Spock felt as if he had not slept for weeks. He was capable of going without sleep for a number of days, a number of weeks even, if necessary. However, he had slept last night, and the night before, and he still felt as if he had not slept for weeks. They had been installed in this new place for five days now. Every day he woke up next to the captain and before he opened his eyes he reached out tentatively with his mind to see if he could sense any kind of consciousness there. There never was. Even after just five days the captain had lost more weight and muscle tone. Every day his limbs had to be moved, and his position changed to prevent bed sores. He tried to think of the coma as a state akin to the Vulcan healing trance, a place of rest in which the body could recuperate, but it was hard to see it in that way when every day he saw the captain becoming less of the man he had been and more of a skeletal body hanging on to life for no reason other than the beating of his heart and the moving of his lungs.
He came back into the critical room after the morning briefing. He did not want to admit to the tiredness that he felt, but he seemed to have little energy for anything but sitting and talking, poring over the details on his tricorder and padd, giving orders but not acting on them. It was a lack of nutrition, he supposed. They had all been taking shifts at the hard labour of trying to clear the road ahead, in case they were compelled to move on. The blockages could be removed with a phaser, but it would take a phenomenal amount of energy to vaporise all of that matter, and they did not have energy to waste if it could be done manually, so Spock had ordered it to be done manually. With the extra activity, though, came extra appetite. There was little protein here to eat that did not come from meat, and he would not bend to becoming an omnivore in this situation. Here, where the scent of blood and flesh was so often prominent, the idea of eating meat was even more abhorrent than usual. He understood the logic of eating whatever one could find, but he would not do it. Not yet.
He went over to Jim, as usual, and knelt by him, first checking his vital signs and then reaching out carefully with his mind to see if he could sense anything of his captain inside that enclosing skull. There was nothing. He knew that sometimes people in comas were aware of what was going on around them, but not Jim. He seemed to be in an endless and dreamless sleep, and without the constant attention of his carers, he would die that way.
He sighed very softly, his head bowed, and readied himself to stand up. A hand on his shoulder stopped him. He looked around to see Maia, the woman he had rescued some days ago, standing behind him with a sorrowful expression. Her latent pain and fear flowed into him through her touch, but he was careful to remove her hand tactfully, by standing up and a little away from her. He looked directly at her and asked, 'How is your hearing today, Maia?'
She could not read his lips, of course. Even if she had become skilled in that it would not help because the movement of his lips differed from the words she heard from his translator; so it was obvious when she smiled and said, 'Much better, Mr Spock,' that she was telling the truth.
Her arm was bound up over her chest with a sling and she moved with the pain of her broken ribs as they walked out of the room. Patients were trying to sleep, and they did not want to disturb them. She had been in the less critical room for a few days now. If only they had a functional bone knitter down here she might have been discharged, but that kind of equipment was beyond this situation.
He glanced at her curiously as they stepped out over the threshold of the front door, into the street outside. She made a small, half-hidden movement of her hand across her exposed neck, and then as she noticed him looking she clenched her fist and dropped it to her side, looking frightened.
'You are Western Caboli,' he said prosaically.
Her face flushed, and she looked about swiftly, as if working out where to run.
Spock put a hand on her arm.
'I would have saved you regardless,' he said. 'You are not a soldier. I would have helped any sentient being with your injuries.'
Her relief flooded him like a wave, and he strengthened his mental shields. It cost effort to constantly shield against the human and human-like emotion around him, but it cost effort to always be exposed to it, as well.
'We have Western Caboli among our patients, although the majority are Central Caboli,' he said. He looked at her directly. 'It was the Central Caboli who raped you.'
She blanched at that and seemed to shrink a little.
'I am telepathic,' he explained gently. At her bewildered look he explained, 'I have the ability to sense others thoughts and feelings, and I felt your distress. But it is no more than Dr McCoy's instruments have told him. He must have spoken to you about it.'
'Yes, as doctor to patient,' she murmured.
She was silent for a while, looking out at the street before them. It was a wide street planted with trees up the sides, but on the opposite side from their commandeered house a lot of the trees were blasted and leafless. The building opposite had had its front blown away, and the rooms ended abruptly, raggedly, disgorging their contents into the air and over the street below. He looked into those broken off rooms and wondered abstractedly about their structural integrity, and whether an exploration could be made for useful items.
'It was the Central Caboli soldiers,' she murmured bitterly after a long period of silence. 'Always the soldiers. They come through and take everything they want...'
Spock had heard similar lamentations about the Western Caboli forces, and more frequently, since they had encountered more Central Caboli people in their stay here.
'There is little to distinguish one side from the other, except by your religion,' he pointed out.
She shuddered, and he got the sense that she wanted to argue, but she didn't speak.
'Yes,' she said after a while. 'Yes, they're all the same. Men fighting. Children and women and the sick and the old suffering. But the men keep on fighting and taking and screaming of injustice...'
'It is not logical.'
She looked up at him then, utterly startled.
'When is war ever logical?' she asked him.
Spock blinked. These people were human in almost every respect. They had no understanding of alien cultures.
'I come from a planet called Vulcan,' he explained. 'Two millennia ago my people were passionate, vicious. There was warfare. There was rape. They ate animal flesh and tortured and killed their enemies. Our planet was ripped apart by such hatred as you could not imagine. Eventually a man called Surak came to prominence. He was the father of our modern civilisation. He advocated the suppression of passion and the dominance of logic as the only acceptable way to live. Eventually his cult grew to become a world-wide force. We put away emotion and live only by logic and rationality.'
'Everyone?' she asked in wonder.
'Those who did not agree, left,' Spock said simply. 'It was known as the Sundering. We had developed crude space flight by that time, and they left to seek another home. They became those you know as the Romulans.'
She looked confused again, and Spock recognised that although the Romulans were hovering about the planet like birds of prey, it was quite possible that the average citizen had no idea of their presence and danger. He would not tell her. She did not need anything else to distress her in this very real, very immediate war.
'No emotions,' she said. 'No love? No sadness?'
Spock pressed his lips together. These issues were so complex. What did he feel for his parents, for Jim, for McCoy, if not love? What did he feel now for Jim, if not sadness? He processed his emotions. He kept them from influencing his decisions and his actions. He acted on logic. But it was true that the emotions were there; very deep, very controlled, but there.
'Logic is the foundation of our philosophy,' he said simply.
She looked at him as if she did not believe him. Spock avoided her gaze, looking up at the thick white cloud and wondering if it held rain, or if the place would dry out and the terrible silica dust would be whipped up again.
'Where will you go when you are healed?' he asked her.
Her face became empty. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Not back that way,' she said, turning her head towards the west. 'But where is there for me?'
The words were very close behind Spock's teeth. You could plead asylum and we could take you off this planet. He did not speak them, though. They couldn't offer asylum to every person affected by this war. The ship did not have the capacity, and the planet needed its people.
'There are countries which accept refugees,' he said. He had researched these things before they beamed down, ascertaining which countries were open to refugees and how they were treated when they arrived. It was disappointingly true that many places either did not take them or did not treat them well, but perhaps being treated as a second class citizen in another country was better than being open to rape and murder and injury in one's own.
'This is my home, but I have no home,' she said in a broken voice.
'Do you have family?'
'Not any more,' she said simply, and then she cried.
Spock stood still, uncertain as to how to react. The captain would have held her in his arms and soothed her. He moved one arm momentarily, but then dropped it back to his side. McCoy had put it most succinctly one day when he had opined, You're not a hugger, are you, Spock? He stood still at her side, looking out into the street, as she cried. And then there was a flurry of footsteps in the hallway behind them and Nurse Shah came out and enfolded the woman in her arm, shooting Spock a censorious glare.
Spock lifted an eyebrow, and turned back inside the building. He felt he had a connection with this woman since he had dragged her out of the rubble and bodies and felt the anguish in her mind, but still he could not break through his self-imposed disciplines to hug her. He wondered how he would react should Jim awaken from his coma. Would he able able to demonstrate his logical relief and gladness to his captain? But with Jim he knew it would not matter if he could not. Jim did not attempt to elicit emotional displays from him to prove that he did experience emotion. He was not as obsessed as many humans were with breaking down the Vulcan character and forcing him to fit in.
He went up to one of the quiet rooms on the upper floors and took out his padd, linking it with his tricorder and carefully studying that morning's readings and reports. The W.C.G. were still some way behind them, thankfully, fighting C.C.G. forces that had arrived afresh. The area to the east of them was largely quiet – but for how long? If they did reach the hospital that was supposed to be in the east, would it still be there? Would it be able to help? Would they encounter anyone with the resources to aid them in contacting off-planet assistance?
He looked through the list of active duty personnel again. If he could send two men out on foot perhaps they could reach this hospital in as little as a few hours. What of the risk? Could they spared? Really the risk was no more than sending people out searching for food or resources, and they would be gone no longer than a day, if all went well. But if all did not go well... It was highly possible they would be killed or injured or not be able to gain the help needed.
Spock resisted sighing. He had not lied when in the past he had said he did not court command. He would do his job, but he vastly preferred data and discoveries to risk analyses and ordering men. If he had followed his father's wishes and attended the Vulcan Science Academy he would have avoided all this. He imagined an alternative version of himself, sitting at a desk somewhere on Vulcan, doing research, but inwardly he shuddered. No. The occasional stint of taking command was acceptable payment for the galaxy-wide spread of discovery and fascination that his job held.
He tapped his finger on the padd, considering the names there. Of all of the security personnel, Ensign Gietz had shown himself the more capable, the more inventive, and particularly good at stealth. Then there was Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye. He did not like the idea of sending out his most senior security officer, but Ndiaye was the most senior for a reason. He was good at his job. He was calm and level headed in a crisis. He was intelligent and resourceful.
Spock made up his mind, opened his communicator, and called the men in.