A/N: I apologize for the following two things:

1) The length and basic crappiness of this chapter. It's been a while since I updated, and I wanted to get something up, but I wasn't finished with this chapter. I'm having problems getting to where I want to go, but I didn't want to leave y'ins in the lurch for much longer without an update.

2) The amount of time it took for me to update. My grandfather recently passed away and the past few weeks have been crazy. But hopefully I will be able to update with more reliability now.

"What?" Malcolm asked.

Kamea nodded slightly, thinking that perhaps he had misunderstood her. "Ferengi."

Trip scratched his head. "Is that some kind of Vulcan swear word?" he asked, which was met by an icy glare from T'Pol. Trip shrugged apologetically and turned his attention back to Kamea.

She sighed and shook her head. "This area of space. It's Ferengi."

Malcolm furrowed his brow. "And the Ferengi would be…?"

Kamea rolled her eyes. She hadn't realized she would have to explain this. How could they not know about the Ferengi? They'd already encountered them once, and they were pretty difficult to forget. Kamea was positive she could still smell the latinum on her clothes. "Scum," she said. "The kind of scum that gives scum a bad name."

Trip made a noise in the back of his throat. "Well, that's encouraging."

Kamea arched an eyebrow but said nothing.

"You've dealt with them before?" Archer asked, leaning forward on the console so that he was almost nose-to-nose with Kamea.

She pulled back slightly. Though she was not as averse to touching as most Vulcans, the captain's frequent breeching of her personal space was unnerving. She nodded and said, "So have you."

Archer narrowed his eyes at her, as though trying to determine whether or not she was being truthful. "When?"

"December 17, 2151," Kamea said matter-of-factly, which elicited raised eyebrows from every member of the crew. She wasn't surprised. She doubted if any of them knew that she had read through – and memorized – the captain's old logs. "Though most of the crew was incapacitated. You see, the Ferengi generally render the crew of a starship unconscious with some kind of knockout gas and then proceed to pilfer anything valuable, which they sell."

"Those guys?" Trip asked. He groaned loudly. "Please tell me I'm not going to have to run around the ship in my underwear again."

Kamea raised her eyebrows. That was a story she was going to have to hear about later. "Not unless you want to."

Archer turned to Trip. "Power down anything unnecessary. We don't know how long we can continue with this alternate energy source, and we have no idea how we're going to get out of this dampening field." Trip nodded and headed for the emergency hatch in the captain's ready room. Archer looked at Malcolm. "Gather your men and the MACOs and start sweeping the ship. If you see any of these…Ferengi…shoot on sight."

Kamea opened her mouth to point out that the dampening field had most likely rendered the phase pistols useless, but Captain Archer had whirled to face her before she could speak. "You go with them," he said. "You've encountered these creatures before, and you might be able to negotiate us out of whatever we've gotten ourselves into."

She snorted. "Not likely." She was going to elaborate but was silenced by the glare the captain sent her way. "On my way, sir," she said, getting to her feet and trotting over to Malcolm.