A/N: Welcome back! Thanks for the support. It really means the world to me. Anything you recognize, I don't own, and I make no $$$ from these weekly updates.

E10 is in the spirit of one of my favorite VOY episodes, 6x09 The Voyager Conspiracy, which includes a lovely J/7 friendship scene, and amazing J/C shippy moments. ("You didn't poison the coffee, did you?" / "Not any more than I usually do.") The other half is borne of a genuine appreciation for Captain Hernandez. She really did deserve much more screen time.

We're building up to a midseason clash of the titans at Vorkado, as well as the inevitable (and very necessary) Section 31 / Special Ops flashback episode.

Next time: an attempt at a gritty remake of a truly ridiculous episode, DS9 1x10 Move Along Home, and also one of those classic stories of ATP disagreeing on the best course of action for a mission. Trust me on this one.

Season Six

Episode Ten: The Maelstrom Conspiracy

Captain Erika Hernandez, commanding officer of the NX-02 Columbia, had never once been described as sentimental.

She'd been called plenty of things by many other people - tough, by the combat trainers back at STC, capable, by her instructors, dependable, by her colleagues and subordinates. Family knew her as warm and open when she wanted to be. During a particularly stressful set of negotiations, she'd been called stubborn and obstinate. Most of her former partners claimed she was fun-loving and low maintenance. Up until about a year ago, she'd been having a lucky streak in that department, one that had come to an abrupt and unceremonial end.

Yes, Erika never considered herself sentimental, until the moment she lost everything.

It had been a tight sixteen months since Laura died, and an even longer sixteen months of attempting to crawl back from the abyss. She and Jon had been together about that long - years ago - when they were both commanders clawing their way up the ladder to that next promotion. He had gotten it first, and their decoupling had been as cataclysmic as the beginning, passionate and beautiful yet rich with the knowledge that this was absolutely, positively the right thing to do.

They remained friends for years, on and off, across subspace and hundreds of light years, occasionally exchanging a letter, but always thinking of each other fondly. From the moment she saw him at the helm of the Enterprise, met his crew and his enigmatic first officer, Erika knew they were on such vastly different trajectories that their lives could never intersect again.

And that was well and good enough. Even after all these years, she wasn't too proud to admit that she loved him. Loved him like a friend, loved him like a brother, loved him like a piece of her heart that was missing, one that she would never get back.

And that brought her right back around to Captain Pritchard - Laura, as her friends knew her. The life of a Starfleet captain was often one of solitude, and after Jon, she'd resigned herself to it, planning on retiring at a grand old age to her childhood home on the former reservation in New Mexico. There, she'd adopt a few dogs, maintain the land, and forge relationships with new friends and ghosts of the past alike. She would contend with her memories of combat and long-ago wars, sharp and painful as they might be, and then spend her golden years pretending like none of that had ever happened.

But the resurgence of the NX-03's CO in her life had changed all of that. For once, she saw herself getting married and settling into a domestic setting, one where the only pleasures she would ever need was a warm breeze, a setting sun, and the company of a beautiful woman at her side.

Laura had been consumed by the powerful need to track down stolen Tarali-class freighters commandeered by the Romulans, and her search had led her to Paan Mokar on the eve of the signing of the charter for the Coalition of Planets. There, they'd uncovered that the offensive fleet leader for the Imperial Guard was selling decommissioned High Command vessels to the enemy, and though they didn't know it at the time, doomed Laura to a bloody and violent death.

When Reed and Taxa first approached her with the evidence that her tactical officer was in league with the Romulans, Laura didn't want to believe it. They'd been colleagues for years, friends and confidantes, that it was almost too horrific to believe. But as they laid out the evidence for her bit by bit, she became convinced, and understood there was nothing else to do.

The official conclusion of Starfleet Intelligence was that Garcia, Pascal, and Osman has colluded to murder her in retribution. The formers been killed themselves soon after, in what appeared to be a telepresence attack. Erika had to admit there was a sort of poetic justice to it, even though every moment following the explosion of Laura's shuttlecraft left her with a profound sense of emptiness she knew she could never fill.

There had been almost nothing left behind in the inferno, but the Cochrane's CMO scraped together a vial of her genetic material in a nutritive medium and given it to her mere moments before the rest of her belongings were sent back to County Clare. Writing that letter had been the hardest thing she'd ever had to do, but she'd told her parents exactly how much she loved her daughter, how much she was admired, what a brilliant commanding officer she was.

How much she didn't deserve her life to end in such a horrifying way.

For the longest time, she kept what remained of Captain Pritchard on her desk. Occasionally, she would hold it up to the light, kiss the lid and let her hot breath warm the glass. Laura had made it clear that she never wanted a fuss if she were to die in the line of duty, but Erika was determined to lay her to rest one day. To drive her through the countryside, back to where the streets had no name, to the Cliffs of Moher she so often reminisced about with a wistful look in her eye. There, she might find reprieve, absolution, comfort, or perhaps a combination of the three.

For the time being, they were in the middle of an interstellar war, one of their own design, with little hope of ever returning home. She thought about it, really ruminated on her involvement with what she could only assume was Starfleet Intelligence, about Columbia's mission to procure materials for their nuclear warhead project. Hundreds had died, thousands had been thrown bereft, and she'd cut a line of destruction from one quadrant to the other to secure their victory.

She had to believe it was worth it, because if she didn't, the self-loathing would be so strong that she would sink into a deep darkness from which she would never return.

Commander Mbatha, her first officer, had questioned her at length before committing to support her unquestioningly. She had given him the same spiel that Trip had gotten back at Sevarin Station, about how there were no good guys or bad, that Starfleet had to exist in the gray area between, alone, an island unto itself.

Months later, Erika realized just how foolish that sounded.

Now that they were relegated to perfectly ordinary patrols, she resigned herself to be alone and only ever speak to others when work demanded it. More often than not, this meant at the morning briefing and a few minutes in passing on the bridge, or a series of polite nods in the hallway. At some point, her crew caught on to her change in demeanor, and Mbatha had been the one to confront her about it one evening as she dined in the Captain's mess. His incursion had been brief and not entirely unwelcome, just a quick in and out while he delivered a PADD, but from the way he lingered at the door, she knew something else was on his mind.

"Ma'am, the senior staff is worried about you."

"Are they?" She took a rather indulgent sip of her water, then contemplatively studied the condensation on the glass. "There's really no need for that."

He looked upon her then, not with pity, but with an immense amount of compassion and sadness. When he spoke again, his voice trembled. "Erika…"

"I appreciate your concern, Commander." He had never once needed to ask permission to speak freely, but now, he almost withered under her gaze. "I'm perfectly fine. There's a lot on my mind. I'm sure you can understand that."

He cleared his throat. "I do. If you change your mind, it's game night in Rivers' quarters. Texas hold 'em, no limits on bets."

"What is it this time? Days of leave? Dessert rations?"

"I heard a suggestion of strip poker." That reply was so out of left field she couldn't help but laugh. "I'm sure we could downgrade to assorted favors and odd jobs."

"As tempting as that is, I think I'll have a nightcap and turn in." As soon as those words left her mouth, she realized how strange that sounded; it was only just after 1900 hours on a Friday night, and a majority of alpha shift was still awake and ready to let off a little steam.

"Suit yourself." Mbatha turned and placed one foot out into the mess hall, then gripped the door frame with force, leaning back into her line of sight. He looked like he was trying his hardest not to say anything else, but his persistent concern for her won the day. "If you ever need someone to talk to…"

"I appreciate it, Philani," she interrupted, but smiled warmly, letting him know his message was well and truly received. "Have a good night."

"You too, ma'am." And with that, he was gone, leaving her alone with her own thoughts.

Erika watched in silence as the stars streaked past her window. She reminded herself that it didn't matter how many nuclear warheads they detonated, or how many colonies they destroyed - the heavens would still be there long after she and the rest of the fleet were gone, to hold silent sentinel over eternity.

Overwhelmed with the enormity of it all, she soon found herself drifting through the corridors back to her quarters, where she pressed her back against the hatch as soon as it closed, inhaling and exhaling deeply.

Even though she'd lived in military housing most of her adult life, she always tried to make wherever she was feel like home - family gatherings and first contacts and outings with friends were memorialized in dozens of frames and holo-discs, and the walls were lined with traditional patterned rugs the women on her mother's side of the family had woven by hand. Erika had never been particularly skilled at the loom, so as a child she would often sit at their feet, listening to their stories and wishing with all of her heart that she never had to leave.

But leave she did, to heed the call of Starfleet, and her family had been so supportive, even as her visits became more and more infrequent, even as she left Earth behind altogether to venture out into space. The last time she'd spoken to her grandmother over crackling subspace, the older woman had wept for joy just to see her face, and asked if she was hurt, if she was alright, if there were bad people out there shooting lasers at them.

She said she was doing fine. The woman who knew her better than anyone told her not to lie.

Pushing that memory aside, she bent down to rummage around in her fridge. Her fingers skipped over the half-empty bottle of shiraz that she and Laura sampled the night of their fateful discovery on Paan Mokar, wincing slightly, before she selected a riesling and poured herself a healthy glass.

Next was her worn and ancient turntable - though vinyl was a dead medium, Erika still maintained a passion for physical forms of music, claiming it afforded a timbre that digital could not. For fear of sounding pretentious, she would never tell anyone else that, and preferred to keep her fixation to herself.

She had an antique dealer on retainer back in San Francisco, who shipped her whatever he could find, packed in layers of insulating material, most of them with the original, crumbling dust sleeves still intact. Most names were unfamiliar, and each artist in her collection had certainly been dead for nearly two hundred years, but that didn't phase her in the slightest. Just like observing the stars, listening to her records gave her the distinct sense of gazing backwards through eternity.

Ever so carefully, she leaned down to place the needle at just the right spot, and the tinny speakers crackled to life. It took a second, but a warm and beseeching man's voice soon availed her, and she sank down in her armchair, pulling the elastic from her ponytail and allowing her hair to cascade over her shoulders.

And now to sing this lovely ballad, here it is, Mama Cass...

It took a couple of minutes, but she finally exhaled forcefully enough to get the tension to evacuate her shoulders, unclenching her jaw and rolling her neck this way and that. Really, it had been an exceptionally dull day aboard the Columbia, nothing on long range sensors, and certainly nothing in the way of entertainment on the bridge. Erika's eyes were already feeling heavy, and she allowed them to drift closed, resting her head back on the cushion.

Almost immediately, she saw the stationmaster of Kandar, one Dr. Feezal Phlox, looking back at her in disbelief as she told her that their humble surveillance station was crucial to the war effort, that she couldn't let the computer core fall to the enemy, that if they were backed into a corner, they might need to take their own lives to prevent the truth of the nuclear program from getting out.

And she'd agreed, of course, because she was every bit an altruist as she was a scientist. After everything she'd been through, Erika wished she could say the same.

She shifted, somewhat uncomfortably, and forced herself to focus on the words.

Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me...

The Solnarans were next, that opportunistic species Starfleet had used and abused during the namesake battle that decimated their population three times over. The brass had been willing to do anything to get their hands on their dilithium, up to and including lying, extortion, and bribery. In the end, one of their two Lords had sold them out, and Erika had to say she wasn't surprised.

Stars fading but I linger on, dear…

Finally, she remembers the First Minister of Bajor and his personal guard, ambitious, cunning, too clever for their own good. The deal had gone south and they'd had to condemn an innocent man to life behind bars. She thought of him often, thought of his hands clasping hers and his warm, tearful eyes as he confessed he would gladly take the fall. But then again, perhaps he knew something she didn't.

Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you…

She must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew, the comm was going off and her glass was tipping out of her hands onto the deck plating. Erika cursed, then headed straight for her computer console.

"Hernandez here."

"We're picking up unusual readings in the dilithium matrix, ma'am, and EPS shorts all over the ship. Environmental control's down on E Deck; it's practically snowing in the gym. Normally we wouldn't bother you at such a later hour, but…"

"It's alright, Mikey," she assured him, struggling to get the words out around her suddenly racing heart. Her instincts were all but screaming at her to jump to action, and she couldn't help but heed them.

"Rivers thinks it's an indication of something systemic. He's asking permission to…"

"Shut down the core."

"What?"

"Shut down the engines, all of them. I don't care what you have to do. We need the computer locked down yesterday, but first, get a priority one distress call out on all subspace frequencies."

"Ma'am…"

"I'll be right there," she promised him, cutting the connection in an instant. Not even bothering to tie her hair back, Erika began to struggle back into her boots.

The tactical alert went off then, and even within her quarters, the lights dimmed and began to flash red. This was accompanied by the requisite footsteps and shouts in the hallway, and she went at once to join them. As she closed the distance to the door, however, the alarm began to warble and pitch down and distend, so much so that when main power flickered off, the shift in atmosphere was palpable, and the music stopped in more ways than one.

As if on a turntable herself, she leaned back and retrieved what remained of Captain Pritchard, tucking it into her pocket. The likely - and possibly only - outcome of this scenario pressed down upon her like a ten ton weight.

Erika was forced to acknowledge that with what they knew of the enemy and this brutal new weapon of theirs, that no ship had emerged unscathed from an encounter, that no member of any crew had lived to tell the tale.

The Hijacker was ruthless, all-encompassing, and singular in its objective.

But it was going to have a hell of a fight on its hands.

Maelstrom Captain's Log, May 23rd, 2158: With any luck, we're on track to reach the front lines by October. Then again, we haven't been having a too awful lot of luck lately.

"For this to work, you must relax."

"I am relaxed, doctor. Could we just…"

"Absolutely not. Commitment to the process is necessary for a fully immersive meditation."

Alira's PADD went off at that moment, and their heads whipped around to look at it simultaneously at the end of his desk. Yuris met her apologetic glance with the slant raise of an eyebrow, silently daring her to make a move and face the consequences.

They couldn't possibly be more different in appearance, demeanor and philosophy, yet they were the only two aliens on a ship full of humans hundreds of light years from home. Although they were practically forced to develop familiarity by circumstance, Alira knew they would have naturally drifted together eventually, just as her half-father and Captain T'Pol had done during the early years of Enterprise's mission.

That didn't mean tensions didn't boil over from time to time, as they did now. Following her brush with death on Bajor, Alira had embarked on a spiritual awakening of sorts, eventually finding fulfillment under his tutelage. Meditating with a Denobulan certainly had its challenges - she was unfocused and excitable even on the best days - but once they got past all that, her perspective was invaluable. More than once, he found himself swept away in her anger, her levity, her overwhelming love for her colleagues, family, and friends. She felt emotions at a much deeper level than anyone else he'd ever met, and from what he knew of her species, he suspected that was a constant. Subtlety wasn't in her vocabulary either, something he appreciated to no end.

At the moment, though, the urge could not be stronger to reach for the infernal thing, which had been chiming every few minutes, and snap it in two.

"If my attempts to mentor you are disrupting your text conversations," he said carefully, allowing just a hint of amusement to leak through his stony exterior, "We should reschedule for tomorrow."

"It's not that. You know I appreciate this." She made a vague gesture between them, then rose to her feet, allowing the red gauzy paneling of her tunic to fall around her like water. On duty she was buttoned up to the highest degree, but in her spare time she was casual and warm and soft, the antithesis of the battle hardened officer she needed to be on the bridge. For the occasion, she'd even let her hair down, and it curled around her cheeks like a blonde halo before tumbling to her mid-back. "I'm waiting on a call. We've been sitting in the queue all day."

Yuris nodded sagely and allowed her this indulgence. Just a few weeks ago they'd crossed into audio contact range with the front lines, and though they were still five months away from their next rendezvous with the Enterprise, Alira intended to take full advantage of it. Words couldn't describe just how amazing it felt to hear him again, though it was faint and weak and subspace static garbled up nearly every other word. Words couldn't describe it, so she'd wept for joy.

They were still so terribly apart, and the distance had never felt wider. But for the time being, it was just enough to hear his voice, to have him respond to her in real time and tell her that he loved her, that he needed her, and what's more, the next moment he got his arms around her that he never intended to let her go.

"Did he choose the book this week?"

She sighed wearily and leaned into the wall, crossing her arms. "Doctor, don't take this the wrong way. I love the man, but…"

"His taste in literature leaves something to be desired." Yuris had heard this same exact complaint before, multiple times, over and over for the past few weeks.

"Exactly! Every time, he picks some super long and exceedingly dull story where nothing happens, on the justification that it's a classic work of literature, that it's quintessentially British, that it's crucial for me to develop an appreciation for human culture…" She trailed off, having inundated her statement with a plethora of what he could only assume was the Denobulan equivalent of air quotes. "I swear, this must be some kind of game. He's trying to get me to tap out first."

"And did he ever take Hoshi's suggestion?"

"I told him if he so much as thinks about searching for Infinite Jest in the database, I'd kill him." For what it was worth, he absolutely, positively believed her. Alira unlocked the screen and scrolled to her direct messages, and her smile immediately fell. "It's Novakovich."

She didn't need to say any more; Yuris rose to his feet, silent and with catlike grace, taking his meditation candle with him. The moment now thoroughly shattered, he intended to return to sickbay to finish some paperwork, or perhaps wander off to the mess hall to seek diversion and take in a bit of people watching, thoroughly judging anyone and everyone who wandered through the doors.

After all, the night was still young.

"He says they've found something on internal scans."

"I suppose he couldn't be more specific than that."

"You know how Ethan is. Drama queen if I've ever seen one." Alira began to load her pockets once again, her communicator, her PADD, her phase pistol and her biometric access key. Finally picking up on her disappointment, she reached out to him, not laying her hand on his elbow, but coming within a fraction of a centimeter of contact. "Do you have plans for tomorrow night?"

He nodded, ever so slightly, then passed her a PADD preloaded with Surakian apocrypha, the necessary sections already marked. "If you are amenable, we could cover the parable of Storra and Yasan."

"Let me guess. Two star-crossed lovers, bonded to others and kept apart by circumstance. They try to adjust to their lot in life, try to make sense of these strange feelings, but at the end, logic wins the day and they go their separate ways."

"And how would you know that?"

"Doesn't it always?"

"Perhaps in theory, but not in practice."

"Ah!" Alira's smile returned in force, and she tapped the end of the PADD into his chest. "Now who's teaching who?"

He returned her enthusiasm the best he could, but it only manifested itself as a slight smirk and the twinkling of an eye. "Try not to start any fires."

"No promises," she said, and took her leave of him.

Somewhere in the middle of the main corridor running the horseshoe curve of D Deck, Travis and Julia lay on their backs with their feet propped up against the wall, studying a masterpiece in the making.

"It's really not that bad," he concluded at last, studying the silhouette of the ship emerging from the pre-sketched clouds of a flourishing nebula. Underneath it lay their unofficial but wholly appropriate motto, so coined by the contingent of the lower decks: Chaos, thy name is Maelstrom.

When he'd agreed to help create her mural, he'd really had no idea just how much work it entailed - it had taken them well over a week to prime the bulkhead and sketch out the various stars and vessels and planets suggested by the crew. Along the way, he'd attempted to keep the conversation going, but they often lapsed into companionable silence, punctuated by her repeated demands that he kept the ruler straight.

The artistic ability his girlfriend possessed (Was that what she was? Were they past that awkward getting-to-know-you stage yet? Should they have already had that conversation?) was absolutely unparalleled. She worked freehand with a pencil and a permanent marker from photographic references, and every tiny scene was rendered to such remarkable detail that it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. They had only just started painting, and he was lucky that she even let him lay down the base coat, rounding the curves and windows of the saucer section with the same slate gray pigment.

Her concentration was admirable, and more than a little adorable; their intrepid first officer had the tendency to bite her lower lip and furrow her brow, and even now, the golden flecks in her eyes were illuminated by the overhead lights. Julia had attempted to corral her box braids into a ponytail, but at the moment they tumbled loosely over her shoulders. Not for the first time, Travis was struck by just how beautiful she was, how brave and how funny and how gentle, that he reached out for her hand and began to stroke her palm, tracing little hearts and figure eights into her skin.

"Not that bad, huh? From you, that's practically a glowing review."

"Hey, I'm serious!" With his free hand, he gestured towards the background, where the Maelstrom disappeared into the clouds at an angle. "Look at the shading. It looks like there's plasma exhaust rising from both nacelles. You can't pick that up in most holo-pics. You've got a gift, Jules."

"So you say."

"I never lie." Finally, she turned her head to look at him, his mega-watt smile on display. "And I never sugarcoat things, either."

Like hell he didn't. Travis was a peacekeeper, and a people pleaser when he had to be.

"Is that why you told me my Daedalus-class supports look like two cans attached to a basketball by pieces of string?" Crewman Stiles' father and uncle were both captains on such ships, and seeing as he'd grown up there, she'd been all too willing to accommodate his request.

"That's not a you thing, baby. It's just how they look."

Her heart leapt at his use of that particular endearment, and she squeezed his hand. "And Captain Tucker?"

"Well…" He winced, studying the miniature sketch of their senior staff photo, with the man in question standing at the center. Unfortunately, at this angle, the light played against the pencil strokes and sharp contours of his face in a way that could only be described as unflattering. "He kinda does look like a swamp monster."

"Stop!" Julia cried, pulling away and rolling to one side to dip her index finger into a small pot of paint. Desperately, he tried to shimmy away, but she was faster, painting a stripe of red across his cheek. Muttering a warning, he reached for her and tried to pin her hand to the ground, to no avail. One well timed kick and an overcorrection later, and they went sprawling out into the middle of the hall, laughing all the way.

In the back of his mind, Travis knew this was neither the time nor the place for this, but the warmth of her embrace and the beautiful peal of her voice were all far too intoxicating to stop now. At one point, he broke free and managed to plant a kiss to her temple, causing her to shriek and throw him off. His back hit the ground, but he rebounded quickly, leaning forward and wrapping his arms around her waist.

And then they were both interrupted, ever so unceremoniously, by someone clearing their throat far behind them.

Both startled, and Travis stumbled to his feet, prepared for a reprimand or else a supremely awkward encounter with a subordinate. Fortunately, it was none of those things, and he exhaled in relief to find all five-foot-ten of their tactical officer standing there, wearing her civvies and an intensely fraught expression.

"If you two could stop being cute for a few seconds," she began carefully. "We may have a situation on our hands."

"A situation?" Julia echoed. Slowly, she closed the distance between them, but she offered nothing else in the way of a hint, brushing past them and continuing towards the turbolift.

After a few tense moments spent in transit, they emerged on the bridge and into a near impenetrable huddle of science crewmen in the situation room. They didn't so much as acknowledge them as they entered, and a second later, they arrived at the science station to greet the unwilling bearer of bad news.

"This better not just be a comet with a special kind of ion trail," Alira mumbled, sidling up next to him and peering into his console. At first she wasn't sure what she was looking at, and he was all too willing to oblige.

"My team was running a diagnostic on our primary data core," Ethan explained. "Somewhere in the armory's backup encryption files, we found a recursive loop."

"A what?"

"A backdoor," Julia intoned, her eyebrows shooting up into her hairline. Once again, her heart was racing, though this time it was for an entirely different reason. With just the touch of a button, she maneuvered them to the next level of the directory, filled with external links and blank memory arrays. Beside her, Alira was trembling, every inch of her a live wire.

"Where does it lead?" Travis questioned. He was slightly embarrassed to admit he wasn't yet following.

"Among other places," she began carefully, steeling herself for the inevitable reaction. "The subroutines for the nuclear warhead design."

Alira reacted immediately, stepping out of the tight circle and nearly causing the crewman sitting beta shift at the comm to jump out of his skin. "Get Nguyen and Kemper down to the armory. Tell them it's urgent."

It took him a moment to steady himself, but he finally asked: "The Captain too, ma'am?"

Without a moment of hesitation, she broke free and tracked towards the turbolift. A second before the doors closed behind her, she offered her reply.

"Wake up the whole damn ship if you have to."

It always started with a warp core breach.

That was how the Hijacker operated; so far, they'd managed to take down two Coalition ships, all through the element of surprise. As with any catastrophic engine malfunction, manpower would be diverted away from the bridge, and that was when it would strike.

Fear of allowing the malware to infiltrate their equipment kept them from studying the enemy's latest weapon, but they had theorized enough to fill entire volumes. The device was small enough to pass through even the most detailed short-range scans, but once it secured itself to the hull, there was no stopping it. EM pulses propagated through the bulkhead and to the nearest circuit, where it spread like wildfire.

Environmental controls were usually next - first the temperature would drop, faster and faster, until it was much lower than a habitable range. Officers would freeze on their way to their posts, to their escape pods, to their quarters to check on their loved ones. Poisonous gas followed, resulting in the near immediate deaths of the crew. It could all be accomplished in the span of a few very tidy minutes, and then with the encumbrance gone, the Hijacker would infiltrate the navigational controls and direct its spoils towards the unwitting target.

Erika could only imagine where that might be; they were in the middle of nowhere, out on patrol in a desolate region of space. She supposed this was a slightly less painful fate than being tortured by the enemy, and ranked over being burned to a crisp in the throes of battle. Every Coalition vessel had lived in fear of this weapon for the past year, and each of them rationalized it through the undeniable fact that there were thousands of ships in the fleet, that they were spread out over a massive geographical area, that the chances of their own crew being hit were astronomically small.

What fools they'd all been.

Since main power was down, Erika opted to crawl up a maintenance hatch, struggling to keep her heart rate steady, willing her legs to remain solid underneath her. In the pitch blackness, the hull jerked and shuddered, and she breathed a sigh of relief knowing that engineering had managed to shut down the warp core before it was too late. Their fight was only beginning, however, and she knew at best they'd only postponed their inevitable deaths by a few minutes.

It was a long shot. At this point, she was forced to come to the conclusion that she couldn't save Columbia, the vessel that for so long had been her life, her pride, her one and only joy - but maybe, just maybe, she could save her crew.

She emerged from the side of the wall onto the bridge into a truly frantic scene. Commander Mbatha had somehow beat her there, dressed in his civvies, surrounded by a fraction of the senior staff and a smattering of science crewmen hard at work at the rear consoles. They were poking around in some circuits with only their flashlights to illuminate the way; collectively as one they startled as she slid down to the floor, then almost jumped out of their skins as she slapped a hyperspanner out of someone's hands.

"No one touches the main computer," she ordered, raising her voice precipitously, begging it not to waver. "Do we still have subspace?"

From the front of the room, she could barely make out the silhouette of her communications officer, Lieutenant Roubanis, rising from his chair. He was wound up tighter than a clock, and though she hardly had any hope left, when he shook his head, a little bit she didn't know she still had fled post haste.

"I did manage to get a priority one distress call out. The last time I checked, the NX-01 and the NX-14 are both a little over three hours away at maximum warp."

It wasn't enough, but it would need to be. Besides, it was about time Jon repaid her for the favor they'd done for them while their engine's subroutines had been compromised by the Klingon augments - if and when they survived this, she made a mental note to remind him of that.

"Good," she whispered, nearly inaudible as she traversed the bridge towards him. To his credit, he didn't shy away from her touch, allowing her to bear down on his shoulders and squeeze with all her might. "Roubanis, I want you to listen to me. Grab a few of those crewmen in the situation room and make a complete sweep of the ship. Everyone who's got a spouse or child back home gets in a shuttlepod."

"Ma'am, that's a little over twenty people. It's going to be a tight fit." She heard Mbatha's warning from somewhere behind her, but scarcely registered it. Out of the corner of her eye, Ensign Clark, their science officer, was jostling for recognition.

"What about everyone else?"

"Into the starboard catwalk. We can isolate environmental control there; it's part of our protocol for isolating during an ion storm. Since we've lost all consoles up here, we're going to need to sever it from the main computer in…"

Roubanis interrupted her, his jaw set with fortitude. "With all due respect, my place is on the bridge."

"With all due respect, Mikey, I'm pretty sure your wife and son would disagree." She was suddenly overwhelmed by the depth of admiration for this man, the spit-and-polished new STC graduate who had pledged his loyalty to her all those years ago. Casting hesitation aside, she snaked one hand around the back of his neck and pulled him forward so their foreheads were almost touching. "I'm counting on you to handle this evacuation. Once you're clear of the ship, emit a transverse gamma wave from your impulse engine to scramble our sensors. Head for the seventh Tellarite garrison on Qualor III and don't look back. Do you understand?"

It took a few seconds of warring with his conscience, but he eventually acquiesced, reaching up to squeeze her hand before pulling away. Though this physically pained him, Erika could hear the resolve in his voice when he shouted towards the assembled crewmen at the back of the room: "Let's move!"

Mbatha and Clark converged on her in a swift zipper motion, and together they converged on the abandoned navigational console, watching as the controls flickered red and green with mixed Romulan and English characters. In a trance, she laid her palm on the glass, feeling the warmth and rumble of the machinations within.

The Hijacker reacted radically to her touch, and soon she was looking at a mirror image of herself, reflected in the tiny camera at the top of the screen used for biometric access. Already, she was sweating profusely, her bangs plastered to her forehead, and the absolute unbridled mortal terror in her eyes was something she couldn't even begin to hide.

"It's watching us," she said ominously. "It's watching our every move."

The hull trembled again, and it was accompanied by the sound of a distant scream. Clark reached for her tricorder automatically, worry etched in deep lines across her forehead. "Hull breach on D Deck. The port docking hatch ruptured."

"Emergency bulkheads?"

"Unresponsive." Then, with a touch of dread or else a deep foreboding: "We've lost three biosigns."

Damn it all. The Hijacker was already hard at work, and if they didn't act quickly enough, they were about to lose their final avenue of escape. Erika began to move, and was instantly gratified by the presence of her first and sciences officers at her side.

"We should split up. Gives us a higher chance of reaching engineering."

"Agreed. Mbatha, you backtrack through C Deck, and Clark…"

"Should we stop for EV suits, ma'am?" She couldn't help it; Erika hesitated momentarily, her hand frozen over the open hatch she'd just emerged from, suddenly forced to come to the realization that the Hijacker could gas them or freeze them out at any time.

"At your own risk," she advised rather vaguely, ducking her head and crawling into the maintenance tube.

The complete shutdown of the core had clearly thrown the Hijacker for a loop; rather than its usual tricks of using the engines to propagate its code through the ship, it was moving laterally and tangentially, affecting seemingly disparate systems as it wreaked havoc on the Columbia.

That is to say, each corridor Erika passed through was a different ring of hell.

Sometime after they split up, she found herself on C Deck, navigating a nearly impenetrable cloud of smoke. The malware, operating by internal audio and visual sensors, seemed to know exactly where she was heading and had sealed off access ports accordingly. More than once, she was forced to haul herself through less than habitable conditions, either a frigid tundra or a burning inferno, where the air was so thin she was reduced to gasping for breath. So far, she hadn't seen so much as a hint of anyone else, which was encouraging - it was the marked fate of every CO to go down with their ship, something she had resigned herself to years ago. If she was the last one remaining in the saucer section when the Hijacker broke through their last defense, then so be it.

Erika wasn't necessarily religious, but she surmised this meant she would at least get to see Laura. Her father. Any number of friends who had died in the line of duty.

Just when had she started thinking like that?

Her ruminations were precluded by the unexpected appearance of her tactical officer, Lieutenant Commander Dancy, whose face was so positively shredded she was scarcely recognizable. Blood ran down her neck and chest in great rivulets from a gash on her forehead, and she looked immeasurably dazed, as though she didn't quite know where she was.

"You need to get down to the catwalk," Erika called out, grabbing her shoulder and forcing her to turn around. They still had a couple hundred meters to go before the next accessible hatch, and she wasn't prepared to leave her behind to her own devices. "We've been attacked by the Hijacker. Did someone not tell you that?"

"Dr. Zhu is dead," she replied evenly. Absentmindedly, she dipped her nose into the open fold of her uniform, seemingly realizing for the first time that she was injured. "The turbolift we were in...just stalled unexpectedly, and the doors opened. When she glanced out…"

Her explanation cut off abruptly with a sideways guillotine motion. That didn't explain how she even made it out into the corridor, or whether the blood covering her person was mostly hers or not, but she had the distinct feeling it didn't matter.

"I need to get back to my quarters. Get a change of uniform...my sonic toothbrush…"

"No, listen to me." Erika forced her to lean against the bulkhead, then moved towards the hatch on the wall, wrenching it open with some difficulty. Already, her head was pounding, crying out for oxygen, and her limbs felt weak and distended. "You can't take it with you. Any of it."

The weight of her words struck her with force. Every single day, every single disastrous mission and supply run and running joke was worth nothing if she couldn't take her crew. It was quite possible she would die there today, and take her deep sorrow and inward shame to a frigid grave, but in the meantime, she had to make sense of the impermanence of it all, of the fleeting nature of life itself.

"Take it where?"

"I wish I knew. I'm going to get us out of this, whatever it takes."

Her expression fell, and then she took several staggering steps back, coming to stand at the entrance of the section. Erika made a wild reach for her, which ultimately came up short. "You've got to come with me, Dancy. If you don't, you're going to die."

"It's karma," she intoned, her voice trembling, her eyes darker than the blackest night. They were bleary and unfocused, and Erika wondered if she even really saw her at all, or if she was really in a place very far away. Besides Mbatha, Dancy had been the only other one to accompany her on their reconnaissance missions back when the fate of the nuclear project was far from certain. Her heart was in the right place, though her morals often got in the way. Oftentimes, she'd expressed doubts as to the legitimacy of their orders, only to be thoroughly rebuffed. She'd been right to do so. After all, on Bajor, they'd condemned an innocent man. On Tarkalea, they'd make a deal with the devil. Hell, on Solnara, they'd brought an entire civilization to ruin.

And there were so very many others, so many that Erika was reluctant to keep track. Still, she kept a running tally of everyone who had ever died at her hand or as a result of her actions, including crewmen who had died in the line of duty. That list, so discreetly tucked away in a notebook back in her quarters, would burn up along with the rest of the Columbia, offering her long-lost absolution.

That didn't mean she would ever come close to forgiving herself.

"Don't," she whispered, breathing out through gritted teeth, creating a harsh rasping sound. "Don't you dare."

Dancy looked like she wanted to say something, to chastise her or share in her pain, but she was interrupted by the emergency bulkhead slamming shut from overhead. The heavy duranium plate caught her by the shoulders and forced her off her feet, sending her tumbling forward into the deck plating and slicing her in half as it slid home.

There was a brief flash of movement, the postmortem tensing of muscles, before she relaxed and settled into her final repose. Her upper body was still within view, having been severed at the hips, her chest tilted to one side, her eyes wide with terror. Erika wondered if she'd even been aware of what was happening to her, but it didn't matter.

In the end, the same fate would befall them all.

Legs suddenly fluid and boneless, she fell to her knees and began to crawl towards to the crumpled form of one of her most steadfast officers. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and all she tasted was blood, sharp and metallic. Ever so carefully, she reached out to brush Dancy's hair out of her face, stroking her cheek with the utmost tenderness, before leaning forward and removing her phase pistol from its holster.

It wasn't going to do her a whole lot of good anymore.

Somehow she made it back to the maintenance hatch and crawled inside; the interior of the Columbia was a mess of live circuits and crackling panels and closed bulkheads that felt burning hot to the touch. Erika kept having to divert her path, occasionally hearing the rumble of a power component or a distant scream, and soon realized that someone very close at hand was weeping and wailing with all of the air in their lungs.

No. Absolutely not. This was not the time, but at the moment, it was uncontrollable and quite visceral. She'd kept these emotions long at bay since Laura died, and besides her failing efforts to remain calm, Erika could only remember crying a few times in her life.

The first had been when her father died. She was ten and not exactly privy to what the adults kept whispering about, but it was a painful, degenerative illness that left him a shell of a man at the very end. His siblings had come up from Chihuahua, and they'd buried him way up in the cliffs with little fanfare.

At fourteen, she'd had her heart broken by a close friend she'd only just started to think about differently. One day, she'd come to school only to be told that her new boyfriend had invited her to hang out with a new crowd, that she planned to make the most of it, that they couldn't hang out anymore if she wanted to keep her reputation intact. That night, she tearfully rode her bike into town with a box balanced on the handlebars to return everything they'd ever shared, the friendship bracelets, the jacket she'd borrowed, the PADDs preloaded with their favorite movies.

At twenty-one, a commanding officer had hauled off and screamed in her face for the first time. They were just weeks into basic training at STC, and she couldn't remember what minor infraction she'd committed - it was probably a uniform violation, or not tidying her bunk just so - but she'd taken the reprimand in stride, clenching her jaw and looking straight ahead as a man twice her size roared his frustration out to anyone who would hear it. That night alone in the shower stall, she let her own homesickness crash over her in waves. Erika immediately resolved to toughen up, to never let something like that affect her again. If she was to be a punching bag for the brass, so be it.

At thirty, she lost someone under her command for the first time. She and Jon were a part of the same flight squadron tasking with performing complex formations for the pleasure of some visiting pointy-eared dignitary, and they were quite eager to show off. Though the most junior member of their company had sworn up and down that he was comfortable performing a Kolvoord Starburst in such a tight formation, he'd panicked going into the final roll and collided with her ship. Everyone managed to beam away to the emergency muster point but him, and though she knew it wasn't her fault, once the formal inquiry was done, she'd collapsed into Jon's arms and wept until she had no tears left to cry.

At thirty-eight, he had come to her with the news that he'd just been promoted to captain of the NX-01. She was on leave from the Republic, toiling away in a truly unforgiving posting as first officer, and they were gathered over two glasses of wine back at their old digs, the 602 Club. At the time, he thought there was nothing more inappropriate than continuing a relationship with a subordinate, and though it pained her, she ultimately agreed. They'd been friends for long before they'd been romantic partners, and she knew they could easily go back to that. After several hours of laughing and reminiscing, she'd bid him farewell just short of closing time, wrapped him in a tight hug and deposited a kiss on his cheek. On the trolley back uptown towards her hotel, surrounded by drunks and lovers alike, she'd burrowed further down into her parka and let the tears sting her eyes anew.

And then again at forty-two, they'd briefly rekindled their relationship during a rock climbing expedition following a debriefing on the Xindi War. Erika heard of the horrors they'd witnessed, and her heart went out to him. She knew it was all wrong, that they were both in a vulnerable position and he was ultimately pining over his first officer, but for one night under the stars, everything was so beautifully, tragically right. They both knew it couldn't go any farther than that, so she had said goodbye at headquarters only a few days later, and she saved her tears for the pillow, knowing full well that it would be the very last time she would ever be that close to him again.

All of that leading up to now, where she found herself weeping, at long last, for the loss of Captain Pritchard. She had been everything and nothing, a burning flame and now a comfortable void, and though she wanted nothing more than to surrender to her pain, Erika firmly told herself that she was way too old to be having a breakdown in a maintenance hatch like some fragile ensign. Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, she took a deep breath and shouldered through the final hatch, emerging at long last onto D Deck.

The lights were completely off - not even the emergency beacons lining the ceiling were blinking, so she reached for her flashlight, shining it into the darkness. The only sounds were the creaking of the hull and the distant whirr of the impulse drive, which kept shuddering and turning over itself, so much so that she was certain life support failure was imminent. As she neared engineering, the crumpled forms of many crewmen appeared, all face down, all desperately reaching forward, as though they were fleeing from something. The air was thick and shimmering with some kind of milky blue haze; she began to cough and gasp for breath, before drawing her undershirt over her nose in a desperate bid to filter out the poison worming its way into her lungs.

Erika had lived on enough starships to recognize a catastrophic coolant leak when she saw it.

Just before she rounded the last corner, she was blindsided by a figure shooting out from the shadows, seizing her shoulders and pushing her into the bulkhead. She thrashed about before recognizing Ensign Beray, one of the two specialists loaned to them by the Tellarite Star Battalion. An SCBA had been stretched over her tusks and broad, pointed ears, but she was still struggling to breathe, perhaps out of sheer panic.

"You can't go in there," she rasped, then forced her to look down towards the pile of officers at her feet, which she'd had to traverse with the utmost care so as not to step on anyone. With the tip of her boot, she rolled over one of them, just enough for her to see that Ensign Clark had failed in her mission to get there first.

Just you try and stop me, Erika thought, though she could scarcely vocalize it over the fire burning her throat. "Where's Rivers? Have you seen Mbatha?"

Beray clenched her fist at her chest and shook it, perhaps to simulate an explosion, then she shook her head, indicating she didn't know anything about the latter. This didn't deter Erika. She leaned in so she could whisper in her ear, croaking out: "We've got to sever environmental control from the main computer if anyone in the catwalk is going to stand a chance."

The only way to do that was a series of manual switches in a panel in one of the far-flung corners of the chamber, and they both knew it. Visibly warring with her conscience, the engineer finally acted, prying the mask from her face and passing it into her hands.

"I'll follow behind you, just in case," she said adamantly, wrinkling her nose at the acrid smell that threatened to steal her breath away. Tellarites could hold their breath much longer than a human could, and even though she didn't understand humans, couldn't bear to be around them for more than a few hours at a time, she knew in that moment she would have laid down her life for them.

As she was now being called to do just that, not by her commanding officer, but the innate sense of duty that connected them all.

Though she looked like she wanted to protest, Erika complied, and together they pried open the hatch separating the rest of the corridor from engineering. Here, the murk was so thick and impenetrable she almost couldn't see her hand in front of her face, but she pressed on through memory alone, desperately praying she wouldn't trip over anyone along the way.

Sure enough, they found Lieutenant Rivers right around where they needed to be, slumped over a railing, his chest colored by a charcoal-colored burn that had seared right through his uniform. A flash of green out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she turned just in time to see the plasma fire take a wild swipe at her, crossing the space between them in milliseconds.

It was only a matter of time before the fire would catch a highly charged cloud of gas and set off a cataclysmic explosion. The survival of the officers hunkering down in the catwalk had never been so uncertain, but she pressed on, squinting into the darkness through the glass shielding fogged by her own frantic breath.

Her hands moved automatically, steadily, ushered forth from the rivers of her memory. Beray hovered at her elbow. Every so often little licks of electricity would sting her fingertips, causing her to grit her teeth and shake uncontrollably. Perhaps it was because all her other nerves were frayed, but it was incredibly painful, and she nearly cried out loud from the sensation.

Finally, at long last, they managed to complete the sequence, and waited with bated breath for the accompanying reassurance of the computer. Instead, the buttons disappeared and flickered red, replaced forthwith by jumbled Romulan characters.

This time, she did scream, punching her fist into the screen and howling: "You can't kill them! This is our ship, do you hear me? My…"

Before she could stop herself, she retrieved her phase pistol and fired into the wall in sheer frustration, causing a hail of broken glass to rain down on them. Beray was already struggling for breath, but when they locked eyes, Erika realized just what a horrific mistake she'd just made.

Neither could move fast enough. The door was fast approaching, twenty meters, then ten, all the while the temperature in the room spiked and fire leapt at their heels. Something fell from the ceiling and struck her across the back of the head, further blurring her vision. Her engineer made it through first, and though she thought she'd been right behind her, the room began to shift and fall away, tilting on a vertical axis as she started to lose consciousness.

Erika didn't pray for a second chance; she was well past the place where that was in the realm of possibility. Rather, she hoped for peace, for a painless end, for a chance that the rest of her crew might live.

It was all she could do.

The wait for the Praetor to arrive at Logistics Command was maddening.

Days passed, melting into weeks and months. The beating heart of the enemy still thrummed away, deploying Hijackers and World Enders, sending troops to and fro and killing Betazoid prisoners with abandon, but D'Deridex was still dragging his feet. From the loud complaints of Admiral Valdore, Rachel knew their fearless leader was reluctant to leave his heavily armored compound on Romulus, preferring to call the shots from a distance.

First Consul T'Leikha was both his mouthpiece and sounding board, and all in all, she wouldn't have been surprised if his orders got mangled and repurposed along the way. She was ambitious, driven, and power-hungry to a fault, and they fully intended to exploit that.

Specifically, she wanted the Praetor dead as much as Section 31 did, and was counting on her to follow through the moment he stepped through the door.

Over the course of many nights in their secret hiding spot, Pascal and Garcia discussed how they would pull it off, bringing forth historical assassination attempts from the depths of their collective memories. So as not to raise suspicion, his death would need to be bloodless, underscoring his already failing health.

"We ought to just poison him," she said flippantly, knowing at least a hundred different ways to do so. "A little bit of something in his food…"

"The kitchen staff is from T'Leikha's household. It would come back on her, and consequently on us."

"Better than sneaking into his quarters and choking him out. You'd get caught for sure."

On the other side of the wall from the maintenance hatch where they were presently hunkered down, they heard a flurry of footsteps, growing louder by the second. Simon held out a hand, and together they held their breath until the sound retreated and faded into the natural ambiance of the ship. Quieter now, he said: "You remember reading about Operation Valkyrie?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"Really? Well, it had to do with the second world war…"

"That's not what I mean. The answer to killing the man isn't some mass casualty event. Even if we could sneak an incendiary device into the ward room, the centurions would think it was a hybrid uprising and airlock us all."

"Or that it was one of their own grasping for power. Some far-flung commander assigned to the front lines, maybe."

Dear God. As the days passed, it was only getting harder for her to avoid throttling him. Maybe she would airlock the Praetor, and then Simon for good measure. "Pity we can't get Dr. T'Uerell in on this. Her staff has to administer his medication when he gets here. Wouldn't be too hard to switch something out."

"Come on, Rach. You know how they are."

"Don't call me…"

"Seriously, every time she wanders into the telepresence room, she gets in a screaming match with Solan. I'm telling you, take out all of them, and the whole operation comes crashing down." Of that she was doubtful - because he'd spent the past few months drugging Betazoids and not eavesdropping on political strategy meetings, he had no idea just how vast the fleet was. That, coupled with their network of allies in trade, proved the enemy very clearly had the advantage over them.

"Give me a few days," she said at last, her mind swimming with plots and contingencies. "I need to think about this."

"And if the Praetor magically appears before then?"

She made a move towards the hatch, but hesitated, reaching up to stroke the seashell curve of her own ear. Even after months of living as a hybrid, her body did not feel like her own. Slowly, she was being driven mad, and she lacked the words to explain to him just how - she had to show him.

"I'm waiting on the First Consul tonight at dinner. Come with me."

It was an order, not a request. Because he was disinclined to take those from anyone, he had to question it. "Won't I get noticed?"

Somewhat incredulous, she gestured towards herself, towards the mask they all wore, which disguised all but their eyes and a spare centimeter around the perimeter of their lips.

"There's so many servants in and out of that room every night. Trust me, they won't know the difference. I'm surprised T'Leikha doesn't have me cut up her food for her." Then, remembering she had indeed demanded that before, added: "Valdore probably has an attendant standing by just to wipe his ass."

He laughed, genuinely laughed, the first time he'd done so in months, though it was gone in an instant. Together, they slipped out of their hiding place and rejoined the throng of hybrids and Romulans moving towards parts unknown.

The executive dining room was the farthest cry away from the assembly line cafeteria where they usually ate their meals. The table ran the length of the chamber, heavy and wooden, with inlaid carvings detailing Romulan conquests since time immemorial. T'Leikha had taken it upon herself to educate her one day, explaining the brutal wars that led to the separation of their people from Vulcans, and how their fate was to rejoin by any means necessary. Destroying their other allies was just collateral damage; as she claimed, no alien entity could ever be as strong or as powerful as the Star Empire, and the Coalition threatened to do just that.

Although, if the way she spoke about her colleagues was to be believed, the real danger lay from within their own ranks.

The ceiling was high and recessed, with greenish incandescent lights casting a sickly glow over everything, the silvery platters and golden cutlery and strange flowering centerpieces alike. Logistic Command's highest ranking officers sat at the four cardinal poles of the table, perhaps the farthest they could possibly be from one another, but even at a distance, the sheer malice in their eyes was noticeable.

Rachel wondered exactly how Romulans could possibly go about their daily lives with so much hatred in their hearts, until she remembered where she was and why she was there and quickly set that thought aside.

Pascal moved dutifully to one side to assist with the stewards, who were ladling out some kind of foul smelling stew. He thought he recognized tentacles, and what vaguely resembled a thumb, but swallowed the bile rising to his throat long enough to stagger across the room and drop a bowl right in front of Admiral Valdore.

"We've received word from the defensive fleet," he declared. Clear across the table, T'Leikha regarded him with interest, pausing her dictation of her nightly orders to Rachel. The opportunity to deliver a bit of good news was irresistible, so he dragged it out for as long as possible. "They managed to capture an entire ECS convoy."

"This is good news," Solan confirmed, though he was entirely distracted, scrolling through his PADD resting on the table beside him.

"Ensure that they bring in prisoners," Dr. T'Uerell requested. "I should appreciate the opportunity to test out my invention on species besides hybrids and Betazoids."

"I can't imagine it could be more effective than the neurogenic virus," T'Leikha mused.

"It's a subdermal electrostatic implant which can render a subject incapacitated in less than a second, and kill them in two." She leaned to one side, attempting to attract Solan's attention. He was distracted, engrossed in some digital conversation, which aggravated her to no end. "Are my latest scientific advancements uninteresting to you, Chairman?"

"Yes," he confessed, gesturing towards a centurion stationed near the door. Immediately he turned and fled the room. "Our informant is here."

"Which one?" Her question went unanswered; at that moment a different hatch slid open, emitting the man of the hour.

Even Rachel had to do a double take - this man was Denobulan, and he strode in confidently, brushing off repeated attempts by the guards to guide his movements. Tall and handsome and blindingly sure of himself, he was dressed in the same black trousers and jacket seen so often on agents of Special Ops, his long, curly hair tied back at the nape of his neck by a series of leather cords. Though he had to know it couldn't be reciprocated by any of them, he smiled, dipping his head towards the head of the table.

"Welcome," Solan said impassively, for once treating their dinner guest to a few pleasantries. "Please, join us."

He complied, sliding in on the opposite side of T'Leikha, sitting so close that Rachel could have reached out and touched him. Her thoughts were racing a mile a minute, and as she was desperately trying to figure out what this might mean, the First Consul decided to lay it on thick.

"I don't believe we've met," she purred, extended her hand out to him, clearly having not received the memo about his species' aversion to physical touch. Surprisingly, he indulged her, running his thumb briefly over the inside of her palm. It must have been unsettling to be the only one unmasked in a room full of strangers, but he didn't show it.

"That's by design, madam," he admitted. Simon approached with a flask of ale and a spare glass, only to be summarily waved off. "My name is Nieron. I'm here as a representative of the Denobulan Infantry."

"Is that your real name?"

"What do you think?"

"I think that the fact you've been sent here by the military and not the government speaks volumes."

"Then you are as wise as you are beautiful." Casting a wink over his shoulder, he retrieved her glass and brought it up to his lips, taking a single, indulgent sip. There was little doubt in Rachel's mind that they were in the company of an experienced undercover operative. He was smooth.

Almost too smooth.

"State your intentions," Valdore intoned, apparently none too enthused at his attempts to ingratiate himself to the staff.

His smile didn't so much as falter. "Your Chairman should have informed you of my initial communique - I'm here to negotiate protection for Denobula against any impending invasions."

T'Uerell's eyebrows quirked and knit together, finding his eyes from across the table. "Are you not confident your Coalition will protect you?"

"As you are aware, we're not full members. We only assist in trade. There is considerable doubt we would be a high priority if United Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, or Tellar Prime are compromised."

"Then what could you possibly have to offer us?"

"Coalition nuclear warheads. Schematics, if you're willing to wait."

"You're too late," Solan said bluntly. "T'Leikha's assistant and her cohort brought us samples months ago directly from Jupiter Station. We've already started reverse engineering them and making our shields impervious to such attacks."

Before he could respond, the First Consul reached out and snatched her glass from his hand, drowning the rest of the contents in one gulp. Her message was silent, yet clear: your move.

"Command codes, then. These are based on biometric signals and do not change. Any information you could ever want about the Coalition would be laid bare to you. All you would need to do is find an open database."

"I don't suppose you could help us with that."

"Use your Hijacker," Nieron suggested innocently. "I understand you've managed to capture both Andorian and Tellarite vessels at this point?"

"Starfleet too by now," T'Uerell mumbled. She was soon on the receiving end of a withering glare from Chairman Solan.

"Do you have them on you?" Valdore clearly doubted the legitimacy of this offer.

"I will," he promised, "Very soon."

For one long moment, none of their four of them said anything, and Rachel was convinced she was about to witness an execution. Across the room, Simon froze as he rummaged around in some cabinets, trying to make himself appear busy.

"Do you have family back home, Mr. Nieron? Any loved ones?" Solan's voice was so low and so dangerous she found herself silently willing him not to answer.

"Yes," he replied carefully, his eye contact never drifting. "I have several siblings, but they all believe I'm dead. Same with my betrothed."

Something clicked in Rachel's head, and it was all she could do not to shatter the PADD she held in her hands.

"So you've been undercover for a long time."

"You could say that."

"Ah." Solan nodded slowly, deliberately. "Valdore over here has a wife and three children. I've got one myself. So you can imagine that I'm reluctant to make deals where the safety of Romulan citizens isn't immediately ensured."

"It is."

"Is it? You've offered no proof we can trust you." T'Leikha leaned in, studying his face with immense scrutiny in a blatant attempt to intimidate him.

"Hold me here until the information arrives. Impound my ship if you must."

"Interesting. I was under the distinct impression he was intelligent," T'Uerell said to no one in particular.

"He is. Otherwise, he wouldn't be General Vesena's little pet."

"General Vesena…" He exclaimed, then inhaled slowly, desperately trying to tame what had been his first emotional outburst of the night. The Romulans in the room waited with bated breath. "...isn't the only one with ambitions."

Rachel was positive then that he didn't mean it, that he was playing them like a fiddle. Her suspicions would soon prove fruitful.

"I should say not," Valdore said, then nodded towards the chairman, offering his tacit approval on the matter at hand. "Though incarceration will be unnecessary. Are you sure you wouldn't care for some ale, Mr. Nieron?"

He finally acquiesced, and then Pascal was there, trying his best not to look at his face. Gone in a flash, he was out the door before she knew it, leaving her alone in the lion's den.

Or perhaps another analogy was more appropriate.

"To friends and enemies, and those who exist somewhere in between." Their informant raised his glass, a gesture which was mirrored all around the table. "After all, you can't unleash a snake and be surprised when it slithers on the ground."

By the time Alira made it down to the armory, the usual suspects had already assembled.

Jimmy Nguyen, her steadfast second, looked more than a little surprised to see her. Seeing as Novakovich hadn't been very specific, he was tremendously curious, but the strained look on her face told him that he probably didn't want to know.

The rest of her beta shift crew was there along with a few MACOs, who had apparently been providing manpower for a scheduled move of photonic warheads into storage. As a courtesy, Kemper had pulled in every single one of his soldiers who had been there that day, including none other than Corporal Saben.

He started to follow her, but she waved him off, then headed directly for Trip and Hoshi, who were both huddled in front of a secondary communications juncture.

"What did you find?" She asked, her voice hovering just above a whisper.

"Looks like the data breach occurred a little over forty-five minutes ago," Trip pointed out a tiny indicator on the screen. "It would've had to be triggered manually from the console outside the nuclear containment chamber. We ought to pull the security footage from that camera in the corner. Based on that, we can eliminate about half the people in this room."

Alira shook her head. "That's not just any operation. To get into the design subroutines, it takes three different sets of command codes. Yours, mine, and Julia's."

"Numerical sequences?" It was a long shot, but certainly possible, if someone happened to stand over the shoulders of just the right people.

"No, the biometric ones. Whoever did this has advanced hacking skills."

"Know anyone matching that description in your brigade?"

"All of them," she confessed. "I only recruit a specific kind of tactician, sir."

"Convenient," he mumbled, casting a long glance over his shoulder towards the gathering crowd of armory crewmen and MACOs.

"There!" Hoshi suddenly exclaimed, drawing the attention of almost everyone in the room. Regaining her composure, she waited until they'd all looked away, then held up her tricorder. "The schematics were sent on a carrier wave along with our daily data package to Jupiter Station sixteen minutes ago. See here, it's disguised in the cargo manifest the ECS uses to tell what to send along with their next shipment."

"Can we stop the signal? Intercept it somehow?"

"No," she said softly. Together they watched as her fingers flew across the console, reading off various telemetry points at breakneck speed. A map of the sector appeared, followed by dozens of criss-crossing lines. "It doesn't stop there. They routed it through at least thirty different subspace beacons. I couldn't even begin to tell you where this was really going."

Alira seized Trip's arm, bearing down tightly. Ever so slowly, she leaned forward to whisper in his ear, her voice unbearably tense. "Just like we did in the Section."

Hoshi frowned and looked away; she'd only learned about the Reeds' checkered past following her death and subsequent transference from another quantum reality, and try as she might, something about the whole ordeal didn't sit right with her. She'd known Malcolm for a full seven years, her best friend for almost three, and she had been forced to look at them in a whole new unflattering, yet realistic light.

"That doesn't make any sense. They manipulated Erika, they had her orchestrate that whole thing with the Solnarans and the Corsettis - they already have all this information and then some."

"It's not about that." She shouldered past him and pointed at a different spot on the array. "They now know our inventory, the exact specs of our containment chamber, how our launch tubes are designed…"

"And your command codes," Hoshi reminded him.

"And if they have that…"

"They have everything else," he concluded, sighing deeply. The muffled conversation behind them was reaching a fever pitch. "We need to contact HQ and have them reset everything for the entire senior staff. Memorizing a sixteen digit code would be better than this."

"Might I recommend getting Starfleet Intelligence out here?"

"You might," Trip said warily. "Where are they right now?"

"Barson II, according to subspace chatter. Apparently a Tellarite freighter pilot and an Andorian captain came to blows."

"That bad, huh?"

"They're still scraping the latter off the landing pad, if that's what you mean," Hoshi replied, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. "I'll have to check with Travis, but I think they could get here in a little over a day."

"Nothing's saying we can't do a bit of investigation ourselves." Alira looked towards Trip for approval, and when he nodded, she turned and approached the group.

Saben leaned against one of the torpedo launchers and crossed his arms, regarding her with his same sort of casual detachment he did absolutely everyone else. "What's this about, Ensign?"

"I'm afraid you're all under suspicion of facilitating a data breach against the Coalition of Planets," she said, going straight for the jugular. "I shouldn't need to remind all of you that this necessarily includes a court martial, and if you're convicted, a dishonorable discharge and up to thirty years in prison."

"Do they still keep people locked up on Alcatraz?"

"Corporal." Kemper elbowed him hard, then cut a glance around the circle. "What's the timeline?"

"Between half an hour and an hour ago. Everyone who was outside this room and in the presence of someone else is free to go pending further investigation."

"That's most of our MACOs," Kemper explained, much to her relief. "We've been going through our quarterly fitness tests over the past few nights."

She made a dismissive wave of her hand, and a great deal of them scattered towards the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Trip queueing up the security footage, but willfully ignored him, focusing her attention on her brigade.

"Fairchild?"

The woman in question frowned, shifting from foot to foot. "I had just gotten off duty. Jimmy has me splitting alpha and beta shifts while Diaz is on medical leave."

"Where did you go?"

"Well, I went to pick up my laundry from the quartermaster, and then to the mess hall."

"And after that?" She visibly blanched, turning away, hiding her embarrassment behind her sleeve.

"She was with me," Saben announced, much too loudly for his own good. En route to the door, no less than three female MACOs paused and glanced back at him, then regarded one another with surprise and a touch of consternation. An awkward silence descended over the room; Alira clenched her fist into her side, not for the first time wanting to smack some sense into him.

Just because their species didn't usually employ discretion in romantic relationships didn't mean they had a free pass to act like that in front of their more inhibited human colleagues. She'd told him this over and over again.

"Then you're free to go," Alira gestured towards Fairchild, who gratefully skittered away, then pointed directly towards Saben. "Not you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, oh." The hairs on the back of her neck were standing straight up; as usual, she had to heed her instincts, the ones that told her that he absolutely, positively had something to do with this. "Lieutenant, can you call the doctor? Tell him to bring his holo-imager."

Hoshi's reply came a second later from some distance behind them. "Of course."

Their CO cleared his throat and she turned, stepping right up to the console where they kept surveillance over the entire ship. Trip was fast forwarding through the recording of the nuclear control panel, where Jimmy remained stationary for quite some time, overseeing the torpedo redistribution. Every so often a pair of MACOs would emerge wearing isolation suits, and then disappear into an adjoining storage locker, a warhead balanced between them.

As the recording continued, her heart sank farther and further until it was replaced with unspeakable dread. At one point, Saben came in, briefly greeting him before sliding a stack of PADDS atop the console.

"Stop right there and magnify," she ordered, and as one, she and Trip leaned forward until their foreheads were almost touching the screen.

There was absolutely no contact being made with the buttons or the display. As soon as he entered, he was gone again, and Nguyen returned to his work, tapping away with renewed fervor.

"Reports from last nights' fitness checks. I left them there for you," Saben explained.

"Jimmy?"

He was perspiring heavily, clearly disturbed by what was unfolding before him. "I downloaded them directly into the console and sent them to your queue for the morning briefing. You can see...right there."

Sure enough, he interfaced the devices with the screen one by one, a column of information appearing before zipping away, then leaned down to place them in the recycler. There were perhaps thousands of PADDs floating around on the ship at any one time, and she didn't blame him for wanting to get them out of the way.

Automatically, Trip reached down to the device in question, opening the lid and peering inside. With a great deal of dismay, he noticed it was empty, that the bi-hourly sweep of garbage to the incinerator had already been completed. Still, she wasn't prepared to accept that, and opened her personal correspondence, intent on examining the text files herself.

They appeared normal, but that didn't mean that they necessarily were.

Yuris suddenly swept into the room, laden with tools, and stalked right past them. Hoshi intercepted him, and they moved together towards the nuclear control panel, drawing a great deal of attention along the way.

"Dim the lights," Hoshi called out, and an unseen hand obeyed.

The black light came out immediately, which gradually shifted into blue and green, before forming a tight grid over the controls. This device was typically used to capture an accurate internal scan of an injured crewman in lieu of a few hours in the imaging chamber, but in the moment, it was perfectly adequate for studying the dead skin and residual oils left over from someone's hands.

Right away, there were several keys that jumped out; Hoshi followed them with her eyes, then beckoned over her shoulder towards them.

The pieces to the puzzle seemed to fall in place one by one; while some keystrokes had faded, the most recent ones stood out: return, the interface with their subspace transceiver, the letters spelling out J...U...P...I...T...

"It can't be," Alira mumbled, inexplicably horrified.

"It definitely is." For good measure, he showed her the DNA residue there, the base pairs unmistakable. Painfully, she came to the understanding that if Pascal had been assigned to the Enterprise to watch over Malcolm, it followed that Harris and Long would have sent someone to keep tabs on her well.

And he really had been so excited about taking the posting in the first place.

"This is all just a house of cards," Trip said. "The evidence is circumstantial at best."

"But it is clear. If you want to wait for Starfleet Intelligence to get here, Taxa..."

"We can't risk it," she concluded. They watched as doubt and suspicion warred in her expression. "Jimmy…"

He took a massive step back and held his hands up defensively. "What's this about?"

"Tell me you didn't do this," she demanded, her tone affecting a note of desperation. For years they'd served together, worked together, shared in pain and tragedy together - and now, she was about to turn him over to the authorities until they could prove his innocence. She was about to ruin his life.

Alira silently willed him to deny it, to throw himself at her mercy, to pin the blame on someone else, but he was much too good of a man to do that. "You know me," he said simply, eyes darting back and forth as the remaining MACOs closed in around him. "I wouldn't betray you. I wouldn't betray this crew. Please!"

She glanced down, and then when she met his eyes again, they were absolutely brimming with tears. Nodding towards Kemper, she gave the order to take him away, and Saben looped one arm behind his back, thoroughly incapacitating him as they hauled him off to the brig.

"Farther up on the right."

Jonathan obliged, lifting the wooden frame a little higher, then glanced back over his shoulder for her approval. His bondmate regarded him with that adorably tense face she made when she was focusing on something, the corners of her lips turned down in the barest hint of a frown, a tiny line of concern formed between her eyes.

"To the left." Then, at his sudden motion: "On the right again."

"T'Pol," he said with as much patience as he could muster. They'd been working at hanging the same painting, the artist's rendering of the Arachnid Nebula, for well over ten minutes, and his arms were starting to get sore. Leave it to their captain to have to make sure everything was just so. "Why don't you go get the level?"

"No need," she insisted, then tilted her head to one side. At the barest hint of motion in his wrist, she held up a hand, and he reacted immediately, pressing the frame into the bulkhead to activate the adhesive.

Through some minor scheduling miracle, they'd managed to have the same day off for the first time in weeks, and had spent the entire evening rearranging and decorating their shared quarters. Her twin bed had been the first thing to go, and then her desk had moved all the way across the room to rest next to his. Seeing as their decision to go public with their relationship had come as a surprise to absolutely no one, Anna's engineering crew had been quite willing to help transform her bathroom into a meditation nook, replete with red painted walls and tall candles set in sconces. Slowly, her clan's crest and IDIC mingled with his family photos and scenic shots of the Archer compound in upstate New York, and her worn copy of The Teachings of Surak joined his old childhood astronomy textbooks on the shelf.

He remembered showing her the book years ago - she'd pointed out the inscription, declaring that it originated from the library of Admiral Jonny Archer. That seemed like another lifetime; how often he'd laid in bed after any particular traumatizing mission and wished he could go to her, step into her quarters and hold her close and afford her whatever comfort she needed. Once or twice, he'd dropped something heavy, and a moment later he heard her plaintive voice asking if he was injured. More times than he could count, she'd directly messaged him to ask that he stop throwing his water polo ball against their shared wall so she could get a bit of sleep.

That wall was gone now, along with whatever barricade stood between them and their mutual happiness. Even Porthos and her cat Lady seemed to coexist peacefully, and were presently curled up on cushions together underneath the window.

Together now and forever, touching and never apart, she'd written in a letter to him shortly after they'd confessed their love for one another in the aftermath of the disaster on Tellar Prime. When her control returned, she had struggled to vocalize her feelings, and so she'd put them to words. He'd saved it along with the rest of her correspondence, and planned to hold it as close to his heart as he did her now, stepping up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist.

T'Pol settled naturally into his chest, tucking her head under his chin. It never failed to amaze him just how easily they fit together, or the fact that she even allowed this at all. When they first met, besides the initial irritation, he'd been in awe of her beauty, her poise, and her strength in the face of insurmountable odds, an admiration he knew would never go away.

"Looks like things are shaping up." Slowly, he turned this way and that to survey the room, and she followed him, ever so carefully intertwining her fingers with his. "Now let's see if we can live together without wanting to kill each other."

"Considering we've already made it this far…"

"T'Pol…"

"Jonathan," she chided, returning his good-natured taunting tenfold. They made their way back towards the entryway, where a shelf hung adjacent to the hatch. "Are you sure you want to display your medal so publicly? It really is quite obtrusive."

"It's from the 2134 North American Water Polo Regionals," he corrected her, dropping a kiss on her temple. "We won against Princeton. I was the goalkeeper in the final quarter, and I'll have you know…"

Having heard that particular story a hundred times over, she completed his train of thought with ease: "Stanford was down until you blocked their two-meter man's attempt at a winning shot."

"That's right. And if you think about it, it's not much different than your award from the Science Academy." She'd come in at the top of her class upon graduation, a feat unto itself, and though Vulcans weren't known to keep nostalgic tokens, the miniature carved replica of the capital skyline, bearing the seals of each of the Ministers and the Administrator, was one of her prized possessions. He knew because on occasion as they sat together working in her quarters after dinner, she would reach into her drawer and retrieve it, running her fingers over the inscription in quiet contemplation.

"Perhaps we should hang that on the wall as well."

"Wow, look at the time!" He rapidly disengaged from her and headed for the door, collecting his PADD and communicator as he did so. At first all he felt through their bond was consternation, though the moment he turned and treated her to his usual boyish smile, her irritation faded, and she went to join him. Jonathan didn't even need to ask, but he did anyway for the good of the cause. "Wanna grab some dinner?"

Whatever she was about to say was precluded by the chirp of the comm. His hand shot out to answer it. "Go ahead."

Their first officer sounded much too anxious for his own good, which wasn't necessarily unusual for him. "I'm not interrupting your day off, am I, sir?"

"We've always got time for you, Malcolm." The use of we and his given name weren't lost on her. "How's the bridge?"

"I wouldn't know. Dita and I have been holed up in the wardroom all day." There was a weighty pause, followed by a flurry of whispers from somewhere close at hand. "You may want to take a look at this. We've managed to decode the data chip that Romulan commando left behind."

Something stirred in the back of their shared memory, deep and irrepressible. A routine repair job in the forests of Artonia IV had gone awry for their away team when they found themselves pursued by a Tal Shiar assassin. Their thwarted escape attempt had led to a confrontation in a cave in the middle of the night, and rather than surrender, he'd shot himself in the face, leaving a much larger mystery unanswered.

After a few more hours of struggling to locate their lost crewmen, they'd taken them to sickbay, where genetic testing determined that he was actually a hybrid. They didn't need the doctor to tell them that - he'd removed his mask in the presence of the both of them, and T'Pol had instantly recognized her childhood friend Vikas, having been under the assumption that he died in a tragic accident as a teenager.

His own mother had been involved with the Ministry of Security, and there had been whisperings and rumors of her disappearance, with most of the neighbors coming to the conclusion that she'd went into the Forge to grieve the loss of her son and been attacked by a sehlat or any number of bloodthirsty creatures that roamed the dunes. Clearly, that had not been the case.

It was more likely that Vikas knew he couldn't go back on his defection and live to tell the tale, so when struck with a miraculous arc of clarity, he'd opted to do the next best thing and give them a shot at success.

That left them the only option of decoding whatever information he'd left behind. The portable hard drive was a mess, corrupted in multiple places, a mix of various Romulan dialects, some which they'd never seen before. Even though time was of the essence and their team certainly knew it, decoding had taken weeks over the course of many sleepless nights. He would be lying if he said his heart didn't beat a little faster at the idea of that - at long last, they were about to blow the enemy's best laid plans wide open.

"We'll be right there," he assured him, and hurriedly closed the connection.

They found Malcolm and Dita right where they said they would be, surrounded by deep stacks of UTs and notebooks and flagons of coffee and tea. Their first office automatically rose from his chair, casting a wary glance back towards his PADD, and went to intercept him.

"We're sorry about the delay…"

Dita interrupted them, gesturing towards the computer display on the wall. "Commodore, we're lucky that Vulcan and Romulan share so many linguistic roots. If they didn't, I don't wanna think about how much harder this would be." She tapped on the screen, and it sprung to life, displaying a detailed stellar map of the sector.

"As far as we can tell, the enemy is mustering their forces near Gamma Hydra once again. That's where their Logistics Command center is based, all their top operatives and generals. The communiques our hybrid friend intercepted called out Admiral Valdore and Chairman Solan by name." Out of the corner of his eye, Malcolm saw T'Pol inhale sharply. "A complete manifest of their forces stationed there was included. They've put all their eggs in one basket, that's for sure."

Over two dozen World Enders, several hundred Hijackers, and countless birds-of-prey - certainly more than anything the Coalition could throw at them. Jonathan sighed, then dipping his head towards the ground, the enormity of the situation pressing down on him from all sides.

"So you're suggesting we go there to apprehend them?"

"No, ma'am. I recommend we gather near Vorkado. It's on the borderland about fifty light years from Romulus, and is technically unclaimed. If we recall everyone and have them drive across the Beta Quadrant, we can send them running." His PADD went off, and he glanced back at it briefly before returning his focus back to them.

"You sound confident." It was more of an observation, but Jonathan realized it came out more as a question. Malcolm nodded resolutely.

"It's going to be about a week before we can get a message back to HQ," Dita said, pulling up a different display of the signal load on their subspace amplifier network. There was a jam near the former Terra Nova, indicative of a recent skirmish near there, which was bound to slow them down. "That's going to delay the arrival of the second Coalition fleet by more than three months."

That included the NX-05 Maelstrom and the NX-06 Tempest, as well as a vast majority of the contingent from the Imperial Guard. Something brief and indecipherable flashed across Malcolm's features, but it was gone in an instant.

"We have no other choice," T'Pol said plaintively, and he had to agree.

"Do it."

He nodded and turned to leave the room, no doubt to alter their course, crossing the threshold just as the comm beeped. Malcolm seemed to know exactly who it was, and met the intrusion in stride. "Go ahead, Hutch."

"We're picking up a priority one distress call about three light years away. It's automated, so there's no details. The NX-14 Achilles is a little closer than we are."

"Let Captain Levy take this one," Jonathan said loudly. "He's always up for the challenge."

On the other end of the line, their helmsman hesitated, then dropped the bombshell: "It's the Columbia."

Immediately, he tensed up, his expression fell, and his blood ran ice cold. He could try to justify it, try to rationalize it, but the truth was undeniable.

Erika wouldn't call for help unless she absolutely needed it.

"Divert course, maximum warp!"

Their every attempt to reach them over the comm was met with resounding silence.

All things considered, Archer was convinced this was how Taxa must have felt en route to Kandar - far and above their working relationship, Erika had been a confidante during a very formative time in his life. He held her in extremely high regard, and though they hadn't conversed much since Captain Pritchard died, he still admired her with the healthy respect that came along with the knowledge that things could have been different in another time and place.

T'Pol knew all of this and more, and didn't exhibit a hint of jealousy or malice; rather, she was concerned primarily with his well-being, sending waves of reassurance through their bond as his anxiety increased by the minute.

They were well over an hour from Columbia when they picked up something unusual on their sensors. At first Liz was convinced it was just background radiation, but upon second look, she determined it was a pair of shuttlepods. Naturally, they laid on the brakes and skidded to a halt, preparing to take on passengers.

Lieutenant Roubanis answered their hail, and he looked shaken, wholly disturbed, his entire person covered with smoke and blood and heaven knew what else. Behind him, the craft was standing room only, with hardly enough space for the assembled crewmen to move from side to side.

"The Hijacker," he said wearily, before they could even ask. Terror seized him anew, but he tried his best not to show it. T'Pol reacted instantly, hitting the button that would remotely open the launch bay doors.

In less than a minute, the doctor's field medics were dispatched, and they were once again on their way. Jonathan took a quick mental tally of everyone he'd seen on the viewscreen, old colleagues and subordinates, and realized Erika had done exactly what he would have in that situation.

She had sent the officers with families away first.

The chances of survival for the rest of them were almost zero, and they all knew that. In the previous two attacks on Coalition ships, the entire crew had been murdered within minutes, and they'd nearly been destroyed themselves trying to stop the cannibalized vessels as they continued on their warpaths. Already, he wasn't looking forward to picking through corpses on his way to set the charges that would fracture Columbia into oblivion.

Fate, as it seemed, had other plans.

They emerged out of warp to a truly horrific scene; though Columbia was mostly intact and stationary, there were multiple hull breaches, and the near vicinity was littered with crewmen, their bodies warped and folded, mouths distended in an eternal scream. The Achilles had beaten them there, and were already hard at work locating survivors and beaming them away from their certain doom.

"Disable their weapons, Mr. Reed," T'Pol said automatically, not wanting to take any chances. Seconds later, it was done, leaving plasma trailing from ruptured EPS conduits across the hull. Their science officer was peering into her viewfinder as she struggled to find biosigns among the interference.

"They're huddled together in the starboard catwalk," she concluded, her hands poised over the controls. "But I'm picking up a few in the saucer section. Should I…"

"Lieutenant." At that unspoken reprimand, she reached for the comm, verifying that Anna was standing by at the transporter.

After that, he lost all track of time. Jonathan scarcely heard himself order for the Columbia to be destroyed. He hardly registered when Dita promised to get a hold of Admiral Gardner, or when Malcolm informed him he would be starting in on the report post haste, because it was sure to be a long one.

He didn't realize that his footsteps took him all the way to cargo bay two, where he found Erika laying bruised and burned and bloodied at the end of the row with an oxygen mask strapped to her face, looking so small and terrified that his world immediately coalesced and then shattered into a million pieces.

There weren't any chairs nearby, but that didn't stop him from kneeling by her bedside and taking her hand. Her fingertips were blackened and charred, from what he couldn't even imagine, and before he could stop himself he kissed them one by one, whispering a silent prayer over one of his dearest and oldest friends.

Vaguely, he remembered being introduced to her at the tail end of flight school, young and bright-eyed and confident, unburdened by the pressures of command. From the beginning, he'd known she was a kindred spirit, and for as long as they lived, they'd be cosmically bound together, their lives perhaps not intersecting, but always running in parallel.

As he watched, her brow twitched, and then her entire face tensed up, indicative of the horrific pain she must have been over. He called for a field medic, only to catch a glimpse of one running past the curtain, cardiostimulator at the ready. In the distance, past the cries of other crewmen, he heard Phlox barking out orders, shouting for assorted equipment, and begging someone to stay with him.

He hadn't heard him in such a state of distress since Solnara, when the very room was filled with hundreds of colonists, all dying from radiation poisoning or worse.

"I'm here, Erika," he whispered encouragingly, reaching up to brush her bangs to one side. Her eyes fluttered open, bleary and bloodshot, but she seemed to recognize him all the same, looking for all the world like she was about to burst into tears.

"Jon," she mumbled, her voice warping uncontrollably. Every word seemed to be agonizing to her, and the portable oxygen unit above her head kicked up a notch in response to her quickening heart rate. "How many?"

"It's alright, you're safe. Just lay down and…"

"How many?" She repeated, louder this time, with intensity. With his free hand, he reached for the PADD that Malcolm had handed him on his way out.

"Fifty-seven, including the ones in the shuttlepods." It wasn't what she wanted to hear, but it was the truth.

"Not even half," she gasped mournfully, her lips contorting under her breathing mask in a manifestation of truly monstrous grief. His heart broke anew, and he set the PADD aside, taking both her hands as she struggled to maintain her composure.

"Erika, listen. You did amazing," he asserted, knowing full well she wasn't going to believe him. "No one has ever survived an encounter with the Hijacker. I'd say it's a miracle, but I know you better than that."

"I regret…"

"I know."

"I just regret so much." She exhaled raggedly, rolling over onto her side to face him. "If we hadn't caused so much suffering trying to supply the nuclear program...if we hadn't made so many enemies…"

"That had nothing to do with it."

"How do you know?"

"I just do. Erika, look at me." he laid two fingers under her chin and tilted it upward, just to make sure his intent was unmistakable: "I forgive you."

He meant to say something else, but at that moment, all the dams burst, and she was sobbing and wailing with every bit of breath she had left. Knowing she needed this, he collected her in his arms, holding her close.

It was the second time she had wept that day. A new record, her mind told her, but she quickly pushed that thought aside.

He let her cry, rubbing her back in small, careful circles, for what seemed like hours, days, centuries. Finally, as her sniffles subsided, she found it within herself to reply. "I just wish I could forgive myself."

"That's gonna take time. We're setting a course to Starbase 1 to drop off the survivors. In the meantime, I'd like you to rest." She shook her head, and in spite of the situation they presently found themselves in, he smiled at her own patented brand of stubbornness. Jonathan elected to distract her from her pain, by whatever means necessary. "You know, Gardner's been up my ass asking who I recommend for the captain's chair on the NX-16."

"Anyone you have in mind?"

"They commission in three months, if you're up for it," he said carefully, and she nodded. "It's going to be the last NX. As I understand it, they've been going with a bit of an ancient warrior theme lately."

"What's it called?"

"The Boadicea."

"A little dramatic."

"Entirely appropriate," he assured her. Slowly, he helped her lay back down. "It's got one of those fancy secondary hulls that's going to be fleet standard once they start cranking out the Poseidon and Yorktown classes. The first one's going to be in 2161, or so I hear."

"Just enough time to wear the old girl out."

"That's the idea."

She laughed then, a beautiful and unexpected sound, before descending into a fit of hacking coughs. Gradually, they lessened, then she reached up, rubbing the tears out of her eyes. "Jon, I want you to write this down."

As usual, she was all business. If nothing just to humor her, he complied, his fingers hovering over the PADD's keyboard.

"Beray, Mbatha, and Roubanis all need the Medal of Honor." Erika searched his face in an attempt to determine if any of them were still alive, but realized he didn't know. "Clark, too, posthumously. I want everyone who went up in smoke to have the full memorial service over the bay, the twenty-one gun salute, the flag presented to their families, the works. And then tell Gardner we need escape pods installed fleetwide. Tell him Hernandez won't take no for an answer."

"She never does."

Erika hesitated, reaching for her breast pocket, her fingers closing around something. Briefly, she struggled to retrieve it, before sliding out a cracked test tube, relieved to see it was still in one piece. The emotion in her eyes was so palpable that he immediately knew what it was.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you." At her bewildered expression, he added: "After Laura died."

She couldn't believe this was coming up now. He'd sent his condolences like everyone else, and despite her crew's best efforts to bring her out of her shell, she had made it clear to everyone that she wanted to be alone.

"I'm not your responsibility, Jon. You don't owe me anything."

"Still, if you ever need me to do something for you..."

"I do." Erika reached up and cupped his cheek, gazing into his eyes as she had so many times before. "Get married to that captain of yours and be happy."

His expression shifted from unbridled confusion to acquiescence, then he covered her hand with his own. "That's the plan. We've already moved in together, Erika. Once this war is over, she and I are going to get married on the beach and get out of deep space. Get desk jobs at HQ. Start a family."

"You deserve all that and more," she said. "Would you mind if I showed up? Just for old time's sake."

"Actually, I was hoping you'd officiate."

"I…" Her breath caught in her throat, and she very nearly wept again, realizing just how strong their friendship remained after all these years. "I'd be honored."

That very clearly floored him, because he laughed, affording her that same winning smile she loved so much. "Do you remember Captain Harvey back at STC?"

"How could I forget? How did his saying go…"

"The three things I know about being a great starship captain," he began with great deal of reverence. "Keep your pips on straight, never leave a crewman behind, and always go down with your ship."

"I did."

"You sure did." There was an extremely weighty pause, and he glanced over his shoulder, clearly anticipating someone coming their way. "And what will you do now?"

"Start over again. That's all I know."

At that moment, the curtain rustled and slid aside, revealing none other than Captain T'Pol. She was holding a rather squirmy beagle under one arm as some would a football, and Erika immediately had cause to smile.

"Porthos!" She cried, having missed Jon's pet unspeakably. When they'd first started dating, he'd just been a puppy, but their rapport had always been strong. Clearly, he remembered exactly who she was, because he trundled down from the edge of the cot to curl into her side, allowing her to scratch between his ears.

The captain was looking at her with that same blank Vulcan expression she always found so hard to decipher, but she would be damned if she wasn't going to at least attempt to break the ice.

"T'Pol, it's good to see you." Her features remained neutral for a moment, then she leaned forward, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder and managing a small and entirely genuine smile.

"Erika," she replied, squeezing lightly. "Likewise."

Sometime after the excitement died down, Corporal Saben found himself retracing his steps back to his quarters, pausing intermittently to heed the call of whispered conversations behind bulkheads. The eyes of everyone he crossed paths with were imploring, but he didn't dare to entertain their curiosity. Though it was the middle of the night, the lower decks were a live wire of rumor and suspicion, and he doubted anyone would be getting rest anytime soon, himself included.

Rather than duck back into the room he shared with three other MACOs, he walked right past it and entered a disused maintenance hatch, blocking the door closed with his shoulders. Once alone in the darkness, he was forced to come to terms with an uncomfortable reality.

He had almost been caught today. With the investigation by Starfleet Intelligence still pending, he might still be.

At any rate, their prime suspect was Ensign Nguyen, and though he felt a little guilty at possibly derailing the career of such a promising young officer, he couldn't suppress the illicit thrill at knowing he'd possibly gotten away with it. He'd stolen his biometric signature first, then snuck into the armory in the dead of night to apply it to the console, taking extra care to brush the right keys with an adhesive wax which would rub away with the slightest touch of a fingertip. The cameras had been easy to disable, and he'd looped back the previous five minutes of footage before sneaking away. Overall, a flawless operation.

Alira, were she not so attached to the matter at hand, would have been proud.

Breathing in and out slowly, he entered his own access key, sent the message request, and waited.

Getting Alira's biometric code had been relatively easy - one night he'd visited her in her quarters, and they'd caroused and talked and laughed just like old times. At one point, she excused herself to the bathroom, and he'd reached for the hairbrush on her desk.

Captain Tucker was constantly being handed PADDs, something which he readily took advantage of. Once, under the guise of signing off on the latest MACO duty roster, he'd pressed multiple fingertips against the screen, which scanned his prints and gathered enough residue to produce a passable facsimile of the weight and afterimage of his hand. And he'd been none the wiser.

Julia was a different matter entirely - as much as he was loath to admit it, the truth of the matter was that he'd screwed her for her command codes, downloading it straight from her computer console as he slipped out of her bed that first night. And then because he was inexplicably drawn to her, he'd returned time and time again, his guilt manifesting itself as his steady reassurance that they should cut things off, that she should really be with Travis.

Now that she was, he should be relieved. His impending disappearance would be all the more easy to accept, but as time passed, he realized he'd made the one cardinal mistake of any covert operative, passed down from the dawn of time.

He had allowed himself to get too close.

His commanding officer had been adamant that his mission would have no adverse affects on the crew of the Maelstrom, that it was all really about their mutual safety, that the sanctity of the Denobulan way was at stake. Saben was fairly sure that blackmail, extortion, and collaborating with the enemy weren't anything close to that, but he kept his mouth closed.

The connection finally went through, and he sat a little straighter, looking out onto the executive suite of their flagship, the Alveron, the entire image anchored by the imposing form of General Vesena.

The leader of their military forces. The second wife of Alira's father. At the moment, the woman who had him exactly where she wanted him.

"Mr. Saben," she said carefully, the complete disregard of his previous and current rank duly noted.

"Supreme Commander," he countered. "Have you received my transmission?"

"Yes, it's on its way." Where, though, was truly a mystery. He had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with the enemy, or creative bargaining, or saving their own ass on the interstellar stage.

He knew it had to do with Alira's former betrothed, the one she assumed died along with her father almost two decades ago.

And to think back then he'd warned Nieron, begged and pleaded with him not to get involved with the daughter of the man he was sworn to protect. Never mix duty with pleasure, he had warned, and then proceeded to do that exact thing on the Maelstrom.

There was an extremely uncomfortable pause, which he eventually dared to broach: "Do you need anything else from me?"

"No," she answered. "Nor are we ready for extraction. You must remain undercover for the time being."

His heart immediately sank. It had been an easy enough alibi for him to join the crew under the guise of his distaste with the current regime, at his frustration at the Infantry's refusal to rescue his oldest friend from execution at the hands of the Xantoras. They had played the long game, even having him join MACO and swear his allegiance to United Earth. Though he knew what was coming, he desperately wished that she wasn't about to make him choose.

"I beg your indulgence, Supreme Commander." There was little point in asking for permission to speak freely - perhaps she really did mean to throw him to the wolves, rather than welcoming him back into the fold. It was a suspicion he held that would never die, even if he did. "There is nothing left for me here."

Saben was already mentally preparing himself to hijack a shuttlepod and ride off into the endless night. Whatever it took, the shame was so powerful that he sincerely doubted he could look Alira in the eye from then on.

Almost ninety-three years he'd known her, pretty much since birth. Their mothers were best friends. They had grown up together and spent most of their adult lives as constant companions. At one point, upon joining the same Special Ops cell, they'd sworn to protect one another above all else. He tried to tell himself that this was what he was doing by going along with Vesena's scheme, but these days, he was never really convinced.

"And there will be nothing left for you on Denobula." She sounded quite cavalier and nonchalant about the entire thing. All the while, her smile was unmoving. "I shouldn't need to warn you what is at stake."

She certainly didn't. They were likely keeping tabs on his two ex-wives, both of whom had divorced him once they found out he was facing a staged dishonorable discharge from the Infantry. It had been both traumatizing and heartbreaking to watch the women he loved pull away from him, knowing full well once his mission was done he would go deep undercover and never see them again.

"You have," he reminded her. In retrospect, if she hadn't held one of the many Special Ops missions of their shared past over his head, he would have never said yes. It dated back about ten years and unfolded over one disastrous night in San Francisco, where they clashed violently and unintentionally with Section 31. The blame, however, could solely be placed on him, and it was enough to put him away for life. As he knew from experience, Vesena wasn't above a little blackmail.

"We have what we need," she said, meeting his gaze over crackling subspace. "The time to act is now."

End of Episode Ten

Next time on Enterprise…

Episode Eleven: A Shining Angel in a Starlit Sky

A fiendish warlord traps the Maelstrom's away team in a cruel game of chance in which more than one of them will not make it out alive. Enterprise engages in a risky resupply mission with Captain Bryce Shumar of the Essex.