Sato
"No, no, NO!"
For my entire childhood, respect for my elders was drummed into me. My parents' word was law. Whatever I thought or felt, I was expected to bow my head and obey, believing that what they wanted was the best for me. Even when I was sent away to a special school so that my linguistic talents could be nurtured to the full, and I secretly wept my heart out at leaving my home and my family and all my friends, I went – if not happily – at least willingly. That was the duty a child owed to its seniors. No-one I knew thought or believed any different.
How the world has turned on its head, for now I'm fighting with a man old enough to be my father – even my grandfather! – as if the two of us were playground children, neither of whom will give ground. He's determined to follow Trip, to stop him and allow whatever horror is going on in that stable to continue, and as hard as I wrestle with him I'm slowly being forced backward. I'm screaming at him that he's wrong, that this is all wrong, that Malcolm wasn't to blame for any of it, that he's a good man and followed the captain's orders, and that I won't let him stop Trip no matter what. The instant he let go of Trip I swept his legs out from under him, I'm trying to hold him down but he pushes me away, and it's like trying to stop some terrible elemental force; he won't stop, even on hands and knees with me holding on to him he won't stop, and he keeps gasping out these terrible things about Starfleet and Enterprise and Jon and Malcolm, how they're traitors and cowards and someone's going to get even, starting now….
"Charles Frederick Tucker the Second, you stop what you're doing right this minute!"
The voice isn't loud, but it cuts through his ranting like a cheese knife, so that he stops in mid-flow and just freezes, his eyes and mouth wide open. I wind myself around him tighter, finding that I'm sobbing with fear and rage; he's not getting away from me, he's not!
Ellen's come down from the house. She should look ridiculous with her dressing gown thrown on anyhow and a pair of slippers on her feet that are too big for them, but the shotgun in her hands makes her anything but laughable. It's pointing at her husband. And though the twin holes at the end of the muzzle are impenetrably black, I wouldn't bet a punched penny that it's not loaded.
Trip's reached the stable. He drags the door open. It must be poorly hung; the shriek of it across the cobbles splits the night.
A second shriek follows, wordless, incandescent with rage.
"Go down there, Hoshi, or there'll be a killin'. I'll take care o' things here."
I don't need telling twice. I almost push Trip's father away and I'm running almost before I'm back on my feet, steeling myself to cope somehow with whatever I'll find.
The first thing I see is a man's body – Malcolm's body! – sprawled across a straw bale. Bleeding cuts criss-cross his back and shoulders and even his outspread arms; he lies limp, unmoving, and for an instant I think he's dead, but then I catch the whimper of indrawn breath and my own goes out of me in a rush of relief. He's alive, Malcolm's alive!
But Carl probably won't be for long, because Trip has him pressed up against the side of the stall opposite, with both hands around his throat.
I've seen Trip drunk and I've seen him sober, I've seen him playful and passionate, I've seen him laughing with Travis in the Mess Hall and working deep in concentration with his team in Main Engineering; I've seen him wide-eyed with wonder as we set foot on a new world, I've seen him mischievous and curious and flirty and even white with rage, but I've never seen him utterly determined to murder. I don't think he even feels Carl's fingers clawing at his strangling hands or notices the ineffectual kicks.
He's not going to respond to a voice. And he's not going to throw away his life and his career over this evil, twisted bastard, not if I can help it.
I snatch up an empty feed bucket and dart outside. There's a rainwater barrel just by the door and I scoop up whatever'll come in half a second and then rush back inside and hurl the lot over Trip and Carl.
That works. Trip falls backwards, coughing and spluttering; Carl falls to his hands and knees, crowing for breath.
"Damn it, leave him!" I smack my ship's Chief Engineer across the back of the shoulders with the bucket when he shows signs of wanting to wade in again; luckily it's only tough plastic, but it does the job, because he fends off another whack and glares at me. "Help me with Malcolm!"
"YOU! STAY!" he yells at his sniveling cousin. "OR I'LL FUCKIN' FINISH THE JOB NEXT TIME!"
His shouts upset the horses, which are already stamping and snorting restlessly in their stalls. There are two of them in here; at first I think there's only one, but in the darker stall beyond I see a chestnut head fling up, and the scared, rolling eye in it.
Not that I have time to worry about that, except to think that if they get scared enough they might break down the rather flimsy doors and try to escape, and that's something we definitely don't want happening. At least not till Malcolm's out of the way.
The two of us bend over our lover. At first I think he's unconscious, but one gray eye rolls open as I touch his face. His breathing is ragged, and his teeth are practically embedded in some small book with a black leather cover. I try to gently remove this, to make it easier for him to breathe, but he stops me with a hoarse, inarticulate noise.
"We shouldn't even try to move him," says Trip, his face bleached as he takes in the damage that's been inflicted on the bare flesh we know is so sensitive. "Go up to the house. Call 911."
"–No!" It's almost a muffled shriek, making us both jump. With what must be a superhuman effort Malcolm spits out the book. It drops into the straw and he swipes clumsily at it. The movement seems to take up an enormous amount of his strength, because his head droops, his eyes blinking frantically like he's fighting to stay awake. "No," he gasps out. "For Christ's sake. No."
"Malcolm, you're hurt! You need help!"
His laugh is like the grating of a saw. "Yes, Hoshi. I know. But not yet. I have to do something. Just help me."
Help him? We hardly dare touch him. There's nothing in the house that would be anything like up to treating these injuries. The blood's running across his skin where cut after cut has opened it, and god knows he could go into shock at any minute, if he hasn't already.
He knows we're hesitating. He drags his head up and looks at Trip, who's kneeling at his other side. "Sir – trust me. For the love of God – don't let me have gone through this – for nothing."
Gently Trip folds a hand over the fingers that are clenched into the side of the straw bale. "Okay, Malcolm. Tell us what you want us to do."
"Get these – bloody ropes off me. As for him–." His eyes cut towards Carl. "Keep him walking."
"With pleasure." It's a growl. Trip's fingers are now busy on the ropes that are cruelly tight around Malcolm's wrists, tying him to the bale; I'd help him, but the knots have been pulled so hard I've hardly pried the first of them open before he finishes the first and comes around to finish mine.
Malcolm swallows, and shakes his head slightly. "Don't hurt him."
"That's not so good. But if you say so…" The rope falls free, and he gets to his feet again. In the shadows behind him, a pitchfork is leaning in a corner.
Carl has started to recover. His face is now more flushed than purple, and he's stopped gasping and choking, though he's still lying in a heap wheezing for breath. His high color drains away as he sees Trip advancing on him with the pitchfork, and he starts scrambling away across the floor, alternately threatening and pleading for mercy.
"Get on your feet, you sick bastard," Trip hisses. "Up, or so help me I'll nail you to the floor with this!"
"You wouldn't dare use that thing on me!"
"Try this instead." There's a whip lying where it fell, on the floor beside me. The plaited leather cord gleams wetly in the lamplight. I pick it up, coil it and toss it to Trip, who catches the handle deftly and lets the lash snake out across the floor with a deftness that suggests hours as a boy spent learning how to knock tin cans off fence posts.
There's blood on my hands.
Malcolm's blood.
He throws the pitchfork away into an empty stall, to be lost among the heaped straw in the darkness inside. Carl's gaze follows it desperately, but the distance is too great, and he'd spend too much time groping around for the thing. Retribution would almost certainly be on him before he'd retrieved it.
"Now. I almost hope you don't believe I'd use this on your good-for-nothing hide." A flick of the wrist makes the lash dance across the dusty, straw-strewn stone floor. "'Cause right now, nothing would give me greater pleasure than provin' you wrong."
"Trip, we – we're fam'ly! You can't do this to me! Just 'cause of this chickenshit little Limey faggot – I only did it 'cause of–"
"Don't even say her goddamn name, you sonofabitch!" yells Trip. "You were told walk, you walk, and every time you stop I'll start you again with this!"
So Carl starts to walk, in circles around the stable, and I run up to the house and fetch clean water and tea-towels, and a tumbler so I can give Malcolm a little water if he asks for it. There's no sign of the Tuckers, and right now I can't spare the time to worry about them.
The situation hasn't changed much when I get back. Malcolm's still awake, but hasn't moved. Carl is still shuffling around the stable, with the menacing shadow of his cousin at his back.
I put the bowl of water down beside the straw bale, and use the tumbler to scoop a little out. Malcolm's lips look completely dry, and I'm pretty sure a few small sips of water can't do him any harm, just enough to wet his mouth.
He manages to swallow some, though most of it goes into the straw. "Thank you."
Him and his beautiful manners. I could smack him upside the head for wasting his strength thanking me at such a pass.
He turns his head to watch Carl. I guess it's not so surprising that his stare is like that of a wolf in a freezing winter, but what is surprising is that Carl seems to be drunk. Even the occasional prod of the whip doesn't seem to stop him wavering in his tracks, and he's started giggling over nothing. Surely he can't think anything about this is funny?
I'm pretty sure the cuts on Malcolm's back need to be cleaned. I'd give him tablets for the pain but that's maybe something the 911 people can help him with so much better if he doesn't have anything in him already, so I drop the tea-towels into the bowl. Okay, it's not sterile, but it's better than nothing, and pity knows what germs were on that whip cord. At least I can make a start.
I pick out one of the towels and wring out the worst of the water before showing it to him. "Can you stand it if I start cleaning you up?"
He nods. "Though I'd rather you – weren't very rough."
"I'll try to remember." Folding it into a pad so I can be absolutely sure how much pressure I'm putting onto any part of his flesh, I begin dabbing gently at the shallower wounds. The deeper ones will have bled more, helping to clean out the bacteria, but these contain flecks of dirt and dust. I use only the lightest of touches, so that the grime will come away on the toweling rather than be pushed into the open wound, and change the working surface constantly so that I keep it as clean as possible. I try not to see how the muscles of his abused shoulders jerk with the pain.
His skin's beginning to feel hot, and when I turn to check on him his pupils look dilated, but he's still perfectly lucid, still watching Carl.
I have no idea what's going on, and neither does Trip, I can tell that by the anxious glances he throws over his shoulder every now and then, but I guess both of us are just trusting that sooner or later we'll find out. In the meantime, Carl's now reeling like he's had a skinful.
"Stand up straight, asshole!"
"No. Wait. Bring him over here. Make him lie down. Here. In front of me."
Malcolm hasn't got the breath or the strength for explanations, even if he wanted to give them. Trip looks at him doubtfully, but herds his prisoner over.
It hardly takes an order to get Carl to lie down. He keels over like it's been all he can do to stay on two legs, but he doesn't seem to be ill, and he doesn't even say anything. He has this stupid great grin all over his face, and rolls over looking up at the three of us like we're the funniest thing he's seen in a long time.
"Right. The harness-rail. Over there. Someone's jacket … some things in the pocket. Bring them to me."
I'm the obvious one to get it; whatever's up with Carl, he definitely can't be left unsupervised with the man he damn near whipped to death, and he's going to be a heck of a lot more cautious of Trip than me.
It's just an old jacket, probably been hanging here for months. I feel in the right pocket and find nothing, but when I dip my fingers into the left one some things that are cold and metallic move under my touch.
I'm the comm officer. I know a transceiver when I see one, though I don't recognize the design.
There's a hypospray too. I bring them back and hand them to Malcolm. Surely the hypospray's a painkiller? Surely he'll order me to use it on him?
He drops his head momentarily as though gathering his strength, and then lifts it again. "Now get out. Both of you."
We protest in unison, but he stares us down. "I wouldn't ask you if – wasn't necessary. Trust me. Go up to the house, give me ten minutes and then – call who you like."
"We'll have to get the cops involved." Although Trip's voice is grimly resolute, I can see the pain in his eyes. "No way can we keep this quiet, even if we wanted to."
"Do what you need to. Just trust me. Please. And – don't worry about me. I'll be fine."
Yeah, Malcolm. Sure. We know. You and your 'fine'.
Reluctantly, we start backing towards the door. Neither Carl nor Malcolm moves. The horses have quieted down, and it feels somehow completely wrong that the world outside should be absolutely tranquil.
We shut the door, and begin walking heavily up the lawn. In the house in front of us a single lamp is burning.
And we still haven't a clue what's going on. Or what the heck we're going to find there.
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