Chapter 5: Twisted Logic

"What the hell is this all about?" Trip asked, walking next to the captain. "You ask T'Pol for a private chat and - boom - here come Forest and Soval?"

"I'd say your theory about her motives has raised a few alarms," Jon said. "There's definitely something going on behind the scenes and I can't shake the feeling we weren't supposed to find out – or at the very least - not yet. Can't say I like being left in the dark."

"You think she's been installed as a spy?" Trip asked, questioning his prior judgment. After all, they only had Hoshi's statement that T'Pol claimed she didn't like the High Command. That was easy to say. Maybe he had let his judgment be clouded by her generous offer to help with the documents and her general willingness to fit into the crew?

"I don't think so," Archer said, interrupting Trip's wandering thoughts. "I have a feeling her posting was not as temporary as we were made to believe. If she were a spy, I think Reed would have sniffed her out by now. You said yourself that he's some kind of former spook. That means he knows what signs to look for."

"I thought this was all about exploring and now we're caught up in politics by the looks of it," Trip said frustrated.

"When the Vulcans are involved, it's always about politics," the captain replied with an equally frustrated undertone. "Let's wait what they have to say. It could be something completely different even though I doubt it."

"Good morning, Ensign," Malcolm offered as a greeting when he walked into the linguistics lab. As always Ensign Sato returned it with a blindingly beautiful smile. He had to fight the urge to smile back. It was hard enough not to show how much it affected him, especially as he had quickly noticed that except for the bloody redneck from engineering and himself, no other officer received a smile quite this radiant from the beautiful ensign.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, he rued his fate in his mind. Leave one job that makes it impossible to have a woman and get caught up in one where it is forbidden to begin with – bloody brilliant.

When he had shaken his self-pity she was still looking at him.

"Have you you found out what frequency band these buggers were using?" he asked, looking at the selection of small devices on the palm of his hand.

"Oh, that wasn't too difficult," she said and Malcolm noticed a distinct amusement in the young ensign's voice. "The whole frequency band they were transmitting on is assigned to the Vulcan Embassy. And you were right; they are simple listening devices with the most ridiculously easy-to-crack encryption I've ever seen."

"The Vulcan embassy installed these listening devices on our ship?" he said, angry and frustrated that the first thing he had to deal with was, that the ship had been bugged by an outside force.

"Looks like it."

"I believe I need to have a word with our Subcommander," he snorted. "I don't think listening in to what happens in the Captain's ready room or the armory is part of a science officer's job description."

"Are you sure it was the Subcommander?" she argued. "I believe her when she says that she's not exactly fond of the High Command. Why would she spy on us for them. It doesn't make sense."

"Words are cheap, Ensign," he replied. "She has been a trifle too accommodating so far, don't you think? If you listen to Commander Tucker, you'd think she's the biggest thing since sliced bread. I had to listen to him waxing lyrically about how much she helped with getting the documents done for the Captain. She allegedly types faster than he can read, does complex mathematical calculations in her head faster than he can program them into the computer. That's an awfully sophisticated training for an ambassadorial aide, wouldn't you say?"

"Are you sure you aren't just paranoid?" she asked. "According to the ships log there have been dozens of Vulcans on the ship during the construction and who knows, maybe they just bribed someone of the crew to install them."

"Bloody Norah, how could I forget that!" he spat and hastily opened his communicator. "Reed to Ensign Taylor!"

"Taylor here."

"Capture protocol 'Ear', countdown minus thirty."

"Capture 'Ear', T minus thirty, aye."

"Bloody hell," Malcolm began to berate himself for his sloppiness, but he was stopped by the com chime.

"Archer to Reed."

Malcolm walked over to the com panel and replied to the hail.

"Lieutenant, would you mind joining us at airlock seven?" the captain requested.

"On my way, sir," Malcolm said and turned back around towards Hoshi. "Thank you for spotting my ... oversight, Ensign."

He turned and left the room.

"Now I just need to convince Phlox to surgically remove that stick you've got up your ass, Lieutenant," Hoshi said with a sigh and a lopsided grin, but the target of her quip and her dreamy glance was already out of the door and couldn't hear it.

Malcolm arrived at the airlock, where Captain Archer, Subcommander T'Pol and that blond-haired redneck were already waiting. The Captain looked, well captain-ish, calm and collected, while the mien of the Vulcan gave away exactly nothing. She could bankrupt the lot at a poker game, he thought, determined to find out if she had anything to do with the current situation.

The bloody American, well he was his usual self – grinning at everyone like a blithering idiot, engaging the Captain in useless smalltalk. He had a hard time believing that this was the man, who had come up with a theory that hit so close to home it would prompt both the Admiralty and the Vulcans to see fit coming for a visit. For what he had seen of the man so far, he ticked each and every box on the stereotype checklist for rednecks, including, but certainly not limited to, the atrocious accent at times.

His mental evaluation of the fellow officers was cut short by the loud beep that announced the end of re-pressurization. The airlock door opened and their two visitors stepped out.

"We should take this conversation to a more private location at all haste," Soval said without as much as a greeting and the captain directed them to the captain's mess.

As soon as they had arrived, both Soval and Admiral Forest started to walk all over the room with scanners until both came to stand in front of him.

"Are the gentlemen by any chance looking for these?" Malcolm asked them dryly and took a handful of the miniature devices out of his pocket and piled them up on the table.

"How many have you found?" Soval asked.

"Fifty-three," Malcolm said with a snort. "They were literally all over the ship. We even found some that were sewn into the hem of my undershirts.

"Someone bugged your underwear?" the captain asked in visible disbelief. Even the bloody redneck had the decency to look scandalized.

"Obviously. What better way to undermine a ship's security than listening in to what its security officer has to say," Malcolm replied.

"What is your assessment of their sophistication, Lieutenant," Soval asked him, stowing away his scanner.

"Some of the hiding places where actually quite good," he explained. "But the devices themselves are the work of a bloody amateur. Their transmitter unit is completely unshielded, so our communications officer noticed the unaccounted-for radio traffic the first time she fired up her console and the encryption – I quote – was 'ridiculously easy to crack'. Whoever had these installed either thinks we are complete retards who roam the streets at night, licking windows or we've uncovered the galaxy's most useless spy."

"The latter," Forest and Soval said in perfect unison, causing the human contingent to chuckle, well all except himself.

"Would you care to tell us what this is all about?" the captain asked and Malcolm could see that despite his momentary amusement, the man took the situation quite personally. That would make them two already.

"What we are about to disclose to you is to be considered highly classified information," Forest said. "Nobody not currently in attendance must learn of what Soval is about to say. Did I make myself clear?"

All officers answered in the affirmative.

"Four years ago, V'Las, a long-time member of the High Command ascended to the highest post in the governing body – that of Administrator," Soval began his narrative. "He is one of the Elders of clan dvinsu ekon-ak, a smaller clan that never played a prominent role in Vulcan politics or the society at large. Shortly after his ascension to power several older ministers were forced to resign, ostensibly due to their old age and were replaced by younger men, all of which came from the clan dvinsu ekon-ak or houses allied to it through strategically arranged marriages."

"The classical groundwork for establishing a dictatorship," Malcolm noted.

"Indeed," Soval acknowledged and continued. "In recent months the purging of dissident voices has become increasingly aggressive. In several cases the whole house, sometimes even the wider clan are summarily punished. Lately these purges have been extended to diplomatic personnel of our Embassy here on Earth."

"And T'Pol's one of them?" the chief asked. Malcolm fought down a snort. The bloke couldn't even adhere to proper protocol. He doubted severely that a Vulcan of all people had offered him to be on a first name basis.