Walk in the Dark

By Drogna

Chapter 7

Lieutenant Reed had been back on full duty in the Armoury for only a couple of days, when there had been a failure in one of the power conduits. The failure had caused massive systems malfunctions and a lot of work for everyone. Engineering was working a double shift and looked as if it could turn into a triple.

Now Reed found himself in need of something to keep him going. Normally working late wouldn't have been a problem, but his injury had weakened him, and he hadn't been prepared for how tired it would make him feel. He entered the mess hall, picked up a mug and filled it with strong black tea, knowing that there was more to be done before he could go to bed. He noticed Hoshi, Travis and Trip sitting at one of the tables in the centre of the room and decided to see if they would mind him joining them.

"Is this seat taken?" asked Reed.

"No, sir," said Hoshi, with a bright smile.

"Malcolm," said Trip with a nod and Travis added a "Sir" in greeting.

"So is the Armoury still in one piece?" asked Travis.

Reed took a sip of his tea, considered the question and nodded. "Well at least we should be able to defend ourselves now, but we still have an inordinate number of damaged systems to repair."

Reed watched Trip play with the piece of pecan pie that he had in front of him. The Engineer wasn't paying much attention to the conversation and seemed to be spending most of his time staring out of the window. He'd briefly seen Trip earlier dashing around trying to fix things but hadn't had time to speak with him about anything other than the power problems.

"The communication console wasdamaged as well," said Hoshi. "I've had to reload the language database from the backups."

"This is certainly one day that I'll be glad when it's over," said Reed.

"Does anyone know what this week's film is?" asked Hoshi.

"I haven't heard yet," said Reed.

"I think they mentioned something about a James Bond double bill," said Travis.

"Which actor is playing James Bond?" asked Reed.

"I don't know. Does it make a difference?" Travis glanced over at Trip obviously expecting him to jump in here with some comment. Trip didn't notice the look and still didn't seem to be paying much attention to the conversation.

"Personally I always thought no one was better than Sean Connery," said Reed.

"Really? I'm more of a Pierce Brosnan fan. Better looking." Hoshi grinned mischievously.

"Come on, you can't beat Daniel Craig. Casino Royale was my favourite," said Travis.

"What about you, Commander?" asked Reed, trying to bring Trip into the conversation.

Trip looked up, surprised. "Sorry, what are we talking about?"

"James Bond movies," supplied Hoshi, looking a little worriedly at Trip.

"Not really my sort of movie. I've got to get back to Engineering." Trip rose from the table and picked up his plate of half-eaten pie, missing the concerned glances that passed between his colleagues. They watched him leave the mess hall and almost bump into T'Pol as he did so. T'Pol merely raised an eyebrow at the near miss and inclined a head at Trip's muttered apology. Reed indicated that T'Pol should join them and a few moments later the Vulcan sat down at the table with a mug of mint tea.

"What is up with Commander Tucker?" asked Travis.

"He has rather a lot on his mind, Ensign," Reed pointed out.

"I know, sir, but he wasn't like this before."

Reed was glad of Travis's direct approach to the question that had been worrying them, but it did seem to be rather strange to wonder why Trip was upset. Obviously Trip was going to be sad and depressed, they all knew what his problem was, but something was different now. His behaviour had changed recently. Trip had seemed to be dealing with his illness, albeit by ignoring it, but now he was sullen and withdrawn most of the time.

"He's been like this ever since he was discharged from sickbay," Hoshi put in. "I went down to Engineering today to see him about repairs to the com system and it was like talking with a robot."

"He is very ill," T'Pol reminded them. "However I agree that he seems to be acting differently."

"He's kind of just going through the motions," agreed Travis.

"It's almost like we have the ghost of Trip Tucker haunting Engineering," said Reed, and everyone around the table knew exactly what he meant. The problem was that no one had any idea what to do about helping Trip.

Lieutenant Catherine Francis looked out of the view screen at her long distance patient. He looked a little tired and preoccupied. He wasn't looking at her but at his clasped hands that rested on the desk in front of him.

"Captain Archer called me. He told me about your unsuccessful away mission and that you are no longer cleared for away missions."

"Yeah, well, it's probably for the best. I was just getting in everyone's way," said Trip.

"You were originally assigned to the mission because of your Engineering expertise, weren't you?" asked Catherine.

Trip nodded and looked up for the first time during the conversation. "I know that I'm good at my job. There's nothing wrong with my brain. Well, actually there is, but I'm still thinking fine for the moment. Phlox is monitoring that side of things too."

"What makes you think that you were in the way?"

Trip sighed. "If I hadn't been sick then T'Pol wouldn't have needed to split the team, Malcolm probably wouldn't have been shot and T'Pol wouldn't have had to put herself in danger to get me out of there. Even when I'm back on the ship this damn illness means I'm stuck in sickbay for a week."

"Did the Captain say that these things were your fault?"

"No, if anything he's been going out of his way to say that they're not. T'Pol tried to blame herself and Malcolm wanted the Captain to think that it was his fault."

"So, they don't think you were in the way, and they don't think it was your fault."

"But I'm still not going on any more away missions."

"As far as I understand it this is more to do with the physical aspects of your illness and not because you aren't a useful member of the crew."

"Maybe, but I'm not exactly pulling my weight. The Captain can't send his Chief Engineer on away missions, and that's a pretty big problem. It's kind of in my job description." Trip allowed a lopsided smile to grace his lips for a second.

"Captain Archer isn't just interested in your ability to physically go on away missions. There's a lot you can be doing on board Enterprise."

"But I'm getting more and more ill everyday. Pretty soon I'm not going to be any use to anyone," replied Trip.

"You just told me that your brain works fine," said Catherine.

"Yeah, but for how much longer?" asked Trip.

"You know the course that this disease will take, Commander. We've done everything we can to prepare for that and make sure that you'll be taken care of in the future."

"I know, and I'm really grateful for all your help there."

"Do you remember we discussed why it was important to sort everything out?"

"Yeah, it's one less thing to worry about, so I can concentrate on the here and now."

"Exactly and you're not doing it. I know that you see this as sign of your ongoing decline, but if you're continually thinking about your death, then you're not enjoying the time you have. You're still the Chief Engineer of Enterprise and you're still a valued member of the crew. If the Captain really believed you couldn't do your job anymore then you'd be on your way home."

"But I'm not getting any better, I'm getting worse, and eventually the Captain will have to send me back to Earth," replied Trip. "I guess I could cope with that when it was years away, but it just suddenly got a lot closer."

Catherine looked at him. "I can't tell you it won't happen, because we both know that day will come. You also knew that you wouldn't be able to go on away missions forever. Last time we spoke you'd made good progress in accepting the changes in your life that your illness has produced."

"Yeah, but I'm getting damn tired of accepting the inevitable," said Trip.

Trip never would have believed that he could feel so disconnected to events on his own ship. They had answered a distress call from an Andorian ship and instead of being sent to help out his Andorian counterparts, Hess had been despatched. Trip had known it wouldn't be long before another away mission came up and he would be left on Enterprise. That in itself wasn't a problem, he didn't always go on away missions, he wasn't always needed, but this was an alien ship with engine trouble. While he could have stood it if it had been a planet, this was just adding insult to injury. He'd come out here at least partly to play with alien engineering, and if he couldn't do that then he was little more than a glorified mechanic.

He was running standard diagnostics when he should have been on the Andorian ship, up to his elbows in circuits and engine parts. To make matters worse Phlox had decided that he needed some more help in the walking department and had given him a cane. It had come with strict instructions to use it, except that he was doing his best to ignore that instruction and the cane was sitting unused in his office. When Phlox found out there would be hell to pay, but that was in the future.

Trip looked up from what he was doing to see Lieutenant Reed enter Engineering.

"What can I do for you, Malcolm?" asked Trip, concentrating on the console in front of him and not really wanting to chat.

"I was wondering if you fancied a spot of lunch?"

"Too busy," said Trip. "And I would have thought you'd be drooling over the Andorian weapons."

"Commander Keren won't let me anywhere near anything interesting," said Reed. "Actually the Armoury is performing standard diagnostics."

"Same here and that's why I'm busy. I promised the Captain that I'd have these done by the end of the day. I'm not in the best of moods so why don't you just let get on with what I'm doing."

"You're just annoyed because Hess is getting to play with a new alien engine and you're not," said Reed.

"Yeah, and why would you think that, Malcolm?" asked Trip, sarcastically. "Maybe it's because I'm stuck here doing routine maintenance instead of out there where I should be."

Reed didn't look sympathetic. "Feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to make the Captain change his mind."

"If it had been to a planet I could have understood," said Trip, a little defeated. "How much trouble can an Andorian ship be?"

Reed just looked at him as if he'd grown a second head.

"Okay, good point," said Trip. "But it's not like they're unknown aliens."

"Last time we had Andorians on board, Captain Archer ended up cutting off one of Shran's antennae to prevent an intergalactic war," said Reed. "Now, I don't have all day, Commander, so let's get a move on."

"You're not going to leave until I go and get some lunch, are you?"

"No, and you'll be needing this," replied Reed, producing Trip's cane from his office.

Trip rolled his eyes and grabbed the walking stick from his friend. "Okay, Malcolm, let's go."

Trip shouted to Rostov that he was going for lunch and they headed out of Engineering. Reed adjusted the speed of his pace so that Trip could keep up easily and then started a conversation on some upgrades to the phase cannons. He had purposefully chosen a controversial topic that he knew they disagreed on how to implement. In the past few weeks Trip had shown very little enthusiasm for arguing about engineering projects. Reed had felt guilty that he was coming to Trip with ideas that he was sure the Engineer would have turned down flat in the past only to find Trip gave in with a little gentle prodding.

"I was thinking that we could route the power for the particle accelerators through the conversion chambers before they reach the firing circuits," said Reed.

"They're your cannons, Malcolm, you do whatever you think is best," said Trip.

"You realise that will draw a lot more power if we do that," said Reed.

"We can afford it," said Trip.

Reed abruptly stopped walking and turned angrily to confront Trip. "That's it, I've had it up to here with you, Mister Tucker."

"I'm agreeing with you!"

"Exactly, you're not putting any effort into this. If I'd suggested this two months ago, you'd have told me where to stick it." If Reed was worried about senior officers being seen shouting at each other in the middle of a corridor then he wasn't showing it.

"I don't get it, Malcolm. You're angry with me, because I won't argue with you?"

"Yes, because I rely on you to tell me when I'm going too far and putting my own little corner of Enterprise above everything else. And because it's been like having a pod person as our Chief Engineer for the past two weeks. You're moping around and feeling sorry for yourself and we're all getting tired of it."

"Yeah, well I've got a damn good reason to feel sorry for myself. In case you'd forgotten, I'm dying, Malcolm. What do you expect me to do?"

"I expect you to give the best you can to this ship instead of just going through the motions. You know what makes you a brilliant Engineer? Your love of this ship and your love of solving puzzles. If you're not going to be that person then you might as well go home now, because you're not any use to us like this."

Trip stared at him, mouth slightly open and Reed thought that maybe he'd gone a little too far. Finally Trip closed his mouth, swallowed and spoke at normal volume. "You can be a real asshole sometimes."

"Sometimes," agreed Reed.

"I can't believe you're asking me to route the power for the particle accelerators through the conversion chambers. Do you know what kind of feedback that would cause? You'd end up with relay failures across the starboard side of C deck before you'd even fired a shot."

"I don't think that will be a problem if we build in a couple of reversion buffers before the final intercept point," replied Reed.

Trip rolled his eyes. "You were going to do that all along, weren't you? This was just to see how riled you could get me."

"Welcome back, Trip," smiled Reed.

"I will get you back for this, Malcolm. So, "pod person"?" asked Trip, grinning.

"You're not the only person who watches movies," replied Reed.

Suddenly the ship lurched to one side and they were both sent sprawling.

"What the hell was that?" asked Trip, as Reed helped him back to his feet.

The tactical alert began to sound.

"I don't know but it can't possibly be good. I need to get to the bridge. Can you make it back to Engineering on your own?"

"I'm a little slow, Malcolm, not completely crippled," replied Trip.

Reed spared Trip a small quirk of his lips before he dashed away to the bridge. Trip went to the nearest communicator and called down to Engineering. He'd learnt that finding out if he needed to walk back to Engineering or if the problem was around the corner was helpful these days and saved a lot of time.

"Any idea what's going on?" he asked Rostov who had answered the com.

"There was an explosion on the Andorian ship, sir," said Rostov.

"What? Anyone hurt?"

"We don't know yet," said Rostov. "Some debris from the explosion impacted Enterprise and I think we may have a problem with the EPS grid."

"Damn it, we just got that fixed," said Trip. "Start routing around the damage and I'll be there as soon as I can."

Trip would have run if he could, but the best he could manage was a fast walk. He'd discovered that he could do a sort of lollop but it required a lot of energy and it didn't sound as if the situation was too desperate at the moment. He made it to Engineering as quickly as he could and found chaos being presided over by Lieutenant Kaspera. His engineering staff were all in action, some putting out electrical fires, others hurrying out of Engineering with toolkits to get to failure sites across the ship.

"Report, Lieutenant," said Trip and got a run down of ship wide systems failures.

Trip looked over the visual schematic showing where the various failures had taken place. It looked like someone had thrown broken glass at their hull. Broken shards of sharp material had embedded themselves into Enterprise's outer skin. "Son of a bitch, what the hell is their hull made of?"

"We haven't been able to determine that yet, sir. It looks like a plasma conduit blew on the Andorian ship," said Kaspera.

Trip pulled up the damage report. A piece of the Andorian ship's hull had embedded itself in the port nacelle and cut through one of the primary EPS conduits. Other smaller pieces of debris had caused further disruption, but they weren't in essential areas. If they couldn't get power to the nacelle then they were dead in the water.

Trip suddenly noticed that the hull piece wasn't just disrupting the power, it was building a charge. The grid wasn't built forthe amount of energy it was buildingand this was very bad.

"Shut us down now!"

"Sir?" asked Kaspera.

"Shut down the EPS grid, take everything off line now! If we don't stop feeding power to that nacelle it's going to blow." Trip made his way to the warp engine and began to power it down.

"Yes, sir," replied Kaspera and got the rest of the Engineering staff involved in shutting down.

Trip reckoned that they had about two minutes before everything went to hell. If he stopped feeding the nacelle power then the hull piece would stop charging, but then the power it had accumulated would need to go somewhere. It would discharge through Enterprise's EPS grid and take out every relay it passed unless Trip could think of something.

"Tucker to the Bridge, I'm implementing an emergency shutdown, we're going dark for a moment."

"Understood, contact me again when we're back up," said Archer. Trip was once again glad that Archer trusted his Engineer and didn't expect an explanation as to why he was about to plunge the ship into darkness. Trip heard Reed giving a report on the status of the Andorian ship in the background. He remembered his earlier conversation with Reed in the corridor and a brainwave hit.

"Kaspera, hold the shut down until I give you the signal," Trip called out to the young Lieutenant.

"Yes, sir," Kaspera replied from his position by the final switch that needed to be thrown to darken Enterprise.

"Everyone get back from the bulkheads in case this doesn't work."

He clambered down from the warp engine controls and limped as quickly as he could to the main EPS routing panel. He hit redirection keys rapidly until he finally had the correct configuration. He overrode the systems that he needed and was done.

"Now!" Trip shouted.

Kaspera pressed the final button to execute the sequence that wouldkill all power onEnterprise. The lights went out and they waited. Suddenly a cascade of sparks zipped across the ceiling of Engineering, illuminating in flashes engineers running for cover as it did so. Then a jolt was felt through the deck plating, followed by a second jolt and then silence.

"Bring up the power, slowly, and make sure the port nacelle's power grid is locked out," instructed Trip to the dark room. Someone shouted "yes, sir," and soon the lights were back on and everyone was moving back to their stations. Trip surveyed the damage. The pulse had moved through Enterprise taking out systems as it went, but it had followed the course Trip had set out for it. It wasn't anywhere near as catastrophic as it could have been. If the pulse had reached the warp core then he wouldn't be standing looking at the damage, Enterprise would have disappeared in a fireball of antimatter.

Trip moved to the communicator. "Tucker to Bridge, we're back up, Captain, but it's going to be a while before we can assess the damage. We're not going anywhere until we can get out on the hull to fix the damaged nacelle."

"Why did we need to shut down?" asked Archer.

Trip gave his Captain the quick version of the problem. "I had to do something with the energy build-up, so I routed it out through the phase cannons," finished Trip.

"Good work, Trip," said Archer. "You'll be pleased to know that Lieutenant Hess and her team are uninjured and will be on their way back as soon as they've repaired the blown plasma conduit. Let me know when you have a full damage report."

"Yes, sir," replied Trip. He wondered how long he'd have to wait before a certain Armoury officer stormed into Engineering to complain about overloading the phase cannons that they had been about to upgrade.

Trip smiled. Who needed Andorian engines to play with? Enterprise had enough surprises for him and she hadn't caught him out yet.

T'Pol walked down the corridor towards sickbay, past teams of engineers repairing the damage caused by the energy pulse. All in all the damage was small compared to what it could have been. Only Commander Tucker's quick thinking had saved them from a warp-core breach. The only person who seemed to be unhappy with Commander Tucker appeared to be Lieutenant Reed, and she was mystified why he should be upset that his phase cannons had been damaged.

She entered sickbay brandishing a padd.

"T'Pol," said Phlox joyfully, "what can I do for you?"

"As we discussed, I have been researching Clarke's Syndrome in my off-duty hours," T'Pol stated, matter-of-factly.

She made it sound as if it wasn't an incredibly difficult task, but Phlox knew that it would probably have taken hours of her time. Phlox had asked T'Pol to look in the Vulcan databases that she had access to and see if there was anything that could help Trip. He hadn't really expected her to find anything but he was aware that Vulcans did suffer from mental diseases that presented with similar symptoms to Clarke's Syndrome.

"I believe that I may have found something."

"Let me have a look," said Phlox. "So far my own efforts have been less than successful. The human genome is a fascinating biological construct, but it is extremely complicated. Did you know that it takes five separate mutated markers to produce Clarke's Syndrome?"

"I am aware of that from my research," said T'Pol, handing Phlox the padd.

Phlox tapped down and read T'Pol's notes. His hope faded as he read about the procedure that T'Pol had found. "This could be very dangerous, T'Pol."

"I know, but given Earth's refusal to do the necessary genetic research, this may be our best option," said T'Pol.

"You're suggesting that we use an experimental Vulcan mutagen to repair his genes. It could kill him, and, even if it works, the side effects could be extremely debilitating. We can't do it on Enterprise, either, he'd have to go to Vulcan. I'm not even sure that my medical colleagues there would be willing to treat a human patient with a therapy designed by Vulcans for other Vulcans."

"I have contacts in the Vulcan Medical Directorate who would be willing to help us," said T'Pol.

Phlox looked at the data in front of him and shook his head. This was the only viable option that they had found so far, but he had reservations about recommending this to his patient. It was a painful procedure with little chance of success.

"The medication cannot cure him. This is his best chance," said T'Pol.

"Even if he does go for this treatment, the damage already done to his body won't be repaired," said Phlox.

"Which is why it must be done as soon as possible," said T'Pol.

"I'm still working on a cure, T'Pol. I have several promising avenues yet to explore," said Phlox.

"Commander Tucker's condition is deteriorating and we both know that it could take years for your work to produce a cure. We should at least make him aware of all of the options." T'Pol had a look of determination in her eyes.

Phlox looked down at the padd unhappily. "You're right, we must show this data to him."