Chapter 35 - Certain Consideration
Spock stepped into the shadow thrown by the overhang of Shutan's house. Spock wore Vulcan robes today, of a type fit for the desert. He had beamed in three kilometers away and walked, pleased with the bright comfort of the open space, the chance to find a rhythm in regular healthy movement. Sarek had delayed restarting Spock's tutoring sessions over Spock's protests that his tutor was rigorous enough to expect him back. And now, from the threshold, Shutan peered down at Spock without giving any hint as to his thoughts. After a full minute, he stepped back to let Spock come inside.
"Sit," Shutan commanded and went off along the length of the house.
Spock took a soft seat and watched dust swirls traversing the low wall around the property.
Shutan returned holding a narrow wooden tray which he placed on the unexpectedly empty table. He sat and, with careful movements, arranged and poured from one stone pot to the next, finally into a low, broad cup which he held out for Spock. The cup swirled with blue flecks. The scent of cool morning Vulcan hills wafted from it. He waited for Spock to sip before pouring a second one and sitting with it balanced on one gnarled palm.
They sat with the wind scuffing along the full-height windows. The warm liquid and the methodic noise made Spock lethargic.
"The shoulder drape is for you, if you require it."
A neatly folded half circle-shaped Vulcan blanket in deep green and gray was hanging over the side of Spock's seat. It was mid-morning and the rooms were still chilled from the night before. Spock, still not in full control of his body had sweated on his walk and now he dearly missed his wicking thermal shirt. But he resisted taking up the blanket.
Shutan considered Spock for a time, three and a half minutes. "If you are ready to begin."
"I am."
"If you wish for a break, you will let me know. Of course. Or if you require anything else at all."
Spock's left brow went up before he could stop it.
Shutan said, "I am of an era where there was proper social protocol for one in your condition." He poured Spock more tea, pushed it closer. "It is perhaps out of fashion to take certain cares around one recovering from such an injury. I do not know. It has certainly been a long time since I dwelt on Vulcan. But it is proper. Nevertheless."
Spock nodded, tried not to lean too far over the rising heat from his mug. The sides of his robes were damp and chilling. He ignored it and sat straighter.
"What did you think of the Bradbury?" Shutan said.
Spock stared at the band of the sunlight beyond the house's overhang, wished the sun had already slid around the sky so it could reach inside.
"I did not find it a coherent whole of a narrative, theme or even attitude. Should I have?"
"I do not think so. And I did not intend when I assigned it for its warning about human behavior in the quest for exploration to ring quite so true for you."
Spock set his cup down and immediately missed its heat. He wanted to meet Shutan's gaze, but stared at the low stone cup instead. "I have in the past been treated to pride damaging mockery and forceful persuasion by my peers on Vulcan."
Shutan's voice wavered from age. "That which is strange begets violence in those not yet settled in their own minds about their own strengths and weaknesses. It is true that I should not discount what Vulcan children are capable of in the same situation. You will continue on, then, at the earth space academy?"
"I still expect to make a place for myself. I am still learning how to accomplish this, perhaps will always be learning this." And because he was facing Shutan and not some other elderly Vulcan, Spock added, "Better than I could on Vulcan."
"Only you can decide that. As only you must live with the consequences. Which story in the Chronicles pleased you the most? Assuming one did."
"The one involving the temporal interstice. Where the two individuals meet as equals across the span of time and cultures, both characters strong and comfortable within their worlds."
"That one does not really fit in with the rest, does it?"
"It had a positive outlook. Unlike the others."
"But as optimistic as it was," Shutan said. "It was an ephemeral moment, almost a delusional moment, not a solid reality for the reader to rely on for the future."
He looked to Spock and waited.
Spock wasn't trying hard today to be well thought out, and that was making it easier to find things to say. "The mood of that story was one of transience and of inevitability. And at the same time, of capturing pleasure in the moment by already knowing and accepting what place one has in it."
Shutan steepled his rough hands. "It is pessimistic also in its acknowledgement that Good requires time and peace to build. It is always more fragile, vulnerable to an easy tearing down or decay. All thinking beings know this at their core. What do the two beings learn from their encounter? Do they become something better because of it?"
"You are suggesting that what happens after the story ends is more important? I did not get that sense from the piece." Spock shifted, tried to encourage his body to warm itself despite his damp robes pressing, airing, and pressing again yet more chilled.
Shutan sat back. "I am merely curious what you would hypothesize."
"You wish to learn about me through my projection onto these characters?"
Shutan sat without reacting for just over two minutes. "Literature indeed teaches in this manner."
Spock sighed. "I suppose the two characters come away from the meeting with new perspective. Perhaps a humility of attitude toward what they take for granted as special. That you cannot know a place by its ruins, you must experience it." Spock took up his cup and wrapped his hands around it.
Shutan considered him. "It will be more damaging to your pride if I get up and put the shoulder drape on you rather than you taking it up on your own."
Spock put the tea down and unfolded the wrap. He settled back in the seat with it.
"I am old fashioned, Spock. You are due a certain care."
"I am not as weak as a full Vulcan would be in these circumstances."
Shutan sat for a time. "Did you expect to ever say that?"
Spock huddled under the warm comfort of a traditional Vulcan wrap that smelled entirely of earth. "No."
In the dining hall the masses of cadets moved to and from the dispensers to the tables. They turned sideways to slide around the spread out lines of seniors standing between the middle rows of tables loudly reciting the Starfleet policy on Accidental First Encounters. The seniors stood with chins up, eyes straight ahead. When one or two fell away for a few words, or misremembered, the others were loud enough it was difficult to discern. The remaining cadets ate in silence, waiting for the noise to abate before conversing.
P'Losiwst wore a crooked grin as she sipped her blue drink. Spock slipped a memory chip across the table that contained the Stores measurements of ten students. He'd requested the entire Stores database with the stated intent of updating the semantic browser of student information he'd built at the beginning of the term. No one had questioned his intent and the measurements were just one small part of a very large dataset.
Spock had also looked over the original requirements specifications for the entry system in the dormitories. The original specifications were the only information regarding it that was accessible to him. Each entry and exit was logged and a checksum stored separately. The checksums were not sufficiently lengthy. Spock could compute two other possible combinations of entrance or exit within 24 hours that would match the checksum. One could not be assured of opening a door at precisely that millisecond to fool the system, but with sufficient access, one might be able to forge a change in the data that would appear to be valid. Like the bots he'd programmed for, the door hardware was mass produced and inexpensive and had likely not been updated. Spock intended to disassemble his own door controller to confirm.
The select seniors went on with their recitation. Their voices echoed around the boxy space, combining and recombining. "The incident shall be logged by all parties who directly witness or were participatory to it within twelve hours of a return to station . . ."
P'Losiwst put the chip under her fingertip and pinned it there beside her plate, stared at Spock as if attempting telepathy. Other cadets slid into the adjacent seats, Veeyla and Tuanton. P'Losiwst put on her usual smile and sipped her drink. Nodded greetings went around.
Spock put his plate aside and placed his padd before him, straightened it just so. As always, the ship model was open on it. He stared unseeing at it. He had an alert specifically for messages from Kirk and knew for certain there was no such notice and he need not check his message list. Illogically, he checked the full list anyway and confirmed it. He did not speculate about Kirk's situation. That would be illogic on top of illogic.
Spock scanned the feeds he'd configured for the Lohanna Sector. They consisted of oft-repeated warnings about travel limits for private vessels, sanitized Federation summaries of action, political discussions about who was in the right, if anyone. All of it was too broad to help
The half shouted chanting continued. The policy on Accidental First Encounters was long. The others in the dining hall began talking over the seniors and reverberating voices bounded around Spock, better defining the wall of control he sat within. His own disciplined lack of reaction to Kirk's silence did not feel comforting. It felt binding, imprisoning, as if to be a whole being was to be subject to weaknesses. But that was illogical. Spock breathed in and out, took in the cacophony of food that beat at his sense of smell the same way the voices beat at his hearing.
Spock pulled the ship model back up on his screen, worked on resolving a conflict between an extension of an access tube, the shielding on a high powered conduit intersecting it, and a boosting of the airflow to an adjacent compartment. He estimated it was impossible to resolve without moving a bulkhead, an expensive and likely unacceptable option.
"There is interference at two o'clock, Commander. Not at eleven where you told me to expect it from. But there's a lot of heavy rock around making it hard to localize."
Kirk held up a hand to call a halt. He heard shuffling boots behind him cascading to a stop. Feet had been dragging for more than two hours, but they were not anywhere Kirk wanted to stop for a long-term break. They were making their way through dry ragged canyons with no good spots for an emergency evac if they had to call one in.
Their unit was still technically waiting for further orders, moving as needed to remain hard to detect, remaining transmission silent. By sending a scout to high ground to use direct line of sight to the skuttles, they'd reported being fired upon and that information would have been passed on to highers up. But no broadcast transmissions with their encoding tag had been received in reply, so they continued on as before, scouting out the area where the firing had originated from. During their pre-mission briefing, it had seemed to Kirk that rebel firepower was always assumed to be mobile, because anything else would be foolish. Organizational assumptions with that much foothold worked at Kirk, like a burr inside his jacket. He may be seeking out this firing origin point just to prove that assumption incorrect.
Kirk turned to locate who was on scanner. Bark scrambled up the loose rocks to reach him. The tech extended the wire arm on the scanner as far as it would go and held it high. Hummer scrambled up, reached over his back, and took it from Bark's hand to hold it higher. Bark rolled his eyes, but adjusted the screen and held it up so he and Kirk could see it.
"Pan back," Kirk said. "That looked like a skuttle."
Bark adjusted the angle. "It's only showing naturally reflected or emitted EM, sir. Looks like sun heated rocks to me."
"There on what is almost a low plateau. You don't think that looks like the corner of a skuttle?"
Uirik came up short of them, leaned her helmeted head between their shoulders. "Planet scan shows clear in that location. I want to agree with Bark."
"I want to divert in closer," Kirk said. "Bark, Hummer, come with me.
Kirk rolled his ankle over a loose rock for the hundredth time that day. The cords up the sides of his knees felt strained, the way he expected them to feel when he turned forty. He should have sent someone else, but he seemed to be the only one seeing things, and he was feeling impatient, which he knew was dangerous.
A rock rolled several meters downslope, cracked against another one. Kirk held up a hand for silence and the three of them picked their way more carefully, walking as if on stilts, making a path out of the smaller scree at the edge of the canyon.
Three kilometers closer in they came to a wide opening in the canyon. Kirk pulled back, halted Hummer with a grab on his arm. He was sure he was seeing artificial constructs among the high rocks, even without enhancement.
They hunkered down and extended the wire eye again.
Hummer flipped up his visor and squinted, nose to the screen. "I've got to agree with you now, sir. What's that next to the skuttle?"
"An upside down ship?" Bark said, halting himself in turning the scanner display over. "Sorry, sir."
"Superimpose the other map."
Bark did so, handed over the display. Kirk studied the circled area where the firing originated from. He'd been angling their route toward a wider ravine that approached the edge of that area. Now the picture looked different. The earlier firing location was chosen to protect that low approach, which in turn was intended to protect something else.
"Let's retreat," Kirk whispered.
"It IS a skuttle?" Uirik said upon their return. She took hold of a display and shaded it with one hand. "A captured skuttle? Nothing's been reported lost for months in this area."
"It is one." Kirk took out a snack bar and chewed it down while the rest adapted to the news. "Send a scout to message our skuttle team. Have them tell base we need more airpower and an air strike, but give us 30 hours before bringing it in." Kirk bundled up the wrapper and pocketed it. He waited for someone to ask for more information.
Bark, emboldened by being selected for the side mission, said, "30 hours for what, sir?"
Kirk reached for the display in Uirik's hand. She hesitated as if not wanting to reward his behavior. He smiled with full shining charm. She gave it up.
"We're going to take out one of what I expect are three guns in total. The one that fired on us I suspect we can't reach without exposing ourselves to lethal fire. They'll be another, however . . ."
Kirk squatted with the display in hand. He was a little shaky adjusting the map display to enhance the geography. If he was right, they'd walked alarmingly close to a second gun emplacement without realizing it.
Kirk zoomed out and in, changed the elevation exaggeration. "Who can tell me about the groups fighting here?"
Kilpea, perhaps the tallest crewmember although he didn't seem it with his soft, adolescent face, raised a gloved hand.
"Go on. Don't be shy," Kirk said.
Kilpea dug a boot toe into the damp sand, rotated it back and forth. His voice was a whisper. "Which group do you want to know about?"
"I want to know about whoever we're likely dealing with here. Who's the most established group fighting for this planet?"
"There are six mercenary groups. Most are ad hoc," Kilpea said, then faded out and his gloved hands fluttered nervously.
"Hm. Not them. Who's actually representing themselves here in this fight?"
Kilpea burst out with: "The Urtics are. I think."
Kirk lowered himself onto his backside and rested his arms on his knees. The others took this as a cue to put weapons down on their butt ends, to slide helmets back on heads.
"Where's home for them?"
"They aren't," Hummer said. "They are fighting for the Valgaro Family, because they owe them from the Sector Wars more than sixty years ago."
"Valgaro? Where are they from?" Kirk asked.
Kilpea said, "F-29983 II. Five systems away."
"That's more like it. Old warrior types I take it if they are calling in a sixty year old favor. Why weren't they in the briefing?"
"The mercenaries are overwhelmingly the primary enemy." Uirik sounded pinched, annoyed.
Kirk looked up and waited until she met his eyes. He stared, silently telling her to stay neutral while he worked. She looked away.
"The professionals are not the enemy today," Kirk said. "Old warrior clan, someone who uses old fashioned thinking about defense and taking territory. Someone methodical."
Kirk raised the map to eye level, pointed at the screen. "There. The emplacement will be there." He pressed the other locations so they were marked and coded, held out the display to Uirik. "Send our climber scout up to tell the skuttles to prepare to bring in airfire 30 hours from now on those locations. And that we'll be firing on the marked locations at launcher range from the other marked locations. With luck we can keep friendly fire to a minimum. Especially given we are the ones on the ground. More airpower will be welcome if they can call it in on time."
Feet shifted, crewmembers looked at each other without raising their heads.
Hummer said, "Sir?"
Kirk smiled at him. He wanted them to do that, to ask for details if they didn't know. Kirk said, "There's an installation there. I'm certain of it. Not a big one, but one nonetheless. It is on top of a small mesa, so it is unlikely it includes any caverns beneath it. It has gone undetected because they are masking scans from altitude. We came in below their eye level, an angle they don't expect approach from and apparently aren't or can't cloak with using the captured equipment they have piled around their encampment."
"The skuttle and the other crashed ship are just for hiding behind." Hummer finally got it. "They don't have their own cloaking tech."
"It might still fly," Kirk said. "But we're going to blow it up before they can put it in the air, so it doesn't matter if it does."