"At ease, Lieutenant."

Reed immediately assumed the correct position, his head up and eyes leveled at the bulkhead directly opposite him.

'At ease' certainly didn't describe his tactical officer right now. Malcolm's face was carefully impassive, but his whole body was rigid with tension.

Jon had taken time for serious thought, as well as holding several talks with T'Pol. He knew this had been hard on the subject of these discussions, particularly as the intervening period covered Christmas (traditionally the season of 'goodwill to all'), but for the sake of the ship he couldn't afford to make a mistake. He knew, too, that it must have been difficult for Reed to have held his tongue, with his fate hanging in the balance, but to give the man his due he'd worked diligently every day, as disciplined and efficient as he'd ever been, never betraying by so much as a look that he was waiting desperately for the verdict.

"I guess you know why I've called you here, Malcolm," he said evenly.

The Brit could hardly grow any paler, but his gaze never wavered. "I imagine so, sir. You've come to a decision regarding my services on board Enterprise."

"It hasn't been an easy decision to make," the captain continued. "I guess it says a lot for the faith I had in you that it came as such a shock when you decided not to have any in me."

He'd used the word 'had' deliberately, and saw the dark lashes flicker. He also saw the already tight mouth clench on a protest at the cruelly blunt description of how the betrayal had felt; he knew that Reed had pleaded with his old handler to be allowed to tell him the truth, but however many 'reasons' there might have been, still the fact remained that when the decision had to be made he'd obeyed Harris.

Once again he felt the stir of doubt in his gut. The officer in front of him had been – on his own admission – a member of a shady organization whose roots ran in deep shadows beneath Starfleet. His files, on closer examination, contained whole chunks of material that was 'classified' – and it was almost impossible to imagine what kind of missions would have required the kind of obedience that could only be guaranteed by putting a man through the kind of torture T'Pol's investigation had revealed. Was it truly possible to effect so fundamental a change by making the man relive that ghastly event and altering how it had played out in reality?

He was still trying to fully come to grips with what he'd discovered about Reed's past, and about what had been done to him. He wasn't sure that T'Pol had told him nearly all of what she'd found out during that mind-meld, though he trusted her enough to believe that she'd told him whatever she deemed relevant to the decision he had to make; it had been obvious that she herself was still struggling a bit with it, so he hadn't pressed her. Whenever he remembered those horrible few minutes in her quarters, trying to win the trust of his terrified, delusional security officer, he was still having problems with it himself. She hadn't told him whether she intended to tell Malcolm about that particular part of the 'treatment' – at a guess, she'd gloss over it. It was hard to imagine anything more mortifying for the Brit to deal with than the knowledge that his captain had seen him in such a pitiful state.

But his decision had to be made. It wasn't fair either to himself or to Reed to keep second-guessing himself. He had to make the call and stand by it once and for all. And T'Pol had come down emphatically on the side of clemency: perhaps no-one else could come close to fully understanding what the lieutenant had been willing to endure to stay aboard Enterprise, and surely she'd have picked up on it if it had been – as Jon's newly cynical and suspicious side had suggested – merely a ploy to ensure his continued usefulness as Harris's tool aboard the flagship of the Fleet.

Besides, the man had once deliberately tried to kill himself to safeguard the ship, had pulled out the air hose of his EV suit so that his body could be detached with the segment of hull and the Romulan mine pinning him to it. Surely that wasn't the act of a spy and a saboteur. That had to count for something, in anybody's judgment.

Jon looked down at his hands, lightly linked on his Ready Room table.

"We'll be reaching the Berengarius system the day after tomorrow," he said slowly. "As far as the reports I've received go, the planet Starfleet's interested in is uninhabited, but this investigation's very important. We can't afford to have anything go wrong. That means I need to have an officer I can trust in charge of my ship's security."

Silence, in response to that: the silence that precedes the death blow. But when he looked up, the face opposite him was immobile, schooled to accept it without flinching.

"So I guess you'll need to be on the alert as usual when we're checking the place out."

Now and again, life in the Big Chair afforded him moments of pure enjoyment. He had one of these now as he watched realization sink into Malcolm Reed, watched the set expression give way to incredulous joy. Or at least as close to it as the English 'stiff upper lip' thing allowed; it hardly qualified as a beam of delight, but nevertheless unmistakable delight diffused through the previously rigid features, making him look momentarily ten years younger.

After just a moment, however, the lieutenant seemed to feel that he was behaving with quite inappropriate informality on duty. He straightened up, and smoothed out the unseemly smile with a palpable effort as his gaze snapped back to his favorite bulkhead. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Request permission to return to the Bridge."

"Granted."

All the pride and resolution of the British Royal Navy was in the way Reed whirled about and marched for the door.

As it closed behind him, Jon permitted his own smile to break out. Sure, he'd made a tough decision, and only events would prove whether he'd made the right one. But life out here was a risk, and once you'd weighed the evidence you had to go with your gut instincts.

And that, in his book at least, was the definition of 'being human'.

The End.

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