Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek and all the characters created therein.
A/N: sorry, this is a really short chapter. For some reason when I divided up the story into chapters I thought this was longer...but nope, only about 600 words. Oh well.
Chapter 13:
Trip woke up with a pounding headache. He was still on the floor in engineering, but someone had been kind enough to slip a folded coverall under his head. Someone was also unkind enough to shine a flashlight in his face.
"Commander—Trip—are you alright?" an unmistakable British voice was asking. Malcolm.
"I believe you are impairing his vision, Lieutenant." T'Pol.
"Maybe we should get Phlox down here. He could have a concussion." Hoshi—geez, was the whole senior staff here?
"Get the damn light out of my face!" he croaked. He sat up—waaaaay to fast. "Oh—woozy." He laid back again and felt a gentle hand cradle the back of his neck. He looked up at T'Pol gratefully. Hoshi and Malcolm exchanged glances but said nothing.
"Commander, please be careful," T'Pol admonished him. "Miss Saunders used unnecessary force. You were bleeding but we've stemmed it. Your biosigns are normal." She showed him the readings on her scanner but he couldn't quite focus on it.
"Billie—yeah, she whacked me on the head. Where is she?" He sat up again, more slowly this time. Malcolm and Hoshi kept their distance, letting the Vulcan help the engineer to his feet. Once steady, her arm lingered around his waist—as though she were steadying both herself and her human at the same time.
"Miss Saunders was immediately apprehended," she told Trip.
"She was?"
"Yes sir!" two enthusiastic voices chorused. Trip looked for the sources of the voices and started laughing so hard T'Pol thought he would fall over again. Lts. Hess and Rostov, grinning ear to ear, had the struggling human trussed like a prize steer. They had tied the unruly technician with what appeared to be relay wiring, and someone had taped her mouth shut with one of the flexible adhesive strips they used for temporary valve repairs.
"Both of you," he struggled for breath, "are getting a raise!"
They beamed with pride. "We heard the struggle, sir," Hess explained. "We were in the junction—" she pointed to the mouth of a now darkened tube—and came as quickly as we could."
"Good work," Malcolm told them. "Good to know you engineers are…" he squinted at the relay wiring, "an adaptable bunch."
"How long was I out, anyway?"
"Only a few minutes," T'Pol had not moved from his side yet. "But we've uncovered a great deal. We need to get back to the bridge. If we can gather all the SMP members in one room, I believe I can say with certainty who the guilty party is."
"Wait a minute—you're going to gather the suspects?"
"Yes."
"All in one room?"
T'Pol glared at him. "Yes."
"And reveal…whodunit?"
"Commander, if you do not wish me to be influenced by it, perhaps you should not expose me to human literary devices," she huffed, helping him out of engineering. "After all, it worked quite adequately in The Thin Man."
"I never said it didn't."
"We are in a similar situation, you realize, with little technology to assist in our current investigation, thus it seemed logical…"
Malcolm and Hoshi waited until they were out of earshot before bursting into laughter. Never had two people so obviously not meant for each other…been meant for each other.