The Thin Man Beams Aboard

The Thin Man Beams Aboard

By galleywest

Rating PG-13
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek and the characters created therein.
Genre: Mystery
Summary: Set between “Bound” and “Demons.” Finally! Our favorite couple has some time to get reacquainted after Commander Tucker transfers back from the Columbia. Trip introduces T’Pol to the human concept of the “whodunit,” but their academic reflections on the subject are tested when Enterprise is sent to investigate a real mystery populated by some very shady characters.

A/N: Since we’re not getting any new episodes, I thought I would try my hand at writing them. That’s what we should have gotten more of: a sense of the progression of TnT’s inevitable relationship and it’s acceptance by the rest of the crew…within the context of the episodes! I am also *ahem* a bit of a Reed/Sato shipper, but its only hinted at here.

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Part 1

Chapter 1: All’s Well that Starts Well

“Well? How do you like it so far?”

Trip looked at her expectantly over his coffee cup as he sidled up next to her. The rest of the officers were gradually filtering into the bridge for the morning staff meeting.

T’Pol wasn’t quite sure what to say. The gift Trip had given her was illogical in both content and form, but she doubted those assessments would meet with favor. Normally she would have no problem with being blunt on the subject, but T’Pol had come to realize that humans required what was termed a “softer touch.” Trip, especially, who put so much stock in her opinion and approval, would want to hear what she considered to be positive aspects of the item he had given her. These thoughts ran through her mind for a fraction of a second before she chose a course of action and pursued it.

“I have not had time to adequately evaluate it,” she informed him, hands behind her back.

He put his mug down on the main console and turned to face her, hands on his hips. “You haven’t read it yet, have you?”

T’Pol’s eyes flicked over his mug for a moment—he knew well that she disapproved of food or beverages while on duty—then met his.

“As I said, I have not had time.”

“Have you even looked at it?” he asked, his face stern.

The Vulcan relented slightly. “The main characters seem…intriguing, but I fail to see how they will be able to assess evidence of any crime without proper training or technical assistance.”

“They’re sleuths, T’Pol. They go with their gut feelings—their instincts,” he amended hastily at her nonplussed expression, “to solve crimes. That’s why I thought you would enjoy it—they have to use their minds to piece together information that no one else has been able to connect yet.”

She remained silent. Trip took this to indicate skepticism as to the appeal of the plot. “I thought you might say that,” he told her as Captain Archer emerged from the lift and stopped briefly to say something to Phlox, “so I scheduled it as this week’s feature for Movie Night.”

Had T’Pol been human she would have groaned. Since his return from Columbia—and, admittedly, since she had revealed both the bond and her feelings for him—he had been in very high spirits. He had insisted upon re-instating Movie Night in order to keep the crew social and give everyone an opportunity for a little fun now and then. Unfortunately he also insisted that T’Pol and all the other senior officers attend on a regular basis, “to set a good example for the crew.” Personally, T’Pol suspected that this had something to do with her—movies seemed to play an important part in human courtship behavior.

They had in fact established something of a ritual regarding Movie Night. He would select a feature and tell her about it. She would express no interest. He would wheedle and cajole until she practically rolled her eyes and told him that she would try to attend. He would save her a seat and give her a sideways smile when she inevitably turned up, and they would spend the better part of an hour arguing about the film over a cup of coffee and slice of pie afterwards.

“I do not know if I will be able to make it,” she told him, true to form.

“Oh come on—you, me, and The Thin Man. You’ll love it.” She raised an eyebrow at him as Archer finished speaking to Phlox and stepped forward to start the meeting. “Okay, okay,” he said in a low voice, “you’ll find it compelling.”

She folded her arms and turned her attention to the captain, leaving her human to grin affectionately at the back of her head.

Later that evening, after her shift was over and she had visited the mess hall for a quick meal with Dr. Phlox and Hoshi, T’Pol found herself in her quarters quietly regarding Commander Tucker’s illogical gift. She turned it over in her hands, feeling rough patches where the paper had pulled away from the cover as well and smooth ones where many hands had presumable held the object, carefully turning its pages. The copy of The Thin Man that Trip had unexpectedly and inexplicably given her was old—from the 1950s at least—and had a cardboard cover which garishly displayed the protagonists and their quarry in heavy line drawings. The binding was loose and the pages were yellowing and brittle, but he had been adamant that she take it, so she had obliged.

T’Pol had owned books before—her mother had given her a meditation book when she turned 14, she had a copy of a book of Vulcan fables that had belonged to her great-great grandmother—but never solely for the purpose of entertainment. There was no reason for that: one could simply access a PADD for the desired literature. This was quicker and much more efficient than finding and purchasing a book.

Her second point of contention, that the characters were unreasonable…well, it was a human book, after all. Nick and Nora Charles may seem perfectly rational to the average Homo sapiens but to a Vulcan they were flawed in their deductions. Trip had assured her that the author of the book was well known and respected as a mystery writer, but she would need more examples of Mr. Hammett’s work before verifying this assessment.

He would keep asking about the book and “how she liked it,” that much was certain. It was better to simply read it and talk to him about it, she thought as she opened it to the second chapter and began reading. Deep in the back of her mind was an awareness that no matter how she justified it and pretended that it upset her personal routine, she enjoyed the attention Trip paid to her and was flattered by the value he placed on her esteem. And, a tiny voice asked her, if a book was so ridiculous, why had she accepted it…and why was she reading it instead of accessing that PADD like a logical Vulcan?

She was soon too lost in the plot to pay these thoughts any mind.

Two hours later she yawned before she realized what she was doing. Had she spent that long reading? The chronometer would seem to indicate that, yes. She placed the book on a table beside her bed and gathered up her meditation candle for a session before bed.

Lighting it, T’Pol settled herself on the floor and quietly went through the process of relaxing her mind and allowing the emotional build-up of the day to release.

“You’re up late,” a familiar voice said.

T’Pol opened her eyes and was unsurprised to see Trip sitting cross-legged opposite her. She had come to expect his presence in the white room of her meditations most evenings. It was strange how the least normal thing that had ever happened to her—bonding with a human—had become the most comforting. She looked forward to this time, free from distractions, to talk to the person who had come to mean the most to her. The bond allowed her to explore her emotional reaction to Trip and had improved both her mental control and her mood considerably.

“I was reading your book,” she informed him. “I lost track of time.”

His face lit up at this. “Really? So you like it?”

“I must admit, it is becoming quite interesting. A number of suspects have been introduced to the story, each of whom seem to have their own nefarious reasons for committing the crime.”

“That’s the point, T’Pol. It’s a whodunit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A whodunit…a who-done-it,” he explained slowly. “You have a whole cast of characters who would each benefit from committing the crime—now Nick and Nora have to wade through all the evidence and figure out what really happened.”

T’Pol digested this for a moment in silence. “I believe the lawyer did it,” she finally said.

Trip’s face fell, but he recovered quickly and turned his head away from her and holding up a hand. “I’m not saying a word. You’ll have to read it to find out. But I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“I have not finished it, so I would prefer to refrain from making a final judgment until I have.”

The engineer nodded, satisfied in the knowledge that she was taking the time to read it. He switched the subject to keep conversation going.

“Did you finish those scans of the particle field we flew by today?” he asked, knowing she could talk about her work forever.

“No,” she stretched her hands over her knees and tilted her head. Trip knew this was Vulcan for “I’m annoyed.” “I had surveyed over 60% of the area when Lt. Reed ran an unscheduled drill of the emergency shutdown procedure for auxiliary science stations.”

Trip stifled a laugh. Malcolm was notorious for his “unscheduled tests.” He was pretty much banned from engineering for that very reason. Trip would not have the man messing unnecessarily with his engines in the name of so-called operational readiness. “Did you lose any of the data?”

“No, but it was an inconvenient distraction. I had just discovered that the field was made of particles consisting largely of titanium with a mix of magnetite…”

He stretched himself out and let her tell him all the fascinating details of her scans, content that of all the people she should share herself with, he seemed to be at the top of her list.

Trip hated admitting it, but he had to. There was really no way around it.

“Okay, so you were right. It was the lawyer.”

T’Pol said nothing, simply inclined her head, acknowledging his defeat.

He smiled as he helped Crewman Barker rearrange the mess hall chairs. Movie Night had just ended and several crewmembers were still clustered in groups, socializing. “How did you figure it out so quickly, anyway?”

“He was the character who had both the motive and the means to carry out the crime and subsequent deductions,” she informed him as she pulled a table back into place.

“I didn’t know who it was until the end, I have to admit,” a voice behind them said. Malcolm Reed appeared, carrying two chairs and setting them around T’Pol’s table. “I’ve read some of Hammett’s work before, The Maltese Falcon, but I’ve never seen any of them on screen before. Great stuff.”

“I preferred the book,” T’Pol told him. “It was more detailed and authentic to the time period.”

Hoshi Sato approached them, joining their conversation as she headed for the beverage dispenser. “I agree, Commander. The book was much more vivid than the film.”

“Really?” Malcolm asked. Hoshi nodded adamantly. “I may have to take a look at it, in that case.”

“I have a copy you may borrow, should you care to,” T’Pol offered.

“You have a copy of The Thin Man?” Hoshi asked. T’Pol simply nodded while Trip suddenly became very busy with the chairs he was moving. Hoshi, thankfully, let it go—but not before eyeing Trip suspiciously.

“Thank you, Commander. I might just do that,” Malcolm told her. As friendly as Trip was to her—he always called her by her name when they were off-duty—neither Hoshi nor Malcolm seemed comfortable doing so. Nor Phlox, for that matter…nor anyone, now that she thought about it, except for Captain Archer. But that was only because he was above her in rank. She couldn’t imagine calling him “Jonathan,” on-duty or off. Perhaps she should make an effort to be more sociable?

“I believe Chef made a pineapple upside down cake for this evening’s meal. There may be some left over, Lieutenant,” she nodded to Malcolm, “and Ensign,” a nod to Hoshi, “if you would care to discuss the film for a while before turning in.”

Hoshi and Malcolm exchanged brief glances of surprise as Trip slid into a chair next to T’Pol. “Pineapple?” he made a face. “Anything decent, like pecan pie?” he asked.

“Decency is a matter of opinion,” Malcolm told him acidly, getting up to locate the cake.

Trip knew pineapple was the Tactical Officer’s favorite food. He smiled when his barb hit its intended target. It was a good thing Vulcans lived to be over 200, T’Pol reflected. It was going to take her at least that long to decipher such strange human male behavior as the frequent exchange of insults and barbs with one’s friends.

“Did I hear Trip say you figured out who did it before the film was over?” Hoshi asked T’Pol, taking a bite of the cherry tart she had selected from the display case.

T’Pol paused as she chewed on her pecan pie.

“Before the movie was over?” Trip snorted before she could answer. “She had it worked out before chapter four.”

T’Pol opened her mouth to retaliate when a nearby comm. panel chirped. “This is the captain. Senior staff please report to the bridge for a briefing.”

The collective good mood evaporated, replaced by instant alertness. They looked questioningly at one another, food and movies forgotten.

Trip stretched out an arm and slapped the comm. panel.

“We’re all here in the mess, captain. Something wrong?”

“I’m not sure yet, Commander,” Archer replied. “Starfleet has something of a mystery on its hands and they want us to check it out.”

Chapter 2: The Plot Thickens

Jonathan Archer watched his officers—his friends—file onto the bridge for the briefing. He hated interrupting their leisure time as they got precious little, but duty called. He smiled at them, letting them know that he appreciated their prompt attention to his call and that this mission did not sound as harrying as some of their more recent assignments. None of them smiled back (except for Phlox) but they did visibly relax. Archer called their attention to a small viewscreen which showed a tiny complex of buildings nestled in a rocky outcrop.

“The Shomar Mining Project,” he began, looking at his crew expectantly.

“I’ve heard of it,” Malcolm offered. “It’s some kind of interspecies science project, isn’t it?”

Archer nodded, pleased. “The project is a joint venture between Andoria, Earth, and Vulcan. A team of scientists and technicians from all three planets has been testing the viability of sustained mining on the surface of Velat 4.”

“Velat 4 is known to have a high concentration of carillium,” T’Pol interjected, “but it is highly dispersed throughout the planet’s crust. All attempts at mining it have resulted in failure.”

“The project leader is an Andorian geophysicist named Strel,” Archer told them. “She believes that she may have found a way to extract the mineral from the upper strata.”

Trip let out a low whistle. “I’ve seen the Vulcan warp trials using this stuff. When it lines a reactor the efficiency of the engine increases at least four-fold. Problem is finding enough of it to do the trick. If these guys really found a source of it…” he shook his head, momentarily lost in the fantasy of warp seven engines.

“The Vulcans and the Andorians are of the same opinion.” Archer smiled briefly at his friend. “The team consists of three Andorians: Strel, her husband Medec, and Tola, a lab tech,” the viewscreen picture switched from the mining outpost to personnel files. Three blue-skinned Andorians appeared, followed by two humans. “Pieter Gundel and Billie Saunders are Earth’s contribution to the team. Both are mining technicians. Earth provided most of the actual mining equipment, as Velat 4’s topography most closely matches its own. The Vulcans,” two Vulcans materialized on the screen, “contributed Dr. V’Ret—”

“A well-known geologist,” T’Pol provided.

“Well-known?” Trip asked, trying not to grin. What exactly made a geologist well known, he wondered.

“He has worked for many years to terraform areas of Vulcan that have undergone desertification, making them suitable for habitation again.” Well, that explained that.

“Who’s the other Vulcan?” Hoshi asked.

“Kovar. He’s the facility engineer.”

“Seven people, three species, one facility,” Malcolm summed it up. “I bet their movie nights are fun.”

“Indeed,” Phlox agreed jovially.

Archer became serious and continued. “For weeks the outpost has been having intermittent communications problems, then they lost contact completely for five days. When they were finally able to restore the link, this was the first message they sent through…” Archer hit a button at the edge of the table and the computer obediently jumped to life, playing the requested audio recording. It crackled and fizzed for a few seconds before a faint voice could be heard. Distorted and frantic, it was difficult at first to make out what was being said and impossible to tell the gender of the speaker.

“…oever is there…whoever can he…is the Shomar Mining Proj…Velat 4. We…an acc… one of our team…been killed and…quipment…malfunctio...Please send help…contact…he Andorian…ulcan High Command, or Starfle…require immediate assistance.”

The recording snapped off in a fit of static. The officers stared at one another around the briefing table, silent.

Uncharacteristically, it was Travis who broke the silence. “Did they just say…that someone was killed?”

“That’s what we’re going to go find out, Ensign. Our orders are to proceed immediately to Velat 4, offer assistance to team, and conduct an investigation.”

“The transmission was unclear,” T’Pol pointed out. “We may be jumping to conclusions. An investigation may not be necessary.”

“Better safe than sorry, Commander,” the captain told her. “Travis, lay in a course to Velat 4.”

“Aye, sir.”

As usual engineering was buzzing with activity when T’Pol entered, carrying a set of data PADDs for Commander Tucker to review. Personnel scurried to and fro, conducting maintenance and monitoring the ship’s precious engines as they thrummed a merry warp 4.5 tune. It was comforting to see everything running smoothly here, at the heart of the ship. During Trip’s absence this section had felt strangely hollow, as though he had taken the very momentum of the engines with him.

T’Pol craned her neck to find the chief engineer, eventually spotting him—or part of him—beneath a nearby computer panel. His legs stretched out along the grav-plating as he wrestled with some unseen electrical foe in the underbelly of the console. “Try re-routing relay 147, see if you get that energy spike again,” he was telling Lieutenant Hess, who stood at a nearby junction.

Hess did as she was instructed. “That was it, sir. No surge now,” she nodded, satisfied that a problem had been fixed.

Trip struggled to remove himself from a tangle of wires and cables. T’Pol bent and took his elbow, helping him to his feet.

“Oh—hello!” his surprise allowed a spontaneous grin of pleasure to escape. His unpracticed emotional response caused the bond between them to twitch momentarily. She dropped his arm and stepped back, fully in control once more. Now that was interesting…was the bond getting stronger or was that simply an unexplored aspect of it? T’Pol had no idea. It bore further reflection at a later time. Trip didn’t realize that anything had happened and had already turned to Hess.

“Yep, it’s relay 147 all right. Get a team up there and check it and the surrounding power grid,” he instructed her. She nodded and left them.

“Is there a problem?” T’Pol asked.

He waved a hand. “Nah, just maintenance. We should have replaced some of those relays about a month ago—I got a little behind on some of the routine checks, I guess. What brings you to engineering?”

T’Pol held out one of the PADDs she carried. “I have been reviewing Dr. Strel’s proposed technique to remove the carillium from the surface of Velat 4. I would appreciate your opinion on her work.”

“Uh-huh.” He took it from her and began reading.

“This one,” she held out the second PADD, “contains reports the Shomar Project was able to send before they lost communications. They indicated several equipment malfunctions or failures. I have been trying to determine the cause but my findings are thus far inconclusive.” Trip took the offered data module and glanced at it briefly before picking up a nearby toolkit and motioning her to follow him to his office.

“Malcolm came by earlier and gave me the specs for the Strel’s mining plan,” he told her as he put the toolkit away. He flipped on his workstation computer and called up the information Malcolm had provided. “I’m not a geophysicist so I can’t really say, but this looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. She wants to actually use the transporter to extract the impurities from the mineral, right?”

“Correct,” T’Pol said. “Initial trials with the process were very promising.”

“Promising enough to get backing from three separate governments,” Trip agreed.

“The technique should also allow them to coagulate isolated mineral particles,” T’Pol went on.

“So they’ll end up with big chunks of the stuff,” he finished for her.

“Essentially.”

He was examining the PADD she had given him once more. “This is some mining facility Strel had planned.” The blueprints for the proposed permanent station were indeed elaborate. “I can see how something like this might be worth killing for.”

“Commander,” T’Pol admonished sharply. Surprised, he looked up from the text. “There is no indication of criminal behavior or violence taking place on Velat 4. There is no reason to make an unwarranted presupposition.”

Trip laughed. “You mean I’m jumping to conclusions?”

“That is the human phrase, yes.”

“I can’t help it—it must be human nature. You can’t deny, it does seem like foul play. Strange equipment failures,” he waved the PADD cataloguing the technical glitches the team had encountered, “a dead team member, a prestigious project and huge egos at stake…”

“I do not understand the human pre-occupation with creating mysteries where there may well be none. It is much more likely that there is a benign explanation. The evidence may not make much sense to us at the moment, but there is a sequence of events that fits it. It is simply a matter of uncovering it.”

“Oh!” Trip smacked himself in the head suddenly. T’Pol was not alarmed—she had seen him do this when he forgot something he deemed important, or when his mind made a sudden connection between two previously unrelated events. “I’m such an idiot!”

“I would hardly say that,” she assured him.

“Huh? Oh—no, I mean, I just realized something. I shouldn’t have given you The Thin Man as your first mystery novel. I should have started you off on Sherlock Holmes. You would like him, he’s extremely logical.”

She tilted her head in doubt. “I will take your word for it. I need to get back to the bridge, please let me know if you come up with anything else.” She turned to go and he settled himself in his office chair to look over the data.

Before leaving, she hesitated. “Trip…”

“Yeah?” he asked absently. When she did not answer immediately he looked up at her.

“I have been meaning to ask you…why did you give me The Thin Man?”

Caught off guard, he wasn’t sure how to answer. He hesitated. Sometimes human emotions just got in the way of communication, T’Pol thought.

“Uh, well…” Trip flushed slightly, clearly not eager to give her an answer.

T’Pol folded her arms and conducted a minor test of the receptive qualities of their bond. She sent a focused burst of thought toward him.

“Hey!” Trip sat straight up in his chair, shocked. It was the equivalent of a telepathic “poke.” He glared at her, she raised her eyebrow back at him. Sighing, he leaned back.

“My mother gave me that book the last time I was on shore leave. I just…uh…thought you might enjoy it, that’s all. I…thought it might help you understand another part of human behavior.”

“Oh…” It was not the answer she had been expecting, not at all. His mother had given it to him—it must have great sentimental value if he had chosen to then give it to her. No wonder he was so embarrassed. He probably worried that she would think it too intimate a gift at such an early stage in their relationship. She decided to put his mind at rest on the subject.

“I do enjoy it, Trip, a great deal. Thank you for giving it to me,” she told him. Uncertainly, she reached out and placed her hand over his. Trip looked highly relieved at her response and grasped her fingers briefly. She gave him a farewell nod and turned to go before his voice stopped her again.

“T’Pol?” he asked. She turned back. His eyes danced mischievously. “Will you teach me that “mind jab” thing you did?”

She did not hesitate to answer. “No.”

His delighted laughter followed her out the door.

Chapter 3: Enemy Mine…er, Miners.

Malcolm Reed was a competent man and an efficient officer. He knew this because he told himself so on a fairly regular basis. Of course, he could also back up that claim, so he saw this as reinforcement of existing character traits rather than justifying fictional ones.

By the time Enterprise neared Velat 4 twenty-three hours after the course had been laid in, he had reviewed all the personnel files for the project members. He had compartmentalized them in his mind (something else he was very good at) and ranked them in order from highest to lowest possible threat potential. He knew that there might be no danger at all, that he might be misinterpreting the transmission and that everyone might be alive and well at the mining facility save for a few bothersome technical glitches. Starfleet didn’t pay him to prepare for the best, though, they paid him to make damn sure he and the crew were prepared for the worst.

This was why, as Travis was saying, “Approaching the planet, sir,” Malcolm was assigning the miners rooms in what he considered to be strategically indefensible positions around the ship (what had happened with those Orion women would not happen again). Anyone else would think he was crazy, but this didn’t bother the Tactical Officer. He was, after all, thinking of their safety (ingrates though they may be!).

Aside from the personnel files, he had also posted a new crew rotation schedule, developed a martial arts training session for the MACOs, and conducted an operational readiness test on the back-up systems in engineering. Trip thought he had blocked Malcolm’s access to the engineering computers, but while the man was a highly talented engineer he just wasn’t as sneaky as Lt. Reed was. After all, who had the spy experience? Not Trip, that was for sure. Hmmm. That test had blown relay 147. Had to be careful about making Trip suspicious. If he found out there would be hell to pay.

Yes, it had been a busy 23 hours, he thought as he turned his attention once more to the varied personalities that made up the Shomar Mining Project.

“Put us in orbit,” Archer instructed Ensign Mayweather. A planetary vista stretched out before them on the viewscreen—Velat 4 looked hard and uninviting. It’s numerous mountain ranges snaked across long stretches of land that held little vegetation. Huge barren shields engulfed most of the northern continent; a sickly ocean filled the gap between this and the southern land mass. Malcolm thought the whole planet looked like a skinned knee waiting to happen.

T’Pol immediately busied herself at the science station, taking readings and trying to find the outpost. Hoshi set about hailing them, but no response came.

“Captain, I believe I have located the facility,” T’Pol told him. She called it up on the screen affording everyone their first view of the Shomar Mining Project.

Malcolm was surprised at its appearance. He had looked at all the available technical specs for the SMP. He and Trip had gone over all the mechanical aspects of the project and T’Pol had briefed him on their methodology as well as the possible gains this endeavor might net. All those plans and all that potential had led him to believe it would be as much a shining beacon of hope on this lonely planet as its initial aerial photograph had suggested. The structure that now filled the viewscreen looked a lot more like a ramshackle prospector’s hovel than an important interspecies science venture.

The five-building cluster was in obvious need of repair. The roof had blown away in two places and it sagged dangerously in at least three more. The buildings were streaked brown and grey, as though scraped by giant, dirty hands. One of the buildings had apparently come apart at the seams and been repaired somewhat haphazardly with sheets of metal bridging the gap between the two sides. Another of the structures looked as though it had been built halfway with one set of materials while the other half was constructed of something completely different.

“Trip, are you getting this?” Archer asked.

The chief engineer’s voice rang out across the bridge. Enterprise’s audio system was sensitive enough to pick out the annoyance in his voice. “Yeah, I see it. I’m gonna have to have a word with their engineer about facility maintenance.”

“Hoshi, anything yet?”

Hoshi shook her head. “They only have audio. Their communications link is open and working, no one is responding.”

“They asked for our help,” Malcolm wondered from his station. “Why don’t they acknowledge us?” For him this was a rhetorical question. He had already come up with over three dozen possible reasons the outpost’s staff might not answer. They ranged in severity from “they’re all dead” to “no one is in the correct building to hear the hail.” A creature of habit, Malcolm was assuming the worst until someone proved him wrong.

The captain decided to take matters into his own hand. “This is Captain Jonathan Archer of the Starfleet vessel Enterprise. We received a communication from your facility indicating that you required assistance. Please respond.”

Everyone held their breath, but no answer came. Malcolm mentally began assigning members of security to an away team and allocating phase pistols.

“Your transmission also mentioned something about a member of your team being killed.”

Still no answer.

“If you do not respond we will begin an investigation on the matter immediately.”

“That will not be necessary, Captain Archer,” a voice suddenly erupted from the comm. link.

“Who is this?” Archer demanded. Whoever was down there was pulling his chain and he didn’t like it at all.

“Dr. Strel, the project manager. As I was saying, you do not need to conduct any sort of investigation. We are in need of supplies, but that is all. I apologize if our transmission sounded more urgent than necessary.”

“What about the mention of someone dying?” Archer wanted to know.

There was silence for a moment, and a buzzing sound in the background of the audio communication. Strel was apparently talking this over with someone else.

“Dr. Strel?”

“Yes, someone on our team…lost their life…but that was an accident. We have already looked into the matter thoroughly and buried our colleague.”

“Doctor, we were asked to look into this matter on behalf of Earth, Andoria, and Vulcan,” T’Pol told her patiently. “We require more detail than that.”

“My first officer is right, Strel. We’ll need to see the medical records and talk to your personnel.”

The buzzing sound was audible again and it was several seconds before Strel spoke again. “Very well. We will make the records available and you may speak with our staff.”

“Good,” Archer clapped his hands. “That’s settled. We’ll send down a party immediately.” He had a feeling he knew how this statement would be met.

“No!”

Yes, that’s what he thought. “Is there a problem?”

“Captain…you probably noticed that our facility is not in the best condition. It would not be in the best interests of your people to come down here.”

“I see. In that case, I will send down an engineering team to assess the damages and determine what repairs need to be made. In the meantime we will transfer your staff to Enterprise.” He said it in his “captain’s voice,” as Hoshi liked to call it. People just did not argue with that voice.

A long moment of silence stretched between the Andorian on the planet and the human on the starship. Finally, Strel conceded. “Yes, of course. A reasonable course of action. I will have my engineer ready to assist your team.”

“Good.” Archer nodded to Hoshi and she cut the transmission. The captain stood in front of his command chair for a moment, brow furrowed and arms crossed. Finally he looked up and made his way over to Malcolm.

“Lt. Reed, I want you to go down there with Trip and T’Pol. Strel isn’t telling us the whole story, and I want you to find out what’s really going on there.”

Malcolm’s eye’s sparkled with pleasure. “Aye sir.”

Chapter 4: A Cast of Suspects

If the mining facility looked bad on the outside, it was no comparison to what awaited the Enterprise team on the inside.

“People live here?” Trip muttered, stepping over a large metal beam that had fallen across the corridor they were walking down. He gingerly pushed aside several loops of cable hanging from the ceiling, then held them aside as T’Pol and the others dodged beneath them.

The rather large human who had met them at the docking pad did not seem to notice the mess, weaving in and out of it with little difficulty. Other than acknowledging that he was Pieter Gundal, he hadn’t said a word to them, simply turned on his heel and walked off. After exchanging brief “what was that” looks, the officers followed him, Malcolm at the fore.

Pieter Gundal was thus far ranked somewhere near the top of Malcolm’s possible threat list. Despite his shock of white hair, at 6’6” he was the largest member of the group and was clearly meant to be the “muscle” of the operation. He and Billie Saunders were only here to run the Earth mining machinery, which might leave the humans with feelings of inferiority. This could very well fray tempers, and who knew where that could lead.

Pieter led them to what was apparently the outpost’s control room, where a small but diverse group waited to meet them. Two Andorians, a Vulcan, and another human stood tensely—Malcolm had the distinct feeling that Enterprise’s arrival was not entirely welcome. In fact, if he had to guess, he would say that the group had been arguing shortly before the away team showed up. There was something about the way the Vulcan and the Andorians were positioned far from one another that told him that the station wasn’t quite big enough for both species.

A waifish Andorian female stepped forward, her antennae quivering atop her feathery white hair. “I’m Dr. Strel. Welcome to the Shomar Mining Project facility—” She was interrupted by a loud clunk as something fell off the roof of the building and crashed to the rocky ground outside. “—such as it is.”

“Looks like you folks could use some help getting this place operational. How did it get this way?” Trip asked.

“The wind shears off the nearby cliffs have worn considerably on our little outpost,” Strel explained. “It may not look like it but we’ve been doing constant maintenance since we arrived.”

Trip exchanged a look with T’Pol that Malcolm couldn’t quite read, but he could guess what it meant. Wind shears had nothing to do with the interior of the buildings and the disarray they were seeing here. Why lie?

T’Pol did not address this, however, and quickly introduced herself and the others from Enterprise. There was T’Pol herself, of course, Trip, and Malcolm, as well as Ensign Mendes from security. Malcolm had wanted to bring MACOs along, but Archer had vetoed the idea. It was a little over the top, he had decided.

Strel greeted the newcomers and turned her attention to her own people. “Allow me to introduce the rest of our team. You’ve already met Pieter,” the human grunted again from the position he had taken near a human so painfully thin she was practically translucent. “This is his assistant Billie Saunders.” Billie eyed the officers from underneath a heavy knit cap which seemed to engulf most of her head. She reminded Malcolm of one of those dreadful Dickens characters, the kind that was always starving and living in a garret somewhere.

Strel turned to the Vulcan, dressed in huge robes and watching the entire scene passively. “This is Dr. V’Ret.” V’Ret inclined his head slightly, like a monarch greeting his subjects.

“And finally, my husband Dr. Medec.” The second Andorian stepped forward and put a hand on Strel’s shoulder. He didn’t say anything, just glowered at no one in particular.

“I did not realize you were a doctor as well, Medec,” T’Pol nodded at the Andorian. “Our files indicated that there were only two geologists assigned to the project.”

“I’m a biologist,” Medec informed her, so shortly that it was almost an insult.

Trip made a slight motion toward T’Pol, which almost made Malcolm smile. The engineer just couldn’t take someone insulting his favorite Vulcan, even though T’Pol would be the first to tell him that she could take care of herself.

T’Pol merely took in the information in her usual emotionless manner. “I see.” If she saw Trip’s movement she gave no indication of it. “Perhaps we should begin our assessment of the structural integrity of your station. Commander Tucker and myself will begin our analysis of your data logs, if they are ready. Lt. Reed and Ensign Mendes will escort your party to Enterprise. Captain Archer has arranged to meet you there and discuss the events leading to your distress call. Our doctor would also like to review the medical data on your…dead colleague.”

“There are two members of your team that aren’t here, Dr. Strel,” Malcolm suddenly said bluntly. He liked to do that—to catch people off guard if possible.

“Yes…Kovar, our facility engineer, is out repairing part of the roof of the processing center. He will assist you, Commanders, with your work here. The colleague that was killed was Tola, our lab tech.” Strel put a hand over Medec’s, which was still on her shoulder. “It was…tragic…for all of us.”

Malcolm said nothing, just watched the Shomar personnel’s reactions to what Strel told him. Medec looked so angry he would explode any moment. The Vulcan stiffened almost imperceptibly beneath his robes, Pieter Gundal looked like he was trying not to smirk. Billie Saunders gave no reaction whatsoever. Her face was so blank that Malcolm wondered if she weren’t somehow “touched.”

He had known that his categorizations of the SMP team would need some tweaking after he met them in person, he could see now that it was going to be a bit more complex than he had realized. There were obviously several strong personalities at work here, each of which would manifest themselves differently according to the species and culture of each individual. If he was going to understand these people and figure out what had happened here, he was going to have to understand their group dynamic. There was only one person onboard Enterprise that he trusted to help him with this task, he only hoped Captain Archer would agree and allow Hoshi to assist him.

Trip and T’Pol set out to find Kovar, leaving Malcolm and Mendes to herd the rest of them onto the shuttle and up to Enterprise.

____________________________

“What do you think so far?” Trip asked T’Pol in a low voice as they made their way slowly through the hallway that Strel had directed them down.

“About what?” T’Pol asked, brushing aside a sheath of wires.

“Don’t touch those!” Trip hissed. “They might be live!”

The Science Officer cast him a withering glare that dared him to question her ability to assess the danger of the situation. Trip glared right back. He could be just as stubborn as she was, and when it came to her safety he didn’t take chances. He’d make sure she came back alive even if he had to kill her to do it.

“I think,” she pointedly addressed his earlier question, “that Dr. Strel has not been entirely honest with us. The damage inside this facility has nothing to do with wind shears and it is obvious that no one has conducted maintenance in these corridors for quite some time.”

“A wise deduction,” a voice agreed from just around the corner ahead of them. They turned it and found the team’s second Vulcan kneeling next to an open panel and a large toolbox. He was dressed in grimy work overalls, a handkerchief fluttering out of his back pocket. Trip could hardly believe it—other than in the most dire of circumstances, he had never seen a Vulcan get dirty or wear something covered in soot. He looked almost…human. It was disconcerting.

“Kovar,” T’Pol said evenly.

The Vulcan nodded and stood. He rose, pulled the rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands before offering the traditional Vulcan salute to T’Pol and, shockingly, extending his hand for Trip to shake.

“You must be Commanders Tucker and T’Pol.” His eyes lingered momentarily on T’Pol before turning back to the panel he had been working on. “You are correct, much of the day to day maintenance here has been abandoned, and it is not wind shear that has caused our problems.”

“What is it, then?” asked Trip. “It looks like a hurricane went through this place.”

Kovar shrugged, another atypical action for a Vulcan. “Our systems have not been functioning correctly for some time. The disorder you see here is a result of both those malfunctions and many attempts at finding the source of the problems.”

“You mean people have just been ripping out relays and wires all over this station?” Trip was appalled at the suggestion.

“In essence, yes.”

“What systems have you had trouble with, and in what order did they begin to malfunction?” T’Pol wanted to know.

“Communications, of course, but you knew that. Life support was on the fritz but I think we’ve got that fixed now…”

Trip mouthed on the fritz? to T’Pol, amazed. This Vulcan was a real piece of work.

“The computer databases were damaged, a lot of information from our early trials was lost, and the processing center has not been working correctly for several weeks…in fact, I believe that was the first system to be affected. I can provide you with the exact data.”

“Affected by what?” Trip asked. “Do you have any idea what has caused these breakdowns?”

“I have run every test I can think of to try to determine the cause and they have all come back negative. Each of the systems has been affected in a different way, there does not appear to be a truly common denominator between them. Some systems have no problems at all while others seem to almost disintegrate. There is only one possible explanation I can think of that would explain all of them, but it is not a popular theory here.”

“What is that?” T’Pol asked. Surely if he had come up with a reasonable hypothesis it ought to be investigated.

“We have a saboteur.”

Chapter 5: A Side Effect of Sabotage

“What happened to Tola was terrible…to find her like that, outside, lying there…it was awful—but it was an accident, Captain.” Strel was adamant on this point, and her stance had not wavered since coming aboard Enterprise. Neither Medec nor V’Ret said anything to contradict her.

Normally when visitors came on board Enterprise the captain liked to invite them for a meal in his private mess and give them a tour of the ship before getting down to business. Given the circumstances this sequence had been understandably truncated. The three highest-ranking SMP colleagues now sat on one side of the conference table, facing Archer, Lt. Reed, and Hoshi Sato. Malcolm had taken Archer aside upon arrival and asked that Hoshi be included in the interrogations.

“We’re not interrogating them, lieutenant,” Archer had seemed slightly amused at Malcolm’s insistence.

“Not yet,” Malcolm had replied. “Give it time.” He was positive that once Phlox got done examining that medical data they would be conducting a murder investigation.

“What happened?” Archer was asking.

Medec, who acted as the medical officer for the group, replied. “It appears that she fell from the roof of the control center. She must have been trying to replace some of the roofing materials and got caught by a gust of wind.”

“A gust…of wind?” Archer asked, skeptical.

“The winds near the facility can reach speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour,” Medec informed him condescendingly. There wasn’t much to like about the Andorian, Archer decided. “Tola’s neck was broken immediately in the fall. She fell face down into the soil and was unable to move herself…she suffocated.”

The grisly scene played itself across the minds of all those present in the room, but Archer continued with his questions. “Why are you so sure it was an accident?”

“First of all, everyone’s presence was accounted for in other parts of the station. It was very early in the morning so most of us were still asleep,” Strel informed him.

“And my examination revealed cuts and bruises consistent with a fall. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign that she had been forced off the roof,” Medec supplied.

The Vulcan suddenly stood from the table. “Captain, I do not see the logic in this course of action. There is little information that can be gained from questioning us in this manner—all that we have told you is available in the reports we supplied to your Tactical Officer. If you have nothing else to question us about, I would like to return to my quarters to meditate.”

Archer hesitated for a moment, then stood as well. “Of course. I apologize. We humans can be impatient and I wanted to get your take on what happened before reading those reports. You’re free to leave.” He smiled his best diplomat’s smile as they rose stiffly and filed out of the room. Once they were gone, the smile faded and he turned to Malcolm and Hoshi.

“I think you hit a nerve, sir,” Malcolm commented.

“I guess so. Find out what the hell happened down there. Go talk to Phlox.”

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

After evaluating all the faulty systems and structural damage throughout the facility, Trip could see why Kovar seemed to think it was sabotage. He would need more time to go over the data that the Vulcan engineer had provided, but he was right—there were no obvious connections between the myriad technical problems that had besieged the SMP.

He sauntered over to where T’Pol was accessing the station’s productivity reports.

“Have you seen Kovar anywhere? He’s disappeared.”

She pursed her lips slightly. On a human the gesture would have been almost meaningless. For T’Pol it spoke volumes. “I haven’t seen him since he took you to the communications relay.”

“You don’t like him, do you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I neither like nor dislike him.”

“Right.” He propped himself against the table and leaned back until he was almost face-to-face with her. “But you don’t exactly approve of him.”

“There is something…strange about him. His manner, his demeanor—he is not a typical Vulcan.”

“Well, who is?” he teased.

She said nothing at this and turned back to her work. Trip wisely decided to drop it and informed her of his findings thus far.

“How about you?” he asked. “Been able to get into those reports?”

“Yes, and it is indeed curious. The productivity of the facility has been consistent—even increasing—since they became operational.”

“I find that hard to believe—you’re telling me that while life-support was going offline they were still mining carillium? And that none of those machines were malfunctioning?”

“No, that is not what I am telling you. Mr. Gundal’s logs indicated that the machines were not functioning correctly several times over the past months. Despite this, advances were made by Drs. Strel and V’Ret to further refine their extraction process. They have been able to obtain more carillium with increasing efficiency from the planet’s surface.”

Trip took this in. “So if it was a saboteur, he or she wasn’t able to stop production.”

“Perhaps he or she did not want to do so.”

Trip gave T’Pol a quick grin. “It sounds like you’re about to make an unwarranted presupposition, Commander.”

“I would hardly call it unwarranted. Given the information that we now have, I believe Kovar’s explanation to be the most consistent with the evidence we have. There is a saboteur at work on this station.”

“So who is it, and why are they doing it?”

“We do not have sufficient data to answer those questions yet.”

“Oh come on, Miss “I-Believe-it-is-the-Lawyer.” Take a guess.”

“Vulcans do not guess, Mr. Tucker.”

“O-kay…then make a logical deduction.”

T’Pol closed her mouth and thought for a moment. Finally she shook her head. “We would need more information on this station’s personnel before doing so. If you are using the human “whodunit” as a guide for our actions, then we must first become acquainted with the suspects before determining who had the motive, the means, and the opportunity.”

Trip laughed. “I guess you’re right.”

“This is not an amusing subject, Commander. If there is a saboteur here then the situation is far more serious than we first suspected. This operation will likely be shut down—not a favorable precedence for future joint ventures between our species.”

“Is that what has you so serious?” Trip asked, staring at her.

“As you have often pointed out, I am always serious, Trip.” She refused to answer the question, but Trip pressed the point.

“You’re afraid that if our species can’t prove they can work together, there’ll be a prejudice toward us forming any kind of relations, professional or otherwise?”

She was silent for so long, attention focused on the console, that Trip almost thought she wasn’t going to respond. “It would be…an unfortunate side effect of this facility’s failure,” she finally said.

“T’Pol, I promise you that our future,” she looked at him sharply at this, “will not be affected by whatever we uncover at one mining facility on a planet most people have never even heard of.”

“There is growing unrest on Earth against aliens.” The engineer almost flinched—he hated the idea of anyone labeling T’Pol an “alien.” “Word of an inability to fulfill the potential of an enterprise such as this would not help that situation. Our species may be very different, but both have shown that they are more than capable of laying blame on the other.”

“That’s true,” he conceded. “But we have a say in this, you know. Maybe these people can’t work together…maybe they’re actively trying to shut each other down—but we, you and I, can work together. We’ve proven it time and time again. I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate that than by solving this puzzle once and for all.”

The look she gave him steeled his resolve even further. They would solve this together. As confident and capable as she was, T’Pol needed to know that humans and Vulcans could have a long-term future with one another. He smiled at her, nudging her with his shoulder. She did not smile back but neither did she move away.

“Come on. I want to take a look at that processing station. It was the first area of the outpost to start acting strangely. I could use another pair of eyes.”

Nodding, she followed.

Hidden out of sight in the shadows of the corridors, Kovar listened with great interest as the two Starfleet officers conversed. Obviously their relationship was more than simply professional. Interesting…but not unexpected.

Chapter 6: Ghosts in the Machines

“Strel is definitely in charge,” Hoshi told Malcolm over her plate of spaghetti. The two were camped out in the mess hall, eating dinner and waiting for Phlox to contact them. The Denobulan had chased them out of sickbay when they had made it clear that they would be happy to wait while he reviewed Tola’s medical data. On the table around them were several data PADDs containing background information for the SMP personnel.

“I noticed,” Malcolm said between bites of chicken parmesan.

“But Medec would like to be. Did you notice his body language?”

“Yes. He seems very protective of his wife.”

“Not just protective—he’s trying to be the dominant one, to assert himself. He wants to be the protector so much that he’s almost too aggressive about it. He’s defensive to the extreme. I think he views almost any slight or insult as a threat to his masculinity.”

Malcolm was impressed. “That’s very important in Andorian society, isn’t it?”

“Extremely.”

“How about V’Ret? What do you get from him?”

“I think he has a major superiority complex. Have you read his file?”

“Several times.”

“He’s been involved in some very important projects on Vulcan. The High Command asked him to represent their interests here on Velat 4. I don’t think he likes it much. I think he resents not only being sent here but also not being in charge.”

“It must be difficult to be such a respected Vulcan scholar to take orders from an Andorian,” Malcolm agreed. “What about the humans?”

Hoshi shrugged. “I don’t really know enough about them yet, but I would guess—”

“Sickbay to Lt. Reed.” Phlox’s voice came out of the comm. link Malcolm and Hoshi had situated themselves near.

“Reed here.”

“I’ve finished reviewing the data. I’ve found something I think you’ll find most interesting.”

“We’re on our way.”

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

Sometimes Malcolm hated being right.

“As you can clearly see, Tola’s neck was broken and she did suffocate,” Phlox told he and Hoshi, “but the timing is off. If she had broken her neck and then ended up on the ground, she would have suffocated relatively quickly. From what I can make out, it took her over twice as long to die as it should have.”

“Perhaps she had some mobility left?” Hoshi asked.

“No,” the doctor shook his head. “The break occurred between her third and fourth vertebra. In Andorians, this is a very sensitive spot. Her prime motor functions would have ceased immediately. No, I believe it took her longer to suffocate because she was struggling, and at some point during that struggle her neck broke. The markings and bruises that Medec catalogued would be consistent with this.”

“He said they were consistent with her fall,” Hoshi said.

“Some of them, yes, but not all.”

“Doctor, are you sure about this?” Malcolm wanted to know.

“Very nearly. To be absolutely sure, I would need to do an autopsy of the actual body.”

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

As much as Malcolm wanted to get to the bottom of Tola’s now apparent murder, he was reluctant to bring Phlox’s request to the captain. Exhumation was not something anyone could look forward to, and Archer was going to have to inform Strel and the others that it was going to take place. Reed did not envy his commanding officer his task. For this reason, he and Hoshi were making their way rather slowly to the bridge. If Ensign Sato wondered why Malcolm was taking his time, she did not ask. In fact, she seemed quite content to ponder the details of the case with him.

“But Strel said they all thought it was an accident.”

“If that’s the case,” Malcolm wanted to know, “then why send that transmission? Whoever sent it must have known the reaction it would get. If they all really did agree that it was an accident, why word it like that?”

“The first thing we need to do,” Hoshi told him, “is find out who sent it.”

“Can you clean it up enough to determine the identity of the speaker?” Malcolm asked.

“I was working on that before Captain Archer assigned me to you,” Hoshi smiled. “I haven’t got it yet, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

Malcolm had complete faith in her abilities. He was glad she was working with him on this—he felt he could trust her completely. After all, she was the person who handled all transmissions—personal, top secret, and otherwise—for everyone on the ship. She had never breached the confidence entrusted to her, and Malcolm respected that. There weren’t many people who wouldn’t be tempted to use that information for their own personal gain in one way or another.

If he were honest about it, he would have to say that more than that, he liked her. When she had tried to protect Phlox from his Rigellian kidnappers he had been proud of her (he hoped that she had used one or two of the moves he had taught her in the crew training sessions to give them what-for). Later she had allowed herself to undergo a mind-meld to help locate the doctor. The very thought of someone squishing around in his own brain gave Malcolm the creeps, but Hoshi had submitted to it to help her crewmate. Yes, Hoshi was a damn fine officer—and quite a woman.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_

In the end, T’Pol decided, Trip was right. She did not like Kovar. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why that was, but ever since he had joined them in the processing center he had been too friendly, too helpful…too chatty for a Vulcan.

Kovar and Trip were getting along very well—too well, in fact. She supposed she should be pleased to finally meet another Vulcan that wanted to work with humans rather than against them, but there was something about the facility engineer that made T’Pol uncomfortable. The two men were having a fine old time discussing every moving part on the station and debating Kovar’s saboteur theory and T’Pol was beginning to feel like—what was that human phrase?—a fifth wheel. Or maybe it was a third wheel. She could not recall, but since most transportation vehicles normally had four wheels, fifth wheel was the logical choice. She turned her attention back to the engineers.

“Gundal was the first person to report problems with his equipment,” Kovar was saying.

The two men were working side by side in one of the giant earth-moving machines. It was basically a rover-like vehicle carrying a huge shovel-like apparatus with a set of spiked drills along the front. These drills would extend and retract, breaking up the tough rocks and minerals from the crust of Velat 4. The shovel would then raise and dump the debris into a funnel-shaped receptacle, where it would be fed through a series of gears and further broken down. This was where Trip and Kovar currently stood. The whole apparatus was also very dirty, which meant that now both men were filthy as well. Neither really seemed to mind.

“Doesn’t seem likely that he’d sabotage his own equipment and then report it,” Trip grunted, pulling a metal grill aside and revealing a set of now-silent gears. He shined a light inside the panel and squinted, sweat dripping down his face.

“Unless he was trying to throw off suspicion…but I don’t think Gundal would harm his machinery in any way. He seems to have an unnatural attachment to it.”

“What about his assistant, Billie?” Trip asked.

“I do not believe that Miss Saunders would have the inclination to commit such an act…or the aptitude.”

Trip nodded and began disassembling the gears. According to Gundal’s reports, the shovel arm of the mover was one of the first pieces of equipment to stop working. “I got that impression. What about the others—what would they have to gain from shutting down this operation?”

“I do not believe that Strel would do anything to endanger her experimental mining procedure,” Kovar took the components the commander handed him, setting them neatly aside. “Her husband, however…”

“Yes?” asked T’Pol. She stood on a catwalk above them, scanning the processing machines.

Kovar looked up at her, then back down at Trip. “I do not think he enjoys it here. I believe he may be jealous of his wife’s success.”

“So he wanted to take it away from her. Pretty harsh.” Trip rolled up the sleeves of his jumpsuit and wished not for the first time that Starfleet would issue a two-piece uniform. He’d be a lot more comfortable in his undershirt right now.

“It is an Andorian trait,” Kovar tilted his chin, “but I do not know that the doctor would have the expertise to disrupt the station’s systems.”

“Who would?”

“V’Ret might—but he is, of course, Vulcan. It is unlikely that someone of V’Ret’s standing in our society would take such a course of action. He would be ostracized for such acts of vandalism and violence—whoever sabotaged this station has shown very little emotional restraint. That does not sound like V’Ret to me.”

“So we’re back at square one,” Trip sat back, resting his wrists on his knees. “How are we suppos—”

He was suddenly interrupted when the gears he was working on roared to life. He scrambled to get away from them but the leg of his jumpsuit caught in one of them. Kovar grabbed onto him as the machine tried to pull him inside its crushing jaws.

“Commander!” T’Pol cried. She vaulted over the side of the catwalk to the mover’s control panel. With more calm than any human would have exhibited she searched for a way to switch it off.

Meanwhile, Trip and Kovar were wrestling against the giant beast, trying to brace themselves against the walls of the funnel to avoid being sucked downward. Unfortunately that was exactly the purpose the mover had been built for, and it rattled and shook in an effort to move these two very stubborn pieces of debris on to their next stage of processing.

“T’Pol!” Trip shouted above the din. “Shut this thing off!”

“I’m trying, Commander,” she shouted back, allowing her agitation to show. Finally she located the necessary command keys and the giant machine powered down.

For a moment the only sound were the gears clacking to a halt. T’Pol took a deep breath to pull herself together and climbed the movable stairway attached to the side of the machine. She was met at the top by Trip, who clambered onto the staircase and down to the floor. Kovar followed much more gracefully.

“Trip, are you injured?” Trip noticed the very slight tremor in her voice, but her face belied no emotion whatsoever.

“I’m fine,” he assured her, “but I can’t say the same for these boots.” He showed her his feet, encased in now-shredded Starfleet issued footwear.

T’Pol didn’t say anything, simply stared at the boots, then looked Trip over to make sure he was telling the truth about not being injured. The engineer did not protest.

“If you wish, we have several pairs of boots in storage. There may be something that will fit you until you go back to your ship,” Kovar offered.

“Yeah, thanks,” Trip ran a hand over his face. “What the hell happened? How did that thing kick on?”

T’Pol could not answer him that.

Kovar excused himself to look for a pair of boots, leaving the two of them to investigate how the machine had come to life so unexpectedly.

Chapter 7: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier…Spy?

“There is no record of anyone turning it on manually.” T’Pol stood at the processing center’s main computer console, scanner in hand. Next to her, Trip sat on the catwalk and removed his boots, dangling his feet over the side.

“Well I guess we would’ve noticed if somebody had,” he said tiredly.

“Not necessarily. It is possible that someone could have been operating it remotely from another location, but that does not appear to be the case.” Trip didn’t say anything to this, just rested his head against the handrail. T’Pol stopped and looked down at him. “You should return to the ship. We have been here for seven hours. You should rest.”

Trip waved it off. “We’re only due to be down here for another hour or so anyway. I’m fine.” He came back to the problem at hand. “So if nobody turned it on, how did it get on?”

The Vulcan pressed several buttons and consulted her scanner once more. She shook her head. “There is no logical explanation. The machine’s software simply switched it on. Specifically, it was given the command to move from “idle” to “in use.” The request was generated spontaneously within the program.”

“A virus of some sort?”

“Possibly. It seems likely that this equipment is still suffering from the effects of the saboteur.”

“And we still have no idea who that might be.”

T’Pol knelt down close to Trip and lowered her voice. “There is one person we have not yet considered in that role.” Trip turned to her, his face inches from her own. “Kovar.”

“Kovar? The guy just saved my life, T’Pol.”

“While that is certainly an action that has merit, it should not exclude him from our inquiries.”

“Has merit, T’Pol?” Trip looked somewhat hurt by this.

She ignored this. Human males could be such children sometimes. “Kovar is the only one on the station with unlimited access to all the affected systems and machinery.”

“What’s his motive, then? He is Vulcan—he’d be no more likely to sabotage the station than V’Ret. Vulcans don’t do things like that—it’s become too uncontrolled.”

“Kovar is not like V’Ret,” T’Pol was adamant. “I do not trust him.”

Trip jutted his chin out at her, a typical sign of human stubbornness. “Well I do. He’s innocent until proven guilty.”

Below then Kovar entered the processing center carrying a pair of black boots. “I believe these will fit you, Commander,” he called.

Trip and T’Pol looked at him, then back at one another. T’Pol stood and descended the stairs of the catwalk. “I have completed my scans in this area. I will move to the common room and the kitchen next,” she stated as she passed Kovar.

Trip watched her go and mentally kicked himself. How had that happened? She had saved his life too, and he repaid her by telling her that her comment—her perfectly reasonable comment, his conscience added unhelpfully—was wrong. He sighed. No matter what their species, women were a complete mystery to him.

While the Commander worried that the Science Officer was leaving because of his comment, T’Pol’s mind was otherwise occupied. Trip was an intelligent man so she had no doubt that he would eventually see the sense in her position on Kovar. No, something other than her fledgling relationship with Trip was bothering her.

Both Commander Tucker and Kovar had all but dismissed both Vulcans from their line of questioning because the sabotage was too emotional, too uncontrolled, and appeared to be personally motivated. Vulcans, both men assumed, would be incapable of such acts.

But T’Pol could think of things that might make a Vulcan lose his—or her—control. She just wasn’t ready to talk about this with Trip yet. To do her duty properly, though, she could not ignore the possibility that it was V’Ret or Kovar, even if they were Vulcan. And given a choice which of her species it might be, Kovar was the one she had misgivings about.

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

While Commander Tucker might not agree with her assessment of Kovar, T’Pol would have been grateful to know that Lt. Reed not only shared her opinion, he was already acting on it.

There was something about Kovar’s records that just didn’t add up. He’d been trained at the Vulcan Science Academy and had served as an environmental specialist aboard two Vulcan ships before being transferred to the Shomar Project. There just wasn’t enough there for a 68 year-old engineer. For a project of this importance Vulcan would not have sent a merely mediocre engineer, not while they sent the jewel of their geological crown, V’Ret. No, something was missing from Kovar’s files, and Malcolm was going to find out what.

He had already searched all the records available from Kovar’s two ships—there was absolutely nothing of interest there. For all that he was mentioned—twice, total—he may as well have not even been onboard. Maybe he wasn’t, Malcolm’s more paranoid side whispered.

He activated his personal viewscreen and punched in his security clearance. Reluctantly he directed the computer to send a communication to an address he had hoped would be behind him forever. He waited impatiently for the computer to connect, but the computer just beeped at him and displayed a testy message.

“No longer a valid location code…” he read off the screen. “What the…?” What was going on? He knew the answer, of course, even before the question had formed on his lips. Harris had moved shop. Damned inconvenient of him.

What now? Malcolm was not the sort to give up easily. He reached for the comm. panel.

“Lt. Reed to Ensign Sato.”

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

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Hoshi was feeling just fine at the moment. After Malcolm had asked—almost ordered, really—her to find a person that didn’t exist at an address that wasn’t a real place (at least according to every directory she had consulted), she had insisted on staying while he put the communication through. The tactical officer hadn’t complained, just got that tight-lipped “I’m thinking it through” look for a moment and nodded.

Malcolm typed in the correct location code and motioned for Hoshi to step out of the viewscreen’s visual range. As she did so the screen beeped and the image of a very pretty dark-skinned woman appeared.

“Well, well,” the image said in an amused voice. “Didn’t think I’d be getting any calls from you again. Not after what you told Harris last time you spoke. Or should I say, last time you hung up on him.”

Reed smiled thinly. “Hello, Mel.”

“So have you called to kiss and make up?”

In his peripheral vision Malcolm could see Hoshi’s eyebrows shoot up. She was practically dancing just out of the viewer’s visual range, trying to get a glimpse of the caller—god only knew what she must think of him now.

“No, I haven’t,” he told Mel hastily, before she could continue down that path. “What I told him last time still stands—I’m not working for him. In fact, if you plan on telling him I’ve called, we can end this conversation right now.” He reached out a hand to terminate the link.

“Wait, wait. So touchy in your old age, Mal. So you didn’t call for Harris—but you did call for something.” Mel leaned forward, her face filling the screen. “What do you want?”

Malcolm’s hand hovered over the termination switch for a second before he pulled it back a fraction and rested his wrist on the smooth metal surface of his desk. “I’m investigating an incident at the Shomar Mining Project on Velat 4.”

“Heard about it. What’s that got to do with me?”

“One of the SMP team members—I can’t find any information on him. A Vulcan by the name of Kovar. His file is practically barren and I just don’t buy it. He’s hiding something.”

“Going with those gut feelings again, huh? Careful—remember what happened in Marseille.” Mel’s voice was laughing but her face had already turned away from the screen to a bank of computers behind her. “Let’s see what we’ve got…”

Malcolm tapped his fingers on the table as he waited for his friend to finish crunching data. Friend—could he call her that? In Mel’s business, it was so hard to know who one’s friends were. Not like on Enterprise. He looked at Hoshi, her face pinched and her fingers practically white as she gripped a PADD and awaited the news.

“Okay, here we go. Got a hit.” Mel skimmed through a screenful of data one of the computer’s had provided. “Oh…”

“What?” Malcolm wanted to know.

“Your Vulcan…well, I can see why his record was empty. Sending you the data now.”

The screen split itself in two, allowing data to stream in under Mel’s image. He began to read furiously, his brow furrowed with concern. “Well,” Mel sighed, “I guess you just love me for my data. Typical.”

“What? Oh…thank you Mel. I owe you one.”

“Oh no, consider us even.”

Malcolm cocked his head at her, confused.

“When you hung up on Harris…I’ve never seen him so angry before.” She raised her eyebrows and a slow smile, dreamy smile snuck across her face. “It was wonderful!” With that the upper half of the screen turned black before Mel’s data took over the entire viewing surface.

“Marseille??” Hoshi asked, coming around behind Malcolm and leaning on the back of his chair. “Malcolm, who was that woman? Who are you?”

Lt. Reed did not respond, simply stared at the file displayed before him. Hoshi took note and turned her attention to it. Her questions about Malcolm’s past were instantly forgotten.

“That little bastard!” Malcolm breathed. “Kovar was at P’Jem.”

Chapter 8: No One Likes the Messenger

“I don’t like having things kept from me, especially by people I’m trying to help!” Archer knew his voice was straying from the evenly modulated tone he tried to keep when addressing a problem, but his nerves were frayed. The Vulcan seated before him gave no response whatsoever, which did nothing to improve the captain’s mood.

This was his last “conference” of the evening—he was beginning to feel like a principal with naughty schoolchildren seated on a bench outside his office, awaiting his reprimands. He had already talked to Strel and Medec earlier, and that had not gone well, not at all. He cast his mind back over the highlights of that delightful chat.

“You can’t simply exhume a body…with—without reason, without permission—it’s…it’s…” Medec’s normally pale face had flushed a deep cobalt as he spluttered angrily. Archer had been afraid he was going to have to get Phlox in with a sedative.

“It’s being allowed by command of the Andorian Empire,” the captain finished for him. “The Andorian Empire” sounded pretty impressive, even if for Archer’s purpose it had consisted of one very put-upon bureaucratic records officer who had granted him permission to dig up a citizen of the Empire and conduct an autopsy. “Phlox is already preparing Sickbay and the body should be here within the hour. Then we’ll confirm or deny our doctor’s initial findings.”

“Which are what? That one of us is a cold-blooded killer?” Medec stood abruptly. “This is preposterous, I’m not standing for—”

“Calm yourself,” Strel, who had been silent to this point, put a hand over her husband’s. She turned to Archer. “Conduct your tests as you see fit. We only want this to be over. Every hour we are here we lose valuable time we could be working in the mines.” Despite her neutral voice and reasonable words, her eyes had been cold—that is, until he informed her that production was going to be delayed for quite some time.

“Commanders Tucker and T’Pol have identified several key technical components on your station that they believe were sabotaged. They’ve been beamed aboard along with several pieces of mining equipment. We’ll be taking them apart and analyzing them to find the person responsible for the damages. You may not be mining again for a while.”

At this Strel’s face went pale and her jaw slack. “You…transported…our equipment…” She seemed unable to finish…indeed, after that revelation she was unable to focus and Archer had dismissed them both only minutes later.

That had been almost an hour ago. Between that talk and this one a great deal had taken place—Phlox reported that Tola’s body was now safely in Sickbay, Trip and T’Pol had returned to the ship, and Malcolm and Hoshi had uncovered…something very unexpected. Archer stared once more at the subject of the tactical officer’s “very unexpected” news as he sat, motionless.

“You weren’t just at P’Jem,” Archer spat at the Vulcan. “You helped it!”

Kovar inclined his head a fraction of an inch—a concession. “Yes, I did. My government came to me and requested my help. I could not refuse.”

“You were a spy—and now there’s a saboteur and probably a murderer running around that mining facility. You have to know how that looks.”

“I would imagine…circumstances do not favor me at the moment.”

“You’re damn right they don’t!” The Vulcan’s expression did not change but he swayed ever so slightly, as though hit by the force of the captain’s words. Archer dialed it back a notch, taking a deep breath.

“Captain, whatever you may believe my past dictates about my present actions, I did not interfere with the station, and I certainly did not kill anyone. Vulcans do not—”

“Vulcan’s aren’t supposed to do a lot of things, but I notice they find loopholes when they need to,” Archer cut him off acidly. “Of all the people on that station, you are the only one who has been both an engineer and a spy. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t suspect you.”

Kovar thought this over for a full minute. “I can’t,” he finally said. “I can only tell you that I have not harmed anyone or anything since I’ve been on that station.” He spread his hands on the table in front of him and looked the captain squarely in the eye. “But ask yourself this: if I am, as you say, the only person who is both an engineer and a spy—why would I do such a poor job of sabotage? Why would I make it so obvious, and why would I call attention to it?”

Archer had no immediate answer for this, and said so. “I don’t know yet,” he leaned forward, “but I can assure you that I will.” He paced behind the seated Vulcan, obviously pondering something else. “Why did the High Command send you here? Do they know about your past?”

Kovar was silent.

Archer leaned over Kovar’s shoulder, facing the young Vulcan’s profile. “I could just call them and ask, you know.”

Kovar turned his head to look at the captain. “The current government does not know about my involvement at P’Jem. I would…prefer they did not.”

“Why is that? How did you get assigned to this project, anyway? Did you have plans to sabotage it from the very beginning? Are you working for someone?”

Kovar seemed almost put-upon, which infuriated Archer. “I did not disrupt the mining operation,” he said patiently, “and I am not working for anyone other than the SMP. I thought the project sounded interesting and simply signed up for it.”

Archer was suddenly very tired. He could feel a stress headache coming on—the kind that required at least two cups of coffee to quell. “I’m confining you to quarters,” he told Kovar. “We’ll talk about this more tomorrow.”

Chapter 9: Vulcans Know Best

Trip spent a lot of extra time getting ready for bed not because he wanted to look (and smell) especially nice for T’Pol, but because he was afraid that he wouldn’t be seeing her this particular evening. Their tiff had been unpleasant but certainly no worse than their usual arguments…no, what worried Trip was the news that had awaited them on their return to the ship.

T’Pol had been right. “Right, right, right,” he harrumphed, throwing his wet towel toward a laundry dispenser and missing completely. He eyed it, annoyed, then moved to place it correctly in the receptacle (was T’Pol rubbing off on him? he wondered).

Kovar was a spy. Not only a spy, but someone who had helped build the monitoring station that had led to an ancient Vulcan monastery being destroyed…and to T’Pol being ostracized by her own people. Trip felt twin surges of anger and guilt. Anger at Kovar, who he felt should shoulder some of the brunt of the blame placed on T’Pol; guilt at his own stupidity for not listening to her.

He settled himself in the bed, arranging the covers and fussing with the pillow before finally settling down for what he was sure would be a very lonely night. Well, he deserved it, no getting around that. His eyelids fluttered closed.

He would talk to her tomorrow about it, first thing. He would apologize, he owed her that much. Then he would ask for her help with the sabotaged equipment and let her tell him any other theories she had as to who or what had caused all the damage. That would show her that he knew she was right, that they could work togeth—

“Are you going to sit there all evening with your eyes closed?”

Trip’s eyes flew open and he was temporarily blinded by T’Pol’s white meditation space. When his eyes recovered from the unexpected glare he focused them on the lovely Vulcan opposite him, still dressed in her uniform and sitting ramrod straight. She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Are you well?” she asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“You appear troubled,” she stated simply.

“No…no, not at all…well, yes. Yes, actually, I guess I am.” Trip shook his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Geez, T’Pol, I don’t know what to say. You were right about Kovar.”

“I believe that is all that needs to be said.”

He stared at her, sitting calmly cross-legged. She really was beautiful. There was a pristine, untouchable quality about her most of the time, like nothing could tarnish her. Though he’d always thought her attractive, it wasn’t until he realized that she could be shaken, unsure, emotional in her own way that he began to see her as more than a colleague. He admired her more for it—the more she stood up to her own weakness the more she became his. He wasn’t exactly sure, but he felt that was what being a Vulcan was really all about—not mindless suppression of every mental twinge and craving, but a constant unabashed confrontation of ones own demons.

“I did not mean that literally.”

Trip shook himself out of his reverie. “Sorry. It’s just…I’m tired. And to be honest I was prepared for more of a fight. I should’ve listened to you instead of buddying up with the guy. Why didn’t I see it? He is so strange for a Vulcan.”

“His past was hardly common knowledge to anyone. According to the captain, Mr. Reed had to go through “back channels” in order to uncover it. As for being strange…as you yourself pointed out, “who is normal?” He is no more odd than anyone else from the facility.”

“You’re letting me off the hook?”

“I do not see what there is to “let off,” as you say.” T’Pol didn’t enjoy human colloquialisms but she had been incorporating them into her speech quite a lot lately. Interesting, that…but she was continuing. “I knew once you recovered from the accident on the surface you would more clearly consider what I said.”

“You did?” Did she know him that well? “I guess I was pretty keyed up.”

“It was upsetting,” she agreed. He did a double-take. T’Pol? Upset? She said it so casually, like she was asking for a report on manifold valves or something mundane. She was studying the ground in front of her. He smiled and reached out to her, placing a hand over hers. The gesture appeared to comfort her and she turned one hand over and loosely curled her fingers over his.

With T’Pol, Trip found, a lot of things he took for granted in human relationships were topsy-turvy. Take this, for instance. He and T’Pol had been to bed, hell, she had kissed him publicly (well, in a public place, anyway. No one happened to be in that corridor at the time, but still…). This slight contact, though—this seemed far more intimate than any of that. This wasn’t a physical response, Trip suddenly understood. This was her emotional reaction to him. She was literally embracing it.

His smile grew. He took his hand from hers and raised it to her face. Gently, he brushed his fingertips along her cheekbone, barely grazing her lips with his thumb. Her eyes were wide as saucers but she said nothing. Trip knew he couldn’t push her—this was all new for her. He dropped his hand and let her recover. Since his own heart was dancing giddily, it wasn’t an entirely altruistic gesture.

T’Pol flexed her hands and folded them in her lap, nodding once, getting back to business. “The revelation of Kovar’s background information does not solve our mystery, however. We have not discovered who the saboteur is yet…or the murderer.”

Trip stretched himself out full length and propped his head on his elbow. Captain Archer had also grimly informed them of Phlox’s report upon their return to the ship. Archer seemed sure that Kovar had something to do with both incidents; Trip thought that sounded like a safe bet. If T’Pol was still considering other suspects, however, he was willing to hear that out. He eyed her quizzically. “You don’t think Kovar did it?”

“His past proves that he has experience in deception…and he has the most technical aptitude of all the SMP members. The likelihood of his guilt may have increased, but that does not negate the possibility that one of the others did it.”

“Do you think the murderer and the saboteur are the same person?” Trip asked.

T’Pol considered this. “Perhaps. But we should not discount that members of the team are working together. If that’s the case, three natural pairings appear.”

“Strel and Medec, Pieter and Billie, Kovar and V’Ret,” Trip counted them off. “Andorians, humans, and Vulcans. Each species keeping to itself, eh? So who’s the most likely?”

“It is a simple matter of assessing what each individual had to gain from either sabotage or Tola’s death.”

“Well yeah.” Trip chuckled. “Sounds right up your alley—so tell me, whodunit?”

“You realize this is pointless, as the autopsy report and the scans of the damaged facility components will reveal the culprit in the morning?”

“Yeah, but that’s no fun.”

“The human concept of fun is one I find often lacking in logic.”

“That’s kinda the point of it. Are you going to tell me who did it or what?”

She sat up straighter, if that were possible, and looked down her nose at him. He could hardly keep from grinning—she would never admit it, but she loved playing detective. “The person who had the most to gain—” she broke off, staring into the distance.

“T’Pol?” he sat up, suddenly alert.

“There is someone at my door,” she told him, still staring. “Who is it?” she addressed no one in particular. More skilled at meditation than Trip, it appeared she could communicate with both the inside and the outside world from her white room.

“Well?” Trip wanted to know.

She looked at Trip with faintly unfocused eyes. “It’s Kovar.”

“What?! T’Pol, don’t let him—” Trip stopped and looked around. He was no longer in the white room, T’Pol no longer in front of him. He was back in his own room, tucked into the bed. He oriented himself for a moment before bolting out of the bed for the door.

He slapped the door open and nearly ran into the shut panel when it failed to slide back and allow him egress.

What the hell…? He pushed the button once more but still the door would not budge. Confused and more than a little worried, Trip hit the comm. button to get Malcolm, security, or anybody to T’Pol’s quarters.

“Tucker to Reed.”

There was no response. Impatiently he hit it again.

“Tucker to bridge.”

There was nothing for several moments, then a slight hissing sound.

“…aving some troub…comm. syst…down all over…ship…” Hoshi’s patchy message came through before the audio snapped silent altogether.

Before he could try to re-establish the link Trip was thrown to the floor of his quarters when the floor bucked beneath him. His engineering sense kicked into overdrive as the ship jerked once more, then stopped. Spreading his hands on the floor of his cabin, Trip was immediately aware—the engines had shut down. The lights in his quarters flickered, then went out. An instant later the emergency floodlights came on, bathing his room in soft amber tones.

Trip’s heart rate increased as adrenaline pumped through his system. He had no doubt—whatever happened on the station was happening here. They had brought aboard a saboteur. His blood ran cold at his next thought…

Jerking himself off the floor, the engineer hit the emergency release on his door and manually hauled it open. He took off down the corridor at a sprint, heading for T’Pol’s quarters.

They hadn’t just brought aboard a saboteur. They had also brought aboard a murderer.

Chapter 10: Sabotage Loves Company

Kovar didn’t look very comfortable, T’Pol reflected. But then, he was Vulcan, and Vulcans prided themselves on being able to endure physical discomforts through a number of effective mental disassociation techniques. No, she decided, she would not shift her weight in order to ease the pressure on his lower back.

Pinned somewhat pathetically to the floor of her cabin, Kovar had been attempting to explain his presence there and his decision to violate Captain Archer’s orders that he be confined.

“I wished to explain about P’Jem,” he was saying with some difficulty. T’Pol wasn’t sure if the difficulty stemmed from the bare foot she had squarely planted in his spine, the knee that held down his shoulders, or the deck plating he was practically grinding his teeth on.

“You designed the listening station. What else is there to explain on that subject?” She flexed her foot, digging in deeper. “I would like you to explain, however, how you ended up on the Shomar Mining Project and what part you’ve played in its demise.”

He opened his mouth to answer her when all hell broke loose. The ship jerked and rocked, tumbling T’Pol off balance and throwing both of them hard against the far wall of her quarters. T’Pol landed on her bedside table, cracking her skull painfully. For a moment she saw stars and had a delirious moment of thinking it might be the one human figure of speech that was correct when she realized she was looking out her own window—and that the ship had stopped. The lights went out, replaced a moment later by the ship’s emergency lighting.

Kovar rolled smoothly to his feet; T’Pol clambered up, readying herself in a defensive posture. To her surprise Kovar simply sat down on her bed. His lip was split and he gingerly dabbed at the green blood clotting there.

Still dizzy, T’Pol warily circled him, moving toward the door. He noticed and stopped dabbing.

“It isn’t me,” he told her. “You of all people should know that a Vulcan would never do this.”

“I would have thought Vulcans would not spy on people we made a peace treaty with—yet you did that.”

He looked at her, confused. “You are agitated. I believe you may have suffered a cranial injury and it is affecting your emotional control.”

T’Pol’s nostrils flared slightly. “I am in perfect control. I merely suggest that Vulcans are capable of many things,” she said darkly.

Kovar’s shoulders dropped and he stared at his hands for a moment. “Yes, they are. I have found, for example, that although we do not allow ourselves to feel emotions, we may still experience…regret.”

T’Pol leaned back against the wall, unsure what she was hearing.

Before Kovar could continue there was a strange fizzing sound followed by a loud *pop* outside T’Pol’s door. Quizzically, both Vulcans watched as the door plate began to slide open, accompanied by a very loud grunt and some softly muttered human swearing. The faint smell of electrical burning told the science officer that the outside door locks had been forcibly overridden by someone.

“Commander!” T’Pol leapt forward to assist him with the door.

“T’Pol!” He burst into the room and grasped her shoulders, looking her over. “Are you okay? Your head!” He turned her head to examine the wound and touched it gently. She hadn’t known she was bleeding until his hand came back smeared with green.

She nodded reassuringly anyway. “I’m fine.” Her eyes swept over his shoulder to where Kovar still sat on her bed. Trip turned and started, placing himself between Kovar and T’Pol.

“I assure you, I did not come to harm her,” Kovar told him, raising his hands.

“What the hell did you do to this ship,” Trip growled. “The comm’s down and the engines are out.” If this Vulcan had tangled with the two things he loved on this ship, T’Pol and the engines, he was going to have a very, very long ride back to the homeworld. Then hopefully the captain would authorize Trip to beam the guy into one of those famous Vulcan volcanoes.

T’Pol placed a hand on Trip’s shoulder. “I believe he was just as surprised as I was when the ship came to a halt.”

“It could be an act! He’s supposed to be confined to quarters, what’s he doing here in the first place?!”

T’Pol felt his anger like a physical entity and subtly shifted her hand on his shoulder, searching for a neural node to calm him. “He was about to explain that.”

Kovar nodded. “Yes, I wanted to tell T’Pol about P’Jem…I see I should tell you as well. Her safety seems paramount to you.” He raised one eyebrow and stared out the window at the immobile stars. “When I was young, just starting out as an engineer, I believed my career would span many years and would be spent furthering the advancement of Vulcan. Now I realize what a fragile, naïve dream that was…” Had he been human, Trip was sure, he would have sighed. Being Vulcan, however, his face was devoid of expression.

Kovar continued. “When I helped create that…observation post…at the monastery, I thought I was doing my duty as a citizen of Vulcan. I was hand selected for that position—a young engineer with a bright future, a Vulcan from a good family, a loyal citizen…To be honest it never crossed my mind that the project might be morally questionable. That was far too subjective for my analytical mind to grasp. It was not until later, when I saw the implications of what I had a hand in being realized that I understood what I had done.

First there were the lies—Andoria wanted to know if Vulcan had built to listening post. We denied it. That made me uncomfortable…I began to question what I had done. The real change came when the Andorians discovered the station, but that story you know of course.”

Trip stiffened. “You bet we do,” he almost spat. “T’Pol got to be Vulcan’s sacrificial lamb for both Vulcan and Andoria.”

“Yes, I know,” Kovar got up from the bed and moved to the window. “I know. That is what I regret most. I petitioned with the High Command to reveal my part in the charade and was denied. Our government was not ready to be open on that subject.”

Trip and T’Pol shot one another startled glances at this revelation. “So they sent you out here, in the middle of nowhere, where you couldn’t stir up any trouble?” Trip asked.

Kovar was silent for a moment, considering something before he answered. “Something like that.”

“But the government has changed now, you could—”

“Our government may have reorganized itself, Mr. Tucker,” Kovar interrupted, “but our new goals of peace with the Andorians and the humans, our ambitions of working together in the future, would not be served by reopening old wounds. No, best to let…what is that phrase? Something about…dogs sleeping?”

“Sleeping dogs lie,” Trip and T’Pol supplied in unison.

“Fascinating linguistic devices humans use,” the Vulcan shook his head. “Anyway, I came here to apologize, T’Pol. I feel a great deal of responsibility for the troubles you have experienced both on Vulcan and Earth. I wanted you to know that there are many who know you were not to blame for what happened at P’Jem.”

Neither Trip nor T’Pol said anything. Both, in fact, seemed too stunned to even move.

“Now,” Kovar went on slowly, “I believe I am about to experience some of what you went through, as your captain believes I am a saboteur and even a murderer—”

“The saboteur!” Trip snapped out of his trance and smacked himself in the head. Kovar seemed startled and took a step back. “We’re sitting here talking when there’s a saboteur loose on the ship! C’mon!” Trip grabbed Kovar and propelled him through th still-open door.

“Where are we going?” T’Pol asked, following him.

“We’re bringing him,” he thrust a finger at Kovar, “to the captain. You tell him what you just told us. I don’t know that I believe all of what you just said, but I think I do. And if you’re lying, I’d rather have Malcolm watching over you, just in case.”

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

Chapter 11: A Starship on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

They say that pets and their owners begin to look alike after a while. Archer wasn’t sure that he and Porthos looked much alike, but he and the ship were certainly beginning to think alike. That is, they were currently both going insane.

“The comm. system is back up sir!” Hoshi chirped from her station. “Oh wait…” she bent her head as the console in front of her blinked erratically. “No, they’re back down.” The console stopped blinking and went dead. “Definitely back down, sir.”

“Sensors are reading five—no six!—ships off the port nacelle!” Malcolm announced. “Wait—no…they’re off the starboard side…” His voice trailed away.

“Lieutenant?” Archer snapped.

Malcolm shook his head. “The readings keep changing. Sensors just told me that three ships fired on the bridge, but obviously they haven’t. These readings are totally unreliable!”

Archer paced the bridge, his mind buzzing. The saboteur was obviously hard at work here on this ship—his ship. But why? He or she must be desperate to keep the Enterprise crew from prying further into what happened at the mining facility. Only Strel and her husband had been informed of the autopsy and that components from the surface had been beamed aboard the ship. There was no telling which other members of the team they had informed, though. Or maybe the saboteur couldn’t stop him or herself—maybe it was a compulsion to destroy, a madness—

Archer’s brief contemplation was cut short by another jolt through the hull plating.

“The navigation system is offline, sir!” Travis called. “The computer won’t let me take over manual control, though!”

“What’s our speed?” Archer asked.

“Still at half-impulse, sir.”

Well, at least they weren’t speeding halfway across the galaxy. Yet. Who knew when the engines would develop a mind of their own?

The door to the bridge was tugged open with a loud grunt and a bedraggled Trip, T’Pol, and Kovar stumbled into view.

“Why aren’t you in engineering?” demanded Archer. T’Pol heard the tension in his voice and was proud when Trip responded calmly. Maybe emotions didn’t always cause illogical behavior. Sometimes they even seemed to spur rational thinking. Her human was a complex being, certainly.

“Just on my way now, captain. Had something to drop off here first.” He turned and Kovar stepped forward.

“How did you get—never mind. Whatever you’ve done to this ship—”

“Captain,” T’Pol interrupted, “I am not entirely sure Kovar is the cause of our current predicament.”

“Any idea who—or what—is?” Archer had long ago learned to trust T’Pol’s judgment. He would give her a little leeway here.

“Not yet, “ the Vulcan told him. Trip shot her a look but she ignored it.

“Sir! Malcolm called. “The computer is trying to activate the alert system! It wants to arm our forward torpedoes!”

“Let’s give our saboteur less to work with. Shut it down,” Archer said firmly. “Shut it all down. Shut down all systems except for life support and lock out command control from everywhere but the bridge. Can we still do that?”

T’Pol had crossed to her station and was attempting to make sense of the flashing computer before her. “I believe so.”

“Do it.”

Everyone held their breath as the ship continued to shake and jolt, the computers beeping mercilessly.

Suddenly…everything stopped. The whole bridge went silent and dark. Three seconds later the emergency floodlights came on, clicking loudly in the silence.

“We’re adrift, sir. It worked,” Mayweather told the captain. The young boomer knew the ship and space travel so well that the subtle sway in the artificial gravity told him all he needed to know. The ensign rested his hands gently on the inactive helm.

Archer exhaled sharply. “I never thought I’d be glad to hear you say that, Travis.” He looked at Trip and T’Pol. “You two—get to engineering and find out what the hell is happening to my ship!” He swiveled to face Malcolm. “Account for everyone else from the SMP. Bring them to my ready room. I want them all in one place, where they can be constantly monitored.”

Malcolm was halfway across the bridge before the captain had finished the order, hot on the heels of the commanders.

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

“Why did you tell him that?” Trip wanted to know as soon as Malcolm went his separated way and they were safely out of earshot.

“Tell who what, Commander?” T’Pol was running scans as they made their way through the darkened corridors, the soft glow of the emergency lighting punctuated by the beams of their flashlights.

Trip found the whole scenario creepy. No ship was meant to be this quiet—not being able to feel the engines purring beneath his feet set his teeth on edge. Not to mention that he still wasn’t wearing any shoes. Mental note, he told himself, always put on appropriate footwear when leaving quarters.

“Why didn’t you tell the captain who did it?” he clarified.

“Because I do not know.” She seemed genuinely surprised at his question.

“But you were about to tell me in the white room!”

“Additional factors have been introduced which must be considered.”

“Oh.” Trip glanced around the darkened passageway. “Right. Who were you going to say did it?”

T’Pol turned abruptly at a junction in the corridor. Trip scrambled to keep up. “I was going to suggest that Medec was the killer and one of the humans the saboteur.”

Trip nodded, turning his attention to the corridor. He stopped suddenly, squatting to get a better look at something along one of the walls. “T’Pol, look at this.” He pointed and she shone her light on the metal paneling—or what was left of it. The fabric of the wall had corroded through to the wires and pipes underneath. “Some kind of acid, maybe?” he asked.

“Not according to these readings.”

“What, then?”

“The scans read it as normal structural distress.”

“What? That thing must not be working right. Let me see.”

“I assure you, Commander, it is functioning correctly.” She tilted the screen so he could see. “The scans read the damage as normal accumulated distress.”

“It rusted away?” Trip was incredulous. “It would take over 70 years for this ship to rust like that! And only without any kind of maintenance whatsoever.”

“It is…curious,” T’Pol agreed.

Trip was looking at the wall, laying his hands on it. “Do you know where we are?”

“I think I have a good idea, yes,” she told him tartly.

He flashed her a quick grin and grabbed her hand, pulling her around the nearest corner. “I love it when you get sarcastic. No, behind here…this is…” he stopped, almost skidding to a halt.

Before them, their flashlight beams could only highlight the uncontrollable mess that spread out before them. Wires, floors, panels—all looked as though they had been pulled apart and then melted. It was barely recognizable for what it was supposed to be.

“…the transporter,” Trip finished.

“What could have done this?” T’Pol wanted to know. “How did someone do this and cause all the other damage on the ship so quickly?”

Trip stepped forward, wading into the mess. T’Pol still held his hand and tightened her grip reflexively. “Trip.”

He smiled. “I’m fine,” he squeezed her hand before dropping it. He turned away before he could see a glimmer of panic cross the Vulcan’s normally serene countenance. T’Pol took a deep breath and reminded herself that her human was very capable and competent…and that if he got himself hurt she would strangle him.

She was still entertaining this thought when Trip called to her from somewhere in the vicinity of what had once been the transporter pad. It was now a softly undulating mass of metal and polymer, melted and reformed in an eccentric caricature of its previous self.

“T’Pol, compare readings from here with the ones we took in the corridor,” he asked her.

She did so. “The two incidents do not appear to be related,” she told Trip, looking up at him quizzically.

He bit his lip. “Uh-huh.” The engineer tromped around a bit on the transporter pad before putting his hands on his hips and staring off into space. T’Pol knew he was thinking, trying to fit together several pieces of a puzzle that didn’t seem to be making the same picture.

“What about the readings down here,” he waved at another passageway, “towards engineering?”

T’Pol focused her scanner and started walking in the indicated direction. “I detect further structural integrity problems…” she refocused the range of the sensor, “of four varieties. None are related to one another, or to the transporter room.”

Trip drummed his hands on his hips. “Which part of the ship was damaged first?”

The science officer bent her head over her scanner, trying to decipher its readings. “It is difficult to establish, however…I believe the transporter was the first to be affected. It appears to be the epicenter.”

“Epicenter…” Trip was turning, surveying the mutilated room. “Like an earthquake and shockwaves…”

“Do you think this is part of a process or program someone initiated?” T’Pol asked. This possibility had never occurred to her before.

“What was the last thing we transported?” Trip asked.

“The mining equipment,” T’Pol told him. “I believe that last piece was the device used to screen out the impurities of the carillium.” She tilted her head. To screen out impurities…in carillium…a natural structural enhancer…

“Trip,” she said sharply. He looked up at her. “I believe we can cover more ground separately.”

“I’m not sure we should split up.” Trip didn’t like this idea at all.

“I need to scan the machinery we brought aboard. It’s in Cargo Bay 2.” T’Pol gave him no room for argument. “I will join you there once I am done.”

Reluctantly Trip nodded. She turned to go and he reached out a hand to catch her arm. “You be careful,” he told her gravely. The look in his eyes dissipated all thoughts of sharp retorts. She placed a hand over his and nodded, then turned and jogged down the hallway. Trip followed her with his flashlight until she was out of sight.

Sighing, he made his way to engineering.

Everything was dark, as expected. Everything was also quiet, as unexpected. Where was the engineering staff? There should be at least four people on duty right now…

CLUNK

The commander whipped around at the noise. Just beyond the reach of his flashlights he could hear shuffling.

“Masarro? Hess?”

No one answered. Trip advanced carefully. “Who’s there?”

The shuffling increased—someone was panicking, trying to get away. Ha! He had them cornered! He leapt forward and shone his light on…

“Miss Saunders?”

Billie Saunders, cap still firmly entrenched on her head, stared back at him like a frightened deer.

“What are you doing back here?” Trip asked. She did not respond. Trip was fed up with this—someone was going to give him some answers, dammit! “How did you get in here—and where is everyone?” He took a step forward and she ran, dodging beneath his arm and away into the darkness…almost. Dropping his flashlight, he caught the tail of her sleeve and yanked her back to face him.

He didn’t see the heavy power converter she carried until she hit him across the head with it. After that, he didn’t see anything at all.

Chapter 12: Mixed Signals

Gathering the SMP members and depositing them in the captain’s ready room should have been an easy task, even on a ship whose technical systems were comatose. This was, after all, one of the things Malcolm loved about his job: you could have all the gadgetry and computer assistance you wanted, but good security came down to the people you had providing it. Since Malcolm’s team was handpicked and well-trained, he had no worries that they would carry out their jobs to the best of their abilities.

Unfortunately neither the ship nor the SMP personnel were cooperating. So far the only member they could locate was Pieter Gundal; it had taken two MACOS and Malcolm over ten minutes to talk him out of his quarters. At least he was being safely escorted to the bridge—Billie Saunders, who was supposed to be in the room next to Gundal, was missing.

It was strange—her room had only been occupied for a few hours but it was already a mess. There were items in it that obviously did not belong to Miss Saunders: a set of silverware and three plates from the mess hall, a pair of brand new Starfleet issue boots, a length of piping, a radiation detector, part of a computer viewscreen, even one of Porthos’s collars. Clearly she was conducting her own inexplicable scavenger hunt around the ship, collecting things from every area she could get access to—and from some she should not have access to.

Malcolm was searching the surrounding area room by room for the missing SMP member—as much as he wanted to carry out his orders, he hated invading his fellow crewmembers’ privacy to do it. He fervently hoped the other two teams he had deployed were finding the rest of the miners with little trouble.

“Thank you, Crewman Yates,” Malcolm told the petite blond swathed in a dressing robe scowling at him. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. He would not apologize for doing his duty, but it was an awkward moment. “Er, yes, well. As you were.” Yates threw the door closed as soon as Malcolm stepped clear of her doorstep, the clang of it reverberated through the hallway.

“Malcolm!”

The tactical officer jumped as someone clamped him on the shoulder. “My god, Hoshi, don’t do that!” he told her. “I’m armed!” He waved the phase pistol he carried to make the point.

“When aren’t you?” Hoshi asked. She looked strange—her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were sparkling brilliantly in the faint emergency lights. “I found something!” she said breathlessly.

“Does the captain know you’re here?”

“Yes—he’s interrogating Kovar in his ready room, but I told him I needed to find you.”

“Well, he’ll get to expand his interrogation in a few minutes, Gundal’s on his way down. Can’t seem to find Saunders, though.” He looked forlornly down the hallway—at all the doors he had yet to knock on. “You’d never believe what we found in her room.”

Hoshi ignored this completely and brandished a PADD triumphantly. “I was on the bridge—I think—well…”

“Hoshi—did you figure out who sent the distress call?”

She nodded. “I’ve been sitting there trying to figure out who sent that message and I wasn’t really listening to it! None of us were…here—” she pressed a button on the PADD and it played the Shomar distress call.

“…oever is there…whoever can he…is the Shomar Mining Proj…Velat 4. We…an acc… one of our team…been killed and…quipment…malfunctio...Please send help…contact…he Andorian…ulcan High Command, or Starfle…require immediate assistance.”

It sounded the same to Malcolm as it had the first time. “Ensign, I don’t see what—”

“Don’t you hear what the caller is saying?” Hoshi continued over him. She was excited now and there was no stopping her. Malcolm shut up and let her go. “We’ve been assuming we understand the content of the message and that all we need is the identity of whoever spoke it. When you fill in the blanks created by the static, the computer generates this as the most likely original message…” she pressed the button again and the message played once more, this time with a neutral computerized voice finishing the lost words and phrases.

“[Who]oever is there, whoever can he[ar me, this] is the Shomar Mining Proj[ect on] Velat 4. We[’ve had] an acc[ident:] one of our team [members has] been killed and [our e]quipment [is] malfunctio[ning.] Please send help. Contact [t]he Andorian [Imperial Guard, the V]ulcan High Command, or Starfle[et. We] require immediate assistance.”

“Sounds about right,” Malcolm shrugged.

“We’ve been assuming that whoever sent that message was alerting us to a murder. If that’s the original message, then why is that person telling us there’s been an accident?”

Malcolm’s eyes went wide as he finally grasped what she was telling him. “Because…that’s not the original message that was sent.”

Hoshi nodded.

“So what is the original message?” He prompted, leaning toward her.

“I’m not sure.” The Tactical Officer sighed and leaned back against the wall. “But,” Hoshi continued, “what if the message wasn’t about someone being killed, but about something being killed?”

Lt. Reed mulled this over in his mind. “Something…“been killed” is what the message said. What’s something you would say had “been killed”? A piece of equipment?”

“They were having problems with their machinery…but it doesn’t sound quite right, does it?”

“No,” Malcolm agreed. They thought for a moment in silence.

“Oh!” Hoshi’s eyes went wide and her mouth formed a perfect “O”. “I say that all the time! When a transmission ends suddenly we say it’s “gone dead” or “been killed”!”

“Hoshi—you’re a genius!” Malcolm told her. She beamed with pleasure. “Play it again.”

She did. Both of them bent close to the PADD, trying to pick up any extra nuances or clues.

“The part where the speaker talks about one of their team members…I wonder if they’re referring to the saboteur?” Hoshi wondered. “They definitely knew something was wrong with the equipment.”

“It’s a good bet. I think it’s time we took this to the Captain and the Commanders.” He started to rise but Hoshi grabbed his arm and held him still for a moment.

“Wait—there’s one more thing. If this message isn’t about a murder, then I think I know who sent it.”

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

It was not exactly lying, T’Pol told herself. She was, after all, going to check her theory on the machinery in Cargo Bay 2…eventually. She had an important stop to make first, though—if Lt. Reed or the MACOs had not beat her to it.

She located the correct door and knocked, wondering if this was futile.

“Who is there?” a muffled voice called from within.

“Commander T’Pol,” she answered patiently.

V’Ret slid the door open with little effort, allowing her access to his quarters.

“Commander, this is a surprise. I had imagined that sooner or later the tactical officer would come to escort me to the bridge…or the brig.”

“Why should he take you to the brig?” she asked. “You’ve done nothing wrong…other than conceal evidence.”

The older Vulcan’s face was well-schooled as he carefully answered her. “You sound…” he crossed the room and seated himself on his bed, arranging his voluminous robes about himself, “…very sure of yourself. In many ways you are not what I expected you would be.”

“We are not here to discuss me,” T’Pol crossed her arms and faced V’Ret. “I am here to ascertain your involvement in the events at the mining facility.”

“You sound as though you’ve already done that. You think I concealed evidence. Of what? Of a murder? A saboteur?”

“Of the truth.”

“And what is that?” V’Ret turned his impassive face to disdainfully to her—but T’Pol saw something else, something Vulcans tried very hard to cover up—fear.

“When Commander Tucker and I were on the surface, Kovar told us that you could not possibly have committed any crimes or caused any damage because the acts were too emotional, too impulsive. You are Vulcan, therefore you would be incapable of such actions. Of course, this would exclude Kovar from suspicion as well—he is Vulcan as well and at the time we did not know of his past at P’Jem.”

This time it was unmistakable. V’Ret’s jaw flexed ever so slightly—a flinch.

“Now he is a suspect—”

“Kovar did nothing!” V’Ret was adamant. “He is still a Vulcan.”

“Even a Vulcan…” T’Pol leaned close to V’Ret’s ear, “can lose control.”

V’Ret’s head craned to look at her. “What are you talking about?”

“There are certain…substances…that can affect Vulcan emotional control.”

“Trellium?” V’Ret asked, the disgust in his eyes clear. Anyone who thought Vulcans incapable of expression had clearly never spent time with one.

“Among other things.” She straightened up again.

“That’s ridiculous—Kovar has never been under the affect of any such substance. It’s not possible.”

“An engineer on a geological mission on an isolated planet…only one other Vulcan to keep watch over him…a known spy…It seems very possible.” She looked out the window at the motionless stars. “A simple blood test once the ships systems are back online should tell us everything we need to know.”

V’Ret jutted his chin. “Kovar has never done any such thing. He’s never had interests in any kind of…emotional experimentation. His control has never been compromised!”

T’Pol turned slowly back to V’Ret. “Spoken like a true father.” V’Ret opened his mouth to say something but no sound came out. “Like a father forced to listen too long to his son’s detractors. I suspect Kovar did not abuse any substances because I searched for evidence at the facility and found none. You know with much more certainty…because you are bonded through blood.”

“How did you know?”

“Once I deduced the cause of the damage on the station, it was the only solution that made sense.”

Continue to Part 2

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