Vulcan for Intimate - ch. 2 & 3

Vulcan for ‘Intimate’

By John O.

Rating: PG13 – some language
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek characters/names/fans’ souls/etc. I call shenanigans.

A/N: Thanks a lot to Y2Kelly for beta and to all of your kind and helpful input!

Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Day 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 2

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

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

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

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

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Day 4

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

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

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

Day 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Chapter 3

Day 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You consumed the local vegetation, I assume?”

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

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

“Mild?!” he retorted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shuttlepod sensors don’t have tachyon detectors.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I do not see why it is relevant…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 4
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A whole mess of folks have made comments

ye-ah i'm first, excellent so far,
i do seem to recall and episode of TNG with a certain Will Riker having an exact replica of him self been transported back on to enterprise while the other remained on the planet for 8 years, it will be interesting to see how this plats out

sorry about the typo should be plays not plats

Great update, I loved all the other fic's you've wrote and this is just as great, if not better. I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

Very interesting, John ... watch out though: Distracted is going to freak out at you 'cause you killed Malcolm. :D

That was some serious technobabble you threw out there, buddy! And now you've got me curious whether there WERE duplicates that managed to survive ... and what happened to Hoshi?

Looking forward to the next chapter...

Looking forward to the next chapter.

@imzadi-

Yeah this was also inspired by that episode (Thomas Riker deal) but I could not remember it's name and I also thought if I said that early on it may give away some plot details. Plus the plot details more closely relating to Children of Time got edited as time went by. Originally there was time travel involved, but things got a little overcomplicated, I didn't want to overshadow the plot with technobabble, there was a lot as it was.

=D

It was called Second Chances 6 season I think. and I agree if you had mentioned it in the summary you would of giving the plot away, I really can't wait to see where your taking this.I keep thinking of different Scenarios up but i doubt they will come close to where your going with it.

Boo hoo! Malcolm went "Ahhh! Crunch!" Sigh. (Rigil... I'm not "freaking out"... just dismayed. Why do you guys always pick on sweet Malcolm? There better be duplicates. Hey... you know, that way you could have TnT2 live happily ever after and still stay in canon with TnT1. You're so smart!) Anyway, other than Malcolm2's rather messy mishap, I really enjoyed this installment. I love the scenes from T'Pol's POV especially, and how she's fighting her need to touch Trip even WITHOUT Trellium in the mix. Is this before or after "Fusion"? Do we have Pa'nar syndrome to blame for her lapse, or is it just close proximity to his irresistable charms creating a bond? I was certain that I caught a bit of early "bondspeak" in the shuttlepod right before the crash. Was it my imagination?

Well in my little Au S2 universe they did the whole Friendship Bond thing in "Second Date" and that's supposed to have opened the door for snippits to seep through. Every now and then - extremely close proximity or heightened emotions may cause things to slip through :)

Yes it's after fusion, and I'm dealing with Pa'nar in a manner of speaking. it's not ignored completetly but I will say in my world it's a pain in the ass! ;)

Wow! I'm really enjoying this story. I really liked Trip's little mad hunt, but thankful for that explanation. And that was some really techno talk there and left me really curious of what actually happened! Really looking forward to see where this goes...and nice TnT interaction.

Great chapters, John. Keep up the great work.

Enjoyed your fic but was a little put off by how helpless you made Trip. He had resources; there was a jungle, which would have provided wood and stones (spears and clubs) and fuel for fires, which are not that hard to produce from scratch. There was the sea; Trip the water-lover wouldn't have thought of using that wooden spear for spear-fishing? And if there is any life on a planet at all, it's going to appear at the water-land boundary. So he should have been able to scavenge something there. Also, wouldn't Trip have had some tool or other, even a pocket knife, stashed away in his uniform pockets?

you have to remember though that he wasn't exactly in his right mind for the whole 6-day period before he ran into T'Pol though, because the hallucingenic plants messed with his mind. He tried hunting he was just too tweaked out to do it right ;)

Next Chap. should remedy your concerns, he takes more initiative to improve life on this planet and becomes much more of a hardy-handy man. :)

Oh,verra interesting! They may have to fashion a life for themselves on the planet! Though they'll have to find a way around the toxic vegetation. Poor T'Pol if she's forced to adopt a carnivore diet!

I'm looking forward to the continuation of this story!

btw T'Pol knows which plants are safe - it was in her lil Vulcan survey study she still has on her tricorder. Trip just didn't ;)

btw T'Pol knows which plants are safe - it was in her lil Vulcan survey study she still has on her tricorder. Trip just didn't ;)

Veeeeddy veddy eenteresteenk. I liked everything except Malcolm. *pouts* Still, if he's still alive somewhere, that makes up for it! Great stuff, and I can't wait to see what happens next! (Quite the nod to "Second Chances", if I do say so myself!) :)

If any captain came to his bridge in the middle watch, especially if the ship was underway, and found the helm unmanned and the OD asleep, there would be a hanging.

Captains don't moan to subordinates. Archer would be incandescent with fury over the gross dereliction of duty and would probably get rid of T'Pol over it. The XO is in charge of discipline, after all.

I suppose Archer was a little immature in reaction to the situation, but I think it's a foregone conclusion that Star Trek is not, and has never been, an accurate depiction of proper Naval military conduct. Every Trek series' crew and conduct have been nothing like one would expect from strict military officers. Even Malcolm, the one who's supposed to be a "stickler" about regs isn't even close to the kind of formalism you're expecting from them.