Immune- Chapter 18

Immune

by Trinneergirl

Disclaimers in Chapter 1

Chapter Eighteen

The sound of rapidly approaching feet rang down the corridor. Trapped, Kurt lunged for Trip and, grabbing the emaciated arm, pulled the weakened man off the Dryalian bio-bed. As Archer, Reed, and T'Pol entered the room they stopped, appalled at the sight of Trip, dressed in loose, white, elasticated pants, on his knees. The Enterprise 's Chief Engineer was tilted to his right, his left arm high, held by the escaped madman, Kurt Wilkinson. A Dryalian rifle was pressed hard into Trip's left temple and none of the officers doubted that the smallest wrong move would see Trip's death. Wilkinson was twitchy and obviously hyped up. He seemed to have a dozen tics at once in his face and neck as he flinched. The crewman was sweaty, his flushed face waxy and his eyes febrile and dilated. In contrast the others, even Trip, were still and calm, trying to emit that calm into the room. The Dryalians stopped in the corridor, staring in horror at the scene through the glass wall.

Kurt began to feel pleased with his audience. He jerked his head towards the Captain.

"Tell 'em, Archer," he jeered. "Tell the Dryalians just how your precious Trip got his job on Enterprise!" Surprised, Jon glanced to where the just arrived Dryalian CMO stood, recovering his breath. Sau'mara, a picture of concern, nodded to Jon to play along.

"He slept with me," the Enterprise Captain replied matter-of-factly. Kurt's eyes lit up in joy at the revelation.

"Tell them," he insisted. Jon shrugged.
"He's a whore. Trip wants something, he has the sweetness between his legs to get it." He carefully expanded his arms sideways to express acceptance of the situation. "I don't mind," he continued. "He serves my turn. He's my whore now. I send him to make the path easier for us all, parcel him out as a treat. I've had him, T'Pol's had him, Malcolm here's had him. We've all taken a ride." Taking their cue, T'Pol and Reed nodded.

"You know the Captain is pleased when Trip turns up at your door," Malcolm forced himself to say.

"His work is efficient in displaying the Captain's approbation," T'Pol found herself telling the clearly smug Wilkinson. "His work as the Captain's whore is an incentive for all his senior staff."

"He smooths the way in a lot of situations," Archer continued. "You don't really think he got pregnant by sticking his hands in some pebbles, do you?"

"He fucks aliens?" Wilkinson asked, appalled. Wondering how the hell a xenophobic idiot like this ever got onto his staff, Jon nodded.

"Sure," he assured the gun-toting man. "Xyrillians, Vulcans, Suliban, Nausicaans, Klingons." The Captain smiled. "It's not like Trip's fussy."

"Klingons?" Wilkinson loosed his grip a little on his hostage as he gawped in amazement. "That isn't possible." Jonathan Archer feigned surprise.

"Sure it is. Remember when T'Pol, Malcolm, and Hoshi here," he gestured at the unmoving form of Ensign Sato on the floor, "got stuck on a Klingon ship caught in a gas giant? We had a Klingon female engineer on our ship?"

"I remember," Kurt replied in fascination.

"Man, I tried everything, reasoning, threats, you name it! Then I tried Trip and she agreed to help us. Phlox needed to do a lot of work on him after that, but that's the price Trip pays for being my whore. He accepts that along with the considerable benefits that accrue." Kurt's slack mouth was slobbering at the picture of Trip as a Klingon plaything.

On his knees, Trip closed his eyes for a long moment. He knew that the Captain and others were playing for time with their responses, but the young engineer felt horribly embarrassed at the litany of lies. To actually hear his colleagues discussing his usefulness as the ship's whore scoured him raw in mortification. He had had enough of Kurt Wilkinson and his delusional insanity. He was sick and tired of being destroyed piece by slow piece by this man's irrational hatred. Whether his colleagues were able to save him or not, Trip wanted this to end. He hadn't the physical, emotional, or mental strength left to take any more. Out the corner of his eye he could see that Kurt's whole attention was focussed on Archer and the grip on his arm had slackened. Normally, Trip might have taken the chance and attacked, but he was just too weak! He waited.

Archer was running out of ideas for feeding Kurt's prurience and could feel the moment slipping from him. He was going to lose Trip here in this room, watch his best friend get murdered before his eyes. None of them were armed, they were too far away to attack. Commander Tucker's life was in the balance and that balance was tipping over towards death. Kurt blinked back from his fantasy and found his resolve to end his obsession's life. For a split second he was caught between the two states and between gears, mentally. At that exact moment, the young helmsman, Ensign Travis Mayweather came belting into the room holding a phase pistol. Not seeing Hoshi unconscious on the floor, he tripped over her and did exactly what you are not supposed to do to an antagonist in a hostage situation, he lunged straight towards Kurt.

Already between gears, moving from one part of his obsession to another, Crewman Wilkinson had to derail and find a third way as the situation altered rapidly. He turned, gaping at the flying Travis hurtling towards him, then he started to turn the gun. Once the muzzle left his temple and began to swish round, Trip grabbed the barrel with his free hand and forced it up by standing and using his whole body weight. Kurt got off one shot, which hit the ceiling, before Travis crashed into him and the three men fell in a tangle of arms and legs. Trip found himself under the bio-bed with the Dryalian rifle slithering into his stomach. Kurt violently pushed off the winded Mayweather and grabbed the phase pistol. Getting to his feet, he pushed the switch from stun to kill and pointed the weapon at the helpless Travis. The dark-skinned man, lying on the floor, looked up at the gun and waited for the end, his breathing fast and his brown eyes wide in shock.

Trip grabbed the Dryalian rifle and aimed. In the split-second he had, the Commander dimly registered that the rifle was also set to kill. There wasn't enough time to change it AND save Travis' life. Trip made his decision and fired. Kurt, caught full in the back by the directed-energy bolt, spun in mid-air before crashing into the glass wall. With an expression of almost ludicrous amazement he stared at Trip as he fell down the wall and the phase pistol slipped from his slackening grip. The last thing he ever saw was the coldly certain, intelligent blue eyes of Commander Tucker. Kurt's own eyes dimmed into nothingness. There was a long silence and complete stillness. Trip, who had never killed a man before, blinked and forced his gaze away from his first murder. He turned off the power cell in the weapon and got out from under the bed. T'Pol moved to Travis and helped the man to rise. He was sweating and clearly in some pain from the shoulder he was holding. He nodded his thanks to the Sub-Commander, who turned and knelt at the side of Hoshi, trying to ascertain the extent of her injuries.

Captain Archer and Malcolm Reed went to help Trip to rise. Adrenaline turning sour in his system, Trip began to shake and sat on the bio-bed, giving up the rifle to Malcolm.

"It was on kill," Trip told them softly. "There wasn't time..."

"You made the right decision, Trip," Jon reassured.

"Did I?" Trip asked, plaintively. "I wanted him dead, Cap'n." The bald pate, just showing the first signs of downy regrowth, shook in perplexity. He looked up and stared at Captain Archer, eyes upon eyes. "I wanted him dead," he repeated. Jon saw the storm of guilt and horror in his friend's gaze.

"Your responsibility as co-first officer of Enterprise is to your crew," Archer told Trip bluntly. "Commander, Travis' life was yours, to save or not save. You made the right choice." Trip thought for a long moment then nodded.

"It was his choice to put this gun on kill, Trip," Malcolm reminded his friend. "He was going to kill you, then, more than probably, all of us."

Trip was having deep emotional battles within himself at having taken a life. While his intellect could accept he had no choice and had taken the only available option if Travis was to live, if he and his colleagues were going to live, he felt like a ink-black stain, marking him out a murderer, was on his hands, his face and in his soul. Archer was deliberately standing between his friend and the body, but Reed, an armoury officer to the soul, moved back slightly to examine the alien weapon in the light and Trip could see Travis, being treated by a Dryalian doctor, his million-watt smile flashing brilliantly through the hurt of his shoulder examination in relief at being alive. Trip's cerulean eyes also took in Hoshi, slowly getting to her feet, helped by Sau’mara and Phlox. That was the prize, the flip side. They were alive because of his actions. The room was suddenly very full of Dryalian soldiers and medics, and Trip was hit by a wall of tiredness. Seeing the fatigue crossing the face of his friend, Archer maneuvered the young Commander back into bed and covered him up.

Trip looked across to where all he could see of his former bete noire was a booted foot sticking out. Despite the guilt it cost him, Trip couldn't help feeling a surge of incredible relief that it was over. There was no way Kurt could hurt him anymore. The sheer trauma of the shot that killed him meant that no one would be able to bring the insane man back from the dead, even if they wanted to. Trip was free of Wilkinson's cracked and evil obsession forever. He shivered in pure release. Closing his blue eyes, Trip slept. Archer rubbed a thumb softly across the brow of his friend, as if to smooth away the creases of worry in the forehead. Jon knew Trip very well. It would take time, but the Commander would get the proper perspective on his actions. He wouldn't be Trip if his first human killing hadn't caused a storm of conscience searching. It was what made Trip a fine man as well as a fine officer. He had killed not in anger or vindictiveness, not even in self-defence, but to save others. That was a part of his job, not a pleasant one, but part and parcel of being in Starfleet. In time Trip would come to live with that truth.

Captain Archer turned away from the sleeping Trip to find himself face to face with Dan'een, the Dryalian Captain. Jon smiled awkwardly.

"We seem to be nothing but trouble," he apologised. Dan'een smiled back.

"It was beyond your control," he exonerated the Enterprise skipper. "We lost two men. Wilkinson killed them. His guards." Archer was appalled.

"I'm so sorry!" he sympathised.

"So am I," Dan'een replied. "They were both good men. Your Commander made the right actions in here. You all did." The Dryalian Captain smiled, "Even your flying ensign!"

The two men laughed in the aftermath of the strain and drama. Raising his brows, Archer stared to where Travis was being helped from the room by medics, his arm was in a brace and it looked as if something was broken. Hoshi was also standing as the medics tenderly eased her from the room, but a trolley was outside and it was clear Sau'mara wanted his concussed patient back recumbent as soon as he could. By now, even Kurt had gone, carried off in a body bag for autopsy. Apart from the comatose Trip, only Archer, Dan'een, and, at a respectful distance, Malcolm remained in the room. Jonathan Archer counted the cost on Kurt Wilkinson's insanity out loud

"Two Drayalian guards dead, Trip hounded to death and now painfully thin, traumatised and weak, Hoshi and Travis wounded, Enterprise in need of huge repairs. All the fault of one cracked, obsessive psyche!"

"It's amazing," Dan'een responded. "On one world, a dictator named Fulathess, took a whole world and expanded to a sector of space before their own people could find the will to see it was wrong. I and my army ached to interfere, but we can only exist if we DON'T interfere. Any thought that our medical staff might favour one side or another in a conflict and our people suddenly become 'legitimate' targets." Jon knew what the Captain was trying to say. Throughout human history, factions full of suspicion had chosen to believe that the humanitarian agencies working for neither side were partisan. Shooting unarmed people trying to help the wounded of both sides was, in some ways a way of emotionally resisting defeat.

The two men walked to the door, the natural instinct of both starship captains to see how the wounded were doing. Jon turned to Malcolm Reed.

"I'll stay with the Commander, sir," Malcolm reassured. The armoury officer holstered the phase pistol and moved to sit beside Trip, still holding the Dryalian rifle.

Even though the threat to Trip had gone, it was clear Lieutenant Reed was going to be overly protective of his friend for some time. Jon reflected inwardly that all of them had been bent out of shape by the malignancy of Wilkinson's madness. It was going to take time for the fallout to settle on this one. Jon knew that he himself wished to stay with Trip, protect him from further harm or hurt. But Trip was a grown man, a Commander of Starfleet and Chief Engineer. He had more than proven his ability to cope alone in the Vort Cloud. Treading the line between helping him back to strength and not driving the independent man insane with mollycoddling was going to be difficult.

"Thank you, Malcolm," Archer softly replied and the two skippers left the room.

"But you weren't the victims of a junt,." Archer pointed out, "Just one twisted mind caused all of this." He gestured to Trip through the glass window as they passed down the corridor.

"One mind in solo, one mind in a dictatorship, the result is always the same," Dan'een responded. "Innocent people are sacrificed." Jon nodded, seeing the sense. In a burst of confession he told Dan'een the history of the estrangement of Trip and its aftermath.

"He was going to leave. I took him for granted so much," Jon admitted.

"But he's going to stay with you now and that's the main thing," Dan'een remarked.
"Yes," Jon agreed. "I'll never take him for granted again, that's for sure. Not when I see his dead body floating in that mectara fluid every time I close my eyes." Anger glinted in his hazel eyes. "One other thing that's for sure, when we return to our side of the Vort Cloud, I want some serious answers as to how that man ended up on my ship. He was entirely wrong even before the crack in his mind opened up to madness. We are meant to have Starfleet's finest aboard Enterprise."

Dan'een didn't argue. Certainly if he was in Archer's shoes, he would want some detailed answers to some very serious questions about Kurt Wilkinson's selection to serve aboard a deep space exploration vessel. The two men, one human, one Dryalian, straightened their shoulders, stood tall, and entered the treatment area, both expected to be omnipotent in their fiefdoms, both aware of their responsibilities. Their time of equality, of being able to relax with each other was all too brief. It was time to be captains again.

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