WALTZER
It should take them . . . how long to get back to Devoli V? Archer asked Trip, once they had sealed the door of the captain's ready room behind them. At present, the conversation was one they might have continued on the bridge; but Archer knew it was only a matter of time before the subject of the hallucinations surfaced again. Before he had to make a definite stand—either in support of his armory officer's exploits, or against them.
And the truth was, he didn't know which argument screamed the loudest.
Porthos snuffled and looked up from his basket in the corner, where Archer had deposited him at breakfast. The beagle had enjoyed more than his fair share of Jon's scrambled egg and bacon, and had been sleeping it off in peace and quiet since. Today Archer envied him, and his cozy, catered, carefree life between meals and naps and tidbits of cheese. A daily walk was the most stress the little furball ever encountered.
Trip reached down where he stood and scratched the dog's ears affectionately. Porthos whimpered and kicked his hind leg in delight. I reckon three days, Cap'n, give or take.
Archer nodded, for once taking a seat at the table. He could feel the urge to pace itching again, and that was always a sign he should sit down—he found his pacing unnerved subordinates, on occasion even Trip, whom he usually relied upon to laugh when others would squirm. Maybe if we'd gone to Warp 4 or even 3 the moment we left we'd have been too far away for Malcolm to even consider taking the shuttlepod. A couple of hours at Warp 2 just wasn't far enough.
Well, there's been a lot to think about, if ya don't mind my sayin' so, Cap'n. Warp 4 in a busy trade route just isn't a good idea, we had to take it slow even if it made us a little . . . fashionably late. I just hope Hoshi can survive three days o' cabin fever with Malcolm. Trip smiled indulgently, but as had been the trend all this night and day, it did not quite reach his eyes, and they remained leaden with weariness. Both of them were on their feet only by sheer willpower, having barely notched up a full night's sleep between them, and having foregone breakfast altogether. Archer's had been fed to the dog . . . and Trip had been hunting down T'Pol.
Speaking from experience, Trip? he teased.
Trip chuckled. You bet. So what do we do now, Cap'n? Do we follow
It'll take us a few minutes to get to Devoli V once the warp reactor's back online . . . how's it coming along down there, you been to check?
Ah, Hess is doin' fine. We can get up to Warp 2 but the antimatter injectors took a bad rap. Might be a coupla hours before we can push her higher.
Even at Warp 2 we'd be there in two hours or so, Archer mused. Porthos headbutted his ankles. We can intercept them. We'll be in orbit before they've even gotten the first few thousand kilometers.
Or before Hoshi's thrown the first punch, Trip shot back. What about this rendezvous at Titrinus? We've still got the nanobots from T'Pol, if Phlox can figure out a way to get em outta her.
I don't know about you, but I don't want those things leaving this ship until we know more about those impostors. I say we stay as far away from Titrinus as we can.
And about that, at least, he could be absolutely certain.
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An hour had passed in silence since he cut the communication with the captain, and after that suddenly shy, childlike apology, Reed's attention had been consumed, entirely, by the helm. Hoshi spent the time replaying all she knew and all she had heard, forcing together puzzle pieces that didn't want to match, trying to make sense of the faint notion she had that Reed was telling the truth. In that time, her rapt gaze did not stray from the back of his inclined head, drinking in the body language that, in absence of the spoken word, was bread and meat to her.
She wished she had not allowed the analogy to surface; she hadn't realized, until now, just how hungry she was.
How long will it take to get back to Devoli V at impulse? she asked, hoping to prompt some mention of food or sleep from him by the question. She did not include a sir' she figured this mission was anything but official.
Remember, Ensign, I did give you every opportunity to withdraw your offer of a chaperone, he stalled, studying the panel uncomfortably hard.
How long, Malcolm?
He sighed, and rubbed his temples with one hand as if they pained him. Three days.
Hoshi jolted upright in her seat. Three days? Did you just say three days? Isn't that . . . I mean, what are we supposed to . . ?
The chair pivoted on its axle, and Reed cast an amused, distant smile on her, though it was thin, and radiated no life. Relax, Hoshi. You know, for an exolinguist you really are quite tongue-tied on occasion. I've checked everything; rations, O2 cylinders, water . . . there's even clean uniforms in that locker at the back. I was always a good Eagle Scout.
There he went again, confusing her by speaking so profusely after a long silence. It was going to be a long three days.
How are we going to sleep? she ventured, at last. Although the question, in its specific form, was How can I sleep, and leave you unguarded?'.
He searched her face carefully, something he rarely did, the cool blue of his eyes cutting through hers and into her thoughts like a laser. It was something he so rarely did that it made her . . . uncomfortable. I was thinking in shifts, he replied, carefully. That way one of us is always alert to any interesting . . . phenomena.
Hoshi flushed under the stare, one that seemed to sever flesh from bone, reading the invisible ink between her spoken lines and responding as opaquely as she had asked.
Why don't you get some sleep, Hoshi? I'll take first watch. And he turned back to his readouts.
Hoshi sat, awaiting more—or perhaps awaiting any excuse, anything, to refuse his offer. Moments passed, with nothing forthcoming. Then out of the blue, and without turning, he said: I won't bite, Ensign.
If she had prepared a response for a preemption as blatant as that, it was gone now; she merely opened her mouth to expel a slight outrush of air, then closed it again with a snap. How did you . . ?
How did I know? He sighed, and the helm seat swung round again, a little less abruptly than before. You'd be surprised what I notice when no one knows I'm watching. I could tell you every detail of your quarters down to the last shelf, and we both know I've not seen it for more than a few minutes at a time, and only once or twice.
He stared her down with that disquieting gaze, more intense, even, than usual. Hoshi dug her fingers into her knees, determined not to be intimidated like a naughty schoolgirl under a teacher's eyes; but the flood of adrenaline that had powered her as they made their launch had subsided and left her strengthless, a sail without a breeze to drive it. Terrified of what she had done, and to what she had become committed. She lowered her head into her palms, elbows on her knees, and counted each painful breath as it came.
In the silence between each heartbeat her sensitive ears detected a progression of soft, measured sounds, barely there; the whisper of his uniform swishing against the vinyl of the helm seat, footsteps that fell too lightly to ring on the deck plates, and the clacking, clattering sound of some metallic item being retrieved.
When she opened her eyes, he was crouching in front of her, his face only a hand's breadth from hers. In his fist he held the discarded cuffs, slightly extended to her.
You have a picture of your high school graduation on the cabinet beside the bed, he related, more softly. And some ridiculous image of an overfed cat with what I assume was you at a much younger—and might I say skinnier—age. You keep that awful pink rug you have the cheek to call a robe on a hook beside the door, and . . . He trailed off, and Hoshi smiled, achingly.
You know, she said, pressing her fingers to her forehead in one final attempt to seal away the ache beginning there, I can remember a fair amount of your quarters, too. That mirror, for one. It looked old.
Yes, well . . . I've had it a long time, he dismissed, on a breath. There's really nothing much to say about it.
Hoshi knew that she had touched a nerve, but said nothing. Reed extended the handcuffs to her with a look of utter amusement overtaking the oblique clouding of his face. You can cuff me to something while you sleep, if it will make you feel better, he said, archly.
Hoshi was about to punch him in the shoulder when the shuttlepod jolted alarmingly, flinging Reed off-balance and slamming his whole weight into Hoshi's knees. With the spring of a cat, he clawed his way back to the helm, anxiously scanning the readouts there. What on earth was that? he demanded, to nobody in particular.
It felt like a collision. A meteor?
I don't see any sign of one. Maybe . . .
He never finished the rest. The shuttlepod was buffeted by another force twice as strong as the first, tremors shooting through the seat and the deck plates beneath Hoshi, the hull squealing as metal ground against metal. Sparks spat from the helm and ignited the air of the shuttlepod with the fumy stench of melted plastic, settling their brilliant points of fire in Reed's unusually tousled hair. This time the shocks did not pass, as before; they grew stronger, bolder, until the third wave came and the shuttlepod rattled with the indiscriminate malevolence of an earthquake zone.
Hoshi was jolted from her seat, and she lie where she fell, pressed to the deck plates and spreading her weight to ride the waves. Reed was on his feet, but barely, gripping the helm with both hands and bracing his knee against the seat beside him, leaning his weight into the shockwaves and shifting his feet as he struggled to remain upright.
Around them, everything began to blur.
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Porthos yelped excitedly as the com whistled again, and Travis' voice said: Captain, we have a problem.
Don't we always? Archer thought, bitingly. He glanced across at Trip where he stood, evaluating the worried collision of his chief engineer's pale eyebrows over his turned-up, ski slope nose. Judging from that baffled look, Trip had had the same, admittedly crass, thought.
Archer moved over to the panel at the far side of the ready room, and depressed the button to speak. What is it, Travis?
It's Shuttlepod One, sir, came Travis' voice again.
Trip was looking uncomfortably hard at Archer, waiting for him to make a reply. Archer felt, briefly, like inviting him to take over.
What about Shuttlepod One? Already there was a sinking feeling—no figure of speech, but a literal sensation—in Archer's stomach, a stone ploughing through layers of sediment.
I've been keeping an eye on it since they launched, Captain, Travis returned. They're gone. Our sensors can't pick them up anywhere within range.
That's impossible.
That's what they said about male pregnancies, Trip drawled, pronouncing the southern twang with a stark deliberance Archer had come to recognize as facetious. He stared at Trip, expectantly. I was just sayin'.
Any sign of their engine signature?
None, sir, Travis reported, with a shrug Archer could not see . . . but could hear in his voice. Should I try hailing them again?
I can do better than that, Ensign. Set a course for Devoli V. Warp 2.
Neither Trip nor Travis questioned the captain, and the com was severed. Trip wordlessly nodded his agreement, the pale crease of his eyebrows deepening with worry.
Porthos whined, and tried to crawl under the table.
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Hoshi flattened herself against the deck plates and locked both arms around the base of the helm seat as beneath her the shuttlepod rumbled like the birth of a mountain . . . or the destruction of one. She clamped her eyes shut against the sickening motion blur zipping past her, like the pound and the wail and the chop-chop scenery of a fairground ride with the safety protocols disabled. A sound high as a dog whistle, stark as the wind rattling broken shutters, sliced through her head and burned behind her eyes. If they didn't stop soon . . .
. . . if they didn't stop soon, then the shuttle was going to be torn apart.
Hoshi tried to yell, but the gale thrashing through the shuttle tore her voice from her mouth and shredded the words into the cyclone. She felt like Dorothy, swept away to Oz.
Another collision rocked the tiny shuttlepod, and she heard a thud and a dull clang beside her as the force threw Reed from his feet at last. She wanted to open her eyes to see if he was hurt, but her head was being cleaved and twisted by the rush, and she knew if she looked, if she saw the impossible flurry of color and shadow and sparks and stars around her, she would vomit. So she held the darkness, kept her eyelids down firmly, and stopped her breath in a wordless prayer she barely realized she formed.
There was an unexpected warmth at her back, arms folding her into the heat. Hoshi took the hand clasping her waist and squeezed it, accepting his weight on her as a shield. They took cover on the floor as the fluctuating gravity in the shuttlepod cut back and forth through them like the force of a plummeting lift. His arms pressed her tighter as the free spin that pummeled the defenseless shuttlepod accelerated to a white noise screaming in her head.
Nothing lasts forever, Hoshi, he said, in her ear. He must have been shouting, and yet she barely heard him. Stay down. It'll be okay.
As if on cue, the battering calmed. Suddenly, there came a point when she had realized they were not spinning so fast, and the thunder dropped to a motionless hush. Reed reclaimed his hand from her and pulled away from her, wordlessly, as if it had never happened. Hoshi lie in her self-imposed blindness a moment, winded and stunned, and crept from one breath to another, forcing each to come.
She heard him punching buttons at the helm, and pried her eyes open, blinking into the gloom. Half of the shuttlepod's internal lights were out.
I don't believe it, she heard him mutter, to himself.
Nursing her ringing head in her hand, Hoshi clambered to her feet, and staggered over to him on unsteady legs. She peered fearfully through the reinforced glass, expecting the crisp velvet and crystal drops of a starfield, immense and infinite from port to starboard; instead, the screen was awash with the blazing blue-white glow of a planet, clouds scudding across the sapphire surface in soft eddies like ripples in a pond.
Reed was not looking up with her; he was studying the readouts with a frown. That's impossible, he muttered.
What is?
He looked up at last, and blinked. I don't think we're in Kansas any more.