Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Heigh-ho, back to the day job.

Actually, I’ve enjoyed this particular outing. As well as offering some strenuous exercise – the city we visited appeared to have been built on a series of nearly vertical slopes, leading one to wonder if there hadn’t been any promising flat surfaces available – it had provided us with an opportunity to observe an alien culture that was in a fascinating, if slightly sinister, state of flux. I’m not completely fixated on the sinister side of things, and I don’t think anyone with any concept of beauty wouldn’t have been impressed by the beauty of the city itself, but it does make one wonder how long that beauty will last if the events we witnessed keep going the way similar ones in Earth’s history did.

“I need to spend more time in the gym,” groans Hoshi, who apparently also noticed the tendency to verticality the city planners had apparently found irresistible.

The captain too seems to have suffered from the brisk exercise. He says that if he’d known there were going to be so many hills, he’d have picked a different city to explore.

The philistine! “It was worth every step, sir. The architecture alone!”

Fortunately, Hoshi too is an admirer of fine architecture. “I could have spent all day in that temple,” she sighs.

I had my doubts about Hoshi when she first came on board – seemed a bit Excitable, if you get my meaning. However, when she showed a predilection for detonating multiple torpedoes at once, that’s the sort of thing that makes me sit up and take notice of a young woman. And now, it seems, she has excellent taste in architecture too. My opinion is rapidly being revised.

=/\=

And so to Decon, where we start ridding ourselves of the rather unpleasant facial attachments that have allowed us to mingle with the city’s inhabitants without arousing suspicion. They’re not the pleasantest things to wear, but they do the job of keeping us safe, and therefore they have my seal of approval.

I’m still unwontedly animated by the prospect of having something of unusual interest to write up. Most of my reports deal with potential threats posed to the landing party by either the environment or hostile new species we encounter; it’s quite a change to have to deal with what seemed like a highly charged political situation in which we were no more than interested observers. “With your permission, Captain, I'd like to write the report to Starfleet. It was my first visit to a pre-warp culture. Seems only fitting.”

Well, strictly speaking the Novans were a ‘pre-warp culture’, but their ancestors got where they were by warp propulsion, so I’m not too egregiously inaccurate. And I think the Captain likes it when his officers are as excited as he is himself, so he’s practically certain to give me the task if I wag my tail a bit.

Hoshi twinkles at me. “I don't suppose it has anything to do with the tactical situation down there.”

I send her a rueful grin. “Am I that obvious?”

Well, obvious or not, Captain Archer says he can’t think of a better man for the job, so it looks like I’ve secured myself a task I can get my teeth into.  I was able to amass a fair amount of information on what’s going on down there, and even if we never get to do anything more about it or find out exactly what happened, it’ll be challenging to present my evidence and professional opinions regarding the potential course of developments. After all, we’re on a mission of exploration, and it matters to make as fair and complete a record as possible of everything we find.

At that moment, our cheerful resident Denobulan looks in through the window, welcomes us home, assures us that we haven’t brought aboard a single thing that might constitute a health issue, and releases us to go and change.

=/\=

Once in the locker room, the Captain observes that, as interesting as the visit was, it's always good to get home.

Well, I agree with him to some extent, of course, but I’m still caught up in the excitement of witnessing what were probably pivotal events in this civilisation’s development. They echo so closely those I’ve read about in our own history – England’s specifically – that I’m honestly sorry we couldn’t devote more time to eavesdropping.

It’s not that I wish on any of the inhabitants of the world below us the suffering that will undoubtedly ensue if my suspicions are correct, of course. But I can’t deny that it’s thrilling to see something like this actually happening; it affords insights that no amount of reporting centuries after the event can provide. “The speaker at the political rally, what was his name? Chancellor Kultrey?”

“Kultarey,” supplies Hoshi.

Not the handsomest chap in the Universe, perhaps, but he undoubtedly had gifts as an orator. “You could write a book about him alone. His speech reminded me of Winston Churchill before the Second World War.”

It's important that we check in everything that we took down with us. I thrust my hand into the pocket my communicator was in.

Nothing.

I must have put it in one of the others. Unlike me, but these things happen.

The other pockets are empty. With the start of something like panic, I check again.

Still nothing.

The captain notices. “Something wrong? Malcolm?”

There’s no help for it. “My communicator.”

“What about it?”

“It's gone.”

=/\=

I pelt down to Sickbay and hunt around the Decon room. Phlox hasn’t seen the wretched object, and it’s not inside the room itself.

From thence to the launch bay, where Hoshi and the Captain are searching. I’m not just discomfited by my failure to look after Starfleet property, I’m fighting off the awareness that if this damned thing doesn’t turn up here, we – as in I – may have done exactly what we should have been so careful not to do: make the planet’s inhabitants aware we weren’t the innocent visitors we seemed.

No joy. It’s not in the Shuttlepod or under it, and the launch bay crew didn’t find it when they were securing the pod.

With the dull certainty of despair, I hear Captain Archer ask when was the last time I remember having it.

Well, that’s easy enough. I contacted T'Pol to let her know we'd entered the city.

“After that. Did you have any reason to take it out of your pocket?

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Chagrin has now become embarrassment. I feel like a tenth-year student who’s forgotten to bring his homework. “I'd remember. Either I dropped it, or someone picked my pocket.” The latter option, though of course he can’t guess at this, offers me a particularly piquant dose of mortification; picking pockets was a standard skill in the Section, and usually I’d be very alert to the possibility of it happening.

My companions exchange glances. “We covered a lot of ground. It could be anywhere.”

Hoshi, bless her, offers an avenue of hope. “I think I can narrow down the search, Captain. An inverse carrier wave should amplify its power signature. With any luck, I'll be able to isolate it.”

=/\=

“I'm getting something. I've got it down to two square kilometres.”

We’re all clustered around Hoshi at the comms station. It’s no longer possible to keep the situation quiet; now all the Bridge officers know I’ve dropped a major clanger and possibly caused a serious incident of cultural contamination.

The map isn’t great, though it’s better than nothing. The blasted communicator is definitely down there, though, and with luck we’ll be able to retrieve it with no one being any the wiser.

With luck. I don’t know why it is, but those words seem to ring a little hollow. Call me cynical, or maybe I’ve just had too much experience.

“Can you do a little better?” asks the Captain, and Hoshi says she’ll try.

Trip is hovering, concerned. “Didn't you say something about a war brewing down there?”

That was certainly the situation as I saw it, but Captain Archer prefers to take a slightly more hopeful view. “We saw a lot of propaganda, but from what we could tell nobody started fighting yet.”

Unsurprisingly, T’Pol chooses to make me feel significantly not better about what I’ve done. She observes that it's crucial we retrieve the technology. We can't risk contaminating a pre-warp culture.

Yes, I had realised that, Sub-commander, but thank you for pointing it out. After all, I might easily have just left the damned thing down there for the sake of diverting people’s minds from a potential genocidal war to the question of how this interesting little machine got here and I wonder what these buttons do?

“I've isolated the signal to within three city blocks,” Hoshi announces. “That's the best I can do, sir.”

The map now shows significantly more detail. I recognise a fountain we passed, with statues in it that in my estimation were as fine as anything in classical Rome or Florence.

Across the street from it there was a tavern, where we sat down to rest as well as to listen in on more conversations in the effort to gauge the local atmosphere – which was definitely taut, after those speeches we listened to from Chancellor Kultarey. If the curst communicator did slip out of my pocket, that was a prime candidate for where it would have happened.

The Captain agrees. He leaves T’Pol in charge of the Bridge and orders her to tell Doctor Phlox we're going to need his cosmetic services again.

I suspect Commander Tucker realises how miserably responsible I feel. He offers to come down and help search, but the offer’s declined. Probably just as well, really; if the shit’s hit the fan down there, the fewer of us there are to get splattered, the better.

Chapter Text

“We'll be in range of their surveillance towers in less than two minutes,” says the Captain, at the helm of the shuttlepod as we return to the city – the atmosphere now far less enjoyable than it was the previous time.

“The hull plating's already been polarised.” It ought to render the ‘pod invisible to the relatively crude scanning methods the towers use, so at least that makes us safe enough. There’s no moon, either, and he’s done everything he can to reduce the sound the craft makes, so we’re as close to invisible as darkness and sophisticated technology can make us.

“Your feet ready for another hike?” he asks.

“It's not a problem, sir.” I hesitate, then the guilt spills out of me. “Captain. my carelessness was inexcusable. I'm prepared for whatever reprimand you feel is appropriate.”

He glances at me. “How about thirty years in the brig, or maybe a good flogging?”

How can he take this so lightly? “Sir–!”

“It was an accident, Malcolm. It could have happened to any of us.”

Well, yes, it could, but it didn’t happen to ‘any of us’. It happened to me, and that’s not bloody good enough. What the sodding hell do I set standards for if I don’t adhere to them myself?

I know both of us well enough to realise that argument will achieve nothing, so I content myself with a resolution to be particularly severe on myself in my report. And maybe three months’ abstinence from pineapple in the Mess should teach me a lesson.

Make that six months. I’m getting soft in my old age.

However, moments later our own scanners divert me momentarily from my self-flagellation. I advise him there are three military aircraft, seventy-two kilometres off starboard. I add that he should increase our descent vector. That should keep us well below their visual threshold.

He takes my advice (which makes a change) and we land without event in a thick belt of woodland, unseen as far as I know. The city is an easy walk away, and so far the Universe is smiling on us.

Well, it might be laughing, but we’ll find out which it is when we get there.

=/\=

The tavern is unchanged, apart from slightly less crowded than it was. I remember exactly which table we sat at, and fortunately for us, it’s free. The benches aren’t a model of comfort, but they come with high backs for privacy. This allows me to have a quick look on the floor, but any lingering hope dies quickly; no joy there.

Rather to my dismay – quickly followed by displeasure – the bartender remembers us. Or more specifically, remembers Hoshi, who certainly is difficult to forget once seen, but other people finding her equally so tends to make me come over all ‘Me Malcolm, Her Hoshi, and Hands Off.’

Still, he doesn’t say anything about any mysterious machine we may have left behind on our previous visit, so the Captain fields his recommendation about Allakas malt without actually ordering any, and he wanders off to see if customers at another table want to order anything while we’re thinking about it.

Or at least, that’s what it looks as if he’s doing. Old instincts set the skin between my shoulder blades crawling.

Still, I finally get a moment to use my scanner unobserved. “I've got it.”

It's in a room off the corridor at the end of the bar. I certainly didn’t go in there on our previous visit, so unless the communicator has suddenly discovered independent powers of locomotion and decided to go sightseeing, someone found it.

There’s no help for it. We have to go in there and get it. If there were more people in here we’d have a better chance of doing so unobserved, but needs must. Maybe anyone who notices us will think we’re looking for the toilets or something.

The worst thing you can do when you’re trying to look unobtrusive is to glance around to see if anyone’s watching. Nevertheless, my neck aches with the certainty of it as we stroll across and part the bead curtain.

The corridor is empty, but my scanner shows two people inside the room the communicator’s in. Another bloody failure; why didn’t I check that first, and save us a journey that may well have alerted people watching for anything suspicious after that mysterious artefact turned up?

And someone certainly was watching. As soon as we returned to the main room, the three men the bartender spoke to jump up and attack us, and they’re not just bar-room thugs – they’re in uniform. Still, even though one of them knocks me to the ground, there’s hope until one of them jams a gun in the Captain’s back.

Inevitably, we’re hauled back into the corridor and into the room where the communicator is now in the grasp of the senior of two more military-types, officers if I’m any judge.

He holds it up accusingly. “Does this belong to you? What is it?”

Of course, the Captain denies any knowledge of what it is. Standard procedure, and quite useless, as we’re pushed against the wall and searched. And, of course, the phase pistol turns up, turning bad to worse. They could have used the communicator till Kingdom Come and got nowhere, but there’s no mistaking what the pistol is.

“What kind of weapon is this?” he demands. Then, when neither of us replies, he demands of his juniors, “Where's General Gosis?”

On the Eastern perimeter, apparently. But it’s odds-on he won’t stay there for long when he gets the message that a pair of enemy spies have been discovered.

In the meantime, we’re to be taken to ‘the Complex’, wherever that may be, and my bet is that it’s nowhere comfortable. And we apparently won’t be seeing our friends in the Alliance for a long time.

Suits me. I wasn’t particularly keen on seeing them anyway.

=/\=

Well, the Complex is pretty well what could have been expected, or at least our part of it is: a prison cell, neither especially large nor particularly comfortable, but it could have been worse.

I picked up a couple of blisters on my previous visit. The footwear deemed appropriate didn’t include anti-friction socks, with the inevitable result. They were no more than mildly irksome by the time we got back to the ship, so I didn’t mention them to Phlox, but a second visit has rubbed the tops off, and now they’re bleeding and damned sore. Not having anything else much to do, I take a look at them.

There are guards on patrol, which puts an end to any inclination I might have had towards seeing if there’s any way I can get us out of here. Inspecting my blisters is a more appropriate use of my time than getting both of us shot out of hand.

The Captain – less accustomed to preserving his energy till it’s actually required – is watching a nearby guard. Still, he glances across at me. “Still bothering you?”

“I didn't have time to visit the doctor. I wonder if the guard would bring us some Epsom salts, if I asked politely.”

He manages a faint grin at my gallows humour. “I wouldn't count on it.”

Having something to do – even as pointless as examining my blistered feet – at least allowed me to push away for a while the horror of what’s happened. Now, however, the whole enormity of it crashes down on me as though the ceiling’s fallen in. My original sin was bad enough; now the attempt to set matters right has made things infinitely worse, and if I needed any further evidence of just how much of a bollocking mess I’ve made of things, the fact that the captain, having come down here to help me reposition things from their current status of tits-up, is beside me in the cell, presumably waiting to be introduced to and questioned by people who it can be pretty solidly assumed have never heard of the Geneva Convention.

If any further icing was needed on the cake, which frankly it isn’t, I, his Head of Security, allowed him, the bloody captain of Starfleet’s bloody flagship, to come along on – oh, who am I kidding? – to take charge of a very fucking dangerous scavenger hunt for a lost piece of technology in the first place! Yes, it was over my obviously not-strenuous-enough objections, and I did try my best to discourage him, but time was of the essence, so I didn’t have long to argue. It’s by no means the first time I’ve bemoaned Starfleet’s lack of foresight for not allowing the ship’s chief security officer to relieve him of duty and pop him into the brig when he’s being idiotically reckless (in the same way that the CMO can confine him to sickbay when he becomes mentally unstable due to exotic radiation or some alien virus or chemical), but it looks as if it might well be the last.

And that isn’t even the worst of it! Noooo! I had to go and lose my bloody communicator on a world that is clearly on the cusp of war and just perfectly primed for the kind of technological revolution that inevitably comes with two disputing cultures trying to annihilate one another!  As technologically primitive as this society is compared to our own, the equipment we’ve just gifted them could give all sorts of leads to any half-competent engineer with a bit of ingenuity. He wouldn’t need to be a Trip Tucker to extrapolate all kinds of highly inappropriate information from them, and then pity knows where it would all lead; but you can bet your life if we fail to retrieve our kit before those blighters figure it out, then when they achieve space flight and eventually warp capability a few generations ahead of schedule and start cruising about the galaxy obliterating planets they don’t much like the look of and taking over all the attractive ones because they haven’t yet mastered the lesson that ‘might doesn’t always make right’, history will record that it was all my fault. We already know the situation here is unstable in the extreme; have I just provided the feather that will tip the scale?

I try to keep my mouth shut, but once again despair breaks it open. “We came down to retrieve my communicator. Now we've lost two of them. Not to mention my phase-pistol and a pair of scanners.”

The Captain looks grim. “I just hope they don't find the shuttlepod.”

Hell’s bells, I hadn’t even got that far.

It’s pretty secure. They’d have a job getting into it if they did find it, especially with the duranium hull. But with enough determination, they’d get in eventually. And then think what would be available to them!

The possibilities are just too terrible to contemplate. And sooner or later – especially when those planes we glimpsed earlier are on reconnaissance duties in daylight, which they almost certainly will be, with a high alert for more spying activities – someone is going to spot that shuttlepod, bright silver in the green of the woodland around it.

The thought’s occurred to me before, but now it makes more sense than ever. “If they really think we are spying for this Alliance, perhaps we should consider telling them the truth.”

I suspect he’s thought of it himself but rejected the idea. He replies that he’s not sure anyone would believe us.

Well, they might not, but it’s not as though we don’t have the means to convince them. Let us only speak to Enterprise, and we could arrange a demonstration – have the whole party beamed up to the ship, where we could retrieve our belongings, tell our guests to behave themselves and set them down again none the worse for wear. What would be the harm in trying?

He’s not buying it. “Visitors from another world? There's no way to know how they'd react. The less we say the better.”

Well. He’s got a point in one way. There’s the unedifying tales about Roswell to take into account. I’m not particularly keen to identify myself as an alien to a culture that’s xenophobic about its own species; it might work wonders for their solidarity, but the outcome for us might not be so great. At the very least, the scenario I just imagined about them cruising around the galaxy annihilating unappealing planets would be more likely than ever – they’d more than likely take the view that ‘attack is the best form of defence’ and pour all their energies into getting ready to go out and slap anyone they can find, just on the off chance. At any rate, he’s the captain and he gives the orders, so that’s it, at least for the time being.

=/\=

Hurrah, an interrogation room, complete with a sprinkle of gun-toting, muscle-bound oafs to supply the physical end of the inquisition. It’s bound to feature sooner or later.

It contains a table where our equipment is laid out to view. An oldish chap who seems to be a new arrival was examining these when we arrived but turns around as we’re shoved roughly into chairs in front of him.

I’m guessing this is General Gosis. Undoubtedly he’s the man in charge, and doesn’t view us with any particular friendliness. I suppose if he thinks we’re spies, that’s not entirely surprising, though it may be completely unreasonable from our point of view.

Things have apparently taken a turn for the even worse in the meantime. He opens by asking us which of us is the captain, telling us that when he was examining the communicator it began to make a sound, so he opened it (well, can’t blame him for that, who wouldn’t have?) “Someone calling herself T'Pol seemed very concerned about her Captain's well-being,” he continues. “Which one of you was she trying to contact?”

Not my call, though perhaps I should have taken the initiative anyway, since it’s my bloody fault we’re down here. I seem to recall Sub-commander T’Pol assuming the mantle of command once when she and the Captain were taken hostage by Coridanite rebels, and she neither burst into flame nor faced a court martial for impersonating a superior officer. Though to be fair, the Vulcans were already known to the Coridanite rebels and had a reputation (deserved or not) for being supercilious interlopers propping up an unwanted government, so it wouldn’t have been hard for them to imagine her as the captain of a Vulcan vessel subordinating another alien species to do their bidding. With my slight frame and (though I might be flattering myself) slightly younger appearance, it might be hard to convince these people that I’m the superior officer, and anyway, Captain Archer duly owns up.

Gosis looks at him with contempt. “The Alliance must be growing desperate if they're recruiting military officers as spies.”

The Captain’s denial of being part of the military is nothing more than the truth, but our captors are never going to believe it.

“Oh, I suppose you're the Captain of a pleasure boat,” says Gosis mockingly as he leans forward to get right in the Captain’s face and scoffs. It’s clearly meant as an intimidation tactic, and the snicker I hear from upstage right when the Captain breaks eye contact tells me that at least one of them thinks the effort has succeeded already. I’m reminded almost painfully of my previous role in Starfleet, when I would have had them all pissing themselves and crying for their mothers by now, as much for spite as for any information they could give me; and as aware as I am of the very serious, very dangerous position we are in right now, part of me just wants to provide some quick, personal tutelage in how to conduct a proper interrogation.

First off, unless I knew that the threat of harm to one of my subjects could compel the other to speak and planned to use that knowledge, I never would have housed them together, let alone interrogated two at once. So much easier to trip them up with inconsistencies in their stories (and scare the piss, if not the truth, out of them with the potential consequences) if A is not present to hear the story B tells.

Secondly, I never would have been fooled so easily by the Captain’s looking away from his opponent. You don’t need to know Jonathan Archer to see that he’s no coward. When it comes to matters of security, I might silently curse him for a thousand kinds of fool, but his courage shines out of every pore, and for once – thank the stars or whatever mysterious powers move the Universe – he chose to make the smart tactical choice. We’ve both been walking all day. We’ve both been worrying about the effect our confiscated technology will have on this civilisation and how we’re going to explain it to Starfleet (though I think perhaps of the two of us, the latter concerns me a great deal more than it does him). We’re tired and run down and in no condition to withstand an enhanced interrogation involving violence, stress positions or other forms of torture. He didn’t look away because he was afraid. He looked away so as not to appear defiant in order to avoid – or at least postpone – a physical confrontation.

“This transceiver, what's its frequency, its range?”

Standard interrogation response: “I don't know.”

The General picks up the scanner and asks how it works. Getting no response from the Captain, he looks at me, and when I follow the captain’s lead and drop my gaze, on the periphery of my vision, I see him roll his head toward our charming friend from earlier (I heard someone on the way here refer to ‘Pell’, so I’m guessing this is the chappie). Pell is apparently very displeased by the lack of obliging response, so he lashes out, backhanding the Captain across the face so hard that I instinctively turn to make sure he’s all right and register in the same glance that the blow was so hard Pell hurt his hand and is shaking it to relieve the stinging. All my instincts want me to leap up and protect my Commanding Officer and there’s no denying I’d relish the chance to give Pell a taste of his own medicine, but as bitter as the necessity is, I do no more than watch him long enough to be sure he’s still breathing and unbroken. Things will almost certainly get worse, and if they do, I’m better off retaining at least some capacity to try to intervene.

Gosis seems to regret the violence, at least slightly. “My superiors expect answers. As an officer, I'm sure you can appreciate that. I have no desire to harm you, but I need you to cooperate.”

Captain Archer still declines to assist.

Oddly enough, I believe Gosis. He strikes me as someone who’d be a very decent chap under other circumstances. He probably has a couple of adoring tots running around the house and a lovely, doting, somewhat frumpy wife putting dinner on the table – or, if these people age anything like humans, he probably has a couple of adult children who come home for whatever holidays these people celebrate, a son-in-law who’s not nearly good enough for his daughter and a handful of grandchildren calling him Papa. But then, he does employ Pell, who has no compunction about beating a prisoner so badly he hurts himself in the process, and even the gentlest of men who use brutes like Pell to do their dirty work for them are nothing but mean little cowards.

Bastard.

Our captor looks from one to the other of us curiously. “I trust you enjoyed the rally this morning. That's why you're here, isn't it? It's curious, the two of you visiting the city the same day as Chancellor Kultarey. Did you come here to observe his security arrangement? Or perhaps assassinate him? We're aware of your ancestral claims against our city. It must make a tempting target.”

“We're visitors, not spies.”

He’s telling the truth, of course, but he probably doesn’t realise that the years he’s spent as an officer in Starfleet have left their mark. He’s not military, but even so there’s a kind of unconscious authority about him that’s evident to anyone with the eyes to see it. I can imagine all too easily that our gracious hosts would have no trouble at all in doing so. But even if they didn’t, it’s only now, when it’s far too late for me to do anything about it, that I realize that even before Gosis asked, I’d already hung a sign around his neck identifying him as the man in charge by respectfully deferring to him and letting him speak for both of us at every turn.

Oh, bloodyfuckingpissingshitting hell! I really have ballsed this mission up right the fuck up, top to bottom, front to back and every which way in between, haven’t I? The Captain will probably never let me leave the ship again unless it’s as cannon fodder on some mission that’s expected to have a violent outcome, and I really can’t blame him.

I may be less easily identifiable as a military (or military adjacent) man, but then I’ve been trained to hide the tells. He’s the one they’re going to concentrate on, and that’s why they’re asking him all the questions. Unfortunately (for us), he’s the one who’s least able to resist interrogation.

Next question. “This T'Pol who tried to contact you, where is she?”

He waits a solid five seconds for an answer. I look down and away again before he can turn his gaze on me, but once again, on the edge of my vision, I see when he nods to Pell.

Cowardly old shit!

Pell has conspicuously less patience, or else he thinks he’ll score Brownie points by getting the information sooner. He hits the Captain again, knocking him to the floor this time with a solid right cross instead of a backhanded slap.

All my good resolutions vanishing, I jump up to land one on him but a soldier with a rifle-butt gets to me first, and for a minute or two things get very vague and intensely disagreeable, though I register all the air being forced from my lungs with the first blow to my solar plexus, my face exploding in pain when the butt of the rifle hits me in the mouth, and my teeth rattling as every aching bone and muscle in my body protests my sudden and violent impact with the floor. When we’re hauled back onto the chairs, however, Gosis spots that Captain Archer's prosthetic forehead has come away at the edge and he peels it off.

Pell does the same to me. Shit, shit, shit.

“You've been surgically altered!” The general looks scandalised. Maybe spies in this culture don’t have a particularly well-developed imagination, or perhaps it’s Not Cricket or something.

If he thought that was bad, things are about to get a whole lot worse. Our other amiable friend jerks my chin up and stares at the broken corner of my mouth. “General. His blood. It's red!”

Now even the goons are giving us the eye. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that whatever the standard operating system is around here for body circulation, it doesn’t include haemoglobin.

Gosis speaks into a sudden, ominous silence. “Take them to Temec. Have him perform a full examination.”

Chapter Text

At least they’re sufficiently advanced to understand germ theory and the value of cleanliness, if not godliness, I silently remind myself as we’re directed into the physician’s examination room. Then, as we’re both ordered to strip on the spot without so much as a curtain for privacy I append nor the concept of patient confidentiality, though I don’t suppose presumed spies would receive anything like the consideration loyal soldiers or even law-abiding ordinary citizens might enjoy.

As luck (or the lack thereof) would have it, the good doctor decides to examine me first. I really don’t know which it is, because I can’t decide if it would be better to have to sit there, starkers, on a hard wooden chair in this chilly room, with your hands cupped over your bits like the Captain, watching the humiliation of one of your officers and anticipating your turn. I’ll be forever grateful that he has the courtesy to look down and away while I sit up there on the exam table, on display for the doctor and all the guards in the room, but I don’t think there will ever be the appropriate words or the appropriate time to express my appreciation for his small kindness.

The examination begins at my scalp, and Doctor Temec is most thorough, scratching it lightly as if looking for dandruff (he’d better not find any, or the manufacturer of my shampoo will shortly receive a Strongly Worded Letter). Satisfied that my scalp is healthy, he next turns to picking through my hair like a monkey looking for ticks, and I have to suppress the urge to tell him he has to eat whatever he finds.

When he slips a lighted scope into my right ear, I flinch slightly and he admonishes me to keep still, because he doesn’t want to injure me.

Right. Just like Gosis didn’t want to harm us, so he had Pell do it for him, and here we are, both of us bruised and battered, being studied like insects rather than receiving treatment for our injuries.

He spends so long peering into my ear canal through his scope like a pervert at a peep hole, making notes and sketches, and mumbling things like ‘most unusual’ and ‘so peculiar’ that I want to inform him, in case he doesn’t know (which he might not, depending on how differently his people are constructed compared to humans), that some people find the ears to be highly sensitive erogenous zones, and in some cultures, this extended amount of intimate contact would obligate him to marry me. But I decide that keeping my mouth shut would be the wiser course of action. It would seem this habit of muttering to oneself in close proximity to another person who would be interested in one’s findings must be the result of a mental defect peculiar to those individuals prone to becoming physicians.  Phlox does it all the time.

I’m a bit of an introvert, in case you haven’t noticed, and by the time the Captain, Hoshi and I had left that tavern to head back to Enterprise, I felt as though I’d had quite enough Human (using the term loosely) contact for one day and was looking forward to a quiet evening alone in my quarters working on my report for Starfleet. So pretty much everything that has happened since I discovered my communicator was missing has been wearing on my nerves, and when Temec finally moves the scope to my left ear, I nearly jump out of my skin at the ticklish sensation. He reprimands me again, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to snap back when I notice Pell standing there, studying me as if trying to determine exactly where and how hard he would have to hit me to break me into as many fragments as possible.

To prevent myself from speaking out inappropriately and giving him an excuse to find out, I clench my teeth so tightly they squeak, cup my bits a little more securely, take a deep breath to help dispel some tension (muscular tension is physically tiring and I can’t afford to exhaust myself over nothing) and squeeze my eyes shut, just praying that I’ll be able to endure this ordeal without saying or doing something that will get me or the Captain hurt. It’s at this exquisitely inconvenient juncture that my mind’s eye is assailed with a montage of clips from old Twentieth Century films playing the most intrusive examinations of various other body parts and orifices – all of which are significantly more sensitive than my ear canal – for laughs. As I shudder, I hear the tone of a reprimand but not the words. What I’m imagining is so very much worse than a lone Regulan bloodworm making its way out of my body at an inconvenient place and time that the words simply can’t register on my consciousness, because I’m far too busy silently cursing Trip Tucker. If not for his abominably juvenile tastes in comedy, I very much doubt I would now have the dubious pleasure of considering just how ‘full’ an examination Gosis is expecting and anticipating the mortifying procedures that will be necessary to obtain the information he wants. At the realisation that the Captain will likely be present for the entire examination, I go hot and then cold all over and break out into a cold sweat.

As he comes round in front of me and goes to presumably look up my nose with his little light, Temec notices the perspiration on my upper lip. He grunts in surprise, takes a step back and mumbles, “Most unusual. So peculiar,” to himself as he looks me up and down, and somehow, I feel impossibly even more naked than I did a moment ago. A frown and another grunt, and mumbling to himself, he turns to a nearby cabinet and pulls out a few test tubes and some swabs like the cotton ones Phlox uses to take samples and apply salves to wounds. He dabs a bit of the dampness from my lip and puts the swab into one of the test tubes.

“Do you feel excessively warm?” he asks.

I hold my tongue until Pell shifts away from the wall. No point taking a beating over nothing. Without separating my teeth, I grind out, “Not particularly.”

“And, apart from the obvious discomforts of your, er, circumstances, do you feel at all unwell?”

Part of me wants to claim some terribly virulent and lethal plague just to watch this fat little bald fucker and that sadistic arsehole Pell panic, but not knowing the names of any of their diseases and realising that such a delightfully humorous prank on my part would be likely to get the Captain and me euthanised tout suite, I decide a truthful response would be best. “If you’re asking if I am ill, not that I know of.”

He circles round me, sampling my perspiration with his swabs, and I do my best to endure it stoically; but I can’t help the gasp or the sudden tensing of every muscle in my body when one of them slips into the top of the crack of my arse. Honestly, I think we’re both very lucky I managed to control what in other circumstances would have been my reflexive response to such an intimate intrusion, because if I hadn’t, the good doctor would likely have come away with a broken face and Pell would have shot me in the head. At least this time he doesn’t reprimand me, but then he’s nowhere near my eardrum and therefore much less likely to perforate it if I move unexpectedly.

Having stored his samples for later study, he turns back to me with what I recognise as a fever thermometer, and praise God, thank Christ and all the angels in Heaven! It’s one of the oral variety.

After the requisite number of minutes, he pulls the thermometer from my mouth and his eyes pop as he reads the result. Apparently, it’s so unusual and peculiar that he can’t be arsed to mutter the words this time. He just squeezes his eye shut, gives his head a little shake, rolls the thermometer and reads it again before shaking his head slowly in wonder and recording my temperature.

As the examination proceeds, nearly everything about me is unusual and peculiar and bewildering in the extreme, till it gets to the point where even I’m starting to think there must be a problem. My heartbeat is in the wrong place, I have pulses where there shouldn’t be any, my blood pressure is simultaneously too high and too low (which I can only take to mean they have both systolic and diastolic pressures as we do, but that the typical numbers are wildly different), he can’t even find my reflexes, and as for my gooseflesh, which comes and goes with the shifting of the cool air around me, this absolutely fascinates him. And just for a change, I find it most unusual and so peculiar that the phenomenon is unheard of here.

Finishing his examination with sample of the gunk under my toenails (not that there’s much of it, I’m quite fastidious about foot hygiene), he stands up with a grunt and tells Pell, “I can do a radiographic examination now, but if General Gosis wants a complete internal workup, they’ll have to be fasted for three days and complete a bowel cleanse.”

I go hot and cold all over again and break out into another cold sweat, and as Pell eyes me up and down and gives me a mean little smirk, it occurs to me that he might just be a voyeur with a sadistic bent. If it gets around to inserting things where Nature never intended them to go, I can bet who’ll be first in the queue of eager volunteers to do it.

“I’ll let him know,” he tells Temec, “but I doubt they’ll be with us long enough for that.”

Temec asks the Captain to move to the exam table, and I’m instructed to get dressed and have a seat in his vacated chair. Absurdly, it occurs to me that I should insist on remaining naked until the Captain’s permitted to dress as well, but I immediately realise that such a show of solidarity would accomplish nothing except to embarrass both of us, get me chilled to the bone in this cold room, and perhaps give Pell a perverse little thrill. So I do as I’m told and avert my eyes while the Captain is poked and prodded. I can tell by his slight grunts and gasps when something uncomfortable or unexpected happens, and I’ll do whatever I can to intervene the moment I think Temec might be harming him, but until that moment, I’m just doing my best to be invisible and oblivious.

Finally, after what seems an eternity, but thankfully not nearly so long as the one I spent naked and on display, the Captain is allowed to dress and we’re returned to our cells.

Chapter Text

Well, given the acquisition of something unmistakably gun-shaped, there was absolutely no way a bunch of military crap-heads weren’t going to experiment with it. As I question the judgement of all the civilisations throughout the galaxy (including my own) who have found it expedient at one time or another to give large numbers of very powerful weapons to petty little men who just want to use them to eliminate people they don’t like, I realise sheepishly that to most people, it would be very difficult to distinguish me from them. Of course, I could say that I only fire when fired upon, I just defend myself and my comrades and I’m only following orders, but the natural response would be, “Funny, but they say the same thing.” Still, I know in my heart that I am different from these men. For one thing, I have no interest in war; history, yes, but an actual, contemporary war in which my friends and colleagues could die, no. It’s neither glorious nor romantic and it’s a poor substitute for actually talking things over and resolving your differences.

We all go into a courtyard, where Gosis pulls the trigger. He’s found out how to take off the safety catch and the default setting in transit (for obvious safety reasons) is ‘stun’. A quick glance reassures me it’s still on it, so if he decides to test it on either of us, at least the victim will live to tell the tale. But rather than risk damaging us, he fires it at a crate of containers, and the energy beam is undoubtedly impressive to someone who’s only ever dealt with projectile weapons.

“It's some kind of coherent energy pulse! I thought this technology was only theoretical!” Pell stares at the weapon with a mixture of awe and envy.

“Our Alliance friends seem to have turned theory into reality,” observes the General.

“May I?”

Within his parameters, Gosis seems a pretty tolerant bloke. He hands over the pistol, with the comment that there appears to be another setting.

There certainly is. When the beam hits the crate this time, it disintegrates it.  Jaws drop all around the courtyard.

If the revelation of a ‘ray gun’ impressed them, the revelation of what it can do when it’s turned up to maximum is clearly deeply disturbing.

“If the Alliance has equipped its troops with these weapons…!” He orders Pell to make sure the devices are kept under guard at all times, by men he can trust. I can’t say I’m heartbroken to see the vicious oik depart, accompanied by some of the goons, but I wish he wasn’t taking my phase pistol with him.

Just as I’m wondering how we’re going to lie our way out of this particular hole, the door opens again, and our old friend Doctor Temec comes out. Joy O Joy, he’s carrying a folder that almost certainly contains the results of all the examinations to which the Captain and I were so recently subjected.

I mean, X rays. Phlox would have a fit.

It only takes one look at his face to tell Gosis there’s going to be some big news. “What did you find?”

It can only be inferred that it’s not just in the haemoglobin stakes that our species are significantly different, though the number of expostulations about our ‘unusualness’ and ‘peculiarity’ in the examination room probably should have given it away. By the way the General stares at the images, you’d think we’d … well, actually, we did, so isn’t it about time the Captain realised we’d better come clean and admit it?

“How is this possible?” he breathes.

“There's only one explanation,” Temec says triumphantly. “Our prisoners belong to another species.”

=/\=

It was wearily inevitable that we’d end up back in the interrogation room. I suppose I can be thankful it contains no specialised aids for extracting information (yet), but I’m not sure whether these new discoveries are going to work for us or against us. On the one hand, they may make it easier to believe we’re not really Alliance spies; on the other hand, if we’re not their particular flavour of ‘Human’, they may be even less reluctant to hurt us. Sentience may not help our cause.

General Gosis resumes. If he doesn’t understand medical terms, he’s certainly had a crash course in our abnormalities. “Doctor Temec tells me your deformities are not the work of a surgeon. He found no obvious incisions or scar tissue.

“You're even more abnormal on the inside,” he continues, pointing accusingly to the prints. “A redundant renal organ and you're missing four thoracic vertebrae. Temec can't even begin to explain this mass.

“As for your red blood, the doctor tells me your haemoglobin is based on iron, a toxic element. He conducted the test four times to be certain.” He pauses, and my heart sinks still further; there’s a missile inbound, I can hear it coming.  “He has a theory about where you came from. I found it difficult to believe until I saw this. One of our surveillance aircraft took this image early this morning. The pilot said the object was traveling at very high speed. Can you explain?”

I know what I’m going to see even before he thrusts the photograph in front of us. Our comrades aboard Enterprise won’t have been idle in our absence, and someone has flown a shuttlepod down to recon the situation.

They might also – I can only hope – have rescued our own before it was discovered. Definitely T’Pol will have seen the terrible risks involved with that being seized by the planet’s militaristically-minded inhabitants.

“None of the other planets in our system are capable of supporting life,” Temec interrupts. “Where do you come from?”

Gosis again. “Our scientists tell me it's unlikely that a craft of this size could have travelled from another star system. They suspect a larger ship must be somewhere nearby. Perhaps orbiting our planet.” He’s frightened now, and angry; he grabs the Captain and hauls him to his feet. “Tell me your orders! Have you made contact with the Alliance?”

Now he’s dealing with something that isn’t his kind of human, his reluctance to use violence has evaporated. He hits Archer hard in the belly. “Answer me!”

When the Captain straightens up, his tone’s derisive and my admittedly flagging courage perks up slightly. “Our intelligence reports underestimate you, General.”

He turns and looks down at me and chuckles as if to say, ‘Can you believe this guy?’ But the message to me is clearly Follow my lead.

“‘Alien creatures’! You're even more delusional than we thought. This isn't a spaceship. It's suborbital. A highly experimental aircraft. We've been observing your territory for months.”

“How did you evade our surveillance towers?”

“It's made from a composite alloy. Invisible to any of your tracking systems.”

He considers that. After all, it would explain a lot. “And your biological anomalies?”

“We've been genetically enhanced,” I butt in before I can think better of it. If the Captain really is determined not to reveal we’re aliens, I have to back him up, and out of the two of us, I’m a far more capable liar.

The suspicious gaze travels to me, with the demand of what kind of enhancements?

It doesn’t take much effort to conjure up something that might give these people serious pause for thought before they stir things up any more against ‘the Alliance’. “Our immune systems are resistant to chemical and biological weapons, and our internal organs have been modified to increase cellular regeneration by thirty percent. That way, our wounds can heal more quickly.”

I bloody well hope they don’t try to test my claims, but the old saying is, if you’ve got to go, go large.

“Create the perfect soldier,” Pell says in a soft, awestruck voice.

I suspect the General is also fairly impressed, and if he isn’t considering the implications, he should be. “How many of you are there?”

The Captain steps in again before I can invent an army. “We're prototypes, the only ones.”

“And your devices, are they prototypes as well?”

“All of them.”

It seems we’ve given him enough to think about for the meantime. He orders us taken back to our cell.

I’d like to think it’s a positive development, but that doctor didn’t strike me as being a strikingly humanitarian type. More than once I got the distinct impression he was sorry he had to stop at non-invasive procedures to find out what makes us tick. And if there’s ever been a civilisation where self-confessed spies got patted on the head and sent on their way with a blessing, frankly I’ve never heard of it.

Still. I’ll keep that reflection to myself.

Enterprise is on our case.

They won’t let us down.

I hope…

Chapter Text

“An upset stomach? Do you really think he'd fall for that?”

Captain Archer is no longer quite the unworldly Boy Scout he was when the ship launched, and even if he had been he’d probably still have dug his heels in.

Still, as I point out, it may be an old trick where we come from, but perhaps they haven't heard of it here.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find his fatalism slightly irksome in the circumstances. No, it’s not a very good idea – it’s not even an original idea – but it’s something. And something, when the alternative is allowing ourselves to be led tamely to the fate ordained for spies, will always be my preferred option.

He shakes his head. “Even if we got out of the compound, we'd never make it to the shuttle. Not looking like this.” He glances across at me. “Genetic enhancements. Very creative, Malcolm.”

“Thanks. Improvisation isn't my strong suit.” Well, it is, but I’m hardly going to explain how I got so good at it.

“You made us sound like the Suliban.”

I’m sure Silik will be thrilled if he ever gets to hear he was the source of my inspiration. But the flicker of sour amusement dies under the weight of our imminent demise.

I know he doesn’t approve of mawkishness, and normally I don’t either, but it’s hard to refrain from picking over the questions that will remain after the event. “What do you suppose Enterprise will do, after we're…?”

 “If I know T'Pol, she won't want to leave any contamination behind. It may take some time, but she'll find a way to get everything back. Including our remains.” His voice sounds commendably steady. Steadier than mine, if I’m honest. Maybe if I knew it was a firing squad that would be waiting for us, I’d find it easier to face, but a fucking noose…

I swallow as though the hemp was already brushing my skin. “It's ironic. Giving our lives to protect people who want to kill us.”

“It's a big planet, Malcolm. I'm sure they're not all like that.”

With an effort I bite down on the retort that it doesn’t take all of them, it just takes the ones with the power. But that would probably betray far too clearly that I’m in the inescapable grip of horror at what’s to come, so I blurt out the only thing that comes to mind, in the hope it may make things feel even a little better: “I'm not afraid, sir.”

He doesn’t believe me. Now I’m a liar in his eyes, as well as a coward. I writhe internally as he says, thoughtfully, “What if we did tell them the truth?”

If he’s doing this to give me hope where there isn’t any, I’d really rather he didn’t. I point out that as he’d said himself earlier, they'd never believe us.

However, he’s seeing the possibilities for himself now. He muses that we could show them to the shuttlepod, bring the General up to Enterprise, give him the grand tour, and top it off with dinner in the Captain's mess. “We'd probably all have a good laugh over how he almost sent us to the gallows. I've gotten plenty of lectures on cultural contamination, but T'Pol never mentioned anything about sacrificing crewmen to prevent it.”

I’d like to think it’s not just the fragment of hope we could survive this that makes me agree with him. As I point out, if we did tell them who we are, it might do them a world of good. Look what the Vulcans did for Earth.

He can’t be entirely indifferent to the prospect of his own survival, and I know for certain he cares about mine. But at this point he realises he’s been proposing something that runs counter to all the rules about interfering with the cultural development of another world. They may not have been fully formulated yet, let alone set in stone, but nevertheless, we have no right to fundamentally change the history of this world just because neither of us wants to die.

As he says, these people haven't even split the atom yet. The Vulcans waited until we were ready, until we demonstrated we’d developed warp capability. “We're doing the right thing, Malcolm,” he adds with genuine compunction. “I'm sorry you won't get a chance to write that report.”

I’m not sure that a missed report is at the very pinnacle of my regrets, but I’m done fighting the inevitable. If I have to face it, I will, and without any more bloody whining.

Still, ‘while there’s life there’s hope’, as they say. Maybe I’ve spent too much time around Phlox and absorbed some of his pestilential optimism. If ever there was a time for it, I doubt whether any will ever be more opportune. “It could still happen, sir. I'm expecting a rescue party to come barging through that door any moment.”

Oh, well. We may as well go out with a laugh.

=/\=

It’s now reached the point where optimism is becoming in extremely short supply.

Our hands are bound. Guards order us to our feet, and we’re marched out of the cell at gunpoint.

It’s not as if it’s a nice place, but at this moment I’d far rather be staying in it. Briefly I’m tempted to put up some kind of a fight that might result in my being shot – better than being hanged, in anyone’s book – but that would leave Captain Archer to face execution alone.

I can’t do that.

We’re pushed along one or two corridors and then even as the door to the courtyard looms in front of us, we hear the crash and dull thud of trapdoors being tested. As we’re shoved through to our execution, I spare one desperate glance skyward, praying I’ll see a shuttlepod or even the underbelly of Enterprise herself, coming in to deliver a strafing run.

In the thin light of dawn, the cloud-dappled sky is empty.  The world around us is silent, holding its breath. The only sound I can hear is a far-distant rattle of what sounds like automatic fire – probably target-practice on some rifle-range or other.

After the glance, my gaze is drawn as though magnetised to the gallows. The nooses look as though they’ve been properly constructed – at least we should be spared the agony of strangulation – but the huge, prosaic brutality of our imminent end is enough to make my steps momentarily stutter.

The Captain must have been hoarding the last embers of hope in Enterprise, exactly like I was. It’s too late for rescue now, but he still tries to save anything that can be salvaged from the ruins. “He's my tactical officer. He can tell you everything you want to know about the Alliance's troop deployments, their weapons.”

Shame almost ties my tongue in knots. “Captain…”

He ignores me, still desperate to protect his own. “You don't need to kill him!”

It was actually a good ploy. Technically speaking, the knowledge I supposedly have should be far more valuable than my corpse, at least until they’d extracted it. It might even have kept me alive long enough for the rescue to happen.

I think it gives Gosis pause, but not for long; he’d rather both of us were dead, and we soon will be.

He gestures with his head. The guards ‘help us’ up the steps, and though at least I manage to tread with fair steadiness now, I can’t deny that my heart’s pounding in my chest as though trying to break out of it by force. I feel nauseous, and I can’t seem to get enough oxygen, but When the end is all there is, it matters and so I straighten my back, set my jaw and prepare to go out like a Reed.

The captain is pushed into position first. I feel his eyes on me and I don’t want him to see how much of a coward I am, so I stay ramrod-straight and still as the noose is settled around my neck. I have a professional interest in the mechanics of it, so I’m not particularly happy about the width of the cord, nor the fact that it’s placed under my ear rather than my jaw – the latter should snap my vertebra in my neck, but the former’s designed to crush my arteries, cutting off blood to the brain. It’ll still be reasonably quick (assuming it works, with this narrow cord), but I’ll definitely know about it, and if anyone’s asking, I’d really, really rather not.

I want to say something about ‘it’s been a pleasure to serve with you, Captain,’ but quite frankly my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth with terror. Silence is as much as I can achieve, and I’ll quit while I’m ahead, thanks very much and nice knowing you, World…

There seems no particular reason to expect anything but a very unpleasant sensation of some kind to end my experience of being alive, but just as I’m bracing myself for it, a cloud of dust is suddenly kicked up to one side of the courtyard in front of us. To my utter disbelief, a disembodied arm appears in midair, pointing a phase pistol.

Whoever’s doing the shooting, I’m going to recommend them for a Mention in Despatches for not just accuracy, but the judicious assessment of who to shoot first. The man by the trapdoor lever drops first (that’s a definite relief), followed by the other one on the gallows. The rest dive for cover.

My esteemed comrade Commander Tucker leaps out of apparently nowhere and pelts up the steps to free us while T'Pol – emerging from the same – provides covering fire. I’d imagine the guards are too stunned by developments to think to shoot us first, but I’m not exactly minded to file a complaint about it, even if I knew the appropriate address.

“Your ride's here,” Trip shouts over the crossfire as he relieves us of our totally superfluous neck-decorations.

Most of me just wants to bolt for what must certainly be the Suliban cell-ship, but duty forbids. I have to make up for my negligence first.  “Sir, the phase pistol – our equipment!”

“Don't leave without me.” Not waiting for me to argue, the Captain provides the covering fire for us to get into the cell ship and then dashes for the interrogation room. There's what feels like an agonising pause while we discourage any attempts by the remaining guards to peek out of hiding, and then at long last the door opens again and he sprints for the cell ship, tumbling in through the doorway just as the last shots rattle against its closing door.

=/\=

Far be it from a Reed to complain about the method of his rescue, and in the circumstances I’m definitely not minded to object to being suddenly in extremely close proximity to my colleagues from Enterprise, but five of us in a Suliban cell-ship is distinctly crowded. Now my heart’s stopped drubbing quite as violently as it was a few minutes ago, I have time to notice I feel faint with relief, and the sensation of air being in – shall we say – restricted supply affects me more than it ordinarily would do. I hope I won’t actually faint, but I’m damnably glad to hear Travis say the shuttlepod’s right where we left it and we’ll be there in two minutes.

Well. Two minutes, I can bear. I start looking around me, hoping that concentrating on things will help dispel the distinct feeling of wooziness. I’m fully aware that a narrow squeak like this is going to have serious ramifications – I experienced PTSD once or twice after more adventurous assignments than usual back in the Section – but for now, I’m just going to concentrate on getting home safely. Until we’re aboard Enterprise and headed for Space, leaving this wretched planet far behind us, I’ll struggle to feel any sense of security at all.

The first thing I latch onto in my search for distraction is Captain Archer, who’s frantically patting his pockets in a way that looks ominously familiar.

Trip’s noticed it too. “Cap’n?” His voice is hollow with foreboding.

This time, however, the Universe finally summons up a fond smile in our direction.  There’s a gleam of mislaid technology on the floor at our feet. “Sir, looking for this?” I ask innocently, picking up the scanner.

Sometimes, it’s nice to have it confirmed that things really just do – occasionally – happen by accident.

Chapter Text

‘Away Mission Report. Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, Tactical Officer of NX-01 Enterprise, recording.’

Well. Thus far and no further. After a short pause I manage the date, and on that achievement my ingenuity fails me.

I must be scrupulously honest. I must record everything that happened, to the best of my knowledge and belief, whether or not it redounds to my credit. As far as possible, I must excise from it any vestige of ‘opinion’; it’s not my job to pass judgement over our actions. Starfleet, and History, will do that.

This report will have to contain facts – not just those that cover what I observed during our first visit, though I must record those as faithfully as I can, but everything that happened. And I’m finding it unbelievably hard to achieve the necessary dispassion. It’s still too close, far too close, and every time I shut my eyes, I see again the looming shape of that bloody gallows that was so nearly the end of me.

Phlox has decreed that both Captain Archer and I should be relieved of duty for forty-eight hours and both of us are scheduled for counselling, whether we like it or not. Normally I’d say I damn well don’t need time off and I don’t want counselling, but the truth is that in my current mental state, the last place I ought to be is in charge of weapons. I’ve vomited three times in the last couple of hours, I’ve a killing headache, and when I look down, I see my closely clasped hands are shaking.

I want to be able to cope. I should be able to cope. I’d hoped – vainly, as it turns out – that plunging myself into this damned report I was so eager to have the authorship of would help pin down the maelstrom of emotions that have seized me. I even cocked a deaf ‘un to the Captain’s gentle suggestion that if I still wanted to write it – and he’d fully understand if I no longer did – I should put it off for a few days.

Put it off, be damned. A Reed summons discipline to get things done. When I sat down and switched on my computer terminal, I was determined that this damned report would be on the Captain’s desk at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, if I had to stay up all night to write it.

I should describe the gathering – the rally. I have the name of the speaker. I can describe the crowds, the buildings, the atmosphere. I can remember some of the most memorable phrases, the ones that drew rapturous applause from the audience. I can remember the parallels I drew, the foreboding that crept over me.

My hands loose their grip of each other and slip around my body. I’m shaking as if I’m in a tank of ice water. I can feel the noose around my neck, the metal grating of the trapdoor under my feet. My ears are full of the thud of something being brought up on the end of the rope.

I make it into the bathroom just in time, but I haven’t eaten or drunk; my belly’s empty. I twist and heave, expelling nothing but a little acid, but I can’t regurgitate the shame that’s worse than any acid, the shame of having precipitated all this by my carelessness. I don’t care if the Captain dismisses it as an accident – that’s not the point. It’s my job to look after the crew of this ship and I damn near got both of us killed. Not to mention probably provoking a possibly planet-scale war, though with any luck I fell short of launching the next generation of spacefaring xenophobes.

My fists thud against the wall at the back of the toilet, and the pain doesn’t stop them. I do it again, and again, punching the daylights out of Pell, and General Gosis, and all the rest of the warmongering bastards who will shortly be launching an all-out attack against the Alliance whom they now believe have genetically-enhanced soldiers, energy weapons and space-capable aircraft, not to mention cloaking technology.

Maybe that last item will give them pause. Maybe they’ll think twice before attacking an enemy they can’t see. Maybe they’ll look out at the encircling land and envisage it covered in invisible tanks, invisible guns, invisible armies.

And maybe they won’t. Maybe in a few years’ time there’ll be nothing left of any of them, because Lieutenant Malcolm sodding Reed couldn’t keep hold of one small piece of technology.

There’s a new noise in my ears, superimposed over the crash of the trapdoor and the howl of inbound missiles. At first easy to ignore, it very quickly becomes impossible, mainly because of its ridiculous accent and rising volume.

“Mal! Will you quit, you crazy sonofabitch?”

It’s phrased as a question, so it isn’t an order. Come to think of it, “Okay then, I’ll drag your sorry ass out!” isn’t either, but it certainly is a threat, because next minute I have two hard hands grabbing my pelvis and pulling. If my brain was connected rather than hovering over a trapdoor with a noose around its neck, Trip Tucker would probably get at least one of my heels square in his bollocks, but as it is, he drags me out across the bathroom floor and into what might technically pass for the safety of my quarters.

“I’m not fucking going to Phlox, so you can fuck off and leave me alone!” I scream at him.

“An’ I’ve never said you’re goin’ to, so you can shut the fuck up!” he bawls back at me. “But what you sure are gonna do is sit with me and tell me what the hell happened down there, and not some half-assed version of it!”

I could – strictly speaking – inform him that since I’m off duty and under Phlox’s supervision, he has no damned business barging in here and asking me anything. I could, on a less formal basis, give him a black eye and various other interesting tokens of my indignation. Instead, now helped by his firm grip on my upper arms, I shuffle and scramble my way onto my bunk, where I sit like a melting snowman rather than a Starfleet officer.

My knuckles are split and bleeding, courtesy of the wall in the bathroom. He tears off a few strips of toilet tissue and wraps them up – I don’t suppose our friendly local Denobulan would approve, but the simple, rough kindness reaches me in a way no amount of professional care could do.

Something hard and cold and made of glass slams into my trembling hand. “You can drink that or bath in it. Your choice.”

Bloody Yanks and their horrible cold beer; for once in a lifetime, I get the point of it. I press the side of the bottle to my forehead, feeling the condensation against the sweat.

“Come on, Mal.” He sits beside me. His arm presses against mine, steadiness in a world whose stability I can no longer depend on.

He takes a gulp of his own beer. Almost in reflex I take the first swallow of mine, tasting the cool gold spilling down my throat, reality in a world that had all but vanished into horrors.

“Hey.” He nudges me. “Take a breath, Loo-tenant. It’s not the Cap’n’s bourbon we’re drinkin’ this time.”

I laugh. It’s shaking, it’s nearly a sob, but it’s one step back from hell.

And then I begin to talk.

THE END.