Title: Eclipsing Moon
Author: Jyorraku
Rating: R
Category: Adventure, Drama
Codes: R, S, All
Summary: Subterfuge on high.
Author Notes: Mara is a goddess! The English language can rest easy with her at its side.
Eclipsing Moon
They told him it would be easy and he believed them. After all, he had been in retirement for an entire two years and two months when they arrived on the doorstep of his apartment with the offer. They wouldn't have trusted a retiree with an assignment such as this if it required more finesse. And they wouldn't have approached him if they didn't think he would say yes.
It would be something to keep him on his toes while servicing the agency. Why let his hard-earned skills go to waste at such a young age?
Malcolm Reed, ever practical, had conceded the point. He had managed to look flattered when Captain Archer chose him as Enterprise's armory officer. The most difficult aspect of the mission, he had decided upon accepting the Archer's offer, would probably be trying to keep the good Captain from getting killed.
However, as he stood hovering on the threshold of Hoshi Sato's cabin, he began to suspect that things were about to become much more complex. He supposed that it could also be just his nerves talking. His nerves indeed, he chided himself. Yes, he was getting old, but not too old for this game, if it must be played.
The scanner indicated the resident of the room was not in. He had it on rather good authority from Travis that Hoshi was going to movie night today, since Liz Cutler had been given the honor of picking the feature, instead of a certain chief engineer. Travis said he and the regular movie-going men would go, since even chick flicks have good-looking chicks. The helmsman, however, did not ask the armory officer if he was planning to attend.
Malcolm, upon returning to his quarters after dinner, thought about the obvious absence of the inquiry and pondered for a second or so whether his sexual orientation was being questioned. That was before he received the disquieting dispatch from Earth. The passive nature of the assignment was about to change. The fact that Hoshi would not be in her cabin was serendipity and he was frugal enough to not let it go to waste.
With due haste, he punched in the key--not with his usual override, but with one he had planted into the system minutes before. Once used, it would re-scramble and be rendered useless, and of course, untraceable. He surmised his current unease was a manifestation of regret, of having to use these hide-and-cover tactics on his crewmates. However, it couldn't be helped. The gentle sound of the door sliding obediently open might have obscured his situation in benign circumstances, but he knew what he had in mind was hardly benevolent.
The cabin was thankfully organized, as was her communications terminal. There was only one fault to a faultless display of order. It would be easy for an intruder, such as himself, to find what he was seeking. And it was ridiculously simple. An ad hoc algorithm had been used to encrypt a classified transmission to Starfleet Headquarters. The agency had not been able to decipher the contents, much to its collective dismay. He was to retrieve the code and piggyback the file on his next letters back home, just as he had been doing thus far. A few keystrokes on the console, and the file was copied on to the disk he had prepared. Having so effortlessly accomplished the mission, he gave the surrounding space another once over.
The closet door was half open. Perusing the visible contents, he noted the Starfleet uniforms hanging on top, but soon found his sight drawn to a familiar blue article of clothing folded neatly at the bottom of the enclosure. He took a step forward before halting. Surely he didn't need the moniker of voyeur added to his repertoire.
Faintly imbued with recrimination, he took it upon himself to exit the cabin immediately. Yet before he could completely remove himself, he heard a shuffling of feet from within. He spun toward the source, feeling his heart drumming rapidly to an old battle cry as an elixir of energy shot through his veins.
* * *
Hoshi heard her voice echo off the walls as she stepped out of the dense shadows. "It was you. You're the one that's been piggybacking messages back to Earth." She held in her hands, ironically, a short range signal scrambling prototype that he had successfully assembled two weeks ago.
Her eyes were riveted to his, searching and questioning. He quickly glanced away, in a fashion that cried shameful culpability. Approaching until she was bathed in the same artificial light, she spoke with the odd intonation of a plea.
"Why, Malcolm?"
It was not the accusation he had expected. He bowed his head until she saw only the length of his fluttering lashes and the sharp crest of his countenance. "Hoshi, does the Captain know?" he asked, his voice coarse.
Hoshi was quick to respond in the assuring negative, closing the distance between them once more. "I haven't told anyone else y--" She jerked to a stop, both in speech and motion, but the epiphany came too late.
His right hand struck out before she was able to retreat, encasing her wrist in an steel vise. "That was a tactical error, Ensign," he said.
Eyes wide with shock, Hoshi stood mesmerized by the ice blue surrounding his dark pupils, trying to find the familiar man. That thought was hastily abandoned when she found herself shaking. His fingers had tightened to a painful grip.
"I'm sorry you won't be able to learn from it," he apologized with deceptive mildness.
Rendered immobile by the unspoken meaning, she watched with burgeoning terror as his free hand extended to the control panel in the wall and tapped perfunctorily on the light switch. The thought to scream stumbled clumsily into her brain, but it was far too tardy in its arrival.
As instructed, the room plunged into murky black, letting the sound of an aborted gasp fade into darkness. Only the firefly illumination of the stars outside was left to witness the aftermath in its perpetual silence.
Author: Jyorraku
Rating: R
Category: Adventure, Drama
Codes: R, S, All
Summary: Subterfuge on high.
Author Notes: Mara is a goddess! The English language can rest easy with her at its side.
Eclipsing Moon
They told him it would be easy and he believed them. After all, he had been in retirement for an entire two years and two months when they arrived on the doorstep of his apartment with the offer. They wouldn't have trusted a retiree with an assignment such as this if it required more finesse. And they wouldn't have approached him if they didn't think he would say yes.
It would be something to keep him on his toes while servicing the agency. Why let his hard-earned skills go to waste at such a young age?
Malcolm Reed, ever practical, had conceded the point. He had managed to look flattered when Captain Archer chose him as Enterprise's armory officer. The most difficult aspect of the mission, he had decided upon accepting the Archer's offer, would probably be trying to keep the good Captain from getting killed.
However, as he stood hovering on the threshold of Hoshi Sato's cabin, he began to suspect that things were about to become much more complex. He supposed that it could also be just his nerves talking. His nerves indeed, he chided himself. Yes, he was getting old, but not too old for this game, if it must be played.
The scanner indicated the resident of the room was not in. He had it on rather good authority from Travis that Hoshi was going to movie night today, since Liz Cutler had been given the honor of picking the feature, instead of a certain chief engineer. Travis said he and the regular movie-going men would go, since even chick flicks have good-looking chicks. The helmsman, however, did not ask the armory officer if he was planning to attend.
Malcolm, upon returning to his quarters after dinner, thought about the obvious absence of the inquiry and pondered for a second or so whether his sexual orientation was being questioned. That was before he received the disquieting dispatch from Earth. The passive nature of the assignment was about to change. The fact that Hoshi would not be in her cabin was serendipity and he was frugal enough to not let it go to waste.
With due haste, he punched in the key--not with his usual override, but with one he had planted into the system minutes before. Once used, it would re-scramble and be rendered useless, and of course, untraceable. He surmised his current unease was a manifestation of regret, of having to use these hide-and-cover tactics on his crewmates. However, it couldn't be helped. The gentle sound of the door sliding obediently open might have obscured his situation in benign circumstances, but he knew what he had in mind was hardly benevolent.
The cabin was thankfully organized, as was her communications terminal. There was only one fault to a faultless display of order. It would be easy for an intruder, such as himself, to find what he was seeking. And it was ridiculously simple. An ad hoc algorithm had been used to encrypt a classified transmission to Starfleet Headquarters. The agency had not been able to decipher the contents, much to its collective dismay. He was to retrieve the code and piggyback the file on his next letters back home, just as he had been doing thus far. A few keystrokes on the console, and the file was copied on to the disk he had prepared. Having so effortlessly accomplished the mission, he gave the surrounding space another once over.
The closet door was half open. Perusing the visible contents, he noted the Starfleet uniforms hanging on top, but soon found his sight drawn to a familiar blue article of clothing folded neatly at the bottom of the enclosure. He took a step forward before halting. Surely he didn't need the moniker of voyeur added to his repertoire.
Faintly imbued with recrimination, he took it upon himself to exit the cabin immediately. Yet before he could completely remove himself, he heard a shuffling of feet from within. He spun toward the source, feeling his heart drumming rapidly to an old battle cry as an elixir of energy shot through his veins.
* * *
Hoshi heard her voice echo off the walls as she stepped out of the dense shadows. "It was you. You're the one that's been piggybacking messages back to Earth." She held in her hands, ironically, a short range signal scrambling prototype that he had successfully assembled two weeks ago.
Her eyes were riveted to his, searching and questioning. He quickly glanced away, in a fashion that cried shameful culpability. Approaching until she was bathed in the same artificial light, she spoke with the odd intonation of a plea.
"Why, Malcolm?"
It was not the accusation he had expected. He bowed his head until she saw only the length of his fluttering lashes and the sharp crest of his countenance. "Hoshi, does the Captain know?" he asked, his voice coarse.
Hoshi was quick to respond in the assuring negative, closing the distance between them once more. "I haven't told anyone else y--" She jerked to a stop, both in speech and motion, but the epiphany came too late.
His right hand struck out before she was able to retreat, encasing her wrist in an steel vise. "That was a tactical error, Ensign," he said.
Eyes wide with shock, Hoshi stood mesmerized by the ice blue surrounding his dark pupils, trying to find the familiar man. That thought was hastily abandoned when she found herself shaking. His fingers had tightened to a painful grip.
"I'm sorry you won't be able to learn from it," he apologized with deceptive mildness.
Rendered immobile by the unspoken meaning, she watched with burgeoning terror as his free hand extended to the control panel in the wall and tapped perfunctorily on the light switch. The thought to scream stumbled clumsily into her brain, but it was far too tardy in its arrival.
As instructed, the room plunged into murky black, letting the sound of an aborted gasp fade into darkness. Only the firefly illumination of the stars outside was left to witness the aftermath in its perpetual silence.