Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Page 16

Fascinating.

  As Data continued to nurse the shuddering, jolting ship down through the layers of cloud and frenzied winds, Spock said suddenly, “I have an accurate fix on the artifact.”

  Ruanek glanced sharply at him. “You’re sure about it.”

  “Yes.” He gave Data the precise coordinates.

  “I will try to set the ship down as close to the site as possible,” the android told them as the ship fought him. “I cannot guarantee it. In fact,” he added as they finally broke through the last of the cloud layers, “I cannot at this time guarantee a safe landing.”

  Below them lay the planet’s surface: a wild jumble of jagged gray mountains.

  “Main systems have finally recovered from the lightning strike,” Data commented, “and are coming back online. But there seem to be few surfaces that are flat enough for a safe landing.”

  Lightning flashed about them, striking the mountains, sending rocks tumbling. The ship lurched and dropped its way down, Data reading off the descent as they went. “Twenty kilometers…fifteen-point-five kilometers…ten kilometers—”

  The ship’s nose was suddenly thrust up, and Data broke off to concentrate on getting back under control.

  “Old Earth saying,” Ruanek muttered. “‘Any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing.’”

  “A true statement,” Data agreed. “Two-point-five kilometers…Please be sure you are all securely belted in. This is as flat a surface as I can find.”

  They hit with bone-jarring force. The ship slewed alarmingly sideways as Data fought with the controls, then came to a full stop so suddenly that only their safety harnesses kept them in their seat.

  There was a moment of silence, except for the endless shrilling of wind buffeting the ship.

  “Is everyone all right?” Data asked.

  “Yes,” Spock said.

  “Yes,” Scotty said. “I’ve got bruises in places that shouldn’t be bruised, but I’m all right.

  “Did we land,” Ruanek questioned wryly, “or were we shot down? And yes, I know that’s an old joke.”

  Spock asked, “Is the cloaking device still functioning?”

  “Amazingly enough,” Scotty said after a few moments of checking, “we still have full cloaking.”

  “And this does appear to be a relatively secure spot,” Data added. “We seem to have landed on the top of a butte.”

  “Landing right side up is good enough for me.” Scotty unfastened his safety harness and got to his feet, stretching gingerly.

  “And landing up here on a flat surface is going to make it almost impossible for anyone below to spot us. Anyone above…”

  “Saavik will keep them from getting within range,” Spock said, unfastening his harness. “Scotty, as we agreed, you will—”

  “‘Hold the fort’?” Scotty suggested.

  “Precisely.”

  Scotty glared suddenly down at his console and stabbed a finger at a control. “Oh, no, you don’t. Behave yourself, you miserable piece of—” He glanced up again, slightly flushed at having just been caught talking to the machinery. “And I’ll be busy keeping this blasted cloaking device operational, too.”

  “Of course you will,” Spock agreed, expression carefully bland. “I would expect nothing less.” He gathered up his small pack of supplies, as did Ruanek and Data. “Meanwhile Ruanek, Data, and I shall steal back the Romulan artifact and Chekov as well.”

  “And that’s all?” Scotty asked dryly.

  “It is what needs to be done.”

  “Spock, my lad, you never change.”

  “Not changing over the years is hardly possible, or logical.”

  Scotty threw up his hands. “I rest my case.”

  Spock ignored that unseemly emotional outburst. “Judging from the lack of settlements I scanned,” he said, “it is possible that Admiral Chekov is being held in the same installation as is the artifact, or at least nearby.”

  “Amen to that!”

  Spock continued. “I have calibrated the differences between the planetary day and the Alliance’s shipboard standard. A day here is two hours and fifteen minutes shorter than shipboard standard. We have arrived in the planetary morning.”

  “Not that you could tell,” Ruanek muttered. “Gray sky, gray land. It looks almost like the Terran moon, were the Terran moon to have acquired an atmosphere. A vicious one,” he added, as a new gust of wind shook the ship.

  “The atmosphere is not the issue just now,” Spock said. “Understand this, Scotty. If we have not returned within twenty-four shipboard standard hours, you are to leave us and—”

  “And return to the Alliance. I may’ve been out of the game for seventy-five years, Spock, but I’m hardly a bairn fresh out of the Academy. You think I haven’t learned that line about ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’ by now? Get on with you, lad, and rescue poor Pavel.”

  It took a great deal of Vulcan self-control not to smile. Spock dipped his head to Scotty, and with that, he and the others left the relative security of the cloaked ship.

  The storm winds hit them with a force that made them stagger back against the ship, struggling for balance, and the bitter tang of ozone was sharp in the air.

  Spock and Ruanek glanced at each other: We can do this.

  Heads down against the force of the gale, Data and they struck out over the edge of the butte and down toward the installation.

  Fifteen

  Memory

  Sunheart and Shavokh fled the system where the fleet had seen two ships devoured. They dared not stop to mourn together, or even decelerate to make repairs. With the loss of even more adepts able to boost the ships’ engines, any speed they could achieve would have to be maintained for as long as they could.

  There would be no more exploration and no further expeditions to mine for resources they were coming, more and more urgently, to need. Any ship that fell behind would have to follow as best it could.

  “Each of us is alone now,” Karatek told the coronet. “Yes, that is illogical: we are born alone and, except for times when we can join our minds with someone else, we live alone. Our solitude leaves us vulnerable to irrational fears. In ancient times, we of Vulcan believed in curses and monsters. And now that we have encountered creatures that suck the soul from living beings, some are mistaking belief for proof.”

  “Firestorm and Vengeance, in escaping the mind-eaters, have outrun our sensors and are still missing. As a scientist, I can run diagnostics on our equipment. I can attribute the absence of our sister ships to navigational failure, interference from dark matter, any one of a number of things apart from destruction. They may even have found a potential home. We simply do not know. But that hardly constitutes a curse.

  “With spare parts running low, we will have to learn to do without some of the amenities—such as they are—on which we have come to rely. And we are hearing now that some ships are encountering food shortages.

  “We are learning that blight has struck some ships’ hydroponics. True, we have stores: dried foods, emergency rations, even frozen genetic material from animals that could be grown, in time, for food. But the fact remains: right now, on some ships, there is famine and, almost as bad, suspicions of sabotage. These suspicions trouble me more than I am prepared to admit.”

  As always when Karatek removed the coronet and returned himself to what he regarded as the “waking” world, he shivered. He drew his newest robe about him. Constructed as it was of outworn insulating blankets, carefully pieced together, it might be bulky, especially at the shoulders, but it was warm.

  No sooner did he step outside his tiny meditation chamber than his consort T’Vysse ran to him. Uncharacteristically, she hurled herself into his arms. She was trembling.

  Karatek closed his arms around her, sharing a warmth that was almost more emotional than physical. For 15.8 seconds, he allowed himself to savor it before stepping back. When T’Vysse too stepped away, looking politely aside, he experienced an
additional minute’s irrational disappointment, replaced by concern.

  “Thee is ill?” he asked. In addition to keeping extensive written records that would serve as a history of the exile, T’Vysse shared care of their youngest children, taught on board, stood watch where she was needed, and worked with the healers. Had there been enough of them surviving for a complete circle, they would have sought to initiate her. That was the only reason Karatek had for not regretting the shortage of adepts: T’Vysse already worked hard enough.

  His consort extended her fingertips and touched his hand, projecting reassurance.

  “I ask pardon for showing emotion,” she said. “It was…Word has come from Command that Firestorm has been sighted. The ship has altered course back toward us, and navigation projects practicable face-to-face communications range within three months.”

  “Any word of Vengeance?”

  “Some very distant, very garbled chatter at the edge of range,” she replied. “Nothing useful. Nothing yet.”

  Firestorm’s survival was good news. The news it might bring was cause to hope.

  Karatek’s reclaimed position as a ship’s elder earned him a seat in the command center as Firestorm’s first messages to Shavokh and Sunheart came through. The communications officer split the screen so that those on board Shavokh could see people from any other ships within communications range. With characteristic generosity, S’task had ceded the privilege of this initial contact to others. Karatek regretted the weakness that would have made a sight of the exile’s leader reassuring.

  The face of Firestorm’s commander, T’Ranneha, fine-drawn, intelligent, and still bearing traces of what had apparently once been remarkable esthetic appeal, formed on-screen. It glowed tantalizingly before them until her words could be discerned.

  Karatek activated his recorder along with, he was certain, at least 95.3 percent of the people capable of doing so on board Shavokh.

  “We greet you, Shavokh, Sunheart,” she said. “This is a great day for us. We had feared we were all alone in the dark.”

  Karatek felt his eyebrow go up. From the emotionalism of her words, T’Ranneha was another of those who had not studied Surak’s disciplines. At least, not so that it showed.

  Be fair, he rebuked himself. T’Ranneha’s provocation was great. And for one who bore the solitary burden of ship command, the relief of finding companions must be even greater.

  “We are pleased to see you,” Karatek replied.

  Ship’s company waited as the message traveled toward Firestorm, as T’Ranneha and her crew processed it, then, for a reply. It was a good thing their exile had taught them to be patient, or the time lag would have strained their composure even further.

  Understanding chased irritation—Is that the best welcome you can give us?—from T’Ranneha’s face.

  “Data stream coming through,” said Shavokh’s communications officer.

  Like the others in the command center, Karatek tensed with hope.

  But T’Ranneha was shaking her head. “No habitable worlds,” she said. “And none that could be made habitable within the outer limit of ships’ viability, given current resources.”

  The screens flickered and went dark. Distorted voices from Firestorm’s command center warned of disruptions in ship’s communications. T’Ranneha’s image reformed on-screen.

  “Interference…an ion storm…we will endeavor…”

  “A force-six ion storm,” communications reported. “My counterpart on Firestorm is highly skilled to have penetrated that at all.”

  Force six, Karatek thought. Firestorm had only a 54.66 percent chance of surviving that. If the ship was already coming about, why hadn’t it taken the extra time to go around?

  Because, logically, T’Ranneha wished to spend no more time out of communications range of others of the great ships than she had to.

  “What do you recommend, Commander?” S’lovan raised his voice as if shouting could do any good. He visibly collected himself, gave a minute shake of his head, and gestured to communications to seek to boost the signal.

  “Ask if they require assistance,” Karatek formed the words without sound, to preserve as much as possible the chain of command.

  But Rea’s Helm was already asking. In fact, that was S’task himself on-screen now, his eyes blazing.

  “We will…we will try to communicate…later…”

  No news of Vengeance. No sighting of a habitable world. No new hope.

  But one ship more than they had had.

  Was it enough? As the ships broke communications to save power, Karatek knew that they were in accord, at least for now. He admitted to a weakness in not attempting to calculate how long this new unity might continue.

  Sixteen

  Now

  WATRAII HOMEWORLD STARDATE 54107.2

  Spock stopped short on the side of the cliff, struggling to catch his breath and keep his balance, the endless blasts of wind beating at him. About him, the gale screamed with undying frenzy, the sound almost deafening to keen Vulcan hearing. If it were not too illogically fanciful, he could almost think of it as being savage as a living foe trying to hurl the invaders to their deaths.

  But staying in one place for long was not safe, either. Lightning blazed all about them, striking the rocks at random, sending sharp shards flying, filling the air with a stench mixed of ozone and scorched earth. The mind wanted thunder, rain, the normalcy of a Terran storm, but that relief never came. There was only the wind and the random blazes of lightning.

  Ruanek, his eyes fierce as those of the warrior he’d been, reached out a steadying hand to him, but Spock shook his head and started grimly forward again. He could manage. There were storms almost as savage as this on Vulcan, the rare, fierce thunderstorms of the brief Vulcan spring that let the deserts bloom in one quick and frantic blaze of beauty. He had even been caught on Mount Seleya once by one of those storms, and still remembered the awe he had felt at the sheer force and fierce will to survive of Vulcan nature. There were also the primal volcanic fury and the savage electrical storms of the Forge.

  Yes, but the storm on Mount Seleya was forty years ago, he reminded himself with blunt honesty. And you haven’t crossed the Forge on foot since boyhood.

  Ah, and humans were so much more frail than Vulcans. If he was having a rough time, then how were they going to get Pavel Chekov up here?

  But then Spock answered himself with cool logic, If need be, Data can carry him.

  Of the three of them, the android was the only one who was clearly unfazed by the wildness about him, presumably able to shut down part of his aural system to keep it from being overloaded, his positronic brain unaffected by the electricity about him, and his body clearly designed for greater than human stability and agility.

  At least there is this, Spock thought. It is highly improbable that the Watraii will be able to track us accurately—not so small a target, not through this much distortion.

  The steep descent did slowly level out, finally putting them below the range of the worst of the endless storm. Spock, Ruanek, and Data wove their way down through a wilderness of knife-edged rocks that were not yet blunted by time, boulders that had been brought down relatively recently by the savagery of the lightning strikes.

  A dangerous zone for us.

  Even as he thought this, Spock heard a near-deafening crack and under it, the unmistakable grinding roar of rock torn loose—

  “Watch out!” he cried.

  He and Ruanek threw themselves frantically to one side as a huge mass of rock came thundering down to a final landing athwart two smaller boulders. They were engulfed in a choking cloud of dust and tiny pebbles.

  At last the dust settled. The fallen rock seemed stable.

  Ruanek gasped, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Spock began. “Are you?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine.” Ruanek got to his feet and offered Spock a hand up. Brushing himself off, Ruanek looked about fiercely. “Data? Data! Whe
re is he?”

  “Here,” answered a muffled but unperturbed voice. A mound of rocks shook, then clattered aside in mini-avalanches as Data emerged from under them. He shook himself, sending pebbles flying. “I am undamaged. But I do believe that we need to remove ourselves from this region as quickly as possible.”

  “No, really?” Ruanek muttered.

  Sarcasm, Spock thought, was hardly logical. But under the circumstances, it was also quite understandable.

  Scotty stood at the entrance to the Alexander Nevsky, refusing to acknowledge the way his heart was pounding with anxiety. This was a fine vantage point. It gave him a perfect view of kilometer after kilometer of, well, nothing much. Rock, more rock, still more rock, and stretches of flat gray desert. Ruanek was right, it did look like Earth’s moon, precolonization, with the addition of a very hostile atmosphere.

  Godspeed, you three, Scotty thought. Get Pavel out of there, get that damned artifact, whatever it is, and get back here in time. I don’t want to even think about having to leave you here.

  Dammit, I hate ultimatums.

  The wind was just too savage for him to stay out here much longer. Shivering, Scotty went back inside the ship and sealed the entrance. Nothing to do now but wait and keep an eye on that blasted cloaking device. Fortunately for his mental well-being, he had thought to download a good number of S.C.E. reports from the past few months into the system. As head of the organization, he kept up with the material as regularly as he could. Hmm, here was an interesting-looking report from the U.S.S. da Vinci about a species that put their planet into a box. Now, how did the S.C.E. crew on that ship figure out how to open that box and release the planet?

  With a sigh, Scotty settled down to read…

  Fortunately, Spock thought, the land never grew level enough to be considered a true plain. It remained a rocky plain strewn with boulders and smaller rocks. Even though that made the footing treacherous, it provided them with shelter that would at least help to hide them from Watraii sensors.

  The ground was almost completely covered with a thick coating of gravel that crunched underfoot. What vegetation there was hugged the rocks in this world’s analogy of lichen or sheltered in niches between the rocks.