Usual disclaimers. Spoilers only if you don't have Sky.
Part the First: Archer's on his chinstrap, T'Pol's going cold-turkey from Trillium and Malcolm's... nude? Surely the point of shore leave is to relax...?
Sometimes boldly going where no man has gone before means hanging out where no man of sound mind would ever want to hang out again.
The only really interesting thing about the Tamerlane system was Tamerlane 4, a small, rocky world used as as stopover point by freighters of all species in the region. It wasn't somewhere that Archer wished Enterprise in orbit of, not by any stretch of the imagination. He'd been down to the surface once when he was serving aboard the Constitution, and the entire planet was a dive. When I started out in this game I didn't think that was possible!
But, of course, their already flaky dilithium crystals had finally gone kaput as they were traversing the system on their way home from the Expanse. Trip had thrown up his hands in despair; he couldn't very well stick the damn things back together with Krazy Glue (though Archer would later wish he'd ordered Trip to do that very thing rather than set foot on this accursed world), and frankly the crew needed somewhere to blow off some steam where nobody would give a damn about a few... incidents. We've just ended a war, prevented the destruction of Earth and prevented a gang of alien nutjobs going back to the 1940s and siding with Adolf Hitler, he reflected. I think the crew are entitled to get a little, ahem, 'out of hand' down there. At this point, he couldn't care less if they got so out of hand that they started a civil war. Not that the place had any government to speak of.
As one might expect, Jonathan Archer was plumbing the depths of mental, physical and spiritual exhaustion. He had calmly and dispassionately described precisely what he'd done in the Expanse, including piracy, first-degree murder and allowing the schematics for a young Death Star to fall into the hands of the Andorians. Insofar as they permitted themselves the sensation, the Vulcans were going to be pissed. And Starfleet Command weren't going to be a hundred percent impressed with some of his more controversial executive decisions either.
He stood. To hell with it all. He was going to find some civilian clothes, go down to the surface of that planet and do everything they'd warned him not to do when they assigned him to Command. Porthos looked at him expectantly.
"Sorry pal. You'd get eaten."
"What? Did you think I wore my uniform on my days off?" Malcolm adjusted his somewhat battered black leather jacket, beneath which he wore a moderately smart shirt and new-looking blue denim jeans.
T'Pol hadn't fully assimilated the notion of Malcolm Reed having days off at all, the incident on Risa notwithstanding. That was probably Commander Tucker's fault, she mused. Lt Reed would certainly say so... She blinked a few times, mentally directed a potent Vulcan obscenity at Trillium-D and all it represented, and calmed herself. This was something she suspected she would just have to learn how to put up with. I am a disgrace to the followers of Sarek! I discover a mineral that can deprive me of my emotional control, and I decide to mainline it? Oh, spirits of my ancestors, I've begun to sound like Trip... Commander Tucker, damn it! She took several deep breaths, counted to a very high number inside her head and followed the mercifully oblivious Starfleet personnel to the airlock.
Trip was still in uniform, and already on the surface. He was examining a selection of dilithium crystals in a salvage yard; the captain had specifically requested that they economise somewhat. Enterprise was looking at a more or less complete refit as soon as they got home, so there was no point buying full-spec crystals at an appalling mark-up when they were a week from home.
"Find what you need, pardner?" called the proprietor, a short and balding human with 'small-time crook' written all over him.
"No. All I see is overpriced crap. I only need five thousand engine hours before we're in spacedock, so the actual merchandise will do pretty well," Trip replied coldly. "However, there is not one single item in this junkyard that is not priced at a minimum of thirty percent more than it is worth. I object to this. And if you make one more crack about my accent then I will kick your ass! Do we understand one another, pal?"
Before the frighteningly creaky old lighter had lifted to pick up the next shore leave party, the crew had gone their separate ways. Travis and some of the MACOs had gone to rent sub-orbital jet sleds, whilst others took up more pedestrian pursuits. At least one bar fight had already broken out between Engineering and Science personnel, famous rivals, before they'd been on the surface three hours. "What does it take to make these guys get along?" Trip groaned, watching as the two Orions employed to keep some measure of order on the premises ejected the combatants.
"You could ask T'Pol's hand in marriage," Hoshi suggested.
"Ha, ha." Trip fell silent. "Hoshi? Does that look like Malcolm over there?"
"Yeah."
"And is he-?"
"Buck naked, yes."
"And is that Rigellian guy with the crowbar chasing after him in particular, do you think?"
"It does kinda look that way."
"Hmm." Trip gave this some thought. "We need to confine him to the ship."
"Whatever his propensity for misadventure, ensign," T'Pol cut in smoothly, appearing behind them, "he has yet to fall pregnant." Trip ground his teeth. "Furthermore, should Commander Tucker propose and I be so foolish as to accept, the feud between our respective departments would not attenuate. It would merely result in the destruction of the wedding venue." With that, she strode away.
"Did she just make a joke?" Trip said in an awestruck tone. "We spent too long in the Expanse; we're all going stir-crazy."
That's truer than you know, T'Pol mused. Or ever will know, I hope.
Malcolm Reed was naked. He was also running for his life. Of all the women in that bar, the only one to take the slightest interest in me has to be married! The entire fucking universe hates me!
It had been one of the most exciting shags of his life, though; so familiar yet so tantalisingly different! Except they'd both fallen asleep...
Flashback, of the sort often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder:
Malcolm groaned, and tried to pry his eyes open. A warm body curled up against him, and he grinned in recollection.
Then he heard the front door open, and certain details began to penetrate the warm, Romulan Ale-induced fog (prickly buggers they might be, but they knew their plonk) surrounding his higher brain functions. Like the double bed, and what appeared to be some bizarre form of alien shaving kit that Demina here most definitely did not use.
And the large male Rigellian standing in the doorway holding what appeared to be Malcolm's trousers. He sighed, and nudged his companion rather sharply.
"Wstfgl?"
"The husband you forgot to mention has just come home. I don't think he's terribly impressed."
"Oh, good. His reaction's really quite arousing to watch."
Malcolm assimilated this information. He had allowed himself to be seduced by a woman who had a fetish for watching her significant other beat the men she'd cuckolded him with to death. I mean, honestly! What are the odds...?
Seeing his cue, the male Rigellian roared aloud and flourished a crowbar.
As he catapulted himself through the window and landed heavily on several bags of he really didn't want to know what, Malcolm tried very hard to work out how he'd ruined his karma to this extent.
Back to the here and now:
He dodged into an alleyway, praying for washing lines and vowing to take up sodomy. It's safer. Humph; I can't stand rum and let's not even contemplate the lash, but one out of three's better than I usually get, isn't it Dad? The mental picture of his father's expression upon learning of any of his offspring's homosexuality did much to restore Malcolm's flagging morale. Why didn't I think of that before...? Oh, Jesus in a camper-van! Please God don't let that be...
"Malcolm? What the hell is going on?" Captain Archer said in the blandly enquiring tone that all bosses use on subordinates with whom they are exceedingly pissed off.
"Woman trouble, sir," Malcolm replied. "Now much as I'd love to stop and chat..." The Rigellian appeared at the other end of the alleyway, still waving the crowbar. "There is a man who wants to drag me back to his house and beat me to death whilst his wife looks on and rubs herself to ecstasy, so I'd best not hang about."
Archer sighed. "This way," he suggested, dragging Malcolm into what appeared to be the outdoor urinals of a bar and bolting the door behind him
"Well, never let it be said that I'm not a man of action," he whispered. "Not five minutes ago I'd sworn off women as more trouble than they're worth, and here I am in a urinal with my commanding officer, entirely without apparel."
"Lieutenant?"
"Sir?"
"Shut the hell up. Now."
"Yes, sir."
Archer opened his communicator. "Ensign? Can you get a lock on both of us?"
"I think so, sir," a woman's voice replied.
"Then get us outta here!"
The Rigellian was just about to breach the door when he heard a despairing howl and the hum of a transporter.
"Everything okay, sir?" the rather pretty young woman asked, handing Malcolm a blanket. He offered a hollow laugh.
"Put me back down, ensign," Archer requested. "I'm starting to enjoy this evening."
Malcolm growled, and went to find some more clothes. And a phase pistol. I'm having that jacket back, for a start!
Coming up in Part 2: Archer gets hammered, Malcolm gets even and T'Pol gets some unwanted company...