Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Cold Station 12

I swear to God.  Even after all this time, he hasn’t learned his lesson.

I’d done my homework; I knew what we could be facing when we caught up with these Augments, and quite frankly I was bricking it at the thought of trying to tackle all nineteen of them at once.  If I’d have had my way we’d all have been carrying phase rifles, but no, we wouldn’t need all that firepower, would we?

Of course not.

Well, it was a bit of a relief to discover that our birds had flown the nest, so to speak. But there was still one little birdie – an Augment birdie.  And it didn’t fool me one little bit that he looked a bit lost and forlorn.  I’ve seen the unlikeliest candidates suddenly turn into deadly threats, and I wasn’t taking any chances with this one.  Especially when he was standing within easy striking distance of the captain.  Yes, that’s right.  The captain who hired me to keep the crew safe – to keep him safe – to do what a Tactical Officer does on board a starship.  Well.  That’s the idea, anyway. (Or rather, that was my idea of my job when I signed on; I discovered fairly early on that my commanding officer and I didn’t quite see eye to eye on that score.)

So, when confronted by a potentially deadly enemy created by a madman like Soong, what does Captain Archer do?

Yes.  Of course.  I’ve got the little bastard covered with my phase pistol in case he tries anything, and the captain tells me to lower the weapon.  I can read him like a book by now: Awww, it’s all on its own and it looks all lost and harmless, so I’ll trust it and it won’t attack me.

Hell’s bells, you’d have thought the Expanse would have taught him better than that.  That’s probably what the Illyrians thought about us, and look where it got them.

Still, orders are orders, so I lowered the pistol muzzle like a good little lieutenant doing what the captain tells him to.

And what happened? 

The poor ickle lost Augment pulled a knife.

Well, bloody hell, who’d have expected that?

So instead of the situation being resolved with one squeeze of a trigger, the commanding officer of a starship trying to stop an all-out war breaking out between Earth and the Klingon Empire ends up having to defend himself bare-handed from a bloody-minded little git the others had left behind because he didn’t measure up to their exacting standards.

And that’s why instead of trying to sneak a tryst with my fiancée I’m here in the gym instead, beating the crap out of the punch-bag because it’s the only way I can vent my temper.  And only when I’ve sweated myself to a standstill will I go back to my room, shower and change and ask her if we can meet up somewhere so I can explain.  It’s always safer to have our less intimate meetings somewhere neutral – hiding in plain view, so to speak.  And nobody appears to have thought it odd that I should have expressed an interest in being able to make myself understood in Klingon, so we can sit together and look busy and innocent; besides, she’s already taught me some wonderful insults.  Not that I particularly want to be in the situation where they might come in handy, but you never know.  It pays to be prepared for every eventuality.  Though at a guess I’d just have succeeded in diverting the enemy attention nicely to myself with my fluency when Captain Suicide would put his arm up and shout, ‘No, attack ME instead!’

Hell.  I haven’t hit anything this hard since the day I had that punch-up with Hayes.  I suppose I’ll never know whether he really was after my job or not; looking back, I get the feeling I might have misjudged him.  That’s not to say he didn’t sit up and beg for it; it was six of me and half-a-dozen of him, so to speak.  But I sometimes wish we could have got past our mutual animosity somehow.  I think once he’d accepted someone he’d be a good bloke to be mates with.

I put my arms around the punch-bag to still it and find myself staring into the mirror beyond.  That was where his reflection appeared that day, behind me.  Goading me beyond endurance by his bloody politeness.  Though by that time he was pretty well goading me just by breathing, so being polite was always going to fall under the heading of ‘provocation’.  But he rescued Hoshi, and died doing it; I’ll be forever in his debt for that.  I hope he knew how grateful I was – it’s a damned high price to pay for someone else’s happiness.  That said, I know he liked Hoshi.  How could anyone not like Hoshi?  I reckon he’d be glad to have made her happy.  And I think she’s happy.  She says she is, even if I find it hard to believe that I could actually have met the woman of my dreams and got her to promise to marry me.

Though I wonder, if she knew ...

I push the thought away.  All that’s over, done with, part of the past.  I was a different person then.  There’s no need for her to know things that would only upset her, and better for her that she doesn’t.  Covert ops is a dirty business and dirty people do it.  The less she knows, the safer she is, and I prefer it that way.

So.  Forget it.  And get ready for everything to kick off again when we finally track down these Augments.

You never know.

This time the captain might actually let me do my job....