Chapter Eighteen: Jailbreak
Hesitant steps in the corridor outside the brig told him that he had another visitor. He sat up on his bunk and glanced out; it was amazing how much he missed human company, even when the company was as lousy as it tended to be on this ship.
It was Hoshi.
She looked at him with curiosity and concern mingled on her face as she chewed on her lower lip. She didn't say anything; she just stood there, watching him.
"Hoshi?" he said.
She didn't answer at first. Then, finally, she said in a low voice, "Travis told me everything."
He felt his stomach lurch unpleasantly. "He … told you?" he repeated. "About …"
Hoshi smiled, ever-so-slightly, although the expression seemed tired and did not quite reach her eyes. "That's right," she said. "You're an alternate version of you from another universe where the Empire was never formed and the Enterprise is on a mission of peaceful exploration."
Trip glanced nervously around the room. "Aren't there recording devices in here?"
She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Trip. I am the head of the communications department." She tapped the universal translator that was hooked to her belt. "I've readjusted this to generate static on the channel. Mr. Reed won't hear a damn thing. Besides … hasn't he heard about your situation already?"
"I just didn't want to implicate you in … all this," Trip said.
Hoshi smiled wryly. "Oh … Trip. I'm the woman of a traitor. I'm already implicated … although Lieutenant Reed is willing to believe my innocence on Ensign Mayweather's insistence and … something in exchange." She grimaced.
Trip didn't have to think too hard about what the armory officer would want in exchange from her, and winced in spite of himself. "I'm sorry, Hoshi."
"Me, too." She glanced over her shoulder, as though to make sure the doors to the brig were still closed, and then she started to unzip her uniform.
"Uh ... Hoshi?" Trip began, confused.
She held up a hand. "Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong," she said. "I don't disrobe before total strangers."
He winced. "I … I'm sorry, Hoshi, I didn't think of … I mean, I guess I did think of it, but it didn't seem … I couldn't …"
Hoshi raised her eyebrows at him as she pulled tools from various places hidden within her uniform jumpsuit. "Articulate as ever, Commander Tucker," she said. "I'm sure I have a course in remedial English somewhere that might do you some good …" She started putting together a device that looked quite complicated with a sequence of small attachments.
" … what are you doing?" Trip said, distracted from his fumbling attempts at an apology for what both of them knew there could be no real apologizing for.
Hoshi sighed as she snapped the last piece of her gadget together. "I'm getting you out of here," she said.
Trip stared. "What? Why?"
She smiled. "Think of it … as a return favor," she said, holding up the tool and examining it to make certain that she'd constructed it properly from the bits and pieces she'd had hidden away in her uniform. "Because of you, I know that there's another me somewhere, another me whose life isn't fraught with the dangers of Imperial politics. Another me whose love life isn't quite so horrific. Another me, with everything to hope for. And I owe it to you both to send you back to her." She began fiddling with the locking mechanism on the cell door.
"Er," Trip said. "Hoshi and I …" Then he stopped. Why should he tell her that? But then again, wasn't not telling her continuing from his dishonesty from before? Didn't she deserve the truth, even if it wasn't exactly what she thought it was going to be? "We're just friends," he said.
She paused briefly, a very strange expression on her face. "Oh, really?" she said.
He felt himself blushing, and wondered why. "Yeah."
"Are you sure?" Hoshi asked.
He had no answer for that, and she didn't seem to expect one; the conversation was forestalled by the audible click of the locking mechanism disengaging. "There!" she said, triumphantly. She opened the door. "Come on. We've got to get you out of here."
He stepped out of the cell and it felt as though a great weight had lifted from his shoulders. "Hoshi … I can't thank you enough," he said.
She grinned a little mischievously. "No, I really don't think you can," she said. She took him by the hand and led him, not toward the corridor, but toward the ventilation shaft's opening in the corner.
"Boost me up," she said. "We've got to get you to the shuttle-bay."
Soon she was seated on his shoulders with her legs wrapped around him and her hands neatly unfastening the clasp on the ventilation shaft's door.
"Hosh … aren't you claustrophobic?" Trip asked, trying not to think about her legs clamped tightly over his chest and his hands gripping her thighs.
"I'll live," she said shortly. Then, a moment later, she announced, "Got it!"
But then there was the sickening sound of the brig doors opening. Hoshi froze on top of him. "Oh, no … I thought I had him occupied," she hissed under her breath.
"Well, well, well." Malcolm's British accent seemed to get thicker, if that was even possible, when his voice was suffused with unholy glee. "What have we here?"
