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Chapter five, and things are beginning to get more complicated...

§ 5 §

Entering his quarters at the end of that fateful day, Trip let the door swish closed, and stood immobile in the middle of the small room. The stars streamed by outside his porthole, and he quickly averted his gaze from what, all of a sudden, was an anguishing view. Enterprise was speeding away from that red planet, where a part of him would undoubtedly remain chained to the mystery they were leaving behind. He felt lost and dispirited, and even though he had sworn to himself that he wouldn't mourn, not yet, not before finding out the truth – for sooner or later, one way or another he would find out the truth – he couldn't help it: his hopes of seeing his Capt'n, his friend, alive again were shrinking with every metre they were putting between them and that obelisk.

Eventually breaking his immobility, Trip shuffled numbly to the bathroom and turned the shower on. Maybe standing under a hot stream for a while would ease some of his tautness. As he went about mechanically removing his clothes, flashbacks from what had just passed went through his mind.

The twenty-four hours that the Ambassador had given them had gone by, and the only additional piece of information they had been able to gather was that there was no trace of Archer's DNA in the earth samples Trip and his team had collected. He would have considered that good news, or at least hopeful news, except for the fact that Blake had marched into the ready room with impatience painted all over him, and proceeded to order Enterprise back on her previous course.

Trip stepped under the water and turned his face up to it. Holding his breath against the downpour, he let the thunderous pummelling carry his thoughts away from the scene that wanted to replay endlessly in his mind; but as soon as he came up for air, his memory lost no time rushing back to that ready room meeting. What had really happened? Where had loyalties stood?

"I desire to consult Starfleet Command on this," T'Pol had told Blake, when the man had imparted his order.

Desire! Demand, that's what she should have said. Her calm, politely controlled voice had angered Trip, who had over-reacted and, of course, shot his mouth off. His own words played like a broken record in his mind. To silence them he turned the water on harder, but they were still there, taunting him.

"You cannot order us to leave and abandon our Captain!" he had barked.

Blake had frozen him with but one look. Trip remembered thinking that he had never seen dark eyes with such an icy quality to them.

"Wrong, Commander," the man had countered easily. "Your Captain is quite obviously beyond rescue, and as of this moment I am taking command of the Enterprise."

Trip had opened his mouth to object, but had been silenced with a firm, "And I suggest you keep in line, Mister Tucker. Or I will have to order security to lock you in the brig."

While Trip's mind was reeling, Blake had gone on to quote some damned article from the damned Starfleet rulebook, and T'Pol…

Banging a flat palm on the faucet, Trip cut the water off. His hands closed into hard fists and he leaned on them against the wall, closing his eyes. T'Pol had said a big fat nothing. She had handed command of Enterprise over without a damn word.

Was it possible that she was privy to something he wasn't? After all they were carrying a Vulcan Ambassador to some mysterious rendezvous. Where did T'Pol stand? Was she loyal to Captain Archer and this crew, or to her own people? He thought he had known, but now he didn't any more. Hell, she hadn't even made a ship-wide announcement: didn't she care how the crew felt, seeing that they had broken orbit without their Captain? But of course. She was Vulcan. No feelings.

"We have no choice but to obey the Admiral," she had repeated once again, with that infuriating calm, after Blake had left.

"We can't leave, T'Pol! We need to do something!" Trip had doggedly urged her.

"There is nothing we can do, at the moment."

Trip had felt despair grip him, and had stormed out of the ready room.

Finally finding the will to move, Trip dragged himself out of the shower and started towelling himself off. The weariness of those tense hours had suddenly crashed down on him. He needed rest. He didn't know what had held him back from physically assaulting Blake and leading a mutiny. A part of him now wondered half-seriously if Malcolm would have joined the cause, or obeyed Blake and thrown him – Trip – in the brig. The Lieutenant was a stickler for regulations and the chain of command, but his loyalty to Enterprise, unlike T'Pol's, was not to be doubted. And he had seen how guilt-ridden the man was feeling about what had happened planet-side. Trip wondered how Malcolm was doing. He hadn't talked to him since Phlox had let him out of sickbay, and he had looked unwell and troubled. As Trip pulled on a pair of sweatpants he made a mental note to find some time soon to speak to him.

Malcolm crossed the mess hall to Sato's table and slipped – well, slipped wasn't the right word: more like tentatively lowered himself – into the chair across from her. He had almost gone off to the empty table in the far corner, but till Phlox gave him a shot, walking was not on his favourites' list.

"So, how are you feeling, Lieutenant?" Hoshi enquired, with a quick glance that told him she had noticed his physical discomfort.

Her voice had been almost normal, with just a hint of vibrato in it. She was putting up a good front, Malcolm thought. But then he studied the jerking movements of her knife as she cut her pancakes into painstakingly small morsels and changed his mind. He didn't know when and how Hoshi had been told that Enterprise would resume her course, but he imagined it had been a hard blow. Archer had been a sort of father figure for the young linguist.

"It appears that once again I have survived."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth Malcolm regretted his idiotic sarcasm. Somebody else hadn't – survived. Indeed Hoshi stopped and regarded him in shock, emotion twinkling in her eyes. But she bravely swallowed it back and returned to mincing her food.

"I'm sorry," Malcolm mumbled. "I..." He pushed his cup away, no longer feeling like tea. "I'm better."

It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't all of the truth either. His head had stopped throbbing and his nausea was gone. But he was still sore all over and could hardly close his eyes without seeing the Captain. It was like a chain reaction: his eyes closed and the Captain's opened in his mind. He had slept little and badly, and if that haunting vision was a trick of his guilt-ridden conscience, then this time he really had it bad.

Hoshi suddenly stopped what she was doing and froze in mid action, as if she had just realised what a mess she was making of her breakfast. Slowly putting her cutlery down, she muttered without lifting her gaze, "If I had been able to understand that message, maybe none of this would have happened."

So he wasn't the only one with pangs of conscience.

"If we hadn't picked up that signal in the first place, none of this would have happened," Malcolm countered darkly. "Don't blame yourself, Ensign. You can't expect to have an instant grasp of all the languages of the galaxy."

"Same as you can't expect to anticipate all the dangers the galaxy will throw at us, Lieutenant?" Hoshi countered, now lifting meaningful eyes on him.

Malcolm's facial muscles tightened. "It's different," he said, his voice all spikes. He shifted away from her assessing gaze. "Going so close to that obelisk was a stupid lack of precaution on the Captain's part: I should have prevented it, it's my job."

Hoshi tilted her head, mouth twitching to the side. "You just called the Captain stupid, Sir," she said, with a touch of annoyance. "It's not nice to speak badly of..."

Malcolm watched her falter and swallow. He sighed.

"I wouldn't do that," he said gently, adding to himself no matter how outright irritating the man was at times. "I said his lack of precaution was stupid." A sharp something went through his heart, and he scrunched his eyes shut. "I had cautioned him," he burst out. "I shouldn't have let him--"

Annoyed that he had let her get a glimpse of his own frustration and guilt, he cut himself off. He was her superior officer, couldn't afford to show weakness.

In the silence that fell between them, he listened to the background noises of the mess hall. Life on board the starship Enterprise went on: not even the loss of her Captain could halt it. If he didn't know better, this sounded like the beginning of any other day. He had always found it sad, in a way, that life didn't stop in the face of death; that your biological needs didn't go on hold. No matter how much you were grieving, your body carried you around, needed food, exercise, sleep… Trip perhaps would say it was a blessing, a way to get you over your mourning more quickly. But he thought there was something irreverent in it all.

"I don't think I can stand to sit at my station with that Admiral in Captain Archer's chair," Hoshi suddenly said, tautly.

Malcolm hadn't actually thought about it – until now. "It won't be easy, but we'll have to."

They held each other's eyes for a moment, and he struggled to be strong for her, though he felt anything but.

Hoshi started to move out of her seat.

"Would you do me a favour?" Malcolm stopped her. The words tumbled out of his mouth. "Keep trying to decipher that message."

Hoshi's brow creased in a determined expression. "You don't need to worry about it, Lieutenant. Sooner or later I'll know what it says."

Malcolm gave her a pale smile. "We'll be okay, Hoshi," he reassured her quietly. Not that he believed it entirely. But now that the Captain was gone he felt even greater responsibility towards the crew.

"Yeah," she replied, half-heartedly.

Malcolm watched her leave; then got to his own feet too, repressing a groan. He'd get Phlox to change – preferably remove – the dressing on his head and give him something for his bruised old bones, and then he'd report to the Bridge.

"Ah. Lieutenant Reed, is it?"

There was a hint of something in the Admiral's voice which Malcolm didn't like. He had been introduced to Blake when the man had come on board, but had hardly met him afterwards. He straightened his shoulders, switching on his unreadable look for the imposing man who had turned to him as soon as he had stepped out of the lift. Why did superior officers always have to tower over him? No Napoleons in Starfleet.

"Aye, Sir. Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, reporting for duty."

He noticed, with his peripheral vision, that T'Pol and Hoshi were looking his way.

"You're fine, then, Lieutenant?" Blake's eyebrows lifted. "I had been told you had suffered a severe concussion."

Again, that hint of… Malcolm took an instant dislike of the man. "I have been cleared for light duty," he replied flatly. "Permission to take my station?" And get over with it – he added irritably in his mind.

Blake looked him straight in the eye for a moment longer; then nodded and went to sit in the Captain's chair.

Slipping out of the seat at Tactical, Müller gave Malcolm a quick report, his green gaze telling him more. Malcolm dismissed him with a quiet, "Take care of the Armoury, Bernhard." Then he prepared for what would undoubtedly be a long and difficult shift.

Trip was nowhere to be seen. The Engineer had probably buried himself in work in the bowels of the ship, and Malcolm envied him a little. If Phlox hadn't ordered him to take it easy, he would have gladly found some physically exacting job and got himself exhausted. Then perhaps he might hope for a good night of sleep, when the time came.

Lifting his gaze, Malcolm studied Travis, sitting, absorbed, at the helm. Where the hell were they going, anyway? Mayweather had been given a set of coordinates, but as far as he had gathered they led to no specific place. He wondered what T'Pol knew of this urgent mission – if anything.

Something beeped, and he dropped his gaze back to his instruments.

"A ship on long-range sensors," T'Pol said, anticipating him.

Blake turned to her. "What ship?"

"It appears to be Andorian."

"They're hailing us," Hoshi added, with an unobtrusive glance at T'Pol.

"Ignore them," Blake ordered. He got up and climbed down to the helm. "Ensign, how fast are we going?"

"Warp four, Sir."

"Go to four point five."

"With all due respect, Admiral," Malcolm said, feeling a secret satisfaction in teaching the man something, "I'm afraid Enterprise cannot outrun an Andorian ship."

"Then maybe they'll get the idea that we're not interested in speaking to them," Blake retorted acidly.

Malcolm pursed his lips to keep in what he thought of that. He looked across the Bridge and caught Hoshi's troubled gaze and T'Pol's, Vulcanly steady.

Not a chance Trip might decide to make an appearance just now, was there?

TBC

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