Star Trek and all its intellectual property is owned by Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.

This story is rated for some violence and occasional mild bad language. If these offend you, please do not read it.

It has not been beta-read so all mistakes in it are mine.

Prospective readers should once again be warned that this a dark story involving major character death. If you really don't like the idea, please hit the 'Back' button.

'I'm not about to accept that it was all for nothing'.

The words ran through Malcolm's mind over and over again; his own words, slurred with bourbon, desperation and bitterness.

He didn't know what Trip had made of his confession. Perhaps it was the suggestion that they were, indeed, wasting air by shouting that had made the chief engineer settle down on the bench beside him, each wrapped in one inadequate blanket and sitting pressed together in the hope of thus conserving even a little of the precious body-heat being inexorably radiated into the freezing air of the shuttlepod.

The silence felt sullen, reverting to the animosity that had followed the shock and grief of their discovery that Enterprise was lost and their own fate sealed. The hours afterwards had been ugly, the contrast between their differing methods of dealing with their situation producing one confrontation after another and culminating in that last almighty quarrel when Trip had tried to sacrifice his own life in order to double his companion's remaining oxygen supply. Almost immediately after that the doubts and self-recrimination had set in, spurred on by the American's shout during their vicious exchange that Malcolm should stop trying to be a hero, 'it doesn't suit you'.

It wasn't difficult to understand that having keyed himself up to suicide, being halted in the act by a pistol-wielding subordinate (or more correctly 'insubordinate') officer would ignite Tucker's temper. Malcolm was well aware that for all his basic good nature, his friend was occasionally given to engaging his mouth before putting his brain into gear, and had fully expected to receive the due tongue-lashing. But although it was of course completely impossible for Trip to know how cruel that particular accusation would feel, still it carried the force of a rifle-butt across the face.

Conversation having effectively ended, Malcolm now had nothing much better to do than reflect on the fact that the man he'd come to regard as his best friend thought that not only was he the Angel of Death, but that he was pretending to be acting out of a courage he actually didn't possess.

He'd never regarded himself as a hero. Certainly his refusal to let Trip die didn't feel like an attempt at heroics, however it had appeared to the ungrateful recipient. If anything, his outburst had been an admission of a weakness his father would have deplored: his despair at the prospect of dying – or, worse still, surviving –alone.

He had, indeed, invested much time and effort in trying to reach a cautious accord with Trip Tucker. For a man who'd long ago concluded – with reason – that friends are people who betray you this was a colossal leap of faith. Before he'd come aboard Enterprise he'd genuinely believed that apart from one or two members of his family no-one, ever, would mean anything to him again. Indeed, he had every intention of ensuring that they didn't. This determination was made easier to uphold by the inflexible front of the persona he'd adopted. The armoured Armoury Officer kept people very much at a distance, where both he and they were far safer.

Trip, however, hadn't read the manual. With his own personal brand of exasperating and ebullient charm he'd somehow managed to worm his way through some unsuspected tiny chink in his junior officer's formidable armour-plating. Not even slightly deterred by the cool formality with which Malcolm had initially repelled any attempts at familiarity, he'd finally succeeded in thawing a part of the Englishman's heart that had long felt as though it were sealed in permafrost.

The change had not come about without perplexity and pain. The long years of Malcolm's servitude to Section 31 had given him ample confirmation of his suspicions that humanity was not to be trusted. He hadn't wanted to be persuaded out of that comfortable belief, to be coaxed into confiding his trust in a man he hardly knew. But it had happened somehow, against his will and almost without his knowing; certainly without his realising how deeply he'd come to depend on Trip's companionship until the awful moment he'd seen him clambering painfully into the shuttlepod's airlock to die.

His reaction then had been one completely lacking in the self-control on which he usually prided himself. His father would have termed it 'hysterical', and the description wouldn't have been all that far out at that; certainly it was light-years from the proper obedience expected of an officer and a Reed. Whatever he felt about his superior's actions, it was not his province to question them – still less to indulge in a screaming tantrum and compel the man at gunpoint to abandon his plans, for no better reason than his own selfish determination to cling on to a hopeless hope that there just possibly might still be a future for both of them.

But the slow minutes had crawled past, morphing into still slower hours, and the temperature had continued its stealthy fall, and Enterprise had not come. Belief, never strong, ebbed away. Detonating the engine had been a long shot at best; and it seemed that despite losing the battle over possession of the bourbon, the galaxy was, after all, to have the last laugh.

It was some consolation that the starship had not, after all, been lost in some catastrophic collision with an asteroid, as the wreckage there had suggested. What actually had happened, they'd probably never know; shortly after summoning sufficient activity to transmit that one message from the ship the comm unit had relapsed, and even Trip's expertise hadn't been up to the task of resurrecting it again. But at least the men and women who'd begun to feel like a family to him were still alive, and that was something for which he could be genuinely and deeply grateful. Although it seemed that his final throw of the dice had been a losing one, the adventure would go on, even if he and Trip would no longer be a part of it.

The cold inside the shuttlepod now was absolutely savage. His arms and legs were completely without feeling. Beside him, the man he'd thought of as a friend shook with repeated tremors, far too intense to be called 'shivers'; his core temperature was beginning to fall. Without doubt he too felt as though an iron band was clamped around his temples, one of the side effects of oxygen deprivation.

Breathing, done for so long without thought, had now become an exhausting labour. Desperate to get more of the life-giving oxygen from air growing thinner and fouler with every moment, their lungs were working like bellows. Malcolm had tried to conceal it at first, but of course the needs of his body had taken over. Now they were both drawing in great hoarse gasps, ignoring the way the cold tore at their throats, and there was never enough, never nearly enough, and it was a cruel, long-drawn-out way to die...

He couldn't have said when the thought first crept into his mind. At first he'd shoved it away, repelled, refusing to admit that things could possibly be that bad. But now they were that bad, and they were only going to get worse. Already the sheer effort of staying upright was sapping what little strength he had left.

If he was going to act at all, he'd have to act soon. Bloody soon.

Drowning. He was drowning after all, drowning slowly, without a drop of water in sight, and the utter horror of that realisation was so all-encompassing that nothing could have been further from the truth than that he was 'trying to be a hero'. If the truth were told, he was fighting with all his soul not to be overcome by his terror. The irony was enough to kill him, if suffocation didn't get there first.

The iron band stealthily tightened around his forehead. His heart was thundering, trying to compensate for the shortfall in quality by increasing the quantity of blood to supply his internal organs.

Cold, cold, he was so bloody cold. It had ceased to be a sensation, and was now an existence.

He and Trip were all that was keeping each other upright. Soon one or other of them would slip, and then they'd both hit the floor. He didn't know how they'd land. Maybe they'd fall facing one another, and all that there would be left for him to do during the time remaining to him was to watch his friend fight a losing battle for life. A slow, agonising battle, his face cyanosed, his body seizing before it finally lapsed into coma and brain death.

Compared to that, the quick agony of hard vacuum would have been merciful. Perhaps the engineer was already regretting allowing the damned Brit to force him down from the airlock to face this infinitely crueller end.

The thought returned. It was stronger now, and more persuasive. It's your fault he's still alive. If you hadn't interfered he'd be out of his suffering by now.

Most of their options were long gone. Neither of them probably even had the strength to stand, so reaching the 'pod's controls were out of the question.

The hand that still clutched the blanket closed – his left hand – was absolutely lifeless. White knuckles stood bleached under skin already showing faintly blue. But his right hand...

Clamped desperately under his left armpit, it had absorbed a little of the warmth still radiated by his chest. Enough to keep the fingers responsive, though stiff and painful to move.

''Tis enough. 'Twill serve...'

It was doubtful whether Trip would have noticed the movement, but all the same he kept it as smooth and silent as his failing co-ordination would allow.

Old habits died hard. In one of the pockets of his coverall, lying snugly at the bottom, was a tiny, slender knife. Made entirely of ivory, like the sheath that snugly encased it, it evaded scanners set to detect metal. In the bad old days he'd worn it strapped to his thigh, under a pocket with a hole slit in it to allow him access in emergencies.

When he'd come to serve aboard Enterprise his instinct had been to get rid of it – as he had done every other remnant of a past he wanted only to forget. Nevertheless, there had been a number of occasions when having it to hand had saved his life, and what harm could it do? It wasn't as though it was traceable, like a projectile, or overtly threatening like an energy weapon. It was just a small knife, handy for peeling fruit or gutting fish or stripping a piece of wire. Nobody but he knew the other uses to which it had been put.

In another life, opening the zip would have been an action accomplished without thought. In this one, it required an effort of will for every tiny mechanism involved in manipulating half-frozen digits burned by the cold of the zip tag.

He managed it somehow. His hand slid clumsily into the pocket. Yes, the knife was still there. A slow movement of a thumbnail released the safety catch of the sheath, and the weapon inside slipped free. Even the hilt was painfully cold against his skin, but the familiar feel of it was at once a reassurance and a horror.

The world was unreal as he straightened up again, the knife invisible under his blanket. Trip's eyes were closed. Although his face was far from relaxed, his whole consciousness was probably drawn inward. With any luck, he was somewhere far from this tiny freezing hell somewhere in the wasteland of space...

Malcolm knew exactly where to strike. He'd done it so often he could have killed his companion in the dark. His mind had already consented; his body still answered to his will.

Nevertheless, he hesitated, staring into the abyss.

It was the right thing to do. Once Trip was gone, he himself would follow. He wasn't sure of his ability to carry out the same strike on himself, but there should be enough capacity left in his femoral arteries even now to bleed out quickly enough. At these temperatures, the arteries in his wrists would probably be too badly constricted.

It wasn't that he doubted the rightness of the action. It was the act of a friend, the last kindness he could do to the man for whom he'd grown – however reluctantly – to care. The answer was far simpler and more absurd than that.

After all these years, he simply couldn't make himself do it.

Jag could have done it, and smiled. But he couldn't – he just couldn't – have his best friend's life ended by that monster in human form.

A few more minutes crept past. Then Trip let out a soft, shuddering groan of misery.

The sound cut straight to Malcolm's heart, and by some miracle of biology travelled straight to the muscles in his arm. Before he could consciously realise what he was doing, he slewed sideways and thrust the blade into Trip Tucker's neck, right under the angle of the jaw where the carotid artery was still beating frantically, trying to stave off the inevitable.

The cold betrayed him. Normally the thrust would have been fast, straight and sure, severing the artery with the practised ease of a butcher. Now, however, his stiff, weakened arm muscles reacted too slowly, and his fingers slipped on the haft, no longer strong enough to hold it steady. Not only did Trip see the movement in time to react, he was able to jerk his head away.

Not enough. Not enough to stop the blade piercing deep, fatally deep, but enough to prevent the clean cut that would have opened the artery like a tap. Instead, it was only nicked. Blood spurted, gouts of it steaming in the cold, but it wasn't a killing stroke. Not immediately.

Trip hadn't enough breath left to scream. He made a thin, awful noise of terror, his blue eyes wide with horror and shock, his arms flailing. One hand knocked the blade from Malcolm's nerveless fingers, the other tried vainly to staunch the bleeding. Scarlet poured between his fingers.

Pure adrenaline took over, blanking even the utter horror of having botched the most important kill of his life. From somewhere his body summoned the strength and the will to move, falling to the icy deck plating to retrieve the knife. The cold of the metal blistered the skin of his other palm, but he didn't feel it; he was too busy trying to get his shaking fingers around the haft again. Trip's boots landed on his ribs; the man was kicking out at him, too spent and crazed to aim properly but trying to fend off his murderer from coming back to finish the job.

But the job had to be finished. Done properly, this time...

His own pulse hammering in his ears, Malcolm managed somehow to stagger back to his feet. His last victim had fallen sideways. The front of his uniform was already black with blood but he was still alive, still weakly trying to kick or paw him away. Trying to fend off the Angel of Death.

Trip's face was contorted with pain and fear. He was probably already beyond speech, but his eyes were pools of shocked accusation: Malcolm, why?

"I'm so sorry, Trip," he whispered, and let himself fall forward.

If you've enjoyed reading this, please leave a review!