Season Five

by EnlightenedSkye

Picking up six months after Terra Prime, the Enterprise attempts to hold the Coalition together while keeping an eye on the growing Romulan threat. Trip takes his own command and the war begins mid-season. [July 2155 to January 2157. 25 episodes. Fully episodic, so each chapter is a stand-alone story. ATP, Troshi, Malcolm/OC, P/C. Rated T throughout. Complete, S6 and S7 complete]

12. Episode 12: First Blood

A/N: Y'all already know what time it is. War time, baby! Thanks for the reviews and support.

The inspiration for this episode was basically 4x05 Cold Station 12 with a smattering of 2x21 The Breach, but where everything that could possibly go wrong does. It's a little bloody and very sad. Please note that I'm putting out a trigger warning for suicide for the middle of the chapter. Here we also see Trip making another difficult decision that's (again) a little questionable. Some details about Alira's mission are a little vague, deliberately, so we have material to flesh out later. I feel like I've been dropping hints all over the place, especially in E4 Sevarin and the constant mentions of her father.

Malira have no idea about their mutual involvement with [SPOILER REDACTED], but rest assured that when they do find out, it will be in a suitably dramatic fashion. We also find out what Simon's deal is here, at least partially. Looking ahead, the Betazoids return next time, T'Pol & Co. arrive on Solnara in E14, and Shran returns in E15, fully not knowing what he's about to get himself into.

Hope you enjoy this chapter and the massive plot twist that just might make you want to scream at your computer screen. It picks up right from the end of E11. Still don't own anything.

Side note...anyone else seen the first episode of Lower Decks? I'm loving it, honestly.

Season Five

Episode Twelve: First Blood

Maelstrom Captain's log, January 25th, 2156: We are en route to answer a priority one distress call from a moon of Tarod IX where the Denobulans have built a surveillance satellite on the edge of Romulan territory. Details are spotty, but it's critical that we reach them as soon as possible.

---

Upon entering the ready room, Alira made a beeline to the window and placed both hands on the frame, leaning into it and exhaling a nervous, shuddering breath. As Trip watched in silence, she made a conscious effort to correct her posture and suppress the shaking in her extremities. When she turned back to him, her expression was dour, severe, entirely distraught.

"Captain, I'm sure you're aware that if Kandar's computer core fall into enemy hands, the effects will be catastrophic."

Not could. Not may. Will. From their bimonthly reports, he knew they'd managed to collect a great deal of information on Romulan ships, weapons, and settlements; logically, it followed that they also stored comm codes for all the vessels in the fleet, their crew complements, and every alliance colony in the quadrant. Even if the Romulans weren't the ones presently storming the station, an infiltration by any malevolent species would blow a massive hole in United Earth's security network.

"Do you think the station residents will be able to hold them off until we get there?"

"As far as I know, they don't have dedicated security officers, and a very limited supply of weapons. As for my mother, she can maintain her calm in a crisis, but-" She paused, and for a split second he thought he saw tears in her eyes. When she spoke again, it was nearly a whisper. "She's a scientist, sir. Not a soldier."

The comm sounded, effectively ending their conversation. Trip came around his desk and switched on his computer console. Alira stepped up to him, hovering over his shoulder, watching as the insignia of the Denobulan Infantry appeared onscreen. A brief countdown flashed in the corner, followed by the image sharpening significantly.

The form of General Vesena emerged, sitting at the head of the table in the situation room on the Alveron. She was a tall, raven-haired woman who certainly cut an imposing figure, even as she maintained a faint, temperate smile. Trip knew very little about the Supreme Commander other than the fact that she was Alira's half-mother, the second wife of the late General Taxa. Though, from the way her expression scarcely changed when she looked at them, he suspected they weren't close.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Captain Tucker? I rarely receive unexpected calls apart from your Commodore."

He looked back at Alira, who cleared her throat, seemingly struggling to figure out how to address her. Finally, she settled on formality. "Ma'am, we've received a distress call from the Kandar satellite. They've been boarded."

Suddenly, her expression shifted, though only slightly. Her eyes widened, and she glanced over the top of her console, seeming to look at someone standing across the room. They could see her hand grip the edge of the table with incredible intensity. "Did they say who? Which species?"

"No, ma'am. We're an hour and fifty minutes away, but the situation could worsen by the time we arrive. Do you have any ships within range?" Trip was hoping the answer would be yes. Nothing had shown up on long-range sensors yet, but he was already expecting to fly into a firefight. Though most of their ships weren't as fast, the Infantry had superior weapons, and their help would certainly be appreciated.

Gingerly, Vesena retrieved a PADD and began to scroll through the fleet manifest, her expression once again a mask of congeniality. They waited with almost bated breath until she turned back to face them, shaking her head. "The Faizor is the closest. Commander Salox can be there in twelve hours. He's one of my best."

Inwardly, Trip could feel the last bit of hope he had for an advantageous arrival slipping away. The Enterprise had already turned around, but at their current maximum speed, they would arrive over six hours after they did.

"Go ahead and send him. If my instincts are correct, we'll need all the help we can get." Trip reached for the button that would cut their transmission, but Vesena beat him to it, affording them another slight smile.

The second they were alone in the ready room, they made eye contact, and Trip knew she was thinking exactly the same thing he was.

She seemed awfully nonchalant about the impending demise of dozens of her world's best scientists.

---

With Kandar only forty-five minutes away, the senior staff gathered in the wardroom of the Maelstrom.

Alira was moving in quick, jerky movements that betrayed her anxiety. She stepped up to the table to interface her PADD with the view screen, and Hoshi could see that her hands were shaking. She was seized with the overwhelming urge to grab her hands and comfort her, though she resisted, thinking about how atypical such a reaction was for her.

"I'd like to start with-" She said waveringly, then cleared her throat. When she spoke again, her tone was perfectly even. "To my knowledge, Kandar is a modified Ilyan-class cargo way station. There's dozens of these between Denobula and Teerza Prime; I served on one of them for four months following my Infantry training."

Alira called up the first screen, the exterior view of the station from above, a geodesic dome formed from many overlapping sensor dishes. Their plane of vision shifted, and they were suddenly looking below ground, where long corridors stretched from the center. Surprisingly, the open area beneath the dome extended hundreds of meters down, far into the center of the moon. She gestured to the base of it, which was somewhat distended, oblong. "This is the reactor room, which powers the entire station. And if I know anything about the scientists they employ over at the Scientific Authority, it's likely that's where they've placed the computer core." She grimaced. "It's also one of the few areas of the station which will be temporarily habitable in the event of a catastrophic life support system failure."

Ensign Nguyen sat forward, glancing at the senior officers. They seemed perfectly disaffected, and he wasn't sure if they'd also come to the conclusion that the invaders would go after the system in question once they'd disabled the station's defenses.

"I want you all to listen to this and tell me what you hear." She surged forward towards the screen, activating the playback on the distress call they'd received. Her mother's voice filled the overhead speakers, and she bristled a little, flattening her back against the wall.

When there was no reaction, she bass-boosted the recording, slowing it down and amplifying the background noise. At first she received incredulous looks from the assembled officers, but gradually they began to be able to pick out individual conversations, in English and Denobulan, people crying out and screaming in pain. Someone was running a tricorder, the warbled noise of the scanner overpowering anything else momentarily. Then, immediately, most of them picked up on what she had noticed: a slow, ceaseless thrumming sound, running through the background at a stately pace.

"Sounds like a fusion reactor turning over to me," Kelby asserted. He'd recognize that sound anywhere; his quarters were directly above the set they had on the Maelstrom.

She snapped her fingers and pointed once again to the screen. "I'd bet anything that's where they're hiding."

Ethan took one look at the reactor pit, which seemed double the length of any other corridor on the station, and asked the question he knew they were all wondering: "How do we get down there anyway?"

"I…" She paused, rubbing her temples momentarily, before snapping back to attention. "We won't be able to transport in; by design, the hull is impenetrable to our matter-energy converters. There's two shuttlepod docking ports we should be able to use, provided we have the right clearance codes. One will most likely be occupied."

"And where are those?"

To Travis's dismay, she pointed just about as far away from the reactor pit as possible, to the far end of two of the spokes.

"Am I correct in assuming our mission will be rescue and retrieval?" Julia was watching from the far end of the table, arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed.

"What else would it be?" Trip glanced back at her, then to the rest of the officers. "We have no idea what we're walking into, or the extent of the casualties they've seen. We need to tell Dr. Yuris to expect a full sickbay."

Hoshi nodded, tapping out a quick message.

"I'd recommend taking at least two MACOs, sir, fully armed. You'll need to consult with Sergeant Kemper, but I'm pretty sure he'll agree that they should be set to kill."

Something about the way she said that set the hair on the back of Ethan's neck on end.

"I agree, Ensign." He paused. "Hammond, Mayweather. You'll be with me."

"Sir-"

"Dismissed."

Hoshi, Jimmy, and Ethan exchanged concerned looks, but slipped out of the door on Kelby's trail, heads down so as not to get a glimpse of the storm that was brewing back in the wardroom.

As soon as they were gone, Alira crossed the room in long strides, stepping well into Trip's personal space. "Sir, with all due respect, you need me. This is a Denobulan station. No one on board knows it better than I do."

Trip looked down into her eyes, fiery and intense, and indecision suddenly clenched his gut. He didn't want to give himself a second to change his mind, and shook his head. "You're too close to this mission, Ensign. We need you on the bridge."

Alira's jaw clenched, and she glanced back at their second officer, plainly looking for backup. She hoped she would realize how ridiculous his selection of away team was, how tactically disadvantageous it was.

She hoped she would realize he was possibly robbing her of a chance to say goodbye.

Julia appeared less confident in his decision, but didn't question it in the moment. "He's right, Taxa. Novakovich and Sato may outrank you on the bridge, but you've got more military experience than any of us. We need a capable commander in the big seat should we find ourselves in a firefight."

"There's no one I'd trust with that more than you," Trip assured her, hoping to convey his conviction and sincerity.

It wasn't enough.

Finally, she gave in, exchanging a curt nod with her COs and charging towards the door.

She hoped it wouldn't prove to be the wrong decision.

---

As soon as the Tarod system appeared on long-range scans, the Maelstrom entered a state of tactical alert.

The silence on the bridge was all-consuming, overpowering; Ethan felt like he could cut the tension with a knife. Every so often, the Captain would glance at him, wordlessly asking if he was seeing anything on sensors. Each time he would shake his head, and Tucker would pace around once behind the helm.

Across the room, Alira was repeatedly rapping her fingers on the top of her console, bouncing her knee under the table. She seemed to be staring off into the distance, not directly towards anything, her expression perfectly blank.

Suddenly they felt the pull of the ship dropping out of warp, pushing them slightly forward in their seats. The great sphere of Tarod IX appeared before them, frigid, frosty, and desolate, painted in shades of gray and white. It was as if the entire room was holding its breath, but as soon as they rounded the side of the planet, they realized as one that something was wrong.

"Where…" Julia began, rising to her feet. Together, her and Trip stood over Travis's shoulder, peering into the empty space around the first moon. There were no ships, alliance or otherwise, and for one long moment, it was as if time stood still.

"Stand down tactical alert. Take us around, Mr. Mayweather."

Travis complied, narrowing his eyes slightly as they came around the dark side of the moon. Soon the exterior dome of Kandar came into view, nearly blending in with the inky blackness of the surface. A quick glance at his console confirmed that there were no ships in the system, let alone half the sector. He knew the Captain saw it too, because in the next moment, he slammed his hand down on the console.

"Any power surges? Weapons signatures?"

Ethan shook his head. "Main power appears to be offline, but that's just based on thermal readings from a distance. I couldn't tell you about weapons signatures, biosigns, or environmental controls. Our sensors can't penetrate the hull."

"What about the comm?"

Hoshi's hands were already pressing buttons, opening a frequency, and soon the overhead speakers were filled with static. In the silence that followed, Trip called out, "Kandar stationmaster, this is Maelstrom. Please respond."

Nothing. The static seemed to grow louder, mocking them.

"Come in, Kandar."

Silence.

"We need to get closer." Alira's voice cut through the stillness, attracting the attention of their COs.

"How close, Ensign?"

"Within a couple hundred miles. She's likely using an amplitude modulation frequency to avoid detection." It was an important survival skill taught to all immediate family members of Infantry flag officers, should they ever find themselves kidnapped or shipwrecked.

Trip looked back at Ethan, eyebrows raised. He grimaced, then started to nod. "We should be okay. The moon's gravity is only about ten percent of Earth's. I wouldn't recommend we stay there for very long, though."

"We won't need to," she promised, rising from her chair.

As they watched, Travis coaxed the ship even further forward, until they were nose-to-nose with the station, seemingly on top of it. The frequency shifted, playing one long, pealing tone, with intermittent modulations.

Affording a sparing glance back to the Captain, Alira approached the screen tentatively. When she spoke, her voice was almost a whisper: "Mother?"

There was an almost endless pause, then the reply: "Alira?"

It was as if the room breathed a collective sigh of relief. On the other end of the line, Feezal began to speak rapidly, the rise and fall of the frequency distorting her words so severely that it took a moment for the UT to latch on.

"It happened so fast...blasted through the bulkhead, decompressed an entire section. First the cloak failed, then the force fields, then the blast doors...they've cut us off from our weapons locker, we need to…"

"Doctor, where are you? How many are left?" It was an indelicate way to broach the subject, but Trip knew their rescue strategy would hinge on her answer.

"Captain Tucker?" There was a pause, and he thought he might have heard a rush of background conversation, but it might have been static. "Near the center of the station. The three of us managed to secure the eastern corridor."

"And how many were there before the attack?"

"Twenty-seven," she replied casually, mostly succeeding in keeping the emotion out of her voice. "We only require one officer to start the manual uplink with our computer core. Once the upload is halfway complete, you are free to disembark."

Her choice of pronouns wasn't lost on Trip. He and Alira made eye contact from across the room, immeasurably concerned. "Mother, who did this to you?"

There was a shuffling, and then the communicator passed hands, an unfamiliar man's voice filling the speakers. "They were wearing EV suits. As soon as the alarm went off, I grabbed my sidearm and headed toward the reactor hatch. Ran straight into one. To escape, I had to…" His voice trailed off, and someone else was comforting him, urging him to finish. "I didn't get too close, but they looked like Vulcans to me."

Alira's heart immediately dropped to her stomach. Months ago, she'd told the Commodore that they wouldn't know where the hybrids would strike until the moment of their next attack. Immediately, she knew she had to-

"Lieutenant, get me Ambassador Soval. If he's not available, get me the whole damn High Command." Julia swiftly reached for him, grabbing his arm, and the look she gave him was nothing short of incredulous.

Alira knew what she had to be thinking. There's no way.

"Did you not see a ship approach?"

Someone else was speaking, a different man, his voice hoarse and urgent. "We usually receive a proximity alarm when a ship enters the system, but they were using an unfamiliar shielding system. I was in the computer core the moment the hull breached. We had a couple of seconds of visual contact when the ship decloaked. I'm fairly sure it was Vulcan."

"Are you positive? Could we see the footage for ourselves?"

"Have you had any visitors over the past few weeks?" Alira asked, praying that someone from the hybrid defector contingent hadn't come to call.

"The only functional systems on the station are life support and the computer core mainframe. I'm not sure if this was evident, Captain, but time is of the essence. It's likely we'll only be able to hold them for another hour or two through the blast doors we can manually lower." They could hear that she was on the move once more, the shuffle of footsteps behind her, the distant sound of weapons fire all around. "Captain Hernandez from Columbia was here about three months ago. Other than that, no one has entered or left this station since we commissioned."

In the distant reaches of her memory, Alira remembered greeting Erika as they orbited Tellar Prime, how she'd told her that her mother ran a tight station, how Kandar had been on the way to somewhere else. With the Solnaran system in the exact opposite direction, she now wondered what she could have possibly been referring to.

"She came alone? Not even a security detail?" Trip was clearly bewildered by this.

"That's right. Just a quick visit." They heard a metallic clank coupled with a loud shearing noise, which he suspected was a wall paneling being moved aside. "Listen, Captain, as much as I'd love to stay here and recount our old logs, we really must act quickly. Unless you plan on coming in through the massive hole they blew through the station, the docking ports are your best option."

"We'll need access codes, doctor," Julia said loudly, as a not-so-subtle reminder.

"Oh!" There was a moment of silence, then a shuffling sound as the lot of them began to move through what they suspected was a maintenance conduit. The weapons fire was much closer now, seemingly on top of them, and Feezal's voice dropped to a whisper. She rattled off a string of seemingly random numbers, growing quieter and quieter by the second.

By the time she finished, she was nearly inaudible, and Trip crossed the room, leaning into Hoshi's console. "Are you-"

"Hurry," she urged them, closing the connection.

A second later, the bridge was flooded with the sound of the bare frequency, shrill and eerie. Hoshi quickly silenced it, routing their request to speak with Ambassador Soval through three successive subspace amplifiers. For one eternal moment, their request was pending, and she watched the insignia of the High Command fade in and out on her display.

"You'll need to handle the Ambassador on your own. You've dealt with him before, so it shouldn't be difficult." Alira realized the Captain was addressing her, but hardly registered it. All she could think about was her mother crawling through some nameless air duct, evading capture by hybrid soldiers who would almost certainly torture her or worse.

It was likely that she wouldn't get to see her before the walls came crashing down. The more time that passed since their initial distress call, the more certain she was that they were headed towards disaster.

Trip and Julia were already halfway to the turbolift when Travis rose from his seat and started to follow them, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Swiftly, Alira reached into her pocket and retrieved her diverter shield, passing it to him. The last time she wielded it during a firefight, she'd stricken down a hybrid conspirator. After nearly being killed by their soldiers twice, she knew they were going to need all the help they could get.

She knew he'd seen her use it during target practice once or twice, but she'd never let him handle it before now. "Are you-"

"I'm sure," she assured him. "Be careful."

The second the lift doors closed, Alira took a seat on the Captain's chair, crossing her arms over her chest and trying her best to calm her racing heart.

---

As on the Maelstrom, the atmosphere on the bridge of the Enterprise was tense as they raced towards the Tarod system.

The moment they received the distress call, they made an abrupt about-face and headed in the direction they'd come, red-lining the engines and pushing the ship as fast as it could possibly go. At some point, the hull began to vibrate; every single item on the bridge that wasn't physically strapped down or welded to the floor began to rattle. They were receiving near continual updates from engineering as Lieutenant Commander Hess fought to keep the warp core from flying apart.

Five-point-eight...five-point-nine...five-point-nine-five...at each successive speed milestone, Pascal called it out, and the expressions of the bridge officers grew more and more fraught.

In one swift motion, Malcolm seized his long-since forgotten coffee mug from the top of his console, preventing it from tumbling to the floor by a fraction of a second. He took one final swig of his cold drink, grimacing, then stowed it by his feet. It took mere seconds for it to overturn and roll towards the viewscreen, where the stars were streaking past the ship more rapidly than he'd ever seen them.

He'd been alternating between trying and failing to look busy and verifying that the phase cannons were online for the hundredth time. He was almost positive that they were about to fly into another hybrid encounter, a brazen attack on a well-known target, where they had very limited control over the situation.

This time, there was nowhere to hide.

He could tell the Captain was experiencing similar misgivings; ever since they'd received the distress call and made contact with the Maelstrom, she seemed to shrink in on herself, crossing her legs and leaning far into one side of her chair. Though her expression remained impassive, he could see her repeatedly tapping the toe of one boot on the deck plating, a gesture that only jumped out at him due to the length of time they'd served together.

Every so often the Commodore would look towards her with tremendous emotion in his eyes and either nod or shake his head, seeming to have an entire conversation without any words at all. Over by the science station, Liz had done away with all pretense of appearing confident, bracing her elbows against her console and pressing her face into her hands.

Suddenly, Dita reached for the comm, activating her headset. Her brows furrowed and she swiveled around in her chair, nearly being tossed to the floor by a subsequent jolt in the hull. Recovering quickly, she called out, "We're receiving an encrypted transmission from the Maelstrom."

"Route it to my ready room."

It was as if the tension on the bridge suddenly burst like a balloon. T'Pol rose to her feet, followed by Jonathan, and the two of them mounted their escape.

Just as they reached the threshold, the Captain paused and glanced over her shoulder towards her first officer.

She didn't need to tell him twice.

Together they hovered over her computer console, watching as the crest of their sister ship appeared onscreen. There was a pause, then Alira slid into view, crashing into the desk chair like she was being pursued. Out of sight of the bridge staff, she was frantic, unnerved, and Malcolm didn't think he'd ever seen such fear in her eyes.

Not for the first time, he wished he could traverse the space between them, burst through the screen and wrap her in his arms.

"Ensign, what-"

"Hold that thought." Her fingers were flying across the keys, and in a second the screen split, revealing a slightly blurry and out-of-focus Ambassador Soval.

She didn't wait for them to exchange pleasantries. "We have a problem here."

"We'll be there in four hours, thirty-seven minutes. We're maxed out on speed as it is," Jonathan explained, much to the confusion of their Vulcan guest.

"Ambassador, Kandar station has been compromised. Captain Tucker just departed with the away team. There's three scientists down there trying to defend their computer core, and they're claiming to have been boarded by Vulcans on a Vulcan ship."

He couldn't even begin to hide his shock. "A Vulcan ship?"

"It's possible this is just a second prototype of the marauder that attacked our ships during the Babel Crisis. They apparently made a cloaked approach."

"Those ships were never manned." The Commodore shook his head, stepping away from the console for a few seconds. "Why would they be bringing the Denobulans into this?"

"It's not who they are, it's what they know. And since all the data they collected on the Romulans has already been disseminated, they must be digging for information about us." She didn't know it for sure, but it was a gut feeling. One that was undeniable.

"And trying to stir up trouble by framing the Vulcans in the process," Malcolm surmised. "Have you picked up any power signatures?"

"The ship is long gone, sir. The best bet we'd have is accessing Kandar's sensor array, but that's offline. They've requested that we go down there and set up a remote data link so we can download their computer."

"And not a rescue?"

"No, ma'am," Alira replied, frowning slightly. "At least not immediately."

"They've got to be hybrids," Archer muttered, mostly to himself, though it clearly came through over subspace. "This is their big move."

The first overture of war.

"It must be," Soval agreed, fixing his gaze on Alira. "Ensign, you have my authorization to do whatever is necessary to pin this on the Romulans and prevent the hybrid plot from being uncovered."

"You and Doctor Yuris," T'Pol echoed quietly, silently adding, whatever it takes.

She nodded briskly, and though he couldn't be sure, Malcolm thought she made eye contact with him over a distance of light years. Something in her expression softened, and then shifted.

"I'll keep you apprised," Alira said, then ended the transmission.

As soon as the screen darkened, the Captain retreated to the far end of the room, crossing her arms and facing the wall. She took one deep, shuddering breath, and then two. When she spoke, it echoed through his mind, and would continue to do so for weeks.

"So this is how it begins."

"We knew they would eventually catch up to us."

"This is my fault," she said, and however steady she kept her expression, there was no hiding the emotion in her voice. "They likely extracted Kandar's location from my mind while I was being held captive by Sub-Commander Tovin."

"If that were the case, ma'am, they wouldn't have waited this long to act," Malcolm assured her. "Especially with us within striking distance."

"He's right, T'Pol. They could have got the intel from anywhere, any comm system on any NX vessel. You said so yourself, they'd been tracking our transmissions for a long time." Jonathan stepped up and seized her shoulders, pulling her in slightly. Quietly, emphatically, he insisted, "This is not your fault."

Malcolm was starting to feel like he was witnessing some kind of intimate moment, and looked away. In a moment, the Captain broke free, rushing back towards the bridge.

"It is of no consequence." Her hands froze over the door controls. "My brother is coming, and he is going to destroy us all."

---

As they rocketed towards Kandar, Trip started to feel more and more like they were going to crash.

Travis was bearing down on the joystick with a vice like grip, slowly banking the craft strongly to one side. Julia was perched in the passenger seat, peering into the viewfinder, guiding him to the left or to the right with a wave of her hand.

According to the schematics Ensign Taxa provided, the docking hatch was holographic, perfectly blended into the rocks and valleys far below them. The only indication it was even there at all was the thin black square around the perimeter, which kept shifting and moving as the exhaust from their thrusters stirred the dust around it.

Behind him, Corporals McKenzie and Chang were desperately trying to keep their balance, which only became more difficult as they fully tilted sideways, making contact with the surface at a ninety degree angle.

Trip heard the whoosh of the docking clamps engage and breathed a sigh of relief. Far across the sphere of the moon, he could barely make out the shape of a Denobulan shuttle anchored to the port on the clear opposite of the station. It looked armed to the teeth; mentally, he started to plan their rescue attempt around it, whether the scientists would go willingly or not.

Chang opened their own pod's hatch and keyed in their access codes, but had trouble with the internal door, a massive wheel that grinded and clicked against its gears with every turn. Trip braced his back against the wall, using his feet to knock the hatch loose.

Immediately, the cabin began to fill with smoke, thick, dark, and murky. Trip was beginning to wonder if they should have brought EV suits when Julia checked her tricorder, affording them all a not too convincing thumbs up. Tentatively, McKenzie peered through the opening, phase rifle held aloft.

Slowly, she sat back and dangled her legs through the hatch, before pushing herself off and falling to the floor of the corridor far below.

One by one, they entered the station. Trip brought up the rear, closing the pod's hatch behind them, activating the night vision eyepiece that had been strapped around his head.

Even with the acuity boost, he was still having trouble making sense of where they were. The hallway was filled with smoke from about waist up, choking out the reddish tone of the emergency lights mounted along the ceiling. All around them, the copper color of the deck and wall plating cast an eerie glow, intermittently stained with what appeared to be blood.

Before he could stop himself, Travis reached out to touch it, dragging his finger through a splash on the wall. Carefully, he pulled his eyepiece to one side and studied it, confirming for all of them that it was a bright, vibrant green.

In that moment, a phaser blast slid past Julia's ear, missing her by mere centimeters. The MACOs swiftly stepped in front of her and leveled their weapons, having to dodge multiple volleys coming from around the curve of the hallway. Instinctively, the Captain and the Commander reached for their sidearms, while Travis took a distinctly different approach.

He charged forward, pressing an unseen button on his arm as he did so. Trip heard the deafening sound of metal scraping against metal, and soon discovered that his helmsman was holding something massive, dark, and circular, with rows of impossibly sharp teeth circling the perimeter.

"This is Captain Tucker from the Maelstrom!" He shouted over the din of their opponents' weapons fire and their own, hoping to avoid whatever misadventure Travis was sure to encounter.

As he rounded the corner, he lifted his shield, diverting no less than three phaser blasts, which disappeared into the ceiling within a fraction of a second. Instantly, he heard a woman's voice calling out to her companions, which he dearly hoped was the Denobulan version of stand down.

He echoed that command, squinting into the darkness. In the silence that followed, Travis stepped to one side and holstered his shield, retracting it into the device strapped to his arm in the blink of an eye. Trip thought he could see his eyes widen and his expression freeze in what he determined to be unmitigated shock.

As their three hosts came into view, he soon realized why.

Naturally, the first person they laid eyes on was Feezal Phlox, virtually unchanged in the three years since he'd last seen her, followed by two men, one taller and one shorter, all wearing slate gray lab coats stained with smoke, dust, and blood, most of it not their own.

The lady in question had a feral look in her eye, clutching a blaster to her chest. Immediately, Julia was taken aback by the notion that such a loud voice could have come from such a petite woman. Alira was much taller and more powerfully built, but the resemblance was certainly there, and almost uncanny. It seemed to her that while her tactical officer was all strength and decisiveness in her movements, her mother was poise and grace, even in the dire situation they presently found themselves in.

"Captain, did you ignore my request, or are you just that ignorant?" They even had the same distinctive accent, all extended vowels and upspeak that made the ends of their sentences sound louder. As Julia watched, she stepped up to him and jabbed the end of her weapon into his chest. "I believe I asked you to send down one officer to help with the data transfer."

"There's no need for that, doctor. We thought you might need some extra help down here. We weren't expecting to get shot at."

"Well, what did you think we'd assume, with five armed soldiers busting through the ceiling?" Even though she knew she was reprimanding him, it still sounded like she was teasing him, though the fire in her eyes told a different story. "And here I thought you were good at following instructions."

Trip gestured toward his first officer, introducing her to the group. "I've brought you your one officer. Commander Hammond used to be a science officer on her last posting. We'll have you up and running in no time."

"Ma'am." Julia said, already feeling ill at ease in the darkened hallway. "I've looked through your crew complement. I'd like to meet with your lead computer scientist if-"

"Dr. Sawyer," she interrupted, gesturing to several of the many blood stains on her lab coat. "She's here, somewhere."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"No time for pleasantries, we've got a job to do." Julia was shocked at how she'd been able to keep the ghost of a smile on her face, even when she was relaying at least the basis of the horrible tragedy that had befallen them. Feezal gestured behind her to her companions. "Juran and Zertaph. Physicists, like myself."

"Gentlemen," Trip muttered, noticing how the two of them appeared much more worse for wear than their leader. They nodded back, then looked away, towards Travis standing along the wall.

As if on cue, Feezal turned on her heels, greeting their helmsman with an extremely forceful: "Forgive me, I've forgotten your name."

"Mayweather. It's been a few years," he admitted.

"Would you mind telling me where you got that?" She asked, pointing to the diverter shield strapped to his wrist, though he suspected she already knew the answer.

Travis glanced up at his COs, who returned nothing in the way of assistance, then revealed, "Your daughter gave it to me just before we left."

She was shaking her head again. "Mr. Tucker, are you telling me that you were asked to render aid to a science team on a Denobulan built station and didn't think to send your Denobulan tactical officer?"

"We needed her on the bridge," he asserted, his confidence unyielding. "Her expertise didn't fit this mission."

"Debatable. At any rate, I would have preferred to see her."

"Why would that be, doctor?"

She paused, facing her colleagues, exchanging meaningful looks with the two of them. Finally, the taller man, Juran, spoke plainly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: "Because the three of us won't be walking away from this."

A second later, the three of them turned and began to stride purposefully towards the center of the station, so quickly that Trip had to break out into a jog in order to catch up with them. "And just what the hell do you mean by that?"

"Exactly what I said," Juran affirmed, then gestured to the UT clipped to his lab coat. "Is this thing not working?"

Feezal ignored him. "We are under strict orders to defend the station at any cost, and if we cannot expel our invaders, we are to die at our posts."

"I believe the human idiom would be to go down with one's ship," Zertaph added, and she snapped her fingers, pointing at him to indicate he was right.

"Whose orders?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that, Captain. We are doing this to buy the alliance some time."

"Time for what?" Travis called out from the back of the group, only to be shushed by the three of them.

"I can't tell you that either. You'll need to trust me."

"Why would we do that?"

They were approaching another junction in the hallway, and the MACOs stepped forward automatically, clearing the way before they forged on through the smoke, which was only getting thicker and more opaque as they approached the reactor pit. Feezal paused for a moment and fell into step beside him, informing them in no uncertain terms: "Because we are the only people standing between what we currently call peace and the complete destruction of both of our worlds."

They hoped she wasn't right. "Listen, doctor, we'll be able to help you better once we know exactly what's going on."

"That's very kind of you, Miss Hammond, but the only thing we need from you is the use of your ship's computer. Your language wizard should be able to translate our computer core as the need arises."

It took him a couple of seconds to realize she was talking about Hoshi. "I hope you understand our objective is to save the three of you and then the station, hopefully in that order."

"Again, that is both unwarranted and unneeded."

Trip clapped his hands together, exhaling in frustration. "I don't want it to come to this, but I'll drag you out by your ankles if I have to."

"I'd like to see you try," she challenged, surging to the front of the procession. Up ahead of them, the hallway was quickly coming to an end, bleeding into near total darkness. She seemed to disappear, followed by her companions and the MACOs, then Trip stepped forward into the station's core.

They were presently standing on a walkway overlooking a massive void, rising above and below them for hundreds of meters. Far above, the distant sunlight was all but choked out by the satellite dishes set into the geodesic dome; the only illumination were the few sets of emergency lights visible from a distance in a few of the other corridors, spreading out from the reactor pit like spokes on a wheel.

Feezal leaned heavily against the railing, seeming to study the task ahead of them, and Trip joined her, his stomach churning at the sight of darkness far below, the top of the reactor housing not even visible from such a distance. There was nary a foot or hand hold in sight, just impossibly smooth hull plating for as far as the eye could see. A warm rush of air hit them suddenly, rustling their hair and clothing, and Trip took a massive step back. "Don't tell me you're really going to-"

It was too late. The Denobulans in their party were already ducking under the railing and preparing for their descent, without any ropes or safety equipment to speak of. He'd witnessed their species' preternatural climbing ability once before, during a rescue mission on Xantoras years ago. It was unnerving all over again.

A second after she disappeared over the edge, Feezal's head popped up once again, nodding towards one end of the chasm. "There's a lift at the base of the eastern corridor. For our human colleagues."

"Use caution! We trapped some marauders behind that bulkhead." One of the men called out, though he couldn't tell which one for the tremendous echo taking place all around them.

The indignity of it all. The moment they were gone, Trip huffed and led the group around the arc of the tunnel, his hand hovering over his holstered phase pistol, listening as the sound of distant weapons fire grew closer and closer.

"It sounds like they're trying to blow through the hatch," Corporal McKenzie whispered, so quietly that they scarcely heard her. Chang stepped up to her as they fellow officers fumbled with the doors behind them, clicking the safety off of his rifle.

"Anyone got a UT on them?" Trip called out, squinting at the unfamiliar characters on the wall panel. They were having trouble getting the doors to open, and pressing random buttons didn't seem to be working.

Julia whipped out her tricorder and tried to decipher what she was seeing, before shaking her head ruefully. The weapons fire sounded like it was almost on top of them, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the MACOs were creeping towards the bulkhead. "The damn thing can't get a lock, sir. It's too dark in here. We ought to-"

All of a sudden, the blast doors burst open, issuing a half dozen soldiers in EV suits, running towards them with incredible speed.

It was time for a less subtle approach.

Trip fired at the wall panel, and the doors mercifully slid open. The lift was little more than a metal cage which bobbed and swayed a bit as they stepped in, and he began to press as many keys as he could as quickly as he could, all the while Travis and the MACOs were trying to hold the line, backing up meter by meter until they finally slipped into the lift and the doors shut with a crash.

There was a pause, then the car dropped precipitously, taking them all by surprise. Julia reached for something, anything to keep from flying up towards the ceiling, and wound up with her hands wrapped around the edge of the borrowed diverter shield. Immediately, she cried out and released it, studying the jagged lines of blood traversing her palms.

Eventually the lift slowed down and they began to proceed at a more stately pace. At last, Trip was able to take a deep breath, gesturing in Travis's direction, then at the MACOs. "Wouldn't you two like to have one of those?"

"Absolutely, sir. I take it you'll have to negotiate with the Denobulans for more."

"Believe me, there's plenty I'd like to say to the Denobulans once we get out of here." He leaned into Julia's side, studying her tricorder screen. "Did you get a good reading on those soldiers?"

She shook her head, wiping one bloody hand on her uniform.

"Did anyone get a good view of them?"

Their silence was supremely reassuring.

"Damn," Trip huffed, just as the doors opened into the computer core.

Almost immediately, Juran was on the move, stepping up to the wall panel and disabling the car so it couldn't go riding back up towards the marauders. He paused, looking surprised. "What did you do to this lift?"

"What we needed to," he insisted as he stepped further into the room. They were surrounded by computer consoles on all sides which cast an eerie fluorescent blue glow over the floor. Feezal stood at the central unit, leaning over a tangle of electrodes and wiring, her hands braced on either side of the screen. "And I know y'all might be thinking this is what you need to do, but I know there's got to be a better way."

"You're wrong, Captain," she insisted. "And now that they know where you were headed, we haven't much time. Miss Hammond, if you please."

She glanced towards him, but complied, coming to stand by her in front of the main interface of the transceiver array. Long range communications were offline, but they might still be able to transmit massive amounts of data over short distances, something she was determined to make happen.

After a few seconds, Corporal Chang joined them, out of curiosity more than anything. He made eye contact with McKenzie, who was presently standing guard in front of the lift, and nodded.

"That's a fine weapon, ma'am," he said, referring to the blaster that the doctor had discarded on the tabletop. It was slightly larger than a standard issue phase pistol and silvery in color, with intricate laser engraving on the hilt.

"Thank you, young man." She certainly sounded sincere, thought she didn't look up from her calculations. "My first husband gave it to me for self defense. Must have been about a hundred years ago now."

"Doctor, you've got a…" Julia trailed off, noticing the ugly, red phaser burn on her shoulder. Subconsciously, she reached up and covered it with her free hand. "Do you mind if I give it a scan?"

"I hope you're not planning on prescribing a course of treatment. There's little point to that now." She frowned, but moved a little closer to her, allowing her to make a cursory pass over with her tricorder.

Once she read the weapons signature, Julia made eye contact with her CO from across the room and mouthed one word.

Vulcan.

Immediately, Trip turned and addressed the nearest scientist, taking him by surprise. "Are you sure that you've run through all your options?"

"Quite," Zertaph asserted, nodding curtly.

"What about a delayed self-destruct?"

"Offline, along with our external weapons."

"Isolating the core and flooding the station with hexafluorine?"

"We managed to do that with the western corridor before we ran out of backup power on the gas canisters."

"How about fighting your way out?"

"We're dreadfully outnumbered, Mr. Tucker. I estimate there's still around fifty of them."

He paused, running his fingers through his hair, exhaling slowly. "I'm just not understanding why you can't destroy the computer core and escape. We can help you. There's still a window of opportunity."

"Because you need this information, Captain, and you'll need it sooner rather than later." He caught a glimpse of Julia moving away, speaking furtively into her communicator. "As to the second part of your question, I'm sure you can follow the logic that if we leave the station now, we will be wanted fugitives."

"Hunted and tortured for what we know," Juran continued, stepping up to Travis. "Please understand that we'd rather die of our own volition rather than by the hands of anyone else."

"I thought you said you had orders."

"We do," Feezal maintained. "As I told you before, you need to trust me. Everything we've done here is for the good of the alliance."

He began to cross the room in wide strides at the same time Julia returned to the console, imploring her, "You don't need to do this. Once we're clear of the station, Maelstrom can blow this place to high heaven from orbit. We can take you back to Denobula. The Infantry can protect you."

"As appealing as that idea is, I'm not negotiating with you. This can only happen one way."

"Ma'am, think about your family. There's no reason for you to die like this." Julia caught her by the arm, and she reeled back as if she'd been stung. There was a flash of pure, unadulterated fury in her eyes, and she saw Alira in her all over again.

"I am doing this for my family. They'll understand that someday." Slowly, she reached for her weapon, drawing it into her side. "I thank you for your assistance, Captain, but you really must be going."

"We're not leaving without you."

"I'm afraid you are." Across the room, Juran was pointing his blaster at an access panel in the wall, though they could see his hands were shaking tremendously. "If I shoot through this air recycler, this room will depressurize within seconds, killing us all."

"And it'll be preferable to whatever fate is waiting for us above." Feezal was looking between the MACOs, who both had their rifles pointed at her colleague. "The data uplink has started. There's just enough time for you to escape."

Trip was seconds away from pulling out his phase pistol and stunning the lot of them when the emergency lights flickered, and then switched off. Above them, there was the distorted, diminishing sound of the fusion reactor slowing, then ceasing to turn over entirely.

Their reaction was instantaneous. Zertaph made a beeline to the lift, followed shortly by his companions. Rummaging around in his pockets, he produced a handful of small, circular devices outfitted with blinking lights, which Trip instantly recognized as portable tricobalt charges.

"This is your last chance, Captain. Another ten minutes, and this station will be entirely uninhabitable." He expected to see something mournful in her expression, but she was somber, resolute. "You have to admit, it's already getting rather cold in here."

She was right. Silently as he went to join them, he glanced between the members of the away team, hoping to make one thing abundantly clear: their mission was to rescue them at any cost.

The lift seem to shake and vibrate even more this time, and it was all the more disconcerting now that they were in complete darkness. They burst onto the main level, weapons held aloft, surprised to find the walkway entirely empty.

"You take the north hallway, I'll take the southwest," Feezal said without preamble, then turned and began to walk away from them, before any of them could change her mind.

They'd each studied the schematics of the station long enough to know that this was where the Denobulan shuttle was docked. With any luck, they'd be able to coax her into it, but as for who could possibly pilot the thing-

Travis met his silent request with a nod and dashed after her without a second thought.

Trip and Julia would have almost missed the other two scientists disappearing into the hallway, were it not for Juran turning at the last possible second and throwing a handful of fuses into the reactor pit for good measure. The MACOs were hot on their trail, but they didn't hesitate, charging ahead into the empty corridor, heads down, focus singular as they distributed the charges throughout the corridor.

At some point they heard weapons fire coming from far behind them, and they began to run, faster and faster until they reached the docking port.

Julia was the first to disappear into the ceiling, accepting the boost offered by Corporal Chang. As soon as they heard the thrusters fire up, he retrieved his weapon and leveled it at the two Denobulans in front of them.

"Alright, I'm not playing this game anymore. You're coming with us."

"If you still think this is a game, you haven't been listening," Zertaph said gravely. In a flash, he'd also unholstered his blaster, raised it, and emptied a round into his companion's chest.

McKenzie and Chang surged forward, meaning to disarm him, but not before he was able to raise the barrel of his weapon to his temple and press the trigger.

Immediately, Trip clutched at his chest and all but fell to his knees. They'd been standing close enough to them that they were now covered in their blood. Even the MACOs look shocked, standing stock still and slack jawed, horrified.

The look in his eyes that had been there a second before he wasn't was something he wouldn't soon forget.

The footsteps and weapons fire were getting closer, almost on top of them. He snapped to attention suddenly, as if he'd been in a trance, and boosted himself up into the shuttlepod. Once it was much too late, he realized he hadn't checked to see if either of them had survived.

On the exact opposite side of the station, Travis was experiencing a crisis of conscience.

Feezal had been kind enough to show him how to open the hatch and start the impulse engine, but then she'd slipped back into the corridor, ignoring his pleas to join him.

"I'm telling you, if you come with us, the MACOs can keep you safe. I'm sure the Captain would protect you with everything in our arsenal."

"That would mean endangering your entire ship. I won't do that."

"You can't stay here. The second you press that detonator, you'll be vaporized."

"That's certainly preferable to being tortured." Her expression was perfectly uncompromising, her words adamant, but he could tell she was experiencing some misgivings by the way she was turning the device in question over and over in her hands. Suddenly, she reached into her pocket and tossed a data chip up towards him, which he only narrowly caught.

"What is this?"

"Give it to my daughter. She'll know what to do with it."

"What if she doesn't?"

"I would hope that she does." She paused, and for the first time, he saw the shine of tears in her eyes. "She's the head of the family now."

Travis looked down at her, and he could tell the weight of the sacrifice she was about to make was bearing down on her. As much as he wanted to bring his friend's mother back, alive, he wanted to believe her that this was what needed to be done.

As she'd said multiple times, he was just going to need to trust her.

"Thank you, doctor," he said quietly, turning momentarily to fire up the thrusters.

"Don't mention it," she replied and offered him the ghost of a smile.

The second the hatch doors closed, Feezal turned and began to walk slowly towards the center of the station, bracing herself against the walls. Her heart was racing, and there was no ignoring it. In her mind's eye, she saw her children, her spouses, her lovers and friends, all racing through the rivers of her memory, faces that she was now desperately trying to shut out.

Before she could stop herself, she reached for her communicator. "Kandar to Maelstrom."

There was a pause, and then a frantic reply: "Mother, what's going on?"

"Alira, I need you to listen to me. Whatever's about to happen, I need you to make sure this station gets destroyed. Every last trace."

"I can't-"

"I hope you can find it before they find you."

"What are you talking about? I don't-" She could hear the emotion in her daughter's voice, and she almost couldn't bear to hear it.

"It's for the good of the alliance. Please, just do this one thing for me."

A moment of silence. When she spoke again, her tone was wavering uncontrollably. "I don't understand."

She was quickly approaching the center of the station. As she'd done only minutes before, Feezal leaned against the railing and peered into the shadows, knowing soon she would join it in nothingness. She had to turn away momentarily, choking back a sob.

"You will, someday. You have all of my love, little one."

"Mother, don't-"

"Always," she concluded, pulling back and throwing her communicator as far as she possibly could. She heard it clattering against the walls of the reactor pit, and knew there was no time to waste.

A second after she pressed the detonator, a great rumbling began to rise up from her feet, growing from the base of the computer core. Far below, a fireball emerged, hungrily devouring everything in sight, shooting skyward.

As the rich tones of orange and red danced before her eyes, Feezal realized that she hadn't expected it to be beautiful.

In spite of herself, she smiled.

The heat was growing now, seemingly coming from every direction. Just as the flames reached the main level, she threw her arms wide and let fate overtake her in a sudden bright flash of light.

It was the last thing she would ever see.

---

Alira was already halfway out her seat when the first set of explosives detonated aboard the station.

It was a truly spectacular explosion, splintering three corridors in a burst of fire and sparks. The area of the moon directly above that part of the station split and caved in on itself, starting a chain reaction that began to spread towards the center of the station.

Suddenly Shuttlepod One broke free from its docking berths and rocketed back towards the Maelstrom, which had retreated to a safe distance. It was weaving and bobbing dangerously as it rode out the first shockwave of the detonation.

It hit the ship next, causing the hull to rumble and the room to shake. Once again, Alira began to pace behind the helm.

"Hail them."

Hoshi complied, watching as the satellite panels on the central dome shattered row by row, creating a dazzling display of glass shards that only barely caught the light of the sun. In a second, Trip's voice filled the bridge.

"It's done, Ensign."

Those three words simultaneously rattled her world and ended it, set her spirit alight and crushed it. Just as the pod reached the halfway mark, the Denobulan shuttle which had been docked at the end of the far southern corridor suddenly shook itself free, making a slightly ungraceful three point turn and soaring out of the atmosphere.

Alira experienced a brief, desperate surge of hope, and glanced back to the science station. There, Lieutenant Novakovich was shaking his head.

"It's Travis."

"And the station?"

"Also one biosign. It's Denobulan." The explosions had afforded them a glimpse inside, which had previously been impossible.

She whipped around to face him directly, squeezing her hands together with all of her might to keep from trembling. Her jaw was clenched tightly, though there was a storm raging in her eyes. "Who?"

"There's no way to tell."

"Can we get a lock?"

Ethan paused, his hands freezing over his console. He wished for a window of opportunity to appear, prayed for it, willed it from the depths of his soul, but there was simply no hope. They were surrounded by an ocean of loss and destruction, and there was no way to stop this tragedy from unfolding.

Alira read all this from his expression and more; in a second, she was hastily retreating back to the Captain's chair. On screen, the detonations had slowed and then stopped, laying the great yawning pit of the reactor hatch open to space. Far below, the computer core may have still been sealed, habitable to someone or something, or it may not have been, but that hardly mattered now.

"How much did you get?" She asked quietly, not even daring to look in Hoshi's direction.

"Sixty percent."

It would have to be enough.

Slowly, she trained her gaze towards the ceiling, into the bright white light mounted above their heads. Jimmy thought he saw heaven and hell, life and death, truth and consequence reflected in her eyes. Gradually, she began to relax, all of the tension diffusing from her body in a matter of seconds. All of her previous nervous energy was now replaced with composure, with serenity. She knew what she had to do, and when she gave the order to fire a full spread of photonic torpedoes, he scarcely heard it.

From the comfort of the bridge, they watched as what remained of Kandar fractured irrevocably into the stillness of space.

What remained was a wide crater on the surface of the moon, blank, inhospitable, unforgiving.

The room was uncomfortably quiet for more than a minute, which felt more like one hundred years.

Finally, Novakovich spoke. "The pods have returned. We have the away team."

It was as if a switch flipped in Alira's mind. As they watched, she collected a discarded PADD from atop the command module and turned to leave. "Excellent. I'll be in the ready room."

"But ma'am-"

"You have the bridge, Lieutenant," she replied tersely as the door slid shut behind her.

As soon as she was alone in the Captain's domain, every single wall she'd been struggling to hold up over the past couple of hours threatened to come tumbling down. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply, determined not to feel her emotions, to keep them buried if only for a couple more minutes.

Within seconds, a sudden wave of rage overtook her and she threw the PADD against the wall as hard as she could, watching as it shattered into a hundred pieces. The silence that followed was all-encompassing, suffocating.

It felt good momentarily, but soon she was overwhelmed with the depths of her own grief. Just as she preferred, no one was there to witness it as she fell to her knees and began to weep.

---

As predicted, she'd been dismissed as soon as Captain Tucker arrived on the bridge. He only had to spare a passing glance at the shattered PADD and his tearful tactical officer to make that decision, and though she had protested, he insisted she take the next day to get her affairs in order.

Immediately, Alira knew what she needed to do.

She knew it looked like she'd been crying, and that by now everyone on board was aware of her plight, but she didn't give them the satisfaction of meeting their eyes as she rushed through the corridors.

Hurrying into her quarters, she switched off the lights and peered into the darkness.

Usually the Rite of Absolution involved the public display of remains, but in this case, nothing had been left behind.

She pushed the thought from her mind and collected the holoimage from her desk. It had been taken the last time her mother and all of her siblings had been in the same place at once, more than five years ago, but it would have to do.

Without hesitation, she placed it on the floor and then knelt down, sitting back on her heels. She already felt weak, unsteady, but knew there was no time to waste.

She knit her fingers together and pressed them into her stomach with force, then bowed her head and screwed her eyes shut. It was in this position she would have to remain for the next twenty-four hours.

Almost immediately images began to appear in her mind, flashes of long ago battles, childhood memories, the sight of the bare crater forged on the surface of an anonymous moon.

She remembered the day her father died. She had been in the middle of her first assignment of border patrol when word reached them that she'd been recalled. At first she didn't know what it was about, not sure what could be so important that she would need to return home, but as soon as she entered the family compound, she'd known.

Her mother had led the procession through the city flanked by her two brothers; her father had already once been widowed, and his second wife hadn't been able to make it to the ceremony. She and her sisters followed closely behind, dressed in traditional mourning robes, eyes trained toward the ground. Though she'd scarcely been able to see around the heavy hood and veil, she remembered thinking how small and afraid her mother looked.

It was the first time she'd seen her that way, and it shook her to her core.

As they arrived, they were silently led by the undertaker into a large, open chamber. There her father lay in state upon a cot, barely illuminated by a single candle burning near his head. It was then emotion threatened to overtake her. She wouldn't look. She couldn't.

She joined the circle of immediate family kneeling around him, barely registering the throng of grandchildren, cousins, and siblings filling out the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as her brothers hooked their arms through their mother's and marched her right towards the body that had once been her husband.

She was trying to pull away, at one point being lifted off the ground in her struggle. Part of it was tradition for the officiant to be reluctant, to not want to contend with the situation, but she knew it was more than that.

When at last her mother was faced with reality, she shrieked, crying out, "What have they done to him!?"

Beside her, her sister began to rise to her feet, only to be pulled back down by her husband. Squinting into the shadows, she soon realized what warranted such a reaction.

He was still dressed in his Infantry uniform, with all of his medals intact, but his face was utterly disfigured, his hands torn up with defensive wounds. The Supreme Council would claim it had been an accident, a surge in a power conduit behind a console, but Alira knew differently.

Roughly, her brothers pushed their mother to her knees, then retreated to the safety of the circle.

The entire room was deathly silent as they listened to her wails of grief. They echoed around the walls and made her hair stand on end. All around her, she could hear her sisters stifling their tears, but she felt curiously numb.

The Denobulans were not a religious species, but they had their traditions, and the Rite of Absolution was one of the most strictly observed. She wasn't sure how long it took, but eventually her mother regained control and began the recitation.

"General Taxa departed of this world on this day following a border skirmish with the enemy," she called out.

"So he was and is no longer," the crowd intoned as one.

"He is survived by eleven children and two wives. His legacy will continue as such, through the memories of his family and friends."

"So he was and is no longer."

As the recitation continued, the cries from the assembly grew louder. All around her people were weeping, but Alira felt a great rage growing inside of her. As the night went on and the distant relatives left, it became almost unbearable, and she began to clench her hands against her chest, scratching, leaving marks where she could. When the twenty-four hours had elapsed, as her siblings were struggling to stand, she remained, stewing silently. Someone had done this to her father, and she was determined to find them and destroy them.

That had been fifteen years ago. She was only now getting her chance at revenge, and she wasn't going to waste it.

For some time after the incident, she sought out the truth, running with the wrong kinds of people and getting into far too many close scrapes. Special Ops was her home for quite some time, and she found comfort in the camaraderie of her company, who were each running from something or someone.

She made connections which allowed her to advance up the ranks of the Infantry fairly quickly, or perhaps they were all simply taking pity on her. It didn't matter. By the time General Vesena ascended to Supreme Commander, she had her own ship and her own brigade. Still, she was driven by the need to know what had happened, and she led them through unnecessary risks. She gambled with human lives, but in a way that could easily be justified or covered up. She became known for her cunning, for her battlefield strategy, which she could only hope no one would ever discover had been honed over months and years of slitting throats and knocking heads on the enemy's homeworld.

It was in this time she was approached by a man, a human, who told her he could get her the information she needed, and what's more, provide her with the opportunity to fulfill her mission. All it would take was a few simple favors. A few simple favors, and a complete switch of alliances.

And so she put in a word with Ambassador Lexora, and the wheels of bureaucracy began to turn. She met him in the dead of night on some anonymous street in San Francisco, where he took one look at her and informed her that as far as he was concerned, she no longer had a name.

Going by a code name took some getting used to, but she accepted it, running errands for Starfleet while still commissioned by the Denobulan Infantry. By the time her transfer went through, he was already referring to her as his golden child, willing and able to accomplish any challenge thrown her way. He informed her that his previous star student had already surpassed the master, so he was eager to see the kinds of things she could accomplish when assigned to one of United Earth's most prestigious vessels.

She was always careful, maintaining her own morals while towing the line with her employer. She knew-or rather, she'd been told repeatedly-that the only way a recruit could ever leave the Section was in a casket, so she never betrayed the Captain's confidence, never put herself in any kind of situation where she might get caught.

Needless to say, she'd been surprised to find that the moment she left Enterprise, a man she'd previously only known by his code name assumed her watch over the ship's operations. Agents usually worked alone, but Harris had made an exception for the two of them a year ago, sending them on a mission to a world in political turmoil that almost ended in disaster for both of them. His injuries had been far more severe, but he'd mostly recovered, and his sudden return could only mean one thing.

Harris wasn't pleased. Someone wasn't doing their job correctly and required additional supervision.

She didn't want to think about all the horrendous things she would surely be asked to do now that war was imminent, nor what she'd do if anyone ever found out. It would mean losing everything, her commission, her reputation, her freedom. But now she was stuck, and she would need to weather the storm, bide her time until it was time to strike. When she'd accepted the offer, she hadn't expected to make friends, to buy fully into their mission wholly separate from her own.

She hadn't expected to fall in love with anyone.

But all of that felt so far away now. She was lost, tormented, utterly consumed by regret. At a moment like this, all she needed was for someone to afford her some comfort. Someone she trusted.

And to think the last time she'd spoken with her mother, she'd been rushing to close to connection. She'd been short with her.

And now she would never have another chance.

Throughout her reverie, she didn't realize that she'd started crying again. She made no effort to wipe the tears away, letting them trail down her face and fall to the floor as she began the recitation.

---

The next afternoon, Lieutenant Sato hovered outside her friend's quarters, running through what she was going to say in her head over and over again.

She'd lost relatives before, sure, but never in such a shocking and public fashion. Truthfully, she didn't know where to begin, and years of instruction into languages truly couldn't teach someone to form a sentence to that end.

Swallowing her trepidation, she hit the comm. There was a pause, then the reply: "Enter."

Alira was facing away from her, kneeling in front of a holo-projection of her family in near total darkness. For the first time in the months they'd known each other, she looked utterly broken, her head hanging down to her chest.

"That doesn't look comfortable," Hoshi whispered, silently kicking herself for her unintentional insensitivity.

"That's the point," Alira replied, and her voice was flat and devoid of the usual amusement she spoke with. Hoshi gingerly approached her, coming to one side of her and kneeling down to her level. She didn't react, just looked on with that thousand yard stare she'd seen so often among the crew during their time in the Expanse.

"Admiral Gardner will be calling in a couple hours. He'll be needing your statement," she said softly, "I thought you might want to know."

"Thank you," she whispered. From somewhere in the room, an alarm sounded, and she pitched forward, laying her head on the deck plating and breathing deeply.

Eventually the alarm stopped sounding. Hoshi decided to press forward. "Malcolm has been trying to contact you. I think you should call him."

"I don't want to talk to him."

"You have to, Alira."

"Why should I?"

"Because he's-" She stopped herself, then tried again. "Because he's worried about you and he loves you."

She didn't respond, just rolled over onto her side and experimentally stretched her legs out in an attempt to work some feeling back into them.

"Captain Tucker isn't angry with you. He believes you did the right thing by destroying the station."

"So I'm not getting a reprimand?"

"No, I don't think so."

"What a relief." Her voice was cold, cruel, mocking. "Let me know the moment I can trade in all the commendations in the world to have my mother back."

Hoshi didn't know what to say, but she took a stab at it. "Look, I know that whatever I say isn't going to make a difference, but if it's any comfort-"

She propped herself up on her elbows and rolled onto her stomach. "You're right. Whatever you say, it's not going to change the fact that I've likely killed my mother. It's not going to change that I'm hundreds of light years away from home, and I have no one to turn to but myself."

"About that. Dr. Yuris reviewed the biosign data Novakovich collected. He's certain that biosign belonged to a male. If anything, she likely died the moment that first explosion ripped through the station."

Alira slowly pulled herself up to a cross-legged sitting position. "So you're telling me she felt no pain."

"You're the weapons expert here."

"It's something," she admitted, sniffing loudly. "But the thing is, no matter how much people are going to come to me with these kinds of facts over the next few days, it's still going to hurt."

"You're right, and it's justified."

"I would do anything to get rid of this pain right now," she cried, her voice warped with emotion. "I wish I could just get into bed and sleep so I don't have to feel, but I can't. I miss her and no amount of wishing is going to bring her back."

"Unfortunately, you're right about that too." As she watched, her companion began to weep anew, louder this time, though she suspected cathartically. After a few moments, she tentatively asked, "Alira, do you mind if I-"

"Please," she whispered, throwing her arms out wide, drawing her friend into a tight embrace.

---

A few hours later, following a shower and a quick change of uniform, Alira made her way down to sickbay, where she found Yuris holed up in his office with a level four security perimeter erected at the front door.

She knocked first, tentatively, then announced her presence. There was the sound of quiet movement from within, then the hatch opened part of the way.

"Doctor?" She leaned forward, only for the doctor to beckon her through the narrow opening into the darkened room.

Alira found herself surrounded by screens and displays, presenting the various sensor and diagnostic readings they'd taken before the destruction of Kandar. It was a dizzying, almost nonsensical ode to her mother's death, and she almost couldn't bear to look at it.

"I've managed to access Commander Hammond's tricorder and modify the readings on the weapons signatures." As usual, Yuris was all business, and he didn't even care to extend an overture of sympathy towards her. He had no idea how much she appreciated it. "The hybrid they encountered was using a Vulcan phaser, but I've replaced it with the power readings from that Romulan weapon you stole from their base on Tellar Prime. We can only hope she did not look too closely at the initial data."

She squinted into the light, noticing that the readings were close enough to where his slightly hair-brained scheme might just work. Though it had been tragic that Captain T'Pol had been kidnapped and tortured that night, she thanked her lucky stars that she'd been thinking ahead.

"We ought to just go ahead and fabricate a power signature corresponding to the readings on Romulan ships that Kandar released with their previous reports. If we make it faint enough, they might just buy that the ship made a cloaked approach," she suggested, knowing that it was very likely close to the truth.

Yuris shook his head, advancing the screen. "There is a problem with your logic, Ensign. Why would the Romulan ship bother to cloak if they were to make themselves appear as a Vulcan ship using their telepresence units?"

She looked toward him, eyebrows raised. "So you're telling me it was definitely a Vulcan ship?"

"The power signature matches a D'Kasha class transport vessel. It hasn't been used in nearly a century."

"So that means-" She trailed off, rubbing at her temples. Alira realized that she hadn't eaten anything in the past two days, and it was quickly catching up with her in the form of a pounding headache. "The hybrids used a Vulcan ship to conduct their raid…"

"To frame the Vulcans and widen the divide between my world and United Earth," he concluded, proceeding to erase the visual entry and mask the offending power signature. "Where they are procuring these vessels is unknown, but it seems that the Romulan plot to destabilize the region did not end with their first prototype."

"Do it anyway. It will be easy to believe that since the Babel Crisis that their technology has improved. To get away with this, I'm pretty sure the High Command will need to admit the resemblance between your species and the Romulans." Her thoughts were racing, and she reached for the vial of green blood on top of his desk. It had been harvested from Travis's uniform, where he'd brushed up against the walls on his way out of the station. "You should say you sent the genome from this sample back to Vulcan for analysis. In the meantime, you can-"

"Make this blood appear as Romulan as possible." His brows furrowed, and he nodded gravely, knowing it would certainly be a lengthy task, in particular because the genetic markers that separated a hybrid from a full-blooded Romulan were difficult to spot as they were.

She nodded and turned to leave. "I need to speak to Ambassador Soval."

A moment before she was out of his reach, Yuris reached out and grabbed her arm in an impulsive act of physical contact that was more than uncomfortable for the both of them. Alira looked down at the offending hand and pulled away ever so slightly.

"We are playing a dangerous game, Ensign."

"A necessary game. You know that." At whatever cost, they needed to protect the Captain's secret.

He paused, as if searching for the right words. When he finally spoke, it carried the weight of experience. "We have a saying among my people. If you cannot smell the smoke, you are doomed to watch the flames."

In spite of herself and their situation, Alira smiled faintly. "We have another saying."

Yuris glanced up, somewhat curious.

"Learn to shoot, or learn to duck."

"And right now?"

"Tonight, my dear doctor, we're going to duck." She paused over the threshold for a fraction of a second, then disappeared around the corner and into the corridor.

---

"It doesn't make any sense," Dita insisted, dropping her face into her hands. From across the room, Malcolm saw that she overwhelmed, tremendously fatigued, but that display of weakness was only momentary as she surged forward, bringing another portion of the code into view. "Hoshi said this is based on a bilateral randomized algorithm?"

"Just a series of numbers representing letters in the Denobulan alphabet, but with six additional layers of quantum encryption set under a recursive sequence that hides and redistributes the data within the mainframe every single time we get close," Liz replied from her post on top of the table in the wardroom, where she sat cross-legged, her chin propped up in her hands. The muted blue light of the display reflected in her eyes, and he could see her frustration and, temporarily, her hopelessness.

It was very late in the evening when the transmission came through, carrying a portion of Kandar's computer core with it. According to Lieutenant Sato, that part wasn't anything critical or security sensitive, but she would need all the help she could get trying to crack the cipher of the century.

Time was almost certainly of the essence. They hadn't yet received word that the United Earth Council was drafting articles of war, but he knew it was coming, knew it in his bones, and he suspected the Supreme Council of Denobula would be next.

It had been weighing heavily on his mind for the past day and a half, ever since they'd received word from the Maelstrom. Just six words had been enough to convey the enormity of the situation.

Kandar destroyed. Solnara threatened. Turn back.

And so they had, just an hour short of the Tarod system. Just an hour short of the rendezvous point, and an hour short of affording whatever comfort he could to the woman he knew had just suffered a tremendous loss.

He tried repeatedly to reach her that first night, one call right after the other, until finally Hoshi had answered on her behalf, informing him that she was observing something called the Rite of Absolution, an observance of mourning that would take her off the grid for the next twenty-four hours. The wait was almost unbearable, and the entire time, he thought about what he might say to her, knowing nothing he could tell her would give her the outcome she wanted.

In the end, he'd settled for a very simple message, telling her that he loved her and he was thinking of her and he was there should she want to talk and that he was very, very sorry. Now that twelve hours had passed since she received it, he was wondering if he'd said the right thing. But Hoshi had assured him that she was fine, and they were all looking after her, and she would talk when she was ready.

Whenever that might be.

He'd caught the tail end of the commotion the transmission wrought as he walked the corridors sleeplessly; Dita had been sitting at the conn and almost immediately vacated her post, rousing Liz from bed. Though she'd just been awake for over two straight days, observing the same ritual with Phlox that Alira had, she'd rushed to her aid, knowing full well code-breaking was often a team effort between communications and the sciences.

He hadn't intended on staying, but Liz insisted, saying she was sure he'd cracked hundreds of security protocols in his day. That much was true, but none of them had ever been so complex.

Then Ensign Pascal had shown up out of the blue, toting a carafe of coffee, his presence completely unwarranted, but not unwelcome for the moment. Together they'd stood in front of the computer display in the wardroom until they were all nearly cross-eyed from trying to decipher the seemingly random sequence of letters on the screen; after four hours, they were even more confused than they'd been when they started.

"If you graph these lines of code on a three-dimensional axis field, you start to see some kind of pattern."

"The Denobulan alphabet only has sixteen letters, Dita. They're gonna have similar amplitudes across the board." Liz squinted, remembering her time as a field medic, the various readouts and vital displays she'd studied. "They look more like brain waves than anything. Like a person coming in and out of a REM cycle."

Ensign Singh reached for the screen, but paused halfway, her hand hovering in midair for one long moment. Finally, she pulled it back, crossing her arms and leaning into the wall. Turning her head, she muttered so quietly they could scarcely hear her: "What were you hiding, doctor?"

None of them knew the answer, and Malcolm suspected they never would.

The room descended into silence, save for the odd shuffling of feet and clinking of coffee mugs. From his post near the door, Simon approached Dita, his brows furrowed in concentration. "Have you tried a mathematical approach, like when you needed to communicate with that gelatinous creature in the cargo bay?"

Malcolm was plainly surprised that he'd read back in their logs that far, but Dita was nodding, assuring him, "It's built into the UT now, should we ever encounter that species again. The difference is this is man-made, specifically designed to be indecipherable."

"Except if you know exactly where to look." Liz stood and all but trudged across the room, her shoulders hunched over, exhausted. "I know we're missing something. Once we find it, the whole algorithm will completely unravel."

He nodded, glancing back at Malcolm, then at his feet. He smiled half-heartedly and tucked his hands in his pockets. "You know, there is one bright side to this situation."

She turned to him, utterly incredulous. "And what would that be?"

For a moment, he seemed hesitant, but that didn't stop him for more than a couple of seconds.

"You might be promoted to wife in no time."

Malcolm had no idea what might have possessed him to say something like that, but the effects of his words were instantaneous. Dita looked at him, wide eyed and shocked, reaching for Liz's arm a fraction of a second too late.

Before any of them could stop her, she reeled back and slapped him so hard across the face that there was an audible crack, and he very nearly fell backwards onto the floor.

Simon cried out, clutching his cheek, managing to gasp out, "Lieutenant, I didn't mean it like-"

"What?" She leaned forward far into his personal space, and her voice was low, dangerous. "What did you mean to say?"

For once, he held his tongue.

"You son of a bitch," she hissed, and for a moment he thought she might strike him again. "Remember this the next time you need a friend on board."

A split second later, she was on the move, stepping over the threshold and into the corridor. Malcolm didn't hesitate, dashing after her without affording a passing glance towards the others.

As soon as the door closed, Dita turned back to her console, her fingers dancing over the keys. She was having a difficult time tempering her emotional response, a struggle which was only aggravated when Simon stepped up to her, insisting, "You have to believe me, Dita, I never meant to-"

"You know, right now, I'd suggest you not even look at me." He started to speak, but she cut him off. "In fact, I recommend you get out of my sight altogether."

Malcolm caught up with Liz just as she entered the lift, having all but chased her down the hall, calling out her name, pleading with her to stop. She paid him no mind, and only really noticed him when he slid in between the closing door and the wall. When she looked up at him, he was surprised to see rage in her eyes, not tears, and the nearly imperceptible trembling of her hands clenched at her sides.

"I don't need your companionship right now, Malcolm."

"I was-"

"Nor your sympathy." She paused, leaning into the wall. "God knows I've got enough of that from everyone else."

"Listen, you're clearly upset. I can't say that I blame you."

Liz laughed suddenly, cold and mirthless. "I don't know what you expect me to do. I'm not going to cry about it. I did plenty of that with Phlox. For twenty-four hours, knelt down on the ground, just crying and talking about what-" She paused, shaking her head and rubbing her temples. "What a great person she was. What a wonderful mother and colleague and sister and friend. The worst part is, I knew all of it was true."

"She was important to you. It's expected." The doors opened onto D Deck, and neither moved. Malcolm surreptitiously reached for the controls, and the lift began to move once again.

"She was-" Her voice was suddenly filled with emotion, and he momentarily thought she might break. "I know you only met her in passing, but she was so sincere, and so funny, and so warm. I'd know, because the first time I visited the family compound, I was terrified of meeting everyone, terrified of what they might say, but she marched right up to me and linked her arm through mine like it was the most natural thing in the world for her and introduced me to everyone as her dear friend Elizabeth even though up to that point we'd only exchanged a couple of letters. That night, she crawled right into bed with me and talked to me until I fell asleep. I have an unanswered correspondence from her on my PADD right now. We hadn't missed a week since before our diplomatic mission."

The lift opened once more, and Malcolm reached for her hand, pulling her into an empty corridor. He said nothing. He didn't need to.

"She's dead now, some act of anonymous violence. It could be that it was all some selfless act that winds up saving the alliance, but more than likely, it was for no reason, and everything we're doing to break this code is for nothing. I've seen it before. We all have." Suddenly she recognized the path she was being led on. "Where are we going?"

Malcolm seemed to dodge the question entirely. "How do you feel, Liz?"

It was a loaded question. She wasn't sure she could find the words to express it, so she just tightened her grip on his hand, hoping it would be enough.

"Like punching something?" He asked hopefully, entering his security code, and together they slipped into the vacant MACO training room.

"Or someone," she replied. "Do you think we could go back and track down Simon?"

"No need." He reached into a nearby compartment and produced two punching mitts and a matching set of boxing gloves, which he tossed over to her.

She looked at him incredulously. "I'm not dressed for this."

"Neither am I." Somewhat hastily, he slipped his hands into the mitts and held them up at chest level. "I'm ready when you are."

Halfheartedly, she punched to the left, shaking her head. "You know, I find it really funny how everyone at HQ was so willing to support Kandar and provide them with scientists and supplies, but when it comes to an impending computer core breach, they order them to die alongside it."

"We don't know they gave those orders." He shuffled to one side, and she pursued him.

"Malcolm, come on." She struck again. "Virtuous Starfleet with their noble goals, selfless scientists willing to sacrifice themselves. It's a tale as old as time."

"Maybe it was the Denobulans."

"Please. They want all the smoke, but none of the heat. They were more than willing to use Feezal up then toss her out like yesterday's garbage the second it became inconvenient for them."

He reeled back, having to shift to his opposite foot to maintain his balance as her punches grew faster. "What difference does it make?"

"It makes a difference because she's just another casualty of war, one that's going to be here faster than you think."

He did know it, but didn't want to think about it. He knew forces were likely already moving behind the scenes, and Harris would be calling on him sooner rather than later. He'd been lording over his head that favor he owed the Section due to an intelligence exchange about Terra Prime, and he knew that the longer he waited, the more drastic action he'd have to take to prove his loyalty.

There was a phrase he'd heard Harris use, a sort of unofficial creed for the Section that he supposed applied better now than any other time.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

In times of war, the law falls silent.

He wasn't sure how he would face Alira again after the fact, knowing that he was a dishonest man who would be forced to bend to the whims of Starfleet's criminal underbelly at a moment's notice.

"...just another name on a list somewhere. Just a name mentioned in some Admiral's in memoriam speech. That's all you and I will be by the end of this." Liz had been talking, but he hadn't been listening for most of it.

"Surely you don't believe that."

She made eye contact with him, nearly missing the punching mitt altogether. "I absolutely believe that. There's twenty-seven names on a plaque somewhere in San Francisco that prove my point."

His hands fell to his side, and she mirrored his posture. There was a pause, and she was looking all around, trying to blink the tears away that had suddenly appeared in her eyes. Suddenly she surged forward, seeming to throw another punch, but he caught her, wrapping her tightly in a comforting embrace. In the space between them, she whispered, "I don't know if I can go through this again, Malcolm. I'm so scared."

"You're not the only one," he assured her, and the moment it was out there in the universe, he realized it was true.

He was terrified.

---

Not a minute after she ended her transmission with Ambassador Soval, Alira was summoned to the Captain's ready room.

Immediately, she felt a familiar rush of adrenaline, one that usually accompanied the start of a dangerous mission, or a close scrape where she was nearly caught in the act.

Now, however, she was catching a bit of that gut feeling. The flight part of fight or flight that had always kept her one step ahead. That sensation which kept her alive.

She knew that whatever Trip could need from her in the middle of the night, it couldn't be good.

The corridors were silent, as was the bridge. She glanced at Lieutenant Mayweather at the conn, who looked through her rather than at her, reaching into his pocket and tossing something in her direction.

She caught it with ease, realizing it was her diverter shield, still warm to the touch, still covered in smoke and dust and dried blood, perhaps hybrid or Denobulan or human, a horrible manifestation to her pain.

Stowing it away, she stopped just short of the room, breathing in and out slowly. Her fingers traced the perimeter of the door chime for a moment, then she surrendered to her fate, jabbing the button with her thumb.

Inside, Tucker stood at the window, his back towards her, studying the desolate sphere of Tarod IX far below. He didn't even move when she stepped up to his desk, snapping to attention, assuming a wide stance with her arms crossed behind her.

The ensuing silence was tense, uncomfortable, with enormous magnitude behind it. Alira was starting to wonder if she'd have to be the one to break it when Trip disclosed, "Ensign, I can't believe I need to have this conversation with you, but I need to ask you a question, and I need you to answer it honestly."

"Of course, Captain."

"Where do your loyalties lie?"

"Sir?" Her heart immediately dropped to her stomach, and her thoughts began to race, trying to think of where they might have slipped up. It was impossible. She'd checked Yuris's work herself. It was immaculate.

"Answer the question," he demanded, his tone imploring.

She inhaled slowly, then exhaled. "To Starfleet, sir."

It technically wasn't a lie.

"Funny how you didn't say to your crew or to your people. To your mother." She thought she heard him laugh or scoff, she wasn't sure, then he was turning towards her, throwing a PADD down onto the table between them. "To me."

"I don't understand what you mean."

He didn't seem convinced. "I was looking back on our sensor logs ahead of our meeting with HQ in the morning. Commander Hammond scanned your mother's phaser wound while we were down there. According to these readings, the weapon signatures were Romulan."

She reached forward and took the PADD into her hands, studying the doctor's handiwork. Slowly, she nodded.

"There's a problem with that. At the time, she took one look at her screen and told me, straight to my face, that they were Vulcan in origin." Trip leaned over the table, coming to within a couple centimeters of her face, studying her impassive expression, how she didn't even make an attempt to back away. "I can count on one hand the number of people on this ship that know how to edit sensor logs that complex."

"I still don't understand," she repeated, staring back at him, unblinking. "She must have made a mistake."

Trip brought his hand down on his desk, watching as she suppressed a flinch. "I don't think so. I think someone tampered with them."

"Are you accusing me of something, sir?"

"You said it, Ensign. Not me."

"Fair enough. Ask yourself this. What could I possibly have to gain from something like that?"

"I intend to find out."

"So you have no evidence," she replied, jabbing the corner of the PADD into his chest. "If I may say so, sir, I'll cooperate with whatever investigation you intend to lead, but I don't care for your implication."

Trip looked into the eyes of his friend, which had ceased to shine as they usually did, replaced with secrecy and resolve. He knew it was far-fetched, but his gut was telling him something was occurring behind the scenes and on lower decks, something out of his purview that threatened to uproot their mission. Once again, it was that gut feeling, the very same one that had always kept him alive.

"I guess you have your own theories about who boarded the station."

"I'd be able to give you a more accurate assessment if I'd been there." Her voice was affecting a slightly bitter tone.

"But you needed to be here. You did what had to be done." As far as he knew.

"If I'm honest, I'm not sure why I was ordered to remain on board." She was hovering dangerously close to insubordination, but staying just to one side of the line, biding her time.

"Because you were ordered to. There doesn't need to be a reason other than that."

"Permission to speak freely, sir."

And there it was. Trip rested his hands on his hips and took a step back. "Granted."

"I think your decision to keep me away from Kandar had nothing to do with who had the most military experience. I don't think you wanted me there."

"You're wrong."

"I'm right," she insisted."You didn't want me there, and speaking as your friend, I have to make sure you know that you deprived me of my once chance to say goodbye."

He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off, coming around his desk and stepping up to him. "And for that, I will never...forgive...you."

By the time she finished speaking, her voice was down to a whisper, almost inaudible, impassioned, treacherous. She appeared as though she was prepared to fly off the handle at any moment, trembling slightly, her eyes burning with rage.

Trip broke the silence. He had to. He needed to, or else he was sure he'd have a physical altercation with his tactical officer right then and there. "Dismissed, Ensign."

She didn't hesitate, turning on her heels and leaving the ready room without another word.

---

Just after midnight on the second day after the attack, T'Pol found herself traversing the familiar path from her quarters to sickbay.

This wasn't a social visit, nor one borne out of necessity; Ensign Keeley has spotted Phlox poking around his domain on her way to gamma shift, and her concern had certainly been warranted. She'd contacted her directly, and T'Pol slipped out of bed without a second thought, dressing quickly and leaving Jonathan to his slumber.

Truthfully, it wasn't a problem; she hadn't been able to sleep anyway.

Try as she might, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was about to be found out, that the entire fleet was soon to know that she was half-Romulan, a pariah, a traitor without having to betray anyone at all. In the morning, they would all find out if Ensign Taxa's gambit to conceal the truth had been successful. The subspace teleconference with the different major political leaders of the alliance would decide her fate.

She had to admit that she didn't like not being in control.

Reaching the pair of sliding doors that marked the entrance to sickbay, she stood on her toes slightly, peering through the windows into the near darkness. Sure enough, she could see the doctor pacing the room, head down, seemingly deep in thought.

At this point, she wasn't sure that she had anything left to give, but she would have to try.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped over the threshold, greeting him quietly. Phlox scarcely glanced over his shoulder before turning back to the cluster of enclosures dotting the counter in front of him. He was fond of saying that feeding time for his menagerie was seemingly never ending, though she doubted that needed to be seen to now.

"Doctor, what are you doing?"

"In sickbay?" He asked somewhat rhetorically, as though the answer was obvious. "Just tending to my creatures."

"You shouldn't be here."

"And whyever not?" Phlox made a quick about face and approached the opposite end of the room, dropping a handful of pellets into his Altarian marsupial's cage. Within, the animal began to burble and shift, shaking its cage rather loudly.

"Because…" T'Pol slowly began to approach him, crossing her arms across her chest and giving herself a slight hug. She wasn't sure how exactly to word what she had to say, so she decided to just come out with it. "At this moment, you should be mourning."

He reacted as if he'd been struck, turning to face her. "I'm very much through with that. Elizabeth helped me observe the Rite of Absolution. She was most helpful. I don't need to take any more time."

T'Pol wasn't a member of one of the most outwardly emotive species, but she was quite sure it took longer than a day and a half to recover following the loss of one's wife. She would know. Her own mother had died over a year ago, and she still wasn't entirely over it.

"I could order you." It came out as forceful, and a touch insensitive, but she absolutely meant it, and he knew that.

He scoffed and retreated around the corner to his computer console, followed shortly by his CO. "That's entirely unnecessary, Captain. I've done my grieving, I've done my reminiscing. The best place for me to be right now is here." He reached for the keypad, then paused, catching her incredulous expression, leaning heavily into the table. He suddenly seemed contemplative. "Do you know how Feezal and I first met?"

She shook her head to indicate the negative.

"Following my first residency, I accepted a posting as a field medic in the Infantry. All I wanted to do was see new worlds. You know how young people are."

She did. A couple of decades ago, she may have been in the same predicament, and certainly at the start of Enterprise's mission, she'd been surrounded by eager and ambitious crewmen. Over the years, she'd seen their resolve bolster and wane, almost be destroyed entirely by their time fighting the Xindi, then come roaring back just in time to be snuffed out again before her very eyes. She was disinclined to think about how the more experienced members of her crew would react once they were officially faced with the prospect of war once again.

"When I met Taxa a couple of years in, he was still a Lieutenant. He broke his arm during a training exercise and it required physical therapy. We became close friends, almost immediately." He smiled to himself, as though he was in on a joke no one else could understand. "Seeing as we were still in the system, his first wife came to visit."

Phlox reached out and seized an empty hypospray from the shelf, turning it over and over in his hands. "He wanted her to have someone close to home, and seeing as I was preparing to return to the capital to complete my degree in hematology…" He trailed off, waving his hand dismissively. "We were married three months later."

T'Pol wasn't entirely sure if he wanted her to interject, so she held her tongue. She looked at her doctor, her friend, who had been with her through growing accustomed to being the only non-humans on board, through Pa'nar Syndrome, through Trellium-D, through everything. She knew, after all that, he deserved to be heard, no matter how long it took. "You know, on Denobula, when you propose marriage, it's customary to ask the other spouses and their firstborn child for their blessing. Alira was about twenty, preparing to leave home for the first time, and her little brothers, the twins, couldn't have been older than four or five."

He gestured towards the blank expanse of wall behind her, seemingly lost in his reverie. "I remember riding the lift up to the family compound to get her answer. I'm only a couple decades her senior, not much older, so I was nervous that she would refuse. But she told me she'd allow me to marry her mother on one condition."

She raised an eyebrow, silently urging him to continue.

"That I promised to love her just as much as her father did." He turned slightly and they locked eyes. She realized he was very close to breaking down, a state of affairs that was betrayed by the wavering of his voice. "I can't speak for how Taxa felt, but I know that she meant everything to me. I hope she knows that I tried."

She was suddenly moved by the overwhelming urge to close the distance between them, but he beat her to the punch. He was insistent, adamant, and his tears were free flowing. "I certainly tried, T'Pol."

Without prompting, she seized both of his hands, covering them with her own, sending whatever peace and solidarity she could over the barriers of physical touch. His sorrow was immediately staggering, all-encompassing, and she momentarily had to fight suffering an emotional reaction herself.

She pulled back just in time, holding onto her friend for dear life, the only anchor in his crumbling world.

---

Some time after his encounter with his tactical officer, Trip returned to his quarters. He was surprised to find the bed still made and the lights on full illumination, but he didn't put much thought into it, settling onto the edge of the bunk and kicking off his boots.

He didn't want to think that the Vulcans were capable of such horrendous acts against two other alliance worlds, but the implications had been obvious. After everything they'd been told about the terrorist activity and sporadic assassinations that had plagued them since the deposition of Administrator V'Las, he wouldn't be surprised if a rogue faction was seeking revenge on the High Command's allies, whatever their motivations may be.

Trip had tried to reach Ambassador Soval only to receive a busy signal; this was expected, as he was more than likely fielding dozens of calls from San Francisco, the Commodore, and damn near every patrol ship in their section of space, desperately trying to figure out what was happening and whether or not they were at war and if they were being recalled or not. In the morning, they would be meeting over subspace to discuss their official response to Kandar's destruction, and he couldn't help but think he ought to have at least partial say in it.

From the other side of the wall, he heard someone entering their access code, then the door opened, producing a very rushed Lieutenant Sato. She didn't so much as glance at Trip as she barged in and rushed to the bathroom, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

"Hoshi?" He stood and followed her, somewhat disturbed over her intensity. In the mirror, he could make out her scowl, plainly see how her brows were furrowed and her shoulders were hunched confrontationally. She was shoving her toiletries into the bag in handfuls, ignoring his every attempt to get her attention. "What's going on?"

She brushed past him, retrieving the spare set of pajamas she kept in his drawer. As she headed to exit, he caught her by the elbow, pulling her back roughly. "Where are you going? Is something wrong?"

She looked up at him as if he'd just said the most ignorant thing in the universe. "Yes, Trip, it is. I'm going to be crashing at Alira's tonight. I get the feeling she just might need a friend right now."

"What about tomorrow?" Saturdays were their usual date night, and though he suspected they'd both be too wrapped up in work to actually take a break, he was experiencing a bout of wishful thinking.

Hoshi sighed, moving away from his reach and leaning into the wall. "I think it's best that I stay in my own quarters for a while."

He frowned, searching for an explanation in her dour expression. He wanted to ask her why, but held her tongue, knowing full well she was about to tell him.

"Listen, Trip, eventually we're going to need to talk this through, but right now, I'm almost too angry to look at you." She crossed her arms. "Your decision to keep Alira here was selfish. I think you know that."

"Hoshi, you know we needed her on the bridge in case the marauders came back. At that point, we didn't know anything for sure. It could have been any species, with any level of tactical ability. She has the most experience out of any of us."

"That's bull," she insisted, "You could have put me or Travis at the helm. You need to be honest with yourself."

"I am being honest. I don't think-"

"Trip." She was exasperated, plainly incensed, as though her patience was being tested. Gingerly, she closed the distance between them, laying a hand on his shoulder. The gesture was admonishing, yet strangely comforting, and he reached up to grab it. When she spoke, it was with an air of finality, and he knew she wasn't going to accept anything other than the truth. "Tell me what you were thinking."

He shook his head. "As soon as we got that distress call, I knew we were going into a no-win scenario. Like our last attempt to stop the Xindi weapon."

"That was a result of our hard work. We spent an entire year chasing them."

"No, Hoshi, that was a miracle. Hundreds of pieces of the puzzle all falling into place at once. We had a one in a trillion chance of saving Earth, but somehow we pulled it off." She reached up to cup his face, and he caught her hand, holding it to his chest. "I kept thinking, if I had known the prototype was about to lay waste to Florida and kill Lizzie, would I have wanted to be there to see her one last time?"

Her eyes widened. Suddenly, she understood.

He really did believe this was the first battle of a war.

"It's likely this is the Romulans' doing, but the Vulcans might be involved somehow. I hope I'm not right, but if I am-" Trip trailed off, looking away for a fraction of a second. "The truth is, as soon as we spoke with those scientists, I knew exactly what we were going to have to do. If I were in Alira's shoes, I wouldn't have been able to handle it."

"That's not your choice to make for other people," she whispered. "Trip, you're the Captain now and you're going to have to make difficult decisions. I get it. But this one-"

"-wasn't a great one," he finally acquiesced, the weight of all the trauma he'd inadvertently wrought upon his friend bearing down at him at once.

It didn't matter if she was a conspirator in the moment-he dearly hoped she wasn't-but he knew what he had to do.

"Give it a day or two," Hoshi continued. "You can apologize to her when you're ready. In the meantime, take your time and sort your life out."

It was blunt, plainspoken advice, the kind he was used to getting from her. As she reached the door, he asked, "When can I see you again?"

"You better give me a few days too," she admitted, returning his smile, then disappeared from view.

As Hoshi made her way through the corridors, she couldn't help but wonder if she'd done the right thing. She almost immediately pushed that thought to the side, remembering her friend's heartbreak, her despondency, the way she'd held onto her, pouring all her anguish into their embrace, sobbing into her shoulder for what felt like hours. She knew she couldn't have let things fester and stew with Trip, knowing full well the destruction of the station had all but broken her.

Rounding the corner onto the senior officers' block, she all but ran into Lieutenant Novakovich coming from the opposite direction with a backpack slung over his shoulder. He looked tremendously weary, but offered her a smile, turning and hitting the chime.

Apparently, they'd had the exact same thought.

It took some time, but Alira finally answered the door, wrapped in a blanket and wearing what she suspected was yesterday's uniform. She looked between them somewhat curiously, her expression devoid of her usual joy. They could tell that she'd been crying again, though she was trying to cover for it, repeatedly rubbing her nose on her sleeve. "Can I help you two?"

"We're spending the night," Ethan asserted, making it clear that it wasn't up for debate.

She shook her head. "That's very kind of you, but I don't need any-"

"I don't think you need to be alone right now," Hoshi interrupted.

"She's right. I've got enough sugar in this backpack to put us all in comas." She seemed a little taken aback by the hyperbole, but soon understood as he slipped it off his shoulder and propped it up on his knee, unzipping the pocket wide enough to show that he'd just raided Chef's domain and divested him of everything sweet. "I bet you'll want to hear about all my away missions that have gone wrong."

"He means every single one he's ever been on. The man is cursed."

"Thanks for that vote of confidence, Hoshi." He rolled his eyes somewhat dramatically, then glanced back towards her. "I spoke with Travis. Since you're both on alpha shift tomorrow, he's offered to sit with you all afternoon."

Alira looked down at her feet, pulling the blanket tighter around her. "You two really don't have to do this."

"We want to," Hoshi insisted, gesturing over her shoulder. "Now, are you going to let us in or not?"

This time, she smiled, an honest-to-God smile, and stepped aside.

---

The next morning, the senior officers of the Maelstrom gathered in the wardroom, taking their seats at the table and avoiding eye contact with one another all together.

On the screen, the complements of the NX vessels were joining one by one, first the Enterprise, then Captain Al-Shahrani on the Phoenix and Captain Pritchard on the Cochrane, with Columbia bringing up the rear. The connection was silent and expectant, almost painfully so; each and every officer in attendance knew what was about to happen, even if they didn't dare vocalize it.

There was a sudden shift in the image, then a handful of others joined. Admiral Gardner, however, wasn't wasting any time.

"Thank you all for joining us." He paused, fiddling with the PADD in front of him on his desk. It seemed to them that he was safe and sound in his office back at HQ. "Starfleet has received word of the incident at Kandar, and we've looked into the matter thoroughly. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the loved ones of the human and Denobulan scientists lost during the attack."

Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. Under the table, Trip pressed his hands together and bore down hard. After the Xindi attack, it had been all people wanted to offer him, so much so that he'd grown to detest that phrase.

"We understand that there was some implication that Vulcans were involved. After our own independent investigation, the Security Directorate has determined that this is impossible." Ambassador Soval was joined by Administrator Kuvak and Minister T'Pau, who stood behind them, their faces impassible, more Vulcanlike than he'd ever seen them.

"Starfleet Intelligence has arrived at the same conclusion," Gardner continued, "We believe that the strike was carried out by the Romulans using a new type of telepresence unit, an improvement over the prototype they last used during the Babel Crisis."

Across the table, he saw his tactical officer relax slightly, followed by their doctor.

"To that end, the United Earth Council has decided to draft a declaration of war against the Romulan Star Empire."

The silence in the wardroom, and he suspected the very same for their sister ships, was overwhelming. In the corner of the screen, he saw Lieutenant Cutler pitch forward and bury her face in her hands.

"We understand this information may take some time to disseminate throughout your fleet. Be assured that you will have full support of the High Command during this transitional period."

He wondered if they'd be able to say the same after the first attack on Vulcan soil.

There was a sharp crackle of someone's audio roaring to life over a distance of many light years, then the screen shifted to the situation room of the Alveron, where General Vesena was joined by Ambassador Lexora. For the first time, their expressions were neutral, perfectly dispassionate.

"The Supreme Council of Denobula has decided to officially declare their neutrality at this time. All nationals currently serving on Earth consulates will be recalled effective immediately and will be fulfilling their duties remotely for as long as it is possible," Lexora explained, as if it were a perfectly rational course of action.

Alira experienced a sudden overpowering wave of rage that she could not suppress, seizing the edge of the table and pressing down with all her might.

How could they just bow to a threat when over a dozen of their citizens had been killed, perhaps not by Romulans, but by their servants, on a cold and barren moon where they had no other hope of rescue?

How could Vesena not commit herself to avenging Feezal's death, considering they'd shared a husband, that they had practically been sisters?

How could they choose this moment out of all to take the high road, and ignore the enemy's treachery that had meant her mother's demise?

They were all cowards. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised. They'd done the same thing almost two decades ago with her father, which had sent her down a dangerous path she was still traveling on to this day.

Beside her, Julia sensed her fury and grief, saw the way she was trembling and desperately trying to hold herself together. Trip had told her that he suspected some form of duplicity from their tactical officer, but she hadn't wanted to believe it, even after he'd shown her how the weapons signatures she recorded had been changed. Perhaps she really had made a mistake.

At the end of the day, however, she knew there was a difference between believing something because you had the evidence and believing something because you wanted it to be true.

She fiercely wanted Alira to be innocent, but at the moment, she wasn't so sure.

They made eye contact, and Julia nodded slightly.

On the screen Gardner was admitting the articles might take some time to pass through the channels of bureaucracy, so they should be on the lookout for any further suspicious activity. Soval was explaining the ancestral link and physical similarities between Vulcans and Romulans to deepen their cover, but Alira wasn't listening.

Quietly, she stood and left the wardroom, pressing her fingernails so hard into her palms that she was sure she would draw blood.

---

In the early hours of the morning on the third day after the attack, Malcolm awoke to the comm sounding in his quarters.

In a flash, he was on his feet and reaching for the wall, switching on the lights in the process. Once his suspicions were confirmed, he took a seat at his desk, hands hovering over the keys for one long moment.

He took a deep breath, in and out. Okay?

Okay.

He hit the button, and a shadow soon appeared, shifting in the near darkness. He immediately recognized his lover, bundled up in bed with a blanket drawn over her head.

"Alira?"

"Beloved?" The light on the bedside table came on, and he took in her slumped posture, the dullness in her eyes, the tracks of tears that had only recently dried on her cheeks. She was laying on her side, facing him, her PADD propped up against wall.

"How are you feeling?" He asked automatically, before mentally cursing himself for asking such an insensitive question. The answer was obvious.

She sighed, extricating a hand from underneath the covers and pressing it against her forehead. "Better."

"Better?"

"Better. Not great, but better." She wanted to tell him that she'd spent the evening calling her immediate family to let them know what had happened, that she'd watched her twelve-year-old baby sister burst into tears when she realized that their mother would never come home again, but she didn't want to relive it.

There was a moment of silence, then he moved to close it. "You know, I had about a dozen crewmen approach me over the past day or so offering to give up their comm time for the week."

There was a hint of something hopeful in her eyes. "How long do we have?"

"Nearly an hour, today and tomorrow. It's safe to say you've still got friends here."

"Give them my thanks." She shifted to lay on her back, propping him up against her knees. "Forgive me for being so sentimental. I know it's not much, but sometimes it's just enough to hear your voice. Makes me feel like you're…"

"I wish I was," he interrupted, knowing full well he'd thought about nothing else for the past two days. With the imminent nature of United Earth's articles of war against the Romulans, he knew the months between their meetings could draw into years. The very idea of it was threatening to break his heart all over again.

After a moment, he decided to broach a subject he really knew he shouldn't. "I did a bit of looking around in the Denobulan database today."

"Did you?" She was smiling softly, holding her PADD with both hands now.

"I did." He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I had no idea your mother led such a full life."

Her smile fell instantly, but he could tell she wasn't upset. "She really did. Have you read the part about-"

"That midnight drive to the northern reaches of Teerza Prime in the middle of winter to repair that subspace telescope array?" He shook his head. "I had no idea she was one to take such risks."

"I had to get it from somewhere."

Their conversation continued, detailing her mother's various exploits, her sister's experiences as an itinerant transport captain, her brother's adventures at the consulate in San Francisco. Really, though her family was obscenely large, Malcolm thought he was getting the hang of it. At the very least, he could now point out each of her eight siblings by name in a holoimage.

"Did your father ever make you run as punishment?"

"Of course he did. I was constantly getting into trouble. He used to make me take the lift down to the lobby from the family compound, then come all the way back up the stairs."

"Well, that doesn't sound too-"

"We lived on the eighty-seventh floor. It took a couple of hours."

In spite of her misfortune, he laughed. "I don't want to think about what you must have done to warrant that."

"Surprisingly, very little. You know how military fathers are. I loved him anyway."

"Then you're a better person than me," he admitted, glancing down at his own PADD. He'd never so much as looked up General Taxa before, but his official likeness was imposing even with a faint smile on his face, a certain intensity behind his eyes that he'd seen in Alira's own. "Your father's got quite the impressive wartime record."

"One of the best," she insisted. "His portrait hangs on the Wall of Heroes in the capital."

The database certainly spared no detail in describing his search and rescue efforts, his airtight patrols, his hundreds of reconnaissance missions. Malcolm realized that he'd been deceased for almost sixteen years to the date, and the location was listed as-

"That's strange."

"What is?"

He shook his head, almost not wanting to mention it, absolutely not wanting to send her back down that path of grieving. But all the same…

"It says he died during a border skirmish..."

"It was an accident," Alira said automatically, her tone utterly resolute.

It said that too. "...with the Kalaine, an Andorian battle cruiser, which at the time was led by Commander Namara and Lieutenant Shran."

She shrugged, as if to say it wasn't important, though the stricken look on her face told him it absolutely was.

What were the odds?

During their most recent trip to Andoria, Malcolm knew that Namara had been involved in a plot to kill Shran and effectively silence the efforts to join their government with the alliance. As for Shran, he had been duplicitous in the past, but for the past few years had been entirely loyal to their cause. It really was a hell of a coincidence, one that he wanted to explore further, but didn't dare given their present situation. So, against his better judgment, he decided to push that thought aside.

He decided to let it go.

"Have I ever told you about myself and Trip's incident on Risa?"

She perked right up. "I've only been begging you to tell me for months." It certainly hadn't been for lack of trying; ever since their little game of twenty questions on Rigel V, she'd been pestering the two of them intermittently, alternating between trying to bribe them and wear them down enough to where they'd let the truth slip. But it had all been for naught; even Trip, their resident gossip king, had been uncharacteristically silent about their ordeal.

"Today's your lucky day, I suppose. Close your eyes."

"Why?"

"I'm just trying to set the scene."

Alira shook her head, but complied, placing her PADD on the pillow beside her.

"Alright. Picture it. Risa, February 2152. Two Starfleet officers walk into a bar…"

End of Episode Twelve

---

Next time on Enterprise...

Episode Thirteen: Hysteria

The Enterprise encounters a Vulcan transport ravaged by a neural telepresence attack, but finds that the Betazoid ship Delphina has gotten there first. The Maelstrom discovers the ruins of an ancient Romulan settlement, and the away team manages to get into more trouble than they bargained for.