Hoshi's face remained a mask of stone. She said calmly, "No, Sub-Commander, I will not open the door."
"You…" T'Pol raged, "you stupid slut! You whore! Why don't you just open the door? You good for nothing tramp!" She snorted derisively. "All that praise I gave you? I take it back! You probably slept your way onto this ship, you stupid, useless trollop! WHORE! WHORE! You're nothing but a brainless human WHORE! Stupid WHORE! No one will miss you. No one will care. So why not do something in your best interest that doesn't involve sex? Just open the door you idiotic WHORE!"
Hoshi stared at T'Pol evenly. "Compromise," she said quietly: "I will open the door and let you out and you can do whatever you want without my assistance. But you will hear me out first."
"You're trying to trick me."
"No."
"Open the door NOW, whore!"
"If I open the door now, our friendship is over the minute you step out into the corridor."
"You…you're bluffing."
"No."
"You'll still work with me on the bridge, Hoshi."
"I will permanently switch places with Karen, T'Pol, or get transferred off the bridge entirely. Suit storage, for instance. You will never see me during your duty shift again."
"It's illogical to think you can blackmail me like that."
"Fine." Hoshi tabbed he console. "It's open. If you want to go, go."
T'Pol glanced between the door and Hoshi. Her anger ran down a bit. "How long will it take you to say what you want?"
"Few minutes."
"All right." T'Pol put her phase pistol on the desk. "No tricks."
"No."
They sat on Hoshi's bed.
"I've never told anyone this," Hoshi said, "but you're right, I have to…to help you. But you should know why I bit your head off. I was 19 years old. I'd gone halfway around the world from Japan to McGill University in Montreal where I was a theater major. I also minored in linguistics, because I had a talent for picking up languages. Annoyed the other kids in class when I could chat with the teacher in her native tongue in less than a week. And to make money to live on, I danced at a strip club an hour away in Ottawa."
"A-an erotic dancer paying for her education?"
"That's me, a living archetype."
"I've never met one before. I am honored. But you were saying?"
"Yes," Hoshi said. "Well, anyway, I…had a sexual relationship with one of the other girls, who was from Montreal. We were a great team. She wanted to get into making porno, and I was in love with her, so we were planning to go to California and meet some people. I would have dropped out of McGill, but so what? What's one more theater geek?
"One day the captain came to McGill to give a talk. He was only a lieutenant commander then, and he didn't talk about alien cultures as much as I wanted. But I was still interested still asked him a bunch of questions and we traded contact info. And I stayed up late that night teaching myself Vulcan."
"You learned Vulcan in one night?"
"It wasn't hard. It's a beautiful language. Basque was worse. Trust me.
"Anyway, the next night I was working in Ottawa, and there was trouble at the door. Some poor Vulcan tourist had got lost and wandered in. He couldn't speak a word of English or French, and no one else spoke Vulcan. So I stepped up and talked to him. I gave him directions to where he wanted to go. He invited me to visit his home if I was ever on Vulcan. He left, I turned around, and guess who was standing right behind me?"
"The captain?"
"Yup. And I promptly had a heart attack…metaphorically speaking."
"What does this have to do with the names I called you, Hoshi?"
"I'm getting to it, T'Pol. Anyway, he gave me the pitch, join Starfleet, help us reach out into the universe, blah, blah, blah. I was reluctant. I told him Starfleet probably didn't want strippers. He told me it wouldn't matter as long as I didn't do anything illegal. He asked me to have lunch with him in Montreal on Wednesday. I said ok.
"It was at a ritzy restaurant. I thought it would be just be us, but guess who else was there? Commodore Forrest and Ambassador Soval! John introduced me as student of languages and made a point of saying I could speak Vulcan. Soval said, 'Indeed?' and every word out of his mouth after that was in Vulcan. I don't remember what we talked about or what I ate. I just remember how Soval was impressed, and was fighting not to show it.
"I was angry at John for having put me in that spot. I later found out the Vulcans had been arguing Starfleet was concentrating on technical elements and questioned whether humans could interact with alien cultures. Anyway, John apologized for putting me on the spot but said that if I stayed out of trouble and transferred into McGill's xenolinguistics program, that would make me a candidate for a communications specialist in the warp 5 program.
"I thought about it. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I had this talent for languages and so far all I had used it for was talking to customers in their own languages. Why not do something important? Help humanity connect to other races?
"So…I told Chloe I had decided I didn't want to make pornos. I told her I was going to stay in Montreal and transfer to the xenolinguistics program. We had a big fight. She called me a slut and a whore and a whole lot of other things. She said I was just kidding myself if I thought John was looking for more than some Asian nookie on his space ship. She threw me out. And I vowed I would never let anyone speak to me like that again."
"I'm sorry, Hoshi, I didn't know." T'Pol paused. "Wait, I didn't know! How was I supposed to know all that?"
"You shouldn't need to be told that, T'Pol. You normally don't call someone a whore in polite society, even on Vulcan."
"I know. You're right. I'm sorry. Please forgive me."
"T'Pol…I understand. You're sick. You're not in your right mind. So even though you opened a LOT of old wounds and said things that hurt me, you are still my shipmate and my friend. You've been there for me and I want to be here for you." She picked up the double ended dildo. "But. I've taken just about all the abuse I can take. So, your choices are these: You can stay here with me, and we can see if we can use this gizmo to get you through the worst of it until the tranquilizer starts to wear off, or you can walk out that door and our friendship is over. And believe me, T'Pol, if it's one thing human women can do, it's cut ties.
"Like I said, door's unlocked. The choice is yours."
T'Pol crept to the door and opened it. She looked between Malcolm and Hoshi. "Hoshi, have you ever played the human game of poker?"
"A few times."
"Any good?"
"Why do you ask?"
"I played once and got cleaned out." She closed the door. "Want it locked?"
"Wellll…." Hoshi took her panties off.
"Locked. Just in case. If this works, don't tell anyone about this. I just wish it didn't involve…that."
"I know what you mean, but I can't see any other way out of this." Hoshi came over to T'Pol, kissed her, and started to help her out of her catsuit. "Then again, with our luck, Phlox might have prescribed this. Don't worry, T'Pol. If it works, I won't tell anybody. And if it doesn't…"
"I know, Hoshi, I shall go out with a bang."
"T'Pol, we have both been hanging around Commander Tucker too much."
8
8
T'Zara said, without a hint of emotion, "Suffice it to say, Ensign, your plan worked. I commend you." She turned to T'Pol. "How often are you upstaged by these humans, T'Pol? Is your logic failing you that miserably?"
"Don't worry about my logic, T'Zara. I wouldn't be here now if my logic wasn't working properly."
8
8
Sitting naked at her computer, Hoshi said, "The gas is almost gone, but everyone is still asleep. And Porthos looks ok from here, Thank God." She got up and crossed to the bed. "I guess that stuff must be really strong, if no one woke up despite how loud you were."
T'Pol was lying face down naked on Hoshi's bed. "We should not wait too long before trying to wake people, though we should be rested. Scan your genitals. I want to be sure you were not damaged."
"I think everything's fine. But just in case…" She scanned her crotch. "Nope, all good. I've had rougher than that anyway."
"From a human!?"
"Mmm-hmm." Hoshi put the tricorder on the table, then lay down next to T'Pol. "Your color looks better and you sound more like normal. How do you feel?"
"The madness hasn't gone, but it has subsided considerably. I believe I can retain control."
"Good, because I don't think I could take much more." Hoshi sighed. "I'm giving up sex after all this is over."
"Why?"
"Why? I don't get anything for months and then BAM!-my life becomes a lesbian porno. That's too much. I'm done. I'll have all my kids in vitro and retire Miss Kitty."
"No, go to Risa first. Then decide about…Miss Kitty's employment."
"Go to Risa and get laid? After this?"
"I suggested Risa to reduce the crew's stress levels. Is your stress level reduced even after all the encounters you have had in the past 24 hours?"
"Not really."
"There you are."
"Ok, if my name gets on the list, I'll go! But I'm not going to look for it."
"You won't have to, Hoshi." T'Pol lowered her voice to a whisper. "Share this with no one: there's a little open-air café three blocks east of the spaceport. You just go down the main street and turn right at the third intersection and you run into it. Just hang out there. 'It' will find you. You won't be disappointed." T'Pol wiggled her eyebrows.
"How would you…wait, Leena said….T'Pol!"
"I've had several pon farrs and I'm neither married nor dead, Hoshi. How do you think I pulled that off?"
"You old dog."
"I suppose I am. I am in my sixties in Earth years."
"So you're my first cougar."
"I'm honored. So what happened with Chloe?"
"Hmm?"
"Your story about your former lover. You didn't get to the end of it."
"What you'd expect. She went to California and ultimately became an A-list porn star. I stayed in Montreal. I danced until I graduated from McGill, and hung up my dancing shoes when I went to Brazil for my post-graduate work."
T'Pol saw the pain in Hoshi's eyes and wanted to change the subject. She nodded to the dildo on the night table. "It is fortunate you had that implement."
"Yeah, and I almost didn't buy it. I was buying all new…implements because we would be away or a long time and I wanted to, ah, anticipate all my needs. I went back and forth and I thought, 'Who knows what's out there,' right? And yeah, we lucked out. I mean, if I hadn't been in a suit and if I hadn't had that bad boy, you'd either be pushing up daises or guilty over raping some poor guy. Let's hope if anyone gasses us again it's not fatal to Vulcans."
T'Pol sat up in bed. "That's a point. How could they have got it?" She got out of bed and sat at the computer console.
Hoshi sat up. "T'Pol? What is it?"
"Now that my brains aren't being fried in the antimatter reactor, I can see there's something familiar about all this. Cross referencing…" She froze. Her hands flopped down to her lap. "Damn it."
"T'Pol, what's wrong?"
"I know what this gas is, Hoshi. I know where it comes from. There's only one way Tauriel could have got his hands on it. And for the first time in my life, I am hoping my logic is wrong."
8
8
T'Pol reached down into her cat suit and pulled out a small metal disk. The force field went down as other Vulcan officers entered the cell. T'Pol went to stand by a gray-haired Vulcan man outside the cell and handed the man the disk.
T'Zara said, "Sub-Commander Sorkan. You will probably get your own command for this. It is long overdue."
Sorkan ignored T'Zara. "Search her thoroughly," he ordered the other men in the cell. "She may have devices on her person to allow her to immolate herself." Zorkan turned to T'Pol and Hoshi. "There may be a technology combability issue. Some of the audio may be garbled. But I feel confident anything pertinent to her crimes will be saved."
T'Pol said, "Thank you."
Sorkan turned and left the brig. T'Pol lingered, her eyes on T'Zara. T'Zara, for her part, ignored T'Pol.
T'Pol exchanged glances with Hoshi. Then they turned and left the brig.
