1. Chapter 1

**Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount. No infringement intended, no profit made.**

**Beta'd by MizJoely, to whom all due thanks!**

**Author's Note: Rating for the occasional use of bad language and non-graphic sexual situations. This is the follow-up to 'Thicker Than Water', and will make no sense if you haven't read that story first.**

* * *

After all this time, it feels so natural.

They are still the same team, and take him back without any particular rancour, though not without gibes – nothing he hasn't expected, and nothing he can't deal with. The difference between the atmosphere here and that aboard _Enterprise_ is oddly stimulating; Jag has forgotten how little formality is observed here, and for all that by nature he's far more comfortable in a disciplined environment, right now he needs freedom in order to make some adjustments that will be extremely painful. Ironically, it's the closeness of his friends – his family, in all but name – aboard _Enterprise _that make it imperative he separate himself from them for a while. They care too much. And while he knows that his old team also care, they're far better able to cope with the craziness that results as a backlash from a particularly difficult op. Possibly he should have warned Captain Archer that there might be mental consequences for him too, but Archer has Phlox looking after him. Jag, on the other hand, was always a loose cannon at the best of times; and if there's one thing _Enterprise _doesn't need, it's a head-case in charge of Tactical.

There has only been one change, and for a moment it startles and angers him. He should be ready for it, but he isn't, and there's a long pause in which they stare at each other, the ready hostility apparent in both of them; meeting unexpectedly in the narrow confines of the corridor they stand almost eye to eye, like two stranger cats with arched backs and flat ears, ready for battle.

With Pard dead and him gone, the team would have been under-strength. Of course they'd had to bring someone in. 'Puma', Leo had told him calmly, as the freighter went to warp. She'd kept out of the way during the trip from Farlaxi, but that would no longer be possible. The two of them will just have to get along.

No more than that. They aren't children or prospective marriage partners, so there are no introductions. They have to find their own relationship. Nobody will cosset them or put either of them on the 'Naughty Step' if they don't behave nicely. They don't have to like each other, and quite frankly nobody will care if they loathe each other, as long as when it matters they can work together like parts of a well-oiled machine.

Her height doesn't intimidate him, though as a rule he doesn't go in for statuesque women; he prefers them petite. Her hair (he has to admit it, if only to himself) is beautiful – thick clusters of burnished chestnut that tumble around her shoulders. It's her best feature by a long shot. Not the most determined admirer could truthfully describe her as a patch on Pard; at best, she's plain. Not ugly, true, but ... well, _forgettable. _Not a bad trait in a Covert Ops specialist, maybe, but one that he irrationally resents, and he makes little effort to hide his disdain.

In other circumstances, he'd be more diplomatic. He rarely sets out deliberately to offend, and he's long ago grown out of valuing a woman only for her looks. Now, however, he's too ready to take exception to an interloper, however illogical that may be; and, raw and bleeding with his own pain, he doesn't give a damn either for his own unpleasantness or for what she thinks of him. The Section has done this to him, has forced him to revert to Jag; they can damn well live with the consequences!

But even though she isn't beautiful, it takes very few days for him to realise that her expertise in weapons and explosives is very nearly the equal of his own. A talent that could go far towards establishing a bridge between them, if they wanted it to.

But she isn't Pard, and almost in the first instant mutual hate sparks between them.

Well, fine. He can live with that. So, apparently, can she. As he fits back into the team as though he'd never left it, they simply ignore one another when they can and behave with painstaking civility when they can't.

The 'job' of which Leo has spoken to Captain Archer is real enough, but apparently there is no particular haste for it to be done. En route to the world in question the freighter calls in at a planet whose occupants are of a particularly hospitable disposition, and the crew are given three days' shore leave. Jag's three days pass in a haze of hard alcohol and soft flesh, where if anyone hears the name he sometimes gasps out they don't care. He comes back on board afterwards and vomits copiously on the floor of his cabin before sleeping for twenty hours and coming back to himself, to find that his best shirt has been dropped deliberately and precisely in the pool of vomit. He cleans both of them meticulously.

The rest of the team are unchanged: 'Spots', the electronics and engineering wizard who looks like a Viking and has an aviary in his quarters in which he keeps and breeds various breeds of tiny finches; 'Stripes', the pilot, whose narrow, pinched and oddly youthful features still give him a look of the Artful Dodger, and whose lucky woolly hat now boasts a violent orange darn on the left hand side of it; and of course Leo himself, whose massive presence broods over the ship even when he is absent, and who sees far more than is sometimes convenient, but seldom chooses to intervene.

Puma is, of course, their weapons and explosives expert. Her nickname is 'Paw', though in his own mind he refers to her dismissively as 'Tail'.

The crew have always taken it in turns to cook. Even Leo does so, presumably feeling less need to stand on his captainly dignity than Jonathan Archer does. Paw, it turns out, is good at cooking too. Even the prodigal son of the team reluctantly mutters praise the first time he tastes her handiwork, ignoring her baleful glance that wishes it might have poisoned him; and from then on the rest of the team benefit so greatly from their bitter culinary rivalry that more than one of them wishes it might be possible for it to become a permanent fixture – a wish that, imprudently voiced, earns the speaker the equal wrath of both antagonists.

The system where their task is to be carried out is not far away, but there is apparently some reason why their arrival has to be delayed – which explains in part the detour for shore leave. The freighter – originally christened simply the _York, _though as far as the official records go, that designation has been long since lost – establishes orbit around the innermost of three barren planets circling a nearby star. It's close enough for the solar radiation to be far too dangerous to leave the ship for any reason, even in an EV suit, but on the other hand the radiation will shield them from anything but an extremely searching scan.

Spots says that the hull plating will protect them for a few days if it has to, but that the environmental systems weren't built to compensate for these temperatures. They're just going to have to put up with being hot for as long as they hang around here.

* * *

'Hot' is hardly the word for it, thinks Jag that night, as he sprawls naked on his bunk, his hands lightly linked above his head to keep the undersides of his arms from touching his ribs; the dressings Phlox applied to his self-inflicted injuries are off now, but the healing cuts still itch a little, and the heat isn't helping. Even the viewing ports have had to be shielded to withstand the radiation, and for much of the time the ship is as hot and dark as an oven. All the power that can be spared from unnecessary functions has been diverted to the hull plating, so that even lighting is reduced to an absolute minimum. They are all having to drink constantly to prevent dehydration, and even as he lies here he can feel the constant tiny movement of beads of sweat springing out on his body and forming rivulets that trickle into the towel placed to protect the mattress underneath him.

Despite his weariness, sleep will not come easily in these uncomfortable conditions. His mind drifts back to _Enterprise_, thinking with some envy of his cool, air-conditioned cabin there. It's a measure of how different his mind-set is here that he'll sleep naked; as the Head of Security on board Starfleet's flagship, he would never have done so, however hot he became. If any emergency occurred, he wouldn't have to waste time getting clothes on, and even a set of blues would be sufficient to maintain the dignity befitting an officer.

Here, though ... he grins, wolflike in the dark. Malcolm Reed, that repressed, rigid monument to propriety, fighting to confine his energies into respectable channels so that they never got out of his control. _You ought to sympathise with T'Pol, Malcolm,_ he thinks. _The Vulcans keep it all buckled down too. And look what happens when the control fails..._

He still remembers the First Officer's voice, breathy and desperate, inviting him to mate with her: '_I've seen the way you look at me...' _Too damned observant by half, was T'Pol. Doubtless that was just another facet of Human behaviour she'd been conditioned to ignore: lust. Although the criticality of the situation at the time had enabled him to behave as the officer he'd been brought up to be, he'd paid for it that night and many afterwards when his imagination ran riot and his sex-hungry body tormented him with the craving for more than solitary relief.

Apart from that memorable occasion, however, she's never glanced in his direction. Perhaps it's just as well. He certainly doesn't envy Trip the dance she's led him.

There are other women on board. He's noticed them, even lusts after one of them – not that the desire is mutual. Nobody would have thought he did, though. He'd built his persona too well from the start, and hid himself behind it so effectively that he suspects few people even now actually think of him as a human being – more as a set of functions that occasionally become irksome. _You've watched too many science fiction films._

He terrifies many of the junior members of the crew. He knows he does. He hadn't meant it to happen, but has no idea how to amend matters without losing their respect. As for his own team? He hopes none of them are terrified of him, but isn't sure. It isn't just romantic relationships he has problems with.

Pard came to him in this bed. His mind draws her straddling him, lithe and naked; his hands rise to cup her breasts, and close on hot empty air. She'd liked to be the one in control, and mostly he'd humoured her. Now and again he'd asserted himself, and then they fought like tigers, using teeth and claws, half in lust and half in earnest. The end was never in doubt, and sooner or later his grunts and her yowls would announce his victory to anyone who cared to listen.

On one of those occasions, it must have happened–

_"Crew to briefing." _Stripes's voice sings out over the comm. "_Pussy-cats all, come out to play..."_

Jag pulls on a pair of briefs that technically bring him into the 'decent' category, if no more. It's too damned hot to wear anything else.

The others evidently think the same as they assemble in the briefing room, blinking in the unaccustomed light there. Spots has been working out, regardless of the heat; his body is glossy with sweat, like something in a bodybuilders' magazine. Leo is an ebony statue, dwarfing Stripes beside him, who is still wearing his woolly hat and has evidently been doing a crossword puzzle. He still has the PADD in his hand, and peers at it from time to time throughout the briefing, sucking his stylus thoughtfully.

And as for Paw ... a barely-adequate orange two-piece emphasises rather than hides charms that have been quite effectively disguised by the loose tawny coverall she usually wears. She walks fluidly, like the big cat she was named for, and her glare is as hostile as bared fangs when she sees him openly watching.

He smiles back, lazily. _You show, I look. Better than I'd've expected, too. Live with it, Tail._

The chairs around the briefing table are as uncomfortably hot as everything else on the ship. Leo has made bacon sandwiches; he's probably just left the rashers outside for a couple of seconds. The bacon will exacerbate thirst, but it helps to restore salt lost through the constant sweating.

Jag begins to wolf his before the bread dries out in the heat.

"Time we started making plans," rumbles Leo, taking his seat. "There's an election taking place on a planet called Traan II. We have to ... intervene."

"Bit of a change for us, hey, what?" Stripes is from Ohio. His assumed British upper-class accent always was (and still is) execrable. "Can't go taking out politicians, dear boy. Not done."

"Oh, I don't know." Spots cuts in lazily. "Quite a few I'd like to take out, if it came to that." He whistles, and one of his tiny finches whirrs down from a cable high above and perches on his finger, investigating the sandwich.

Jag thinks of V'Las and says nothing, but tears the bacon savagely with his teeth.

"I know it's not normally our sort of job," Leo continues. "I don't care for it myself, come to that. But it's not our place to decide, just to get it done."

"Any reservations?" asks Paw. She doesn't mean 'reservations' in the sense of 'doubts' of course; she only wants to know if any caveats have been issued as to collateral casualties.

"None other than the usual." 'The usual' simply means 'keep it tidy'. No more bodies than necessary, no evidence left behind, no fingers left attached that could point to Starfleet.

"I'll send what we have to your PADDs. Familiarize yourselves. It'll take us about two days to get there and then we have three to get our ideas fine-tuned and get ourselves into position."

"Why does the Section want this ... politician ... taken care of?" Jag breaks his silence. He's been watching the finch, and suddenly his hand shoots out and closes on it before the minute bird can take flight. Spots looks down impassively. He knows it won't be hurt.

Tiny. It's so tiny, imprisoned between his fingers. Tiny and alive, its little heart beating frantically. Its head pokes out between his thumb and index finger, and tries to peck him.

Keri would have been enchanted with it.

On that thought he opens his hand. The finch flies back up to the cable and swings on it, scolding him.

Leo's saying something about 'minerals' and 'affiliation', but Jag's no longer paying any attention. He went through a phase at one time of bringing back unusual pieces of weaponry as trophies from ops, as well as a few antiques he brought with him from Earth, and they're still on display here and there around the ship – maybe left 'for luck', or just nobody's bothered to throw them away. There's an antique Lee Enfield rifle on the wall of the briefing room and he takes it down and begins stripping it. He's irritated to find that it's received expert care in his absence; it's still in absolutely perfect condition, immaculately cleaned and oiled.

_Forty-eight cakes and a rabbit._

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	2. Chapter 2

Their cover story is simple enough, and one they've used before on several occasions.

Traan II is a staging post on the run out from Earth to Vega Colony. It's a thriving world, with a sizable population and enough natural resources to sustain itself in very fair comfort as well as attracting a considerable amount of trade from passing ships. It has sophisticated repair yards too, and sees regular business servicing and upgrading those same ships. All in all, it's a place that has worked hard for its good reputation and has always shown itself anxious to maintain good relations with all of its various neighbours – Starfleet in particular. If the dream of some kind of 'Federation of Planets' ever does get off the drawing boards, Traan will almost certainly be among the first to apply to join, and the prospect of establishing a close and potentially even exclusive relationship with a planet with those mineral riches is not one that Starfleet can or will ignore.

The freighter in which the team travels actually does contain a quantity of trade goods. Now and again, when their cover requires it, they're perfectly willing and able to use them, usually turning a profit when they do so. However, it will be nothing at all out of the ordinary for the ship to develop some small technical fault – a recurring one that would exhaust their stock of spares and necessitate a visit to the yards at Traan. They've called there before and done legitimate business, so their credentials are already established (even though these naturally carry no indication that they are aligned in any way to Starfleet; they're registered there as a small independent company trading out of Vega).

The orbital station's repair facilities are doing the usual brisk trade as the freighter approaches, and Traffic Control signal them to a vacant docking berth on one of the arms. As they approach it, Jag is occupying the co-pilot's seat. He notes uneasily that an NX-class is coupled up; _Enterprise _is far behind, so it has to be _Columbia_, presumably calling in on some official business in passing. The growing menace of the Romulans has led to the NX-02 being held closer to Earth than her older sister.

"Homesick?" asks Stripes, obviously seeing the direction of his gaze.

Jag shrugs.

"How is she to fly?"

"Don't know. I never tried. Got a decent rudder-man – Travis Mayweather."

The pilot nods, interpreting the praise without difficulty for what it is. "Got a good reputation." He brings the _York _drifting gently around the tail-end of _Columbia_'s left nacelle, so close that if they were on water the other vessel would have bobbed on the bow-wave. The sunlight gleams on the sleek duranium hull, though the warp coils lining it are quiescent, their luminous blueness slumbering.

It's strange to get an outsider's look like this, thinks Jag, his gaze roaming over the saucer. Some of the improvements on _Enterprise_'s design are pretty obvious: the extra armaments, for one, plainly thought necessary in view of the increasing tensions on the edge of what's beginning to feel suspiciously like a front line. He eyes them a little wistfully; he's always thought his own ship was pitifully poorly equipped for self-defence, even when she'd been refitted to face the Expanse, but the recently-appointed Lieutenant Kiona Thayer will have less to worry about on that score. Maybe _Columbia_'s older sister will be brought home presently to be fitted with something similar. The days of peaceful exploration are already beginning to feel as though they are part of a mindset with a limited life-span.

The thought of _Enterprise _being refitted and her armaments upgraded without his personal supervision costs him a surprisingly deep pang, which he resolutely stifles. _Nothing to do with me any more. _ Even if the shipwrights at Jupiter Station and the technicians at Starfleet R&amp;D didn't know their business – which they most assuredly do – then he's left some damned good deputies behind, who can be guaranteed to have everything done just as he'd want it.

Stripes guides _York _to the allocated docking bay at the yards. The freighter ghosts into place, halting with the barest tremor through the hull as her bow contacts the forward buffer. Alongside, the technicians will already be getting the transportation tube positioned, manoeuvring it to seal around the ship's airlock so that repair personnel and matériel can be brought on board and any of the crew who care to can 'stretch their legs' on the station or – time and funds permitting – travel down to Traan itself.

Funds won't be a problem. That fictitious company on Vega has already provided the necessary, thanks to the strictly unofficial end of Starfleet's accounts that have the Section's stamp on it. Traan's repair crews are anxious to oblige such a prompt and unquestioning payer, and the planet's hospitality is at their disposal.

* * *

"Might be best to stay out of the centre of town, though," says the garrulous individual who brought them their drinks at the bar on the station and has evidently appointed himself their adviser. "It's ... it's not the best place right now, especially at night. There are troublemakers, just every now and then ... wouldn't want you to get involved accidentally."

"We're always careful," responds Leo. "But thanks for the advice." He hands over payment, complete with a generous tip, and is rewarded by even more advice, this time about what hotels offer the best service.

Jag sits a little way back from the table, trying to control his left foot, which is displaying a tendency to tap rapidly on the floor. The bar is large and spotlessly clean, brightly-lit and comfortably furnished. It provides a startling contrast to the last bar he was in.

His foot is tapping again. He stops it.

A small group of personnel in Starfleet uniforms are occupying a table over at the other side. Their faces are bright and open, heartbreakingly young. To go by their average age, they aren't that long out of the Academy; some sort of crew rotation for _Columbia_, perhaps. At least they won't have to sit there and keep a straight face while their captain makes 'gazelle' speeches.

His drink's palatable enough, which is lucky, as he needs something to snigger silently into at the memory. Across the table, Spots sends him a sharply inquiring look. He pretends not to see it.

Stripes is still working at a crossword – presumably a different one, as he's addicted to them. Tail, looking over his shoulder, supplies an answer he's been struggling to find, and he digs her in the ribs with his elbow. She's wearing a dark blue catsuit that would suit T'Pol, and looks surprisingly good in it.

The waiter obviously think so too. It takes him nearly forty-five seconds to register that someone is watching him who doesn't approve of his admiration and requires him to take it away while he can still walk upright on his own two legs. Once he's grasped that fact he goes away rather quickly, having presumably remembered urgent business elsewhere.

On a personal level, Jag doesn't care if Tail shags everything on the station including the resident rodents. But she's part of the team, whether he likes her or not, and the team's safety is his priority. Nobody touches the team. His hand has drifted as though by accident to his thigh, where a slit inside an innocuous pocket gives him instant access to the slender knife underneath it. He's hardly likely to use it anywhere so visible, or for such a reason, but the feeling of the hilt under his fingers lends an edge to his smile that even an alien will be hard pressed to misunderstand.

Spots smiles tolerantly, doubtless noting that the hand drifts away again. His moustache has got longer since the old days, and one of these days he'll appear with his long hair braided into plaits; then all that will be required will be a horned helmet. He has an odd sense of humour sometimes, and nobody would be entirely surprised if the helmet too put in an appearance, though presumably he wouldn't wear it on ops – unlike Stripes's woolly hat, which is mandatory wear at all times, possibly even in bed. His eyes are a paler shade of blue than Trip's, the North Sea as opposed to the Gulf of Mexico.

Leo looks inscrutable. "He was being informative."

"He was being nosy. They're the first people who'll be interrogated afterwards. _Who were after all the information they could get? _Whereas we..." A fluid shrug. "Anyway, we already know where we're staying. I checked out their security certificate."

Tail is undoubtedly aware of what is going on, otherwise she'd have looked up by now. She's paying far too much attention to that crossword puzzle, though she's usually keener on Sudoku. She's undoubtedly checked out the hotel too, if she's anything like good enough, or if she hasn't she should have done.

It occurs to Jag at that moment that it's hardly surprising Tail hates him. He's playing Hayes to her Reed: the interloper, the old hand, the professional, brought in to sit in judgement on the amateur playing at soldiers. The irony is almost enough to make him laugh, and strangely enough it would have been a genuine laugh at that. So perhaps it's just as well that he swallows it.

There is a regular shuttle service down to the surface of the planet.

It's hard to imagine, looking down through the portholes of the comfortable shuttle, that anything on that unruffled-looking world down there can possibly constitute enough of a threat to justify Starfleet sending in a team of professional assassins. It's a pleasant-looking planet, somewhat larger than Earth though with a considerably greater ratio of land to water, and its people the Sashwe are generally good-natured and hospitable. They are humanoid in appearance, though their dappled skins have an iridescent sheen and their necks boast vestigial gill-slits that flap open when they're disturbed or upset. Their pronounced eye-sockets with overarching brows and small, curved noses give them an appearance of perpetual owlish incredulity, so that one rather expects them to hoot rather than speak in the actually rather pleasant fluting voices they possess.

The only real disadvantage, Jag decides, watching the retreating figure of the flight attendant who'd brought the passengers their in-flight drinks, is that their genders aren't as well defined as those of humans. He thinks this one is female but isn't certain. He lies back in his chair, contemplating the problem, his eyes half-shut. That's one major plus for being Jag rather than Malcolm Reed: he can think about sex all the time – at least when he isn't thinking about causing explosions of a different sort. Maybe all the years of keeping his hormones bolted down are getting their revenge, because those three days of shore leave are beginning to seem very long ago, and he's ready to go again. Oh, yes. Very ready. Maybe in between checking out the opportunities for disposing of their target he'll find opportunities for target practice of a different kind.

The mission is naturally his first priority, though. He's already familiar with the target: a politician named Bheval, the leader of a relatively minor xenophobic party whom the establishment is beginning to find irksome. Among other 'crimes', he distrusts Starfleet and is hostile to the idea of entering into any kind of exclusive agreement with them. Unfortunately for the establishment, he's a powerful and persuasive speaker, and has already contrived to put together quite a case for Traan to stay independent, reserving the wealth of its mineral deposits for whichever bidder can pay most handsomely.

Maybe if war wasn't on the horizon, Starfleet would feel less threatened. But among those minerals is dilithium, on which so many of its vessels depend, including _Enterprise _herself of course. If war comes, any source of dilithium will become incalculably more important from a strategic point of view – as well as a resource that needs to be secured for their own use, it's one that will have to be denied to the enemy (assuming of course that Romulan ships are also powered by dilithium, which is one among thousands of unknowns as yet).

These strategic considerations are about to prove singularly unfortunate for Isahd Bheval.

Almost as unfortunate is the fact that the Sashwe are insuperably handicapped by their own intrinsic good nature. By the appalling standards set during Human history, Bheval is nothing but an amateur. He's an isolationist, but certainly not a particularly malicious one; as Stripes has jocularly put it during one of their briefings, he's more likely to send his defeated political enemies to a holiday camp than to a death camp.

He and his party are trying – and learning fast. So fast, indeed, that Intelligence suggests they have unwelcome assistance from other interested parties; though if any other hostile species are acting in an advisory capacity, they're keeping themselves well hidden. But not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough to anticipate an assassination order from a world so far distant, or to have the expertise in place to prevent it.

Yes. Unfortunate.

And _fatal._

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	3. Chapter 3

The planet's high reputation for hospitality is well-deserved, thinks Jag, depositing his holdall on the bed of his hotel room. Ever since the shuttle landed, the visitors have been treated like royalty. The Sashwe, it seems, are genuinely pleased to see them; and he has no doubt that this is something quite different to the professional and superficial pleasure that so many in the hospitality trade can switch on and off like a light bulb and with about as much feeling. A past master at that himself, he can recognise it instantly when he sees it.

No wonder their politicians are useless at being wicked. To use a quaint old Americanism, they're behind the eight-ball right from the start.

Traan prides itself on being 'cosmopolitan' as far as visitors go. There are all sorts of species in evidence, especially up on the space station. Humans are not a novelty, but nobody would suspect this from the reception they've received; they had been practically fêted when they'd got off the hover-car in front of the hotel foyer. Free drinks had been pressed into their hands before they were through the doorway, and every member of the staff they've encountered has been at pains to emphasise how pleased the hotel is to have their custom, and how any requirement they may have will be attended to instantly.

Jag bounces once or twice on the bed and grins. He has one requirement that springs to mind quite readily, but unfortunately that will have to wait. Leo has given them twenty minutes to freshen up, and then they are to meet up in the foyer and go out to check out the ground. He'd be quite willing to pass up on the wash if he could corner a particularly obliging and indubitably female member of staff for a lively encounter in the horizontal position, but that might draw attention, especially if he got carried away and forgot the time.

Well – the wash, then. He strips off his top; it will do no harm to wash his hair and give himself a quick rub down, and Phlox has given him a lotion to rub into his the skin of his hands to help the healing process. The full works will have to wait till later.

The bathroom is small, but immaculate. He glances automatically at his reflection, and isn't sure who's looking back at him. Under the glinting recklessness, there is still something else.

Somebody else. Weighted down with responsibility and grief.

_"Yesterday, upon the stair,_

_I met a man who wasn't there–"_

The photocell works instantly. Warm water gushes into the polished stone sink. He plunges his hands into it. The sound of his voice echoes off the walls, sing-song and mocking.

_"He wasn't there again today –_

_Oh, how I wish he'd go away!"_

He gets barely a split second's warning, and that born more of his own instinct than anything else. For that reason alone he gets three fingers under the cord before it closes around his neck. But the pressure on it is atrocious, and three fingers aren't enough to pull it loose. A heavy body smashes him into the sink, pressing him down while the cord saws into his throat, his own fingers crushing his larynx.

By the bitterest of ironies, it's the water that saves him.

Maybe if the water wasn't there, bubbling and sparkling mere centimetres from his face, he'd give in and die. It's his phobia that sends him mad, turns him from a choking victim into a crazed animal with more strength and viciousness than any human has a right to possess. He brings his legs up and kicks off the wall, hurling himself away from the sink even as he flings his head violently backwards. The top of his skull slams into a jaw and something breaks, teeth or bone, he doesn't know and doesn't care, but the cord suddenly goes slack and the air is like champagne, except that no champagne he's ever tasted has filled him with such wild exhilaration and sick hatred. The wicked little knife strapped at his thigh springs into his hand as though it has a life of its own, and without bothering to turn he plunges it behind him repeatedly, jerking upwards and twisting as the blade sinks in.

His attacker makes a smothered sound of agony and tries to push him away, but they're up against the shower cubicle now and Jag braces his feet on the floor and keeps pushing backwards, using the knife again and again. The hands drop the cord and begin tearing at his hair, his face, trying to find his eyes.

That's a mistake. He has teeth as well as a knife, and moments later bone is grinding between his jaws, blood running sweet and salty across his tongue.

His other hand's free now, having torn the cord loose and flung it away where it can do him no more harm, and he's bringing it up to defend his face when something crashes into the side of his head, bringing a darkness he falls into momentarily. There's the sense of toppling against the sink again, though he manages somehow to keep hold of the knife, but a heavy body pushes past him and lurches towards the door, breathing ragged with pain. The door opens and closes, and he's alone, dazed and wheezing and shaking but alive, staring into the still cheerfully bubbling water into which he's now dripping red.

He dips a hand into the water and splashes some over himself in the effort to clear his senses. It runs off darker red; his scalp is bleeding, as well as his face. Now that he has attention to spare for the mirror again, his reflection looks back at him, scratched and pale and shocked, with the ligature mark already ugly around part of its throat. His assailant must have been hiding in the shower cubicle, which is built into the wall at right angles, the top half of it just deep enough to provide such a hiding place; the scent of recently-used cleaning agents masked any trace of his smell. There's more blood on the floor, pools of it around his feet. He feels rather apprehensively around his body, but there are no injuries there, though the base of his ribs is badly bruised by the impact with the front edge of the sink.

Awareness comes back, and with it anger and fear. Stupid, _stupid_, to have been so criminally complacent! He fumbles for the small spare button attached just under the waistband of his jeans, and presses it three times; then waits, his finger trembling slightly on the small innocuous surface. It feels like an eternity before four answering vibrations come through it.

His door is locked of course, but Spots has no trouble getting through that. Moments later the rest of the team are crowding in through the bathroom door. His gaze rakes them for evidence that they too have been targeted, and with a nauseous sense of relief finds nothing.

They sit him in the shower and clean him down, while he presses a handful of clean tissue-paper to the bleeding lump on the side of his head where a marble vase from a nearby niche was smashed into it. Paw runs the scanner over the blood on the floor before she wipes it up with more tissue-paper.

"Nausicaan," she says succinctly. "You were lucky."

"I think you mean 'good'."

"No, I mean 'lucky'. He cared more about getting away than finishing you off."

"Shouldn't be too hard to track the blighter, though, what?" Stripes is so concerned he's turned his hat around so the darn is on the right hand side. This is very nearly unprecedented.

Jag looks up at him wearily. "Cut it out, you bloody daft git."

"By Jove! It's a sure sign you're feeling better, dear boy. I always know you're not on your death-bed as long as you can still curse." This is, of course, outrageously ironic, because the pilot can curse like a navvies' ganger himself, and invariably does so when anyone takes a pot-shot at the ship, which he regards as his personal property.

"We won't find him." Leo is methodically sorting through the first-aid kit that has been hidden at the bottom of Jag's holdall. "We can't afford to draw attention to ourselves by getting the police involved, and I'd rather not call a doctor unless we have to."

There is an oblique question in the second half of that sentence, and Jag answers it with a shake of his head. "I'll be fine." Not very fine, and not just yet, because the movement is enough to send a wave of dizziness over him that makes him rather glad he's sitting down, but he'll be 'fine' enough to manage.

The hypospray brings him some relief, and he sits impassively enough while Spots cleans the minor wounds and sutures the one in his scalp. The ligature mark around his neck, however, is too high to hide beneath his clothes, and far too distinctive not to attract unwelcome attention.

"Here." Paw has disappeared for a few moments, and now drops a scrunched-up bundle of silky blue material into his hands. It's a scarf, shot through with strands of silver thread. All but one of these are absolutely harmless. Only the closest examination reveals that the one is actually nylon cord, supple as water. Applied in the right way, it will cut like cheese wire.

Considering that, it perhaps isn't the best thing ever to have wrapped around his neck, but as long as he can avoid anybody getting hold of the ends and yanking them, it will at least provide concealment. He takes it with a word of thanks and wraps it gingerly in place.

"Just your colour," simpers Stripes. "And it's _so _'this season'."

Jag responds to that information with a hand signal that suggests he isn't particularly fashion-conscious.

When the world has steadied somewhat, the team dry him off, help him back into his bedroom and get him lying down.

Leo frowns down at him. "I think you need to rest for a while. Stay here. Will you be okay on your own?"

"Fine." Not wholly ungrateful for the respite, he submits. He's pulled a phase pistol out of a concealed, scanner-resistant pocket in the base of his holdall, and now lays it on the bed beside him, within easy reach. "I'll have that if I need it. Don't worry about me."

"Why should we?" asks Spots, with more than a touch of sarcasm. "You just got jumped by a Nausicaan and nearly strangled, and just as a finishing touch he tried to bash your brains out with a bathroom ornament. Nothing to worry anybody there."

Jag colours with vexation. He's already acknowledged his own complacency and carelessness to himself, but doesn't want them made the subject of a general discussion – and certainly not one involving his rival. "He got the drop on me. He won't do it twice."

"He might if you fall asleep."

"I won't. And besides, I put enough holes in him. He'll have more than me to think about for a while."

"You don't know that there isn't more than one of them here."

"We'll discuss this further later, when you're feeling better. In the meantime, we've got to check out the ground. Paw, stay with him." Leo's decree is final.

_Oh, for–! _Jag doesn't argue – arguing with Leo is a waste of breath – but he punches the bed in frustration. _Her, nursemaiding me!_

To judge by her glare, Paw isn't much more delighted by the pronouncement. "We don't know what's behind this. There could be other attacks planned on the rest of you!"

"If there are, there'll be more than one of us to deal with it. I'll see you in a couple of hours." The team leader nods at them both, turns, and leaves the room. Spots shrugs, raises his eyebrows helplessly, and follows him.

"Toodle-pip, chums!" says Stripes, and skips after them, whistling tunelessly. Though not before putting his hat back the right way around.

There is a small silence. Then Paw drops into the chair by the desk, beating a tattoo on its arm with the base of her fist.

"So now what do we do?" she demands.

"You could always sit on my face," he suggests crudely, driven more by a cruel impulse to goad her further than by any supposition that she might even contemplate such a thing.

"Only to suffocate you."

"Yes, I love you too."

"_I_ didn't ask you to come back!" She rounds on him savagely. "You left, remember? You were too good for the likes of us. You went up in the world, right? Now you've found you can't hack it and you're back here whining for sympathy. Well you're not getting any from me!"

Jag sits upright with a jerk, tearing the scarf from around his neck. In the mirror opposite, the marks on his skin stand out in stark contrast to the pallor of his sudden fury. "I'm not justifying myself or my actions to you, and you can take your sympathy and shove it! I was in this team when you were slow being potty-trained, and let me remind you I _did _step up. I'm a Starfleet officer, and you'll show me the appropriate respect!"

"You're forgetting something, _Lieutenant. _I'm not one of your damn ensigns and I don't have to jump when you bark!"

Far back in his mind, a cold raw flame ignites. Usually this precedes a death, but she's part of the team – though she'd better not trade on that too far or too often, not when he's in this frame of mind. "You can call me what you like and take your chances, but you'll keep a civil tongue in your head when you refer to the crew of my ship. Or I'll kill you where you stand. Is that clear?"

"Don't worry, I feel sorry for them. They joined the pride of Starfleet and ended up taking orders from a Royal Navy reject."

There's a long, aching silence. Then he slowly lies back down again. The grin that writhes across his face is murderous, promises retribution at his convenience. "You were left here to look after the Royal Navy reject, Tail. Enjoy." And he turns over, settles himself down on the bed, and to all intents and purposes goes to sleep.

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**All reviews received with gratitude!**


	4. Chapter 4

The three other members of the team return just over two hours later, complete with bags of food purchased from a local market.

They've encountered no trouble at all. The hall where the election rally is planned to take place is only half an hour's walk away, and only one of a number of places regularly visited by sightseers. They've taken a tour bus and gawked around it with all the other visitors, oohing and taking photographs. Jag knows of old that Stripes can discourse knowledgeably on architectural styles with anyone who cares to listen: one of a number of odd abilities which reside unexpectedly under that tatty woollen hat.

The food is mostly fruit, but there are containers of some kind of rice and baked meat in savoury sauce, to be eaten scooped up on the rigid leaves of a local vegetable. The five of them fall to, eating hungrily while Stripes passes on the details of the hall where the mission is to be carried out.

Like so much else on Traan, it wasn't built with security issues in mind. It's usually used for amateur theatrical productions – the Sashwe are inordinately fond of plays and indeed of all forms of dramatic display, and make it a point in every city and town to provide plentiful places where such things can be enjoyed by as many people as possible, usually without charge. To facilitate this, the hall has half a dozen official entrances and a dozen more unofficial ones, none of which will be strictly guarded.

One would have thought that a rally would be different, especially given the fact that this particular party's policies seem to be engendering some tension. It seems not, however. It goes against the inherent openness of the people to exclude anyone from coming and hearing what is to be said – and even disagreeing with it, if that's how they feel. Casual conversations with the people in the area suggest that given these conditions it may well turn into rather a rowdy occasion, but that no particular level of violence is anticipated. The Sashwe expect an audience to heckle as much as they expect a speaker to be able to able to deal with the hecklers, and points are usually awarded for a particularly pithy put-down. It all seemingly adds to the entertainment value.

Listening to this, Jag feels the first small stirrings of unease. It's by no means the first assassination in which he's participated, and he'd known when he came on board that someone would almost certainly have to die thanks to his expertise. Now and again in the past, the task he was given by the Section was simply a case of bloodless sabotage, and he'd vaguely hoped that this might be another, but it seems that it's not to be. Isahd Bheval is making waves that might one day sink Starfleet's war effort, and he has to go. Along with however many innocent bystanders get caught in the blast along with him – the friendly, hospitable people who enjoy a rowdy debate and are passionate theatre-lovers, who pride themselves on the cleanliness of their streets and the quality of their goods, and who think humans are their friends...

Unseen, he glances at Tail, who has finished her rice and is now using a small spoon to scoop out the flesh of what looks like some kind of melon. _If it isn't me, it'll be her. _And maybe she isn't as careful, maybe she isn't as skilled. For sure, she doesn't have his experience with explosives. Maybe if it's down to her more people will die, more collateral damage in the disposal of a man who thinks his world should have the right to sell its goods to the highest bidder. Whoever the highest bidder may be...

"Does it have to be explosives?" he hears himself ask, in a moment's quiet.

The others look at him.

"Well, that was the plan." Spread open on the table is a visitor's map of the hall, helpfully indicating all the walkways and exits. In case that isn't helpful enough, many of the details of the superstructure are delineated as well, affording an excellent insight into where charges might be placed in order to do the most damage. Spots already has his index finger pressed to the area where the guest speaker is likely to be housed; it's only a matter of getting access to the level beneath it, which appears to be given over to storage. Getting access to places is his particular speciality, and given the lax standards the Sashwe apply to security he has no expectation of struggling with this one.

Whoever is coaching Bheval from behind the scenes may well have convinced the politician to maintain a lower profile than normal most of the time. On the occasion of a rally such as this, however, it's unlikely they'll have been able to imbue the staff of the hall with quite the fear of the unknown that a more realistic (or cynical) species would find wholly appropriate. Considering that they themselves are making such efforts to keep themselves out of the picture, it's also unlikely that they'll risk taking on the role of his bodyguards. They may want him protected, but it would present a very 'off' appearance for him to turn up at the rally surrounded by aliens intent on keeping his own people away from him. It's a virtual certainty that at least in the environs of the hall, he'll be left to the protection of the staff there.

Jag looks down at the structure of the building. He's already studied the photographs taken by the supposed tourists, the photographs that show so very clearly the slender, fluted columns that hold up the roof. Ordinarily he'd have no fears that his work would be careless enough to damage even a single column so badly that the structure of the building would become unstable; even if he can only take the most basic of surreptitious scans during their next preparatory visit, he's entirely confident that he can do what needs to be done without bringing in the roof. But still, even the most precisely placed explosion, in that confined and crowded space; he knows what will happen next.

Panic.

And in panic, there are always casualties. If it happens in a place as crowded as this hall is promised to be, many will be injured; some, probably, will die.

With that certainty lying on his heart, he speaks out, softly but clearly. "It's not very subtle."

Stripes tilts his hat back slightly. Bafflement is writ large on his face. "Explosives aren't usually very subtle, old chum – no disrespect to present company, of course. But they do have the virtue of being effective."

_They do when I'm involved. _Hasn't he seen the aftermath often enough? Hasn't he seen the articles on the news, hasn't he read the forensic reports, hasn't he taken immense satisfaction in the exquisite placement of blast damage just where it was required? Hasn't he sat at the Tactical Station aboard _Enterprise _and dealt out devastation with phase cannons and photon torpedoes, achieving exactly what his captain required of him?

He exhales. "I know," he says slowly. "It's just that – in this instance – I'm not sure it's the appropriate method." Out of the corner of his eye he sees Tail's lip curl. _The Brit's lost his nerve._

"Nobody is forcing you to do this, Jag." Leo's voice is quite gentle. "If you'd rather not, we understand."

Jag places his palms together and presses his steepled fingers to his lips. "It isn't that I'd 'rather not do it'. I'd 'rather not do it to innocent people'." He must be getting soft. Time was when he wouldn't have cared, wouldn't have let himself care. Still, there's a shred of an idea forming in his mind, and his speech and movements are quiet, so that he won't scare it away.

The team's leader nods assent. "That's fair enough. The only problem is, we've done some research on this and everything we saw this morning confirms it. A shot from a sniper would be ideal, and you or Paw could do that easily, but we've seen preparations going ahead already for covering the vantage points; it's not just ideal, it's _obvious._ I'm not sure there's any other way we can do it and be sure it's done. I've already said, this guy is getting some good advice from somewhere. He's hard to find and harder to get at. These sorts of occasions are the only times he shows himself."

"It has to be asked, where he's getting this advice _from._" Spots glances shrewdly at the marks on Jag's face and throat. "There may be more going on here than we thought."

"I think it's fair to assume Starfleet aren't the only ones interested in Traan's mineral deposits. We haven't had any reports of Nausicaan involvement, but it wouldn't be out of character for them to be taken on as hired guns, and their presence would account for the 'trouble' the guy up on the station warned us about. They'd definitely have the expertise to ramp up tensions. It'd be entirely to their advantage." Leo looks thoughtful. Starfleet has encountered Nausicaans on many occasions, and such encounters are rarely pleasant. They're aggressive, cunning and unscrupulous, often turning to piracy; rumour suggests they have more than a friendly understanding with the Orion Syndicate. "We need to find out why you were targeted. Are they on to us, or was it some kind of revenge attack for Farlaxi? Was it an attempted robbery? Or even just a coincidence?"

"I think we can rule out 'coincidence'." The engineer is _de facto _the team's second in command and usually acts as Leo's sounding-board when he needs one. "Even Nausicaans don't normally try to murder someone for nothing. It's entirely possible Jag has a price on his head after Farlaxi. It's also _possible_ that someone's received 'inside information' about our mission. With Traan being as strategically valuable as it's likely to be if a war breaks out, we're not the only ones who're likely to be interested here. We still don't know who's influencing this Bheval. Worst case, it could even be the Romulans." There's a faint, chill pause at that suggestion, but it's a thought that's been in all their minds. "If word is out that we're here to deal with him, the logical person to take out is the one who's going to be responsible for the end result." A faint nod apologises to Paw that she is no longer the natural choice for that job.

"Yes. Oh, and incidentally, I'd avoid Klingons for a while too, if I were you." The dark gaze travels to Jag, who returns it with a faint smirk as he chooses a piece of fruit from the selection the team brought back. "I understand they were quite annoyed about what happened at Farlaxi. Now Archer's not the only Starfleet officer with his name on their shopping list."

"They wouldn't hire a Nausicaan, though, surely." Paw speaks disdainfully. Klingons have a strict code of honour, and the general belief is that they regard pirates as scum. This code of honour might bend enough to permit the hire of a bounty hunter, as _Enterprise_'s captain has already discovered, but there are probably limits when it comes to acquiring the person of a man not even actually convicted yet of any crime against the Empire.

Jag stares unseeingly at the fruit in his hands as he separates it neatly into sections. It doesn't worry him in the slightest that the Klingons have added Lieutenant Malcolm Reed to the list of enemies of the Empire, and he hopes that their indignation over events at Farlaxi had been so great that they'd flattened the place – hard as this would be on the unfortunate slaves still held captive there, it might save many others from suffering the same fate. He isn't sure enough of the niceties of the Klingons' moral compass to take a guess at their opinion of the slave trade in general, but it seems that there are at least some among them who have some regard for justice and honour. Maybe the discovery of such a putrescent pustule as Farlaxi virtually on their doorstep might spur them sufficiently to clean it out.

As for the threat to him in his present incarnation, as a result of that mission, he is almost as indifferent to that – except insofar as it threatens his team. If someone somewhere has got a tag on a Section 31 unit they could be disastrously compromised. One way or another, his days with them are numbered; once this mission is done, they'd best disappear for a while, and confine themselves to work in quite a different part of the sector. It might even be best for them to ditch him at once, right this minute, and leave him to fend for himself. If he's marked – and it seems that he is, for whatever reason – then he's nothing but a liability to them now. After all, they already have a weapons specialist, and however much he hates to admit it, she's good.

He looks up as he comes to that realisation, and finds Leo watching him steadily.

"We don't leave a man behind," the deep voice rumbles.

"You should if it makes sense." He pops a piece of the fruit into his mouth, and smiles crazily. The juice is so tart it makes his teeth ache; not a patch on pineapple. Back on _Enterprise_, over lunch in the Mess one day, Hoshi had given Keri a packet of jelly beans, zealously saved from a parcel of goods from home. Keri had placed two on a plate and made a smiling face out of them with a half-slice of pineapple. Trip had leaned across the table and turned the piece of pineapple upside down, saying, 'That's what Malcolm here looks like when I won't give him all the power he wants for the Armory.' His ... friends ... gathered around the table with them had exploded with laughter.

_Forty-eight cakes and a rabbit._

He is expendable.

_'I don't want to die, what makes you think I want to die?'_

But that was then and this is now, and all he came away with was forty-eight cakes and a rabbit, and a grief that was more than he could bear.

He hopes Hoshi understood his gratitude, for her kindness to Keri and for her presence in his life. He's admired her beauty and her grace, and above all her courage. Sometimes he's wanted to touch her in other ways than the strict impersonal guidance necessary for instruction in weapons practice and self-defence; he's dreamed occasionally of having her in his bed. Never acted on it, though. That one occasion of misunderstanding showed him clearly enough that she was revolted by the mere suggestion of a relationship with him, and since then he's been content merely to dream. Dreams, after all, are harmless. In dreams you're not revolting, and in dreams you end up with your daughter calling you _Daddy_, except that every waking since has buried the truth in him afresh like a _bat'leth _blade, and maybe it's time to find peace.

The solution has finally come to him with the sweet certainty of a flower opening in the sunlight. He hopes there will be flowers for Keri. He hopes she'll change her mind about being an Armoury officer, it's a risky job; but hell, he wouldn't have traded his years on _Enterprise _for anything.

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**All reviews received with gratitude!**


	5. Chapter 5

He goes to Leo's room late that night, moving as silently as an owl down the darkened corridor.

They have a code signal. His fingertips remember it, and are light on the smooth pale wood of the door. Maybe the man inside will already be asleep, but he doesn't think so. And his instinct is proved sound when the door opens to admit him.

He took a risk coming here alone, but this is self-evident and Leo has never wasted time by stating the obvious.

The lighting within is low, provided only by a lamp that has been moved close to the window so as to cast no shadows on the curtain. The decor is simple and comfortable. No form of entertainment media appears to be in use, but he is oddly taken aback by the simplest thing: a chessboard is set out on the coffee table, its pieces ready for the start of play.

Leo is sitting on the couch at the far side of it, massive and relaxed. The board is turned sideways on to him, so that the visitor can choose which colour he will.

Jag usually plays black, but after a moment's hesitation he turns the board to take white.

He opens with the Vienna gambit: dangerous, and more reckless than he normally plays.

Impossible that Leo does not recognise it. He responds carefully.

The pieces act out their little war, silent and hostile on the board. No time is allowed for long consideration. On Operations you often have only seconds – if that – to decide your next move.

Jag's play is risky. The stakes are high. He wouldn't play like this aboard _Enterprise_, where Malcolm is considered more of a master of subtle traps.

"Checkmate."

The white king has only one of his knights still in play. The last move made by the knight has left it facing backwards for some reason, so that he stares back at his king across an unfathomable distance. Jag contemplates the truth in that picture for a moment before idly flicking the knight over. The piece rolls around its base in a semi-circle before it comes to rest.

"I need to talk to you about the mission," he says at last. His gaze is fixed on the knight.

"Team mission, team discussion." There's no heat in the reminder, and Leo doesn't think he's forgotten that; it simply sets out the fact that no decisions which affect everyone will be made without everyone having a chance to listen to everything and then have their say. The final decision will be his – this is not, and never has been, a democracy – but he accords every member of the team their due dignity.

"I know. But I–"

There's a long silence. Jag doesn't fully understand why he's come here, and the chess game both settled and unbalanced him. There is something inside him that's suddenly fighting to get out, and if it doesn't it will quite probably kill him, but so utter a violation of everything he's become will quite probably kill him too. His left foot is tapping wildly. There's a glass of water on the coffee table and without asking he drinks it, which is rather a messy operation as his hand is shaking like a leaf. Tears would be some respite, but the agony is far too hard and deep for that; still, finally and almost against his will he has to face the fact that he's reached the point where he can no longer go on functioning without touching another human being.

Maybe for someone else, what follows would bring back memories of childhood, of being held and comforted. He has no such memories. His nightmares were faced down alone, for it was bad enough that he was a weakling in body without being discovered to be one in spirit too; therefore the sensation of pulled in to lie cradled against Leo's chest is so alien and bewildering that his last defences crumble. He speaks of Pard, and that's a mistake, for after Pard comes Keri, and once Keri is spoken of the dam bursts. Too much follows, far too much, from a man psychologically soiled and ethically compromised, whose entire concept of service paradoxically rests on the word _honour. _The Section took no account of that when they broke him for their purposes and set him at war with himself, and ever since he's been stretched on the rack of his dual identity.

On _Enterprise _he'd finally begun to mend after a fashion, gradually reverting to what he should have been, but he was still a pawn in the Section's game. If Joelle Grenham hadn't been an EM specialist working for Starfleet, Keri's kidnapping would almost certainly have been a mere footnote in the sorry tale of interstellar piracy, her fate unknown and largely unmourned. As it was, the value of her mother's potential contribution ensured that one man could be risked to save her – the one man with the best reason, as well as the best ability, to succeed, using whatever means were necessary.

Ironically, it was the Section's psychological training that had enabled him to get through the assessments for his post on board _Enterprise_ without betraying the depth of the damage that had been inflicted on him; that damage, however, had been finally exacerbated beyond bearing by the vile part he'd had to play in order to rescue his daughter.

There had been other wounds inflicted on him in Starfleet's service, deep and vicious and unhealed wounds courtesy of the Expanse, where he became an accessory to torture, theft and murder before participating in a mutiny – itself an act that, however utterly necessary, rent his loyal soul to its core. Finally, at Azati Prime, he'd been unable to fulfil the duty for which he'd been brought on board, that of protecting the ship and his comrades. All his weapons skills had accomplished nothing as the enemy had begun ripping _Enterprise _apart. Twenty-seven deaths joined the weight on his conscience, and although the investigation on the ship's return home had cleared him of blame, and logically he agreed with that verdict, still it had not felt like absolution for his failure.

He'd put aside all offers of counselling, and here again the Section's training had both helped and betrayed him. He was too good at keeping up a front, at pretending to be someone quite different from the reality. Even the experts had finally accepted the '_fine' _at face value and let him go, marvelling at his sang-froid, while he returned to the service of the ship, perhaps not even himself realising his strength was now fatally flawed. Then over the course of this final mission the whole horror of his existence as a Section operative had crashed down on him, utterly real and completely inescapable: the killing, the destruction, the lies and deceit, culminating in finding himself looking into a mirror from which a monster looked back at him.

The hand now stroking gently and rhythmically through his hair is puzzling, but mysteriously comforting. It doesn't stop while the words bleed out of him, not even the worst, and as long as it continues he can go on, even though now and again there are pauses in his narrative – not to evade, but rather to let him construct, the truth. The whole experience is surreal. Even sex has never been so intimate. He has never guessed that it could be possible for him to be so close to another person without feeling threatened in the slightest.

He doesn't know whether Leo regards him as a potential lover. Right now, as the last words sigh out of him into a gorgeous lassitude of spirit, the question is irrelevant. Finally, Jag has made his full confession, and a peace descends in which he is content to rest absolute trust in the man who holds him.

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**All reviews received with gratitude!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: Acknowledgement and grateful thanks to Andy Morgan, without whose expert advice this scene would be far less authentic!**

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Were he more Malcolm Reed now than Jag, he might not have detected it.

As it is, he's gone far back into his old self, and Jag relies as heavily on his senses as on his brain. All of his senses, even down to the nerves on the soles of his bare feet; and if it is one skill in which the jaguar excels, it's stealth. Even before his hand touches the recognition plate of his door, now programmed to admit only him as the legitimate guest, he knows that someone else has been here. During the day, the intruder might have got away with it, but now, at this hour, the air is still, and holds the phantom, alien scent.

His right hand begins the small ritual that prepares him mentally for killing. His fingers spread and curve. He imagines the claws.

He has the luxury of preparation, but little time. He doesn't want to give whoever it is more time than he can help to get themselves settled. Still, he takes a few seconds to loosen up; it takes both mind and body to perform at their utmost to survive a stealth attack. Without a sound he unfastens the leather thong from around his neck and fastens one end of it to the hilt of his knife, which he allows to dangle from it. Still in absolute silence he allows the blade to just kiss the door handle and the recognition plate. Electrocution is a favourite method for an assassin, but the blade turns slowly and silently, rather than being hurled away by an electric charge.

This established, he lowers his body and carefully smells the door fixings before drawing long soundless breaths of the air through the crack under the door. When he straightens again he's frowning, but a little of the tension has gone.

He presses his thumbprint to the recognition plate and the door opens quietly. If things were different he'd be in there at once, diving and rolling with his phase pistol drawn ready to fire as soon as he found where the intruder has hidden himself, but in the circumstances it will be much more impressive if he just walks in and speaks.

"Where I come from it's polite to wait till someone's at home," he says silkily, laying the phase pistol down on the table. His guess was correct; she's still here all right, though she's far too good at the game to let on where.

After a moment she steps out from behind the door into the bathroom. A bit unoriginal, he thinks sardonically, but the room's not luxurious; it doesn't offer many options for concealment. That was his prime reason for choosing it.

She doesn't apologise. He doesn't expect her to. As for how she got in here, that's elementary – the team always made a habit of sharing its skills, and presumably still does. If being a warp drive engineer and a Section operative ever palls, Spots has the talents to make a handsome living out of burglary; he says that locks amuse him.

She closes the distance between them with short, angry steps. If she had a tail, she'd be lashing it.

"How long are you planning to stay?" she demands.

He doesn't dignify the question with an answer, unless the slight lift of one side of his lip tells her anything. He moves to the fridge and checks that a single hair he'd inserted into the seal just below the bottom hinge is still in place. Reassured on that score, he opens the door and takes out a bottle of fruit juice. When he put it in there earlier he was careful to put his fingerprints on the top, and now he uses his scanner to check they're still there before he opens it. After all, the hair could have been noticed and replaced, and poison is just as apt a tool.

Still without speaking, he throws himself down on to the couch and sprawls there negligently, sipping the sweet liquid with his eyes shut. After a few moments he opens one eye and glances up in pained surprise: _What, not gone yet?_

It's just as well he loosened up, because she's bloody quick. His head has only just vacated the cushion before her right boot hits it like a hammer, a door breaker to open! This bitch means business.

He, on the other hand, has struck even as he launched himself up and away, and the open hand to the face is a shot to nothing, but it does what it was intended to. As she reacts backwards she's off balance and he has the half a heartbeat he needs to get his distance and turn to face her, watching in bright-eyed malice for what she'll do next.

Reed and Hayes, Hayes and Reed, it's history replaying itself, and this time there's no Captain Archer to tear strips off the combatants. He won't kill her, though he'd like to; he'll just let her a little blood and teach her a much-needed lesson. He's still holding the bottle and he leans aside, cat-quick, to smash it against the wall. The sight of broken glass always has a hypnotic fascination for an amateur (not that he thinks she is one), and the fact that it's in his right hand may help her forget he's ambidextrous. The hilt of his knife now protrudes from the pocket, like an old friend, ready and waiting for when he wants it.

But she has a trick up her sleeve too, and it's the first time _that_ one's been used against him: her top comes off with a rending of Velcro, leaving her in nothing but a very small pair of pants. As she comes leaping over the couch at him, sheer surprise holds him still for just the split second she was counting on. He parries late, but he gets there, and the vicious slash of the broken bottle opens a thin red line on her naked side. Her free hand goes for his eyes, fingers rigid, and he admires her technique, though naturally he doesn't hang around to be one of her successes.

Her body's oiled, and his snap kick slides off her belly as she turns instead of delivering all the force it should have done. She's behind him in a flash, her left arm snaking round his neck, her right coming up to secure the choke; her height advantage is already lifting him onto his toes as the pressure comes on. A sharp elbow to the abdomen presents her head nicely for a throw, and he takes it promptly, and isn't gentle.

She lands hard in front of him, his shin across her throat almost before she lands. _See how she likes some back!_ He looks down on her, a cruel grin on his face, as she struggles to get his weight off, cherishing the feel of the revenge he'd promised himself for that 'Royal Navy reject' gibe. But he underestimates both her resolve and her flexibility, and the kick to the head she gets in sends him staggering away, delivering a soft sibilant stream of expletives. As he shakes his head clear she's back up again, rubbing her neck, and if looks could kill he'd be deader than venison.

He draws his knife, kisses the blade and points it at her eyes, the broken bottle cast aside for a more familiar weapon. She's mistaking him for Malcolm Reed, but he's Jag now, and Jag's a vicious bastard, and she'll find that out if she pushes her luck hard enough. They can cover up the evidence, they're Section and they lie and lie, and she's fucking picked the wrong man to prove a point to. "_Come on bitch, if you think you're hard enough..." _He flicks the point of the blade gently, calling her on.

"You should have stayed away," she pants. The knife she's brought has a smooth edge and a serrated one; a row of nicks in the hilt may or may not be bravado, but personally he thinks it's vulgar either way. Still, it's a plus for the team that she wants her place so badly she's willing to kill for it. His gaze never leaves her eyes, but that doesn't stop him admiring the view with his peripheral vision.

The next attacks are a blur: blades, hands, elbows and knees striking and parrying, with no time for conscious thought, only seasoned training and instinct. Both sides land cuts and blows on the other but neither are able to gain the upper hand. A line of fire slices across his left forearm as he tries to evade a stab that would have left him short of a lung – a small price to pay by comparison, but still a weakness for her to exploit. He staggers, pulling the arm to his chest as if to protect it and putting up his other hand to feel the damage.

She saunters back, plainly feeling the win and already revelling in the glory. She's battered, cut and bloody but still manages to look fucking superior. He tries a thrust with the knife but the cut has weakened his grip, and she blocks it easily with a hard forearm, the weapon flying away from the force and the pain. She points her own knife back at his eyes. "Do you think I'm hard enough now, _bitch_?'" she purrs. "You're done, old news, washed up and wasted. Make way for new blood_." _For a second the light dims in his eyes as her words sink in, and his head droops.

Her smile broadens as she relishes that evidence of his broken spirit, and her knife is tossed carelessly on to the couch, no longer necessary. She slinks towards him, demonstrating the feline grace of her namesake as she's already demonstrated the fighting prowess; she steps in close, running a finger across his cheek, down to his bloody arm, her nail scoring along the deep gash she's given him so that his arm and shoulder flinch away. "Just not enough tricks for an old dog," she says with mocking sympathy.

The strike to the throat hits before she's finished her taunt, a cheap but powerful shot designed to shock rather than kill; it fetches a gasp and sends her head flying back, a bloody hand print splashed across her throat like the collar of a household cat or a brand, staking a claim on what's rightfully his. He's already moving before she's able to react; a solid knee to the solar plexus doubles her over again, straight into a second throat-strike, this time keeping hold and lifting her up to his full reach and then throwing her down, hard to the floor. Maybe because he endured one too many beatings growing up or just because his spark has never left him fully; yes he's broken inside, yes he's had to bear too much for any man, but that's his battle to fight and no cut from a bit of tail can make him feel more hurt than he already does. He can go no lower than he already is so every fucking step he takes now is up.

So there it ends: she's winded and dazed from hitting the floor, and his hand is still on her throat, blood drying in the final embrace of the fight. As his breathing slows, the red mist clears and his anger and self-loathing ooze back into the dark recesses of his soul. He looks down at his erstwhile opponent with something perilously close to respect. This 'piece of tail' has damn near bested him, and she certainly wouldn't fall for his parlour tricks and fakery a second time. She's a strong member of a good team whom he'd pushed aside without a thought as he walked back in the door. He knows exactly how she'd felt; he'd felt the identical corrosive jealousy and fear when Hayes was brought on board _Enterprise_, seeing in every word and gesture of the MACO who technically outranked him confirmation that his own position was deeply threatened. He has a suspicion that his visit to Leo's room at so late an hour has been the final straw; maybe there's the beginning of something there that is more than she can endure to have snatched away from her too. As she lies there he has leisure to observe once more that she's wearing practically nothing – a fact he certainly couldn't afford to take notice of until now. At one word he'll release her, but she doesn't say it; instead, she lies there staring up at him with eyes that are flecked with green and brown like mossy stones in a stream-bed, staring as though studying the very depths of his soul. Is there a hint of respect in those eyes too? As far as the team's concerned she's his nemesis and rival but in some ways she's already his equal, and no longer nearly as forgettable as he first thought….

Her mouth tastes of blood, hers or his own or both, he doesn't know. He's branded her and now he claims her, and they both ignore the bruises and the hot sting of sweat in open cuts as they roll over and over, as much fighting as fucking. Her teeth savage his shoulder but her legs lock him in place, and her claws raking his back testify eloquently to his skills as a lover as well as a fighter. They're both too excited for it to last long; all too soon her frenzied bucking snaps his control, so that there's no way to deny himself even if he wanted to. He loses it, howling release and vindication together as another part of his lost soul fits painfully back into place.

Afterwards they go into the shower together, washing each other's hurts carefully. The cut on his arm could use a few stitches if it's not to scar, so she attends to that without fuss, and they both apply dermagel to the more minor cuts they inflicted, to help them heal. Room service brings them up drinks, and once these are verified safe they sit together peacefully sipping one of the local beverages, not saying much. After a while she drapes herself across his knees, and he quietly massages the muscles in her back, working out one or two knots he finds there.

Later, her eyes say she expects to leave. He's expected the same right up till this moment, but almost against his will a soft touch detains her. They're not friends and never will be, but there's something between them now that feels like security, even rest. He doesn't know what she feels, and doesn't ask, but she consents to stay; and that, perhaps, is his greatest victory of all.

* * *

**All reviews received with gratitude!**


	7. Chapter 7

The rally is about to start.

It's been a good couple of days, almost like shore leave all over again. Now they haven't had to go through all the boring rigmarole of preparing the explosives and scouting out the entrances and making plans for a getaway, it's been _so _much more fun. Stripes has gone up to the repair yards and come back down raving about the upgrades to the engine. The engineers hadn't been content with just repairing the so-called 'fault'; they'd thrown in a whole cache of new pieces, and the engine had just sat there and purred like a cat in the sunshine. 'Top-hole job, old boy! Absolutely top-hole!'

They've done the whole tourist thing, staying together for safety of course, and Traan has some bloody gorgeous beaches; white sand, great food, cold drinks in icy glasses, and the weather – bloody hell, the weather has been fabulous. Likewise the Sashwe, especially once he'd got clued up about their gender; though there'd been one memorable all-night party when the lines had blurred along with everything else, and even wide awake he'd forgotten the agony of existence for a few precious, fleeting hours.

They haven't forgotten the necessity for vigilance, but so far there has only been one moment to give him concern: in a crowded bazaar both he and Paw thought they caught a glimpse of a tall figure with unkempt black hair around distinctive, bony features. Leaving the others secure and alert, the two of them had gone hunting, slipping through the crowds with silent, deadly purpose, ready and eager to kill if they could corner their prey in some quiet location. The trail had finally gone cold, however, and they didn't dare leave the rest of the team alone and unprotected for long, even in such a public place. By way of consolation they'd bought a piece of sticky cake from a nearby market-trader and shared bites of it, licking and nipping each other's sticky fingers as they trotted back to the others. They might not have been able to find the bugger, but they'd bloody well given him a right royal scare, as well as garnering more proof for the Section that the Nausicaans are indeed present and probably involved in this somehow – whether on their own account, or as cat's-paws in some more sinister game, remains to be discovered. Maybe that's something the team will be able to look into afterwards. For once the job's done, they won't leave immediately; only the guilty flee the scene of the crime.

Not a bad line to end on, all told, though he acknowledges a little regretfully that it would have been nice to have been on the 'twisting' end of a garrotte. Just by way of letting someone know what it had felt like from the 'strangling' end.

Now, at last, he's alone, just one among the cheerful crowds jostling for entrance into the hall. With a fleeting grin he'd picked out a flowery orange shirt from a market stall that morning; its almost fluorescent decoration stood out, even among the clothing of a people who believed that colour was there to be made the most of. Hell, it was so gaudy even Trip might have thought it was too much, but the seller had kissed him, and given it to him for half the marked price – because of his smile, she said. (She'd even thrown in a matching scarf, so that he's been able to return the one he borrowed back from Paw, which – despite Stripes's claims – is really not his style.)

Her perfume had been nice. Familiar, too, which was why he'd smiled, and maybe why she gave him the bargain price on the shirt. It had reminded him of vanilla and musk, and more recently of his mouth slipping across smooth naked iridescent skin; maybe in his dreams, though the world now is little more than a dream in which he moves with the quiet and absolute certainty of success.

The hall is already crowded, and the air conditioning is struggling to cope. Chairs are not provided; the audience seat themselves on terraces of cool marble arranged in a semi-circle in front of the stage, laughing and chattering in the anticipation of a good debate to come. The temperature is gradually rising, but the cheerful Sashwe joke about it and fan themselves with printed programmes and any loose items of clothing. Free drinks are distributed, clinking with ice; his has a slice of that sour fruit in it, but he downs it anyway and bites into the fruit last of all, feeling the juice of it run down his chin onto his bare chest. He is glad, more glad than he could possibly have expressed, that he is not, after all, to unleash hell on these good people.

_You don't get rid of us that easily, Loo-tenant._

He laughs aloud, and the people around him laugh too, even though they have no idea what he finds so amusing. A little girl two rows in front of him looks up and giggles. Maybe her hair is platinum-fair in the sunlight; he no longer notices the owlish look of astonishment or the dappled, iridescent skin. Maybe in a moment he'll look across the auditorium and see Pard. The lightness in his head says it isn't impossible.

His idea had to be run past the team, of course, and for all that there had been some resistance, he knew they'd accept it in the end. The parting from them a while earlier had been carefully nonchalant. Judging by the prickle of awareness at the back of his neck, Paw had shadowed him for a while, making sure that nobody else was doing the same, but there had been no trouble. A sense of peace still hangs around him from his confession; there can be no absolution, he's not simple enough to believe that possible, but maybe acceptance is close enough. No, more than acceptance: the tale of his pain has been stored away in a brain that never forgets and never forgives, and if ever Harris grows careless, Leo will be there to ensure that Jag is avenged.

As for the marks which both he and Paw had borne after their little settling of accounts, those had been accepted with hardly more than one or two raised eyebrows. It seems that it had been expected that some such altercation would take place eventually, and since both combatants survived with their full complement of limbs and organs, and have evidently come to some understanding, nothing more needs to be said. A contrast to Captain Archer's attitude on the occasion of a similar dispute between a certain Major Hayes and Lieutenant Reed, but then the difference between Leo's style of command and Jonathan Archer's has always been marked.

The event starts forty minutes late. Among all their other virtues, the Sashwe don't sweat it about minor matters like punctuality. Jag doesn't care. Invited to sing an Earth song, he regales the company with a raucous rendition of the tale of the 'four-and-twenty virgins who came down from Inverness', and it goes down a storm; in vague deference to the presence of children he uses the slightly politer version and switches the UT off fairly frequently, and nobody here has the faintest idea of where or indeed what Inverness might be, even if they'd been able to understand the words. Which it's probably just as well they can't, even if they are incredibly broad-minded. The more gifted mimics among them quickly pick up the words of the chorus and sing it with him, and after a couple of verses almost half the hall is bawling, 'If you don't get shagged on a Saturday night, You'll never get shagged at all...' He suspects from the grins around him that even if they don't speak English vernacular, at least some of them have more than an idea what he's singing about.

Good job he never _did_ find that Malcolm Reed, actually. Stuffy git would have thrown a fit.

But the applause for his impromptu performance is interrupted by the arrival of the compère for the evening's entertainment, who welcomes everybody and hopes that they will all have a wonderful time. Now they have to welcome their guest speaker, Isahd Bheval, and please, everybody, listen to what he has to say and there'll be plenty of time afterwards to ask questions.

The violently pink curtains are drawn back with a swish. Bheval is seated alone in a chair on the stage. He's younger than Jag had expected, and has none of the air of a megalomaniacal xenophobe. He's grinning in anticipation, like most of the audience, and stands up to step forward to the microphone. He has no notes; presumably he has his arguments off by heart, and trusts to his own wit to carry him through the noisy debate sure to follow. All in all, he doesn't look like an unpleasant sort of bloke at all, and as for his distrust of Starfleet, well, that isn't all that unreasonable, is it? After all, look who's been sent to sit right opposite him, with orders to kill.

So it's a pity.

Still.

Jag sits back and picks up one of the printed sheets, fanning himself with it as though overcome by the heat, which by now is considerable. He takes off his scarf, and opens the last remaining button of the gaudy floral shirt, so that the long silken panels of it fall loose around his thighs. Under its slithering softness his hand slides into his trouser pocket, and his fingers close around the familiar shape of an EM-33 – another of the collection of weapons that he kept as trophies around the freighter.

_You don't have to compensate for particle drift, Hoshi._

Something is wrong on stage. People are rushing in from the sides, converging on Bheval; talking, gesticulating. He looks bewildered. A tall Human with ebony skin and massive presence is speaking to him rapidly.

The audience are taken aback. First puzzlement and then apprehension rush across the auditorium like a chilly wind; people are looking around them, pulling their children close.

He can't see Pard yet. Maybe in a minute.

They are surrounding Bheval, turning him away.

With a swift, fluid movement Jag rises to his feet. His arm is levelled, as steady as it had ever been during phase pistol practice on board _Enterprise_, the pistol aimed unerringly.

_– allow for particle drift, like the old EM-33's –_

There's a tumble of chestnut hair in the crowd on stage. At this distance he can't see the colour of her eyes, green and brown-flecked like pebbles in a stream-bed, but he can feel them on the gaudy shirt and the bared chest in the middle of it. She's good. Bloody good. Maybe better than he is himself, and Leo must understand just how good she is, or he'd never have agreed to this.

Pure adrenaline is thundering through his veins. Every breath is more precious than the one before it. He loves the feel of the pistol in his hands, the lingering tartness of the fruit in his mouth, the brightness and colour of the hall. Being alive is the most wonderful feeling in the world.

_Squeeze, don't snatch, but she'd already know that–_

His shot and hers are virtually simultaneous. He hasn't allowed for particle drift. His shot misses, and maybe it's just coincidence that it passes just above the little crowd on stage and hits the boarding at the back, bursting it into flame.

Her shot doesn't.

The impact is shocking. It hurls him backwards. He lands among a parcel of screaming Sashwe, and sprawls there, watching the pinpoint of darkness at the very apex of the ceiling sweep down towards him, growing huge and all-enveloping. He wants to breathe, but the pain won't let him. He's done with breathing, anyway.

_Pard?_

* * *

**All reviews received with gratitude!**


	8. Chapter 8

The darkness has sounds in it.

A low hum, interspersed with a regular bleeping.

A steady hushing sound, that comes and goes to the slow rise and fall of his chest.

Voices, beyond the verge of his comprehension.

_'...received the information just in time...'_

_'... sent to intercept him...'_

_'... working alone ... some kind of grudge...'_

_'... enormously grateful...'_

_'... misinformed...'_

_'... indebted...'_

_'... face justice...'_

His left hand twitches. There's something taped into the back of his right that shouldn't be there. He has to pull it out.

He can't move his arms.

His chest goes on rising and falling, rising and falling.

In the chasm of his mind he moans.

The sound falls away into the darkness, and he falls with it.

* * *

There is still sound.

The bleeping goes on, regular and passionless.

The hushing noise is the ventilator, keeping him alive. His chest still rises and falls, even when he tells it not to.

Hands are moving him gently, changing his position so that he won't develop pressure sores. Changing the –

Agony howls through his chest. The bleeping becomes frenzied.

He howls with it. _No, no, NO!_

Murmuring voices. _'...This is what their database recommends...'_

_No..._

* * *

Bleeping. Quiet and regular.

The hushing is gone.

He tries to stop breathing, and an alarm sounds. There is the tiny metallic sound of a valve opening in response, and fluid courses down the tube into his arm. Unwanted, artificial calm floods his mind. His pulse steadies. He draws a long, uneven breath, but after a moment his breathing is regular again.

He stares up at the ceiling. It is dim. He is quite alone.

_No. No. No._

* * *

The bleeping is still regular.

He tries to move his arm. He wants to pull the tube out of it.

He can't.

* * *

It would be easier if they despised or even mistreated him. They don't. They simply care for him, wary and uncomprehending. Suddenly he truly is an alien, in a way he hadn't been before.

He can tell, though they never speak to him. At a guess, they don't want to hear anything he has to say. They probably can't imagine how to deal with any communication he might make, even if he had the desire or the ability to do so.

Their care is unrelenting. They make sure he's never unsupervised, never out of their control. He lies in a sterile nightmare, alone.

Helpless.

* * *

The darkness draws back again.

Light has come into the room – natural light, so that his eyes blink at it feebly.

Colour has come in with it. He's become attuned to the white coats of the people who attend to the machines, and the strong blueness so close to him is stunning.

"Yes." The familiar voice is cool, dispassionate. "I can make a formal identification. This man was one of my crew."

His fingers scratch weakly on the sheet. He watches the drift of condensation on the inside of his oxygen mask.

..._ 'indebted' ... 'Starfleet' ... 'gratitude' ... 'friendship' ... 'treaty' ... 'prisoner' ... 'trial' ... 'evidence' ..._

The blueness vanishes.

The beeping continues.

He wonders if he's imagined everything.

* * *

Movement.

The bed is moving.

He clutches at the mattress beneath him, momentarily afraid. There is white, and blue.

The air changes. It pushes at his face, fresh and astonishing. Overhead, more blue: infinitely lighter and far away, with birdsong in it.

_No, _he says soundlessly.

Grey, with black lettering on the side. They manoeuvre his mattress gently through the opening, placing it carefully on the floor.

Familiar faces look down at him. He returns their gaze, silent and desperate.

_No._

* * *

Sickbay.

Phlox, pottering around talking to his menagerie. Coming to the bedside every so often to check on the readings; not saying much, but his smile is gentle and fatherly. His care is as constant as it had always been on every occasion when a battered Tactical Officer of his acquaintance was once again in need of restoration. You wouldn't know from his hands that he's caring for a murderer and an assassin.

Trip, coming in after his shift is over. Talking about the everyday doings in Engineering and the Armoury. Bernhard and Em have done a fine job: 'You'd be proud of 'em, Malcolm.' Every now and then, reading a chapter from _Ulysses_, and almost managing to sound as though he's actually enjoying it.

Travis, filling him in on the gossip he's missed. The gregarious helmsmen seems not to notice the silence, and gives him the lowdown on news from HQ as well, seemingly determined to bring him up to speed with everything that has been happening in the outside world since his ... illness.

Bernhard, as usual stuck for conversation. Going over the latest test results, and pleased with the way the port cannon seems to have stopped playing up.

T'Pol, giving him a formal report on where the ship has been and what has happened during his absence. Her voice is reassuringly normal. He doesn't have to waste energy searching it for sub-tones. She's submitted daily reports to his work station as normal, and is sure he'll catch up with them when he's feeling stronger.

Em, glaring at him. Loosing off a tirade of Spanish invective on the apparently fruitful topic of male stupidity, and then plumping down on the chair beside him and taking his hand. "_Conseguir bien, Patrón..."_

He hasn't seen the captain. Hasn't expected to, really. What is there to be said?

There was one other, though.

He hadn't _expected_ her, exactly. Every time the sound of the doors brings his eyes open in hopeless hope, he lashes himself for his stupidity. Even his brain is playing tricks on him, for in the mornings when he rouses to the waking noises of the menagerie and Phlox's relentless cheerfulness he sometimes thinks he catches a waft of vanilla and musk. It comes as a shock, having the oxygen mask removed; the smell of the bottled air has begun to be part of his normality.

The doctor is pleased with the progress of his chest wound. It's apparently healing nicely. Considering that a couple of centimetres down and to the right it would have been instantly fatal, it had done _remarkably _little damage. After delivering himself of that information, Phlox goes away to feed one of his creatures, grumbling to himself about primitive projectile weapons.

He looks at the ceiling. That had been the entire _point. _Stunning him would have left Starfleet open to the accusation that it had been a set-up. Even using the phase rifle set to 'kill' wouldn't have achieved the same end, in the unlikely event that he could have persuaded Leo to authorise it. The Sashwe were deeply visual, lived through their eyes. Loved colour and display. If anything was to sink into their collective consciousness, it had to be dramatic. And the Lee Enfield had been lovingly cared for. No weapons expert worth their salt could possibly have resisted practising with it.

The needs of the many...

The whole point of eliminating Bheval had been to eliminate opposition to the prospective treaty with Starfleet. But if his opposition could be eliminated instead – transformed to gratitude – the innocent Sashwe were so fatally easy to misguide...

Not exactly what the Section had had in mind. But it achieved the same object, and the body count afterwards would only be one. And that one a man whom far fewer would miss than Isahd Bheval.

He's not devout. He has no fixed beliefs in God, although there have been odd moments in his life when he's experienced something that might fall under the heading of an intimation of 'Something Other'. On a remote hillside once, seated in the middle of a ring of long-fallen stones raised six thousand years ago by others who'd also, perhaps, felt that same uncanny sense of being '_presenced_' there, he'd thought that this was as close as he'd ever come to experiencing spirituality. Nevertheless, although even now he perceives his life to be almost without value he would still want only to give it up in a good cause. To simply surrender it for nothing is unworthy of a Reed.

The plan he'd come up with had necessitated him taking the greatest risk of his life, and literally _with _his life: putting it out on the palm of his hand, for Fate to take or spare. That wasn't quite the same, in his view, as willing himself to die, though a part of him had possibly prayed that Paw wasn't as good as he thought she was, and that even if she hit him precisely where she intended to, the Sashwe would turn on a dying would-be assassin and tear him to pieces. Instead of which they'd summoned medical help and brought him back to the land of the living, if only so that he could face the justice of his own people as a renegade. Who could doubt Starfleet's good intentions now that they'd shot one of their own in plain view? If ever a national turn-around was achieved in the time it took to squeeze a trigger, this had been the day. Bheval himself had said that he'd been sorely misguided as to the Earth organisation's untrustworthiness, and that 'certain elements' who'd given him seriously inaccurate information about Humans would be dealt with most severely. Every one of the planet's political parties had been united in their shocked decree that 'they' would be forbidden to visit Traan, ever again.

The day he'd overheard that, he'd laughed. The laughter had hurt his chest and made his eyes leak, and the people tending the machines had hurriedly sedated him again so that he stopped laughing, though the water still ran out of his eyes, and the doctors, troubled and perplexed, ran checks for infection that came up negative.

* * *

**All reviews received with gratitude!**


	9. Chapter 9

Days have gone by, and he doesn't know how many. Doesn't care much either, because one is much like another in Sickbay, though on account of not being able to shut his ears he's gleaned odd bits of information about the ailments of various members of the crew who come in for treatment. Not that this interests him either.

The doors hiss open. He doesn't open his eyes. The Alpha shift will be on duty, and Em has already visited. Bernhard had mentioned the night before that the ship is in orbit around an uninhabited Minshara-class planet, and that the captain has agreed to take adequate security down when the landing party goes to collect samples.

Miracles, it seems, do happen occasionally. Not that that's any business of his any more.

The new arrival comes quietly across the room and sits beside the bed.

His nose is playing tricks on him now. Obstinately he still doesn't open his eyes. He doesn't care about anything.

"Malcolm?"

He opens his eyes at that all right. Bloody fool.

She's holding a PADD out to him. "I'm sorry if I disturbed you. I thought you might want to hear this."

He blinks down at the PADD and then up at her. Her expression bewilders him.

"Th-thank you."

Across at his work-table, Phlox stiffens at hearing his voice for the first time since he'd been brought on board.

His thumb is uncertain on the PADD controls. She gently presses the 'play' button. Their fingers brush. Her skin is soft. Vanilla and musk.

Blonde hair, platinum in the sunlight. A clear, girlish voice he'd thought never to hear again.

"I hope you get this soon, Malcolm. Hoshi says you've had to go away on a mission, so I hope you're okay."

His daughter's wearing a white blouse with a yellow flower embroidered on the collar. She has the long strap of some kind of handbag over her shoulder, also yellow. She's fidgeting with it, a little self-conscious in front of a camera.

"Mummy says daddy will be out of the hospital soon. She says I can write to you whenever I want, so I'd like that. But daddy says you've got to check it's okay with the captain first."

"Captain Archer says as long as it doesn't interfere with your duties, he doesn't mind at all." The comm officer's voice is low and amused. "If she sends them to HQ they'll be included with the standard transmissions. It'll be a change for you to have something in the mail like everyone else."

"Don't forget what I showed you about the butterfly cakes," Keri goes on sternly. "You have to practice. Mummy says it's not good for you to just do work things all the time. And I worry about you." She glances aside, obviously responding to a gesture from someone out of view. "We're going to the hospital now. I want you to let me know you're all right. Hoshi says she'll send me a photograph so I can show mummy and daddy what you look like. They want to know." She slips off the chair and pulls up the handbag strap, which has slipped. "Bye bye, Malcolm. Love you."

The screen goes blank.

He's shaking.

He might have missed it. He might have failed her. Why hadn't he understood that?

They'll let him keep the message, surely? Even if he can never receive another?

"Hey." Hoshi's fingers tighten briefly around his hand. It isn't the way you'd ordinarily touch someone you think is revolting, but maybe his wishful thinking's going into overdrive. "I brought someone to share the photo. Trip thought it might be an idea. And he lent me his camera."

Mr. Button's expression hasn't improved in the interim. The smirk is still complacent and exasperating.

Hoshi leans forward with it. At a guess Phlox doesn't miss the way that his elbow shifts helpfully so she can tuck it into the crook of his arm. Yes, and his hair's a mess too. Shakily his other hand runs through it in the vain effort to get it into some kind of order. It's too long, for one thing.

"I think it kind of suits you all mussed up." She has the camera levelled. "Say 'cheese'."

He says 'Keri' instead. At least he does inside his head. Saying it aloud is too complicated, for a lot of reasons.

"She'll love it." She shows him the photograph. He privately thinks he looks like shit, but considering he's had a hole blown through the middle of him quite recently, allowances should probably be made. And that damned rabbit has _no_ bloody business looking so pleased with itself.

"I'll take it back up to the Bridge and send it straight to her," Hoshi continues. "When I have lunch, would you like me to bring you some soup?"

Oh, this is just way, _way _too complicated. He opens his mouth to say 'No thank you', as would be only right and proper, but 'Lovely' falls out instead. He hopes he meant the soup, but he might not have done.

She squeezes his hand again before she leaves, which is nice of her, if puzzling. It takes him a moment to register the fact that she's left the bunny with him. Talk about persecuting the afflicted; if he has to look at that thing all day he'll suffer a relapse.

It's painfully obvious that Phlox waits a few minutes before coming over. It appears that Mr. Button isn't the only one with an irritating grin.

"So you've decided to rejoin us, Lieutenant?" he says cheerfully.

_Sheer coincidence. Don't make anything of it. It's not like I'm going to be a permanent fixture._

"Ensign Sato has been here a great deal," the Denobulan continues, adjusting the drip to the cannula. "It seemed to us that you slept more quietly when you knew she was here. Now that you're recovering, I trust she'll be able to catch up on all the sleep she lost."

_I could make her sleep like the dead. Eventually, anyway. If she didn't think I'm revolting._

_Why would she sit up with me if she thinks I'm revolting? _

_Maybe she's just doing it because she thinks I'm her friend. _That isn't quite how he'd like her to feel, but it's something. Like the rest of the crew, she evidently hasn't heard yet that he'll shortly be on his way to Starfleet to stand trial. It's the only explanation he can find for their friendliness, which continues to perplex him.

It's all far too tiring. His eyelids are getting heavy.

"A little nap before lunch will do you good, Lieutenant." Phlox's voice is fading away. "But I want you to make the effort to eat, even if only a few spoonfuls of soup. And afterwards, the captain will want to talk to you."

_Tell him ..._

_Tell him I'm sorry._

_That bloke I went looking for wasn't there after all._

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**All reviews received with gratitude!**


	10. Chapter 10

"Lieutenant."

He almost doesn't answer. After all, that was the rank of that bloke he'd gone away to look for, and wherever the cowardly little shite had hidden himself, he'd done a good job of it.

Habit is strong, however. The measured voice expects an answer, so after a moment he responds.

"Sir."

The soup had helped. At first he hadn't wanted any of it, but that wasn't in the bargain. It had been downright embarrassing having an ensign (especially an extremely attractive ensign) helping him hold the spoon, but after a couple of tries he'd got the hang of it again. And though he hadn't eaten much of it, it had tasted wonderful. 'Lovely', in fact. Fortunately this time his vocabulary had supplied him with 'Delicious', which was less open to misinterpretation, although there were circumstances ...

His mind pulls him up sternly. He's back on _Enterprise _now, where that kind of thought is entirely out of order. And besides, the captain is here on the most formal business in his capacity as a ship's commanding officer – to institute proceedings against the criminal who was formerly a member of his crew. Jag's inclined to grin, if only because that's what he does in the face of ruin, but some respect is owing to the man who gave him a chance for salvation, and so he remains quiet and attentive.

Captain Archer sits down in the chair. Hoshi has gone back up to duty on the Bridge. Phlox has gone out, presumably to catch some lunch on his own account. Sickbay is quiet. Even the menagerie seems to be sleeping.

"I read the report on your mission," the captain says quietly, after a moment. "How are you feeling now?"

"Fine, sir." _Not bad at all, sir, for a would-be assassin who was shot through the chest. She's bloody good, you know. We hated each other's guts, but she can bloody shoot. Now you're short of a tactical officer you could do a heck of a lot worse, but I'm not sure how good she'd be with reports._

"Traan has enormous deposits of dilithium. If war breaks out, it might be crucial for Starfleet to have access to that kind of supplies. I understand that's what you were sent to ensure."

"Pretty well, sir." He wonders what sort of detail the report had gone into. Standard Starfleet personnel were unlikely to have been given the unredacted version, but in view of the captain's position in relation to events, he might well have been told more than most. After all, he'd had to go to the planet in question and verify the identity of the man who'd only just been prevented from carrying out an assassination of a public figure carrying out a perfectly legal activity.

Bloody hell. By the time all these reports are in, he'll have one of the most radioactive service records in Starfleet history. They'll have to enclose it in lead casing and concrete before it's filed under _Closed: Dishonourable Discharge. _There will be a court-martial, of course, and he'll plead guilty; what point would there be in doing otherwise? He'd accepted that as inevitable if he survived, for the evidence is there in black and white, with hundreds of witnesses to testify to it. His own team will speak against him if required; they were, after all, sent to track down and eliminate the would-be assassin. At least, that's the story, and that's what their testimony will say when the Section provides it. How pleased Harris will be by these developments is hard to say, and quite frankly he doesn't give a damn. At least it will put an end to Jag's career once and for all. Even the Section would be hard pressed to justify employing a condemned criminal, especially one convicted in the show trial his will probably be. And he'll be locked up anyway, to serve out his debt to Starfleet and the Traan government, for however long the tribunal decides such treachery merits.

_Imprisonment... _The word makes him shudder, even though that too is inevitable, and there's nothing left that he cares about anyway. He wants to believe he's strong enough to bear it, but isn't as confident as he'd like to be. Can one die of despair? Keri won't be allowed to correspond with him after this, and that's for sure. Her parents won't want her even to remember his existence, and young as she is she'll forget quickly enough. He hopes she will, anyway; hopes she'll never discover that the man she thinks of as her friend is a convicted criminal... Maybe it would have been better for him if Paw hadn't been as good a shot, but Leo had given her the orders. She'd hit him exactly where she was supposed to hit him, giving him the chance of surviving. With skills like hers she'd be a real catch for _Enterprise_ – after all, they won't be getting their tactical officer back.

It wouldn't half piss Harris off, having _Enterprise _nick another weapons expert off him – the thought would be a cheerful one if he didn't know how good she was for the team. Though maybe she was happy enough with them anyway, and wouldn't want to leave. And pity knew how she'd get on arguing with Trip over more power for the Armoury all the time. She probably wouldn't be able to understand his accent, for one thing.

"So. Would you feel up to debriefing on it?" The question breaks into his wandering thoughts, recalling him to the present.

For the first time, he feels something close to anxiety. Leo is his senior officer. Unless Leo is dead or compromised, he shouldn't discuss Section affairs with anyone else, especially not someone who doesn't belong. But at least there's one thing he can safely say.

"I – I couldn't find him, sir. I'm sorry." There, that's safe enough. And he _is _sorry – for so many things. Sorry for being a disgrace at home and a failure at his career; and sorry for letting Captain Archer down, because he's a decent bloke, and whoever this Reed chap had been, Archer obviously cares about him. Pity knows why, given all that's gone on between them lately; you'd have thought it would have been _good riddance to bad rubbish._

The captain looks at him strangely, for what seems like a long time.

"The report said you were ordered to use explosives. I guess that would have taken out a lot of innocent people."

He swallows. There's a silence, which he terminates by nodding, though he doesn't say anything.

"Something you'd done before – when you were ordered to?" the American suggests casually.

He nods again, jerkily. _Murderer._

After a moment the other man sits back. Above the crossed arms his face is reflective.

"So how many of those other times did you suggest having yourself shot as a viable alternative?"

This is far too searching a question. He hasn't been expecting it. A betraying quiver of consternation crosses his face.

"It – it just seemed like a good idea, sir."

"Why? Seems to me it was more like a gamble. The sort of gamble a Section operative wouldn't even think about, if all he cared about was getting the job done."

"It _got _the job done, sir." His voice is too desperate. "The other way, he'd just have been a martyr. One martyr makes a thousand converts."

"But that's not Section thinking, Lieutenant. That's Tactical Officer thinking. Intelligent thinking. Even _compassionate _thinking, for all those innocent people who'd have died too. You're a disgrace to the Section, Operative."

Somebody bites down on a low moan of absolute horror, and it might be him. Although this was the outcome he'd contemplated and accepted in the hour when he'd decided that the gamble had to be taken, still, to hear it named in all its brutal simplicity appals him. He's a failure again. He couldn't kill and they wouldn't let him die. _Murderer. Renegade. Outcast. _Will there ever again be somewhere he belongs?

Sickbay blurs in a hot, stinging rush of desolation and despair. He thrusts out a hand, blindly, and a strong one catches it.

"Malcolm. We can get you through this. If you'll trust me. Work with me."

He blinks the tears away and stares, dumbfounded, at the man who used to believe in him.

Get him _through_ this? Through a court-martial, and the scandal that would envelop Starfleet if the truth came out? His silence will protect the team. He won't talk, not for any price. Better prison for the rest of his life than that.

And besides, what's this from Archer? The man already knew he was a proven traitor, and has now found out he's an assassin to boot. Is this the sort of officer he wants manning his ship's tactical station, in the unbelievable event that the course of justice can be perverted?

"Come back to _Enterprise_, Lieutenant. She needs you. _We _need you. You're one of the family."

He laughs aloud at that. He can't help it. If he's one of the family he's the black sheep of it, and he's more than half way to the slaughterhouse already.

"Sorry, sir," he replies a little unsteadily. "I'm flattered, I'm ... hell, I can't believe you'd still say that. But there's the small matter of my upcoming trial to take into account."

The captain's eyes move to the marks the garrotte left. They've faded, but if you know where to look you can still see them. "You were part of an undercover unit sent to investigate who was influencing opinion against Starfleet on Traan," he says almost conversationally. It sounds like he's reciting something that has been carefully put together in co-operation with someone else who's far better than he ever was at concocting plausible fairy-tales. "Unfortunately, I believe you were attacked. Captured. Tortured. Drugged."

"I'm a _Section 31 operative_, sir. I'm trained to resist that sort of thing." He speaks slowly and carefully, as though this was a minor detail that his erstwhile commanding officer might somehow have forgotten.

"_As far as Starfleet is concerned, _Mister Reed, you've had no more training than the average security personnel. You couldn't be expected to combat what was used against you. Mind-altering drugs, that made you open to suggestion."

A frown, as he thinks through the avenue the captain is opening up. "If a Starfleet officer was convicted of the killing, the assassination would play into the Nausicaans' hands. They'd lose Bheval – but they'd make a martyr of him. Just as I predicted."

"So it was just as well that the rest of your team tracked you down, realized what was going on, and took the only option available to them in the time." For the first time, the hint of a smile touches the captain's eyes. "Their methods were a mite crude, but they got the job done."

There's a pause. "Mind-altering drugs – that the Sashwe's doctors didn't detect."

"There were several substances in your blood that they didn't recognize. Your anti-allergens, for one."

"And _Phlox _would be willing to stand up in front of a tribunal and _lie?_" he asks incredulously.

"If we play this right, it won't get as far as a tribunal." The smile-creases deepen, but there's ruefulness in the twist of the captain's mouth. "I'm getting too good at this business. I'm learning how to write reports to get the results I want rather than to tell the brass what actually happened. And your team have already agreed to support whatever report I submit."

The admission startles a huff of laughter out of him, but it's brief, and he falls back into total sobriety as he stares at his commanding officer. "Sir – why are you willing to do this for me?"

It's a question to which he has to have an answer before he makes a decision. Time had been when Jonathan Archer would never have contemplated falsifying official records. Admittedly the Expanse changed him, and in many ways not for the better, but not that much.

There's a much longer pause, during which he can read all too clearly that he's not going to like the answer. Finally, the other man speaks, slowly, as though choosing his words. "I agreed to send you back to your old team as much for _Enterprise_'s benefit as for yours. After everything that I saw on Farlaxi, I..."

"You thought I'd fail. You expected me to fail. You _wanted _me to fail!" The three successive realisations are uttered on a rising volume of shock and pain. Perceiving the truth too clearly, he wouldn't believe a denial if the captain attempted one; but Archer doesn't even try.

"Malcolm," he says quietly instead, after a long moment. "Do you remember when we first set out, how often you got mad at me for not taking enough care of the ship?"

"I can't imagine a number with that many fucking zeros in it, _sir_," he snaps. It's hardly appropriate language, but then nothing much is likely to make his prospects significantly worse, so he might as well take the chance of getting this old grievance off his chest.

Instead of reacting with anger, his commanding officer simply nods. "You were right. I had to learn that lesson, Malcolm, and in hindsight I'm only amazed we got away so lightly. But I _did _learn it. And now I can't – I _won't_ – let my personal feelings get in the way of my responsibility for the safety of the people in my care. I thought I could cope with what you had to do on Farlaxi, but it ... it raised too many doubts. And with those doubts, I didn't dare take the chance. I had to find out the hard way, by putting you to the test. And yes, if you want the truth, I did expect you to fail. I thought you'd revert to what you were back then, what you were on Farlaxi. It just seemed like..." he drew a deep breath, "like so much a part of you."

"You let me believe you were doing it for my benefit, when it was for yours all the time." The words are low and bitter. The betrayal is unbearable; all else he can endure if he must, but this is the blow that will kill him.

"No." Archer's voice in rebuttal is almost as low, and vehement. "It wasn't for yours and it wasn't for mine. It was _for the ship. _And I'll be damned if I'll let you accuse me of _wanting _to lose the best tactical officer in the Fleet! Can't you get it through your thick skull that it was the only way I could think of to _keep _you?

"After all we've been through, after all you've done for the ship, you honestly think I wanted to get rid of you? Hell, Malcolm, you should know me better than that! But maybe you did too good a job of teaching me where my responsibilities lie, maybe I've learned too much of what you tried to tell me all those years ago. The ship's welfare comes before _everything. _Before whatever I feel or whatever you feel. I can't rely on my gut feelings any more. When it comes to the safety of my ship and my crew, I need _proof!_"

Yet another pause, this one long and aching, while two pairs of eyes search one another savagely.

"If I'd carried out the Section's orders, you'd have let me hang."

"I wouldn't have lifted a finger to save you. You had to prove to me who you were. When you did what you did, I had my answer. And for that officer – _my _officer, not the Section's – I'll do whatever it takes to keep him on the ship."

The decision is both simple and unbearable. How can he fault the captain for learning, at last, to be ruthless? How can he explain how it hurts to understand that Archer has learned to play the Section at its own game, to lie and connive for his own ends? What end will it serve to accept the punishment he didn't earn, to plead guilty to a crime he never intended to commit, to spend the rest of his useful life behind bars for deliberately missing a target? For war is coming. They both know it, they can smell it like rain on the wind, and if _Enterprise _is to stand a chance of weathering the gathering storm she'll need the best weapons officer in Starfleet. By comparison with that, the loss of some outworn concept of 'honour' is a small sacrifice, if indeed there still is any remnant of honour in him that wasn't fouled and compromised long ago.

Perhaps there is no way now to redeem himself, to pick a way back to whatever he once dreamed of being. Perhaps in a way Archer's right, and the Section has too hard a hold on what he is. Perhaps the captain to whom he gave his allegiance when he came on board died long ago in the Expanse, as surely as he himself died in the Section, and there's no resurrecting either of them. He could weep himself blind at that realisation, but tears solve nothing, restore nothing. All that he has left that's capable of deserving his undivided loyalty is _Enterprise _herself.

Jaguar's death-scream is long and soundless. His knuckles are white; somehow he's found a hand to hold, a lifeline to hang on to. The captain endures the pain, saying nothing, his grip in return as hard as his gaze. He too knows now that choices are dirty and life is grim, and that compromise is sometimes the only way to get through and get the job done.

_Enterprise _needs him. Soon she'll need him as she's never needed him before.

After a long moment, the world comes back into focus.

He's holding his captain's hand, which is probably counter to at least half a dozen regulations, and bloody embarrassing as well. Him being a Brit, and the English don't go in for all this hand-holding stuff.

He draws a deep breath. It's shakier than he'd have preferred, but he's got hold of himself by the end.

"Sir. Request permission to come back on board."

Archer releases him. "Permission granted, Lieutenant. As soon as Phlox passes you fit, we'll be glad to have you back on duty."

Malcolm sits back. He's trembling with relief, and something close to exhilaration. They're not out of the woods yet, but Starfleet know too well that the war is coming. Given a chance to dismiss charges against the tactical officer of the fleet's flagship, they're unlikely to ask too many searching questions. And Traan's newly discovered distrust of the Nausicaans will be a fertile breeding ground for yet more suspicions, carefully planted and watered. Kidnapping – torture – brainwashing! What other horrors might these previous 'allies' of theirs be capable of? It's a working certainty that they'll spread the word to other governments with whom they have friendly relationships (and there are many). The Nausicaans may find themselves with a cool welcome around this part of the quadrant from now on.

And in the meantime, he's home.

He's home again.

At last.

**The End.**

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**Author's Note: Thanks to Serit, who helped me with some of the ideas for this chapter!**

**All reviews received with gratitude!**


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