A/N: Welcome back! This is meant to be a funny episode featuring the main cast. I've always wanted to do a silly, irreverent sports episode a la DS9's 7x04 Take Me Out to the Holosuite, so that's riffed off of here. Enterprise's story arc is actually based on the suggestion box scene from an episode of The Office, 2x08 Performance Review. And, yes, the cold open is inspired by The Full Bullpen from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Torturing Malcolm is a really popular trope around here, but I prefer to torture him by forcing him out of his comfort zone and making our favorite socially awkward tactical officer as uncomfortable as possible. You'll see what I mean.
Things to look forward to in this episode: Trip's premature midlife crisis and very Tom Paris -like fixation on 20th century culture, an internet safety PSA, Kevin and Sparky (the real heroes of this story), and a timely Parks and Rec reference. I realize I made the Maelstrom sound like the party ship compared to the Enterprise, and that's because...yeah, it definitely is.
Since we've officially run our course of diplomatic mission and transitional episodes, what's been your favorite story so far?
Starting next chapter, this story will be much darker and more violent, but such is the nature of war. Next time, we learn the what and why of Alira's secret mission.
Some scenes managed to make their way out of cut-for-time purgatory of the last chapter and find their way here. I don't believe the switches of scenery between ships are too confusing, but please let me know if they are. Still don't own anything, just using this story to keep myself occupied during self isolation. Enjoy!
Season Five
Episode Eleven: Letters from Subspace
Maelstrom Captain's Log, January 21st, 2156: We're three weeks into our mission to the Alpha Eridani system. Some of our new commissions have had trouble adjusting to life aboard a starship, but our department heads have performed admirably in bringing them into the fold. I'm proud of them for always maintaining professionalism where it really counts.
A few minutes after midnight, the doors of a turbolift opened and Travis poked his head out, looking to the left and to the right. When he was sure there was no one around, he took a tentative step onto D Deck and gestured for his companions to join him.
"Are you sure about this, Ethan?"
"Absolutely. We gotta do it now, before I lose my nerve." The man of the hour stepped into the hallway. He glanced around the corner where the aft section curved into port, peering into the artificial darkness created by the environmental controls. He was stretching as if he were about to accomplish some significant athletic feat.
He was quickly followed by Hoshi, who looked a little apprehensive. Nervously, she passed her PADD back and forth between her hands. "You know, Alira's not going to like missing out on this."
"Serves her right for getting gamma shift conn again," Novakovich countered, placing the tactical helmet he'd stolen from the armory over his head and tightening the straps. He took a seat in the desk chair he'd dragged all the way from his quarters, experimentally turning this way and that. "Travis, do you have the goods?"
Carefully, as though they were conducting some sort of back alley illegal trade, their helmsman slid his backpack off his shoulder and onto the deck plating with an audible clink. He unzipped the largest pocket and produced a canister of thruster propellant, freshly siphoned off from their forward array.
"Video at the ready?"
"Roger that," Hoshi replied, training her PADD at the back of his head.
"It's time," he said with an incredible amount of solemnity, and popped the cap off of the canister. His finger poised over the trigger, he gestured down the hallway. "I pity a lot of officers around here. They look out there and see a problem. I look out there and see an opportunity."
Within their first few days aboard, the senior officers came to the unfortunate realization that the designers at the Utopia Planitia shipyards had swapped out the deck plating of the previous NX vessels for a new substance, one which kept its shine easier even after being trampled by hundreds of boots a day, but was incredibly slick and tended to catch most off guard. Many of them had slipped and fallen at least once, not to mention the disaster that was the MACO's attempt at a run through the corridors earlier in the week. Hoshi had come upon a half dozen of them laying in a heap on the floor, trying to regain their bearings.
This had started the lot of them talking over meals in the mess hall; Ethan, their resident mad scientist, was willing to bet he could slide on the slippery floor all the way from the aft to the forward turbolifts on the port side of D Deck, where he'd noticed the deck plating was particularly slick. Immediately, they'd started plotting, and by the end of the week, they had a plan.
Besides, they were in between ports at the moment. It wasn't as if they were spoiled for choice for things to do.
"I can't believe you're really gonna do it," she said.
"That's right, Hoshi. I'm doing the full corridor!" He exclaimed, throwing his arms wide.
Travis took hold of the top of his desk chair and placed him squarely in the middle of the hallway. "Be careful, don't spray that propellant in your face or on your hands. It'll make certain body parts freeze and fall off." He laughed, but their helmsman grabbed his shoulder, and his voice was suddenly grave, sincere: "I'm not exaggerating."
"Do you want some motivational music? Maybe a little Eye of the Tiger?" Hoshi asked, entirely serious.
"Hoshi, please. I'm a professional," Ethan pulled his knees up so that his feet no longer touched the floor. He glanced up at her expectantly.
"Here we go," she said, pulling back, then pushing his chair as hard as she could.
For a second she was certain he was going to crash into the wall, but at the last possible opportunity, Ethan aimed the canister at the deck plating and pressed the trigger, sending him shooting in the opposite direction around the curve of the hallway. He whooped excitedly, and the two of them dashed after him, struggling to keep up with the speed he was traveling.
There was a near miss at a set of quarters down the hall as a very tired looking Private Carender peeked out. Travis shouted at him to get out of the way, and the MACO complied, looking more than a little confused as their chief science officer rocketed past him in a desk chair.
Hoshi and Travis were running now, cheering him on as he approached his final destination. Two more puffs of propellant, and he turned slightly, giving them an enthusiastic thumbs up.
In that moment, two things happened. The doors of the turbolift opened, and their CMO stepped out. Ethan realized a fraction of a second too late that he wouldn't be able to stop, and his expression morphed into one of pure shock and horror. Yuris mirrored his surprise, albeit in a much more understated manner, and put his hands up defensively.
They collided, knocking the poor doctor over and pushing them both into the lift. There was a moment of heavy silence where they weren't sure if either of them were injured, followed by the faint whoosh of the doors closing part of the way. Hoshi hurriedly stopped recording and stashed her PADD in her pocket.
Tentatively, Travis crept forward, calling out, "Doctor? Ethan?"
Inside, Yuris was stumbling to his feet, struggling to regain his composure, smoothing out the fabric of his jacket. He glanced down at a very sheepish Lieutenant Novakovich, then to his companions, asking perfectly evenly: "The full corridor?"
Travis glanced at his chronometer, confirming that Ethan had managed to make the at least forty-five second walk in less than fifteen. He showed it to Hoshi, whose face lit up with excitement. Together, they threw their hands up, calling out, "The full corridor!"
FROM: HOSHI SATO, LIEUTENANT
TO: ALL MAELSTROM PERSONNEL
SUBJECT: COMM USAGE CODE OF CONDUCT
Please review the attached file and digitally sign indicating you acknowledge the requirements and responsibilities of using the fleet's subspace communications network. As a reminder, due to newly instated espionage prevention protocols, the communications department is required to open your correspondence if the outbound file is larger than a standard size.
Be aware that no transmission is truly private, and use discretion with what you send over subspace.
Just before the start of alpha shift, Novakovich found himself in the mess hall, hurriedly tucking into his breakfast before he was due on the bridge.
He hadn't gotten much sleep, mostly due to worry, even though the doctor had promised not to tell Captain Tucker about their misadventures in the hallways early that morning. He suspected it had less to do with the goodness in his heart and more with their promises to help him recruit his newest field medic. Hoshi had quietly promised them she'd use her sway with the Captain to curry his favor should the truth come to light, and honestly, he had more faith in her than he did in their reticent Vulcan CMO.
On the far end of the room, he saw Ensign Taxa enter the mess hall somewhat drowsily, fumbling with the pitcher, refilling her coffee mug. She approached, affording him a poor reproduction of her normal brilliant smile.
"Coming on or going off?" He asked, though he knew the answer.
"Going off," she replied with a sigh, sinking into the chair across from him and momentarily burying her face in her hands.
"I should've known. I can tell by the..." He gestured to his own face. "Deadness in your eyes."
Alira sat forward, setting her PADD onto the table. "You know, just because I only sleep six days out of the year, doesn't mean I need to get stuck on gamma shift conn all the time."
He downed the rest of his orange juice. "You're all about direct action. Did you bring it up with Commander Hammond?"
"I did. She told me that I was at the bottom of the totem pole on the senior staff roster," she replied, making air quotes around the middle of the sentence. He suspected she'd had to look that term up.
Ethan inhaled sharply through his teeth. "Ouch."
"Ensigns get overnights, Miss Taxa. It's a rite of passage." She said, performing a flawless imitation of Julia's Texan accent. It was entirely unexpected, and Ethan couldn't help but laugh. "It's insane. I've got more military experience than the Captain and the Commander combined."
He sometimes forgot that she was three times his age, but he suspected that didn't matter a lick to Starfleet. Glancing over her shoulder, he confirmed he only had ten minutes to report, and started to eat faster. In between bites, he asked, "Any plans for the rest of the day?"
"Oh, I was thinking I'd go for a run." She paused, taking a long sip from her mug. "Maybe I'll beat my head against a wall or drink a liter of warp plasma. Who knows? The day is still young."
Ethan, like a majority of the crew, was aware of Alira's entanglement with her former superior officer. Over the past few weeks, she'd been mostly herself, though a little somber, her usual effervescent sparkle somewhat dulled. It was in this time they'd grown closer as friends, and she'd started to confide in him the kind of deep loneliness she was experiencing. She'd said that her people were known to be patient, but for some reason, she was having trouble living up to that. Reaching for her PADD and turning on the screen, he confirmed his suspicions.
She'd been flipping through pictures of their recent trip to Europe: the two of them cuddled up on top of the Eiffel Tower, walking through the Colosseum, making faces at their reflections in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Ethan didn't think he'd ever seen Lieutenant Commander Reed look happy at all, or even smile come to think of it, unless she was around.
"You see, this is your problem." He tipped the edge of the PADD towards her. "You need a distraction. Something else to focus your energy on."
Alira frowned, a rare sight indeed. She intertwined her fingers and began to twiddle her thumbs. "What do you suggest?"
As if on cue, Lieutenant Mayweather entered the mess hall, looking a little rushed. He grabbed an apple from the bowl at the end of the buffet line and approached their table, gesturing broadly. "Is it my imagination, or did Hoshi just tell us not to send nudes over subspace?"
She retrieved her PADD and pulled up the recent message, which had been sent to everyone on board. "It sure does look like it."
"You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Ethan locked eyes with her and raised his eyebrows.
Alira scoffed, holding a hand to her chest. "Ethan, really!" She took another suspiciously long drink. "I'd think you'd know me better than that."
He shrugged and returned his attention to his breakfast. When she was sure he wasn't looking, Alira winked conspiratorially at Travis, who burst out laughing.
Novakovich was clearly onto their game. "That's good. I think they might have opened that letter I got from Corbin last week."
This time, they both laughed. They were familiar with his boyfriend, an environmental technician at Vega Colony, because he kept a holoimage of the two of them on his desk in the science laboratories. They'd been together through thick and thin, withstanding all the trials and tribulations, except for-
"She might've just replied for me," Ethan surmised. "And whatever she said, it must've been rough, because just this morning I got a Dear John letter."
Travis took a seat at the table. "I'm so sorry to hear that, Ethan. I know the two of you were together for a long time."
Alira must have naturally assumed the meaning of the phrase, because she reached across the table and patted his hand, though she looked a little uncomfortable with the physical contact. "Take all the time you need. It's especially hard when there's no way to get closure face-to-face."
He shook his head. "Guys, I saw it coming a light year away. Really, it's fine."
They didn't look particularly convinced. Alira pulled back and snapped her fingers, paraphrasing what he had said to her moments earlier. "You just need someone else to focus your energy on."
"She's right. New ship, new crewmates. Put yourself out there."
Ethan set his fork down and crossed his arms. "You know, I've been keeping my eye on someone since we shipped out. I don't think I have a chance, though."
"You never know. Give it a shot."
Suddenly, Commander Hammond burst out of the Captain's mess, looking tremendously rushed. From across the room, she made eye contact with Travis and stalked towards them, explaining, "You're about to get a message about Mr. Tucker's scheme to get the senior officers to bond. I just want it on the record that I told him it was a bad idea."
Before they could question that statement, she turned and strode towards the hatch.
Seconds later, their PADDs chimed almost in unison. Alira was the first to look, apprehensively activating her screen and maneuvering to her direct messages.
Travis and Ethan were silent as she read, watching her expression for clues. She appeared confused, then pulled up another page, then began to nod enthusiastically, a smile spreading across her lips.
Abruptly, she rose from her chair. They were waiting for her to give an explanation, but none was offered. "It's perfect!" She cried, and all but ran for the door.
Enterprise Captain's Log, January 21st, 2156: We are presently four weeks from the Solnaran system at warp five-point-five, and four days from course diversion. I have noticed a decrease in morale since the Maelstrom commissioned. After speaking with the Commodore at length, I believe I have identified a proper solution to this problem.
During lunchtime on alpha shift, Malcolm sat in the far corner of the mess hall, trying his best to make himself scarce.
He'd be lying if he said he'd assimilated his function as acting first officer easily; far and above his regular commitments in the armory and on the bridge, he was also now responsible for organizing duty shifts and dealing with staffing, whether that be placing officers on report, holding one-on-ones with department heads, or settling petty disputes. The latter was his least favorite part of the job-the truth of the matter was that he wasn't very much a people person, and never had been, which made listening to two crewmen second class argue about noise levels in their shared quarters all the more difficult.
He saw their chief engineer enter, and preemptively hid his face behind his PADD, hoping she wouldn't see him. Invariably, Lieutenant Commander Hess's department, being the largest on the entire ship, would have some kind of quarrel going on within it on any given day. He wasn't looking forward to another impromptu counseling session.
It was too late. Anna caught a glimpse of the motion of his hand, and soon she was standing in front of his table, toting a plate of Chef's latest concoction. "Do you mind, Mr. Reed?"
"Not at all, Ms. Hess," he lied, giving her a not entirely convincing smile. "How are you?"
He didn't particularly care to know the answer, but on the Commodore's insistence, he'd been trying to be more friendly and welcoming with the crew, especially the senior officers. It had been extremely difficult, especially now that a piece of his heart was missing.
Apparently, it had been a busy day in engineering, because Anna's coveralls were stained with smoke, grease, and heaven knew what else. The cowlick of her pixie cut, which was normally brushed over to one side, was sticking straight up, and a streak of grime colored the side of her face. She sighed dramatically and waved her fork around in the air. "You know what they say, the devil works hard, but night shift works harder."
He knew exactly what she meant. Gamma shift was the notorious witching hour of a typical day aboard the Enterprise, where all means of equipment malfunctioned, hostile species appeared on long range sensors, and crewmen apparently forgot how to do their jobs properly. More than once, he'd shown up on alpha shift to discover that the armory was mere minutes from bursting into flames, sometimes literally.
"I can't leave these assholes alone for longer than a couple hours without them nearly causing a warp core breach," Anna complained. "That EPS control specialist we stole from the Galveston put the primary plasma injector in backwards at around 0300 hours this morning. Caused a hell of an echo in the warp chamber. By 0330, I was getting called out of my quarters because Lieutenant Moss was convinced the entire ship was going to explode."
"His former CO may have been trying to get rid of him with his recommendation," Malcolm remarked.
"I'd stake my reputation on it. The man's useless. I've told him as much." Anna paused. It occurred to him that given present company, she was the perfect match for his cynicism. "What are you doing down here? I would've thought you'd be hiding in the armory."
"The Captain invited me to lunch. She says she has something important to discuss with me."
"Oh!" She smirked and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. "Maybe they're shipping you off to the Maelstrom after all. I'd happily step up to first officer."
"Don't I wish," he mumbled. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Ensign Singh enter the mess hall and make a beeline directly towards them.
"Mail call," Dita informed them in her usual chipper, singsong manner, handing them each a PADD. "You're the last on my rounds. Max sends their love from Columbia as usual, Anna. And, sir-I'm sure you know who that's from."
He surely did. As Dita watched, they both began to scroll through their messages, smiling quietly to themselves. Seeing her friends' reactions to their daily correspondence was one of her favorite parts of the job.
Suddenly, Malcolm's eyes grew wide as saucers and he slammed his PADD into the tabletop face down. His face was red, and he was shifting around uncomfortably in his chair. Anna immediately took notice and reached for it, asking, "What's gotten into-"
He practically launched himself across the table to prevent her from reaching it, taking them both by surprise. Once he'd secured his prize, he added it to his pile, at the very bottom where they'd both have to work to get at it. Dita raised her eyebrows, not sure what to make of what had just unfolded before her. "Sir, I-"
"Commodore!" Malcolm stood, collected his PADDs, and headed for the Captain's mess, intercepting their CO's along the way. Saying silent thanks for his unwitting saviors, he ducked into the adjoining room, leaving two very amused senior officers in his wake.
Inside, the three of them took their seats, and the Captain made a gentle overture of welcome to her guests.
"We're four days from splitting off from the Maelstrom. I went ahead and contacted the Corsettis, they're expecting us a month from now," Archer said, referring to the former warp seven project dilithium specialists that had set up shop at the Solnaran mining outpost. There were presently carrying about five metric tons of supplies in cargo bay three for them.
As the steward entered with their meals, T'Pol asked, "Are there any reports of increased Romulan activity in the area?"
He shook his head. "No change in the past month. We're lucky."
"Or perhaps they're just waiting for us to arrive." Malcolm poked as his lunch, not too interested in it at the moment. "Then they'll have a real fight on their hands."
Archer smiled, reaching for the salt shaker. "How have you been, Mr. Reed?"
"You mean, since lunch yesterday?"
He laughed. "Sure."
He wasn't sure what they wanted to know. He could tell them how much he missed his other half, had missed her for three weeks, and how it wasn't getting any better. How she stole the covers consistently, even though she wasn't the one who needed to sleep. That she was the only person he'd ever met who loved gory, gratuitous action films more than he did. How she read voraciously, the classics from all the worlds they'd been to, and salacious romance novels, with basically nothing in between. The fact that she wasn't vain, but always made sure her lipstick and nail polish were applied just so, the same shade of cherry red he'd always associated with her. He could tell them how much he missed her, missed her arms around him, missed her voice, missed her infectious laughter and sharp tongue. He could have told them how much he desperately loved her, but he didn't.
Instead, he reached for the water pitcher in the middle of the table. "Just fine, sir. Had to settle a disagreement between Crewman Marceline and Ensign Starks this morning over extra counter space in the science laboratories. Cutler wasn't around. She's got beta shift conn."
"Who won?"
"Marceline, of course. She's got all of those creatures that need their own space, or else they'll eat each other." In terms of size of their menageries, Phlox's only narrowly beat that of their resident exobiologist.
"A sensible choice," T'Pol concluded, suddenly all business. "Lieutenant Commander, we've noticed that morale among the crew has been markedly low as of late."
He tilted his head and squinted his eyes, pretending like he hadn't been a contributor. They weren't the only lovers or friends to be separated by the Maelstrom's commissioning, and he suspected they wouldn't be the last.
"We've decided to reinstate the suggestion box." At Malcolm's bewildered expression, Archer pressed on: "The Captain and I think it's a good idea to find out what the crew wants and implement their advice where we see it's appropriate."
"Sir, no one's touched the inbox of that comm code since-"
"Probably three years ago, I know." Jonathan shook his head apologetically. "That's why we're putting you in charge of determining which ones are no longer relevant and which ones are still useful."
"Ensign Singh will be sending out a message to all personnel this afternoon soliciting submissions. They'll be able to send anonymous suggestions, or approach you directly," the Captain explained with an air of finality.
It was sure to be a formidable task, one that would force him to talk to a great many people and read through dozens if not hundreds of insincere or otherwise half-baked submissions. Immediately, he wasn't looking forward to it.
"Two days from now, we'd like a full report of your top ten at the senior staff briefing. See if you can get some of them implemented in the meantime." He leaned forward, jostling him with his elbow. "Don't make that face, Mr. Reed. It's going to be fun."
"Yeah...fun," he repeated, silently plotting how he could sneak out to the shuttlebay, steal a craft, and quietly disappear for the rest of his life with no one noticing.
That evening after dinner, Trip found himself in his ready room, tidying up a few loose ends.
Hoshi had asked him repeatedly whether or not he was coming to bed, which he took as a hint with all the subtlety of a stun grenade, but he had a mountain of work on his desk that had to be done before his call with Admiral Gardner in the morning. Really, he had some idea of what the job entailed from watching Archer for so many years, but nothing could have possibly prepared him for the sheer amount of paperwork a Captain had to do just to keep the ship afloat.
There were weekly senior staff reports, fleet-wide mission updates, minutes from Coalition meetings back at HQ with delegations from the alliance consulates, transfer requests, ECS purchase orders, cargo bay manifests, and communiques from various Admirals, Ambassadors, and Chancellors. It made for incredibly dry reading, and was almost never ending.
The comm sounded, and he hesitated before reaching for it, praying it wasn't someone who would be needing something from him. Though he typically didn't mind doing things for his senior officers, his productivity was often derailed by their constant requests.
"Tucker here."
"Video message from the Enterprise for you, sir." It was Ensign Medina, their new beta shift comm officer, coming in with his indefatigable positivity.
This late at night? Glancing at his chronometer, he confirmed it was just now 2300 hours.
Except...it was a Thursday.
"Send it to my ready room," he said, hurriedly reaching into a side cabinet and shuffling around until he found what he was looking for.
Seconds later, Malcolm appeared on his screen, seemingly in his office in the armory despite the lateness of the hour. They'd been carrying on the same ritual since the first year of their mission, shortly after their misadventures together on Shuttlepod One, where they'd realized that the other might be tolerable and maybe, just maybe, they could even be friends. Trip raised his beer towards him. "How's your day been, Mal?"
"Hold on a minute," he cautioned, reaching for his bottle opener. Trip mirrored his gesture, and together they popped their caps, leaning back in their chairs. "Now it's official."
Malcolm stared off into the distance behind the screen, seemingly deep in thought. So long was the pause in between his words that he thought he was about to say something profound, but when he spoke, it was only to say, "Not great, Trip."
He sighed and propped his feet up on his desk. "Hit me with it. The therapist is in."
"Did the Captain and the Commodore talk to you about this suggestion box idea of theirs?"
This time, he couldn't help but laugh. As a matter of fact, Jon had mentioned it during their last video call, that he and T'Pol had noticed that the mood of the crew was down across the board, that it was clearly interfering with the ship's efficiency, that it hadn't really been this bad since they were en route to the Expanse to confront the Xindi. Trip suspected that maybe the persistent rumors of an impending war with the Romulans had something to do with it, but didn't dare vocalize it.
"I don't think they realize what they're getting themselves into. It's been a long time since the two of them lived outside a senior officer's block," he said, fondly remembering the trouble he'd gotten into at STC and the daily misbehavior of his brigade back in the engine room. Affording a bunch of brash, overly excitable twenty and thirty somethings a place to anonymously sound off about whatever they wanted could only really end in one way.
Malcolm was busily scrolling through submissions on his PADD; from his way his thumb never left the screen, he could tell he was having to look through hundreds of entries. Suddenly, he paused, laughing quietly to himself. "Listen to this one. Reinstate movie night, but with better movies."
It had long been a rumor that Trip was the one selecting all the movies, and his over-the-top reaction to this suggestion was all the confirmation he needed. "I'll have you know that no one's complained about the movie selection on the Maelstrom yet."
"They have no basis for comparison," Malcolm said, taking another swig of his beer. "I'll put Liz and Simon in charge in the future. Hopefully they'll bring a balanced perspective. We can't risk boring the crew to death with old horror films on repeat."
"Make fun of my taste in movies all you want. If you made the call, the only selection criteria would be whether or not something blows up." He watched as his friend rolled his eyes, then asked, "How is our Frenchman doing, by the way?"
"Pascal seems to be adjusting pretty well. Reminds me of how Travis was in the beginning, all blind enthusiasm and obscure spacefaring knowledge. He also seems to be a big hit with the female crewmen."
"It's all about the accent, Mal," he replied, pushing his God-given Southern inflection for all it was worth. "You of all people should know that."
"It never seemed to help me."
"That's because people got to know you," Trip offered, much to his dismay. His friend gradually became absorbed in his suggestion box submissions again, alternately shaking his head and grimacing. He decided to broach the one subject that Hoshi had all but forbade him to bring up to Malcolm, thinking, to hell with it. He deserved to know.
"You know, we've got a couple of MACOs that are a little too big for their britches. Sergeant Kemper's been trying to keep them in check, but…" He trailed off, noticing that he still didn't have his attention. That was sure to change. "Private Margate made a pass at Alira during last week's movie night. Hoshi was there, it happened right beside her."
His reaction was instantaneous. Malcolm rotated his chair so he was facing the screen head-on, setting aside his PADD and narrowing his eyes. "Margate? Who is he?"
"New recruit. I don't think he knew any better. They'd been talking, and I think he mistook her kindness for something else." He shook his head. "He tried to pull The Move during the last half of Carrie."
"The Move?"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about." He made a big show of sighing dramatically and wrapping his arm around the shoulders of an invisible companion. "It's a classic, Malcolm!"
"What did she do?"
"Apparently, she looked him dead in the eye and told him if he didn't move his arm in the next three seconds, she'd snap it in two."
"That's my girl." He raised his bottle towards the screen, then frowned. "Should I be worried?"
"I don't think so. I mean, Margate's gorgeous. He's a former professional swimmer, looks like a Greek god. I'd date him myself if I could." He realized he wasn't making the situation any better, and continued: "What I'm saying is, everyone who came over with us knows she only has eyes for you."
"I mean, given the circumstances-" He grimaced, as if the thought had just occurred to him. "I wouldn't blame her if she took another lover."
"Come on. You don't mean that." From his stricken expression, he could tell he was right. Trip couldn't tell if it was the distance or the pressures of the job that had his friend's self esteem at an all time low, but it certainly begged the question…
"Does this mean you haven't had the monogamy talk yet?"
Malcolm shook his head ruefully. Trip threw his hands up in frustration, then retrieved his bottle and took another swig. Using the table as a counterbalance, he pointed at the screen, speaking slowly, incredulously: "So let me get this straight. You entered into a relationship with a member of a polyamorous species and didn't talk about whether or not you'd be exclusive?"
"In my defense, I didn't feel like there was a need to lay it all out while she was here."
"Doesn't matter. If you're gonna act like this, you need to talk it out." He paused, taking in his long suffering expression. "Communication, Mal. It's the foundation of any good relationship. Ring a bell at all?"
He cleared his throat, momentarily setting aside his drink. "You're right. It needs to happen sooner rather than later. We'll be limited to five-minute video calls and text-only correspondence once we hit course divergence."
"Same here. Hoshi's been saying that Echo Three will be working overtime between us and all the patrol ships out in the Solnaran system, and we gotta be at least twenty light years out before we drop another subspace amplifier." Trip shook his head, rotating his chair so that he was facing the window. The Maelstrom was moving at a cruising speed of warp five, with their sister ship close behind. He'd already discussed it with his senior staff, and once they split off from the Enterprise, they'd be jumping to warp seven, or as close as they could physically get to it without flying apart. "You know, once we reach our destinations, you and I will be farther apart than we've ever been in the past five years."
"Don't tell me you're getting sentimental, Trip. At any rate, our tradition will still continue. We'll just have to drink faster."
"Amen to that." Trip hadn't managed to put much thought into how much he'd miss the lot of them, but now that it had been nearly a month, he missed T'Pol's dry brand of humor, Jon's dad jokes, Dita's fearlessness, Anna's sarcasm, Malcolm's lightning fast alternations between complaining and self-deprecation, and Liz and Phlox's constant needling of one another. "I'll be thinking of you suffering under a million suggestion box entries when we're making first contact and exploring strange new worlds."
"At least I'm not forcing people to play sports with me that are better suited to an eight year old's birthday party," Malcolm accused, watching as his friend rotated his chair so he was facing him. "I know you want to try and recapture what we used to have with the senior staff, but really, Trip? Bowling?"
He threw up his hands defensively. "Hey, there's nothing wrong with bowling!" He'd hit up the local bowling alley hundreds of times with his buddies as a kid, which was home to a disused antique jukebox that was likely older than any of their grandparents combined, a horrendously stained carpet, and suspiciously inexpensive hot dogs. In his experience, there was no better way to bring together a disparate group of individuals that spending an hour throwing twelve-pound balls down a sixty foot lane.
And as far as his senior staff, Trip had to admit he took for granted what they had, the solid rapport they'd built over the course of many years and dozens of traumatizing missions, their constant cutting up and practical jokes, their strong support network and the way they knew what one other needed without even asking. On the Maelstrom, though a few new friendships had popped up, the senior officers struggled to even have meals together, though he supposed that had something to do with the fact that their respective departments were almost entirely new commissions who required constant supervision.
He knew there was a group chat that he wasn't a part of, because just that morning he'd borrowed Hoshi's PADD to check the crew manifest and seen about a dozen memes pop up referring to something called The Full Corridor. Though he'd all but begged her to let him in on the joke, she refused, and he had to accept that he was no longer in the loop.
Like the Captain and the Commodore, he was doomed to irrelevance in his own little macrocosm of the ship. Unless of course, he could choose a course of action that could change his fate.
The moment he laid eyes on the ten pin bowling set tucked away in the cargo hold of the ECS Yukon the previous weekend, he'd known exactly what he needed to do.
He bought two sets and made several successive evenings of it, setting up two regulation lanes in a disused corner of cargo bay three. At first Julia and Hoshi had been curious about his personal project and peppered him with questions; when he'd finally told them over breakfast that morning, they'd plainly been shocked, though at least pretended to be supportive of his efforts to bring the senior staff closer together. Julia had repeatedly suggested more traditional bonding events, such as after-shift drinks, a smaller and more selective movie night, or making a second attempt at a family dinner, even though their first time had ended in disaster.
Though he typically appreciated his first officer's counsel, this time he willfully ignored her, and the news had gone out just a few minutes before alpha shift. Trip even went the extra mile to make sure they were all free early Saturday morning. The winning team would even get an extra day off the following duty rotation, which he suspected would be their core motivator for indulging his childhood nostalgia.
Malcolm's musings interrupted his reverie. "There's a problem if there are certain overly competitive people serving aboard your ship."
"Are we talking about who I think we're talking about?"
Malcolm downed the rest of his drink, slamming it down on the table. "Take it from me. Alira and I spent six months constantly trying to one-up each other. She's intense. She takes everything way over the top."
"And you love it," he accused, knowing full well he was right.
"I'm telling you, if you're determined to win, you need her on your team. She'll give one hundred fifty percent. I've never met anyone with better hand-eye coordination."
"Well, Mal, I feel like you might be a little biased." There was a sudden commotion from the other side of the door, a flurry of footsteps. The hatch opened, and Hoshi stepped over the threshold, dressed for bed in one of his ratty old t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. She placed her hands on her hips and pinned him under her gaze.
He knew that look, and exactly what it meant.
On the other end of the line, Malcolm was defending his position, saying his recommendation had nothing to do with personal attachment and everything to do with a perfectly objective, clinical analysis of who he needed on his team. Not taking his eyes off his guest, Trip interrupted him: "Gotta go. Duty calls."
He looked somewhat disappointed to be ending their call early, but acquiesced. "Same time next week?"
"I'll be around," he replied. "Hopefully."
"If the Romulans don't get to us first." It was a running joke among the former senior staff of the Enterprise, somewhat morbid, but effective nonetheless. Together they signed off, and Trip closed the connection.
In the relative silence of his ready room, Trip asked, "Did anyone see you come in?"
She shook her head, and her smile was positively devilish. In a matter of seconds, he had approached her, backed her up against the desk, and lifted her up on top of it in a singular, practiced motion.
At 0630 the next morning, Malcolm slipped out of his quarters and set to fulfilling the first suggestion box entry of the day.
Some, like give me larger quarters because I deserve it and please shove my annoying roommate out the nearest airlock, would be far too difficult to achieve without knowing exactly who it had come from. For others, like install a regulation water polo pool in cargo bay two and expand sickbay into the MACO training room, it was blatantly obvious who had submitted them, and though he didn't have the heart to break it to them that their suggestions were plainly unreasonable, he certainly wouldn't be seeing to them anytime soon.
He digressed. The first couple of changes have been relatively painless, and he was confident he could see to the next one without needing to run into anyone or anything in the calm before alpha shift.
Fix the water pressure on E Deck Section 14, we science non-coms are suffering. It had been a simple enough request. He'd been able to trace the piping from their communal bathrooms all the way back to the header for that deck, which branched off from the main water supply behind a panel in a supply closet in, ironically enough, the science laboratories. Though he briefly considered seeking help from Lieutenant Kov, he wasn't sure if he could handle that much positivity so early in the morning, and committed to diagnosing the problem himself.
As soon as he stepped over the threshold, the overhead lights flickered on, and he was greeted by an empty room, the rows and rows of laboratory benches stretching off to the right and disappearing around the curve of the hull. To his immediate left, a computer screen and old-fashioned chalkboard were plastered with unfamiliar equations and diagrams, and in the corner next to the window, the closet door lay open.
"Anyone there?" He called out, stepping further into the room. Normally, during the middle of alpha shift, the laboratory was swarming with various specialists, all talking excitedly over one another. To see it so empty, so quiet, was certainly unnerving.
Tentatively, he approached the bench nearest the wall, which belonged to their resident exobiologist. Crewman Marceline's prized specimen, a multicolored toad with a half dozen eyes, stared up at the wall, unblinking. His cage was filled with rocks and leafy greenery, as well as a small pile of uneaten mealworms from the night before. He knew she had the tendency to name her pets, and this was no exception: a small label affixed to the top of his tank proudly proclaimed his name was KEVIN, GOROKIAN MIDWIFE TOAD.
Malcolm found this incredibly amusing, and he tapped the glass, attempting to attract his attention.
Suddenly, there was a great deal of noise behind him, and he spun around, striving his mightiest not to look like he'd just panicked momentarily. Lieutenant Cutler and Ensign Pascal stood in front of the hatch, and they seemed just as surprised to see him as he was to see them.
"Can I help you, Mr. Reed?" Liz asked with a smile, taking a sip from her thermos, which he knew from experience held a frappuccino containing nearly every sugary ingredient from the replicator. She pointed at him. "Don't tell me you're here to steal Kevin. We had enough of that during that prank war that Novakovich started a couple months back."
He shook his head. "No, no, Kevin's safe. I'm here to fix the water pressure for your non-coms."
"Thank God. Honestly, I'm a little tired of hearing them complain about it," she replied, and he wondered if she was kidding.
"Good to see you, Ensign."
"Sir." Simon made eye contact with him and smiled, which looked friendly enough, with a little something undecipherable behind it. "Cutler and I are discussing next week's movie night. I hadn't brought it up yet, but I was thinking about a real crowd pleaser. Maybe Jurassic Park?"
Liz gasped, clasping her free hand to her chest. "I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid! I used to run around my parent's backyard pretending like I was being chased by a t-rex."
"Me too," Malcolm confessed, remembering how often he pulled Madeline into his games. He wondered just how many members of the crew could say the same.
"A passion for adventure, even then." Simon gestured towards him and the PADD he was holding. "Need any help, Mr. Reed?"
"Oh, I…" He glanced towards Liz, who was smiling encouragingly. It was true that he hadn't planned on interacting with anyone this morning, but at the same time, he was supposed to be making friends with the crew.
He wasn't so sure how he'd missed the boat with Ensign Pascal. There was something off about him.
Before he could respond, she took a step down the length of the room, calling out over her shoulder, "I'll be in my office if you need me!"
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, then Malcolm cleared his throat. "Right. This way."
Much to his dismay, he found that the storage closet was encircled with shelves, each and every one of them filled with spare instruments, storage containers, and random pieces of machinery. At the very least, he was able to narrow down the wall the hatch was on, and started to pass things into Simon's waiting arms.
All the while, he was trying and failing to make small talk, asking him about what he was working on at the moment, how the armory was, how he felt the whole ordeal with the suggestion box was progressing. He was at least making an overture of friendship, but Malcolm was having a difficult time returning it, just as he had in the early days with Captain Tucker.
Finally, he made enough room to shove both of his arms in the panel, shining his flashlight into the narrow opening. It took only seconds for him to diagnose the problem.
"It's the pressure regulator. The technicians at dry dock must have forgotten to restore it back to default position after all that routine maintenance." Thanking his lucky stars the fix was relatively simple, he turned the valve several times to the right, watching the needle on the gauge swing into the optimal range.
"Can't believe it was that easy."
"Few things at this job are." He closed the hatch and turned towards him, starting to reload the shelves.
"Funny, I'm getting the sense of that around here." Pascal smiled softly. "I've been reading your old mission logs. Nothing so crazy ever happened on the Republic. I'm glad to be where the action is."
Malcolm thought he would change his mind the second they got locked into their next life-or-death firefight, but said nothing, reaching toward him to accept his next offering.
He soon realized that it wasn't storage, but a small cage. The lid was loose, and he clamped onto it tightly, reading the label: SPARKY. ALDEBARAN CEPHALOPOD. IN TIME OUT FOR BAD BEHAVIOR.
A little ominous, he thought, but forged on, lifting it out of his hands. His next question nearly caused him to drop it entirely.
"And how's Ensign Taxa?"
"I don't know what you mean." He was struggling to maintain his balance; inside, Sparky was thrashing around, and water was splashing out from the narrow gap between the cage and the lid. "Good, as far as I know. Why do you ask?"
"I met her at the New Year's Eve party. She told me a crazy story about your diplomatic visit to Rigel V." Simon was now concerned as well that the creature would escape and he reached toward him, only for Malcolm to pull away roughly. "You two seem pretty close."
He wanted to tell him that it was none of his business, that he had no right speaking to a senior officer that way even if they were off duty, that he was better off fishing for information from someone else. He wanted to ask why he cared, and summarily tell him to bugger off. But he didn't have the chance, because in the next moment Sparky threw the weight of its body against his hands, making a flying leap out of its cage and onto the floor.
Malcolm wasn't quite sure what he was expecting out of an Aldebaran cephalopod, but he certainly hadn't anticipated anything iridescent and shimmery, with a single bulging eye and more than two dozen legs. It moved with incredible speed, and soon he was pushing past Pascal, shouting, "Catch it!"
By the time he made it out of the storage compartment with Simon hot on his tail, Sparky was halfway toward the door. They both reached for him and wound up knocking heads; Pascal tripped and fell into the nearest lab bench, leaving Malcolm to crawl after it on his hands and knees.
The second he grabbed hold of the creature, he realized why it was named Sparky.
It felt like his entire body was on fire and simultaneously vibrating; he was frozen in time, unaware of the strangulated cry escaping his lips. He was at least passively aware of footsteps approaching them; Lieutenant Cutler entered his line of sight, her eyes wide with shock.
Suddenly Sparky ceased its attack and Malcolm meant to throw it as far as he possibly could. Liz took a step towards him, holding an empty tank in her hands. In a flash, the creature had launched itself at his face, latching onto him with every one of the hundreds of suckers on its legs.
It felt like his brain was being sucked out through his nose. He was struggling to pull it off and making little headway; he could barely make out Liz and Simon moving about the room, shouting, desperately trying to find a solution to his predicament.
He saw Liz approach with a phase pistol held aloft, and he was pleading with her not to shoot, pleading for her to do anything else, though it was muffled around the cephalopod cemented to his face.
She fired, and Sparky went limp. Immediately, he pushed it to one side and sat up, grimacing at the burning sensation rippling up his face and neck. "I can't believe you-"
"It was on stun, the lowest yield!"
"You shot Crewman Marceline's specimen! You could have killed it!" He paused, rubbing his cheeks, already knowing his face was going to swell up like a balloon. "You could have shot me!"
Her response was immediate, and emphatic. "Yes, but I didn't!"
FROM: NICHOLAS KELBY, COMMANDER
TO: ANNA HESS, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
SUBJECT: EPS GRID MAINTENANCE MANUALS, FORWARD SECTION
Please send along the material you have on the subject. Two members of your team came over to the Maelstrom with me, and they either lack the intelligence or the know-how to figure out surge proofing. Seeing as we're about to venture into a region of space with high levels of Romulan activity, I would've thought you would've taken the time to brief them before they came over.
FROM: ANNA HESS, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
TO: NICHOLAS KELBY, COMMANDER
SUBJECT: RE: EPS GRID MAINTENANCE MANUALS, FORWARD SECTION
Cut McFarlane and Fletcher some slack. They're pretty inexperienced, and the warp seven technology is new. I've attached what I have. Surprised you didn't keep any literature on it.
FROM: NICHOLAS KELBY, COMMANDER
TO: ANNA HESS, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
SUBJECT: RE: RE: EPS GRID MAINTENANCE MANUALS, FORWARD SECTION
Don't try to deflect. I can only teach so much before what they lack in their initial training starts to show through. I'm surprised you recommended them despite their shortcomings.
FROM: ANNA HESS, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
TO: NICHOLAS KELBY, COMMANDER
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: EPS GRID MAINTENANCE MANUALS, FORWARD SECTION
Since we no longer work together, I can comfortably tell you to kiss my ass.
And since you're still technically a superior officer, I'll amend my statement to request that you kiss my ass, sir.
Later that afternoon, Alira lay prone on her bunk propped up by her elbows, engaged in a furious text conversation with her younger sister.
Shoshan, sixth of nine, was experiencing a bit of domestic unrest in the fact that her first wife hadn't approved of her recent selection of a prospective second. Technically, there was nothing stopping her from marrying her chosen bride, but a certain level of cooperation definitely helped, especially because the three of them would likely be living together for at least the first few years. Like most matters of the Denobulan family, there was drama closing in on them from all sides, and Alira was living for it.
Suddenly she received a notification, a message from Lieutenant Sato in all caps: ARE YOU COMING OR NOT?
Checking the time, she confirmed that it was 0320, and immediately remembered that the Captain had asked the senior staff to report to cargo bay three in the last half-hour of alpha shift, and unless she started moving immediately, she was going to be late.
As usual.
Quickly, she rolled to one side, meaning to catch herself on the bed frame, only to slip and fall face first onto the deck plating, a shriek of surprise escaping her lips. She stayed there for a few seconds, wondering how exactly her life had come to this, before the comm sounded from across the room.
Alira stumbled to her feet and towards the door, all the while surveying the room for her discarded uniform. At first glance, she found nothing; regardless of her momentary panic, Ensign Medina's voice came through, loud and strong over the comm.
"Incoming transmission for you. Audio only."
"Who's it from?"
From the pause on the other end of the line, occupied by his fingers dancing across his console, trying and failing to determine its origin, she knew exactly who it was.
She'd ignored her past three calls. She couldn't do it again.
"Put it through to my headset, Jaime." Crossing the room in three steps, she slipped the device in question over her ear, catching a glimpse of the coveralls she'd all but jumped out of when she came off gamma shift, balled up and kicked under the bed. Dropping to her hands and knees, she crawled towards it.
All at once, her mother's voice filled her ears, and she sounded like home, comfort, warmth and sincerity. It also sounded tinny and far-away, and she knew it was due to the Captain's newly instated communication protocols, meaning all of Kandar's transmissions had to backtrack through several additional long-range transceiver arrays to avoid detection by the Romulans. "So you deemed my call worthy of a response. I was already wondering what excuse you'd use this time."
"Mother," she chastised, retrieving her coveralls and struggling into them one leg at a time, pulling it on over her shorts and thermal undershirt. "I shouldn't have to remind you that we're busy trying to hold our brigades together up here."
"As are we," Feezal replied off-handedly, and Alira knew she was right. Kandar's staff was a curious mixture of human and Denobulan scientists from all disciplines stuffed into a surveillance satellite no larger than the average transport. As time went on, their weekly reports to the fleet became more and more detailed, and her mother's recount of the station's drama grew longer and longer. With limited contact with the outside world and the near constant threat of detection, it was clear that her team was going stir-crazy.
"I'm on my way to meet with the senior staff now. I don't have long." She informed her around a mouthful of bobby pins as she attempted to force her hair into some kind of passable ponytail.
"Of course you are." On the other end of the line, she heard the distinct whirr of one of her many microscopes firing up, and it brought her back to a specific time in her childhood, a time before any of her siblings, when her father had just accepted his posting with the Infantry and it was just the two of them at home. She accompanied her mother to her laboratory day after day, more often than not watching her work with rapt attention, disturbing her specimens, and poring over unfamiliar diagrams in her physics textbooks.
Alira hit the button to open the hatch, peering to the left and the right down the corridor. It was populated with a crowd of officers characteristic of the half hour before a shift change. Stepping over the threshold, she slipped naturally into their native tongue. There was no point at keeping up with the pretense. "What time is it there?"
"Just after the evening meal. As long as I have you, I should let you know that I just spoke to Kladon." He was her favorite husband, though she would never admit it, who had lived on Teerza Prime for over a decade as she traversed the quadrant with the Interspecies Medical Exchange. "Your sister's Rite of Passage ceremony is next month. I'd like you to be there in my stead."
She exhaled slowly, knowing full well that their anticipated course put them even farther away from home at that time, somewhere in the Arloff system. Yolanna was the next-to-youngest sibling, and she knew she'd suffered from not growing up at the family compound like most of them. "That might be difficult, mother." She paused, exchanging a cordial smile with one of the new armory crewmen that crossed her path. "Has she made a decision?"
"She's chosen the Science Academy," Feezal said, and Alira could hear the pride in her voice. "At the moment she wants to be an engineer and gain an advanced officer posting in the Infantry. She tells me that if you made it to Commander in fifteen years, she'll make it in ten."
Alira couldn't help but laugh at that, stepping into a crowded lift and nearly pressing herself against the doors in a bid to maintain her personal space. She knew she'd already had a leg up because of her past career as a military historian, and the fact that her father had been a general at the time certainly didn't hurt. "Tell her she ought to enlist. It's not the same unless she suffers through the galley and laundry midshipman assignments like the rest of us."
"Sounds to me like you're bitter. You could've had it so much easier." A pause. "Dracil's still confident in her plan to become a professional singer. I don't know where she gets that from."
She smiled. It was to be expected; she was only twelve, and still full of childish ambition. "I don't know, mother. You sang to us all the time growing up." She remembered the little songs, the lullabies, the melodies she would hum to herself when she thought no one was watching. As far as she could recall, her childhood had been full of love and laughter, especially as the family compound filled with siblings, assorted lovers and husbands, their spouses and children. At one time, there had been over sixty people living under one roof, and she'd loved every minute of it. For a majority of her life, she'd never known the meaning of the world alone.
Until now.
"I was never any good," she replied, something she knew not to be true. The doors opened, and Alira stepped out, only to be immediately accosted by Ensign Nguyen heading in the opposite direction. Swiftly, she covered the mouthpiece with her hand and gestured to the PADD he was carrying.
"Are those-"
"The reports from the first round of MACO fitness checks." He grimaced.
"That bad, huh?"
"Read 'em and weep." He passed it over and swept past her into the lift, leaving her to ponder that particular idiom and hope that the results weren't bad enough to elicit an emotional response.
She resumed her path, apologizing for the interruption. Before she knew it, her mother was asking about the Enterprise and how her human friend was faring.
As usual, her insinuation was obvious. "He's my lover now. As far as I know, he's doing just fine."
"I don't know how you managed it. Humans are so inhibited. The tiniest little advance embarrasses them to no end."
"I'm not going to lie to you. It took six months." The cargo bay hatch came into her line of sight.
On the other end of the line, she was laughing. "Who's got that kind of time?"
"I know!" She shouldered the door and pushed it open, beholding the huddle of senior staff standing near a cluster of cargo containers. Almost immediately, the Captain took notice of her and threw something in her direction with all of his might. Her hand came up automatically, watching the hyperspanner hit its arc and fall towards her, catching it with ease. Seemingly satisfied, Trip nodded and turned back towards the group.
It was all very curious. "I've got to go. Unless, of course-" Momentarily, she pulled the headpiece from her ear and called out, "Hey, Captain! Do you want to talk to my mother?"
His reaction was severe and instantaneous, shaking his head and making a cutting motion across his throat. She turned back towards the wall, trying to hide her amusement. "You should have seen his face!"
"I do wish I was there. For more than one reason." She paused. "Take care of yourself, little one. Be strong, no matter what happens. I do hope you're eating well and getting plenty of rest and-"
"You don't need to worry. I-"
"Because you never know what might happen, and-"
Hoshi turned just in time to see Alira approach them, looking more than a little frustrated as she addressed her conversational partner with a barrage of yeahs and uh-huhs and okays. They made eye contact, and she rolled her eyes. By the time she hung up, she was entirely exasperated, and tore off her headset, sighing deeply.
"Mothers are all the same across the galaxy, no matter what species," she said, and Alira had to agree.
Across the group, Travis was speaking to all of them, gesturing wildly as he tried to get his point across. "All I'm saying is, really, how many of us already have doctorates?"
Ethan, Julia and Hoshi immediately raised their hands.
"I've got two," Yuris informed them, his very Vulcan pride on display.
Alira shouldered up to him, affording him a friendly smile. He returned nothing but his typical impassive expression. "And I've got three."
"Exactly," Travis said, "So why isn't STC recruiting at universities for intelligence?"
"Because then we wouldn't have the honor of you serving with us, Mr. Mayweather," Julia answered, wrapping a companionable arm around his shoulder.
Ignoring the laughter and smiles of his fellow senior officers, he shook her off and mumbled, "Very funny, ma'am."
"As much as I'd love to keep standing here and making fun of Travis-" Trip suddenly clapped his hands, then gestured around the circle to the lot of them. "I'm about to show y'all something that's gonna change your life."
Without another word, he turned on his heel and made fast tracks towards the opposite end of the room, weaving between rows of haphazardly stacked cargo containers. Hyperbole notwithstanding, Alira was practically bouncing on her toes, leading the way for the rest of them.
Ethan and Kelby brought up the rear in silence, and the former seized the opportunity to try and draw their surly chief engineer out of his shell. "Are you excited for bowling?"
He shrugged, seemingly surprised that any of his colleagues were talking to him at all. "Do you really wanna know what I think?"
Not really, if he had to be honest, but at this point, he was kind of resigned to his fate. Ethan nodded.
"This is stupid. Think about how much work we could be getting done if we weren't constantly distracted by stuff like this. The Captain needs to give up. We're not meant to be best friends here."
"Maybe not. But it makes our time here a lot more tolerable, doesn't it?" He glanced at him, and he looked away, effectively ending their conversation.
All of a sudden they rounded the corner and beheld the fruits of the Captain's personal project, which Ethan had to admit, was pretty impressive.
Somehow he'd sanded down the deck plating and applied a lacquer, making that section of the floor incredibly shiny and slick. He could tell that he had painted the foot markers and foul lines lovingly by hand, and a ball return made out of a curve of metal was set into the floor, which Travis recognized as the replacement siding to one of their shuttlepods. Trip had even jury-rigged a pin setting machine out of a great hulking gadget anchored to the ceiling far above them.
"Is that one of the torpedo movers from the armory?" Ensign Taxa asked, raising her eyebrows into her hairline.
"It was a spare," he assured her, throwing his arms wide. "What do we think?"
"It sure looks like you spent a lot of time on this," Julia noted, her voice almost a full octave higher than normal.
"That it does," Hoshi agreed skeptically.
Ignoring the unspoken uncertainty in the room, he retrieved a ball from the return and approached the line, crouched down, pulled back, and let it fly down the lane. Seconds later, all ten pins toppled over, and he whirled around, smiling triumphantly. "It's the most fun you can have on a starship without getting thrown in the brig. Trust me on this one, fellas."
"With all due respect, sir, I'm pretty sure you only like it so much because you're good at it," Ethan cut in, dearly hoping he'd remembered to install bumpers. "I haven't played since I was a kid."
Alira suddenly appeared beside him. "Don't worry, Novakovich. I've reviewed the rules. It's quite simple, really." As the pins reset themselves and the next ball queued up, she gestured down the lane. He knew she'd spent much of the past day reading everything there was to know about the subject, watching professional games, working on her technique. It was a little endearing to know that she'd thrown herself so intensely into the Captain's plot in an attempt to avoid the issue at hand, though at the moment, he found himself wishing she'd lay off just a bit. "If you knock down all the pins in one roll, it's called a strike, and if you do it in two, it's a spare. There's ten frames, and if you roll a strike in the final frame, you get-"
"That kind of enthusiasm is exactly why Taxa is my first pick." Trip interrupted, not wanting to tell anyone the privileged information he'd received ahead of their game. She swiftly ended her explanation and went to go stand by him, beaming from ear to ear.
"Are we really picking teams now?" Julia asked, and at his confirmation, turned to the rest of them, seemingly deep in thought. "I think I gotta go with my girl Hoshi."
In spite of the ridiculous situation they were currently in, Hoshi stepped up and wrapped an arm around her friend's waist, returning her high-five.
"Kelby," Alira said immediately, trying her best to welcome him into the fold. Ethan knew that she was also involved in the unofficial committee to force their chief engineer to make friends, come hell or high water. As he trudged over to them, she asked, "Since we're off duty, can I call you Nicky?"
"Absolutely not."
"I changed my mind," she called out, causing him to stop in his tracks. "Ethan, get over here."
Hoshi picked Kelby next, to help him save face more than anything. Ethan rounded out their team with Travis, figuring the helmsman's fine motor skills would serve them well in their quest to run Commander Hammond's team into the ground. By the time the doctor joined them, the Captain's team had turned away, gathering in a loose huddle to one side of their makeshift bowling alley.
"Glad to have you on the team, doctor," Hoshi said with a smile. Really, Yuris reminded her very much of T'Pol during the first year of their mission, and she knew they would be able to build a strong rapport.
She just hoped it wouldn't take five years.
"I must admit I fail to see the logic in forcing the senior staff to partake in human recreational activities." He looked uncomfortable, and more than a little nervous, something that Hoshi wouldn't have been able to pick up on if she hadn't spent an extended amount of time with another Vulcan.
"That's the spirit, Yuris," Julia asserted as she sized up her team for the first time. She knew she was at least passable at bowling, but she had no idea about Hoshi, their resident physician, or the walking protocol book standing before her. She was almost positive they were doomed. "I'm sure with your scientific mind, you'll be great. It's all about angles and speed."
Somewhat encouraged, he pivoted to face the lane, narrowing his eyes in concentration.
Across the room, Trip was hunched over, his arms draped over Ethan and Travis's shoulders. Even though it was completely unnecessary, he whispered, "I need yall to understand that we have to win this thing tomorrow. It's a matter of pride for me."
"We will destroy them," Alira confirmed with a frightening amount of intensity, her eyes flashing with excitement.
"I was hoping for that reaction." He looked to his left and his right, and when he spoke again, Ethan knew he was addressing the two of them directly. "Do not blow this."
Before they could reassure him, he was gone, approaching the other team and calling out, "Alright, folks! Let's get to practicing!"
FROM: JULIA HAMMOND, COMMANDER
TO: MALCOLM REED, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
SUBJECT: MAELSTROM BOWLING TOURNAMENT
Hope you're doing well. Real talk, first officer to first officer, should I be concerned that Captain Tucker is suddenly fixated on bowling? Feels like he's trying to cling to relevance with the younger senior staff. Don't tell him I said that.
FROM: MALCOLM REED, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
TO: JULIA HAMMOND, COMMANDER
SUBJECT: RE: MAELSTROM BOWLING TOURNAMENT
Not at all. He's been trying to get me to play for years. Fortunately for me, we've never been on leave in the same location on Earth for longer than a day or two. He gets these obsessions: obscure horror films, old music, exactly when Chef makes pecan pie, forcing the away team to try fly fishing on an uninhabited M Class, you name it. Once he gets these ideas in his mind, it's best to let it run its course. Unless, of course, it's putting someone in immediate mortal danger.
FROM: JULIA HAMMOND, COMMANDER
TO: MALCOLM REED, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
SUBJECT: RE: RE: MAELSTROM BOWLING TOURNAMENT
And just how often does that happen?
FROM: MALCOLM REED, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
TO: JULIA HAMMOND, COMMANDER
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: MAELSTROM BOWLING TOURNAMENT
More often than you'd think.
Following a visit to sickbay, Malcolm decided to forge on with his mission. With the last scrap of dignity he had left, he hopped on a turbolift and set a proverbial course for engineering.
En route, it slowed to a halt and the doors opened, admitting the Captain. All the while, he was hoping and praying she wouldn't ask about the angry, red welts all over his face and neck. She didn't, and he was grateful, though she did seem amused in her own way.
"How are you faring with your assignment, Mr. Reed?"
"Just fine, ma'am. I'm headed to engineering to tackle the next suggestion."
As they exited the lift, he took it that they were headed to the exact same place. Together they fell into step with one another, maintaining companionable silence until they reached the hatch. Malcolm reached for the door controls and moved aside to let her go first.
The second she stepped over the threshold, she slapped the PADD she'd been carrying into her opposite hand with an audible crack, taking him by surprise. If he didn't miss his guess, this indicated that she was angry.
Inside, he first made eye contact with Lieutenant Commander Hess, who was leaning against the railing of the warp core console, watching her subordinates work far overhead. She nodded towards the two of them, but when the Captain moved closer, she immediately snapped to attention.
"Miss Hess, a word?"
"Of course, ma'am," she replied, her smile not wavering for a second. Together they moved off into an adjoining smaller chamber.
Malcolm didn't have the time to wonder what that might be about; Lieutenant Kov was at his side in an instant, offering him his own version of a smile, graciously avoiding mentioning his physical appearance. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr. Reed?"
"It seems that someone's taken issue with the plasma conduits running through the ceiling of C Deck. Apparently, it's keeping Crewman Morales up all night."
"I've been listening to those complaints for months, sir, and there's no merit to them. Even with my superior hearing, I can't hear a thing in his quarters."
He nodded. "All the same, I think we ought to take a look."
"Very well," he replied, though he plainly didn't look too enthusiastic about it. As they moved off in the same direction that Anna and T'Pol had just a few moments earlier, he gestured for Crewman Kelly to join them.
"Busy morning?"
"Just some preventative maintenance and putting out the usual fires," Janelle answered, punching in her security code so they could enter her domain of plasma conduit housings at the far end of the room.
"Surely you're joking."
"I'm not," she assured him, reaching over to retrieve a fire extinguisher attached to the wall. "C Deck, you said?"
"Section 4. I'll stay out here and monitor the particle flow." He didn't know much about engineering, but that was one thing he was sure he could do. As he activated the console, Crewman Kelly passed the extinguisher to Kov, who led the way into the chamber, carrying it under his arm like one would an American football.
As the two engineers worked within, he was barely able to make out the Captain's conversation from around the opposite corner. He tried not to listen in, but her tone was intense, and he could tell that Anna was receiving a thorough dressing down.
"It is of no consequence what he said to you first. You are not, under any circumstances, to tell a senior officer to-" She paused, as if reading from her PADD. "Kiss my ass."
"Even if it's Kelby?"
"Especially if it's Kelby. You are not to antagonize him."
"What if he's being unreasonable?"
"Lieutenant Commander, I am not telling you that I approve of your actions, but I am telling you that I understand."
"Thank you, ma'am. Are you placing me on report?"
"No, but this is your first and final warning."
Suddenly, the particle levels on the screen jumped drastically, and he shouted a warning that almost came too late. Kov and Janelle burst from the plasma compartment, followed shortly by a fireball that jumped out a few meters from the opening, nearly singeing Malcolm's eyebrows off in the process.
They seemed mostly unharmed, if a little dazed, and stayed on the ground for a moment trying to gain their bearings. Malcolm glanced into the room, watching the resulting little fires smolder and fizzle out along the wall. He guessed there must have been a hairline fracture in the conduit, creating a throttling noise as it passed overhead.
The Captain and Hess rounded the corner and struck nearly identical poses, hands on their hips, eyebrows raised. "Do we have a problem here?" Anna demanded.
"No," the three of them responded simultaneously, not doing nearly enough to assuage her suspicions.
Travis awoke to the sound of someone banging on his door.
Disoriented, he rolled to one side and checked the time: 0530 hours. Who in the hell was knocking so early on a Saturday, especially when everyone knew that he'd been stuck on beta shift conn for most of the past three weeks?
Suddenly, he remembered. Bowling day.
Cursing up a blue streak, he struggled out his blankets and stumbled into the bathroom. Outside the door, Ethan and Alira continued their attempts to draw him out of his quarters.
"Hey Travis, knock twice if you're ignoring us," Ethan called out, pressing his ear against the door. He could hear movement from within, so he figured that might as well be the case.
Alira mimicked his posture, listening carefully. "Knock three times if you're being held hostage by an alien life form and need me to kick down this door."
Ethan laughed. "You know, it's just like that song the Captain is always playing."
What with his previous preoccupation with old movies, the senior officers might have already guessed that Tucker had a fixation on 20th century Earth culture, especially the 60s, 70s, and 80s. By the time he started playing quiet music overhead on the bridge during the second week of their mission, that notion was firmly cemented in their minds.
It was mostly country classics, with a few pop songs sprinkled in; by week two, more than one of them had been caught humming Mamma Mia or Don't Go Breaking My Heart during their off duty hours, much to the amusement of the others.
"Which one?"
"You know the one." Novakovich cleared his throat. "Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me, twice on the pipe if the answer is no…"
She joined in immediately, kicking the door three times in rapid succession. "...means you'll meet me in the hallway…"
"Twice on the pipe…" Barely being able to hide his amusement, Ethan struck the wall with the heel of his boot twice over. "...means you ain't gonna show..."
The hatch slid open, revealing a very drowsy and frustrated Lieutenant Mayweather. Before either of them could speak, he insisted, "I'd give up my leave for the next five years if it means never having to listen to the two of you sing ever again."
Citing tradition, Trip had insisted they all wear the same oversized button-up bowling shirt with wide lapels and a stripes down either side of the chest; Travis thought it looked ridiculous, and seeing as he was on duty later, he'd opted to wear it over his uniform. He could see that his two companions were more or less dressed in their civvies, with a single greasepaint line across each cheek underneath their eyes.
"What's with the-"
"Captain's suggestion. It's plasma injector lubricant."
"What exactly does he think this is? The Super Bowl?" Ethan slung an arm across his shoulder to guide him, and he let him, the trio stepping out into the hallway.
"Travis, the man's honor is at stake," Alira asserted in a way he couldn't tell if she was kidding or not.
As they stepped into the lift, Ethan said, "If you want my opinion, I'm pretty sure he's just trying to get back in the fold. Gotta be a rough transition going from senior officer to CO. He's like a middle-aged dad hanging around his son's friends to try and feel cool again."
Travis whistled. "Maybe I don't want to make it to Captain after all."
"You'd probably force your senior staff to go rock climbing."
"You bet your ass I would."
They arrived to the cargo bay to find it empty save for the Captain, who was perched on a stool in front of the two makeshift bowling lanes, a score sheet balanced on his knees. Though their game officially started in half an hour, Commander Hammond's team had yet to show, and for that, Travis was grateful.
He knew Ethan had picked him for the team under the assumption his skills as a helmsman would translate somehow into bowling prowess, but in reality, he had been a miserable failure, struggling to knock over more than two or three pins per frame. Taxa, though he knew for certain she hadn't played before, was a natural, approaching the foul line and rolling within seconds, scoring a strike every single time without fail. The only one who could even remotely challenge her was Dr. Yuris, who approached every turn with mathematical precision. Trip was nearly as talented, followed by Ethan, who was simply passable. He knew he was dragging the whole team down, and relished the ability to practice a little more before embarrassing himself in front of everyone.
"Today's the day!" Alira called out, much too excited for the earliness of the hour. Ethan suspected that she was just glad to be off gamma shift for the moment. "You know, we had a saying back in the Infantry for the moments before our battle simulations."
"What would that be, Ensign?" Trip asked, swiveling around to look at her.
"Death to the opposition," she answered cheerfully, and Ethan was surprised just how easily those words had come out of her mouth.
The Captain stood and stepped up to the ball return. "As usual, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I'm gonna need you to tone it down a little."
She shrugged and bounded over to him, followed shortly by her teammates.
"I promise you, Travis, it's not that difficult. Just pretend you're trying to move the ship through a tight spot in an asteroid field. Hold the ball up to your face, approach, focus your sights on the middle pin, and-" Trip swung his arm back and released it, and the four of them watched as it flew down the lane, knocking down eight pins.
"A split," Alira noted, crossing her arms. "Not bad, Captain."
He frowned and glanced back at her in consternation.
Meanwhile, Ethan had stepped up to the second lane, gesturing him over. "Watch this, Travis. If you can't knock over pins the straightforward way, you might as well try a trick shot."
"What did you have in mind?" He could tell Alira was curious as well, because she was presently standing behind him, watching with rapt attention.
"I'm just saying, maybe the problem is you're keeping your rolling arm too tight. Try moving around a little to loosen up." He began to spin around in place, his arms held out to either side with the ball clasped in his left hand, faster and faster until he was almost a blur.
"Ethan, I'm pretty sure that-"
She didn't have the opportunity to finish her statement, because in the blink of an eye, the ball escaped his hands and flew towards the center of the room, striking her in the face.
She cried out and fell backwards, rolling from side to side and clutching her forehead. Tucker was at her side, offering her his hand, but she was stumbling back to her feet almost instantly.
"I'm so sorry, Alira, are you-"
"I'm fine!" She assured them. They could already see a deep purple bruise developing on one side of her split forehead, and could tell that she was dazed beyond measure. "If I was injured, could I do this?" She threw her arms wide and grinned at them.
"What are you doing?" Travis asked after a moment of silence.
"Cartwheels." She suddenly looked very concerned, wringing her hands together. "Am I not doing them?"
"Don't worry, Ensign. We'll get you checked out. Right this way…" Trip reached for her, indicating for her to take a seat on the stool he'd recently vacated.
She nodded, her brows furrowed with concentration. She took one step forward and promptly passed out, falling face first into the deck plating before any of them could catch her.
"This is bad," Ethan mumbled, watching as Travis attempted to lift her off the floor. "We're going to lose for sure."
"That's what you're concerned about?!" He hissed, completely incredulous.
Suddenly the hatch to the cargo bay opened, and Hoshi peered into the room, gesturing for Trip to join her. As he approached, she whispered, "We might have a problem here."
Glancing into the hallway, Trip decided that was an understatement. Julia and Kelby stood close by, supporting their star player between them, holding him up. He looked unbalanced, disoriented, with a far off look in his eye.
"Doctor?"
"Captain!" Yuris cried out, apparently having lost all control of the volume of his voice. "Lieutenant Sato is exaggerating the extent of my inebriation. I will certainly be able to play in this tournament provided, of course, that the room ceases to spin."
"We were having breakfast together, you know, to hype the team up. I offered him my danish. I had no idea that chocolate had such an intoxicating effect on Vulcans."
He thought about it for a moment, and soon realized that he'd never seen T'Pol eat the stuff. It was a little difficult to believe that such an innocuous ingredient in human cooking would knock them off their feet, but here they were viewing the living evidence otherwise, who was listing heavily to one side and fighting a smile with every ounce of control he had.
"Just how many did he eat?"
"Four or five," Julia said matter-of-factly, tightening her grip on his waist. "Couldn't we just postpone the game?"
"Could we?" Kelby echoed, more than a little excited at the prospect.
He shook his head. "I had to work some magic to get all of us off for this shift. The next time we'll be able to do this won't be for several months."
"Precisely!" Yuris crowed, breaking away from his companions. He turned back to Hoshi, insistent. "You don't understand. Lieutenant, we have to win!"
Before any of them could reach him, he surged forward into the chamber, stumbling towards their makeshift lanes.
An hour later, as the game progressed, Hoshi decided that the entire undertaking of a senior staff bowling tournament was doomed to failure from the get-go.
At some point Alira came to and gestured her over, pulling her down until her ear was right next to her lips. "This is just like the time we tried to make family dinner. Except this time, we didn't start a galley fire."
"No, this is more like a dumpster fire," she informed her, ignoring her confused look and turning back to where her team was struggling to score a single point at all.
Going into the tenth frame, they were tied in cumulative points across all three players, and Julia was determined to gain the advantage. Leaning over the ball return, she pointed two fingers at her own two eyes, then directed them at Travis. "You're going down, Mr. Mayweather."
"I have no doubt about that, ma'am," he answered, much to Trip's chagrin.
Over by the cargo container where they were both propped up, Alira whispered, "Doctor, I think there's something wrong with my face."
"I'm going to need you to be a little more specific than that, Ensign." Yuris was watching the proceedings with a strange sort of wide-eyed expression.
"It hurts. I think I might have-" She was interrupted by him reaching over and placing his entire palm on her face, pressing lightly, moving around a little.
"Feels just fine to me," he replied, returning to his reverie.
After Travis and Trip, Ethan was the last to bowl. They were still tied, and he knew he would soon have to face his nemesis if he wanted to bring it home for the team.
"It's all up to you, Novakovich," the Captain said as he retrieved his ball. "No pressure, though."
He glanced over at Kelby, who looked perfectly bored, even during the climax of the game. They made eye contact, and he said, "Good luck."
Kelby looked more than a little confused by this, but whatever that particular statement meant to him, it certainly affected his game, and he walked away with only four points.
Ethan took a deep breath, steadying himself, then approached the line, not wanting to overthink it. He could hear his teammates cheering him on, but he ignored them, pulling back, following through, letting the ball fly, and…
A strike.
Immediately, Travis had approached him and wrapped his arms around his waist, lifting him off the ground. Trip was next, embracing the both of them, whooping and hollering a little louder than was appropriate.
"You still have two more rolls!" Alira called out. "Don't stop now!"
He didn't care. He'd never gotten a strike before, not ever in his natural born life, and their victory was sealed.
"You are attempting to manufacture a triumph where none exists. Neither team scored over three hundred points between three players," Yuris concluded. "It would seem that none of you are particularly skilled at this game."
"Manufactured triumph's good enough for me!" He shouted, continuing their celebration.
Bright and early Saturday morning, the senior staff gathered in the wardroom to hear Malcolm's presentation on the best of the suggestion box submissions, grand ideas that he would either need additional help with or need executive approval for. Truthfully, he was just glad to get over the first hurdle of what had been a truly nightmarish assignment, even though he knew there was still much work to be done in the near future.
"Why are we here?" Liz asked from the far end of the table, crossing her arms. Not only was it technically her day off, the stars had aligned just so that the doctor had the day off as well, an occurrence that only took place a few times a year. Needless to say, she was more than a little upset at being robbed of even part of their limited time together.
"Because the command trio values our opinions," Phlox informed her gently, then shook his head. "At least, there's the pretense of it."
"I, for one, am just glad that the suggestions I made three years ago are finally getting read," Anna cut in sarcastically from her position at the window.
"Thank you all for coming," Malcolm said somewhat belatedly, glancing towards the hatch. "The Captain and the Commodore should be here any moment."
There was a moment of somewhat hostile silence, then Dita suggested, "How about we go through the ones from the past twenty-four hours?"
"That's a great idea," he answered, though he wasn't sure if it really was. Ensign Singh reached for his PADD and interfaced it with the view screen behind them.
"What should we do about the MACOs' obvious BO problem? If we have to share a locker room with them, there have to be boundaries," he read aloud in near perfect monotone. Next to him, Dita began to repeat what he just said as she took minutes of their meeting. "I don't know, is that really that big of an issue?"
"I've noticed it," Simon assured him. "It hits you as soon as you walk in the men's locker room."
"Listen, they exercise daily, they work hard-"
"They're grown men, Mr. Reed." Anna was shaking her head. "At least, a majority of them are. I can assure you we don't experience this problem in the women's locker room. Tell them to take a shower and make an active effort not to be completely repulsive."
"Thank you, Miss Hess," he said loudly, and advanced the screen to the next submission. "What should we do about a fellow crewman battling space madness?"
"That's gotta be a joke," Liz said.
"Actually, space madness is a phenomenon not too uncommon to deep space exploration vessels." In spite of the subject matter, Phlox smiled to himself. "It's really a wonder that it hasn't happened to any of us yet."
"Very reassuring. We're learning, we're figuring things out." Somehow, he wasn't sure that the crew had entirely grasped the concept of the suggestion box. He maneuvered over to the next entry, then swiped over quickly, muttering, "Ah. A blank submission."
"No, no. There was something there. Go back," Pascal insisted.
"I don't think that-"
"It's really no problem if-"
"Sir, really-" Dita reached over and returned to the previous screen, immediately realizing her mistake.
Liz was squinting at the screen, trying to make it out what it said, then realization struck her like a speeding bullet. She surged forward and reached for the button that would cut off the screen, but it was too late.
"Looks like it says don't sleep with your subordinates," Simon read aloud, making direct eye contact and smiling at him.
For a split second, Malcolm felt the undeniable urge to fly across the table and beat the hell out of him. He didn't know where he got off making these kinds of insinuations.
What was his problem, and what did he know?
"Do you think that has anything to do with-" Phlox began, but was quickly shut down by Liz delivering a swift kick to his shin under the table.
As the doctor struggled to maintain his composure, Anna added, "That's really underhanded, but could be referring to almost anyone on board. Do you all have any idea how many unsanctioned relationships are on this ship?"
"Too many," Simon asserted.
"You know, that's really none of your business. Next submission, Mr. Reed." She said conclusively, nodding at him from the opposite site of the room.
And to think that after all this time being casual acquaintances, she had always been on his side.
Thank God for Anna.
Suddenly, the hatch opened, producing the Captain and the Commodore. Malcolm quickly deactivated the screen and stood, calling out, "Are we ready to get started?"
At 2059 hours that evening, Malcolm sat at his desk, watching the seconds tick by on his chronometer.
It had been a rough day to say in the least, the entire suggestion box debacle notwithstanding. He'd already resolved not to tell her, under the reasonable assumption that she'd already heard everything from Liz. Really, he would be surprised if the entire complement of the Maelstrom hadn't already heard.
She was known to constantly be running late or cutting it close, but for this, three times a week, she was always on time. At 2100 on the nose, the transmission finally came through, and he was treated to the sight of her beautiful, smiling face, much too close to the camera.
Alira made a small, surprised noise and took a massive step back. He could see that she was wearing his STC sweatshirt, the same one she'd stolen repeatedly over their time together, the same one she'd slipped on after they made love for the first time back on Earth, the same one she'd very unsubtly slipped into her suitcase when she was packing to move quarters. He'd confronted her on the spot, and she explained that if she couldn't have him, she'd at least have something that carried his scent.
Truthfully, he hadn't realized just how important her sense of smell was to her until the night she returned from her midnight mission to Betazed. He'd made some sort of insinuation about her ability to handle reconnaissance on her own, and though he apologized in his own way, he was apprehensive as to what she might say when they were face to face. He wondered if this was already the end to something that was just beginning.
She arrived at the stroke of midnight and all but fell into his arms, drawing strength from him in a way he never would have thought she needed, but that he was more than willing to provide. Though she'd tried to cover them up, the purplish bruises around her neck were still apparent against her alabaster skin, and he'd pressed her as to who had hurt her and what had happened.
She maintained that she was okay, that she meant it when she said that she should have taken him along on the mission, that it didn't matter anymore because she was safe now. Finally understanding where her boundaries were, he dropped it, and distracted her as long as he possibly could with ship's gossip and stories from the early days of their mission.
Hours later, cuddled up together, she'd asked him if he wanted to see how Denobulans kissed. He hadn't known what to expect-Trip had once seen the doctor and his wife embrace, and was more than a little perturbed by it-but he had allowed her to nuzzle him and plant butterfly kisses on his cheeks, all the while inhaling deeply. Truthfully, it felt affectionate and profoundly intimate.
That particular tradition continued for months in and among their typical loving, until he finally worked up the nerve to ask her exactly what he smelled like that she liked so much.
Standard issue soap. Machine grease. Mess hall coffee. Safety. Entire days spent in bed. Love and warmth.
"Beloved, what happened to you?" Her question shook him from his reverie, and he knew she was referring to the red welts all over his face.
"I could ask you the same question," he countered, not feeling the need to explain for the hundredth time in the past forty-eight hours that he'd done battle with Crewman Marceline's Aldebaran cephalopod and lost. As she turned to one side, he could distinctly make out the giant bruise on her temple.
With a huff, she bent over and retrieved a massive wicker laundry basket, setting it down on the end of her bed. Alira was the kind of person who needed to constantly be doing something else while she was on a call, and he was more than willing to indulge her. "Would you believe that Lieutenant Novakovich threw a bowling ball at my face?"
"I would," he admitted, "Trip told me all about it. At least your team won."
"Just wish I had been lucid for most of it."
"It's for the best. You would have trounced them."
"You and I know that. They don't know that." She paused, making a rather half-hearted attempt at folding a fitted sheet. It was only seconds before she balled it up and cast it aside. "This new quartermaster is getting on my nerves. Crewman Morales would have had everything washed, pressed, and delivered to my door overnight."
"And now…"
"You've got to pick everything up and fold it yourself. Do I look like I have time for this?"
"Beloved, you're awake twenty-four hours a day."
"I'm busy!" She insisted, struggling to turn the sleeves of her coveralls right side out. From the sheer volume of her basket, he could infer that this was the first time she'd done laundry since they commissioned, which he found amusing for the fact that he knew that her wardrobe consisted of little more than exercise clothes and matching sets of trousers and button-ups. It was a slightly more feminine version of what Phlox wore every day, except he knew that she owned it in at least two dozen colors. "You know, I was looking through pictures from our trip to Rome earlier."
This was typical for her, and one of the main ways he knew she missed him just as much as he missed her, even though she was reluctant to say it. Likewise, he'd never tell her that he kept a holoimage of the two of them at the top of the London Eye under his pillow, and that he looked at it whenever the space between their calls felt much too long. "Were you now?"
"I was thinking about how even with such primitive building methods, they took the time to add all of these details. Everything back home is so plain, so utilitarian. That's one thing I admire about humans. You appreciate beauty. You indulge your passions. You live life to the fullest extent."
"And Denobulans don't?" That didn't sound right.
"It's a work in progress," she admitted. "We make a conscious decision to focus on all that's good in the universe. In terms of hedonism, though, very few species can beat yours."
"I see. And of all the interesting, fun-loving humans you could have chosen...you picked me?"
She shrugged and looked down in an attempt to hide her smile. "I never said I had good taste in men."
He scoffed and leaned far back in his chair, suddenly remembering his timely reality check with Trip, his insistence, his own agreement that he couldn't let her go hundreds of light years away without knowing where they stood. "Speaking of which…"
Alira turned to him, curious, and for a brief moment he considered aborting the mission altogether. "Listen, I know the way our people approach relationships are completely different. I won't stop you from being who you are, but at the same time, depending on which path you go down, it might be difficult for me to-"
"Multiple lovers? In this economy?" Fortunately for Malcolm, she naturally anticipated the conclusion he was trying to reach and even met it with humor, stopping him from continuing to babble and dig himself into a deeper hole. She made a swift, dismissive motion with her hand. "Let me be perfectly clear. Right now, you're the only one that I want."
"Right now?"
"And if that changes, you'll be the first to hear about it." She knew it wasn't exactly the answer he'd wanted to hear, but there was certainly something to be said about the intensity of her feelings for him, which had been building up since the moment they met and now threatened to overwhelm her. Truly, it was all about compromise. "I believe I'm willing to try things the human way."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him visibly relax. There was a moment of heavy silence, and she went to sit at her desk, awaiting his reply.
"I would do just about anything to be there with you right now."
"Really? What about stealing a shuttlepod?"
"Anything short of a court martial." Almost simultaneously, their consoles beeped, and they looked down at the incoming alert, then back at each other. "Looks like our time is almost up."
"Hoshi's been very strict about the bandwidth limits. We'll have to switch to text-only correspondence."
"Text-only, Alira."
"Really? Are you sure about that?"
On the other end of the line, he looked away, laughing to himself. "Maybe not."
"That's what I thought."
There was a pause, where neither knew what to do or say. Finally, Malcolm reached for the button that would cut off the transmission, thinking it best to end it without fanfare. Because that had already gone so well when they'd said their goodbyes after commissioning, and every subsequent video call after that. "I love you."
"With all that I am," she replied, then beat him to the punch.
In the silence of their respective quarters, separated by a handful of light years, they simultaneously pitched forward and buried their faces in their hands, sighing loudly.
In the middle of the night, Jonathan awoke to the sound of the door chime.
With a huff, he rose from his bunk and crossed the room, none too surprised to find the Captain standing across the threshold. She was dressed for bed in her silky pajamas and one of those Vulcan robes she loved so well.
"T'Pol?" He whispered, squinting into the bright light of the corridor. "What time is it?"
"A little past 0300. I couldn't sleep. Lady will not stop staring at me."
"That's just what cats do, T'Pol."
She nodded, not entirely convinced, and glanced past him into his quarters. "Would you mind some company?"
"You know, your excuses for coming to me in the middle of the night are wearing a little thin." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Why don't you just admit that-"
"Yes or no?" She challenged, crossing her arms across her chest. He could see that she was exhausted, harried, and pouting a little, something that he found quite adorable.
It was no use. He couldn't deny her.
He stepped aside and allowed her to enter. She looked around for a few moments, then slid out of her robe and slippers, preparing to climb into bed.
She stopped the moment he took hold of her arm. He had to know the answer. "Why don't you just admit that you enjoy sharing a bed with me?"
It had been their routine, multiple times a week, for almost two months. He knew how she felt about him, and vice versa, so there was never really a need to discuss it. In that moment, he knew she felt the waves of affection coming from him, and thought he felt her respond in kind.
Suddenly she turned on him, placing both hands on his chest and pushing him roughly into the wall. It was one swift, decisive motion that took him by surprise; he often took for granted that she was much stronger than him, in more ways than one. Her hands were working, constantly moving, sweeping over his chest, down to the waistband of his shorts, then back around his neck and to the sides of his face. When she kissed him, he could feel her desire, sense her care and devotion.
For years, it was all he'd wanted, all he'd needed. And she was right here, right now, her motives clear, with a warm and open bed within arm's reach.
"I need to hear you say it, T'Pol." He pulled her closer to whisper in her ear, feeling her moving against him. He knew she could feel his heart racing. "Tell me what you want."
She pulled back, studying him for one eternal moment, tracing the lines of his face with her eyes. It occurred to her that he was her rock, her support, her constant companion, her everything. And she knew she couldn't lie to him.
"You," she stated plainly, relishing the sight of the smile teasing at his lips. "Jonathan, I must warn you, if we continue, we will become bonded."
"Really?" By that time, he was depositing soft kisses over her face, before working his way down her neck and back up to the tip of one delicately pointed ear. She was breathing hard, fighting an emotional response, and he couldn't get enough of it. "What exactly does that mean?"
"We will be able to feel one another's emotions without touch..."
"Yeah?"
"And sense each other's thoughts…"
"Mhm."
"In due time, we may be able to communicate telepathically."
"Due time?"
"If we decide to continue."
"You know, call me crazy…" Seizing her by the waist, he pushed her down to the bed, his heart and mind set alight by the affection he saw in her eyes. "But I've been looking for ways to get closer to you."
It was exactly what she wanted to hear. Acting on an impulse, she wrapped her legs around his hips and flipped him over, straddling him, leaning down to whisper, "I am grateful that you have arrived at this decision."
Some time later, Jonathan lay on his side facing the window, watching the stars streak by with the woman he loved cuddled up to his chest, the top of her head tucked underneath her chin. He gently stroked her bare arm from her shoulder to her elbow with the barest of touches, and she sighed, settling farther into him.
Throughout their lovemaking, he'd studied her nearly impassive expression with concern, and had asked her repeatedly if she wanted to stop or try something else. Each time she refused, and after the fourth or fifth time he asked, she seized both of his hands and squeezed them with all her might. Immediately, he was nearly overcome with emotion-her emotion-her desire compounding over his own.
When she'd strode into his ready room at the start of their first mission, sharp-tongued and ready for an argument, he never would have imagined that the events of the next five years would drive them into each other's arms. But if everything they'd gone through had directly led to this, he was grateful, through every moment of suffering and strife. He loved her with all that he was, and what's more, he could now feel that she felt the same, even when she said nothing at all.
"In the morning, we should ask Mr. Reed for a second review of the suggestion box submissions. See if we can narrow them down any farther." He didn't know what else to talk about, so work would have to suffice.
He could feel her nod. "I know you are disappointed that your suggestion of building a pool was rejected."
"It wouldn't have just been for water polo, T'Pol. Swimming is great exercise. The entire crew could use it."
She made the smallest of noncommittal gestures with her free hand, as if to tell him, if you say so.
There was a moment of silence, then he felt her amusement growing through their bond, until the only thing holding her back from laughing out loud was her emotional barriers.
"What's with you?" He asked, pulling back slightly.
"I was not truthful with you, Jonathan." Her expression was perfectly neutral, completely at odds with what he was feeling. "Lady was sleeping peacefully when I left my quarters tonight."
"Stand down for alpha shift!" Trip called out as he strolled onto the bridge first thing Monday morning, catching a majority of the assembled officers by surprise.
Alira rose from the Captain's chair, perfectly disaffected, and it seemed like a herculean effort for her to do so. Slowly, she arched her back and leaned into a stretch, arms clasped high above her head. She turned just in time to see Julia round the corner and approach the conn. Wordlessly, she reached for the PADD perched atop the command console and passed it into her hands.
Julia nodded, tapping it into the palm of her other hand in silent appreciation. "Exciting night, Taxa?"
"Just another day in paradise. At one point we thought Ensign Farrokh spotted a rogue comet on long-range sensors." She cut a glance to the man in question, who had just been promoted to bridge watch and was more than a little sheepish about how worked up he'd gotten over his alleged discovery. "It turned out to be a speck of dust on the screen."
Behind her, she heard Trip stifle a laugh, but she ignored it. "Hey, don't get discouraged. Did you know I detected a previously uncharted stellar core fragment during my first six months on the Columbia?"
"No, ma'am." In the very least, he was looking a bit hopeful now.
"Captain Hernandez wound up naming it after me. Of course, we only stumbled across it after days and days of looking out on a view screen exactly like that." She gestured towards the front of the room, the blank expanse of anonymous stars spread out before them.
They didn't get to hear exactly what he thought about that, for in the next moment Ensign Hutchison and Lieutenant Novakovich swept onto the bridge, the latter stopping just across the threshold and taking a deep bow. "No autographs, please! It's hard enough being a celebrity."
Hoshi exited the turbolift next, shoving him from behind and nearly causing him to tumble face-first into the deck plating. "Move it or lose it, Ethan."
"From now on, you can address me as Bowling Champion of the Sector and All Starfleet." They both stepped up to their stations to relieve the night watch, accepting their reports and settling into their seats.
Julia couldn't help but roll her eyes. It had been two days, and Ethan still wasn't over his extremely fortuitous victory. Someone had to bring him down to size.
Propping a hand on her hip, she extended the PADD Alira had given her towards the science station. "How about The Only Department Chair Who Hasn't Turned In Their Monthly Staff Evaluations?"
"Is it that time already?"
"The twenty-fifth of the month, every month. Did Lieutenant Cutler not tell you about it?" Trip asked, raising the Captain's chair up by a few inches and crossing one leg over the other in a figure-four formation.
"She did," he acknowledged, his former bravado a little tarnished. He nodded towards Julia. "I'll have it to you by the end of the shift."
"Make it by lunch."
"Deal."
Jimmy Nguyen was the last of them to enter the bridge, making a beeline for the tactical station. En route, he pointed at Alira, taking her by surprise. "You. I need help getting the phase cannon power readings to show up on the dorsal display."
Somewhat dramatically, she glanced at the chronometer mounted to the wall. She crossed her arms and exhaled quickly, addressing him with palpable frustration. "Are you trying your best, Ensign?"
"God, I hope not," he mumbled, locating his chair and sliding it half the length of the wall towards his station. "But yeah, probably."
Across the room, Hoshi was receiving a transmission. Quickly, she reached for her headset and clipped it over her ear, calling out, "It's time!"
All around her, the gamma shift bridge crew was vacating the room, save for Alira, who took up her post beside her second. Jimmy quickly trained his gaze towards the console, but she kept glancing back at the screen, an action that only became more noticeable when the bridge of the Enterprise appeared before them.
On the other end of the line, the Captain and the Commodore were standing in front of the conn, having adopted identical postures, arms crossed with a wide stance. Trip all but jumped to his feet and stepped up to Commander Hammond, saying, "It's about time we got rid of the likes of you."
If T'Pol was amused, she scarcely showed it, the corners of her lips twitching slightly. "Safe travels, Captain Tucker."
"Try not to cause too much trouble out there, Trip." As Archer spoke, Hutch was punching in their new course, and soon they felt the ship list heavily in one direction.
"I oughta say the same to you." Hoshi looked up just in time to see Alira reach across and pat her side underneath her right arm. It was quick, but unmistakable, especially as her counterpart placed a hand on his chest on the other end of the line.
"Godspeed, Maelstrom."
"Godspeed." Trip nodded, and Hoshi cut the connection. He was smiling now, visibly excited. "Warp six, Ensign. We'll increase speed as we gain distance. Don't wanna show them up too bad."
All at once, they began to feel the gently increasing force of the engine pulling them backwards. The light originated from a single point far ahead of them, growing wider and wider until it swallowed them entirely. The hull began to vibrate and nearly sing, and for a split second Trip thought they were going to have to pull back, but then they found their equilibrium, the stars beginning to move past them at a much faster clip.
Satisfied, the Captain and the Commander returned to their seats. At this speed, they were only two days from the Alpha Eridani system.
About half an hour passed in relative silence, save for the occasional squeaking of a chair and electronic beeping of buttons being pressed. Jimmy and Alira were still trying to solve their problem, arguing quietly, nearly taking their entire station apart in the process of attempting to find a short in the secondary EPS relay.
Hoshi was starting to think that it would be a regular uneventful duty shift when her console suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree.
"Captain, we're receiving a priority one distress call." It was close enough that she knew the Enterprise had to be picking up on it as well. Though she'd certainly read about it more than once in their protocol manuals, she'd never seen one before. That designation meant more than an emergency; it signaled near or total catastrophe.
Everyone seemed to sit up a little taller, and the ensuing silence was tense, expectant. "Range?"
"Five light years. Audio only."
"Put it up, Lieutenant."
At first she struggled to force the transmission into something intelligible, but when she finally succeeded, the bridge was filled with the sound of a woman speaking frantically in Denobulan, the background flooded with distant weapons fire and many other people talking, whispering, screaming.
Instantly, Alira rose from her chair, leaning into her console. She was clutching her chest, her eyes wide with horror.
The second time around, the UT was able to lock onto the syntax.
"Attention all alliance ships within range, this is Kandar stationmaster. We have been boarded by unknown invaders. Repeat, we have been boarded."
Now, Trip and Hoshi couldn't help but recognize that voice.
"Cloak is down. Primary and secondary defense systems have failed. Multiple casualties...decompressed chambers...will defend...any cost...require assistance…" As she spoke, Feezal's voice became more and more distorted until it lost coherence completely, and the overhead speakers were overcome with static.
Trip reacted immediately, rising to his feet and calling out, "Alter course, Mr. Hutchison. Maximum speed." He glanced back at Ethan. "How long?"
"At warp six-point-nine, two hours."
"Lieutenant, tell Kelby I want six-point-nine-five and not a bit less. And while you're at it, get me the Supreme Commander of the Denobulan Infantry. Immediately."
Trip came from around the conn and looked towards his tactical officer, who was visibly trembling and struggling to catch her breath. Roughly, he seized her elbow and tore her from her trance, plainly shocked by the fear he saw in her eyes.
He wondered if she knew something they didn't.
"Ensign," he said quietly, and she nodded.
Together the two of them disappeared into his ready room, descending the bridge into silence.
End of Episode Eleven
Next time on Enterprise...
Episode Twelve: First Blood
The Maelstrom arrives at Kandar, which the remaining scientists have been ordered to defend until their last breath. Alira's loyalties are questioned, and Yuris tries to cover their tracks.