After thinking furiously for perhaps a minute, T'Pol stood up and exited the shuttle herself.
She did not, however, go to her quarters to change.
She went instead to Main Engineering.
Commander Tucker was on the inspection platform in front of the warp engine, briefing a maintenance team to ensure the nacelle caps had suffered no damage during the brief incursion into the planetary atmosphere. Another team was just leaving, presumably to stand by at the appropriate airlock to carry out a similar inspection of the deflector dish. The inspections would necessitate the ship coming to a halt for a short time, but there being so little prospect of coming under fire from the planet's relatively primitive weaponry – especially when the Merixa had so much else to occupy their thoughts – it had been deemed quite safe for her to do so.
"Commander, I need to speak with you as a matter of urgency," she said, halting at the foot of the access ladder.
The chief engineer looked somewhat surprised, but turned over the briefing to his second and quickly descended to floor level. "What's up, Sub-commander? I hear you had a rough time down there."
With a frown, she led him a couple of paces to withdraw both of them from earshot of their juniors. "I am concerned about Lieutenant Reed."
"Malcolm? Was he hurt?"
"No. I don't think so," she said slowly. "I suspect something's wrong. But without much stronger proof, I'm reluctant to make accusations."
"You want me to talk to the cap'n?"
"I fear we may not have time for that." She looked up into his worried frown, now the mirror of hers. "Can you contrive a reason to be on the Bridge? At the Engineering station?"
"I daresay I can come up with somethin'. This little jaunt rescuin' you two shook the ship up a little. I can say somethin' needs checkin'."
"And can you conceal this phase pistol on you?" She had brought the one from the other shuttlepod, and held it out to him.
The blue eyes widened, and he fairly recoiled. "What? Why in hell would I need that thing?"
"You may not. But I want you to have it, and to be prepared to use it if you need to."
With obvious reluctance, he took it from her. He went quickly to his office, and tipped out the contents of a small tool-case on to the desk. The pistol fitted inside it, and he closed it and tucked it under one arm. "Let's go."
The two of them walked hurriedly to the nearest turbo-lift. "Are you goin' to tell me what this is all about?" Tucker asked in an undertone as the lift doors opened.
She darted a look at him. "I have only suspicions. But I suspect that Lieutenant Reed may have been compromised in some way."
"Malcolm?" It was fortunate that they were now inside the lift; the Human did not attempt to moderate his cry of outraged astonishment.
"Yes," she said shortly. "I want you to stay at the Engineering station and watch him as closely as you can without making it obvious. And have the phase pistol ready, set on stun. I shall be monitoring him from the Science station."
"An' you don't want the cap'n told about this?"
She turned to face him. "I don't want to level scurrilous and possibly unfounded accusations at an officer I respect without far stronger proof than I have. If I'm in error, I shall be relieved to be proved wrong. If I'm not, I believe that you and I, forewarned, may be able to contain the situation."
To judge by his stunned expression, he was having difficulty in absorbing the concept of anyone having grounds to level 'scurrilous' accusations, or indeed accusations of any sort, against the ultra-correct Englishman in charge of Tactical. He was so perturbed, indeed, that he didn't even pass any comment about 'relief' being an emotion. However, as the turbo-lift arrived at the Bridge, he managed to compose his features, and nobody glancing casually at him would have noticed anything amiss as he made his excuses to the captain and moved to the Engineering station, where he set down the tool-case and began tinkering with the insides of the control panel in a laudably convincing manner.
Trusting that the captain was so preoccupied with watching events on the viewscreen that he would accept her own arrival without comment, and not notice immediately that she was still wearing her formal Vulcan robes, T'Pol slid into her seat at the Science station. In the circumstances, it was not much of a gamble, and it paid off. Like most of his bridge crew, Captain Archer was grimly watching the tragedy unfold far below. At a guess he was hoping even now for some chance to offer help, perhaps even a last-minute appeal to mediate a truce or arrange terms for a surrender. She doubted whether his optimism was justified, but at least it afforded her a delay before having to deal with his inevitable concern and curiosity over the landing party's experiences.
The viewscreen displayed the story in unflinching detail. Parts of Bai were already ablaze. The Council buildings were rubble. Similar scenes were being played out in all the major cities across the planet. Crew and captain watched in silence. Only Commander Tucker, busy under the Engineering console, seemed oblivious.
The sound of the turbo-lift doors opening was loud in the appalled hush. Lieutenant Reed stepped out of it, restored to his customary pristine appearance – though she noted that he was still wearing the phase pistol from the shuttlepod, which should have been restored to the locker. Without a word he moved quickly to his station, taking over from the junior officer manning it.
T'Pol had already changed her display to monitor any changes that took place on Tactical. With horror, but somehow without surprise, she watched the tell-tale information pour in. He was fast, expert. He would require only seconds.
She leaped to her feet. "Trip! Stop him!" she screamed.
She swept her own pistol from its hiding place, but in the event it was unnecessary. Almost before it was leveled, a shot from under the Engineering station caught the tactical officer square in the body. At that range the force of it knocked the lieutenant sideways and sent him sprawling unconscious on the deck, his face still frozen in the remnants of a look of surprise.
The captain was scowling.
Phlox was examining the still unconscious Lieutenant Reed, both of them hidden from view behind the privacy curtain in Sickbay. Captain Archer had seen his tactical officer safely bestowed and pronounced in no immediate danger, and then come out to begin the investigation into what must have appeared to him a quite incredible chain of events.
T'Pol's fairly brief initial explanation of why she'd had one of his officers shoot the other with a phase pistol on the Bridge seemed rather to have fanned his wrath than cooled it. Wherefore the scowl, now shared equally between his First Officer and his Chief Engineer.
"Are you absolutely sure you didn't make a mistake?" he demanded. "For heaven's sake, you know what Malcolm's like. He keeps those weapons ready to fire at the drop of a hat! He was probably just going through the routine, because of what was going on down there. He'd be worrying in case someone took a pot shot at Enterprise! And you went and shot him?"
The Vulcan faced him calmly. "Sir. He was not 'going through a routine'. The logs will bear me out, and I believe so will Commander Tucker. Lieutenant Reed was preparing the ship's weapons to fire – both cannons and torpedoes, a full spread. And in another two seconds he would have done it. On his own initiative."
"It's true, Cap'n." The commander's face was a picture of misery, but his tone was definite. "I saw it for myself. Everything was armed and aimed. He was goin' for the firin' sequence when I dropped him."
Captain Archer looked from one to the other of them in total bewilderment. "But why?"
Commander Tucker said nothing, but looked at her. He had obeyed the orders of a senior officer, and probably much against his better judgment. She had to exonerate him of blame, even though he refrained from appealing for her to do so.
"Sir, the decision was mine." She paused. "I suspect the lieutenant's loyalties may have been compromised by a sexual encounter with one of the Merixa."
"What?" yelled Tucker. "Malcolm?"
Captain Archer said nothing, but turned away and walked rapidly to the far wall. He stood there with his back turned, obviously absorbing the development and thinking hard. When he turned around, his face was granite. "I hope you have some evidence for that accusation."
"Unfortunately, Captain, there is evidence." Phlox's voice was heavy as he pushed through the curtain. "My initial examination has revealed significant traces of Merixan DNA on Mister Reed's body."
"My God." The chief engineer covered his eyes briefly with one hand. "I don't believe it."
"Anything else?" the captain asked bluntly.
Phlox shook his head. "He's washed very recently. Impossible to tell without a much closer examination."
Washed, thought T'Pol. Consistent with the lieutenant's impeccable hygiene when donning a clean uniform, even in haste; also consistent with the actions of a guilty man taking steps to get rid of evidence.
Phlox's findings merely reinforced what her nose had told her when the tactical officer had passed close by her on his way out of the shuttlepod. Quite possibly a human nose would not have detected it, but even though the years of service on Enterprise had done much to blunt her sensitivity to the smell of her crewmates, she had caught the odor of Weapons Master Yathai's perfume quite distinctly on Lieutenant Reed's person.
Considering that the two of them had spent a considerable time together the day before, that in itself would not have aroused her suspicions unduly. But coupled with that guilty start in response to a quite casual remark about his having worked long hours after his shift, plus the fact that she herself had slept far more heavily than she would ordinarily have done – so heavily that she had no idea at what time he had returned to his room – it added up to something that had set the seal on her belief that something somewhere was wrong.
She would have put it down, with some disapproval, to another instance of Human inability to control their sexual urges if she hadn't suspected that she had been deliberately removed from the reckoning. That, plus Reed's insistence on going to the Bridge immediately even though he was disheveled and unwashed, had set alarm bells ringing. The officer with immediate access to the ship's weapons had possibly been compromised by potentially intimate contact with an individual on one side of a now declared civil war, and was acting uncharacteristically. The situation must be monitored as a matter of the utmost urgency, at least until the crisis was over.
She had felt some reluctance in recruiting Commander Tucker to assist her in monitoring the suspect. But it turned out that her suspicions had been correct. If she had not acted on them in the way that she had, Enterprise would have been drawn into the conflict, embroiling Starfleet in a major scandal and quite possibly ending Captain Archer's career as well as that of the guilty man himself.
Even she was having difficulty in believing that an officer as exemplary as Lieutenant Reed would carry out such a heinous betrayal of his commanding officer. It was therefore hardly surprising that the captain and Commander Tucker appeared stunned. Their regard for the lieutenant had the additional complication of being mingled with affection – the chief engineer in particular had developed a friendship with the previously rather reserved Englishman, and now looked positively sick.
"I have to get back to the Bridge," Captain Archer said at last. "Phlox, carry out whatever tests you can. Trip, carry on in Engineering – I'll call you when we have time to discuss this. T'Pol, as of now, Lieutenant Reed is suspended from duty. I want a security detail kept on him and a note made of anything he says. When he wakes up and Phlox clears him fit, he may have to face a Court Martial."
Tucker opened his mouth, clearly to protest, but closed it again without doing so. After a moment he simply said "Cap'n." Then he nodded acknowledgment, turned around and walked out of Sickbay without another word.
Phlox disappeared behind the curtain again, and T'Pol stood waiting for dismissal. Her commanding officer stared at the privacy curtain for a moment as though illogically expecting to find an explanation written on it, but then roused himself. "You probably had a rough time yourself yesterday," he said to her with unexpected sympathy. "Take the morning off duty and get yourself some rest."
"With your permission, Captain, I will absent myself from duty, but I will take the opportunity to write down everything regarding this situation while it is still fresh in my mind. If I can meditate, it will help to clarify my thoughts."
"Whatever it takes." He looked at the curtain again. Fatigue and grief and confusion were etched on his face. "I'd have trusted him anywhere…"
"Sir." She spoke softly. "Under your own legal code, the lieutenant is innocent until convicted in a court of law."
Or by his own actions. The words hung in the air between them, unspoken.
"We'd better get back to the Bridge," he said at last, heavily. "You never know. I told Hoshi to keep broadcasting appeals for them to let us mediate to reduce the casualties, but I don't hold out much hope."
T'Pol thought to herself that Ensign Sato probably knew perfectly well she was wasting her time, but would doubtless continue obediently proffering an offer neither side would accept. The only aid Enterprise was likely to be able to render would be humanitarian in helping to clean up the aftermath, if indeed they were asked to do so. She hoped that Captain Archer would not blame himself for not being able to do more to avert a war that had been utterly inevitable.
The two of them left Sickbay. She headed for the Armory, to pass on the orders for the security detail to whoever was in charge there and to ensure that the sudden loss of their department head would have no detrimental effect on its efficient running. At a guess, Reed's deputy Ensign Müller would have stepped up to retake command, stoically awaiting developments; it was only proper for him to be given a brief and redacted account of events, since doubtless the news would have flashed around the ship, doubtless growing ever more garbled as it went.
As for what would happen when the lieutenant awoke, only time would tell.
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