CHAPTER 10
Hoshi was in a quandary as she stepped out of her quarters the next morning. Should she head for sickbay and get something for her hangover-induced headache? Or, should she report to the bridge and pretend there wasn't an army of little men with sledgehammers pounding the inside of her skull?
The need to have a clear head to work on the inscriptions turned her steps toward sickbay. She'd get something from Phlox, check if there was any progress on finding out why she was in Jon's body and vice versa, and then go to the bridge.
If she hurried, she'd only be a few minutes late for her shift, and the captain couldn't blame her for getting something for the hangover. He could have at least warned her that, despite his size, he had no more tolerance for heavy drinking than a slug.
Blinking against the bright glare of the lights in sickbay as she entered, Hoshi looked around for Phlox.
"Doctor?" she called out, wincing at the excrutiating loudness of Jon's voice when she spoke.
"Yes?" Phlox answered as he came around the partition behind which he kept medical supplies. "Can I do something for you, Hoshi?"
"I have the most horrible headache."
Phlox clucked sympathetically and picked up a scanner, moving it around her head. "Hmmm. Been drinking, I hope?"
"Yes," she said with a puzzled frown.
"Good. Otherwise, I was concerned it might be a side-effect of the switch."
Phlox efficiently loaded a hypospray and applied it to her neck. As the injection began to take effect, Hoshi closed her eyes and felt some of the tight muscles in Jon's shoulders relax. "Thanks, Doctor. I'm feeling better already."
"A suggestion, if I may?"
Hoshi looked at him questioningly.
"Use alcohol in moderation," he said. "The captain has been in here more than once after a night of drinking with Commander Tucker."
"Now you tell me," she muttered. Changing the subject, she asked, "Have you figured out how the switch took place?"
"Not yet, but Sub-commander T'Pol and I are exploring various possibilities. I feel sure a return to the planet will prove most helpful."
Hoshi thanked the doctor again as she left sickbay, a spring in her step as she made her way to the bridge. Not only were the lingering effects of a night with the bottle dissipating but today they would go back to where this whole mess had started. She hoped they'd find some answers there. The only thing better she could wish for would be to find a Rosetta stone that held the key to the language.
Too bad she didn't have time to get something to eat. Now that the headache was almost gone, Jon's stomach was growling in a most unladylike fashion.
Jon was already on the bridge when she arrived. She saw a frown distort his borrowed features as he looked at the chronometer built into the command chair.
"Sorry, sir," she said as she hustled over to the communications console. "I stopped to check in with Doctor Phlox."
She saw her excuse hadn't fooled him. He'd been there last night, eating chocolate while she and Trip and Malcolm had killed off the bottle of whiskey. As she remembered the dent Jon had put in her chocolate reserves, she resolved to do everything she could to crack the alien language as quickly as possible, if only to keep him from blowing up her body like a blimp.
He'd taken her advice and put on the barest hint of mascara and blush this morning, she noticed approvingly. When she'd insisted last night on showing him how to apply make-up, he'd been equally insistent that they go in the bathroom, away from the amused gazes of Trip and Malcolm who were helping polish off the whiskey.
She had tucked a tube of lipstick and another of mascara in a pocket on her uniform this morning, just in case she had to drag him to the ready room and fix his face, but he'd done fine on his own.
Within minutes of her arrival on the bridge, the comm panel on the command chair beeped. Trip was reporting in to say that the Tellarite vessel had been fully repaired and all Enterprise personnel were back on board.
"Then let's get out of here," Jon said, giving Travis the order to head back to the planet.
They'd only been underway a short time when from the tactical station Malcolm said, "The Andorian ship is following us."
Hoshi, despite Jon's less-sensitive hearing, could hear his muttered expletives all the way over at her console. Last night, about halfway through the bottle, Malcolm had filled her in on what had happened with Jon and Shran. She didn't blame the captain one bit for swearing. Shran was lucky it hadn't actually been her alone with him in the captain's mess -- Jon and Malcolm had let him off a lot easier than she would have.
"Open a channel to Shran," Jon said when he ran out of names to call the Andorian commander.
Hoshi keyed the proper buttons and Shran's smug face appeared on the viewscreen.
"Captain Archer," he said with cloying sweetness. "We meet again."
"Knock it off, Shran," Jon replied. "Why are you following us?"
"The heading you're taking indicates you're on the way back to that planet. I'm very interested in seeing what you find out about your condition and whether it can be reversed."
Jon glared at him. "And I suppose if we do find out how to reverse it, you'll want us to let you know?"
"Think of the Andorians who are in the same fix. Surely you wouldn't keep such information from a close friend like me."
Jon sputtered at Shran's choice of words and looked away. Hoshi had to admit Shran had a point. If they could figure out how to reverse the procedure and gave that information to the Andorians, it would go a long way toward cementing ties between their two species.
"If there's anything I can do to help, please, let me know," Shran said.
Jon looked back at the screen, and Hoshi was struck by how her body looked under Jon's influence at that moment -- the stiff posture, the forward lean of the torso, the "don't mess with me" expression. Jon looked just like her mother when Hoshi or one of her siblings had stepped out of line big-time.
"Follow us if you want, Shran," Jon said slowly and clearly. "But stay out of our way."
He motioned for Hoshi to cut the connection but not before they all saw the satisfied smirk on Shran's face.
"Malcolm," Jon said, then paused. Hoshi bit her lip as she watched Jon try to manuever her shorter legs to swivel the chair. They weren't quite long enough to get leverage from the deck. She'd have to remember that if she ever was left in command of the bridge.
"Malcolm," Jon said again as he finally got turned the way he wanted. "If Shran's ship even looks like it's about to try something, shoot it."
"Sir?"
"You heard me," Jon said. "Shoot it. Hell, if you get bored, go ahead and take a potshot. I don't care." Getting up from his command chair, he very deliberately turned it back to face the viewscreen, his expression daring anyone to make a comment. "I'll be in my ready room."
There was absolute silence as Jon marched up onto the upper level and into his ready room.
A few moments later, a text message popped up on one of the screens on Hoshi's console: "PMS as an offensive weapon?"
There was only one person who would dare send her that message. Hoshi couldn't look at Malcolm for fear of bursting out laughing.
The rest of the morning passed quietly, although Hoshi could sense Malcolm's alertness. He wasn't about to let Shran try anything. She wondered if he was tempted to take a shot at Shran's vessel just for the heck of it, although she knew he was too much of a professional to actually do it.
Jon remained in the ready room, for which Hoshi was grateful. He certainly was in a snit. Not that he could do anything on the bridge right now anyway.
By the time they arrived at the planet, Shran's ship in close attendance, Hoshi was no nearer to cracking the language than she had been the night before. At a briefing with the senior officers to discuss their options now that they were once again at the planet, she reported that, despite the copious inscriptions she had recorded, she had reluctantly come to the conclusion that she didn't have enough to work with.
Jon ordered another party down to the surface. It would be comprised of the same group as before. Its members had been there before, but now their purpose was twofold: While Hoshi sought out more inscriptions, T'Pol and Trip could look for the mechanism that had initiated the transfer of brainwaves. Although there was no reason for Malcolm to come along again, Hoshi could tell Jon didn't have the heart to tell him to stay behind.
Jon also ordered Hoshi to send a strongly worded message to Shran, warning him not to attempt to follow them down to the planet. For once Shran didn't argue, but no doubt the Andorians would be following their movements as closely as possible with their scanners.
After some consideration, Jon allowed Trip to pilot the shuttlepod.
"I'm still not used to the shorter arms' length," Jon said, stretching an arm out and looking ruefully at the hand on the end of it.
"Hopefully it won't be for much longer," Hoshi told him.
The flight down was uneventful. They landed at the same place as before and quickly climbed out of the shuttlepod, Hoshi in particular eager to find new inscriptions that might unravel the mystery.
When Jon and Hoshi started off to look for more inscriptions, he called out to the others, "Whatever you do, don't stand under the archway."
A dry, dusty wind whipped through the air as Jon and Hoshi methodically went from building to building checking for inscriptions. In doing so, Hoshi did have one small epiphany.
"Look, sir," she said as she pointed to an engraved symbol next to a doorway. "Most of the outer doors have a marking of some sort on the upper right-hand side. It could be a numbering system, like street addresses on Earth."
Jon nodded. "Maybe studying them in the order they're posted as we go down this street will prove you right."
They spent close to two hours, Hoshi recording every inscription they could find, before they made their way back to the structure with the archway. Malcolm was standing outside, apparently having stepped out for a breath of fresh air.
"Anything?" Jon asked as they approached him.
"They're still taking scans," Malcolm said. "So far, they haven't found anything."
The trio went inside to find Trip and T'Pol hunched over their hand-held scanners.
"No indication of any power sources," T'Pol reported. "No indication of any devices that might channel power."
Trip nodded in confirmation of T'Pol's succinct report. "If there's somethin' here that caused what happened, I don't have a clue what it is."
"We could try excavation," T'Pol went on. "However, if there is mechanism within the walls or underground, we could inadvertently damage it."
"Perhaps whatever it is needs to be activated for you to get a scan," Hoshi said hopefully. "Maybe it's masked or doesn't give off a power signature unless it's working."
She waited as the captain pondered her remarks. By the set of what should have been her shoulders, she could tell he was thinking along the same lines as she was.
If whatever equipment caused their body switch needed to be in operation in order to detect it, the next logical step would be to try standing under the arch to activate it. Risky, maybe, but after two days in Jon's body, she was willing to try it. The ideal outcome, of course, would be that they were switched back. At worst, nothing would happen.
Hoshi was ready when the captain turned his gaze to her.
"Hoshi? Are you willing to try it?"
Her affirmative reply was almost drowned out by both Trip and Malcolm's protests.
"You can't do that, Cap'n!" Trip said. "Who knows what will happen?"
"It might even kill you to go through it again," Malcolm added.
Jon turned to face them, and if there was ever any doubt that it was truly the captain in her body, his manner and his decisiveness would have ended that speculation.
"We're not getting anywhere solving this problem," he said. "This is a chance I'm willing to take. Hoshi is, too, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir," she answered immediately.
"But what about Hoshi's attempts to learn this language?" Malcolm asked. "Shouldn't we wait until she can translate it?"
Hoshi was prepared for this argument and she spoke with conviction. "Even though I've made some progress today," she said, "there's still not enough variation in the symbols we're finding to provide a big enough base of information to unlock this language. I won't say I can't do it because I think I can, given enough time. But right now, I think it would take me a very long time."
"I've made my decision," Jon said firmly. "Make sure you've got the scanners recording all this when Hoshi and I step into the archway."