xx
T'Pol glanced at the ceiling. She couldn't see outside but she knew the night had fallen. She was supposed to be at the rendezvous point, waiting to see if Enodreiwn came back, like she had supposed to be for the past two days, but Hoshi was too sick to be left alone. The fever had peaked but was showing no sign of abating.
The concern occupying her current thoughts was the pain. Hoshi was screaming in agony. She was only twenty weeks along, there would be another month before the child would be born. Initially, T'Pol had thought that Hoshi was having the baby prematurely. It would be bad, but survivable. But an examination of Hoshi's abdomen had revealed no sign of contraction. Whatever was going on was not related to labor. Which meant that T'Pol had no idea what may be happening, and no tools to guide her.
She found Dr. Phlox coming to her mind in a way that made him seem almost real, as if he were in close proximity. But the doctor was millions of lightyears away, aboard Enterprise, and he would not be coming to help with a diagnosis or a cure.
Another moan from Hoshi ended in a strangled cry. Was the baby dying? Was it killing her? There were pharmaceutical compounds in the medical lab that could take care of the pain. But their effect on a pregnant woman was unknown and she couldn't let herself experiment on the ensign.
T'Pol looked at Hoshi, taking in the short hair plastered against her skull by sweat, the pallid color. Hoshi moaned again, arching her back, eyes wide from pain and anxiety until the moan transformed into a scream. T'Pol took one step forward, positioning herself close to the medibed, and administered a Vulcan nerve pinch, interrupting Hoshi's scream midway.
The silence was a relief. Now if she could just figure out what was going on and what to do about it.
xx
Enoikoawn was waiting for them in the eating chamber, sitting on a stool by the eating table. Just from the weight of Phlox and Enodreiwn's footsteps, he knew they had been unsuccessful. His mane rose in commiseration.
They all sat around the table, each deep in his or her own thoughts. Phlox finally looked up at Enodreiwn. He couldn't help wondering about her. She claimed to be against what her people thought and how they felt, but in the meantime her son was a Nint guard. She had given up the rendezvous point to the Nints. He couldn't help the feeling she may be lying. Did she actually meet up with T'Pol and Hoshi and deliver them to the Nints?
"Why didn't you help the guards?" he asked "There was nothing in it for you not to. Why did you put yourself at risk for two aliens?"
Enodreiwn's mane lifted slightly and he knew he had struck close to the truth. She had not been quite forthright in her story. He waited while she visibly collected her thoughts.
Finally, she looked straight at him, trying to frame an answer that would help him understand how she felt. She started ploddingly, stopping every few words "What the guards did was not right. I would have told them everything if they had asked, these were only aliens. But they didn't ask. They didn't ask to enter my house, they didn't ask to look around. They came and they took. And then the leader hit me. And I told him where to find Tee-Paw and Aw-Shee. And still he kept hitting me."
She stopped, swallowing back tears. After a while she started talking again "I thought about it when we were waiting for them in the hovercraft. The aliens never harmed me but the Nints did. I blinked the headbeam twice, like we had agreed. And that's when I decided that I would not help find them. And I blinked the headbeam a third time."
She glanced over at Enoikoawn, whose mane was showing he was very upset "I want to fight them. I want to do what you do". She extended a hand as if she was going to pat Phlox's arm reassuringly, recoiled at the thought of the contact. "I will go back to the rendezvous point" she told him. "They will come back."
Phlox looked silently back at her, thinking how the most ordinary people were often capable of the most courageous acts. He crossed his hands on the table, leaning over them. "You have to find them," he said. He took a deep breath, pushed off from the table and started pacing around the room. "You have to go back every night until you do." He stopped, leaned on the table, staring at the two Nints "Having the baby will kill Hoshi."
Phlox put a hand up when he saw their disbelieving stares. "When a Nint baby is born" he explained "it cuts through the birth pouch with the birthing claws. The birth pouch heals naturally and the birthing claws fall off by the time the baby turns one. Human women don't have a birth pouch" Phlox privately thought that neither did Vulcans, but he didn't have to explain about that. "The birth pouch is on the inside of them, not on the outside. When the Nint baby needs to come out and cuts through the birth pouch, it will also cut through the mother's body and kill her." That was how simple he could make it without going into anatomical details that went over his audience's head.
Enodreiwn's mane had gone up a full inch. She was looking at Phlox in shock. He leaned over to her "You have to go back every night until you find them. Hoshi may only have two weeks left."
Enodreiwn nodded. "We will find her" he promised. Neither realized he had spoken for both of them.
xx
"Here" Archer leaned over to refill Reed's glass. The Tactical Officer was spending a lot of time in his quarters these days, where they could endlessly go over the terse communiqués from Starfleet and armchair-quarterback recent developments.
"To the Vulcans" Malcolm raised his glass and downed it.
Archer had to chuckle. After hearing that Phlox had to go to Nint and take care of one of the higher-ups who still wouldn't help bring the women back, the thought of a Surak-class starship dropping by for a quick hello was the sweetest news there had been.
If he had not been a captain, he could have expressed his frank enjoyment at the situation that the Dalgorts found themselves in. But he was a Starfleet captain, and Starfleet was one of the organizations feeling the warmth of Vulcan's breath on the back of their necks, so his amusement had to be tempered.
"We still don't know if they can do more than we were able to do" he reminded Reed.
The weapons officer burped in response and pointed at an unseen enemy on the far horizon "Yeah, but the Vulcans won't pussyfoot around. They'll just drop in, throw a few bombs if they have to, grab T'Pol and Hoshi, and bring them back. And then they'll explain to the Dalgorts that it was the logical thing to do."
Reed sat contemplating his glass, twirling it as if disappointed it was empty. He went on "they don't give a hoot about military interests or commercial interests or other aliens' feelings about each other or not stepping on those aliens' feelings." He burped again. "Us included".
Archer shook his head in amusement, his Tactical Officer was definitely soused. Archer leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. He knew there must be a flaw in Malcolm's plan, otherwise Starfleet would have done exactly that. Right?
xx
Hoshi opened her eyes, looking at the pattern of the curved ceiling. It reminded her of someplace she had been before. But where was that? She abruptly remembered where they were, in the squat building that occupied so many of her nightmares. The memory was pushed away by another, more bitter, realization. She was in one of the medical chambers she remembered so well and so painfully from her time at the camp. Why was she there? She sat up suddenly, still in somewhat of a fog.
And found herself staring into the eyes of T'Pol.
"Ensign" the Vulcan said, imperturbably.
"Where am I? What happened?" Hoshi grabbed the blanket that had been covering her, trying to use it as a shield from the room and from the memories.
"You do not remember?" the Vulcan asked.
Hoshi shook her head "I remember that we were hiding in the lower levels of the camp headquarters. But why am I here, in this chamber? Last I remember you went to meet Enodreiwn and I was waiting for you!"
T'Pol nodded reassuringly. "That was a few days ago. You have been sick, but it seems that it resolved itself successfully. How do you feel?"
Hoshi felt like replying she has never felt better. Except for feeling very hungry she wasn't tired at all. She noticed that she was still pregnant. It looked like the illness had not been enough to threaten the fetus. "I am fine" she said. Gosh, she was started to sound like a Vulcan. "What happened?"
T'Pol straightened up "It seems the fetus is making a protein that the human body is not accustomed to. Fortunately the protein does not cross the placental barrier. Your body reacted violently at first but then seems to have been able to accommodate. Can you stand?"
Could she stand? Hoshi pretty much jumped off the medibed as a demonstration.
"Good, now we need to get you food" T'Pol left the room, obviously expecting Hoshi to follow her. Which didn't give the Ensign much choice, especially as she suddenly had a yearning for grain cakes. She was about to roll her eyes at the Vulcan's back when it dawned on her that if T'Pol had been there the moment she woke up, she must not have left her side the whole time. Probably not even to eat. Which left Hoshi feeling impressed, grateful and petty all at once.
How the emotionless Vulcan managed to always evoke a plethora of emotions in her was something she would never fully understand
