Star Trek® Cast no Shadow

by James Swallow

  “At first?” she echoed.

  Tancreda continued past the implied slight. “I’m aware that Vulcan telepathic therapy techniques are quite complex compared to Betazoid ones. But I think we can find some common ground.”

  “For what purpose, Doctor?” This time she looked up, and met the other woman’s gaze. Her expression remained cool and unconcerned. Sitting opposite the Betazoid in her hide of shade, the Vulcan was in the full glare of the yellow-white rays of the sun overhead. If she allowed herself to believe it, the warmth was almost like that of home. Almost. “Will you tell me what kind of progress you hope we can make? I would like to know.”

  Tancreda sighed, and she felt a slight pressure at the edges of her psionic senses. The woman was trying to take an empathic read of her mood. “Your rehabilitation is the reason you are here,” she said. “But you continue to obstruct the process, and frankly, I’m having difficulty understanding the reason why.” Tancreda frowned. “We’ve been meeting for these sessions for over three months now—”

  “Three months, two weeks, four days.” The correction came automatically, “Federation standard calendar.”

  “—and in all that time, you’ve given me little to work with. You keep yourself closed, and I understand that Vulcan reserve is hard to drop, I really do. I respect that. But the fact is, I have a lot of information about who you are and what you have done. Your . . . past actions mean that things you have held private have come to light.” Tancreda tapped a padd at her side. “I’ve read your personnel files, your logs, seen your psychotricorder scans . . . I know a lot about you. It’s my job to keep that trust and, in the keeping of it, help you. But if you don’t let me in, then all I can do is make my best guess at the drives that motivate you, and report that to my superiors. Is that what you want?”

  An admission of failure on her part. It was a tiny victory in the game that had unfolded between the two of them over the past few weeks and, for the Vulcan, the only real diversion aside from playing chess with the penal colony’s computer or the slow march of reading every book in the stockade’s digital library. But now, like the pointless physical labor they made her and her fellow convicts perform, it was becoming tedious.

  For a moment she looked away, eyes falling to the black oval at her waist where a belt’s buckle would be positioned. The device blinked silently, sensors inside the module constantly broadcasting every aspect of her physiological status and, more importantly, her precise location to the prison’s mainframe. Every resident of the Jaros II stockade wore one; they were legacy technology from the old perscan medical modules used by Starfleet in the 2270s. There were no bars on the windows or fences surrounding the prison, no guards patrolling the corridors in great number; every barrier and shackle here hid in plain sight.

  “What I want. . .” She almost answered honestly, and stopped herself. She gave Tancreda a long look. “What I want is for this to be over.” The Vulcan’s elfin eyes narrowed slightly. “I am Valeris, the traitor and the killer. I am the assassin’s cohort. The shame of Vulcan and Starfleet. As all those things, convicted by a jury of my peers as guilty of treason and murder, do you truly believe that for one single moment what I want has any meaning whatsoever?”

  “Do you want to go home?” Tancreda watched her carefully, fishing for a reaction. Valeris almost gave it to her, but she was careful.

  Instead she went on the offensive. “Perhaps we should consider a different question, Doctor. Perhaps you should tell me what you want to hear.”

  “I want to hear the truth.”

  “Do you?” Valeris cocked her head. “Or would it be more expedient for you to hear the right truth? So you may complete your work and move on to another subject. I imagine it would reflect well on your future career to be known as the woman who reformed a traitor.” An edge of something that might have been irritation crept into her tone. “I regret the choices I made,” Valeris continued. “I was misled. I was naïve and foolish. I allowed my own innate arrogance—which I have now totally overcome, thanks to your stewardship—to blind me to reality. I am sorry for what I have done and beg forgiveness.” She halted for a moment. “Is that enough? Or would you like me to attempt to portray some sort of emotional display? Tears of remorse, perhaps?”

  Tancreda’s lips thinned. “Some people say Vulcans aren’t capable of feelings, but you get sarcasm pretty well, don’t you? Don’t insult me, Valeris. It’s beneath you.”

  “Doctor, I consider this entire endeavor to be beneath me.”

  The Betazoid shook her head. “No, that’s not going to work. The high-handed manner, that’s the easy play. You can do better than that.” She shifted in her chair. “Come on. Have the courage to show me something real.”

  Valeris looked away. The irritation was real enough, grinding at her like a stone in her shoe. On some level she was disappointed in herself for letting it take root; but then, she had been here for a long time, and her skills had naturally atrophied in the prolonged company of so many emotional beings. “What can I show you that you do not already know?”

  Tancreda picked up the padd and tabbed through the pages. “In 2293 you played an instrumental role in the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon of the Klingon High Council.” She read out the words as if to an unseen audience. “You were a coconspirator under the guidance of the then-admiral Lance Cartwright. Following his direct orders, you—”

  “I know what I did.” She spoke over her. “We both know.”

  “Are you squeamish about it?” Tancreda asked, seizing on the moment. “You don’t want to hear me say it out loud?”

  “There is no point reiterating facts that we are both already aware of.”

  “Very well.” The Betazoid paged on through the padd’s memory, throwing a sideways glance up to the discreet shape of a monitor bead at the corner of the ceiling. “Let’s not speak about the assassination. Let’s talk about what happened after Gorkon was murdered, after you framed James Kirk for the deed. After you killed two men in cold blood at point-blank range.” Tancreda’s tone turned cool and judgmental: Almost Vulcan, Valeris thought. “When they caught you, how did you feel?”

  “Disappointed.” The answer slipped out before she could stop herself. It was the most honest thing Valeris had said since she entered the room.

  “Who disappointed you, Valeris?” Tancreda asked. “Not Kirk. He was a Terran, a human. An emotional being. You couldn’t expect his behavior to measure up to your standards. But your mentor, Captain Spock . . . That must have been difficult for you. When he let you down.”

  She didn’t answer. Inwardly, she reached back to the techniques she had learned as a young girl, the patterns and mental structures that built walls between her thoughts and the silent turmoil of emotion. She let her hands lie flat on the arms at the sides of her chair, the carved wood warm beneath her fingertips.

  Valeris saw the moment again in her thoughts, there on the bridge of the Enterprise. The moment she had relived a hundred times over. Kirk’s angry demands and her refusal to answer them. Spock’s challenge . . . and the assurance she had felt in that instant, as if her arrogance were shield enough against them both. The memory came back with brutal clarity, and she allowed herself to hate it, just for a fraction of a second.

  “A lie?” Spock had asked.

  “A choice,” she replied. But she had been mistaken to think it would end there.

  Valeris remembered the flash of surprise when Spock came to her, and the sudden, sickening knowledge of what he would do next.

  She tried to fight him. Another mistake. His skills were so much greater than hers, and the barriers she put up were like paper compared to the steady, fluid pressure of his thoughts. Kirk ordered Spock to reach into her psyche through a mind-meld to draw out the names of her fellow conspirators, and to her shock and embarrassment he had done so without question.

  She fought as best she could, against reason, against logic. Some primitive animal part of her mind refused to giv
e in, but on his captain’s orders, Spock opened her and took the truth from where she hid it. And the horror of it was, she was powerless to stop him. There was nothing Valeris could have done to end the invasion of her self, nothing except capitulate—and the thought of surrender never once entered her mind.

  While races with a comparatively crude telepathic nature like the Betazoids could only mind-speak and cruise atop the surface of another’s thoughts, the Vulcan mind-meld was something of much greater magnitude. It was not just communication but communion. More than the touch of thought on thought, it was a temporary merging of two psyches. In the right instance, a transcendent bond of minds sharing a brief, perfect union.

  Valeris’s feelings toward Spock had always been complicated, and if she were truthful, neither he nor she had correctly navigated them; but she hoped that one day they might have been able to share each other’s thoughts as equals. Not like this. Not under such dark impetus, driven by lies and distrust.

  The worst thing of all, worse than the disgrace and the violation of it, came in the sharing of them. Valeris showed Spock her disappointment in him—at his weakness, his illogic, his failure to live up to the expectations she had for him; and in return, Spock showed her a fathomless well of regret and sorrow, the blame he took upon himself for her actions.

  When it was over, both of them had been ashamed—not just by what had been done, but by what had been left unsaid and unfulfilled between them.

  The silence of the meeting room was suddenly broken by a percussive snap, and Valeris looked down at her right hand to see that she had grasped the arm of her chair with such force that the wood had splintered. She let it go and found Tancreda watching her steadily.

  Another unwelcome jag of fleeting annoyance passed through her: Valeris had let her control slip and given the psychoanalyst exactly what she wanted—a reaction, an emotional reaction. Now that Tancreda had pushed her into it, would the doctor gloat? Would she take this moment as her tiny victory?

  “I think we’ll end this session here,” said the Betazoid. If anything, the other woman’s expression was more sympathetic than critical—and, in its own way, that was more insulting. “I can see we’re not going to make any more progress today.”

  Valeris gathered herself and crossed the room to the door, which opened at a command from Tancreda’s padd. She paused on the threshold. “I would suggest, Doctor, that if you wish to proceed with these meetings, you make an effort to engage me with something of import in future sessions. I dislike having my time wasted.” Before the other woman could answer, she strode away into the corridor.

  Malla Tancreda watched the Vulcan woman go, and once she was alone, she blew out a breath. The doctor knew going in that Valeris would be a difficult subject—years of working in telepsychotherapy had exposed her to dozens of different species and the Vulcans were always the toughest nuts to crack—but she had rarely met someone with the same degree of emotional scarring that afflicted the disgraced former officer.

  When she accepted the assignment to work with the inmates on Jaros II, there were those among her colleagues at Starfleet Medical who questioned her willingness to engage with Valeris’s case. In seven years of confinement, the woman had never shown any kind of contrition or any desire to atone for her part in the Gorkon conspiracy. Valeris seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be in this for the long run. With a life sentence imposed for her crimes, that would be a long time indeed. Given the life span of an average member of her species, Valeris might conceivably live to see the twenty-fifth century from the window of her cell in the western wing of the prison complex.

  There was some truth to what Valeris had said before. Tancreda’s work with the last surviving member of Cart-wright’s conspiracy of hawks might mean a paper in the Federation Journal of Psychology. It might mean academic kudos both here and back home on Betazed. But that wasn’t the only reason Tancreda was interested in Valeris, and the longer she knew her, the more the doctor wanted to understand her. The scars the woman carried were very deep, and not just from the incident with the meld. As much as the Vulcan wanted to believe that she was governed by cool logic, something darker and deeper churned below, and Tancreda was only just starting to see the edges of it. She glanced at the broken chair arm and wondered if Valeris would ever be able to make her peace with the choices she had made aboard the Enterprise, and elsewhere.

  She paused, taking a moment to clear her thoughts and center herself. The doctor’s innate psionic abilities favored her with a strong empathic sense, and one side effect of her work was the ghost of emotion she felt from her subjects, sometimes long after they had ended a session. It was one of the reasons she preferred to work with Vulcans: they kept themselves in check as a matter of course, instead of wearing their emotive nature broadly like Andorians or Deltans. Valeris’s aura still hung in the air like a coil of smoke.

  Gathering up her padd, she walked to the door. Even as it slid open, she had the sudden sense of another being present out in the corridor, the faint mental impression of someone watching and waiting.

  He stood silently examining a glass sculpture out in the hallway. The door closed behind Tancreda and she took a step toward him. He wasn’t a detainee or a member of staff. He wore a simple grey tunic with squared-off shoulders and matching trousers. She saw the side of a lined face, the rise of an upswept eyebrow, and those characteristic Vulcan ears.

  “Spock.” She said the name aloud before she was aware of it. To do such a thing, to address someone not known to you, was considered coarse behavior in Vulcan society, and Tancreda instantly regretted it. But the man said nothing, turning away from the sculpture to give her his full attention.

  It was him. Some residual flicker of Valeris’s emotions toward the man remained in Tancreda’s mind. She felt a faint stir of need and of anger.

  He approached her, his expression unchanged but the light in that steady gaze alert and penetrating. “Doctor Tancreda. I would take a moment of your time.” His voice was metered and resonant.

  She looked around, nonplussed. Even out here on Jaros II, they had heard the barrack-room discussion about the famous Captain Spock and his resignation from the service. The fleet had wanted to handle it with pomp and ceremony, some said, but others noted rightly that Spock’s years of duty to the Federation had earned him the right to select a quieter form of departure from the rigors of the uniform. The rumors said that he had traded in his insignia for a role in the Federation Diplomatic Corps, following in the footsteps of his father.

  And now here he was, apparently a civilian, appearing from out of nowhere. Tancreda glanced at the padd in her hand containing the files on Valeris. This could not be a coincidence.

  “My office—” She began to gesture down the corridor, but he gave a slight shake of the head.

  “I will be brief. I do not wish to delay you on your rounds.”

  They were near a monitoring room, where observers could look in on meetings and therapy sessions from any part of the complex. A suspicion came to Tancreda and she played it. “You were watching.”

  Spock nodded. “Your sessions have a . . . uniquely proactive nature, Doctor. I am reminded of the somewhat forward bedside manner of one of my former crewmates.”

  Tancreda’s skin prickled with warmth. She could feel the echo of Valeris’s buried emotions still resonating at the back of her thoughts. They were coloring her own, like ink pouring into water. “These sessions are confidential.” Her reply was terse. “I certainly do not recall giving permission for anyone to observe them.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “My security clearance affords me certain liberties.”

  “Nothing we discussed in that room had any bearing on issues of galactic security. I think you’re well aware of that.”

  The Vulcan looked away. Was that a flash of guilt she sensed? “Indeed,” he allowed. “If you will permit me to confide in you, Doctor Tancreda, I am here for personal, rather than professional, reasons. I admit, I
have used my reputation to facilitate that.”

  “Valeris.”

  He nodded again, and this time there was regret in his tone. “Yes. I am preparing to set out on a journey of some extended duration. Before that begins, I have been . . . making some rounds of my own.”

  Tancreda folded her arms, anticipating the unspoken question. “She is as well as can be expected, given the circumstances.”

  “I see.”

  The doctor gave him a level look. “You’re not going to talk to her.” She made it a statement, not a question.

  Spock shot her a challenging look, but then he gave a slow nod of agreement. “No. At the moment, that would not be in her best interests. I would find it difficult to speak with Valeris. I only wished to ensure that she was . . . comfortable.” He inclined his head in a gesture of farewell and began to walk away.

  Tancreda called out after him. “Why did you do it?” she demanded.

  He halted but did not turn back to face her.

  She went on. “The meld. You could have found out the information you needed another way.”

  “There was no time,” he said quietly. “She gave me no choice.”

  “What you did could be construed as torture, sir!” Tancreda’s voice rose. She wondered where her ire was coming from: Was it hers, or was it the ghost of Valeris’s fury speaking through her? “A crime!”

  “Yes.”

  The data accompanying Valeris’s case files covered much of what had happened on the Enterprise during the days surrounding Gorkon’s murder, including copies of the fleet review board conducted after the dust had settled. Spock’s actions had been ruled lawful in a crisis of the most extreme nature. What he had done allowed Kirk to break open a conspiracy to reignite the enmity between the Federation and the Klingons. But at what price?