Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Page 23

  The world farthest from the star circled at a forty-eight-degree angle to the ecliptic. It was tiny, a ball of frozen gas, possibly a comet attracted by the star’s gravity. With resources so strained, Karatek could not countenance exploring it. Nor could he allow approach or even prolonged observation of the system’s gas giants that might, perhaps, have become stars themselves. Others of the planets circled too close; in years to come, those almost airless cinders might make good forward observatories.

  But it was the fourth orbit from the sun that drew Karatek’s attention and kindled all his hopes. It was occupied by two planets of almost equal size, one circling the other, both circling the sun, in an immense dance. At first sight, the fleet decided to name them after one of Vulcan’s oldest myths: the story of the god-brothers. One was dark, one fair. Both had blazing eyes. Sometimes quarreling, but always united, when the universe was formed, they escorted their mother, the morning star, to her home, then upheld her among the stars.

  Although S’task had made no songs since leaving the Mother World, he still thought like a poet. When he had suggested those names, everyone had fallen silent: Surak’s followers striving for control, the te-Vikram pausing for a moment of prayer. Even the technocrats had looked down.

  One of the Two Worlds turned in a day-and-night sequence that was very welcome after so many years of ships’ watches. The other world’s orbit kept one face locked toward the first, with the other in perpetual darkness.

  Those paired worlds were the answer to their quest and to the question of why early sensors had at times shown almost seductively Minshara-class readings and, at times, readings that veered between blazing heat and extreme cold.

  Even the earliest scans of the dominant world on which S’task had fixed all their hopes showed it to be one of awesome beauty. It was not ruddy, like lost Vulcan, but a treasury of golds and greens, blues and whites. Viewed from orbit, the world displayed three principal landmasses, enriched with lakes and rivers that gleamed like gems set in bloodmetal. Two continents possessed extensive mountain ranges that thrust sharp peaks whose height exceeded that of Mount Seleya into the haze of atmosphere that gentled the world. Extraordinary to refugees from a desert world, this world possessed generous oceans, changeable in color from wine-dark to blood green, and whipped to frenzy by tides from four shimmering moons.

  But neither oceans nor mountains were this haven’s most conspicuous feature. Possibly because of tidal perturbations as well as volcanic activity, an eruption had cracked the planet’s mantle so that it now possessed an immense firefalls. And that was the real reason Karatek had dispatched the rescue mission: Solor’s ship had crashed close to the firefalls and could most easily survey the metals in the planet’s crust and core.

  “T’Kehr,” said Avarak, who had managed to serve as communications officer for this watch and, no doubt, as eyes and ears in the command center for Karatek’s opponents, “a report is coming in from Serevan, in command of Shuttle Two, now leaving the second planet’s gravity well.”

  From various consoles came murmurs of surprise, even from those who had long studied Surak’s Analects. Karatek watched as his hand, resting against the warm metal of the bulkhead, trembled. If Sarissa were injured, Serevan would have said so. Wouldn’t he?

  But Avarak was watching. It was not just a breach of control to show emotion; it was a political liability.

  “Put Serevan’s report on main speakers,” Karatek ordered.

  Even given the limitations of his vessel’s communications systems, Serevan’s voice seemed to boom out over the distance between his vessel and Shavokh.

  “Report,” Karatek ordered his son-in-law.

  “First, your pardon, sir. We encountered some difficulties from zenite fumes before we instituted appropriate decontamination measures.”

  Zenite ore released fumes that turned emotional beings violent, and, apparently, controlled beings emotional.

  “Continue,” Karatek made himself say.

  “We are transmitting deep-scan assay of the most readily accessible veins—that is, accessible beneath the ice. I would not recommend venturing sunside. Much of our equipment is not sufficiently hardened to withstand the heat, which is high enough to melt critical systems.”

  At Karatek’s gesture, Avarak screened the initial report, which made eyebrows rise all over the command center. Half furnace, half glacier, the world locked in orbit around its brother was a virtual treasure house of minerals like duranium, pergium, uridium, and, obviously, zenite.

  “We’ve packed the shuttle’s hold with something that I think you’ll be glad of—I mean, something that will relieve concerns that we have had for some time: large, high-grade dilithium crystals. At first, we thought they were ice formations…again, I ask forgiveness, sir.”

  “The reason was great,” Karatek admitted. Dilithium! The crystals had grown in importance to the fleet as more and more engines were retrofitted to use it, rather than the power of adepts, to boost speed. But the great ships’ supply of dilithium had been dwindling for years; Shavokh itself was now operating on its last truly symmetrical crystals. Karatek had postponed calculating how using the remaining flawed crystals that remained would further degrade engine performance.

  “Report,” Karatek ordered.

  “We landed on the dark side.” As Karatek heard Sarissa’s voice, some, but only some, of the tension in his spine eased. “Some minor injury from frostbite when a suit’s heater failed, but we got T’Lura in before she took permanent damage.”

  Sarissa was sending back images now of the dark side of the world. It was icy, pocked with frozen pools of gases. Nitrogen volcanoes jutted from the surface, spewing what looked like pallid ice grains into its atmosphere.

  Karatek tightened his lips. The fleet’s astronomers hypothesized that some worlds in similar locked orbits were marked by a “twilight zone,” created by planetary libration, in which the climate was less extreme. What twilight zone this world possessed, however, was apparently very slight. At least, however, the world’s atmosphere was sufficiently dense that it hadn’t frozen or bled off into space.

  “Scans are showing immense reserves of water trapped approximately three hundred kilometers beneath the surface of the ice,” Sarissa reported. “Apologies for the imprecision, but it wasn’t just the zenite that made us decide to limit our exposure to this world.”

  The scans also showed great veins of radioactive ore.

  “I wanted to limit biohazards,” Serevan said. “Even brief exposure to mutagenic metreon radiation isn’t a thing we considered prudent to risk. I recommend immediate prophylactic radiation treatment on our return.”

  Once that team returned, the shuttle and Shavokh itself should be decontaminated. He raised his eyebrows again, seeing projections of a 38.5 percent potential here for thalaron radiation, which could build up to levels that would vaporize everything it touched. No. That number had to be inflated. The only scientist he knew who had ever tried to explore the technology to create thalaron radiation had been T’Kehr Varekat.

  “What’s that?” Serevan’s voice sounded fainter. Either communications were shorting out, or he had turned away.

  “Thrusters? Very well. Sir,” his voice increased in strength, “we’re getting some thruster trouble that I need to look at before we try to link up with Shavokh. I’m hearing shouting, too. Shuttle Two out!”

  “I want to be informed the moment Shuttles Two and Three dock,” Karatek ordered. “The instant their personnel have boarded, their injured have been treated, and—” He saw that Avarak was not the only person present whose face bore positively un-Vulcan expressions of curiosity and greed. “—their samples have been off-loaded, call a council meeting.”

  Twenty-Four

  Now

  U.S.S. ALLIANCE STARDATE 54107.6

  Ensign Tara Keel of Starfleet looked uncertainly about the Alliance’s narrow but well-stocked and spotlessly clean hydroponics bay. Then she pretended to be very interes
ted in the row of bright blue Antevian lilies to give herself an excuse for standing there, thinking, just in case anyone else came in and saw her. She was human, young, fair-skinned and blond, and fairly new aboard the Alliance.

  The ensign was also very worried by now. This was just not the sort of mission that Tara had expected when she’d started her Starfleet career back in…well, it really hadn’t been so long ago, really, Tara had to admit. This was actually her first shipboard assignment.

  “Tara?”

  She turned with a gasp, but then relaxed again. The newcomer was just one of her fellow new ensigns, N’Kriil, covered with soft brown fur that made him look like a child’s toy with neat little claws. Like Tara, he hadn’t been in service very long, and like Tara, this was his first shipboard assignment. “Whatever made you come down here?”

  “Probably for the same reason you did, N’Kriil. No one comes by here on this duty rotation.”

  “Right.” They stood in awkward silence for a few moments. Then he burst out, “You don’t like this, either, do you?”

  She didn’t have to ask what he meant. “It’s not up to us to like or dislike it. We made the choice to follow our captain.”

  The K’taris ensign’s fur ruffled up suddenly, betraying his uneasiness. As it settled back down again, he shivered once to get it all back in place, then said, “The choice we made was to actually do something. To help someone. To, oh, you know, ‘boldly go’ and all that. All we’re doing is breaking Starfleet law, risking our careers, and…waiting.”

  Tara absently played with one of the lilies. “We don’t really have much of an alternative.”

  N’Kriil sighed. “I guess not. Not at this point. We can’t very well up and leave. But I can’t say I’m happy about it, either.”

  “Do you two have latent herbicidal tendencies?” a voice drawled behind them. The ensigns whirled guiltily and came to full attention at the sight of their Bolian superior. “Lieutenant Dralan!” N’Kriil exclaimed. “Uh, sir, we uh, were just…”

  “Or is it something personal between you and the lilies, perhaps?”

  Tara looked down at her hands in dismay and found she’d uprooted three of the bulbs. Guiltily, she stuck them back into their pots and tamped down the soil. The lilies drooped sadly, and she tried with N’Kriil’s help for a desperate moment to get them back upright.

  The lieutenant sighed. “Ensigns, please stop torturing those plants and get back to your stations.”

  “Uh, yes, sir.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Lieutenant Dralan, whose specialty was weaponry but whose hobby was horticulture, ran his slim blue finger knowledgeably up each lily’s central stalk, hitting each plant’s central nerve, and the revitalized plants sprang back up from their droop, returned to proper life.

  If only it were so simple to revitalize our crew, he thought. Those two children—I didn’t have to ask to know what they were discussing. Bah, Starfleet never should have forced so many newcomers on us. They have neither common sense nor patience.

  But you weeded a garden only as it grew. And you couldn’t weed it at all till you saw which were the weeds and which the plants worth saving.

  Still, Dralan thought, absently running a hand over his bald blue head, he supposed it was another one of those unwelcome messages that would have to be passed on to the captain. Just as, he thought with a sigh, the other officers had been doing.

  The Alliance’s engine room was a neat, tidily run place with nothing out of order and everything humming peacefully as it should. But within the engine room, one of the new techs was not paying any heed to his surroundings or to much of anything else.

  Anything, that was, except for the current situation. He was a Bolian youngster named Haril, and he’d jumped at the chance of joining the crew of the Alliance after hearing all about its fine war service, thinking that this would be a terrific way to get his career going.

  All it seemed likely to do right now was send his career zooming straight into a court-martial.

  Why did I agree to this? Haril mentally berated himself. I had a chance to get off the ship before this mission began. Why did I stay? Now my career’s going to be over before it begins, and we’ll probably all be court-martialed, and I won’t ever be able to—

  “Ensign Haril! What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

  To Haril’s horror, he realized that was definitely Chief Engineer Atherton’s voice. To his greater horror, he realized only as she knocked his hand away that he’d been about to let it rest on a panel of controls, some of which were already lit by his last careless move. Oh no, no, no, if he’d been just a little clumsier, he could have fouled up the ship’s ventilation system completely.

  Feeling himself blushing an embarrassing cobalt blue, he muttered, “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Atherton was a handsome blond human woman, tall and slim, the sort who would somehow manage to look elegantly self-possessed no matter what the situation or what she was wearing. Even in this situation, even when her blue eyes were fairly blazing with anger—

  Anger at me, Haril thought miserably. Justifiable anger.

  “Sorry!” she shouted. “You damned well should be sorry, Ensign! Tell me, were you simply bored and daydreaming, or were you deliberately trying to sabotage us?”

  “I…don’t have any excuse. My mind was wandering, Commander,” Haril muttered. “It won’t happen again.”

  “That,” she said grimly, “is quite true. Because if it does, I swear you’ll be spaced. Now get back to work!”

  Arms folded, fists clenched, Atherton watched the young Bolian hurry back to his proper station. Only then did she allow herself the luxury of letting out her breath in a long, angry sigh.

  Dammit, these youngsters were starting to get in the way of everyone. They weren’t bad kids, and they were doing their best to learn on this…this on-the-job training session, but they hadn’t been on any perilous missions before. No, most of them hadn’t been on any missions before, let alone one like this, one that was officially unsanctioned by Starfleet.

  Yet another report that will have to be made to our beleaguered captain, she thought with a touch of genuine sympathy for Saavik. I wish that I didn’t need to bother her yet again, but for the safety of the ship, she must know all about what’s going on.

  As though Captain Saavik didn’t already have enough to worry even the staunchest of Vulcans.

  Worry, Saavik told heself, was illogical. It was also counterproductive.

  Ah yes, and it is also a ridiculously difficult emotion to keep under control—particularly right now.

  There wasn’t much that she could do about dealing with it. Saavik could hardly go into meditation here on the bridge, or even use any mental disciplines that might reduce her worry but dull her alertness at the same time. And given their location so near to the Watraii homeworld, she could hardly leave the bridge for more than a few moments.

  So be it, Saavik told herself. She wasn’t a raw recruit like those youngsters on board, who couldn’t yet quite master their skills or self-control. Spock had been in more difficult situations than this, and so had the other three with him. And so had she, for that matter.

  Think of our time on Romulus, Saavik reminded herself. Think of how close Spock and I both came to death. Yes, and think of how much poor Ruanek had to give up to bring Spock back to Vulcan…and to me.

  Data, too, had faced both danger and death during his Starfleet career, including several encounters with the Borg, and had survived both. Scotty had, as well, and had even managed, in his own clever way, to outwit death. They were hardly new to peril, any of the four….

  Again, not like the youngsters aboard her ship. They were beginning to concern her, since Starfleet had trained them well in every aspect of shipboard behavior except the fine art of waiting and doing nothing.

  They will learn. With time.

  But the reports that she was almost constantly receiving from various crew memb
ers were not precisely heartening. The youngsters were becoming, if not a definite liability, a potential danger.

  We need a distraction. Something useful or absorbing for them to do. Something to occupy their uneasy young minds….

  “Captain,” Lieutenant Abrams said suddenly. “I’m picking up incoming ships…three of them, heading directly toward us.”

  “Cloaking on,” Saavik ordered.

  Nothing.

  “Lieutenant. Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Cloaking isn’t…isn’t coming up, Captain.”

  Wonderful. They had been given defective equipment by the Romulans. No, on second thought, she couldn’t see Charvanek ever being that small.

  Blame Romulan postwar budget cutbacks, Saavik thought, and ordered, “Shields up. Engineering, see what you can do about restoring cloaking. Lieutenant, put the ships on-screen, please.”

  As the image came up, Lieutenant Abrams added what by now was the obvious identification to everyone who’d been through this before: “They’re Watraii ships, Captain, and they’re on a direct course for their homeworld.”

  The Watraii captains and crew couldn’t help but see the intruders blocking their way. Unfortunate. And they couldn’t be allowed to reach the planet and spread the alarm.

  “They’re powering up weapons,” Abrams continued.

  This isn’t exactly the distraction that I had in mind, Saavik thought.

  “Red alert,” she ordered. “Battle stations. Weapons at ready.”

  Saavik didn’t waste any time trying to open a channel to the Watraii. What could she possibly say that would slow them down or stop them? It’s not what you think; we just coincidentally happen to be here; we just incidentally have to stop you from going home?

  “Lieutenant Suhur,” she ordered, “open a channel to our Klingon allies.”

  “We see them,” the two Klingon captains replied almost as one before Suhur could speak. JuB-Chal added, “You have the right of first kill.”

  Klingon battle courtesy. How kind of you, Saavik thought wryly. “We have a team on the surface. We cannot get too far away from them.”