Chapter 5
Malcolm Reed was trudging in the mud, spouting white clouds of mist into the cold night air.
His nose and mouth burnt, and his body heat was making him sweat profusely inside the heavy winter uniform, while the drizzling rain slowly soaked it. The heavy body he was carrying on his shoulders made taking each step more difficult, but he hung onto it with the blind determination a drowning man would cling to a lifeline with.
His mind was still full of the terrible scenes he'd left behind at the German field hospital in the flood of casualties coming in from the combat zone. The place had been nightmarish: limbless bloodied men wailing and screaming, carried in by their fellow soldiers, the doctors and nurses madly trying to direct the tide, working feverishly on the nearest body. Blood and dirt were everywhere.
No-one had paid any attention to him and Ryan stealing away one of those nameless wounded.
He could hear Corporal Ryan shuffling behind him, his boots slogging in the sticky mud. The MACO had offered to relieve him and carry the unconscious body for a while, but he refused with a curt "no", focusing on the task of getting one foot after another. He would carry the dead weight to the shuttlepod, even at the cost of his last living breath. He had promised it to himself. And he was not a man to go back on his bloody word.
"Everything went according to plan." He should be satisfied. His extraction strategy had been well-organized and punctual. As soon as T'Pol had called him to the Ready Room and communicated they thought they had located the captain, he had thrown himself into analyzing every possible detail. And the ease of the real task almost frustrated him. He would have liked a good fight to release some of the anger he'd kept inside for the last two days.
But all he'd got was a sweaty plodding in the mud, struggling with his own limbs to carry the dead weight of Captain Archer's unconscious body.
---
"We've got him, Ma'am! We'll be at the shuttle in five minutes! Reed out."
T'Pol tapped the comm console and turned to Travis.
"Did you hear that? Ready to take off as soon as they get here."
While the young ensign performed pre-flight checks, her mind was busy archiving the news. It seemed everything had gone according to plan.
She felt some kind of emotion insinuating her hard-won control. She tried to analyze it, as she often did with the feelings she now experienced, only to discover they were much more complex and perplexing than she expected. Her clear-cut, logical mind seemed unequipped to deal with them.
She inhaled twice in rapid succession, detaching herself. Then she turned her mind's logical eye to the painfully tight sensation enveloping her inner being. She knew humans would call relief the feeling they'd experience in the present circumstances. But the human definition of the emotion was somewhat perplexing: it implied that relief was a pleasant emotion, and what she was feeling resembled more grief than pleasure.
She let a small sigh escape her lips. Almost never, in her growing experience, a feeling had turned out to be what it was supposed to by human standards. The contradictory human label of "relief" must be accepted for now. There wasn't time for a deeper analysis of the matter.
She filed her doubt away for a later examination and turned her attention back to the situation at hand.
She went to the open hatch, peeping outside in the drizzling blackness.
"Did you see anything?" she asked Corporal Romero, who'd been mounting guard outside. He shook his head and was going to answer, when they heard a shuffling sound from the wood.
The MACO readily pointed his weapon, but the voice of Malcolm Reed reassured them:
"It's us," he wheezed out, scuffing, carrying a limp body on his shoulders. "Help me!"
Romero ran to relieve the officer of the captain's body and swiftly carried it to the shuttle.
As soon as everyone was on board, the shuttle took off.
"How's the captain's condition?" asked T'Pol, securing the captain's unconscious form to the gurney and trying to determine his state.
Reed managed a windy answer: "Unsure. He is unconscious and has an apparent head wound. Apart from that, I couldn't say." He was shuffling around to find a medical scanner.
T'Pol examined the large burn on the side of Archer's face and the white bandage they'd applied around his head, a new wave of emotion engulfing her.
"Captain!" she called in an urgent voice, gently shaking his shoulder. His uniform felt damp under her hand. "Captain!"
"I don't think he can hear you, Ma'am," said Reed stoically, reading the findings on his scanner screen. "Skull fracture and brain edema. Better comm Doctor Phlox and ask him to meet us in the shuttlebay."
---
"Oh, he's going to be alright!" proclaimed Doctor Phlox with his usual cheerfulness, just a touch of weariness in his voice. He emerged from the sickbay's restricted area, taking off the gloves he'd used for the procedure.
"I was able to relieve the pressure on the brain, and he should regain consciousness within the next 24 hours. All we can do now, is wait," he told Commanders T'Pol and Tucker who had been waiting for news in the general area. "You'll be able to see him in a little while, should you wish it."
He left to go back to his patient, leaving the impression of his overextended smile hanging before their eyes.
Trip sighed, scrunching the side of his face: "Well!" he said, dropping his tall form to a chair. "We did it again! The Captn' owes us big time!"
He didn't know if he felt like laughing or like crying. He settled for a grin, thinking of the way he would rib Jon, just like old times. The wave of relief washing over him at the thought left him suddenly spent, and he hunched on the chair.
T'Pol had not stirred, her usual Vulcan poise firmly in place, her spine ramrod straight, her hands clasped behind her back. "I think this is an appropriate time to rest, Commander. I suggest we retire to our quarters, we will be able to visit the captain at a later time. Hopefully, he will be conscious by then."
Looking at T'Pol standing in front of him as cold as a cucumber, the embodiment of the quintessential Vulcan façade, Trip Tucker was submerged by an unexpected gush of laughter
"Ya know, T'Pol, ya just sound soo logical," he giggled, "sooo damn logical!" his form spasmodically but quite soundlessly shaking on the chair.
T'Pol merely raised her brow, dryly thinking that, even with her new understanding of emotions, human reactions were still highly illogical and vastly incomprehensible.
---
The boy couldn't hold his liquor. Reed scoffed, looking at the plastered young man on the other side of the table, his eyes glazed and his head starting to loll around. He was a little high himself, but nothing compared to Travis.
Well, it probably wasn't very fair, considering, the way he had unobtrusively poured whiskey after whiskey after Andorian ale in the young ensign's glass, but, hey! Everything is fair in love and war… Even though…, technically, they weren't exactly in war any longer, …or were they? And as for love, well…. His thoughts began to jumble.
He hunched on his chair in the deserted half-lit crew mess. No-one was around any longer, but the gathering had been lively a couple of hours before. Travis and himself had meant to drink to the completion of the mission, to the captain's health and to a safe return, but he had to admit it… whiskey and the lazuline liquid didn't mix well… He didn't want to think how Travis would feel in the morning, or, maybe, …he wanted to!
He scoffed again, his shoulders shaken by a low amused laugh. To hell with propriety! He thought of his straight-laced father and laughed in his face, then daringly mumbled an obscenity to the address of Captain Jonathan Archer, just for the fun of it and to vent some of his pent-up frustration. How would he have a kick out of it now, if he could just detonate a couple of those little, flirty, photonic torpedoes!…
"Easy, Reed, or you'll find yourself at the wrong end of a firing squadron…." He laughed himself into stitches, falling from his chair and onto the deck floor.
"Travis!" he bellowed. "Travis, help me up!" He couldn't stop laughing.
Travis tried to get up, swayed on his feet, mumbled something under his breath, and gracelessly sank to the floor. He then began to produce indistinct grieving sounds.
Reed laughed harder, rolling on the floor, crying until he was reduced to an incoherent heap. His stomach hurt, and his head was also beginning to bother him. Bloody hell! What a mess… no-one around to help them to their quarters… this move had not been very… tactical! Malcolm Reed started laughing again.
A little more and he would laugh himself into oblivion.
---
T'Pol stopped just inside the curtain, letting it fall behind her.
The captain appeared to be sleeping. He lay on his back, his arms along his body, the white sheet neatly folded under them, his chest rising and falling at regular intervals. His expression was totally relaxed, like a white canvas waiting for the painter.
T'Pol stood motionless, her attention fully focused on the sound and motion of the man's breathing. The scene was, for some reason, uncommonly peaceful.
"Disturbingly peaceful."
She would never have used those two words together six months ago, at a time when she was still in total command of her emotions. But now her perception of herself had permanently changed. She felt, to use Commander Tucker's irritating words, "like an old oil painting". Somewhat cracked. And the same things that used to run off her like water infiltrated the cracks, and touched the marrow.
Now was one of those times when apparently meaningless things, for no justifiable reason, left her open to emotional disturbance. It was the very peacefulness of the situation which left her unsettled. Illogical, but nevertheless true.
She took a step, and stopped beside the bio-bed. Phlox had assured her that the captain's condition was evolving favourably. He was expected to wake up within the next 20 hours, all he needed was rest. There could be temporary impairment to his memory or thought processes, but he would suffer no permanent damage. Everything was well. This made her present state of mind all the more capricious.
She sighed, silently, lowered her head and timidly touched the captain's hand with her own. She had already learnt that physical contact was a way to diffuse the disturbing presence of emotion, even if the discovery hadn't been painless. His hand was warm and dry, pleasant to the touch. She felt with her fingertips the callousness of his, then with a slow caress followed his fingers to the palm and gently squeezed it.
She studied his face. His right side to her, the burning marks were almost invisible, and he looked simply asleep. She had never had the opportunity of studying his face quite this accurately before, and it gave her a strange sense of intimacy. She felt again a rush of emotion, a warm feeling creeping from her stomach to her breastbone, climbing up her oesophagus, and she tried to fight back the tears forming at the back of her throat. She felt defenceless.
And for once, alone in the narrow privacy of the curtained bed, at the presence of the captain's unconscious body, she felt she could let her control slip and gratefully surrendered herself to the flow of illogical mingled emotions and cried.