For all that Malcolm's reasoning mind knew that the ship's life-support system was functioning just as efficiently as it ordinarily did, he received the immediate impression as he stepped into the Ready Room that the temperature inside it was quite a few degrees colder than that on the Bridge.
His first cautiously assessing glance at his captain, who was waiting seated at his desk, was a little reassuring. Although Archer had no welcoming smile for him, he wore the look of one suspending judgement. He could hardly be expected to be pleased by this development, but he was prepared to give his officer a fair hearing.
"Sir." Malcolm stood at 'parade rest' in front of the desk, awaiting orders.
There was a pause. He was aware of the older man's careful scrutiny.
"Were you expecting any contact from Earth, Lieutenant?" asked Archer at last.
"No, sir." He could answer that promptly and honestly. It had been a bolt from the blue for him too.
As the ship's commanding officer, the captain had access to all security codes and would have found the one which his tactical officer would use for a secured communication. He'd evidently opened the file on this computer and played through it a second time; the photograph was still displayed on the screen, frozen where the playback had been halted. Now he looked at it thoughtfully. "Do you know this girl?"
"N-no, sir." The slight stumble over the denial was eloquent. One of the captain's eyebrows went up, unnervingly like T'Pol's did sometimes, so Malcolm went on in a soft, rapid voice, "I don't know her, but there's a ... a resemblance to someone I used to work with. She may be a close relation. I don't know. There must be some reason why Harris would think I'd be interested." He withdrew the data chip from his pocket and laid it on the desk. "The file he mentioned, it's on there. I haven't opened it."
"Why not?"
The lieutenant drew his gaze from the bulkhead opposite and met his CO's searching eyes. "I told you, sir, as far as I'm concerned I no longer belong to the Section. I owe them for helping us out with the Terra Prime business, but I won't take a single step without your knowledge and approval. If I'd opened that file first you could reasonably suspect I might have tampered with whatever was on it. As it is, Commander T'Pol will be able to verify that it hasn't been opened at all."
The scrutiny endured for a while longer. Then, "I guess that won't be necessary."
There was a sense of tension easing slightly as the captain picked up the chip and inserted it into the slot in the computer. "I imagine you'll want to see this with me."
There had been no need to encrypt the copied file; a data chip was a simple matter to dispose of. The information spooled on the screen.
Malcolm had extensive experience of picking out the vital pieces of information from a document extremely quickly. He skipped through the extraneous text in seconds, but one sentence sprang out at him, hitting him so hard he felt as though he'd been physically punched in the gut.
'Adopted in 2148 from classified Human parent on Proxima Colony.'
"Malcolm?" The captain's voice, now quick with concern, brought him partially back from wherever he'd gone as the Ready Room unfocussed around him. "Are you okay?"
"Sir," he said muzzily. "Per – permission to sit down for a minute."
"Granted. Sit down before you fall down." He hadn't seen the other man move, but suddenly Archer's hands were on his upper arms, partly supporting him and partly pushing him towards one of the chairs against the wall. After a moment, "Here. You look like you could use some of this."
He took the cup, unresisting, and tilted it to his mouth without thought. The bourbon hit the back of his throat so that he drew in air with a gasp.
It was completely against regulations to drink on duty. It took him a moment to realise he actually wasn't on duty, even if he felt as though he was, having been summoned into the captain's presence to explain himself. Anyway, he didn't give a damn. He tossed back the rest of it as though it was water.
Enterprise came back to him, but it was now obscured behind a wall of fear. He stared up at his commanding officer, wondering how much he could – how much he dared – say to him.
"Take your time." Archer set a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Breathe slowly."
He wanted to breathe slowly, but he couldn't remember how to. His heart was drubbing in his chest, his mind a whirl. A few moments later he found himself being pressed gently but inexorably forward, bringing his head down by his knees. Bloody hell, had he nearly fainted?
"I – I'm all right now, sir," he said awkwardly, as the world steadied. To his embarrassment, he discovered that the captain was now squatting beside him, looking intensely concerned. "I'm fine. Really."
"I think I've heard that from you a few too often, Malcolm." The smile was genuine and gentle. "Do you need me to call Phlox?"
"No! No, sir, really. I just ... I ..." He scrubbed a hand across his face. He'd run out of words. Warily he sat up; the world dipped a little, but no longer spun before his indignant gaze.
The older man stood up, but rested a hand on his shoulder again and kept it there – a small intimacy from which he would ordinarily have shrunk, but now it felt like a sea-anchor to a ship adrift in a southerly gale. "I think there's something here you need to talk about, if you feel you can. Do you need a little time by yourself first?"
Malcolm paused before replying. The instinctive urge to confide in his captain warred against the old habits of stealth, of secrecy. He knew himself too well: given enough time, he'd persuade himself that least said, soonest mended, and find all sorts of plausible reasons for not giving Captain Archer the honesty he deserved. Before that could happen, he blurted out, "It was ... I was part of a team. We went on missions – things that couldn't be sorted out by ... orthodox means." He caught the captain's steady gaze on him, with a hint of distaste in it, and he coloured, but went on with an effort. "It wasn't the sort of life that ... well, you can't have 'ordinary' relationships, really. You try, but it doesn't work out." A soft, bitter laugh escaped him. He'd found that out the hard way. "There was this girl, this woman, in my team ... I never knew her real name, you don't tell people things like that, but she and I ... well, it sort of happened. It wasn't a love affair or anything, we ... we just accepted each other." To keep yourself anywhere near sane in that line of work, you need some kind of emotional connection, even if it's with someone who's as flawed as you are. He and Pard certainly hadn't loved one another, sometimes they hadn't even liked each other very much, but they filled a need in each other's lives. Explaining a relationship that had been at once so complex and so brutally simple was beyond him, however; like so much else in the world he'd inhabited, you had to be there to understand.
He broke off, studying his linked fingers. This degree of honesty, of openness, was terrifying to him. "She died on the last mission before I left to join Enterprise. I never even got to tell her I was leaving."
The captain's gaze travelled to the monitor, and Malcolm's followed it.
"There was one year she didn't come with us," he said tightly, forcing the words out. "We were told she had another job to do for a while, a good few months. It was 2148, and I got one coded message from her. She didn't say where she was, but I wanted to know, just in case, and there are ... ways, if you have the right contacts. She was on Proxima."
There was a silence. He realised he'd started pushing his fingers distractedly through his hair, making it a mess. For some reason, however, his customary care for his appearance seemed to have deserted him.
"And ... the father?" Archer asked the inevitable question at last, with aching care.
"I didn't know. I don't know. Fucking hell." The words were muffled, because now his hands were pressed to his face, and he didn't know till he heard the words that he'd cursed in front of the captain. "Maybe."
Another, longer silence. He listened to his own breathing.
The captain broke the silence again, gently. "How can we help you, Malcolm?"
"You can't." The hands dropped into his lap, in an eloquent gesture of defeat. "If she was taken where I think she was, a Starfleet ship turning up anywhere near it would close down the whole place so fast you'd think there wasn't a living soul on it."
Archer moved back to the desk and read further, summarising the contents. "Her mom and dad were on a routine transport to a conference on Denobula and the ship was attacked by pirates. Marcellus Grenham was badly injured, a couple of the other passengers were killed, anything of value was taken..." he trailed off.
Malcolm sat mute as the knowledge twisted in his soul like a white-hot knife. He hadn't needed to be told. Anything of value.
"Joelle Grenham is currently at work on a top secret project for Starfleet R&D," the captain continued. "She was among the injured, but fortunately not seriously. Obviously," he glanced at his tactical officer, "having her daughter kidnapped is going to affect her participation in this project, whatever it was. The top brass won't like that."
"She works in EM field research." Some of the material he'd read up on as background to his own experiments had been hers.
The irony was enough to kill him, if he let it.
Under the shock and pain and sudden raw, visceral terror, his mind must have been working furiously. His next actions were now laid out in front of him with an inevitability that admitted of no possible argument.
"Sir, I have to go."
The captain looked across at him.
"You said that if a Starfleet ship came anywhere near it, they'd all disappear."
"I have to go alone."
There was a pause.
"You'd be risking your life for something that might not..." Archer was obviously searching for a tactful way of putting it, "might not be what you think."
He pointed at the screen. "She's still missing."
"They'll send somebody to look for her."
"And by the time 'somebody' arrives, she'll be long gone."
The pain was gone. The shock was gone. The terror had gone deep, and dark, and icy cold. There was nothing left but the hunting.
Jaguar was loose.
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