There have been some questions regarding the relationships in this story. Without giving too much away, the story isn't really centered on any one character, which is why I have labelled it so. It's going to be a pretty dark story with reflections about relationships, but not about them, if you get my drift. Remember, I've set this story twelve months after Terra Prime and a lot has changed in that time between our characters, so there will be a bit of everything, including het and slash (though the slash is not smut, just acknowledged).

I hope that clears up any misunderstandings and I hope you all continue to enjoy my story!

Anyhoo, this is in response to the history challenge at The Delphic Expanse and is set twelve months after Terra Prime.

The rating for this story will change as it progresses.

Chapter one contains minor spoilers for Canamar

Thanks to Honeybee for her patience in beta'ring this story for me.

Disclaimer: I own absolutely, positivity, nothing. CBS does. So I'm not making any money out of it, I'm just taking my favourite people for a spin around the universe...

His adrenalin raced through his body; his breath pounded in his ears. "Malcolm," Archer shouted over the cacophony of explosions raining around him. He pinned his eyes on his armoury officer who was sitting forward of him, a picture of focus, as the lieutenant frantically pushed buttons on his console.

"The shuttlepod's defence systems are no match for them, Captain," Malcolm called back in his clipped British accent that he always used when under pressure.

Archer rocked in his seat as another explosion shook the tiny shuttlepod, well tiny compared to the vessel that was trying to make them one with the stars. The unknown aggressors had appeared out of nowhere, firing instantly as they dropped out of warp, providing no quarter for the occupants of the shuttle to initially defend themselves.

Steeling his nerves, Archer desperately searched the space ahead. "C'mon..." he growled; willing Enterprise to appear. He had sent an immediate distress call as soon as they had come under attack, but Enterprise was still too far away to give any assistance.

Archer ducked when sparks flew out from above his head, pulling him back to the urgent matter at hand. "Trip, can you do something to avoid all this weapons fire?" he bellowed.

"I'm trying," Trip growled.

The captain was thrown from his seat when another barrage of fire hit the shuttle. He tried to grab the edge of his workstation, but missed and fell to the deckplating with a hard thud. He gasped at the sharp pain that shot through his elbow and up his right arm, but pushed it aside as he heaved a breath and dragged himself back into his seat. "Trip?" he yelled.

Trip righted himself in his chair. "Dammit," he swore then turned the shuttle into a nose dive to try and avoid another barrage. "How long till the Enterprise gets here?" he shouted.

"Two minutes, Trip!" Archer replied instantly. He didn't need to check the timing; he'd been constantly monitoring his scanners since the attack began.

"Trip, port side!" Malcolm roared a warning.

"Dammit!" Trip swore again, yanking the controls of the shuttle to steer them away from the danger.

Archer stared out the front view window and breathed a sigh of relief as the enemies red weapons fire went wide, missing the shuttle by only a few meters. The captain felt a little useless, sitting in the back of the shuttle unable to pilot or defend, but he trusted his officers to do the best they could and settled on providing a second pair of eyes and ears instead.

Archer turned back to his console. "If you can get behind them, Trip, Malcolm can take a shot at their aft ventral plating." He looked at his armoury officer. "See if you can hit something vital that may slow them down," he ordered. Not knowing what the ship's defences were, and with limited senor function ability, it was the best he could offer. Malcolm nodded in response as Trip started his maneuver.

Archer held on tight as the shuttle veered and he looked up quickly to check on his friend. Trip was bent over his controls, shoulders tight, his face, covered in sweat, was set in concentration, doing his best, Archer knew, to keep them out of the line of fire.

He turned his attention past Trip, as the engineer completed his turn, and felt a fist of apprehension knot in his chest as the shuttle dropped in behind the enemy vessel. He'd never seen this ship before. It was stippled with dark colours of black, green and brown, and shaped like a flat triangle. He briefly wondered what they had done to piss off these particular beings, who appeared to want them dead, but he decided it didn't matter. They were trying to kill him and his men, and he was resolute that wasn't going to happen. Not today, not on my watch, and not if I can help it.

Archer shook himself out of his thoughts and turned his attention to Malcolm. "Fire," he ordered then waited as the lieutenant tapped his controls, discharging their phaser weapon. Archer held his breath and watched the bright beam cut across the expanse between the two ships and impact the enemy's outer plating. He lowered his head in despair. He knew the shot had not inflicted any damage, but he turned to Malcolm for confirmation anyway. His hopes of ever getting out of this alive plummeted when Malcolm met his eyes and shook his head, confirming what the captain already knew.

"No effect, Sir," he advised, bleakly.

Archer took a steadying breath. "Okay, the best hope we have of ever surviving this is to wait for Enterprise," he said, keeping his eyes fixed with the lieutenant.

Malcolm's eyes darkened. "But there still light years away, Sir," he answered, tersely.

"I know that, Lieutenant," Archer ground out. He pulled back from some of his anger. He knew now was not the time to lose his cool. The captain took another steadying breath. "We'll just have to do the best we can and fight it out until they get here," he told him, feeling more in control.

Malcolm held his eyes for a moment before looking away. "Aye, Captain," he replied, dutifully.

Archer turned his attention to his readings. "Trip, keep doing what you can to stay out of range. Mal..."

"Captain!" Trip roared.

Archer turned quickly. His heartbeat beat a little faster, when the enemy vessel loomed into view dead ahead, firing its weapon as it bared down on them. He felt the shuttle jerk as Trip pulled on his controls, turning them hard to port, but it was all for naught. The weapon impacted on the starboard side rocking the ship violently, causing fires to erupt around the shuttle, showering sparks of red hot heat down on the men below.

The captain's head spun when the momentum of the weapons fire sent the shuttle into an uncontrolled roll. He lost his tenacious grip, when the force of the shuttle, spinning violently, ejected him out of his chair. The air left his lungs, and his head bounced hard, as Archer hit the deckplating once again.

As he laid there, head pounding, body aching and trying to suck in air, the captain could hear groans coming from Trip and Malcolm as tiny explosions continued to flare all around him. He coughed to clear the smoke that had filled his lungs, and shook his head to clear it, before raising himself to his knees and quickly assessed their situation.

The shuttlepod creaked as it slowly drifted in space, engines obviously dead. The lights were dim, running on emergency power only, and heavy smoke hung in the static air from the small fires that were still smouldering. Archer could only hope that the damage he was seeing wasn't as bad as he thought it might be.

Malcolm stirred beside him, rising slowly to his knees, and Trip, the captain was relieved to see, was also waking; rolling onto his back, wincing and coughing as he did. "Everybody okay?" Archer rasped, still winded by his fall. At their nods and murmured 'aye sirs', Archer rose to his feet and stumbled over to the front of the shuttle. He came to a stop next to Trip's left shoulder. "What's our status?"

Trip shook his head. "We're dead in the water, Capt'n," he answered, despondently.

Archer squeezed Trip's shoulder and gave a short nod; he had already accepted that this was the case, but he had hoped for different news. He stared into his friend's eyes for a moment before looking past Trip and taking in the enemy vessel that loomed large in his vision. It had come to a halt in front of the shuttle, a predator waiting for the final kill. "What are they waiting for?" Archer asked no one in particular when the ship didn't fire.

"We've got no way of fighting back, or getting out of here, Capt'n, you'd think they would take their final shot," Trip offered, quietly.

Archer nodded his head in agreement but said nothing; his mind was working frantically to find a way out of their deadly situation. He turned to Malcolm.

The tactical officer was staring at his computer, banging away on the keyboard hard, as if by doing so, it would magically return to life and provide an answer. The captain smiled mirthlessly. "I don't suppose you can see if Enterprise is coming to the rescue?" he asked with just a tinge of hope. At Malcolm's tight shake of the head, Archer sighed. "Yeah, thought so," he said, leaning forward and gripping the back of the chair in front of him in frustration.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Trip standing beside him, hands on hips, offering his unspoken support. He smiled inwardly at the gesture.

"Your orders, Captain?" Malcolm asked after a moment of silence.

Archer turned, leant up against the chair, and faced the lieutenant. "We should do what we can and destroy anything of use. I don't want them exploiting any of our technology." he said, rubbing the back of his neck to ease his tension.

"Then what?" Trip asked.

Archer looked out at the enemy vessel for a moment, his anxiety itched at his skin. What he was about to ask them to do would not sit well with his officers, but he was determined that they would all survive this encounter. He straightened his shoulders and turned back to his friends. "Then when they board us, we don't put up a fight," he ordered.

Archer could tell that Trip was about to argue that point, so he held up his hand to head off any debates. "Better alive and get away, than dead, Trip," he said bluntly. He nailed his chief engineer with an unwavering look to make sure he got the message loud and clear. When Trip threw his head back and blew out a puff of air, Archer knew his friend had acquiesced. "Now..."

"Captain, they're moving above us," Malcolm interrupted, urgently.

Archer spun around and stared as the ship hovered menacingly above. "Remember, no..."

Suddenly, bright light filled the cabin, sending spears of pain flashing behind the captain's eyes. He heard Trip and Malcolm cry out, and grabbed Trip's arm to support him, but lost his grip when a thousand knives seemed to burn into his body. He roared in agony and fell to his knees.

Archer's lungs felt on fire as the intensity of the light increased. He rolled onto his side and managed to force open his eyes in time to watch Trip succumb, and fall to the deckplating next to him, unconscious. "Trip," he gasped, reaching out to his friend but stopped, and grab his head tighter, when the fire multiplied in his body.

In an effort to ease his pain, Archer curled into a ball and tried to breathe, but it was futile. The agony was unrelenting. When darkness finally came to meet him, Archer stretched out his hand and wrapped his fingers tightly around Trip's wrist.

As his head exploded in pain, and his world started to turn black, Captain Jonathan Archer thought he heard the sweet voice of Ensign Sato calling his name...

There was an unnatural silence on the bridge as the Enterprise dropped out of warp.

"They've taken heavy weapons fire, Commander," Ensign Zabel, Malcolm's replacement at tactical, advised evenly.

Commander T'Pol, sitting rigidly in the captain's chair, gave a curt nod and turned to Ensign Sato. "Try hailing them again, Ensign" she ordered calmly, though this was in deep contrast to what she was... feeling.

Hoshi shook her head. "I've been trying, Commander, no one's responding," she advised coolly, although T'Pol could see something deeper than worry growing in the young woman's eyes. But now was not the time to contemplate its meaning, T'Pol thought. She was also worried about a certain commander.

T'Pol nodded her head slightly at Hoshi in encouragement. "What about life signs?" she asked, turning her attention back to the shuttle.

"None, Commander," Ensign Mayweather answered, grimly, from his place at the helm.

They had gone to high warp as soon as they had received the shuttlepod's distress call, but it had taken time for them to arrive. Now as Enterprise slowed, and approached the drifting shuttlepod, she wondered if they were too late.

T'Pol drew in a calming breathe. They had made the initial mistake, once before, of believing their officers had perished, but as it had turned out, they had been on board a prison ship bound for Canamar. T'Pol stared out the viewscreen. She would not allow anyone to make that assumption again. "Scan the area for any ships within a million kilometre radius," she ordered then turned to Ensign Zabel. "Deploy the grappler and bring Shuttlepod One into the launch bay."

After Ensign Zabel acknowledged her order with a nod, T'Pol studied the young crew on the bridge. She could see the worry and fear etched on their faces, but they had been together for many years, fought many battles, this was just one more. Her eyes grew dark with determination as she stood from her chair. "The captain, commander and lieutenant are out there," she told them with conviction, though she was careful to mask the concern that was building up inside her. She clasped her hands firmly behind her back and fixed her eyes on Hoshi. "And we shall find them."

To Be Continued...