A/N: Welcome back and thanks for the love! There's a little more blood and guts in this chapter, but nothing out of the ordinary for me.

See the first chapter for content disclaimers.

Let Me Take You Out

Chapter Four

The second Captain Archer and Sub-Commander T'Pol disappeared into the back corridor, Nallim converged on the head table, carving a wide swath across the dance floor and drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

There was no way he couldn't be aware of what just happened; Malcolm was at Hoshi's side in an instant, and together they gave chase, catching up just as Nallim treated his wife to a genuine, if not fraught smile, leaning forward to press both of his foreheads against hers.

His command was so soft that the UT couldn't pick up on it, but due to sheer force of adrenaline, Hoshi heard it just fine: "Take the baby and get to the safe room."

"Darling…"

"Be quick." Veela started to pull away from him, but he held fast, allowing his hand to drift from her shoulder to ruffle their son's hair, first the left head, then the right. Newly calm after his encounter with T'Pol, he could only offer him a toothless grin, not seeming to understand the mortal peril that awaited them in every corner of the ballroom. The tension was so thick that they could have cut it with a knife, and Malcolm instantly felt the gooseflesh rippling up the back of his neck, setting his fight or flight reflex into overdrive. "Be safe."

She nodded her assent, four eyes wide in shock, which quickly morphed into acceptance. With a flick of the wrist, the nanny joined her, and together they began to work their way towards the winding staircase at the back of the room, murmuring something about bath time, bed time.

Once they were gone, Nallim slowly came around the table, took his seat at the head, and draped a napkin across his lap. Both heads were looking to the left and the right, towards the servants lingering at the ends with perfectly blank looks on their faces. Hoshi held her breath as he retrieved the captain's glass and drew it up to his lips, inhaling slowly.

The shock was immediate; with one hand, he set the goblet down, and with the other, he passed over the sub-commander's glass, encouraging Malcolm to take a whiff. By no means did he consider himself a wine expert, but even he could tell something was off - a certain sharpness behind the bouquet, something dangerous and illicit.

Nallim said something which the translator couldn't pick up. They shared a bewildered glance, then Hoshi whipped out her tricorder, typing away in a desperate attempt to make sense of it. Frustrated, he repeated himself multiple times, sounding it out and altering the pronunciation, until it finally came through in standard.

"It's a love potion."

Were it not for their present situation, Malcolm's expression would have been borderline hilarious. His eyebrows flew up into his hairline, and he swirled the contents of the glass contemplatively in a none too convincing air of nonchalance. Surely the UT had misinterpreted what he said - not only were Archer and T'Pol too focused on propriety to indulge their passions on such an important away mission, he wasn't sure their science officer saw the captain as anything more than an annoyance. At any rate, that was how she probably felt about him.

"Come again?"

"It doesn't amplify feelings which aren't already there," he assured them hastily, dipping his fingertip into the glass and dragging it across the tablecloth, leaving a reddish streak. "B'Saari couples drink it together to induce their mating cycles. It's how Veela and I conceived our son."

Hoshi blinked slowly, leaning across the table into him. They were both having trouble wrapping their heads around this, and Nallim must have known it, because he met her gaze straight on. "Are you saying that someone bribed your servants to drug our commanding officers just so they would…"

"They're holographic, all of them. They were programmed that way," Malcolm interjected, doing a cursory check of all the exits. Sure enough, they were starting to move into position to block their every avenue of escape.

"These are our seats, so it's likely meant for us. It was all supposed to be so simple." Nallim inhaled swiftly, burying one face in his hands while the other one looked up at him, his lips set in a tight line of concern. "Why do you think we sought out your ship?"

There was a moment of confusion, then it hit Malcolm with force: "You were going to lose the election."

"The isolationists were gaining in the polls. Our opponents accuse us of weakening the B'Saari identity by working so closely with the Denobulans and the Vulcans, and I believed an alliance with the humans would be advantageous. I knew…" He paused, pushing back from the table and standing. "I believed they would behave with agents of a foreign government present."

Even Hoshi was surprised by his naivety; surely an experienced politician like him would know that corruption never slept. No one understood that better than the crew of the Enterprise, seeing as their first year traversing the cosmos were consumed with espionage, trickery, and brushes with death at every single turn. Now, she felt like they were all careening over the edge of a precipice, scrambling for purchase and pleading with the universe to break their fall.

Malcolm, by contrast, was consumed by one thought and one thought only - making sure their commanding officers were safe. There was an unspoken threat there, one he had to bring into existence. "What would your opponents possibly have to gain from drawing the two of you away from the reception and into an isolated, secondary location?"

He didn't need to respond. They already knew the answer to that question, and in a flash, all three of them were bursting out into the corridor, forsaking anything and everything else.

Their first hint was a communicator which had been dropped upon the ground. Turning it over, Hoshi spotted a familiar serial number and quickly pocketed it, letting her dour expression do the talking for her.

They made a left, then a right, then two more lefts before they found a discarded tricorder and a shoe scuff, indicative of something being dragged or pulled. Hoshi's heart leapt to her throat, and they followed that streak all the way to the nearest maintenance closet, which appeared to be darkened and shut tight.

She wasn't sure what came over her; all of a sudden she was reaching for the door, and Malcolm intercepted her, stepping between her and the wall and unholstering his phase pistol with the opposite hand. Without being told, Hoshi took a giant step back, gently guiding Nallim away from the action. A pit of dread had formed in her stomach, and she was positive they were about to find their captain and science officer tortured, slaughtered, or worse. She had seen a lifeless bodies before, but it was certainly different when it was someone she knew, and steeled herself against the inevitable.

Malcolm hit the switch, twirling around the corner as the hatch slid away. There was a split second of tense, overwhelming anticipation, and then she stepped forward to behold…

Nothing. Nothing and no one.

Beside her, Nallim heaved a massive side of relief, throwing up both hands and stepping over the threshold. Inside there was a mountain of mops and sanitizers and feather dusters, but no officers caught in flagrante delicto. Part of her was grateful, though she would rather see her friends embarrassed than dead. Their host was in a similar predicament, and turned back to smile at them, if only to emphasize that they had nothing to worry about.

Before they could even blink, the muzzle of a rifle was shoved between the ventilation panels on the ceiling, and the person on the other side of it fired a single round, nearly muffled entirely by the silencer. It hit Nallim in the temple before surging out the other side, and all life instantly fled from his eyes, all four of them. Every part of her was screaming to rush forward and catch him before he hit the ground, but a sudden gush of blood blinded her, covering her entire front, inundating the two of them in the ghost of the man's final breath.

Malcolm didn't go to his side either. With a lightning fast draw, he fired into the grating, and a muffled cry was all the indication that his phase pistol had met its mark. Then the assassin was scrambling away through the air ducts, and when Nallim's body hit the ground, it sounded positively thunderous.

That impact shocked Hoshi to the core, and she opened her mouth to scream, which was curtailed by a hand that shot out to curl around her shoulders. Shrieking and whimpering, she allowed Malcolm to hold her steady, and strived mightily to find comfort in the solid presence behind her, the heavy breath rasping near her ear. This time, she could feel him shaking, and knew that for all his bravado, Lieutenant Reed was just as terrified as she was.

It felt like an hour passed, but he finally released her and stooped down to wrap his hands around Nallim's wrists. Briefly he felt for a pulse, and she allowed herself to indulge in a fleeting moment of hope, before it was all dashed and her companion began to drag him into the closet, heads first.

"What are we going to do?"

That question seemed to confound Malcolm. Shrugging helplessly, he gestured for her to help, and soon they found themselves sitting in the janitor's closet, surrounded by puddles of blood and a rapidly cooling corpse, an elephant in the room if there ever was one.

Now alone together in the dark, Hoshi allowed herself to mull over the facts. Archer and T'Pol were missing, possibly captured by dangerous antiestablishment dissidents. One half of the ruling body of B'Saari was dead, having been slain in a contract kill. And somewhere above them, his wife and son were waiting for the all clear, having no way of knowing that they were most likely next.

So she repeated her question, and finally, he answered.

"Call up to the Enterprise," he advised, his voice nothing but a whisper. He swiped at his brow, leaving a long streak of blood across his face. "Tell them we've got a situation on our hands."

(to be continued)