Fic: 'Run of the Ship (3/8)

[fathomlessspite]

Title: Run of the Ship (Part 3 of 8)
Fandom: Star Trek Enterprise
Rating: PG
Character: Reed, bit of Travis, Kelly, Rostov and an OFC, with some of the main cast sprinkled over it to top it off
Category: General, Humour
Spoilers: None. Could be set in season one, or after return to earth from xindi mission.
Summary: Almost the entire crew are on shore leave, a team of alien engineers are doing repairs onboard & the ever security conscious Malcolm remains onboard to oversee them. It seems his current paranoia is not ungrounded when they highjack the ship.
A/N: Not a sequel to, but in the same universe as Target Practise which introduces the OFC Crewman Angela Robertson, who Malcolm has no particular affinity for :)

Click the Image to Catch Up

* * *

“Why are we in here again?” Angela said again to Malcolm as she shifted uncomfortably. 

 

Malcolm glared at her. “We’re hiding Crewman,” he hissed. “You know, so that they don’t see us?”

 

“Yes but why are we squashed in here?!” she said indicating the tiny crawl space barely big enough for one person let alone both of them. She frowned at him. “Is this just a sneaky chance to cop a feel?”

 

“I’m barely touching you!” he exclaimed in an angry whisper. “And be quiet!” They glared at each other in silence and waited.

 

Malcolm listened carefully to the voices of the two Larackians in Engineering through the slightly ajar hatch. After a few minutes he smirked triumphantly as the voices turned frantic and confused.

 

“Trell!” one of them yelled. “Something’s wrong,” he said. Malcolm could picture him frantically pressing buttons.

 

“What is it?” another alien, presumably Trell, asked.

 

“I’m not exactly sure.” 

 

All of a sudden warning sounds sounded throughout engineering, reverberating off the walls of the crawl space causing Malcolm and Robertson to flinch.

 

“What’s that?!” Trell exclaimed.

 

“There’s an anti-matter cascade!” the other alien exclaimed.

 

“Trell to Celtra.”

 

“Yes?” came a tinny voice over the comm.

 

“There’s an antimatter cascade, we have a minute probably less. We need to get out of here as soon as possible.”

 

“We’ll use the transporter.” There was a pause. “Ready?”

 

“Affirmative.” 

 

And then the only sound was that of the alarm.

 

“Come on then,” Robertson said kicking his shin. Malcolm rolled his eyes and pushed the hatch open slightly further and glanced around it. Engineering was empty. He climbed out being careful not to kick Robertson in the face; he doubted he would get away with that. He heard her feet hit the deck plating a few seconds after him.

 

“Rostov did well didn’t he?”

 

“Excellent. I’ll be sure to mention it in my report,” Malcolm said.

 

“Make sure that you do.”

 

“Could you do something about that noise?” Malcolm asked. “It’s doing my head in.”

 

“Yes sir,” she said and moved to a console. Within seconds the noise had stopped and the ‘antimatter cascade’ or the illusion of it had been stopped.

 

“Reed to Mayweather,” Malcolm said into the comm.

 

“Sir?” Travis’ voice responded.

 

“Are you at you post ensign?”

 

“Yes sir.”

 

“Get us out of here ASAP then.”

 

“Yes sir,” Travis responded. A few seconds later they felt the ship jump to warp.

 

* * *

 

Malcolm stalked onto the bridge, went straight to his station and began to run scans. Internal scans to see if those Larackians had screwed with any of the ships systems, and external to find out exactly where they had taken them. 

 

From what the long range scanners were detecting it looked like the facility the ship had been in was now a fair distance behind them. The scanners also indicated a small system on their previous direct heading. Which they were unfortunately closer to than the facility they’d been high jacked from and were now returning to.

 

All of a sudden the ship shuddered violently. Malcolm activated the tactical alert. The ship shuddered again.

 

“Sir,” Travis said urgently, “We’ve dropped out of warp.”

 

“What?!” Malcolm asked alarmed. He hit the comm. harder than necessary. “Reed to engineering. What’s going on?”

 

“We’ve lost warp sir,” came Robertson’s voice.

 

“Really?” Malcolm growled. “And what are you doing in the engineering Ela? I assigned you to armoury.”

 

“Mike asked me down here,” she defended.

 

“I’ll repeat my question,” Malcolm said in exasperation, “What is happening?”

 

“Maybe you’d better join us down here sir,” Rostov said.

 

“I’m on my way,” he sighed and closed the channel. “Continue on full impulse Ensign, you have the bridge.”

 

* * *

 

Malcolm stalked into engineering, his sour expression worsening at the sight of Robertson.

 

“I thought you might take the hint and return to the armoury,” he said sternly to her.

 

“I insisted on staying, Kelly went in my place. She thought you might be irritated if I hadn’t had the foresight to get someone to man the armoury so offered to go herself. I think she’s a little afraid of you sir,” Robertson replied smirking.

 

“I only wish you were,” he grumbled, she smirked again. “Moving on,” he cleared his throat. “Why don’t we have warp?”

 

“We only have three plasma injectors,” Rostov said as he walked towards Malcolm.

 

“What?”

 

“The Larackians” (-even Malcolm was impressed at the amount of disgust she managed to put into that word-) “appear to have taken one of them,” Robertson said.

 

“One?” Malcolm enquired as he followed the engineers over to the hatch where the plasma injectors were contained.

 

“It looks like they tried removing another one, but didn’t do it properly. They’ve irreparably damaged it,” Rostov explained.

 

“Why did we have warp at all then?” Malcolm asked.

 

“The injector worked for a small amount of time, but eventually gave out,” Robertson said.

 

“So we’re stuck with impulse?” Malcolm asked dejectedly.

 

“Yes sir,” they replied.

 

“It took three hours at warp four point five to get here . . . how bloody long is it going to take to get back on impulse?” Malcolm asked quietly. 

 

He didn’t receive an answer.

* * *

Continues with PART 4