Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Page 17

  The vegetation all seems to be relatively primitive species, Spock mused. Either this is a very young planet, indeed, or one with so perpetually harsh a climate that nothing more complex is able to evolve.

  Which begs the question of how likely it is that any species as complex as the Watraii are here. It implies that they are not native to this world. But why would they settle on so inhospitable a planet?

  One possible hypothesis came instantly to mind, but Spock warned himself that it was only a hypothesis. He could draw no truly logical conclusions without further information.

  “Odd,” Data murmured to Spock and Ruanek. “As we surmised from space, there really do not appear to be that many Watraii.”

  Spock was busy with the tiny tricorder he carried—one that was too tiny, he hoped, to register on Watraii systems. “No,” he said after a moment, looking up at Data and Ruanek, “indeed there do not.”

  Ruanek frowned slightly. “That doesn’t really make sense. If they are a dwindling or even dying species”—his not-quite-controlled tone hinted that he would approve of the latter situation—“they either are being killed off by this hostile environment or simply aren’t very fertile.” He held up a hand in a questioning gesture. “Yet they’re using what have to be rare resources not to build transport ships and get their people out of here, but to build warships. Where’s the logic in that?”

  “There is none,” Spock agreed. “Unless,” he continued carefully, “they are not originally from this world.”

  “Are you saying that they may be refugees? Come now, Spock, that doesn’t seem likely. They have working ships. And since they have ships, why would they take refuge here?”

  “That is precisely what I wondered. But I can only theorize, Ruanek. Point one: What if they never actually planned to settle here permanently? Point two: What if they look at this world as merely a temporary staging point or training ground? And point three: What if they really do have a valid claim—”

  “To what?” Ruanek snapped before Spock could finish. “To the Romulan homeworlds? No, I will not believe that.”

  Spock did not even try to remind Ruanek that the Romulans in turn were not native to Romulus and Remus, either. “Without proof, we cannot—”

  A blast of green fire shot past him, narrowly missing him. Ruanek pulled Spock down to safety with him behind a low ridge of rocks, and Data dove behind another. The Watraii must have spotted them after all. They were under attack!

  “Captain Saavik,” Lieutenant Suhur said abruptly. “We have finally received clear evidence that the Alexander Nevsky did arrive safely on the planet’s surface. Unfortunately, further information beyond that basic fact is being blocked by the planetary weather conditions.”

  “Understood.” Saavik managed to make her sigh of relief seem like nothing more than a slightly deeper than normal breath. So far, as the humans say, so good.

  To her crew, she broadcast, since they had a right to know what was going on, “The Alexander Nevsky has arrived on the planet’s surface. You may resume your normal duties.”

  And of course the newcomers among you will be speculating until you drive your more seasoned shipmates half mad. And of course forbidding speculation will only make the situation worse.

  To her Klingon allies, since they had the right to know what was going on, Saavik sent the message that yes, the shuttle had safely landed. Predictably, she got back two fierce and identical replies: “Qapla’!”

  Well-put, Saavik thought dryly.

  She truly wished more complete data about what the away team was doing. But that was impossible. And, she reminded herself sternly, it was illogical to speculate without any data at all.

  Qapla’, indeed, she thought.

  The attack continued without ceasing. Spock, Ruanek, and Data stayed pinned down behind their rocky shelter as green flashes split the air. However, Spock realized that many of those flashes came nowhere near them, and indeed nothing more—no accelerating of the attack—seemed to be happening in their immediate vicinity.

  “They’re not firing at us,” Ruanek commented with a professional’s knowledge. “The angle of the beams is wrong for even the worst of aims.” He risked a wary peek over the edge of the rocks, and then ducked back down. “Aha. I’m right.”

  “A battle between factions?” Data volunteered.

  “I don’t think so.” Ruanek risked another look, and then ducked back down again. “I’m right. It’s not a war, it’s just war games. Four teams of Watraii, with the first color I’ve seen on this cursed world: stripes of red, blue, yellow, green. All masked as usual, by the way.”

  Then a new green bolt shot past them—and this time hit a nearby rock and sent sharp splinters flying in all directions.

  “Those are live weapons!” Ruanek hissed. “Those idiots are using live weapons on their own troops!”

  Spock took his own careful look around the rocks, and then stared in disbelief. Ruanek was right. There was already a casualty on the yellow team, lying limply across a rock. But to his relief, the others moved with such precise skill that no one else seemed to have been hit.

  The blast of a shrill whistle cut the air. A second later, the war game maneuvers ended. Without the troops wasting any time, the dead Watraii was vaporized by blasts from the others’ weapons, one Watraii scooped up the fallen one’s weapon—and with that, the troops simply marched off and were lost among the rocks, all without a word.

  “That,” Data said, staring after them, “was a singularly vicious form of training.”

  “Make that a vicious and illogical one,” Ruanek added in sharp disapproval. “No matter how sternly you want to train your warriors, you don’t kill them. Especially if you’re already working with a reduced population base. Truly illogical.”

  “Perhaps,” Spock mused. “Or perhaps what we have just witnessed were the actions of a people who are so close to the edge that they can think of only one thing.”

  Ruanek snorted. “It’s obviously not anything as practical as species survival.”

  “No,” Spock continued, “not the practicality of survival but the illogic of a people who have become utterly obsessed with turning themselves into a military machine.”

  “To go after the Romulans,” Ruanek finished grimly. “That, I assure you, will be a fatal mistake.”

  For which people? Spock wondered.

  For neither, he answered himself. For every problem there is a solution. There is one for this. I…merely have to discover it.

  Seventeen

  Memory

  “I will keep this entry brief,” Karatek thought. “Regaining contact with Vengeance 3.6 months after Firestorm found us should, logically, have improved morale, but it has not done so. T’Vysse thinks we need to remember who we are and what we fight for. She has therefore decided that our family, at least, will celebrate the Sanctification of the Hearth. In anticipating tonight’s ritual, I find myself almost illogically excited.”

  For the past 38.6 ship’s days, T’Vysse had been helping her children shift watch schedules. She had traded additional work hours for foods Karatek had not seen for years so that she could assemble her family to watch as she blessed their hearth and invoked their House’s gods.

  She had even lit the brazier in their living quarters for the occasion. Incense that smelled like their lost desert itself poured from between the verdigrised fangs of the winged bronze le-matya, an heirloom of his House.

  For a moment, Karatek enjoyed a great and treasurable illusion of homecoming. But the brazier’s light picked out details on tapestries that warmed the chill off the ship’s bulkheads, not old stone. The image of the desert that occupied one wall was a projection, not an actual view from beyond his House’s walls. Still, his sons Solor and Lovar and their wives and children sat with Sarissa. Young children clung to T’Vysse’s legs. It might not be the hearth he remembered, but it was all the home they had. In this moment, too, it was enough.

  He looked down at T’Al
aro. His daughter had graduated from creeping to unsteady steps. How fast the time had gone! The veils flicked over his eyes, concealing impermissible emotion. Surak had had no children. Perhaps he would not have understood how instinctive the urge was to smile at one’s young children.

  But who could be so unspeakably rude as to pound on the door when he and T’Vysse had taken pains to tell their coworkers that this night shift, of all others, they were re-creating his family’s shrine?

  By custom, it was the eldest son’s duty to guard the gates. Lovar rose and cracked the hatch slightly to prevent the room’s warmth from escaping. T’Partha pushed past him, her eyes flicking from Sarissa to T’Vysse to Karatek himself before she collapsed, gasping for breath.

  “I ask pardon for this unpardonable intrusion,” T’Partha gasped, drawing formality about her like a tattered ceremonial cloak. “We are in danger.”

  Healer T’Olryn rose to attend T’Partha as Solor and Sarissa ushered the children into the nearest sleeping cubicle. T’Vysse came to her side with one of the translucent cups carved from petrified wood that she had smuggled on board wrapped in a night-shift. In all these years, she had never broken a single one.

  “Welcome to our hearth,” T’Vysse said. “The danger must wait until thee has refreshed thyself.”

  T’Partha gulped the water down. T’Vysse nodded, tacit permission for their guest to return to ship’s business.

  “They’re taking the ship hostage,” she told Karatek. “Already, they control hydroponics and the docking bay, and they’re moving toward central control.”

  “Who is?” Karatek asked.

  “Eater of Souls take them!” Sarissa erupted, then nodded apology at the incense-breathing winged creature in the brazier. “Some of the techs like T’Velan and Avarak here, Avarin and his associates on the other ships, plus the te-Vikram, have been working on the spaceborn, trying to persuade them they’d be better off if we all went back to Ankaa, the last Minshara-class world we found, the one that had preindustrialized sapients. This would divide the fleet!”

  The sons and daughters born during the exile knew no other life but on board ship. Some of them found the idea of being nomads in a desert of stars, much as their ancestors had traveled the Forge before settling in cities like ShiKahr and ShanaiKahr, much to their liking.

  “The creatures at Ankaa are primitives,” T’Vysse said. “Our xenobiologists say we would eradicate them in 39.2 years.”

  Solor shook his head. “You think the techs care? They probably bought the te-Vikram with an offer of all the wilderness on the planet!”

  Sarissa looked down. “This could be the end of all that we are.”

  “Why was I not told?” Karatek demanded. If only the returning ships’ reports had contained better news. “So many stars ahead, and not one, not one star suitable for us….” He lamented.

  “They lied!” T’Partha said. “The techs took over astrocartography long since. Those reports have mostly been falsehoods. And conspiracies, so they could help plan this mutiny!”

  A buzz sounded, repeated, paused, then sounded again.

  Sarissa flung herself at a particularly attractive tapestry depicting Mount Seleya at dawn, tugged it aside, and whispered into the com set into the bulkhead.

  “They’re going to try to take engineering,” she reported. “They’ve got the area locked down, but Serevan hears signs of a break-in. He thinks they’ll threaten the engines so we can’t decelerate. And not on this ship alone.”

  “Madness,” Karatek said. “Don’t the spaceborn realize that these ships cannot last forever?”

  “Rhetorical question,” T’Vysse said as crisply as if she brought a class of children back on track.

  “Engineering’s going to need reinforcements,” Sarissa said. “I’ll go. I remember what to do from my rotation there.”

  “We need a plan!” Karatek said. “Sarissa, do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

  “We have a plan,” his daughter said.

  She pulled down another tapestry that they had hung over a ventilation duct just for the evening. Dragging over a worktable, she clambered up and began to unfasten the duct cover. As the grid fell free, she set it aside.

  “T’Olryn,” Sarissa’s eyes met those of her sister-in-law and held. “You need to get to sickbay and release the gas. Go now. The masks…you know where they are. And the weapons.”

  “I have told you: I will not arm myself,” said T’Olryn, and when Sarissa looked as if she would protest, “I am safer unarmed. Healers have always been neutral.”

  “Not this time, if they catch you. Please, reconsider.”

  “No.”

  Solor boosted T’Olryn up into the shaft and removed his hands from her waist reluctantly.

  The healer reached paired fingers down to brush her mate’s temple in farewell and blessing, then disappeared without a backward glance.

  “When I heard about this plot,” Sarissa continued, “I called it disloyal and illogical. I ask pardon. Because my words were immoderate, they cost me the rebels’ confidence, so I learned no more. But I told Commissioner T’Partha about the threat to engineering after Serevan”—she looked down and away—“told me.”

  “So, there are no secrets between you and this engineer, but in the family, you keep secrets?” Karatek asked.

  “For this, too, I ask forgiveness,” she replied instantly. “Logically, you were too prominent to be involved in any conspiracy. It was easier for us to remain out of sight, to pretend ignorance. But you? If you knew, your behavior might betray it. Or you would have tried to wage peace, just like…”

  “Just like T’Partha.”

  “I did try to persuade them of the criminal illogic of their course,” T’Partha admitted. “I failed. I was standing watch when I heard footsteps and assumed they were coming for me. So I ran here to alert your children.” T’Partha rose, clasping her hands together. “I have put you all in danger. I will go. You can say you did not see me. The occasion warrants the lie.”

  “That’s no good!” Sarissa almost snarled. “They have that prototype memory sifter!”

  The technology, Karatek knew, derived from the same basis as his coronet. S’task had actually authorized the venture. It was the one trait S’task had retained from his years of study with Surak: he ascribed the best motivations to people who sought knowledge.

  “If they capture me, I think I can withstand it for some time, provided T’Olryn gets to sickbay quickly and you succeed in reinforcing Serevan,” T’Partha said.

  Sarissa swung herself up into the ventilation shaft and disappeared.

  “You could claim sanctuary at our hearth,” T’Vysse offered.

  The bronze le-matya had never glowed more brightly, or the room seemed so comfortable.

  “Thank you, but I’m needed. I will warn the rest of our colleagues,” said T’Partha. “Karatek, monitor the ship. As soon as people collapse, get to central command, drag the rebels out, then seal yourself in until one of us signals.”

  “What happens if you and the others fail?” Karatek asked. Worst-case analysis always gave them something against which to strive.

  T’Partha drew herself up. “Then, my old friend, you must still get to central command. But in that case, it will be your task to protect us from the dishonor of mutiny and potential genocide. You must activate the self-destruct.”

  She raised her hand in the old, split-fingered greeting, then lowered it, staring for a moment at her fingers. The gesture was tainted now. Karatek knew none of them would ever use it again.

  Instead, she nodded respect at the hearth. Smoke rose in a fragrant cloud as if in response.

  Then she was gone.

  “Your pardon, Father, Mother,” said Lovar. “I believe the commissioner has forgotten her mask. I have a spare. And,” he added, “she may need protection. She is not as young as she used to be.”

  He too was gone before either of his parents could protest.

  T�
�Vysse muffled her hand in a fold of her robe and slid shut the flanges in the brazier, extinguishing its fire. “My daughter-in-law and I will take the children to the shelters,” she said.

  “But the gas…” Karatek protested.

  “We must trust in T’Olryn’s healer’s oath,” T’Vysse said. “Besides, the te-Vikram will not harm children they could adopt, or fertile women.” Politely, she looked away. “Furthermore, I calculate odds of 93.05 percent that they would turn on anyone who attempted to.”

  “Those odds aren’t high enough!” Karatek protested.

  “Now, who is thinking with his emotions?” T’Vysse said. She bent over him and touched his fingers with her own. “We all have our tasks. At least my children and I will have a night’s uninterrupted sleep.”

  Then she was gone, T’Alaro clinging to one hand, the infant T’Lysia in her arms.

  Karatek tucked the coronet into his robe. Then, from the box beneath its storage place, he pulled out a weapon very like the one he had once borrowed from T’Kehr Torin. He too had had his secrets.

  Karatek would have to trust that T’Olryn would reach sickbay and Sarissa would reinforce engineering. Note to himself: Should they all survive, he must make inquiries into this man Serevan.

  From the emergency supplies in every set of quarters, he drew out a thin mask to protect himself against the sleeping gas that would flood the ship. Adjusting the mask over mouth and nose and setting his old weapon on his lap, Karatek settled in front of the monitors, hoping to see people—and their mutiny—begin to collapse.

  “Years ago, on the Forge, I killed raiders to protect my comrades and avenge young Varen. After all these years of struggle, of endurance, to think I may be forced to kill again!”

  It was harder to wait than to fight. And harder yet to know that Karatek’s own family was out there, while he sat watching as the corridors seethed with frightened passengers. And with mutineers. He drew deep, rhythmic breaths to help him conquer the need to plunge out into the revolt and kill anyone who even looked at his family.