I do not own Star Trek. I'm just telling this story for fun, and to improve my writing. Please don't sue.
She couldn't hear them anymore.
Spacefaring vessels were optimized to absorb vibrations. This was done primarily to prevent nanoscopic fractures in the hull, which would inevitably result in a breach; and to a lesser extent, to minimize ambient noise, which could otherwise become distracting for many species.
It was basic engineering. T'Aiza had completed a cursory study of the subject when she was nine.
So as the door to T'Aiza's emergency transport hissed shut, she understood why she could no longer hear the cacophonous roar of fracturing bedrock. Or the level voices coordinating the evacuation on the other side of the bulkhead. Or the...reassuring...voice of her mother. Simple science, nothing more.
Still, it seemed...incongruous.
One moment, T'Aiza's mother had been instructing her brother, Sotil, to ensure T'Aiza stayed by his side...and then the door hissed shut, and all she could hear was a voice over the comms informing the passengers that they were launching.
That was logical. They needed to launch. The next transports could not land if theirs was still on the launchpad, and if the next transports could not land, her parents could not evacuate.
At least, not anymore.
"Why did Mother and Father stay back?" T'Aiza looked up to Sotil for clarification. The grip he had on her arm was becoming slightly uncomfortable; she was certain that her mother's instructions were not supposed to be taken quite so literally. "Why did they allow the Verais twins aboard before them? The coordinators said they were only allowing two more people. They must have heard the announcement."
Sotil said nothing.
Also incongruous. Her brother was often corrected for extensive bouts of speculation; his uncharacteristic silence raised more questions in T'Aiza's ten-year-old mind...
...Perhaps this was a good time to practice her logic exercises?
At approximately five years her senior, Sotil was double her height, and appeared to be using the advantage that height gave him to see over the other passengers; towards what––given the angle of the seemingly non-artificial light illuminating his face––was most likely a window.
Sotil's face looked oddly tight. Almost the way it had the year before, when he had broken his arm while studying the Human sport of tackle football. But he didn't appear injured.
"Sotil? What is it?"
Still...nothing.
T'Aiza suppressed a distracting spike of fear.
What could he see out that window that she could not?
She needed more data. Quickly.
Looking around the cramped transport, T'Aiza quickly came to the conclusion that––if her immediate line of sight was any indication––many other parents had followed the same inclination as her own: T'Aiza estimated that for every adult Vulcan aboard the transport, there were at least three Vulcans her brother's age or younger.
It was confusing.
Where was the logic in their parents waiting for the next transport, when the ground shook like a sehlat shaking itself off after a dust storm, and the earthquakes were bad enough to necessitate a temporary evacuation of their region? Was it not more logical to board evacuees as they came, rather than by age––
The room shook.
Hard.
Sotil fell forward, accidentally dragging T'Aiza down with him.
Her brother released her arm in order to stop his decent; now free to move on her own, T'Aiza shifted out of Sotil's path; managed to dodge being struck by the errant elbow of another falling passenger as she landed.
An alarm blared. Loud. Shrill. The lights shifted red.
Some of the youngest children began to cry.
The shaking subsided, but did not completely cease.
Regaining her bearings, T'Aiza looked around; a quick glance confirmed that very few people had managed to remain on their feet, and those few were now carefully sitting down as a logical safety precaution.
Were they under attack? Who would attack a vessel transporting evacuees from a natural disaster?
...Was it a natural disaster?
Father had said they needed to leave because of the earthquakes. But they had begun so suddenly, and were so prolonged...were they actually earthquakes?
T'Aiza chided herself.
Of course they were earthquakes. They had to be. Father had said so. And what else could cause the ground to shake like...
The ship groaned. Like it was straining to hold itself together.
What was happening?
More data. She needed more data.
Her eyes searched the room for a comm button, or a viewscreen panel, but they were near the opposite end of the structure. Not the safest option, in the event that the shaking worsened again.
In contrast, the window was only a few feet away. Perhaps she could see something...
T'Aiza quickly crawled towards the window, careful not to step on anyone.
"No, T'Aiza, don't!"
She disregarded her brother's belated order; carefully eased herself onto her feet; looked out.
They were not at warp, but the distorted ripples of a warp bubble seemed to enclose their vessel.
...She had not thought that was possible. Her education center had claimed that warp bubbles were only stable if a transport was moving.
And they were clearly not moving. The window opened out the rear of the transport, and she could still clearly see Vulcan just a few hundred thousand kilometers below her. It was not coming closer; nor was it moving away…
She felt her stomach clench; tried to ignore it.
Another incongruity.
Mother had said the transport was meant to take them to the other side of Vulcan, to ride out the earthquakes. Why did their trajectory appear to be sending them into deep space instead?
Had they boarded the wrong transport? Were her parents going to land in ShiKahr, and be unable to find them, because she and her brother had accidentally boarded a transport to Tellar Prime inst...
A crack formed on the surface of Vulcan.
...Illogical.
Her...her anxiety...must be causing faults in her vision. Or it was a refraction of the anomalyous warp bubble. Planets did not form cracks. Not ones visible from space. Not––
Another crack formed.
And another.
And another.
...That was not the warp bubble.
T'Aiza watched, unable to suppress her horror, as the surface of her home spiderwebbed into hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of fractured pieces, all beginning to stir and swirl; crumbling in on itself like a whirlpool of red dust.
It couldn't be real.
Vulcan was imploding.
That...that couldn't be real.
...Mother.
...Father.
They...they had to be alright. Their transport must have made it offworld, or one of the vessels above must have beamed them away, or...
...But that was just emotion talking, wasn't it?
T'Aiza was too old to cry. She had started her training. She was stronger than her emotions.
The tears came anyway.
Helpless, the ten-year-old watched from the window as the only world she'd ever known crumbled in on itself.
An entire civilization––her civilization––reduced to dust.
Someone screamed.
Her throat ached.
Then, after another tremendous shake sent her falling once more, T'Aiza's ship warped away.