Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (7 page)

“Doubtful,” Spock said with a sigh, turning away from his work. “Doctor, Mr. Naraht has an eminently logical mind—unsurprising: so did his mother. If his emotional tendencies—”

“Aha! The truth
will
out!” McCoy said jubilantly. “That’s it! You like that boy because you knew his mother the Horta—
and she liked your ears!
”

Spock simply looked at McCoy. Jim started to whoop with laughter. Unfortunately, Uhura’s board chose that moment to let out one of its more strident whistles. She put her transdator back in her ear, looked off into space for a moment, then said, “Captain, it’s
Inaieu.
They’re ready for you.”

Jim got up out of the helm, still shaking with laughter. “Tell them we’re on our way. Gentlemen, the defense against the charge of nepotism-by-association will have to wait till this is over with. Uhura, call the transporter room.”

“No shuttlecraft?” McCoy said, a little sorrowfully.

“Sorry, Bones, we’re late.”

“One of these days,” McCoy growled as the three of them stepped into the lift, “that damn transporter’ll glitch, and we really
will
be.”

Inaieu
was if possible even huger than it looked. Jim at first wondered if some slippage in protocol, or confusion on the part of his own transporter chief, had sent him to the cargo transporters instead of the one for staff and crew; for the room they beamed into seemed almost the size of a small hangar deck. But the Eyrene transporter officer on this side reminded Jim forcibly that not only ships, but people, came in rather different sizes.

Deneb was a large star with more than one planet. The Klaha, the first Denebian race that Fleet had made contact with, lived on Deneb V; it was that species which Federation nomenclature meant when it referred to “Denebians.” But the peoples of the other worlds, the Eyren and the!’ hew and the Deirr, were Denebians too—not simply because of sharing a star. The worlds of this huge blue primary were all big, and dense, and had heavy gravity, for which their various versions of the humanities were equipped. So the
Inaieu
had been built to accommodate the primarily “Denebian” crew who would be handling her—such as the Eyrene transporter officer. She was typical of her people, looking very much like an eight-legged, circular-bodied elephant with no head and four trunks—a squat, golden-skinned, powerful person, and one (with her six-foot diameter) rather too large for any merely hominid-sized transporter platform.

When they were all materialized she came out from behind her console and bowed by way of respectful greeting—a Denebian bow, more of a deep knee bend. “Captain, gentlemen,” she said, “you’re expected in main briefing. Will you follow me, please?”

“Certainly, Lieutenant,” Jim said, noting the stripes on one of the four sleeves; noting also, with mild amusement, that all there was to the uniform was those sleeves. The Lieutenant led the way out into the hall, moving very quickly and lightly—and understandably so; the common areas of the ship were apparently kept at light gravity for the convenience of a multispecies crew. “Hi-grav personal quarters?” Jim said to McCoy.

“So I hear. They had to do quite a bit of juggling with the power-consumption curves to make it work out. But this ship’s got power to burn.”

“That’s no joke, lad,” Scotty said, peering in an opening door as they went past one of
Inaieu
’s six engine rooms. “That one warp-drive assembly in there is by itself half again the size of the
Enterprise
’s.”

Jim glanced at Scotty, who was now nearly walking backward, and looking hungrily back the way they’d come. “Later, Scotty,” he said. “I think we can spare you time for a tour. We have to do a routine exchange of ships’ libraries anyway; you might as well stop in to see the chief engineer and exchange pleasantries.”

“And equations,” McCoy said.

Scotty smiled, looking slightly sheepish, as the group entered a turbolift about the size of a shuttlecraft, and their Eyrene escort said, “Deck eighteen. Low-grav.” The lift went off sideways, then up, at a sedate enough pace; but even so Jim had to smile to himself. All the Denebian races, it seemed, love the high accelerations and speeds they were so well built to handle; and the thought of the speeds the lifts in this ship probably did when there were only Denebians aboard them made Jim shudder slightly. But that was part of their mindset, too; no Denebian would ever walk anywhere it could run, or do warp three if it could make warp eight. Life was too interesting, they said, to take it slowly; and certainly too short—if you have only six hundred years, you must make the most of them! So they plunged around through space, putting their noses (those of them who had noses) into everything, and thoroughly enjoying themselves; the galaxy’s biggest, merriest overachievers, and a definite asset to the Federation. Jim was very fond of them.

“Here we are. This way, gentlemen,” said the Eyrene lieutenant, and hurried out of the lift. The four of them went out after her, hurrying only slightly, and were relieved to see her turn leftward and gesture toward an open door. “Main briefing, gentlemen.”

“My thanks, Lieutenant,” Jim said, and led his officers in.

Main briefing, as he suspected, was about the size of a tennis court. The table was of that very sensible design that the Denebian races used when dealing with other species; a large round empty space in the middle, where Klaha and Eyren and!’ hew would stand—they never sat—and chairs or racks scattered around the outside of the table for hominids, along with bowl chairs for the Deirr. This way everyone, whether they had hominid stereoscopic vision or multiple eyes or heat sensors, could see everyone else; and of course everyone was wearing intradermal translators, so that understanding was no problem. At least, no more so than usual…

The company seated at that table rose, or bowed, to greet Jim and his party as they entered. One of them got up out of her bowl chair with the sucking sound that Jim remembered so well; and he started to grin. “Nhauris,” he said, holding out his hands, “you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Neither have you, flatterer,” said the Captain of
Inaieu,
flowing toward him and reaching out a tentacle to wind in a comradely grip around one of his wrists. Nhauris Rihaul was a Deirr, from Deneb IV; half a ton of what looked like wet brown leather, all wrinkles and pouches and sags, shaped more or less like a slug that had half mastered the art of standing upright—but a slug eight feet long and five feet across the barrel. One long multipupiled eyeslit ran across what would have been a forehead, if she had properly had a head. Under the eyeslit was a long vertical slash of a mouth, lipless and apparently toothless, though Jim knew better. From beneath the mouth sprang the cluster of handling tentacles, ranging from tiny ones to huge thick cables. It was one of the smaller ones that was holding him, pumping his arm up and down in Nhauris’s old mocking approximation of a handshake. “Jim, how are you?”

“Fine, Captain,” Jim said—the old answer—“as soon as you stop that!”

She did, though not without bubbling briefly with Deirra laughter, a sound like an impending gastric disturbance. “Well enough. Captain, I have to apologize for asking you to hold this meeting here; properly it should have been on
Enterprise,
since she’s flagship for this operation. But I think we might have crowded your briefing room a bit.”

“I think you’re right,” he said, looking at the two Klaha, three Eyren and one!’ hew standing at the center of the table, each one of them nearly the size of half a shuttlecraft. “In any case, let’s get introductions over with so that we can get down to business. Captain Rihaul, may I present my first officer and science officer, Mr. Spock”—Spock bowed slightly—“my chief engineer, Montgomery Scott; my chief surgeon, Leonard McCoy.”

“Honored, gentlemen, most honored,” Captain Rihaul said, taking them each by the hand, though foregoing the jump-start motion she had used on Jim. “Welcome aboard
Inaieu
.” She led them toward the table. “I present to you my officers: first officer and chief of science Araun Yihoun; chief of surgery Lahiyn Roharrn; chief engineer Lellyn UUriul. And our guests; outside the table, from
Constellation
—”

“Jim and I have met, Nhauris,” said Mike Walsh, reaching out to grip Jim’s hand warmly. “Academy—then posts together on
Excalibur,
ages back. When did we last see each other? That M-5 business, wasn’t it? Horrible mess, machine getting out of hand…”

Out of the corner of his eye Jim could see McCoy getting very interested indeed. “This meeting’s a lot better than that one,” he said, looking Mike up and down. Long ago, Jim and his classmates had used to tease Mike that it was a good thing Starfleet didn’t have the old space agencies’ maximum height requirement; otherwise Walsh would never have made it past atmosphere. He was six foot six, a slim man with sandy blond hair, a long, loose-limbed lope, and a look of eternal, friendly calculation, as if he were doing odds in his head. Probably he was; Mike had a reputation among his friends for being the biggest gambler in Starfleet. It might have been a problem, if he didn’t always win. Nobody played poker with Mike Walsh—at least, not twice—but people fought to get aboard
Constellation
. Her command record since Mike took her was almost the equal of
Enterprise’
s for danger, daring, and success not only snatched from the jaws of failure, but afterward used to beat failure over the head. It was easy enough for Jim to understand. Mike Walsh hated to lose as much as Jim did; and he had carefully surrounded himself with people who felt the same way. It was a good way to stay alive in a dangerous galaxy.

Mike waved at his officers—a Terran Oriental, and two handsome, intense-looking women, one a Tellarite. “My first, Raela hr’Sassish; my chief surgeon, Aline MacDougall; my chief engineer, Iwao Sasaoka.”

“And here is the Captain of
Intrepid
,” Rihaul said from one side. “Captain Kirk, may I present Captain Suvuk.”

“Sir,” Jim said, bowing slightly—not just because Vulcans were not handshaking types. This was, after all, the man who had saved nearly thirty other ships and the lives of thousands of Starfleet personnel by willingly delivering himself into the hands of the Klingons during their last brief war with the Federation. That war had been won on another front, at Organia. But Suvuk, even after being physically tortured, and then subjected to the Klingon mind-sifter, had still, in rapid succession, broken free of his captors on the Klingon flagship
Hakask
at Regulus; disabled the ship’s warp-drive and melted down its impulse engines, strewing unconscious, injured, and occasionally dead Klingons liberally along the way as he went; made solid-logic copies of everything of interest in the Klingons’ library computers, then dumped the computers themselves; and had finally made it back aboard his own ship in a stolen Klingon shuttlecraft, well before the Organians’ ban fell and both Klingons and Federation suddenly found their weapons too hot to handle. The Federation had later given Suvuk the Pentares Peace Commendation, with the extra cluster for conspicuous heroism.

But it did not take decorations to make it obvious that this was a man to be reckoned with. Suvuk was much shorter than Spock, and slighter; that Jim had known from holos he’d seen, and had wondered at, hearing the reports of what he did on
Hakask
. Now Jim didn’t wonder. What the holos didn’t adequately express was the sheer force of the personality living inside that rather ordinary-looking body. This was someone Jim had suspected might exist, without ever having seen confirmation of it—a full Vulcan so powerfully certain of himself that he had no need to be bound any more than he desired to be by the conventions of his homeworld. The face was sharp, set and cool, like that of almost every Vulcan Jim had ever seen. But it was also still, from within, in some way that most younger Vulcan faces only imitated. There was slight wrinkling around the eyes and mouth, an almost lazy droop to the eyes; a look of ease and relaxation, though the body held itself erect and alert, its power ready, but leashed.
This is what Spock might look like in sixty years or so,
Jim thought.
I hope I live to see it….

“Captain,” Suvuk said. Jim was surprised again; who would have thought such a powerful voice would come out of such a small person? He held up one hand in the Vulcan parted-hand salute. “I greet you, for my world as well as for myself. We have had cause to acknowledge your contributions to us before this; nor would it be speculation to state that we doubtless will again.” He turned to Spock and Scott and McCoy. “Long life and prosperity to you, Spock,” he said, and Spock lifted a hand and returned the salute and the greeting. “To you also, Mr. Scott, and Dr. McCoy. Doctor,” Suvuk said, letting his hand fall, “I read your recent paper on conjoint enzyme adjustment and cryotherapy as applied to the traumatized Vulcan simulpericardium. May I compliment you on it? It is precise, comprehensive, and conclusive.”

McCoy’s face was so still that Jim knew he was concealing absolute astonishment under it, saving it for later. “Captain,” he said, “I’m gratified to hear you say so. All I need to know now is whether the technique will work as well in the field as it did on paper and in the lab.”

“Oh, as to that, you may make your mind easy,” Suvuk said, “for the T’Saien Clinic at the Vulcan Science Academy is already using it on their patients. I should know; I was one of them, some months back.” McCoy’s eyebrows went up; that was all he allowed himself for the moment, though Jim strongly suspected the Saurian brandy would be flowing in sickbay when they got back. “But we may discuss that later,” Suvuk said. “My chief surgeon will also desire to hear what more you may have to say; the syndrome is a problem for us. My chief surgeon, Sobek; my chief engineer, T’Leiar; my first officer, Sehlk.” One after another his officers nodded in acknowledgment—the slightly stout doctor, Sobek; the willowy, blue-eyed T’Leiar, with her long black hair; and Sehlk, a man much like Suvuk, but younger—small, darker skinned than the others, and with a keen, ready, intense look about him, all very much controlled. “Captains, gentlebeings all, shall we sit? Captain Kirk no doubt has a great deal to discuss.”