Chapter 16: Malcolms Secret

Trip had always dreamed of having a family, but this was not how he had envisioned it coming about. Not that they were a family, but that was what living in the same quarters with a woman and a child felt like.

Looking up from his console, he saw T'Pol and T'Lara sitting across from each other in deep meditation. He wondered what Vulcan butts were made of, considering that they'd been sitting there motionless for the last six hours straight with nothing but a slim pillow underneath them for comfort. For a moment he'd almost forgotten that they were technically under arrest to prevent them from killing M'Gambe as soon as they arrived at the station, which – as a look at the chronometer confirmed – would happen in about four hours.

The frightening thing was, the decision was warranted. He would perhaps have backed out of his intention, but T'Pol had made it clear that she was not open to negotiation in regard to her determination to make sure that Vulcan law was enforced. And that age-old law prescribed death at the hands of the victim's clan, executable by any member of said clan willing to do the bloody deed.

To say that his quarters were cramped was an understatement. Two folding beds had been added to the interior for T'Pol and T'Lara. Originally T'Pol had been confined to her own quarters with the child, while he was locked away in his own, but a rather contrite-looking captain had delivered them into his care a mere two hours later; he could only speculate that Soval had something to do with that, having heard that for reasons unknown, he seemed to be the only one who could console the little girl.

Having been cooped up with them in the small space and seeing the interaction between him and T'Pol, their young guest had finally started to lose her fear of her fellow Vulcan. He was utterly lost for ideas as to why the battered young thing would seek protection from him – someone of the same gender and species as the very people who had abused her – but had trouble accepting someone from her own clan.

How Starfleet planned to get them out of this was a mystery. The High Command was already breathing down their necks – after all, somewhere out there was a Vulcan cruiser with T'Pol's former handler aboard, from whom they had fled in the first place. When word got around what humans had done to a young Vulcan child, there was no way the Vulcans wouldn't retaliate, and they had more weapons on a single ship than humanity could summon if they assembled their whole fleet – hell, Enterprise was the only ship that could go past warp three!

It was hard for him not to succumb to tears now that T'Pol had reluctantly disclosed the reason behind T'Lara's melt-down. What he really wanted to do was going on a killing rampage, but showing his true feelings would just add to the pain of the young one in their care. So he put up a brave facade and swallowed down the heartbreak he felt. How mundane did those problems of yesterday now appear, considering what horror T'Lara had gone through.

Jon paced the room like a caged animal. Why had he even bothered to lock Trip and T'Pol away? Arriving back at Starbase 74, a neither surprised nor even remotely apologetic-looking Lieutenant Reed had reported that Commodore M'Gambe and his five men in the brig had 'committed suicide'.

Was Reed thinking Enterprise's captain was roaming the ship at night, licking windows? And Max seemed not to be too bothered about the veracity of Reed's 'report'. He had just taken it at face value. Or at least seemed disinclined to dig any deeper into the murky depths the words so effectively hid.

Granted, the six people were no loss to the universe, there wasn't really much reason to mourn the 'unfortunate demise' of a bunch of child rapists, but this still went against everything Starfleet was supposed to stand for. What had happened to putting people on trial for their misdeeds? Whatever the Commodore and his henchmen had done, Jon wasn't prepared to let Reed get away with this. He was as appalled as he was furious that his Tactical Officer had seen fit to appoint himself judge, jury and executioner. What the hell had happened to Malcolm's sense of justice, let alone his regard for the rule of law?

Maxwell and the subject of his ire had just entered the room when his screen sprang to life unsolicited. The face of a gray-haired man in his fifties appeared on it.

"Who are you?" Jon spat, so enraged that he didn't even acknowledge the arrival of his superior officer.

"My name doesn't matter, Captain. Although it isn't my normal approach, Starfleet has convinced me that it is better to inform you about some things."

He looked back at the stranger, not best pleased that someone could remotely operate his kit from Earth. What point was there in being the fucking Captain if some run-down shmuck could commandeer his screen from back home whenever it took his fancy?

"Whatever you come up with as an excuse for my tactical officer murdering people, I suggest you make it a spectacularly good one," he growled, after pausing just long enough to establish that he was in no hurry to engage in conversation with someone he didn't know and didn't want to know. Not only was that man intruding into his comm system, he had also an air of utter arrogance about him.

A faint smile touched the iron mouth. "You might want to reread the Starfleet Charter, Captain – especially Article fourteen, Section thirty-one. There are a few lines that make allowances for bending the rules during 'times of extraordinary threat'."

"Then I take it you told my tactical officer to 'bend the rules'?"

"I think I should answer that question myself, Captain," his tactical officer interposed calmly, and Jon sent him a look of rage that made sure to convey that he wasn't in the mood to be sold a bullshit story.

Reed met the look, unflinching. "The gentleman you're talking to is my former superior officer. Before I accepted a demotion to Lieutenant to join this ship's crew, I was part of an organization that calls itself Section 31, in reference to the aforementioned article of the Starfleet charter. You could call it Starfleet's secret service if you like."

"It looks as if you haven't quite cut all your ties with that organization, Lieutenant," the captain snapped, not at all satisfied with the Brit's explanation although he did find it quite surprising that the man had actually accepted a demotion to join the crew.

"It was my decision, Jon," Maxwell explained, his expression only slightly apologetic. "As the man will tell you, he wasn't very happy about Lieutenant Reed's departure, but he couldn't prevent it. Reed said he was done with the Section, but I personally asked him to do one last mission for it."

"This isn't 1850, Max," the captain said in an irritated voice. "We don't hang people without giving them a fair trial anymore! You've put Reed in an impossible situation. How am I to trust him now? How can I be sure he won't take your orders again – or his – rather than mine, if the next crisis happens?" He jerked his head contemptuously towards the man on the screen as he spoke.

"I can't promise you that it won't come to that," the Admiral admitted. "The only thing I can promise is that Lieutenant Reed will be authorized to inform you about it in the future. We hope we never find ourselves in such a mess again, but we can't say it won't happen."

"Why now?" Jon demanded curtly.

if any Vulcan besides Soval and your first officer learns of what happened to the girl, we'll have a heavily armed fleet of Vulcan battle cruisers in orbit and they won't be in a mood for talking. There was no other way to deal with it. It's not something I'll be living easily with, but it had to be done. Soval wrecked his guest quarters on the way here – with his bare hands! Imagine what happens if three billion Vulcans learn of it."

"Perhaps Starfleet should punish corrupt officers instead of giving them command of a Starbase so they can commit even more crimes," Jon replied snottily. He was properly fed up with Starfleet's back-room dealing and their decision to corrupt his tactical officer to cover up their own failures.

"This is not meant to leave this room," Forrest answered, lowering his voice. "You are preaching to the choir, Jon. The order came directly from the President's office. We were busy basking in our own magnificence about launching our first Warp Five ship. A corruption scandal in Starfleet would have been a PR disaster."

"And you call this better?" he bit back, incredulous.

"We are talking about politicians," Max replied and Jon registered the disgust in his friend's voice for the first time. He'd been too busy with his own anger to notice it before. "They only think from twelve till lunch-time. Everything beyond the next elections doesn't matter. And even if we can't make public what M'Gambe did, trust me, we won't let them forget what a monumental clusterfuck that particular decision turned out to be."

Jon sat back, some of his wrath cooling. Maxwell wasn't exactly known for a propensity to swear. Whatever the situation was, his old friend was clearly under a lot of pressure.

"I want to talk to my tactical officer, so if you would leave us alone? All of you."

He added the last bit with an unmistakable stare at the screen, and it went dark immediately as the image of the mysterious guy went as quickly as it had appeared. Not trusting a system that could be hacked into with such ease, Jon yanked the electrical connection out of the wall socket as well, just to make sure.

With a last apologetic look, the Admiral left the office.

It wasn't the normal way in which Jon would speak to a superior officer, and he was aware that Max had cut him a heck of a lot of slack, understanding how he must feel, but the situation had seriously dented his authority and Jon couldn't be bothered to hide the resulting irritation.

And now he had to deal with Malcolm.

"Sorry," Trip muttered as T'Pol shook him awake, her face wearing a look of utter bewilderment.

The reason for that became obvious in a hurry. It wasn't every day that he woke to see the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth standing in his quarters. But the bigger issue at hand was the Vulcan child sleeping soundly, tucked up in the circle of his arms.

"She wouldn't sleep unless she could crawl in here," he said, abashed that a member of a race that considered touching a stranger as taboo would find one of their own in the arms of a representative of the race that had tormented her.

"There is no need to apologize, Commander," the old Vulcan said in an uncharacteristically soft tone. "In fact, I have come to ask you a rather serious question."

Trip looked blankly at his guest.

"According to the information given to the High Command, T'Lara and her entire family have been killed during the Nausicaan raid of the Vulcan outpost. The authorities are not aware that the child survived, nor do they know of her ... ordeal."

He held his breath. Since his childhood the Ambassador had, in his mind, been the epitome of a 'controlled Vulcan'. Hearing Soval's voice thick with pain as he referred obliquely to T'Lara's fate was chilling.

"All I can say is, sorry," he muttered, helpless in the face of the two Vulcans' agony. T'Pol looked as if she was about to burst into tears at any time; now that would be totally scary. He was still remembering vividly that Jon had turned her over into his care with a drawn weapon.

Thankfully, oblivious to all this, the child remained sound asleep in his embrace.

"You are not the perpetrator of this ... outrage, Commander. It is indeed fortunate that the child found someone with whom to seek refuge." The Ambassador's voice was still uncharacteristically thick with emotion. He paused before continuing, with what in another man might almost have been shyness, "Are ... are you and T'Pol prepared to become the child's en'ahr'at?"