"All things considered."
Well, that just about summed the day up, thought Jon, lying back on his bed. They'd got away comparatively lightly ...
... all things considered.
But now he finally got time to start processing events, and the ship could be considered reasonably safe (though with those cloaked Romulans, there was no saying exactly when Enterprise might have been deemed seen safely off the premises), there were a few things he had to start fitting into his understanding of one of his officers.
He'd started off the day with that intention. Breakfast had seemed as good a route as any to start probing beneath the very stiff and proper surface of his Armory Officer, though he probably should have been prepared for Reed to turn up with a PADD bearing some roster modifications for which he wanted his superior's approval. The changes were minor and logical, and he suspected that normally the Englishman would have been content to present them to his immediate superior (Trip) for rubber-stamping. That he'd chosen to consult the ship's CO looked like a deflecting tactic, for there was little doubt that he was deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of engaging in one-on-one conversation with his captain.
Sport should have been a bridge. Everyone knew that all the English were crazy about soccer.
Unfortunately it turned out that all the English except Malcolm Reed were crazy about soccer. He didn't even know that the national team had made it to the World Cup. If he had known, it seemed unlikely he'd have been interested; turned out he wasn't particularly keen on any sport at all.
Jon, who enjoyed all sport in general and water-polo in particular, found this the most inexplicable aspect yet of his rather enigmatic officer. He'd been disappointed, because that meant the hoped-for 'bridge' was effectively useless, but even so he was by no means ready to give up.
The ship's arrival at the planet they were headed for had interrupted their awkward tête-á-tête, probably to Malcolm's deep thankfulness. However, the excitement of discovering a Minshara-class world had been short-lived, ended abruptly by the explosion that took out a chunk of C and D Decks on the ship's forward quarter. T'Pol's modification of the scanners had revealed that the seemingly uninhabited planet was ringed with orbiting mines; only luck had prevented the ship from hitting more than one of them before anyone even realized they were there.
But that luck had been short-lived. Moments after the first struck, another mine attached itself to the hull. It didn't explode on impact as the other had done, but there was no doubt that it was carrying just the same explosive capacity. And though the first had done comparatively little damage, if this one went off it had the potential to disable Enterprise completely.
And that had set in train a sequence of events that had done more to reveal the man behind the armory officer's mask more effectively than any discussion of sport over breakfast could possibly have done.
At that moment Porthos jumped up on to the bed, and Jon pulled him in for a hug. He knew that they'd had the narrowest of escapes, and even though he'd known well enough that (as the Vulcans never tired of cautioning) Space was dangerous, still when the danger was past and there was time to look back at it, there was bound to be a bit of reaction. His quarters were undoubtedly the same temperature they always were, but there was a faint chill in his body that seemed to have in it some lingering aftermath of the infinite coldness of the void in which he'd worked to disarm the mine, save his ship and free his trapped officer.
Porthos seemed to know something was wrong. He snuggled in close, whining.
"Hey, it could be worse," Jon told him. "I could be in Sickbay with a hole through my leg."
Phlox had tck-ed and borne Malcolm straight off for surgery. Jon had waited around long enough to see the EV suit cut off to reveal the circuit-filled shaft impaling his armory officer's thigh and then been glad enough of the doctor's dismissal. More pain medication had been required while the suit was removed, so Malcolm was pretty well out of it, but nevertheless the captain had paused to drop a hand to pat his shoulder. "You did a fine job out there, Malcolm."
There had been no reply of course, though a surprisingly shy smile had wavered across the lieutenant's face. And Jon had left Sickbay then, to talk repairs with Trip and file reports to Starfleet and eventually catch something to eat.
After which he'd retired to his cabin, where the thinking he hadn't had time to do while he was in the thick of things started.
He'd had little hesitation in appointing Reed as his Head of Security. He still thought he'd made the right call. Hell, given that he now knew the man was willing – if not goddamn determined – to sacrifice his own life to safeguard the ship, it was hard to imagine anyone better fitted for the role.
But that determination had opened a hole in the lieutenant's previously impenetrable front. Pinned to the hull and (in his own eyes) doomed to die one way or the other, Malcolm had been more forthcoming about himself than he'd been in the whole of the previous fourteen months. Well, maybe not so much about himself, but that story about his uncle dying in the Clement sure hadn't come out by accident.
And so it proved.
Jon hadn't quite gotten around to figuring out how to discipline an officer for an act of heroic self-sacrifice. There ought to be some way around it, but so far he hadn't found one.
Most of the impression he'd received of Malcolm Reed so far fitted with his background, coming as he did from a military family. His father had been a high-ranking officer in the British Navy, and hadn't taken it too well that his son had chosen to join Starfleet rather than follow the family tradition. Maybe that one act of insubordination wasn't as out of character as it might otherwise have seemed, despite the fact that up till now Reed had been stiffly obedient to every order. It was beginning to appear that the Englishman was perfectly obedient all the time – right up to the point where he decided not to be.
Strictly speaking, his decision to join Starfleet rather than the Navy could hardly be described as insubordination per se, though it wasn't hard to imagine that was how it would have appeared to his family. At a guess, his whole young life must have been spent in the expectation that he would follow in his father's footsteps. Jon, who'd idolized his own father, could imagine how much surprise and consternation would have followed the announcement that the only son of the household had his heart set on a career among the stars rather than on the high seas. It was a pointer to the fact that for all his rather shy and self-effacing outer appearance, there was a core of high-tensile steel inside it.
Well, there wasn't anything wrong with that. If you wanted to get on in your chosen career, you had to be tough. Jon approved of a man (or, indeed, a woman) who knew what they wanted and was prepared to do whatever it took to get it, within the limits of the law of course.
Competition for the post of the Head of Security aboard Earth's new Warp-5 capable flagship had been intense. There were a lot of fine officers hungry for the post, both for the prestige of it and for the opportunities for adventure it offered. With this capacity for interstellar travel at record speeds, Enterprise could look to see sights and meet peoples whom Humans had never set eyes on before; and for all that the Vulcans maintained their customary been-there, seen-that, not-excited attitude, most of Starfleet were intensely proud of their new flagship and eager to share in its discoveries, if only at second hand via the regular reports sent back.
Uniquely, the Head of Security was not assessed only on their qualifications (Malcolm's were impressive, to put it mildly, but there were others with even better) but on their expertise with weapons and unarmed combat. Jon and the other members of the board had gone down to the gymnasium, where practice bouts had been organized to allow the contenders to show off their skills. Reed had been easily the smallest of the lot, and it had been widely expected that he'd make an early exit; but though he was quiet while he waited, weighing up the competition thoughtfully, once he was moving he was a revelation. His greatest disadvantage – his small physique – became his greatest asset as he used his opponents' greater height and weight against them, and his fighting spirit was indomitable. Jon, watching, was reminded irresistibly of a Jack Russell terrier, though he was careful to keep that comparison to himself; he rather doubted the strait-laced Brit would thank him for it.
The shooting scores were pretty evenly matched. Most of the candidates used standard pulse rifles, but in the early rounds Reed had produced an antique Lee Enfield – much to the bemusement of all – and his accuracy with it was startling. Later, to demonstrate his versatility, he reverted to a pulse rifle of his own, and his scoring was consistently very high, if not always unbeatable.
Lastly, in keeping with the tradition of the eastern Martial Arts, each candidate was required to perform a kata,a detailed choreographed pattern of movements made to be practiced alone. Almost all of the candidates made use of some kind of weapon as an adjunct of it – a sabre, or a two-headed axe – but there was a gasp of shock and consternation when after his opening moves Reed lifted from the floor beneath his feet a barbaric curved metal weapon with multiple wicked edges. Jon hadn't seen such a thing before, but plainly others had; the word 'bat'leth' was muttered among the audience. He almost certainly wasn't the only one who watched in apprehensive awe as the slight figure twirled and twisted silently with the weapon passing deftly from hand to hand, sometimes close enough to the moving limbs that it seemed all but certain that blood must spring out onto the spotless white cotton of his karategi.
But when the performance was over, there was no sign of injury. Strangely, none of elation either; the old-young face had remained shuttered, even while a spontaneous burst of applause had broken out.
'Shuttered'. That was a good adjective to describe Malcolm, John thought a little grimly now. For all that he couldn't help but admire – in one way – Reed's willingness to self-sacrifice, it was a bit disturbing that the man perceived his own life as being of such little value that he'd actually argued with his CO against attempting a maneuver that gave both of them a chance of survival rather than one that would result in his own certain death.
He'd been willing to give the Brit time to get comfortable with his surroundings and his new post, but time had passed and still he'd remained very much an enigma. His results with his department were never in question; according to T'Pol, he was highly respected by his team, if not (Jon suspected) loved the way Trip was. He ran a tight ship, firm but fair; but he remained, and still was, an enigma.
So. In the light of today's events, was he still the best option for Enterprise's Tactical Officer?
That was what Jon had to decide now.
It hadn't been a unanimous decision, back on Earth. Three candidates had shone out from the rest, and Malcolm had been one of them. One of the five interview board officers had been flatly against him, two undecided. Jon had finally been swayed by the fourth, an older, grizzled guy who'd taken little part in the discussion but who at the end had turned to him and said bluntly, 'If you want an officer who'll do whatever has to be done whenever it has to be done, you'll choose Reed.'
'Whatever has to be done' … including condemning himself to death.
Contemplating how he himself would have reacted to having a metal spike pierce his leg, pinning him out there on the hull in the face of the infinitely hostile environment around him, Jon couldn't imagine that he'd have shown the same heroic self-control as Malcolm had. There had been hardly a gasp audible through the comm. to tell them what had happened; even when he reported the news, his voice had kept its usual dry irony, and when the captain had joined him out there he'd tried to conceal his agony beneath a façade of gallows humor. He hadn't been very good at it, but he'd tried.
For all that Jon found the man's readiness to die inexplicable, there was no denying his courage. So would it be justice to reward it by taking from him the post he'd fought so hard to win?
'Justice', in the last analysis, could not be the deciding factor. All officers chosen to serve in deep space had to go through a rigorous psychological assessment, and presumably Reed had done the same. Their mental fitness for the job they had to do was the most important thing, and after that morning's events, the lieutenant's was suddenly in question. In Jon's mind, at least.
But that brought him back to that blunt statement, made in the comfort of a Starfleet office with cups of coffee on the desk in front of them: 'If you want an officer who'll do whatever has to be done whenever it has to be done, you'll choose Reed.'
There was little doubt in his mind that their ongoing voyages would present his ship with more moments of grave danger. In hindsight, he saw his initial optimism on setting out as being foolish, if not foolhardy; suspected that Reed did too, though the Brit would have been torn by wild horses before admitting as much.
So, given that the path that lay before them was not as lined with primroses as he might have hoped (if not exactly believed – contrary to the Vulcans' belief, he wasn't that naïve), was it still appropriate to rely on the judgment of a psych-eval board? To be sure, every one of his senior officers had to be steady and sane under pressure, but at no point had Malcolm faltered in his analysis of the steps necessary to defuse the mine. His decision that his own death was the next logical step to safeguard the ship when that operation failed had not been made in haste or hysteria; it was as cold and calculated as any one of the instructions he'd previously given out to his captain, perforce manipulating the components of the mine. When Archer tried to circumvent that decision he'd coolly taken matters into his own hands, and if Jon hadn't spotted the movement as quickly as he had, Reed's life would have bled out with his oxygen supply. That, in itself, was potentially a disciplinary offense; petting Porthos, Jon smiled at the thought that the morrow might well see a rather chastened Malcolm Reed requesting an interview to put himself on report. He was right back where he'd started – at the difficulty of disciplining an officer for a demonstration of heroic self-sacrifice.
But the one thing that the episode proved beyond question that whatever the inner workings of his mind might be, Malcolm was undoubtedly and utterly devoted to the preservation of the ship. He might have decided to find a career among the stars, but he had inherited in full measure the loyalty and courage that had exemplified British Navy men for generations. When the chips were down, he had preferred to trust his own judgment and surrender his life rather than obey his commanding officer's orders which put Enterprise at risk.
"Good luck with writin' that up," Trip had said on parting. "Guess you'll have to decide whether the guy gets a medal or a disciplinary."
Justice said he deserved both. Trip had been right; writing up the episode for official documentation was going to be challenging to say the least.
But with the long voyages still to come, and the new and sobering realization of the threats that might await them out there, couldn't he just admit that Reed might not be your average Armory officer, but the ship was damn lucky to have him, all the same?
The Brit's protective camouflage had finally been torn. What was underneath wasn't quite what Jon had been expecting, and maybe time would offer further insights, but even so – "Yeah, I reckon we're lucky to have him," the captain told Porthos, smiling.
"All things considered, I think I picked the right guy after all."
The End.