In all his life, Narak had never known such tranquility. For one mad moment he wished he could undo everything he had done in the past year or more, leave Sarek unmolested, throw himself on the mercy of Vulcan authorities, explain why he had been sent here, and hope he would be believed. But the moment passed and, alone in the climate controlled shelter he had brought with him this time for what he assumed would be a long wait, he poured some mineral water and reminded himself that he should have thought of all that at the beginning. Too late now.
And too soon for her to be here? She stood in the doorway of his shelter, unannounced. He hadn’t heard her approach. Startled, he rose abruptly, hand on his weapon, sending the flagon of mineral water tottering in his haste.
“Father,” she said softly. “It is done.”
Eighteen
The first time, Narak had brought very little with him in the small skimmer he’d concealed among the titanium-bearing boulders a half-day’s walk away. This time, confident that soon there would be news emanating from the city of ShiKahr that would occupy the media and security services from here to the Klingon Empire so thoroughly that they would never notice him, he’d brought not only all of the creature comforts he felt he deserved, but everything else in the various spider holes he had inhabited in his peripatetic way across Vulcan, including his weapons and a scanner at least as good as a Starfleet-issue tricorder.
It confirmed what Saavik told him once he’d recovered from his shock and offered her a seat at his table, pouring mineral water for both of them after wiping up the few drops he’d spilled: a damaged and still smoldering small hovercraft of the kind favored by the Vulcan High Command, nose down in the sand an hour’s walk distant. Inside, a single newly dead life-form—Vulcan, female, charred down to bones and teeth.
Of all the things Saavik had been required to do since the day she’d encountered Tolek in the market, this was the most distasteful. She almost wished the V’Shar as well as Narak had an avatar to replace her, a T’Vaakis to perform the task of leaving bodies in her wake.
Offering her water, Narak could see that she was visibly shaken. Of everything he had required of her, killing T’Saan had finally been one thing too many. The hand that held the cup to her lips trembled violently. He took it from her and wrapped her in his embrace as the torrent loosed and she clung to him, shaking with sobs.
After some moments, she quieted and pulled away, composing herself.
“We cannot stay here now,” he said, not impatiently but with a sense of urgency. “Invisible the V’Shar may be, but once one of its important operatives goes missing, there will be a search. Just let me scan the nets to learn what is being said of Sarek, and then we will go.”
But he scanned in vain. After some moments, he raised his eyes from the scanner, frowning.
“Perhaps they will wait until they’ve rounded up all of his accomplices,” he said, more to himself than to Saavik.
“Or perhaps,” she said, a phaser in her hand, “all of yours.”
She would remain embarrassed about the crying jag for some time. Even arguing that it had been necessary to distract Narak so that T’Saan’s backup could move in, even telling herself that she had drawn from the Romulan side for such a disgraceful display of emotion, did not entirely quiet her self-disgust. Add it to the many sequelae of this mission, though. She did not have time for it now.
T’Saan had resorted to an old V’Shar trick, placing the body of a Vulcan female of about her age—who had in fact died of smoke inhalation following a hovercraft accident—in a damaged craft where Narak’s scanner would find it, to make it seem as if she and Saavik had quarreled and Saavik had crashed the craft in a show of loyalty to her newfound father.
Saavik’s sudden appearance, and her outburst, had thrown Narak sufficiently off guard that he did not hear the churning of sand as another official hovercraft set down on the shore of the brackish pond. The expression on his face as Saavik relieved him of his weapons and led him outside to confront his fate was something she would remember for the rest of her life.
T’Saan, alive and well and flanked by two armed aides, was quietly issuing instructions into a comm unit. She glanced up at Narak with mild interest as she said, “Hold the one called T’Vaakis for my personal attention,” and closed the comm. Her glance moved from Narak to Saavik and back to Narak.
“Indeed, there is a resemblance,” was all she said. “Lieutenant, he is ours now.”
To his credit, Narak recovered quickly. As he began to understand the full extent to which his own plot had been used against him, he threw back his head and laughed.
“Oh, this is magnificent!” He looked at Saavik with pure, unadulterated affection. “Blood will out! You knew where to find me.”
“It was logical,” Saavik said diffidently, not entirely convinced herself. “You provided no meeting place, yet you expected me to find you.”
But Narak was having none of it. “Say what you will, you are completely mine! No Vulcan could lie and scheme as effectively as you have!”
The hand that held the phaser trembled. Aware that T’Saan’s aides had Narak covered, Saavik returned it to her belt and steadied herself.
“One cannot lie to a liar,” she said with all the calmness she could muster. “I am myself and nothing of yours.”
The laughter in his eyes faded. His face fell. Almost his shoulders slumped, but he kept his dignity.
“Pity,” he said. “I never had anything but affection for you. Well, keep the Honor Blade, at least.”
She almost gave it back to him, confident that two drawn phasers and whatever other skills T’Saan and her cohort had would be more than a match for an accountant and his ornate knife, but she never had the chance.
As he turned his back on her to face his captors, he burst into flames.
The flare lit up the moonless night and might have been mistaken for a meteorite, for many fell in this hemisphere at this time of year. In less time than it took the four surrounding him to react, he was transformed from living flesh first into matter so hot the others were driven back in spite of themselves, and then to ashes. As with all the devices he’d carried with him at their first meeting, the fire starter had been well concealed and had gone unnoticed.
“Subcutaneous and minuscule, with leads implanted in the major arteries to induce rapid immolation,” the healer who examined the remains, if remains they could be called, reported afterward. “Even if one had had time to examine him, it would have been difficult to detect. Quite sophisticated as well, as one can see from the outcome. Pity it left only trace elements in its wake.”
“And therefore, one assumes, no DNA.” T’Saan did not so much as ask. “Dentition?”
“That’s the curious thing,” the healer explained. “He had no natural teeth, only implants. One assumes this was done to make identification impossible.”
“Unfortunate” was T’Saan’s opinion.
If Saavik had an opinion, she kept it to herself.
Over the next several days, nineteen operatives were pulled in along the spider strands Narak had laid across a planet, including a young female who bore a remarkable resemblance to Saavik herself.
“There will be trials, of course,” T’Saan informed her, in what Saavik hoped would be their final encounter. “One had hoped in camera, but that is for the High Council to determine. You will be asked to give depositions, but these can be written only.”
In camera, yes, Saavik thought. One would hope to protect the ambassador’s privacy, not to mention Vulcan pride.
“And then?”
“Then thee are free to go,” T’Saan said, relapsing into the old formality. “With no obligation on thyself. A reluctant spy is an unreliable spy, as perhaps the empire has learned through Narak, if that part of his tale is true.”
“My inquiry was about the prisoners,” Saavik clarified, steadfastly refusing to allow this to be about herself.
“Logically one has to wait for the de
termination of the trials,” T’Saan said, though she knew what Saavik was asking. “If any are found guilty, they will likely be offered in exchange for prisoners the Romulans hold for just such eventualities.”
“If they are returned to the empire, having failed in their mission, they will most likely forfeit their lives,” Saavik suggested. She did not know how she knew this, but she knew.
“That is not for thy concern,” T’Saan said not unkindly, but with a coolness to her tone that said there was no logic in asking further questions.
Saavik returned briefly to Amorak, primarily, once she was informed that he was in fact alive, to visit Simar and thank him for his service. The old spy allowed himself the shadow of a smile and then, as everyone looked the other way, embraced her to show that he was proud. Then an unmarked vehicle returned her to ShiKahr without fanfare, as she would have wished. Logically there was no other way to be the hero of an event that had not happened.
Amanda was far less shy than Simar about her feelings. She also had plans to whisk Saavik away for the rest she had not had time for before this whole thing began, but Sarek intervened.
“My wife, it is I who need to speak to her,” he said quietly, and Amanda yielded.
But confronted by the young woman who had risked so much, the master diplomat found himself at a loss, and said as much.
“No words are adequate to thank you for what you have done,” he said, and stopped.
“I did only what was necessary, Father.”
“But to risk your career, and the enmity of those who trusted you …”
“I had hoped that, as a member of the family, T’Saan would have briefed you, at least in part. Barring that, I assumed you would acquire what information you could through diplomatic channels,” Saavik said.
In fact, Sarek had had to wrest the information from T’Saan in spite of, not because of, the family connection.
He had not told Amanda everything about the “situation” at Amorak, most notably that it was reported an elder had died, quite possibly at Saavik’s hands. For one thing, even given Saavik’s irrational outbursts over the past year, Sarek had refused to accept this as truth. Journeying immediately to the shrine, he’d been told little more in person than had been imparted to him in the initial communiqué. Had he not encountered Simar in the corridor following his rather fruitless dialogue with T’Leng, he might have remained in the dark until the entire mission was ended.
Simar did not speak, merely reached one gnarled hand to Sarek’s brow, as was his right as an adept, conveying, with not a little humor, that the report of his death was an exaggeration.
“Where is my daughter?” Sarek had asked aloud, and Simar had withdrawn his hand, though not before conveying an additional thought: Family knows what family knows.
The return journey to ShiKahr gave Sarek ample time to ascertain that Simar had at one time been something other than an adept at Amorak. Sarek’s next visit was closer to home. Reaching T’Saan at her residence, he was succinct.
“Where is my daughter?”
“As you were informed at Amorak, she has gone to the desert.”
“For what purpose?”
“I submit that her purpose was known only to her,” T’Saan suggested mildly.
“And I submit that you are being less than truthful.”
Lesser beings than T’Saan had been intimidated into revealing much beneath Sarek’s gaze. Even one larger-than-life Starfleet officer had been known to find himself making excuses in the Vulcan’s presence. While tact might be a diplomat’s greatest skill, there was much to be said for psychological arm-twisting.
But T’Saan and Sarek were kin and of an age. They had spent time in childhood under T’Pau’s watchful gaze, and even that old battle-ax would not have been able to say with any certainty which could outstubborn the other.
This time, Sarek broke the silence. “Thee have put her at risk, and thee will not tell me why. Logic suggests I am somehow implicated.”
“Only a logic that can leap chasms without looking down,” T’Saan replied.
“It is my right to know that which is done in my name.”
“Only if thee are prepared to accept consequences over which thee has no control!”
Impasse. Sarek considered the many diplomatic threads he had cast across a quadrant or two, and which of them might intersect whatever multiplicity of threads the V’Shar might have in parallel. It was possible that the V’Shar knew everything he was up to, including most particularly the overtures to the Klingons; it was equally impossible for him to know everything the V’Shar knew. Nor did he want to know, except where Saavik was concerned.
“‘My logic is uncertain where my son is concerned,’” T’Saan said now, her tone an exact imitation of his, an annoying way she’d taunted him when they were children. “Yes, of course I heard. All of Vulcan heard the words you spoke on Mount Seleya.”
“And so my judgment is suspect hereafter?” Sarek demanded. Was that anger in his voice, or only righteous indignation?
“Say rather that it is taken under advisement,” T’Saan replied, and not for the first time Sarek was reminded that it had been he who first taught her how to play kal-toh, only to have her beat him at every game they played thereafter.
Very well, then. She might have him physically removed from her office but, barring that, he was here on his own time, and she would have tasks that called her away. Eventually her comm would sound and she would have to go back to work. Sarek would use that to his advantage.
He waited. She did not blink. But she knew, as he knew, that this time she would have to break the silence. Eventually she said, “Thee must give me thy word that no matter what I tell thee, thee will take no action, make no further inquiries, leave the matter entirely to us regardless of possible outcomes.”
“Without knowing the nature of—”
“Thy word, or nothing.”
Sarek exhaled, running permutations in his head. Could he trust that the entirety of the V’Shar was better equipped to solve this, whatever it was, than he alone? That Simar’s death had been nothing more than a contrivance argued in the affirmative?
But more to the point, he had to trust that Saavik, whatever beset her at present, would not waver from her true self. If he could not trust her, no action he might take would matter.
He trusted her.
“My word,” he told T’Saan.
Again, keeping all parties involved compartmentalized, she had told him only enough to confirm his faith in Saavik and to keep him safely removed from whatever happened next. Not until Narak’s network had been successfully rolled up and his operatives detained was Sarek told everything.
And, in fact, Saavik had not even considered whether or not T’Saan had briefed him, until now. She had simply thrown herself in the path of this thing, at first for Tolek, and later, when she understood the enormity of the plot, for Sarek. Logically, there was nothing else she could have done.
“Nevertheless, you took a great risk,” Sarek said now. “The rigors of the desert, the likelihood of death at any time …”
“… were preferable to the alternative,” Saavik pointed out. “Had the plot succeeded, far more would have been lost.” Take that to mean, Father, that the optimal outcome of your conversations with the Klingons are of greater value to me than any one life or career. To say I feared losing you and Amanda and Spock would be to admit to emotion. That I will not do, even to you. “Better such temporary risks than a lifetime of regret.”
“Indeed.”
It was the closest either could come to saying, “I could not bear to lose you.” The senior diplomat looked upon his adopted daughter with a new appreciation. His expression softened.
“You have no idea how difficult it was to keep what little knowledge I had from your mother,” he said long-sufferingly.
“Then it would seem we have both survived the Kobayashi Maru,” Saavik suggested with a new appreciation for the concept of humor.<
br />
It was at this point that Amanda intervened before they both embarrassed themselves.
It has been said on Earth that if more women ruled, fewer men would die, this despite the fact that for much of Earth’s history, women who ruled frequently did so at least as ruthlessly as their male counterparts. This neglects consideration of the fact that women who rise to power in male-dominated societies more often than not do so having emulated the most cold-blooded tactics of the menfolk in order to achieve that leadership. Where rule is benevolent, the gender of the ruler need not signify.
That aside, when two women put their heads together, the conversation is likely to be very different from the conversations of men.
Amanda was there for her when Saavik finally allowed herself to feel.
“Whatever you tell me does not go beyond this time and place,” was how the human began the conversation.
Lying scattered like a strand of rare emeralds tossed carelessly against a bed of red and dun sands, the oases of PirAelim, constructed along a series of freshwater springs drawing from numerous underground sources, had offered refuge to Vulcan’s nomad populations from the time of the beginning. Nowhere else on the planet was there so much variation in the type and source of water, from the iciest mineral springs, to sulfur-laden pools so hot they bubbled, to those tolerable to the skin and replete with phytoplankton that glowed in the dark. Trees and grasses of every native variety fed on the waters and flourished only meters from sands so dry that nothing grew. The contrast and the choice of waters offered a haven to even the most restive of souls.
Saavik had not visited here since she was a child, when Amanda had spirited her away on school holidays for what she’d called a “just us girls escape.” Ever so serious, Saavik had of course had to ask what they were escaping from, to be rewarded with only a wink, as if it were some great secret. Now, with maturity, she thought she understood. Nevertheless, she had been reluctant at first, consenting only because she knew it would please her foster mother. Surely, Saavik thought, the pristine sanctuary she recalled would seem somehow less than perfect to her adult eyes.
Star Trek: TOS - Unspoken Truth Page 27