Baird cleared his throat. "Sir, we are being hailed from the surface."

"Liz Cutler?" Archer asked, wheeling around quickly. "Did she say what the hell was going on down there?"

Phlox is dying she'd said, just before they lost contact with her.

"It's Lieutenant Reed, actually sir. He said something about a Verculian killing someone called Mettus and injuring Dr Phlox and Crewman Cutler."

Archer blinked. "What the hell is a Verculian?"

"Not sure, sir," Baird replied. "It sounded something like Verculian. Honestly, sir, Lieutenant Reed was very het up so I didn't quite catch it. I did ask him to repeat himself, but he just swore at me and demanded to speak with someone who wasn't a 'blistering pile of frog jelly packed into a flight suit'."

"Did he?" Archer replied headily. "That's terrible! You know what, crewman? Take the rest of the shift off to recover."

The moment Baird wandered away in bemusement, Archer rushed to the comm. "Malcolm? What's going on?"

"I said Valakian sir. At least I think that's what Liz said. Anyway, there's no time. Phlox is getting help, but Mettus is dead already, and Liz seems to be dying in front of us. We think she's been poisoned."

We? Archer thought in confusion, and he could indeed hear a pair of voices nattering away in the background. "Who is 'we'?"

"Me, and a pair of med students Alice plucked off the reject pile and let drill into my skull. Consequently, they seem to have grown quite attached to her, and have decided to...where IS she, anyway? Liz needs more care than we can give her."

"We will help you as best we can from here, Lieutenant," T'Pol cut in levelly. "I presume you have scanned her with the medical scanner Dr Harper took from Enterprise? Please send the results to us, immediately. I will consult with the medical team on the T'Kenara, and synthesise an antidote if I can, and transport it to you."

Archer nodded hollowly to T'Pol, as she cut the line.

"We are receiving the scans of Crewman Cutler now, Captain," she said in reply. "In the meantime, we now have a new problem."

"We have to get our people off that planet," Archer murmured, as if to himself. "They're being cut down like..."

"Captain! The mining barge," T'Pol interrupted forcefully. "We now have no one on world capable of going to that ship. We must reconsider sending a team from Enterprise."

"Abandoning more people down there is unacceptable, T'Pol," Archer snapped.

T'Pol rose to her feet. "With respect, Captain there is no other option. The Denobulan authorities are too overwhelmed to even consider the evidence. And while there is a Vulcan embassy staff, by the time the command crew of the T'Kenara has reviewed the evidence and given clearance for a mission we may have missed our chance to gather a crucial piece of evidence for Romulan involvement in what has happened here. The Valakians could not have done this alone."

"The Valakians," Archer replied still trying to fit this piece on information into place. "Do they really hate us this much? To collude with our enemies to destroy us? We tried to help them."

T'Pol nodded. "Yes. But we helped them far less than we could have. I maintain we acted correctly, but Valakian resentment is not incomprehensible. Earth resented Vulcan for far less."

Even in the middle of it all, Archer couldn't help but smiling at T'Pol's diplomatic use of 'Earth' rather than 'you, Captain'. They'd made progress since that time. Since that day they had turned their back on the dying Valakians and warped off to their next adventure.

How many times had he even given the Valakians a thought? Archer wondered to himself. He'd done so occasionally, yes. But not often.

Now, he suspected it would be a while before the consequences of that decision failed to keep him up nights.

"Right," he said more firmly. "So we need a volunteer to go to the mining barge and then be quarantined on Denobula."

T'Pol hesitated. "While I appreciate you would rather minimise crew loss, protocol dictates that we should send two people."

"I know T'Pol," Archer nodded. "I'm the other volunteer..."

"Captain, you must not..."

"...and that's final."

T'Pol did look displeased, but she acquiesced without further argument. "If you insist, Captain. In any case, there is a small possibility that whoever we send to the mining barge will not need to be quarantined. A short while ago, Dr Phlox and Crewman Cutler were examining what appeared to be a gene therapy treatment for the Denobulan pathogen, tailored to a particular species. the Valakians, as it turns out. Using this analysis, we may be able to reverse engineer enough information about the pathogen in order to make a diagnostic test. If we can do so in time, we would only need to quarantine those who go to the barge if they are indeed exposed."

"That's something, I suppose," Archer replied with a smile. "Stay on top of that won't you?" He then opened ship wide communications and explained the situation, including T'Pol's small ray of hope. Then he asked for volunteers.

This done, he retired to his ready room, sat down heavily in the dark and waited. He stirred only to sooth Porthos, who was clearly unsettled by his actions. "It's okay, boy. I'll have you sent down to me, if I get stuck down there. And I won't let the Denobulans eat your kidneys. Who knows? Between the two of us, we might start a craze for pet dogs down there..."

Finally, the door signaled indicating he had his lucky volunteer.

It opened. He should have known.

"Hoshi," Archer sighed. "Well, at least you aren't Trip."

"We'll be wearing bio suits. And a diagnostic test is only an hour or two away. And the mining barge might not be contaminated in any case."

It was no good. He was refusing to even look at her. Instead he just stared out the mess hall window. She could see the blankness of his face reflecting back at her.

"I'm the obvious person to go, Travis," she tried next. "I can help translate anything we find, probe into the computer systems, prove once and for all that the Romulans were here. That they were the ones that are really behind this Valakian attack."

Travis rolled his eyes. "Oh, sure thing, Hosh. That's what this is about. Translating."

Hoshi took a deep breath and fixed her eyes resolutely on the wall. "Just what are you saying, Travis?"

"I'm saying, you're a coward," he replied with a low growl.

"And just how am I a 'coward', exactly?"

Travis laughed humourlessly. "Oh don't play dumb. It's genius. This way, you don't have to choose. You can leave it up to fate. Or maybe you have already chosen, and you can help fate out by tearing your suit a little? That way, you get what you want and you look good doing it. Genius."

"If I wanted to go down to Denobula I could have just gone," Hoshi snapped.

And Travis laughed once more. "Oh, I know that Hoshi. I know. And that's why I called you a coward."

Hoshi's chest tightened, but she held her nerve. "I just came to say I'll see you soon. I thought you'd want to wish me luck."

"Luck with leaving me, or luck with starting a war?"

"I'm not leaving you, Travis!", Hoshi insisted. "I'm going to be careful, and T'Pol is going to get that test working. I'm coming back."

Travis shrugged. "I suppose we'll see, won't we?"

Hoshi left without replying.