He really was infuriating. T'Pol had noticed it before, of course, but he had become even more so, if that was even possible. Perhaps it was the situation, and the knowledge that if they could not fix whatever the nonexistent problem was in the next few hours, they were all going to die of asphyxiation. Perhaps it was his lack of sleep. Perhaps he was just annoyed with her. But whatever the reason, Commander Tucker was beginning to grate on her last nerve.
He had wedged himself in the Jeffries tube, determined to find the root of the problem, though T'Pol believed that there was nothing wrong with anything on Enterprise. They were obviously caught in some kind of dampening field that was rendering their electronic equipment useless. Commander Tucker, on the other hand, was convinced that Kamea had done something to the engine and – after ordering Kamea to go find out if they had hit something – began to storm through the engine room, checking all the systems.
She knew he was frustrated. They were all frustrated. It would be difficult to get out of their current situation when they weren't even certain what their current situation was. And whether or not he knew it, his frustration was feeding her sour mood, and in turn her mood was fueling his frustration. It was a vicious cycle, one that showed no signs of ending, and so T'Pol had decided to meditate in hopes of calming both herself and Trip down.
Kamea returned after an absence of approximately thirty minutes, sliding down the ladder. She walked over to T'Pol and raised her eyebrows upon seeing the commander's feet sticking out of the end of the tube.
"Did you learn anything?" T'Pol asked.
Kamea shook her head. "Sensors were clear before it happened, so we didn't hit anything. Malcolm says hull plating was holding, so we weren't attacked."
T'Pol nodded. She had suspected as much. She'd been on the bridge only minutes before the accident, and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary. "Dampening field?"
"Best guess," Kamea said. She crossed her arms. "Captain Archer disagrees."
T'Pol raised her eyebrows. She had expected that, as well. "It is the logical deduction."
Kamea nodded emphatically. "That's what I said." She rolled her eyes. "Humans."
"I heard that," Trip said, his voice muffled, as he was still in the tube. His feet began to move, and both T'Pol and Kamea moved so that he could pull himself free of the confines of the tube. When he was out, he glanced up at Kamea. "Were you able to fix the coms?"
She made a noise in the back of her throat. "No."
He narrowed his eyes. "Did you try?"
"Of course I tried," Kamea said. "But it's difficult to fix something with no power." She nodded at the tube. "What were you doing in there?"
He continued to glare at her as he got to his feet. "Trying to find out just what exactly you did to my engines."
Kamea sighed patiently. After the backup systems had failed to turn on, Trip had yelled at her for at least five minutes, and even T'Pol had felt he was treating her unfairly. It was obvious that there was nothing wrong with the engines. "I didn't do anything to your engines. But if it would make you feel better, would you like me to take a look?"
T'Pol could tell, from the look on Trip's face, that he did not want her anywhere near the engines, but as he had been unable to find the problem she had supposedly caused, he had no logical excuse to tell her no. He stepped back, allowing Kamea to climb into the tube. Once she had crawled inside, he turned to T'Pol. "What do you think happened?"
T'Pol stared at him, refusing to allow emotion to creep into her response. But she had already told him her opinion, and he hadn't listened to it. She took a deep breath and said, as calmly as she could, "We have somehow flown into a dampening field."
He scrubbed both hands over his face. "I'm starting to think that, too."
"Ow!" Kamea said.
Trip crouched by the end of the tube. "Did you cut yourself?"
"No," came Kamea's reply. She slid out of the tube. "Just got shocked, is all. Big one, too. I could see the lightning."
Trip nodded and stood, leaning against the bulkhead. T'Pol found herself focusing on Kamea's response. Static electricity was obviously unaffected by the dampening field. Would it be possible to somehow harness the static electricity and transform it into a power source? T'Pol was going over simple calculations in her head when she felt Trip's eyes on her.
"Would it work?"
She was momentarily startled, until she realized that he obviously overheard her musings in own mind. But he apparently thought she had spoken them out loud. Best to let him continue to think that, though if he could hear her thoughts, she would have to exercise more caution in his presence. "It is not impossible. We would only have to generate enough electricity to power life support functions."
Kamea cocked an eyebrow, glancing back and forth between Trip and T'Pol. For a brief moment, T'Pol feared that she would reveal her secret. But to her credit, Kamea didn't say anything.
Trip nodded, thoughtfully, and she could already sense him working through the problem. "Has it ever been done before?"
T'Pol shook her head. "Not to my knowledge. But our time is rather limited, and we are running out of options."
"I'll grab a couple of the guys and we'll get cracking," Trip said, turning and jogging off in the vague direction of the corridor.
When he was gone, Kamea looked at T'Pol. "Perhaps you'd like to explain what that was about?"
Malcolm was surprised when Kamea rejoined them on the bridge looking thoroughly disgruntled. When Archer demanded an account of what had happened in engineering, she informed him that Trip and T'Pol had devised a plan, but that she wasn't allowed to assist in implementing it, so they had sent her back to the bridge. She tried to explain the details of the plan, but the whole idea was so theoretical that Malcolm had a difficult time following her explanation. Something about harnessing static electricity and converting it into energy.
"Trip won't let me anywhere near the engines until I've had a good night's sleep," she said to Malcolm, in response to the questioning glance he'd given her. "Which means that I'll never be allowed back in engineering."
As there was little any of them could do except wait, Malcolm and Kamea had isolated themselves from the others. Kamea had collapsed into Malcolm's chair, and he stood behind her, leaning against the bulkhead. He scrutinized her; she was beginning to show signs of fatigue, and he knew that her difficulty sleeping was wearing her down. But she refused to discuss the situation with him, and she was absolutely adamant against seeing Phlox.
"Kamea," said Malcolm, leaning against his console so that he was speaking almost directly in her ear, "have you ever considered sedatives?"
She turned to look at him, and he was suddenly breathless with her close proximity. He moved to the other side of the console, so that there would be a physical barrier between them. It was getting harder and harder to control himself.
"I've already had this conversation with Trip," she said, with just a hint of bite in her voice. "Trust me, they wouldn't help." She lowered her head, resting it on her folded arms. "It's almost like my father is inside my brain, forcing me to repeatedly relive his death. I can't think of any other explanation."
He knelt in front of the console, mimicking her position. "Are you afraid to go to sleep?"
She glared at him. "Vulcans do not experience fear."
He didn't believe that for a minute. He had seen T'Pol afraid before – though he was certain she would deny it – but he knew that Vulcans had emotions, even if they didn't always display them. He just looked at Kamea, his eyebrows raised, waiting for her to respond.
After a while, she grunted and gazed at the ceiling. "You should talk. You're afraid of water."
He bristled, not at all pleased with the way she so quickly brushed off his deepest fear. Most fears were irrational, and even he couldn't deny that being afraid of water was a little silly, but she didn't have to be so indifferent about it. "It's called aquaphobia, and it's a legitimate fear."
She cocked an eyebrow. "It's not aquaphobia. It's hydrophobia. You can't confuse two roots like that."
Malcolm turned and slid along the console until he was sitting on the floor. "At least I'm not afraid of sleeping."
She stood up and leaned over the console, so that she was looking down at him. "It's called somniphobia, thank you very much." She paused. "And I only meant that being afraid of something general, such as water, is highly illogical. I mean, you're obviously not afraid of water itself, otherwise you wouldn't even drink it. You're obviously afraid of something about the water."
He clenched his jaw and defiantly stared at a spot in the darkness in the opposite direction, but she ignored him and continued. "If you're afraid of fish, it's icthyophobia. I've heard of people being afraid of waves, and that's cymophobia. Or there's the fear of floods, which is antlophobia. So which are you?"
He exhaled loudly through his nose and continued to stare at where T'Pol's station would have been, were the lights on. "If you must know," he said through clenched teeth, "I'm afraid of drowning."
"Ah," she said. "Then you have praefocophobia. Literally 'fear of suffocation'. Which is actually fascinating, when you think about it."
Curiosity got the better of him. He glanced up, only to find that Kamea had come around the console to sit on the floor beside him. He started at the sudden change in positions and became acutely aware of ever millimeter of space between the two of them. "What's fascinating?" he asked.
She lifted one shoulder in a barely perceptible shrug. "When you drown, you actually asphyxiate. And you live in space, where if you were to get caught outside the ship, you would also asphyxiate. And here we are now, with no life support, about to die in the same manner. But you're not afraid at all." She let her head fall back against the console. "Fascinating."
He opened his mouth to respond but could think of nothing, so instead he continued to stare across the bridge. In fact, when the lights came back on several minutes later, he didn't even realize that there was finally something in the space that he was staring at until Kamea abruptly stood up beside him and went to the other side of the console.
Malcolm got to his feet and leaned over to see what she was doing.
"Excellent," she said. "They had enough power to bring sensors back online." Her fingers moved swiftly over the controls, which Malcolm found intriguing, as he didn't think she'd ever been to the bridge before. "Let's see if I can bring up our last known coordinates."
It took her quite some time. By the time she actually managed to locate what she wanted, Trip and T'Pol had joined them on the bridge. Now everyone was crowded around Malcolm's console, watching Kamea work.
"That's it," Malcolm said, pointing. "This is the last reading I was able to take before the accident."
Kamea nodded and brought up the star charts.
"This area of space is not widely mapped," T'Pol said. "I do not believe the Vulcans have been out this far in many years."
Kamea suddenly groaned and let her head drop to the console with a thud. "And for good reason," she said, her voice muffled. She pushed herself up and swirled in the chair to face T'Pol, who stood beside her. "Ferengi."
A/N: Yes, Ferengi! I know that they already dealt with the Ferengi, but I wanted to write a story with them in it just because I wanted to use this conversation that I thought up (which will be in the next section). I think it's funny, but then I have a habit of thinking something I write is funny when it really isn't. Perhaps I'm simply more easily amused than other people. (I'd put money on that.)