Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Daedalus

“Sato to Commander Tucker!”

I don’t have time to find out where Trip is at this moment.  I can only hope he’s not busy with Doctor Erickson, because I need him to leave whatever he’s doing right now.  And if he is tied up with the transporter modifications again, it’s going to be damned hard to make him understand in tactful terms what’s going on.

“Tucker.”  The lazy, relaxed tone of his voice says he’s not concentrating especially on anything.  Behind him I pick up the vibration of the warp engine.  He’s concentrating on that, of course, but that’s what he does, waking or sleeping.  And at least it means he’s in Engineering, and I can talk to him.

“Please – can you meet me outside Sickbay?  It’s really urgent.”  I’d rather not have said that, but I need him to hurry, hurry!  I try not to let my voice sound as panicky as I feel.  There will be other people in Engineering too, and I know better than most how word gets around.

“With you in just a minute.”  And fortunately it’s less than that before he comes pounding along the corridor, a look of intense concern on his face.  “Hoshi?  Are you okay?”

It takes all my self-control not to run to him and grab hold of his uniform for reassurance, but there are people passing who look curiously enough at us as it is, and I can’t make this public knowledge.  It soon may be, but right now it’s a damage limitation exercise.  So I wait till he reaches me and then I whisper, “Trip, it’s Malcolm.”

“Malcolm?”  He puts his hands on my shoulders and stares around anxiously.  Particularly in the direction of Sickbay, where Malcolm has so often ended up, to his and Phlox’s mutual displeasure.  “Is he hurt?  I thought it was just Burrows ...”

“No.  He just found out what happened.  I was going in to get one of my boosters, and he ... he came out looking like he was going to kill someone, and he said he’d asked Phlox.  He said he was Burrows’ head of department, he had a right to know ...”

“Sonofabitch.”  His hands tighten momentarily.  “So what happened then?”

“He’s gone to find the captain.  Trip, please, you have to stop him!”

He stares.  “Hoshi, he’s probably already there!”

“Then follow him!”  I’m giving orders to a senior officer, but I’m too frantic to care.  He hadn’t seen the way rage had bleached Malcolm’s face to something I hardly recognized.  Now I don’t know what could happen if nobody intervenes.

And luckily, Trip responds.  “I’ll get him for ya, Hoshi.  It may take some convincin’, but trust me.”  Without another word he scoots off in the direction of the turbo-lift into which Malcolm had vanished. 

The odds are good at this hour of the day that the captain will be on the Bridge.  I can only hope that the combination of his authority and his diplomatic skills will have prevented a knock-down, drag-out quarrel in front of everyone; my lover isn’t exactly in the mood to keep his mouth shut right now.  He doesn’t say much, but the losses in the Expanse hit him hard, especially those from his own department.  Every one of them still weighs on his conscience – the men and women whose safety he was responsible for.  And now another of them is dead, and I think it’s too much for him to handle.

­­*               *               *

“Because your old friend didn’t tell the truth, one of my men is dead – sir!”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Malcolm so mad.  He’s almost shaking with rage as he stands opposite the captain. 

After the original attack, Phlox had ordered him to take half a day off duty, mainly because he was the one who saw Burrows killed, and from what I heard it wasn’t a pretty sight.  Not that the order went down too well. Malcolm’s seen a whole load of things a lot worse than that in his time, and he sure told Phlox that; but the doc can be really stubborn when he makes his mind up, and Malcolm was grounded whether he liked it or not.

At least till he found out what had happened.  Once he had that information, no way was he going to stay in his quarters and keep his mouth shut.

It was Hoshi who commed me.  Just as well, really.  I guess she’d tried to stop him, but when he gets into a state like this she might as well try to stop a photonic torpedo.  He was armed, dangerous, and going for the top.

Well, I can understand that.  Because I can understand how I’d feel if it’d been one of my men who died.  None of us think of any member of our teams as dispensable, and this was such a stupid, pointless way to die.  And it doesn’t make me feel any better remembering how thrilled I was to find that Emory Erickson was coming on board.  My hero from way back.  A legend from Starfleet history.

But also, it turns out, a man not too worried about being economical with the truth.

I reached the Bridge just as the cap’n emerged from a fight to the death with the morning’s reports and found himself eye to eye with a barely-restrained homicidal maniac disguised as his weapons officer, requesting – no, demanding – to discuss something with him ‘as a matter of the utmost urgency.’

Jon immediately and wisely decided that whatever was up with Malcolm, the best place for said discussion would be his Ready Room; he’d probably been expecting this little party, if not quite so soon.   I’m not actually sure I was invited by either of them, but hell, I’m not sure Jon on his own would be able to cope if Malcolm lost control.  And right now, he’s not far from it.  I can understand that the Ready Room was a wise choice to keep things private, but it’s also a damned hard place to get out of in a hurry if your weapons expert decides to murder you.  I suppose I should be thankful Malcolm’s not wearing a phase pistol, though he can kill just as well without one. I guess if he had one, someone would have to take it from him, and I sure don’t want the job.

“I’m sure Burrows’ death was completely accidental, Lieutenant.”  The use of his rank is deliberate, I’m sure of it; an attempt to remind him of the fact that he’s on duty and speaking to a superior officer.  The cap’n will cut an awful lot of slack for a guy who’s as justifiably upset as Malcolm is right now, but his patience isn’t inexhaustible.

“No, sir!”  The retort nearly snaps his face off.  “‘Accidental’ doesn’t involve willful withholding of information.  This was therefore not an accident!”

I think it’s time to step in.  “Malcolm, don’t tell me you think Dr. Erickson actually thought he’d be endangerin’ anyone on the ship by bringin’ us here!”

The twin lasers swing to cover me.  “If he was capable of willful misappropriation of a whole bloody starship, which should get him twenty years in jail at the minimum, I’m not prepared to say what else he’d be capable of!”

The door chime sounds at that moment.  I can hardly imagine any point less opportune for an interruption, but it might be important.  Signaling Malcolm to be quiet for just a moment, and asking permission of Jon with a glance, I hit the door control.

Danica’s standing outside.  Just about the last person I’d have been expecting, and right now just about the last person who needs to hear what Malcolm has to say.  Ordinarily the presence of a civilian, and a lady to boot, would shut him up like a clam, but she’s part of all this, part of the parcel of lies that’s lost him a crewman.  I can’t guarantee he’ll keep his mouth shut on things she doesn’t deserve.

“Ahh, Dani, this isn’t the best time….”

“I’m looking for a Lieutenant Reed,” she says, with that straight look of hers.  Strangely, she’s carrying herself differently: like a burden’s been lifted off her shoulders.  Maybe it has.  A burden of wondering and waiting, and of not having a body to put in a grave.  I know how the last one hurts, and I realize suddenly that she’s strong enough to face Malcolm.

“He’s in here.”  The invitation is implicit, and she walks in.  Jon makes a sudden movement of protest, but stops.

He’s the only one of the three of us she doesn’t know.  She stops in front of him and meets his eyes, absorbing all that pain and anger that he doesn’t try to hide.

“I came to say sorry,” she says, with this lovely simple dignity.  “Sorry your crewman died, Lieutenant.  And sorry for all the lies we told the captain and Commander Tucker.  But if you loved somebody like my father and I loved Quinn, I’d like to think you’d want to get him back, just like we did.  Even if it’s only to bury.”

He stares at her in frowning silence; he’s not ready to give anybody absolution yet.

She takes a deep breath, and plows on.  “I know it’s not going to change anything – that I’m sorry. I know we shouldn’t have done it.  If we’d known, if we’d thought for a moment that anyone would be hurt, we wouldn’t have even tried.  But the thought of Quinn out there … maybe knowing where he was, maybe wondering why we weren’t bringing him home … we couldn’t bear it.”

“I can understand that.”  His voice is quiet.  It’s like watching a lion-tamer at work.  Mesmerizing.

“I believe you’ll be expected to send a message to his family.  I’d be grateful,” she takes a data chip out of her pocket and proffers it, “if you’d include that.  It’s from me and my father.  They deserve an apology from us too.”

“I will.”  He takes it and puts it into his own pocket.  “Thank you.”

Not a lion-tamer.  A snake-charmer.  Five minutes ago he was a spitting cobra, ready to sink his fangs into anyone, and now he’s retracted his hood and retreated into his basket.  I still wouldn’t care for my chances if he’s prodded, but the quietness is something we can handle.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get back to Dad.  I don’t like leaving him on his own for long just yet.  He … we’ve spent fifteen years working to get Quinn back.  It just wasn’t supposed to end like this.  At least, not as far as Dad was concerned.  I guess I never had as much faith in happy endings.”

Malcolm nods.  “I’ll walk you back to him, if you’ll allow me.”

“I’d be delighted.”  Then, damned if he doesn’t offer her his arm and she puts her fingers on it ever so lightly, and they walk out of the Ready Room together.  The stairs are too narrow to let them go side by side, so he lets her precede him with that stiff British politeness he does so well, but they’ll be together again as they walk to the turbo-lift.  Maybe neither of them will find much more to say, but there are more ways to communicate than talking, and more ways to heal than stitching.

There’s a little silence when they’ve gone.

“I’m not sure I know what just happened,” I say at last.

“Dani’s a remarkable woman,” the cap’n says with a tired little smile.

Jeez, Jon.  Tell me something I hadn’t noticed, will you?

“Guess I’d better get back to Engineerin’.”  And there’s a comm officer who could do with having her mind put at rest.  Though maybe it’ll be for the best if she doesn’t catch an eyeful of her significant other walking another woman down the corridor with the stateliness of an Earl or something.  Would she mind?  I don’t know.  I guess she knows by now that appearances aren’t what they seem.  And if there’s anyone on the ship you can trust, that man is Malcolm Reed.

We all know that.