Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (17 page)

She swung around through the door into detention and saw the sight that many of Rihannsu had long desired to see: the captain of the
Enterprise
and his formidable officers, one and all, crammed into a cell in the brig and every one of them looking ready to commit murder that would have no laughing about it. There was the good doctor, his strange blue eyes flashing, and handsome Uhura looking as if she wanted a knife; and Mr. Scott with arms folded and eyes narrowed. He turned away from the sight of Ael as she came in;
a pretty touch,
she thought,
and probably based on reality
—for Mr. Scott had not yet forgiven her for the wounding of his precious engines. Even the Vulcan looked murderous—though in a restrained and decorous fashion. And the captain, the courteous, genteel captain, was from the look of him far gone in a cold rage that would have done the best of Ael’s old commanders proud. Ael nodded the outer guards away from the forcefield controls on the door—poor Triy and Helev, looking as grimly triumphant as they knew how, and, Ael suspected, ready to break up laughing as soon as they knew they were no longer watched.

“Captain,” Ael began, courteously enough; but the captain didn’t let her get any further.

“It is about time you found your way down here, lady,” he said, with a stateliness of language that sorted bizarrely with his anger.
“What are you doing with my ship!
And my crew! You are in violation of—”

“You are in a poor position to be talking about violations, Captain,” said Ael, motioning Triy to kill the forcefield. “You were the one we caught in the Zone—”

“Surely you would not mind if my crew watched this, Ael,”
said LLunih’s voice from the intercom.

“Who the devil is
that!
” the doctor shouted.

“Of course not,” Ael said, as she stepped into the room and her eye fell on Nniol, who was doing inside guard duty.

O, by my Element,
Ael thought, for Nniol’s sister was on
Javelin,
and there was no possible reason for him to be on
Cuirass
—and there he was, his face shielded by a fortuitous angle for the moment, but the instant he moved a breath’s worth, or she did, the pickup would catch him all too clearly. Her back was to it, at least; her eye flashed alarm at Nniol—there was nothing else she could do—

Then the fight broke out. At least it would have looked like a fight to any observer who did not stand where Ael did, who did not see the captain swiftly cock back one fist and turn a little in the doing, just enough to exchange glances with the doctor. The doctor instantly put his head down and economically, savagely, butted Nniol in the gut with it. Nniol doubled over, his face safely out of the way of the pickup; but on the way down he clubbed McCoy two-handed and sidewise in the legs, and the doctor came crashing down on top of him, concealing him further. Mr. Scott and the Vulcan got in the way, but Triy and Helev, shouldering in past Ael and the captain, shoved or slapped them back out of trouble—rather easily, in the Vulcan’s case, though the phasers pointed at his midsection and at the captain, and their meaningful looks, might have had something to do with it. And as for the captain’s punch, that had started all this, it never fell. Ael blocked it, hard, blocked the second one harder, heard something snap, and didn’t dare hesitate, but carried through, slamming the man backhanded across the face. He went flying, crashed up against the wall, sagged down it, didn’t move.

Ael glared at Uhura and Scott and Spock, who stood at bay in the corner of the cell, with phasers held on them. “I had thought to offer you honorable parole,” she said, “but I see now it would have been a fool’s act. Have them bound,” she said to Triy. “All their other people, too; I dare say this boorishness and treachery is typical. And tend to this one.” She nudged Nniol with her boot. Nniol, who lay sprawled face down under the doctor, stirred and groaned, but very prudently did not move otherwise.

Ael stepped over the carnage and out of the cell, dusting herself off. “LLunih,” she said, while Helev assisted the doubled-over Nniol out of the cell and Triy sealed the cell up again, “I would stay for conversation, but you see that I have business to be about—interrogations and so forth; and these people are not going to make it easy for me, that’s plain. I do hope you’ll excuse me.”

“Any assistance I can offer, Ael—”

“LLunih, I will surely ask. In the meantime, I would count it a kindness if your navigator and mine would consult together, so that yours can match my course.”

“Certainly.”

“Then a good day to you; I will pay you a courtesy call tonight or tomorrow, if you would be so gracious as to receive me. Perhaps we might have dinner.”
Though I say nothing of keeping it down for long.

“Ael, I would be delighted.”

“Until later, then.” She turned back to the glaring group in the cell and eyed them until Lhian said from the bridge,
“They have closed channels,
khre’Riov.
Shall I send a security detachment?”

“No, we’re secure,” Ael said. “As you were, Lhian.”

“Commander.”

—and she stepped forward and killed the forcefield, and bent down hurriedly to the captain, as the others did. “That crawling slime,” she said bitterly as she helped the captain to his feet. “He so loves the sight of others’ shame that he cannot resist spreading it around for the delectation of his whole crew. Captain, I have done you a great discourtesy! I shall do you a better turn some other time.”

The captain, for the moment, found nothing to say but a groan. She helped him stand from one side, while Spock assisted him on the other, being very careful of the injured arm. “There’s this good at least come of it all,” she said. “LLunih will gossip so to the commanders of
Rea’s Helm
and
Wildfire
of how he saw
Enterprise
’s great captain struck down that they will give us no trouble. In fact, I would lay money on the creature’s having recorded it to show them. —Doctor, I heard something break, I didn’t mean to hit him that hard—”

The doctor was running a small whirring scanner up and down the captain’s left arm. “Greenstick fracture of the ulna, Commander; that’s this forearm-bone here. Nothing serious. Jim, are you slipping in your workouts? Since when do you cross-block backward like that?”

“You could do it better?” said the captain, looking humorous through his pain.

“Well, I—”

“Never mind. Commander, that
was
the youngster you were going to send back?”

“Yes. I had no idea he was going to be here, though, else I would have warned him out….”

“Murphy’s Law,” the Captain said. “At least we managed to cover for him. Nice work, everyone. —Bones, how long is it going to take to regenerate this thing?”

“About an hour. Less if you don’t squirm when it itches.”

“Captain,” Ael said, “who was Murphy, and what was his Law?”

“One I should have learned the last time,” said the captain. “Never eat at a place called ‘Mom’s’; never play cards with a man called ‘Doc’; and don’t start fights with Romulan commanders.”

That was when the punch came that the captain did
not
telegraph; and it slammed Ael back against the nearest wall so hard that the effect was the same as being hit twice, once in front and once from behind. She rebounded from the wall, tried to stand, staggered. Things spun.

“But if you
do
start one,” the captain said with an absolutely feral grin, “always finish it.”

The room would not stop rotating; and Ael’s mind was in such a whirl of rage, relief and merriment that she scarcely knew what to do. “Captain, your hand,” she said, holding hers out and considering—just briefly—showing him that trick of N’alae’s that he had so admired. But there would be no honor in doing it to an injured man…. He took her hand, and then grinned.

“Yours sweat too, huh?” he said.

“Captain,” she said, “what a pity you’re not Rihannsu….”

“I bet you say that to all your prisoners. Let’s get back up to the bridge.”

Jim sat in his center seat and wondered at the strangeness of the world.

Here he was, deep into Romulan space, surrounded by Romulan ships; not even under way, his engines only producing enough power to run ship’s systems and keep themselves alive. Another eighteen hours would see the
Enterprise
towed into a Romulan starbase. Yet he sat in his chair, and turning to one side, he could see Scotty leaning back in his station’s chair, grumpily eyeing the nonexistent power conversion levels in the not-really-blown-up port nacelle, while delivering a rapid-fire lecture on the difficulties of the restart procedure to the slim dark Romulan man looking over his shoulder. Hvaid, that one was. Turning the other way, there were Mr. Spock and Lieutenant Kerasus and young Aidoann, Ael’s third-in-command, deep in conversation about Old High Vulcan linguistic roots and their manifestations in modern Vulcan and Romulan. And Uhura would be—

She wasn’t, though. Jim’s train of thought was temporarily derailed. “Mr. Spock, where’s Lieutenant Uhura?”

“She went down to recreation, Captain,” Spock said. “I did not catch the entire conversation, but there was some communications problem to which she felt Mr. Freeman from life sciences had the answer.”

“Fine. Where’s the commander?”

“I believe she is also down in recreation, Captain. Lieutenant Commander Uhura requested the commander’s presence there shortly after she left.”

Jim got up, stretched—and stopped the gesture abruptly; his neck muscles still ached from the backhand the commander had given him. “All right, Mr. Spock, mind the store till I get back.”

“Acknowledged,” Spock said. He moved down to the center seat, and Kerasus and Aidoann moved with him, the analysis of Vulcan phonemes missing hardly a beat.

“Sickbay,” Jim said to the lift, and off it went. He leaned against the wall, rubbing his neck.

There was something bothering him about the whole business. Not a feeling that Ael or her people might betray him—not that
specifically.
But the whole matter of where the
Enterprise
was, of both capture and escape being out of his hands…Out of his control. That was it.

The old problem,
Jim thought, with some chagrin. He remembered all too vividly that little incident back on Triacus with Gorgan the
soi-disant
“Friendly Angel,” in which that fear, his worst one, had been inflamed to paralyzing proportions.
This isn’t nearly that bad,
he told himself severely.
And I did choose to do this. It was my decision.
But all the same, it had been Ael who came to him with the idea all ready-made; and even when he had been ready to refuse her, damned if circumstances didn’t force him to accept her plan.

Circumstances. Very convenient circumstances, too…

Oh, stop that! That’s paranoia!

Still, it was difficult not to be paranoid about this woman. A Romulan, to begin with…Well, that by itself wasn’t reason to mistrust her. But she had admitted to Jim that she had rigged most of the circumstances that had brought the
Enterprise
here—even to the point of paying a considerable amount in bribes to have the information about “something going on in Romulan space” smuggled out to Starfleet Command, planted where they would hear it. She had angled specifically and with great precision for
Enterprise
to be sent here—and she had managed it. And now his bridge was full of her officers, and his rec deck was full of her crew…and his neck ached.

She had him right where she wanted him…wherever that was. It was the not knowing that made him crazy.

Loss of control…

The lift slid to a stop. Jim stalked out of its open doors and down the hall toward sickbay, brooding. It might have been slightly easier to handle if the woman were at least likeable…if she weren’t so relentlessly manipulative, as sharp and cold as the sword she had been admiring in Spock’s quarters. If only she didn’t constantly seem to be maneuvering events with the same cool virtuosity that Spock exhibited while maneuvering pieces in the chesscubic. Though not
quite
the same. Spock’s terrible expertise was always tempered, at least with Jim, by that elusive, almost mischievous compassion.

Then again, he couldn’t set aside that wicked, merry, understanding flash of Ael’s eyes at him, just after he had punched her out….

He breathed out in disgust, gave the problem up as something he couldn’t do anything about but would be pleased to see ended, and swung into sickbay. And there it all was again, for here was Ael’s chief surgeon, t’Whatever-her-name-was, those Romulan words were pretty to hear but impossible to remember—with Lia Burke beside her, showing the Romulan woman how to use an anabolic protoplaser in regenerative mode. They were working on the Romulan’s own arm, apparently removing and regenerating the tissue of an old scar a little bit at a time, so that the Romulan surgeon could get a feel for the instrument’s settings. “No, watch that, you’ll involve the fascia and get the cells all confused,” Lia was saying, her dark curly head bent down close together with the Romulan’s bronze-dark, straight-haired one. “Try it a little shallower. One millimeter is deep enough where the skin is this thin. Good afternoon, Captain; how’s the neck?”

“I have a pain in it,” Jim said, thinking more of the figurative truth than of the literal one. “Where’s Dr. McCoy?”

“In his office, sir. Paperwork, I think. Can I be of assistance?”

“Possibly. Would you excuse yourself, Lieutenant?” Jim walked on through sickbay to Bones’s office in the back; Lia came after him.

“Bones?”

McCoy looked up from a desk cluttered with cassettes and computer pads. “Come on in, Jim. What can I do for you?”

“Close the door after you, Lieutenant. Would you mind,” Jim said to the nurse, “telling me what was going on out there? My orders were that our ‘guests’ were not to be given any nonessential information. We are still going to have to answer to Fleet after we get out of this mess—always providing we
do.
”

Bones opened his mouth to say something, but Lia beat him to it. “Captain, with all due respect, complete healing of the wounded, no matter how old the wound is, hardly strikes me as ‘nonessential.’ And in this area at least, my oaths to Starfleet—and other authorities—are intact.”

“‘Other authorities’?”

“‘I shall teach my Art without fee or stipulation to other disciples also bound to it by oath, should they desire to learn it,’” Lia said, that dry, merry voice of hers going soft and sober for the moment.

“‘…and this I swear by Apollo the Physician, and Aesculapius, and Health and Allheal His daughters, and by all the other Gods and Goddesses, and the One above Them Whose Name we do not know….’” Bones said, just as quietly. “The Romulan version turns out to be a lot shorter—but the intent’s the same. Some things transcend even the discipline of the service, Jim.”

Jim’s neck throbbed worse, and he opened his mouth—then closed it again.
Gently. Gently. Loss of control…
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’re quite right. Bones, my apologies.”

McCoy raised both eyebrows. “For what? Nothin’s normal around here just now—no reason for
us
to be. Lia, get the captain ten mils of Aerosal, all right?”

“Better make it twenty,” Jim said.

Lia looked from McCoy to Kirk and back again—then, significantly, up at the ceiling. She nodded. “Fifteen it is,” she said, and went out.

McCoy looked after her with rueful amusement. “They don’t make nurses like that anymore,” he said.

Jim sat down and laughed at him. “Just as well, huh Bones?”

“Well,” McCoy said, “I
was
about to say fifteen. I think that woman’s been taking lessons from Spock—though I don’t want to know in what. Don’t get comfortable, Jim; I was just going down to recreation.”

“Isn’t everybody?” Jim said. “Can’t keep the crew away from the Romulans….”

“I didn’t think you would want to. We’re going to be working pretty closely with those people over the next twenty-four hours or so, on some pretty crucial business. The more comfortable the crew gets with them, the better.”

“Theoretically, at least…”

“Misgivings?” The small transporter pad on McCoy’s desk sang and sparkled briefly, and a spray hypo and an ampule of amber liquid appeared on it. McCoy picked it up, checked the label on the ampule three times, almost ceremonially, slipped it into the hypo and came around the desk to Jim. “Stop twitching.”

“The arm still itches.”

The hypo hissed, and McCoy tossed it onto the desk. “If I were anything but an old country doctor, I would suspect your itch of being elsewhere.”

The throbbing in Jim’s neck went away. “I’m nervous,” he said.

“See, the truth
will
out after all. Guess what? So am I.”

“And who do you tell about it?”

“Christine. Or maybe Lia. Then they tell Spock, see, and Spock tells the ceiling. A carefully arranged chain of confidences. The nurses talk only to Vulcans, and the Vulcans talk only to God….”

Jim snorted. It was a lot harder to be paranoid when he wasn’t in pain. “That explains where he gets his chess strategies, anyway…. Bones, there’s a question I wanted to ask you. Where’d you learn to play like that?”

“Watching Spock, mostly. And watching you.”

“With a talent like that, you should be in tournament play.”

McCoy started to laugh quietly as the two of them left his office, heading down the hall to the lift for recreation. “Jim, you haven’t looked at my record since I was assigned, have you?…My F.I.D.E. rating is in the 700’s somewhere.”

Jim stared at McCoy as they got into the lift. ‘The F.I.D.E.’ was the Federation Intergalactique des Échecs; its members got their ratings only through Federation-sanctioned tournament play, and the 700’s, while hardy a master’s level, were a respectable neighborhood. “No kidding. Why don’t you play more often?”

“I’m a voyeur. —Oh, stop that. A
chess
voyeur. I use it mostly as a diagnostic tool.”

“Come again?”

“Jim, chess isn’t just good for the brain. It’s a wonderful way to get a feeling for someone’s attitude toward life and games and other people. Their response to stress, their ability to plan, what they do when plans are foiled. Their attack on life—sneaky, bold, straightforward, subtle, careless, what have you. Humor or the lack of it, compassion, enthusiasm, the ‘poker face,’ all the different things that go toward ‘psyching’ an opponent out…A string of five or six chess games can make a marvelous précis of a personality and the ways it reacts in its different moods.”

“An intelligence test?”

The lift stopped and they got out. “Lord, no,” McCoy said. “On this ship intelligence is a foregone conclusion…and in any case, it’s hardly everything. It’s hardly even
anything,
from some psychiatrists’ point of view. You want to get a feeling for where someone’s personal style lies, their ‘flair.’ Spock, for example. Why do you think he gets so many requests for standard 3D tournament play when we’re close to home space? It’s not because he’s brilliant. There are enough brilliant chess masters floating around the Federation to carpet a small planet with. But Spock’s games have elegance. My guess would be that it comes partly of his expertise in the sciences—the delight in the perfect solution, the most logical and economical one. But if you look at his games, you also see elegance—exquisitely laid traps that close with such precision, it looks like he micrometered them. There’s a great love of the precision itself: not just of its logic and economy, but of its beauty. Though Spock’d sooner die than admit it. Our cool, ‘unemotional’ Vulcan, Captain, is a closet aesthete. But you knew that.”

“I did? Of course I did.”

“I should make you figure this out yourself,” Bones said. “Still, none of this is anything you haven’t already noticed from long observation of him in other areas. That aestheticism is a virtue; it shows up in his other work too. But it’s also a hint at where one of his weak spots might be. He will scorn blunter or more brutal moves or setups that might produce a faster win. Why do you think he has that sword on his wall? But this is where you get lucky sometimes, because you tend to go straight for the throat. Spock gets busy doing move-sculpture—and enjoying himself; he loves watching people’s minds work too, yours especially—and he gets lost in the fun. And then you come in with an ax and hack his artwork to pieces with good old human-brand unsubtle craziness. Note, of course, that he keeps coming back. The win is obviously not the purpose of the game for him.”

“Obviously. Bones, is this something I can take a correspondence course in?”

McCoy grinned. “Psychology by mail, huh? You might have trouble. Not that many med schools teach diagnostic chess, and they wouldn’t be able to help you with 4D anyway. In fact, Lia is one of the few people I know who’s managed to find a course in even 3D diagnostic. She routinely plays at least a game or two with her patients whenever she can. She’s not much of a tactician, but she says she doesn’t mind losing…she’s more interested in finding out about other people.”

Bones chuckled as they stepped into recreation together. “You should have seen her playing with Jerry Freeman the other week…poor Lia found out a little more about him than she wanted to. Jerry wasn’t paying attention to the game at the beginning, and Lia put him in a bad position pretty quickly. So he bided his time and fought a holding action until she got up to answer a page, and while she was gone, he quietly programmed the cubic for ‘catastrophic dump.’ When she got back, she tried to move a piece, and the cubic blew up. Pieces flying everywhere…I wish you could have seen her face.”