Ensign Hoshi Sato took a deep breath and tried to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. Enterprise was due to arrive at the T'Roth's coordinates this afternoon, but the waiting was starting to get to her. It's just a problem with their comm system. She'd been repeating that to herself all morning, like a mantra, but it wasn't helping much. She needed a distraction. Unfortunately, much like the comm system, the bridge was dead quiet. Everybody was concentrating fully on their own stations. It's just a problem with their comm system.
"Everything all right, Hoshi?" Great, now the Captain had noticed her uneasiness. Get a grip Hoshi, she silently berated herself. Forcing a smile onto her face she replied, "Fine, Sir."
Thankfully, he seemed to buy it, or at least she thought so briefly until he leaned down towards her and said in his most reassuring tone, "Their comm system's probably just down."
Hoshi kept the smile plastered on her face and nodded agreement. On the inside however, she knew the Captain didn't believe that for a minute, and if she was being truly honest with herself, neither did she. Still, in some situations, Hoshi found that honesty could be overrated. It's just a problem with their comm system.
She breathed a sigh of relief as the Captain's attention was drawn away by the sound of the turbolift doors opening. She turned herself to see Commander Tucker entering, a tool kit in his hands. She let a small genuine smile escape her lips. Trip was no doubt here to complete the sensor upgrades. That meant he was going to be working with T'Pol. Hoshi always enjoyed listening to the Commander and Sub-commander trade barbs. They seemed to bring out the best, or worst, depending on how you viewed it, in each other. Listening to them would be just the distraction she needed.
"Did you sleep well, Commander?" T'Pol asked.
"Fine."
Hoshi frowned. There was an odd note in the Commander's tone. It was very subtle; Hoshi doubted anyone else would have picked up on it, but with her ears she tended to notice nuances like that. It was one of the reasons she was so good at linguistics.
"You don't sound so sure about that." Once again, Captain Archer proved her wrong. She supposed it was only natural; the two had been friends for a long time. If anyone besides herself would notice, the Captain was the most likely choice.
"Tossed and turned a bit," Trip admitted. "Guess I was a little anxious..." Instead of finishing the sentence, Trip gestured to the view screen. Oh, the Vulcans. Hoshi had temporarily forgotten them after all, just like she'd hoped, only now she remembered again. Damn. The Captain looked at Trip as if he didn't entirely believe him, but instead of commenting further he just returned to his chair and resumed staring at the view screen. Hoshi glanced at the Commander. Trip was staring at the Captain with a look on his face as if he'd just dodged a bullet. Wonder what that's about. Hoshi frowned in concentration as she tried to remember if she'd heard any gossip about trouble between the Captain and Trip. Nothing came to mind, but then again, nobody had had time for gossip the last couple of days.
"Commander Tucker." T'Pol's voice broke the silence that had descended on the bridge.
"Oh right. The sensors. Did you clear the buffers?"
"Yes."
"Good. I'll need to get to under your console." Trip made little shoo-shoo gestures with his hands to indicate T'Pol needed to move. She raised an eyebrow at him as she moved back out of the way. Wedging himself in between the console and T'Pol's chair, Trip pulled off a section of plating.
"Tucker to Engineering."
"Engineering here, Sir." Lieutenant Hess's voice filtered back through the comm link.
"You can start rerouting the power couplings now."
"Aye Sir."
"T'Pol, could you pass me the phase coupler out of the tool kit?" Without turning to look, Trip stuck out his hand behind himself. T'Pol coolly bent down to retrieve the requested item and handed it to him wordlessly. So much for snappy banter, Hoshi thought dejectedly. Looks like it's going to be strictly professional today.
After a few minutes work, Trip questioned, "How's that look?"
T'Pol moved closer so she could see the console controls. "The console doesn't appear to be working," she replied.
"What?" Trip jumped up from underneath the console, only missing banging his head by centimetres. "That's not supposed to happen." He pushed a few buttons on the console.
"Nevertheless, it has."
"I can see that," Trip responded tightly. "Tucker to Engineering. Stop what your doing, we've got a problem up here."
"Aye sir," came the reply, too quickly for Hoshi to determine the speaker. She always loved trying to pick out voices over the comm system. It was a good test for her skills she thought.
"Problems?" Captain Archer asked. He and everyone else on the bridge had all stopped what they were doing to watch the proceedings at the science station. Since everyone else seemed to be focussed there, Hoshi stopped pretending that she was busy as well. The computer had been doing most of the work anyway and she'd rather watch what was going on properly than out of the corner of her eye.
"Probably just a minor glitch in the console. Shouldn't take too long to track it down."
"How do you intend to find the...glitch...with the power down?" T'Pol asked.
"Well, I thought that would be obvious to you, T'Pol. Logical deduction." Trip finished the sentence with a smirk as if he'd just put one over on the Sub-commander. T'Pol didn't seem fazed at all, however.
"The Captain wishes this job done quickly. I would suggest that now is not the time for you to be experimenting with new techniques."
Hoshi couldn't help letting out a giggle at T'Pol's statement. She quickly put her hand over her mouth to cover the laugh but it was too late. Luckily, she wasn't the only one laughing. Travis also let out a brief chuckle and Hoshi didn't need to look over at the Tactical station to know that Malcolm would be smirking. Trip was now giving both herself and Travis a death glare. He crossed his arms over his chest and asked,
"Just whose side are you on, Ensigns?" Emphasizing their rank was a low blow in Hoshi's opinion.
But before she could respond T'Pol turned to him and said, "If you'll recall Commander, I outrank you."
Hoshi couldn't see the look on T'Pol's face because of the way she was facing but the look on Trip's said it all.
"Captain," he appealed, sounding for all the world like a five year old. Hoshi half expected to hear 'T'Pol's picking on me,' to come out next. The Captain however was holding back his own laughter.
"Don't look at me Trip. She's got you there."
Trip threw his hands up in the air and gave an over dramatic sigh. "Fine. This is the amount of respect I get for keepin' this ship runnin' day in, day out. Remind me why I signed on again." Before anyone had time to respond, Trip pointed at T'Pol. "Don't you dare say anything. And that goes for the rest of you too. Now if you don't mind, I have work to do." With one last glare at everybody on the bridge, Trip moved back under the console.
Hoshi shared a grin with Travis as they both turned back to their stations. Looking at the results of the latest sweep for comm traffic quickly wiped the grin off her face though. Nothing. Just dead, empty space. Dead. She wished her mind had come up with a different word than that as she tried to suppress the sense of dread that was welling up inside again. She took a deep breath. It's just a problem with their comm system.
**************************************
Captain Archer tried not to fidget in his chair. He also suppressed the urge to ask for the umpteenth time whether or not T'Pol was picking up anything on the sensors yet. She'll let you know when she gets something, he tried to tell himself. Despite a brief problem, the sensors had been upgraded this morning and ever since then Archer had been on tenterhooks, waiting for the moment they would come into sensor range. The entire senior staff, with the exception of T'Pol who appeared the same as always, all seemed to be in a similar state. It was only a matter of minutes now, but to Archer, these seemed like the longest minutes in history. He half turned in his chair, but T'Pol anticipated the question before it sprang from his lips,
"Nothing yet, Captain."
Archer turned back. He knew he was making both himself and his crew jumpy with his behaviour but he couldn't help himself. He stared at the view screen as if that would tell him what he wanted to know. All it showed however was the stars racing by. He drummed his fingers on the chair arm. There was nothing he hated more than waiting.
"We're coming into sensor range now, Captain," T'Pol stated.
Archer resisted the urge to race over to her console and look over her shoulder. Instead he moved to Travis at the helm.
"Slow down to Warp 2 Ensign. We don't want to barge in there before we find out what's going on."
"Aye sir."
"Well?" he asked T'Pol. She didn't answer him as she studied the data coming through to her. After what seemed an eternity to Archer she looked up.
"There appears to be nothing in the vicinity of the coordinates."
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Exactly what I said Captain." Down at the helm station, Travis turned in his seat and gave Malcolm an 'I told you so' look. Archer briefly wondered what that was about and he gave his own questioning glance to Trip, seated at his engineering station. The engineer just shrugged his shoulders in reply. Archer supposed it didn't really matter, after all he had more immediate questions that needed answering. Malcolm, however, beat him to it.
"What about debris?"
"The scans detect no debris," T'Pol replied.
"But we are at maximum range. It's possible that there could be debris, just small enough not to be detected yet." Malcolm persisted with his line of questioning.
"Possible, but unlikely. The T'Roth was not a small vessel. If it were destroyed, it's likely that some of the debris would be large enough to detect even at this range."
"Wouldn't that depend on what destroyed it?"
"It would be almost impossible for a hostile vessel or vessels to have enough firepower to leave the T'Roth in such a state as you describe." T'Pol seemed to have an answer for every question, but so did Malcolm.
"Almost, but not entirely impossible? Besides, what about this experiment they were conducting? For all we know, that could have destroyed them without leaving much debris."
"Whatever the case," Archer interrupted to break up the argument brewing between his science and armoury officers. "For now, we know that no ships are in the vicinity. Travis, why don't you pick up speed again."
"Aye sir. Increasing to Warp 4.5."
"Why don't you make it 4.8. We may as well hurry this up a little more."
"Four point eight," Travis echoed. The ship shuddered a little as it hit the new speed. Archer settled in to wait for Enterprise's arrival at the coordinates.
Four hours later, Enterprise dropped out of Warp. They had discovered about an hour earlier that T'Pol's initial scans had been correct. Nothing at all, not even debris, was in the area of space surrounding the Vulcan's ship's location. Especially not a Vulcan ship. Archer found himself squinting at the view screen as if it would help him spot what wasn't there. His report to Starfleet wasn't looking good. Arrived at coordinates. Nothing to find. He could just imagine the Admirals and Vulcans back home reading that. No, he was going to find something even if it was just a speck of space dust. His father had always told him that if he was determined enough he could achieve anything. He kept that firmly in his mind now as he waited for further scans to be completed. From her science station, T'Pol looked up from her scanner.
"Captain. I am detecting two Warp trails headed away from the area at bearing 247 mark 080. One is clearly the T'Roth's." Archer wondered how she could keep so calm with a shipload of her people missing. If it had been a human vessel, Archer doubted he would be so serene. Hell, he wasn't serene now.
"And the other?" he queried.
"Unknown. However, the trails are badly decayed. They have been gone for at least a few days."
"So someone's subdued the T'Roth then, and taken it captive." Lieutenant Reed voiced what was probably going through every bridge officer's head, including Archer's.
"It seems that way," Archer agreed before tilting his head in T'Pol's direction, "unless you can think of a logical reason why the Vulcans would leave with an alien vessel and not report it to the High Command?"
"No. However that doesn't mean there isn't one." T'Pol replied. Archer tried not to roll his eyes at his science officer.
"Put it up onscreen," Archer ordered. Two yellow lines marking the warp trails led off into the blackness of space popped up on the view screen. Maybe there would be something to put in his report after all.
"Time to follow the Yellow Brick Road," Trip commented from his station. Archer let a small smile escape at the imagery that his friend had brought up. The two yellow lines from the ship's warp trails did seem to define a pathway. T'Pol, however, apparently hadn't gotten the reference.
She looked at Trip in askance. "Yellow Brick Road?"
"Really not important right now T'Pol." Archer answered before Trip could respond. "Travis, lay in a course to follow and take us out of here." Sharing a brief look of acknowledgement with his Chief Engineer he added, "It's time to go see the Wizard."
