NX-01 Enterprise, Feb. 3rd 2155
The Captain's dinner was different this time. Instead of his Chief Engineer and his First Officer, his guests were the remaining alpha shift bridge officers – Lieutenant Reed, Ensigns Sato and Mayweather.
Ensigns, the Captain thought to himself. They've been ensigns for four years now.
Starfleet had lost the understanding for the concept of promotions by the look of it, but one could only hope that his latest report would remind Admiral Gardner of that 'ancient ritual' that involved putting additional pips on someone's collar.
"Captain, are going to just leave the Commanders here on Vulcan?"
The indignation in the armory officer's voice was hard to miss. Thinking back to the early days of the mission, he remembered the somewhat stiff and overly formal Brit, who had the proverbial stick so far up his rear-end he almost gagged on it. Now that very same man was the best friend of the Chief engineer of all people, the resident southern charmer, and not to forget he had joined the now at least a dozen strong group of people who clandestinely broke the no-frat rules.
"Yes we are Malcolm," the Captain answered. "Minister T'Pau informed me that Trip and T'Pol take a hike through the Forge to bury the katric arcs of their daughter and her mother in the ruins of the T'Karath sanctuary. That makes three days there, and hopefully three days back again and in between 5 days of meditation. Starfleet doesn't want us to hang around here for almost 2 weeks.
Ambassador Soval is here to brief the High Council and will give them a ride back on his ship when he returns as well."
"Um, Captain, not that I would dare to question your sanity…"
Jon gave Malcolm a lopsided grin. "I know, Trip and the desert are not exactly a match made in heaven. But I know from first hand experience that T'Pol is more than capable to keep a human in line who's completely out of his depth. How do you think I made it through there."
"Captain, you said they're burying a katric arc. Does that mean T'Pol somehow managed to save Elizabeth's katra?"
The Captain answered Hoshi's question with a nod.
"Apparently she somehow managed to get past Phlox's watchful eye and melded with her for a moment. I passed out when Syrran melded with me, but I think it didn't take much longer than three or four seconds. So I guess she somehow managed it. I can imagine that it gets somewhat crowded in her mind by now, with four people in it."
"Four?" Travis asked.
"When her mother T'Les died, T'Pau managed to mediate a meld between T'Pol and T'Les. T'Pol couldn't yet do it by herself at the time. So she has herself, her mother, their daughter and Trip in there. I don't even want to imagine what it means to have that much going on in your mind."
"Trip?" Malcolm asked with no small amount of alarm. "You just said he takes a hike through the desert. Now you make it sound like he's dead."
"No, Malcolm," Hoshi interrupted him and grinned like the cat who ate the canary. "If the Captain is saying what I think he does, I believe he's trying to tell us there are exactly two people on Vulcan who are married in true Surak style, and one of those people is our chief engineer."
"You are both experts on Surak now?" Malcolm asked and both the Captain and Hoshi were amused about his bewildered look at both of them.
"Lieutenant, I had his katra in my head for days. Granted, since it was transferred to the priest all that's left are bits and pieces here and there that I picked up at the time. Hoshi helped them translate the Kir'Shara to contemporary Vulcan and Human standard. She's probably the only non-Vulcan who will ever be allowed to know the whole text. So, over to you, Professor Sato…"
Hoshi snickered slightly at the Captain's antics.
"When Surak brought logic to Vulcan, to end the war on their world, there was a schism. One faction, the ones who had used nuclear weapons, were under the leadership of S'Task. They were called "those who walk beneath the raptor's wings" and were adamant to retain their savage ways and eventually abandoned their home world. As far as I can tell the Vulcans don't know where they ended up or if they went extinct."
"They must have made an impact in any case," Malcolm said. "They 'march beneath the raptor's wings' and both the Romulan vessels we met at the mine field and just about any Klingon ship we ran into looked like giant birds of prey. For people who toiled about two thousand years ago they sure seemed to have left a lasting impression on some species."
"We'll leave that for later discussion, Malcolm," the Captain chipped in. "I think Hoshi was just about to get to the interesting bits."
"Those stayed on Vulcan, under leadership of T'Klaas, the first Koh'linar master, radically reformed their society according to Surak's teachings. Back before those days, when Vulcans fell in love with each other they developed a tel, a telepathic connection of their minds. Even after Surak's reform this was considered the most blessed way of getting married."
"I'm sensing a 'but' in there," Malcom remarked.
Hoshi nodded. "If two Vulcans bonded with each other that way, they found their true Ashayam, their eternal soul-mate. That was the best I could come up with for a translation. Human standard doesn't really have any words for what a monumental meaning that has for Vulcans, at least nothing that doesn't sound ridiculously corny."
"But you said Trip and T'Pol are the only ones married that way?" Travis asked. "Surely among billions of Vulcans it must have happened to someone else."
"It's literally impossible these days," Hoshi said and shook her head. "Vulcan males have to mate every 7 years or they die from the biochemical imbalance. Back in pre-Surak days they all wanted to find their true soul-mate and unless they got incredibly lucky they died when their first mating drive hit them. Seeing that senseless loss of life, Vulcans decided to arrange marriages to make sure that every male had a mate when the time came. Bonds were now initiated by priests during the marriage ceremony instead of developing on their own. Those are only a mere shadow of the real thing, but it prevented them from going extinct."
"Not to put too fine a point on it," Malcolm pointed out. "But didn't T'Pol marry this Koss fellow? Wouldn't the priest have initiated one of those ersatz-bonds between them?"
"I can only speculate," Hoshi said. "Either T'Pol and Trip were already bonded and just not aware of it, but then the priest would have called off the wedding anyway. Or the whole marriage was a mere sham."
"I think the latter is spot-on," Malcolm said, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Now it makes sense."
"Care to enlighten us?" the Captain asked.
"When Trip came back from Vulcan earlier than expected, I found him in his quarters, hogwashly clattered. Seeing he was completely off his face, I didn't really pay much attention to his ramblings as I was trying to keep him from doing anything even stupider, but he said something about her mother being put in jail if she didn't marry that bloke. Back then I had just dismissed it as Trip trying to delude himself into anything to believe that she hadn't rejected him."
"Well, Lieutenant, don't quit your day job to become a relationship counselor," the Captain needled him.
"Well, maybe I can contribute something," Travis said. "When I was a kid, our parents gave us the rundown about all kinds of races we might run into on our cargo runs. Vulcans are apparently organized in a complex structure of clans, comprising of different houses each. If marriages are arranged there's bound to come a political element into it. Which clan marries into which, which house gets joined to which."
"That would explain why he called off the marriage just weeks later," the Captain agreed. "When the High Command was disbanded, Koss had the marriage annulled. Apparently it had served its intended purpose, or not for that matter."
"So, long story short, our chief engineer and Commander T'Pol are married and Starfleet is going to give them hell about it," Travis remarked.
"Over my dead body," the Captain replied, shaking his head. "Those two have danced around each other like angsty teenagers for nearly two years. Now that they've finally smelled the coffee, I won't have Starfleet break them up."
"Well, you can add my dead body to the barricade as well," Malcolm proclaimed.
"Of course, entirely unselfishly," the Captain said with a wicked grin. "Hoshi would have my hide if you came to any harm."
The gasp of the ship's communications officer told him he had hit paydirt.
"Malcom, Hoshi, I have to give it to you, you are good at keeping it low-key, but I'd be a useless skipper if I didn't know what happens on my ship. If I had objected to it, I would have put a stop to it. Now go, all of you. We have a few quiet days. Make the best of it."
His officers filed out, but before Malcolm left, he called him back.
"Sir?"
"Malcolm, that brewery installation that the two Germans on Trip's team are running in engineering – I expect to be put on the customer list."
"Of course, Sir," Malcolm said all business like, but the Captain was pretty sure he had heard something like "Bloody Norah" mumbled under Malcolm's breath.
-=/\=-
The Forge, Vulcan, Feb. 5th2155
"Drink," T'Pol demanded and handed him the waterskin.
"First time I made it through a desert and didn't end up half dead or maimed," Trip said, eagerly emptying the water from the leather contraption.
"It was not for lack of attempt by the Le'matya," T'Pol remarked and he still felt the residue of shock and fear in his mind, convinced that it was spill-over from her mind. "My mother wishes to know if you have always been adept at fighting predators."
"I grew up in Florida. You could run into a gator at every turn. These critters have spread like wildfire since they've been put under protection."
T'Pol looked blandly at him and he knew what the unasked question was. He closed his eyes and used the meditation technique she had explained to him. Soon he managed to project an image of an alligator to her mind.
Another short burst of shock spilled over to his mind.
"Don' worry too much, darlin'. They ain't the brightest candles in the chandelier, so even if you ended up figtht'n one of 'em, you could easily outsmart 'em."
Another bland look followed, accompanied by what he had come to call 'the eyebrow of amusement'. T'Pol was always doing that when she was looking for a Vulcanly way to giggle.
"T'Mom didn't understand half of that, did she? I'm sorry, I mean, T'Les."
"Your assessment is correct, but she also assures me that she has grown quite accustomed to this appellation and takes no offense if it used. She finds it strangely agreeable."
"So much for 'Vulcans don't do nicknames'," he said.
"We do use them," T'Pol corrected him. "But not in the same way as humans do. On our world using something other than one's official name is a form of ostracism. So when I was called 'dust devil' in my childhood it was meant as an insult. Humans in contrast use nicknames to denote closeness and friendship."
"That explains why it took you ages to call me Trip."
"That, and the fact that T'Rip is a female Vulcan first name. In fact in early schooling I had a classmate named T'Rip. As you can imagine it took some adjustment."
"Yep, that makes perfect sense."
-=/\=-
The sun had almost reached the zenith when they had finished chiseling a miniature cavern into the solid rock to deposit the two katric arcs in. They sealed it with a rock and marked it as a grave site. No Vulcan in his right mind would ever try to touch it, let alone disturb the peace to the two clay vessels behind it.
"Will you miss them?"
"Of course I always will. As for their residence in my mind, no. It can be quite disconcerting. I have now a much better understanding of the Captain's frantic behavior when he bore the katra of Surak."
"Well, we can always come here when you want to get in touch with them. I can tell you, humans would give everything to have that ability."
"We shall meditate now."
-=/\=-
He didn't know how long they had been meditating already, but if the excruciating pain in his rear-end was anything to go by, it must have been a long time. Before he could muse further about his wrecked buttocks, he was drawn out of his meditation by the faint sound of labored breathing. Not expecting any guests, he immediately reached for the crude pole weapon he had made before fighting the Le'matya,
An elderly Vulcan, perhaps Soval's age came into view, but he didn't quite look like most Vulcans he had seen so far. He wore tattered robes, dirty from the hike through the desert, and an eye-patch over the left eye.
"Weapons will not be necessary, young man. I wish neither you nor T'Pol any harm."
Hearing her name T'Pol shot up and froze immediately. The last time he had seen her in such a state of naked shock was when the Captain had staged the biggest comeback since Lazarus after escaping the alien space Nazis in the wrecked timeline after the Xindi mission.
Trip looked back and forth between them as they had fixed their looks at each other.
"Father?" T'Pol finally said, in Vulcan. It was one of the few words she had explained to him when he tried to introduce himself to their then still alive little daughter.
"I believe it would be better to use the human language," the Vulcan said. "Unless you purposely try to leave out your mate."
"Does everyone know?" Trip wondered aloud.
"Every Vulcan will know in a matter of seconds," T'Pol said. "Our tel is much stronger than the usual mating bonds on Vulcan."
"Indeed," the Vulcan she had claimed to be her father, said.
"You have been presumed dead for over fifty years," T'Pol stated the not-so-obvious. After all he seemed to stand in front of them and for all intents and purposes looked very much alive.
"Sit, children. It was a long way and I am no longer as resilient as I used to be."
"Well, Sir. T'Pol seems to think that you are her long-lost father and despite the fact that literally nobody but the first minister knew where we are, I guess there's a bit of explaining to do."
"I did not need assistance to find you. How many human biosigns in unusually close proximity to a Vulcan one could there be on the planet. And before you ask, young man, we have the technology to scan through the natural dampening field."
"Who is 'we'?" T'Pol asked.
"I shall explain, and I wish to beg forgiveness as this will only add to your already troubled minds."
"Go on," Trip said, taking T'Pol's hand. He knew that she would probably need some support. After all she had just buried the souls of her mother and their child and was now confronted by a seemingly resurrected father. Somehow his gut feeling told him this wasn't going to be an entirely happy reunion.
"We are the Rihanssu, or what humans call Romulans."
Yeah why not, ease us into it, gently Trip thought and eyed the weapon, making sure it was still in reach.
"Spare yourself the trouble young man," the Vulcan-now-Romulan said. "I already assured you I intend no harm, and if I would, you would no longer be alive. There are easier ways to assassinate someone than risking your own life in this hellhole to do it."
"If you are Rihanssu, you cannot be my father," T'Pol said, and Trip felt the anger about the betrayal boil up in her.
"You are both incorrect and correct at the same time. He who was known as V'Nur of Vulcan, he who was betrothed to T'Les, never lived to adulthood. Contrary to what the High Command wanted the universe to believe, Vulcan youths are just as foolish as those of other species. V'Nur was supposed to meet his childhood betrothed for the first time. In a foolish endeavor to prove his masculinity, he wanted to slay a Le'matya in the Forge and fashion a traditional waterskin from its hide to impress T'Les."
"I guess the Le'matya won," Trip interrupted dryly.
"Indeed," the Romulan confirmed. "He was by far not the only Vulcan youth prone to such foolishness and it became our preferred way to infiltrate Vulcan. We waited for young males to die in the Forge and took their place."
Trip looked at T'Pol, but she was still in a state of veritable shock, so it seemed to fall on him to find out what the hell this was all about.
"If I get this right, you aren't actually the real V'Nur, but you are the V'Nur who married T'Les and you are a Romulan spy."
"I was an operative, and yes, you assessed the situation correctly."
"That means T'Pol is half-Romulan?"
"It matters little. What genetic changes does a species undergo in two-thousand years?"
"Fucking hell," Trip swore. "Are you trying to tell us that the Romulans are the descendants of the Vulcans who killed Surak and then left?"
The Romulan nodded, wordlessly.
"Why are you telling us all that? You say you don't want to kill the two of us, but at the same time you give us information that we would definitely use against your people if they attack us again and we make it out of here alive. The Andorians have spent a century on developing weapons for the sole purpose of killing Vulcans. If what you say is true, they'll work just as well on your people."
"I am counting on that, young man."
"Why?" Trip asked and the Romulan fixed him with his one functioning eye.
"Because I wish to defect."