Reed stopped just inside the door of the dimmed mess hall. He'd been hoping to find a bit of peace, a hot cup of tea, and maybe a bit of something to eat after a long day, and it was so late that he'd not been expecting to find anyone else there. He should have known better. Sato sat at a table facing the window, a cup of steaming tea held between her hands, staring out at the stars.
Afraid of disturbing her, he was just about to turn around and leave. But she must have heard him or seen his reflection in the window, for she said, "It's really beautiful, isn't it?"
Taking that as an invitation, Reed stepped forward. "It is." He moved to the drinks dispenser and got a cup of black tea. Careful not to spill it, he settled in a chair beside her.
They sat in silence for a while, staring out at the stars. It was rare that he was able to see them. Far too often, they'd found themselves streaking through space, the stars, if he noticed them at all, an indistinct blur. It was rare that he wasn't rushing about on the ship as well. It had been a long time since he'd taken a moment to simply sit and look, and he was glad to be able to find this moment of peace.
Sato spoke from beside him, her voice low. "How's your hand?"
"Better," Reed replied, flexing fingers that were still stiff. The bandage was gone. Phlox had repaired most of the damage, and he was feeling the benefits of the painkiller Phlox had administered.
"Remember the first time we bumped into those aliens?" Sato asked with a trace of mischief.
"I'm not sure I could forget," he said, his voice echoing her tone.
Then Sato whispered one word: "Pineapple."
Reed smiled at the memory. He remembered her asking him, years ago, about his favorite foods. At the time, he hadn't known that it was for his birthday, and he had ended up mistaking her interest for an interest in him. It had all been rather Shakespearean, actually. Or was that Dickensian?
"Different this time," she said.
"Yes, we are," Reed replied, still lost in those memories.
"I meant the aliens," she said, with more than a hint of humor.
"Oh," he answered. He could feel himself blushing, and he looked sideways at her.
She gave him an easy smile. "Were you able to get any readings?"
"No," he said, grateful that she had let his gaffe go. "Last time, we were able to get some brief readings when they'd fired on us. They must have changed their shielding since." He raised his mug to his lips.
"What are we supposed to call these people, anyway?"
"Pardon?" Reed said around his tea.
"What designation did Starfleet end up giving that species?"
Reed thought for a moment. "Erm...Species 75896, I believe."
"You would remember that," Sato said. She gave him a tiny smile. "It doesn't really suit them, though, does it? I mean, I know Trip and Travis had started calling them 'little green men,' but that's not quite it, either."
Reed shook his head, not really sure where she was going with this. He'd always wondered what those aliens had called themselves. They'd been a bit strange looking, from what little of them they'd captured in their recordings. Tall, thin, bipedal, eye stalks; humanoid, perhaps, but far from human. And Sato was right: they were neither little, nor green. Nor, in all likelihood, men.
"I've always thought of them as the pineapple aliens," she said.
But they'd certainly not looked like pineapples.
He must have given Sato a strange look, because she flushed and went on. "You know, for...obvious reasons." She covered her blush by sipping at her tea. She looked out at the stars again. "Do you think they learned from us last time, and changed their weapons and tactics in response?"
Reed turned the cup in his hands, warming them. "Likely so, yes."
He looked down at his cup, and something flitted across his vision. He tensed, and it happened again. Not movement. There was no real sense of something being there. More like a flicker, or an old film skipping a frame.
He looked up at Sato to find her looking at him, eyes wide, and he knew that whatever it was, he wasn't the only one experiencing it.
x-x
Reed stepped onto the bridge to find T'Pol sitting in the captain's chair. It was well into the night, and normally the gamma shift officer would be on deck. But it wasn't unusual for crew members to switch shifts, as T'Pol must have done. Reed was glad to find her in charge this night. He and she tended to approach problems from a similar perspective, and despite the fanciful nature of what he may have seen, he had no doubt that T'Pol would approach the issue rationally. At the moment, he felt he could do with a bit of logic.
T'Pol's fingers tapped away at the chair's console, and she looked concerned. Her brows were raised almost to her hairline, and for this Vulcan, that was a sure sign of anxiety.
The dark-haired ensign staffing the communications console, said, "Commander, reports are coming in from all over the ship. Some sort of..." She hesitated.
"Yes, Ensign?" T'Pol prompted, looking up from her work. She gave Reed an acknowledging nod when she saw him.
"It's not very clear." The ensign turned toward T'Pol. "They describe it as a flickering, and as a darkness."
"Have there been any damage reports?"
"None, Commander."
"Keep me apprised," T'Pol said. She looked again at Reed. "Lieutenant?"
"I have my staff investigating the occurrences on the ship," Reed said as he stepped forward. "Ensign Sato and I experienced the same thing on the observation deck."
T'Pol nodded and, gaze going back to her console, added, "There appears to be something wrong with this area of space."
That sounded ominous. "What do you mean?" he asked.
She didn't answer at first, her gaze locked on the information before her. Finally, she looked up. "I am not certain. The readings are...incomplete. I am in the process of analyzing them now."
Reed crossed his arms and asked curiously, "Is this something new?"
"In what way?"
"Did we get similar readings when we first entered this area?"
"One moment," she said, looking through the data. "Yes, although we did not notice them at first. They are intermittent and brief." She scrolled through the information on the screen before her. "There is a slight escalation in frequency of occurrence after the time when the alien ship attacked us."
Perhaps all of this was connected, thought Reed. The aliens being in this area of space, the reports from the ships, the occurrences onEnterprise, and T'Pol's anomalous readings. He voiced his suspicion. "Do you think the aliens have something to do with these occurrences?"
T'Pol looked up. She gazed at him for a moment and then, with a barely perceptible nod, said, "I will contact the captain."
x-x
There was motion, and it was dark, and someone was there. Reed tried to shout an intruder warning, fighting against the form above him, only to end up on all fours on the floor of his quarters, shocked awake by the force of his fall.
All right, he thought, looking about himself frantically. Dreaming. He'd been dreaming. Heart pounding madly, he sank to a seat, his back against the bed. His hand went to his forehead--it hurt--and came away red. He must have hit his head against the night stand.
Alarms went off around him, and a voice came over the comm: "Command staff to the bridge."
The ship bearing Sato's pineapple aliens, the little green men, must have returned again, Reed realized. He closed his eyes with a groan. He must have hit his head harder than he'd thought. Pushing himself up, he pulled a sweater on over his T-shirt and a pair of trousers over his skivvies, and slid his feet into his boots. Then he was out the door of his cabin.
He was no farther than three steps into the corridor when he nearly banged into T'Pol. "Sorry," he murmured as he passed her.
"Lieutenant," T'Pol said sharply.
He turned. Unlike him, whose attire--and probably the state of his hair--clearly showed that he'd been sleeping when the alarm had gone off, T'Pol looked as if she'd either never been to bed, or she'd slept in her uniform, without wrinkling it or even mussing her hair. So sometime after he'd seen her on the bridge, and after they'd met with the captain, even though her shift ended soon after that, she...
He frowned, as he was fairly sure that this train of thought was not entirely pertinent to their immediate situation.
T'Pol stared at him frankly. "You are bleeding."
His hand went to his head. He felt the wetness there. "Yes. I banged my head in my quarters."
T'Pol's gaze became piercing, and she stared directly into his eyes. "You need to go to sickbay."
"The aliens," he replied, waving a vague hand in the direction he'd been heading.
She rocked back on her heels. "You are on your way to sickbay," she parried firmly.
Knowing an order when he heard one, he simply nodded, regretting the sharpness of the movement as soon as he'd done it. Wincing, he turned in the opposite direction and headed for sickbay.
As Phlox examined him, flashing a light in his eyes, poking fingers to his head, he tried to explain what had happened in his quarters. At first, he'd been quite sure that it had something to do with the aliens, but now, under the harsh lights of sickbay, he was less certain. He may simply have been dreaming.
Then Tucker showed up at the door with a cut on his lip and a bruise forming on his right cheek, and Reed knew that it had been no dream.
x-x
