Hoshi frowned

She pictured Theera stretching her arms upward, out toward space, like a plea.

To put together. To join.

Not a plea-an imperative.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I think it’s very relevant indeed.”

Green turned to her, a look of puzzlement on her face.

Hoshi explained.

Twenty-Six

Bodies everywhere.

Fallen in corridors, sprawled across escape pod hatchways, on sickbay cots, on top of computer stations, with blood and spittle pooled in the corners of their mouths, with expressions of agony frozen on their faces.

Klingons could hardly be said to rank high on Captain Jonathan Archer’s list of “alien-races-I’d-most-like-to-be-trapped-aboard-a-starship-with,” but this…

What had Sen done?

The governor wasn’t telling. After releasing Archer, and bringing him down to the mess to eat, he’d told the captain they had two tasks before them. The first was cleanup.

“You will go to the sickbay, and fetch a gurney.” Sen, sitting across a long table from the captain-just far enough to be out of Archer’s reach-leaned back and popped some sort of food in his mouth that looked considerably more appetizing than the gagh on Archer’s plate. “You will then use the gurney to transport the bodies to shuttlebay, at which point we will jettison them into space.”

The captain nodded.

“I understand.”

“Good. You will not, of course, make the mistake of attempting any sort of escape, or sabotage, while you perform this task. The Klingon commander has thoughtfully equipped the ship with monitors everywhere.”

Again, Archer nodded. The monitors weren’t really the problem, of course, the problem was the collar he wore-some sort of punishment device that could be activated by a remote, which now rested in Sen’s hand, and which was, the captain suddenly realized, very similar to the ones used by some Orion slayers. Like the ones Enterprise had encountered in May. And thinking of Enterprise, he wondered where his ship was now; what was happening with his crew, what they thought had happened to him. He had vague memories of Sen firing his weapon, of lying on the floor, stunned, the feel of a transporter beam, a flash of bright light and then darkness, waking up in the Klingon brig, and realizing…

“Captain.”

Archer looked up to find Sen glaring at him.

“Eat.” The governor gestured with the remote. “You will need your strength.”

Archer ate. And when he was done, he worked.

It was a gruesome, horrific, mind-numbing task. He tried not to see the bodies he lifted and dragged and threw about as people, but simply as things. He tried to keep his thoughts occupied elsewhere. On Sen-how had the governor managed to kill an entire shipful of Klingon warriors? Obviously, he’d had some kind of plan in place, a contingency worked out if things went wrong, which they somehow had. A hidden weapon-the evidence suggested a biological agent-or a booby trap of some kind. Maybe a traitor on board the ship. Definitely a traitor somewhere, whether here or within the Empire itself, though the captain was hard-pressed to think what circumstances would drive a Klingon to betray their people like this, to condemn them to this manner of death, so contrary to the code of the warrior they lived and hoped to perish by.

Though a few of them, now that he looked more closely, seemed to have died in a fight of some sort. The captain was inside what looked to him like a captain’s mess, or a formal reception area. Death here had been messy, and not just in the way it had elsewhere on the ship, either; there was evidence of weapons fire, knife wounds…

He almost tripped then, on a young Klingon female who wore a look of (strangely enough) surprise on her face-well, half her face anyway, as the other half was blasted away.

The captain couldn’t quite reconstruct the sequence of events in his mind. Not that it mattered greatly. What was done was done. What lay ahead, for him specifically…

Sen’s initial plan, obviously, involved selling him to the Klingons. Now…

The governor said that was still his intention-that he would just have to complete that sale now through a third party. The glint in his eye when he spoke, though…

Archer wondered if Sen didn’t just intend to kill him outright, once tasks numbers one and two were complete.

“Captain.”

Archer started, and looked around.

“Speed, please, We still have much to do.”

The voice-Sen’s voice-came from everywhere, and from nowhere, all at once. A hidden speaker/speakers.

Sen hadn’t been lying about those video monitors, obviously.

“Sorry,” Archer said out loud. “It’s just… a little hard to take in.”

“Such sensitivity.” The captain could hear the scorn in Sen’s voice. “Admirable. But we have no time for it now. Work.”

Archer was about to make another comment when he felt a slight tingle around his neck, from the collar. A few volts, courtesy of the governor. Just to get his point across.

The captain worked.

Three corpses to a gurney. Two gurneys at a time. Ten trips down to the shuttlebay. Sixty-three bodies in all, which if memory served was the entire crew complement of this ship, which he’d tentatively pegged as one of the new D-3s, judging by deck layout. (The captain wished he could read Klingon; there was writing everywhere, more than enough, he was certain, to positively ID the ship.) Which meant that he and Sen were all alone aboard the vessel: either the governor had killed whoever had helped him take over, or he’d gotten help before he boarded the vessel. Either way, that made Archer’s job-overpowering the man, gaining control of the ship-easier. Theoretically. As a practical matter…

He had no earthly idea what he was going to do.

Sen had said two tasks, though, which gave him a little more time to puzzle things out, Archer thought, pushing the last of the gurneys in the direction of the shuttlebay. This one was lighter than usual, carrying not heavily armored warriors but three Klingon females. In addition to the younger one he’d found earlier, there had been two others in the stateroom, huddled together in a corner, as if for comfort. Wearing much less than Klingon females usually wore. Consorts, he guessed, for the dead officer in the stateroom. They wore expressions of equal parts puzzlement and horror. As if they couldn’t believe what was happening to them. The captain had never particularly thought of Klingon females as sympathetic figures, but looking at these two, sprawled across the gurney…

Archer stopped dead in his tracks.

Coming from around the corner, he heard voices.

No. Not voices. Just a voice. Sen. But the governor was in the middle of a conversation, in the middle of talking to someone. Probably a contact back on Procyron, or elsewhere in the sector. Arranging a rendezvous, no doubt, a way off this ship, because two people could not run a vessel this size for very long.

He was having a hard time making out what Sen was saying; the governor was talking unusually softly, and in what almost sounded like incomplete sentences. Strange. Archer caught a name, Roia, and a few isolated words- “greedy, Verengi, Coreida system”- some of which were familiar to him, some not. He waited a moment longer, hoping to hear more, perhaps even a response from this Roia, whoever s/he was, over the com. But nothing came.

He pushed on, deciding that incomplete information was better than having Sen catch him in the act of eavesdropping.

Rounding the corner, he frowned.

Sen stood in the middle of the corridor, a good ten meters away from the nearest companel. Too far away to speak to someone over the device without shouting. So how-

“Is there a problem?” Sen asked, at which point the captain realized that the mental frowning he’d just done must have shown on his face as well.

“No. No problem. Just wanted to let you know that this was the last of the bodies.”

“Good.” Sen pointed to the shuttlebay. “Put them with the others, and then we’ll take care of this business.”

Archer wheeled the corpses into the shuttlebay, and laid them in a pile just outside the entrance hatch, next to the pile he’d made the trip previously, which itself was next to the pile from the trip before that-and so on, and so on, and so on. A hangar filled with such piles, filled with corpses. He stood and took a step back.

The room was beginning to smell. Sen was right about one thing, at least; getting rid of the bodies was the smart thing to do, because even though he and the governor had been immune to whatever killed the Klingons, there was a good chance they would not be immune to the microorganisms and bacteria about to infest all the corpses.

He turned to leave.

The hatch was closed behind him. Through the porthole, Sen smiled.

Heart suddenly thumping, Captain Archer punched the companel next to the door.

“Governor. What’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” Sen said in response, pressing the button on his side of the door. “Can’t you guess?”

He could. He did.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, he cursed at himself, should have been paying more attention, should have…

The captain took a deep breath, and forced himself to stay calm.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s happening?” the captain said.

“You’ll recall me mentioning two tasks we had to accomplish?”

“I recall,” Archer said, forcing himself not to turn and look for the shuttle, though he knew that there was one in the bay, he’d stacked bodies right up against it, the only question was whether or not it was open or locked, well not the only question, he had to get to the shuttle first, and whether or not Sen would let him do that or use the remote-That train of thought crashed to a halt as he saw, through the porthole, Sen’s hand on the emergency bay door hatch. The governor was going to open the bay to space, at which point everything in it-dead, alive, flesh and blood and machine-was going to get sucked out in the vacuum.

Evac suits. Did the Klingons have evac suits? Never mind that, was there a handhold-

“Number one was the corpses, obviously,” Sen said. “Number two…”

He shook his head.

“Well, actually I was wrong about there being two.”

He was grinning ear-to-ear now, clearly enjoying himself.

“I get that,” Archer said. “You know Starfleet will pay a reward too, for me. I don’t know exactly what the Klingons were promising you, but- “

“There are three.”

The captain stopped in midsentence, mouth open.

“What?”

“There are three tasks we need to accomplish,” Sen said. “Number two is to secure the shuttle, so it remains in the ship when we evacuate the bay.”

The shuttlebay hatch opened, and the governor stepped through, holding the remote before him like a weapon. Archer gave way.

“There is auxiliary cable in the maintenance locker there,” Sen continued, pointing, “which can be used for that purpose, to supplement the bay locking system. You should have no trouble figuring that out.”

The governor smiled at him again.

The captain stood there a moment, and felt his heart, still hammering in his chest.

Sen shrugged, spread his hands.

“Just a little joke, Captain,” Sen said. “You didn’t really think I’d jettison you along with the bodies, did you? After all… even if I can’t arrange sale to the Klingons through a third party-as you said, Starfleet is certain to offer a reward. So what is the sense in killing you?”

The man’s eyes glittered as he spoke, and in that instant, the captain felt certain that reward money or no, Sen was going to find a way to do just that, and probably take a long time doing so.

“Right,” Archer said. “A joke. Don’t know why I didn’t see that.”

“So serious.” The governor made a show of frowning, and shook his head. “I had heard humans possessed quite a sense of humor. Ah well. You can’t always believe what people tell you, can you, Captain?”

Without waiting for a response, Sen turned his back and started walking away.

“I will be on the bridge,” he called over his shoulder. “Where task number three awaits us. Join me there when you’ve finished.”

He secured the shuttle as Sen had directed. He closed the hatch behind him.

He pressed his face to the porthole, said a silent prayer for the Klingons on the other side of the bulkhead, and opened the airlock.

Everything in the bay that wasn’t, literally, nailed down, or secured in some way, shot forward, out into space, as if it had been fired from a cannon.

Sudden cold numbed his cheek. The captain watched as the crew of the c’Hos, their captain, and their companions left the ship for the final time, and in that instant had the sudden thought-really, it was more of a premonition-that if he did indeed manage to survive this ordeal, what had happened here would someday come back to haunt him, not in his dreams, but in a very real-world way.

He hit the companel.

“All set here,” he said.

“I can see that.” Sen sounded angry. “Come to the bridge immediately.”

The governor sat in the command chair when he arrived, a set of tools laid out on the decking nearby.

“We’re doing some rewiring?” the captain asked.

“In a moment.” Sen frowned. “There is a problem with the security system. I am unable to access the operator subroutines.”

Archer stood there a moment, waiting. Sen simply sat, one hand on the armrest of the chair, fingers drumming impatiently. His other hand lay on his leg, the remote held loosely in it.

His attention was elsewhere. The captain judged the distance between them. A little more than three meters. In optimum physical condition, he could jump most of that in a single bound. Certainly with a running start. But he wouldn’t get a running start here, and he wasn’t in optimal condition. Still…

This might be the best chance he’d get.

Archer tensed, and prepared to leap.

Sen’s gaze swiveled, and fastened on him.

“The voltage in the collar is more than sufficient to disable a Klingon warrior, Captain. I don’t doubt that the effects on the human nervous system…”

His voice trailed off.

A light came into his eyes, and he smiled.

“Excellent,” he said, and nodded. “Excellent.”

“Excuse me?” the captain said.

Sen blinked. His smile disappeared for a second, and then returned.

“I have just bypassed-just realized how to bypass-the Klingon security protocols. Which means we can begin our work.”

“Ah.” The captain nodded, and for a brief instant met Sen’s gaze again.

The governor was lying about something, Archer realized. But what? Why?

He had little time to contemplate those questions over the next few minutes, though, because at that point Sen began giving him instructions at a rapid-fire pace. Take this tool, remove that deck plate. Disassemble that conduit, attach the power couplings there. Take that station, access the operator software, enter this password, reroute control from here to there.

Their task, the governor explained as Archer worked, was to modify the bridge’s control systems so they could all be operated from the command chair, a necessary thing, Sen pointed out, given that they no longer had a full complement of crew on board. As he worked, Archer tried to keep track of the original system layout and the modifications he was making-Starfleet, of course, would be interested in all of it-but as the work got more and more complex, he found it impossible to keep all the details in his head.

The governor seemed to have no such problem.

Sen knew an awful lot about the systems on c’Hos, Archer realized. He wondered how. Probably, the captain thought, he’d bought and paid for it before he’d ever set foot on the vessel. Insurance, just in case something went wrong with his plan. As it clearly had. Smart.

Archer paused a moment to wipe his brow.

“Problem?” Sen asked.

“No problem.” The captain was crouched on the floor, up near the helm console, about five meters away from Sen in the command chair, facing toward the governor. “Just need a minute, that’s all.”

“A minute. Of course. I’ll count it out for you.”

“Thanks so much.” He set down the tools he’d been working with. “How much longer you think this is going to take?”

“Not long,” Sen said. “Are you in some sort of rush? You have some place else you need to be?”

“No. Just curious.”

“A few more hours, perhaps.”

Archer nodded. He wondered if there was a task number four.

He wondered if, when he was done here, he’d be joining the Klingons.

He had to do something soon. No, not soon. Now.

He looked down into the exposed access panel, saw the conduit and cabling, and thought: sabotage.

“Thirty seconds, by the way,” Sen said.

The captain looked back up.

“Can I get a drink of water?”

“Not just yet,” Sen said. “We’ll return to the mess shortly. You can drink there. Eat as well, if you like.”

“More gagh. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”

“Perhaps we’ll find another item on the menu your system can tolerate. In the meantime…” Sen waved the control in his hand. “Back to work.”

Archer nodded, and bent over the access panel once more.

“Beneath the conduit we just disconnected,” Sen said, “there is a sheath of optical cabling. One strand should have a faint blue glow to it. Do you see it?”

Archer nodded.

“I do.”

“Good. That strand joins with the others in a junction box at the far end of the access panel. I want you to disconnect it from the box.”

The captain braced himself on the deck with one hand, and reached down with the other.

“It may take some doing, by the way,” Sen added. “These have a tendency to get stuck.”

Archer frowned.

Now how in the world did Sen know that? Even assuming he’d spent the last few weeks studying up on this ship’s systems, that kind of practical knowledge…

It just wasn’t possible. What did he have in his head, some kind of computer?

His hand paused in midair.

And he remembered, all at once, what Malcolm had told him down on Procyron. How Sen’s guards were able to react so fast, to move so quickly as a unit. They had implants in their heads, some kind of neural interface. What if—

He felt a brief, sudden tingling around his neck.

“Captain. Work, please.” Sen stood over him glaring.

The captain looked up at him, and their eyes met.

Archer tried very hard not to smile.

Chipped. Sen was chipped. That was how he’d been able to overpower and kill the crew, how he was able to monitor the captain so easily, how he knew so much about the ship’s internal workings…

“Something amuses you?” Sen asked.

“No. Not at all.”

“Then…”

“Sorry.” The captain reached down, and made a show of yanking on the cable again. It came free, right away. Not stuck at all.

“Well look at that,” Archer said.

Sen snorted. “Humans,” he said, and went back to the command chair again.

Archer went back to work as well.

Rewiring.

And planning.

Twenty-Seven

Elder Green did not see the interrogation recording in the same light as Hoshi. She did not read the enunciation in Theera’s voice as imperative, or a plea. She was certain the Andorian had indeed said “Antianna,” not “Ondeanna.”

“Our time and effort,” she said to Hoshi, loud enough so that all within range could hear, “must be focused on configuration and testing of the diode panels. You may continue your research in this regard, Ensign Sato, but as for the rest of us…”

She motioned, and the other Mediators returned to work.

Setting aside her frustration, Hoshi did as Green had suggested, plunging back into the database, searching for further connections between the Antianna and the Barreon. She began by reviewing history. There were conflicting records, conflicting accounts of the Barreon’s early years, up until the time of their encounter of the Allied Worlds. They’d been in the process, apparently, of forming an Alliance of their own, though with whom was unclear; no races were mentioned in any of the accounts Hoshi read. The Barreon (or Barrion, sources had it both ways) had been quite sophisticated, technologically; the basic design of the Type-2 FTL ship was attributed to them by more than one source, and several mentioned as well a sophisticated, semi-intelligent software program that had run a number of their defensive systems toward the end of the war. Where they fell short, though, was in armaments-offensive, and defensive weaponry-and numbers. When war came-conflicting territorial ambitions, according to most sources-the Barreon were no match for the Allied Worlds. There were several smaller conflicts before the epic confrontation that destroyed both empires, a war that, depending on which source you believed, either lasted for close to five years or was over in a month.

All extant sources put the number of people killed in the billions.

Following the war, there was a blank spot in the histories, an interregnum of close to half a millennium, after which the Thelasian Confederacy-occasionally claiming ties to the Allied Worlds-arose to become the dominant power in this part of the quadrant. But of the Barreon…

There was nothing.

Hoshi pushed back from the console, and frowned.

Antianna. Ondeanna.

Maybe she was imagining it, at that.

The console beeped.

The screen cleared, and filled with the image of Doctor Hael, from the Kanthropian sickbay.

“Ensign Sato.”

“Yes?”

“I thought you might like to know. The Andorian has awakened.”

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

She closed down the system, and hurried from the room.

Theera was indeed conscious. Weak, barely able to talk, but otherwise lucid.

With no memory, whatsoever, of what she had said while under the influence of the mind-sifter.

“I am sorry.” The Andorian shook her head. “I wish I could help.”

“That’s all right.” Hoshi stood over the bed, hesitant about pulling up a chair alongside it. Maybe it was her imagination-her guilty conscience at work-but Theera seemed to have closed herself off again.

“I want to apologize to you,” Hoshi said. “I didn’t know that they were going to do that-the mind-sifter. I didn’t think- “

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t remember anything. Not the pain, not what I said…” She shrugged. “Nothing.”

Hoshi nodded. In a way, that was fortunate.

The two were silent a moment.

“Do you think it is possible,” Theera began, “that the Kanthropians would return me to Andoria now?”

“Now?” Hoshi shook her head. “I don’t know-right now, as I understand it, we’re being shadowed by the Antianna fleet. I don’t think any ships in the Armada are leaving anytime soon.”

“There are courier ships aboard S-12, are there not?”

“Yes, but- “

“Would you ask Elder Green if one would be available to take me?”

“I could ask, though I doubt…” Hoshi’s voice trailed off as she realized something. “Theera. Did your memory come back, is that why you’re asking to go home? Because if that’s the case, then…”

“No.” Theera was shaking her head emphatically. “It’s just… I want to be there. As soon as possible. I want to start living my life again.”

There was a sudden edge to her voice. Hoshi couldn’t quite place it. Excitement, impatience… something else?

“I understand,” Hoshi said. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Thank you.”

Hoshi smiled. “You’re welcome.”

The two were silent a moment.

“I should get going now,” Hoshi said. “Let you rest. Get back to work-we’re still trying to…”

“You should come,” Theera interrupted.

It took Hoshi a minute to figure out what Theera was saying.

“To Andoria?”

“Yes. You should leave here too. Come back with me.”

That edge was back in the Andorian’s voice, and now, hearing it again, Hoshi recognized the emotion behind it. Not excitement, not impatience…

Fear.

“Theera,” Hoshi said. “Is something the matter?”

The Andorian lowered her gaze.

Of course, Hoshi thought.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” she prompted. “The Antianna?”

Hesitation. And then…

Theera nodded.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“That’s all right.” Now Hoshi did take that chair, and pull it up next to the diagnostic bed. “I understand.”

She put her hand on top of the Andorian’s.

“I’m not going to pretend you don’t have reason to be scared. But we’ve found something, I think-a clue, in what you said under the mind-sifter- and so I think we can talk to them, I think- “

“You can’t talk to them,” she said, suddenly grabbing hold of Hoshi’s hand. Her grip was strong. Painfully so.

Hoshi winced, and tried to free her hand.

“If they catch us,” she said. “You don’t know what they’ll do. You don’t know what will happen.”

Hoshi gave a sudden twist, and freed her hand. It throbbed with pain.

“We’ll find a way to talk to them,” Hoshi said. “I know we will.”

The Andorian shook her head.

Hoshi said her good-byes, and left the room.

Doctor Hael was waiting for her outside the door.

“Ensign Sato,” he said. “I’m glad I was able to find you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“General Jaedez wishes to see you. Immediately.”

Hoshi was escorted back to the Conani flagship, to the general’s office, where she found not only Jaedez but Teraven there as well, waiting for her.

They were looking at something on the viewscreen.

The general caught sight of her first, and waved her forward.

“Ensign Sato. Excellent. Please, come in. We desire your opinion as well.”

She walked to the front of the room, and saw what they were all looking at.

It was an image from Theera’s “interrogation.” The Andorian, risen from her chair, the restraints that had held her to it lying on the deck beside her feet, snapped in half.

Hoshi’s own outstretched hand was visible in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.

“We are interested in your opinion, Ensign.” Teraven, who’d been standing to one side of the general, now moved front and center, pointed to the image on the screen behind him. “If you have an explanation for this. How the Andorian was able to snap these restraints, to physically move while under the influence of the mind-sifter.”

Hoshi shrugged. “The restraints were defective. Obviously.”

“No,” Teraven said. “They were examined prior to your arrival. There was nothing wrong with them.”

“Then…” Hoshi shook her head.

Her hand throbbed where Theera had held it. The Andorian was strong. But that, really, was no explanation either. Strong didn’t break duranium.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t explain it.”

“General?” Teraven asked, turning to Jaedez, who gestured for him to proceed.

“Perhaps,” the Pfau said, “the Andorian is not what she seems.”

“I don’t understand,” Hoshi said. “What else would she be?”

“A spy.”

Hoshi did a double take.

“What?”

“Theera is a spy. An Antianna, in the guise of an Andorian, placed among us to sabotage the fleet.”

Hoshi shook her head in disbelief.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am quite serious,” Teraven said.

“It took three of my men and their weapons to subdue her earlier,” Jaedez said. “To bring her to this ship. That strikes me as unusual.”

Hoshi-who had been about to express her opinion more forcefully-suddenly frowned, as she remembered the contemptuous ease with which one of Jaedez’s guards had handled her.

“Well… she’s had training, obviously. That’s all.”

“I have had training,” Teraven said. “Training takes you only so far against a superior opponent.”

Hoshi couldn’t dispute the truth of that.

“Ensign Sato, I seem to recall a conversation,” Jaedez said, “with you present, where Elder Green told me that the Andorian had been spending her time reviewing background-personal, professional-that she should have been familiar with?”

“It’s because she has amnesia,” Hoshi blurted out.

“Or so she would have us believe,” Teraven said. “Perhaps she simply seeks to further her masquerade.”

“She’s not faking.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just… I’ve spent enough time with her to see. That’s all.”

Teraven frowned. “Hardly scientific proof.”

“You’re saying she painted herself blue, and glued on a set of antennae. That hardly seems scientific to me either.”

“Such surgical ‘masquerades’ are not unknown.”

Hoshi shook her head. “So you’re saying that none of the information we obtained from her is reliable?”

“Given this evidence”- Teraven gestured to the tape- “given the fact that no one still has provided a satisfactory explanation as to how the Andorian can possibly recall a scan that took place on one ship when she was on another-yes, I am afraid that in my opinion, none of the information we gleaned courtesy of the mind-sifter can be considered reliable.”

“I am in agreement,” Jaedez said. “We have ordered Elder Green to cease construction on the light-emitting diodes. Furthermore- “

“You can’t do that!” Hoshi said.

Jaedez raised an eyebrow.

“You forgot your place, Ensign,” Teraven said.

Jaedez held him back. “No, no. I will hear her out. Proceed. Tell me why you think-exclusive of the Andorian’s ‘recollections’- the diode project is worth continuing.”

Hoshi took a deep breath.

“It’s not the diode project I’m concerned with,” she said-and launched into her theory regarding the possible connections between the Antianna and the Barreon.

“Ondeanna,” Jaedez said when she had finished. He gestured to Teraven. “Run the recording, please.”

Teraven did, playing the entire session back, pausing it at the very end once more, on the image of Theera, arms outstretched, reaching for the sky.

“I am in agreement with Elder Green-at least partially,” Jaedez said when it finished. “I do not hear the word as Ondeanna, but Antianna. Regarding the Andorian’s expression of intent, however…” He turned to Teraven. “Commander?”

“‘Join.’” Teraven frowned, and shook his head. “What could it mean, in this context, Ensign?”

“I’m not sure,” Hoshi admitted.

She looked up at the screen. The look on Theera’s face, the yearning, in her eyes…

An idea came to her, all at once.

“But there’s a simple way to find out,” she said. “Send a signal.”

Teraven frowned. “A signal. To the Antianna?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me for stating the obvious, but we have been sending signals. Thousands of them, over the last few years, at a guess. The aliens have responded to none.”

“Well we haven’t been sending the right one, obviously.”

“And the right one is?” Teraven asked.

Hoshi looked at Jaedez and saw understanding in his eyes.

“Ondeanna,” he said.

She smiled. “Precisely.”

The test was simple enough to set up.

Jaedez took Hoshi to the flagship’s bridge. Introduced her to his com officer, who in turn showed her to an unused station which he then reconfigured to give her external transmission privileges.

Hoshi settled herself into the seat, and set up a few quick parameters. Signal strength, transmission frequency, and content. A burst message, once every fifteen seconds, saying the same thing, over and over and over again.

Ondeanna.

Simple enough, she thought, and turned around.

Jaedez was deep in conversation with one of his officers. She waited for a pause in the conversation, and then caught his eye.

“All set,” she said.

He walked up behind her, and nodded.

“Very well. Proceed.”

Hoshi sent the message.

“I’ve set it for maximum strength, minimum dispersion,” she said. “To make sure it can cut through any other com traffic. I’ve also set up a directional shift every few seconds, just to make sure we cover all three hundred sixty degrees. It’ll probably take a few minutes to hit the first Antianna ship, because I’ve started at zero degrees heading here- “

An alarm sounded, then stopped.

“Sir!”

The officer Jaedez had just finished speaking to was leaning over a station at the front of the bridge, frowning.

“Colonel,” Jaedez replied. “Report.”

“Picking up movement from the Antianna ships, sir. They’re closing.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, sir.”

Jaedez glanced over quickly at Hoshi, and smiled.

“It appears you may have been right, Ensign. Congratulations. Colonel, I want you to contact Elder Green aboard S-12, let her know what we’ve done, and ask her to immediately provide a database of the Barreon language to all…”

“General. Picking up something on long-distance scanners as well.”

Jaedez turned.

“Something.”

“Yes, sir. Hard to be certain, but I think…”

“Confirm that reading, General.”

The colonel was back in position, leaning over the same station.

“I have eighty-eight separate signals, heading in this drection.”

“Eighty-eight?” Jaedez’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir, quite sure.” The colonel leaned closer and frowned. “They appear to be ships. Antianna ships, in fact.”

The bridge, all at once, fell silent.

Jaedez turned to Hoshi.

“I sincerely hope, Ensign,” he said, “that the word means what you think it does, and not something else entirely.”

“As do I, sir,” she said.

Jaedez nodded and turned to face the viewscreen once more.

Eighty-eight ships, Hoshi thought. This was either the beginning of a very long negotiation process, or a very, very short war.”

Twenty-Eight

The work was a lot more involved than Sen had originally anticipated.

After the better part of a day, they still weren’t finished. Not even close, by Archer’s reckoning, as he’d only rewired/reconfigured about half the bridge stations. He’d been slowing the last hour or so, though-running on fumes. Sen was tired too. Out of the corner of his eye, Archer had caught the governor yawning more than once. He’d hoped, perhaps, that Sen would nod off, and he’d be able to overpower him. No such luck.

Instead, a few minutes ago, Sen had called a halt to the work, and escorted Archer back where he’d come from. Back to the brig.

“We’ll resume in a few hours,” the governor told him. “In the meantime… make yourself comfortable.”

The captain looked around the cell where he’d spent the last couple of weeks. He barely recognized it; for one thing, he’d been pretty well out of it most of that time-drugged, between, sleep-deprived…

For another, the lights had been permanently dimmed, back then. Now, though, they blared full intensity.

Archer thought that, on the whole, he preferred the darkness.

The cell’s floor, walls, and ceiling were all bare steel, rusted and stained a brownish red. There were no seats or benches of any kind. And the smell…

“You know, there are a lot of empty cabins aboard this ship right now,” Archer said.

“I’m well aware of that,” Sen said. “After I leave you, in fact, I’ll be on my way to the officer’s deck, to find a place to rest myself. I suspect I’ll end up in Commander Kareg’s suite-the monitor images make it look like quite a nice place, actually.”

“I’m sure it is. I’d settle for a simple enlisted man’s bunk,” Archer said.

“I’m sure you would.” Sen smiled. “Good night, Captain. Sleep well.”

He slammed the steel door shut behind him, and left the brig.

Archer glared after him.

Sleep well. He didn’t think so. Not just because the last thing he wanted to do was put his head down on this floor. The truth was that these next few hours might be the only chance he had to think for a while. To figure a way out of not just here, but his larger predicament.

One thing he’d realized in the last few hours, since his discovery that Sen was chipped, it wasn’t the Klingon system the governor was hooked up to-it couldn’t be. Because if it had been, Sen wouldn’t have had any problems overriding c’Hos’s security protocols. What was probably going on, the captain decided, was that Sen was talking to a rogue program within it. Probably one he’d introduced himself. A smart program, one that could learn from and actively combat the systems that hosted it. Starfleet had something similar in the works; “intelligent software agent” was the term, if memory served. This program, though, sounded like it was light-years ahead of Starfleet’s design.

Gingerly, he took a seat on the floor, and settled in as best he could.

He put his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and catnapped. He thought about alternative plans of action. He wondered, briefly, what was happening with the Antianna-if, in Sen’s absence, the war fleet had indeed launched, or if Hoshi, and the Mediators, and the Andorian linguist had managed to decipher the Antianna signal, and establish communication. He thought about Sen’s software agent.

He wondered just how smart it was.

He wondered if Sen was the only one who could talk to it.

He got to his feet.

“Excuse me?”

No response.

“I know Governor Sen is probably sleeping, but this is something that maybe the ship’s computer can answer. Computer. Are you there?”

Nothing.

“Just a question about how much longer I have to sleep. Computer?”

Still nothing.

Archer sighed, and sat back down. It had been a long shot, anyway. Even if the program was able to recognize voice input, Sen probably had it configured to respond to him only-probably keyed to certain specific phrases, or words.

Forget the computer, the captain decided, though of course he’d have to take it into account no matter what other plans he came up with.

He yawned involuntarily then, and realized that he needed to sleep as well. But there wasn’t time. A few hours, Sen had said, and then they would be back at it.

Approach the problem differently, he thought. Clearly, he couldn’t overpower Sen and the computer on his own. He’d need help to do that. Someone outside the ship. Enterprise, ideally, but if not… then someone else. Someone nearby.

The problem with that approach was that he had no idea where, precisely, they were at the moment. He could take an educated guess; they certainly wouldn’t be headed toward Klingon territory, or back toward the Confederacy, they’d have to be going deeper into the galactic interior, or out toward the rim. Probably the latter, he decided. Who was out in that direction?

He couldn’t think of anyone at the moment. Still. Assume they were out there, the trick was getting them to come. Getting a signal off, which was clearly possible, because he’d heard Sen talking earlier today…

He frowned.

Wait a minute.

He thought back to what had happened, back when he’d been transporting the Klingon corpses down to the shuttlebay, and he’d paused in the corridor.

Sen had been talking to someone. A contact back on Procyron, or elsewhere in the sector, he’d thought then. But what if…

Hmm, he thought. What was that name he’d used again?

“Roia,” he said out loud, remembering.

Static hissed.

“Working,” a voice said.

Archer smiled.

“Roia,” he said again. “This is Captain Archer.”

“Identification confirmed. You are Captain Jonathan Archer, commander Earth ship Enterprise.”

The captain nodded. “Right I wonder if…”

He frowned, and thought furiously.

“… if I could get a drink of water.”

“Water. First Governor Sen must be awakened for permission to obtain- “

“No, no, no,” Archer said quickly. “We don’t need to wake the governor. What I was really wondering… I’m having a hard time sleeping, Roia. I wonder if I could talk to you for a little while.”

“You are talking.”

“Yes, I know. What I should have said was… I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Questions.” Archer could almost hear the frown in the computer’s voice. Amazing piece of programming. “Certain subject matter would be prohibited What did you wish to talk about?”

“Well…” The captain shrugged. “You, for one thing.”

“You refer to the Roia program?”

“Yes. I’m curious. What, exactly are you?”

There was no response for a moment.

“Is this a prohibited subject?” the captain asked.

“Negative.”

“Then…”

Another pause. Then:

“This program is a modified version of the Roia-12 matrix. An independent, adaptive, software agent.”

“Ah. And-where does the name Roia come from? Is it an acronym of some kind?”

Again, the program hesitated.

And then it-she- told him.

An independent, adaptive, intelligent software agent, Archer thought. Which Sen twisted into an avatar of his own warped desires.

Let’s see, the captain thought, if I can do a little twisting of my own.

Twenty-Nine

The Antianna ships kept coming.

Hundreds of them, so many that Hoshi pictured a factory on the Antianna homeworld, wherever that was, just churning them out, one after another, giant machines spewing forth more machines, that then rocketed off into space.

All she (and Jaedez, and everyone else on the flagship’s bridge) could do was watch as they assembled, just on the other side of Confederacy territory. If they decided to attack, then the Armada would be destroyed. It was as simple as that.

But they did nothing.

Jaedez had ordered the signal-the word, “Antianna”- stopped at least an hour ago. Now he frowned, and turned to Hoshi, and asked if she thought it should be broadcast again.

She didn’t know what to say.

If the word really meant what she thought it did- “join”- then sending it again could do no harm. On the other hand, if-as Jaedez had suggested earlier-it had another meaning entirely…

“Something’s happening.”

That from one of the bridge personnel, who now looked up from his station and frowned.

“Ships on the move, sir,” he said to Jaedez.

The general cursed and strode forward. “Prepare defense stations. Maneuver primary battle cruisers into delta formation. Attack squadrons, at the ready.”

Hoshi, still seated at the aux station, saw the ships moving too. Correction.

“Single ship, General.”

Jaedez spun around, glared at her, and then turned back to the officer who had spoken.

“Colonel?”

“Confirm, sir. My mistake. A single Antianna ship, detaching itself from the main fleet.”

Everyone’s attention went to the viewscreen, where indeed a single ship was moving away from the mass of others surrounding it. Though it was understandable why Jaedez’s officer had made an error in identification.

The vessel was huge. Twice as big as any other Antianna ship they’d encountered.

As Hoshi watched, it crept forward toward the Armada, and then, when it reached a point equidistant between the two fleets, stopped.

And broadcast the word back at them: Antianna.

“Do we respond sir?” the com officer asked.

Jaedez frowned.

“I don’t think we need to repeat ourselves,” Hoshi said before the general could answer. “I think we need to take the next step.”

“The next step?” the general asked.

“Yes.”

Hoshi rose from her seat, and gestured toward the viewscreen.

“Go out there,” she said, “and meet them.”

When she said “we,” of course, Hoshi meant herself, but she had no illusions about her relative importance in the larger scheme of things. She expected a long argument from Jaedez after proposing that the ideal envoys would be herself and Elder Green.

She was surprised when she didn’t get one.

Instead, Jaedez sent her with one of his officers to a flight simulator, so she could familiarize herself with the control layout of the ship they’d be taking. She made the point that it would take more than a few minutes for her to get comfortable, but the general didn’t seem troubled. So off she went. Green, she was told, was being shuttled over from S-12, and would join her in a moment.

It took longer than that. Longer than Hoshi expected, and when Green did finally show, she looked a little worse for the wear. Problems, apparently, on her trip over.

“You sure you’re all right?” Hoshi said.

“Yes. Just a fainting spell, apparently. I’m fine now.”

“The doctors looked at you?”

“Yes, the doctors looked at me,” Green said, and then managed a smile. “I thank you for your concern, Ensign, but if you’re trying to dissuade me from coming on this mission-you’ll have to do a lot better than that. The descendants of the Barreon…” Green shook her head. “This is-cliche as it may sound-a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I have to talk to them.”

Hoshi had to smile back. She understood entirely.

The two of them made their way down to the shuttlebay, at which point a lot of things became clear to her.

The ship they were taking was a military vessel. Much larger than any courier ship she’d ever seen, shaped more like a saucer than anything else, albeit a saucer with multiple weapons turrets, sharp angles, and a relatively large warp coil.

Standing by the gangplank leading up and into that ship, talking to a single armored warrior, was General Jaedez.

“Oh no,” Hoshi said angrily, and stalked over to him. “This is a military vessel,” she said.

Jaedez nodded. “That’s correct.”

“This is supposed to be a peace mission. We’re,” she gestured toward herself and Green, “supposed to be peace envoys. You send a ship that looks like this, and the Antianna will know…”

“Will know what? That we do not readily give our trust to an enemy who has killed several hundred of us? That is exactly what I want them to know,” Jaedez said.

“I’m not firing any weapons,” Hoshi said.

“You won’t have to.” Jaedez turned to the man he’d been talking to. “You may take your station, Colonel. I will be in contact.”

“Sir.” The Conani saluted smartly, and then, to Hoshi’s surprise, walked up the gangplank and disappeared inside the ship.

“No,” Hoshi said. “You can’t put a soldier on the ship, too. That sends the entirely…”

“There are ten soldiers on the ship, Ensign. There is a specially shielded compartment belowdecks. If all goes well, neither you-nor the Antianna-will ever be aware of their presence.”

“And if all doesn’t go well? If the Antianna find out they’re down there? That could ruin the mission before it starts. You have to take them off the ship.”

“The soldiers stay.”

“General, think about it. What good are ten soldiers going to do…”

“Ensign,” Jaedez cut her off, “you wish someone else to take your place? Younger Emmen, perhaps?”

“No. What I want is…”

“What you want is irrelevant. I decide the mission needs and the personnel that can best fulfill them. I have no second thoughts about the soldiers; if there is trouble, if things do not go as planned, their task is simply to see that Elder Green-and yourself-return safely. That should be easy enough to understand, yes?”

“Yes, but…”

“I hear your concerns, Ensign,” Jaedez said. “To a certain extent, I share them. But I have other concerns as well, that override them. Now. You have your orders. Carry them out.”

Hoshi bit back the words on her tongue, and nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

He looked past her then, to Elder Green.

“Kanthropian. You will keep this one in check, yes?”

Jaedez said it with a slight smile. Green managed one in return.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good. Good luck then.”

The general saluted then, and left them on the gangplank.

Hoshi watched him go a moment, and then took Elder Green’s arm and helped her into the ship.

The cockpit was built for four, two seats in front, two in the back of the small compartment. She and Elder Green settled themselves into the forward pair. Hoshi found herself looking at a dizzying array of control screens, some whose functions were obvious-com, sensor, helm-some less so. As she reached for the helm controls-Haven’t done this in a long time, she thought-a voice sounded right at her ear.

“Ensign Sato.”

She caught Green’s eye and shrugged.

“Right here.”

“This is Colonel Diken. We will control helm.”

Hoshi raised an eyebrow.

She’d seen no trace of the colonel and his soldiers when she’d entered the ship-she’d pictured them crouched down in some dark, hidden compartment, weapons at the ready-but now she adjusted that image in her mind, visualizing something more akin to Enterprise’s command center. A chamber that big, she thought, the whole ship might have been designed around it. So maybe the shielding was as effective as Jaedez contended, and the Antianna wouldn’t find them either, even if they had cause to search the ship.

Maybe.

“All yours,” she told the colonel, and removed her hands from the helm control.

“Guess we’re just passengers, for the moment,” she said, turning to Elder Green.

“Indeed.” The Kanthropian smiled weakly, and nodded. Green still didn’t look well to her. Hoshi wanted again to ask how she was doing-actually, what she really wanted to do was suggest that Younger Emmen take her place-but she already had a good idea of how that suggestion would go over. Besides, she suspected Green, no matter the seriousness of her illness, would rise to the occasion. A good thing too-she had no illusions about her competency as a translator relative to Green’s. And speaking of translators…

Hoshi checked her UT, to make sure that the Barreon language-what they had of the lexicon-had been correctly downloaded into their handhelds. Looked that way to her.

She felt a tingle of excitement then herself. The Barreon. The Allied Worlds…

Theera, she thought then, and a tiny bit of apprehension crept into her mind as well.

“You are cleared for launch,” came the voice in Hoshi’s ear, and at that instant the bay doors opened.

Thrusters fired, triggered by the soldiers hidden belowdecks, and the little ship surged forward, out into space.

They took it slowly, even after they’d cleared the last of the Armada ships, and entered what she could only think of as “Antianna space.” The autopilot had them on the rough equivalent of one-third impulse, which put their destination at least ten minutes away.

Hoshi switched her attention to the companel. The fifty-seven pulses were still coming in, loud and strong. She still had no idea how they related to the message they’d sent, that the Antianna had responded to: Join. Join what?

The console in front of her beeped.

Hoshi looked down and saw the terminal in front of her had filled with a line of text.

Testing. Okay up there?

Up there. The signal, she realized, was from the colonel, below decks. Testing.

They were running silent. No internal transmissions for the Antianna to pick up.

She keyed in a response:

A-okay. No problems.

Good. Stand by. Contact in five minutes.

We will monitor.

Hoshi signed off too, then, and turned her attention to the viewport, where the Antianna ship was just visible in the distance. The clean lines, the lack of visible weapons structures or sensory apparatus-the image rang a bell with her, and a second later she realized why. It was exactly the same view she’d had from her station on Enterprise, over a week earlier, when they’d been trying to press forward into uncharted space, and the Antianna ship had stood in their way.

Same view, that is, except that judging from the incoming telemetry, this ship was more than three times the size of that vessel they’d first encountered.

“Readings indicate the ship is unoccupied,” Green said, a note of puzzlement in her voice, and Hoshi looked to another screen, and saw the Elder was right, their sensor scans were picking up nothing remotely resembling biosigns, just a huge, diffuse energy field.

“We had this problem on Enterprise too-on my ship. There’s some kind of force-screen that prevents us from getting a clear signal right away. Just wait a minute, and…”

As if on cue, the telemetry changed.

“Picking up something now,” Green said.

“I see it.” A surge of energy aboard the Antianna ship. It looked to her like…

“The power grid is reconfiguring itself,” she said out loud, shaking her head.

Which was no more possible now than it had been that week and a half ago, when Trip had noted the same thing.

Hoshi frowned.

The console directly in front of her came to life.

Incongruous sensor scans. You?

She keyed in a response.

Same. Noted in previous encounters.

No cause for alarm.

Just as she sent the message, Green inhaled sharply. At first, Hoshi thought she was in pain.

“You all right?” she asked, turning quickly.

Green was staring out the viewport. “I am fine. However… something very unusual has just occurred.”

She gestured toward the space outside.

Hoshi followed her gaze, and saw that the Antianna ship-for lack of a better word-had changed.

There was now a clearly visible sensor array-at least, that was what it looked like to her-projecting from the underside of the vessel.

“That wasn’t there before,” she said.

“No. It appeared immediately following the reconfiguration of the power grid.”

“There must be a bay of some sort on the bottom of the ship. They stow it there, and then lower it as needed.”

“That makes sense,” Green said. “Although… such deployments, in my experience, usually take a fairly good length of time to complete. On the order of several seconds.”

In her experience too, Hoshi thought. And this had occurred instantaneously. But…

What other explanation was there.

“I think,” Hoshi said, and that was as far as she got, because at that instant three of the screens in front of her began blinking and beeping all at once.

“Massive power surge aboard the Antianna ship,” Green said.

Hoshi saw it too. So did the colonel.

Raising shields.

She cursed under her breath and keyed in:

Don’t. They may take that as an act