Transition
Trip was packing T'Pau's clothing, which allowed her to spend another half hour at the beach and in the water before the shuttle would arrive to collect her. He wondered why she had brought so much stuff, considering that he had to enforce 'paternal authority', requesting that she wore at least a bikini when out of the water. Practically everything she had brought for the three day stay on the island had been largely untouched.
"How are you doing?" Malcolm asked, entering the room.
"I'm fine," Trip started before stopping mid sentence. "Well, obviously not fine, but getting better every day. We've still got the weekend left. I think I should be good to go come Monday."
"I'm sure I don't have to tell you that T'Pol will watch over you like a mother hen for a while. Hoshi certainly will do too."
Trip sighed, stopping in the middle of the room with one of T'Pau's blouses in his hands. "Maybe it's a good thing," he admitted. "I'm obviously not very good at looking after myself."
"You're totally crap at it, to be brutally honest," Malcolm snorted. Trip saw him leaning against the wall in a relaxed pose.
"Was there something specific you wanted to talk about?" Trip asked, knowing that Malcolm wasn't the type to engage in casual small-talk a lot for no reason.
"Well, I wanted to ask you to talk to Hoshi after T'Pau has left. She wasn't best pleased with the dress code you introduced."
"Malcolm, T'Pau might be thirty-three, but compared to a human, she's sixteen, maybe seventeen. Imagine having a teenage goddaughter prancing around naked in front of you all day. How would you feel?"
"Point taken," Malcolm conceded.
"I don't think it's too much to ask that she wears a bikini or a swimsuit on a beach, is it. The alternative is that I feel like a weirdo all day."
Trip's little rant was stopped by two pairs of hands clapping slowly. He turned around and saw that Hoshi had joined Malcolm in applauding his latest little outburst. She had probably overheard the whole conversation from the adjacent room.
"Congratulations," she said and kissed him on the cheek. "So you finally realized that you won't be shot if you ask others to make compromises for the sake of your well-being."
"Don't tell me you planned this," Trip half asked, half stated in disbelief.
"No, I didn't plan anything," Hoshi answered. "I actually didn't even expect you to have a problem with it. You never had a problem when I was naked."
"You are a big girl already," he said. "And besides, we've known each other for a long time and most importantly, you aren't an adolescent goddaughter of mine."
"Good," Hoshi said and flashed him a grin while picking at her swimsuit. "Because that thing is coming off as soon as the shuttle has taken to the sky."
"It was never meant to apply to you," he said.
"I know, but a little show of female solidarity can't hurt," she replied with a giggle. "It made it easier for T'Pau to accept your restriction."
"I'm not so sure what the Eldest Mother has to say about that," Trip wondered aloud. "We were supposed to teach her swimming. Instead we've turned her into a compulsive nudist. I'm not so sure that she'll be happy with that."
"It's a transitory thing," Hoshi said. "When I got my ground car license, I drove around endlessly for days until the novelty factor had worn off. It's the same for her. Once she's done it often enough, she'll tone it down."
"I sure hope so," Trip said, and started to snicker. "And I hope it doesn't take her as long as you to get it out of her system."
"I am a compulsive nudist," Hoshi said with another giggle. "Now that my neuropressure training is finished, we'll go to the spa at different times than you and T'Pol. We'll take her in with us, so you won't be bothered by it. We'll need her to help Malcolm for a while longer anyway."
"Thanks," he said with a grateful smile and closed T'Pau's packed bag. "I'd half expected that the two of you would try to drag Malcolm into the water."
"Trip, I still need at least one of them nearby to cope with a small whirlpool, preferably by holding my hand," Malcolm snorted. "The whole bloody ocean would be a slightly premature step, wouldn't it. I consider it a minor miracle already that I can be on this island here without freaking out about all the water around us."
"I think the shuttle is approaching," Hoshi said and they walked outside, where T'Pau met them on her way back to the house.
"T'Pol has laid out a dress for you in the living room," Trip told her and with a nod T'Pau walked into the dwelling.
=/\=
Feb. 1st 2157, Romulan space near Algeron
The small cloaked courier vessel glided towards the edge of Romulan space at a steady warp four. Within the hour they were about to cross into enemy space, with another six days needed to travel to Vulcan space.
"I believe we are being followed," Turius remarked calmly and pointed at a seemingly normal piece of space on the display. Only the trained eye of an operative would notice the little subspace distortion.
"An operative sent by the Praetor to monitor our mission," Tavrus replied nonchalantly.
"I take it you were expecting him?"
"The Praetor is foolishly assuming that his private security code is really private," he answered with a satisfied grin. "When he gave me permission to recruit you for this mission a little too promptly, I decided that keeping an eye on his communication was a prudent idea."
"You are even cleverer than I thought Tavrus."
"Fortunately he is also very predictable," Tavrus continued with a smirk. "He sent exactly the man, who will open the door for us on Vulcan. There is only one man other than myself, who seems perfectly suited to work undercover on Vulcan."
"You already have a plan?"
"I don't need one," Tavrus gloated. "The man chasing us is known as Centurion Lerok, a V'Shar operative, who would have already been executed if the Praetor or any of his advisors could be bothered to read all the Tal'Shiar reports."
"You have finally found a way to reveal the Vulcan undercover operatives?" Turius asked with interest. "In my time most who had the necessary expertise in genetics were wasted as lowly foot soldiers on the front-lines instead of being provided with the necessary equipment to do genetic research."
"That has not changed," Tavrus replied, shaking his head. "But I have lived among Vulcans long enough to know if someone suppresses his emotions naturally or by force. When Lerok did slightly too well in the emotional suppression test, I became suspicious and took him on a hunting excursion."
"They can learn to kill just as well as we can," Turius suggested. "I would hardly call such a test conclusive."
"Lerok easily killed a seth'let, too easily in fact. Vulcans do not relish the smell of blood. They do not enjoy seeing the life leave the beast after a long barehanded fight. He killed it swiftly and painlessly. That's the one part of their nature that Vulcans simply can't overcome. They cannot administer needless pain."
"That we can do so is hardly a reason to be proud," Turius snorted in obvious disgust.
"I did not say this made me proud, Master," Tavrus apologized. "It is a part of our nature that we chose to accept when our ancestors left Vulcan. Our peoples are extremists. While we relish our emotions, the Vulcans seek to lose them. There must be a way of life in between those extremes."
"I see that your time on Vulcan has influenced you much in the same way as it influenced me," Turius remarked. Tavrus could not find any trace of reproach in it.
"It has," the younger man admitted. "I didn't know she was your daughter, when she cowered before the tip of my blade, but I knew that my life started to change when I could not kill her, even though I was ordered to do so."
"When did you last see T'Pol?" Turius asked and Tavrus could hear the pain in his mentors voice.
"Almost two years ago. We were ordered to terminate all remaining Syrranites to cover up our involvement in bombing the human embassy. She was traveling with the Vulcan leader and the captain of the human ship she served on, trying to bring their precious artifact to the capital city. During a fight the human captain and the Vulcan were able to flee with the relic, but T'Pol was separated from them. She was injured but unwavering in her will to resist. Maybe it was the unhidden rage I could see in her eyes that rendered me unable to kill her. I may have felt subconsciously that she was one of us."
"She is only half Romulan," the Elder corrected him. "I believe your hesitation had a different reason. Like me, you must have realized at some point that we have become conquerors for the sake of conquering. We do not need these planets. We have much more territory than we need to exist. We are shedding the blood of our young in senseless battles."
Tavrus, who would soon be Talok again, thought about his mentor's words and realized the truth and wisdom behind them. The Klingon onslaught was sufficient to keep the imperial forces more than busy enough and the Praetor had rushed into a war on two fronts, hoping that glorious wins against the terhassu would silence the unrest about the horrific bloodshed at the Klingon border.
But those wins never came. The humans and their allies outnumbered them six-to-one, and even though they had no ships that could take on an imperial warbird, two or three of them could, especially if they were using the small specialized destroyers and frigates that the coalition was building in rising numbers.
"Have you come to a decision, Tavrus?" his mentor asked. "It is not too late to return to the Empire in good standing."
"There is no good standing in the Empire for either of us," he answered bitterly. "We are both 'curiosities', gawked at and spurned by the females and our families. We would live out our lives in reclusion or be killed whenever the Praetor needs someone to take the blame for his defeats."
"Then it is decided," his old teacher proclaimed.
"It is decided, Master. Once we reach Vulcan space Lerok will contact his superiors and warn them of us. We will surrender ourselves to them and betray the Empire."
"That is a grave decision, Tavrus. Our own will be out to kill us. That is, if the Vulcans don't forestall them and terminate us first."
"It is a risk I'm willing to take," the younger man replied with grim determination. "The Vulcans will not kill us before they have all information we can provide. If that information shortens the war by just one year, it will save hundreds of thousands of our families from grieving for their sons and daughters. If it costs my life to achieve that, so be it. I'd rather die a merciful death at the hands of the Vulcans than wasting away on our home world as an outcast, presiding over needless massacres."
=/\=
three days later...
First Minister Soval hid his hands in the wide sleeves of his ceremonial robe. The assembly of ministers and sub-ministers was currently waiting for General V'Daro, the head of the V'Shar. The the organization's most senior operative had requested this meeting to present new information. If he went as far as requesting an immediate session of the High Council, it could only mean that he had information of the highest importance.
"Is it wise to invite the Humans to a session with the highest ranking representative of our intelligence service, Excellency?" Sub-minister Sulak asked.
Soval regarded the young man with a hard look. Sulak was a most effective overseer of their shipyard operations, but he was one of the Council members who still had to let go of some of their preconceptions.
"Sub-minister, we are involved in a war and are part of an alliance. Surely you understand the logic of involving our allies from Starfleet Intelligence, especially as our two species have been tasked with providing the majority of intelligence."
Chastised into silence, the young councilman acknowledged the rebuttal with a nod.
A soft notification sound from the console in front of him forestalled any further discussion and Soval pushed a button to establish the connection to the subordinate who had called him.
"The subspace connection to Earth has been established, Excellency," the sublieutenant reported.
"Forward it to the council chambers," he ordered, and the face of Commodore Falkner appeared on the view screen. From the little interaction he had with Earth's new head of Starfleet security, Soval knew that he spoke flawless Vulcan and was exceedingly more efficient to work with than the disagreeable individual who had occupied the post before.
"Councilmen, I introduce – Commodore Falkner, highest ranking officer of Starfleet security."
All attendees of the session acknowledged the Human's virtual presence with a nod that was wordlessly returned by their ally on Earth.
"As we are complete, I admit General V'Daro to the floor," Soval decreed.
"Excellency, Ministers, Commodore," the General opened his speech, and with satisfaction Soval noticed that the seasoned operative had included the human in his greeting. "We have received information from one of our operatives that two high-profile Romulan agents are currently on approach to Vulcan."
Soval raised his hand to silence the murmurs among the attendees. Interestingly, he noticed, the human showed less reaction than some of the younger individuals in the Council chamber.
"Proceed," he ordered once silence had been restored. "What do we know about these operatives?"
"One is called Tavrus," V'Daro explained and brought up an image of the man on a second view screen. "He spent several years as an operative on Vulcan using the name Talok. He rose to the rank of Major in the High Command forces and is believed to have been one of former Administrator V'Las's closest confidants. His last position in the Romulan hierarchy was that of overseer in the Tal'Shiar."
"The boss himself drops by," the human interrupted. "Now it gets really interesting."
"What is your assessment of the situation, Commodore?" Soval asked. Obviously the human had something to contribute.
"We've only got one operative left on Romulus, but she's an effective one," the alien explained. "Your information about Tavrus's position in the Tal'Shiar matches ours. On top of that we've found out that he's gotten himself into a rivalry with Admiral Valdore – their fleet commander. Apparently Valdore wants to attack at all costs, while Tavrus tried to delay and maybe even back out of the war altogether, because he realized that we vastly outnumber them."
"Most interesting information," general V'Daro noticed. "We might need to consider the option that Tavrus is a defector."
"That will depend on who his companion is," Falkner added. "We didn't know about Tavrus's approach to Vulcan, but what we do know is, that four days ago all records about Romulan operatives in coalition space were irreversibly destroyed. Whatever undercover agents they still have in our space, they have no way of contacting them anymore unless Tavrus has given that information to someone else."
"I advice caution, however," the human's Vulcan counterpart continued. "While the prospect of such a high-level defector would undoubtedly have a significant influence on the war, it could also be an attempt at misinformation."
"Speculation will not serve any purpose at this time," Soval interrupted and fixed his general with a direct glance. "What do we know about the second operative?"
"We know very little," V'Daro admitted. "His name is Turius. He retired from active service two decades ago and was apparently exiled by the Romulan authorities for his unwillingness to accept the regime's aggressive expansion at the time. We have no more information other than this image from the time he was forced into exile."
Soval gasped when the slightly blurred image replaced that of the first operative. Even though he quickly caught his momentary lapse in control, some of the higher ranked ministers had caught it. He felt that he was under intense scrutiny from Kuvak, his youngest brother's son.
The first minister turned his attention back to the image and shook his head slightly, unable to believe his eyes. The image was not of the best quality, but it clearly showed a Vulcan-looking man sitting near a fire, preparing some sort of killed animal for consumption.
"Are you unwell, Excellency?" Sulak asked. He had apparently noticed the struggle of the first minister.
"I am well," he replied, dismissing the sub-minister's concern. "This image, however, is deeply unsettling."
"Do you know that man, Excellency?" the general inquired.
"This man looks like my deceased brother V'Nur," Soval admitted.
=/\=
"I apologize for the delay, Admiral," Trip apologized when the connection to Gardner was established. "Phlox literally intercepted me as soon as I set foot on the station and poked and prodded me for two hours."
"He better had," the Admiral replied curtly. "What's his verdict?"
"He wants to make Hoshi a counselor," Trip quipped, but his grin vanished as quickly as it had come, when he saw that Gardner didn't find it funny. "He has cleared me for duty and set up therapy sessions twice a week."
"I expect that his orders are followed to the letter. If you run yourself ragged again or miss just one of these sessions, I'm gonna kick your ass so hard you'll end up orbiting Jupiter, did I make myself clear?"
"Don't worry Sir, it won't come to that as my wife or Hoshi would beat you to the punch anyway."
"That's nothing to joke about, Tucker. You have no idea how close you came to being taken off the project."
"Sir, with all due respect, I wasn't cooped up in sickbay drooling all over myself," Trip protested. He thought the extent of his problem was vastly exaggerated.
"No, but you were so messed up, you couldn't go two hours without crying helplessly," Gardner growled and Trip took the hint that any further jokes would probably not be appreciated.
"Sorry Admiral," he apologized, but stopped mid-sentence. "I didn't mean... Holy Shit!"
"What's wrong?" Gardner asked, looking alarmed.
""I'm either hallucinating or a whole piece of hull just materialized from thin air," Trip answered in stunned disbelief. "The last time I've seen something like that was at that automated repair station that tried to kill Travis."
"Surprise!" Gardner quipped and Trip saw that his look of alarm had given way to a satisfied grin. "I'm a pilot, not an engineer, so you'll have to ask Solan or Jeffries for details, but the short version is, they've developed a method to matter-transport the hull plates directly into place."
"I can see that," Trip muttered, still looking out the window of his office in amazement. "I only notice it now, they must have nailed on two months' worth of hull in just ten days!"
"Solan will give you the details tomorrow," Gardner said with an unmistakable emphasis on the timing of the meeting.
He acknowledged the Admiral's hint and the connection was severed. After the screen had gone blank, he called up the engineering logs, but as soon as he had entered his password, the screen went blank and a short error message appeared.
"Forget it, Buddy."
=/\=
"I believe I just lost a bet," Malcolm said and rolled his eyes when he saw the look of satisfaction and the raised eyebrow on T'Pol's face. "Logged on as soon as the Admiral hung up on him."
"I take it Hoshi had implemented the appropriate counter-measures?"
"Sure," he confirmed pensively. "She picked him up and went to the spa with him for some neuropressure while we caught up on the last ten days."
"Very well."
"T'Pol, I'm not too comfortable with nannying him like that. He's our superior officer and sooner or later it'll bite back if we keep watching his every step," Malcolm admitted.
"I do not like it any more than you do, but if we are not insistent that Trip learns to bring structure to his life, we will find ourselves in the same situation again and next time Starfleet will surely relieve him of duty."
"Let's hope he learns it before he gets thoroughly sick of us," he said with a sigh.
"Now you surely understand that it was important to demonstrate that we are serious. It would not have been of much help if we allowed him to go on like always, immediately after our return," she explained.
=/\=
Commodore Archer gripped his chair as a massive fountain of sparks exploded near the tactical console. He winced when he saw how two well coordinated medics carried the limp , bloodied body of his tactical officer away while his second in command took his place. They had quickly become used to taking casualties – much too used to it.
"Helm, evasive maneuvers," Erika barked out and while the grav plating and the inertial dampers kept their internal organs where they were supposed to be, the view screen made it clear into what a steep bank the ship turned as it slipped through the chaos of the fight. There was something to be said for helmsmen, who had been trained using simulations of Travis Mayweather's idea of how nimble an NX class starship could be.
When Lorian's squadron returned from their short excursion to Jupiter station, they had stumbled upon a marauding group of six Romulan birds of prey and a huge warbird skulking around in the Yridia system; and with intelligence reports suggesting that the Rommies currently had no more than forty or fifty of these monsters available for the fight with coalition forces, losing seven of them would make a serious dent in their war effort.
Not wanting to be caught with his pants down, Jon had assembled a squadron of fifty ships led by the two NX classes Atlantis and Endurance, several Kumari class cruisers, the heavy cruiser Sh'Raan from the Vulcans and a whole host of frigates and destroyers. But even though they outnumbered the Romulans seven to one, they were kept busier than a one-armed paper hanger in a windstorm.
It had been a lot easier when the enemy were still using the cloaking device. Yes, they could sneak up and suddenly appear out of thin air, but at least they had a vulnerability back then. Without it, those tough bastards were a pain to grind down. It took countless hits just to wear down their shielding, let alone banging any dents into the heavily armored hulls of the behemoths themselves. Their only weakness was that they were as nimble as a gazelle, or what was that gray animal with the trunk called, he thought with self-depreciation. God, how naive and idealistic he had been back in those days!
His short mental excursion was interrupted by Erika's string of instructions as Atlantis rejoined the fracas with a steep dive towards the squadron leader, a massive warbird. Six D'Kyr class frigates were buzzing around it like a swarm of mosquitoes, slowly but steadily wearing down the enemy's shielding, while two Kumari class cruisers drew its attention away from the vulnerable Vulcan ships.
"Let's see what a triple salvo of those new torpedoes looks like, Ensign," he heard Erika say and a satisfied grin appeared on the face of the young man who had taken over the battered console.
Jon didn't like the new torpedoes. They were the strongest yet, even dwarfing the Andorian ones, but they were so because Starfleet had adopted a deadly 'tit for tat' strategy after the nuclear devastation of the Galorndon system; Earth reacted to that brutality by deploying modified Mark IV torpedoes equipped with cluster warheads and fission charges. They didn't add anything in terms of destructive power, but in the case of a hull breach the 'dirty' warheads ensured maximum loss of life by blinding or incinerating the enemy crew, and whoever survived that was bound to succumb to the deadly radiation.
He saw the three torpedoes leave the tube in rapid succession, and coming near the warbird each of them released ten warheads. The Romulan lead ship, robbed of its shielding and already wounded by relentless fire from the Kumari and D'Kyr vessels, stood no chance when thirty nuclear warheads rained down death and destruction on it.
"Get us out of here," Erika ordered and the helmsman brought the ship about. The last Jon saw of the massive vessel was the orange glow as the deadly heat from the fission charges melted the innards of the ship and vaporized the corpses of its crew. Atlantis was rocked hard when it was hit by the shock-wave as the warp core of the Romulan ship exploded in a massive fireball.
For a moment Jon was lost for words, and then the old Oppenheimer quote came to his mind. "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," he muttered, and scowled.
=/\=
Trip was sitting in his office, refreshed from a good night's sleep with T'Pol in his arms. He had lost count of how often he had woken up to the once-elusive feeling of her head on his chest, but he knew it would probably never get old.
Hoshi had removed the 'child lock' from his desk as promised, but not without giving him a berating for trying to access the logs, despite the clear agreement that he would not start to work before his first official shift, which had started thirty minutes ago. One thing was clear – Solan and Anna had not mucked around in his absence and had devised a rather brilliant scheme to speed up the construction process.
They had modified the cargo hold of an old warp 1 cargo barge into a huge transporter platform and developed transporter tags that could be applied to the four corners of where the hull plate was supposed to go. Instead of unloading the plates from the arriving cargo ships with a robot arm and cumbersomely putting them into place, they could now transport it to the converted cargo hold and from there directly on to the skeleton of the ship. Instead of twelve hours, emptying a fully laden cargo ship and putting the plates on the ship took now a mere ninety minutes. So, instead of the initially planned four months they would probably finish the hull in a record-breaking three weeks. Starfleet was already busy finding old cargo barges that hadn't been sold for scrap yet to convert more of them into flying transporter platforms for the other shipyards in Andorian, Tellarite and Vulcan space.
As great as these developments were, Trip couldn't feel too happy about it. While his people were busy coming up with brilliant ideas to speed up the ship building, their senior officers had been down on the surface cavorting around on the beach of a private tropical paradise for ten days. No matter how often his friends and his wife repeated their mantra of having needed that time of peace and quiet, he couldn't shake the nagging feeling of being a slacker.
Before he could come up with more names to call himself, the entrance of Malcolm interrupted his thoughts.
"Blimey, did you read the latest AAR's? Commodore Archer nuked seven Rommies yesterday," the Brit said with a satisfied smirk.
"Literally," Trip said with a look of disgust, knowing that by now the new 'dirty torpedoes' must have found their way to Jon's fleet. "What's the butcher's bill?"
"A D'Kyr and two frigates with all hands and ninety-two casualties on the surviving ships. Oh, and about one and a half thousand Romulans."
"You'd think they start getting the clue at some point," Trip said, pensively. "We must have butchered about three hundred thousand of them by now."
"Closer to four hundred to be precise," Malcolm corrected. "At thirty thousand casualties on our side it's looking quite good actually."
"How can that be good, Malcolm?" Trip asked, offended by his friend's nonchalance. "That's still thirty thousand families grieving for one of their own!"
"Trip, we are all as sick of this war as you are. But trust me, I've seen what happens to worlds that have been granted the 'honor' of being annexed by the Romulan Star Empire. Don't pretend you are the only one affected by this." His look was bleak as memories came to him he had hoped were buried deep in his past.
"Sorry," Trip apologized before getting very angry. "I'm just so damned sick of it. I wanted to go out exploring and what do I end up doing? Once this ship is ready we'll go out and kill enough Romulans to make Hitler proud. That shit is not what I've signed up for."
"Sit," Malcolm said, deciding that 'ranks be hanged', and Trip obeyed.
"Take it from someone who's more used to killing than he feels comfortable with. Accept it as a necessary evil and we'll deal with the consequences later. I have ample experience with that and you have three people looking out for you. We'll catch you if you fall."
"You're getting good at this," Trip remarked with a slight grin. "For once I get the feeling you're better in touch with your emotions than I am."
"I have a good teacher," Malcolm replied, deadpan. "You have no idea how much T'Pol helped me the last two weeks and I know for a fact that Hoshi has become an expert in getting through to you. So stop whining and use the help that's offered to you. We need you back at your best."
"I'll do my best, Mal," he promised with a sigh.
"If your people go on like they have been doing, this ship will be ready in a month, maybe one and a half. Let Hoshi and Phlox help you, OK? I hate to be so blunt, but if T'Pol thinks you're not at your best, we won't let you take this thing out. You may hate us afterwards, but you'll take responsibility of more than two hundred lives. We won't let you do that if you haven't worked through your problems."
Trip stared at his friend, dumbfounded by the unmistakable threat. He knew that Malcolm was perfectly right, but it didn't feel too great to be told about it so directly.
"Twenty hundred in our quarters, Hoshi will be waiting for you. You need to talk about this and she'll listen."
"I'll be there, Mal."