Star Trek: Discovery: Desperate Hours

by David Mack

  “Our thoughts are one.”

  She heard his assurance inside her own thoughts, in his voice as well as her own. Here in this uncreated womb of thought, Sarek’s estranged son and surrogate daughter confronted each other without barriers to candor, bereft of the armor of ego and lies, stripped of the comforts of isolation. “To form a lasting telepathic bond,” he explained to her, “we must trust one another.”

  “I understand,” she said, knowing even as she had thought the words that she wasn’t sure she had such faith left in her—and that Spock now knew that as certainly as she did.

  Then came the fusion, and deception became an impossibility.

  His mind and hers became a single entity, a blended consciousness. He gifted all his pain to her, and she shared her lifetime of hurts in kind. She lived his life, and he dwelled in hers.

  * * *

  “Half-breed!” the other children yell, and Burnham feels her cheeks flush with the heat of shame and anger. “You’re no more Vulcan than a Tellarite!” They are only words. Burnham knows she shouldn’t let them affect her emotions, but they do. She is an embarrassment to her father, Sarek. Just by existing she has sullied the ancient and powerful dynasty of their family.

  * * *

  Exiled early to bed by his parents, Spock can’t suppress his urge to eavesdrop on their conversation. Doctari Alpha, the remote science outpost on which they’ve lived for the last year, is full of antiquated hardware and software. The communication system is no exception. Despite his tender youth, Spock has taught himself to bypass the comms’ parental lockouts. From his tiny room he taps into their quarters’ communications subsystem. It takes him only a few moments to access the sonic receivers in the family room, where his parents argue in hushed voices.

  “Are you kidding me? We’re already packed!” Father is furious. “Whether we’re here or on the transport, she’ll be watching the supernova on a viewscreen.”

  Mother does her best not to sound upset, but her calm pretense falters. “She knows how hard I worked on this project. How much I care about it.”

  “You saying you changed your mind? You want to stay? Because until yesterday, you were fine with leaving on tonight’s transport.”

  “I was willing to accept it,” Mother says. “It’s not the same thing.”

  “So? What’s changed?”

  “She changed.” Mother pauses to rein in her anger. “She’s old enough to know the difference between just seeing a vid and being part of a moment in history.”

  “If we miss tonight’s transport, we’re stuck here another week.”

  “Calvin, please. You didn’t see the look in her eyes when she asked to stay. She wants this experience. Don’t take this away from her. And really—what difference does a week make?”

  The silence between them is fraught with unspoken resentments. Spock imagines he can almost hear their contest of wills in the conversational lull. Father resigns from the argument with a sigh. “Fine. If being here for the supernova means that much to her, we’ll stay.”

  Alone in his room, it’s all Spock can do to contain his joy. He fights the urge to jump and whoop in celebration, and instead logs out of the comm system. Then he scrambles back into his bunk. He cocoons himself with bedcovers in the nick of time: He hears his bedroom door slide open a few centimeters, just enough to admit a sliver of light. His parents hover outside the door.

  “She’s already asleep,” Father whispers. “We’ll tell her in the morning.”

  The door slides shut. Under the covers, Spock smiles in anticipation—but only because he doesn’t know that when he sees the supernova of Beta Volanis in three days’ time, he will witness it alone, through a fish-eyed lens of tear-stained eyes.

  The next morning explosions and alarms wake Spock. He rushes to his bedroom door and opens it to find his path blocked by fallen debris and hot smoke. His family’s quarters are shattered and aflame. In the midst of the fire, his parents lie slain, their corpses charred and broken.

  Firefighters in hazmat suits break through the wreckage. Spock wails with grief, reaching in futility toward his parents, as paramedics spirit him away from the blaze, to safety.

  Lying in the infirmary, Spock weeps until his eyes burn and his strength is spent. He gleans from muted conversations all around him that the outpost was attacked without warning by a Klingon starship. Casualties at the outpost are heavy, and the Klingons have escaped.

  This is my fault, he realizes. If we’d left last night, like Father wanted, he and Mother would be alive. We’d be together. I could’ve watched the supernova on the transport. But I made them stay. They died because of me.

  Orphaned and grieving, Spock confronts a cruel truth:

  Regret, by definition, always comes too late.

  * * *

  Burnham reels from the adrenaline of landing a punch on a taller, older Vulcan boy. The youth lands hard, stunned by the blow not just because of the strength behind it, but for the naked admission of savagery it represents. The momentary pleasure that came from lashing out, from knocking down the older boy, fades in an instant as Burnham sees the fear—no, the revulsion—in the eyes of her victim and all his friends as they retreat from her.

  When Father hears, he will think as they do.

  He will say I am not a Vulcan.

  * * *

  Arriving for the first day of instruction at the Vulcan Learning Center in the planet’s capital city of ShiKahr, Spock is taken aback by the open hostility he finds in the faces of the Vulcan children. They glare at him as if he is an infection that has violated the sanctity of their school.

  He notes their disdain as they eye him and mouth the word “human” as if it were a vulgarity; by the end of his first hour in the Learning Center, he has come to believe that it is. During the few rest intervals that break up the daylong program of teachings at the VLC, none of the other students deign to speak to Spock, even though he wears the same plain cassock and has made his mother cut his bangs in the classic Vulcan style.

  From his first day, he knows the truth that no one will say out loud: no matter how hard he tries to fit in on Vulcan, he will never be accepted by his peers. To them he will always be an oddity, a freak, an alien imposition upon their cultural purity.

  He will always be alone.

  * * *

  A child of nearly eight years, Burnham embraces the trembling body of I-Chaya, her pet sehlat. His wounds, sustained defending her from a le-matya in the Llangon mountains outside ShiKahr, are grievous. She has known the noble animal companion her entire life. She cannot imagine a home without his rumbling purr, his clumsy lumbering bulk disturbing small pieces of furniture, his strangely silken fur warding her from the chills of winter winds . . .

  But there is no denying the reality of this moment.

  I-Chaya is dying.

  Burnham has just returned with a healer from a nearby village. The healer has examined I-Chaya and made his prognosis. All his medicine can do now is prolong I-Chaya’s suffering.

  It would be unseemly for Burnham to cry. She is Vulcan.

  “Release him,” she tells the healer. “It is fitting he dies with peace and dignity.” As the healer prepares his hypospray, Burnham’s adult cousin Selek watches while she whispers her farewell to I-Chaya, with her thanks for his courage, his loyalty, and his sacrifice.

  Burnham’s face is blank and her eyes dry as the healer injects I-Chaya with a dose of powerful sedative. The glaze of pain and confusion departs from the sehlat’s eyes, and then Burnham watches his last spark of life dim and go dark.

  Selek reminds her on the journey home that she made the logical decision. The merciful choice. She knows these things are true. But all she wants in that moment is to hold her beloved pet and weep until her well of grief runs dry—the one solace a Vulcan will never allow.

  * * *

  Amanda grips Spock by his shoulders and looks him in the eye. “Don’t listen to the other children. Just because they’re Vulcan
and you’re human, that doesn’t give them any right to judge you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Spock nods. He is so alone, so frightened. The universe seems to have no end of people who wish to do him harm, to see him excluded, and he doesn’t understand why. All he knows is that he has lost nearly everything and everyone he loves; now this harsh place is all he has left. He can’t give up, not ever. He has come too far. To surrender now would mean—

  A bear hug, tighter than any he has ever felt. Amanda enfolds him in her sinewy arms and the gauzy fabric of her desert robes. Spock feels as if he could vanish into that embrace, disappear inside the feather-light folds of Amanda’s robe and never return. Hidden in her arms, he feels safe at last; treasured beyond all comparison.

  For the first time in years, he feels loved.

  * * *

  Burnham wants to wither and vanish from sight as Sarek glowers at her. “A place awaited you at the Vulcan Science Academy. Why throw that away to apply to Starfleet Academy?”

  She refuses to let fear color her reply. “I desire to experience more of the universe than would be possible as a member of Vulcan academia.”

  “Preposterous,” Sarek says. “There is nowhere that Starfleet goes, no mystery of science or philosophy that it explores, that the VSA does not.”

  “Perhaps,” Burnham says. “But as a fellow of the VSA, all of my travels and discoveries would be made in the company and context of Vulcans. As a member of Starfleet, I will have access to the perspectives of a great many more species and philosophies. It is that broadness of experience that I desire.”

  “You would deny your birthright in the name of novelty,” Sarek says. “Most illogical.”

  Burnham speaks without thinking: “You would elevate tradition and societal approval over the expansion of knowledge. If anything deserves to be called ‘illogical,’ it is that.”

  Sarek’s expression never changes, but he lifts his chin.

  It is a subtle cue, but enough of a reaction for Burnham to realize she has insulted her father more heinously than she had intended. It is too late now to retract words spoken in haste. All she can do is watch her father turn his back on her and walk away, leaving her to wonder if they will ever speak civil words to each other again.

  * * *

  Days melted into weeks that bled into months that flooded into years. Through it all, two lives flowed as one: Spock’s and Burnham’s memories became a river that carried them both from their earliest moments of cognition, down through the decades . . .

  Observing the fusion of identities from a psionic redoubt in his metaconscious, a part of Spock struggled not to seethe with envy.

  All his life he had yearned for his father’s mentorship, only to find nothing beyond Sarek’s taciturn disapproval; now he lived in Burnham’s memories and realized she had spent her youth being tutored and guided through Vulcan life and education by Sarek’s steady hand.

  Since his youngest days Spock had wanted to rebel against the emotional stilting of Vulcan customs and show his mother how deeply he loved her, but every time he had come close to revealing his feelings to her, something had stopped him. When he had been young, it had been Sarek, or his peers, or his instructors who had forced him to deny his love for his mother. But from adolescence onward, he realized to his enduring regret, it had been he alone who bore the blame. Not since his earliest childhood had Spock known the comfort of his mother’s embrace. Burnham, on the other hand, had ended up the focus of all of Amanda’s maternal instincts, yet she barely seemed to appreciate how precious that gift truly was.

  It was enough to stir the fires of anger in his Vulcan blood . . .

  * * *

  A shadow of Burnham’s psyche lingered outside the telepathic blurring of memories and felt a deep swell of pity for young Spock. She felt his envy, and his rage. They were easy feelings to understand. He had so much respect for his father—it verged dangerously close to worship.

  As for the depths of Spock’s love for his mother, Burnham was sure they were beyond measure. Yet he had been compelled—cruelly, in Burnham’s opinion—to suppress his love for his mother all his life. When she reflected on the unconditional love and devotion she had received from Amanda, she understood at once why it must sting Spock to bear witness to it.

  He deserves to know the truth. All of it.

  There was a part of her memory that she had walled off many years earlier, with help from Sarek. It was a dark and terrible corner of her mind, a place she preferred never to go. But without this last piece of her puzzle, Spock would never understand Sarek and Amanda’s choices. Their actions would haunt him unless he knew what had bonded them to her.

  To lower the last of her mental defenses, to expose the most vulnerable aspect of her mind to a stranger, went against everything Sarek had ever taught her.

  But it wasn’t some stranger with whom she needed to connect. This was Spock, Sarek and Amanda’s beloved son—and everything she had experienced of his life in their first few moments of connection told her that if anyone would be able to understand, it would be him.

  Making a leap of faith, she let her last walls of defense crumble.

  * * *

  Pain and confusion are all that Spock knows. He struggles to remember.

  Everything had flashed, then gone dark. Thunder rolled—no, an explosion. A bomb had detonated. Walls of fire had devoured the slow and the unsuspecting, and then there had been nothing left but the agonized cries of the wounded and the keening of the bereft.

  Above Spock a holographic display filled with equations blinks on and off. Its lessons had felt so important just moments earlier. Now it is just another broken machine.

  Spock looks down at his brown hand. It is caked in red blood, shaking—no, twitching. His vision is stained now with crimson, and the ferric tang of iron-based blood fills his mouth. Frightened and in need of comfort, for salvation, he searches the darkness around him—the wreckage of the Vulcan Learning Center. The bodies of slain children lay strewn about, some of them dead in spite of heroic acts of sacrifice by the proctors, many of whom also lay dead throughout the facility. Smoke drifts through the shattered building.

  Consciousness stutters. Reality comes in flashes, broken and perplexing.

  Then Spock hovers above himself—looking down at his body, but it is Burnham’s frail form, skinny and dark, her hair cut in the Vulcan style . . . and her face caked in blood, her flesh burned. The explosion has caved in part of the back of her skull.

  Darkness intrudes. A momentary gap stretches out . . .

  An icy cold blackness engulfs Spock, an oblivion unlike any he has ever felt. It is an erasure of self, an obliteration of his being. He knows he should be terrified, but it came on so swiftly that he had no time to realize—

  “Please,” Amanda begs, her voice cracking with fear and desperation, “bring her back. I don’t care what it takes. Bring her back.”

  A flash of reality, looking down from the ceiling. Sarek and Amanda kneel beside Burnham’s—beside Spock’s—broken body. Sarek gently presses the fingertips of one hand to her face. “My mind to your mind,” he intones, “my thoughts to your thoughts . . .”

  Spock sees the strain of effort on Sarek’s face, the agony of using his psionic gifts for something more taxing than has ever been asked of him before—

  And then Spock—no, Burnham—gasps and bolts upright, alive, jolted back into consciousness by Sarek’s sheer force of psychic will restarting her autonomic functions. She springs past Sarek, into the safe harbor of Amanda’s embrace. Spock is mesmerized by Sarek’s stern mask of weary concern and Amanda’s tearful countenance of relief and gratitude, until he slips once more into the shallows of unconsciousness.

  * * *

  Spock retreated mentally from the meld, just by a degree, to process Burnham’s revelation. As a youth he had heard of the bombing, referred to on Vulcan at the time only as “the Incident.” He had known that many adults and children ha
d been hurt in the blast, and that his parents had been there in the aftermath. But until this moment he had never known that Burnham herself had actually died for nearly three minutes, or that Sarek had revived her with a mind-meld.

  No wonder she resisted the meld, he realized. Linked to a trauma, indeed.

  A familiar but unexpected voice called to him: “Spock.”

  He turned to confront a flood of light—and silhouetted within it, a spectral image of Sarek. Spock shielded his eyes with his hand, but it did not help. “Father?”

  Sarek extended his hand toward Spock.

  “Come, my son. Our time is short, and there is much to do.”

  Confused but unable to decline, Spock followed Sarek into the light.

  * * *

  Burnham didn’t know where the katric shade of Sarek had led her, but she stepped through the curtain of light to find herself facing the mental projection of Spock. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “So, are we in your head or mine right now?”

  Sarek answered, “Neither. Both. You are melded. You are one.” He regarded the pair with a disapproving stare. “And yet trust eludes you both.”

  Spock reached out and waved a hand through the ghostly form of Sarek. “Your mind is not actually present. And yet you are the true essence of Sarek.”

  “A katric echo,” Burnham said. “Left behind after he revived me from brain death.” She circled the katra ghost. “I don’t think even he expected this would be a side effect of saving me.”