Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Bound Part 1

The Orion Syndicate.

I know as soon as that ship appears that there’s trouble brewing.  And when Captain Archer agrees to go over there in person to deal with this ‘Harrad-Sar’ who’s in charge of it, the warning signals fire off in my mind like fireworks on November the Fifth.

I suppose I should be thankful that he agrees to take me and two MACOs along.  Finally he appears to be absorbing some security sense – at least with the three of us along he ought to be reasonably safe, though I leave orders with my deputy to keep the weapons aimed firmly towards the Orion ship’s warp drive. At the first sign of it powering up she’ll bring them online and fire.  I’m no keener on being a hostage than anyone else, and I wouldn’t trust our charming ‘host’ as far as I could throw him.

At least this will give me some respite from being on the Bridge and sitting opposite Hoshi.  I remember thinking once that I was like Moses, condemned to see the Promised Land but never set foot on it.  Now I’m more like Adam, cast out from Paradise by an angel with a flaming sword.

I didn’t expect the captain to forgive me, let alone reinstate me.  It isn’t that I’m ungrateful – who wouldn’t be, for such magnanimity?  I expected to be thrown off the ship and ejected from Starfleet in short order once I’d served whatever prison term the court martial found appropriate.  To find myself back in my place, as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened, is so bewildering that sometimes when I wake up I have to touch the wall beside my bunk to assure myself that it’s the familiar cool duranium.  Though if nothing else, the tearing sense of emptiness and loss should tell me it’s real enough....

In my darker moments I wonder if Captain Archer was truly being magnanimous when he reinstated me, or if there was a less amiable side to his actions.  I hate myself for thinking it, because I know he’s not that kind of man; whatever damage the Expanse did to him, I can’t believe that however injured he is (and God forgive me, I saw in his face what I’d done to him), he’d be deliberately vindictive to a member of his crew.  But I can’t help thinking he must feel there’s a bitter kind of justice in me being here every day, seated opposite the woman who used to love me.  It’s a worse punishment than any court martial could have handed down.

As for Hoshi?  I don’t blame her in the least.  I never deserved her, and now I’ve lost her.  I had to risk that when that bastard Harris contacted me and ordered me to betray my captain and my ship, all for some underhand game he’s playing with the Klingon Empire.  In hindsight I should have done differently; I should have gone to the captain and told him everything.  But I didn’t, and now I have to pay the price.  Maybe I could bear it if I wasn’t the only one, but despite the fact that she’s doing her damnedest to keep up a hard front, I know her too well.  The cosmetics she’s using with such skill and determination don’t fool me for a moment.  Every morning I can see that she’s been crying, and despite the captain’s orders to leave her to make the first move if she wants to, the only thing that stops me from leaping across the Bridge and trying to comfort her is the knowledge that the bastard who’s done this to her is me.  So the sight of her pain is added to mine, and magnifies it a thousand fold.  Guilty and helpless, I can do nothing but try to lose myself in the daily duties of the Tactical Station. 

Duty.  Once upon a time it was my God, then it was my downfall, and now it’s my only anaesthesia.  The irony of that could probably kill me, if I let myself dwell on it.

So it wasn’t just the captain I betrayed.  But at least my skills as a weapons and tactical officer will enable me to go on protecting the ship, and the crew who eye me askance now, and the woman whose heart I broke.  And especially, right now, the captain; even if the friendship he offered me is history, and the absolute trust he had in me is shattered, I can still keep the faith in one respect.  I’m glad of that at least.  Though as we mount the transporter platform en route to the Orion ship I still have the deep suspicion that this sudden and unexpected gesture from Harrad-Sar is far from being the proffer of reconciliation it appears to be.  It will pay me to be on my guard even more than usual over there.  And at least, for just an hour or two, I’ll be spared the sight of the woman I love, who can’t even bear to look at me any more.