Chapter 7
Spock sat at his asenoi and schooled his body's reactions. His heart rate was elevated, breathing accelerated, adrenaline still affecting his involuntary nervous system. He began by listing the concerns of the day that required meditation:
1. The condition of Starfleet
2. The strategy of Nekae
3. The status of his mission
His concerns ordered, he turned next to his descent. To calm himself and sink down into a deep meditative state, Spock would replay a memory from the day. He was eidetic, as all of his kind were, and recalling a memory would invoke the same physical responses in him as he had experienced at that time.
He watched his Captain, sitting on the biobed and across the chess board from him. Kirk was still in Sickbay, though he had gone through all of the mandated competency tests and could technically be released at any time.
Earlier, when Spock had come by Sickbay on his way to the Science Deck, he overheard Kirk speaking with Dr. McCoy. Kirk was agitated at his confinement in Sickbay, but the Doctor made it clear that he would not release the Captain until he was completely satisfied at Kirk's mental and emotional competence.
Spock's experience with human passions roused in argument helped him avoid stepping into a conflict he could not resolve. Instead, he returned as his shift ended with the chessboard. He thought to both calm Kirk down and provide enough of an assessment to satisfy McCoy. Spock made sure to pass the Doctor on the way in, and after sharing a look he watched McCoy rise from the lab station and head for his office.
From the Chief Medical Officer's workstation he could access the security feeds for the Medical Section. Spock had no doubt the Doctor was watching.
"Stop that," Kirk said offhandedly as he moved his knight. Spock raised an eyebrow but kept his focus on the game. His Captain was a skilled chess player, but helping to liberate him from Sickbay did not mean he had to lose a game as well.
"Your request is imprecise, Captain," he said, moving a pawn on a lower level.
"This is just supposed to be a game, Spock. So stop watching me like you're waiting for me to flip out or burst into tears." Kirk's voice was anything but offhand now, and Spock marveled at how the human could pivot so quickly from casual conversation to direct conflict. He nodded his head once in response.
"My apologies, Captain," he said, moving again, this time bringing a bishop up a level to challenge Kirk's queen. He waited until Kirk was clearly thinking through his next move to speak again.
"I had firsthand experience with the damage the Neural Neutralizer had on Dr. Van Gelder, as well as firsthand knowledge of being under a Vulcan Healer's care."
Spock kept his tone neutral, but his words got a reaction. Jim Kirk's head shot up and he looked Spock in the face.
"Was that a joke?!" he asked, and the tension between them left as if it had never been.
"A joke, Captain?"
And with that, he released any obligation to watch Kirk himself, knowing that McCoy was also monitoring them both, and settled into the calm of a chess game with a challenging opponent.
Spock sunk into his meditation, leaving the firepot, the curtains, the incense-filled air of his quarters, and the ever-present hum of the engines behind him.
1. The condition of Starfleet
Starfleet as an institution was built on the principles of peaceful exploration, but since the loss of his home planet the ratio of missions predicated on exploration to those designed to support Federation security was 2:12. This ratio was unacceptable to him on all levels. As a Vulcan, he would never have joined Starfleet under these conditions. As a citizen of the Federation, he objected strenuously to Starfleet being used in this manner. As a member of Starfleet, he objects to the internal culture change this ratio continues to cause among the rank and file.
There is also the issue of the rank and file. The battle against Nero and the Romulans from a future alternate reality resulted in a devastating loss of Starfleet ships and personnel. This has resulted in the additional loss of scientific missions, as crew on remote outposts conducting scientific experiments have moved back on to starships or into Academy classrooms.
Perhaps even more devastating, in an effort to push new recruits into space faster Starfleet Academy changed their curriculum so that it emphasized specialization. This has meant that new recruits are narrowly trained on specific functions related to starship duty and not given the well-rounded scientific education necessary to conduct scientific experiments or observe new phenomena in space.
This combination (lack of exploratory missions, a change in the internal culture of Starfleet, the outnumbering of new personnel to experienced Starfleet officers in space, and the tremendous specialization in the training of new crew) has started a shift in the ethics of the fleet.
The conflict with the Gorlans was a result of this shift. An inexperienced, new Captain trained only to lead surrounded by new, specialized staff running two exploratory missions for every twelve Federation security missions encountered a brand new race.
Starfleet was becoming a military.
He felt a deep rooted conviction to stop this. As a loyal Starfleet officer, as a Vulcan, and as a son he could not let this stand.
But none of his attempts to reverse the momentum had so far yielded sizable results.
A review of his past tactical exercises in this regard:
First, he radically reorganized his current staff, developed an aggressive recruitment strategy, and began to pouch anyone and everyone with experience for Enterprise. He did not take personnel from other ships, or from the Academy. Instead, he asked anyone with qualifying experience who came onto the ship to stay. He prepared incentive packages and made new hire pitches to every man, woman, and genderqueering being that the ship encountered, and retained over 87% of visitors as new crew.
After that he went for the research stations, promising the staffs there that they would be engaged in genuine scientific inquiry. His counterpart, Dr. Carol Marcus, drove the point home, running the research labs through each and every disaster, skirmish, firefight, and first encounter the Enterprise had. And stacking the ship with personnel that had been removed from the fleet as a whole helped combat the culture change; a majority of ship crewmembers saw themselves as deep space scientists.
He then began networking with the First Officers of other ships and sharing his emphasis on recruitment. They used his tactics and had similar success, but the deep space outposts were quickly drained. In addition to the many ships filling their crew cabins, many had been staffed by teams that included Vulcans, and were now without them from his own planet's repatriation efforts.
This changed the cultures of 23.589% of the deep space fleet. An impact, but not sizable enough. This lack of progress forced him to consider an option that, in the recent past, he would have dismissed as unacceptable.
He mentioned his concerns to his father one night over dinner.
Traditionally Vulcans do not talk over meals. Both he and his father were used to the practice because it was normal for humans. More than normal, it was desirable, maybe even bordering on necessary. As a family, they spoke at meals, while eating. In no other public setting was talking and eating appropriate and when they dined with other Vulcans they ate wordlessly. When Spock was young and he questioned his father about it, he was told that it was something they did for his mother.
Now that she was no longer with them, they did it still. At times Sarek would be too tired to start the conversation, but Spock could tell he preferred them. He would not otherwise indulge them.
Spock shared with his father that he found himself doing more and more security missions, and he watched as Sarek pieced together what he was telling him. He knew that once his father smelled a problem with Starfleet he would chase it as any sehlat chases a ch'kariya to ground.
But watching his father explore the diplomatic side of the problem did nothing to relieve his concerns. It very quickly became clear that the current arrangement of Admirals was a deterrent to change, and the Admirals had figured out a way around Sarek's traditional strategy. Normally Sarek would put on pressure as a Federation Ambassador who happened to sit on the Starfleet budget and appropriations committee.
Right now no one else on the committee was willing to hear why a severely understaffed Starfleet should get less of a financial allocation.
This had become a regular topic of conversation between father and son.
His blood pressure started to dip, a biological timer he had set to give him enough time to complete his meditation.
He moved on to his next concern:
2. The strategy of Nekae
She addressed him as bondmate. She used this appellation repeatedly, in a way that sounded genuine, and even had a thoroughly thought through, logical rationale for the practice.
She expressed concerns over his less than rigorous application of the disciplines. Called out every lie, every act of violence, every instance of casual disregard for another sentient life.
She put him in the role of a friend, playing a game where they pantomimed being companions, where that companionship included the simulation of a telepathic bond and a practical familial partnership. In a way, she used the game to extend the farce he had created when he pretended to be her bondmate on Organia, acting as though they were husband and wife, comparing their relationship with that of his parents.
She was open with him, sharing freely about her people, their defenses, their patterns. Claiming privacy an impossibility, she cared nothing about telling him how each of the classes of her people operated, including what tactics they favored. She mapped out her part of space, talking him through what it looked like to live in each part of it he came across.
All of this stood in sharp contrast to their conversations with the Nomad via subspace during their first encounters.
Those first conversations were all hostile. When she spoke to him or his father, it was to threaten them-and, by extension, all Vulcans-and even that was rare. For the most part she ignored both him and his father, focusing her attention on Kirk.
The probability that Nekae would go from outright hostility to friendship and possible romantic attraction is less than 1.6489%
It was far more likely that she was using common knowledge about Vulcans to build rapport with him. He had even contributed to whatever knowledge she had been able to gather from hacking subspace signals with his performance on Organia. He had taught her how Vulcan bondmates were expected to behave.
Now she used that information against him.
A bondmate would keep no secrets from him. She would share information easily and readily.
A bondmate was the closest friend an adult Vulcan would have.
A bondmade would demand and require his protection, both physically and telepathically.
A bondmate serve as his conscience, and be one of the few people in his adult life allowed to criticize his lack of adherence to the disciplines. Sharing a bond gives a mate access to thoughts, opinions, and passions no other Vulcan would know about.
And while a bondmate would not constantly refer to their mate as such, the claiming of a mate's attention was habitual, a sign of possessiveness, ownership, and belonging.
As a strategy to build rapport, Nekae's was highly successful. Already he had revealed more information about his own people that he intended. Biologically, he noticed a release of neurochemicals responsible for positive emotional states at the anticipation of their games together.
This, along with the fact that he spoke to her in her private quarters was disarming. The presence of two very charming, curious litkas only furthered a sense that they were friends. Confidants.
A bonded pair.
It was important that he do things to undermine this assumption. Already he required a Healer's intervention to part him from Nyota Uhura.
If you think of her first name, think of her last too. She is no longer yours to call by her first name. Better to call her by her last only, or her rank. Especially her rank.
On Vulcan it was said that a woman should not play servant to a man that was not hers. The result was to risk uneven attraction, which could very quickly escalate when the more amorous member of the pair was a Vulcan male.
This might not be true for the Nomads, and that would mean this Nomad did not know the ancient passions she risked raising.
On the other hand, her status as a Nomad made her likely by her very nature to be expert in building quick rapport with strangers. That skill would be essential to survive in what is, essentially, political anarchy.
He must undermine this assumption. Assert additional people into their interactions, lengthen the amount of time between their conversations, balance the cooperation of their gameplay with a pantomimed competition.
In the privacy of his meditation he could admit that he did not want to do any of those things.
Some were impossible. He had yet to identify a way to be adversarial to her in the game.
Others were impractical. These interactions were designed to build bridges between their respective peoples. Talking to her was work, and he could not deliberately shirk that duty by talking to her less.
After working so hard to get the Nomad to speak to him instead of Captain Kirk, it seemed illogical to now bring another person into their conversations.
He was at a loss for what to do next. His most viable course was to ask experienced colleagues for assistance.
Putting that concern aside as resolved for now, he reset his biological alarm and turned to his final concern for tonight's meditation:
3. The status of his mission
His heart rate was slightly elevated and he was breathing faster than was ideal for a deep meditative state. To recenter himself, he sunk into another memory:
Spock relaxed his lower back muscles, his body conforming to the chair in Dr. McCoy's quarters. The environmental controls were now at levels he might set in his own quarters. The Doctor was filling glasses with lemonade and Spock felt the back of his jaw tighten at the anticipation of a familiar flavor.
His mother had often made lemonade, lemon water, or lemon tea to go with meals and snacks. There were two lemon trees in her garden, and because of the adapted growing schedule his father had designed to keep them alive and fruiting on Vulcan they produced more than normal fruit yields.
A glass was put in front of him, the only one of the three that was not frosted and filled with ice. He nodded at the Doctor in thanks; after working so hard to raise his internal temperature he did not want to drink anything cold, but he would also not have complained after such an effort was obviously being made to accommodate his Vulcan physiology.
"Would you have been able to tell if the entire memory were faked?" McCoy asked as he moved to top off the Captain's glass, "I know these Healers of yours can do some amazing things with their telepathy. Maybe that, combined with the stress from the mindsifter..."
The Doctor had reached an erroneous conclusion regarding Healers, which was not surprising. Vulcan culture was not precisely secretive, but it also did not lend itself to the effusive sharing Human cultures often engaged in. He would not have interrupted, but the Doctor seemed to sense he had something to say and trailed off, nodding at him.
"No Healer can completely manufacture memories Doctor, regardless of the state of the target's mind. Memories depend on one's unique perspective, and that's not something translated with enough accuracy in reports or logs to be fabricated. Even if the Nomads had somehow gotten access to my report, they would have had to be there to understand the detail, and even then it would have been a feat to fabricate my perspective."
"Okay, what about this," Kirk began, sitting back and raising his hands in the very physical vocalizations that once irritated Spock, but that the Vulcan was now accustomed to, "What if he just tapped into your worst memory and somehow finished it?" Spock nodded, a behavior Lt. Uhura had encouraged him to adopt as it facilitated communication with humans, keeping the flow of dialogue smooth. He heard the Doctor take a breath, preparing to speak, and he turned his head.
"What kind of technology finishes memories? And where can I buy it, because I need a little more wish fulfillment in my life!" Emotional. If he waited, Kirk would respond to this.
"Bones, we've seen all manner of strange tech. Aliens we've never met have come leaps and bounds ahead of us technologically and many can do things that seem impossible. Just look at the Organians." This was something Spock had himself considered.
"While also correct, I should point out that this explanation could also be used to prove the memory was genuine, and the precursor to an unorthodox rescue mission." He found himself the center of attention, his two colleagues and friends focused on him.
"'An unorthodox rescue mission? You're talking about saving your mother!"
"All the reason to look at this situation objectively-" Kirk responded, acting as a welcome shield against the Doctor's passionate nature, "-and consider the possibility that it was faked. Spock is a highly ranked Starfleet officer, and at the hands of a strong telepath could be a formidable weapon against the Federation."
"I quite agree. Even as a spy, I hold a high intelligence rating and know the details of key planetary defense systems. And, because humans often forget my hearing, all manner of personal information, much of which would be embarrassing and professionally damaging if revealed." The Doctor made an odd, physical sound that Spock was sure it would not be polite to point out.
"Oh, I know. If Starfleet Medical regulations let me, I could write one hell of a book!" Aghast that the doctor had taken his words as license to break confidentiality, Spock took a verbal step back.
"Doctor! The revealing of knowledge gained from-" Kirk cut him off, which he was grateful for, as he had no desire to end their hospitable interaction and be forced to leave a perfectly warm room for the frigid hallway.
"So we've got two possibilities: Either what you saw was real, or it was fake. And if it was fake..." Wrong. There were three choices, not two, and treating this as a binary problem would only lead them down the path of faulty logic. Kirk trailed off and when Spock looked up the Captain was nodding at him.
"In point of fact, I believe there are three possible scenarios: Either what I saw was real, or it was fake and accidental-perhaps the combination of an unconscious mental healing, the presence of two new minds, and the damage from the mindsifter-, or it was fake and purposeful. There are compelling motivations possible around faking it for gain."
"But short of having you and Scotty using your memories to build us a mindsifter and pull in a woman connected to a Healer, we can't test that theory." McCoy's voice was filled with irritation, and Spock was loath to remind him that a possibility, unable to be disproved, could not merely be set aside.
"So we can't discount it. What about a purposeful ploy. Can we prove that?" He had often wondered what his Captain's esper rating was. Looking down, Spock focused on the game that was sitting forgotten between them as he answered.
"We can establish a timeline with Ambassador Sarek to see whether it was possible for Nekae to know that negotiations were breaking down when she left Nomad territory and headed for Organia. We can have Intelligence look through data logs to see if there were any breaches in the communications about the negotiations and we can review the family history on Nekae available on the Nomad's social media interface to estimate the likelihood that she is a Romulan spy..."
"Would she even need to be Romulan? Seems to me like her people don't like yours. Maybe she's working a Vulcan-Nomad angle?" A salient point from the Doctor.
"That is a possibility," He added, watching Kirk glance at the board and then away, possibly already seeing the check in three moves.
"Okay, and what about the last alternative. What if it was real?" Spock remembered why he had initially considered skipping the Healer going straight to his quarters after their return to the ship. This was indeed possible, and he had not had the time to properly meditate on it. After a few moments, it became clear that the other men were waiting on him to respond.
"To prove that, we would need to establish that the planet in question really had waves of time displacement that caused visions of the future. But even that would not preclude the possibility that she was using this Nomad tradition for personal or collective gain. We would need to prove that she really had this vision of a woman she did not know who just happened to be important to me."
Recentered, Spock reflected on his mission, building a bridge with what he had learned so far that connected his memory with the present.
One of Sarek's Aides had sent a message to the Federation President with the details of the negotiation with the Klingons 4.651 hours before Nekae abruptly announced that she had a "killer party" to attend and ended her last conversation with his Captain and himself. The next time they spoke was on Organia, in person. Circumstantial
Starfleet Intelligence sent him a report 5.21 days after he made his request, and their assessment was that no communications breach had occurred. Unknown margin of error
Enterprise Security staff briefed him 4.953 days after he made his request-but before the deadline he had initially set for them-on Nekae's family history. According to her social media page her mother, Lagassa, lived on Suk Heya, a space station that, he suspected was named in reference to a sexual slang term. Her had been a Nomad, and was considered a Disciple, but her own social media page made it look as though she had fulfilled her destiny and gone into something akin to a human "retirement". Her mother's page was filled with pictures and videos that documented Nekae's life in minute detail from birth on, and many of these pictures featured other Nomads on Suk Heya. Unreliable. Mother could also be a spy. Romulans have been known to plant sleepers in civilian populations.
No information on Nekae's father existed. Other mentions to family on social media were connected to the family she belonged to now, Mosu-Vohareyak Igen. The Task Force made a distinction between biological relations and the familial relationships formed by individual Nomads. The Family Mosu-Vohareyak Igen was a family-by-choice, though there were social media posts linking Nekae to at least two of the family's other members, Sabbas (a Navigator) and D'erryl (a Machinist) going back to when they were all children. Also inconclusive. It was not abnormal in this society for children to have only one connection to a biological parent.
Spock now received weekly reports from the Security, Communications, and Social Sciences Task Force that had been assembled to comb through Nomad social media and build a databank of knowledge on this new culture. From these reports he learned that all Nomads had three essential characteristics: 1) a destiny, which many learned in utero when their mothers visited what Nekae had called The Time Planet, 2) a commitment to never killing another Nomad, and 3) a commitment to protecting Nomads and the residents of the Oasis. Inconclusive. Nekae could still be taking advantage of this tradition for personal or collective gain.
There were still many possibilities: Nekae could be a Romulan spy, either planted herself, or the daughter of a spy, or recruited later by the Empire. She could be on an intentional mission of ill-will against Vulcan, either personal or in collaboration with other members of the Family Mosu-Vohareyak Igen. She could be telling the truth, and have a destiny that included catching a falling woman that his mind merged with his own memories of watching his mother fall. Don't dwell on this.
Or she could be telling the truth, and have a destiny that included catching his mother. Were this the case, her mother would have to have taken her to The Time Planet before she was born confirmed by social media sourcing, she would have shared her destiny with many other Nomads, as was their custom confirmed by social media sources, and Nekae's own personal accounts, and by the customs reflected in their gameplay, and Nekae herself would have to eventually cross paths with the late Amanda Grayson Sarek as she would have when the two of them first met on Tesnia.
None of his original pieces of information was enough to prove or disprove any of the possibilities.
His blood pressure dipped again, and he began to create his path out of deep meditation. He took the bridge he had built between the past and the present and stretched it, transforming it from a bridge into a ladder. Climbing, he rose out of the meditative state and back into his body.
