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Please note that this story contains some mildly adult material.

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


They had some difficulty in finding anyone of any authority to speak to. There were a few guards and servants about, but none of them seemed either willing or able to conduct them to the medical facility.

Eventually a sleepy Siurh-hal steward was unearthed who seemed willing to take their demand seriously. He didn't seem willing – or able – to disguise his incredulity at the manners of these Starfleet visitors who conceived an irresistible urge to disturb half the palace to see for themselves that their colleague was in good hands. Their implied distrust of the quality of care the sick man was receiving was an insult in itself.

"This is highly irregular. The man is resting," the steward complained.

"I'm aware of that. I don't want to disturb him. It'll be enough if we just see him. Unless you've any objection." Archer's tone suggested that he very much hoped he hadn't, and luckily the hint seemed to be taken.

"I must insist you do not speak to him, but if it will put your mind at rest…." He led the way down a maze of corridors and pushed a door open.

The room was small, but immaculately clean. It contained no furniture except a bed, and on that bed lay the supine figure of Enterprise's armory officer. He must be very deeply asleep, possibly even sedated, thought the captain, for normally on away missions Reed slept as lightly as a cat and the sound of an opening door would have awakened him instantly.

"Are your minds quite at ease about him now?" There was a faint undercurrent of sarcasm in the query, and Captain Archer didn't miss it.

"I take the responsibility for my crew very seriously," he said rather sharply. "If I want to check on them – day or night, for any reason – that's part of my duty. And I'd appreciate it if that can be borne in mind in future." He glanced at Hoshi, who'd moved very quietly closer to the bed and was staring hard at the man lying on it. "Ensign, we've been told not to disturb him. Time we were leaving."

"Yes, Captain." But she hesitated an instant longer, and when she did obey him the frown on her face had deepened rather than dissipated.

She said nothing, however, until the three of them had been escorted back to their suite. Then she put her mouth close to his ear and whispered, "Captain, that wasn't Malcolm."

He stared at her blankly. In his mental turmoil he very nearly forgot to whisper in his turn. "WHAT?"

"His breathing. It was wrong. I don't think it was human at all."

Trip had been briefly silenced by this demonstration of his colleague's 'safety.' Now he evidently deduced without difficulty that the situation was not, after all, as straightforward as it had appeared.

"Check Travis," he whispered, when the news had been passed on to him. He was evidently having a whole lot less difficulty accepting the idea than Jon was; the captain's brain felt fit to burst with the conflict of ideas and evidence.

Once again they crept into Mayweather's room. The young helmsman had turned over in his sleep and was now lying with one arm trailing off the edge of the bed. It looked uncomfortable, but none of them cared to risk waking him by moving it.

"He's fine, Captain." She mouthed the words rather than speaking them, and gestured that they should leave the room. It was probably not the best idea to shut the door, just in case some unknown fate was waiting to descend on Travis as well, but they drew it close to minimize the disturbance.

"Tell you what, Hoshi. Would it make you feel better if the cap'n and I gave you a rub down in the shower?"

For one split second Archer thought that Trip had completely lost his mind. Then he caught the intensity of the blue stare and the small, circular, hidden movement of the upright index finger indicating the room. Surveillance devices? His brain hurt even worse. Trip thought they were being spied on?

He thanked his lucky stars that Hoshi was equally quick on the uptake. Only for the briefest instant did she look as though she actually believed that in the middle of all this, her superior officer was genuinely suggesting that he and her captain were in the habit of sharing a shower with her. So many emotions struggled on her face that it was only surprising that the muscles in it didn't go into a seizure.

"Yes, sir. I think I … I think I'd really enjoy that." Her voice quavered only a little. Time was when she'd have gone into hysterics on the spot in this situation, and the captain squeezed her elbow encouragingly under cover of supposedly steering her towards the bathroom.

"You know we always make you feel good." I don't suppose the database says anything about behavior like this. With any luck the Siurh-halla wouldn't have gone into the fine detail of what was or wasn't acceptable behavior between ranks on a starship. Though it was doubtful whether it would have been particularly informative on such topics as this even if they had. With the crawling sensation of being about to label all Starfleet command personnel as perverts who preyed on junior officers – and that on the slenderest and most superficially lunatic of excuses – he followed Trip into the bathroom.

It was always possible, of course, that this room was bugged as well. Unfortunately they had no scanners with them to test it. It was only the engineer's instinct that suggested they were being monitored at all, but Archer had learned to trust Trip's gut feelings. They had to take the chance that some kind of decency in their hosts would have made them install only an audio device in here; it was a remote chance at best, but it was the only one they had.

He left the adjoining door half open, partly to keep an ear open for any sound from Travis's room for as long as possible and partly to allay any suspicion. It would add verisimilitude if anyone who was watching saw them supposedly stripping off. It's no worse than decon, he told himself resolutely. He removed his pants and tossed them carefully into a position where they'd be partly visible, gesturing to the others to do the same. Experience helped, recreating for them the standard polite professionalism that really was Starfleet practice.

Trip switched on the shower and tested it. "In you go, Ensign. Make yourself comfortable till we join ya." Carefully he aimed the spray at the glass side of the cubicle which seemed likely to afford the most noise from it. "Better remember to keep the actin' up every now and again," he mouthed.

"If we're going to be drummed out of Starfleet for this we might as well go the whole hog," growled the captain under his breath.

With an inward groan of utter despair he stepped into the cubicle. The water bouncing off the side instantly began soaking his blues, just as it was Hoshi's.

"Every time I see you like this I remember how lucky we are to have you on board," he said aloud, speaking to the glass above her head because he was too embarrassed to look her in the face. He could only pray that the Siurh-halla didn't recognize a lame line when they heard one; it was like something out of a really awful movie, but he couldn't think of anything better on the spur of the moment. And a human would have heard the note of his voice ring as false as a cracked bell, but hopefully the eavesdroppers wouldn't.

"I'm lucky to have two handsome officers who'll do this for me." Meek, shy little Hoshi was actually grinning at him, he realized incredulously, though unsurprisingly it was a forced grin at best; it was he, to his intense chagrin, who was blushing.

"RHIP, they say. 'Rank Has Its Privileges.' " Trip had evidently decided to go for an acting award. His voice was positively lascivious. "Move over, in there."

"Moving over."

The chief engineer joined them. Just for good measure Hoshi produced a loud moan, and Jon's blush deepened to crimson.

"You do realize we won't be able to finish this till we get back to the ship," he said, praying that the circumstances would make his body listen to what he wasn't saying rather than what he was. Otherwise … well, there'd better not be an 'otherwise.' "They haven't given us big enough beds."

"Can't we improvise a bit, Cap'n?" Trip was evidently enjoying his friend's discomfort, if nothing else. His eyes gleamed with devilment and desperation.

"Just call this a taster." He leaned in close and hissed in Hoshi's ear, "Please tell me you're absolutely sure about Malcolm."

"Absolutely certain, Captain," she hissed back. "The chest resonance was all wrong."

"Like I said, you're a real asset to the ship." At least he could infuse genuine feeling into that, and the relief made him smile, though it, too, was a strained one that was hardly more than a grimace.

Under the cover of the water noise Trip related the details of what had happened to him, as best he could recall them. One thing he couldn't remember was how the encounter had ended. There was simply a gap in his memory for which he couldn't account, one which ended with him turning up, alone and unhurt, on his bed. "I don't know why she just gave up like she did, Cap'n. Unless she just realized she wasn't gonna get anywhere with me," he finished. His eyes were dark with dread. "But I remember – she said if I co-operated we'd all leave safely afterward." He swallowed, and obviously couldn't bring himself to articulate the obvious corollary, that it was because of his refusal that Malcolm was somewhere unknown, and almost certainly in extreme danger.

"Stop blaming yourself, Trip." The captain put an arm gently around the younger man's shoulder. "You know the last thing he'd want is for you to give in to blackmail. No matter what."

"It's easy to say. Kinda hard to believe." Tucker stared at Hoshi. "Hosh, what did you … what were they doin' to him?"

"He was tied down." She shuddered. "That woman … the one who said she'd look after him … she was touching his face. And he was screaming, like it was burning him."

"Damnation." His mouth twisted. "How soon can we contact the ship?"

"About another hour." Nausea was cramping Archer's stomach at the thought of what might be happening to his tactical officer. Unfortunately, the atmospheric storms were still in full swing – he'd already seen through the windows that the sky had clouded over, and an attempt to contact the ship had produced nothing but the crackle of static. T'Pol had contacted him with details of the expected duration of the latest weather blackout shortly before it happened, so she wouldn't be expecting contact. She'd have no idea that anything was wrong.

"Captain!" Hoshi grabbed him suddenly by the arm. "There's someone in the room outside!"

Travis! They weren't getting his helmsman as well. With an inarticulate shout of rage, the captain plunged out of the shower and through the door, Trip hard on his heels. Hoshi was close behind them.

T'Pol looked at the three of them in surprise.


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