ILuvHawkeye: I am glad you loved it! It is nice to be the only thing in someone's life one looks forward to. And you do not that T'Son can look at your review whenever he wants, right? But then, you are illogical, remember? Thanks for being my one reviewer. By the way, you join T'Son and me this chapter. Finally!
I only have one A/N this time: REVIEW PLEASE!
The moment her helm officer turned around and said, "Romulan warbird uncloaking dead ahead. Should we raise shields?" Qwi leapt into the air and let out a victory cry of "Finally!" She grinned a bit nervously when the entire bridge crew turned in their seats and simply stared at her. That is, they did until the communications officer announced something even more startling.
"They are... hailing us, Captain," he said nervously. This was unusual, for normally Romulans in a war merely beginning firing. "They do have shields up and weapons powered up though."
"She doesn't trust me either?" Qwi muttered, slightly put out. "On screen," she continued in her normal voice. A moment later, the image of the proud Kaleh was replaced by the faces of three familiar people and many not so familiar people. Qwi could not help but notice Toreth had quickly stepped between T'Son and Vokar. Puh-lease.
"To those of you who do not know, I am Commander Toreth of the Romulan Warbird Kaleh. Greetings, Captain Qwi; I assume that you know Commodore T'Son?" Toreth said in her most imperial voice.
"Dispense with the dramatics, Tori," Qwi said with a laugh. She did, however, notice that Toreth had not given her real title. Also, she looked mad now.
"Tori? You would dare to give the- me, a human nickname? How dare you."
"Relax, Tori. I give you all kinds of nicknames- Vallie, Steph... does T'Son still call you Val-Pak?" Qwi laughed to herself as she watched a range of emotions from humiliation to fury rage across Toreth's face. She was quite certain no one had talked to Toreth like that since she had become Chairman of the Tal Shiar. Toreth at last settled for a clearly feigned calm.
"We need to talk, in private," Toreth hissed. "Beam over to my ship promptly. I will have security officers meet you in my transporter room. Bring no one else." With that, the screen went dark, and then went back to the picture of the Kaleh with, Qwi now noticed, the slightly damaged Royale in her tractor beam. Shaking her head and smiling slightly, Qwi headed for the transporter room.
Vokar felt the beginnings of a headache starting to develop. He had finally gotten rid of the T'Son-induced headache he had had for the last few days, and now it appeared Qwi was going to blow headaches to a whole new level... again! The young human captain appeared... hyper. Now, he was sitting in a conference room listening to Toreth and T'Son argue.
"T'Son, you hate everyone I love. First Qwi, then Andrew, then Vokar! Honestly, you are worse than Mom was."
"Why did you have to remind me of Andrew now? I had just forgotten him!"
"Why did you hate Andrew so much anyway? Were you jealous or something? And what is between you and Vokar too? I am allowed to have other friends, you know." Luckily for all parties involved, the door opened at that moment and Qwi dashed in, ignoring the annoyed expressions of the security guards.
"You have done more than enough," Toreth told them sympathetically, knowing what it was like to deal with a hyper Qwi. "Please, take tomorrow off. Qwi, be seated and we can began... discussions." The security guards gave each other identical looks of relief and excited the room.
"Oh, goddess, Tori, you do not know how much I missed you when you left. That was even worse than when you made the announcement you were moving to Kansas! Luckily, we got thrown forward in time and you did not have to do that. But how dare you leave me alone with T'Son as the only people on the Enterprise younger than twenty-something!?"
"Qwi, this is hardly the time for me to make much atonement for past wrongs," Toreth said dryly. I need to decide what I am going to do to- with, you two. Now please, be seated. There are open spaces next to T'Son and Vokar both." Qwi frowned a little and took the seat next to Vokar.
"What do you mean by, 'do "to" us,'" T'Son asked, leaning forward and wishing Toreth had not taken the end seat.
"You are Federation. I am Romulan. We are at war. You are good at math."
"But... what about friendship, and loyalty, and-" Qwi began, but T'Son interrupted.
"You must have missed the word 'Romulan,' Captain," he said. "Romulans are, to be blunt, tricky backstabbers. And, as Vokar oh-so-kindly pointed out to me a few days ago, Toreth is hardly the semi-sweet human you once knew. In fact, being Chairman of the Tal Shiar, she is probably the biggest backstabber of all the Romulans. Am I right?"
"You are," Toreth said, idly pulling out a dagger from somewhere on her person and balancing it on one finger. This, of course, underscored T'Son's point.
"You guys are being condescending again," Qwi pointed out, annoyed. As Toreth protested that she did, this time, actually have a reason to be condescending because of her position, Vokar gave silent thanks to God that he was not born a human. They may have been made in His image, but they did not have the sense God gave a grasshopper. Luckily, sixteen years had done a lot to stamp that out of Toreth, but as the other two were surrounded by the loathsome beings 26/7... If was even worse than the experiment Toreth had done when she first took command of the Kaleh. She bought a housecat. Needless to say, the cat and the starship did not get along. He was beginning to understand Toreth's Earth expression "cat-fights" in reference to human social actions, especially in the range of ages from twelve to thirty.
"Need Advil," Toreth moaned nearly an hour and a half latest. "Or chocolate," she added thoughtfully.
"Come on, I'll walk you back to your quarters. You can have a relaxing nap or something," Vokar said, standing up. That was when the first torpedo exploded. Qwi and Toreth were thrown to the ground, as they were just standing up. T'Son, having still been seated, narrowly managed to hang on and Vokar fell to his knees.
"Damn it!" Toreth cried, jumping to her feet and dashing in the direction of the bridge. Vokar, T'Son, and Qwi were only two seconds behind her. "What in the name of light was that?" Toreth demanded the moment she skidded onto the bridge.
"There is something out there firing on all three ships," a terrified officer said. "Worse, it can fire when cloaked. We think it is that bird-of-prey you told us about."
"Okay, release the Royale from our tractor beam and beam her crew over to her. And while you are act it, get me some people who know about gas and photons," Toreth ordered. Everyone but Vokar, T'Son, and Qwi looked doubtful, but they did as they were asked.
"Dropping shields to beam... now!" an officer cried as the Hawkeye fired a wide spread of phasers hoping to distract the bird-of-prey. Unfortunately, that did not work as well as anyone might have hoped. For, even as T'Son was disappearing from the bridge, so were Toreth and Qwi. And the transporter pattern was nowhere near Federation or Romulan. The Klingons, now that they had the three commanding officers where satisfied. It might also have had something to do with the fact that it was now two starships and one warbird against their lonely bird-of-prey. Anyhow, they fled in warp, leaving three devastated crews behind.
Elaina Darkeir picked herself off the floor where she landed after the transporter beam released her, trying to shut out the confused and angry thoughts invading her consciousness. Where was T'Son? For that matter, where were the other officers. She and two ensigns had landed on the bridge. That made her the ranking officer. Lieutenant Commander Elaina Darkeir was in control of a starship in the middle of a war zone in the Romulan Neutral Zone.
"Are either of you the communications officer, because someone is hailing us," she told the two ensigns. One of them muttered something about being a communications major and opened a channel. The face of that a Romulan male appeared on screen. A moment later, the screen divided in two and the face of a Trill male appeared also.
"I am Subcommander Vokar," the Romulan said.
"Commander Codiar Ruen," the Trill introduced himself.
"I'm Lieutenant Commander Elaina Darkeir," Elaina said nervously.
"I assume that neither of you have your ranking officers back," the Romulan said. "It appears as though they are in the hands of the Klingon veruuls."
"Are the two of you willing to call a temporary truce so we can determine exactly what happened and how to get the Commodore, Captain, and Commander back?" Commander Ruen asked.
"All too much," Vokar said under his breath. "Yes. The commander is extremely valuable to the Empire."
"As is the Commodore," Elaina said, wishing the commander would come back on the bridge. She was not cut out for command duty, and had come to expect that the T'Son's stable hand would always be there. Yet, in the past week, she had gotten thrown in a Romulan brig, left to rot for a few days, thrown out again and onto the bridge of her ship, and now she was in command. It was enough to turn any sensible Betazoid's head. But she did know one thing- no matter what, they would get T'Son (and the other two) back. They had to.