Chapter four
A/N: The wild haired spit fire just can't stand this strict soldier can she? Well carry on, And you might get a glimse of her knocking Malcolm on his rear once more.
Briana thought her chances of winning the fight were pretty good in her opinion, but something about the tatical officer bugged her. It reminded her of her time as a black Ops agent or a top-secret agent . If she were to guess, Briana would say that the man had a secret past before Enterprise.
Walking down the corridors, Briana soon found her footsteps had carried her to the Mess Hall. Looking around herself, she noticed that people were clustered together in groups and it went deathly quiet when they realized a stranger was among their midst.
*)_(*
Hoshi noticed the way their newest guest was acting. She was a lot like Malcolm Reed, she thought, grinning. Most of the time, she kept to herself but when she didn try to join the crew in something, Sato found that she was always on edge, waiting for something bad to happen. If she was ever asked, Hoshi Sato would say that Briana Sheppard and Malcolm Reed were similar but different in vast ways.
"Ma'am is this seat taken?" Briana's voice asked, her tone guarded.
Looking up, Sato gave Briana a kind and welcoming smile. "Not at all, as long as you don't mind me babbling in Klingon." She held up a PADD, "Captain wants me to get this decoded before we reached their planet in a few hours."
Smiling a genuine smile, Briana guestured if she could look at what she was reading. "May I, ma'am? I'm always trying to pick up new languages."
"You may, but how can you read this? Humans have never encountered the species before." Sato asked, unprepared for what Sheppard did next.
Scrolling through the padd, it reminded her of a Kindle in her day. Seeing part of the text still in Klingon, so she read it out loud, not very well. Pausing after she finished, Briana gave her compaion back her PADD. "You can thank my family for that one, ma'am. If my siblings and cousins didn't want me to know something they spoke different languages, but I eventually learned that language and they would have to switch it. They finally resorted to talking in fake languages, after a while I had picked that up too. Learning a new lanuage isn't hard for me, it' basically like a mathmatical equation." she explained before digging into her meal.
*)_(*
Malcolm had sworn that he would never do this again. He had started to dig further in the database about the name Sheppard but everything was scrubbed spotless. The whole file had been cleaned and almost everything had been classified about them. He had only been able to find that she was Air Force, delcared KIA, three days after being MIA.
Other than that, Malcolm had found very little. He knew that she came from a military background on her mother's side for several generations, but she had a long list of medals and awards with very little said about them. For one the many medals that she had received were without a report for why. Including but not only she had been awarded, an Air Medal, a Silver star, and a Purple heart. Which Malcolm found was really intreding was that she was rated to fly several different types of ships, after finding out that she was a test-pilot it started to make more sense.
The farther Malcolm looked into her record the more question he had about the woman. There were more holes in that file than swiss cheese, the more Reed knew that she was hiding something that could endanger all of Enterprise. So he went to measures that he swore that he'd never do again.
"Reed, I have a mission for you." Haris's voice broke through Malcolm's thoughts, startling the younger man. Grimancing, Reed turned his attention to Haris on his computer screen.
"What do you want Haris?" He asked putting away the interesting file of one Briana Sheppard. "I thought I told you that I don't work for you anymore."
"We've been through this before Malcolm. You never quit Section thirty-one." Haris tried to steer the convosation back to why he called. "We just got intel about a woman aboard Enterprise."
This got Reed's attention quicker than anything else, if the Enterprise or her crew were in jeporady it was his respoability to safe guard the ship.
"Tell me more." He told the agent, leaning closer to Haris.
"She was a one of the best Top-secret agents that were persumed dead while on a important mission centuries ago. We don't know anything more as to why she's aboard Enterprise, but her record was scrubbed clean. You couldn't find any dirt on the woman if you wanted to." Haris got down to bussiness and told him what he was to do.
"So why me?" Malcolm asked, intrigued immasely.
"You're the only agent that can protect her, Malcolm. If she can't get the intel she recovered to us, Earth doesn't stand a chance to surrive." Haris's tone of voice was something Malcolm had never heard from him.
"Why her?" Malcolm asked, trying to get a picture of what this mission might be like.
"She is related to a Colonel that was on the Front lines. They used her since she was the perfect person for the mission. No one would think that the chief of Security was working for them. Not even the commander of the base she was stationed at." Haris told Malcolm, everything he would need to deal with the threat at hand.
"So I'm to protect her until we can drop her off at Earth?" Reed asked, bitterness in his voice. He hated being the errand boy. It was a waste of his talents and time, when Enterprise needed him.
"Malcolm, you're the closest thing we have out there to protect her. If she doesn't get the intel to us, than we might as well write our most classified base a lost cause. This agent specializes in lost cuases, so give her a chance." Haris suddenly sounded older than thought possible to Reed's ears. "When I terminate this communicate, your moniter will automatically download the full file on your target. Protect her with your life, Commander."
"Haris, I bloody hate these secret assignments from you...!" Malcolm never got to finish his protests, but stopped when he saw who's file it was, One Briana Sheppard. The one person that Malcolm wasn't perpared to see her whole file.
The more he read, the more disbelief he had about her. No one could have exsited with those odds piled over their heads, yet she did and did it, persumably with flair. If Malcolm had a thousand years to figure her out, it still wouldn't be long enough for him to do it.
*)_(*
Trip crossed the decon's floor, knowing that the passager they picked up while on Tontaze IX, was more than likely bugging Malcolm this very minute. He didn't know what was with the two, but Malcolm would be blind if he didn't know that he liked the woman even a tiny bit. If she wasn't bugging the Lieutenant about letting her help out in the Armoury, than she was hanging out with the MACOs(Military Assault Command Operations). Sometimes Trip caught the woman in Engineering eager to learn any and everything. If he remembered correctly today was the day that Malcolm would test the woman's skill in combat, if Trip had heard from the grape vine correctly.
If Briana was like what the others claimed the woman to be, than it would be interesting to say the least. She had a familiarity about her that bespoke her ease of weapons and combat situations. Trip smiled knowing that a lot depended on a pile of Ifs and WHAT THENs.
*)_(*
As Malcolm faced Briana and noticed the ease of her movements. They were neither rushed nor sluggish, but done with ease of long pratice. Her long midnight colored hair was pulled back into a braid wrapped around her head like a crown. Both were in the ready stance but neither were making a move. Starting to cirlce each other, they took note of the way the other walked and things like that, never missing a thing.
After making a couple of moves, everything went dark for the whole ship. The crew had collasped and no one knew why.
*)_(*
There were people aboard the ship, ones that weren't part of the crew. Short with Ears that started in the middle of their foreheads these were Ferengi, thieves of the Galaxy. They did not call themselves theives but merchants. People who arrcured things in an unusual manner. Wandering the ship, two of them happened to find Briana and Malcolm in the training room, lying side by side on the blue mat.
"This one is female." One of them hiss talked to the other. "What are we to do with them?"
"Bring the crew, the females will make a good profit for the Orins, leave the males abaord."
A/N: Just when things were getting easy for our two love birds. Well I know this will come across as pleading but who cares. Please, please leave a review. I honestly have never tried writing a romance before and I need the feedback to make it better. Otherwise this story, which has a lot of potiental, goes right down the drain of horrible wrongs.