Disclaimers, et al. in chapter 1

Author's Note: As always, many thanks to reviewers, and also to my occasional editors. (Don't worry, I will get to doing a round of fixes eventually.)

Anna Hess was an engineer with no hands.

Well, more accurately, she was an engineer without her own hands. She now possessed a rather ingeniously engineered set that a couple of the guys from Engineering had helped Phlox fabricate (luckily for her, seeing as the prosthetic industry on Earth had just taken a rather permanent hit). They were a good match, too, since Phlox had taken a complete scan of her body that time she took a spill off the upper deck and therefore had a lot of data to work from. They looked real to people who didn't look too closely, and they obeyed commands from her brain only slightly later than the real parts of her body did.

They were pretty much useless in terms of helping her feel her way through a delicate job by resistance or texture or fine detail, though, which really reduced her effectiveness. They couldn't feel pain, either, which she might have thought would be a blessing, except that pain, it turned out, could be useful. She now had to test the heat of the water in her shower with her elbow or her foot. Also, she'd once somehow gotten a hand stuck in her wardrobe door and left it there.

If she'd had a roommate, she could have held up her stump and said, "Hey, can you give me a hand?" And that was the other thing. She'd never realized how common hands were in spoken language. People would say "on the other hand" or "I can't quite put my finger on it" or something equally innocuous and suddenly get all awkward around her. She knew she ought to find a way to defuse that, but so far she hadn't figured out how not to let it get to her.

A lot of things got to her.

Today, she was Cargo Bay Two's new hydroponics lab pricking a batch of gai lan out of their flat for transplanting into individual growth packs. It was definitely a test of her hand-eye coordination - or, more accurately, her fake-hand-eye coordination. Fortunately, there were always more seedlings than she could use, so a snapped stem here and there just saved her from the inevitable anguish of ditching baby plants.

As the door to slid open she looked up from the seedlings and stared.

Was that really Trip Tucker smiling at her?

"What's up, Lieutenant?" he asked.

"The Chinese broccoli," she said, quickly deciding that he must be real, and stood up to accept the hug she knew was coming. She suffered his tight squeeze without complaint, holding her hands just off his back. She'd had some issues controlling the amount of force she delivered, and it wasn't as if she'd get any tactile pleasure from it anyway. "You're alive!"

"Yep. But surely you must have heard that through the grapevine already?"

"Chef hasn't stopped by for his daily pick yet. He's the one who keeps me informed." Now that she was in charge of the new hydroponics lab, Chef was suddenly her pal, though she wasn't sure how long this would last, especially if the eggplants he'd begged her to try didn't pan out.

Trip folded his arms and regarded her critically. "You look pretty good."

She smiled stiffly. People were always telling her she looked pretty good. Part of her was relieved she'd never have to go home and listen to anyone there tell her she looked pretty good.

"How are they working out?" he asked, nodding at her hands.

"I'm getting better with them," she said, holding them up. "I can't complain." Nobody would want to hear it anyway.

"So why are you in here instead of Engineering?"

She gave him a tight smile. "Plasma explosions are somewhat less common in hydroponics labs than on engineering decks."

He grimaced. "Did you try to go back?"

What did he think? "Yes, I tried. I'm still having some breathing issues, which get a lot worse when I think about panels exploding in my face." Dr. Phlox had actually diagnosed her as having panic attacks.

He bit his lip. "You know we're undermanned in there?"

How could she not know that? What did he do, come back from oblivion just to scold her? "Yes, sir. I also know that we're at risk of running out of food."

He looked around. "Well, it looks like you're doing your usual excellent job. How would you feel about supervising the building of an outpost down on the planet?"

She blinked. Supervising? That would mean working with people again. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. "Are any plasma conduits involved?"

He smiled. "Nope. I'm thinking something pretty basic, at least at first. "

She could be on a planet again. She hadn't thought that was very likely again, ever. She wondered how food crops might fare down there. "What's it like?"

"Depends on where we build," he said. "The first job will be to help pick a site."

She hesitated. The truth was, she loved this hydroponics lab. It was soothing, watching tiny little seeds transform into new life, a nostalgic sample of the rich diversity of a planet that no longer existed. It was also pleasantly quiet and secluded. "Is there really any point?" she said. "Isn't this planet just as doomed as Earth was?"

He regarded her steadily. "We don't know that."

"Commander, I'm trying my best to stay useful here."

"I know, Lieutenant," he said. "But here's the thing. I either need your help down there, or I need you in Engineering to take the place of someone I'll have to grab out of there."

But that was no choice at all! She blinked at him in dismay. Why couldn't she just be left in peace?

"I'm sorry," he added.

If she went back to Engineering, she might flip out again, right in front of everybody. "The planet, then."

x x x

Trip didn't understand. T'Pol could see that. He was alarmed by her behavior. He thought something was wrong with her.

Something was wrong with her. Her mate was failing to understand just how badly she needed him! How could he seem to be so completely understanding about their bond, yet so blind to the requirements of it?

She blinked and took a long, deep breath. She focused on her candle again and tried to empty her mind. The candle flickered. Her mind leapt from one thought to another, stubbornly refusing to embrace that cool white state of detachment that she had relied on throughout her adulthood to help her order her thoughts and suppress her emotions.

Even if a full meditative state was not achievable, she could at least reason. She could still examine her logic. If T'Pol had learned anything in the Expanse, it was that she could get by on less than full Vulcan discipline if she had to.

So. Apply logic to the situation: Trip could not read her mind. He didn't know what she needed if she didn't tell him. He didn't know that his touch had awakened a hunger that she hadn't felt since the Trellium-D. He didn't even know about the Trellium-D. He could not know how desperately she craved him - that she needed a steady supply of him. Their bond required it.

But that was absurd! What was wrong with her? Mates often managed being parted on Vulcan. They worked different jobs, sometimes light years away from each other for extended periods of time. Her own mother and father had.

Perhaps this was why mates traditionally spent the first year together? Perhaps, after that first year of luxurious contact, it was possible to be parted for periods of time without pain? T'Les had never seemed to be greatly affected by her husband's absences – at least until that last one became permanent. But T'Pol was affected if Trip so much as left the room. Waiting in the stable for him to reappear had been agonizing. Waiting for him to return to her from his tasks today was taking all her concentration, especially since they had made no formal plans to meet.

Was this due to damage from her Trellium-D addiction? Was contact with Trip somehow doing something similar to her brain chemistry? Would Phlox be able to tell her if it was? And if so, would he be able to tell her what to do about it? What if he told her she had to quit Trip the way she'd had to quit the Trellium-D?

That would be intolerable.

Logic, then: She was managing. She could cope. She had functioned all day as acting captain - perhaps not at an optimal level, but she had functioned. She'd functioned without Trip, too, before. She'd had no choice.

Where was he now? Why didn't Trip understand how difficult this was for her?

Logically: because he couldn't read her mind. She couldn't help thinking how much simpler this could be if he could, and if she could read his, even if it would mean exchanging certain uncomfortable secrets. She longed for that most intimate of connections, and the sharing of actual thoughts, not just vague sensations. With Tolaris it had been a nightmare, but with Trip? It would be a culmination. Even just a short glimpse could be enough to help her understand what drove him … to see how that brilliant, intuitive mind worked … to find out what he needed. Perhaps then she could then supply it to him and he would no longer crave the religion he had discovered on the planet – for that was surely a worrying symptom in a man who was, despite occasional indications to the contrary, fundamentally rational.

Not that this desire of hers was rational. It was primal, as fundamental as the desire to mate with him. More than once since their reunion, she had resisted the urge to raise a hand to his head and simply push into his mind. But that must not happen. It would be a violation. It also risked giving him Pan'ar Syndrome. Her symptoms had been stable under Phlox's treatment regime, but the disease was still likely to limit her life span. She could never forgive herself if she harmed Trip's mind or reduced his already-too-short life span.

This assumed anyone's expected life span mattered, of course. But it was their duty to operate as if Captain Archer would accomplish his goal - right up until the moment it became an inescapable truth that he had not.

The door buzzed. "Come," she said. She did not get up from her meditation mat. She knew who it was.

Trip looked down at her. "We need to talk, don't we?"

"Yes."

x x x

Jon stared anxiously at the spot where three blue phased energy beams had been converging on the sphere for a good forty seconds. This was the spot where it was, at least in theory, the weakest. "Nothing's happening."

"Patience, pink skin," Shran said, but he sounded edgy and looked towards Talla, who kept her eyes on her instruments. Jon noticed that their skins were beginning to crack, and looked down at his own hands, only to notice the same. The doctor had warned them this was likely, but it was quite another thing to see it actually happening.

Enterprise's phase cannons would have overheated by now, but nobody on the Andorian bridge was reporting any issues yet. Jon swallowed hard on the bitter taste of their transformed environment; the surgeon's compound might be keeping them alive, but that didn't mean the experience was pleasant. By now, the braces the Andorians were wearing on their antennae had lost their comic novelty anyway. The risk to those delicate instruments was now all too real. He put a careful hand up to his own ear. Yes, it was cracking, too.

Their skin could regenerate, but if the phase cannons didn't work fast enough they might as well not work at all. "How long will it take you to initiate a warp core breach?" he asked Shran. "Shouldn't you get started?"

Shran glared at him, then walked to hang over Talla's shoulder. "Increase power."

"We're at maximum," she said. "I could try modulating the frequency."

"Do it." He grimaced. "How about a torpedo?"

Talla said, "The sphere's surface would reflect too much of that back at us. It might knock out our own shields and weapons."

Shran said, "That's not –"

Another officer interrupted. "Commander!"

On the screen, a small explosion marked a breach at last. "Excellent," Shran said. "Helm, move us in closer. Deploy all weapons on the central structure."

Lights dimmed as a batch of torpedoes was added to the mix. Explosions began to rock the interior of the sphere. The ship also rocked, and the bridge crew exchanged concerned glances. The motion didn't seem directly related to what they were doing.

"We're receiving reports of intruders," the communications officer reported.

"Security knows what to do," Shran said.

"One crewman is dead, another injured. They are retreating through bulkheads!" the comm. officer reported.

"90 seconds before we start suffering permanent damage," the surgeon reported.

Jon stared anxiously at the sphere. It was clear that it was taking heavy damage. It was not clear that this was making any difference. What if they had been wrong to target Sphere 41? What if this crew was dying for nothing?

"One minute," the surgeon said.

"Quiet, please, Doctor," Shran said. "We're committed now, one way or the other." He shot a look at Jon, who grimaced back at him.

The officer manning sensors said, "Something's happening!"

On the screen, the sphere began to crumple in on itself.

"Back us off," Shran ordered, as the sphere shrank in on itself dramatically. A beam suddenly shot out from it, whizzing past them.

The transformed soup they had been working in abruptly returned to normal.

The officer at the sensor panel said, "I'm seeing a cascade of catastrophic damage to other spheres."

"It worked!" Shran said. He sounded surprised.

"Of course it did," Talla snapped.

"All transformed areas within scanner range have dissipated," the sensor officer said. On the screen, all that was left of the sphere they had destroyed was a surprisingly small cloud of charred debris.

"And the anomaly fields?" Shran demanded.

The sensor officer worked his instruments awhile longer, then said, "I can't find evidence of any within scanning range."

Jon stared at the debris, surrounded by all that normal space. They'd won.

Shran called his surgeon over. "Can we take these diabolical devices off now?"

The surgeon scanned his antennae. "Yes, they can come off. But don't scratch!" He slapped at the hand Shran had already begun to raise.

"That's better," Shran said, with a sigh, as his antennae began to move. "Good job, crew!" he said. He walked to where Jon was sitting and watching all this and somehow feeling quite blank. "I owe you," Shran said. "I'd say a good chunk of the galaxy owes you."

"A little too late now," Jon said. Victory felt hollow with no Earth to benefit from it.

Shran frowned. "I wouldn't count you pink skins out yet. Set a course for the planet the Humans call North Star," he said to his helmsman. "Maximum warp!"

To be continued…