Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (55 page)

For an instant the high-mag image of tr’Annhwi’s ship ran head-on toward
Bloodwing,
wingtip phaser conduits glaring intolerably bright as they spat destructive energy. The screen became a Bosch vision of Hell seen through a stained-glass window in the nanosecond before it filtered down to impenetrable black, and
Bloodwing
shuddered under the flail of sequential direct hits.

“Commander,” said Aidoann calmly, “shields four and five are now reduced to sixty-five percent efficiency, and the progression curve indicates failure after three more strikes.”

Ael nodded. “What about
Avenger
’s present status?”

“Sensors indicate a shift in energy consumption; they’re channeling more power through the weapons systems. Shields are holding at…eighty percent of standard.”

“Oh. I see. Typical of him. And in that Klingon scow too. Well, let’s see it catch us when we go into warp and—”

A communicator whistle interrupted her.
“Engineering, this is tr’Keirianh. Can you give me seven standard minutes to put this mess back together?”

Ael looked at the speaker/mike with an offended, betrayed expression, and McCoy looked at her. She was not a lady who liked her words suddenly made hollow before they were fully spoken, even by a chief engineer whose problems and requests sounded very familiar.

“Do what you can, Giellun,” she said after a glance at the tactical repeaters, “but I can’t promise you so much as seven seconds….” And then she turned right around, as did McCoy, to stare at movement where right now no movement should have been.

Ensign Luks was standing by his chair, looking confident, eager, determined—and scared stiff.
Oh, God,
thought McCoy,
another space cadet!
“Sit down, son,” he said aloud. “This isn’t your affair any more than it’s mine.” Luks stayed where he was, and gave no sign of even having heard McCoy. All his attention was directed at Ael.

“If you need seven minutes, then you also need a diversion,” he said. “Clear the cutter for takeoff.”

There might have been surprise in Ael’s mind, or confusion, or disbelief, or scorn. “You’re going to die,” she said matter-of-factly.

Luks shrugged at that, then grinned broadly. “Maybe—most everyone I know will too. But not right now. Not me. I’m the best you’ve got.”

“Son,” said McCoy, “did you take the
Kobayashi Maru
test?”

“Yeah, I did, sir.” Another grin. “Tried it once, and didn’t like it. It’s such a downer.”

“But worth remembering.”

“Not for me—I like something a bit more cheerful. Catch you in ten minutes or so, Doc. You can buy me a drink.” Luks grinned some more, until McCoy wondered whether some muscle rictus was at work. “But don’t leave without me on that account.”

He headed off with Hvaid, whistling some catchy tune or other that McCoy couldn’t place.
Bloodwing
shuddered again, and orange warning lights began to flash on the ship’s-schematic board. Evidently tr’Annhwi’s scanner officer, that overly keen Subcenturion tr’Hwaehrai, had noticed the weakness in
Bloodwing
’s shields, because those last shots had hit fair and square on the damaged sectors and reduced them to barely forty percent effective.

“He’s away!”

Bloodwing
’s screen flickered to a new image as Luks’s cutter shot from the rearmost hangar-bay and darted straight at
Avenger
like a mouse attacking a lion.
Avenger
sheered off with enough violence to threaten her nacelle integrity, though whether it was because of the incongruity, or the unexpectedness, or the ferocious salvo of fire from the cutter’s single phaser mounting—or because it was so very definitely a Federation cutter—nobody on
Bloodwing
knew.

Luks
was
the best, McCoy decided—or if he wasn’t, he would do until the best arrived. He flung his little vessel about the combat area, raking
Avenger
with insignificant but probably infuriating blasts, and then disobligingly evading the response. And he was having fun, which was more than McCoy could say about his own part of the mission.
Well, that’s what he wanted, isn’t it?

“Engineering, report. How go the repairs?” Despite her coolness while he was here, Ael watched Luks’s gadfly attacks on the screen and nipped the tip of one finger between her teeth. Since the cutter was launched,
Bloodwing
had gone unscathed as her opponent concentrated planet-cracking firepower against a ship no bigger than one of its warpdrive nacelles. “Engineering…?”

“Two more minutes—maybe less.”

“One. That’s all. This…performance…can’t last much longer.”

There was a silence at the other end of the channel, but it still had the unmistakable hiss of an open carrier. Ael stared at it, her finger poised over the recall button on her personal comm board. Then tr’Keirianh came back, coughing and breathless but sounding very pleased with himself.

“The mains are back on line, Commander. Up to warp four at your discretion.”

“Not enough—but it’ll have to do. Bring that young fool back in here and—” Her words stopped short when a phaser beam as thick as the cutter’s hull clipped Luks’s ship and split it open. “Oh,
no!
”

McCoy was on his feet, fingers gripping the padded arms of the station chair so tightly that they had sunk through the skinning and into the foam beneath, watching fragments of metal and plastic sparkle in the light of Eisn.
Avenger
cruised disdainfully through the cloud of glittering slivers, and swung with ominous deliberation back on
Bloodwing
’s trail.
He knew the risks.
That was the only coherent thought his mind could form right now, and it was totally inadequate for—

“Bloodwing…?” Luks’s voice was weak, and not just because of a poor transmission signal. McCoy had heard too many mortally injured men not to recognize one now. “Bloodwing,
you still there…?
”

“This is Ael, Ensign. Yes, we’re still here. We shall use a tractor beam and—”

“—and nothing! Get out of here before that…”
His voice trailed off and there was silence for so long that Ael leaned forward to cut the connection.
Avenger
was forgotten just for these few seconds. By
Bloodwing
’s people, anyway. Not by Luks.
“I’d as soon not…be their guest,”
he managed to say.
“And you folks deserve some peace….”

There was a click as he cut the connection, and everyone’s eyes went to the main viewscreen, dominated by the predatory outline of tr’Annhwi’s
Avenger.
The brief flash of an attitude thruster was noticeable only because it took place in the warship’s shadow, but the consequence of Ensign Luks’s decision was going to be enough to cast shadows of its own as far away as ch’Rihan.

His crippled cutter drove like a piloted torpedo straight into the nearest of
Avenger
’s nacelle pods and cracked it wide open, letting in space. The matter and antimatter of two warp-capable ships combined, uncontrolled. A blink later there was nothing but a single globular spasm of destruction as furiously radiant as a nova. It expanded, pure white light, impossible to look at. It would not fade for hours.

On board
Bloodwing
the main viewscreen swung away from the blinding light to the cool starfields that surrounded 128 Trianguli. Nobody said a word to McCoy for what felt to him like a very long time, until Ael touched her communicator gently. “Damage reports?” she said.

“The shields took all of it—whatever it was, Commander.”

“Good. Prepare for warpspeed. Aidoann, you know the course, through the Federation Neutral Zone, and…and he left his codes programmed into the navigator’s station. Implement warp four on my command.” Ael sat back and closed her eyes, looking very tired. When she opened them again, it was to gaze steadily at McCoy, who gazed as steadily back.

“Well,” he said.

“Or ill. But his choice. Our peoples have more in common than either of them choose to see. You’re the doctor. Tell me, how long to cure the blindness?”

“I don’t have that answer for you, Ael,” he said softly.

“I thought not. Too long for my lifetime, at least. Or if they listen to your little Arrhae, maybe not so long after all. Aidoann, Hvaid, warp four. Take us away home.”

“They will be convinced, Doctor,” said Ael. “Rest assured of that. I saw what Lieutenant Rock left of two or three who stood up to him”—Naraht shuffled and rumbled, plainly not proud of himself—“and any who faced him with that knowledge in mind would surely be either heroic or insane. From what you say, Arrhae ir-Mnaeha is a most self-possessed young woman. She will have them dueling for the privilege of lacing up her sandals.”

“Um.” McCoy rolled neat ale around in a chunky crystal glass, staring at its color and feeling pretty blue himself. “I keep thinking about her. And about Luks…”

The postmortem on the day’s events had run on long into ship’s night, without really getting anywhere but back to the beginning again. Food had been prepared, toyed with, and nibbled at, but for the most part ignored in favor of wine and ale. Lots of both.

“He was all fire, that one,” Ael said quietly, “they burn bright, and burn out. He knew what he did, and he did well. Leave him his brightness. The Elements did not mind doing so.”

The Sword lay on Ael’s side of the wardroom table, a reminder of events past and events yet to come, but more cutting even than the Sword’s edge was another empty chair where Ensign Luks was meant to sit. “Turn down an empty glass,” McCoy said, drained his, and did.

“Knowing
that
one, he would rather you filled it and drank,” she said, “but you’ve done enough of that for any three Terrans. I think”—and she pulled the ale bottle and the winejug across the table and out of his reach—“that
these
belong where you can’t get at them. This is not medical advice. This is the owner of the drinks-cabinet speaking.”

Very, very slowly he began to smile. “You sound like my ex-wife,” he said.

Ael considered that. “I’ll assume you meant that as a compliment. Don’t correct me if I’m wrong.”

“Correct a lady? Never.”

“At least not on her own ship. Come, then, enough of you, all Earth and tears…a walking mud puddle. We are all heroes here, and deserve to make ourselves better cheer. Tell me about Arrhae. Why did she stay behind? I confess to fascination, because given the chance to go home myself…”

He looked at her speculatively. “She wanted to stay with her family.”

Ael made a Spock-eyebrow at him. “Indeed. How strange it is: we feel closer to the kin we adopt than to the ones we’re born to. A perceptive young woman, I would say.”

She sat back and looked at the Sword. “And you?” McCoy said. “Whom have
you
adopted lately?”

“Ah,” Ael said. “The paid debt. I wondered when that would come up to be handled.”

“But, Ael, you don’t owe me anything. Or the Federation, or even Jim.”

A slight smile tugged at her lips. “Jim. No, of course not. So much the more reason to pay the debt back. Or forward.”

McCoy scowled. “Bloody
mnhei’sahe
again. Not even the implant does anything about that word.”

Ael smiled. “Only people can do anything about it. And the day you understand it,” she said, “that day our wars are done. Meantime…we must still translate for others. By actions, not words. I have an Empire to rehabilitate. You have your own worlds to save, I shouldn’t wonder.”

He looked at her and saw no mockery. He had none for her either. “All of them,” he said.

She stood up and stretched. “A heroic goal, befitting a hero. But even heroes must start small. And for me, that means a ship to run. For you, a liter of ale to sleep off. Drink less next time…but dream well now. We’re going home.”

“Not to yours.”

“Someday,” she said from outside the door.

Arrhae i-Khellian t’Llhweiir stood in the dark silence of the garden and looked up at the aurora curtain hanging in the night sky. It was fading now—which was to say that it was no longer bright enough to be seen during daylight hours—but it still rippled and crackled wonderfully as it ran through its random color-shifts. Arrhae watched as the blue-green background glow became suffused with an astonishing chrome yellow shot with incandescent red, and the whole fragile structure seemed to billow like a drapery of finest silk. Scores of cameras had been pointed skyward and hundreds upon hundreds of recreational tapes had been made, regardless of what had been the cause of the phenomenon.

The public channels had claimed that brave and noble Fleet warships had brought the “pirate” vessel to battle just beyond ch’Rihan’s atmosphere, demonstrating with many and various models, diagrams, and computer-simulated animations the manner in which it had been englobed and blown apart as it tried frantically to flee from the engagement….

However, Senators knew differently.

It was probably unheard of in the long history of the Rihannsu for any House, no matter how noble, to be served both willingly and well by a
hru’hfe
with her own entirely independent House-name, much less one who held a seat in the Senate Chambers, though that was a nominal matter for the present, since the actual building was still closed for extensive reconstruction and, until another had been built, Arrhae could have held her assigned seat—or its fragments—in her two cupped hands.

The image of what that august body would have said and done had they known the true provenance of their latest member was one over which Arrhae preferred to draw a veil….

Once the dust had settled and various outraged persons had been mollified by the execution, suicide, or banishment of various others, Arrhae had found herself a hero. And after her collarbone had been set, regenerated, and, most important, had stopped hurting, she began to enjoy herself. It was rare behavior nowadays, but in the past the elevation of a trusted servant to a position of nobility had been a common reward for services beyond that normally expected. In her case, someone had spent a long time rummaging through the records to find sufficient authority for her promotion to the Senate.

Then there had been the interview with Commander t’Radaik’s replacement, which had become a sort of drunken picnic in the garden after the intelligence officer had arrived at House Khellian with enough food and alcohol for the entire household and had begged time off for everyone. Arrhae remembered that quite fondly, because the man had been
very
handsome—and, more to the point, had gone away entirely satisfied that nobody here had known anything about the shocking debacle at the last espionage trial but one.

Khre’Riov
or not, intelligence or not, he hadn’t found it easy to get by H’daen tr’Khellian, who had promoted himself to honorary uncle, father figure, and, for all Arrhae knew, representative agent. The reprehensible behavior of the late Subcommander tr’Annhwi had soured him against his old practice of cultivating any and all who seemed likely to be of use; and with a Senator working under his own roof, he no longer needed such doubtful patronage anyway.

When that Senator was also a hero who had the good fortune to be a beautiful young woman and unmarried besides, what H’daen was finding he did need was a stick to beat the suitors away from his front door….

She looked up at the sky, at the aurora and at the stars beyond….
If they’ll listen…tell them that the rest of the family is waiting….
“They’re not ready to listen to
me,
Bones,” Arrhae said softly to the night and the darkness. “Not just yet. But they’ll be ready sooner than they think, and when they are, I’ll be ready too. I…or my children.”

She smiled at the notion, and because she had dared to say it aloud even to herself; then she turned from the stars and walked back into her House: her home.