A/N: Wow! What a great response to the last chapter. Thank all of you for the reviews.

CHAPTER 13

The days fell into a routine. Hoshi found she had plenty of time on her hands.

Each morning, after a night spent by herself in her cabin, she would have breakfast with Archer in his quarters. Afterward, she would go with him to the bridge, where she'd been assigned to an out-of-the-way auxiliary station. She'd check any transmissions that had been picked up in the past day that were in other languages, translate them, and file them with the communications officer on duty.

When Hoshi had first been told to translate the communiques, she hadn't thought it could possibly take all morning. But one of Enterprise's routine operations was to pick up any transmissions in its area. They were looking for anything that might be considered treasonous to the empire, she supposed. It was amazing how many transmissions there were, and how many weren't accurately translated by the UT. The first day, there had been quite a backlog to wade through. As she caught up over the following days, she realized that any free time she might have could be devoted to upgrading the UT, but she held off making that suggestion. She couldn't put her finger on the reason, but somehow it just felt wrong to voluntarily help these people. The best she could rationalize was that she felt like she needed to hold something back, in case she needed it later, much like she hadn't tried breaking the code on her cabin door yet.

To her surprise, lunchtime was proving to be the most interesting portion of her days. T'Pol always accompanied her to the mess hall. That was probably the captain's doing, Hoshi thought, and although she didn't need a babysitter, she was grateful. The presence of the Vulcan kept most of the other members of the crew at bay. As was the case back home, the majority of the crew was male, but the brazen looks she got from the men here were unsettling. She wondered if that was because they knew she was sharing the captain's quarters and therefore thought some hanky panky was going on, or if the men had fewer moral constraints than they did in her universe.

T'Pol, once her initial icy demeanor thawed, was an interesting conversational companion. There were times Hoshi had to remind herself that this wasn't the T'Pol with whom she served. But in both universes, T'Pol was intelligent and articulate. Hoshi soon found that T'Pol was as curious about her universe as Hoshi was about hers, and they spent their lunch breaks comparing the two. Although the conversation was usually on general topics, Hoshi couldn't help but wonder if T'Pol's glimpse into her mind during the meld had fueled her curiosity, in particular about the role of Vulcans in Hoshi's universe. Indeed, T'Pol had asked several insightful questions about first contact between Vulcan and Earth. Hoshi was willing to bet it wouldn't be long before T'Pol asked about her counterpart.

Much as Hoshi would have liked to continue some of their conversations, T'Pol had to return to duty after lunch, but not before she escorted Hoshi to the captain's cabin and unlocked the door for her. Archer hadn't given Hoshi the code to either his or her cabin doors. She could only surmise that he thought she might try to slip out some night, although what mischief he might be afraid she could cause she didn't know.

Her return to Archer's cabin marked the point in each day when everything came to a screeching halt. Long afternoons with nothing to do stretched out before her. Sometimes she played with Dart, other times she tried to read some literature in the computer database, although a lot of the recreational material was too vulgar for her taste. When the captain's duty shift was over, he'd stop by the cabin to get her and they would share dinner in his private dining room located off the ship's mess hall. The evenings were equally long, as Archer was often engrossed in mission reports or communiques from fleet headquarters. Hoshi had gone so far, with Archer's permission, as to groom Dart in the evenings, simply to have something to do.

After a week or so, Hoshi was bored to tears, as well as confused. No mention had been made of trying to find a way to send her home. She tried to ask T'Pol about it during lunch a couple of times, but the Vulcan had responded with cool silence. Hoshi had eventually dropped the subject.

In the meantime, she continued her work translating messages. If she upgraded the UT, she reasoned, Archer wouldn't need her any more. Or maybe she could tell him that she could upgrade the UT, but wasn't going to do it until he promised to look into sending her home. That might give her some leverage, but from what she'd seen so far, this Archer didn't like to be forced into anything. Quite the opposite. He might decide to force the upgrade information from her, and an involuntary meld with T'Pol would not be pleasant.

She was listlessly pacing around her quarters one afternoon when she heard Archer's door slide open. A glance at the chronometer showed that he was back early. She stuck her head through the open doorway of their quarters. She'd taken to leaving it open except when sleeping or changing since her claustrophobia tended to kick in when she had nothing with which to distract herself. She saw Archer taking a seat at his desk.

"Is something wrong?" she asked as he punched away at the computer keyboard.

"Not at all," he responded, his attention riveted to the screen. "Come here. I want you to see something."

Hoshi walked over to look over his shoulder. The screen showed a vibrant green planet rotating peacefully against a field of stars.

"That's our next stop," he said. "Fleet headquarters has finally seen fit to send us somewhere useful, instead of wasting our time cataloguing space anomalies."

Hoshi's first reaction was dismay. Science might not be her forte, but she realized that by remaining in the area where she'd been found, there was a better chance of being sent home. Her second reaction was to wonder why Archer was telling her about this new assignment, unless it had something to do with her.

"What planet is that?" she asked.

"Balanti IV," he replied, which meant nothing to her. There was no planet that she knew by that name in her universe. "They've been sending high-grade deuterium as tribute to the empire for decades. Now they've decided they want something in return. They're withholding shipments of deuterium until their demands are met."

"So they're part of the empire?"

"A subject planet," Archer said. He snorted derisively. "Not really a 'part' of the empire in the sense I think you mean."

So the people of Balanti IV were basically slaves, just another of the empire's conquests in what she was learning was a very long list, if her conversations with T'Pol were an indication. Or maybe they were free people, and paying tribute with deuterium, which was essential for warp engines, kept the empire appeased. "Are they human?" she asked.

"Of course not. They're humanoid. That's where you come in."

"You want me to translate during the negotiations," she said flatly.

This earned a belly laugh from Archer. "There aren't going to be any negotiations. I'm going to tell you what to tell them in no uncertain terms. They're going to toe the line, just like they always have, or the consequences will be dire. It will be up to you to make sure they understand that."

Hoshi was disgusted. The people of Balanti IV had been providing the empire with a valuable resource for decades, Archer had said, but when they asked for something in return, they were going to be slapped down. The Terran Empire apparently had no qualms about taking advantage of weaker species. To judge by Archer's smirk, he knew what she was thinking. Her stomach knotted as she realized that he actually enjoyed this type of work.

She wasn't in a position to argue imperial policies with him, but she might be able to make a small difference in how things went on this one planet. She jerked her head toward the screen. "I'll need access to any information you have about the Balantian people, their history, their culture, and so on, as well as what the UT database has on their language."

Archer tilted his head. "Why?"

"First off, I don't know their language, so I'll have to learn it."

"You can do that in a week? Because that's when we'll arrive there." At her nod, he added, "I knew you were good, but that's unheard of."

Hoshi knew her abilities. "If it's anything like most humanoid languages, a week should be more than enough," she said confidently.

Archer looked impressed, but not convinced. "If you say so. But the other information you want..."

Her Captain Archer would know why she needed the information. Her ability to learn new languages quickly hadn't been the only reason she had earned a place on her Enterprise. "What is said in any language has variables that tie directly to culture, history and other factors. If you take the context literally, it could be interpreted incorrectly." At his raised eyebrows, she explained, "Often the words themselves aren't enough. You have to understand how they came to mean what they do, even why particular words are used in a given situation."

Archer's attention waned as she tried to explain. He wasn't interested. In fact, he probably didn't care. But he turned to the computer, keyed in a few commands, and said, "There. You now have access to everything we know about Balanti IV." He gave her a sidelong glance. "Have fun. And make sure you're ready when we get there."

Archer still expected her to spend her mornings translating transmissions. That work could have been relegated to the UT, as it had been before, but Archer had insisted. Hoshi got the feeling he was testing her. If he really wanted to test her abilities, she thought, he ought to let her concentrate on the upcoming mission. But he hadn't asked her opinion, so she buckled down in the afternoons and studied harder than she had since when she'd learned the Xindi insectoid language.

It wasn't just the language she was studying. Balanti IV, she soon found out, wasn't the homeworld of the people who lived there. They'd been there so many generations, however, that they'd lost the knowledge of where they came from. On the face of it, that seemed unlikely -- how could you forget your heritage? -- but the planet was poor. Reading between the lines of the information Archer had allowed her to access, it became clear that in the struggle to survive on Balanti IV, everything else had become unimportant, even keeping track of history. The population had been involved primarily in farming, trying to eke out a living, until deuterium had been discovered forty years ago.

Until that time, Balanti IV had been beneath the empire's notice. The discovery of a vital component for starships, however, had immediately attracted attention. The empire had swooped in and taken over. Now not only did the Balantians have to devote much of their time and energy to mining deuterium, almost all of which went to the empire, they still had to support themselves. They were too weak to fight back. The squalid conditions had deteriorated even more.

Things must have become so bad on their world that they had to stand up to the empire, even if it meant their destruction. Hoshi had no doubt that the empire would simply wipe out the Balantians and bring in contract labor or slaves to do the mining.

These people needed help, but all the empire was concerned about was its precious supply of deuterium. It didn't matter what had to be done to ensure that supply. Hoshi was going to see if she could change that.