It was no dream for the Suliban however. The men Silik had sent through time to capture Danaë had returned to the Helix and informed him of their failure. They knew they would be tortured and punished by Silik, but the final price would be exacted by the mysterious Temporal Agent upon the Cabal leader himself. The men stood in a line before Silik, afraid to speak.
"How could you possibly have lost her!?" Silik growled. The men he had trusted to secure her said nothing only looked at the ground. "Answer me!" He grabbed one man slammed him against the wall in rage.
"We had difficulty controlling the emissions of chronometric particles so the temporal vortex would open. When we did make it through the Enterprise was already there."
"Your weapons should have been more than enough to destroy them" Silik hissed. His hand tightened around the subordinate's throat as he tried to explain.
"They fired on our weapons banks and disabled them before we could get a shot off."
"Then you should have killed the human female." Silik slammed the man against the wall once again in frustration.
"You told us that he wanted to see her and question her." The subordinate struggled to speak. Silik released him dropping him to the ground.
"Now because of your failure she is safe on board the Enterprise with Archer." Silik knew far too well the cost of failure. The rewards for success had granted him many genetic enhancements which he enjoyed with relish, but likewise each time he had failed some of those gifts had been taken from him. If he was lucky this would only cost him his compound retinas.
In truth he cared nothing for the timeline, Archer, or the creation of the Federation of planets, but he did covet those augmentations. The superiority he felt from each new ability was a greater high than any drug he could imagine and if destroying Archer was what it took to reach the pinnacle of genetic evolution, then so be it. The problem was that this human captain had proved himself quite resourceful and that, combined with a temporal agent helping him, had made it a difficult task indeed.
It was because of this that they had changed their strategy. Silik had not lied when he told Captain Archer that he knew everything about him. He had seen in the timeline that Archer would meet Danaë Picard. He knew how entwined their lives would become, first as friends and then as so much more. Her contributions to Starfleet and Federation would be substantial on their own, but more importantly she would become Jonathan Archers confidante and support when his burdens were too great as well as his lover. Also of great importance were their two sons. Both would follow in their parent's footsteps continuing the legacy and building on what Danaë and Jonathan had built. Silik's orders from the Temporal Agent he worked for had been clear. Capture Danaë Picard and bring her to him. Under no circumstances was she to meet Archer. The result would have been the destruction of Archer's foundation before it could it could be built.
Now she was there on the ship with Archer and Silik could only cringe at the thought of the punishment awaiting him for failure. If only there was a way to fix this, perhaps make Archer give her up. No, he would never do that. Perhaps if the Enterprise was at stake, but no, Archer would give himself up rather than risk the ship, lives of his crew or a guest in his care. Perhaps that was the answer. The human captain was a far better prize than Danaë Picard and if they brought him to the agent he might well be rewarded. Perhaps it was time to seek out the Enterprise.
Captain Archer was keenly aware that the Suliban may yet return for their captive. He still wanted to know why they were so interested in her. At this point she seemed a rather odd choice. True, she was a very intelligent woman who seemed quite knowledgeable about Starfleet and this future Federation, but she was not a member nor connected to anyone he knew of that was, at least not in his century. One thing he had noticed during the ship tour was that she seemed quite familiar with everything. When he saw her again, he might need to ask about that.
Stepping into his own quarters Captain Archer suddenly found himself inside an office with a view of San Francisco. The desk was well ordered with everything in its place. A half drank cup of tea sat near a PADD, a hint of steam blew off of it proving that it had not gone cold and the occupant of the office would soon be returning. The screen in front of him read 'Starfleet Academy'. He couldn't imagine why or how he got here. As he walked about the room he turned and saw Agent Daniels watching him. Archer immediately set his jaw in indignation. He had long since grown tired of being dragged into Daniels Temporal Cold War and today was no different.
