Chapter 15: Silver Lining

Hoshi entered engineering and found Trip hunched over a console looking at its display intensely. He didn't seem to notice too much of the bustling activity around him as dozens of Engineers hurried to and fro trying to get various subsystems online, checked and realigned. She looked over his shoulder and saw that he was studying a transliteration of the Vulcan software.

She put her hand on the small of his back and he jumped a little before he realized who had touched him.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked once she had captured his attention.

"If I only wanted to see you, I'd drop by your quarters in the evening," he joked and she was happy to see him chuckle. "The view's much more entertaining then."

"You goof," she shot back with a smile and gave him a playful smack on his rear. "So what do you need me for if it isn't to admire my amazing naked body?"

"And your unrivaled humility," he added, shaking his head with a grin, before becoming serious again. "Actually, I'm reaching the end of my rope with this routine," he said and pointed at the screen. She bent over next to him to get a better look. "It's the control routine for the intermix ratio. I could be wrong, but I get the impression the thing is way too complex to work. During the last simulation the speed started fluctuating as soon as we hit six point two and I suspect that this piece of code can't keep up, causing the fluctuation."

"It's encrypted," Hoshi said and started tapping at the on-screen keyboard, before she remembered that she was poaching in his working zone. "May I?" she asked somewhat belatedly.

"That's what I asked you to come here for," he remarked, then smiled and grabbed a nearby chair for her.

"Thank you kind sir," she cooed and took a seat. "It's been a while since I had the chance to crack something. Too bad that it doesn't look like much of a challenge."

Her hands flew over the keyboard and soon the code appeared on the screen as a series of elegant Vulcan symbols.

"It's a Golic cipher," she analyzed. "No wonder this thing can't keep up. It's written in meta-instructions and encrypted on top of it. I bet T'Pol could manually control the intermix ratio quicker than this routine."

"Figures," he muttered.

"I thought this engine was straight out of a Suurok class?" she asked and looked up at him. "How come the Vulcans don't have any problems?"

"The ring nacelle design is much less prone to stability problems. They barely need to adjust the intermix ratio at all. That's s the drawback of our twin nacelle design. We pack everything so tightly that we inevitably run into challenges at higher speeds. But on the upside our system is much less prone to enemy fire and plasma leaks."

"You know what, we'll just rewrite the whole thing in machine code," she offered. "All I need is the offset matrix for the correction and an op-code list if you have one."

"Have you ever written an ECU routine before?" he asked in surprise.

"No, but all the target correction routines of Buran's torpedo launchers are mine. Malcolm and I rewrote them all. They use the exact same principle and the interface to the rest of the ECU software is pretty clear cut. It's a simple set of RPC calls."

"You never cease to amaze me Hoshi. Never knew you were such a programming genius."

"It's just another language," she said and smilingly accepted his kiss on her cheek before watching him run off to get the matrix diagrams. It was good to see his enthusiasm return.

"Now isn't that a cosy little scene?" Malcolm observed in a hushed voice as he and T'Pol came to stand near the entrance to engineering and saw Trip and Hoshi working on the Engine Control Unit. He had to swallow a chuckle when he imagined how he would have reacted to such a spectacle three or four years ago. His best friend and his wife – a fleet captain and a Lieutenant-Commander – were sitting side by side working on the engine software. Trip's arm rested on the backrest of her chair and in between discussing the particulars of their work they took little breaks to joke with each other. Even though he knew that Trip was not yet completely out of the woods, it was great to see that Hoshi managed to bring his brighter side to the fore again.

Back in the day when his rear end was still filled to the brim with a very rigid stick, he would have gone ballistic over the unprofessional familiarity on duty, but back then he didn't know what it meant to be with people who meant more to him than his own family. And back then he didn't have to force himself to go on doing a job he had lost the enthusiasm for.

Gone were the days when he would have thought that such behavior, especially if displayed by two senior officers, would lead to general sloppiness, if not even downright anarchy. It was obvious that the crews of Enterprise and Buran had put their 'First Quad' – the human contingent had adopted the Andorian nickname – under some peculiar form of 'puppy protection'. Nobody would even think about complaining to the higher-ups about the casual way they interacted with each other and nobody would take it as an invitation to drop their own professional conduct.

In fact, the opposite was the case. He had overheard talks in the mess halls that the relatively new crew of Buran took the closely knit friendship between the two couples as a sign of hope that being cooped up in close quarters for years could lead to much more amazing things than just cabin-fever and exhaustion.

In those thankfully distant days he also wouldn't even have dreamed about ever getting married, let alone to the most beautiful and enchanting creature in the world. His time-displaced alter ego certainly had never learned to get over his past and his messed up social skills. But then, that incarnation of Malcolm Reed had not had T'Pol as a close friend to help him with that.

"I guess the armory installation check can wait until tomorrow," he decided seeing that Trip was in the capable hands of Hoshi. "I could use a bit of supper. Care to tag along?"

He saw T'Pol's nod and they left toward the mess hall where Trip's mother ruled the roost.

"Does it bother you that we've played a fair game of wife-swap lately?" Malcolm asked cutting another piece off the best chicken cordon bleu he had ever tasted. "We've spent more time with each other than you and Trip the last two weeks; well except for the nights of course."

He could see that she had to think about this for a while.

"I do not think this question really presents itself for me. If there was anything to be concerned about, my bond reflexes would let us know about it. I would actually prefer he would spend even more time with Hoshi, because whenever he does he is making progress in his recovery. I believe doctor Phlox's remark that she would be a most capable counselor was meant more seriously than he made it appear to be."

"I guess the Andorians have a point when they call us a quad," he said pensively, squashing a potato. "Seriously, if they were to order you and Trip away tomorrow, I'd go potty. It'd be like losing half my family."

"Trip and I were most distressed when we had to leave you behind at Salem One," she admitted and he could see that her mind was not really on her salad right now.

"I'd always thought I'd live out my sorry life alone," he said, savoring another bit of his meal before continuing. "Did you know that my counterpart on Lorian's ship died a lonely bachelor not long after Trip?"

"Trip mentioned it during the first dinner we had in our quarters."

"Right, the double date on movie night," he remembered fondly. "You have no idea how much the two of you changed my life when you played match-makers between Hoshi and I. I don't think I can ever thank you enough for that."

"No gratitude is required." She dismissed the sentiment. "It changed our lives in a positive way, too. I do not think Trip would have recovered as much as he has so far without Hoshi's and your friendship. He might appear gregarious, but he has few really close friends."

"Has he ever said anything about what he thinks of our idea of building our own space station when the war is over?" Malcolm asked acknowledging her previous statement with a nod.

"He finds it most compelling," T'Pol said. "But he has doubts that even the substantial monetary savings of all four of us would be sufficient to build anything more substantial than what he refers to as a 'floating shack'."

Malcolm chuckled at the mental image.

"Well, I've had an off-record talk with Commodore Falkner," he said. "We might be able to acquire substantial funding from Starfleet. Do you remember the first planet we visited? The one with the psychotropic pollen?"

"All too well," she said with a raised eyebrow. "You could say it was the first 'lover's quarrel' I had with Trip. Although we were not quite aware of being lovers yet."

Malcolm put his hand before his mouth to prevent spraying T'Pol with its contents as he struggled to fight the laugh long enough to swallow the half-chewed bite.

"I think you could make a fortune as a stand-up comedian," he managed between laughs and coughs.

She just looked at him with that raised brow. Nobody outside the 'First Quad' would know that it was her very personal form of giggling.

"Anyway." He returned to the original topic. "If we can find a way to eradicate whatever plants produce that pollen, Starfleet wants to use that planet as their very own version of Risa, sans the slags and criminals. They would probably be willing to help fund a space station in orbit around the planet if we manage to make it habitable without needing to inoculate people with Inaprovaline as it's only practicable for forty-eight hours."

"We would first need to find out what place the plants occupy in the planet's ecological system. I believe that genetically manipulating them to no longer produce Troposoline is preferably to eradicating them. I shall begin my research at an opportune time. Doctor Phlox would surely be amendable to helping me."

"So what do you think?" he asked. "Should we throw our hat into the ring?"

"Is it a competition?"

Malcolm had to chuckle. For all her time among humans, T'Pol still could be slightly naive at times as far as human nature was concerned.

"T'Pol, Starfleet offers up to three billions of funding and a two-hundred square kilometer island on the surface as private possession. Once the station is running you have to repay that, but at a zero interest rate and over a fifty year period. Everybody and his dog is jumping at a sweet deal like that."

"But which chances would the four of us have against big industrial conglomerates?"

"First of all – our standing with Starfleet," Malcolm explained. "With the way we kicked the Romulans' arses lately, the war will go on for four, perhaps five years before they get tired of being slaughtered. By that time we will have a ten year deep space service record. Two tours against the Xindi and the Romulans – presuming we are still alive, of course."

"Indeed."

"And on top of that we have already rebuilt and run two stations for them and in both cases we used significantly less monetary resources than what the bean-counters had estimated. That's a massive competitive advantage. The more they're spending, the more they love to save money."

"Your logic has merit. We shall apply for the contract. There is one question, however, that needs an answer. I doubt it is a coincidence that such an offer materializes just as we think about building a space station."

Malcolm smiled. She was good. No wonder she had worked as an operative.

"I might have pinched the idea ... slightly," he replied dryly. "With a little help from Falks."

"Curious."

Four days later...

The prisoner was led into the interrogation chamber. His haggard frame was clad in a gray prisoner's uniform, his hands shackled in front of his body. Soval fixed him with a steely glance. There was no doubt. He looked indeed like how his brother would most likely appear had he not died in one of the many border skirmishes with Andorian forces. At least that had been the assumption for all those years.

Soval doubted that any medical procedure could have duplicated the prominent scar on his temple that her father had received when fighting a wild sehlat during an infant T'Pol's naming ceremony. There was no denying it. This was T'Pol's male parent – and he was a Romulan.

"It is good to see you again, Soval," the prisoner said in flawless, unaccented Vulcan. "I see you did not content yourself with the post of an Ambassador. First Minister – I always knew you would ascend high in the hierarchy."

"Who are you?" Soval asked, tightly controlling his emotions. "What happened to my brother?"

"I am the brother you knew most of your life. V'Nur, son of V'Kar and T'Mir died in his youth. Do you remember his journey into the forge? His Rite of Tal'oth?"

"I do," Soval said, still fixing the man with a hard glare.

"He did not survive it. I tracked him while he was in the Forge. He chose a cave that was too small and was killed by the sand fire. I brought his corpse out of the forge. On board a cloaked ship I was surgically altered to resemble him by some aliens that the Empire had enslaved. I don't even remember their species."

"And you took my brother's place," Soval deduced.

"It was and still is the preferred method of infiltrating Vulcan. You will find it interesting that killing a Vulcan is considered the same crime as killing a Romulan on our world. That's why we developed the method of taking over the identities of Vulcans who died in the Forge."

"V'Las did not appear to have any problems with killing Vulcans," Soval disagreed, without showing his disgust about what he had heard so far.

"He killed my dear mate T'Les," the prisoner agreed with a quivering voice, his glance directed away from his interrogator for a moment and Soval was taken aback when he saw genuine pain and grief in the Romulan's eyes. "If this human – this Captain Archer – wouldn't have done so already, I would now wish to kill that veruul with my bare hands. V'Las – or Moravius as he was known on our world – and Valdore killed more Vulcans than the whole imperial fleet since its inception."

Soval started pacing along the wall, something he had never done before. He should be outraged about the lie that a large part of his life had been. The grief for the man who, as he now knew, was not even his true brother, had lasted a long time. Yet something about V'Nur – or Turius as he called himself – stirred curiosity in him.