"You're worried," Liz murmured. Her words drifted through the darkened room.

The reply was a long time coming, and brusque. "Of course I'm worried."

Liz let the sheets slide off of her and crossed the room only covered my darkness. "Your daughter - it's Palayjah who's pregnant, is it? - will be fine."

She barely perceived the answering nod in the darkness.

"I expect she will, yes. If nothing else, I expect she will be amenable to a hysterectomy. She is a doctor, after all."

"I'm sure it won't come to that," Liz soothed. With Denobulans, a comforting touch was always at risk of being taken as sexual. Knowing this, Liz decided her next move may as well be intentionally dual-purpose.

"It's worse than they thought," Archer announced shortly, when T'Pol answered a hail to his ready room. He punctuated his displeasure by tossing a PADD at her. A human might have dropped it.

"10% of births are now affected, and climbing," Archer said, as T'Pol read the same information for herself off the classified report she had been tossed. "It's appearing in new cities. The Denobulan press are in a frenzy. There are even reports of riots! Riots, T'Pol! Rioting Denobulans! Can you imagine?"

"Yes," T'Pol said, using the time which a literal answer brought her to think. "I can imagine". A hard knot was forming in her core.

"Starfleet Intelligence has suppressed a report from IME stating that this could be an extinction level event. It's already been classified a humanitarian disaster. We will be there in four days. I'm appointing you officer in charge of our scientific and humanitarian response. I'll need you to coordinate from the ground the collection of..."

"Me?" T'Pol interrupted loudly enough to stop Archer mid-sentence. "Surely one of the doctors..."

Archer shook his dead. "No way in hell. Phlox is personally involved and Alice has all the diplomatic savvy of an inebriated elephant. It has to be you. Time to make use of that away-mission clearance you fought so hard for."

The knot in T'Pol's stomach pulled tighter, all but strangling her. She nodded occasionally as Archer continued to talk, his instructions nothing but a muffled blur of sound. When he finally finished, she strode toward sick bay at a speed that would cost her many hours of pain im her trembling legs.

She found sickbay empty, apart from Alice and her latest steaming cup of coffee. The smell, mingled with her exhaustion and her pain, made T'Pol gag. "I need a favour..." she managed, while swallowing bile.

"Pain killers aren't favours..." Alice began eyeing T'Pol's legs suspiciously.

T'Pol shook her head. "No. I need you to revoke my away-mission clearance."

"Very funny," Alice replied, sipping her coffee. "Want me to assign you pot-washing duty too?"

"I'm quite serious," T'Pol gasped, sinking into a chair with enough force to buy her the other woman's full attention. "I cannot go down to Denobula."

"T'Pol, you've been working to get your away-mission clearance back for almost a year. All those endurance tests, all that physical therapy... What's going on?"

"You do not want me to answer that..." It was only later when T'Pol realised that this was the last thing she should have said. It was only later that she thought of dozens of plausible lies.

"I NEED you to answer that," Alice replied, brow furrowed. "I will revoke your clearance, if that's what you need, of course I will, but you NEED to tell me what's..."

"...I am pregnant."

"You're pregnant?"

T'Pol's announcement had resulted in a spill of a small, but piping-hot, volume of coffee. Unfortunately, this did not prove a sufficient distraction.

"Pregnant?" Alice demanded again, while sucking several of her fingers.

"I believe the proper first aid is cold, running water," T'Pol replied with more calm than she felt. A great deal could depend upon this conversation.

"Don't change the subject," Alice shot back, though she at least removed her fingers from her mouth. "Pregnant? How? Why?"

T'Pol scowled and set her shoulders. "Was the 'how' not covered in your medical school?"

"And, the male Vulcan that nobody told me was on board is, who?" The sharp words hung in the room, demanding an answer.

"The baby is Trip's," T'Pol replied heavily. "Commander Tucker's."

Alice's face changed almost imperceptibly at that, although her tone did not. "And, that brings us back to 'how'."

T'Pol felt herself shift uncomfortably. "I... That is hard to explain..."

"Try me..."

"Will you revoke my away- mission clearance?"

Alice rolled her eyes. "Oh, you better believe I will. You aren't setting foot on that planet while you're pregnant. But now this cat is out of the bag, it needs a collar and a bell, so you'd best give me the rest of it. How exactly did you get pregnant?"

T'Pol lowered her eyes. "I am a considerably better scientist than those of Terra Prime."

"...A seven-year-old with a bottle rocket is a considerably better scientist than those of Terra Prime." Alice scoffed. "What are you SAYING?"

T'Pol's words came haltingly; she had not imagined this particular audience for them. There might be advantages to this disclosure, though, she realised. Confidentiality, for one. A human perspective. Some clue of what she should do. "I only intended to experiment. To learn as much as I could. About how to create a healthy, hybrid baby. To start a family. To be sure that it was possible before...I never intended to implant one..."

"…oh dear..."

"...but then there was this one. One particular embryo. I did the gene sequencing. I projected the likely transcriptomes... I had modulated the epigenetic regulatory factors...and this embryo, it...she...resembled Elizabeth. When the time came to dispose of it I...the chance of pregnancy resulting when I'd made no preparation was slim. I thought it would fail, but that I could tell myself I'd done all I could do. Only..."

"...only you're pregnant."

"Yes. The implantation proved successful."

Alice took a long draft of her coffee. T'Pol noticed several blisters were forming on her untended fingers. "And Trip knows...?"

"He knows about none of this." T'Pol replied and sighed now the last of it was out. She would get her clearance revoked and the rest would fall as it must. "How should I tell him?"

Alice paused for a moment. "And who else DOES know? Apart from me? How much do your science minions know about this experiment of yours?"

"I have taken precautions," T'Pol replied, thrown of kilter by the unexpected reply. "No one else, apart from you, is aware of any of this. Now what do you suggest I do? I realise this is... I need human advice."

"Human advice," Alice sighed heavily. "I suppose I just about qualify. Tell me, though. Do you want my sensible, ethical advice? Or do you want my actual advice?"

T'Pol frowned. "I suspect I can predict the former, so I suppose I want the latter..."

"Lie."

T'Pol blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"Lie through your fucking teeth. You pretend you have no idea how this happened. It's a million to one shot! It's a miracle! Spontaneous pregnancy! An adorable, miracle baby girl! And the two of us take the truth to our graves."

"But," T'Pol stammered. "That cannot be ethical."

"Oh, hell no! We are way past ethical. 'Ethical' sputtered and died on a Petri dish in your laboratory. Forget ethical, this is damage control. Specifically, damage control for everybody except you."

T'Pol shook her head. "No. My actions were...I did not intend for this to happen, but I need to face the consequences..."

"Why?" Alice interrupted. "Look, I don't mean to be harsh, but why? So you can feel better? Let's pare this situation back to its bare minimum. We have, apart from you, Trip, and his ever growing collection of children he didn't agree to have. And then, we have your daughter, who you decided to incubate because she resembles her dead sister. In other words...the truth SUCKS! It's radioactive. Flush it out the airlock, along with anything else incriminating. And, after you've done that, walk back in here and tell me you feel sick in the mornings. Then, I'll scan you. Then, we'll both get the shock of our lives! Then, you go break the news to Dad while I drink this whole conversation into oblivion. An option sadly not open to you. You want my advice? That's it. Lie. Lie now. Lie hard. Lie forever."

"And you'll revoke my away-mission clearance?"

Alice sighed. "You couldn't have just told me you didn't want to go to Denobula because dead babies make you sad? I'd have bought that..."

T'Pol sank further into her chair. "I did not think of that."