by Dave Stern
He hooked it back up.
“What are you doing?” Kairn asked, coming back to stand over his shoulder.
“You’ll see in a minute. Fane?” Trip called out. “You still have the intercepts on-line?”
“We do.”
“Can you send them to this station?”
“Done.”
“Thanks.” Trip sat down then, flexed his fingers, and keyed in his query. Kairn read the words out loud as he typed.
“Kota Base?”
Trip nodded, his eyes focused on the screen.
Kota was located in a neighboring star system of the same name. It was the place where, fifteen years ago, Sadir had taken Daedalus after capturing it. Where he’d ripped that ship apart, and with the aid of its captain, Monique Duvall, replicated its weapons and warp technology. It made only sense to send Enterprise there now, for exactly the same reasons.
He explained his reasoning to Kairn as the computer ran his query. Just as he finished, the display screen flashed.
SEARCH COMPLETED
The screen went to black for a split second, and then began filling with a list of results: the first few lines of each message that had mentioned Kota.
“Most of these are from cargo transports on their way to the base. Most of them in the last week,” Kairn said, reading off the screen. “They’re bringing in supplies—a lot of them.”
“Which could mean they’re building something,” Trip said. “Weapons.”
“Could be.”
All at once, Trip sensed someone leaning over his other shoulder. The professor.
“It’s not just equipment they’re bringing in,” Brodesser said. “Look.”
Brodesser pointed to a message toward the bottom of the screen. Trip read the first few lines and blinked.
“What is it?” Kairn asked, leaning closer so he could see.
“Vox Four,” Trip replied, and brought the full text of the message up on-screen.
ISHENQ COMMANDER DEF CRUISER
JAQUANDRA
TO KOTA BASE SECURITY
SPECIAL TRANSPORT
VOX 4 PICK-UP
SECURE DOCKING BERTH REQUIRED
SECURE QUARTERS REQUIRED
Vox 4 was the prison they’d rescued Brodesser from. The prison where they’d expected to find the remainder of Daedalus’s crew, but instead had come upon only empty cells.
Now, Trip suspected, I know why.
“Vox Four pick-up complete?” Kairn said. “You think they brought them back to Kota? The Daedalus crew?”
He nodded. “Look at the dates. Right before we tried to break them out…”
“They were ferried aboard Jaquandra. To fly your ship?”
“I think so,” Trip said. And not just to fly it, of course. To run every critical system aboard the vessel. He should have seen it before. Who better to work a Starfleet vessel than a Starfleet crew? Especially a crew that you’d already beaten the resistance out of.
“DEF,” Kairn said. “That’s Makandros. He’s got Enterprise.”
“Not necessarily.” Royce spoke for the first time, making his presence known. “Special transport—that could be any of the generals, requesting those prisoners.”
“But whoever has them—my shipmates—they’re all at Kota,” Brodesser said quietly.
“Without a doubt,” Trip said.
Brodesser turned to face him.
“You have to take me with you.”
Trip shook his head.
“Can’t do it, sir,” he said. “This is a combat mission. You’re not trained.”
“Those are my people, Trip,” Brodesser replied. “I have an obligation to rescue them—the same way you have an obligation to rescue your crew.”
“I understand you feel that way, and believe me, I’ll do everything in my power—”
“Tell me you couldn’t use an extra hand piloting the ship,” Brodesser went on. “Tell me that if you go into a combat situation, Hoshi could do a better job on sensors—on your cloak—than I could.”
His gaze bore into Trip’s.
“I know those systems now, Trip. Almost as well as you, I warrant. I know Kota too, in case you’ve forgotten. I can help you.”
Trip sighed. The man was right, in everything he was saying. And yet…
“I don’t know. Three in that cell-ship—it’s going to be kind of tight, sir.”
Brodesser managed a smile.
“You forget where I spent the last seven years, Trip. The cell-ship is actually somewhat…palatial, by comparison.”
“Palatial.”
Brodesser nodded.
“Besides, it’ll give me a chance to see the ship’s ion drive in action.”
He smiled then, as Trip’s mouth dropped open in surprise.
“Or did you think I’d missed that as well?”
Trip’s silence was the only answer the man needed.
“I’ll collect a few things,” Brodesser said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Give me twenty minutes.”
The professor was as good as his word. His gear—and sufficient supplies to last him for a week—was stacked in a pile next to the cell-ship less than half an hour later. In another pile were three EVA suits Kairn had pressed on them, suits Trip had gratefully accepted after learning that the main weapons fabrication facility at Kota was located on an orbital platform above the base itself.
All the above items, however, weren’t going anywhere just yet. Certainly not aboard the cell-ship—not until they were checked over thoroughly, not until it was certain that they contained no trace of the proteins that Hoshi and he were so allergic to. A check that only Doctor Trant—with the scanner Trip had given her from one of Enterprise’s medkits—could perform.
Trip and the professor had been standing next to the new gear, making small talk, for perhaps five minutes when the door to the launch bay opened and the doctor stepped through.
A second later, Ferik followed.
As always, seeing Neesa’s husband—especially in her presence—made Trip uncomfortable. He managed a smile, which Ferik returned. Then Trip turned to the doctor.
She, however, was all business.
“Commander. Professor.” Trant took out her scanner and motioned Brodesser to stand apart from Trip. “This will only take a minute.”
She calibrated the scanner and studied its read-out, stepping around Brodesser slowly and carefully.
Ferik clamped a hand on Trip’s shoulder.
“You didn’t come to say good-bye,” he said. “I wanted to say good-bye.”
“Sorry.” Trip managed a smile. “It’s been hectic.”
“You come back here, Tucker?”
“No.” Trip shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Neesa’s back was to him, but he thought he saw her flinch ever so slightly.
“Okay.” Ferik stepped between him and the doctor, and held out his hand. “Good-bye, Tucker. Yes?”
“Yes,” Trip said, taking the man’s hand and shaking it. “Good-bye, Ferik.”
The man nodded and let go. He stood there a moment, a blank expression on his face, temporarily at a loss.
“Say good-bye to Hoshi, Ferik,” Trant said without looking up from her scanner.
“Hoshi.” Ferik nodded, and turned to face the cell-ship. He waved to Hoshi through the viewscreen. She waved back.
“You’re all clear, Professor,” Neesa said, looking up from her scanner. “You can board.”
“Thank you.” Brodesser nodded to her and then Ferik. “Good-bye. Trip, I’ll see you aboard.”
“Just as soon as we get these other things checked out.”
“Won’t take a minute,” Trant said, and began to scan the new gear. She pushed one of the EVA suits to the side, and then spoke again.
“Ferik,” she said quietly. “I wonder if you could go down to the ward now, just in case anyone shows up.”
“Be on duty?”
“Yes. Be on duty.”
“Okay.
” He nodded, then turned back to Trip again. “Good-bye again, Tucker.”
Trip said good-bye again as well, and watched the man leave through the door he’d entered.
And then he and Neesa were all alone, standing in the shadow of the cell-ship, the command center behind them blocked from view.
“This is all clear,” she said, stepping back from the gear.
“Thanks,” Trip said, taking a step forward. “Neesa—”
“And I have something else for you,” she said hurriedly, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a metal box the size and shape of a communicator. After a few seconds of fiddling with it, Trip found the release and opened the lid.
There were pills inside—big pills, looked almost like horse tranquilizers. A couple dozen in all.
He looked up questioningly.
“Pain-killers. I made them up this morning for you and Hoshi. Derived from the same compounds as the pisarko, so you shouldn’t have any reactions.”
“Thanks.”
“They’re strong, Trip. One a day—only.”
“I understand.”
“I was going to send Ferik up with them, but then Kairn called and said Brodesser was going with you, and all his gear needed to be checked out, so—”
“Neesa.”
He moved forward, as if to kiss her.
“Don’t.” She blinked away tears. “This is why I didn’t want to come. I didn’t want to go through this all over again.”
“I understand. Last night was good-bye.”
“Yes,” she said. “Last night was good-bye.”
Trip cleared his throat, intending to say something poetic. He’d thought about it for the last half hour, ever since realizing that he would see her one more time—something about there being another Trip out there in this universe, another Enterprise, and that maybe one day, that ship would come to Denari, and she and that Trip would meet, and…
The words wouldn’t come, though. They suddenly seemed infinitely false to him—false comfort, false dreams, false hopes.
They were never going to see each other again. That was the hard truth.
“Good-bye, Trip.” She touched a finger to her lips, and then his.
Before he could respond, she turned and walked away.
Trip watched her go.
Then he loaded up the cell-ship, climbed inside, and sealed the hatch.
Brodesser, he saw, had taken the station directly behind his and was even now hard at work analyzing the ship’s code.
By the time we reach Kota, he’ll know the systems better than I do. The thought made Trip smile.
But for some reason, his eyes were moist.
“Sir?” Hoshi asked. “Everything all right?”
“Not yet,” Trip said, turning away from her. “But it will be—once we find Enterprise.”
The bay doors opened then, and they were away.
Eight
SOMEONE LAUGHED.
Archer, who’d been pacing back and forth in the cell from the moment they’d been put in it—a good hour ago, at a guess—frowned. He turned to seek out the guilty party.
His gaze swept along the back wall of the cell and came to rest on Rodriguez. The young man was sitting on the floor, shaking his head, a trace of a smile still on his face. Yamani, sitting next to him, was smiling too.
Archer walked over to them. Their conversation died out.
“You find something funny about our current situation, gentlemen?” the captain asked.
Both men suddenly straightened.
“No, sir. Sorry, sir.” Rodriguez wiped the grin off his face. Yamani did the same.
“Then what were you smiling about?” Archer sounded Queeg-ish to his own ears, and tried to damp it down. But he was frustrated, and he was angry. To have spent two weeks planning an escape from one prison, only to be trapped in another…
“My fault, captain,” Yamani put in.
“Go on.”
Yamani looked at Rodriguez. “I said, any minute we’d be drawing straws. To see who got to play Dwight’s part.”
Archer shook his head then, and managed a small smile himself.
“You’ve got the part, Crewman,” he said to Yamani. “I’ll let you know when you go on.”
“Thanks, Captain,” Yamani answered.
Archer resumed his pacing.
Eighteen strides before he had to turn around and head in the other direction—which made the cell roughly twenty meters wide. He figured it for half again as deep. “Cell” was maybe the wrong word, though, since the back wall was the only permanent thing about it. The other three sides were composed of a force field, a sheet of floor-to-ceiling pale yellow light that gave a nasty shock when touched.
Holding pen, Archer thought. A temporary one, probably, yet for all that it was less solid than Rava, it felt far more escape-proof. That feeling came from this ship’s crew—no Tomons or Gastornises here. The men and women who had held weapons on them as they’d marched off the Stinger had been completely silent—and utterly professional. A dozen soldiers, none of whom had spoken a word or let their concentration lapse for even a nanosecond.
They’d simply marched Archer and his crew into the cell one at a time, stripping them of weapons, communicators, and anything that might be used to fashion an escape.
And despite Archer’s protests, they’d stripped him of the UT module as well—which he found the most disturbing thing of all.
“Not a good sign,” he told T’Pol once they were all inside the cell. “That they don’t intend to talk to us.”
“Perhaps they simply intend to return us to Rava.”
Archer nodded. Covay had suggested that would be the case.
On the other hand…
There was another, far more sinister implication to what had occurred.
“Captain.” T’Pol must have caught the look on his face. “If you’re suggesting that they intend to kill us out of hand, I must point out that they have had ample opportunity to do so at any point since we lost control of the ship.”
“They didn’t want to damage their vessel before.”
“They wouldn’t have needed to. They could have opened all the airlocks.”
“They could have…” Archer shook his head. He hadn’t thought of that.
“So they want us alive.”
“Perhaps.”
“But they don’t plan on talking to us.”
“So it would seem.”
“So what do you think they intend to do?”
“Without further information, I have no way of knowing.”
Archer frowned.
And at that point, he’d started pacing. Thinking about a way out of this. But what? Another escape didn’t seem likely—not for a long, long time. After Rava, the Denari were going to be very focused on Archer and his crew. He doubted there would be many opportunities for them to gather en masse, unsupervised. There was always a way out of any prison, of course, given enough time, but Archer wasn’t sure how much time they had.
Rodriguez and Yamani might have been kidding about who got to play Dwight’s part, but the truth of the matter was they were all going to end up looking like the young ensign in a little while.
Again, the captain wondered how his captors had done it—seized control of their ship. Those last few minutes before the voice had come over the ship’s intercom, ordering them out of the vessel, T’Pol had spent in fruitless study of the ship’s underlying software protocols, ultimately coming to the conclusion that it was a part of the vessels’ control system, not a jury-rigged thing.
Across the room, a door opened, and a man and a woman entered. More soldiers, though these two were older, instantly recognizable as officers, the man Archer’s height, dark hair, dark skin, the woman a few centimeters taller, blond and fair.
“T’Pol,” the captain said as they approached the force shield.
He turned to see his science officer already on her feet and walking toward him.
T
hey stood together as the other two approached.
Archer got a better look at them now. The man was older than he’d first thought—crows feet in the corners of his eyes, his hair a uniform shade of jet black that suggested it had been dyed—and the woman younger. They were talking animatedly as they approached. Arguing, Archer guessed, though of course he couldn’t understand a word they were saying, since they spoke in Denari.
The woman was in the middle of saying something when the man looked up at the captain, and their eyes met.
The man held up a hand, and the woman fell instantly silent.
“I think,” Archer said out of the corner of his mouth, “this is General Makandros.”
T’Pol nodded, and opened her mouth to speak.
The man beat her to it.
“Yes. I am General Makandros,” he said. “And you are Captain Archer. And you, Sub-Commander T’Pol. Won’t you come with us, please?”
Archer’s eyes widened in surprise.
Not only did Makandros know who they were, but he’d just spoken in perfect, unaccented English.
How?
The question burned in Archer’s mind as he and T’Pol followed the general and his aide out of the holding cell and into a corridor every bit as squeaky clean as the interior of the Stinger. That impressed the captain; whatever else was true about Makandros, he obviously ran a tight ship. A tight fleet.
But tight ship or not, how could he know their language? It had been only three weeks since Enterprise was attacked; even Hoshi would have had trouble picking up a completely new tongue in that span of time. No Earth vessel had been out this far before. Archer supposed it was barely possible that a human being had come this way aboard an alien ship, but even if that were true…unless the general was a fanatical student of language, why would he bother to learn English?
There were ways that the general could have known who T’Pol and Archer were. He could have gotten that information from Rava, for one thing. But the language…
That was a mystery only Makandros could provide the solution for. And right now, the general was talking not English, but Denari, having resumed his conversation with the woman almost the instant Archer and T’Pol had stepped out of the holding cell. Again, the captain had the sense it was an argument, and watching their body language now, he had the sense that whatever reasoning the woman was using, it was failing to convince Makandros of anything.
