Chapter Text
Logically, Prisu knew what to expect that first time at sixteen. Or should have. They had been in captivity three years by then. But one could not logically prepare for an experience yet to be experienced. It was all conjecture. To make herself ready, she attempted to recreate it out of whispered conversations and stray, unguarded emotions that only served to magnify the anticipated unpleasantness. She’d sought reassurance from her mother’s mind like a child and found it closed tight as it so often was after Sunat was taken away. Instead, Mother gave advice, “There is a short time in which you will be able to meditate. Seek stillness. Calm. The man is stronger than you. It is illogical to fight him. If you fight you will be injured.” Prisu fully intended to follow her mother’s advice, but as soon as she felt the press of the man’s body on hers, the fear hormones rushed to her blood. She could not keep from fighting and, as her mother warned, she suffered for it.
After that first time, a serene mind was illusory at best, and acceptance was … unacceptable to her. To make herself aesthetically unappealing she feigned a vermin infestation and shaved her head under the watchful eye of Dr. Mas, who knew she was lying about the vermin but did not care. The men mocked her but were otherwise undeterred. After a soldier ardently admired the softness her skin, pinching, stroking, nipping at it with his teeth, she rubbed a stinging weed on her naked flesh to make it blister. Again Dr. Mas treated her without question. But she had to spend two extra days in the garden beds making up for time lost. She gained a reputation for being challenging, which made everything worse.
She then decided to concentrate her meditation on making her womb inhospitable – thickening the cervical mucus to reduce sperm motility, thinning the uterine lining so that a fertilized ovum could not attach, trying to prevent ova from being released at all. But her efforts at this, like every attempt before, proved harmful only to herself. None of the other women used meditation techniques for contraception because the only reprieve from rape was pregnancy.
But even that certainty had fallen away. Commander Kaol had grown lax about so many of the rules. He’d never taken the visibly pregnant to his bed, but within weeks of her parturition, he’d done so with Shashi, made her do something that had deeply disturbed the older women. He’d also returned her mother to the garden beds though she was breastfeeding, and her fertility ( and therefore, usefulness) was reduced by 98%. He’d taken Talu out of rotation to service him alone. Then beat her so severely – well, none of the Starfleet people could tell them if she was even still alive. And her little sister Tes, a child, nearly victim to the one perversion Kaol had never indulged in all the years of their captivity.
If Mother had killed him, Prisu would certainly not mourn the loss. If the Vulcan Starfleet officer expected any of them to experience regret for what Mother had done, he would be disappointed.
***
“Any one of us might have done the same,” she told him.
“Only one of you did however.”
Spock walked with Prisu and Tes toward the shuttle, concentrating on holding an infant who was squirming furiously and somehow managed to be dead weight at the same time. Tes had offered to take her brother from him, which he declined. Prisu had not offered, but she would be boarding in her mother’s place so he assumed she understood she would have to take responsibility at that point. Though he learned quickly it was unwise to make assumptions about Prisu. Tes, on the other hand, was overcorrecting for any perceived disrespect.
“May I ask, sir, why Mother cannot come with us? She appears calm now.”
“Your mother is unwell. I will escort her to the ship’s medical facility myself once you and your siblings are safely away on one of the shuttles.”
Tes glanced back over her shoulder at Perren still on the bench staring into the middle distance while her armed guard did likewise. “Your pardon, sir, but she does not look unwell.”
“He means she is dangerous,” Prisu said. “He fears her tremendous power.”
Tes darted a glance at him, embarrassed for his sake at the accusation. Seeing no evidence of fear in Spock, another backward look at her mother showed a woman who seemed quite powerless at this moment. Prisu was obsessed with the rightness of her position. Tes was caught in the crossfire of provocations clearly directed at him.
They reached the shuttle and the pilot, Ensign Waeyur, stepped out for a final inspection. The second shuttle was in a holding pattern waiting for this one to take off and the delays had been unnerving and frustrating to the captain no matter how unusual the circumstances of those delays. This was the one shuttle outfitted with the safety of infants and small children in mind, so this was the one that waited.
Prisu took a couple of steps up the short ramp and turned to face him, gesturing that he should hand over her brother. He tensed, hesitating even as the infant stretched pudgy arms reaching out for her. She tugged the baby from his grasp.
“I would have done the same to Kaol, had I the skill or knowledge.” She pressed her cheek against her brother’s cheek. “Would I not, my pretty pi’kan-bu?” A singsong inflection engaged her little brother’s attention, but the words were meant for Spock. She placed one arm across the infant’s back and the other beneath his bottom, swaying and rocking with him. “Unlike my mother, I would have made certain he was dead.”
With that she turned and disappeared into the shuttle.
Beside him, Tes took a step forward, then stopped, her arms held stiffly away from her body, fingers splayed. She looked at the craft’s interior and suppressed a shudder. None of the passengers could be seen from that angle, only the deck, the bulkhead dividing the pilot from the passengers and blinking indicator lights. Ensign Waeyur came around from the other side of the craft, trailing his hand along the outside hull, his inspection finished. He looked from one to the other. Spock knew the shuttle was now at capacity, and that most of Tes’s relatives (save one) were currently onboard. Waeyur interpreted the situation without prompting. “I suppose I can seat her in the co-pilot's seat if you want her on this flight, sir.”
Short runs like this didn’t require a co-pilot or even a navigator. The course was set in and there were few changes the pilot couldn’t handle. The navigator’s chair was unoccupied, and he considered it. The next shuttle was to carry the women who were pregnant, and the last one would transport everyone else, including older children like her.
But the language of her body said no, arms crossed over her chest, lips pressed tight together to stop them from quivering. The stresses of the day were taking a toll. Her emotions were too close to the surface and he could not expect her to maintain equanimity as he might an adult.
“If you wish, I will allow you to beam up to the ship with me as I accompany your mother to the Enterprise’s medical facility. That way you can assure yourself she will be treated respectfully and with compassion.”
“Thank you, sir,” she whispered.
Immediately he regretted his impulsiveness. But Ensign Waeyur took it as a given, stepping into the shuttle, and retracting the ramp. The door slid shut and after a second, running lights lit up as the interior preflight checks commenced.
On the compound’s side of the tower, a ripple of anticipation as women still waiting to get off the planet realized the wait was shorter now. He could see Nyota expertly multi-tasking. None of the tasks fell strictly under her purview as communications officer and most were well beneath her paygrade. She had agreed to this because he had asked, and she never took on any task she did not intend to give her all. Observing her calm efficiency reminded him of when she’d been his teaching assistant. And not angry with me. She noticed him watching and turned her back.
“Come,“ he told Tes. They sped from the landing area. She was jogging to keep up with his long strides, so he slowed his pace. But distracted by the sight of a young Romulan soldier vanishing in a column of light, she did not slow down and ran into his back. Her cheeks colored. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Apologies, sir.”
He dipped his chin in concession, then said, “There are conditions imposed on this offer.”
“I am listening, Mr. Spock.” He paused to make certain of it then started walking again. She half-skipped alongside until a sideways look from him reminded her to dampen her excitement.
“You will not touch her or allow her to touch you. Make certain that myself or the security officer is physically between you and your mother at all times—”
“She would not hurt me.”
“I am certain she would never mean to do so, but her mind is … in disarray. It is best to take precautions.” Even with precautions his proposal sounded more illogical and fraught by the second. He stopped ten meters from the bench where her mother sat and lowered his voice. “I must also warn you that once there, she will be confined to a room and restrained for a time. It may be unsettling to witness, and you cannot interfere.”
She looked at him with such earnest regard, her features an awkward mixture of prepubescent baby fat and adolescent angles. Head too big for her body. Eyes too big for her head. Teeth too big for her mouth. Her limbs thin and gangling. He could still change his mind. The third scheduled shuttle was surely a more appropriate option. Safer.
“I will adhere to your conditions, sir.”
“Very well.”
She returned to half-skipping, half-jogging again. “I-I have never been through a matter transporter beam.”
He might have cited the Enterprise’s rigorous safety protocols, regular inspections, upgrades, and factors of error percentages. Instead, he said, “Your safety is assured, nu'ri veh.”
“It will be a constructive experience in every way then.”
***
“And look at this, sir,” Sooka said, pointing at the surveillance cameras above the doors. “Disabled. In every room. There’s a monitoring setup for all these in the squad leader’s office but it’s just for show. Hasn’t been active in a long long time.”
Kirk’s self-imposed condition of seeing the first shuttle off before returning to the bridge meant he now had time on his hands. Hence, he found himself standing in a tiny cell with a beefy Tiburonian pondering disabled surveillance devices.
“So,” he ventured, “there was supposed to be oversight of some kind. And they just stopped bothering?” If voyeurism had been a motivation, the devices would be still be in operation. Likely surveillance was originally intended to protect their … what? Breeding stock?
Everything about this outpost made him sick to his stomach.
The eight rooms in the modular building were essentially prison cells – about 2 x 3 meters, gray walls, strip lights in the ceiling, with a bed bolted to one wall and a toilet/sink combo that slid out of a panel on the opposite wall. A drawer next to that held a container of cleansing cloths, and a jar of what he assumed (with an involuntary shudder) was lubricant. This particular room was clean and tidy, but the air was stale and held traces of the much stronger odors they’d got whiff of in the disheveled, recently vacated rooms. Though never occupied by humans, there was familiarity by association in those odors. He wanted to blow this building into space and, also, call his mother and apologize for all the teenage-boy smells in his room when she was home that one time.
He concentrated his attention on the disabled surveillance devices instead.
Perhaps the experiment was never meant to last this long. Or the powers-that-be got lazy. Perhaps no one in the Romulan government had been able to figure a graceful way out of this mess once the planet Vulcan was destroyed. The fear of Federation reprisals for Vulcan’s demise got all conflated with their usual paranoia and bad intentions as evidenced by this outpost. (Officially, the Federation noted that the Empire bore no responsibility, but the Romulans were a suspicious bunch and there were a lot of revenge rumors floating around the quadrant.)
Add to that, Vulcans were now a rare species, possibly perceived as valuable commodities.
Beside him, Sooka made a face, scrutinizing bare facts. “The tech seems kind of dated for a society that places so much value on innovative state-of-the-art military. This is all surplus, bargain basement stuff. And there’s not much of it either.”
“The medical equipment looked current,” Kirk said, but he saw chief’s point. The fact that the equipment in the tower hadn’t been powered up for a while was definitely odd. “If this program was conceived and operated by Romulan secret intelligence, maybe they didn’t want a lot of attention called to it – in case they had to scrap it quick. Political winds shift a lot.”
“But the cheap stuff is easier to hack!”
“Why would anyone bother? Why suspect hacking would get them any information of value? Even the message we traced here was just straight-up text. I mean, sure the transmission method was clever, getting out through a dedicated channel, hitting all the right nodes, but—”
“They captured ships though, right?”
“Everyone thought the Orion Syndicate was responsible. This could all be attributed to the Syndicate.”
No dis to Chief Sooka, but Spock was better at turning Kirk’s intuitive speculations into actionable insights. There were still so many pieces missing from this puzzle. And lot of those missing pieces were actual people, some of those, hybrid infants. How many had already been born? Where were they now? Did Spock’s hypothesis fit the evidence or were they fitting the evidence to preconceptions?
Interviews with the Vulcans would fill in some blanks, though he suspected they had no clear idea of the ultimate plan either. Unfortunately, not much clarity could be counted on from the Romulan soldiers in custody even if they all still had working brains. He was confident those men didn’t know any more about the big picture other than they got to have a lot of sex with women who couldn’t refuse them.
His communicator chirped. “Kirk here.”
“The first shuttle is on its way back to the Enterprise, Captain,” Spock said. “The second one is preparing to land. I have also taken the liberty of assigning a science team to do forensic sweeps of the outpost, all the hard and soft equipment and systems. Whatever information is here we intend to take with us.”
“Perfect.”
“I am beaming to the Enterprise with Perren shortly. Lt Uhura is directing the onboarding of the rest of the Vulcans, and they have all been assigned quarters. I have also been informed that the Romulan prisoners are confined to the brig. The commander is in the medbay being treated, and the young man who requested asylum has just beamed aboard. I have not spoken with Lt. Beghaii but assume she will handle the particulars of that situation as well as the finalities of the mission.”
Kirk checked with Sooka who nodded. “Acknowledged. That’s the plan.” That was also his cue. “Thank you, Mr. Spock. Kirk out.”
And moments later, he was.
***
By the time Jiekh and his armed escort reached the berth he’d been assigned, the device that translated his words into theirs was functioning so smoothly he hardly noticed it. He placed the clean garments he’d been given on the narrow bed. The room was small but had private hygiene facilities and a beverage dispenser. His guard demonstrated how to use these things and informed him that he was not to leave this room without an escort and that if he did so he would be placed in high security detention with the rest of his fellows.
“Do you have any dietary restrictions?”
“I am unsure. I have never eaten Federation foods.”
The man considered a moment. “There’s some Vulcan food on regular rotation you’ll probably do okay with. I’ll let the galley know. Your meals will be brought to you here.”
“My thanks.”
The man shrugged “Sure.” He entered information into a handheld device. “Once they’ve processed your asylum request you should be able to eat in crew’s mess. More options there.” He glanced up. “I don’t know how long that will take, mind you.”
“Will my tablet be returned to me soon?”
“Um… sorry. I don’t know anything about that.”
“Can you find out?”
A noise of frustration was followed by a suspicious look. “Maybe.”
“It has my games and other entertainment programs.”
The man lurched forward suddenly and Jiekh stumbled back. “Dude. Relax.” A holo-screen was activated at the small table. “Games and entertainment.”
Jiekh’s heart started thumping fast. “My tablet contains all of my work.”
"Oh yeah?" The suspicion deepened. “What kind of work is that?”
“Personal work.” He swallowed, looked at the grayish carpet, humiliated for no fathomable reason. “Writing.” A deep breath. “Poetry. Mostly.”
“Oh. Hey, that’s cool. I dabble myself. But you gotta know they’ll put it through a forensics examination before they can give it back, right?”
“But they will return it, yes? I intended to give it to my – to someone. So that she—” He cut off the words. They sounded strange to his ears. Not right.
He looked up and saw the guard watching him, his head cocked slightly. “Tell you what. I’ll ask around. See if we can get it back in one piece.”
“I thank you.”
The human started to say something, but seemed to change his mind. Instead, he said, “No problem,” and stepped out into the corridor. The door slid shut and Jiekh was alone. Colorful graphics bounced around on the holo-screen, but he couldn’t read the script.
He sat on the bed and wept.
***
In the confines of security holding cells there was much discussion about the coward, the traitor who’d sold them all out for a girl.