Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Zero Hour

You know sometimes when you have to do something that another person will never forgive you for.

I just saw that expression in Malcolm Reed’s eyes.

He keeps his guard up most of the time, but I’ve gotten used to reading him better than I used to.  And it sure wasn’t difficult to read him when I told him that I was going to have to force Hoshi to help me with decrypting these schematics.

I should be used to it by now, doing things that one day I’ll maybe have the leisure to be ashamed of.  Right now I haven’t, and Hoshi’s the only hope we have.  He’ll just have to cope somehow, and maybe when it’s all over he can tell me in glorious detail what a heartless bastard I am.  Yeah, like I hadn't worked that out for myself.  Dad’s little hero, saving the world by bullying a sick, hurt woman half his size, who wouldn’t be out here at all if this real nice guy she used to be friends with hadn't talked her into it.

I bend over her, and the smell of sweat assails me.  Fear-sweat.  Her uniform’s rank with it.  Nobody’s had time to clean her up and give her a change of clothes, and she’s lying there almost comatose, her face bruised and dirty, with those godawful marks on her temples where they did ... something ... to her, to make her talk.

Pretty well the same thing I’m going to do to her, really.

Way to go, Jonathan.

A lot of Malcolm’s history was classified, even from me.  Something to do with the darker end of operations.  I asked a few questions in the right places, but even there, there was a brick wall and I hit it – hard.  So he’s probably not the best guy in the world to have mad at you for torturing his girlfriend. No, more than that: the woman he’s utterly in love with.  I saw that when they brought her on board and he saw what they’d done to her.  As I walked away from him to come down here I had this cold, creepy feeling between my shoulder blades that said it was a good thing he wasn’t armed.  I’ve seen him mad before. I’ve seen him scared, I’ve seen him happy, I’ve seen him drunk once or twice. Hell, over the years I’ve seen him most things.  I even saw it in his face when he wanted to beat the living daylights out of me for that time there was that ... incident ... when all three of us were transformed into the Loque’eque.  But I’ve never seen that icy, murderous fury that looked out of his eyes as he realized exactly what I’m going to do now.

“Hoshi.”

If I believed in God I could ask for forgiveness.  Unfortunately, I don’t.  There is no mercy out in the Expanse.  None at all.  And Lieutenant Malcolm Reed will never forgive me as long as he lives.  Understand, maybe. He’s been places where dirty people had to do dirty things, whether they liked it or not.  But forgive?  Forget it.

“Hoshi.  Wake up.”