Caught in the Act

See Prologue for disclaimers, etc.

Title: Caught in the Act
Author: Ginny Powell


Act IV - Escape
Scene 1

Meanwhile, back on the Bridge, Lieant ant Reed tried to
concentrate on his work, but he kept finding himself
looking at the closed Ready Room door. It seemed like the
Captain and Gabreefa had been in there a long time. He
couldn’t imagine what they were doing. Well, actually, he
could imagine what they were doing, and that’s what
bothered him. But he couldn’t think of anything he could
or should do about it, so he went back to his work, only to
glance at the door once again minutes later.

He was distracted from this cycle by the whoosh of the
turbolift. Trip stepped off and moved to hand a data pad
to T’Pol.

“Here’s those readings ya asked for,” he said to the
Vulcan. She thanked him and turned to get right to
studying the results, assuming the Commander would leave.

But he didn’t seem to want to. He looked around the Bridge
for something to occupy him, caught Lieutenant Reed’s eye,
and sauntered over to his friend.

“Hey, Malcolm, how’s it goin’?”

“Just fine, Commander.” Malcolm really wasn’t in the mood
to chat. He looked down at a console, pretending to be
busy, hoping it would discourage Trip. No such luck.

“So, uh, where’s the Cap’n?”

“In his Ready Room.”

“Oh.” Trip looked around the Bridge again, obviously a bit
ill at ease. “And, uh, where’s Gabreefa?”

“With the Captain.”

“Oh.” Trip glanced at the closed door. Then he leaned
closer to Malcolm and lowered his voice. “How long they
been in ‘ere?”

Malcolm looked up, his eyes narrowing. “Too long,” he
replied quietly. The two men stared at each other,
understanding dawning on both.

Malcolm broke the gaze when, over Trip’s shoulder, he saw
T’Pol moving toward the Ready Room.

“Uh, Sub-Commander?” he called hurriedly. “I wouldn’t
bother the Captain just now.”

Trip turned around, realized what was happening, joined
Malcolm’s effort. “Yeah, he’s in a very important
meeting.” He might not be happy about what the Captain was
most likely up to, but he was his friend. And hell, even
an enemy didn’t deserve to be caught in flagrante delicto
by T’Pol, of all people.

Malcolm nodded enthusiastically in agreement. “Very
important.”

T’Pol paused, raised an eyebrow at the two officers. “The
Captain did not leave orders that he was not to be
disturbed when he gave me command of the Bridge.”

“Well, yeah, that’s just kinda understood,” Trip tried
again, looking to Malcolm for support and receiving it.

“Even so,” T’Pol rejoined calmly, “I believe he will find
what I have to show him of sufficient interest to warrant
an interruption.” She resumed her path to the door.

Trip looked to Malcolm, his eyes widening in alarm.

“Uh, and what is it you have to show him, Sub-Commander?”
Reed parried, merely hoping to buy the Captain some time at
this point. “Can we see it?”

T’Pol stopped once more, pivoted to look piercingly at the
two officers. “That is for the Captain to decide,” she
intoned, and without further delay she turned, closed the
distance to the door, and pressed the door chime. Behind
her, Malcolm and Trip waited nervously for the Captain’s
response.

And waited.

After a minute of silence, T’Pol pressed the chime again.
“Sir, it’s T’Pol,” she called.

This time there was a muffled reply. “Yeah, yeah, I’m
coming, just a minute.”

Trip hadturnturn to hide his face. Malcolm had to settle
for covering his mouth with his hand. T’Pol glanced
briefly at the two men, then turned away, choosing to
ignore their incomprehensible antics, and went back to
waiting patiently.

Another full minute later, the door finally opened to
reveal a slightly miffed, but fully dressed, Captain
Archer.

“This had better be important,” he said a bit too gruffly.

“It is, sir,” T’Pol replied, handing him a data pad. “I
asked Commander Tucker to rig the maneuvering thrusters to
emit various particle beams around our entire perimeter to
a depth of ten kilometers. When we tried honorian
particles, sensors detected several anomalies, which I then
used to construct a three-dimensional image.”

“And?” Archer said, but he wasn’t really listening.
Instead he was watching Gabreefa, who had slipped out of
the Ready Room and had made her way over to Ensign
Mayweather. As Archer watched, she touched the helmsman’s
hair while he smiled shyly up at her. Out of the corner of
his eye, he could see Trip and Malcolm, watching the alien
woman with studiously blank faces.

“And,” T’Pol pulled the Captain’s attention back to her,
“this is what it looks like.” She pointed to the pad
Archer held but had yet to look at. He dutifully glanced
at it, and was about to glance away again, when he realized
what he was looking at.

The silhouette of a ship.

A really big ship.

T’Pol had been right; there was a cloaked mother ship out
there. Most likely, Gabreefa had been sent from it. This
was all some elaborate deception. But to what end? Once
again, he looked away from T’Pol to find Gabreefa, this
time with suspicion in his eyes.

But she was no longer near Mayweather. With increasing
alarm, Archer’s eyes searched the Bridge, but the alien was
nowhere to be found. Then, rising over T’Pol’s shoulder,
he saw a hand – a blue hand – heading for the Vulcan’s
hair.

And suddenly it all made sense.

“Genetic enhancements,” he heard the Doctor say, remembered
the picture on the monitor of the microscopic boxes hidden
under Gabreefa’s fingernails. “Storage containers?” he’d
asked. “To store what?” “She has them other places in her
body, too,” he heard the Doctor’s voice again, superimposed
over the memory of himself locked in Gabreefa’s embrace.

“Stop!” Archer’s hand shot out, capturing Gabreefa’s wrist
before she could reach the Vulcan.

“Captain?” Gabreefa asked, her expression one of injured
innocence.

“Sub-Commander, step away,” Archer ordered. The Science
Officer complied with an arched brow. “Hoshi, get me the
Doctor.”

The Communications Officer, who had been staring at the
tableau before her in shocked amazement, hurried to do her
Captain’s bidding. Moments later, the Doctor’s voice could
be heard throughout the Bridge. “Captain?”

“Doctor, those biomechanical boxes you showed me, can they
be emptied?”

“Theoretically, I suppose, though I would worry about
damage to-”

“I’m sending Gabreefa to you now. She is not to leave
until every storage device on her has been cleared. Mr.
Reed, please escort our guest to Sickbay.”

Malcolm rose slowly from his chair, but did not move toward
where the Captain still held Gabreefa. “Captain, I don’t
understand. Why-”

“Jon, what’s goin’ on?” Trip demanded at the same time.

“Jonathan, please,” Gabreefa pleaded, tugging at the wrist
he held with a vice-like grip.

“She wasn’t sent here looking for help for a dying world,”
Archer explained, his eyes boring into Gabreefa, his voice
dripping with righteous indignation. “She was sent here to
gather samples of our DNA, in…various ways, for her people
to use to genetically enhance themselves. Isn’t that
right, Gabreefa? Is anything you said to me true? Any of
it?”

For a long, tense moment, they stared at each other,
Archer’s face contorted with rage and disappointment,
Gabreefa’s with fear and betrayal.

Then she dropped the façade.

“I- I’m sorry,” she said, looking down in shame. “My
people are in need, in need of new genetic material, we’re
dying out, you have to understand-” When she looked up,
her face was streaked with tears that glistened in shades
of violet against the blue of her skin. “There is so much
diversity on this ship, and you were all so generous-”

“Mr. Reed,” Archer almost whispered.

“Yes, sir.” Malcolm hurried to his Captain’s side,
training his phase pistol at the enemy woman. Though she
looked at him with pleading eyes, his aim did not waver.

But when Archer released her wrist, and Malcolm gestured
for her to proceed to the turbolift, she stood her ground.

“I’m sorry.” She looked around her, meeting the eyes of
Archer, Reed, and Tucker. “I have to go now.” And she
pressed the big toe of one foot with the other.

Outside, right where T’Pol’s model had shown it was, the
mother ship uncloaked. Of the same overlapping brown as
the scout ship, only part of it was visible through the
Bridge viewport, but that part was quite impressive. The
thing was huge. Mayweather saw it first.

“What the hell?” he said. Everyone turned and gaped. Then
a flash of blue light filled the Bridge, and everyone
turned to see Gabreefa disappear. When they turned once
more to the viewport, all they saw was the distorted rear
end as the mother ship went to warp.


Scene 2

“I still think we should have tried to pursue it,” Malcolm
sulked, taking another swig from the bottle he held. He
really disliked the taste of bourbon, but that was all the
Captain had left, or was willing to admit he had left. And
he was rapidly nearing that stage at which the taste no
longer bothered him. He planned to continue until he
reached the stage where nothing bothered him.

“We did try,” Trip said impatiently. “But they slipped
through our fingers like a greased pig.” He took a swig of
his own bottle, then set it down with a thump on the table
before him. They were in the formal dining room, the
mostly uneaten remains of dinner littering the table.

“Besides, Malcolm,” Archer put in, “shooting at stuff isn’t
always the best answer.” Unlike the others, he drank from
a glass, and the bottle from which he poured was still
mostly full.

“Maybe so, but it would make me feel better,” Malcolm
replied sullenly. The others had to agree with that, and
all three fell into a brooding silence.

“We should make a pact,” Trip said after a few minutes.
“That no woman shall ever come before our friendship.” He
raised his bottle in salute.

“Here, here,” the other men agreed, raising their own
containers of choice to clink solidly together over the
center of the table. Then all three took a long drink to
seal the deal.

Another silence settled over the room, until Trip broke it
once again.

“But remember, I got there first.”

Archer chuckled. “That’s ‘cause she was saving the best
for last,” he quipped, with a smug smile. Trip chuckled
appreciatively, and then both turned to look expectantly at
Malcolm.

But he was not ready with a snappy line of his own.
Instead, he was slumped down deep in his chair, the bottle
of bourbon tilted at a precarious angle in his limp
fingers. Archer leaned over and rescued the bottle. Reed
tried to protest, but only ended up slumping further into
his chair.

“Well, gentlemen,” the Captain announced, standing slowly.
“I think it’s time we all called it a night.”

“Goo’ night, Jon,” Trip drawled, waggling all but the index
finger and thumb of the hand that held his bottle.

“Good night, Trip.” And Archer retired from the room, a
bottle in each hand.

Trip sat for a long time, listening to Malcolm snore and
staring out the viewport. He wondered if there really was
a planet Harac, and if they would ever find it. Then he
slumped forward, his head resting on his crossed arms on
the table, his lips curled into a contented smile.