TITLE: Hidden Truths Part Eleven

SUMMARY: Revelations

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing trek related.

NOTES: Here's the next part you lovely people.

^~*~^

Chapter Eleven

APEX

"Listen to me, I don't know what a Kamidari is but I'm pretty sure we don't have one on Enterprise." Jon tried. Maybe these aliens had the wrong ship. The notion wasn't entirely dismissible.

"Quiet!" His captor shouted. Jon was getting real fed up with meeting new species that always wanted to kill him. He wondered what feat of ingenuity had kept him alive all this time. Fate? Good Captaining skills? Dumb luck? Whatever it was Jon sure hoped that it wasn't going to fail him now, seeing as he doubted sincerely that the aliens would get what they were looking for.

^~*~^

Ten minutes? That wasn't enough time to make a decision like this....But what choice did he have - let the Captain die or reveal himself to the entire crew, seriously screwing up everything he'd worked so hard to achieve. Then again, hadn't he already done that by rescuing Hoshi?

Trip could not let Jon die. That much was obvious. So how could the situation be remedied? Then it came to him.

Make up a new choice.

^~*~^

"Kamidari! You have less than one minute!"

Jon was getting slightly worried now. If whatever, or whoever these people wanted didn't come through that door, would they really kill him? Considering their non-hesitant attack on Enterprise when they had first appeared, it was certainly plausible. But Jon wouldn't go out without a fight. There were only seven or so of them. With large weapons. And armour. Who were considerably larger and stronger than he.

No problem.

"Seems your Kamidari is not very good at protecting you Archer." The leader of the aliens scoffed.

"Hold it!"

Trip?! What was he doing? Saving him, no doubt. *Well he better have a damn good plan.*

"I'm who you're looking for. Now let him go."

The leader of the Kett looked Trip up and down. "Prove you are Kamidari."

"If you say so." Trip mumbled. He turned to a random Kett and stared him in the eye, as he had done on Regis Jata with the Nistet. Then he willed the alien to spray his companions with gunfire. "Captain, get down!" Trip shouted, as he also dived for cover. When the Kett were nothing but corpses littering the floor, he forced their killer to turn the gun on himself. Soon the chaos was over.

"Come on, we have to take back the ship." Trip told Jon.

"What? Not until you tell me what the hell just happened!"

"I don't know, I guess one of 'em just went nuts."

"That's a damn lie, Trip! It was you. You did this."

"Cap'n I don't know what you're talking about." Trip lied. It was worth one last shot at playing the innocent. But Jon was a smart man, and Trip was pretty sure he wouldn't back down.

"I think you do. And I think I deserve some answers."

He was right. Jon deserved to know the truth, after all it was Trip that put him in danger, put the whole ship in danger. But first priority was to eliminate that danger. "Not now. First we have to close that rift, and destroy that damn Kett ship."

"Kett? These aliens? They came through this... this rift?" Jon said. He was having trouble coping with what he had just witnessed.

"That's right. Please, I'll tell you everything, I promise, Cap'n. But first we have to close that rift or it's going to get bigger, and more ships will come."

"What do they want?" Jon asked. If aliens were going to destroy Enterprise, he wanted to know why.

*Time to spill your guts Charles Tucker* Trip sighed and looked into his friends' eyes.

"Me."

^~*~^

"You. All these aliens, that huge ship, they want you?"

"There's no time for explanations right now, we have to take back the ship!"

"Damn it Trip you are gonna tell me what the hell is going on right now. I have been you're Captain and your friend for too long. Don't lie to me. You owe me that much."

Trip couldn't agree more. After everything they had been through, Trip had hated lying to his friends so much. But the worst part was lying to Jon. He was putting his life on the line practically everyday, and still found the time to be a good friend and a courageous man. Trip had always thought what he was doing was for Jon's protection, but what could there be that his Captain could not defeat? It was time to tell everything. Time to make up for all the years of deception.

"You heard the Kett talk about a Kamidari, right?" He opened, starting at the very beginning.

"Right." Jon acknowledged.

"That's me. My race. I'm not human, Jon."

For a moment Archer couldn't form a single word. "Not human?"

"Well, I am, and I'm not. The Kamidari are a race of watchers. We watch over time, making sure nothing is changed." Trip tried to put his existence into a simple sentence

"You mean like Daniels?"

Trip managed a slight laugh. "We're bigger than Daniels. We oversee everything, I mean, them, the Suliban, everything. The only people who know we exist are the Kett."

"The aliens that want to kill you."

"That's right. There are rifts through time, that's how the Kamidari travel, and when the Kett discovered the rifts they started interfering. They attacked key elements in the time-line and the future was drastically changed. We had to put it right then send people to guard the pivotal places and beings. I was sent to guard Enterprise." Trip could see the look of utter betrayal forming in Jon's face. It seemed the news was just about seeping into Jon's mind. "Nothing about our friendship was fake Captain." Trip insisted.

"I'm not your Captain. I don't even know who you are." Jon scorned. He believed the story, he had to after everything he'd seen, but he couldn't accept it.

"I'm still me! I never lied to you, I just.....hid certain truths." Trip said carefully.

"That's the same as lying Trip." Jon looked to the side and laughed a hurt laugh. "I don't suppose Charles Tucker is your real name."

"Actually we don't use names. But I have been Charles Tucker for so long, it's who I am."

"I can't even begin to understand who you are. You know what, I can't deal with this right now, time-travelling aliens are trying to destroy my ship." Jon spat out the last sentence. It was clear who he blamed for everything. "Just tell me how we get rid of the Kett."

Trip didn't want Jon to hate him. He wanted to apologise and explain why he had lied, and why everything was happening, but it seemed Jon needed a little more time. "Their leader is dead. If we tell them that, they'll go back to their ship and destroy Enterprise. But if we destroy their ship, others will come through the rift."

"So what do we do?"

"We have to destroy their ship, then close the rift before reinforcement's arrive."

"We can't combat that kind of technology."

"Sure we can."

^~*~^

The bridge of Enterprise aired a bizarre atmosphere. Three crew-members would never look at Trip in the same way again. Others retained their blissful ignorance while Trip felt nothing but loneliness and remorse amongst the people he called his closest friends.

Trip nodded at the distant Archer when he'd finished locking the weapons onto the Kett ship's weak point. Hoshi opened a com channel and Jon began his message.

"This is Captain Archer, the guy whose ship it is your trespassing on. Your leader has been killed, I suggest you leave my vessel and be on your way, or we will destroy your ship."

"All alien life-forms have been transported off the ship Sir." Malcolm declared. The crew waited to see if the Kett would leave, or fire, like Trip had said. Sure enough.... "They're powering up weapons."

"Fire." Jon ordered.

In a riot of fire the Kett ship exploded slowly, deck by deck. The weak point Trip had targeted was evidently correct. There was no time for relief, or even time to watch the fires die down. It was time to close the rift. Jon stood up. "Commander Tucker." He urged. Trip rose. The brutal formality stabbed him through the heart.

^~*~^

End of Chapter Eleven

^~*~^