Chapter Four
Offer
"Deline, I must say your vessel is absolutely fascinating." Archer confessed just part of the way through the 'tour' the woman was leading. His five fellow officers, Trip, T'Pol, Hoshi, Elizabeth and Jennifer were equally amazed by many of the sights they had seen.
In addition to all the wonders they had seen already, they experienced a room containing holographic images that, enhanced by force fields, seemed as real and solid as reality. There was a diagnostic medical scanner that could record all the information in a body with a single pass of a small, hand held stylus. There were anti-gravity units that could negate either the natural or artificial field in a limited area, so that a single person, unaided, could lift and maneuver hundreds of pounds of equipment. There was a personal force-field generator which not only protected its wearer from coherent energy weapons or physical attack, but was self-perpetuating, drawing power from the forces it repelled.
They also learned that the silver 'coating' on the Bravinan ships was not only almost infinitely malleable (though it did have to be replenished after incidents like 'healing' a hull rupture) but was a energy collector vastly superior to the old solar cells developed hundreds of year ago on Earth. They were tied directly into the life-support systems, so even in the event of a cataclysmic disruption of the ship's systems they would still provide full life support faculties to carry the crew over through any necessary repair time.
Trip mentally slapped himself for that one; this concept was well within their own ability to use on the Enterprise. Even at minimal efficiency they would still be able to breathe and stay warm even if every other system on the ship went out. He was glad these women had not rubbed his nose in it.
It was an absolutely fascinating tour, and Archer and his team had tried to keep their fascination close to the vest. The others had followed their Captain's lead, and he allowed for being impressed but carefully not overwhelmed.
The tour just naturally seemed to wind up in the shuttle bay at the rear of the ship, and an invitation for the Deline and her Third Officer to tour Enterprise. Along the way to the Pod, Archer and Trip exchanged one of those looks that covered a thousand words in an instant of time.
There was still the untouched matter of the planet below them. Both sides had a claim to it, and the negotiations were going to be tricky indeed. But first, each side wanted to gauge the strength, and resources, of the other. Unfortunately, as grand as the Enterprise was, and impressive its technology and resources may be, this time they were not going to be approaching the 'table' in a position of strength.
---
The medical treatment took more than an hour and, for Tia, it was the most humiliating hour she had spent aboard Enterprise. It was not so much all that Phlox had to do as the knowledge that he knew her wounds were self-inflicted. But he treated her anyway. He did not attempt to pass judgment on her, did not demand a reason or try to embarrass her. He even reminded her that his records were private; no one who did not need to know would have any indication of anything he had found, but none of that made her feel any better. She would have felt better if he had been angry, as Shar-les had been; or even reacted in any overt manner at all, but he did not.
In the end, he assured her she would make a full recovery. She had come out of the imaging chamber whole, but he was more concerned at the moment about other things. "You've taken a big risk, and you're lucky things were not worse than they turned out to be."
"Yes, Doctor."
"Before you resume any of your normal … activities, particularly with Commander Tucker, I will want to see you again, to check your progress."
"Yes, Doctor." She whispered meekly, eyes downcast.
"Oh, come on!" He snapped. "If I'm annoyed with you it's because as a biologist with enough credentials to rate a doctorate on some worlds, I expect a lot more sense out of you! You may have avoided infection; an impressive feat in itself considering the damage you did and left inadequately untreated, but you were nothing short of reckless and frankly I'm very disappointed in you. You are an Auran in a primarily human environment, and you left yourself open and at risk to any number of diseases and …" He shook his head in exasperation, waving his hand at the door. "Oh, get out of here before I quarantine you!"
She turned, wanting only to escape, to retreat to her quarters and privacy.
She wanted to rip off this uniform she once wore proudly but now was something that seemed to accuse her. She did not feel that she was worthy to wear it, felt that doing so was a lie and a sacrilege; that its very existence on her body was a painful reminder of her failure and shame. She felt humiliated to wear it because she thought herself unworthy of the standards it set.
She almost reached the door when it opened and Captain Archer entered.
She stopped, frozen in place, remembering that Shar-les had said that he would have to tell the Captain everything he had learned, and on seeing him her humiliation crashed upon her ten fold.
She barely registered the sight of the woman next to him, a tall woman with long pure white hair, dressed in a blue gown. There was another woman with them as well, this one clad in a green gown, whose hair was an astonishing bronze. Shar-les was with them, as well as T'Pol and Liz Cutler, and she longed to seek his eyes but could not move.
"And this is our Infirmary…" Archer was saying, but he got no further in the tour. Tia was barely aware that she stood directly in their path, blocking their entrance, her mouth hanging open, staring at him, transfixed in speechless stasis. Archer was about to ask her to let them pass when the green gowned woman stopped everyone in the room.
"An Auran?" She exclaimed in utter amazement.
The white haired woman beside Archer turned to him. "Captain, I had no idea you had an Auran serving in your crew."
---
If Tia had been stricken silent by her embarrassment, this exclamation left her completely dumbfounded. Liz Cutler, watching her, thought 'I think they used to call that expression 'deer in the headlights'.'
When she could regain her voice, she exclaimed in amazement: "You my people know?" She looked at Tucker. "Did say she my people know she does?"
The white haired woman looked at her in only a little less surprise, and then raised her left arm, looking at the device strapped to it in mild consternation. "I'm sorry, Captain, my translator seems to be developing a fault."
"No, it's not." He assured her. "Miss Anlor?" With a gesture, Archer indicated the girl should step out of the way enough for the party to clear the doorway. Embarrassed, humiliated, stunned and surprised, Tia managed to move aside, allowing her shipmates and their guests to come in. "Deline Jessena, may I present Miss Tia Anlor; and our physician Dr. Phlox? Tia is, indeed, an Auran, though it comes as a surprise to all of us that you recognize her."
"Not at all. I do not recognize her, but her species. We encountered an Auran ship about three of your months ago."
"A ship?" Tia repeated, dumbfounded, wishing the cosmos would stop spinning wildly long enough for her to get off! "A ship of Aurans?"
"Yes, my dear. They were most certainly your people, some 200 if memory serves."
Archer's concern was, at the moment, the delicate matter of dealing with the Bravinan. He recognized Tia was stunned by the news; he was taken aback as well, but if she had not been he could easily picture her letting out a shriek of delight and grabbing Jessena, insisting in fragmented English to know everything the other woman knew, and he wanted to avoid just such a moment when the girl got her bearings. "Perhaps you could give her the details?" With silent expression, he communicated to Ensign Cutler to bring Tia off to the left end of the room just as Jessena gave her subordinate direction to proceed with the side conference. Liz took the stunned girl's arm and actually had to pull her across the room, where she could speak to Alir.
The three women stood within the Brevinan's UT field, which was well because Tia could not think of one English word; so the quiet conversation was conducted in three languages, heard by each in her native tongue. Cutler made a mental note to bring this to the Captain's attention. The Enterprise's UTs could handle two languages – with reasonable reliability – provided they had been properly programmed. This device was fielding three. She wondered if she should have T'Pol or Phlox join this session.
"I'm sorry; I don't really have much to tell you." Alir said. "We met them only briefly. They were fleeing, they said, some problem on your world. We learned their language, traded a few things, but they were in a hurry and left quickly."
"Do you know where they are?" She asked with growing urgency.
"I'm sorry, no."
"Can you find them?!" The urgency was quickly mounting into full blown desperation.
"Calm down, honey." Liz advised, but Tia barely heard her.
"Well, I suppose so. We can give you the position we found them at, and their course when they left. But to assume they kept that course for three of your months…" She left it hanging.
"This cannot be! A ship out there?! My people?! You must tell me how to find them!" Liz took her arm, the one closest to Alir, trying to calm her, but more to prevent Tia from grabbing the woman.
"Alir." Jessena called, indicating that the brief stop was ended. Tia turned to Liz.
"They must be found! They must! Please! I have to find them!" She clutched her friend's arm desperately.
"Calm! Down!" Liz ordered firmly. "We'll take it up with the Captain. Later."
"Excuse me." Alir said, stepping away to rejoin her commander. As she did, the UT field withdrew as well.
"Liz, please! I have to! You know what it means! Pleasia! Qualsia! Li laro tuvial mosquant quanrant!" Liz detached the girl's grip on her arm with great difficulty. "Turan masva lurantiisu mokir!" She tried to grab Liz's arms again, but the woman forced hers down and held up her hands.
"Tia, English! I can't understand you anymore." Tia looked to the side, seeing the group exit the Infirmary. She clenched her fists in sudden rage.
"Nyas! English! English! Know nyasi! What words!?" She looked up at Liz, but the woman could not help her. "Kraanstat!" She cried. "I my fringatye mind am lose going to over these welsdnark words!" Liz, unable to think of anything to say, hugged Tia instead, trying to give some comfort. It felt to her like hugging a steel statue, so tightly wound was the girl.
"Come on. Let's take a walk before you explode."
"I so should daakisi lucky be!" She muttered.
---
The tour of Enterprise continued apace, but Archer honestly would have preferred a longer view of the Extikone. There was, however, no particular rush, since there was no indication that this encounter between the starships would be cut short. There was still the planet to deal with.
In the meantime, he had listened while Phlox had spoken about the Infirmary, but part of his attention had been on the urgent conversation going on behind them. He could not blame the girl, but he also had to keep some control of the situation, so when he had seen it was going to very quickly get out of hand, he had suggested to Jessena that they move on and return later. He knew she would be frustrated, but he had to balance that with so many concerns in dealing with a new culture; particularly when there were important negotiations to be held later.
He had already learned quite a bit about these people, and looked forward to the opportunity to compare observations with his senior officers later.
---
That opportunity arose about an hour later, when the two Bravinan officers had returned via Shuttle Pod One to their ship. As soon as the shuttle departed, Archer turned to Tucker and T'Pol. "Observations?"
"Cap'n, we've gotta cut a deal with these people!" Archer restrained a smile. So much for ignoring the obvious.
"I have been able to identify their world." T'Pol reported with characteristic efficient calm. "Bravina is listed in the Vulcan Star charts as Cygnet XIV. Cygnet is a Class B blue star having a surface temperature of some 19,000 degrees C, and luminosity about 10,000 times that of Sol, which would logically make the 14th planet out Minshara class. Nothing is known of their culture, but their technology is apparently quite advanced."
Archer looked closely at her. Jokes, or insights into the obvious, he would expect from Trip, not the Vulcan. He wondered if she were as overwhelmed as he himself felt.
"One thing's for sure, Cap'n, if there's a colony down there it's pretty well hidden, because our sensors don't detect a blessed thing."
"Their shuttle got to us almost the moment the mother ship entered orbit, so it had to be on the planet already." He looked at T'Pol. "They came from south of our landing position, see what you can find."
"Yes, sir." As she left, Archer turned to his friend.
"Pretty impressive, aren't they?"
"I'll say. I'd like to spend a month aboard that ship!"
"I'll see if I can accommodate you. In the meantime, learn everything you can about their technology from here."
"Why don't we just ask their computer. I'm sure it'll be up to a chat." He whistled in amazement. "Artificial intelligence to a degree I've never dared to dream. Add to that a self-sealing hull, gravity nullifiers, a UT that makes ours look like a tinker toy…"
"Don't let Hoshi hear you say that." Archer quipped.
"No. On the other hand, she'd probably love to get into its software for just an hour. I'll bet she can come up with all sorts of improvements for ours."
"Get on with your scans." Trip nodded and they actually got about two paces apart before
"Cap'n?" Archer turned around, but the look in his friend's eyes was eloquent enough.
"I know. The other ship." He held up his hand. "One thing at a time."
"Aye, sir."
---
Two hours later, in the galley, Hoshi Sato joined her friends at their usual table, finding them in animated discussion. She noticed before sitting down that while Liz had contented herself with a small course of food in concern for her figure, Tia's plate was filled almost to overflowing with a portion of just about everything on the menu in her usual utter disregard of her own figure. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, the svelt girl's portions were easily double either of theirs, and she was trimmer than either woman. 'Where in heaven's name does she put it?' the linguist wondered not for the first (or fiftieth) time, glancing down at her own sandwich and salad and trying to fight down a wave of envy. Certainly Trip couldn't be responsible for that much of her 'workouts', but the girl was going to have to have her clothes taken in if she didn't start gaining weight to match her portions.
"Hey, Hoshi, have you heard the latest?" Liz asked with a wry smile, as if knowingly feeding her a straight line. There was no point in feigning ignorance of what 'latest' they could be discussing; their young friend was virtually bouncing out of her seat!
"Yes. The Captain has me scanning the frequency used by the Krontis." She turned to Tia. "Congratulations."
"Ealyiis! Kil mir volus sei! I mean, this so exciting is! They out there are, and we find them will! Kir – um, when you hear-."
Hoshi grasped Tia's arm firmly, halting the girl's excited torrent. "Listen to me. I know you're excited, but just sit and listen!" Surprised into silence by Hoshi's sharp tones, Tia shut up. "We're scanning with passive scanners. We're just listening. That means if they are not transmitting on the frequency we're monitoring, we'll never hear them." The girl stared at her with wide golden eyes, unable to believe she heard Hoshi right.
"De stal?! Culyin duplaste Pi -." She grasped Tia's arm even more firmly, cutting off the rush.
"Listen to me! Have you thought this through? If they are running, that means the Silurians are probably hunting them the way they did you. If so, they're probably maintaining radio silence, and the worst thing we can do is to start calling to them!"
Tia sat staring at her, her mouth open but mute. Liz reached out, taking her other hand across the table, her tone deeply sympathetic. "That's what I've been trying to tell you, hon; but you wouldn't listen. Hailing them is probably the worst thing we can do."
Both officers sympathized with their friend. Tia, moments ago animated and excited beyond words, sat staring at them, clearly stunned. They both knew she had known these things, but she had buried the reality in the chance of reuniting with her people. She sat still, her spirited demeanor plummeting by the moment, her elation falling into a deep depression.
"Hey, guys." Ensign Pat Greene paused at the table, carrying her own tray to the back of the room. "What's up?" Hoshi and Liz tried to answer as if the tension of the past few moments had never occurred, but Tia was unable to speak to her, lost as she was in the cataclysmic plunge of her high spirits. "That was an impressive display this morning." Pat continued, speaking to the Auran. "I don't know how you do it – sometimes I can barely manage two, but not twenty! What's your secret?"
Tia looked up at her, mystified. "De stal?" She asked vaguely, but then shook herself free. "Anston. I know what you ask not."
"I was just asking how you manage it, and can you give me some tips?" Tia looked at Hoshi and Liz, still mystified, then back at the woman.
"I … 'tip' not." She said uncertainly. The woman looked at her, miffed.
"Fine, be that way. No skin off my nose; I was just making conversation." She stalked away. Tia, bewildered, touched her own nose; then looked imploringly at her friends.
"You got me." Hoshi confessed, turning to Liz. "You know what that was all about?"
"Excuse me," Liz said, getting up. "I'm going to find out." She followed the woman to a table across the room.
---
An hour later, on the Bridge, Archer had gathered his officers at the situation board at the rear of the bridge, whereon was displayed all the readings of the multitude of sensors currently examining the ship in orbit with them and the planet below. Next to him Ann Anderson manipulated the various sensor reports as needed on the screens. T'Pol was just concluding her report. "Captain, I find no indication of a colony anywhere within range of our sensors, nor that any had ever been prepared for."
He did not question her. If the efficient Science Officer had found nothing, then there was indeed nothing to find. But it did leave one problem.
"What was the time from when the Extikone came out of warp to when we first spotted the shuttle?"
"Less than eleven seconds. And it did not launch from the mother ship; it was definitely in the atmosphere at that time, and I can find no indication of its point of launch nor anything artificial along the trajectory indicated."
"Could it have been screened? Remember that Xyrillian ship that was tapping our warp plasma exhaust?" Reed reminded them. The ship had been invisible on the sensors at less than a hundred meters!
"I wouldn't put anything past them." Archer granted.
"No, Captain, no matter how good any cloaking technology may be, perfect screening is impossible." T'Pol insisted. "Cloaking technology such as the Xyrillians use bends light and readings around the ship, lets us see what is behind them but not the ship itself. It would not serve on the surface of a planet; there is no bare, untouched ground under a colony."
"What about camouflage?" Ann Anderson asked. "What if they screen themselves with the image of another part of the planet? You'd have to look for two identical stands of trees or fields."
T'Pol was silent for a moment. Her junior officer had made an insightful observation that she might have at another time complimented; but this time it only made her job several levels harder.
"Well, if that's the case, and again I'm not discounting anything possible where scientists having access to such incredible technologies may use them, but it seems to make it a moot point." Archer wanted to take T'Pol off a very uncomfortable hook if he could do so, without making it look like he was doing so. "For now, I'm less concerned about a theoretical colony we can't see as I am about a ship we can. What do we know about our friends over there?"
"They're humanoid to the limits of our sensors." Ensign Cutler reported. "Phlox got some excellent scans of Alir while we were in the Infirmary; thank goodness for distractions. They check out as almost human."
"Why no men on that ship?" Tucker asked.
"At least not any that we saw." Archer pointed out.
"According to Alir, their society is much like ours was a long time ago, except I could say in reverse. Men simply don't serve on Bravinan ships."
"Just like the military on Earth is right." Archer remarked. "Several years of service isolated like that…"
"I'd die first!" Anderson muttered to herself, realizing a moment later that her voice had been just a bit too loud. She looked up at her commander. "Sir."
---
Trip Tucker had retired early, knowing that the wonders of the day were probably only going to be exceeded by those of the next, and he wanted to be sure he'd had a good night's rest. But, being a light sleeper, he woke as he heard the unexpected sound of the outer door to his quarters opening. He kept still, moving only his eyes, which focused on the chronometer on the wall: 23:16.
He had no doubt of what had awakened him. He knew every sound this ship could reasonably be expected to make, and his outer door had indeed opened and closed. He was fully awake and alert, because the list of people who would (or could) enter his quarters without permission was mighty short indeed.
He moved the blanket aside, allowing himself free movement, so when the inner door opened to the small bedroom he was ready for anything.
The figure framed in the door, barely visible in the dim light, was familiar indeed, as was the quiet whisper that accompanied it. "Shar-les?"
"Tia?" He kept his own whisper, mildly surprised though it was, low, though he realized a moment later there was hardly a need for it. His next words, though low, were no longer a whisper. "What's wrong?"
The list of people who would enter his quarters without permission was indeed mighty short; it had only one name on it, and as she stepped into the room the door hissed closed behind her. She was little more than an outline in the extreme dimness. He could just about see that she was wearing a pair of shorts and a half-length shirt, though her feet were bare. She knelt beside the low bunk. "Shar-les, qualsia, li luran iacas edal nyas!"
"I'm sorry?"
She took his hand in hers, her voice less than a whisper. "Please, I want alone to be not."
He pulled a little, and it was enough. She got onto the bunk, a familiar place indeed for her, but this time for a need that had far less to do with the body and everything to do with the soul. He gathered the quiet girl into his arms, and held her close. She cuddled close to him and rested her head against his chest. He listened for a few moments to her quiet breath, carefully adjusting the blanket about her shoulders.
"Tia, I appreciate what you're going through, but you always know I'm here for you." She did not answer. "Tia?" He looked down more closely at her, and smiled. She was already asleep.