This is an old story that had been sitting around in the "Work in Progress" folder for awhile. I hadn't planned on it being a "Sickbay Month" story, but perhaps it will do.

Failure to Communicate

Blue-gray eyes fluttered open and took in the sterile, bright whiteness and the tiny space of the cubicle enclosed by privacy curtains. His nose was assailed by the signature scents of the place - alcohol, bleach and the creatures in the healing menagerie. A small moan escaped his lips as pain flooded his consciousness. Exactly where it came from or precisely how it had been inflicted he couldn't quite recall at the moment. Truthfully, he didn't care. All that mattered was that he was back in sickbay aboard the Enterprise and that he had failed yet again.

He knew that the captain, his fellow officers and the crew would not see the situation, much less himself, as a failure. In their eyes, he has done his job. He had covered the captain's and Hoshi's retreat to the shuttlepod and safety in the face of duplicitous and angry aliens. He had taken the shot meant for the captain. He wouldn't disagree that that was in his job description and that he had successfully carried it out, but in his own mind he was still a failure.

He wasn't lacking in combat skills. He handled a phase weapon at least as well as he designed them. He was a crack shot with other, older projectile weapons. He held the highest rank in several forms of the martial arts and could hold his own in a down and dirty street brawl as well. When one is the youngest, smallest child at a military boarding school, one learns what has to be done to survive and learns it quickly. No, failure didn't lie here, but he still believed that he was a failure.

He had a brilliant mind for strategy and tactics if his grades in those courses at the Academy were any indication. He remembered with quiet satisfaction that on the cumulative final exam in his senior year his class had been given the task of re-fighting the battle of Gettysburg. He had been assigned the role of Robert E. Lee, and he and his team of fellow students had won. Their Army of Northern Virginia had gone on to capture Washington and end the war in the fall of 1863 with a Confederate victory. He had successfully argued before a panel of professors that such a thing was at least technically possible. The only problem was that these courses had not prepared him for the present scenario in which he believed he was failing miserably.

He had no complaint in regard to his team on the Enterprise. They were intelligent, quick to learn, highly skilled, hard working and deeply motivated. They respected him and willingly followed his commands. No, there was no fault in them, only in himself as their leader. They could - and would - do what was necessary to protect Enterprise and her people if given the opportunity.

His mother had always said that if one had to resort to fighting, then one had already lost. He suspected that T'Pol would agree with that assessment. What his father thought of the statement, however, was not something he would repeat in polite, mixed company. He himself wavered between espousing a macho "taking one for the team" mentality and favoring his mother's more pacifist stratagem of trying to prevent the fight in the first place. Deep down, though, he was a realist. The latter couldn't always be achieved, but the former was happening far too often. He'd been mugged, beaten, shot, poisoned, drugged, possessed by aliens in one way or another and nearly hanged by the neck until dead (may God have mercy on his soul). Why was this? The long and the short of it, save for the last, was that try as he might, he simply could not convince Captain Archer often enough that adequate security measures were necessary and proper. That, in a nutshell, was why he was a failure.

By now, Dr. Phlox's pain medications must have started to kick in because his mind drifted back to Cool Hand Luke, the Paul Newman movie Trip had recently shown for Movie Night. What was that line again? "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

That certainly seemed to be the case when it came to any Reed-Archer dialog on the subject of security. He couldn't understand it. They both spoke the same language (more or less). Yanks had told him, particularly the female of the species, that they loved to hear him talk, so his accent wasn't a problem. He acknowledged, though, that there was a difference between hearing and listening. One could hear and have the sound go in one ear and out the other. Really listening, on the other hand, required that the message stop some place in between. Archer heard, but he did not listen.

He'd tried to deliver the message politely and correctly. He'd asked for permission to speak freely, and when given it, had spoken passionately and, he thought, eloquently. He'd indicated, advised and recommended. He'd added the adverb "strongly" in front of all three words. He'd come this close to insubordination. He'd even begged (and you know Reeds don't beg) Archer to let him do his job. At best, he'd get a verbal pat on the head like he was Archer's little pet armory officer and of no more significance to the running of the ship than Porthos. At worst, he was accused of being paranoid, trigger happy and generally out of line. On one particularly difficult interview, Archer had gone so far as to remind him that his job was whatever he (Archer) told him it was.

He considered asking the other senior officers for assistance. T'Pol was often supportive of his recommendations, particularly with races like the Andorians who were known to the Vulcans and had a reputation for belligerence. Not that Archer paid much heed, mind you. It had to be that American mind-set. Even when they were colonials, they'd never been good about taking direction from the Mother Country (or anyone else). That attitude hadn't improved after the revolution, had been kicked up a notch or two after World War II and had really gone into high gear with the fall of the Soviet Union. The world's last remaining superpower, indeed! It had taken some generations to figure out exactly what that meant, and by the time they had, had the premise even been true?

Trip Tucker probably understood the captain better than anyone else. They'd been close personal friends for years. In addition, Trip was his closest friend as well. One would think that Trip could provide the missing link in the communication chain except that he behaved even more like a space tourist than Archer. With his camera, loud shirts and roving eye, Trip often acted like he'd just checked in to Club Med on the Sea of Tranquility.

He supposed the difference in mind-set between himself and the captain could be attributed to their different heritages. He came from a small island nation that much of the time was either being actively invaded or living under the threat of invasion. The wild Celtic tribes, the Romans, the Germanic tribes, the Norse, the Normans - they all came marching through and took whatever they wanted. Some stayed and imposed their way of life. The Spanish, the French, the Germans (again!) and the godless Russians would lie in wait, ready to exploit the smallest weakness. The religious zealots of all types brought terror to even the most peaceful and mundane of settings. Sometimes, even the motives of erstwhile friends like those former subjects "across the pond" were suspect. His people were acutely aware that they needed peace and trade in order to survive. They must protect themselves.

Archer's people, on the other hand, were, overall, an optimistic bunch. From the beginning, they'd believed that in their land, if one worked hard enough, one could do or become anything one wished. If one failed in one place, one simply moved on and tried again somewhere else. It was no big deal, just a new career in a new town.

He was good with maps, but despite that, had never really grasped how big America was until he'd attended Starfleet's Academy in San Francisco. He'd ridden coach on the high-speed transcontinental train from New York as it was all he could afford. It had taken a bit over a day. He couldn't image crossing the country in a wagon drawn by plodding oxen.

For the most part, the Yanks had been safe in their huge land and blessed with peaceful neighbors, especially once they and his people had decided that the border with Canada would be the 49th parallel, not 54°40', nor would they fight about it. Even before United Earth, it was the longest undefended border in the world. Save for the Civil War, when they'd done it to themselves, they'd only been attacked a handful of times - dates they could recite and number off on the fingers of one hand. Children seeing military equipment moving along quite country roads would smile and wave, not run and hide. It was only the weekend warriors of the National Guard on their way to summer maneuvers. It was the military and the Guard who brought help in times of natural disaster. Only in rare cases of civil insurrection did some Yanks ever look upon the military or the Guard in outright fear. He supposed that it really should be no surprise then that Archer and Tucker still looked at everything with open wonder and moved into any situation blithely and boldly. He could never make them understand until it was too late. He would always be a failure, and they, his charges, were the ones who'd pay the price.

He'd been uncharacteristically quiet and compliant in sickbay while he'd wrestled with this problem. So much so, he found out later, that Phlox had spoken to Archer about it. Rumor had it that Archer's only response had been, "Be thankful for small favors." Once he had examined the situation from all angles and determined that there was only one thing he could do to protect these people who, despite his best efforts to remain strictly professional, had become his friends and more, a family more caring and supportive than those who held that name by blood, he had chafed for release from the good doctor's care. He had things he needed to do.

Once back in his quarters and only on light duty, he set about making discreet inquires. He was looking for a man with whom he'd studied at the Academy, a man with whom he'd had an intense rivalry that was sometimes friendly and sometimes not. In any case, as the Yanks would say, "That was business; nothing personal." The man had the necessary skills and a sense of honor. He had one more important thing, something that Reed lacked: He was an American with, for what Reed had in mind, a particularly relevant family history. On December 7, 1941, the infamous day, one of this man's ancestors had had the misfortune to be assigned to the U.S.S. Arizona. His name was one of nearly 1,200 carved into the wall of the marble memorial built above the sunken ship. On September 11, 2001, what the Yanks simply called 9/11 without the year because for them there could only be one, another of this man's ancestors had answered the call "Let's roll!" and found a grave in a field in Pennsylvania amid the shattered, burning wreckage of an airliner. Reed felt a sense of satisfaction when at the end of his inquiries he found that the man was interested in his project and that a person in authority approved of it as well.

Reed wasn't surprised when Archer approved his request for a transfer, but he was a bit saddened when he did so without even token dissent. "It's probably for the best, Malcolm. I see Enterprise as a ship of exploration, but you see her as a warship. That's a fundamental difference in viewpoint that's not likely to change. It would remain a constant source of friction between us."

"Admiral Erickson will be delighted to have you in Weapons R&D. He's reminded me regularly since I chose you for Enterprise that he had a place on his staff waiting for you if you ever found your posting here not to your liking."

Malcolm said nothing in reply, although it took almost all of his considerable self-control not to blurt out that his request for a transfer had nothing to do with disliking anything about Enterprise or his place aboard her. It was all about duty - his duty to serve and protect - and the fact that the only way he could do that would be to leave the ship, and all those aboard her whom he loved, in what he hoped would be the capable hands of another. He sighed to himself. It he thought he could explain this to Archer in such a way that he would understand, then he would have done so, but his inability to get through to the man was what had brought him to this pass in the first place.

"I think the officer you've recommended to fill the vacancy you created will work out just fine. His record is almost as good as yours, and he's quite interested in the position."

Malcolm knew this, of course, but it wouldn't do for Archer to know that he'd been handed a fait accompli. "I wouldn't want to leave you in the lurch, as it were, sir," he said quietly.

"I appreciate that, Malcolm. If you ever decide that you'd like a little more excitement than planetside Weapons R&D can provide, I'd be happy to recommend you to any of my more gung-ho fellow captains who might be in the market for a capable weapons and tactical officer or chief of security."

"Thank you, sir. Most kind."

"It's been a pleasure to serve with you, Malcolm."

"The honor has been mine, sir," Malcolm replied. Under the circumstances, one would have thought that these were empty words, a mere formality that was expected, but strangely enough, Malcolm still felt a liking and even respect for the man who was Enterprise's captain, and for a few minutes more at least, his commanding officer.

Malcolm stood by one of the view ports on the observation deck of Jupiter Station and watched as Enterprise moved gracefully out of the docking area and toward Lowell beacon. He could see the bridge in his mind. Archer in the command chair. Travis at the helm, a broad grin on his face as he carefully maneuvered the ship through traffic. Hoshi at the communications station carefully monitoring both arrival and departure control frequencies. Trip at the engineering station keeping a careful eye on the readouts for both the impulse engine and the warp drive. His colleague taking his place at weapons and tactical.

Compared to all the wounds he'd suffered that had landed him in sickbay, this hurt the most. It was his own fault, of course: His failure to communicate, his failure to maintain professional distance and his sentimental foolishness in coming to bid Enterprise goodbye, but he'd been drawn like the proverbial moth to the flame, and like the moth, he'd been burned. He'd always heard "if you love someone, then set them free and they'll come back to you." It had never been true for him in the past, but Enterprise and her people were truly special and would perhaps prove to be the exception. He devoutly hoped so; after all, that had been the point of the exercise. With one last look out the view port, he shouldered his duffle bag and headed to the docking bay for the day's last shuttle to Earth. Final boarding had just been called.