Chapter Seven: Intruders

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In the dim lighting of the transporter room, Sybok's eyes are black, his gaze impenetrable. Standing this close, Spock can see the faint line of a thin scar etched on Sybok's cheek, an exaggerated nob on the bridge of Sybok's nose suggesting that it has been broken more than once.

A violent life. The idea is so disturbing that Spock instinctively mentally reaches out, searching for the connection he used to feel with his brother.

Nothing. Just as he has felt nothing from Sybok for years.

From the corner of his eye, Spock sees Captain Kirk shift his posture.

"This is your brother?"

Spock nods curtly. Kirk casts a long glance at Sybok, and then with a sudden motion of his chin, points toward the door of the transporter room.

"The conference room might be a better place to talk."

"Captain," Spock says, casting a look toward the security detail. Kirk picks up his meaning immediately.

"Search him," the captain says.

As the nearest security guard takes a step forward, Sybok raises his hands and says, "A dagger. In my front right pocket."

The guard fishes out the dagger and pats Sybok down carefully before nodding up at Kirk. Something about the dagger catches Spock's attention and he takes it from the guard, tipping it up slowly so that the light cascades down the edge of the blade. Tiny grooves, almost too small to see, are etched on the handle. Rihannsu.

He holds out the dagger to Kirk as they make their way down the corridor toward the conference room on Deck Two. The four security guards flank Sybok as he follows.

His expression darkening, Kirk examines the knife.

"You have Romulans on your ship?"

"Does that matter?"

"It might," he says, darting a glance at Spock before leading the way into the conference room.

Going directly to a chair at the head of the long oblong table, the captain makes an opening chess move of sorts, establishing his control and positioning himself to see everyone else while facing the door.

Sybok hesitates for a moment and then sits at the opposite end of the table—also a chess move of sorts.

Spock looks from one man to the other before lowering himself into a chair to Sybok's left . The security detail fans out in the room.

"Why did you steal the Altoran ship?" Kirk asks abruptly, but if his intention is to catch Sybok off-guard, his strategy is ineffective. Sybok sits back and rests his hands on the arms of the chair, a look of mild bemusement on his face.

"We did not steal it," he says. "We assured the Altorans that our need for the ship was greater than theirs and we offered to compensate them for it."

"You took it against their will," Kirk says. "And two Altorans were badly injured in your assault."

Sybok's cavalier expression blackens immediately into a look of undisguised grief. If he had been skeptical before, Spock is convinced that Sybok must be one of the V'tosh ka'tur.

"You have not answered the larger question," Spock says, and Sybok snaps his head in his direction.

"Why now, you mean. And to do what."

Not questions, but statements. Spock waits for him to continue.

"Now because our crops were going to fail," Sybok says. "As they did last season, and the season before that. We had no more reserves to get us to the next harvest. If we had stayed where we were, we would have starved."

"You could have asked for help," Kirk says. "Could have arranged for legal transport."

"With what? We have no currency, Captain. We are poor settlers. No one would want to help us. We are exiles from our own worlds, Rihannsu running from political persecution and Vulcans running from social persecution."

"Then—"

"Why did we need a ship? To go home. To Vulcan. Because we are tired of running. Because the Vulcan ideal of diversity should include us, too, even the Rihannsu, even if we disagree on what it means to be a Vulcan."

Spock feels Kirk's eyes on him. Ever since Selek appeared in his quarters and mentioned Sybok by name, Spock has imagined this moment—has, if he is honest, dreaded it with such intensity that it has troubled his infrequent dreams.

He catches Kirk's gaze and lets out a breath he wasn't aware he had been holding.

"Vulcan was destroyed 18 months ago," Spock says.

There. Bare facts, stripped of their emotional overtones. He takes another breath and watches Sybok react.

A frown first, and a twitch of his head.

"You are lying."

"You know I would not lie to you," Spock says. "I was there when it happened."

The color drains from Sybok's face and he makes a garbled sound, like someone drowning.

"I do not believe you! This is a trick to get me to surrender the Altoran ship!"

"No," Kirk says, but Sybok doesn't seem to hear him. Instead, he stands up abruptly, his fists clenched at his side.

"Show me!" he says, and with a single bound he is around the end of the table, leaning over and pressing his fingers into Spock's face like hot irons.

"Show me!" Sybok says again.

No, Spock protests wordlessly, but even as he does he feels his resistance falling away, Sybok knocking aside his shields like someone brushing away a spider web.

Show me now, Sybok says, this time with more sorrow than anger, and against his will Spock feels his boots slipping on the scree of the cliff outside the katric arc, smells the sulfur in the air as the ground buckles and heaves, hears the Vulcan elders behind him stumbling over the small rocks in their path.

He tries to exit the memory - I do not wish to see this - but Sybok is remorseless.

You cannot leave, Sybok says, and slowly Spock turns and looks for his mother, feels Sybok using his eyes to watch her standing at the edge of the crumbling rock.

His heart thrumming in his side, Spock reaches out his hand to her, sees the stricken look on her face.

The wind whips up—he blinks as the dust swirls around him—and then she is gone.

Mother! he calls, but unlike before, this time he hears Sybok calling out in concert with him.

And this time he feels something else, too, something more—Sybok's own guilt coupled with his own.

I should have been here, Sybok cries out, and for an instant Spock's eyes are open and Sybok is staring into his face, his expression contorted in grief and pain, beads of sweat across his brow. Closing his eyes again, Spock tries to push away from Sybok's mental contact but his arms and legs are heavy and useless, his head throbbing.

Show me! Sybok says, and too exhausted to resist, Spock reveals the next memories as well—the hasty reconnaissance of the Narada, the disastrous miscalculations that landed him and Jim Kirk in the middle of the crowded cargo bay, the dawning awareness of the alternative timeline, the frantic destruction of the drill.

Nero's final defiance—his ship breaking apart in the singularity.

There's more, Sybok says, catching glimpses of Selek in Spock's mind, but Spock fends him off.

Stop, Spock says, too weary to speak out loud. But Sybok is like a deaf man.

Show me! he insists wildly. His fury and helplessness roll over Spock like a wave.

You should have saved her! Sybok howls. You should have been the one who died!

The pressure in Spock's head, on his face, is almost intolerable. His breath ragged, his lungs on fire, he parts his lips to speak.

Yes, he longs to say. I should have saved her. I should have died.

But his words come out strangled and unintelligible.

Opening his eyes, he sees the end of a phaser pistol looming close and hears the telltale whine as it engages. The world lights up like old holos of 20th century nuclear tests on Earth—the light so bright that he closes his eyes again, the heat scorching his face—and through it all, Sybok's mournful cry as their connection is broken.

He starts to stand but his knees turn to water and the floor rushes up to meet him.

And then, nothing.

X

"Are you alright?" Amanda asked. "You look a little pale."

In fact, Sarek had a headache—a nagging ache behind his eyes that had started around lunchtime and threatened to bloom into something more debilitating. For a moment he debated whether to admit as much to Amanda. The odds were high that if he did, she would call off their evening plans—attending a rare performance of Andorian symphonic music right after work.

Not that he would mind missing the music. A skilled musician himself, Sarek appreciated the artistry and tonal qualities of many different composers and performers, but Andorian harmonies were exceedingly discordant and frankly unappealing.

What he would mind missing was an opportunity to socialize with Amanda away from the office. Only recently had she asked him to call her by her first name—a symbol, Sarek knew, not just that their relationship had become less formal, but that she was inviting him to explore what it might become in the future.

On one hand he was glad to spend more time with her. Her company was almost always pleasant; her intellect was keen and her wit was sharp—even though he was often the target of it.

But a larger part of him was cautious about implying that the relationship could be more. His life was fraught with complications enough—the impermanence of his posting on Earth, for example, and his responsibility for Sybok.

Not to mention the difficulties of interspecies communications. Among other things.

Sex, for one. Whether it was desirable. Or even possible.

Lately he found himself drifting into such ruminations when his mind wasn't sufficiently busy. No wonder he had a headache.

"Nothing an analgesic will not alleviate," he said. "We can stop by my apartment on the way out of the compound to get something before the concert."

The Vulcan embassy was a maze of buildings. The main hall and meeting areas were tall glass structures that looked out over the bay on one side and Ghiradelli Square on the other. Tucked behind an ornate enclosure was a low apartment building where most of the staff lived.

Sarek spent little time there and it showed. As he keyed in the number sequence on the pad outside the door of his apartment, he was aware that Amanda was examining the bare walkway. To the left and right were other apartments with more ornamental entrance ways—large potted plants lining the walks, decorative wind chimes hanging from the eaves.

The door unlatched with a loud click and he pushed it open, standing aside for Amanda to precede him. He watched her closely as she did, her eyes roving around the spartan living area. Suddenly his life here seemed impoverished and spare to a degree that embarrassed him.

"I will only be a moment," he said, heading down the short corridor on the left to his sleeping and bathing area where he kept his personal effects.

"That's good," Amanda called after him. "I wouldn't want anyone to think we were up to something."

The bottle of analgesic capsules was not where he had assumed it would be, in the storage cabinet in the bathing area. For a moment he stood flummoxed.

If not here, then where?

He didn't have a clue. It was true that he rarely had headaches and even rarer still that he used analgesics—but it was unlike him not to remember where he kept things.

He headed back down the corridor.

"Is everything okay?" Amanda asked as he passed through the living area on his way to the kitchen. A glass of water. It might not help his headache, but he was feeling hot and thirsty. He heard her footsteps as she followed him.

There on the counter was the bottle of analgesics.

"I was looking for this," he said as she walked up behind him. He picked up the bottle and held it in his hand, like someone examining an exotic plant. The only reasonable explanation was that he had left it here—and recently, too.

Dimly he was aware that Amanda was opening the cabinet over the counter and pulling out a cup, was stepping swiftly to the sink and turning on the faucet, was standing so closely to him that he could smell the curious mix of citrus and floral notes that he had come to associate with her.

"Here," she said, looking from his hand to his face, and he felt the cool glass pressed into his palm. "Drink this."

He lifted the glass and took a sip, all the while keeping his eyes locked on Amanda's. Suddenly the room was so stuffy that he felt perspiration beading up under his high collar.

"Here," she said again, this time tugging the glass from him. As she did, he let his fingertips brush her arm—an intentional intrusion, he knew, but as she looked up at him and he heard her breath hitch, he knew that she welcomed the contact. Her hand snaked up and she stroked his cheek with her cool fingers.

And then to his astonishment, she leaned up and brushed her lips against his.

He knew enough about humans to recognize a kiss and what it represented. Or he thought he did.

Amanda leaned back and said, "There. How's your headache?"

"My headache?"

"A human custom," she said, a smile turning up the corners of her mouth. "When someone has a hurt spot, we kiss it."

"I see," he said, not seeing at all. The kiss was not a sexual overture? His information was faulty, then.

On the other hand, it had been pleasant, regardless of the reason. Tilting his chin down, he said, "My head still hurts. Perhaps you need to do that again."

This time he followed Amanda's lead and closed his eyes as she pressed her lips to his. Her mouth was soft and cool, and when he felt her lips part slightly and her tongue tease forward, he reached for her hand and ran his fingers along hers.

At once he felt her presence slip into his mind—amusement and wonder radiating from her in equal measure.

He maneuvered his free hand against the small of her back, steadying himself by pressing her to him. This close he could hear her heartbeat speeding up, could feel her knee bumping his own. To his surprise, he realized he was becoming aroused—and that she knew it and shared it.

"Amanda," he said, pulling back slightly. He let go of her hand and felt instantly bereft as their link dissipated.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, blushing.

He had no idea what to say.

"Perhaps we should go," he said at last, and with a tiny nod, she turned and walked ahead of him to the front door.

If the concert was as he expected—typical discordant Andorian fare—he couldn't say. He hardly heard it at all. As they sat side by side in the concert hall, Sarek's mind was a jumble of contradictions: Pleasure when he remembered the kiss and mortification when he thought of how he had taken Amanda's hand—and her mind—into his own without seeking her agreement. Her behavior might have been forward, but his was inexcusable.

And, yet, if he was completely honest with himself, he knew he would be tempted to do it again if the opportunity arose.

Would that be wise? The complications seemed overwhelming if they proceeded.

If Amanda was experiencing the same level of turmoil, she hid it well. In fact, she seemed quite taken with the music and spoke energetically about it as he walked her to the public transport station after the concert was over.

"Here's my ride," she said, glancing at the hover bus turning the corner. "Thank you for going with me tonight."

For one horrifying moment, Sarek thought she might kiss him again here in public, but she just smiled and nodded when her bus pulled up.

"I forgot to ask about your headache!" she called back as she queued up. "Are you okay?"

He gave a short wave as a reply.

By the time he walked back to his apartment, his headache had worsened. His throat was parched, too, and he couldn't adjust the temperature controls to suit him. All night long he was up and down, hot and dry, so restless that he quickly gave up the idea of trying to meditate. A virus? If he still felt this way in the morning, he would consult the healer.

He stretched out across his bed and closed his eyes, but every time he did, he replayed the events from earlier in the evening—felt again Amanda's fingers, her lips, her knee, the small of her back. The memory of her tongue in his mouth, of her mind in his like a tentative visitor, made him groan out loud.

And then he knew. Pon farr.

Fear shortened his breath and he stood up, panicked.

The subspace comm unit chimed.

Before he answered, he knew it was his mother, alerted to his distress through their family bond. Sure enough, her face swam into view when he tapped the controls.

"This is early," his mother, T'Aara, said. "You can still get home in time."

"Get home to what?" he said, struggling to keep his tone even.

"I will call the matchmakers right away," T'Aara said. "T'Nara can go ahead and prepare the place for the koon'ut."

"No!" he said loudly. His mother didn't bother to hide her worried expression. "I told you—I will not risk being bonded to someone who doesn't also seek marriage."

"I will instruct the matchmakers—"

"There is not enough time," Sarek said, gulping. His heart was beating so hard that he could feel it in his throat, like the buzz of Terran bees. "I will not bring another child into the world that I cannot care for fully. I will not, Mother. Please understand."

Even over the subspace, Sarek could make out the distress in his mother's face.

"Just because Sybok's mother refused you does not mean that another bondmate will," she said. "Your logic is faulty. Arguing from one example is a fallacy."

Sarek lowered his eyes and considered his mother's words. She was correct, of course, that although Sybok's mother had not wanted to marry him, another bondmate might be more agreeable.

However, the idea of an emergency coupling—with someone he did not know, for a future he could not predict—was unsettling.

"Even so," he said, lifting his eyes, "I have other plans."

"You have someone on Earth?" his mother said, her eyes growing wide.

"No," Sarek said. "I will spend the time in meditation. It has been done, Mother. By many people. The stories of the danger are overblown."

His mother shifted in her seat and Sarek hurried on.

"And if I cannot manage with meditation alone, the healer can give me some meledoxidrine to alleviate the worst symptoms. I will be okay."

"And if you are not?" his mother said, this time sounding almost angry. "You say you do not want to father a child you cannot raise. What about Sybok? If you die, you will not be able to raise him, either."

Taking a deep breath, Sarek felt the bond with his mother humming like an electric current. Her worry was understandable. Her affection was appreciated.

"I will not die, Mother," he said, and he tapped the subspace comm shut.

For the next hour he prepared his apartment, clearing the tables and dressers of breakable objects, filling several large jugs with water and setting them along one wall in his bedroom.

He typed out a short message to his secretary and told her he would not be into work for several days, and then he turned off his comm and his pager and disabled the door chime and the entry code.

He changed into loose clothes, turned the cooling unit as low as it would go, and lit his asenoi, and then, not able to think any further, he lowered himself on the floor cross legged and tried to enter the first level of meditation.

Normally reaching the first level was so easy that it took only the slimmest preparation. Today, however, Sarek struggled to concentrate on the flickering firepot. If he weren't so hot he could think. Reaching behind him, he opened one of the water jugs.

That was better. He let his hands drift to his side and started counting his breaths. One, two, three—

A flitter whirred loudly overhead. Someone in the distance—a neighbor, perhaps—coughed twice. The air handler in the corridor rattled.

Four, five, six—

Another flitter, this one so close that it shook the floor of his apartment.

With a bang, Sarek slammed the flat of his hand down. He raised his hand back up to eye level and looked. He was shaking, as the humans said, like a leaf.

Over the next few hours he slowly slid into a haze of fever and disturbing fits of emotion—anger at random noises, despair at his uncontrolled outbursts. And running through everything was a grinding, aching sexual frustration that blinkered his thoughts and kept him coming back again and again to the memory of Amanda's kiss.

He knew that using fantasy and memory could help ease normal sexual tension. Surely it would help him through this.

At first he tried to shift his memories to long ago encounters he had in his youth—sexual explorations with two different Vulcan women, one a fellow student at the Vulcan Science Academy, the other an architect working in the same office in his first fulltime job.

Both relationships had been relatively short-lived and amicable, but when Sarek tried to call up the images of either woman, he had trouble picturing them—as if his mind had blanked them out. Instead, he drifted back to the way Amanda's fingers had felt in his hand, closed his eyes and felt—in startling detail—her body pressed against his in the kitchen.

For two days he alternated between fitful dreams that shook him awake, his clothes soaked with sweat and semen, and short periods of meditation, his hand shaking so hard that he struggled not to tip over his asenoi as he relit it. In the distant part of his mind he watched himself sinking further and further, like a dispassionate observer, until he woke up with a start, surprised that he was still alive.

Someone was banging on the door.

"Sarek! Are you in there?"

Amanda! He pushed the bedcovers off and stood up, wobbly, unshaven. Amanda! Before he had any conscious thought of doing so, his body was tumbling toward the corridor, pulled forward by an urgency that almost frightened him.

"Open the door, Sarek! I'm worried about you!"

He could do it! He could open the door and she would be there as he needed her to be—in his mind and in his bed.

Parted from me and never parted.

The words of the koon'ut rang in his ears and he stumbled to a stop.

Amanda banged on the door again.

Leaning against the wall where he stood, Sarek slowed his breathing and listened to his heartbeat in his ears.

She was just outside. He could open the door.

With a grimace, he forced himself to sit where he was, his head bending forward until his forehead touched the ground. Until the banging at the door stopped and he heard Amanda's footsteps growing faint, he didn't move. Then he dragged himself back to his bedroom and lay down on the floor next to his bed.

I am going to die, he thought with the same dispassionate point of view that had entertained him earlier. Now that the idea of his own death wasn't something abstract or distant, he took it up and examined it, like someone listening to a piece or music or reading a narrative.

He thought of his mother and father and allowed himself to feel gratitude for their guidance and care. They would be distressed by his death, of course, but they would accept it—or he hoped they would.

And his colleagues—the people he saw daily who were part of the landscape of his work—they would note his death as well, perhaps finding their lives more difficult without his help.

Sybok was too young, too distant to know what the loss of his father would mean. Sarek felt a deep pain in his side at the thought of leaving his son an orphan.

And Amanda. What was that human saying about loss? That you never knew what you had until you lost it?

More banging at the door. A hallucination, his fevered mind wishing to see her again, to stutter out something this time when she looked abashed and apologized for kissing him, instead of his tongue-tied silence.

So hot—the cooling unit must be broken.

A Vulcan face swam into view. It buckled and wavered and the mouth opened and shut and called out, "He is here."

A mechanical purring in his ear, someone saying, "He is out of danger," and a sudden coolness on his back as he was lifted from the floor and lowered gently, gently onto his bed. A sheet pulled up to his chin, and Amanda, her eyelashes wet and clumpy, leaning over him.

"Are you sure it's safe to leave him here?"

I am dying, he said, but no one seemed to hear him.

Retreating footsteps, lights flickering off, his asenoi dark. The front door slammed and the house grew quiet. In a few minutes he was asleep.

He began dreaming at once. In his dream he heard the beep of the keypad as the front door was opened and he listened as footsteps pattered down the corridor.

I knew you would return, he said, looking up at Amanda standing beside his bed. In the dream he could see her smile despite the darkness of the room, and because the room was dark, he risked letting his own mouth quirk up.

How's your headache? she said, and the bed shifted and dipped as she pressed one knee into the mattress and leaned over him, her fingers sliding across his forehead. Do I need to kiss it and make it well?

She stood back up and made some odd motion with her hand, angling her arm behind her back. Her dress slipped over her bare shoulders and then fell to the floor. Kneeling again on the bed, she leaned over him.

He shivered and reached for her.

When he awoke he knew he was over the worst of it. Although he still felt feverish, he wasn't as dehydrated or achy. The headache was gone but his muscles were sore, as if he had been running in the desert. Some food and a shower, and by lunchtime he felt well enough to return to work.

On the walk from his apartment to his office he mulled over what to say to Amanda, tried to sort out what she knew. He had a clear memory of hearing her banging on his door, of her returning later with a healer. The thought that she had seen him as he had been made him flush—but there was no denying it, what she knew.

Nor what he had discovered when he thought he was dying—about loss and regret, about not speaking when words were called for.

"You look much better!" Amanda said as soon as he came in the door. She was sitting at her desk, her hands poised above the keyboard of her computer. "How are you feeling?"

"I am…well," he said, trying to decide if he really was. "I wanted to thank you…for your concern. I am sorry for the trouble I caused you."

She was watching him closely as he spoke, an unreadable expression on her face.

He stood in the doorway, unsure how to proceed. Finally he said, "The healer must have told you—"

Stumbling to a stop, he looked down.

"Sarek," Amanda said, "I never meant to intrude in your privacy. If the healer said anything, I've already forgotten it. I don't have that Vulcan memory like you do. I'm just glad you're okay."

Looking back up, he saw that she was leaning forward slightly, as if doing so punctuated what she was saying.

He nodded and said, "Very well."

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," Amanda said leaning back, and Sarek tilted his head and raised one eyebrow. "You know—some things aren't supposed to be remembered?"

He realized that she was asking if he understood the saying—one of many human aphorisms that tripped him up from time to time. He nodded.

"But I do have a question," he said, and Amanda sat up at attention. "I disabled my apartment door code. How did you get in?"

"Oh, that!" Amanda said breezily. "I paid attention when the healer used the emergency override. That's how I got back in later."

X X

Sybok wakes in sickbay.

A surprise, really, not to find himself in the brig. He tries to sit up but the pain in his head forces him back down.

"Easy there." Sybok looks around for the owner of the voice—a dark-haired man in blue holding a medical tricorder. A healer, evidently.

"Dr. McCoy?" A tall blonde human offers to hand the healer a padd but he knits his brows and shakes his head.

"Put it over there," McCoy says, pointing to a counter before turning his attention back to Sybok.

"I was stunned."

"You were indeed," McCoy says. "And from what they tell me, with good reason."

McCoy raises his eyebrows—an unmistakable nonverbal You deserved it. Despite the pain behind his eyes, Sybok gives a rueful laugh.

"A Vulcan with a sense of humor," McCoy says, shaking his head. And then, as an afterthought, he adds, "And quite a temper."

"What do you mean?" Sybok says, watching McCoy wave his medical tricorder in front of him.

"Well," McCoy says slowly, "you did try to kill our first officer."

"I wasn't trying to kill him."

"That's not what the captain said."

Sybok looks at McCoy more closely, a man with a world-weariness surprising in one so young. A jokester, perhaps, or someone who uses humor to mask his pain.

"The captain is mistaken," Sybok says, looking away. "I would never hurt Spock."

"I could understand if you wanted to. I certainly do sometimes."

The doctor's serious words are at odds with his playful tone—something Sybok hasn't heard in years.

Amanda, of course, was adept at saying one thing while meaning another.

"I know you don't want me to read you another story," she would often tease as she settled him in bed at night after she and Sarek moved to Vulcan. Although he spent more time with his grandmother and aunt, Sybok preferred the room Amanda had tricked out for him at the house in Shi'Kahr—the ceiling painted a rich purple like the night sky, real lights the size of pinpricks set in random patterns like stars.

When he protested that he did, in fact, want another story, she would sigh and pretend to be persuaded, their chatter eventually garnering the attention of Sarek who would look in disapprovingly on his way down the hall to his study.

At such times Amanda would wait until his footfalls had fallen away before laughing softly, like a conspirator, and saying, "Your father's jealous that we are having all the fun!"

Now a bustle at the door—and Sybok sees Captain Kirk with a security guard, Spock bringing up the rear. Gingerly he raises himself on the biobed and swings his legs over the side.

"Captain Kirk—" he says, holding up his hands like someone in surrender.

"You try anything, I'll stun you again."

He would, too—Sybok notes the cant of the captain's head, like someone leaning into a storm.

Shrugging, Sybok lowers his hands and meets Spock's gaze.

"You were not harmed," Sybok says.

He means by the close phaser fire, but as he says it, he realizes from Spock's expression—a hint of anger quickly replaced by a feigned indifference—that he thinks Sybok means the forced mind meld.

"A V'tosh ka'tur would not think so," Spock says. His eyes are narrowed, his voice barely suppressing his grievance.

A fair rebuke. Sybok nods once and says, "I was not…in control. For that, I apologize."

"The people on your ship?" the captain says, taking a step closer. "How are they going to react when they find out about Vulcan? The way you did?"

"I won't lie to you," Sybok says. "We are a violent people—like all Vulcans are, though some hide behind ceremony and ritual. Take that away and you see us as we truly are.

"And as for the Rihannsu—well, our distant brothers make no claims to be peaceful people. Without Vulcan, they have no place to go, either. We have nothing, Captain. Nothing. And people with nothing have nothing to lose."

Captain Kirk clenches and then spreads the fingers of his right hand rhythmically and takes a deep breath before answering.

"Then we have to convince them that they do have something to lose. You have to convince them—keep them cooperative—at least until the High Council on New Vulcan decides what to do."

"A colony world?"

"They've already made a lot of progress. The High Council is meeting now to consider your petition to settle. Of course, there's the problem of the Altoran ship to consider—"

"We made no petition," Sybok starts to say, but his words falter as he sees Spock's face, pale and drained, and watches as he totters suddenly, as if the ground had shifted under his feet.

"The bridge," Spock says tonelessly. "The crew."

Clearly alarmed, the Captain grabs Spock's arm to keep him upright. "What it is?"

But before Spock can speak, the intercom squeals and a man with a heavy Scottish brogue says, "Captain, we have intruders onboard. They've taken over the bridge."

A/N: I hope you enjoyed this chapter, but no matter what you thought, thanks for letting me know. Your reviews are what keep me writing. Really!

Thanks, too, to StarTrekFanWriter for her suggestions. If you are a Loki fan, check out her completed story "Blue" in my faves.