Disclaimer: The characters and the starship don't belong to me; I'm just giving them new lives and new situations.

Doctor Leonard Horatio McCoy leaned forward, elbows planted on his desk, and rested his chin in cupped palms. He narrowed his hazel eyes at the couple seated before him. The beautiful human woman with glowing brown skin and sleek dark hair wrapped into a tight bun atop her head smiled pleasantly, despite this unexpected summons to the physician's office. The pale half-Vulcan to her right stared back at him, his face too carefully composed to convey what he might be thinking.

"How familiar are you with hybridogenesis?" McCoy asked, his voice abrupt. May as well get it over with, he thought.

"It is an atypical form of sexual reproduction in which certain female hybrids produce zygotes without the inclusion of the paternal genetic material," Spock answered for the couple.

McCoy's forehead furrowed as he frowned a bit before responding verbally.

"Yeah, well… Yesterday, I would've said your definition is dead on, if more simplistic than I would've expected, coming from you. But... yes, that's how we've seen it manifested in all cases observed in the past. At least, as far as research available to me indicates."

He paused, then leaned back in his chair and crossed one arm over his chest. His other hand drifted to his face, allowing one finger to rub against his jaw line. He frowned again, his thoughts turned inward.

Uhura looked intrigued; Spock, as was most often the case, looked impassive.

"Doctor, your statements suggest you no longer believe that the currently available data fully represent all the available… possibilities. Lieutenant Uhura is, as far as medical science has been able to determine, fully human. I, while undeniably a hybrid, am male. What does hybridogenesis, as you understand it to occur, have to do with our present circumstances?"

Spock suspected he knew exactly, or almost exactly where, Leonard McCoy's thoughts were headed. But it was not necessary to depend on suppositions when there was a reasonable expectation that a direct question would be answered.

Bones frowned in earnest now. His hands shot down onto the desk as he leaned forward once more.

"This has nothing to do with hybridogenesis 'as I understand it,'" he snapped, but without much bite. "I don't understand this at all! Yet. I'm a doctor, damn it. Not a xenogeneticist."

He shoved a frustrated hand through his dark hair while shaking his head. But, again, there was little heat to his apparently combative words.

Uhura stifled a giggle at her colleague's half-hearted attempts at curmudgeonly behavior.

"Len," she said, reaching out towards the hand still resting on his desk. While she'd managed to refrain from actually laughing, her smile was as apparent in her voice as it was on her face. "What are you trying to tell us, Bones?"

She didn't think to be concerned about whatever the ship's chief medical officer might have to say. She was more than his patient and colleague. She was his friend. Leonard McCoy was good at what he did – better, in fact, than many of Starfleet Medical's best – but he couldn't sit back and not try to fix the broken, and he didn't have it in him to hide his worry when treating friends who might be in danger. Not to her anyway. Uhura could read the oft-grumpy, frequently snarky doctor as well as she could read the stoic half-Vulcan seated at her side.

Bones sighed. Dropping his left hand from his head, he leaned forward and, uncharacteristically, gave a couple of pats to the one covering his right.

"The kids are half-Vulcan."

Now, the lieutenant sat back, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape. She turned her head, first staring at Spock before returning her gaze to McCoy.

"Excuse me?"

A/N: For the record, my strong points have been in describing setting and developing characters. Since I started working for a newspaper, my skill at plot development has gotten shaky. Because this story focuses exclusively on fully developed characters, and because I'm attempting to adopt a more spare descriptive style that I feel is more suitable to the subject (and since I'm near-perfectionist writing without a beta) updates might take a while.

Also, I've always had a keen interest in genetics and biology, but my major were first journalist, then English Lit. If my science is faulty, let me know, but hybridogenesis is real.

I'm new to this site and to publishing this manner, so give me a heads up if you think I'm failing miserably.