Chapter 16: In Search Of Help

As the turbo-lift came to a stop Trip and Hoshi let go of each other's hand. They had used the short ride to reassure each other, but as soon as the door opened they had to leave their friendship behind – at least in the public eye. The crew needed two experienced leaders and that meant they had to hide their own insecurities and fears to be dealt with in the privacy of their cabins after duty hours.

As they stepped out of the lift they walked into a beehive. Engineers and bridge personnel were bustling to and fro immersed in last minute preparations and adjustments to the many consoles. Although the Molotok class had a rather spacious main bridge, Trip had decided not to waste time on that right now and conduct the entire mission from the battle bridge. The 'luxury bridge' was something they could use on a mission of exploration. For trying to sneak into enemy space to nuke a shipyard it was a rather useless commodity.

"Captain on deck!" Tholos called out and the frantic activity died down in a heartbeat.

"As you were," Trip answered in acknowledgment and immediately everybody resumed what he or she had been doing before Tholos' call.

"How about I try to collect some sitreps while you sift through the reports?" Hoshi suggested.

"Sounds like a plan, Commander," he replied semi-officially. "I'll be in my ready room. I bet there's a tower of PADDs already waiting for me."

Soval stood with his hands hidden in the wide sleeves of his robe. When the two prisoners were brought in, he saw with satisfaction that the human Embassy's offer to take over responsibility for the nutrition of the inmates showed results. Both were in better shape than after the first two weeks of their stay. He harbored the suspicion that the two Romulans would be seen frequently in the dining facility of United Earth's embassy, where they could consume meat without much prejudice.

An almost imperceptible nod was enough to convey his wish that the two persons before him be freed of their shackles. The young Lieutenant fulfilled the First Minister's wish and Soval gave them a moment to relax their arms and wrists.

"The High Council has deliberated on your further faith and has come to the conclusion that your invaluable service in aiding us to shorten this war in connection with your detention warrants to abstain from further punitive action, provided that you do not attempt to engage in any further espionage nor try to contact your people."

"If our people learn of our continued existence, they will try to correct that 'oversight'," the man who was not V'Nur replied with unhidden sarcasm. "As you can imagine, we have no reason to contact them."

"Leave your security in our hands," Soval replied evenly, not reacting to his false brother's emotionalism. "As you surely understand, we will not be as improvident as to leave you unobserved. But the agents who are charged with surveillance of your actions are also responsible for your safety."

"What are the restrictions on our freedom?" the younger Romulan asked.

"You are subject to the same restrictions that apply to every Vulcan civilian. In your case the additional surveillance may bring occasional infractions of your privacy, but the forces are ordered to reduce those instances to the absolutely necessary minimum."

"I take it an appropriate cover story has been fabricated?" the older defector inquired.

"You are V'tosh Ka'tur, who returned after being detained by the V'Las administration on a remote outpost. Your status as members of the sect will allow you to show emotions without raising suspicion. But be aware that while their lifestyle is largely tolerated, you may face censure from conservative elements of the population."

"This is something we can live with. We are not planning to be too visible to the wider public in any case."

"A wise choice," Soval replied dryly.

"Has the High Command also decided on my personal request?" asked the man who once was thought to be V'Nur.

"Your request to visit T'Les's burial site has been granted," Soval replied, not showing the rage he still felt at the man before him. "As for a possible meeting with T'Pol, the High Council has deemed this time inopportune to confront her with the information about her ancestry."

"Understood," the Romulan acknowledged and Soval believed he saw a genuine flash of sadness on the Romulan's face, further confounding him. The man deserved all the rage he had trouble to suppress, but on the other hand he had an emotional makeup as if he really was V'Nur.

"You will be provided with shelter," Soval decreed, tabling resolution of his inner conflict for later meditation. "From now on you are free to live on your own."

With that he pivoted and left the chamber without affording the Romulans any further conversation. He deemed exposing himself to more inner turmoil supremely unwise at this point in time, especially since there was more to ponder. The Eldest mother had summoned him to an audience on short notice. He needed to meditate urgently, lest he would offend the clan's matriarch by not having calmed his mind satisfactorily before meeting her.

Malcolm stood in front of the view port, observing the umbilical cords as they fell away from the massive hull of the new ship one by one. T'Pol stood next to him, observing the scene with equal interest and – as he guessed from his own feelings – apprehension.

He thought about the two people whom the slowly moving ship was taking further and further away from him. It would be the first time since their wedding that Hoshi and he would be separated, but that was nothing compared to his two friends, who would have to suffer through the effects of a muted mating bond for however long this mission was going to last.

T'Pol had explained that she and Trip would remain able to sense each other as a faint presence at the edge of each other's minds, but the inherent closeness of being in complete tune with their better half's emotional make-up would be gone due to the great distance. Knowing this, he didn't dare making any attempt to fathom the emptiness that Trip and T'Pol would be feeling very soon.

This would also be a test of strength for Hoshi. The nightmares about her abduction by the Reptilians and the images she saw on Corridan had haunted her a long time and only receded due to his holding her tightly every night. When she found herself alone in Salem One's field hospital after her injury at Betazed, they had returned in force. Returning to her routine of resting in his protective embrace fought them back into remission, but now she would find herself separated again.

He had pondered just asking Trip to let her sleep in his quarters, but he knew what the reaction would be – Trip would be scandalized at the thought. He fought down an amused snort. In a way he could understand Trip, but the situation also didn't lack a certain irony. It wasn't exactly an uncommon occurrence to come home from the gym after a Suus Mahna sparring with T'Pol and find Trip and Hoshi engaged in a card game, sharing a beer or drinking tea, which to the outsider would of course have looked utterly strange due to Hoshi's categorical refusal to wear more than a pair of panties – if at all even those – inside their own four walls unless the ambient temperature forced her to.

Neither would any of the four of them think anything was wrong about him and T'Pol using the communal shower of the gym at the same time after their martial arts practice. Yet the thought of T'Pol asking him if she could sleep in his quarters was somehow too weird. Not that he understood why, considering that it wasn't any more intimate than being in the shower together even if the communal facility left enough space between them.

T'Pol certainly wasn't of the ugly persuasion; in fact she ran a very close second to Hoshi's gorgeous form and Trip probably thought the same, just with the roles of Hoshi and T'Pol reversed. But appreciating the gorgeous looks of their wives was one thing, swapping them for that was out of the question. The thought of hurting his best friend like that was anathema to him and he didn't doubt for a second that Trip thought the same. That's why he would win the bet with T'Pol, no doubt about that.

In her typical fashion T'Pol had surprised him by declaring that it was 'the logical course of action' that Trip keep Hoshi company if that's what was required for restful sleep. Of course – he realized – she approached the topic with the logic of a Vulcan as opposed to their pesky unexplainable human gut feelings. She knew that they were close but in absence of any averse bond reaction she saw no reason to be worried. In a way she operated on the maxim 'as long as the bond remains calm, everything is fine among the four of us'.

What the alternative looked like, well, poor Trip had learned about that a while ago, when some recently-hired young civilian female engineer, unaware of his being taken, had made less-than-subtle advances on the Station's commanding officer, leaving Trip and T'Pol almost physically sick when their bond's equilibrium was upset by the blatant intrusion.

He looked over at T'Pol after a prolonged silence watching the launch of Trip's ship. Of course he had seen the errant tear that had escaped her attempts to remain outwardly calm the moment the huge ship had started to move, but he pretended not to have seen it, for her sake.

"Are you sure you're up to coping with all my paperwork on top of yours?" he quipped in an attempt to lighten the gloomy mood.

"As I understand it, it would be poor form to back out of a bet," T'Pol replied dryly, her voice showing no sign of her inner turmoil. "It is, however, not yet a given that your assumption will be proven true. You might be underestimating Hoshi's strength."

"I might," Malcolm agreed. "But I'm happy she's not alone out there. Trip will look after her."

"They will both help each other," T'Pol noted. "It is what we promised each other, is it not?"

"Indeed," Malcolm said with a small smile, happy about T'Pol's verbal assist in prying himself away from the view port. "That's why I'll help you with those botany studies now."

He chuckled at her eyebrow creeping very far north in surprise.

"Well, with you on the task there's no chance that we are not going to win that contract," he explained. "My talent to blow stuff up will be fairly useless in a few years. It's time to broaden my horizons."

Her eyebrow still was very high up her forehead, but she offered no comment as they walked away to the big table in T'Pol's station office.

"So, has Phlox offered any help in genetically modifying these plants?" he continued his conversation with her eyebrow while she called up what looked to him like a genetic diagram.

"I have revisited the data that Crewmen Cutler and Novakovich collected before the compound started affecting us and I have come to a surprising result," T'Pol explained and called up a few more diagrams for comparison.

"The genome looks completely different than the others," Malcolm noted and pointed at a sequence that couldn't be found in any of the other diagrams.

"Indeed," she agreed. "This plant is not native to the planet. That explains why it has such a heavy defensive mechanism that serves no purpose in the absence of any herbivores big enough to consume its foliage."

"So it has been introduced?"

"Most likely inadvertently," she confirmed with a nod and called up some sort of meteorological simulation. "I extrapolated the likely distribution area of the plant."

"We suspected the pollen was blown down from the mountains," Malcolm recalled. "You didn't suffer any problems before the storm hit."

"Indeed. The plant must reside on the south side of this mountain range."

"Or half the planet by now, if there were more storms," he mused.

"That is rather unlikely," T'Pol disagreed. "Although the planet's insect population is diverse, none of the insects have evolved to care for this plant. It is dependent on being pollinated by chance, which severely hinders its procreation."

"So it should be relatively easy to exterminate."

"We need a live sample to determine a way to exterminate the plant without putting an unnecessary strain on the planet's eco system."

"I think we know someone who can help us with that..."

Soval entered the dwelling and pushed back the cloak that had protected him from the sun. It wasn't often that one was summoned for an unannounced audience with the clan's matriarch and he wondered what T'Para wanted to discuss. The release of the Romulan defectors was the likeliest topic.

"Live long and prosper," he intoned in contemporary Vulcan. "You wished to see me, pidkom."

"Peace and long life, son of our clan," the matriarch returned the greeting. "Have a seat and rest. We have much to discus."

Soval took the offered glass and slowly drank its contents. It would be unseemly to display any haste. It also gave him time to contemplate any possible reasons for the unexpected audience. Speculation did of course serve no purpose as the Eldest Mother would reveal the reason for her summoning him in due time, but it was one of the habits he had adopted during his time on Earth and it was a hard habit to lose.

"T'Pau has contacted me with a request for help, and upon reviewing her logic I found myself in favor of offering the requested assistance," the matriarch began without preamble, and her tone made it clear to him that she did not expect him to come to a different conclusion.

"If you would let me have the details behind this request?" he inquired dryly.

He listened intently as the Eldest Mother relayed details about how Charles, his wife and the En'ahr'at of Lorian planned to go up against several large industrial consortia in their bid to receive Starfleet's order to build a space station and make a planet habitable that had almost ended Enterprise's mission for some of the crew mere weeks after the launch.

He knew that Charles was overly ambitious at times and T'Pol could be prone to set herself unattainable goals, but this was an impossible target, even by their standards. What surprised him even more was the impression that the clan's matriarch seemed to share their misplaced optimism.

"I find myself surprised about your positive regard for this request," he ventured carefully, once the Eldest had concluded her narrative. "It appears to be overly ambitious even by Human standards – and would it not be better for Charles and T'Pol to return to Vulcan at some point in time?"

"Vulcan is no place to live for Charles. Prolonged exposure to our higher gravity would lead to long-term consequences for his health. It would also be no place for Malcolm or someone as fragile as Hoshi."