Reed's Armory -- A Malcolm Reed Fanfiction Archive ..

Title: Apocalypse Tomorrow!

Author: Taryn Eve

Author's e-mail: [email protected]

Fandom: Enterprise

Pairing: Archer/Reed

Rating: R

Category: Slash

Summary: Malcolm Reed journeys up the 'hole of darkness for a very special mission.

Comments: Thank you to Stexgirl2000 for the inspiration and to D for groaning every time I read him a line and for beta reading goodness.

Archived to Reed's Armory on 10/15/2003.

San Francisco.  Shiiiit.

Daylight cracked through the perfectly shaped windows and I had no idea how long I'd been sober.  Or why.

I used to be an officer and sometimes even a gentleman.  Eight years into my sojourn among the stars I killed a man.  For that, my captain sent me home, not knowing that from the start my mission had been entirely separate from his own.

My orders came from a section of our government so secret I would have had to shoot myself if I said the name aloud.  No matter.  Even they were powerless against the will of that captain whose name I could not say without regret...

I was becoming coherent.  Time for another bottle since Starfleet would never again have the balls to hand me another mission.

The glass slipped from my hand and shattered on the spotless hardwood floor.  I stared at the pattern, trying to remember where I'd seen it before-the drugs and the alcohol made all space-time slide together in my mind.  My ex-wife's disapproval rang in my head.

"You smell terrible for a guy who used to be so prim and proper."  Blinking, I tried to focus on the apparition in front of me, but she turned away.  "How the mighty have fallen," she said, circling me with a glare.  "Try to pull yourself together, for God's sake."

I tossed off a salute at her.  "For a hallucination you look damn good, if a bit heavier."

She kicked me.  A sharp knot of pain sent me crashing to the ground.

"Ah, it's you, Hoshi," I said, clutching my leg.  I had forgotten how painful marriage was until now.

The former Mrs. Reed grabbed me by the hair and dragged me a short distance until I managed to crawl away from her.  There was no escaping her look of disgust, however.

"Get up," she said, her contempt poisoning those perfect looks.  Well, perfect except for the extra kilos.  Had she been overindulging on the cheesecake and lattes again?

"I am up," I said, leering at her.

She kicked me again.  Of course.

"We have a briefing at Starfleet in an hour," she barked.  "I hope you have a clean uniform."

Looking around the spare apartment, I shook my head.  "Feel free to do an inspection, Commander."  I was sure she'd snoop around anyway.  During our imperfect marriage Hoshi turned into a psychotic and paranoid bitch, accusing me of various infidelities that I never actually had the time to try, much to my vexation.  Getting kicked off of Enterprise actually worked to my advantage, now that I thought about it.

I hobbled past her, making sure to give her a view of the famous Reed arse that she used to love so much.  Once in the shower, my mind crackled to life.  Why had Starfleet sent her?  The last information I had placed her on the other side of the quadrant.  I'd lost track of everyone else from Enterprise in the years following my return to Earth.

To my disappointment, the Not Little woman didn't join me in the shower.  I could have used a good shag.  It would have been a welcome distraction from the intergalactic drum orchestra taking residence in my head.  After the shower, I shaved off the beard and removed the body paint and wandered back into the living room.  Hoshi gave me a speculative look.

"What?" I asked, leaning against the doorframe.  I've been told that I look extremely hot while doing that pose.

She snorted and threw a clean uniform at me.  "It's funny how our memories never live up to reality.  Instead of a phase rifle, you've got a puny little pistol.  I'm sorry I didn't pass off this assignment."

Phase pistol.  Ow, send for a medic.  She used to like that particular weapon, thank you very much.

"What, no underwear?" I asked in a sly voice.

Lightning fast, she crossed the room and kicked my leg.  What was that about a medic?  Send me Starfleet Fucking Medical.

A short time and a few more injuries later, we arrived at a conference room in Starfleet Headquarters.  Inside were a few of the admirals whose names I couldn't remember.

"He's the best we've got?" one of them asked, eyeing me with suspicion.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and shot him a confident smile.

"No," Hoshi said, staring at her nails.  "My first three choices either had dysentery or diarrhea or both, so we'll have to go with this one.  He's been useful in the past."

Useful.  Yes, that's Malcolm Reed.  Yes indeed.

The door opened behind me and a matriarchal Vulcan figure swept into the room.  As we all rose, I noticed that the newcomer was wearing a pumpkin-puke colored robe and held a padd aloft as if she wished for nothing to do with it.

"Commander Reed."

Transfixed, I stared at her until Hoshi pinched my thigh.  "Oh, hello T'Pol."  Hoshi whispered in my ear.  "I mean, hello Ambassador T'Pol."

The old girl was a bit larger than I remembered.  Perhaps the adjective 'Reubenesque' would not have been out of place.  I remember us kidding her that she'd grow bigger than a shuttlepod if she kept sucking down those pecan pies.  How had she become so old, though?  Perhaps I needed to revise my understanding of Vulcan physiology.

T'Pol seated herself and passed the padd down the line of admirals to me.  "This is the latest information on the subject.  You have been reactivated in order to end the subject's mission."

"What, I get to kill someone else?" I asked, trying to stifle an irrational shout of glee.  I was really good at my job, but I only got to do it once a decade or so.  Masquerading as a ship's security officer almost ruined my instincts...all those times I had to pretend to not be able to shoot someone.  Escaping Enterprise was very liberating, trust me.

"You were the foremost assassin of your times when you were younger," T'Pol said, her face impassive.  "You must recall who you were in order to terminate Mr. Tucker's command."

"Terminate," Hoshi added, "as in 'with extreme prejudice'.  That means you get to shoot him more than once."

Hooray!

I looked down at the padd and stared.

"No, this can't be right," I said.  "He's harmless, if a bit off his rocker."

Hoshi gave me a scorching look.  "He's so far off his rocker that it's on another planet.  Can you do the job or not?"

I blinked and swallowed, feeling helpless.  Of course I could do the job.  The question was, why did Starfleet and Vulcan want me to kill Trip Tucker?

As it turned out, I had to wait for my answers.  And wait and wait and wait, as my ship out of the Solar System was delayed for three days.  Hoshi kicked me off of Earth and sent me to Luna to wait for my ride.  I put my padd into my gear and went shopping.

Unlike most men of my acquaintance, I adore shopping.  Oh, I've made loud noises against it, but who can resist the feel of a Ganymede3000 or the subtle sounds of the right knife coming out of the wall?  Within the three days I used up all of my credits and went looking for my ride when I finally got the call that he was here.

I saw a familiar figure lurking at the spaceport when I arrived.  "Travis, you smiling son of a bitch!"

Travis hugged me hard enough to make my breath go whoosh.  The man had grown a large set of muscles in the last few years.

"How you doing, man?" he asked, wrestling my gear away from me.  "Come on in, we've got a long ways to go."

Following him inside, I stopped short at the sight of yet another familiar face.  "Oh, it's you.  Funny, my briefing didn't mention you."

Phlox shrugged.  "Chef couldn't make it, so I was volunteered.  I hope you like crawfish Denobulan style."

Oh dear.  And I was the one operative who didn't have diarrhea.

I found myself a quiet little corner in the engine room and started reading and rereading my papers.  It seems that my old friend Trip Tucker had been through a lot over the last three years of the Temporal Cold War (or 87, depending on your perspective of things).  After Starfleet moved into the Kokami sector, we continued to have fun-I mean trouble-with different aliens who banded together against us.  They would shoot at us, we would take out a town of theirs and so on and so forth.  When the Klingons finally shoved the idea of a peace treaty at us, noises were made about reparations for all the damage we'd caused.  Tucker was promoted to commander and was sent in with a team of engineers to fix things.

At first glance, the mission was a public relations success.  Tucker got friendly with the natives (and I can only guess at the amounts of groping and nudity that involved) and for the most part, the shooting stopped.  After a period of time, the peace talks failed and the Klingons left in a huff.  The Suliban and their associates started lobbing bombs again-and more.

One by one, Tucker's engineers began arriving home in body bags.  342 of them, to be precise.  Tucker himself vanished into the jungles of Kokami Prime.  As the months passed, Starfleet Intelligence began collecting rumors about a renegade officer who was leading the natives in short strikes against our forces in the sector.

One of the survivors of the latest battle transmitted a picture.  It was blurry and taken at dusk, but I could make out a grossly huge bald man in a loud Hawaiian style shirt and what appeared to be some sort of sarong or perhaps an adult diaper. It was Trip, no doubt about it.  No other man in the galaxy would wear such disgusting ensembles.

It would be strange to see the man I once counted as my closest friend.  I remember one time we were close to death and he drank the last drop of bourbon, the bastard.  Plus that time I caught him pawing my wife.  They both said they were trying to refit her universal translator, but I knew a lame excuse when I saw one.

Killing him would be easy.  It's a wonder I didn't do it years ago.

I spent the next few days of the voyage cleaning and testing my weapons and fighting Phlox for the good coffee.  Travis wisely steered clear of me.  Come to think of it, he spent an awful lot of time alone on his bridge.  He always came out of there smiling.  One begins to wonder if the secret to his happiness consisted of his so-called 'joy stick' and the rather large bottle of engine lubricant he insisted on keeping next to his chair.  As I recall, he was always the happiest man on Enterprise...

He broke into my personal space a few days later.  "I'm getting some supplies at Anuscon 6.  Just stay here, all right?"

I bounced up with my guns in hand.  "Anuscon 6?  I've heard it's the biggest shithole in the galaxy."

Travis narrowed his eyes.  "Don't get all worked up, okay?  I can just get in and out and we'll be on our way."

Phlox bounded into the room.  "You won't believe who's here," he said, beaming.  "No, actually, you would believe it, wouldn't you?  You were always paranoid that way."

I blanched.  "No.  Not him."

Travis scowled.  "Get back in the galley and start making that gumbo, Phlox.  I'm going to fire you if I catch anything crawling out of my bowl again tonight."

Phlox slunk away.  "You know you're harder to get along with than all my other spouses combined."

I blinked.  Phlox and Mayweather?

Travis gave me a look that was surprisingly menacing.  "Stay here.  He doesn't want to see you."

I blinked.  "He doesn't, does he?"

Strange.  Once upon a time he hadn't been able to keep his hands off of me.  It took him years to quit hinting around and grab me by the arse and kiss me.  Leaving him was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

I held my chin up high.  "Well, if he doesn't want to see me, he's in for a disappointment."

Travis raised an eyebrow, a mannerism that T'Pol managed to transmit to all of us during our time aboard Enterprise.  In a few short minutes he led me to the docking ring of the space station and we were engulfed by a crowd of beings from all over the known galaxy.

"Say, aren't those the butterfly girls from our first mission?"

Travis hit my arm and dragged me away towards a bar.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a familiar figure duck into a dress shop.  Travis noticed my disgusted look and did the eyebrow thing again.

"Either the Suliban have taken to disguising themselves as plump Starfleet officers or Hoshi is following us," I remarked.

"Oh, it's Hoshi," Travis said, shrugging.  "She's been stalking me ever since you left Enterprise."

"What?" I demanded.

Before he could answer, a blast of country music assaulted my ears.  "What the hell?" I shouted.

A figure emerged from the doorway of the bar, bolted over to me and picked me up.

"Hey, Malcolm!  I knew you'd show up if Travis told you to stay away.  That old reverse psychology gets you every time."

I pounded on his still handsome chest.  He dropped me and gave me a sheepish grin.  "Sorry.  I know how fond you are of breathing."

Gasping, I shook my head.  "Commander Archer.  How are you?"

He wrinkled his nose.  "I'd feel better if someone hadn't gotten me busted down a rank and cost me my ship."

I shrugged.  "Golly, that sounds terrible."  It had been a lot of work, too.

"What are you doing in these parts, anyway?" Archer asked, clumsily pawing my arse.

"Just passing through," I said, removing his hand with a firm grip.

He gave me a disappointed look and led us inside the bar.  "I was hoping we could catch up on old times.  Or start new ones."

"Ooh, talk temporal to me, baby."

"Guys," Travis growled.  "I'm going to go requisition my supplies."

We both waved at Travis as we took a table.

And apparently, we took a bed, a wine rack, and a few coasters as well because I kept finding odd things in dirty places the next day.  Jonathan's grin was much too wide for that early in the morning as we continued our journey.

"No sneaky taking command and stealing the ship," Travis admonished us in the galley over breakfast.

"Aww," Jonathan said, giving him a half-hearted smile.

"What's that disgusting odor?" I asked, looking at the pan on the stove.  "Phlox, what on Earth are you cooking?"

"I love the smell of roasting gazelle in the morning," Jonathan said.

The ship started rocking.  We followed Travis to the bridge.

"It's a few Suliban ships following us," I reported.  "Shall I blow them out of the sky, Captain?"

Travis gripped his joystick firmly.  "I prefer to negotiate.  Open a channel."

I flipped a switch and nude dancing butterfly girls erupted on the viewscreen.

"Not that channel," Travis snapped.

I pushed another button.  Where the hell was Hoshi when you needed her?

A pair of angry Suliban men glared at us.  "We want the man named Archer."

My hands went to my weapons as Travis stood and smiled.  "He's busy."

Jonathan put his arm around me.  "Yeah, I'm busy in a loving, committed relationship."

What?  My grip tightened on my weapons.

"What's wrong with Silik?" the taller Suliban asked.  "You seemed to get along so well with him."

Jonathan pouted.  "Silik doesn't surf."

The Suliban left without another word.  I pushed another button.  A song called Stand By Your Man started playing at full blast.

Travis kicked us off his bridge.  Jonathan and I fucked like crazed temporal weasels for the next three days (or 36 weeks) until we finally arrived at our destination.

We left the ship and crept into the jungle.

"You never talk," Jonathan whined.  "It's always me who has to initiate everything and I'm getting sick and tired of-gaaaaaaaaaaah!"

I rolled my eyes.  "For heaven's sake, if you wanted to be on the bottom-oh dear."

An arrow jutted out of his happy parts.  Or formerly happy parts.  Unhappy parts...little bits...um.

"That's got to hurt," Travis observed.

Phlox smiled.  "I can take care of that."  He led Jonathan away.

I scanned the jungle, feeling invisible eyes upon me.  "Well, Travis, it's up to you and me to complete the mission."

There was no answer.

"Travis, you were always smarter than you looked," I said, seeing him as a spot in the distance.  "Faster, too."

I started walking, waiting for more arrows to rain down.  Monkey calls filled the air.  I sweated, missing the perfect environmental controls of every ship I had ever served on.

As I walked, I tried to fix my game plan in my mind.  Find Tucker.  Exchange taunts with him.  I.e., 'I always thought you were the whiniest wanker in Starfleet', and 'You're mama wears combat boots' and 'You wish your mother wore combat boots, you disgusting Yank with incredibly bad taste' etc.

Instead I walked into a trench.  C'est la vie, eh?

After a few days of rain, I woke up inside a wooden cage.  My weapons were gone, I was naked (of course) and my bum burned.  The aftertaste of bourbon seemed to flood my entire being.

"That was fun," a deep voice said.  "Let's say for the next round of Truth or Dare you let me just win again?"

Oh dear lord.  "Commander Tucker, I presume?"

He walked around to face me, a wreck of the man he used to be.  Or three or four wrecks of the man he used to be.  I was beginning to wonder if the Starfleetbucks chain of coffee shops had reached this planet as well.  Those cheesecakes they served were a more lethal weapon than anything I carried.

Tucker took a swig from the bottle in his hand.  "This war has gone on long enough.  I'm going to stop it by killing everyone.  Lob a bomb for peace.  It's perfect, man.  You know what happens if you stick a biogenic weapon on a temporal photon torpedo and aim it at Earth?"

I pushed my face against the bars.  "No."

He gave me a crushed look.  "Damn, I was really hoping you could tell me 'cause I have no idea."

"Stop!"

Hoshi and T'Pol lumbered out of the jungle, both of them wheezing.  They aimed weapons at Tucker.

"Let him go," T'Pol ordered.

Tucker blinked at her.  "It's you.  T'Pop."

"T'Pol," she said in an even voice.  "There is no P on the end."

"Boy, I could say all sorts of things about pee and ends, but Hoshi's eyebrow is going off," Tucker said, setting his bottle on the ground.  "Hey, you Vulcans ever play spin the bottle?  It's fun, you should try it.  Come on."

Casting me a doubtful look, T'Pol let Tucker distract her while Hoshi freed me.

"So what now?" I asked, giving the dynamic duo a shudder.

Hoshi eyed me.  "Did you send in your phase pistol for repairs, because it's gotten a lot smaller than the last time I saw it."

I covered myself with my hands and glanced away, embarrassed.  As I studied the ground for something to wear, I saw a small box.

"Hey, Tucker, you dropped something."

"That's mine," Hoshi said.  "It's a signaling device to tell Starfleet to launch all their weapons on this location when we find Tucker's temporal biogenic weapon.

"What?" Trip asked, rising.

"You mean this was a suicide mission all along?" I shrieked, tripping over Trip and falling on Hoshi's box.

Oops.

I wish I could remember what happened next, but everything is starting to look like San Francisco.  Shiiiiiiiiit.

~the end~