Archernar dipped in a half bow and one corner of his mouth pulled tight. The sight made murmurs break out in the chamber and hard words slid out underneath people's breaths. The worst were the survivors like Saavik.
"The arrogance!"
"He smiles."
"He has the nerve to address us as if he did nothing wrong?"
An understandable, but wrong conclusion. Saavik never thought they'd make an accusation like that, but she should have.
She held no illusions about what Archernar was: a thief, a conman, a black marketer. Someone who stole from his friends and then sold their own things back to them with a smile.
Her opinion hadn't changed with his last words to her on Enterprise or his comparing her worth to the gold coin.
But it also didn't change what he was not. He was not responsible for Hellguard. She never would have saved his life if he had been. His small bow and what looked like a short smile weren't arrogance or mocking the Vulcans who had needed him. What he was trying to do was show he was sincere, but he probably hadn't done that in so long that he couldn't quite pull it off with people who didn't know him. He'd have been better off if he had never attempted it.
She got to her feet to explain. The words He is not responsible for the crimes against us were never spoken, because she found Micar, Komal and A'kornora doing the same thing. They stopped at the sight of each other.
Jdehn snorted. "Told you. The alphas."
They had revealed themselves without intending to do it and without even knowing that's who they were. Now that it had happened, they stood and stared at each other.
The elderly woman seated next to Eitan in the front row slowly got to her feet. With a nod to T'Pau, she said only three words to the crowd.
"Are we Vulcan?"
Anyone who had said something at the first sight of a Romulan dropped their eyes. It was hard to tell who was hit hardest by her words: the Hellguard survivors who tried to live up to half their heritage or the Vulcans born to it and who should have known better.
Mekhai started to laugh, probably ready to say no, he wasn't Vulcan, but the elderly eyes found him and he shuffled under their weight like the people who had muttered about Archernar.
T'Pau spared them by calling for quiet. "The cause for such reaction is sufficient--" echoing Surak's teachings as had already been done, "but it cannot be abused into an excuse. We have much more to endure. Reacting with conclusions based on no facts dishonors us. This is the sender of our information, not the creator of it."
She ordered the presentation be continued.
Archernar straightened from his bow. Saavik had never seen him like this. He could be a guest lecturer at the Academy with the way he spoke and held himself.
"I will not waste your sensibilities by making a greeting. I couldn't make one that didn't mock why we're in contact. This new attack on the survivors is vicious and no one who claims to have any kind of decency can excuse the actions made by my Empire on the Thieurrull colony."
Subtitles translated his words into Vulcan and Federation Basic. Different whispers circulated now, with the Vulcans either chastising themselves for their earlier illogic or approval at what Archernar had said. Kirk asked Spock if this was the same Romulan who had been onboard the Enterprise.
Saavik was nonplused at this new somber and sedate Archernar and that only grew stronger with his next words.
"I first started gathering any information I could find when I met one of the survivors."
She was that survivor! He had started collecting data on Hellguard back then? Why?
Fortunately, he didn't name her. Even though quite a few people already knew she was the one who had suggested contacting Archernar, she didn't want that connection to be something everyone knew. It would create too many questions.
And suspicions. If the others from Hellguard lost control over just the sight of him, what would they do if they thought she was connected to him?
"I've spent the years since then using every resource that exists to find everything and everyone still out there. What you will see are the only remaining files. Everything else was destroyed when the task force shutdown the -- first project."
No one could miss his hesitation and Saavik wondered what he had been about to say before he thought better about it. Genetics project? Breeding project? Vulcan project?
Did it matter?
He found files from the project? Not just the disease!
"The files are only rough drafts that the scientists made before giving their final presentations. One of the project leaders, a scientist named Thair--"
Saavik kept herself carefully quiet. She remembered Thair. She had survived numerous, terrible beatings because Thair had ordered the Centurions to do it. He had called them lessons.
"--smuggled them out before he deleted everything on his system himself. He knew the Centurion assigned to the data deletion wouldn't miss them because no reference to them was ever made in the colony systems. It's the only reason they still exist. These are the originals and there aren't any copies. I won't even keep a copy of this transmission. You have the right to be the only people that have them. They won't answer all your questions for which I'm sorry, but it's something."
He took a breath. "The immediate question is did anyone in the Empire access any information on the colony or did someone from the colony create the disease. Even indirectly. You're going to see that for yourself and I think you'll trust your own judgment more than any answer I'd give you."
He didn't mean that as an accusation, but it was the truth. And the truth was uncomfortable. It was as bad as Eitan's elderly relative reminding them that they weren't acting as Vulcans.
But Saavik did have to see for herself. Even if he had told her that the Romulans were responsible for the disease and how --
They must be responsible... who else would know everything they did?
-- she had to see those files for herself. Everyone in the audience was the same. But curiousity became a double edged sword. She had to see the people who were responsible for Hellguard try to justify themselves. Even though she already knew nothing said in these files would give her what she wanted.
"I've confirmed everything I've just said to you," Archernar said.
She could tell he was finishing. Good, because it didn't matter anymore how well he presented himself. The longer he talked, the longer it became before the files started.
"This is the only data left and I've tracked down anyone who was even remotely part of the project. I only wish I could give you more as easily as I'm handing over this."
He bowed again and no one misunderstood it this time, even if they had allowed themselves such a lapse of control again.
His image faded into black which lasted on the screen for a second before fading into a different Romulan male. He looked like he was in the last years of his youth with gangly limbs, medium brown hair, and a slight brow ridge.
Fegral.
A healer and maybe the closest thing to a kind heart on Hellguard. Every hurt Thair and the others dealt to Saavik, Fegral had healed. When Thair and the others called her a lab animal (which, in fact, she was), Fegral wanted them treated like regular children. So she'd call him kind hearted... if he hadn't been one of the Romulans behind everything the colony did. No kind heart acted like that.
It was a lesson all the children had known. They liked Fegral, but they had never trusted him. He was one of Them, and They were cruel.
His back was stiff, and his words came out forced and unnatural. He eyed the camera as if it was a superior about to chastise him. "Progress report 155. I will start off by answering the questions in -- in the, the last packet."
The lights in the lab bore down on him and every object in the room. It was stark and bare, not in the way Vulcans kept everything in order, but as if the place was too new to look used by anyone. System screens grew bright and dim behind him, depending if they had new information scrolling by. He touched one and whispered something. The data on the screen flashed off and was replaced with a DNA diagram.
"Uh-- the question about the hybrid children possibly being sterile which -- which happens so often in uh... in hybrids. Thair has focused on this since the beginning. He thinks that sterile children will-- will be a sign of failure just like the, uh the people who asked the question."
"Success!"
On screen, Fegral jumped at the outburst and Saavik heard Jdhen and Arik make startled noises too.
Thair swept into view as Fegral tried pretending he hadn't jumped. What was worse? The sight of the Romulan who had caused Saavik such pain? Or what he carried?
What he carried was a newborn baby swaddled in blankets. The blood and birth fluids from its mother still stained its skin. It made a terrible comparison to Thair's well tended, strong dark looks.
"The first born!" he cried. "To be followed by so many others!"
Fegral lost his nervousness -- and forgot about the camera -- at the news. "The first born? When? I was supposed to be there at the birth. Let me examine her, you haven't even cleaned her up, Thair!"
Thair refused to relinquish his prize. "I examined her and I cleaned and cleared anything that could harm her. Who cares about the rest? It won't be the last time someone else's blood touches her skin."
He does not know how well he has foreshadowed her survival after we were abandoned.
But Thair had no inkling that the abandonment would happen. What plans could he have had that he pictured spilled blood by a child he treasured? Why did he make the children like the one he held?
A blast of cold drifted through the chamber. It came from the air conditioning, but its timing served as a shiver at his words.
Fegral shifted again under Thair's arrogance and dismissal. He tried to rally. "She needs her name. We picked--"
"I'm giving her a name right now." Thair leaned down closer so his face hovered over the infant's and began to recite. "'And those that were cursed were sent to the Wasteland where their blissful ignorance was lost to becoming the hunter or the hunted.'" His smile that mocked tenderness grew into a grin. A dark, chilling grin. "'And the day came that a child was born of her mother's pain. And they named her Dhivael because she was born as part of the storm.'"
His eyes lifted from the newborn to the twitching Fegral. "What's the matter? Don't like it?"
"Who would?" Fegral blurted out. "Quoting The Wasteland? You know what happened to those people!"
Thair laughed and then laughed more when the other flushed. He punished Fegral for that reaction by quoting more. "'And each of them was cursed all their wretched lives and so were all their tainted progeny. The Race of the Wasteland, marked with guilt and shame, and shunned liked the scorpions.' Look at you jump, Fegral! Don't be so superstitious! It's only a dusty old legend." He looked down again at the child. "She -- and all the others that will come after her -- are the reality."
The other male was beaten and turned away, maybe to leave before he was made into a bigger fool. Then he caught sight of the still active recording and swung back on Thair. "I need your research on hybrid sterility for the next report."
He got only a shrug.
"If they're sterile--"
Thair didn't look up. "Oh, my plans for them go on much further than one generation. Dhivael and the others are just the first wave. I'll send you my research."
That made Saavik grateful -- if she could use such a word -- that she had no plans for children. Even the slightest mischance in Thair's plans was a victory.
"Fine," Fegral said. "But it's no use continuing the report now. Computer--"
"Save report! File under my access." Thair spoke to the baby. "I want to keep a record of this moment. You're the real first step for this project. And it's going to be a glorious future."
He left the other scientist alone with that. Fegral fidgeted and then glared at the camera for catching his humiliation. "Switch off!"
The image went dark.
Saavik had only a second before the next image began. The questions she thought of in that instant would wait.
A female Romulan sat at a desk in the same room, and like Fegral, she looked right into the computer camera. Her brown hair was lighter than Saavik's, and it was pulled back tight from her long, thin face. The pale robes she wore washed out her face under the lights.
Ejarh.
"Progress report 372. Everything is going well. We improved our process in breaking down the control in our Vulcan subjects for breeding them--"
Saavik, as a scientist, had used that word subjects herself many times and would use it a lot more in the future. If she had one. But to hear it used for the prisoners and the forced pon farr reduced to only a footnote in a report...
At least, pon farr itself was not mentioned.
As much as Saavik thought of Commander Uhura, she didn't want their privacy invaded any more than it already was. And she knew the commander would feel the same way. So would Rrelthiz, if she was here.
"-- so the children are born now with more regularity. We are well aware of the risks involved with getting more subjects, but all data points to our needing at least one more group in order to have the proper gene pool."
A screen behind Ejarh scrolled with names and faces. They were too small to make out at this distance. Stacks of work now crowded the surfaces in the lab along with writing tools, tricorders, and portable scanners.
"I am attaching a full report on our practices in breeding the Vulcans--"
Saavik made herself remember that nothing else existed except these presentation drafts. That report on how to cause pon farr was as destroyed as Hellguard itself.
"--and the data for an increased gene pool. By our calculations, we'll need at least another--"
How many lives Ejarh wanted captured got cut off. Fegral entered carrying an infant in an odd recreation of his earlier report being interrupted by Thair. A young girl followed him, dressed in the plain blue tunic that all the hybrid children had worn. Her name tag read Dhivael. She looked the age Saavik had been when she had left Hellguard.
"Here he is!" Fegral held the newborn at an angle so Ejarh could see the baby's face. He noticed the computer recording and turned so it saw the infant as well. "Arngeir."
Arngeir was one of the ten in stasis right now. And younger than me, Saavik thought, although not as young as Arik. Still it meant that she had been born and was somewhere in the complex.
And that Arngeir's family sat somewhere in the audience, witnessing his first moments. While in the time of the video, his Vulcan parent -- the person they had lost -- was thrown back into the cells or died.
Those poor people.
On the large screen, Ejarh protested. "What is he doing here? Fegral! I thought we had stopped this nonsense of parading them -- Dhivael! What are you doing out of quarters!"
Fegral's smile refused to go away just because Ejarh yelled. "She's helping me, aren't you, Dhivael? She's going to be a healer some day."
Ejarh started to protest, but didn't get a chance.
"No, she won't."
From out of a back corner where Fegral and the camera had missed him, Thair came into view.
"The latest tests show they're not meeting even basic standards for children their age. And they're beginning to fight each other."
As if that was her cue, Dhivael clenched small hands in fists. "That's not my fault! They keep taking food away! I got to fight to get enough. And the lessons are stupid! Not me!"
She spoke in full Romulan!
Not the bastardized subset of the language that Saavik and the others had created, but full Romulan.
They used to teach us the real language... Unlike Saavik's childhood when she was always told their minds were too savage and lacked focus in the lessons.
Hard on the heels of that thought came: there was a time when there was enough food for all of us! It must have stopped when she was an infant. But why had it changed?
She waited for Thair to strike the girl for talking back, especially if she told the truth. But he didn't hit Dhivael. He couldn't even look at her.
"Get back to quarters."
That's all he did.
"No. I'm with Fegral." The small chin came up and the eyes demanded that Thair pay heed to what she said. She looked like the Noble Born instead of a mongrel born in a lab. Thair always looked expensive, but it was someone of a lower caste using money to raise himself. He had known of the breeding Dhivael showed.
His face flushed with anger and his lips twisted in a snarl. He moved so he towered over her. "Get back to quarters."
She lost the look of nobility and power and became a frightened girl. She stared at him, blinking, and started shrinking inside herself. It was the pose all the hybrids would learn: hunched in a cringe, a quiver of terror in tight muscles, and waiting for the blow.
"Go!" he bellowed and with a shriek, she ran from the lab.
Eharh was on her feet. "Thair! I never agreed with Fegral that we have regular children here, but treating them like that--!"
He rounded on her and caught Fegral starting to protest. He snapped at both of them. "They're a joke! You don't believe me? Here!"
He stabbed at a computer and then threw his hands at the screen. "See the results yourself!"
But he didn't look. He stormed out and then turned back at the door. "Computer, save report under my access! That way, I have a record that I warned you."
Ejarh ordered the camera to stop recording. One last brief shot showed her bending over the computer results with Fegral as his face blotched in patches, gripping Arngeir, and reading the test scores.
The screen went black and then showed the now familiar lab again. Ejarh sat in front of the camera once more, but Thair stood behind her shoulder in clear view this time. He glared at the floor.
"Progress report 1384--" she began.
His head snapped up. "I told you not to bother."
"Thair, we have to file the report. If we don't--"
"I told you. They've shut us down, Ejarh. They're sending a ship to break down the colony. Why bother recording a report that they'll just wipe out with everything else?"
"If we report on what we've accomplished, they may not shut us down."
Thair laughed at her. It was cold and cruel and it mocked her. Saavik had heard that laugh too many times. Ejarh recoiled from it.
"Don't be a fool, Ejarh. It's over."
"When they get here, they can test the hybrids themselves. They'll see--"
"The hybrids will be executed. So will all the Vulcans we have left. I've seen the orders. They're going to be wiped clean like all our systems and equipment. It'll be like they never happened."
Ejarh paled. It hollowed out her cheeks and under her eyes, and made the bone structure in her face stand out like a skeleton. "No... all our work..."
Thair laughed again, but it was a wan imitation of the one he gave before. "All our work is worth nothing."
She snapped, "Don't pretend it doesn't matter, Thair. This whole thing was your idea! You may not be the commander that's on the record, but you created this project and you got the backing to make it happen! So don't give me your stupid playacting that you don't care that it's going to be destroyed!"
He matched her, bared teeth and temper, and leaned down into her face. "I did create this project. It's mine. I was going to--" His eyes grew wide over what it was he was about to say. He plastered the insolence back in his expression. "I was going to do a lot of things, but what I'm not going to do is die over this. You want to save them? Fine. It's your life or theirs. What's your choice now?"
Her mouth worked for a second, but stayed silent.
He grinned at her, a little brighter now that he could enjoy her pain. "That's what I thought. Tell Fegral the new orders. He's still trying to salvage the little washouts. You can break the good news that he's failed as much as they have."
If this is the day that he received orders to shut down the colony-- Then that night was the last time he had Saavik beaten and said it was the only revenge he had left anymore.
He had also congratulated her on being a survivor and said it was a shame that "it won't help you to survive this time". Little did he know...
Why were the executions halted?
Thair didn't wait to leave the lab this time. He stared right at the camera. "Computer, save this file and lock it to my access. I'll have proof that I did what I was supposed to do." His intensity seemed over the top. When the ship arrived, his actions in tearing down the colony would give him more proof than a file.
Is he concerned over someone else who will demand proof? Someone not on the ship?
Did he show them this file?
No answers came because the screen blacked out again. Archernar had been right. Too many questions were still unanswered. Where were the explanations about the disease that he had promised they'd see for themselves?
The screen stayed dark for so long that people began to speak. T'Pau held up a hand for silence and she didn't raise the lights.
The screen came back on, but the blackness was barely broken with the image of the Romulan female standing in one small pool of light.
Ejarh. Older, too much more than she should be. It wasn't her clothes or the light robbing the color and the life from her skin this time. She looked like a carved wax figure with glass eyes.
"I'm the only one left still alive." She swallowed. "They killed everyone else, over time. I never saw Thair after the evacuation. He never transported to the ship like the rest of us. I heard Fegral made the mistake of arguing about the project once too many times. And the rest... we got hunted down by the people we used to -- who were bred with the Vulcans. It didn't matter that we gave up everything to do with the colony. Fegral's death taught us that. But they didn't like having anything tying them to the project and we were the last pieces of evidence left. I almost was killed myself, even after I went into hiding. I'd be dead now if--"
Her eyes darted off camera.
Archernar. Saavik figured it had to be him. She still didn't know why.
"So I'm the last thing left. Me... and these files. I didn't even see them until today."
She sagged a bit more. "Thair apparently was executed a little while after we left. Or so the Centurion who sold these files to Archernar said. He was the one who carried out the execution and took them from Thair's body. He tried blackmailing some people with them. I was next on the list... but I already said something about that."
A glow suddenly came into her gaunt face and her skeletal arms waved in the air instead of staying clamped to her body.
"Archernar says thirty three of you survived. Thirty three! I can't believe it. We were told you were all executed before the ship left the colony. But you survived all alone for that long! Thirty three of you!"
Twenty two now, Saavik corrected automatically. And only twelve sat here watching this.
"The tests were wrong. I knew it! Our formulas couldn't be that wrong, I told Thair! I don't know where the testing went wrong... maybe environmental factors. If we corrected that or reevaluated the systems we used for testing--"
The scientist, happy that her lab rat ran correctly through the maze after all.
"I wish I could see you. Grown, accomplished. You became everything we said you would be."
The words scraped Saavik's sensibilities.
"How I'd love to prove our theories worked! Did your telepathic abilities develop? We were worried about that. We didn't know how to teach you and we could only hope we'd find a way to force the Vulcans to do it. Or at least reveal what the training should be."
One of the older hybrids had grabbed Saavik once on Hellguard. His mind had suddenly slammed into her head, shoved in like a cold blade.
Yes, our telepathic abilities developed.
She didn't look at Micar with his hand missing the one finger, but she couldn't keep out Valeris saying that Saavik had no idea what it was like to have someone's mind forced into hers.
Which made Valeris as wrong as Thair.
Some signal was given off screen. Ejarh's eyes darted there and came back. "Yes! I nearly forgot. Archernar told me about this disease. And you have some theories about it. We didn't develop it. It'd go against everything we wanted. We always intended you to live full lives in the Empire – well, until the end when the project was shutdown. We didn't have any need to create something as a self-destruct mechanism or to make you dependent on staying at the colony. It's not us. And Archernar has all the Hellguard information and it's only these presentation drafts that Thair saved. Any information that would give that right level of detail was wiped out when the project was shutdown. And we're the only ones who know you're alive. The disease does not come from the Empire."
A lot of theories and optimism sank with those words. The Romulans didn't do it. They didn't even help anyone to do it. The killer or killers were as dangerously unknown as before.
And what was worse was the small voice inside Saavik's head that admitted:
I wanted it to be the Romulans.
Because it would have justified so much.
Unless Archernar was wrong. But then, she was the one who had chosen him for the very reason that she knew he wouldn't get it wrong. If the slightest connection tied the Empire to the disease, he was the perfect person to find it.
If he hadn't found it, it didn't exist.
Ejarh gripped her bony fingers tight together, the enlarged knuckles going pale green. "You must find a way to cure this disease. You must survive! You're my proof, don't you understand? You're my proof."
Someone cursed from behind the camera and she disappeared.
Silence. No one in the hall said anything.
Then Mekhai jumped up. He threw something at screen. "Damn you to hell!"
No Vulcan stopped him or complained.