Jon Archer should have realized that this was inevitable. Admiral Gardner was a stickler for adhering to the rules and thus a visit from said Admiral was bound to happen as soon as he received the reports about Trip and T'Pol being bonded. The good news was that this visit was officially unofficial. T'Pol hadn't understood that reasoning. Archer had been hard put to explain that it meant that while Gardner was here he was strictly a civilian but that anything he did or said here could still end up being official if they gave him reason to make it official. That meant that while there was potential for trouble, they weren't in trouble yet. What they had to do was keep it that way.

He met the Admiral at the airlock and personally escorted him to the VIP quarters. The Admiral stowed his gear and waved Archer to a seat while he took one as well. "Alright Jon, you are going to explain this bonding thing to me in small words and then you're going to tell me just why I should go along with it." Archer sighed; this was going to take a while.

Meanwhile Malcolm was helping Hoshi with her target practice, a rather flirty encounter that was cut short by both of them being called to the bridge. There was a class nine gas giant to explore. When they arrived on the bridge they did no more than glance at the out of uniform Admiral in their midst and simply proceeded with their own duties. 'Ours is not to reason why,' they both thought, although it was very easy to guess as to the reason for his presence. The man couldn't stop staring at Commander Tucker and SubCommander T'Pol like they were bugs under glass. Fortunately protocol was to ignore any superior officer out of uniform unless he was on his own ship. In an emergency no one cared what a person was wearing.

Captain Archer was glad for the protocol as well because he was soon swept up in an encounter with a group of Klingons. He had one belligerent Klingon woman in sickbay and others on board her ship that was about to be crushed along with three of his officers, he didn't have time to be dealing with having an Admiral aboard officially. Later he would realize that this small crisis, (no one was shooting at them after all) was actually perfect timing. With T'Pol being one of the trapped officers and Trip being stuck on the ship, the situation gave Gardner a first hand glimpse of how they would act and react when one was in danger. Gardner was of the opinion that married couples should not be on board the same ship.

However the old rules and regulations regarding such things did not take into consideration aliens or space travel. Vulcan bondmates served together, their mental bond making the very idea of serving apart almost blasphemy to them and Archer wasn't sure that it wasn't literally. There was also the fact that eventually, once Starfleet had more than a single starship exploring deep space the missions would become longer and longer. Archer could foresee a time when missions could last years, maybe even decades, although wouldn't be for years yet. Archer just hoped that Gardner would be able to see the writing on the wall.

Gardner, who was no fool even if the people around him saw him as a hide bound idiot, made himself as small as possible and stuck to lurking in the background. It was the best place to carry out his mission, which was to find out if he needed to have Tucker transferred or otherwise dealt with. He had never been totally confident that the publicly admitted trouble magnet should have been allowed off the planet. The only reason that he had gone along with it was that Lt. Reed was a fantastic officer and Commander Tucker was the finest Engineer they had. Reed's ability to keep situations from exploding and his by the book attitude made him the perfect man to baby-sit Tucker in Gardner's opinion. He still didn't really understand how it was possible that Tucker had found himself engaged to the Vulcan woman without knowing about it but then Vulcans were reticent bastards. He never could get them to talk about a lot of things that were important.

Sitting back and watching provided him with information that he hadn't expected to get. He had known that Archer was a good Captain and had more experience with aliens than anyone else in a command position in the fleet. But he hadn't known that the job demanded such flexibility and willingness to go with what worked. While he might, at a stretch, have thought of using reverse psychology on the Klingon woman, he never would have figured out a way for the Klingons to save face over the incident.

Later in the Captain's mess he talked to Archer over the some of the best bbq ribs he'd ever had. "You've got yourself a good crew Jon. The SubCommander did a good job over there and Tucker did his job without demanding to be the one to rescue his girl. I'm not so sure I could have done that."

"They're both professionals sir," Archer said. "They would never give anything but their best. Being bonded to each other isn't going to change that."

"I'm beginning to see that," Gardner admitted. "There is so much we still don't understand about Vulcans, even after knowing them for so long, not to mention the rest of the universe out here. I know that it is just going to take time, time and experience like what your crew is getting." He snorted, "I just wish it wasn't like Tucker is getting but the simple truth is I know that's not going to happen. As soon as we started seeing aliens as people, just ones with different bodies and cultures and the like, it was bound to happen sooner or later."

"Yes sir and I've already been hearing rumors about more possible romances among my crew. Not all of them have talked about couples that were both Human." Archer wasn't about to tell him about the time he had been semi forced to kiss an alien to keep from being discovered during a landing party.

"I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place here Jon. I've seen that Tucker can handle his duties even when his wife is in danger and the SubCommander is Vulcan so there isn't any problem with her emotions overriding her head. But I still want to transfer Tucker back to Earth space." Gardner held up his hand to stop the explosion he could see building on Archer's face.

"I said I want to but the simple fact is I can't. We don't have anyone who could take either of their places out here and that's a fact. We are going to have to grow our own ship crews and Tucker and T'Pol are a big part of that. I can't ship them back to Earth or to Vulcan for that matter, without seriously endangering our plans for future ships. Columbia should be ready to launch in the next year, year and a half. I'm going to need some of your crew to transfer when she's ready. Most likely I'll be taking your seconds of each department to head up the departments on Columbia or to give the heads of those departments someone to lean on. We need experienced officers and crew on all of our ships. Enterprise is our sink or swim baby. Everyone of your crew is going to end up in a command position somewhere unless they can't hack it and from what I've seen over the last couple of days that isn't going to be the case. Your people are good Jon and they're getting better." Gardner shrugged, "So when's the wedding or haven't they made any announcements yet?"

"Well the wedding will be as soon as their parents can get here," Archer said, more relaxed now that Gardner had admitted he couldn't afford to reassign Trip. He didn't have the authority to reassign T'Pol but he really could have done his best to screw everyone else up by adhering to the rules and regs. Archer also didn't want to have to point out the flaws in any reasoning Gardner might have given. It wasn't a good idea to point out that a higher ranking officer was being an idiot. "As for making an announcement to the crew, well, does arguing over their children's names count?" he asked with a grin.

Gardner gapped at him while Archer nodded. "Dr. McCoy from the 1701 genetically engineered some children for them. Trip is absolutely adamant that they will not be naming one of the boys after him. T'Pol is just as stubborn as he is and she's determined that they will. The argument has gone to the 'yes we are and no we're not' stage."

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"Captain Sopek," T'Les greeted the Vulcan Captain as he met her at his ship's airlock.

"Lady T'Les, how may I be of service?"

"The Ni'Var is scheduled to make a stop at Coridan. I require transport to that area of space," T'Les said calmly.

"The Ni'Var is at your service Lady T'Les. Follow me to the guest quarters," Sopek was curious of course. There were few things that would take this Lady off of Vulcan and none that he knew in Coridan space.

"Captain I require silence as to my presence on board as well as my destination. There are those who do not believe that I should leave Vulcan under any circumstances." Lady T'Les did not agree with that view Sopek could see. "I have a family duty to take care of and I will not allow others to dictate a course of action that will not allow me to fulfill that duty."

"It shall be as you require Lady T'Les," Sopek answered. He did not have enough information to form a theory. That did not stop him from speculating to himself as to what family duty could take this woman of all the women on Vulcan to Coridan space.