by Peter David
“Security, Grant here.”
“Grant, get a squad to the Lady Cwan’s quarters right away. If a female Vulcan is there, apprehend her immediately. And alert the docking bays and perimeter patrol. No ships in or out. Lock down the entire sector.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
She replied to the unspoken question on Calhoun’s face, “I may be the last one to have seen her. She was in Robin’s quarters. She said she was following up on the birth of Robin’s baby.”
“I don’t like the sound of that at all. Something’s wrong with Selar, and I think we’re about to reach the tipping point.”
Calhoun sprinted out of Shelby’s quarters and she was right behind him. Even though there had been no way she could possibly have suspected that something was wrong with Selar, Shelby blamed herself for not spotting it. She prayed that whatever was going on, they were in time to head it off. But the fact that Rulan had not been beamed back aboard the Excalibur was particularly worrisome. It suggested to her that there was someone else involved, and that placed a serious wild card into the deck.
ix.
A normal human would have been incapacitated by the Vulcan nerve pinch for several hours. Even a normal Vulcan would have been out cold for at least an hour or more.
The fact that Soleta was a Vulcan/Romulan half-breed already served to make her unique in terms of her biology. Furthermore, she had impressive control over just about every muscle of her body. Therefore, when Selar had applied the nerve pinch, Soleta had just enough time to tense the muscles in her shoulder, rendering them just short of rock-hard. Even though she lost consciousness, it was for a far briefer time than if she had experienced the full brunt of the attack. So it was that not really all that long after Doctor Selar had departed with Lucius, Soleta had fought her way back to wakefulness.
She felt a slight stiffness in her neck, but she knew what the cause was. As quickly as she could, she got to her feet and shook off any lingering dizziness.
“Robin,” she said as she saw her friend still lying unconscious on the floor. She went to her quickly, knelt next to her, and checked her over. Uttering a quiet prayer of thanks that Robin was not dead, she stood up. Unsure of how to activate the voice responsive comm unit in the small quarters, she called out, “Security team. I need a security team to—”
The door slid open and a security team charged in.
“That was fast. Well done. I—oooof!” The foremost security man slammed straight into her and knocked her to the ground.
“Don’t move!”
“I can’t very well do so. You’re lying on top of me.”
“Bridge, this is security,” one of the guards said as Soleta was hauled to her feet and her hands secured.
“De Paulo here. Go ahead.”
“Tell the admiral we have the Vulcan.”
“You can tell her yourself—she should be there any moment.”
Sure enough, Shelby arrived seconds later, preceded by Calhoun. He took one look at Soleta and visibly deflated. “No, no, no. You’ve got the wrong Vulcan.”
“With all due respect, Captain, you didn’t specify which Vulcan. And we found her crouched over Lady Cwan.”
One of the security men had picked up Robin, who was still unconscious. “I’ll get her to sickbay, Admiral.”
“Yes, do it,” said Shelby, but she was looking suspiciously at Soleta. “Bring her to the brig. We’ll question her there.”
“You can question me here if you want. I’ve got nothing to hide. Don’t you trust me, Admiral?”
“Right now I don’t trust anybody.”
Least of all a former member of Starfleet who went over to the Romulan Empire. She didn’t say it aloud, but the sentiment remained unspoken between them.
x.
Robin Lefler heard something before seeing anything, and what she heard was extremely familiar: the voice of her mother.
“I’m reading a jump in brain activity. She’s coming around.”
It was at that point that Robin heard the steady beeping of various monitoring instruments she knew to be typical for a sickbay. Her eyes were still closed, and it required a conscious effort on her part to force them open.
Morgan was looking down at her, smiling gently. She reached down and touched her face. Her hand didn’t feel the way it had when she was truly alive, another reminder of the fact her mother existed only as part of a technological miracle. Still, it was better than nothing.
“They have holotech here in the sickbay in case they need to activate the emergency medical program. I’ll be here with you the entire time.”
Robin fought to recall the details of how she had come to be there. Everything was confused, fragmented. She reconstructed it, piece by piece, recalling that Selar had come to her…examined her…and she had…
Understanding rushed back to her, and suddenly she sat up much faster than she should have. Everything swirled around her and she gripped the sides of the medical table. “Doctor!” called Morgan, and a medtech immediately approached Robin. “Robin, you need to lie down—”
“Where’s Cwansi?!”
“Selar pumped something into you to knock you out. She—”
“I don’t give a damn about Selar! Where’s my son?” When Morgan hesitated, she grabbed the holographic representation of her mother by the arm and practically shouted in her face, “Where is he?”
“Robin,” said the medtech, “please calm yourself before—”
“Shut up! Where’s my son?!”
“She took him,” Morgan said in a flat tone. “Selar took him.”
“Where? Where did she take him?”
“We don’t know. She’s vanished from Bravo station.”
“She couldn’t have just vanished! She has to be somewhere, and wherever she is, she has Cwansi with her! We have to find him!” Robin was trembling and was so agitated she could barely string words together. “We have to! We—”
“The captain and admiral are working on it…”
“I don’t want them to work on it! I want them to find him! Before she’s done God-knows-what to him! I need you to—what the hell are you doing?”
Her voice had risen to a scream as the medtech shoved a hypo into her arm. She tried to knock it away but it was too late: The contents were injected into her with a hiss. Robin lunged toward the doctor, who stepped back to avoid her fingers that were curved like claws. She started to tumble off the table but Morgan caught her before she could. “What…what did you…?”
“Just something to calm you a bit, take the edge off. It won’t knock you out, but—”
“Kill her. I’m going to kill Selar…and then,” she said and looked balefully at the medtech, “I’m going to kill you.”
Then she slumped back onto the table, Morgan easing her down. Robin continued to stare up at the ceiling, and she kept muttering, “Kill her. Kill her…”
“It’s going to be all right,” she said soothingly. “The captain is going to take care of everything. Why, I’ll wager that right now he knows exactly where Cwansi is and he’s on his way to get him back safe and sound.”
xi.
It was everything Mackenzie Calhoun could do not to punch the wall. He did consider it for a moment, the alternative being to punch Soleta who was seated in a chair looking up at him blandly. “You have to have some idea of what’s going on.”
“I wish I did,” she said. “I’m just an innocent, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Shelby was standing at the opposite side of the room, leaning against the wall. “You’re telling me you just happened to show up at precisely the moment when Selar just so happened to launch a kidnapping attack?”
“Coincidence does happen in real life, Admiral. Look,” she said tiredly, “I have no reason to steal the child.”
“No reason that we know of.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that you’re freelance now, Soleta, and that I know you’ve done wo
rk for the New Thallonian Protectorate,” said Shelby.
“Not for the Protectorate. For Robin Lefler. If she needs some espionage performed, yes, I am the one she comes to. Who else would you seek for such endeavors except someone you trust? Are you saying her trust was misplaced?”
“I’m saying her baby was misplaced, and your ship is gone.”
Shelby’s words rocked Soleta with the effectiveness of a blow to the face with a granite glove. It was all she could do not to go slack-jawed from the news. “Are you sure?”
It was Calhoun who replied. “We’ve locked down the sector, but it wasn’t fast enough. The Spectre vanished before we realized anything was wrong. And that ship of yours is undetectable when it needs to be, thanks to the combination of your cloaking device and ion glide drive. Even we can’t find something propelled by starlight.”
“Strains coincidence beyond the point of credulity, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, it surely would,” replied Soleta slowly. “It would seem, Admiral, that the concerns you expressed regarding Lucius were well taken.”
“Except Lucius has no prior relationship with Doctor Selar; at least none that we know of,” said Shelby. “You, on the other hand, do.”
“So what are you saying? That I acted as an intermediary between Selar and Lucius, and then was double-crossed by Lucius?”
“It certainly seems like a viable chain of events.”
“If that were the case,” said Soleta, “then I would be as betrayed as you, and thus as much in the dark.”
“Except you would know the reasons behind the kidnapping,” said Calhoun. He leaned in toward her, placing one hand on the back of her chair. “Was the Protectorate Council behind it? Has the baby been brought back to Thallonian space?”
“I do not know.”
“To New Thallon itself?”
“I do not know.”
“To another safe location?”
“I do not know.”
“Dammit, Soleta!” yelled Calhoun with such ferocity that she jumped slightly. “You were the last person to see Selar! She must have said something to you, done something!”
“Yes. She rendered me unconscious. So it wasn’t as if we had a chance to catch up on old times.” She forced her voice to remain level and steady. “And she was aided by someone whom I didn’t see. I was assaulted from behind, giving Selar the opportunity to finish the job.”
“Who was it?”
“My apologies, Captain, when I said ‘someone whom I didn’t see,’ what I really meant to say was that it was someone whom I can identify.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“If I had to guess, I would say it was Lucius. With my vessel gone, he would seem the most likely perpetrator.”
“Except,” said Shelby, “you said you rigged your ship so that it would not depart without you, that it would shut down if someone else attempted to take it over.”
“Yes, well,” Soleta said slowly, “that wasn’t quite accurate.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the design of the Spectre’s computer was such that I couldn’t arrange for the programming to be as user specific as I had hoped because I didn’t have enough time, so I simply reversed a genetic coding subroutine that was designed to prevent other races from assuming control.”
Understanding dawned on Shelby. “You rigged it so that only someone with Vulcan DNA could command it.”
“That is correct.”
“And since Selar is Vulcan…”
“I effectively handed her the keys to the kingdom on a genetic level.”
“Which still brings us back to the why of it all,” said Calhoun. “None of this makes any sense.”
“I am quite confident in saying that to Selar it makes nothing but logical sense.”
“And what do you know about it?”
“You’re going around in circles, Captain,” said Soleta. “I don’t know any more than I’ve already told you.”
“And you’ve no clue as to Selar’s state of mind? She shared nothing with you?”
Soleta hesitated, but the hesitation could well have been seen as weariness over the protracted questioning. “No. Nothing.”
“She’s lying.”
No one in the brig had spoken. Shelby, Calhoun, and Selar looked around automatically; they recognized the voice instantly. “Morgan?” said Shelby. “Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me.” There was cold, implacable fury in her tone. “And I can tell she’s lying. I’m employing the brig scanners used to monitor and maintain the health of prisoners. I can use them to detect any change in heartbeat. For all I know, Soleta could regulate her bodily processes sufficiently to deceive any normal lie detector, but she can’t fool me. Did you hear that, Soleta? You can’t fool me.”
“Yes, I heard you,” Soleta said hollowly. “Since you are the only one talking—”
“Come down to sickbay and we’ll be done with talking,” came Morgan’s voice. “My daughter is sedated because she was going out of her mind with worry.”
“Did she say what happened?” Shelby asked.
“She said, Admiral, that Selar knocked her out. That’s all she knows.”
“How gratifying that you’re willing to take her at her word,” said Soleta.
“Bring her down to sickbay, Captain,” Morgan urged Calhoun. “I have ways to force the information out of her.”
“That would take you quite some time,” said Soleta.
“I have nothing but time. I’m dead, and I never tire. I can have you begging for death, and I’ll feel as fresh at the end as I am at the beginning.”
“That won’t be necessary, Morgan,” said Shelby. She walked over to Soleta and fixed her gaze upon her eyes. “Because Soleta is going to tell us what she is lying about. She’s going to tell us absolutely everything she knows. And she’s not going to do it because she’s forced into it. Hell, that would probably just make her more intransigent. She’s going to cooperate because she’s someone who nearly got herself killed trying to save me.”
“An action that resulted in my being thrown out of Starfleet.”
“I’m all too aware of that. And I owe you.”
“I see. And how, precisely, do you intend to repay that debt?”
“By offering you this: If you tell me right here, right now, what you’re holding back from us…then I’ll still be your friend.”
Soleta stared at her. “And you think that’s going to sway me?”
“I’m hoping it does.”
Slowly nodding thoughtfully, Soleta lowered her gaze and studied the floor. Calhoun looked as if he were about to speak, but one cautioning look from Shelby brought him up short, and he waited instead. To a man of action like Calhoun, it seemed interminable.
“We don’t speak of it,” Soleta said finally.
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Vulcans. Vulcans do not speak of it.”
“Well, you’re not exactly a pure Vulcan, are you,” said Calhoun.
“Yes, Captain,” she said, ice dripping from her words. “I am all too painfully aware of that.”
“All I’m saying is that perhaps since you are part Romulan it gives you some leeway in that regard.”
“You don’t understand. You cannot understand. It’s…I don’t know that telling you would be of much help. It wouldn’t give you anything concrete in terms of her whereabouts or her plans. All it would do is address her state of mind.”
“And that could be of use,” Calhoun said. “Because, frankly, her behavior has been incomprehensible. She’s been a good and loyal member of Starfleet, despite her personal trauma. To see what she’s doing now…Soleta, if you can help us understand what’s going on in her head, it could be invaluable. If—”
“All right,” she said, putting up her hands as if in surrender. “But I need you to comprehend that I’m still dealing with this knowledge myself. What she is experiencing…it’s not like the Vulcan mating ritu
al, Pon farr. Pon farr is meant to lend at least some semblance of dignity to a biological drive. The thing I believe has seized hold of Selar has no ritual associated with it. There is scarcely even an acknowledgment of its existence.”
“What is it?”
She had trouble forming the word on her lips, and even when she finally spoke it, neither Shelby nor Calhoun could quite make out what she had said. They glanced at each other and when they both realized that neither had heard her properly, Shelby said, “We didn’t catch that.”
“Shal’tiar,” Soleta said again, with visible effort. Once she had managed to repeat it, she let out a breath as if she had just managed to clamber to the crest of a steep hill. “It is called Shal’tiar. It is not written of in any texts. What knowledge of it there is exists purely in oral tradition and rumor.”
“But what is it exactly?”
“It is a sort of ‘logic madness,’ for want of a better term.” She shook her head. “People think we Vulcans are emotionless. We are not. We restrain emotions, bury them as deeply as we can, but they are always there. Every single minute of every single day, we make a conscious effort to suppress them. Shal’tiar is the opposite. It is said, or believed, that if a Vulcan is faced with a severe enough crisis, one that cuts to the core of his or her soul, then she can enter the state of Shal’tiar. Understand, Captain, that one of the underpinnings of our belief system is that any problem can be solved with proper application of logic. Shal’tiar can occur when there is a massively traumatic problem to be solved, and no logical means of doing so. But when no logical option exists, a Vulcan can make a conscious decision to jettison logic out the nearest airlock. In such an instance, the affected Vulcan can become dangerously obsessive. Nothing matters except solving the problem.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Shelby.
Soleta paused, trying to figure out the best way to explain it. “In my Academy days,” she said slowly, “the logs of James T. Kirk were required reading. I was particularly interested, for obvious reasons, in anything he recorded about Lieutenant Commander Spock. There was one instance involving a life or death situation with a shuttlecraft—the Galileo Seven, I believe it was—in which Lieutenant Commander Spock faced a problem that could not be solved through logical means. The shuttle was trapped in orbit around a planet, and Mister Spock had no means of summoning the Enterprise. Spock jettisoned and ignited the fuel, transforming the hours of survival to mere minutes.”