Chapter Six: Course Corrections
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the mischief.
"Are you busy, Commander?"
Of course he is.
Humans ask Spock this often and the question never ceases to baffle him. When is anyone not busy? Is he really so different from, say, Cadet Ellison—who even as he stands at Spock's office doorway, rocking gently on the balls of his feet, waiting for an answer—must be remembering and noticing and calculating and a hundred other mental activities that hardly bear cataloguing?
He starts to say so but pauses.
"Don't be so quick to answer a question," his mother has cautioned him more than once. "It makes you sound arrogant, or worse—indifferent, like you don't care enough to give a serious response. And don't give me that look. I'm just telling you how it sounds to humans when you bark out a reply that fast."
As much as he hates to acknowledge it, there is something to what his mother said. Even his cousins—the people who know him best, who have known him the longest—sometimes take offense.
And often over that odd question about being busy.
"But you don't look busy," he remembers his cousin Rachel complaining when they were both young teenagers and he spent one summer at his Aunt Cecilia's house in Seattle. Much of his energy that June and July was spent turning down Rachel's invitations to join her in mischief of one kind or another—giving as his reason that he was busy.
"You aren't doing anything but sitting there," Rachel added.
"I am thinking," he told her, and she wrinkled her nose at him.
"You're boring!"
She flopped dramatically on the other end of the sofa where Spock sat cross-legged.
Eyeing her for a moment, he said, "Things are not in and of themselves boring. You mean that you feel bored. That is an emotional state that you can control."
"No, I can't!" Rachel said, throwing her arms over her head like someone in surrender. "This day is boring! And you aren't helping."
"Perhaps you should read your book," Spock said, glancing at the small PADD Rachel had abandoned on the coffee table earlier.
"My book is boring!"
"You are letting your emotions affect your judgment," Spock said primly. "The book is not boring. You are bored. There is a distinction. Your lack of interest, the fact that you slept fewer than five hours last night—"
"How do you know how long I slept?" Rachel said, her eyes narrowed. "Were you spying on me?"
"I heard you talking on your comm. Repeatedly."
Rachel's face turned pink—a sign that she was embarrassed? Surely she didn't think she was keeping her activities secret.
"Those were important conversations," she said, crossing her arms and resting her chin on her chest.
"And today you are too tired to be interested in your book," Spock said.
"I'm not interested in my book because it's a boring book."
A few years earlier Spock would have continued to argue his point. Now he simply raised an eyebrow, a useful bit of nonverbal communication he had picked up from his mother.
All that runs through his mind as Cadet Ellison stands in his doorway. One second passes, then two.
"No," he says, looking up at the cadet. "I am not busy. Please have a seat."
J.C. Ellison is one of the few students Spock has taught more than once at the Academy. Almost as tall as Spock, as thin as a runner, and with long fingers that are often in motion ruffling his dark, wavy hair, J. C. is the first teaching aide who hasn't quit or asked for a transfer after a few weeks.
Not that Cadet Ellison has been a completely satisfactory aide. More than once Spock has been impatient with how much direction he needs, how after two months he fails to anticipate what Spock needs him to do.
A minor annoyance, considering how in every other measure J. C. performs well, how unsatisfactory Spock's previous aides have been—cadets too anxious or distracted to be worth the time and trouble to train.
"Thank you, sir," J. C. says, slipping into the chair to the side of Spock's desk. "I see you've been keeping up with the news from the border." He waves his hand towards the computer monitor showing a news account of an empty 20th century Earth sleeper ship found in a decaying orbit around a remote Beta Quadrant planet. Speculation is rampant that the ship dates from the Eugenics Wars—though Starfleet has been hesitant to confirm any rumors.
"In a way, I want to talk about—that," J.C. says, pointing to the monitor. "About what Starfleet is doing out there."
Tilting his head, Spock waits and J. C. flushes slightly and continues.
"In fact, I was hoping you could give me some advice."
At once Spock is on alert. Too often when humans say they want advice, what they actually want is validation of a decision they have already made.
Or they have other ulterior motives. He feels a wave of uneasiness as he recalls the last time a cadet asked him for advice—Cadet Uhura, deftly maneuvering him into twice a week Vulcan language tutorials.
"Your Academy advisor might be a better choice," he says, but J. C. shakes his head.
"No, sir," he says. "I need your advice."
"Very well," Spock says, offering to shut the door if J.C. requires privacy. "Proceed."
"My father," J. C. begins, looking down as he laces his fingers together, "has been asking me where I'm applying to grad school."
Glancing up, he pauses, and Spock wonders if some sort of response is required or expected—just the kind of odd hiccup in conversations that often trip him up. No appropriate response comes to mind and he waits for J. C. to continue.
"He hasn't said anything directly, but I know he wants me to go to the Mars Institute like he did."
Again J. C. pauses and darts a glance at Spock. What does this comment have to do with needing advice?
Perhaps J. C. is asking Spock to speculate on Dr. Ellison's preference for the Mars Institute. After all, Spock knows Dr. Ellison as a colleague, someone who works in the subspace array lab, who teaches advanced engineering design classes, the civilian professor who over the summer took a small group of Academy students including Cadet Uhura to Mars to help calibrate the new sensor array being installed.
Of course, Dr. Ellison's familiarity with the Mars Institute would prejudice him in wanting his son to do graduate work there. That conclusion is self-evident. J. C. must mean something else.
Is he asking Spock for his personal assessment of the Institute? That, too, seems unlikely. Just last week, J. C. was in the break room when Cadet Uhura was making tea before her tutorial. Setting a mug on the table before Spock, she asked him if he was familiar with the Institute's array program.
"I have not been to Mars since my cousin's graduation," he said. Even as spoke he regretted the familiarity of the words, the unspoken intimacy they implied. He never talked about his family to his Academy associates, never shared the kinds of details that someone could turn to their advantage—or rather, to his disadvantage—a habit learned from hard service as a Vulcan schoolboy.
His occasional slips of the tongue with Cadet Uhura—telling her stories about his mother, for instance—had to stop. If he was going to meet with her several times a week to tutor her—to watch her lips form the sibilant consonants and hear her tongue shape the guttural vowels of a language as evocative to him as Vulcan—then he had to become the instructor he knew most students believed him to be—distant, impersonal, unmoved.
Now he sits up a fraction straighter and gives J. C. his attention.
"You said you wanted my advice," Spock prompts, and J. C. jumps slightly in his chair.
"The Mars Institute has a well-regarded linguistics program," he said, "but so does the Nairobi Center. And it's smaller and closer."
"I am unable to offer any comparisons," Spock says. "As I mentioned last week, I have not been to Mars in some time, and I was unaware that the Nairobi Center has a graduate linguistics department."
"Oh, yeah," J. C. says, shifting again in his chair. "Uhura's aunt is a guest lecturer there. I toured it over our interim break."
Against his will Spock recalls being a witness as Cadet Uhura leaned up to receive a kiss from J. C. one evening outside the language building.
But that had been 247 days ago. His observations since then suggest that their relationship is not as intimate as the public kiss implied.
This revelation that J. C. traveled home with Cadet Uhura over the interim break changes the equation again, forces an unfamiliar pressure in his sternum that makes his breath hitch.
Leaning forward, J. C. says, "It's just—I'm not even sure I want to do graduate work. At least not right now."
Another stab of pressure in his sternum catches Spock off guard a second time. Cadet Ellison does not want to go to the Nairobi Institute, despite having visited there recently. Perhaps his travel in Kenya was just that—a simple evaluation of a possible future.
Academic or otherwise.
Which he's decided against.
"You have something else in mind," Spock says, feeling the unexplained pressure in his chest ease slightly.
"I want to apply for active duty when I graduate," J. C. says in such a rush that Spock has to strain to understand him. "I want to serve on a starship. To do something instead of heading right back to more school."
Taking his mother's advice, Spock waits a beat before answering.
"Your final year at the Academy is rather late for changing your plans."
At that J. C. looks up and says, "I realize that, Commander. I'm missing several courses—"
"Tactical training. The command strategy seminar. To name a few."
J. C. shakes his head.
"Maybe it's crazy to even try," he says. "It's just—I know my father enjoys his work as a teacher. And I probably would, too. But first I want to go see what's out there. I want to be a part of a team, not some isolated academic stuck in an ivory tower somewhere."
Looking up quickly, J. C. says, "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean—well, I'm not saying that academia isn't important or that what you and my father do doesn't matter. It's just that I want to be part of something bigger right now. In a way, it's Uhura's fault. She drives me crazy keeping me posted on the Enterprise's updates. You'd think she was personally responsible for building it."
His brows knit into an uncharacteristic frown, J. C. sighs.
"I want to be that excited about something, that committed."
He sits up and drapes his hands on his thighs, a sign he is preparing to stand and leave.
"You're right, Commander," he says, his tone unmistakably sad, even to Spock. "I should have thought this through earlier, back when I could have done something about it."
A young man struggling with two possible futures—not just struggling, but caught between his father's expectations and his own desires.
Perhaps Cadet Ellison is right, that Spock might have some advice to offer.
"There are always possibilities," Spock says.
For the first time since their conversation began, J. C. smiles.
"Sir?"
"If you are willing to double your course load next semester, you could make up some of the missing work."
"Will the Dean—"
"Two of the required classes are not being offered," Spock says, and from the corner of his eye he sees J. C.'s expression fall. "However, you might be able to convince the instructors to let you take them as independent studies."
At once the cadet brightens and Spock is almost embarrassed for him, at how easily he vacillates from despair to happiness.
"Thank you, sir!" J. C. says.
"Of course," Spock says, "there is no guarantee that there will be a posting available when you graduate. The Enterprise is more than two years away from launch. Only the Farragut and the Camden have regular rotations scheduled before then."
"You two look busy."
Cadet Uhura's voice catches Spock completely by surprise. Standing in the doorway, she lets her backpack swing off her shoulder and slide to the floor beside her.
"I'm a few minutes early," she says. "I'll come back."
"That's okay," J.C. says, scooting back his chair and standing up. "The Commander and I are finished."
"You sure?"
"I'll tell you all about it later," he says, flashing her a grin that she returns.
Spock looks away.
"Is this the topic for today?"
When he glances up at her, Spock sees Cadet Uhura peering at his computer monitor and the news story about the derelict sleeper ship. However, he has tagged a different article for their tutorial, one dealing with a fungus spreading through the desert plants in the southern hemisphere of Vulcan. He's already made a list of vocabulary he expects she won't know—has pulled out three examples of syntax inversion characteristic of scientific journal writing.
He starts to tell her so but she places the tip of her finger near the monitor and says, "I saw a little bit about this on the news vid this morning. Do you really think it might be an Augment sleeper ship?"
She glances over her shoulder, her look so intense and earnest that he immediately abandons his prepared lesson.
"Possibly," he says. "Years ago, authorities on Vulcan were approached by Augments who said they knew of the whereabouts of a sleeper ship. As far as I know, that ship was never found."
"Really! Why not?"
He realizes that he has moved forward gradually, incrementally, in his chair until he is uncomfortably close to the cadet. Leaning back quickly, he says, "The story is rather long. Perhaps we should stick to the published account here."
It's a dodge, a way to keep his resolve to be less personal and more professional. No more stories, no revelations.
No near misses—moments when that unwanted pressure in his sternum catches him up short.
Placing her hands on the desk as if to brace herself, she says, "What do you know? You have to tell me!"
He doesn't, in fact, have to do anything of the sort. He can, and he should, remind her that the sole purpose they are together right now is to improve her spoken Vulcan—focus her attention on the persistent slip in her glottal stops—redirect her attention to the unfamiliar vocabulary in the news stories.
Augment, for example, is not a word with a ready Vulcan translation.
He opens his mouth to tell her so when she does something that completely disarms him.
She tilts her head and cocks one eyebrow, such an uncanny imitation that he blinks.
"You can't offer something and then not give it," she says, and Spock closes his mouth and swallows.
She's watching him as if she can see him sifting his thoughts. That idea is so disconcerting that he feels a wave of heat flood his torso.
Why not tell the story? It is, after all, a matter of public record, available to anyone who looks up the file.
"It all started," he says slowly, steepling his fingers and shifting his posture, "the day my mother was kidnapped."
X X X X X
"The pictures don't do them justice."
Amanda's voice was barely above a whisper, yet she had the distinct impression that the six men standing in a group across the crowded meeting hall heard her. The tallest one—a burly man as muscled as a wrestler, swiveled his head in her direction and stared with eyes so blue that they looked unnatural.
Which, Amanda thought, they might be. The men were members of the Traders, a nomadic tribe of space travelers descended from genetically enhanced humans who had fled Earth at the end of the Eugenics Wars in the 20th century.
In most history books they were called Augments, though they rarely referred to themselves that way. Regardless of what they were called, historians agreed that their development had been disastrous, leading to global insurrections and instability until they were finally destroyed or driven off the planet.
In the chaos after the war, the number of Augments who managed to escape—most in long-distance sleeper ships—was unknown. Generations grew up fearing their return, hearing stories of supermen whose prowess was matched by their boundless ambition, supermen who wouldn't allow themselves to be beaten by mere mortals a second time.
The Traders were the best-known of the Augments, but even they existed more in legend than in fact. Distant explorers in the Beta Quadrant often told of brushes with men in small attack ships who boarded quickly and took all the freight before anyone had time to react. Sometimes unlucky barge captains were found adrift in the shipping lanes, alone on their empty ships, telling unbelievable tales of men so charismatic that they could talk a loyal crew into mutiny.
Most of the other Augments were believed to be further out in the quadrant, somewhere under the rule—or under the thumb—of Colonel Green or Khan Noonien Singh. At least one remote Federation outpost was tasked with doing nothing more than keeping an eye out for possible Augment activity.
Yet for the most part they remained as elusive as some mythical will-o-the-wisp, just out of reach.
When a man calling himself Sarab Alande showed up at the Vulcan embassy saying he was a member of the Traders and offering information about where to find the other Augments, the Federation Council offered to send negotiators immediately.
"No humans," Alande insisted. "The last time my people were on Earth, humans tried to destroy us."
Sarek became the lead negotiator, and for a week Amanda saw little of him except for snatches on the news vids. There he was, almost dwarfed by the tall Traders, most with long blonde dreadlocks and the same piercing blue eyes as Sarab.
"But why now?" Amanda asked on one of Sarek's rare trips home to shower and change clothes. "What's motivating them to come forward now after all this time?"
Sitting on the edge of the bed to lace up his boot, Sarek glanced up and said, "Sarab says they are ready to return to Earth. That they want to settle instead of continuing to roam, that they've never found a place that is suitable for establishing a long term colony."
"That doesn't answer my question at all," Amanda said with a huff. "I mean, why now? Surely they didn't just decide they were homesick after all these centuries. Do they have a new leader who's pushing them to return? Is that what this Sarab is doing?"
"Unknown," Sarek said, picking up his other boot and slipping it over his foot. "Does it matter why? Sarab says they are willing to trade information about where to find the other rogue Augments in exchange for repatriation to Earth."
"Of course it matters! If they want to return because of some catastrophe—if they are starving because of a worldwide drought, for instance, then I wouldn't be so suspicious of them."
"Amanda," Sarek said, standing up and slipping his arms into his robe, "these are not the same people who fought in Earth's Eugenics Wars."
"But they're Augments, Sarek. They're bigger and smarter and more dangerous than ordinary humans!"
"So are Vulcans," Sarek said, tipping his head toward her, "and we seem to have found some sort of…accommodation."
No matter how tired she was, how annoyed, how put upon or misunderstood she felt, at those moments when Sarek teased her she felt a visceral flip in her stomach—love, she knew, wrongly assigned to the heart-—a flutter in her midsection that yoked her to him.
As she followed Sarek to the front door and watched as he started up his hoverbike, she felt Spock at her hip, barely touching her. At five he was beyond asking for open affection—in fact, lately he shied away from her touch if she reached out to tousle his hair or pull his jacket into place.
But sometimes at odd moments he was suddenly there at her side, his eyes focused ahead on whatever had her attention, as if he was determined to see the world through her point of view.
That evening as she watched the Traders from across the embassy meeting hall, she reached out briefly to check on Spock. In the part of her mind always reserved for him, she felt the buzz and click and hum that was his signature when he was busy—his thoughts always in motion, one idea leading to another or branching out into several parallel avenues or circling back to the starting point.
Whatever he was doing he was fine—and she felt a surge of gratitude to Sybok who never complained about being asked to stay with his little brother while Amanda worked or—as on this night—attended embassy events.
"Amanda," Sarek said, and she looked up as the leader—Sarab Alande, obviously—made his way slowly through the crowd toward them.
Reaching out and taking Amanda's fingers in his own, Sarab startled her by lifting her hand to his lips like a courtier in an ancient history text.
"Lady Amanda, I presume," he said, smiling as he released her hand. To her right she felt Sarek stiffen.
"And you must be Mr. Alande."
"Sarab, please," the tall man said. "My people recognize no hierarchies, no titles."
"Indeed," Amanda said, lifting one eyebrow. "I thought the Augments were fiercely competitive."
Immediately Sarab's smile evaporated and he narrowed his gaze.
"Human propaganda," he said.
"Well-documented history," Amanda countered. She felt a prickle of concern from Sarek.
She sensed something shifting in Sarab and his smile suddenly returned, though his eyes gave him away. He was not amused.
"Written by the victors of war," he said. "Not exactly unbiased sources. My ancestors weren't around to serve as correctives for the narrative."
"Neither were the 37 million who died in those wars," Amanda said, feeling Sarek's prickle of concern blossom into something more. She darted a glance in his direction.
"But I don't mean to be rude," she quickly added. "You're right, of course. That happened a long time ago. My husband reminds me that holding you and your people accountable for the past is…unfair."
"But not unwise?"
Sarab flashed another humorless smile. A warning?
"That remains to be seen, doesn't it?" she said.
"That's why we're here," Sarab said, looking directly at Sarek for the first time since he crossed the room.
Excusing himself, Sarab headed back to the other Traders who were gathered near the door.
Before Sarek could speak, Amanda looked up at him and said, "I know. I shouldn't have said anything,"
The rest of the evening was a typically dreary Vulcan affair—not quite a working meeting, not quite a meal. Two embassy staffers pressed into service as waiters walked around with spare trays of beverages and fruit. For the most part, the Vulcans talked softly with each other while the Traders stood uneasily together.
No music, no entertainment of any kind. By the end of the evening, Amanda had a headache.
"The Traders have proposed an amendment to the repatriation application," Sarek told her as she gathered her outer wrap and headed to the transport garage where her flitter was parked. "I agreed to look at it tonight. Go on ahead—I will be home as soon as I can."
A quick brush of his fingers communicated his unmistakable worry. Surely he wasn't concerned about her traveling at night alone. Crime on Vulcan was almost unknown; flitters were safe; their home wasn't far away.
The amendment, then. He didn't trust the Traders. With a guilty start, she realized that her own negative attitude must have affected him.
The garage was brightly lit but Amanda felt uneasy as she walked across the open space and unlocked her flitter. A ghost of Sarek's mood, most likely—like a stretched wire connecting the two of them, vibrating on both ends.
Pressing the starter, she waited a moment as the motor warmed up—and then it happened.
The overhead lights in the garage went dark at the same time that the door of the flitter was flung open.
"Move over!"
She recognized Sarab's voice at once.
"Move over!" he said again, and she felt his fingers around her arm like a vise.
"You won't get away," she said, beating back her panic. "Sarek already knows something is wrong."
"He's being detained, and I don't want to get away," Sarab said, low and insistent. "I want to talk to you. In private."
"And you thought you needed to abduct me to do that?"
The fingers on her arm tightened and she was shoved roughly to the opposite seat.
"If I have to," Sarab said. His next words were muffled by the sound of the flitter being started. Grabbing the door handle, Amanda struggled to open it before the flitter had time to lift off.
She was yanked back before the latch could release—and then the flitter was up and out of the garage and heading into the night.
They flew in silence for only a minute before the flitter began its descent. From the window Amanda tried to recognize the terrain, but all she could tell for certain was that they were somewhere south of the city. In the distance she could see the lights of Shi'Kahr. In the other direction were featureless hills.
When the flitter came to a stop, she reached again for the door latch but Sarab grabbed her hand.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said, his expression hidden in the shadows cast by the dash lights. "But I will if you make me."
"What every bully says," Amanda retorted, and to her surprise, Sarab suddenly let go of her.
"I—" he started, pausing suddenly. "I…am sorry. I wouldn't have resorted to this but I'm desperate. We're desperate."
Nothing Sarab could have said would have astonished her more.
"Why me? You could have spoken to someone at the embassy."
For a moment Sarab seemed to mull over his answer. Amanda sat and tried to read his expression in the dim light.
"I'm telling you because you don't trust me. If I can convince you—"
Amanda shifted in her seat.
"I won't talk to a kidnapper."
As she watched, something shifted in Sarab's posture. For another beat he was silent, and then he said, "Here."
With a jerk of his thumb, he hit the release and opened both doors of the flitter. Sliding out of the pilot's side, he walked around the front of the flitter and waited as Amanda scooted over.
"May I?" he asked, motioning to the passenger's seat.
A curt nod and they were on their way.
Her first intention was to head back toward the city lights and to the embassy.
But as she approached a familiar turnoff, she banked the flitter to the left and headed home. Sarab looked up immediately.
"I won't listen to a kidnapper," she said, "but I will listen to a guest."
If Sybok was surprised to see her with one of the Traders from the news vids in tow, he didn't show it.
"Where's Spock?" Amanda asked as she showed Sarab to the sitting room, and Sybok pointed to an intricate arrangement of colored tiles laid out on a low table.
"Asleep," Sybok said. "He made me promise to show you this. His idea for some sort of garden path. He said you would understand."
And she did. Earlier that day she had complained that the new plant soaker was muddying her shoes when she worked in the garden. Spock had said nothing at the time, had simply looked at her with a seriousness that should have alerted her that he would take her complaint as a challenge.
From the corner of her eye she noticed Sarab listening to the exchange. With a nod, Sybok retreated to the kitchen to make tea.
"Your son is an Augment?" Sarab asked as Amanda settled herself in a chair opposite the sofa.
Adjusting a pillow to give herself time to consider how to respond, Amanda said, "Not the way you mean it. He shares Vulcan and human genes, but he isn't genetically enhanced."
"But genetically engineered."
"In a sense, I suppose," she said, feeling a wave of annoyance. She was, she knew, sensitive about the subject—not only because the stigma of genetic engineering lingered, but because underneath her joy and pride in Spock she was always aware of a sorrow, too—as if she had failed him, or failed Sarek, or even failed her own humanity by needing medical intervention to have a child.
Sorrow that it took the deaths of two children to convince her to seek the help of the healers—pregnancies lost at four months, a girl and a boy—perfect, beautiful children, with no explanation ever given for why they failed to thrive.
"You said you wanted to talk," she said, and Sarab squared his shoulders.
"You are not wrong to be wary of the Augments," he said. "We are as our ancestors were—strong and ambitious. We've been bred to be leaders."
"The word you mean is dictators."
"A matter of semantics," Sarab said, cutting his eyes at Amanda and giving a sly smile. "At any rate, all that is changing. At least for us."
"What do you mean?"
Sarab looked up as Sybok walked into the room carrying two tea mugs.
"Thank you, Sybok," Amanda said, answering his unspoken query.
I'm alright. Your father is on the way.
She took a moment to feel Sarek's presence in her mind—and sent him reassurance that she was safe.
As Sybok left the room, Sarab began to speak again.
"There is no future for us," he said. "Among my own people, it has been many years since any child lived to term. Our medics tell us our genes are no longer viable—too many years of breeding only with other Augments. If we don't return to Earth—if we don't rejoin the larger human population—in a few decades there will be no trace that we ever existed. The Traders will die out."
Not a bad thing, Amanda thought, but she bit back the words. Her own attitude troubled her, her knee-jerk reaction born of stories she had grown up hearing about the Augments and the Eugenics Wars.
She couldn't deny her feelings. To try would be a waste of energy.
With a sigh, she cupped her hands around her tea mug.
"Suppose I do believe you," she said. "What can I do? The Vulcans are the ones who will decide whether or not to advance your petition to the Federation Council. It seems to me that your medical issue makes your case stronger—"
"No one can know!"
The panic in Sarab's voice was so intense that Amanda shivered.
"But why—"
"I told you!" he said, his eyes wild. "We were created to rule men, not to be ruled by them. That's what everyone knows, what everyone believes. If we return as dying men—if humans believe we are walking ghosts—they will destroy us."
"But if you return as Augments, humans will fear you."
"Better to be feared than destroyed out of hand. And we will be, if the people of Earth believe they can. You know it's true. Search your own feelings. I saw it in your eyes the first time we spoke."
It was true, and in a rush, Amanda knew that.
Lowering her voice, she said, "You still haven't told me what you need from me."
"Convince the Ambassador to accept our petition. Tell him that Earth is ready to welcome us."
"I'm not sure that's the case," Amanda said, and Sarab shook his head.
"It will be the case if you add your voice. If you show that you trust us—"
"I don't. You tried to kidnap me an hour ago."
"Then consider what we have to trade. I know where a sleeper ship with over 80 Augments is in parking orbit, waiting for a timed countdown before they are revived. As far as they are concerned, the Eugenics Wars just ended. When they wake, they will ready to spread out and conquer. Surely that information is worth something."
"I don't keep secrets from Sarek," Amanda said.
"I'm not asking you to," Sarab said. "But he doesn't need to tell anyone else. Vulcans are pragmatic people. If they think it will benefit them somehow, they can overlook many things."
Out of loyalty or irritation, Amanda started to contradict Sarab—but then she reconsidered.
He wasn't wrong. She'd seen that in practice more times than she cared to remember. For all the Vulcan talk of high ideals, at the end of the day, the practical needs of the many would always outweigh the needs of the few or the one—an inelegant solution when you were the one, but hard to argue with given the long view.
"I can't speak for Sarek," she said, and Sarab caught her eye for a moment and then nodded twice.
"But you can speak to him," he said. "That's all I ask."
"Suppose I do and your petition is granted. What then? You said you were bred to be rulers. Do you really think your people would be content to be anything else? Frankly, I'm skeptical."
"Lady Amanda," Sarab said, leaning forward and peering at her with his too blue eyes, "we have no other choice."
"Of course you do," she countered. "There are always possibilities. If Earth doesn't accept your petition, there are many other people in the universe who might welcome your contributions. If you are serious about wanting to settle and raise families—"
Sitting back up suddenly, Sarab scowled.
"We would never dilute our humanity that way. Our ancestors believed in the possibility of human strength, human skill. Anything else would be a compromise of those ideals."
There it was, the proof she had been looking for—proof that she wasn't being unfair or harsh in her judgment. Proof that the Augments were, under their charisma and practiced civility, as xenophobic, as dangerously narcissistic and arrogant, as their ancestors.
The faint whine of a hoverbike motor—Sarek, certainly, racing home—and the deeper roar of a police cruiser shook the floor slightly. Amanda looked up and met Sarab's gaze.
"You'll help us, then?" Sarab said.
Amanda set her mug on the table, her hand shaking with anger, and she stood up as the sound of the hoverbike rumbled to a stop outside.
Suddenly Sarek was in the room, three armed Vulcans with him, Sarab quickly bundled out of the house, Amanda's silence telling him all he needed to know.
Days later, Sarek swayed the Vulcans to recommend against repatriation, and the humans on the Federation Council agreed. Notwithstanding their origins as Augments, the Traders' more recent history as suspected pirates and highwaymen meant reconciliation was problematic.
"I can't say I'm all that sorry," Amanda told Sarek. "Say what they might, Sarab and his crew are dangerous. They would never be able to live as ordinary citizens on Earth."
Sarek didn't necessarily disagree, but he argued that Sarab's information about the other Augments might have made the risk worth it.
"He said he knew about one sleeper ship with less than a hundred Augments onboard," Amanda said, trying to sound reasonable. "That's not exactly an army. If they do try to return to Earth, the patrols will stop them."
Her words were calculated to convince herself as much as Sarek, but it was many weeks before she could unlock the flitter without looking over her shoulder first.
Before Sarab's description of Spock as an Augment stopped rankling her.
Before she could remember that the Eugenics Wars had happened long ago: ancient history, a tragedy that didn't concern her or her family—and never would.
X X X X X X
"You think the ship in the news is the same one the Traders mentioned?" Cadet Uhura asks, her gaze so intense that Spock has trouble looking away. A rectangle of light from the window falls across her face, sketching her long eyelashes in sharp relief.
With a start, Spock realizes that she is waiting for an answer.
"Impossible to know," he says. "Though if it is, the Augments it carried have dispersed."
Cadet Uhura blinks slowly and shakes her head. As she does, her long ponytail slips forward over one shoulder, the filaments of her hair lighting up in the sunlight.
He's told her little beyond the official records—that twenty-two years ago the Traders approached the Vulcans for help in repatriation efforts, that the Vulcans declined the petition.
When he sketches out a few details about the attempted abduction of his mother, Cadet Uhura says, "Well, that strategy backfired!"
"It cast doubt on any benign motives the Traders may have had," Spock says. "Though my father maintains that the information the Traders had about other Augments would have been valuable intelligence."
"Some things aren't worth the price," she says, the heat in her voice surprising him. Tipping her chin up, she looks at him, frowning. "From what I've read, the Augments were engineered to be ruthless. They would never have integrated back into society on Earth."
"You suggest," Spock says, "that someone's genetic heritage is his—for lack of a better word—destiny."
He sees her eyes narrow—not in anger but in the kind of quicksilver casting around in her mind that makes her such an engaging student—signaling her willingness to examine her beliefs and either change them or defend them.
At this moment, she chooses to defend them.
"I'm not saying that's true for everyone," she says slowly, as if she is testing the strength of her words. "But the Augments were genetically engineered. They were designed."
The antipathy in her voice is unmistakable.
Designed.
It's an accidental bruise, something she couldn't possibly know.
But her words make him feel lonelier than he has in a long time.
Leaning forward suddenly, he toggles off the computer monitor and she seems to recognize this for what he intends, a dismissal. As she lifts her backpack from the floor, he feels her watching him closely.
Has he let his distress show?
"Commander," she begins, "have I said—"
"Next time we need to focus on your use of the subjunctive," he says, not meeting her gaze. "You might want to review the causation rule before then."
He stands so that she has no choice but to do the same. As she hefts her backpack on her shoulder, she says, "I'm heading to the cafeteria for an early meal. Are you…I mean, would you care to join me?"
In another life, in an imagined life, he would have accepted her offer, would have walked with her across the commons warmed by the late afternoon sunshine, would have followed her into the noisy cafeteria and selected a salad and sat with her at a long table surrounded by cadets who saw nothing unusual about two ordinary people sharing a meal, having a conversation, finding pleasure in each other's company.
In another life—
But he halts that thought.
"They were designed."
His is no ordinary life, no imagined life.
In another year Cadet Uhura will graduate—one of many gifted students, passing out of his view to a future she is even now conjuring up for herself.
Probably on a starship. Possibly on the Enterprise.
In the meantime he will teach her Vulcan conjugations and correct her pronunciation as she practices reading news stories in translation.
Nothing more.
He pauses before he answers.
"Thank you for the offer," he says, meaning it. "But I am busy."
A/N: The Augments are important lore in both TOS and Enterprise. In TOS, Khan Noonien Singh was the leader of the sleeper ship that Kirk and crew found in "Space Seed," setting in motion a chain of events that eventually resulted in Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan.
The Augments do serious mischief in Enterprise as well, notably in a three-episode story arc beginning with "Borderland."
This fic, of course, is set in the universe of the alternate time line—but I imagine that some things, such as the Eugenics Wars—happened more than once….unfortunately.
When you leave a review, I know you are out there! Thanks for taking the time…it keeps me writing.