Vulcan's Soul Trilogy Book One Page 23

  One more connection…there. Now, one last connection remains….

  “Here they come,” Ruanek snapped.

  “Finished.”

  “Good timing! Wait, here, let me.”

  The device was definitely heavier than it looked. With a grunt of effort, Ruanek hoisted it into his arms and Spock told Saavik, “Return the Watraii and be prepared to beam us up precisely after that.”

  It was perfectly timed. The startled guards found themselves suddenly back in reality, not sure what had just happened to them, even as the new guards came rushing in—and Spock, Ruanek, and the amplification device vanished into sparkling air.

  And then they were back in reality.

  As the transporter room of the Alliance formed about them again, Ruanek stepped down from the dais, staggering a little, and gladly handed his heavy burden to the waiting engineers, who had an antigrav pallet waiting for it.

  “We have it, sir.”

  They quickly began shielding the device to keep it from attempting an interface with Saavik’s ship and a possible lethal explosion.

  While the engineers continued their work, Spock and Ruanek hurried back to the bridge.

  “ ‘Sir,’ ” Ruanek said wryly.

  “He was uncertain of what rank you held.”

  “Commander of the Romulan Star Empire, last time I actually was in service. Not exactly useful here.”

  With a nod to Saavik, who nodded approval back at him, Spock opened hailing frequencies between the Watraii, the Federation ships, and the Romulans.

  Without preamble, Spock began, “We have aboard our ship a certain vital weapons device formerly belonging to the Watraii. I am certain that they will be willing to verify this fact.”

  There was heavy silence from the Watraii. Embarrassed silence, presumably, Spock thought.

  He didn’t wait. Instead, he then told Charvanek, “I would find it quite agreeable to use the device to save the Romulans—but only if you are willing to order your fleet to drop their shields as well.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Instead of answering, Spock said to the Watraii, “I would be willing to return your property to you—but again, only if you are willing to order your fleet to drop their shields.”

  “What madness is this?” Charvanek snapped.

  “No madness. Merely logic.”

  “You dare to call it logic? I call it cunning, and were it anyone other than you, I would think myself betrayed! Romulan honor works against me, no thanks to you, Spock. If I promise not to shoot, my honor is pledged.”

  “What nonsense is this?” cried the Watraii leader, unable to keep silent any longer. “You know that this matter cannot be resolved! If we open fire, the murderer race retaliates. And neither side can know which side a thief and trickster will favor.”

  “Now, which of the two of us, I wonder, is the thief and which one is the trickster?” Ruanek commented wryly. “Not that it matters. The only ones left with functioning shields after all this maneuvering are our nice, friendly Federation ships.”

  “Exactly so,” said Saavik. In what Ruanek had once ironically dubbed full Starfleet Bluffing Mode, she swore to all listening, “I will open fire on whoever shoots first.”

  Spock wondered, with the slightest touch of humor, just how much of that proclamation actually was bluff.

  But the facts were the facts. The Romulans and the Watraii really did have no choice but to accept the reality of the stalemate, Spock thought. They would have to agree—

  Did they, though? No matter what she might be thinking, Charvanek was too honorable for anything like trickery. But this was still all suddenly a little too easy to be logically credible. Why was there no more resistance from the Watraii than a few harsh words?

  “To the transporter room!” Spock snapped.

  Ruanek hurried after him—and so did Chekov.

  “Admiral!” Saavik shouted.

  “No! I’m not being left behind this time.”

  Closely followed by both Ruanek and Chekov—who was moving with a younger man’s speed and determination—Spock reached the transporter room just as someone dark-clad and masked beamed aboard from the Watraii ship. The Watraii leaped straight at the device, wrestling with it, trying to tear off its shielding.

  Chekov, who was nearest to the intruder, threw himself at the alien, not trying anything as foolish as fighting, since a younger warrior was bound to be stronger, but just hanging on with all his might, trying to drag the Watraii away from the device.

  “Chekov, get back!” Spock shouted.

  “No, dammit! Just help me hold him!”

  “Pavel, now! A transporter beam is activating—get back!”

  But the Watraii and Chekov were now tangled up in the Watraii’s flowing robes. Chekov, struggling, couldn’t pull free in time. The Watraii transporter beam caught him as well as the Watraii intruder, and they both faded out in a shower of sparks.

  Spock raced to the transporter controls, struggling to recover Chekov, refusing to let himself feel anything but calm determination…logic…The Watraii program was similar to that used by the Federation, since there were only so many ways to use a scientific principle, but it wasn’t identical. The frequencies weren’t quite the same—and there was no time to puzzle out the differences.

  For a moment, he thought he’d succeeded. Chekov and the Watraii rematerialized on the transporter platform, struggling fiercely. But then the image wavered, distorting, breaking up—

  Spock heard a hoarse scream of agony.

  Then the figures were—gone.

  Spock’s hands tightened on the console so fiercely that the composite cracked. Ruanek, after a stunned moment of silence, began to murmur a prayer in Romulan.

  It seemed the only thing that could be done. Spock could only, logically, deduce that Chekov and his enemy had both died in a transporter malfunction, possibly the result of incompatible energies between the Starfleet and the Watraii ships.

  What had seemed a victory had just been turned into a stunning personal loss.

  He chose this, Spock told himself. There is no blame.

  His voice sternly under control, Spock reported what he had witnessed to the bridge, speaking formally to Saavik, saying the words he had never thought to speak:

  “Admiral Pavel Chekov is dead.”

  TO BE CONTINUED IN

  VULCAN’S SOUL, BOOK II

  EXILES

  About the Authors

  JOSEPHA SHERMAN is a fantasy novelist, folklorist, and the owner of Sherman Editorial Services. She has written everything from Star Trek novels Vulcan’s Forge and Vulcan’s Heart with co-author Susan Shwartz, to biographies of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com), folklore titles such as Mythology for Storytellers (from M. E. Sharpe) and Trickster Tales (August House), and fantasy novels such as the forthcoming Stoned Souls (Baen Books) with Mercedes Lackey. She is the winner of the Compton Crook Award for best fantasy novel, and has had many titles on the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Reader list.

  As of this writing, Sherman is editing The Encyclopedia of Storytelling for M. E. Sharpe. For her editorial projects, you can check out www. ShermanEditorialServices.com. When she isn’t busy writing, editing, or gathering folklore, Sherman loves to travel, knows how to do horse whispering, and has had a newborn foal fall asleep on her foot. You can visit her at www. JosephaSherman.com.

  SUSAN SHWARTZ’s most recent books are Second Chances, a retelling of Lord Jim; a collection of short fiction called Suppose They Gave a Peace and Other Stories; Shards of Empire (Tor), and Cross and Crescent (Tor), set in Byzantium; along with the Star Trek novels (written with Josepha Sherman) Vulcan’s Forge and Vulcan’s Heart. Other works include The Grail of Hearts, a revisionist retelling of Wagner’s Parsifal, and more than seventy pieces of short fiction. She has been nominated for the Hugo twice, the Nebula five times, the Edgar and World Fantasy Award once, and has won the HOMer, an award for science fiction given
by Compuserve.

  Her next novel will be Hostile Takeovers, also from Tor. It draws on more than twenty years of writing science fiction and almost twenty years of working in various Wall Street firms; it combines enemy aliens, mergers and acquisitions, insider trading, and the asteroid belt.

  She received her B.A., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke and earned her doctorate in English from Harvard University. She has also attended summer school at Trinity College, Oxford, and has held a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for postdoctoral study in conjunction with Dartmouth College.

  For three years, she taught at Ithaca College in upstate New York, but for the past twenty years, she’s worked on Wall Street at various brokerages, a leading bond-rating agency, and an asset management firm. She is now Vice President of Communications at an alternative investments firm in New York.

  Her nonfiction has appeared in Vogue, The New York Times, Analog, Amazing, various encyclopedias, and collections of critical work. She is a frequent public speaker, most recently at the NSA, but also at Harvard, Princeton, Mount Holyoke, the University of Connecticut, the State University of New York at Binghamton, Smith College, the Naval War College, and the United States Military Academy.

  Some time back, you may have seen her on TV selling Borg dolls for IBM, a gig for which she actually got paid. She lives in Forest Hills, New York.