A/N: Ah, see, chapter 9, up by Monday, just like I said. It's going to take me a while to get chapter 10 up, but I hope to have it posted by the end of the week.
Cried my eyes out last night when I saw "Terra Prime". Well, let me tell you, in this universe, T/T have suffered enough, and I'm not going to let the universe punish them any more. And from what I've heard about the so-called finale, I can tell that I'm not going to like it. I'll still watch it (it IS the last episode - curse TPTB!), I just won't like it.
Malcolm felt like the galaxy's biggest prat. He had rushed off to "defend" Kamea without any knowledge whatsoever of his opponents, except that they attacked with some kind of shriek, which had Malcolm on his knees in pain in a matter of moments. The Ferengi accosted him, tied him up, and hauled him up to the bridge, where he was placed with the rest of the crew, who thankfully hadn't been harmed. However, they didn't look too thrilled on seeing their tactical officer tied up next to them.
"Nice rescue, Malcolm," Captain Archer said, shaking his head. "I knew I recruited you as head of security for a reason."
"All due respect, sir," Malcolm said, his pride sufficiently wounded, "they ambushed me."
"And the others?" T'Pol asked, which Malcolm took as code for, What about Commander Tucker? It was fairly obvious that's what she wanted to ask, but was afraid to.
"Commander Tucker and Kamea are attempting to mount a counterassault," he said. "They're rounding up crewmembers as we speak."
Travis's face fell. "I wouldn't be too sure of that."
Malcolm furrowed his brow in confusion, and Travis used his head to gesture at the captain's ready room. When Malcolm saw a Ferengi dragging a bound Kamea behind him, his heart momentarily stopped beating…until he saw that she appeared uninjured and seemed to be willingly accompanying her captor. It made absolutely no sense, because Kamea should have had no problem freeing herself. And the Ferengi obviously didn't see her as any kind of a threat, since she was still conscious. Her wrists were tied behind her back, but she was lethal even then.
The Ferengi barely seemed able to touch her – Malcolm remembered Kamea saying something about that earlier, but in all honesty he hadn't really been paying attention – but he led her to the others and pushed her roughly down. She fell onto her side, and with his hands bound, Malcolm was unable to help her up. But she managed to right herself.
"What are you doing here?" Malcolm asked.
She turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised. How one look could be both irritating and endearing was beyond Malcolm's comprehension, but she managed to do it. "'Ohana," she said. "Where I come from, it means that nobody gets left behind."
He leaned in as close as possible without losing his balance and lowered his voice, recalling that Ferengi had excellent hearing. "I told you I would take care of it."
Kamea rolled her eyes. "And look how well that turned out."
He grunted, not ready to admit that she had a point. He'd hardly been the gallant protector when they'd subdued him in mere seconds, and he hadn't even managed to prevent her from getting captured. That shriek of theirs was a very powerful weapon. How Kamea had managed to keep hold of her senses with that shriek echoing in her ears was a mystery, especially since her hearing was more sensitive than Malcolm's – even T'Pol had admitted having difficulty, and for T'Pol to admit that was an achievement in itself. "You got captured, too," he said, at the moment not caring that he sounded like a child.
"Yes," she said, dragging out the word longer than necessary, "but I wanted to get captured." She glanced around. Malcolm followed her gaze and saw that she was watching their Ferengi guards, who were no longer guarding them. They were arguing over some piece of equipment that they'd ripped out of the wall. Kamea winced at the sight, but turned her attention to her restraints.
"Come again?" Malcolm asked, at a complete loss.
Kamea leaned forward slightly, looking around Malcolm at T'Pol, on his left. "Do you want to break out now, or wait for the revolution?"
T'Pol narrowed her eyes, but only slightly. "I assume you have a plan." It wasn't a question – it was practically an order.
The others looked anxiously to Kamea, who grinned. "Divide and conquer," she said. "I'll create a diversion while you get the others out of here."
Malcolm cleared his throat. "I really don't think that's such a good idea."
Kamea sighed in exasperation. "Malcolm, I can do this. Let me do this."
She didn't wait for him to respond and, using the captain's chair for leverage, pushed herself onto her feet. "Do you have any idea what you're even going to do?" Malcolm asked.
She shook her head gleefully and jumped, swinging her arms down so that now her hands were tied in front of her and not behind. "No."
One of the Ferengi noticed that she was now standing and walked over to her. When he was close enough, she spat in his face. He charged her, wrapping his arms around her stomach and rushing towards the wall of the bridge. She pulled her legs up, waited for her feet to make contact, and then pushed off, sending both her and the Ferengi stumbling backwards into the other Ferengi, who had gathered to watch the spectacle.
T'Pol, meanwhile, effortlessly freed herself from her bonds and set about freeing the others. When everyone had been untied, they raced for the ladder in the captain's ready room.
They didn't make it that far. One of the Ferengi saw them endeavoring to escape and let loose with one of their high-frequency shrieks. Malcolm squeezed his eyes shut against the searing pain in his head, clamping his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block out the sound.
"Shut up!" said Kamea. She jumped on the shrieking Ferengi's back, throwing her still-tied arms around his neck. "I am so sick of you guys doing that!" She placed her hand at the juncture between his shoulder and his neck, and he collapsed beneath her.
Two more Ferengi attacked Kamea from behind, but before they had even laid a hand on her, they went flying across the bridge and into the wall. But they got up quickly and advanced once more. Soon she was surrounded by the remaining six of them, who were all regarding her with suspicion.
Kamea glanced around her, realizing for the first time that she was surrounded and outnumbered. She didn't so much like her odds. Granted, as far as odds went, six against one wasn't as bad as it could have been – she'd had worse, but those times hadn't turned out to her advantage. She tried to count all of the times that she'd been in this situation and found that she couldn't count that high – and she was an engineer.
And her hands were still tied together.
She stared at the bonds securing her wrists and yanked them apart unceremoniously. She rubbed her wrists to restore circulation, making sure to keep her eyes on the Ferengi. She could still get out of this if she tried. All she had to do was get to the ladder in the ready room. She could do that.
One of the Ferengi advanced, and she kicked him in the stomach. When he stumbled backwards another one lunged at her from behind, but she sensed him coming and nailed him in the face with an over-the-shoulder right hook. Two of them came at her at the same time, but she ducked down and let them collide with each other. She tried to crawl across the floor, to where the others were scrambling down the ladder, but one of the Ferengi grabbed her ankles.
She barely had time to squeak in surprise before the Ferengi had hauled her back into the circle, and when she rolled over to get some perspective, she saw that they had all surrounded her again. Her brain was fuzzy – those damn scumbags were interfering with her telekinesis now as well as her telepathy – so she couldn't lash out with her mind, which was the only thing that had saved her before, in situations like this. She kicked wildly, nailing one of them, at least, in the groin area, but there were too many of them to fight, and eventually they had her arms pinned down to the sides.
A Ferengi gripped her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, successfully keeping her arms at her sides so that she couldn't fight back. He held her where she was, suspended in midair, before the others. They were poking her and prodding her and if her telekinesis hadn't been all screwed up, they would've found themselves missing vital parts of their anatomies.
"Vulcan," one of them said. It came out as a hiss of distaste. How any of them knew what a Vulcan looked like was beyond her, since to the best of her knowledge the Vulcans had never encountered the Ferengi before. "Ferengi" wasn't an entry in the Vulcan database. He pinched the tips of her pointed ears, as if to prove his point, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Leave it to a Ferengi to be so callous – it wasn't just the Vulcan hearing that was so sensitive. The ears were the most sensitive spots on a Vulcan body, which was why they were erogenous zones. But she wasn't about to tell the Ferengi that.
"Don't let the ears fool you," Kamea said through clenched teeth. "Keep it up, kēkake, and you'll see just how un-Vulcan I really am."
He poked at her again. "You would do well to hold your tongue."
She narrowed her eyes, knowing full well the Ferengi stance on the equality of the sexes. She'd encountered it enough times working at that damn depository – Ferengi didn't exactly hold women in high regard. She'd often been shunted aside in favor of the men in engineering, even though she was more qualified than all of them. Not that she particularly cared. If the Ferengi wanted to fly around space in an inferior ship, that was their problem. She got enough business from the Orions anyway.
"What do you want with Enterprise?" she asked, blatantly ignoring the suggestion that she shut up. Since when was she going to take orders from a Ferengi?
They laughed, but Kamea saw nothing funny about the situation. Finally, the one holding Kamea leaned close and said into her ear, "We have some clients who would pay a bundle for a warp-5 vessel."
She was about to ask what kind of clients would deal with the scum of the universe when that same damn Ferengi started poking her again. So she did the only thing she could think to do. She spit in his face.
The Ferengi hissed and drew away, all except the one holding Kamea, who remained exactly where he was. She'd had enough of this. Summoning all of the strength she possessed, she broke free of the Ferengi's hold and threw her elbows into his abdomen as hard as she could. When the others came at her, she did a combination of acrobatic moves that she generally only saved for spars with Malcolm and landed on the other side of them – on the safe side. Without sparing a backwards glance to see if they were following her, she raced into the ready room, lowered herself into the chute, and loosely grabbed both sides of the ladder, allowing her to slide easily down. She glanced up and saw that they were clambering into the hatch as well, obviously intent on following her down.
She landed somewhere on D-deck and took off down the corridor. She hadn't gone far when she crashed into something. The jolt just behind her navel and the tingling in her skin told her that she had run into Malcolm.
Malcolm started to speak. "Kamea, what the – " But he didn't get very far into his sentence before Kamea had grabbed him by the wrist and was pulling him down the corridor.
"Get out of the way," she said. "Get out of the way. Get out of the way. Get out of the way."
They didn't stop running until they were well away from the emergency ladder and buried deep within the labyrinthine engine room. Kamea collapsed to her knees, short of breath, and listened to Malcolm's ragged breathing somewhere off to her right. She glanced up, catching the glint in his eyes as he sought her out in the darkness. "Why did you come back for me?" she asked.
He smiled. "Nobody gets left behind."
She couldn't help but smile, and if he could have seen her face, he would have seen just how shyly she was smiling, and that she was blushing all the way to the tips of her pointed ears. She glanced around engineering, quickly realizing that the two of them were the only ones there. "Where is everyone?"
"The launch bay," Malcolm said. "The captain thought it was best, considering the circumstances, that they convene in a place with adequate amounts of space to plan the counterassault."
Kamea raised her eyebrows. "Makes sense, I suppose. You reckon we should join them?"
"'Reckon'?" Malcolm said, and she could hear the amusement in his voice, even if she couldn't see it on his face. "I think you've been spending far too much time in the company of Commander Tucker."
She rolled her eyes but started towards the launch bay. "T'Pol's under that impression as well. Perhaps the two of you should form a club."
It took T'Pol ages to convince Trip that she was okay. He had felt something – he knew he had, he just had no idea what it was he had felt – and he was sure that whatever it was, it had something to do with her. He didn't even care that everyone was staring at the two of them as he gave her a precursory inspection. She appeared unharmed, but only after he had dragged her over to Phlox was he completely satisfied that she was really okay.
T'Pol, for her part, seemed annoyed at his attention, but a pleasant tingle at the base of his brain told him otherwise. He could tell, for some reason, that she really enjoyed his concern for her well-being.
Once Phlox had examined all the members of the bridge crew – minus Malcolm and Kamea, who were still missing – the captain addressed all the assembled crewmembers. There weren't many, unfortunately. Though Kamea had been correct in saying that engineering held the greatest concentration of people, it was still less than a fourth of the total crew.
And when the captain unveiled his so-called brilliant plan – he intended to barter with the Ferengi, offering himself in exchange for the rest of Enterprise's crew – Trip got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that something really, really bad was going to happen. This wasn't the first time that Trip didn't agree with Captain Archer's decision. Trip couldn't remember the last time Archer had been his friend and captain as opposed to only his captain, or the last time he had made a sane, rational decision. The captain was always placing himself in harm's way, and while originally Trip had believed he did so to reassure his crew, he now thought that Archer did so because he couldn't stand anyone else doing what he thought he should do. He thought he was freaking Superman, or something.
And this was no exception.
His whole idea was ludicrous. It made absolutely no sense. Attempting to barter with the Ferengi? Trip didn't need to know anything about the Ferengi to know that that plan wasn't going to work. Why did the captain continue to think that he had to sacrifice himself for Enterprise? Granted, Trip didn't exactly have kind of backup plan, but there had to be another way.
"There is no other way, Trip," Archer said, when Trip confronted him and told him that his plan was suicide. "This is the way it has to be."
Trip opened his mouth to launch yet another valid protest – but since when did the captain listen to him? – but was interrupted by T'Pol. "Captain," she said, lightly laying her hand on Trip's arm and successfully preventing him from doing something he probably would've regretted, "with all due respect, that hardly seems logical."
Trip bit back a smile at T'Pol's infusion of logic. One of these days he was going to make a bet with her that she couldn't go an entire day without saying the word "logical". But this time he had to agree with her – not only was the captain's idea illogical, it was stupid and suicidal. There was no method to his madness – just madness. Trip knew that Archer had had some dumb ideas before – the alien hatchery debacle came to mind – but this one really took the cake.
Archer didn't seem to share Trip's amusement. In fact, he looked downright pissed off, much the same as he used to back in the early days of the mission. "Well, it may not be logical," Archer said, "but it's the only option."
He turned and headed for the corridor. Trip and T'Pol exchanged a look, having a conversation with their eyes, which Trip understood even though he didn't really understand, before they hurried after him. He was halfway across the launch bay before they caught up to him, and he was almost to the door when Kamea and Malcolm burst through it. They were both out of breath and looked as though they'd been running for a ways.
"Where's the fire?" Trip asked, as Malcolm and Kamea both collapsed against the railing for support.
Kamea rolled her eyes, but said nothing. She was still trying to catch her breath. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on her thighs, and took deep, even breaths. Malcolm also said nothing, resting against the wall and clutching a stitch in his side.
"What happened?" T'Pol asked.
"We had an unfortunate run-in with our friends," Malcolm said. He winced and sucked in a sharp breath, dropping heavily to the floor. "I don't think I've ever run that fast in my life."
Kamea nodded, her eyes closed. "Those little buggers run fast." She straightened slowly, exhaling through pursed lips. "It was all we could do to get away with them. All of them together like that disrupts my brainwaves, and I'm good, but I can't take on seven at once." She glanced at T'Pol. "Please tell me you have a plan."
Archer straightened so quickly that Trip swore he could almost hear his spine snap into place. "I'm going to offer myself in exchange for everyone else."
Kamea and Malcolm exchanged a look, much like the one Trip and T'Pol had shared. Kamea cocked an eyebrow, looking confused, and Malcolm looked irritated. Then again, Malcolm always looked irritated. Trip had always assumed it was the British in him.
"That's your plan?" Kamea said. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
A/N: Sorry! Forgot I had a Hawaiian word in there.
kēkake -- jackass (literally, "donkey", but for the purposes of this story, it means "jackass")