Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Divergence

“Thank you for coming here, Hoshi,” said Captain Archer gently.  “Sit down.  Please.”  He indicated the chair at the other side of his desk.  “We need to talk.”

“Sir.”  She sat down, very precise and upright, like a little cat.  She was very pale, but composed.  Throughout her shift she’d been totally professional, never even looking at the man who’d retaken his forfeited place at the tactical station almost opposite her.

The captain joined his hands on the desk in front of him and studied them for a moment, trying to decide how much he could safely say.  Discreet enquiries suggested that the shadowy Section whose representative had pulled Malcolm’s strings so successfully was really best left alone, and the less said about it the better.  Nevertheless, although he gave Hoshi credit for maintaining her always high level of professional conduct throughout what must have been an incredibly taxing time, he felt that she was owed some kind of explanation, and preferably as soon as possible.

How much damage had been done to the relationship between her and Malcolm, he didn’t know.  Still less could he guess how far any explanation would go towards repairing it.  Knowing his tactical officer, he’d probably have committed the equivalent of hara-kiri, and magnified his own guilt so outrageously she’d only marvel he hadn’t been put up against a wall and shot out of hand with one of his own phase rifles.  That said, at the start of the affair the man’s perfidy had seemed so incredible, so utterly and totally vile, that the option wouldn’t have seemed at all an unreasonable one if it had only occurred to him.

“I guess you were ... surprised ... that I brought Malcolm back on to the Bridge,” he said slowly.  “I’ve done some investigating, and I’ve done some talking to him, and I’m satisfied that he’s been punished enough for what he did.”

She blinked several times.

“He said you were going to court-martial him.  That he was guilty.”

Archer paused before he answered.  “He was placed in a very difficult position.  I don’t condone what he did, but I understand it.   He did what seemed to him to be the right thing, believing it was going to cost him his career.  I may question his judgment, but I can’t question his courage.”

“He betrayed Phlox.”  Her voice was taut, controlled, giving away nothing.

“I agree that’s how it looks.  But if it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t be heading to Qu’Vat right now.  He had his reasons for what he did, Hoshi.  I don’t know what he said to you when you went to see him, but I want you to believe that he did the wrong things for all the right reasons.”

“Do you believe that?” she asked.

A faint smile softened his troubled frown.  “I sure as hell wouldn’t have let him out of the brig if I didn’t.”

There was a little silence.

“I’ve forbidden him to talk to you for a couple of days,” the captain went on mildly.  “I think both of you need time to think things through, to let everything settle down.  Then maybe you can have a talk, see how things stand.”  Another small smile, this one touched with unhappiness.  “Maybe you could talk things over with Trip while he’s still here.  You’ve always been able to rely on him.”

“I thought I could rely on Malcolm.”  The bitterness and hurt broke through suddenly.  “Now I’m not sure I ever knew him at all.”

“I’m with you there.”  A grimace.

“Captain, how could he do this to us?  To all of us?  To you?  I can’t – I just can’t understand it!” she burst out.

He stood up, walked around the desk and perched on the side of it in front of her.  Her hands were clasped nervously in her lap, and he took hold of them comfortingly.

“Hoshi.  What I’m going to tell you now is classified, and it must never go beyond this room.  Understand?”  She nodded, and he continued.  “Malcolm worked in Covert Operations before he joined Enterprise.  When he did what he did, it was on the orders of a man in that organization he trusted, who he’d answered to back then and who gave him reasons – good reasons – for playing ball with him now.  He was told Phlox would be in no danger, and that doing what he was told would save thousands of lives.  He wanted to tell me, to take me into his confidence, and he was forbidden to. 

“That’s the part I still have trouble with.  He should have trusted me.  He should have told me, no matter what.  But I think he could have made it an awful lot harder for us to figure out who the saboteur was if he’d wanted to.  Hell, I think he did everything bar writing a confession.  I think he felt he had to do what he did, but once it was done he couldn’t live with himself.”

“Covert Operations,” she said slowly.  “He was an undercover agent?”

“And a good one, apparently.”

There was a long pause.

“I’d imagine – to be an undercover agent – a good undercover agent – you have to be really good at telling lies.”  She sounded as though she was talking to herself.  “You have to be able to make anybody believe anything.”

“You have to be able to do that when it’s your job,” he agreed gently.  “But that doesn’t mean that everything about you is a lie.”

“But it could be.”  She looked up at him.  “It could be, and nobody would ever know.”

Archer nodded mutely.  He wouldn’t insult her intelligence by denying it. 

Silence fell again.

“I don’t know how I feel about him anymore,” she said at last in a puzzled voice.  “I don’t know if I can trust him anymore.  I don’t even know what to say to him.”

A sigh.  “I can’t help you with that, Hoshi.  It wasn’t easy for me either.”

“But you didn’t think you were in love with him.”  A bittersweet smile curved her mouth.  “And that he was in love with you too.”

“No, I’ll give you that one.”  Dryly.

Hoshi stood up.  “We’d better get back on to the Bridge, sir.  A Klingon warship could arrive at any minute.”

“But then I have a good man as a weapons officer.  A man I believe I can trust – in spite of everything.”  He touched her cheek gently.  “Take your time, Hoshi.  Give it a couple of days.”  Assuming the Klingons don’t solve all our problems for us permanently.

“Thank you for that, sir.  I guess I’m going to need them.  Or maybe more than that.”

“As long as you need.  I’ll tell him to wait till you make the first move.  I think he owes you that much.”

“At least,” she agreed wryly.

She preceded him up the stairs.  As the door hissed open, the dark head bent over the tactical station lifted as though it was dragged up by force. 

One glance.  Then it dropped again.  The fingers resumed their steady movement across the board, making calculations, changing the scan parameters, checking the weapons readiness.  To all intents and purposes, he did not know she existed. 

Captain Archer walked to his chair and sat in it.  Nothing had changed in these few minutes; T’Pol would have informed him immediately.  He watched his communications officer return to her station and settle down.  Her face was the picture of calm composure as she began monitoring the channels; this near to Qu’Vat, she was probably picking up a few routine Klingon transmissions already.

The Bridge was back to normal.  Apparently.

It just went to show.  You could never rely on appearances.