Disclaimer: Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no money made.
Author's Note: This story is part of the MU Tucker/Reed rivalry that came to a head in the events of Dreamers of the Day. I actually wrote it some time ago but it fell into a hole on my hard drive and I only found it again when I was having a tidy-up, so here it is. As always, thanks to Mandassina who helped to polish it up!
Major Reed is really not a nice person at this point, so reader discretion is advised. There is no graphic sex or violence, but there is non-con. If this upsets you, please do not read it.
"If you need any help, at any time… you know where I am."
It's a habit of mine to walk quietly around the corridors, helped by the slightly softer soles of my boots. For one thing, if anyone's waiting for me around a corner they'll have less idea when I'm getting close (unless they're using a scanner, obviously), and for another it's damnably useful for allowing me to overhear things I'm probably not supposed to.
Such as this whisper from Martin Roberts.
He's an engineer of Tucker's team. Probably bright, or he wouldn't be where he is, but not that bright, or he wouldn't be whispering sweet nothings in the ear of a certain Crewman Cutler whom I'm in the habit of fucking whenever I have an itch I want scratched.
Well, yes. Apart from Commander Archer's dog I fuck pretty well anything that moves around here, as long as it's junior to me (though I draw the line at Tellarites – just call me picky). But for reasons I can't be arsed to analyse, Cutler… well, she's become a bit of a habit.
It's not as if she's particularly gorgeous. She hardly registers on the tit scale, though I'll grant you she has a very nice bum, and a shapely pair of legs to go with it. But even though she's nobody's idea of a pin-up girl, she's my fuck-toy and I don't give a shit who doesn't like it. And I'm not one bit pleased by finding some love-struck little prick whispering in her ear like he fancies playing Perseus to her Andromeda. Not one single, solitary, teeny-weeny bit pleased about it – especially when instead of having the extreme good sense to wilt a bit when I swept around the corner and found him touching her on the arm, he actually had the effrontery to leave his hand where it was.
So. I can, of course, find or invent some perfectly plausible reason to park him in an Agony Booth for a few hours. It needs a bit more testing, I believe Phlox was saying the other day he'd had some ideas about refining the focussing mechanism so individual neurons could be targeted. (We'll have to discuss precisely how that would improve the results, and whether it might be useful in other applications too, but I'm always up for R&D when it comes to administering discipline around the ship.) Maybe if Roberts had had the good sense to drop his hand and step back I might have let him off with that, though it would have had to have been a decent few hours to cool his knightly ardour.
Obviously the disruption this would cause to our dear Commander Tucker's schedule would be vexing. As a matter of fact that encourages me more than anything; the more ways I can find to annoy the arrogant oaf, the pleasanter my world is. I still haven't worked out from where he gets the gall to look down his nose at me; Lucifer knows I've a healthy sex drive, but compared to him I'm a talented amateur. And his predilections have taken him into some highly specialised comfort houses of late, that I rather doubt he'd be happy at his dear old grey-haired mother finding out about. Unless she's a heck of a lot more broad-minded than your average dear old grey-haired mother, of course.
So. Accidents are, after all, my speciality. I wonder whether there might be an opportunity here that I'm not seeing…
Hmmmm…
Roberts is responsible for maintenance checks on a number of critical systems. Some of these include coolant pipes – the impulse engines can run very hot during a firefight, and they absolutely must be kept from overheating. They're laced through with a highly complex network of pipes that absorb the heat that can't radiate efficiently in the constricted space, and with the volume of liquid that needs to be pumped through them to cope with the temperatures, they operate under extreme pressure. As a result, they have to be inspected and serviced regularly. Like painting the old Forth Bridge back on Earth when modern engineering was effectively in its infancy, as soon as you get to the end you start again at the beginning. Needless to say, servicing can only take place while the warp engines are propelling us; anyone in the proximity of those things when they're online would have an extremely short life-expectancy.
And, as the importance of this coolant system is therefore hardly capable of being overstated, it's one the Head Hobgoblin himself takes an interest in occasionally. Not often, true, but he prowls his unpleasant and often radioactive little kingdom down there on a regular enough basis; and it really wouldn't take an awful lot of … shall we call it 'adjusting' … for one of those valves to develop a fault that would lead to a blowout – unfortunate in the extreme for anyone who just happened to be looking in that direction at the time.
I'm not talking about anything critical. A capillary, as opposed to an artery. But though young Roberts must be supposed capable of doing the job unsupervised, at some point in time there will be an occasion when he'll have checked the system and signed it off, and the next person to look at it will be our own dear Commander Tucker.
I'm the Head of Security. It's child's play for me to break into the dull world of the Engineering records, which I must say are meticulously kept.
Ah. Duty rosters…
My, it almost feels as if all this was intended. In three days' time our would-be Perseus will be checking the coolant system, and even though he won't be actually in that specific area, Tucker will certainly be close enough to respond to an alarm when something (mysteriously) sets one off.
I, of course, will be innocently occupied on the Bridge by that time. I'm perfectly capable of arranging something so there's just enough pressure to put a joint under strain. I can get in unseen and I'm entirely capable of wiping out the access records so there's no trace of my visit. And of course, if I arrange a little target practice at just the right time – it's important that the ship be kept at maximum capability, and I can always say I've been tinkering with the targeting scanners again and want to test them; the captain daren't refuse the request…
The ship will have to drop out of warp. The impulse engines won't be engaged (there's a failsafe that stops them when personnel are in there, though it can be overridden if needs be – better to accidentally fry a few engineers than lose the ship because we can't fight), but the system will automatically shoot through a pulse that will clear any blockage that may have built up…
They say that if opportunity knocks, it's rude not to answer the door. And even in these less-than-ideal days, we English are known for our excellent manners.
I can't believe you'd think I'd refuse.
=/\=
"Emergency in the starboard impulse engine, captain!"
T'Pol is prompt to report the alarm. I, of course, am busy slamming high energy pulses through the target – just a lump of old junk welded together to give me something to shoot at. I don't know what's happening in Engineering, what's it got to do with me?
We're stationary, so we're not going to blow up. There's nothing in our immediate vicinity (I've checked) and what I've arranged isn't going to present any serious hazard. Well, not to anyone who doesn't happen to be right there and looking at it, that is. And I'm sure there'll be someone else around who can take care of the body and sort the problem out. A couple of turns with a spanner and there you go. Now, whose name was last on the maintenance list?
I don't pay much attention to the background noises of Captain Forrest being concerned and asking captainy questions about what's going on. Commander Tucker's name is mentioned but I've just smashed what's left of the target into rather more than its original number of component parts, so why should I be interested?
'Sickbay'. Oh, bugger. He's still alive. Can't have panicked as thoroughly as I'd hoped. Still, maybe he'll be damaged enough to get 'invalided out'… unfortunately Forrest thinks too highly of him to just introduce him to the wrong side of an airlock out of hand. I suppose they might be able to find something for him to do somewhere. Scrubbing floors is always an option, I suppose someone could fit a sensor on the mop handle to tell him where the walls are.
The situation is under control. Damage is minor, except to a certain Chief Engineer, and even that isn't apparently fatal.
Damn.
I must be slipping.
=/\=
On the following day I have an entirely fictitious headache so I take the opportunity to wander down to the lair of my favourite partner in crime. Though 'favourite' should not be taken to mean that I actually like him, mind you. He just happens to have an absolutely brilliant understanding of anatomy and neurobiology, particularly the vulnerabilities and pain receptors (both of humans and of the lower species), so that makes him useful. It just so happens that my preferred field of research intersects conveniently with our mad scientist's, so the enhanced interrogation techniques I've been developing nicely justify his vivisection studies on immobilized, fully conscious sentient beings.
Phlox is not particularly pleased to see me. He's not in a good mood to start with, having had to interrupt his vivisection programme in order to actually do some doctoring, and I don't think my arrival improves things much. I'm well aware that he doesn't like me anymore than I do him, but, being alien scum, he'd never dare say it in so many words. Even among the human crew my reputation alone keeps most people too shit scared to speak to me any more than absolutely necessary. When they do have to talk to me, they're nothing but respectful; in fact, most of them are absolutely obsequious.
"Merely a little tension headache," he grumbles, giving me a shot of something after I've checked what's in it. The labels might have been switched, of course, but he's quite well aware that disagreeable consequences from Em would follow if any unpleasantness occurred as a result of my visit, so I'm reasonably confident this is what it says it is.
My non-existent headache having been disposed of, I take the opportunity to wander over to the bio-bed in what might be termed the 'long stay' area, insofar as Sickbay actually has such a thing. Only one bed is occupied (it's unusual for there to be any – the Imperial Star Fleet doesn't normally go in for long term care, though I imagine, in a civilian hospital, if the patient has enough money they'll be happy to continue treatment until he expires) and indeed, from what can be espied under the wads of bandaging across his face, it's our dear Commander Tucker.
Tch. I should have said across half his face. The other half, though necessarily somewhat obscured by the bandages, seems more or less undamaged.
Looks like he was keeping his eyes on the monitor rather than losing his head (and his eyesight) by looking at the joint that was about to pop. It'll have done some interesting damage to the side of his face, but well, his habitual glower never made him look that attractive to start with. It's not as if it's likely to put any serious brake on his activities anyway – the merchandise in comfort houses aren't allowed to be picky about the clientele.
"Unfortunate!" I remark.
"Extremely." Phlox sounds waspish as he leans over his latest subject.
"Eyesight?"
"One eye is undamaged. The other, we'll have to wait and see." He glances up irritably at me as if wondering if I've not got someone to terrorise anywhere else.
A one-eyed engineer… not sure how that would play out. But my little operation wasn't a complete failure; even if I haven't half-blinded him, I've still left him a token of my affection.
And in the meantime, I have an appointment with the investigation team. After all, when something goes wrong with the workings of an Imperial starship (and the flagship, no less!) there are always possibilities of treason.
Martin Roberts, a traitor to the Empire?
As if.