Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (60 page)

“Freedom,” tr’Kiell said softly. “It is a noble dream.”

“Freedom,” said tr’Anierh, and for the moment said nothing else.

“What time does the Senate meet tomorrow?” said tr’Kiell.

“Eighth hour,” said Urellh. “I will stand and propose the diplomatic mission at the ninth hour. All the important personnel are selected; all that remains is to have the Senate come to believe it has selected them, and then approve the assignment of ships in the usual way. They can be on their way by the threeday’s end.”

“Until tomorrow morning, then,” said tr’Kiell, and saluted them both, and went on his way down the steps.

They watched him go, making his way down across the plaza and into the street leading to emn’Thaiven, the wide pale-paved Avenue of Processions. “There,” said Urellh, “we shall lead the traitress to her death in chains, in not too long a time. And afterward we shall set about putting things right; mending the world, the Worlds, to be as they should have been long ago.”

Tr’Anierh nodded, still saying nothing for the moment. The thought was in his mind:
What in the names of Fire and Air has come to this man, that he speaks so openly? As if he had nothing whatever to fear from anyone?

He glanced over to find Urellh looking at him: a casual look on the surface, but there was no missing the assessment in it. “I must go,” Urellh said then. “Honor to the Empire, confederate.”

“Honor,” said tr’Anierh to Urellh’s back, as he swung away and went down the steps in tr’Kiell’s wake. Discreetly, from off to one side, Urellh’s personal secretary came down along the steps to meet his master and began to speak to him, head down, as they went.

Eveh tr’Anierh watched them out of sight. He was filled with fear, but he dared not show it.
We are all riding the
daishelt
together now,
he thought.
No choice but to hang on tight to the horns, lest we slip back to where the claws can rend us….

He turned at last and went back up into the shattered building, to meet his own secretary and arrange matters surrounding the speech in the Senate tomorrow. There were some other messages to be sent now, as well. Eveh started composing the first one as he passed through the clear sheets that hung where the bronze doors should have; and in that hot wind that ran down the streets between the tall graceful buildings of the presidium, the sheets whispered together, saying
aish,
again and again,
aish:
the word for war….

James T. Kirk finished rereading the report that had been appended to his most recent orders on the viewer in his quarters, and let out a long breath. For the better part of a month and a half now, he had been wondering, as he occasionally had before:
Where is
Bloodwing?…Now he thought he understood why she had made herself more than usually scarce.
But that’s about to change.

“It’s happening,” Jim said, “at last.”

He looked up from the viewer in his quarters at McCoy and Spock. Spock was wearing that look of complete calm that only a Vulcan could assume; but Jim knew what was underneath it…or at least he had strong suspicions. McCoy was frowning, but then he had been frowning a lot since he came home from his last leave, a “vacation trip” that had wound up taking him a good deal further away from home than many people would have initially expected.

“The orders,” Spock said, “are, on the surface, routine.”

“As if any orders containing the words ‘Romulan Neutral Zone’ are routine,” McCoy said. “Now or ever, but especially now.”

“But the orders contain no such phrasing, Doctor,” Spock said. “They refer only to the space around 15 Trianguli…”

“You know as well as I do, Mr. Spock, that any space in the direction of Triangulum and further away from Earth than about fifteen hundred light-years is hotter than the insides of a warp containment vessel,” McCoy said, “and about as safe, at the moment. 15 Tri is plenty close enough to the Zone to provoke interest in some quarters.”

“Those ‘quarters’ being the Senate and the Praetorate,” Jim said, leaning back in his chair. “Who it seems, after the events of the last month and a half, are ready to start some serious shin-kicking.”

He looked over at Spock with some concern. “The moment we start moving at all directly toward that space,” he said, “word will get to the Romulans, either via moles in Starfleet or other intelligence sources here and there. And our movement will be taken as an excuse to start things rolling.”

“Your analysis is likely to be correct, Captain,” said Spock. “But the orders seem clear.”

“Everything about them is clear except the time frame,” Jim said. “They haven’t come right out and told me ‘Head in that direction but take your time about it,’ but that’s what the instruction factors down to. So I’ll take the time.” He thought for a moment. “Scotty has been complaining about some adjustments he wants to make to the warp engines’ matter-antimatter annihilation ratios: I intend to proceed at a leisurely enough pace to let him do that. At the same time, I know why they’re sending us to the neighborhood of 15 Tri. We are intended to meet a ship, quietly, out in the system’s fringes, to discuss a few things with its commander.”

“And while we’re doing that,” McCoy said, “I have this feeling a few other ships may drop by to chat about this and that. All very informally, of course.”

“Of course,” Jim said. “But the Triangulum area being as lively as you say, Bones, I think we may dodge over in the direction of alpha Arietis first…bearing in mind that we also still have a technological problem that we haven’t yet figured out what to do with.”

“Sunseed,” Spock said, somber.

“The trouble with technology,” McCoy muttered, “is that you can’t stick it back in the damn bottle once it gets out.”

“Any technology that allows a ship on the fly to create ion storms on demand,” Jim said, “is too damn nasty to let out into the world. But here we are, stuck sitting on the thing. The Romulans would have used it as a weapon—
did
use it—which was bad enough. We took it from them lock, stock, and barrel, which was something of an accomplishment…but since we’re certainly not going to use it, we need to find a way to make it unusable before it leaks out somehow…which it is eventually bound to, no matter how closely Fleet tries to guard it.” He folded his arms. “Scotty has a few ideas on the subject, but he says he could use some assistance at the theoretical end. So we’ll go get him some.” Jim looked at Spock. “Estimate of total time?”

“Four days and fourteen hours to alpha Arietis at warp six,” Spock said, “from our present position. Then five days, twenty hours at the same speed to the neighborhood of 15 Trianguli.”

Jim nodded. “See to it, Mr. Spock.”

“Captain,” Spock said, and went out. The door shut behind him.

McCoy paused. “There was,” McCoy said, “something else.”

Jim put his eyebrows up, trying to look surprised. “There was?”

“Jim,” McCoy said, “this is no time to start trying to play the wide-eyed innocent with me. You should have started years ago, or not bothered at all. Now, I’m not going to ask for details about the sealed portion of these orders…”

Jim’s mouth quirked into half a smile.

“But I wouldn’t mind knowing,” McCoy said, “whether I should start actively preparing myself to meet my Maker. Again.”

“I’d have thought that after your little holiday on ch’Rihan,” Jim said, “you’d be all caught up in that regard.”

McCoy gave him a dry look. “And whether our own side is as likely to wind up shooting at us as the other one. Or other
ones.”

There it was: the same concern that had been riding Jim for the past few hours, while he digested the content of the orders he’d received—both the parts that he could disclose to his crew, and the parts that he could not—and started to game out the way he thought things might go in the next month or so. “Bones,” he said, “believe me, I’m going to be doing my best to keep matters straightforward. One side shooting at us at once is more than enough for me. But things can change fast sometimes…so you’d better fasten down anything that’s loose in sickbay. And keep a chair ready for me when I need to come to talk.”

“I’ll take care of it,” McCoy said, and went out.

The door hissed shut behind him. Jim sat down behind his desk again and leaned back in the chair once more. He held that position for a good while, his eyes resting on nothing in particular. Then he reached out to the computer console on his desk. “Computer.”

“Working.”

“Record a message and seal under my voiceprint.”

“Recording.”

“Latest communication received here confirms our last joint discussion on strategy. Meet us as previously arranged.” He thought of signing it “Jim,” but encryption was such a fragile and ephemeral art these days; the security of the message could not be absolutely guaranteed, and there was too much to lose should it be broken. Besides, he could just hear the laughter at the other end when the receiving party heard the signature.

“Code and send,” Jim said.

“Working. Sent.”

He hit the comm button again. “Bridge. Lieutenant Commander Uhura.”

“Uhura here, Captain.”

“I just routed a message to your system. What’s the subspace transit time?”

There was a moment’s silence.
“Judging from the relay address in that message’s ‘capsule,’ I’d say fifteen hours.”

“Thank you, Commander. Mr. Sulu?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Lay in a course to alpha Arietis, warp five, and execute immediately.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And Mr. Sulu—do you have a ‘tank’ session scheduled in recreation this evening?”

Sulu chuckled, very low.
“Yes, Captain. We’re finishing up a round of tournament play.”

“Maybe I’ll stop by,” Jim said. “Kirk out.”

He switched his viewer to show the bridge screen’s view as
Enterprise
made her change of course, a big wide swing to the galactic “southward,” and added a warp factor or two, the blue-shifted stars pouring past her like so many burning arrows in the night.

I’d hoped I was wrong when I saw this coming,
he thought.
But I was right.

I just hope the trend holds. Otherwise…

He killed the external image and went back to studying his orders…looking for the loophole that would let them all survive.

They came out of warp a scant light-week from Orundwiir, or alpha Arietis as the Federation stellar cartographers called it; a great blaze of a star, even at this distance, burning dazzlingly orange-golden in the long cold night.
Bloodwing
went sublight with all her weapons hot and her sensors stretched out to their utmost…and found no one there waiting for them.

Khiy looked up from his post at the steersman’s console. “Should we decloak,
llhei?”

“No, not yet,” Ael said softly. “Let us wait our time.”

Her people kept their eyes on their instruments, saying nothing for the moment, and Ael watched the screen, sitting in her hard straight command chair, and said nothing.

“They’re late,” said t’Hrienteh, in slight amusement.

Ael looked over her shoulder at the ship’s chief surgeon, who had been doing part-time duty on scan and comm for some time now while training the ship’s last remaining junior officer in the position. “Possibly our time-ticks are out of synchronization,” Ael said. “It would not surprise me; the computers have been through so much tinkering recently, and tr’Keirianh has not had time or leisure to look over all our shoulders and supervise as he would like to…”

“You mean constantly,” t’Hrienteh said. “Fortunately, the master engineer must sleep sometimes.” Her tone was wry. “But I very much doubt anything is really wrong with the computers,
khre’Riov.
”

In reality Ael agreed with her. What she would not voice was her concern, even after so much evidence to the contrary, that something might yet go wrong with her dealings with the Federation, now that matters were becoming genuinely crucial.

Ael stretched herself a little in the command chair, gazing at the screen and admiring the giant midsequence star centered in it. Even away out here the brazen-golden fire of it was extraordinary, like Eisn but easily thirty times the hearthstar’s size. No one else was paying the great burning monster much mind, though. She glanced around her at the familiar faces, all bent to their work at the moment. There were different familiar faces on her bridge than had previously been here, for
Bloodwing
had lost about a third of her crew component during the operation at Levaeri V, either in battle on the station itself or on
Enterprise
owing to her son’s final treachery, and it would now be impossible to recruit replacements.
And will it indeed ever be possible?
Ael thought. For there would always be the chance that any new crew picked up in passing would actually be an agent in the service of the intelligence agencies based on ch’Rihan, intent on
Bloodwing
’s destruction, perhaps even to the point of suicide.
No,
she thought,
for the time being we must just scrape along as best we can….

“Incoming vessel,” t’Hrienteh said, and Ael glanced up. “Just dropped out of warp; subluminal now and decelerating fast.”

“On screen—”

The view changed, losing that burning core. Instead, a faint golden spark reflecting Orundwiir’s fierce orange light came coasting in toward them, the glow growing swiftly brighter as she came. Ael sat there and mused briefly over the numerous conflicting feelings that accompanied the sight of
Enterprise,
all gilt with the system primary’s fire, approaching with her screens down, graceful, massive and—in these spaces—massively unconcerned.
How many times over all the years before Levaeri V did I wish much to see this sight,
she thought,
and to be lying nearby, cloaked, with weapons ready. And now the wish comes true. But how circumstances change with time, and how little satisfaction our wishes bring us once fulfilled! Yet another of the Elements’ small jokes with us…and if we are wise, we laugh.

“She is hailing us,” Aidoann said.

Ael smiled slightly. It would not matter to Kirk that his ship’s sensors showed nothing here while
Bloodwing
was cloaked.
He knows,
she thought. “Decloak and answer the hail,” she said. “Barely two
stei
late, t’Hrienteh: I think you may forgive him that.”

“Bloodwing,
this is
Enterprise,” said a familiar female voice.
“Welcome to Hamal…”

“T’Rllaillieu here,” Ael said. “Thank you kindly, Lieutenant Commander Uhura.”

“You’re a shade early, Commander-General,”
said another familiar voice.

“Or you are late, Captain,” she said, amused. “We have been discussing which might be the case. We really must see to it that our computers are better synchronized.”

“Mr. Spock and Aidoann can sort that out between them, I’m sure,”
Kirk said.
“Meanwhile, would you care to beam aboard? We have a lot to discuss…and when the first discussions are done, there are some people over here who want to greet you.”

She watched
Enterprise
dump the last of her velocity and slip up alongside
Bloodwing
with easy precision, a very neighborly kilometer away. “I will be with you in a matter of some minutes, Captain,” Ael said. “I have a thing or two to make secure here first.”

She waved at t’Hrienteh to kill the communication, then stood up and stretched. “Your orders,
khre’Riov?”
Aidoann said.

“There’s nothing needs done,” Ael said. “Stand easy. But when did I ever obey any such request immediately, as if I had nothing better to do? Always wisest to leave even one’s close associates a little uncertainty; a little room to wonder what one is up to. That way, if one day you must suddenly change your course, or your mind, without warning, you will have left yourself room to maneuver.” She smiled.

“Even Captain Kiurrk?” Aidoann said, with a small smile of her own.

“Even the captain,” Ael said, “may someday need to change his mind…or may have it changed for him. For that day, which may never come or which may be hard upon us, we must yet remain prepared. Khiy, the center seat is yours. Mind you match their movements exactly. Their helmsman is watching you, and you know Mr. Sulu’s sharp eye—you must do us proud. Come along, Aidoann, t’Hrienteh; we have a meeting….”

Jim stood there in the transporter room in front of the console, which Scotty was presently manning. His hands were sweating.

Ridiculous,
he thought. But at the same time, there were few guests aboard
Enterprise
about whom he had had more thoroughly mixed feelings than the one who was coming back aboard now. Here was a woman who had sat in his center seat, and had somehow managed to look like she belonged there; a woman who had not only thrown him in his own brig—
well, yes, it wasn’t as if I didn’t cooperate
—but had decked him out as well—
all right, I returned the favor almost immediately, but still—

He caught himself, and smiled. “Worthy opponent” was the very least of the descriptions he might apply to Ael i-Mhiessan t’Rllaillieu; and there were others, more appropriate still, but he would not spend too much time thinking about them now. They would only make his hands sweat more.

He wiped them off against his pants and breathed out in brief annoyance. “Something holding them up over there?” he said.

Scotty shook his head. As he did, the door opened and Spock came in, closely followed by McCoy. It was just shutting when the communicator whistled.
“Captain,”
said Uhura’s voice out of the air,
“we have an incoming shuttle.”

Jim leaned over the transporter console and punched the comm button. “From the starbase?” he said. Starbase 18 circled Hamal’s furious amber fire a couple of hundred million kilometers out.

“From the base, yes, but not Fleet registry,”
said Uhura.
“ID shows the shuttle as registered off Hamal III.”

“Aha,” Jim said. “Very good. Clear the shuttle through into the bay. We’ll be down to meet the passenger shortly.”

“Yes, Captain. Bridge out.”

The faint hum of the transporter came up. “Coming through now, sir,” Scotty said.

Three faint pillars of sparkle began to form on the transporter platform; the light swirled, went solid, and the bodies it formed were held in a fractional second’s immobility as they finished becoming real.

She was looking right at him, and Jim thought, almost with annoyance,
How does she
do
that…?!
A little woman, slight, dark, slender, in the faintly red-glittering tunic of a Romulan officer, the sash across it glowing a subdued gold in the transporter room’s low lighting; dark breeches and boots below, and above, long dark hair braided tight and coiled at the back of her head. She might have seemed unexceptional enough, except for those eyes—which even in this frozen moment held in them what seemed an uncomfortably assessing, knowing, look—and her carriage, even now like that something held proud and ready for a fight; a banner, a sword…

The shimmer of sound and light died away completely. “Commander,” Jim said.

She glanced around her for a second, taking in her surroundings, and half glanced off to one side of her: then looked forward again. Jim swallowed. Big blond Aidoann t’Khialmnae, Ael’s new second-in-command, was on the pad to Ael’s right, as Jim had expected, and Surgeon t’Hrienteh, whom he remembered from the way he had kept finding her in McCoy’s company when they were preparing the attack on Levaeri V, was on the transporter pad behind her. But Ael’s brief glance had been toward someone who was not there, and Jim thought of how he had first seen her son Tafv beside her, much taller than his mother, but as erect and proud. He would not now ever stand beside her again, of course; but it was poignant that Ael still carried herself, somehow, as if there were someone standing to her left, in his accustomed place.
If I have my own ghosts,
Jim thought,
so does she….

She came down from the transporter and reached out to take his hand.

He took it, not to bow over it, having learned that the gesture, polite enough for an honored lady on Earth, was charged with meaning for a Rihannsu which he didn’t desire to invoke. He simply clasped it a little above the wrist, and she returned his grip and met his eyes forthrightly. The expression, as always, had an element of challenge to it, and more calm than Jim thought he would have felt under the circumstances.

She let him go. “Well met,” she said, “so far into your own spaces, and after such a time.”

“You’re very welcome,” Jim said, “in whatever time, and whatever space.”

That elicited a shadow of a smile. “Commander,” Spock said, stepping forward.

Did that assured expression become just slightly haunted as she looked at him? Hard to say; the look was concealed by the slight bow of her head to him, which Spock returned. “Mr. Spock,” she said, “well met indeed.” Then she straightened. “And Mr. Scott: do you do well?”

“As well as possible under the circumstances, Commander,” Scotty said. Jim tried to keep his grin from getting out of hand. Scotty had been sympathetic enough to Ael, but her involvement with
Enterprise
had caused the ship considerable structural damage, some of it actually planned rather than as an accident in battle, and Jim suspected Scotty was already having misgivings about what kind of trouble her presence was likely to bring this time.

“As do we all…” she said, possibly thinking along the same lines Jim was. She turned, then, and said, “Well, McCoy, and what of you?”

He simply smiled half a smile and reached out to squeeze her hand. “It can wait.”

A few more moments were spent greeting t’Hrienteh and Aidoann; but finally Jim said, “The doctor’s right, Commander. We shouldn’t linger here. Someone else is arriving whom you should meet.”

They all headed for the doors. “Someone from Starfleet?” Ael said.

“Occasionally,” Jim said. “I believe her commission may have been reactivated for the time being; officially she’s retired.”

Ael raised her eyebrows. “I am sorry to trouble an elder’s peace.”

McCoy made an amused face. “Nothing much troubles her,” he said, “and, besides, this ‘elder’ is somewhere between one and three years old, depending on whose years you’re using.”

“Doctor,” Spock said, “in Hamalki reckoning, it is considered an error of reckoning to separate out new ‘incarnations’ from the total life span—”

Ael looked over at Jim in some bemusement as they all got into the turbolift. “Doubtless this will be made clear to me shortly.”

“As clear as it gets,” Jim said.

There was some small talk in the lift, inquiries about Ael’s crew and
Bloodwing
’s whereabouts over the past month or so.

Then the doors opened and they all stepped out. Jim was amused to see Ael’s eyes widen a little at what they met first: a rugged rounded glittering shape nearly two meters tall and three meters broad, patched in what looked like rough amethyst, tourmaline, and ruby, with dark fringes all around that sparkled in the bright hangar bay lights as it moved.

Ael strode right up to that domed figure and stood there a moment with her arms akimbo, looking him up and down. “Mr. Naraht,” she said, astounded, “what in Earth’s name have you been doing to yourself to
grow
so great?”

The rough scraping sound that emerged was plainly a compromise intended for those who used airborne sound in its higher frequencies; but it was also plainly laughter. “Commander,” said the Horta through his own translator, “just eating. But I’m told that’s enough.”