“Stratagem”
Page 3 of 5system. T’Pol orders the ship out of the debris field. Degra asks it there are more anomalies. Archer replies that he doesn’t know. Archer tells Degra it was: “subspace turbulence.” Degra starts getting suspicious again. He asks Archer if he knows the names of his children. Archer stalls till Hoshi tells him the names. Meanwhile, T’Pol notices that Degra has a weapon and tells Archer. Hoshi tells Archer the names and the captain repeats them to Degra. Degra asks which one is older and attacks Archer when he doesn’t respond. The crew enter the shuttle and Degra tells Archer: “You’ll never find the weapon.” The MACOs grab Degra and Archer tells them to take him to the Brig.
Back in the Brig, Degra tells Archer he began suspecting things when they were contacted by Thalen who was supposedly on Azati Prime. Archer tells him: “We know your ship has been there, recently.” Degra tells Archer that Azati Prime is where an Insectoid Deuterium facility is located and that his people would never have gone there to hide from them. Archer tells him: “You gave us the coordinates of a red giant.” Degra replies he only told him what he wanted to hear. Archer tells Degra that he will have to wipe his memory and try again. Degra tells him that his people are probably searching for him and that there is no more time for simulations.
In the Command Centre, Archer discusses the situation with his officers. He doesn’t want to waste three weeks getting to the red giant only to find that the weapon isn’t there. He asks Trip if he’s: “learned anything more about how they open the subspace vortices.” Trip replies that using the vortices: “their ships can travel a half a dozen light years in a couple of minutes.” Archer wants to know more.
Later, Archer contacts the bridge from Engineering and tells them they are ready. T’Pol orders tactical alert and tells Travis to “engage”. Reed goes to the Brig to get Degra and his engineer and brings them to engineering. When they arrive, Trip tells them he needs their help to stabilize the vortex. The ship is falling apart but then Travis inverts the warp field and the ship returns to normal space. Archer tells a MACO to take the Xindi engineer back to the Brig. Archer, Reed and Degra go to the bridge. When there, T’Pol tells Archer they’ve reached the coordinates of the red giant. Archer orders that they go in and attack. Degra blurts out that: “You’ll never get close to the weapon. Our defense perimeter will destroy you.” Archer asks that Hoshi show him where they really are. They are still in the debris field where the weapon was being tested out. Archer tells the MACOs to take Degra to Sick Bay.
Degra and his two shipmates are returned to their ship. Their memories have been wiped. Archer asks how things are going. T’Pol tells him that they’ve made it look like: “a plasma conduit ruptured … rendering them unconscious.” Phlox injects them with a small, harmless amount of plasma. T’Pol warns that it won’t explain how their computer core has been erased. Archer replies that: “As long as they don’t know we were here, we can leave them with a mystery.”
Captain’s Starlog, supplemental: “Hopefully the journey to Azati Prime will be the final leg in our search for the Xindi weapon.”
