A simple mission: escort Ambassador Spock and his party to Arongotu; provide whatever assistance the Ambassador may require in renewing the trade contract. Simple, easy, routine.
The first problem occurred fifteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds into the mission. The negotiator for the insectoid Arongotu stood in front of the young Vulcans in Spock's party. His tan pincers and mandibles against his black, segmented body, moved rapidly, the gestures and clicks as much a part of his language as the moist sounds he made.
"I heard Vulcans start career training at young ages. I am so pleased to see this for myself!"
He directed his comment only partly to Spock and mostly to Saavik. She was the female. The negotiator all at once realized he had bypassed another woman to reach the students, Spock's diplomatic aide. He lifted his first two body segments off the ground, turning on the rudder leg under the last, elliptical section, and dropped back to the ground. He greeted her correctly, but one ruby eye on his T-shaped eyestalk swiveled so it stayed on the students.
Rebekah Gad returned the gesture, her short brunette hair falling against her very white skin. When she stood up again, her shockingly blue eyes went to Spock. He shook his head, watching the negotiator whose mandibles worked in quick, sloppy movements, the saliva collecting in orifices under his mouth, funneling down to his resin glands to be used later.
The problem came from the Arongotu having pushed through everyone else to reach the younger Vulcans, who had stayed in the background as they were meant to do. The literal pushing didn't concern Saavik so much. The hall was larger than normal for the planet, and showed outside influence on the native architects. When Saavik first visited the planet decades ago, even the shortest person in the landing party had to permanently duck their head, and they all had to overlap their shoulders in order to fit in the room. The Arongotu found comfort in crawling over one another. Even their vehicles were designed to do it, so no space was wasted in making room until they dealt with other species. The hall nevertheless was cramped with barely a gap an arm's length long around Saavik or anyone else. The negotiator had to push to get to the people he wanted to reach.
The fact remained he paid too much attention to them.
"Speaker," Spock said, using the negotiator's native title. Amber light poured through the translucent resin wall panels in their dark frames, and lent everyone the look of a fairy tale. Spock became the Elder over the younger people of a more evolved Pan, and Speaker a denizen of the mysterious Underworld.
Saavik, however, never paid much attention to fairy tales, even Vulcan's, unlike Spock. For her, the heavy light meant an amber twilight in the room and made things more difficult to see.
Spock twisted his fingers and hands to mimic the insectoid's mandibles and pincers, making sure to use male to male gestures. The Universal translator took care of rendering his words to the sounds no humanoid could make. Fortunately, he didn't need to imitate any of the insectoid's seven legged footwork, especially as the last leg was used only as a rudder and tail support. The language was already complicated without making up for five less legs.
"I assure you, Speaker, they serve only as observers. Their interaction with me as their teacher will be secluded from our negotiations and cause no disturbance."
Despite his rigid shell, Speaker deflated. "Truly?"
He spun on his rudder leg again, exposing his six pairs of tightly grouped, diminutive arms pressed against his first section. Saavik stepped closer when his eyestalk pivoted again and focused on the youngest Vulcan. His octagonal red eyes proved his people once lived on the surface under the light of a sun. Unlike Saavik's communications officer where the species developed completely underground, sightless and burrowing in the dark.
The ten year old Vulcan moved forward, recognizing his request for introduction. A dozen reflections of her opal eyes shown in his crystal ones, as well as her shoulder length black hair, swept behind the delicate points of her ears. She held her forefingers straight out before her mouth, then closed them in a V over her lips. She then moved her hands out, mimicking his pincers, keeping them in a closed position and held out next to her jaw. Since she was a child and female, she kept her head bowed, but raised her eyes showing that as an adult, she would ascend in rank over his gender in Arongotu society.
Speaker returned her gesture and a fine quiver jiggled his tail. "Such knowledge at such a young age! I see the information on your schooling were rumors! Your youngest daughter, true?"
Spock's eyebrow shot up and the girl looked towards her parents, silently asking what she should do. Gad turned her side to the room, checking the reports sent to the Arongotu on her tricorder. But Saavik knew without looking that the report listed the observers in the party, but That information concerning T'Pren's connection to Spock and I is not.
Saavik strode into the space between Spock and Speaker, and, in that way, between the insect and her daughter.
"I am curious, Speaker," she emphasized any gestures that spoke of her gender over his, "how you came to know of that relationship?"
His clicked pincers and wet mutterings came in quick response. The translator gave these as a laugh.
"There speaks the protective instinct of the mother for the young! As well as the captain for those under her protection. We understand. We are, after all, a matriarchal species. But my knowledge is benign. We hold a personal interest in you since it was your party who first contacted us. The USS Rider, correct?"
She nodded. "I was one of the party, yes."
"Imagine our surprise, Captain, to find such life outside our own!"
Imagine the Federation's when I penetrated the shielding minerals throughout the surface of this planet.
Suddenly,they not only found life on a world supposedly barren, hidden until sensor technology further developed and Saavik put together information on those minerals, but a thriving culture. And the Arongotu found themselves in the neighborhood of three major powers.
"My great-grandmother's memories speak highly of you, Captain. We researched public information on your life as it has been four generations since your last meeting. Such good news that you chose to bear twin females to carry on for you. As well as adding a male to the work force." One pincer gestured to Spock. "You truly used the same choice for breeding stock each time?"
Saavik waited the two seconds it took for Spock's other eyebrow to climb and join the first. Usually she was the target for statements on who was lucky enough to marry whom. She spared a moment to arch her eyebrows at his dry look.
The ruby eyes swiveled on their eyestalk, one staying on T'Pren as the rest traveled up the grown young male next to her. "This is not your son, correct? What career have you chosen for him? And the other little female?"
Of course. That was the reason for the negotiator's obsession, when another species would have paid scant attention. He was face to face with something he had never seen in his own people.
"It's true, yes?" he asked her. His eyes went up and down one young Vulcan to the other. "They are...?"
Saavik confirmed his every dream. "Students."
"Students," he repeated, hushed. "And the careers you embedded in your own young are?"
Spock folded his hands behind his back, knowing Speaker would prefer Saavik explain.
She paused. Did she risk their standing with the gender sensitive Arongotu by answering him fully? She decided she didn't. The Federation had listed these details from their first meeting.
"We do not implant a child's profession into his or her genetic coding, Speaker, anymore than we deliberately choose the gender. Our children, as well as these students, choose their careers themselves."
Speaker's eye stalk dropped back into his head with a snick. "Yes, yes, of course. I had forgotten. So the information wasn't rumors. Amazing!"
His mother had been told their people needed males and an arbitrator, so she choose a mate and created Speaker, weaving the skills, knowledge, even inherited memories into his DNA when he was a larva. From birth, he was fully ready to perform his role and started working when he was one. Schools and the concept of education were total unknowns to the Arongotu, as foreign as being bipedal and mammal.
He cared more about that than the fact Saavik hadn't chosen to have two daughters. Good.
She saw the tendrils lining Speaker's mouth quiver. He whispered, "A student at... how old is she?"
Spock caught her eyes, then moved to the side away from Saavik so that the Arongotu had to turn from her. She waited to see if it would work. Speaker must recognize Spock's authority on behalf of the mission. Saavik could, if the two year old Arongotu's inexperience made it necessary, enforce Spock's decisions being female and familiar from her first landing here. But she had her own duties.
They were terribly close to the Romulan Neutral Zone. In fact, Arongotu inhabited the slim frontier between the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans. Their neutrality in the past meant they traded with all three governments. Never anything major: minimal trade in dilithium, minerals, and alloys kept the planet from going unnoticed entirely. If the Federation didn't keep watch over the Arongotu's claim to their own world, one of the Empires would have overrun it by now.
If only the Arongotu didn't see embracing everybody in trade as the only way of life.
That made the other part of Saavik's mission. Since they had destroyed the Klingon civilian colony Narendra III, the Romulans kept to themselves. Even before that, since the battle at Tomed in 2311, the Federation heard little from the Empire. The quiet spread to their trade contract with the Arongotu, and Starfleet hoped Saavik would find out the Romulans and the insectoids had lost interest in each other. If so, she and Spock would suggest they consider Federation membership again.
The whole thing would go more smoothly if Speaker didn't consider Spock only as Saavik's choice for breeding stock.
The irony.
That Spock must establish himself as an ambassador when, in reality, he wouldn't be here if he hadn't agreed to mentor the Vulcan study group on this mission. He never would have been sent to handle such a minor, already established trade contract otherwise.
Speaker did turn to Spock, and listened in rapturous silence, his pincers and mandibles stilled.
"T'Pren is ten years old, measured in Federation years. What you will find the most amazing," Spock said, "is the minimal amount of education dedicated to career training in this stage. It is why she has an observer's status on this mission, and only for indelicate meetings such as this. As opposed to Seprix here who is nineteen and two years into his dedicated career studies. His work will duplicate much of Rebekah Gad's, whom you have met."
Saavik nodded, satisfied. Spock held Speaker enthralled, and was already moving him away from his interest in the students to the contract renewal.
Interesting. The Arongotu do not know of the family tie to Seprix. Granted it was distant and through a betrothal.
One miniature eyebrow shot up on T'Pren's forehead in response to Speaker's comment on her confusing status of reaching some adult responsibility when she turned seven -- in reality, when she passed her Kahswan. But Vulcan also considered her still a child and just beginning her education in her career path. On Earth, she wouldn't even have that status. Saavik knew her youngest child burst with questions and everything else she'd like to discuss with the Arongotu, all made further tempting by Speaker wanting to talk with her. But T'Pren, Saavik noted with satisfaction, kept quiet, maintaining her place only as an observer.
And experiencing more than she expected this quickly.
Of course, if T'Pren didn't have such discipline, she would never have earned her place in the study group. Coincidence put her here after her father and mother were already assigned. Vulcans didn't indulge in nepotism, and even if they did, Saavik and Spock did not.
She swept her landing party with a critical glance. The moist noises coming from Speaker's tendril lined mouth made one of her ensigns turn a queasy shade of green. The humidity in the warm air dropped his uniform as well as his shoulders. Her look got him back to attention with the contents of his lunch still in his belly.
Not every world's life forms were beautiful to the human eye; that didn't make them less important. And if this ensign wanted a career in Starfleet, he'd better learn that now.
Or he will not serve under my command.
Her communicator signaled her, and she dropped back behind her people to answer it. Spock discussed how Starfleet patrols cut down on the piracy in the neutral worlds, and she nodded to show she recognized an opening for later discussion on Federation members being protected along the Neutral Zone.
"Saavik here."
"Captain! We have a Romulan ship coming into orbit, paralleling us on the other side of the planet."
Backs tightened along the line of the landing party. The comm officer's voice had reached their ears.
"Identification?" Saavik asked. She was not going to jump to conclusions until she found out they weren't talking about a freighter. She still signaled to Spock, letting him know another issue had arisen. He kept an eye on her as he listened to the negotiator discuss the schedule for the next few days.
"We're working on that now, Captain. It's a cruiser, a refit on the older K'Tinga-class, not the new Amarcan-class we saw at Narendra III."
You did not see those ships at Narendra III, Lieutenant, Saavik thought. If you had, you would be dead.
"Identify that ship, Lieutenant," she ordered.
Spock excused himself from Speaker when the negotiator said he needed to prepare for their initial meeting, and reached her side when the comm officer came back.
"Coming through now, Captain. It's the Liusaidh. It's supposed to have a sister ship, the Aminta, but there's no sign of it. It could be cloaked or assigned somewhere else. Both ships are under the command of --"
Saavik already knew the commander's name. So did Spock. His head came up and their eyes met as the name came over the communicator.
"--Commander Ajeya, Captain."
The tight backs in the landing party grew more tense; Ajeya's fearsome reputation proceeded her.
Saavik had met Ajeya when the Romulan woman had captured her, saying she followed old orders to execute Saavik and any other half-Romulans born on Hellguard. But Saavik had expected the capture and prepared for it. The ship she'd served on then, the Armstrong, rescued her and took the Romulan as a prisoner at the same time, leaving Ajeya to swear she would escape, and when she did, she would someday hunt Saavik down again.
Ajeya had escaped on the way to her trial.
Still looking at Spock, Saavik asked, "Have the Romulans raised their shields or armed their weapons?"
"No, Captain. They must have seen us since we saw them, but they just settled into orbit and contacted the planet. Shields are down and they seem content with keeping Arongotu between us."
T'Pren and another Vulcan girl started leaving the room for their assigned quarters now that the more sensitive negotiations were about to start. Spock signaled them to wait nearly simultaneously with Saavik.
"Captain! They just beamed a party to the surface!"
"Location?"
"The Arongotu command center. The same coordinates where they first had you beam down."
Ajeya had to know it was Saavik's ship in orbit. But did she know Saavik was on the planet?
"Have they attempted to contact you?"
"No, Captain."
Regardless, the safety of her ship and the diplomatic party were her first priority, not to mention the Arongotu themselves. "Yellow alert. Scan for cloaked ships and find the Aminta if it remains out there. I want a security team standing by in the transporter room and keep this communication line open until further notice."
She closed the communicator and the distance to Speaker in almost the same amount of time. "Speaker, my ship informs me that a Romulan landing party has transported to your command center. Their ship maintains an orbit around this planet."
"Ah good!" Saavik heard his small arms scratch against his shell. "They're on time. That bodes well for their negotiations."
She stepped in front of him as he started to move off. "Perhaps you are unaware of it, but the Romulan Empire has increased hostilities with the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Their arrival here at the same time as ours further aggravates the situation."
"I am sorry to hear you think so." The tendrils around his mouth did hang straight down, and the scratching became a nervous tick-tick-tick tapping sound. "However, these hostilities have nothing to do with us. The contracts are separate. We have always maintained this throughout our history. I am handling your contract, another Speaker in another location will handle theirs."
"Even so, I am certain you will understand that I must consider the safety of those under my command. The students will return to the Contact, and a team of Starfleet personnel will need to transport down."
What that really meant was trading the inexperienced ensigns for the security team waiting in her transporter room. She opened her communicator.
"You insult us?" Speaker lifted his first two body segments off the ground so he reached her chin. The snapping pincers and drooling mandibles might have intimidated others, but both Saavik and Spock knew not to take an alien appearance and turn it to something it wasn't.
Speaker was upset, maybe even angry, but not attacking.
"I have told you, Captain! Your hostilities are not here! These are our contracts and the contracts have always been peaceful!"
"As we well know," Spock interceded. "The accord your people have kept with us and the Romulan Empire is not in question. We seek to not extend the hostilities to your world through our presence here. It is the reason Captain Saavik takes these measures."
"If she removes personnel, Ambassador, she shows she does not believe what I have said is true. If the Federation cannot place their faith in our history with them, then perhaps it is time we end our association."
Starfleet Command would have plenty to say about a captain who lost a minor, easily re-negotiated treaty. Not to mention, inflamed the situation with the Romulan Star Empire at the first appearance of one ship and no signs of aggression. And possibly push the Arongotu into the Empire's hands.
Especially when they told her to find out the Romulan situation on Arongotu.
So Saavik argued. "Seeking to prevent further hostilities with a third party is not meant as a distrust towards your people."
"It is if you believe yourself unsafe with us! You, of all people, to distrust us!"
Spock said, "A compromise then. We will keep our party on the surface as we previously agreed. This includes the student group. However, we request a team of additional personnel be transported here as well."
As Speaker's eyestalk rose to its full extension and his eyes swiveled independently of the other, looking at everyone in the Federation party at once, Saavik stared at her husband for contradicting her security measures. She reminded herself, No signs of aggression have been made. Something Spock balanced with the Arongotu reaction.
"Agreed!" Speaker shouted. "As long as all your people keep their distance from the Romulans."
The Arongotu body word for Vulcan was for the pincer to outline the pointed ear shape in the air. When he said Romulan, he snapped his pincer while making the same shape. The harsh sound better represented Saavik's thoughts that any word she knew.
"I assure you," she replied, "we have no desire to do otherwise."
The previously ill looking ensign whispered to the person next to him, "I thought this mission was routine!"
How many times have I said, no such mission is routine?