Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

The Forgotten

SYSTEM FAILURE. 

The warning glowed from the display on the Situation Room wall, its brilliance impossible to ignore.  The deck plating underfoot shuddered gently, on a frequency quite different from the subtle vibrations of the warp engine to which she’d grown so accustomed that she no longer felt them at all.

Hoshi bit her lip, and tried to fix her concentration on the displays on the consoles in front of her.  The fire on the hull had to be brought under control quickly, before it spread, and the only way to achieve it was for two men to go outside and manually seal off the leak that was venting warp plasma perilously close to the reactor. 

And one of them, naturally, had to be Malcolm-volunteering as always for the dangerous jobs.  Wouldn’t he ever get over that suicidal streak that made him step forward every time?  Sometimes he reminded her all too vividly of a small boy teasing a scorpion, playing a deadly game to prove to himself he was quicker than the sting.

Perhaps one of these days the scorpion would prove him wrong.

Perhaps today would be the day....

If you survive, I’m going to kill you myself.

They weren’t outside yet.  She didn’t have to start worrying for another couple of minutes.  With a conscious effort she made herself look around at the ruin of the Bridge.  It was a miracle that most of the instruments were still either working or salvageable, and that no one here during the attack had been fatally injured. Travis would have been killed at his post if he hadn't dodged as one of the pieces of the superstructure above his head crashed down on to the helm station.  Eighteen other members of the crew elsewhere in the ship hadn't been so lucky.  Dozens more had needed to be treated for injuries ranging from fractures and burns to smoke inhalation.  The fact that the ship was still actually supporting life at all had to be regarded as a miracle in itself.  They were all tiptoeing around the place as though a careless footfall might shake the bulkheads loose and start a catastrophic disintegration of what remained.

The airlock warning light lit up, drawing her attention back to her console.  The repair party was about to leave the ship, venturing out on to the expanse of the external hull plating.

In the circumstances, it was only natural that the comm link between the two men would be on an open channel.  Everyone on the Bridge was listening intently.  T’Pol was monitoring the status of the affected area and would keep the others updated if the situation changed.

The breathing inside an EV suit always sounded strange.  Hoshi shut her eyes momentarily, imagining what it felt like out there under the immensity of space; then, chiding herself fiercely for not doing her job right, she fixed her attention back on the readouts.  Both functioning normally, pulses a little elevated but that was hardly surprising in the circumstances.  Oxygen supply optimal, life support optimal.  Surroundings, not optimal.  From up there they’d be able to see so much of the damage.  Whole chunks of the ship must be missing.  Even the part they were walking on would probably have been hit.  Pieces of warped and razor-sharp metal could be sticking up, as ready and able as any claw to snag on a suit and rip it open...

Oh, please, Malcolm, be careful.

Their voices sounded calm enough.  Trip, naturally, was in charge, directing his junior officer to the second panel that had to be opened.  Considering that the chief engineer was ‘running on empty’ as far as sleep was concerned, and was living on the shreds of his nerves as far as his emotional state was concerned, he seemed remarkably cool and collected.  Even when the second panel was found to be jammed shut, and had to be opened with a plasma torch (an operation that would use up precious time that was fast running out), he stayed steady under fire.

But ‘cool’ was suddenly not an adjective that applied to Malcolm any more.

The panel he had to cut open was close to where the superheated plasma was boiling out of the ruptured conduit.

The EV suits were built to withstand very high temperatures, but they had a limit, and it had been passed.  The environmental controls inside it couldn’t keep up with the furnace heat beating on it from outside.  And when a second explosion increased the flow of plasma still more, turning it to a volcano erupting mere meters away from him, the warning lights began to flash on the console.

Scorpions thrive in the heat.

Malcolm, being Malcolm, wouldn’t mention the fact that he was now being spit-roasted at forty-four degrees Celsius.  Hoshi therefore felt no compunction in mentioning this fact to the captain on his behalf.

Captain Archer, responding appropriately to his tactical officer’s danger, ordered him to return to the airlock.

Malcolm, still being Malcolm, ignored that order.

Okay, I’m going to kill him SLOWLY.  I’ll make things so hot for him he’ll have to jump into that plasma jet to cool off.

Forty-five degrees.

Trip ordered him to stop, told him he’d finish up.

More I’m-a-hero-and-I-must-save-the-ship-at-all-costs-even-if-I-die-doing-it crap from Malcolm.  Well, not in so many words, but that’s what it boiled down to.

She could almost hear the scritch-scritch of the eight legs advancing softly across the hull.  The hard starlight gleamed on the sting on the high, curved tail.  The powerful, unseen claws hovered.  Will he be fast enough this time?

Forty-six degrees.

His voice was slurring.  He must be on the edge of collapse from heatstroke.

She listened to his labored breathing.  The helmet microphone picked up the vibration of the valve being slowly shut down, and on the viewscreen the green spout of fire wavered, lessened and disappeared.

And the breathing had suddenly gone very, very quiet.  So quiet, surely the claws were reaching, opening...

She controlled the urge to scream frantically into the comm.  Trip, what’s wrong?  Why aren’t you checking him?  Trip, say something, say anything!  But of course the job had to be finished, and Trip could have little concept of the way the odds shorten with every gamble... but at last he was saying something, talking to the man slumped over the second port, Malcolm whose breathing was now hardly more than a feeble rasping of air.

“Tucker to Doctor Phlox...”

Today, it seemed, the scorpion had been cheated yet again of its prey.  In her mind, the deadly thing drew back, disappointed, before retreating stealthily into the darkness to resume its patient vigil.

But there would always be a next time.