Star Trek-TOS-027-Mindshadow

by Kevin Underwood

  was here... a couple of hours ago, and picked up

  a

  medikit. No, she didn't say where she was

  going..."

  The rational part of McCoy's mind commanded

  him to stop, but he no longer could. He tried the

  captain's quarters, the rec room, and then the

  dining

  room.

  His face was pale when he called Emma's

  quarters

  again, but he knew before he tried that there would be

  no answer.

  He laid his head down on the desk.

  Sulu faced his fencing partner once again, but did

  not push down his face mask. "We've been at

  it long

  enough, don't you think?" He was perspiring

  freely,

  his almond skin flushed.

  "Tired?" came the gentle voice from under the

  facemask.

  "Well . . ." Sulu smiled and winced at the

  same

  time. "It's been almost two hours. As much as I

  appreciate good parrying, I must admit that's a

  little

  longer than I'm used to."

  His partner pushed up his face mask to reveal a

  silver complexion punctuated by a flash of

  white teeth.

  His brow was covered with a light mist, as though he

  had barely begun to break a sweat. Millenia

  ago, the

  planet Radu had been settled by colonists from

  the

  Klingon system. Unlike their militant

  cousins, how-

  MINDSHADOW

  ever, the Radu were a gentle folk who directed

  their

  intelligence and curiosity to matters other than

  war.

  "Don't tell me you're not tired,"

  Sulu said. "I

  thought Radu was near Ten'an standard gravity, but

  you have the stamina of a Vulcan."

  "Thanks," said Varth Regev. He lifted the

  facemask

  off to reveal a shock of coppery hair. "I work

  at it.

  Shall we repair to the sauna?"

  The sauna was so steamy as to obscure any

  object

  more than a few feet away, but Sulu could make

  out

  Varth's stocky, muscular form; the Radun

  hadn't been

  kidding about working at it.

  Varth settled himself gingerly on the hot tile

  bench

  and Sulu did the same. "What was the call

  about?" the

  Radun asked. "Someone looking for the Captain?"

  "Not him this time, although that's usually the

  case," Sulu replied, squeezing his eyes

  shut and surrendering

  to the almost intolerable heat of the steam.

  "Dr. McCoy was looking for Dr.

  Saenz."

  "Business of a medical nature, no doubt,"

  Varth

  said innocently.

  Eyes closed, Sulu smirked, resembling a

  Buddha in

  meditation. He did not respond.

  "For such a small person," Varth continued, "she

  seems to have done some real damage."

  "She must have had quite a bit of training," Sulu

  said without opening his eyes, "to do that to the

  captain."

  He's pretty good?"

  Sulu opened one eye for emphasis and closed it

  again. "He usually works out with Mr. Spock--that

  is,

  he used to. And they weren't that mismatched. Of

  course, I understand that Dr. Saenz spent some

  time

  on Vulcan herself."

  "Looks like she learned a few tricks there."

  Sulu grunted assent. "From the look on the

  captain's face, I think the damage was serious.

  I doubt it's

  going to do much to improve his mood."

  Varth's expression became doleful. "I

  guess it

  won't."

  Sulu squinted at him through the steam and wiped a

  rivulet of condensed moisture from his forehead.

  "Been riding you pretty hard?"

  "He doesn't like me," Varth replied

  matter-of-factly.

  "I wish I knew why, what I'd done..."

  Sulu reached toward him with a reassuring gesture.

  "It's not you, Reg, not what you've done. You know

  you're good."

  "Yes," the Radun agreed, without a trace of

  false

  modesty.

  "It's just that... that the captain was very close to

  Mr. Spock. Seeing someone else take

  Spock's place is

  hard for him. But he's a fair person, Reg.

  He'll readjust."

  "Let's hope it's soon," Varth said,

  sweating.

  Kirk rolled slowly from the bed, mumbling

  incoherent

  curses at the insistent buzzing, and

  winced as the

  injured shoulder reminded him of its presence. He

  opened his eyes with a start, and relaxed again as he

  saw that he was in his own quarters. He shook his

  head and tried to remember: the injury in the gym,

  Emma wrapping it for him... he flushed because he

  remembered kissing her, and because he could not

  remember anything more. He certainly did not

  remember

  returning to his quarters, and the awful

  thought occurred to him that she might have carried

  him.

  The buzzing did not stop until he stumbled to the

  door and opened it.

  Ingrit Tomson stood, poised with mouth open,

  ready

  MINDSHADOW

  to speak, but at the sight of the captain, her

  complexion

  colored to pale pink. She closed her mouth.

  "Yes?" Kirk scowled. He knew he must have

  been

  something to see: bare-chested, bandaged, in his

  baggy white trousers, which no doubt had been

  interpreted

  as antiquated pajama bottoms. He swayed

  slightly in the doorway; the effect of the

  sedative had

  not yet worn off.

  Tomson's surprise at the captain's

  awkward appearance

  lasted but a moment; she was as excited as Kirk

  had ever seen her. The mouth opened again. "Sir,

  I'm

  sorry to wake you, but you said if I ever--"

  "Get to the point, Lieutenant," Kirk said

  crossly.

  "Sir, we have a lead on a murder suspect."

  She

  actually smiled. "I preferred to contact you

  personally,

  sir. We haven't made the arrest yet, and I

  didn't

  want anyone overhearing our conversation."

  "Then come in, Lieutenant."

  Tomson stepped just inside the door; it closed

  behind

  her with a swoosh.

  "A crewmember?" Kirk asked, interested but

  hardly sharing the enthusiasm of the security

  chief.

  "Yes, sir. It's just circumstantial

  evidence, but sufficient enough in my opinion for an

  arrest."

  "Who?" Kirk demanded.

  "Lieutenant Commander Scott, sir--"

  "Scotty? That's impossible, Tomson--"

  "Sir, after treatment with truth serum, Ensign

  all-Baslama

  was able to clearly remember all the incidents

  surrounding the disappearance of the prisoner. One of

  the thin
gs he remembers is that not half an hour

  before

  he was fired upon, Mr. Scott came down to the

  brig.

  Also-Baslama said it struck him as very odd--

  Mr. Scott

  just stood there for several minutes staring at the

  prisoner, then muttered something and left."

  "That's not enough to arrest a man, Lieutenant.

  Question him, yes--"

  "Sir, that's not all. Al-Baslama was also

  able to

  recall that the force field was lowered at

  the exact

  instant he was fired upon. Star Fleet

  Intelligence informs

  me that no one has developed a shield

  neutralizer.

  So if the pirate didn't neutralize the

  field, and all-Baslama

  didn't let it down, that leaves only one way

  the field could have been lowered."

  "Engineering," Kirk said shortly.

  "Yes, sir. The emergency override

  controls."

  "Just because Mr. Scott works in Engineering

  doesn't mean that he was the one who sabotaged the

  override--"

  Tomson shook her head. "Sorry, sir. We

  questioned

  certain crewmembers in Engineering, and a

  Midshipman

  Dobson reports that at the approximate time

  the

  shields went down in the brig, Mr. Scott was

  servicing

  the manual override controls."

  The muscle in Kirk's cheek began

  to twitch; he

  looked down at the floor and studied it for some time

  before he looked up at Tomson again.

  "I'm afraid, Lieutenant," he said

  slowly, "that

  you'll have some difficulty in arresting your

  suspect."

  Tomson looked at him quizzically.

  "Mr. Scott is not on board. He's

  piloting a shuttle-craft

  to Star Base Twelve. Spock and Chapel are

  with

  him."

  She paled. "Then we'd better put out a

  bulletin on

  him as soon as possible."

  Kirk shook his head firmly. "No. He'll

  come back,

  Lieutenant."

  Tomson gasped in disbelief. "Sir, Mr.

  Scott could

  very well be a murderer, in which case he's been

  given

  the perfect opportunity to escape. I have

  to issue a

  warrant--"

  MINDSHADOW

  "Lieutenant," he said, "Mr. Scott is

  due to arrive

  back in approximately five hours. You can

  question

  him then."

  "And if he doesn't return, Captain?"

  "He'll return. If he's even ten minutes

  late, you can

  issue a bulletin on him and throw me in the

  brig."

  "Yes, sir," Tomson said coldly. Kirk

  had no doubt

  that she fully intended to take him up on the offer.

  Chapter Six

  THE STAR CALLED Eridani 40 slid

  slowly up over

  Vulcan's horizon, a reddish-pink ghost of the

  blazing

  fireball it would become by midday. It eased the

  moonless darkness, and slowly colored the desert

  from black to gray to red, the sky from indigo to soft

  orange; the mountains in the distance

  remained coal

  black.

  Nothing was so quiet, so serene as dawn over the

  plain. Even the hellishly hot breezes for which

  Vulcan's

  deserts were notorious would not stir until

  Eridani

  climbed higher in the sky. The still cool air

  carried

  the oddly sweet, piercing warble of silver-birds,

  teresh-kah, which sang only at dawn to greet the

  sun.

  A lone traveler, weary from the night's journey

  across the desert, closed his eyes and stopped

  to listen

  to the song of the teresh-kah. He stood transfixed

  until

  the first warm gust swept across the plain and drowned

  out the ancient melody, then resumed his painfully

  slow pace toward his destination, the small desert

  township of ShiKahr.

  t24

  MINDSHADOW

  To the east lay the black Arlanga Mountains,

  cold

  and forbidding in their grandeur. It was there he had

  tested himself, at the age of seven, in his own

  personal Kahs-wan, the ordeal of maturity. The

  fear of failure had led him to the mountains months

  before the formal

  ritual took place in the Sas-a-shar desert

  --the mountains

  were far more dangerous than the desert, and he

  knew that if he could survive them, he would

  easily

  survive the desert. Twice that year he had

  crossed the

  plain of ShiKahr on foot, once heading east

  to the

  mountains, one west to Sas-a-shar.

  Now Spock crossed the plain a third time,

  traversing the fifteen kilometers of desert that lay

  between the

  Vulcan capital of ShanaiKahr and the city

  where he

  was born.

  His hometown of ShiKahr was quite small and

  tourism was nonexistent; therefore, one shuttle

  ran in

  the morning to take locals into the

  capital, and one

  shuttle ran in the early evening to bring them home

  again. Spock arrived in ShanaiKahr shortly

  after the

  evening shuttle had left. If he had wanted

  to wait all

  night and another day in the capital, he could have

  caught the next shuttle going into ShiKahr.

  Conveying this complex information to Chapel

  would have been tedious and pointless; Spock

  preferred

  to cross the desert himself in the cool night, and

  courtesy forbade his waking his family to have them

  pick him up in the skimmer. Since Chapel would

  have

  refused to allow him to do so, he let her assume

  that he

  could easily catch a shuttle so that she could

  dispense

  with her responsibility toward him. She had

  broken

  her ankle when they had crash-landed in the soft sand

  dunes of Star Base 12, and had refused

  to take anything

  strong for the pain, as she was obliged

  to keep an

  alert eye on Spock at all times. The

  ankle had begun to

  throb so that even with a lightweight emergency cast,

  she was unable to put any weight on it, and it was

  necessary for Spock to help her off the shuttle when

  they arrived on Vulcan. When he went to the

  nearest

  terminal and purchased a return ticket for the

  next

  flight back to Star Base 12, where Scott was

  repairing

  the Galileo, Chapel accepted without even a

  mild

  protest.

  The fierce high-pitched scream of ale matya

  brought

  Spock's thoughts back to the desert; he continued

  grimly, keeping his pace steady. The le matya

  might

  catch his scent, in which case he would be in grave

 
; danger, but he did not flinch at the thought. He

  had far

  worse things to fear than ale matya; that, at

  least,

  would be a clean, quick death.

  The fearsome predator had still not attacked when

  Spock arrived at the city border, a carefully

  sculpted

  garden springing out of the desert. He was safe; the

  sensors hidden in the greenery surrounding the city

  kept out unwanted beasts but permitted the

  passage of

  Vulcanoids, humanoids, and domesticated

  animals.

  The dusty streets of ShiKahr were as sparse and

  bare as the desert itself; the hot wind stirred up

  dancing swirls of sand. Spock passed no one

  as he

  walked through the town, and at last he arrived at his

  father's house. He paused before the garden wall; the

  heavy gate was made from a single massive

  block of

  stone inlaid with ebony wood that had been polished

  to

  a sheen. A small metal plate hung

  slightly below

  Spock's eye level. On it was inscribed a

  hieroglyph, a

  symbol of such ancient origin that its

  pronunciation

  had been lost millennia ago by all save the

  clan for

  whose name it stood. It was not written in the modern

  Vulcan script, for it was not permitted for any

  stranger

  to utter the name of one's ancestors, a custom

  dating

  from before Vulcan's collective memory, from a

  time

  MINDSHADOW

  when one's forbears were worshipped as deities rather

  than merely esteemed.

  Spock held his hand before the timeworn symbol;

  the massive gate sighed and opened before him.

  The contrast to the bare sand streets outside would

  have startled a stranger, for the garden within the

  sterile stone walls was as lush and deep green as

  a

  tropical rainforest. Spock crossed the stone

  pathway

  to the front entrance of the house. He passed through

  the main room, not bothering to glance around him,

  and into the long narrow hallway that led to his

  bedroom.

  He had reached the point of exhaustion; sleep

  was at hand.

  The sight of his old bedroom was overwhelmingly

  comforting; it was as it had always been, comfortably

  familiar, everything in its proper place.

  With one notable exception.

  He had removed his cloak and was nearing the bed

  when the figure of a young female, barely a

  woman, sat

  bolt upright in his bed, clutching the covers

  modestly

  to her bosom. Her features were Vulcan, but

  strangely

  enough she made no effort to stifle the wave of

  emotion

  that assaulted Spock: terror, followed by a