A/N: I just wanted to thank you all again for your patience … and apologize to you for my irregularity. I also apologize for the clumsy action sequence and for my not identifying the two separate pairs of handcuffs a few chapters back; once I finish this monstrous thing there are a couple of things that'll get rewritten …
Chapter Twenty-One: Savior
Captain Archer stared into his subordinate's face and slowly, very slowly, he began to smile.
Trip's finger rested on the trigger of the phase pistol, pressed against the chest of the man who looked so very much like one of his closest friends and most respected officers. He looked into the smirk that turned up the corners of Jonathan's mouth, of the coldness in his eyes, and wondered whether he had a story as sad as Hoshi's or Travis's, hiding somewhere in there. He wondered, also, if he had it in him to put an end to it.
"Well, Trip?" said Archer, raising his eyebrows. It was an amazingly snide tone to address someone who held your life in his hands with. "You've got my attention. What are you going to do with it?"
"You think this is about attention?" Trip asked.
He would have to do it. He couldn't let Archer keep talking – who knew what he might say?
But he didn't think he could do it. He didn't think he had it in him to pull that trigger and to watch the man that had been his role model and his friend, almost like an older brother, die.
"This is about power, Trip," Archer said, his voice contemptuous. "But you don't have power over me."
"Don't I?" Trip said. He didn't back away, as much as he suddenly wanted to.
"If you do, pull the trigger," Archer said. "Kill me. That's the only way you're going to get out of this one."
Trip's finger twitched on the trigger, but he didn't press down.
"You can't do it," said Captain Archer.
Trip felt suddenly lost. He couldn't do it. He'd never killed a man in cold blood, never in his life, and this man had done nothing to him. He was a self-righteous, obnoxious son of a bitch, the representative of a horrific system, with inverted values and a hell of a lot of sleazy, and he'd treated Trip's friends terribly in ways that he had trouble thinking about, but when you got right down to it, Trip couldn't kill an unarmed man.
He took a step backwards.
Captain Archer smiled a cold, terrible smile and backhanded him across the face. Caught off-balance, Trip stumbled backwards. He was open to attack and Archer took the opportunity he was given, lashing out with a hard kick. His foot caught Trip's hands and knocked the phase pistol out of his grasp.
It clattered to the ground. Trip and the captain dove for it at the same moment. Both of them grasped it at the same time and tried to wrestle out of the other's grasp, rolling over several times on the ground. Trip had right on his side, of course, and he was younger, faster than the older man; but this Jonathan Archer's life had not been easy and he fought dirty. He thrust his knee into Trip's groin from underneath him and threw him over backwards so that he hit the wall with a heavy thunk, ripping the weapon from his fingers and breaking several of them in the process.
Trip cried out in pain and rolled over, surging to his feet and thrusting his head into Archer's face. There was a sickening crunching sound as the captain's nose was broken, and Trip wrenched the phase pistol out of his grasp again.
He transferred it to his left hand, his right with its broken fingers utterly useless at this point, and fired at Archer's head. The other man dodged out of the way and spun around to thrust his elbow into Trip's windpipe. Trip stumbled back, gasping for air, and raised the gun to fire again.
Before he did so, there was another phase blast from the doorway to the ready-room and Archer crumpled to the ground.
Trip turned around, gasping for breath and trying not to whimper in pain. Travis Mayweather stood in the doorway, holding a phase pistol and smiling grimly.
"Sounded like you could use a little help," he said.
Trip nodded wearily and mopped at his brow with the back of his hand. "I could use a doctor, too," he said. "But not Doctor Singerra, I think."
"You're the highest-ranked Starfleet officer on this ship, Commander …" Travis said mildly. He crossed the room and squatted in front of the fallen Archer, examining him critically. "That makes you functionally the captain. Singerra pays attention to rank."
"I'm not the captain," Trip said firmly. He bent over and picked up the handcuffs that Malcolm had used on him. "Is he dead or stunned?"
"Stunned," Travis replied with a smile tossed over his shoulder at Trip. Then he whipped a dagger out of his boot and calmly stabbed the fallen man in the heart. "Dead," he said. He stood up, leaving the dagger embedded in his former captain's chest, and turned to look at Trip with upraised brows. "Shall we go?"
Trip wondered if the Travis he knew on his Enterprise – the real Enterprise – were just as capable of calmly stabbing an enemy in the chest. Probably not, since Trip himself wasn't capable of it, but he thought the image might haunt him the next time they shared a tent on a camping trip.
"Yeah," he said, holding up the handcuffs in his left hand. "I've got some property to return."
