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Chapter 7
As she walked to the transporter room T'Spock silently willed Sarek to feel her in his mind, willed him to urge the elders out of the Katric Ark's resting place.
"Clear the pad," T'Spock said stepping up to the transporter, the prone bodies of Kirk and Sulu at her feet. "I'm beaming down to the surface."
"The surface of what?" she heard Kirk ask as though from a great distance.
Father, she willed, get mother, I'm coming.
"What, you're going down there?" yelled Kirk. "What, are you nuts? T'Spock, you can't do that!"
She couldn't feel if Sarek comprehended her distant plea; was he too deep in meditation to hear - or was she too panicked?
Sinking into a low crouch T'Spock said, "Energize."
She felt the familiar buzz of the transporter beam and her next breath was in the atmosphere of her homeworld, but it had the acrid unfamiliar smell of smoke in it. The roar of rocks crumbling assaulted her ears. Quickly surveying the world literally disintegrating around her she sprung from her crouched position and raced towards the Katric Ark. She was as fast as any human man, but not as fast as a Vulcan man. She tried not to think of the valuable seconds the slower pace of her gender cost her.
Father, get mother, please leave...
And then in the distance, on the cliff outside the Katric Ark's entrance she saw them: the council members led by her father, her mother tucked protectively under one of his arms. She was too breathless to even feel relief.
"Chekov," she panted over her comm, "beam us up."
"Who, Keptin, I detect only you?"
Her family was only 575 meters away.
"The disturbance in the core..." she gasped.
"It could be interfering with ze sensors," said Chekov.
"Affirmative. I will get closer," said T'Spock, now only 50 meters away.
"Yez, the signal from your communicator should amplify their energy signaturez," said Chekov.
T'Spock did not bother to respond. As she ran the last few meters, her mother rushed from her father's arms to greet her. "T'Spock!"
Drawing to a halt and not bothering to respond, T'Spock said, "Chekov, can you read our signals now? There are seven hominids, including myself."
"Affirmative, Keptin. Preparing to energize."
T'Spock's body slumped, she gasped for breath, and the earth seemed to sink a bit beneath her feet. Amanda's arms wrapped around her.
"Amanda, T'Spock," said Sarek, suddenly on the far side of them, pushing them both. "Away from the edge."
T'Spock tried to get her bearings and felt the earth sink a little more even as her father pushed her and Amanda toward the cliff walls.
Her eyes met Sarek's. She felt the faint buzz of the transporter and blinked. The world shook, she opened her eyes, and Sarek wasn't there.
"Keptin, please do not move," said Chekov. "The interference is very strong -"
"Sarek!" screamed Amanda.
Her father was dangling a meter from T'Spock's feet above nothingness.
Diving to the ground, T'Spock grabbed her father's hand as the ledge beneath them slumped downward. Sarek's weight pulled T'Spock forward. She felt Amanda, on her back, trying to hold her up.
"Let go!" said her father, his voice fierce, his hand going limp in hers.
"No!" said T'Spock, even as his weight dragged her and her mother down.
Meeting her eyes, Sarek clasped her hand tightly, and for a moment T'Spock thought he was accepting her refusal. And then her skin began to burn where her father's fingers touched hers, and her mind began to fill.
She looked at his familiar deep black eyes...and saw they were empty. She gasped.
The hand in T'Spock's went limp again and without T'Spock's volition, her own hands let go.
Into the nothingness she screamed.
"Father!" The sound came out as she lay stomach down on the transporter pad, her mother clasping her arms around her waist, sobbing.
x x x x x
Sarek's katra sent T'Spock's mind into turmoil. On the one hand it dulled the grief she felt - at least for him. To her mind a great portion of him was still alive, but that was also a problem. She was herself, and she was not. There were her thoughts and there were Sarek's. This she could handle. Sarek's rational mind was even better organized than her own. She could compartmentalize his memories and last mechanizations of his mind, store them away to explore later. But their combined emotions...
Sarek's and T'Spock's grief for the loss of their home world was amplified by the grief of 6 billion souls. The death of so many telepathic beings at once was too much to block out completely. T'Spock was devastated, angry, beyond caring - and to her surprise Sarek had felt everything she did at the end of his life...but more so.
And then there was the bond with her mother that his consciousness was accustomed to. That link was severed with his life. Amanda was in sick bay. T'Spock was on the bridge. Her mother was so close, but now she felt an eternity apart.
T'Spock was adrift, and unstable, but there was nothing she could do but go on. What were her options, hand over control of the ship and the lives of her crew to a barely tested, unstable, cadet? T'Spock was convinced that the stress of Pike's heroic sacrifice was responsible for Kirk's assignment as first officer. She should have protested more loudly at the time, but it was done.
Now the ship was hers, and the crew, and she was barely more fit to command it.
"Acting captain's log Stardate 2258.4.2," said T'Spock as she sat in the command chair. "We have had no word from Captain Pike, I have therefore classified him a hostage of the war criminal known as Nero. Nero who has destroyed my home planet and most of its 6 billion inhabitants.
"While the essence of our culture has been saved in the elders who now reside upon this ship, I estimate that no more than 10,000 of Vulcans inhabitants have survived."
She tilted her head. She wanted to pursue Nero, drive the Enterprise through the monstrosity of a vessel he inhabited. But what good would that do? One more suicide? They were the only ones who had survived the first onslaught. Logically, they should regroup with the fleet and share their data. With careful analysis, perhaps a weakness could be found...
Or perhaps not.
If she were Romulan, and not devoted to logic she would attack without caring if it were suicidal. She envied her enemy for more than just his superior fire power.
Determine the Narada's destination based on its last known trajectory. The command was on her lips, but she didn't say it out loud.
Instead, standing quickly from her chair she made her way to the turbolift.
The door was just sliding closed when Noyoto slipped in front of her. The doors whooshed behind his heels and they were alone.
T'Spock looked at Noyoto but could not speak. His face was blank, unreadable.
The turbolift began to move. Reaching out a hand, Noyoto stopped it.
T'Spock catalogued this action; she could not bring herself to stop him, or even ask why he'd done it. It was as though her body and mind were disengaged.
"I'm sorry," Noyoto said. "I'm sorry."
The logical response was "It's not your fault". But T'Spock could not bring herself to say it. And there was something else, something she did not expect. Within her mind Sarek's mind began to assert itself.
Noyoto was saying sorry because to some extent he felt her pain on a physical level. T'Spock suddenly knew this like she knew the next breath she took would fill her lungs.
Noyoto's hands went to her face. Through the light empathic connection T'Spock could feel her hypothesis verified.
"I'm so sorry," Noyoto said. He brushed his lips to T'Spock's forehead and T'Spock's eyes closed. There was no trace of the anger she knew he'd felt earlier when he discovered she'd assigned him to the Farragut.
She remembered the day Sarek confronted her after the discovery of Kalanel's transmission.
"If the relationship is mutually beneficial to you both," Sarek said, "It will wait until Mr. Uhura graduates."
T'Spock had not believed her father. Noyoto had engaged in casual kissing - or more, with an Andorian just a few weeks before that discussion. It was true, there had been no spoken commitment between her and Noyoto, but it had still stung. Proven to her how quickly she had to move...and how quickly his affections could vanish.
But now with his hands on her face she could feel his feelings for her had not changed, after all the time apart, and after she'd behaved so illogically. Another part of her mind, the part that was Sarek, noted that in her absence he may have been intimate with others - but that did not change what Noyoto was feeling here and now.
Humans didn't feel as deeply as Vulcans. But...
She leaned into Noyoto, breathed him in. His hands slid down away from her face, but T'Spock stopped him, wanting to keep the empathic connection between them.
His emotions were not as intense as hers. There was no burning darkness that T'Spock felt uncoiling in her, but there was affection, and desire, and protectiveness, and the lightness of his feelings lifted her.
"What do you need? Tell me. Tell me." Noyoto said his lips touching her forehead again, then one cheek, and the other.
It was a question of emotional needs, but snapped T'Spock's rational mind back to her obligations. She wanted to stay alone with him in this fragile, protected moment, away from responsibilities, in this temporary harbour from grief.
Swallowing she pressed the turbolift resume button. She did not have the luxury of retreat.
"I need," she said. "I need everyone to continue to performing admirably."
Noyoto pulled his face away from hers. He nodded.
The turbolift came to a halt.
She wanted to acknowledge what Noyoto had done. What he was. There were no words. She pressed her lips to Noyoto's on instinct that was definitely not Vulcan - her memories...no, Sarek's memories informed her of this.
In the few seconds before the turbolift doors opened Noyoto's lips responded. His coolness doused the heat of her anger and confusion, and the way his lips moved so naturally against hers, the way she knew how to respond even though she'd never done this before - it was some certainty in the heart of an uncertain universe.
Hearing the soft click of the doors they both pulled back.
T'Spock did not meet his eyes or turn back as she exited the turbolift and walked down the hall, if she looked back she might not have been able to go on.
A/N:
Well, a couple little twists there I guess - err, and one big huge one. If you read and enjoyed please leave a review. It helps keep me posting!