LEMONADE
A monitor beeped in the dismal silence. It had beeped, indicating nothing they cared to know, at steady intervals of five seconds for this past hour, invading the restless silence passing between the three crewmembers watching the night slide away into morning in sickbay. Two of them were red-eyed, speechless, breathing only as a habit and not as a conscious bid for life; the third never to breathe again, stretched out on a biobed that was little more than a glorified mortuary slab.
The captain had refused to leave before taking a moment to console her; it had been empty encouragement, and both knew it, but Hoshi appreciated his efforts and urged him to leave her be. She could read his face like an open book, as the cliché was; she had seen he had things to do and enquiries to make, and that she must take second place.
Trip offered to remain with her, and almost before the captain had made signs to leave had stood in close, ushering her away, allowing room for Phlox to do his terrible job. Hoshi could only look gratefully at him, robbed of words. He had sat with her in sickbay, and in total silence, for the remaining hours of the night, just his presence a balm to the aches and wrenches inside her. Funny, she had had little chance to get to know Trip Tucker—but this one, basic act of human kindness told her everything about the commander that she needed to know.
The silence was a physical thing, dense and alive. Hoshi's eyes continually crept across the hard deck towards the biobed where Reed lie, but always they stopped just shy, taking in the bed's base and no further. The silence reminded her that he was . . . that she had . . . if he were only sleeping, as she wanted to believe, then his dreams would never allow him to be this silent. The restlessness had disturbed her, back in her quarters, watching him twist and turn in her bunk—but now, she would give anything to witness it again.
Sounds strange, doesn't it? Trip murmured, his usually buoyant drawl heavy with fatigue.
Hoshi turned her head to him, grateful for the distraction and the excuse to focus her attention anywhere but at that bed. The commander's skin was ashen, his eyes colorless and cold; the laughter in them had died.
What does? she prompted. Speaking, even two tiny words that left hardly a dent on the introverted hush, seemed too much like moving on. Accepting there was anything to move on from.
Bein' so quiet, he sighed. I never could sleep when it was quiet.
Hoshi swallowed, feeling it catch in her throat like a fishhook. It was the quiet that had waked her. After so many months sleeping in tune to the engines' lullaby, to suddenly miss that sound had been the catalyst that shocked her from a sleep she should never have been indulging to begin with. She shouldn't have agreed to decrypt the nanobots, shouldn't have been asleep during her watch . . . shouldn't have listened to him in engineering. She should never have been in engineering. She should have let him disable the warp reactor. They could always get another reactor . . . but they could never find another Malcolm.
It had been difficult enough to find the first beneath that impenetrable exterior.
Do you think they'll be able to get the engines online okay? I mean . . . shouldn't you . . . she began.
Trip let the sentence fall, and she was pleased he knew enough not to attempt to complete it for her. It was just another small thing for which she silently thanked him, and yet no small thing at all.
Lieutenant Hess can handle herself. I reckon they'll be finishin' up down there fore they even miss me.
Hoshi nodded, her brain doing nothing with the information her eyes and ears took in, letting his not quite idle chat wash over her.
Ride the waves. It had always been such good advice, something she repeated to herself when stress threatened to blot out her coherent thought; but this felt like she was clinging to a life raft during a storm, thrown about by elements too strong for her to fight.
I ran down a puppy, once, she said, distantly. On my bicycle. It . . . it shot out in front of me, and I . . . I couldn't stop in time. I heard the front wheel hit . . . it sounded so heavy, somehow. Like a rock slamming into a wet paper bag full of sand.
That true? Trip asked, quietly.
She nodded, and refused to look at him.
Did the puppy sue?
That startled a laugh from her she didn't know she had to give; it tasted strange on her lips, and sounded like it came from somebody else's vocal cords. she pleaded. Please, don't.
Sorry. Don't know why I said that. He sounded truly contrite about the slip. Then, with more strength, and studying his interlaced fingers rested between his knees: He ordered you to do it, Hoshi. Don't you go forgettin' that.
Hoshi sat up, running her hands through her tangled hair. She had been called out of bed when all of this begun, and her hair hung loose and wild over her face. No, Commander, he didn't. He didn't order me. She finally turned to the biobed, unflinching as her gaze fell on Reed's ghostly clay face, left uncovered while Phlox performed his tests. New stubble had begun to bristle his chin, proof he had not been himself for these two days, that something else had been haunting him. He asked me.
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Archer strode onto the bridge like an alligator were on his heels, his feet slamming brutally into the deck. A complement of five tired and empty faces looked up as he entered; news traveled fast on a ship this size. Travis was there, waked and brought to his post by the tactical alert, his normally smiling, open face strained and grave, the rich color of his skin drained and gray. The tactical station grinned like a toothless mouth as Archer stalked to his chair, and took his seat. He noticed wearily that the science station was as empty as tactical.
Where's T'Pol? he demanded.
As he was the senior crewmember present after the captain, Travis took the liberty of answering from the helm. She hasn't shown up, sir. She must have heard the sirens, but . . .
An inanimate object would have heard the sirens, Archer thought, uncharitably. It can wait, he growled. I want a channel open to VISAC. Now. They're going to give me some answers.
Ensign Kerr took Hoshi's station, and Archer caught flickers of the Vulcan database on the screen as she searched for the necessary co-ordinates.
Captain . . . these co-ordinates are different from the last time. Are you sure the Vulcan database has VISAC listed correctly?
Archer glared at Kerr before he could stop himself. He was in no mood to be challenged on his own bridge. Open a channel Ensign, he repeated, forcing himself to speak more kindly. They had all lost a respected colleague here today, and some of them, as evidenced by Trip and Hoshi's dead-eyed faces in sickbay, had lost a friend. He must not allow himself to forget that his crew was every bit as mortified as he was.
He had hand-picked Malcolm Reed for this post for several reasons, and all of them, he must now admit, had been purely professional ones. The lieutenant had tested highly in every physical and mental test, and his aptitude evaluations had more than qualified him. Archer's only concern had been that Reed was so unhealthily introverted and uncommunicative, and would fair poorly in team integration—but now, seeing the truly heartfelt grief on Trip's face, Hoshi's, Phlox's, Travis' . . . feeling as much himself . . . he realized that fear had been ungrounded. And he understood now that as well as recruit a relative stranger to protect the pride of Starfleet, he had never since taken the time to get to know the man.
Now he never would.
Channel open, sir, Ensign Kerr informed him, breaking the thought before it could lead Archer further from his first priority, the job in hand.
The screen crackled, then blipped, once. Sparek's chiseled granite face appeared, stern and faintly greenish in the institute's unflattering lighting.
Archer began, abruptly.
Yes, Captain. I am Sparek, head of science at VISAC for the Vulcan High Command.
Archer brushed off the unnecessarily formal introduction, knowing full well who and what Sparek represented, and annoyed that the Vulcan thought him stupid enough to have forgotten in so short a time. What Archer could not dismiss was the disdain. Emotionless, calm disdain, as if Archer had interrupted an important meeting and Sparek was impatient to have this discourse over.
Sparek, your little favor' hasn't gone quite according to plan, he bit, caustically. Vulcans may have wormed their way out of responsibility for humans' slow development of warp technology, they may have twisted out of providing valuable information in the past . . . but they wouldn't prevaricate their way out of this.
I do not know to which favor you refer.
Archer felt his shoulders brace like a steel girder, the insult and the gall of this lying prim-faced lock-jawed Vulcan more than he was willing to tolerate, more than he was able to tolerate. He had allowed more give-and-take in the past than he wanted, especially both for and against T'Pol, but he would not tolerate the belittlement of this death. He reared from his chair and leapt the three or four steps to the screen, the hairs on his neck and arms bristling with tiny charges of electricity.
My armory officer is lying dead in my sickbay because of the nanobots you asked him to carry. He dropped his rising tone, stepping back from the screen; Sparek's face had remained unchanged throughout the accusation. You Vulcans always said that space was no place for humans. Well now there's one less human in space for you to worry about.
I am uncertain what it is you expect me to say, Captain. I offer our condolences for your loss.
What do I expect you to say? He was yelling now, and he didn't care. I expect you to explain yourself, Sparek. I want you to explain what's so important it was worth the life of one of my crew! Now what did you inject him with? What were those nanobots carrying?
If the especially austere Vulcan had shown fear, surprise, anger, anything, it would have largely placated Archer's rising bloodlust. But that blank nothingness was unbelievable. I assure you, Captain, I did not inject your crewman with anything.
And you expect me to believe this? I saw you do it. We were at VISAC, two days ago. Ring any bells?
Sparek intoned, softer even than before to deliberately strike a contrast against Archer's shouting. I can promise you, though I have heard of you, we have never before today met.
Archer stared.
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The silence had seeped back in, and both Trip and Hoshi had let it, their attempts to revive the conversation coming up dry and falling flat. It seemed indecorous, even disrespectful, to talk.
Trip could not help but feel more concerned for Hoshi than for his own feelings, or guilt—he was older, wider lived, and wilder in attitude. He had seen corpses before, had seen engineering accidents back at Jupiter Station and the like, and although it would be an outright deceit to pretend it ever got easier, you did get used to it. He had gotten used to these silences, a little, although his own experience had barely matured. Hoshi, however, was green as green could be. It was blatant that she was uncomfortable around corpses, that the sight and the silence burrowed into her like a worm, and that she was battling that aversion against a new, and even worse, element; this corpse was no nameless stranger, no alien. It was her friend. Her responsibility.
Still, it looked unlike him, in many ways. That was probably a blessing. Malcolm Reed had always been a neat freak, always shaven, hair always rigidly combed into that practical shape, his uniform crease-free and clean as a whistle; but lying there he was disarrayed, his hair out of place, his uniform crumpled and stained with smoke, and his face showed new signs of bluish stubble beginning to thicken around his jaw.
An officer at his best, after all, is always well groomed.
Trip ventured, startled that his voice was so croaky, and dry. It felt like sand in his throat.
I'm gonna step out for a few minutes. Got a coupla things I wanted to take care of.
Hoshi reared up straight in her seat, eyes wide as saucers in her pallid, milky-coffee face. Why? Can't it wait?
No, Ensign, it can't. Call me if the cap'n stops by.
Trip rose, and purposefully turned away from Hoshi as he left—left her alone with Reed's silent accusations, forcing her, as he knew it would, to acknowledge, to relive, to reason, and to grieve, without a pillar to lean on. This was something he needed to do, for Malcolm but also, in so many ways, for Charles Tucker III—and perhaps this time alone was what Hoshi needed too, if she only knew it.
It was the cusp of the ship's false dawn as he snuck from sickbay, that hinge between night and day when the shifts rotated and the rich smells of breakfast began to spill into the corridors from the mess hall. Normally this was one of Trip's favorite parts of the day; his ship was waking to a new dawn full of promise and discovery. Although it was traditionally the captain's prerogative to claim ownership on any vessel, it was the chief engineer who cared for her, improved her, and nurtured her. It was a symbiotic existence, the one dependent on the other, their welfare bound together—and this morning, the ship's voiceless silence, as if in salute to her lost crewman, was uncanny and disquieting as Trip prowled the corridors. The day spoke not of promise and discovery, but bleakness, silence, and questions without an answer.
Whatever came next—and he knew there would be inquiries, an investigation, an autopsy—both the captain and Doctor Phlox had agreed with him on one thing; that Hoshi must never be told the phase pistol was set to kill. Let her imagine the nanobots responsible, as indeed they may be, and herself freed of guilt to a small degree. Trip knew he would never have that mercy. The phase pistol had been set to kill—his phase pistol, his responsibility—and it had killed. It had killed a comrade who didn't want to die.
But Trip remembered, all too bitterly, what that comrade did want, when faced with death once before.
An officer at his best is always well groomed.
And so he would be.
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Hoshi glanced up as he returned, her face leaden with unshed tears, her cheeks still sullied with smoke and fumes. Her hair hung limp in her eyes and her fingers curled convulsively in the fabric of her uniform. She had not been crying, but perhaps, Trip speculated, she should have been.
What did you . . ? she began, forlornly, and paused as he held the item in his hand aloft. Hoshi frowned, creasing her dirty, pretty brow and the hollows around her lampblack eyes into soft valleys. Her mouth quivered as she questioned him, and Trip watched her minutely, encouraging her to show the kind of emotion that he, in his official capacity, could not afford to. Why do you want that?
Just somethin' he said to me, once, Trip replied. A slow smile broke over the forced stillness of his face, evoked by that one memory. Thought I'd do a friend a favor, that's all.
He approached the bed with soft, respectful steps, boots clipping distantly on the deck with a sound like rain on a tin roof, and halted at the head of it, looking down silently. Then he took the electric razor he had fetched and gently, attentively, began to shave the new growth from the locked jaw and still throat.
Hoshi crept up beside him, staring in silent bewilderment at this bizarre ritual a long time before she finally spoke.
What . . . what are you doing that for?
Malcolm had a thing about looking his best, Trip replied, with a gulp. Funny—he had expected that white skin to feel . . . colder, somehow. He shook his head, dislodging the nagging twinge of imagination. He was dead, Phlox had said so, the phase pistol had said so. If he was warm, then it must just be the room temperature, giving a false impression.
Hoshi asked, suddenly. Do you smell that?
Trip took a gulp of the air, concentrating past the sterile cleanliness of sickbay to pick out the sharper scent below it. Now you come to mention it . . . kinda smells like my mama's lemonade.
Hoshi brushed past Trip, all the fear of approach apparently thrown to the wind and snatched away—and gingerly, like the biobed itself would bite, she curled her fingers in Reed's, and lifted his limp hand from the bed. Hers tightened grimly around it, clutching a lifeline, perhaps, facing the fact in front of her. Trip switched off the razor and watched her, silently relieved that she had been able to make this step.
Trip . . . she choked. And Trip knew, from the use of his name if from no other intuition, that she had reached the same impossible conclusion as he had.