CHAPTER 5: Tread Softly - This is Hallowed Ground
AUTHOR: MNEMOSYNE
RATING: R, for violence and some language
CATEGORY: Angst, Drama, Romance, Action, Deathfic
CODES: R/S (heavy on the R) with touches of everyone
Though every nerve in Malcolm's body was screaming at him to run to Engineering fast as a racehorse and rescue the crew, the tactical officer knew better than to throw himself into a potentially dangerous situation unarmed. His puny phase pistol seemed pathetically small in his vice-like grip, and judging by the wound in Marylebone's temple, the perpetrators were obviously well-armed with extremely powerful weapons - probably modified variations on a phase rifle.
The obvious place to re-equip himself was the Armory, and that was precisely why he had chosen to stay away from there. Any alien invader with half a working brain cell would realize that the Armory would be his first stop upon arrival, and would have taken steps to either keep him away or else kill him once he got there. So it was with careful footsteps and a racing heart that he continued to edge his way along the B Deck corridor until he stopped in front of a familiar door.
It was a door like any other on the ship, but with special significance for Malcolm - this was the cabin he had shared for a year and three months (going on four) with his wife, Hoshi. They had moved in shortly after the wedding, when it became obvious that sharing one of the smaller crew quarters - "economy class" as Hoshi called them - was going to be impossible. It was a double cabin, meant to be shared by two crewmen, and so there was two of everything - two closets, two dressers, two desks, two beds. "The closets and dressers we can live with," Hoshi had told him with a twinkling eye. "But I think we need to remedy the bed situation, don't you?"
He had whole-heartedly agreed.
So they had roped Trip in to help them tear the bunks out of the walls and jury rig them together to form one large, full-sized bed. This had left an unnatural, gaping hole in one wall, and Malcolm had filled it with a heavy, metal strongbox, locked tight with a combination latch.
It was for that strongbox that he was here now.
Casting his eyes up and down the empty corridor, he tapped in the entry code and the door swished open. He wasn't aware that he was holding his breath until he stepped inside and looked around. A small part of him, he realized, had been hoping Hoshi would be here; that somehow she would have escaped the fate that had befallen the rest of the crew. But she was nowhere to be seen; absent as snow on the hottest day of July.
But there was a light flashing on his desktop comm console.
Malcolm Reed had a message.
*******************
Forcing his hands not to tremble, Malcolm reached for the PLAY button on the comm console. It seemed too much to hope that here - in this warm, familiar room that smelled of orange pekoe and his wife - he might find some message from the missing crew. Perhaps even a message from Hoshi herself.
//No hopes, old boy,// he told himself firmly, and pressed the button.
The instant her face appeared on the screen, his heart lodged in his throat; initially from joy, then fear. Hoshi's eyes were a study in terror. He had not seen her so afraid since her first year aboard the Enterprise. Her hair was tousled and there was a smudge of dirt on her brow. She'd obviously been clambering through some dirty places; probably the self-same maintenance shafts Malcolm had hauled himself through just a short time earlier. People were moving behind her - he recognized Trip's fluid gate, Mayweather's broad shoulders, and a few other people as well.
"Malcolm," she said, voice shaking, and he forced himself not to blink as he watched her and listened. "I don't know if you'll get this, but I have to try." She swallowed and her eyes darted nervously to the door off screen, then back. "We don't have time. They're coming and we have to hide. But I had to let you know, Malcolm, in case you come back and find everything … gone." She swallowed, and Malcolm found himself swallowing with her.
"We tried, Malcolm," she said, and though her voice was breaking, he could hear a hint of the strong woman she'd become peeking through. "I needed you to know that we tried to fight them, in case you come back and find out we lost. God…" She ran a frustrated hand over her dark hair, which was coming loose from it's compulsory ponytail and hung in a ragged fringe around her harried face. "I can't believe this. I can't believe I'm leaving you a goodbye message, when just a few days ago I was kissing you in Shuttlepod One."
She reached out a hand and touched the screen. Before he could stop himself, Malcolm reached out and touched the screen in return. He tried not to imagine the screen was warm and alive beneath his fingertips, where they touched hers.
"Malcolm, if you get this, you have to leave," Hoshi continued, desperation giving her voice a breathless, cracked sound. "Please, Malcolm. Just forget chivalry and honor and all that military mumbo jumbo and get in the shuttle again and LEAVE. Go get help if you think you can, but don't stay here."
Tears were in her dark eyes. "Malcolm, I know you, and I know what you'll do. I know you'll want to stay, and I know nothing I can say will change your mind." Swallowing again, she pressed the palm of her hand against the screen. Malcolm followed suit. "So if you're going to stay, at least listen to me." Her fingers curled against the screen.
"Don't trust, Malcolm," she whispered. "Don't trust anything or anyone. Don't trust your own shadow; it might not be yours." She shook her head and slowly drew her hand away from the screen. The tactical officer felt a tangible stab of pain across his chest as she did.
"We're going to hide now," she said, voice stronger, as she wiped her eyes with trembling hands. "I can't tell you where, in case…THEY find this before you. I know you can find us. I trust you, Malcolm." She smiled shakily. "I think you're the only person I can still trust."
"Hoshi," he whispered, palm still splayed against the screen.
She had tilted her head to the side as someone behind her said something. When she looked back to the screen again, tension had flooded back into her face, replacing the affection she'd held a moment earlier. "I have to leave now, Malcolm." Behind her, the lieutenant could see the others in the room scrambling awkwardly back into the maintenance shaft in the ceiling. "We came here to get some weapons." She smiled again, an odd juxtaposition against the severity of the situation. "Don't worry; we left you something special."
A sharp voice behind her made Hoshi look over her shoulder, and Malcolm's fingers twitched against the screen, desperate to see her eyes again. "Oh, God," she stammered, looking back at the screen. "Oh, God, Malcolm, they're coming. I have to go!" She hesitated for a moment.
"Go…!" he whispered hoarsely, pressing his hand against the screen. "Run!"
She stared at him through the recorded connection, then bent forward swiftly and pressed a brief kiss to the monitor. "Emma's safe," she whispered. "You keep safe, Malcolm. I love you." Her hand came down in a swift motion, and the message blinked off.
For a moment, Malcolm sat in silence.
"I love you, too…" he finally murmured.
For a while, he debated ever moving again. What was one more dead man aboard a dead ship, floating dead in space? Perhaps he could give Ensign Marylebone some company.
After a while, however, he began to move. His fingers were the first to twitch, curling into a slow fist against the comm screen. Then, very slowly, he stood, and looked to the left.
The lockbox stood open and empty in its recess.
Don't worry; we left you something special.
His eyes slowly roved around the room, trying to spy anything out of place - a clue to where Hoshi had left his surprise.
It struck him quite suddenly, and his eyes snapped to the right.
Emma's safe. You keep safe, Malcolm.
With long, quick strides, Malcolm crossed the room.
Emma Sora Sato-Reed had been born eight months ago, while Enterprise sampled matter from the corona of a hot blue star. She had quickly been adopted by the entire crew, and Hoshi liked to joke that the baby had more aunts and uncles than a golf ball had dimples. "She'll be spoiled rotten if we aren't careful," his wife would warn playfully, usually while Emma was plying her charms on one of her innumerable "relatives."
"We'll just have to make sure that for everything they buy her, we get her something even more special," he'd invariably respond. "I've always said, in matters of childrearing, it's always better to have the best bribe." This would make Hoshi laugh, which was precisely why Malcolm always said it.
Something even more special
He stopped beside Emma's crib, which was positioned behind a rice paper screen etched with whimsical patterns in a corner of the cabin. The crib itself was a frilly affair, done out in heaps of lace and hand-sewn bolsters and cushions; just a few of the "spoiled rotten" gifts Emma had received even before she was born. A few stuffed animals were lying in oddly forlorn positions in the bottom of the crib, atop a bottom sheet that was decorated with teddy bears holding heart-shaped balloons. Mr. Buttons, Emma's favorite toy - a stuffed squirrel with a soft, plush body - was missing, presumably in hiding with the baby. A small part of his heart warmed with the knowledge that, wherever in this godforsaken ship his daughter might be, at least she had Mr. Buttons to keep her company.
Mr. Buttons and her mother.
He plunged a hand into the crib. After a minute of searching, he stopped and pushed his finger through an unnatural hole in the seam of the bolster on the far side of the crib. He probed a little deeper, then a little more, then finally tore the seam from corner to corner and ripped out the stuffing.
A sleek phase rifle, outfitted with a slip-shod power booster, tumbled into the body of the crib and rattled against its ribs.
Malcolm stared at it for a long minute, then slowly wrapped his hand around it and hefted it up and out of the baby bed. Examining the rifle with an expert eye, Malcolm nodded with satisfaction. Trip had obviously been the one to hotwire the booster to the power cartridge - the seams were almost invisible. With this, he had a fighting chance against whatever had stolen Hoshi and Emma and hidden them away like pirate treasure.
The lights hadn't flickered again since that one time in the musical cabin, but Engineering was still Malcolm's next destination. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, and never ignore fortuitous evidence. That was what Professor Novelle had taught his Introductory Criminology class at Starfleet Academy, and the words had stuck with Malcolm ever since.
"Father's coming, sweet," he murmured, and flicked his thumb against the side of the rifle. With a whine, the phase weapon powered up, the diagnostic screen of the power booster glowing like a wicked red eye and lighting Malcolm's face with an eerie scarlet glow. With a firm stride, he stalked to the door, then slipped stealthily into the corridor.
Behind him, back in the cabin, the grate covering the maintenance shaft shook minutely as something hidden in the dark hole in the ceiling crawled away from its silent spying , leaving nothing but a faint shower of dust to show it had ever been there at all.