Vulcan's Soul Trilogy Book One Read online

  If he survived to return to T’Vysse, he would have to tell her that history had changed. Throughout Vulcan’s history, strangers had always been honored guests. It was one’s neighbors who could prove to be enemies. And Kovar and Tu’Pari were neighbors. There would be a place made there. Kovar would soon be of age, and Hot Springs had many unmated males who watched Tu’Pari, young as she was. But Karatek could not help but think the children’s parents had hoped for more than this installation could offer.

  True, they were offered food and water and fire, but only fire seemed in plentiful supply, and when Karatek asked to call ShiKahr, he was informed that his call would be timed: Hot Springs was conserving power.

  Monitored, too, Karatek thought, and determined to guard his words, expecting Torin to be equally discreet.

  Torin’s news had proved ominous. Treaty violations on the South Continent. Te-Vikram presence in the Assemblies. Protests outside the VSI itself.

  “Tell Surak I am initiating my contingency plans,” Torin had ordered.

  Karatek had wanted to demand an explanation, but tremors shook the ground, the generator flickered, and his call was cut off.

  In the days that had followed, Aravik had spoken with him often: clan lord, he realized, to ambassador. “It is quiet here,” he admitted to Karatek, “but safe.”

  Tu’Pari passed by, carrying bowls, with three other unbonded girls. Tu’Pari’s home should have been safe. Karatek raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Lesson learned,” Aravik growled. “You already know we can’t rely on our generators. We’ll replace the gates with stone and desert glass and tunnel ourselves a retreat into the hill caves. What happened at one station will not happen here.”

  Karatek inclined his head as if he really were an ambassador, not a propulsion expert. Some ambassador! Aravik had agreed to hear Surak, who had done his persuasive best. But had it been enough?

  Karatek couldn’t tell. And since when, he asked himself, had he begun to care?

  Perhaps, he thought, since they had found two children in the ruined installation.

  When the subject of Kovar’s and Tu’Pari’s futures had come up, “Their lives are mine,” Karatek had told Aravik. He didn’t know what he’d have done if the older man had challenged his claim.

  Now, Skamandros did contest it. Karatek glared at him. He had not let Aravik stop him from doing what was right. He would not let this follower of Surak—what was the man, a converted terrorist?—stop him either.

  “Skamandros!” Surak called back. “Yield to the logic of the situation.”

  Tu’Pari’s eyes filled with relief—yes, and admiration of Surak. Karatek would give much to have that look turned on him, he realized. He would adopt these children, he decided. Once the initial grief passed, T’Vysse would be glad.

  “T’Kehr?” Tu’Pari edged closer to him.

  “There is no reason to fear,” he told her. “You will join my House.”

  She walked in silence as the sun rose in the sky. “If I am to have a new House,” she said at length, “I should have a new name, as Kovar will once he passes kahs-wan.”

  “So, you have given thought to this, daughter?” he asked.

  She shrugged under her pack. “When you refused to let us remain in Hot Springs, it seemed logical you might take us in.”

  Karatek chuckled. Tu’Pari did not.

  “I have selected my name,” she told him. “Let the girl Tu’Pari die with her parents and betrothed. I am Sarissa.”

  “Heard and witnessed!” cried Varen. His eyes glinted, and Karatek recalled that Surak’s younger disciple had often glowered at the unbonded males who followed Tu’Pari—no, Sarissa—with their eyes.

  “We will consecrate that name at Mount Seleya,” said Surak.

  “Is that where we go next?” Karatek asked. Shielding his eyes, he glanced across the Forge, estimating distances, longing for one of the flyers that had been grounded as too-easy targets.

  “Seleya will be the last stop on our pilgrimage on Vulcan,” Surak said.

  Meaning, Karatek thought, that Surak was convinced their next stop had to be the stars.

  The installation turned village at Hot Springs seemed to herald the reception Karatek and his companion received in every other installation along their line of march. As little as the scientists liked it, Surak’s arguments struck a chord within them. They didn’t trust the technocrats who used funding as a way of controlling them and who were injecting observers and managers to constrain free research. And they were appalled by the warring clans and priests who rejected the advances made by science and the quest for all castes, clans, and people to get along.

  As the days passed, Karatek saw what Surak intended him to see: Scientists like him were very much in the cross fire. They, their Initiatives, and their families and clans could all be held hostage as long as they possessed a resource that everyone wanted: access to the Great Ships.

  Karatek had seen the models. He had worked on the drives. Now he found himself acting not just as a fact-finder but as Torin’s ambassador. The man had smoothed the way in a manner Karatek would never have expected, spending a lifetime of trust and honor as if he poured water out onto the Forge. All along the Forge, from base to research site to security installation to weapons emplacement.

  “You said nothing about your conversation with Torin,” Sarek observed to Karatek one evening. Koval and Tu’Pari—no, Sarissa—had been sent to the children’s quarters in the safest place the community possessed, and he and his companions had been quartered together—no doubt for greater security.

  They might feel like specimens under observation. Ostensibly, they were guesting at a research station devoted to desert agronomy that had recently accepted a group of ship architects into its community. Hydroponics, Karatek thought. He could see T’Raya forming a valuable membership of this tribe, assuming she could be persuaded to leave the Vulcan Space Initiative. Assuming the Vulcan Space Initiative survived.

  Karatek looked down and aside, a sign that his communication with Torin was too personal to discuss in detail.

  “I ask forgiveness,” Surak said.

  “There is no offense,” Karatek replied instantly. “It requires no logic to know that many of my…my former associates in the VSI have become increasingly concerned. The priest-kings have stepped up their raids. Three days ago, they struck within sight of the East Gate of ShiKahr, leaving ten dead and tracks that led all the way back to the Womb of Fire.”

  Ignoring Sarek’s disapproving lift of the eyebrow, Karatek made the ancient, propitiatory gesture about the Womb, a region more desolate even than the Forge. It was possible to cross the Forge and live. To enter the Womb of Fire and emerge alive required more than preparation: it required the cooperation of the te-Vikram Brotherhoods, whose chief shrine lay within, ruled by the Old Mother of Fire, or perhaps her son, if the whispers that she’d gone into the desert to die were true. In that case, the whispers ran, the Womb would be doubly accursed.

  It was not a place that Karatek wished to go. And yet it lay perilously near the borders of the Forge where they must pass if they hoped to reach Seleya.

  “Our work here is done,” Surak said. “We should leave for Seleya at dawn.”

  Rock formations, striated blood green and a deep red, rose out of the ruddy sand. Their outcroppings were roughly symmetrical, reminding Karatek of ShiKahr’s East Gate or the menhirs at Great Houses’ sanctuaries of Koon-ut-kal-iffee.

  Sarissa raised her head, sniffing the air.

  Varen nodded at her. “Water,” he said.

  Kovar tensed, visibly controlling his impulse to dash forward and walk between those jagged pillars.

  “Where there is water there is the potential for war,” Surak murmured. He dropped into a crouch, stretching out on the sand.

  “Beasts would wait until nightfall to drink,” Varen said.

  “Not if we disturbed them in their lairs. Certainly not, if we disturbed a le-matya and her k
ittens or a dormant vai-sehlat,” Skamandros replied.

  Tu’Pari—no, Sarissa—put her hand on her brother’s shoulder, forestalling a protest of “I knew that!”

  “Do you wish me to scout?” she asked Karatek. But her eyes followed Surak worshipfully.

  He shook his head. He and Surak could not be risked, as hard a dose as that was to swallow. Kovar was too young. Sarissa? There were reasons why she was the worst possible choice. It would have to be Varen or Skamandros, and Karatek didn’t wholly trust Skamandros.

  “We will all go,” Surak said. “That way, it cannot be said that we are spies.”

  They rose. Hands well away from their weapons, they approached the rocks. The desert floor sloped up. From here they could be seen for at least a hundred k’vahr.

  “Halt, water thieves.”

  The voice was the coldest thing Karatek had ever heard on the Forge.

  “It is illogical to accuse us of breaking water truce,” Surak said. “We have not even approached your well. But we would purchase water if you would sell.”

  “Water is life,” the voice retorted. “We do not sell our water—but we would sell our lives dearly.”

  Sarissa shot an outraged look at Karatek. He nodded minutely at her. Just because these people probably were te-Vikram didn’t mean they would automatically kill this time.

  “Stand or die!”

  Six te-Vikram left the security of the rock with an assurance that told Karatek that more remained hidden. They moved so that the sun was in Karatek’s eyes and he longed for the lenses he had left behind. Veils flickered across his sight. All he could see was tall figures, dark in the sunlight, except for where it glinted off drawn blades.

  Of course! The te-Vikram would not use blasters on strangers whose bodies’ water they hoped to reclaim. Karatek thought of the blaster at his waist, thought of how quickly one of the men confronting him could throw his knife, factored into the equation the fact that he had never killed that he knew of, and sighed.

  Surak stepped forward.

  “We are children of the same Mother,” he began, his rich voice echoing off the rocks. “Lay down your weapons, and let us reason together. There is no logic in fighting and none in dying of thirst when all may drink.”

  “Eminence!” a shout rang out. “This is the outcast our brothers tracked across the Forge!”

  In his last call, Torin had warned Karatek that the te-Vikram had taken oath to destroy Surak and all his works—along with the VSI.

  A seventh figure, not as tall as…his guards and not nearly as young, emerged from between the rock spires. Light glinted off the gems in his belt, in his dagger, and trimming his sandsuit.

  “Sir,” said Surak. “We come in peace.” He continued to move forward. Varen and Skamandros started to flank him, but he gestured and, obedient, they stayed where they were.

  Surak moved nearer, talking, always talking, but not raising his voice above the tone he might use at a dinner symposium. “I am not one of your disciples,” said Surak. “But that is no cause for hostility. I have learned that infinite diversity exists in infinite combinations and it is logical to accept that. I come to serve. How may I serve thee?”

  “You can die!” the te-Vikram priest snarled.

  Drawing his jagged ritual knife, he lunged forward, determined to silence Surak through death if he could not do so by logical argument.

  The priest was fast, very fast.

  At this distance, Karatek could not outrun him. His hand darted to the blaster at his belt.

  But Varen was faster.

  “T’Kehr Surak!” he shouted. Ardent, impulsive, and profoundly loyal, he dashed forward. And flung himself between Surak and the te-Vikram priest, whose hooked blade sank into Varen’s chest. The reek of copper gushed out with the young man’s blood, and he sank onto the sand. One hand struggled up, as Varen attempted, even in his death throes, to defend his teacher.

  Surak reached out and caught Varen’s bloody hand without looking away from the te-Vikram priest. For a moment, his eyes blazed as if the Fires raged in his blood. Then, they subsided.

  “It is illogical to end life without need,” he stated. His voice did not even falter.

  The te-Vikram ripped his knife free. More blood gouted onto the ruddy sand, dying it dark.

  Again, Surak gestured to restrain Skamandros. “Must I tell you twice?” he asked.

  Again, the priest raised his blade.

  Skamandros would never be able to intervene, even if he obeyed his master.

  The time is now, Karatek told himself. Recovering the ability to move, he dropped his hand to his belt, drew Torin’s blaster, and fired. He was furious at the loss of life, furious at the waste, the stupid, self-righteous waste of the priest-kings and their anachronistic, backward hatred. He was furious at Surak, too, with his childish trust that he could wage peace when others dealt only death. And he was furious that his children had to see this atrocity after they had already endured so much.

  His blaster shrieked as energy turned into flame and flesh turned into ash, then into nothing at all. Along with the last of the warriors, his anger disappeared. They had not, he realized, been that difficult to kill after all. Torin would say they had gotten slack, preying on the old, the infirm, and the occasional pilgrim on spirit quest.

  Then there were no more te-Vikram to kill. Karatek put the blaster away. Now, he found it hard to meet Surak’s eyes, much harder than it had been to kill the te-Vikram. It was too easy to kill. He had never understood that until now. For a moment, he thought his knees would give way.

  “Thy logic failed,” Surak observed. Slowly, he knelt beside his dying student.

  Karatek’s moment of revulsion passed. Too rapidly, Surak might say. If Surak did not talk so much, Varen might not be dying!

  “Better my logic than my blaster,” snarled Karatek. He too dropped to his knees beside Varen.

  “Stay back!” Sarissa snapped at her brother. Kovar listened to her not at all. Both raced forward to fling themselves down up on the sand. Sarissa reached out to clasp Varen’s free hand, where it pressed against his death wound.

  “Give him water!” she told Kovar.

  “No,” Varen gasped. “Don’t waste…”

  “We can replenish our supply from the well,” Surak assured him.

  He gasped as the water dribbled down onto his slack lips. A thread of deep green blood escaped from the corner of his mouth.

  “Sir,” he gasped. “I ask forgiveness for my loss of control.”

  Surak laid his free hand on Varen’s head. Shutting his eyes just as Varen’s eyes rolled back into his head, he slid his fingers over to Varen’s temple. He knelt there, utterly still, as if listening to a voice only he could hear. Then he bent forward, closing the young man’s eyes and smoothing his black hair, making it sleek once more.

  “It is well that we are bound for Seleya,” Surak observed. “I can place Varen’s katra in the Hall of Ancient Thought on Seleya because, truly, it is not ready for release.”

  His voice was completely level. Only for an instant did his face twist as he fought and mastered a surge of the same hate for the te-Vikram that had enabled Karatek to kill for the first time.

  Then, pressing Varen’s limp hand against his other, bloodstained one, he rose.

  “I ask pardon for my loss of control,” he said, bowing to Skamandros.

  “The cause was great,” the other man replied.

  He bent over Varen, stripped the body of gear, then covered it with sand.

  Slowly, Karatek sheathed his blaster, then wiped his hand on his sandsuit. How strange: he felt as if it should be coated with blood, and yet it was clean. Clean as the desert.

  Kovar and Sarissa walked over to him, looking up into his face, not as if they expected him to make everything right, but as if they wanted to see what he would do next.

  Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out the scarred cabochon he had pulled from the ground near their shattered home.
He had taken it in memory of Sarissa’s betrothed, slaughtered there. It would serve now to mark where Varen lay.

  “Would it have been so bad?” he shouted at the sky, quivering with heat. Then, he mastered himself.

  “Here,” he said gently to Sarissa, who fought not to weep. “Give this to him.”

  Sarissa edged forward and placed the glinting gem on the shallow mound that was all they could see of Varen. Skamandros was already storing his gear about his person.

  “I grieve for thee,” Sarissa told both men.

  Surak, tucking those of Varen’s belongings Skamandros had not already packed, inclined his head. “At least,” he told her, “all that he was will be preserved at Mount Seleya.”

  Karatek turned to look at the shallow mound that covered a young man he wished he had had the chance to know better.

  “Karatek!” Surak did not even trouble to raise his voice.

  Karatek turned to follow Surak, who carried everything of Varen that mattered now.

  Eleven

  Now

  STARFLEET HEADQUARTERS

  Chekov—that was Admiral Pavel Chekov, thank you very much—managed to put the padd down without hurling it against his office’s wall. He’d already put a dent in that wall once, hurling a paperweight, and that had been awkward enough to explain. He had a nice office after all, a pleasant office of smooth wood and thickly padded leather chairs, a gentleman’s office.

  But thinking of that didn’t help reduce his frustration at all. He had never wanted to be a gentleman. “And I vas not meant to be a bureaucrat!”

  Even after more than a century in Starfleet, he had never quite lost his Russian accent. Or maybe, Chekov admitted wryly, he was deliberately hanging on to it as a last link with the past. The way-back past. The last time he’d been in Moskva, he’d barely recognized the place.