CHAPTER 36

Hoshi's trip to the bridge turned out to be a bust. Not only was T'Pol not there, but after her conversation with Tucker, she found that there were few transmissions for her to translate. After the battle at Panmikar, very few alien ships were broadcasting, as if they were afraid to draw attention to themselves. She couldn't say that she blamed them. She easily and quickly translated the recordings sent to her station, then found herself with nothing to do but monitor the traffic from the main communications console. She felt more than useless.

On top of that, the atmosphere on the bridge was oppressive. Most of that she put down to Ensign Freeman on duty at the main comm station. She didn't have to be a mind reader to know that the officer disliked her, maybe even hated her. If she was lucky, he'd only have to put up with her looking over his shoulder, figuratively speaking, for a few more days. For the time being, she would try to stay out of his way.

It was a relief when it was time for her to take her lunch break. She powered down her station and went to the turbolift, feeling Freeman's eyes on her the whole time. She let out a long, shuddering breath when the lift doors closed, shutting her and Mayweather off from the bridge.

As usual, her bodyguard said nothing on the way to the mess hall. Despite her revulsion at finding out he'd been "conditioned" to follow orders, she was glad he was with her.

The mess hall was only half full when she arrived. As was her customary practice, she made her way to an empty table after picking out something to eat. Mayweather took up his position a few paces to the side and behind her, his back to the bulkhead. He had been with her long enough that most of the diners paid no notice, which was fine by Hoshi.

She'd taken her first taste of the cream of broccoli soup she'd selected -- too much pepper, but she thought she could eat it -- when T'Pol entered the mess hall. The Vulcan woman selected something from the food cabinets and, with studied nonchalance, made her way in the direction of Hoshi's table. Perhaps now, Hoshi thought, she'd get a chance to ask if the data was ready for her. "Care to join me, Commander?" she asked as T'Pol approached.

T'Pol dipped her head in agreement. As she sat down, Hoshi got a look at the dish she was carrying. The Vulcan had opted for a salad.

"I didn't see you on the bridge this morning," Hoshi said.

T'Pol didn't answer immediately; she was staring at her salad. Hoshi took a closer look. Apparently pepper was the seasoning of the day, for the lettuce was liberally covered with the small, dark specks.

T'Pol sighed, as if in resignation at the fare before her. "I have been working some night shifts in addition to my regular alpha shift," she said as she placed a napkin on her lap. "The bridge duty roster had to be adjusted to accommodate the captain's absence." She looked at Hoshi. "Commander Tucker insisted on taking a rotation. This morning, he ordered me to take some time off."

T'Pol's gaze was steady. Hoshi reasoned that if T'Pol now thought Tucker was innocent, she would probably say so, but no such words were forthcoming. She wondered if T'Pol had come to the same conclusion as she had: Tucker might still be responsible for the attempts on the captain's life, despite Kelby's confession.

For lack of anything else to say, Hoshi commented, "He is the first officer. He's probably doing what he thinks is best."

"He serves Enterprise better as chief engineer."

Such talk from T'Pol might get her in trouble, even if she was speaking what she perceived as fact. Hoshi glanced at the diners at the closest tables; no one appeared to have heard. Taking care to keep her voice soft, she asked, "Do you have something for me?"

T'Pol, her eyes downcast, sedately took a bite of her salad. Hoshi, nevertheless, saw her eyes dart from side to side. The Vulcan woman then reached down to remove the napkin from her lap. "I don't believe I can eat this salad," she said, putting the napkin on the table.

She hadn't answered Hoshi's question, but was looking levelly at her. Then Hoshi saw the other woman's gaze slowly track down to the napkin she'd placed on the table.

Hoshi reached out and knocked over her glass of iced tea. She grabbed her own napkin to sop up the mess. "I'm sorry. I can't believe I did that." She made a few swipes in the pooled liquid. "I think I'm going to have to get something else to help wipe this up."

"Use my napkin," T'Pol said, pushing it closer to Hoshi.

"Thanks." Hoshi put her hand over T'Pol's napkin and dragged it across the tabletop toward her. When it reached the edge, Hoshi felt something small and lightweight drop out from underneath onto her lap. Mopping at the mess with the napkin, she used her free hand to slide the data chip into her hip pocket.

It was difficult to go back to the bridge after T'Pol had given her the data chip. Hoshi wanted to find a private place to view the information, and the bridge was anything but private. She thought about going to her quarters, but Archer might be there. Even if he wasn't, there was that whole business about not knowing the code to the door. If she was in this universe much longer -- and she fervently hoped she wasn't -- she would need to do something about that.

With a start, she realized she hadn't thought much about Archer since she'd left the interrogation. He probably was due for some more painkiller, especially since he'd been up and walking around, which would aggravate the wound.

With a shake of her head, she reminded herself that she wasn't his nursemaid, no matter that she seemed to have been in charge of his medical care, if only by default, ever since Phlox had tried to poison him. If Archer truly needed her, all he had to do with use the intercom system and page her. He knew where she was, anyway; she'd told him she would be on the bridge doing translating.

But unfortunately, there wasn't anything to translate. She'd already gone through what little had been picked up that morning, and there seemed to be no subspace traffic at all to monitor now.

It took her the better part of two hours to decide to look at the data chip while she was on the bridge. She didn't think anyone would notice what she was doing, other than looking at something on one of the screens on her console. But of course, there was Mayweather, her ever-faithful bodyguard, standing off to her right. He'd be able to see what was on the screen. Not willing to risk that he might realize what she was up to -- he might feel it necessary to report it to Archer, despite his apparent loyalty to her -- she entered a few commands into her console before inserting the data chip so that when the file opened and displayed on the screen, the text was in Andorian. She was fairly sure no one on board other than herself could read that language. To the casual observer, it might look like she was reviewing an intercepted transmission. After a glance over her shoulder to make sure no one was paying any attention to her, she began reading.

As she'd feared, the information was quite technical. T'Pol had provided all the analysis, along with supporting theorems. She read quickly until she came to the end, where T'Pol had written a summary of her findings in terms that were easier for her to understand.

Hoshi's heart started pounding. She'd been right, she saw as she read the summary. Her arrival here, and her departure for that matter, hinged on the space anomalies. But the bigger shock was that the anomalies weren't the only thing necessary to send her back.

The summary listed a set order of events that had to occur to open a window between the two universes. A warp engine, such as the one on her shuttle, had to be engaged within one of the anomalies. Then the combined energies of the anomaly and the engine had to be channeled in an unusual joint conduction through a dense metal. According to the report, T'Pol had never seen readings such as those that had been recorded when Hoshi's shuttle had popped into this universe. She hadn't been able to identify the metal.

But Hoshi had an idea what had caused those readings.

She almost laughed out loud on the bridge at the irony, but quickly caught herself. All along she'd thought it was merely a useless souvenir of what was a dead civilization in this universe. She sincerely hoped that Reed, after finding out that the unscannable object they'd found in the asteroid field hadn't been a weapon, hadn't thrown the paperweight away.

Archer put in an appearance on the bridge late that afternoon. Hoshi was surprised to see him, but realized that he was making a public show of his recuperation. Now that the alleged assassin had been caught, he probably wanted to let the rest of the crew see him up and around, if only to show them that he would no longer be an easy target because of his injury.

When he stepped out of the turbolift, he came straight to her. The cut on his forehead stood out vividly on the pale skin of his face, and there were circles under his eyes. "Hoshi," he said to her. "Join me in my ready room."

Hoshi removed her earpiece and shut down her console. As she followed Archer toward the ready room, she saw Tucker, smiling, move to get up from the command chair to turn over the bridge to the captain.

Archer waved him down. "Stay put, Mister Tucker," he said, adding sarcastically, "Enjoy it for a while longer."

Hoshi caught a glimpse of resentment on Tucker's face, which brought back all her worries about relying on torture as a means of interrogation. She had her doubts about Kelby's confession, since it had been extracted under torture. She tried to reassure herself that Tucker had seemed happy that the person trying to kill the captain had been caught. Then again, that was what she would expect of Trip on her Enterprise. Here, Tucker might be happy because he hadn't been caught and that Kelby was taking the blame in his place, although that look of resentment she'd seen on his face could have been due solely to the captain's tone in addressing him.

She also couldn't forget the look of pure hatred on Kelby's face when he'd been asked if he'd tried to kill the captain. So maybe the junior engineer had been behind the attempts on Archer's life.

She rubbed her forehead as she followed Archer into the ready room. There never seemed to be any clear-cut answers in this universe. The feeling of things being out of her control was back, and it was giving her a headache.

Archer sat down at his desk with a grunt. His side was definitely bothering him. "Kelby confessed," he said.

"I heard," she told him. "Commander Tucker told me after you called up to the bridge about it."

"So, now that that is taken care of, we can move on to the next order of business."

"What might that be?" Hoshi asked.

"Finding something worthwhile to occupy the flagship of the Imperial fleet, instead of studying an endless procession of space anomalies that have no explanation."

That was the last thing she wanted to hear. While she could sympathize with the frustration of having boring assignments, she now knew it wasn't a good idea for her to leave the vicinity of the asteroid field, not if she wanted to get home. She tried to keep the panic out of her voice. "Um, surely fleet command has a good reason for you to be here."

"Oh, I know exactly why they have insisted on keeping Enterprise in this isolated backwater," Archer said, his brows drawing together much like the gathering of thunderclouds before a storm.

Even preoccupied with her own situation, she was aware that what he was telling her was very unlike him. Paranoid tendencies aside, it sounded almost delusional, although there was no trace in his manner of the agitated ranting as when he'd had a fever. She remained mute, uncertain of what he wanted from her in this meeting.

"They don't like what I'm doing," he continued. He motioned for her to sit down. "I know you were confused when I decided to talk to Shran in person."

She'd almost forgotten about that. She was still curious, but since going home was almost in her grasp, she realized she didn't really care. Not to follow up on his opening, however, would only make him suspicious. "Yes, I was," she said as she sat down.

Archer leaned back in his chair, looking down to where one of his hands rested lightly on his side where he'd been wounded. "This just goes to prove that perhaps I can't do it all by myself."

Hoshi remained quiet. She had no idea what Archer was talking about.

"I feel I can trust you because you have no ties in this universe. You have no hidden agenda of your own," he said.

If he only knew! Hoshi thought, trying to keep her expression politely interested instead of showing her dismay.

"The empire can expand only so far before it won't be able to maintain its hold on subject worlds," Archer continued. "The end result will be a period of chaos and destruction with, I believe, the empire being overthrown. Humans will become the slaves of every race that has been conquered by the empire, which is about all of them." He frowned. "There are already signs that it's happening: the Andorian uprisings, the escalating Klingon attacks, even rumblings from Vulcan."

"What has this got to do with Shran?" Hoshi asked.

"I'm getting to that," he said. "In the past year, I've made contacts with leaders of some of the subject species who could prove to be a problem for the empire in the long run. I've tried to work out arrangements that would benefit their people as well as humans. Stability, even if humans have to share some of our power, is in the best interest of the empire. My first attempt was with Ambassador Gral. I won't bore you with the details, but he committed suicide rather than ally himself with humans." Archer scowled. "The short-sighted fool!"

Archer's voice took on a deeper intensity. "I thought Shran would be more open to reason. We arranged to have it appear as if there would be an attack on a Terran colony world by Andorian forces. The plan was for me to arrive before the Andorian forces, initiate a standoff, call in Shran to supposedly negotiate, and then he would call off the attack -- before it started. If you hadn't caught that imbedded transmission, I would have never have known Shran was already on the way to lead the attack instead of stopping it."

"What would Shran have gotten out of this if he'd followed your plan instead?" Hoshi asked.

"He would have been rewarded. I have connections that would have made sure that he was the first alien on the Imperial Council." Archer sighed. "He was to have been the first of many, with subject species eventually having a voice in the empire. But Shran didn't want to work with humans. As we found out, he'd much rather kill them."

Hoshi couldn't believe what she was hearing. In this twisted, cruel universe, there was actually someone who had a vision of a better way of life? Then she remembered who was talking to her. "What's in it for you?" she asked.

Archer laughed. "Reed is right. You are clever." He leaned forward, his face earnest. "I don't want to be emperor, if that's what you're wondering."

"It had crossed my mind," she said faintly.

"I believe that I would be best suited directing the subject species on the council. A behind-the-scenes position, until the time is right for a united organization of all species, humans and others, to be formed."

"With you at the head of it," Hoshi guessed.

Archer smiled approvingly at her. "I want you to pay careful attention to all transmissions that we pick up," he said. "All I need is one little reason, one excuse, to leave this area. News of a Klingon attack on an outpost, or maybe some of the Andorians acting up again, that sort of thing. Anything that might justify us leaving this area without direct orders from fleet command. Then I can continue making contacts among the subject species. Stuck where we are right now, there's no chance of that."

Hoshi stared at him in disbelief. If they left this area of space, her plan to go home would be gone. She was going to have to act soon, or perhaps lose her chance forever.

Then Archer said what she'd been fearing, off and on, the entire time she'd been in this universe. "When everything is in place, you will be at my side as my consort."