Rating: PG-13 for angst

Chapter 7

The pirates had been destroyed, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Enterprise and The Endeavor, both which took damage but prevailed in the melee with three small, swift ships. The first time the surviving humans had encountered pirates, they had merely beaten back the little ships and hoped that would be enough. But inevitably, the pirates would return with a stronger, bigger fleet. So, Captain T'Pol had given the order for Enterprise and The Endeavor not to just defend the colony but to aggressively destroy the pirate ships. While this strategy didn't stop the attacks, it lessened their frequency.

"Report, Commander," she said in the comm.

"Minimal damage, Captain," said Trip, "We should be back to normal in about three hours."

"Understood," said T'Pol, "Good Work, Lt. Commander Reed," said T'Pol as she headed into her ready room.

Malcolm watched her go. He had always respected T'Pol, but now he felt that none of them would be alive without her. Her application of logic in the most difficult of situations had been their saving grace more than once. He was very grateful, as most of the crew was, especially since she could have long ago fled to the safety of Vulcan.

Malcolm tapped the comm.

"Corporal Cole, do you have a report?"

"No enemies reached the ground, sir," replied Amanda in her professional tone, "So, the MACOs will be returning to the ships within the hour."

"Good," said Malcolm, "Reed out."

Amanda could no longer be a part of the combat teams, given her condition, but she was adept at coordinating operations. Since several previous pirate attacks managed to land people on the surface, it had become standard to dispatch MACOs to the surface.

Malcolm and Amanda had talked about moving to the surface, once the baby was born, but they had decided against it. The ship already had the ten children that had been adopted, and four others had been born. Enterprise was becoming a generational ship, and their new son would be a part of it. It wasn't an ideal future, but then no one's future was ideal.

****

T'Pol's conversation with Archer later that day was intense. He questioned her about everything from the motivation of the Xindi to the nature of the attack to the physiology of his own illness. She answered each question patiently, but when she got up to leave and attend to her other duties, he tried to stop her.

This was a common enough occurrence, and she remained calm.

"Captain," she said softly, "I've other duties on this ship. If you like, I'll send Lt. Sato in to answer any more of your questions. . ."

"Lieutenant Sato?" replied Archer skeptically.

"Two and a half years have past. . ."

The room began to spin, and T'Pol grabbed the edge of the desk to keep her balance.

"T'Pol are you okay?" asked Archer, anger disappearing from his voice.

"No," she said as blackness consumed her.

Archer managed to keep her from falling, and he swept her into his arms. He opened the door to his quarters and told the officers he was taking her to sickbay. The guards made no protest, one merely followed the former captain as he carried the current one. In the turbolift, T'Pol's eyes opened.

"What happened?"

"I don't know," said Archer, "I'm getting you to Phlox."

However, when he arrived at sickbay, Archer found a red-headed human woman in place of Phlox.

"What happened, Captain Archer?" asked Dr. Sanders.

"She blacked out," said Archer, who gently placed T'Pol on the biobed.

"Could you stand back, Captain Archer?" said Sanders, who gently began examining T'Pol and taking vitals, "Did you get hit or bumped during the combat this morning, Captain?"

"No," said Archer.

Sanders bit her lip. She always tried to refer to the two captains by name, so as not to cause Archer undue stress.

"I wasn't talking to you," she said.

"No, I am unharmed" said T'Pol, "and I am feeling well again. I should return to the bridge."

"Not quite yet," replied Sanders, "I think you ought to get some fluids in you and rest for a bit. And while you're here, Captain Archer, I might as well take a look at you. Last time we met, I found you to be in near perfect health, aside from your memory issue."

"How long has Phlox been gone?"

"About two years," said T'Pol, who was starting to feel better.

"All of your vitals are normal, and you don't appear to have hit your head. Have you been eating?" asked Sanders.

"My behavior has been as it always has been," said T'Pol, glancing over at Archer.

"Well," said Sanders, "I'm going to have a steward bring you down some of your favorite tea, and I want you to drink it. Then, I'll let you get back to the bridge."

Sanders then turned to Captain Archer and began examining him, patiently answering all his questions about her background and how she had survived the Xindi attack.

****

An hour and a half later, T'Pol left Archer in Sanders's care and headed toward the bridge. She ran smack into Trip as he was exiting the turbolift.

"I was just coming to see you," he said, "Are you all right?"

She nodded.

"It was merely a dizzy spell. Due to the stress of the recent attacks, I may require more meditation," she said.

The hallway was empty, so he put his hand on her cheek. It was Vulcan warm, but she didn't seem fevered.

"I assure you," said T'Pol, "Dr. Sanders did not find anything wrong with me."

Trip searched both her face and briefly her mind for any sign of deception, and he found none. He then looked around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't, so he planted a kiss on her lips.

"I'll see you tonight?"

She nodded, and she entered the turbolift, which was on its way up rather than down. She returned to the bridge to finish her shift.

Two days later, Dr. Saunders summoned T'Pol back to sickbay. Her message was vague, so T'Pol assumed it was ship's business the doctor needed to talk about. She arrived to find the doctor examining some instruments and no patients on any of the biobeds. It was a good day, when no one was sick or injured.

"Sit down, Captain," said Dr. Sanders, gesturing to the bio bed.

T'Pol realized that she had been summoned as a patient, so she obeyed the doctor.

"I was looking over your blood test from the other day and something struck me as odd. Not bad. Just. . .unusual."

T'Pol was silent.

"At first, I thought it was a residual hormonal imbalance from your recent mating cycle. But then, I did some checking in the Vulcan medical database. So, I want to run one quick test on you to see if I can explain this."

Dr. Sanders approached T'Pol with a medical tricorder, and she took a skin sample from T'Pol's palm.

"Am I ill, doctor?" said T'Pol.

Vulcans spoke little about pon farr or its potential health consequences, so she didn't know if she was at risk for anything. Dr. Sanders appeared to be studying her instruments carefully.

"You're not ill. According to this, you're pregnant."

"That's not possible," said T'Pol, calmly, "Your data must be incorrect."

Dr. Sanders nodded.

"It's possible that you are experiencing a phantom pregnancy. After going through Pon Farr, your body simply expected to be pregnant so it is producing the appropriate hormones. But there's nothing in this test that says you aren't pregnant."

T'Pol kept her Vulcan calm since she was certain this was a mistake.

"Humans and Vulcans have never mated successfully," said T'Pol.

Dr. Sanders nodded.

"I've looked into that, but you also need to remember that there have been very few attempts at Vulcan/Human mating. As near as I can see, in the last hundred years there have been only a handful of documented cases of Human/Vulcan sexual relations, and only five of them have occurred during pon farr. That's hardly a definitive number, and in all five of the pon farr cases, it was a human female mating with a Vulcan male."

T'Pol was unmoved by this.

"We are biologically incompatible," she said calmly.

Dr. Sanders nodded.

"It would seem so. However, there is a documented case of a Vulcan/Andorian hybrid child being conceived naturally. And Vulcans and Andorians are even further apart genetically than Vulcans and Humans. But both the Vulcan mother and the Andorian father carried an unusual gene mutation that allowed for fertilization. It was estimated that only 1 in 100,000 Vulcans carried it and 1 in 75,000 Andorians."

T'Pol thought carefully about this news. She wasn't sure if she was more surprised at the idea of a Vulcan and Andorian mating at all or the fact that they had a child. She briefly wondered how such a pairing had happened.

"Here's what I suggest," said Dr. Sanders, "Think of yourself as pregnant until next month, when I'll be able to put you in the imaging chamber and find out of if this pregnancy is real or not. Don't drink alcohol, avoid radiation and try not to stress out. You don't need to tell anyone, except of course Commander Tucker. If next month, we learn this is a false alarm, then no harm, no foul. But if it isn't, then you will have done the right thing."

T'Pol nodded in agreement, certain that it was a false alarm.

"You have suggested a logical course," she said.

"Don't hesitate to come to sickbay if you need anything or have any questions," said Dr. Sanders.

"Thank you, Doctor," she said formally and headed back toward the bridge.

On the way up, she briefly considered the remote possibility that this was not a false alarm. However, it was a completely illogical notion, so she put it out of her mind. On the way, she passed a cheerful looking Amanda Cole, who had just started showing the signs of her pregnancy.

T'Pol felt a tinge of regret. She would likely be a mother by now, had she returned to Vulcan and married Koss. Even though she knew what she had been giving up, sometimes the thought of it still made her feel a bit empty.

****

Since the strange visit to Dr. Sanders, T'Pol had accessed all the Vulcan serenity she had and then returned to her quarters for additional meditation. Since her fainting spell, she had added an extra 40 minutes of meditation to her daily schedule. Twenty minutes in the morning, twenty in the evening. It had helped center her, and she knew it had allowed her to deal with her phantom pregnancy with appropriate logic.

As she stared at the candle, she thought about what to tell Trip. He would be able to tell if she was suppressing information, but on the other hand, she did not want to upset or alarm him. He might not react with the same logic as her, which would make him anxious for the next month. The situation presented a quite a quandary.

The door opened, and she didn't move. Trip had long ago stopped ringing the chime, since they essentially shared both their quarters. She didn't move, and he sat down across from her on the floor.

"What's on your mind?" he said, tentatively.

"I don't wish to speak of it yet," she said, honestly.

He searched her face, and it was as usual impossible to read. Her thoughts were a little easier at this point.

"You saw the doctor," he said.

She looked at him, but said nothing.

"I know, you don't want to talk about it. . .but just tell me you're okay."

He placed his hand in hers, and she felt the worry in him.

"I'm fine. I'm just experiencing a side effect of. . .of my recent . . ."

She never stuttered, unless she was talking about something Vulcans didn't talk about.

"I get it. What kind of side effect?"

"A hormonal imbalance. It was likely responsible for my fainting spell. Dr. Sanders believes it will work itself out."

"She can't fix it? Sounds like it would be pretty easy to. . ."

Trip started to sense something bigger going on. The truth popped into his head, most likely because she wanted him to know. His jaw dropped open. She felt shock in him.

"It is unlikely to be true. It is most probably a false alarm."

T'Pol explained everything the doctor had told her, and Trip stood up and pulled her into a hug. It wasn't what she needed, but she sensed that he needed it.

"What are the odds? That it's true?"

"Very slim, which is why I did not wish to tell you."

He squeezed her tight, and she sensed the most peculiar mix of hope and anxiety from him as the earlier shock faded.

"I thought you did not wish to bring a child into this existence."

"I don't," he said, "It wouldn't be logical, but. . .I don't know. Maybe humans aren't logical about this stuff. Now that there's a chance. . . I half want it to be true. Half not. "

"A slim chance," she said again.

"But not impossible," said Trip, "We should talk about what to do, if it is true."

He led her to the bed, where they sat down, together. He sensed she thought speculating on such an unlikely outcome was illogical, but he disagreed. In fact, he had a very strong instinct that she was in denial. For whatever reason, his human instincts told him that this wasn't a false alarm.

"I guess we'll just have to do what Malcolm and Amanda and the others are doing. . ."

"The child would be half Vulcan and therefor different from all the other children. . .and we don't know how human or how Vulcan he or she would be . . ."

Her voice trailed off.

"Well," he said getting up, "I suppose the answers will just present themselves. I need a shower. Care to join?"

She nodded and took his hand. Unlike most nights, they didn't engage in sexual relations. Instead, as they curled up together, Trip gradually got her to talk about the possibility that her condition was not a phantom.