Story of a Star
In Sarek's mansion, as all of the men with information about the delicate situation stood, Sarek even reacted less than Spock had. This was to be expected, even though most of the other alien lifeforms responsible for the assistance of New Vulcan's development were present on the planet and the secondary Vulcans' actions could easily disgrace them all in the presence of representatives all throughout the Federation.
The Vulcan which Spock had subdued earlier was now conscious and bound before them. He faced an arrest if he did not comply, but he was refusing to speak. Sarek looked at Ambassador Spock, who he knew was even more concerned about the young lady than he was about the reputation of New Vulcan, although New Vulcan's reputation was severely important to him, as well. The Ambassador looked to Sarek and said, "A meld seems to be within order." Sarek bowed his head, slightly, indicating to the elder Spock that he intended for him to do the honors.
Ambassador Spock placed his hand into position to initiate the process. Kirk had his arms folded and he was glaring at the Vulcan that they held in custody. Dr. McCoy glanced at the captain, knowing that at any moment, he might have an outburst. The Ambassador withdrew his hand, looked at Sarek and asked, "Where is the Bride?"
Spock entered Ravalan's quarters and found her laying in her bed with her eyes open. He cleared his throat and said, "Ravalan, you are being summoned by the Master of the House." She blinked her eyes and sat up. He helped her to pull her round pregnant body from the bed and led her into the dining area, where all were gathered, standing around. She laughed when she saw the Vulcan seated in chains. She said, "Well, well, well, you managed to get yourself caught, I see." She walked over to him and took a seat next to him, holding her arms out in front of her as she did. Spock folded his arms and sighed. "Do you not wish to arrest me for an attack on Federation personnel?" She asked Spock.
Spock ignored her question and asked, "What is Sybok doing with Lt. Uhura?"
Now, Ravalan's face quickly became upset. She lowered her arms and asked, "What do you mean Sybok and Lt. Uhura? This visit is not about my brother and his friends running wild at the Embassy on special day?"
"Your brother and his friends ran wild on special day while Sybok had the Lieutenant apprehended," Dr. McCoy commented, annoyed.
She began to cuss in Vulcan, stood up and began to throw things at the wall. Spock approached her from behind and restrained her, then he melded with her and she remained still as he did. Kirk was becoming even more and more nervous about the situation. He wanted someone to tell him where Sybok was so that he could get him, and so that they could find Uhura before it was too late. The stress she must be in, the danger that the baby could be in. Kirk honestly thought that if he had to endure seeing his friends lose another baby that he might cry.
Bones had cried after removing the girl from Uhura, and was grateful that she was not awake to see his reaction to it. There were already two tiny shrines on the ship, in the main conference room, and Kirk had no intention of covering the entire room in baby memorials.
"What the hell? Has anybody learned anything about Uhura's location from this melding thing?" He finally blurted. "Lt. Uhura is at the mercy of an evil, emotionally unstable Vulcan and some strange powerful crazy house Vulcan/Romulan half breed and everybody's trying to read minds! We need to take action. We need a way into that institution! Why can't we beam into it?"
"It is built in such a way that we would not be able to penetrate it by beaming inside." Sarek stated. "Please remain calm, Captain Kirk. I assure you that we will follow the most logical course of action."
"I don't want the most logical course of action. I want the damned course of action that is going to return Uhura and my godbaby to Spock!" Kirk yelled. Spock sighed and folded his arms as he stared at Ravalan. She looked at the others in the room, then left and went back to her own room. "Where is she going?" Kirk asked.
"Sybok would not include her in his plans, but he did share some information with her. Styik has made a connection to Lt. Uhura and Sybok intends to exploit that connection to get himself closer to the boy. If true, then Sybok will have no usage for her after he establishes a connection of his own with Styik."
"We have no way of telling how long that would take, Spock." Sarek informed him. "It is possible that even if Sybok could utilize the connection between Styik and Miss Uhura that she would be required for all such interactions between the two of them. In which case, Sybok would not set her free."
For the first time since the news had been told to him, Sarek showed a bit of worry about the situation. Spock knew that this would distress his father. The future of Sarek's bloodline, the wife and child of his beloved son was in grave danger. Nyota was a young woman whom his beloved deceased wife had adored as a mate for their only son and the child growing inside of Nyota was the rightful heir to the family legacy. The family's new legacy is how Sarek thought of his unborn grandchild. With each pregnancy, he had gotten his hopes set upon having one, and this one was no different. Woman and child being in the grasp of that monstrous child, Styik and his dangerous abilities made Sarek frown greatly.
Sarek had seen the ugly effects that the child could cause on the human mind and while Nyota was very intelligent and fairly logical, she had a history of emotional instability and her current hormones would provide quite a weakness for the child. She could accidentally say something to upset him or to make him suspicious of her motives, and he would destroy her mind. Sarek found himself afraid for the young woman who reminded him so much of his precious Amanda. Having her around always made him think of his times with his late wife and seeing her and Spock made him happy that Spock could have a love similar to the one he had shared with Amanda...
Now he did not wish to think of Spock suffering a loss like he had when Amanda was taken from him. The connection a Vulcan and his wife share was one that a Vulcan did not have with his mother. Sarek could never prepare Spock for acceptance of such a loss. Spock had handled the loss of Amanda so terribly that Sarek dreaded the thought of how he would handle Nyota's loss. Spock was staring at him curiously and broke into his thoughts with, "What is it, Father?"
Sarek responded, without a hint of worry, "I fear that with the losses of your two children that your wife may have difficulty in discerning the child's face from the concept of innocence. She may believe that he is not capable of the things which he is capable of. Distress could be detrimental to the child she carries."
Kirk insisted, "That is why we need to get in there to her! Is there anyone else who might have access to the building other than Dr. Uhura?"
"Of course... Dr. T'Priu." Sarek responded. "Are we going to make a public issue of the situation?"
"You have my word." Kirk said, wanting to punch the Vulcan in the face for not mentioning that T'Priu could probably get them in the building, worried about a damned public opinion of New Vulcan. Kirk headed for the door and the others followed, leaving the Vulcan troublemaker seated in the chair, still chained.
Styik took Nyota's hand into his and led her to a chair, in which she sat down in. He stood in front of her with his hands behind his back, reminding her of Spock when he did. She sighed and said, "Styik, I am not going to insult your intelligence by assuming that you do not realize that this visit is wrong. I simply ask you to explain to me why it is taking place?"
The beautiful child smiled like a little angel. "You called for this visit, Friend." He informed her without speaking. She forced a smile, trying not to allow her hormones to interfere with her mind frame, as he seemed to be only communicating with her through it. He added, "You have wished to visit me and it was noted and accomplished. Now, might I ask you why it is taking place?"
Nyota started the conversation with, "I wanted to ask you why everyone seems so afraid for me to be around you..."
Styik's smile left his face as he responded, "Partially, but mostly you wanted to discuss the nature of your dreams." He then instructed her, in his own voice, "I will advise you, Friend, to proceed with caution when you address me. I can tell if you are lying and lying is not a practice becoming of friendship. If you wish to speak about dreams, just tell me that you wish to speak about the dreams."
"The dreams that it can be debated that you planted in my mind." Nyota pointed out to him. If he wanted honesty, if he was going to speak as an adult, she would respect his wishes and be frank with him.
The boy answered, now back in his mental voice, "It can be debated, but we did not gather for a debate, did we? I planted nothing in your mind. "Planting" is what the Vulcans call it. I call it sharing. I shared with you the visions that were presented to me upon touching you."
"I don't understand." Her thought was honest, and he was grateful that she had stopped speaking. With her extensive knowledge of languages, she realized that his mental voice was his form of a first language, and she decided to speak to him in it.
"As telepaths, Vulcans can often receive feelings and thoughts from others with a simple touch. Some of us can see the past and know the history of someone by touching them. I can see certain possible futures, quite vividly and quite quickly upon touching another. I think that it is merely my brain producing possible futures as they relate to the individual's past and present concerns, however, I don't think that others see these images in the same manner in which I do. When I touched you, I saw a possible future for you, and I wanted to share it with you." He explained. Seeing the sorrow in her face at his explanation, he commented, "You are not pleased with my gift to you."
She tried to explain now, "Styik, I am a happily married woman, expecting a child. The possible future that you shared with me endangers that. Did you not have any other possible futures that you could share with me?"
Styik nodded slightly and offered, "I had several of them. This was the only one in which I was both present and happy. Happiness does not frequent me here, in this place. You seem to be a great source of it, although your "happily married" status is questionable. You love your husband, but you are not happy and have not been for quite some time. Your husband can not make you happy, because he himself is not. He struggles too greatly with losses. He struggles about past losses, over which he had no control and he struggles with the fact that he believes it is illogical for him to allow the losses to take such precedence in his life. You make him happy, but he does not remain happy, as he realizes that it bothers you that you can not bring him peace. Your relationship is strained."
"So, you think that I should simply leave my husband and marry Sybok and we can adopt you and we will all suddenly be happy?" She wondered.
"I never suggested such a ridiculous thing, Friend. I merely showed you a possible future. You do not have to do anything with it but remember the fact that I have shared it. That was my gift to you. Allowing you to see a future for yourself in which you can have a family and be happy. Sybok, however will relish in the thought, and he can make the possible future become the actual future. I have no intention of attempting to forcing you into anything."
"There is no possible future with Spock and you that you could show me?" She asked. The thought of this child being fully in her life suddenly seemed so real and so necessary.
He replied, "Yes, there is. But in it, I am not happy. I am not happy because with the both of us in your life, you would be too conflicted to be happy. If you are unhappy, I can not be."
This information touched her heart. She believed him. "What would I be conflicted about?" She wondered.
Now, Styik's eyes dropped to the floor and his hands were moved to the front of his body, clasped carefully close to himself. "Your husband has not settled his attitude about Romulans since the destruction of Vulcan. I am Romulan. My mother was what your husband would describe as "like a Romulan". He would never accept me as a part of your life. He does not even accept me as your new friend, as you have already witnessed. He would not even help you to visit me, which would have caused for a much less eventful scene. The two of you could have merely walked in, he could have convinced Dr. Uhura and you could have met with me. Then, both of you could have simply walked out, and Dr. Uhura would not have known that your husband even influenced him. Senior Chief Doyle did not know when he protected you from her."
Nyota startled. She had somehow forgotten about the incident in mention, but apparently, it remained somewhere in her mind, otherwise, Styik could not have had exposure to it.
"You refer to my father by name and Sybok, yet when you mention Spock, you call him my husband. Why is that, Styik?" She now wondered, completely off topic.
He looked at her for a moment and decided that she was genuinely curious, and not attempting to be crafty, so he answered, "Your husband is my enemy. I do not like to call my enemies by name. I would rather group them all together as things in need of discarding." Nyota gasped at the words and Styik raised a hand and said, "Please calm down, Friend. I do not mean that I will bring harm to your husband. He and I have a short but very dynamic past. I would like him removed from your life."
She felt a tear roll down her cheek as she said, "I'm sorry, Styik. That is not going to happen."
He sent her the thought, "No, I am sorry, Friend. The situation is now completely out of your control. Sybok will definitely make it so."
"Sybok has a wife!" She now squealed, her hormones were making it difficult for her to think calmly.
"The wife of Sybok is my enemy and must be discarded. He does not love her. He will sign her over to the family."
"Styik, this is crazy." The thought came to her mind before she could stop it.
Something frightening flashed in the child's eyes that she did not realize could ever be present in a child's face. She jumped at her notice of it.
His demeanor changed into a threatening one and he instructed her, in her own language of Swahili, to convince her of his seriousness, "Never attempt to criticize my mental capacity, Friend. It is a subject that I am just as sensitive about as you are about your dead babies."
She reached out her hand to slap him in the face, but stopped just short of coming into contact with him and looked at her hand. He had not even flinched when she nearly hit him, but when she caught herself, she felt dread come upon herself. She was shaking and she began to cry. She had almost struck a child. She withdrew her hand and covered her face with both of them. Styik reached out to her and gave her a hug. "Do not cry, Friend. For soon you will be happy." They both reverted back to silent speaking.
She pulled away from the hug and wiped her eyes, "Why do you not refer to me by name? I thought that only your enemies were not given names. You do not use one for me, either."
"I use for you the most affectionate name that I know. If you would prefer, I can call you Nyota, or I can call you Uhura. Dr. Uhura told me that your name means "freedom". Freedom is something that I can readily identify you with." Styik's explanation pleased her. Now, she found herself only wishing to know more about him, to build upon this strange friendship with this strange child. In his hug, she could sense that he was in need of a friend. He was in need of someone like her – a Mother Hen.
"Do you know what "Nyota" means?" She asked him, placing her hands in her lap as she had the thought for him to read.
"I am afraid that I have never received that information from another." Was his response.
They had never been formally introduced, therefore she told him, "It means "star". My name is Nyota Uhura, but you can continue to call me, Friend."
Styik smiled at her as he responded, "Thank you, but I think that I like the name "Star" for you as well. I miss the stars. I never see them anymore, in here. It is fortunate for me to see you, as it helps me to remember exactly what the stars are like. They are visible in your eyes, did you know that?" She shook her head, loving the comment, and coming to love the child who said it.
She told him, "You are quite a star, yourself, Friend."
"I am far too small and insignificant to be considered a star." He replied.
"Even the smallest star shines brightly." was her comeback.
Styik now smiled. This compliment was unexpected and brought about a closer connection to her. Styik touched her womb and said, "As your Friend, I would dedicate myself to the aide of your heir, whom I would call my brother." His confession made her want to cry. From the touch of his hand, she could feel that his vow was sincere. In the dreams that he had shared with her, her son was his "brother," and at the moment, she fully believed that the boy would never do anything to hurt the child or her.
She touched is cheek, "You are such a sweet child. I just do not understand why everyone is so afraid of you. Are you able to help me understand?"
Styik's exquisite emerald eyes looked deeply into hers as he told her, "I can show you things, but I am afraid that you would not want me to call you Friend any longer."
She hoisted him unto her lap and thought, "What if I promise? What if I promise you that no matter what you show me, I will be your friend?"
Styik's response was, "Then I shall hope that you do not become a liar after the fact. Because if you break a promise to me, I will consider you my enemy." Styik reached out for Nyota's face and she shut her eyes to allow him to show her things:
Nyota and Styik walked hand in hand and all of the lifeforms passing them by kept staring at them. He was smaller than she remembered him being, but just as cute. She suddenly felt worried about some of the others watching them. Some of them seemed hostile towards them. She picked him up to carry him in her arms and sped up her pace. Fear crept into her mind as she tried to run towards their lodging area. Someone called out to her. The language that they used did not make sense to her, which surprised her, that there was a language being spoken, and she did not know it. Then, she passed by a window and looked at herself. She was Vulcan!
Nyota touched her face and her ears. She had emerald eyes, pale skin, pointed ears, and jet black hair, which fell past her hips. In fact, she looked a lot like Ravalan, but she did not look so much like Ravalan that she could not tell that she was not her. She knew that she had a role in one of Styik's memories and her role was as his mother. She cradled him to herself and tried to utilize her own mind, to try to determine what these aliens were saying to her.
"It has been long enough. Give us the boy." One of them finally said in Federation standard. Nyota tried to find her own voice, but as this was a memory, she had to say what was said on that day, by Taavik.
The words that came forth from her mouth were, "I will die before I give my child to you so that you can test him and study him, so that you can treat him like an experiment. He is a child. He is my child and you can not have him." The group began to struggle with her for the boy. He was crying, now. She was fighting quite vigorously. She managed to apply the nerve pinch to one of the female aliens, and grab her weapon. She turned to one of the males holding the weapon, but he fired at her and hit her in the abdomen.
Taavik's emerald eyes grew wide and she dropped the weapon and looked at her wound – a hole had formed in her gut, and her flesh and clothing were badly burned by it. She looked at Styik and smiled. She placed her hand onto his crying face and she said, "Remember." Then, she fell to the ground and Styik squealed in crying, trying to reach her.
...Nyota realized that Styik had taken her some place else. He was not around, so she walked around through this particular memory to try to find him. She found him seated on top of an examination table with different alien life form doctors laying all around the floor, beside the table. She entered the examination room and the boy looked at her. She wanted to look at herself, to see who she was portraying at this time, but the child said to her, "We have no dealings with each other, now. My mother is dead. I watched them kill her. Where were you?"
She heard herself say in a familiar male voice, "If I had been there, I assure you, Styik, things would have occurred differently."
Styik smiled slightly and said, "But you were not there, were you? As you can see, I am well aware of taking care of myself. If you would just leave me, I will be certain to do so."
"Why are you still here? They are all incapacitated. Leave with me," The male's voice asked the boy.
"I have no intention of going anywhere with you Sybok. And I am not leaving, yet. Enough of them have not suffered for my mother's death." Sybok! She realized that she was Sybok. She walked over to Styik and the child warned, "I must tell you that to touch me right now would be a mistake."
Sybok insisted, "Allow me to take you to Vulcan. T'Pau can help you..."
"T'Pau cannot help me. She was instrumental in having me banished." Styik answered bluntly.
"You mean in having your mother banished?" Sybok asked.
Styik glared at him and said, "Stop... trying... to penetrate..." The child reached out and placed a hand on Sybok's and Nyota felt a surge of hate flow through her body and heat radiate through her head.
Sybok pulled away from him and said, "You have her katra! Styik, you MUST allow Taavik's katra to be returned to Vulcan."
Styik smirked sinisterly and said, "You would love to separate me from my child, wouldn't you Sybok? I will not return to Vulcan. I will not return to beg T'Pau for help. I will stay with my son, and you will never be inside of his mind, not with me here to protect him."
Nyota found herself back in the institution, but it was a different day. She was someone else. She wished that Styik would show her these things without involving her. She turned to look at Styik, crying and she asked, "Oh, Styik, what is wrong?" Immediately, she recognized her voice, speaking in Swahili. It was Ashaki's voice. She was now in the role of her mother, in Styik's memory. She rushed over to the boy and kneeled in front of him.
He confessed, speaking in the same language that the woman had taught him, "They are getting too close to my mother. They want to take her away from me. They want to take her out of my body, and I will be alone. Please do not touch me, Nanny. I am far too upset, and I do not want to hurt you."
She smiled at him and said, "Well, why don't we just sing you better?"
"It will not work today." Styik said, trying to stop crying.
"You love to sing!" She insisted.
He shook his head frantically, and it was the most childlike thing that she had seen him do since knowing him, "No, not today, Nanny."
Ashaki fought the urge to wrap her arms around the hurting Vulcan child and instead, rested her hands upon her knees as she asked, "Would you like to listen to my daughter sing again? You told me that she had the prettiest voice that you ever heard, even prettier than your mother's."
"Nanny, will you please let me go? I need help out of this place. I do not hurt anyone unless they try to hurt me and I am not mentally insufficient. They are keeping me here to imprison me. I know that you feel the same way, I have read it from your thoughts." His voice was desperate and Nyota felt it break her heart, hearing it and knew that it would have broken her mother's heart, as well... especially if the child's suggestion was true – if he was being kept there as a prisoner.
She sighed and put her head down as she stood up, "Styik, I have no control over it. If I let you go, I can be charged by the Federation. Everyone else thinks that you are dangerous and they want to try to help you become less dangerous before they release you."
"They want to separate me from my mother, then turn me into a puppet. They want to learn more about my power so that they can make me control it in the way that they think it should be controlled. They want the being that I am to cease to exist and they want to turn me into someone else!"
Ashaki watched the child, suspiciously for a moment before asking, "Am I still talking to Styik? Or is this the mother?"
Styik hissed at the woman, "You think that I am a split personality. I am not! My soul is in this child's body. If they separate us, there will be no one to protect him, Ashaki."
"He is unprotected now!" Ashaki snapped. She was not completely sure if she believed that another being's soul was in fact inside of Styik, but if it was, she aimed to tell it how she felt. "If you have been protecting him, then how did he come to be in this dreadful place?"
"Sybok is responsible for that." Styik answered.
"Well, he is here now. He needs whatever help that they can give him!" Ashaki looked up to see several Vulcans dressed in robes enter the room and Styik fell to the floor. She rushed to his aid, but one of the Vulcans intercepted her and said, "Please, do not touch him. He is extremely unstable at the moment." At the sound of his voice, Nyota would have gasped if she was in her own body.
"Spock?" Ashaki said and removed the hood to reveal his face. She struggled with him as the boy writhed on the ground with the other Vulcans' hands pointed at him. "Stop it! You are hurting him!" Ashaki insisted, trying pointlessly to free herself from Spock's restraint. She extended a hand in Styik's direction, in complete fear for his safety and called his name, hopelessly. What were they doing to the poor child? Why did he seem to be in so much pain?
"They are merely subduing the child so that they can successfully perform the ceremony to remove the katra from his body." Spock informed her. She stopped struggling with him and began to cry. He allowed her to cry onto his chest. When his grip had lightened, Ashaki shoved him and rushed over to Styik. She picked him up and cradled him and Nyota could feel rage and sorrow and pain and hate flood into her mother's body, her heart, and her mind. The woman screamed and fell to the floor, with wide open, flickering eyes.
Styik cried and touched her hand, "Nanny? I'm sorry, Nanny." The Vulcans took him and as the child was being carried away, he watched the hood-less Spock gather Ashaki up into his own arms and carry her away, as well.
Nyota now sat on a patio on an escarpment. She was crying, until she heard a sound behind her. She turned to see a teenage boy with emerald eyes approaching her. She sat up, more erect and he smiled and kneeled in front of her, "Are you still likely to be my friend?"
Her eyes were soft upon him. He was worried that their friendship was about to end. She nodded her head to let him know that she still wanted him as a friend, she realized now more than ever. The poor child had been through too much. She wondered what became of Ashaki, and she knew that Spock would have hell to pay when she saw him again. Secrets. Family secrets. Forgiveness would be extremely difficult. Was he ever even going to tell her this? And her father, was he? She asked Styik, "Where is she? Where is my mother?"
"She is at the institution. When she needs to be brought out for appearances, Sybok can temporarily "fix" her. There are Vulcan mending techniques that can be accomplished through a meld, but Ashaki's only prove to be temporary."
"Why didn't my father tell me about this?" She wondered. At this point, she felt that it would serve him AND Spock right to leave them behind, at least for a while, to get herself together after this.
Styik explained, "Dr. Uhura is trying the best that he can to make his life work now that it has been turned so upside down by me. He blames me for what has become of Nanny. They all do. I tried to warn her not to touch me, but she saw me hurting, and she loved me too much to let me lay there that way. I am sorry that I hurt her, Mother. I am sorry that they can not make her whole again." Nyota hugged the sixteen year old version of Styik, briefly, then sighed. She had her hands in her lap.
"It wasn't your fault. Did they ever perform that ceremony?"
He spoke through gritted teeth. "Yes, they took my mother away from me... but they were unable to take away my knowledge of how her mind worked and how she used the mind to exercise her abilities. So, they made liars out of themselves in thinking that I would be safe to let go after she was taken from me. I'm afraid that after I was forced to hurt Nanny and they took away my mother, I became even more dangerous to them."
She understood. "This is why you hate Spock."
Styik had no desire to speak such a thing to her, feeling so close to her now. He defended, "He was doing what he thought was logical," Then, he attacked, "but I knew of what the two of you went through. He knows how it feels to lose a child. He knows how it feels to lose a mother, and he assisted in having mine forcefully taken away from me."
Now, she defended (mad at him or not, disappointed or not, he was her husband and she loved him), "But, it was different when his mother was taken away. Your mother was already dead. I'm sure that he thought it would be best for you to remove her... What is the katra?"
"Her soul. She placed her soul inside of me. Generally, if Vulcans do this, the soul is to return to Vulcan, but as she had already been cast out, she did not wish to go back. She wished to remain with me, and they took her." He allowed himself to shed a tear, but he did not let out any other trace of a cry. Suddenly, he turned, terrified and looked behind him, she turned to face the direction that he had.
They were back in the mental institution, as themselves, the current versions. She was in the chair, and he was on her lap. Sybok was standing in the doorway.
"They are coming for her," Sybok informed Styik. Styik nodded his head and Nyota could feel the hatred transferring into her from the child as he looked at the Vulcan who had brought him here. Sybok continued, "Styik, if you do not assist me in getting the two of you out of here without their notice, you will lose her forever and you will remain here."
Styik spoke calmly, "Nyota chooses her own path. I can not force her to remain with me. She is a happily married woman, expecting a child."
Sybok walked over to them and kneeled in front of Nyota, "Do you or do you not agree that this is no place for the boy?"
She fought back the groan that was building inside of her for her contact with Styik and his accidental transfer of resentment for Sybok. Luckily, Styik was not as filled with rage as he had been in the memory. "I agree." Nyota said through clenched teeth.
"He will not come with me. He can not allow himself to open up to me, or to accept me. For him to be with me, we would need a medium. Someone that we could both care for enough to be able to connect to each other. I know that you have a life with Spock, but Spock helped to deprive this boy of his life, and the boy chose you to help him gain it back..."
"Do not try to manipulate her, Sybok. I will allow no harm to come to Nyota, or her child. Her answer is clearly no." Styik looked into Nyota's eyes and said, "I understand." The misery that she felt come forth from the child was too much to bear. She sighed and said, "I will help you to get him out, but I will not stay with you. I have a life and a career. I will help just as long as it does not affect everything that I have worked for." Styik smiled, only slightly, but she knew that he was delighted. She asked Sybok, in Vulcan, "What do you need me to do to get Styik to freedom?"