Repercussions- Pt. 2

Repercussions

By ShouldKnowBetter

Summary: A planet holds unexpected treasure for Enterprise’s crew.

Rating: PG13

Disclaimers in Part 1

*************

Part Two

Tucker was taking his mind off worrying about T’Pol by trying to sort out staffing schedules in Engineering – his least favourite job of all time – when her replacement at the science console stiffened and tapped a few controls. Less focussed on his own task than he should have been, Tucker looked over at once. “Problem, ensign?”

The luckless man repeated his checks but the result refused to change. “Sir … Shuttle Pod 1 has disappeared from sensors.”

“What?” Already tense, Tucker bounded out of the command chair as if jet propelled, coming to glare at the scan results which did indeed show nothing. “Run the sequence.” In silence, they watched the record of the pod’s smooth descent until it simply vanished at a 2km altitude. “Hell,” the engineer muttered under his breath. “Hoshi, hail them.”

Her, “No response, sir,” was hardly a surprise although Tucker cursed softly again.

“I guess we know why we couldn’t see the Andorian ship down there.” It wasn’t a good time for Phlox to hail the bridge. Tucker closed his eyes, breathed a silent prayer for patience, and answered. “Go ahead, doctor.”

“Commander Tucker, I have been trying to locate Sub-Commander T’Pol. Do you know her whereabouts?”

“She’s in a shuttle pod, heading for the planet we’re orbiting; I hope.”

“Ah.”

Tucker groaned, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Problem, doc?”

“Well, had I been asked, I certainly wouldn’t have cleared her for away missions at the moment. As you should know, commander.”

“She wanted to go. Doctor, we’ve got a situation up here. Can this wait?”

There was a pause that Tucker didn’t like at all. “I think it best if you hear what I have to say, Mr Tucker.”

“OK.” The engineer swallowed, hoping his sudden panic wasn’t too visible. “I’ll be down. Tucker out.” He nodded to the ensign beside him. “Run those sensor logs again. Let’s have a closer look at what you’ve got.”

Vulcan strength paid dividends as usual, as T’Pol was able to brace herself against the crash impact. It still took her a few moments to recover her breath but physically she could detect no injuries beyond some superficial bruising. With a last centring breath, she turned to assist her colleagues, aware of irrational relief that Tucker was not one of the away team. Given his tendency to attract trouble, he would almost certainly have been injured in the crash and she was sadly unconvinced of her current ability to remain detached under such circumstances. Archer stirred as she checked his pulse, grimacing as he pulled himself into a sitting position, but he waved her away and moved slowly to where Mayweather had been pitched from the pilot’s chair, leaving her to locate Reed. She found the lieutenant slumped awkwardly in a corner, bleeding profusely from a head wound and one hand at a peculiar angle; she was really very glad that Archer hadn’t felt the need to bring his chief engineer along.

“How’s Malcolm?” Archer demanded, having determined that Mayweather was no more than shaken, and T’Pol offered cautiously, “I believe he has a broken wrist and a possible concussion.”

“Damn.” The captain dug out an emergency med. kit and edged her aside. “See if you can raise Enterprise. Travis, I want a damage report.”

It took T’Pol no more than a few seconds to confirm that she could no more contact their mother ship than Archer had been able to; all main systems on board were dead. Her portable scanner was operative, however, but the result widened her eyes slightly in shock before she mastered the reaction. “Captain, I am unable to detect Enterprise in orbit.”

“What?” He looked up sharply from applying dressings to Reed’s injuries, then, before she could repeat her findings, proved that he had been listening after all. “Scan for a debris field.”

“Negative. There is nothing in orbit but natural satellites. However,” she had redirected the instrument planet-side, “I am now detecting a ship on the planet’s surface. Also some primitive structures.”

“Is it the same planet?” Archer asked sarcastically and received a cool look.

“The planet’s physical characteristics are unchanged from those I detected on Enterprise. The only differences are those I have described.”

“How far’s the ship from our position?”

“Approximately 40km.”

“Can you get any details?”

“No. It appears to be unpowered.”

“Lifesigns?”

“None.”

The captain sighed. He had always found T’Pol hard work when she was in this sort of mood. It was hard to believe that less than an hour ago he had come across her locked in a passionate embrace with his chief engineer. “Where are the structures?”

“Somewhat over 5km to the southeast.” Finally she volunteered some information. “It would appear to be a settlement containing some five thousand individuals.” Running the sparse facts through his head in the hope that inspiration would strike, Archer returned to treating Reed and T’Pol added, “How is the lieutenant?”

“Bad concussion.” He fastened the dressing around Reed’s head. “The other injuries aren’t too bad, but that could be a problem. Travis,” he raised his head to peer around for the younger man, “what’s the pod’s status?”

“We’ve no power, sir.” Grateful for the chance to stop running pointless checks, Mayweather joined them. “The impulse engine’s dead and there’s not enough left in the storage cells to be useful.”

“Have you tried re-initialising the impulse engine?” T’Pol queried and he nodded.

“Half a dozen times, sub-commander. I can’t detect any faults, it just won’t start.”

She raised an eyebrow and went to perform her own checks while Archer glared at nothing. “I think we can safely assume that Enterprise can’t see us, either.”

“Which won’t please Commander Tucker,” Mayweather commented and Archer grimaced in acknowledgement. Trip was undoubtedly working himself into a temper to cover deep concern. The captain just hoped it wouldn’t affect the engineer’s judgement and lead him into doing something rash, but that was one problem he definitely couldn’t solve at the moment. He stuck with the immediate concern.

“I don’t want to wait around here when there’s a ship load of Andorians in the vicinity, not to mention a native population, but we’re not going to get far with Malcolm unconscious.” As if to prove him wrong, the armoury officer stirred and Archer pressed a hand to his shoulder to hold him still. “Take it easy, lieutenant.”

The Englishman’s eyes blinked furiously open. “What the hell happened?”

“The shuttle pod crashed. Do you remember being in a shuttle pod?”

“No. Why are the lights out?”

Archer grimaced. “Malcolm, you’ve got concussion. Who am I?”

“How should I know? It’s dark.”

“Consciousness usually returns before sight in cases of concussion,” T’Pol observed as she rejoined the group and Reed’s face contorted in concentration.

“Sub-Commander T’Pol?”

Archer couldn’t suppress a smile. “I’m insulted, Lieutenant. You can recognise your first officer, but not your captain?”

“Captain Archer?” Reed frowned, raising a hand to his head. “Sorry, sir. Not feeling quite myself.”

“That’s all right, Malcolm.” Archer squeezed the man’s shoulder and glanced up at the Vulcan woman. “Anything, T’Pol?”

“The energy loss has extended to all portable systems with the exception of my scanner.”

“So no phase pistols?”

“Correct.”

“Then we definitely can’t stay here. Travis, let’s see if we can rig a stretcher for Malcolm. T’Pol, gather up a few supplies.”

“I can walk,” Reed muttered, obviously having followed the discussion, although the remark was addressed to predominantly empty air since Archer and Mayweather had already departed.

“That would not be wise, Lieutenant,” T’Pol informed him crisply and went to collect emergency rations and blankets. Perhaps she should have yielded to Tucker’s advice and stayed on Enterprise; away missions rarely went smoothly when humans were involved.

Phlox was reviewing what looked like scans of brain activity when Tucker entered sickbay. The Denobulan took a quietly assessing look at the engineer and attempted to steer him into his office although Tucker resisted. “Just get on with it. I’m busy.”

Fortunately the doctor had had plenty of experience of human coping mechanisms and knew that irritation was one of them. “I assume that you are aware of Sub-Commander T’Pol’s symptoms, Mr Tucker?”

Tucker scowled then shrugged, torn between anger and resignation. “Depends if she came clean with you; and with me, I guess.”

“You have reason to believe that the sub-commander may have been less than frank?”

“She’s Vulcan. They’re always less than frank. What did she tell you?”

“That her sleep pattern has changed.”

“That’s it?” Tucker turned away, a hand kneading the back of his neck when the muscles had bunched. “Not about the dreams? The flashbacks?” He winced, knowing that T’Pol was going to hate him for this. “That she doesn’t like being alone?”

Phlox sighed. “I suspect that she classifies all three as problems that can be overcome with mental discipline. She would only come to me with physical symptoms.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Commander,” the doctor’s voice was kind, “I consider it a positive sign that Sub-Commander T’Pol has allowed you to know of her problems. As you must be aware, Vulcans are intensely private people. You must be very close.”

“But that doesn’t help when I’m up here and she’s down there,” and he gestured inaccurately at the deck.

“No, particularly when I believe that the symptoms you describe have a physical cause.”

“Huh?”

“I ran some tests this morning.” The Denobulan gestured at the screen he had been observing when Tucker entered. “This is a scan of the sub-commander’s resting brain activity from her last physical.” He tapped a control to pull up another image. “This is from when she was catatonic following her violation two weeks ago. You can see where the areas of her brain associated with long-term memory are active. Before I discharged her, brain activity had returned to normal. In this next scan, taken this morning,” the image was strangely blank, “it appears that all activity is shutting down.”

Tucker squinted at the screen, not happy outside his own speciality. “So you’re saying what? She’s having a relapse?”

“No, this is a new problem.”

“Can you treat it?”

The doctor deactivated the screen. “No. There is no neurological damage to correct, no chemical or hormonal imbalance. The Vulcan medical texts offer no advice.”

“Then what’s gonna happen?” Tucker sounded scared even though he tried to mask it.

“If the process continues, she will become progressively more and more fatigued until she literally sleeps herself to death.”

“No.” The engineer’s voice had turned fierce.

“I have no alternative to offer at present.”

“I’ll call V’Lar. She helped once. She can damn well help again.” He was already half way to the doors and Phlox sighed to himself. Humans would one day have to learn that determination alone could not solve every problem.

T’Pol was using the flames of the small fire Archer had lighted to help her meditate but most of her attention was fixed on not sleeping. She seemed to have lost the ability to prevent unwanted dreams and the ones she had suffered over the last fortnight had been far more disturbing than the erotic ones that inflicted themselves on her when she allowed her lust to get out of control. At least for the last few days there had been someone there to hold her tight and stroke her calm, but she didn’t want Archer or Mayweather to be witness to her weakness. Bad enough that Tucker knew, although she trusted in his silence.

“Sub-Commander.” She jerked out of a doze she hadn’t realised had taken her to see Mayweather holding a bowl in front of her. “Emergency rations, ma’am. Not nice but better than starving.”

“I am not hungry.”

“Eat it, T’Pol.” Archer sounded irritable. “That’s an order.”

Reluctantly she took the bowl and looked at the textureless mess that steamed slightly; her colleagues had evidently used the fire to heat the rations. Eating was something else that had become an effort and without Tucker to force her, she wasn’t sure that she could be bothered but Archer would undoubtedly nag if she didn’t make an effort.

“Should I give Lieutenant Reed some, Captain?” Mayweather enquired and Archer looked doubtfully at the armoury officer who was propped against a nearby tree, eyes half closed.

“You can try,” and he watched as the helmsman filled another bowl and went to try a further customer with his culinary talents. The captain was worried. Reed’s condition was deteriorating and he needed to be returned to Enterprise asap, but with potential hostiles in the area and no weapons, Archer couldn’t justify the risk of working on the damaged and powerless shuttle pod in the dark. The probabilities were shifting, however, for he was starting to realise that it wasn’t one but two of his crew who were ill. It had taken Mayweather several attempts to attract T’Pol’s attention and she had clearly been asleep, not meditating. In fact, she was again nodding over the bowl of food she wasn’t eating and Archer knew his first officer well enough to know that that wasn’t normal. Either she had been injured in the crash and not told him or this was a long-standing problem, and reviewing the last few days, he thought it was the latter. He should have realised that Tucker wasn’t happy enough for a man who had just embarked on a relationship with the woman he loved, but the captain had put his chief engineer’s abstraction down to concern over the plasma injectors, not T’Pol. And perhaps, Archer admitted, he hadn’t looked too closely at Trip and T’Pol recently. It did still rankle that the Vulcan woman had preferred his friend to himself, even though he’d had months to reconcile himself to the fact.

“Captain,” Archer accepted his own bowl of mush from Mayweather, “I don’t think Mr Reed’s doing too well.”

“No.” He frowned as he dug into the food, knowing he had to set an example. “But at the moment, Travis, there’s not much we can do for him.” He wasn’t looking at the armoury officer, however, and the young man followed his captain’s gaze and pulled a face. “No one likes my cooking tonight. Shall I take it away from her, sir?”

“I think you’d better.” T’Pol was clearly asleep, bowl tilting slowly, and he’d better start thinking of a plan because there was no way he was going to face Trip and tell him that his captain had let T’Pol down.

It took Sato some time to track down V’Lar and longer to convince the Vulcan comm. operator that the ambassador would accept a call from an Earth vessel. By the time she succeeded, the rest of the bridge crew still hadn’t made any progress in locating their missing shuttle pod and were on edge from Tucker’s increasing anger. They had all grown wary of the engineer’s hot temper over the last couple of months, but for the previous week or so he seemed to have returned to his normal cheerful disposition. Now they had the angry Tucker back again and the only reason no one had filed a complaint was because they all knew why he was reacting badly.

“Commander, I have Ambassador V’Lar available.” Sato hoped it would improve Tucker’s mood although there was no immediate sign.

“Put it through to the ready room,” he snapped and headed that way himself. “Ransom, try re-routing auxiliary power to the sensor net.”

“You want to blow half the relays?” the woman at the engineering station asked – but not until her chief had disappeared from view. “I wish Captain Archer had taken him along.”

“He’s just worried, Sarah,” Sato said soothingly and the other woman sighed.

“Do you know what happened, Hoshi?”

“With Commander Tucker and Sub-Commander T’Pol?” Her grin was impish. “They made up.”

“We guessed that! But how well?”

“I don’t know but I’d say … very well!”

“Damn. Makes me wish I’d entered the betting pool.”

Sato grinned. “You can’t fool me, Sarah. There hardly a woman on this ship who wouldn’t have cut the sub-commander’s ears off if it would have made Commander Tucker take notice of them instead.”

“Well, he’s cute.”

“Mmm.” Sato’s eyes unfocussed slightly. “Particularly when he’s in the gym. Have you …”

“Do you mind?” T’Pol’s replacement glowered at the two women. “Because while I happen to agree with you, I also know that Commander Tucker’s going to come back out here and flay us alive if we’ve not made any progress.”

Sato and Ransom sighed, shoved fantasies to one side and returned to work.

“Commander Tucker,” there was resignation in V’Lar’s voice, detectable even via a sub-space channel, “if this concerns the fact that Ambassador Soval is petitioning to have T’Pol expelled from …”

“It doesn’t.” He knew what Soval was doing because T’Pol had shared that much with him. Fortunately, the man considered her action in taking a human lover so distasteful that he was not using that as evidence and so he had little leverage to apply beyond the force of his own reputation and Soval had also spent long enough away from Vulcan to be viewed with suspicion in certain stratas of Vulcan society. “T’Pol’s still not well.”

“I understood that she was fully recovered.”

“That’s what we thought, but she’s been deteriorating all week.” He glared at the image of the Vulcan ambassador, no more reconciled to her species than he had been immediately after Soval’s attack on T’Pol. “Dr Phlox says that she’s … I dunno … shutting down or something. She’s having bad dreams and yet she wants to sleep all the time.”

There was a pause then V’Lar’s grey head moved in a fractional shake. “I cannot help you, commander.”

“Then one of your doctors …”

“No. I have heard of the condition you describe. There is no remedy.”

“What?”

“You must understand how rare it is for a Vulcan’s mind to be violated as T’Pol’s has been – twice, from what I was told, even a third time if you include my mind-meld with her. Your description was accurate, she is retreating from a life she no longer wishes to lead. There are no recorded instances of someone … returning.”

“T’Pol doesn’t want to die! She loves me!”

“So I believe, but against every tenant of her beliefs, her upbringing. Do you really appreciate, Commander Tucker, the sacrifice she made in admitting her feelings not only to you but to me as well? Consciously she accepted you as her lover. Unconsciously, it may be that she is retreating from the consequences of that acceptance.”

“She told me that Vulcan’s don’t allow their sub-conscious to affect them.”

“She lied. We are less influenced by our sub-conscious than I suspect your own species to be, but it still occurs. Perhaps at a deeper level than we admit.”

“So you’re saying I’m the one killing her?”

“You over dramatise, commander. T’Pol made her own decision to join with you.”

“What if she comes back to Vulcan?” Tucker was clutching at straws. “She mentioned some masters, kolinahr …”

“I said there was no remedy.” She seemed to study Tucker’s image for a moment, perhaps judging his desperation. “You may try if you wish. I will ensure that the necessary orders are given to any Vulcan ships in your area.” She paused again. “I regret that this has come to pass. Farewell, Mr Tucker.”

The screen went dark and Tucker sank back into the desk chair, dropping his head, heels of his hands pressing into his eye sockets, fingers digging into his scalp. He thought he’d hit rock bottom after the explosion in Shuttle Pod 1 that had nearly killed Archer and put him under investigation for negligence, then again after T’Pol brutally rejected him shortly after. He’d been wrong both times.

Reed had lapsed into unconsciousness and was snoring in a way that Archer didn’t like at all when Mayweather, who had been prowling around the perimeter of their small camp, said urgently, “Captain!”

Archer came to join the younger man, peering at the light that had appeared through the trees surrounding them, still several metres away but closing steadily, accompanied now by the sound of several large bodies brushing through undergrowth. The captain was certainly glad of Mayweather’s muscular presence at his shoulder, but he still doubted their ability to defend their helpless crewmates if it came to a fight. The final few branches parted and a tall figure stepped out, a flaming torch in one hand that threw a strangely steady light over the scene, allowing Archer to see the man’s very humanoid features and silver-grey eyes and hair. The hand not holding the torch stretched out, fingers spread wide, and despite hard-earned caution Archer felt some of his tension release. There was no hostility in that gesture and the man’s expression was benign. Nothing to stop him cutting their throats in ten minutes time, of course, but it was a good start. “My name’s Archer, Jonathan Archer.” He wouldn’t be understood, of course, but a friendly voice never hurt – hopefully.

The other man placed his free hand on his chest and bowed slightly. Archer copied the gesture; this was going well. His early optimism diminished when the alien made to move past him to approach Reed, although he halted when Archer held out a restraining hand. Why the hell hadn’t he brought Cato along? “Can we help you with something?”

The silver eyes met him for a long moment then the man pointed to his head then to his wrist and then to Reed, following it with a sweeping gesture that brought a woman to his side and for the first time the captain noticed the small group of aliens gathered behind the first, apparently staying discreetly in the background while first contact was made. He hesitated but it seemed obvious what was intended and Mayweather’s low-voiced comment supported his own view.

“Sir, I think they want to help Lieutenant Reed.”

Archer nodded and the aliens clearly took it as their permission to proceed rather than his response to Mayweather. The woman, whose hair was as pale as the man’s, brushed past them to kneel at Reed’s side, careful hands exploring his skull.

“Do you think these are the natives, sir?”

“It looks that way.” The clothes were vaguely consistent with the low technological level T’Pol had described although the steadily burning torch sounded a false note at the back of Archer’s brain. “Maybe they saw the shuttle pod come down and came to investigate.”

The woman rose to her feet, expression grave, and gestured to Reed and then back the way the newcomers had arrived. The man nodded and beckoned another couple of his people forward before turning to Archer, the meaning of the sweeping gesture plain: ‘come with us’.

It wasn’t the ideal solution as far as Archer was concerned but he was worried about Reed and their options were limited. “Travis, give our … friends … a hand with Malcolm.” The young man moved to obey and Archer crouched at T’Pol’s side, hand on her shoulder. “Sub-Commander.” He shook her gently. “Sub-Commander T’Pol.” Slowly her eyes blinked their way open and she stared blankly at him. “We’re moving, sub-commander. On your feet.” She let him pull her upright then stepped away as her eyes finally focussed, staring at the figures surrounding them. “They just arrived,” Archer explained. “They think they can help Malcolm.”

“You have been able to communicate?”

That was more like his first officer. “Sign language seems pretty effective.”

“Where are they taking us?”

“Their town, I guess.”

He got a sceptical look. “You are willing to trust them on such short acquaintance, captain?”

“I don’t think we have much choice, sub-commander. Let’s go.”

When Sato contacted him, Tucker was still sitting in the ready room, unsuccessfully fighting despair and guilt. “Yeah?”

“Commander Tucker,” despite her familiarity with the engineer’s lack of formality, that response surprised Sato, “Lieutenant Hess reports that she’s got the modified probe ready for launch.”

Tucker thrust his fingers into his hair, struggling to focus on the immediate task in hand. “OK.” God, this was hard. Command school covered coping with stress, exhaustion and uncertainty – he’d scraped through - but it hadn’t addressed remaining in control when the woman you loved was dying and you were responsible. “I’ll be there.” He took a few moments longer to try to stifle his feelings then ran a hand over his rumpled hair and headed for the door. Prioritise. Get the away team back and then panic. That was about as good a plan as he could manage at the moment.

*************

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