Vulcan's Soul Trilogy Book One Read online

  Karatek leapt over a knot of cheering observers, and pulled the old man off his victim. How’d he get the drop on the te-Vikram anyhow? He was easily one hundred years younger than he.

  Rovalat! Torin had refused the Journey, but Rovalat, his agemate, had not. While the old survival teacher had restrained himself from walking onto the Forge alone in penance for the boys lost during that disastrous kahs-wan ordeal twenty years ago, he had declared he was not fit to live or die on the Mother World and had accepted Exile.

  Clearly, however, Rovalat had not left all emotional baggage behind him on Vulcan.

  “What do you think you’re doing, T’Kehr?” he demanded. “You’re a civilized man! An Elder! How will we live if we’re already snapping at each other like le-matya round a watering hole in a drought?”

  Rovalat, bleeding from the mouth, spat. “Do you see his insignia, Karatek?” he demanded. “Match them against the spear your son Solor brought out of the desert, and then tell me I have no right to avenge my honor upon him!”

  “Solor lived,” Karatek said. “And, in any event, if a death judgment is to be passed, he should have a voice in it. He could have left this man for the le-matya. Instead, he unbound him.”

  Now that Karatek looked at Rovalat’s victim more closely, he could see the scar from where his son had struck the man with a rock.

  “You shame your student,” he told Rovalat. “Solor chose mercy over vengeance. Granted, he made his choice twenty years ago, but that should have given you time to learn.”

  The old veteran flushed deep olive under a pallor—and a discomfort—he was fighting to conceal. This was Rovalat’s first time offworld, let alone at heavy acceleration, so he was probably suffering the consequences and controlling himself admirably. Karatek felt a moment’s regret at lecturing an Elder. Then, he recalled Torin’s impatience with Rovalat’s protracted mourning.

  “You have remedies with you,” he murmured to Rovalat. “Use them before you…”

  Rovalat plunged his hand into pocket after pocket of his traveling cloak, emerging finally with a small, square white patch that he applied to the inside of his wrist. His color improved.

  Bending over, Karatek relieved the te-Vikram of his dagger and whatever other sharp objects or trappings that could become weapons with a little ingenuity.

  “Karatek!”

  That was T’Partha. Efficient woman to have completed what she planned to do and return, in this confusion. Karatek braced himself for the next calamity. The voice that cut across T’Partha’s took away his fears.

  “My husband?”

  T’Vysse!

  At the familiar touch upon his mind, Karatek felt the strain upon him diminish. He gestured at several of the surrounding men—two in the utilitarian desert suits of Surak’s disciples, a once-trim man in formal robes from the High Command’s staff, and uniformed security—to watch the te-Vikram before he turned to greet his wife.

  T’Vysse hurried across the deck to meet him. Taking Karatek’s hand, she covered it in both of hers, as desperate for reassurance as he was. Through their bond, he shared her anguish at the sundering of their family. For now, she rejected the long view that one day the descendants of the children who were left behind and the children who went out into the long night of Exile might meet and greet each other as close kin.

  That is for tomorrow, or a year of tomorrow’s from now. But not for today.

  T’Vysse might be an historian, but for now she had found no perspective. Later, she would yield to the logic of the situation and endure what was: for now, however, she considered grief the appropriate and logical response, and she grieved.

  Lovar, his younger son before he had adopted Solor, stood behind his mother. Then he heard rapid footsteps. Why was he not surprised? When in all her life had Sarissa not managed to be on the scene when there was trouble? And when did she and Solor not join forces?

  A rhetorical question, as Surak would say.

  Sarissa attempted to hold her brother back, but Solor shook free of his sister. Edging around the te-Vikram’s guard to get a better view, he blinked, practically dropping the Veils of his inner eyelids in his surprise.

  “N’Keth!” he exclaimed. “This is not why I spared you from becoming a feast for the le-matya!”

  “You!” snapped the te-Vikram. “The brat I planned to take back to the Womb to be reborn as a child of my House! How did you learn my name?”

  “I read it off the sigils on your spear,” Solor said. “The one I took as a prize. I still have it. Would you like it back?”

  To Karatek’s astonishment, the te-Vikram laughed, a sharp brief bark. “Ingrate, I would have raised you as a son, schooled you to withstand any challenge, and instead, you trapped and struck me. Keep what you stole! And may it serve you as badly as it served me.”

  “It has served me well,” Solor told him. “I had already lost one father and gained another. I did not wish a third. What’s done is done,” Solor said. “Now, we can accept what is, or we can die. You may prefer to die with honor, but I prefer to live with it.”

  “And what are we going to do about it?” Karatek saw his moment and seized it.

  “For a start,” came T’Partha’s voice, “we could see what personnel and what supplies we have on board. I have here a roster of this shuttle’s crew, passengers, and its cargo manifest. It cannot be correct: for one, I am not listed on it, nor are the other political representatives or our te-Vikram…guests. Do you not think it logical to correct these lists?”

  The woman was stealing his thoughts, his plans, the leadership Torin had entrusted to him, Karatek thought, with an instant’s furious resentment.

  How could he compete with T’Partha? As the youngest person to win a seat on the High Council in fifty years, she knew politics.

  In the next moment, T’Partha had walked over to him and put the lists into his hands.

  “One of my roles in the High Command was to evaluate the consensus, confirm it, and then act upon what I found,” she told him. “Here are the lists you asked for. Please let me know what else I can do to help.”

  Then he understood. Her talent was to evaluate the consensus, in effect, to gain the measure of how a group thought and felt, and to proceed accordingly. This group, however—here was a group whose core had chosen to break free of the High Council’s authority, a group that had found itself tossed together with other groups that it had always considered to be enemies. A member of the High Council could not take command. But someone else might. Someone who understood how things worked. Who was backed by people with a knowledge of history, understanding of their mission, and even familiarity with the faces of their enemies.

  T’Partha had placed power firmly in his hands.

  And now he owed her. It promised an interesting dynamic going forward.

  He leaned over. “Talk with T’Vysse, please. I’ve worked with the Technocrats. The hardcore Surakists, well, if they haven’t yielded to the logic of the situation, they’re probably spies, so we’ll have to think of something else. Such as how to imprison them. What worries me now, however, is how to manage the te-Vikram.”

  T’Partha tilted her head and raised her eyebrow. This time, she didn’t wince. Note to self: T’Partha probably does not have a concussion, but should still be subjected to medical examination. (He sensed the crystals of the coronet pressing into his flesh beneath his tunic, whispering at him to remember.)

  “I think we should bring your son Solor into it,” said T’Partha. “He seems to have had this prior relationship with that N’Keth. The man might be just malleable.”

  “A te-Vikram? Malleable?”

  “A te-Vikram facing eternal exile from Vulcan,” said T’Partha. Her voice broke on the words.

  A little abruptly, she turned away from Karatek to speak with his son, who nodded, then sank on his heels to confront N’Keth. Solor had made a point, Karatek knew, of studying the te-Vikram. But how had T’Partha deduced that so quickly? She nodded
and slipped away. Karatek suspected that the next time he saw her, she would have an updated list of passengers and cargo for him to present when they docked.

  Again, Karatek reminded himself that T’Partha’s special talent was for how a group ordered itself, just as one engineer’s gift was for circuitry, another’s for design, a third for visualizing the entire picture. He would have to learn all of those talents or at least how to make use of the people who possessed them.

  With startling abruptness after so long on course, the shuttle yawed. Karatek gasped, gulped, and wondered if, this time, he would be sick. How long would it take for the shuttle to reach the vessel that would be their home until, should all go well, they made planetfall at New Vulcan? He was already beginning to hope that there would be older and wiser heads than he on board that ship, Elders who could advise him how to bear the responsibilities Torin had inflicted upon him.

  Stop blaming Torin, he rebuked himself. You have been preparing for this your entire adult life—or at least since you saw Surak walk out of the deep desert.

  “So, what are we to do with you and those of your brothers on board this shuttle? To say nothing of the other shuttles that are on their final approaches to the Great Ships?”

  N’Keth lay silent, his eyes glinting.

  “You know, a single explosion might take out a shuttle, but those ships are powerful beyond a personal bomb’s capabilities. It would be a waste,” Solor added meditatively. “As well as a betrayal of your deepest ethic.”

  “I am glad you tricked me and did not become my son,” said N’Keth. “I would not have liked to expose my son in the Womb of Fire for blasphemy, but I would have done so and burned the glyph of shame into my own flesh.”

  “ ‘Blasphemy’?” Solor asked. “When I spared your life out of respect for the cycle of life itself, risking my own? And you call me an ingrate! N’Keth, I was a child. I knew you could track me and catch me, but I took the risk, rather than live with the certainty of having left you to die with no means of defending yourself!

  “So I call life’s debt on you. As payment, I claim your Right of Statement. Hear me, heed me: If you turn your back on life in this Journey, you betray your kind’s greatest value!

  “You value purity,” said Solor. His voice almost cracked with tension, a throwback to the child he had been the first time he had faced N’Keth. “You see the Forge as an ordeal in which your people are passed through the fire and beaten on an anvil into something stronger and finer than anyone else. That fire is challenge.”

  “That fire is challenge,” N’Keth repeated, as if it were a line in some ritual.

  “And what do you think we face but challenge?” Solor demanded. “We cross the vastest desert we can imagine—the desert of stars. We do so to preserve the sanctity of the Mother World from conflict that might destroy it. And I tell you, that the lightest challenge we face on this Journey will be greater than the most severe ordeals in the Womb of Fire that the priest-kings can contrive!”

  T’Vysse set two fingers on Karatek’s arm. He nodded to her.

  He too had not realized just how deeply his son had studied this strange and antagonistic offshoot of the Vulcan people—or how eloquent he was. A moment longer, and Solor and N’Keth might even agree—and on N’Keth’s terms.

  “My son is eloquent, isn’t he?” Karatek stepped forward, putting himself between the two. “Young blood. But it seems to me that we must all hunt together or we shall all starve separately.”

  “There is no honor in that,” said N’Keth.

  “Indeed,” Karatek agreed. “Shervon here, who gave his allegiance to Surak, would tell you that it is illogical to die when one might live. I simply think that it would be a waste.”

  “Now,” he added, grateful for a gift for lightning calculation, “assuming we do not come under any more fire, I estimate that we shall arrive at the ship that will carry us into Exile in 5.4 hours. T’Kehr Torin entrusted this shuttle’s welfare to me, and I think we would do well to organize ourselves for speed in processing so that the ships may leave on schedule.”

  “You, in charge?” asked T’hva. “But you’re an engineer, not an administrator!”

  Although she had lost her bid for a seat on the High Command, she held almost as much authority among the Technocrats as T’Partha held in the High Command. “What about the pilot?”

  “The pilot flies the ship and defends us against attack. For that reason, I spare the pilot all other considerations. Or are you such a one,” Karatek asked with a good imitation of disdain, “as brings petty complaints about the scarcity of scented towels to the caravan master himself as he tries to guide you across the Womb of Fire when the land is quaking?

  “Let the pilot fly. I am ears and hands for the pilot. And, right now, I am her voice.”

  Abruptly, he felt his own voice faltering. He was the pilot’s voice. He would be the shuttle’s voice. But when would he be able to speak in his own voice for himself or on behalf of his family? He and his wife had just seen their son, daughter-in-law, and cherished only grandchild cut off from them forever. Did they not deserve time to mourn? They deserved to be whole, and never again would be.

  We have not been whole since our daughter died, Karatek reminded himself. And now, we know it for a fact.

  We are Exiles, and that knowledge will have to suffice.

  With that realization, he felt his heart slow in his side. They had yielded to the logic of agonizing situations before, and they had survived. Yes, their daughter had died and could not be replaced. Not ever. But she had taught them to care, to want a daughter. As a result, they had known how to accept and value Sarissa, who was now a joy, a comfort, and a source of deep strength to them.

  Karatek sensed T’Vysse’s agreement in the bond they shared. The crystals in the coronet hidden in his tunic murmured and whispered assent.

  So, ultimately, did the people on board the shuttle.

  The pilot had invited Karatek, as the representative of the shuttle’s passengers, onto the bridge to watch its arrival at the docking bays of the Shavokh.

  Schematics, he decided, had failed to prepare him for the majesty of the approach. He remembered the pilgrimage he had made in his youth to the sea, how his heart had lifted at the sight of the great statues built by the strand in days so far past that Vulcan had worshipped not gods, but omens scratched on the bones of le-matya. The statues had awed him, the earliest monumental work of Vulcans’ hands, deep crimson jade sculpted flake upon flake by tiny stone chisels.

  Even more impressive had been the cliffs themselves. Over the years, shavokh had turned the seaside cliffs into an eyrie: coming upon that eyrie at sunset and watching the shavokh come home had been the most impressive sight of Karatek’s young life—except for dawn of the next day, when the shavokh flew out again to bring food to their mates and nestlings.

  There was neither sunrise nor sunset in space, but Nevasa’s light struck brilliant beads off the hull of the Great Ship named after Vulcan’s birds of passage. The docking bays gaped open like immense metal eyries, all crimson and black and dulled bronze.

  The ship edged into its berth.

  “Docking complete, shuttle nine,” came the voice from controls. “Live long and prosper. And welcome on board.”

  “We come to serve,” replied the pilot. “Standing down.”

  As the pilot released the takehold signals, the immense gates of the airlocks slid across the docking bay, and air filled it, Karatek glanced out. In control rooms about the berth were Vulcans, working to insure his shuttle’s welfare. Waiting to receive its people.

  Karatek nodded thanks at the pilot, then rose to lead the way out into the Shavokh.

  This might be Exile.

  But it would have to be home—for as long as the journey took.

  Twenty-Four

  Now

  U.S.S. ALLIANCE

  “Captain Saavik,” Lieutenant Abrams paged from the bridge, her tone urgent. “More Watraii ships
are arriving in the vicinity.”

  “So much for the luxury of ambivalence,” Saavik said. “We make our decisions, and we make them now.” To Abrams, she snapped, “On my way. Saavik out.”

  The four of them, Saavik, Spock, Chekov, and Ruanek returned to the bridge just as Lieutenant Abrams reported from her console, “There are ten new Watraii ships.”

  “Cowards,” Ruanek muttered.

  Their fleet had been successfully blocking the Watraii ships from any action until this moment. But now the sudden arrival of the newcomers threw everything off.

  “Delta formation!” Saavik commanded sharply.

  “Three-dimensional chess,” Spock murmured to Ruanek as the ships shifted formation into a double polygon.

  “Always hated that game,” Ruanek shot back.

  Now they had created a renewed stalemate, with ships still blocking ships. But the situation could not last. With so many different races forced into an immobility that was unfamiliar to many of them, with so many hands near the controls of so many weapons, the tension was growing so great that it prickled even along Vulcan nerves. There was utter silence, two fleets of ships hanging motionless in space…

  And then someone, it wasn’t clear who or on which side, suddenly could stand the suspense no longer and opened fire, one wild blast of red.

  With that one blast, the perfectly balanced configuration was broken and the stalemate vanished into a full-out battle. Ships turned and swerved and fired without warning, according to their own captains’ battle ideas, sending out blasts of blue or red or green fire that split the darkness of space, exploded against enemy shields—or sometimes the shields of friendly ships.

  It had all at once become the most dangerous of situations, an open, three-dimensional melee, with the biggest problem that of not taking out a friendly ship while staying undamaged by an enemy ship. One Starfleet ship was enveloped in bright green, shields at full just barely holding off the direct hit. A Watraii vessel was hit by Romulan fire, to savage cheers from the Romulans, and veered sideways, a nacelle shorn off—