Vulcan's Soul Trilogy Book One Read online

  Memories of career choices…yes. Career choices and changes.

  Yes, Saavik told herself, she had truly enjoyed her time serving with Captain Truman Howes aboard the U.S.S. Armstrong. He had proven a good and honorable captain, and she had learned much during her time on board about the most practical and logical ways to deal with humans and other races.

  But during that time, Saavik had also learned much about herself, gradually coming to terms with her Vulcan as well as her Romulan blood.

  And soon after, her adventures with Spock on Romulus during the overthrow of Dralath and the installation of Narviat as praetor had taught her at the end not to be ashamed of either side of her heritage.

  And, indeed, she had finally known what she wanted to do and to be….

  The suite looked more like part of a private home than a Starfleet office. A comfortable private home, Saavik thought, with cushions on the chairs and handsome photographs of Earth on the walls.

  Behind the smooth mahogany desk, Admiral Edward—Ed (not that she would ever call him that)—Clement beamed at her. “Ah, Commander Saavik. Please, come in. Sit down.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I am willing to gamble like a Romulan that those frames on his desk hold family photos.

  “Would you like anything to drink? To eat?”

  “No, sir. That will not be necessary.”

  Saavik kept her face a mask of Vulcan calm. Admiral Clement had the gentle face of a man who was truly concerned about those in his care. Right now, she knew, he was politely, if illogically, making it seem as if he hadn’t ordered her to his office.

  But the admiral’s gentle face didn’t hide the keen intelligence that shone in those deep brown eyes.

  “Commander Saavik, we both know you are qualified by now to captain almost any ship in the fleet.”

  “Yes, sir. I am aware of that.”

  “Yet you have put in a request simply for a science vessel.”

  Humans did have a way of stating the obvious. He was holding a printout of her request. “Yes, sir,” Saavik repeated patiently.

  “Commander, I don’t have to tell you there is always a need for qualified Starfleet captains. And you have already shown an ability to work with, ah, some of the more emotional races.”

  “Yes, sir, I have.” I’m doing it right now. “Nevertheless, I do request a science vessel.”

  Admiral Clement leaned forward, hands on desk. “Why, Saavik?”

  Why, indeed? Saavik mused. Because I’ve already seen more than my share of violence for a Vulcan? Because violence is also there in every drop of my Romulan blood and having chosen to be Vulcan I wish to keep the violence under control?

  “Because I wish to add to knowledge,” she said at last.

  Admiral Clement sat back in his chair as though a bit disappointed in her. “Ah. Well, knowledge is a good thing. I’m not going to argue with you, Commander. The science vessel is yours. But please remember that if you ever change your mind…”

  “I have no intention of changing my mind.”

  Saavik truly had had no intention of changing her mind. At the time, it had seemed quite logical to look forward to years of peacefully satisfying scientific exploration, interspaced with equally satisfying time with her husband.

  And for some time, she and her crew worked well together, enjoying their journeys and discoveries. Saavik, a little bemused and, were it not illogical to be so, proud, had even had a chance to lecture at the Vulcan Science Academy on a new variety of xerophyte that her away team had found on an otherwise barren planetoid. It had been a…fascinating experience. Particularly since Spock had been in the audience.

  Yes, but then came the war.

  The Dominion War had broken into the ordinary existences of millions of beings with all its horror, shattering lives and civilizations. There was all at once no place for peacetime scientific exploration, only for the cold, hard science of weapon design. All able-bodied captains had been pulled away from their peacetime vessels and reassigned to the war.

  Even before she could be commandeered, though, Saavik, fiercely determined to defend Vulcan with a passion that she freely admitted to herself was pure Romulan, had asked for and received a warship.

  This ship.

  Saavik had, to her immense inner relief and satisfaction—and yes, of course such emotions were illogical—brought the Alliance safely through the war, and in the process had lost no more than a handful of her crew (not that the loss of even one crewman or woman or being could be taken lightly). She had taken a wound herself, and spent some time convalescing on Vulcan, but had been back in service soon enough.

  But even wars end. And with the end of the Dominion War, Saavik had even begun to think rather hopefully, though albeit not totally logically, that maybe now in this new time of peace, the Alliance could change its ranking, become an explorer, not a destroyer.

  Illogic, indeed. Now it would seem that we may be forced to become a fighting ship yet again.

  I could hope it were not so.

  “Gentlemen,” Saavik said as they sat about the table in her ready room, “there’s no time to waste. We have to make some difficult decisions, and make them quickly.”

  “First and most difficult of those decisions,” Spock said, “must be the puzzling out of where the truth and the moral course of action lie.”

  “Oh, I think that’s easy enough to see!” Ruanek exclaimed. But then he settled back, aware of Chekov’s startled stare. “Your pardon for the illogical outburst. But the fact is that I can hardly be unprejudiced in this affair. In case you didn’t know it, sir, I was raised on Romulus.”

  Which, of course, was true enough. If only part of the truth.

  After a moment of startled silence, Chekov retorted dryly, “Vell, not all of us can have so clear-sighted a view. And clearly, the aliens, the Vatraii, feel that they have cause—although vhat cause it might be, I admit, they have not said—to attack the Romulans.”

  “But there is no logic in a massacre,” Spock countered, “and no possible justification for what the Watraii clearly consider nothing less than a war of utter extermination.”

  “Yes,” Ruanek continued, “and quite understandably, the Romulans feel that they are in a battle for their survival.”

  “Vonderful,” Chekov said. “Ve have found ourselves between that prowerbial rock and that uncomfortable hard place.”

  “There is worse,” Spock corrected.

  “Oh, there is, is there?”

  “Indeed. Not only we, but the Federation itself, have found a situation in which there may be no ‘good side.’ ”

  “To fight for?” asked Ruanek.

  “With whom to make peace.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “We know very little of the early days of the Sundered. Ruanek, think. You, yourself have admitted to me that the Romulans know very little about the time of arrival on Romulus and Remus. Can you, yourself, tell us more? Can you separate fact from mythology?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Ruanek reluctantly shook his head. “So many records were lost over the years.”

  Spock continued, “Then without facts, there can logically be no clear judgment. And so I must ask this: What choice can be made if both sides are at fault?”

  Ruanek glared at Spock at that, clearly wanted to say something that would be very much out of Vulcan character. But then, as if remembering where he was and who he was supposed to be, he…only shrugged.

  Twenty-Three

  Memory

  Alert/danger/takehold whooped from speakers in each corridor of Karatek’s shuttle. It lurched to port, then banked so steeply its metal creaked, throwing him against a bulkhead. He crashed into a clump of people huddled together on the deck, unable to find seats or handholds. They shouted in pain, fear, and alarm before he found himself a safety hold and scrambled to his feet, which were getting heavy, heavier…but this shuttle design wasn’t supposed to subject passengers to the actual sensations of higher gravity fo
rces until it approached its critical tolerance levels.

  “We’re breaking up!” someone shouted from the people huddling together for comfort.

  “We’re not going to break up!” he shouted. His response was reflex, not reasoned, but it was what had to be said: Vulcans, especially those who had chosen Exile, might be many things, but they were definitely not cowards. “We’re taking on more speed, that’s all.”

  “How in the name of all the hells do you know that?” snarled a man who wore the jeweled lappets of a te-Vikram underpriest.

  He was going to be unpleasant company for the rest of the journey, that was for certain.

  “I designed this thing!” Karatek said.

  It wasn’t quite the whole truth. He had worked on the propulsion systems for the shuttles. He knew they were at least as tough as the multigeneration Great Ships themselves because they, unlike the Great Ships, had to be able to break free of planetary gravity and fly in atmosphere.

  They were also considerably smaller targets. Right now, that was a great advantage.

  (Karatek felt, then suppressed, the horror and grief at the loss of Vulcan Station he knew would mark even his katra. All those people. The beauty of that disk in the sunlight. The science. All those people. Dead in an instant.)

  Bank, dive, swoop, long, long after you feel as if your stomach were left behind.

  Karatek braced himself against the heavier gravity and just endured.

  He pressed a hand to his tunic, over where the wrapped coronet lay. He imagined he could hear the great central crystal wrapped in copper and bloodmetal whispering to him.

  Record, Surak had ordered him. Remember.

  Not now.

  Now, the imperative was survive.

  The shuttle quaked, attempting to rock in all directions at once as it was buffeted….

  “It’s going to tear apart!” someone screamed again.

  Karatek clung to a safety hold, as he tried to reach a screen. He had lived with these ships so closely for years. The creaks from the hull weren’t the noises a shuttle made as its hull buckled, he comforted himself, albeit with conspicuously little success.

  The buffeting came again. Perhaps someone had gotten the Great Ships to fire a warning shot. There had almost been a civil war on the subject, but when the shouting had subsided, the decision had been made: the Great Ships would carry weapons. The decision was perhaps neither the outcome nor the tribute that his late colleague Varekat, who had blown up his laboratories to expiate his guilt in creating war machines, might have wanted, but it was pragmatic—and a concession that had to be made by Surak’s disciplines to the Technocrats, who had held up funding until the Great Ships were properly armed.

  The pilot eased off until Karatek felt only the vibrations in the deck that indicated steady, growing acceleration.

  “We made it!” he cried.

  His screen lit. Well within structural tolerances. Not even on the green line between acceptable and unacceptable risk levels.

  His screen showed something else too.

  The Great Ships had sent out their Stings—small, vicious ships designed to operate in the twin regimes of space and atmosphere. The presence of Stings represented another argument that Surak’s disciplines had lost. For that matter, Karatek too had opposed the inclusion of fighter craft, adapted from the types of ships that enabled Vulcans to make war on other Vulcans, on the ships that would take the Exiles out into the infinite night.

  He saw now he had been in error.

  Karatek ended the dataflow. Being wrong wasn’t necessarily illogical: it was a fact that tended to reflect factual error. And it was subject to change. A time might come during their long journey when the weapons and the Stings might turn on their creators. As he turned away, he met a woman’s eyes. Even blurred with tears and fear, they held his.

  “Your engines held,” she said. “Good work!”

  “Commissioner T’Partha! What are you doing here?”

  The woman who congratulated him was indeed one of the newest appointees to the High Command. Of all the people who had no incentive to leave Vulcan, he would have thought that a newly appointed commissioner ranked very high.

  When the explosions and the shooting began, her security forces must have rushed her on board this shuttle. The shuttles were intended to join the Great Ships and would be used, however long from now, to make planetfall when the Exiles arrived at whatever world they chose to be their new home.

  The formal trousers-and-tunic combination she wore, of a teal green enough to hint at femininity, was stained and rumpled. As he watched, she adjusted the folds of her bronze silk dress cloak to conceal the worst of the damages. Bloodstains on the cloak: Karatek had to conclude that her security had not survived. Best not ask right now.

  He held out a hand to assist the commissioner to rise.

  She eyed it, raising an eyebrow and flinching at the bruise on her forehead. Scratched and bloodstained: Karatek’s hand was nothing she cared to touch. Instead, she pulled herself up by a safety handle. Then she lifted the hood of her cloak over her head, concealing a greenish bruise on her forehead while signaling that she deeply wished to regain her control. T’Partha had always been as self-contained as any follower of Surak, her thin, taut face revealing little beyond intensity and ambition. But now her long eyes were wide with shock and loss as the realization that her exile was permanent sank in.

  She has been used to effortless success, and here she is, confronted with an absolute that she cannot change. If she is not given an exterior focus, her mind will break, Karatek feared. Torin told me to lead. Leadership is just applied problem solving. Here is a problem, Karatek: solve it.

  He had been an ambassador once, and had led, had he not? He had. What else had he done? He had adopted two children. Lost one friend. Killed several enemies.

  And negotiated quite successfully with a number of leaders who had seen themselves as tribal lords. He could hear Torin’s ironic voice adding, You’ll manage, son.

  But would T’Partha?

  In her own way, T’Partha was as much a warrior as old Torin. She probably would. And where she survived, she would be of use. Right then, Karatek decided he could probably be pleased that she had survived. Depending on whether she chose to ally with him or oppose him.

  “So,” Karatek said, “now you tell me I did good work. You were not so complimentary when I came before the High Command to request an increase in funding,” he reminded her.

  “You were the VSI’s most effective lobbyist,” the commissioner said. “Do you agree now that I was right about the Stings?”

  Concede something.

  Karatek made himself laugh. It came out wrong, discordant, and that made him laugh in truth.

  “I have never been more relieved to lose an argument,” he told her. “The Stings and the Great Ships’ weapons may well have saved this ship.”

  “Are you well?” she asked. “Your family?”

  “My eldest son and his family—they were trapped, could not board…” He felt himself losing control of his voice and flinched away from her hand upon his arm. The touch would give away too much.

  “And yours? I know you did not choose this,” Karatek said.

  Her face fell.

  “My bondmate brought our children to watch the shuttles. When the attack started…” She shook her head.

  She doesn’t know whether they are alive or dead! They might even be on board this shuttle or another one, Karatek realized.

  Give her a task, something to occupy the minutes for now until you can get her scanned for concussion.

  “Commissioner?” he asked. “Have you seen my wife? Or my middle son? Young Lovar had an internship with the High Command last year; you might recognize him.”

  Her eyes flashed at him. “The reason I ask,” Karatek went on, “is that I am looking for some sort of passenger roster so we can adapt it. My eldest’s family is gone. You are here. Did you see that te-Vikram and some of the Te
chnocrats also got swept up?”

  “Unlikely shipmates,” T’Partha agreed.

  “Surak taught me, ‘What is, is,’ ” said Karatek. “I do not say give up hope, but for now, will you accept that what is, is, and give me your aid?”

  She inclined her head.

  Acceptance, if not consent.

  “I shall find your family for you,” T’Partha said. “And if anyone has secured a passenger roster and cargo manifest, I shall require it for you.”

  She bowed to him, then headed down the corridor. On the one hand, she might have thought she was meeting a constituent’s needs. On the other, he had sent a member of the Vulcan High Command on an errand for him, and never mind who stood where in which chain of command.

  If I do nothing else today, I have made an alliance.

  The ship rocked again. More buffeting.

  More attacks?

  “It’s all right,” he assured frightened passengers—two te-Vikram, a Technocrat family that had apparently come out to watch the show, and four followers of Surak who looked gravely offended that Karatek would assume they needed reassurance.

  And Ancestors forgive him if, in the next moment, an explosion made him out to be a liar. The pilot, clearly, was flying his heart out. He didn’t know if the shuttle’s crew had bothered to arm its (exceedingly token) weapons; if Karatek had been commander, he would have ordered the crew to reinforce the engines and life-support.

  He was not commander, not in the military sense. Torin had ordered him to lead. Surely, Torin had not expected him to be burdened with such a bedraggled and terrified group, but…

  What was that?

  Something was pounding rhythmically on the deck one hatch down. Voices rose, sharpening to the vicious edge Karatek had only heard in mobs.

  Never mind the ship’s passenger manifest, Karatek told himself. The way they had hurled passengers onto this shuttle at the last, it was likely to be all wrong. He whirled and, bracing against the bulkhead to counteract the ship’s acceleration, made his way into a compartment where a man whose white hair and thin shoulders indicated he was well into his second century was pounding another te-Vikram’s head against the deck plating.