Author's Notes : Set after "Vox Sola". Spoilers up to and including this episode, especially "Shuttlepod One".
Rating : PG
"The Trouble With Trip"
Lt. Malcolm Reed entered the mess hall after the end of his duty shift. It had been a mostly uneventful day, although the targeting scanners had gone out of alignment yet again towards the end of the shift. It was the fifth time in two days, and Malcolm didn't like it. What is wrong with the damn things, he wondered to himself. It had taken him an hour to realign the things but he had no doubt they'd be out again by the end of the day. I'll have to ask Commander Tucker to look over them when he's got a moment.
Grabbing his food selection, he turned to survey the mess hall. Speak of the Devil, he thought to himself, as he spotted Commander Tucker sitting at a table towards the back with Ensign Mayweather. Working his way through the crowd towards them he asked,
"Mind if I join you?"
"Not at all, Sir," Travis beamed back enthusiastically. A noncommittal grunt was the only sound forthcoming from the Commander.
Malcolm sat down, and threw an inquisitive glance at Trip. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. Caught up thinking about the problem with the targeting scanners he had forgotten that for the last few days, Trip had seemed rather churlish around him. He couldn't figure out what he'd done to upset the Commander though.
"Bad day?" he ventured.
"Nope."
Malcolm rolled his eyes in annoyance. One word answers seemed to be all he could get out of the Chief Engineer these days. He cast a quick glance over at Travis, who was staring at Trip with a puzzled look on his face, obviously confused by the new air of tension at the table. When the young ensign turned to face him, Malcolm just shrugged.
"So, did you get those targeting scanners fixed Lieutenant?" Travis asked, hesitantly. He had still been on the bridge when Malcolm had first gone down to the armoury to fix them, but by the time he'd got back, the Ensign's shift had been over.
"For now." Malcolm replied dryly. "Actually I was wondering if you might take a look at them for me, Commander?"
"You wouldn't rather solve the problem all by yourself," Trip muttered back.
"What?" It was the most words the Commander had said to him in days, but it wasn't exactly what he'd expected to hear.
"You heard me. Look, I've got to get back to Engineering." Trip rose from the table.
"But you only just got here," Travis interjected.
"Yeah well, turns out I'm not hungry after all."
With that last statement he picked up his plate and moved away from the table. Travis turned wide-eyed from Trip's retreating back to look at Malcolm.
"What was all that about?"
"I wish I knew" Malcolm replied honestly. Whatever it was, it was clear that he was the source of the problem.
"Well, when did it start?" Travis didn't seem willing to let the subject drop at that though. Malcolm thought back to the first time Trip had seemed short with him.
"While he was in Sickbay, recovering from that alien creature attaching itself to them."
The creature in question had found itself aboard Enterprise and had taken several crewmembers, including Commander Tucker and the Captain and joined with them. Only Hoshi's successful attempts to communicate with the creature had saved the crewmembers from becoming one with it.
"Maybe that's it then. He's still recovering. Might make anyone short-tempered."
"Only with me? He doesn't seem to have the same problem with anyone else. Nice try, but I don't think so."
"Maybe you should go and talk to him about it, before it gets worse." Travis shrugged as if to say That's what I would do.
"Maybe I will." Malcolm made up his mind. "If you'll excuse me Travis."
At Travis's nod of acceptance, Malcolm stood up, took his own plate to the recycler and followed Commander Tucker's footsteps out the door.
****************************
Engineering was it's normal bustle of activity, as Malcolm stepped through the door. The massive warp core in the middle gave the area a cramped feeling, and the people buzzing around it on the catwalks reminded Malcolm of ants crawling over a new find. He searched out Trip in the crowd, and eventually spotted him on the walkway directly in front of the core, punching in instructions to the computer. Moving to stand beside him, he waited patiently for Trip to acknowledge he was there. After a few minutes of no response however, Malcolm got sick of waiting and asked bluntly,
"Are you actually going to ignore me until I get sick of it and go away?"
"That was the plan," came the terse reply.
"Well it's not going to work."
"Fine. What the hell do you want?" Trip's reply was barely restrained fury.
"I want you to tell me what's going on." Malcolm couldn't help but put the same ferocity into his own voice.
"Why do you care?"
"Because I thought we were friends."
"So did I." There was no 'barely restrained' anything in that reply as Trip shouted it out, drawing the attention of the rest of engineering. Malcolm could barely care that anyone was witnessing the argument, he was too shocked at the rest of Trip's reply, "But no. Apparently not, 'cause you don't even respect me as an engineer. How can you be friends with someone you don't respect."
"When did I say I didn't respect you as an engineer," Malcolm interrupted.
"You didn't have to say it. How long were you working on that force field without even telling me. How many times did you get stumped on a problem and never tried to ask for my help."
Malcolm's mind was reeling. Trip was upset about his forcefield invention. He blurted out the first excuse that came to him:
"Your the Chief Engineer, you were busy."
"That's Bull and you know it," Trip retorted, "I'm not on duty 24hrs, and we were together on off-duty time plenty of times when you could have asked."
"But.."
"No. No 'buts'. If you don't like me, you just had to say so you know."
"I do like you."
"You got a funny way of showing it."
"And both of you have a funny way of choosing the appropriate places to argue." A new voice came sternly from the deck below them. Both men turned mortified gazes onto Captain Jonathan Archer. Someone on the engineering team must have called him down. Where he had barely noticed the attention before, Malcolm now felt like sinking into the floor.
"Both of you. Follow me." Archer ordered before striding out of Engineering. Both Malcolm and Trip had to hurry down the ladder and practically run to catch up to the obviously furious Captain. Trip made as if to say something, but before he could utter a word, Archer held up his finger,
"Not one word Trip."
Trip shut his mouth immediately. The journey through the corridors and the ride through the turbolift was carried out in stony silence. When the turbolift finally spit them out onto the bridge, Sub-Commander T'Pol merely raised her eyebrows at the scene.
"I don't want to be disturbed," Archer addressed her on his way through.
"Understood."
When they were finally in the Captain's ready room, Archer spun around to face them.
"Mind telling me what made two of my senior officers start going at each other like cats and dogs?" he asked angrily.
Trip stayed silent, seemingly studying his shoes intently. Malcolm gulped,
"Just a slight misunderstanding, Sir."
"You call that a slight misunderstanding?" Archer waved the question away before Malcolm had time to respond. "You know what, don't answer that. I really don't care. The fact is it's unacceptable behaviour on both your parts. I expected better from the both of you."
"Sorry Sir." Malcolm thought he heard a similar apology from Trip, but it was hard to tell. The Engineer seemed to be trying to make himself as small and unnoticeable as possible. Not a bad idea at all, Malcolm's brain tried to tell him.
"Your damn right your sorry. Your both working your shifts tomorrow in waste extraction. And Trip, take the rest of this shift off."
"But Cap'n" Trip finally exploded.
"No," Archer cut him off, "Your both lucky I don't make your punishment worse. I'm only making it light because you obviously have some problem you need to sort out. In future, hash it out in private. Understood."
"Yes Sir." Malcolm and Trip responded in unison.
"Dismissed."
Malcolm made his way back onto the bridge, Trip at his side. He tried not to look at any of the bridge crew, the last thing he needed now was to know for sure that they were staring at him in amusement, like he assumed they were. Probably be the laughing stock of the whole ship tomorrow. Once they'd gotten in the turbolift and punched in there requested deck number, Malcolm turned to Trip.
"So, I suppose we should talk about this, then," he suggested.
"Not now."
"Well then when?" Malcolm could feel his anger growing and he clamped down on it tightly.
Trip remained silent until the turbolift came to a halt. Then he said,
"My quarters, 2100 hours," before stepping off and letting the door close behind him.
Malcolm just stared at the solid doors as the lift once again started moving, taking him to his destination.