Gigi Sinclair
Crossver slash

Gigi Sinclair

ENT

A.G. Robinson's guffaw could be heard all the way across the common area. Trip Tucker felt like he was about to throw up. Which, for once, had nothing to do with the pureed peas and mock-pecan pie they'd had for lunch, and he didn't want to begin to speculate as to what a mock-pecan was.

Still, Trip couldn't help himself. He peered over the top of his PADD (this month's special feature: how to make a twelve-by-twelve cell look fabulously spacious through stackable storage units) and saw Robinson leaning back on a chair, surrounded by his cronies.

The Brotherhood of Dead Characters Introduced To Lend Emotional Depth were one of the bigger gangs in Trek. They fought constantly with the Humorously Accented Major Characters (who'd been very interested in Trip when he first arrived) and the Comic Relief Aliens for control of the prison. Trip hated the entire Brotherhood. They were all slime: "Jennifer" Sisko, who wore drag even when he didn't have to, Daddy Crusher, with the high-class wife and the kid in juvie for trafficking addictive holographic game software, Daddy Troi, whose wife had conjugal visits with everyone except him. Most of Trip's hate, though, was reserved for the man who had done him the most harm.

Staring at Robinson, Trip's ass actually started to burn, like it had the night Crusher and Sisko held him down while Robinson branded the coffin-shaped symbol of the Dead Characters Brotherhood into his cheek. Trip had paid Robinson back for that, and then some, but he wasn't going to be satisfied until Robinson was dead. By his hand or someone else's, it didn't matter which.

"This seat taken?"

That wasn't a question Trip had heard much since coming to Trek, where everyone knew his place and if he didn't, he kept his head down. Something Trip had learned too late. He looked up, ready to tell whoever it was that he was welcome to sit down if he didn't mind risking his reputation, possibly his sanity, and, if he tried anything fresh, a vital portion of his anatomy. The words stopped in his throat when Trip saw the man in front of him.

The man was tall, with short, light brown hair and green eyes. He was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt and there was a large, strange tattoo on his left bicep.

"What's that?" Trip indicated the tattoo.

Smiling, the man turned a chair around and straddled it, although that was possibly the least comfortable way to use a chair. "A beagle."

"Beagle?" Trip blinked. "Like the dog?"

"Noblest breed there is. Just about killed me to leave Porthos behind. They won't let you have dogs as visitors, you know." Trip hadn't known that. "Don't know what the fuck that's about. I'd rather see him than any goddamn human." The man's eyes flicked over to the Comic Relief Aliens table. "Or humanoid." The man looked at Trip intently, which Trip would have taken as a threat, except the man followed it up with: "Pleased to meet you. I'm Jon Archer."

"Trip Tucker," Tucker admitted.

"You don't look like much of a career criminal, so how'd you end up here?"

Tucker looked at Archer suspiciously, but it wasn't like the guy wouldn't hear it from someone else anyway. Probably Travis Mayweather, Trip's talkative cellmate. "I was an engineer. I killed a kid in a transporter accident. I'd been drinking, I pressed the wrong button and..." Poof. Katie Rockford's particles were scattered all over the known galaxy.

"Shit. That's rough." Jon Archer shook his head with what, in another life, Trip might have interpreted as sympathy.

"What about you?"

Jon smiled and Trip felt a strange stirring sensation in his stomach. "Little of this, little of that." Then, Jon actually winked.

Trip was shocked. Before he could think of any kind of possible response, Guard Hayes's voice boomed across the room from the megaphone at the guard's station. "Tucker! Get your ass up to Shran's office, pronto."

"Got to go." Trip allowed himself a brief smile.

"See you later," Jon replied easily. Trip could feel Jon watching him all the way up the stairs though, and, strangely, he didn't mind. It was a lot more pleasant than the whistling and hooting he endured when he walked past Robinson and the Dead Characters Brotherhood.

***

Ent City, the experimental wing of Trek where Trip had the "good" fortune to be housed, was the brainchild of Shran, an Andorian academic. His theory was that the more psychological help, education and access to Internet porn inmates had, the better their chances of rehabilitation. At first, when he'd heard about it on "60 Minutes", Trip had been all for it. Then he'd actually been thrown into Ent City himself.

"Tucker." Shran stepped around his desk when Trip came into the office, Hayes, twirling his photon nightstick, close behind him. "Trip," Shran amended. His antennae were drooping and his light-blue goatee looked less luminescent than usual, so Trip knew something was up.

Right away, he thought of the worst. "Is it Natalie?"

Shran's antennae crossed in confusion. "I thought she wrote you a Dear John letter back in season one."

Tucker shrugged. "I'm still hoping." Although not too fervently. Natalie had been pretty shocked when she'd come for her one conjugal visit, picnic basket in hand, and seen Robinson's mark on Trip's ass.

Shran shook his head, antennae bouncing. "It's not her." He sighed. "It's your sister."

"Lizzie?"

Shran sighed self-piteously, like he was the one suffering. "I'm sorry, Tucker. She's been kidnapped."

"Robinson." Trip didn't hesitate. "That motherfu---"

"UPN, Trip," Shran cut him off quickly.

"Right." The Union for the Prevention of Negativity. They'd taken over management of the prison halfway through the last season, and had made some changes. Tried to, anyway. After the third riot in as many days, though, they backed off a little, although serious swearing and overt homosexual behaviour was still prohibited. Unless it was between two female guards. "But it was him."

"We don't have any proof of that."

"What more proof do you need? He burned a coffin onto my ass. I blinded him in one eye in a drug-fuelled rage. I took a..."

"We all know what you did, Trip," Shran held up a hand to cut him off.

"Some of us were eating popcorn at the time," Hayes muttered.

"I know it was Robinson. And if you won't do anything about it, I will," Trip declared. "And maybe grow some facial hair in the process." He stalked out of the office as Shran called:

"Just don't tell the Amnesty Intergalactic people, OK? I just got them off my back," after him.

***

Trip found Malcolm Reed lounging against one of the cinderblock walls, near the stairs. Malcolm was an anomaly in Ent City, in that he'd rejected the Humorously Accented Major Characters as soon as he'd arrived and gone it alone. Malcolm's only allegiance was to himself and to his mentally handicapped brother Maddie. He also had the black market in Romulan Ale all sewn up, which meant Trip had spent a lot of money chez Malcolm when he'd first come to Ent City, and they'd been friends since.

"What do you want me to do?" Malcolm said, once Trip had explained the situation.

"I don't know." He hadn't thought quite that far ahead. "But we have to do something." Trip glanced over his shoulder. Robinson arrogant as always, was baiting T'Paul, the always dignified, self-appointed spiritual guide of the Comic Relief Aliens in Ent City. When he'd first been victimized by Robinson, T'Paul had tried to help Trip spiritually, but it had failed. Trip wasn't cut out for spirituality, apparently. Well, that, and the constant presence of T'Paul's henchmen Neelix and Quark had been a little off-putting.

Suddenly, Trip's attention was drawn away from Robinson, towards Jon Archer. ARcher was bending down, talking intently with Trip's wheelchair-bound cellmate Travis Mayweather, and as he watched them, Trip felt the return of that strange feeling in his gut.

Malcolm chuckled. "Oh, no. Stay away from that badass motherfucker."

"UPN," Trip warned automatically, still transfixed by the way Archer's powerful muscles moved beneath the beagle tattoo.

"Archer's bad news," Malcolm repeated.

Trip glanced back at him. "What's he in for?"

"Robbing a holosuite complex and killing the owner. By accident. He got eighty-eight years."

"That seems like a very specific sentence."

"Yeah, well." Malcolm shrugged, and Trip reluctantly pulled his gaze from Archer and scanned the rest of the room. Maddie Reed was sitting in front of the TV with the two oldest inmates, James Kirk, who talked to God, and Agamemnon Spock, who didn't, watching a the ongoing adventures of "Counsellor Deanna" and her amazing breasts. "That's just what they could prove. If I were you, I'd strike a bargain with T'Paul. Spiritual crap or not, he's about ready to declare open war on the Dead Characters."

And if that happened, Trip thought, there would be no way to prove just who delivered the final blow to Robinson.

"Gotta go, man," Malcolm said suddenly, smoothing back his hair and straightening his hooded sweatshirt. Trip followed his gaze and saw Guard Hayes strolling along the upper mezzanine, one hand casually resting on his photon nightstick.

"He's married, Malcolm," Trip reminded him, although that hadn't prevented Reed from lusting after the guard for months, ever since he rescued Malcolm from a fracas with Big Scotty and a couple of the other Humorously Accented Major Characters.

Malcolm winked. "Not for long." And left Trip standing beside the stairs.

***

At 1700, as always, the buzzer sounded and Trip trudged back to his cell. "Pod", as they were called by Shran, because apparently that word had more positive connotations, although, when pressed, not even Shran could say what those connotations were.

Trip stopped in the doorway. Travis and his things were gone and instead, Jon Archer was lounging on the bottom bunk. "What are you doing here? Where's Travis?"

"He moved. I'm your new roommate."

"Why?"

Archer shrugged and sat up. "Who knows?" He grinned, then immediately looked sympathetic, a trick Trip hadn't seen before. "I heard about your sister."

"How?"

"Travis. Never shuts up, huh?"

"No." That was what Trip had liked about having Mayweather as a cellmate. When Travis was around, expositing on anything and everything and giving him detailed case histories of every new person who came to Ent City, Trip didn't have to think for himself.

"Listen, Trip." Jon glanced around and inched forward, beckoning Trip closer. Trip hesitated, but leaned forward when Jon said: "I know what bastards the Dead Characters are. My..." Jon swallowed. "My father was one."

"But you're..."

Jon shook his head emphatically. "Absolutely not. Never. I hate Robinson more than anyone."

Trip looked at him for a long moment. "How can I trust you?"

"Here." Jon stood up suddenly, unbuckling his pants. Trip watched, amazed and more than a little aroused, as Jon lowered his pants. On one perfectly formed ass cheek was a coffin, in the middle of a circle and crossed by a diagonal line. Trip winced in sympathy. He remembered all too well how painful it had been when Robinson burned the symbol onto him. The extra additions would have been even worse.

"Hey!" Trip's eyes snapped up and the sound of a photon nightstick banging against the wall. Hayes was smirking on the other side of the glass. "UPN, here, fellas."

"So," Jon said, pulling up his pants and turning back around. "Trust me now?"

Trip inched forward. "I hear the Comic Relief Aliens are ready to declare war on the Dead Characters. All we need is to convince them to do it when it's best for us."

"Great." Jon smiled happily. He reached out and touched Trip's arm. Trip flinched automatically, but Jon didn't move his hand. Which, Trip realized, was large and warm. "And I have a pretty good idea of how we can pass the time until then."

***

T'Paul had a new cellmate since the days when he'd been giving Trip spiritual guidance. This new guy, Hoshi Sato, was small, slight and decidedly effeminate. He'd been pegged as a prag as soon as he set foot in Ent City, and it had thrilled Trip inordinately when Ravis, one of the Comic Relief Aliens, tried to stake a claim on Sato and got a shank in the eye for his trouble. Sato, apparently, was a major player in the Pacific Rim Triads, which was why he'd been sent to Ent City. All the other prisons were too full of his cohorts. Even here in Ent City they'd heard about the infamous "Harry" Kim, not to mention the grandfather of them all, Sapporo Sulu the Hokkaido Killer.

Sato was in the cell when Trip arrived, sitting on the bottom bunk in what looked like a pair of baggy silk pyjamas. He stared at Trip with a calm, even expression that even Trip, who had no pre-incarceration experience with that type of thing, knew meant Sato could garotte your entire family with piano wire without batting an eye or cracking a nail.

"I'm looking for T'Paul," Trip said, as calmly and respectfully as possible.

"He is not here," Sato replied.

"Do you know where he is?" Trip prompted, when nothing more seemed forthcoming. He really wasn't in the mood for this. He was tired, thanks to three straight nights of lights-out fun with his new cellmate, and the whisker burn on his cheeks from this morning's pre-dawn session was, well, burning.

"The library," Sato replied, surprisingly surely.

"Thank you." Trip smiled and left before Sato could remove his kidneys with the end of a ballpoint pen or something.

T'Paul wasn't in the library. A.G. Robinson was, though, talking to someone. Sidling up behind a bookshelf, Trip listened as Robinson laughed and said: "Pathetic fucker's sure falling for it."

Another man joined in the laughter. It sounded familiar, but before Trip could figure out who it was, the question was answered for him. "I don't know how you stomached him as long as you did," Archer replied.

"Yeah, well. Prissy little slut. He was fun for a while." Robinson chuckled. "Nothing like you, though, Jonny."

"Of course not," Archer replied. "I'm not some clueless motherfucking engineer."

Trip felt a sudden, burning pain inside his head. He turned on his heel and walked out of the library as quickly as he could without attracting attention. He passed the Reeds, Maddie watching TV and Malcolm staring fondly as Hayes manhandled one of the Comic Relief Aliens off to the Hole. Mayweather called out to him from where he was playing cards with McKenzie and Cutler, but Trip ignored him. Instead, he went to his cell, reached under his mattress, and waited for Archer to come home.

As soon as he stepped in the door, Trip pressed the shank to Archer's jugular.

"What the fuck..."

"I'm a clueless motherfucking engineer," Trip said, pressing the sharpened mess hall spoon further into Archer's neck. "I can make things."

"Whoa, Trip." Archer held up his hands defensively. Trip didn't move. "What's going on?"

"I heard you. In the library." Trip couldn't decide whether he wanted to cry or kill himself for being so stupid. Well, he thought, he was going to be here a good long time. Plenty of opportunity to do both. "With Robinson."

Archer's eyes got wide. "I can explain."

"Don't bother." It seemed pretty self-explanatory.

"We were in prison together, before. In San Francisco," Archer said anyway. "I was his bitch."

Trip blinked, his hand tightening on the spoon. "You? But you're..." Streetwise. A criminal. A man.

"Yeah, well, I didn't exactly enjoy it. But it was what I had to do. I hate Robinson, Trip, believe me. How can I prove it to you?"

Trip lowered the shank. "Kill him." Or kill me. Either way, Trip thought, at least he'd know.

Archer smiled. "Consider it done."

***

"A play?" Someone called.

"Of course." Shran beamed at the assembled prisoners. "What better way to let inmates express their frustrations and dissatisfaction with a society that has turned its back on them than by presenting a Shakespeare play?"

"Give us back our cigarettes," someone else yelled, but Shran ignored them. Hayes held up the photon nightstick, and the restless crowd quieted a little.

"I've chosen 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'," Shran went on. "Because I just knew you fellows would love the opportunity to dress up as woodland sprites. Now, for the role of the King of the Fairies..."

"That'd be you, Robinson." This time, it was obvious who'd called out. Robinson stood up, stared at Travis and snarled:

"You wanna come over here and say that, you straight-off-the-cargo-ship Boomer?"

Shran winced at the slur and Hayes took half a step forward "Now, now, gentlemen. There are plenty of good roles for all of you. Trip Tucker, for example," Trip stiffened as Shran's eyes sought him out. "I thought you'd be a natural for the role of Bottom."

Robinson barked a laugh, and Jennifer Sisko and Daddy Troi joined in. "Now that's what I call typecasting, huh, cupcake?"

"That's the spirit, A.G.!" Shran beamed. Archer, seated a few chairs away from Trip, glanced over Agamemnon Spock's head and winked at him. Trip looked away.

***

Lizzie had been murdered. The Federation Bureau of Investigations agent who came to speak to Trip told him they suspected an inner-city gang known as the Xindi, but Trip knew better.

"They were working for A.G. Robinson."

Agent Daniels looked skeptical. "That seems fairly implausible, Mr. Tucker. The Dead Characters Brotherhood has ties to the Aryan Nation and the idea of Nazis working with the Xindi is so ridiculous as to be laughable. No sane person would credit such a theory. You'd have to be completely ignorant of every major facet of Aryan dogma..."

"Well, maybe I'm not sane." Trip cut him off. That was seeming like a pretty sure bet, actually. "But I know Robinson had something to do with it."

Daniels looked down at his PADD, which was about as dismissive as you could get. Just as Trip was about to get up and leave the visiting room, with Hayes's permission or without it, Daniels went on: "Do you know anything about Jonathan Archer?"

"Like what?"

Things had cooled off considerably between them. They still shared a cell, but Trip didn't know how much longer for.

"He's the prime suspect in the murder of several test pilots at the Warp Five Complex in San Francisco. I've never been able to conclusively tie him to the crime, but it's haunted me for years." Daniels smiled. "But at least it's something to do on the weekends."

"Oh." Trip frowned. "Why would Jon murder test pilots?"

Daniels shrugged. "I'm not a psychiatrist, Mr. Tucker. But the profilers tell me that the man who committed this crimes is likely a closeted pilot, and unable to reconcile himself with it. But if you have nothing further to add..." Trip shook his head. "My sympathies about your sister."

"Thank you," Trip replied vaguely, his mind racing. He stood up and let Hayes lead him back to his cell.

Jon was there, lying on his bed in sweatpants and a tight-fitting, sleeveless shirt. He was flipping through a beagle magazine, and didn't look up when Trip came in.

"You're a pilot," Trip said.

"What?" That got his attention, at least.

"You killed a bunch of test pilots in San Francisco."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Jon scowled. "I'm no jet-jockey, for Christ's sake. That's disgusting."

"If it's what you are, Jon, then there's nothing wrong with it." Trip looked at him. "If Daniels finds proof it was you, they'll put you on Death Row."

Jon shrugged and stared at his magazine. "So what? They make all the best hip hop records over there."

"I don't want you to die." As he said it, Trip realized it was true. At least not until he killed Robinson.

"Listen." Jon tossed the magazine to one side and sat up. "I like flying sometimes, OK? It's fun. But I'm no pilot."

Trip turned away. "Whatever, Jon." He went to heave himself onto the top bunk, but Jon grabbed him and kissed him hard, his fingers digging into Trip's shoulders and his teeth cutting into Trip's lip. When Jon finally released him, shoving him roughly against the bunk, Trip tasted blood. He stared after him as Jon left the cell, certain that this was as close to true love as he was ever going to get. Which seemed really unfair.

Just before the bell rang for dinner, A.G. Robinson's body was found in the stairwell near T'Paul's cell. Within minutes, thanks to Travis's network of gossips, the news was all over the prison. The leader of the Dead Characters had been garrotted with a length of piano wire. Ent City was being put into lockdown as soon as Shran came back from his "Healing Hands, Helping Minds" convention. And, most importantly, the performance of a "Midsummer Night's Dream" had been postponed indefinitely.

Thanks to Daniels and a crooked judge, Jon was convicted of the crime and sentenced to Death Row. Since things had improved dramatically there in recent years, there was only a twenty-seven year wait before he was to be executed, so Trip decided to take a correspondence course in law and get Jon's conviction overturned, arrange for Maddie Reed's release, and do the taxes of every inmate in Ent City.

Once his inappropriate relations with Malcolm Reed were discovered by Warden Forrest, Guard Hayes was transferred to TOS, home of Sapporo Sulu and the Russian Mafia's Pavel Chekov. And, although T'Paul was murdered by the Dead Characters shortly after Robinson's death, his legacy of leadership was continued by a new inmate, Tuvok, who brought peace to Ent City, arranged the firing of Shran, and worked tirelessly for prisoner's rights, eventually overturning the rule that a visitor had to be of a humanoid species. The day the elderly, arthritic Porthos was allowed to visit Archer on Death Row was the happiest of Trip's life, if you didn't count the thirty-four years before he came to Ent City. But even though Porthos brought a stack of "Space Shuttle Monthly" and "NASA Boys"'s with him, Archer still denied being a closet pilot.

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Gigi Sinclair Crossver slash

Gigi Sinclair

ENT

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Gigi Sinclair
Crossver slash