Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History

by Christopher L. Bennett

  He had hoped—yet again—to be spared this. Hoped that by relaxing his rigid emotional repression, he would have somehow made it easier, less overpowering, when the time came. And yet what burned in his veins now was as intense as it had been before . . . seven years ago.

  So he retreated to his guest quarters aboard the Hypatia and immersed himself in meditation. Hopefully he could at least defer the worst of it until he could return to Vulcan and then . . . then . . .

  What? He had given no thought to what he would do when the pon farr came upon him again. He had known this day might come soon, but he had chosen to devote himself to Saavik’s training anyway. Sometimes the cycle was irregular. Sometimes assuming responsibility for a child could postpone the hormonal surges that triggered the mating drive. Perhaps that was why it had kicked in so suddenly now—because it had been looming already, held in abeyance until he was separated from his young charge. Perhaps if he resolved this matter quickly and returned to Saavik, the urges would subside again until . . . until he could decide on a logical course of action.

  Or until he died because he had been too foolish, too afraid even now of facing this onslaught of emotion, to develop a plan for it. To find someone he could turn to. To take a mate. Why had he avoided even considering it?

  Spock became aware that the door signal had been sounding persistently for some moments. Then her voice, T’Pring’s voice, sounded through the door. “Spock! Let me in!”

  He did not mean to obey, but a moment later she was stepping inside, facing him. Her eyes caught his intensely. She trembled. Her skin was hot enough to feel across the small space that divided them . . .

  He moved back, putting the length of the room between them, and turned to look out the viewport at the Muroc beyond. “You should not be here, Subcommander.”

  “Yes, Spock, I must. I must understand how this bond has formed between us.”

  “I . . . apologize . . . if it is inappropriate.”

  “No. I am unbonded.” A pause. “My betrothed—Stonn—and I went into space service together, as couples so often do. But . . . he was killed in a Compact raid before our first time together came.”

  “I grieve with thee,” Spock said ritualistically. Some part of his analytical mind that remained functional was fascinated by the degree of convergence between timelines, the tendency of the same individuals to follow similar life paths. In both realities, T’Pring and Stonn had come together. And now, somehow, the currents of probability had brought T’Pring and Spock together at a time of pon farr, even though no Spock had ever lived in her reality. Was there perhaps some kind of quantum resonance between timelines that led different iterations of the same individual along similar paths? But he was in no condition to assess the hypothesis now.

  “When the need came upon me,” T’Pring continued, “a fellow officer provided . . . his services. Yet he was bonded already and married soon thereafter. And so I remain unattached.” She paused. “So why do I feel this . . . so strongly . . . toward you?” She stepped closer, but froze when she saw how he tensed. She retreated behind an elementary question—or so she must have thought. “Are you unbonded as well?”

  Spock took several slow, deep breaths before daring to answer. “I . . . was bonded,” he said. He still resisted facing her, but he glanced over his shoulder as he confessed, “To you.”

  She gave a soft gasp that only Vulcan ears could discern.

  “Forgive . . . my inaccuracy,” Spock went on. “Of course, I mean your counterpart. That T’Pring and I were bonded as children. When the time came, we met at the appointed place.”

  “We . . . were married?”

  “She challenged. For she, too, desired Stonn.” He repressed a surge of rage. “She maneuvered me into killing my closest friend—or so I believed at the time. I released her from her commitment to me.”

  There was a pause before T’Pring spoke. “Then that is why you resist this now. Is that logical, Spock?”

  “This should not be. I react to you because you share her hormones and psionic signature. It has triggered this involuntary response. And my own hormonal and psionic influence is what you are responding to.”

  “Psionic?” she asked, startled. “You are a melder. This is something you are doing to me . . .” But her tone revealed disbelief in her own words.

  Ahh, yes. Spock recalled that before the Kir’Shara had been rediscovered, most Vulcans had believed mind-melding to be a rare ability, socially ostracizing those who displayed it. The mating bond had been explained away as a purely pheromonal and psychological effect, its subtle psionic component glossed over. “All Vulcans have the capacity to join minds,” he told her. “Some more strongly and instinctively, but in the rest it simply needs to be awakened through training.” He saw her hesitation. “If you stay away from me, perhaps the effect—all of the effects—will subside for you.”

  This time, when T’Pring came closer, she did not let his resistance stop her from touching him, turning him to face her. “But not for you. If we are mentally linked—never and always touching and touched,” she went on, the ritual phrase carrying new meaning for her, “then that gives me a responsibility for you. Why should I leave you to suffer, perhaps to die, when I am ideally qualified to succor you?”

  “Because I do not wish it!” he barked, seizing her arms and shoving her away.

  But this T’Pring was a trained soldier. She grabbed his forearms and turned her momentum to her advantage, spinning around and flinging him onto the couch. A second later she was atop him, forearm pressing against his throat. His hands rose to clench her throat. Aghast, he caught himself, stopped them . . . and then watched them stroking her cheeks, her shoulders. He jerked them back, just as aghast.

  “Think, Spock!” T’Pring cried, panting harder than exertion alone would account for. “We both need to be at maximum efficiency to save your crewmates. Logically, we should mate, and we should do it now. It is the optimal way to resolve this difficulty.”

  He pushed her off him, rising and seeking distance again, but she stood in the middle of the narrow room and there was nowhere to go. But did he resist so strongly because of his resentment . . . or because of the intensity of his desire?

  “Spock, look at me,” T’Pring said. He resisted. “You are being childish. Look at me!” Sullenly, he met her gaze. “I understand what you see, Spock. You see your betrayer. You see a cold, covetous manipulator. But I am not that T’Pring. I could not be.” Her voice softened. “Stonn was a part of me. And I lost him. Ever since, I have been incomplete.

  “She could not understand that, if she was capable of making you kill your friend to satisfy her agendas. Perhaps then, when all I knew was desire for Stonn and its gratification, I would have been as selfish. But now I understand the . . . the immensity of loss. The profoundness of solitude.”

  T’Pring reached out the first two fingers of her hand, brushing them lightly against his. “I see that same solitude in you. You know the emptiness of being alone, and yet you seek it out, preferring it to the risk of making a bond. I find that an illogical waste, Spock. I would not see you condemn yourself—or your friends.” She lifted his hand up between them, stroked his paired fingers more firmly with her own. “We can help each other, Spock. Let me help you . . . and then let me help your friends.”

  Let me help . . . He remembered how Jim Kirk revered those words. As Spock gazed into her dark eyes, as he sensed the timbre of her inner voice through her touch, he knew that her likeness to the T’Pring of this universe was superficial. The T’Pring he had known would see no logic in thinking of another’s needs before her own. She could not be this generous. This kind.

  So he could see no reason, logical or emotional, to refuse her generosity. Clasping both her hands, opening his mind to the untrained but instinctual touch of hers, he led her into the bedroom.

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Stardate inapplicable

  “Okay, so we have to break out of here,” McCoy s
aid. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that we can do that without getting blown to bits. But where will that get us? We’ll still be damaged, and we’ll have two fleets huntin’ us down instead of one.”

  The doctor, Kirk, and Sulu were meeting in the officers’ lounge at the rear of the bridge module—not the private meeting room with its holographic screens, but the public observation area, a cozy conversation pit with four large trapezoidal windows affording a spectacular view of the rear of the saucer and the backswept, Art Deco warp nacelles. McCoy and Sulu sat in comfortable chairs on the port side of the lounge, the branches of one of the dwarf trees in the planter behind them tickling the doctor’s head if he leaned back too far. Sulu took the seat closest to the windows, his knees blocking McCoy’s view of the painting on the low wall beneath them, a representation of an Apollo astronaut on Luna with Earth over his shoulder. Assorted books and journals rested on the low table against the aft wall, left by various members of the crew for the benefit of their shipmates. Normally this lounge would have been more populated at this time of the evening, but the ship’s officers were currently either busy with the round-the-clock repair schedule or sleeping off their exhaustion from same.

  Kirk paced before the windows, gazing out at the claustrophobic drydock frame that contained the Enterprise like a cage, a dense clutter of scaffolds lit in the green hues that the Klingons favored, giving the Enterprise’s hull a sickly cast. “We can’t stay here, Bones. I can’t hold off ch’Naras and Barak much longer. Either we get out while we can or they take this ship by force.”

  “I’m not arguing that. I’m just asking, what the hell do we do next?”

  “We try to convince the Vulcans we’re not their enemies.”

  “These Vulcans? Jim, they’re practically Romulans. You heard ch’Naras.”

  “We’ve heard his side of things. And we got off on the wrong foot with the Vulcans because they were concerned about their missing ship.”

  “And they’re still Vulcans, Doctor,” Sulu said. “Their history’s only different for the past one or two centuries. So they still believe in logic. They should be open to reason.”

  “Vulcans aren’t exactly known for their openness to new ideas, Mister Sulu,” McCoy told him. “It took a hundred years for humans to convince them we didn’t need mollycoddling.” He turned to the captain. “And Jim, you and I know firsthand the kind of savagery the Vulcans barely manage to keep buried beneath the surface. And these Vulcans aren’t tryin’ as hard to bury it!”

  “So what’s your alternative, Bones?” the captain challenged.

  “Hell, there must be some neutral worlds somewhere in this godforsaken reality. Someone who hasn’t lined up with either side. Maybe Denobula, or the Betelgeusians.”

  “It could take weeks to find a viable ally, even longer to take the planetoid from the Vulcans and figure out how it works. We don’t have time for that. The Vedala confluence drives might kick in again and leave us stranded here at any moment. Our only option is to work with the people who control the planetoid, who’ve already got a head start on studying it. We have to mend fences with the Vulcans.” Once he saw that McCoy had no ready riposte, Kirk turned to his acting first officer. “Sulu? Any other thoughts?”

  Sulu took a moment before responding. “I agree, Captain.”

  Kirk waited. “Anything else?”

  The acting exec fidgeted. “No, sir. It’s a sound plan.”

  “Very well,” the captain said after a moment more. “Let’s sleep on it and work out the details in the morning. Good night, gentlemen.”

  Kirk went up the short steps and headed through the dining area toward the exit. Sulu and McCoy followed, but the doctor stopped the younger man by the beverage dispenser as Kirk went on without them. “Hikaru, how about a little nightcap? It helps me sleep.”

  Sulu smiled, though with some confusion. “Sure, Doctor, if you like. But the captain . . .”

  “Jim can manage. It’s you I wanted to talk to.”

  “What about?”

  Their drinks obtained, they sat at one of the tables. “Back there, when Jim asked your opinion, it looked to me like you weren’t entirely sold on his plan.”

  “Why, no, Doctor!” Sulu said, shaking his head. “The captain knows what he’s doing.”

  “You misunderstand me, Hikaru. The problem isn’t that you weren’t convinced. The problem is that you didn’t say anything about it.”

  Sulu gave a nervous chuckle. “Doctor, you raised the objections just fine without me.”

  “Sulu, stop thinking like a helmsman. You’re the first officer here, not me. Sure, I can tell Jim when I think something’s a bad idea. But your job is to let him know if you have a better one.”

  McCoy sipped his drink while Sulu pondered that. “Think about it. Does Spock just sit there quietly and let Jim make the plans on his own?”

  “No,” Sulu said slowly. “If anything, Spock usually comes up with the plans. But . . . but he’s Spock!”

  “Yes, he is. And that’s why Jim wants him as first officer, not just science officer. Because Jim doesn’t want a yes-man or a rubber stamp. He wants a first officer who’ll give him good ideas. Who’ll come up with options he wouldn’t have thought of on his own.”

  Sulu pondered his words, then finished his drink in one go, as if fortifying himself. “Thanks, Doc. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to see the captain.”

  McCoy raised his glass in a toast. “Attaboy.”

  “I think we should go to Earth, sir.”

  Luckily Kirk was still up when Sulu called at his quarters, doing some reading before bed. He set his book—Duane’s acclaimed monograph on Vulcan history—on the couch beside him as he pondered Sulu’s words. “You mean the Onlies’ Earth?”

  “Yes, sir. It stands to reason that it returned here. I know it’s uninhabited now, but there were Federation relief workers and science teams living there for nearly eight years while it was in our timeline.” He leaned forward, resting his hands on the table in the center of the living area, taking care not to disturb the antique armillary sphere that was its centerpiece. “And they left in a hurry. They may have left equipment there we can use to help repair the Enterprise, put us in a stronger position when we face the Vulcans.”

  “Hm.” Kirk considered him. “And if they didn’t?”

  “If nothing else, sir . . . we know the Sol system better than the Vulcans or the Compact do. That would give us a defensive advantage if we needed to fight or elude pursuit. Sure, some of the inner orbits must have shifted by now, but we have detailed knowledge of things we could use for concealment or defense—Jupiter’s magnetic field and radiation belts, Saturn’s ring system, the geysers on Enceladus.”

  “It’s an interesting idea, Mister Sulu,” Kirk said after a moment. He rose, laying the book down next to an abstract crystal sculpture on the couchside shelf. “Which is why I already considered it before making my decision. You’re right about the possibilities for repair and defense, but the bottom line is, we simply don’t have the time. Fighting the Vulcans is not an option. We have to establish a dialogue with them—even if it means surrendering and throwing ourselves on their mercy.”

  “I understand, sir,” Sulu said, disheartened. “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

  Kirk came around the table and lightly clasped his arm. “Hikaru, a first officer never wastes his captain’s time by offering an opinion—only by failing to do so. I need you to feel free to contribute ideas. Maybe the next one will be something I hadn’t considered. Maybe it’ll be something I would’ve rejected on my own but could be talked into by a persuasive enough argument. Who knows? Maybe I would’ve given more thought to going to Earth if you’d proposed it before I made my decision. But being a captain means sticking by your choices and not second-guessing yourself. So in future, Mister Sulu, I hope I can count on you to make your opinions heard up front.”

  Sulu straightened. “Yes, sir. I’ll make sure of it.”


  U.S.S. Hypatia

  Stardate 7585.8

  The joining with T’Pring was at once more profound and more quotidian than Spock had imagined. Though their minds touched and flowed freely through one another, the resultant connection was not as deep, not as compelling, as that between mates bonded in childhood. It was impermanent, as it had to be, as they both preferred it to be. But it was what they both needed at this time, and its ephemerality, its particularness to this moment in their lives, gave it special meaning to them both.

  The physical aspects of their interaction were certainly . . . fascinating . . . in a visceral sort of way. T’Pring had significantly more experience in such matters, more training and practice in the Vulcan arts of neuropressure which could be applied as a therapeutic art, a martial art as in the nerve pinch, or—as Spock learned now—a more intimate art as well. Yet she taught him the reciprocal techniques to ensure that the benefits of their interaction were mutually gained.

  But what surprised Spock was how gentle and relaxed the interaction was. The burning, the frenzy, came from the frustration of the need for joining; once that need was met, the blood fever passed relatively quickly, the initial passion sated, though still remaining in a less urgent, more enriching form. Moreover, the intellect returned quickly, allowing them to take fulfillment from one another on a mental level as well as the primal, animalistic level he had expected and somewhat feared.

  In short, they talked a great deal, in between and even during their more physical interactions. Spock found himself able to speak openly to T’Pring of things he had rarely been able to discuss with any but his closest friends and family, and sometimes not even that. She listened without judgment to things that most Vulcans in either universe would react to with scorn or shock, things that she herself might not have accepted in another state of mind.

  “This new emotional engagement,” she said to him at one point, “is something your father accepts?”