The Nimbus Quandry - Lexalicious70 (2024)

Chapter 1 Chapter Text

The Nimbus Wars are over. But at what cost? Starfleet believes itself the victor, but we have all paid so dearly, and each of us in our own way.

T’Pol, alone in her home’s sleeping quarters, allowed herself a frown of frustration. She’d been attempting to meditate for nearly an hour now, but the words from Trip Tucker’s subspace message refused to leave her mind.

“Each of us in our own way,” the young Vulcan murmured as she snuffed out the attunement flame upon her meditation alter. An incense stick continued to burn nearby, sending notes of jasmine and vanilla into the air. Outside, Vulcan’s long night began its watch. The soil and rocks cooled and groaned at the setting of the sun. T’Khut loomed, as always, locked in a twin orbit with T’Pol’s homeworld. She crossed the room, knelt at a slim, square nightstand, and unlocked a drawer with a three-digit code. It slid open, and T’Pol pushed file tapes aside and withdrew a holographic photo keeper. There was no need to ask the device to search for an image—it contained only one. She powered the device on and a looped image began to play, that of Jonathan Archer, resplendent in his Starfleet uniform, every inch the captain he’d been back then, commanding the Enterprise. The image turned and then began to offer different angles of the holographic photo.

“It is wasteful and illogical to allow the past—including past events you cannot change—to have a negative impact on the present,” T’Pol said aloud.

The photo continued to smile at her.

“Were I human, I would say your death was unfair. The act of an indifferent and uncaring universe. As a Vulcan, I do not believe the universe thinks or acts depending on its whims and to move on without any information regarding your fate is—unkind.”

The photo continued to spin. T’Pol set the projector's base on a table in a main room of her home. Her half-grown Sehlat, T’Lok, raised her head at T’Pol’s footsteps, yawned, and stretched out on her side. T’Pol had taken her in when she was an abandoned cub and she’d since been a welcome and worthy companion. She kept away predators and hunted for herself when evening came.

T’Pol watched the holographic image zoom in on Archer’s face, which offered a 3D image so realistic she felt she could reach out and touch it.

She’d been dreading this day and now it was upon her—the day Starfleet had officially declared Captain Jonathan Archer dead. His mother, Sally, took the news with little emotion, at least according to Trip’s message. He’d watched the proceedings over the subspace Starfleet news and information channel.

“She accepted the council’s vote on the declaration and took possession of what the cap left behind,” T’Pol recalled Trip’s words now. They gave her a folded Starfleet flag, noted the meeting minutes, and then . . . That was the end of it.”

The end of it. T’Pol closed her eyes and her mind took her back to the past, to the day she’d last laid eyes on Captain Jonathan Archer.

Chapter 2 Chapter Text

Nimbus 3

Two years earlier

The A'Gulk pressed in, their spindly, ant-like forms swarming the side of a plasma-scorched hillside. The aliens had six legs but walked upright and the second pair of legs, just above the thorax, ended in vermillion-colored appendages that delivered an acidic, deadly venom.

While the aliens carried black-market Klingon blasters, the venom was their preferred weapon of choice. As the Enterprise landing party scrambled for cover behind a mound of boulders, one of the men on Reed’s security team lost his footing and tumbled down into the pursuing pack of A'Gulk. Archer and the others watched as the aliens stung the man and he seemed to melt away like an ice cube sprayed with hot water. Mosquitoesque proboscis emerged from a single wet slit where a nose belonged on a human. Their large, unblinking eyes with horizontal, diamond-shaped yellow irises, filled the human witnesses with a kind of cold dread.

“Oh—” Trip closed his eyes and struggled to keep his stomach from pushing the “eject” button. Captain Archer gripped his phaser—it had enough energy left for a single shot, one he had to make count.

The A'Gulk continued their pursuit, leaving behind a pink smear where the security officer fell, another hapless victim of the Nimbus Wars.

The conflict was now in its third year. The six planets in the Nimbus galaxy that supported sentient life were some of the first populated under the newly-formed FederFederation guidelines and protection. Nimbus 3 only had three settlements so far, mostly humans with a few Vulcans there to teach and guide the settlers. Now, the Federation wanted them all evacuated. The landing party hadn’t anticipated the level of A'Gulk occupation, though, and now found themselves pinned down by a pack of eight.

“We need to get back to the shuttle, sir!” Reed shouted above the din of phaser fire.

“There’s still one settlement we haven’t checked!” We have to ensure we don’t leave anyone behind!”“But sir, if we can make it around this hill, the shuttle is less than a quarter of a mile away! There’s also ground cover—scrubby trees and bushes mostly—but we can make it in less than 10 minutes!” Tucker glanced at his tricorder.

“And the settlement?” Archer asked.

“400 meters southeast of the Davinci, sir!”

“Then that’s my destination. Reed, get everyone back to the shuttlecraft safely. Trip, you and Reed’s team cover the flank with T’Pol while I check for survivors at the settlement.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, Commander!” Archer snapped, and for a moment, the friends locked eyes. “Go on!”

“Yessir!” Tucker shouted in a tone edged with anxiety and anger, turning away to join the others. Archer lagged behind and turned toward the direction of the settlement, inching along a ridge, rough rock scraping his palms as he pressed himself against it to try and hide himself. The A'Gulk continued their pursuit of the landing party and Archer released a breath held from anxiety as the path to the settlement became clear after he’d crept around the next bend. He turned, mindful of the slippery shale beneath his feet and the terrible fate of the crewman who’d fallen earlier.

The majority of the remaining A'Gulk were out of sight now, and Archer moved on to the trail. He found the footing better here and loped down to the settlement.

A wooden gate, the lowest rail charred and crumbling, bumped against the remains of the opposite post. There was no lock—phaser burns left an irregular hole where it used to be. Archer pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped into the main road of the settlement. The dome-shaped dwellings sat quietly, many of them partially or completely burned by the A'Gulk. Archer examined each, and then the low rumble of the shuttlecraft Davinci’s engines caught his attention. He left the shelter of the farthest dwelling as the shuttle landed. He glanced Trip’s face in the pilot’s seat, then watched it twist from a smile to a grimace of fear and alarm. His mouth formed a single word.

Captain!

Archer’s spine stiffened as a bolt of pain hit him with such force that, for a moment, he thought he’d been hit by lightning. He thudded to the ground, stunned with a Klingon phaser, and spindly, thin appendages seized him. As he watched, twitching and unable to control his muscles, more A'Gulk swarmed from an underground supply bunker where they’d been hiding. They rushed the shuttle, and agony filled Trip’s expression as he goosed the shuttlecraft into the air before the aliens could overtake it. Escape was protocol during a surprise attack and Trip knew he had his orders, but he’d take the blame too, Archer was sure.

The shuttlecraft arced over his head as the A'Gulk dragged their stunned captive away, (to join their food cache, Archer assumed,) and their chitinous language echoed off the walls of the plundered dwellings.

Chapter 3 Chapter Text

The chime of an incoming message from the communications console pulled T’Pol from her unpleasant memories. She shut off the holo-photo of Archer and moved back to the console. Perhaps Trip had forgotten something.

The communique, however, was from Federation HQ. T’Pol arched a brow. She’d left Starfleet after Archer disappeared and refused to take another position when the search efforts dwindled. She’d requested a small ship with a meager crew to continue the search, but by then, Starfleet’s interests lay elsewhere. T’Pol returned to Vulcan, where she taught computer science to young Vulcans at the Science Academy. So what could Starfleet want with her now?

She ran the file through the decoder and allowed herself a moment of surprise when Federation President Admiral Gabriel Wessex seemed to pierce the screen with eyes the color of deep seawater. T’Pol nearly snapped to attention at the sight of them.

“T’Pol of Vulcan, greetings,” the 50-something human male began. “We urgently request that you travel to Federation Headquarters immediately upon receiving this message. If necessary, we will arrange transportation from Vulcan for you.” Wessex paused. “We require your expertise and experience in a matter related to the disappearance of Captain Jonathan Archer.”

T’Pol’s eyes widened in shock and she reached out a hand to reply less than a few seconds after the message ended.

Yes, she would help.

Yes, she required transportation.

And yes, though unspoken, the tiny light of hope that her heart held for Jonathan Archer’s safe return began to glow anew.

The United Federation of Planets Headquarters

Earth

San Francisco, California

T’Pol watched San Francisco Bay loom closer as the shuttlecraft she rode in banked over the water to target its landing pad. The auto-host, which acted as a security system and a flight attendant, announced their arrival, their pod number, and the location of the nearest transporter kiosks inside the arrival terminal. As the pod pressurized and the shuttle door opened, people hurried past her, civilians and those in Starfleet uniforms alike. As the moving sidewalk hurried her along, T’Pol noticed the partisan theme of the building’s interior—rows of Starfleet and Federation flags, sculptures in every medium, and memorials dedicated to men and women who’d given their lives creating or protecting Starfleet’s highest ideals. There was Dr. Paul Hewitt, the man who’d invented the first subspace communications panel, Dr. Emory Erickson, inventor of the transporter, and of course Zephram Cochrane, the inventor of mankind’s first warp engine.

Trip said they want to memorialize Jonathan Archer as well. But why build a memorial to uncertainty? Was it simply easier to declare him dead and then build their statues?

When T’Pol reached the main hub, an officious-looking man stood waiting with a holo-sign emblazoned with her name.

“I am T’Pol,” she told the man, presenting her credentials, and he nodded.

“Greetings. I’m Commander Peletin. I’m here to escort you to the president’s office.”

“Very well,” T’Pol nodded. “Please proceed.”

“I trust you had a pleasant journey?”

“It was uneventful.”

“Ah. We’d like you to know that Starfleet appreciates your discretion and assistance in this matter.”

“Excuse me, Commander Peletin, but I have little information regarding what this matter is.”

“Yes, and we do apologize.”

The pluralistic way the man spoke reminded T’Pol of a human idiom she’d learned from Trip about keeping small rodents on one’s person.

“But understand,” Peletin continued, “this is a highly sensitive issue and we couldn’t risk anyone intercepting subspace messages.” They turned a corner, rode an ascending turbolift, then walked down a long, polished hallway. A set of cathedral doors loomed, and Peletin pushed them open.

In an office dominated with more Starfleet and Federation flags, as well as a glassed-in display case filled with the models of some of the first spacefaring ships, Gabriel Wessex stood at a nearby window, watching cadets perform shuttlecraft maneuvers as part of their pilot training.

“Sir?” Peletin prompted, and the Federation’s first president turned. He was a human of average build with the same piercing, wide-set eyes T’Pol remembered from the message he’d sent. His wheat-colored hair was neatly trimmed, triangular shapes at the ears and the back of his neck. Despite his youthful looks, the short beard he wore glimmered with silver hairs as he turned from the window.

“T’Pol,” He said, moving toward them.

“Mr. President,” T’Pol replied. “I am honored.”

“Please, the honor is mine!” Wessex replied. “On behalf of the Federation, thank you for coming.”

“Of course. And now that I am here, perhaps you would provide me with some details about this sensitive issue you mentioned?”

“Yes! Please, this way,” The admiral nodded, leading her out of the office and back to the turbolift. “As you may know, most Starfleet officers and crew who went missing during the Nimbus Wars have either had their remains recovered or listed as deceased.”

“Yes,” T’Pol nodded.

“And while any official recovery efforts by Starfleet ceased some time ago, there are other individuals who work strictly for themselves.” The turbolift car stopped and the doors whooshed open. “One such individual, a seeker of lost things and people for profit, came to us last week after exploring some fringe planets near Kronos,” Wessex explained as they walked down a hallway and he unlocked a set of coded doors. At the other end of the hall, a man dressed in Federation medical scrubs watched something through a window that nearly filled the length of the wall. T’Pol felt something glow briefly in her chest like a conductive wire touched to a power source.

When they reached the window, T’Pol realized it wasn’t a window but a one-way mirror that looked in on a room bare of furniture, save a sleeping bunk. Wessex approached the mirror and T’Pol stepped up next to him.

A figure lay bundled on the bunk, medical-grade restraints fastened across the chest and binding the wrists. Chapped, peeling lips turned downward as the figure’s head turned. It took all of T’Pol’s training and self-control to keep her emotions in check. The thin, dirty figure on the bunk, his tawny hair a wild nest of mats that hung well past his shoulders, was Jonathan Archer, former captain of the Starship Enterprise.

Chapter 4 Chapter Text

T’Pol returned to the room Commander Peletin had assigned her, a comfortable space not unlike her quarters on Enterprise. She sat at the communications console, her nimble mind working over what she’d seen.

They’d denied her request to try and speak to Archer, citing his agitated state of mind. The Federation doctor in charge of Archer’s case, a rather gruff yet empathetic human male named Dr. Randolph, told T’Pol that Archer seemed to live in a state of constant fear and allowed no one close.

“We had to sedate him . . . He seems to have few memories of his past, but I should know more once I can give him a more complete exam.”

So this was Archer’s fate, then—recovered by a bounty hunter and confined to a padded room, tied down like a horse gone wild, then recaptured.

Surely they will contact his mother. She may even have to care for him or place him in a facility.

That thought vexed her; shutting Archer away rather than discovering what happened after the A'Gulk took him seemed cruel. It was an unfair end for any Starfleet service member, let alone Jonathan Archer.

T’Pol ran scenarios in her head, along with odds for each outcome, before she opened the communication console and began to draft a video message.

Enterprise NX-01

Trip Tucker thought about Jon Archer every day.

Sure, adopting Porthos and seeing the pup through the confusion and fear of his master’s vanishing brought Jon to mind every time the beagle fell asleep in his lap, but it was the changes to the NX-01 that triggered Trip’s memories of its former captain.

Not that Trip held any grudge against his current commander. Captain Dudley was an experienced commander who led by the book. Starfleet rules and regulations were his true north, and while Trip respected him, his stodgy demeanor was such a contrast to Archer that it colored most of Trip’s engineering duties.

Now, as he returned to his quarters after a day shift, Trip remembered how he and Archer had bonded over water polo, spending many evenings together watching game tapes Trip received over subspace. Captain Dudley held himself apart from most of his crew, save for a few high-ranking bridge officers.

“Not that every captain I serve under has it be my pal,” he said to Porthos now as he refilled the beagle’s water dispenser bottles. “But I don’t appreciate being seen as some accessory to the warp engines, either.”

The communications console chimed with an incoming message notification sounded. Trip tapped it and a video began to play. T’Pol sat in the foreground of an unfamiliar room.

“Hello, Trip,” T’Pol began. “I understand our communications are usually not as frequent as they have recently become. However, I have urgent information to share, information Starfleet seeks to hide.” The young Vulcan paused.

“Jonathan Archer is alive.”

Trip felt a cold, numb sensation travel from the center of his spine outward until he gripped the armrests of his chair with cold, clammy hands.

“I was called to Federation Headquarters, where Admiral Essex revealed a bounty hunter found Archer living in a primitive way on a planet far on the fringes of Klingon space. I have, since recording this message, decided to obtain the name and location of the retrieval area from this individual. The key to discovering the captain’s missing past may lie there. I intend to go, Trip. I understand your duty lies with Starfleet; I simply want to declare my intent.” She looked away from the screen for a moment, then back. “Perhaps the logical course of action would be for me to return to Vulcan and my teaching duties. However, it is illogical to leave a man as honorable as Jonathan Archer in a state that keeps him forever locked away. I cannot let him live as Starfleet’s secret, his trauma untreated.” Her gaze held Trip’s. “Should I, too, vanish during my efforts, know that seeing you again would have been . . . Agreeable.” She lifted one hand in the Vulcan salute. “Peace and long life, Trip Tucker.”

The video ended there and Trip rubbed a hand over his mouth.

The captain was alive.

Starfleet was keeping it a secret.

T’Pol wouldn’t let that secret go.

Trip understood where this left him and wished mightily, if only for a moment, that he had the logic of a Vulcan—it would certainly show him a more definite path ahead.

The console screen shifted into rest mode, throwing pale shadows across Trip’s cheeks.

Chapter 5 Chapter Text

Alandra Xiao sipped their sweet drink, letting the fizziness dissolve on their tongue. Like most Orions, they had little use for humans, other than the fact they’d invented soda. Orions had nothing like it, as their species was mainly carnivorous and ate lean meat and drank mostly mead or water during the Burning Times.

Xiao hadn’t seen a Burning Times season, or any other Orion season, since their 16th year. That was the summer the offworlders invaded in their fast ships full of cargo space and captured all the women, even those too young for mates, for the intergalactic space trade. Xiao would never forget her father’s challenging roars as he covered the retreat for his wife and two daughters. Xiao's mother, and their little sister Delphina had fled for the Ashen Wood, where volcanic ash fell nearly every day thanks to the active volcano nearby, and it made tracking there difficult. Delphina fell behind and screamed for her mother; the rutting offworlders took her to the ground as she turned to defend her child and used her until she was dead.

When Xiao emerged from the shelter in the woods a day later, they were alone. Their parents’ bodies and those of the others in her clan lay heaped in a pyre of corpses, burned by the outworlders. They remained on her homeworld for only two more days before taking a cooking and slop job on a merchant ship. For the next eight years, they moved along the merchant lines on different ships, searching for any sign or word of their sister. Eventually, Xiao turned to bounty hunting and shipping unstable goods that other merchants refused to. After several years, they had the funds to buy a ship of their own, the Onyx, giving them more freedom to search for their sister.

They downplayed their appearance considerably, keeping their dark curls under a layer of netting, which they then covered with a helmet the same emerald green shade as their skin.

Xiao wasn’t sure why they'd agreed to meet with the Vulcan woman who’d contacted them/ They had less use for the emotionally repressed species than they did for humans, who at least offered soda instead of bitter tea that tasted like grass.

The open-air food market teemed with so many different kinds of beings that Xiao's green skin barely earned a second glance. Her Altairian falcon, Aza, perched on a fence nearby. As a human male rushed by and bumped the fence, Aza’s ebony plumage ruffled and feathers on the crown of his head, colored a startling crimson in contrast to the rest of his body, flared upward in alarm.

“Not friendly!” Xiao told the human in a sing-song and waved a gloved hand in his direction. He frowned when he saw the index finger of their right hand was missing. They scowled and readjusted the gloves made from the hide of a gualld, a type of migrating ungulate on Orion. They traveled the harsh plains that sprawled between the planet’s two largest volcanic ridges, and their hides withstood high temperatures that made for durable wearables.

“What’s your problem?” Xiao half-called after the man. Aza turned his copper-colored eyes on her and she muted their temper. “Never met anyone missing a finger before?” They tossed Aza a strip of meat from the meal they'd nearly finished.

“You pilot the space cruiser Onyx?” A voice asked at her shoulder asked, and Alandra looked up. A rather slight Vulcan woman regarded her with benign curiosity.

“That’s my ship,” Xiao nodded.

“I am T’Pol. I appreciate you agreeing to meet with me.”

“I might not answer all your questions, especially those that might interfere with any future money-making ventures.”

“That is understandable. However, I may be able to offer you such an opportunity.”

“Don’t assume I’m available, Vulcan,” Xiao replied, and T’Pol sat across from them.

“Noted.” She glanced at Aza. “Is the bird your pet? Altairian falcons are notoriously difficult to tame.”

“Aza is my companion. I don’t cage or confine him, and he enjoys freedom aboard my ship, too. We respect each other.” They tossed the falcon another meat scrap. “Ask your questions.”

“Very well. Are you aware that your most recent bounty is one of some importance?”

“Your Starfleet doesn’t perform retina scans and DNA tests for just any old bounty,” Xiao scoffed. “I paid a lab technician for the information—yes, I know, it’s that missing Starfleet captain, Jonathan Archer.”

“Starfleet is not mine, as I resigned my commission several years ago. My interest in the retrieval of Captain Archer is . . .personal.”

“I didn’t think Vulcans had personal stuff.”

“I would think any sentient species, especially among those with a considerable sense of self-awareness, would. But I am here to ask about Captain Archer. You discovered him on Sigma Two, a planet whose inhabitants are in their earliest days of civilization. How did you capture him?”

“With meat and a snare,” Xiao drank the rest of her soda. “I think the guy went native, to borrow a human phrase.”

“Was he able to communicate?”

“He made sounds. But it wasn’t exactly talking.”

“So you learned nothing regarding how he reached a primitive world, light years from his last known location and thought long dead by most of his people?”

“Look, Too Small—“

“T’Pol,” the Vulcan corrected her.

“A Tellerite might look different under the moonlight, but it stinks just the same.” The Orion waved their hand. “My job is hunting, capturing, and delivering bounty.”

“Indeed,” T’Pol replied, her mind seeking another tact. “Then tell me—did you ignore a request by Admiral Wessex to keep this matter to yourself by answering my message?”

“Of course I did! Secrets and sensitive information keep me in business—not friendly!” The Orion bared their teeth at a passing male when his gaze lingered on their exposed skin a moment too long. Aza clacked his beak at the retreating man and for a moment, T’Pol wondered if “not friendly” applied to the bird, Alandra Xiao, or both.

It surely must be both.

“As I was saying, people need information and most are willing to pay for it.”

“And if I require transport for myself and one other passenger back to Vulcan, with few to no questions asked and for considerable pay, is your ship available?”

Xiao stared at the Vulcan before they gave an amused smirk.

“By the boiling breath of Oibus!” They said, invoking the name of a popular Orion deity. “You really surprise me!”

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t come here to ask how I captured Jonathan Archer—you came to hire me to take him right out from under Starfleet’s snooty nose!”

T’Pol lifted her chin.

“I remind you, one of my stipulations is that you ask no questions. However, I have one more to pose to you— what do you charge for such a journey?”

This has to be a sting or something, but didn’t I read somewhere that Vulcans can’t lie? At any rate, at least I’ll finally have a lucrative excuse to leave this planet.

They pushed the empty drinking glass at the Vulcan.

“You can start by buying me another soda.”

Chapter 6 Chapter Text

It seemed to T’Pol that Sally Archer had the tired eyes and worry lines of a woman 30 years her senior. In the two months since her son’s return, she visited a stranger who cringed or bared his teeth at her when she tried to touch him.

One afternoon, Sally left Archer’s room, where a doctor and a Federation staff member waited. T’Pol watched from the other side of the window, not having meant to tarry on the way to the nearest cafeteria, but the exhaustion in Sally’s eyes made her hesitate. After a few moments, the doctor patted Sally’s hand and she left the inner room. T’Pol turned away, giving Sally time to wipe her eyes and face.

“T’Pol, hello again,” Sally said after a moment, and the young Vulcan turned to face her.

“Mrs. Archer. I did not mean to intrude.”

“Sally, please—and of course not.”

“You seem distressed by the doctor’s words. Is there a change in the captain?”

“Well—yes and no—T’Pol . . . Oh, you’re going to think I’m terrible!”

“Unlikely,” T’Pol replied. “And why have you arrived at this conclusion?”

“The doctor said they can't do anything more for Jon and they're releasing him to me, only I don’t think I can handle him! He has episodes of panic—he won’t even let me touch him! I’m not a young woman anymore, but God, the thought of putting him in a long-term care facility? He’d never do that to me, so how can I—T’Pol, what am I going to do?”

“I may have a solution for you, but I cannot speak of it here.”

“There’s a cafe on the corner headed east once you leave Federation Headquarters.”

“Very well. We will speak there.”

____________________________________________________________________

The cafe had its roof and support beams covered in fragrant, flowering vines. Large koi fish, glimmering silver, gold, and copper, swam in an eco-pond near the center of the outdoor seating area. Sally sipped chamomile tea while T’Pol chose an orange-infused local blend.

“Speak when you are ready, Sally,” T’Pol said a few moments after they sat with their cups.

“I want to be honest with you.”

“Please.”

“Six or seven months before that bounty hunter found Jon, the house and land in New York were getting to be too much for me. I was going to sell both and get an apartment in a senior facility. A few of my friends already live there, but being responsible for Jon—I’d have to take him back to the family home. Maybe it seems selfish, but watching my husband wither away and forget my name was enough for one lifetime.”

“I cannot say I understand the singular experience, but to be free to pursue goals and create a life of one’s own, unfettered? Yes . . . I understand that.” T’Pol set her cup down. “Many people believe that my homeworld is a harsh and unforgiving place. Still, it draws in beings from all over the universe. They feel safe there. The nights are cool and linger for hours. Many come to study. Others seek a path to logic. Some go there to heal.” T’Pol put a slight emphasis on the final word. “Starfleet does not seem interested in Captain Archer’s healing—they only wish to further other Federation interests. As benign as they may be, none of them help you or the captain.”

“I agree. They’re sympathetic but made it clear that Jon is my responsibility.”

“Sally, what if Captain Archer were to become my responsibility?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Federation may not have a solution or care to find one. My people have many ancient healing techniques for the mind and body that may help the captain. If you release him to my custody, I can take him with me to Vulcan. I can try to reach him, to find his true self once again.”

“The doctors—”

“Have limited knowledge. They know only what their training teaches them. They cannot cast their sight beyond it nor beyond their own beliefs. On Vulcan, Captain Archer has a chance. Here, he will know only confinement, even in the best of facilities. Will you legally release him to my custody?”

Sally looked into her teacup as if it held the answer.

“When you put it that way . . . I suppose it’s the best option,” she said in a quiet tone. “But it’s so difficult. Jon is my only child. As a Vulcan, perhaps it’s hard for you to understand these emotions.” Her tone, that of near-apology, was one T’Pol had heard many times before from humans.

“I spent a great deal of time with humans during my time with Starfleet. I likely understand better than most of my kind.”

“You’re probably right,” Sally sighed. “Will you keep in touch?”

“Of course. Know that I cannot promise any results—I do not wish to offer you false hope.”

“I understand, and thank you. I’ll contact our family attorney and have the papers drawn up right away.”

____________________________________________________________________

72 Hours Later—The cruiser Onyx

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

T’Pol glanced up to find her transport pilot watching her seat Archer behind the empty co-pilot’s seat and remove the magnetic catch on his wrist restraints. The Federation doctors had sedated him and given him a bath, haircut and a shave, and his smooth cheeks now gave him an almost boyish appearance. Archer blinked up at his former science officer and T’Pol tossed the cuffs aside.

“Federation security protocol within its own walls is sometimes . . . .hypervigilant,” she replied to Xiao. “Captain Archer is not a danger to anyone, and he is my responsibility. Please mind your helm, Mz. Xiao.”

“Orions don’t recognize Federation gender titles.” Xiao pressed a console button and a small rectangular drawer flipped open. "And adults choose their own gender." They pulled out a jeweled, slim, pen-shaped device. They pressed a button, inhaled at one end, then exhaled a lavender-colored stream of vapor. Orion tukka oil, T’Pol surmised.

“Indeed? Very well then, how shall I address you?”

“Much like the Klingons, Orions value deeds and cleverness that help them overcome enemies, which earns them their titles.”

“I am not your enemy. Nor is Captain Archer.”

Aza, perched on a steel pipe above Alandra’s right shoulder, stalked back and forth. His talons made ting-ting sounds as he marched.

“So far, you’ve lived up to your end of the bargain,” they allowed. “You can call me Pilot Xiao or simply Xiao.”

T’Pol sat down next to Archer. She wondered how Orions mated if they didn’t recognize gender but assumed it was too personal a question to ask at this juncture. Instead, she watched Earth fall away behind them.

Bound for Vulcan—and the unknown.

Chapter 7 Chapter Text

“Trip! Trip, oh God, help me!”

Trip opened his eyes to find himself hung upside down in some kind of terrible wet fibrous material. An A'Gulk, only more armored and insectoid, hauled the captain up toward some awful, writhing catacomb that resembled the innards of a paper wasp nest. The air stank of alien breath and the chemicals that coated their skin. Underneath those unimaginable odors were the sharp sting of his own terror, sweat, and urine, as Captain Archer screamed out his final moments of life and vanished, twitching and gurgling, into the squirming nest—

Then Porthos barked in Trip's left ear, jolting him from the nightmare. Trip reached out for the comforting warmth of the beagle’s fur and tugged him close. Porthos licked his cheek, then barked again.

“All right, buddy,” he said, rubbing the dog’s ears. His nose wrinkled as he caught a whiff of his own sour, panic-fueled sweat. “And I need a shower.”

After clicking on Porthos’ auto feeder, Trip stripped down to his skin and stepped into the shower, letting the hot water strike his face and hair. Some kind of weird psychological guilt washed from his psyche as the dream faded.

After all, Trip knew the captain was alive—changed, but alive.

“Isn’t that enough, then?” Trip muttered to himself. “To know he’s safe with T’Pol on Vulcan?” He scrubbed both hands through his hair. “To know at least he didn’t die on some alien world, alone and used by the A'Gulk like he, Trip, always dreamed about.

Should have known he’d survive, Trip mused. He was—is—one of the smartest men I’ve ever known. He used to joke about coming from a long line of geniuses, but I don’t think that was all B.S. The cap used to collect facts, numbers, and stats like a kid collects comics.

Trip turned off the water and tugged down a clean towel. A mental wind blew through his mind, chased by a fragment of memory lighter than a dried flower stem. Trip frowned and then it was gone again. He dismissed it as the remnants of his bad dream and went to dress for the day.

Twenty minutes later, Trip arrived for his shift in engineering. His assistant, a dark-haired kid with sleepy grey eyes and a thin build, glanced up from a nearby console.

“Morning, Chief!”

“Hey Ray,” Trip nodded. Like most engineering officers, Ray wasn’t the kid’s real name but a nickname, one he’d been given at the academy. His real name was Peter Evan Webber, but most who worked in the engineering department called him Raygun or, simply, Ray. ”What’s the good word?”

“The good word? What’s a synonym for “a dreadful routine?”

“C’mon, ensign, things aren’t that bad, are they?”

“Not that bad? Chief, the captain has us running the timing on the turbolifts! For each floor! I’ve been up and down so many times, I feel like some psychotic sewing needle!” Ray pistoned two fingers up and down on the vertical to illustrate, and Trip put a supplicating hand up.

“All right, okay!”

The captain used to say he came from—

“I’ll find you something else to do!”

“Thank you, sir!” Ray sighed, then brightened further as Trip signed off on the night shift report and handed it to the ensign.

“Go run this to aux control and file a copy.”

Long line of—

“Will do!” Ray nodded. “I’d rather travel back in time and get trapped in some never-ending lit class, reading—”

Geniuses—

“Joyce or Beckett!”

“Beckett!” Trip half-shouted. Ray paused.

“Sir?”

Trip waved Ray forward on his duty and hurried to the nearest computer console. His guts felt numb, as they’d been filled with ice.

“Computer.”

“Working.”

“Give me data on a Dr. Sam Beckett—uh, circa the year 1987, old Earth calendar.”

A photograph appeared on the viewscreen and it rocked Trip’s mind back. The handsome young man with a serious expression offset by kind green eyes and Trip’s former captain looked more like father and son rather than distant relatives. Meanwhile, the computer droned out data.

“Youngest graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Winner of the 1985 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum mechanics and theories. Leader of the Starbright Project. Dr. Beckett vanished without a trace in September of 1989–”

“Hold on!’ Trip interrupted. “Vanished how?”

The circ*mstance was unclear—Starbright project coordinator Albert Calavicci reported that Dr. Beckett disappeared one weekend while hiking in the New Mexico mountains. Multiple searches over the following years revealed no traces of Dr. Beckett. His daughter had him declared dead on what would have been Dr. Beckett’s 90th birthday.”

“DNA on file?”

"Affirmative.”

“Computer,” Trip said as his fists clenched. “Access DNA profile and compare it to what we have on file for Captain Jonathan Archer, then compare for any genetic markers that would indicate these two individuals share any identical markers.”

The computer whirred to itself.

“Affirmative. Genetic markers indicate a 99.999 percent probability. Captain Jonathan Archer is the 5-times great-grandson of Dr. Sam Beckett.”

“Computer . . . Compile all known records on Dr. Beckett, for all projects related to him, Albert Calavicchi, and Dr. Beckett’s disappearance. Send it all to the computer station in my office.” Trip entered the transfer authorization code after he spoke. Most of the time, as long as the ship ran smoothly and he got his drill results, Captain Dudley rarely called down to engineering.

Trip headed to his office, the faces of Jonathan Archer and Sam Beckett whirling around in his head.

Chapter 8 Chapter Text

The Space Cruiser Onyx

Two months later

“Jon? Jon . . .”

The voice, somehow part of a past he barely remembered yet also part of his present, called to him. He opened his eyes, tensing, conditioned to flee. The voice spoke again.

“It is I, T’Pol.”

The being that brought him food and freed him from the uniformed men. She always called to him by making that odd sound, the “Jon,” and since responding to it caused no pain or fear, he felt secure answering to it.

As for T’Pol, she no longer entered the small living space Jon used with any type of trepidation. She’d coaxed him with food, offering his favorites when he learned (or re-learned) social behaviors and remembered to use them.

She spent her free time using the ship’s computer to find out all she could about possible paths Archer might have taken or was forced to take.

His escape from the A'Gulk is in itself a curious event. They take captives but only briefly, as they must feed themselves and their children constantly. How did the captain escape? Did his experiences with them cause his current mental state?

“You’re using a lot of data blocks for whatever it is you’re doing.”

T’Pol raised her head as Xiao spoke from the pilot’s chair.

“I am correlating data to form several hypotheses regarding Captain Archer’s escape from the A'Gulk.”

"Yeah?”

“Indeed. However, the circ*mstances of his escape must have been incredible, as data obtained during the Nimbus Wars reports that captives of the A'Gulk rarely survive such encounters. The only individual to ever escape an A'Gulk breeding catacomb needed several prosthetic limbs in the aftermath.”

“My father’s sister mated with someone like that once,” Xiao replied. “And despite the affliction, they built a large clan.”

“How so?” T’Pol asked, and Xiao grinned a feral Orion grin.

“The females of our species are difficult to satisfy—we need mates with strength and stamina. Mechanical parts don’t tire.”

T’Pol cleared her throat.

“I understand.”

“Besides, I don’t think scrawny back there spent any time in an A'Gulk breeding catacomb.” A square button on the pilot console flashed cyan and Xiao pushed it.

“Captain Archer.”

“Former captain!”

“Shall I remind you of our current financial arrangement?”

“Archer, then!” Xiao rolled their eyes. “Squeeze the coin pouch, Vulcan!”

“I am continuously amazed by some species’ inability to connect actions and consequences,” T’Pol replied. “But what makes you believe the captain spent no time in the A'Gulk catacombs?”

Xiao glanced over their shoulder.

“Look—the A'Gulk are an invasive species, you agree?”

“Affirmative.”

“And invasive species are most concerned with . . .what?”

T’Pol took only a moment.

“Resources. Food, fuel, materials for building their ships, and the annihilation of anything or anyone that stands in their way.”

Xiao clenched their tukka pen between strong teeth and mimed shooting a phaser at T’Pol with the hand that still had an index finger.

“Give the little lady a candy stick!” Xiao twirled the pen. “The A'Gulk plunder the worlds they find. They take what they need, consume it, and move on Archer’s bones would’ve been polishing some A'Gulk’s colon just minutes after they took him. Did you know that they don’t care too much about what they eat, as long as they can overpower it?”

“If what you say is true, then whatever allowed the captain to escape must have occurred after he left our range of vision. Xiao, are you certain of this?”

“On my world, many different races came there to plunder our people and property. They took what they wanted and built a commerce built on death, abuse, and slavery! Don’t look surprised—I know the Federation sees the pleasure dens, the secret trade routes!” Their eyes flashed with unbridled anger and indelible loss. “Say whatever you like about my people, Vulcan, but also say this—we had our own ways before offworlders turned us into barbarians and desperate whor*s hooked on whatever addictive drug controlled them most easily!”

“I regret your people suffered such adversity,” T’Pol said after a moment. “But I am also gratified to know you escaped such a fate. You are a most accomplished pilot.”

“So offer me more money,” Alandra replied as they puffed out a lavender cloud of vapor. T’Pol took that to mean the end of the conversation and returned to Archer’s living space.

Upon first glance, T’Pol thought she’d traveled back in time to her first day aboard Enterprise and stepped onto the bridge to see Archer in his command chair. Then the shadows shifted and it was only Archer, watching multicolored, blurry stars glide past through a viewing portal from a chair he’d set in the middle of the room.

“Jon?”

He turned his head to glance a her. She’d been trying to gauge his overall comprehension to a narrower field over the past few days, but his skill seemed to fluctuate.

“Is it true?” T’Pol asked as she stepped forward. Of course, she expected no sound answer and there wasn’t even a logical reason to ask. Still, some grim, primitive thing inside her felt fed when she spoke. “How did it happen?” She turned his chair and caught Archer’s gaze. “If the A'Gulk didn’t take you, who—or what—did?”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Archer’s shattered self was, to his own mind’s eye, a garbage dump blown apart by cannon fire. Sure, you could wade in and paddle around and even find bits of his memories here and there, like this one when he was five and crawled into the family’s doghouse with their Shepard mix, Tricky, during a thunderstorm. Over there was a fractured memory of his mother, leaning in to scold him, maybe, her face blurred as by some large eraser that blurred flesh instead of pencil lines. These were old memories, and not secret.

It was the box he needed to hide. His handlers had looked for it—they dug deep and blasted often, ripped the sanity from the moors of his mind, and sent him into dark mental waters with slashed sails.

Jagged lines of pain ripped across his mind, like the claws of some huge cat whose shape had been chewed by their owner’s obsessive gnawing. They gripped his brain, scraped away layer after layer, and sought to lay his secrets bare.

Xiao was right about several facts concerning the A'Gulk—yes, they consumed prey almost immediately after capturing it and stored some live for their young, but only if circ*mstances were safe enough to open the breeding catacombs. A war was no place to risk that, but what Xiao didn’t know was that the A'Gulk were as resourceful as they were voracious. They understood the value of underground trading, and when their food cache was full, they sold the surplus so they could move on.

The A'Gulk were also quite cruel and understood exactly who Captain Jonathan Archer was and the price the Klingons had put on his head.

And as one of the defeated participants of the Nimbus Wars, the Klingons had every reason to take Jonathan Archer well out of Federation jurisdiction. . and perhaps even beyond Rura Penthe. The Klingons were glad to pay, despite the losses they’d taken in the war. It was easy for the A'Gulk to name their price for the former starship captain. The funding came directly from the Empire, with 90% of the High Council in agreement (with a shift to a unanimous vote directly after the first, when the only holdout died suddenly from a dagger to the right eye) that the Klingon Empire was far from finished with Captain Archer.

II: Miners of the Mind

Praxis

The Klingon Empire

Praxis Detention Stronghold

Three Years Earlier

“In there, human!”

The young Klingon guard with plaited hair and eyes that looked to Archer like two bulging fried eggs shoved him into a cell with a barred door that swung down and locked at its base. A thick metal screen slid across and the guard glared in at him.

“I suggest you do not get comfortable! Our chancellor of interrogation will send me to fetch you soon enough!” More locks slammed closed, leaving Archer in a cell barely tall enough to crouch in, The stone floor was covered with stains, some ominously maroon, stiff, straw-like material, bedding maybe, was heaped in layers, soiled, and the stench caused Archer to gag the moment he drew in a breath. It was an overwhelming, fetid odor, and it seemed to hang in the air like a noxious fog.

Archer made his way through the foul stuff and to a corner as he took shallow breaths. His thoughts swung from his current predicament to what he’d seen during his brief time with the A'Gulk.

As a Starfleet officer, he knew that serving on ships that explored the unknown meant a greater risk of death when compared to serving planetside; he’d seen men die before, but never in the way he’d seen after his capture by the A'Gulk.

The aliens moved single file as they boiled into a cavern. Archer assumed an A'Gulk ship orbited the planet, just as Enterprise did, and now the aliens vanished rank by rank via a red flicker—the A'Gulk’s transporter system. As Archer found himself separated from the rest of the people they’d herded into the cavern, another one of Reed’s squad, an ensign surely no more than 20, screamed as one of the A'Gulk clawed his uniform off, along with much of his skin.

“Captain!” The kid screamed, holding out his bloody hands for rescue, and the alien’s jaw widened sideways. The kid stared at Archer as the alien swallowed him whole, feet first. “Oh God please, it hurts!” He vanished down the alien’s gullet, his eyes going glassy, fingers twitching as the A'Gulk swallowed them last. Archer hung his head in grief as the flickering transporter beam bore him away to the A'Gulk ship.

Archer fully expected his captors to execute him when they reached the ship, which rioted with pulsing chambers, their surfaces covered with something that reminded him of ear wax. The A'Gulk ushered him past these and into what he guessed was some kind of holding pen. They forced him inside and activated a force field that Archer knew would probably deliver a nasty shock if he touched it. He paced the enclosure as much as it allowed; three steps, a turn, three steps, repeat. An A'Gulk guard watched him with a hungry expression. But then, he thought, they always looked hungry.

After pacing tired him, Archer sat in a corner and rested his chin in one hand, His throat ached with thirst and he needed to urinate. He doubted the insectoid aliens had any facilities built for humans.

So he sat, bladder aching as he reviewed his situation. The crew witnessed his capture and no doubt assumed him dead.

They must, knowing the A'Gulk use captives for food. Trip will want to search for me, but T’Pol has the conn now. She’ll do the logical thing and head for the nearest star base, Archer thought to himself. I can’t be sure where they’re taking me, but I have to take whatever opportunity I have to escape.

“

Chapter 9 Chapter Text

“Chief, are you all right?”

Trip glanced up at Ensign Webber through gritty, dry eyes.

“Do I look all right?”

“Sir, no offense, but you look like hell,” Ray replied.

“None taken.” Trip rubbed his eyes. “Has the captain been satisfied with our drill scores?”

Chapter 10 Chapter Text

T’Pol’s home, a one-story but rambling building made from layers of fired red clay, faced the city of Kah’reesh. The Vulcan Science Academy, from which T’Pol had taken temporary leave, now gleamed in the lowering sun as rays of light struck its many windows and turned them quicksilver.

Both Aza and Xiao prowled the grounds while T’Pol settled Archer in an extra bedroom she sometimes used for storage.

T’Lok, pleased to see T’Pol, all but knocked her down with cat-like bumps of her large, wide forehead. Archer seemed drawn to the Sehlat, and T’Lok’s finely tuned instincts seemed to recognize his internal trauma and pain. An hour after their arrival, T’Pol found T’Lok asleep beside Jon’s bed as he rested. He had little strength, so T’Pol used the computer to find meals that would improve his constitution and stamina.

Of course, healing the former starship captain’s body wasn’t the difficult part: the greatest challenge was to unlock his mind. Much of his initial panic had faded during the trip to Vulcan, but he remained non-verbal. T’Pol had a few connections at the science academy, but none to the high priestesses that might successfully mind meld with him.

So T’Pol accepted the current state of affairs for the time being and seated herself at the communications console. She’d managed to access a few messages while onboard Onyx, but—

T’Pol paused when she came across Trip’s message and the equations. They piqued her curiosity. Their formation was both elegant and thoughtful somehow and lacked the rigidity of math created by Vulcan scholars.

Trip’s accompanying message was nothing short of fascinating as well. Captain Archer was a direct and easily traceable descendant of Dr. Sam Beckett, one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. T’Pol knew his work well—he’d held seven degrees, including a medical doctorate, and his work in physics earned him a Nobel Prize.

After the Starbright Project, Dr. Beckett seemed to vanish from the public eye and worked in secret somewhere in America’s desert southwest. After that, according to most reports, Dr. Beckett disappeared while hiking. It seemed to T’Pol that the authorities of the day didn’t seem very concerned with Dr. Beckett’s vanishing, judging from how cursory the investigation seemed. T’Pol called up some information on Dr. Beckett’s work and who he’d been working with when he’d vanished. She read headlines, skimmed articles, and memorized names.

Dr. Beckett’s daughter, Alissa, had her father declared dead on his 90th birthday, T’Pol thought to herself. But did not that one news magazine report—

“Computer!”

“Working.”

“Biographical information on Dr. Alissa Beckett, born circa 1985 or 1986, old Earth calendar.”

“Dr. Alissa Beckett, born 1996 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, to Donna Elise-Beckett—”

“Computer . . . does the birth certificate for Alissa Beckett name Sam Beckett as her father?”

“Affirmative.”

“Interesting,” T’Pol murmured at the discrepancy. “A child born to a man who went missing seven years before she was born.”

It had to be a record-keeping error, or maybe Dr. Elisee listed Dr. Beckett to cover an indiscretion. That wasn’t likely though, especially considering how much Sam Beckett and Jon Archer favored each other. Donna Elisee-Beckett died of kidney cancer at the age of 82, leaving behind only one child—Alissa.

“I can’t believe this!”

T’Pol flinched as the shout broke her concentration. She looked from the console to find Xiao scowling at the food synthesizer.

“If you need assistance—”

“What I need is a meal with some befrigged meat in it!”

“Most Vulcans are vegetarians.”

“I’m not a Vulcan!”

“You state the obvious.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Merely that it is unlikely people would take you for one.”

“People wouldn’t mistake Aza for one either, but we both want a decent meal!”

This conversation would test Surak on his most logical day, T’Pol thought to herself.

“Very well,” she said at last. “Vulcan is not completely devoid of meat—I will request synths-packs that will satisfy you. Does not Aza hunt for himself?”

“Sometimes,” Xiao nodded, then glanced at the equations T’Pol had left up on the display screen. “Someone’s using calculus formulas to send you messages?”

“Pardon me?”

Xiao stepped closer to the display.

“There’s a message here.”

“You can understand these formulas?”

“Orions invented calculus!” Xiao boasted.“I believe Sir Isaac Newton of Earth—”

”Sir Isaac Newton was a human-passing hybrid born of a space-faring Orion and a curious human.” They leaned closer and picked up a nearby writing stylus. “And don’t even get me started on Fibonacci!”

As a mathematician, T’Pol found herself mildly scandalized and more than a bit curious. Xiao handed her the stylus.

“There’s an embedded video in a file buried under a ton of garbage code. Here’s the video location and the encrypted passcode.”

“Thank you,” T’Pol replied.

“If you want to thank me, feed me!”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I appreciate you taking time to communicate directly regarding the video my—my guest uncovered.”

Trip tried not to grin at T’Pol’s hesitation. He was in his quarters, talking to his friend and former shipmate via subspace streaming, something a few old-timers still called “FaceTiming.”

“What happened?” He asked. “No one answered your ‘Wanted: Angry Klingon roommate wanted, Targs welcome,’ ad?”

“Are you still trying to teach me sarcasm?”

“Yeah, and I wish you’d catch on because that was hilarious!”

“Xiao is not as disagreeable as you may think,” T’Pol replied. “They have been considerably helpful with decoding this message in particular.”

“All right, let’s give it a look.”

T’Pol opened the file and entered a line of numbers. A video screen window opened, dividing both of their screens into thirds.

A man in his mid-50s sat in an easy chair. He wore a red button-down shirt and matching slacks, black suspenders, and a black-and-red polka-dot tie. He was not a large man, but something in his clever dark eyes commanded attention.

“To whoever finds this—if it ever gets found—know that the only reason I’m doing it at all is because Sam Beckett is a good man who doesn’t deserve to be forgotten or lost to time.” The man cleared his throat. “My name is Albert Francis Calavicci, and I want to tell you about Project Quantum Leap . . . And about what really happened to my best friend, Sam Beckett.”

Trip and T’Pol listened to Al’s story in near silence, exchanging looks of disbelief more than once. The retired admiral explained that when Starbright ended and Dr. Beckett formed his “best of the best” team for Project Quantum Leap, the goal was to create technology that allowed them to observe the past, to obtain a lock on certain historical events to discover the truth behind how they really happened.

“And that was the man Sam was,” Al said. “He wanted to use his gifts for good—solve old murders, bring closure to their families who had missing loved ones, things like that. We ran a few tests, but there was a problem with the formulas that ran the accelerator. The ratios were off—Sam knew it, and I had to talk him out of the damn thing nearly every day. He talked about being so close to chasing down the formula imbalances and being able to lock on a specific day, but our investors got nervous. They wanted results and for Sam to prove his theories.” Al paused to unwrap an odd-looking cylindrical object he removed from his shirt pocket and then lit one end with a match as he puffed on the other.

“Interesting,” T’Pol remarked. “A cigar—still a popular tobacco delivery system in many cultures.”

“Probably a holdover habit from his time in the military,” Trip replied. “I’ve read that a lot of those guys came back from combat pretty hard-boiled.”

“I don’t know if anyone who finds this in the future can understand the kind of pressure this meant for Sam and the team. It was especially tough on Sam—he’d put his heart, his soul . . .hell, even some of his own neural brain cells—into Ziggy and building the accelerator.” Al glanced away from the camera. “This next bit? I’ve never talked to anyone about it, not even Alissa. It wasn’t because Donna had her using some of Sam’s . . .” Al made a swimmy gesture with his free hand. “That they’d frozen and stored. She’s still Sam’s daughter, and I love her like she was my own. It’s because she’s his. That’s the whole damned reason.” Al wiped a hand over his mouth.” I don’t want her to know that I wasn’t there when Sam decided to test the damn accelerator himself!” Al’s voice cracked. “He was desperate for it to work! I knew he was and I never should have left the project grounds!”

“He couldn’t have known,” Trip said.

“My people often say that no one person can predict the actions of another. I find that no matter how strong a bond between two people may be no one can truly know everything about that other person, much less the choices he or she might make.”

On the screen, Al continued to speak.

“I made back for the project hell-bent for leather,” he said, (causing T’Pol to briefly consult the linguistic banks on her computer,) “but when I got there, Sam was gone and the whole experiment had sort of taken on a life of its own. Instead of Sam observing time, he got lost in it. The quantum accelerator pulled him into the river of time, and he lived as other people, in the past, for a few days, maybe a week. He’d leap in, change that person’s life for the better, and leap out again. I know how this must sound but I swear on my Pop’s grave, it’s all true. Sam didn’t vanish during a hike or cross the border to start a new life in Mexico like some of the tabloid rags claimed. He’s out there, and he’s been alone since the government shut us down. Maybe I let Sam down, and I hope somehow he knows why I never showed up again—” Al’s voice shook. “But what I could do was make sure no one ever used Ziggy to create war or to weaponize what she could do.” He took a long drag on his cigar.

“One hour ago, I destroyed the project location by setting off a self-destruct sequence Sam and I installed. It was the only way to truly protect her. The sequence set off a massive charge, and Ziggy is history.”

“An invention of that magnitude—glitches aside—and he ops to destroy it!” Trip exclaimed.

“Considering the admiral’s options, I believe he made the most logical choice,” T’Pol replied.

“If this message reaches far into the future and humanity has progressed the way I hope it does, then I have only one request. Review the data included in this file. Al Calavicci’s dark eyes seemed to plead to T’Pol and Trip directly.

“Rebuild Ziggy . . . Find my friend Sam.”

Chapter 11 Chapter Text

“Trip,” T’Pol said as the video ended and he fed the Enterprise computer the data regarding Ziggy. “We must proceed using reason as our guide.”

“T’Planahath?”

“She is considered one of the wisest of our philosophers.”

“Philosophy is great in the classroom, T’Pol! Didn’t you hear what Admiral Calavicci said? Captain Archer’s ancestor built a Time Machine using quantum physics! I can rebuild it!” The excitement in his voice began to rise. “We can go back in time and get him back! I mean, hell, we could even prevent the Nimbus Wars completely! Think of the lives we could save!” All the displacement and grief—we could wipe it all away!”

“You know as well as I that such a thing is not as simple as that. The concept of time travel—the admiral himself admitted that Dr. Beckett became lost in time, never to return, because they could not control his leaps.”

“But what if I can correct those problems in a rebuild? Our magnetic lock technology is years ahead of what Dr. Beckett used! We could erase the captain’s trauma!”

T’Pol paused.

“Dr. Beckett created this project to observe the past. Perhaps he understood the dangers of tampering with timelines. Trip . . .if we had a means of seeing what caused Archer’s trauma, we might be able to heal it.”

Trip reared away from the screen, his expression filled with sudden excitement.

“I never even considered—you’re still a genius, Starfleet or not!”

“I merely examine the logical aspects of the problem, and here is another: it is unlikely that Captain Dudley will sanction the construction of a time travel device on board Enterprise.”

Trip groaned.

“Oh, hell! Dr. Beckett took the project underground, right? That’s not exactly an option for me. I’ll need someplace to house it!”

T’Pol began to speak, then raised an eyebrow.

“Trip,” she said finally. “If we attempt this, you must get leave to come to Vulcan.”

“Why Vulcan?”“You and I were among the last to see Captain Archer before the A'Gulk took him. Knowing that, and that a possible means of treatment is available to us . . . I cannot let this be, nor can I accomplish it alone. Will you come?”

Trip gnawed his lower lip a moment and then chuckled.

“Even if I thought it was impossible, I’d hate myself if I didn’t at least try. I’ll have to bring an assistant, though.”

“What for?”

“Someone has to hold the flashlight, so to speak! Do you have any ideas about where to house it?”

“Prepare for your leave from Enterprise, and I will secure a place for us.”

“Where?”

T’Planahath may have been wise, T’Pol mused, but she never ascended from chaos alongside humans.

“Somewhere close by.”

____________________________________________________________________

“I know you don’t have to let me stay here, but it’s not enough to keep me from asking this—are you crazy, or what?”

T’Pol regarded Xiao with a blithe expression. “I assure you, I am not. And what I ask is temporary. It will not harm your Onyx.”

The Orion pilot and the Vulcan stood on the front patio just after sunset. Aza perched on a planter nearby, copper eyes watchful for a careless lizard or large insect.

“Okay, so if your brain hasn’t gone softer than a Regulan bloodworm, can you tell me why you’d want to turn my ship into a time machine?”

“Your ship will house the machine. We need its engine power to run tests.”

Xiao gazed up at the darkening sky. They’d taken off their helmet more often lately but kept their dark curls bound up in a thin, jeweled fabric net. The netting itself was the same color as their hair, making the jewels appear to float there.

“You would be assisting Captain Archer. Perhaps his family and even Starfleet would reward you if we are successful,” T’Pol coaxed.

“Do you bank on being successful?”

“I have not yet computed the odds.”

“Boy, that’s a surprise!” Xiao rolled their eyes.

“Must you not remain on Vulcan for a time anyway?”

“Don’t remind me! I’m already delayed.”

“Delayed from what?” T’Pol asked, and the pilot’s jaw clenched.

“If you really must pry, I’m—on a mission.”

“A mission?”

“Okay, it’s more like a quest.” Xiao turned to T’Pol. “Are you and your friend really going to assemble a Time Machine inside my ship?”

“If you allow it, and if Commander Tucker and I can duplicate Dr. Beckett’s technology.”

“Then I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let you use Onyx . . . But only if you let me use the time travel technology to find my sister.”

____________________________________________________________________

”I can understand Starfleet giving you an extended leave, I mean, you’re one of its Nimbus War heroes, but what am I going to Vulcan for?”

Trip locked his safety harness. Ray seemed to look everywhere at once. The transport ship, a sleek descendent of the past’s commercial airplanes, sat 275 passengers comfortably. Today, one-quarter of the seats remained empty. The Vulcan-owned ship, the Surak, shuttled Starfleet members, diplomats, and other space-faring Federation members to nearby Starbases and outlying planets, including Vulcan. A few of the aforementioned sat examining reading styluses and computer screens built into a pop-up console. A pair of Tellerites talked in the rear of the craft, but even two of them chatting sounded like an argument.

“Chief?” Ray prompted as Surak prepared for departure.

“I told them I needed an assistant for an engineering project I had planned for the sabbatical. You’re an ensign, they can spare you. And don’t call me a hero.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“This is like shore leave, Ray. You can call me Trip.”

“Right,” the ensign nodded. “So what’s the project?”

“I can’t tell you now, someone might hear.”

“A secret project?”

“Mmmm . . . I’m not sure if secret is the right word. It’s more like—trying to fix something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

The Surak moved out, heading to Vulcan. Its nacelles glowed a serene twilight blue.

“But you can’t change the past,” Ray said. “I had a professor at the academy who liked to say, ‘You can’t unring a bell.’” Ray paused. “Unless you’re looking for a way to unring it?”

“Something like that.” Trip glanced around and lowered his voice. “Do you know about Captain Archer? The commander of the Enterprise before Captain Dudley took over?”

“Yeah. He went missing during the Nimbus Wars. Subspace gossip said the Federation declared him dead.”

“I was there when he went missing,” Trip admitted. “It’s not easy to talk about—he wasn’t just my commanding officer, he was my friend, too.”

“Damn. I’m sorry sir—uh, Trip,” Ray corrected himself. “So this project, it has to do with finding out what happened to Captain Archer?”

“You might say so,” Trip nodded. “But you’ll learn more when we get to Vulcan.”

____________________________________________________________________

”There has to be a reason he doesn’t speak anymore. Are you sure his tongue wasn’t removed?”

T’Pol gave Xiao a rather annoyed glance. They sat in the outdoor space in the back of her home, what humans might call a back patio. Jon and T’Lok seemed to be involved in a game of tag, with the young Sehlat gently rolling him to the ground when she caught up with him. Jon enjoyed her company and even fed her tidbits of meat from Aza’s hunting spoils.

“He has his tongue. I believe his being mute is a result of whatever trauma he endured.”

Xiao gazed at Vulcan’s twin planet, the upper curve appearing almost transparent at this time of evening.

“Trauma is like an Andorian swamp snake,” they said after a moment. “Those barbed fangs sink into your skin and they hang on. And once that happens, you either let the venom kill you or you cut out the damage so you can go on.”

“I have never been to Andoria.”

“It’s one of the most inhospitable places in the galaxy. Even their swamps have ice crystals growing on the trees.”

“And you encountered these snakes?” T’Pol asked. Xiao held up their incomplete hand and then pulled off the glove they wore. The finger was little more than a stub, and the skin at the end of the wound looked like a burn that healed the best it could.

“You cauterized the bite . . .sacrificed your finger.”

“So I could go on and survive!” They replaced the glove “And that’s what trauma is, Sis, it’s something you have to cut off and toss away. Otherwise, you’re paralyzed . . .stuck.” They watched Jon curl up against T’Lok’s furry side.

“How does one cut away another’s trauma?” T’Pol asked. “Especially when one cannot be sure where to begin? No one knows what he truly endured.”

Xiao rose from their chair.

“If I were you, I’d start by cutting open the wound.”

___________________________________________________________________

That night, long after everyone slept, T’Pol searched the city’s governmental registry and the ambassador’s list for someone who might assist her. While most Vulcans could mind link with other species, some were quite sensitive and especially talented, and such individuals were often tapped to work at the ambassador’s building at the center of Shi Kahr, Vulcan’s largest city. While T’Pol had no official connections there, perhaps she could find a lower-ranking Vulcan emissary willing to look into Archer’s mind and open a window to look in upon his shattered psyche.

The list, which the ambassador’s council updated each week, listed two new junior ambassadors: Shula, from a family in the high deserts, and Sarek, from a well-known family in the city. High desert Vulcans were hardy and aloof, even with their own, and T’Pol would likely run into a stone wall of arid logic with Shula.

Sarek, however, was a possibility. His dossiers noted he’d recently married, just before accepting the new assignment. His new wife, Amanda, was an Earth woman.

“An Earth female!” T’Pol exclaimed to herself.

An Earth woman who might understand, and even persuade . . .

T’Pol accessed the contact information on file as, in the other room, Jon Archer cried out in his sleep.

Start by cutting open the wound.

Chapter 12 Chapter Text

The Vulcan Consulate: Office of the Ambassador

T’Pol sat in the outer office of the Ambassador’s inner sanctuary. The secretary, a young male Vulcan, offered her a cup of cool mint tea while she waited to speak to Sarek.

The room featured comfortable seating, a public information console, and two doors—one led to a sanitary cubicle and the other to Sarek’s inner office. Vulcan and Federation flags flanked the secretary’s polished desk. A clean room with a logical design; T’Pol wondered what Xiao would think of it.

The communication device on the secretary's desk gave a chirp. The man set his reader aside and pressed a silver button.

“Yes? Very well.” The secretary glanced up at T’Pol. “Sarek will receive you now. Please, follow me.”

T’Pol wondered why she needed an escort for a journey of four steps, but she didn’t question it. The young Vulcan opened the door.

“T’Pol,” he announced and then closed the door at his superior’s nod.

Sarek regarded T’Pol with dark, intelligent eyes. His hooded gaze and ebony hair made him look like a young but wise raven.

“Do sit down, T’Pol,” he said in a baritone voice, and she sat. Sarek made a pyramid of his long fingers, his elbows resting lightly on his desk.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” T’Pol began. Sark didn’t reply right away, and when the younger Vulcan did not rush forward to fill the silence, he found that impressive; most Vulcans who worked with humans picked up their bad habits like niceties and platitudes.

“I admit, your message intrigued me. I was part of an emissary group that visited Enterprise during her construction and had the opportunity to meet Captain Archer. You served aboard with him for several years, yes?”

“Nearly four, sir,” T’Pol nodded.

“And all through the Nimbus Wars.”

“Most of it, yes.”

“And now the captain returns despite being declared dead by the very organization he served. I am not completely versed in the human concept of irony, but I believe that qualifies.”

“Indeed,” T’Pol nodded. “That thought had occurred to me as well. It seemed . . .unfair.”

“I have had several dealings with both Starfleet and this newly formed United Federation of Planets. Many of the humans involved are eager to look toward the future, to venture further out into unexplored space. The Nimbus Ward, and its casualties, are part of the past.” Sarek leaned back for a moment. “Say what it is that you wish of me.”

T’Pol folded her hands in her lap.

“I came to ask if I might bring Jonathan Archer to you so that you might mind meld with him. Perhaps I have no right, but if I have wasted my time here, know that I do not regret the attempt.”

“I reflected earlier that Vulcans who serve aboard starships with humans often take on their bad habits. It seems you took on something else.”

“Sir?”

“A way of solving a problem that combines logic—one’s singular logic—with the understanding of the usefulness of working with others. It is not a compliment,” Sarek said as T’Pol began to thank him. “It is an observation. And perhaps I should send you on your way. I will be honest—I do not entirely trust Starfleet’s militant edge and believe the Vulcan Science Academy is where exceptional young Vulcans belong.”

“I understand and respect your viewpoint,” T’Pol said as she rose to leave. Sarek held up a hand and nodded to the chair. T’Pol sat back down.

“Despite my views, it is also my opinion that Starfleet owes more to Jonathan Archer than it offered when he was discovered alive.” Sarek tapped his fingers together. T’Pol tried to ignore the way her heart picked up its pace.

“I have a meeting tomorrow at the academy . . . I am part of a coalition for an interstellar student exchange program. It will bring me close to your home. After I discharge my duties there, I will pay a visit to Jonathan Archer and assist you with an assessment of his current mental state. Will that suffice?”

T’Pol nodded.

“It would more than suffice, sir!” She replied, hoping her tone did not betray the surge of relief that welled up inside her.

____________________________________________________________________

”Oh my God, I can’t breathe!”

Trip turned at Ray’s gasp as they stepped off the shuttle pad ramp and into the baking Vulcan heat. A few Vulcans gave them disapproving glances as they passed by.

“Ray!”

“Sorry, Chief! I didn’t expect to have to breathe in a furnace!”

“Well, where did you think the phrase “Hot as Vulcan” came from?” Trip picked up his gear.

“Guess I never thought about it. I’m better with numbers than with words, like most engineers.”

“Fair enough. C’mon, we need to find a ground transport pod.”

“Now that we’re here, can you let me in on why?”

Trip nodded as he headed for the nearest automated pod station.

“You’re gonna help me build a quantum accelerator and a hybrid supercomputer.”

“A quantum accelerator? Chief, why?”

“Because T’Pol and I think we can help Captain Archer that way.” Trip stepped forward and tossed their duffels into the pod before climbing in. Ray sat beside him.

“Destination?” A pleasant, computerized voice asked, and Trip toggled in the coordinates. A moment later they were hovering over the red sand desert. Trip had to admit the automated pods were clever, especially since transporter technology still had a lot of bugs to work out. Accidents weren’t as common anymore, but they still happened.

“Do you know what’s wrong with Captain Archer?” Ray asked, pulling Trip from his thoughts.

“A lot of trauma, that’s all we really know. After the A'Gulk took him, we don’t know what happened or how he ended up on that primitive world where the bounty hunter found him.”

“Reports say the A'Gulk are intelligent. Maybe they knew the captain made a valuable prisoner. Do you think they tortured him for information about Starfleet but then he escaped somehow?”

“That’s one theory,” Trip nodded. The pod glided to a halt in front of T’Pol’s home.

“Destination reached,” the pod’s computer announced. “Please exit the vehicle.”

As Trip exited the pod and Ray grabbed their gear, T’Pol stepped outside. Trip’s heart gave a skip and he grinned despite himself as she walked toward him. T’Pol held her smile in her eyes and Trip felt a rush of nostalgia.

“Trip,” she said, and held out a hand. He touched it a moment. “It is agreeable to see you face to face at last.”

“I’m glad to see you too. T’Pol, this is my assistant, Ensign Peter Webber.”

“Call me Ray, ma’am,” the young man said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Trip informed me he would require help with this endeavor,” she nodded. “You are welcome here.”

“I’ve always said engineers need at least four pairs of hands . . .” Trip trailed off as Jon Archer stepped into the open doorway.

His former captain and friend and friend was leaner than Trip had ever seen him, which highlighted his unique and handsome features. His hair was past his collar, and a silver-white forelock about two inches wide dominated his left temple. The sharp, hawklike gleam of command and confidence was now a cautious, almost timid expression. Trip blinked away tears.

“Cap?” He asked brokenly. “Jon?”

“Do not expect him to know you,” T’Pol said. It seems he has no memory of his past. He even balked at his own mother’s presence back on Earth.”

An animal resembling a saber-toothed bear shoved its head between Archer and the doorway.

“Is that a sehlat?” Ray asked, excitement raising his voice.

“Yes,” T’Pol nodded.

“Ever neat!” Ray grinned. “I saw one in an animal sanctuary once when I was a kid, but I’ve always wanted to see them close up!”

“Her name is T’Lok. She will not harm you.,” T’Pol said as Trip took a step back.

"Can I touch her?” Ray asked.

“She will approach you as she becomes familiar with your scent,” T’Pol said as she lead them toward the house. “You cannot force friendship upon a sehlat.” She spoke to the animal in Vulcan, and it backed up to allow them in. Trip tried not to stare as Archer made an anxious noise and shrank back as well.

“You are a stranger to him, Trip.”

“But—”

“I understand this is difficult for you,” T’Pol said. “But you cannot allow your emotions to rule you.”

Tip sighed as they entered the home and Archer vanished down a hallway with the large animal padding behind him.

“Maybe if I go to him—try to make him remember!”

“I saw the results of that tactic on Earth—it only frightens him. Like a sehlat mother with her weanling cub, you must be patient.” She touched his arm. “Come, you and Ensign Webber must be hungry.”

“It’s just Ray, ma’am,” Ray replied. “But I’ll take you up on that meal!”

___________________________________________________________________

T’Pol served a stew with vegetables and noodles made from native wheat. Trip kept glancing toward the hallway, but Archer didn’t reappear.

He and Ray did meet T’Pol’s other guest halfway through the meal, though. The Orion paused when they noticed the newcomers and gave them a fearless glance before going to the stewpot and lifting the lid to inspect the simmering contents.

“Xiao, these are the men I told you about,” T’Pol said. “Commander Tucker and Ensign Webber, but most people call them Trip and Ray.”

“Trip?”

“It’s a nickname!”

“What, are you clumsy or something?” They asked, then scowled at Ray. “And what are you staring at?”

“I’m not—that is—I’ve never seen an Orion face to face before.”

Xiao took four steps forward until they were nose to nose with Ray. Trip swore he heard the poor kid squeak.

“Well here you go, human! Take a good look!”

Ray’s throat worked.

“He meant no offense,” T’Pol said. “He has not been in deep space long.”

Ray nodded and Xiao stepped back.

“So you’re the ones who are going to turn my ship into a Time Machine?”“With your permission. And for the record, Trip is a family nickname! Have you ever known a clumsy engineer?”

"I’ve never known any engineers. And only a few humans. So far, their systematic exploitation of my people hasn’t endeared me to them.”

“Now wait just a minute! Hang on!” Trip protested.

“So you deny it? Pah! Typical!”

“I am not! Starfleet does all it can to prevent the trafficking and sale of any sentient being, including Orions!”

“And what a great difference it’s made!” Xiao scoffed.

“What’s that mean?”

“Take a look at your former captain!”

T’Pol, Ray, and Trip all stared.

“What do you mean by this?” T’Pol asked, and Xiao’s expression shifted.

“I know the habits of the A'Gulk . . . Our people fought them during the Nimbus Wars, too. They eat or lay eggs in what they capture, so why was Archer spared? He’s a documented A'Gulk survivor—one of perhaps five in the whole galaxy! That’s five, out of the millions they killed!”

T’Pol’s heartbeat quickened. Her guest’s words were, so far, following a logical path.

“Continue,” she said, and Xiao warmed to the topic.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Mostly because there isn’t much else for me to do here but think. Anyway, I think the A'Gulk know who they had and his value to certain species—one species in particular.”

Trip’s eyes widened.

“You think they . . .”

Xiao leaned against the counter. “I’d bet my ship on it! The reason the A'Gulk spared Archer is because they knew he was worth more alive!”

Trip gave T’Pol a stricken glance before the former spoke.

“And sold him to the Klingons.”

Chapter 13 Chapter Text

Sarek arrived early the next morning with a young assistant, Solta. To T’Pol, he appeared fresh out of the science academy. She served them a cool mint tea and biscuits spread with plokk jam, a type of fruit that bloomed during Vulcan’s brief rainy time.

Once Sarek drained his cup, he set it aside and rose to his feet.

“Now, to the matter at hand. Take me to Jonathan Archer.”

“Perhaps if we moved outside?” T’Pol suggested. “He’s fearful of strangers and may not react in a way that—”

"I am not concerned with that,” Sarek replied. “Take me to him.”

“This way,” T’Pol nodded, leading the older Vulcan down a hallway.

Archer sat in front of a computer console, watching as a variety of different animals appeared with a click of a button. It was T’Pol’s hope that reintroducing Archer to technology might help him regain some of his memory and encourage him to speak again.

“Jon?” T’Pol entered the room. “I’ve brought someone to see you. Do not fear him, he will not harm you.”

Archer glanced up and his expression changed when he saw the two men.

Chapter 14 Chapter Text

True to his word, Sarek returned several times in the following month to meld with Archer. Sometimes the traumatized human would weep or cry out as if in remembered pain. At first, Sarek had utilized a nerve pinch to keep Archer calm before the meld but after a month, Archer bent his head willingly to the Vulcan’s hands. T’Pol would sometimes find them with Archer on his knees as Sarek sat in a chair or stood over him, his fingers on Archer’s face. Kneeling, Archer resembled a devoted acolyte as Sarek unlocked his memories.

During one recent session, just after Sarek broke the mind meld, Archer cried out and clutched the front of Sarek’s robes. T’Pol stepped closer, the action startling her, before she recalled Sarek’s instructions to never interfere, no matter what.

“NO!” The word erupted from Archer’s throat, and T’Pol’s eyes widened. Sarek pulled away then, his expression momentarily vulnerable before he came back to himself.

“He spoke!” T’Pol exclaimed, and Sarek lowered his hands.

“I believe I reached the core of his conscious self.”

“Share them with me, Sarek. I implore you!”

Sarek closed his eyes a moment.

“You do not know what you ask.”

“He is more to me than my former captain. He is also my friend.”

"Very well,” Sarek nodded. He turned toward her. As his fingers touched her face and the mind link formed, T’Pol felt herself fall away and into the dark pool of Jonathan Archer’s memories.

I: Qemjlq

I am Qemjlq, servant of Koroth the Enslaver, born for no other reason than to obey him.

My sense of rebirth as Qemjlq is all sensation. It buries my other self in a murky landslide of pain and pleasure, of wanting and self-disgust. Layers of myself dry up and peel away, like old skin, until only Qemjlq is left.

Master taught me all I need to know to serve the mighty house of Koroth. I polish his armor, serve his meals, and feed his Targs. I warm his bed when he commands it and I lie quiet when he uses me. Master does not want me to speak and taught me long ago to serve without using words.

“A quemjlq does not speak! Nor does it think or want or learn anything unless its master commands it!” He said once, early on, when I questioned an order. That night, he applied this to several new lessons in his bedchamber.

That is my existence. I am Qemjlq.

II: Vulcan

”No!”

The word escaped T’Pol as she pulled away from Sarek’s mind meld. Tears dripped down her cheeks as she understood Archer’s time with the Klingons was one of humiliation, assault, and complete enslavement. She skidded the heels of her hands to wipe away the tears there. Sarek watched, his expression veiled.

“He does not speak because he was conditioned to be silent,” Sarek said after a moment. “He was there for his master’s use and little else.”

“The name the Klingon gave him,” T’Pol said, her voice shaky. “What does it mean?”

“It is not a name, but an object.” He paused to glance at Archer, dozing in a semi-fetal position. ”Qemjlq is a Klingon word. It means ‘hole.’”

____________________________________________________________________

If Xiao had to give a brief description of the two human men they’d agreed to work with, it would be one word: odd. They talked more than any other beings Xiao had ever encountered, that was one thing. The one named Trip told stories about Earth and the colony (or state, as he called it,) of Florida. He spoke of how many of Earth’s space vessels had launched from there and how it inspired him to join Starfleet.

Ray, who was from a human martian colony on Mars but had family originating in the American Midwest, used odd social cues like referencing his culture’s past and current media. The one that puzzled Xiao most was “building a time machine out of a DeLorean,” which usually prompted Trip to declare that Ray was his ‘density.’ This usually caused both of them to laugh, something else that felt alien to Xiao; on Orion, showing one’s teeth was a sign of aggression.

Xiao had to admit, though, that the two men remained true to their word and did not stare at or touch her. Ray even took an interest in Aza, despite their first meeting, and worked to earn the falcon’s respect and boundaries. After three months of working on Onyx, Xiao often found Aza perched near the ensign as he reviewed blueprints or assembled small sections of housing.

Trip worked on rebuilding Ziggy 2.0, and as he did, he found himself thinking more about Sam Beckett. According to records from the 21st century, Admiral Calavicci passed in 2021 without Dr. Beckett ever having reappeared at any subsequent retrieval projects. Was it possible Sam was still out there leaping? Would the leaps have kept him from aging? Or was he trapped in some kind of timeless quantum limbo since Al pulled the cord on destroying the underground complex? Could this new Ziggy possibly retrieve him?

As the work on the new computer progressed, one evening, Trip called T’Pol to Onyx. His former shipmate seemed preoccupied ever since Sarek’s visits became less frequent and true to her nature, she wasn’t sharing why.

Flocks of silver birds dotted the sky as sunset approached and T’Pol stepped into Onyx’s engine room.

“Trip,” she greeted him, and Trip offered her a chair.

“Thank you.” She sat.

“Listen,” Trip said. “I think I’ve hit a snag with Siggy.”

“Siggy?”

“It’s short for Space Ziggy. Ray named her.”

“As surmised,” T’Pol nodded.

“Anyhow, the original Ziggy had some of Dr. Beckett’s neural tissue. It’s how Al and the team locked in on him after each new leap. Since we solved the lock problem, I don’t think we’ll need his. Still . . . I’d like to use some of the captain’s to link him to Siggy if you think he can handle the extraction.”

T’Pol remained silent. Trip didn’t push any further—he knew she was weighing logic against sharing whatever burden she carried.

“I feel it is time to tell you what I know concerning the captain’s imprisonment,” she said. "Then we will decide together."

Chapter 15 Chapter Text

Trip managed to keep his emotions in check until he reached his bunk aboard Onyx. Once there, he let his knees unlock and covered his face with both hands as he sat down on his cot. A hoarse sob tore from his throat and he brought a fist down on his thigh so hard that it left a bruise.

“The bastards!” Trip gritted the words out between sobs. “Those sons of bitches!”

T’Pol’s words had been almost too much to bear. His friend and commander, a kind and clever man, reduced to a Klingon slave and—no, Trip couldn’t think about that.

Someone pressed his door chime and Trip wiped his face with both hands and cleared his throat briskly.

“Come!”

The door slid open and Xiao stood in the doorway.

“I have an idea to save space in—” They hesitated. “What happened to you? Are you sick or something?”

An errant tear dripped from Trip’s right eye and he blinked it away.

“Don’t Orions express emotion?”

“Sure—anger, irritation, annoyance, fury, vexation, wrath . . .”

”What about sadness? Regret?”

“I suppose my people feel those things,” Xiao admitted, stepping further into the room. “But we use them to drive our ambition so we reach our goals. Do you humans always leak when you feel strong emotions?”

“It’s called crying. Our feelings cause the moisture, called tears, to leak from our eyes. Humans cry for lots of reasons, even when we’re happy, sometimes.”

“It sounds like human emotions take a great deal of energy to cope with.” They sat down in a nearby chair. “So. Your tears are because of Archer?”

“It turns out you were right. The A'Gulk knew who he was and sold him to the Klingons.”

“They may be ugly, but they’re clever, too. I think that’s why the war went on longer than it should have. Everyone underestimated the A'Gulk.” Xiao took out their tukka pipe, hesitated, then offered it to Trip. He accepted the slim cylinder.

“I’ve never tried tukka before.”

“It elevates energy and mood.” Xiao gestured. “Go on, I’m not trying to poison you.”

Trip took a careful puff, held it, then exhaled, watching the iridescent lavender vapor travel toward the ceiling. Xiao nodded and lifted their chin in approval.

“Tell me what caused your cry.”

“Why would you want to hear about that?”

“My people place great importance on the oral tradition. We trade stories like we trade goods,” they said. And something in your eyes—a burden, perhaps—mirrors my own.

“T’Pol said the Vulcan who’s been mind-melding with the captain told her that the leader of a former Klingon ruling house made Archer his servant in every way possible. In every way,” he repeated, as if verifying it might make this awful thing simply a fact and not the vile act it really was. “The bastard broke him down, took away his memories, his sense of self. T’Pol—” his voice broke. “T’Pol says there’s probably no chance of ever recovering from the trauma. That he’ll never be the person we knew ever again.” Trip shook his head. “Before this happened, I used to think—or at least believe—that there was this good energy in the universe that took care of you if you tried your best to be kind and not cause harm to people.”

“Do you mean a god?” Xiao asked, and Trip nodded.

"Yeah, I guess so. Do your people have a god?”

“We have many. Some are more popular than others. And now, Trip Tucker, since you shared with me, I will trade you in kind.” They took back the pipe. “I wasn’t always a pilot and a bounty hunter. I once had a family—a mother, father . . .a sister. Life away from the larger Orion cities was not always easy, but we had all we needed. One day, the offworlders came, and they shattered my world... .”

The human and the Orion talked far into the night as the curve of Vulcan’s sister planet became translucent, then almost transparent, a seafoam-colored arc or a rainbow bled of all but one shade.

____________________________________________________________________

Months passed. Trip, Ray, and Xiao completed the accelerator and connected it to Onyx’s warp drive. They then worked on Siggy, and T’Pol brought Archer to the project several times a week so he wouldn’t panic when the systems were up and running. He seemed to enjoy the brightly-colored buttons and clicking toggles on Siggy’s main console and even imitated the sounds.

Since he’d spoken that one word a few months earlier during that mind meld with Sarek, Archer began to vocalize more often. He became an impressive mimic, echoing T’Lok’s sounds and one evening startling them all by imitating Aza’s hunting cry. (No one was more startled than Aza, who flared his head crest and gave Archer an annoyed chirp before dozing off on his back patio perch again.

One morning, as T’Pol prepared the morning meal and Trip came in to eat before returning to Onyx, Archer glanced up from his plate.

“Trip!” He’d said, suddenly and clearly. Trip dropped his cup and it broke into several pieces. When Archer offered nothing further, Trip fled the room, muttering apologies about the broken mug.

T’Pol couldn’t blame him. Despite relearning their names, Archer made no progress on a cognitive level and as far as Sarek could read, he never would.

“There was something there once,” he told her as he left on the evening of his final visit. “But it was ripped away. What remains is badly damaged."

T’Pol considered these words now as she sat in front of her meditation altar that same day, but her usual prayers offered no more comfort than she could offer Trip earlier. While the chance still remained that Siggy could help, she could not ignore the dangerous implication of time travel.

Yet Admiral Calavicci’s notes indicate that Dr. Beckett altered timelines deliberately, T’Pol thought as she watched the attunement flame flicker. But to what end was not always clear right away and entity, if any, caused the so-called leaps.

It was difficult for T’Pol to believe that any human deity caused the leaps, despite several references to God in the admiral’s notes.

As a scientist, he might have known better, T’Pol mused. Of course, Vulcan religion makes much of things that are not of the body.

The flame flickered. A flock of Phra’ta glided past the house overhead, their forms like elongated swans, tattooing T’Pol’s roof with their shadows.

Not of the body.

There is a void there.

He’s one of the smartest men I ever met.

It was ripped away.

Not of the body . . .

T’Pol’s eyes snapped open as she left her meditative state. A word burned in her mind, hotter than an ancient Vulcan forge.

Katra.

Chapter 16 Chapter Text

“You know what you ask puts you and Archer at great risk.”

T’Pol and Sarek sat in Sarek’s office in the city. Outside, Vulcan baked in the dry midday heat. The sphires of taller buildings seemed to shimmer and undulate as T’Pol nodded.

“I have considered the risk. And while I cannot say I know Jonathan Archer’s mind or desires, I am confident in my belief that he would want me to try.”

“You know that to carry another’s Katra requires great mental strength and discipline. You are young and still learning what it truly means to be Vulcan.”

“With all due respect sir, I have come to know that being Vulcan means many different things, including following and trusting one’s own chain of logic.”

“I fear, T’Pol, that your reasons for wanting to restore Jonathan Archer to his former self are not based entirely in logic.”

“Please explain.”

“We speak of one man. One human. Is it logical to spend time, effort, and resources on such a venture?”

“Captain Archer may be one man, one human, but that is one reason I wish to make the attempt. He is no ordinary human, and to allow him to live out his the rest of his life this way is a waste.”

Sarek got to his feet.

“Very well. You understand, however, that your chances of success are minimal.”

“I understand. Thank you for your assistance,” she said as he accompanied her to the door. Once outside, she summoned an autopod, returned home, and sought out Trip.

She found him, or rather his feet, as he laid on his back underneath Siggy’s main console, the low hum of a plasma welder filling the space.

“Trip!’ She raised her voice over the noise.

“Huh?” The tool powered down. “Someone call me?” He squirmed out from under the console and wiped his forehead. “Oh! Hey, T’Pol. Everything okay?”

“I need—input,” she said.

“Yes, regarding the captain.”

“I’ll do my best,” Trip nodded as he sat down nearby. “Shoot.”

“You recall my plan to carry Captain Archer’s Katra.”

“Yeah . . . But I thought only Vulcans had those.”

“The Vulcan Katra is not the same as a human’s consciousness. Sarek believes we have little chance of success; however, I wish to know if you believe the captain would want us to attempt it.”

Trip wiped his hands on a clean towel and tossed it aside.

“You mean, trying this instead of letting the captain live out his life imitating animal sounds and wandering Vulcan with your sehlat because we didn’t act at all?”

“You are closer to the captain than I am. You have known him for many years. I wish to know if my plan of action is one he might choose himself. If he would agree.”

“You know,” Trip smiled, “I never knew anyone as curious and just plain bright as the captain. And I don’t mean smart—not that he wasn’t. Or isn’t.” Trip sighed. “But I also mean he lit up at certain idas and loved the prospect of adventure. That’s part of what made him such a fine captain. So I do think he’d make the choice you’re making for him? Yeah, I do. Because the unknown was like his greatest adventure.” The engineer glanced away. “The way he is now? I’m grateful he’s alive but—but it’s like—”

“An offense,” T’Pol supplied, and Trip glanced up.

“Yes! An offense, and we need to undo it. Question is, how are we gonna do that without leaving another Archer with the mind of a human toddler?”

T’Pol handed Trip a memory chip.

“This will allow Siggy to access multiple timelines. It is logical to assume that the captain does not survive the A'Gulk in at least one of them. I will exchange his mind with that of our captain. It may seem cruel, but for a man destined to die, perhaps the way may be less terrifying for him if our Archer’s damaged mind does not allow him to understand the impending death.”

“Could be,” Trip nodded. I wish it didn’t have to happen in any universe, you know?”

“I understand,” T’Pol replied. “Please let me know if you need assistance with the new programming.”

“I will, thanks. Hope I helped!” Trip added as T’Pol departed. He held up the chip to examine it.

Multiple timelines. Who knows how many? Who am I in those other universes? Are those other Trip Tuckers good men? Is there an evil version of me somewhere? Or one where I’m Vulcan and T’Pol is human?

That thought made Trip chuckle and he got to his feet.

“Most illogical,” he intoned as he stored the chip in an empty slot inside Siggy’s memory bank.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Time passed quickly for the team, who worked long days to program Siggy. One morning, Ray woke Trip, his blue eyes gleaming.

“Chief! Chief, hey! She’s up, she works!”

“What . . . Ray? What’d you say?”

“Siggy, sir! She works, she’s talking!”

Trip tossed his blankets aside. Ray looked at the ceiling as his boss pulled on a pair of pants and a plain white tee made of Vulcan fabric that deflected the heat of the planet’s sun. The two men hurried to engineering, where T’Pol and Xiao stood in front of Siggy.

“She has a digital recall relay in the circuits we rebuilt using Dr. Beckett’s specs! She—it’s like an artificial ancestral memory bank!”

“I can’t believe it,” Xiao said as the two men entered. “I thought we’d never get her up and running.”

“My God,” Trip murmured as he watched Siggy’s main console pile with an energetic array of colors. “Oh hey . . .” He stepped forward. “Siggy?”

“Yes, Commander?” A pleasant voice responded. Trip blinked.

“You know me?”

“Yes. You built me.” A few buttons flashed red and yellow as her systems came online. “Dr. Beckett. The admiral,” Siggy said in a regretful tone that sounded all too human, at least to Trip’s ears.

“We brought you here partly for them,” he said. “Dr. Beckett’s team never did manage to leap him home. But a whole century has gone by now, almost, and we think we might be able to find him and help Captain Archer.”

More lights as Siggy accessed several files. A nearby monitor came to life and displayed several photos of Archer and Sam Beckett side by side.

“DNA scans confirm that Dr. Beckett and Captain Jonathan Beckett Archer share generational markers.”

“Damn!” Ray said. “Those are some strong-ass genes!”

“May I meet Jonathan Archer?” Siggy asked, and Trip nodded as he glanced at the others.

“I don’t think there’s any harm in that. Ray, go get the captain, okay? He trusts you now.”

“Aye, sir!” Ray nodded, and Trip smiled.

You can take the ensign out of Starfleet . . . He thought to himself as Ray trotted off.

“You accessed the message left by Admiral Calavicci, yes?” T’Pol asked Siggy.

“Yes.”

“Do you have any additional information regarding Dr. Beckett? Is it possible he never stopped leaping?”

“The source of the quantum energy was difficult to identify and remains so today. There are many possible outcomes across dozens of realities.”

“Well,” T’Pol said after a moment, “Your new software seems to be running correctly.”

Ray returned then with Archer at his side. The former Enterprise captain stepped into the engine room. The smooth slide of colors across the half-orb set into Siggy’s main console seemed to draw him in. He placed a hand on it and something struck those silent generational memories, like someone tapped a tuning fork at the crossroads of his corpus callosum. Trip watched as the arc of colors reflected in his friend’s hazel eyes.

“Ziggy,” he murmured, and the intensity of the colors increased.

Trip touched Archer’s arm and glanced at T’Pol.

“I think we have everything up and running,” he said. “If we want to move forward.”

“What’s involved in this Katra business anyway?” Xiao asked. “Do you need other Vulcans?”

“Ideally, a Vulcan priest or priestess is present—or so the legends say. It is not exactly a well-known practice.”

“We’ll have to get the captain ready,” Trip said in a quiet voice. “Before I lose my damn nerve.”

Chapter 17 Chapter Text

The unlikely team worked far into the night, running tests on Siggy and the accelerator while T’Pol took Archer to the empty quarters onboard. She sat on the bed.

“Jon,” she said, then repeated his name as the room’s console lights caught his eye. He turned toward her, then sat.

“In many ways, I regret what we must do. If I could, I would prevent your death in any universe. I know you may not even grasp my words, but to speak them offers me a measure of comfort. Perhaps as a Vulcan, I should not want or need it. But as a Vulcan who served under a most extraordinary human, it seems fitting that you give it to me. Thank you.” She touched his hand. “I will do all I can for you.”

The door chime sounded.

“Come in,” T’Pol called, and Trip opened the door.

“Hey . . . we’re, uh, ready when you are.”

“Very well.” T’Pol stood and motioned for Archer to follow them.

“Trip!” Archer said amicably, and the young engineer wrestled back tears.

“You’re gonna be fine, Cap . . .” he said, the last word cracking like ice under running water.

This ain’t fair, not at all! What the hell kind of f*cked up horrorscape are we living in, where we’re about to ask a computer to find a timeline where the best man I’ve ever known dies in the least awful way possible? Trip asked himself as they returned to engineering. Maybe it’s true that life isn’t fair, but that just isn’t good enough! Not this time!

T’Pol allowed Trip to come through, and as Archer passed her a moment later, she applied a nerve pinch as they’d planned. Trip turned and caught him as he lost consciousness without a sound. He carried Archer to the wide cot they’d placed nearby. Trip watched her, and then she glanced up.

“I require privacy.”

“Are you sure you don’t need, I don’t know, like a spotter?”

T’Pol took a moment to translate that and shook her head.

“If I understand you correctly, no. I will be fine.”

Trip gave her a slow nod.

“Good luck, then.”

T’Pol gave a slight bow of her head before focusing on Archer. She placed her fingers on his face, touching under his right eye and alongside his nose.

“Give me the core of your being, Jonathan Archer,” she murmured. “I must have it if you are to survive! My mind to your mind, open yours to me—trust me as you did on Enterprise!” She closed her eyes and a pinhole-sized spark appeared in her mind’s eyes, a flicker that shifted colors first a dull citrine and then mercury silver, then blue, the same shade as a Starfleet jumpsuit. The spark began to grow, larger and larger, and then T’Pol felt her mouth fall open as it seemed to swallow her; she felt weightless, translucent . . . unfettered. Above her, Archer’s katra hung like a ripe ple’teek, a fruit that grew in lush bushes in such a remote location of Mount Seleya that a Vulcan may only taste it once or twice in a lifetime. T’Pol reached for it with both hands and it fell into them. It was warm, and firm, its exterior beaded with precious moisture.

Yes, very much like ple’teek . . . I tasted it once, as a small child. It was sweet and running with nectar but also of something—unknown.

One might even say alien.

Yes, alien, but T’Pol was not afraid. She drew the damaged consciousness into her mind and cocooned it inside a protective mental chrysalis. She willed herself out of the trance a few moments later, feeling momentarily nauseous and mentally taxed, as a runner may feel physically after a marathon. T’Pol breathed deeply and stood, gauging how the meld had affected her. She then laid a hand on Archer’s cheek and waited; yes, the human’s mind was vacant. She opened the door to find Trip essentially standing guard, and his expression was one T’Pol recognized as one humans wore when they’re caught doing something they thought they needed doing despite what others told them.

“Are you okay?” The engineer asked, and T’Pol nodded.

“I was successful. The captain can now be moved to the project area so we can monitor his vital signs while we prepare for the timeline search.”

Trip went to Archer and managed to get his still form up over one shoulder, his long legs dangling down Trip’s back.

“How long can you keep that—the kanga?”

“Katra,” T’Pol corrected as they made their way to engineering.

“Right, sorry. Katra.”

“Unknown. I hope we find a viable timeline as soon as possible.”

“Off the record? I hate that we have to do this.”

T’Pol’s dark eyes tipped up to Trip’s blue ones for the space of a heartbeat.

“Off the record . . . I feel the same way.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

When Trip and T’Pol returned to the engineering room, they found Xiao and Ray running scenarios. Trip laid Archer down on a medi-bed and monitored him for a few moments.

“Body functions are stable.”

“What do you have for me?” T’Pol asked the others, and Ray brought up several options.

“In this timeline, the captain contracts an incurable disease that causes body wasting. The cause of death is multiple organ failure. In this one, he freezes to death while trying to escape Rura Penthe.” Xiao pointed to each in turn. T’Pol considered the pros and cons of each.

“The first option seems to have circ*mstances that suit our needs. Performing Fal’tor Pan on the surface of a frozen penal planet does not seem feasible.”

“We’ve programmed Siggy already,” Xiao nodded. The door of the quantum accelerator hissed open, and T’Pol stepped inside. As she waited for the warp engine’s power to trigger the accelerator and cause the leap, a wave of consuming dizziness crashed over her. She felt herself lose all the balance in her legs, yet the accelerator wasn’t running. She lost consciousness a moment later and never heard Aza’s calls of alarm and fear as Xiao, Ray, Trip, and the helpless Captain Archer all vanished without so much as a murmur.

Chapter 18 Chapter Text

At first, Commander Charles Tucker III, “Trip” to nearly everyone who knew him, assumed the bright flash he’d seen was the Onyx’s warp engines overloading. But as the light faded, Trip found himself in the most lush and expansive garden he’d ever seen. Plump, fuzzy bees, drunk with pollen, cruised around flower beds that rioted with colors and pleasant scents. Trip sat up on the bench where he’d awoken.

“Hello?” He called, getting to his feet. “Hey!” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Halllooooo!”

“I do hope you aren’t as alarmed as you sound!”

Trip spun around at the voice so fast that the movement gave him vertigo. He stepped back and the backs of his knees hit the seat of the bench. He flung an arm out for balance as he sat down hard.

The person who’d spoken came into Trip’s line of vision. He had a fair complexion, an unlined and lugubrious face, and brunette hair that seemed to stand up behind his wide forehead. The texture was riotous—not quite curly but somehow voluminous. Hazel eyes, much like Jon Archer’s, regarded him with a concerned gaze that wore a thin edge of mockery. He wore a Starfleet jumpsuit with a captain’s rank. Trip blinked.

“What—who are you? Where is this place?”

“Another insatiably curious human!” This person said in a tsk tsk tone.

“Humor me!” Trip shot back, coming more to his senses.

“My name isn’t important, but since you humans insist on having a singular identity, very well.” He nodded as Trip stood. “You may call me Q.”

“Just Q?”

“Yes. Simple to remember, even easier to spell,” This Q said in what Trip felt was a haughty manner. “Now, come with me.”

“To where?” Trip asked, and frowned as Q walked away as if he simply expected him to follow. “Hey—hang on!” Trip trotted down the path between the flowerbeds. When he reached the end, the surroundings changed—no, that wasn’t the right word. The garden was simply gone and now he seemed to be in the kitchen of an American Southwest ranch-style home circa 1989, old Earth calendar. Wind chimes the color of faded turquoise sang their song with the help of a cool breeze.

“Hello!” Q called as he headed down a hallway dressed in pleasant summer shadows. “I brought him!”

“What—” Trip followed. “Look,” he said as Q opened a door and stepped through. “If I don’t start getting some answers pretty soon, I—” He’d reached the open doorway and for the second time since awakening in this strange reality, he was struck mute.

There were two men in what looked like a comfortable combination personal library/home office. One was tall and athletic with an easy smile, hazel eyes and thick tawny hair marred by a silver streak over his left temple. The other was smaller with short brunette hair and clever dark eyes that hinted at his Italian heritage. Both turned their attention to Trip, who stuttered when he saw their faces.

“You—this . . . this c-can’t—”

Dr. Sam Beckett, who didn’t look a day over 35, stepped forward. He wore faded Levis and a tan pullover.

“Are you all right? Here, sit down.” A chair appeared with a muted twinkle. Do you want some water?” A glass of ice water popped into his right hand.

“You’ve been in the Continuum for how long now, and you still have those tiresome human manners!” Q chided. Perched on the desk’s edge in front of them, Al Calavicci, seemingly a spry 50-something, scoffed as he pulled a cigar from the inner pocket of the plum-colored vest he wore. The dress shirt beneath it was a pale lavender.

“Give the kid a break, Q! In Continuum time, we’ve barely arrived!” The tip of the cigar crackled to life with a motion of Al’s finger and he puffed on the other. The smoke he exhaled carried an iridescent quality, and Trip watched it drift past him, odorless.

Odorless.

Sam pressed the glass into Trip’s hand. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”

Al hopped off the desk.

“But at the same time, we had to stop T’Pol from leaping!”

“T’Pol! What do you know about her?”

“Because we know everything, Commander Charles Tucker III of the NX-01 Enterprise,” Q said in an affected, bored tone. Sam gave him a mildly frustrated look, one Trip had seen on the captain when T’Pol tried to verbally stonewall him.

“The others!” Trip said with a sudden, cold fear.

“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “We haven’t harmed them.”

“And wouldn’t!” Al chimed in. He nodded at Sam. "In fact, my doctor pal here healed some physical trauma that Archer's time with the Klingons gave him." He cleared his throat. "The below-the-belt kind of trauma."

“Well, I’m glad to hear that and thanks, but what is all this? Admiral Calavicci, with all due respect, sir, you’ve been gone a long while now.” Trip gestured. “Uh . . .”

"Dead?” Al asked.

“Yessir.”

“Al is fine, kid,” the older man said, “And the Continuum brought me here after the project got shut down and Q found Sam stumbling around in time without his Observer.”

“We knew it wouldn’t do,” Q said in a mildly theatrical tone, a cup of steaming tea appearing in one hand. Both sides bore Starfleet’s logo. “We didn’t mind a few wrongs being righted, but you don’t leave a blind man stumbling around a strange room, do you?” He made an expansive gesture. “We recognized his brilliance—by human standards anyway—”

“You always have to qualify it like that!” Sam interrupted, and Q flapped a hand at him.

“We understood his potential, so we brought him here and made him and Al one of us.”

“I’m sure you want to see your friends,” Sam said as he helped Trip to his feet. The younger man nodded, startled by Sam’s eyes—a mirror of Captain Archer’s before the Nimbus Wars and the A'Gulk . . . and the Klingons.

“Yes. I don’t mean to stare, Dr. Beckett—”

“Sam.”

“Sam,” Trip agreed. “It’s just that you look so much like the Cap’n, I . . .”

“I get it,” Sam replied with a sincere grin. “I know all about mirrors, Trip.” He motioned the engineer out of the office. Q and Al followed.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I wanted to say first off that I’m impressed you were able to replicate my work to the degree that you did.”

Sam fed seed to a variety of small birds that flitted around his feet in the garden. The birds’ feathers seemed to flicker with colors each time they hopped to catch a tidbit.

“I couldn’t have done it without the team,” Trip said. “But I guess you’d know that.”

“So if we did such a great job, why’d you stop us?” Xiao asked.

“I too am curious, Dr. Beckett,” T’Pol said. “Is there something fundamentally wrong with Siggy?”

“Wrong? No! Your calculations were on the money, and the leap to that other timeline would’ve been successful. But . . . Al? Do you want to show them?”

“Sure.” Al stood and created a display screen with a flick of one hand, its edges transparent. He snapped his fingers and an image of Archer, wrinkled flax-yellow skin stretched over bone, his once-proud Roman nose reduced to a sallow bridge of cartilage. Only two or three lank patches of white hair clung to his scalp, like stubborn cloud wisps on a mountain peak. Trip and T’Pol exchanged grim glances.

“This is the timeline you chose because in it, Archer would die from Demming’s Syndrome, a wasting disease.”

“We figured that was our best option, yessir,” Trip said, focusing on Al so he wouldn’t have to look at that awful image.

“Humans are always in search of the best and still get it wrong,” Q interrupted. “Because in making that exchange, you’d have a profound effect on the timeline.”

“But we ran scenarios—”

“Only up until Archer’s death, mon Ami!” Q replied, making the young engineer frown. The image changed to that of a young black woman in surgeon’s scrubs. “Dr. Sondra Nichols., the bio-genetic and surgical genius who found a cure for Demming’s Syndrome. Do you know how she found it?”

Al gave Q a nudge and the latter allowed Al to continue.

“Archer had a will, and in it, he asked that his physical remains be donated to medical science. His mental faculties were still sharp because the wasting of Demming’s Syndrome doesn’t affect the brain. Dr. Nichols performed her first exams on Archer here—” a graph appeared. “—“Two hours after his death at 20 minutes after nine in the morning.” The image then changed to an AP news headline: 15 dead, Dozens Injured in Shuttle Track Collapse. Al gestured to it.

“This happened three hours after Dr. Nichols was performing the first post-mortem on Archer. If we had allowed you to make the leap and the exchange, it would have prolonged that Archer’s life by about two-and-a-quarter hours. It could be that your Archer’s limited patterns of thought eased the other’s mind and gave him a few additional hours of life.”

“Unfortunately, the altered timeline put Dr. Nichols on one of the shuttles that fell into the Pacific Ocean after a section of shuttle track failed. She drowned, along with four other passengers,” Sam it in. “She was on her way to the special care facility to perform those tests, only she’d never arrive. No cure for Demming’s Syndrome, and thousands die where they would have lived. With each change, that timeline starts to degrade. A century later, it’s unrecognizable. Chaos.” Sam wiped the display screen away with a gesture of one hand.

Silence hung in the air a moment, and then Trip spoke.

“Okay, so you stopped us, I understand, but you’re telling us that giving that version of the captain a few extra hours of life causes an entire timeline to collapse?”

”I’m afraid so,” Sam nodded. “And it would be that way for any alternate timeline scenario.” He sighed. “We can’t let you try again. I’m sorry.”

Trip blinked as if the physicist had slapped him.

“You can’t allow us?” He repeated.

“I’m afraid not. The Continuum protects existing timelines for exactly this reason.”

Q rolled his eyes as Trip’s narrowed.

“Human tantrum, incoming!” He almost sang the last word, and it hooked Trip’s gaze. His blue eyes glittered.

”Shut up, you!”

“Actually, it’s pronounced Q.”

Trip got to his feet. T’Pol reached for him but he avoided her grasp and marched up to Sam. Al stepped in between them. Sam put a gentle hand on Al’s shoulder and stepped around him. T’Pol quelled the moment of alarm this caused; his bio painted him as a kind, patient man with an almost awkward social air despite his genius IQ.

Then again, this man with the genius IQ could wipe Trip out of existence with a flutter of his eyelashes.

But Sam made no move to defend himself as Trip stood nearly nose to nose with him, trembling, his fists clenched. He merely met Trip’s gaze. After nearly a minute, all the tension left him, as if someone had opened a valve deep within him.

“You know it’s wrong,” Sam said in an almost fatherly tone. “You can’t destroy the lives of people who live in that timeline—or any timeline for that matter—for the life of one man.” Sam turned to the others. “I know what Jon Archer means to you. If you see that as cruel, then I’m sorry for it.”

“If you can’t let us interfere with any alternate timelines but the Continuum has all this power, can’t you heal the captain mentally as well as physically?" Ray asked.

“It’s unlikely the Continuum would allow it,” Q replied. “Expending that much power would put us in danger, something others of our kind frown upon. And the physical damage compared to the mental damage is like comparing a turn of a screw with replacing an entire engine!”

“So that’s it?” Trip asked. “You’re just gonna send us home?”

“We’ll let you rest first,” Sam said, regret still apparent in his tone. “Then we’ll set things back on track by returning you all to Onyx.”

____________________________________________________________________

Trip sat by the open window in the comfortable room he’d been shown to, alternately dry-eyed and seething or weighed down by his grief.

We were so close. So f*cking close!

A mild knock on the door pulled Trip from his thoughts, and he got to his feet to answer it.

If it’s that Q fella and he starts up again, I’ll bloody his nose, super being or no! Trip’s thoughts made him scowl and he opened the door. He found Al there, in a black-and-red silk dressing gown belted over blue pajamas.

“Admiral? What can I do for you?”

“Al. After all, I’ve been retired over 150 years.”

"Al,” Trip nodded. “Come in—I mean—it’s your place after all.”

“Well, yes and no. It’s a replicated memory of the modest ranch house Sam and I used to share when we started Project Quantum Leap.” Al smiled as the sound of the wind chimes on the porch reached them.

“So being a Q means being able to choose your environment?”

Al paused long enough to pluck a wrapped cigar from a pocket in his robe.

“More or less. I was damn lucky; the Continuum brought me here to make Sam happy. And it’s not so bad, spending forever in a place where you felt safe. And with someone you love.”

“I imagine so. So, what can I help you with?”

Al held up a hand and a small computer chip appeared between two fingers. Trip gave a curious co*ck of his head.

“What’s that?” He asked, and Al dropped it into Trip’s palm.

“Take it back to Siggy. Install it,” Al said. “It’ll send you into the future within your own timeline and to someone who might be able to heal Archer’s mind.”

Trip stared at it.

“What?”

“It’s not a guarantee, but I’m betting the odds are real good. Siggy can tell you for sure.”

“Do Dr. Beckett and Q know about this?”

“Nope,” Al replied through a cloud of smoke as he lit his cigar.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“All you need to understand is that I know what it means to lose someone who means everything to you. The person who, for whatever reason, saved you. The one who set you on a path you would have never found on your own.” His gaze, warm with memories, met Trip’s. “I’m gonna be honest, Trip—I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going back then without Sam Beckett at my side. After I left that video you discovered, I juggled life and death for months. But I lived because as much as I couldn’t accept life without him, I couldn’t give up on him, either. You can’t give up on Jonathan Archer. I can see it. Even if the Continuum sends you back, you’d never quit trying to find a way to heal him.” Al’s dark eyes brightened and he cleared his throat. “I can’t let anyone else go through that, not if I can help it.” He nodded at the chip. “And if there’s anything of me at all in Ziggy’s updated offspring, so to speak, I’m betting she’ll agree.”

Chapter 19 Chapter Text

PART III: Visalayan

Dr. Miranda Jones, the first human natural-born telepath to form a corporate entity with a Medusa’s, came awake as Kollos spoke in her mind.

There is a new consciousness among us.

“Yes,” Dr. Jones replied as she rose and slipped on a sensor-weaved shawl. While she no longer needed sensor-enhanced clothing while living as a double entity, the sudden appearance of a new consciousness unnerved her.

When T’Pol began to regain her senses once the bluish-white arcs of light the leap caused faded, she realized that everything in her line of sight was tinted green. She raised her host’s hands (large, male, humanoid, five finely-shaped fingers) and touched the visor that covered her eyes. The person (or a leapee, Al had said,) Siggy chose was one of three Vulcans who worked directly with the ambassador on the Medusan homeworld of Visalayan. The Vulcan, Stavar, was the head attache to Kollos and recorded and arranged communication needs for the Medusan’s cabinet.

A glowing door opened to T’Pol’s left and Trip stepped out—or rather, his hologram. He held a sleek, updated version of the handling in one hand. A streaming sequence of lights played tag in a landscape display that reflected in Trip’s eyes.

“I hope that Siggy is correct in her statement that the visage of a Medusan cannot harm a hologram,” T’Pol said. “We saw what happened to Larry Marvick.”

Trip nodded, his expression grave. Siggy had shown them the events on the Enterprise of the future surrounding Dr. Jones, Kollos, and First Officer Spock. He’d found himself amazed and a bit frightened at the same time.

“Well, if we’re lucky, we’ll be speaking to Dr. Jones face to face and not Kollos.”

The doors to the inner sanctum opened a moment later and Dr. Jones stepped in. T’Pol held her ground; she knew what a powerful telepath the woman was.

“It’s you!” She said after a moment. “Who are you? Where’s Stavar? You’re wearing his physical aura like a stolen coat!”

“Please, don’t be alarmed,” T’Pol said. “Stavar is unharmed and will return.”

The invading consciousness is a young Vulcan woman. There is no harmful intent within her. Puzzlement touched Dr. Jones’ mind. She carries another consciousness with her. It is badly damaged.

“I speak for Kollos as he speaks to me. I’m Dr. Miranda Jones, and we are a permanently-joined double entity.”

“I am T’Pol, a Vulcan who served on the NX-01; she was the first to bear the name Enterprise.”

There is much documented about the NX-01 and Captain Archer. He was, by all accounts, a brave human and a fine leader.” Dr. Jones’ voice shifted, the timbre changing. “I am Ambassador Kollos. Welcome to Vislayan.”

“Thank you,” TS’Pol said. “And allow me to apologize for intruding. My companions and I mean no harm. We—” T’Pol hesitated. “We urgently request assistance. I am here from the past—the past of this timeline—in hopes that you can help me heal our captain’s shattered mind.”

A look of excitement danced in Miranda’s sightless eyes.

“How fascinating! Please, come with us to our offices . . . We want to hear the tale.”

___________________________________________________________________

Over the next two hours, T’Pol told the double entity about the Nimbus Wars, Archer’s capture by the A'Gulk, and his long and terrible time as a Klingon slave. An automated refreshment cart made the rounds, and Trip stared at some puff pastry with longing.

“I wish I’d thought to put an auto-vender in the imaging chamber!” He groused.

“I haven’t much more to explain,” T’Pol replied after telling Kollos about Siggy, the Q, and the need to protect alternate timelines.

"And this Trip . . . He remains in the past?” Kollos asked.

“Yes, and he acts as a link between past and future, as well as the Leaper’s present. Admiral Calavicci took on the role of Observer when Dr. Beckett began to leap.”

“Tell him about the chip Al gave me!” Trip said.

“Yes, we—”

“And how the other timeline was at risk!”

“Admiral Cala—”

“And how we—”

“Commander!” T’Pol raised her voice a notch. “Unlike our hosts, you and I do not share a consciousness. I cannot provide important information if you interrupt.”

“Right, sorry.”

“Admiral Calavicci provided us with the data we needed to reach you. According to this future timeline, it’s been approximately six months since the incident aboard Enterprise NCC-1701 when you healed the shattered mind of the ship’s first officer, Mr. Spock.”

The office fell silent. After a moment, Miranda Jones spoke.

“So, we get to it at last,” she said mildly.

“Dr. Jones, we mean no offense by coming here. We intended to use another timeline until the Continuum prevented it. Perhaps you feel as if you owe Starfleet nothing. I would agree. But you touched Jim Kirk’s mind when Spock went mad. You must have known what Kirk felt at the idea of losing him forever.”

Dr. Jones went silent for a moment.

“I feared it,” she said at last. “I feared it because I thought it would smother me, the way Larry’s did. But then I saw that it bloomed outward, as if Kirk’s mind was desperately trying to reach his friend’s sinking mind despite having no telepathic ability. It shocked me out of my self-imposed isolation and I knew I couldn’t shut other people out anymore if I was going to join with Kollos.”

We owe a boon to Starfleet. We would not have become ourselves without the help of the Enterprise crew. How can we ignore such human ingenuity?

Trip watched, the handlink gripped in both hands.

Please, he said to himself. Please, we’re out of options!

“Kollos and I both believe Starfleet was instrumental in him and I becoming one. While we can’t guarantee an outcome, we’ll do our best to heal him.”

Chapter 20 Chapter Text

T’Pol sat on a large, salmon-colored cushion in a meditative pose. The room they’d given her was a quiet, comfortable space, and she was grateful for it as Dr. Jones prepared for the attempted healing of Archer’s mind. His katra slept in the cocoon inside her mind and a small but fearful part of her trembled at the thought of losing this part of him if the healing failed.

The door chimed.

“Come,” T’Pol called.

The door opened to admit Dr. Jones. She wore a blue gown of watered silk—it appeared free of sensors, but then T’Pol assumed KKollos guided her now with just as much precision.

“Are you rested?” She asked, sitting down in front of T’Pol.

“Yes, thank you. Dr. Jones, are you certain you can heal his mind while I carry it?”

“Am I certain? No . . . But you must understand, T’Pol, that no part of this is. I can’t return to the past with you and you couldn’t bring his physical form here.”

“Then this is truly our only option,” T’Pol nodded. “Please, proceed.”

Dr. Jones leaned in as she rubbed her hands together to stimulate blood flow, then crooked her fingers before putting the tips to the young Vulcan’s temples. T’Pol’s consciousness was a lake, a mirrored surface along which memories ghosted and emotions, sunken like secret ships, lay in unknown depths.

Miranda Jones then let go of the physical world and plunged into T’Pol’s mind.

————————————————————————————————————

The mind of a Vulcan was, to Miranda, an ordered, wide desert that appeared still on the surface but hummed with activity beneath. She walked on red, rough-textured sand, but the going wasn’t as difficult as she expected. At one point, a Sehlat ambled in the distance, its aura painted with affection.

Miranda crested a hill and at the bottom was a lone tree. The cocoon containing Jon Archer’s shattered consciousness hung cradled between two branches. In her mind’s eye, Miranda reduced herself to the size of a small butterfly, rose to the cocoon on gossamer wings and slipped inside, Archer’s pain and fear cried out to her telepathic mind almost immediately. She enveloped it with her wings, then in her cupped hands as she transformed into herself again.

“Show me your mind, Jonathan Archer! Give me your pain, your fear, your unabridged and unhindered by the need for speech, for language!”

Archer’s consciousness yawned open then enveloping her in a black abyss irradiated with trauma and confusion. She thought she’d known those things after touching Larry Marvick’s mind once he’d laid eyes on Kollos, but this was different. Archer’s psyche had not been blown apart but dismantled, level by level, with terrible tools wielded by cruel yet gleefully knowledgeable hands. Miranada descended a set of steep, uneven stairs and saw that interlocking mirrors bordered them on both sides, some silver with age, some missing their corners, some cracked with wide spiderweb-shaped damage. Memories slid along the surface of each. Scenes of his time with the Klingons passed, either smeared with or dripping blood. The steps shifted and Miranda pitched forward. An image of Archer, his forehead pressed to a glass surface, stared out at her as she stumbled to the bottom of the steps. His lower lip was split and dribbled blood. He seemed to bob forward and back, but not under its own power. As Miranda watched, a large alien hand clapped over Archer’s bleeding mouth, and then the motions increased. Miranda gasped as the ghost of sensation touched her and she fled down the stairs to another level.

Proceed calmly, Miranda, Kollos said. These are Archer’s memories and can only harm him.

“It was a systematic undoing,” Miranda replied. “Level by level . . .” She found herself in a long hallway, the arched ceiling made of stone. Iron doors sat rusting every few feet, ancient yet unyielding. In each cell, a memory cried out. They reflected in dank puddles and on the surfaces of dirty water that sat in cell buckets. Miranda clasped her hands together as she suddenly glimpsed a path to healing this man.

“We must heal his trauma in the same manner and order as it was undone! Rebuild it as you would rebuild a stone wall!”

And find and replace missing pieces, Kollos agreed, then created an image in their joined mind—an outline of Archer in a cracked-glaze mosaic. We must repair and rejoin the parts.

Miranda observed the way the cells in the hallway changed when she touched each mentally The worst of them cried out the loudest as Miranda and Kollos continued into the descending levels of Archer’s mind, collecting memories and abilities and other parts of his discarded psyche. While Miranda knew only one other starship captain, the desire to live and explore and know was just as strong in Archer as it had been in Kirk.

The final level of Archer’s mind was a place where no light shone. A pleading cry rose up in the dual entity’s mind.

No! Not down there!

A mental door began to slam shut, but Miranda blocked it open and stepped into the darkness.

She found herself in a different hallway immediately, one lined with torches and distant, guttural laughter. The air seemed lined with smoke and the coppery smell of rare meat. Miranda started down the hall, the floor lined with animal hides. As Miranda stepped up to an iron-banded door, a presence appeared behind her, touching her mind lighter than the brush of a rose petal

(a rose by any other name).

Miranda turned.

“Who’s there? Show yourself!”

A shadow moved in the alcove she’d passed a moment ago and Qemljaq, the personal servant of the head of the ruling house of Kronos, stepped forward, his eyes downcast. He wore a leather garment—little more than a pouch of animal hide, really—to cover his genitals and nothing else. A kind of dark alarm filled Miranda; this was the final piece Archer that no one had been able to reach. It had shown itself briefly to Sarek back on Vulcan, only to retreat here, so deep into the depths of Archer’s shattered consciousness.

“Come to me,” she said, and he cringed. His hair, long and shot through with dull grey streaks, hung in a limp tail over one shoulder and knotted with a strip of worn hide. He backed away. Miranda stood her ground but didn’t advance—she knew if she did, he would flee, and this last chance to heal his mind would flee with him.

“I only want to help you. Please, Jonathan Archer, remember your true self!” She held out both hands, as one might for an old, dear friend. The bedraggled human cried out and lunged forward, plunging his fingers in between hers, his face a mask of terror, shame, anger, and a narrow sliver of hope. Miranda brought all her shielding abilities to the forefront and braced herself, crying out as she took in Archer’s final trauma—its terrible memories and the shrapnel it left behind,. Kollos added his abilities to hers, helping her draw it in so the powerful double entity could absorb it. It poured from Archer, its aura bleeding. As Archer wailed during the purge, Miranda felt as if they, she and Kollos, used mental shovels to unearth something that had been buried alive. Yes, this was Archer’s foundation, and if they could make it strong enough to build on, they might be able to return Archer to his former self.

The transference slowed to a trickle and then stopped.

This is a great deal for our neurons to sort and process, Kollos said, and Miranda soothed him as she sensed his burden; Archer’s mind was a jumble and to untangle the memories would take hours. The visage of Jon’s foundation lay quiet and empty at their feet, and Miranda imagined him a wind-battered blue swallowtail butterfly before ascending the levels of Archer’s consciousness, the velvet wings fluttering in her cupped hands.

____________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Beckett Archer, former captain of the NX-01 Enterprise, opened his eyes to find himself lying under a tin ceiling. He lay on what felt like wooden boards but the sensation seemed somehow familiar. He sat up, dressed in jeans and a New Mexico Space Museum tee shirt. He grasped the material.

New Mexico? That was years ago! I remember going with mom and dad and asking for at least a dozen things in the gift shop—I got this shirt and one of those reusable drawing pads you could peel the sticky backing and draw something new. A throwback toy, dad had called it. I had grumbled at first . . .

But later on, he spent many grey fall days in Archer’s Bow with it, a large treehouse Henry’s grandfather built long ago, when Archers first settled in the area around the Mohawk Valley, drawing ships and dreaming of the future.

But I can’t be there, either! That tree fell in a summer storm when I was 14 and smashed Archer’s Bow! The sign I painted for it ended up in a batch of nettles almost half a mile away a few days later!

“That’s because you’re not here.”

Jon gasped and scrambled to one side like a startled kitten.

“I’m sorry,” said the lovely, dark-haired woman who sat on a cushion absconded from Sally Archer’s guest room bed. She wore a blue gown, the folds of which seemed to ripple like seawater. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Who are you?” Jon asked. “And if I’m not here, where am I?”

“We’re inside your mind, in the safest memory you have. My name is Miranda.” She held an oversized book in her arms. “Don’t be afraid.”

“Why are we here?” Jon asked, and Miranda laid the tome on the floor of the treehouse. The pages were crisp and white, free of text and illustrations.

“We’re going to fill these pages with the memories and other parts of your consciousness Kollos and I have gathered. He and I are a double entity and are attempting to heal you.” She held out a hand. “It’s time.”

Jon eyed the book.

“I don’t like remembering.”

“I understand. But you have people waiting for you. T’Pol. Trip.”

Their images appeared on the book’s pages so they faced each other, painted as if by an invisible brush. Miranda nodded.

“They’ve sacrificed a great deal to bring me here,” she said. “Just as you would do for them.”

Tell him of my abilities.

“While I am Miranda Jones, I’m also Kollos, the Visalayan,” she explained. He is a formless being but a powerful telepath who can destroy damaging memories that are too difficult to bear.” She offered her hand again. “Come.”

And this time, Jon Archer accepted.

Chapter 21 Chapter Text

The pages of the book, cotton white, felt like hard-packed snow under Jon’s feet. He and the corporate entity made their way across the expanse, filling in blanks, completing visual images, and scattering small, connective memories like seeds.

When they turned a page, an image of one of the A'Gulk formed, the insectoid image inked red in terror.

“They ate one of my crew,” Jon said, and Miranda coaxed him forward. The memory took shape with each step forward, bleeding into the surface. “He begged for me to help him . . . I was his CO, he trusted me!”

“I believe there is an acceptable risk in joining Starfleet,” Miranda replied. “And trusting someone doesn’t always lead to a positive outcome when you travel in space.” She touched his arm. “And war inevitably leads to loss.”

Jon moved forward then, leaving the memory asleep but accessible.

As they moved through Jon’s mind, Kollos found the human surprisingly resilient. His mind was different than Larry Marvick’s, who died because he couldn’t stand the agony of what he’d seen. Now, as a page turned, Kollos hoped Jon Archer’s bravery didn’t falter.

The surface of the page darkened then; it went from dove grey, then to black, like an empty pen nib filling with ink. Archer halted.

“The Klingons,” he said in a trembling tone.

If we force him to remember, he may retreat so deeply into his own mind that we can no longer reach him.

He must reveal them before you can destroy them! Miranda replied to Kollos. Archer broke and tried to escape, but she grabbed his arm and propelled him forward, ignoring Kollos’ shout of warning and Archer’s cry of terror.

Trust me, Kollos! Please, now if never again, trust me!

The same iron-banded door appeared and came at them, moving at break-neck speed before it exploded, pitching them into a hellscape of unlocked memories.

____________________________________________________________________

If there were pages under Archer’s feet here, they were stitched together with the hides of both animals and humans. The edges of the footprints he left behind had blurred edges from the way he trembled. Stone walls and flickering torches made a reappearance, then enough light filled the space to reveal an ornate chair made from chiseled rock and bone. A large, aggressive-looking Klingon appeared, and Archer cringed back. A multicolored hide, resembling the coat pattern of Earth’s African wild dogs, lay to the right of the large chair.

“Tell me what this is,” Miranda said.

“No.”

"Why not?”

“This is where it happened. Where Koroth unmade me,” Archer murmured, and in that moment, Kollos understood their true role in healing Jon Archer’s mind.

Destroying these memories will not heal him, Miranda.

“What are you saying?” Miranda asked almost sharply.

It will not be enough—not for this. Only one person can face, fight, and overcome Koroth the Enslaver—Jonathan Archer.

Miranda gasped as she sensed Kollos’ intention.

“No!”

We must! It is not enough, Miranda! Do you remember how it was with Larry Marvick? You couldn’t heal his mind because his will to live, to fight, had left him! Archer must prove that will now or forever remain a prisoner of his own memories!

Miranda glanced at Archer, who cowered at the sight of Koroth’s ruling house chair.

May the heavens help us and Jon Archer forgive us, she thought, and allowed Kollos to unleash his mental abilities. Most of the scene remained, but now Koroth was rising from the rock-and-bone throne, staring at his slave, who now wore nothing but a slave’s pouch of tanned animal skin. Now caught in a loop of horrific memories brought to life by Kollos, Archer was Qemjlq once again.

“Who ordered you off your mat, Hole?” Koroth said in a mock-scandalized tone.

“I—”

Koroth backhanded him off his feet with one swing of his huge hand. He landed near Koroth’s favorite targ, which snapped at him as he landed too close to the beast. The assembly of Klingons there shouted laughter and pelted Archer with bits of discarded meat and bones. Koroth planted a booted foot on his servant’s rump and pushed him. Archer grunted as his chin struck the floor, Koroth yanked the tanned pouch from Archer’s body, leaving him naked. He began to slap Archer’s buttocks and tease the targ with the prey he’d presented. This sent the human into a circular stumble as he tried to escape. Finally, Koroth tripped him and he cracked his chin on the floor again. The laughter then took on a tense, predatory edge and the energy in the room changed, the way two or more dogs froze before attacking each other over mating rights.

“Fight!” Miranda cried, knowing this was the thing that had fractured the last of Archer’s hope. After that day, when Koroth shared him around for hour after miserable hour, the fuse that lit Jon Archer from within burned out. The final Klingon to have him swore the human was dead when his turn finally came. ”Fight them! They are only as strong as the energy you give them!”

Archer, now on his hands and knees, raised his head. A childhood memory struggled up from the well of his trauma, climbing the rope ladder to Archer’s Bow, a squirt gun in one hand as he held off imaginary enemies. Kollos caught the memory as one would catch a bouncing ground ball hit by a mediocre batter. The Visalayan rocketed the memory down synapsis and accessed other memories during which Archer used his wits and courage to stay alive. Kollos urged the mental form of Koroth forward to grab Archer by the throat. Archer gasped and then gagged as his feet left the ground.

Kollos, no!

I must, if he is to live!

The scenery melted, then shifted, and Koroth now held Archer over a deep pit at a trafficking and auction planet where the A'Gulk met Koroth and his men for Archer’s exchange. The pit held trash, feces, and other offal, along with countless dead and dying who no longer brought a price. Those who worked on the auction grounds called the pit “The Sobbing Stew” because at night, those unlucky enough to enter the slop alive were often heard crying out in pleading tones to be set free, and later, in agony as some of the used-up servants who weren’t quite dead ate parts of them out of delirium, illness, and starvation. As Archer looked over one shoulder, decomposed faces bobbed on the fetid surface, which roiled with blowflies.

Later, Kollos would wonder if he put the fight in Archer that day or if it was the repressed childhood memory that screamed itself awake at the sight of the pit had. Driven by Miranda’s desire to heal this human, Kollos forced another memory to Archer’s frontal lobe and both met at a mental axis, plunging Jon Archer into his past once more.

____________________________________________________________________

”Jon? Jon, come help your Nana!”

Jon Archer, just turned eight, set down the kite he’d been repairing on the front porch of their Upstate New York home. It was almost July, and his dad was going to teach him kite racing this weekend. He hopped off the glider and went into the house.

His mother stood in the kitchen with Granny Archer, who measured exactly 4’11” and ran the house like a benevolent general. She wore glasses adorned with tiny crystal butterflies at the corners and one of a dozen patterned aprons she owned over jeans and a simple blue pullover blouse. She ruffled Jon’s hair with a small hand.

“Jonny, be a peach for me and go up into the attic for my good silverware? I want to have it cleaned. You know where the box is, don’t you?”

“Sure!” And off he’d gone to the home’s widow-peak attic on the 4th floor, above his dad’s office. It was a small room, closed off by a thick oak door with a fat crystal knob that Jon sometimes pretended was a giant's treasure.

He opened the door and climbed the set of eight stairs, frowning; it was always damp in the attic stairwell. He pushed open the unfinished door at the top of the steps, his nose wrinkling as he did so.

Phew, what’s that—

And then Jon opened the door to a roiling cloud of blowflies, sent into the air by his presence. Jon froze for nearly seven seconds, struck mute with terror. The stench of decay filled his nostrils as the flies, their bodies flashing bronze, blue, and green, flew into his face. He felt their legs strike his cheeks and bump against his ears, the volume of their drone deepening as they hovered close.

Then Jon’s terror broke and he screamed, clawing and swinging at his own face and head. He tumbled back down the steps and struck the opposite side of his father’s office door.

It was a dead raccoon and two kits that brought the flies, someone from the extermination company told Jon’s dad.

“Poor thing didn’t survive having her babies and they ended up starving. She must’ve gotten into the attic through the roof—I’d have it checked, Mr. Archer.”

Jon’s grandma made much of him, holding an ice pack to the bump on his head and soothing him with her homemade peach ice cream. As he grew, Jon buried the terrifying incident inside his mind, layer by layer. Now here it was again, rocketing up through his subconscious to collide with the other memory Kollos sent, one of the most difficult and exhilarating times of his life—survival training for Starfleet. His CO, a massive man with a barrel chest, shouted from inside his own skull. He’d been an expert in hand-to-hand combat and had taught him to use his opponent’s own body weight to gain leverage.

“Break the hold! Archer! Break the hold, break the—”

Archer. Archer, Archerrrrrrr . . . .

Archer! I—I am not Qemljq . . . I am—I am Jonathan Archer!

This memory, combined with a renewed desire to survive and a terrified need to avoid the blowflies, took advantage of his position. He drew his long legs up and pistoned both feet into the Klingon’s bare midsection. Koroth staggered back, dropping Archer as he snarled in pain. Cries from the pit echoed back. Archer rolled onto his side as the people in the pit moaned to him, wordless, and the blowflies hummed as Koroth charged him.

“I will tear you open with my co*ck until you bleed out and then sell your carcass by the pound!” This image of Koroth roared.

As the Klingon stepped into Archer’s field of vision, Archer reached up and gripped the armor on Koroths shoulders and yanked him forward, hiking a foot into the Klingon’s midsection. For one moment, Koroth and his former slave were nose to nose, and Archer’s green eyes glinted with anger and emotion.

“I’m Jonathan Archer!” His hands moved to Koroth’s face and he plunged his thumbs into the Klingon’s eyes, feeling nothing but satisfaction as he felt the orbs burst. “And my body and mind don’t belong to you anymore!” He hiked Koroth up and over his head, sending him down into the pestiferous pit. Koroth hit its contents as Archer rolled away from the edge to lie on his side, panting, as the creatures of the Sobbing Stew pulled Koroth beneath its flyblown surface. As the scene began to fade, he heard Kollos speak to him in a gentle, almost fatherly voice.

Well done, Jonathan Archer. Well done.

Chapter 22 Chapter Text

When Archer next opened his eyes, he found himself staring up at a peaceful, starry sky. The curve of a translucent planet provided an almost alien backdrop that prodded his healing mind with a memory.

“Vulcan,” he murmured, sitting up and gazing at the sky.

“Hello, Jon.”

The voice startled him but then he realized it was only T’Pol, sitting down beside him. She tucked her small, bare feet up under her thighs.

“T’Pol? What am I doing on Vulcan?”

“This is a mental projection of Vulcan. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I—I’m not sure. I was on Enterprise. We were in the middle of a conflict.”

“The Nimbus Wars. The conflict is ended and we defeated our enemies. You were taken prisoner and your mind was injured. Currently, I carry your consciousness, which I, Commander Tucker, and others took a great many steps to heal. Now it is time for you to return to yourself.”

Archer gazed up at the night sky.

“How do I do that?”

“With some techniques a few new friends were kind enough to teach me. We’re prepared to return home now, and Trip and I, as well as the others, will explain it all to you.” She paused. “When you learn of my recent actions, you may not be pleased with all of them.” She gave him that furtive glance she sometimes did when felt she’d maybe done something wrong. “You may even believe we wasted resources and time to save one life. But when Trip and I discussed it, we decided that you are more than one man, as you mean many things to all the people whose lives you have touched.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Are you ready? The team says it is time to go home.”

“Team?”

“Don’t worry. I will explain when we meet again.”

____________________________________________________________________

While Ziggy hadn’t always behaved in ways Sam Beckett and his team expected, Siggy proved much more dependable. She returned T’Pol to the past and sent Stavar home. Trip was the first to meet her as she awoke. Jon Archer’s physical shell, healed of its worst damage thanks to advanced Vulcan medical techniques, lay in a medibed nearby.

“T’Pol!” Trip touched her hand. “Is that you? Are you all right?”

“Yes, to both questions.” She sat up as the rest of the team came in.

“Holy sh*t!” Ray said, all but skidding to the bed. “Holy Harry, Hail Mary, it worked!”

Trip gave him a withering stare. Ray rounded his shoulders.

“Sorry. I rhyme when I get excited.”

“Welcome back,” Xiao said. “What was it like?”

“I cannot say if there is a singular phrase that would describe it.” She accepted Trip’s hand as she got up from the medibed and regained her balance. “How much time has passed here since the leap?”

“Nearly 96 hours,” Trip said. “But your vitals stayed steady.”

“Then you are all deserving of congratulations. It appears Siggy is a complete success,” T’Pol noted, then went to where Archer lay, still and silent.

“You are home, Jon Archer,” she murmured. “We are both home.”

____________________________________________________________________

”What’s taking so damn long?”

Trip paced as he glanced toward the room Archer occupied since he’d come to Vulcan. The others watched. “She’s been in there for almost six hours now!”

“Archer isn’t an engine with a damaged relay,” Xiao said. “Even with what Kollos taught T’Pol about transference, putting Archer’s consciousness back where it belongs is no easy feat.”

“I just wish she’d have let me stay with her,” Trip said. “Something could’ve gone wrong and we’d never—”

The click of the room’s door latch cut Trip off and he turned so quickly that he nearly stumbled over a footrest.

“T’Pol!” He went to her. The Vulcan appeared sallow and exhausted, but she gave a nod.

“I have completed the transference.”

“Are you all right? Is the cap’n awake?” Excitement and anxiety thickened his Florida coastal accent.

“His healed consciousness is back where it belongs,” T’Pol said. “But I will not know the extent of my success until he awakens.”

“How long?” Trip asked.

“Unknown. Perhaps you can sit with him. I require rest.”

“Sure! I imagine you must be beat,” Trip nodded. “The others and I will keep an eye on him.”

“Thank you, Trip. Please alert me when he awakens.”

____________________________________________________________________

As T’Pol slept, Trip, Ray, and Xiao kept watch over Archer and ate biscuits with Vulcan seeded fruit jam. Trip nodded afterward, his arms folded, chin resting on his chest. As Ray and Xiao shared the last biscuit, the Orion spoke up.

“You know how T’Pol said that Siggy is a success?”

“Sure,” Ray nodded as he licked a bit of jam off one finger.

“Once Archer wakes up, there won’t be any reason for me to stay on Vulcan anymore. Onyx has the permits the Safety Council required and I want to take Siggy with me so she can help me find my sister. Besides, I don’t want Starfleet getting hold of her. They’d only take her apart to see if they could make more like her, like some mass-produced toy!”

“What do you think Trip will say?”

“I think Siggy was a means to an end for him. He might care about what happens to her, but for him, it was all about healing Archer.” They hesitated. “Siggy is alive because of the Onyx. She was—well, born there, I guess is what I mean.”

“As an engineer and someone who worked on her too, I know how you feel.”

“I believe that.” They cut their eyes away for a moment. “Pity you can’t come with me.”

“You? Wishing for companionship from someone other than Aza? Are we still in the right universe?” Ray clutched a set of imaginary pearls. Xiao raised a mock-threatening fist.

“Keep on, human, and you’ll go back to the Enterprise with a black eye!”

Ray only grinned.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

Xiao began to reply when their heightened senses warned they were being watched. At the same time, Ray’s eyes widened.

“Holy . . .” He reached over and shook Trip’s shoulder. “Chief!”

Trip woke with a start and blinked up at his crewman.

“What?” He asked, and Ray nodded at the bed, where Archer watched them with the muzziness of someone coming out of a deep sleep. Trip got to his feet and approached the bed, his heart beating in an increasing tattoo as Archer’s eyes, aware and clearing, tracked his movements. Trip swallowed against a dry throat.

“Cap’n?”

Archer stared at his friend.

“Trip?”

The younger man nodded, his throat aching.

“What happened?” Archer asked. “Where have I been?”

And Charles Tucker III, who hadn’t allowed his emotions to get the better of him since that night aboard Onyx, stumbled to one knee and wept at his friend’s bedside. Archer’s hand, the touch gentle, familiar, squeezed his shoulder and then touched his head until Trip’s storm of emotion passed.

____________________________________________________________________

Days went by and Archer grew stronger. He’d lost weight during his time on Vulcan, along with some muscle tone, but by the end of the first week, he was taking short walks in the evening cool and his appetite grew.

His memory before the war seemed mostly intact, and the gaps that remained were more merciful than troublesome. Archer remembered his capture by the A'Gulk and Koroth’s terrible throne, but the rest was like an old watercolor painting, with some areas too faded to view completely. One night, T’Pol asked him if he remembered escaping Kronos.

“Klingon government isn’t very stable. For every ruling house, there’s another clan that wants to take over, and that’s what happened. There was a large skirmish one night, and Koroth was defeated. I still had my instincts, and I knew the new head of the ruling house would slit my throat or feed me to the targs—when a ruling house changes, all traces of the former ruler are destroyed, including their servants. Some of the Klingons loyal to the new ruler filled a detachable garbage scow with Koroth’s body, his fallen men, and a bunch of other trash. I crawled inside when no one was there and played dead. They ejected the scow the next day—that planet I ended up on is inside the Klingon Empire, and I guess it’s just one of their many dump-off spots. I knew Koroth was dead but without my former memories, I lit out for the jungle there instead. That’s where Xiao found me.”

“You were fortunate that planet’s gravity allowed the scow to soft land,” T’Pol said. It was one of the many fortunate moments that allowed Archer to survive.

T’Pol and the others filled in details about Siggy, their encounter with Sam Beckett and the Q, and how Al gave Trip what he needed to travel forward and find Miranda Jones and Kollos.

One evening, about a month after Archer came to, T’Pol found him on the rear patio, gazing out at the skyline. He glanced up as her shadow moved and alerted him.

“Hey, T’Pol.”

“Am I intruding?”

“Not at all.”

T’Pol sat down next to him.

“Xiao is leaving tomorrow. With Trip and Ensign Webber back on Enterprise, it will no doubt seem strange. It’s curious; I became quite fond of Xiao and the ensign.”

“None of this would have been possible without them,” Archer agreed. “But you were the one who never gave up on me. You risked everything, including your own life, to bring me here and heal me.” Archer turned toward her. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can say or do to repay you.”

T’Pol considered this a moment.

“I did not choose the path I did so you would feel indebted to me. As a Vulcan, my loyalty never wavered and I chose to do what Starfleet would not. You gave so much of yourself, including your own life, had we not intervened. I know humans often say life isn’t fair, but for a Vulcan, platitudes do not suffice when one can take action instead—as unconventional those actions may seem to others.”

“Like time travel?” Archer smiled.

“Precisely.”

And so they watched the evening come on, both human and Vulcan.

“I did those things as a Vulcan,” T’Pol said after a moment. “But to heal your mind, to make you whole, one might say that I did that because of your humanity, your determination to know me despite the initial mistrust and anger you felt for my people.” Her dark eyes glimmered. “That, to me, is invaluable. And I could not accept the loss.” She allowed herself a small smile, almost hidden in Vulcan’s gloaming.

“I could not accept losing my closest friend.”

A flock of silver birds made their way to a nearby roost, their waning shadows gliding across red sand, as human and Vulcan watched in companionable, healing silence.

Chapter 23: Epilogue

Chapter Text

Captain’s Personal Log, April 5th, 2162

Sitting in Enterprise’s captain’s chair each day still feels like coming home, even though I’ve been back in command for a month now. I suppose it’s my good fortune that Captain Dudley realized he prefers commanding a smaller vessel and wanted to return command of Enterprise to me, and that Starfleet agreed.

With T’Pol back on board as my science officer and Trip in the engine room, it really does feel like old times.

Trip told me he got a subspace communication from Ensign Webber, although these days he just goes by Ray. He resigned his commission recently to travel with Xiao and their sister, located and recovered thanks to Siggy. They’re going to use Siggy to observe different timelines in a way that won’t change their flow, and I wish them nothing but the best.

As for myself, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, and I know how lucky I am. My ancestor Sam Beckett, Al Calavicci, Xiao, Trip, Ray, Miranda Jones, and Kollos . . .they came together despite their differences and initial mistrust to help heal one broken human, and if anything, that gives me the one thing I need to continue Enterprises’ ongoing mission.

It gives me hope.

THE END

The Nimbus Quandry - Lexalicious70 (2024)

Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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Chapter 9

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Chapter 10

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Chapter 11

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Chapter 12

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Chapter 13

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Chapter 14

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Chapter 15

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Chapter 16

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Chapter 17

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Chapter 18

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Chapter 19

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Chapter 20

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Chapter 21

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Chapter 22

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Chapter 23: Epilogue

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References