THERE ARE CHANGES IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS! So please reread them if you read them previously.

==CHAPTER 3====/\=
("The Tholian Fluke")

"It's a Tholian vessel.", supplied T'Pol from her station the next morning.

The armory officer announced from his, "Sir, I think... maybe they've powering a weapon?"

"Hull plating!"

But it wasn't in time; before he could react, the unknown ship had discharged one unexpected round, and the Enterprise rocked with the direct hit causing her crew to catch their collective balance. Without a word, Reed had efficiently polarize the hull, albeit a split second after the fact.

"Hoshi?", Archer glanced at his comm officer for information, giving her just enough time for input before he would order fire be returned.

"Sir, they haven't been returning our hai Wait, yes they are!", Hoshi corrected herself, looking up for permission to open the channel.

Flummoxed and stepping down from the adrenaline burst, he nodded to patch the offending ship through the comm.

"Voice only," she clarified with a sudden frown before a dodgy alien voice filled the bridge.

"Error. Not you. We apologize."

Archer exchanged a nonplussed look with his linguist and then with his science officer. Neither had ideas of value to impart, it seemed. "No permanent harm done, I don't think."

No reply was forthcoming.

"Care to tell us "

And with that, the comm was cut off.

"Sorry, Captain. Looks like the short-range communications overloaded and just burned out the transceiver." Hoshi's fingers danced over the keys on her panel.

"Any way to re-establish the link?", he asked, striding over to Hoshi's station which happened to be no more than a couple of feet from his science officer's.

Trip chimed in with an explanation from across the bridge. "The external relay fried secondary to the initial hit. I just got a crew on it, but the chain of damage might take a while to clean up 'n' glue back together."

"They're moving away at full impulse." Continuing through Reed's update, Archer pulled a face.

"For what it's worth, Captain, they were speaking English.", Hoshi offered.

He frowned in confusion at her, then at T'Pol, and finally shook his head. "I don't know what that was supposed to be, but here I was thinking this might be a boring day of interstellar travel." After the ship had gone and nothing further seeming to transpire, he plodded over to the port side of the bridge. "May as well write it up. Lieutenant, T Subcommander," he uncharacteristically stumbled over her appellation, "if you could compile and send me the specs of that configuration in case we should run into them again? I'll be in my ready room. Ensign, keep us on course."

Not fifteen minutes later, T'Pol asked for entry to the diminutive space he'd retreated to.

"Come." was his automatic reply. When he saw who it was, his anxiety rose just a tad.

"Captain.", she stood prim and proper, and he gave her his full attention.

When she didn't immediately offer forth anything, he commented, "I take it this isn't about the Tholian ship."

"It isn't."

She looked embarrassed, he thought.

"I apologize for my behavior last night. I acted foolishly." Vexed, she shifted on her feet. "What happened was not supposed to happen, and that is my fault."

Well, at least there was an apology. "What did happen, Subcommander?" He was formal on purpose; he felt pretty formal after this 'tidbit' he'd learned about Vulcan telepathy, what had been kept from him and everyone else all these years.

Her fingers fidgeted behind her back. "I did not have full control over my mind or the meditation process. I should not have allowed physical contact between us."

"You said it was telepathy."

Her disinterest in sharing information on this topic was palpable, and her eyes darted before she could muster up a complete thought. "It has not been a subject publicly discussed with other species."

He blinked, amazed but absolutely annoyed at the same time. "No, apparently it hasn't." 'One more secret.', he thought. "I can't help but wonder why."

She shifted again to get more comfortable before deciding to continue, seeing as how he didn't seem interested in letting the topic go. She would just have to trust him with this information. "You are aware Vulcans typically refrain from making direct physical contact with anyone other than close relatives."

He followed her to a point. "Because you're telepathic."

"Touch telepaths, yes.", she confirmed.

"And that's never been mentioned to humans?"

"Not to my knowledge. Physical touching is generally considered to be a private, ...intimate exchange."

He blinked. But what of him? "So... what you're saying is, humans can may be able to become", he corrected himself, "telepathic?"

The blankness of her expression showed she was as clueless as he on that question. It was hardly something that had been openly tried - at least, to her knowledge.

He couldn't help but wonder in what way past diplomatic sessions and other interactions might have been compromised. "Are Vulcans able to read human minds?" It sounded accusatory, and it was.

She had the good grace to continue looking ashamed, at least as much as a Vulcan could. "Theoretically. But as I said, this is not a practice that tends to occur outside intimate Vulcan relationships, so it is unlikely it has been tried."

Well, that explanation brought a small relief to him. "Until now."

She was without an idea how to respond to that beyond once again apologizing and promising it would not happen again, but she was saved from that by an interruption of Reed's voice over the internal comm. "Captain, another ship has appeared off our port bow."

He stood from his chair and went around T'Pol, unceremoniously leaving for the bridge before her. But he at least gave credit to her for not beating an easy, hasty retreat ahead of him. "Our Tholian friends?"

"I don't believe so, sir."

Now on the steps up to the bridge, he asked, "What did you mean by 'appeared'?"

"Appeared out of thin air, sir. Space.", the armory officer answered and corrected himself with bewilderment, his grey-green eyes darting over the screens before him, continuing to run scans. "But I haven't seen this configuration before either. It's small. One life form aboard."

"Hail them."

Hoshi spoke up from her station, a communication so garbled it couldn't be understood by any of the bridge crew, even her. "There's no way to sir; the excomm repair isn't finished yet."

"It's not a Tholian ship.", T'Pol seconded the assessment, now back at her station.

"It's coming toward the door of launch bay one. Should I open it, sir?", asked Reed.

'A small craft means it probably doesn't have a lot of weaponry on it by default.', Archer thought. "Go ahead."

Reed cut back in. "It's entering the launch bay."

"Send in a security team. I'll go down there and say hello myself."

"Yes, sir."

"T'Pol, you have the bridge." He gave her a shared protracted look after entering the turbolift before the doors closed. He could tell it was going to be an eventful Tuesday.

Half a dozen security officers had arrived before he did. They were now standing guard meters away from the new ship, a shuttlepod in the typical Starfleet light gray with a touch of warmth to it. Yet it was of a design they weren't familiar with. There was a symbol painted on its side along with a short registry number in English, but neither of those were recognizable either, and the captain was positive he was up-to-date on the latest in their own fleet. He thought the visitor aboard might be able to fill him in, and on cue, a door opened from the back of the shuttle, drawing his attention. He motioned to his officers to hold up while he approached alone, intending to give a friendly welcome to the new guest if at all possible that is to say, greet without the brandishing of any phase pistols.

What he wasn't expecting was a Vulcan to emerge. But then, recent experience should have taught him to expect the unexpected out there in uncharted waters. The Vulcan was barely taller, about an inch off Archer's height. He was also fairly young, maybe in his late teens or early twenties at the most. He didn't come off as either guarded or threatening, as Archer had felt the majority of his kind did; instead, he seemed to be perturbed but then, that shifted to, what was that, an actual smile? He had looked over to the captain with an expression he'd never seen on a Vulcan before, with the possible exception of just a hint of the same that graced his first officer's face from time to time.

The Vulcan's lack of an air of tightassedness compelled Archer to welcome him as warmly as V'Lar had when they'd met. "Welcome to Enterprise. I'm Captain Archer.", and as he'd become accustomed, he stopped short of offering his hand, the question of what it was with Vulcans and their aversion to touching other people flitting through his mind again. He'd always figured it was part of their general semi-xenophobic superiority complex. And he'd hated to think it, hated to go there. He much preferred to think he was over that mindset. 'But at times they'd historically made it pretty damned hard not to go there.', he thought. But maybe it wasn't that at all, if his mental encounter with T'Pol last night was what he should judge by.

The visitor raised an eyebrow to the captain's greeting and morphed what appeared to be almost a grin into a delicate, quizzical frown. "Lieutenant junior grade Solon Henry Archer.", he spoke softly with a rising tone at the end.

Jonathan Archer was fairly certain the security officers hanging behind him hadn't heard. "Excuse me?", he chuckled, stupefied, then thought to himself, 'What a bizarre Who does this Vulcan think he is?'

But the Vulcan's expression was incredulous. Continuing through the officers' dislike of their visitor's forward movement, he stepped close enough to the captain that the latter thought about taking a step back, but the former looked over his elder's shoulder at the security detachment beyond, then lowered his head conspiratorially and almost whispered, "Dad, is this a joke?"

That gave Archer pause like nothing else ever had, and he was a man who that not long ago had been slingshotted eight hundred years into a dystopian future. He hadn't a clue what to say to this, stunned into part leaning back, part stepping back and examining the face of this young Vulcan, searching for some explanation. To his surprise, he did find something: a resemblance. Longish face, but a little rounder. An indentation at the chin, but not as noticeable as his own. Straight brown hair, whereas coal black hair was more common for both their species. Green eyes like his own. Upswept eyebrows like a typical Vulcan's, angular, and otherwise, a bit bushy, also like his. Then he stopped himself, and his jaw reset to the side. 'Is this resemblance real or only the effect of him mentally priming me?', he asked himself. 'Or has he had himself physically altered? What's the point of this?'

At the captain's change in demeanor, his eyebrows dipped; something had occurred to him after he had, in turn, looked the elder over, maybe making sure he thought he also really was who he thought he was or, at least, who he thought he was supposed to be. "What's the date?", he asked, decidedly not joking.

"April first, twenty-one fifty-two.", Archer answered matter-of-factly this time, finding his voice again.

His face slackened, blanched, and his eyes went wide, belying the natural coolness behind those pointy ears.

Keeping an eye on the visitor for a few moments longer, Archer turned to his security team and instructed them to wait outside the doors, then he whipped out his comm to contact the only other Vulcan on-board, the only other person at all who might have a clue as to what was going on here. "Archer to T'Pol."

"Captain.", came the succinct reply.

"I need you in launch bay one immediately."

"Acknowledged."

Maybe she would be able to provide some input about what was going on with this Vulcan.