Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Azati Prime

The silence on the Bridge was thicker than treacle.

Motionless at the Tactical Station, watching the sensors that stubbornly refused to indicate any sign of an explosion at the planet’s surface, Malcolm Reed glanced from time to time at the closed door to the captain’s Ready Room.

He’d already accepted, as far as it was possible for him to accept, that Jonathan Archer had gone and would not return.  All that was left now was the detonation that told the waiting crew his death hadn't been for nothing.  It should have happened over an hour ago.  The tension had mounted as they counted down the minutes to his arrival; he knew where the weapon was – Travis had given him the precise co-ordinates.  The interference created by the detection grid had meant that the ship’s sensors had lost track of the borrowed craft, just as they had done on the first trip, so they had no way of knowing exactly when it reached its destination, but it had to be about twenty minutes or so after launch.  At twenty minutes precisely you could have heard a pin drop on Enterprise.  Reed had watched the sensors with held breath and straining eyes, unwilling to blink in case he missed the first microsecond of the incoming information.

Five minutes later he was still waiting. 

Five minutes lengthened into ten.  Into fifteen.  Into another twenty.  Thirty.  Forty-five.  An hour.  Still the sensors remained mute and the Ready Room door remained closed.  And the captain’s chair in front of him remained without a tenant.

The signals on the console told him that the readouts were being channelled to every other display on the ship that could receive them.  Everywhere people were waiting, watching and praying.  And beginning to wonder what was taking so long.

He lifted his eyes.  Across the Bridge, Hoshi was at the science console.  She was monitoring the sensors there.  She didn’t look up, but her face was drawn with the fear that was beginning to gnaw at his own heart.

If the captain’s ship had been fired on and exploded, they’d have detected the traces of even that small a blast.  The time was well past when he should have reached the weapon; no amount of last-minute difficulty would account for a delay of this magnitude.  Therefore, every moment increased the probability that he’d been captured and was now a prisoner of the Xindi, complete with the stolen vessel bearing its deadly cargo.  They could hardly want more incriminating evidence of humanity’s murderous intentions.

Trip was in Engineering.  He was doubtless watching the sensor display on his own account.  His friendship with Jonathan Archer went back far beyond Enterprise’s creation; it had hardly been a matter for surprise that he should feel unable to watch the end from the bridge.  When the explosion came, he would want privacy in which to mourn as well as rejoice.  The events in the Expanse might have stretched the friendship at times almost to breaking point, but Tucker doubtless had far too many memories even now of what they’d had before the Cogenitor crossed their path and the shadow of the Xindi probe fell across Earth.  Maybe in a very real sense the man with whom he’d been fast friends no longer existed, but the end of what was left of him still had to be a grievous loss.  Malcolm, already braced for his own grief, could only imagine what Trip was going through.

Another hour crept past.  The silence had grown denser, heavier. And all of that time it had been slowly filling up with dread, until it was hard to breathe without feeling the effort catch at the lungs.

A movement drew his attention.  Hoshi had finally looked up, but not at him.  She had glanced at the closed door of the Ready Room, and the worried little frown that creased her forehead tipped him into action.  He could have endured his own fear, but not hers.  Hers must be allayed, at whatever cost to himself.

He stood up and walked towards the turbo-lift, pausing for just a second beside her.  “Comm me immediately if anything happens,” he told her in a low voice.  He wanted to touch her hand for mutual comfort, even for an instant, but others were looking, drawn to any small incident in that tense, waiting silence.

“Yes, sir.”  It didn’t need any elaborating what ‘anything’ meant.  The silence followed him into the turbo-lift, and occupied it with him.  It was still present, filling the corridors like invisible cotton wool, as he walked the short distance to Engineering.

The door hissed open.  Trip was standing immobile, his gaze fixed on one of the monitors.  At the sudden, unexpected sound, he literally jumped.

“Malcolm?” he gasped.  “Has – is somethin’ wrong?”

“May I have a word, Commander?”  There were other crew present and within earshot.  Protocol still applied.  He kept his voice absolutely devoid of inflection.

“Sure.”

The two of them went into the corridor.

“I don’t suppose you know what the situation on the Bridge is at the moment, sir.”  He paused, wondering how to explain it tactfully, but Trip knew him very well and would pick up intuitively what he didn’t say.  “I think it would be – helpful to the crew if the captain was with us.”  The new captain, that is.  He didn’t say that aloud, because the thought was too horrible and too painful to be put into words, but Trip would understand that was what he meant.

The blue eyes stared at him incredulously.  “She hasn’t come out of the Ready Room yet?”

Malcolm shifted a little uncomfortably.  This was too like tale-bearing for his liking, but he felt that something had to be done.  And if anyone could get through to T’Pol, it was Trip, who was now by default her second-in-command until or unless she appointed another.

“Not by the time I left.”

His meaning couldn’t be clearer.  In this situation of fear and uncertainty, the captain had a duty to be visible, to provide a focus for his crew, to give reassurance and inspiration.  To simply disappear, without any explanation to anybody, was the worst possible reaction by the commanding officer of the ship.  If Captain Archer’s suicide mission had failed, then options had to be discussed and a new course of action decided on without delay.  Trip knew that as well he did, and T’Pol should have known it too.  Her unaccountable failure to pick up the mantle of leadership which had fallen onto her shoulders could be utterly disastrous for the ship; uncertainty could too easily turn into panic, and panic was contagious, would spread like fire in dry woodland.  As long as they had someone to lead them, the crew would cope.  Even if they were led into hell, they would follow.

A number of emotions crossed Tucker’s all-too-expressive features.  At a guess, the last thing he wanted to do was to start a fire-fight with his commanding officer, but somebody had to remind her of her plain duty.

“Okay.  I’ll talk to her.”

They both walked back towards the lift.  The silence went with them.  It endured as they returned to the Bridge, and was not even dented by the anxious glance that met them or by the little shake of the head that said there was no news.

Malcolm walked back to the Tactical Station.  Trip walked toward the Ready Room.  It was noticeable that he braced his shoulders before he hit the chime button asking for admittance, and that there was a pause before permission was given for him to enter.

The door closed behind him.

And everyone went back to the waiting.