A Captain And A Madman

Chapter Thirteen: Daniels

"What... what did you...?" The Doctor's mouth opened, then closed as he looked from Daniels to the unconscious Archer. "Are you completely mad?! I thought you two were on the same side!"

The other man was kneeling beside Archer's fallen body, passing a scanner over the captain's head before pressing a small, round device to his temple.

"Relax," Daniels replied, fitting the weapon back to his belt before folding his hands behind his back, voice quite cheerful. "It's a neural suppressor. I just stunned him, and Simmons there will modify his memory a little. Nothing serious, just blurring the details of your face, removing any memory of your ship's appearance... we'll be doing the same to T'Pol when she's off her duty shift. This is the simplest way to prevent a significant alteration to the timeline due to your visit predating the Detroit incident. Far simpler than wiping the entire crew's memory of the encounter, at least. With any luck it'll be enough to keep the Relativity off your trail. Could we speak inside?"

"Oh, inside?" the Time Lord drawled. "Like you lot haven't tried to pull that one before. How do I know you're not just here to drag me back into a detention cell?"

"Well," Daniels said, blinking. "If we intended to make an aggressive move, I probably would have shot you too."

Sighing and narrowing his eyes a little, the Doctor hesitated, obviously considering making a dash for the blue box in front of him. Finally, however, he marched towards the TARDIS with narrowed eyes. His hand lifted and his fingers snapped sharply, the doors flying open as he slipped inside, leaving a slightly startled Daniels to follow in his wake. As they stepped into the TARDIS, rather unceremoniously leaving the Captain of the NX Enterprise behind in the launch bay with his mind-wiping medic, the Time Lord kept half an eye on Daniels, expecting him to pull some scanner out of his admittedly non-existent pockets at any moment.

"Snapping your fingers," Daniels murmured, actually looking a little surprised as he shut the door behind them. "Doesn't that seem like a poor security measure?"

"Not when it only works if I do it," the Doctor replied airily, quickly changing the subject as he hopped up the stairs to the TARDIS console. "So, 'Daniels.' Like multiple Daniels. There's a time paradox joke if I ever heard one. Not, I presume, from the Relativity. Unless there's more inter-ship bickering than I thought on there."

"No," Daniels replied, shaking his head as he wandered around the control room looking, for just a moment, like a wide-eyed little kid. "I come from the thirty-first century, not the twenty-ninth. Actually, I'm the reason they didn't find you here already, or in Detroit for that matter... Jonathan included both incidents in various reports to Starfleet, or rather, he'll be including them. But I pruned the records about a century later, thanks to a very selective data bomb; it'll also help keep Picard's Enterprise from learning who you are too soon."

The Doctor's mouth opened, and then closed... and then he just laughed, a helpless little giggle. Something about having one faction trying to drag him in for questioning, only to be stopped by potentially the same faction later down the timestream, struck him as ludicrously droll. Daniels, for his part, didn't seem to mind the laughter, instead ogling the control console as he waited for his host to finish.

"Well, I just wish you hadn't pruned this ship doctor's autopsy report," the Doctor finally scoffed, jabbing a finger at him. "Only reason I'm here in the first place is that the Relativity's Starfleet didn't know where, or when, the ship came from, or who took it back for that matter. I had thought..."

"I know," Daniels replied, sounding sympathetic. "I'm sorry for that, but it was decided that we should talk."

"Should we now?" the Time Lord's eyes narrowed, just a little. "Why would you hide me from the twenty-ninth century, anyway? Was only yesterday your great-granduncle five times removed or whatever was interrogating me just for dashing about in my box, minding my own, and occasionally everybody else's, business."