The Devil's Heart - Carmen Carter [22]
So many names lost … so many lives disrupted … so many families wounded by this tragedy.
Drifting grains of sand could not shore up his crumbling emotional defenses. Sendei loosed a thundering earthquake across the desert. The ground trembled and shook until a jagged fissure opened beneath his feet. He dropped down into total darkness, into the very center of his despair.
Sorren is dead. My son is dead.
Sendei’s reaction was Vulcan, silent but deeply felt. Offworlders often mistook that lack of outward show for indifference, but the pain of such a loss was not meant for display. Few Vulcans managed to extinguish all emotion, but most had mastered the ability to contain it. According to the philosophy that the Vulcan race had adopted, there was no reason why any emotion, no matter how intense, should influence behavior or cloud the path of logic.
Deep in meditation, Sendei searched for a final construct that would contain his unruly emotions. He chose the image of a river rushing through an underground chasm. Here his rage and grief could run freely and purely in their own channel until death brought him inner peace.
CHAPTER 7
“There is no Bendii’s!”
Beverly Crusher had charged through the doors of the captain’s ready room after only a token ring of the chime. She was brandishing her medical padd like the head of a vanquished enemy.
Picard lowered the teacup that had been on its way to his lips and waved the CMO to a chair in front of his desk. “I take it your medical report is ready.”
“Yes, by god, it is.” She moved into place with the grace of a dancer, the tails of her lab coat billowing out behind her. “Tissue cultures from T’Sara’s metathalamus were negative for Bendii’s syndrome. In fact, during the autopsy I found no signs of any kind of pathology in her brain or nervous system no lesions, no tumors, nothing organic that could result in violent or irrational behavior.”
“Then what could have triggered such violence among the Vulcans?”
“Oh, but I’m not convinced of that either,” said Crusher. Heightened spots of color on her cheeks betrayed her excitement. “I may be rusty on the finer points of forensic medicine, but it appears that several of the Vulcans were stunned before they were killed, and almost all of the bodies show obvious signs of having been moved after death.”
She jabbed at her padd screen, consulted the new readout, then continued. “For instance, Soth was found lying facedown in the plaza, but blood had pooled on the back of his body; T’Challo’s arms had small scrapes and bruises that occurred after death, and three of Sohle’s fingers were broken after rigor mortis had set in, apparently to force his hand around a phaser grip.”
Picard already had a notion of where this discussion was leading, but he sipped his tea as Beverly continued to develop her argument.
“Not to mention that Tessin’s fingerprints were found on the weapon that killed Skorret, even though the rate of cellular degeneration suggests she died at least a half hour before he did.” Tossing the data padd onto the captain’s desk like a gauntlet thrown down in challenge, Crusher said, “Frankly, I find it highly unlikely that a group of homicidal Vulcans would concern themselves with moving their victims from one place to another; a far more likely explanation of the entire situation is—” “—is that off-planet intruders staged a clumsy cover for the murders.”
“Exactly!”
The new scenario unfolded before his mind’s eye T’Sara caught unawares, falling under the unexpected barrage of phaser fire, victim of an attack from without rather than from within. Although the forms that wielded the weapons were shadowy and undefined, their existence had the solidity of truth.
“I concur with your interpretation of the evidence,” said Picard. “The question remains, who would do this and why?”
She shrugged. “Sorry, Captain, that’s not my department.”
“No,” he sighed. “But it is mine.” The answers