He dropped into the chair, allowing his arms to hang loosely for a moment. Then he picked up the datapadd and downloaded the Suliban freighter specifications into his console.
The sounds of his crew working outside carried through the walls and distracted him. They spoke in short, hurried tones. Unrest was growing. He would have said something to ease the tension amongst his people, had he known anymore than they did. Of course, what little else information he was privy to, he was under strict orders to keep to himself.
Reed rubbed his brow in an attempt to stave off the headache he could feel building. The security report lay almost completed on his desk, the one that would define the mission to retrieve the data disks from the Suliban ship. He entered a command into his console, then watched the freighter specifications flicker onto the screen.
The chair squeaked in protest. It almost rolled out from underneath him when Reed shot forward, out of his seat and towards the console. Although he told himself that he shouldn't have been surprised by what he was reading, he was nonetheless.
"Reed to Sub-commander T'Pol."
The comm was silent for a moment. "Go ahead."
"Do you have a moment? I'd like to speak with you about something of a confidential nature. In person, if you don't mind." He fidgeted with the sleeve of his uniform, cords of energy blazing through every nerve
ending until he could barely stand still.
"I will meet you outside of Sickbay in approximately five minutes," her voice replied calmly. "Is that acceptable, Lieutenant?"
"That'll be fine, Sub-commander." He tucked the datapadd into the pocket of his uniform. "I'll be there shortly." Reed left the armory and headed towards the turbolift. His feet moved quickly, betraying the fatigue he had been fighting just moments before.
The lift slid to a stop, and Reed glanced up to see a pair of large dark eyes staring back. Hoshi moved over and he stepped in to stand beside her.
Reed nodded and gave her with a tight smile. "Hoshi," he said in greeting. "Where are you headed?"
"B Deck," she replied. He reached over and pushed the button that would take him to Sickbay, then took in Hoshi's appearance. Her normally straight shoulders were slumped and there were dark rings under her eyes. We're all losing sleep, love, he thought compassionately.
Hoshi cleared her throat to get his attention. "We're having a memorial service in the Observation lounge for the Paraagans," she said. "I thought you might want to come. It's starting at ten tonight."
"You mean 2200 hours?"
She smiled and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Whatever," she replied, waving a hand absentmindedly. "It's not important. Will you come?" He heard her sigh as she crossed her arms.
"I can't, Hoshi," he answered. Reed stared uneasily at the wall behind her, uncertain of whether he should meet her eyes, and unwilling to see the disappointment he could imagine was there. "There's something I
need to take care of."
In his peripheral vision, Hoshi shook her head. "Can't it wait?" she asked with a touch of disbelief, and Malcolm stifled a sigh. She always did speak rather theatrically. Hoshi had a way with words, not the sort of baffling variation that could drive one to the brink of insanity, but eloquently simple and straight to the point. He wondered if he was giving her too much credit. Maybe her mind was such a complex jumble of conjugations and syntax that English simply got lost along the way. Hoshi nudged his shoulder. "I would have thought you would want to pay your respects," she said.
He couldn't tell her, so he said nothing.
Hoshi's eyes flashed with anger, and she turned away from him. "I should have known," she said through clenched teeth. "Too busy trying to wash the blood off your hands." The lift slowed.
"Urru areinnye," she called, storming out into the corridor. "That means go to hell."
He watched her departing form until it rounded the corner, then leaned heavily against the wall of the turbolift.
"As I have already told Captain Archer, the Vulcan Science Directorate has concluded that time travel is impossible."
They strode through the corridor. Aside from the odd crewman making his way through the ship's lower corridors, the deck was virtually deserted. Reed shook his head. "I just need you to answer as if it were."
T'Pol stopped and stared at him, perhaps debating whether there was a point. He could never tell with Vulcans. She nodded. "That would be illogical, but I will try."
She had surprised him with that, but perhaps he should have expected her co-operation. Reed adjusted his stance and crossed his arms over his chest. "What are the risks of knowing your future? Is it dangerous
because one might feel compelled to try to change it?"
T'Pol inhaled a short breath before answering. "I would assume the danger is not in attempting to change it, but in succeeding."
Reed drew his thumb absentmindedly across his lower lip, arms crossed. "That's what I thought." He stood quietly for a moment, listening to the hum of the ship.
"May I ask why you have suddenly developed an interest in time travel?" T'Pol raised an eyebrow in the Lieutenant's direction. "I assume it has something to do with our current mission."
Reed hesitated. "I'd rather not say exactly, unless we could keep this between us." Her eyebrow seemed to be raised perpetually in that position, and for a moment, he was sure she would say no. Then she nodded her agreement.
He dropped his voice a shade lower. "The Captain and I downloaded the Suliban freighter specs from that temporal device Daniels left behind in his quarters. I used it to draft the security report for the Captain."
Malcolm paused as a pair of officers passed, waiting until they had reached the end of the corridor before speaking again. "It seems that our good friend Daniels knew a lot more about this ship than he was letting on," he concluded.
T'Pol seemed as interested as Malcolm believed a Vulcan could ever be. Her eyes blinked slowly. "Somehow I downloaded more than that. And I don't know enough about this temporal war to know if the details are—" Malcolm searched for the right word. "—accurate? From what I understand, the timeline has been altered. The past that Daniels knew, and the one coded into the temporal device, said nothing about a destroyed Paraagan colony."
She blinked again and glanced down in thought, before raising her stare back to his. "Have you informed the Captain?"
Malcolm shook his head. "No, and that's why I've asked that we keep this between us. I'm under strict orders to avoid reading anything I should not know, but he has other things to be concerned with and I'd rather leave him to it."
T'Pol drew back from him firmly. "Then there is no matter to discuss, Lieutenant. You must follow the Captain's orders, regardless of whether you agree with him." She held out her hand. "Under the circumstances, I feel it would be prudent if I confiscated the datapadd."
Malcolm reluctantly pulled the small tool from his pocket and handed it to the Sub-commander. He nodded his thanks. Was she at all curious to read it? He began walking towards the armoury.
"Lieutenant." He heard T'Pol call after him, and he turned around.
"It is still possible that the time line will be repaired." She sniffed delicately. "Perhaps it would be best if I destroyed the datapadd, in order to ensure that the freighter data is all that remains."
Internally, he smiled. For someone who did not believe in time travel, T'Pol could be pretty damn illogical.
The door to his office was locked again. Reed sat down as a feeling of deja vu swept through him. Basic training in quantum theory wasn't exactly rocket science, he thought. Though T'Pol had taken the datapadd, the information was still downloaded to his console. Burning a hole in my pocket, he thought wryly. His apparent lack of will power was amusing, but in reality he was cautious. He could be playing with fire.
The device was precisely the type of tool Reed imagined he would need, had he been a time traveller from the 31st century. For a brief moment, he envied Daniels.
Reed found himself fighting the instinct to activate his monitor, and though he knew it was against protocol, his hand crept across the desk towards it. As a child, he had considered it the ultimate discovery to be able to see the future, before he had learned how to fence. That, of course, had led him to his position as the armoury officer aboard Enterprise, and had spawned his love of weapons. One hand firmly pushed the button on his console. The screen lit up, and his heart beat faster in anticipation.
An entire Enterprise crew manifest blinked invitingly before him.
His palms were cool and clammy to the touch. Scrolling down the screen slowly, he hesitated over his own file. A wave of guilt washed over him, and with a last tap of his finger against the desk, Reed pulled his hand away. He wouldn't read it. Man would lose their fascination with space travel eventually. There was no need to force time's hand.
Reed made the move to shut off the console, angry with himself for almost defying orders and letting his curiosity get the better of him. He wondered how many people would be strong enough to resist the pull.
Then something caught his eye as he glanced at the names on the manifest, drawn towards the letter S.
There was no Sato.
Perhaps he was mistaken, so Reed checked again. Then he looked through the entire list, name by name, hoping that she was simply misplaced. There was still no Sato. For a moment, he sat and tried to keep his head from spinning. Then he flew out of his chair for the second time that day.
The quarters were still sealed off. Reed walked through the ship towards Daniels' former cabin. His mind was pursuing several tangential curves at once, trying to find a logical answer for Hoshi's "death". He could remember her hurt expression from earlier that day, and over the last few months, he had come to think of her as a friend. Hoshi wore her heart on her sleeve for the entire universe to see, rivalling only Mr. Tucker in that department. She certainly wasn't a ghost.
For the first time in years, protocol and procedure fell by the way side. Reed found that he could care less. The door loomed in front of him, and he entered the security code.
The device glowed luminescent when he activated the hologram. It spread majestically above the desktop, but Reed had never been one to stop and marvel in the face of something more urgent. His blood ran coarsely through his veins, fed by his still wildly beating heart. Did he push this button to scroll through, or was he supposed to trace a spiral with these connecting dots? He didn't know how to work the temporal scanner, belittled by technology beyond his comprehension, but somehow the device was scanning for Hoshi Sato.
That fact was lost to his confusion. Internally he was almost chaotic, as though time was of the essence. But of course, he thought, because it was.
Twenty minutes later, Reed found what he was looking for in an historical archive. He quickly read the entry, appalled at how short it was. His hand shook of its own accord.
SATO HOSHI (December 22, 2133–May 18, 2146):
Daughter of noted space travel advocate Sato Nori. Three time winner of the International Youth Linguist Scholarship. Youngest member of the Planetary Institute of Languages, at the age of 11. Drowned after
falling into Cathedral Lake while visiting Yosemite National Park with family.
Reed fumbled with the device trying to find the power button, and the radiating blue glow that lit the room folded over itself, leaving the room bathed in black. He stumbled to the door and escaped out into the corridor. Sometime later, Reed slumped to the floor and buried his face in his hands.
Perhaps they had been mistaken. He would have to ask Hoshi when her birthday was, and her father's name, but he knew that he was grasping at straws. He dropped a hand to his chest, absentmindedly rubbing his heart. History had recorded her death. What a fright Daniels must have had, Reed surmised, to have found her here when he materialized his way aboard. Even through time, Hoshi's persistence was admirable.
His mind was muddled with confusion, cognitive processes attempting to reconstruct pathways he had never built, and Reed sat until he realized that a great deal of time had passed. When he rose, his heart protested the movement, mourning the loss of a 12 year old girl he had never met.
Soft wisps of candlelight spilled through the doorway upon the floor, distracting Reed from his thoughts and gesturing wildly for him to follow them. He glanced into the Observation Lounge, where a table sat
littered with empty plates to his right. Beside that was another table, covered with candles. He didn't even know the ship had that many, but his safety persona was relieved to find them snuffed out. The light scent of burnt wax filled his airways. His peripheral vision caught a single candle still burning out of the corner of his eye.
Hoshi was grasping it in her hand, but her wrist had gone slack. She lay on a small couch in the centre of the room, asleep beneath the large spherical window used for gazing at the stars, and he approached her quietly. Her breathing was slow and even. Reed slipped the candle from her fingers, not worried that the fabric on the floor would catch fire, but that the flame would touch her skin and startle her awake.
He had found no meaning to her presence on the Enterprise. The device had yet to prove its worth, and only the success of the mission to retrieve the data discs would decide that. Reed sat down on the floor near Hoshi's head, leaned back against the couch, and rolled the thin candle gently between his fingers.
He felt her stir a few moments later above his head. Her voice mumbled a quiet sigh. "I thought you weren't coming," Hoshi said. He watched the tiny flame reach for the last of the unmelted candle wax. Her breathing became deep and even once more, and it fell warmly against his neck. Hoshi Sato was very much alive. The nerve endings in his neck were telling him so.
"Hoshi?" he asked, reluctant to wake her.
"Hmm... " she trailed off.
He wasn't sure what he was trying to say, but he settled for the first thing that occurred to him, as suspicious as it might have seemed. "Have you ever been to Yosemite National Park?" The stars shone through the skylight above them, illuminating the dark room in a soft, shadowed light.
Reed waited for her answer. When she shook her head against his neck, he exhaled the short breath he had been holding in relief.
The couch dipped above him. "We were supposed to go once," Hoshi said, "but my father was delayed in Paris. I was disappointed. I'd wanted to see Cathedral Lake because that's where my parents met." She sighed thoughtfully. "You know how kids are when their parents are divorced."
Relief dulled with sorrow. He had often wondered what his childhood would have been like, had his mother ever grown a spine. A thought occurred to him.
"Have you ever dreamt in another language?"
She laughed girlishly at the question, taking the change in conversation with stride. "No one has ever asked me that before," Hoshi said enchantingly. He glanced behind him to see a smile spread across her face, and knew he had caught her. She looked very much like the 12 year old girl he wished he had known, peeking at him through lidded eyes. "Promise you won't tell?" Hoshi asked.
Reed blew the candle out and laid it at his feet. He would hazard a guess that she dreamt in whatever language was on her mind at the time, but there was no further insight from Hoshi other than an almost imperceptible shake of her head against his neck.
"A linguist with a passion for language," he deadpanned. A yawn threatened to overtake him. He muffled it with his hand. "Even if I told, who would believe me?"
Reed shifted quietly, reluctant to move. He knew then, with a measure of clarity, that the timeline could be skewed and distorted beyond recognition, and he could never forget her. He frowned in anger. If the device was correct, they had been destined to never meet.
As easy as it would be to stay in the lounge all night, Reed could imagine the scene when they were discovered in the morning. He rose wearily to his feet, giving Hoshi's hand a tug. "Come on love," he said, pulling her to her feet until she stood, barely, of her own accord. Her eyes fluttered open. They made their way to the corridor and slowly walked towards her cabin on the same deck.
At her quarters, he stood as she entered her security code. Hoshi turned with one foot half way in. She gave him a questioning stare. "Why did you want to know if I've ever been to Yosemite?"
He leaned one hand over her shoulder against the wall, trying not to hesitate and feeling very much like a deer caught in headlights. "Homesick, Hoshi. I was just thinking of Earth."
She leaned against the doorframe to her quarters and tried to figure out why Lieutenant Reed was still here. Hoshi had blinked a few times at him sleepily and cast a couple of yearning glances towards her bed, and for good measure, she had even thrown in a side splitting yawn. Reed was still talking, and the way that he had yet to receive the hint, despite being known for his observational skills, was suspicious. Not only was he stalling, but she had never known him to be this forward with her.
She interrupted him when he began to ramble about a painting his father had once owned of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Her hand on his chest stopped him in the middle of the sentence.
"Malcolm, what are you still doing here?" she asked. Tact had never been Hoshi's best quality when she was tired.
A frown creased Reed's face and he furrowed a brow, puzzled by the disruption. His mouth opened and closed. "What do you mean, what am I doing here? I've just walked you to your quarters," he replied indignantly. A smile quirked behind her lips almost in spite of herself; it was an obvious stall tactic from the tactical officer. Hoshi was surprised that he would try something so blatant.
"You know that's not what I meant," she said. Hoshi used the palm of her hand to apply a firm pressure to his shoulder, pushing him towards the corridor. "It's late. I want to sleep." She hummed low in her throat in an expression of annoyance. He blinked at her a few times.
"Malcolm," she tried again, her tone one of quiet impatience. "Why are you still here?" A part of her was starting to feel as if he was trying to tell her something.
Reed didn't answer. Hoshi wondered if she had expected that, but when his hand raised up to slowly trace a finger along her jaw, her eyelashes fluttered in surprise.
The finger became a hand on the nape of her neck, teasing her skin and the soft strands of hair. His puzzled gaze drifted to her lips. She heard his breath catch, saw the other hand in her periphery, and with a finger, he tilted her chin up. In one fell swoop, he leaned in and caught her parted lips with his.
A small hum flew from her throat, loud in the silence of the darkened corridor. Their wet lips tangled together.
Then just like that, it was over. Reed pulled back and whispered something illegible against her lips. Her heart pounding in her ears, Hoshi pushed him away again, firmer than before, but this time with a faint blush colouring her cheeks. Her stomach fluttered.
"I'll see you in the morning," he said quietly. The pause between them swelled, and abruptly he turned to walk away. Hoshi frowned. With one hand following the path his finger had traced across her skin, she tried to convince herself that what she had seen was merely fatigue's weary work.
His eyes had been unexpectedly sad.