Hi. I've had this in mind for some time. I don't own Star Trek in any form; believe me, if I did then there would be more series, movies, and a lot more Stargate Atlantis or Stargate Universe-Esque stories where the main characters either visited other galaxies or times, just to broaden it out. But luckily there is Fanfiction.

I hope you enjoy this, please let me know what you think.

Seeing First Contact.

"Captain's Star Log: March 17th, 2156

After a whole year of chaos following the Terra Prime incident, we have resumed our mission of exploration. I am beyond thankful for that; the last year has been gruelling for all of my crew, following the Augment crisis and the Xindi war. I remember, following the whole mess in the Expanse, and the way Ambassador Soval insinuated I had deliberately allowed the crew of the Seleya to die, when there was the possibility of them being cured after being exposed to Trellium-D despite Phlox telling me straight there was no chance, telling Erica who's now taken command of the Columbia I wanted nothing more than to return to the person I was before the Xindi waged their genocidal campaign against us. I don't know what we're going to find, but I hope our mission of exploration is not interrupted.

Currently, we are back in the former Delphic Expanse. We arrived just last night, and everyone is on high alert. Tension on the ship is high, and I don't blame my people for that. This region of space has truly terrible memories, memories I know which will haunt me to my grave."

X

Jonathan Archer paused as he made out his log. He took the moment to read through everything he had dictated, pausing as he looked at the mention of the Selaya and what he had just said about Erica, and he wondered if he should erase it. He had learnt over the last few years Starfleet Command went through the logs of their commanders and captains with fine-tooth combs. He supposed it was logical, really; they would want to know if there was more to what the captain was saying in a mission report. But the reminder of how he had blown up at Soval brought back bad memories, especially since the Ambassador had proven to be a great ally following that mess with V'las and the insane plan to conquer the Andorians.

It had been a blow to Archer's general image of the Vulcan ambassador that all those years of looking down on humans had just been his general orders by a reluctant High Command to make sure humans who had come out of a global war which had devastated the entire planet, only to rebuild it in less time than the Vulcans themselves did not make mistakes the Vulcans hadn't made in the same situation.

To say he was surprised to learn the last conversation held between Soval and Admiral Forrest (Archer still could not believe Forrest was dead; it was so shocking, it was almost unbelievable) revealed that Vulcans were actually afraid of humans because humans reminded the Vulcans of themselves, how the Vulcans had warred among themselves and would have likely wiped themselves out if Surak's philosophy of logic and peace hadn't made the impact it had, rebuilding in just 1,500 years before reaching the stars, while for humanity the same feat only took a century, and the High Command was more than a little intimidated by what humans would accomplish if given advanced technology.

Seriously, if Archer had learnt that little tidbit he would not have believed it. And yet, he had remembered his feelings towards the Vulcans in the last few years although as Enterprise had travelled through space, he'd been getting insights into their behaviour and their reasons for 'holding Earth back.'

The time that made him question his own prejudice towards Vulcans, on the whole, had been that business where the Valakians had wanted Phlox to help them deal with their plague, only to discover the Menk were evolving. When Phlox had made it clear the whole thing was a sign of natural evolution, Archer had needed to accept the Denobulan doctor had a point; they could not interfere, and they didn't have any right to meddle. But the Valakians wanted Earth's growing warp technology.

He had known from the moment they'd asked he was going to have to refuse. Archer, despite not being an engineer, had been around warp specialists and scientists his entire life. But it was well known how dangerous and volatile antimatter was. Every schoolchild knew how dangerous antimatter was, the Valakians didn't. Sure, even if they had stayed to help, it would be decades before the Valakians were even able to crack warp 1. T'Pol's response was typical, really, but Archer despite telling her he had told the Valakians he'd think about his answer, had made his decision already.

He'd had no intention of giving them warp technology. Impulse technology, perhaps. Artificial gravity, maybe, but not warp technology. The Vulcans may consider him and other humans... emotional, but stupid was not one of them. The Valakian's science was too primitive to understand the dangers of antimatter, and if it blew up in their faces, it could cause terrible damage. Enterprise's warp five engine was the most powerful Earth had built so far, but their technology was growing. Perhaps if the Valakians had broken the warp barrier, things would be different, but they hadn't. When he'd been asked to provide that technical information he had known it would have to be a no. But during that conversation with T'Pol, he had suggested they help the Valakians, only for her to point out the Vulcans had done the same for humans. And they were still there.

Archer went silent as he remembered how he had remembered all those times he had lashed out at the Vulcans, despising their supercilious attitudes and how they believed humans were nothing more than a primitive race of insects, believing they were deliberately holding humans back under a pretence of helping them get ready. For the first time, he wondered if he had misjudged them. Oh, sure - he still resented the Vulcans for their general arrogance, but during that conversation with T'Pol, he had mentally pictured the scene.

After Enterprise had sent off a communique back to Earth telling Starfleet Command about his intentions, Forrest and the others would debate about the idea, and they would likely agree since the prospect of being a mentor to a species, or two species if you took the Menk into account. Ships travelling at warp 3 would then arrive on the planet, and they would help the Valakians develop scientifically and technologically.

With a bit of luck, the Valakians would eventually get a good understanding of physics to understand how warp technology worked, and they would receive the scientific tuition needed to do it for themselves before they were ready to launch.

But they couldn't.

Earth was still developing itself.

If they had helped the Valakians, sure it might have given them a host of opportunities to make mistakes, but mistakes which would have terrible lasting consequences.

The fact was humanity just was not ready (it was hard for him to even accept that) to guide other races. In any case, Archer could see numerous scenarios where things would grow out of control. For instance, what if human guidance and technological aid inspired the Valakians to commit genocide against the Menk? Humanity wanted to explore space, not destroy life.

No, the Valakians needed to develop on their own. How long it would be before the Menk became dominant, Archer had no idea.

But ever since that mess with the Cogenitor and Trip, Archer had come to realise the dangers of meddling in other races affairs was the worst idea ever. The Vulcans had learnt that lesson a long time ago, but now he had learnt it as well. He closed his eyes and exorcised the thoughts swirling in his mind, facing up to the real reasons why he was focusing on the past.

He was trying to avoid the memories of everything he had seen the first time he had been in the Delphic Expanse. In that year… everything had turned so dark, so seemingly helpless while he had tried hard to maintain his grip on reality. To the rest of the crew, he had become a hard, unrelenting man, but in truth…. He had been frightened. He had been terrified he was going to fail to save Earth (he would not think of that terrible alternate timeline he had observed where Earth had been destroyed by the Xindi, decimating the human race and turning them into refugees while he had been reduced to a senile state), terrified of what was going to happen when the Xindi were finally encountered while trying to go out of his way to avoid a major conflict until he knew the location of the weapon they were building.

But all the things he had done; the way he had tortured that Ossarian pirate, preparing to kill Gralik even if the Xindi-Arboreal had not done anything to them and hadn't even known what his fellow Xindi was currently doing behind the scenes (that mess in Carpenter Street had truly made Archer think about the Arboreal, and how he would react if he had seen what the Reptilians were doing), manipulated Sim, stranded that harmless group of people in space, manipulated and brainwashed Degra…

Jonathan had never even considered himself capable of any of those things, and it terrified him he had even contemplated any of it, never mind doing it. But the scary thing was, he knew he would have no hesitation in doing worse if another race planned to blow up Earth and reduce it into an asteroid field.

For two years before the mess with the Xindi, he and Trip had been making it clear to T'Pol and others humanity had changed. No longer were they the war-obsessed monsters who'd torn Earth to pieces for reasons that made no sense looking back from a historical point of view, although the Vulcan science officer had no right to argue considering what Archer knew of their history, truthfully he knew human nature could not be changed in two hundred years. During that time in the Expanse, Archer had often wondered if she was going to give them a 'Sure, you've changed so much' look.

All of those things he had done boiled over as he remembered the rest of it; the Insectoid and Reptilian attack to get hold of human DNA with Raijin's aid in case the primary weapon failed to completely wipe out all humans, that incident with that lost human group who'd been kidnapped by aliens and dragged to the Expanse to work as slaves, fighting D'Jamat while the Triannon religious leader was fighting in that pointless crusade that ironically meant nothing, that mess on Carpenters' Street, where Daniels had come back to haunt the crew to tell him the time travellers who'd provoked the Xindi were more dangerous than they'd heard.

Sometimes Archer wished Cochrane had invented a time machine instead of just warp technology; it would make life much simpler. With time travel, they would be able to explore eras as well as places, but at the same time, they wouldn't feel like they were pawns on some extra-dimensional chessboard. That was how he had come to see the Temporal Cold War.

It had been hard to accept the Xindi were manipulated by time travellers in the first place, learning a transdimensional species was trying to wipe out humanity so the Federation that Daniels had talked about during their encounters wouldn't thwart their plans to 'terraform' space into a transdimensional wasteland and dealing with it all was hard to take. There had been moments where Archer had thought he was dreaming.

Archer looked back at the log recording he had been dictating, the log that was still on the screen of his Ready Room computer.

"Computer, resume log," he whispered.

The computer chirped, unfreezing the entry, waiting for him to begin to speak. "We are maintaining continuous watch for Xindi activity; while the leftover remnant of their Council may have survived, and I have faith in members like Jannar so the Insectoids and the Reptilians don't attack us when they realise we're here. But at the same time, I don't want to take any risks."

The door chimed. Archer looked up, eyes crinkling as he wondered who was outside.

"Computer, end recording and log the recording," Archer instructed before he raised his voice. "Come in."

The door opened and T'Pol stepped in holding a PADD. She stepped into the room and handed it to him while keeping her distance. Archer took the PADD while he looked at her sympathetically. The last year had been truly rough on T'Pol, who had become one of his best friends despite how he had treated her before. That mess with the Syrannites and how her mother was one of the many casualties thanks to the corrupt High Command and the loss of her daughter was truly painful for her. Archer knew T'Pol had been as affected by the Trellium D as the crew of the Seleya had, but she was nowhere near the level of insanity as those Vulcans.

Seeing her expression, the way she held herself…. Archer knew he shouldn't be too surprised if the Vulcan science officer hadn't originally planned on leaving Enterprise. Everyone had been mentally tortured by this Expanse, T'Pol was not alone there.

"The scan analysis. Our first sensor sweeps have been completed," T'Pol said quietly, her mental disciplines masking how she felt.

Archer scanned the PADD. "No thermobaric clouds. No spatial anomalies…. Well, at least we don't need to go through that hell again," he commented, perusing the PADD with greater interest. "There's a binary star system within range. I remember that; we avoided it when we got to the other side after that fight with Duras….," he commented, not feeling particularly bothered they wouldn't see the arrogant blustering Klingon anymore.

"Shall I inform Mr Mayweather to set a course?"

"Definitely. It would certainly send a message to the crew we are back to being explorers now we're here," Archer said, mentally contemplating visiting some of the other worlds they'd encountered, however, they would be avoiding that world with the genetic virus which transformed aliens into a different species. "Any….Xindi activity?" He asked carefully.

"No," T'Pol replied.

Archer nodded. "Good. But maintain watch just in case."

"You suspect they will attack us?"

"I hope not; we have a few allies among them, but you know how belligerent the Reptilians and the Insectoids are. The last thing I want is to get into a fight with them. And that includes the Triannons."

"The Triannons are likely struggling to rebuild, Captain," T'Pol pointed out although Archer knew her well enough to gather she shared the sentiment. "Their war devastated their entire planet, reducing their population down to a small number. D'Jamat's attack on those so-called heretics only made things worse. Even if they learn we are here, they will probably avoid us as they have their problems to concern themselves with."

While he knew she was right in theory, Archer knew not every species had the Vulcan gift of logic. He would make sure Malcolm and the MACO's were prepared for anything, he would not allow the Triannons another foothold on the ship.

X

T'Pol had been around humans long enough to get a good idea of what they were truly thinking, and while her connection with Trip had allowed her to gain a better understanding of the human mind, it did frustrate and annoy her whenever humans didn't follow the same logical thoughts as a Vulcan.

But the most frustrating thing was she could see the matter from their perspective whereas before she had been as confused and annoyed about humans like every other Vulcan.

She had been, as humans would say, 'in two minds' about returning to the Delphic Expanse. The earlier expedition into the Expanse to locate and destroy the Xindi weapon following the probe which had cut a deep line of destruction on the planet's surface which killed seven million innocent people, shocking and outraging the human race which had terrible repercussions for human-alien relations later, although it was logical for them to do that.

The Delphic Expanse was a hazard area in space. All Vulcans had known about the region, with the thermobaric clouds surrounding the area, and rumours of there being hostile species, and areas the laws of physics did not apply which was an oddity in itself. But the few ships to come back… the crews were either dead or close to death. And then there was what had happened to the crews of the two Vulcan starships, the Vaankara and Seleya. Both crews had gone insane, but now they knew what had happened….a fate T'Pol herself had nearly endured. She pushed those thoughts aside to focus on the conversation she was having.

"Maybe, but considering how obsessive they were with their religion, its probably a good idea-," Archer's voice brought her out of her thoughts, forcing her to focus on the conversation on hand, but what happened next shocked her.

When her captain reached the word idea, he suddenly seemed to freeze - T'Pol would later look back, and she would wish she could find a better description, but it was apt. Captain Archer just…froze midsentence.

"Captain?" She asked cautiously, wondering if the human's mind had come up with a thought, and he had gone silent to dwell on it. T'Pol fully expected Archer to respond to her prompt, but he didn't. "Captain?" She tried again, but Archer remained silent.

Ever since she had injected liberal amounts of Trellium D to experience the rush of emotions she usually kept suppressed and under her control at all times, T'Pol experienced moments where she experienced emotion without being able to control herself. This was one of those times. Instead of looking at the situation logically, she instead spent a minute on the point of panic. When she finally regained her composure, T'Pol looked around the room to see if there was anything else out of the ordinary while she studied Archer properly for the first time.

The human Starfleet officer was completely frozen, and he didn't seem to be breathing. That stunned T'Pol; he should have been breathing, but he was completely still like a waxwork. T'Pol was about to summon Phlox to help, and she even had her hand on the comm button, but then her eyes caught sight of the computer screen. The digital clock on the screen was frozen as well. The clock was frozen at 10:05:07 and no matter how hard she stared at the screen, the time did not change.

T'Pol had seen many strange things in her life; it was, as humans would say, an occupational hazard, for starships to discover unexplained phenomena as they travelled through space, and even though it wounded her pride, which she had kept buried underneath the layers of emotional control she had trained her mind to develop over the years as many other of her people, whenever the Enterprise discovered one strange phenomenon after another that was not filed away in the Vulcan database; that enormous starship with the disembodied entities, those cybernetic creatures who had threatened their lives, the Temporal Cold War and several other instances of time travel, that alien drone ship that was believed to be Romulan, that older version of Enterprise crewed by the descendants of the crew and captained by T'Pol's own son with Trip, that alien virus on the planet within the Expanse itself which spliced genetic material into people from other species, that dark matter nebula she and Captain Archer had ignited, the trans dimensional beings who manipulated the Xindi and had planted those spheres behind the cloaking barriers to 'terraform' a large chunk of the space here.

But she had never encountered anything like this.

Time seemed to be frozen. For a long moment, she wondered if Daniels was behind this, but she quickly dismissed it; Daniels may have been frustratingly enigmatic and his appearances sporadic, but he had never frozen time before. Thrown the ship back through time, yes. Made everyone think he was dead after getting shot, definitely, but he had never frozen time before.

It had taken T'Pol a long time to accept the reality of time travel after she had spent a long time believing it was impossible thanks to the Vulcan Science Directorate; that visit to stop the Xindi-Reptilians from devising a bioweapon to wiping out the human race by going back in time might have been…unpleasant, to say the least, but it had opened her eyes. However, when they had been dragged back into that alternate timeline where Vosk and the rest of his group had time travelled and gave Nazi Germany the means to conquer the world instead of their little empire being pushed and defeated further and further until Berlin itself had been besieged, T'Pol had been reluctant to believe time travel was that real.

It was hard enough accepting that mess in Carpenters' Street and that encounter with that second Enterprise, but at least there was logic to those two events; encountering an alternate timeline where history itself was skewed was too much, so she had denied it for a few hours until she realised it was one of those twists in time travel she would need to accept.

Was this another time travel event?

T'Pol reached out and touched the comm button, deciding to get help. "T'Pol to Phlox."

No reply.

A frown crossed T'Pol's face. Was the communication system working? "T'Pol to engineering," she asked, logically aware of the communication system was malfunctioning, then it was essential to get it repaired while she tried to determine what was wrong with the Captain.

No reply.

By now T'Pol was becoming seriously frightened even though she was trying hard to keep a grip on her emotional control, while she went through her mind the list of possible choices to solving this problem.

"- to be on the alert," Archer suddenly began speaking again, startling her and making her look at him in relief. "I'll have Malcolm keep an eye- T'Pol, is everything okay?" He suddenly asked, looking at her perplexed when he realised she was not where she had been before.

"No, it's not okay," T'Pol replied. "You just froze, and the clock was frozen on your computer screen. I also tried the comm. system but there was no reply."

X

"Well, accordin' to the sensors there was a subspace distortion around the ship, and it surrounded a good portion of the saucer and the stardrive section" Trip said, "but the clocks were definitely off."

The senior staff were currently at the aft of the bridge by the ops table while they looked at the sensor logs. As soon as T'Pol had given her report, Archer had called the senior staff together and made Trip and T'Pol examine the sensor readings to determine if something had gone wrong with time. If there was one thing he had learnt since he had taken command of the ship, it was to never dismiss the possibility of time travel and its various phenomena. If time travel or something related to it was happening, Archer wanted answers.

"And time really froze?" Hoshi asked.

Archer was thankful the crew were believing all of this; ever since they had originally left Spacedock to take that Klingon back home to his people, they had found themselves embroiled in the Temporal Cold War. Those incidents involving Daniels had proven to them the existence of time travel, and while not all of the crew had seen that alternate Second World War or Carpenter's Street, they had become more open-minded to the prospect of time travel.

"The digital clock on the captain's computer in the ready room didn't change," T'Pol confirmed.

"It seems you were not the only one to experience this phenomenon," Phlox spoke for the first time as he looked gravely round the table. "Three crew members came to sickbay, reporting they had been either having conversations with other members of the crew, or they had been simply walking down the corridors, and then they had seen others freeze. I am currently examining those who were frozen to make sure there aren't any lasting effects."

"Good thinking," Archer said thoughtfully. "There are so many things about time travel which make no sense, and we don't know what the long term effects are."

All of the staff at the table knew their captain well enough to see that he was clearly not happy by the latest turn of events. They didn't blame him either since many of the time-travelling fiascos either focused on a future their captain was meant to usher in, or they occurred when they learnt wanted or needed them to happen.

Malcolm voiced their concerns in his next question. "Could it be Daniels?" He asked.

Archer's face visibly twisted at the mention of the temporal agent who had masqueraded as a member of the crew for months, while all the time knowing far more about what was happening with the Suliban in that time and what was pushing them on. "I don't think so," he ground out, "Daniels would prefer to send you to whatever time period he felt was appropriate; he did it when I was on Degra's ship as we were pursuing the weapon, sending me seven years ahead to the signing of the charter of a coalition of planets, and he used the same trick when Enterprise was sent to that alternate timeline where Vosk had changed the past. This doesn't seem like his style."

"Then what is goin' on?" Trip asked.

"I don't know, but I want to find out what we're dealing with. Is there any way you two can adjust the sensors to pick up one of those moments in time where we're all frozen?" Archer turned to Trip and T'Pol.

"We could adjust the sensors to pick up subspace distortions and align our own clocks with local time," T'Pol said slowly, although they could all hear the Vulcan's uncertainty this would even work.

"What about the grapple beacons?" Trip asked thoughtfully. "They might be sensitive towards cloaking devices, but it won't take us long to modify them a bit to pick up subspace distortions."

T'Pol tilted her head in thought before she nodded. "It could," she agreed.

Archer nodded in satisfaction, hoping the pair of them would have no problem working with each other on this one. Trip and T'Pol had both been through a great deal after the last year with that mess with Terra Prime, but he hoped they could get the immediate job finished. "Get started."

The work took three hours, but when Trip and T'Pol were finished they both made it clear the system wasn't perfect, but it should be enough.

Archer took a breath. "Deploy the beacons."

The view screen suddenly came alive. It was as if a giant hand had taken a solvent to a painting depicting space, and had flicked the chemical against the painting, and ruthlessly scrubbed out patches. Here, the moments in time, the subspace distortions, floated around local space like bubbles blown in a street to entertain children. Archer leaned forward, seeing some of the pockets looked as large as his ship, or others were seemingly so small they could swallow Porthos and still have room for a few more dogs.

"So many of them," Hoshi commented softly.

Archer agreed with her. "Ahead slow, Travis, try to avoid them."

"Aye, sir," Travis moved his chair to take control of the joystick, and he gently guided Enterprise through the bubbles, but it was as tricky as it had been for the helm officer to perform the same thing when the ship had been trapped in that minefield a couple of years before. As Travis guided the ship through the free-floating bubbles, the ship lurched.

"What was that? Travis?" Archer asked while the helm officer checked the instruments at his console.

"Captain, whatever is happening it's affected the local gravity. We are being pulled towards something," Travis's fingers stabbed the console in front of him, desperately trying to make sense of the readings. "I can't break free-."

Suddenly the whole view on the screen changed. Where it had shown nothing but empty space beforehand, but now they were in the middle of a familiar solar system, with the familiar blue planet swathed in clouds.

"Earth?" Hoshi turned questioningly to the others.

"But when? T'Pol, Travis, scan the local region; check the astrometric readings to see how far we have travelled. Hoshi, contact Starfleet… if it exists in this moment of time," Archer turned to Reed, who was looking at the screen in surprise like everyone else.

"Anything on long-range sensors?" He asked.

Reed quickly checked. "Nothing, sir. But I am picking up something odd about Earth's atmosphere."

Archer felt himself tense. "What?"

Reed needed a moment to confirm the readings, but when he did he lifted his head, looking very grave. "There are trace elements of radioactivity in the atmosphere of the planet," he replied.

"What?" Archer couldn't believe what he was hearing, ignoring the gasps from the other members of the bridge crew.

Malcolm was about to go on when T'Pol added to the report. "The radioactive decay has been occurring for at least ten years. I have also been scanning many of the cities; they have been heavily damaged. And much of the infrastructure known in the 22nd century is either not functional, or it doesn't exist."

"So we've travelled back in time," Archer commented, his mind ringing a distant bell. Cities destroyed? Radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere, present for ten years….

"Captain, I've just run an astrometric scan," Travis's grim but incredulous voice cut through his thoughts. "I had to run it twice to be certain, but I'm positive we are in the late 21st century."

Archer closed his eyes, nodding. "That makes sense," he whispered.

"Captain, there's a disturbance on sensors. I'm putting it up on the viewscreen," T'Pol reported, but Archer's eyes remained fixed on the screen as the picture changed, this time showing a different angle of Earth. Space seemed to be spinning and frothing with blue-white energy, which seemed to be forming a large hole in space.

Archer was about to have T'Pol report on the scans he knew she was running on the phenomenon… only to stay silent when something emerged from the vortex. It was a dull, grey leaden sphere, and it came out of the vortex before slowing down until it was orbiting the planet below.

"Malcolm?" Archer turned to the Tactical chief, who was already scanning the ship.

Reed looked up from his console, a look of dread on his face. "No, not them…. Captain," Reed looked up, his expression one of horror, "the power readings from that ship match the captured and modified transport ship stolen by those cybernetic beings from the Arctic."

The moment the report was out of Reed's mouth, the senior staff members on the bridge stiffened as they remembered the incident two years ago where a group of scientists had disappeared after they had discovered two cyborgs buried in the ice for a hundred years. They had pursued the transport ship, believing the researchers were prisoners... only to discover they had been gruesomely transformed into unfeeling cyborgs like their captors. Vicious, deadly, and hostile, the cybernetic lifeforms had tried to take over the ship, and they had used cunning tactics to try to take the ship. If it hadn't been for Archer and Reed, who had planted explosives on their form of warp drive, they would likely have been "assimilated."

"Tactical alert. Arm phase cannons and torpedoes," Archer turned his attention away from Reed to face the screen again, his mind going over what he remembered of the story Zefram Cochrane had given, about those cyborg things from the future. If they were here, then-

"Sir, they are firing on the planet!" Reed reported, although he didn't need to, Archer could see the pulses of devastating blue light as they were fired on Earth below. Earth, already seriously devastated by the Third World War, just took it.

"Lock weapons," Archer ordered, momentarily wondering where this group of humans from the future were supposed to be, but he wondered for a moment if he and his crew were meant to be those humans. But then he decided it didn't matter; the whole subject of predestination paradoxes wasn't something he was interested in, but regardless, he was not about to let an alien race devastate the future because they wanted something from Earth. Ever since he had seen that other timeline where the Xindi had destroyed Earth while he was incapacitated, Archer had sworn never to let it happen again on his watch.

He was just about to give the command to fire when T'Pol spoke up, "Captain, something is coming from the vortex."

Archer tensed, but when he saw what came out of the vortex, his mouth dropped. "Oh, my god," he whispered.