The Devil's Heart - Carmen Carter [12]
Of course, there were some exceptions—a few stubborn pockets of activity—and one of these was the captain’s ready room.
Picard rubbed the bridge of his nose in a futile effort to ease his aching head and blurring vision, then he scanned the text on his desk computer one more time.
“No, that’s not right either,” he muttered and tapped a key that would delete the paragraph he had just written.
The preliminary mission reports to Miyakawa and Starfleet command had been easy to draft, but the captain was experiencing more difficulty with his personal message to the director of the Vulcan Science Academy.
On the surface, Vulcan culture was straightforward and rational, but appearances could be deceiving; logic took some unexpected twists and turns when mixed with primal issues such as murder and death. Picard had written and rewritten his description of T’Sara’s injury and the death of her colleagues, but although his instincts could lead him away from certain phrases that might offend, he was less sure of what words to put in their place.
The trill of the ready room doorbell was a welcome distraction from the frustration of his task.
“Come,” called out Picard, then waved his visitor to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk.
“Good evening, Captain,” said Data with typical formality. “I apologize for taking so long to prepare my report. I was delayed by an unfortunate discovery the camp’s computer data files were erased by the electromagnetic pulse from a phaser blast.”
Merde. Picard assumed the Vulcans were methodical enough to maintain duplicate records elsewhere, possibly at Starbase 193, but tracking them down would take more time.
“Fortunately,” said Data, “I was able to reconstruct the broad outlines of the expedition’s history from our own library archives. The project’s formation was quite unusual.”
“In what way?” asked Picard.
“Earlier Federation surveys established that most items of note were removed from Atropos several hundred years ago by the original inhabitants. Although the reasons are obscure, the colony was deliberately and methodically abandoned, thus rendering it of minimal scholastic value. As a result, T’Sara was unable to secure support from academic institutions to explore the ruins, and eventually she sold her family estate on Vulcan to fund the venture herself.”
“A private expedition? That certainly bespeaks considerable dedication.” T’Sara’s reputation for radical departures from conventional scholarship was well-founded. “So what was the basis for her fascination with Atropos?”
“The avowed purpose was considered to be “illogical,” even downright eccentric.
T’Sara claimed that an artifact called the Ko N’ya was buried somewhere on the planet.”
“The Ko N’ya?”
“Yes,” said the android. “The Ko N’ya is—” “Thank you, Data.” Picard had become adept at stemming the android’s excess of information. “However, an explanation won’t be necessary. I’m quite familiar with the legends of the Ko N’ya, quite familiar indeed.”
Ko N’ya.
Years had passed since Picard had uttered that name aloud. The emotions it evoked were rooted in childhood and threaded through the long years of his adulthood. His earliest recollections surfaced first and sent a shudder of excitement and fear up his spine and out through the tips of his fingers.
It was a delicious sensation.
CHAPTER 4
When the Iconian people fled through the Gateway to seek safe havens, Ikkabar was the most inviting of the new worlds. Its lush plains and shallow seas were familiar to homesick eyes, and a walk along the curving coastlines of the northern continent could trick the mind into thinking Iconia’s destruction had been nothing more than a fading nightmare.
To this first generation of settlers, Ikkabar was a clean slate on which to reconstruct their history and culture. They raised cities filled with the same delicate architecture that had been trammeled to dust by enemy weapons, then they picked up the threads of their past lives as if nothing had changed. Many called