[USS Charon]
"I assume Kovel has been returned to the brig rather than experience a similar … transporter malfunction." It would have been too much of a stroke of good fortune … and it would have been suspicious. One accident due to the imbeciles crewing this ship, that T'Pelar believed without blinking. Two … would have implied a pattern.
But it also made matters slightly more complicated. Not to mention that sooner or later people would realize what had happened and start looking for her.
"You are capable of preventing lifesigns from showing on internal sensors?"
The hologram nodded plainly and spoke with artificial cheer, "I am, Councilwoman."
It was difficult not to pace these dark and dreary little quarters but even though there was no living thing to observe her doing it, T'Pelar saw no reason to elicit a comment from a few strings of code either.
She needed a plan, and fast. But she was a researcher and politician, not a military strategist. The dirty details were Kovel's métier. But perhaps…
"Savant, I will require you to arrange for transport to Temep`Shar once we are in range. Only Kovel and myself, after which you will follow us and erase any evidence of your presence from Charon."
Again the image nodded, unperturbed by the drastic command. She seemed pleased by the order. "As you wish, Councilwoman. I shall take the liberty of transporting some of your accoutrement as well, when the time comes. Please make ready." And Savant disappeared in a puff of logic, leaving T'Pelar alone in the gloom.
Should that vile t`Rehu woman dwell alone in her misery while T'Pelar took her prize home. She would deal with these insolent people here later. If they ever made it back.
The councilwoman moved towards the tiny window where stars streaked past and pondered her options. Most of them required dealing with the surviving crew of Temep`Shar first. From what little they had been able to learn in the brig – ah, no matter how disconcerting that young clerk with the violet eyes was, he had proven invaluable in getting their keepers to divulge information without even realizing they did so – there were still V'Ket on board. A nuisance, albeit perhaps an advantage as well.
Had T'Pelar not been so absorbed by her musings she might have noticed the sound and vibrations of the warp engines did not quite correspond with her current position on board – let alone that there was something distinctly odd about this entire scenario. The young clerk she held in such disdain would at this point have become very quiet indeed – the kind of silence that bode ill for continued serenity.
One of the first things one learns in V'Shar is that arrogance kills.
One of the things T'Pelar never had bothered to learn was how to pay attention to things that did not serve her purposes. You did not rise to a position such as she held now by being concerned about … trifles.
Savants' voice interrupted T'Pelar's incisive thoughts; the mellifluous sounds were almost abrasive in T'Pelar's mood. "Councilwoman, we are in position. Shall I engage your directive?"
How could anyone truly believe this program had even a semblance to a living thing? It apparently needed confirmation for every small command, as if it were less than the sophisticated AI it was made out to be. "Affirmative."
The grey walls melted away beneath the blue cascade of lights. For those brief seconds she was neither hot nor cold, light nor heavy, awake or asleep. Consciousness itself seemed to pause - not fall away as in slumber, nor the universal oneness of meditation. Perhaps something greater, perhaps something less. Her thoughts moved like cold tree sap dribbling down rough bark, sluggish and scattered, leaving resinous trails of identity behind them.
When the waterfall drained away and heat returned, it was a cold heat - an oxymoron, but the shiver of cold that instantly cut through to her bones could not masquerade as warmth for long. Her eyes re-focused from the transporters' disorienting hum, and she shuddered.
From the cold, ostensibly. But it was only a clever guise to hide her shock and horror. It was black, lit only by a few points of white and the dull carmine of emergency lighting. She bobbed in microgravity within the cold confines of Temep'Shar's ruined bridge, Vulcan bodies suspended motionless midair around her. The air, what there was, was stale and whispering. Those whispers were not ghosts, as easy as it might have been to imagine so. That was from the struggling force field, trying vainly to restrain the remaining atmosphere from exploding out into the destroyed front wall of the bridge. Black, stars and a blue-green nebula waited beyond, a hungry void. Jets of plasma, nascent stars, hung like redshift-bloody teeth from the gaseous clouds. The force field flickered, and the ghosts whispered anew. Another gasping breath lost to space, to feed the birthing stars. So this is what the worm feels in the mother's beak.
Heavy robes floated about the councilwoman's tall frame as she struggled to reach for any stationery object – but to no avail. What had this … thing ... done? Had it malfunctioned?
There was none to see her anger nor the disbelief flickering across T'Pelar's features though she suppressed both immediately.
A tall male in deep blue tunic floated right before the gaping hole, his face serene in death as one might not expect from a Captain whose ship had died with him. But there was no doubt the silver haired one was Sesek although she had never met the man – the golden rank insignia were gleaming even in this dim light, a silent accusation twinkling in the dark.
The woman suspended in mid-air right above the Captain seemed to reach for him as if to pull him back from the emptiness out there. Shimmering jet black hair in the practical bowl-cut so many Vulcans favored was fanning about her face, thankfully hiding her features. But this one, too, T'Pelar could place. T'Ylenn. The one person the Academy had insisted on adding to the crew roster. The one who answered to her adversaries.
All those details her mind processed while frantically searching for a way out of her predicament. What had happened? What could she do?
The first question could wait. The second …
No one there to hear. No one alive. But her voice was still steady when T'Pelar called for Temep`Shar's computer. Hardly unexpected, there was no answer.
No way out. No way to call for help.
And the flickering forcefield getting weaker.
This could not be how it ended. She refused to accept it.
Blazing anger fueled by very real fear raced through her veins and even in the rapidly thinning air the sound of a furious snort echoed off the amaranth red walls.
No. All those years of careful planning, all the perfectly calculated projections, they could never have led to this. Something was very, very wrong.
But even through the green haze of rage T'Pelar knew she was in denial.
The fingertip that touched upon the back of her neck might well have been a slap for its surprise and sudden appearance. The touch stroked down to the top of T'Pelar's collar before disappearing, replaced with a ghostly voice in her ear.
"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice."
Vulcans do not believe in ghosts. Though there are those who will accept that inexplicable things exist. The only thing T'Pelar knew with certainty was that no living, breathing creature was here with her. And Temep`Shar was as dead as her crew.
A projection? A comm badge? What kind of sick game …
The voice continued, unperturbed, still behind her, though the speaker was invisible despite any amount of struggle - T'Pelar simply had nothing to push against to turn herself around.
"From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire."
The forcefield staggered, stuttered, gasped - there was a burst of heat as the local capacitors began to cook off their final charge. The sudden hot wave boiled through the room, and then roared. T'Pelar was flung amidst the bodies and detritus of Temep'Shar's dying bridge out into the black. Like a cork bobbing to the surface of a churning stream she shot from the wreck and into the nebula.
Fire. The useless, sickening heritage of her race. All her life T'Pelar had fought it with the cold steel of reason. To feel it consume her now in helpless rage was worse than the knowledge that she would die. Die by the hand of an unknown, faceless assailant, flung into the darkness among the grotesquely flailing bodies.
The atmosphere fled like roaring wildfire passing through a field, leaving char and black behind, but still she could hear that voice. It was close now, a breathless whisper against her earlobe. Was it in her mind? Was this some momentary madness before the long night set in?
"But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate."
The black of space condensed into wisps, long whipping wisps of ebony, sweeping around her like strands, coiling beside her head, visible only through the way they caught up the billion stars, twisting them into long locks. The floating underwater flow drew stars together at their crux, pulling them into a moonbeam face, perfect in proportion and as ethereal as the night sky.
"To say that for destruction, ice,"
Her eyes drew blue from the distant nebula and shone like the birthing stars. Her mouth drew upon the red-toothed jets for lips, slow distortions within the fabric of space itself that knotted and coiled in pharyngular loops. Savants' body followed behind, solid black that shed the stars, inky-dark; she took the singularity's clothing as her own.
"Is also great, and would suffice."
[To be continued ... ]
Savant
&
T'Pelar
