Immune - Chapter 3

Immune

by Trinneergirl

Disclaimers in Chapter 1

Chapter Three

After Trip left, Jon sat down at his desk and stared at the chair where his friend had been sitting, the thoughts going through his head like pack ice breaking up. Grinding together, colliding, cracking apart. The one aching certainty was that he could lose Trip soon. Until now Archer hadn't really taken on board how much he needed his best friend. The support Trip gave him, the certainty of loyalty that came with having Trip there at his side, the knowledge that if he needed to be shaken to sense or pulled back from depression, Trip would do it. The sad fact was that Jon simply took for granted that Trip would concur with his decisions and so, eventually stopped asking. He was never sure that T'Pol would agree, so he kept asking her opinion. He must have been blind to not see how hurtful that would be for Trip.

Now the fruits of his blithe assumptions were being harvested. Trip had taken and passed his Command exams and Jon hadn't even said congratulations. In just under a month he could lose the person he cared about most in the universe because he'd taken him for granted to such a degree that he'd forgotten his existence. Even his decision to leave the injured Trip down on the planet’s surface had been taken in the belief that Trip would forgive him. He remembered the way the blue eyes looked at him just now. He'd never seen the young engineer regard him so coldly. Winning back the friendship and trust was Jon's first priority. It was going to take time, but Jon needed that friendship, needed that friend. He reached over to the communications panel.

"Archer to T'Pol."

"T'Pol here," the Vulcan Sub-Commander replied.

"Would you come to my ready room, please."

"On my way."

After lunch, Sub-Commander T'Pol entered Engineering. She asked where Commander Tucker was and was told he was checking the systems in one of the side rooms off the warp engine room. The Vulcan made her way there, finding Trip alone, diligently tapping the readings from his instruments into his diagnostic PADD.

"Commander," she began. "I need to talk to you." The Chief Engineer stiffened defensively. He turned to her, his brows raised.

"That's a first for a while," he responded. "I usually get talked at these days."

"I've come to apologise to you," she soldiered on. "When you were lost, the Captain asked me to put into practise the engineering crew changes that Starfleet ordered. The Captain had scheduled a meeting with you about them before you were taken prisoner. I met with Lieutenant Hess and the changes were implemented. I made the mistake of not checking with the Captain when you returned to see you had been informed. I also didn't schedule a meeting with you myself."

"Why did Starfleet give the engineering upgrades to you in the first place?" Trip asked, unbending. "Was it due to the fact that you've spent the last few months telling Starfleet how poor I am at my job?" To Trip's surprise, T'Pol's face registered shame.

"That is something else I need to apologise for," she owned. "When Captain Archer asked me to take over the responsibility for crew ratings, I failed to understand the system correctly. I assumed they were month on month assessments, not overall ones." Trip's brow creased in perplexity.

"I don't understand," he admitted.

"In the Vulcan system, my performance for the month would be taken against my performance for the previous month. If I did the same, I would be average, if better good, if worse poor. I assumed your system worked the same. Your improvements in personal efficiency led me to give your last ratings as excellent, very good, and good. I have contacted Starfleet and told them of my error and your service record has been altered to show your continuing excellence. You are not the only one, Commander. All the crew have suffered through my mistake."

It was characteristic of Trip that he didn't have to think twice before forgiving his colleague.

"You can't have two races working together without a little confusion. Thank you for putting it right, with Starfleet I mean."

"I should have been more careful," T'Pol stated.

"Maybe," Trip responded. "But I was gone for near three weeks, T'Pol. You had to take on all my non-engineering work as well as your own. Nobody, human, Vulcan, Klingon, or whatever can do that workload without making the odd assumption."

"Captain Archer tells me you think I am trying to oust you. Commander, Enterprise never works as well without you. I hope you will stay on board. I would not feel it was in any way good if you left. Just the contrary" That was as close to an emotional outburst as Trip had ever heard her come.

"It depends on the Captain," Trip revealed. "I won't know how it's gonna fall until he sees me again."

"The Captain has asked for a meeting between you, me, and the Captain himself at sixteen hundred hours in his ready room." Trip, knowing this meeting would be crucial to his future, nodded seriously.

"Sixteen hundred. I'll be there," he confirmed.

T'Pol turned to leave when a dizzy spell hit her. She halted trying to sort out her balance. But it was like there was a delay between the sensory perceptions and her responses. By the time she had responded, all the balancing had altered. Trip saw the slender Vulcan sway, and dropping his diagnostic PADD, he reached out just in time to catch her. Touching her forehead he found it warm. In Vulcan terms that meant she was burning up. Trip stood and carried the negligible weight into main engineering. He gently placed her unconscious form down on the deck and reached for the communications station.

"Tucker to Sickbay."

"Sickbay here," Phlox responded.

"We have a medical emergency in Engineering," Trip explained.

"On my way." Phlox closed the communications on the words.

Trip saw the green flush on T'Pol's skin. She seemed to be out of it. He touched her forehead, trying to reassure. She was ill, no doubt about it. Despite their precautions a disease had hit Enterprise. That was more than serious. It could kill them all. Trip reached for the communications panel again.

"Tucker to Archer," he called.

"Archer here." Trip barely registered the hesitant response.

"Captain, T'Pol is unconscious. Some kind of illness has struck. We may have a Medical One emergency. Phlox is on his way." Archer went cold. Trip didn't say things like that without reason. A medical one emergency was too serious a phrase to mess with lightly.

"Medical One?" he asked hoping he had somehow misheard.

"T'Pol was fine one minute and unconscious the next," Trip elucidated. "All of Engineering is suspect. Please, sir, drop out of warp. We all need assessing medically. Sir?" Trip finished.

"Yes Commander?" Archer knew to the bone this would be bad.

"T'Pol has a temperature. Call Chef and demand ice for Sickbay, sir, please. If and when a human comes down with it they're going to burn up. Tucker out." Sitting in his chair on the bridge, Archer swapped an appalled look with Mayweather, Hoshi and Reed.

"Drop out of warp, Ensign," he ordered. Mayweather, his young face clouded with worry, took them to impulse. Archer turned to his communications panel again. "Archer to Chef."

"Chef here."

"We have a possible Medical One emergency. We may need ice. Lots of it. Soon."

"As much as you need, if and when you need it, sir. I'm on it."

"Thank you, Chef. Archer out." Archer stood. "Mister Reed, you have the bridge." The Lieutenant nodded and the Captain walked over to the turbo lift. "Hoshi, contact Starfleet. Tell them what's going on."

"Aye, sir." The beautiful Japanese translator's brow was marred by her worried frown. Archer keyed open the turbolift doors and stepped inside. He felt numb to the soul. Sickness was something he couldn't fight. He had to trust Phlox to fight it for him.

Trip had the Bridge and the Science station both when Archer returned with Phlox in tow. He was seated in T'Pol's usual place going over diagnostics and star-charts. Archer gestured for them all to join him in the Situation Room. A misnomer as it simply described an area to the back of the Bridge. Trip, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, Ensigns Travis Mayweather and Hoshi Sato, and Doctor Phlox stood round the table. Archer looked dazed, tired. That probably didn't mean good news.

"How's T'Pol?" Trip asked, never one to approach a thing side on. "What's wrong with her?" Archer nodded to Phlox to answer the Commander's questions. The Denobulan doctor, normally only too happy to animadvert upon his medical knowledge, was hesitant this time.

"Sub-Commander T'Pol has contracted a nasty strain of Dryalian Meningitis." He admitted finally. How it got on board, I don't know, but it's been incubating here for nearly four weeks, judging by its mutation pattern."

Trip's eyes narrowed and he turned his handsome face slightly to one side, a characteristic movement that signified the engineer was reading an awful lot more between the lines than what was being said. Trip had an uncanny knack for seeing what others were trying to hide. The blue eyes transferred briefly to Archer, then fixed back on Phlox.

"Incubating for four weeks? But she was fine one moment and out cold the next!" he insisted.

"The disease exists as a virus. It breeds in the system until it reaches a critical mass. Then it attacks with frightening force," Phlox explained. "It attacks all the major organs of the body, including the brain." Malcolm Reed, the Armoury Officer spoke next.

"Can you tell how many of the crew are infected?" he asked. Phlox nodded. He gave a glance at Archer, who was leaning forward with his hands on the table, his shoulders slumped, then the Doctor responded.

"All of us are infected, Lieutenant. Including myself. The only person on board who is not infected is Commander Tucker." Suddenly all eyes were on Trip. He registered surprise.

"What the Hell's different about me?" Trip bluntly questioned.

"Your Xyrillian pregnancy, Commander," Phlox replied. "It left a series of long-chain molecules in your DNA. They usually lie dormant. But when you first became exposed to the Dryalian Meningitis it triggered an immune response. If we'd known I could have used your blood to create a vaccine, but now that we're all infected it's too late. I have been able to use your blood to create a palliative treatment. Without it Sub-Commander T'Pol would be dead by now." That was a sobering thought.

"We need to get back to Dryalia. Fast. As fast as possible," Archer revealed. He raised himself up and looked Trip right in the eyes. Trip knew that look and tensed. Jon was just about to drop a bombshell on him. "In less than a week, everybody on Enterprise but you will be unconscious, like T'Pol. We're four weeks away from Dryalia at warp four point five. If we are to stand a chance of survival we are going to have to rely on you being able to take control of this whole ship, by yourself, for at least three weeks."

Trip had never expected anything good to come from the events surrounding his Xyrillian pregnancy. He'd gone to help fix the dysfunctional vessel and whilst there, Ah'len, the Xyrillian engineer, had shown him a holodeck. It was fantastic. They'd played a game where they put their hands into some semi-transparent whitish pebbles in a box. It allowed them to reach into each other's minds and read each other's thoughts. When Trip returned to Enterprise, he found out that the experience had also got him pregnant. Once the initial shock had subsided, Trip had been scared, confused, ashamed, angry, and a whole lot of other emotions that his surging hormones didn't help with. After a week of looking, the Xyrillian ship had been found and Ah'len was able to transfer the child into a Xyrillian host. Trip wasn't the father, the Xyrillian females transferred all the genetic data for the child, the males just hosted the embryo.

Once he'd returned to Enterprise, Trip had thought the events were over. He soon found out he was terribly wrong. Less than a month into their historic mission all eyes of their homeworld were on the first deep-space Earth vessel. That the Chief Engineer, a man, had become pregnant had been a major news story. Many chose to believe their own version of events and a great deal of vitriol, abuse and, on the net, a quantity of bad fiction, was written about the handsome Starfleet officer who had been locked in a steamy embrace with an alien beauty. Starfleet, angered and embarrassed by the scandal, gave Trip the third degree, asking him question after question until the young Commander had been worn to the bone with it. Scientists and physicians wanted chapter and verse on the first human man to become pregnant. The media services wanted to interview Trip; his sweet but none-too-bright girlfriend, Natalie, had written a storm of a letter, dumping him, then went to the media giving stories about his prowess in bed and impressive manhood until the legend of Trip Tucker was ingrained in the public consciousness. The real man, unfairly dubbed a 'space Lothario,' was mortified by the intrusion, the personal humiliation.

Commander Tucker had dealt with it all in the only way he knew how. He did what was asked of him professionally, kept the cowboy mask on all the time, day after day, good ol' boy, Trip. Only when he was alone did he sit, staring blankly at the walls of his room, hour after hour, trying to work out why him? Why was his career being ruined before his eyes? He was a laughing stock for the whole Earth. A medical freak for the scientific community. A weapon for Vulcan to use to show that human's animal instincts made them unready for space exploration. And Trip had loved Natalie. So much so that he'd genuinely thought about asking her to marry him. If she said yes, was prepared to wait, he'd wed her when Enterprise returned. He'd had it all planned, he'd bought the ring, booked the lovely Italian restaurant they both enjoyed, he wanted the night to be perfect. Then Klaang had crashed his Klingon craft on Earth and Enterprise was launched eight weeks early to get him home. Trip had cancelled the date and had never seen Natalie again. Now he never would. The tears that had silently fallen in the darkened room, in the fresh aftermath of his pregnancy, had run down his cheeks and splashed down onto his hands and the tiny box he held. A box that had once held his future and now only held a ring.

Knowing that, if given just one reason to get rid of him, Starfleet would, Trip gave his entire concentration to doing his jobs supremely well. He was determined never to give them the weapon they needed to sever the thread that held the Damoclean sword over his head, every day of his working life. He had earned his place on Enterprise by hard work and by being the best there was. He would stay there the same way.

When the scandal died down and was largely forgotten, Admiral Forrest admitted to Captain Archer that Starfleet had allowed itself to become too involved in what, in truth was just a learning curve exercise in space exploration. There was a full public hearing about the events, at which Trip had given evidence over subspace. When the truth was told and proven, people lost interest. Not only a simple error, but one that any one of them might have committed in similar circumstances, wasn't nearly so interesting as the thought of steamy, erotic sex with an alien. But Trip had given his evidence with his intelligence and charm in full flood. The PR exercise did everything to raise new interest in the mission. Becoming a Starfleet pin-up wasn't exactly in the Commander's job description, but if that was the price, so be it. He was just glad he was too far away to experience it.

It all seemed to have happened such a long time ago that Trip was surprised that his Xyrillian pregnancy could still leap up and bite him on the ass. No one had ever mentioned a series of long-chain molecules attached to his DNA before. Not in his memory. And Trip had an excellent memory. It was disturbing to realise the very building blocks of his body were fused with alien molecules. As far as he recalled, Phlox had reassured him that he was totally back to normal. And Trip had excellent recollection. While Trip was glad that his multi-species DNA had allowed his blood to save T'Pol he hadn't, until this moment, realised he had multi-species DNA. He pushed the troubling thoughts about how human he actually was now to the back of his brilliant mind for the time being. What Captain Archer was asking him to do would take up his entire concentration for some time.

Trip and Lieutenant Malcolm Reed had forged a friendship together in their time on Enterprise. The Southern US engineer and the English Armoury Officer seemed poles apart, but they actually shared a lot in common. They were both dedicated professionals, sworn to uphold a duty they both took very seriously. Both single men, with an offbeat sense of humour. And whereas Malcolm seemed shut off to Trip's open exuberance, in actuality, Trip was by far the more difficult one to get to know. Experienced in the art of emotional camouflage, the Commander was like seeing an image through a kaleidoscope of shifting planes and patterns, without ever seeing the real Trip at all. As Security Chief as well as Armoury Officer, Malcolm was privy to Trip's record. When he'd read it, Reed blinked in shock. Trip had finished Enterprise when Henry Archer's final illness took him. Half the components Reed used every day were designed by Charles Tucker III. He had done wonders to finish the starship. A world renowned theoretical physicist and highly respected orbital engineer, Trip was also one of the brightest humans alive.

At first suspicious of Trip's goofing off and endless bonhomie, Malcolm began to see that it was a protection. The Southern-boy persona was a six-foot-thick, twenty-foot-high wall ringing who Trip really was. No one and nothing ever got in. Except maybe Archer. How much the young Commander revealed to the Captain no one knew. Malcolm knew Trip was a first-class officer. But there was something else there, something Malcolm could sense about Trip but couldn't quite grasp. It fascinated the Lieutenant. There were times, like now, when Trip was wrestling with a problem, when the act dropped and the real man appeared. His handsome face serious, his blue eyes glittering brilliance as they reflected the razor-sharp brain behind them. Almost always, Trip would say something that no one would have expected when he was like this. The cerulean gaze was locked onto the table in the situation room for a time. Then Trip regarded Archer once more.

"Single-handedly take on all the systems of Enterprise for three weeks, minimum?" Archer nodded.

There were eighty three people on board Enterprise and none of them were passengers. Not for the first time, Archer reflected, he was asking Trip to do the impossible.

Trip stepped away from them appalled, and then stopped. He tried to comprehend the enormity of the task, but his mind balked. Then with its usual rapidity and intelligence, he began to work through a scenario he'd never had to imagine before. Enterprise would have to travel at high warp. He prioritised systems in his mind, sorted through everything that could go wrong and how to prevent those events from coming to pass. He turned back to Captain Archer.

"Every thought I have, every instinct, says I can't do this, sir," he revealed. "But, somehow, I have to." Archer started to nod, then he swayed and fell unconscious to the floor. Phlox bent down and, removing a hypospray from his pocket, injected the Captain. The Doctor looked up at Trip who was bending over the prone Archer, his face a picture of concern.

"He'll be fine for now," Phlox revealed. "I'll take care of this. I believe you have other priorities. Sir," he finished.
Trip stared at the alien doctor feeling the cold go through him. Phlox was right. With T'Pol and the Captain out of commission, he was the next highest-ranking officer on the ship. The whole crew was looking to him now to lead them in this crisis. He felt terribly alone. One by one, he was going to lose his crew until he really was terribly alone. Commander Tucker stood and turned to the others.

"Travis, lock us into a course to Dryalia, warp four point five. Plot and lock the course for me, come the worst of it, I won't have time to steer."

"Aye, sir," Mayweather replied.

"Hoshi, I want you to lock the translators into Dryalian. Give me long-range transmitters. Make everything you can automatic for me."

"Yes, sir," Hoshi almost whispered. Trip turned to Reed.

"Malcolm you take the Bridge for as long as possible. Please do the same as Hoshi for the weapons systems. I don't want Enterprise to take potshots at any passing ship, but I'd be real appreciative of the hull plating coming online. And targeting must be automatic and tied in to the helm's evasive maneuvers. Travis I need you to do that too." Mayweather and Reed exchanged a look and nodded.

"Where will you be, sir?" Reed asked.

"While I still have an engineering department, I'm going to use them to lock off everything I can. All non-essential systems will have to cease. As time goes on, entire levels and areas like the mess hall will be closed off to re-route power. The more systems I can take offline, the less there is that can go wrong. And if everyone is going to be unconscious for a month, Doctor, you will need to tell me what to do to keep you all alive. Again, make it as automated as possible. My hands will be very full with the bridge systems and the warp engine." He turned again to Hoshi.

"Once you've finished with the translators, take the Science station and monitor bio-signs. As soon as there is a problem inform Phlox. Watch each other in here. As soon as one of you falls, inform Phlox and call me. Phlox, we need hyposprays full of that stuff; is there anything you need from me?"

"More of your blood, Commander," Phlox replied promptly.

"I'll be along as soon as I've got Engineering started," Trip promised.

He looked around at the senior staff, trying to find the right words to say when there weren't any.

"Help me here and I'll give everything to get us to Dryalia intact," he vowed to them. "I can't and won't fail you. Let's get to work."

To his surprise his colleagues immediately moved to their stations to carry out his orders. Hoping he was worthy of their trust, Trip made his way to the turbolift to go to Engineering. As he stepped inside, his mind was too full of all he had to accomplish to really feel scared. All he knew was that he was a Commander of Starfleet and he could not flinch. All here looked to him for leadership now. He accepted that fact without being daunted by it. The immediate practicalities took up too much to leave space for nerves, fear, or uncertainty. His imperatives were all involved in getting everything done quickly enough to prevent his colleagues from dying. That meant work; solid, hard, practical, work, and he could do that. Certainly, he could do that. His nervous breakdown would just have to wait.

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