Chapter Ten

A/N: #Hides as fellow readers and writers throw stones at her for being a very very bad girl and not updating#

You will be glad to hear that I am now through the weeks of pain and exhaustion that is exam time and am ready to finish this story. I have got to do so in the next four weeks since I am going to China (!) next month and will be incommunicado for a while. So... I promise I won't leave you hanging as the story hots up (even more).

Enjoy it!

Thanks to all my reviewers, you are my conscience in getting me to update! And yes, Verity Kindle, there will be more Malcolm angst... #manic laugh#

Disclaimer: Let's face it, if I owned Enterprise, the episodes would all have been two months apart.

Chapter Ten

The Quartermaster Ashore

Despite the surprises, ill-experiences and frankly astonishing revelations of the past few days, Jill Derner entered the store with a new spring in her step that morning. The ship was in orbit around a warp-capable world: a world with a varied assortment of beaches, mountains, and luxury hotels. The Captain had given her the not unwelcome task of informing the Quartermaster's Team that they, along with the command crew and the cook team, had first offer for three days of shore leave in any area of their choice.

"Crewman," he had said, catching up with her in the corridor the evening before, "I've been checking the records and it seems I'm right in thinking that the Quartermaster's Team has never had leave during missions?"

Jill had paused for a moment in thought, and realised that he was quite right – the only breaks the team had ever received had been on Earth, between missions. They hadn't gone off-ship when Enterprise had stopped at Risa in the first year of their voyage, since the crew had, oddly enough, still wanted clean clothes to wear when they got back. She had said something to this effect to the Captain, who had started slightly before giving a chagrined smile.

"Right. It's just that we've found a planet on the starcharts about twenty light-years away that looks appropriate. Beaches, busy cities, that sort of thing. It's been a while since the crew's had a proper break."

"You're a very considerate commanding officer," Jill had replied, giving him, to her later shame, her most charming smile.

"Not as considerate as James," he had said, then stopped, looking awkward. "I'm sorry, I didn't -"

"Don't worry." She had said quickly, though she didn't meet his gaze. "Shore leave sounds good."

It certainly did sound good when she relayed the Captain's information – with a few embellishments – to her friends and colleagues in the Store, though she made sure she did not spend too long looking in either Annan or Billy's direction.

"Beaches, you say?" Miranda's eyes widened, and she gave a glance which Jenny deemed suspiciously over-eager in Tiller's direction. Tiller coughed, his already ruddy cheeks flushing.

"Hmm, bit of sun sounds good." He said after a pause, earning him a beaming smile from Miranda.

"I don't know, the town sounds better." Henny smiled, but Jill noted that there was a hint of nervousness in both her expression and her tone. "You know, hit the bars." Yes, Jill silently agreed – and drown a few ghosts.

"Search out a few specialist establishments," Billy said, with a raised eyebrow and a knowing grin in Jill's direction. She looked away, a little awkward, and turned to the only silent person in the room to avoid dwelling on his suddenly frozen expression.

"Annan?"

Annan looked up, one slim eyebrow raised, looking more like a Vulcan than ever.

"It should be passable." He said after a pause, and Jill rolled her eyes. High praise from Annan.

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"You aren't doing very well at this whole getting drunk thing, Trip." Malcolm remarked dryly, glancing at the off-duty engineer over the top of his almost-empty glass. It had been Trip who had suggested that they find the cheapest watering hole on the planet and get roaring drunk, but he seemed too busy gazing morosely into his glass to actually consume any of the liquid inside it. Malcolm couldn't really say he blamed him. Finest Scotch whisky the local ale most certainly was not. He suspected, however, that the alcohol was not the cause of Trip's melancholy disposition. He further suspected, however, that he himself might need a little more of the said alcohol inside of him before broaching the subject of Trip's reverie. If he was even the right person to do so in the first place.

"Yeah." Trip blinked into his glass, before glancing up and giving a hopeless smile. "Heck, Malcolm -"

"I know." Malcolm nodded curtly, refilling Trip's glass – not that it needed it. "It's alright."

"No it ain't." Trip said softly, and Malcolm gave a sigh, though of sympathy rather than exasperation. Not even quite sympathy either, for sympathy implied understanding, and how could he even claim to understand how it would feel to have a daughter thrust upon him against your will and then have her taken away again just as casually by the whims of fate?

"Trip." He paused. "T'Pol is staying in the local Scientific Research Institute. I don't mind if you go."

Trip frowned, not looking at Malcolm, as though hoping that he might discern in the depths of his glass an omen which told him yay or nay. The choice, however, was bitterly his.

"You think I should?"

"Yes."

"Alright." Trip rose, slapping a handful of the local currency onto the table. "I'm paying." He gave a rueful smile. "Your reward for putting up with a miserable bastard all night."

With that parting shot he walked, slowly but at least with aim (rather than the senseless musings which had filled the last half hour) out of the bar, leaving Malcolm to wonder why the only place in the universe which made truly good alcohol was at the tip of a small island inhabited by men wearing kilts. He also wondered why it was always the innocent – both the Elizabeth Tuckers, Henny Mackie – who suffered when there was a huge excess of swollen, corrupt men as they had encountered on the planet Clendavin.

He raised his glass, musing:

"The universe is a funny old place, I suppose." Upon noting that this philosophic announcement was met with by curious and even hostile stares by his neighbours, he downed the drink and followed Trip's path out of the alien door.

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He had not been five minutes out of the drinking establishment when he encountered Henny Mackie, and when she smiled broadly on seeing him he told himself that his flush was due to the alcohol he had consumed and nothing else.

"Lieutenant!" She glanced around the dark alleyway. "I've been looking everywhere for a friendly face. I've been rather deserted."

"Indeed?" He too glanced around the alleyway, though possibly with a little more suspicion than she had. He disliked spaces such as this – enclosed, with few exits and even less people (he would always support the old adage of there being safety in numbers) – but the guide who had shown them to the allegedly most respectable local watering hole earlier in the evening had shown them only one route from their hotel, via this alley. It was for this reason, he asserted silently, that he drew deliberately closer to the young crew woman. "You shouldn't be out here alone. It could be dangerous."

Henny raised an eyebrow.

"Yes Dad." She caught his eye and began to giggle, though Malcolm noticed that she put her hand through his pointedly proffered arm without comment.

"You may laugh, but -"

He never got a chance to explain to her why she should stop laughing, for that very moment something compact but heavy struck the back of his head, and, since he felt her fall beside him in his last moments of consciousness, hers too. Neither of them would be doing much laughing for the time being.

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"This sort of thing happens far too often for my own taste," he groaned, rubbing the back of his head as he sat up, ignoring the fact that almost every nerve in his body was insisting that he would like nothing better than to lie back down and submit to sleep once more. Crewman Mackie was already sitting up, however, and he convinced himself – for the sake of duty, if nothing else – to rise so he could inspect the back of her head.

"Good morning, Lieutenant." She said, rubbing her eyes, and wincing as he pressed the spot where her head had been struck. She gave him a brief smile. "Knew I shouldn't have drunk so much last night. Damn hangover can't have anything to do with being hit over the head by a baseball bat, can it?"

He snorted, gently pulling back her hair. A large bruise was rising, but the skin was intact and there was no blood to be seen. She seemed to predict his diagnosis, for she, too, stood up.

"There's nothing wrong with me." She put her hands in his shoulders. "Your turn to sit down, you look awful."

"Thanks," he retorted, lowering himself to the floor and attempting to deny the fact that he met its solid flatness with great relief, "fortunately for you I am too much of a gentleman to return that compliment."

She didn't laugh, but he felt the tickle of her slow, shaky breath on the back of his head. He flinched slightly as she parted the hair at the back of his head, and felt instantly ashamed, for she had not moved when he had done so to her.

"Sorry," they both said together, and Malcolm grimaced. Her fingers hovered over his skin for a little longer before she made her assessment.

"Just a bruise for you too. Let's hope that your skull is too thick for them to have fractured it." There was a tightness in her voice at the word 'them', and Reed turned, frowning.

"Have you seen them?" It was only now, as the final vestiges of sleep – and, yes, a hangover – left him that he fully realised the situation they were in. Shore leave was three days long, and it might not be until the final day that anybody realised they were missing, since he for one had made no definite plans to meet anyone. He looked around, cursing as he noted that the room they were in was nothing more than a sealed concrete cube, with what looked like an impregnable metal door with one small peep-hole. Had the containment been a technological one, he might have been able to over-ride it, but he was far too aware of the fact that neither of them had quite the right build to even attempt breaking through the door. Add to that the fact that their kidnap seemed a fairly arbitrary one, for they had never been to the planet before –

"I have." Henny interrupted his increasingly concerned musings. "It's the aliens – from the planet." She shakily settled herself next to him on the floor. "The Clendavins. The two that I – I thought I'd killed."

"You recognise them?"

He knew he had said the wrong thing as soon as she turned her oddly hollow eyes onto him.

"I thought I'd killed them. Of course I recognise them."

Reed nodded. It wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that they should have survived – they were hit by the rocks, after all, rather than a certainly deadly laser beam – but Clendavin was a pre-warp world, and it had taken the Enterprise a week to reach the planet for shore leave by Warp 5.

"They must have had help." He muttered, remembering that before making contact with the planet's surface they had picked up several other warp trails – the Clendavins were no strangers to technologically advanced visitors. He glanced at his companion, who, clothed as she was in a loose summer dress (of the sort, he mentally added, over which his father used to have heart attacks about Madeline wearing), was beginning to shiver. As far as Malcolm could tell, she was scared, tired, and still recovering from the away mission the week before. She could easily have been mistaken, since the inhabitants of the planet they were currently on looked fairly similar, and even for him one alien was much like another. Then he glanced at her again, and remembered her determination and level-headedness in that terrible cave, and he knew he had done her a disservice by not even giving her the credit of recognising a person when she saw them.

"Lieutenant?" She said, after a long silence. He looked up. She was biting her lip to keep from shivering, and he hastily pulled his own jacket off and placed it around her shoulders. She laughed nervously. "That was needlessly gallant."

He inclined his head.

"Do you expect anything less?"

"No." Her face crinkled into a smile, but then it faded, and she looked him straight in the eye. He wished he had the will to look away, for he knew what she was going to ask, and he also knew that no lie would pass her. "They're going to find us, aren't they?"

He was saved answering by a sound which put more fear into him than her question had. The door clanged open, and a low, rough voice spoke from behind them.

"Stand up." Then, as they both rose slowly, a mottled hand reached out and grabbed Henny. Malcolm started, but the face of the Clendavin freedom fighter – a foot or so taller and at least a stone heavier than Malcolm even if he hadn't been carrying a gun – twisted into a smirk. "Not you."

The alien twisted away, and Henny Mackie's cry of alarm was lost as the door slammed, leaving Malcolm alone in the cell and feeling that he ought to have been far more gallant than he had been.

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A/N: Well, it's a Malcolm fic, so it had to involve a kidnap! Please press that purple button and tell me what you thought. Reviews make my creative juices flow faster!