Disclaimer: Characters contained within do not belong to me, but to Gene Roddenberry, Paramount Pictures, etc.

Author's Notes: It's technically Saturday now. My apologies. I did try for Friday, but life gets in the way sometimes. Thank you, once again, from the bottom of my heart, for all of the incredible feedback. I continue to be amazed by your enthusiasm for this story. And thanks, of course, to Lisa, who is now and always will be my friend.

The Opposite of Logic

by Kristen Elizabeth

"I believe he cheated."

They were the first words Spock had spoken since dinner. Having reluctantly resigned herself to a silent evening, Uhura gladly put down her Klingon translation of Hamlet, and glanced over at the man sitting up in bed beside her.

"Can you prove it?"

Spock's fingers were steepled at his mouth, a clear sign that he was lost in his thoughts. "You were there, Nyota. How do you think he did it?"

"Maybe he just grinned at the computer and it did what he wanted it to do." Uhura snorted delicately. "I mean, it does have a female voice. And no one messes up women better than Jim Kirk."

He turned his head to look at her. "What do you know about him?"

"He's an arrogant, over-sexed jackass with a massive superiority complex," she immediately replied. "He takes too many risks and he can talk his way in or out of anything." After a pause, she added, "He's also an extremely charismatic leader."

"You admire him, then?"

"I tolerate him," Uhura corrected. The look on his face when he'd asked made her lips curl up. Jealousy could strike even the most logical of men. "You know..." Rising to her knees, she swung her leg across his, straddling him. "The first time we met, he hit on me and started a bar fight."

Spock frowned, but his hands lowered to rest on her slender waist. "Did you...hit back?"

Uhura leaned forward, bringing her lips close to his pointed ear. "Hard."

When she looked back into his eyes, she could see molten desire simmering just behind his cool facade. Whether he was aware of it or not, his fingers were slowly inching her nightdress up her thighs. "I have yet to make a formal accusation against him. Would it upset you if I did?"

"It always upsets me when people break the rules," she said. "But if he cheated, he should have to face the consequences." She cupped Spock's cheek, brushing her thumb across his mouth. "Can we not talk about Jim Kirk right now?"

Not even two seconds later, she found herself on her back and there was no more talking on any subject for the rest of the night.

"Put her down here," McCoy ordered the security officer who had carried Uhura's limp body from the bridge. Kirk had wanted to do it himself, but his chief medical officer had threatened to declare him unfit for duty if he'd tried to lift an unconscious pregnant woman with his broken arm.

All Kirk could do was watch the officer lay Uhura down on an exam table. McCoy, who was either ignoring the oozing laceration on his cheek or hadn't noticed it all, swept the sensor wand of his tricorder up and down her body. "Her vital signs are steady," he announced. "So are the baby's."

"Then why isn't she waking up?" Kirk demanded.

"Could be a lot of things, Jim. I'll need to run a few tests to..."

"Doctor!"

McCoy looked back at the Engineering officer who'd just been brought in with severe plasma burns. "Ah, hell." He plunged a hand through his hair before handing the tricorder to Kirk. "Look...just keep watching this thing. If anything spikes or drops or changes at all, come get me."

Kirk blinked. "Bones, I don't..."

"It's not rocket science, dammit! You're just monitoring her vitals! A first year cadet could do it." With that inspiring speech, McCoy went to help the latest victim of the quantum filament.

Later, Kirk would look back and realize that this arrangement was mostly just McCoy's way of getting him to take it easy on his arm until someone could set it properly, but right then he was so focused on watching over Uhura that he didn't even notice he'd been manipulated.

He might have been captain of the Enterprise, but in Sickbay, McCoy ruled them all.

When Spock returned to the house he shared with T'Lan, his wife was nowhere to be found. Some very small part of him felt very relieved to discover this...which only reinforced the resolution he'd come to while sitting in front of the medical center after his father's departure.

If he was going to have a productive marriage and help his people, which had been the entire reason he'd left Uhura behind, he was going to have to bond with his wife. Failure to conceive would mean that it had all been for nothing.

He'd hurt Uhura so deeply. He had to believe that he hadn't done so in vain. Otherwise, he wasn't sure he could ever live with himself.

As Spock saw it, the logical first step towards bonding with T'Lan was to better understand her. He could count on his fingers the number of things he knew about his wife. She was a xenobotanist, her entire family had perished at the hands of Nero, she did not like to kiss on the mouth, she was a terrible cook, she drank tea every day and she spent the majority of her time in her garden.

How could he not compare her to Uhura? For months before his relationship with Uhura officially began, he'd been obsessed with every new detail he learned about her. She painted her fingernails because the Academy dress code didn't say she couldn't, a small act of rebellion for a woman who otherwise followed every rule. Her hair smelled like jasmine from her shampoo, she liked sweet drinks, but was willing to try anything once.

She loved to cook alien dishes and her plomeek broth was unrivaled. She missed her family back on Earth and communicated with them often. She loved to laugh and loved to try to make him laugh. She could kiss for hours and still want more...he could go on and on.

Spock shook his head to clear his mind. Whatever happiness he could have had with Uhura was far out of his reach now. And to have regret for a choice he'd made of his own free will seemed highly illogical.

Coming back to the task at hand, Spock headed straight for T'Lan's garden. If the plants and flowers occupied so much of his wife's time and attention, he would have to know everything about them. Perhaps if they bonded over a shared interest in botany, their physical bond would also strengthen.

Per his arrangement with his father and the Elders, the sooner a child was conceived and born, the sooner he could return to the Enterprise.

He did not expect Uhura to be waiting for him. But if Spock knew her at all, he knew she would still be there. The Enterprise had been her dream from the moment she'd learned it had been comissioned. And even just getting to see her every day aboard the ship on which she'd long desired to serve would be enough for him.

With that in mind, he began walking through the hanging garden, making notes on everything he saw.

When the little red line on the tricorder spiked wildly, Kirk's heart dropped into his stomach.

"Bones!" he yelled. "Something changed!"

On the other side of Sickbay, McCoy had his hands full with a young ops ensign. The man's heart had stopped and despite several shocks from a cardiostimulator, it didn't seem to want to start again. But McCoy was not a quitter.

"Be more specific!" McCoy shouted to Kirk. To the nurse next to him, he ordered. "Raise the charge and try it again."

"The red line is spiking!" Kirk shouted back.

"Which red line? There should be two, one for her and one for the baby," McCoy replied. "Get me a hypo of cordrazine," he told the nurse. To his patient, he urged, "Come on, kid! Stay with me!"

With his own heart beating faster, Kirk examined the tricorder's readings. "The top one. The one under it isn't doing much at all."

"The baby's pulse is the second line," McCoy said, rubbing the back of his hand across his tired eyes. "If it's slowing down while hers is speeding up..." He hesitated. "She could be going into labor."

"But...it's too early." Kirk swung his head back to look at the doctor. "Isn't it?"

"Yeah." The nurse handed him the requested hypospray and McCoy shot the medicine into the ensign's neck. A split second later, the man's whole body jerked as the powerful stimulant jump-started his heart.

"Bones, what do we do? She can't have this baby yet!"

"I want a complete read-out of his brain function," McCoy told the nurse. "If there's any damage from oxygen loss, we don't have much time left to fix it before it's permanent." To Kirk, he ordered, "Check to see if she's dilating."

When he received no reply, McCoy looked across the room and saw Kirk absolutely frozen, staring back at him. "I know you don't need help getting a woman's legs apart, Jim."

"This isn't a woman!" Kirk protested. "It's Uhura. And I can't...you know...look at her like that, Bones! It's not right." He amended this, "Not anymore, at least."

"Oh, for the love of..." Handing his recovering patient off to the nurse, McCoy made his way over to them. He grabbed the tricorder from Kirk and pressed a few buttons. "She's having mild contractions, but she's not dilating," he eventually determined. "I'll give her something to stop them, but it might just delay the inevitable."

"What's the inevitable?"

McCoy's sweat-dampened brow pulled into a worried frown. "This baby could be coming...whether it's time or not."

Kirk's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed heavily. "Would it be all right?"

"If we were talking about an entirely Human baby, not without a hell of a lot of medical equipment and luck," McCoy admitted. "She's only at 26 weeks."

"But the kid's not all Human." Kirk looked back at Uhura's rounded stomach. "You think having Vulcan blood could help it survive?"

"Him," McCoy corrected. He nodded when Kirk blinked. "Yeah, it's a boy."

Kirk couldn't hold back a small smile at this revelation. "How much do you know about Vulcan babies, Bones?"

"Not nearly enough," McCoy admitted.

"And with the computers down, we can't access the Starfleet database to-"

"Chekov to Sickbay." A thick Russian accent interrupted him. "Captain, we have regained enough control of the ship's communications to broadcast a distress signal."

Kirk thought for a long second before replying, "Do it. And after that, see if you can get a subspace message through to the Vulcan colony on Degan V."

"Sir?" Chekov hesitated. "We are having limited power and-"

"You heard me, Ensign."

"Yes, sir."

McCoy frowned. "You promised her, Jim."

"I never break a promise, Bones." Kirk bent down to speak in Uhura's ear. "If you can hear me, I'm going to do this to help you. Both of you." He touched her belly. "All three of you."

With that, Kirk started out of Sickbay, but he was stopped at the door by a burly security officer. "Doctor's orders, Captain," the man apologized. "You don't leave until your arm's in a sling."

Clenching his teeth, Kirk gave in and let a nurse begin to examine him, cursing his old friend under his breath the whole time. Each second that ticked by put Uhura's child...Spock's son...in greater danger.

If he was going to keep all of the promises that he'd made, he had only once choice, only one person he could turn to for help.

He just hoped that telling the older Spock about his younger self's child wouldn't mess up the space-time continum too badly.

To Be Continued