CHAPTER 9

Doctor Phlox came to the captain's cabin and performed a quick examination. As Hoshi suspected, the meld had not hurt her other than to give her a headache. Before leaving, Phlox injected her with an analgesic. Her headache receded almost immediately. Despite the revulsion she felt for this strange version of her Denobulan friend, she couldn't help but be grateful that he had eased her pain. No longer distracted by the headache, she could think more clearly, and she had a feeling she was going to need her wits about her.

The door had no more shut behind Phlox when the captain said, "Now, we need to decide what we're going to do with you." He began to pace the width of the cabin.

Hoshi, still seated at the table, got the impression that he'd already reached a decision. "I don't have much say in the matter, do I?"

"No, you don't," the captain said, adding, "That's very perceptive of you."

She tensed as he walked toward her, then relaxed marginally as he took the seat across from her.

"Unfortunately," he started, his elbows on the table and his fingers steepled, "you aren't going to be able to help me with the one thing I wanted the most after we analyzed the technology on your shuttle. T'Pol says your own memories confirm that your expertise is in communications, not engineering."

Hoshi peered warily at him. He didn't sound too disappointed. That was good. She hadn't seen him be overtly cruel or petty, but she recalled the conversation she'd heard between him and Phlox in sickbay. He'd ordered Phlox to wake her, despite the danger to her, instead of waiting until she roused on her own. That was a powerful first impression that hadn't left her. He was someone who put his own desires ahead of the welfare of others.

She felt compelled to defend herself, nevertheless. "Not everyone on a starship has an engineering background."

"True," he agreed, "but in your case, I had my hopes." He sighed heavily, as if resigned, but his manner had the aura of theatrics.

With a flash of insight, Hoshi realized she had been reading him correctly when she'd emerged from the bathroom in a towel earlier that day. The reason his reaction to her appearance had seemed off was because her subconscious had been analyzing his expression and demeanor, expecting him to act as if he was the Captain Archer of her universe. Her captain would never be so mean-spirited and rude as this one had been in that situation. And he wouldn't have taken pleasure in scaring her, as she now suspected was the case.

Now that her memory was back, however, and she was aware of where she was, she was certain that, while Archer wasn't happy that she couldn't provide new tech, there was something else about her that he was anticipating. Determined not to let him intimidate her any more than he already had, she sat up a little straighter and looked him in the eye. "You have something in mind for me."

"Your ability with languages is impressive," he said. "There is no one in the entire fleet who can speak more than four or five languages, and most of them have to use a UT at some point. As a skilled linguist, you can appreciate that relying on a machine for exact translations, not to mention subtle nuances, can be foolhardy. I've decided that you're going to be my personal translator."

His last statement hit Hoshi like a bombshell. Her mind was still in a whirl from the meld, but there was one topic she'd noticed that had been ignored. Unsure of her status, she hadn't brought it up, but he hadn't offered any information about it, either. It was what she'd wanted to know ever since she'd gotten her memory back. "But what about sending me home?" she asked.

He leaned toward her across the small table, his green eyes hard. "You might as well get used to this being your home now," he said.

Hoshi leaned away from him as his menacing tone sent an apprehensive shiver through her. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You mean it's not possible for me to go back?"

"I have no idea," he told her flatly.

"But--"

"It's not a high priority."

"It is to me!" Even as she argued, Hoshi was amazed at her boldness. She'd noticed the narrowing of his eyes at her outburst, and half expected the captain to slap her down, verbally or maybe physically. But the sudden sense of isolation, surrounded though she was by people who looked familiar, couldn't be denied. "I don't belong here!"

"You do now," he said between gritted teeth. It was obvious he was trying to hold his temper in check. "If you would be kind enough to let me finish."

Hoshi gulped. "All right," she said, but she was damned if she was going to apologize. She was the injured party here, in more ways than one.

"T'Pol and Tucker may figure out how to do that," Archer told her, "once they're finished going over what's left of your shuttle. And our current assignment isn't finished. That takes precedence over everything else."

It wouldn't hurt to find out what this Enterprise's current assignment was. The more she could find out, the better she'd be able to gauge her situation. Bracing herself for another reprimand, she asked, "What is your current assignment?"

"Space anomalies in this sector that are interfering with ship transit."

Hoshi's breath caught in her throat. She wondered if this Enterprise had ever encountered the Xindi.

He saw Sato's face go pale. Strange. He'd expected that reaction sooner, when he'd almost lost his temper as she'd argued with him. But she'd stood up to him, and although he could tell she was afraid, she hadn't let herself be bullied. She may come from a background that was much softer than the Imperial Empire, but she was by no means weak.

But it was when he had mentioned the space anomalies that he'd seen the fight go out of her. There had been a momentary flash of terror in her brown eyes. Something bad involving space anomalies had happened to her. He was on the verge of asking about it when he saw her get a grip on herself.

"Have you ever encountered the Xindi?" she asked.

He shook his head, even as he remembered that T'Pol had said Sato's Earth had been attacked by the Xindi. "No. And I never will. They exterminated themselves a millenia ago, fighting amongst themselves."

At his words, Sato visibly relaxed. "That's good," she said. "That means the anomalies aren't theirs."

Archer frowned and leaned toward her, and this time, he noticed, she didn't seem upset that he was encroaching on her personal space. "Anomalies can be caused by any number of things," he said, "and sometimes for reasons we don't know. What is it about them and the Xindi that upsets you so much?"

Again he saw the hesitation that preceded some of her earlier answers. She was thinking about what she was going to say, or if she should even say anything. While that was a good quality in an officer in enemy hands, he didn't want her to think of him as the enemy. He wanted her to work with him, not against him. He also had a feeling that ordering her to tell him would only make her clam up, so he leaned back, trying to make her more comfortable and giving her some time to compose her answer.

"You're lucky," she said at last. "The Xindi attacked my Earth." She closed her eyes at what had to be a painful memory. "Seven million people were killed. And that was only a test of a smaller version of the weapon the Xindi planned to use to destroy Earth."

T'Pol had told him that Sato had been involved in that conflict, but hadn't given him any particulars. Seven million humans! Archer's face hardened. No one would dare try that with his Earth. They'd be destroyed before they got anywhere near the home planet of the Terran Empire. "Why?" he asked.

Sato didn't react to his harsh tone; she was too deeply entrenched in the emotions of what had happened in the past. Her gaze lost its focus as she began speaking. "A transdimensional species tricked the Xindi into believing Earth would destroy them at some time in the future. And the Xindi believed them!" She took a shaky breath, trying to regain her composure. "What the Xindi didn't know, but what we found out, was that the species from another dimension was trying to transform our universe to make it habitable for them. If they had been successful, it would have destroyed our universe as we know it." She looked at him with wide eyes. "The space anomalies that we encountered were a manifestation of the beginning of that change."

Archer stared at her for a long moment. It was possible that these transdimensional beings had counterparts in his universe. It might even be the same beings. Without the Xindi to aid them, they could be trying a different version of the attack they'd perpetrated in Sato's universe. Or the anomalies could be nothing other than any of a variety of space phenonmena for which there was no explanation.

But the possibility of an attack from another dimension couldn't be ignored. If there was the smallest chance it could happen, it had to be addressed as a threat.

He looked at Sato with new appreciation. She was going to be able to provide some valuable information after all. "You're going to tell us everything that happened in your universe's war with the Xindi, and everything you can remember about the anomalies and those transdimensional beings."

For once, he was pleased to see, she didn't argue.