Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (10 page)

“What?”

“Unknown. I am missing data, Captain. Though I find it most interesting that the subject of our research extends eighteen hundred light-years past the area of the galaxy where we were studying it.”

“
Intrepid
again, Captain,” Uhura said, working hard over her board to hold the signal. “Their comm officer managed to get a squirt through between storm wavefronts. It’s up to force six, but they predict it’ll stabilize at that force and then break somewhere in the neighborhood of 766 Trianguli. They’ll leave further reports with the unmanned Zone monitoring stations as they pass them—that way they won’t have to waste time trying to punch through the interference. Their status is otherwise normal; the area’s clear.”

“Eminently logical,” Jim said.

—and the ship abruptly went on automatic red alert, lights flashing and sirens whooping. All over the bridge, people jumped for battle stations. “Ship in the area, Captain!” Uhura said. “Not Federation traffic.”

“Identify it!”

“No ID yet. Power consumption reading, nothing more—”

“Warship, Captain,” Spock said, back at his post and looking down his hooded viewer. “An extravagant power-consumption curve. Approaching from out of the Neutral Zone at warp eight.”

Bingo,
Jim thought.
At last it’s beginning.
“Course?”

“Not an intercept. I would say it has been unaware of us until now.”

“ID now, Captain,” Uhura said, looking both excited and puzzled. “It’s a Klingon ship!”

“The Klingons have been selling the Romulans ships for a long time now—”

“Noted, sir. But the ID is unmistakably Klingon code and symbology. KL 77
Ehhak
.”

It was a name Jim recognized from accounts of the Battle of Organia: one of the ships that had invested the planet. “What the hell are they doing here? Mr. Chekov, arm photon torpedoes, prepare to lock phasers on for firing. Mr. Sulu, prepare evasive action but do not execute.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Phasers locked on, sir.”

“Excellent. Hold your fire until my express order, Mr. Chekov.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Intruder’s range—”

“Not a Klingon ship,” Spock said abruptly. “ID is in fact Klingon. But the power-consumption curve is inconsistent with either the old
Akif
-class or new
K’tinga
-class warships. Range now six hundred eighty light-years and closing. Course is still not an intersect. If this continues they will pass far above and ahead of the task force—”

“Another contact!” Uhura said. “Romulan this time. ChR 63
Bloodwing
—”

Jim’s fist clenched, hard. “Course?”

“Following the first ship,” Spock said. “Closing on it at warp nine.”

“Uhura, messages to
Inaieu
and
Constellation
. All screens up, and battle stations. But if either ship comes within range, do
not
fire unless fired upon! Let them pass.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“We’ll see what they’re up to,” Jim said. “I am willing to be forgiving of an accidental intrusion into Federation space—always supposing the intruders tell me why they’ve come without calling first.”

“Indications are that the first ship will shortly be unable to tell you anything, Captain,” said Spock. “The ship with the
Bloodwing
ID is closing on it very—More data; the ship ID’ing as
Ehhak
is actually a ship of the old Romulan warbird class. Cloaking device in place but not functioning.
Ehhak
is beginning evasive maneuvers, but they are proving ineffectual.
Bloodwing
continues to close.”

“Range—”

“Two hundred fifteen light-years. Two hundred—Better readings on
Bloodwing
, now. Its power-consumption curve too is atypical. Warp engines have been boosted, and other alterations are indicated—One hundred fifty light-years—”

“Time till they cross the Neutral Zone—”

“At this speed, four seconds.” Spock watched in silence. “
Ehhak
has crossed. Now
Bloodwing
. Visual contact—”

The screen leapt to life with their images—two Romulan warbirds, both screened, screaming out of the Neutral Zone high above the plane of the
Enterprise
’s travel. The pursued ship veered suddenly, trying to shake its pursuer; to no avail.
Bloodwing
would not be shaken. “Still closing,” Spock said. “One hundred light-years from us. Seventy-five. They will pass within twenty-two point six three light-years of the
Enterprise
at closest.
Bloodwing
continues to close on
Ehhak
. Within firing range. Firing.”

“Gently, Mr. Chekov,” Jim said, noticing his weapons officer’s twitch. “They’re not shooting at us, not yet.”

“Noted, sir.”

“Good man. Result of fire, Mr. Spock—”

“None as yet.
Ehhak
is turning again. Toward
Bloodwing
, this time. Firing now—No effect. Standoff. Firing again—”

The blast of blinding light that suddenly filled the screen lit the whole bridge like lightning. When it faded Spock said quietly, “Evidently some of the alterations installed in
Bloodwing
have been to its phaser systems. Their intent was apparently to draw
Ehhak
into range for quick and certain destruction. Obviously they succeeded.”

“Noted,” Jim said softly. “
Bloodwing
’s location and course, Mr. Spock.”

“Its old course took it somewhat past us, Captain. Turning now: fifty-three light-years away on bearing one-ninety-nine mark plus-eighteen. Approaching us.”

“Status,” Jim said, beginning to twitch a little himself.

“Slowing,” Spock said. “Screens up, but no sign of further belligerence. Down to warp six now; warp five; holding at warp five exactly, and coasting in toward us. If the Romulan continues along this course,
Bloodwing
will be paralleling our course at a distance of one light-second from us.”

“Neighborly,” Jim said. “Hold the screens as they are. We’ll wait and see what they do.”

And they waited, the bridge becoming very still indeed. Closer and closer
Bloodwing
glided to them. After about a minute she had no motion relative to
Enterprise
, but was soaring along beside her in neat formation, a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles away.

Ten seconds passed, and three hundred sixty million kilometers of empty space, and several breaths’ worth of silence.

Uhura’s board beeped.

She listened to her transdator, then said, “They’re hailing us, Captain.”

“Answer the hail. Offer them an open channel if they want it.”

Uhura spoke softly to her board. The screen shimmered.

They found themselves looking, as they had looked once before, at the cramped bridge of a warbird-class Romulan vessel. A man in the usual Romulan uniform—dark-glittering tunic and breeches, with a scarflike scarlet half-cloak fastened front and back over one shoulder—stood facing the bridge pickup. He was of medium height, dark skinned for a Romulan, with even features and a slightly hooked nose; young and well built, with auburn hair cropped short in a style reminiscent of the Vulcan fashion, and light, narrow, noticing eyes. He spoke in Romulan, which the translator in Uhura’s board handled with the usual disconcerting nonsynchronization of mouth movements. “Enterprise,” the Romulan said,
“I am Subcommander Tafv tr’Rllaillieu, second in command of the Romulan warship
Bloodwing.
Do I address Captain James Kirk?”

Jim stood up, feeling an odd urge to match the young man’s courteous tone, even if there might be a trick behind it. “You do,” he said. Then he paused a moment. “Sir—may I ask if by chance you are related to a commander by the name of
Ael
t’Rllaillieu?” He said it the best he could, hoping the translator would straighten out his mangled pronunciation.

The subcommander smiled very slightly.
“You may, Captain. I am the commander’s son.”

“Thank you. May I also ask what brings you into our space under such—unusual—circumstances?”

“Again, you may. The commander’s business brings us here. I am directed to express to you Commander t’Rllaillieu’s desire to meet with you and any members of your staff you find appropriate, to discuss with you a matter which will be as much to your advantage as to ours.”

“What matter, Subcommander?”

“I regret that I may not say, Captain. This is an unshielded channel, and the business is urgent and confidential in the extreme.”

“What conditions for the meeting?”

“The commander is willing to beam over to your vessel, unescorted. As I have said, the matter is urgent, and the commander has no desire to stand on ceremony at the moment.”

“May I consider briefly?”

“Certainly.”
The young man bowed slightly, and the screen went dark, showing stars again, and
Bloodwing
hanging there, silent.

Jim sat down in the helm for a moment, swung it around to face Spock. “Well, well. What now? Recommendations, ladies and gentlemen?”

Spock stood up from a last look down his viewer and folded his arms, looking very thoughtful indeed. “This is a vessel we know, Captain.”

“No kidding,” Jim said. “She’s singed our tail a few times. Of course we’ve singed hers too….”

“However,” Spock said, “while we have often been at enmity with
Bloodwing,
the ship has never acted in a treacherous fashion toward us. In fact, often very much the contrary. Ael t’Rllaillieu, whoever she may be, has dealt honorably enough with us, though we have never seen her.”

“True enough,” Jim said. He remembered the shock after their first engagement, over by 415 Arietis it had been—on fighting a whole week’s fight-and-run battle with
Bloodwing
and finding out afterward that the “t’” prefix on the house-name denoted a woman.
Oh God, not another one,
he had thought at the time. But he had changed his mind since, after a few victories, and a couple of defeats. He wanted to meet this old fox, very much indeed.

And now he had the chance.

“Well, Mr. Spock,” he said, “we came all this way to gather information about the Romulans, and now it seems they’ve got some for us. Let’s see what the commander wants. Uhura?”

She nodded. The screen came back on again; Jim rose. “Subcommander,” he said, “if you will be good enough to come within transporter range, and provide my communications officer with the commander’s coordinates, we will be delighted to receive her. Beaming in three hundred seconds precisely. Uhura, give the subcommander a five-second tick for his reference.”

“Thank you, Captain,”
said Tafv,
“we have that information. I will confer with your officer.
Bloodwing
out.”

Jim turned his back on the star-filled screen. “Uhura,” he said, “when you’ve finished that, page Dr. McCoy and have him report to the transporter room. Come on, Spock. We mustn’t keep the lady waiting.”

Five minutes later, Jim said to the transporter chief, “Energize.”

Light danced and dazzled on the platform, settling into a woman’s silhouette. The silhouette grew three-dimensional, darkened, solidified. The dazzle faded away.

Jim stood very still for a second or so, simply regarding her. She was little. Somehow he had always thought of her as being tall, lean, and ascetic; or else tall, muscular, and athletic. He was not prepared for this tiny woman, smaller even than the other female Romulan commander he and Spock had dealt with. If she was five foot one, that was granting her an inch or so; if she weighed as much as a hundred and ten pounds, that was on a dense planet. She was wearing her hair braided and coiled at the nape of her neck; exposing the upswept and pointed Vulcanoid ears; there was gray in those neat, tight braids. The woman’s build and facial structure were so delicate that she looked as if she could be broken between one’s hands—but knowing Romulans, Jim knew much better. She had great dark eyes and a mouth with much smiling behind it, to judge by the few wrinkles that showed there; and looking at her, Jim could see where Subcommander Tafv had come by that proud nose. But probably the most striking thing about her was her age, and the way she bore it. Jim had never thought to see a woman with such an aura of power, or one who seemed to take that power so much for granted. She carried herself like a banner, or a weapon: like something proud and dangerous, but momentarily at rest. Jim found himself wondering whether he would look that good when he was—how old was she? Romulans were of Vulcan stock, after all. She could be well up in her hundreds—

“Permission to come aboard,” the commander said.

“Permission granted.” Jim stepped around from behind the transporter console, Spock pacing him. “And welcome.”

She stood there quite relaxed, looking Jim up and down, then favoring Spock with the same calm, unthreatening examination. Jim used the moment to continue his own. “They’ve changed the uniform,” he said.

The commander glanced down at her tunic and breeches and boots, then smiled; a wry expression. “It was well changed,” she said. “The kilt on the old uniform was a drafty bit of tailoring, and difficult to work in.” She stepped down from the transporter platform, looking around her with curiosity. “Is my translator functioning adequately?” she said. “It was a hasty business, reprogramming it for Federation Basic.”

“So far it seems to be doing well enough,” Jim said. “If you like, though, Dr. McCoy here will help equip you with one of our intradermal models.”

“I would appreciate that,” said the commander. “We have talking to do, and there must be no chance of imprecision or error; too much rests on it.”

She looked at Jim with such perfect ease that for a moment he was envious.
Would I be so calm after I had delivered myself into the hands of the enemy? What cards is she holding?
“So here at last,” she said, “is my old friend Captain Kiurrk.” Doubtless some flicker of reaction got out despite Jim’s best intentions, for she smiled again. “Perhaps I will just call you ‘Captain’; for it does not do to mishandle names.” She turned to Spock. “Yours, though, I think I can say, estranged though our languages are. And yours,” she said, glancing toward Bones, “might almost be Romulan. But ‘Doctor’ is an honorable title, so if I may, I will call you that. Gentlemen, may we go where we can talk? Handsome as this room is, it hardly looks like a reception area.”

“This way,” Jim said, and led the group out and down the hall to the officers’ lounge. He bowed the commander in; and the first thing she responded to was not the elegant appointments, or the artwork, or the refreshments laid out, but the large port that looked out on the stars. That starlight was wavering, the uncomfortable starlight of unfiltered otherspace. Nevertheless she looked long and hard at it before she turned away. “The view must be marvelous,” she said, “when the ship is not in warp.”

“It is,” Jim said. “Commander, will you sit?”

“Gladly.” Without a moment’s hesitation she slipped past the two couches set by the low refreshment table, and sat down in the single chair that faced them both, the chair commanding both the best view of the couches’ occupants and the best access to the table—the chair Jim had intended to sit in. He smiled, said nothing, and made himself comfortable on one couch; but McCoy, fishing around in his medikit for a translator implant and the spray injector to fit it into, caught Jim’s eye and raised one eyebrow before turning his attention back to business.

“Commander,” Jim said, “what can we do for you?”

“For the moment, listen,” said the commander. “More strenuous service may come later, however, if you agree with what I have to say. First, though, I have given you no name. I am Ael.”

Spock, who had seated himself beside Jim, looked momentarily startled, and immediately composed himself. “Your first officer understands, perhaps better than most, that we are chary about giving others even our first names, even when they are already known,” Ael said. “And there are other names more private yet. But I can think of no other way to demonstrate my sincerity to you from the start, since many of the things I must now say to you will sound incredible. I urge you, study to credit them. The whole Romulan Empire, and the Federation, and the Klingon Empire as well, rests on how seriously you take me.”

“Tell us your problem, madam,” Spock said.

“It will not be simply told.” Seeing that McCoy was ready, Ael held out her arm to him; he took it, picked a spot on the inside of the forearm, and used the spray injector to install the translator’s neutral implant up against the brachial nerve. “How is that? All right?—Well enough. Captain, have you ever heard of a place called Levaeri V?”

Jim considered for a moment. “Levaeri is a star in Romulan space, if I remember right. I would assume the ‘V’ refers to a planet.”

“It does. Actually, the planet itself is uninhabited; a space station, built for research purposes, circles it. The Empire has been doing research there for some fifteen years into the nature and exploitation of genetic material, particularly the building-block molecule that governs and transmits life, along with its various messenger segments.”

“DNA and RNA,” said McCoy.

“Correct. The research has been secret, for reasons you will come to understand. But it is very nearly complete now. If the fruit of that research is allowed to escape into our civilization, it will destroy it—and eventually yours. The research has specifically involved the genetic material of Vulcans.”

Spock sat up very straight. Jim glanced sideways at him—knowing that putting-it-all-together look from long experience—but for the moment said nothing but, “Toward what purpose?”

“The scientists at Levaeri V have been correcting Vulcan DNA and messenger RNA for the genetic drift that has occurred over the years between Romulan and Vulcan genetic material—so that the drift-corrected material can be used to give Romulans the paramental abilities of trained Vulcans.”

“My God,” Bones said softly.

Jim sat there wondering if he had missed something. Certainly it sounded dire…. “Bones, explain.”

McCoy looked as though he would rather have done anything else. “Jim, this research—if I’m understanding Ael correctly—had its earliest antecedents on Earth in some very primitive mind experiments concerning planaria. Flatworms, as they’re called. If you teach a flatworm something—takes awhile, I can tell you—and then chop it up and feed it to other flatworms, the worms that ate the first one will learn the same trick the first worm learned, but much more quickly than normal. This is a terrible oversimplification, but RNA and DNA can be passed from one creature to another by numerous means, even simple ingestion. It caused a lot of poor jokes for a while about how ‘you are what you eat.’ But some of our own chemical-learning techniques that we commonly use in Starfleet for speed learning are based in the same technology, considerably updated and refined.”

“We understand one another,” Ael said. She looked somewhat relieved, but also unnerved, as if actually discussing the subject in public frightened her. “The process I speak of is even more refined than the chemical-learning techniques, which we also possess—”

“Stolen from us, I believe,” Jim said mildly.

Ael gave him a sharp look, then smiled, that wry expression again. “Yes, we are always stealing things from one another, are we not? I would like to come back to that later, Captain. But for the moment let me say that the scientists have refined the techniques to dangerous levels. Some bright creature—the Elements should only have taken him back to Themselves—got the idea that, since we are brother stock to the Vulcans, surely they could teach us what they know of the arts and disciplines of the mind, to our great benefit—”

“Madam,” Spock said, leaning forward and looking at Ael with great intensity, “those techniques of the mind were not developed until long after the Vulcan colony ships bearing your remote ancestors had left. In the warlike state of the pre-Reformation civilization, before the Peace of Surak, the techniques could never have been developed at all. And the Romulan civilization as we know it preserves to this day almost exactly the same combative atmosphere as existed on Vulcan before the Reformation—unless you can give us some better news.”

“If I could, Mr. Spock,” Ael said, laughing with a trace of bitterness, “I would not have had to blow up my old ship to keep word of my actions from getting back into the Empire. I would not have been exiled to the Neutral Zone at all. Perhaps there would be no Zone. But those are all wishes, and I am wandering from my story. The researchers at Levaeri determined that such abilities, the mind-techniques such as mindmeld and mindfusion and touch telepathy, and such lesser physical techniques as the healing trance and controlled ‘hysterical strength,’ could in fact be successfully passed on to the nontalented, and quite simply—by a procedure involving, among other things, selective neutral-tissue grafts to the corpus callosum and spinal cord, and a series of injections of the DNA and RNA fragments into the cerebrospinal fluid.”

“It could be done,” McCoy said, looking rather upset. “Certainly it could. But you would need—”

“Donor tissue, yes,” Ael said. “Brain tissue, both ‘white’ and ‘gray,’ and cerebrospinal fluid cultures, from mentally talented Vulcans. A great deal of it, at first, until cultures had been perfected that were sufficiently innocuous not to be rejected outright by the recipient’s autoimmune system. Naturally the researchers at Levaeri could not simply take ship across the Zone to Vulcan and ask for some good-quality live Vulcan brain tissue; any more than the Vulcans would have given it to them for any reason whatsoever. So the researchers began—borrowing—Vulcans.”

Spock looked at Jim. “Captain,” he said, “this is the reason why I asked the Federation Intersellar Shipping Commission for the data on all recent ship losses. My preliminary studies were showing an odd jump in the curve—a nearly statistical probability that spacefaring Vulcans were going missing more frequently than were travelers of other species. I had hoped very much that I was wrong—”

“But you were not,” Ael said. “Romulans were taking them, Mr. Spock. They were taken to Levaeri V—as many Vulcans as the researchers thought could be kidnapped without anyone really noticing—and there they were used as experimental subjects and tissue donors.”

Jim looked across at McCoy, who was practically trembling with rage. “This is monstrous, Commander,” he said, controlling himself very tightly.

“Certainly it is, Doctor,” she said. “What honor is there in taking one’s enemies by stealth, giving them no chance to fight back, and then binding and torturing and slaughtering them like animals? But there’s worse to come. Surely you must realize the purpose of the research. The Empire’s High Command greatly desires the Vulcan mind-techniques for a weapon against its enemies—against you, and eventually against the Klingons, who are swiftly becoming a garment too tight for us. And the High Command has been an unscrupulous lot for some time now. The Command, and the Praetorate and Senate, will demand to be the first to use the newly developed techniques. The implementation would not take long, I understand; a clinic-type surgery, followed by several injections and a very brief period of training. Then—Can you imagine, just by way of example, the kind of place Vulcan would be if its people at large, and its rulers in particular, had never developed the logics of peace and ethical behavior that Surak brought—and had the mind techniques anyway?”

Spock looked more grave than Jim had seen him in a long time. Evidently the thought had occurred to him at one time or another. “A culture of ruthless opportunists,” he said, “violating one another’s minds for gain, or for power, or even for the mere pleasure of the act. Turmoil among the great as they struggle for preeminence and domination, trying to keep the techniques for themselves. Rebellion among those who do not have the techniques, and desire to, at any cost. War…”

“Worse than war,” Ael said. “A world in which no thought that did not agree with the present political ‘gospel’ would be safe—where a chance whim, a moment’s disaffection, could mean death at the hands of those who were listening to your thoughts. A world in which honor and trust would swiftly become devalued coinage, and personal integrity a death warrant, if it crossed the desires of those who controlled the technique, those in power. The process has already started. Right now on Romulus and Remus there is already considerable political infighting going on over who will first get the technique when it becomes available. Who will first read all the others’ minds? Who will first learn his enemies’ secrets? And of course there are people who must be prevented at all costs from learning one’s own secret business. A lively trade in assassination is springing up.” Ael said the word as if it tasted bad. “We have already lost four Senators to the ambition or fear of people in high places.”