Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Page 12

  Sarissa turned away from her friends and followers to T’Vysse, standing nearby, her face as greenish white as the terrible day when she had seen Turak, her eldest son, and his family torn from her side. It was a breach of control, but Sarissa put her arm around her mother and stood with her, watching in uncharacteristic silence.

  Karatek and his son walked together down the shuttlebay to the waiting craft. Their boots tapped out a rhythm that reminded Karatek of war. In the 6.7 minutes it took the shuttle’s ramps to extend and its crew to board, Karatek’s recorder showed a free-for-all on the planet. Thus far, two people had died and one, bleeding green from a gash on his weakened arm, held off two others with what looked like a lirpa as wagers by the three voices he had heard before mounted into the thousands of quatloos.

  Even as the ramp retracted, another Vulcan fell, her head falling back like a kylin’the blossom snapped from its stalk by a careless hand.

  How would the shuttle’s crew reach these people?

  Easy enough, Solor had said with the confidence Karatek no longer could attribute to youth. They would go down to the surface of the planet, find an installation that resembled the one Seyhan had described, and be transported off the surface.

  Then, they would face the greater task of trying to reach their captors both intellectually and morally. Not just trying: for the good of the many, as well as the few, they must succeed.

  The shuttle withdrew its ramps and turned on the landing circle. As the warning sirens rang out, Karatek turned and walked back to his family. The shuttlebay doors slid shut like the rock gates of an ancient tomb. The ship’s primary docking port gaped open into eternal night.

  Even after the alarms in the main bay ceased, confusion continued. After hearing reports of covert messages passed between ships, S’lovan had reversed his earlier decision. Now, armed security guards ran into the secondary bay. A defense against revolt?

  S’lovan had even ordered out a dagger, a tiny, vicious craft that had proved useful back on Vulcan for surgical strikes. At the time of exile, each ship carried twelve to twenty of them. They had largely been ignored as long as shuttles were in good supply and working order. But ever since S’task had taken command of Rea’s Helm himself so that S’lovan could join Shavokh, S’lovan had had engineers working double and triple shifts to boost the speed of Shavokh’s daggers so they, rather than the bigger, more valuable shuttles, could be used as couriers.

  The guards rushed a position near the waiting dagger, then saw Karatek. One started to salute, then, unsure of his current status, broke off.

  “T’Kehr Karatek?”

  “Yes, N’Vea?” he asked. This guard had studied propulsion with him before deciding her physical strength and endurance could be put to more immediate use in security. The child of one of the few successful intermarriages between a te-Vikram and a city dweller, N’Vea was a tall woman whose spare frame and darker skin—not to mention her honesty—revealed her desert blood. He remembered her as one of the younger generation on the periphery of Solor’s circle of friends.

  Beneath the shining helm she wore, he could see consternation on her face. Her hands on her prisoner’s shoulders were gentle as she turned him to face Karatek and the other guards.

  “Rovalat!” Karatek exclaimed.

  Night and day, the man who had guided his sons, and the sons of most of his closest associates back on Vulcan, must have been pushing three hundred. Karatek had heard that he was very ill of a disease that made it hard for his blood to carry oxygen, a disease exacerbated, the healers said, by a random mutation induced by conditions on board Shavokh.

  Seeing Rovalat in the light, Karatek realized that the old explorer wasn’t just ill. He was dying. On Vulcan, a man like Rovalat would have walked out onto the Forge, assuming that there he would finally meet his match. Here, he had waited—until now.

  Now, he drew himself up. Pale, almost livid, he might be, but as he summoned his strength, Karatek could almost think he had been mistaken. After all, the lights in the docking bays could be misleading. Suited up, clearly ready and willing to fly, the old teacher’s upright posture reminded him of the trim, formidable man capable of keeping pace with a howling sehlat as they ran out into the desert to bring out lost children, or of pounding the head of a trained warrior a third his age into a bulkhead in sheer rage.

  Rovalat had never even tried to follow Surak’s disciplines, but he had accepted exile as a fitting punishment for the loss of a third of what proved to be his last kahs-wan class back on Vulcan. Only reluctantly had he accepted the charge of leading the next generation, but he had resigned that position, too, 3.1 years ago and withdrawn from much of the ship’s life.

  In fact, Rovalat’s resignation had given Karatek the idea to offer his own. The decision had been, he decided, spectacularly bad judgment on both their parts.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the commander shouted over the com.

  “Let me go,” Rovalat asked. “You can see my most recent medical reports. The healers tell me I have, at most, two years and possibly less. Let me…” He started to cough and fought against spasms that would have bent him double and caused security to carry him off right then to the healers.

  Redeem my old fault, Karatek knew the man wanted to say.

  “Those are my boys down there,” Rovalat said. “My last class on Vulcan. Let me…” He had never gotten over the loss of those boys, and now some of them were bleeding their lives out in the arenas toward which Solor led his crew.

  “You are ill,” T’Vysse said. “Here, let me help bring you to the healers.”

  She reached out to take his arm, guide him away, but he shook her off with a vigor that belied his age and illness.

  “Your response is emotional,” T’Vysse tried again, a measured rebuke.

  Rovalat laughed. “I thought you’d say that. Yes, I am being emotional. Loyalty is an emotion. Duty is an emotion. Therefore, I should think you would consider them, to borrow a word you’re fond of—and that’s another emotion right there—extremely logical. I taught those boys. Therefore, if they allowed themselves to be captured, it is my responsibility to bring them home. Again. Or die trying. Night and day, what does it matter? I’m practically dead already.”

  The commander tried a frontal assault. “You are too old to fight! If you go in, you’ll cost us the element of surprise!”

  “Too old?” asked Rovalat. “Would you care to borrow a phrase from our enemies below and place a small bet? I will wager I can hold you off long enough to make it to that ship and start the takeoff cycle. You will have no choice then, logically, but to evacuate the launch bay.” He flashed the other man a twisted smile. “And don’t tell me we can spare the metal to repair the hull again, because I know better. Some of the engineers were my students too!”

  His eyes sought out Karatek’s and held them.

  “You have a plan, don’t you?” Karatek asked.

  Rovalat nodded. “I remember your son Solor. He’s a smart lad, resourceful, but he’s up against an enemy too big for him. He’ll go in there, attempting to deal peace, and they’ll take them, take them all, and throw their lives away in those damnable arenas.”

  “You’re saying he’s unarmed? Solor is armed with the greatest weapon of all, the truth!” T’Vysse said.

  Rovalat bowed. “We are making history, lady, not studying it. Please. There isn’t much time. Let me explain this to your husband and, if he’s not convinced, I will be content to go with you to the healers.”

  Willing, Karatek thought, but not content. Not for what short time he had remaining. And he wasn’t even certain he believed the old man.

  Was it so very terrible to allow the old man to seek his own end, like the crippled warriors he had seen at ShiKahr’s gates, going out fully armed into the desert to make the pilgrimage toward Seleya, but never reaching it? Or T’Kehr Torin firing into the crowd to give the last shuttles time to escape Vulcan, for all the worlds as if he stood again, as
the hero of Arakahr?

  Rovalat was being logical, at least according to his own standards. He was crafty, experienced, and desperate. They could use any help he could give them.

  Karatek glanced over at S’lovan’s face on the viewscreen. The commander shrugged as if to say “You know these people better than I.” How hard it must have been for him to come over from Rea’s Helm and try to command another ship as a stranger, an outlander in this desert of stars, trying to claim leadership of a clan.

  “Frontal assault won’t win our people what they want,” Rovalat said. “You all know that. But you’re bound by these ethics of Surak’s, which have already cost you more than enough. I’m not. Let me go.”

  “What do you have in mind?” asked the commander.

  S’lovan eyed Rovalat over the viewscreen and visibly relaxed. It was only logical for him to conclude that Rovalat was no physical match for the security forces present. Perhaps.

  Rovalat’s body was deteriorating, but there was nothing wrong with his mind. It had been wily enough to outwit the le-matya in its den and deal with the desert on its own terms. It had made generations of children fit to wander the Forge alone.

  Karatek looked over at Sarissa. She glanced quickly down. Oh, he knew his daughter: that was not a glance of modesty, but of pure guile. She had concealed it quickly, but not so quickly that he had not seen it.

  She had chosen to let him know.

  He allowed his gaze to travel over to the corridor that he knew led to the arms locker. Sarissa moved over to stand beside him.

  “The needs of the few, or the one, are important. He needs to be of use,” she murmured. “So I have helped him.” She handed him an image caster, one of only a few prototypes. Karatek had no doubt she had provided Rovalat with one as well.

  If Commander S’lovan did not begrudge Rovalat the use of a dagger ship, surely no one else would object. What was an image caster compared with a ship? And such was Rovalat’s reputation that it was entirely possible that he might bring the dagger, the image caster, and the captives back in triumph.

  Rovalat looked at the commander’s visage on the screen. “Let me go, sir. While the young ones on board that shuttle attract those creatures’ attention, one man, operating alone and quickly, might gain access…. A pincers movement is more logical than a direct assault, don’t you agree? If you’ve done your work right, that dagger can overtake the shuttle. If I catch up with it, I’ll travel in with it, concealed by its mass. But I have to go now. If the shuttle gets too big a start on me, there’ll be two separate signatures.”

  If Karatek could see the flaws in Rovalat’s argument, S’lovan surely could. The beings that had turned Vulcans into fighting slaves would probably see right through Rovalat’s proposed ruse. But it was the best strategy they had: they owed the shuttle’s crew at least a fighting chance.

  “I have a duty,” the commander said, “and responsibilities to protect this ship.”

  “Then let me brief Karatek in your place,” Rovalat begged. “Please.”

  Tears, so rare for a Vulcan, had begun to well in the man’s eyes, almost hidden in the deep creases formed by years peering into distant places in fierce sunlight.

  Walking over to N’Vea, Karatek detached her hand from Rovalat’s arm. Like Sarissa, N’Vea was letting him lead. With her native strength and training, she could have broken his arm in seconds.

  Taking charge of the elder, Karatek walked with him to a secluded portion of the deck as Rovalat spoke quickly, earnestly.

  I am going to agree, Karatek realized. I may regret this for the rest of my life, but it is Rovalat’s choice to make, and it is my son’s life, and the lives of his companions.

  He had not realized he had already agreed until he found himself kneeling, as if taking leave of a Head of House. Rovalat reached out to touch his brow. It was farewell. It was blessing.

  And when he felt the stirring of unfamiliar thoughts inside his mind, Karatek realized it was also Rovalat’s katra.

  Ten

  Now

  U.S.S. ALLIANCE STARDATE 54104.9

  As the Klingon ships raced toward them, Saavik crisply ordered, “Go to yellow alert.” This was hardly the time to wonder why Klingons would suddenly be attacking a Federation ship. Granted, Martok had until this moment proven himself a staunch ally of the Federation. But anything was possible in the unstable and ever-changing universe that was interplanetary politics. To the bridge crew, Saavik ordered, “On-screen.”

  But almost at the same instant that the image stabilized into two fierce-looking vessels, one of them standard Klingon rust-red, the other a startling stark white, Lieutenant Abrams amended, frowning, “Their weapons have just gone off-line, Captain.”

  Saavik sat forward in her seat, studying the screen. “We know those Klingons.” Not surprising that they’d have taken their weapons off-line. “Cancel yellow alert. Lieutenant Suhur, open hailing frequencies.”

  “Hailing frequencies open,” he replied almost at once. “It would appear that they are eager to speak with us, Captain.”

  “Yes,” Saavik commented to no one in particular, “I thought that they might be.” Since Klingons didn’t begin conversations with what they considered needless courtesies, she simply declared brusquely, “You out there, you both know who I am: Captain Saavik of the Federation Starship Alliance. And I recognize you, too, both of you captains.”

  The first Klingon commander to appear on-screen was a huge, muscular warrior. “As before, I am Captain Tor’Ka sutai Triquetra, captain of the Demon Justice, ship of the Demon Fleet of the Klingon Assault Group.”

  Spock raised an eyebrow. He remembered these two well. These two captains and their crews were privateers, possibly licensed by the Klingon government, though of course not officially acknowledged. It was equally possible that they were acting on their own, since as privateers they had the right to do just that. But this may well have been the Klingon government’s way of helping without appearing to be helping.

  That these two ships were privateers also explained why they had first approached with weapons online: privateers had to be ready for anything. Only when they had assured themselves that this was, indeed, the Alliance and not some snare that had been set for them had they stood down. People such as they would always need to be both wary of and well acquainted with deception.

  The commander of the second ship, which was that startling and most unusual white, was an older Klingon warrior, with the flaming red hair that sometimes appeared in the noble Houses. “And I, as before, am JuB-Chal, captain of the Dragon’s Wrath.”

  His white ship, Spock remembered, was a K’Vort-class bird-of-prey. Its color, as its captain had told the Alliance crew with a laugh, had lured some enemies into thinking that it was nothing but a harmless hospital ship, then learning too late that it was not. Spock had never learned if that coloring had been a deliberate deceit by JuB-Chal or merely a convenient coincidence: Klingons seldom made use of the color white, as far as he knew, but it might conceivably have some significance to the captain’s House.

  Then again, Spock thought, white may simply be JuB-Chal’s favorite color.

  “Why are you following us?” Saavik asked the Klingons coolly. “We are a science vessel.”

  The Klingons on both ships let out roars of appreciative laughter. “Of course you are,” Captain Tor’Ka said in a mock-conspiratorial tone.

  Captain JuB-Chal added, “Indeed you are. Just as my nice, white Dragon’s Wrath is nothing more than a harmless hospital ship.” He grinned, showing an array of fierce-looking jagged teeth. “No need to use deception with us, Captain Saavik. Remember that we know you. We followed you the last time into a glorious battle.”

  Only Klingons, Spock thought, could have called that bizarre chess game of a combat, when Federation, allies, and Romulans had ranged themselves against the Watraii and tried not to kill anyone, a glorious battle. It had, he considered, been more of a three-dimensional stalemate with occasiona
l wild melees than a genuine battle.

  “I suspect that we could make good use of them,” Spock murmured in Saavik’s ear.

  “Mm?”

  “As a distraction if nothing else.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” she agreed just as softly, never taking her gaze from the viewscreen. To the Klingons, Saavik warned, “Understand that this is not a sanctioned Starfleet mission.”

  Both commanders burst into another explosion of fierce Klingon laughter. “Captain Saavik, we do not mock you,” Captain JuB-Chal said, “but remember what we are!”

  Captain Tor’Ka continued, with his own jagged-toothed grin. “Klingons, especially Klingon privateers, do not worry about such petty things as sanctioned missions.”

  “Very well,” Saavik said as though surrendering to their logic. “If you wish to join us, we gladly accept your company.”

  There was a thunder of shouted approval from both Klingon ships. Tor’Ka exclaimed, “You are as wise as ever, Captain Saavik! Now we, captains and crews together, will join you on this new mission for honor, glory—and blood.”

  They cut off communication. The viewscreen went dark.

  “Fascinating,” Spock said into the sudden silence.

  Soon after their unexpected allies had joined them, Spock excused himself from the bridge. As he and Saavik had previously arranged through a moment of touch telepathy, he went straight to her ready room and keyed himself inside, then made certain that the door had sealed securely behind him once more. Seated at Saavik’s table and console, Spock entered a series of specific and intricate codes, and then sent the carefully encrypted message.

  Then he sat back to wait, fingers steepled in the habit that he’d had since before his days on Kirk’s Enterprise.

  What would you think of what we do, Jim? Spock wondered, allowing himself a moment of self-admittedly illogical fancy. Would you approve of all this—or would you think us all gone mad?