by Xenutia


Rating: PG
Category: Friendship/Angst/some Humour/some Romance in later parts
Codes: R/S
Summary: Reed awakes from an accident to find himself held prisoner in a tank without windows or doors, and with no idea how he got there. As he slowly pieces together the events leading up to his capture, he is forced to re-evaluate a lot of things . . . including a certain comm officer . . .
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers for Vox Sola'
E-mail: sorted@witzend.fsbusiness.co.uk

THREE

This time the monitor he hated with such black passion jolted to life on its own. Gone were the blueprints, the dots, the aerial survey map; in their place, only a row of cold green zeros glowed, apparitions in a dream he couldn't wake from. Not this time. As he watched, fascinated and morbidly hypnotised, those numbers clicked from 0:00:00 to 0:00:01.

One hour. The voice had gone, and with it, all chance of negotiating, of offering something other than this favour in return for Hoshi's life. He would have been prepared, if communication had been possible, to build them anything they wanted, anything it lie within his sphere of expertise to build. Stun weapons, sensor enhancements . . . EM barriers . . .

But it had not gone so well the last time he attempted to duplicate his success against the gestalt creature in their cargo bay, and he had been forced to put the first occasion down to a fluke. A lucky break. He doubted anything else he might offer would interest these people enough to make them abandon their beloved captured phase cannon, and everything but those minute adjustments to the EM shields would be every bit as available in Enterprise's computers as the cannons had been. But he had never, since those experiments, entered his personal tweaks into the computer's original specs. If these people tried to build their own EM emitters from the blueprints, they would no doubt fail as Starfleet had done.

Malcolm couldn't help but feel vitally possessive over the achievement, lucky break or not. If they wanted to recreate those barriers, they would need him to do it. But clearly they did not intend to speak with him again except to reinforce those few, caustic words that had cut him to the quick. They would need Hoshi to produce anything more, and she . . .

Unless he fired on five thousand innocent people, she would be dead in approximately fifty-eight minutes.

Malcolm slumped down where he knelt, pressed his hand to his eyes to force away the dreadful pound already beginning there, and for a long time, he neither thought nor felt anything at all.


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There was no escaping the stark reality of those numbers; of that they had made certain. He might close his eyes but the light pounding down on him pierced through, making voluntary blindness no protection at all. He might turn his back to that console but a morbid fascination tugged him toward it again like iron to a magnet, making him twist where he lie, waking arrows of pain in his shoulders but satiating his appalled curiosity. The lit numbers on that tiny screen flew past, too slow to endure, too fast to deny. Each precious second squandered ought to have registered as one less in which to save her; instead each seemingly abstract digit was merely one less second of indecision left to him. Soon, that counter would roll from 00:59:59 to 01:00:00, and this terrible responsibility would be taken from him. The burden would be lifted. Soon, no compromise he could stoop to would make a difference to her anymore. The time to act would have passed; the stillness, the luxury beyond it to grieve, beckoned him with gentle menace. He wanted it to be over.

For some while now Malcolm had merely lie, overcome by an absent tremble that would not be stilled and a cold sweat that would not be staunched. Neither concerned him. Those numbers changed in flickers of bitter light but there were others that did not, and would not; one woman versus five thousand civilians. One life for many.

Only it wasn't just one life . . . it was her life.

They had known. If they had watched him all this time, then a part of him understood he had been studied to discover his weakness. Today on that beautiful alien planet he had handed it to them on a plate.

Malcolm huddled under the bench, his eyes hypnotised by that taunting console, but his hands clamped firmly beneath him, the only restraint he had left. His body lie inert, but his mind raced, the returning memories far from idle, and unavoidably it led him back to the events that had stranded him here . . . and put Hoshi's life in the balance . . .

It had been a routine mission with no reason to fail, and that had made it a danger. It had been a routine mission until he grew complacent. He could no longer remember the incident as he would like; but he remembered, at last, why they had ever been in the firing line.

The giddy success that had met Hoshi's first mission emancipated from the guiding eye of the captain, T'Pol, and Commander Tucker had bred arrogance . . . not hers, but his. Malcolm alone had accompanied the initially apprehensive ensign to the planet, to pilot the shuttlepod and provide a perfunctory protection none of them had truly considered necessary on so idyllic a planet. Welcome the shore-leave as he may, he had been mildly chagrined at being designated nursemaid' but Subcommander T'Pol apparently considered that Hoshi would feel more independent if a crewmember not far removed from her own rank were her escort.

Malcolm felt sure there was an insult buried in there somewhere.

The ten-day mission had been successfully completed in only nine, and on their premature return he had dipped the shuttle down low to sweep the cusp of the mountain ranges due north of the capital, delighting the confident new Hoshi with whom he returned—and doing so, he must admit, for that very reason. She had not seen him steal that one, brief glance to her—of that much, he had been careful—but as they nose-dived, he had done so, once, and seen her face aflame with sheer, luminous joy. He would never admit as much to a living soul; but seeing her so eminently happy at his command had restored a little of the self-esteem he had lost, dwarfed by Hoshi's resounding triumph against his own failure during those nine days. The council members had wanted one thing and one thing only from him, and he had been unable to give them even that much. But at least, he had thought rather childishly, he was still good for something.

Her elation had saturated the small cabin like a drug, seeming to infect him through his skin. He had turned a faint, indulgent smile towards the helm, hiding it from her—but she had known, all the same. Otherwise, she would never have suggested they land. Enterprise did not expect them back for another day, she had argued; what prevented them from using that day to explore the rest of the planet?

Shaken from his sour reverie, Malcolm cast a disgusted glance over the counter that now read 00:32:37. Twenty-eight minutes to complete a task he had regularly completed in so little as six. Twenty-eight minutes, and the light that had seemed to accompany her wherever she went would be extinguished, for good.

He closed his eyes despite the malicious glare burning an angry orange through his eyelids, holding fast to that one, radiant image—Hoshi's eager, goat-footed step as she leapt from the shuttlepod and sank her bare toes into an alien grass on which no human had trod before . . .

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. . . Careful down there, he called absently after her, raising his head barely enough to direct his warning voice through the hatch, but not enough, alas, to take his eyes from his swift inventory to ensure that she were still within earshot. His outward reluctance to land, albeit a lie, had apparently not done enough to instil any caution in her. Wherever the old, flinching Hoshi had gone—and no matter how intoxicating her new-found enthusiasm was—a part of him wished she would come back. Ensign . . . for all you know there might be huge poisonous insects hiding in that grass just waiting for a nice, juicy foot to tread on them.

If they're that hungry, they're welcome! she returned, tossing the reply blithely back over her shoulder. Malcolm tutted indulgently, and tested the cell of his phase pistol one last time. Hoshi's understandable euphoria had yet to fade, he could see; usually she hated bugs.

They had put down in what appeared, from all scans, to be a natural concavity between two pillars of pale, shrouded mountains, a line of faded opal rising in smooth ridges, and the insects he warned against had been the largest biosigns in sight; he had felt satisfied that this uninhabited land was safe enough territory to explore alone, should Hoshi's new-found curiosity extend so far. And, he must admit, his own interest could not help but be a little piqued now that he felt this solid alien soil beneath his feet.

He shaded his eyes with his hand, squinting to make out the distant blue of water between the hills, the lines of the mountains beyond, framing the green slopes around them. Everywhere the colours quivered with noonday sun, and already the heat had soaked through his thin beige desert uniform and drenched his back with warm sweat. The perspiration tickled as it streamed down his spine and cooled there. If he closed his eyes, this could almost be Earth—but a good armoury officer did not close his eyes on an alien planet, and the whim was not permitted to take hold. He picked up his pace, and jogged lightly over to her.

Slow down, Ensign, he said crisply. This is one of those rare occasions where we do have all day.

Hoshi graced him with her best exasperated smirk, and glanced pointedly down at her feet. You know, Lieutenant, you really should take those boots off, she suggested, impishly. There's nothing quite like feeling alien grass between your toes.

No, I'm sure there isn't. I'm also sure there's nothing quite like feeling an alien creature bite you in the heel.

she accused. Then she turned, and walked on. Malcolm could do nothing but follow her.

The shuttlepod receded behind them until it vanished altogether into the cloying heat-haze, with only meadow land below and blue sky above, a blue so rich it was an incandescent turquoise in colour, stretching unbroken in all directions; save ahead, where the looming mountains reared forward into a near precipice which sparkled iridescently in the light, glittering with perpetual motion. A waterfall. It was for this that Hoshi was headed when there came an unearthly shriek.

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There was a difference, he now found, between a girlish shriek such as that and the true scream to come later; one was by its very nature a conscious drama, a means of asserting femininity in a fundamentally unthreatening scenario—few men shrieked like that—but the other, often reflexive and unplanned, could cut to the marrow. Malcolm let the numbers in his direct line of sight wash into his eyes, but his brain did nothing with the sensory input. 00:38:51 should mean more to him than this, but he was inexorably pulled by the unfounded belief that somehow time would freeze and the moment he dreaded, the moment when Hoshi was dead and no decision of his could any longer alter that, would not come. That shriek had taken him, with the tolerance that was every big brother's prerogative, back to all those times in the past when Madeline would see a spider and squeal until he deigned to come and remove it for her. Sometimes, rather wickedly, he had made little attempt at haste—the sight of her standing on a chair with her arms clasped protectively around her head was just too amusing to waste in chivalry.

It had been no spider that startled the yelp from Hoshi that morning . . . but even on a young woman high on conquest, the effect had been the same.

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The horrified squeal had no sooner petrified in his blood when Malcolm's booted feet loosened, and he darted in the direction of that sound instinctively, imagining the worst; that the sensors had failed to detect some aggressive breed of indigenous life form, that she had somehow misjudged this alien landscape and suffered a physical injury, and any number of potential disasters besides. It had been wrong of him ever to bring her down here, wrong to assume this kind of responsibility . . .

He found her rooted motionless in an expanse of gentle, heathery turf, her arms clasped about her shoulders like a limpet to a rock, her face a sodden ashy oval above them. Her eyes burned wide with a fluctuating combination of fear and disgust, and cut straight through the grass at her flinching feet like a phase beam. As he slowed and watched she hopped from one foot to another, keeping each from the ground as long as the natural force of gravity would allow.

There, in the grass, were crowds of leggy, black bugs the size of golf balls, scuttling industriously between the faintly silver blades.

Problem, Ensign? he asked pleasantly.

The last wisp of colour clinging to her face melted away, and her huge dark eyes raised to his in silent apology. I don't think they're hungry, she said, in a small voice.

Malcolm baited her, still polite to an offensive degree.

Hoshi shuddered, squeezing her arms about her like a vice as if that would somehow protect her. At the sound of a slight, unconscious whimper escaping her throat, Malcolm holstered his drawn phase pistol, and quickly closed the space between them. He halted close beside her, silent, tight-lipped, his eyes downturned. She would be embarrassed enough at this display later on as it stood . . . by turning away, he hoped to spare her any further humiliation. As he came close her quiver seemed to cut through him like a gale.

Steady, Ensign, he said, softly—placing the words almost in her ear, mindful of her closeness and the inevitable discomfort involved, but more concerned, for now, with maintaining that degree of secrecy he had hoped to instil. Hoshi's eyes darted to him and held there, unforgivingly drawing his gaze up no matter how determinedly he forced it down. All he had said was two, unimportant words—but she knew, he felt certain, that with them he was promising to keep this between them.

Gingerly, Malcolm hooked his left arm under her knees, his right circling her back, and lifted her from the ground in one fluid motion too swift for her to protest. He was not sure she would have protested if she could—the black creatures were swarming thickly now, presumably drawn by their body heat or their scent.

Perhaps next time a superior officer tells you to put your boots back on, you'll listen, he said, archly, as he carried her away.

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What had appeared a tranquil glittering of water streaming over slick-faced rock was altogether different from the tempest whose cool-scented spray stung them as they approached, but for all his world and this he would not have exchanged the reality for the illusion. The coarse rain striking up from rock and pool lashed through their thin uniforms and soaked them from skin to bone, driving a delicious chill deep into the day's heat, and battering the breath from them.

Malcolm felt Hoshi cringe in against him instinctively as the curtain of impenetrably white water hit, and he swayed a little unsteadily on his feet, his balance thrown as much by her sudden movement as by the water's assault. Hoshi gasped against the hollow of his throat, for once uncovered in his desert uniform, and he felt her lips quiver over his skin in a light, skipping dance. Then she swallowed, taking in a mouthful of the falling shower before he could warn her otherwise, and broke into an abrupt, musical laugh.

Malcolm twisted uncomfortably and saw her face creasing at her private joke, her brimming amusement seeming to set the edges of the rain alight with tiny lines of fire. She met his puzzled glance, and erupted into an even bolder laugh. Malcolm found himself returning it before he even knew what he did.

Aren't you going to tell me not to drink this? Hoshi prompted impishly, raising her voice a little to rise above the thunder of the waterfall breaking over rock on its inevitable journey. Not until it's been sampled, tested, and prodded first? I don't recall being allowed to eat a single thing this week without your scanner having something to say about it.

He chuckled and turned his head up to the downpour, mouth open to receive a little of it. It tasted faintly salty, neither so clear as spring water nor so brackish as the sea . . . but it also left a faint tingle on his tongue like ice, and slipped smoothly down his throat like bourbon.

Hoshi laughed harder, and whooped in response.

He set her down a little further along the shallow bank of the pool where the spray did not reach so far or so fast, and where the rock at least made a pretence at dryness, even if it failed miserably to deliver. For a second as he slowed at the spot he merely stood and held her, his arms tired but his mood now fully awake; she had made him laugh. There were few, some days too few, of whom the same could be said.

Your arms must be killing you, she said, earnestly.

They are, he replied.

Better put me down, then. I don't want to throw our armoury officer's back out. Whatever would the captain say?

He smiled, but it was thin and faintly sour after his sudden good humour. As he set her carefully down, her bare feet finding the smooth wet rock and accepting her weight, he couldn't help but be disgusted at himself for that little display. He had drank alien water with no way of knowing that doing so would be safe—fine. He had laughed at no visible joke and perhaps made a fool of himself—again, fine. But for the life of him he could neither explain or excuse the strange hesitation that had come over him when he set her down at last.

He watched her carefully, searching her cautious moves and distantly satisfied face for a sign, any sign, that she thought his behaviour as odd as he did himself—and as inexcusable, embarrassing, as he did. There was nothing to mar her smooth coffee-cream face but a few black whips of saturated hair streaking down her cheeks and a faint, barely surfacing smile touching her lips. Whatever lie behind it, clearly it would suffer no intrusion, and no questioning.

Malcolm did not want to risk soaking his scanner any more than was absolutely necessary, so he did what Captain Archer had advocated so long ago, in what seemed a different world, a different time, from this; he explored this strange new world with his own living senses, taking back for humanity what should belong to no lifeless probe. He had tasted the salty-sweet water and smelled the ozone-charged frost of scent in the humid air; now he looked, and saw this waterfall for the first time.

The strong deluge plunged down a cliff not quite sheer in its shape; it had form enough, he surmised, to break through the curtain at intervals and rent the water into forks, which tumbled on their own course to break again lower down the rock face. And the rock, he could now see, was opalescent, causing those flashes of sunlit colour he had seen even from the shuttlepod when they landed, like noonday flares on glass. He almost wished he had thought to borrow Trip's camera . . . but of course, this little landing-party had been anything but planned.

He squinted, fencing back the overhead sun with his flattened hand to his brow, and noticed that his first assessment was not entirely accurate; there was a stretch of water, quite low down the cliff and close to the pool's turbulent foaming surface, where the curtain did not break. It fell straight down into the deepest sinkhole of the dark lagoon, as if no rock existed there to interfere with gravity. A cave, perhaps, screened from view and completely inaccessible.

Hoshi had skipped along the line of marble-like stones and scrub that made up the bank, and was gazing out past the peninsula that ended in the blunt-faced cliff he studied. She appeared to be looking hard at something in particular which he was ignorant of. Malcolm left his geological survey to approach her on silent feet, his stealth training fully engaged, and halted close at her shoulder to stare out along her line of sight. Barefoot, she stood quite a little shorter than him, and he found himself gazing out across the misty expanse over the sleek line of her dampened hair and wet brow. She did not move a muscle, as he had somehow expected her to do—she seemed perfectly at ease with his unnecessary proximity.

What are we looking at? he asked.

Don't you see it? She tilted her head, and her hair breezed teasingly past his face—but she did not turn to look at him.

See what?

There's an island out there. The lagoon stretches right around this peninsula where there's calm water, and if you look away to your left, just tucked behind that ridge . . . there's an island. It can't be so far out as it looks.

I think I see it. But why the interest, Ensign? Although, he thought sickly, already an idea was forming to explain her intrigue; and he couldn't say he liked it much.

Don't you just . . . feel like a swim on a hot day like this?

Might I remind you, Ensign, that we have no way of knowing the chemical composition of the water on this planet? Besides, I would have thought you'd be less than eager to repeat that little display back there over the spiders.

They were not spiders.

They looked suspiciously like spiders to me . . .

Still refusing to turn, Hoshi leant backward and nudged him gently in the ribs. Malcolm hissed in the briny air through his teeth, startled, and reached out to tug her hair chidingly.

Whatever else had come later, that moment was the moment when everything between them had been unstoppably set in motion.

Part 4 coming soon . . .