Chapter Text
Vulcan Rehabilitation Facility Ankeshtan K’til.
On the third day Sybok opened his eyes, glanced sideways and closed them again. “You have successfully disturbed my serenity, Chu’lak.”
“Then engage with me or reject me.”
“Either option will only give pride to your misery. You and your brother can martyr yourselves on your own time.”
“That is not our goal.”
“That is how it will end.”
“Not this time.”
“I am not interested in your latest attempt at a holy war, or whatever petty vandalism you and Teska are calling ‘sedition’ these days.” That hit a little too close to the mark. “I am only speaking to you now to impress upon you how deeply you will suffer should you reveal my name to anyone here.”
Chul’lak glanced about. The hardened features of some of the other inmates had not softened much that he could tell, though many claimed to have found a renewed peace under the ministrations of counselors and logical disciplines. But surely at least one of these criminals knew Sybok as Sybok? The administrators must know.
“Your name is not as useful as your connections. Or your unique mental acuity.”
“Is that what they’re calling it now?” Sybok muttered. A rhetorical question easily dismissed.
There was an agenda and the optimal time for action would soon disappear.
“We have reason to believe, based on information from a primary source, that a weapon of unimaginable power has been discovered. The first of its kind in over six thousand years.”
“My partner and I do not traffic in weapons of mass destruction.”
“It could be used that way, but with guidance of the sort you could provide it would be far more effective. ‘The greatest victory is to change the minds of one’s enemies.’”
Sybok had canted slightly towards him, his features schooled into careful neutrality. “If you’re quoting Surak this must be a very good scheme.”
Which was encouragement enough for Chu’lak to press his case.
“Fourteen years ago, when I was a laboratory technician at the VMI, our team received a case for review – a female fetus in utero with a genetic disorder so rare it was no longer in the current databases, only in historical archives. The outcome for infant and mother was believed to be dire, and termination was not only advised but required.”
“An edict such as that strains the ethicism of logic.”
Every adherent of V'tosh ka'tur debated the ethicism of logic, especially as it applied to fundamental moral issues such as body autonomy.
“It does indeed. Soon after our confirmation of the diagnosis, agents for the Health Ministry arrived. They removed all communications about the case, every record or exchange, scrubbed the files completely. Not a trace remained.” Chu’lak knew this because he’d tried to find them covertly, been caught and dismissed. “We were all required not to speak of it to anyone, not even each other, lest it alarm the public.”
“Was an environmental cause suspected?”
“No such investigations were pursued that I knew of. Our facility would have been the one to do the testing. The concern was not for the danger the disorder presented to its mother or to the public at large but rather the danger a living child with those genetic characteristics would pose on an unwitting populace should it ever reach adulthood.”
“A Keikudaya?” Intrigue radiated off Sybok now and Chu’lak ducked his head to hide his glee. But the man’s next words poured sand on the fire, “You want my assistance to chase down a myth.”
“It is not a myth. The keikudaya lives. Her gift is demonstrably real.”
“I doubt you and Teska would know what to do with it even if was real.”
“But you would.”
“Hush.”
“Think what we could accomplish, Sybok—”
“Be still.”
Chu’lak bristled, but a commotion in his periphery stopped whatever protest he thought to make.
T’Pring, the administrator betrothed to Sybok’s mixed-race brother, was crossing the grounds in a hurry, the tails of her headscarf flying back. She ignored logically designed walkways and disrupted meditative patterns raked into the sand in her single-minded march towards the pair of them.
Chu’lak’s first thought was accompanied by a prurient thrill – here comes the goddess Akraana riding her sandstorm, bringing war and sex and boiling blood.
His second thought?
She knows.
^^^
“You’ve never been a fan of the slow burn.” Erica picked up a french-fry, examined it listlessly and put it down again. “Not in romance fiction or in real life.”
Christine shifted on the bar stool, trying to keep the very short skirt of her very short dress tucked under her butt. It was the first time she and Erica had met up since she’d been back. Cocktails and a sparkly outfit seemed the perfect prescription to shake off the cranky cloud that hovered over her since she got off the shuttle three days ago.
Until Spock had walked into the bar, took one look at her and walked right back out again.
If he didn’t want to be friends, fine. But there was no logical reason they couldn’t occupy the same public spaces at the same time. He was supposed to be the logical one. Or at least better at compartmentalizing--
Just one of the issues regarding him she’d been expounding on in various ways for the last forty minutes.
“Life’s too short for all that ‘will-they-won’t-they’ stuff.” She downed her martini and signaled the bartender for another. “Everybody knows they will so why not get to the point?”
“Maybe that’s not the point though. Not everybody lives like they’re gonna die tomorrow.”
“I don’t do that!”
“—and Spock’s deep, you know.”
“So, I’m shallow? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I dunno,” Erica muttered, elbow on the counter, cheek smushed into a hand. “Maybe.”
“Wow. Ouch.”
Erica unhunched her shoulders, wriggled her spine into a straight line and pushed the plate of fries - still piled high next to a pristine pool of ketchup - away. “I’m not in the mood for this.”
Still stinging, Christine spun round on the bar stool so she could scowl at the crowd. “Order something else then. Jesus.”
“No. Not… this.” Erica waved a hand at the plate, then made whirling motion in the space between their bodies. “This.”
Socializing? Friendship? Air? “What?”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, on account of you’ve been talking about a guy non-stop, but I’ve got my own stuff going on.”
Well. Crap.
“Oh my god, Erica, you’re right. I’m so sorry. I was venting. I never intended to dominate the evening with whiny bullshit.”
About a man, no less.
What is happening to me?
“I know,” Erica said, dismissing both apology and excuses. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I hate people like me. I’m a terrible friend. You should have shut me down sooner.”
“You’re not a terrible friend. Per se. It’s just… I wanted to be regaled with tales of your nerdy adventures. Listen to gossip about people I don’t know and don’t see every goddamned day.”
“Yeah, again, so so sorry. Distracted from what though? What’s going on? Tell me.”
“Eh. I can’t.”
“You can tell me anything.”
“No. I can’t,” Erica stressed with an exaggerated grimace.
“Classified. Right. Sure.”
Christine was pretty much indifferent to the whole “classified” thing. Authorities and their secrets, right? If she needed to know they’d read her in on it, otherwise, no point wondering what warranted the label.
“It’s more like an investigation,” Erica corrected, watching bubbles collapse in her beer. “Or exactly like, I guess. About me.”
“Over what? You being too good at your job?”
But try as she might, Christine was unable to pry any more out of her friend and had to settle for an extra-long hug followed by the requested tales of her nerdy adventures – waxing poetic about the facilities at Utopia Planitia’s famed IXAA, how the city of Shi’kahr on Vulcan actually had a nightlife, watching holovids never seen by the public of the Orion digs—
“So, what’s he like, your hero Roger Korby?”
She paused, thought about it, finding her impressions of him hard to pin down - the way she thought he would be, the way he was with her, and the way he was with the others on the team. How she’d felt seen, really seen in away she hadn’t felt with anyone else – not with family or mentors or lovers. And other times she just felt…watched. Not in a creepy way, but definitely in some way.
“He’s actually kind of sexy. In that ginornous, gorgeous intellect fashion."
“Are you changing types?”
“What d’you mean? I’ve always found the brain to be the sexiest organ.”
“But you didn’t used to date them.”
“I should have stuck with that policy,” she laughed.
She didn’t mention the assault. Started to but it just wouldn’t come out of her mouth. It wasn’t the vibe she wanted to end the evening on. And even though she had no reason to feel ashamed about it, being slammed with shit balloons was a singular experience with few correlations in her life to date. She didn’t know when she’d be ready to talk about it, if ever.
Around 2200 she and Erica parted ways in the corridor outside the galley with promises to work out together at 0630.
Her reasons for ending up at Spock’s door fifteen minutes later would not bear scrutiny in the morning. Suffice it to say she’d worked up an ire and leaned on the chime until the pleasant notes compressed into an uncanny squeal. By the time she considered he might not even be in his quarters, the door whooshed open.
How a door whoosh could sound so thoroughly pissed-off was a question for another time, because there he was: barefoot, shirtless, hair mussed, expression icy.
^^^
The S.S.Yuno. Somewhere between Tau Aerto and Yael 129.
They had been ministering to refugees at a colony on Mossiv for three months before Sarda Romar learned they were being hunted, that V’Shar agents had been seeking their whereabouts since they’d left Vulcan.
By that time they had gathered others who’d been called to their mission, bringing the logic of compassion in one hand and Oekon’s gift of k’war’ma’khan, the awareness of All as One, in the other.
Benefactors amongst those they’d helped were eager to help them in turn, providing funds and transport to worlds on the outskirts and edges of Federation law where their ministry was needed. The V’Shar were never far behind but they trusted Oekon to guide them and keep them safe.
The child’s gift had not yet manifested then – or at least not in the form Vulcan’s Ministry of Health believed required termination in the womb.
The idea that any ethical being would think such a thing ran counter to his understanding of logical morality. It appalled him and reinforced his belief that Oekon had divinely intervened, guiding Lhai to his door that day to save her beautiful child.
And she was beautiful, their Sulei. Soft and brown, a verdant glow beneath her freckled cheeks, and a halo of hazel hair that seemed constantly lit by static charge. Unlike most young children, her emotions were slow to surface. And though she showed little intellectual curiosity, her presence, even as an infant, had a calming effect on others, particularly those in pain. Perhaps because her eyes, often unfocused or looking inward, saw a different, more benevolent reality. When she did fix her gaze on someone in need, truly looked at them, they felt themselves part of that reality, wrapped in her contentment like the plush toy animal she held to her chest.
Sarda could not have imagined, let alone anticipated, what his counsel to a young woman caught weeping at his doorstep would mean for him these many years later, would bring him to this point in time and space, in a small cruiser of questionable registry drifting in the vast black.
When the catastrophic event occurred, it seemed to erupt out of nowhere, an unexpected disaster with no prior warning. Yet, like any disaster, in retrospect the signs of its imminence were always there. He’d simply chosen not to see them.
He could not shirk his responsibility now, would not, though his weariness was constant and bone-deep, unrelieved by meditation or slumber.
Leaning against the open door of the captain’s berth, he watched Lhai and T’Kar carefully roll the child onto her side and cover her with the weighted blanket again.
“We can’t keep her sedated for the rest of her life,” T’Kar said.
Though Lhai’s shoulders tensed, she made no reply to the obvious. Sarda touched her forearm, squeezing gently. “I will see how the repairs are progressing.”
T’Kar shot him a look. None of them were engineers. She’d been a reclusive, anti-social artist before she was called. Yiluv, up in the flight deck, had gotten her pilot’s certification via subspace. T’Rehu was the rebellious daughter of a Shikahri industrialist. Metana, a nurse practitioner. All the non-Vulcans of their coterie (which had included at least a flitter mechanic) had chosen to part ways after the tragic event.
This little ship, the S.S. Yuno had been leased for their use by an anonymous benefactor, its captain (and sole operator) given coordinates to a moon in the Tau Aerto system – safe, unpopulated – but only if they could make it to Epitome Station in time.
A busy hub like Epitome was both a risk and a blessing. Easier to slip through unnoticed, but more likely to be flagged for alerts. Suliei had been particularly agitated and in their desperation to get her through the terminal without incident, they’d tried using a device—
Despite the resulting commotion of that mistake, somehow, miraculously, they got away.
The captain’s body was now in a stasis hold below deck. It was possible Sulei had inadvertently done something to the ship’s propulsion systems as well. They still had functioning life support.
And an emergency beacon.
“We have to use it, Sarda,” Yuliv urged. “I haven’t the knowledge to determine what has failed let alone to fix it.”
Metana’s hand covered the lever that accessed the signal. “And if the V’Shar are close?”
“Then they will be pleased their aid made it so convenient to capture us.”
T’Rehu, in the jump-chair next to the cabin door, tucked her trembling hands between the seat and her thighs. “We can’t be sure anyone will hear us.”
They had been adrift for sixteen hours now.
“That is a certainty if we do not use the beacon at all,” Sarda pointed out. Logic and a positive perspective were not incompatible approaches. “We are, as always, in Oekon’s hands. We must take what action we can and trust there is a greater plan for us.”
He nodded at Metana. She swallowed and removed her hand from the lever. Yuliv pulled it up and twisted it. A light began to pulse softly and a single, small bloop sounded, but only to let them know the beacon was transmitting.
^^^
Spock, fully prepared to voice his displeasure at the person on the other side of the door (Christine) was unprepared for how she would look under the bright lights of the corridor, bedazzled in pink and white from the top of her bright teased-up hair to the toes of her shimmering tights. Her shoes, impractical (also pink), she held in one hand by the straps.
Her dress was … quite short.
“Oh, shoot. Did I get you out of the shower?”
“I was preparing to retire for the evening.”
She laughed – a bright, tipsy burble. “At 2200? What are you a monk now?”
It was 22:18 but he refrained from correcting her. It would only prolong the conversation.
“I have had a long and trying day.”
“You tell me to meditate when I’ve had a hard day.”
“Why are you here, Nurse Chapel?”
“I need to ask you about something. In private.” She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of voices and footsteps. “Please.”
Lieutenants Boateng and Virtanen slowed down as they passed, mouths open at the sight of her vivid outfit and his unfortunate lack of attire, but they quickly and wisely averted gazes. Humans had a way of pretending nothing at all was amiss that he sometimes envied.
Virtanen was the new replacement at bridge ops. He’d arrived with Christine on the same shuttle. Boateng was from engineering. Which meant the gossip was sure to spread like a virus, fore to aft, port to starboard, deck by deck.
He waited until they’d rounded the curve and were out of view before stepping aside to let her enter.
The door slipped shut. She stood, swinging the shoes absently, perusing the premises as if something might be different from the last time she was there.
She’d only been gone three months and eight days. It was much the same. But when he turned to her to say so, she made a squeaking sound, and looked quickly away. Her chest flushed, then her face.
That usually happened when she drank alcohol, and usually within minutes.
She cleared a thickness in her throat, said, “Um, could you maybe put on a shirt or something?”
He moved to comply before a thought stopped him - why should I?
“I did not invite you here. You should have no expectation that I will adjust my routine for your comfort.”
“Oo-kay. May I sit down?”
There’s the chair, he indicated but then kept his arm out like a bar blocking her way to the more comfortable floor cushions in the communal area.
She sighed. Eyes on his face, she sat and pointedly crossed her legs.
The chair was ... a mistake. Worse than the cushions because her legs would have been hidden by the table if she’d sat on the cushions. Now he would need to avoid looking at her legs lest she become smug. Worse still, he’d fully intended to put on a shirt for sleeping and now felt he couldn’t because it would admit his own discomfort.
He refused to let her request be the logical one.
“What is it you wanted to ask?”
“Well. I’d like to ask why you bolted as soon as you saw me—”
“You were not the reason I left. I remembered that Number One—”
An impatient gesture cut off his explanation, “Doesn’t matter. Not why I’m here. Okay…”
She paused, seeming to weigh the efficacy of whatever she was about to ask. It warranted a deep, fortifying breath, and a slight squirm on the chair seat.
“Okay. I need to know if there’s some sort of official investigation going on about Erica?”
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting exactly, but it was not that. “Lt. Ortegas?”
“Yes, Spock. Of course. Who else?”
“There are five crew members who use the name Erica, including Erica Fassbinder who trims my hair.”
Her glare of mild exasperation forced him to forgo his pedantry and admit, “I know nothing of an investigation concerning Lt Ortegas.”
“Really?”
“I have no reason to deceive you on the matter.”
She regarded him skeptically a moment, then sighed. “All right. That’s too bad.”
“Do you wish me to inquire—"
“No. Uh, definitely not. I got the impression she wasn’t even supposed to mention the investigation let alone what it’s about. She just seemed so beaten down. I thought maybe if you knew something…”
“You assumed I would tell you.”
“She’s our friend, Spock.”
“She is your friend. She is my colleague.”
“Right, of course.”
“But I will attempt to find you information if I can manage it discreetly.”
“Thank you.”
There was nothing more to say but neither of them moved. All the words they weren’t saying hung awkwardly in the air between them. Instead of urging her to leave, his mind scrambled for a way to keep her there.
“How-how was the research? Your fellowship?”
“Amazing. Dr. Korby is brilliant of course. And everyone else was too. I was a little intimidated at first but as soon as we were working, we just meshed into a team. I’d love to tell you about the research when you’ve got time.”
“I would enjoy that.”
She sighed, “I’ve missed this. Three months went by really fast but in some ways, it seemed like forever.”
“Subjectively, time will appear to pass more slowly when one is anticipating a result or longing for… something.”
She gulped hard, her eyes flicking sideways then down to her hands twisting in her lap. A breathy laugh, “I really wish you’d put on a shirt.”
The pause was just long enough for him to consider it before her gaze shot up again.
“Or, you know, take off your pants.”
The atmosphere buzzed and hummed, charged with a very specific energy.
“That dress is an affront to the eyes,” he countered. “One risks the possibility of a seizure.”
“For a guy with inner eyelids that’s really saying something. I’d need help getting out of it though. It’s got this old-fashioned, finicky zipper.”
“I offer my assistance.”
She uncrossed her legs with languorous precision, for his benefit he knew. But she didn’t take his offer. Both feet on the floor, she held his gaze steady and widened her legs just enough to remind him what he knew of her, there, at the core. Two steps. Three. And he was standing between her knees.
"Pants,” she said, her voice thick.
He hooked his thumbs in the waistband, pushed them down over his hips and thighs until they fell of their own accord to the carpet, and he stepped out and kicked them aside.
She dipped her head and inhaled. It was obscene, thrilling, and her mouth was right there, right there. He surrendered to the wet well of it and the risk of her teeth.
Later in the bed, as he aligned his body with hers so they could slot together with one smooth push, a glint of something caught in his peripheral vision.
T’Pring’s earring on the nightstand.
He remembered putting it there, but the why escaped him.
Suspended between a woman’s thighs, his arms stiff, he felt himself a bridge over a river of probabilities, potentialities, and scenarios with myriad possible outcomes.
Christine gazed up at him, shining with the preternatural patience she had whenever he wavered. But he'd already decided. At least for tonight.
Braced on one arm, he reached over and brushed the earring off the nightstand to the carpet. Then slipped that arm beneath her back and rolled them both, so it was her above, straddling him the way she preferred. She canted her hips, sank down to engulf him. He slipped a hand between their bodies, sliding his fingers over her clit.
In the morning, he will step on the earring. In the morning, she will try (unsuccessfully) to slip out unnoticed into a too bright corridor, a beacon of pink and white sequins, with her hair in tangled tufts and her makeup smeared.