ENT: Vulcan for...

[John O.]

Re: ENT: Vulcan for... 'Boo!'

Epilogue



“How is he?” the Captain asked when he reached the Doctor on the far end of sickbay. He ignored the strange look of anxiety painted all over T’Pol’s face as he glanced in her direction near the door. She kept her distance from the biobed and its occupant, but she was clearly paying little attention to anything else.

“Oh he’ll live,” the Doctor responded hopefully, if not lacking in his normal exuberance. Archer shook his head.

“One of these days I’m going to have to actually punish him for disobeying orders and saving our asses,” Jonathan laughed as he checked on the Commander who was resting comfortably.

“It looks like whatever he did to shut everything down discharged a pretty debilitating electric shock into him. His brain functions were unaffected but the shock stopped his heart. When he was brought in, however, Crewman Cutler began preparing him for micro-defib until I arrived,” he added with a weak smile.

“I’m sure Trip will want to thank her when he wakes up,” Archer patted the man’s arm and turned to leave.

“Uh, Captain, I’d like to keep him here for at least three days and another day of rest before returning to duty,” Archer nodded over his shoulder and went to Trip’s side. He gave his unconscious friend a smile and a pat on the shoulder before heading for the door. He stopped in front of T’Pol, expecting her to follow him to the bridge. Her eyes were far away, distant even for a Vulcan. She started slightly after Archer watched her for a few moments. She nodded to him and pursed her lips before declining his silent offer to follow. She turned and approached the doctor silently. Archer took the cue with furrowed brows and headed for the bridge.

“Doctor,” T’Pol called quietly as she approached.

“Ah yes, Subcommander, I thought you might wish to speak after the Captain left.”

She did in fact, but as rarely as it occurred, this Vulcan didn’t know what to say, only that something had to be said. The doctor watched her carefully and although he was one, it didn’t take a careful observer of behavior to see she was searching for the words – and failing.

“Subcommander,” he went on, stepping towards her kindly.

“I don’t know what the text means, and I do not believe Crewman Cutler knows either. I have spoken to her and I do not believe it is necessary to inform the Captain of the… um… writing,” he said.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she replied, her voice dry and hoarse. “I would prefer to keep this… private.” He nodded. She turned to depart when he laid a hand on her shoulder lightly.

“Subcommander, if I might make a suggestion. When humans are ill or injured they typically find it comforting to be visited by uh… a friend,” he added cautiously. She tipped her head to one side, spying the Commander in his bed as his chest rose and fell evenly in his sleep.

“I do not believe he is conscious,” she responded clinically. Phlox cracked a smile and suppressed a laugh as he ushered the Subcommander towards the bed lightly by the shoulders. She did not resist, and he continued as they walked.

“For humans it does not matter, he will appreciate the company.”

“He will be unaware of my presence will he not?”

“Even so, if my interpretation of this… writing,” he added, searching for the easiest thing to call it. “…is correct, then your relationship to the Commander might benefit from showing a little… affection.”

She snapped her head at him severely, trying to dissuade his clearly inappropriate implication with an icy look. He gave her a challenging glare right back that in Trip’s words, T’Pol thought to herself, may have said “Oh, boloni”.

He left her and she watched as he disappeared behind a control terminal, suddenly finding herself right next to Trip. Somehow she had managed to be ushered all the way to his bedside and failed to notice.

He breathed quietly but gracefully, she thought, as a support machine of some sort beeped monotonously in the background. His nostrils flared every few moments, his eyelids fluttering in some unseen dream tucked away inside his mind. Deep within it, he chased a cute, brown haired girl with pointy ears around the playground of his pre-school. Even though there had been no such girl.

His skin was rough from hard work, his face was marked with few scars but his arms held the evidence of years of childhood hijinks and injuries. His face – she studied it carefully - unknowingly watching it move only slightly with his breathing for several minutes. The stubble there - an attribute the Vulcans were nearly all disgusted with – was beginning to grow unbidden in the hours since he had been in sickbay. It was rough, the almost animal-like pockets of hair these humans had on their faces. But so different from a Vulcan’s clean and smooth skin, she wondered how it would feel to run her fingers over it…

That was when she realized her fingers were already busy. Tangling with his, squishing the skin of his knuckles together and caressing the firm and powerful center of his palm. It was unthinkable! It was absolutely vulgar for a Vulcan to submit to such affection! She would have recoiled and fled to her quarters to meditate if suddenly he hadn’t squeezed back at her. It filled her fingers and then her arms, her trunk and her whole body with warmth that seized her cold Vulcan uneasiness and sent it far away; melted it into oblivion. The tension disappeared like wind over an Oklahoma prairie, and suddenly a memory came to her. The memory of camping on the plains with an old man well into his seventies, and smoked ham over a campfire with the stars bright overhead and the coyotes howling in the distance. It was no Vulcan memory, and no fantasy – it was vivid, lifelike, and filled her with more calm than anything she had known outside of the deepest meditation.

Her eyes were closed, reaching in futility for the departing memory she didn’t understand but would not let go of without resistance. Suddenly her eyes opened, unaware they been closed, and met Tucker’s, shining brightly back at her from the other side of the memory.

“Hey,” he called to her with a curious but pleasant smile. He almost couldn’t believe she was here, and was happy to see as he glanced about that she was the only one. His hand was haphazardly lying under hers and as he awoke, he instinctively squeezed the soft, warm skin. He was almost worried when she didn’t say anything, but a moment later he didn’t really care that she didn’t speak.

Because she just squeezed back.

 

[Trippy]

Re: ENT: Vulcan for... 'Boo!'

Love it! I really like your stories John O. Keep posting them here!

 

[Mistral]

Re: ENT: Vulcan for... 'Boo!'

Nice finish. Good story, well written. More stories?

 

[kes7]

Re: ENT: Vulcan for... 'Boo!'

I like Trip and T'Pol. I'll have to check out more of your work.

 

[John O.]

Re: ENT: Vulcan for... 'Boo!'

Thanks! guys, I appreciate it. There is one more story in this series. I should probably rename the thread "Vulcan For..." series because it's the series of 3 stories. Here goes.

 

[John O.]

Re: ENT: Vulcan for... 'Boo!'

It doesn't look like I can change the thread title. If an admin would like to, I think, "ENT: Vulcan For..." would be a good title as it is the whole series. Enjoy the conclusion!

Psst: After this I think I will begin posting my other series, Your Mom n' Me here.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Vulcan for ‘Intimate’
Author: John O.
Rating: PG13 – some language/sexuality
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek characters/names/fans’ souls/etc. I call shenanigans.




A/N: Sequel to “Vulcan for Second Date”. Takes place approximately three weeks after Second Date. Our young season 2 pair is exploring the less formal side of “dating” without fully admitting to themselves that’s what it is. When there’s a strange sensor reading from an isolated planet, our pair agrees to join the mission to find the source of the anomaly. Their lives are very soon changed forever and it soon becomes clear that resolving their emotional baggage will only be the first step to the rest of their lives…

Inspired by DS9’s Children of Time.

The idea is “what if this happened offscreen in S2 and we never saw it, then came back post-Terra Prime to help Trip and T’Pol resolve their feelings.”


Chapter 1



0425 – The Bridge

“I don’t know sir, it was a brilliant flash, all the panels went dead and then just came back,” the flustered communications officer sputtered as she placed the headset carefully back over her long black hair. Archer’s brows furrowed together in puzzlement more than concern. He rubbed his eyes and collapsed into the command chair, barely maintaining some semblance of command.

“I ran a full systems diagnostic, that showed a momentary power failure but other than that,” Hoshi trailed off, shaking her head at the fully functional panel.

It was then that Archer looked down and realized he wasn’t in uniform anyway, and so gave himself some leeway as he yawned. A moment later he propped an elbow on his arm as he stared at the comm. officer who continued to scan over her panels.

“I’m waiting,” he snipped with dry humor and an exasperated but teasing grin.

Hoshi spun around to snap at her CO before she bid the monster down. He knows just how to get under my skin, it’s not fair! Jonathan threw an arm on the console and let out an obnoxious yawn that practically echoed through the bridge, perking up an ensign’s ears as he nodded in and out of consciousness. All the damn bells and whistles on this baby and I had to be awakened from a pleasant sleep by a flustered Ensign yelling something about the world ending.

Ok something more like ‘massive energy distortion’, he admitted to himself.

“Weren’t any other systems affected? Navigation, Weapons, Engineering?” Archer glared back in good humor as Hoshi turned with an evil glare and a set jaw.

“Ensign Kent left the helm on autopilot sir, he asked to turn in early and Lieutenant Riley agreed to let him go,” she snapped in a low voice. Riley, missing his name being mentioned, snored lightly from the rear station. Archer glanced through droopy eyes, first to the empty helm, noticing for the first time that it was unoccupied and finally to the drowsy young man at Tactical.

“Lieutenant…”

The man dozed silently through his Captain’s soft-toned call to attention. He was too exhausted for a court-martial, letting the young man off the hook as he turned away. The bridge was empty but for himself, Sato and Riley. Archer sighed, rubbing his eyes openly while Hoshi stared through her own sore eyelids at the empty viewer.

“We’ve got to do something about this shift,” Archer moaned.

“Sir?”

He looked up in confusion. She watched him expectantly for a moment.

“The anomaly?”

“Right,” he sighed as he rubbed his eyes and stood.

“Do a full system’s check and uh, report it to Trip in the mo-”

Suddenly the bridge shook violently, going black before the running lights and crimson-hued emergency power bulbs switched on in the bulkhead corners. Archer’s mind leapt into action and he slapped the console adjacent to his chair. The bridge shook again and emergency power failed, returned, and then failed again.

“Archer to all hands, damage report! Engineering, report!”

There was no reply for several seconds while the alarms sang and red lights flickered through the bridge. It was a rude awakening for poor Lieutenant Riley, who sprang from his console with the first disturbance and now looked to his Captain in panic.

“Orders, sir?”

Archer turned, glad to see the Lieutenant’s eyes were open. “I want a damage report, all decks, and find out why the hell Engineering isn’t answering!”

“Comms are down sir, I’ll have them back in…” Hoshi trailed off as her fingers flew through different schemes of control interfaces. In frustration she slammed her fist on the terminal with a grunt, drawing a slightly surprised look from her Captain. She dropped from the seat and ripped the side panel open to access the circuits directly. A few moments later the ensign climbed to her feet, giving Archer a brusque nod and opening a channel to Engineering with a loud beep. Finally, the bridge crew burst from the lift doors and scattered like ants to their respective stations. Archer looked about, noticing T’Pol was not among them.

“Archer to Engineering, Trip?” he asked with a questioning tone. A moment later voice responded, but it was a woman’s.

“Hess here sir, it’s a mess down here but we’re picking up the pieces, are we under attack sir?”

Archer looked knowingly to Hoshi who just sighed in frustration. A stray lock of her raven hair fell across her face, her appearance mussed by the adrenaline rush. The shaking had subsided and emergency power was slowly climbing back to full strength.

“Some kind of anomaly.”

Archer rubbed his mouth in irritation, fighting back the urge to snap.

“Where’s Trip, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t know sir, he hasn’t reported in yet,” Archer groaned to himself in frustration. Where the hell could his Chief Engineer be during a crisis like this? He leaned into the com., preparing a ship wide PA to call for the engineer like a lost child when an exhaustive voice rang out distantly from the back of Engineering.

“Here, Cap’n!” the southern accent replied as the clanging hatch being flung open in the background gave away his last minute arrival. Archer squinted in irritation, the sleep beginning to pull on his eyelids once again as the panic and adrenaline subsided.

“Mr. Tucker, have a damage report ready by 0800 hours. Archer, out!” He moved to address the ship when T’Pol entered the bridge finally, looking as composed as usual. He spared her an irritated eye as his science officer rounded the bridge to her station before he gave the order.

“Senior staff to the situation room, 0800 hours.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

0755 – Corridors

“So, you figure out what caused our little four-AM wakeup call?” Trip asked with a light smile as he met the Sub-commander at a tee in the corridor. They turned together, walking beside one another towards the briefing.

“If I recall correctly, we were both quite awake.”

“Tell me about it,” Trip groaned through a yawn as he tried in vein to rub the sleep from his eyes.

“Vulcan endurance is far superior to that of a human. Perhaps you should request a stimulant from Dr. Phlox if you wish to continue our activities,” T’Pol raised a secretly cocky eyebrow at her human companion.

“Ha – Ha, so chess isn’t my game. My game is out there, I’ll find it,” he assured her with a grin.

“I believe the terms of the challenge were, ‘an intellectual game’,” she countered.

“Your race has a number of… competitive activities that do not fit that description,” she continued in low tones.

“Many of which involve far too much… contact,” she returned with mock disgust.

“Oh, really? And you’ve seen some of these ‘contact activities’ that disgust your ‘evolved Vulcan sensibilities’?” he asked. She turned to him with an empty stare and held his eyes for several moments.

“Unfortunately,” she replied simply. Trip exploded with laughter as they passed a smug-faced ensign who nervously eyed his superior officers as he squeezed between them.

“You see that?” Trip asked with furrowed brows after the man was down the corridor. He watched the young man disappear behind them and turned back to T’Pol. She didn’t reply.

“Have you noticed people acting kind of funny around here? People lookin’ at us weird lately whenever we’re workin’ together?” he murmured quietly as another crewman approached.

“I have not,” T’Pol replied absently. This time it was a pretty young woman of about twenty-five. She was doing a lot of lookin’ alright, but not of the ‘weird’ variety. T’Pol watched the woman approach. She eyed the young woman, her pupils instinctively dilating. In one step, T’Pol’s shoulders came into light, but close contact with the Tucker’s, her forearms relaxing until their uniforms brushed into one another’s as they walked and her posture shifted unconsciously.

All of this in a fraction of a second was like a blaring klaxon, screaming a biological warning. Instinctively, T’Pol met the woman with a particularly icy Vulcan stare, locked in a contest. When the other woman’s gaze fell to the floor instead of daring to look at Tucker, T’Pol knew she had won. A moment later, when she realized what had just come over her she flushed a tinge of green and began to review in her mind what had just happened.

“T’Pol?”

She absentmindedly met the Chief Engineer’s thoughtful glance as they stood toe-to-toe in front of the briefing room.

“I didn’t think Vulcans spaced out,” Trip chuckled as he reached to punch the keypad, still watching her. She returned his gaze absently as she simultaneously reached for the pad as well. His jest melted into a warmer smile, instinctively allowing his fingers to remain atop hers as they pressed against the panel for the briefest of moments. It was only too soon that the door opened and Archer appeared from the inside with a questioning look. Both snapped their hands to neutral ground and marched past a confused Archer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Situation Room


“I believe the disturbance was a burst of radiation from a nearby star system,” T’Pol declared.

“It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen,” Archer returned with a slightly challenging tone.

“There is one possibility. A theoretical phenomena I studied once, many years ago on Vulcan,” T’Pol replied to the Captain’s query.

“I believe among Earth physicists it is known as gravitophotonic coupling,” T’Pol informed them.

“Gravitophotonic?” Hoshi asked in puzzlement. The Captain eased into his chair with a curious glint as T’Pol straightened.

“It was the subject of much debate on Vulcan when we first developed quantum theory nearly a millennia ago. It was our early attempt to reconcile gravitation with the quantum world, however, it inevitably failed.” Archer winced as T’Pol mindfully reminded her human crew of Vulcan’s superior scientific progress.

“As I understand,” she glanced towards Commander Tucker. “It received similar attention on Earth during the early 20th century. It was originally developed by a physicist called Burkhard Heim as an attempt at a unified theory. It was briefly accepted around 2020. However, experimental verification of the existence of subspace invalidated the theory and it was later revised to more accurately describe observed subspace geometry.” Archer cracked a smile at Trip when he spied the unintentionally boggled look on Trip’s face.

“Have fun in multidimensional manifolds lecture, Trip?” Archer asked. The engineer rolled his eyes with a smirk as he tongued the inside of his mouth. The crew awaited the explanation of the inside joke.

“Yes I did,” he snapped back defensively with a hidden smile. His eyes narrowed and he trailed off. “Even if I didn’t always make it to class, and spent more time with Natalie”, he shrugged as Hoshi giggled. Hoshi “oooh’d” aloud, teasing the Commander who turned a few shades of pink despite his best efforts. The room’s attention had shifted from T’Pol, luckily for her, as she looked on with a rather displeased demeanor. Suddenly, Trip threw a finger at his Captain.

“But, I did pass that course… Which is more’an I can say for some,” he mumbled ruefully through a mischievous smile. T’Pol watched clinically as the Captain and Commander exchanged barbs until Jon’s laughter died away into a serious glint.

“So, T’Pol, where did this phenomenon come from? And how far from this system will it affect us?”

T’Pol turned towards the view screen at the front of the room, moving a previously-unseen hand remote through the air. Suddenly the blackness on the screen came to light and a silver planet with a wavy haze around its atmosphere filled the picture. Hoshi’s eyes widened at the sight of it, she usually didn’t follow the science at this table but she usually found T’Pol’s visual presentations quite beautiful.

“It came from this planet. In the Vulcan database it is designated Beta-Epsilon seven,” she continued clicking through several sensor screens.

“Well that’s kind of a dull name isn’t it?” Trip asked with a playful frown. The Sub-commander met his mocking face and watched him chuckle at her stolid response. On the outside she ignored him, but inside she indulged for an instant to watch him smile – a thing so alien for her to even consider.

“T’Pol?” the Captain echoed a second time. “How exactly did it affect our systems?” Archer asked with a hint of curiosity. When T’Pol turned and continued to answer his question, he shot a glance at the obvious source of the Vulcan’s distraction, a flicker of curiosity tickling at his brain.

“… Approximately four light-years from our current position. I believe the source is artificial. However, there is no evidence of recent life and it is classified as uninhabited in the Vulcan database.”

“Think ya’ll missed something?” Trip asked as he straightened in his chair. She met his gaze this time with sterner stuff and responded in kind.

“Unlikely,” she returned with a stubborn eyebrow. A smile crept across his lips for the third time in the last five minutes just from watching T’Pol. He rested an elbow on the table, fingers across his face to conceal his goofy grin, knowing full well his attention to the Vulcan in public could become noticeable.

“It is most likely a remnant of an abandoned or extinct civilization that has recently become activated for reasons yet unknown. Captain, I would like the opportunity to study the device and perhaps retrieve it from the planet’s surface if possible,” the Captain shot into the upright position in his chair.

“Are you sure? How do you know it won’t throw out another burst of,” he gesticulated as he groped for the word.

“Gravitophotonic radiation.” T’Pol answered. The Captain nodded.

“Like any other low-intensity emissions, we can block the field with enhanced shielding. The Enterprise’s systems are far too distributed for sufficient shielding. A shuttlepod, however, could be sufficiently protected.” The Captain turned a wary eye to Tucker, who watched with hands folded on the table quietly, trying to avoid the Vulcan’s eye lest he should cock another goofy smile. Hoshi had already seen the last.

Dammit, Trip thought. I can see in her eyes what she’s gonna go around telling everybody I’m smitten…

“Trip, is it safe?” Trip’s head snapped up and back into action.

“I think so sir,” he responded, chancing a look T’Pol’s way.

“I’ve had a chance to look at what T’Pol proposes and I think the away team can be kept safe. But this thing comes in bursts. That’s what hit us. So we won’t really know for sure until it’s too late if our shielding isn’t enough.”

Jonathan’s brows furrowed as he frowned, a disconcerting mannerism T’Pol knew she had to counter quickly should her proposal survive the next few seconds.

“However, there is no reason to believe our preparations will be insufficient,” she quickly reminded Tucker. He nodded his head sideways in half-agreement.

“Enterprise will have to be out of range of the burst or you’ll be disabled pretty quickly,” Trip continued. The Captain nodded and then shot a glance back at the Commander.

“Are you sure you want to go on this one, Commander? Phlox is in his hibernation cycle and I really don’t want to see Crewman Cutler try to perform open heart surgery on you,” he laughed as the engineer frowned.

“Yeah, ha-ha,” Tucker snapped playfully.

“I need to go on this one Cap’n. If anything goes wrong out there, I’ll need to be there to get her back in one piece.” The room went still for only a moment before Trip got red in the face and nearly slapped himself.

“The Shuttlepod,” he trailed off while pursing his lips and fiddling his thumbs together. Jonathan suppressed a smile while Hoshi made no effort to resist in any regard. Archer nodded and stood to signal the end of the briefing.

“Prepare to embark by 1300 hours. Dismissed.”

As the Captain stood and followed them out of the conference room, T’Pol furrowed her brows curiously at the smirking Ensign Sato as she filed out from behind.

 

[Trippy]

Done!

 

[John O.]

Chapter 2


“Adjust your descent vector by point seven degrees normal,” a calm voice came from the seat beside him. Tucker watched the darkness of space disappear as a beautiful blue horizon filled the viewer, land unseen for thousands of miles on the water-rich planet below.

“I’m comin’ in just fine”, he mused absently as a smile broke across his face. Trip loved the water and immediately below them hung a planet full of it. It had a grayish tinge that turned more purplish than the soft blue oceans of Earth, but it was close enough to home to pluck at his heart.

Along the horizon, however, bright green rimmed the planet’s edge, growing larger as they approached the land mass. In the shuttle Commander Tucker, Sub-Commander T’Pol, Lieutenant Reed, Ensign Mueller and Ensign Sato rode quietly save for light conversation between the trio of subordinates at the rear of the pod.

T’Pol sat beside Tucker near the front of the pod observing several readouts and corroborating the measurements on her own Vulcan tricorder device. She was focusing on a sensor array displaying particularly intriguing tachyon residue far deeper in subspace than she had expected to find. Tachyon detection was a feature the array was not designed for. The upgrade was at least five years ahead of Starfleet’s sensor technology – a fact which lead T’Pol to conveniently forget to inform the Vulcan High Command she had made a few field upgrades to the Enterprise and her shuttlepods. The act was purely logical, her efficiency as a science officer would be drastically hindered without the proper tools. The enhancements were far more effective on Enterprise’s systems, but the shuttlepod upgrades were sufficient to pick up a faint trace of tachyon emissions. The subspace tachyon field density approached unity as the pod descended. However, before T’Pol could realize the catastrophic consequence, her attention wandered.

It felt like a tickle in her mind, but had substance and form – like a word. Beautiful… As if the word tapped her on the shoulder she turned to find her human companion studying her. For several moments they held each other’s glance as Hoshi surreptitiously spied on them from the rear, amazed at how obvious the star-crossed couple allowed their affection to show when it seemed no one was looking. Hoshi could not quite believe that it was almost as if the two did not even notice it themselves…

T’Pol returned her concentration to the tachyon emissions, but only for an instant long enough to look back up at Trip in horror.

“Comm-!” she began to shout in alarm as the shuttlepod rocked violently, losing attitude control and spinning our of control into the atmosphere.

While Tucker strapped himself in, T’Pol turned to help Sato and Mueller who failed to secure their harnesses and knocked helplessly from bulkhead to bulkhead. Alarms and sirens blared throughout the pod. Hoshi screamed as her head came crashing against the bulkhead with another rough jarring of the crew. Finally, Hoshi came to a crashing halt against the floor as she felt the distant tug of Malcolm’s arm around her upper chest. Locked into his harness, he hoisted her up from the floor as best he could. Malcolm had also secured Mueller who had been seated immediately adjacent to him.

Hoshi was now upright in her seat, a trickle of blood and a monstrous bruise decorating her forehead as it bobbed unconsciously with the rocking of the pod. She swooned in and out of consciousness, catching only fragments of conversation as the alarms continued and the pod spun further out of control.

A moment later, “Enterprise!... ‘is shuttlepod two, I repe-“

She lost consciousness again, just before hearing a call for emergency beam-out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Day 1


It had to be a dream. He couldn’t see but the sounds and smells were as familiar as the scent of home. It was like the Florida beach – at least it felt like it. The crunchy sand under his head as he tried to move and the hot sun beating onto his already pink complexion felt like South Florida to Trip as he groaned and tried to sit up. He opened his eyes, blinking several times under a blinding light. Suddenly it all came crashing back in one chaotic blur of sounds and images and he realized this definitely wasn’t Florida.

He quickly sat up and looked about, searching for any sign of T’Pol or the others. He immediately stood up, taking a survey of his immediate surroundings. He was standing nearly a hundred meters from the waterline of a wide beach with a calm tide lapping against the sand. On either side the beach fell away into the insides of the island continent – indicating that Trip currently found himself on some sort of sandy outcropping of land nearest the sea. His uniform was dirty, full of sand and pleated against his skin with sweat. Beads of moisture had seeped through, darkening the neckline and upper chest of his tunic.

It was clear that no one else from the pod was nearby. Next on his priority list – the shuttlepod. It was nowhere to be seen, yet how could he have been separated from it? He remembered picking T’Pol up from a rough fall and hearing her call for a beam-out, but the pod must have been too deep into the planet’s atmosphere to get a lock. Or perhaps, he thought, the anomalies on the planet interfered with the transporters in some way. In either case, he was here and appeared to be alone.

His arms crossed instinctively as he recalled the events aboard the shuttlepod just before waking to find himself in this place. The landing must have been hard, as he could not remember anything below the moment when they called for the beam-out. He gave up trying to solve the mystery for more immediate concerns – food, shelter and a deep concern – for T’Pol. He walked down the beach towards the light foliage that crowned the edge which led further inland.

Given the circumstances, he thought, it wasn’t such a bad place to be stranded – temporarily, anyway. Leisurely looking up at the planet’s sun he estimated it wasn’t noon just yet but already at least 40 degrees centigrade and his neck and legs were already dreadfully hot. Just as he was about to give in to the heat and shed his uniform, he found a patch of direly needed shade. He let out a grateful groan, collapsing on a large boulder to take refuge from the merciless heat.

After walking about a kilometer from where he awoke, he found that his shady refuge was thanks to a tall, palm-tree like plant that stood out several meters from a denser area of vegetation. The sunlight crept only to the edge of the jungle and abruptly ended as the grassy canopy within locked it out. Relieved of the sun’s assault, he began to trounce through the cool jungle plants, but then realized that the refuge could hold unforeseen dangers. Predators, dangerous insects, even plants with toxic pollen were just the tip of a nightmare that would have Phlox screaming in agony once the Commander returned home. When I return home, he reminded himself. After several minutes cautiously looking through the jungle, he stopped in a circle of somewhat flat ground where the taller plants gave way to a sheltered grass-bed about three to four meters wide. He figured this was as good a place as any to try to get somebody’s attention.

“T’Pol!” “Malcolm!” “Hoshi!” “Mueller!”

He cupped his hands, shouting in every direction until he was hoarse and out of breath. It had been a few hours since his awakening near the sea and the temperature was dropping. He decided he would setup camp in the grass-bed, although it wouldn’t be much of a camp since he didn’t have any gear. He looked around in all directions, trying to logically deduce in what direction the shuttlepod might lie. He finally lit out in a random direction, making as detailed a mental map of the area as he could. As he passed particularly larger tree trunks and tall palms, he used nearby barbs and branches to tear a piece of cloth from his uniform and mark the trail.

It was nearly another hour in walking and shouting for his crewmen when he finally gave up for the night, since the jungle was getting darker. It was very unlikely he would find anyone tonight and the temperature was dropping fast. The jungle was shaded during the day – and it was hoing to be damned pitch black any moment, Tucker realized. He backtracked towards the flat he had discovered for shelter, and as he ducked overhanging branches and hopped over thick undergrowth, he soon realized something was peculiar about this jungle. Something about it didn’t sit right in his gut, and he scrunched up his face in dismay as he stopped and looked around anxiously. Not a sound. Silence.

Every forest like this one he had come across, both terrestrial and alien, held in common the buzz of hoots and howls and sometimes growls once the sun fell. The biological symphony could be unnerving but the silence was unbearable. Since entering the jungle he was concerned for the threat of predators within, but knew that after scanning the wide open beach that the forest was the only chance he had to find his friends or the shuttlepod.

The silence of the jungle was no comfort either, and the dim light between the trees became almost black. He realized that some darker unseen danger may be responsible for the unseemly quiet. He quickly avoided dwelling on fear by taking note of each landmark-piece of cloth as he passed it, and not without a sense of pride in his outdoorsman capability. He would be sure to point it out to T’Pol when he found her.

He enjoyed the outdoors back home, as rare as it was that he could spare a wink to go off fishing or camping since being assigned to Enterprise. Now back in high school, he recalled with a bright grin. Those were the days, he thought, as endless streams of memories came back in a whirling barrage of imagery. River rafts, all day hikes, frog gigging and his very first engineering feat in the form of a beer-can pyramid. Not to mention his first all-nighter with a girl in the confines of a 1-person sleeping bag down by Horseshoe Crick. He may have been born in the wrong century to be a frontiersman, but the same thrill coursed through his veins. He just preferred to explore without the bugs and stick to starships.

Finally, he returned to the flat he had discovered and somehow felt a little more at ease there than in the dark and close confines of the jungle. In addition to its comfort, the flat came complete with sunroof – a gap in the overhead canopy. It allowed what little light remained from the setting sun to pour through and make the flat significantly warmer than the surrounding jungle. He looked around for anything resembling a structure to rest on or against and as luck would have it, he found a large boulder with an indentation on one side just large enough to crook one’s head into. He tore several harmless looking plants from the ground and mashed them into a pile. He added to it several tufts of grass that he tore from the edges of the flat, being careful not to remove any of the natural cushion where he intended to sleep. He packed the hunks of grass and soft leaves together and mashed them into place in the indentation of the boulder. Several fell out of place as he did so, drawing the frustrated engineer to repeatedly pick up several fallen leaves and hunks of grass to return to their rightful place to be his pillow.

He seated himself against the rock and found the sun had fallen much faster than he expected while he was fashioning his grass-pillow. The increasing speed with which night fell led Tucker to hypothesize that an anomaly must affect the planet’s axis of rotation and cause the sun to set exponentially. His mind wandered to T’Pol’s report, searching the memory blindly for something in her study of the planet that might explain such a phenomenon. Or for that matter, he thought, for the phenomenon of suddenly waking up lost and alone on the planet’s surface with no sign of the shuttlepod. He frowned in discomfort as he realized how much more likely he and T’Pol were to get out of here alive if they could work together. He sighed gruffly as the stars peaked from the blackness above, drawing his absentminded gaze while he continued on the train of thought leading directly to the science officer.

He desperately wanted to find T’Pol more than the shuttlepod or the others, but his command responsibilities and common sense reminded him that shelter and supplies were the number one priorities to survival. It wouldn’t do him a whole lot of good if he found T’Pol and they both starved and/or froze to death.

As the night grew colder, he kept telling himself that, but it didn’t feel any truer. Somewhere on this island, he thought, T’Pol could be hurt, freezing or dead and as badly as he wanted to, he couldn’t do anything about it.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Day 2


In the heart of extremes lies the nature of the Jungle. Dreadfully cold at night, and stiflingly muggy under the light of day. And as Commander Tucker discovered upon his second awakening on the mystery planet, the peculiar silence of the jungle night contrasted the sights, sounds and movements that bristled through its branches during the day. An animal, a creature or a critter disappeared with the clatter of rocks and the rustle of bushes, rarely in sight as they scattered from sight.

He was stiff and weakened slight without food, requiring some effort to lift himself from the bed of grass. It must be early morning, he thought, as the sun did not yet peek directly down the hole of the canopy above. His neck was cramped and his head was sore from the solid rock beneath it as he tossed and turned all night. Several times during the night, the encroaching freeze of night stuck to him so brutally it woke him and he shivered violently. At long last, he began to pray for the return of the scalding daylight, and was rewarded as far off birds began to welcome the rising sun.

During his restless sleep, a plague of images haunted his unconscious mind. It was T’Pol, freezing and alone in a dark corner somewhere out of sight but not out of mind. He tried running to her, seizing her in his arms and giving every iota of his body heat to her shivering body and chattering teeth, but he couldn’t. Light began to pour in, filling the darkness with sights, sounds and heat – and that is when he awoke. He winced, recalling the nightmare vividly. It struck a fire into his resolve and he threw his arms back and forth wildly, stretching the sleep and stiffness from the sinews.

“Alright, Tucker, let’s find your crew,” he muttered, clapping his hands together and rubbing them vigorously. It was warmer than the frigid night, but his breath still condensed and became visible as he breathed. He set out into the foliage to identify his first cloth-marker. Taking note of it, he turned at a right angle and set out in the perpendicular direction and laid another marker after several meters. He would systematically search out a few kilometers in each direction each day, hoping to find the shuttlepod or another crewman. The latter possibility seemed more likely given that there were four others to find and only one shuttlepod, assuming they all survived. The thought that he could be the only survivor terrified him for a moment but he quickly squelched it away. He knew it was useless and would only make him worry and panic. On the bright side, he thought, Enterprise should be conducting a search and rescue mission that very moment. He was sure, however, that Archer would ensure the same thing wouldn’t happen again before sending another team. It was the right thing to do, but it might mean an extended stay on this deserted planet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Day 4


He was hungry. It had been almost three days since he had eaten and the water source he managed to find made him gag. He wasn’t sure if it was always a bad idea to drink rainwater or if it was just something on this planet that made it unpalatable. He forced himself to down some of it to keep from dehydrating but the sun was working him down faster than he could possibly stomach the water – which was only reachable when it rained as it had the night before. He had to find fresh water. He had to find T’Pol.

His first “meal” was mere hunks of grass he tried to clean the dirt from in pools of rainwater, but that didn’t go over so well and the grass was soon back on the ground. After that experiment, fortunes continued to frown on him. He searched high and low for two solid days, remaining in the shade to trap his body moisture in and keep from dehydrating. Soon he would need to find a way to hunt the local game, but survival skills out here so far had rendered meager results. Every Starfleet course on wilderness survival assumed you had at your disposal at least one tool or one resource, of which the chief engineer had none. He considered finding the nearest tuft of soft grass he laid eyes on and forcing it down his throat to calm the thunder in his belly calling for sustenance. Still, he quelled the rising hunger and kept searching.

Night fell, and the jungle once again fell silent. It now seemed, however, that even the rhythmic lapping of the ocean was barely to be heard – dissipated and lost through the miles and miles of jungle he had traversed in four days. He rubbed his hands together briskly in his new flat, a more open area that he took residence upon now that his search had expanded further from the shoreline. He found himself drifting into a daydream, of T’Pol warm by his side in this deserted paradise. It was dangerous during the day, treacherous at night and all the while depressing in its abject desertedness. But the sun was warm, the sand was soft and the stars were bright – and in his heart he knew things could be worse. Still, a man could only dream of so much on an empty stomach, and soon the pleasant pipedreams of his arms wrapped about a content T’Pol were mercilessly torn away by the familiar call of hunger even as he slept.

Day 6


He wasn’t hungry. He was starving. He tracked through the jungle furiously, having once again tried to stomach a handful of grass and dirty rainwater. It kept his stomach at bay for a good hour – until it came back up. The very act of vomiting had only weakened him further and tensed the muscles in his neck and throat until his mouth was very dry and in danger of cracking and bleeding. That was all he needed, he thought. Open sores in a god-forsaken jungle hole like…

Just then, something scurried. He froze in place as the crackle of a leaf underfoot brought him to a halt. He blinked, hoping whatever creature or critter lying in wait nearby was safe and healthy to eat. But aside from the critter, without a weapon to stab or a fire to cook; this meal wasn’t going to be pretty. But it wasn’t grass or muddy water, and that made it #1 on the “Day 6 Without Food” menu for Trip.

 

[John O.]

For several seconds he remained still, desperate in his resolve to find this bastard critter as he mentally cursed it. Just then, as if called by name, a squeaking nose emerged from the hollow of a nearby log. It was a muskrat-looking creature with light brown hair, looked to weigh about five kilos and anxious as all hell to get away from the big hulking creature towering above it. Trip leapt in for the kill, going at the animal with both hands hoping only to grab it and – do what, he wasn’t sure. Strangle it if need be, his stomach had gone empty long enough and the painful hollow made quick work of his normally squeamish appetite for live catch. While Trip scavenged wildly for the chunky animal, it scampered once again with surprising speed, disappearing into the murky underbrush of the jungle floor.

“Dammit!” he screamed into the jungle. He kicked a few logs out of place and picked up a medium sized branch and snapped it on his knee, only to be sorry for it a moment later. The raspberry pulsed above the knee of his uniform, a round bruise aching from the force it endured. He screamed in frustration, “Sonofabitch!” and kicked another large log. This time, his prey was revealed as the muskrat-like vermin sprang from its coop and was forced to run across several meters of open ground before it could again take refuge under hiding. Trip’s eyes glowed like a savage and he took off after the rodent in a blind run. He passed the place the creature went into hiding, cursing it as he saw it get away. He stopped and turned to give chase back to its hiding place when he took a step and caught his foot on a branch. He lurched towards the floor, meeting a dried log face first and splitting his lip. He rolled forward and sprawled onto his back, the canopy above turning and twisting before coming to a halt. It looked rather peaceful, a voice inside him thought, as he tasted blood dribbling from his crimson lips. His eyes watered with tears for the first time since childhood, not sad – but deject, hopeless angry tears.

In that moment something snapped inside Charles Tucker III and he leapt to his feet, lighting into a dead run. He didn’t know where, he didn’t care – he just wanted to find someone or something. A voice of desperation begged the next bend might somehow reveal T’Pol or Malcolm, or Jon or even Porthos. He didn’t want to be alone in this damn jungle anymore, to freeze in the nights or sweat in the days and wretch in the evenings immediately after supper. He ran without care through the jungle for several minutes in frustration and panic. He screamed at the logs that tripped up his footing and cursed the pricks and thorns that tore at his sides as the leafy floor beneath him disappeared. The welling tears streaked his cheeks now, but none replaced them. Absolving the misery, the power of anger and madness washed them away. As the trees flashed by in a flurry, his eyes lay set, unblinking on the next branch, the next corner. The crunch and crash of his feet on the grass became more distant as his heart pounded louder and louder. But he kept going, his heart fluttering in panic, the very same panic he consciously hoarded off days before – now strengthened by an empty stomach and a welling heart. He was terrified for T’Pol, and felt all the more guilty that his own state had so overwhelmed him that he was beyond reason. He couldn’t help her even if he found her, so far-gone was he from rational thought.

Just then, he tripped, fell and saw no more, but dreamt a beautiful dream.

 

[kes7]

I just read this and checked out Triaxian Silk, and I can't get enough! I love the development you're giving to my favorite ENT pairing. It's all really believable.

 

[John O.]

There is more Trip and T'Pol there than you could possibly take . And we're still going. In fact, as hard as it is to believe, there are more submissions per month than there ever have been since we opened in December 2006. Crazy, huh?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 3


Day 8


There was a blizzard of images, thoughts and sensations, but he could not distinguish any one of them. Dreams, reality, and phantoms amalgamated into one incomprehensible form, blowing by him as he desperately tried to snatch a piece of consciousness. He drifted in, but could hardly distinguish the real from imaginary, so when T’Pol kneeled above him he unknowingly groaned aloud in frustration.

“Not you again, you’re not real. And it isn’t very nice to come haunting me like this when I know you’re not real,” he complained as he adjusted to the dream world’s bright light. T’Pol raised an eyebrow at him as she laid an unseen object by his side and rose to step away. It may have been a dream to him, but her retreating form was still an unhappy sight and he moved to rise and stop her from leaving again.

“Wai- AHH!” he screamed aloud. If nothing else, the searing pain shooting from one neuron to the next as he tried to lift his crooked ankle seemed real enough for Tucker to begin regaining lucidity. He was on his back somewhere, a hard rock surface of some kind but his lower half lay on something softer to brace his legs. T’Pol remained out of sight as he craned his neck to look about him, noting the open cave entrance only a few meters behind his head. From it, poured the light of day for a few meters, fading off into a penumbra in the area he laid upon, where it was cooler. Deeper into the cavern, total darkness hid T’Pol from him. He was only now beginning to realize that every muscle in his body ached, and a terrible pain throbbed behind his eyes. He lurched again to sit up. He blinked hard against the light that spilled in above his head and groaned as he became nauseous and fell back against the hard surface again.

“Do not try to move, you will aggravate your condition further.” She returned with a steel pot and various field utensils, indicating she had apparently located the shuttlepod. But, Tucker wasn’t nearly lucid enough to realize everything around him was real. Neither of them spoke as she dabbed a moist cloth on his forehead, arms and – as he suddenly realized, bared chest. His tunic had been removed to keep him cool, but he was assured by the feeling of the material that his pants were in fact still in tact. A warm but welcomed breeze blew in from the cave entrance during a long pause, tickling the hair across his chest. He let his head fall back again and collected his thoughts, instilling some semblance of calm into the Commander. After her wet-wiping and other strange ministrations he didn’t fully understand – or protest – Trip worked up the strength to raise himself on his elbows.

“Where are we, and how did you find me?” T’Pol wrung out the cloth in a small pot and returned the pot to a very neat and organized quarter of the cavern where several other tools and supplies lay. He noted the equipment and finally realized the implication but held off on asking of the shuttlepod and crew.

“I found you unconscious in the jungle. I brought you back here to heal your injuries. You were unconscious for several hours until you awoke in delirium. I tried to calm you but soon you became ill and again fell asleep for several hours.”

He blinked and looked around. A rancid-smelling residue only a foot or so from him corroborated her story and he winced in disgust. She raised an eyebrow, her hand falling softly into his chest to keep him stationary but exerting only light pressure.

“You should continue to rest, you are still quite ill and your ankle is broken.”

He glanced down and realized it must have come from the fall. He also sported a large bloody bruise above one eyebrow. There was a pause and then he cocked his jaw and replied, his voice cracking in dryness.

”You said… in ‘delirium’?” he asked in confusion. For several moments her hand lay with secret contentment against his hard chest. Finally, she removed it.

“Yes,” she rose and retrieved a canteen from her stash of survival gear.

“You consumed the local vegetation, I assume?”

He nodded. “After a few days I was gettin’ a little hungry,” he chuckled, trying to lighten his own mood.

“The Vulcan expedition several years ago found that the local plant life contained mild toxins which also caused emotional outbursts in the Vulcan survey team.” His eyebrows went together as he processed this.

“Mild?!” he retorted.

“To Vulcans,” she reminded him as she handed him the canteen. He took it from her as he shook his head. Enjoying a long drought, he returned the canteen with a pleasant sigh.

“Why wasn’t that in your report?” he spat back at her. She took it in stride, raising the eyebrow of a disapproving mother who was repeating a warning after the fact.

“I believe it was.” She stated flatly, fully realizing he knew it.

“I haven’t had clean freshwater since we got here,” he changed the subject, wiping his mouth and attempting to sit up.

“I see you found the shuttlepod,” he asked nodding at the stash of equipment and supplies.

“Yes, I awoke and found myself alone in the jungle. I was searching only for a few hours before I came upon it. It appears to have been significantly damaged in the crash. None of the electrical systems are operable but the emergency stores and equipment were intact. I decided it more pertinent to search for other survivors than attempt repairs.”

”Lucky,” he snorted as he wiped his brow and glanced at the bristling heat of daylight through the cave entrance.

“I walked for days and never found it. Got so hungry I tried to kill an animal with my bare hands,” he threw his hands together as if he were choking the imaginary rodent.

“I believe your hysteria was likely a result of the psychological effects of the toxin. It creates only a mild disturbance to Vulcans, however for humans its effects are much more potent. However, were it to have remained in your system, you likely would have seized and fallen into a coma. It is fortunate your body rejected the plant. ”

He closed his eyes and the pounding in his head got worse.

“Didn’t feel so fortunate at the time,” he complained.

She turned back to him, absorbing the sight of him alive and more-or-less well, before returning to the gear. She rearranged pieces of equipment before returning. She was surprised that Tucker did not argue in this case that a Vulcan definitely faired better than he. He was silent for several moments, recalling the fear he had for T’Pol’s wellbeing and felt silent relief that she was in fact doing better than he.

“How an’ the hell did we end up so far apart?” he asked, breaking the silence. As she began to speak he sat up, slapped his thighs in frustration and interrupted.

“In fact, what in the hell happened in the first place?”

”I believe we rematerialized from the transporter beam at apparently random locations on the planet’s surface… or approximately on the planet’s surface,” she added quietly. Tucker looked back at her in confusion.

“What do you mean, approximately? ” She took a breath and instinctively moved closer to him.

“On the third day I found Lieutenant Reed. He had suffered severe trauma as from a great fall, however, there were no cliffs or precipices nearby. I believe he rematerialized in the air above the planet’s surface.” Trip nearly choked on the shock and himself instinctively moved closer to T’Pol.

“Malcolm’s dead?” he asked in a lowered voice.

She nodded silently. His gaze fell to the ground in sadness. What a useless way to go, he thought. Knowing Malcolm the way he did he was sure the man would have wanted a more ceremonious end. And as he would have deserved, he was sure. Suddenly, his intellect snapped back into motion and realized something didn’t make sense.

“Wait a minute, you’re telling me he reappeared in mid-air and fell to the ground? How in the hell does that happen? The transporter beam is unidirectional, it can’t be reconstituted anywhere else… and hell even if it could there’s no pattern buffer here, there’s nowhere for the signal to go while it’s reintegrating…” he complained. She nodded and when he trailed off she began to explain.

“I do not fully understand it. However, I have a theory.”

“I thought you might,” Tucker smiled at her appreciatively.

“There was a sensor reading in the shuttlepod indicating a rise in tachyon emissions, just before we lost control.” His eyebrows drew together in curiosity.

“Shuttlepod sensors don’t have tachyon detectors.”

She met his eyes and dryly replied, “Vulcan sensors do.” For the first time in days he watched her eyes dance behind her Vulcan curtain and smiled back at her. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch his face, a most illogical urge. The task at hand was survival, and she must attend to it until Enterprise can mount a rescue. This brought her mind back to the present discussion.

“I believe the anomaly on the planet was building to another burst, perhaps as a result of our incursion into the atmosphere, it is possible it is motion-sensitive. When I called for the emergency beam-out and the transport initialized, I believe it set off a cascading reaction which redirected the paths of the energy beams back towards the planet.” Tucker was already shaking his head, anticipating her next move.

“But the transporter moves matter through normal space, the gravitophotonic emissions from the planet are a subspace phenomena. The two can’t interact.” Taking a cue from Tucker, T’Pol continued again, rebutting his argument.

“That is true. However, as you know the transporter leaves –” “Aahhh, I see where you’re going,” Tucker interrupted, nodding his head. “… Leaves a faint tachyon wake that’s so weak we didn’t even know about it until ten years ago. Sensor technology wasn’t advanced enough when transporters were first developed to even notice that a tachyon field appears to travel in advance of the wake since they exist in a subspace domain.”

“Vulcan sensors were capable of such measurements,” she stated dryly.

”Well good for Vulcan sensors!” he snapped back playfully.

“So you think the energy field from the anomaly actually redirected the matter stream by refracting the tachyon wake and rematerialized us on the planet?”

She nodded. “My measurements aboard the shuttlepod would suggest that gravitophotonic potentials are capable of manipulating tachyon fields.”

“But what are the chances our signals would happen to reintegrate correctly, we’d be randomized.”

“Not necessarily. It is logical to assume that by being refracted, the matter streams were redirected along the field lines back to the source. At the space-subspace interface all normal interactions are orthogonal to the subspace field, suggesting the signal would reintegrate exactly one hundred eighty degrees out of phase. We should have all materialized near one another. However, as a result of the shuttlepod’s erratic descent, our signals diverged from the path to the source,” her voice became hoarse as she realized the real meaning of it. Malcolm appeared in midair, perhaps thousands of feet up. Hoshi and Mueller could have materialized anywhere between the shuttlepod as it careened into the atmosphere and the landmass – even in the ocean. They were just lucky to land on the planet itself.

Lost in thought, Trip finally looked up when T’Pol dipped her head to curiously meet his gaze.

“Oh, I was just thinking. Transporter beams, to my knowledge have always been unidirectional. If a beam became bidirectional, you would almost be able to make an exact replica of the matter stream. One replica would maintain static phase while the orthogonal beam would be reversed.” She nodded in agreement, inwardly impressed with his rationale.

“So, how do we know that didn’t happen?” he asked. She frowned curiously.

“I do not see why it is relevant…”

“Because if it did…” he chewed his lip nervously. Finally he looked back up at her with concern.

“There could be another copy of the away team that made it back to Enterprise…they may not even be lookin’ for us.”

“There is no reason to believe that reversing the quantum polarity of bio-matter would even work. The organism may very likely not survive, yet we are alive,” she reminded him.

“It is not logical to dwell on such a possibility, remote as it is,” she fibbed. “The effects are unknown, to my knowledge there has never been such research.” She stood and straightened her dirt-streaked uniform.

“Probably because nobody could figure out how to refract the beam,” he joked as he stared off at the far wall in thought.

“It will be difficult for you to move, however, it is late in the day and we should find shelter nearer the shore where it is warmest at night.” He chuckled and nodded as he reached up to receive her assistance to stand.

“Wish I’d have thought of that,” he grunted as she helped him stand. “I froze ma’ ass off in that jungle every night, lookin’ fer you,” he chuckled. She turned a questioning and curious look to the awkward statement.

“I mean, the rest of the away team,” he stuttered.

As they hobbled out of the cave and into the sunlight, Trip’s mind wandered back to their scientific debate. The situation wasn’t without a sense of irony to it, he thought. On one hand they may have just discovered an application of transporter technology that only required energy to create solid matter – a very significant advance over protein re-sequencers. On the other hand, they were stuck on a worthless planet because of it.

And as both of them realized, if he was right – there would be no rescue mission. If he was right, another Trip, T’Pol, Malcolm, Hoshi and Mueller were safe and sound aboard the Enterprise – sailing through space, oblivious to the consequences of the “close-call” beam-out they barely survived 8 days earlier.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The sun fell expediently as Trip and T’Pol hurried through several hundred meters of greenery to the warmer beach.

“Night falls on this planet extremely rapidly, we should try to reach the shore before sunset,” T’Pol whispered through labored breathing. Even her superior Vulcan strength was being pushed to its limits after several days of meager rations and little water, trying to carry almost the Commander’s entire weight. His arm was wrapped around her shoulder and her left arm wrapped around his waist helping him walk on his injured ankle.

”’Yeah, I noticed…” Trip mumbled in reply as he grew weaker by the minute. She glanced quickly at him to ascertain his condition. She knew he was badly malnourished, and would require food rations as quickly as possible. She attempted to force feed him while he was unconscious but this only lead to the waking hysteria that nearly injured him further. She would have to return for rations after reaching the shore.

“Cold…” he muttered into his uniform as his chin sagged into his chest, his entire body nearly dragging with every step.

“It will be warmer by the shore, I assure you Commander,” she whispered.

“Would ya’ stop callin’ me ‘Commander’ already, we’re on a…” he was interrupted by a wave of nausea and nearly faltered. Before she could insist on maintaining proper protocol, they finally broke through the trees and found the sandy beaches lined the ocean as it looked out over a calm sea.

The sun was almost blinding as it crowned the horizon, setting the beach alight with a fire that starkly contrasted the pitch dark within the jungle’s frigid shade behind them. It would have been a breathtaking sight for Tucker, but he had little breath to take as he stumbled several steps with his arm around T’Pol into a covered area. A large tree not unlike the one he found his first day covered an area on the beach where T’Pol had apparently made camp. He let himself collapse onto the coverlet she had procured from the shuttlepod, still warm from sitting under the mid-day heat.

“You sure thought of everything,’ Trip muttered into the blanket as T’Pol knelt over him. She paused to ensure his ankle was set before she departed again. When she had clinically held for his pulse and listened to his breathing like a properly detached officer, she began to rise. But her fingers, still against his throat looking for a pulse, refused to pull away. His facial hair was rough and unkempt after several days without a razor, but his skin was still as soft as she remembered from the few times she had touched it. Then it hit her – she was terribly glad to see him and thankful he was alive, though his condition was less than perfect. The feeling of his stubbly face was a memory she had shamefully found herself unable resist recalling each day. Before finding him, she worriedly contemplated his death often. She recalled the line of his jaw and the protrusion of his Adam’s apple. Frozen above him as the sun painted her in golden light and bathed her companion in warmth, she longed for an instant to have more to recall of him than just passing gestures and briefly forbidden touches during their Friendship Bonding ceremony. She wished to know his hands on her skin, to feel his curious fingers tickle the crooks of her neck and the secret corners and crevices all over her body. Like a wave, it overwhelmed her when at precisely the same moment an ominous gust ruffled her hair and swept across the sand. It was the setting sun’s final gift of warmth as its rim dipped out of sight. She could not help but raise her eyes to the setting sun as it melted below the rim of this world upon which they were trapped.

Suddenly a noise broke her fantasy and she returned her attention to the sleeping creature at her knees. While his chest rose and fell in an uneven rhythm, concern and care allowed her fingers to move from his face to his chest. They lingered there a few moments, warming the cool skin beneath them before she regained focus and shied away shamefully. Only while he slept would she have allowed such a un-Vulcan indulgence. He could have awoken at any moment and found her touching him, it was almost unthinkable. At least she knew it should have been unthinkable… but she thought it anyway.

She rose to retrieve food and warmer clothing for her human friend from the supplies. She ran across the darkening sand, the sudden chill of the cold jungle running throughout her body. Before the night fell completely, she would return and cover him with extra blankets to keep him warm. In his weakened condition, a single field blanket may be insufficient to keep him warm, she reasoned, as she ran through the jungle. Upon her return it would be logical to share their body heat to prevent his condition from worsening. But they would only need to be in physical contact beneath the field blanket – there would be no need to enjoy it, no logical need at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[John O.]

Day 12

Trip rose with a ceremonious yawn from his fourth and final day of rest and recovery from his ordeal. Luckily for him, T’Pol was a much better scientist than a field medic and it turned out his ankle was only sprained and not broken. After treatment with their only medical scanner and his ankle being set, he could walk lightly on it and he insisted on doing so. He was ready to take a look at the shuttlepod and try to salvage the distress beacon. It was early and still cold as Tucker walked down the beach towards T’Pol who knelt with a tricorder in her hands several meters towards the waterline.

“What ya’ doin’ up so early workin’ on, darlin?” She turned to meet him and stood.

“I believe I have already told you it would be appropriate to maintain proper protocol. You should still address me as Sub-Commander,” she added with an unflinching expression and walked past him towards the camp. He tried to don his best Tucker-charm face but she was already past him. Still wrapped in Starfleet survival blankets like a toddler refusing to dress for the day, he tried to muddle through the sand after her – kicking up sand as he did.

“Com’ on, you saved my life you’ve taken care of me for the past four days. I’m just bein’ nice,” he announced in his best southern voice. He stopped pursuing her, and like clockwork she stopped and turned back to him.

“While the gesture is commendable, I assure you it is unnecessary,” she replied. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes. This is gonna’ be a long day.Again she turned to hide the upturned corners of her lips.

 

[John O.]

Vulcan for ‘Intimate’
Author: John O.
Rating: PG13 – some language
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek characters/names/fans’ souls/etc. I call shenanigans.




A/N: In case anyone forgot, italics denote internal thoughts, ship names or sometimes just vocal inflections.

Chapter 4


Day 12 (Continued)


Later that afternoon, the engineer and science officer trekked through the dense jungle to survey the damage to the crashed shuttlepod. For the better half of his recovery, T’Pol was forced to repeatedly force Trip to rest. He protested, argued, yelled and finally begged her to show him to the pod so he could assess the damage himself. When Trip had finally worn down her will to say ‘no’, she agreed that if he rested one more hour and desisted from further pleading until that time, she would take him to the pod. She had been conducting her own analysis of the planet’s orbit, seasonal axis and climate with only her Vulcan tricorder when finally even her Vulcan pacifism could stand no more of his complaining without threat of violence.

“This planet must have some axis of rotation, the way the days are so short and the nights just jump up on ya’,” Trip commented as they crossed a swiftly flowing stream. T’Pol mechanically leapt over it. Trip chuckled and imagined for an instant superimposing T’Pol into a Tom Sawyer novel.

“Indeed. My preliminary analyses would suggest that the same anomaly we were investigating may be responsible. My calculations show the duration of a single rotation on this planet to be equal to approximately ten point seven Earth hours.” Trip trailed behind and beside T’Pol by just a few meters, but as she reached an opening to a rocky outcropping from the jungle she stopped and turned towards him. The near-flatness of the jungle floor near the beach had risen to a significantly steeper incline as they reached the outcropping of rock. As he approached, both had to lean into the incline to remain steady.

“A cliff approximately thirty meters high lies beyond this point. The shuttlepod appears to have impacted there,” she pointed several meters up the slope where a great disturbance had smashed the rock into fine gravel and continued for several meters.

“It came to rest just meters from the cliff,” she added as they continued up the slope. Trip nodded and followed. They reached the shuttlepod and Trip made a wide circle about the pod, taking note of the strange pattern of displacement of the rock and soil. T’Pol intuitively answered the query now occurring to him before he could ask.

“I believe when we were beamed off the shuttlepod the auto-descent failed to take over due to the system failures caused by the anomaly. The pod appears to have slammed into the rock bed on its side and turned over several times before coming to rest here.” Trip nodded as he entered the pod.

“Yeah, looks that way,” he added absently while his voice trailed off once he entered the pod. She approached and watched him, curious as to which systems he would attempt to salvage first.

“I checked the primary and secondary systems, none of them are operable,” T’Pol stated flatly, standing just shy of the torn entrance to the pod’s interior.

“I know,” Trip mumbled as he flattened himself on the deck plating and slid beneath a panel where coils of wire protruded from a blown open hatch. T’Pol flinched, shifting her stance uncomfortably as she considered the reason he was ignoring her conclusion.

“Do you not trust my assessment?” she asked, not without a hint of irritation and insult. He sensed the honesty of her question and turned from the hatch’s mangled contents to respond sincerely.

“ ‘Course I do. There’s just a few engineering tricks I know that might help squeeze some power outta’ these babies,” he assured her with a genuine smile. She raised an eyebrow in curiosity and joined him in the demolished shuttlepod. She took a seat in the only chair remaining intact and began another survey of any recoverable components she may have overlooked. It was a senseless activity to her, but she had come to learn that such redundancy is helpful in avoiding unnecessary confrontation with humans.

“I had limited success in connecting my tricorder to the shuttlepod’s sensors; however, the power grid was too badly damaged to power the system for more than a short time before the power failed.”

“What we really need to be worryin’ about is gettin’ power to the distress beacon. Why d’you care about sensors?” Trip asked with a grunt, reaching deep into the console for some elusive component. He pulled a blackened power distribution node from the internals and examined it closely, squinting through the sweat now beginning to coat his face.

“I believe we may have a more serious problem,” T’Pol declared calmly. She had suspected the possibility of what she was about to say since the tachyon readings during descent. It was only when she managed to tie power into the sensor array that she became sure. The connection lasted barely long enough for her to be sure from the sensor readings combined from her tricorder and the pod’s systems, but it was long enough. She had delayed informing Trip this long, knowing the reaction she would get. Not only was it unethical and foolish to keep it from him any longer, it was most certainly illogical. Lying would not change things.

“What are you talking about, what ‘more serious problem’?” he asked with a hint of irritation. Somehow she knew his distemper lie with the situation rather than her. She hesitated to turn from the console to face him and took the extra moment to compose her explanation carefully.

When she did not answer immediately, he simply returned his attention to the component in his fingers. It was blackened with damage, and beyond repair. He cursed and tossed it aside, unintentionally severing a connection and setting off a brilliant spark, only inches from his face.

“Ah! Dammit!”

T’Pol turned to find him gripping his eyes with one hand and for a moment lost her composure as she practically leapt to his side.

“Trip, are you alright?” she asked hastily as he removed the somewhat blackened hand and blinked several times. He didn’t respond at first as he looked about, ensuring his sight was undamaged.

“Yeah, it just missed me. Caught it in the hand,” he winced and went back to work. He stopped and looked back at her in shock.

“You just called me Trip,” he announced in triumph, a wide grin melting the Vulcan’s composure for a split second. She pursed her lips and rose defiantly without response, returning to the console. He watched her leave his side, a smile still glued to his face in disbelief. Shaking his head in amusement, he rose to an upright position.

“There is a more important matter to discuss. I have been analyzing readings from – ”

“Don’t change the subject, you called me Trip!” he exclaimed, forgetting the panel of wires above him. T’Pol sighed audibly and turned to meet him steel-faced.

“Commander!” she snapped, losing her composure once again. She quietly cursed how often this human elicited such a lapse in her.

His tongue wagged into the side of his cheek a moment longer despite her recrimination, but when he saw the seriousness in her eyes he finally gave in and returned to work.

“You were saying, Sub-Commander? ” he responded sharply, with professional detachment.

Her voice became lower as she relaxed in the deformed chair and set the tricorder on the burned console. He relinquished the tool in his hand back to the field kit and slid out from under the panel.

“The shuttlepod logs record several transporter signals just before we lost consciousness. Before the power grid failed, I was able to get power to the sensor grid and I recorded the data onto my tricorder. I have since been confirming the results.”

“Which is?” Trip shrugged his shoulders absently as he blinked. “The away team was split up, it makes sense the sensors would pick-up individual signals.”

“However, the logs clearly indicate a single, vary large signal which disappeared from range as it exited the atmosphere. “ Her voice became lower as she looked to the floor. “The other signals are of equal intensity, spread out across great distance towards the planet’s surface.” Trip was nodding.

“All of us up in one group, each of us down,” he mumbled to himself. There was a long silence as Trip realized his hypothesis was confirmed – their signals were duplicated. Suddenly he looked up.

“So which is the copy, I mean…” he gestured from his chest to T’Pol’s direction.

“What are we, just copies, I’m not even me!?” he asked with incredulity. She stiffened, expecting Tucker to very soon lose his temper. She replied honestly, hoping to dispel the disquiet that obviously upset him over the thought of being a copy of himself and not the real thing.

“You are the same person you were on Enterprise</>, both transporter echoes are in effect a copy of the original. You are as much Charles Tucker the Third as the other,” she assured him. Her voice was sure and comforting and it bid his anxiety down to a manageable irritant.

“So, they’re not comin’ back,” he grumbled, his chin falling.

He let out a long sigh and pushed himself back under the panel.

“It could be worse,” he muttered into the cabling. Her eyes fell to the floor as she let out a small sigh.

“There is something else,” she replied flatly. He looked up with a hint of exhaustion.

”More?” he asked incredulously. This time she did not hesitate.

“The phase pistol is missing from the emergency survival kit.” His eyes got wide as he stared back at her. After a few moments he finally blinked.

“You looked around the crash site? I don’t know how, but I ‘spose it got thrown from the wreck,” Trip replied. She did not reply but gave a slight nod. His hands were frozen on their components in the panel as he sat, chewing his lip in silent thought.

“And you said this place was totally uninhabited?” T’Pol nodded again.

“Hoshi or Mueller?” Trip asked. It was a foregone conclusion for T’Pol that one of the two crewmen must have found the wreckage before she did and taken the phase pistol, however difficult Trip found it to believe. When T’Pol didn’t reply he took her silence as an affirmative that she concurred.

“That doesn’t make any sense, why would one of them take a phase pistol but no supplies? Or not stay with the pod hoping to find one of us?”

T’Pol turned more towards the Commander, her Vulcan seriousness returning effortlessly.

“We must concede the possibility that Ensigns Mueller or Sato may have suffered the same ill effects of the local vegetation as you. If they continued to ingest it, they may be acting irrationally.”

Tucker frowned back at her but could find no holes in her logic, as usual. He went back to work on the cabling without another word, an unpleasant anxiety eating at him.

”Great, now I gotta’ worry ‘bout one of our own people shooting me in my sleep,” Tucker mused with an edge of alarm in his voice.

On top of unknown figures possibly lurking in the jungle, their first and foremost priority was fixing the distress beacon. Even so, Tucker knew that a bucket of good luck lie between them and getting home even if he managed to do so. With the distress beacon repaired, the sensor evidence did not lie and T’Pol was sure they would find copies of themselves aboard Enterprise. She contemplated in silence as he worked quietly in the compartment’s innards.

“You might be relieved, Commander,” T’Pol called to him after several minutes. He looked out with slightly accusatory brows.

“Why?” T’Pol blinked and replied evenly. “Lieutenant Reed, and any of the others who may have been killed, are most likely alive and well on Enterprise.” The anger disappeared and his face melted into a thoughtful smile and the native twinkle returned to his eyes.

“You’re right T’Pol, it is a good thought.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[John O.]

Day 21

It was getting to be a habit – running through the jungle at dusk like a couple of wild animals fleeing a predator. It was damn cold. Every night, Trip thought. He couldn’t get over how this planet refused to have one nice night. After a full day of working at the crash site – Trip on the distress beacon and T’Pol on her study of the anomaly - they had to return to the beach where they wouldn’t freeze to death. They considered using the shuttlepod as shelter, however, one very cramped night and an exchange of unpleasantries between its shifting inhabitants ruled out that idea. As a result, they had spent the past several days making the beach more habitable.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They worked day in and day out, on repairing or salvaging any component of use from the shuttle. It was little more than a skeleton now. Initially, Trip objected to cannibalizing the shuttle on the basis that it might fly again if they got the distress beacon working. After several days of inhospitable cold even on the beach, however, he finally admitted they needed the raw materials more than the pod. He was also beginning to wonder if in desperation, he was failing to see the distress beacon for the lost cause it really was. It had been almost three weeks with no word from Enterprise and strong evidence that there never would be. Very soon, he realized, he and T’Pol would be forced to accept what might be an unpleasant reality.

The seat cushions, floor paneling and any upholstered surface in the pod was ripped up and used as a bedding layer. The most useful of the pod’s actual structure was its outer hull. It was long and tedious work given the limited tools but after two days of tugging and swearing, Trip separated a large outer layer of the pod’s monotanium skin from the hull. The material-memory of the alloy held the shape of the pod’s outer hull, thus forming a natural shelter. They used this to construct a covered shelter under which to sleep. It significantly decreased the bitter cold of the wind during the frigid nights. The day their first real shelter went up, however – it went down! Violent wind and rain prompted Tucker to redesign the structure. He stripped the skin from the rear of the pod and managed to scrounge a low temperature welder from the emergency supplies. He had reserved the use of its power cell for absolute emergency needs, but there was no other way to attach the two pieces together. He cursed not having thought of it before; else he could have cut the pod’s outer hull in one piece.

He dried up another power cell mounting the rear plate of the shuttlepod’s skin to the U-shaped cover – essentially creating a shelter that was closed at one end. To secure it from danger of wind or rain he also dug the sides into the sand several centimeters. As he put the finishing touches on the shelter and took a step back, he couldn’t help but realize what he looking at. It wasn’t just any shelter. His arms went across his chest and he chewed his lip as a brisk wind tossed his hair and he peered up at the sky. It grumbled at him, signaling the oncoming storm and encroaching nightfall. But more than that, the darkening sky seemed to answer the unasked, undesired question he found himself pondering.

He looked to the jungle several meters away, expecting T’Pol to return soon from her own tasks. It was at her insistence that the power cell be used to weld the shelter material, even as Tucker staunchly argued they needed it in case the distress beacon needed supplement power. She became all the more stubbornly set in her decision and he finally acceded. She was, after all, the Commanding officer – and they had not yet completely abandoned protocol. At least not yet. As much as he had been denying it to himself, it was the inevitable conclusion just at the back of his mind. The sky rumbled again.

Standing there as T’Pol emerged from the jungle, for the first time since they crashed he saw the woman differently. Her hair was longer, her skin tinted a darker shade from the exposure to sun. Her walk was agile but alive, unlike the mechanical movements of a Vulcan just three weeks earlier. Her eyes, dark but intense and acknowledging – as if he were looking at them for the first time – as if a new woman emerged from the jungle canopy. The sky churned and a loud crack preceded an immediate downpour. T’Pol lit into a jog for the camp as Tucker stood next to the finished shelter, being drenched by the rain.

“Yes,” the thunder replied silently. “This is your new home.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Day 22

The sound of the slowly wracking waves told him they were already nearing the beach. It was nearing nightfall once again and the two sprinted through the dense foliage for their shelter. Between panting breathes, Tucker almost gaped at their record time. He wondered if he wasn’t getting in better shape as a result of this little island getaway. With only two meager meals a day and a good five kilometer morning walk and evening run – he was losing weight and getting leaner. He couldn’t help but notice T’Pol’s physique was harder as well … not as if she needed it, he chuckled to himself. He glanced beside him to find her matching his speed with ease and instinctively allowed his eyes to fall down her body as she ran.

Some days, like this one, they hurriedly chased the setting sun, barely making it back before the night fell. Such un-Vulcan unpunctuality was in fact Tucker’s fault (most of the time). He lost track of time as he recalled his childhood to T’Pol and spoke of his parents, sister and various relatives. He would tell T’Pol stories about Elizabeth, and in return she finally spoke of her own family. It had taken a few weeks of total isolation with this nosy human to open her up, but one day, to Tucker’s great surprise, T’Pol replied to one of his common anecdotes with a story from her youth. He found himself smiling as the Vulcan recounted tales of her “Vulcan childhood”, a topic in which he was supremely interested.

Missing Scene – T’Pol’s Garden

She would never admit it, but on this night she had herself “lost track” of time while relating stories to her companion. As they ran side-by-side, a spark lit into the telepathic centers of her brain and she turned to find Tucker glancing down her body as their run slowed to a jogging stride. He admired her features, that much was obvious to her, but hardly disturbing. What was indeed disturbing was her reaction to such an appraising glance from a loud, nosy human – it excited her.

As they came to the sand and halted to a walk, they went about their predetermined chores. When their talks and repairs on the shuttle ran long as they had this night, they had to rush to cover the sensitive equipment. As Trip had learned his first night, although it was warmer, being closer to the beach meant a higher chance of rainstorm. Windy rainstorms. As Tucker dashed about and his hair tossed in the wind that began to pick-up, he had a feeling this was going to be a bad one. Thunder clapped above them as Tucker ran into the opening of their metal shelter as it faced towards the ocean. Since T’Pol had deduced that the weather patterns forced the rain to come in from the landfall side, they kept comfortably dry even in the most torrential downpour. The length and breadth of the shuttlepod itself meant that it made for a spacious interior, roughly the size of a pod’s interior. As Tucker ran in, ducking below its ceiling, T’Pol was already waiting with her share of the equipment and supplies. He read the look on her face instantly and snapped back with a smirk.

“You’re Vulcan, you’re supposed to be faster!”

She lifted an eyebrow and was tempted to taunt him verbally. As many times as he had insisted Vulcans were not superior to humans, she filed this admission of his away into her orderly memory for future recollection to him.

The bedding was wide enough for two people to sleep comfortably – and with professional distance between them. The first night they slept on it Tucker was surprised with the softness of shuttlepod upholstery. Then again maybe he was just comparing it to three weeks of sleeping on hard ground and pricking pebbles. The edges of the pod’s skin sat just under two meters wide, and the length stretched almost four meters in length. On other similar occasions when the storms kicked up early and the pair made it back late to the shelter, they were forced to make fire on the edge of their shelter, far enough from the bedding for safety. It was a contingency that became habit over the past several days as the torrential rains continued to fall. Trip had often preferred to leave the cooking fire burning after they finished to provide extra warmth, so the small fire pit sat right on the far edge of the open side of the shelter. They were running low on remaining field rations, so T’Pol had begun augmenting their meals with indigenous plant life she identified to be safe from the Vulcan survey information. It was something of a minor miracle that her tricorder had remained with her upon their arrival; for they often depended on it for crucial survival needs such as these.

The storm raged on outside their shelter as they finished up yet one more meal between well-fed and starving. There were few words between the two through the meal, but it was hardly silent. The constant beating of rain against the shelter grew to quite a disturbing racket for T’Pol’s sensitive hearing. As Trip wiped his mouth he sat back on his hands and looked up at the ceiling of their shelter – only about six centimeters above his head. The rain continued to pound on their shelter and the cross winds at the door tossed and turned the flames of the cooking fire. Every so often a gust of wind would carry a pocket of rain into the opening and quenching the flames intermittently. Trip frowned as he watched the flames flicker lower and lower until they crept only around the red embers at the base of the fire. He stared into the fire, wondering if he would see Elizabeth, or his mom and dad… or the Enterprise ever again. T’Pol must have sensed his apprehension as she gained his eye and held it steadily.

“Soon you will have recovered power to the main grid, correct?”

He nodded and forced a curve of his lips, though a frown still stuck to his face.

“Then we will activate the distress beacon and signal Enterprise or any passing ship. There is an inhabited system of a peaceful race only twenty-eight light years from this planet. They are primitive but possess limited warp capability. There is a chance they will detect us,” T’Pol consoled him. He smiled through a chuckle as he realized what she was doing. It was kind of her to put any effort into allaying his illogical fears, as it was a burden Vulcans were not forced to bear. She was in a situation of extreme circumstances and she followed the protocol she knew and understood to the letter. She would practice every precaution and use every measure necessary to procure rescue – without being fearful or apprehensive. Her human companion, she knew, was not trained to accept the situation so coldly.

They both knew the power grid in the shuttlepod was not the key to the distress beacon, even as T’Pol used the assurance to allay his anxiety. Even once he activated it, he would only be able to determine if the beacon’s own power relays were fused or not. T’Pol knew, but it was an excuse to give him the support he needed. He spared her a long look, and for a moment thought he saw something - emotional. As he watched her blink curiously, he couldn’t help an appreciating grin break across his lips. Several seconds later he looked away and tucked himself under the heat blankets and shuffled himself closer to the fire. As appropriate, once beneath the covers he shed his uniform until clad only in Starfleet undergarments and pushed his bodysuit uniform to his feet beneath the covers.

T’Pol did the same, removing her jumpsuit from the shoulders down as she did each night to sleep in a gray tank top and matching gray shorts. The two comfortably situated themselves as far apart as possible and turned to face away from one another. A barrage of illogical imagery refused to leave her in peaceful sleep, testing her convictions and tempting her desires for over an hour, staring into the empty metal. She evened her breathing to keep the Commander from being aware she was awake, just in case he was awake too. His was even and unlabored as well. On the other side of the shelter, Trip, too – stared into the metal plating.

What am I doing? Why do I keep thinking about this?

He asked himself over and over.

Things seemed to be going well on Enterprise wasn’t it? We were… well, what were we? Dating?

But now, on the planet she had recoiled into a professional detachment for most of their interactions.

Why don’t you just tell her how you feel? This isn’t the place for it! Part of him replied. Then again, he realized… it may be the only place for it.

It was only because there wasn’t another soul on the planet, Trip thought, that she spoke a word of a non-professional nature at all. Soon, however, both of them were fast asleep.

The light flickering off the steel-gray walls grew darker as the coals of the fire burned lower and dimmer. Sometime late in the night, as Tucker dozed with his face towards the wall, there was a rustling of the covers opposite him. His eyes fluttered partially open, groggy with sleep. A moment later they closed again as he began to doze off once more. Though sleeping, he became aware of the warm body that pressed against his back. Her bare legs brushed his and her lightly covered breasts came into soft contact with his bare upper back. Tucker suffered a moment’s lucidity and began to wonder – am I dreaming, or is this real? A warm hand crept over his abdomen and came to rest against his pecks, splayed flat and possessively against his chest. He sensed her closeness as she nestled her head only inches from his and breathed him in. He let out a pleasant sigh, and knew he must be dreaming. Whether T’Pol heard Trip sigh sleepily with satisfaction, she herself was already fast asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Day 23


When he awoke the next morning, T’Pol was gone. He rose from the sheets with hair sticking up in some directions and out in others. He yawned loudly and went to jump to his feet, bringing a loud *thunk* against the inside of the shelter. Outside, T’Pol was several meters down the beach sitting cross legged on the sand just out of the tide’s reach. She made a point to find a place for meditation out of earshot of the camp even for her attuned hearing. The endeavor this morning was, unfruitful to put it mildly. Many images, sensations and memories from the night before plagued her and embarrassed her.

Tucker spit and swore at the shelter as he greeted the blinding sunlight that met him when he emerged from it. He stretched his arms high above his head, letting out another pleasant yawn. It was still early morning but the chill was much more manageable. He idly thanked the planet for not being a cold pain in the ass this morning as he dressed and thought about breakfast.

He didn’t look for T’Pol right away, initially assuming she was already fastidiously at work on the shuttlepod doing – whatever it was she was doing this past week. He made a mental note to ask about that. Just then he was sidetracked when a particularly thunderous grumble of the ocean brought his attention to the sky above the horizon. It wasn’t a storm approaching, it was something else. He thought it might be some kind of disturbance in the atmosphere caused by the anomaly, and for a moment he grew concerned. It was a rapid spiral of brilliant colors in the atmosphere, parting at the center like the eye of a hurricane through which the very stars of deep space were visible. It actually appeared as though the planet’s atmosphere had sprung a leak! An instant after the spectacular display looked as though it was about to catastrophically culminate… Nothing. The vortex of colors fizzled away as a fog fleeing from the warmth of dawn. He chuckled with a “hmf” and hands set on his hips in confusion. He turned back towards the jungle but in so-doing, caught an eye of T’Pol down the beach. The event in the sky was silent aside from the initial thunder which T’Pol must have ignored or been too deeply meditating to hear, since she remained still and silent. He chewed his lip and squinted in the sun, watching her where she perched in meditation. A dangerous thought occurred to him. He considered what he was about to do for several minutes.

Coulda just been a dream… he reasoned. But a dream you’ve had for the past four nights? He argued back. He shook his head as he started down the beach.

 

[kes7]

Ah, more Trip and T'Pol goodness. Thank you!

 

[Treknut]

Yes thanks for posting more Trip and T'Pol fiction, I am enjoying it alot.

 

[Mistral]

Yes thanks for posting more Trip and T'Pol fiction, I am enjoying it alot.

'Nuff said.

 

[John O.]

Hey, yeah, sorry about the delay guys. I was doing a computer rebuild and it went kinda south for a few weeks so I was offline. Try to post more regularly now.

 

[John O.]

Ah! Again! I'm sorry for the week long wait...

Chapter 5 is long, so goes for 2-3 posts down here.

-------------------------

Chapter 5


Day 23 (Continued)

He dropped to the sand directly in front of her raucously, hoping to rouse her attention. She refused the bait and remained still and silent.

“I know you can hear me,” Trip grunted in an annoyed whisper. The drawl and low key of his voice was unexpected and sent shivers down her spine that flickered down her legs and other regions she endeavored to ignore.

“You could not, in fact, know that with any certainty as humans are not telepathic,” T’Pol responded curtly though her eyes remained closed. After an exhausted sigh and a few moments of stillness, T’Pol opened her eyes to find Trip still watching her expectantly. He tossed sand about at his knees like a toddler, feigning an absence of purpose to his interruption. T’Pol watched him carefully. Something weighed heavily on his mind she thought… she could feel it. Her telepathy was not normally this potent with those around her but lately she could sense his feelings easier than before. She worried it was a side effect of less rest, meditation and far too much time spent with Mr. Charles Tucker.

“Days are gettin’ a lil’ warmer,” Tucker ventured finally, just as T’Pol was preparing to dryly cut the tension with Vulcan grit. His eyes wandered in the sand but avoided her glance as the morning breeze tossed his hair to and fro. It stole her eye for a fleeting moment, resisting the urge to reach out and return several errant strands to their rightful droop. She was growing irritated with his silence as well as her own degrading mental focus. He was apprehensive, and it was making her apprehensive. Finally, she decided to accede to this meaningless small talk in hopes that his true intent would emerge.

“The climate is indeed growing steadily more temperate,” she responded dryly. He finally turned up his eyes to meet hers. Here goes…

“Ya’ know it might not even be so cold at night pretty soon,” he nonchalantly leaned back onto his hands, watching T’Pol as she finally eased herself from the lotus position signaling she was officially acknowledging their conversation. Her eyes held his curiously, with a glint of suspicion and anxiety in this train of thought.

“I ‘magine it’s real cold at night here for you, I mean your planet’s a lot warmer than this?” Trip asked, cocking his jaw to one side. T’Pol nodded lightly, her eyes falling to the sand slightly to avoid the shimmer of his blues.

“’Cause… well,” he rubbed his jaw nervously, unaware of the attentive eyes of the Vulcan as they watched his prickly stubble, imagining its rough tickle.

“I think I’ve been havin’ these dreams, I don’t know,” Trip shook his head as he looked to the sky, trying to hide the nervousness in his voice. “Sorta’ like, I feel someone-“

“Dreams are of a very intimate nature to Vulcans, Commander,” T’Pol interjected suddenly. “Perhaps it would be more appropriate if we did not discuss them,” she continued, her voice weakening slightly. Trip watched her with a tongue against his cheek in thought, deciding his next move carefully as she pursed her lips and continued to avoid his eyes.

“You know…” Trip went on in a lower voice, returning to a normal seated position and leaning forward. He dipped his head to catch her eye, and finally she met his face. Rims of golden brown looked at him calmly with a Vulcan strength behind them but human frailty pierced her as she tried to hold his gaze and not lose her control.

“I know that it’s your custom to repress them,” he continued carefully. “But everybody has feelings, and it’s not easy to be out here alone. Besides the fact that, before comin’ here… me an’ you,” he chuckled as he flicked a finger between them. “I don’t know what to call it, T’Pol,” he chortled again nervously. “But we were more than colleagues,” he finished evenly. “More than friends,” he added bravely.

“I believe it would be most appropriate if we discontinued this conversation!” T’Pol spat roughly, barely getting the words out behind a shaky voice as she rose from the sand and sped away as quickly as a composed-looking walk could manage her. Stunned into silence Trip let out a frustrated sigh and fell onto his back, staring up at the sky. He shook his head against the grainy sand that lie beneath him and sighed aloud.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Day 44

Three Weeks Later



“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Trip muttered, as he lay flat on his back, staring up at the stars.

T’Pol’s invisible form moved in the darkness as she returned several tools and utensils to their rightful placement and ordering. She kept the Starfleet field kits supremely organized. Her human companion, however, had insisted upon “fixing her supper”. She had begrudgingly accepted the invitation only upon being assured that local wildlife would not be on the menu. She made a mental note to include a caveat that he must adequately return the cookware to the correct storage receptacles in the future. Then it hit her. The future, she thought… could be longer than they previously expected. She froze for an instant in the darkness as she processed the implications of this truth. It had been almost three weeks since their argument on the beach and neither had spoken a word of it since. Trip had tossed it over and over in his mind each night, hoping the familiar embrace he was now beginning to miss would return. He started to wonder if he really had been dreaming and T’Pol had never done any such thing at all. The thought terrified him that not only had he made an enormous fool of himself but insulted and shamed her as well. For T’Pol it was a time of reflection, tinged with self doubt and uneasiness. She confessed in meditation that these feelings for Tucker must be nothing more than manifestations of her Pa’nar syndrome. It had been six weeks since treatment and each day that came and went she was sure was one closer to her last. Yet, the other symptoms of Pa’nar had not returned, and for this she had no explanation. Deep within, however, a confession not ready to be made whispered of the truth behind what she did the nights Tucker was talking about. She was not ready to recognize the motivation for her actions were within her, and not Pa’nar.

Only a week after their argument, a day came when she began to realize how much she depended on her one companion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was the day they found Hoshi. Trip had finally admitted defeat and declared the distress beacon a lost cause when T’Pol returned from scouting a distant area of the jungle into which they had not yet ventured. Even T’Pol, her nerves and controls apparently frayed more than she knew, wore a ghostly pallor when she came to Trip as he removed the last remnants of useful material from the pod. When she told him what she found, he was devastated, and surprised to find tears welling in his eyes. T’Pol shook almost visibly as he wept when they buried her. The sight of the dirt toppling over her features set Trip on a dangerous edge. The reality was becoming cold and tasteless now – they were on no island getaway, no temporary vacation. They were here – here to stay.

The experience of burying Hoshi is a memory that would never leave him, despite consolation by one who cared so deeply for him – it was a horror that T’Pol could do nothing to help drive from his dreams. As T’Pol looked out over the fire that evening, she glanced down at the head that slept without peace in her lap. She could not seem to remember how they ended up this way: her sitting lotus and Tucker sleeping away dried tears with his head in the crook of her thigh and hip. She could sense the pain filling his dreams and did the only thing that instinctively came to mind to consol him. Her fingers stroked his blond hair, continuing to idle about his rough beard as he snored. She couldn’t bring herself to touch him so intimately when under the weight of his brilliant eyes, but something tugged at her too powerfully now to be resisted. But she knew the moment would not last for long, for a disturbing reality had yet to be faced by the two of them.

Whereas Malcolm had clearly died of a great fall as evidenced by broken bones and crushed features – a sight T’Pol was thankful Trip had not laid eyes upon before she buried him – Hoshi’s cause of death was very different. A single phase pistol wound to the upper chest could mean only one thing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Day 44 (Continued)

It was after nightfall.

“T’Pol?” he called behind him, the firelight flickering across his features. They occasionally camped on the open beach at Trip’s insistence, when the nights grew warm enough. Instead of the typical joviality in his voice there was naught but irritation, and even a hint of concern. Every moment she was out of sight brought a new moment’s terror that something might happen to her too…

It had been weeks now since they found Hoshi and he still had nightmares of her face screaming in terror as he ran towards her, but she always fell to the ground with a smoldering hole over her heart just before he could reach her. The image flashed before him and he jumped instinctively.

Several days after her burial, he began to accept Hoshi’s death, knowing they had no choice but to go on. Once his mind cleared of her death, T’Pol grew unsettled by how dead set on vengeance Trip became. They argued repeatedly on whether to go find Mueller and how to deal with the obvious threat that now existed. After several such arguments that grew to yelling matches, T’Pol finally pulled rank and ordered Commander Tucker to obey her decision. He was livid to be sure, and stormed off for several hours. T’Pol sighed as he left and realized she was shaking, filled to the brim with frightful emotions she could scarcely identify: fear, concern, and something she could not label. She knew humans were often wracked by the trouble of emotions, her experience and her education on Vulcan had taught her this. But now T’Pol was faced with one of the most volatile: desire for vengeance. And she found it buried within the man she had come to admire, respect and even care deeply for in a way no Vulcan ever had. She had found a way to inwardly justify her feelings by asserting Tucker was an excellent and unique specimen of humanity with a singular kind of emotional control of himself. Now she was forced to realize that he was indeed just like any human: prone to irrational despair following loss, and vengeance following anger. Yet perhaps the most disturbing realization to her was that these things made her care for him no less, but in fact magnified her concern for him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[John O.]

Trip’s emotional explosions decreased in frequency and intensity as he accepted Hoshi’s fate and realized (with albeit no relief), that killing Mueller would bring no respite from the pain or the nightmares. He slowly began to act as the same man T’Pol knew and her emotions became more easily controllable than before, but the improvement required her to increase meditation to a full four hours each morning. She feared that the Pa’nar syndrome was still with her as vigilantly as ever, although she culled its hunger for her peace of mind with abundant meditation and concern for their daily challenges. On the fortieth day, they officially ran out of field rations. In the four days since, Trip and T’Pol were still on meager diets while fine-tuning any means they could manage to sustain themselves.

T’Pol had not allowed such a thing to fall upon them suddenly; however, the task of learning and hunting the local wildlife (for Trip) was not an easy one. While T’Pol still abstained from consuming flesh, she assisted Tucker whose hunting skills initially left a great deal to be desired. He eventually improved to exceptional proficiency with a spear, even to the impressments of T’Pol. It was against a Vulcan’s beliefs to eat or kill an animal for food, but her options were to help or watch Tucker starve. Still, she convinced him to sample the local vegetation to augment his diet, which he surprisingly found to his liking.

The storms subsided, coming now only once a week or less and weaker in strength. The present evening was clear and comfortable, not more than a blissful fourteen degrees centigrade as T’Pol noted with her tricorder.

Under the open stars, Trip found some semblance of peace and quiet for the first time in more nights than he could remember. Perhaps, in some way deep down Tucker was trying to break his own depression. He recalled again that the other Hoshi was back on Enterprise, and hoped she was safe and sound as she should be. He called again for T’Pol through the flames as they danced between him and the dark night.

It was a small fire, but he didn’t plan on it staying that way for long. T’Pol, again, did not answer but appeared a moment later. A slender form materialized out of the darkness, moving with a grace he had never noticed. Tucker didn’t speak, only quietly continuing to watch her approach through the flames of the fire. She carried a bucket of seawater to extinguish the no-longer-necessary fire.

“No, no, wait!” Tucker called out in distress as he leapt from the sand. He held a staving hand out, telling T’Pol not to put the fire out while he retrieved more of the dry wood he had located just before dusk. She froze when the engineer panicked and watched in confusion as he acquired more wood.

“The meal is finished, is it not?” she asked when he finally returned with well over a cord of wood spilled around his arms. It was the first time she had spoken since their meal and her voice carried something electric as it entered Tucker’s ears.

“Yeah, but that’s not the point. It’s a campfire, T’Pol,” he insisted and began feeding and stoking the fire.

“I see,” she responded simply with a curious eyebrow. She rounded the newly invigorated campfire and planted herself on the grainy sand. Trip watched her from the corner of his eye as he knelt beside the pit, enlarging the radius of the rocks forming the boundary. When he turned and saw her looking up at the stars, he couldn’t resist the smile that immediately came to his face.

As if he had spoken, she turned from the sky and met his eyes. It was a relief to see him smile again, and the reality of how it lifted her spirits was a double edged sword that drew across her Vulcan pride. She quickly looked away and found she had nothing to look at but the sand in front of her and the crackling fire.

She enjoyed watching him when he did not know, but she feared to let him see. For the second time, she felt fear – and it lead to shame. He sensed her uneasiness and his smile faded. Hoshi’s death had indeed hardened his fear of losing the only person close to him, and he gave into the urge to be nearer to her despite the chance such a gesture could provoke a stonewalled Vulcan outburst. He stood, rounded the fire and sat near her. Several moments of silence passed while the pair merely watched the fire or the stars or the ocean or the sand – while desperately trying not to watch each other. Finally, Trip decided to make conversation on neutral ground.

“I’ve managed to salvage one whole power cell from the shuttlepod, but we don’t really have any use for it. It’s not enough for the sensor grid in the shuttle,” he added glumly.

“It may be useful for any emergencies that may arise,” she replied quietly.

He nodded, tossing a clamshell into the fire.

“I was thinkin’,” he went on.

“Locating the source of the generator creating this big anomaly might be a good idea. There could be some kind of communication equipment in there,” he suggested, turning to meet T’Pol’s gaze. She agreed, but knew the task would be no simple one. The landmass was twice the size of Texas and they had only a global map from her scanner, with no local landmarks to work from.

“It would be the logical course of action, however, inclement weather has thus far thwarted the possibility of any such undertaking,” she replied. They both knew it was the only productive venture towards a possible escape from this planet they might hope for.

“However, my tricorder is not sensitive enough to triangulate its position and there is not enough power to activate the shuttlepod’s array.” Tucker nodded. He sighed in defeat and abandoned the idea for more contemplative thoughts. A desire to mend their unpleasant encounter began to surface once again.

“There is another option,” T’Pol replied. “It may be possible to locate the field generator using my tricorder; however, it is only capable of detecting field strength. It could take considerable time to find the generator,” Tucker nodded.

“Time’s one thing we’ve definitely got,” he muttered sorrowfully. “What about the cold?”

“There’s no way we’re sleepin’ in there, you’d freeze to death. And Hell, I’d freeze ma’ parts off,” he swung an arm behind them. At the mention of her wellbeing (and his parts) she looked up in moderately hidden surprise.

“You could go alone. It may still be unpleasant at night; however, with the field blankets and the exothermic heating pads your health would not be at risk and you may locate the generator.” Trip looked at her with incredulity.

“Are you kiddin? And leave you here with what, a grass skirt and the pod to cover you? You’d freeze even out here on the beach without the gear,” Trip chided her brazen selflessness. “No, we’re both goin’ or we’re both stayin’,” he declared with finality. She had all but forgotten that as his commanding officer she could order him to go and leave her but she was not anxious to pull rank on an issue Tucker clearly had his mind set on. On the other hand, a part of her was pleased to know he cared.

“There is the possibility that we could wait,” she replied in a lower voice. Trip’s brows furrowed in confusion.

“Wait for what?”

“I have finished a preliminary analysis of the data I took on the Enterprise as well as from the planet regarding it seasonal orbit. This planet cycles through varying seasonal climates and at this latitude, I believe the temperatures will continue to rise in the next several weeks. I believe it would be similar to Earth’s North American ‘Summer’ climate. It should be safe to travel and rest in the jungle at night. In fact the temperatures near the beach will rise and eventually become quite extreme for your biology.” Trip was pleasantly surprised and made a “hmm” of approval.

“Sounds like a plan. That first night here will be something I never forget,” he shivered in retrospect. Almost simultaneously a shiver rode up and down T’Pol’s spine and broke her resistance to remain unmoving. A brisk wind blew in from the sea and Trip cursed the cold gust. He stretched out and snatched up two bundles from their supplies. Without request, he stretched the blanket out across T’Pol’s back and pulled it around her shoulders. She turned to nod a neutral appreciation, but miscalculated his closeness. When she turned to him, coming just centimeters from clunking into his face, her eye level became even with the taller man’s cheek. When they realized the unintended maneuver had brought their faces so close, both of them froze.

Her lips came to a halt a few centimeters from him and slightly below his chin. His right hand was still slung around her back, and he considered using it to pull her closer. His arm remained still across her back, its weight naturally pulling her closer along with her own refusal to resist under their mutual stare. His heart raced madly.

He should have just kept moving, ignoring the intensity of the wave that slammed into him the moment that her eyes fell on him – but he couldn’t, he was spellbound. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman’s eyes could freeze him the way T’Pol did, and he searched back into every memory he could muster. It was as if every moment he had cataloged with Natalie all those years ago now paled in comparison. The Vulcan science officer that repelled every other human’s attempts to get closer to her looked up at Tucker behind gorgeous brown eyes, instantly transformed from his commanding officer to a woman in his arms.

There were no words from their lips, tides from the ocean, nor rustling of the trees. Even the flames that warmed their skin seemed to pause and watch. She blinked after several moments of stillness, bringing her soft lashes into contact with the rough skin of his cheek. He avoided the full beard that would grow unbidden by shaving occasionally, but his skin was still rough with a light covering of hair. The tiny contact was electric, causing her to tremble and close her eyes. She finally gave her head the slightest of tilts. She slowly moved into him, their cheeks meeting silently as Tucker took her cue. He continued to pull the blanket around her but as she continued to push into him, he was soon on his back against the sand. Her hair tickled the stubble of his chin as she buried her face into the neck of his uniform. It was dirty and dry from being washed in salt water but it also filled her face with his scent. Her lips opened against his skin, darkened to a golden bronze by the beating sun.

A few moments later, the two officers were a single melded heap lying silently under the stars. She wanted to – no craved, to look up and to wrap her arms around his trunk and… where the desire led terrified her. She laid there, her comparatively tiny body atop the Commander’s and her arms and legs ensnared about his. A fire burned between their bodies as she rose and fell with every breath he took, each one sending a cool shiver across the back of her neck as he exhaled.

He reached to pull the exothermic blanket wide and around the both of them. He shuffled their combined form sideways to be nearer to the fire. Even T’Pol’s borderline panic at giving in to such forbidden emotional temptation began to drift away, leaving only peace in its wake. The uncertainty, the fear and doubt - all seemed to flutter away with the brisk ocean breeze, leaving Tucker looking down at T’Pol’s kempt brown head as she hid her eyes in his chest. She still could not bring herself to look at him, fearing to lose control… I have come this far, she rationalized inwardly.

He instinctively caressed the Vulcan’s laser-straight brown strands and drew his hand down to cup the nape of her neck. With this motion he felt her lips part against his chest in a silent gasp, and close around a pocket of his skin, tasting and kissing the flesh between her lips. She finally looked up and pushed herself upon her hands decisively, crawling up his longer form to meet the level of his face. Without any warning she crashed into him like a wave, spilling into his mouth and slinking her fingers around his neck. They instinctively began to tug at his collar, passively at first but then with a powerful tug she forced the zipper down several inches. Her lips pressed softly but completely against his, moved around them, below them, kissing his chin and rough stubble. She returned to his mouth with a slow and passionate purpose, occasionally allowing his tongue to probe and prod against hers. T’Pol had never kissed a human, and for that matter had never kissed a Vulcan. She knew humans used it to express affection and more she had seen it in the films on movie night – but these were not the reasons she knew how. An instinct drove her mouth into his, a drive deeper and older than Logic, and stronger than resistance urged her on.

It was an altogether alien but wildly arousing sensation, something Vulcans only experience during the throws of Pon Farr, but even then clouded by madness and depravity. In this passionate exchange, she was free to taste what she knew to be forbidden, so un-Vulcan and terribly exciting. It was completely unlike the violation she suffered under Tolaris, that forceful invasion couldn’t be further from the warm and tentative kiss of Tucker’s lips.

He touched her carefully and considerately as the fire she lit inside him was stoked by an overwhelming shock that this was happening. T’Pol pushed her body harder into him, encouraging his roaming hands. He couldn’t believe T’Pol was pushing him on, and her arousal was driving him mad, making him hotter than he had ever been with any woman. With the blanket covering her back from the cool air, he relieved the zipper of her uniform only far enough to slip his hand to the small of her back, not wanting to rush the moment. She pressed up from his lips finally after what seemed like hours of methodical kissing. He leaned himself up on his elbows, afraid for a moment that it was a prelude to second thoughts. He breathed hard and fast, his lips twitched into a smile as he felt a flutter of tension and arousal all through his body that ached for her to be close to him. She did not retreat, nor lose the deep and singular purpose in her eyes as she pulled him up to meet her as she straddled him. He watched her movements in awe and wonder. The child in his eyes was so contrasting to the sexual man she wanted to take here and now that T’Pol watched him for several moments in fascination before she continued on a woman’s journey. She looked at him and realized for the first time that he was a worthy mate, even for a Vulcan. He was brilliant, kind and honorable, despite his brash emotions and outspoken attitude. Even when he challenged her patience and tolerance, there was always an endearing honesty in him, and most of all, uniqueness that she knew would exist in no other. No Vulcan could ever be like the man in front of her. She kissed him again, rough and carnivorous as she lost herself in the emotion. She released her passions into him, tugging at his uniform until she relieved every speck of cloth covering him. In her deepest desires she wanted to go slowly, to experience what she feared was inescapably beyond her ability as a Vulcan to do – love. She rapidly threw herself on her back and pulled him atop her, madly kissing him and pulling her legs around him. She secretly feared the romantic feelings within her, and squelched them with lust. Trip grunted against her kiss, straining to catch his breath.

“Wait…” he tried to coax her to slow down, to stop – well, maybe not to stop. She flattened her hands out against his sides, slowly finding his muscular torso, a process she repeated over and over until he couldn’t think straight. He managed to call out in between attacks of her lips, beginning even to worry about what might be going on with her. He tried to pull away with more strength. She lifted away the gray tank from her shoulders and wriggling out of her tight shorts. Her nude body ground against his, forcing him up into a sitting position to try and pull away and look her in the face. He finally freed himself from her embrace and met her white hot gaze.

“T’Pol, I want this too but…” he cried in a low voice, his mouth close enough to her lips still for her to feel the hot breath. Deep concern mixed and confused by intense arousal looked back at her as he held back her arms by the wrists. For a moment, she struggled but he held her firmly and finally her eyes fell back onto his. She could easily have overpowered him, but deep insider, her logical mind was not completely derailed by the fervent passions boiling to the surface and she withheld her assault and looked away from him with humiliation with eyes brimming to the surface in shame.

She realized as pleasant a thing as she wanted, to allow him to make gentle love to her, she could not endure and call herself a Vulcan. The fear and uncertainty was so abound in her, at her core so very unknowing and inexperienced in ways of expressing emotion – so immature in her Vulcan way.

She knew a human female of Trip’s comparative age would be readily prepared to accept his feelings, his emotions, and return his honest passion. And of course, at the very heart of her anxiety, lie the Pa’nar syndrome. The treatments Phlox had given her before their accident had thus far staved off the deleterious effects but it must only be a matter of time until the disease re-asserted itself. She recoiled in terror from that thought. She feared to let her true emotions show and not the empty, violent lust she masked it with.

She panted as their naked bodies beamed against one another’s. Short breathes captivated the silence as he finally let go of her arms and allowed his fingers to rest on her taut hips. Her hands hung in midair where he had held them, her mind a blur of fear and confusion, her spirit confounded by the feelings that such intimate contact with Trip elicited and the shear contentment he caused her. Finally, her fingers dropped to his chest, warmly lying against his flesh. He cocked his head to look into her evading eyes, and finally she succumbed and met the blue orbs.

“I…” he shook his head in befuddlement, bent on trying to understand what was bothering her yet afraid he wouldn’t know how to help. I don’t understand… The fear and anxiety lie still within her but the steady care and warm concern in his face calmed her, restored her focus and her eyes widened as the full brunt of the effect he had on her became apparent to T’Pol. She could deny the desire to feel his compassionate embrace no longer and she let the emotions slip out along her fingers as they slowly reached up to cradle his jaw. She rose up to bring her body into total contact with his, straddling his lap. He began to object but when the slow and intimate way she moved became evident, he was too captivated by awe to utter a word. She fell into his kiss and slowly eased him back onto the sand, smoothly releasing the anxious knot wadded up in her belly. He gently rolled her over and kissed her lower lip with a content smile.