The forward hold of the Elliot was a cavernous bay, poorly lit by bulbs far above the floor. Perishables and ammo were stored here in formidable crates lashed to the grating underfoot. The whole room smelled of machine oil, and human sweat, and was as hot as an oven. The area was intended for a vertical launch missile system, but budget cutbacks curtailed that idea. Presently, the room echoed the sound of the twin diesel turbines aft like a cathedral to engineering. Mulder was almost as uncomfortable as he would be in a church.
There was a silent crowd clustered together in the bay, and Dana and Fox were the only two not in uniform. Eight men in dark gray fatigues lounged about on or near the crates. Some were sleeping, others stripping automatic rifles. Two men sat shoulder to shoulder, talking quietly. Three other officers, in pressed Army fatigues, sat together around an overturned carton. They were quietly examining a sets of drawings. It was unnerving that the loudest noise they made was the rustling of their papers. Last was a man in the light blue of the Air Force, sitting quietly in the corner. Despite the darkness of the room, he continued to wear a pair of aviator's sunglasses. Fox pegged him as a spook, or intelligence officer, immediately.
"Cute. We're going to go investigating with a strike force." Scully's aplomb took Mulder off stride. He looked down to see her frankly appraising the people before her.
"I told you we had back-up. If you don't like 'em, maybe 'Uncle Kane' can get some new ones." His blank face, turned down to her, met her eyes.
"Honestly Mulder, I didn't know he'd be here until I read the ship's name in the file on the way over." Her blue eyes searched his empty face.
"Well, I for one am glad that the man with the biggest guns is a bona fide good guy." He faked a smile for her. Mulder's accustomed way to deal with unpleasant feelings was to dive headlong into action.
"Thanks." She was glad he wasn't upset. He didn't like the military or surprises, so Uncle Kane was a bit much for him. She had thought that perhaps she should have warned Mulder in advance, but hadn't wanted to. It was just something she'd rather not go into.
Fox was, however, quite upset. His partner and friend had lied to him about where she'd been, and then casually omitted the story about her 'Uncle Kane.' He couldn't think of too many reasons why she would be doing all this. The one idea that kept coming to mind was that she didn't care for or trust him. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and picked a target from the room.
Without further ado, Mulder set out across the cargo bay, making a beeline for the Air Force Officer. Dana rolled her eyes, knowing that her partner wanted to go trolling for trouble. She felt that he probably didn't even stop to think first. After all, being a skinny civilian in a dank hold with a small strike force put him at no disadvantage, right?
Dana pushed a wave of her copper hair back behind her ear, and quietly wound her way through the hold toward the back. She wanted to talk to the men in the back, whom she presumed to be the USAMRIID team. Perhaps she would be able to find out what was planned, and still keep an eye on Mulder.
Fox, meanwhile, had picked up a small wooden crate labeled 'USN/SPL/1207-A Drd. Frts.' He walked a short distance before depositing it a few feet in front of the Air Force officer. Fighting his nausea in order to smile broadly, Fox sat down on it. And despite being at eye level, less than four feet away, the officer didn't move.
Mulder leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Hi! My name's Agent Mulder. Everybody calls me 'Spooky.' I guess that makes two of us, huh?"
The officer did not move.
"I'm here to see the aliens. When they meet the President, I mean. How about you?" The glint in his eye betrayed some of Mulder's emotions.
The officer was completely quiet.
"Are you one of the corpses he's returning to them?" When Mulder's question wasn't answered, some of the animation drained from his face.
Tentatively, he reached for the man's dark sunglasses. He hesitated a few inches away, but then resumed reaching for them.
The man's hand snapped up, clenching tight about Mulder's wrist. Fox, Dana, and several onlooking soldiers all jumped at this.
"No, Agent Mulder, I'm not dead." He remained expressionless as he spoke.
"You could have fooled me." Fox extricated his arm, not without difficulty. "You seem to know me, but I don't know your name." He tried for the most saccharine voice he could, while still sneering.
"I'm glad." Mulder heard a snort behind him.
It suddenly dawned on Mulder that the soldiers lounging about behind him were no longer lounging about behind him. They were surreptitiously watching as he made a fool of himself. And thanks to his own obnoxious sense of humor, he'd made it very difficult to extricate himself from the situation. He blinked, and wondered how you backed away when you were sitting nose to nose with the original Mr. Stoneface.
Thinking quickly, Fox smiled broadly, and announced in a loud voice, "Nice to meet you Sergeant Glad!" Now the spook had to decide whether he wanted to put up with that, or come up with a better name and rank.
"You, Agent Mulder, are in my way." Glad hardly moved as he spoke.
"Gee, I guess that makes me Glad, too." Mulder heard another snort behind him.
Slowly, Glad turned to face Mulder fully. "You and me can play all the games we want. Later."
"Really? The Reticulans play Three-Card Stud." Mulder smiled, enjoying every needle he could stick into the Air Force Officer.
Glad lowered his glasses, exposing surprisingly warm brown eyes. "Once we hit that rig, stud, you'll be praying for aliens."
Mulder shared one trait, and one alone with the sociopaths he excelled at profiling; he simply did not respond to punishment. If anything, his lopsided grin got bigger and tighter. He opened his mouth to burn Glad for that remark, but was halted by a light touch on his shoulder. He didn't need to turn to recognize Dana; it seemed to Fox that the soft smell of her hair preceded her always.
"Mulder," she said with false lightness, "I've got some papers you need to see. Come take a look." She stressed the last ever so slightly.
Mulder looked up at Dana, her face only a foot away. She was wearing a flannel shirt and a red windbreaker over a thick white tee shirt, though both were open. Fox could see that she was wearing her shoulder holster underneath, barely visible past the curve of her breast. Quickly he looked back up to meet the urgent look in her eyes.
Fox hesitated momentarily as he watched Dana's eyes flicker. "Yeah, sure Scully."
He stood up, and wavered slightly as the seasickness overtook him. For a second, his right hand opened, instinctively reaching for Scully's shoulder. But he would be damned before he did that, doubly so with the soldiers watching. Instead he gamely walked away, fighting his balance and the sensation of hostile eyes burning his back.
For a moment, he paused a few feet away, debating whether or not Scully would let him fire a parting shot. Her hand on his arm tightened briefly, and he gamely followed her to the USAMRIID encampment.
Scully quickly took a seat around the impromptu table with the other doctors, and pulled on Fox's arm until he sank down as well. Before he could bollix a second meeting for the day, Scully decided to intervene.
"Mulder, these are Doctors Whitman, Pryce, and Hadat. They're from the Army Infectious Disease Center." She gestured to the three men in turn.
Fox shook hands perfunctorily with each. All had uniformly dry hands, and the same firm, brief grip he did.
"Hi guys. Bomb any California towns recently?" Mulder's smile was beginning to annoy Scully, so she surreptitiously kicked his shin.
Three dour faces greeted Mulder's question, but the youngest man, Whitman, smiled. "No. But I'm new to this assignment."
The oldest man, a short Major with a sad face, nodded in the direction of Glad. "Nice to see you want to antagonize the pit bulls before you take them for a walk. You have figured out that he's the local Bad Man, haven't you?" Scully could hear the capitalized letters in Pryce's cultured voice.
"Yeah, I noticed. I also noticed you guys are bringing biohazard suits and respirators with your guns. I guess that makes you real friendly." Seasickness had Mulder's stomach rolling, and he felt like sharing some of the acid.
"Mulder!" Scully snapped. "There's a good chance this is caused by some biological contaminant, like we found in Alaska."
Hadat chimed in, with a deep booming voice. "I cleaned up your mess at that USGS station. If you'd gone in with clean suits, there would have been more people walking out."
"Nice Monday Morning Quarterbacking, Doctor." Fox kept his eyes blank. "But I don't seem to recall seeing you up there at the time."
Hadat looked grim. "I'm here now."
Mulder's jaw worked, though he appeared otherwise impassive. After a moment, he waved his hand. "Okay, so what have you got for us?"
"These are the deck plans for the rig." Pryce gestured to the somewhat crumpled blueprints spread out before them. "The SEALs are already familiar with this type of design, but we needed some better information."
Mulder glanced up. "How the living room is decorated?"
"No, just structural stuff. As you can see, the derrick is a warren of vents and shafts, used to cool machinery and people. Some of it vents air from the oil reserves, some vents from the drills. In any case, sealing it off in case there is a toxin or virus aboard is damn near impossible. Even if you ignored all the rust holes and rats." Major Pryce outlined these systems with a pen as he spoke.
"I take it you do have a plan though." Mulder wasn't asking a question.
"Yes. We go over and check the place out. Any persistent toxins get washed, any class 4 viruses, and the team lights the rig."
Fox sat back. "You plan on demolishing a multi-million dollar oil rig?"
Hadat answered him. "No, we don't. But if we can't burn a class 4 contagion out, the structure goes down. Agent Mulder, if the Hoover Building got hit by something that lethal, we'd burn it out with formaldehyde."
"Now there's a project I can really get behind. So what about the possibility of terrorists?" Now he actually looked curious. The intellectual puzzle pulled his attention away from how sick he felt.
"The SEAL team will be going with us. We'd need them in the event we had to blow the rig, anyway."
While they were talking, Whitman leaned over Scully's shoulder. "Is he always this flip?" he whispered.
"No," she hissed. She didn't know what had gotten into her partner suddenly.
Mulder stood up abruptly, "Well, guys. Sounds like you have everything planned. Have fun. And call me when you get back."
Whitman glanced at Pryce before he spoke. "Um, Agent Mulder, you and Dr. Scully are coming with us. Right?"
"Why? Sounds like you have everything well in hand." He thrust his hands into his jean pockets.
"Mulder," Scully got up to face him, tuning the USAMRIID people out. "What is your problem here?"
In return, Fox simply eyed her intensely, his jaw working. He watched her silently until it became obvious that she was waiting for him to say something. Then it was his turn to take her by the arm, and drag her away. He pulled her along until they rounded a large crate, and disappeared into the darkness.
"Okay Mulder, stop." She pulled away as he let her go. She whispered to him, "Now do you want to tell me what's going on?"
"What do you mean, 'tell you what's going on'?" Mulder suddenly dropped the veneer of calm which had covered him. "You've been listening to these loony-tunes as long as I have."
Scully balled her fists. Everything had to be a conspiracy with Mulder, she thought. And now he was mad at her for not being rank and file in agreement with him from the start. "I've been listening to medical doctors outline a plan for the containment of what may be a Level 4 biohazard. If that rig has Anthrax, or something similar, we can't afford to take chances."
Mulder leaned forward, his face pressing down toward her. "Scully, I don't care if they've got Ebola over there. The Navy has hospital ships that can deal with it. So does the Coast Guard. Hell, the Blackhawk is big enough to have been sent directly from the mainland."
"What are you saying?" She had a chilling idea of what he was suggesting.
"They sent a ship out with cruise missiles on the deck. The thing's got a cannon on the foredeck, and a hit team inside. Why divert a cruiser, unless you want to use it?"
"It could be the nearest ship. It might need the smallest crew. It could be the easiest to seal against contaminants." Fox shook his head as she listed possibilities. "You have no reason to believe this is some grand conspiracy."
"No? How about us? I get those pictures dropped off on my doorstep. Then two hours later the Navy wants us out here with them. Out with that killer in uniform, Glad!"
"Whom you've so graciously alienated. If you honestly thought he was a problem, why bait him like that?" She arched an eyebrow, her full lips pulled back in a grin.
"I wanted to know if I was right." His hazel eyes were flat, clouded.
"Right about what? That Air Force officers have no sense of humor?" She tried keeping her face as straight as he, but her eyes danced.
"No, that this is just meant to get me out on the ocean. Alone."
"You're hardly alone. You've got me, my Uncle, and every other member of the team here." She couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice. She had to admit, this was a ridiculous argument.
"That was just what I was worried about." Fox took a step away from her.
Scully stood up straight at that, her slight smile gone instantly. A jumbled montage of Mulder's recent behavior flashed warningly past her eyes before she spoke. "What does that mean?" Even to her own ears, her voice sounded tiny.
"You know what I mean, Scully."
"He's just my Uncle, Mulder. For goodness sake, I trust him."
"I know that. So do a lot of other people."
"Mulder, you can't get rid of a cruiser. And I trust Uncle Kane." She set her jaw, her arms crossed. "So that means that you can trust him, since you can trust me."
"I can?"
Dana stopped breathing. How could he say something like that, after all they'd been through. "You know you can. I wouldn't lie to you." He had her trust, completely. And she'd always presumed she had his. How could they be this close, and still lack that trust?
"Okay, Scully. Let's try this morning one more time." With a smile resembling the grimace he'd assumed for 'Sergeant Glad,' Fox leaned down again toward Dana. "How was the weekend?"
Light dawned in her eyes, as cold as his. She flushed red, then white. "That's what this is about? My weekend?"
"No. You lied to me." His full lips never even paused as he spoke, never betrayed a feeling.
Dana felt something trip high inside her chest, and her head buzzed slightly with anger. "Agent Mulder," she hissed through clenched teeth, "Unlike you, I have a private life. And it is just that. Private."
With that, Dana turned about, and left Fox standing behind a crate of toilet paper. She never looked back as she headed to her berth, furious. She never saw Mulder's face crumple with grief.