16

The Vulcanorion Connection

Chapter Five: "Welcome to Mars!"

As they walked along the corridor leading them back to the "Arrivals" area of the station, Fer'at attempted to explain himself.

"Soval, I know you must think me a hypocrite," he said, "I have been the advocate for the rights of Shir'Kaya and Vulcanorion youth for eighty years. There is, however, something about this young man that disturbs me. He is not the correct choice of a mate for my daughter, but she is very headstrong and will no longer be told what to do by her father. I would have preferred for her a traditional bonding ceremony with a fully Vulcan male or even a Vulcanorion...but due to her Orion heritage, Jovan has little telepathic capacity. She has always told me that she would choose her own mate. I had hoped that her choice would wiser, but her Orion passion will not be denied. Even so, I have trained her all of her life to follow the path of Surak and to channel her emotions into creative and academic pursuits...yet I have failed. How can I now protect her against this Andorian?"

"Fer'at," Soval told him gently, "I will tell you what you have always told me with regard to my own son. There comes a time when you must send them out into the Universe, whether or not they are prepared. I cannot condemn you for your prejudicial treatment of Kelsad, for I know that I contain the same attitude within myself. I was, in my younger years, involved in the conflict with the Andorians over Paan Mokar. But Kelsad is not an Andorian...nor is he a Vulcan, an Orion, or a Human. He merely carries the genetic material of these four species. He is all of them, and yet he is none of them. There are not many like him, even with the Orion push for hybridization. He is alone in the Universe, and needs guidance. I would prefer that he receive it from Vulcans rather than Andorians or Orions...and you will not give him that guidance by constantly referring to him as 'The Andorian'."

"You are correct, my friend, and yet I still mistrust him."

"Father," Fer'at's son Sethir asked him while they waited for their guide Talcon to appear, "Will Admiral Forrest's daughter Maxine be coming on this tour? I would like to see her."

"Sethir," Fer'at replied to his son, "I do not believe that the Admiral would approve of a Vulcan boy expressing an interest in his daughter."

"The Admiral would not, Father?" Sethir queried, "Or you?"

"Both of us would disapprove, my son," Fer'at retorted, "Now please, taunt me no more with this question."

Fer'at was spared any further queries about the Admiral's daughter when Talcon arrived, accompanied by Sorral.

"We will be boarding a shuttle in approximately five minutes which will take us to the planet's surface. There, we will be met by a Human guide, the Starfleet Admiral, and his family," Talcon announced.

Sethir gave his father a victorious look, obviously pleased that Admiral Forrest's daughter would be there. Soval knew that the Admiral had traveled to Mars two days ago in order to consult with Admiral Washington about the many Vulcanorion immigrants who were arriving on Mars' doorstep—and requesting visas to Earth in large numbers. He did not realize, however, that he had brought his entire family with him.

After a few minutes, Talcon gestured to them to follow him, and he led the way to a private Security shuttle which was to take them to the surface. As they sat waiting for the shuttle to depart, Soval took the opportunity to speak with Sorral about his experience of the Vulcan-Mars Consulate so far. He was pleased to see that the young man's face held a neutral expression on it.

"I trust that you are behaving yourself, Sorral?" he asked him.

"Yeah, Dad, I think so," Sorral answered, keeping his voice low, "but that Talcon guy is driving me nuts. He's always critical of everything I do, and he orders me around constantly. I wouldn't mind if he was a little older, but he's about the same age as me! If he's the only one who's going to be supervising me, this is going to be one long, miserable placement. I thought it was Dr. Fer'at who was going to be supervising...couldn't he come in and just be an observer while Talcon goes and does something else?"

"That is not up to me, Sorral," he replied, "Sirtek has made it very clear that he has his own plans for your supervision. In my communications with him before arriving here, he was not particularly receptive to suggestions from me."

"But Dad...surely you could have some influence over this. Couldn't you arrange for Mark and I to work on some joint Human-Vulcan thing together?"

"It would not be in your best interest for me to interfere, my son," Soval countered, "your colleagues will say that I am using my position to advance you prematurely to assignments that you have not yet earned."

"I know, Dad," Sorral replied, disappointed, "I understand...although I don't think the other Vulcans at the Consulate would refer to me as a 'colleague'. I'm so low-down on the hierarchy that they don't even look at me let alone speak to me."

"I began my career in much the same way, Sorral."

Sorral let out a sigh, as if resigning himself to his present situation. He would need to accept the consequences of what he had asked for, and for what he was now receiving...there was no way that he could avoid it.

As the shuttle launched from the docking area, Soval settled in for the ride. He spoke little during the trip, but instead preferred to look out the viewing portal so that he could see the barren Mars landscape. It reminded him somewhat of the Vulcan desert. The rusty-red Martian surface was peppered with sand dunes, rocks, volcanoes, and impact craters. The various work-communities were housed within a series of underground compounds that provided access to the Main Dome, which protected the larger Martian community. The colony had an extensive, interconnecting underground Safety Zone in case of an emergency evacuation of the Bio-Dome due to fracture or leakage. In fact, at least half of Martia City was located underground rather than within the surface area of the Dome. The Dome itself was at all times scrupulously monitored as a result of the harsh conditions on the surface of Mars. The sandstorms that pelted the Dome were long and fierce in duration and obscured outward observation for days on end. Soval held a secret admiration for the gritty determination and the adaptive prowess of the early colonists, who had managed to not only survive but thrive on a planet which boasted even worse conditions than those on Vulcan.

As the shuttle descended to within a few kilometres of the Main Compound, sliding doors opened immediately to allow the shuttle entry into a large underground passageway which led to the shuttle bay. After a few minutes, the pilot opened the hatch and the passengers were permitted to go down the exit ramp. They were directed to walk through a set of sliding doors, and on the other side a small woman with jet-black hair met them.

"Ambassador Soval," she greeted him in a jovial fashion, "Welcome to Mars! I'm Olivine Fossa, and I'll be your guide while you're here. I will bring you and your aides on a tour of the Main Compound, and I'll show you some of the work processes that the Vulcanorions and Shir'Kaya Vulcans have been performing since they got their jobs here."

"They are not my aides, Ms. Fossa," Soval corrected her, "this is Dr. Fer'at. He is a psychiatric analyst, and he will determine the psychological health of the Vulcanorion and Shir'Kaya workers here. We are accompanied by our sons, Sorral and Sethir. They are coming with us for educational purposes only."

Olivine smiled broadly. "Education is a great thing, Ambassador!" she said with great enthusiasm, "Sorral and Sethir, you guys are going to love this."

"We are not here for the purpose of enjoyment, Olivine," Talcon stated gruffly.

"Oh, all right, Talc," Olivine teased him, "I'll try to make it as miserable as I can, just for you."

Talcon came as close to a scowl as his Vulcan expressive etiquette would allow. Their guide laughed merrily as she led them down a corridor. She was obviously not interested in putting on airs for the Vulcans.

"Mars is an amazing world, gentlemen!" she crowed, "We have all the latest mining technology available to us to mine ore from the craters and other minerals from the crust. We will be taking the underground MagLev to the area of Nili Fossae, the area my father, Neil Fossa, was named after. That's where we've been mining the mineral Olivine, among many others."

"And you were named after the mineral, Ms. Fossa?" Sorral asked, somewhat unnecessarily.

"Of course!" Olivine sang out, "It's better than being called Chrysolite or Magnesium!"

When they arrived at the platform where they were to take the magnetically levitated train to Nili Fossae, Admiral Forrest and his two children, Maxine and Mark, were waiting for them.

"Sethir!" Maxine called out, "You made it here, after all."

"Yes, Maxine," Sethir replied as he walked over to her, rather too eagerly, Soval thought. Fer'at gave his son a sharp look, but the boy ignored it.

"Good afternoon, Ambassador," Forrest greeted him, "I'm sorry our wives couldn't join us. Mariel is attending a conference on Mars-Earth relations and she invited T'Nak to go with her."

"I see," Soval responded, "I was not aware that my wife had traveled to Mars. She normally prefers to avoid space travel as much as possible."

"I'm afraid Mariel convinced her to go," Forrest told him, "She said it would be an exciting adventure, but I'm not sure your wife agrees so far."

"Conferences bore T'Nak," Soval replied as they boarded the train, "I am surprised that she agreed to come at all."

As the MagLev whooshed along the tunnel on the way to Nili Fossae, Olivine chatted on about the area and its history. Nili Fossae was home to a number of large grabens, or vallies between faults, which were filled with sediments and minerals such as Olivine, Pyroxene, and Iron Oxides.

Many of the first colonists, Olivine told them, had arrived as refugees of the Eugenics Wars about one hundred and thirty Earth years ago. The first attempts to construct a bio-dome and the underground tunnel system were fraught with difficulty due to the harsh planetary conditions and thin atmosphere. Earth's corporate dictators at the time did not expect the colonists to survive, and therefore many "undesirables" were recruited and sent to Mars as "trash" to be dumped on a barren world and abandoned. The colonists, however, had a fierce determination to survive and to build a world based on the equality and freedom which had eluded them on Earth. Their vision and sheer strength of will won out over the vapid lack of imagination shown by the corporate overlords, who had nearly decimated the Earth and its ecosystems. Eventually, with the help of other voluntary colonizers, Mars became a successfully inhabited world on an inhospitable planet.

"The Mars colonists were not expected to survive, let alone to thrive, and yet here we are," Olivine concluded her remarks proudly, "My grandparents came to Mars as colonists, my parents were born here, I and my brother were born here, and my brother's children have all been born here. Four generations of Marsies! Not bad for an "un-colonizable" world, eh?"

The young woman's voice held a note of uncompromising triumph, and Soval could hardly blame her. He certainly appreciated the immensity of the task that the early colonists had set for themselves.

"Wow, Ms. Fossa," Sorral blurted out, "Humans sure have great ingenuity in the face of adversity."

Fossa appeared pleased by Sorral's words of admiration, but Talcon was not.

"Vulcans have inhabited an inhospitable world for millennia," he scoffed, in an obvious ploy to sound unimpressed.

"Don't worry about Talc," Olivine said to Sorral, "He's just jealous of us Marsies. I've known him for most of my life. We knew each other as kids growing up—his parents are both scientists who have been regular visitors to Mars, even before Sirtek became the Envoy to Mars. They had come to study our mining technology and methods. Talc and I have always played this game where I brag about Marsies' accomplishments, and he comes back at me with something better that the Vulcans have done. He's always had a bit of a crush on me, I think."

"I think perhaps the opposite is true," Talcon retorted, "I believe Ms. Fossa was most disappointed to hear that I was married last year to a Vulcan female...is that not true, Olivine?"

"Oh, yes, Talcie sweetheart," Olivine responded in mock heart-brokenness, "and so was my boyfriend Isaac. So much for his chance to get rid of me."

"It is most unfortunate for Isaac," Talcon replied, "that he must continue to endure your prideful silliness."

As Soval listened to the two of them bantering back and forth, he thought that their relationship appeared to be far too familiar.

"Mr. Talcon," he interjected, "I believe that, since you are serving as role model and supervisor to my son, a more professional demeanor might be called for, do you not agree?"

"Yes, Ambassador," Talcon replied, his face betraying a slightly greenish tinge, "My apologies. Ms. Fossa can be extremely...distracting, and annoying."

"She is Human," he chided the young man, "But you do not have that excuse. Please use your focusing abilities to override the...distractions."

Behind them, Sethir and Maxine were whispering to each other, as if secretly enjoying Talcon's chastisement by the Vulcan Ambassador.

"Okay, guys," Forrest soothed them, "That's enough of that. We're here to listen to our guide, not fool around."

"Sethir, you will behave yourself," Fer'at told the boy sternly.

When the MagLev arrived at their destination, Olivine led them through a long tunnel, at the end of which they boarded a ground vehicle, which in turn took them to a lower level; at this point they disembarked and entered a turbo-lift, which took them to an even lower level.

They followed Olivine into a viewing booth, where they could see the mining operations without actually entering the mine. The miners who were working in the area all wore spacesuits and helmets complete with an oxygen-feed which permitted them to breathe. They were monitoring the equipment and the mechanization process. Soval could not tell whether the miners were Human, Vulcanorion, or Vulcan.

"There are only a few people working on this level—they're all either Human or Vulcan. No Vulcanorions, but we have begun some training classes to help teach them what they need to know...however, we're not going to spend too long on this area because we have new state-of-the-art technology which we have been slowly introducing, and the work is now almost 98% mechanized. Soon, we will be using androids to perform work in the most dangerous areas. Then, we won't need to worry about O2 feeds."

Soval was dismayed to learn that the Humans were planning to introduce androids to the work process. He certainly hoped that they would be more efficient than Maxine's "Tomm-1000" household assistant, which had crash-landed their dessert just a few days ago. Soval was personally uncomfortable with machines in sentient form. It seemed to him a sentimental attempt to make machines more emotionally appealing. Vulcan androids had been criticized for that very reason on his world, although many professed that they preferred androids to living Vulcans for the opposite reason: they offered the perfectly rational, emotionless state that Vulcans worked so hard all their lives to obtain. Very few people were capable of achieving that "perfect" state, however, and so the androids served to remind the Vulcans that they still had a great deal of work ahead of them.

Amongst the Humans, however, an absence of emotion was feared and mistrusted. Many Humans feared the androids, and they feared that they would take over work positions that were once exclusively held by biological beings. He knew also that many Vulcanorions and Shir'Kaya Vulcans feared technologies such as androids for the same reason. They were afraid of being rendered obsolete, and of having no purpose in life.

Olivine and Talcon were mirroring Soval's thoughts by arguing about the benefits of androids over biological beings.

"Human-built androids are far too error-prone," Talcon was saying to Olivine, "In spite of your beliefs to the contrary, they are nowhere near ready to take over the tasks of biological beings—their thought processes are too simplistic. They are not truly capable of independent thought and action."

"No, you're wrong, Talc," Olivine argued, "you just don't want to admit that Humans have invented something that Vulcans could not. You're jealous."

"I am incapable of jealousy," Talcon responded in an even tone, "and, by the way, your very first androids were patterned after Vulcan prototypes."

"No, they weren't," Olivine countered, "the very first androids were created in twenty-first century Japan, on Earth, about a hundred and fifty years ago."

"Those were primitive. They were not capable of any independent thought. The androids that you have today created were indeed patterned after the original Vulcan prototypes, invented by Vadrak of Vulcan."

"Okay, okay," Olivine relented, "Hooray for Vadrak of Vulcan. But we did make a few changes to them—including giving them nice, round ears instead of pointed ones."

"Irrelevant," sniffed Talcon, "the shape of the units' ears do not affect their work performance...although I believe Vulcan ears to be more aesthetically pleasing."

"Excuse me, Ms. Fossa," Sorral interrupted the argument politely, "but what will be the need for Vulcanorion or Shir'Kaya workers if all these positions are taken over by androids and machines? I mean, I spent a lot of my time on Vulcan teaching in the Tribal Districts. The Shir'Kaya kids, both Vulcan and Vulcanorion, don't have a great deal of advanced education. If they keep coming to Mars, what will there be for them to do here?"

"An excellent question, Sorral," Olivine replied, "and I'm about to show you the answer. I have a special work program for the less educated among the new immigrants, and I designed it with them in mind. Most Humans don't want to do work that requires simple, repetitive tasks anymore—that's why androids are becoming so prevalent nowadays—but this is different. It utilizes some of the Shir'Kayas' amazing skills of craftsmanship. Follow me, and I'll show you...up the chute again, everyone. We're going to the upper level."

Olivine led them back up the way they had come, chatting about the amazing benefits of technology.

"Ms. Fossa," Maxine interrupted her spiel, "Do you think that your android technicians can help my Tomm?"

"I sure do, Sweetie," Olivine answered the girl tenderly, "You did the right thing bringing Tomm here to Mars. We Marsies are on the cutting edge of android technology!"

"You see, Daddy?" Maxine looked up at her father, "I told you it was worth it to bring Tomm to Mars! They can help him here."

"My back's still sore from loading up the parts, Pipsqueak," Maxine's brother Mark said to her, "So they darn well better get that contraption working a lot better than he has been."

"You stop calling Tomm a 'contraption', Mark—you meanie!" Maxine chided him.

"Okay, kids—that'll do," Forrest told them firmly, "Mark, remember you're here in a professional capacity, as a Student Envoy. Quit bugging your sister."

"Yes, Sir," Mark replied, before retreating into his normally quiet personality.

Olivine led them to another ground vehicle, which transported them to a large building. Inside, they were ushered into a work-room. It was filled with Shir'Kaya Vulcans and Vulcanorions, who were sitting at various work-stations, busily grinding, polishing, and engraving different kinds of gemstones.

"We have employed the Shir'Kaya Vulcans and Vulcanorions to help us make jewelry and figurines out of gemstones such as Opal and Peridot," Olivine explained, "Peridot is a variety of the mineral Olivine...one of my favorites. We discovered that many of the older Shir'Kaya workers are very talented gemstone carvers, so we used that skill in finding them work. We've also trained the younger ones in the whole process, and they're learning quite well."

They stopped at one of the work-stations, where young women and men were mixing slurry to aid in drilling and engraving. As Fer'at took notes furiously, Soval inspected the surroundings. He noted that the building and outer work conditions were clean and well-organized.

"How do you like this job?" Fer'at asked a Vulcanorion girl.

"Very well, Sir," the young woman replied, keeping her gaze trained on her work, "much, much better than working the mines on Vulcan."

"How do you cope with the boredom of performing the same task all day?" Fer'at continued his inquiry.

"Oh, we don't stay at the same job, Sir," the girl responded, "We rotate. Sometimes I mix slurry, sometimes I grind or drill or polish or engrave. The older ones carve the figurines by hand. We younger ones use the tools and machinery. I like it."

"We also get rest periods," a young man added, "we never got those at the Ta'Kaath Mines back in Shir'Kaya. I'd like to bring my whole family to Mars!"

"See?" Olivine declared proudly, "We've got a whole new generation of Vulcan Marsies beginning to form."

"The proper term should be 'Martians', Olivine," Talcon interjected, "I have spent at least half of my life on Mars, and I think it sounds more appropriate than 'Marsies', which sounds like one of your sucrose-laden confections."

"Oh, shush, Talc, you wet blanket, you," Olivine quipped in return, "I like 'Marsies' better. 'Martians' sounds like a bunch of green E.T.s from an old Sci-Fi movie."

Soval ignored their banter, but continued to move through the various work-stations, asking the workers questions as he did so. It was becoming obvious that the workers here had a far higher rate of job satisfaction than they did back on Vulcan, where the work tended to be concentrated in the mines. The Ta'Kaath mines, where Soval had worked as a young adolescent, were now becoming increasingly mechanized and the low-skill Tribal workers who had been working there for a century or more were no longer needed. They had then been forced to go to the traditional, less mechanized mines, which operated outside of governmental jurisdiction. These mines required their workers to work long, tedious hours in very dangerous conditions. It was an embarrassment to the rest of Vulcan that these kinds of ventures were still permitted to operate, but the current government seemed to think that bad work was better than no work for the more disenfranchised members of Vulcan-desert society. The only other alternative to the mines in Shir'Kaya, other than joining a Surakian monastery as Soval had done, was of course the infernal drug trade. This had raged on unabated, and the Vulcan High Command seemed surprisingly tolerant of it. Other Vulcan citizens, however, were not. Many groups of protest had formed around the need for educational reforms and a stricter policy towards drug offences. The Administrator of the High Command, V'Las, was not going to be able to ignore the citizens' voices forever. He had shown great leadership capacity in other areas, but the Jaboraxin Trade on Vulcan had grown under his watch.

Soval felt a disturbance in his chest area, and he breathed in deeply to dissipate it. The situation in his home district still upset him, and he was not certain that he approved of this "make-work" project that Ms. Fossa had concocted. Although it was admittedly a better work situation than the one on Vulcan, it seemed to him that it had been created merely to occupy the workers' time—almost as though they were children who needed some "program" to help them develop. Most if not all of the Vulcans and Vulcanorions here were miners, and it seemed rather insulting to them, Soval thought, that they must devote their time to making baubles for Human amusement. Still, he knew that Vulcan could offer them very little else of value, and he could not blame them for wanting to move their families here.

"This little project is under my supervision," Olivine stated, having given up her argument with Talcon to join the Ambassador, "I wanted to make sure that the Vulcan workers would have safe, clean, and humane conditions. When I found out what kind of conditions they worked under on Vulcan, I was really shocked. I'm really surprised that a civilization as technologically advanced as yours would not know how to take care of its own work force."

"We have no work force on Vulcan," Talcon interjected, once more throwing himself into the conversational arena with Ms. Fossa, "Properly educated Vulcans pursue careers. Those who are incapable of advanced education are trained in the skilled trades, and work which is similar to what you are doing here. But the Shir'Kaya Vulcans are stubborn, and they cling to the past. The Vulcanorion Hybrids are mainly created out of the Shir'Kaya desert population, and so they suffer from the same dilemma. They all refuse to modernize, and their youth are paying the price for it in the form of drug abuse and idleness. In some ways, it is their own fault."

"You speak from ignorance, Talcon," Soval told the young man sharply, "You have no experience of Shir'Kaya, and you do not understand the complexities of the problems they face. I grew up in Shir'Kaya, and I well know the obstacles involved in entering the larger Vulcan society."

"What you say is also not entirely correct, Talcon," Fer'at retorted, his calm demeanor giving way to irritation at the impudent young man, "Soval and I, in addition to many other Shir'Kayas, have managed to enter the first tier of the Vulcan education system in spite of all the obstacles put in our way. I have worked for the past eighty years to improve conditions in our district, and I am very well aware of their challenges. It is not all their fault. We, the Vulcan people, bear the larger burden of responsibility for what is happening to the youth of Shir'Kaya and other desert tribal societies on Vulcan."

"As you say, my elders," Talcon conceded, "I offer you my apology for what you consider to be my uneducated opinion."

At this point in the conversation, Forrest took Soval aside.

"Ambassador," he said, "You and I are going to be meeting tomorrow with one of the top Ministers of the United Earth Planetary Council, Nathan Samuels. Apparently, there are some Earth officials who are concerned about the number of Orion people who are coming to Mars, both from Vulcan and now from Andoria as well. There are a lot of...Orion-Andorians who have been coming through here recently. I even noticed a few on the floor of Ms. Fossa's work project. I don't mean to be insulting, but the Andorians are...well, kind of an unknown element to us at the moment. I know Jon and the crew of the Enterprise have been making a lot of progress in establishing relations with them, but we still don't know how far we can trust them. We now have a newly appointed Andorian Ambassador, Ka'Jar Ch'Zhek. He'll be meeting with us tomorrow, and he wants to work with us in dealing with this budding Orion Drug Trade that we're all so afraid is going to take root on Mars. Do you know him?"

"I am very familiar with Ka'Jar Ch'Zhek," Soval replied, "I worked with him a number of times, and found him to be quite well-contained for an Andorian. He is a member of one of the less aggressive male genders amongst Andorians. Unfortunately for us, however, he represents a government full of Alpha-males, or Thans. It is unlikely that we will be receiving rational solutions from the Andorian government. Some amongst them would like to exterminate all the Orion-Andorians if they could get away with it. The influx of Orion-Andorians could be in response to a threat from their own government."

"Oh, boy," Forrest replied, a grim expression on his face, "So we could be looking at a refugee crisis. Can we count on Vulcan support in dealing with this?"

"I will do everything in my power to ensure that we arrive at a peaceful solution, of course," Soval assured the Admiral, "but there are a number of Vulcan and Vulcanorion citizens that may be working against us. I believe Mr. Talcon has been collecting information on which ones are of interest, and which we can safely regard as non-threatening to Martian security."

"Do you think Talcon and the rest of the Vulcan Security people will cooperate with our security teams?"

"I will strongly urge Sirtek to help as much as he can," Soval answered, "He does not particularly care for me, but he will want to stop this criminal minority from disgracing Vulcan with its actions. If we could manage to combine Human, Vulcan, and Andorian security forces to address this issue, we might manage to 'nip it in the bud', as you Humans are fond of saying."

"There's another problem, besides the Orion Drug business," Forrest added, "There are ministers in the Earth government who do not favor people of Orion heritage being granted entry to Earth. I think this Hybridization idea has them running scared. They're worried about the creation of a Humanorion underclass."

"That," replied Soval, "is a distinct possibility, Admiral. I recently met a being named Kelsad, who is the mate of Fer'at's daughter, Jovan. He is descended from four separate genetic backgrounds: Orion, Andorian, Vulcan...and Human. Apparently, he and Jovan have already procreated; and so the Andorian and Human gene pools will be entering Fer'at's family. He is having difficulty accepting this—and he is one who has been among the most open-minded of Vulcans towards the Vulcanorion population."

"And if Kelsad's got some Human in him...do we have a responsibility to grant him entry to either Mars or Earth...I mean, our constitutions guarantee all Humans the right to settle on at least one of our worlds without intimidation or harassment. There's nothing in our documents, however, that specify whether that also pertains to Hybrid-Humans. This could get a little hectic."

"And with the arrival of people like Kelsad, it has already begun," Soval concurred, "I must admit, it seemed to me that Kelsad carried a grudge against Vulcan society for the manner in which he was treated on our world. I cannot judge him severely for that, however, since I had many problems of the same nature growing up on the margins of our society. I would advise you to tread carefully with this issue, Admiral. Do not be too quick to accept these people into your midst, but do not ignore opportunities to align them with your world's culture, either. I'm afraid it is a very difficult issue to balance."

"This is gonna be a real double-edged sword," Forrest murmured, as they turned to follow Olivine Fossa out of the work-station door. When they had finished touring the rest of the compound, seeing the other culinary and service-oriented jobs that the Shir'Kaya-Vulcanorions were performing, they were picked up by a large shuttle-bus. As they boarded the bus, Soval noticed that the driver was a rather surly-looking Vulcan. It was no doubt another make-work position for a Shir'Kaya Vulcan, he thought to himself. He felt, however, something else from the man—something very disturbing. Soval lectured himself to restrain his irrational "feelings" and adhere to logical observation only. Even when he observed dispassionately, he noticed that the Vulcan appeared to be anxious, and perhaps distraught.

The bus took off at a rather alarming rate, before either he or Forrest could take their seats. Soval gave Talcon a questioning look, and the young man peered suspiciously at the driver.

"Excuse me, Sir!" Talcon cried out, "But where are you taking us? I believe we are to go in the opposite direction."

When he received no response, Talcon went to the front of the bus.

"I order you to halt at once. Please explain yourself," he told the Vulcan, "You are transporting diplomats, a Starfleet Admiral, and their families. If you do not stop immediately, I will be forced to draw my weapon upon you."

As Talcon reached for his phaser pistol, the driver suddenly put on the brakes, and Talcon was thrown with a thud to the front window. The driver got up and brought out a laser-rifle, disarming the stunned Talcon in one swift motion.

"I am Valk," he told them, "Do what I say and you will not be harmed. You are now under the custody of the Vulcan-Orion-Andorian Alliance."

"What the hell...?" Olivine Fossa jumped up, glaring at the man, "Valk! What are you doing? I entrusted you with this job!"

"For which I am very grateful, Ms. Fossa," Valk replied, "But I have other plans for my life than being a slave-laborer for Marsies."

He opened the door and several men stormed on board loaded with weapons of varying degrees of strength. Some were Vulcanorion, others Andorian-Orions, and still others were full Andorians or Vulcans. One of the men, a full Andorian, cuffed Talcon's hands behind his back and threw him down on the centre of the aisle.

"There you go, you little snob," he said scathingly to the young man, "No one here deserves this more than you do. I can't wait to see the smug look wiped off of your father's face when he finds out that we've captured his Security-Officer son."

"Hey!" Olivine shouted out, "You watch how you treat Talc!"

"We are sorry about this, Olivine," Valk said to her, "but we are doing what we must to ensure that our people receive the appropriate rights that are due them."

"Surely, Valk," Soval said to the Vulcan gently, "You do not believe that this illegal act will help our people?"

"We have been ill treated for long enough, Old Man," Valk responded, "You should know all about that, having grown up in Shir'Kaya. I will listen to no more foolishness. Bind their hands!"

Valk gestured to a young man to carry out the order. A green Vulcan-Andorian stepped forward with a collection of handcuffs. As he put the first pair of manacles on Soval, the diplomat suddenly recognized, with great shock, who it was; and Kelsad, the intended mate of Fer'at's daughter Jovan, stared back at him with hatred in his eyes.