Chapter 3: Conspiracy of Destruction

Apparently nobody found it necessary to explain, why they had to return to the ship all of a sudden. Captain Archer's frequent evasions of a straight answer told her that they wouldn't like it.

-=/\=-

After almost three hours of meditation T'Pol found herself back in Paxton's Prison holding baby Elizabeth. One of Paxton's guards pointed a phase pistol at her head. Suddenly the door was opened and a guard shoved in Trip's beaten up body. Blood ran down his face.

"I should have known it," Paxton growled. "It is time for you to learn that Terra Prime does not make empty promises, Mr. Tucker."

"What have you done to him?" T'Pol asked sternly.

Without answering, Paxton tilted his head towards the guard and the tall black man pointed his phase pistol at Elizabeth. The beam cut through child and mother when he pulled the trigger.

-=/\=-

"NO!" An earsplitting cry from the bunk tore T'Pol out of the shared nightmare. She shot up from her meditation pillow and raced over to the bed. Trip was sitting wide-eyed, shaking and sweating profoundly. His breathing was rapid and erratic.

"It was a dream," she said softly. "We're safe Trip." He looked at her, lost in the horror of the images that he had just seen.

She gently pushed him back down again and brushed a few sweat soaked strains of blond hair from his forehead.

"Yeah, safe and awake. Might as well head down to engineering," he grunted sadly. "I don't think I wanna sleep again."

"You need to rest and I shall make sure that you can," T'Pol said softly and let her Vulcan robe slide off her shoulders. Clad in gray stretch underwear she went to the bathroom and returned with a wet rag and gently started to wipe the cold sweat of his forehead and face.

Her gentle ministrations soon calmed him down again and she put the rag aside. Carefully, she climbed in under the sheets and slung her arm around his waist. Resting her head on his chest she listened and noticed how his racing heartbeat calmed back to a normal frequency.

Ten minutes later she noticed that his breathing again subconsciously matched her own frequency and soon after he fell back to sleep, protected by her embrace.

-=/\=-

"Minister, is this channel safe?"

"Yes, V'Las, it is one of the secret channels that Solkar established after first contact. Not even Soval knows about their existence."

"We have to react," the former administrator urged his fellow Vulcan. "The humans are posing a constant danger. Our plans have been thwarted too often by them. We must eliminate Archer."

"No wonder that you were removed from the High Command, V'Las," his conversation partner rebuked him with un-Vulcan like, openly displayed disdain. "Your judgment is incorrect again. It is not Archer, whom we need to eliminate, it is Tucker and T'Pol. Twice we tried to open war with Andoria and twice the human has obstructed us. He has too much insight into our culture. The two of them together could easily uncover us. You should have removed T'Pol from their ship. She has become a danger to our plans. If information about the child or their relationship reaches Vulcan, they might elicit unfavorable voices of support."

"We tried repeatedly to remove her," V'Las answered defensively. "The humans always obstructed our attempts,"

"Do not concern yourself. You have failed often enough, V'Las. I will resolve the matter myself," the Minister said coolly and cut off the transmission.

-=/\=-

Koss sat on his meditation pillow in his guest quarters that had been provided by the Vulcan embassy on Earth. The latest news had disturbed him. T'Pol, his T'Pol, was the mother of a Vulcan/human child. The father was a human engineer he was way too familiar with. His meditative mind was working hard to collect his thoughts.

An incoming transmission ended his meditation prematurely.

"Koss, meet me in my office."

"Yes father."

-=/\=-

A sweet scent accompanied Trip as he woke up. The feeling of a pointy ear on his chest brought realization that he had spent the second night with the woman he loved so dearly. After his nightmare last night, she had snuggled up to him and he had fallen into a very resting and uninterrupted sleep. Noticing that she was already awake, Trip gently traced her jaw line.

"Morning, T'Pol"

"Good morning. Did you rest well?"

"Yeah, except for the damn dream it was the best night of sleep I had since before the Xindi mission," he said with a weak smile. "It's nice to wake up with you in my arms. Thank you for helping me, I wouldn't have made it without you."

"I find it a most agreeable experience as well," she admitted.

"I've sort of wanted to do that for a long time."

"As have I," T'Pol agreed.

He gently kissed her forehead in gratitude.

"It would be wise to return to your quarters now to change your uniform. Please meet me in the mess hall within the hour. I shall be waiting for you," she instructed with a gentle kiss on his cheek, while disentangling herself.

-=/\=-

Captain Archer paced the briefing room back and forth sunk in deep thought as the first members of his senior staff started to arrive. He would have to face his tormented friends merely three days after their heart breaking loss. His experience told him that he was to expect a T'Pol who looked stoic as ever but was inwardly devastated and Trip would probably look like death warmed over. His friend's troubles in dealing with losses were the world's worst kept secret.

He had not understood how the two of them had become so connected to this child. It wasn't created the usual way and they only saw her for a few days. But the scene he had witnessed in the shuttle pod, the worried and frantic care of the two parents, would have given no indication that this child was engineered in a lab. This only painfully added to the evilness of Paxton's plans. These plans could well wreck the life of a longtime friend. And the saddest part of it was, that he was about to add to their pain by relaying bad news in a few minutes. Sometimes it was just not a good thing to be a Captain.

"Morning," Trip greeted after he entered the briefing room. After holding out the chair for his companion, the ships science officer, he walked around the table to take his own seat. The other officers looked a tad bemused at his old fashioned gentleman manners.

"I'm surprised, Commander. I expected you to look a lot worse. Not that I'm complaining, of course," Jon said with a surprised expression on his face.

"Well I got more sleep than expected. T'Pol has helped me a lot," Trip explained.

"Well, whatever keeps our engineer on his feet, I'm glad you're helping him." the Captain closed the topic of Trip's surprisingly good condition. He couldn't delay the problematic topic any longer.

"Actually I have bad news. I've tried to buy you some time, but Starfleet and the Vulcan High Council seem to be hell bent on getting some answers. That's why they summoned you to a hearing at 1400. The only reasons to postpone it are medical reasons," Archer reported warily.

"You'd think they'd give us at least a week or two," Trip grunted angrily.

"I believe it will be of little help to cite medical reasons. If I'm not mistaken, the earth expression is: It is as good a time as any to get it over with." T'Pol said in an uncharacteristically unsuppressed tone of resignation.

"Looks like your picking up some human habits is more than just a joke," Malcolm gasped, wide-eyed with surprise.

"Joking aside," Archer interrupted, "Trip, are you sure, that you can go through with it?"

"Yeah, I'll ask T'Pol to show me some meditation techniques and I'll be good to go," Trip supplied with a sigh.

T'Pol, slightly surprised at Trip's sudden bout of responsibility, consented "That is a reasonable request. I shall assist the Commander."

Every officer in the room darted his or her eyes back and forth between the two Commanders. Both seemed completely out of character. No teasing from Trip, no arguments. If anybody needed proof of the magnitude of impact the recent events had on them, it was visible now.

After a moment of silence, Archer continued the briefing.

"Admiral Gardner and Nathan Samuels will conduct the debriefing on behalf of Starfleet and Vulcan will be represented by Minister V'Lon and Ambassador Soval."

Trip's face lost all color and T'Pol's eyebrow went very far north.

"Shit! That's no coincidence." Trip exhaled, before he buried his face in his palms.

Shocked about Trips sudden outburst, the captain asked: "Trip, T'Pol, what's wrong?"

Jumping to his feet, throwing the chair back in the process, Trip paced the room, desperately trying to restrain his fury. A massive wave of anger and fear washed over through the bond and T'Pol winced silently at the brutal onslaught of transmitted emotions.

"Trip, what the hell is wrong!" Jon probed more forcefully.

"V'Lon, that's wrong!" Trip yelled, gesticulating wildly. "That's the fucking jerk, who blackmailed T'Pol into that mockery of a marriage to his retard son. And he was also the guy who sent Sopek to collect her after P'Jem. I can't understand that they didn't throw him the hell out, when V'Las got the boot."

Trip sighed deeply, while picking up the chair and returned to his place. Before he buried his face back in his palms, he said to T'Pol. "Guess you hav'ta show me some pretty hefty meditatin' techniques, or I'll gonna kick that creep's ass right back to Vulcan."

His worsening drawl and the ripe choice of words was a telltale sign of his massive emotional turmoil and his fellow officers stared open-mouthed at him. Such a vulgar outburst was not his normal behavior.

The captain was upset.

"So you're telling me the same person, who tried to get you busted for P'Jem and taken off Enterprise and who later blackmailed you into a forced marriage to his own son, will now debrief you on this incident? With you being just short of breakdown, well Trip at least? I'll contact Starfleet immediately, I'm not going to have any of that," Archer half asked, half told T'Pol and turned to leave towards the com.

"Captain!" T'Pol interrupted him. "That is a futile attempt. Minister V'Lon is part of a most conservative and isolationist faction in the High Council. His followers are most discomforted by the thought of a child conceived by a Vulcan and a human. That means he is here for a reason. Nothing that Earth could do, would change that situation. Ambassador Soval does not share his views. He might be the only one who could be of assistance to us. Trying to delay the proceedings will only serve to strengthen minister V'Lon's resolve."

"Trip's never going to get through that T'Pol, not without a major outburst," the captain countered in anger.

"Your assessment has merit. I foresee major difficulties for Commander Tucker to maintain his composure. I must include myself in that assessment as well," she admitted with an audible sigh. "I shall do what I can to prepare us for the ordeal. It is my belief, that Minister V'Lon's motives are not honorable. It would be logical to assume, that he wishes to take advantage of the impact that Elizabeth's death had on our emotional condition. It would be the only logical explanation for the exceedingly short time between the event and the debriefing."

"You mean he wants one of you to break down?" the captain asked in disbelief.

"That is my theory. I cannot, however, provide a theory what the Minister's reasoning behind that is. Many on Vulcan believe that he is still influenced by former administrator V'Las."

"Now that's a name I recognize," Archer sighed as clarity dawned on him. "You two better get out of here and do what you can to brace yourselves as long as there's still time. This is looking like a fight is coming our way."

"Aye, Captain!" T'Pol and Trip answered in unison and left the room.

All remaining officers stared at each other in a mixture of shock, sadness and anger.

"Bloody Hell!" Malcolm uttered angrily. "They're setting them up pretty badly. We must do something."

"There's nothing we can do but hope that they make it through somehow, but the Vulcans are not going to get away with this," Archer hissed furiously while reaching for the com.

"Archer to Doctor Phlox."

"Doctor Phlox here, Captain. What can I do for you?"

"When we go down in the afternoon, please take whatever you need for the case of either one of the Commanders breaking down."

"If one or both are in danger of breaking down, we must not go in the first place," the Denobulan warned him.

"We may have no choice. Ee have gotten information that the Vulcans may try to break one or even both of them."

"This is a scandal," the Doctor gasped. "But if you think there is no other option, I will be prepared. Phlox out."

"Captain, we all want to come down with you," Malcolm stated firmly and affirmative nods from the others met his statement. "We will not let them walk into that without our support, if only morally."

"I was counting on that." Archer nodded with a sad smile. "Dismissed."

-=/\=-

"Wow, I always thought that meditation is dull, but this is something else," Trip wondered. He was sitting with T'Pol in the white space of her meditative mind, cradling her gently.

"We are immobile physically but our minds are active. You have been progressing well. I did not expect you to learn the breathing techniques rapidly enough to leave time for your first experience of proper meditation."

"Well, whatever helps down there ... I wanna try this meditation malarkey again, it's interesting."

"We shall repeat the experience, but we have to leave now."

-=/\=-

"Well, it's certainly interesting in there, but my legs don't really agree with it," Trip groaned as he got up from the unfamiliar position.

"It will take time to get used to the long periods of immobility. It will become less straining as you progress in training. Please go to change your uniform, we are expected to leave in 15 minutes."

-=/\=-

"That's the first time I see you in a standard issue dress uniform, T'Pol," Jon noted when Trip and T'Pol arrived at the airlock.

"I decided it is a more appropriate choice than my usual attire. The minister shall be shown that my allegiance lies with Starfleet."

"Can't argue with that. Let's go everybody," the captain ordered and the officers started boarding the shuttle pod.

-=/\=-

The entire bridge crew of Enterprise accompanied by some of Trips engineers, who had insisted on going with their chief, arrived at Starfleet's Headquarters with about 15 minutes to spare. As they arrived in the waiting area outside Briefing room 32, they met a very familiar blue face.

"Shran, what the hell are you doing here?" Jon asked with pleasant surprise.

"There is time to explain that later, pink-skin," Shran answered while indicating him to keep his voice down. "I am here to warn you. V'Lon is a dangerous man and this whole hearing stinks worse than a Tellarite's droppings."

"We think that this V'Lon might be trying to break down Commander T'Pol or Commander Tucker, but we have no clue why," the captain agreed.

"Whatever he plans, this is only the beginning," Shran said with a grim face. "Some of our diplomats from the coalition talks are still here. I'm no longer a member of the Imperial Guard, but I have some good friends who still owe me. I will try to find out, what is going on."

"They threw you out, because you lost the Kumari?" Archer hissed in angered surprise.

"As I said, I will explain that later, for now I must go to find out what the Vulcans are planning."

"Shran, why do you do all that?" the captain asked.

"I may not show it too well, but I respect them both a great deal. I came here to attend the funeral of their child, but when I heard about this hearing I knew that there's more we need to do for them. Can we meet on your ship in the evening?"

"Fine for me, does 1800 sound ok?" Jon offered.

"I will be there," Shran said with a nod and left.

-=/\=-

"What are they doing?" Malcolm asked Hoshi when they saw Trip and T'Pol stand close to each other, face to face with closed eyes.

"Looks like deep breathing or meditation to me," Hoshi speculated. "They've been practicing that all day since the morning briefing."

"They would really make a nice couple, don't you think? I bet that would give some of those Vulcans a bloody conniption." Malcolm asked in a soft voice.

"I never knew you were a romantic," Hoshi said with a big smile.

A moment later the big double doors opened and signaled the start of the proceedings. Briefing room 32 was one of the bigger rooms of that type, specifically equipped for larger audiences. Several staff members of Starfleet, some media representatives and some crew members of the newest, recently commissioned Vulcan cruiser T'Karah, including their commanding officer Admiral V'Kar were already in the room. Big tables for the four dignitaries on an elevated platform made the whole arrangement look like a tribunal, rather than a debriefing.

Nathan Samuels and Admiral Gardner were sitting on the left side, while Minister V'Lon, a broad shouldered tall man about the same age as Ambassador Soval and the Ambassador himself sat on the right side. V'Lon's face was stoic as every Vulcan face, but Soval's expression was not as neutral as usual. His furrowed brows were a clear giveaway that he found the proceedings less than agreeable.

When Trip and T'Pol entered the room to take their places at the front of the audience, they were approached by a most unexpected and unwanted guest – Koss.

"It is agreeable to see you again, T'Pol," he greeted, ignoring Trip's presence completely. T'Pol answered the greeting with a silent nod and waited for him to give way.

"What can I do to help you?" Koss continued.

"Well you may volunteer to get lost. I'm pretty sure you'll help her a lot with 'at." Trip spat angrily.

Father was correct. The human has no emotional control. I do not believe that T'Pol wishes to associate herself with him, once she sees his volatile nature exposed; a most logical plan, father.

"Trip, do not let him provoke you," T'Pol said softly and brushed the back of his hand with two fingers to reassure him before she addressed her divorced former husband. "Koss, I would prefer if you stepped aside. I do not wish any help from you."

Taken aback, by the obvious determination of the Commanders not to be bullied, Koss complied immediately.

"Admiral, Minister, Ambassador, Mr. Samuels," the Captain spoke unasked. "Before we begin the proceedings, I want to express several concerns for the record. At first, I demand that Koss be removed to a more distant position from Commanders T'Pol and Tucker. We have just observed him violate Commander T'Pol's personal space, putting her visibly at unease. Furthermore, I want object to the fact that Minister V'Lon is part of the debriefing. I was informed, that he was directly involved in coercing Commander T'Pol into an involuntary marriage to his son, the aforementioned Koss. We doubt that he is impartial."

"Your objections have been noted, but since the marriage between Subcommander T'Pol and Koss has been dissolved and this is a debriefing and no tribunal, both objections are unseemly and irrelevant." V'Lon answered sternly.

"Well, guess we know who runs this show, then. And you might want to remember that her rank is that of a Commander with Starfleet," the captain rebuked V'Lon, "Admiral, did the Minister allow you to speak to us?" he asked Gardner sarcastically.

"You're out of line, Captain." Gardner growled, but his anger stemmed more from the fact that Archer had delivered a way too apt description of what was going on. Instead he addressed Malcolm. "Lt. Reed, I cannot remember having summoned you to the debriefing."

Malcolm stood up.

"Sir, I speak for the entire senior staff of Enterprise. It does not take a warp specialist to see, that this debriefing has the sole purpose of trampling all over our friends, the Commanders Tucker and T'Pol. We will not let that happen without showing our support for them. These two have lost their child a mere three days ago, they are still grieving. We are appalled that Starfleet allows this meeting to happen."