He was a coward.
No: he was a man under orders.
Someone pounded on his door. He did not answer. The noise built up, then seemed to sink lower and lower on the door, as if someone collapsed, still pounding, outside. Their first apparent success: T’Olryn had released the sleeping gas.
When no jolts in course, no groans of outraged, overstressed metal, no explosions came, he concluded that Sarissa had reached engineering.
Now, he must cast out fear for T’Partha. She was neither young nor well. She had already sacrificed her family to the exile. What more could be asked of her?
Nothing short of everything.
The thought made him want to rage. To kill. And T’Vysse was not present to absolve him.
True to T’Partha’s charge, Karatek watched. On the screens were images, shipwide, of people sinking to the decks as T’Olryn’s sleeping gas circulated. She had always been as efficient as she was determined.
On some decks, however, squads of mutineers, wearing the drab quilted tunics that provided warmth and some protection against edged weapons while making the wearer look bigger and more imposing, rushed out. Their eyes were wild over their breath masks.
The te-Vikram held gemmed blades, while the technocrats had energy weapons and what looked like memory sifters fastened to their studded belts. They fought until there was no one left standing, and the decks and bulkheads that had been so carefully adorned and maintained since leaving the Mother World were stained with green blood.
The com flashed.
Karatek eyed it. It could be one of his family. Or it could be that the mutineers had won and were looking for him. In that case, he knew he should get to central command. There was risk either way.
He touched the light.
“Father?” Sarissa’s voice had not sounded so uncertain since the night he had found her in the desert.
“Are you well?”
“No, Father. But I live. We secured engineering. Serevan and I are going to the command center. We need you to meet us there.” And then, on a long, unsteady breath: “Please?”
She must not have been able to reach T’Vysse or any of the rest of the family. His own heart pounded in his side, but he forced composure into his voice. “I will see you there, my child.”
He edged into the corridor, holding his weapon in front of him. He heard a rush of air, as if someone sought to flush Shavokh’s life support of the sleeping gas that had incapacitated so many people on board, giving them…giving him a chance to protect what was theirs, Karatek thought with a rush of passion that embarrassed him.
T’Vysse, he thought, who had calmly walked into what could have been a slaughterhouse.
T’Partha, who assessed the needs of the many and placed them above the needs of the one.
T’Olryn, who would soon come out to tend the wounded and bless the dying.
Lovar, gone to protect their old friend. He was eldest son: it was his task, after all, to guard the gates.
Night and day, he thought, where were they?
But the plan required him to meet Sarissa and this engineer of hers at central command. If the worst had happened, he would not cheapen the sacrifice by disobedience.
He called a lift. It contained three people, slumped on the deck and breathing unevenly. People were already fighting off the effects of the sleeping gas, he realized. Karatek went up three decks and emerged into a corridor like the ones he had seen on-screen. Blood darkened where it coated the deck and spattered the bulkheads. While some of the people who slumped against the bulkheads fought for breath, most would never rise again.
From intersecting corridors and the lifts came healers, unarmed and in formal robes. Still wearing their masks, they knelt beside those bodies that still moved, that fought for breath, that struggled not to cry, and set about their work.
Blood chilling in his veins, Karatek raced down the corridor toward central command. The last few steps were crowded with the bodies of mutineers.
“T’Olryn!” he cried, seeing Solor’s wife at last. “Is the commander…?”
She looked up, her delicate features suddenly decades older.
“I grieve with thee,” she whispered.
She was kneeling over a man’s body. Carefully, slowly, she finished turning it over. This man did not wear the padded tunic of the rebels, but a robe—Night and day! Karatek knew that robe and the sigils sewn onto it even though he could no longer recognize the face of Lovar, his eldest son.
He shut his eyes before reaching out and felt T’Olryn clasping his hand. “It was an energy weapon,” she said softly. “No eyes remain to be closed.”
Karatek’s eyes stung as if they too felt the fire.
For long, long moments, he knelt there. Then he gained the courage to open his eyes again and saw what his son had died fighting to protect: T’Partha.
Lovar had succeeded, but only partially. The rebels had used that damnable memory sifter upon T’Partha. Her eyes were open, fixed on vacancy, until he moved into her field of vision. He put out a hand to brush her hair from what appeared to be two livid, coin-sized bruises, seeping blood.
T’Partha’s eyes focused, ever so slowly, upon him.
“I told you I could hold out,” she whispered.
“I always said you could wear out anyone until consensus was achieved,” he told her. Stupid, illogical, meaningless words, and yet, what else was there?
One thing more. He reached out with joined fingers to touch T’Partha’s temple.
“Thee consents?” he asked.
The woman nodded feebly. If he had found her two minutes later, all that she was would have been lost.
“Remember,” she whispered, and the breath went out of her.
That was how T’Vysse, stumbling as she fought off the sleeping gas in her haste to reach her dead son, found Karatek: holding the woman who had been colleague and sparring partner since they had left Vulcan and—logic be damned to the Womb of Fire—weeping.
Control thyself! Thy wife deserves better, scolded T’Partha’s acerbic thought in his consciousness. He would have to deal with her katra, too, in the days that followed. He suspected that would be quite a task.
For now, however, he could only be grateful for the reminder.
He straightened T’Partha’s tumbled limbs, then rose and held out his hand to his wife. Together, they walked toward the command center. The door opened. Weapons confronted them, then came down as he was recognized.
“We are in communication with Rea’s Helm,” said Commander S’lovan, bruised and bloodstained. He coughed, then held a mask to his face with the arm that was not broken. He drew three deep, deep breaths before he could speak again. Even so, he had to steady himself against a chair.
“Forty-seven of the rebels wish to leave Shavokh,” he said. “I have agreed to give them a shuttle. All of the ships will.”
“A shuttle? Where will they go?” Karatek asked. “Will Rea’s Helm take them in?”
Waste of a shuttle, T’Partha’s katra whispered into his thoughts.
“Personally,” S’lovan replied, “I’d send them straight to the Eater of Souls for what they’ve done. Not just on Shavokh but all over the fleet! But I won’t diminish our friends’ deaths by murder.”
Karatek struggled not to show how moved he was by the commander’s sorrow.
“Don’t look at me like that, Karatek!” he snarled. “I know you studied with Surak, but I had to watch while your son died, while they tortured T’Partha, and I ask you, man, which is a more fitting punishment: a quick execution or sending those veruul—your pardon, please—off in a shuttle that will probably break down?”
Does logic require me to plead for the lives of the people who killed my son, my friend, my shipmates? Karatek asked himself. He drew breath to begin.
“I’ve managed to restore communications with Rea’s Helm,” the communications officer announced. It was not T’Velan. Karatek awarded the younger officer full marks for
precise timing of that interruption.
Karatek looked at the list of mutineers who had chosen exile from Shavokh. T’Velan, who had always been one to erupt, was on it, but Avarak was not. Interesting. And predictable.
“I concur.” The voice that came over the ship-to-ship link was so hoarse that Karatek had difficulty recognizing it as belonging to S’task. He suppressed his dismay at the sight of the fleet’s commander. S’task looked fifty years older, hunching over, with his hand to his side as if the pressure relieved a greater pain. His breathing was labored, his color livid.
“T’Kehr S’task!” Karatek cried. “Are you…?”
“I apologize for the show of…of discomfort. My condition is satisfactory.”
In the viewscreen, he could be seen to wave off a man wearing a shabby healer’s robe over an insulated shipsuit that strained it at the shoulders.
“No, it isn’t!” the healer interrupted. “He has an infection of the simulpericardium. In a man his age, it could be fatal….”
S’task thrust the healer away from the screen, then doubled over.
“I ask you to agree with S’lovan. Let the rebels go.” S’task struggled up and met Karatek’s eyes.
“But that shuttle is inadequate to its task,” Karatek began. “The odds of—”
“I have calculated the odds!” S’task snarled. “Our history has taught us what the punishment for treason must be. And once more, we see why!”
Karatek looked at Commander S’lovan, then away. He needed neither T’Partha’s caustic presence in his thoughts, nor T’Vysse’s sorrow, nor his own pain to interpret what he now heard. S’task had, in essence, decreed the fleet’s first capital punishments.
Because S’task collapsed in his command chair, to be carried away by his healers, he did not hear S’lovan give the command to launch the mutineers’ shuttle. Karatek did. He saw grief replace anger in the commander’s eyes, to be followed by a confusion he shared.
How, he wondered, had they gone so wrong?
Eighteen
Now
WATRAII HOMEWORLD STARDATE 54107.2
Spock, Ruanek, and Data waited where they were with the cautious patience of three people who were very well aware of the passing of precious time.
The Watraii did not return.
At last, still wary, they came out from hiding.
Data frowned slightly. “It would appear that the Watraii war games are over, at least for today.”
Ruanek nodded. “From what I know about them—war games, that is, not the Watraii—you don’t just stop war games, withdraw for a breather and a nice cold drink, and then return to the field for a second bout within the same day.”
Spock dipped his head to Ruanek, acknowledging his greater military knowledge. “Then let us, by all means, carry on.”
They continued their wary way across the rock desert of the Watraii planet, heading toward the one installation that their scan had revealed. Even accepting that the warriors were gone, they kept a cautious watch for other Watraii as they went.
“I don’t see anyone,” Ruanek said.
“I am not detecting any life-forms,” Data added, peering down at his own tricorder.
There was not much else to see, for that matter, just an unchanging, featureless panorama of rock and dust that went swirling up in the endless winds.
“It is not surprising that no one but us is about.” Spock pulled the hood of his cloak farther forward, trying to shield his eyes from the blowing dust. “The climate hardly encourages any unnecessary surface activity.”
“Now, that is an understatement if ever there was one.” Ruanek shook a cloud of gray grit out of his hair, running an impatient hand through the tangled black strands, and then pulled his own hood back up. “This has got to be the most incredibly barren world of any inhabited planet that was ever reported in any of the Federation or Romulan accounts.”
“And that, you must agree, Ruanek, is a sweeping overstatement,” Spock retorted.
“True. But, Spock, you have to admit that, logical or illogical thought though it may be, this world does lend itself to unpleasant superlatives.”
“A world, by definition, cannot lend itself to anything.”
“Metaphors are logically a part of speech.”
Data noted, “There is, I must comment, an almost alarming lack of flora and fauna on this world. I do not even sense any form of insect life, and that lack is truly unusual. If there is lichen, there should be at least some form of primitive insect life.”
“In addition,” Spock added, “surface water does seem alarmingly rare. So far, we have found only that one stream of brackish water. One assumes that there is subsurface water, and that, given the poor soil and rough weather, the Watraii grow their food in belowground vats.”
“Of course they do,” Ruanek muttered. “They would. Fungus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“Or maybe they survive on their equivalent of emergency rations,” Data suggested.
“How wonderful for them,” Ruanek said without expression.
“No place to go, nothing to do but constantly train for war. No wonder they’re shooting at each other with live weapons. I suspect that I’d rather get shot than have to live here if I were one of them—and let me add that I am truly grateful that I am not one of them—”
He broke off sharply. “Akhh, here comes another troop after all. Take cover!”
As the three of them dropped down behind a pile of broken rocks, a small troop of the Watraii marched past. Spock counted forty of them in all. Every one was fully armed with the Watraii version of rifles and sidearms. Their dull black boots crunched with perfect precision on the gravelly surface. Indeed, all of them moved as one in what was an almost alarmingly faultless military formation.
“That is truly impressive,” Data murmured. “Even Jem’Hadar patrols are not often that precise. I have not seen such exactitude since the Borg.”
“Unlike the Borg, the Watraii are not a hive organism,” Spock retorted softly. “Both on the individual level and in battle, they have already proven that to be so.”
The Watraii might be individuals, but the figures in the troop looked utterly alike in their dark gray uniforms of hooded tunics and trousers. The uniforms were so poorly fitting, however, that they hid any clues as to gender. The only differences that Spock could determine were in the slight variations in the various figures’ heights and weights, though none of them could accurately be called anything but slender, possibly even gaunt. Their faces were completely hidden by their ritual masks, each mask exactly like the next. At least, Spock mused, the zigzag ornamentation on those masks was now explained. Those could only be representations of stylized lightning bolts.
But with the adults marched a group of smaller figures…. Could those be children?
Yes, Spock thought with the smallest, quickly repressed prickle of uneasiness.
Those were definitely Watraii children, although they were dressed in smaller versions of the dark uniforms, making them look identical to the adults save for size. They kept up that same absolutely perfect military discipline as they marched.
Perfect, yes. They were simply…too perfect, Spock thought. Even the best-trained of Vulcan children of that age would have broken control now and again with a small fidget, a shove or two, or a curious glance about—yes, and have been forgiven for it by the adults because of their youth. These children by comparison remained absolutely, eerily resolute, never showing the slightest hint of individuality or any sign of childishness, never even glancing at each other or their surroundings, moving in that precise order.
“Like so many little machines,” Ruanek murmured. “But isn’t this interesting? Apparently Watraii children aren’t considered old enough to wear masks.”
“Or perhaps they have to earn them,” Data said.
“Maybe,” Ruanek said. There wasn’t much interest in Watraii sociology in his voice. “But what do you know? We finally get a look at
Watraii faces.”
It seemed almost an anticlimax to Spock after all the mystery to realize that there weren’t any astonishing surprises. Watraii faces followed the basic humanoid pattern: two eyes, one mouth, one nasal passageway. The Watraii children’s faces, though, for all their undeniable youth, were cold, pale, and expressionless. Humanoid faces, yes, but far more narrow, gaunt, and sharp than those of the average human or Vulcan, with little of the immature softness that humans called baby fat. The adult faces, Spock extrapolated, would prove even more gaunt and more sharply cut. Each child’s face had ice-blue eyes, as did the adults. Disconcertingly, the children’s faces were all almost alike.
Almost. After a few moments of careful study, Spock could tell one from the other, and could safely assume that the children were not actually clones—a thought that gained prominence in Spock’s mind when Data compared the Watraii to the genetically engineered Jem’Hadar of the Dominion. No, there must simply be too narrow a gene pool here to support a species’ normal amount of variation.
That lack of variation is hardly a healthy situation for any species. The Watraii must surely be aware of that.
Yes, and judging from what they were seeing, there was another issue. It would seem that the Watraii brought their children up almost as a military resource, possibly in crèches, certainly without anything in the way of parental warmth or affection.
That is hardly a healthy sign, either, Spock mused.
Children of all healthy sentient species shared a need for affection and for play if they were to grow to be normal adult examples of their species.
Odd. A species that was advanced enough to build warships surely must also be advanced enough to correct any flaws in its own genome. Granted, the Federation’s ban on genetic engineering, in place since the Eugenics Wars, proved that there could be such restrictions. But even so, exceptions could be made under carefully monitored conditions if the future of a species was in danger. Unless, perhaps, Spock postulated, the Watraii had some societal ban against making such corrections? Societal or cultural bans could be quite illogical, although quite thoroughly ingrained. Or perhaps the problem was that their scientific knowledge was amazingly limited in its scope, focused solely on militaristic technology.
Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Page 18
