A/N: This is my personal favorite of all the chapters so far. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 11

Hoshi might not be comfortable with Tucker, but she was downright spooked by Reed. It was irrational, for she had only met him once before, and then only briefly, and she didn't have much by which to judge him. But, as with Archer, her first impression had been that this was a man who was supremely confident and who did as he pleased, even if it meant hurting others. She remembered thinking that she never wanted to be alone with him. Now she was expected to work with him. The idea made her blood run cold.

She glanced anxiously at Tucker, hoping he might provide some reason for her not to go with Reed, but she got no support from that quarter. He was glaring at Reed, who seemed amused by the engineer's irritation.

"Whenever you're finished here, we can get started," Reed told her.

His half-closed eyes as he gazed at her over the rim of his coffee cup sent an apprehensive shiver down her spine. The man practically projected depraved lust. She could continue eating, if only to delay going with him. But her appetite was long gone, and the little she had eaten was making her queasy. She pushed her plate away. "I'm finished."

Reed got to his feet, leaving his cup on the table. Hoshi reluctantly got to her feet as well.

Still seated at the table, Tucker looked up at Reed and asked suspiciously, "What's the captain want her to do?"

"As I said, translate. That's what she's supposedly good at," Reed answered. Shifting his gaze to her, he added, "We'll see just how good she is." The way he'd said that, it sounded as if he was talking about something other than translating.

Despite her uneasiness, it hit Hoshi how unlike their counterparts these two people were. Tucker intensely disliked Reed, who in turn seemed to take pleasure in angering the other man. The Trip and Malcolm she knew worked well together, but these two, she thought, probably enjoyed working against each other.

Reed didn't say anything as they walked to the turbolift and got in. He pressed the button for a lower deck. If this ship was the same as hers, they were going to the armory. Hoshi had no idea what could possibly be in the armory that required translation. Finally, as the door opened, her curiosity got the better of her.

"What am I supposed to translate?" she asked.

Reed hadn't looked at her the entire time they'd been in the turbolift. If anything, she expected him to crowd her personal space, but perhaps this was a tactic to make her even more nervous by implying she was insignificant. He looked at her from the corner of his eye as they stepped out of the lift and walked down the main corridor.

"You'll see," was the cryptic answer.

Halfway down the corridor, he stopped at a hatch and opened it. With an exaggerated sweep of his arm, he indicated she should enter first. As she had guessed, he'd brought her to the armory. It was laid out as on her Enterprise, with fire control panels and torpedo launchers, and weapon storage lockers lining the bulkheads. Two crewmen, dressed in black outfits similar to Reed's, were on the elevated level at the main fire control panel. Both gave them a cursory look before going back to their duties.

Now that she had her memory back, Hoshi couldn't but help but compare what she encountered on this ship and the one on which she'd served for close to five years. The biggest difference she could see in the armory was that there appeared to be twice as many torpedos stacked in racks near the launchers. She was well aware of what a torpedo could do, and she'd always been uneasy around them, as if even loud footsteps could set them off. It was silly, she knew, but she had a healthy respect for their destructive potential.

As Reed closed the hatch, she asked again, "What am I supposed to translate?"

He walked to one of the storage lockers and, after unlocking and opening it, beckoned her over. He reached in and pulled out a cylindrical object made of a type of burnished metal she'd never seen before. It was about half a meter long and ten centimeters around. He thrust it at her so abruptly that she almost dropped it. It was heavier than it looked.

"Be careful!" he scolded her. "For all we know, that might explode and take out this entire section of the ship if it hits the deck."

Hoshi had never seen anything like it. "What is it?"

"That's what you're supposed to determine. Do I have to keep repeating myself?"

Careful to keep a tight grip on whatever it was that she was holding, she said with a spark of defiance, "You're the weapons' expert, not me."

He exhaled heavily and rolled his eyes. Really, if he was anything like the Malcolm Reed in her universe, he should be very knowledgeable about weapons. Her area, on the other hand, was communications, and in her opinion, Reed wasn't doing a very good job of communicating.

He reached out, startling her with his lightning quick move, and took the cylinder from her. He rolled the cylinder over to show her the other side. Alien writing was etched into the metal.

"Oh," she said faintly.

"We found this in the same asteroid field where your shuttle showed up," he said.

"And you don't know what it is."

His eyes narrowed. "No."

Hoshi took the cylinder back from him, studying the markings. If she wasn't mistaken, the symbols were Risan. Unless some things were significantly different here, the UT should have been able to translate this. She rotated the cylinder in her hands, but she could see no openings or indications that it could be taken apart. It appeared to be one solid piece. She refocused on the first line of the inscription, and blinked. Maybe this was some kind of joke. "Why do you think it's a weapon?"

Reed crossed his arms over his chest. "It was in the midst of some asteroids that had been pulverized into fine dust. As it was intact, I had to suspect that it was responsible for the destruction of the asteroids, which are composed of the densest materials in the sector."

She studied Reed's face. He was deadly serious. He really thought this was some sort of weapon. She bit her lip, because she didn't think he would like it if she laughed at him. She cleared her throat and asked, "Did you try scanning its interior?"

"Of course I tried that!" he retorted, glaring at her. "I wouldn't be very good at my job if I didn't try everything at my disposal to figure out what this is." He huffed. "Scanners couldn't penetrate the material of the cylinder."

Hoshi had been reading the rest of the inscription as Reed had vented. When she got to the last three words, she almost did laugh. He was going to either be very disappointed or very embarrassed, or both.

"Can you read it?" he asked.

Time to practice some of those diplomatic skills her Captain Archer had been teaching her. One of his tips was to give background information before imparting what might be bad news, to prepare the listener and soften the impact. She was going to have to choose her words carefully. "Yes, I can read it. It's Risan."

"Risan?" Reed frowned. "That species was exterminated more than twenty years ago after they tried to secede from the empire."

So that was another point of divergence between their two universes. It probably explained why the Risan language wasn't in the UT here. Now that she thought about it, Risan hadn't been included on the language test she'd taken the day before. But even more important was that she'd learned that the Imperial Terran Empire was apparently so strong -- and vicious -- that it had not only wiped out an entire population, but its culture, including its language. In her universe, the people of Risa were peace-loving and friendly. She wondered if they'd been of a similar nature here.

"Well?" Reed asked impatiently. "What does it say."

Disgusted by what she was learning about the humans in this universe, Hoshi shoved the cylinder back at him. "You don't have to worry about it blowing up. It's not a bomb, or any other type of weapon." At his doubting look, she added dryly, "It's a souvenir."

His expression was priceless. His gray eyes had gone wide and his mouth actually gaped. She had a feeling it wasn't often that he was surprised. He recovered quickly, however, and through clenched teeth he asked, "What the bloody hell is it?"

"I'm not sure, but I'd guess maybe a...paperweight? The inscription indicates it's composed of a mineral that is supposed to aid in relaxation. It likely was jettisoned from a passing ship long ago, or got lost when a cargo hold with luggage lost compression and, because it's so dense, it wasn't damaged by whatever it was that destroyed the asteroids where it was found." She pointed to a symbol off to one side of the main body of text. "Here's the mark of the shop on Risa where it was purchased. And down here," she said, indicating the last line of text, "it says 'Made on Risa'."

Anger marred Reed's countenance as he glared at the object. "A bloody paperweight?" he asked incredulously.

Hoshi took a step back. He wasn't going to be one of these people who killed the messenger, was he? "Well," she said apologetically, "that's the best I can figure out, from its shape and obvious lack of functional purpose."

He'd been staring at the cylinder, but at her last words he switched his stormy gaze to her.

She cringed, hoping he wasn't going to throw the thing at her. "Or maybe it's a doorstop," she said. "Or...or...a meditation aid."

"Get out!" he yelled.

She turned and ran for the door before he could change his mind.

Hoshi was sure Archer wouldn't like her roaming the corridors by herself, but she wasn't about to go back to the armory and ask Reed or one of his black-suited cohorts for an escort. That would be asking for trouble. Besides, she'd done what had been asked of her. It wasn't her fault that Reed didn't like the results.

Her hurried steps slowed as she approached the turbolift. She probably should go back to her cabin. That is, if she could get in her cabin, because as far as she knew, it was still locked and Archer hadn't seen fit to give her the code. But she'd been cooped up for so long. The only time it seemed she was allowed out was when they wanted something from her: the language testing, the debriefing about the Xindi conflict, and lastly, the translation of writing on some pseudo-weapon.

If she'd been back home, she might have gone to sickbay to visit Phlox and his animals, but that was out of the question here. She shuddered as she remembered the cool indifference in the eyes of the doctor of this universe.

As she pushed the button to summon the lift, she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflective surface of a bulkhead panel. Her uniform, which she'd worn for two days in a row, was looking rumpled. If she could get into her cabin, she could change into something else. Because none of those clothes appealed to her, however, she dismissed that idea.

The lift door slid open and she stepped in. Her hand hovered over the control panel as she debated where to go. Maybe she should find the captain. Maybe he could let her back into their shared quarters, because she was sure he didn't leave his cabin unlocked, and so trying his door was out of the question too. But she didn't want to go running to Archer for every little thing. It was enough that she was going to have to ask him about getting her some decent clothing.

As she continued her internal debate about what to do, she realized that the turbolift controls she'd been staring at were were almost identical to those back home. While the people here were markedly different, the ship itself didn't seem to have any major design differences. She could see if there was one particular department that was in the same place, and thereby take care of one of her problems.