Having just gone through the motions of yet another courtesy briefing by yet another overworked official on Denobula, Archer leaned back on his chair and closed his eyes. While tedious in the extreme for all concerned, these briefings did have one enormous advantage.

It gave him an excuse for still being here.

It allowed him to hide from the increasingly likely truth that he was about to abandon four of his people - one badly injured - on a rapidly destabilising planet.

And, of course, it allowed Hoshi to continue her frenetic, round-the-clock observation of what was certainly a disused mining barge.

Almost certainly a disused mining barge.

Probably.

"Oh don't look at me like that," he snapped at his unlucky Beagle, who had chosen that particular moment to look up sleepily. "You don't want Hoshi to be right. If she's right we'll be at war with the Romulans. At war with an enemy we don't understand. That we've never even seen eye to eye. And, there are no puppies allowed on war ships."

Porthos whined plaintively, then turned his face to the wall.

Archer exhaled, feeling like an asshole.

That last briefing had taken a lot out of him. It had been a courtesy briefing with the explosives expert that had been reviewing the shuttle and embassy bombing sites.

There had been a great deal of technical detail in the briefing, which Archer had not remotely understood, and had only served to make Archer keenly feel the absence of his munitions expert.

And most of his freaking medical staff, of course. His current chief medical officer - Andy Anyodele - was a terrified exo-anatomist, who generally required a long pep talk, or at least a hug, from anyone unfortunate enough to go to sickbay seeking treatment. But until the T'Kenara arrived, he was the best they had. After the T'Kenara arrived they would have some dour, Vulcan CMO who would, no doubt, make everybody miss Andy.

And at some point, very soon, Enterprise would have to leave orbit. And Malcolm, Phlox, Liz and Alice would not be coming with them.

He stared grimly at the list of four names displayed innocently on his screen under the officious menu title of 'Crew - onworld'.

'Crew - doomed' felt more like it. 'Crew- abandoned'.

Then the little 'AWOL' tag next to Alice's name drew his eye. Not for the first time in the last day, his finger hovered over it. It would be so easy to change it, maybe add in some bland explanation about a clerical error, and bury the whole thing, like he had buried Hoshi's involvement by tinkering with the transporter logs.

Currently, this AWOL status was something of a diplomatic incident waiting to happen. Once the T'Kenara arrived, they would, as a fellow Coalition member, be automatically informed that there was an AWOL crew member. And being Vulcans, they would follow protocol and inform the Denobulans, probably in triplicate. Then the Denobulans would be placed in the position of either arresting a talented doctor working in the middle of a planetary health crisis, or not arresting her, and breaching their treaty obligations in the middle of a planetary health crisis.

And then what might happen to Malcolm?

And how was IME going to react?

And what about that fucking mining barge?

"Come in!" he snapped, when the door chimed right at the peak of his annoyed thoughts.

Icy cool, as ever, T'Pol glided into the room, and sat down as if Archer had done nothing unusual.

Porthos, perhaps feeling that somebody should, offered a reproachful yawn.

"What can I do for you, T'Pol?" Archer asked, before adding hopefully, "Have you made any progress with your research?"

"Unfortunately not, Captain," T'Pol replied. "I expect my research into the Denobulan situation to take some time. I am here on another matter. I wanted to talk to you about filling the officer vacancy in my department. I wish to promote from within."

Archer frowned. "T'Pol, we haven't even had a memorial yet for Morello and the others."

"I realize that," T'Pol responded, not quite meeting his eyes. "And yet, we are in the midst of an emergency situation. Normal rules of conduct must be suspended. However much we might wish otherwise."

Archer sighed. "I suppose you are right. I mean, I'm not going to tell you how to run your department. So if you want a field commission for Nadia Giurgiu, I'll push it through. Don't sweat the small stuff, right?"

T'Pol frowned in confusion and Archer was on the point of explaining the expression, when her reply left him baffled. "I did not mean Nadia Giurgiu."

"Oh," Archer replied honestly shocked. "I'm sorry, I just assumed, when you said you wanted to promote from within. Crewman Giurgiu's evaluations are always a cut above everyone else's. It didn't occur to me you didn't mean... I still can't think who you did mean, actually."

"I... well," T'Pol stammered. "I meant...I meant Crewman..." she fell into silence.

Slightly alarmed now - The T'Kenara really couldn't get there fast enough - Archer pushed back gently. "T'Pol, is something wrong?"

For a moment, her face held almost as much turmoil as he had ever seen, and given some of the days he had seen her - the deaths of her daughter and her mother, the days of the Expanse, Tolaris - that itself was worrisome in the extreme. After a few seconds, however, her face smoothed into its familiar lines, and her breathing steadied.

"Actually, Captain, I have been premature. I need to give this matter further thought. Do excuse me, Captain." And she stood the, as if to leave.

"I'm never too busy, T'Pol," Archer said softly.

She nodded, but left without saying more.

Whatever strange social forces had drawn the Denobulan extended family, like the tide, to Palayjah's rooms to visit with the prodigal Phlox, now drew them out again. Within the space of an hour or so, the place was emptied again, apart from Resba, Chenteel, Palayjah, Phlox and Mettus.

Down to a far more manageable number of Denobulans, Liz had just enough time to feel a sense of relief, before Phlox announced that he would now be going out to visit various elderly relatives, too tired or too ornery to travel to Palayjah's rooms.

Even worse, it soon became apparent that Resba and Chenteel planned to be occupied elsewhere in the building, in rooms belonging to another of Resba's daughters, who happened to also be Chenteel's niece (AND Feezel's cousin, and also, somehow or other, Phlox's sister-in-law).

"I need one of those diagrams to keep it all straight," Liz offered weakly at the end of this explanation.

"I'd be happy to get you one," Resba responded, perfectly serious.

The final blow fell but a moment later when it suddenly became clear that Palayjah intended to retreat to her home office for a few hours to review pathology specimens from several of her patients.

All that added up to leaving Liz in company that didn't please her in the slightest.

"Take me with you," she pleaded to the departing Phlox. "I'd love to meet 14 of your great-aunts."

"17," Phlox corrected mildly. "And while I very much appreciate the offer, I will not inflict them upon you. Unfortunately, some of the older generation are not so open minded as the young, and I fear given the current...uncertainty, that they might be particularly disagreeable. It could make for a very unpleasant afternoon for you."

Liz personally thought that an afternoon of geriatric xenophobia seemed less unpleasant than an afternoon in Mettus's company, but this was difficult to say to any of his close relatives, so she miserably held her tongue.

Sure enough, the very moment his father had stepped out the door, Mettus abandoned his 'wave broadcast and came at sat next to Liz on the bench.

Right next to her.

Not lifting her eyes from the complicated electronic family tree Resba had furnished her with, Liz shifted herself away from Mettus, so far over in fact, that she was mostly held in a sitting position by her own quadriceps rather than the few inches of bench still beneath her.

"I could explain that to you, if you like," Mettus said, closing the distance between them again.

"Got it! Thanks!" Liz replied, wondering if she could squeeze over any further without falling.

After a heavy pause, Mettus continued. "I don't like aliens."

"You don't say?" Liz replied, edgy.

"No. Denobula is for Denobulans and mixing has only every brought us harm. Contaminated what should be pure."

"I suppose your father feels differently," Liz observed as blandly as he could, unthinkingly following a family tree back several centuries while not reading a word.

"I don't know what he sees in you. But I have to admit, spending time with you, it has made me curious..."

And then he touched her cheek.

The situation would have been alarming entirely on its own merits, but Liz had spent most of the last day in a room packed full of Denobulans, who, however busy and crowded things got, never so much as bumped each other accidentally. She had felt no one's skin, apart from Phlox's, since arriving.

This touch shot through her, and profound primal alarm brought her to her feet.

"Changedmymindgoingtomeetyourgreatgreatauntsbye," she muttered in an English he could not have possibly understood and ran out the door.

She had no idea where she was going in the huge, warren like building and could only hope that the vaguely centrifugal design would spit her out at the front door if she kept moving.

At last she happened upon a flight of stairs running adjacent to an exterior wall and she ran down the flights as quickly as she dared. She could not hear anyone following her but could not quite bring herself to slow down in any case. An alarm in her head was demanding she get out -out!- and it would not stop until she did so.

Then she saw daylight, the front door, and miraculously, Phlox, silhouetted against it, passing the time of day with an elderly man. As drastically inappropriate to the local culture as the gesture was, she grabbed Phlox's arm as she ran past, and pulled him, as he confusedly farewelled his neighbor, into the street.

Sayden had been in place since dawn, and his backpack was now empty.

Wiring up the building upon his arrival, he had been plagued by a vague but unyielding sense of uneasiness, and by the time the last brick of explosive was wired in place, the source of that uneasiness had been revealed to him.

It was not enough for Phlox to die. Phlox The Unhealer - he must suffer.

And what suffering would be more apt than the loss of his home? The death of his closest family.

For, if Phlox The Damned felt that loss, then he would know Sayden's soul, and when he later died- died looking into Sayden's eyes- then he would know who had killed him.

And so Sayden had waited. Through dawn, through the ingresses and egresses of a hundred or so Denobulans, drifting into and out of the path of fate.

He'd waited for Phlox to emerge.

And there, now, he stood.

His mortal enemy.

Just standing in the street.

Just standing in the street being mildly perplexed by a human woman.

And so Sayden depressed a switch, and the building - and the families within- became smoke and ash before The Unhealer's very eyes.

The vengeance of Valakia had come.