Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

The Aenar

Nobody home yet.  Still, I’m sure he’ll be here soon.  With any luck, he’s just taking extra fuel on board.

Hoshi slipped her leisure clothes off and slid into the bunk.  She was tingling with anticipation.  She’d seen the look of vengeful triumph on Malcolm’s face as the ship’s photonic torpedoes blew the second drone ship to Kingdom Come, and hadn’t been at all surprised to later intercept a whisper in which quite another sort of full spread had been mentioned.  They’d been passing each other in the Mess Hall at the time so she hadn’t been able to respond, and as they were seated at different tables she’d had to force herself to pay attention to what had been said at her own, and not so much glance in his direction.  But the time ever since had seemed to pass on feet of lead, and she’d never been so thankful when the clock told her it was time to make her way to his cabin.

She burrowed into his bedding, inhaling the scent of clean cotton mixed with the faint, familiar, excitingly male smell of his body and the after-shave he used.  It was slightly surprising that he wasn’t here to meet her; punctuality was one of his obsessions, and she was sure he must be as famished as she was herself.  After waiting for so very long since lunch, it was a little unkind of fate to make her wait even longer now.  And if this was his fault, she’d make him pay for it.  She’d make him wait at least ten seconds before checking his weapon was fully armed.  Which, of course, it would be, but they both enjoyed her making absolutely sure.

But the minutes passed, and when he still didn’t appear she began to feel the first prickling of worry.  She picked up her chronometer from on top of the heap of clothes on the floor and checked it.  No – he was more than ten minutes late.  For an obsessive like Malcolm Reed, that was virtually a cardinal sin.  Any minute now he’d dive in through the door, explaining that the captain had thought of something that needed to be discussed among the senior staff and that couldn’t possibly wait till tomorrow, and pulling off his clothes in such unseemly haste to make amends that he wouldn’t even stop to fold them up and put them neatly on the chair.

She indulged herself in this unlikely fantasy for another ten minutes.  At the end of which, she was convinced that something really serious must have happened, and she had just swung her legs out of bed and sat up, ready to get her clothes back on, when the door finally opened and Malcolm came in.

Her first wild uprush of relief and indignation and excitement was killed instantly by the look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, frozen with dread.

He stopped just inside the door, and stared at her blankly.

“Trip’s leaving,” he said.

She blinked, sure she must have misheard him.

“I’m sorry...?”

“Trip.  He’s put in a request for a transfer to Columbia, and the captain has authorized it.”

“Columbia?”

No wonder he was looking shell-shocked.  Over the course of the mission, Trip Tucker had done more than anything else to thaw the icy Tactical Officer who’d come on board at the start of it; she knew that nobody had ever become as close a friend to him, and nobody stood higher in his estimation (except, perhaps, Captain Archer, who was as close as the Englishman acknowledged to a God).  The news that he had suddenly decided to up and leave for another ship could not be less than shattering.  It was terrible to her too, but she had other friends, even if nobody could ever quite fill the place that Trip occupied on the ship and in her heart.  Malcolm, on the other hand, had almost no-one.  He quite liked Travis, but he and Trip had forged an extraordinarily close working relationship based on mutual respect and affection.  This news must have fairly torn his heart out.

But how could it possibly be that the captain had authorized it?  Had the two quarreled?  Their relationship had never been the same since the Expanse, but she hadn’t dreamed it could have taken such damage as this suggested.

“You’ve talked to him?” she asked, drawing him down to sit beside her on the bed. 

“Yes.  He thought ... he thought I ought to hear it first-hand.”  He spoke stiffly, as though forcing the words out.

She took hold of his hand, which lay unresponsive in hers.  His eyes stared straight ahead, glassy gray pools of shock and bewilderment.

“I thought he was joking when he told me,” he said softly.  “Then I realized he meant it.  He’s leaving, Hoshi.”

“But why?”  The sight of his pain ignited a hot rage inside her.  At that moment she wanted nothing more than to grab hold of Trip Tucker and bang his head against a bulkhead till she could knock some sense into it.  Leave Enterprise, and the crew who’d become his second family – why the heck would he even contemplate such a thing?  And what would his leaving do to T'Pol?

Then realization hit her, almost in the same instant as Malcolm breathed the name in despair.  T'Pol.   Perpetually in view, perpetually unattainable; the tension between them of late had taken on a quite different quality to the original slightly hostile air of their relationship at the start of the voyage, or the almost playful friendship that had slowly developed and replaced it.  The playfulness, of course, had been mostly on Trip’s side, but the First Officer had definitely responded to it.  Since his return from Vulcan he’d been withdrawn and humorless, reverting almost to the perpetually angry man who’d lived for nothing but vengeance on the Xindi after the attack on Earth; and since her return to the ship a couple of weeks later, the few exchanges between them had acquired a bite that was painful to witness.  Instead of seeking her out, he’d actively avoided her.  He never even looked at her unless he had to.  To anyone who knew him, he was exhibiting all the signs of a man caught up in feelings beyond his control, and he was not a person who did anything by half-measures.  Once his love was given, it was given with both hands.  And once committed, he could no more have stopped caring than he could have torn his heart out of his chest and dropped it down the waste recycling chute.

That the Vulcan returned Trip’s feelings in some way was indisputable; she’d privately admitted as much to Hoshi.  That she returned them in the same way was more problematic.  It appeared that something had precipitated a crisis.

“I tried to talk him out of it.  He wouldn’t listen,” her lover went on now in quiet hopelessness.  “I know he’s had it bad.  Has for a long time.  I can almost sympathise – putting myself in his place, if I had to see you every day and could never have you, never love you, I don’t know how I could bear it now.  I’d probably leave too, I don’t know.

“But it’s not just that.  The ship needs him.  We won’t find anyone nearly as good as he is if we search till the next generation leaves the yards.”  He put his head in his hands.  “Captain Hernandez must think it’s bloody Christmas, Easter and her birthday for the next twenty years rolled into one.”

“Maybe he’ll change his mind,” was all Hoshi could think of to say.

“No.  I know Trip.  Once he’s made his mind up he won’t change it.”

“But if T'Pol asks him?”

“Well.  For that, maybe.”  He laughed bitterly.  “But short of that or some other minor miracle, you, me and Enterprise can kiss goodbye to Commander Charles Tucker the Third.”

And they sat on together in mournful silence.