A/N: Welcome back! Thanks for the comments and support. The season finale of Lower Decks was amazing; my headcanon is that Riker is Chef, and Faith of the Heart is the title sequence that plays over the beginning of every episode of his holonovel. I still won't acknowledge TATV as canon, and I know I'm not alone in that! I'm sure that program contains a few historical inaccuracies...
This episode calls back to ENT 2x03 Minefield. I've attempted here to reconstruct those events from the enemy's perspective, as well as include some Q-type shenanigans from the universe's worst temporal agent. This cloaking device is a precursor to the one stolen in TOS 3x04 The Enterprise Incident. The idea of a warp detection grid comes from the pocket novels, but this time, the shoe's on the other foot.
Stray thoughts from this episode: Kirk may have been known as a menace to the Department of Temporal Investigations, but Archer's definitely got to be up there. I can also rest well knowing that no one ships Malira more than Phlox. We've named all of our Section 31 players for the rest of this season and the next; may or may not have thrown a big red herring in here about the season finale.
Next time...desperate times call for desperate measures, and the Section's at the end of their rope. We learn what happened to Alira's father, and Captain Pritchard continues to chase her great white whale.
Season Five
Episode Twenty-One: Battle of Barisa VI
Enterprise Captain's Log, August 26th, 2156: We are en route to rendezvous with the fleet ahead of our planned invasion of Barisa VI. Starfleet Command had authorized us to use all necessary force to drive the Romulans out of the system.
"Are you sure this thing is going to be safe?"
Crewman Bennett's question reached him from all the way across the room; it was the third time she'd asked that in just as many hours, but now, it truly gave him pause.
He took a step back and propped his hands on his hips, turning this way and that. Over the course of the past few weeks, the armory and science brigades had expanded into a disused targeting range at the back of the chamber, transforming the space from a handful of lanes situated around holographic projectors to a veritable concrete and lead sarcophagus ready for their first shipment of nuclear warheads from Salvare Station.
After two full years of development under the cloak of secrecy and the threat of scandal, they were finally prepared for distribution; as Malcolm understood it, Section 31 had been orchestrating stolen shipments of Triton class spatial torpedoes from Jupiter Station through Starbase 1. This had been overseen by Captain Al-Shahrani of the Phoenix, stationmaster Commander Zhang and, mostly shockingly of all, their old friend Captain Hernandez.
At first he'd been disbelieving of the idea that she'd arranged first contact with the Solnarans just to get a hold of their natural dilithium deposits and brought in two nuclear weapon specialists to head off the mining effort, all under their noses and in plain sight. He hadn't wanted to acknowledge that it had all gone wrong and ended in the near total destruction of that world, and the death of Alira's mother and dozens of other innocent scientists at Kandar. Nevertheless, citing strategic advantage and the need to even the playing field, they'd pressed on, their plan only being laid bare when Captain Tucker forged into their space following the eventual decoding of the station's computer core.
He'd spent hours agonizing over it, and he was positive every other tactical officer in the fleet had as well - sure, they were presently limited to using these nuclear warheads in the capacity as flash-bangs in open space to confuse the enemy's sensors, but he could readily visualize a not too distant future where they'd be destroying Romulan settlements. Most terrifying of all, he could imagine a plethora of scenarios where he could see himself justifying it; he'd already done horrific things in the name of the war just in the first six months, so he hated to wonder what lay just over the horizon.
And to think that years ago, he'd fervently professed to Trip during a traumatic experience on Shuttlepod One that he wasn't the Grim Reaper or the angel of death, that he desperately wanted to preserve life just as much as he did.
It was incredible, appalling really, just how the meaning of those words had been tempered by the passage of time.
He hadn't set foot outside the armory in over fourteen hours; already, he felt a little unsteady on his feet, bleary eyed, and the lettering on the consoles all around them were starting to run together. Some time ago, he'd rolled up his sleeves to the elbow; it was a running joke among the officers who had served with him since the beginning that this was how they knew he meant business. He hadn't shaved in a few days, and his hair was slightly disheveled, indicative of the tremendous amount of sleep he'd lost over the past few weeks.
Building their isolation chamber had required painstaking, meticulous work, and at times the presence of the science crew had been more of a hindrance than a help. They laughed and caroused and joked around, though he had to admit they were as diligent and industrious as his own brigade. Over the course of the day, various specialists trickled in and out before disappearing altogether, leaving their fearless leader behind to finish the job.
Lieutenant Cutler was presently emerging from underneath one of the heavy iron wrought storage units, scooting out on her back onto the deck plating. She was moving slowly, as though she was underwater, and he could see the weariness in her expression even around her worn NX-01 baseball cap, which was pulled down low over her eyes. It was rapidly approaching 2300 hours, and, like him, she hadn't so much as taken a break all day.
That wouldn't stop her, however, from coming to his aide. "It's got to be," she replied, offering Shelby an apologetic shrug. She smiled softly and stepped out of the doorway, and a second later, the buzz of her sonic hacksaw resumed.
There was a weighty silence, then Liz pitched forward, bracing her hands on her knees and heaving a massive sigh. She rubbed the back of her neck, touched her toes, then righted herself, affording him a long-suffering glance. "How about some dinner?"
"Will the doctor be joining us?"
"Naturally. He's already asked if you'll be there…" She trailed off, moving to collect her PADD from a nearby shelf. Her eyes danced across her notifications. "...four times."
In spite of himself, he smiled, shaking his head. Meeting Phlox for the evening meal (which was more like a midnight snack) had become somewhat of a routine over the past few weeks as they built the isolation chamber; normally, the good doctor was alone during gamma shift while everyone else was sleeping. Once, he'd confided in him that he used to show up for breakfast at 0500 hours and wait for the first members of the crew to appear in the mess hall, a habit which was greatly reduced over the years with the company of their science officer in his life.
Malcolm knew that the Denobulans were an incredibly social and outgoing species. They lived communally, in family compounds of fifty people or more, which sounded like his own personal hell. They wore their hearts on their sleeves; he could always tell when Alira was angry without her even having to say anything, and could also tell that they were both deeply concerned about the impending invasion of Barisa VI.
She'd said over and over that it was only ten light years from Teerza Prime and fifteen from Denobula, repeating it like a mantra or sacred recitation, if only to remind herself of the critical nature of their mission. Phlox, by contrast, avoided discussing it like the plague, though by this point, it was completely unavoidable.
Their home system, once closed to newly arriving ships, was now closed to off-worlders altogether. Like many unaffiliated species in the quadrant, they seemed to take the news that the Romulans and the Terrans were developing nuclear weapons very seriously. The underground fallout shelters, disused for over ten thousand years, were once again active. Alira's younger brother, a law enforcement officer in the capital, had sent her a video of him standing in the empty streets among towering skyscrapers during a mandatory drill, the sirens wailing discordantly from the heavens.
It reminded him of the levels of fear and paranoia that persisted on Earth during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Blitz of World War II; his great grandfather six times over had lived through the bombings as a child, and wrote at length of the terror he experienced, of the fortitude he saw in the faces all around him. Now, he realized, could be no different. None of them knew what the next day or even the next hour could hold. The Romulans could blast them out of the sky at any time, and once their first shipment arrived, they return the favor.
The only difference was that now, he and two other members of the crew would be the ones holding the launch codes.
He was lying if he said it didn't leave him feeling a little unsettled.
"Far be it for me to disappoint the doctor…" He trailed off, and she looked at him curiously. "We really ought to correct the radius on that final turn. We wouldn't want one of these missiles to go flying the second Ensign Pascal banks a hard turn."
"Why can't we wait to assign that to someone in the morning?"
"Why can't we do it now?" Malcolm waited for her to protest, and when she didn't, tossed a hyperspanner into her hands. "It'll take five minutes."
Liz sighed somewhat dramatically, then turned away from him and retreated to the far corner of the room. He'd been brushing up on nuclear protocols from decades-old wars, and had resolved not to allow anyone in the chamber unless they were wearing a full EV suit. Even though the Corsettis claimed their torpedoes were fully shielded and stable, he was reluctant to believe them, and didn't want to take any chances with the wellbeing of his brigade. As such, they had developed a system of mechanical arms and conveyors to remove the missiles from their storage units and transport them across the room, before depositing them into their launch tubes, all without having to make contact with it at any point.
Although he knew it was a pipe dream, he dearly hoped the system they'd gone to such painstaking trouble to design would go unused for as long as possible.
She approached the conveyer and squinted, studying the point where the tracks disappeared into the wall. Sure enough, it was set at an angle, and if they were going to come across the kind of turbulence they'd seen during their encounter with the battalion in the Bowerman Nebula, it was going to cause an issue.
Without pause, she inhaled quickly, then dropped to her knees, groaning loudly. The tiny light affixed to the end of the tool came on, and she began to saw away at the point where the tracks were counterbalanced with tension wires, hoping to be able to pull it up and through the rivets that ran the length of the line.
"You know, that's one thing they don't tell you about reaching a certain age." She glanced up at him, already knowing where this was going. "Welcome to your thirties, you're tired all the time and everything hurts."
Liz huffed, hiding her laughter behind her hand. Her birthday had been just last month, and the entirety of senior staff had been poking fun at her for it. Truthfully, within the confines of her mind she still felt eighteen, though her body sometimes stubbornly refused to cooperate. She suspected that would remain the case for the rest of her life.
"At least I'm not pushing forty." He cut her a look of thinly veiled consternation, and she smiled mischievously. "Sir."
Now that wasn't fair. He still had a few years left, something he was keen to remind his sister every time she teased him about being old. Still, with his birthday approaching, his own mortality had been weighing heavily on his mind. "Wait until you're north of thirty-five, then maybe you'll be a little more sympathetic."
"Can't wait." The cable she'd been lasering through snapped, and he reached forward, holding it as she threaded it through the undercarriage. "You know, Phlox has been telling me just how difficult the one-twenties have been hitting him."
The longevity of the Denobulans was another issue entirely, one that had been keeping him up at night. He hadn't wanted to bring it up with anyone for fear that he was just being foolish about the entire thing, but perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, or how much he valued Liz's opinion and counsel, but he decided not to bite his tongue any longer.
"Do you ever worry about the fact that he's going to outlive you by a hundred years or more?"
The wire stopped moving.
For a fraction of a second, Malcolm thought she was about to snap; she tensed up, then all but retreated into herself. When she looked up at him, her eyes were shining with tears. She smiled carefully, shaking her head. "You know, I try not to think about it."
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant, I just…"
"It's alright!" She insisted, though he could tell from her expression that it very much wasn't. They were both exhausted, with their emotions close to the surface. He should have known better than to say anything at all. The wire resumed its motion, until she was able to flatten the conveyer flush with the track and loop it through the clamps far below. Liz stood, shaking out her shoulders. "I mean, it's not important."
He looked at her curiously, expectantly, but wisely kept his mouth shut.
"It's about being happy right now, enjoying what we have in the moment." The hyperspanner passed hands again, and he held onto it, running his fingers over it contemplatively. "My grandmother always used to say, don't postpone joy. It's not worth it. You know that."
All too well.
By the time she finished speaking, her voice was nearly a whisper, and she was avoiding his gaze altogether. He wanted to reach out to her, to afford both of them some physical comfort, but thought better of it. And so they stood there for a moment, a million moments, each wanting to say something but not finding the words to do so. Suddenly the external doors of the armory opened behind them, and he went to answer it, gratefully for the temporary distraction.
He found the Captain and the Commodore standing just inside the chamber, their heads bent towards one another, looking for all the world as though they were having a silent conversation. He knew they were close, perhaps just as colleagues and friends, though rumors abounded that they were close as he and his former second were, something he promptly decided was none of his business. They were standing at a professional distance apart, though every time he looked at her, his expression softened, and his eyes seemed to sparkle, as though they reflected the moon and the stars.
He knew that look. It was difficult to miss.
"You're up late." It was Crewman Bennett, and she'd shut off her torch and set aside her welding helmet, regarding their COs with a warm smile.
"We'll be arriving on the outskirts of the Barisa system within twelve hours," T'Pol said without preamble. "Is the armory prepared?"
"Of course, ma'am." They'd all been working double time to batten down the hatches ahead of their attempt to retake that region of space from the Romulans, but he'd seen to it that they would be ready, come hell or high water.
"And the cloak?"
That was another matter entirely. Malcolm was loath to say that they hadn't made much progress with it all since stealing it from the enemy marauders at that Vulcan surplus depot. He knew it was made to interface with the relay that initiated the hull plating sequence, but couldn't for the life of him figure out how.
It hadn't just been him; he'd gotten Liz on it, and the Rosners, their resident computer specialists, as well as Anna and Kov. Their chief engineer had some fun chasing her second around the room with it, even though he threatened to steal it and use it to cloak everything in her office once she had her back turned.
Admiral Gardner had been eager for them to decipher the source codes and reconfigure it for mass reproduction. The only way to get on an even footing with the enemy, or so he claimed, was to take a page out of their playbook and expand it fleetwide.
That very prospect was ethically flawed, and in his opinion, very dangerous.
It shouldn't have been this difficult. They'd studied a Suliban cloaking device before at length, but it was nowhere near as complex as the one they now held in the armory. He wanted to explain that to the Captain, but didn't want to offer excuses, only results.
"We've got it working on short range." Lieutenant Cutler said, traversing the room towards the table where the cloaking device was spread out, hooked up to various instruments. Earlier in the day, in the throes of a migraine, she'd demanded that the scanning rate be turned down, and his brigade had complied, though now that they were right next to it, it was nonetheless deafening.
"Does it function similarly to our own deflector shielding?"
"Yes and no." Shelby was moving the barrier in place, a thick duranium plate with thermal insulation on either side. "Our shields create a layer of energetic distortion containing gravitons around our saucer section. They bend gravity and therefore deflect whatever weapons come our way, at least in theory."
Malcolm grimaced. The weaknesses of their shielding was well known; it was based off of an Andorian prototype riddled with redundancies and broken lines of code, and it often went down within the first few volleys of weapons fire during a conflict. He and damn near every other tactical officer in the fleet had put in their hours, until it became abundantly clear to them that it would probably be best to start over from scratch.
"This device reflects instead of deflects all of the space around it. From Kandar's scans, we know that their EPS gridlines emit the most power along the outermost edge of the hull. That's where we see the discrepancy, and that's why we could see their outlines when we were traveling through the nebula."
If only they could encounter the enemy in a cloud full of ionized gas every single time.
That would be awfully convenient.
Liz flipped a switch off the side of the table, and the giant crystalline globe began to glow and hum even louder, seeming to pulsate as it lay before them. It added to the deafening cacophony of instruments, and she saw little need to shout over the din, leaning forward and inserting her arm into the beam.
It vanished instantly, and the Captain's eyebrows twitched upward by a fraction of a centimeter. Experimentally, she began to move her hand around and wiggle her fingers, flexing her elbow but not seeing the resulting motion in her forearm. If they looked just closely enough, they could all make out the barest suggestion of her palm, though for all intents and purposes, it was gone.
"Incredible," Jonathan marveled quietly, then cut her a bemused glance. "When you joined us as a Crewman, did you think you'd wind up doing something like this?"
"No, sir," she answered earnestly, then leaned forward until her entire arm vanished up to the shoulder. From mild-mannered entomologist to the invisible woman.
All it took was an extraordinary tour of death and destruction along the away.
Shelby reversed the beam, and her arm started to reappear, first just in washes of color, then in shapes, until it emerged from subspace, clad in her uniform and undershirt.
"How close are we to shipwide integration?"
"Not very close, ma'am," he admitted, and Shelby looked away, ducking her head towards the deck plating. "I understand that Admiral Gardner has set a deadline for us, but if only we could have a little more-"
Suddenly he was seized by a wave of dizziness, one which caused the assembled officers to shift before his eyes. Simultaneously, the Captain faltered, rocking forward and nearly falling into the table.
Liz reacted swiftly, grabbing his elbow and studying his expression. It was gone in a second, but he seemed inexplicably weakened, all the color drained from his face.
Are you okay? The words reached T'Pol through their bond, and she nodded, dropping her face into her hands and rubbing at her eyes. It was an uncharacteristically casual gesture, but mirrored the sheer apprehension that was washing over her.
I believe I may be fatigued, she replied. Mr. Reed is likely in a similar predicament.
Jonathan felt her anxiety, and it affected him just as deeply, though he hid it well behind a smile. "I'll speak to him. Everyone's got a lot on their plate, and he's got to understand that."
"Thank you, sir. If you don't mind..."
"Get some rest, Mr. Reed." He took one step to the side, and T'Pol followed him, before breaking free and leading the way to the hatch. "All of you. That's an order."
Maelstrom Captain's Log, August 26th, 2156: The situation on Barisa VI is looking more dire by the minute, and it's become apparent that we need to act now. This means forging ahead without the Enterprise, which definitely throws a wrench into our plans.
Julia stepped into the wardroom and into a veritable horde of officers.
She immediately spotted the Andorian contingency; they were posted up near the door, arguing loudly amongst themselves. Shran's voice cut through the noise, loud and harsh, shaking his fist at a fellow Captain who had apparently insulted his honor for the last time. The other two COs waited with baited breath, as though they were ready to jump in at any moment, to switch loyalties and draw lines in the sand. Really, it was behavior she would've more expected out of the Tellarites, though they seemed perfectly content to pick at the refreshments at the far corner of the room, treating anyone and everyone who glanced their way to a reproachful snarl.
Captain Graseka, the field director of the Tellarite Star Battalion, jumped out to her immediately. He was short and stout, but imposing nonetheless, and was apparently a close associate of their tactical officer from her time in the Denobulan Infantry. She made a mental note to remember this association, and to use it at a later time to their advantage.
Three Vulcans stood off to one side, dressed in the sharply tailored uniforms of the High Command with their hands clasped behind their backs. She could see Captain Pritchard attempting to avail them with what was most likely an amusing anecdote about the circumstances of their meeting, only to give up and join two of her officers at the table. One of them turned, and realization struck her with force.
She rushed across the room, and when they locked eyes, her old friend reacted, surging forward and drawing her into a tight hug.
She was as tall and wiry as she remembered, with a crooked smile and an added air of experience that differentiated her from the young officer she once knew. When they'd served aboard the Shenandoah, they were practically inseparable, and now that they were reunited, she couldn't imagine a better surprise to cheer her up before they went charging into harm's way.
"How are you, gorgeous?" She held her at arm's length, affording her a winning smile. "I almost didn't recognize you! You look so happy!"
"That I am, for the most part," she admitted, catching a glimpse of a familiar blonde ponytail out of the corner of her eye. She whistled, and Alira nodded, breaking through the crowd in an attempt to get to them.
It took a couple of seconds, and more than a few half-hearted apologies and gentle shoves, but she finally reached them, introducing herself and shaking her hand.
"Lieutenant Rachel Garcia, chief tactical officer from the Cochrane." She paused, glancing over her shoulder towards the swirling trails of ionized gas of the Karonid Nebula behind them. It was a truly spellbinding sight, and if they weren't presently hiding out preparing to mount a historic counterattack, she might have found the time to admire it, the towering spires of green and orange and blue. "I understand that you'll be my partner in crime for the ground invasion. It's great to put a name with a face!"
"At least until the Enterprise gets here. Have you had the time to review the final revisions to the plan?"
"I have." The hatch opened from the far corner of the room, and Julia saw the Captain enter. They locked eyes and he shook his head, causing her heart to sink. "Any chance of getting Mr. Reed to sign off on contingency plan 6B?"
"About that-"
"Give it another try, Ensign. I'm sure he can be convinced."
She smiled, her tone affecting a note of incredulity. "I don't think I have the sway over him that you think I do, ma'am."
"Better you than me," she mumbled and dropped a hand on her shoulder, before taking her leave of them and retreating to the head of the table.
Trip was ready before she was even at his side, passing a PADD into her hands. Their heads came together, and he whispered: "They're not going to make it."
"By how long?"
"Pascal doesn't know. They're having engine troubles, and he thinks they've wandered into some kind of subspace-"
"Mr. Tucker!" Shran was there in an instant, rubbing his hands together and gesturing around the room. "What are we waiting for, the Romulans to come to us?"
They'd made everyone wait for long enough, and they both knew it. In the absence of the Commodore, Trip knew he was going to be responsible for briefing the fleet, thousands of people spread across NXes and Daedalus classes and patrols and other alliance vessels, and what he said was going to be absolute law, providing them with their deliverance or almost certain death.
Similarly, Julia was fully prepared to step into the shoes of Captain T'Pol, though the look on her face distinctly said otherwise. Trip said something, but she couldn't even pretend to hear it, retreating to the far wall and stepping up to the main computer display.
As if on cue, a weighty, somber silence descended over the room. The assembled officers turned to offer them their full attention, creating an intricate mosaic of uniforms and ranks and strained expressions, all waiting to hear the worst.
"We've just received word that the Enterprise will be delayed. Our initial attack formation will need to be a hundred thousand kilometers forward from what was in our last communique." Trip advanced the screen, and the ships drawn there were pulled towards the surface of Barisa VI, leaving little room for the enemy vessels to mount an escape. "To compensate for the change in firepower, we'll need to move the Sharosta and the Varan to the left flank."
Across the room, two captains, Tellarite and Vulcan, nodded to show they understood. Julia rotated the viewing axis until they were facing the opposite side of the planet, which was currently cloaked in darkness. "The Pilgrim is currently in a geosynchronous orbit around Barisa VI, with everything turned off but life support. They've provided us with detailed readings and scans of the Romulan fleet. Even with the Enterprise gone, we outnumber them two to one."
"How can we be sure they have not detected us here?" It took her a moment to locate the source of the question, but when she did, she beheld the severe expression of a female Andorian officer, her arms crossed over her chest confrontationally. Immediately, Julia felt ill at ease, and knew that whatever she said, she wasn't going to like it.
"We all approached from the far side of the nebula, emitting neutrino pulses to scramble their sensors," Trip explained, pinning her down under his gaze. He recognized her from their ill-fated visit to Andoria; Captain Namara had order the murder of their offensive fleet leader to assume the position herself, and tried to frame Shran to derail the Coalition talks entirely. Due to the eleventh hour actions of their away team, she hadn't gotten away with it, and he had a feeling her presence here was more out of obligation than of free will. "This nebula gives off a molecular dispersion field, and their patrols are spaced out every six hours. They haven't passed anywhere near us, but that could change if we wait even one more second for the Enterprise to show up."
He waited for the UTs spaced around the room to catch up, listening to his voice repeated over and over again in Andorian, Tellarite, Vulcan, and various United Earth dialects. It seemed to catalyze a few of them, and there was a murmur of dissent among the room, once which he knew needed to be quashed as soon as possible.
"I question the wisdom behind the sneak attack when our numbers are higher than theirs."
"I'm afraid the time for discussion of our plan of attack has passed," Julia asserted, and met her gaze, feeling the fire in her eyes from across the room.
If looks could kill…
Shran cleared his throat loudly, affording them what she assumed to be the equivalent of a thumbs-up, garnering the ire of his companion. The other Andorians with them seemed to remain impassive, though Trip could tell they were clearly boiling from within.
"We're damn lucky that the World Ender they used to attack the colony was destroyed in the firefight. We've got the High Command to thank for that." The trio of Vulcan captains, all of which had survived the first battle, scarcely reacted at all. "The biggest obstacle for us will be entering the system without triggering their warp detection grid. Through long range scans, we've identified the relay beacon which, if disabled, will take down the entire network. The load bearing wall, if you will."
Somewhere in the crowd, Julia could hear someone moving around, then Novakovich stepped into the fray, toting an armful of PADDs. He looked towards her for encouragement, and when she nodded, he called out: "These most closely resemble the lateral sensor relays on our Daedalus class vessels. I've deconstructed at least half a dozen of these. If we can get to the computer core, I can trip the transmitter and make it seem like a signal clear on the other side of the system was triggered. The entire beacon can be disabled within fifteen minutes' time."
"And just how are you planning on getting over there?" It was Captain Pritchard, and she was smiling faintly, indicating she already knew the answer, but was attempting to encourage them.
Julia zoomed in, exposing the miniscule dots that represented their patrols interspersed among the front lines. Ethan continued: "The Seafarer will take us as far as the barrier and beam Hammond and I out. It'll be a spacewalk from there. Since the grid will pick up warp, impulse, or thrusters, we'll turn off all engines and coast through on our own momentum, before kicking up a cold start and roaring all the way to the surface. They'll be followed by the Opportunist, who will be bringing the MACO brigades of the Maelstrom and Cochrane down to the surface."
Truthfully, Ethan had planned on bringing Lieutenant Cutler along; he'd fielded her teasing about how all of his away missions seemed to go horribly wrong, but fortunately for her, Enterprise's diversion had forced him to bring his backup. For all intents and purposes, Julia was just as capable as Liz, having served as Columbia's science officer for years, but he could tell that she was surprised by his declaration, her need to start preparing growing by the second.
Garcia and Taxa were next, and Rachel took advantage of the attention, standing atop one of the chairs to address the room. "The Vulcan colony on Barisa VI was there to mine rare earth elements used in computer chips and plasma injectors. As you can imagine, this is a strategic take for the Romulans. They've set up a temporary command post on an old mining site on the southern continent."
"This is going to be a full throttle ground assault. Our squadron should be able to take the site within the hour, at which point we'll be picked back up by the patrol fleet on their way back to the front lines. If you don't hear from any of us by then, well…"
Ethan interrupted Alira before she could finish her thought. "It's a sub-tropical, swamp like climate by of a low-lying mountain. Besides the biting insects, your primary concern should be the giant reptiles. From the Vulcan database, it seems that they're approximately the equivalent of an Earth crocodile, but about ten meters long."
"You're free to shoot as many of them as you like," Trip added, drawing the attention back to the front of the room. "The Maelstrom will be picking up Hammond and Novakovich on our way into the system, and we'll be taking the disabled sensor beacon with us."
He knew the natural conclusion most of their allies had reached: that United Earth intended to capture the device and modify it for their own personal gain. The goal, as Admiral Gardner explained to them, was to work out the kinks and instate it across the alliance, so they would never again have to subvert an invasion force.
"Above all, the goal is to drive them out of the system by any means necessary. If they manage to break through the lines today, they're gonna have Denobula and Teerza Prime in their sights. And once they're through there…" He trailed off, catching his tactical officer's stricken expression, which was replaced seconds later by her normal, easy-going smile. "Captain Pritchard?"
Laura wasted no time; turning to the attendees, she switched on her PADD and held it up in the air far above her head so everyone could see it. "I'll remind everyone to be on the lookout for Tarali-class Vulcan transports. We encountered one in the Deneva system last month attacking an ECS freighter. They were decommissioned and dismantled over a hundred years ago, so their presence among the Romulan fleet is a bit of an oddity. There are no such vessels in any of the surplus depots in the quadrant."
"It implies that we're looking for a smuggler, or a private collector," Trip clarified. "If you find any, the crew must be captured and taken in for questioning. Are we clear?"
The rumble of agreement across the room was enough for him to know that his message was well and truly received. He glanced at Julia, as if to verify that they'd covered all their bases; she shook her head, and he took a step forward, his eyes dancing across the crowd.
"Now let's go out and give 'em hell!"
There was only an hour left in Ensign Pascal's shift, and he had already dozed off in the Captain's chair a half dozen times.
His usual overnight compatriots took full advantage of their ability to get up and walk around, crossing the bridge to gossip with one another or wandering down to the mess hall or taking a lap around the situation room. The indisputable rule of the gamma shift conn was that he couldn't leave for any reason, and though he'd outright asked Lieutenant Commander Reed if he could be placed anywhere else, he knew that senior staff Ensigns fleetwide were often assigned to this post at least twice a week. Dita seemed to take it in stride, but then again, she was a much better person than he could ever hope to be.
His posting aboard Enterprise was tenuous to say in the least. While their COs and the rest of the crew still trusted him, he knew that Malcolm was suspicious, even more so with the voice of Agent Lazuli in his ear. At first, he'd been sent there under the explicit order to ensure everyone's loyalty and keep the great machine of the Section rolling towards completion of their goals.
Jaguar, Long, and Harris had been very clear on the fact that he'd failed; now, they needed to pivot to a new mission to address a different threat to the hold Starfleet held over the quadrant. The powers that be would take care of their wayward interlopers, and for now, all he had to do was bide his time.
The wait for something to happen was maddening.
He'd always been a man of action, willing to do whatever was needed to get the job done. This had endeared him to the brass, and it wasn't long before Harris started referring to him as his golden child. He preened under the positive affirmation, which he'd spent his entire life seeking. As the youngest of six, he rarely received enough of it, and the second he became old enough to set out on his own, he began a grand tour of overachieving, clawing his way up the ranks as he went.
Sure, he'd had to snap a few necks and crack a few skulls along the way. He kept telling himself, he had to believe that it was all worth it.
It was all justified to keep United Earth safe.
A sudden gasp and shudder of the hull abruptly ended his contemplations, and before he could even react, Enterprise lurched and dropped out of warp, decelerating quickly and sending them skittering across open space. Over at the navigation console, Ensign Schroeder's hands danced across the screen, checking the autopilot, before confirming that nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Crewman Marceline over at the science station was similarly bewildered. "We've dropped to quarter impulse, but we're still on our present heading. There's an M Class planet up ahead, and…"
"Engineering, report!" He cut her off, but Ensign Westminster was already halfway there, the comm hanging open across the space of several decks.
The voice on the other end of the line wasn't Anna or Kov, but their slightly bumbling gamma shift lead, Lieutenant Moss. He sounded weary, confused, and more than a little anxious. "What's going on, bridge?"
"I wish I could tell you. We're still moving along, but we're alone, and long range sensors-" Marceline shook her head. "-aren't picking up any ships in the vicinity."
There was a pause accompanied by a hurried rush of conversation behind him. "It looks like there's been a short in the warp coil in the starboard nacelle. I'm sending someone to investigate, but it might be an hour or two before it cools down enough to get a team back there."
"See to it." He nodded, and Westminster closed the connection. "Contact Maelstrom, let them know we've been delayed. It'll only be a few hours."
That seemed awfully optimistic, and the look on her face conveyed her doubts. She swallowed her trepidation, not wanting to appear insubordinate, and asked, "Should we wake up the Commodore?"
He glanced at the chronometer at the far corner of the room, then frowned. There was only an hour left until the start of alpha shift, and for the moment, they didn't appear to be in imminent danger. "Let's wait. What's this about a planet?"
"It's a half light year up ahead, seemingly uninhabited. According to our records, we passed through here a few years ago and encountered two Romulan vessels."
None of them had been serving aboard during the incident in question, but Simon had made it his mission to review all of their past logs, learning the behavior of his marks and targets with uncanny precision. This particular run-in with the enemy had involved a minefield, and an impalement, and the threat of a firefight that was dodged by mere seconds. "Any evidence of enemy ships in the system?"
"No sir, though they may be cloaked." Crewman Marceline turned to face the dorsal display of her console, hiding her anxiety. Perhaps this had been their objective all along...to lay in wait for the right moment, then blow the United Earth flagship out of the water the second they appeared incapacitated.
They'd almost done it once before, in the Bowerman Nebula.
"Extend the grappler arm and activate the quantum beacons. Start cycling the phase variance through the gamma spectrum."
"Sir?"
"There's very likely cloaked mines out there," he explained gravely, and it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. "Stay sharp, Mr. Schroeder. Be prepared to shift to maneuvering thrusters only."
He nodded, and then they fell into a prescient silence, training their eyes on the viewscreen.
T'Pol awoke neatly, without fanfare, fluttering her eyes open and studying the shelf under her mirror from across the room.
It had become somewhat of a habit over the years; this was where she kept her meditation aides, her totems, the items which allowed her to focus on an idea or a specific point in time, to ease her mind where else she was adrift in an ocean of uncertainty.
There was an IDIC pin, the one she'd been awarded following her graduation from the Science Academy. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations. She'd ruminated on that concept for days on end, and after living for so long among humans, she'd discovered a new, more profound meaning, one which enriched her every interaction with them, though privately, their irrational proclivities and excitable nature often frustrated her to no end.
Next was the crest of their clan, worn and scuffed from repeated hand paintings, a holoimage of her as a toddler next to her beloved pet sehlat, a ceramic bust of Surak, then finally, a family portrait taken shortly before her father died. She'd looked at it a thousand times, feeling the grief rush over her, before dissecting and compartmentalizing these feelings and storing them away in her memory, leaving her with an undeniable sense of calm that lent comfort to her nightly routine. She often meditated in the morning as well, just a few minutes to steel her nerves before facing the day, using that very item to center her thoughts. But now…
It was gone.
She blinked rapidly, then squinted, confirming her suspicions. Perhaps she had misplaced it. Her gaze sweeped over her desk, then her meditation pillows. When she couldn't find it, she felt an irreparable surge of panic she couldn't suppress.
It was one of her prized possessions, something she couldn't begin to replace. Her mother had the other one tucked away at the family home, and she couldn't ask her to give it up, not even for a second. It was almost all she had to remember her husband, and T'Pol knew she felt the pain of the loss every single day.
She tensed up, ready to swing her legs over the side of the bed, only to feel the sheets shift behind her. T'Pol froze, eyes wide, feeling an unexpected guest snuggle up behind her and throw an arm over her waist.
Their scent was strong and musky, masculine yet intensely familiar, and she immediately knew who it was. She couldn't deny the thrill she felt at him holding her like this, so warm and so intimate, even though it was impossible for them to carry on in this way. The very suggestion was forbidden. She thought it was understood that even if they had feelings for one another, they could never act on it.
How had it come to pass, then, that the Captain was asleep in her quarters, embracing her as though he'd done it a hundred times before?
Lightning fast, she pulled away from his touch, standing and moving a couple meters away, retrieving her robe and wrapping it around herself to protect her modesty. He stirred, then rolled over, propping himself up on his elbows. Her eyes traveled along the exposed length of his strong, muscular chest, the same one she'd wanted to touch so many times before.
"Good morning, honey," he mumbled, affording her a drowsy smile. "Sleep well?"
She shook her head; he seemed to recognize that something was wrong and sat up in bed, studying her from across the room. When they left the armory the night before, she'd still been a little woozy, but had shaken it off quickly, and by the time they reached her quarters, she was back to her old self. Repeatedly, he asked if she wanted to see Dr. Phlox, but she refused, chalking it up to fatigue and stress.
And he had believed her.
"Captain, what is going on?" Her voice was wavering uncontrollably, though she quickly took measures to control it. She inhaled slowly, then exhaled forcefully. "You shouldn't be here."
"What are you talking about?" He stood, shimmy into his shorts, then closed the distance between them, faltering slightly as she shrank away from him. At first, he thought she might have gotten up early to attend to ship's business as she often did, but now, looking into her eyes, he could see that she was terrified.
"You must leave," she insisted, hoping he understood that if he did so, she would forget this indiscretion and they would never speak of it again. There was a big gap in her memory from the night before; she remembered dinner in the Captain's mess, a quick run in the gym, then returning to her quarters alone, unaccompanied by anyone, least of all her superior officer who had apparently taken her to bed. Perhaps she was ill, or they had passed through a strange subspace anomaly, or…
She turned and began to root through her drawers, suddenly desperate to get more clothes on. T'Pol expected to find her standard gray jumpsuits, pressed and folded and rationed by the High Command, but instead she saw stacks of Starfleet uniforms, folded lengthwise with four pips pressed into the lapel. Something swept past her feet, and she startled, looking down to see a cat with calico markings weaving between her legs. Farther still, Porthos sat obediently atop her desk, as though he was waiting for some attention from his human companion.
Something, she realized, was wrong. Dreadfully so.
Jonathan - since when had she started thinking of him so informally? - seized her shoulders and made her turn around, and when he looked at her, his eyes were so brimming with concern that it made her heart skip a beat. What he said next would set off every alarm bell in her mind.
"What year is it, T'Pol?"
Lieutenant Cutler approached the mess hall's buffet line, slid the plate off the pile, and began to load it up with a selection of Chef's breakfast offerings. It was early, painfully early, and though she'd fallen asleep the second her head hit the pillow, she hadn't rested well.
That had been the case since the Battle of Solnara and her bout with radiation poisoning; despite her partner's persistent optimism, she'd been entirely convinced she was going to die, and though he would never tell her as much, she knew from reading her own medical files that she nearly had several times. Her evenings were fraught with nightmares, and though Phlox was usually there when she woke up, to hold her and whisper comforting words and gentle her down from the precipice, he sometimes wouldn't be, and she'd shake and cry until she finally exhausted herself and fell into another fitful sleep.
Last night, she dreamed that she was a kid again, in the backyard of her family's home in St. Louis. She and her brother would race each other to the top of a great, centuries-old oak, avoiding the ladder which lead to their treehouse, where they'd pretend to be pirates or secret agents or astronauts. They were laughing, pushing one another, until they finally reached the uppermost branch and broke through the cover of the foliage above them.
It was a beautiful cloudless day, and the sky was so brilliantly blue it seemed to sparkle all around them. She smiled and tented her eyes with her hand, peering into the unknown.
Suddenly a dark speck appeared in the sky, growing closer and closer until it was almost unbearably hot and the air around them seemed to sizzle with electricity. Her mother was screaming bloody murder from the porch, calling out to them, something about come down from there it's coming oh my God get in here right now.
The horizon turned red, then started to blacken. The sirens came on, driving out all rational thought.
They were scrambling down the side of the tree one by one; every handhold was agonizingly painful, and her lungs were burning, crying out for oxygen. Looking down, she thought she might be able to land on her feet if she jumped, but the second she locked eyes with her brother, his grip loosened and his features melted away from his face, his expression frozen in a horrifying death mask of pain. A second later, she too was lost in the inferno, then she woke up, muffling her screams into her pillow.
She wasn't the only one unspeakably worried about the impending threat of a nuclear attack; Phlox, who held two separate degrees in psychiatry, had already expanded his daily office hours so he could counsel the crew. Dita confided in her that sometimes the panic she felt was so great that her chest would tighten up and she would start to hyperventilate; what with her mother suffering from cancer and her sister expecting and every telepresence unit in the quadrant seemingly hunting ECS freighters for sport, it was well and truly understood.
Liz could hear them laughing now at their usual table; curiously, the gathering of senior officers that morning had been a little thin. She gathered that something was going on; Anna had apparently been called to tend to an emergency in engineering, and Pascal was sitting at the conn for gamma shift, a posting she didn't envy even for a second. They would reach Barisa VI within hours, likely flying into the middle of a firefight. Tonight, like so many other nights, she wouldn't sleep a wink.
She poured herself a second cup of coffee, just in case, then wandered back across the room to rejoin the party.
"It doesn't matter how lonely it is, or how much it loves people, you can't just-"
"You don't understand, Ensign. If this creature doesn't get its exercise, it could grow to fill its cage within a matter of days!"
"The thing's got a three heads with doglike faces! Unless you want to terrify half the crew, I wouldn't recommend taking it for a stroll around D Deck."
Phlox dealt her a long-suffering look, as if asking for backup, but she shook her head, loath to admit where her loyalties lay on this particular matter. "Dita's right, beloved. That thing's basically an eldritch horror. I can't even look at it whenever I go to feed it."
"I'll have the two of you know that the Markoffian sea lizard is a marvel of veterinary science. It has opposable thumbs, can spit its venom fifty meters away, and lays eggs which are invaluable in the treatment of plasma burns." He huffed, poking at his meal with his fork. "I love her as I would one of my own. You don't want to know how many favors Alira had to go call in to get me one of these."
"Would it be too much to ask for you to walk it in the middle of the night when no one's awake?" Dita shivered involuntarily. "Those eyes always make me feel like it can see down to the depths of my soul."
"Now listen here..."
The hatch behind them suddenly opened, and Liz turned in her chair to behold none other than their first officer. Malcolm was spit and polished as usual, his uniform spotless and hair immaculately coiffed. She waved him over, and he hesitated for a moment, before cutting through the line of tables and heading towards them.
"Good morning, sir," she said, affording him a warm smile. "Rest well?"
"Well enough, Crewman." He seemed preoccupied, glancing around them and shuffling from foot to foot, but apparently wasn't distracted enough to avoid making jokes about their conversation with the Commodore last night.
Liz rolled her eyes, patting the seat next to her. "Join us. Maybe you can help us settle this argument about a lizard."
"I'd love to, but I-" He trailed off, seeming to notice their communications officer sitting across from him. He pulled a queer sort of expression, then extended his hand towards her. "I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met. Lieutenant Reed."
It was unusual; Enterprise functioned for all intents and purposes like a small town, where everyone knew everybody else. Was it possible that he'd not introduced himself to a member of the crew over the past year?
She laughed and returned his gesture, making an exaggerated show of pumping his arm up and down. "Ensign Nandita Singh. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Did you have the chance to look at those specifications for missile launch protocols I sent over to you last night?"
The moment the words came out of her mouth, she realized she'd made a mistake. Her eyes traveled up his form to the two pips on his lapel, a distinct deviation from the usual three.
Liz, fortunately, came to her rescue. "What brings you here this morning, sir?"
"The Captain's invited me for breakfast. I'm not sure if he wants to discuss something, but all the same, I'll be prepared." He glanced again towards the back of the room, seemingly in a hurry, slapping his PADD against his free hand with an audible crack. That was a little far from the truth; waking up, he'd discovered that everything in his quarters was shifted around slightly from where he'd left it, and his uniform was crumpled up on the floor, as though he'd been in a hurry to get out of it the night before. A handwritten note sat on his dresser, perhaps the component of a larger gift, its unnamed sender declaring that they were thinking of him and loyally his, along with a red lipstick kiss, the corners of the mouth turned up in the barest hint of a smile. What's more, his personal files seemed to be scrambled, and the revamped duty roster he'd been so looking forward to showing his CO was no longer there.
It was all very concerning, but he had little time to think about it when duty called.
His colleagues, Crewman Cutler and Dr. Phlox and this unfamiliar officer in science division stripes, looked like they'd just been slapped upside the head. The doctor surreptitiously reached for his medical tricorder, asking: "Are you feeling alright, Mr. Reed?"
"Perfectly fine," he assured them, and turned to leave, only to feel Cutler grab hold of his arm.
Her expression was intense, utterly dire, and when she spoke, he felt the need to answer. "What day is it?"
"April 22nd."
Wrong. Her face visibly paled. "The year?"
"2152," Malcolm replied, suddenly aware that something was amiss. Over her shoulder, the comm went off. He recognized the Captain's voice, though couldn't make out what he was saying. Phlox listened, nodding intermittently, then when the transmission ended, he gestured towards him, followed by the hatch.
"If you'll just follow me down to sickbay. I promise you, this won't take but a minute."
"Thinking about bolting?"
The question came out of nowhere, and whoever it was happened to be mere centimeters from her ear. Alira startled and took a step back from where she'd been watching Barisa VI approach through the viewport, turning just in time to see Lieutenant Garcia offer her a mischievous smile and a half-hearted apology.
"Ensign, I'm sorry, I-"
"I considered it. In an EV suit, I could probably get a couple hundred meters, but once the other patrols rip through on our trail…" She smacked her hands together, then dragged her left over the right, simulating a hovercar running over a piece of roadkill.
She was rewarded with a laugh, and when she looked back towards her, her eyes were shining with mirth. At least partially, she was aware that her sense of humor could be quite anachronistic and a little dark, so she was glad someone could appreciate it.
Giving the Cochrane's tactical officer a second glance, she seemed tall and thin, though impossibly strong, with an air of friendliness that immediately endeared them to her. She had a unique, melodious voice, and she found herself hanging on every word.
"If it's any consolation, I bet half of these officers would be right behind you."
They were presently crammed in the cargo hold on the Opportunist with over a hundred MACOs, all dressed in their fatigues, checking their weapons and furtively stretching against the wall. There was a dull roar of conversation all around them, nervous and intermittent, as though they were all trying to ignore the fact that they were all about to waltz into almost certain death.
"Hey, I wouldn't discount any of them. They're tough. At any rate, I'd certainly throw my trust behind my own brigade."
"I was talking more about myself," Rachel admitted, pressing their back against the hatch and surveying the room.
"Of course." She laughed, knowingly so, and mirrored their posture. "What is it that you did before commissioning to the Cochrane?"
"Ordnance officer on the Shenandoah, and before that, private security for Admiral Forrest and the United Earth Council delegate from Spain. Not at the same time, of course."
"No kidding! What made you switch?"
She turned her head to look at her, smiling wryly. "To tell you the truth, Miss Taxa, there's only so many meetings you can sit in before you want to rip your hair out."
Wasn't that the truth. They'd only known one another for an hour, but she felt oddly at peace around her, enough to know that they could be great friends.
Assuming they both survived this battle.
"I wouldn't think too much about it," she said out of the blue, and she knew her face had said it all. "When we're about to undertake a dangerous mission, I try to think about happy things. Puppies. Ice cream. A movie night where Captain Tucker doesn't pick the film."
"How do you know about that?"
"He's notorious, Ensign. That man truly has no taste." She leaned in, whispering quietly: "Is that something you're allowed to say about a commanding officer?"
"You ought to see his Hawaiian shirt collection."
"All the same, it helps to keep your mind off of it."
She shook her head. "In the Infantry, we made a big deal of heading into battle. There's chants, and recitations, and you go around telling everyone to walk with the light, walk with the light."
"Does that have some kind of religious significance?"
"Denobulans don't have an established pantheon." She paused, tilting her head to one side. "I suppose it really is the equivalent of telling someone God bless you."
"It's beautiful," she mumbled, training her gaze on the back of the room. "Maybe we ought to make that a habit."
Suddenly one the MACOs from the Maelstrom wandered by, and Alira surged forward, calling her out by name.
Corporal McKenzie startled, but immediately turned to face her CO, placing her hands on her equipment belt to keep her stun baton and particle rifle from knocking against her knees. Alira made a twirling motion with her finger, and she smiled, before turning around and kneeling down.
At some point over the past few months, she'd started to insist that all female MACOs wear their hair in tight chignons in the field; at first, a few of them had balked, but she promised them that the first time they were caught and dragged by the ponytail during hand-to-hand combat, they would think differently. Seeing it as a safety issue, Sergeant Kemper had given it the greenlight, and she began to keep a stash of elastics and bobby pins on her person at all times, because someone would invariably forget.
Not that any of them particularly minded: though she was known for being freewheeling and fun loving, Alira was also a bit of a mother hen, fussing over the MACOs and the armory brigade whether it was warranted or not. No matter what happened, they knew that she and Kemper had their backs, and it only made them that much more willing to go forging into the fire by their side.
Once she was done, McKenzie caught and admired her reflection in the chrome plating of her particle rifle, aiming it into the ceiling. "Not bad. Hey, Gilson, tell the boss what you said earlier!"
The private in question faltered slightly, frowning and shrugging off her request.
"Go ahead!"
When she looked at the two of them, they were both smiling encouragingly, so she decided to take a chance, admitting sheepishly: "You can't fight the enemy if you don't look cute."
She was rewarded by the sight of her COs laughing, a broad Denobulan smile spreading across Alira's features. She said something about knowing that to be true, then moved off to the viewport at Lieutenant Garcia's insistence, tracking to one side as the first sensor beacon flew by in a streak of light.
"Nine minutes," she said reverently, referring to the amount of time their scientists had to make this whole half-baked plan work.
It seemed to last a matter of seconds, but soon then they were through the warp detection grid, and the deck plating shook, indicative of them jumping to full impulse. Behind them, the MACOs were already lining up, and the room fell silent in anticipation of what was about to come.
Of what was about to happen to all of them.
By the time the Opportunist rocketed past them, Novakovich was shoulder-deep in the beacon's electrical housing unit, bracing his knees against the base to keep from floating out into open space.
Being beamed out into nothingness was unnerving to say in the least; one moment, he had felt the ground solidly underneath his feet, then the next, he was weightless, using a broad, open-armed swimming motion to make his way over to the beacon. Julia settled into the other side; really, the unit was no longer than two meters, and skinny enough that he could readily wrap his arms around it.
He supposed this was a brilliant move on part of the enemy; each of these beacons was so small it could easily be mistaken for a sensor blip, unless of course one knew what they were looking for.
Unless they were explicitly on the lookout for booby traps, which he certainly was, following his experience in the Romulan fortress of doom on Yadalla Prime. He didn't think anyone could blame him for that.
Accessing the main computer was slow, careful, painstaking work, and though Julia hadn't been his first choice for the mission, but she'd certainly been a quick study. They worked in tandem, with the distinct awareness that they were on a time crunch and they were completely vulnerable out in the open, practically begging for the enemy to pop up and take a shot at them at any time.
They heard the Wanderer disengage its engines from a distance, laying on the brakes and coasting across the barrier on momentum. Julia watched the main computer screen with bated breath, waiting for the alarm to be triggered, a catastrophic event that never came to pass. She nodded, and it was barely visible in the muted blue lights illuminating her face in the confines of her helmet.
Ethan exhaled, knowing that the first part of the battle was already won. The first three patrols were through, but they only had a matter of minutes before the Maelstrom would arrive. There was no way in hell a vessel of that size would make it through the barrier even if they slowed to an almost complete stop, and Captain Tucker had made it abundantly clear that they were all counting on him. If they wanted this takeover to succeed, there was absolutely no room for error.
It was enough to drive him crazy with worry.
He'd spent several hours with Hoshi and Yuris, practicing meditation techniques and praying that he'd be prepared when the moment arrived. Ethan had never felt comfortable in an EV suit, though he managed to hide it through STC and his time on Enterprise. But now, as he lay suspended in the vastness of eternity with nothing to do but to contemplate his own insignificance and the coldness of space nipping at his skin, it felt like everything was starting to close in on him.
"Are you alright?" Julia's voice sounded tinny and far away, and he grimaced, pressing the ballistic glass of his helmet into the top of the unit. His heart was racing, and it felt like every nerve ending in his body was on fire. A second later, he saw her arm begin to inch around the side of the beacon, leaning in until she was able to find his hand and take hold of it.
He squeezed, though it was difficult around their gloves, inhaling and exhaling slowly.
Okay?
Okay.
"You've got this, Ethan. I trust you."
"Maybe you shouldn't."
"Don't make me start doubting you now. What's next?"
"Remove the third power coupling on the left and connect it to the main viewport. You'll then have the chance to enter the signal parameters of our lure."
"Your left or my left?"
"Your left. How big do we want to go?"
"Enormous. Vulcan battle cruiser, Suurok class, all the bells and whistles." With one finger, she began to punch in the strength of an energy reading corresponding to an appropriately sized warp core, then without being prompted, hit enter. "Bombs away, all the way by Barisa Prime. Time check?"
"Four minutes. We've got to remove every single one of these sensor components, but all in a specific order, or we're going to garner attention really quickly."
"Don't be a tease, Novakovich. What's the sequence?"
He rattled off a series of numbers, and she did a double take, her hands freezing over the console. When she didn't respond, he repeated it, slower this time, and they set to their work.
It was unusual, really, the stillness of space. The silence was almost oppressive, and soon, he began to hum quietly, a familiar tune they'd heard over subspace. It was a mindless pop song, but she soon joined in, and they began to move faster and faster until the end was very much in sight.
Ethan saw it first; the tiny electrical components before his eyes seemed to rattle, intensifying until the space around them started to vibrate, and he himself began to shake, a deep, chilling sense of impending doom settling into his bones.
The bird-of-prey appeared above them in that next moment, uncloaking and speaking itself into existence. They both froze, metaphorically and literally shaking in her boots, for what seemed like one endless moment. As one, they looked up to the giant painted surface of the ship's undercarriage, one question on both of their minds.
"Do you think they see us?"
"I'm sure their proximity sensors are going off like crazy." Julia knew that if she pushed off from the base of the sensor beacon, she could go flying and touch the ship. It seemed to cast a massive shadow over them, and he knew the hybrids on the bridge were likely already plotting to beam them aboard and spirit them away to some detention center, likely never to be seen again.
Under no circumstances could that happen.
She only had one more connection to sever, but she hurriedly reconnected a few of them, drawing a bewildered look from Ethan. He fumbled for his communicator, activating it and hissing: "Novakovich to Maelstrom."
"Maelstrom here."
"Could you speed it up a bit? We've got company."
"Define company."
"There's a giant bird-of-prey hovering about ten meters over us."
The Captain's curse at the other end of the line was unmistakable. "We'll be there in sixty seconds. Hold tight."
"Acknowledged, Novakovich out." He severed the connection just in time to see the countdown appear on the screen before him. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Rolling the dice," she replied, double checking to make sure the auto detonation circuit had been activated. "It's your turn to trust me. Do you think you can do that?"
She was already making her way around the base of the unit, grabbing his shoulders and wrapping her arms around him. He was unspeakably frightened, but he met her gaze with resolution, nodding curtly.
"Right when we hit five seconds, we need to push off with all our strength to get out of the blast zone. If we don't…"
"Aren't you scared?"
"Terrified," she corrected him, looking over his shoulder towards the screen. "To tell you the truth, I've never felt so alive."
"With all due respect, ma'am, now I know you're full of it."
"There might be some truth to that. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…"
At that moment, several things happened concurrently. They pushed away, pumping and kicking their legs in a desperate bid for survival. Maelstrom appeared in a flash of light, coming right up to the barrier and nearly running into them headlong. The bird-of-prey started to move, only to find itself on the receiving end of a blast from the phase cannon, and the sensor beacon detonated, the searing heat reaching them at the split second they were beamed away.
Mere seconds before the start of alpha shift, Lieutenant Cutler entered an auxiliary security bypass code and swept into Malcolm's quarters.
Her hands were shaking; there was no hiding that. She'd just spent the past hour listening to their Captain and first officer insist that it really was 2152, that Archer had recently survived his ordeal in the 31st century and they were only two months removed from an extremely ill-fated visit to Risa. T'Pol wore her Starfleet uniform, though she looked uncomfortable, as though she might crawl out of her skin at any second. Even Malcolm, the consummate officer and model for human stoicism, looked immensely distressed, especially when they repeatedly refused his questioning about where Trip and Hoshi and any number of officers stationed to the Maelstrom were.
They soon realized that they'd dropped out of warp, and Dita went to investigate, only to hail from the bridge a moment later to report that they were presently in the same system as the mysterious M class once claimed by the Romulans, where they'd stumbled into a minefield and nearly blew out the starboard aft quadrant of the ship. And, what's more, the date Malcolm gave exactly corresponded to the day they'd diverted course to investigate, veritably altering the course of history.
It was all too much to be a coincidence.
At first Phlox suspected a traumatic brain injury, though cortical scans revealed nothing out of the ordinary. None of them could deny it was unusual for two people to be experiencing the exact same delusion; it was as if someone had taken a snapshot of them exactly as they were years ago, mannerisms and idiosyncrasies included, and Jonathan had to admit that it was shocking just how much they'd changed in that amount of time.
T'Pol, certainly, was more open in the present day, her emotions much closer to the surface. When they first met, he might have described her as an ice queen, but now she was a burning fire, a smoldering flame; he had loved her then, and he certainly loved her now, which made her condition all the more concerning. Even Malcolm had loosened up tremendously over the years; he remembered how strict and protocol oriented he'd been back in the day, depriving himself of the company of his crew and even the simplest of pleasures. As he sat upon the biobed hooked up to electrodes and instruments, he almost couldn't bring himself to look into his CO's eyes, ending every remark with a very clipped and proper sir or yes sir.
Long-term memory loss had been next on the docket, then passage through a subspace anomaly, though their investigations ultimately proved fruitless. He knew there was little time to waste, that the fleet was waiting for them and engines would be up within the hour, so he ordered Phlox to keep digging. He resolved to keep them confined to quarters until this mystery was resolved - at any rate, it would be less terrifying than sending them to the brig, though certain modifications were needed before the transfer could even be made.
So that was how Liz found herself digging through her first officer's personal affects, seeking out and removing every single piece of evidence of their mission from the past four years.
Dita had already revoked their comm and database access; that was half the battle, and she found herself thanking her lucky stars that Malcolm's domain was markedly spartan, with little decoration to speak of. There was a holoprojector image of the lot of them standing in Bay Stadium following the Xindi mission - that disappeared into her pocket, then a handful of him with Alira, standing at the top of the London Eye and cuddled up in a restaurant booth and laughing at Hoshi's New Year's Eve party. She paused, then reached underneath his pillow to collect one more, adding it to her collection.
He'd seemingly taken a trophy from their stolen Insectoid shuttle; it lay on the sill underneath the viewport, along with a jagged and reflective speleothem, a handwritten note, an antique nineteenth-century six shooter pistol, and the power cell from a particle rifle. As an afterthought, she turned to his desk and whipped open the drawers, hoping that she wouldn't find very much, as her pockets were already getting pretty full.
She removed a handful of PADDs and old-fashioned notebooks filled with drawings and schematics, then, at the very back of the drawer, saw something that made her heart skip a beat.
It was a small, black velvet box with a silvery hinge on one end. She'd certainly seen a hundred just like that, in movies and in photographs and regrettably in personal experience, and immediately knew what it was.
Her hand shot out to retrieve it, and she briefly considered opening it, but pushed that thought aside. This was already an incredible invasion of privacy, and she felt guilty. Last night, she'd briefly wondered why he'd asked how she coped with the idea that Phlox would outlive her by decades, but now, she understood why he had.
Apparently, he had been thinking about it a lot.
It didn't matter; she was needed on the bridge to attempt to force the warp drive into submission, and needed to make a pit stop at her office to drop off her bounty. She would return it to him at a later date, more than likely under a pile of other items, and no matter what, she would not mention it to him.
No matter what, she had to keep his secret.
Soon after, Jonathan found himself in his quarters, pacing the length of the room from the hatch to the window.
His mind was a storm of worry and racing thoughts: the new developments concerning his Captain and first officer were deeply upsetting, and even more so that it had interrupted their journey to Barisa VI, where the fleet was preparing to retake conquered territory. Something reeked of external influence, of some foreign power, of a trickster playing with their chances of survival, moving them around like pieces of a chessboard.
Selfishly, irreverently, he was most troubled by the fact that he could no longer sense T'Pol in his mind, hear her thoughts and feel her love for him, all-encompassing as a boundless ocean. He didn't realize just how much he'd gotten used to it since their ordeal on Tellar Prime, just how much he wanted her and needed her on a consistent, unyielding basis, until she was gone, cold and distant as she had once been, with the hint of something underneath that drew him to her and dared him to take a chance.
He had known it wasn't her even before Phlox informed him that her Pa'nar Syndrome had inexplicably returned, that there was no evidence of Malcolm's leg ever being damaged in the minefield, even on a subatomic level. An analysis of cellular decay rates revealed their internal ages as exactly what they'd been four years ago, and he knew they had an impossible dilemma on their hands.
First and foremost, he needed to know exactly where his people went, and how to get these imposters back without disturbing the fabric of space-time in any way. Then, he needed to repair the engines and arrive in the Barisa VI with enough time to lend his hand to the invasion efforts, not necessarily in that order. Jonathan supposed they really didn't know if leaving the system would close up their narrow window of opportunity, and momentarily, he was paralyzed with worry and the treacherous nature of choice.
The universe, it seemed, was willing to extend him a favor.
He appeared seemingly out of nowhere, passing through the bulkhead and stepping into the room with no fanfare whatsoever. He was smiling, self-righteously so, a purely rote gesture that didn't make it to his eyes, which were cold and dispassionate, black as darkest night.
Jonathan instantly recognized Bran, temporal agent from God knew when or where, who had formerly moonlighted as parliamentary adjunct to the Most Divine Lady of Betazed. When they'd first met, he and the others had probed their minds to suit their own needs, finding out all they needed to know about the hybrid plot and T'Pol's ancestry. They had plans to act to keep them from discovering the intricacies of the situation, but Alira had inadvertently blown their scheme wide open, exposing the Romulan plot to kidnap members of the Fifth House and weaponize them for use on their new and improved neural telepresence units.
They'd seen the devastating nature of these probes firsthand on the Saral, where two dozen Vulcan scientists were driven to madness in a matter of seconds. To avoid being tracked and rescued and potentially having their secrets exposed, the Romulans implanted a neurogenic virus in each and every one of their Betazoid pilots which would kill them shortly thereafter and sever their link with the telepresence unit. This disease had the potential to wipe out his people entirely, and, bucking protocol for perhaps the first time in his career, Bran had decided to take matters in his own hands, holding up Ensign Singh in the cargo hold at gunpoint and attempting to force her to hand over the navigational sensor logs from the attack.
Enterprise's decision to chase after the telepresence unit, he claimed, would severely alter the timeline and lead to their destruction, and, or so it was implied, the mass extinction of his people. Jonathan knew they had altered the course of history by sending the Maelstrom after the probe, and he had made his peace with that. Three members of Trip's crew had become possessed with the consciousness of the dying Betazoid pilots and tried to take over the ship, but they had eventually been overpowered. He soon knew they had a larger problem on their hands; it became apparent over the course of weeks and months that there were hundreds of telepresence units out there, and coupled with the World Enders cruising the quadrant looking for easy targets, the Romulan threat was stronger than ever.
Bran evidently knew this, or else he wouldn't be standing before him now, dressed in the same strange, three-dimensional jumpsuit that he had once seen Daniels wear. The memory of that particular agent, frustrating and bittersweet as it was, had been enough to make him wish that he would never have to deal with the consequences of altering this timeline ever again.
Now, it seemed, he would have very little choice.
In a flash, he closed the distance between them, wanting to grab him but keeping his fists clenched at his sides. Jonathan towered over him, furrowing his brows and hissing: "You've got some nerve coming back here."
Bran barely reacted; the corners of his mouth twitched before spreading into an even larger smile. "I promise you, Commodore, I'm only here to help."
"Were you helping when you threatened to kill my communications officer on that Vulcan transport? We're lucky that the Ministry of Security was there, and that she…" He trailed off, and his expression softened. "She shot you. We thought that you died."
"I did, in a manner of speaking," he said, and offered no further details. "I've come to offer you a choice, and if you know what's good for you, you had better take it."
"Does this have something to do with my missing people? What have you done with them?"
He held up a placating hand and took a step back, as if encouraging him to listen. "I'm here to extend an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past, correct the damage made from your decision to alter the timeline. By now, you know exactly where we are and the temporal origin of those people in your sickbay."
"Where are my officers? I'm not going to ask again!"
"They're safe," he insisted. "If you let them in on the particulars of the events of that day, I'll simply return them to their own time and they won't remember a thing except for what you told them, like a post-hypnotic suggestion. They can avoid the minefield, and postpone the war altogether."
"Postpone, but not prevent. Why not go back and do it yourself?"
He didn't respond; Jonathan expected him to say something vague about how time didn't work that way, but his silence was sufficiently infuriating. By the time he spoke, he had no idea just how close he was to being punched. "You don't understand, Commodore. When your ship entered that minefield, they tipped the Romulans off to the threat of United Earth and the inevitability of a new, quadrant-wide alliance. They immediately started work on their first prototype of their telepresence units, which you encountered while you were transporting that Tellarite delegation."
The Babel Crisis. He remembered it vividly.
"Now, when those warbirds scanned you, they picked up on the presence of a hybrid among your ranks. They knew the truth of their operations on Vulcan was in more jeopardy than ever, and they began to withdraw operatives and scale up their efforts to sway the High Command. There were several hybrid sleeper agents in high-powered positions. You might know one as-"
"Administrator V'Las," he ground out, as though it were a curse word. "I suppose he's got something to do with the persecution of melders over the past few decades."
"What better way to hide among a telepathic race then to deny them the use of their abilities?" He didn't wait for him to reach the inevitable conclusion. "He was also behind the continued efforts to recall Captain T'Pol and remove her from human influence. You might say the Tal Shiar has a vested interest in her switching sides."
In those days, it had become somewhat of a supremely unfunny running joke that every time they turned around, the powers that be were trying to get his first officer back to Vulcan. He suspected it had something to do with his own reckless tendency to wander into misadventure - T'Pol had pointed it out so many times that he could now freely call it for what it was - but now, things were starting to make a lot more sense. "Who is this Tal Shiar?"
"Romulan secret intelligence. Her father was chairman for some time before accepting a position as a sleeper agent in the Ministry of Security and eventually fathering T'Pol."
"Wait, you're saying-"
"The man known as Venek died two years before she was born during an undercover mission on the Romulan homeworld, and he was readily replaced, holding his cover for almost two decades. The chairman was replaced with another colleague, then another and another, until his son rose through the ranks and took his place."
"And that son-"
"Is her half-brother, Solan," he concluded, not the least bit apologetic for interrupting him once again. Jonathan remembered how he'd appeared to her in a nightmare during their diplomatic visit to Vulcan, giving her one final chance to join the insurgency. When she refused, he promised she would know no peace, and had all but obliterated her emotional control on Tellar Prime trying to extract the location of the alliance listening post at Kandar. For months, he'd haunted her dreams, disturbed the both of them with the thought that he was coming for all of them, and when he did, he was coming for blood. "He was there that day, as a Commander in the Romulan guard. He's the one who told you to leave the system immediately or be destroyed."
His heart immediately dropped through his stomach, and he attempted to speak, but no words came out.
"You've got an opportunity here to avoid the minefield and buy the alliance some time, a couple of months at best. You can even kill Solan if you wish, but whatever you do, you need to make this decision fast."
"And why would that be?"
"Because you've already damaged the timeline irreparably as it is. It's caused ripples across centuries." He took a step forward, and his words were pointed, spitting, dripping with vitriol. "My very existence has been called into question due to your foolhardy decision to-"
"This is about that neurogenic virus, isn't it? What happened to the needs of the many? Isn't that what you temporal agents try to focus on?" Archer returned his challenge, moving so closely that their foreheads almost touched.
"Don't you dare try to preach to me. I've spent the last six standard months trying to correct your mistakes. If only you'd given Captain Pomona the navigational sensor data on that telepresence unit when you had the chance-"
"Call me crazy, but I'm still not even sure I can trust you." And he definitely hadn't known that then when he'd given the Maelstrom the order to divert course and pursue, but all the same, the data they'd gathered from that excursion had been invaluable towards protecting some of the alliance's less well armed outposts.
"You trusted Daniels, why shouldn't this be any different?"
Now that was a stretch. "He never did anything this drastic. He would take me somewhere, show me the effects of an incursion in his Temporal Observatory-"
"And did that ever work for him?"
Jonathan was loath to admit he had a point. Even then, he was more than likely to avoid his counsel, before eventually acquiescing and doing something that vaguely resembled the right thing. He was shocked into reverie, and Bran took advantage of his silence.
"I encourage you to talk to your officers again. See how optimistic they are, how centered, how utterly unaffected they are by the trials of two separate wars. Ask yourself if all the death and destruction and the unraveling of your crew's mental state is really what you want." He pulled a reproachful sort of glare, and was about to chastise him further when the comm sounded.
Jonathan didn't hesitate, reaching over his shoulder and punching the controls. "Archer here."
"We've got warp back, Commodore. I've been told the Captain is indisposed. Should we continue on our way to Barisa VI?" It was Lieutenant Kov, and he sounded concerned.
They locked eyes, and there was an expectant moment of silence, wherein he felt the weight of the past, present, and future pressing down on him. The words were right there on the tip of his tongue, and it would be so easy to speak them into existence.
He thought about everything that had happened since he took command, everything they'd been through and everything they'd learned, every bit of it done by trial and error. It had been bloody and devastating and heartbreaking at times, but he realized he wouldn't trade it for anything.
"Go ahead. Best speed."
The second he ended the transmission, Bran was furious, seizing him by the lapels and all but lifting him off the ground. "You've made a huge mistake!"
"It's mine to make," he insisted, grinding out his reply through clenched teeth. "Now bring my people back and let the future take its course."
"You have no idea how much damage you've-"
"Maybe I don't. Now, do I have your cooperation or not?"
The unbridled rage in his eyes told him everything he needed to know.
The Commodore insisted it was unnecessary, but Phlox was determined to escort his patients back to their quarters himself.
They both knew they couldn't remain in sickbay; they were a mere half hour from Barisa VI, and once they broke through the Romulan barricade, he was almost sure to see casualties. If their deep, gnawing sense that something was horribly wrong wasn't overpowering enough as it was, the sight of unfamiliar crewmen bleeding and clinging to consciousness all around them would certainly push their panic response into overdrive.
The Captain had been first, and she had gone more quietly than he expected. He left Mr. Reed in sickbay under the watchful eye of one of his field medics and walked with her in silence, dearly hoping they wouldn't run into anything incriminating on the way.
Unlike Jonathan, he had no idea that they wouldn't remember any of this when they returned to their own time, and had gone to painstaking lengths to ensure that everything around them looked exactly as they remembered it, though sickbay had undergone extensive upgrades since then. Malcolm in particular had peppered him with questions, which he'd done his best to divert or answer vaguely, but eventually, he had to admit that he was starting to wear him down.
His thoughts drifted to how his life had changed in a paltry four years, a period of time considered insignificant in the lifespan of a Denobulan. He'd thought his time on Enterprise would be relatively short, a welcome diversion from the complications of family back home, but he soon found himself drawn to his human shipmates. They were optimistic, quick to anger, and even more ready to forgive. They were incredibly friendly, though slightly inhibited, a walking contradiction that fascinated him to no end.
It certainly didn't help that in that time he'd taken another lover, a human, who entertained all of his flights of fancy and then some. Elizabeth wasn't like most Starfleet officers he knew; she was tremendously intrigued by alien cultures, fearless but cautious when it counted, with a biting sense of sarcasm that tempered his natural exuberance. By the second year of their mission, they'd been all but inseparable, and now, he couldn't imagine being without her.
He'd also lost a wife in that time, but had become closer to her firstborn, a tradeoff which had been welcome but bittersweet. He and Alira attempted to help one another through the loss over dozens of subspace transmissions, relaying their stories until there was nothing left to say. In the back of his mind, he knew he was likely to live another two hundred years without her, so he'd written a painstaking description of Feezal from memory, from her shining eyes to her sharp tongue and boisterous laugh, which had always made him smile even when they were in the midst of an argument. It had made their time together beautiful, and as long as he lived he would never forget her, even if it took everything he had.
The pain of loss, so often felt during their travels, was even more apparent now. The T'Pol he knew in the present day was so far from the woman walking by his side. She was entirely retreated within herself, closed off to anyone and everyone, though with enough prodding, she could talk for hours about their mission, morality, and the inherent nature of their fellow crewmen to go wandering into trouble at every opportunity. He'd seen it firsthand during the early days, when they'd bonded over being the only two non-humans aboard a Starfleet vessel, and now, it should be no different.
"The results from your imaging scan should be back presently," he informed her as they stepped out of the turbolift onto the senior officers' block, moving to one side to allow her to take the lead. "I'll contact you as soon as you-"
"There is no need, doctor," T'Pol interrupted, clasping her arms tightly behind her back. She felt unsettled, and though a bout of meditation seemed tempting at the moment, she knew that the crew was hiding something from her, something they desperately wanted her not to know.
She intended to get to the bottom of it.
"Oh." He paused as they reached her quarters, his fingers hovering over the door controls. "In that case, I'll be sure to bring you the midday meal. Gespar and pok tar, as usual?"
They'd shared many an hour in the mess hall together, enjoyable outings that he knew she remembered. She nodded with the barest rotation of her chin, and Phlox opened the door, peering into the near darkness.
The Commodore had done a good job of stripping the room of anything that could possibly give her a hint as to the historical events of the past four years; even Porthos and the cat (whose name he could never remember) were gone, leaving behind a distinctly spartan environment that didn't look the least bit welcoming.
As she stepped over the threshold, he turned to leave, only to be taken aback by the feeling of her hand bearing down tightly on his arm. The unwarranted touch was momentarily jarring, and he looked up at her with thinly veiled consternation, fighting every impulse that told him to bolt.
He was expecting her to say something profound, but she only took another step towards the window, pivoting to face the other side of the room, and whispered: "Thank you, doctor."
The door closed a second later, and he was left slightly bewildered, and none the wiser that she'd managed to slip his communicator from his pocket while he was distracted.
Phlox returned to sickbay on the double, intent on contacting Elizabeth and letting her know to search long-range sensors for evidence of cloaks or quantum fissures. It was the easiest explanation, but given that it had already happened twice before, he was suddenly suspicious that they'd passed within range of a portal to an alternate reality.
He found Malcolm sitting on the end of a biobed with a worn leather binder in his lap. Across the room, the field medic he'd left in charge of him was deep in conversation with a familiar crewman, arguing that they needed to preemptively take a mountain of antiseptic and bandages for the inferno that would inevitably erupt in engineering once they waltzed into the firefight at Barisa VI.
Phlox suppressed a twinge of annoyance and went to attend to his patient, reaching for the book in his hands. Phlox realized that he'd likely found one of Elizabeth's scrapbooks in the cabinets behind him. It was a strange sort of human tradition, and try as he might, he couldn't see the value behind going to the trouble to print photos onto paper, but he was more than willing to humor her, under the assurance that one day he'd be glad to have such a tangible manifestation to their time aboard the Enterprise.
He could see that this one was from their six month diplomatic mission, where they'd traversed the quadrant attempting to get their allies to buy into the charter of the Coalition of Planets. It started with their group photo gathered around the Captain's chair, smiles on display, and ended with them crowded around the podium at the Maelstrom's commissioning ceremony, huddled down in their coats against the winter wind.
Malcolm was reluctant to relinquish his hold on the book, leaning away and turning to one side. He was somewhere in the middle now, between their visits to Betazed and Coridan, poring over a series of photographs from an impromptu gathering of the senior staff in the sweet spot.
It was Travis's birthday; he remembered it well, because he'd helped Hoshi carry the liquor and snacks up through the maintenance shaft, and they'd spent the entire evening carousing and playing poker and listening to their helmsman's boomer stories, including a particularly colorful one involving his mother giving birth to his little brother in a turbolift during an ion storm.
The first photo was Trip in a wide-brimmed visor, holding a fan of cards in front of his eyes. He insisted on dealing, though everyone always suspected he was cheating or stacking the cards, and weren't shy about calling him out. Next was Malcolm and himself wearing identical conical party hats on Elizabeth's insistence, the former not looking the least bit pleased about it. On the opposite page, Alira sat against the wall with her legs outstretched, the back of Hoshi's head in her lap. They were both pointing at whoever was behind the camera, their lips spread apart in silent laughter. Their cheeks were red, most likely from the contents of the bottle Hoshi held in her hand.
Trip called it moonshine, straight from his Uncle Ambrose's farm in Alabama, but Elizabeth maintained it was more like battery acid.
"Who is this, doctor?" He immediately knew who he was talking about, and that he'd likely seen her all throughout the scrapbook, in uniform and in her civvies, posing among the armory brigade and with the MACOs, and was probably curious as to when a Denobulan had joined Starfleet.
"An old friend of mine," he answered cryptically, finally wrestling the book from his hands.
He frowned, then looked this way and that. When he confirmed that no one was listening in, he confided: "She's pretty. Put in a good word for me, will you?"
Phlox knew he was likely baiting him, trying to trick him into saying if this mystery woman served with them at all. The Malcolm he knew all those years ago would never fraternize with one of his fellow officers, a marked difference to the present. He only laughed and shook his head, stowing the scrapbook in the nearest cabinet.
He'd be lying if he said he wasn't rooting for them. His half-daughter's last relationship had ended in tragedy; her betrothed and her father had died on the same day, in the same accident during a border skirmish with an Andorian cruiser sixteen years ago. She'd had plenty of casual attachments and a veritable string of lovers, but the moment she started to show an inclination towards settling down, she'd somehow picked the most socially awkward, irascible, introverted human in the quadrant. They were almost perfect opposites, and it was endearing, and more than a little amusing. He would be remiss if he didn't check at least once a month to see if they intended on getting married anytime soon.
"Is it really 2156?"
He hesitated, knowing he'd interpolated the date from Elizabeth's scrapbook, and there was no use hiding it now.
"Doctor, I don't remember anything of the past four years. Even looking at all those pictures didn't jog my memory." He dropped his face in his hands, sighing loudly. When he spoke again, it sounded muffled and far away. "What's happened to me?"
Briefly, Phlox considered lying to him, telling him that he'd hit his head or that he had a virus or any variety of easy medical explanations, but somehow, he couldn't bring himself to. Right when the silence between them grew uncomfortable, a sharp klaxon ripped through the overhead speakers, followed by a distinctive voice heralding a tactical alert.
Malcolm startled visibly; he'd been planning on discussing his ideas for a shipwide security protocol with Captain Archer, but it was nowhere near ready, though apparently he was experiencing the living proof otherwise.
"It's time to go," Phlox said somewhat rhetorically, and he didn't need to be told twice.
They made their way through the corridors as the ship threatened to fly apart around them. Malcolm felt an undeniable urge to get to the bridge, but it was clear that the doctor had no plans of allowing him to do so, no matter how much he tried to convince him.
The second they reached his quarters, Phlox opened the hatch and pushed him in, but not before the hull rolled once again, throwing them to the deck plating. In the resulting struggle, Malcolm managed to pilfer his tricorder, slipping it behind his back and retreating towards the viewport the moment the door closed behind him.
Captain Laura Pritchard of the NX-03 Cochrane had only just put Barisa VI in her sights when she located her mark.
She took it that Commander Hammond and Lieutenant Novakovich's plan to disable and steal the sensor beacon had gone massively awry; she knew it the moment they flew past the pickup zone through the debris of what had once been a bird-of-prey. Tucker sounded deliberately vague over the fleetwide comm, but mentioned that they were about to double back to steal another device, and while they had managed to disable the grid, they had no way of knowing if that Romulan interloper had warned the rest of the fleet before meeting their untimely demise.
Perfectly able to read into that subtext, the Undali had elected to come with them, and together they'd flown directly into a mass of stolen Vulcan ships and Romulan patrols. It was clearly obvious they hadn't taken the bait. She could hear Shran cursing in Andorian over the comm, and briefly wondered exactly how long they had before their backup would arrive.
As it turned out, the answer was not soon enough.
Laura was the kind of CO who cut her teeth as she rose through the ranks at the communications station; everything she learned about combat before earning her own brigade had been through simulations and case studies and careful analysis of Enterprise's mission logs. Needless to say, the moment she set foot on the bridge, she felt more than a little over her head.
In the beginning, Captain Hernandez had been there for her in a mentor capacity; she, Erika, and Jon had their fun at STC, and when the opportunity presented itself to join them, she jumped on it, and made it through her first few months of command with the counsel of an old friend and advice from her senior staff.
She wasn't too proud to admit she felt like she was flying by the seat of her pants. Erika respected that, and assured her that every other captain in the fleet felt the very same at some point. Eventually their letters shifted from professional to cordial to friendly, and by the time they reached a planned rendezvous on Vulcan, they'd resolved to meet face to face for the first time in years.
Truthfully, she wasn't sure who started it. Erika had her over for dinner, and to her surprise, invited her to her quarters afterwards. They laughed and reminisced and traded stories, and maybe it was the ambiance or a little too much red wine, but the next thing she knew they were kissing, shyly at first, like teenagers on a first date, before falling into an embrace that made her realize that she didn't even know what she'd been missing.
It had all been over after that.
There was little they could do about the fact that they were at the helm of two separate ships, and they could go months without seeing one another; at one point, when Erika had been out near Bajor and she spent months overseeing the rebuilding of the very infrastructure of Solnaran society, she thought about giving up altogether. Day after day, it was the same, treating radiation poisoning and supervising terraforming efforts and assuring people on their deathbed that they were going to be alright even when she knew they weren't. Then Erika had thrown her for a loop, revealing that she'd been involved in an effort by Starfleet Security to build nuclear warheads. Immediately after Admiral Gardner finished their briefing, they spoke over subspace, and she'd apologized profusely for her repeated lie by omission, and asked if it changed the way she felt about her.
She didn't know what came over her in that moment. Really, she should have told her where to shove it, but, after witnessing the devastation the Romulans had brought down upon the people of Solnara firsthand, she didn't want to imagine if Earth were to fall under a remotely similar fate. Erika was normally perfectly level-headed, but she'd almost cried with relief to hear that she was in it for the long haul, provided she didn't get involved in any more intelligence schemes.
Erika had been the one to encourage her to chase her metaphorical great white whale; within days of leaving the Solnaran system, they'd responded to a distress call from the ECS Kingston, who claimed they were being assailed by no less than three Vulcan patrols, each outfitted with disruptor cannons, which had already pumped their hull full of holes.
By the time they arrived, the crew had been completely slaughtered, either trapped in decompressed chambers or floating around in space or laying in the corridors halfway to the escape pods with their throats slit. It was bloody, violent, and horrifying, and she'd immediately resolved to get justice for them, even though she didn't know them from Adam.
The vessels on the Kingston's visual sensors were somewhat of a curiosity; they were hundreds of years old, and were so obsolete that the Vulcans weren't even keeping them for scrap. This implied that there was a private dealer out there financing the Romulans' tour of destruction, and the very thought of it infuriated her. She became consumed by it, chasing leads until they dried up and calling in every favor she possibly could from the High Command. She'd lost sleep over it, and resolved not to rest until she found what she was looking for. And find it she did, among the dozens of ships orbiting Barisa VI looking for a fight.
The universe might hate her for all the curveballs it's thrown her lately, but for now, it's affording her a few moments of grace.
"Treshka, can you cover us?"
The words came out of her mouth before she could stop them, and on the other end of the line, Captain Namara indicated her assent. Her helmsman broke off of formation immediately, turning the joystick at hairpin angles, dodging and weaving against the hail of weapons fire the Maelstrom was unleashing against a stolen Vulcan ship. She instantly recognized it as a modified D'Kyr combat cruiser, and it began to turn towards them, only to be distracted by the fervent action of the Andorian patrol dipping in and out of its nacelle ring.
It wasn't the first time she'd thrown her trust behind an alliance captain; the Vulcans she knew they could trust, at least in all matters above the table, and the Tellarites as well, where it concerned protecting their homeworld. The Andorians were always a wild card, forever out for their own interests, business or otherwise.
Laura had heard the Commodore extoll the virtues of Commander Shran before, but now it was time to put another Imperial Guard CO to the test.
It only took a few seconds for them to catch up with the transport, which didn't seem to be in too awful of a hurry. She called out to her science officer, and he confirmed that while he'd managed to locate a blind spot in their hull plating, they would need to be within a kilometer to beam anyone out.
The prospect of taking Romulan prisoners and making them answer for their crimes against humanity was, as usual, irresistible.
The voice of her first officer was in her ear, advising that they turn back as they rounded the curve of the planet to the dark side. She knew the MACO squadron was still down there laying waste to the temporary command post; at that point, they only had about twenty minutes remaining before their inevitable extraction attempt. Her own tactical officer was down there, and her absence was keenly felt, especially as the transport began to fire on them, knocking out their deflector shielding with a single volley.
She cursed inwardly as the damage reports began to flood in. Garcia's second attempted to disable their engines, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Her hand came down on the armrest and clenched down, watching intently as they came around and reentered the fray.
Her navigator had to almost reverse engines to avoid running headlong into a trio of birds-of-prey, before banking up and rocketing over their bow. One of the vessels seemed to turn on a dime and unleash a barrage of disruptor fire on their aft section, hitting their starboard nacelle head on and greatly reducing their speed in an instant.
"Treshka, we could use a little backup here!" A sharp pang of fear seized her gut, setting every nerve ending in her body alight. This, she realized, was the fight or flight reflex, the one that always kept her alive.
As usual, she would heed her instincts, no matter what anyone else told her.
"Acknowledged." Namara's reply was short and clipped, and a Daedalus class ship immediately pulled off from the front line to attend to them. They were slow and unwieldy, looking about as graceful as two soda cans tied to a baseball, but made up for it in armament and hull plating, where they were more sturdy than any of the NX vessels could hope to be on a good day. She watched as they crossed the Treshka's path and curved around their port side to lob some torpedoes at the enemy, keeping their target transport in sight.
Another round of disruptor fire and their phase cannons were knocked out. Laura ordered evasive maneuvers, reaching the support ship and doubling back into a displacement roll. By that time, the Andorian vessel was all but upon them, and she saw her chance.
"Captain, I'll go forward. You need to pull around aft and attack their-"
At that moment, one of the birds-of-prey weaved behind the transport, and the Treshka fired, most likely confusing their targeting sensors in the process. She watched helplessly as her mark erupted in flames and then disintegrated, bringing her fist down on the command console and baring her teeth with frustration.
She didn't have the opportunity to lend voice to her rage, for a second later, the Enterprise dropped out of warp directly above them, shaking the hull and nearly throwing her from her chair. Their science officer's voice filled the overhead speakers, and she sounded weary, as though she had the weight of the universe on her shoulders.
Join the club, she thought morosely, and broke off from the front lines to allow her crew to assess the damage.
The ride in from the outer atmosphere of Barisa VI had been rough to say in the least; even Alira, who often prided herself on having an iron stomach, felt a twinge of nausea that she had to choke back down. The inertial dampeners on these patrols were much less sophisticated than the ones on an NX class, and she felt the difference every time they hit a bit of turbulence and she was sent flying into her companions.
Rachel's tricorder came out and she was scanning, locating the settlement on the horizon and indicating which direction they would need to start running the second they hit the ground. They had resolved to lead the way, along with Sergeant Kemper and the Cochrane's MACO lead, and the moment they heard the thrusters powering down, she extended her fist out to her, saying: "Walk with the light, right?"
"Walk with the light," she echoed, and suddenly realized what kind of gesture she was offering, striking her knuckles against hers. Her phase rifle felt heavy and unwieldy against her back, and her knees felt like they would give out from under her at any second.
That was how she knew she was ready.
The hatch opened, and they pressed forward into a thick, impenetrable fog. It was the middle of the night on this side of the planet, but all the stars were drowned out by thick cloud cover. Even with night vision goggles, they could only see a few meters ahead, so they treaded lightly, tramping through massive puddles and patches of mud that threatened to fix them in one place.
There were enormous bald trees all around them, their thin, spindly arms casting shadows that danced across the ground. The ground gently sloped up to one side, and Alira realized that they'd been sent down in the shadow of a great mountain. The air seemed to vibrate with electricity, indicative of a recent storm, but there were no signs of wildlife, not even a hoot or a howl.
For a couple of minutes, the only sounds around them were their boots on the ground and the shift of their equipment belts against their uniforms.
Ahead of them, Sergeant Kemper barely made out a series of dirt features along their path, heaped up and redistributed in neat mounds, seemingly undisturbed for quite some time. His hand came out and seized Alira by the back of her tactical vest, pulling her back and anchoring her to his side. Her hand came up, palm facing out with fingers spread, and behind them, he heard the cascade of a hundred MACOs skidding to a halt.
Slowly, he bent down and picked up a rock, before pulling back and throwing it as hard as he could. Almost immediately, a bright flash of light appeared on the horizon, and the ground below them shook, indicating that they'd just stumbled into a field of landmines.
Lieutenant Garcia was scanning and scanning, and they were waiting with baited breath, until she finally shook her head, indicating what they feared most.
They didn't have enough time to go around.
"Watch your step," Alira whispered, and the warning rippled through the regiment.
The Cochrane's MACO chief led the way, fully aware that the first landmine may have alerted the enemy to their presence. He was terrified, but hiding it well, gritting his teeth and pressing on.
They had less than half a kilometer to go when disaster struck.
It began as a hiss and a low growl; the Corporal leading up the rear of the group stopped in his tracks, his metaphorical hackles raised. He listened and waited as the noise grew closer, feeling every hair on the back of his neck stand up. The safety clicked off of his rifle, and he opened his mouth to alert his companions a split second before a massive reptile came flying out of the darkness and latched its jaws around his chest.
Rachel heard the screaming before she saw what happened. She turned on her heels, and in the light reflected by the night vision glasses of a dozen MACOs, she witnessed the crocodile-like creature engaged in a death roll, having disemboweled one of her men and strewn his innards across several square meters.
Were it not for the sergeant at her elbow holding her up, she would have lost her composure entirely.
The beast soon backed up and retreated into the shadows, but not before throwing its head to one side, striking the legs of what had once been a man against one of the dirt mounds and triggering a detonation that pushed several of them off their feet.
In the distance, shouts and weapons fire.
They were running again, trying not to trip over themselves, until a beacon appeared on the horizon. Alira recognized it as a floodlight, and she reached for her pockets, retrieving a dozen portable charges and passing it into the hands of the officers all around her. She knew the message was well and truly received: dash from one end of the settlement to the other, blast their way through if they have to, and destroy the command outpost at all costs.
A handful of hybrid marauders seemingly came out of nowhere, and she immediately knew they'd been expecting them. Kemper shot first; they dodged his blast readily, parrying to the left, shouldering their disruptors and unleashing holy hell upon the approaching squadron.
Rather than shelter in place with her phase rifle, Alira activated her diverter shield and broke out into a sprint, charging at the nearest hybrid with force. He was wearing some kind of balaclava that covered his face, though she could see the surprise in his eyes, followed by overwhelming agony as she caught his chin with the serrated edge and nearly took his head off.
His companion was there in a second, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and lifting her off the ground. She'd already been almost strangled at their hands once before, so she didn't waste time, kicking and pushing off against another nearby hybrid until she was able to walk up his chest and wrap her calves around his neck, twisting to one side and sending them both tumbling.
She knew she'd killed him before they even hit the ground; the hybrid who had been holding her captive reached for her, but she swiped at him, leaving an ugly red line across the stomach of his uniform. In a flash, she stumbled to her feet and charged after Kemper, who was holding his own as he charged into the series of superstructures ahead of them.
The Romulan outpost was made of a curious mixture of canvas and stone and steel, all illuminated from overhead with beacons and space-heating lanterns, which were quickly overturned and thrown aside as the MACOs thundered past.
There were more of them than they expected, each armed to the teeth and stronger than three humans combined. Private Gilson was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground, only to find herself on the receiving end of a disruptor rifle pressed into her forehead.
Kemper quickly emptied a round into the hybrid's back, causing him to fall forward over her. She was rattled, but was able to stand easily, firing off another pulse just to make sure he was dead.
One MACO fell, then two; the others attempted to carry them along, fireman style, but the added weight caused them to fall behind. Garcia and Kemper were throwing charges indiscriminately as they went, and the harsh evening air seemed to burn their lungs, rubbing their throats raw and causing breath to escape in shaky gasps. A fine mist started to fall, and Alira reached up to wipe it out of her eyes, only to leave a streak of blood across her face.
The end was in sight a few minutes later; somehow, she was able to find her detonator, reminding herself to count to a very leisurely ten before hitting the big red button to allow time for the MACOs to follow behind them.
Suddenly, a veritable wall of hybrids formed in front of them, thick and impenetrable. Her heart leapt to her throat, but she didn't stop, rapidly deciphering which contingency plan this required.
From the comm, a whisper of salvation.
"Enterprise," she rasped, speaking their plight into existence. "We need help. Tell Mr. Reed to get down here right now."
"I'm afraid he's indisposed at the moment."
"What the hell do you mean he's indisposed?" She hissed, not having a second to question the fact that Liz was on the other end of the line, not the Captain or the Commodore. "We're on the far eastern end of the settlement. There's probably about two minutes until our chances are completely shot!"
"Cole is on her way with the team. Stand by."
She exhaled raggedly through her teeth, then began to run faster and faster, feeling the thunder of her companion's footsteps by her side. They had to blast through the line in order to finish laying the charges, and they had to do so in one swift, decisive motion.
A second later, the Romulan and alliance forces collided in a hail of weapons blasts and a flurry of screams, burning through the night like a raging fire.
By the time Enterprise arrived in the Barisa system, Lieutenant Cutler took one look around and realized, with horror, that she was the ranking officer on the bridge.
Shran was practically screaming on the open comm link, begging for backup, and Ensign Pascal immediately obliged, banking them hard to one side and bringing them around the side of the planet. She locked eyes with Crewman Bennett from across the room; she nodded gravely, and she knew what she had to do.
"Cutler to the Commodore."
There was a long pause as her request flew about in subspace trying to find its target, but when it did, his voice sounded tinny and far away, interspersed with someone shouting and struggling with him in the background. "I'm not going to make it, Lieutenant!"
"Sir?"
"You've got this!" The connection ended, and she all but rocketed out of her seat, coming around her station and approaching the conn, cautiously at first, like it was a viper about to strike.
She stared it down for one eternal second, like it was something to be conquered. Since Solnara, she'd relived the firefight all over again, relived attempting to save a child from certain death and piloting a rickety escape pod out into the atmosphere without knowing what she'd find. Far and above what had happened in the Expanse, it nearly defined the worst of her traumatic experiences in the line of duty, and for far too long, she had let it define her.
No longer, she promised herself, sliding into the Captain's chair and bracing herself against the armrests. On the viewscreen, a Vulcan battlecruiser lay broken and splintered and surrounded by dozens of birds-of-prey, trying to pull away long enough to resecure critical systems. It seemed that the Undali was fighting a losing battle to prevent them from being extinguished entirely; everyone else seemed entirely occupied, dogfighting their way across the great circle of the sky.
"Take us in, Mr. Pascal. Tactical, photonic torpedoes, full spread."
The Maelstrom zoomed over them in that moment, bobbing and weaving through the fray in a manner that made her suspect their inertial dampeners had gone out again. It seemed that they both had the same idea, and she urged them on, digging her heels into the deck plating as the ship bucked and rolled.
"Did we get that sensor beacon, Captain?"
Trip's voice sounded strained, as though he was laboring for breath. "Yes and no. Do you want port or starboard?"
"We'll take port. On your command, sir."
At the helm, Pascal furtively swiped at his face, wiping away the sleep there. She knew he was pulling a double shift, and from what it looked like, he was powering through admirably. At the moment, she knew she could trust him, and held her breath as the Enterprise tilted to one side and hung vertically in space.
A passing marauder delivered a one-two punch of disruptor fire to their forward section, and the bridge shuddered, raining down a hail of sparks. On the command console, she could see damage and casualty reports coming in, but she tried her best to ignore it, fixing her gaze on the viewscreen and not tearing her eyes away for a second.
They crossed paths once again before coming along the length of the disabled Vulcan ship, unleashing holy hellfire on the enemy.
Pascal whipped the joystick around the moment they reached the nose, turning them one hundred eighty degrees and repeating the motion so that Bennett could have a second chance. The intensity in her eyes was positively frightening, and she more or less hit her marks, creating a dazzling display of drive plasma venting from the ships all around them.
She thought she could hear Trip whooping in excitement and Shran answering in kind; they made an abrupt about face and went to the aide of the Cochrane, but not before seeing three patrol ships break free and rocket towards the surface. One of them flipped out of the charge and made a beeline towards them; a second later, their captain broke subspace silence, and she instantly anticipated their request, giving the all clear for the MACOs to begin transporting.
Down below, the invasion force was struggling and failing to hold their ground.
There were way more soldiers at the command outpost than any of them anticipated, and their clash had been bloody, ruthless, and violent, with a mixture of particle weapons and knives and fists being used as they whaled against each other. At one point, Alira turned just in time to see one of her own MACOs be impaled through the stomach with some kind of serrated spear; they made eye contact, and she saw his shock, his realization of what was happening, followed by the lifeforce start to drain from his face.
She desperately wanted to break free and run to his side, but they were everywhere, firing and blasting and tearing at the front line with everything they had. Kemper backed up to her, then turned around, using her shield as cover to unpin a handful of stun grenades and send them flying into the oncoming horde of Romulans. They had far less severe of an impact than either wanted, and he cursed loudly, knowing they were relatively low on options.
Neither were sure exactly how much time had passed since they heard the MACO squadron from the Enterprise was on its way. It felt like either ten seconds or a hundred years. All they knew was that their people were dying around them, and they needed to act decisively to give themselves a chance to finish the job and blow the command center to high heavens.
"Kemper, what do you do when you're out of ideas?" She ducked a split second before he raised his phase pistol and fired upon an approaching soldier, the blast passing right through where her head just was.
"Something stupid," he shouted back, feeling her start to shuffle forward. "We've already been down that road, ma'am."
"Couldn't hurt to try again," she replied, and reached for her plasma baton tucked into the elastic in her hair.
As it swung through the air, it extended out to its full two meter length and began to spark, the torrential downpour falling from the heavens causing it to sizzle and smoke. Her fingers curled around the hilt, and she glanced at him, silently asking if he trusted her.
At this point, he had no choice.
The shield retracted into her arm, and she charged into the oncoming line. He made a move to go after her and guard her six, but she turned away from him, screaming for all her might: "Hit the deck!"
She pressed an unseen button, and then the device left her grasp, traveling around in a circle and turning about its axis, striking and stunning about a dozen different soldiers as it did so. Corporal McKenzie almost found herself on the receiving end of a heart-stopping plasma pulse, but ducked and rolled at the last second, missing singeing her hair by a fraction a centimeter.
To his utter shock, it returned to her hand and retracted instantly. Together they dashed forward, being able to reclaim a dozen more meters on their way to the outskirts of the settlement, then knelt down behind a stone barricade, gasping for breath.
"My stun baton doesn't do that," he grumbled, uncorking his water bottle and passing it to her.
"Clearly HQ doesn't take good care of you like Special Ops does," she replied breathlessly, clutching her chest. "I'd reach out and see about getting you one, but…"
He knew all about how the Denobulans had closed themselves off from the rest of the quadrant and declared their neutrality, at the expense of seeming cowardly and shrewd to the rest of their interstellar neighbors. Kemper waved off her concern, then checked the charge on the power cell of his particle rifle, aiming it into the ground. "You realize you haven't fired a single time since we landed, right?"
"To each his own. Hand-to-hand is where I-"
The space all around them seemed to shimmer and glow, and the next thing they knew, dozens of armed MACOs appeared around them, startling for a second at their new surroundings before charging straight into the firefight. In the low light, she instantly recognized Sergeant Cole, who looked ready to bolt at any moment.
"About time you got here!" She shouted, drawing a headshake from her.
"On your feet, Ensign!" Amanda retorted, extending her hand, which was gratefully accepted. "Which way?"
"Up towards the cliffs. We've got about ten minutes before extraction."
"Then we'd better move fast," she said, though that much was obvious.
The next few moments passed by in a blur; the soldiers kept coming and coming until Alira was sure that they must have brought half the population of the Romulan homeworld with them. Several wounded were delivered to the front of the line in varying states of consciousness, though there was little hope of having time to treat their wounds now. McKenzie made a mad break for the outskirts of the settlement, only for a soldier to catch her by surprise and fire a loose round at her head. Fortunately, Corporal Chang was there to grab her arm and force her away, only for the charge to disappear into his chest and send him crashing into the ground.
She was running before she could stop herself, falling to her knees and desperately feeling for a pulse. For a split second, she couldn't find one, and her own heart nearly stopped. Garcia was there as well, and they locked eyes, before realizing what they needed to do.
Rachel had halfway righted herself when an enemy marauder came flying out of nowhere behind her, rifle leveled. Alira reacted instantaneously, pushing her to one side, grabbing him by the forearm and twisting back over his head. His weapon went flying, and he screamed, cold and discordant. She knew she'd broken his arm, and felt an inexplicable rush of rage, which quickly shifted into shock as her counterpart pulled a thick, serrated metal cord from a previously unseen wristband and wrapped it around his neck, ending things with a decisive slice.
"Where did you-" The words came out of her mouth before she could silence them, and she was seized by an inexplicable sense of terror, of realization.
Harris never gave them much to work with out in the field, but that had been an ever present part of her arsenal.
Rachel met her gaze, her expression indecipherable, and then the moment shattered just as soon as it had formed.
Far behind, MACOs were running towards them, screaming for all their might, though she couldn't for the life of them make out what they were saying. She heard it then: rushing water, cracking trees, and tumbling boulders, coupled with a low rumble that shook the ground and only increased in volume by the second.
"Mudslide," Rachel said breathlessly, and turned to run.
She was gone in a flash. Alira wasn't sure how they'd managed to trigger it, but one thing was certain: she needed to move, and she needed to move fast.
It took a few seconds for her to pick up Chang and stumble to her feet; she desperately wished he had been at least partially conscious, because at least she wouldn't have to carry him like a sack of potatoes, but she shoved that thought aside, gritting her teeth and stumbling forward.
A few of her companions were also carrying their wounded; they seemed to be running much faster than she could ever hope to. With every step, the mud threatened to take hold of her boots and suction them in place, but she fought on, though the air burned her throat and it felt like her lungs were about to explode.
The Romulans seemed to vanish all around them; she had no idea if they were resigned to their fate or if they simply weren't fast enough to escape the mudflow, but soon it was just them, and the cliffs were agonizingly, tantalizingly close.
She kept telling herself that she just needed to get high enough to avoid being swept away. She was blessed with a natural climbing instinct, one that had saved her life on many an occasion, but she'd never scaled a completely vertical wall with a full grown man draped over her shoulders before.
Gilson and McKenzie were the first ones to reach the top of the cliff. From their vantage point, they could see the mudslide approaching, most likely the result of the torrential downpour and landmines all around them, as tall as a three-story building and as loud as an oncoming hovertrain, destroying everything in its path. It was moving incredibly quickly directly towards them, and they instantly knew they were in trouble.
They helped Kemper up the final few meters up the side of the rock face, then a couple others, before rolling over and laying face down over the side of the cliff, their upper bodies dangling into the unknown.
Far below them, they could make out Ensign Taxa screaming and waving her hands, though they couldn't understand her over the rapidly encroaching thunder of the landslide. Kemper reached for his communicator, only to realize he'd somehow lost it in the firefight, then watched as she pointed to her waist, then to Chang slung across her back.
"Grappling hook!" He shouted, reaching for Gilson.
He repeated himself, and McKenzie joined in, seizing the device on her equipment belt. She searched for an anchor around them; finding none, she dug her heels into the ground and fired away into the darkness below.
It took a few seemingly endless seconds, but she felt the line tug and began to walk backwards. Kemper wrapped his arms around her waist, then Gilson, then Cole, until about a half dozen of them were all arranged in a line, desperate to avoid losing one of their own to the rushing torrent.
The second Chang was dragged over the side of the cliff, Kemper rushed forward and fell to his knees, immensely relieved to see their tactical officer scaling the rock face at an impressive clip. She was only a few meters above the safety zone when the flow swept past her, shearing against the wall and taking several outpost buildings and Romulan soldiers with it. They locked eyes, and he could see that she was shaking down to the very core of her being, which wasn't remedied for a second as she joined them at the top of the cliff.
She rolled onto her back and stared up at the night sky and into the downpour, breathing heavily, then righted herself and stumbled to her feet. Alira was winded and terrified, but she pointed to Rachel, who quickly filled in the blanks.
"Contact the patrols and let them know the new extraction point. Do a headcount."
They nodded and moved off without another word, leaving the two of them looking over the side of the cliff at the rushing river below them.
Neither said anything for one long moment, then Alira felt her hand in the middle of her back, pushing lightly.
"What do they call you?"
"Rosalind," she replied after a minute of hesitation. "I think you should know that I was sent along to make sure you didn't survive this mission."
She tensed up, realizing that with a single shove, she could send her flying over the precipice and straight to her death. Alira turned out of her touch and faced her, fighting to keep her expression neutral.
"Sent by who?"
"I think you know that," she ground out slowly, dangerously.
"Did they tell you anything about me?"
"No, but does it matter?"
The look in her eye told her that it didn't matter at all to her, and the fact that she had once been like that was terrifying. "Why didn't you?"
"You saved my life," Rachel replied matter-of-factly. "And despite what people say-"
"Stop." She closed the distance between them, unable to ignore how her heart raced. Really, she was feeling quite faint. "You can say I fought you off, or that I survived despite your best efforts."
"We've got to make it look convincing."
Alira nodded, then took a step to the side, looking all about. Once she was confident no one was around, she reeled back and punched her with all of her might, privately delighting to see her head snap back and her arms come flying up.
Rachel said nothing, baring her teeth and leaning into the pain. She pitched forward, hanging her upper body over her knees, then righted herself, revealing what would soon be a massive shiner.
She turned to leave, her mission unfulfilled, but their covenant sealed. The second before she was out of earshot, she turned back, calling out: "I can only hope this doesn't ruin our friendship."
The second they entered the firefight at Barisa VI, Malcolm began to pace the length of his bedroom, feeling for all the world like a caged animal.
His place was on the bridge. It was an undeniable truth that flooded his thoughts, as natural and real as the blood pounding through his veins. He needed to be there to defend them against the enemy, whoever that may be, to heed the Captain's orders and guide them to a hopefully decisive victory. Try as he might, he couldn't understand why they were keeping him from his post.
The doctor had asserted that he wasn't well, but he felt perfectly fine. His PADDs had been confiscated, his computer access revoked. The phase pistol he always kept underneath his mattress was gone, ensuring he couldn't even defend himself if he wanted to. They'd even maximized the polarization axis of the viewport in his quarters, effectively cutting him off from the rest of the universe.
It was all very curious, and very much unlike Captain Archer to keep matters of security hidden from him. He felt like a stranger in this reality, like an unwanted visitor in someone's home. Every part of him was screaming to escape and investigate, even if it meant breaking a direct order. He'd never disobeyed his CO in such a drastic way, but as the deck plating rolled and the plasma sizzled in the EPS conduits above him, he knew he needed to act.
He whipped out Phlox's tricorder and accessed the sensor subroutines; it was a medical model, and very much different to his own, but he was able to navigate to the correct directories with little trouble. It was the fifth or sixth time he'd scanned for any anomalies around them since the tactical alert was activated, and wondered if it would be the last. As usual, he picked up their own weapons signatures, unfamiliar engines and vessels, Vulcan and Andorian and Tellarite and some other species, and curiously, background chroniton radiation, which he couldn't even begin to explain.
Malcolm knew there was likely an armed guard outside his quarters and the Sub-Commander's; he wondered how she was taking the news, but knew she was most likely just as stoic as ever, resigned to her fate, perhaps plotting and planning for her own escape…
"T'Pol to Lieutenant Reed." The comm sounded on his wall, taking him by surprise, and he went to answer it, covering the speaking with his hand.
"Sub-Commander," he whispered, pressing his ear against the bulkhead. "How did you manage to get through? They've revoked our command codes, and-"
"I managed to borrow the doctor's communicator," she revealed evenly, and he privately found the fact that they'd both engaged in a bit of pickpocketing slightly amusing.
"Ma'am, I believe something is very wrong. The Captain is hiding something from us, we're taking on quite a beating, and…" He trailed off, studying the sensor readout in front of him. His eyes widened, and terror clenched at his gut. "I'm reading a heightened EM radiation concentration in the armory. It's low in the spectrum, they're not going to be able to pick it up on internal sensors, but it's building up to a critical mass. When it reaches it…"
"It will set off secondary explosions throughout the ship." She followed that thought to its natural conclusion, and quickly realized what they needed to do. "I will distract the guard. Be prepared to run."
"Ma'am?"
She didn't respond; a second later, she heard her door open across the hall, followed by a flurry conversation. Someone cried out, then toppled to the floor. A blast with a phase pistol severed his door controls, and the hatch slid open, revealing their science officer standing over an unconscious crewman.
T'Pol's expression remained impassive; he stepped over the threshold, informing her: "If you ever tire of the bridge, we could surely use you on the security team."
He had no way of knowing of her past time in the Ministry of Security, nor her work as a field operative, and for the time being, she elected to keep that a secret. They retreated down the corridor, breaking out into a run within seconds.
As they drew within a few meters of the turbolift, the Captain's door flew open, emitting the man of the hour, who was locked in a fist fight with an unfamiliar assailant. A punch landed against the side of his face, and he turned, revealing a head full of dark, curly hair and completely black eyes.
T'Pol didn't hesitate, side-stepping them and crashing into the lift. Malcolm followed her, and the moment the doors closed, he realized they were in the midst of a battle with forces they couldn't possibly understand, perhaps with the Suliban, possibly involving Daniels or any number of temporal agents. He thought about what the Captain had told him after their last encounter with Silik, assuring him that the threat was far from gone.
It seemed that in the past four years, things had escalated out of control.
For a split second, he thought they were about to become trapped. The floor jolted underneath them, sheared against the wall, then came to rest at an angle the second the doors came open.
They were running again, past unfamiliar crewmen and repair crews and a stream of soldiers dressed for battle. Malcolm hesitated for a second, recognizing the MACO uniform, his thoughts kicking into overdrive.
At last, they reached the armory and swept inside to a chaotic scene. He scarcely recognized his own domain; it seemed that they'd done some remodeling, and a massive concrete chamber sat in the far corner, locked tight to anything and everyone. Ensign Tanner, one of the few officers in the room he recognized, pushed through the crowd of crewmen rushing around and was at his side in a second, pushing him back, urging him to get out, get out, get out.
One of the dorsal phase cannon housings exploded in a hail of sparks, and he glanced back at it, enough time for the two of them to break free and retreat to the far side of the room, where they located the source of their mysterious EM signature.
It was a strange glowing, pulsating white ball, locked into the table among a cluster of scanners and instruments. He suspected it might be Suliban in origin, but without further analysis, he couldn't be sure. Malcolm was almost afraid to touch it, but if his scans were any indication, this thing was ready to self-destruct at any minute.
He tried to tell Tanner that they needed to beam it out into space right now, that the entire ship was in danger, but he could hardly hear him over the din of torpedoes launching and crewmen shouting. When he realized that it was all for naught, he seized the thing and slung it under his arm, surprised by how heavy it was but managing to stagger to the door without a second thought.
They made a beeline for the airlock, T'Pol leading the way, phase pistol held aloft. Several crewmen startled and threw themselves against the bulkheads to get away, tremendously shocked to witness their Captain forcing her way through the corridors, threatening to shoot anyone in her way.
Together they reached the hatch; she fumbled with the controls, but was eventually able to open the door, and he rolled it in, rapidly inputting the ejection sequence. Archer and their guest caught up to them in that moment, dashing around the corridor and skidding to a halt. He was breathlessly attempting to regain his composure, wiping at the blood streaming from a massive cut on his forehead.
Jonathan watched helplessly as they ejected the stolen Romulan cloaking device into space; not a second later, it detonated against the hull plating, shaking the floor and nearly throwing them off their feet.
Realization hit him like a lightning bolt: it must have been rigged with an auto-detonation circuit, and the second they returned within range, it was remotely triggered by the enemy fleet. He remembered Malcolm saying that it had been remarkably easy to steal the cloak; perhaps that was by design.
He glanced at Bran, who looked back at him soberly, reverently. The temporal agent nodded, and he understood.
This had been what he was trying to prevent all along, but it seemed like the natural inclination of his officers to protect their own had intervened anyway.
"You win," he said quietly, and vanished into the nearest bulkhead. A second later, Malcolm and T'Pol began to shift and shimmer, dissolving in a flash of light.
Long after the last Romulan marauder had been run out of the system pursued by errant patrols, they'd all been briefed about the situation on the surface, and the crew had began to mend their wounds, Jonathan found T'Pol in sickbay being poked and prodded by every instrument in the doctor's arsenal.
She very much looked like herself; her hair was longer now, dusting her shoulders, and was back to the same lovely shade of soft brown he was used to. She seemed at home in her uniform now, her former ramrod straight posture relaxed by a fraction of a centimeter. He knew the moment Bran followed through on his word, because he felt her calling out to him through their bond, careful and insistent, making sure he was safe and unharmed. She was desperately looking for an explanation. Phlox had apparently only been too willing to provide one, though it was up to Jonathan to fill in the blanks.
The moment he stepped behind the curtain, he was seized by the overwhelming desire to wrap his arms around her and hold her close. He didn't realize just how much he treasured having her in his head until she was gone, and he knew she understood that from the way she reached out to him, taking his hand and teasing his fingers with her own.
T'Pol, as usual, was not one to waste time. "You could have postponed the war. We could have been prepared months ahead of time…"
"It still would have happened, and-"
"We could have come to an understanding much sooner," she interrupted, and from the barest twitch of her eyebrow, he caught on to her insinuation.
Jonathan glanced around them, verifying the doctor wasn't in earshot, then whispered: "You know, in spite of everything we went through, all the years we tried to deny it, I'm glad we had all those years together. I wouldn't have it any other way."
She knew he meant it, and he could sense she returned the sentiment.
I know all of our struggles were worth it, but I think it's worth mentioning that I loved you then just as much as I love you now.
T'Pol felt a sudden rush of warmth, and inwardly, the very beginnings of a smile. I believe I knew you would become special to me the first moment you raised your voice outside of Klaang's hospital room.
You're kidding. I was so worked up, I really let you have it…
You were honest. I knew you were a man of integrity. Impulsive, yes, and reckless, yes...
Say what you want, I kept Enterprise in one place while Bran was here.
The way you prevented the total destruction of my ship during my incapacitation was admirable.
Your ship?
My ship, she asserted, meeting his gaze and daring him to correct her. A bubble of amusement rose through his throat, and soon he was laughing, a sudden display of amusement that he could not suppress. Before she could react, he leaned forward and captured her lips in a very human kiss, soft and celebratory, that conveyed his adoration for her and more.
She tasted like love and life, of the hope that one day they would find their way out of this war.
On the other side of the room, Malcolm lay on a biobed, blinking into the overhead lights and trying to make sense of what had transpired over the past twenty-four hours.
Phlox had asked him where he went while his former self was here, and truthfully, he had no idea. It felt like he was asleep, floating in some kind of primordial soup at the beginning or end of time. He was mostly conscious, but every time he tried to confirm he was there in a physical sense, he felt nothing. Nothing but an overpowering sense of calm and comfort, of warmth and reassurance, that for a moment he mused that this must be what it was like to be in the womb.
That seemed to satisfy the doctor, and he took his leave of him. For what seemed like an eternity, the only sounds around him were the occasional blip from the biosign monitor above his head and the chirping of creatures lined up around the counter. Soon, his eyelids fluttered shut, and the moment before he dozed off, he heard the curtain rustle.
He startled slightly, blinking away the drowsy haze, then sat up just in time to greet Lieutenant Cutler, who was carrying a large box and looking more than a little guilty.
"How are you feeling?"
"No worse for wear," he assured her. "A little sore from carrying that cloaking device at a full sprint, but I'll live."
"Glad to hear it." She approached him cautiously, avoiding meeting his gaze. "The Commodore had me round up a bunch of stuff in your quarters. Apparently, that didn't help us very much."
"Apparently not," he echoed with a laugh, having been told all about his past self's efforts to save the ship. He dearly hoped that old Malcolm wouldn't remember a thing about his time in 2156, and from the way everything seemed to be exactly how he left it, he knew he didn't. Gingerly, he rotated and swung his legs over the side of the biobed, accepting the box and pulling it into his lap.
Sure enough, a majority of the trophies he'd collected over the past few years were there, souvenirs from various alliance worlds and totems that only vaguely reminded him of past traumatic missions. He shuffled around, making sure that everything was there, until his eyes fell on one item in particular and he froze.
"Lieutenant, this isn't what it looks like-"
"Really, it's none of my business. Don't worry about it. I-"
He produced a power cell from one of the MACO's particle rifles, which she suddenly remembered was a huge breach of protocol for him to have outside of the training room. Liz breathed a huge sigh of relief.
"It belonged to a friend," he answered vaguely, though that might have been a stretch. While he was alive, he might have called Hayes a good fighter or a dependable colleague, thought certainly never to his face. It was only after he was gone that Malcolm began to dissect the complicated nature of their relationship, and acknowledge that his feelings for the man ran deeper than he would care to admit.
He thought about it, wondered if things could have been different if they met in another time and place. Everyone was stressed and strung out during the Xindi conflict, and they whiled away the months taking out their frustrations on each other, hiding their interest behind a seemingly unending power struggle. The closest they ever came to acting on anything was the night their fistfight spilled out from the gym into the corridors; after that, he shut down, knowing full well he needed to get himself in check before his professionalism and ability to lead could be called into question.
He'd never been one for relationships, having taken steps to close himself off from anyone and everything. It was easier that way; he couldn't get hurt, and he couldn't lose focus on his work, which kept him going even when everything else around him seemed to be falling apart. He enjoyed his own company, and had all but resolved to remain a bachelor for life as his counterpart had in the distant future on the generational Enterprise. And he had made his peace with that. Until...
"Like I said, it's none of my business. I'm just happy you're feeling okay." She clasped her hands together, wringing tightly. "I'll see you at dinner if you're up for it."
"Wouldn't miss it," he promised, and continued rooting around. She'd just set one foot outside of the curtain when his fingers closed around a small velvet box, and his heart all but dropped down through his stomach. "Wait..."
Liz stopped in her tracks, dipping her head to hide her grimace. Slowly, she turned on her heels to face him, only to confirm her worst fears. "We absolutely do not have to talk about that," she assured him. "Your secret is safe with me."
Despite his previous misgivings about sharing even the smallest details of his personal life with his coworkers, he knew he could trust her. He did his best to force an encouraging smile, which drew her back into the makeshift room.
"You told me last night not to postpone joy," he began quietly, flipping open the box and closing it just as quickly. "I've been thinking about this for a while."
"How long have you had it?"
"That's not important," Malcolm asserted, slightly mortified by what his answer would be. "I guess we're in the same boat, aren't we?"
It terrified him just how seriously he'd contemplated making Alira an honest woman. In the space of just over a year, they'd become best friends and companions, lovers and confidantes. She was different; while he was a calm, placid ocean, she was fire and a raging hurricane. The moment she left for the Maelstrom, he realized he needed her like air and water, that he needed her more than he had ever needed anyone, man or woman, human or anything else, and he needed her for the rest of his life, however long that may be.
He wanted to get out of deep space the moment the war was over and buy a home far from the city, somewhere no one from their pasts could find them. He wanted them both to work at R&D at Utopia Planitia, where they'd have all the weapons to tinker with they could ever possibly want. He wanted to take walks with her in the evenings and argue about literature and movies and politics until they were blue in the face. He wanted to give her the child she so desperately wanted and make sure they had everything they needed and that no one would ever, ever hurt her.
It was his fantasy, and there was no point cluttering it up with reality.
Even if, at the moment, certain agents of the Section had it out for them, making his action on the matter all but impossible.
"We are," Liz said, smiling softly. "You ought to act soon, or else we just might beat you down the aisle."
"Really? Is he that serious about it?"
"Are you kidding? He's been dropping hints all over the place. Phlox is the least subtle person in the universe." They both knew that to be true. Honesty and plain-spokenness seemed to be a key characteristic of their species.
Malcolm shook his head and stowed the box in his pocket, pulling a strange, strained expression. "Would that make you my mother-in-law?"
By human standards, she supposed it would. The thought of it was so amusing that she couldn't help but laugh, and soon he joined in, all the tension of the past few days diffusing in an instant.
It took him a minute to recover, but when he did, he glanced back up at her, hope in his eyes. "What do you think are the odds of her saying yes?"
"She will, one hundred percent. I can guarantee it."
He breathed out a sigh of relief, knowing full well all he needed now was a plan, and the right time and place, and for the threat on their lives to be extinguished. "If only we can get through this war," he mumbled, not intending for her to hear it.
"You never know, Malcolm." She retreated to the curtain and swept it aside, exposing them to the large, open space in the middle of sickbay, then turned back, offering him a small smile. "It's an infinite universe, after all."
End of Episode Twenty-One
Next time on Enterprise...
Episode Twenty-Two: A Wind in the Door
The fleet returns to Paan Mokar to sign the charter of the wartime Coalition of Planets. Section 31's ultimatum arrives.