Chapter 20: Uncertain Path

Careful not to make any sound, Falkner pushed a branch aside, catching a glimpse of where Admiral Zagayev was going. Now why would the Commander in Chief of Starfleet, successor of the sacked Sam Gardner, visit a busy industrial estate during lunch-time a second day in a row?

When the Admiral disappeared into one of the offices, Falkner looked for a way to follow him. It was a bet with lousy odds that the scene he was going to witness would probably be the same sickening procedure as yesterday, only that today he had a bug and a hidden camera in place to record the event and didn't need to risk detection. Now it was just a case of downloading the data.

Crossing one hundred meters of tarmac unseen would be impossible, unless he managed to blend into the scenery, but he had spent enough time scoping out the place to know that a good solution was not far.

He jumped out as a forklift passed by, and in a swift movement the driver was incapacitated and tossed aside into the undergrowth. He saw the unconscious body disappear into the greenery as his accomplice Gardner dragged it further in to hide it from view. Normally he wouldn't work with amateurs, but Gardner was the only one he could rely upon, seeing that they were sacked from Starfleet.

The vehicle barely swerved as Falkner skillfully regained control of it and steered it to a ramp not far from the office that Zagayev had disappeared into. Fortunately there was a spare hi-vis jacket on the back of the truck's seat so he hurriedly shrugged it on in case anyone noticed he wasn't wearing one and came over to ask awkward questions. To maintain his cover, he started to transfer empty barrels between loading bays, keeping the door of the office shack in sight.

It didn't take more than ten minutes for Zagayev to come back out, and Falkner steered his forklift towards a darkened loading bay to avoid detection, careful not to speed up or give any sign that he was what he appeared to be – just an anonymous site worker, interested in nothing but the weary grind of moving barrels. Parking up inside, he pretended to be checking something on the vehicle's control panel, but out of the corner of his eye he kept an eye on the yard. The Admiral looked around often, but the camouflage of the hi-vis made a humble worker effectively invisible; Zagayev's gaze passed across him indifferently. Barely two minutes later, a Vulcan walked out of the office.

It was the same guy he had seen the day before, and a shiver ran down Falkner's spine. Not since Harris's pet mind-rapist Tarok had he seen a Vulcan with such a lunatic facial expression – one that had 'psychopath' written all over it.

Once Gardner had sent the agreed sequence of vibrations to his communicator, notifying him that both Zagayev and the Vulcan had left the premises, he drove his fork-lift over to the office, where he brought it to a halt and, with a last cautious glance around to make sure he was unobserved, started downloading the data from both surveillance devices.

Now it was a matter of getting the data to the rogue First Fleet. He remembered that there was an office vacant not far from here. Slightly tainted by a burn mark on the carpet, of course, but with a non-registered subspace terminal. And it was easy to break in if one knew the secret codes.

Admiral Valdore walked into the Praetor's office, knowing that his life had run its course. All he could hope for was that his private spies on Earth would finish his plans. He had set the operation in motion to topple D'deridex and become Praetor himself, but at least it would now serve to save his family from sharing his own fate.

The dark face of the Praetor left no doubt about the purpose of the meeting. He wasted no time on superfluous preliminaries before launching the attack.

"Seven thousand, four hundred and twenty-six warriors and engineers died, Valdore." His voice began low, but rose to a scream. "Seven thousand, four hundred and twenty-six! We have no more shipyards and the Coalition now has a ship that can easily match a warbird. Since their shipyards are still intact, they will soon have more!"

"May I remind you, who told them where to find our shipyards? It was the same vang'radam you flattered as if he was your own son?" the Admiral growled back, unflinching. He was going to die anyway, so he might as well let the veruul behind the desk have a piece of his mind. So many things had burned and festered within him for all these months. What would it profit him to die with them unsaid? At least with the words uttered he could die in peace.

Nobody had ever offered D'deridex such insolence. He almost swayed with the shock. "You will be silent, Valdore!"

"Know this, mighty Praetor," Valdore snarled, making the title an open insult. "Even as we speak, operatives that answer only to me and my family are on Terrha working on destroying this Coalition. I hired them to get you off your throne and take your place. Now they will be what safeguards my family and keeps you from losing power. The people have no admiration for failures, and you don't have many victories to proclaim."

"Take him out!" the Praetor demanded, seemingly almost on the verge of hysteria. With a mocking salute, Valdore walked outside, followed by the firing squad.

He screamed in agony as the disrupter fire started to dissolve his flesh. Fortunately, it seemed that at least some of the soldiers secretly sympathized with him. Not all of the weapons were set on minimum.

It was painful, but at least it was relatively swift.

"He's two hours overdue," Jonathan Archer said, sitting in the captain's chair of Hammer Of War. The ship had been patched up hastily and was now en route to Earth with Buran, under the command of T'Len. Several Andorian and two Vulcan cruisers were also in the convoy, ready to engage Starfleet if it was necessary, but Jon preferred to save what was left of the coalition. The irrational orders from Starfleet had caused severe problems among the four species, and the fact that they had made a hard-line separatist like Admiral Zagayev the successor to Gardner certainly hadn't helped any.

"Falks may be late, sir, but he will get the information to us. He can't exactly walk into a post office to call us," a clearly irate Malcolm Reed shot back sarcastically.

Jon looked over at his former tactical officer. Time had been when that kind of disrespect would have earned Malcolm a sharp reprimand, but then time had been when it would be the last thing the Brit would have contemplated displaying. A lot of water had passed under the bridge since they'd all set out aboard Enterprise for the first time, and a lot of things had changed. None of them for the better, in his opinion. And not a whole lot in Malcolm Reed's world either, it seemed.

He'd never thought he would see the Brit, who redefined the concept of 'stiff upper lip', cry, but when the matriarch of T'Pol's clan had died after her desperate attempt to save T'Pol, he had seen the battle-hardened man reduced to tears. It was a picture that still haunted him.

The news about Trip had hit them all hard. After two more seemingly endless surgeries, Phlox and Dr. Lucas were now convinced that Trip would have control over his bladder and digestive tract – provided he ever regained consciousness in the first place. This would spare him the cruel fate of having to wear diapers for the rest of his life, but considering that he would still have to live out his days blind and bound to a wheelchair, that was only a mild consolation.

A much bigger consolation was that T'Pol had regained consciousness and had taken the news with less distress than anyone had expected. The one hope that kept Jon going was that T'Pol would sure as hell now abandon her life-long fascination with micro-singularities and spend all her scientific prowess on researching ways to undo the damage that had been done to her mate. Somehow he took comfort in the feeling that one day Trip would walk or see again, perhaps even both. Such was the confidence he had in his former science officer. If she set her mind on something, she would get it done, no matter if it took months or years.

Hoshi and T'Pol had been left back at Salem One. Hoshi was required to stay there a little longer in any case as her short stint as an underground guerrilla had not done her healing wounds any favors; and there was no easy separating T'Pol from Trip anyway.

The beep on Malcolm's PADD told him that the long-awaited communication was coming in. Normally he would prefer to be kept in the loop, but he could hardly push Starfleet protocol on a rogue ship and he knew that by taking the message in the ready room, Malcolm was giving him plausible deniability in case the almost inevitable court-martial came.

"What the fuck did we just see?" Gardner raged after Falkner had sent the recording to Hammer Of War.

"The same that made you forget almost a week of your life," Falkner explained. "You can call it a mind-rape. A Vulcan forcefully mind-melds with you and plants false memories and hidden commands in your brain."

Gardner thought about it for a moment. "That's why this industrial estate seemed familiar to me, isn't it? I too went there every day to have my brain messed up by that pointy-eared asshole."

He saw Falkner nod gravely.

"How can you know this?"

"Harris had a pet psychopath like that one. The section did the same to Malcolm Reed and a whole host of other good operatives."

"That's why he called himself Hadrian!" Gardner realized.

"Yes, somehow his forced schizophrenia was triggered. God knows how he did it, Malcolm seems to have overcome it. He was back to normal this morning. Talked about a Vulcan killing his 'dark katra'. A Vulcan gave it to him, so it stands to reason that only a Vulcan can cure it."

"I knew Harris was a despicable asshole," Gardner ranted. "But that he went as far as that!"

"He had lost connection to reality a long time ago. Why do you think Malcolm and I walked out on him?"

"You killed him didn't you?" Gardner said, pointing to the floor of Harris' former office. "And not with a Starfleet issue weapon either. I've seen these burn marks before. Each and every one of them meant a Rommie had offed himself on Salem One before we retook it."

Falkner nodded wordlessly.

"Good man," Gardner said dryly. "Now let's see if we can help Archer and Reed clean up this mess."

Jon slowly gravitated towards the right side of his chair, away from Malcolm Reed who had come out of the ready room wearing what could only be described as a 'thousand yard stare'.

"If you would excuse me for an hour, sir," the Brit stated in a lifeless voice, "I need some time to wreck the gym."

Without waiting for his captain's answer, he walked off into the turbo lift. The whole bridge crew recoiled in horror as a blood-curdling scream of rage and agony could be heard through the doors, fading away as the lift descended into the bowels of the ship.

Zagayev stared at his screen, watching in horrified incredulity as the Nork class Tellarite cruisers left orbit when Archer and his rogue fleet arrived in the solar system. They didn't attack the rogue ships – they joined them. The last ship still left was Enterprise, docked on Jupiter station, but no hails were answered. He was an Admiral without a fleet.

Left without options, he took out the phaser from the top drawer of his desk, put it to his temple and pulled the trigger.

"Where exactly are we going, Malcolm, and what was that show about two days ago?" Jon demanded as Reed steered the shuttle down. Had he not forced his way aboard, the Brit would have gone on his own.

Wordlessly, the other man put a data chip into the computer and played a recording.

"Tolaris!" Jon gasped in horror, when he saw the mad-looking Vulcan putting his hands to Admiral Zagayev's face.

"Bring me Gardner," the Vulcan demanded, clearly deeply sunk in a mind-meld. "He resisted and wanted to kill my T'Pol instead of giving her to me. He has to die. I shall disembowel his treacherous body and devour his organs with the greatest pleasure after I have taken her. She will be mine! I shall take pleasure in her cries for help and mercy. She deserves punishment for refusing me. Now that her human is dead, I shall have her. Bring her to me. Bring Gardner and T'Pol to me! She is mine. You cannot refuse."

Jon covered his mouth with his hand and tried to swallow a surge of bile as the recording was displayed on the screen.

"What? The human is not dead? Why is she so far away? Who is the one who took her away from me? Tell me his name! 'Malcolm'! I shall consume him, too. He too must die. Clueless Rihanssu. They freed me and thought I would work for them. Valdore will not be pleased."

There was a pause in which the Vulcan's face took on an irritated look. It seemed as if Zagayev was putting up a fight. Tolaris' features distorted into an ugly grimace of rage.

"Why do you want to know that? Stop resisting. Bring me my prize, bring her, nothing else is of consequence. BRING HER TO ME! SHE'S MINE!"

Jon looked on in horror as the Vulcan used his telepathic abilities to inflict what must be unspeakable pain on Zagayev's brain, making the human groan and weep in agony. Finally Tolaris let go of the hapless admiral, and the human stumbled off with a completely lifeless look, void of emotions and conditioned to serve the Vulcan's bidding.

"I would ... challenge you for the right to kill him," Jon said weakly, wiping the taste of bile from his mouth. "But I take it you have the experience to make it as painful and excruciating as possible?"

He saw Malcolm nod wordlessly. The gray eyes of the Brit were as hard and cold as slate in winter rain.

T'Pol and Hoshi sat at a remote table in Salem One's mess hall.

"How are you?" Hoshi asked. She hadn't seen T'Pol in two days as Phlox had made her return to the hospital zone.

"Considering your appearance, that is something that I should ask you," the Vulcan replied tiredly.

Hoshi shrugged a little bitterly, disregarding the discomfort the movement caused. "My wounds will heal."

She looked up in surprise when suddenly T'Pol took her hand.

"You love him, do you not?"

It was couched more as a statement than a question, but nevertheless she recoiled, startled and guilty. "I – I don't know what you mean!"

"Hoshi, I saw you when I was reconnected with Trip by the Eldest Mother. You would not have been there would not both of you love each other. You have been part of his last conscious thoughts."

She looked back at T'Pol and had a hard time fighting the tears. It was telling that the Vulcan was using the L-word instead of saying 'having an affection' or 'desire him'.

In the face of such naked courage and honesty, nothing other than equal honesty would serve.

"Yes, T'Pol, I love him. I tried not to but I do. I think of Trip and Malcolm and I want them both. I ... It is so egocentric, but that's how it is. I don't know when it happened. But I promise, I will never get in the way of your marriage." Of the effect of these complications on her own marriage, she tried not to think; time to face that when she must. Right now she had as much to cope with as she could bear.

"I do not blame you, Hoshi, and you will not become a danger to our marriage. He will need both of us. I wish only for one thing. Let us promise to each other that we will stop at nothing – nothing at all – to make his life worth living once he wakes up, no matter how damaged his body or mind are."

"Nothing, nothing at all," Hoshi promised in a whisper as tears ran down her still bruised face.

"You wanted to know who took her away from you?" he called out into the great dim space of the hall. "It was me, Malcolm Reed. Come out and make good on your promise, scumbag! You wanted me brought to you. Now I'm here. Come on, if you think you're hard enough!"

The empty building that had once been a factory was dark and dirty, and the sound of his voice echoed from the walls. Just the right place for a psychopathic rapist to hide. If there was one redeeming thing about this madman, it was the fact that he had abandoned the mission given to him by the Romulans who had freed him from prison. But that was hardly for altruistic motives, but rather because his rejection by the lovely Vulcan all those years ago had festered in his warped brain and turned into an obsession for revenge into which every other desire was swallowed up. As long as he was alive there would be no safety for T'Pol, and Malcolm would rather serve time for cold-blooded murder than expose her to the risk. It would be just one more added to the many stains of blood on his hands anyway. What difference would it make?

"Malcolm." A menacing voice sounded from the shadows to his right and the Brit hastily adjusted his position to put a pillar behind his back. Somehow the Vulcan had managed to sneak up on him. He was not best pleased. The Section had trained him better than that. Must be getting careless; or maybe just getting old.

He wouldn't get to be much older if he fucked this up.

Suddenly the shadows disgorged the Vulcan he'd come to hunt down. Gone was the smoothness that had characterized him on board the Vakhlas. Now the insanity that had lain beneath the surface had boiled up through it and was clear for anyone to see. His face was distorted with hatred and his eyes blazed. There was foam at the corners of his mouth.