Immune

Immune

by Trinneergirl

Date: Dec 2002 - March 2003
Length: 20 Chapters
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise
Pairing: None
Genre: Action adventure/Thriller
Rating: PG-13 (for violence)
Status: Complete
Feedback: Yes, please! Trinneergirl@aol.com
Series/sequel: No
Archive: Sure, just tell me.
Disclaimer: Original material copyright 2003 the author. This is not an attempt to infringe on Paramount's copyright. No money was made. I love Trip for free!
Spoilers: There are a few but none from series three. This is set instead of, rather than before, the Xindi stuff.

Warnings: None. Kinda intense, but that's all.

Summary: This was started as my perfect episode of Enterprise, but it grewed! The crew fall into an illness to which only Trip is immune, he has to get Enterprise to safety on his own. In a b-plot Trip has passed his exams to become a full Commander. Only he hasn't told Captain Archer.

Chapter One

Captain Jonathan Archer started to wonder at breakfast. He was alone. Sub-Commander T'Pol, the Enterprise's Vulcan first officer never joined the starship captain for breakfast, preferring to sup her Plomeek broth in the mess hall. Often Archer would start the day with his second officer, the Chief Engineer, Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker III, and Archer's best friend for the best part of a decade.

As the Captain ate his eggs he realised that he hadn't seen Trip for near on a month. Not at breakfast, not at lunch, not at dinner. Jon had just returned from a three-week away mission with his alien first officer. Normally Trip would have been there the second Jon got back, to badger every last piece of information he could get about what went on. But this time he hadn't. Hadn't even found an excuse to appear on the Bridge to be part of the senior staff. As the second command officer, Trip had been in command for the duration of the mission. When Archer returned, Trip had certainly been there. He rose from the Captain's chair and, as Jon bantered with Mayweather and Hoshi, the Chief Engineer had slipped out, back to Engineering.

Rising from the captain's table, Archer made his way out into the main mess hall. He glanced round. Just leaving to start their shift were Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, the Armoury officer, who hailed from England, and his Communications officer Ensign Hoshi Sato, the Japanese prodigy he had found who could speak languages by the dozen. A call went out to the pair who paused to allow their co-officer Ensign Travis Mayweather to catch up. The tall, black skinned man joined them with a huge smile on his handsome young face. The three greeted Archer, who responded with a friendly nod, then they left. T'Pol was drinking her Plomeek broth and talking to Phlox, Archer's other alien officer, a Denobulan physician. Only Trip was absent. The feeling that something was very wrong deepened. He moved to his first officer's side and calmed them as they made to rise. T'Pol, a slender, beautiful Vulcan female was unperturbed as her culture dictated. Eschewing all emotion and making a religion of logic. Archer had not wanted her on his ship, having a deep distrust of Vulcan's. But he'd learned to trust this one. A brow rose on her olive-complexioned face and her intelligent dark eyes fixed on him.

"Is something wrong, Captain?" she asked.

"I was just wondering when you last saw Trip in here?" he voiced his worry in characteristic straightforward style.

T'Pol, who wasn't given to guessing replied, "four weeks and three days ago." Jon frowned.

"I assumed he'd been with you," T'Pol finished. Jon shook his head. He stopped Crewman Douglas as he passed. Douglas had replaced Daniels after he'd left the ship as Archer's serving waiter at meals.

"Have you served Commander Tucker while I was away?" he questioned.

"Commander Tucker? No, sir," Douglas replied. "He ate in his quarters or your ready room the whole time."

"Thank you," dismissed Archer.

Without another word he left and went to his ready room. There he found all the senior officer's reports on the desk in his ready room. Largely uneventful time according to Trip's straightforward, report. There had been a little trouble with some alien species called the T'vojians who had attacked, some engine trouble, and a diplomatic first contact with some race of sentient arachnids called the Scre'an. Trip, always an excellent Starfleet officer had fully detailed the events, but the enthusiasm and excitement that once characterised Trip's reports and made Jon smile, even laugh, had been replaced by a chillingly accurate account.

When he read the reports from the rest of his senior staff the dismay lodged in Archer's stomach like a stone. The T'vojians had attacked and nearly destroyed Enterprise. According to the reports from Hoshi, Mayweather, and Reed, Commander Tucker had been quick, decisive, inventive, and brilliant. In short he'd saved the ship. The 'minor' engine trouble turned out to be an almost catastrophic anti-matter cascade failure. Lieutenant Hess, Trip's second-in-command in Engineering had filed a report as Trip had been on the Bridge. According to her report, Trip, doing a round of checks had cleared Engineering and fixed the problem at the cost of a painful series of radiation injections. Phlox's report spoke of burns which he had treated between Trip overseeing the repairs and conducting a tiring series of diplomatic relations with the Scre'an, twelve-foot spiders whose language included needing specific motions for each word. The video footage showed Archer an incredibly complex dance where arm, leg, head, and eye movement, even blinking were critical in conveying messages.

Hoshi's report stated that Trip had never put a foot wrong. Literally. Despite negotiations needing incredible physical and emotional concentration that lasted hours, Trip had done magnificently. On the back of his burns and radiation poisoning, he had negotiated a treaty and made Earth a new friend. Any one of these acts should have been an adventure for Trip; his reports showed they weren't. Any one of these acts should earn the Commander a commendation. Jonathan Archer was non-plussed. What the hell was going on? What had happened to change Trip that much in just a few weeks? Shaking his head Archer got up and went out of the ready room and out to the Bridge.

He started his shift on time as usual and, as usual, the others were already there. T'Pol rose from the Captain's chair and returned to her Science station. Archer looked around, but there was no Trip to be seen.

"Report," he ordered. T'Pol gave the first report. Reed followed. Then Mayweather. Finally Hoshi. Archer listened, asked questions and heard recommendations. Then he gave his orders. He'd finished the formal part of his day after an hour. "Anybody seen Trip?" he asked.

"Ah, 'Commander' Tucker," Lieutenant Reed responded with emphasis on the rank. For a second Archer stiffened as he thought Malcolm was patronising Trip, before recognising that he wasn't. Reed was grinning with pleasure, as were Mayweather and Hoshi. Reed saw Archer tense in his chair and misinterpreted. "He passed, sir!" he tried to reassure. "With flying colours!" Reed's happy smile faded as he saw his Captain's genuine bewilderment.

"Passed what?" Archer asked.

Lieutenant Reed knew that Trip's relations with the top two officers on Enterprise had been strained lately. At least, with Trip avoiding the others like a bad smell, that's how Malcolm perceived it. Now he wasn't sure what was happening.

"His Command exams, sir," the Armoury Officer responded cautiously. "Trip took his Command exams six weeks ago. We heard this morning, he's passed. He's no longer a Lieutenant Commander, sir. He's a full Commander." Hoshi and Mayweather also let their cheerful faces fall away as they saw Captain Archer's perplexity. Archer turned to T'Pol.

"Did you know about this?" he asked.

"No," T'Pol replied, simply.

"You mean you didn't know, sir?" Hoshi asked, surprised.

"No," Jon replied, feeling a lot of emotions, confusion, hurt, disappointment. Trip had shared each of his well-earned promotions with Archer. Giddy with excitement and achievement, Trip had climbed the Starfleet officer's ladder in swift strokes. Why had he done this without telling his Captain? Why had he done this without telling his friend?

"He never told me." Trying to gloss over the situation Reed spoke hesitantly.
"Well we wouldn't have known if Admiral Forrest hadn't chosen to do the ceremony here on the bridge screen, sir. I think that we would just've noticed the extra dot at some point."

"A full Commander at thirty four!" Mayweather was awed. "That takes some doing! An earned honour that's something every Starfleet officer will want to emulate!" Archer glanced across at T'Pol.

"Where is Commander Tucker?" he wanted to know, anger now glinting in his hazel eyes. The Vulcan scanned for bio-readouts.

"He's in main Engineering," she replied. Lieutenant Reed waited a beat, but realised that first officer though she might be, T'Pol wasn't a Starfleet officer and might not know the protocols. Which meant as the next highest ranked officer present it was his duty. Also as Trip's friend, Malcolm wanted to try to run some interference.

"Sir, Commander Tucker wasn't obligated to inform anyone but Starfleet if he wanted to take his Command exams," he reminded Archer as tactfully as he could.

"I'm aware of that, Lieutenant," the Captain replied.

Reed saw the whiteness around Archer's mouth and let it lie. There was no point in trying any further. Anything he did would only make things worse. The Captain was very, very angry. Archer stood up.

"Sub-Commander, you have the Bridge." Without another word or look, he walked to the turbolift and exited the bridge.

"Why didn't Trip tell the Captain?" Mayweather wondered aloud.

"Did he tell anyone, on Enterprise?" Hoshi asked. Everyone shook their heads. "Then he clearly didn't want us to know until he'd passed."

"But why?" Travis insisted. "It's not like Trip to go behind anyone's back. Least of all the Captain's."

"He has been behaving oddly for a few weeks," Reed agreed.

"Perhaps he wants to leave Enterprise," Hoshi offered.

That sobered them all. Trip was the unofficial ship's counselor. Everybody went to him with their troubles. The positive, dauntless Commander was always sympathetic, without being a bleeding heart. Up until now, Enterprise had been a happy ship, Trip was a major part of why that was and no one wanted that to change.

T'Pol, who had taken the Captain's chair, was listening to the conversation. She and Trip had an unusual relationship. They worked together on many projects, first and second officer, Science and Engineering departments. Trip perplexed her on many levels; he was intensely emotional to her emotionally repressed. Brilliant on the levels of science and engineering, the tall, slender, blonde Commander was also wise beyond his years in many ways. At first T'Pol couldn't see this, only the Southern US country-boy persona that was both who Trip really was and also a mask he used to conceal his intelligence. Often paralysingly blunt, Trip was so complex a human that the Vulcan was as fascinated by him as she was infuriated. It had seemed for a while as if he and she had forged a relationship, but then he'd slipped through her fingers. It occurred to her that, outside of work, she and Trip hadn't shared a conversation in months. Why that bothered her she could not say, but it did.

"You are wrong about one thing, Ensign," she told Mayweather. "Although Commander Tucker's behaviour has become more noticeable these last few weeks, he's been distancing himself for a while now."

There was a long moment while everyone digested these words. They realised that the Sub-Commander was right. Slowly, gradually, Trip had been reducing the time he spent on the Bridge, excusing himself from senior meetings, offering to stay on board through away missions as against his aching need to go on every one in the beginning. He looked after his department with an efficiency that every other, even T'Pol's Science department, envied.

Enterprise was humankind's first deep-space vessel of exploration and its first warp-five engine. That experimental engine should have given them a lot more problems than it had. It was one of Trip's geniuses, Engineering. He knew every inch of Enterprise like no one else. He'd been a major part of her since the design stage. He'd designed many of her components himself, taking the theories and work of Henry Archer, Jonathan's late father, and making them real. From the air they all breathed, to the gravity under their feet. From the hull that kept the inhospitable cold and empty space from them, to the sewage, hydroponic systems, plumbing, electricity; the list was endless, and they were all Charles Tucker's responsibility. They trusted him to keep them alive every day in the practical sense, as much as they trusted Archer's leadership to keep them safe in the missions they did.

Commander Tucker's personal efficiency rating was 97%. His department’s, 95%. By far the highest on the ship of highest achievers. Neither the Science Officer nor the Armoury Officer could get their departments above 87%. Word was that not only did Trip have a gift for the motivating of, and delegating work to, his staff, but that he was tough as nails on any slacking. People who spoke of Trip's private interviews with those who weren't carrying their weight, did so in hushed tones of dread. The Chief Engineer could be understanding of problems on a personal level, but you failed even one of his very high standards by so much as a hairsbreadth and you knew about it. Anyone who failed that first warning and went on falling short knew to a gramme exactly what being hit by a ton of bricks felt like. You only got two warnings from Trip. Three strikes and you were transferred out. His reputation for tough but fair command had been forged into a legend when he had taken over the building and fitting out of Enterprise in Spacedock after Henry Archer's final illness took him. Only twenty nine at the time, Lieutenant Tucker shouldered with an effortless grace responsibilities that would have crushed many others.

When Enterprise was finished, Captain Archer requested his best friend as Chief Engineer, not because of their close relationship, but because Trip was the very best. Starfleet agreed only if Trip agreed in turn to act as a consultant. The Admiral in charge of Spacedock was very sorry to lose Commander Tucker, but knew that the challenge and adventure of deep space exploration was what Trip lived for and that Enterprise’s chances of making it through in one piece were far better with him on board. So Trip divided his time between being Second in Command, Chief Engineer, unofficial counselor, pilot, and part-time diplomat, with completing reports for Starfleet as an engineering consultant. Meeting the easy-going, laid back, friendly man, with his off-beat sense of humour, gentle smile and sensitive soul, it was hard to believe he put in the amount of work he did. Losing him was a blow nobody wanted to contemplate. Why he would want to go was something no one could understand.

What was happening to Trip?

Continue to Chapter 2

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