In the past twenty years, Karatek had become a wearier, warier, and perhaps even a wiser man. He had watched the expansion of the qanats until they could shelter ShiKahr’s population underground. He had lobbied for the reconfiguration of the ships and, as a compromise that Surak had helped engineer, committed to help build the station. Vulcan’s exiles might be leaving forever, but Vulcan too was going into space. He remembered the first voyages that proved that robots and remotes could mine tritanium and duranium, even small amounts of hyponeutronium, from their system’s asteroids: they would have to pause along the way to enable the ships to endure past their projected lifespans.
What was a year or two, if it extended the ships’ effectiveness? Vulcans had learned patience in good causes. And their lives would be long, now that they had ended the need for war.
The Vulcan Space Initiative’s pilgrims had tried to keep the day of their departure a secret. Tried to keep it calm. They had succeeded in building a fleet. They had not succeeded in overpowering Vulcan curiosity. Inevitably, the news feeds learned, perhaps through their contacts among academics, some of whom still wished to “revisit” the entire question of Exile.
And with the news feeds came the politicians. And the soldiers.
Again, the bones near Karatek’s ear buzzed. “They are very insistent,” Torin told him. “I need you to help keep order. Keep them calm.”
Karatek stepped out of line, his elder sons with him. How amused Ivek would be to see him assuming the role of security guard, directing the flow of pilgrims on board the shuttle. Ivek was another one who deserved a place on board but had refused it.
“It’s the usual argument: What would be the harm in waiting? We could develop more fail-safes. This is pointless!” Torin’s voice grew crisper, and Karatek knew he was now addressing the politicians he had reluctantly consented to receive. “Sirs and Ladies, I am going to the launch site. If you wish to say your farewells, it would be courteous to accompany me.”
Now, that invitation was not the best idea Torin had ever had. The damned politicians must have harassed him past his best judgment.
“Incoming!”
Speakers screamed the threat of attack that all Vulcans had come to dread.
“Move quickly, move along, don’t stop to pick that up, quickly now!” people urged all along the line of march.
“Shut the gate!” came a shout from one of Ivek’s men, followed by an instant scream of protest from the people about to be left behind.
“They’ll have to wait for the next shuttle!” his eldest son shouted.
“Will there be a next shuttle?”
There was no time to calculate the probability.
Karatek saw his eldest son, Turak, step out of line. His wife, carrying their daughter, pushed through to join him. Just in time, Karatek reached out to stop T’Vysse from running after them.
Her eyes were terrible.
Now Karatek could hear weapons, screams of rage and pain. “Get the others on board,” he told T’Vysse. “I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
If I can.
He had worked too hard to get those shuttles off the ground, to get those ships out of Vulcan’s system. He remembered Surak’s great aphorism. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.”
Yes, he deserved better. But he was only one.
He ran toward his son and tripped over a body. His fall saved his life, as an energy beam raved over where he would have stood, and a scream of rage told him that his enemies had broken through.
He saw te-Vikram insignia. He saw the sigils of personal guards as well as ShiKahr’s own guards.
He saw Elonat, Ivek’s second-in-command, brought down by the butt of a laser rifle, then trampled by agents of the priest-kings. He was not the first of many to die, and he certainly would not be the last.
“Karatek, what are you doing?” Torin’s voice roared over the struggle. “You have to lead this wave!”
Karatek saw the old man at the end of the corridor, pressing toward the toppled security barriers. “Get those things back up!” he was ordering the surviving guards.
“Get out of here!” Torin ordered. “We’ll hold the line!”
Karatek turned. His eyelids tightened as he fought back unworthy tears. The last he saw of Torin was his old mentor, swaying with the energy of his blaster as he fired methodically into the crowd, chanting the sixth Stave of “Azeraik’s Last Stand.”
“Listen to your master,” came a familiar voice. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.”
Surak!
Karatek whirled and seized the man just as an energy bolt glanced across the carrybag he had somehow retained. He thought to shed it so he could move faster, but it had saved his life and should be retained.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
Surak raised an eyebrow at him. “Your question is superfluous. I have been waging peace, with, apparently, only limited success, so I will be returning to my duties here on Vulcan. I regret…”
An immense explosion rocked the landing field, and the two men clutched each other, fighting to retain their footing.
“We have no time for regrets. I wanted to give you this.”
He thrust a package at Karatek. In the tumult, its outer wrappings had been torn, and Karatek saw the precious silk of an inner casing. When he took hold of the thing, he knew what it was.
“The coronet!”
“Take it with you. I want you to keep records,” Surak said. “Tell your story, all of it. And one day, bring it home. Remember!”
His voice rose to a shout.
“T’Kehr! Surak!” Skamandros’s voice boomed over the crowd.
A mistake. Half the people left standing took up the chant, while Surak’s enemies tried to rush him.
“Go!” Surak ordered, and ran back the way he had come, to wage peace or die trying.
It didn’t take Surak’s logic to know which fate was the more likely.
Skamandros fell, a charred hole in his chest. For a moment, Surak’s face twisted. Then, he went over to join Ivek at the barricades. He stood watching, and Karatek knew he was deciding which enemy to speak with first to forestall their last, desperate attempt to prevent the shuttles from lifting off.
Waging peace to the last.
Tears were a waste of water, Karatek chided himself.
“Karatek!” T’Vysse’s voice in his ear. “I await thee.”
Karatek ran back the way he had come, trying not to weep.
A hideous light bloomed in Vulcan’s bloody sky, bloodier now, as Vulcan Station exploded.
The sheer enormity of that act stunned friend and enemy alike on the landing field. In the silence, Surak’s voice rose, rational, persuasive, aching with compassion.
Karatek found his feet and ran back to his family, weeping as he went.
He was last on board the shuttle, reaching it just as its hatches sealed. Its pilot lifted off before the last arrivals were seated, much less strapped in, and they reeled across the corridors. Karatek fell against a biologist whose laboratory had been three floors down from his in the VSI for the last five years. They steadied each other, but then she all but tripped over a man whose sigils proclaimed him a te-Vikram acolyte. He, in turn, rose to his knees, steadying a small girl-child, whom he restored to her anguished mother before facing off against a guardsman.
The two of them stared at each other, hate in their eyes.
“You can’t afford this!” Karatek shouted and thrust himself between them. “We will talk about this later.”
Later.
Perhaps they would fight. Or perhaps he had won precious time to wage peace, one of many such skirmishes that the people who had crammed onto the shuttles at the last minute would have to win over the next years.
The years of their exile.
He could hear people crying out for their families as turbulence buffeted the shuttle. He fought his way toward the control room, although, logically speaki
ng, he should have taken his place among the engineers. But Torin had told him to lead this group, and lead he would.
The shuttle rocked, and someone cried out that a surface-to-air missile had taken out the one immediately ahead of them. It rocked again as its pilot began an inspired series of evasive maneuvers.
When they reached the ships—assuming they reached them—he would have to create a roster of the people who had actually survived. He expected there would be some surprises, like the te-Vikram who had been swept up into the rush to get the shuttles off Vulcan. They would have to be dealt with—incorporated into the community. Vulcan-in-Exile would find uses for all of them. It was logical to leave their battles behind on the homeworld.
Perhaps it would be possible to reunite clans and families. He forced himself not to think of his son, his wife, and his grandchild, remaining on Vulcan. They had made their choice. If the Mother World survived, it would be through the efforts of people like them.
Twenty-Two
Now
U.S.S. ALLIANCE
“Formation Alpha!” Saavik shouted over the open channel to the rest of the fleet.
With captains who were, regardless of race, all professionals, the ships instantly zoomed into the agreed-upon formation. They began enclosing the enemy fleet in what would quickly become a three-dimensional trap—
No! Someone of the Watraii fleet had seen the danger just in time. The Watraii ships moved almost as one, forming an arrow of ships that surged out of the trap, turning with alarming speed and fanning out.
They are dangerously well organized, Spock thought. We must not underestimate their mobility, either.
“Beta!” Saavik shouted.
The Fleet opened up more room between them, then opened fire with testing bursts. But as Spock had expected, the Watraii were every bit as swift to react, returning fire on Saavik’s fleet. The darkness around them lit up with flashes of blue, red, and eerie green—but in the quickly shifting pattern of ships, no one was struck.
“Gamma!”
Another quick shift of positions created a new attack formation. It was a duel in space with the Watraii, their ships also in motion, each side maneuvering, each side trying to get the other to leave an opening. The Watraii fired first this time, as though tired of the duel, but Saavik’s fleet retaliated in an instant and this time gaudy flashes of green and blue showed where ships on both sides had been struck.
“Damage reports!” Saavik ordered.
Quick messages shooting from ship to ship assured everyone that, thanks to the swift maneuverings, there had been only minor damage and no serious injuries to anyone.
“The Watraii?”
Lieutenant Abrams shook her head, not looking up from her console’s screen. “Looks like…no. No major damage to any of the Watraii ships, either, Captain.”
This is what humans call a standoff, Spock thought. Perhaps now the Watraii will accept the facts and open communications with us.
The aliens evidently were thinking the same thing. “Captain,” Lieutenant Suhur said suddenly, “they are hailing us.”
“Looks like they’ve finally learned some manners,” Ruanek murmured. “Or at least some common sense.”
“Open hailing frequencies,” Saavik ordered. With what only another Vulcan would have recognized as wry humor, she added, “Admiral Chekov, I believe this call is for you.”
The figure that appeared on the viewscreen looked vaguely humanoid in its general outline, but its face was completely hidden behind a dark green oval of a mask that was ornamented only with vertical zigzag lines like so many slashes of lightning. All that could be seen of the face behind the mask were hints of pale blue-white skin and dark blue eyes.
“They haven’t changed,” Chekov said without hesitation. “It’s the Watraii.”
The Watraii leader—or at least their spokesman (the universal translator picked up a voice that sounded male)—said flatly, “You know our race. Give us yours at once.”
“I am of the human—” Chekov began.
“We do not recognize that race.” And we don’t care about it went the unspoken words. “But you must know this warning and believe it: Your race and you are in error. You have made the fatal mistake of allying yourself with the murderer race.”
Chekov glanced at Spock, Ruanek, and Saavik. “These people? But—these are Vulcans, not—”
“Would you lie? I see them beside you.”
“We are, indeed, Vulcans,” Spock said calmly. “Not any other species. We are truly Vulcans, bred to peace, not war.”
“You speak soft words, but that does not lessen the lie that hides within them.”
“They haven’t learned manners after all,” Ruanek muttered.
“You are one of the murderer race,” the Watraii continued in that flat, deadly voice. “And you, human creature, you are given this one warning: Turn back. Turn back before the Watraii destroy you along with those of the murderer race.”
Chekov didn’t blink an eye. “Sorry, but ve cannot do that. The laws of the Federation ve serve forbid genocide.”
“What nonsense is this? I fail to see why you call it genocide.” The mask hid all emotion, and the translator flattened out the words, but the anger behind the words could not be masked. “We are not criminals. We do what we must do! Eliminating the murderer race is not an act of genocide but the necessary actions of a legitimately sworn feud.”
That was too much for the Romulans. Charvanek suddenly shouted, her voice sharp with fury, “I am a Romulan, not some gentle Vulcan. Your fight is with me! And I state this for all to hear: We have sworn no feud with you, you masked coward! We have done no harm to you. And there is not and can never be any justification for what your vile and dishonorable kind has done to innocent, defenseless colonists!”
“They were not innocent!” the Watraii replied savagely. “Those creatures were nothing less than members of your murderer race. There was no such thing as disgrace in the destruction of that nest of monsters.”
Angry cries shot up and down the Romulan fleet. Charvanek shouted fiercely, “Silence! In the name of Praetor Neral, I call silence!”
Instant quiet fell. Even so, Spock suspected that it was only strict Romulan military discipline that kept them from attacking.
Unmoved by their reaction, the Watraii commander continued in that cold, remorseless voice, “So now, you members of the murderer race. Did you think that would be our only strike against you? Hear me and tremble!
“We openly declare here and now that the Watraii intend to work the same destruction, total and absolute, on Romulus and Remus. We declare nothing less than the total annihilation of the Romulans!”
This time, even the Klingons roared with rage.
“We will attack!” Commander Tor’Ka shouted.
“We will slaughter these masked cowards!” Captain JuB-Chal agreed. “The Romulans may be our sometime foes—but there’s no honor in letting someone else kill them!”
“We will not let the Klingons fight our battles!” one Romulan captain shouted back.
“We can fight for ourselves and our honor!”
“No one threatens the homeworlds!”
“No one threatens the Romulans!”
“Silence!” Charvanek shouted. “Take no action!”
“Stand down, all of you!” Saavik ordered. “Stand down!”
Spock, ignoring the turmoil around him, said, “It is only logical for us first to be given the details of this ‘sworn feud.’ ”
“The truth is not for you!” the Watraii snapped, and abruptly broke communications.
Saavik sprang to her feet. “Spock, Chekov, Ruanek, to my ready room. We have some quick plans to make.”
As Saavik traveled the short route to her ready room, Spock, Chekov, and Ruanek accompanying her, her mind was busily multitasking in true Vulcan fashion. Humans, of course, were only partly able to perform such efficient mental agility, and had, at their first meetings, been rather bemused to l
earn that Vulcans definitely could think of two things at the same time, and not lose their concentration on either account.
But right now most of Saavik’s conscious mind was analyzing the current situation with its lack of clues, puzzling over the Watraii and their claims, and hunting for a logical and—it was to be sincerely hoped—a peaceful way out of what seemed like a truly illogical and potentially warlike situation.
But part of her mind was also suddenly remembering the past, and looking for useful links or data in the strange chain of events that had led her to become who she was and to be where she was now…
…a flash of memory:
The child, thin and fierce as a wild thing, half-starving and so terribly alone but determined to survive…the half-Romulan child that the Romulans had abandoned along with the other half-bloods they had begotten, thinking them of no value…
Not useful. Forward in time.
…flash of memory…
The feral girl, rescued by the young Spock and gently, kindly, civilized by him and by his father…Sarek, a moment of genuine grief at the thought of his loss, he who had given her the first home she had ever known…
Not useful. Forward in time.
…flash of memory…
The girl, now known as Saavik, her first true name, gradually liking what she found on Vulcan, gradually liking to be civilized and trying her best to learn Vulcan ways and logic…
…flash of memory…
The young woman, Saavik totally civilized now, a Vulcan of the Vulcans, entering Starfleet and admitting to herself with brutal honesty that she was doing this because of Spock, because she wanted to please him, in a blatant case of what the humans so accurately called “hero worship.”
…flash of memory…
The horrifying information years later that Spock had died, and the amazing realization that he still lived and that she could rescue him…
…flash of memory…
All the events that had led at last to their stunned realization that there was much more than logic to their marriage…
Pleasant memories, but not useful now.
Vulcan's Soul Trilogy Book One Page 19
