"Daniels," he whispered, the dread that filled his heart upon hearing from his former steward was more than he wanted to deal with at the moment.
"Hello, Captain." He was greeted by a slender man, with thinning dark blond hair and blue eyes that looked at him too intently. "I had not thought that we would meet again, but I'm afraid I have to trouble you once more."
"What is it this time?" Archer snapped. "What is it you think you can save by bringing me here? I don't want any part of any more of your wars!"
"I'm hoping that by bringing you here, we can save Earth," Daniels announced solemnly.
"My brother, the Drama Queen," Reese snorted snidely returning with a pair of heavy boots and a pair of socks in one hand. She sat on the floor to apply her footwear. "Give him a minute, he'll have you believing that 'All of Time' hangs in the balance, unless you climb to the top of the Empire State Building and hock up a loogie." When she spoke the words 'all of time' her voice raised in pitch in a decidedly snide fashion.
"Stay out of this, Reese!" Daniels snapped in frustration.
Around them a hollow boom shook the room they were seated in. Reese looked around thoughtfully. "Whatever you're going to tell him, hurry up! We're running out of time!" She surprised even herself by chuckling at her own joke, wandering off to pop the top on a bottle of beer.
Daniels looked back at Archer and smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way. "We need to set the past to rights," he offered. "Something went wrong, I'm not sure where exactly, but..."
Reese cursed quietly. "You flubbed it," she told Archer shortly, handing him a dark brown bottle.
Jon flinched. Studying the two faces, so similar in features, Archer felt a little light-headed. He took a long swig from the bottle.
"Reese! It's my story! Let me tell it!" Daniels pouted. He frowned at the bottle the captain held, but he wasn't about to snatch it back. He refused the one his sibling offered him.
"I tell it better," she looked straight at Archer when she said that. "Are you feeling up to it? Because this is bad."
"I couldn't possible feel worse," he told her woodenly. He rather liked her blunt manner. He certainly preferred it to the overly sentimental and mysterious ways of his long-departed steward.
She snorted, possibly with humor. Daniels opened his mouth to object, but Reese held up a hand. "You handle the technical stuff; I'll give him the shorthand. She added under her breath, "Otherwise we'll be here all night." Jon couldn't help but grin grimly in acknowledgment.
Daniels rolled his eyes, but agreed. "Fine, but make it snappy." He sounded vexed.
"You were supposed to make a speech about peace, but you flubbed it. You started waxing maudlin about people that had died, and those you thought were probably responsible for their deaths. It was a long list and you ticked off all the dignitaries.
"Turns out there were some uninvited guests among the celebrants, including Klingons and an Andorian named Shran. You mentioned P'Jem and the Andorians started a fight with the Vulcans. You pitted the Xindi and Suliban against one another by talking about the people who died in the Delphic Expanse. Tellarites picked fights with Coridians. And Starfleet suddenly needed to defend themselves against everyone else."
The lights above his head that looked like carnival lights were the lights of phasers and disruptors. The noise that jerked him out of his speech had been gunplay. He remembered it now, but distantly, as though it happened a long time ago to someone else. As far as he knew it had only happened ten minutes ago.
"The Peace Conference degenerated into a bloodbath. You were shot in the leg as you tried to escape on the ramps, and Shran pulled you to safety. Daniels used a temporal gate and pulled you out of there. When the Andorians discovered that you knew of Shran's whereabouts, they left the hall. The fight spilled onto the landing pad. It extended into the orbit around Earth." She paused. "The war extended farther than that. It encompasses most of the Alpha Quadrant."
Archer couldn't help his stunned reaction. Pain glistened in his eyes.
Reese stared at Archer with compassion in her eyes. "My brother saw the temporal wave coming. He took you from your time and encased us here in a protective bubble. We are all that is left that remembers the way things should be. Outside, there is nothing but death and destruction."
"It's a temporal anomaly held in inter-dimensional flux," Daniels corrected her with irritation. "It's not a bubble."
"Whatever, Rubbermaid," was her only response to his interruption, referring to the black textured suit that her brother wore everywhere.
"We're safe inside the bubble," she told Archer, glaring pointedly at her sibling who exhaled loudly, "But the action outside is growing increasingly hostile. Not only are we continuously bombarded with fresh temporal waves, the residents are in the midst of a massive war. If they puncture the anomaly, we're all toasted." Another shipwide quake sent Reese over to scan a display panel for information.
"Fill him in, brother dear, and let's get this ship straightened out," she commanded gently. "We have to save 'all of time.'" As she said that last phrase, one that Daniels had used often in the past until Archer was sick of hearing it, her voice raised and she that same nasal whine in a certain indication that she'd heard her fill of the Time Wars as well.
"Captain," Daniels sat on the edge of the couch next to Archer. "We need to reset the timeline. We need to get you back to the moment on the stage where it all started to go wrong. You need to give the speech I remember you giving, the one that inspires hope to all who hear it. It's a historical speech. I can have a copy brought out of the database if you've forgotten it." Daniels sounded as eager for all this muck as he ever did, and Jon was tired of this whole mess.
"I can't go back," he told the future man faintly. "I can't give a speech about peace. I don't care if they live or die." His voice cracked. "Too many lives were lost in a quest for peace that never came. Maybe there was never supposed to be peace at all." He rolled over, effectively turning his back to Daniels. "Just let me have my memories."
Daniels started to protest but Reese crossed the room and grabbed his bicep, dragging him into the galley portion of the ship. "Give him a minute, Doofus. He's had a bad day."
"We're running out of time!" Daniels protested. He stomped his feet in frustration.
Reese stared at him. "What are you, two years old? Get a grip. Go check the flux capacitor or the Improbability Drive or the magic hamster beans that manage the time travel thingy and make sure we've got the power to do this right."
"Time travel thingy?" Daniels stared at his sister in exasperation. "You were never very good at physics!"
He stomped into the other room as she called after him. "At least my mucking about never resulted in a temporal wave that destroyed 'All of Time', you Jackass!"
She snuck a quick look at Archer who'd opened one eye to stare at her morosely. "Sorry," she apologized without much worry. "Didn't mean to implicate you in that."
"What's really happening?" Jon asked. His head hurt and his eyes burned and he just wanted to talk with his friends about this. Trip would find some way to make this funny.
"Go see for yourself." She nodded at a window nearby.
Jon rose from his couch and stumbled to the clear pane. Just outside was an empty space approximately ten meters wide. The Picard drifted inside its walls that shimmered like jelly.
Outside the walls chaos reigned.
Bits and pieces of rock floated around them. Clouds of dust hung heavily in the thick vacuum of space and the pale light that filtered through it cast everything in a red haze. Lights flashed nearby, familiar colors in red and green and blue. He realized there were still ships fighting out there. A meteorite hung immobilized in a night sky that was torn and red. It was missing a large chunk of its sphere, like a pie with a giant wedge cut out. The vessel they stood on drifted around the large chunk of rock and as Archer watched he recognized the unmistakable sight of South America's round top and triangular tail peeking out from the gouge. He wasn't looking at some meteor; he was looking at the remains of his own planet.
"We're in Earth's orbit?" He wheezed the words out past a throat suddenly constricted to tightly for the passage of air. She stepped up next to him and offered a plate with a sandwich on it.
"There's not much of Earth left, although it used to be nice," Reese answered quietly. "In this timeline it's been desolated since the twenty third century. It's a dead rock, it won't sustain life anymore." She smiled sadly. "If Rilo hadn't activated the temporal bubble, I'd be nothing more than a memory. As it turns out, memories are all I have left." She turned back to the empty room and swigged from her beer again.
"Memories are all I've ever had," Jon told her, biting reluctantly into the food. As soon as the flavor hit his mouth he realized he was starving and chewed more enthusiastically. "Trip was the only family I had left. My dad died before I became captain. My mom died before I took command of Enterprise. I never got married, never had kids. I never did anything. I watched everyone around me live." He swallowed hard.
"I died when Trip died. He was my best and only friend."
"That's just pitiful." She raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you spend, like, ten years on a ship with about a hundred other people? Don't they matter to you?" Reese exhaled through her nose. "You and Rilo deserve each other," she muttered. "You don't do anything but whine on about the past. This is the future. You can change every day of your life just by making a different choice."
"I wish I had made any choice at all." Jon cringed. "I didn't make any choice. When the time came, I just sat back and watched those crooks kill Trip. I didn't do anything." His chest hurt as though he stood in Sickbay watching Trip wink at him all over again.
"I'm sorry your friend is dead," she uttered softly, resting a hand on his arm. "But this world cannot remain like this. This ship will not survive forever. You have to go back." Jon was already shaking his head in the negative. Reese's voice hardened just slightly. "Is his life worth the lives of the billions of people who died because you can't talk about the future of peace?"
"I just can't do this without him by my side," he whispered. "I'd rather be wiped out of existence than live without him." He studied the woman. "Daniels is your brother, right?"
She nodded ruefully. "My twin actually," she replied.
"What if someone told you that your world could be perfect if you just let your brother die?"
That impish grin stole across her face. "Honey, I'd be the first person in a long line to kick him out an airlock!"
"Would you?" Archer stared into her green eyes, daring her to lie to him. "Would you really?"
She couldn't. "No," she answered. "He's an idiot, but he's all I have." She sounded forlorn.
"Then help me!" He was begging her now.
"You've encountered Daniels before," she reminded him. "You know what problems can arise if you muck around with the established boundaries of the future! Would Trip want to be responsible for the end of everything if this doesn't go right?"
Jon choked on his own words. "I can't..."
"Live without him," she finished. "Yeah, I heard you the first time." Now she sounded annoyed.
They were going to risk the existence of everything for the life of one man. "My brother won't let you do this," she warned Archer.
"Then I'm going to need your help," he stated with determination.
"I thought you might," she smirked.