After a glorious week of hiking, swimming, light sunburns, and eating way too mamy s'mores, shore leave ended and they returned to the Enterprise. Elle had a very nice tan, if she did say so herself, and she knew how to start fires now, which would be useful in the future.

Another week in orbit around the base and the Enterprise was fully restored to its former glory. "And a good thing too, cap'n, for the mods the Kelvan had us put in woulda blown us up regardless," Scotty informed them at breakfast the day they shipped out. "They miscalculated the effecct of transwarp on duoneutronium. Woulda sheared us clean in half."

"Good to know," Kirk said after a startle moment. "And now?"

"Better than ever, captain."

"Excellent, Mr. Scott, thank you." The captain glanced at Elle. "Did you know about that?"

She shook her head. "I had no idea."

"Hm."

She suppressed a shudder. If they hadn't managed to take back the ship, they would've died in the void between galaxies, lost for another three hundred years. "Well, at least that didn't happen," she said, trying to be matter-of-fact. "Where are we going now?"

"HQ asked us to investigate the whereabouts of the Exeter," Kirk said. "We haven't heard from them in six months and their quarterly report is late."

"The Exeter," Elle said, frowning. "Who's the captain?"

"Captain Ron Tracey, good man."

Elle bit her lip. "Where'd they disappear?"

"Somehwere around Omega Four." Kirk's gaze sharpened. "You recognize it?"

"Omega," Elle said slowly. "No, it's not that... that's Voyager... Omega, something. Oh, man, what was it?" She smacked her forehead a couple of times with the heel of her palm, trying to trace it back. "Oh... right. It's the cocaine episode."

The adults around the table startled. "Cocaine?" McCoy questioned. "That's been eradicated for two hundred years."

Elle started to laugh. "No, it's not really cocaine, it's just that's what we called it because it looked like little lines of coke, except," she sobered. "Except they're all dead. Sorry. It's not funny."

Kirk set his jaw. "Tell us what you know."

Elle narrated what she remembered of the episode. "And then you give this great rousing speech about democracy, very Captain America of you, and that's it. The end."

"The shock of losing his whole crew must've driven him mad," McCoy muttered, shaking his head. "Advocating genocide in this day in age..."

Kirk looked angry now. "And in doing so, breaking the Prime Directive," he said. He stood up and crossed over to the wall comm. "Kirk to bridge. Increase speed to warp six."

"Aye sir," said Sulu's Gamma shift pilot. "ETA, eight hours."

"Understood. Kirk out." He sat back down at the table. "We'll have to be incredibly careful, try and extract him before causing anymore damage to the native populations."

"What about restoring their democracy?" Elle asked. "What if there's really an American flag? Isn't that really weird, finding that way out here?"

"That part has to be fiction," Sulu said kindly. "There's no way a civilization would parallel Earth that closely and we have no record of a colony this far out."

Elle thought about the time period Star Trek was made in. "Yeah, you're right."

-/\-

The neat thing about not having to switch back and forth and keep pacing and timing in mind, aka not living in a television show, is that Star Fleet has its people carry button cams on their insignia as well as recording feeds from the tricorders. So Elle could watch the hazmat team wander the deserted Exeter on a livestream. Not that it was anything other than terrifying watching them scan dehydrated crystals that used to be people.

The hazmat team came back to the Enterprise, ran through strict decontamination protocols, and McCoy reported to the captain. "They've been reduced to their organic components, completely drained of all liquids," McCoy said. "I've never seen anything like it."

"And everyone on the planet gets infected?" Kirk asked.

"Looks like," McCoy said. "If we go down there, we have to stay long enough to pick up whatever immunity they've got."

"Hopefully we don't have to go down there at all," Kirk muttered. He turned to Uhura. "What have you discovered so far, Lt?"

She removed the earpiece from her ear. "My department has been scanning all outgoing signals from the planet, and so far we've been able to confirm Elle's knowledge. There was a war in the last generation or so, and the race called the Kohms won, practically exterminating the other side. The Yangs, as they're known, were reduced to almost stone-age civilization. The entertainment broadcasts we've been able to pick up portray them as almost Neanderthal-like."

Elle leaned on the dividing rail. "Seriously? It's real? The universe is really producing social commentary on Earth history?"

"Elle?"

"Sorry, I'm fourth-walling."

"What?"

"Never mind me, how did they get here?" Elle persisted. "They have to have some kind of history channel, we can scope out their like, Ancient Aliens documentaries and figure out how Earth got copy-pasted onto this planet."

"Our first priority is removing the Exeter crewmen," Kirk reminded her.

"Okay but after that we can figure it out, right?" Elle asked. "It could be important."

"If we find more evidence directly correlating with Earth's history, then yes," Kirk said patiently.

"Cool." Elle checked the time. Three minutes to her next class. "Oop, excuse me."

Kirk waved a hand. "Go on. We'll keep you updated."

"Thank you, sir." Elle left the bridge and headed for Engineering.

-/\-

That evening Elle headed for the observation deck. The captain wasn't there. Cmdr. Samir sat there instead. "Sorry, Elle, the captain's not back yet," Samir said.

"They went down to the planet?" Elle asked, surprised.

"Yup."

Elle snorted. "Of course."

-/\-

She was asleep when the comm chimed. "Elle here," she mumbled, reaching out to slap the button. "Wh's up?"

"An American flag," Kirk's voice said.

Elle sat up in bed, completely awake. "For reals?"

"For reals. Report to the conference room."

"Aye sir." Elle ignored the closing of the comm channel and rolled out of bed. She stomped into her sneakers and pulled a cardigan on over her pajamas. She snagged her meal card as she went out the door and made it to the conference room in record time.

The senior officers were all there, as well as the joint heads of Anthropology and Archaeology, Cmdr. Samir, and Cmdr. Sha'len. Elle got a cup of tea from the replicator and slid into the seat next to Chekov. To her relief, she wasn't the only person in pajamas.

"Bones?" Kirk asked, opening the meeting.

"Well, the reason we couldn't distinguish Captain Tracey from the rest is that, biologically, the natives of Omega Four are completely human. Besides the constrained gene pool, there's no mutations, abnormalities, or anything to distinguish one of them from one of us right now."

"So, what," Sulu said, "somebody picked up a cross section of Americans and East Asians from the middle of the Communist era and plopped them on Omega Four?"

"But why?" Chekov asked.

"Maybe they thought humanity was going to extinguish itself and created a backup colony," Scotty offered.

"Or they wanted to study the results if the communists won, but without disturbing the entire planet," Uhura suggested.

"Pure speculation," Spock said. "We cannot make assumptions about these as yet unknown people and their motives." He turned to the two dept heads. "Have your people been able to discover any archaeological sites of interest?"

"We've scanned the planet and marked four locations of interest," Samir said. "These seem to be underground structures that are intact, approx fifty feet under the surface. We've been scanning with more detail and it seems that the current inhabitants, the Yangs and the Kohms, have only been here for three hundred years."

"So somebody literally just transplanted them," Elle murmured.

"Yes."

"Can we access these underground structures?" Kirk asked.

"The transporters will get us there," Samir said. "We don't know if there's air, or what quality it will be."

"And they might be sealed for a reason," McCoy warned.

"Why don't we send a MALP," Elle said, stifling a yawn.

"A what."

"I'm watching Stargate," Elle said. "A little exploratory probe? We have those, right?"

Spock confirmed the Enterprise had them.

"All right. We've completed our rescue mission such as it is, and we'll finish the Exeter's mission here, to survey the planet and discover its history," Kirk said. "For now, everyone dismissed. Go to bed."

And everyone besides the science departments shuffled away to sleep.

-/\-

Elle woke up early the next morning and made a beeline for the A&A Departments. "Whattawegot?" she asked, bouncing on her toes.

"There's definitely air," Samir said. "We're ready to send a team down."

As this was purely scientific in nature, the captain let Spock take the lead. Spock, two engineers, two archaeologists, and two security officers beamed down to the largest of the underground chambers. The Enterprise and Elle watched from the comfort of the bridge. All hail the button cam.

Spock and the away team materialized and immediately a blue light swept over them. "Vulcan-human hybrid, Andorian, humans," a robotic voice announced. "State your ID numbers."

"We do not have ID numbers," Spock said.

A red light flashed. "Unauthorized personnel." And the computer bank promptly powered down. The air system and the lights stayed on.

"Fascinating," Spock murmured.

Elle suppressed a grin.

The away team puttered here and there, examining whatever let itself be examined. "This seems to be a long-distance transporter," Spock declared after a few minutes of poking at a console. "Capable of transporting over a hundred life signs at a time."

"That must be how they did it," Kirk said.

"Agreed," Spock replied. "The civilization capable of such technology must be hunreds of years more advanced than the Federation."

Elle rubbed at her forehead. "I feel like I should know this one," she muttered, scrunching up her face to concentrate better. Advanced civilization, poking around 1960's Earth, long-range transporters. Wait. "Wait," she said aloud. "Assignment: Earth. It's an episode that hasn't happened yet, but, oooh, what's it called. There's a civilization. Uhhhhhhh..." She bit her lip furiously. "The Aegis! That's who did this!"

The computer bank next to Cmdr Samir's elbow, the one that had turned itself off, lit up one single row of buttons.

Spock pounced on it. "Computer, was this colony established by the Aegis?"

"Affirmative."

"For what purpose?" Spock pressed.

"State the purpose of this query," the computer retorted.

"Knowledge," Spock said. "We wish to understand the history of this planet."

The computer ruminated on this for a moment and blinked a green light. "The reason is acceptable. The history of this planet is as follows. The Aegis wished to study the effects of opposing political parties in a controled zone, away from the oncoming Eugenics Wars. The Aegis relocated a subset of people involved in this war and established this colony."

"Except this time, the communists won," Samir said.

"Affirmative."

"What is the future of this colony?"

"To be human," the computer replied and shut down again.

Try as they might, nobody could get the computers to budge. Nor could they copy any information from the servers. All the information was stored on crystals that reminded Elle of Stargate DHD control crystals. Yes, okay, she might be obsessing about a new show instead of reading Walter Scott, but hey. That's life.

-/\-

The away team came back after some final scans and Spock sent the final report to Star Fleet.

Star Fleet replied as promptly as they were able. "They're sending a team to bring back the Exeter and a survey team for the Aegis sites," Kirk told Elle that evening. "We've been ordered back to base to drop off Captain Tracey and his crew."

Elle nodded. Five people out of four hundred and thirty. "Space is really dangerous," she said.

Kirk smiled teasingly. "You're just now realizing this?"

"No, I, it just, it just hit me again." Elle stared out at the window at the planet, peaceful from this high up. "At any second, any of us could die, no matter how much we know. Or don't know."

He squeezed her hand. "That's why we have to do the best we can, when we can," he said. "It doesn't even the odds, but it gives us an edge." He gave her a fond grin. "It helps that everyone on this ship is completely crazy."

"Even Spock?"

"Especially Spock."

They both laughed at that and the melancholy in Elle's heart eased.