Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Is there anything worse than watching the person you love die in front of you?

 

He gave no sign.

 

Externally he was the same as he had always been – quiet, composed, professional.  There was no hesitation in the skilled, precise movements of his fingers on the control board.  As he reported the success of his attack, his voice was measured, betraying nothing of either triumph or distaste.  He remained motionless at his post during the boarding, listening intently for any mishap, ready in an instant to despatch reinforcements or do whatever else might be necessary to immobilise the ship’s prey as they pounced on it like some deadly duranium spider.

He had injected the paralysing venom.  Others would finish the job he’d started, taking by force what they’d been denied for the asking.  After they’d finished with her, their victims would be left alive, crippled but alive, abandoned to make their way home as best they could.  They might make it safely, or become the victims of some other pirate as ruthless as the captain of the Enterprise but with even fewer scruples; the Expanse was an ideal hiding place for such scum.  The chances were that nobody would ever know.

 

Hoshi sat silent.  The comm link in her ear told her nothing of what was happening on the Illyrian ship, though she could guess all too clearly.  For once, her attention wasn’t fixed on what her ears were telling her, but on what her eyes were.  Though even these were liars and traitors, because they would not have told her, unless she had known it already, that across the Bridge from her Lieutenant Malcolm Reed was slowly dying of shame.