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]

18. Episode 18: Infiltration

A/N: Welcome back! Thank you all for your reviews and feedback. This is the only episode of the season that isn't a stand alone story per se: it's leading up to next time, where the Kandar conspiracy is blown wide open and we discover the Romulan superweapon. Alira's secret also comes out; T'Pol's big reveal comes later. As a wise philosopher once said: the truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off.

Xantoras is from ENT 2x21 The Breach, which is quite honestly one of my favorite S2 episodes. Saw an opportunity to do a little bit of worldbuilding and took it! We're going in the canon direction of how the Romulan War was fought as set by TOS 1x08 Balance of Terror. If you know, you know.

Full disclosure: As I plan season six, I'm thinking we definitely need a late-2140s Section 31 and Special Ops field work flashback episode. Also gotta say, during the train station scene, all I could really think about was the part in Parks & Recreation where the Sapersteins are dancing around going don't be suspicious, don't be suspicious...

Enjoy the fluff and shameless spy movie tropes!

Next time: the continuing adventures of Walking Family Disappointment and Blonde Tilly as they attempt to survive this mission from hell. Our armory seconds get the chance to prove themselves, the Romulans make their move on the Enterprise, and Trip has a confrontation for the ages.

Season Five

Episode Eighteen: Infiltration

The people of Xantoras were used to living in the shadows.

For decades, for generations, their government had been in a state of upheaval. They lived in a constant state of fear, dodging beatings, arrests, and random searches, as every new iteration of the ruling class asserted their power and moved rapidly to put down their detractors.

They built their houses over and over again, adobe walls and windowless walls, each constructed in a period of hours or days, as one never knew if that night their homes would be destroyed by incendiary bombs. Many grew used to sleeping underground in their basements, only to venture outside in the broad light of day.

Many worked for the resistance in its numerous forms; there were several groups always working behind the scenes to overthrow whatever military faction was in power at the time, and their operatives were everywhere, hiding their armor and weapons in panels underneath their floors. Their couriers took the form of children, expectant mothers, and the elderly, who could often move about the city undetected by the Regional Governor's soldiers.

Elsewhere, others attempted to keep their heads down and eke out a meager living, hoping and praying their only means of survival wouldn't be suddenly taken away by a war they had no intention of fighting. They ate communally. They kept their family close. They lived openly, so as not to draw suspicion of their motives, but sometimes it didn't matter.

This morning was no exception.

The inhabitants of the homes in the industrial sector heard it first. The day was only just dawning, and peddlers were wheeling their carts out in the streets, windows and doors were being thrown open into the heat of the morning, and children were running underfoot, taking advantage of their ability to go to school while they still could. People were laughing and shouting and calling out to one another, a tenuous state of normalcy that was interrupted by the distant sound of breaking glass.

There was a flurry of weapons fire, then people yelling, which was entirely incomprehensible until they grew closer, and two rather frantic fugitives burst into view.

Seeing someone fleeing from private police wasn't an unusual sight, but they still instinctively moved out of the way, dashing out of the street and onto the sidewalks, pressing themselves against the walls of surrounding buildings. Some dared to look up at the poor unfortunates, who were now almost guaranteed to be put in front of a firing squad, and noticed with shock that they didn't seem to look anything like them.

The reigning Governor had opened their system to off-worlders, a change which had initially been welcomed by the enterprising business owners of the capital. They soon realized, however, that this seemed to be limited to criminals, smugglers, and other ne'er-do-wells that exclusively supported his interests. The motives of these two were as of yet undetermined, but from the way they were running for their lives, expressions fraught, arms and legs cutting the air, it was nearly obvious.

A few recognized the species as one of their celestial neighbors, the Denobulans. Several had made enquiries, made over secure transmissions that could only just slip through the planetary communications suppression network, about what it would take to be granted asylum. They'd heard that particular world was one seamless bustling metropolis, and everyone there seemed to be anonymous and inconsequential, a quality which seemed so attractive to them after spending their entire lives under the close scrutiny of the government.

The two of them, a man and a woman, were trailed by a dozen soldiers, all dressed in reflective black armor, their faces obscured and weapons held aloft. They were too far away to get a good shot, but that didn't stop them from commanding help from the civilians around them, shouting: "You there! Stop them!"

Everyone pretended not to hear it.

They knew where they were going even before they made their first turn off the main drag: a large, open blacktop reserved for visiting traders, where everyone was thoroughly screened and every ship was painstakingly searched. It was still about a half kilometer away, and the soldiers were gaining on them, a problem which was only exacerbated when the woman tripped on a broken cobblestone, nearly sprawling out face-first into the street.

The man reacted immediately, seizing her arm and pulling her along. A second later, they darted into an alley under the pretense of taking a shortcut, dearly hoping they weren't about to be cut off on the other side.

"Is this still a part of the plan?" He asked breathlessly, ducking and weaving through the crates and barrels dotting the passageway.

His companion clutched her side, desperately trying to catch her breath, nearly tripping again as they burst out into an adjoining street. She could barely hear the soldiers around the blood roaring in her ears. Adrenaline had kicked in, forcing out all reason. All that remained was fight or flight.

They were very much past the point where fight might have been a viable option.

"Of course," she replied, and he didn't believe her for a second. They were coming up on the open-air hangar now, finding a broken spot in the fence and forcing their way through. Almost immediately, an alarm began to sound from the guard towers all around them.

In the distance, they spotted their shuttle in and among the other vessels. It was still powered down, and she knew at least passively that it would take at least thirty seconds from the time they entered the hatch to the time they could get off the ground.

She could only hope they'd be able to hold them off for that long.

They were perhaps a hundred meters away when they heard it, the very distinct sound of a short-range torpedo leaving its launch tube. They were both immensely familiar with it, out of misadventure or necessity, and paused, instinctively ducking as it roared overhead.

A second later, their ship exploded in a cataclysm of fire and sparks, the smoke billowing out from the point of detonation and overwhelming them. They stood there for a moment, shocked and horrified and tremendously fearful about what this could mean for their mission.

While she hurriedly calculated their next move, he was regretting every single decision in his lifetime that could have led up to this moment, along with the series of actions that caused them to be stranded on an unfamiliar world with no weapons, tricorders, or communicators to speak of.

"New plan!" She shouted over the roar of the flames, and reached for his hand. He obliged, and together they rushed towards the opposite end of the barricade, bursting back into the labyrinth of the city streets.

---

TWO DAYS EARLIER…

---

Enterprise Captain's Log, June 12th, 2156: We are en route to Xantoras to conduct reconnaissance based on a credible source which indicates the Romulans are building a superweapon somewhere in the quadrant. Ensign Taxa has briefly joined the mission to help us make contact with a former agent of Infantry Special Ops.

---

"How long has it been, Malcolm?" Archer asked as they waited by the shuttlebay.

"Five months," he said quietly, his hands hovering over the door controls, completely avoiding eye contact. Technically, it was a lot shorter than that if he counted their brief interlude in the storage locker after the Battle of Solnara, but he certainly didn't; besides, that was one experience he'd rather not share with his COs.

"Maybe this will give you an opportunity to catch up. It'll be ten hours to Xantoras at warp one."

"They will be undertaking this mission to perform a vital service to the alliance," the Captain interrupted. "Not to socialize, or-"

"Singh to the Commodore."

"Archer here." He reached forward to activate the comm, effectively cutting off whatever nugget of wisdom T'Pol was about to bestow upon them concerning professionalism.

"The shuttle's trailing us at five hundred kilometers."

"All stop. We'll roll out the welcome mat." A second later, they felt the great lurch of the hull as the engines disengaged. He nodded, and Malcolm opened the launch bay doors.

Jonathan's hand was on the hatch, and he could feel the cold vacuum of space on the other side threatening to punch through the metal of the bulkhead. Their first officer was doing a poor job of maintaining his poker face: his jaw was set and his eyes were slightly narrowed, tapping his fingers against his side. The second the shuttle rose through the floor, he pressurized the chamber, and glanced back at him, silently seeking permission.

He was all too willing to give it, and together they swept into the room, eyeing the vessel powering down over the side of the railing. It was strange enough to see a Denobulan shuttle in their docking berths, let alone the fact that it looked like an insect, with an oblong, copper toned hull and two forward-reaching appendages housing phase cannons. The twin viewports became eyes, and the transponder relays took the form of antennae bent forward at an unnatural angle over the roof. The Commodore surged forward, pausing at the top of the stairs, watching as the hatch popped open and folded out onto the deck plating.

The Maelstrom had used the shuttle to escape Kandar following their aborted rescue attempt and ultimate destruction of the station; later on, Captain Tucker would swear it was serendipity that they ran into misfortune at Starbase 1. Since Commander Leota and his senior staff were supposedly otherwise occupied dealing with a massive torpedo smuggling operation, they hadn't been able to transfer ownership of the pod. This had allowed them to keep it, and it became a project for Taxa and Mayweather, who essentially gutted it from stem to stern in preparation for their mission.

The engine was still whirring and vibrating, but he heard its pilot call out, the voice both familiar and deeply stirring. A second later, Alira peered out of the hatch, and Malcolm momentarily forgot to breathe.

"Welcome aboard, Ensign." The Commodore was the first to extend a greeting, stepping aside to allow her to join them on the walkway.

"It's good to be back," she replied, handing the PADD she'd been carrying to the Captain. "Confirmation that I've been transferred to your command for the next seven days, starting with our mission briefing."

T'Pol immediately handed it back to her. "We'll meet in the wardroom at the top of the hour. It is imperative that we begin preparations as soon as possible."

"I agree, Captain," she said, finally affording Malcolm a passing glance. All it took was a simple upturn of his head, and their eyes locked. He could see that she was trying her hardest to keep her expression neutral. "Sir."

"Ensign," he replied, clearing his throat.

"I trust that you've been keeping the armory in top form in my absence."

"He's been doing a remarkable job. I recommend you review his modifications to the targeting sensors before we meet. We'll be doing some work to route all the main bridge controls through the forward EPS grid tomorrow. It'll be all hands on deck." He gestured towards the hatch, and she complied, shouldering her duffle bag and following them down the gangway.

"I'd be happy to, sir."

"We'll stop by the armory on our way to the wardroom," he assured them as they stepped over the threshold, getting the distinct impression that this was as far as their COs intended to go. "I'll show her to the guest quarters."

"Very generous, Mr. Reed," the Captain said, and they could feel her eyes on them all the way down the corridor.

Alira was walking quickly and with purpose, not even bothering to look up, but the moment the turbolift doors closed behind them, she pushed him against the wall and kissed him hard, and it was as if no time had passed at all.

There was a momentary struggle; in a second he had pivoted so they were both leaning against the wall, and his hands became tangled in her hair, pulling slightly as he kissed her again. She tasted sweeter than he remembered, and he wanted to savor every second, to remember her in this instant, this joyous moment of reunion.

She broke off, breathing hard, and pressed herself against him, relishing in the familiar sound of his heartbeat in her ear. "I take it I'll be welcome in your quarters tonight?"

"I wouldn't be a very good host if I said no," he admitted, pressing the button that would bring them down to the guest accommodations.

"I suppose you missed me, then?"

He looked down at the woman in his arms and knew he had to tell her the truth. "More than anything."

"Hmm. Then you'll have to show me," she replied with a mischievous glint in her eye, pressing a different button behind his back.

"Alira, we've only got..." He leaned dangerously over to one side to catch a glimpse of the chronometer reading on the wall. "Twenty-seven minutes."

"Twenty-seven minutes," she echoed matter-of-factly. "Plenty of time."

He was starting to understand where she was going with this. "This is important. The Commodore said-"

The doors of the turbolift slid open and they quickly separated. She bent down and retrieved her bag, slinging it over her shoulder as she crossed into the senior officers' block. "Then you'll have to give me a quick summary."

"When?" He demanded. In response, she raised an eyebrow at him, and began to trace the familiar path they'd taken together so many times before.

He watched her, watched the swish of her ponytail and the gentle swing of her hips, and realized he had no desire to argue about it. Rushing after her, he caught up the moment she reached his quarters, her fingers pausing over the controls, his personal access code halfway entered.

Covering her hand with his own, he completed the sequence, and the door slid open. Swiftly, she turned on her heels, resting her hand on the frame and leaning into it, blocking the entrance with her body. Her bag went flying, landing somewhere on the deck plating, soon to be forgotten.

He could tell she was issuing a silent challenge; the glint in her eye was positively devilish, and he knew he couldn't resist her, this rubenesque goddess, this temptress, this brash, riveting hurricane of a woman who had swept into his life and changed it all for the better.

He knew they likely only had a few moments before a crewman came strolling by and caught them in a compromising position. Without pause, he hooked an arm around her waist and walked her backwards into the room, recklessly fanning the flames of desire he saw burning in her eyes.

---

Trip entered the wardroom ahead of the morning briefing and almost immediately was walloped upside the head with a flashback he could not suppress.

The first thing he saw was Lieutenant Novakovich, laying over the front of the conference table on his back, his arms folded across his chest. For a second, he thought he was asleep, but he reacted instantaneously to the sight of his commanding officer, sitting up, removing his sunglasses, and stashing them in his pocket.

Yuris stood by the window, appearing contemplative and taking sips from his mug, which proudly proclaimed that he was the World's Best Doctor. It had only been a few days since his birthday, and Trip couldn't begin to describe how glad he was to see that he was at least humoring the senior officers' attempts to celebrate it.

The mug had been his idea, and Alira had tagged onto it, giving him a bag of one of her favorite coffee blends. Hoshi had chastised her, saying that she drank way too much of the stuff for someone who had a natural inexhaustible fount of energy, but she'd gone ahead with it anyway, and for the past few days he'd taken inordinate pleasure in watching their resident Vulcan fill his mug again and again.

Travis was seated at the end of the table engaged in a rather one-sided discussion with Ensign Nguyen, who looked like he'd sooner melt into the deck plating than engage with him. In almost every conceivable way, Jimmy reminded him of Malcolm; though much quieter, he had the technical knowledge and social awkwardness in spades, and was even known to fire off a sarcastic remark from time to time.

Julia and Kelby were at the far corner of the room arguing about God knew what; both looks incredibly annoyed, like they'd more than likely throttle the other instead of coming to a resolution. Their voices were drowned out by the woozy, swinging big band music pounding from the overhead speakers, and in the middle of it all, his girlfriend stood at the viewscreen, surrounded by a circle of PADDs stacked a half meter high.

"Hoshi!" He had to almost shout to be heard, and she reacted with barely restrained indignation, pressing the keys on the side of the monitor to decrease the volume. Trip vaguely remembered her getting up in the middle of the night, as she had almost every day for the past few months, no doubt to attend to yet another theory about Kandar's computer database. Though she and Dita managed to decode several large portions of it, nothing had seemed particularly consequential, and neither he nor the Commodore were willing to accept that Feezal and her crew had gone down with themetaphorical ship for no reason. "I thought you said no jazz."

"It's been growing on me," she admitted, gesturing towards the screen. "Looks like the algorithmic block cipher didn't work either."

He wanted to wrap her in a hug, to afford her some comfort and extend his gratitude for pulling so many double and triple shifts, but graciously avoided it in the presence of the other senior officers. "And what are all these?"

She suddenly seemed to remember that she was surrounded by PADDs and took one step out of the semicircle, using the wall to balance herself as she moved over the barricade. "Each of these represents an approach we've looked into. Believe me, Captain, I've tried every single method I can think of, database steganography, RSA encryption, chronograms in hundreds of languages. None of them have worked. I've failed every single time, sir."

"I wouldn't say that you are a failure, Lieutenant," Yuris remarked, continuing to study her work from afar. "You just lack the distinct set of skills necessary to solve this problem."

Hoshi's eyes narrowed, as though she wanted to deal him a withering remark, but refrained from doing so. She returned her focus to him. "I think it's time we pull someone else into this. I'm telling you, Lieutenant Roubanis from the Columbia used to train operatives for Starfleet Intelligence. He'd have this cipher cracked in a week."

All the same, Trip was wary to involve anyone else in their investigation until they knew exactly what they were dealing with. Even assuming Alira and Malcolm's mission was successful, they wouldn't have a sense of the bigger picture for another week at least. Even though he didn't know for certain, he had a hunch that Kandar's destruction and the Romulan efforts to build a superweapon were very much related.

"Let's give it one more go," he said, and she quickly clamped down on her protestations, her jaw set with resolve. "Why don't you take one more day to look at this and nothing else? Ensign Medina can cover your post."

"With all due respect, sir, I'm going to need a fresh set of eyes. I feel like if I look at these encryption sequences for one more minute I might just..." She mimicked an explosion noise between her lips and fanned out her hands from her face. Her frustration was well and truly understandable.

"Lieutenant, I sincerely doubt that another few hours studying Kandar's data core could lead to-"

Trip snapped his fingers and pointed at him. "You just volunteered yourself, doctor!"

His eyebrows raised a fraction of a centimeter. "Me, sir?"

"And the full reign of sickbay. You've got a degree in mathematics, don't you?"

As a matter of fact, he did. It had been a momentary diversion in his academic career before devoting himself fully to medicine. Though he knew it was irrational and ultimately unproductive, he silently wished the Captain hadn't looked so far back into his personnel file.

"That is correct, sir. I will begin making arrangements." The look in his eyes was tense, utterly averse.

Trip, seemingly satisfied, went to take his place at the head of the table. The senior officers were settling down now, and on cue, Novakovich slipped off of it and went to go sit next to the doctor.

He laid a hand on his shoulder and whispered, almost but not entirely inaudibly: "Good luck with that."

"Looks like it's your lucky day! Ethan's going to be joining you too!"

"Sir-"

"Glad that's settled," Trip said, rubbing his hands together. He cut a glance towards Ethan and smiled, which he returned somewhat hesitantly. Hoshi slid into her seat and cued up the view screen behind them.

"We're still a few days from joining the patrol at the Canopus system. It looks like Columbia's going to beat us there by a couple of hours," Julia said, gesturing towards the flight diagram.

Travis was adamant. "Not if I can help it."

"Glad we can count on you." She paused, indicating for her to advance the screen. "The Phoenix will be there a day after us. Enterprise will be taking a minor detour to conduct some tactical drills in the Bowerman Nebula. The particle flux should protect them from being detected by the enemy, but in the meantime-"

"We most likely won't be able to contact them in any way," Hoshi concluded, cutting her an apologetic glance. "They're supposed to join us in a week, and they'll be bringing Ensign Taxa back with them."

"Funny how the Denobulans expect us to do favors for them, but they won't even join our side of the war." Ethan crossed his arms and leaned into the table, referring to elaborate cover they'd constructed for the clandestine mission to Xantoras.

Julia and Trip exchanged a meaningful glance, being the only ones on the ship who knew of their true motives for infiltrating the capital under the cloak of darkness. Maybe one day they could tell them if their investigation proved fruitful, but as for now…

"I heard that the Supreme Council also rejected the Solnarans' formal request for asylum on Teerza Prime," Kelby remarked, making a brave overture of interruption into the morning briefing, something he was typically unwilling to do. According to his counterpart on the Cochrane, they'd traveled all the way to Denobula only for Lord Moberly to be practically turned away at the door. Captain Pritchard had been furious, and when they returned, the terraforming effort resumed in force.

Ethan bit his tongue this time, though he shook his head, training his eyes on the deck plating.

"It's a shame," Trip said firmly, meaning to be the authoritative end to that line of discussion. Not only was it shameful, it was outrageous and outright coldhearted. It was now apparent to him that moving forward they couldn't count on the Infantry for anything.

There was a moment of weighty silence, then Julia cleared her throat, asserting: "I'd like to touch on this trading agreement proposed by the Ktarians…"

---

T'Pol was annoyed.

She didn't have to say anything for Jonathan to pick up on it; it was written all over her face, in her slightly narrowed eyes, in the barest curve to her upper lip. Her boot was tapping a melody into the deck plating, an obvious tell, not to mention that her thoughts were racing a mile a minute, each one more cutting than the last.

It wasn't like Mr. Reed to be late. If anything, he was almost always early.

Technically, he still had about thirty seconds; Jonathan gently reminded her of this, along with the fact that they themselves were notorious for showing up to morning briefings at exactly the top of the hour, finding the rest of the senior staff waiting.

T'Pol made a big show of hiking up her sleeve to study her chronometer. From his seat beside her, he could see the seconds counting down: Five, four, three, two…

The wardroom door slid open, issuing two breathless tactical officers. Alira greeted both of them, her smile maintaining truly outlandish proportions, then moved to connect her PADD with the view screen.

She was slightly flushed, and her fingers momentarily fumbled with the cords, but she was in a much better state than her companion, whose countenance could best be described as tomato red.

Malcolm didn't so much as glance at them as he took his seat, propping his elbow onto the table and hiding the bottom half of his face behind his hand. He was suddenly very interested in the deck plating, doing everything in his power to avoid making eye contact with either of them.

"I'd just like to thank you once again for authorizing this mission, Commodore." On the screen, she summoned an old visual scan of Xantoras, which quickly shifted and turned on its axis until they were zoomed in on a northern continent. It was slightly smaller than Earth, but what it lacked in size, it made up for in the beauty of its geological formations, mountains and rivers and canyons that could even be seen from orbit.

The last time Malcolm had been there, he'd had little time to admire the planet's natural beauty, instead spending three days crawling around below ground attempting to locate three Denobulan scientists who were very unwilling to abandon their work, forcing them out of the caves under threat of being shot in the arse with a phase pistol.

He doubted they would have any leisure time this time around either.

"The entire alliance is counting on the two of you," Jonathan reminded them. "I wouldn't have given you permission if I didn't think you could handle it."

She nodded, exhaling quickly and pulling at the collar of her undershirt, as though the temperature in the room had just gone up significantly. It was only then he noticed that she'd skipped a button in her haste, but she didn't seem to notice, zooming in on a sprawling city lining the coast. Alira took a step forward into the muted blue glow of the screen, only to be swiftly cut off by her CO.

"Is something amusing, Ensign?"

"What?" She was visibly startled, and behind her, Malcolm sunk down deeper into his chair. "No, ma'am."

He could see her making a conscious effort to neutralize her expression, which worked for only a couple of seconds until her smile started to sneak back in. "Once we reach the drop zone, we'll be ten hours from the capital. We'll be meeting our contact in the industrial sector, right about...here."

Jonathan followed her gesture to a collection of ramshackle buildings adjoining a cobblestone street, then remarked: "I understand that he was a friend of your father's?"

Her grimace, momentary and fleeting as it was, couldn't be missed.

"He was his direct report in the Infantry. At the time my father was Supreme Commander, he was a Captain, and they served on the same ship." She took a deep breath, then her smile returned, wide and shameless as ever. "He was my mentor when I first joined Special Ops."

She called up his headshot, and they were soon greeted by a middle aged man who looked a little worse for wear, with a knowing smirk and a nearly visible chip on his shoulder. The image looked a little blurry and warped around the edges, as if it had been taken decades ago.

"Is he still affiliated?" Jonathan knew that T'Pol had read the same classified documents he had, about all the horrendous and violent things her colleagues had been forced to do in the past to preserve Denobulan sovereignty, operating mostly under the radar until directly confronted by Starfleet Intelligence agents.

Try as he might, he couldn't help but wonder if she'd been involved.

Alira cut a glance at Malcolm, who didn't seem to be offering very much help at the moment. She'd told him all about the demise of General Taxa, at least as much as she could without compromising her mission, and he knew all about how he'd been present at the accident that killed him and the rest of his patrol near their border. It was the truth, or as much as she could even bear to muster at that moment.

"No," she replied, and his image vanished from the screen. "Varox was burned from Special Ops about a year and a half ago. He's been rogue ever since, dealing in reconnaissance, mostly."

And weapons and biological agents, if rumors from members of her previous cell were to be believed, but that was beside the point.

"What makes you think he's going to honor your request for information?" T'Pol's skepticism, after everything they'd been through and how many times they'd been double crossed, was well warranted.

"He owes me a favor," she said automatically, knowing full well that it wasn't the answer they wanted to hear. More specifically, he owed her father a favor that she now hoped to collect on.

The favor he owed for saving his life.

T'Pol didn't seem convinced. "And are you sure you can trust him?"

"No, but that shouldn't matter."

"We'll be prepared," Malcolm agreed, speaking for the first time, taking them all by surprise.

She forged on, calling up the headshots of two young Denobulans, a redheaded woman and a dark-haired man, both beaming from ear to ear. "We'll be assuming the identities of Sareen and Rivell, two weapons dealers who have done business with the current ruling Regional Governor before. They were known associates of Varox, at one point running all of his intelligence to Mazar."

Her use of past tense certainly wasn't lost on any of them, and Jonathan desperately wanted to know what had happened to them, but thought it best not to ask.

"Are these former operatives?" If they were, their likenesses were most likely known to the Xantoras at this point, and their mission would become all the more complicated.

"No, sir. Just civilians." Civilians who had gotten themselves caught up in forces they couldn't even begin to understand. She gestured again to their images. "Rivell was Sareen's first husband. They've both got extensive criminal records back home, but nothing that would put them on the provisional government's radar."

They were fortunate that the new ruling body was amenable to doing business with off-worlders; just four years ago, that hadn't been the case, and they'd witnessed a transport being unable to land even though they'd just experienced a catastrophic reactor failure. The previous governor's reign of terror had continued up until a year and a half ago, when he'd been suddenly and violently deposed. His misfortune had been to the benefit of the ECS and any number of trading factions, who made their move almost immediately.

Such was the nature of a quadrant at war.

"We'll be spending the rest of the day preparing for this mission," Malcolm said. "As you know, we won't be bringing our phase pistols, tricorders, or even communicators-"

"Or anything else that could possibly identify us as Starfleet officers." Alira deactivated the screen and turned to face them, crossing her arms.

Her insinuation was obvious.

"We'll be at the rendezvous point ahead of schedule," Jonathan assured them. "In the meantime, we'll be running through those tactical exercises you recommended."

All in all, Malcolm regretted not being able to head those efforts himself, though it would afford the crew some much needed downtime for training and maintenance. As he understood it, they would be hiding in a protostellar nebula a few light years away; the particle flux would prevent them from remaining there for more than three or four days, but it would thoroughly hide them from any scans conducted by the alliance, the enemy, or otherwise.

"Crewman Bennett is certainly up for the challenge." It would be her first opportunity to take over the armory since she'd been promoted to his second, but he was more than willing to give her the chance.

The armory was his baby, but at some point, with his increasing duties as first officer, he was going to have to learn to let go.

"The senior staff, save for Dr. Phlox and Ensign Singh, believe you are en route to upgrade the planetary defense system at the Denobulan science outpost at Teerza VII." T'Pol paused and looked away, the news she'd received over subspace just that morning still fresh in her memory. "It seems that alliance ships are now banned from entering the system altogether so as not to appear that they've broken neutrality."

It was a frightening development, and Alira quickly decided she didn't like the increasingly isolationist stance her own government was taking. Though at that moment she couldn't vocalize it, she knew deep down that it would only backfire on them.

"So stealth will almost certainly be of the essence."

"All the same, try not to go walking around in disguise, Mr. Reed."

"I'll try my best, sir." He looked at the two of them expectantly, and the Commodore quickly rose, causing a ripple of motion around the room.

"Be safe," Jonathan said, reaching out and taking both of Alira's hands. The gesture was wholly unexpected, and served to convey his unease about their mission, but at the same time, his confidence in the two of them. "Be careful."

She nodded, squeezing his hands for a fraction of a second before turning and heading for the hatch. Malcolm followed closely behind her at a respectful distance, but at the moment they stepped over the threshold, his hand came up to hover around the small of her back, as though he was escorting her into the corridor.

The second they were gone, Jonathan heard T'Pol's thoughts clear as day.

I do not like this.

You're going to need to be a little more specific than that, honey.

I do not like the idea of sending them on the mission together. They are obviously romantically involved. They may become distracted.

That much was abundantly clear; although protocol dictated they should have come to him for official clearance of their relationship months ago, he knew that Alira was much too proud to do that, and the very idea of it likely embarrassed Malcolm to no end.

And to think that years ago, during their mishap in the Romulan minefield, he'd encouraged him to make friends with his crewmates. To open himself up to new opportunities.

It seemed that he'd finally taken his advice.

He laughed suddenly, and she turned to him, raising an eyebrow in consternation. He held his hands up in surrender even before delivering his reply.

I'm sure they'll be fine. Honestly, we have no room to judge!

Even though she didn't want to, she had to admit he was right.

In the space between them, she extended her pointer and middle finger, and he reciprocated the gesture, relishing in the comfort and affection that flowed across their bond like water.

---

"It's not that I don't believe you, I'm just saying that it doesn't sound very much like Trip."

"It definitely happened. Believe me, I was there." The doors of the turbolift slid open, and she stepped out tentatively, glancing to the left and to the right. Once she confirmed they were truly alone in the hallway, she surged forward into the senior officer's block, lowering her voice considerably. "Physically, at least."

He followed her closely, hoping to make a clean break. A majority of the bridge staff was now off shift, and even though their involvement was already well known, they'd automatically slipped back in their routine of sneaking around. He remembered those days fondly, remembered her by longing glances and stolen kisses in weapons lockers and hands held underneath the tables in the mess hall. It had kept him sane over the past few months when he missed her so much it was physically painful, and now that she was back, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and never let go.

"You were in the middle of a psionic energy induced hallucination. I wouldn't be surprised if you imagined the whole thing." She glanced back at him, slightly irritated before she noticed his furtive smile. As usual, he could take her teasing, but could also very easily dish it out.

Fair enough.

"I'm sorry, didn't you shoot the Captain?" Her hand came down over the door controls, blocking him from entering his access code. It had been one of her favorite stories from the early days of their mission; while searching for the Xindi in the Expanse, they discovered a society of humans who had been abducted and brought to a barren planet hundreds of years before. She'd seen more than a few westerns during movie night at Trip's behest, so she was able to imagine their world vividly, the horses and saloons and old fashioned muskets.

It was an impulsive, childish move, but he was more than willing to humor her. Immediately, he attempted to pry her fingers away, and when that didn't seem to work, tried to shoulder her out of the way. She held fast, digging her boots into the hull plating. "My phase pistol was set to stun," he insisted, nearly throwing his entire weight into her. "No harm done."

"Uh-huh." Swiftly, she moved aside, and he nearly fell face into the floor. Before she could stop herself, she was laughing with abandon, and he was reaching for her, pulling her over the threshold. As soon as the door shut behind them, she found herself pressed up against it.

"You are-"

"So let me get this straight." Alira began to run her hands over his chest and shoulders, not stopping for a second. She knew that he was likely about to finish his sentence with the worst or the best, both of which meant the exact same thing in this context, and cut him off before he could reach that natural conclusion. "You think I shot myself just to make my story sound plausible? Does that sound realistic to you? Does that sound right?"

"Stranger things have happened."

"Mhm. Then I don't believe you ran into a dragon back on Berengaria VII."

"Believe what you want." He leaned over far enough to reach his personal PADD sitting atop his desk, pressed a few buttons, and then turned it around to face her. "There's a picture to prove it."

Sure enough, there he was, standing in a massive cavern with the helmet of his EV suit cracked open, captured midstep as he walked towards the camera. The flash reflected the shock and fear in his eyes frozen in time. Behind him, a massive sinuous beast lay in repose wrapped in its own wings, one reptilian eye open as it regarded the intruders into its domain.

"You're looking at Ensign Pascal's crowning achievement." Before she could say anything, he broke free and retreated to the bathroom, calling out: "My face is on every social chat on the ship. It's already been memed to death."

"Not on the Maelstrom, it hasn't." There was a pause, and then he heard her PADD chime, indicating that she'd just sent it to herself.

He sighed dramatically, loud enough for her to hear, and trained his eyes at the ceiling. As she had been before commissioning, she was truly insufferable. What's more, she was brazen, sharp-tongued and obstinate-and he loved her all the more for it.

"Take off your coveralls before you get into bed." On the opposite side of the wall, she froze, one hand already having seized a handful of the sheets. "You've been crawling through conduits all day."

That much was true. Following their extremely embarrassing briefing with the Captain and the Commodore, Alira had been perfectly willing to jump in and serve the rest of the shift in the armory. The second she entered the room, there was a palpable shift in the atmosphere, and she began fielding spirited greetings and well wishes and even a few hugs. He'd almost forgotten how strong of a rapport she'd managed to build with the crew; over the course of the next few hours, people trickled in and out to say hello, most notably Phlox, who wandered down from sickbay only to lean against the targeting console and almost trigger an errant torpedo launch.

She'd volunteered to go with his second to depolarize the EPS relays in the phase cannon ports ahead of the following day's routine maintenance; he could hear her and Shelby talking and gossiping, their laughter reaching him on the upper level. Years ago, he might have snapped at his subordinates for mucking about during a shift, but at that moment, it only warmed his heart.

They had dinner with the senior staff at their usual table, and she'd spent the entire time arguing with Anna about Kelby's merits as a chief engineer, about how much he'd progressed in his efforts to integrate socially with the crew, about how he was almost tolerable now. Dita had told her all about her visit to the Cochrane after the Battle of Solnara, about her husband's coworkers and the drastic differences in how Captain Pritchard ran her brigade, asking questions and keeping the conversation going far longer than he could if he'd been there alone.

She was indefatigable, a dauntless ray of sunshine that brightened his days and lifted his spirits. He could be run down and beaten and chewed up and spit out, but a letter from her could turn all of that around. And now that she was here, he didn't intend to waste a single moment.

He heard her shuffle across the deck plating to the far side of the room, opening and closing drawers until she found what she was looking for. A few seconds later, he leaned back into the doorframe, noticing that she'd slipped into a pair of his pajamas.

"You know, the Captain was saying at breakfast that they intend to formalize my posting as first officer as soon as possible." He paused, taking in her discarded boots, coveralls, and undershirt strewn across the floor. Really, it was a miracle someone so disorderly had made it so far in the service. "It includes a promotion."

"A Commander? Already?" He could tell she was proud; she was beaming from ear to ear, and a second later, she'd closed the distance between them, stepping up and throwing her arms around him. "That's unprecedented. That's-"

"They're putting a lot of faith in me," he interrupted, the significance of the gesture not lost on him for a moment. Just a few months ago, he'd felt woefully lost and underqualified for his new role, but now, he was starting to get the hang of it.

"And you're going to impress them, as you always do."

"They'll expect me to keep the tactical station." He knew that was likely her next question, and it had been his the moment he'd heard the news. Needless to say, his hopes had been thoroughly dashed, and he'd spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how to break the news to her. As Trip was so keen to remind him every time he came to him seeking relationship advice, the direct approach was always better.

She deflated slightly, but hid it well, standing on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. "You'll have your own command before you know it. Allow me to put my name in the running for your senior staff right now."

"Considering you're the first to declare your interest, I'd say you've got a pretty good chance." He reached forward and passed her hairbrush over his shoulder, which she gratefully accepted. "I heard they're planning on having twelve NX vessels by this time next year."

That wasn't all. According to his counterpart on the Phoenix, the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards were also doubling in size, and any armory officer who transferred out of their deep space assignment was almost guaranteed to be sent there. It was only a matter of time before the stationmaster would be recruiting their brigades directly, and they would need to keep their guard up if they wanted to keep any of their more seasoned talent.

She whistled, loud and sharp, then pulled at the elastic of her ponytail. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders, curly as a corkscrew and blonde as anything. He'd always thought it was one of her most lovely features, right after-well, damn near everything else.

"I might beat you to Captain after all at that rate." He bent down to splash his face with water, effectively ensuring she would have the next few moments to babble on. "It'll require a transfer or two. I'm not getting promoted on the Maelstrom anytime soon. There's already three Lieutenants on the senior staff. Too many cooks in the kitchen, Julia says."

The sudden imitation of Commander Hammond's Texan accent was flawless, and more than a little amusing. He leaned against the doorframe and smiled, watching as she began to brush through her hair, gingerly working her way through the knots and tangles.

"You know what Trip wrote on my quarterly performance review?"

He shook his head.

"Taxa has the rank of Ensign, the experience of a Commander, and the confidence of a Vice Admiral." She took a step closer, not being able to hide her smile for a second. "I've never worked with a finer tactical officer."

Malcolm was slightly wounded by this, but didn't let it show. "Surely he didn't say that."

"Alright, maybe not the last part, but the subtext was definitely there." She suddenly bent over to brush the bottom layer of her hair, her words muffled. "I've been thinking about what we're going to do after the war."

We. The word echoed in his mind, drowning out all other rational thought. He'd be lying if he'd said he hadn't thought about it, daydreamed about it, no matter how foolish he knew it to be, how unproductive it was to his mission to continue on in her absence. He kept telling himself that the future was a long way away, that there was no guarantee their relationship could withstand the trials of long distance, but it never hurt anyone to hope.

That, and the fact that the war was just beginning. It could be years. Even decades.

She didn't wait for him to say anything.

"I hear that Starbase 2 is going to want two chiefs of security. I've seen the blueprints. They're going even bigger than the first." Alira swept into the bedroom, pacing as she often did when deep in thought. "As appealing as that idea is, being the only barrier between order and total anarchy, rounding up criminals on the frontier of deep space…"

She heard the sink running, and paused long enough for him to join her. "I've been thinking about taking up a bounty hunting contract."

This time, he couldn't help but laugh. "Bounty hunters?"

"Why not? I think we'd be good at it." As he changed for bed, she wandered over to his bunk, throwing the covers aside and climbing in. "You be the brawn, I'll be the brains…"

"I'm pretty sure you've got that backwards."

"Maybe so. But we could very easily acquire some lucrative targets. I know some people."

"Of course you do." In the reflection of the mirror hung by the door, he could see the blue light of her sonic toothbrush, clearly making out the exaggerated grin she was pulling as she moved the device around. "And here I thought you wanted to stay in deep space service."

She paused and pinned him down under her gaze, the intensity simultaneously frightening and comforting. "I do, but that's not the only thing I want now. We've got to have options."

It was true. She wanted him for as long as he would have her, and though she knew it was nearly impossible given their choice of careers, she wanted a family, a home and two or three hybrid children. It was completely counterintuitive to how she'd seen her life going even just a year ago. She'd pictured it a thousand times, thought about the future that might await them if only they could get posted on the same ship.

If only they could survive this war.

"And do I make that list?"

"Of course you do." The light switched off, and she reached for him, opening and closing her fingers. "Now get over here and hold me."

"So demanding," he sighed, though he complied, crossing the room and slipping into bed beside her.

At first she settled into his side, but it wasn't enough, and she threw her leg over his side, straddling him and pulling herself into his lap. The sudden contact was unexpected, but entirely divine, and he quickly wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her close.

"I've earned the right to be," she whispered, and closed the distance between them.

Soon she'd all but melted into him, thoroughly pressing him into the wall behind the bunk. She was nuzzling him and pressing her forehead against his, and soon their embrace gave way to soft pecks and languid kisses. Now that he had her, he wondered how he could have ever denied himself of this, this sensation so dizzying in its proximity to bliss.

"You're thinking." It was an accusation, not a question.

It was so quiet that he thought he might have misheard it, but he forged on, kissing her across the bridge of her nose, down her cranial ridges and up the curve of her delicately pointed ear, before dipping down and paying special attention to the triangular protrusion on her chin. "I've only been thinking about this for five months-"

"Eleven days, and-"

"Sixteen hours," he finished, his lips trailing down her neck.

"Not like I've been keeping track."

"Me neither." He could feel her hands working their way under his shirt, singular in her focus. Her fingers came to rest above his heart, and he knew she could feel it thundering away, only and ever for her.

Even though he frustrated and challenged her to no end, she knew she loved this man. He made her burn like he always would.

"T'Pol to Taxa."

Her eyes snapped open and she immediately reached for the comm behind him, clapping a hand over his mouth as she did so. It was a sudden, impulsive gesture, and most likely unnecessary, but the look in his eyes was positively priceless.

She inhaled slowly, then exhaled forcefully in an attempt to steady her tone. "Taxa here."

"I tried to reach you in guest quarters and received no answer. The computer located you on B Deck."

Busted.

In spite of the dire nature of their situation, that they'd been directly caught by their commanding officer this time, Malcolm didn't seem too worried. His hands had located that spot on the small of her back where he knew she was ticklish, and he was looking at her with a smug sort of glint in his eye, threatening to act at a moment's notice. She stared him down and mouthed just three words.

I'll kill you.

"We're getting ready for the mission. Working on contingency plans." It wasn't so much of a lie; after dinner they'd retired to his office, where they'd spent several hours studying maps of the city and the corresponding underground. Not only did they have a Plan B, they'd basically gone all the way to the end of the alphabet, out of necessity more than anything.

They'd both been on too many away missions gone awry to not be prepared for any and every eventuality.

"I wanted to make sure you'd considered the planetary communications suppression network. It's been recently installed since our last mission to Xantoras. Mr. Reed should be able to..."

"Yes, ma'am. He's mentioned it." She dealt him a withering glare, but he pressed on, and she had to grit her teeth to keep from laughing out loud.

"Our post-mission rendezvous coordinates should be encrypted in the shuttle's computer. You'll be suspected of espionage if the telemetry does not immediately lead back into Denobulan territory."

"It's been taken care of." She was having to weave and dodge to avoid his hands, but was ultimately unsuccessful, her voice wavering slightly.

"And the long-range sensors?"

"Calibrated for the interference in the atmosphere. Saw to it myself."

There was a pause, then she heard what sounded suspiciously like a man's voice in the background. Alira furrowed her brows, leaning farther into the comm, attempting to focus on literally anything else.

Finally, she replied. "Very well, Ensign. Get some rest."

"Thank you, ma'am. I'll keep you apprised." She hit the button to end the transmission, then pressed it a half dozen more times for good measure.

Once she was sure they were well and truly alone, she pulled back, noticing how his ministrations had stopped. The glint in his eye was downright diabolical, and she knew she couldn't let it slide this time.

"I told you."

"You did."

"And now you're going to get it."

"Bring it on."

She reached for him, meaning to pull him into a headlock, only to find her amidst a tangle of arms and legs and stray martial arts moves from various disciplines. She knew they were evenly matched, but couldn't fathom giving in, and fought tooth and nail for the advantage.

In the next moment, he laid his hands on her shoulders and pushed her backwards, only for her to severely overcorrect and throw them both off the bed, landing on the deck plating in a heap with an audible thud. She was laughing and breathing heavily, but soon realized by his dazed expression that he'd hit his head, and rather hard by the looks of it.

"Are you okay? I didn't mean to-" Her fingers were moving through his hair and across his forehead, suddenly deeply concerned.

"I'm fine, thank God." He could tell she was confused, and he was all the more willing to provide context. "Could you imagine trying to explain that to Phlox?"

She was momentarily diverted by the thought, and it was all the distraction he needed to gain the upper hand, flipping them and towering over her. His hands found that same ticklish spot, and this time her laughter was loud enough to wake up half the corridor.

---

It was well into gamma shift when Alira slipped out of the senior officers' block and made her way to the mess hall.

Malcolm was an incredibly light sleeper, a habit forged from years of serving in deep space, ready to spring to action and report to his station at any moment. She gingerly extricated herself from his arms and dressed quickly, before stopping in her tracks en route to the door. There was a pause, then she turned on her heels, catching her reflection in the window, interspersed in and among the stars streaking past.

The guilt of hiding her secret, which had been almost unbearable while she was on the Maelstrom, was now threatening to crush her. Her eyes strayed to him, his peaceful and slumbering form, and couldn't help but wonder what he would think of her if only he knew that she was involved in covert operations, that she'd snuck around behind her Captain's back multiple times and would soon be forced to do it again, if Lieutenant Commander Zhang had anything to do with it.

He was so loyal, so steadfast in his devotion to the service and to her, that she knew that the moment he found out it would all be over. At the very least, it could never be the same.

The thought of that was terrifying to her.

She didn't encounter anyone in the corridors, and for that she was grateful. In the turbolift, she exhaled slowly and closed her eyes, trying and failing to hide the apprehension clenching her gut.

The future she regretted, the present she was so carefully manipulating, and the future she desperately wanted were all colliding, much too close to comfort. Captain Varox's involvement with her father directly led to her decision to seek revenge with the help of Section 31, which preceded her joining Starfleet and meeting some of the closest friends she'd ever had. At first her being there had been purely transactional, more out of convenience that anything, but then she'd gotten closer to him.

Her beloved. Her heart. Her everything.

And to think that Varox could take it all away with a single remark.

Alira knew she had to tell him. She knew it had to happen, and knew she would need to answer for her duplicity, knew she had to face the consequences of her actions one day.

It was looking more and more like it could be any day now.

The mess hall seemed empty at first glance; gamma shift was still a half hour away from their regularly scheduled lunch rotation, and precious few others were awake. She half expected to find Phlox there; he'd once told her that he'd taken to showing up extra early to breakfast and waiting for the rest of the crew to appear. He loved them, cherished his human friends even though their behavior was often bewildering and confounding, and for that she couldn't fault him.

Alira rooted around in the display case for a bit before coming up empty and moving to the freezer unit. She retrieved an empty bowl and propped it underneath the dispenser, noticing with satisfaction that Chef still kept her favorite flavor in stock.

For a species that only slept six days out of the year, intrusive thoughts were often unbearable and inescapable.

Ice cream certainly helped.

She found Lieutenant Cutler sitting in the near darkness at the far corner of the room, picking at a scoop of rocky road. The look in her eye was indecipherable and far away, but she still indicated she'd be alright with having a bit of company.

Alira obliged, sitting across from her and studying her companion. She knew Liz had spent the past few months recovering from radiation poisoning, and according to Phlox, had only recently started feeling like herself again. Apparently, she'd lost a lot of weight and a great deal of her hair, along with all hope and optimism for the future of the war. Even now, she looked like a completely different person, with the weight of experience pressing down on her.

She'd been there before time and time again, and knew the last thing she probably wanted was to be asked how she was feeling. So she went for an entirely different approach. "What brings you here tonight?"

"Just catching my breath," Liz said, contemplatively moving her spoon around in the bottom of her bowl. "They've got me performing upgrades on the forward EPS grid this morning. We're looping all of the bridge consoles into additional backup power."

"Fun stuff," she replied sardonically.

Liz raised her eyebrows for a fraction of a second, smiling slightly. "I've been doing as much work as I can beforehand. They've got all of the maintenance teams working on the buddy system. You'll never guess who my partner is."

The look on her face told her everything she needed to know.

"I'm sure it won't be that bad."

"Pascal is the worst," she complained. "You know after Feezal died, he told me-"

As a matter of fact, she did know, having heard it from Phlox a few days after the fact. All things considered, she didn't blame her for slapping some sense into him when she got the chance.

If she'd been in the room, she likely wouldn't have stopped at one strike.

"It's been months, hasn't it? How does the rest of the crew feel about him?"

She rolled her eyes. "They love him. I swear, some people, you put a French accent in front of them and they just lose all sense."

The senior staff seemed to know better, mostly due to Liz's hatred of him and Malcolm's insistence that the man was up to no good and couldn't be trusted even for a second.

There was no way he could have known, but as usual, his instincts were on point.

Simon hadn't joined them for dinner, and for that she was grateful. Like her, he must have come to the conclusion that if one of their covers were blown, the other would follow suit. He'd made himself scarce the entire day, blatantly avoiding her, clearly haunted by the past.

It was far too recent and prominent in their memories to push to one side. The first time they'd met almost a year and a half ago, they'd been assigned to a dual mission on Xantoras, one which ended in near disaster. A week ago, she'd reached out to another contact from Special Ops, who confirmed what she feared: that they were both still wanted by the provisional government, dead or alive.

She made a mental note to keep Malcolm away from any computer consoles or bulletin boards while they were planetside.

"Liz, it's been months. Everyone was tired, strung out-"

"I'm sorry, are you defending him?" She was incredulous. "I can tolerate him, I can work with him, but you can be sure that I'm never, ever going to forgive him."

"Well, maybe you should." Across the table, they locked eyes, and Liz leaned back, crossing her arms confrontationally.

There was a moment of tense silence, wherein she was looking all around, blinking and sniffing in an attempt to fight back the tears that were only just beginning to shimmer in her eyes. Instinctively, Alira reached out to her, only for her to pull away farther.

"You know, the past few months have made me realize one thing." She briefly glanced towards the window, and the lights at the front of the room caught her profile, casting a muted glow across her face. "My life, your life-none of it is really our own, is it?"

She didn't know what to say, so she elected to stay silent.

"Everything we have, all of it can just be taken away without warning. We all know it, we don't want to acknowledge it, but it's the life we've chosen. We've thrown all of our effort behind a worthy cause, but for some of us it will cost everything."

"That's just the price we pay to keep everyone else safe," she replied automatically, and the phrase struck a chord within her, reminiscent of another time and place.

"You're not wrong. Except, when Earth is finally safe, they won't be thanking any of us." She paused, collecting another spoonful from her bowl. "They'll be thanking Starfleet. I've thought a lot about that, dying in battle, becoming just an anonymous name on a plaque somewhere-"

Alira swallowed hard and looked away, suddenly unable to meet her gaze.

"-and I've decided that if I'm going to be another faceless soldier, I'm going to enjoy the time I have for all it's worth. If I want to eat ice cream at 0300 hours and watch sappy movies until I cry and really feel my feelings, that's what I'm going to do. I don't need anyone's permission to do that."

She laughed suddenly. When Liz looked at her with curiosity, she explained: "You sound like my mother. She always used to say, don't ever let anyone dictate your path for you. If you ever find yourself debating if your next action is right or wrong, you're clearly lying to yourself. I've really been meditating on that, ever since…"

Liz interrupted her, miraculously before she could say anything incriminating, reaching across the table to grab her hand. It was swift, and she barely had a moment to react, but she squeezed back hard.

"Alira, I hope you know that I can never replace your mother."

It didn't escape her how odd their relationship must seem by human standards; Liz was a third of her age, but would soon become her half-mother, if fate had anything to do with it. Phlox had marriage on the brain, repeatedly asking her when she planned on eloping, and even starting to plan how he was going to propose to his own partner. Alira knew that he was searching for something to celebrate amidst all of the death and destruction, and she was all the more willing to humor him.

"I just hope that we can be good friends."

"Liz, you're one of the closest friends I have," she confessed. "I'd do anything for you. If you ask me, you're already a part of the family."

The closest thing she had to it in the wilderness of deep space.

They remained in companionable silence for some time, holding onto one another, staring out the viewport into the stars.

It could have been minutes or hours, but eventually the door to the mess hall slid open, taking them both by surprise.

Liz's expression immediately soured and she pulled back, drawing her hands into her lap. "Ensign, are you having fun yet?"

She didn't even have to turn to know who was standing there. If he picked up on her forced friendliness, he didn't let it show.

"Gamma shift conn, where dreams go to die," he answered blithely, and sat at their table without being extended an invitation. "I'm taking an early lunch. Crewman Marceline is driving me crazy."

That didn't sound much like their mild-mannered exobiologist. "What do you mean?"

"She's got one of her specimens in a cage on top of her console. Apparently it's been acting up and needs to be supervised twenty-four-seven. It's the Gorokian midwife toad, I think its name is-"

"Kevin," Liz concluded. "He's on the search for a mate. His calls sound like an orangutan screeching."

He snapped his fingers, then ran his fingers through his hair, exhaling raggedly. "I swear, it gets louder the longer you have to listen to it."

"Better on the bridge than in the science lab." She stood suddenly, collecting her dishes. Alira wanted nothing more than to leave with her, but knew it would look suspicious and more than a little mean-spirited. "If you'll excuse me, I think I'll get in a couple of hours before we start on upgrades. 0900?"

"0900," Pascal agreed, and smiled at her as she retreated towards the front of the room. The second she was gone, he stood and moved towards the window, facing away from her with his arms clasped behind his back.

Alira paused for one nearly eternal moment, then went to join him.

"Agent Corsica."

"Agent Lazuli. How are things on the Maelstrom?"

"Just fine."

"Glad to hear it." He shifted so that he was leaning against the viewport, one foot braced against the bulkhead. Alira could feel his eyes traveling up and down her form, and she didn't like it one bit. "Starfleet Training Command Class of 2147, huh? Sounds a little before your time."

She knew he was referring to Malcolm's sweatshirt, the one she'd stolen from him shortly before commissioning and had worn almost every day like a security blanket, but wasn't going to dignify his observation with the reaction he wanted. Instead, she crossed her arms and took a step closer. "What about it?"

"It would serve you well to be a little more discrete," he said, and the glint in his eyes was positively hostile. "We're serving aboard a starship, not a pleasure cruise."

"And it would serve you well to tighten up. The entire senior staff thinks you're up to something."

He laughed suddenly, cold and emotionless. "Well, we can't have anyone confirming their suspicions, can we?"

"Certainly not."

"Glad you agree. See to it that your mission on Xantoras goes well." He leaned in until their foreheads were all but touching, then tapped on one of the mechanical neurostimulators attached to the outside of his uniform. "At least, better than the last one."

It wasn't a secret that he blamed her for the injuries he sustained during their mission; truthfully, by the time they'd seen their doom approaching, they'd had no time to process it, and even less time to react. They were both lucky they hadn't been killed.

"I'll do my best," she said quietly, meeting his gaze and not looking away for a second.

"Good, because if it doesn't-" He took a step back, preparing to make a swift exit. "You've got more to lose than the war."

So the Section had now been reduced to making idle threats. If she wasn't so terrified, she might have found it pitiful. "Just how close are Lieutenant Commander Zhang's operatives?"

His eyes widened by a fraction of an inch, but he hid it well. "Closer than you think."

She wouldn't stop thinking about that, those four words, for the next few days.

---

It was a few minutes past 0400 hours when the comm went off in the Captain's quarters.

Trip had only just drifted off to sleep, visions of long-ago firefights and lost crewmen and away missions gone awry dancing before his eyes. Try as he might, he just couldn't rest. Hoshi knew it, and she was constantly recommending different therapeutic tea blends, meditation techniques, and breathing exercises.

As appealing as those ideas were, he preferred the doctor's tried and true cocktail of sleep aids, which he'd been unable to acquire that evening as he ground away at Kandar's recalcitrant computer core. The omission was duly noticed, and he'd tossed and turned for hours, his thoughts not ceasing to run even for a second.

The message he soon received didn't seem to help.

Novakovich sounded much too loud and much too excited for his own good. In the background, he could hear Hoshi chattering excitedly, and Yuris responding in that exact same measured, even tone he always maintained. Trip rubbed his eyes and brought his ear closer to the speaker, hoping to understand what he was saying.

Finally, through the distance of several decks, he heard it.

"We've figured it out, sir. You might want to come on down here."

Trip couldn't move fast enough.

Sweeping into sickbay, he was shocked to find it so out of alignment with the usual appearance, the careful state of cleanliness Yuris was so insistent on maintaining. There were PADDs and instruments strewn everywhere, various snacks and diversions from the mess hall covering the biobeds. All computer displays were activated and in use, covered with equations and diagrams and all means of investigative tools. They all seemed to be in their civvies, though in the doctor's case, he could scarcely tell the difference. Hoshi was barefoot, her hair thrown up in a haphazard bun, and Ethan had a blanket wrapped around his head and shoulders, his discarded headset dangling around his chest. Trip thought, at least passively, how funny it was to see his colleagues in this manner, looking for all the world like they were studying for an exam that next morning.

Their terse expressions, however, couldn't be missed.

"Captain, please." Yuris gestured for him, and he joined the three of them at the main viewscreen above the imaging chamber. "A few months ago, Ensign Singh noted that if you graphed the lines of code stored in the main data core on a three-dimensional axis field by the letters of the alphabet, you start to see some kind of pattern."

He could see it now, turning and wavering around the origin, gingerly folding out to form one continuous line across the screen.

"At first we thought these might be readouts from vocal recordings, but if you play it through our auditory sensors, they don't make any sense." Ethan yawned, but hid it behind his hand.

Hoshi was chilled; that much was obvious. She began to run her hands over her bare arms, shivering slightly. "We even tried reversing and backmasking through other areas of the core, just in case we were missing another half of the transmission. The only thing that worked was…"

The doctor zoomed in suddenly, farther and farther until one fluctuating line became multiple, all rising and falling with different frequencies and amplitudes. "We're superimposing these readings over a computer simulation of neurotransmitter activity in the Denobulan brain. I've had it on file since our incident with the telepresence unit. Should Ensign Taxa run into a similar issue in the future, we should know how to treat it more rapidly."

He seemed to trail off, and Trip leaned forward, silently encouraging him to continue.

Yuris nodded briskly and restarted the data transfer. He could see the different areas of the brain lighting up now, the simulated heartbeat and breathing rates quicken in response. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed by the memory of Feezal, leaning over the control panel in the engine room of Kandar, surrounded by a pile of electrodes and instruments a meter high, and how she'd said, repeatedly, emphatically, that this can only happen one way.

"They're memory engrams," Hoshi concluded. "I don't know how they did it, but they uploaded parts of her subconscious into the computer core."

"How is that even-"

"This core is massive, sir, even though we only managed to download sixty percent. It's using damn near every bit of free space we have on our own computer. Even a second of memory, the sights and sounds and tastes, corresponds to terabytes of information. What we're looking at is probably only a few minutes." Ethan paused, leaning over the biobed. "Perhaps seconds."

"Whatever it is, she wanted for us to find this, I'm sure of it now." Hoshi was adamant.

"And whatever this is, she died to protect it." Trip whirled on Yuris, suddenly intent. "How do we get this data into a form we can analyze?"

He looked bereaved, impossibly burdened by what he was about to say, but managed to get it out anyway. "We could download the information directly into a cortical monitor. It will temporarily become a part of the subconscious of whoever wears it, and then it may be transferred in visual and auditory form to a new host. I recommend Lieutenant Sato and I take part in this experiment."

"What kind of experiment?"

Yuris met his gaze and pinned him down underneath his own, wondering at least passively how he hadn't come to this conclusion before. The very idea filled him with concern he could not suppress.

"A melding of minds," he admitted, and the room fell silent.

---

"Mr. Reed, I'm afraid I must insist that you sit still."

He came at him with his brush, only to be dodged once again. Phlox huffed and set it down on the counter behind him, crossing his arms confrontationally.

"It itches." Before he could stop himself, he reached for his newly decorated cranial ridges, nearly subverting an hour's worth of work. Surprisingly, the doctor slapped at his hand, his expression slipping into reproach a second later.

"Don't touch it," he commanded, wagging his finger at him. "That hypospray should be kicking in any moment now."

Not only had he been sitting for what seemed like days, they'd also come to the unfortunate conclusion that he was allergic to whatever paint the doctor had been using to add definition around his silicone prostheses, along with bromelain, oak pollen, dust mites, and damn near everything else in the universe. It had made the application of his disguise an incredibly uncomfortable experience, and the wayward comments of the artist hadn't made it any easier.

He'd asked if now was a good time to finally have that conversation, and he'd feigned ignorance, as though he hadn't been thinking about it constantly over the past few days. Malcolm said he wasn't sure, which seemed to disappoint him to no end, but then he'd joked that this experience would either make or break them.

More specifically, Commander Tucker had relayed to him an old Southern adage: before taking the plunge, a couple should go white water rafting, or rock climbing, or any other high-stakes exercise that involved working as a team, just to make sure they wouldn't kill each other when times got rough.

He couldn't think of a better time to put their relationship to the test.

Phlox continued puttering around, adding details to his cheeks and nose, humming to himself as he tended to his work. Finally, when he was satisfied, he reached for a mirror, holding it up into his line of sight.

"You could very easily pass for one of my own," he remarked, passing it into his hand.

The transformation really was incredible; the doctor had managed to shift his appearance into another species altogether. His cranial ridges were three dimensional, starting at his hairline and curling into his cheekbone. Freckles covered his temples and lower curve of his ear, mirrored on the backs of his hands rising up to his shoulders. He'd even insisted he let him paint his chest, legs, and back, which he'd balked at initially, but soon acquiesced when he remembered just how deep undercover they were expected to go.

The doctor had managed to fluff his eyebrows and force his hair almost straight back; he'd let it grow for almost three months in anticipation of this mission, something which had bothered him to no end, but Phlox had still remarked that he was rather well-groomed for a Denobulan and that unless he agreed to wear a hairpiece, there was very little he could do.

Needless to say, he decided to take his chances.

He even wore the doctor's clothes; they were a little oversized and long in the torso, but he'd been determined to make them work, ordering a rush job from the quartermaster so he didn't wind up looking like a child in his father's dinner jacket. All in all, he really had no idea if Alira's contact would buy that he was anything but human, but if his own initial impressions were to be believed, the disguise certainly held up even under close scrutiny.

"The finishing touch." Phlox handed over a small container, and he startled slightly, having momentarily become lost in his reverie. Setting the mirror aside, he made quick work of the clasps, revealing two electric blue contacts in solution.

Already, he wasn't looking forward to wearing them for the next few days, but forged on, tilting his head back and inserting them one by one.

The doctor must have picked up on his discomfort from the strained expression he was pulling, because he quickly moved off, calling out: "The blurriness will subside momentarily. Let's get you some eye drops."

He blinked rapidly, swiveling in his chair to face the overhead lights and the doors of sickbay. The loss of visual acuity was a little unsettling, and he furrowed his brows, attempting to make sense of the mass of color and shape approaching him.

"You've got a gift, Phlox."

He'd recognize that voice anywhere.

"You think so?"

"Definitely. If medicine doesn't work out, you ought to become a painter." She stepped closer, and because they were shielded from view by a half-drawn curtain, reached out to trace one of his cranial ridges.

He had felt her get out of bed in the middle of the night and tend to some unknown errand, but the second his alarm went off, she was by his side once again, running her hands through his hair and over his back and arms, trailing butterfly kisses all over his face. It was all a part of their morning routine when they were together, one of the things he missed most about her when she was gone, and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't pretended to fall back asleep, allowing her love to wash over him for another few precious moments.

In the shower, he'd told her that she had turned his bathroom into a crime scene; there was red hair dye in the sink and on the mirror and on every single one of his towels. She promised to clean it up before they shipped out, but if he knew her even a little bit, it had most likely slipped her mind. Admittedly, it had turned out pretty well, and he couldn't help but let her know.

"I quite enjoy this new look," he whispered, feeling her sidle up next to him. The view cleared steeply, and he was soon greeted by the sight of her in her civvies, the long-sleeved tunic with the mandarin collar and loose fitting trousers tucked into her boots.

"Don't get used to it. Apparently it's going to wash out in a couple of weeks." She shook her head and took another moment to admire the doctor's handiwork, turning this way and that. "Really, it's uncanny."

"Do you approve?" It was barely audible, but his implication was obvious.

She said nothing, but gave him the kind of searing toe-to-hairline onceover he hadn't experienced since his days at STC. It immediately gave him cause to blush, and he had to look away the second Phlox approached, hiding his embarrassment behind a rather unsubtle cough.

Alira accepted a vial of clear liquid from him, and the doctor graciously moved off. Immediately, she uncapped it and took a whiff, her smile widening visibly.

"Here." She passed it under his nose, and he inhaled deeply, attempting to detect even a fraction of what she seemed to just moments before.

"This doesn't smell like anything." Like water and clean air, maybe, but nothing particularly pleasant.

"Are you kidding?" She seemed incredulous, though she forged on, pouring a bit over her fingertips and pressing it to his pulse points. "Mating season is coming up. Our pheromone levels are already ten times higher than normal. If Varox's guards don't smell you from a kilometer away, they're going to know something's wrong."

He'd wondered why the doctor had bothered to take multiple rounds of blood samples earlier.

"Our?" She nodded, confirming his suspicions. "That explains a lot."

She socked him in the arm, hard and fast. He listed to one side and furtively rubbed his bicep, leaning over just in time to see Dita sweep into the room.

"Ensign Singh, what can I do for you?"

As usual, she was all business, shoving a PADD into his hands. He looked down at the rows and rows of Denobulan characters, the loops and whorls swimming before his eyes. "From now on, sir, I'm no longer your communications officer. I'm your dialect coach."

He attempted to furrow his brows, feeling the pull of the prosthetics limiting his range of motion, then frowned to demonstrate his consternation. "Dialect coach? I'm not quite sure that's necessary."

"Please don't take this the wrong way, Mr. Reed, but there's not a Denobulan alive that sounds like you."

Alira stifled a laugh, then swiftly covered her mouth with her hand, keenly avoiding his gaze. She quietly excused herself and brushed through the curtain, undoubtedly to join Phlox at his computer console at the back of the room. The second she was gone, Malcolm reached for the vial she'd abandoned and furtively slipped it into his pocket, regarding Dita with trepidation.

"Where do we start?"

She tapped the screen. "The main difference between English and Denobulan is that every vowel sound is long. You need to hit every consonant like you're punching it in the face, and raise your voice slightly at the end of every sentence." He looked confused, so she pressed on: "Just talk like you're trying not to laugh at a joke, but hiding it poorly."

The protest from the back of the room was immediate: "Hey, I don't sound like that!"

Dita leaned backwards around the side of the curtain, smiling politely, then turned back to him. "Repeat after me. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

He only got three words in before she stopped him.

"Could you give me an American accent?"

"He does a great imitation of Captain Tucker!"

She was starting to wonder why Alira had taken her leave of them in the first place. "Think about Lieutenant Cutler. The Midwest. It's the easiest accent on Earth to pick up, and one of the easiest to understand."

"Really?"

"That's exactly why everyone in the movies sounds exactly the same." It was unfortunate, but true. "Now, repeat after me…"

His lesson continued for what seemed like an hour; at one point, Malcolm thought they might have been making some headway, only to have his hopes dashed when Dita laid a placating hand on his shoulder, sheepishly admitting they should have started weeks ago.

A few minutes later, he heard the comm go off, followed by a rush of conversation. Soon Alira burst through the curtain, the twinkle in her eyes unmistakable. "We're nearing the rendezvous point. Pascal is going to be dropping out of warp in five minutes."

"Are we ready?" He slid off of his chair and ran his hands over his tunic, suddenly feeling extremely self-conscious. Dita afforded him an encouraging smile, and he attempted to take her confidence in him to heart.

"Bags are packed and the engine's running. I'll drive." Before he could stop her, she was en route to the corridor and he was rushing after her, closing in by the second.

"Are you sure? If you want, I could-"

She laughed. "Please. I've been piloting these since before I could reach the pedals on a hovercar. I can't believe you thought-"

The doors of sickbay closed behind them, effectively cutting them off. There was a pause, then Phlox turned, calling out: "Good luck!"

"Are they going to need it?" Dita asked, although she already knew the answer.

"More than likely," he replied plainly and disappeared behind another curtain.

---

Following her midnight encounter with Alira in the mess hall, Liz only managed to lay down for an hour or two before her alarm went off. She forced herself to get up, though fatigue had already seeped into her bones, and it felt like she was having to shake cobwebs off of herself to get moving again. She and Phlox had breakfast, and he kept telling her she really shouldn't be having so much coffee on so little sleep, which only made her want to drink more.

Fifteen minutes before she was due to report to the maintenance shaft on A Deck, they dropped out of warp within visual range of the Bowerman Nebula. As she had time and time again, she joined her fellow crewman at the viewing windows to get their first glimpse of the phenomena, a swirling mass of gas and dust that was only just beginning to form a new star. It appeared hazy and indistinct, but the mix of blue and gray was gorgeous, spellbinding, and she couldn't help but drink it in for a few moments.

She found Crewman Shelby Bennett standing by the replicators, holding a thermos in each hand. Malcolm's second had only been in command of the armory for three hours, but she was practically bouncing on her toes with excitement, with anticipation of being able to lead the MACOs and their security teams through a plethora of tactical drills. She'd asked if she was ready, and she'd replied that she had been born ready, that she was ready for whatever the universe had to throw at her.

Liz couldn't help but wonder if she had just jinxed it.

As they crossed into the nebula, the hull lurched, and they momentarily lost primary systems. The Captain ordered an all-stop, and within minutes, she and Anna were called to her ready room.

According to Lieutenant Commander Hess, they'd tried their best to shield the nacelles from the molecular dispersion field all around them, but regardless of her crew's readiness to adapt to their ever-changing circumstances, they would still need to depart within seventy-two hours to avoid major hull degradation. T'Pol had said this wouldn't be a problem, but they could see the concern in her eyes, and knew with the constant threat of a Romulan incursion, it was well warranted.

Liz recommended that Crewman Rosner remained in the bridge even during their regularly scheduled maintenance; every sensor would be blind except for the proximity alarm, and they would only have about five hundred meters of advanced notice if they were to be approached by the enemy. With that, she'd been dispatched to her post for the day, fully prepared but not particularly excited to spend hours rerouting bridge consoles.

She worked in blessed silence until he arrived; there was really only room to lay down or sit upright in the narrow space of the horizontal maintenance shaft, but he somehow found a way to get right next to her, asking her how she was and if she slept well and, sarcastically, if she was looking forward to having a crick in her neck for the next solid week.

She'd been halfway hoping that he'd forgotten, overslept, or been assigned to somewhere else, but it seemed that her silent prayers had gone unanswered. With the state of her fatigue, she was even having trouble making small talk, and every reply felt like it drew hours of strength from her.

It didn't help that the hull kept bucking and shaking; the Captain tried her best to inform everyone ahead of time, to ensure they were braced for impact, but some bursts of particle flux could not be anticipated. Really, it felt like she was moving underwater, in a dreamlike trance, and more than once she felt herself nodding off.

"What are you thinking for movie night next week?"

"Hmm, what?" She suddenly snapped to attention and turned her head to look at him, finding that her hands had likely been positioned over a series of overhead valves and switches for the past few minutes. In the physical sense, she was very much present, though in her mind, she was very far away. "I don't know. When was our last war epic?"

"We can't watch one with Mr. Reed gone. That would be sacrilege." He paused, extending his hand into an open panel off to one side. "Hand me that spanner, will you?"

She obliged, and he inserted his arm up to the elbow, leaning back to catch a glimpse of the readings on the tiny screen within.

"I take it you had an idea?"

"As a matter of fact, I did. How about Dead Poets Society?" When she didn't respond he pressed on: "A man comes to teach at some elite private school and winds up inspiring a bunch of kids."

"I don't know. Is it exciting enough to keep people's interest?"

"Are you kidding?" He heard a flurry of conversation far away from them, and tilted his head just in time to see a few dozen sets of legs rush by, most likely MACOs running an intruder drill. "It's amazing. Must have watched it a hundred times when I was in school. Carpe diem! Seize the day, boys! Make your lives extraordinary!"

"I'll trust your judgment." With another adjustment with her micro-caliper, the display she'd been working on roared to life, and she smiled to herself, feeling more than a little bit triumphant. "Tactical is up and running."

"Here's hoping they didn't notice its absence on the bridge."

"They can wait. We're working as fast as we can."

There was a weighty pause, and she could practically see the wheels turning in his head, as if wondering if he should express what was on his mind or not. Having been the witness to a particularly brazen lack of tact on his part, Liz willed him to stay silent, a warning he did not heed.

"Don't you think it's weird that Reed and Taxa got assigned this mission? She could have had anyone on the Maelstrom, anyone on the Enterprise-"

"I try not to ask questions," Liz interrupted him, already seeing where his line of thinking was going. "If and when it's my business, the Captain and the Commodore will let me know."

"Do you ever think they're hiding too much from us? I mean…" He trailed off, choosing his next words carefully. "Wouldn't you want to know if a battle was imminent? If your life was in danger?"

"We live on a starship, Pascal. Isn't it always?"

"I just thought your perspective might have changed. You know, after Solnara."

Her fingers wrapped around an exposed pipe and beared down, hard. Try as she might, she just didn't know what to make of this man. If he wasn't being infuriatingly positive, he was fishing for information or making thinly veiled insinuations about her friends. Just for once, she wanted to know exactly what his problem was.

She was about to respond with anger, to whirl on him and ask what the hell he meant by that, when the maintenance shaft suddenly went dark.

They both startled, waiting for the emergency lights to come back on, though they never did. Liz was the first to move, rolling onto her stomach and turning around, starting her procession back towards the corridor.

She was only a meter from the hatch when it suddenly slammed shut ahead of her, cutting them off from the rest of the ship.

"Pascal to bridge. What's going on?"

Silence. The hull rocked again, strongly, ominously.

"Pascal to bridge."

"Rosner here. The armory's tinkering with isolation protocol again. With all the particle flux around us, the computer thought we experienced a hull breach."

"We seemed to be trapped in maintenance shaft A-15. Could you send someone down here to let us out?"

"Sorry, Pascal. Engineering's going to be the number one priority. The turbolifts are sealed too. In fact…" She trailed off, and there was a flurry of conversation behind her. "We're trapped on the bridge as well."

Simon sighed. "Acknowledged. Keep us informed."

She heard him close his communicator, and realized she would now be privy to a very different kind of nightmare.

Being trapped inside a confined space with someone she couldn't stand.

"So, have you read any good books lately?"

---

"Four moves. What happens if they see through our disguises?"

"Before or after we exit the shuttle?"

"Before. Six moves."

"Alira, you don't have to-"

"Answer the question, beloved. Eight moves."

Malcolm sighed raggedly and removed his hand from the chess board altogether. "You distract them, I initiate the ignition sequence. Blast our way out, take no prisoners, send a distress call the moment we get out of the system and hope Enterprise hasn't entered the nebula yet. After?"

"Best case scenario, Varox gets us out of it. Worst case, we dogfight our way out and lay low in the community until we can steal a ship." She watched him as he pondered his next move, then the moment he touched the bishop in the center of the board, said: "Three moves."

"Is this tactics again?"

"Make your move and find out."

The journey between the drop zone and Xantoras had been uneventful; unlike their own pods, the Denobulan shuttle was equipped with a warp one engine, effectively shortening their preparation time from an anticipated three days to just ten hours. She suggested he get some rest, but he refused; they spent their time drilling through contingency plans and reviewing every single detail of what they knew of their false identities, just in case the inspection teams decided to ask questions.

At some point he'd brought out his chess board; it had been some months since they'd had the opportunity, but they both had fond memories of sitting in the mess hall and playing for hours, trying to outsmart the other and making outlandish wagers for an ongoing tournament between the two of them that never really ended. At one point, following a rather humiliating defeat, he'd had to serve as her personal assistant for the day, and soon after, she'd had to polish every single torpedo in the armory by hand. In those days, it had been one of the main excuses he had for spending time with her, and she truly was the best opponent he'd ever encountered, the fact that she kept telling him how many moves she could win in notwithstanding.

They locked eyes, and he studied her expression, her unmoving smile that refused to yield to his scrutiny. His hands hovered over the board, touching multiple pieces until he finally took hold of a knight in the far corner. Inwardly, she cursed.

She'd hoped he wouldn't see that.

Impulsively, she leaned backward, checking one of the many computer displays built into the wall. The tall, looping script was completely in Denobulan, but he could still make sense of their flight trajectory, of the countdown to their arrival in the system. "It's almost time," she declared, and began to rummage in the storage compartment underneath her seat.

It didn't escape Malcolm just how different this vessel was from one of their standard shuttles; for one, there was enough overhead room to stand up, and it seemed to be much larger on the inside than it appeared on the outside. The controls were scattered all about the cabin, taking the form of screens and dials and switches, all in the same copper tone as the deck plating. There was even a table and two chairs situated about a replicator, every inch a ship made for long-distance travel.

A second later she produced a handgun, aiming it towards the ground and passing it to him by the barrel. It was sharp and angular, slightly longer than a phase pistol, though he knew it was much more powerful.

"Your blaster," she began, and they paused midway through the exchange, her fingers hovering over a series of buttons on the grip. "It's meant to be fired with the thumb or the forefinger, depending on your dominant hand. Very similar to the civilian model, but the Infantry version had two additional modes."

He studied the swirling characters, hoping to make some sort of sense of them, but came up short.

"Vaporize and eviscerate," Alira concluded, and reached underneath her seat again.

"Which one is worse?"

"Doesn't matter. Best not to get them confused." A small, rectangular device came across the table. "A mobile emitter to disguise your biosign. The Captain's been wearing one for weeks. I'd recommend placing it somewhere they can't readily find it."

She wiggled her fingers, and he got the hint.

After a few seconds of digging, she finally produced what he suspected to be a more specialized version of the UT. She didn't ask for permission, but simply reached across and seized him by the collar, pinning it on the underside and hiding it from view. "Just so you can understand what's being said. I'll be wearing one as well."

"Why's that?" He watched her turn up the cuff of her tunic and secure it there.

"Varox and I speak different regional dialects." At his confused expression, she continued: "It's like if you got someone who only speaks French and someone who only speaks English in the same room. They can probably comprehend some of what the other's saying, but when it comes to communicating…"

"I never realized there were so many languages spoken on Denobula."

"You and most of the xenolinguistics students at STC." She couldn't count the number of times she'd met one at a party or in the library, only for them to ask if they might practice their alliance languages with her. They'd then start off in a dialect spoken thousands of kilometers from where she'd grown up, only to be slightly embarrassed or disappointed when she'd tell them she didn't understand.

"Will this translator mask my…" He trailed off, gesturing to himself, grimacing slightly. They'd spent the past few hours practicing on Ensign Singh's insistence, only to realize their efforts were coming up woefully short.

"I don't think so. It's best to let me do the talking." She stood and retreated to the viewscreen at the front of the cabin, sounding somewhat sheepish. "It's what's expected."

He'd heard rumors that Denobulan women were much more socially dominant than their men, and even had the chance to experience it firsthand when her mother visited the ship years ago. For all intents and purposes, he admired how assertive she was, and because this was her world, he was willing to follow her lead.

"Anything else I should be prepared for?"

"We shouldn't touch in public. It's a social inhibition." She pressed a few keys, and he felt the engine shift into a higher speed, the rumble underneath his feet growing exponentially. There was a moment of expectant silence in which she kept glancing back at him furtively, looking as if she wanted to say something, but was consciously biting her tongue.

"What exactly are you looking at?" He asked, and when she didn't reply, went to join her at the main console.

She shook her head, but soon turned to him, taking both of his hands. "Malcolm, I need you to be aware of the fact that the look on your face makes it seem like you're always pissed off or thinking about murder."

"To be fair, that's usually true. Hoshi used to call it-"

"Resting bitch face." She seemed amused, but continued with her request. "You're going to need to smile through most of this, even if someone's got a gun pointed to your head."

He nodded, assuring her that he was going to try his best. Then, for good measure, he made a go of it, baring his teeth and pushing his grin to nearly Denobulan proportions.

She lost it almost immediately, bursting out laughing and reaching for him, tracing the contours of his face with a featherlight touch of her fingertips.

Her smile was a wonder of the universe, some kind of miraculous elixir of life that set his heart and soul alight. Irrationally, he wanted to do whatever it took to keep her happy, to be by her side through every trial and tribulation just so he could see it time and time again.

Not for the first time, he was seized by a sudden pang of guilt, of having to lie to her, of having to keep his past and present with the Section hidden. Her love was so honest and so pure that he knew she could never lie to him. She could never abuse his trust and loyalty, as he now did with her.

"I'm sorry, who hurt you?"

"What? Do you want a list?"

"That many, huh?" She stepped into the circle of his arms and looked up at him, her eyes gleaming. "I don't want to get ahead of myself, but…"

He knew what she was about to say, and the thought that he might have to hurt her to fulfill some foolish commitment he made years ago was momentarily so painful that he knew he couldn't have brought himself to repeat that sentiment.

Fortunately, the autopilot came to his rescue, lighting up one of the screens before them to herald their arrival. Together as one, they felt the shudder of their pod dropping out of warp.

Alira seemed tense now, ready to bolt at any moment, but took a pause, seizing both sides of his face and kissing him soundly. It went on for one perfect, endless moment, then she pulled away, availing him with a very human phrase she'd heard Trip use time and time again: "Show time."

"Not quite." Quickly, he retreated to the chess board, making his penultimate move. He seemed triumphant, and more than a little pleased with himself. "Check."

"Very funny. Get that out of here." She gestured towards one of the open compartments built into the walls and he obliged, not carrying where the board or the pieces landed for the moment, closing and latching it a second later.

He could see her moving around at the front of the cabin now, her face and shoulders illuminated by the starlight as they broke through the cloud cover. Already, they were receiving hails from the surface, no doubt telling them to stand down and prepare for inspection.

She produced a small vial of white powder seemingly out of nowhere, uncapping it and dipping her fingertips into it one by one. After blowing on her hands to remove the residue, she stashed it in one of the forward storage units, leaning into the console and inhaling slowly.

Malcolm immediately knew she was feeling that surge of adrenaline and anticipation that heralded the start of a covert mission; it had been a while since Harris had sent him out in the field, but the sensation was all too familiar. He didn't give himself a moment to wallow in it, slipping his blaster into his waistband and going to stand by the hatch.

They set down on a large, open blacktop surrounded by other vessels. Through his narrow vantage point of the viewscreen, he could make out a Vulcan transport and a Rigelian freighter, both powered down and seemingly abandoned, as though they hadn't been boarded in weeks.

When Alira joined him, he could see that she'd plastered a smile on her face, a purely rote gesture that didn't entirely make it to her eyes. He adopted a passable facsimile of her expression, trying his best to appear convincing. Someone knocked on the exterior of the craft, and she obeyed without pause, hitting the controls and forcing the hatch to fold out towards the ground.

They were soon greeted by a trio of phase rifles pointed directly at their heads.

To her credit, Alira didn't react, taking a massive step back and allowing the lead inspector to enter their craft. Malcolm realized that he'd never so much as seen a Xantoras before, and the sheer size difference was momentarily jarring.

The man before them stood well over seven feet tall, and had to stoop down to avoid hitting his head. He seemed to be covered in reddish-brown freckles from top to toe, and his hair was silvery and braided, cascading down his back in a series of complex twists and catches. He peered down at Alira as though she was less than insignificant, and she met his gaze unwaveringly.

"State your intention for landing in our territory."

"Exactly as our transmission read. The Vice Governor is expecting us. We have business."

"What kind of business?"

She laughed suddenly, as though he'd just asked the most foolish question in the universe. "Let's just get this over with."

"Very well." He huffed, gesturing for his companions to join him. Without preamble, they fanned out and took up positions all over the cabin, whipping out their tricorders and intensively scanning the interior. Their ringleader quickly shouldered his weapon and retrieved another device, a cylindrical instrument with a tiny, flashing strobe light on the end. "State your name and place of origin for the record."

"Sareen Rivell, Lureyva Province, Denobulan Coalition." She squinted into the light, which was rapidly cycling and fading in and out, taking into account her vital signs and facial expression. "I could go into greater detail if you want. Maybe you'd like to hear about my date of birth, my childhood, my immediate family…"

The device beeped suddenly, loud and clear, and he seemed satisfied with that. "I'm afraid that won't be necessary. Arms out."

She complied, and he pressed an unseen button, causing the width of the beam to grow. He passed it over her body, then had her turn, all the while his colleagues were pulling open compartments and throwing things around. They didn't seem to be finding anything, which seemed to anger them to no end, and they began to move faster, shouting and calling out to one another, becoming more enraged by the second.

"Are you carrying any other weapons or electronic devices?"

He had a feeling he knew what the truth was; he was attempting to pin her down under his gaze, but she did not falter, her smile inscrutable. "Just my blaster."

"Care to explain why the registration information for this craft is missing from your transponder signature?"

"Bought it off a smuggler. Seems to be the only way you can get a fair price these days."

He snapped his fingers, and one of the guards surged forward, grabbing her by the shoulder and roughly forcing her to sit at the table. Malcolm almost reacted, but caught her shaking her head by a fraction of a centimeter in either direction, settling for digging his fingernails into his palm.

"You. Name and place of origin."

It took a second to realize he was being addressed, but once he did, he inhaled slowly, forcing out any last vestiges of nerves. He knew that Alira had pretty much spouted lie after lie to the inspector without being detected, and if they wanted to even gain access to the city, he would need to tow the line.

"Rivell, Guarentar Province, Denobulan Coalition." This time, he moved the device much closer to his face, so close that he was almost blinded.

"And who is this woman to you?"

"My second wife."

Over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of one of the soldiers holding up one of the queens from his chess set, studying it, holding it up to the light. "What are you doing on Xantoras?"

"I believe she told you. We're here on business."

Hurriedly, he stashed the device, retrieving what he suspected to be a PADD and switching it on. There was a pause, then he held it up next to his face, his eyes darting from left to right.

Even though his pupils were severely dilated, Malcolm recognized the image as the mugshot of the real Rivell, who was likely dead at the bottom of a lake somewhere. The resemblance was there, certainly, but not perfect, and he immediately knew they were in trouble.

"If you'll just come with us, we'd like to hold you for additional questioning."

Alira stood swiftly, only to be forced back down into her seat. Though he couldn't see her at the moment, he knew she was about to call his bluff. "Feel free to contact the Vice Governor. He should be able to clear all of this up for you. You'll discover we're telling the truth."

"Madam, I don't believe you want me to discover the truth." He took a step closer to her, and his hands strayed to his belt towards the hilt of a long, curved sword. "I think I would sooner-"

"Stand down!"

The call came from somewhere outside the craft; gingerly, Malcolm leaned over to one side, barely catching a glimpse of a trio of soldiers, dressed in similar black armor and carrying much smaller weapons. Blasters.

Denobulan blasters.

One of them broke free from the line, stepping over the hatch and right up to the lead investigator. He didn't spare them a second glance. "We'll take it from here."

Alira stood immediately, bursting through the huddle of soldiers and stepping into the pre-dawn darkness. Malcolm started to follow, but paused over the threshold, listening to the two Xantoras men chatter behind him.

"I will remind you to hold Mr. Varox's merchants in higher regard in the future."

A significant amount of currency passed hands, effectively ending their inspection.

The sudden change in ambiance was momentarily jarring; Malcolm found himself blinking repeatedly, peering into the floodlights of the landing platform, studying the skyline all around him.

The capital was built into the side of a sprawling mountain; the rocks and crags were interspersed with vibrant wildflowers and deciduous trees, rambling down the side of the slope, seeming to stop on a dime as they reached the outskirts of the city. The buildings were arranged haphazardly around cobblestone and dirt streets, squat, adobe structures that looked like they'd been destroyed and reconstructed time and time again. There were precious few streetlights; what illumination he could see appeared to be candles and lanterns set on windowsills.

The only people around them seemingly for kilometers were the soldiers in the guard towers at all four corners of the lot, and their escorts, who soon forced them to move, pressing the muzzles of their pistols into their backs.

They abandoned their ship at the very moment the engine finished powering down; without the steady whirr of the machinery, they realized the streets were utterly silent, an almost eerie stillness that threatened to crush them under the weight of it as they moved under a great stone archway into the city.

It seemed to be deserted; what little movement Malcolm could discern around them seemed to be contained within a swish of a curtain, a rush of footsteps, or the flash of a pair of eyes in the shadows of the alleyways. He assumed that the city must be under some mandatory curfew, and immediately remembered one of the first rules Harris had taught him the moment he joined field operations for the Section.

Never have your back turned on someone who's got a gun drawn on you.

He could see Alira had a similar idea, repeatedly glancing over her shoulder and even at one point walking backwards, attempting to engage the soldiers in conversation. Malcolm slowed his pace, at one point falling in line between two of the guards, before one of them took notice and shoved him forward.

"Thank you for your assistance back there. If you hadn't shown up, I don't know what we would have-"

Their leader surged forward, and she stopped in her tracks, refusing to stumble away from his advances. This time he pressed his weapon into her sternum, threatening: "Madam, I hope you know I could split you in two before you even have the chance to blink."

The look in her eyes conveyed that she would like to see him try, but she acquiesced, turning and continuing their procession up the hill.

One of the guards mumbled to the other, perhaps something about not being paid enough for this, then fell silent.

It felt like hours before they reached the end of the street; the building there looks tremendously out of place, a one-story structure with metallic siding and no windows to speak of. Even the door seemed comically short, especially for a Xantoras, and their ringleader had to bend down to enter his access code.

Alira flexed her hand experimentally, and he soon caught a glimpse of her fingers tapping against her side: Four...two...six...nine…

He was taken by surprise as the soldier who had been standing beside him divested him of his weapon, before surging forward and doing the same to his companion. Alira treated him to a brilliant smile, then turned back towards the door, peering into the darkness as the leader stepped over the threshold and disappeared into the shadows.

They seemed to wait for some time, and all the while they were looking all around, mapping potential escape routes. At one point Malcolm caught her eye and then glanced down the street towards what appeared to be a storm drain set in the face of the cobblestone bracketed by a series of metallic bars. She nodded quickly and turned away, looking up towards the singular hatch at the far end of the wall.

At last he returned and ushered them inside; the interior of the building seemed metallic, entirely sterile, without even a hint of dust in the air. It was a wide, open space, filled with various crates and storage containers in innumerable rows and columns. Their escorts were moving faster now, forcing them to match their pace, but Malcolm was still able to catch a few of the tables, stamped or painstakingly handwritten into each package.

POLYGEMINUS GREX. 16 CT ADOLESCENT TRIBBLES INDIVIDUALLY PACKAGED. WARNING: KEEP AWAY FROM FOOD SOURCES. STORE IN COLD CONDITIONS.

DENTARIUM ALLOY MATRIX. ORIGIN BETA QUADRANT, 40 ERIDANI A.

ICONIAN GATEWAY COMPONENTS. EN ROUTE UTOPIA PLANITIA. CARE OF A. CICERO.

Something about that jolted his memory, and the rest of the labels passed by in a flurry, until the found themselves before an open door into a sparsely decorated office.

It seemed to be empty; he could barely make out a desk and two chairs facing away from the entrance, as well as multiple stacks of books in the far corner of the room, all dogeared and warped with age. The room seemed to be empty, and they were momentarily confused.

The ringleader reached forward and pushed Alira with an open hand; she startled slightly, then took one step into the room, followed shortly by her companion.

The door shut behind them, and they quickly heard a lock engage from the opposite side.

At first, she was bewildered; there seemed to be no other egress, nor any kind of ventilation or access point. Carefully, she began to walk along one wall, running her hands up and down the smooth metallic plating, looking for some kind of break.

Malcolm approached the desk and retrieved a discarded PADD, before quietly calling her over. What they saw there was unmistakable: Denobulan characters set against a white background, with the crest of Special Ops serving as a watermark.

She immediately knew they were in the right place.

As if on cue, a panel in the far wall pushed forward and slid to one side, revealing a heretofore unseen opening to a passageway. Before she could think otherwise, Alira slipped the PADD into her pocket. There was a pause, then a man passed through, regarding them with unbridled disdain.

Like their doctor, Varox was of average height and build, slightly stocky but making up for it with a distinct confident air about him. He was balding around the temples and the crown of his head, and as he moved into the light, Malcolm could see that his face was covered with scars and rippled skin. His smile, though, was apparent, with a little maliciousness hidden underneath.

"So the firstborn of General Taxa is here to collect on my debt." He nodded towards her, clasping his hands behind his back and starting to traverse the room with slow, measured steps. "What a pleasure it is to see you again, envoy. I'd ask what was new in your life, but I have a feeling I already know."

"I see that you've moved up in station from Special Ops. When Mesoa told me you'd been burned, I feared the worst."

"It truly is their loss," he assured her, stopping just short of them, his eyes traveling up and down Malcolm's form. "Who is this?"

"A colleague," she answered vaguely, which seemed to amuse him to no end.

"Are you telling me that Starfleet doesn't trust you to run missions alone?" He retreated behind his desk, producing a curved bottle full of amber liquid from a drawer. "Perhaps they know you better than most."

She didn't care for his implication, and her expression said it all. Bringing her hand onto the tabletop with an audible slap, she ground out: "You know, I was expecting you to have Denobulan guards in your employ. Unless, of course..."

He laughed, and it sounded cold, emotionless. "You've been in my home for less than a minute and you're already accusing me of something. Don't you ever rest, Taxa?"

"You taught me better than that."

"I'm aware. If only your father had similar sensibilities all those years ago." He gestured towards the two empty seats before him. "Please."

Malcolm and Alira locked eyes, seeming to have a conversation without any words at all. Finally, she nodded, and they sat, postures ramrod straight, as though they intended to bolt at any moment.

"Saurian brandy," he began, holding the bottle of liquor up to the light. "I know it's your favorite. Since they outlawed it here, it's been awfully hard to come into possession of a worthwhile quantity. We're part of the largest distribution ring in the sector. Of course, Mr. Reed, that's strictly off the record."

He barely reacted, though the slightest twitch of his eyebrow gave him away. Slowly, Alira shifted in her seat until she was leaning the other direction, and while Varox rooted around for three glasses, nudged his shin with her boot.

She didn't have to say anything. He shared her concerns.

He seemed to know way too much.

He soon began to fill their cups, carefully, gingerly, studying their expressions as he did so. When he finished his task, he lifted his glass to his nose, inhaling the vapors through slightly parted lips.

"Every mission or business transaction in our Special Ops cell began with a drink back in the day. Alira saw to that." He made an overture of a toast. "To new opportunities."

"To forgiven debts," she replied, and for one long moment, no one moved.

Finally, Varox broke the silence. "Come now. If you can't trust me, who can you trust?"

As a matter of fact, she could probably count that number of people on one hand. He seemed to remember something, bending down and rooting around in a drawer again, and Alira seized the opportunity to dip one finger into the liquid and swirl.

Almost immediately, it turned black, and she showed it to him with the slightest flick of her hand, before burying it in her lap the second he righted himself.

"This is just a taste of the information we've acquired on the Romulan weapon." Curiously, he passed the PADD to Malcolm, who took one look at the characters there and realized he couldn't understand one bit of it. Scrolling down, he caught a bit of a map detailing flight schematics terminating somewhere in the Devron system, and nodded reverently, handing it to his companion. "If you'd like to see the rest, we've got to go down to the control center. It's only four levels underground. My entire operation's run from there."

Just about every single alarm was going off in their heads. Even though they weren't aware of it, they were both remembering the second axiom of field work.

When meeting with a contact, never agree to transition into a secondary location.

"We'd be happy to," Alira said before she could think otherwise, abandoning every single bit of her training and taking Malcolm by surprise. His fingers tightened over the armrest, and she didn't miss it for a second.

"Excellent. I'll take the back way and meet you there." He pressed an unseen button, and the door behind them opened once again, producing three armed guards. He nodded towards them. "Please see Sareen and Rivell to the lift."

Alira stood quickly and led the way into the corridor; as they stepped over the threshold, she glanced over her shoulder in time to see Malcolm exhale, eyes wide, nostrils flared. She had a theory, and if he could indulge her, even trust her for a second, they might see it through to completion.

With every step, she became more and more confident, until the moment the doors of the lift closed around them, when she realized she'd made a dreadful mistake.

The soldiers seemed to take another step closer to them, towering overhead, their pistols held tightly to their chests. She stole the opportunity to reach into her pocket and feel around for the PADD they'd stolen, tracing the perimeter with her fingers all the way around until she reached the charging port, which had been covered by her hands as she held it back in the office.

There was a character carved there, sharp and angular, like the curve of a sickle. It felt like an inverted English letter T with an extra notch, and immediately she knew where she'd seen such a figure before.

She'd been looking over Hoshi's shoulder at the communications station for far too long not to recognize it.

With her free hand, she sought Malcolm's, pressing her fingers into his palm, slowly curling her thumb inward. Her pointer followed, then the middle.

At the moment her little finger moved, he reacted with all the subtlety of a stun grenade, stepping on the instep of the soldier to his left and grappling for his blaster as he cried out. With the flick of a wrist, he sent it flying on its arc and into her grasp.

Rather than take the time to fumble with it, she grabbed the hilt, pulled back, and drew it across the face of the other guard so hard that he immediately crumpled, falling to his knees and momentarily struggling to collect himself. It wasn't long before the leader standing behind them sprung into action, but Malcolm was ready, seizing the arm that had been slung over his shoulder and throwing himself backward, crashing them both into the wall.

It was short and violent and the very definition of close quarters combat, but when the doors of the lift opened into the lower level, they were the only ones still standing.

They didn't hesitate, rushing forward into the empty corridor, laden with PADDs and biometric access keys and stray weapons and whatever else they could carry.

"Exactly what were you thinking? You could have gotten us killed! You could have-"

"I was thinking that we'd fight our way out once we got down here and bled him dry for all the information he had. I thought maybe he meant to imprison us or turn us over to the provisional government, but-" She'd been hurriedly strapping blasters to her belt, and accidentally discharged one of them into the floor, causing her to curse loudly. "He's working for them, Malcolm. I knew it the second we stepped into that lift."

"Working for who?" He hissed, though he already knew the answer.

They reached the short end of the corridor and woefully found no means of escape, not even an emergency exit or a ventilation hatch. Simultaneously, they turned on their heels and began to move back the other direction, running this time.

"You said so yourself, these hybrids are getting dentarium alloy and supplies for their bases from somewhere. He's in league with the Romulans, I'm sure of it, maybe even financing their weapon. The second he learned I wanted information about it-"

"He moved to secure his client's interests by whatever means necessary." Malcolm had so many questions, but he suspected that the circumstances by which Varox had been expunged from Special Ops would best be saved for another day, perhaps one where they weren't running for their lives. "Why would he betray you? I thought he and your father were close."

"Close is a stretch." For some time, she'd been doubting Varox's story about the sequence of events that lead to her father's death, but now, she was almost certain he'd been lying. "You'd be surprised what some will do in the acquisition of wealth, especially when-"

An alarm began to blare overhead, and on cue, Xantoras soldiers began to emerge from doors on both sides of the corridor, far behind them but growing closer. They were rapidly approaching the end of the hallway, their chances of escape looking more grim by the second.

Finally, they spotted it: a hatch in the ceiling about two and a half meters off the ground. Alira's brain was working double time, frantically running through the contingency plans they'd prepared, but quickly realizing that nothing they talked about could have prepared them for this.

"Give me a boost!" The soldiers were almost upon them now, and they seemingly had no other option. She felt him crouch down and offer his knee, then, presumably realizing they would still come up short, weaved through her legs and stood with some difficulty, wrapping his hands around her calves.

Alira began to struggle with the metal grating, first trying to wiggle it out, then punching it, before finally taking her blaster to it. The recoil and the sparks raining down on her face were momentarily painful, and she hissed through her teeth, attempting to maintain her focus.

"Do you think you could hurry up?"

"I'm moving as fast as I can!" The grating clattered down around his feet, then he felt her push off, wrapping her hands around the bottom of the hatch above them and pulling herself up with the sum of her strength.

It felt like her shoulders were threatening to pull themselves out of their joints, but she eventually made it, turning around and pressing her stomach into the floor, reaching out to him far below.

He took one look at her, then another at the soldiers bearing down on them, and quickly came to the conclusion that he should have gone first.

"What are you waiting for?"

Her hands were right there, so he took them, and together they struggled for what seemed like ages. Just at the moment his upper body crossed into the hatch, she suddenly felt a tremendous force pulling down, and almost slid out headfirst on top of him as a half dozen soldiers seized hold of his legs.

Malcolm was powerless to do much, but he could feel their hands on him, divesting him of the PADDs and weapons he'd been so keen to collect in the lift. The Xantoras were so tall that they could almost reach into the hatch with their feet on the ground, and he soon felt their hands on his chest, pulling and tugging and threatening to drag him to his doom.

Alira was cursing up a blue streak, but wasn't willing to give up so easily. She braced her feet against both sides of the tunnel and beared down, holding onto him with one hand and seeking out her blaster with the other. She thought she might have heard him cry out, but she was determined not to allow him to protest, laying down weapons fire on the unsuspecting soldiers below.

It surprised them, and Malcolm was thrashing around blindly, kicking a few of them in the face and knocking them sideways. Discarding her weapon, she added her second hand back to the mix, using the temporary confusion to draw him up and into the conduit.

Every muscle in her arms was wracked with searing pain, but she knew they couldn't pause for even a second. It was only a matter of time before they were followed. He led the way this time, making a wild guess, hoping they were heading in the right direction.

"I can't believe you-"

"Consider it returning the favor," she huffed, trying her best to keep her weight off her arms as she crawled. "For Rigel V."

"You mean you would have left me behind to die?"

"Maybe. Still might. Haven't decided yet." He could hear the laughter in her voice despite their dire situation.

"But you can admit that it's your fault that we've found ourselves here?"

"I'd call it a team effort." She paused, and together they noticed light streaming through an opening at one end of the tunnel far ahead of them. "You should know that you're heavier than you look."

"That's never hindered you before." As a matter of fact, she'd all but thrown him across the room during one of their sparring sessions long before the Maelstrom commissioned, back when they were still trying to one-up each other in what were really poorly disguised attempts at flirting.

"All the same, I'll be doing a lot more pull ups when we get back."

They could hear the soldiers in the conduit behind them, closing on them once again. A second before they reached the unknown light source, Malcolm rolled over and slid the remaining distance on his back, immensely surprised to see daylight staring back at him.

It was the drainage ditch from before, he was sure of it.

It took him a little more time to get the grating off, but he eventually settled for the tried and true method, using her proffered blaster to sear through the metal bars. Now feeling slightly more optimistic about their chances of escape, he turned his body and pulled himself out onto the street, emerging into the early morning light surrounded on all sides by a dozen Xantoras soldiers.

Alira was next, but she realized their predicament much too late. Her companion had already dropped her weapon and was staring down the barrels of multiple pistols, hands in the air.

She knew he was looking for a route of escape, and she was only too willing to take the first option she saw.

"Gentlemen," she began, backing up slowly. They moved to intercept her, but she was persistent, continuing to walk even as she felt two separate weapons pressing into her back.

They were stepping closer and closer to a cluster of civilian homes, even an abandoned cart laden down with what appeared to be homemade pottery. She shuffled to one side, and the sights of the guards followed her, centimeter by centimeter, until she was able to slip behind it.

"Put your hands up!" One of them shouted, and she complied, if only for a moment.

"While we appreciate your hospitality, we do, the truth is that we really must be-"

All it took was a shove to overturn the cart and send its contents flying, raining down over the soldiers in a hail of broken shards.

One of the civilians was rushing towards them, screaming at them from his vantage point farther up the street, but they were already sprinting, running from almost certain death, nearly tumbling down the hillside as they did so.

By the time their shuttle exploded on the landing platform, her thoughts were racing and her brain was starved for oxygen, and the only thing she could think to do was to drag her partner back into the city, hoping to remember some inkling of their numerous contingency plans that could possibly suit their present situation.

They seemed to lose the soldiers in the smoke and the resulting confusion, but didn't stop running until they crossed multiple streets and alleyways, dodging civilians and entering into a different neighborhood altogether.

She finally located a break in a fence in someone's backyard and forced her way through it, making a beeline for a shed situated among intermittent patches of grass.

Together they burst into it, and he slammed the door behind them, before falling to his knees and clutching his chest, gasping for air.

Alira rolled onto her back into the soft earth and trained her eyes up towards the ceiling; as her disorientation steadied, she began to make out a network of strings traversing the space above them, laden with shirts and trousers and what appeared to be long, floor sweeping robes.

She could tell that he was trying to say something, but ignored him, stumbling to her feet and moving towards the back of the chamber. There were multiple vats of water all around them and what appeared to be bottles full of cleaning solution, enough to tell her that they were in some sort of washroom.

"We need to go back and steal a ship," he finally gasped, leaning into the walls.

"We can't return to the landing platform. They'll be waiting," she reminded him. "We have no idea if there's another one in the city. I doubt the civilians have access to shuttles."

"Then we should find some way to get a message back to Enterprise for an emergency extraction." It would be tricky with the communications suppression network, but he was sure they would manage, assuming the Commodore hadn't yet led them into the nebula.

"I don't plan on leaving empty handed." She produced the PADD they'd found in Varox's office and began to scroll through it, not for the first time wishing she'd paid more attention in school when they'd been instructed in his regional dialect. Even now, she could really only pick out every couple of words. "We're going to find his ship, and we're going to catch him in the act. I can't be sure, but it looks like they're making another run this morning."

"Another run? Where?"

"He wouldn't be a good smuggler if he left that information out in the open, would he?"

He couldn't believe after their latest near death experience she wanted to go charging back into danger. With the information they'd managed to collect, they had more than enough evidence to issue a warrant for the man's arrest. "I'm sorry, do you even have a plan?"

"Of course." She paused, inhaling slowly, then turned to him, adamant. "Take off your clothes."

"Alira-"

"Oh, stop. They're going to be looking for two Denobulans, a man and a woman. We need to blend in." She began to move around the clotheslines.

"We may be able to change clothes, but we can't change our faces that easily." He knew he was making a very valid point, but she didn't appear to be listening. "Need I remind you that we don't even have weapons?"

She turned to him suddenly, throwing her hands up in frustration, then reached for the hem of her tunic, revealing what appeared to be a flexible band wrapped around her waist. A second later, she'd unclipped it from behind her back and turned it to face him, revealing a series of hand weapons and implements tucked into the fabric.

"Where in the hell did you-"

"I wouldn't be a very good covert operative if I didn't come prepared. That inspector scanned for particle weapons, but he never asked about a dagger, or my diverter shield, or my ushaan-tor…"

He was suddenly overwhelmingly relieved. "Have I told you recently how much I love you?"

"Hold that thought." She appeared apprehensive, more than a little nervous about what she was about to reveal. "I've got a device here that may be the answer to all of our problems, but you can't ask how long I've had it, or how I came into possession of it."

From the look on his face, she could tell that was to be his very first question, but forged on anyway. She produced the holographic emitter than Agent Kafatos had given her ahead of her midnight mission to Betazed, all the while the Captain was experiencing the effects of another telepresence attack and everyone else in the room was conspiring against them. At first she'd been confused about why she'd been given such a gift, but with that temporal agent's influence, it was now obvious.

"With this device, I can be Andorian..." Hands shaking, she held it in front of her and flipped the switch.

His reaction was nothing short of incredulous. Though her skin was blue and her hair was white and she had two antennae sprouting out of her head, he could still tell it was her, though the sudden shift in appearance was uncanny.

"I can be human..."

She was still as blonde as she ever was, but with darker eyes and a smooth forehead.

"I can even be you."

This time, he moved to intercept her, all but snatching it from her hands and studying it in the low light streaming in between the wooden boards in the wall. It took only a moment for him to come to the realization. "These are Betazoid characters."

It was unsettling enough to see her voice coming from his mouth, but her explanation didn't nearly do enough to assuage his concerns. "Chandra gave it to me months ago. She said I might need it during our mission."

"How could she possibly know that?" At the point they'd had dinner in the palace of the Most Divine Lady, they hadn't yet known of the impending hybrid threat. "And why didn't she give me one?"

Something wasn't adding up.

"I don't know, but we're going to need to change our appearances, one of us more drastically than the other. Do you want to, or should I?"

He took a second look at her, well, himself really, and saw her unease reflected in his eyes, her desperation to be believed. And seeing as their situation truly was dire, he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Questions would come later.

"I trust you," he said, and for the very first time, wondered if he really should.

She nodded and took a step back, activating the device one again. In a flash of light and the space of a second, she grew in height by almost a meter, and her features warped and shifted significantly.

He could still see her in her smile and the persistent twinkle in her eye, but for all intents and purposes, he was now standing in a shed alone with a Xantoras man, with the significance of what they needed to do not lost on either of them.

---

"So where are you from?"

"St. Louis. You?"

"Calais, but I grew up in Rouen. If you had to meet one historical figure, who would it be?"

"Sally Ride, no question." At his questioning look, she continued: "The first American woman in space? I had a photo of her aboard the Challenger on my wall as a little girl. I idolized her."

He laughed somewhat ruefully. "That's better than mine. I was going to say Napoleon. What I wouldn't give to have half an hour to pick his brain."

"I had no idea you were so tactically minded, Pascal."

Simon seemed to stiffen a little at that remark, but quickly relaxed, gesturing to the emergency bulkhead beneath their feet. "You ready to try again?"

She nodded, and he counted down from three. They proceeded to bear down and hard as they could while laying horizontally with the floor, bracing themselves against the walls and kicking with all of their might.

After a few seconds, they gave in, almost entirely resigned to their fate.

"I should have known that wasn't going to work. This is solid duritanium alloy."

"At least we got those clamps to release."

"Yeah, but at what cost?" He flexed his shoulders experimentally, still feeling the burn of exertion there. "I know they're working as fast as they can, but…"

They'd been trapped in the maintenance shaft for well over an hour, due to a catastrophic failure of the power grid caused by a few crossed wires in the armory. At least the emergency lights and secondary power were on now; they could see one another in the low light, their harried and worn expressions, their eagerness to get out of this claustrophobic nightmare and back to work.

She'd elected to engage in small talk with him, attempting to put aside any preconceived notions, and had been pleasantly surprised by just how friendly he could at least pretend to be. Liz wasn't entirely sure she could trust him, but she could at least tolerate him, and at the end of the day she could think of worse people to be stuck in an access tube with.

"I don't know about you, but I might just take a nap." She rolled onto her back and pressed herself against the floor of the tunnel, being very keen not to press up against any critical instruments.

Simon shifted to one side and mirrored her posture, crossing his arms over his chest. Even with her eyes closed, she could sense him glancing at her every now and then, and knew it was only a matter of time until he broke the silence.

"You know, Lieutenant, all my life, I've struggled with making friends."

"Me too," she admitted, momentarily taken aback by his vulnerability. "Middle and high school was the worst. Girls didn't like me, guys thought I was too much. I didn't really meet my people until university."

"For me, it was much later. Probably when I joined the Republic." There was a weighty pause, and she could hear him nervously fiddling with the zipper on his sleeve. "When I came here, I thought I'd get something similar with the crew."

"Has that not been your experience?"

"Sure it has. Just not with the senior staff."

There it was. She turned to face him, and her eyes snapped open. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Liz, please." When she didn't react to being addressed so informally, he pressed on: "Everyone knows Mr. Reed hates me. I'm not sure why."

"Malcolm's a difficult guy to get to know. He's got some quirks, I'll give you that."

"And then there's…" He sighed, raggedly. "Listen, I wanted to take the time to apologize to you. I know I did that several times after Kandar, but I knew you were angry and I thought it was best to give it some time to breathe."

Immediately, she felt a surge of anger clench her gut, but quickly dismissed it. He seemed sincere enough, and deep down, she wanted to believe him.

"I didn't know you that well back then, or the situation with you and the doctor's other wives. My comment was way out of line. I can't blame you for lashing out like you did."

"Pascal, listen-"

"I can be your friend, Liz, if you let me." He seemed insistent. "I mean it."

She thought about his apology, his candor, his earnestness, and then considered Alira's words, how she'd told her to open her heart and give him a chance. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine herself wallowing in the pit of misery that had been churned up by Feezal's death for a moment longer. Space was an incredibly lonely place without friends and irrationally, she wanted to welcome him into the fold, to prevent him from such a tragic fate.

"I'd like that." His eyes immediately lit up, and he smiled, a gesture which she quickly returned. "The moment main power is back online, the first thing we need to do is reprogram the long-range sensors to accommodate Romulan biosignatures. I've got the specs on my PADD. We just got them from the High Command a couple of days ago."

"Do you think you could show me? I've always wanted to learn more about what you do. Really, if you think about it, I do a whole lot of sitting and doing nothing at the helm."

"I suspected as much. In fact, once we get out of here, why don't we-"

The hull jolted again, but this time, it was a different kind of impact, one she recognized from another time and place, over and over again over the space of many years.

Weapons fire.

His communicator came out again. "Pascal to bridge."

This time, his inquiry was answered by a call over the intercom.

"All hands, this is the Commodore. We've got a Romulan vessel off our port bow within visual range. If you can get to your post, or anywhere near a computer display, we're going to need all the help we can get."

Fear suddenly seized her gut, in a wave of mortal terror she could not suppress. All pretense of a friendly conversation gone, she began to pound on the hatch below them with her feet, with such ferocity that it startled her companion.

"Liz, what are you-"

She was frantic. "I'll tear apart this bulkhead with my bare hands if I have to!"

---

"I'm telling you, doctor, I've done this before."

Hoshi was insistent, but Yuris wasn't buying it.

"You must prepare yourself for the kinds of images you are about to see," he reminded her gently. What they were both about to experience was likely the final, desperate thoughts of a dying woman, recorded in the minutes before or after the station had been boarded and their fate became immediately clear.

They were presently arranged on the floor of sickbay with the lights dimmed and a containment field erected in front of the door; Trip and Ethan were seated on either side of her to complete the circle, and as one, their eyes were focused on the candle burning between them.

Yuris was understandably apprehensive; though he'd risked his career for the right to perform mind melds, to experience a greater depth of emotional intimacy that most Vulcans could only dream of, he hadn't actually performed the procedure in years. When he'd returned from Dekendi III, fresh from defending Captain T'Pol, he'd been summarily dismissed from the Council of Physicians. His predilections were revealed publicly in a final attempt to shame him, and he'd been disowned by his family and abandoned by his coworkers and friends.

For some time, he lived on savings, trying and failing to find gainful employment by every conceivable avenue. When that failed, he considered becoming a monk and devoting himself to the newly found original teachings of Surak, hoping that would lend his life some meaning once again and prevent him from dwelling on the fact that he was scorned and woefully untolerated, by anyone and everyone he met.

Just when matters seemed hopeless, he received a communique from the newly instated Minister T'Pau. They'd discovered an aberration, a genetic anomaly among certain high ranking members of the High Command, and they were in the position to believe that only he could help. Desperate to acquire income by any means necessary, he'd agreed, only to become instrumental in discovering and exposing the extent of the hybrid plot.

Administrator Kuvak was in agreement that because the Romulans were able to hide in plain sight for so many years, decades even, they'd likely been the ones to initiate the cultural campaign against melders. He proposed, in a strongly logical argument, that there was no better way to maintain one's cover among a telepathic race than to use government influence to deny them of a natural and harmless inclination. Finally, all those years he'd spent hiding his abilities and sharing them in secret with willing participants made sense, although it was his most fervent wish after years of strife he would no longer have to hide once the truth came out.

He never wanted to hurt anyone with his gift. But now, it was becoming more and more clear that he might have to come very close to it in order to protect the alliance from certain destruction.

"Stop me if this becomes painful at any point." He nodded towards Ethan, and he reached up towards the countertop, retrieving the cortical monitor and fastening it to his parietal bone.

Almost immediately, he felt the surge of a separate undersense enter his mind, a joyous and tragic cataclysm of memories, of decades and decades of experience, of a life well lived. There was confusion, then pain, then elation, and he was nearly overwhelmed by it, by the steady thrum of one word over and over in his mind.

Alive alive alive alive.

Before he could stop himself, he smiled, the sheer force of the memories taking up residence in his subconscious all but blasting through his system of emotional suppression. Trip studied his expression for clues.

"I am fine," he insisted, though his voice wavered uncontrollably. "Are you ready, Lieutenant?"

She nodded, leaning into him, allowing him to position his fingers across her chin and cheek.

He heard Ethan flip open a medical tricorder and begin to press buttons, keen to monitor them whether he was requested to or not.

Yuris inhaled slowly in a fruitless attempt to quell the surge of emotions swirling in and around him, threatening to overwhelm him entirely. To be inundated by the memories of such an exuberant species was sure to be challenging. Closing his eyes, he spoke the words of the ancient practitioners of his discipline: "My mind to your mind. Your thoughts to my thoughts. Our minds are merging, our minds are becoming one..."

She gasped and stirred, somewhat painfully, and Trip automatically reached for her. In the far reaches of his mind, he thought he heard her: Can you hear me?

Yes. Prepare yourself.

I trust you, doctor.

He could only hope it wouldn't prove to be her downfall.

Carefully, he moved to a certain memory, one of the more distant ones, and accessed it, allowing it to slip to the forefront slowly. Then, when she didn't react, he allowed it to flow through their bond of physical touch, so strong and so harrowing that he couldn't help but cry out.

Sickbay disappeared in a flash of white light, and Hoshi momentarily panicked, grasping her chest, only to find herself in another time and place.

She was surrounded by instruments and computer displays and hand-written diagrams, sitting behind a desk greeting an unbidden guest.

He was Denobulan, wearing a slate gray lab coat and a rather dour expression. He didn't even have to say his name for her to recognize him: Dr. Juran. Her second. At the moment, her closest confidante.

"She's here, and she's not going away until you agree to see her."

"It's certainly unexpected. Do you think it has anything to do with-"

"Undoubtedly."

Hoshi found that she had no control over the body she inhabited; in a second, she stood and approached the hatch, pausing with her fingers over the door controls. She was suddenly filled with dread, knowing nothing good could possibly come from this encounter, but being powerless to stop it from happening.

"We've got a duty," he said, reaching out for her but stopping a fraction of a centimeter short. "To the alliance, to ourselves, to every single human scientist on this station…"

"Don't remind me." As she swept into the corridor, she caught her own reflection in a computer panel and was shocked by what she saw. In the real world, she jolted roughly, and Trip moved to steady her.

They were growing nearer to the docking port in the north corridor, and everything around them seemed to warp and distend. Hoshi could feel her heart racing, though she wasn't sure if it was her own. Farther down, they encountered a junior scientist standing watch over the hatch, and without preamble, they opened it, revealing a very familiar face indeed.

She didn't waste any time, quickly lowering herself through the opening and greeting them with the traditional touchless handshake she'd seen visiting dignitaries perform time and time again. For all intents and purposes, she was exactly how she remembered her from their time in orbit of Tellar Prime, and immediately she knew this must have been in the weeks immediately preceding it. What was it that she had told Alira?

It was on the way. On the way to somewhere else.

Effortlessly, she switched into English, treating their guest to a winning smile. "Captain Hernandez, to what do we owe the pleasure?"

"The pleasure is all mine," she assured them, and didn't even wait for her to introduce her companion. "Is there a private place we could talk?"

The memory seemed to fast forward, the corridors and stairwells and chambers slipping and sliding away in the rivers of her subconscious, until she was truly alone with her in her office, with the door locked and the auditory dampeners turned way up.

"Dr. Phlox," Erika began, noticing how her host had her back turned to her, studying a map of the system on the wall, nervously wringing her hands. Hoshi could feel her trepidation, and momentarily, her anger when she tried again. "Feezal?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand what you're trying to tell me."

"It's very simple, really. I just need you to confirm that these are the coordinates where you encountered that errant sensor reading." A piece of paper came across the table, and it seemed significant for how unusual its presence was. She reached for it, studying the numbers there, then nodded. "Excellent. One of our scientists we have stationed here alerted us to your findings. I'm sure you can imagine that this kind of thing needs to be kept a secret for the time being."

"For the sake of the alliance," she agreed, as though she was reciting from a speech. "To buy us more time."

"That's right. If at any moment the security of this station is threatened…" She tilted her head to one side, allowing her to fill in the blanks.

"I know what I need to do." She was overwhelmed with a sense of determination, of purpose, but also of realization and mortal terror.

"Your service to the alliance will not be forgotten."

Somehow, she didn't seem convinced. There was another passing glance at the coordinates written upon the paper, and Hoshi all but screamed for her to hold it still, but the memories were coming faster now, rushing over her and moving so fast she couldn't gather her thoughts for even a second.

Discovering what some of the human scientists had been doing behind her back and right under her nose and confronting them, telling them that they'd put all of their lives in danger.

Releasing report after report to the United Earth fleet, all tempered with benign information about comets and nebulas, with the necessary information about the Romulan ships they saw lurking nearby sprinkled in.

The knowledge of their impending doom growing more and more present by the day, but being powerless to do anything about it.

And finally, the day of the attack, bursting into her office in a hail of weapons fire, desperately rooting through drawers until she found what she was looking for: that piece of paper with the coordinates written on them, faded with time. There couldn't be any physical evidence. She didn't hesitate, retrieving a match and setting it alight.

In the muted glow of the emergency lights, she could feel her urgency, her need to get below ground and meet with her colleagues, the steady thrum of a reminder that it's time, it's time, it's time.

For as long as she was alive, she could not stop. She could not rest.

Hoshi cried out from the pain of the impending loss, of the understanding of her obligation and duty, but forced herself to keep her eyes open.

Together, she and Yuris began to recite a long string of numbers in one, unbroken breath, which Trip captured into his tricorder. A second later, the doctor disengaged from their mind meld, reeling back and all but throwing the cortical monitor across the room. He was very clearly distressed, something he was having a difficult time hiding, but Hoshi was in tears, in horror at what she'd just witnessed.

In the space between them, he reached for her hand, and she took it, squeezing tightly. "Captain, we need to go. I believe there's a-"

"See for yourself," he insisted, passing the tricorder into her line of sight. "There's nothing there."

Yuris shook his head slowly. "No," he said with a great deal of reverence. "There's something there. I am sure of it, perhaps even a-"

"Who? Who's got something there?" Ethan was still monitoring their vital signs, noticing with satisfaction that they were stabilizing.

"We do!"

"Lieutenant, how can you be sure?"

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life." She choked back a sob, and he could feel her shaking, trying and failing to maintain her composure. "We're hiding something, and...oh my God!"

With some difficulty, he shifted to one side and retrieved his communicator, the words of the dead repeating over and over again in his mind giving him pause.

This can only happen one way.

Everything we've done here is for the good of the alliance.

If you still think this is a game, you haven't been listening.

"Tucker to Hutchison."

"Hutch here."

"Divert course, best speed. We'll be transmitting coordinates shortly."

"Sir?"

"Did you hear me, Ensign?" He hesitated, feeling the eyes of three of his senior officers on him. With the full weight of his command bearing down on him, he pressed on: "We're not going to make that rendezvous after all."

---

All things considered, Malcolm decided he could get quite used to being seven feet tall.

Every step felt like a marathon, and he almost stumbled over his feet more than once, which didn't exactly do wonders to maintain their cover. He still felt very much like he was in his own body, but every time he caught his reflection in a shop window, he was taken aback by his appearance, the long, silvery hair trailing down his back and the reddish freckles that seemed to cover every inch of exposed skin. He could feel one of the knives Alira lent him pressing into his waistband, but when he looked down, it wasn't there, replaced with the voluminous robes and leather sandals worn by a majority of the civilians around them.

They moved easily through the crowd, keeping their heads down and eyes trained towards the ground. Several times they passed groups of soldiers or private police on street corners-really, they were virtually distinguishable in their reflective black armor-but didn't seem to draw very much attention, which he was eternally grateful for.

In the minutes after they adopted their new identities, he and Alira had poured over the PADD they'd stolen from Varox, desperately trying to make some sense of the diagrams and schematics they found there. The UTs she'd brought along with them were only good for auditory translation, and not for the first time, Malcolm found himself wishing they'd been able to bring their own instruments along.

It didn't matter; from a series of coordinates, they identified the launch site for Varox's ship as a transport station clear on the opposite side of the city, and departed immediately, knowing there wasn't a moment to lose. As Alira pointed out, due to the sheer amount of time they'd worked together, he would likely anticipate her coming after him, and take every step to depart the system long before they could intervene.

And if what they suspected turned out to be true, they absolutely, positively couldn't let that happen.

At some point the adobe buildings and the cobblestone streets and the wildflowers and the greenery began to bleed together, and he repeatedly asked her if she knew where she was going, receiving a series of reproachful looks and rude gestures hidden halfway behind her sleeves. He didn't know they were at the transport station until they were practically on top of it, and the great glass dome of the roof rose high above them, charred and pockmarked with what he suspected to be years of weapons fire as successive regimes fought for control of the city.

The line to get in seemed to go on forever; soon, he came to the conclusion that everyone was being searched and inspected all over again, and the thought of it terrified him, especially as they witnessed another young man being dragged away, kicking and screaming, before being unceremoniously thrown into the back of a waiting vehicle, which quickly sped away.

There had to be another way.

She followed him around the side of the line, and together they wedged themselves against the door, hoping to enter with the crush of people who seemed to be running late to their destinations. They soon found themselves in the middle of a jostling crowd, and Alira's hand shot out, retrieving two boarding passes from an unsuspecting gentleman's pocket when his back was turned.

His eyes danced over the characters written there, not being able to make sense of it for a moment, but hoping it belonged to someone at least somewhat close to his age and appearance.

At last they broke through to the interior of the building, taking in the impossibly high ceilings, gray walls, and lines and lines of people stretching as far as the eye could see, all progressing through multiple checkpoints. Malcolm's heart immediately dropped through his stomach, and despite the urgency of their situation, he began to formulate a plan.

His thoughts were interrupted by a very agitated member of the regime's police force, who was quite insistent on seeing their documentation.

"Of course, sir," Alira replied, deliberately forcing her voice into a lower octave. He snatched the paper from her hand and held it up to the light, his eyes darting back and forth between her and the text. She knew he was looking at just another male of his species, but she couldn't help but feel that he could see right through her.

"Right. And just where are you going today...ma'am?"

Damn it all.

Instantly, her heart began to race, something she could not control. Her lips parted, and she wondered if he could sense her unease.

Behind them, as if on cue, the man she'd stolen from realized his boarding passes were missing, and quickly lashed out at the person standing closest to him. His female companion was attempting to hold him back, but he was furious, and before they knew it, a fist fight had broken out.

Several wayward blows struck people around them, and soon they joined in, layer by layer, until the crowd of citizens near the door was nothing but a mass of kicks and punches, screams and threats of violence.

They weren't the only ones to seize the opportunity to break through the line; there were young people and children and couples all pushing forward, making a mad dash for it, eventually causing a panic among those who were waiting at additional checkpoints, causing a veritable stampede towards the boarding platforms.

All around them, soldiers were blowing their whistles and waving their weapons around, threatening certain death unless they all stopped moving, stood stock still, immediately, right now. The general attitude among the residents of the capital, however, was that they certainly couldn't catch all of us.

She reached for his hand and held on for dear life, to avoid being separated in the resulting panic more than anything. All around them, people were screaming and falling and being trampled over, and more than once they nearly were wrenched apart, lost in the throng of runaways bursting over the tracks.

The trains were old fashioned, still sitting on wheels, boosted with a small impulse engine mounted to the front and the back of each carriage. They generated a great deal of black smoke, which was momentarily suffocating, clogging the platform and adjacent corridors.

Breaking free of the crowd, they pressed themselves against the wall, if only for a moment, desperately trying to catch their bearings. The PADD came out of the pocket of her robe, and she squinted at the diagram there, fighting the intense watering in her eyes.

"According to this, the only way we can reach from this side it is through the third tunnel, about a quarter kilometer deep. There's an access port in the wall."

He shook his head, taking into account the width of the train and the passageway. "Once that carriage starts moving, it'll mow us down in seconds. We won't have room to stand to one side."

The compartments were growing full; she could see that from her vantage point, but wasn't willing to wait another second.

"Then we'd better be quick about it."

He didn't have time to convince her otherwise. In the next second she'd flown over the edge of the platform onto the rails, sidestepping spikes and bits of ballast.

And to think, in a bit of lovestruck fervor, he'd once told her that he'd follow her into hell if she asked.

At the moment, he very much regretted telling her that.

The inside of the tunnel was sparsely illuminated with emergency lighting along the walls; she moved quickly and with purpose, eyes trained on the panels on either side of them. A moment later, they heard the train whistle, and she startled, nearly dropping the PADD in the process.

At last, right when he'd resolved to drag her back to the platform by her ankles if she refused to go willingly, she stopped in her tracks, crying out and stepping to one side. He could see that the port had been accessed recently, and in a frenzy they began trying every single biometric key they'd stolen from the soldiers back at Varox's base, to no avail.

"They've scrambled the access codes," she shouted, almost inaudibly over the train's wheels grinding on the tracks behind them. "We're going to have to-"

"Step back!" He swiftly pushed back one of his sleeves, revealing her diverter shield strapped to his forearm. With a press of a button, it unsheathed, and soon he was whaling away at the metallic surface of the door, striking it repeatedly with the sum of his strength, the reverberations from the impact shaking him to his core.

He began to kick up sparks, and Alira took a step back, turning on her heels and peering into the darkness. In the distance, she could barely see the reflection of the train's headlights coming into view, and she instinctively clenched at her chest, terrified.

They'd made a dent in the door, but nothing wide enough for a person to get through, and they were both beginning to lose hope. Knowing full well that it likely wouldn't matter anyway, Malcolm was suddenly seized by the futile nature of his actions, and grew angry, boiling mad, absolutely furious at the conditions of this war, the wicked tendencies of men, his own inherent nature that lead him to seek a life among the stars in the first place.

She was screaming at him, but he couldn't even begin to understand what she was saying. She wrenched him backwards and latched onto the door handle, pulling with all her might, praying indiscriminately for a miracle.

At the moment he joined her efforts, the train made its final curve into the tunnel, picking up momentum and bearing down on them with increasing velocity. The headlights caught his eyes, and the horn filled his ears, and his brain was preparing for death.

A death that never came.

The door swinging open almost threw them across the tunnel altogether, but they held fast, scrambling through the opening. They fell together onto the cold floor of a darkened room, and a split second later, the train zoomed past, shearing the hatch off its bearings and creating a nearly unbearable screech of metal against the walls.

She reached out to him in an instant, and he was frantic, taking hold of her arms and shaking her with force. "What are you doing? We could have both been-"

"We're alive," she reminded him, reaching out to trace the lines of his face with her hands. Even though at the moment she very much didn't look like herself, he could see the relief shining in her eyes, and it tempered his response, cooling the fires of rage.

It took a moment, but they soon realized they were surrounded by storage containers, just as they had been at Varox's base. It was quiet, almost eerily silent, and they both took measures to calm their rapid breathing, rising slowly to their feet.

"There's got to be another entrance," she remarked, as if that wasn't just about the most obvious thing in the world.

"One of these boxes should have weapons in them. We need to arm ourselves." Together they descended further into the warehouse, looking left and right, dearly hoping they weren't about to run into anyone. "Now that we're in his inner sanctum, I'd like to know what your master plan is."

"I'll let you know as we go," she said, and that aggravated him to no end.

"No, absolutely not." Alira stopped in her tracks, and in her male form, turning to him and threw her hands up in exasperation, in anticipation of what he was about to say. "I've been following you into misadventure all day. This time, I'm going to lead."

She stepped aside and made a grand, overdramatic gesture towards the far end of the wall. "Be my guest."

Her sarcasm notwithstanding, once they started moving again, Malcolm had to admit he had no idea where in the hell he was going. They walked for what seemed like hours but was actually minutes, before breaking into a clearing where all the containers had been pushed to one side, filled with soldiers calling out to one another and moving crates and conducting final mission checks.

The centerpiece to their latest challenge was a sleek cargo ship, elegant in its design and presumed function, the hull plating black as the darkest night.

Immediately, he knew it was exactly what they were looking for. He led her around the side of the circle, and the next time two Xantoras guards came strolling into the darkness, they found themselves on the receiving end of a lights-out punch.

Seconds later, two new soldiers were joining the throng, pushing through the crowd and striding up the gangplank with no fanfare whatsoever.

The interior of the Xantoras ship was dark, incredibly opaque, replete with reflective deck plating and shadows in the corner of every room. Malcolm lead the way, following a guard toting two cases into a smaller cargo bay adjoining the main hallway.

The ceilings were lower here, and they almost had to duck to avoid striking their heads. She immediately noticed that the labels on the characters were in Denobulan, Varox's regional dialect, and she furrowed her brows, desperately willing her adrenaline-addled brain to come up with a translation, but coming up empty.

They moved deeper into the room until they could no longer hear the chatter of the other soldiers and she began to take her time, tracing the characters and racking her memory for clues. She could tell that the containers were pressurized, and very likely refrigerated, leaving ice crystals all over her outstretched fingers.

Suddenly, realization struck her like a lightning bolt, and she cried out, covering her hand with her mouth. Before he could react, she moved to the next one, then the next one, then the next, until she was visibly shaking, utterly shocked by what she'd just read.

Malcolm was there in an instant, begging her to shed some light on the situation. She held up four fingers, then lowered them one by one, intoning: "Deuterium, tritium, plutonium, uranium. All the materials necessary for a-"

"Hydrogen bomb," he concluded, suddenly feeling very faint himself. "Where could they possibly be taking this?"

"In such high quantities. It makes me think that…"

"What they were building…"

"There's no mistaking it. It's going to be for…"

"The World Ender." Their realization was simultaneous, tragic, and horrific.

It was quickly interrupted by the intercom overhead. "All hands perform final pre-launch checks. Stand by for engine ignition."

"We've got to get out of here," Malcolm asserted, breaking free and taking several steps towards the door before he realized she wasn't following.

Alira was shaking her head slowly, back and forth. "You're wrong. We need to find out where they're going and stop them."

"And then do what? Take over the ship?"

The look in her eye told him she was incredibly committed to the idea, and for once, he couldn't fathom it. He was about to dive headfirst into another argument, to try and reason with her, when they heard the distinct sound of boots on the deck plating.

Suddenly he was moving, looking for any crate that was unlatched and not full of radioactive materials. She whispered frantically, saying that they were better off fighting, but in her heart she knew that they couldn't take on all of them.

When he located one, he lifted the lid with the greatest amount of care, peering inside. When he'd confirmed that there was nothing inside but some old transporter parts, he pointed towards her, then aggressively indicated the open container.

"No way. I'm not doing that."

"Beloved, any other day I'd argue with you, but this time, I've got to insist. Now-"

"Malcolm-"

"Get in the crate!" He hissed, and with the sound of footsteps bearing down on them, she complied. He followed suit, closing the lid above them.

When the ship's first officer entered the last row of cargo in the hold, he was greeted with silence. He ran his fingers contemplatively across the latches of the containers, ensuring they were secure and not about to shift during flight.

It was to be their fourth run for their new clients.

There couldn't be any mistakes this time.

Right before he was about to retreat to the bridge, he located an open latch and seized it between his hands. For one eternal moment, they were terrified he was going to check inside, but he only closed the loop, pulling out his communicator and informing their leader: "Cargo hold secure."

Neither spoke for a few minutes, for long after they felt his footsteps retreating into the corridor. They heard the exterior hatch close, then at the moment the deck plating jolted underneath them, Alira whispered: "Do you want the bad news, or the even worse news?"

Truthfully, he didn't think things could get any worse, so he didn't say anything.

"That was us taking off."

"And?"

"Pretty sure this container only unlocks from the outside."

End of Episode Eighteen

---

Next time on Enterprise...

Episode Nineteen: The World Ender

The undercover mission continues with renewed urgency. Maelstrom seeks out a mysterious set of coordinates and runs into some familiar faces. Enterprise is pursued through a nebula by a hybrid battalion.