Chapter 6: Broken Bow

April 2151

Dawn smiled as she walked next to Buffy around Spacedock. In the almost ninety years since Zefram had flown the Phoenix with the help of the Enterprise crew, Earth had come a long way. So had she and Buffy. In the years afterwards the sisters had gone on a few dates to try and sort out the growing feelings they had for each other.

"Well, Dawn," said a voice behind the sisters, "you think she'll fly?"

Buffy and Dawn turned and saw Jonathan Archer and smiled.

"She'll fly," Dawn said.

Archer was one of the very few people who knew who Dawn and Buffy were. And it was only because he had attended the dedication ceremony for the Warp Five complex thirty years earlier where Dawn and Buffy had been in attendance, standing as they had for the sixty years previous by Cochrane's side.

"I wish my dad could've seen this. ..."

"And we wish Zefram could have seen this also," Buffy said. "But he's gone … In my opinion some things just didn't come out fair. I don't think anybody in Starfleet'll ever quite forgive the Vulcans for stalling."

"The worst part is how they pretend they didn't," Archer commented drably, "as if we're too silly to know the difference. I've been waiting thirty years for them to open up, and it's never really happened. They just keep dangling that carrot."

Dawn waved her hand toward the ship in the drydock before them. "And look at what we've done."

Archer smiled, heartened, and drew a deep breath. "Yes ..." He gazed for a moment at the underbelly of the meaty, stubborn-looking ship's wide saucer section, then turned a grateful regard to Buffy and Dawn. "With you two around, who needs a ship's doctor?"

Buffy laughed. "You do, or have you forgotten we are not officially a part of your crew. We are engineering advisors."

Archer smiled, and sighed happily. "God, she's beautiful. ..."

"We know," Dawn said. But she did not wholly agree with the sentiment. She had seen another ship that had borne the same name as this one, Enterprise. The NX-01 was only a stepping stone to that ship.

Suddenly the comm unit next to Dawn chirped. She tapped it. "Advisor Summers."

"Is Captain Archer with you?"

Archer moved beside Dawn. "Go ahead."

"Admiral Forrest needs you at Starfleet Medical right away."

"Very well," Archer called to the com. "Ask him to stand by. I'm on my way."

"Thank you, sir."

Buffy and Dawn quickly followed Archer to a waiting shuttle and headed down to Earth. Upon reaching Starfleet Medical they were joined by Admirals Forrest and Leonard, Commander Williams, Ambassadors Soval and Tos and a female Vulcan.

The Admiral's knew who Buffy and Dawn were and knew that the Vulcan's had pulled strings to classify them at the highest levels. He didn't really know why, but he didn't ask them to leave either. In fact he had been debating asking them to stay on the Enterprise after her shakedown as permanent officers.

Buffy and Dawn instantly recognized the man in the bed for what he was, Klingon. They wondered if this man could be Worf's ancestor.

"Admiral," Archer spoke directly to Forrest and made eye contact with the other two humans, deliberately leaving out the two Vulcans, who now gazed at him with mixed disapproval.

"John, I think you know everyone," Forrest mentioned, whether it was true or not.

"Not everyone." Archer studied the big sick guy through the isolation window.

Admiral Leonard tried to help. "He's a Kling-ott."

"A Klingon," one of the Vulcans corrected.

"Where'd you find him?" Dawn asked.

"Oklahoma," Forrest replied.

"Tulsa, right?" Archer moved closer to the glass.

"A wheat farmer named Moore shot him with a plasma rifle," Forrest filled in. "Says it was self-defense."

"Fortunately," Tos added, "Soval and I have maintained close contact with Qo'noS since the incident occurred."

Archer turned. "Qo'noS?"

"It's the Klingon homeworld," Admiral Leonard said, proud that he could pronounce it.

Forrest eagerly added, "This gentleman is some kind of courier. Evidently, he was carrying crucial information back to his people—"

"When he was nearly killed by your farmer," Soval stuck in.

Archer turned and faced them all.

Dawn could tell just from Archer's posture he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Carefully Admiral Forrest finally admitted, "Ambassador Soval thinks it would be best if we push back your launch until we've cleared this up—"

"Well, isn't that a surprise?" Archer snapped. He looked directly at Soval. "You'd think they'd come up with something a little more imaginative this time."

Soval's face was impassive. "Captain, the last thing your people need is to make an enemy of the Klingon Empire."

"If we hadn't convinced them," Tos filled in, "to let us take Klaang's corpse back to Qo'noS, Earth would most likely be facing a squadron of warbirds by the end of—"

"Corpse?" Buffy broke in. "Is he dead?" She stepped past Soval and Admiral Leonard to the ICU door, opened it, and cued a passing physician. "Excuse me—is the Klingon dead?"

"His autonomic system was disrupted by the blast, but his redundant neural functions are still intact, which—"

"Is he going to die?" Buffy asked.

"Not necessarily."

"Let me get this straight," Buffy spun on Soval. "You're going to disconnect him from life support, even though he could recover. Where's the logic in that?"

"Klaang's culture finds honor in death," Soval explained.

"I know that the Klingons have a sense of honor," Buffy said as she remembered Worf. "That they are a warrior race. That they dream of dying in battle. That does not mean that is the only diplomatic solution, Ambassador."

"Advisor … Commander Summers is correct," Forrest said. "We're not murderers."

Buffy noted the fact that Forrest had put a rank to her name. She and Dawn both had thought about leaving Earth for a while, just as a test to see if Dawn's Millennial senses were tied to Earth or whether Dawn was simply a very powerful empath.

Archer turned a cold shoulder to the Vulcans and faced Forrest. "You're not going to let them do this, are you?"

Soval leaned a little toward them. "The Klingons have demanded we return Klaang immediately."

"Admiral?" Dawn said throwing her weight in with Archer and Buffy.

Forrest fidgeted. "We may ... need to defer to their judgment," he said, trying to make everybody happy.

"We've deferred to their judgment for a hundred years," Archer snapped.

"John—"

"He's right," Buffy said as she looked first at Dawn and then Archer and finally Soval the only ones that knew she and Dawn were Millennial. "Mine and Dawn's grandmothers were part of the team that built the Phoenix with Cochrane. I don't think either of them would like to know that the Vulcan's have held us back. So how much longer are they going to?"

The Vulcan female stepped forward, quite suddenly, right through the two elder ambassadors. She was the only one with the guts to say what she was thinking.

"Until you've proven you're ready."

Dawn stepped up in front of the woman. "Do you know who I am?" she asked.

The Vulcan female looked at the ambassadors and then back at Dawn. "No, ma'am."

"You will …" Dawn started.

"May I speak with you, Dawn," Soval said, "in private."

Dawn glared at Soval and then nodded as they walked several feet away.

"Are you sure you wish to go down this road?" Soval asked. "It will reveal that while you and your sister are human, that you are genetic anomalies. Are you sure you want to do that?"

"Soval," Dawn sighed. "You have been a good friend since you found out how old Buffy and I are. And you did us a great favor pulling in some favors of your own to get Starfleet to mark our records, classified at the highest levels. But Earth needs this. I need this."

"Why do you need this?" Soval asked.

"I need to know if my abilities are tied to Earth or simply empathic in nature. I need to be out there."

"You can come on one of our ships."

"I need a ship where the crew feels emotions," Dawn replied. "While Vulcans can feel emotion you suppress them for logic. I need a human crew."

"Why this mission?" Soval wondered. "Why are you and Buffy so impassioned on helping Archer to take the Klingon back to Qo'nos."

"Because we agree with him," Dawn replied. "Since Zefram's warp flight. Vulcan has been holding us, Earth, back. Besides if we return him alive, it could build trust between us and the Klingons."

"And it may not," Soval answered. "And the Klingons definitely will not see it the way you do."

"I know that," Dawn said. "He is not the first Klingon I've met. Remember the times Zefram mentioned cybernetic beings trying to interrupt his warp flight?" Soval nodded. "They were real. They came from the future to stop it. It was the crew of another ship, called Enterprise, that came back to stop it. On that ship was a Klingon. He was a member of their crew and answered to a human captain."

"Time travel is …"

"Possible," Dawn said. "Buffy and I were onboard their ship. Far more advanced than anything we had seen."

"How come we did not know they were there?" Soval asked.

"Because they made sure not to be detected so as not to alter their history any more than it had been altered," Dawn said. "This is why Buffy and I are siding with Archer. Maybe this Klingon is what leads them to allying with us. And even if it's not, that Klingon for all we know could be Worf's ancestor. If he is, we have to make sure he lives." Soval shook his head as she walked back over to the rest of the group. "Admiral, your decision."

"We've been waiting nearly a century, Ambassador," Forrest said as Soval returned to them. "This seems as good a time as any to get started."

"Listen to me," said Soval, his voice noticeably louder as he looked toward Dawn, trying to tell her that even with this future knowledge they had no way of knowing for sure if any of what happened now would affect it. "You're making a mistake."

Archer's reply was calm, but there was no mistaking the condescension. "When your logic doesn't work, you raise your voice? You have, been on Earth too long."

The debate was over.

The Vulcans turned and quickly and quietly left the room.

Forrest waited until they were gone, then winked at Leonard and spoke to Archer, Buffy and Dawn. "I had a feeling their approach wouldn't sit too well with the three of you. John, don't screw this up."

"Admiral," Buffy said," the ranks."

Forrest looked to Buffy and smiled. "They're yours if you want them. I know you two wanted to travel for a bit. I don't know the reasons why. But this will give you both the chance." He looked to Archer. "Their valuable John, even I know that. I may not know what is in their file that has it so heavily classified. But I know that they are valuable, find a place for them in your crew."

Archer winked at Buffy and Dawn. "I'll see you both onboard, Commanders."

"Yes, sir," Buffy and Dawn replied and they and Archer laughed.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

"But the shipment was confirmed for this afternoon," Malcolm Reed, the Enterprise's armory office, protested as Buffy and Dawn walked up to them onboard the Enterprise. "I got the bill of lading. How do these things occur? Inefficiency?"

Trip Tucker, the Chief Engineer, shrugged as he looked at the two women. He recognized them of course; as they had helped design the Warp Five engine. Add on top of that Archer had told him that the blonde was to be his executive officer and the brunette was going to be flittering between being his own assistant and the assistant communications officer. Of course with her background he had to wonder why it wasn't the other way around with him being her assistant. "We've had six foul-ups already, and it's not even breakfast. You're not the only one."

"All involving shipments?" Travis Mayweather, the helmsman, asked.

"All but two, which were misinstallations of critical parts for the motive power system. I have to watch my engineers like a mama lion." Tucker gave a nod to Buffy and Dawn. "Commanders."

"Don't worry," Buffy said. "We're not underway so we won't stand on who is a superior rank and who is not. I'm Buffy and this is Dawn."

"Who made these misinstallations?" Reed asked with a slight nod to Buffy to acknowledge what she had just said.

"Don't know. We're trying to trace them, but nobody seems to know where the work orders are coming from. Just confusion, is what I think."

"Well, I don't care for that at all ... where's the captain?"

"Oh, him?" Tucker shrugged again. "Where would you be if you had just ordered your ship fitted out with a seventy-two-hour readiness deadline and you didn't even have a deflector or a command staff …?"

"He's in Brazil," Dawn said. "Rounding out his command staff upon a recommendation I made. I know languages which is why I will be flitting between your department and communications. But I'm not the best and John, wanted the best. So I recommended to him, Hoshi Sato."