String Theory_ Fusion (Book 2) - Kirsten Beyer [4]
Naviim stumbled, involuntarily grasping the entrance alcove’s railing with a free hand as the Betasis shook beneath him.
Structural integrity has been compromised, she thought painlessly.
As Naviim regained his balance, she saw the simple devotion of the man who had been her shi-harat her entire life, and wished she could reward him with something other than certain death.
“Go,” she commanded.
Naviim bowed his head, but remained rooted to the floor.
He will not desert me, even now. Her final comfort would not be a view of the stars of her home, but instead, the sight of the love and loyalty of her most faithful servant.
Accepting this, she turned to the few remaining strands of thought that connected her mind to her body.
With her two powerful arms designed but rarely used for manual labor, she took hold of the command console before her and ripped it in one piece from its casing. Naviim averted his eyes, in deference to the sight of her two delicate interior arms as they emerged from the pouch sewn into the back of her ceremonial robe. Extending the long tapered fingers that were meant to embrace her mate, she thrust them into the sparking wires that still pulsed with life within the console.
“Be at peace, Naviim,” she whispered. “The transference has begun.”
These were the last words that Assylia, rih-hara-tan of the Fourteenth Tribe of Monorha, and commander of their finest achievement, the Betasis, ever spoke in the flesh.
Chapter 1
Tuvok was conscious of the song from the first fraction of a second that he began to emerge from his meditative state. He gradually roused himself through the stages of alertness; awareness of the weight of his limbs, his slow, rhythmic breathing, the hum of the shuttle’s engines, the soft caress of the environmental controls setting the cabin temperature much warmer than most humans would be comfortable with. Finally, as he recalled where he was, and how he had come to be here, the intensity of the music threatened to plunge his Vulcan restraint into chaos.
With the precision only years of rigorous training in the Temple of Amonak had given him discipline to master, he forced the passion, the longing, and the unutterable pain into the recesses of his mind, and only when he was certain that he, and not the music, was in control did he open his eyes.
“Computer…”
The computer replied with a chirp, awaiting his command.
“What is our current heading?”
The cool voice devoid of all emotion answered as expected. “Current heading remains unchanged: one six seven mark one four.”
“Estimate arrival at the singularity.”
“One hour, twenty-seven minutes, eleven seconds.”
Exactly as he had anticipated.
With great care, Tuvok rose from his knees next to the shuttle bunk, and sat on its edge. He shifted his focus inward, until he had counted exactly one hundred times the quarter of a second between each beat of his heart, and satisfied himself that no matter what, it would continue to beat at precisely the same rate, substantially slower than the normal Vulcan resting heart rate, until he allowed it to do otherwise.
He then turned his attention to the corner of his mind where he had placed the music. It had been a desperate struggle over the last nine hours to maintain his ability to perform even the most rudimentary exercises of piloting the shuttle, but finally he had forced the living presence that now shared his mind into a section of his consciousness that he could examine at will.
He was certain he was experiencing