CHAPTER 1: If Ever a Sound in Silence Made
AUTHOR: MNEMOSYNE
DISCLAIMER: All Enterprise related characters are the property of their rightful shepherds. Any new situations, characters, creatures, etc, are mine. The poem that makes up the chapter headings of this story is mine as well, written especially for this story. LOL! I think I was in a creative mood. LOL! RATING: R, for violence and some language
CATEGORY: Angst, Drama, Romance, Action, Deathfic
CODES: R/S (heavy on the R) with touches of everyone
NOTES:
I don't know what possessed me to write a piece this angst-ridden, but something seems to have taken hold of my hands and typed this out. LOL! It skips back and forth between "past" and "present," but you should be able to tell them apart quite easily. To make it simpler, the past segments have been italicized. And as always, internal thoughts //are between slash marks//. :D This takes place in an AU future.
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
- "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by Keats
The ship was quiet as he docked in the deserted shuttle bay, and immediately Malcolm was on guard. He'd been ill-at-ease since hailing the ship twenty minutes ago with no reply. Subsequent hails had also gone unanswered, leaving Lieutenant Reed with the acidic taste of dread on the back of his tongue, and a phase pistol ready in his hand as he disembarked.
The bay was indeed empty, which only added to his disquiet. Even if the ship's comm system had somehow been damaged and unable to reply to his hails, Captain Archer would certainly have had someone here waiting for him, to explain the situation upon his return. Trip would have been grinning at him from the control room, all white teeth and twinkling eyes, and everything would have been right with the universe.
But nobody was here, and no one was arriving. Which left Malcolm with two frightening questions. First, what had happened to the crew? And second…
…Who had opened the shuttle bay doors?
//Think,// Malcolm told himself silently as he stole across the shuttle bay. It was no good to try hiding - whoever had let him in obviously knew he was back, which meant they were probably watching his every move. But every fiber of his body was screaming at him to remember your training! Remember your rank! Remember to go for the eyes!
With the footsteps of a cat, he glided towards the doors which would let him out into the corridor. But before he reached them, he froze, turned his eyes upward and to the left, and stared eye to lens with the camera he knew was there, monitoring his every action. He found it with pinpoint accuracy, which was only natural, since he'd installed it; a security precaution, to survey "guests" as they came aboard. "Yer one paranoid son-of-a-bitch, Malcolm," Trip had teased him as they'd hooked up the wiring.
"You say that now," Malcolm remembered answering. "But when this camera saves you from a pack of marauding space pirates someday, I'll expect effusive thanks."
The whole thing seemed silly now. Whatever had happened to the crew, this puny camera had obviously done nothing to stop it.
With a fluid, practiced hand, Malcolm raised his phase pistol and fired. The camera exploded with a hiss of escaping electricity and a small plume of flame, then was quiet, belching smoke into the empty, echoing shuttle bay.
Turning away from the door, Malcolm all but ran to the maintenance hatch a few meters away. Ripping the grating off the front, he tucked his phase pistol back into its holster and clambered into the hole in the wall. It was a tight fit, making it nearly impossible to maneuver. A jagged bolt ripped through his uniform and tore a long red gash in his shoulder as he squirmed around, making the lieutenant curse as he reached out into the bay and pulled the grating back up to cover the hole behind him. "Should have made these damned things wider," he muttered as he started to climb over bulky equipment and glowing power couplings. "No wonder Hoshi lost her shirt that time."
Hoshi.
No. Mustn't think of her. Mustn't think of anything but the job, the job, find what happened and solve it. Fix the problem. Fix the ship. Hoshi later, ship now.
Malcolm stopped moving. He'd come to a crossroads in the shaft, and was given three options: turn left, turn right, go straight. Left would take him towards engineering; right would take him towards Sickbay; straight would take him home.
He didn't have time to dawdle. Decisions had to be made in an instant in a situation such as this. If the crew had taken ill, Sickbay was the place to go. But if someone had taken control of the ship, their first priority would have been to secure engineering.
Then they would have taken prisoners, and confined everyone to quarters. Perhaps they would have killed a few, to send a message to the rest.
With a growl of frustration and a racing heart, Malcolm began moving again, straight ahead, eyes fixed on the dim shaft in front of him. //I'll find someone on B-deck,// he rationalized. //They'll certainly be able to tell me what the hell is going on.//
Mind clear, Malcolm Reed was going to find his wife.