A/N: hellloooo! I'm so sorry for the long wait. This chapter was terrible. I rewrote it 4 times, then deleted it and started anew, only to rerwrite the new chapter again 4 times. Honestly I expect there to be quite a few mistakes and typos, as I just drew the line this evening and decided to just post it. Please let me know if you found spelling mistakes or if some of the writing doesn't make sense - there's so much exposition and explanations in this one, and since I rewrote it so often, I really can't tell whether or not the writing is sufficient or not. Also, please bear with me: I'm confident in my English, but the time-travel-grammar really is making my brain hurt. 'Would have X meant that they will Y if we only hadn't had Z' -whaaaaaat? :D
Anyway! Here it is. This is where we go deep into the 'episode-fixer' stuff. I hope you like it!
STRINGS ATTACHED
CHAPTER EIGHT
"… are there any more questions?"
Silence fell over the Ready Room. Hoshi and Travis looked up at them with big eyes. Anna Hess, who represented Trip in Engineering for the time being, was already engrossed in one of her reports; since she and the rest of Engineering were right in the middle of the fight for Enterprise, the Commander's briefing had held the least news for her. Travis and Hoshi, on the other hand, looked shocked and scared at the same time when they learned that they still hadn't found a way out.
Sensing this, Trip smiled at them encouragingly. Under normal circumstances, the Commander would have cracked a joke by now to ease the tension – but the circumstances were far from normal. Trip was tired and worn out; smudges of machine oil matched the dark circles under his eyes that were visible in the harsh artificial lights. Malcolm wondered if boosting crew morale was his job now. Unfortunately, he wasn't good at cracking jokes to make people feel better. He was much better at giving and taking orders.
"Do you all know what you'll have to do?" he asked, therefore.
"Cut back the disk's influence on our ship," Lieutenant Hess mumbled, rolling her eyes at Trip who held up his hands in good nature. "Maybe for more than three hours, this time."
"I'll help out in navigation. Again." Travis spoke up. He sounded frustrated, and Malcolm really could relate.
They had found the alien disk half a day ago. After a few hours of analysing it and examining its effects on the ship, Engineering had proven that they finally found the culprit for all the misbehaving sensors, the revved up warp drive, and all of the unresponsive secondary systems. The disk had built neuronal networks, rewrote code, claimed coils and rerouted power, all the while the Captain's overhaul had kept the crew away from the respective changes the disk was conducting using most of the new systems they had installed.
When Engineering learned about that, they had been furious. It hadn't been difficult to motivate them to work with combined forced against the disk, and indeed they had managed to cut back its influence. They had slowed down, won back navigation, and had even turned around… for exactly 47 minutes. Afterwards, the disk had somehow re-established its control over the engines, turned up the warp, and changed course again.
It was battling with the Engineering crew ever since. They isolated the disk, turned the ship around for longer and longer intervals, only to find themselves going Warp 4.5 and heading in the opposite direction again a few hours later. Since they were still flying blindly, finding out that they changed course was tricky. The disk sneaked in orders and built new connections faster than the Engineers were able to analyse which parts of the ship had formed a new control centre by taking over existing hardware.
In summation, they had spent the last eighteen hours literally flying in huge circles, yet still didn't know where to or why. Each time they turned around, Trip sent a shift of worn out Engineers to sleep for a few hours, until the device won once more and the ship rumbled as it activated high warp. Security had tried to remove it, but its connections were entwined to the warp drive control centre and threatened to trigger a core breach – for the time being, thus, Trip had decided to try to find a way to shut it off rather than destroy it.
They had just lost control again for the third time, much to the Engineers' despair, and Trip had called a meeting of the senior staff to inform them. So here they were, now, still flying blindly, still not in control, but tired and frustrated.
Malcolm wished there was something he could do except for making sure the crew kept to the new rotation schedule and overseeing the repairs of the secondary systems- but he couldn't help in Engineering and he still didn't even know what they were fighting. He had read all reports about their adventure in 1944 and had talked to everyone involved. After hours of research, he was none the wiser. The only one he hadn't interviewed yet was Archer, and if he didn't shed some light on this, they might be going in circles forever.
"Hoshi, I want you to try to contact T'Pol," Trip said, focussing on the Ensign who had been running the bridge lately. "Communications are not working great, but they seem to be the least of our issues."
"It's possible that she tried to contact us again in the meantime and we can't extract the message."
"Try to hail her, as well. We could really use her help."
Just a year ago, such a sentence would have never come across Trip's lips, Malcolm mused bitterly. As Trip and Hoshi kept going on about frequencies and subspace transmissions, he allowed himself a small, very useless moment of grudge against the Vulcan. They desperately needed her expertise, that much was obvious even for Malcolm, but the fact that Trip's mood had brightened visibly after Hoshi had informed them about T'Pol's last message earlier had still been difficult to swallow.
After learning about the overhaul Archer had been conducting in her name, T'Pol had waited a few hours for Trip's answer. When none arrived, she had sent a communiqué informing them that she was leaving Tellar Prime on an alien vessel with Warp 7, ready to take her a certain part of the way towards Enterprise's estimated position. Hoshi only managed to extract thus messages from the computers after they had been moving away from her with high warp for a couple of days. Yet, Trip and the scientists had calculated that, adding the few hours they kept stealing from the disk when they turned around to go in circles, it was possible that T'Pol was waiting only about a day away from them. Give or take a couple of lightyears that she was off their course, Trip was hoping for a maximum of two days.
The last message had given them the coordinates of an alien outpost where T'Pol was about to be dropped off. Trip had scheduled a shuttlepod to pick her up, but the rendezvous had to be timed precisely: they still weren't able to power down warp completely thanks to the disk, and the shuttlepod was only able to leave and re-enter their warp bubble with a respective bubble of the same strength. Meeting a tiny shuttlepod while flying in huge circles without external sensors was complicated and dangerous. With the disk reclaiming control between the shuttlepod's takeoff and return, anything was possible.
"Anna, please report back to me hourly," Trip told Hess and pulled Malcolm's thoughts back to the here and now. "In the meantime, I'll check Environmentals and then try to get External Sensors back online."
"The sensors?" Malcolm asked, baffled. Just before the meeting, he had tried to talk Trip into sending an Engineer to the Armoury, which was dead, dark, and unresponsive. "What if we're attacked? Commander, we'll need to be able to defend ourselves!"
Pressing his lips together, Trip shrugged. "Well, we won't be able to defend ourselves if we can't see the enemy approach."
"But we're clearly under attack, Trip!"
"We're spread thin, Lieutenant. I'm prioritizing External Sensors." This time, Trip didn't add a conciliatory gesture.
"Yes, sir," Malcolm sighed. He had agreed that they needed to take Environmental Controls off the main system and run it via auxiliary, safe routes to protect it from the disk. It had taken Trip more than a few hours. Malcolm had hoped that, afterwards, the Commander would turn to the Armoury, as Trip knew very well that the Armoury systems were more than targeting machines and explosives – yet he had stepped right into Archer's footsteps of naively believing that the wouldn't need defence if only they were nice enough to other species. It was beyond frustrating for the Chief of Security, who had wasted hours on the subject with Archer.
"Dismissed," Trip said jovially when there weren't any more questions, and the senior staff scattered.
Malcolm stayed behind and waited for a few seconds until Hoshi and Travis' voices had disappeared. With a quick glance at the panel on the wall, he reassured himself that Trip had ended the meeting right on time – Phlox had scheduled a meeting in sickbay in ten minutes. When Trip had launched into a lengthy explanation about the disk's connection to the warp drive, Malcolm had speculated that the Engineer was stalling for time.
To be honest, Malcolm wasn't that keen on getting to sickbay either. Captain Archer had woken up, as Phlox told them happily over the comm link, and ready for visitors. They needed to talk to him as soon as possible… but when Malcolm thought about his last interaction with the Captain, he really wasn't looking forward to facing him so soon. And Archer wouldn't be too happy to see him either…
Trip, however, certainly had more than enough on his plate right now without having to deal with Archer's odd behaviour on top. As if on cue, though, Trip sighed and turned to him. "No point delaying it, huh?" Despite of everything, he motioned him to follow and led the way through the door.
For a second, Malcolm thought about offering to do the interview on his own, but Trip wouldn't back down now. He needed to see Captain Archer – needed to see how much Jonathan had been involved in the rage fits. Just as Malcolm wanted to ask him how he was doing, another voice called out behind them.
"Commander!"
It was Ensign Heston, and he was dragging a cumbersome, heavy piece of equipment with both arms. As Trip turned around, Malcolm noticed the adorable line on his forehead that only appeared when he wanted to laugh, but didn't.
Uh-oh. Wordlessly, Malcolm stopped as well and watched. He thought he had seen the box Heston was carrying before – it was the container for the lifting weights in the gym. Judging from the way the Ensign was panting, it was fully loaded.
"Commander, Lieutenant." Heston gasped. "Lieutenant Hess said the cogu-… coaglunitator hasn't been subpolarised properly."
Trip's eyes went wide, and he slapped the unbruised side of his forehead with his hand. "Oh Jeez, that's right. Hold still, Ensign."
With trembling arms, the Ensign held out the 'coaglunitator'. Trip started to type something on his PADD, then pretended to turn some buttons, humming, while sweat drops appeared on Heston's forehead and his arms started to shake.
Aw, come on, Trip, Malcolm thought, but didn't interfere. He had read the reports of Trip's arrest to the brig, after all.
Finally, Trip held the scanner over the chunk of metal, flicked his wrist a few times, and then nodded approvingly. "Now it's subpolarized. Thank you, Ensign, you can bring it back to Lieutenant Hess."
Relieved, Heston let his arms sink. He almost toppled over but caught himself. "Yes, Commander. Do you think…Could I use the turbo lift, this time?"
Trip drew in a sharp breath. "What?! Are you insane? You know the computers are working all crazy!"
"Yes, Sir." Heston's head dropped.
"I told you what happens if the quadro radiation mixes with the coaglunitator's entropy. The whole place could turn into a Planck scale!"
"Yes, Sir."
Malcolm turned away to inspect a communication panel on the wall, hiding the grin on his face. This was an important lesson for the young Ensign – never cross a technician. Or arrest your superior officer and visibly enjoy it.
"Do you want us all to die, Ensign?!"
"No, Sir."
With an exhale, Trip laid a hand on the Ensign's shoulders and smiled at him forgivingly. Malcolm didn't miss how the Ensign almost lost his balance at the extra weight. "You're doing great, Marvin."
"Thank you, Sir."
Grunting, Heston turned around, red faced, sweat stained, and nodded at Malcolm as he slowly, painstakingly, stalked away, lugging the device along.
Malcolm turned to Trip. "I can't believe you forgot to properly subpolarise our coaglunitator." The Engineer shrugged, grinning mischievously. "I hope that will be his last walk of shame."
"Hm, we'll see what Anna thinks of this. Two weeks ago, he cut her line at lunch."
"Is this really necessary?"
Trip eyed Malcolm out of the corner of his eye, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. "Are you questioning my leadership style, Lieutenant? With your past full of revolts and mutinies?"
"I wouldn't dream of it, Sir."
They resumed their way, both chuckling for the first time in days, but when they neared their destination, the anxiety crawled up Malcolm's spine again.
Phlox hadn't told them much about Archer's state of mind. Malcolm suspected him to be quite coherent, otherwise the doctor wouldn't allow them to visit so soon, but they still didn't know if the device in his brain had left permanent damage, changed the man permanently or how long the man needed to recover. With their engines slowly but steadily burning up, they might not have this time.
Trip had surmised that the device and the disk needed to somehow work together to realise the overhaul and the secret takeover – if that was true, Archer might have, unbeknownst to him, the key for ending all of this. And God knew they needed some answers: After trying to reconstruct Archer's steps in 1944, and then reading all of the following reports up until yesterday, Malcolm had ended up with more questions than answers… and a huge pile of guilty conscience for not noticing sooner that the Captain was slipping into madness.
The warning signs had all been there. Now that he knew what to look for, reading Archer's reports felt like spiralling down the insanity well with him. Trip's perceived insubordinations, starting out as witty comebacks, then changing into serious allegations, the rising emotionality, the anger about little things the crew did or didn't do, Archer's thirst for solitude, his advancing paranoia…
"Mal, I can hear you grinding your teeth," Trip's well-known drawl disrupted his musings.
They had reached sickbay, but as they walked through the doors, only the Osmotic eel greeted them. The beds were empty and there was no sight of the doctor or the nurses. They were probably tending to some patients with more serious conditions behind the doors leading to the private rooms of sickbay. In one of them, Malcolm knew for sure, was Archer.
"I'm just anxious," he answered truthfully. "I wish I knew what we were fighting."
"A very small supercomputer that has had more time to study us than we had to study it," Trip said and made his way over to one of the sickbeds to sit down. Malcolm observed him closely; the Engineer had spent the last fifteen hours struggling for control with weird alien technology and had barely rested for more than a few hours at a time, and definitely not in a bed. "We'll find a way to stop it."
"What if there'll be an external threat as well? We're sitting ducks!"
"I'll get to your weapons, Malcolm," Trip's voice took a sharp edge. "We're not progressing as quickly, and I can't spare personnel right now. The second we stop working on a system, the disk is notified and sneaks up on us from behind."
Malcolm had a very clear opinion about further proceedings. "We should keep trying to get rid of it."
"Not as long as we can't slow down considerably." Trip leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. "Its main grasp is on the warp engine and it won't let us go under Warp 1.1. We'll lose containment or the bubble, and if that happens while we're going faster than .5…"
…we'll be ripped apart, Malcolm added in thoughts. Still, it didn't sit well with him. "You don't know for sure what will happen. I wonder if we can overpower it. Force it to shut down."
"We're not even sure how it runs on power," Trip only shrugged, half-heartedly, so Malcolm pushed on.
"Shoot it with a phaser pistol. Feed it energy until it has to react and observe."
Trip's eyes snapped open and he stared at him as if he had grown a second had. "You want to shoot at my ship while we're going full speed and don't have control? Are you for real?!"
"I want to shoot at your ship because we're going full speed and don't have control! It's clearly an enemy device!"
"Malcolm!"
"Ah, Mister Reed." The doors to the private sickbay areas had opened suddenly, and Phlox was coming towards them, smiling broadly. "Please don't make the Commander scream in here, you'll arouse the other patients as well."
Trip snorted a surprised laugh, while Malcolm felt his ears glow and his brain go offline.
"He's really good at getting a reaction out of me, Doc," Trip said slyly, and slurred the words 'a reaction' absolutely intentionally.
"If you say so, Mister Tucker." The two grinned at each other. Malcolm wished the ground would open to swallow him.
As Phlox exmined the bruises, Trip looked back at him, dropped the grin and glared pointedly. Shoot at my ship and this will happen again.
Bastard, Malcolm channeled.
"How's the Captain, Doc?" Trip asked innocently, eyes not leaving Malcolm and raising an eyebrow. Deal with it, Reed. "You said he woke up."
"Yes, he woke up but needed a while to regain consciousness fully. He was very confused." Phlox put away the scanner and beamed at Trip. "Ah, but you're almost as good as new, Commander."
Malcolm stepped up, back in his element. "We need to talk to him as soon as possible."
"Mister Archer is ready to see you… he remembers and was deeply shocked about the whole ordeal, Trip," Phlox reported. In contrast to the Captain, Malcolm was sure that the Doctor chose very consciously when to use which name. "His hormonal levels are more balanced, but it will take a little bit of time until his emotional responses will be as controlled as they used to be."
As they walked into the private room and the Doctor announced them cheerfully, Malcolm drew in a breath when he spotted their Captain. Seeing him out of uniform was always strange, but in the white shirt of sickbay, with a thin, neat bandage wrapped around his head and a few strands of hair standing out stubbornly, Archer didn't look like their Captain – he looked like a sick person. Even though he had rested for hours after the surgery, he looked exhausted, with dark rings under his eyes and pale, haggard skin.
Archer sported a small, strained smile as they walked in. As his gaze found Trip, who had stepped in last, his mask slipped a little bit. Malcolm watched carefully how his eyes focused on the faded bruises on Trip's face and then dropped quickly at his hands, staring at them in shock.
Yeah, he definitely remembered.
"I did that, didn't I?" He asked, skipping the superfluous greetings. Malcolm hadn't heard his voice this controlled for a while and thought about all the nervous energy and sudden mood swings they had seen from Archer lately – no wonder the man was exhausted. "I'm so sorry, Trip."
He looked utterly rueful. Trip, on the other hand, leaned back against the wall with a few metres distance and crossed his arms. "The Doc told us about the device. You weren't in control."
The detached and calm tone he had used was so professional and unlike Trip's usual way of speaking to Archer, he might just as well have spoken to a stranger. Archer flinched slightly and looked up only to have Trip avoiding eye contact. Usually, the Engineer was beyond forgiving once the issues were resolved or the misunderstandings clarified, and therefore Trip had just very clearly told him that things wouldn't go back to normal that quickly. Looking at the Captain now, the message had come across devastatingly well. They weren't okay, not by a long shot.
"Did Doctor Phlox fill you in, Captain?" Malcolm spoke up because he almost felt sorry for him. Almost. "We need to ask you a few questions."
"Of course," Archer answered, turning to Malcolm. "As I told the Doctor, I don't think I have any gaps in my memory. It's just that sometimes…" he looked at his hands again, struggling to find the words. "Sometimes I just stopped thinking. It swept me away."
"The device manipulated the intensity of your emotional responses," Phlox explained, helpfully. "It controlled the inhibiting function within your limbic system. In effect, your body has been regularly flooded with hormones. At a certain threshold, there is no room left for reason anymore, and your body acted."
"It was as if I saw things through a veil," Archer mused, remembering. "When I was in your quarters, and gathered that you two –"
He had turned to Malcolm, but stopped in the middle of the sentence when he realised what he was about to say. As Malcolm felt the embarrassment bubble up, he still noticed the plethora of emotions that flashed across the Captain's face suddenly. There was anger among them, too, and Malcolm remembered Phlox' warning. The emotion the Captain settled for after a second, though, was astonishment. And… amusement?
He looked to and fro between him and Trip, eyes wide, the ghost of a smile on his lips, and Malcolm wanted to die. "Wait. Are you two…?"
"We're here to talk about the device in your head," Trip interrupted him mercilessly, no inflection whatsoever in his voice, and even though Malcolm was glad the topic had changed, he felt a pang of sympathy for Archer, who deflated immediately back to his contrite self. Behind him, Phlox grunted, disappointed as well.
"Of course, Commander."
"Do you recognise this?" Malcolm asked, starting the interrogation, and showed the Captain a PADD with the disk on screen.
"It's the disk Silik stole from the alien compound in 1944."
"What happened to it?"
"I stored it in cargo bay two…" Archer answered, but at the end of the sentence, his voice grew uncertain and his brows furrowed. "Why are you asking?"
"You told us we left it at Starfleet Headquarters," Trip butted in.
With a puzzled expression, Archer looked at him. "Yes…yes. I didn't want to give it away..."
"Why did you lie to us?" Trip asked, just when Malcolm posed the next question: "Did you leave it there?"
Emotions flickered over Archer's face again while he thought. He seemed confused, his eyes moving from right to left and back, as if trying to make sense out of a garbled puzzle. "I had to keep it from you," he said, suddenly, focusing sharply on Trip. "You wanted to analyse it. You… and T'Pol."
Archer's voice had gone up and his tone became more aggressive. Automatically, Malcolm tensed, but then Archer shook himself and rubbed his hand against his mouth, drawing in a deep breath "I felt like I had to keep it from you. And since T'Pol took inventory of the cargo regularly, I decided to hide it somewhere else…"
"Where?" Malcolm pressed on. They were getting somewhere.
"Under the plating of the impulse drive. Your team had just inspected impulse and I thought you wouldn't have to look there again…" Archer paled. "Oh God, is that why the ship is shaking?"
So Phlox hadn't told him about the disk's control. Malcolm looked at Trip, who only shrugged in response. According to the doctor, there was nothing influencing the Captain anymore, and as he clearly wouldn't take over command soon, there was no reason to leave him out of the loop. They needed answers, after all.
"The disk is messing with our systems," Trip explained, breaking it down to only a few words as if to avoid talking to Archer more than necessary. "We're on it."
"Where did the ship's overhaul come from?" Malcolm asked, prying further.
Archer looked at him with big eyes. "T'Pol's overhaul?"
That was interesting. So Archer had actually believed it came from her. Trip had studied the blueprints when they realised that many of the conduits and power re-routes they had constructed had fed right into the disk's reach across the systems. They had, basically, paved its way. But the overhaul's blueprint had been professional, detailed, and nothing a person lacking years and years of aerospace engineering education could produce… and even then, it was a bold design. "We contacted T'Pol. It's not hers."
At that, Archer groaned in defeat. "It was on my computers just after she left, sent from her code, and I felt like this was the perfect timing to do it. I never questioned it."
"I think this was the disk's doing," Trip offered, addressing Malcolm. "It scanned the ship and analysed what it needed. New power lines. Malfunctioning sensors to keep us oblivious."
"What's happening to the ship?" Archer's gaze was pleading. He was well aware that something was going on, and as the whole situation unfurled, the guilt was adding up.
"The disk you planted in the ship was connected to the device in your brain," Malcolm explained. "Which means that this goes back to Vosk and the alternative past we visited."
"You need to tell us everything you know about Vosk and Daniels."
Archer looked as if someone had slapped him in the face. "This is Vosk's doing?"
"Or Silik's." Malcolm squinted at the thought of the changeling. "Or even Daniels'. We never managed to make sense out of what happened, and you were the only one talking to all parties."
"Your report states that Daniels talked about stealth time travel technology…" Trip didn't finish the sentence. They had never learned how Vosk travelled through time, but Malcolm seriously doubted that there was any stealthier technology than a device planted in your brain that controlled your emotional responses and made you order sneaky reconstruction work on your ship.
Just then, the ship shook and rumbled, and for a second the lights flickered. The disk had revved up high warp, again.
Trip grimaced and pushed himself away from the wall. "I guess that's my cue." He nodded at them and left the room with Phlox hurrying after him, and then Archer and Malcolm were left alone. They were silent for a few seconds, but then Malcolm thought he saw the Captain relax.
Two hours later, Malcolm hurried towards the mess. His head was swimming with questions, answers, theories, and objections. After almost two hours of remembering and analysing the last month, a task beyond embarrassment for the Captain and thus also for Malcolm, they had managed to clear up a few of his questions. They weren't done by a long shot, but Archer had visibly tired after a while, and Phlox had intervened at some point. Now he was late to his lunch with Trip, and Malcolm really needed time to discuss a few potentially explosive issues.
The mess was relatively empty, only a few officers had gathered and drank out of steaming cups. Afternoon, Malcolm thought… whatever that means in space. Trip was already there, sitting in the back and leaning over some reports with a cup of coffee next to him.
Rolling his eyes, Malcolm went and grabbed two plates. Captain Archer had often joked that Trip's healthy appetite was a preventative measure for the times the Commander was stressed and forgot to eat. Or sleep. Somehow, Trip was able to function for long stretches of time on coffee alone. The only problem was that when the adrenaline came down, after the stress was gone and the world saved, Trip's body tended to remind him very clearly what it thought about the neglecting.
Without greeting, he set down the plate in front of Trip, who looked up in surprise. As he sat down himself, it occurred to him that the last time he had actually taken time to eat properly had been his lunch with Hoshi. It already felt like a lifetime ago. Contrary to Hoshi, though, Trip dug into his pasta without further ado, muffling an utterance that might have been a 'thanks'.
"Back in control?" Malcolm asked as he picked up his cutlery. He wished to just spend some time with Trip, to relax, but ever since their adventure on the brig, things had been crazy. They hadn't had any time to themselves, and even during the very small moments of relative privacy, all they talked about was the disk, Archer's brain device, and the tasks that lay ahead.
"I wish," Trip said, obviously unhappy, and grimaced as he steered the conversation to where he knew it had to go. "How did it go in sickbay?"
Before answering, Malcolm cut his salmon meticulously, thinking hard about how to say what he needed to say. Talking to Archer had cleared some things up for him, and Trip, as their commanding officer, needed to be informed. As much as Malcolm wished to spare him some of the details and take at least some of the burden off his shoulders, Trip was his superior, and this was a matter of security and very possibly life and death of Enterprise and its crew. This was a matter of following protocol.
Still, there was at least the chance to start with something positive: "The Captain and I have concluded that the disk's influence probably also involved the meddling with the oxygen and carbon dioxide mixture in his private chambers."
Obviously, Trip hadn't expected him to bring up the ridiculous charges Archer had raised against him. With furrowed brows, he looked up without pausing to eat. "We suspected that already."
Watching him closely, Malcolm knew that Trip kept up his carefully crafted, calm façade while there had to be a storm brewing inside. Maybe the accusations Archer had raised over Trip weren't on their priority list right now, but the Brit knew that the Captain's behaviour towards Trip was eating away at him, and that avoiding his feelings about it by concentrating on the ship would sooner or later blow up in their faces.
Maybe Malcolm could help to mend at least some bridges. "He dropped the charges already. It's over."
Trip leaned back in his chair. "Do you believe him?" he asked after a few seconds of silence.
And wasn't that just the most important question? Malcolm had asked it himself for the last two hours. He had watched Archer beating himself up over his own actions as they went through the ordeal with Trip step by step. Going through the rest of their journey since they arrived in 1944 had been difficult and arduous, but nothing had visibly shaken the man so much as recapitulating his behaviour towards Trip this past week.
"Yes," he said, thus, "I believe him." Which wasn't the same as forgiving him, though.
Trip just shrugged and resumed shoveling pasta into his mouth, which was pretty much his way of saying 'good enough for me'. "I hope that wasn't all you talked about."
"Good news or bad news first?"
"Bad news," Trip grunted through a mouthful of pasta. "Let's get this over with."
"We didn't get much about Vosk," Malcolm's features darkened. "He never really shared his plans or talked about the technology, not even to Archer. But… I think I found a different approach. Commander?"
The Engineer looked up, raising a brow at the title. Malcolm swallowed; this was going to be difficult, but Trip had to know, and he needed the pragmatic Commander now, not his temperamental boyfriend.
"I thought about Silik's role in this a lot. I think he knew about Vosk's technology, and he wanted to get it through you."
The Suliban's involvement in all of this had been even more of a mystery to Malcolm than any stealth time travel technology or Alien Nazis were. From the very beginning it hadn't made much sense – when had the Suliban arrived on Enterprise? Why had he first wanted to abduct Trip, and then left for Earth without him? What had he wanted to achieve when he had taken Trip's form in the compound and followed Archer to the ship?
Now, with a little bit more data, Malcolm had a working theory. One he didn't like at all, and one Trip would like even less. Forgetting to eat, Malcolm ordered his thoughts and talked the Engineer, whose eyes were getting bigger and bigger, through his theory.
Silik had been sent by his benefactor to steal Vosk's technology. Yet, the changeling had never tried to get the disk back from the crew after they had found it on him – he probably knew that it had to stay on Enterprise. What had made Malcolm suspicious, however, wasn't the disk, but Silik's strange obsession over Trip: First he had tried to kidnap him, but then left without him when he knew he had been detected. In the compound, he had taken Trip's form, yet let the Engineer live for some reason, when he could have killed him off easily.
Malcolm had spent hours trying to find the missing puzzle piece, until he suddenly realized that it was right in front of him: Silik's behaviour made perfectly sense if the Suliban had known how the technology from the 29th century worked. If he had known what the device and the disk did, targeting Trip was perfectly logical – had the device been implanted within the ship's Chief Engineer, conducting changes on Enterprise would have been incredibly easy. Silik couldn't have risked killing Trip since he needed him, or at least his form, for further proceedings on Enterprise.
Trip swallowed audibly and shook his head. "You think he wanted to have the device implanted himself when he took my place in the compound?"
"It's all speculation, really," Malcolm sighed, "but Phlox thinks that the device assembled in the Captain's brain on its own. He might have breathed in the parts, or ate them, got injected… we don't know. Silik would have been able to reject the device after it assembled as soon as he changed forms. I think that when he took your form in the compound, he wanted to get the technology himself and smuggle it aboard. He couldn't risk killing you, though, because there was no way for him to tell if you already carried it."
When Archer freed 'Trip' and Travis from Vosk, Silik had had no choice but to tag along. But as he had been forced to change on Enterprise and no brain device had shown up, his last chance of obtaining it had been in helping the Captain rescue Trip from the compound.
At this, Trip dropped his fork and stared into the distance. "Oh shit. He knew that we would blow up the place?"
Malcolm shrugged. It was a possibility. He hadn't had time to think into that direction, since he had concentrated on something else: What if there were two devices? Or even three, with Travis?
Trip, however, had latched onto that last piece of information and ran a nervous hand through his hand. "Damn… so all of what we did in 1944 somehow will be known to Silik's benefactor in the future?"
It wouldn't be common knowledge, though, otherwise Daniels would have been informed it, too. Malcolm felt the back of his neck tingle. He didn't like the direction Trip had taken at all. "Vosk was a big deal. Maybe they'll know because this was when we stopped him and changed the temporal cold war?"
Or because we didn't. He didn't need to say it out loud – Trip's worried eyes met his just then.
"There have been no other official records about this mess but ours. Silik's dead. Vosk's dead. If the 28th century knows about all of this, they know about it because of our reports or because it's not over yet, Malcolm." Trip was staring into nothing, jaw tensed. Malcolm had seen this a few times over the past few years and knew that it meant that he had zoned out, thinking about the issue at hand as he would tackle a problem in Engineering. Suddenly his eyes went wide. "Oh, shit. You know what our logs state right now? That Enterprise's Chief Engineer tried to murder his Captain by meddling and sabotaging the ship."
Malcolm's heart missed a beat. Finally they were going full circle: if the technology wasn't well known in the future, outsiders like Silik or the benefactor had to go with what they concluded from the existing files… and these reports stated very clearly that Commander Trip Tucker, Chief Engineer, had started to act weird and insolent, and finally turned out to be a saboteur. To the benefactor, taking over Trip would mean getting the device, and he had ordered Silik to do just that without knowing for sure when the implantation would happen.
It also meant that in the future, people knew that Vosk's devices had been on Enterprise at that specific moment in time.
"It's not over yet, is it?" Trip asked, feebly. "We didn't stop the temporal cold war."
A dry, humourless huff escaped Malcolm. "Maybe we did in 1944. That doesn't mean we stopped Vosk in the 29th century. Or anyone else for that matter."
"I hate time travel," Trip groaned and let his head fall into his hands. "Now I need the good news, please."
Malcolm watched him and swallowed. All of this had been the buildup to what he had to say now… which was going to be unpleasant. "The good news is that you're not carrying one of the devices. I asked Phlox."
Peeking through his fingers, Trip raised his head a few centimetres and looked up. "What?"
Damn. He had tried to convey the words lightly, as if they were no big deal, but one look at Trip showed clearly that he had failed.
This was going to be difficult. "I'm sorry, Trip, but I had to make sure. I asked Phlox, but he had scanned you earlier because of your concussion. There's nothing wrong with your brain... That's good news!"
Incredulous, Trip stared at him, but didn't move. "Malcolm, are you insane? Have you seen me knocking out random crewmembers lately?"
"You've been in the compound long enough. Travis, too," he added quickly and laid the fork, with which he had stabbed the air earlier to make his points, down. "We don't know how the technology works. We don't know enough to rule out a backup device or even a synergy."
Trip squinted his eyes. "Yes, we do. The Captain has been acting weird for a long time. We just didn't know what was behind it."
"I'm sorry, Trip, but this device is sneaky. I set up an order for Travis to get scanned as well, but I need you to sign it." Malcolm rummaged in one of the pockets of his uniform until he found a data PADD. He chose the file and reached across the table to hand the device to Trip, who stared at it wordlessly.
A speechless Trip wasn't a good sign. It usually meant that one had to be prepared for an outburst. Malcolm took a deep breath – all of his reasoning, all of his lengthy derivations about Silik and Vosk, and Trip still took it as a personal affront.
Surprisingly though, Trip didn't get mad. Instead, Malcolm found that he suddenly looked incredibly tired. His heart hurt at the thought; he hadn't meant to add more load on Trip's shoulders. Malcolm wrecked his brain for a way to make this easier, but he just wasn't good at words. "Listen," he settled for finally, lowering his voice, "I know this seems tough, but I need to consider the ship's safety first."
For a second, Trip looked as if he had slapped him. Then, his brow wrinkled, an icy anger pierced out of his eyes, and he grabbed the PADD that still hung between them. Malcolm had seen that sharp, calculating gaze only a handful of times – when Degra was on board, for example, or after he had learned about Sim and needed to sort out how to feel about Archer's decision. It was an expression that rarely spelled out positive.
"Yes, let's consider the ship's safety first." Swiftly, Trip typed in his code and thus verified the order. Malcolm let go of that breath, but then realised that Trip kept on typing. "You'll have to take over Travis' mission, now that he's under suspicion. "
"Sure," Malcolm exclaimed, glad that they had found a way to solve this productive as Trip handed him back the PADD. Malcolm read the words on the screen, while Trip got up and left his half-empty plate on the table.
The meaning of the sentences needed a few seconds to register. Trip was almost out of the doors of sickbay when Malcolm had caught up with him, PADD in hand and indignation driving him to grab the Commander's shoulder.
"You want me to pick up T'Pol?" Malcolm asked incredulously, louder than expected. "Is this a joke?!"
"I need someone who can brief her in detail, and who'll get her on board safely." Trip shot him a deadly look and resumed walking towards the turbo lift, but Malcolm stayed on his heels. "Anna calculated that we'll be in control in an hour. The Shuttlepod's been updated and is ready for takeoff."
Malcolm felt the anger bubbling up now as well. Trip was pushing him away out of spite. He was trying to do his job damnit, and if the last week had taught them anything, it was that they needed to be thorough. "The ship is in danger. You need me here!"
"What I need is T'Pol and her expertise," Trip's voice was calm, but his eyes were blazing. "This was an order, Lieutenant."
The words felt like acid in Malcolm's ears. And Trip had to know that. He knew perfectly well that T'Pol was still a sore topic, and to be sent away from a dangerous situation… Trip knew exactly what he was doing to him.
He tongue was leaden. "You're taking this personal. I get it. But please don't let this interfere with what's going on with the ship."
Trip's lips twitched for a mirthless smile that didn't each his eyes. "I'll have Hoshi send you the rest of mine and T'Pol's private messages to pass the time. We had a steamy argument about the motor coils two weeks ago. You'll love it."
Malcolm felt the heat rise to his face. He desperately wanted to make a case that the messages had been evidence, but he knew that the point was moot. He had regarded them as evidence, true, but for more than just proof about Trip and T'Pol working together. He really had no right to appeal to Trip's integrity as a Starfleet officer…
When he didn't answer, Trip simply walked past him. "Godspeed, Lieutenant."
-tbc-
Phlox continuously embarrassing Malcolm about personal stuff might be my new favourite thing. Please R&R!