Another thick moment of silence followed Mekhai's outburst. Then T'Pau moved in front of them and her voice carried the burden of what they had just viewed. Her normally strong tones came out hushed and heavy.
"We cannot deny what we have seen. It has been verified. As we were warned in the beginning, more questions remain without answers."
She paused and then sought out Saavik and the others in the audience. "This Dhivael... She was not one of you when Symmetry reached the colony."
Saavik didn't know what had happened to Dhivael. But others remembered if the way they darted glances at each other was any indication.
A'kornora was the one to stand up and answer T'Pau. "No, she was not there when the Symmetry arrived. She... died approximately one year after her last appearance in the presentation."
She wanted to be a healer. She was educated and more accomplished in it than any of us had imagined being at that age.
It was the only eulogy Saavik could give the girl. T'Pau stayed quiet a second longer for the same reason.
"Our primary concern for the moment is this disease. The Empire is not its source. This possibility is the reason why we have always investigated other causes. I suggest anyone involved in this investigation convene immediately."
Micar rose to his feet. "Before we leave, may I ask if I and the others could use this chamber to meet alone? With the files we just viewed?"
Saavik had wondered who would be the one to speak up. She had been ready to do it herself.
T'Pau naturally granted the request. Everyone understood they'd want time to absorb what they had just seen. As much as it affected them all, it was the survivors' past and their lives discussed and discarded by the people who had created them.
And it would give the Vulcan families time alone too.
If T'Pau or anyone else knew the real reason, they never would have agreed.
As people filed out, Saavik did not look at Spock, remembering too well what they had talked about so very recently. She equally stayed from Kirk's satisfied expression that she appeared to be leading this group at last and from Sarek and Amanda's glances of concern.
No one moved until even the faintest echoes of everyone else leaving faded away. Then Saavik leapt for Archernar's recording while two others, hampered by the drain of Phase III, followed in her wake. The rest moved down to closer seats or stood up if they had the energy, unable to sit down during this.
Saavik took over the controls for the files while Ny'Jul activated the screen and Sajjan ordered the room's systems to dim the lights. Saavik forwarded to the lab scene where names and details had scrolled behind Ejarh. She magnified that screen and every pair of eyes watched the names go by.
Their names. Saavik stilled when she saw hers. Not at reading her name, although it was the first time she could read it spelled in Romulan, but at her picture. She had never seen herself in a mirror until she was onboard the Symmetry. Before that, it was distorted reflections in metal or water. She couldn't quite take in how her toddler image looked so... vulnerable. And trusting.
The only details next to her picture were her name, her ID number, and a link to her full file, which of course she could not access through this recording.
"They're not there," someone said.
"Why aren't they there?!" Mekhai shouted.
"Most likely, they were in the full files," Saavik responded. She didn't want it to be that way anymore than he did.
"We should have known," Sajjan whispered. She slipped back to the seats and sat down hard. "They made sure to erase their names, we should have known."
Saavik rapidly went through the presentation, for the sake of being thorough. She snuffed out the audio and brought up multiple images of every computer screen.
Nothing.
Ny'Jul had stayed put on the floor while Saavik worked, but with no more information coming, she turned to the group. "What do we do?"
She glanced at Saavik from the corners of her dark eyes, the makeup lines around them even darker. They were part of her being from the Ta'lendow province. So was her more shaggy hair. So were her inflections.
Mekhai drew himself up, maybe to point out his strength or give himself confidence. Maybe to intimidate the others. "We do it anyway."
"How?" The small braid and its bead behind A'kornora's right ear swung with her head. "And do you insist on still using that accent? Now?"
He ignored her, but his speech deteriorated even more. "Nothin' stoppin' us from goin'. Who says we can't?"
"No one," Micar answered, "but without the names of our Romulan parents, how will we find them?"
"Who says the names ain't out there? This guy -- uh, Archernar -- he didn' know to get 'em. That don' mean he can't!"
Saavik said, "He was told to find all information regarding the colony and ourselves. He further stated this was the only remaining data regarding the project. That would certainly eliminate the possibility of a file with the names we seek."
"You don' know!" Mekhai argued. "Why you got a Romulan contact anyway?"
There it was. The question she had known was on their minds.
She grabbed each person's eyes that she could. "He is a Starfleet contact. One made by the Enterprise crew while I was onboard, during the same mission when I destroyed the colony."
A few shifted.
"The contact was done not out of personal connection, as you well know, but for payment. And it was done not through me, but Commander Uhura."
"That's sometin' else!" Mekhai took a few steps down. "How did outsiders find out 'bout us? You tell her?"
"Indirectly."
"Who cares about 'directly'! "Who said you talked for us wit'out asking? Nobody! You broke our privacy!"
She vaulted her eyebrows. "Oddly, Mekhai, you sound Vulcan."
He flushed and gripped his tight fists.
"I did not have the choice or the capability in that moment for group consensus. It was necessary I give details on my own life. As it was a secure channel, Commander Uhura was equally necessary to maintain that security."
Mekhai snarled. "You got choice. You just did what you wanted."
She turned back, ice to his fire. "Consider it the price for Hellguard's destruction."
He shut up. They all did.
"I used Starfleet resources to do it, including the plan they devised. I delivered the colony's death, but it would not have been done without the means I required to do it. The price paid is the knowledge of our past being known by one discreet individual. I consider it fair payment."
Komal answered, not Mekhai. "You mislead us, Saavik. You would have had the resources anyway if this Uhura had not heard of our past."
Mekhai's grin held nothing but sharp teeth. "Cunning," he said, knowing the Romulan reference would grate. "But you blew it, Sa'Av Ik."
That damned accent!
Vi'hai hadn't met her eyes this whole time because his head had been down. Now he raised it with some little effort. "I have another question. Equally candid."
What new attack was this?
"We each want justice from the Romulans, especially the ones... whose biology we carry."
Any time they had used 'parent' before, it had been a terrible term. Until Vi'hai used this expression instead. Now Saavik preferred going back to the other word.
They carried the crime each Romulan had committed. It was in their blood. It was in the fact that they lived.
"If we still went to the Empire, who would survive the journey?"
He was tired just from being here. So were Micar, Ny'Jul and some of the others, and they were healthier than the ones who needed support to stay upright in their seats. The answer was obvious.
The journey would kill many of them. And Saavik realized she still thought in terms of 'them', not 'us'.
"We will not live to deliver the justice we want," said Vi'hai.
Arik whispered, "Maybe it's better to die that way then..."
Ny'Jul shot back, "It is easy for you to say, Arik. You would survive."
Mekhai pounced on that. "That's what we do. We go--" He swept a hand at Jdehn and Arik, who didn't look thrilled at being included in his group. "-- and we do it for everybody. We take Jdehn's ship--"
"Hey! Who said you decided about my ship!"
"--we get the names from this--" Another wave of the hand to mean Archernar. "-- guy and we take care of it! You got guts, you come too."
The temptation to do it... but he made a dangerous assumption. "Archernar does not have the names," Saavik pointed out.
Mekhai jabbed a finger at her. "You're fightin' it 'cause you don't like that you didn' get them!"
"And perhaps you react in hindsight now that we know the records do not contain the information we sought."
Sajjan jumped to her feet. She was small, she always had been, and while she hadn't been the most timid on the colony, she never had been assertive either.
But life on Vulcan had thrown her a surprise. Her family had taken her in, but her new parents, aunt and uncle had died offworld five years ago, suddenly leaving the responsibility for the younger children and their home on Sajjan's shoulders.
The beta had learned to be an alpha. She had trouble for a moment standing up in front of the others, the old lessons of the colony almost bringing her eyes down and sending back to the safety (and shadows) of her seat. But maturity born from leading her house kept her in place.
"I have another question." Her chin came up as all eyes turned to her. "Why should we use what time we have left in chasing after the Romulans? Someone is killing us. Whoever they are, they are the most immediate threat. Find a cure for the disease and we have time to bring justice to the Romulans."
Jdehn got to her feet now. "We got no more idea about a cure or who might've made the disease than we do our -- parents." She swallowed on the word. "We die trying to find that cure and then we wasted our time doing that instead of paying back the Romulans!"
"At least it gives us more opportunity than your plan!"
Mekhai stepped down. "Nobody's rememberin' that the names could be out there right now and we don' got 'em 'cause we never said to give 'em to us!"
Saavik spoke up again. "Archernar stated these were the only remaining data. Ejarh confirmed it. We know everything we can."
Mekhai slumped a little. It made a visible symbol of everyone's sense of defeat. But then his rage lifted him back up.
"They dunno everything! We got to find out. Pay 'im to find out and watch how fast he suddenly says he didn' give us it all before. We all said we'd pay his price for this stuff before."
Saavik gave a fleeting thought to what she had almost sacrificed to pay Archernar so she could control the data he'd send.
"Then the Vulcans paid, so good! And they even showed us what they got. So let's pay it now!"
Micar spoke for the first time. "I agree with Sajjan. The more immediate threat is this disease. We waste ourselves on any other fight than that."
That caused A'kornora to speak. "Micar, we can each do what we want. I side with Jdehn. Why die knowing that Romulan is living? Even if we don't get our -- parents, why let Ejarh live? She's as guilty, maybe even more."
Eitan took a place with Micar as if A'kornora had threatened the weaker male. "You would be illogical? After Micar has pointed it out?"
She bristled. "Who gave Micar or Sajjan the power to declare logic for me?"
A few of her vowel sounds were flat next to his. Like Earth and so many other worlds, Vulcan's once rich diversity in languages and accents had been boiled down to a few by cultural dominance in past centuries. So A'kornora's home province in E'oDq sounded little different than Eitan's ShiKahr speech, but she used it to draw an invisible boundary between them.
Mekhai had to shove himself back in the front again. "And we don' know some Romulan didn' make the disease! We got to find out! That means we go!"
We go in circles! That is the direction in which we go.
"We have answered this point," Saavik argued out loud.
"You believe Romulans now? 'Cause your lover is one?"
Mekhai flinched in the next second when Saavik began crossing the floor and had reached the bottom of the steps to where he stood when he threw up his hands in retreat.
"Fine! Your Starfleet contact. But c'mon!" He shouted at everyone. "You believe that one? Ejarh and all of 'em lied all the time. But now you believe her? Who else can it be but a Rom? Nobody knows us like they do!"
He looked like he wanted to throw up by admitting that, and Saavik thoughts spun in no less a nauseous way. Who did know Hellguard and their backgrounds as well as the Romulans?
"It does not answer all the facts," she said. She tried to convince herself as much as anyone. "How did Romulans breach the Federation to infect us?"
How did they reach me on the Aerfen
Mekhai was olive in the face and the veins in his neck were thick ropes. "It don' mean that one of 'em didn' helped, gave information, somethin!"
"Either them," Komal began, "or--" She stopped. Saavik and five others got her meaning anyway.
"Do not finish that statement," Micar warned. "It is illogical."
"No," Komal answered, a strain in her voice. "To not think it is illogical. They are the only other ones who know as much."
"You accuse the Symmetry team?" Sajjan's voice went up two octaves. "You accuse-"
Rierlyrq got to his feet, a male as dark and nearly as big as Sohan in stasis. "I will take such an accusation against Spock as a personal challenge."
"I was not accusing Spock!" Komal defended. "But others on the team. It is at least possible. At least a few were resistant to our coming to Vulcan."
"You have your family wiped out to create us and see how resistant you are, Komal." Rielyrq stood with such strength, it lied about the effects Phase III had on him. Only the gaunt tightness in his face told the truth. "They gave their word to Spock. Spock gave his word for them."
Micar spoke. "I will also take an accusation against Spock's word as a personal challenge."
"As will I," A'kornora said.
"And I," echoed around the chamber.
Except for Saavik. She knew how appalled Spock would be at this blind devotion causing violent challenges for his sake, so she didn't echo it. Frankly, she thought it ridiculous.
"Komal does not challenge Spock," she said. "Not one of us would. And while she has not mentioned the report which gives as much data as any we have named--"
"It's more personal than a report!" Mekhai hollered. "Who said you got to lecture anyway?"
Vi'hai's strained words slipped in between them. "We must make a decision."
"Each one for themselves," Komal insisted.
"Do we go and seek justice in the Empire?"
Put that way, Saavik began to see it as futile. It didn't mean she didn't want it.
"Or do we stay and seek out who created the disease?"
Which seemed equally futile and she wanted it equally as much.
Vi'hai said to Jdehn, "If you will take me, I will go to the Empire. I said I would not die in the hospital. I am no healer, I cannot find a cure. But I may find who is responsible for me and die with meaning."
Jdehn looked overwhelmed by his nobility, rather than the revenge she sought.
Micar stood taller with Eitan's help. "I will stay. I am no healer either, but some fact that I know, even unconsciously, may find these new killers. Then I will die with meaning."
Saavik wanted both and could not choose. Which battle? Both were too important to let the other go and, even though she didn't see it consciously, she didn't trust the others here to fight one of them for her.
But she trusted Spock. He would not stop until he had everyone responsible for the disease in hand. She could leave that fight for him and go to the Empire.
And... very possibly lose everything she had gotten back from him.
But if that price bought justice...
Someone interrupted, calling from the door. T'Pau. She was flanked by T'Mes and Stron. Immediately, everyone in the chamber straightened, forced calm, and wondered how much she had heard.
"I need to inform you of what has just occurred."
Her face revealed no change, neither did the two VSE officers, but Saavik had seen enough commanders in situations like this.
"It is the patients in the stasis units. They have been attacked."
Saavik and the others didn't have T'Pau's skills or experience to so eloquently control their reactions. When the stone masks slid over their faces, it was noticeable to other Vulcans.
Jdehn cursed under her breath and Mekhai balled his fists. Arik paled.
"The life support in the units was disengaged and the alarms turned off. The remaining systems prohibited the patients from re-awakening or calling for help. They -- are dead."
Micar turned so abruptly, he stumbled. Arik dropped into a chair. Saavik held herself tight as each of the others dealt with the news in their own way.
Ten more dead. Just like that. Ten more gone.
And now they were twelve.