Evening arrived as the ceremony reached its slow and dignified conclusion. In the rarefied air of Mount Seleya’s upper reaches, high above the heat of the Forge, the cold of night came immediately, making T’Pol shiver despite the thickness of her robes.
The three visitors rose to their feet as the adepts and their newest inductee formed a procession that departed the broad stone circle, a space that had been worn smooth over the centuries. After the wind had swallowed up the retreating sound of the adepts’ bells, T’Pau turned toward T’Pol and said, “We hope that this—the full embracing of the teachings of Surak—will become the birthright of every Vulcan, from now through every generation yet to come. Peace, through the exercise of logic, via the discipline of the Kolinahr. Do you understand now that we cannot contemplate war when that possibility is finally within our grasp?”
Ignoring T’Pau’s question, T’Pol instead addressed the administrator’s deputy. “Minister Kuvak, are you in agreement?”
Administrator T’Pau’s deputy cast an uneasy eye in his superior’s direction before answering. “In this matter, Administrator T’Pau speaks for all of Vulcan.”
“Indeed,” T’Pol said, as the bulwark of hope that had enabled her to endure the past two dozen days crumbled. “Then I must report to my commanding officer that my mission has ended in failure.” She paused; what she planned to say next would be difficult, but it had to be said. And her candor could hardly make matters any worse.
“And I must also report,” T’Pol added, “that Vulcan is being led to ruin by an evident megalomaniac.”
“Kroykah!” Kuvak shouted, his self-control momentarily in shambles.
T’Pau held up a hand for silence, and her deputy dutifully subsided, though he cast a heated glare at T’Pol. T’Pau merely stood in silence as she considered her accuser’s words with apparent serenity.
At length, the administrator said, “Do you harbor... objections to the teachings of Surak, T’Pol?”
That was a question T’Pol hadn’t expected. In fact, she hadn’t expected a question at all; she had assumed that both officials would immediately have her banished from the mountain, if not from Vulcan, for her effrontery.
“No, Administrator,” T’Pol said. “Like all Vulcans, I revere Surak. I deeply respect his accomplishments.”
T’Pau nodded sagely, looking disconcertingly wise for one so very young. “We understand. Yet you will allow your reverence and respect to take you only so far and no farther. You will not permit yourself to pass a certain point of inconvenience, particularly in regard to matters of war.”
“War is never a matter of convenience, Administrator,” T’Pol said, nettled. “But it can be necessary.”
Kuvak ceased glaring at T’Pol and lowered his eyes to the stone floor, perhaps meditating on T’Pau’s words. Did that signify that he agreed with her, T’Pol, about the occasional necessity of war?
She put that matter aside for the moment; her eyes were drawn to those of T’Pau, whose gaze had grown eerily fervid and bright, canceling out some of the darkness that was encroaching upon the guttering brazier’s failing light.
“No, daughter,” T’Pau said, shaking her head. “There are always... alternatives to war. Still, we do not wish to leave you with the impression that we are mad.”
Unable to restrain her irritation at the administrator’s continued predilection for self-absorbed pronouncements, T’Pol said, “Then will you explain precisely whom you speak of when you say ‘we’?”
T’Pau lapsed into a meditative silence for a few moments, then appeared to reach an important decision. “Very well, daughter. The person standing before you does indeed speak for another in addition to T’Pau.”
Noting that the administrator was now speaking of herself in the third person, T’Pol hoped that T’Pau’s grasp on sanity hadn’t grown as tenuous as it appeared.
“Do you claim to speak for all of Vulcan?” T’Pol said.
“No, to do so would be illogical. We speak for T’Pau, but we also speak for another: Surak.”
“Are you... keeping Surak’s katra now?” T’Pol asked. “As Jonathan Archer once did?”
“The Kolinahr adepts have designated one of their own as a long-term vessel for Surak’s katra. But we are together now, and have been for a time, since shortly after our arrival—after my arrival—at Mount Seleya several weeks ago. The experience has been a transformational one. And it is something that all of Vulcan can share, via the meld.”
Syrrannism from Voroth to ShiKahr, T’Pol thought, not quite sure yet how she should regard such a sweeping prospect of change, which could well prove to be both inevitable and permanent. It could spread out exponentially through a network of telepathic contact. All of Vulcan, governed by the purest application of Surak’s ideals, and it could all occur in a single generation’s time.
The night deepened and grew more frigid. T’Pol stood alone beside the dying brazier, pondering, long after T’Pau had retired to an adjacent chamber to meditate, long after Kuvak had excused himself to return to ShiKahr.
She contemplated the broad transformation that was almost certain to come to Vulcan.
T’Pol found a stick of incense that one of the adepts had apparently dropped on the stone floor, and tossed it onto the brazier’s stillsmoldering embers; the incense ignited, and its bitter aroma helped her to focus her racing thoughts.
As she inhaled deeply of the incense, she began to wonder whether there was more to T’Pau’s decision to stay out of the war than simple Surakian pacifism. After all, her meld with Surak had occurred after Jonathan Archer had briefly carried the Vulcan philosopher’s katra in his brain. Therefore T’Pau may have been granted a rare understanding of humans and their capabilities.
But Archer had shared his own mind with Surak, and yet had remained pragmatic in matters of war and peace. T’Pol’s mind-link with Charles Tucker must have given her an understanding of humanity’s capabilities—at least equal to that T’Pau—yet T’Pol had no illusions about humanity’s chances of survival. It was going to take more than resolve to defeat the Romulans. Earth still desperately needed Vulcan’s help.
Something else had begun to bother her about T’Pau’s vision as well: She wondered just how the administrator expected to persuade all of Vulcan to adopt the mind-meld. While the Syrrannites regarded the practice as a sacrament, most Vulcans saw the act as either an unacceptable compromise of personal boundaries or as an outright obscenity. The notion that the mass of Vulcan’s population might be expected to undertake it—even to touch the most universally revered mind in all of Vulcan history—could rouse a social backlash capable of reversing all the progress that T’Pau’s new Syrrannite government had made so far.
T’Pau is attempting to tame truly dangerous forces, she thought. Those forces could bring about an overnight leap forward in Vulcan’s progress along Surak’s path of peace and logic. Or they could dredge up old apprehensions that could drive this society right back to the fear and aggression that motivated V’Las. And that place, T’Pol felt certain, lay only a few short steps away from the raptor’s wing. She shivered, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the chill of Seleya’s thin air.
The shrill beep of the personal comm device interrupted her grim reflections.
“T’Pol here. Go ahead.”
“I have news, T’Pol,” said a voice that she recognized immediately as Denak’s. “Ych’a has just returned to Vulcan after completing a clandestine assignment.”
“That is gratifying to hear,” T’Pol said, relieved to learn of the congenial resolution to which Denak’s unenviable predicament had come.
“There is more,” Denak continued, sounding almost ebullient by Vulcan standards. “Ych’a brought someone back with her—someone I am certain you will wish to see immediately.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus
CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST NIJIL ONLY GLANCED at the image on the screen atop the desk in the
First Consul’s office. But that momentary glimpse had been more than sufficient to tell him everything he needed to know. Nijil had known from the outset that T’Leikha wasn’t content to conduct a mere ransacking, as the late Praetor D’deridex had recently done in an attempt to intimidate Valdore. Had that been her plan, T’Leikha wouldn’t have prevailed upon him to create and plant the explosive compound that had reduced the mansion, along with most of the estate’s outbuildings and much of its surrounding landscaping, to a smoldering crater.
“You do fine work, Doctor,” First Consul T’Leikha said as she gazed with obvious satisfaction at the real-time aerial images the tiny drone was still transmitting.
“Thank you, First Consul,” Nijil said, forcing a smile.
But even though he had been working secretly against Admiral Valdore’s interests, Nijil found it difficult to share the first consul’s enthusiasm. He had been quietly funneling assistance to the Ejhoi Ormiin dissidents for years—presumably without the knowledge of either Valdore or T’Leikha—but he would not have chosen this moment to make an overt move against the admiral.
“I’m not at all certain this was a wise course of action,” he said as he slowly paced across the broad, plushly carpeted chamber.
T’Leikha sighed in an almost theatrical display of forbearance. “Don’t worry, Doctor. I will see to it that Admiral D’soria retains you as his chief technologist once he assumes Valdore’s duties.”
“That’s not what worries me, First Consul.”
“I find that curious, Doctor,” she said, frowning. “I would think protecting your career would be uppermost in your mind at the moment, given the penchant that new administrations have for making a clean sweep of their predecessors’ functionaries so they can replace them with their own toadies and sycophants. Unless you have something else to protect—something you value more highly than your prized position in Valdore’s military hierarchy. But I find it difficult to imagine what that might be, since you are not known to be a family man.”
“What if Valdore turns out to be right?” Nijil asked, hoping to use a larger truth to distract her from what he wished to keep concealed. “What if the Coalition really does pose as grave a threat to the Empire as Valdore believed?” After all, the Ejhoi Ormiin’s aspirations to seize power on Romulus would be trouble enough without an aggressive external foe to fight off as well.
T’Leikha looked askance at him. “Of course Valdore was right. Coalition habitations have been expanding at an alarming rate for tens of fvheisen—particularly those of the hevam.”
“Granted,” Nijil said, though privately he maintained the same doubts he always had. “And yet you just killed a military leader who seemed to appreciate that fact better than most.”
“No,” she said, aiming such a hard scowl at him that he nearly flinched. “We quietly removed a dangerous obstacle from our paths. Other military leaders can rise to the Coalition threat more than adequately, particularly now that D’deridex’s madness has ended. Leaders such as Admiral D’soria.”
“D’soria has far less practical experience than Valdore did.”
She shrugged. “That can be said of most anyone. But D’soria also lacks Valdore’s capacity for vindictiveness. I am well aware that Valdore always held me responsible for his recent imprisonment.”
“Yet you were instrumental in setting him free.”
“In order to make use of Valdore’s talents. I have no further need of them now.”
Nijil thought he understood. Freeing Valdore had never been about his ability to win the war against the Coalition and the hevam—at least not entirely. But by freeing Valdore, T’Leikha had acquired a means of removing D’deridex from the praetorate, and with that purpose accomplished there was now no longer a reason for T’Leikha to delay replacing Valdore with someone less ambitious, and therefore less dangerous.
Admiral D’soria bore no grudges against the first consul of which Nijil was aware, and he was certain to be far easier to manage— and far less likely to make an eventual bid for Senate power—than Valdore, a former senator, would have been. Nijil wouldn’t have believed that Valdore had been plotting to rebuild his old power base in the Senate—at least not before the new praetor had freed the disgraced Senator Vrax from indefinite confinement in the Hall of State’s dungeons.
Vrax’s family now stood to regain much of the standing it had lost under D’deridex’s rule, a development that could be extremely disruptive of the delicate balance of senatorial power that T’Leikha had crafted so carefully. Vrax would place much of the blame for his imprisonment on T’Leikha, who had almost literally stepped over Vrax in order to free Valdore.
Nijil could only hope that Vrax and T’Leikha would quietly destroy each other with mutual assassination schemes, canceling each other out like a particle/antiparticle pair, preferably without causing excessive collateral damage.
As he considered what might happen in the meantime, a new thought chilled Nijil to his core: If T’Leikha could find Valdore dispensable, then when might she make a similar determination concerning the newly deceased admiral’s chief technologist?
“I trust that my services will remain useful for the foreseeable future,” he said cautiously. “Both to you and to Admiral D’soria.”
She smiled indulgently, in obvious response to his transparent unease. “Relax, Doctor. You still have a high-warp stardrive project to rebuild. Valdore has paid the price for the catastrophic failure of the avaihh lli vastam project at Atlai’fehill Stelai.”
Nijil nodded, resisting only barely the urge to smile. The apparent debacle at Atlai’fehill Stelai was indeed a setback for the Romulan military. Fortunately for him and his Ejhoi Ormiin allies, no one in the Empire’s power structure understood as yet how truly monumental that setback was.
“So you need only concern yourself with restarting the warp-seven initiative,” T’Leikha continued. “As well as periodically furnishing vital assistance with certain... special endeavors. Like the one our joint efforts brought to fruition today. As well as others that we will speak of in person at your earliest convenience.”
The scientist wasn’t sure whether he ought to feel reassured or worried. On the one hand, she had reminded him that they both would be equally culpable in today’s assassination, should it ever come to light. On the other hand, she had also acknowledged not only her inability to eliminate her political enemies cleanly on her own, but also her continued need for his expert help in covering her tracks. Nijil had always found such matters easy enough to deal with. No one would suspect that the destruction of Valdore’s estate had resulted from anything other than a tragic, if unlikely, malfunction of the public utility grid that served Ir-Dartha. The chiefs of the military, the Continuing Committee of the Romulan Senate, and even Praetor Karzan himself would soon believe Valdore’s death to be merely another unfortunate happenstance. It was a common belief, among the moneyed and ruling elites of Romulus, that such calamities tended to occur in clusters.
But now Nijil had to put all of that to one side. He had to at least keep up the appearance of rebuilding the warp-seven stardrive program. Very shortly he would have a new supreme admiral to manage. And it was all because of one key fact to which he had not yet become accustomed, or allowed himself to accept:
Admiral Valdore was dead.
SIXTY-NINE
Outer ShiKahr, Vulcan
ALTHOUGH T’POL HAD EXPECTED the lights to be on inside her late mother’s home, she kept her phase pistol at the ready as she opened the front door and entered.
“Welcome home, T’Pol,” said Denak, who stood in the entry vestibule, showing no apparent concern over her display of caution.
She lowered her weapon as the door closed silently behind her. “Your request to use T’Les’s home as a safe house was logical.”
“Nevertheless,” he said as he turned and led the way through the narrow entryway toward the dwelling’s broad central living space, “you have my gratitude.”
“Ych’a is here with you?” T’Pol asked as they walked toward the living area.
“Yes. She has just returned from the Atlai’fehill system.”
Achernar, deep inside Romulan space, T’Pol thought. The star the Terrans call Alpha Eridani.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise) Page 49
