by Dave Stern
“Whenever you’d like.”
“I was thinking someplace more private, actually.”
Sen drew the human’s attention to the upper solarium, high above the main floor.
Archer hesitated a second.
“I’ll have one of the guards notify your man where you are,” Sen said. “If you’d like.”
The captain shook his head. “Not necessary.”
“Very well then.” The governor smiled. “Shall we?”
The two men turned as one then, and made their way toward the central elevator bank.
Hoshi had circled the party twice, the first time to blow off some steam—recreational sex? Please—the second to look for Theera, to pick up the conversation that Sen’s appearance had interrupted. She didn’t see the Andorian anywhere.
On her third circuit of the room, she witnessed Malcolm save the governor’s life, and saw Sen’s would-be assassin murdered. The combined result of which was that she felt like stalking up to Reed and saying, “How could you?” Which was of course the wrong reaction; she should be congratulating him, except her stomach turned at the idea.
Maybe what she needed was another drink.
She stomped off to the nearest refreshment table.
“Any Romulan ale?” she asked the server.
“Sorry,” he said, then smiled at her. “Nice dress.”
A sound something like “grrrrrr” escaped her mouth.
“Whoa, whoa,” the server said, backpedaling away from her, hands raised in self-defense. “I can go check. We may have more.”
“That,” she said, nodding, “would be a good thing.”
“We must be very high up here,” the captain said.
“Oh we are. Roughly five thousand meters above the planet’s surface. Touching the edge of the planet’s atmosphere,” Sen replied.
Archer looked down, and then up. It did seem to him that the stars were brighter than the lights of the city below. One star in particular, in fact. A silvery white dot that seemed to him to be moving toward them. Probably one of those patrol ships they’d encountered earlier, while coming in on the shuttle.
He turned away from the window. Sen was standing over a large circular table that occupied the center of the room (the upper solarium, as he had referred to it), studying a display screen built into the top of the table. It was running a text feed of some sort, in a language Archer didn’t recognize at all. Several languages, in fact, running down the screen in parallel columns. One of those languages looked to him like Orion, or a dialect thereof, which he’d had occasion to brush up on recently, a run-in with some slavers. It wasn’t text, though, so much as numbers. If he was reading it right. Sen was deeply absorbed in the readout. Happy about what he was seeing. Archer wished Hoshi were there to interpret.
“Good news?” the captain asked, pushing aside one of the chairs that surrounded the table to get closer to the screen. As he did so, he noticed that the floor they stood on was now opaque, cutting off their view of the party below. Neat little feature. Privacy on demand.
“Very good news,” Sen replied without looking up.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Yes. The transfers have all cleared, and the routing data has all been erased.”
Archer frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s not important. What it means is that we’re ready to go.”
Sen straightened. He held a weapon of some sort in his right hand, aimed squarely at the captain.
Foremost among the thoughts crossing Archer’s mind at that instant was that he really had to learn to trust Malcolm’s instincts.
“I thought we were going to talk.”
“We will. At a leisurely pace. Quite soon, in fact.”
Keep him busy. Keep him speaking, the captain thought, his eyes flickering around the room, searching for a weapon of some kind, any kind. He had one hand on the chair he’d pushed aside. He wondered how heavy it was, if he could grip it with both hands and throw it before the governor could fire. Not likely. Might be his only chance though.
“Care to tell me what this is all about?”
“Money, power…” Sen shrugged. “The usual sort of thing. Ah. Here we are.”
Sen’s gaze went to the window behind Archer. The captain turned and saw that same silver star he had noticed before, growing larger with each passing second. Coming closer. It wasn’t a star at all, he realized, and turned back to Sen, opening his mouth to speak again.
The governor raised his weapon.
There.
General Jaedez, and Theera. And Ambassador Quirsh. Surrounded by a knot of uniformed Thelasians. Quirsh and Jaedez were talking, Theera stood by, looking distinctly uncomfortable.
Why, Hoshi thought, did I have the feeling that the same conversation she’d witnessed was playing out all over again?
She took a step toward the group, and someone touched her shoulder.
Sen, she thought, shuddering.
She took a deep breath and turned around.
Malcolm.
He smiled. “You and the governor getting along all right?”
She glared.
“Do not,” she said, pointing a finger, “expect me to congratulate you for saving that man’s life.”
“I know,” he said, frowning. His eyes went past her, scanning the room.
“I’m kidding,” she said.
“I know,” he said again, continuing to look all around.
“What’s the matter?” Hoshi asked.
“Where’s the captain?”
“I haven’t seen him. Why?”
“Where’s Sen?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” The last slipped out before she could stop herself. Maybe, she thought, two Romulan ales were her limit.
“See if you can spot him,” Reed said, ignoring her remark. “He’s got to be here somewhere.”
He looked to his left, and his right, and Hoshi did the same, and he looked over her shoulder, and she looked over his, and then he looked up and said—
“What happened to the floor?”
Hoshi looked up too then, and saw Malcolm was right. The floor of the upper room, which had been transparent before, was suddenly opaque.
“Privacy feature,” she said. “I wonder who’s up there.”
“I can hazard a guess,” Reed said. “Come on.”
He took her arm.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He pointed upward.
There was a sudden flash of light, and a noise like the end of the world.
Twelve
Hoshi opened her eyes.
She was in a small, dark, dank cell. It smelled of something terrible. Something alien, something awful, something that made her skin crawl, made the veins in her forehead ache and pound with remembered pain, something that—
Xindi.
“Oh God,” she said, getting to her feet. She knew where she was now. Aboard the reptilian ship. After they’d stolen her from Enterprise, beamed her right off the bridge. That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to be possible, Trip had assured them of that. Except here she was. Again.
The door hissed open, and the reptilian commander walked in.
Governor Sen was next to him.
“It’s a dream,” Hoshi said out loud, though of course it had to be a dream, the reptilian ship and commander were dust now, dead all these months.
Unfortunately, that didn’t matter at the moment.
“We were quite impressed with your linguistic abilities,” the Xindi said, just as he had all those months ago, when they’d tortured her and put who knows what kind of parasite into her brain to make her give them what they wanted, when they’d ruined her innate, God-given ability to—
“That—and your dress,” Sen added, and Hoshi realized she was wearing the red outfit the governor had given her.
“This is a dream,” Hoshi repeated. “It doesn’t matter what you say. What you do. None of this is happening.”
Sen and the Xindi looked at each other, then laughed.
“Then you won’t mind if we…”
The reptilian commander smiled and held up a weapon, the same weapon, she knew instinctively, he had used to inject the parasites into her brain earlier.
Dream or not, she wasn’t going through that again.
Hoshi sprung from her seat and shoved past the two men, running out into the corridor. An alarm sounded. Enterprise’s alarm. The call to battle stations.
She looked around. She was aboard her own ship.
“Hoshi!”
She turned. Captain Archer was running toward her.
“The Antianna. They’re attacking! We need that translation!”
All she could do was shake her head.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have it yet?”
“No.”
“Hoshi.” Archer’s shoulders sagged. “You let me down. I trusted you, and you let me down.”
“Yes, sir. I let you down.”
“I’m going to need a new translator,” Archer said. He looked past her and smiled.
Hoshi turned and saw Theera.
“I have the information you need, sir,” the Andorian said.
“Yes.” Archer nodded. “Go ahead.”
Theera frowned. “But I can’t tell you.”
The captain frowned back.
The nearest bulkhead exploded. Archer hurtled through the air, crashed into a bulkhead, and lay still.
Hoshi turned away—
And almost ran right into her mother.
“Remember this one?” her mother asked, and started singing the fifty-seven-pulse signal. She stopped, and started, stopped and started, more times than Hoshi could count.
“It was a big hit for Elvis. Got it yet?” her mother asked.
“No,” Hoshi said. “No I don’t understand.”
Her mother frowned, and shook her head.
“Kids. You think you’ve done a good job with them, and then something like this happens.”
Before Hoshi could respond, there was another explosion.
The entire side of the corridor disappeared, and Hoshi saw the stars beyond.
The vacuum of space sucked at her, and she—and everything and everyone aboard the ship—flew out, into the black.
She opened her eyes.
She was aboard Enterprise, in the sickbay. She felt weak, and thirsty, and the skin of her face felt raw and mildly burned, as if she’d stayed out too long in the sun. Across the room from her, a woman stood over another patient, frowning at the display readouts above his cot. Hoshi couldn’t see who the patient was. The woman was Nurse Cutler.
Hoshi swallowed, and tried to call her name. Nothing.
She closed her eyes again.
She was back in the cell once more. The reptilian commander loomed over her.
“The launch codes,” he said. “You will give them to us. Or else…what happened to your friend will happen to you.”
He looked to Hoshi’s right. She turned to follow his gaze.
Theera sat beside her.
“Theera?” Hoshi asked hesitantly. “Are you all right?”
The Andorian remained silent, staring straight ahead.
“Theera?” Hoshi reached out a hand and—hesitantly—touched her shoulder.
The Andorian slumped toward her.
A worm—as thick as Hoshi’s index finger—crawled out of the scar on Theera’s brow ridge then. It looked just like the parasites the Xindi had put in her.
A second worm crawled out after the first. Then another, and another, and another, and right about then Hoshi stopped thinking, and started screaming.
“Ensign Sato. Ensign Sato. Are you with us?”
Hoshi blinked, and looked up. Doctor Phlox was leaning over her.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, and with those words, she began to cry.
“Shhh,” Phlox said. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”
He kept making soothing sounds, and she kept crying, still seeing the same horrible images in her mind, of the worms and the Xindi and the Antianna and Captain Archer’s look of disappointment, and Enterprise exploding. She felt as if she’d lived a thousand lifetimes, each of them more painful than the last, since she’d last been awake.
“I’m sorry,” she was able to finally get out. “Give me a minute.”
“It’s all right. Take as much time as you need. No need for explanations. You’re with us, you’re safe, you’re one hundred percent whole. Alive, and fine.”
She nodded. “Yes, but—what happened to me? Why am I here? How long—”
“Shhh.” Phlox shook his head. “Eat first, ask questions later. I have just the thing,” he said, and he did, he brought her miso soup and rice crackers, and she attacked them greedily. They tasted like home. They reminded her of her mother sans the Elvis imitation, of her siblings, of times long before she’d ever thought of going into space or becoming a linguist, before she’d heard of the Training Institute or Jonathan Archer or any aliens other than the Vulcans or the occasional visitor from Alpha Centauri, certainly not the Xindi or Sen or—
She felt pressure on her arm.
She looked up and saw Phlox holding a hypo.
“Hey,” she said. “What was that?”
“Nutritional supplement.”
“Oh.” She took a few more sips of the soup, and all at once, yawned. “Oh.”
She looked up at Phlox again.
“Nutritional supplement?”
“Among other things.” He smiled, and moved the tray with the soup and crackers out of the way. He eased her back into a supine position.
“Rest,” he said.
“But—”
“Rest.”
She did.
The next time Hoshi woke, she felt—for lack of a better word—human again.
Phlox stood over her, along with Nurse Cutler, and T’Pol. The Vulcan eyed her critically.
“You look much improved today,” she said.
“I’m glad to hear that, but—today?” Hoshi frowned, propped herself up on her elbows. “How many—how long have I been here?”
T’Pol looked quickly to Phlox, who nodded.
“You have been here—unconscious—for three days.”
Hoshi wasn’t surprised. The way she’d been dreaming…the Vulcan could have told her she’d been out for a year, and she would have believed her.
“But what happened? The last thing I remember was that reception, down on the planet. Governor Sen, and the captain, and…”
“There was an explosion. The governor is dead. Over two hundred people died. The Thelasian authorities think it was some sort of terrorist act.”
“Terrorist act. I don’t—” She frowned. “The captain? Malcolm…are they…?”
“Lieutenant Reed is fine,” Phlox said hurriedly. “He was unharmed in the explosion, and is in fact currently on Procyron, assisting the Thelasian authorities in their investigation of the incident. He’s anxious to talk to you regarding your memories of that evening.”
“Of course. As soon as he wants.”
“As soon as you are able,” Phlox stressed.
“Yes. But—what about the captain? Where is he?”
The expression on T’Pol’s face changed. Phlox shook his head, and looked down to the ground.
Nurse Cutler turned away.
“Oh no,” Hoshi said. “Oh no.”
T’Pol nodded.
“We are attempting,” she said, “to reconstruct the sequence of events that occurred just prior to the explosion. Lieutenant Reed strongly feels…”
But Hoshi wasn’t listening. She didn’t have the energy for it.
It took every ounce of her strength not to start crying again.
Travis came to visit her the next day. He looked the way she felt—stunned. Like he’d been run over by a truck.
“I can’t believe it either,” he said. “
I don’t want to believe it.”
He gave her more details: the explosion had centered in the upper solarium—ripped away a portion of the dome there, sent massive chunks of debris raining down on the people below, set a portion of the structure on fire, sent everyone there into a panic, screaming toward the exits, afraid they were under attack by hostile forces. The situation had gotten straightened out fairly quickly—Malcolm had apparently played a part in that—but the damage had already been done, obviously. The destruction. The deaths.
But she wasn’t going to think about that.
As to who was responsible…there were a number of theories going around. Some thought that Sen was the sole intended target, others that the violence had been more generally directed at everyone attending the reception. Travis echoed what T’Pol had told her, that Reed wanted to talk to Hoshi as soon as she was able.
She nodded blankly, and tried to think of something to say.
“What about you?” she asked, finally.
Travis frowned. “Me?”
“Yes. The money. Horizon…?”
“Oh.” He shook his head. “No luck yet finding them. They must be…I don’t know. In the middle of a run, out to someplace well off the beaten track. I don’t know.”
She nodded again. “Maybe I can help you try and track them down, when I get out of here.”
“Maybe. For now, you concentrate on getting better.”
A few more minutes, and he left. Hoshi tried to fall back asleep, but she couldn’t. Partially because she didn’t want to dream again. Partially because she didn’t want to lie there and think about the captain. She needed to keep busy. The translation. The Antianna signal. Work. That would do it.
She got up from the cot. Nurse Cutler told her to get back down. Hoshi refused. Phlox came in, asked what the problem was. Hoshi told him she wanted to be released. He told her he’d see how she was tomorrow. She said she’d stop back then, if he wanted. He reminded her that he was the doctor, and that involuntary confinement to a sickbed was always an option.
She went back to her cot. Nurse Cutler got her a viewer, which Hoshi used to tie into the Thelasian database. There was nothing new—no further information on their “tentative” translation of the Antianna signal.