All Vulcan terms are from the Vulcan Language Dictionary. Some characters are borrowed from Paramount and will be returned.
T'Pol woke to an intense pain in her head. Her hand went out reflexively to her head but she couldn't complete the movement and she realized that her hands were tied behind her back. Her feet also were tied together, the bonds tight enough to be almost painful. She kept her eyes closed, feigning unconsciousness while she tried to figure out her surroundings.
A sharp pain in her flank made her start up and flinch away. "We know you are awake." The voice was male, and it was talking in Vulcan.
At that T'Pol opened her eyes, blinking at the throbbing in her head. Her vision was partly obstructed. After a while, the glare receded and she was able to take in her surroundings. She was in a large grotto, with walls of black stone that were too sleek to be have been entirely nature-made. The floor was covered with a white sandy granulate. The vertical plane of the walls was interrupted by a horizontal crack that ran the entire length of the grotto, wide enough in places to allow for a fully grown person to stand. The inside of the crack was obscured by shadows from the overhang and one could not tell how far the crack extended or even if there were people actually occupying the ledge. Turning her gaze to the person who talked, she saw a Vulcan male with a lance in his hand, eyeing at her suspiciously. He was in all evidence a youngster, between twenty and thirty years old, on the cusp of teenage years. His long hair was a shaggy mane in which leaves, shells and other natural decorations were woven at regular intervals. The lance was rough-hewn from what must have been a fallen branch, though the sharp pain in her flank matched the shaped arrowhead at its top. His arms were bare but he was otherwise fully clothed in some kind of tunic and leggings that seemed to be made of animal skin. She raised an eyebrow, then using her shoulder and elbow, lifted herself to a sitting position. She blinked rapidly a few times trying to block the intense dizziness that accompanied the motion. Once again, her hand went reflexively to her head, but was checked by the restraints. After a while she was able to block the pain to a degree.
The two of them silently stared at each other. "Who are you?" she asked in Vulcan.
The young male didn't reply. He looked up at the ledge and a second young male leapt down onto the sandy ground. He too was between twenty and thirty years old. He was dressed in a tunic and pants that had seen better days, his hair was chopped off at his shoulders and he was holding a lirpa in his left hand. He stepped over and faced T'Pol "You are not to ask who we are. You are to tell us who you are."
"I am T'Pol of Vulcan. I came on the starship Enterprise. We received the distress call that Leader S'Erhik sent five years ago. We came to help."
"How do we know you are who you say you are?" a feminine voice rang from above. T'Pol raised her head, trying to peer into the shadows of the ledge, which triggered waves of pain and nausea. She leveled her gaze to the men in front of her and saw the second guard walk to the wall, raise his hand to the ledge, and a lithe figure step down over his shoulder, using him as a ladder. She wore the tunic of an adult woman though she looked about twenty. Like the guard with the lirpa, her clothing was beyond threadbare. She flipped her long black hair away from her face and solemnly marched to large flat stones that had been gathered in somewhat of a natural dais in front of where T'Pol sat. She had deep grey eyes, a recessive genetic trait on Vulcan, and T'Pol knew instantly who she was from her close study of the roster of the colony's children, After five weeks, she had become intimately familiar with each child and the detailed information in their file, from name, height, eye color, preferred food, and any other data Vulcan saw fit to track and preserve on its remote citizens, which other species would have considered encyclopedic. Having identified the woman as T'sdith, she tried to match the two guards to the other children in the roster. Eight years made a lot of difference between childish and adult features, but the guard with the lance might be Axarev and the one with the lirpa had a passing resemblance to Sisig. That meant that at least three of the colony's children had survived. Hopefully there were more.
"Are you T'sdith?" she asked.
The young woman was visibly taken aback, then drew herself straighter "I am Leader T'sdith, matriarch of the Na'gseihr Clan." T'Pol's eyebrows shot into her hair. A matriarch. At twenty. Impossible. "You say you are T'Pol of Vulcan and that you came to help" T'sdith went on, an undeniable twinge of sarcasm in her voice. "Now, tell us the true purpose of your presence.""
"You heard that we were still alive and came to finish what you started?" Axarev butted in.
T'Pol turned to him, puzzled, "I am Vulcan. Why would I kill the colonists?"
"Vulcans are our enemy."
T'Pol blinked. That was extremely illogical. "How can Vulcans be your enemy when you are Vulcans," she retorted.
In one bound Sisig was at her side, lirpa pressed tightly against her throat "We are not Vulcans." He growled. "Vulcans are the ones who massacred our parents."
T'Pol's eyes widened. Her mind reeled, trying to make rational sense of the situation. It just did not make sense. Did they truly think Vulcans had destroyed the Colony? That was impossible. She had a flashback to the Syrannite camp in the Forge and V'las blanketing the area with thermabombs, and closed her eyes. Perhaps what they said was true? Did the Vulcan High Command order the extermination of the colonists. But why? What would have been V'las gain in this? bombing a remote outpost of those he considered rebels was very different from bombing a colony of scientists. And who could have participated?
"I have no knowledge of the matter," T'Pol conceded, and Sisig straightened up, lirpa still at the ready but no longer at her throat. T'Pol went on "The Vulcan High Command was in power when Na'gseihr was established. They could have ordered the attack, but there have been many changes on Vulcan in the past few years. The Vulcan High Command has been disbanded. The Vulcan High Council now rules according to the teachings of Surak. Surak abhorred violence and would have never condoned an attack."
"Vulcan abides by the teachings of Surak as it sees fit" T'sdith responded with a sneer. She went on. "Why would we believe you? You are Vulcan and Vulcan sent troops to eradicate the colony. How do we trust that you were not sent by the Vulcan High Command?"
T'Pol silently considered the almost open display of emotion from T'sdith and Sisig, and the elements of paranoia and distrust in their statements, the incongruity of Sisig denying they were Vulcan, and the unwarranted violence in capturing her when they could have easily subdued her without force, lined these up against the absence of parental guidance or structure for five years. She had to consider that the surviving children may have started reverting to their violent, paranoid and suspicious past. The attack being by Vulcans could be a shared delusion. She needed to reach more than the three of them. Perhaps others were less emotionally charged. She spoke loudly, making sure her voice carried up the walls of the cavern to the ledge she could only see peripherally
"I am T'Pol of Vulcan and I am the science officer on board the starship Enterprise. Enterprise is a human spaceship of exploration. Its captain is Jonathan Archer. He was the one who received Surak's katra and helped discover the Kir-Shara. Vulcan is now following the original teachings of Surak as brought to us by the Kir-Shara."
"What is the Kir-Shara?" "What is a katra" "What is Starfleet" "Who are the humans" the questions came fast and furious from the ledge above them. She could sense the inquisitiveness of young and curious minds pressing against her. Curiosity was an overriding characteristic of Vulcans everywhere. T'Pol was satisfied that her approach had worked. And that her audience was hooked. There were more than the three youngsters facing her and she felt more certain about the situation than she had thus far.
"Kroykah!" T'sdith shouted at the ledge.
T'Pol pressed her advantage "How many children survived? How many of you are there? Can you tell us what happened?"
"We certainly will not tell you how many survived." T'sdith spat the words out. "So that you can kill them and finish what you started."
T'Pol narrowed her eyes in frustration. "We came here on a rescue mission, to bring you back to Vulcan. The transmission of your colony's distress message was slowed down by a black hole or Vulcan would have sent a starship for your rescue five years ago."
"The same way they sent a starship to destroy us." T'sdith's tone was bitter.
"Why would we go to Vulcan when they ordered the elimination of Colony Na'gseihr?" Sisig asked.
"Why should we trust you?" T'sdith spoke almost at the same time.
T'Pol thought for a moment, then she said "Administrator V'las and the Vulcan High Command murdered my mother in the bombing of another group on Vulcan."
T'sdith eyes went wide. Axarev and Sisig stepped back. Nobody said anything. The silence stretched for several seconds. Eventually T'sdith nodded. "What do you have to tell us?"
"First untie me. I will answer your questions and then we can talk about Colony Na'gseihr and its children." T'Pol added "It is illogical to keep me tied up when I do not know my way out of this cavern and there is very little risk I would flee." Anticipating the distrustful nature of the clan matriarch, she went on "I could also give you my word that I will not try to escape." There was no way she would allow herself to be separated from the colony's children but saying as much would compromise T'sdith's standing as clan matriarch and therefore it was neither necessary nor wise to bring attention to it.
T'sdith looked at her for a while, then gestured with her chin to the guards. Soon, T'Pol found herself free to move again. She gingerly assessed the wound on her head. Her eye was swollen almost shut. Being able to physically sense the damage made it easier for her to block the pain and she soon was able to move her head without paroxysms of nausea.
"First, I shall tell you about the Kir-Sharah," She sat in a meditation pause and waited. As expected, since she was an adult female and the oldest present, long-imprinted behaviors took over and the guards and the matriarch soon followed her cross-legged on the sandy floor. T'Pol started the recitation in the traditional manner, as her foremothers before her grandmother before her mother before her "At the time of Surak…" Her voice was the only sound echoing through the chamber, reverberating along the walls before finally reaching the hidden ledge, where an unseen army of ears listened in rapt silence.
She had been talking for quite a while when there was a rustle on her right. T'Pol felt more than saw the small figure hanging from the ledge, letting itself drop to the grounds before scurrying over to where she was, kneeling alongside her, close enough to touch yet not touching her. It was a young child, about eight years old. She felt a sense of contentment coming across her shields. Of course. The child would have been two or three at the time of the attack and would already have started meditating with his mother. Old enough that he could have survived the severing of the parental bond, too young to understand or absorb the matriarch's lessons of anger at and hatred at Vulcans and so young that he would be compelled to look for a replacement bond with any adult Vulcan. She stopped talking and looked at him. He hesitantly reached out to grab her wrist and she indicated her acceptance of the connection. As he could not easily maintain his hold on her wrist, he chose to put his hand on her ankle instead. At that, another rustle sounded, and another small figure awkwardly lowered itself from the ledge, this one a female of about seven years of age. She came over to T'Pol's other side, kneeling in the same fashion, and put her hand on T'Pol's other ankle. In quick succession, two more children joined them, choosing physical connection with the boy when they realized they were crowded out of direct access. T'Pol felt the presence of their unruly and untaught minds, and raised her shields to block them out without interrupting the connection. She went back to the story she was telling.
The retelling of the events that led to the discovery of the Kir-Shara and the changes it brought on Vulcan took hours. "The Kinshara has been fully translated and more and more on Vulcan are adopting it as the guiding principle of their life, starting with the High Coucil." T'Pol stopped, gauging the reaction of her audience before deciding whether to talk about Enterprise in orbit around the planet and their search for the children of Colony Na'gseihr. The four children, still linked to her through a chain of physical contact, were soundly asleep. She had gently pressed on their minds the need to sleep, well before she got to the part about the bombing of the Syrannite encampment in the Forge. There were now a dozen young Vulcans seated around the cavern, all younger than T'sdith, listening intently. She nodded to them and they bowed back. Nobody said a word.
T'sdith finally broke the silence. "So the Vulcan High Command, the government body before the discovery of the Kir-Shara has been replaced with the Vulcan High Council?"
"That is correct."
"Then the Vulcan High Council,the current government body of Vulcan, had nothing to do with the destruction of the colony and the deaths of our parents."
"The Vulcan High Council was formed after the date of the attack. It could not have ordered the attack." T'Pol went on "Are you the surviving children from Colony Na'gsheir?"
"Yes, we are."
"How many of you are there?"
T'sdith hesitated, still suspicious. "There are forty-seven of us."
T'Pol's eyes narrowed slightly. This was more than expected, less than hoped for. "Can you tell me what happened?"
T'sdith steepled her hands in front of her, obviously bracing herself. She talked in the cadence of a story well-worn and shared. "This cavern and the rooms behind it were the nursery school complex of Colony Na'gsheir. The colonists found the cave and arranged it to provide the children with protection from the random radio electromagnetic activity of the volcanoes, and also in case of a volcanic explosion." T'Pol nodded in understanding. It was a pre-Awakening Vulcan tradition to raise a community's children together in an offsite location where they would be shielded from predators, nuclear radiation, other warring clans and the dangers of desert life. Most of those places were caverns hewn out of rock, either above or underground. They were still being used. Vulcans were eminently practical, and long-memoried.
"One day, we heard bombs hitting the colony and we realized we were under attack. The upper classes went to stand with our parents and defend the colony. The lower classes stayed with one of our teachers, T'KehrK'runik" She turned to Axarev and Sisig "He held Axarev and Sisig back so that there would be someone to help protect the children if need be. But the attackers didn't find us. When the sounds of battle had died, T'KehrK'runik sent me out to check whether it was safe to come out. I was the oldest remaining of the khu'nis leh-keh-steh but also the smallest, and could easily hide." T'sdith paused, looking unseeingly at the cavern walls "I snuck to the edge of the colony without being seen, but it had already been destroyed. Soldiers were going from house to house, firing rounds inside. I came back and we waited two more days inside the complex before T'KehrK'runik gave the order to go out again. By then, everyone was dead. T'KehrK'runik helped us bury our parents, and organized our survival."
"I grieve with thee." T'Pol said. "Where are the rest of the children?"
"The fracture in the rock leads to a complex of caves and other chambers where we live." T'sdith motioned to the flat stones on which she stood "T'Kehr K'runik had us dismantle the stone staircase that led to the ledge for added safety."
"Where is T'KehrK'runik?" asked T'Pol, hopeful that perhaps he was waiting somewhere in the complex with the rest of the children.
"His bondmate died in the bombardment. He chose to take his own life right before the next Time came upon him." T'sdith looked down at the ground.
T'Pol's eyes widened in sympathy. The Pon Farr would have turned K'runik into a powerful predator, the only available females were all grossly underage, and the two youths would have been scant protection against a full-grown Vulcan. His was the only honorable choice. She felt regret at the waste of a valuable life, one that would still have been much needed by the surviving children.
The four youngsters still physically connected to her all stirred in their sleep at the same time. T'Pol took a couple of minutes to steady her mind and straighten her shields, sending soothing thoughts to her young charges. The children quieted down in their sleep. A part of her took note of the herculean task ahead of having a temporary parental bond with four orphaned children. But the good of the many outweighed the good of the few, or the one. She would have to provide for the children's psionic needs until they could establish proper parental bonds with new parents. There would be many family members on Vulcan ready and willing to raise the young as their own.
Except that the clan thought that Vulcan was the enemy. "How did you know the attackers were Vulcan?" T'Pol asked.
"When I went out to find out about the outcome of the battle and the soldiers were methodically firing into the houses, one of them took his helmet off." T'sdith replied. "He was Vulcan."
T'Pol's eyebrow rose "Did you say he took off his helmet?"
"Yes."
"But the fighting had subsided?"
"That is correct."
"Vulcans do not usually wear helmets other than in the heat of battle." T'Pol frowned, trying to make sense of the new input.
T'sdith eyed her with little warmth. "But they did, and they were." she stated with finality
Carefully shielding the young children sleeping at her feet from her thoughts, T'Pol thought how T'KehrKurik would have considered all reasonable explanations for the presence of what T'sdith believed had been Vulcans on the planet surface. But he was not there and T'sdith was unmoveable.
"I cannot disclaim what you saw" T'Pol countered. "There is a starship that is not associated with Vulcan currently in orbit around this planet, ready to rescue you. I need to know if you would come with us. Or if you would stay here."
T'sdith looked at T'Pol silently for long seconds, then raised her arms high above her head "I call the Council of the clan Na'gseihr to meet at the appointed place when the sun rises above Volcano Tarik." She waited until she received a subliminal response that her command had been heard, then looked back at T'Pol. "The time is late. The children needs must be attended. We will convene again tomorrow. Thou gave your word thou would not escape."
"I will not escape." T'Pol replied.
"Good. We shall speak tomorrow" and with that T'sdith turned on her heel and walked to the side wall, where Sisig helped her up to the ledge, and disappeared in the shadows. The dozen or so young Vulcans looked at T'Pol hesitantly before scaling the walls back to the ledge, whisking the four youngest children who had been around her with them.
When the grotto was empty, T'Pol knelt on the sandy floor in a meditation pause and closed her eyes. While the situation was not conducive to meditation, due to stress and distraction, the position allowed her to still her mind while staying hyperaware of what was taking place around her. There was much to ponder.
Based on the records, Sisig and Axarev had been seventeen at the time of the attack, and T'sdith a mere fifteen years of age. They were not even teenagers by Vulcan standards. They had absorbed the premises of Vulcan tradition but were too young to understand the social structures, how everything was interrelated in harmonious logic. T'kehr Kurik had re-created the social organization that they were familiar with, but they did not have much knowledge or understanding, if at all, of the context and history behind these structures. T'sdith was the matriarch of their community when she did not have the age or qualities of being a matriarch. They had made the position one of age instead of wisdom or psionic powers. They had a governing body in the form of a Council without a full understanding of how a council operated or what it did. They called themselves the Na'gseihr Clan when clans on Vulcan were thousands of years old and were deeply intertwined socio-politico-economic bodies, not quickly formed pragmatic association of members sharing the same objective. There had not been a new clan on Vulcan since the Awakening. Certainly not a new clan that viewed Vulcans as their enemies. Which made it highly unlikely they would be willing to adapt to Vulcan society. Which made it unlikely Vulcan could accept their new social structure.
If she had been human, she would have sighed.
x x x
The sun was rising over the settlement when the noise of overhead engines disturbed the silence. This time the two shuttlepods landed on one of the grassy plazas. Eleven men exited, most of them MACOs. Soon a large number of equipment shimmered at a short distance from the shuttlepods and the men set to work.
Reed was in charge. As devised in the command meeting at 0400, the teams would search in two outward spirals, going in opposite direction from each other. The goal was to cover an area of 900 square miles by day's end, farther than anyone could walk on foot in any direction in a full day. Anything beyond that would have required the use of equipment foreign to the planet and then they had a different issue on their hand. As it was, Reed believed that T'Pol had somehow gotten incapacitated while looking for underground shelters and that they would eventually locate her.
He frowned as he caught sight of Tucker in the middle of one of the teams. He would much rather have passed on the help of Archer and the engineer. He certainly appreciated the reason why they had insisted to be part of the search effort, but Archer tended to throw caution to the winds and neither man had the level of training of the MACOs or Reed himself. He sighed. One day, these types of decisions would be his, and his alone, to make. And then he wouldn't be swayed by the ties of friendship. Until then, he had to accommodate the requests and minimize the risk.
To his surprise, he saw Tucker leave his team and walk over to the colony's research center, where a team of engineers were already at work trying to find any system worth repairing. Reed narrowed his eyes in sudden insight. If Trip went with one of the search teams, he would only know what that team was finding. If he was at the research center, where the teams had order to regroup at the end of the day or earlier if they located T'Pol, he would know what both teams were up to.
Reed smiled. Things were looking up already.
TBC