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Beta'd by VesperRegina, to whom all due thanks!

OC Em Gomez borrowed by kind permission of Chrysa.

"MEN!"

The word was uttered like a curse as Hoshi Sato stepped into the sanctuary of her friend Em's cabin and heard the door hiss shut behind her.

"That good, huh?" Gomez was on Gamma shift and preparing for bed, but she was always ready to participate in a discussion of a subject dear to all female hearts. She came out of the bathroom in her pajamas, finished twisting her long dark hair into a night plait, and leaned against the wall with her arms crossed in the manner of one prepared to receive confidences. "So what's the problem with them now?"

"Your boss is the problem!" The comm officer dropped onto the bunk and pulled the band off her ponytail, shaking her glossy hair free.

Coming from anyone else on the ship, that accusation would have made Enterprise's deputy armory officer bristle in defense of her superior. Hoshi, however, was one of the select few who could get away with it, it being tacitly understood between the two of them that in fact relations between her and the lieutenant were rather more complex than was strictly appropriate between ranks.

So instead of bristling, she sighed. "Major Hayes?"

"Of course, Major Hayes!" Hoshi exploded. "And Malcolm's just as bad. If not worse! They're like two little boys, fighting over a toy!"

Em did her best to conceal a grin. She wasn't successful, earning herself a glare that would have felled either of the combatants to the deck plating if they'd been the recipient.

The crackling hostility between the ship's chief tactical officer and the head of the MACOs was achieving epic proportions. They missed no opportunity to snipe at each other, barely concealed beneath a superficial gloss of professional courtesy. When they passed in the corridor each rarely wasted a glance on the other.

It had even reached a point where they were fighting over food. If there was a last piece of peppered steak on offer in the Mess and he got there first, Reed would appropriate it and sit and eat it with an expression of mingled satisfaction and distaste. In the same manner, Hayes had been known to abstract a second helping of pineapple cobbler in addition to his own and hand it with exaggerated courtesy to one of his crew who'd had no dessert, leaving a seething lieutenant to stare into a cabinet now void of anything with pineapple in it. On that particular occasion it was widely held that it had been fortunate indeed that Malcolm hadn't had a phase pistol clipped at his hip. His fondness for pineapple was legendary.

In different circumstances, Captain Archer would almost certainly have picked up on the tension almost immediately and dealt with it. As it was, he had no attention to spare for squabbling among the crew, his whole concentration bent on finding the Xindi weapon. His Vulcan XO was very slightly less preoccupied, and had once or twice been seen to give the combatants rather sharp looks, but since their behavior did not in fact have any effect on the proper running of the ship she seemed content to leave it at that.

Before the attack on Earth, Trip would have unerringly detected the problem and done his best to defuse it by unofficial methods. Now, however, he was withdrawn and morose, isolated by his anger and grief. He was perhaps the one man on the ship who could, and would, have knocked sense into the armory officer by one means or other. Over the course of their slowly evolving friendship, Malcolm had come to place enormous trust in Trip's opinions and his necessarily superior understanding of the captain's actions. Now, however, the loss of Lizzie Tucker had fractured that friendship; Reed no longer felt safe to approach the chief engineer on anything other than a strictly professional level. He had no-one who could reassure him that the presence of the MACOs on board was not a direct slap at his department's competence, that the captain was not assessing Hayes as his replacement. Deprived of the balance he'd come to rely on, his perpetual underlying insecurity had run absolutely riot. Unable to express fear, he'd taken refuge in rage.

The colleagues who understood him (probably better than he'd have cared to realize) could read his reasoning perfectly well. The members of his department backed him like a faithful echo, whether they agreed with him or not; Em was among them, despite the fact that an attractive MACO had recently made overtures to her that under different circumstances would not have been rebuffed. However, it didn't make for a comfortable atmosphere on board ship, and Hoshi wasn't the only one who was coming to yearn for somebody with the authority to bang a couple of heads together. Even if it didn't succeed in knocking some sense into either of their thick skulls, it would at least vent the feelings of all those who were suffering the side effects of their ceaseless, stealthy, and bitter feud.

"And I thought the major had some sense!" Hoshi raged now. "But do you know what he did at lunchtime?"

"Threw all the pineapple in the waste disposal?"

"Worse than that!"

Em's eyebrows rose. "Dios mío, I hope Chef had his meat cleavers out of reach. I'm all ears!"

With some disgust, Hoshi realized she was blushing. "He kissed me. In front of Malcolm! On purpose!"

"He what?" The other woman fairly gaped at her. "So when's the funeral?"

"Not like that. Not on the mouth. On the hand!" She explained how the MACO leader had employed exquisitely underhanded tactics to offer the maximum possible provocation to his rival while at the same time leaving him not the smallest room for filing a complaint. On the surface, the gesture had been nothing more than polished courtesy on his part. Everyone knew that the MACOs' old-fashioned manners were enchanting. There had been some good-natured ribbing on the part of many female members of the crew to their male counterparts on that subject. How could it possibly be proved, however sure anyone might be, that the gesture of brushing a kiss on her fingers was as much a slap to her superior officer as it was a salute to her?

"Ooh, that was g – I mean, that was bad." Em was, of course, fully alive to the problem. "No wonder the boss was like a targ with PMS this afternoon!"

"No, was he?" In spite of herself, Hoshi giggled at the simile. Malcolm had been absent from the bridge after lunch. She hadn't envied whichever department he'd sailed his thundercloud away to; it was probably inevitable that it had been the armory which had borne the brunt of his suppressed and impotent wrath.

"Bernhard told me he was punching hell out of the simulations." Gomez grinned too. "Now I know why."

"Fifty credits says he goes to the gym tonight instead of the mess hall."

"No takers. I don't bet on a one-legged horse. But I'll give you odds he splits the punch bag again."

"That's the second one this month if he does. He'll end up on report for excessive enthusiasm in his work-outs. That'll be one for the record books." They were laughing like hyenas by this time.

"You'll have to cheer him up by blowing him a kiss across the Bridge," suggested Em, wiping her eyes. "If it doesn't give him a heart attack it'll make him feel better."

"The way he is right now he'd probably put me on report for unprofessional behavior," chuckled Hoshi.

"You could offer to endure some rigorous punishment?" A waggle of the eyebrows gave some indication of what sort of rigorous punishment might put the lieutenant in a good mood.

"I'm more in the mood to punish him rigorously, and Hayes with him."

"Ooh, could be interesting. Madame Hoshi's House of Horror. There'd be a queue down the corridor."

"Don't think the captain would buy it," said the comm officer regretfully, after contemplating the possibility.

"You could offer to give it to him for nothing." Em sat down beside her and dug an elbow into her ribs. "I'd give a year's pay to see his face if we put in a requisition for a pair of manacles for recreational purposes."

"The temptation would be to lock both of them up and throw away the key."

"Good plan, I could do with a promotion." She grinned, and then yawned cavernously. "Seriously, I think it's getting to the point where something's going to crack. It'll probably be something made of bone – jaws or ribs, whatever. But it can't go on like this."

"I think it probably could go on forever." Hoshi realized belatedly that she was keeping her friend away from much-needed sleep, and stood up quickly. "Malcolm won't start a fight. He's too stiff-upper-lip British. And Hayes won't, because it'd be an assault on a senior officer, and anyway he's doing just fine the way it is." A wry smile curved her lips. "Those guys are just so alike. If they weren't so busy making each other mad, I think they could be really good friends."

"Take a tip from me and don't tell either of them that," said Em drily. "Unless you really, really want to wind them up so far they'll never speak to you again."

"Ah, I know." She sighed. "Anyway, I'd better get off to see if there's anything left for dinner. Thanks for listening. Even if no-one can help."

"It's only a matter of time. And take it from me, not a long time either." She put a reassuring hand on Hoshi's arm. "I know the boss. He's had as much as he can take. Believe me – there's a storm on the way. And it's a lot closer than the horizon."

"Will that be a good thing or a bad thing?" Her smile was slightly woebegone.

"I don't know till it happens, but at least it'll be a done thing. Right now, I don't know about you but I feel like I'm sitting on a crate of dynamite waiting for somebody to hit the plunger. It's going to go off sooner or later, so best get it over and done with. And then anybody with a bit of gumption can be right there ready to pick up the pieces."

Elsewhere in the ship, an incensed Head of Tactical had found by this time that even pummelling the punch bag till the sweat ran down his back was not a sufficient outlet for his ire. He swung away from it and squared up to his reflection in the training mirrors instead, dropping into a fighting stance. The blood fizzed in his veins, overloaded with adrenaline and testosterone.

He glared at the slight figure in the mirror, bulking it out, increasing its height, painting the broad torso with a brown t-shirt instead of a grey tank top. Hours of hawk-like observation had taught him all the favourite moves. He recreated them now without difficulty. Alone in the gym, when anger had kept him sleepless, he'd practised over and over how to counter and better them. Oh, for a chance – the chance he dared not give himself. He knew exactly how likely it was that any bout he and his nemesis engaged in would explode out of control. As a head of a department he couldn't allow that to happen. What sort of example would that set to those watching?

Biting down on almost a moan of yearning to feel his fists hitting flesh rather than air, he threw the first punch, then another and another. Blood spurted, so vivid he could almost smell it. His lips writhed back off his teeth, snarling. Try kissing her now, you arrogant Yank!

The sound of the door opening startled him. He ignored the second edition of the hated image, concentrating on completing the destruction of the first. The MACO knew as well as he did what would happen if they ever crossed swords. So he'd just make an excuse and leave.

Disturbing me? You've been bloody disturbing me ever since you came on board, Major. You can shove it.

The challenge was out before he knew he'd finally lost control of his rage.

Hayes wouldn't accept. He'd just walk away, gloating at having finally goaded his enemy into betraying the depth of his fury.

Except that he hadn't walked away. He'd accepted.

With savage, incredulous joy, Reed watched him walk forward.

Game on!

The End.

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