The Red King - Michael A. Martin [103]
It occurred to him then that to Donatra, the request he was about to make might seem more serious than even that.
VANGUARD
Dr. Ree and Dr. Venora were processing the latest group of refugees as they beamed in from the captain’s skiff. As the group milled about, near panic, Tuvok saw Admiral Akaar leaning up against one of the habitat’s walls, wincing.
Tuvok approached him warily, but respectfully. “Do you require assistance, Admiral?”
Akaar stared at him, his gaze inscrutable. It didn’t appear to reflect pain from a physical wound, nor did it harbor the kind of simmering anger that Tuvok had seen in his erstwhile friend’s eyes three decades ago—and over the course of the past week.
It was something else entirely.
“Yes. I do need your help,” Akaar said, reaching toward Tuvok. “I twisted my ankle badly during the rescue.”
Tuvok allowed the much larger man to put his arm around his shoulder, and helped him limp over to a recessed alcove amid several crates of relief provisions. Akaar sat down on top of one of them.
“I’ll get one of the doctors,” Tuvok said and turned to leave.
“Tuvok, wait,” Akaar said.
The Vulcan turned back toward his Capellan superior. “Sir?”
Akaar hesitated for a moment, then spoke, his voice low. “I broke the Prime Directive down there, or at least its spirit. Not in a casual way or even an obvious one.” He paused, then continued, his words spilling out as if the confession had to leave his mouth quickly. “The people I rescued were religious believers who abhor high technology. Rather than help themselves, or allow us to help them, they had chosen to commit suicide, and to kill their children, even as Oghen disintegrated around them.”
He paused for another moment then, looking down. Tuvok remained silent.
“I did not care what they wanted,” Akaar said. “I wanted to save them. I wanted their people to have a chance to survive and rebuild. I wanted their children to grow up with an opportunity to make their own decisions about their futures. So, essentially, I abducted them.”
Tuvok nodded. “You made a command decision, Admiral. You did what you felt was right.”
Akaar stared up at him, his eyes haunted, but said nothing.
Tuvok remained still. “Do you have something more to share?” he finally asked.
“There will undoubtedly be repercussions,” Akaar said at length. “What would you have done?”
Tuvok squatted on his haunches, bringing his eyes to a level just below those of Akaar. “I would have done what I felt was right as well,” Tuvok said. “Regardless of the repercussions.”
Akaar shut his eyes for a moment and let out a long breath, his shoulders deflating. When he opened his eyes again, they sparkled as tears played at the edges of his eyelids.
“I am sorry, my old friend,” Akaar said finally, his deep voice trembling. “I have wasted so much time in anger.”
Tuvok put his hand forward and laid it gently on the Capellan’s shoulder. Though it was a supremely un-Vulcan gesture, it seemed perfectly appropriate at the moment.
“That is why it is sometimes good to abolish emotions,” Tuvok said very quietly. “Anger, and hurt, can be a cancer in one’s heart.”
Despite all his training and suppression of emotion, Tuvok felt regret and sorrow percolating into his own consciousness as well.
And one other emotion…
Hope.
U.S.S. TITAN
Olivia Bolaji looked over at Noah Powell as he watched the viewscreen with her in sickbay. He had come to be with her and her baby—to “keep them both safe,” in his words—while almost everyone else aboard Titan was preoccupied with the rescue mission over Oghen.
I shouldn’t let him watch this, she thought, wondering if the boy had fibbed about his mother having given him permission to watch the events unfolding on the planet. Still, the ongoing disaster was only indistinctly visible from Titan’s current orbit, hundreds of kilometers above the surface. She made up her