Kindred - Chapter One

Author: sandsofvulcan

Email: [email protected]

Series: TOS, NF

Rating: PG

Character Code: S/Saa, Soleta, Shelby, Calhoun

Summary: Saavik discovers what Soleta was done at the request of her Romulan father, Rajari and enlists her help to repair the damage.

Disclaimer: Star Trek is copyrighted by Paramount/Viacom. I do not own any of their characters.

Archive: No.

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In the quiet murmur of the crowd, Soleta withdrew, wishing away the presence of the others. However, when she looked up again, the scenery had not changed; the velvet draped walls and stately mahogany furnishings illogically oppressive, the wooden chair she now sat in biting uncomfortably into her back. The large wooden door she faced opened impossibly slow as the panel entered: Admiral Edward Jellico, Admiral Alynna Nechayev, and several others under whom she had served.

"Stand please," ordered Jellico. In spite of her reluctance and denial, Soleta went instantly to her feet. Facing the panel, she forced herself straight. The room became deathly quiet.

"In view of the evidence presented, this panel finds that you, Lt. Cmdr. Soleta, did willingly and knowingly conceal that you had blood ties to a race considered actively and aggressively hostile to the Federation."

Knowing that this would mean her discharge from Starfleet, Soleta could not master the emotions overtaking her. "No!" she found herself screaming. "I did not know! I am Vulcan!"

Her own screams bewildered her, even in the middle of this turmoil. *Why am I out of control?*

Cmdr. Shelby rose from her seat on the panel, and pointing her finger, yelled back viciously, "Did you or did you not tell me that your father was Romulan?! *You* are Romulan!" and then Shelby sat, her decorum regained, and quietly dug the knife in further. "As evidence of it, I point out, Vulcans do not yell."

"In addition, regarding the charges brought by the Romulan Star Empire," continued Jellico. "Due to the preponderance of evidence against you for which you offer no defense, this panel finds that you, Lt. Cmdr. Soleta, shall be immediately stripped of rank and remanded into the jurisdiction of the Romulan Star Empire for summary execution."

The murmur around her rose to a roar. The crowd was on their feet, bellowing their anger at her. Soleta heard nothing else, turning slowly to see everyone she had served with loyally for years had turned their back on her, except for one. He made his way purposefully through the crowd as she felt her arms pulled tightly behind her and restrained. She twisted slightly from the discomfort and was rewarded with more as a disruptor dug into her spine, and then Spock was there before her. Soleta studied the make of the trousers that emerged from the bottom of his robes. They were well-wrought and of a black Vulcan fabric called tra'mooz, woven of the fibrous tendrils of the d'tra plant; the same style of pants that her adoptive Vulcan father had worn almost every day of his life.

"Why?" he demanded of her as he stood there, rigid. As difficult as it was, she raised her eyes to his, and found she was unable to speak, though she knew what she wanted to say.

"Why?!" he demanded again.

"I-I'm sorry," she finally gasped.

"Your apology, though no doubt sincere, is both unnecessary and of no interest. Vulcans do not apologize."

Needing someone to accept her apology, she turned to the guard who restrained her, and saw his dead face. She screamed again as he fired his disruptor.

Soleta jolted awake. *Vulcans do not dream,* she reminded herself, as if that could somehow change things. She untwisted the tangled sheet and eased herself to the floor of her cabin into her meditative position. As a Vulcan, she had tried to compartmentalize the feelings she had about what had happened on Ch'Rihan. This was the first step to mastery of those feelings, but the dream tonight showed her failure. So, as she had almost every night since the incident, she began a slow methodical, reasoned analysis of the dream and the events that caused it.