Chapter 1.
Five thousand three hundred and nine years ago, the inhabitants of the citadel of Shih Hanya were all killed by a radioactive shrapnel bomb. Small pieces of sharp durasteel tore through stone and flesh and lodged themselves in bones and metal. The Vulcans of clan Hanya fell where they stood, where they sat, where they made love. The defenders on the battlements fell, eyes still looking out over the desert sky for an enemy that had never come. The cooks in the high towers fell, dead before they hit the giant vats of stew. And the lord of the citadel himself died sitting on his throne, his grasp on the armrests as tight in death as it had been in life.
And there they lie still, perfectly preserved. The containment force dome that sprang up saved the immediate lives of the denizens of the cliff dwellings surrounding the citadel, though many of them died young as well, from cancer and grief.
It was the end of the last of the vendettas in the Green War, because when the archenemy of the Hanya, lord Yari, was told the details of the attack, he broke his ancestral sword in two, and used the ragged end of the hilt to spill his blood over his own war table. And his heir rode for two nights to throw herself at Surak's feet, as he threadbare disciple of peace and logic was teaching on the outskirts of the forge, and begged him to save Vulcans from themselves.
That ride, and Surak's famous response, is well-known even among outworlders who are rarely told more than the absolute minimum about the shameful, violent, passionate pre-reformation times. But this story is about the prologue to that ride - and the final epilogue, many thousands of years later.
ooo0000ooo
"What do you mean, no air-conditioning?" Bones demanded.
"Precisely that, Doctor," Spock responded, eyes on the approach vector. The red, cracked stone landscape beneath them reached all the way to the curved horizons.
"That's absurd! There are people, living breathing Vulcans, living in the whatchacallit mansion right now. And I know for a fact that even your father has air conditioning in his city offices."
"My father often entertains alien visitors. But yes, many Vulcans use climate control devices to regulate the temperature of their homes. The mansion does not."
"You can't seriously mean…!" the doctor exploded, but Jim waved a placating hand from his seat behind the nav board.
"He's pulling your leg, Doctor. No air-conditioning, yes, but the ancient Vulcans built the mansion into the cliff wall itself, leading the wind to naturally flow through the rooms. You'll be cool as a… plomeek."
"Indeed," Spock confirmed. "A most apt analogy, Jim, since plomeeks and shuryas grow in the hanging gardens off the cliff face."
"I've been reading up," Jim confirmed with a grin. "It pays to be prepared when it comes to Vulcan."
Bones saw the minute stiffening of Spock's shoulders, and then the way they were deliberately relaxed a few seconds later. Good. He'd almost have been worried if he'd seen no such signs.
"Bah," he groused, voice deliberately petulant. "What about food stasis?"
"Certainly. The mansion is theoretically equipped to handle more than a thousand visitors at a time, caring for both their food and lodging."
Jim glanced up at this, "A thousand? That I didn't see in the data banks." He smiled. "And here Uhura was wondering if we weren't inconveniencing you, bringing down the senior officers of the alpha bridge crew. We could have brought down the entire crew of the Enterprise, and had plenty of room to spare."
"It is no inconvenience." Spock hesitated. "I would certainly have offered, but it would not have been politic at the moment, bringing down the entire crew of a battle-ready starship to a clan holding. While my father might have resigned himself to my association with Starfleet, I would not wish to cause him difficulty in the senate."
"I was joking, Spock." Jim responded, "And I have to say, it'll be good just to have the bridge crew down there. Family, you know."
"What do you mean, 'theoretically'," said Bones, who had been focusing on the important parts of the conversation, "'Theoretically equipped to handle visitors.'" He grabbed at his seat and cursed as Jim took an unnecessarily sharp turn before setting the shuttle down on red sandstone.
"Most of the environmental systems are over five thousand years old, Doctor," Spock replied coolly. The sudden spin didn't seem to have faced him in the slightest, and he rose the second the craft had stabilized. "It is unclear how much of them have survived, after all this time, should the entire complex be activated. We will be mostly alone here, and will not tax the systems. You need not be alarmed."
Once they had landed, Spock excused himself to alert their host to their presence, and walked straight into the cliff. It obediently rippled around him for a second, before the camouflage reasserted itself.
The other shuttle, bringing Uhura, Sulu and Chapel arrived only a few minutes later. It touched down in a much smoother curve that the Galileo.
"He's good," Jim remarked from where he was lounging by the rock wall, enjoying the last rays of the sun and breathing in the spicy air of the evening wind.
"That's Uhura piloting, not Sulu," Bones said. "She's good, yeah. But more to the point, you're rusty."
Jim made a face. "I never have time to fly anything anymore," he complained. "Maybe that's what I'll do this week. See if there are any ancient Vulcan flyers down there, forgotten deep beneath the stone." He gave the doctor a grin. "What's this? No outrage?"
Bones snorted. "As if Spock would ever let you go up in something that wasn't checked ten ways to Sunday." He took a deep breath. "But maybe I'm getting rusty with my Spockology. I'm honestly surprised that he's ok with letting you near this planet."
After what happened last time, when he killed you during the plak tow. Bones didn't say it of course. It was pretty clear that they weren't supposed to ever talk about it. It was enough to drive a man to drink and a reluctant ship's psychologist to pour over a particular psych profile for hours on end.
Jim shook his head.
"Not just ok, Bones. He asked us here, remember." He pushed off from the stone wall. "And you're not getting rusty. You're just focusing on the wrong part of that whole sorry mess."
And with that parting shot, the insufferable captain of the Enterprise sauntered off towards the others.
"This place his huge, Captain," Uhura said. She was using the edge of her sandwalker hood to shield her eyes as she looked up the cliff face above them. The shuttle pad had been cut into the mountain, the only perfectly horizontal area among the vertical, sloping lines. "I took us around to the east, and there are windows there as well, if you look carefully enough."
"The citadel on the top must have held hundreds of people as well," Sulu confirmed, eyes roaming the high cliffs around them. It made Kirk smile, relieved to be seeing a glimpse of the curious young lieutenant he'd come to respect so much the last few years. The last mission had been brutal, and Sulu had suffered more than most. "The sensors aren't working up there, of course, but just from the sheer size of it…"
"It's a shame we can't go inside the dome up there," Uhura nodded to the glinting spires far above, fingers tapping unconsciously at the useless tricorder at her side.
"It must still be radioactive," Sulu guessed. "Did, ah, did Mr. Spock say anything about that, Captain?"
Jim shook his head, as always energized by the enthusiasm of the younger officers. "Mr. Spock is being uncommonly forthcoming about Vulcan matters as it is, Sulu. Let's try not to pressure him too much and jinx it. What do you say, Uhura?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes, Sir. Of course… Now what is that?"
"That's Mr. Spock and the mansion's Guardian, A'ara," Nurse Chapel said quietly from her side, as the stone seemed to shimmer and disappear, leaving two Vulcan silhouettes waiting patiently at the mouth of a corridor inside.
Bones glanced at her as the others set off towards the opening. His head nurse had been unusually quiet ever since Spock extended the invitation to them all to accompany him here during the Enterprise's orbital repairs in Vulcan Space Dock 1.
"The captain's not the only one's who's been reading up on this place, I see," he said as he fell into step beside her.
Chapel adjusted her large duffel bag and kept looking straight ahead. "It always pays to be prepared, Leonard." Her gaze was caught by the sun's last ray's hitting the pearlescent domes of the Shih Hanyah towers, protected from the elements in their impenetrable force dome many hundreds of meters above them.
It didn't happen exactly then. Maybe because, as the Vulcan Science Academy will tell you, there are no such things as omens. But three minutes and two seconds after Spock ch'Sarek of the House of Surak had welcomed the last of his guests into the mansion beneath the doomed Shih Hanyah, the main tower split in two and fell down with a crack that reverberated among the abandoned canyons. It was most likely due to the inevitable effects of physics of erosion and minute gravitational shifts during the last few thousand years.
Most likely.
ooo0000ooo
When Ranek opened his eyes, there were another fourteen pages covered with writing in front of him.
"No," he whispered to himself, "No, no, no." He closed his eyes and summoned all the Vulcan discipline his forty two years could offer, but even so was only able to just keep the panic at bay. "No, no, no, no."
The ancient writing reed broke under his trembling fingers and he threw it at the wall. The action shocked him enough to bring back some semblance of order to his mind.
Deep breaths.
Centering.
Discipline.
When he surfaced from the light meditative trance, the message icon on his terminal was blinking. Feeling as if he'd just broken the surface from an overlong underwater swim, he read A'ara's request for him to help her with a welcoming ceremony for visitors. Off worlders. For a split second, Ranek felt a murderous feeling of absolute contempt and he shut his eyes and willed it away. Far away.
By the time he had manage to wrest his emotions under control and felt alone in his skull again, he realized that he was far too late to help the Guardian.
Author's note: This story has been in the back of my mind for a while - but it was actualized by something that WeirdLittleStories wrote. I won't say more, but the soul stones of the title will become more and more important as the story goes on.
It'll be fun to write a friendship centered adventure story. What do you think of it so far?