Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (28 page)

“Why, only this—” She saw Jim wince, and laughed, considering that they were still living with the results of the last time she had said those words—and might yet die of them. “Jim, there’s
Battlequeen
coming—”

“So I see,” Jim said, annoyed. It was hard to miss that ship. “Even with
Intrepid
’s new engine refit, I don’t think we can outrun one of those things. And I know
Enterprise
can’t. So?”

“Well.” Ael reached into her pocket and pulled out a logic solid.

“You want us to fake a Romulan ID?” Jim said, half teasing, half annoyed. “Ael, this is no time—”

“Of course it isn’t, you fool.” Heads turned around the bridge, and Ael ignored them. “Before Spock started infecting the Levaeri computers, I was looking through the system and stumbled on something interesting.” She juggled the solid lightly in one hand. “The Sunseed program.”

He stared at her blankly.

“Sunseed!” Ael said. “They had to have it to catch all those little Vulcan ships, Jim.” She held it up in front of his face. “Wouldn’t you like to start your very own ion storm—and leave those three ships to founder in it? Here’s the program.”

“Oh my
God,
” Jim said. “Sehlk!”

The doors hissed open. “Will I do, Captain?” said a mellow voice—and Captain Suvuk walked in. He looked wasted and tired, and the plast that McCoy and Sihek had put on him did little more than cover the worst of his facial wounds; the thought of what injuries lay hidden under the uniform was terrifying. But the man was all power and certainty, though he staggered, and had to support himself on the back of his center seat as he stepped down to them.

“Sir—” Jim said.

“I heard,” Suvuk said. “I have been listening from sickbay. Commander,” he said to Ael, “there would be a certain irony in turning against our pursuers the weapon they used on us. Am I correct in hypothesizing that we are going to need a star to make this work?”

“Yes, sir.” She and Jim followed Suvuk up to the communications station. “We would be stimulating the star’s corona not only with phasers and photon torpedoes, but our own warpfield. I understand that though it works well enough with one ship, it would do better yet with two, or three—”

“Two, I think, Commander,” said Suvuk. “I doubt
Bloodwing
could match the”—he paused to put the solid down on the comm station’s reading plate—“the warp eleven speeds that this requires. And we have little time to implement; the fewer ships we must coordinate in this maneuver, the better. I see that the parameters and frequencies for the phasers are adaptable to our standards. T’Leiar, pass this information on to
Enterprise—
”

“Already done, sir.”

Ael blinked. “Intrepid,” Scotty’s voice said, “
this is
Enterprise—”

“I’m here, Scotty,” Jim said. “Don’t stop for discussion. Do it!”

“Aye, sir.”
And Scotty switched off.

“Timings, sir—”

“I am adding them now,” Suvuk said. The bridge doors opened and Spock came hurriedly in, followed by Sehlk. “Sir, what we are—” they both said, practically in unison, to Jim and Suvuk respectively.

“What a fascinating program,” Suvuk said mildly. “Mr. Sehlk, pass these phaser settings and photon torpedo dispersal patterns on to the weapons officer at once. Do you see the ingenuity of it, madam, gentlemen? The ionization effect propagates from the star’s coronal discharges, but in a spiral pattern like a pulsar’s series of ‘rotating’ wavefronts. Of course we shall have to get quite close to that star, inside the warp boundary in fact; but paradoxically the stimulation of the corona will keep the stellar chromosphere from being overstimulated, a most elegant—”

“Sir,” Sehlk said, in a voice that sounded much more like Jim’s than like Spock’s; and Suvuk turned, looking calmly at his first officer with an expression more like Spock’s than like Jim’s. Ael raised one hand to hide her mouth. “
Enterprise
reports ready.”

“Mr. Sehlk, a word with my ship, if I may?”

Sehlk nodded at the ’com console, and the Vulcan communications officer looked up at Jim.
“Scott here,”
said that oddly-accented voice.

“Just this, Scotty. Be careful not to set up a backlash effect—this is
not
the time to go back in time twenty-four hours!”

“Aye, indeed, Captain,”
Scotty said, as close to laughter as Ael had heard him in some time.
“Good luck to you. And to
Intrepid.”

“The same from them,” Jim said, looking at Suvuk’s calm face. “Out.”

“
Battlequeen
is closing in on us, Captain,” said Sehlk. “One light-minute and closing.”

“Implement the ion-storm maneuver, then,” said Suvuk.

The ship’s great warp engines began to roar. Ael, glancing at Jim, noticed that he had found himself an empty station and had closed the anti-roll arms down over his thighs: Spock was doing so on the other side of the room. Ael sat down at one of the security stations and did the same. Suvuk, hanging on to things all the way down, found his way to the center seat.

“Computer lock on the star,” Suvuk said. “Shut down ship’s sensors for the closest part of the pass. Screen off.”

It was just as well, for they were already closer to the Levaeri primary than Ael had ever wanted to be to any star; she could see its corona already beginning to flare and twist wildly at their approach. Unfortunately, there was now no telling except by report how
Bloodwing
was doing, or how close
Battlequeen
was getting….

Ael began to sweat. The thought of Lyirru blowing them all up was bad, but the thought of him getting hold of them and taking them back to ch’Rihan was worse still.
O, Elements,
she thought,
if it has to be one or the other, let him blow us up!
Then she rebuked herself; perhaps the
Enterprise
people would prefer to survive, on the grounds that while there was life there was hope.
They may have something there,
she thought.
I have never seen such a lot of survivors….

The bridge doors hissed open again, and there was McCoy hobbling in, with his left leg in a light pressure cast. He walked slowly over to where Jim was sitting, braced himself firmly against the rail, and said, “Broken fibula. I told you this’d happen some day.”

“Doctor,” Ael said, laughing at him, “if you have been predicting such an occurrence for so long, why are you surprised that it happened?”

“As for
you,
” McCoy said, “with this damn fool idea of yours, let me tell you, young lady….”

Ael said nothing, but the look Jim traded with her told her that she had been admitted to a very exclusive group: those people McCoy would rant at. She let him rant, and nodded contritely in all the right places, and otherwise concentrated on what was going on.

“One hundred million kilometers from the star,” Sehlk said. “Ninety million…sixty…thirty…”
At this speed,
Ael thought, amazed,
if I blink I’ll miss it….
And indeed, a second later, everything seemed to happen at once.
Enterprise
and
Intrepid
dove into the star’s corona together;
Intrepid
shook hugely as she first hit the star’s bowshock at multiples of the speed of light, then created another of her own, trailing jointly behind her and
Enterprise.
The ship lurched again, and again, as photon torpedoes and phasers fired. Then a third terrible lurch of heaviness, and stomach-turning lightness, and normal weight again, as the artificial gravity wavered, the ship malfunctioned in trying to compensate for the star’s terrible mass, and slowly went back to normal again.

“Report,” Suvuk said, as calmly as if he did this every day.

“
Enterprise
reports intact, Captain,” said Sehlk. “Maneuver complete.
Helve
and
Lahai
are far behind, not even in the area.
Battlequeen
is hitting the bowshock of the ion storm now—”

“Force reading, please.”

“Force twelve and escalating.”

“Evidently you were right, Commander,” Suvuk said to Ael. “It is more effective with two starships. They are getting rather worse than they gave us as a distraction.”

“Communication from
Bloodwing,
Commander t’Rllaillieu,” said the comm officer. “They report they are cutting across our hyperbola to meet us, ahead of the ion storm. Rendezvous in approximately four minutes—”

“Thank you,” Ael said.

“
Battlequeen
is slowing somewhat, Captain,” said Sehlk. “Possibility that her navigations are going out on her due to the extreme intensity of the storm—”

“Intrepid,
this is
Enterprise,” said Scotty’s voice.

“This is
Intrepid,
” Jim said, at a nod from the Vulcan comm officer. “How’s she riding, Scotty?”

“Smooth enough so far,”
Scotty said,
“but we’d best pour it on a bit. That lad behind us isn’t taking no for an answer; he’s come through the far side of the bowshock and he’s accelerating again. Maintaining warp eleven cruise speed on the eta Trianguli course.”

“Noted,
Enterprise,
we will match you,” Suvuk said. “Screen on, Sehlk. Deflector shields up; phasers ready. Commander, can
Bloodwing
maintain a warp eleven cruise?”

“Not for more than a few minutes, Captain,” she said. Her hands had been sweating now for several minutes over just that issue.

“Very well.
Enterprise, Bloodwing
cannot match warp eleven. I suggest we maneuver close enough together to allow a joint warpfield, and take her into it.”

“Captain Suvuk,”
Scotty said, sounding very distressed,
“with all due respect, that’s extraordinarily dangerous for two ships of the same model, let alone ones with different engine specs—”

“—which we now have,” Suvuk said. “Granted, Mr. Scott, but we cannot leave
Bloodwing
behind, either. Do you wish to speak to your captain?”

“Not now,”
Scotty said,
“but I will later…. Implementing, sir. Scott out.”

Suvuk looked at Jim with calm approval. “Sir, have you ever noticed that while we run our ships, our engineers own them?…”

Ael watched the slow smile cross Jim’s face. He said nothing, only turned back to the screen.

“Rear view,” Sehlk said. And there was
Enterprise,
great and shining, all white fire and stark black shadows from the Levaeri primary, and growing dimmer as they fled the system. She was getting quite close…pulling up alongside the
Intrepid
now, the two of them streaking along much closer together than any two ships traveling at warpspeed had any right to be. “Coming up on
Bloodwing
’s position.” Sehlk said. “She is accelerating to warp eleven to meet us. —Warpfield match with
Enterprise—
”

Intrepid
lurched again, a violent motion that made the earlier shaking seem very mild. “Warpfield match with
Bloodwing,
” Sehlk said—and this time even a few of the Vulcans went flying about the bridge.

Not Suvuk; he might as well have been glued into his center seat. “Match complete,” he said. “Lieutenant T’Khia, head for the Zone, eta Trianguli course—”

“
Battlequeen
gaining on us again, Captain,” Sehlk said. “Warp twelve…warp thirteen…”

“We cannot long maintain our lead,” Suvuk said, looking over at Jim and Ael, “not while they pursue at warp thirteen.”

“Fourteen now,” said Sehlk. Spock looked across the bridge at Jim and shook his head, ever so slightly.

“Recommendations, Captain? Commander?” Suvuk said.

“Not to be taken, sir.” Jim said.

“Commander?”

“I agree.”

“My ship has such orders already,” Jim said.

Suvuk nodded.

“
Battlequeen
is once more at one light-minute,” Sehlk said. “One-half light-minute—”

“Captain,” Suvuk said, “by the way—though thanks are said by some to be illogical—thank you for another three hours of life.”

Jim bowed where he sat, straightened again. “My only regret is that I could not return you to your ship before this,” Suvuk said quietly. “Or you to yours, Commander.”

“The fortunes of war, sir,” she said.

“If fortune exists,” Suvuk said. “And if this is war. At any rate, I thank you also, Commander. It has been an unexpected—gratification—to discover that our cousins may also be our brothers.”

Ael bowed her head too.

“One-tenth light-minute,” Sehlk said into the great quiet of the bridge.

“Enterprise,”
Jim said.

“Aye,”
Scotty’s voice came back—and that was all he said.

“Bloodwing,”
Ael said.

“Commander—”

“Wait for it,” Ael said softly. “We shall meet shortly.”

“Four light-seconds,” said Sehlk.

Ael saw Jim look across the bridge at Spock, a long glance, then another one, up at McCoy. And then at the screen, toward the empty space ahead of them, toward the border of the Zone, that they would never reach.