Missing Scenes from Season Three - Damage

Spoilers: "Damage" and prior episodes in Season 3, and it will probably make little sense without them.

Disclaimer: All things Star Trek belong to CBS/Paramount. "Damage" was written by Phyllis Strong.

Author's Note: Damage, damage, damage and more damage. I appreciate any reviews (including constructive criticism). I've decided to fly without a beta this time, but I owe a debt of gratitude to justTrip'n for all her insights up to now.

Trip stopped by sickbay on his way up to the bridge. Eager as he was to see the captain with his own eyes, he also wanted to check in on the injured members of his own staff.

What struck him first as he neared sickbay was the crowd of occupied cots stretching out into the corridor. Next came the awful mingled odors of humans in distress. After the caustic smoke and fumes of engineering he hadn't thought he'd be able to smell anything, but he had to stop and take a few slow, shallow breaths through his mouth to avoid adding the contents of his own stomach to the mix.

Once he'd resolved that issue, it didn't take long to find one of his own staff. Ensign Masaro was lying on a cot set up just inside the open doors, cradling his all-too-obviously broken arm and wrist. The ensign had been in the wrong place at the wrong time when a support beam had given way in the corridor outside Engineering. Now he was staring so intently at the ceiling above him that Trip looked up to see if there was something wrong with it. It looked sound, as this most protected part of the ship should be.

"Has anyone taken care of you yet?" he asked.

"Phlox said I would have to wait," Masaro said, without taking his eyes off the ceiling.

"They gave you something?"

"Yes, I'm fine, sir. Just lying here enjoying the show."

Trip eyed him doubtfully, and checked the ceiling one more time. He often found Masaro's sense of humor a little subtle. Perhaps the painkiller was making it even more elusive.

"Have you seen Marcel?" he asked, after scanning the rest of the beds and cots he could see without actually pulling sheets and curtains out of the way.

"He didn't make it." Masaro's tone was oddly lacking in affect.

"What?" Trip stared down at him, stunned. He knew Marcel's burns were bad, but he'd assumed they were survivable.

Masaro used his chin to point across to one of the room's alcoves, where four bodies lay under blankets. "You'll probably find him on the floor over there, sir. With the others that didn't make it."

Masaro's eyes, finally meeting his, glittered with something that raised the hackles on the back of Trip's neck. But then, no one on board exactly looked normal at this point.

"I'm sorry," Trip said. As two of the four ensigns assigned to engineering, Marcel and Masaro had only occasionally shared routine shifts. If Masaro was competitive - and if he was, he hid it well - he might have resented the fact that Trip was far more likely to leave the more mature and capable Marcel in charge of a shift. But Trip assumed they were friends, if only because he sometimes saw them eating together in the mess hall.

Masaro didn't say anything in response, just turned his focus back to the ceiling.

Phlox poked his head out from behind one of the curtains. "Commander Tucker, are you by any chance here to fix my imaging chamber so I don't have to rely on a hand scanner to diagnose critical internal injuries?"

Phlox looked as tired and frustrated as Trip had ever seen him, and Trip immediately abandoned any plan he might have formed of asking just what the hell had happened with Marcel. "Sorry, doc. I should be able to detail a repair team up here soon. I was just checking on my people."

"The captain has my most recent casualty report," Phlox said tersely, and disappeared again.

Trip touched Masaro lightly on his good arm and moved on. First, he made a quick inspection of the imaging chamber. It was unfortunately obvious that the problem wasn't going to be an easy fix. He managed to find a couple more engineering crewmen by being nosy and in the process happened upon other crewmen who had suffered much worse injuries, including two amputations and some horrifying burns. And no matter where he moved in sickbay, he was aware of that blanket-covered row of the dead. He left newly queasy. He hadn't really allowed himself to think about their losses, or that they might include the wry, witty Philippe Marcel, who had already been short-listed for promotion to Columbia.

That wouldn't happen now. Perhaps it never would have happened anyway. They didn't even have a working warp coil. Perhaps Lizzie and the other seven million and Marcel and the other crewmen they'd lost today had merely gotten a head start on the fate that awaited the rest of this crew and the rest of humanity.

In the privacy of the turbo-lift, Trip took deep, steady breaths - the ones T'Pol had taught him for neuro-pressure - and tried to get his game face back on.

At least the captain had come back to them. Surely that counted as something of a miracle?

It was at least a relief. Trip didn't know what to make of T'Pol's recent behavior, but he'd begun to wonder if he was going to have to organize yet another mutiny, something he definitely didn't have the time or the stomach for.

He also feared he'd simply lost all judgment where T'Pol was concerned. If Archer had decided to fly off in a shuttle, would Trip have tried so desperately to stop him? Would he have attempted to literally pull Jon back by the arm?

No. Obviously not.

He'd had that chance with the captain earlier, and he hadn't even put up an argument.

"Is it just my imagination, or is T'Pol a mess?"

Trip grimaced. After the obligatory I'm-glad-you're-alive/so-am-I in the dark wreckage of the captain's ready room, Jon had gotten right to the point.

"I don't know, Cap'n. Something's up with her. I don't know what."

"She's not pregnant, is she?"

Trip nearly choked. "Ugh... I don't think that's possible." Was it?

Archer scowled. "Is she fit for duty?"

"I don't know. Are any of us fit for duty right now? Do we even have enough able-bodied crewmen left to worry about whether someone's fit for duty? I sure as hell don't. Plus, I'd guess that even when she's falling apart T'Pol is still more capable than the rest of us."

Jon sighed. "All right. Get the team together. I'll be out in a minute."

Malcolm and T'Pol were the first to join him in the situation room. "You all right?" Trip asked Malcolm.

Malcolm folded his arms and said, "Fine. You?"

"Can't complain," Trip said. "Still have all my fingers and toes. T'Pol?"

She had folded her arms, too. "I'm fine," she said softly, without quite meeting his eyes.

"We should have access to Cargo Bay Two restored by tomorrow," Malcolm said.

"Okay," Trip said, and wondered why he was telling him that.

"You have a number of spare parts stored there," T'Pol said, as Hoshi and Travis joined them.

Trip eyed her. "And they'll all have to be carefully inspected after being decompressed this long. Mind you, if we had a spare warp coil tucked away there, I'd be the first one in the door."

Malcolm looked confused now. "But I thought..."

But the captain arrived then, and they fell into the practiced routine of delivering and discussing their anything-but-routine reports.

Throughout, Trip was conscious of T'Pol standing at his side - not as close as she sometimes stood, but not pointedly on the other side of the table, either. She looked tired but relatively collected, but he had the feeling it was taking enormous effort for her to maintain that appearance. Or maybe he was just projecting his own sense of exhaustion and near-despair onto her. According to Jon, the Reptilians and Insectoids could return to finish the job at any moment. And in the shape they were in now, their prospects of finding and stopping the weapon looked pretty damned grim.

Archer said, "I know things look as bad as they've ever looked right now. But we're still here. And I made some inroads with the Xindi, or I wouldn't be here. They have no reason to hurry up and launch, given the information they now have. Let's get ourselves back in some kind of shape and then see what we can do. I promise you: This isn't over yet."

Trip exchanged a quick, hooded glance with T'Pol. It was indeed a relief to have the captain back. Archer was a hell of a lot better at cheering on the troops than she was, or was at least willing to give it the old college try.

Trip just wished he could feel the least bit cheered up.