd sooner gut a whole crew before asking their help for anything. I just wanted to lay it out there right now that we can't be intimidated, that we can't be threatened, and we have no intention of offering anything besides what's on that contract." It wasn't an entire truth, per se, but they needed to get her to show her cards.

They needed to force her hand, by whatever means necessary.

She giggled, finally setting her knife and fork aside. Jelora scrutinized him anew through narrowed eyes. "Come on, Mr. Tucker. With the tactical officer you've got, you should know that truly dangerous women never issue threats."

Damned if that wasn't true.

"All the same," Julia continued, slowly pulling her attention from the opposite side of the room. Alira persisted, putting one foot in front of the other and leaning into the motion with the utmost caution. "We have information in our possession that will force you to cooperate."

"Is that so?"

"It is. You might even say we're prepared to throw you to the dogs."

Jelora was suddenly enraged, seething, breathing hard through clenched teeth. Rocking to one side, Alira caught a glimpse of her reaching for her weapon underneath the table, the other hand raising to beckon her guards forward.

She didn't hesitate, screaming out a strangulated warning before launching herself across the table, sending goblets and plates and pitchers crashing and breaking all the way. At the last possible second, her heel caught on a table runner, which in turn pulled a rug out from its previous position, overturning several candelabras and setting off a chain reaction around the perimeter.

Almost instantly, the room erupted in flames.

---

Kov was the first one to be hit.

At first he was too dazed to register what had happened, too panicked to slow for even a moment, until he felt a rush of warmth and looked down to find his parka stained with blood.

Enterprise had been raided too many times for him not to recognize the wound, and he'd seen so many MACOs screaming in pain in triage outside sickbay not to immediately know what it was.

"Disruptor," he gasped. There was an unbearable pressure bearing down on his lungs, and it was all he could do to take a breath, to avoid falling to his knees and succumbing to the pain. Anna was screaming, though about what he had no idea, and before he knew it, she was back at his side, throwing her entire body against him and desperately trying to pull him to his feet.

There was more weapons fire, frighteningly close, and his CO was screaming at their unseen attacker to come get some, though the tremor in her voice betrayed all her anxiety and more.

"A trap," he hissed, rolling onto his side, desperately willing strength to return his legs. Suddenly Hutch was there, wrapping an arm around his chest and helping him up. Behind them, Kov heard the unmistakable sound of boots hitting the snow. "The subspace beacon…sabotaged..."

"I know, buddy. Can you run?"

"Not leaving the group," he whispered, pressing down on the point of impact. Surprisingly, it became easier to breathe, and he bared down with the absolute sum of his strength.

"You don't have a choice." Hutch pushed him forward, then turned on his heels, laying down fire from a defensive position.

Indignant and a little irritated, Kov hesitated, wanted to tell him he had no business giving him an order, only for another blast to go whizzing past his ear, mere centimeters from its mark. Swallowing his pride and heeding his instinct, he trundled off through the snow into the darkness, desperately wishing for the moon and the stars to peek through the clouds and afford them even the barest glimmer of hope.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Malcolm make an abrupt about-face and double back on his path, all the while rummaging around in his pockets for something. Like him, their first officer was acting on instinct, and it struck him then exactly what he meant to do. Kov wanted to scream at him, to tell him not to do it, but knew that whatever warning he could offer would fall upon deaf ears.

He pulled the pin of the stun grenade and threw it as hard as he possibly could. It flew over Anna and Hutch's heads, almost as if in slow motion, and landed at the foot of the Romulan commando who had been stalking them from the moment they beamed down. Immediately, he began to stumble backwards to put some distance between them, but the moment it detonated, Kov knew they had much bigger problems.

It started out as a whisper, a trembling, a low rumble through the trees. The very roots underneath him seemed to vibrate, and overhead, snow began to rain down from the branches. Anna stood and turned, locking eyes with him, and opened her mouth in a silent scream.

All of a sudden, the beast awakened, and the ground around them bucked and warped, sweeping them all in one rolling undulation towards parts unknown. There was a mad scramble for purchase against any number of trees and rocks, but everything was so slick with ice that they encountered little success. The creature pushed them across the landscape with breakneck speed, over hills and dales, through small streams and valleys, until the ground suddenly leveled out and the snow fell away from them.

Malcolm realized what was happening a second too late - many on Enterprise were aware of his pathological fear of drowning, and despite the fact that he was just a blur alongside the rest of them, Kov could hear the absolutely mortal terror in his scream.

Just as they flew over the side of the precipice over a churning and raging river, he seized hold of a low-hanging branch with both hands, almost wrapping his entire body around it. The blocks of ice tumbling over the rocks and the roar of the water was positively deafening.

Several meters overhead, Hutch appeared over the edge of the cliff, desperately seizing Malcolm by the ankles. Crying out, he almost immediately lost his grip, and then they were all falling to their deaths, thrashing and screaming and praying for a miracle.

The shock of cold water and ensuing weightlessness was a surprising and welcome benediction.

---

The next few minutes were a rush of shouts and adrenaline, of blurry vision and smoke searing the lungs.

Jelora fought like a madwoman, and for a brief moment, Alira wondered if she'd made a mistake. One particularly punishing blow landed in the same spot where she'd been impaled back on Rigel V all those months ago, and she saw stars. Eventually, just as her air supply was running out, she managed to throw her weapon away and gain the upper hand, straddling her back with her knees pressed firmly into the back of her thighs. With her hands trapped underneath her, she had little room to escape, but she pressed down on the back of her head for good measure, then dragged her lips as close to her ear as she dared.

"Tell me where it is!" Alira had to shout to be heard over the roar of the fire all around them, and the smoldering timbers that were threatening to fall down around them. Her hair and uniform were cemented to her person, practically a part of her now, but she felt like a phoenix reborn out of the ashes.

Whatever reply she was prepared to offer was lost in a desperate struggle for air, and then she felt a strong hand weave through the back of her tactical vest and pull her to her feet. She thrashed against it momentarily, assuming it to be one of Jelora's guards, only to look up into the wide and fearful eyes on her CO.

Trip tried to speak, but descended into a coughing fit. The smoke was thick, already accumulating on the ground, and though she was hesitant, when he gestured towards the exit she stumbled after him. Legs completely deboned, head pounding, she had to fight to stay on her feet as they burst out into the clear evening air.

Simply inhaling and exhaling had never felt so good, and she couldn't get enough of it. Almost immediately, her limbs began to tingle in an early indication she was hyperventilating, but she pushed that aside, dashing through the smoke billowing out the windows and into an alley some distance away.

There, Trip collided with Saben so hard they tumbled into the wall; he winced, grabbing at his injured shoulder, gritting his teeth in a bid to maintain his composure. His entire person seemed to be coated in blood and soot, and Alira didn't want to think about what a frightful sight he rest of them were.

"Where…"

"Back at the shuttlepod," Kemper rasped, clutching at his chest. With his free hand, he held up his tricorder. "I lost track of it."

Breathless and disbelieving and intensely horrified, Trip shook his head. "What the hell do you mean? We need to find it right now."

"What we need is to get out of dodge." A flurry of shouts back in the street startled them, and they withdrew further into the darkness, descending into whispers. "The fire department will be on their way. The Bracasians may not ask questions, but if they think we set this on purpose…"

"Which way?"

"Back towards the riverfront. This way." Kemper knew just as well as anyone that they needed to keep moving to stay off the Orion's sensors, and if they had any chance of catching them red handed, they needed to go right now. The rest of them didn't argue with that, and before she knew it, they were scrambling over fences and retaining walls, stealing through loading docks and backyards and assorted places where they definitely weren't supposed to be.

Years ago, while combing through the information they extracted from the net-girl's data port, they uncovered an old book of appointments. One detailed a resupply rendezvous on Vulcan with a Major Talok - a common name, she reminded herself, until she reviewed their notes on the incident six years later and realization struck her like an incoming hovertrain.

He was among the first hybrid sleeper agents known to the High Command, and had been instrumental in the near deposition of the government prior to the discovery of the Kir'Shara. V'Las had kept him on retainer as his right-hand man, and they'd defected almost simultaneously, never to be seen or heard from again.

And then this morning, following a routine security scan, her second had called her to the bridge. What she saw there was unmistakable - rhodium power cells, Denobulan in origin, outdated by over a century. During their undercover mission on Xantoras, she and Malcolm had come across hundreds of them in the warehouse of the man who had killed her father and conned her into joining Special Ops, sending her down a dark path from which she was still trying to return to this day.

In a daze, she had pulled up old data from her tricorder and compared the tracking signature, only to find that it matched. Perhaps there was a perfectly logical reason for why Varox's cargo wound up in Syndicate hands, but for her, given how the Orions had recently been spurned by the Coalition, there really was only one explanation.

At the end of the day, Jelora's government had sworn to neutrality, at least on the surface. There was no telling how many under the table deals they'd cut over the years, but they had never once flaunted their blatant disregard for the unwritten rules of the quadrant. Without a doubt, this revelation that she was trading with the enemy would result in her expulsion from the Syndicate, and probable murder at the hands of an ambitious upstart within her own cell.

And she was almost positive one or more of them was wanted by the Romulans, the Betazoids, or the Ktarians at this point. Any of them would pay handsomely to have their heads served up on a platter, and Jelora would have been more than willing to oblige, a cruel reality which didn't escape her for a moment.

From the moment she had invited him back to her home base, it was abundantly clear she never intended to trade with any of them.

"What if she beats us there?" Kemper hissed, crouching down to claw at an opening in a towering chain link fence. She pushed Saben aside and joined him, pulling at the opposite side in a desperate attempt to make enough room for them to crawl through.

Trip looked like he wanted to smack him upside the head for even suggesting that. "We fight our way through and get what we came for, then we let Starfleet Intelligence handle the rest. I shouldn't need to remind you that without those dilithium crystals…"

Half of the patrol fleet would be rendered immobilized. The stakes had been in the forefront of their minds the entire time. Alira couldn't help but think that they were on the verge of uncovering a larger conspiracy in which several quadrant-wide superpowers were working against them.

"Are we well past the point of negotiation, or…" Saben trailed off, then dropped to his knees, rolling over onto his back to get through the fence. At one point, his elbow caught on the chainlink, and he stopped himself from crying out by a fraction of a second. Alira was reminded of darker days, of running full pelt through a transport station on Draylax with a broken leg and a companion riddled full of blaster burns at her side.

It was gone in a second, and then she was scrambling after him, ducking into the adjoining alleyway. Trip, in the meantime, finally found the wherewithal to speak. "What do you think, Corporal? Honestly. This was never about warp plasma and deuterium injectors. What do we have that they could possibly want?"

"That neurogenic virus," he suggested, then, at the way Kemper's head swiveled around to glare at him: "Or the location of the Commodore."

After everything they'd been through in this mission so far, Trip was having a hard time believing he would suggest lending samples of the deadly pathogen to the Orions, knowing full well they employed Betazoids as living, breathing lie detectors. Just an hour ago, he had shared just how horrified he was following the incident with the slave girl in the days of their youth, and now, he was suggesting throwing thousands of people they didn't know to the wolves.

Even worse, he'd casually thrown around the idea of betraying their fleet commander as though it were nothing.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear those words coming out of your mouth."

"These are all worst case scenarios, sir. I'm not saying any of these are good ideas, or…"

"Shut up," Alira interjected, and meant it with every fiber of her being. She'd once been exactly like him, greedy and opportunistic, caring only about herself and her own goals, but time away from the horrors of Special Ops had changed her for the better. It wasn't enough and it would never be enough - she suspected she would be working on self-improvement in perpetuity - but at the moment, she had never felt more distant from the man she'd known for her entire life. "Just shut up."

He looked like he wanted to say something else, but thankfully, Kemper skidded to a halt at the end of the alleyway, throwing out his arm and nearly clotheslining the Captain in the process. He forced them to take a step back, and then as one, they leaned forward far enough to peer out into the street.

Two Orion soldiers stood guard on the crumbling sidewalk several doors down, their weapons held at the ready. Slowly, they leaned back into the shadows, and for a beat, no one dared to say anything.

"That's a trap if I ever saw one," Trip said, and they couldn't help but agree.

"We need confirmation from Shuttlepod One. They should be able to pick up the energy signatures from there. It's very likely they're using some kind of dampening field." Kemper nodded towards Saben, who reached for his communicator, only to pull away at the last second. Eyes trained towards the heavens, he gestured across the street, and they followed his gaze all the way to the top of one of the surrounding buildings, where twin barrels of phase rifles hovered just within sight.

"I'm on it." Alira cast a skittering glance towards her CO, and at his nod, placed the toe of one boot into the brick of the building nearest them and began to scale the wall, thanking the powers that be for her species' innate climbing ability.

It took less than a minute to reach the roof; after a bit of struggle, she managed to hoist herself over the ledge, then crawled through dust and debris on her stomach. Here, far above the pavement, it was much cooler, and for that she was grateful. To every side, she saw an endless cityscape and thousands of streetlamps, heard the blare of sirens and the distant rumble of thunder. Farther still, she saw the orange and red glow of a building on fire, and immediately knew if anyone had remained back at Jelora's headquarters, there was truly no hope left for them.

It didn't matter; all she had to do was lay still and prop her chin up on the ledge. It was a bit of an awkward angle, but she was only just able to spot the snipers laying in wait across the street, much too well protected for anyone to hit from this distance.

Alira took a deep breath, and then a second one.

She ran through one of the doctor's meditation mantras as she waited for a golden opportunity.

---

Travis Mayweather was absolutely certain he'd never run faster in his life.

The moment they broke free of the building, he was practically flying. When Kemper suggested that they go and employ the shuttle's much more efficient lateral scanning array to locate the power cells, he'd actually leapt at the opportunity, and he and Julia had dashed out into the roaring night.

Somewhere en route, she'd taken his hand, and he told himself it was more to keep from falling behind or being separated than anything else. Still, her fingers knit naturally between his own, and just like that leap of faith they'd taken on the World Ender back at Galorndon Core, he felt an undeniable sense of calm wash over him, taking the edge off of his racing thoughts.

All things considered, he supposed it was suspicious they encountered so little resistance getting back to the pod, but hardly put any thought to it. They kept main power down and shut the hatch tight, then set to navigating the sensors with nothing but a strategically placed flashlight to guide their movements.

"It's about ten blocks away from Jelora's headquarters," Julia concluded after a few minutes of tense silence, squinting into the display. "Surrounded by a metric ass-ton of Orions."

Despite the direness of the situation, he couldn't help but laugh. "I'm sorry, how many is that?"

"Fifteen, twenty, maybe more." She cut him a wry grin, tacitly warning him not to derive amusement at her expense. Travis fully ignored her and nudged her with his shoulder, reaching for the comm with his free hand.

A second before he made contact, it sprung to life. It was Saben, and he sounded unbearably tense. "Can we get confirmation on the location of their power cells?"

"You're practically on top of them, but they're surrounded." Travis studied the handful of additional signatures around them, then came to a rather unfortunate conclusion. "Most likely armed."

He cursed, then Trip took over. "We'll need an extraction. Contact the ship, give us five minutes, and head to our current position."

"Shouldn't we wait? I mean…"

"Taxa's got this," Saben advised, then cut the connection, leaving them thoroughly bewildered.

"Of all the vague and ridiculous…" Julia trailed off, lifting the screens drawn against the viewing window to make sure they hadn't been followed. Somewhat satisfied, she leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. "Do you have the slightest idea what that means?"

He shrugged. "Anyone's guess. I figured if anyone could decipher what the man's talking about, it would be you."

As soon as those words escaped his lips, he knew he'd royally put his foot in it. Eyes wide, perfectly agape, she turned on him, and for one endless moment, Travis thought he might be on the receiving end of a slap.

"Let's get one thing straight," she began carefully, and he was so captivated by the ferocity in her eyes that he could not look away. "The Corporal and I…"

"Ma'am, you don't need to…"

"No, I think I do. Listen, he and I have hooked up a few times - really, an embarrassing amount of times - but it was right after Xantoras, and that whole business with that time traveler. I was sad and lonely and looking for physical comfort." Julia laughed, shaking her head. "Listen to me, I sound like a teenager. Make no mistake. I knew exactly what I was doing."

"You always do."

There was no anger there, no jealousy or malice - she couldn't help but take his hand once more, squeezing with all her might. "You gotta admit, he's a charismatic guy, just so funny and charming. I don't think I knew something was wrong until he stabbed the Supreme Commander in the middle of engineering that one night."

"There is something off about him," Travis agreed readily, and perhaps foolishly, but it was with such conviction she knew he was serious. "Alira recognizes it, I think because she's changed so much since they worked together. It's not my place to tell you who to associate with, but…"

"Travis," she interrupted, hoping to indicate she knew all of this and more. "I just want to make it abundantly clear that I would have chosen you. But we went on that one date, and when I asked to see you again, you never got back to me."

"Wait, you…" He startled, turning to her, a boyish (if slightly bewildered) grin playing across his features. "You know, with things as crazy as they are and everyone dying around us, sometimes it just feels safer to stick to what you know. I don't know if that makes sense, but I didn't want to ruin our friendship. I didn't want to make you uncomfortable or hurt you in any way."

She was stunned, utterly spellbound. "Travis, you think you would hurt me?"

"Never on purpose. But you're a superior officer, and it's beyond me to make a move without…"

Julia couldn't help it - she started to laugh, really laugh, until her shoulders were shaking and tears stained her cheeks. And to think, the entire time she'd been waiting for him to indicate his interest! They really were that couple in one of those bad romantic comedies, trapped by a miscommunication that could have been resolved with just a handful of words. Travis looked confused, but soon joined her, and the moment he leaned into her she turned her head and placed both hands on the side of his face.

This time, she wasn't going to let him get away.

Rather than fireworks or supernovae exploding behind her eyes, this kiss was smoldering, slow-burning, a flame that she would nurture if only he would let her. He responded automatically, with more enthusiasm than she'd ever seen him have for anything before, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her into his lap. It went on for one moment, then two, then countless more, until she was dizzy and breathless and her heart was racing for an entirely different reason.

The comm went off again and they jolted apart, red-faced and embarrassed. It was Trip, and he sounded frantic.

"Let's get this show on the road," he finally managed, firing up the engines and keeping the lights switched off. In the space between them, however, it felt like he had just dialed them up to eleven.

---

The wait for something to happen was maddening.

Though she knew it was a matter of minutes, Alira felt it had been hours. Everything was eerily silent - even the sirens had stopped, and the distant sound of birdsong was no more. She was perfectly in tune with her heartbeat, the sound of her own breathing, the sensation of her finger hovering over the trigger as she waited for the signal. A Surakian meditation mantra ran through her head over and over, and she clung to it for dear life.

You are floating on your back atop a boundless ocean.

Not unlike when Hoshi sacrificed her pagh to give her a second life.

It is warm, and you are comforted. Safe. Free of worry and pain and the trivialities of life.

This was what it was like to be in her husband's arms - they had both suffered so much together and apart that they could not help but be one other's anchor, a shield, a counterpoint against all else.

You are focused, single-minded, and driven in your goals. There is nothing which you cannot achieve.

She had no choice but to believe this now, because the fate of the mission lay on her shoulders.

"Tucker to Taxa."

Alira moved for her communicator ever so slowly, holding it open by a fraction of a centimeter. "I'm here, Captain."

"If you're going to do something, do it now."

Not even bothering to respond, she returned her hand to the trigger, running her thumb up and flipping open the sights. It wasn't enough, couldn't be enough, so she went for the other attachment, the small circular mirror she so often used in the Infantry to hit targets around blind corners and behind her back. This time, she didn't look through it, but turned it just so that it caught the floodlight and reflected against the smooth metallic siding of the building across the street.

It took a moment, but one of the snipers leaned forward to investigate. Bit by bit, he slowly leaned into her sights.

A second later, her phase pistol hit its mark against his jugular, and his upper body instantly went slack, falling over the ledge several stories towards the ground.

The impact was as loud as a lightning strike and catalyzed everyone on the ground. Saben's battle cry was sharp and distinct, and she heard them roaring over the sidewalk towards their unsuspecting prey. Across the way, she managed to drop the second soldier, then she was on her feet and running to catch up with them, traversing the gaps between buildings with great flying leaps.

Meanwhile, the guards outside the second Orion stronghold had apparently sounded the alarm. They were surging out of the building in waves, but that didn't stop them. Knowing full well they were in danger of being gunned down, Alira paused and aimed her barrel directly down the facade, laying down rapid fire without pause.

"I've got you!" Trip yelled, and she obeyed, slinging her legs over the edge and descending as fast as she possibly could. At some point one of the Orions managed to break free and get a good shot at her, clipping the fingertips of her left hand, causing her to shriek and lose her handhold in a brief and powerful moment of terror.

Fortunately, she wasn't that far from the ground, and Trip caught her by the waist, lowering her to the ground. She stepped in front of him and took out the man who'd shot her, then buried her hand in the folds of her uniform, gritting her teeth.

"Nice shot!" He shouted, backing up to her as they clambered over the unconscious soldiers in front of the door. "I owe you one, Taxa. Anything you want."

"Now that you mention it, lieutenant's pips sound nice."

He laughed, something wholly unexpected, and together they leaned back to take Kemper's hands and pull him up the barricade. Saben was already pressing forward into the atrium, negotiating dozens of soldiers, not letting his finger off the trigger for a second. She was positive this wasn't what Admiral Gardner had in mind when he assigned this mission to the Maelstrom, but at this point, he really shouldn't have expected anything other than complete catastrophe out of them.

Alira thought she heard Kemper ask if she was alright, only for her to remind him that she'd had worse. If the top half of her left hand's little finger had still been there, it would have been blown off, and for that, she had to thank her Xantoras jailers all those months ago.

Though the lighting was low, she could easily make out that the soldiers around them were covered with dust and soot. Knowing what this meant, she broke free of her defensive position and surged forward into the far corridor, mowing down everyone in her path.

She made one turn, then two, testing handles and depositing swift kicks to door frames. Unsatisfied, she rounded one more corner and felt the cold, smooth metal of a pistol press into her forehead.

"Go ahead," she warned her, noting how her rage was burning through her eyes with the fury of a thousand suns. "It'll make my day, I promise you that."

Jelora laughed, cold and mirthless. "We're not so unlike, you and I."

"I don't know anything about…"

"But I know you. Do you honestly think I didn't realize who you were? Have you forgotten the consequences for abandoning the Syndicate?"

"We got what we came for."

"I don't know how you convinced him, but one of my father's dearest friends witnessed for you. When you disappeared, we had to kill him. I hope you know that."

"With all due respect, I fail to see how that impacts me."

"So you agree, then. We both bend the rules of war, duty and civility to our whims, whatever consequences we may face." She paused, then moved into the light, just so she could see that her head and upper body was drenched in greenish blood. Jelora sneered, baring her teeth. "Tell me, do you like what you see?"

Alira was fortunate that her companions were close at hand, because she was momentarily shocked into near deadly inaction. Trip reached her first, and Jelora turned and ran, leading them right into the belly of the beast, where the corridor suddenly gave way to an immense storage room, filled with all means of glittering diversions and open cargo containers. In the middle of the room, the rhodium power cells stood tall and proud, amounting to a lure and their almost certain demise.

"Where are the crystals?" He demanded, his voice sounding unbearably loud as it echoed about the walls. Alira knew there were probably others hiding within the stacks, so she began to walk, peering into every nook and cranny with one ear trained towards the conversation.

"If I were to give them to you, would you let me go?"

"Not a chance in hell."

"Then I'm afraid I can't help you. My reinforcements are on the way."

"So are ours." Trip's lie was so outright and brazen that her breath caught in her throat. "This can only happen one way. We'll deliver you to Starfleet Security and surrender you to your government. I wonder what they're going to think about you violating Orion neutrality?"

"Don't fool yourself, Mr. Tucker. There are so many of us, Orion and Denobulan and Vulcan and Tellarite. What else was the Syndicate supposed to do when we could no longer do business with your precious Coalition?"

She spat out that word like a curse, and Alira finally completed her circuit of the room, coming to stand behind her with her gun leveled. Across the way, Saben and Kemper emerged, bruised and bloodied but no worse for wear.

Her communicator trilled. She didn't dare answer it.

"You're clever," he said, knowing that one thing to be true. "I'm sure you'd think of something."

"And yet you know exactly how it is to be in too deep."

"I can't deny that."

"Then you understand that I'm doing this so my ancestors won't have to. Maybe they'll go into politics, or teaching. They could even join Starfleet." The thought of that was apparently very amusing to her. "If I walk out of here today, my career continues. Can you say the same?"

Though she wasn't looking at her, Alira immediately knew what this meant, and in her mind's eye, she was back on that Xantoras patrol ship choking her former mentor to death as the man she loved looked on. Her hands shook, and she almost lost hold on her weapon.

Almost, but not quite.

"I'm not a criminal," Trip insisted, the emotion in his voice physically painful.

"Keep tell yourself that. That's half the battle." Jelora took one step forward and instantly vanished in a swirling column of light, taking them all by surprise. They locked eyes, then he tore away from them, all but shouting into his communicator.

"Maelstrom!" A pause. "Shuttlepod One!"

---

The river was so cold, so unbearably frigid, that he almost immediately lost feeling in his extremities.

He was thrown again and again, rolling and scrambling, taking in intermittent gasping breaths, desperately trying to locate Kov or Anna or Hutch or any last remaining scrap of his sanity.

Forget Romulan mine fields, or World Enders, or Klingon ships sinking into gas giants.

This time, Malcolm Stuart Reed was absolutely, positively sure he was going to die.

And it would have been a poetic way to go, not dissimilar to the way his great-uncle Mitchell had back on the HMS Clement all those years ago. It would have been so easy to let go, to close his eyes, to allow the waves to overtake him and drag him down to their depths.

Besides, drowning wasn't nearly as horrific as what would come next if that Romulan commando found them.

The back of his hand caught against a boulder, right where his ring brushed up against his knuckles, nearly taking his finger off in the process. He cried out, inhaling a mouthful of frigid water, then snapped to attention, thrashing his arms and moving perpendicularly to the current, reaching the riverbank after a few moments of struggle. Digging his hands into the mud and permafrost, Malcolm grappled with his last remaining strength and the undeniable pull of the current, making only centimeters of headway until someone laid a hand on his shoulder and pulled him the rest of the way to shore.

Instantly panicked, he reached for his phase pistol, only to find that the safety wouldn't even disengage. This was by no means the ideal time and place to fight his way out with his bare hands, but damned if he wasn't at least willing to try. Rolling over, he pulled his dagger out of its sheath and went for the Achilles tendons, determined to incapacitate his attacker before he could kill him.

"Sir," Kov rasped, stumbling back out of his reach. "This is not the proper way to thank me for saving your life."

Unspeakably relieved, he took a deep breath in, and then proceeded to hack up a lungful of water. Gasping and clutching his chest, he finally regained his composure and rolled back onto his knees, willing the panic-induced floaters in his vision to vanish. A short distance away, someone was shouting, and he turned his head just in time to find Anna standing on the opposite side of the riverbank adjacent the cliffs, jumping up and down and waving her arms.

She cupped her hands over her mouth, but Hutch silenced her, pointing up towards the mouth of the canyon far above them. The commando was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't mean he wasn't close at hand. They needed to regroup, come up with a plan, and most importantly, find some way to contact the Enterprise.

"There's got to be a generator putting out a dampening field nearby. It's jamming our comm, but if we can move far enough away...get to high enough ground…"

"Lieutenant, how's your back?" It sounded perfectly daft coming out of his mouth - the man was very clearly in pain, and fresh blood was staining his parka. Malcolm could only wish they'd have the foresight to bring an emergency first aid kit along.

"I can manage," he assured him, though he didn't believe him for a second. Across the way, they watched as Anna and Hutch jumped from stone to stone across the river, taking great care not to be carried away by the rapids. Once again, the forest was silent, the air was still, and the clouds betrayed not a hint of the cosmos. The Captain and the Commodore had most likely been alerted to the fact that they'd missed several check-ins by now. They couldn't scan for them, and aerial searches likely wouldn't yield results, but he was comforted to know that one or both of them would come up with some crazy fix to get them out of their current predicament.

They always did.

Anna took one more flying leap towards the shore and found her footing, then staggered towards them, limping all the way. Hutch was holding his chest and breathing heavily, but all in all, they didn't appear worse for wear. For that he was relieved.

"We need to build a fire or else we're going to freeze to death," she said at last, extending her hand to help him up.

"Absolutely not," Hutch replied, gesturing towards the smooth surface of the cliffs to either side of them. A thick curtain of jagged icicles hung above them, the kind that could puncture the skin and sever arteries if the point of impact was just right. "That's like holding up a big sign saying yes, I'm over here, murder me please."

"Jack…"

"Honestly, if you want to play that way, we need to set a trap. We could take him."

"With what? I don't know about you, but my phase pistol's shot. Not to mention the elements, and whatever the hell is going to happen to Kov…"

"I'm fine," he insisted, struggling to keep his expression neutral.

"Well, I've got mine, and we wouldn't even be here if someone…"

"Ensign," Malcolm interrupted, drawing his attention. "Do you have something to say?"

"No, sir, it's just that the Prime Minister warned us the forest was alive, and…"

Anna grimaced. "I'd stop while you're still ahead."

"You're right," Malcolm admitted, causing their squabbling to end. "I made a rash decision, but we can get out of this."

"What makes you so sure?" Kov's question took him by surprise; looking back at him, he was utterly shocked to find every vestige of his normal endearing enthusiasm gone, replaced by sheer panic. Truthfully, he wasn't sure, so he subverted that entirely.

"Anna, Hutch - you've both given us suggestions." The cold was starting to set in, and he shivered involuntarily. "We're going to try both."

---

A few minutes later, they were huddled just within the mouth of the nearest cave, attempting to pile up tinder with shaking hands.

Kov sat to one side, nursing his wounds and trying his best to be useful. Every so often, he would call out to Malcolm and Hutch, asking if he could help them move boulders to cover the makeshift trap they'd made, only to be thoroughly rebuffed and ordered to sit tight.

Anna crouched down next to him, hurriedly disassembling a phase pistol, trying her best to force it into submission. She got down to the energy conversion relay before handing it over, thoroughly frustrated by her failed attempts to pry it open.

Employing his superior Vulcan strength, he managed to crack it and hand it back over. Their chief engineer made a small, triumphant sound, then laughed, flipping the power cell and replacing it. A second later, she aimed it at their feet and fired one continuous plasma pulse, churning up smoke and a small flame in no time.

"These things aren't just for hitting practice targets," she mumbled. "Or triggering accidental overloads."

From his vantage point, it appeared that Malcolm and Hutch had built a makeshift snare trap out of twigs and their boot laces, disguising it with strategically placed rocks and tree branches. They took a moment to admire their work, then returned to the group, hovering gratefully over the smoldering fire.

"You guys pretty confident that's going to work?"

"Of course," Hutch said, affording her a wry smile. "You're camping with the two most decorated former eagle scouts on the ship."

They high-fived, and Anna shook her head. "Lucky me."

"Is this what camping is?" Kov looked between them incredulously. "Liz was telling me all about ghost stories, and tents, and s'mores…"

"Not at all. Don't worry, Lieutenant. The next habitable M Class, we'll set down and show you a grand old time. Hopefully we won't have another pollen incident." Hutch sat down with some difficulty, experimentally flexing his near-frostbitten fingers. His breath curled through the air and sank towards the ground. "As long as we're at it, maybe I can start."

"Oh man, we're in for it now."

"Once upon a time, there was a man who loved his job and loved the people he worked with, but certainly never planned to get involved in horrific nonsense like this."

"I don't think any of us…"

"Really though. If you would've told me when I applied to STC that I'd be a veteran of two different interstellar wars within ten years, constantly consumed and haunted by the past, I never would've applied."

These were bold and unexpected words coming from a member of senior staff, and they all momentarily contemplated that. Knowing he was being open and vulnerable, Kov leaned over so he could be in his line of sight. "I don't think you would have."

"What makes you say that?"

"You're here right now." He threw his arms wide, towards the walls, towards the ceiling of the cave, towards the interior where those strange three-eyed bat creatures were roosting. At this, Hutch's expression softened, and he nodded in acquiescence. "To be quite honest, I'm just happy to have a family for once in my life."

Kov offered them all that crooked Vulcan smile of his, and Anna was at once seized with admiration of his honesty, his warmth, and his pure intentions in the face of overwhelming adversity. He had once been cast out by everyone he knew over his involvement with the V'tosh Ka'tur, and had never really felt at home within the ranks of the High Command - all this he told her time and time again, usually over a glass of Saurian brandy after a particularly grueling duty shift.

T'Pol might be the brains of the Enterprise, Archer the soul, but Kov was absolutely the heart.

She placed a hand on his arm, gauging his expression, then wrapped it around his shoulder, squeezing it companionably. When he didn't pull away, she leaned in and dropped a chaste kiss on his cheek, expressing appreciation in the one way she never had for her second, her friend, her companion in everything. "For me, I've just numbed myself to everything. You could probably whack me up the head with a shuttlepod and I'd just think, oh, same stuff, different day."

"That sounds like a miserable way to live, ma'am."

"It is," she confirmed, releasing him slowly and retreating into the folds of her parka. The silence between them was deafening. All the while, Malcolm was shifting uncomfortably, looking all around, desperately trying to hold in whatever was on his heart at the moment.

"I miss her," he confessed at last, with an absolutely heartbreaking amount of sincerity. He said nothing else, but they could all see the pain in his eyes, as well as how tired he looked, the perfect opposite of the steadfast officer they normally saw on the bridge.

Malcolm tried to tell himself that this is what they signed up for, that they knew how difficult it would be going in, but nothing could have prepared him for how absolutely gut-wrenching it was to spend their first wedding anniversary alone. He'd sent her flowers weeks ahead of time in a homemade stasis unit, hoping they would get there in one piece, praying that he could somehow make it special even though they were hundreds of light years apart.

None of it was right. She should have been telling him some ridiculous story about her former Infantry colleagues that night over dinner, snorting and cackling and struggling to get it out around her own laughter. He should have been holding her close under their blankets in that special star-gazing spot on D Deck, showering her with love and gifts and affection. She was his best girl, and she deserved everything, the moon and the stars included.

They deserved to be together, and he resolved to bring it up at the moment of their next rendezvous. He could switch postings with Julia Hammond, or convince the powers that be to let him surrender the tactical desk and just be the first officer.

After all the years he'd served under him, the Commodore owed him at least that much.

Whatever Anna was about to say in the way of comfort was precluded by the sound of a twig snapping outside. Almost as one, they turned towards the great yawning mouth of the cave, breathless and speechless, and for one long moment, it was as if time stood still.

Hutch was the first to see his eyes, brimming with rage around his balaclava. He rose to his feet, reaching for his ruined phase pistol and setting his sights. Curiously, he took one step forward, edging ever so closer to their trap they'd set only moments ago. Perhaps it was forced perspective, but he felt like he was at least seven feet tall, brawny and broad shouldered and capable of killing each and every one of them with his bare hands.

"Stand down!" Malcolm shouted, closing the distance between them. He knew his companions had his back, that they were prepared to talk him down based on sheer bravado alone. If he could tell that three of their four phase pistols had been rendered inoperable from their impromptu bath in the river, he showed no indication of it. "I said stand down! You're outnumbered."

It was quite possible he didn't understand them, though he was fairly sure his intentions were clear. Malcolm approached him at an angle, hoping to lead him directly towards the trap.

Anna just knew this had to be an agent of the Tal Shiar, a trained assassin. Now, seeing as they were woefully under-equipped to deal with the threat and forced to handle this by their wits alone, she was rapidly looking around for things to defend herself. Things to throw. Objects to bludgeon him with.

"Do you understand me?" Malcolm gestured vaguely with his free hand, and Kov held up his UT, hoping it could pick up on his words from such a distance. "We're with the United Earth affiliate of the Coalition of Planets, from the Enterprise. Put your weapon down, or I'm going to stun you."

The snow was falling harder now; the hood and shoulders of his jacket were laden down with flakes, but he seemed immovable, perfectly impassive, statuesque against the rolling darkness of the night. Malcolm was so close he could have reached out and touched him, yet he did not react, didn't even reach for the disruptor rifle slung over his shoulder. Experimentally, he pressed the barrel of his weapon into his chest, and was utterly bewildered to find that he did not react.

"I'll give you five seconds. Either way, you're coming with us." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Five. Four. Three. Two…"

He reacted at that moment, reaching into his pocket and producing a small, cylindrical data rod, which he held up in his line of sight. The fire in his eyes was dulled, replaced with a deep, burning sadness.

Malcolm accepted his offering and promptly threw it as far as he could, making the assumption that this was either an incendiary device or a prototype of the Hijacker. Either way, they didn't want it anywhere near their temporary stronghold.

The commando lashed out, quick as a flash, and twisted his wrist rather painfully to one side. He didn't drop his pistol, but did stagger backwards to regroup, coming back to his senses just in time for the man to reach for his disruptor rifle and empty one round into his temple.

Anna screamed, and it seemingly went on forever. A second after he hit the ground, Malcolm fell to his knees and rolled him onto his back, checking for a pulse. Realizing the exercise was futile, he shouted: "Run, get out of the dampening field! Get a hold of the Enterprise, whatever you have to do!"

This time, Hutch didn't hesitate, bursting out of the caverns, dashing off into the night in a direction he dearly hoped would lead to town. In an uncharacteristic display of physical affinity, Kov reached out and wrapped his arms around his CO, holding her up as her legs threatened to give out underneath her.

Once again, they were alone in the wilderness, left alone with their demons and the horrific knowledge that whatever this man knew, it was serious enough to die for.

---

The first few minutes after the Syndicate crime lord known as Jelora Tendi vanished passed in a whirlwind.

Up in orbit, Ethan and his team were hard at work attempting to find out exactly where she'd gone, only to discover a sensor blip big enough to fit a Romulan bird-of-prey. Seeing as they hadn't picked up any residual chroniton radiation from movement under cloak, it was likely they'd been stationary for days, even weeks. The Bracasian patrols had to be questioned, even though they seemed perfectly oblivious, and Alira's second was more than willing to attend to that. They had their crystals after all, but Trip wasn't satisfied, and vowed to post MACOs at the old Orion stronghold until Starfleet Intelligence could get there to catalogue it.

He vowed to tell Admiral Gardner everything, up to and including their old mission with the net-girl. Trip agreed to omit any mention of the Xantoras mission, but the fact of the matter was they were staring down the barrel of a greater conspiracy, of a vast quadrant-wide network of enemy collaborators.

It was enough to give all of them pause, and as they sat in sickbay being fussed over the doctor, they could think of nothing else.

"I believe I told you to wear that brace for the foreseeable future," Yuris warned, experimentally rotating Saben's shoulder through his blood-stained uniform. Ever the fastidious one, he'd donned gloves and forced them to perfectly still on drop cloths while he examined them. Perfectly unaware of his intentions, Kemper had tracked mud halfway across the room as he headed out the door, causing the resident Vulcan to flare his nostrils in frustration.

"And I believe I told you that I was needed on this mission."

"In matters of health, I outrank you," he reminded him with as much gentleness as he could muster, which wasn't much. Carefully, he filled a hypospray of what he dearly hoped was a painkiller, taking his time to make sure he had the dosage just so. "Be advised that I am not above temporarily relieving you of duty."

"You wouldn't."

Yuris turned back to him, his expression perfectly impassive, but with a singular raised eyebrow that tacitly offered a warning: try me.

On the other side of the room, Trip lay supine on a biobed, rubbing his eyes, not doing nearly enough good to clear the soot and debris on his face. The overhead lights were much too bright, his head was pounding, and Jelora's words were set on a continuous echo. In a few minutes, he would need to stand and deliver the necessary leadership to his crew, but for the moment, he felt disoriented, arms and legs leaden, and movement was all but impossible.

The doors of sickbay opened and closed again, and then Hoshi was there, cupping his cheek with the utmost tenderness. She glanced over her shoulder to confirm no one was watching, then stood on her toes to kiss him softly, coming so close he could feel her eyelashes fluttering against the bridge of his nose.

She didn't need to ask how he felt, because she could already guess. Everything else, he would confess to in due time.

"Starfleet Intelligence will be here in four hours. You should clean up and take a nap."

Hoshi didn't give him time to respond; snatching a washcloth off the counter, she held it underneath the tap until it ran warm. Brushing his hair back from his forehead, she began to wash his face, knowing he would object to her suggestion, but hoping to lend him what encouragement she could.

"Am I a criminal, Hoshi?" His question gave her pause. They certainly had discussed this before at length, but with every successive mission, they were forced to test themselves, to stray from the vows they'd sworn to as officers and protectors of United Earth.

Truthfully, she hoped the general population would never have to know what they had to do in order to preserve their sovereignty.

Looking into his eyes, so blue-green and bloodshot and full of tremendous sadness, she resolved not to lie to him. Setting the washcloth aside, she pressed her lips to his forehead, whispering: "No more than the rest of us."

In spite of himself, Trip stifled a smile and slowly rose to a sitting position. She held up a placating hand, then stole a short distance away, parting the curtain and peering within.

Alira startled, but didn't move significantly. Tapping her boots with the backside of the PADD she was carrying, she quickly stepped up to her bedside and offered her a soft smile.

"Thought this might cheer you up. Just got here about ten minutes ago, and we're only about three days behind." One of her hands was thoroughly bandaged up and immobilized, so she passed it into the other one, and took great joy at watching her eyes light up. "Give it another month or so, and we'll be able to get real-time audio."

"Thank you," she replied automatically, devastatingly sincere. Hoshi nodded and let her be, slipping out without a second word.

In the newly established silence of her own little corner of the universe, Alira fumbled for her headset briefly, praying that it wasn't broken, before retrieving it and slinging it over one ear. The PADD interfaced, and at his first word, the tension began to flow out of her body like water.

They always began their letters with a running countdown leading up to their next rendezvous, and ended with a redeclaration of devotion. Even after all this time, after a year of marriage and two and a half of being his, she would expect nothing else.

One of the first lessons in meditation Yuris offered her was the idea of innate balance and harmony. Everything happened for a reason, and every bit of history was interlocked in a tight network of cause and effect passed down from time immemorial. In times of great suffering and strife, she took great comfort in that. Even now, the facts were clear.

Uncover Jelora's previous meetings with hybrid sleeper agents and cast doubt on her legitimacy.

Find Varox's old merchandise in her hoard and uncover a collusion and a vast conspiracy.

Reckon with her past and shake her own sense of self-worth from the foundation.

In due time, she would need to unpack all of this, to understand what this meant for her and her increasingly volatile relationship with her dearest and oldest friend. But for now, she was content to close her eyes and find her center, listening idly to a detailed account of a day like any other.

Finally free of the doctor's scrutiny, Saben slid off the biobed, stretching this way and that. Sickbay was eerily silent, although he had the feeling that the rest of the ship was thrumming with activity. With Yuris's mandate that he stay off active duty for the next week, he knew that an endless expanse of boredom stretched out before him, and he was seized by the powerful need to find something to fill the hours, if only to avoid being alone with his own thoughts.

He briefly entertained asking Commander Hammond to accompany him to dinner, but as he passed through the front half of the room, he caught a glimpse of her sitting beside Travis on a biobed, laughing and jostling him with her shoulder. Their hands were clasped tightly together, and for once, they seemed perfectly unaware of his existence at all.

Good, that voice in the back of his head told him, though the sight of them still turned his stomach in knots. It would make what he had to do all the more easier.

Casting a glance back towards where he knew Alira lay, he quickly resolved not to interfere, turning away and striding headfirst into the future.

End of Episode Nine

---

Next time on Enterprise...

Episode Ten: The Maelstrom Conspiracy

The Columbia falls victim to the Hijacker weapon. Meanwhile, a treasonous plot is discovered among friends.