Chapter Four
It tolls for thee!
Hoshi, wearing her dress uniform, is brought by Security Officer Cein into the Mess Hall, the only room large enough for these proceedings, and she is appalled to find it filled. It seems like every crewperson who could fit into the room is here. She had hoped for a limited exposure of her shame. Now, no matter which way the trial goes, she must endure an unmercifully public humiliation.
In the far end of the room is a long table, one of only two tables remaining in the room, these rectangular and square rather than the normal round ones. At the main one before her is seated Captain Archer, to his right is Sub-Commander T'Pol and Lieutenant Reed. To his left is Lt. Abrams from Life Sciences and, to her monumental shock, Lt. Seamus O'Cathain!
She stares at him in utter disbelief. How can her dearest love sit on her Court Martial Board?
There is a thin corridor within the rows of spectators, running from the door to the 'bench', and a vacant area about seven feet wide before it. She is led to the center of this empty rectangle. She looks around as she is brought up, finding Jennifer, Dina, Andrea and several other of her closest friends scattered about the room. Trip Tucker is seated at a small table to her right, as close to the edge of the vacant space as he can be. She very pointedly does not look at him.
She looks around for friendly faces; and her heart pounds as she finds how many of the people she knows so well, felt closest to, are there to see her humiliation. Indeed she is even more profoundly shocked to see Liz Cutler and Tia Anlor seated with Patricia McCabe in the second 'row'.
She looks pointedly at them, but they return her gaze with no distress or apprehension. In fact, they look calm. Too calm. Far from the women who had left her barely an hour ago with pledges of support for her case.
x
The Trial Board is also in Dress Uniforms. She stands before them, mouth dry and heart pounding. 'This cannot be happening.' She thinks urgently, desperately. 'I've got to wake up. This must be a nightmare. Please, let me wake up. Please. Let me wake up!'
Captain Jonathan Archer reaches out and picks up a small brass hammer, striking a brass gong in four sets of paired strokes.
Hoshi, seeing the gong, is stunned, recognizing it as having come from a shelf in her quarters. She stares at it in disbelief. She cannot believe they would have the gall to enter her private quarters and just take her personal property to use 'against' her!
Archer, acting as if all were normal, stands and addresses her in grim tones. "Ensign Hoshi Sato, you appear before this Board of Special Court Martial to answer serious and grievous changes. Under Starfleet Regulations, a Board must consist of no less than five Command personnel. I have therefore appointed," he glanced at each in turn, "Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, Sub-Commander T'Pol, Lieutenants John Abrams and Seamus O'Cathain." He picks up a paper. "The charges and specifications –."
x
"Just a minute!" Hoshi exclaims, looking about. Archer lowers the paper, mildly surprised. He had not expected her to interrupt. "Where's my Advocate?"
"There is none."
"What?" She is absolutely shocked. He can not have said that.
"In a Special Court Martial, Starfleet Regulations decree that the role of an 'Advocate' is superfluous." His tone indicates his seeming surprise that she does not know that. He looks again at the paper in his hand. "These Charges were brought to our attention by Commander Tucker, and frankly I was astounded when they were amassed to fourteen Charges and forty-two Specifications. The first actually goes back to barely a month after you joined this crew, and I –."
"Wait!" She exclaims, finding her voice. Archer looks up, and she is shocked at the expression on his face, which seems to say 'why are you interrupting?'
"Ensign, you'll get a chance to respond, but later."
Hoshi is stunned, mouth actually hanging open, but as he starts to read again she has had all she can stand. "NO! I don't know what's going on here, but I am not going to be silenced. I demand to have my say now!"
She cannot believe that Archer looks at the other members of the 'Board' as if something unexpected has happened.
"What is going on here? You're bringing up something that happened years ago? You've never indicated that my performance was unsatisfactory. In all the time I've been aboard you have never expressed any dissatisfaction with my work. Now suddenly I'm up on Charges? For things that happened nearly two years ago? I know I was out of line on Declan IV, said some things I shouldn't; but those rate a Reprimand, not Court Martial. Now Starfleet directs a Court Martial – you know what that will do to my career. I'm arrested; deprived of Counsel; allowed no visitors; given no access to the Charges so I may prepare a defense; marched in here in front of the entire ship; this is probably being broadcast. I'm forced to stand, you don't even give me a damned chair," she pointed a finger trembling with rage at the brass gong before them, "and that is my gong! You broke into my quarters to get it!"
She forces herself to stop for a moment, feeling her control weakening. Rage is one thing, but if she gives way to the tears of betrayal and fear she feels, she knows her case will be lost. "You bring me here to strip me of my dignity, humiliate me before everyone on this ship; it'd be more merciful to beat me to death than to let this travesty go on."
x
During her words, Trip Tucker had crossed the room, and now bends over the table, whispering to Archer. He signals to the other members of the 'Board' and they huddle together, conversing in whispers as Hoshi stands trembling as much in physical reaction to her 'tirade' as from her fear.
Several times different members of the 'Board' glance at her, but their faces are unreadable, and her anxiety increases. She cannot stop trembling, her breath catching in her throat, heart pounding so heavily she can barely hear anything else, and she fears she might actually faint.
A long moment later the conference ends, Tucker goes back to his table and Archer stands up. She cannot read their faces; even Seamus' is closed to her. "Members of the Board, you have read all the Charges and Specifications in this case. How do you find the defendant Hoshi Sato?"
She is shocked. This can't happen.
Malcolm Reed stands up, his expression grim as she stares at him in a confused welter of emotions.
"Guilty."
x
Hoshi gasps, feeling a knife driven into her heart. She covers her mouth to keep from crying out or sobbing. This is madness. Sub-Commander T'Pol stands up.
"Guilty." Hoshi's breath locks. She cannot breathe, unable to believe two people she'd worked so closely with, thought of as friends, could do this. It is wrong. This can't be happening! She feels the second knife twisting through her heart as Lt. John Abrams, head of Life Sciences, stands up.
"Guilty." Hoshi can't breathe, standing trembling in shock as her friends and colleagues kill her. She was not really close to this man, did not know him well, but she'd always thought he was fair.
But then Seamus O'Cathain stands up, and she feels her first real hope. Suddenly she understands Archer's plan.
x
If the Board has to vote to end this, and that vote has to be unanimous, he will stop this travesty. This is the 'out' her friends have orchestrated. That is why Seamus is up there – to legally end this. For the past year they are dating, truly intimate. She knows him as well as she knows herself, and their love is deep, real and fulfilling.
She meets his eyes, locks upon them; all her hope focusing on him.
She tries to send all her love to him, down that deep, spiritual bond they share. He will save her.
His eyes meet hers, and she knows the anticipation she sees in them.
She knows he will save her!
x
"Guilty."
x
He tears the knife through her heart as Hoshi feels the tears come, her shaking breath silenced behind her covering hand. She cannot believe it. They are in love. He didn't even look away. No remorse, no grief, no guilt. He simply killed her.
The knife in her heart twists with an agony that forces a cry from her covered lips as she squeezes her eyes tightly closed to clear the stinging tears, feeling them trickling down her cheeks.
When she forces her eyes open again, Jonathan Archer stands up. "Hoshi Sato, you have been found guilty of the Charges against you. It is the ruling of this Court that you be stripped of the rank of Ensign; along with all of the rights and privileges attendant to that rank."
x
Hoshi's heart stops. She can't breathe. Her body goes as cold as death itself, but then a greater horror fills her as she sees Archer signal to O'Cathain, and he comes around the table toward her.
"You bastard!" She whispers to Archer from behind her covering hands, her voice trembling, trying to hold back the tears as he sends her beloved to execute her. "You fucking Bastard!"
O'Cathain stops before her, and she forces herself to wipe her eyes and cheeks, to lower her hands; to control her trembling body; to hold back the tears, to not humiliate herself further than she has already been. She forces herself to meet his eyes.
"I really hope, Hoshi, that this does not change anything between us."
x
She is too shocked to answer. He had voted against her, was going to ruin her publicly, humiliate her, and he was concerned about their relationship?
"Oh! no! sir!" She answers with as heavy an irony as she can achieve; her hatred for him in this moment as incendiary as her love had been.
She stands up straight, forcing herself to keep her hands to her sides, to stand still, forcing herself not to move, not to show what she is feeling. Her control is fragile, her heart pounding in her chest, but she is determined to take it with as much dignity as she can muster, even while her pounding heart is shattering and she trembles with grief and betrayal.
He reaches out, taking the zipper of her uniform and lowering it as she stands perfectly still, barely breathing, not moving at all; fighting to keep her face frozen into an impassive mask as her heart shatters. He lowers the zipper just enough so he can reach the back clasp of the silver rank pin on the right side of her uniform.
She keeps perfectly still, eyes locked forward past his head but unwilling to see the Officers beyond. He does not touch her at all as he works. Just as well; for she swears in that moment that he is never, ever going to touch her again.
He finishes, raising the zipper back up to its former place. He takes a step back from her and snaps to Attention, executing a crisp salute as his lips break into a wide grin.
"Congratulations, Lieutenant!"
x
The entire room comes to Attention, saluting smartly, holding the Honor as she gasps in disbelief; then can breathe no longer. Her heart is pounding; pounding very, very hard. She looks down to where a second rank pip, a twin of the first, gleams on her chest. She looks about her, the entire room motionless in Honor, holding the salute until it would be returned; then up into the grinning face of her beloved; back to her chest with the twin rank insignia glinting in the light; at her friends and colleagues surrounding her; at the Command Crew before her holding salute and grins of delight while behind them the background seems to dim; at the pins again, now seeming to grow oddly dim; at Seamus going out of focus, the background behind him dimming; at the pins which seem somehow to shine, out of focus in a closing darkness a moment before a part of her stunned mind remembers in the final moment that she'd stopped breathing and had never resumed.
Seamus O'Cathain is just close enough to catch her before she hits the floor.
Epilogue
Unfocused, diffused light comes to Hoshi Sato first, even before the awareness that she is lying down and that there is a gentle hand patting her right cheek. She opens her eyes wider to see a circle of faces looking down from high above her, one particular face very close at her left side. "Seamus?"
"You okay, honey?" He asks, concerned. She realizes she is lying on several chairs placed together, not entirely comfortably, as he kneels beside her and the Command Crew surrounds her, several other bodies visible between theirs in a field of Starfleet blue. She looks down at herself, a moment of anxiety banished by the sight of two silver pips on her chest. "Yes, it's real." He confirms.
"We're really sorry, Hoshi." Archer says, coming on one knee beside her so she can see him better. "When we realized you thought all of this was real, that you were in trouble, we jumped to the 'last page' of the script. We thought you knew what a 'Special' Court Martial was, that it's all a Starfleet tradition."
"I never went all the way through the Academy, remember?"
"Now we do."
"And I wasn't allowed any visitors."
"Most people use this time as a period of reflection upon their careers, and preparation for their new lives. We didn't realize you wouldn't see it that way."
He holds out his hand. "I'm sorry you were …" His voice falls off as he realizes he doesn't have a strong enough word for what she'd been through because of that lack.
"Inconvenienced?" She offers, surprised she is able to smile and liking it. She takes his hand and he helps her to sit up. The chairs feel a lot more comfortable when she can sit in only one. "You know, this has the trappings of a practical joke."
"The promotion's real, Lieutenant. As to the rest…" He is forced to admit that: "I guess you could look at it that way. Traditions do tend to be … interesting." He catches the look in her eyes. "All right, one freebie a piece." He promises.
"You'll never know what hit you … sir."
"I look forward to it." He helps her to her feet, where everyone is waiting to greet and congratulate her.
For a few moments Hoshi is caught up in a whirlwind of her friends, but finally she comes face to face with Seamus again.
x
"I'm sorry about the gong, honey." He says. "I thought it would mean more to have something personal involved in the ceremony."
"Well… I guess …"
"You should know, Lieutenant," Archer says, to save any further embarrassment, "that you have some very good friends among the crew. Those who haven't been to one of these went to … extraordinary lengths on your behalf."
She turns to the throng of friends surrounding her, knowing who and what 'extraordinary lengths'. "Thank you, all." She turns to Trip. "But you… I thought that you…"
"Oh, don't make a mistake; I was angry, and if you ever do that again I'll slap you in irons, or just slap you silly." He says with a smile, and she is able to grin a bit as well. "But after I cooled down, and started reviewing your record; which really is exemplary, by the way; I started thinking that maybe you were right about some things, things I had been … well, not closing my eyes to, but still not seeing. So I amended my report."
She turns to Archer. "Those 'strong recommendations'; the ones 'that take the matter completely out of your hands'."
"Starfleet had to approve the promotion, of course, as well as other recommendations Trip made."
"It's that point you made on Declan that crystallized it." Tucker tells her, feeling a bit sheepish considering how things had progressed. "There really was an … imbalance with the female officers, as you so dramatically pointed out. In fact, we're going to be looking into that in the coming weeks." He tells her, sharing a non-secret.
"I trust that there will be a clearer understanding about the 'Special' in this … tradition."
"Count on it."
"Well, Lieutenant," Archer catches her attention, "there's a celebration in your honor as soon as we get this room put back into shape. But before then, though we had a moment of 'emergency' to deal with, you have some unfinished business to complete."
"I do, sir?"
"Yes." He comes to Attention, saluting crisply and holding it. Throughout the room, every officer and enlisted person duplicates the gesture, the few civilians doing so as well.
Lieutenant Hoshi Sato looks at her friends and colleagues; all those she loves surrounding her, and hopes the smile on her face hides the lump that forms in her throat and the moistness in her eyes. She draws to Attention and returns the salute as sharply as she ever had.
