Disclaimer: Still none of the Starfleet characters are mine. Lieutenant Hess, Baird, Novakovich, Foster, Hutchinson and Porter

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Counsellor Bynaul waited. Drumming his fingers on the silvery desk, he cast a suspicious look across his dimly lit guest quarters. He wasn't going to take any chances. He had to ask permission to speak with his father on a private channel. Lieutenant Reed didn't seem so fond of the idea, but Captain Archer gave him permission after a moment of thought.

Finally, Geido's face popped up on the screen in front of him. "Dad!" He said eagerly, speaking in his own tongue.

"How are you, son?" Geido asked.

"Never better. They gave me good guest-of-honour quarters, and the Vulcan took me on a tour of the ship, but none of that's as important as what I have to say." He blurted the words, rushing to get to the important topic.

Geido gave a quick nod, interrupting Bynaul before he could say what was on his mind. "Did Chef cook you some Salindais dishes?"

"Yes, father, he's a good cook. Will you listen to what I must say?" He mentally scolded himself and told himself to calm down. He took a deep breath and tried to relax in his chair.

"Speak."

"She has the key. The real one!" He said with a smile.

"How do you know?" He said, a shadow of doubt creeping upon his face.

"I took a look at it. The script glowed, unlike the two dummy ones we made." Bynaul wiped the smile off his face. This was not something to be giddy about. He needed to stay professional.

"How did you get close to it without suspicion?" His father was becoming alarmed. Bynaul wasn't keeping a good eye out for his mistakes. His father was easier to talk to when he was calm.

"I asked the Linguist if I could take a look at it. I told her I had one when I was a boy." Not a very good alibi, he knew. He could think of a million things better he could have said, now that he had gotten it over with.

Geido shook his head. "You must be more careful, son. Even if she does have the real one, I have no intention of taking it from her. We don't know how these Humans deal with criminals. We don't want to make enemies of them. That's why we're Adili, son!"

"Father," Bynaul said, not wanting to give up. "She has the key to the ultimate weapon of defense. If we use the weapon, we'd have no enemies!"

Geido shook his head. Angrily, now. "That's not the way it works."

"Am I your counsellor, or am I not? Hear me out." Bynaul said, giving his father a taste of his own interruptive medicine.

Geido ran right over his words, speaking louder. "Having a weapon like the one the Adili of centuries past have made will only bring us more enemies. People are threatened by a species with a weapon that can destroy a small moon! Retrieving the key will only prove to bring us more enemies."

"We can defeat them all with the weapon!" Bynaul nearly shouted.

"Didn't you hear a word I said? It doesn't work that way!" Geido returned his son's near shout. He sighed, and leaned back in the chair, eyeing Bynaul with his pale fiery eyes.

"Father, I wish to recover this weapon. Learn about it. Make use of it. Wise use. If I make mistakes, then I will learn from them. I would much prefer to have you at my side for guidance." He said, pronouncing every syllable clearly and slowly.

Geido looked down at his hands, folded in a black tangle of fingers on his desk. He studied them for a moment before saying quietly, "The risk is too great."

"Father, we can do this. I know we can." Bynaul watched his father for a reaction that might indicate he was giving in. He received quite the opposite response.

Geido's mouth twisted in fury. He unknotted his hands to drum his stubbly fingers hard against the desk. His forehead creased with streaks of anger, and his fist came down hard against the metal of the desk. "And who exactly do you plan to use the weapon against, hmm boy? Do you plan to attack the Klingons, teach them a lesson in honour?" He didn't even hear his son's pleas to be quieter and calm down. "Wipe out the Vulcans so you wouldn't have to put up with their words of logic? You are not putting so much as a finger on that key!!" He shouted.

"Father!" Bynaul snapped. "Two generations of men have laboured over that weapon. Will we just sit here and let our father's fathers work rot on the moon? They would not approve!" Geido had his back turned to him now, no doubt studying the patterns of dust on the wall. Bynaul hoped he had hit Gedio's traditionalist side. If he had, there was a good chance that he would help in order to honour the work of two generations of Adili. Salindais always honoured people who had passed away, and honoured their goals and achievements.

His father simply stood there, his back turned to his son. So he waited. And waited. For ten minutes, it seemed. Longer. Half an hour passed. An hour. Maybe more.

"I need time to think on it." Geido said slowly and quietly. Like a sulky predator that had lost its prey.

Bynaul hesitated before speaking, trying to choose the right words. Diction was always important in debates, he had learned. "The Humans may have become suspicious of us from my visit to the Linguist. We may not have much time." Before he had spoken his second word, Geido deactivated the comm. link with a punch to a button beneath the monitor.

Scrubbing his face with a black-skinned palm, he checked the time on the monitor. He had been talking to his father for only six minutes.

- - -

Something on the communications console began to flash. "The comm. link has been terminated." Baird announced.

The crew working on the night shift waited for the Counsellor to announce that he had ended the link, as he promised he would. There was nothing.

Baird, Novakovich, Foster, Hutchinson and T'pol waited for him to say something. The bridge was eerily silent.

Something beeped, making a few people whip their heads around in surprise. "The Counsellor is opening a channel." Baird announced. T'pol nodded, the slightest dip of her head.

"Counsellor Bynaul to bridge." He said. He sounded like a depressed teeny-bopper. His voice was crackly. He sounded exhausted, as if he had just run a marathon. "I am finished with the comm. line."

"Acknowledged." T'pol answered, but the comm. link between his quarters and the bridge was already dead.

- - -

Light flooded into the mess hall as someone hurriedly entered. She didn't so much as glance at the movie as images flashed on the white screen. She made her way to the back of the mess hall and stayed there, where she was soon forgotten by those indulged in the movie. She hid the bright cyan glow of the screen of the padd she held by putting it face down on the nearest table. She stood there, paying no mind to the movie, until it finished. A few people who had held bowls of popcorn came to the tables to leave the bowls as the room lit up. Travis, Hoshi, Trip, and Malcolm came to the back.

"Ensign Sato, Lieutenant Reed." She said, picking up the padd. "I need to talk to you."

"Lieutenant Hess, aren't you supposed to be in engineering?" Trip asked.

"My shift doesn't start for another hour and a half, sir." She told him and turned back to Reed and Hoshi. "Go for a walk?"

Reed nodded, and looked uncomfortably at Hoshi. They exited and turned left to head to engineering. Trip and Travis said their goodnights and headed in the opposite direction.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" Reed asked the dark skinned engineer.

"I heard yelling from the Counsellor's quarters. It's not everyday you hear an alien yelling in his quarters, so I thought you would like to know." She said, meaning Reed. "I recorded some of what he said, but I can't translate it." Hoshi perked up.

"Hmm." Reed said thoughtfully as Hoshi took the padd from Hess. Reed would of course like to know why Bynaul would be yelling in his quarters, teenage hormones or no. "I don't mind this, but I don't think the Captain would appreciate us violating his privacy." Hess had always been a little bit too nosey.

Hoshi looked up from the padd. "We can keep this between us, can't we?" Reed gave her an uncertain look. "I could check the comm. logs from my quarters, see if he was talking to anybody and try and get details on his conversation."

"But what if his yelling was just no big deal?" Hess asked.

A yelling alien was a pretty big deal to Malcolm. "Then we keep it to ourselves. If what he said has any significance, then we – or one of us – should tell the Captain at an appropriate time."

They stopped outside engineering. Hoshi had her head bent over the padd, reading, trying to translate. "Lieutenant, bring this back to my quarters when your shift ends. I'll download the conversation so I don't have to keep your padd."

Hess nodded, but before she could turn the handle of the latch on the door to Engineering, Reed said in strict voice, "Remember. We tell no one."

"Aye." Hess disappeared inside.

Reed and Hoshi were left in the corridor together.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Lieutenant." Hoshi said and headed further down the corridor towards the turbolift.

"Goodnight, Hoshi." He answered in an awkward voice. His quarters were in the other direction. He turned away from her, and went back the way he had come. For a moment he wished Hoshi hadn't traded quarters with Ensign Porter four years ago.

- - -

"Done!" Hoshi said, as the download of the Counsellor's conversation completed. She handed the padd back to Lieutenant Hess. "Have a good sleep." She said, and Hess nodded and left.

Hoshi ran the conversation through the Universal Translator immediately. The results were corrupted. She could only get pieces of what had been said. No doubt the walls had muffled some sounds, or the alien had spoken too quietly for the recording device on Hess's padd to pick up. Finally the end result popped up on the screen. But she couldn't make heads or tails of it.

She sent it through the translator again, and it picked up more.

"Having a weapon like the… Adili of centuries past… enemies… tened by a spe… can destroy a sma… the key will only… more enemies…."

That was good. She ran it through again. And again. It picked up more each time. After a while, she got a near complete conversation. She read it over, and her eyes widened.

She checked the time. Her shift didn't start for another half hour. Hurriedly, she sent the translated conversation to Malcolm's station on the bridge. She grabbed a ponytail from the desk and pushed her hair to the back of her head, tying the ponytail around it. Shooting a quick glance in the mirror, she checked the screen of her computer. Malcolm had downloaded the information. Good.

Snagging a drink of water from the bathroom, she left her quarters and headed for the bridge, nodding quickly to a friend or two along the way.

"You're early." Travis said with a grin as she entered the bridge. T'pol looked up from the Captain's chair but showed no emotion.

Hoshi mirrored his grin, though she shot it back with a hint of unease. "Have a good night, Travis?" She asked, trying not to appear so nervous.

"Yeah, it was fine. I had a dream that I was looking at alien…." He cut himself off before he could continue. Hoshi scrunched up her face in disgust, not wanting to know.

Something on her console flashed, and she checked it out. Malcolm was sending her a message. She looked up at him, sitting at his station on the other side of the bridge, before looking down.

::I got your message. We should tell the captain sometime soon. We don't know what the Salindais are up to. They could be planning an attack anytime.:: Hoshi read from the screen. She sent a message back to him.

::I agree. When does the Captain's shift start?:: She waited for a response.

::He should be here any minute. We should ask to see him privately in his ready room. We don't want to get anybody else on the bridge worked up.::

As if his message had somehow summoned him, Archer appeared on the bridge. T'pol stood and took her place at the science station.

"Anything interesting happen last night?" Archer asked T'pol.

"Counsellor Bynaul has gone back to his ship, but that is all. He said he had matters to attend to with his father."

Hoshi and Malcolm glanced at each other.

"Captain." Malcolm said after clearing his throat. "Hoshi and I need to speak to you. In private."