"Thirty-six hundred."

The words were whispered. So quiet that even Hoshi's superb hearing could hardly have picked them up if she'd been in the turbo-lift with him, but charged with a horror beyond his capacity to express, if not – unfortunately – to feel.

Thirty-six hundred people!

He looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly.

He had closed the plasma ducts. He had. He knew he had. He'd have taken oath on anything anyone cared to produce. The pre-flight briefing had been clear on the danger; the protocols to avert it had been simple. Close off at fifty kilometres. But being always keen to err on the side of caution, he'd closed off at half as much again. He could see his fingers on the relevant controls. He could see the lights winking off. Having the ducts closed would make the descent a little harder to handle, but it was nothing he couldn't cope with. He'd been calm, confident; two sets of backup alarms had stayed silent. The craft's sensors would have detected the first traces of tetrazine, they'd have blared the threat of combustion long before it could have happened.

But they hadn't. And he'd guided the shuttle blithely down, down into disaster and the conflagration that had burst away from the base of the shuttle and consumed thirty-six hundred people.

He'd killed thirty-six hundred innocent people!

Vomit rose in his throat too fast for him even to try to swallow. He fell to his knees, retching as though he were bringing his intestines up. Fortunately it was a while since he'd last eaten, so there wasn't much in his stomach.

The door hissed open. He shrank from discovery, too ashamed to turn his head. At that moment he wished the vomit-soiled floor of the lift would simply vanish and drop him into the shaft. At least the impact at the bottom of it would be some atonement for what he'd done.

"Lieutenant!" Hoshi's voice was quick with concern. At least it didn't follow up with witless questions such as 'Are you all right?'. Absolutely fine, considering I just became a mass murderer. I'm sure it'll be quite a jolly sensation once I get over the surprise.

She stepped into the lift and pressed the command to return to E Deck. She also ordered someone from the maintenance team to meet them there with cleaning materials. In another universe he'd have been surprised and proud at how calm and competent she was in dealing with the unexpected situation; in this one, however, he had thirty-six hundred reasons not to be overly interested.

The lift stopped at E Deck. The door opened, and Hoshi activated the emergency stop button before crouching down beside him.

He was cold. So cold he was shivering convulsively. He was terrified she was going to touch him. Touch a murderer.

"Sir. Malcolm." She was talking to a murderer. "You need to get back to your quarters. Have a shower and change."

"It won't wash it off." He spoke to his hands, splayed on the lift's deck plating. The hands that had killed thirty-six hundred people. Thirty. Six. Hundred. People.

Men. Women. Children. Incinerated by the blast as the tetrazine ignited and the atmosphere turned to fire. The surface of their skin and lungs scorched in seconds, and death as painful as it was swift. Thirty-six hundred charred bodies down on the planet's surface, lying where they'd fallen in the ashes of what could one day have been a civilisation of its own. All my own work.

His legs had ceased to function. It was possibly only shame that enabled him to co-operate as she tried to lift him.

She got him as far as the next junction of the corridor before his legs stopped working again. He leaned against the wall and stared at her in blank horror, envisaging her wreathed in flames, her perfect skin cracking and splitting in the inferno.

"It wasn't your fault." She was talking as though trying to convince herself as much as him. "You didn't do anything."

I flew the shuttle down. I killed them all.

There was a comm panel right beside him. She pressed the button. "Commander Tucker, please respond."

"What's the problem, Hoshi?"

"Sir, can you meet us by the lift at E Deck? You'll have to use the accessway." A pause. "It's urgent."

"Be right there." The link closed.

He didn't think he'd shut his eyes, but a blink of time later there was a second blue uniform in front of him.

"Malcolm. We will handle this." The usually soft Southern-accented voice was hard.

Put much faith in resurrection, do you, Commander? Sorry. Call me an agnostic. I've killed thirty-six hundred people and they're not coming back.

"LIEUTENANT!" The shout at almost point-blank range shocked him back from wherever he'd been headed. Tucker's eyes were sparking with rage. He blinked dazedly up into the blazing blueness of them, but the anger was not directed at him.

"Sir..." He made an effort to stand upright.

"We are gonna sort this out," growled Trip. "We are gonna find out what happened and then I'm gonna kick whichever sonofabitch did it all the way back to Jupiter Station to stand trial."

"Might as well start now," Malcolm whispered. "I was flying the shuttle."

"Don't give me that!" The engineer's hands slammed him back against the wall. "There was nothin' wrong with that shuttle and there wasn't a damn thing wrong with the way you flew it. So we're gonna get you showered and changed, and then you and me are gonna go over every goddamn centimeter of that shuttle and we're gonna find out what happened!"

He was manhandled into his cabin, and his vomit-soiled uniform unceremoniously stripped off him and dumped on the floor. Over his croaked protest he was shoved into the shower cubicle in his underwear, presumably to preserve his modesty in front of Hoshi, who had followed them in as though hypnotized by what she'd unleashed.

"You just stay in there and wash yourself!" shouted Tucker, pushing him back in again as he tried to make his escape. "Wash all that goddamn self-pity outta yourself too, and come out when you're back to bein' a Starfleet officer!"

That penetrated. He spun around, fury igniting in him just as the tetrazine had in the atmosphere. "You –!" He pounded both fists against the Plexiglas and screamed into the implacable face behind it. "'Self-pity'! I killed them, you insensate Yank bastard!"

"Wash yourself, Lieutenant, or do I have to come in there and do it for you?"

"You set foot in here and I'll beat you to a fucking pulp!"

"Yeah, well, you could try. But in the meantime, if I have to tell you one more time I'll put it on your report as gross insubordination!"

Perhaps only the lifelong habit of obedience to a direct order from a superior officer enabled him to comply. Trembling with rage, he turned away and picked up a bottle from the stand with hands that shook. Exactly what was this supposed to achieve? Washing the blood off his hands like Pontius bloody Pilate? Giving a junior officer a floor show to take his mind off things?

Gel, shampoo, what did it matter? He sloshed out a handful of something and slathered it over his hair and body. Halfway through the operation he heard the door open and close; Hoshi had gone.

Some of the rigidity left his shoulders. He put his hands flat against the wall and leaned on them, his arms braced. From above him the water poured down on the back of his head. He stared down at the floor, watching the streaks of foam swirl around the drain between his feet and disappear.

"I did close the plasma ducts," he said at last.

"Sure you did." Trip's voice was now as quiet as his. "I've been through the logs and I've checked the ducts. When you hit the tetrazine layer they were shut up tighter'n a duck's ass. The explosion had nothin' to do with the way you flew the shuttle."

"But they'll use this against the captain." The Vulcans had never thought Archer competent for the job. They'd seize on it like a starving dog finding a juicy bone. Starfleet would have neither the will nor the inclination to resist Soval's demands that the ship be recalled in disgrace. The mission would be cancelled. Enterprise would slink home in ignominy, and it would be a miracle if she ever made it out into space again. The inglorious demise of his own career, probably accompanied by an indefinite prison term, was almost insignificant by comparison. Humanity's triumphant embarkation on its journey of interstellar discovery would be over almost before it had begun.

"Sure they will. So we've gotta find out what really happened."

He turned around. The chief engineer was now waiting with a towel in his hands. "Come on, Malcolm. If there's anyone here who can find out how that explosion happened, it's you." The anger in Trip's face was gone. In its place was calm confidence in him.

He switched off the shower, pressed the worst of the water out of his hair and peeled off his wet underwear. The towel was tossed carelessly in over the top of the cubicle, and he caught it just before it enveloped him. "Thanks."

"All part of the service, Loo-tenant." Tucker turned away and began rummaging in the fittings for a set of clean blues and a fresh uniform.

"Don't you dare leave my socks untidy, Commandah."

"Aw, a bit of creative organizin' makes a room look lived in."

"Yes. Lived in by somebody who thrives on chaos." Reed stepped out of the shower cubicle, balled the wet towel and flung it with the accuracy of a weapons expert. It had not escaped his notice that Trip was amusing himself by applying some creative organising to his sock drawer. There are some things that a man has to defend, even against a senior officer.

"Oof! Sonofabitch!" The commander clawed the soggy missile off the back of his neck and glared in mock wrath at the perpetrator, who was poised to dodge a return. "Get your clothes on, Lieutenant, and let's get workin' on findin' out who really was responsible for killin' those people. And after we've done that, if you're still feelin' brave, I'll take you on in a game of basketball the end of next shift. Engineerin' versus Armory. And I'll bet we whup your sorry asses."

"Done!" He began scrambling into his dry change of blues. The offer of the game of basketball sounded heartless, but he knew it was anything but. "I'll get the full set of schematics downloaded through the launch bay computer," he continued, dragging a shirt half-buttoned over his head in his haste. "And then we can..." A pause. "Thanks, Trip," he said quietly.

"My pleasure, Malcolm." Trip handed him his coverall. "Now, you were sayin'...?"

"I'll tell you when we get there. We're just wasting time talking here." He was pressing the door control button even before the zip was up. Anybody who was passing would just have to conceal their incredulity at his damp and dishevelled state; he had more important things to think about right now. He had the killer of thirty-six hundred people to bring to justice. Everything else would have to wait.

Including, unfortunately, thanking Hoshi for having the presence of mind to send him a saviour. But with luck, that wouldn't have to wait very long.