That was why Saavik crossed the open courtyard at the hospital. Spock and Kirk had her summary report, giving them the highlights of her conversation with Captain Hunter, but they needed the details. She needed help with two questions: why didn't she remember that encounter with the Vulcan? And who on their list of suspects had the technical skills to violate her security access?

She headed for the stasis room, just as she had been doing when Hunter had contacted her. Maybe Kirk and Commander Stron's teams had found something that would explain what had happened on the Aerfen. Or maybe this new mystery would make something come clear about the stasis chamber attacks. She took the quickest route and cut across the courtyard. The fresh air and touch of the sun made for a better walk than the maze of corridors attaching the different buildings of the hospital and Science Academy. It was also how Mekhai attached himself to her.

"Hey, Saavik!"

She shot him a look over his bellowing in the peace of the hospital - not to mention bothering her at all. He didn't even care.

"Gotta talk to ya." He at least wore a light, sand colored covering over the shirtless vest he habitually wore. Someone had warned him about the sun and he had finally paid attention.

She never broke stride. "I have little time, Mekhai. I am reporting to the stasis room."

He shrugged and fell into step. He wasn't long legged like her, but even with her speed, he kept up with no problem. He was in such good physical shape that he didn't even lose any breath with talking at the same time. "Make your mind up?"

"Regarding?"

"You goin' to the Empire wit' us or stayin' wit' the fight here."

Her stride didn't hitch but her mind did. "Hasn't that decision been made for us with this last attack?"

"Nah, course not. Jdehn's gotta job and we're playin' crew for it. It's near the border so we take care of that and slip in."

"It will not be so easy as that."

"Who said easy? But it's the plan. So you comin'? You said nothin' at the meetin'."

No, she had never made that decision, but had this latest attack made it for her? Along with finding out about the puzzle about her supposed visitor and security attack on her ship?

Former ship, she corrected herself. She was no longer a part of the Aerfen's crew... and no longer in uniform.

But did staying here mean throwing away her only chance to bring justice against her Romulan parent?

Mekhai suddenly stopped. "What's that? Hear it?"

Yes, although she hadn't payed attention to it. "It is the children's choir. They are broadcasting their music into the courtyard. They are most likely rehearsing in the Arts center. It is near the Science Academy."

He forced her to stop by shouting after her. "Why?"

She came back the step or two to keep his rude volume down. "Unknown. Perhaps some of the children are here in the hospital or they have family who are patients. Perhaps it is merely to add to the serenity here."

He listened like an animal catching an unknown sound. The children's voices were so innocent, so... pure that they carried the light and the breeze along with them. More than one adult, both Vulcan and offworlder, listened as the song layered in its harmony. It didn't overpower, but drifted like a underlying soft scent, an unobtrusive hint of a flower or spice in the air. Even as Mekhai's face clouded over.

"Never fought for a thing in their lives. Nothin' hard, everythin' handed to 'em. So easy -- so clean."

For the first time since he had landed on the planet, Saavik understood him. "Yes, they are. Their view of hardship is nothing to ours. However, Mekhai, that is the way it should be. Would you condemn them to our childhood because we did not have theirs?"

"You sayin' that's it for you? You hear that and... and it's, it's fine?"

She pictured those young faces, lifted in song, their eyes youthful and their lives untouched by shadow. Bellies that never knew anything but a wealth of food and hearts that never knew anything but the security of sleeping safely in the night.

"No, it is not so easy for me anymore than it is for you. But I would not damn someone with their own Hellguard. Cheating them will not give us what we lost."

"So just forget it? Like that's ok then? You know what song I got taught as a kid? Come dance in the night winds and sail to the stars. We will come home with blood on our feathers--"

"-- from winning the enemies' wars," Saavik finished. It was the song the Aerfen crew had overheard and she had identified before a battle started. A song of deep space, of bravery and kinship, of coming back to the haven of the home stars. She hadn't heard it in so many peaceful years until that day on the bridge.

Mekhai bared his teeth. "You know how I know it?"

"Yes. The Romulans sang it the same time every year. A number of them would build bonfires, especially once we were abandoned, and they would sing around it."

"They'd get drunk and laugh when--"

"--they would shoot at us if we drew too close to the firelight and could be seen. They created a game from it with a scoring system based on the difficulty of the shot and the level of wound they inflected on us. A death brought the highest score. I was there, Mekhai."

"Yeah. Yeah, you were."

Drunken voices garbling the lyrics, the phaser shots going by her head as she clutched a stolen scrap of food, and then profane laughter, hard and cruel to her ears, slurring the blood's on her feathers! Not ours!

No wonder she had never smiled or laughed, even after leaving Hellguard. When had a smile or humor or strong emotions been anything but the precursor for cruelty?

Mekhai listened another second more, but that's all he could take. He turned away and walked hard from the music. He tore the covering off his body and his muscles were displayed as hard lines under the vest, as severe and terrible as the darkness in his expression. He plowed into people instead of moving around them, not caring about the complaints that they spoke out loud or said in their stares. In fact, Saavik suspected he deliberately pushed into anyone he saw listening to the children's song and used his appearance that was so obviously not Vulcan as a weapon. He speared people with it, daring them to start something so he could finish it.

She moved quickly in front of him and acted as a buffer between his bitterness and the innocent bystanders in the courtyard. It wasn't what she wanted to do, but it was what she had to do. They said nothing until they were in the next building.

"Gotta headache?"

She glanced over but didn't stop again. "Why would you ask?"

He stayed hunched against the music outside, but he talked like he had forgotten it – until the last sentence. "You kinda look like you do. Forehead's scrunched up a bit and you're a little pale. Saw it when I caught you back there. I got one the other day. So did Jdehn and Aik. Hearin' those kids do it to you?"

Now Saavik came to another halt. "All three of you had headaches?"

"Yeah, so? That Kirk kept yellin' questions."

Saavik doubted Captain Kirk had yelled at all. "What type of questions did he ask?"

"Somethin' about us landin' here and did we remember somebody callin'. So what." He walked a few steps but now she kept him back when she didn't join him.

Jdehn, Mekhai, and Arik exhibited head pain when they were questioned recently. She had a slight headache when Hunter talked to her. It could be a coincidence or part of the disease.

She changed direction. "We have to go to the Phase III ward." If headaches, even mild ones, were something happening to the four of them and it wasn't a coincidence, then some of the others would have gone through this too. It would be in the medical charts at the ward and the doctors would know about it -- or needed to be told to check the others. Every detail could lead to an answer.

She entered the ward from the far end of the main duty station, closer to Micar's mural than Pekhi's old bed. She glanced around quickly but the room was a lot emptier than before. The ten latest deaths accounted for part of it and so did Vi'hai's leaving for home, but Saavik expected more people than this.

Another ghost from Hellguard's past leapt up in front of her, as unwelcome as the memory of the bonfire a few minutes ago. On four of the beds, the patients' clothing lay neatly folded and stacked on the side tables. Something about the careful way the clothes were put out where they could be seen, like a marker...

"K'htoditk!"

Mekhai's cursing told her that he saw the same ghost. His wide eyes barely blinked as his head turned slowly to her and he just as slowly nodded.

She rushed from one bed to another. Micar's painting equipment was just as carefully packed and lay underneath his clothes. Another bed left a bracelet, worn smooth from its owner never taking it off until now. The same was true at the other beds. Each person had left personal articles that clearly meant a great deal along with their hospital clothing.

Saavik stopped a nurse and indicated the four beds. "Where have they gone?"

"For home. They did not wish to -- stay."

They did not wish to die here was what the nurse had been about to say, but Micar never would have left something so intensely personal as his painter's kit behind if he went home or if he was going with Jdehn to the Empire.

Saavik glanced down the long length of the mural, ending with the figures right above her head, and came face to face with herself.

When did he do this?

She was in the cream sleeveless dress she had worn to the presentation. He must have memorized what she looked like then and used it as his model. In fact, Jdehn, Arik, and Mekhai were in their clothing from then. All of the survivors wore clothes from their lives after the colony, but in their eyes... in their eyes, they said hid a past too terrible to talk about out loud. Amanda's twilight eagle perched on the rock formations with them and some shadowy predator concealed itself so its lines could barely be made out while its bright eyes glowed dully in the dark. The sun set, bathing their lower halves in hues of red while stars began appearing as a canopy above their heads.

The nurse noticed her staring. "He exhausted himself finishing it. He added you and the others after he returned from your meeting. He said he had a more immediate deadline than he had first decided. Most likely, he referred to his decision to leave the hospital."

"Can't be!" Mekhai said, barely waiting for the nurse to leave. "How could they go and do it when they just talked about fighting here or the Roms!"

"We have to make certain." She went after the nurse and asked her if anyone had contacted the families to see if the patients had reached home. Vi'hai's records showed he made his regular contacts with the medical staff assigned to his home care, but Micar and the other three had postponed their first appointments. Each one stated they wanted time for rest and meditation, and said someone would pick up their belongings. Each of them, Micar, Eitan, Kf'iskjyk, and Ny'Jul, had contacted the hospital from somewhere other than their homes. Each of them gave their messages to separate people, so no one would suspect the similarities.

It could be all innocent, but the messages chiseled away at the possibility. The Vulcans on Hellguard who had decided to dictate their own deaths had stacked their clothes precisely in the same way as they walked out into the desert to die. Anything they valued would be lain with their clothing to be passed on to other survivors and perhaps even to those at home, if the others were rescued.

At the other end of the ward, outside the main doors, Saavik saw a familiar figure go by: Subcommander Soluk.

"What now?" Mekhai asked. "Don' take off, Saavik, talk! I can help!"

"Mekhai! I can calculate the path they are most likely to take from here if they truly are going to commit suicide beneath the sun. I will inform Subcommander Soluk and he will have a medical team on emergency standby if I am correct."

And if I am not, I will have not taken the medical staff away from important duties.

"Then go, I'll tell this guy what you said. -- Don' argue! You know this place, you can find 'em."

It would save time if he reported to Soluk and they had very little of it if they were right. "Inform the subcommander I am investigating our theory that these four will commit kalifee v'rekor. It is the Vulcan term. He will understand what needs to be done. Also inform him I will use one of the groundcars assigned to the task force."

He rushed out and she tackled the nurse one last time. She requisitioned a medical tricorder and packed an emergency kit. She told the other Vulcan to verify her need for the supplies with Subcommander Soluk and was out the doors after a quick glance showed Mekhai talking, his hands wildly waving as he explained what was happening.

She reached the groundcar and started its engine when someone came up on the passenger side. Mekhai jumped into the seat next to her, panting a bit. "That Soluk figured you could use help if you find 'em. He told me how to get here before you took off." He grinned. "You still move fast."

They were in the air and cutting around Shikahr's congested areas before he spoke again. "Where we goin'?"

"They most likely would not waste time. The longer the route they take, the most chance of discovery. We will explore the more direct path first and then move on a course that will take us along a number of entry points into the desert. The tricorder will enable us to scan for their lifesigns and they will leave their clothing as a marker wherever they have entered as they left their hospital garb."

He didn't bother telling her that he knew that last part. He didn't say anything at all as they left the city behind them, just gripped the instrument board in front of him. City buildings dwindled down into residential sections. Saavik didn't know if Micar had taken public transportation or a private car, but most likely he and the others had used the former. Most Vulcans did. She didn't bother trying to track down the exact transport because he was nearly a day ahead of her. Trying to find someone who had seen him or the other three would take much longer than what she planned.

"You know, I was at one of the same schools you were." Mekhai stared straight ahead as if they could see signs of Micar already. "I was after you left. Stayed in the same foster home too." He shook his head. "Don' know why I just said that."

She hadn't planned on asking although she had wondered. It didn't matter anyway because he spoke again after a pause.

"Gotta be thinkin' 'bout all the past. Those kids and everythin'." He fell back into silence, but not for long. "The Rrakarran couple – that foster home. Remember 'em?"

Yes, she did. The two big fierce looking males, similar to Terran wolves, but disciplined and honorable. More importantly to her, they never pried into her life, but provided a safe haven while she took her concentrated and accelerated courses meant to make up for the years she lost on Hellguard. She had stayed there for a year before moving to the next school and foster home.

"I remember them," she said. "They were good people."

"Yeah," Mekhai replied, still looking ahead. "They talked about you." He shrugged. "All good stuff."

She stopped the car long after they left houses and estates behind. The desert stretched out ahead, showing nothing but the rough terrain and sparse plants. Saavik thought how good it looked, even now, taking on a luster of light colors and patches of dark as a compliment to the red sky.

"Whatta hellhole," Mekhai said as he only partially climbed out of the groundcar. "Whatta are we doin' here? I don' see nothin'."

"This is the first point they could have taken. They would have left any transport here and walked to wherever they chose to go."

No sign of any other vehicle. They must have used public transportation if they came here at all.

"Then why'd we stop? C'mon, get back in here and let's go."

Saavik reminded herself that he was trying to help and honestly didn't know anything about Vulcan. "It is reserved for foot traffic only, Mekhai, for those beginning a pilgrimage into the desert. We will enter it but search away from the established path. We will not need to go far."

"How come?"

She activated the tricorder and began her scan. "For two reasons. The first is Subcommander Soluk will have already contacted the emergency station that lies farther into the desert. They would have communicated if they had any sign of Micar and the others by now. Second, Micar especially suffers too greatly from Phase III. He will not have the strength to travel a long way. Instead, he and the others will rely on journeying away from the path instead of distance to avoid being found."

"Think they're together?" Mekhai looked around. "Forget it. They're together."

She asked him to bring the emergency kit and started off on her proposed sweep. The tricorder picked up nothing as they walked but the small animal life keeping out their way. The desert breeze had already reached out and swept away any footprints that might have been left behind.

The emergency kit crashed into her head and drove her to the ground. Mekhai clubbed her with it again, the blow lifting her into the air and spinning her so she landed on her face. He flung the bag away and crouched behind her, grabbing her neck and jerking her head back to snarl in her ear.

"I didn' say no revenge, Sa'Av Ik! Not when you kept torturin' me on the ship." He drove a fist into the base of her spine. "I told Soluk nothin'! Nobody knows you're out here! Nobody's comin' lookin'!"

He struck with exacting damage to her body. He fought for a living and even if Hellguard had never taught him how to attack her, his sport had. He drove the air out of her lungs and kept her down on her knees with ramming strikes to her kidneys, more to the spine and the backs of her legs, hitting hard and fast before he buried his hand into her hair and pulled. "How do you like it now!"

He curved along her back and his chest pressed against her as he breathed heavily. His left hand supported his weight and lay right next to hers.

...The way Micar's had, years ago on Hellguard. All five fingers still on the hand as he grabbed her the same way, an arm around her throat, forcing her down and trapping her on all fours. The contact forced his emotions into her unshielded mind like a hammer. They never were taught that they were telepaths, and their abilities knew no discipline. She couldn't understand the word for lust then or the odd, gnawing hunger burning Micar, but it felt like something crawled along her skin and then thrust in, branding her as his victim. She had looked down where his other hand held him up and next to it, a large rock. Desperate, she grabbed it and slammed it on his hand, not knowing until the next day that his scream and his blood came from the piece of jagged metal buried in the stone, its sharp edge severing his one finger. His shouts brought the Vulcans, but she ran to her bolt hole, not seeing them remove the last bit of skin holding the destroyed finger onto his hand and use their healing abilities to staunch the flow of blood. Saavik had stayed hidden, tight in a ball, hugging herself, not able to get rid of that taint that ravaged her or the scream from his mind. T'Pren came to her, wiped away Micar's blood from her arms and held her, touching certain spots on her hands and face to make the shaking stop.

No rock laid here next to Mekhai's hand. She didn't need it. He was far stronger physically, and he caught her offguard. Not to mention, his being a professional fighter. But he didn't study Vulcan techniques, and he never should have left her hands free. No one of this planet would have made that mistake and it was her only chance.

She had to move fast. Blood already dripped from the cut next to her eye into the sand.

She heaved up under his weight as she grabbed his left wrist and then snatched the right buried in her hair. She hit the pressure points, numbing his arms up to the elbow. The one dropped from her neck as his weight fell on her back from his left hand toppling. She twisted at the waist and elbowed him hard to the side of the head. He dropped off of her and she leapt to her feet. He kicked at her legs and then swept them. She managed to jump into a roll over his side and then immediately fell back, leveraging him underneath her, and striking the correct nerves in the junction of his neck and shoulder. He collapsed.

She hesitated, but then grabbed an arm and hefted him across her shoulders, staggering away before balancing him properly. Just in time. The sand boiled and twisted. The sand grubs, the ivnolhti, crawled out and feasted on the emerald blood drops, craving more. They could strip a le-metya to the bone in seconds.

If Mekhai had moved faster... if he hadn't stopped to gloat... but thinking about what hadn't happened was pointless and she had a long walk back to the groundcar with a heavy burden. She settled his weight more comfortably and thought darkly that he was fortunate she wasn't looking for retaliations or she'd leave him here!

That would be illogical, of course, so she turned in the sand and got her bearings. As she breathed in deeply and settled him again on her shoulders, a small voice whispered that the madness had never come during the attack. She had kept Hellguard at bay, something she thought impossible in these last few days.

Triumph, she reminded herself, is also illogical.

Their fight had taken them away from where they had been walking. She scanned the area for the way they came, considering how she was going to pick up the tricorder and the emergency kit without dropping Mekhai when something in the distance caught her eye.

It was far enough away that she couldn't be sure, but it looked like a stack of clothing secured against a desert plant.