Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [61]
And once the Vulcan ship arrived, that would not solve the dilemma of how to deal with the creature. No doubt enough electricity could be generated in order to destroy Wanderer—but T’Pol did not consider that a solution, and she doubted the other Vulcans would find it to be one, either.
Interestingly, her mind kept wanting to return to the long-ago incident with Jossen, and the lecture she had attended, listening to the Kolinahr adept Sklar on the question of self-defense and peace. T’Pol did not believe in intuition or the subconscious; Vulcan minds were trained so that all was conscious, and nothing buried; intuition was merely a human concept, for those whose mental machinations were so foggy that they were unaware that their “flashes” were the product of logical deduction.
Or so T’Pol had always thought. Yet an image kept returning to her: a centuries-old vid, restored from Old Earth newsreels, of a small, gaunt bespectacled human wrapped in a simple white cloth. Gandhi-ji, the people had adoringly called him. The elderly, frail man, all bones and dark flesh, had smiled at the crowds, who had thrown flowers and called him Bapu, Father.
She wondered whether the ancient Vulcans, with their passionate hearts and penchant for emotional display, had similarly welcomed Surak.
Somewhere, in the lesson of Gandhi, lay the solution for Wanderer. T’Pol’s instinct knew this, even as her conscious mind rebelled. The notion had gnawed at her from the time of her earliest realization that Wanderer meant the human crew harm.
Were this so, I would be able to logically deduce why I believe this. Thus far, I have been unable to do so. Therefore, this line of thinking is irrational.
Yet the image of Gandhi persisted.
As T’Pol meditated, the doors to the bay hissed open.
She opened her eyes at once. In the entry stood Lieutenant Meir’s reanimated body—possessed of an unnatural posture, the head listing with alarming limpness to one side—and in Meir’s grip was a phase rifle. Meir’s head and body swung about until they faced the captain and Commander Tucker, at which point she raised the phaser rifle and took aim at the electrical pistol, loosely held in the slumbering Tucker’s hand.
T’Pol’s keen vision detected that the rifle was set to kill.
“Commander!” the Vulcan shouted. She threw her body forward—enough to push against Tucker’s thigh and startle him awake. Instinctively, he leapt up and raised the pistol in his hand.
Meir fired.
At the same time, Tucker dodged the killing beam as best he could and fired back.
The stream of electricity caught Meir full on, emblazoning her torso with a lightninglike display of dazzling blue-white. She twitched convulsively, dropped her weapon, and fell; like a wraith leaving her body, Wanderer emerged, again spasming as if in agony, then vanished once more.
At the same time, the rifle blast caught Tucker’s hand; he cried out, sank to his knees, then dropped completely. The electrical gun dissolved in a brilliant burst, leaving behind the smell of molten metal.
Several things happened at once.
Captain Archer and Lieutenant Reed woke, and went to the aid of their friend, as did Dr. Phlox. The rest of the crew members woke as well, and the once-silent bay became a cacophony of sound.
“Trip, are you all right? My God, Doctor, hurry….”
“Good lord, Commander….”
“It’s Meir! She’s dead!”
Commander Tucker’s groans added to the noise level. T’Pol took care to leave Dr. Phlox room to examine his patient, but she was close enough to see his wound in detail: The blast had completely burned away the tops of his three longest fingers to the distal joints. No doubt the electrical jolt he had received from firing the weapon had caused him to drop it immediately afterward—and Wanderer’s aim had been perfect, intended not to kill potential food but simply to destroy the weapon.
Captain Archer’s face, in