A/N: Welcome back! Thanks for all the support. This story immediately picks up where my story Season Five left off. If you're new to my ENT continuation, I highly recommend you go back and read it - if you're strapped for time, there's a plot summary on my profile, right at the top of the page!
This episode is inspired by DS9 2x25 Tribunal; if anyone in the Beta Quadrant has a Cardassian-like legal system, it's definitely the Xantoras. Here, our heroes deal with the consequences of the undercover mission in S5E18: Infiltration and S5E19: The World Ender. The idea of this new Romulan weapon comes from the ENT pocket novel Kobayashi Maru. I'm a sucker for episodes in shows that have different ending theme music out of the blue; this would definitely be one of them. You'll see what I mean.
This episode is pretty dark with lots of morally ambiguous decisions. I've been driving characters to their brink and showing them at their worst, and it's Trip's turn. No worries, happier times are fast approaching! This will still be rated T throughout, and will still be updated once a week. Each episode is self-contained story, and we'll be going all the way through the rest of the war. I don't own these characters, and I don't make any money from this. I'm just trying to keep myself occupied during this crazy time, and entertain you all in the process!
Next time: the revelation of the Romulan second front, and a direct prequel to TNG 5x09 A Matter of Time.
Season Six
Episode One: Beyond the Veil
The moment the bridge started to warp and shimmer before her eyes, Alira began to formulate a plan.
It didn't take more than a second to figure out what was going on. Over the course of hundreds of undercover missions and life-or-death scenarios, she'd learned to trust her instincts, and now was no exception. If Corsica and Rosalind were still alive - and she was almost certain they were - it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that they were now out for revenge. Unless she missed her guess, the Section had indeed extracted them from their impending court martial, destroying a transport full of Starfleet Intelligence agents in the process. She, her husband, and the command duos of both the Enterprise and the Maelstrom had conspired to frame them for Minister T'Pau's kidnapping, a gambit which ultimately succeeded.
It didn't matter if Malcolm had lived up to his end of the bargain and informed Admiral Gardner of T'Pol's half-Romulan ancestry; Simon was out for blood, and he was about to make the first cut, which in her experience was always the deepest.
When she and Agent Corsica worked together years ago, they'd seen to the murder of the previous Regional Governor of Xantoras, who had effectively closed the system to trade. Naturally, his deposition reaped tremendous rewards for both Starfleet and the ECS. The mission had gone awry, however, resulting in Simon losing partial use of his legs, and a bounty being placed on both their heads. If someone were to be captured matching her description, they would be put to death by operatives of the previous regime, she was sure of it.
They just had to know where to look.
She materialized in a dark room. The bulkheads and deck plating were made of that same opaque reflective material that made the chamber feel like it was shrinking in on her. Or perhaps it was the half dozen Xantoras men standing around her - all well over seven feet tall, with long silvery hair and reddish brown freckles that seemed to entirely cover their person. Whatever the case may be, she reacted at a moment's notice, reaching for her belt and grabbing her phase pistol.
It was a bit of a running joke among her friends that she was packing heat at all times, especially on duty. She'd even worn her sidearm under her wedding dress, something which had amused her husband greatly. Somewhere between the cargo bay and his quarters, he'd asked if she intended to shoot him so soon after their nuptials, and she'd only replied that the night was still young.
There was little time to waste with the stun setting. She managed to drop two of them before they could meaningfully react. When she felt two strong hands seize her by the shoulders, she leaned back and stomped on the man's instep, then pistol whipped him across the face, punching and kicking as he lifted her off the ground. It gave her leverage, and when the nearest soldier moved towards her, she used the momentum to walk up his torso and wrap her calves around his neck.
She twisted to one side, sending the three of them falling. Alira knew the man was dead before he even hit the ground, but her first assailant was still very much alive, seizing her by the hips and throwing her against the wall.
Her phase pistol went flying, and she was momentarily disoriented. Then the three of them were on her, and she was screaming like a banshee, shrill and discordant, in an attempt to throw them off. She managed to wrench one of their plasma rifles away from them, turning it around and aiming it at their skulls. They were attempting to drag her by the ankles into parts unknown, and she was having none of it. Alira shifted the firing sequence into automatic and began to shoot indiscriminately, riveting the wall behind them full of holes and adding a second layer to the soldiers on the floor. Then she was on her feet, locating the hatch and stumbling out into the corridor.
Blood was dripping down into her eyes, and she wasn't sure if it was her own. She didn't move to wipe it away, only surged forward, gritting her teeth and daring someone, anyone, to step forward and try her today.
Her thoughts were racing, attempting to reconstruct a suitable recollection of the layout of one of these Xantoras cargo ships. She and Malcolm had stolen one from her former mentor months ago, driving it straight into a nebula full of Romulan marauders in search of the Enterprise. Due to some minor miracle, they'd wound up saving the day along the Cutler and Bennett. Upon further inspection at Starbase 1, the audio sensor logs had exposed their intentions to defect from the Section and escape the foolhardy lifelong commitment they'd each made years ago.
That was the beginning of the end. Agent Long's ultimatum had caused them to come clean to the Commodore, and together with Shran they'd exposed the Section's intentions to place tracking devices on decommissioned Vulcan transports that were being traded to the enemy. It was high treason, quite transparently so, and even after all this time, even under the circumstances she presently found herself in, Alira was determined to make sure they all got what was coming to them.
Overhead, an alarm was sounding, and she broke out into a run, glancing to the left and to the right at the junction of every corridor. They were curiously empty, and the desolation was nerve-wracking. Every hair on the back of her neck was standing up, and she tried to force herself to remember how long it had been since she'd been abducted from the Maelstrom, to no avail.
She needed a new plan.
Plan A...an escape pod. Even if she could find one in this labyrinth, it was an impossibility - she would certainly be ripped to shreds from the sudden drop to sub-light speed.
Plan B...hijack the ship once again. It had worked when Malcolm was with her, but now she was alone, and if her tricorder readings were any indication, there were nearly two hundred troops aboard. She was good, but not that good.
Plan C...hide out until the Maelstrom came to her. She would need to disguise her biosign and her appearance - silently, she cursed her lack of foresight, knowing full well that her plasma baton, diverter shield, and holographic emitter lay in her desk back in her quarters. If she could get closer to the engine, she might be able to hunker down in an area with a lot of EM radiation and access the internal systems, finding some way to send out a distress call that would hopefully go undetected.
It was just crazy enough to work.
She paused for a second to gain her bearings, turning until she caught a slight shift in the thrum of the reactor underneath her feet. Alira diverted course and dashed into a dimly lit section of the vessel, where even the overhead lights seemed to flicker. Naturally, she was terrified, but quickly pushed it aside, knowing there was no time to get lost in matter at hand.
Perhaps a minute or two passed, all the while the groan and shudder of the warp core grew louder and louder. She realized this ship was ancient, certainly older than the Enterprise or the Maelstrom, and was likely in need of a multitude of repairs. The walls were streaked and stained with blood and soot, indicative of a crew that had far more worthwhile things to do.
Bounty hunters, she thought, or paid mercenaries. There was no doubt about it.
Alira was starting to get the sense that she was being watched; she could scarcely hear anything over the roar of her heartbeat in her ears, but the premonition was undeniable. With every closed hatch she passed, she pictured being ambushed and taken down to the ground, until she finally slowed to a jog, then a walk, then came to a halt altogether.
She listened. Waited.
Fate struck, like the stormfront of a hurricane.
They came from both ends of the corridor, dozens and dozens of them. Weaving and dodging, she pressed herself against the wall, suddenly wishing that she'd been able to pick up her phase pistol before fleeing the transporter chamber. It forced her to make a choice - one side or the other - and she managed to take down every soldier coming from the far end of the corridor before turning and running.
It was shameful, it was beyond foolish, but in that instant she was a slave to her most base impulses. She turned one corner and then another, all the while being pursued, until she felt two probes latch onto the back of her thigh, wires shooting through the skin all the way to the bone.
The resulting electrical shock was overpowering, and she fell forward, crashing into the ground. Every muscle in her body was engaged, contracting furiously, and her heart seemed to clench and turn inside of itself. She was groaning and shrieking, trying to roll over and retrieve her weapon but lacking the strength. The taser had only been disengaged for a fraction of a second before she felt a hypospray press into the back of her neck, and the resulting lick of fire coursing through her veins.
Immediately she knew what it was, and with the last bit of coherence she had left, she singled out a few phrases to repeat over and over again in her subsequent stupor. In Special Ops, they'd trained them to resist all means of torture, and this wouldn't be the first time she'd had to fight through the effects of a truth serum.
Their hands were on her, pulling her to her feet and then, when she refused to walk, dragged her down the corridor on her knees. It was as if her inner ear had completely detached from the equilibrium centers of her brain, and the deck plating was bucking and weaving around her, the soldiers passing before her eyes in incomprehensible streaks of color. They were talking in low voices, but she had no idea what they were saying, and in spite of the direness of the situation, soon surrendered herself to blessed oblivion.
She came to the moment they forced her down into a chair, strapping her arms down by the elbow and the wrist. It didn't matter; she was much too weak to move anyway, let alone try to make sense of her surroundings. Several Xantoras were milling about, tinkering with various instruments and blinking consoles. At last one approached her, holding up a cylindrical device in her line of sight. A strobe light was flashing on and off, and she attempted to fix her gaze on it, each burst only serving to blind her further.
"Do you know why you're here?" Their UT was doing an impressive job, but she was having a hard time as it was translating her thoughts from Denobulan to English. Her head was already pounding, getting stronger by the second.
"Alira Taxa, Ensign assigned to the NX-05 Maelstrom, serial number 2984F0705SM1. Service of Starfleet and the United Earth affiliate of the Coalition of Planets." Her own voice surprised her, gruff and hoarse, slipping and sliding in and out of coherence.
"That's not what I asked. Do you recognize me?"
"I don't know."
"How about this photograph? Is this you?"
Without even looking, she was positive it was a still shot from a surveillance camera, taken of her and Simon just moments before they snuck into the palace to eliminate their mark. They were both made up to look like the local population, but upon closer scrutiny, especially with the use of facial recognition software, the disguise probably didn't hold up.
"I've never been to Xantoras."
"Are you sure?"
"Alira Taxa, Ensign assigned to the NX-05 Maelstrom-"
He was on the move, nodding to one of his underlings, who approached with a chrome device outfitted with multiple blades. She clenched her fist, but they very easily won the battle, fitting it over her knuckles and adjusting the sights.
"Does the name Adwar Karrabi mean anything to you?"
The regional governor she'd killed. She'd lured him into a corner and stabbed him, and Simon had come along to finish the job. His blood was on both their hands.
"I don't know."
"Here, look at this image of him."
"I've never been to Xantoras."
"Are you going to cooperate or not?"
"Alira Taxa, Ensign assigned to-"
"Enough!" His roar was thunderous, and in her drugged state, she moved away from him. It was only then she realized that she was crying, trembling and sweating profusely, a state which only worsened as he leaned forward until she could feel his breath on her face. "Tell me what this is."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was able to register that he was tracing her wedding band, and she wanted to tell him that it was hers, that he couldn't have it, but knew she had to stick with the plan lest the truth come out. It would be all too easy to slip up if they could get her off target.
"I don't know."
"Very well. Perhaps you know which finger you could stand to lose."
"I don't-"
His hand came down on the trigger, and even in the most distant corners of the ship, the air was filled with a bone-chilling, blood-curdling scream.
"It just doesn't make any sense."
"I'm with you on that one."
"They wouldn't have sabotaged their own impulse drive. It's incomprehensible, it's..."
"Calm down, Rivers. No one's disagreeing with you." Lieutenant Commander Hess paced one more time around the charred wreckage of the Cochrane's shuttlepod, which was little more than an assemblage of warped metal pieces than the remains of a working craft. "It's something that would have come up on the pre-flight checks. I have a hard time believing that Ensign Osman didn't at least initialize them before taking off."
Only forty-five minutes ago, a devastating explosion had claimed the lives of Captain Laura Pritchard and Ensign Zahid Osman as they returned to their vessel. The ship had been laden with no less than three vessel detection grid beacons, which they'd been attempting to calibrate ahead of a deployment mission to Draylax. They'd been on board the Maelstrom discussing their next assignment with Ensign Taxa, who was now also missing, having been kidnapped by a Xantoras scout ship. It was all connected together, or perhaps not at all. Each of these instances were too coincidental, too inexplicably linked to be disparate. Anna knew that there was just one little detail, one line of fine print they were missing that would unravel the entire conspiracy, but for the moment, she was truly lost as to what that might be.
"He did," Kov mumbled, bringing his face to within a few centimeters of the viewscreen. They were presently hunkered down in the launch bay of the Columbia running a failure analysis, and if she had read the tone in the Commodore's voice correctly, he expected the results yesterday. "It's right here on the sensor logs, but he didn't finish them. They must have been in a hurry."
Perhaps it was that she felt beholden to them in some way - she'd known Zahid personally, known what a kind and caring person he was, known that he had a wife and children back home. He'd been seized by the need for adventure just as she had, and had sought that impulse to the bitter and violent end.
More than likely, it was the idea that if someone as friendly as Captain Pritchard could have a price on her head, that it could happen to anyone. She was thinking about her own brigade, her friends and her partner, who was toiling away in the engine room several decks above them, unable to provide her any sort of comfort, so close yet so far away. In the perils of war, no one was safe, and that had become immediately evident the moment they used the grappling hook to bring the wreckage into the bay and saw the skeletal remains of Zahid's hand clutched around the navigational joystick, the rest of his body thoroughly vaporized.
Laura had been even less fortunate; there was nothing left of her, not even a trace of her DNA. It was as if she'd never been there at all, and given the evidence, she would be more than willing to believe that, if their internal sensors hadn't picked up her biosign a split second before they left the bay of the Maelstrom. Liz had watched their signatures disappear on her readout, and everyone on the bridge had seen the resulting cataclysm, a stunning turn of events that left more questions than answers. There were no signs of struggle, nor record of course diversion; in fact, they hadn't tried to speed up or put any distance between them and the fleet, as though they'd been completely unaware of their plight after all.
It was all very curious, and more than a little terrifying. The enemy had managed to infiltrate their ship at least once before on Berengaria VII, and she was loath to believe that perhaps there were sleeper agents in their midst that could tamper with their critical systems and kill them all within a matter of seconds.
She could only thank her lucky stars that Pascal and Garcia had been apprehended when they did.
Kov, apparently, was thinking the same thing. He slowly righted himself and swiveled around to face the debris, his brows furrowed in concern. Anna attempted to make eye contact with him, but he seemed incredibly far away, lost in the rivers of his memory. "Perhaps it was sabotage after all."
"There's no way. It's been a month since Starfleet Intelligence took them away. According to the Cochrane's logs, they've done a dozen full diagnostics on that pod in that time. They would've found something."
"Garcia was a tactical officer," Kov reminded her. "If anyone knew how to subvert ship's systems, it would have been her. All these malfunctions could've been placed on a delayed start."
"But why would she..." Anna trailed off and sank to her haunches, spotting a flash of red amidst the charred remains of the craft. Like most of the senior officers outside of the triumvirate, she had some knowledge of the charges being levied against their former chief navigator - allegedly, he'd conspired with the Andorians and the enemy to kidnap Minister T'Pau and extract state secrets. They said he'd been feeding troop movements and positions for quite some time and attempted to turn the Captain over as well. She had no idea about T'Pol's ancestry - couldn't fathom it - and had no idea that this report was only a slightly warped version of what had actually happened to her on Tellar Prime.
One day she would learn all that and more, but as for now, she only knew that Pritchard had uncovered Namara's plot, and indirectly, Pascal and Garcia's. It was a very limited, barebones version of the truth, but for the moment, that was good enough for her.
Something about the timeline of events just wasn't adding up.
Anna retrieved a pair of forceps from her pocket and reached into what remained of the transponder housing. She struggled momentarily around the warped shards of metal and ceramic, having to use her fingers to clear the charred detritus from the viewscreen, but was finally able to make out the relay connections running the length of the panel.
When she seized the appropriate connection, she was taken aback by the lack of tension she found there. A small, surprised sound escaped her lips, then she held up her prize for all to see. "The connection between the transponder and the main computer has been mostly sawed through. Looks like they used a microdyne coupler. They would have been able to send messages out once or twice before losing the signal."
"Any warning we could have sent them would've come too late. I wouldn't be surprised if..." Rivers was cut off by the hatch opening, the sudden appearance of their next guest stunning him into silence. Anna clambered to her feet and turned just in time to see Captain Hernandez reach them, her posture tense, her expression impassive.
"Do we know what happened, Lieutenant?" Her voice was even and measured, as though she were trying to maintain her composure, as though she'd taken steps to lock down whatever emotional response had been brought forth by seeing her girlfriend obliterated into nothingness across subspace. Anna and a majority of the crew had seen them dancing together just the night before at the reception. The news had subsequently swept through the fleet, leaving everyone wondering just how long that had been going on. Never one to contribute to the rumor mill, Anna had been satisfied to leave well enough alone. She had to acknowledge that if she were a starship captain, she'd definitely keep her personal life a secret too, and besides, she knew a couple in love when she saw it.
It had been a beautiful moment of happiness in what would turn out to be a very tragic twenty-four hours.
Rivers hesitated, looking towards them for backup, but finding none. He dug his hands into his pockets, a move which only seemed to aggravate his CO. She took a step closer, and he finally found it within himself to confess. "We believe the pod's engines were tampered with, ma'am. We don't know how, or by who-"
"We're on a strict deadline here," Erika interrupted, keen on making eye contact with each and every one of them, if only to remind them of what was at stake. When Anna met her gaze, she realized she'd been crying, though she'd hid it behind her Captain face. "Gardner is expecting an explanation, and if we don't have one in the next few hours, we're going to have Starfleet Intelligence up our ass. They're going to tear into every system across four different ships."
At this point, Anna was starting to think that was what it was going to take.
"We're working as fast as we can," Kov assured her, but it didn't seem to assuage her concerns. She crossed her arms and dipped her head towards the deck plating, exhaling forcefully. "It would be helpful if we had extra personnel pulling security footage, diagnostic records, maintenance logs-"
"Use whoever you need. I'll let the Commodore know." And then she was gone, making her way to the door, hiding the wavering of her voice behind a chill, detached exterior. She had one foot over the threshold when Anna spoke up against her better judgment.
"We'll figure out who killed them," she asserted, immediately resolving not to rest until they had answers. Even though she could only see the back of her head from this angle, Anna could see her shoulders droop, see her retreat within herself. When she spoke next, it was damn near close to a whisper. "Whatever it takes."
The veneer of professionalism was back in a second, and then she was gone, en route to her ready room, where she would spend the rest of the afternoon fighting the onslaught of tears like the rising tide.
The first few minutes after Captain Pritchard's untimely demise were filled with shouts, countless scans, and blind, unreasoning panic.
Liz was repeatedly scanning for biosigns, for wayward transmissions, for energy readings, for anything. He could see her fraught expression from all the way across the room, but didn't let that stop his own personal investigation. He searched for weapons signatures and residual chroniton radiation from a cloak, only to find nothing.
Nothing and no one, and no explanation for why the Cochrane's CO and her newly promoted tactical officer had been murdered in cold blood.
And he was almost certain it had been murder - too many things had happened at once. Shuttlepods were simplistic in design by necessity. Even the most inexperienced crewman in engineering could disassemble one in a matter of hours, meaning that any tampering or sabotage would have been immediately detected. It would take an act of stunning genius to slip anything past their internal sensors, or perhaps the actions of one individual hellbent on revenge. On framing someone for something.
Of having something to prove.
He wanted to give chase to the Xantoras vessel which had inexplicably jumped out of warp and then disappeared a moment later without so much of a hail. In the back of his mind, he knew that Alira and Simon were wanted dead or alive for their role in the deposition of the last Regional Governor, but didn't want to think about what that could mean for them. He didn't want to give credence to it. He couldn't fathom it.
Trip's next transmission confirmed his worst fears.
Just a month ago, he'd dreamed that Alira died in his arms during a hull breach on the World Ender, and he'd been powerless to stop it. There was an overwhelming urge to scream and throw things and shoot something, to kill or perhaps be killed or seek absolution for his own guilt that threatened to gut him from the inside out. Now was no different, and with what he knew of Pascal's escape, he couldn't help but think that they'd finally done it.
He'd played by their rules, and it still hadn't been enough.
Across the bridge, he made eye contact with the Commodore, and he nodded, offering his permission. Malcolm was on his feet before he could even process where he was going, and even after he beamed aboard the Maelstrom, he ignored anything and everything in his path on the way to her quarters. Her personal access code flowed freely out of his memory even through the haze of his racing thoughts, and soon he was crashing over the threshold into gracious silence, narrowly avoiding falling to his knees by a fraction of a second.
The panic was so overwhelming that he momentarily was nearly consumed by it. He inhaled sharply through his teeth, then seethed through them, fighting the urge to hyperventilate. There was no denying he'd been in hundreds of life-or-death situations before, but this was different. They hadn't just taken his wife, but also his lifeblood, his support, his reason for carrying on even in the dirge of war. Malcolm instantly knew that he would have to do whatever it took to get her back, up to and including anything that would normally warrant a court martial.
It didn't matter who he had to kill. He would have his wife in his arms again. He would save her life from certain torture at the hands of the Xantoras, whether he had to slash his way through half the quadrant to get there.
Ten minutes had passed since the accident, and curiously, security teams had yet to arrive. He took a moment to steady himself, to look around the room and take in the normal state of disorder, the rumpled sheets, the stacks of PADDs and the clothes strewn everywhere but the hamper. Normally, her untidiness would have driven him mad, but now, he only found it endearing.
There were a pile of holoprojector discs on her desk; activating one, he was soon met by an image of them at the top of the Eiffel Tower during their last round of leave, bundled up against the cold. He was treating the camera to a warm smile and she was pressing a kiss to his cheek, unable to suppress her grin. Another one brought back memories of a particularly raucous round of senior officer bonding in the sweet spot, and then last night in Rome, leaning up against the Trevi Fountain, the ghost of two wishes hanging in the night air like frost.
He remembered it like it was yesterday. Once they'd tossed their tokens into the water, he'd asked her what she wished for, and she'd cuddled up to him, informing him in no uncertain terms that she already had everything she wanted.
Her computer console was locked. A quick check of the login credentials confirmed that she hadn't accessed her personal files since yesterday afternoon - well before the accident in question. No clues there.
Even her thermos was dry, without the suggestion of her normal morning cup of coffee. Her overnight bag and wedding gown had been haphazardly tossed on the bed, and unless he missed his guess, she hadn't had the time to go anywhere else before reporting to duty that morning. Everything was exactly how she left it the day before, the day she returned to the Enterprise to check up on the results from another round of diagnostics, the day he proposed and the day they'd gotten married. It was been a beautiful day, a miracle and a wonder all in one, and indeed the happiest day of his life.
The day after, though, left much to be desired.
As she swept out of his quarters that morning, she'd nearly tripped over two binders which had been wedged between the hatch and the wall. She soon realized it was one of Liz's scrapbooks, and had marveled over her kindness and generosity for a moment before bidding him farewell. They were both going to be late or very close to it, and despite the fact that their honeymoon was very much over, he'd still pulled her back into the room and pressed her against the bulkhead and kissed her just one more time until they were both breathless.
And then she was gone, promising to resume their tradition of daily letters, promising to send video messages whenever she could. He watched her go, feeling the emptiness within him grow with every retreating footstep, then stashed the book in his desk, meaning to get back to it later for when he found himself missing her the most.
In spite of himself, he reached for her duffel bag and drew the zipper lengthwise, revealing a handful of tiny white flowers and a tangle of pajamas. The scrapbook was stuffed lengthwise against the front pocket, and he gingerly removed it, opening the cover and studying the first page.
Somehow, Liz had captured the moment she twirled out onto the floor during their first dance, their hands clasped together and arms outstretched. She was looking at him with the moon, the sun, and the stars in her eyes, and he was only returning it tenfold. Her skirts were fanned out all around her, the curls of her elaborate updo framing her beautiful face. At that instant, they might as well have been the only two people in the universe, and he remembered that feeling before locking it down instantly, should it never come to pass again.
Next to that was another picture of the two of them at one of the many senior staff briefings during their diplomatic mission; according to the transcribed date, it had been only a week after their escapades in the battle simulator, when they were still getting to know one another. There had been an undeniable attraction there, an ineffable tension, and although he would never admit to it, by the end of the month he was already dreaming about her, imagining the warmth of her in his arms and the taste of her lips and the sweet nothings he would whisper in her ear if only he had the chance.
None of that showed there - it was mostly candid, or perhaps taken by surprise. Alira was beaming at the camera, and he was offering a wary thumbs up, as though they'd caught him mid-conversation with the Commodore. They were coworkers only at that point, perhaps even friends, a complete polar opposite of what he saw in the other image.
Underneath it, Liz had gone to great lengths to reproduce a snippet of a familiar poem in careful calligraphy. He read it once, then read it twice, before sinking down onto the edge of her bunk in quiet contemplation.
For I dipped into the future far as the eye could see, saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.
For one endless moment, he didn't react, didn't move, didn't breathe. The fear of losing her was too great, and he was already mulling over his options, thinking about how he just might convince the Captain to go after the Xantoras ship. He needed to see this through, needed to see her again, if only to confirm that she was still alive and that the beautiful fantasy he'd been living in since he met her didn't have to come to an end.
He seized one of her pillows and drew it up to his face, drinking in her scent. It reminded him of love and of warmth, of patience and persistence, and he closed his eyes, committing it to memory just in case it would be his last chance.
The hatch slid open, and within a second he was on his feet and at attention. Trip seemed surprised to find him there, but thankfully didn't question it, skipping over any pretense of professionalism and closing the distance between them, grabbing his shoulders and bearing down for all it was worth.
"Malcolm, I'm so sorry. I promise you, we're going to get her back..."
Hoshi caught up with him then, thoroughly breathless from their dash through the corridor. She was carrying a handful of PADDs, and as she drew closer, he could see that her hands were shaking tremendously. For some reason, she was avoiding eye contact with him, something that immediately set him on edge.
"Trip, something's gone horribly wrong." As soon as it left his mouth, he realized how daft it sounded.
"We know." He paused, cutting a glance at Hoshi. Whatever he was about to say was visibly paining him, but he knew he had to get it out. "That ship just sent us a transmission right before they crossed out of comm range. Alira's been sentenced to death for the murder of the last Xantoras regional governor."
It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. All of the ambient noise in the ship disappeared, replaced only by the deafening thrum of his heart. He could feel Hoshi reaching out to him, but scarcely registered it, paralyzed by fear.
"I don't think she's ever been to Xantoras," he finally managed, knowing full well that it was a lie and that Trip knew it. This was mostly for the benefit of Hoshi, who didn't yet know of their involvement with the Section and the fact that Alira and Simon had, in fact, committed the crime under Harris's orders some two years ago.
"That's what I thought," Trip said slowly, still maintaining eye contact with him. "Erika's contacted Starfleet Command. We're probably looking at a hostage situation. They've clearly got the wrong person, and we'll just need to show that she has an alibi, that there's no way she could've been there…"
Another lie. He knew, just as well as Malcolm, that this was likely Pascal's revenge, and unless they acted quickly, she would be dead long before they could reach her. He also felt a surge of terror knowing that Hernandez had already pulled in the brass, because they were sure to ask more questions than the Commodore ever did.
"We're on our way to plead our case. If we can maintain warp six-point-nine all the way there, we can make it to their system in a little over seven days." Hoshi was running her hand up and down his arm in an attempt to bring him back down to earth, but it wasn't working too well. "The Enterprise can come with us. To talk them down, a display of force is probably going to be necessary."
To talk them out of murdering his wife. They already had an hour's head start, and that would be all they needed to commit the deed, assuming they hadn't done so already.
"You don't think they can be reasoned with?"
"Malcolm, if they've already sentenced her without a trial…" He knew he was right, but didn't want to lend credence to it. The thought that they would likely have to risk destabilizing the sector to get her back was too horrifying.
"Come with us," Hoshi asserted, and when she reached for him again, he willingly took her hand and allowed himself to be led into the corridor.
They found the Captain and the Commodore in her ready room surrounded by PADDs and reference materials, facing the viewport with their heads bent together in silent congress.
The atmosphere in the room was nothing short of electric. Malcolm felt it the moment he stepped over the threshold, and it instantly sent goosebumps rippling up his arms. There was little doubt in his mind; they had reached the same conclusion about Alira's disappearance as he had, and if they were to see their gambit through to the end, they had to proceed carefully.
They had to keep the truth a secret, not only for Hoshi's sake, but for the sake of the rest of the fleet.
"Admiral Gardner has officially reached out to the Xantoras Regional Assembly for some sort of explanation," Jonathan informed them, crossing his arms and leaning away from the window. "Apparently, the previous regime has staged a coup and regained power. All off-worlders have been given seventy-two hours to leave the system."
Except for political prisoners apprehended through under-the-table intelligence transfers, apparently. Malcolm supposed, somewhat cynically, that he really shouldn't be surprised by this return to form.
"Do we have any personnel there?"
"No, Lieutenant. Fortunately, the ECS saw this coming. They evacuated weeks ago." He wondered if this information had come up in one of the Captain's daily intelligence reports, and if so, why she hadn't thought to mention it. While he knew he could trust her unquestioningly, he'd moved on from denial and right into anger, and at the moment, wasn't quite sure what to believe.
"What about the Supreme Council?" It was a worthwhile question; she was a Denobulan national protected by Starfleet, and it naturally followed that the Infantry would be joining their mission.
Archer grimaced, shaking his head, and just like that, his anger morphed into rage. Malcolm clenched his fists tightly to avoid a very physical response. Her father's second wife was the Supreme Commander of the Denobulan Infantry, and had only proved her disloyalty time and time again, from refusing to rescue her mother from certain death to stringing her along for years in Special Ops. She had partially orchestrated her husband's demise, only to make a desperate grab for power once he was gone. Malcolm would never say it out loud, but he was of the opinion that General Vesena was an irredeemable snake, and hoped his wife lived long enough to see her put in her place.
"Are you kidding?" Hoshi sounded incredulous, and her reaction was truly warranted. She set down her PADDs on the desk and crossed her arms, leaning into them. "They're even closer than we are, and they're not even going to send a ship?"
"Ambassador Lexora said, and I quote…" T'Pol paused, inhaling slowly. "This is a purely Starfleet matter, and Starfleet will resolve it."
"We'd like to go after her, Commodore. The Maelstrom's the fastest, and has the largest arsenal." Trip sounded adamant, and to his surprise, Jonathan began to nod immediately.
"The Cochrane's probably going to stay where it is for the next few days while the investigation is ongoing." She stepped aside, and they all laid eyes on their spare shuttlepod zipping through open space, scanning the place where disaster had struck. Laura's second had assumed the role of acting captain, but was still very shaken if the rumor mill was to be believed. Starfleet Intelligence was still two days away, as most of their operatives in the sector were still tied up investigating Simon and Rachel's disappearance.
Most of their crew, however, didn't know that, and felt doomed to wait it out, to pray the same fate wouldn't befall them in the meantime.
"Take Columbia," Archer said, and before he explained himself, Malcolm couldn't help but think about how cold blooded it was to tear Erika away from the wreckage at a moment like this. "Their engines are in the best shape right now, and their MACO detachment is the largest."
So he was already expecting to take her back by force. He had to admit he wasn't surprised.
"It'll take seven days to get there if we push. They're going to be over twelve hours behind us."
"That's the best you're going to get, Trip. Every other warp seven engine in the fleet is on patrol right now." Even Jon had to admit it was a stunning stroke of misfortune that they were so short handed when they needed them the most.
He didn't look particularly pleased, but nodded anyway, digging his hands into his pockets and rocking forward. Malcolm could tell that the conversation was effectively over, that they were about to go their separate ways and see this tragedy out to its natural conclusion, but something still felt out of place. Something wasn't right, and in that moment, he decided to commit to the one thing he would ordinarily never do.
Rather than his head, he let his heart speak for him.
"With your permission, I'd like to go with them." He didn't need to elaborate. They knew his motivations for doing so, and he was hoping they would sympathize.
The Captain's reply was swift and automatic. "Out of the question. We need you here to help with the investigation. You have more experience with these situations than anyone."
"With all due respect, ma'am-"
"With all due respect, Commander." In the blink of an eye, she turned and leaned across the tabletop to meet his gaze, her expression inscrutable, her words biting. They met their target with razor-sharp efficiency, and he faltered, realizing that he'd very nearly committed an act of insubordination against one of the few individuals who had always had his back time and time again. Trip and Hoshi were frozen in place, and the moment hung in the air for a full count of ten, up until the silence started to become quite uncomfortable. When she spoke again, it was very close to a whisper. "You would do well to remember your place."
And there it was. He knew she was right. As much as he wanted to go charging into the unknown guns blazing, he knew he couldn't abandon his post or his sense of duty, however misplaced he believed it to be. At STC, they'd drilled it into their heads that an officer's first duty was to the truth, and if he went along with the Maelstrom, they'd be playing right into Pascal's hand. He could expose him. He might even kill them all while he had the chance.
The truth - which they'd deliberately warped and bent to their whims just to get him out of the picture - was now coming back to bite them.
The ease with which he'd forgotten all of that was frightening.
Malcolm meant to utter some sort of apology, to agree with her, to assure her that she was right, but found himself stunned into silence. Hoshi looked like she wanted to bolt, and Trip was visibly weighing the consequences of saying something to diffuse the situation, but thought better of it.
Finally, Ensign Singh came to their rescue, though from the look on her face, it wasn't good news. She appeared preoccupied, and as she swept into the room and passed over the PADD she'd been carrying, they could all see how hard her hands were shaking. "Message from the Draylaxian Territorial Council."
Archer reacted before T'Pol even said anything, stepping up to read the message over her shoulder. His eyebrows flew up into his hairline, and he seized the edge of the desk, gripping tightly. "When was this received?"
"Four minutes ago." Her reply was almost inaudible. The moment she'd read it, Dita knew that it couldn't wait.
"ETA?"
"Hutch is saying ten days. Tempest can be there in twelve, and the Apollo-"
"Set a course," T'Pol ordered, and together they all surged onto the bridge.
The length of time between her first interrogation and their arrival on Xantoras was all a blur.
Alira remembered being dragged from her chair in the darkened room, growling and seething in an attempt to avoid crying out. The next moment, she was thrown sideways, and her back hit the ground in a cold, musty cell. Someone was talking, telling her this would all be over if she would just name her accomplices, but she barely heard it over the surge of agony wreaking havoc through her body. At some point, they left, and she was left in the pitch blackness to nurse her wounds.
Gradually, her eyes adjusted, and she removed her hand from where it had been balled up against her side. Experimentally, she curled and flexed it, only to come to the horrific realization that her little finger on her left hand really had been cut off to the first knuckle. Without a second thought, she used her teeth to tear off a strip of fabric from her uniform sleeve and then wrapped it tightly in a bid to staunch the bleeding. Every nerve ending from her wrist to her shoulder was on fire, and though it certainly wasn't as painful as the time she'd been impaled on Rigel V, she had to admit that this latest incident certainly challenged it.
They kept her there for what seemed like days. Through the haze of the truth serum, her internal clock was thrown off, and she could no longer determine day from night. She knew they were still moving, alternating from a red-line speed to a more manageable warp three or four. She lay there, breathing in and out slowly, listening to the footsteps outside her door and the reverberations of the EPS conduits above her head. It took some time, but she gradually started to make out where she was, where the bounty hunters were headed, and the location of the nearest lift.
It could have been hours or even just minutes, but her interrogator returned, opening the hatch and exposing her to the blinding light of the corridor. He repeatedly asked her if she cared to make a confession, telling her it was good for the soul, assuring her that she would do well to spare her family, husband, and the Coalition any further embarrassment by coming clean. She said nothing, and he gradually grew enraged, calling for two of his guards.
They began to cut off the articulations of her cranial ridges one by one at the end of every barrage of questioning. She remembered telling her students all about it when she'd been a tenured professor of military history, letting them know all about how interstellar rivals had tortured the Denobulans of old. Turning from one side to another to take in the full range of their horrified expressions, she reminded them just how important their ridges were for equilibrium and internal temperature regulation. Though she'd read accounts of former political prisoners, nothing could have prepared her for this level of anguish, and each time she screamed and thrashed about with all her might, to no avail.
That first night, she alternated between burning with fever and shaking so violently she was sure she was about to fly apart. She heard voices of long-lost friends and colleagues and tried her best to tune them out. It was tremendously common for Denobulans to hallucinate during times of extreme emotional distress, and all things considered, this certainly qualified. But she wasn't about to give in to her fantasy world just yet.
At last they finally arrived at their destination, and she was introduced to a woman who claimed to be her legal defense, her conservator. At that point, her vertigo was so overpowering that every time she moved she nearly vomited, so she remained as she was curled up on the floor, squinting at the bubble of a shadow claiming to be a person in front of her.
"You'll be seen before a tribunal. As we believe in swift justice, the verdict has already been decided."
"Then why are you here?"
"I'm here to help you concede to the wisdom of the state." She was slightly shorter than the average male of her species, but her sheer size was still intimidating, and Alira couldn't help but shrink away from her. "If you put on a good show, if you demonstrate that such a willful act of treachery can only end in one way, I am sure that the court will be merciful."
"I've never heard of a Xantoras court showing mercy." That much was true; the last time they expelled off-worlders from their home, they'd rounded up the stragglers and shot them in broad daylight against a wall in the capital's busiest district. Once in the midst of his legal studies, her brother had told her that petty theft was often punished by placing the offender underneath a heavy stone until they suffocated. Flogging and hanging by the neck were still common. Though she had no intention of going quietly, she'd already begun imagining a similar fate for herself.
"Your punishment will be merciful because it will be held in private." To spare her personal relations further shame at being associated with her, no doubt. Alira couldn't help but laugh at that, an emotional response of which she quickly lost control. Her conservator, whose name she didn't care to remember, kept asking her questions in an attempt to craft their narrative for the courts, but she didn't respond, unable to hide her amusement at the irony of it all.
She would have preferred if Pascal had just crept up behind her and shot her. The fact that he was willing to go to such trouble to get rid of her, risking exposing the Section and a whole closet full of Starfleet skeletons was interesting to say in the least. She'd never been that important to anyone. Well, almost anyone.
Fortunately, in the struggle to question her, the bounty hunters had yet to confiscate her ring. It was her only anchor as the hours stretched into days, and she repeatedly rolled it with her thumb, thinking of happier times. Of white ribbons and sky blue dresses. Of the laughter of their friends and his arms around her, protective and secure.
She could only imagine the holy hell Malcolm was raising right now. All of their co-conspirators would need to tread carefully now in an attempt to throw off suspicion. Rumors were likely running rampant, but if she believed in anything, she knew that he had her back unquestioningly and would do whatever it took to get her back.
And because she didn't intend on waiting for him, she began to plot her escape.
Patrols passed her door on an hourly basis, invariably the same collection of soldiers. She grew to recognize their voices, started to tell them apart by their footsteps, especially when they came in with her interrogator to impart a little bit of torture upon her. While she lacked the strength at the moment, she became familiar with where they stowed their weapons. One time, she managed to swipe a pocket knife, holding it between her hands like a heretofore undiscovered treasure. In the dead of night, she would sneak off the ship and steal a shuttle, any shuttle, if only that it would get her out of the system and return to any alliance vessel in the sector. She'd done it before, but her plan was somewhat complicated by the fact that her equilibrium was severely disrupted.
Several times Alira attempted to stand, only to fall forward onto her knees or faceplant into the deck plating. They'd made quick work of carving her ridges out of one side of her face, and she didn't want to think about how horrific the sight must have been. Tentatively, she reached up to touch her temple, utterly taken aback by the smoothness she felt there.
Her preparations were interrupted by the reappearance of her conservator; together with a trio of guards, they dragged her out of the cell, through the corridor, out of the airlock and into a waiting vehicle. All around her, she heard the clamor of the city, the Xantoras running out of the street, dodging the government transport bearing down on them. In her mind's eye, she imagined they were traversing the same streets as their undercover mission, which truly seemed like decades ago.
The ground underneath them sloped precipitously, and at the moment they slowed to a halt, Alira felt the sting of another hypospray being pressed into her neck. This time, she had no time to prepare, and was dragged into the main council chambers through a crowd of jeering civilians, wide-eyed and terrified as reality crumbled around her.
The courtroom was sparse and utilitarian, with little illumination save for the spotlights hanging over the judge and the defendant's seat. This time, when they set her down, she didn't fight, only knitting her fingers together in her lap and staring down at the floor. She tried to formulate a coherent sentence, to translate the phrases racing through her mind into some kind of passable English, but the truth serum compounded on her empty stomach and weakened mental defenses slowed her attempts to a grinding halt. Something was in her face, cold and metallic, and she recognized it as a camera.
Her prosecution, key to the former regime's plot to reign the populace back in line, would be broadcast to the rooftops and every available viewscreen in the region.
"The offender Alira Taxa, Denobulan, officer of Starfleet, has been found guilty of capital murder of former Regional Governor Adwar Karrabi. She has been sentenced to death. Let the trial begin." Over her head, he struck a heavy object against his desk, and she flinched, giving them the reaction they wanted.
It was the only words of the proceedings spoken in a language she could understand.
Her conservator took over from there, and though she didn't realize it, proceeded to explain how a deep, ingrained feeling of inadequacy led her to a life of crime. Due to the untimely deaths of both of her parents, she hated her own people, and had ultimately betrayed them by serving aboard a human ship. She'd killed the governor to preserve the smuggling interests of her employers - information related to them by reliable sources - and what's more, showed no remorse. There was only once plan of recourse, but because Earth had been such reliable allies in the past, they were determined to show some leniency. When the judge delivered his verdict, she scarcely heard it, but snapped back to reality the moment he hit his gavel.
Hands were on her once again, and she was mentally cursing herself for not taking the opportunity to defend herself when she had the chance. There was little room to get a word in edgewise; besides, she was truly beyond coherence, and when she spoke in an attempt to ascertain what was going on, it certainly didn't come out as anything intelligible.
She was taken to a new cell this time in the basement of some government building, surrounded by other prisoners shouting and screaming and begging for mercy. Her window of escape was rapidly closing, but it was all she could do not to fly apart at the seams, gripping her sides and rocking back and forth as the reality of the situation consumed her.
In the hours that followed, she would learn of her punishment, feel it acutely, and briefly remember teaching her students about it decades ago, a moment in time which seemed like centuries.
Death by a thousand cuts.
Maelstrom Captain's Log, January 18th, 2157: We're only a few hours from Xantoras, and no closer to figuring out what happened to Pritchard and Osman. Honestly, at this point, I'm hoping for a miracle.
"Listen, Anna, it's not that I don't believe you, it's just-"
"Kov's analysis was completely clear, Trip. It's unquestionable. The same microdyne coupler was used to sever the transponder link to the main computer, and…" Her next words were lost to the garble of subspace, and he struck the side of the display with an open hand, causing the signal to shift back into coherence. "...the feedback loop on the driver coil assembly. They wouldn't have noticed their impulse drive was critical until they started to downshift into a lower speed."
"Are you saying our saboteur meant to take out the Cochrane as well?" It was the natural conclusion; with the natural degradation of the plasma exhaust, time would have run out just as they skidded into their berths. If they hadn't idled in the shuttlebay for so long before takeoff, they might have been looking at hundreds of fatalities.
"It's the only safe assumption we can make. All of the diagnostics done on their shuttlepod for the weeks leading up to the accident check out, but two days before it, their engineering staff had a few visitors to run through contingency drills."
Trip was starting to see where she was going with this, and didn't like it one bit. For the first time in a few hours, he sank down into his desk chair and reached for his PADD, typing out a furious message to Hoshi.
Get me Alira's brother, the lawyer. He lives in the capital in their family compound. Tell him it's urgent.
Her reply, only a matter of seconds later: That would be an understatement.
It wouldn't have been the first time they'd talked to him in so many days; now only twelve hours from Xantoras, they were consumed with preparations to take on the Regional Assembly themselves. While the judge assured them that their verdict remained firm, they'd been kind enough to send over their evidence, which only amounted to eyewitness accounts and a grainy still image from a surveillance video. From her own admission, Trip knew it was her, that his tactical officer was partially responsible for the coldblooded murder of a head of state, whose offense was depriving the ECS of trading opportunities in their sector and probably countless war crimes. He didn't want to believe that the shady underbelly of Starfleet had ordered it, but faced with tremendous documentation, he was forced to come to terms with the fact that the monolithic organization to which he'd pledged his life was not what it seemed.
Mareth had helped them prepare their arguments, given them a brief rundown of the inner workings of the Xantoras legal system, which was less of a governing body and more so a complete free-for-all polluted with bribes and special interests. If they wanted to free her, they would need to be clever, although without knowing all the facts he was adamant that she was innocent.
He swore up and down that she'd been visiting him on Earth that day while he was stationed at the Denobulan Consulate in San Francisco; Trip reminded him that he would need to swear on that statement and furnish proof. Immediately, he'd produced a series of photographs she'd taken with him and his first two husbands in and among the California redwoods, all with the correct time stamp. Trip knew he was committing willful perjury, but seemed all too willing to do so, given the circumstances and the ever-dwindling countdown to save his sister's life.
All things considered, Mareth felt obligated to help. As the chief legal counsel for the Supreme Council, he'd stood outside the main chamber and listened to them deliberate about whether or not to stick their necks out to save one of their most decorated former commanders. It turned out to be a fairly short discussion: Vesena had refused, and they all went along with it, somehow not even questioning how easily she turned her back on her half-daughter.
He may not have known anything about her time with the Section, but would defend her unquestioningly. Mareth had been keen on making sure he knew that one day Vesena would get her just desserts, that he planned on using threats of revealing her duplicity to barter his way into a spot on the council himself. Perhaps he wasn't the most ethical, but Trip respected him for his candor, and had bid him a fond farewell before erasing the entire transmission.
With what Anna was about to tell him, he was starting to feel that another conversation would soon be very much warranted.
"Taxa was there, as well as Kelby. We tracked the modified coupler all the way to one of the utility storage rooms on the Maelstrom."
"Who accessed that locker last?"
"That's the funny thing. It looks like it was returned to its case to avoid suspicion, only to be checked out again in the middle of the night on January 10th." The night of the wedding. Trip leaned forward, affecting an incredulous look that hung heavily in the silence between them. "Looks like they went back to finish the job."
"That's a level four security area. The only ones who can get in there are me, Jules, Kelby, and…"
"Taxa, as the ranking tactical officer on board. Each time the coupler was removed, her biometric access key was logged. She wasn't subtle at all about it." Even though he couldn't see her face, Trip could tell she was confused. It was wholly out of character for her. "The last instance was somewhere between midnight and six in the morning on January 11th. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but-"
His hand immediately shot out and activated the comm. "Ethan, Travis, get in here!"
There was a muffed acknowledgement of his orders from the other end of the line, then he leaned back, punching his fist in the air in silent jubilation. It seemed that Pascal, or his accomplices notwithstanding, had thought of almost everything in their quest to frame Taxa and implicate her in the plot to murder Captain Pritchard. What he hadn't counted on was an extremely overdue and ultimately well-timed wedding.
They were there in seconds, bursting through the hatch into his ready room, almost pushing one another in an attempt to reach him. The concern was written all over their faces; as time went on, rumors sprung up that Taxa had actually defected to the Xantoras, that she was involved somehow in Pascal's plot to supply the enemy with classified information, that she'd sought revenge on Laura before fleeing the inevitable retribution. Julia had tried her best to squash them, but they had run rampant through the lower decks, and by the time they reached the sector, some were saying that they were actually there to collect her and bring her back to Earth to face justice.
It absolutely blew his mind. Taxa was well-liked among the crew, but in the mess of war, there was the prevailing attitude that nothing and no one could be trusted. They were all playing into Pascal's hand without knowing it. All the same, he'd promised Malcolm, had practically sworn on his life that he would bring her back in one piece. Trip had seen his best friend get married, and he would be damned if he would also see him widowed in less than a month.
Their answers to his next question would determine their entire game plan moving forward.
"Where was Taxa right after midnight during the reception?"
Mercifully, they reacted automatically. Travis pointed towards his companion, and Ethan said: "Dancing with me."
"Are you sure?"
"Definitely. She saw Captain T'Pol and the Commodore leave, then asked what the time was. I looked right at my chronometer, and she asked if I wanted more champagne."
Trip remembered, but it helped to hear it from someone else. Alira had signaled to him, and the music had significantly increased in tempo, drawing a majority of the remaining guests out onto the floor. He stood in the corner with Malcolm and watched as she twirled around and around with his science officer, laughing all the way.
"And when did she leave?"
It was Travis's turn to fill in the blanks. "Around 0200, we left together. I went up to the transporter pad, and they continued on to the senior officer's block."
"And are we sure she was in his quarters from 0200 hours all the way up to the start of her duty shift?"
"Trip, there's no one on B Deck, Section Four who can't confirm that. That's why I was so confused. Once you start putting the pieces together, it doesn't add up. With the right know-how, those biometric readings could've been fabricated. If I were you, I'd pull all of the security footage from the Maelstrom for those hours. I've already checked on my end; short of crawling through the ventilation shafts, there's no way she could've left the area overnight without being seen."
"Already on it." Travis disappeared onto the bridge, only to return moments later laden down with PADDs. He unceremoniously dumped them on the table, then they were all rustling through them, listening as Anna's voice faded and reemerged repeatedly over the barriers of subspace. They were barely within range, and once the Maelstrom dropped out of warp, they would forge on to investigate a very untimely attack on the Draylaxian homeworld that threatened the tenuous state of their alliance.
From now on, they were on their own. Trip bid his former protegee a fond farewell, then closed the connection, devoting his full attention to the task at hand. "I can vouch for Jules. She followed Hoshi and I back to my quarters and crashed on our sofa."
He was sure the security cameras would confirm that. The three of them really had been quite intoxicated, laughing and falling all over themselves. He'd known that he wasn't a teenager anymore, that he couldn't handle his liquor like he used to, but he had gotten so caught up in the happiness of the moment that he had entirely resigned to his fate.
"Here." Ethan finally located the correct PADD and switched on the screen, revealing footage that corresponded to E Deck, Section Twelve. Together they came around the side of the desk and leaned over him, watching with bated breath as various crewmen milled about through the corridor.
He doubled the speed, then tripled it, watching as the crowds thinned out and gamma shift assumed their posts. They'd been running on a skeleton crew that night, and it showed; this was a mostly industrial area of the ship, and for nearly an hour, they barely saw anyone.
Trip was about to deem their venture a miserable failure when something crossed into the camera's line of sight, tentatively at first, then abruptly. They watched as what he assumed to be Pascal's conspirator stepped into the room and then right back out again almost immediately, revealing his face to the lens as he did so.
He would've recognized that walk anywhere.
They were silent for almost a full minute, then Travis tentatively breached it. "Should we have Nguyen bring him down here?"
"No," Trip said, rising from his seat. He was boiling with rage, and they could practically feel it radiating off of him. "We're coming to him."
The convoy reached them even before they entered the system.
T'Pol had listened with rapt attention as the casualty reports rolled in. A science station orbiting Draylax VII had been lost with all hands, as well as a dozen transports and their fastest warship. The Territorial Patrol had thrown everything at the incoming marauder in an attempt to hinder them; several vessels had even crashed headlong into them, sending them careening off course. At last, with over a hundred smaller ships attacking the marauder, it finally went down over the southern continent, taking out a small village and the side of a mountain with tremendous religious significance.
At first they suspected a neural telepresence unit or even another World Ender, but once they received holoimages over subspace, they realized the situation was a lot worse than they anticipated, and that a breakdown of the Coalition was imminent.
The vessel which had nearly laid waste to the Draylaxian homeworld was none other than the Vurdela, the Andorian flagship, which up until a few months ago was under the command of the deposed traitor Namara.
Of course, the first natural conclusion they drew was that she still had allies, that they suddenly and violently revolted - Jonathan had done his best to gently suggest this to the newly promoted Captain Shran, who told him, in no uncertain terms, that that was a ludicrous suggestion, that the Imperial Guard would not stand for such baseless accusations. He demanded that they wait to investigate until they arrived, but seeing as the Draylaxians were now considering pulling out of their impending buy-in to the Coalition charter, it was quickly decided that it couldn't wait. Shran, naturally, was incensed, but there was very little he could do about it while still four days away at maximum warp.
The envoys of the monarch guided them right into a geostationary orbit, where they proceeded to bracket them in, as though they expected them to bolt at any time. T'Pol half expected to be received in the grand palace in the capital, but the chiefs of staff decided to come to them, filing in through the airlock in such great numbers that she feared that the wardroom might not be big enough.
Through a complex series of hand gestures and bows, they were introduced to Ambassador Grethe Zhor and Councilor Bharana Wrex, both of which had distinct leonine features, long, flowing golden hair, and short whiskers that sprouted out of their cheeks. They and every single member of their staff wore stiff, almost triangular robes, obscuring the entire forms except for their faces and the tips of their fingers. When Zhor pressed her hands together and dipped her head towards them, T'Pol realized she was covered in a soft down of orange fur, and quickly reciprocated the gesture.
Before they could begin discussions, Dita stepped forward and handed them both a UT, then bent to her instruments. The Councilor's opening gambit was obscured in a mixture of his own language and standard English, before she was able to lock onto his dialect and shift his sentence into coherence.
"You honor us with your rapid response, Starfleet. We were under the impression that with the growing Romulan threat, your people no longer cared for the affairs of the Alpha Quadrant." His tone was soft and melodic, but they all struggled to figure out if this was meant to be insulting. Seeing as this was his first encounter with the Draylaxians, Jonathan reached out to T'Pol through their bond, who confirmed that their plain, vaguely Tellarite-like manner of speech was par for the course.
"As an allied world, your safety is our top priority." T'Pol made an honest attempt to affect an additional note of warmth to her voice, but they didn't seem convinced. "Upon their arrival, Acting Captain Katchadourian from the Cochrane will be leading the effort to establish the vessel detection grid around your system. The same technology is in use among all the member worlds of the Coalition."
"With all due respect, this seems to be too little, too late. I fail to see why your patrols didn't detect this incursion sooner." Ambassador Zhor turned and followed the Commodore down the hallway, tucking her hands into the sleeves of her voluminous robe. She and her companions moved with short, purposeful steps, and almost appeared to be walking on air. Dita waited until the delegation had passed, then followed closely behind, locking onto as many regional dialects as she could.
"The Vurdela was still answering hails up until three hours before the attack," Jonathan explained, somewhat sheepishly. "We had no indication that anything was wrong. They never reached out, and they never-"
"Quite expected for the Andorians," the Ambassador quipped, and her companion seemed to agree.
"Our scans show no biosigns remaining on this vessel. We've refrained from approaching it, as the hull is venting gaseous methane at an alarming rate." Wrex passed him a PADD, and though he didn't recognize the characters there, he could get the vague sense of the prevailing data trendline.
"Are you suggesting the crew was poisoned?"
"The Andorians are an intensely loyal species. If they did defect, it is unlikely the entire complement would buy into it." T'Pol paused, and the four of them stepped in the turbolift, leaving a vast majority of their delegation behind.
Zhor didn't seem convinced. "Perhaps it was an attempt to quash an uprising gone wrong."
It was Jonathan's turn to shake his head. "Any Andorian I know would prefer to win their victory through combat."
"So what are you suggesting?" The Councilor sounded aggravated, impatient even, desperate to gain some sort of explanation for the tragic series of events that had wiped out multiple vessels and one of their most sacred religious sites.
What do I tell him, T'Pol?
The truth would be a nice start.
We don't know what the truth is yet.
I'm fully aware of that, Jonathan. The doors opened, and they stepped out onto A Deck. He took the lead, making it to the wardroom in record time. Once there, he paused, blocking the threshold with his arm.
He hesitated, then made his case. "Let us investigate. Our officers will beam down with a few of our MACOs. Feel free to send as many of your guards as you like."
This time, Zhor and Wrex hesitated, cutting each other indecipherable sidelong glances. The request hung in the air unanswered for almost a minute before the delivered their decision.
"This is acceptable," Wrex determined, and pushed past them into the room.
Trip rushed down to engineering as though the devil himself was on his tail.
He briefly wondered if he should have called Ensign Nguyen or any of the MACOs to assist him, but pushed that thought aside. It would have been the right thing to do, but in that moment he was so engulfed with rage that he could hardly consider anything else.
Cornering his chief engineer in his office and asking him point-blank if he was conspiring with Starfleet's black ops underbelly wasn't exactly captain-like; nevertheless, he was desperate, frantic, and with less than an hour to go until their arrival on Xantoras, they had very little time to lose.
Kelby rose to his feet as they entered the room. Trip was there in a second, clapping a hand on his shoulder and forcing him back down into his seat. His desk was covered with diagnostic results and various instruments, indicative of a normal day, and his expression betrayed confusion with an undercurrent of irritation.
Travis and Ethan took one step in after him, blocking the hatch and ensuring it slid shut behind them. They both seemed to realize exactly what they were doing in that moment and hesitated, looking towards him for encouragement.
He nodded, and Travis handed over the PADD, with the footage already queued up. "Did you get a chance to read the report Anna sent over?"
"I did," Kelby admitted, crossing his arms and leaning away from him. He studied his companions' faces for clues. "What's this all about?"
"Someone falsified Taxa's biometric readings. She never opened the storage locker that evening. As I'm sure you know, there's only a handful of officers onboard that have the right clearance level."
He was starting to see where he was going with this. Somewhat warily, he turned his head to look back at him. "I'm not sure what you mean, sir."
Trip suddenly disengaged from him and came around the front of the desk, leaning across the table. He was starting to feel like he was in the middle of a police interrogation. "What time did you leave the reception?"
"I left right after the ceremony, so probably around 2000 hours."
"Why didn't you stay?"
It was a loaded question; he could tell them that after so many years with the crew, that he still didn't feel comfortable with them, that he felt that no one truly knew him or understood him. They just looked at him like some walking, talking protocol book, undeserving of their friendship or sympathy. He could let them know just how hard it was to live with a ship full of extroverts when he was nothing of the sort, or explain just what it was like to be in a room full of people and feel so dreadfully alone, but he didn't. Kelby shrugged, hoping to convey indifference. "I was tired, and I had some repairs to do."
"Late at night on a Friday?" Travis had seemingly jumped in, and he really wished he hadn't.
"Why not? We were on a skeleton crew, and I wanted to work without people bothering me."
"What were you using the microdyne coupler for?"
"I was recalibrating the transtator on the forward EPS manifold. Crewman Seymour was in the same area, she could testify that I was there until around 0100 hours."
"At which point you put the coupler back in the locker?"
"I think so, why?"
Ever so slowly, Trip finally slid the PADD over to him, and on the tiny screen, he watched himself walk down the corridor and approach the access panel on the wall. He entered his biometric access codes, then swept inside, effectively stepping out of view. "That's the same microdyne coupler that was used to sever the link of the transponder on the Cochrane's shuttlepod. It was returned to the locker, only to be checked out again using Taxa's biometrics."
His eyes went wide, and all color fled from his face. Ethan wondered if he understood he'd been caught, but soon realized that this was the abject terror of an innocent man desperate to clear his name. Kelby might be gruff, reclusive, and downright unpleasant at times, but he definitely wasn't a murderer.
At least, as far as they knew.
"I don't know anything about that, sir, but all the tactical officers in the fleet have access to that set of security protocols. It would be really easily for someone to get into the computer and change it within seconds-"
Like Garcia. Trip had no idea how much time had transpired between their arrests, but if what he was saying was true, she could have had the opportunity to set any number of traps. She could have contacted the Xantoras government well ahead of time. She could have tampered with the Maelstrom's shields remotely, or set them on a remote timer for deactivation. He interrupted him swiftly, turning to Ethan. "Would it be possible to remotely access the shuttlepod's computer and engine subroutines?"
"If you know where to look," he admitted. "As far as if it would leave a record…"
"What about two days before the accident? Weren't you over on the Cochrane working on contingency plans?"
"Sure, but so was Taxa and Nguyen. Zahid's brigade was there, but he didn't show up until after she left."
"Why's that?"
"Honestly, Captain, I have no idea." Kelby paused, swallowing hard. He looked between all of them, suddenly desperate to get his point across. "Listen, I'll answer whatever questions you have, I'll speak to Starfleet Intelligence if I have to, I'll cooperate with the investigation all the way. But believe me when I say this...how long have we worked together?"
Trip had to put some good thought to that. Though he had insisted he didn't need any help, that he had everything under control on the Enterprise, Gardner had still sent a new second his way. This had bumped Anna down to gamma shift lead, which automatically created tension between him and the rest of the brigade. He'd tried to dispel the unpleasantness, but all in all, it hadn't done much good. He regretted that now, and wondered just how much of his dislike of the man originated from that. "Two years and then some."
"All that time I've served under you - ignoring that whole ordeal with the Orions - I have never once disobeyed your orders. Check into my background if you like. Call my family and former coworkers. But I think you know I didn't do this. Why would I help Pascal get revenge on one of my closest friends, all because she helped gather the info that got them court martialed?"
He paused for emphasis, and Trip realized he had no idea Kelby thought about Alira like that. Their interactions were always terse, but that didn't mean she didn't try to bring him into the fold at every opportunity.
"Why would I be selling us out to the enemy? The service is my life."
"Kelby-"
"My life," he insisted, this time with so much fervor he couldn't help but believe him. Slowly, he began to nod, and he relaxed, settling back into his chair. There was a long pause, where neither knew what to say, and the tension between them was insurmountable. Trip met Ethan's gaze, and he soon saw himself through the eyes of his officers: strung out, paranoid, and making impulsive, rash decisions. There was no doubt about it - he needed to get himself under control.
And then the comm went off.
Travis reached out to answer it, leaving them little room to breathe. "Mayweather here."
"There's a ship approaching on an intercept course."
Trip's question came from the far end of the room, almost inaudible on the other end of the line. "What does it look like?"
"A small transport. They're hailing."
"I'm on my way." The moment shattered, he pushed past them towards the door, only to be stopped as he lingered over the threshold. "Origin?"
"It's Denobulan," Hoshi replied, thoroughly bewildering them all.
They managed to slow down to impulse for less than a minute, and the ship conducted one of the smoothest docking maneuvers he had ever seen. Ethan and Travis quickly excused themselves, only to be replaced by Julia seconds later, who was thoroughly out of breath from her jog down from the bridge. The deck plating lurched underneath them, indicative of another jump to warp, and they looked on as the hatch between them pressurized.
"Who-"
"It was audio only. They say they're an old friend, that they just want to help." Julia clapped her hands together and rubbed them furiously. He couldn't help but wonder just how many secrets Alira could still be hiding from them after all this time.
His misgivings were thoroughly dispelled by the appearance of a broad-shouldered Denobulan man, raven-haired with the largest blue eyes he had ever seen.
He wore a darker version of the normal Infantry uniform, the loose-fitting pants and double-breasted military jacket. Before they could even say anything, he closed the distance between them, shaking both of their hands in turn with far more enthusiasm than was necessary.
"Commander Saben, Infantry Special Ops." His smile was persistent, unmoving, and set them both at ease despite the circumstances. He pointed at both of them, coming to some sort of realization. "You're Trip, and that makes you Jules! How wonderful it is to put a name to a face!"
"Captain Tucker, and this is Commander Hammond," he corrected him, understanding just how much he reminded them of another officer they knew, albeit slightly more upbeat and unhinged. "I don't know if we've met."
"We haven't. This is Alira's best friend from the service," Julia explained, clearly having listened to more tales of her past than he had. He beamed at her, and a look went up between them, like sparks to a flame.
He made a hushed, muffled sound of surprise in the back of his throat. As a matter of fact, he did remember some of Alira's more wild stories, the ones she was more likely to tell over a cocktail in the sweet spot than anywhere near active duty. "That Saben."
"The very same. Just in case it wasn't obvious, I'm here to help. Where would you like me?" He shifted his jacket, revealing an entire arsenal of weapons, a dizzying array of knives, hand grenades, and throwing stars secured to his belt. Trip held up both his hands, as if encouraging him to slow down.
"Don't get me wrong, we're glad to have you, but if you wouldn't mind telling me how exactly you-"
"It's all over the news, Mr. Tucker," he said, as though it was obvious. "I was out on patrol, and I knew I had to join the rescue effort."
"So you deserted."
"In a manner of speaking, yes. I'm expecting a court martial when I get back." Trepidation and regret dashed across his expression, only to disappear a moment later. "Perhaps I can't explain this to you in a way you would understand, but when a Special Ops cell is formed, we pledge to defend one another without question. It's a lifelong commitment spanning hundreds of years."
"And what about the others?" If she remembered correctly, they usually traveled about in groups of four or five stirring up trouble wherever they went. Now was no exception, even as all forces were withdrawn to maintain the integrity of the border against the enemy. The Denobulans had forsaken their allies to coil up within themselves, and all things considered, she didn't blame them.
"Needless to say, they take their vows less seriously than I do. You should know that I've already spoken with Mareth. I'm willing to provide you with correspondence proving Alira was visiting Earth on the day in question." He was instantly all business. Saben seemed to be just as much of a hurricane as his counterpart, and although Trip knew he was committing to a bold-faced lie, he did it with a smile on his face.
"I don't think that will be necessary, Commander. We're planning to negotiate."
"Negotiate with a Xantoras? Are you out of your mind?" He visibly backtracked, frowning slightly. "Forgive me, but unless you have something they want…"
Trip was loath to admit he hadn't eliminated the possibility of bribery yet, just in case they couldn't logic their way out of the situation. Not for the first time, he wished they'd been able to bring T'Pol along. "If things go south, we'll still need to be prepared."
The insinuation there couldn't be missed.
"Don't worry. You've got the right person for the job." He breezed past them, then stopped at the corner, gesturing towards the left and to the right. "Which way to the weapons locker?"
The southern rainforests of Draylax Prime were dense, pluvial, and utterly stifling.
Normally Liz wouldn't have minded such conditions; after all, she was from the midwest, where the summers could be downright boiling. The environmental they were wearing weren't doing them any favors, and the pace they maintained as they tracked up the side of the mountain didn't particularly help either.
In an attempt to respect the religious observances of the Draylaxians, they'd beamed in on the north side, a good kilometer from the village and ancient temple which had been wiped out as the Vurdela fell out of the sky, landing on its side and cutting a vast swath of destruction up the slope. A majority of the far side of the mountain was on fire, and she could see it clear as day in the ash that filled the air and the wisps of smoke that curled above the treeline.
Even the MACOs were struggling to keep up; after a few minutes, she felt the hand which had been gripping the back of her apron release and pull away. She paused, glancing over her shoulder. "Doing alright back there, Kov?"
Their resident Vulcan nodded and afforded her a slight smile, before doubling over and bracing his hands on his knees. Even though the suit, she could tell that he was breathing heavily and struggling to maintain his composure.
She didn't wait for him to answer. A backlog of MACOs was forming behind them, and they also slowed to a stop, leaning against one another and nearby tree trunks for support. Popping the lid of her face shield, she called out: "Sir, could we take a break?"
He stopped automatically, and his shoulders visibly slumped. Malcolm had been conquering the slope like a very physical manifestation of his own demons, and she was loath to put a stop to it, even though her heart raced and sweat poured from every single pore in her body. If they weren't careful, they would all succumb to heat exhaustion, and she suspected he knew that.
Slowly, he returned to her side, uncapping his water bottle and passing it into her line of sight. Liz attempted to get a good hold on it, but her equipment was posing too much of a hindrance. She broke the vacuum microseals and slipped her glove off, finally being able to accept his offering.
It was only then she noticed how hard his hands were shaking. She set the bottle down onto the soft earth and reached for him, not even thinking for a moment how out of place that might look.
His expression was terse and forcibly neutral, but she could see a storm of emotion raging in his eyes. Immediately she knew what was going on, and knew that he was decidedly, absolutely, most definitely not okay.
Malcolm's gaze strayed down to where their hands connected, and he seemed to notice her engagement ring for the first time. For the past week, this had been a secret between her and Dita; everyone else had either been too focused on the mission or else supremely unobservant. All things considered, she didn't blame them. They weren't in a huge hurry to announce the news, and that suited her just fine.
He whispered her name, low and insistent, then she pulled away roughly, reaching down to retrieve his flask. "Don't start with me," she warned, taking a massive swig and brushing a few damp locks back from her face. "And whatever you do, don't tell Alira just yet."
Truthfully, he meant to make some kind of joke, perhaps about the fact that she was about to become his mother in law, but thought better to keep his mouth shut. A minute later, they were on the move again, gradually reaching the summit and descending into the smoldering wreckage far below.
Even at this distance, the sharp, acrid smell of methane was overpowering. A hundred meters out, Liz was coughing so hard she had to secure her helmet again, hoping the watering in her eyes would go away on its own. The hull of the Vurdela was warped and charred, completely unrecognizable, both of its nacelles having been sheared off from the impact. All that remained was the coffin-shaped drive section and the residential quarter, though most of windows had been shattered. A tremendous amount of smoke was billowing out of them, and she was scanning, trying to determine if they were about to walk into a literal explosive situation.
To his credit, Malcolm waited while she completed her analysis, searching around the perimeter for an easy access point. Both airlocks had been smashed in irreparably. There didn't seem to be any biosigns, but the wreckage still felt alive, pulsating and breathing, as though they were treading across someone's grave.
For all intents and purposes, they were, and he resolved to gather blood from as many fallen soldiers as he could so Shran could bring them back to Andoria.
He stepped up to a smashed window and peered into the darkness. Even the emergency lights were out, and every fixture which hadn't been bolted down was now strewn across the ceiling. He thought he might have been looking into the mess hall, but couldn't be sure. Predictably, it was empty, indicative of the state of emergency that the crew had attempted to rein in before eventually being overcome.
Righting himself and retrieving his flashlight, Malcolm made a troubling discovery.
Even the birds had stopped singing.
Gradually, the MACOs caught up with them, and when he turned around, they were all looking at him, their expressions mixed with resolve and trepidation, awaiting their orders. Liz nodded, affording them her silent approval, and he pressed on. "Lieutenant, take Sergeant Cole and go to the engine room. See if you can locate the black box."
Kov didn't look convinced. Even Malcolm had to admit that if the nacelles were gone, the impulse drive was likely entirely inoperable. He was also fearful of venturing into the unknown, a veritable tomb of asphyxiated soldiers, but was determined not to disappoint him. "I'll try my best, sir."
"Woods and Romero will come with Lieutenant Cutler and I to survey the bridge. With any luck, we should be able to reconstruct the last few seconds of sensor data." It was more than that; from the state of the Vurdela, it would probably take a miracle. He suspected they all knew it. "The rest of you, fan out and search for survivors. Be sure to maintain an open comm link at all times."
Malcolm didn't wait for their acknowledgement, just sank to his knees and rolled over on his side next to the open window, activating his grav boots. One moment he was standing horizontally on the wall, then on the ceiling, weaving in and around the furniture and aiming his flashlight into the darkness.
At some point between Galorndon Core and here, he'd slipped back into a familiar routine. Rather than putting any sort of consideration to his feelings, rather than think about how his wife was likely only hours from death, he threw himself into his work, allowed it to consume him, forbidding his mind to waste time on anything else. It had served him well, especially during the Xindi Crisis, but now, all he felt was unrest.
They located their first victim just outside the mess hall into the corridor; the poor unfortunate lay on his side, his hands clawing at his throat, his face contorted in a horrifying death mask of pure terror. A look back at Liz and a weary nod confirmed his suspicions: even almost two weeks after the crash, the methane levels were still well above toxic.
The interior of the Vurdela was sharp and angular, the beams melting into arched bulkheads and warped sections of deck plating. Twice he had to take a flying leap to traverse a chasm, open and steaming up from the sections below. The turbolifts were predictably offline, so they took the long way, stepping up and over the crumpled forms of Imperial Guardsmen. They all seemed to be on the way to somewhere else, some of them toting portable scanners and weapons, all of them running from their imminent demise.
It really did feel like they were trespassing in some sort of ancient mausoleum. Naturally, Malcolm had seen plenty of dead people before, but never in so great a quantity and concentration. Some emergency lights seemed to be active, and every time they passed one, Liz paused long enough to attempt to bring the consoles on the wall back to life, with limited success.
Just outside of the bridge, she became aware that their group had suddenly thinned out. So focused was she on counting footsteps that she'd scarcely noticed when Kov and the others fanned out. Now, she was keenly aware of how desolate the ship felt. She helped Malcolm and the MACOs shoulder open the hatch, then they were on the bridge, surrounded by officers who had proudly and tragically died at their posts.
Their CO was still in his seat, his hands gripping the armrests, and for a single, heart-stopping second, Liz was convinced he might still be alive. Irrationally, it reminded her of the aftermath of the Battle of Azati Prime, where they'd lost a quarter of the crew in the inferno. In her capacity as a field medic, she'd helped Phlox wheel the victims down one by one to a refrigerated storage unit in one of the cargo bays, where they'd be kept until their families could be contacted.
Until enough caskets could be built to provide them a proper burial.
In the days that followed, she started insisting that he return to their quarters at a reasonable time. He had the tendency to practice avoidance to a frightening extent, and she never wasted an opportunity to remind him of it. One night, after searching all of his usual haunts, she'd found him sitting in the makeshift morgue, surrounded by ghosts of the past.
She didn't say anything; the look in his face foretold it all. Instead she just wrapped her arms around him, and together they wept for their loss, for the untold horrors that were to come, and a war with no end in sight.
It didn't escape her that they now found themselves in a very similar situation. Carefully, she approached what she assumed to be the ops station, starting to nudge the fallen crewman out of the way with her foot. Something about that felt supremely disrespectful, so she bent down and hooked her arms around their shoulders to drag them away. Seconds later, she returned to her task, hooking up a handheld energy generator to the console and watching the screen flicker to life.
At first she was greeted by the vertical, crosshatched fishbone shapes of the Andorian alphabet, but they quickly flickered and shifted into orderly lines of square, hooked letters. A circle appeared, cycling, alternating between sage green and teal blue. Her UT came out, and a moment later, she took a step back, a belated warning dying on her lips.
Malcolm was there in an instant, shouldering his way to the console and studying the display as the virus ripped through their internal systems. She knew he recognized the Romulan characters just as well as she did.
"It's in their propulsions systems, navigation, environmental…"
"Explains how they were poisoned." Methane was one of the most plentiful gases aboard any starship, and could easily be rerouted through air ducts. It was one of the many reasons the distribution system was locked down behind a mountain of security protocols.
Protocols that didn't provide any kind of barrier to the precision-designed malware like this.
"Recognize those infiltration protocols?"
He hesitated, then leaned forward, hanging his head over the controls. Malcolm wasn't sure why, he wasn't sure how, but the virus that had taken down the Vurdela was a variation on the one they'd attempted to use to take down the World Ender. It wasn't a stretch to believe that the data chip Julia had been carrying had been lost in their fight to get to the engine room.
And now they were all facing the consequences.
"Whoever's modified it did one hell of a job." Liz shook her head, glancing around the room, where the MACOs were busy checking for survivors one by one. "It's proliferating around the exterior EPS grid, originating from a single point on the hull, less than ten centimeters square. I bet if we were to go back out there, we'd find some kind of device with its teeth sunk right into the duranium."
And all too small to be picked up on short-range scans. Malcolm could imagine the fear the CO must have felt at losing control of their systems, feeling the air escape from the room, seeing his comrades die around him one by one. There was no doubt about it: assuming the Romulans had gone through with producing as many copies as they could, they could now easily assume control of any ship in the Coalition. This was different from the World Ender, more devastating, because they might never see it coming until it was too late.
Immediately, he reached out and activated his communicator. "Reed to Lieutenant Kov."
There was a crackle of static, then his uncharacterically rough reply: "Please tell me you haven't got more bad news."
"Is everything alright down there?"
"Oh, perfectly fine," he lied, frowning as he stepped through the pile of engineers surrounding their warp core. In the near darkness, they were hard to avoid, and their horrified expressions were difficult to ignore. Several times, he brushed past an outstretched hand, and it felt like the dead were threatening to drag him down with them. All the same, he steeled his nerve and surged forward to the console, brushing off a great deal of soot and debris as he did so. It was then he decided to co-opt a phrase he'd heard his human colleagues use ironically so many times before: "Just another day in paradise."
"Does it look promising?"
"All of their injectors are shot. I don't see any way we can get this ship off the ground." He suspected they knew that before they even arrived, and was more than a little dismayed at their decision to seek his expertise at a time like this.
Malcolm nodded towards Liz, and she stepped forward, tricorder held aloft. "Keep going, Lieutenant. We're going to try to extract as much sensor data as we can."
A few seconds later, they heard him utter a very un-Vulcanlike curse, followed by the far away voices of Sergeant Cole asking if he was okay. He waved them off, then advised: "I wouldn't connect our equipment to these stations. It looks like all these systems were rendered inoperable within a matter of minutes."
"And the crew?"
"Dead within seconds." He turned his helmet light up to full brightness, squinting at the Romulan characters. They were vaguely similar to Vulcan, and he could even pick out a word or two. The idea that the enemy was so closely related to his own species was a little unsettling, and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't put a great deal of thought into it.
They heard him inhale rapidly, and as if on cue, the deck plating underneath them began to shake. At first he suspected it was a landslide, hoped even, but Kov's next words pushed every shred of doubt out of his mind.
"It has activated the self-destruct sequence." Kov was sure they'd tripped a sensor along the way, or triggered a vertical cascade as they reactivated all of these consoles, but there was little time to consider all of the possibilities.
They had to get out as quickly as possible.
It was difficult as it was to run in grav boots, but the debris and the bodies cluttering the ceiling didn't do them any favors. Kov wound up staggering forward in a high-kicking, staggering motion, gritting his teeth and all but slamming into the bulkheads the whole way. He was sure he looked ridiculous, but pushed that thought of out his mind as he searched for daylight.
A soft, feminine voice was counting down over the speakers, and she sounded much too cheerful for her own good. At one point, Sergeant Cole shouted for him, and he backtracked, attempting to force open one of the few windows that hadn't been shattered by the impact. She grabbed his elbow and all but threw him back, hitting the glass with a sustained blast of the kill setting on her phase rifle. This produced a hole big enough for at least one of them.
He forced his way through first, crawling on his hands and knees into the dense undergrowth, and then they were running as fast as they possibly could through the rainforest, trying to put sufficient distance between them and the blast. Kov was sure there was enough dilithium in their stores to level half the province, and he wasn't feeling too optimistic.
As the vibrations underneath their feet reached a fever pitch, Amanda grabbed the back of his suit and forced him down behind a large, anchored boulder. They were still much too close to the impact, and immediately, he felt a sharp pain in the side of his head, indicative of his eardrums bursting. Trees were torn from their roots and tossed hundreds of meters. The shockwave was visible as it raced down the mountainside, towards the inhabited towns far below.
Kov soon realized that Amanda, as a human with less acute hearing, had been less affected by the blast. She sounded like she was underwater, and he had to read her lips to determine that her ears were ringing out of control. The air was filled with smoke, and they both remained there for an indeterminate amount of time attempting to regain their bearings, taking long gulps of the purified oxygen coursing through their EV suits.
He had no idea if the other two groups had survived until he heard them over the comm. Kov had no idea what they were saying, or if his reply was even intelligible, but he gradually stumbled to his feet, leaning into the boulder and boosting himself up to survey the damage.
The detonation of the Vurdela had left a wide, smoldering crater in the ground, and the destruction was widespread enough that he knew nothing had survived.
As nothing could, when imminently faced with the Hijacker.
After two days, Alira quickly came to the conclusion that she hadn't known such horrendous pain in her life.
Losing half of a finger, she decided, was just child's play. The ministrations started up one arm and down the other, sometimes only nicking the skin, other times dipping down by a centimeter or more. She was able to brush off the first few, but by the time they wound around the back of her neck and across her other shoulder, she was trembling violently from the sensation. Each time, the guard would slice through her uniform before taking their leave of her, telling her in no uncertain terms when they'd be back to deliver another blow. Invariably, they'd be back much sooner than that, and she waited in anticipation for the hatch to slide open.
One blow was inconsequential, but hundreds were enough to bring her to her knees. It was hard to wrap her head around the fact that it was over, that her life force would soon slip away. She'd been without food for what she estimated was about a week, and for the longest time, she was nourished on her tears as she wept for the long line of mistakes that had led her to this moment.
It was all over. There were no more lifelines, no more contingency plans. After so long running, her treacherous past had caught up with her, and she would need to deal with the consequences. Perhaps it was better to stop while she was ahead - before she could hurt anyone else.
The sensation of a hand hovering around the small of her back shook her out of her contemplation. Immediately, she knew she was hallucinating, but gladly surrendered herself to it, happy to have some company in her final moments. They weren't touching her, but they were affording her some comfort, and she gingerly unfolded herself from the fetal position, looking up into her father's face.
Taxa was exactly as she remembered him as a Supreme Commander, tall and fair, wearing his Infantry uniform studded with medals. His smile, which could positively charm anything and everything, was on full display, and she watched as he moved to sit in front of her, not allowing her to escape his scrutiny for a second.
"You're not here."
"I know that, and you know that. Nothing wrong with it." He paused, then actually touched her, gingerly pushing her hair back from her forehead. "What have they done to you, Li-Li?"
"They punished me for a crime I committed." That was the truth of it all, no matter how much it hurt.
"They've cut your ridges." He looked tremendously concerned, then relieved. "Not to worry, they'll grow back in a month or two."
"I don't think I'll make it that long, father."
"That sounds like quitter's talk."
"I'm just being realistic."
"You've never been realistic," he corrected her. "I raised you better than that."
The ghost of a laugh escaped her lips, and with the last bastion of her strength, she sat up and leaned into him, burying her face into his shoulder just as she'd done so many times as a little girl. Though he'd been killed by a trusted friend almost two decades ago, in that moment he was very real.
Taxa pressed a kiss into her hair, then attempted to afford her some comfort, rocking her slowly from side to side. "I heard you got married."
"I did. You would have loved him." She'd promised that she would never take a spouse until she met someone that looked at her like her father looked at her mother, and she hadn't, the first attempt with her dead betrothed notwithstanding.
"I don't doubt that. He seems to be a formidable warrior."
"That he is. He's an amazing person, just so sweet and thoughtful and intelligent..."
"I only wish I could've been there for our dance as father and daughter."
It was a tradition she understood was also present in human weddings; though she tried to suppress it, she admitted to feeling a touch of melancholy knowing that neither of her parents would be there for every subsequent milestone in her life. "Phlox filled in pretty well. He did cry the entire time, though."
"I can't say I wouldn't have done the same." He paused, waiting as her shaking subsided. "You're going to see him again. All we've got to do is get you out of here."
"There is no way out. I tried for so long to avenge your death. Everyone - the Supreme Council, the Section, Special Ops - they all used me, used my grief for their own personal gain. I've made so many mistakes. I've…" She trailed off, thoroughly choked up. "I've hurt and killed so many people."
"I know. You forget that I'm in your head."
In more ways than one. She found it curious that he seemed so nonchalant about it, so she decided to go straight for the point. "I need you to forgive me."
"For what?"
"Everything I've done. Father, I've done some horrible, disgraceful things."
"I can't," he asserted, drawing pure anguish from her. It was all she wanted, all she needed, and even a projection of the one person she'd always considered a hero couldn't give it to her. He reached out and tilted her chin upwards, forcing her to look at him. "Listen to me. It doesn't matter if anyone else forgives you, if you don't forgive yourself."
"I hate the person I've become. Every time I look in the mirror, I…"
"Then become someone else. You can't go back, you can only go forward." Together they held their breath as yet another guard walked past the doorway, then hurriedly resumed. "Do you remember what I told you every time you scraped your knees, or got into an argument with your brothers, or came home in tears because some children at school were being mean?"
She did. "Someday, this will all just be less than a pearl in a sea of stars." It was an uncommonly beautiful way to describe life's everyday challenges, but she'd clung onto it for years, unwilling to let go.
"That's right. Remember, you're living for your mother and I now. You may never be free of what you've done, but with time, you may learn to live with it."
"May?"
"You will," he asserted, then pulled away from her. "Now stand up and assess the situation."
His order was abrupt and businesslike, and without pause, she clambered to her feet. The world spun, her stomach clenched, but she gradually found an unsteady equilibrium, leaning into the hatch with both hands. "The back end of the locking mechanism is right here. I've already tried to jimmy it open. The gap is too narrow."
"Have you tried using that pocketknife you stole?"
"Of course. I wouldn't be a very good survivalist if I didn't." She paused, running her hands over her uniform, ignoring the biting pain on her arms and shoulders. Fortunately, she was obscured from view from the corridor save for a narrow pane-glass window at waist level, her only vantage point into the rows and rows of cells around her.
"Do you have any more bobby pins?"
She shook her head. "I've broken them all." Of that she was sure; she'd had time to go through all of her pockets twice over. A sudden wave of nausea hit her, and she pitched forward, placing her hands on her knees. It was then that she saw it.
The floor of her cell was cold metal with an impossibly smooth finish, but one of the guards must have brought in a pebble off the street the last time they delivered a cut. It was oblong and jagged on one end, and she instantly knew she'd found her prize.
"This could take some muscle," Alira said as she inserted the pointed end into the locking mechanism, praying she wouldn't break it. She could hear the pins turning within, but couldn't make sense of them in her drug-addled mind.
Taxa shrugged, as if he didn't know what she expected him to do about it. She looked back at him, but he only smiled and told her that he loved her, that he missed her, and what's more, that he was still so very, very proud.
He vanished in that next instant, and the latch popped open, ushering her back into reality.
The Maelstrom dropped out of warp only to be greeted to a sea of Xantoras patrols. They apparently knew they were coming, and if Ensign Nguyen's warning was any indication, a vast majority of their weapons were currently trained on them. There were no other Coalition ships in the sector, Columbia was still several hours behind, and they were truly alone.
"Admiral Gardner is asking for an update." Hoshi's voice shook him out of his inaction, and Trip stood slowly, approaching the comm.
"Tell them we'll have one in a couple of minutes. Hail them."
She complied, somewhat warily, and together they listened as the metaphorical dial tone rang out over subspace. Finally, someone deemed their request worthy of a response, and he realized they'd been passed over the fleet and sent directly to the capital.
The image of a Xantoras woman appeared on screen. She regarded them with contempt, and Trip was immediately incensed. "This is Captain Tucker of the Maelstrom. We've come to collect our crewman."
"And I am Miss Taxa's conservator." The corners of her lips twitched upward into a self-assured smile. "I'm afraid she's already been tried, sentenced, and punished for the crime."
It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Trip's heart momentarily seized, and he turned to Hoshi, confirming that the UT had provided an accurate translation. Already imagining having to inform his best friend that his wife was gone, he asked: "Could we see her remains?"
She momentarily looked confused, then shook her head. "You misunderstand. She is not yet dead, though she will be within a matter of days."
He could hear Saben breathe a sigh of relief from the back of the room. Julia turned away from him and leaned into the wall, exhaling slowly.
"We've got new evidence that will prove her innocence."
"I have no doubt that Starfleet has managed to fabricate an alibi in an attempt to get her out of this." This time, her grin was blinding. "I'm afraid that will not work. We are determined to seek justice for our fallen governor, and if she is not put to the death, it will be considered a major failing on our part."
"You've got the wrong woman," Trip asserted, knowing full well he was lying to her face and hoping desperately he could pull this off. She didn't seem convinced, so he pressed on. "If you agree to meet with us, we can make it worth your while."
The conservator seemed to take this hint in stride, nodding slowly. "I'll need to speak with my superiors."
"That's fine." A second later, she ended the transmission, and Trip turned back to face his bridge crew, his expression resolute.
Much too late, he wondered exactly what he'd tell Erika when she arrived.
He wondered how he would face Hoshi after the fact.
As he passed her station, she caught his eye, and her gaze was filled with so much love and encouragement that it made what he was about to do all the more difficult. He nodded towards Saben, and he surged forward with him into the turbolift, cutting a skittering glance back at Julia.
They met Sergeant Kemper in the launch bay, and he was going off about safety protocols and how they were very likely about to be taken hostage themselves. Usually he would have appreciated his very un-MACOlike fixation with questioning orders, but this time, he willfully ignored it and let Saben take care of it. He'd just met him, but soon learned he could argue with the best of them, and he listened to the two of them bicker back and forth as they ducked and weaved through the patrols and approached the planet.
Rather than in the middle of a lush field, they touched down in a bustling city on the rooftop of a sprawling government building. The guards met them there, demanding they surrender their weapons and giving in just as easily. Trip all but lead the way through the corridors, down steep stairwells and past rows and rows of screaming prisoners thrashing against their cell walls. The sound was deafening, simply terrifying, and he momentarily faltered.
He felt Saben's hand on his elbow then, tight and insistent, pulling him forward. He was scowling, quite unusual for a Denobulan, an expression which didn't change until the moment they were met by a trio of high-ranking government officials.
It was then Trip realized that he'd never met a Xantoras face-to-face; they were each at least seven feet tall, and the sheer size difference was momentarily jarring. They seemed to be unmoved by their pleasantries, so he didn't waste much time with them. Trip readily informed them that the two individuals in the photograph that they'd used to sentence his tactical officer to death were actually Garcia and Pascal, who had unfortunately perished in an untimely accident as they were transported to court martial. Taxa and Laura had been instrumental in providing evidence of their guilt to HQ, so they'd ensured their demise, one through an unfortunate mistaken identity and the other through a shuttlepod explosion.
The missing link was their presumed accomplice Osman, who had taken any further evidence with him when he died. Trip knew that it was partially the truth, but not entirely, but it was a convenient enough lie to pin the blame on a dead man. From what they knew at the moment, it could have happened. He'd had means and opportunity, and knew how to alter systems to produce the anomalies seen during the accident.
It could have been true. He just had no way of proving it.
"I've brought photographs and correspondence proving that Miss Taxa was on Earth during the date in question," Saben cut in, smiling sweetly with a hint of malice, then passing the PADD over to them. As they scrolled through the evidence, he added: "The Supreme Council is ready to pursue any legal or tactical option we have to resolve the situation."
The way he sold it, Trip was positive they thought he was some representative of the government. He cut a wayward glance at him, taken aback by his resolve and the ease by which falsehoods left her lips, mirroring his own.
At his words, their demeanor changed, and they bent their heads together, chattering so quietly the UT wasn't able to pick it up. Their ringleader, a tall gentleman wearing what he could only assume to be judge's robes, was shaking his head. It was at that moment he decided to make a deal with the devil.
"Name your price."
As it turned out, it was steep, but affordable. He sent word to Kelby to prepare five hundred liters of warp plasma for transfer to their lead vessel, and mercifully, he didn't ask questions. They were lead deep underground through many successive cell blocks, and Trip's unease only grew by the second. The corridors narrowed until the prisoners were able to reach out and touch them, and he found himself gently extricating their hands from his collar as they begged for mercy.
The guards stopped at the end of one hallway and gestured them onwards. Saben paused by them and crossed his arms behind his back. Trip knew full well that he had enough hand grenades strapped around his belt to level the entire building, and he would've bet any amount of money he had one hidden up his sleeve right now. The thought was a little unsettling, but somewhat comforting.
He counted his steps to the designated cell, noticing with satisfaction that it seemed unlocked. Gingerly, he shouldered the door, and it swung open to the interior, affording him a glimpse of nothing and no one.
Kemper surged forward through several successive T's in the corridor until they were out of sight of the guards, and he followed closely until they were in the near darkness.
A flash of something out of the corner of his eyes attracted his attention, and the Sergeant whirled around, clicking the safety off his rifle. The sight they were met with shook him to his very core.
Alira's uniform was irreparably torn and stained, and she seemed to be covered in blood from the waist up. Her cranial ridges had been carved with some sort of blunt instrument. The look in her eyes was dull, far-off, and she seemed to stare right through them, enough for him to tell she had been drugged. She stumbled forward once, then twice, struggling to speak. "What took you so…"
Without preamble, she passed out, falling forward into his arms. Trip caught her and lifted her up, noticing with dismay how light she felt. As they rounded the corner and approached their hosts, Saben looked back on them completely agape, then pressed a hand to his mouth. He was completely and utterly horrified.
They all were.
At some point as they journeyed back to the ship, Alira regained consciousness. She could tell there had been a sudden change of scenery, but likely didn't realize where she was, because she began to sob almost immediately. It was such a sharp, mournful, discordant sound that every hair on the back of his neck stood up.
"Tell me what you need," Kemper demanded, locating the emergency medical pack in a panel on the wall and tossing it in Saben's general direction. He complied and began to root through their stock, no doubt looking for something resembling an analgesic.
Her request was quiet and plaintive, but immediately broke his heart. "I want to see my husband."
"Alira-"
"I need to see him," she demanded, rolling away from them to face the back of the craft. Trip was pushing the impulse engine as fast as he could to get her to sickbay, and the shaking underneath the deck plating couldn't have been comfortable.
Someone needed to break the news to her, and Kemper decided that it might as well be him. "He's not here, Ensign. You're not going to see him."
And she wouldn't, not for at least a year, no matter what ungodly horrors they encountered along the way. Her cries reached a fever pitch, and Saben bent forward to gather her in his arms, ignoring how she seethed in pain.
"It's alright. Just pretend I'm him." He gradually found a position which wouldn't disturb any of her cuts, then added: "What should I do to make this feel more authentic? Should I go on and on about some old naval battle no one's ever heard about?"
It could've been his imagination, but Trip thought he heard her laugh. This was good. She needed the distraction idle conversation afforded them.
"Saben," she whispered, reaching up to touch his cheek. "You left your post."
"Of course I did, and I'd gladly do it again."
"But how will you go back?"
"I don't know, but I will. I'll accept a dishonorable discharge if that's what it takes." Something indecipherable crossed his face, and Trip realized that he had to know. He had to know what the Infantry had done to Alira and her family, and he wanted out.
He was glad to provide him with a convenient escape.
"Even if I'm cast out, I've got plans. Kemper here is going to get me in touch with General Casey at MACO headquarters. It'll just be a few weeks of training, and then I'll be back before you know it."
Trip locked eyes with him, and he nodded, realizing that his offer was entirely serious. Though he had yet to see Saben's skills in battle, if they were anywhere close to Alira's, he was going to be a valuable addition to the team.
"That would make me so happy." There was no guarantee that he would be assigned back to the Maelstrom, but at the moment, she was all too willing to entertain that thought.
As they ascended into the shuttlebay, Saben helped her sit up. He managed to elicit her first smile of the past few days. "While I've got you here, how's monogamy treating you?"
"Saben-"
"What?" He cried defensively, shaking his head. "We're all thinking it back home. I'll have you know that the two of you made the news, just like when my aunt married that B'Saari…"
"Of course she did, that man has three heads!" As Trip and Kemper ran through the steps of the landing sequence, they listened to them argue, a welcome respite towards what had been an otherwise harrowing day.
Brushing off any last reservations about physical touch, it was Saben who carried her up the gangway and down the corridor towards sickbay, reveling in the ability to be near his best friend once again, but wholly unsure of how to tell her exactly what had happened to the Infantry in her absence.
To be fair, he was also unsure of how to tell her that her former betrothed, once thought dead in the same attack that killed her father, was still very much alive.
Trip left sickbay and returned to his ready room in a haze.
He knew his appearance was a bit unsettling; his uniform was rumpled and horribly stained, coated with his tactical officer's blood. He had made sure they made it to sickbay, and waited while the doctor made his initial assessment. She hadn't eaten in a week, and was much too weak to stand.
Yuris attempted to get her to swallow some disgusting protein blend, to very little success. The pain was too great for her to think about anything else, so he'd sedated her as he set to bandaging her wounds. Trip had felt her vice like grip weaken on his arm centimeter by centimeter until her eyes closed and she was free of anguish at last.
The doctor assured him that her cranial ridges would grow back in a few weeks, which he was sure would come as a relief. Her skin had been methodically sliced, even cut down to the bone in some places. It was a miracle they hadn't gotten infected yet, but all the same, the sheer amount of blood was horrific. He knew she would tell Malcolm the extent of her injuries in due time, but as for now, he just had to tell her that she was okay.
To be more specific, she was alive.
Julia tried to warn him, but he pushed past her into his ready room, only to find a very weary Captain Hernandez perched on the edge of his desk. They locked eyes, and he almost immediately turned and retreated, before remembering himself and standing his ground. A long silence passed between them, cold and expectant, until she finally deemed it acceptable to breach it.
"So that's it, huh? We're just going to frame Ensign Osman?" Clearly, Julia had been filling her in. Suddenly, she was furious, her tone treacherous, her every word dripping with rancor.
"Listen, Captain-"
"So what if he was on the shuttle with her. Are we really going to claim that he killed himself to throw us off, that he was in league with Pascal and Garcia the whole time?"
"You know what? We are." Trip began to empty his pockets, slowly divesting himself of his phase pistol, his PADD, and the flash bang Nguyen had been so insistent he brought along. Erika watched him, tracing the blood stains on his coveralls with her eyes, daring him to finish. He was only too willing to oblige. "Because that's probably exactly what happened. It all adds up. He and Garcia were very close. She set it up, and he drove it home. The enemy wanted the governor dead, and they went to great lengths to follow through."
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand, and she closed the distance between them, meeting his gaze with frightening intensity. "Trip, the man has kids back home. Twin little boys, both three years old. They're going to grow up thinking their father was a traitor."
"Maybe he was." Trip took a step away from her, only for her to seize him by the forearm, clenching tightly. He had hoped to present his evidence, to get through this under her radar, but clearly Erika was much smarter than that.
She hadn't always been.
He took a deep breath and looked at her, really studied her, before coming to the terrifying conclusion that he needed to come clean. The Section had already taken advantage of Erika's practicality, of her sense of duty, of her inherent good nature, and he knew it couldn't happen again. Trip hesitated for a moment, winging and shaking his head, then just as she had done on Sevarin Station when the Maelstrom strolled in on the mass production of nuclear warheads, he told her everything.
As Trip watched, her expression morphed from surprise to horror to fear to something indecipherable. She visibly retreated within herself and moved to the window, where she leaned into the glass, studying the stars streaking past them at impulse. A lot was starting to make sense to her, and he didn't blame her for taking some time to process it all.
That particular state seemed to go on for hours, but it was perhaps only a matter of minutes. Trip joined her at a respectable distance, wanting to ascertain her emotional state but not wanting to cross any boundaries. If she reacted in any way similar to the way he thought she would, it was all over, and the gambit they'd spent so long crafting had failed. The Section would be exposed, T'Pol's ancestry would be widely revealed, and they'd all wind up dead, he was sure of it.
Erika's next words almost stunned him into silence.
"What are we going to do about Pascal and Garcia?"
We. The word ricocheted around in his mind like the inside of an echo chamber. He shrugged. "There's nothing we can do. We don't know where they are, or where they're going to strike next."
She seemed contemplative, pensive even. "If I were them, I'd go into hiding."
"To what end?"
"To plot their next move." Erika finally turned to him, and she was shaking faintly, gripping her sides in an attempt to hide it. "They know they're not going to win with so many officers against them. There's only so much they can do in the shadows until they have to step out into the light."
He huffed, barely restraining a laugh. "You know, I've been in the service over fifteen years, and I've never experienced anything like this."
"Me neither. I guess it all makes sense that when the brass can't do what you want, and you have to go under the table." She bit her lip, so hard it almost drew blood. "It's clever. It's pragmatic. It's also all my fault."
"Erika…"
"No," she interrupted fiercely, reaching out to grab him by the shoulders. "When I was approached by that agent, he claimed to be from Starfleet Intelligence, and I believed him. I spent years making sure they had what they needed to make nuclear warheads. I set everything else aside, Trip, and to whose benefit?"
"The fleet. You once told me that we can't always be bad guys or good guys, that we have to exist somewhere in the middle. It's all going to be worth it when we come out of this war on the other side." He had to believe that, if not only to maintain his sanity. The issue at hand was so complicated, so multifaceted, that he wasn't entirely sure if his actions were justified either.
"Not for me. I towed the line like a good captain, and all it cost me was everything." She took a step back and dipped her chin towards the floor. When she looked up, he was shocked to see tears shining in her eyes.
"Surely you don't believe…"
"The reason Taxa ran afoul of the Section to begin with was because I was receiving all those torpedo smuggling runs through Starbase 1. That tipped off Harris, who tipped off Zhang, who gave Commander Reed that crazy ultimatum. If they weren't there that night Laura and I were planetside, this never would have happened."
"You don't know that."
"Oh no, I do. You don't get to have this many years under your belt without being able to follow cause and effect." She sniffed loudly. "Do you know exactly how much I've sacrificed for my career?"
Too much, he wanted to say, but held his tongue. Probably a lot more than me.
"This time around, I really thought we had something good. We were planning on taking our next leave together, you know. She'd take me to the Cliffs of Moher, and I'd take her to meet my grandmother back in New Mexico." Erika knew she was oversharing, but for once in her life, she couldn't hold it in. She couldn't hold onto her professional exterior as everything else unraveled around her. "But I always knew it was too good to be true. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought about how I could lose her. Maybe in the middle of a battle, or to some strange alien virus, or to a warp core breach."
Still he said nothing, and she seemed to crumble under the weight of the universe, propping her hands on the windowsill and leaning into them. "And now that it's finally happened, I half expected myself to be screaming and tearing my hair out, I don't know, anything that's a stronger reaction than this. But after all the horrific things that have happened to us, after everything we've seen…"
She trailed off, then laughed, a gesture which surprised him. "I suppose it's like that old song. Is that all there is?"
Her words struck him like a speeding hovertrain, and soon he too was consumed with guilt, confronted by the realization that he'd also become desensitized to it all, too numb to process his pain and understand what it all meant to him. This wasn't the first time it had happened; now, as in many nights before, the loss of his sister was fresh in his mind.
In the stillness of his ready room, Trip moved to embrace his friend, and she allowed him, burying her face into his shoulder and allowing her grief to consume her to the depths of her very soul.
End of Episode One
Next time on Enterprise…
Episode Two: Sign of the Times
A heretofore unknown illness rips through the allied world of Haakona, leaving Enterprise to pick up the pieces. The Maelstrom encounters a man claiming to be a time-traveling historian from the 26th century.