Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Page 7

  Inclining his head in a tacit promise, he raced down the corridor. The deck underfoot still trembled, like a gong struck in the Kal-if-fee. That mating could never take place now. On board one of the other ships, another would probably die today, a woman deprived of her betrothed.

  He ran toward the bulkheads that sealed off the hull breach that had once been a shuttlebay, fighting the wave of Vulcans who were evacuating the area as technical, construction, and security specialists poured in.

  Burnt metal, ozone, and the reek of scorched cables within the bulkheads assaulted his nostrils, not to mention a sort of sharp, stinging sensation that hovered just beyond his awareness and made his instincts scream danger. He would be very, very fortunate if, at his age, the radiation treatments did not leave him sickly for the rest of his life.

  Thick billows of acrid smoke still filled the area. The ventilation systems panted like wounded sehlats to suck it back into the air ducts built into the bulkheads to be purified and released, traces of poison still probably in it.

  Karatek coughed, then coughed again into an upheld hand that came away from his mouth flecked with dark green.

  He rounded a corner, all but staggering as he stumbled into masked security and medical workers who knelt at…

  “N’Keth!” Karatek cried. It made him cough again, bringing up more blood.

  The te-Vikram warrior—warrior-by-courtesy, Karatek supposed—lay propped against the bulkhead. He was coughing feebly, dark green blood trickling out of his mouth. His face was bruised, and his garments sodden with blood. One leg, bent at an impossible angle, was thrust out before him. Before Karatek glanced away in a combination of courtesy and nausea, he thought he saw bone piercing the bared flesh.

  A weaker man would have been unconscious. N’Keth was waving away the healer who knelt at his side, offering him painkillers since, obviously, meditations on the theme of “there is no pain” would not serve a man who served the priest-kings now parsecs behind them on Vulcan.

  To Karatek’s astonishment, his son Solor knelt on N’Keth’s other side. He probably knew as much about the te-Vikram as anyone not blood of their blood, or sealed thus to them. What an irony. N’Keth had sought a youth to train in the te-Vikram’s ways. To some extent, he had actually succeeded.

  “Father!” Solor said. He bent over N’Keth. “I told you there was a 93.4 percent probability that my father would come directly here from the shuttle.”

  N’Keth muttered something Karatek interpreted as “logic be damned.” Well, Karatek could hardly criticize the man’s reasoning. He was injured; pain weakened one’s judgment. And Karatek had thought the same thing not five minutes earlier.

  Instead, he dropped to his knee and edged over beside the te-Vikram. N’Keth reached out and clasped his wrist, a warrior’s gesture of respect.

  “You must leave,” he ordered.

  “I just got here!” Karatek protested. He looked over at his son. Solor was young and would wish to have children: he was the one who ought to leave before he took additional radiation damage.

  The healer inclined her head, lowering her eyes. Karatek recalled this one: T’Olryn. She was very young, trained during the journey to be especially aware of its hazards.

  “I want you to take your son away,” N’Keth said. His voice was fainter. More blood trickled out of the left side of his mouth.

  Internal injuries?

  One wondered that the healer had not yet ordered him sedated and carried out.

  “I won’t go,” Solor said. Not his most courteous voice, but Solor had always been stubborn, especially when Sarissa was not present to glare him into cooperation.

  He heard a painful chuckle from N’Keth. “And so you challenge again? I regret I must…must yield.”

  A long pause. N’Keth closed his eyes, as if summoning reserves of strength.

  “I told him that even if we removed him to emergency facilities…” Healer T’Olryn’s voice remained clinical as her long, delicate fingers touched her instruments as if she played a music that only she could hear.

  “My choice!” N’Keth told her. “And you, what are you doing here…courting damage…better that some warrior court…court you! Leave us, woman!” he ordered.

  T’Olryn lifted slanted eyebrows and awarded him a haughty glance. She was tiny, with masses of dark braids piled up on a proudly carried head.

  “The day I cannot appreciate a little beauty like you…” N’Keth choked out. Wiping at the blood, more of it this time, that trickled from his mouth, T’Olryn pressed the cloth to his lips, hushing him.

  “He has the right to refuse treatment, T’Olryn,” Solor told her.

  As the healer met his eyes, he inclined his head, respect that he turned into a bow.

  And was that a chuckle, or a gurgle of blood Karatek heard from N’Keth?

  He forced himself to scrutinize the wounded…no, the dying…te-Vikram. He remembered young Varen, dying in the desert in Surak’s grasp. Varen’s lips too had been stained with blood. He too had fought for breath and composure. And he had looked at Sarissa with the same kind of admiration.

  Karatek lowered his head.

  The healer reached out, her paired fingers extended to seek out the katra that struggled within its damaged prison of flesh.

  N’Keth flinched away violently, then slumped and lay panting. Finally, he spoke again. “Always…I wondered how, when I was too old…They challenged. Those damned le-matya cubs…” He laughed, a rasping sound that hurt Karatek’s ears and made Solor flinch. “I never expected…” He paused. “Good for them! When I told them to wait, that the shuttle would return, that a proper pilot, not some young girl, would take N’Veyan—may his katra return to the Womb of Fire and be reborn—to the appointed place…they told me that no Fires burned in my blood, and hadn’t, not since exile. They…told me that I was useless, and they thrust me aside.”

  “That wasn’t all they did!” Solor said. He reached down and pried N’Keth’s free hand away from the gaping wound in his chest.

  Never mind the fumes the man had inhaled. It was a wonder he had survived at all with a chest wound like that, Karatek thought.

  N’Keth’s face grew even more pinched, and Karatek knew the end was very near.

  “Let him go,” Solor told the healer. “You know they regard a warrior’s death as a matter for warriors.”

  “Leave me, woman,” N’Keth commanded the healer again.

  T’Olryn’s eyes blazed. At the illogic, at the loss of a patient, or at the criminal waste?

  “Yield to the logic of the situation, T’Olryn.” Again, Solor tried to persuade her. He held out a hand to help her rise.

  Pushing his hand away, she drew herself up, a swift movement of upright, outraged dignity. She pulled her robes aside and stalked away through the security officers and construction crews. They parted, allowing her to pass, bowing respect as if to a senior priestess.

  Karatek would have been surprised if they had not.

  “Someone turn that racket down!” Karatek ordered. If N’Keth had last words for him, he needed to be able to hear them. And it was only respectful to let the man die in a decent quiet.

  A guard gestured, and the whoops and shrieks of the alarms subsided.

  “I…” He looked up at Karatek. “I don’t envy you. Things are…You know matters are only going to get worse. The old ways, the old world…gone now. I will be glad to rest.”

  “You didn’t have to get yourself killed to tell me that!” snapped Karatek. He looked down at his radiation badge, suppressing a snarl at what it told him.

  Again, N’Keth chuckled. He tried to speak again. Instead, he yawned deeply, drifting away as his blood flow ebbed in a deep green tide.

  “Look…you look after them,” he said. “I was the last of our men trained in the old ways.”

  “Ways change,” said Solor.

  “But you, you will remember?” For one as sure, as arrogant as N’Keth had been every time Karatek had seen
him, the uncertainty in the dying man’s voice pierced Karatek’s heart.

  “I will remember. Commissioner T’Partha told me to say, ‘I grieve for thee.’”

  “Stubborn woman,” said N’Keth. “Like the pilot they sent outside. They did right. I was indeed old, useless…. But that young healer, she is a rare one, is she not?” He tilted his head at Solor.

  To Karatek’s surprise, his son glanced down and sideways. He had not known that N’Keth enjoyed that much of Solor’s confidence. He had had to be so busy with Shavokh’s affairs, he pleaded inwardly, but not so busy that he neglected his family or lost his son’s confidence. Solor should have been bonded years ago.

  “You,” he told Solor. “Both of you. Go now before the radiation drains you like the Eater of Souls. But, before you do…a gift. A blade to match the weapon you stole from me so long ago!”

  “No,” Solor whispered. “Surely, some other kinsman remains.”

  “The last of my sons died today,” N’Keth said. “I do not wish to wait, to die on a pallet in the bright lights of what you call a medical ward, exposed to…to the shameless likes of that healer whom you follow with your eyes the way a nursing sehlat watches his dam. I shall go now.”

  He pulled his hand out from beneath Karatek’s and let it drop to his belt. For a moment he lay panting, visibly fighting to summon his last strength. And then he pulled out a dagger, its hilt studded with gems and heavy with the sigils of whatever House a te-Vikram might claim.

  “You…you were my first defeat,” he told Solor. “When I am gone…take it from my body!”

  “No!” Karatek whispered, echoing his son’s protest.

  “He does not understand…explain!”

  “N’Keth can no longer fight,” Solor told Karatek. “If we were back on Vulcan, he would walk out into the desert and die there, preserving his honor for his clan. But, as you see, he cannot walk. So, instead, he will claim Final Honor.”

  “This is barbarous!” Karatek protested. The illogical waste and cruelty—and to think how, long ago, he had watched old men limp out alone into the desert without racing after them….

  “I am only thankful he has the strength and will to claim it for himself,” Solor told him. “Otherwise, Final Honor is the duty of his closest male kin. And you heard him call me ‘son.’”

  Karatek shut his eyes, hoping that N’Keth would die now, right now, from the blood loss, and not subject them all to this atavism he called honor.

  A thin wail of chanted Old High Vulcan came from N’Keth’s lips, as the trickle of blood down his chin grew thicker. Solor joined him in the chant, his voice rising and falling in the inflections of the deep desert, gaining strength as N’Keth’s voice faltered. There was no emotion in Solor’s voice; the pain Karatek heard came from the tones of the chant itself.

  N’Keth gasped and fell silent. “One more thing,” he told Karatek. “You. You and the man who is son to me, as well as to you. Remember my true name. I am Azeraik. May the Womb of Fire grant me swift rebirth!”

  As Solor supported him, Azeraik, called N’Keth, thrust the dagger into the wound in his chest, widening it, so the blood ran freely over the barren, violated deckplates. And, as he died, he laughed.

  Solor lowered his head, his lips moving. Karatek stayed near his son, waiting. Finally, Solor rose. Taking the dagger from N’Keth’s limp hand, he cleaned it on a dry patch of the dead warrior’s tunic, then thrust it into his belt.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Six

  Now

  EARTH STARDATE 54104.3

  The U.S.S. Alliance was a sleek, elegant ship, an Excelsior-class Starfleet science vessel—one, though, that had served as a military ship during the Dominion War, and also in the unofficial encounters with the Watraii.

  Its captain, Saavik, who was also wife to Spock, sat in her command chair like the perfect image of a Starfleet officer in her neat uniform.

  Saavik also looked, she knew from years of careful practice, the perfect image of Vulcan calm and cool. Not like a half-Romulan who still, even now, had to fight down fits of hot temper. Not like a Starfleet officer who had nearly thrown away her whole career to help Spock defeat the Watraii, no matter how temporarily.

  We did what was both logically necessary and humane. And if it caused trouble with the bureaucrats, so be it.

  That last part of the thought had been purely Romulan.

  The bridge of Saavik’s ship was a clean and elegant blend of Starfleet and Vulcan tastes, appealing to the mind and eye alike, absolutely logical in its layout, with nothing out of place.

  Yes, the ship might look tranquil, Saavik thought wryly, but her image of calm wasn’t completely honest. Her crew was normally made up of a mix of experienced humans, Bolians, and Vulcans, a crew with whom she’d worked for quite some time and whom she knew she could trust to be efficient and effective even in an emergency. They had volunteered to go with her on that mission against the Watraii without hesitation. But Starfleet’s latest experiment in accelerating the training of newer recruits—they’d tried a dozen such methods after the end of the Dominion War and the realization of how shorthanded they’d been caught—had been an order that new crew members be assigned to several ships. That meant, of course, that some of the more experienced crew members had to be transferred away to make room for the newcomers.

  Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, regardless of species or culture, Saavik thought philosophically. As Spock might say, you cannot fight it; simply accept it.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, one ensign gave her a quick, awed glance. This was a human, Ensign Edwin Del, a Terran from a Hispanic background and one of those newly assigned to this ship—no, he would be new to any ship—who looked on Starfleet as something almost divine. Another new ensign was Nalia, a pretty Bolian young woman with skin that was a clear, light turquoise and who looked too young, in fact, to be in any service. Nalia happened to look her way and then actually blushed in confusion.

  Children.

  But for all their newness and occasional awkwardness, they do seem quite competent, under normal circumstances.

  I only trust that we don’t run into any abnormal circumstances.

  That was particularly true since they were currently entering orbit of Earth—a world many of the young people aboard knew primarily as the home of Starfleet Academy and more abstractly as the seat of the Federation government. Thinking of the shore leave possible in San Francisco alone, Saavik told herself that she would need to be sure the young things were kept on leads like so many frisky kitiki.

  The fact that she would, unless the Romulans had called off the entire meeting, also have her own brief shore leave with Spock…

  Maybe, she thought dryly, I should put a leash on myself as well.

  At that precise moment, with what she knew humans would have called a prime example of Murphy’s Law, Lieutenant Suhur, a dark-skinned young Vulcan man at communications said, “A message is coming in from Earth for you, Captain Saavik. It’s encrypted, double security, ma’am.”

  Saavik got to her feet. There was a logical 93.552 percent chance that the message was from Spock. Something clearly had happened, either at the Romulan–Federation conference or—But guessing was not logical. “I’ll take it in my ready room. Mr. Harex, you have the bridge.”

  Saavik’s voice, Spock thought, sounded most upset—no, to be more accurate, it held a mixture of surprise, alarm, and annoyance. “I did not know,” she said. “I didn’t think it possible for him to have survived. But yes, of course Admiral Chekov must be rescued. And of course I will be part of your team. After all, it was from my ship that the admiral…disappeared.”

  “And yet…?” Spock prodded.

  “And yet the issue that is standing in the way is that I have several very new crew members aboard, husband. I cannot risk their lives and careers—and I do not trust their new skills on such an unusual and unpredictable mission.”

  “There is a choice,” Spock to
ld her. “You can offer them a shuttlecraft, an honorable chance to leave.”

  Only her husband could have read the barely controlled frustration in Saavik’s voice. “Yes, husband, I will do just that—though they are just young enough to be foolishly courageous.” She gave the softest sigh. “Still, you need have no concern on the matter. I will, as I say, be part of this team. Saavik out.”

  She broke the connection, and Spock allowed himself a split second of longing for his wife, from whom their careers separated him far too often—emotional thinking though that might be—and then joined Uhura and Ruanek as they continued their clandestine enlistment mission. Uhura, being who and what she was, already knew perfectly well who she had in mind. As before, the majority of the team whom they reached were those people, human or not, who had been on the first mission, many of them those surviving members of the several Enterprises who were available.

  But then Ruanek came suddenly alert. To Spock’s bemusement, Ruanek watched Uhura and the person on the viewscreen with intense curiosity.

  Uhura, of course, was aware of it, but ignored it. “Ah, Lieutenant Commander Data. A pleasure to speak with you again.”

  “And with you, Admiral Uhura. I do understand the mission, and I shall be honored to be included.”

  “Data, you know that my offer still stands. You would make an excellent SI operative.”

  “Again, Admiral, I am honored, but I fear I cannot accept.”

  Uhura smiled. “I understand, and believe me, I’m not offended. You will do far more good as an officer on our flagship.”

  Ruanek’s curiosity finally got the better of him. “No insult meant, Lieutenant Commander, but are you not an android?”

  “Indeed I am, sir, though I am now equipped with an emotion chip that enables me to feel what a human would feel.”

  “Thank you, Commander Data, I’ll transmit your new orders shortly. Uhura out.”

  Spock glanced sideways. “Ruanek?”