Victims of an apparent "swine" attack, Shran's crew abandons ship. Aboard Enterprise Hoshi and Archer swap insults during "Tellarite practice." (She also informs him they'd consider Porthos a delicacy.) NX-01 visits Tellar Prime to escort Ambassador Gral and his party to a Tellarite/Andorian peace conference. After docking (beautiful effect) the ambassador greets Archer with a hard-squeezing handshake and remarks how small and unimpressive the ship is. Archer replies he was thinking the same about them. In a room filled with food Archer and Gral argue over cuisine (one nod, among many, to "Journey to Babel").

Hoshi intercepts Shran's distress call. NX-01 rescues nineteen Andorians though their ambassador was killed. Shran notes their assailant's strange maneuvers. T'Pol reconstructs sensor data showing a Tellarite attacker but Gral dismisses the allegations as absurd. In the captain's mess Archer and Shran toast the Kumari, Shran's command for twelve years. He's glad the aggressive female Talas survived; recently he was forced to choose between charging her with assaulting a superior officer or mating with her. Both sides have lost ships but neither budges from their preconceptions. Then an Andorian warship intercepts Enterprise and opens fire.

Shran oversees the counter-attack but it goes unexpectedly. Afterwards Shran and Gral bicker until Archer threatens to brig them both. T'Pol learns both attacks involved the same power signature. Shran declares Vulcans "excellent liars;" Archer defends her. Back in the mess T'Pol misinterprets Archer's concern about moving too fast, and tells him about her dissolved marriage. Cut to Romulans surrounding a seated figure wearing a funny VR helmet and gloves. Enterprise finds an airless ship bristling with "multi-spectral emitters;" Trip and Reed haul two sharks over. During their examination it attacks Enterprise, knocking the transporter offline. NX-01 takes off (their stabilized injector allows them Warp 5.06!) as Reed knocks his air-hose loose. Shran decides to interrogate the Tellarites himself.

One of the Romulans insists their prototype was not ready for combat. T'Pol discovers the mystery ship uses boridium, like the Romulan minefield. Archer speculates they fear the burgeoning Starfleet alliance. The Romulans discover Reed manually tapping LOX for his tanks but cannot dislodge their magnetic boots. Talas strips down to tempt her shark-guard; he doesn't succumb but the unarmed nearly-naked girl defeats him anyway. T'Pol discovers the Romulan craft can simulate different ships and weapons. On the heeyuge G-Deck Archer barely stops Shran from airing Gral though Talas gets winged. Reed and Trip enter the ship's empty bridge as the Romulan-view pulls back, revealing they remote-control the ship from Romulus.