Lt. Malcolm Reed watched his crewmate voraciously tear into his heaping plate of scrambled eggs with more than a little morbid fascination. He silently observed, with concern, the Commander shovel formidable spoonfuls of the fluffy, yellow imitation eggs without once coming up for air.
It was as if the man hadn’t seen food for days, he thought in amazement.
He chuckled softly to himself. He probably hadn’t. Having been onboard an alien ship for three days without knowing how their native food might disagree with his human physiology, the Commander was very likely to have declined many strange delicacies diplomatically.
The British officer shook his head in amusement, as he watched his companion chew away at his rubbery “eggs” in spite of himself, amazed that the man could tolerate such a massive dose of food that even he had found to be completely tasteless and settled down quietly to count the seconds to his companion’s almost certain choking episode.
Commander Trip Tucker never seemed so… animated… before. After an exhilarating three-day excursion aboard the Xirillian ship to repair their badly abused warp coil, the man practically radiated energy.
His expressively youthful visage contained the telltale flush of enthusiasm as he excitedly recaptured the moments spent onboard the strange vessel.
“You should have seen it, Malcolm!” Trip managed to sputter around a mouthful of foamy-looking egg matter. “I mean, they had food growing on the walls! And grass all over the ground… it was amazing!”
Reed couldn’t help but grin at the Commander’s almost naïve expression, so classic of their entire reason for shipping out millions of miles away from anything close to resembling home.
“What were the Xirillians like?” The British officer asked eagerly, reliving Trip’s entire journey as he told it.
“Oh… just like us… only shorter… a little quieter…” The Chief Engineer’s face had a sort of wistful, far-away look that spoke volumes to his companion.
“Did you make any friends while you were there?” The Lieutenant couldn’t help but poke a little further into Tucker’s narrative. There appeared to be more to the story than he was being told, and for a rare instance, curiosity got the better of Reed.
“Their engineer… her name was Ohlen…” Trip rolled the exotic name off of his tongue, tasting the sweetness of a simple word and reveling in the depths of its mystery.
“She was the one you thanked for taking care of you?”
Malcolm recalled the moment they had contacted the Xirillians shortly after Trip rejoined the Enterprise after a grueling three-hour decompression procedure.
He found himself intently studying the screen, taking in this new species with eager eyes. Suddenly he had felt like a child again, who dreamed of far-away places and exotic worlds yet to be discovered and felt the shiver of excitement of his boyhood dreams.
This new race of creatures was soft-spoken, almost reptilian in nature. They were oddly beautiful. Their ship’s internal structure, along with the aliens’ slender, graceful forms would haunt his dreams for years.
He had then recalled the way Commander Tucker had bid a tender goodbye to the glittering being in the foreground. Reed had long deliberated their faces, attempting to discover just what lay between the two engineers.
She was petite, and slender in build. Her skin, though pebbled, glinted pinpoints of radiance from the multi-colored lighting from inside the ship. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a small spark of attraction between the two.
“Interesting scales…” was all he managed to say coyly, as he subtly searched his friend’s face for an encouraging confirmation of his suspicions.
“She was something else…” Trip countered teasingly, sensing the Lieutenant’s thoughts. “Still… she did have a certain… sensuality about her…”
The Chief Engineer leaned back in his chair, remembering her brilliant green eyes that had penetrated his own blue ones deeply as their bodies were rocked softly by the gentle waves lapping against their holographic boat.
It amazed him how such simple, gentle creatures could possess such incredible technology. His mind continually screamed at him to remember that he was in a small room, onboard the Xirillian vessel while Ohlen had showed him the holographic chamber. But the way the cool sea air caressed his face, and the spray from the ocean water had dampened his clothing… it was impossible to tell their holographic experience from the real thing.
Sparks…
He suddenly recalled the soft surge of static electricity the Xirillian had emitted from her slender fingers while she curiously traced his jaw line to feel the day’s growth of hair on his chiseled face.
The look of pure concern for his comfort as she asked him if her touch had hurt the delicate-looking human made him smile in remembrance.
As if those tiny sparks could hurt! He had felt shocks worse than that by running across his grandmother’s carpet wearing socks in the winter! Ohlen’s touch simply awakened his senses with its gentle, yet throbbing probe of his stubbly skin.
Then there was that box of pebbles…
“Ahhh!” Trip gasped softly as he delicately scratched his wrist.
“What’s wrong?” Reed asked with concern, sensing the change in his companion’s demeanor.
“I… I don’t know…” Tucker muttered as he raised his sleeve for a better look at the offending itch.
The raised, pinkish-tan nub of raw-looking skin glared angrily back at the two Starfleet officers, and the Chief Engineer felt his heart speed up.
“Are you perhaps allergic to something?” Reed asked, hopefully, attempting to deter himself from suspecting the worst possible outcome.
“I don’t think so…” Trip managed to stammer, his eyes never once leaving the spot on his wrist.
“Better have the Doctor take a look at it… just to be safe…” Malcolm cleared his throat as nonchalantly as possible, as he cleared both of their plates in a gentle attempt to move his companion toward the infirmary.
*************
// What if I caught some strange alien disease while I was onboard that ship? // Tucker thought glumly to himself as he slumped off toward Sickbay.
Malcolm eyed the Commander’s set jaw line and steely eyes inconspicuously as they trudged toward Dr. Phlox’s office. He had to admire the Starfleet officer’s courage, but knew that he must be fearing the worst, as he would be if the situation were reversed.
// Oh great! What if I’m contagious and I just contaminated the whole ship?! Just great, Tucker! Your first encounter with a new race and you manage to kill off the entire crew of Enterprise with the alien version of some funky skin-herpes! //
Trip smacked his hand to his forehead and just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
Sensing his companion’s discomfort, Reed thought it best to have his friend seek Dr. Phlox’s advice in private. It would do Tucker little good to fail to be completely honest with the good doctor on his account.
Clearing his throat as nonchalantly as he could when they arrived just outside the infirmary doors, the Lieutenant politely excused himself, muttering something about unfinished duties on the bridge.
Trip simply sighed, turned and somehow managed to keep his fingers still enough to ring the doctor’s door chime.
**********
Dr. Phlox studied the mark intently, and then back at his tricoder findings for quite some time.
// The human species is indeed fascinating! // The Doctor thought to himself as he stared at the monitor in disbelief.
“I don’t recall being allergic to anything, Doc…” Tucker chimed in nervously after several long moments of thoughtful silence flooded the room; choking what little composure he had left out of his body.
“I don’t believe you are having an allergic reaction, Commander…” Dr. Phlox droned softly, his impossibly blue eyes never once leaving the Engineer’s wrist. “Tell me, did you have any… sexual encounters while on board the Xirillian ship?”
“What?” Trip could not believe his ears. He could be dying right there on the table and all Dr. Phlox was concerned with was whether or not he got it on with one of the alien crewmates!
“Any type of encounter at all?” The alien probed gently but there was a definite force behind those words.
“Absolutely not, Doc!” Tucker snapped. “I was on the ship for THREE DAYS repairing a WARP COIL!”
The Commander’s mind was reeling. He was terrified, annoyed, and curious all in the same moment and the adrenaline burn in his chest was making it very difficult to breathe.
The softly beeping tricoder was run over the length of his body once again, and Trip found it almost impossible not to snatch it out of his hands and smash it into a million pieces in frustration.
// I just want answers… what the hell IS this thing? // He groused to himself glumly.
“Ah! The blastocyst is located right inside the peritoneal cavity… nestled in abdominal muscle tissue…”
The good Doctor was awarded with a blankly confused stare from the Chief Engineer, who valiantly attempted to recall his high school biology classes to assess the information that was handed to him.
// Why the HELL did I fall asleep in that class?! What is a “blastocyst”… and more importantly… am I contagious? Is Enterprise in any danger? //
“That,” Phlox indicated to the raised mark on Trip’s wrist, “…is a nipple…”
// What the… Did I just hear this guy correctly?! I’m dreaming… I have GOT to be dreaming… //
Tucker’s wide, blue eyes never left the Doctor’s as he searched for a small hint of humor in their deep, opaque pools, but found complete earnest truth.
“I don’t know if congratulations are in order, Commander… but… you’re pregnant.”
Tucker found himself trying very hard to keep Dr. Phlox’s face in focus, but his vision rippled mercilessly and his eyes rolled uncontrollably toward the back of his head.
The last thing he saw was Dr. Phlox move faster than he had ever seen the creature move in his entire time aboard the Enterprise and then he became blissfully unaware of his surroundings. The darkness from fainting mercifully surrounded his poor shock-frazzled mind.
**********
“Commander Tucker…”
The voice, though soft and rumbling, was full of deep concern, but Trip didn’t care. He didn’t want to open his eyes. Not for anything in the world… the blackness was comforting and he hadn’t slept this good in a very long time.
There was also that very uncomfortable memory lingering somewhere in the back of his sleep-fogged brain.
Desperately, he tried to convince himself that this was the part where he woke up from the nightmare to laugh about it. He cautiously lifted one eyelid very slowly to focus on a warm, familiar face. He fixed both eyes on his friend in relief and grinned.
“Cap’n! Thank goodness it’s you! I just had the craziest hallucination… you’re gonna laugh when I get through tellin’ you what I just dreamed about…”
The Chief Engineer rose slowly up onto his elbows only to have his heart sink deeply into his gut when he realized that he was still in the infirmary… that he didn’t just dream Dr. Phlox had moments ago told him that he now had a bun in the oven.
“Oh shit…” He muttered as realization sank in and noticed three very curious faces now surrounded him. Two of which held traces of… what was that? Amusement?!
Captain Jonathan Archer tried the best he could to kill the grin that threatened to split his handsome face in two, while Dr. Phlox’s eyes sparkled with the good news and complete fascination.
T’Pol’s was the only unreadable expression in the room. However, to Tucker, it seemed that he saw traces of the Vulcan version of disgust etched across her beautiful features and his heart sank even further.
“Doc…” The Commander struggled to raise himself into a seated position on the bio-bed. “What are they doing here? Please tell me I was dreaming…”
“I doubt that you had sufficient enough time for REM sleep in the brief moment that you lost consciousness, so I cannot feasibly say that dreaming was possible. As for Captain Archer and Commander T’Pol, I felt that it was necessary to advise them of your medical condition… I must say that yours is a very extraordinary case, indeed!”
“Just great, Doc… So NOW what am I supposed to do?”
“Well, I would suggest further tests would be in order. If you will just strip out of your uniform, Commander, we will run a quick diagnostic of your body to see what, exactly, we are dealing with here…”
Sighing heavily, the Chief Engineer realized that there was no point in arguing with him. Even if he was able to run past Archer and T’Pol, there wasn’t anywhere he could run to… and it wasn’t as if he could just forget about what had happened to him… pregnancy was not something that just “cleared up” on it’s own…
Tucker shuddered, visibly, at the thought and compliantly began to unbutton his flight suit.
***********
The five minutes that were spent inside the scanning chamber were beginning to drive the Commander insane, as he fought the terrifying thoughts that slowly bombarded his frazzled mind.
One moment he was haunted by a recollection of a videodisk he had watched as a child. It was a classic twentieth century film involving space colonists and strange, spider-looking alien creatures that laid their eggs inside human hosts only to have them burst forth from their chest cavities days later.
He had laughed about such silly primitive speculation of space travel when he was a child… but looking back on it now, he was terrified.
The next moment he visualized himself sprawled across the infirmary table, his sheet-covered legs suspended by stirrups. His brow was covered with perspiration, his belly huge as Dr. Phlox and Captain Archer with stupid grins on their faces each urged him to breathe and push.
// Push? Push from WHERE exactly?! //
“Are you almost done out there, Doc… Getting a little claustrophobic in here…” Trip called shakily, his voice resonating from inside the tube.
“Have you out in a second, Commander… Just lay perfectly still…” Dr. Phlox called into the chamber the same moment he pressed the release button.
Tucker was zipped out of the tube quickly and he found his bearings long enough to see what had captured his crewmates’ mutual attention.
“See that cluster of cells right there… that… is the embryo…” Dr. Phlox indicated the digital diagram of Trip’s torso for the Captain and the Vulcan.
Even from his view of it upside-down, Commander Tucker could clearly see a small, light-colored mass among his internal organs that had not been there before.
“Great…” he muttered, his last glimmer of hope in this being some shared joke between his crewmates soon sputtered and died, unable to withstand the obvious visual truth.
“Ordinarily, Commander, the fetus you carry would not …technically… be your child, as the Xirillians utilize genetic material from the mother only… the father serves as sort of a host for the developing zygote… but this…” He indicated a complex-looking readout with the telltale diagram of a double helix molecule, “is unlike anything that I have ever seen before…”
“What IS it, Doc?” Trip found it increasingly difficult to remain calm under the circumstances but surprised even himself with his poise.
“It would appear that nature… in order to accommodate for the environmental and species differences in the host… has made a way for this child to survive inside your body.” Dr. Phlox’s eyes sparkled at this discovery.
“It seems that the Xirillian genetic material has somehow combined with that of your human DNA to allow for the child to adapt to both our environment and its mother’s. In short… it is part Xirillian… and part human…”
“Well that’s all well and good, Doc…” The Chief Engineer swung his legs over the edge of the bio-bed and sat up. “But how the hell did I get… knocked up?!”
“Not much is known of the Xirillian mating behavior, but I am sure that it would not be difficult for you to recall any sort of sexual encounter…”
Commander Tucker’s head was beginning to hurt from the days events and the remaining strength he had was used to shoot the Doctor a withering look of waning patience. What WAS this guy’s fascination with sex, anyway?
A quick glance in the Captain and Vulcan woman’s direction was rewarded with looks of quiet anticipation and traces of disappointment. Trip couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Oh come on, Captain… it was a three day mission… do you honestly think that I would jeopardize my Starfleet career by initiating a ‘sexual encounter’ with some alien?”
A tiny burning spark fluttered and died the minute it arose within T’Pol’s chest as she awaited the Commander’s explanation. Very calmly she assessed the alien sensation in connection to this new turn of events.
Envy.
She could barely believe it but she was actually jealous of Trip’s trivial affair with the Xirillian female.
People don’t become pregnant with mere glances or casual touches, she knew, and a small stream of hurt curled its fiery way into her bloodstream. Deliberately she sought out the remaining traces of that spark of emotion and killed it with her Vulcan will.
These human officers were beginning to affect her poise and she refused to allow any trace of misguided emotion sway her logical train of thoughts. Still this human man had obviously lacked the discipline necessary to restrain his urges. She felt the slightest taste of betrayal and thought that something about seeing him squirm just might take the sting out of her chest.
“Three days…” T’Pol could not hold her tongue much longer. “You were only on their ship for three days and you couldn’t restrain yourself.”
Trip shot her a confused and angry glare.
“Cap’n,” He looked toward Jonathan for any trace of support. “I never laid a hand on her. I was a perfect gentlemen the entire time I was on board, I swear…”
“That would depend on how YOU define gentleman…” T’Pol spat the last word out with barely suppressed disgust as she valiantly attempted to hold on to her dignity.
“The only female Xirillian that I was in contact with was Ohlen… and other than repairing the warp coil and seeing the holographic chamber nothing happened between us…”
“Holographic chamber?” Captain Archer asked interested.
“It’s this room you go in and it’s almost as if you’re really wherever you select to go to,” the Commander explained patiently despite recent circumstances. “She showed me home movies… pictures of her planet… we took a ride in a rowboat… other than that I was the perfect diplomat, I swear it!”
“Well there must have been some extensive physical contact in order to not only transfer her genetic material into your body, but for yours to combine with hers to create this… little dilemma we are currently discussing.” Dr. Phlox pointedly interjected.
The Chief Engineer could not believe he was actually here, in the infirmary, debating with his Commanding Officer, an alien doctor, and a Vulcan woman about his supposed lurid sexual encounter and resulting pregnancy. It was too much!
“I didn’t lay a hand on her… I swear it… certainly nothing out of the ordinary occurred for this to have happened…”
Commander Tucker suddenly smacked his hand to his forehead as a sudden bolt of remembrance intruded his rationalization.
“Well… there WAS that box of pebbles…”
“Pebbles?” Captain Archer was kicking himself for not accompanying Tripp on this one. Sounded like one interesting visit.
“Yeah… they have these iridescent granules you stick your fingers in… It’s a GAME they play… it makes you telepathic… but… but they HAD to have been holographic… like the rest of the room…” the Chief Engineer stammered and faltered weakly, attempting to hold on to the last shred of dignity left within him.
“Doctor?” Captain Archer looked quizzically at the man in question.
“Well it would be difficult to say without a sample of these… granules… but it is possible that they could have served as the transfer medium…”
// I need a drink… // Tucker thought wearily, his vision blurring with this stream of questioning and crashing realizations. // But first we’ve got to get this thing out of me… //
“Isn’t there something that you can do, Doc? I mean there has got to be a way to get this… baby… out of me without hurting or killing it? What about an incubation chamber or something? I really should be getting back to work…”
“The embryo has attached itself to your muscle wall and integrated quite delicately with your system… I would not feel comfortable removing it, for risk of harming you or the… er… child. I really would prefer that I get more information about the Xirillian gestation cycle… even then this is not your textbook pregnancy… there are many factors here, Commander…”
“Just great….” The Chief Engineer muttered under his breath, the very last smoldering spark of hope fizzled quickly and turned to cold ash as he leaned back on his elbows crushed by the weight of such enormous reality.
“It seems to me, Commander, that you have much to learn about being a diplomat…” T’Pol hissed with barely checked smugness in her voice.
Tucker was about to jump in, when Captain Archer stepped forward, “T’Pol, wouldn’t it be helpful to our situation and to Commander Tucker if we could find the Xirillians? They may be able to come up with a solution for all of this…”
“Yes, I suppose it would, Captain…” The Vulcan muttered in defeat.
“Then I suggest you and a team begin searching for signs of their ship…” Archer graciously offered T’Pol the opportunity to leave with her dignity intact.
He turned to follow her to the bridge when they were stopped by a very weary request from their newly pregnant comrade.
“What’s say we keep this little… situation… between the four of us… huh, guys?”
Tucker turned his silently pleading eyes to each of the crewmates in turn. Only Captain Archer, who had known Tripp longer than any of the rest of them, could see the fear behind those orbs. He made a mental note to speak to his long-time friend in private much later.
We humans draw life and breath from sharing the struggle toward goals. From Thomas Jefferson to Bill Gates to Martin Luther King to the Wright brothers, it was not the money, nor the acclaim, nor the 'place in history' that drove them, but rather the dream of giving something new and immeasurably valuable to the world. - Jean S. Mill
Story Notes:
No… I am not getting rich writing this stuff… in fact, I think I would fall dead on the floor if I even saw a Monopoly bill for all my hard work.
However, if Rick Berman ever finds himself in dire need of a wacky, Trip-starved writer with some wild ideas… I think I could humbly point him in the right direction… Ahem! *Innocent blush*
P.S. This little piece of work is especially dedicated to my list sibs not inside the United States who may have quite some time to wait before seeing Enterprise take off…
P.P.S. My muse has just died on me... I know have more unfinished works out there than I care to mention *crimson blush*
Warning: This story deals with inter-species male pregnancy and absolutely no sex! If such subject matter offends you, please steer clear.
That in mind: enjoy the ride ahead! Remember to keep your arms and legs inside the fic at all times… absolutely no flash photography as it scares off the muses!