Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu, Book 5: The Empty Chair

by Diane Duane

  “I want to know,” the Praetor muttered. But for the moment he seemed to decide to let the subject rest. “What about Artaleirh?”

  “The Fleet will be there in a matter of hours,” tr’Anierh said.

  “They are to chastise the planet immediately, and then turn their attention to finding that woman,” Urellh said. “She must be destroyed without delay. Word of what happened to end the negotiations will certainly leak out—damn those treacherous neirrh who stole Farmer Gurri out of Gorget’s very infirmary! But we can at least slow it down.”

  “Once the Fleet handles Artaleirh—”

  “Assuming they can,” Urellh snarled. “The under-commanders are so divided among themselves at the moment, the Fleet Master Admiral tells me, that they can hardly even fly in the same direction. This blasted infection is spreading, and I don’t doubt some of it has been spread by you two.” He glared at tr’Anierh.

  “This seed’s of your sowing, Urellh,” tr’Anierh said, more mildly than he needed to. “A couple of years ago you were all for ‘strengthening personal ties with the Fleet,’ as you called it. Of course what you meant was, ‘wresting its individual commanders’ loyalties to oneself so as to render the Grand Fleet Admirals largely powerless in any crisis.’ And as you did so, then so did we all; for what one of the Three does, we all do, in self-defense if not out of policy. Why should it be any news to you now that the commanders are now studying to dance to their masters’ harps—that is to say, ours? And why has this outcome surprised you?”

  “If we were unified in our opinions,” Urellh said softly, “it would not matter.”

  Even Armh’n looked amused at that. “We’re not one mind in three bodies yet, Urellh. Nor will be, at the rate things are going. Each of us has his own power bloc to manage in the Senate, and each of them is trying to go in its own direction, like wayward hlai before the dinner pail’s heard clanking. Soon enough they’ll all be lined up at the gate again. But for the time being we must let them think what they’re doing is their idea. And we must not lose our nerve. Artaleirh’s outcome will settle them down.”

  “It had better,” Urellh said. “How long now?”

  “Three hours, give or take a little time.”

  “We must meet at the Grand Fleet command center in five hours, then. The signal will be delayed coming back, but not too much.”

  The other two nodded, and Urellh slapped the blue light to kill the antiscan devices. A moment later the door swung open, and the Three came out again.

  Their small suites of attendants were waiting for them, all of the Three having come from a morning session of the Senate, one of the last before the sessions could move back to their proper place under the Dome. Urellh rounded immediately on one of his attendants. “You are to get in contact with the heads of the news and broadcast services,” he said, “and let them know that their heads, not their reporters’, will answer for any escape of the news about the…difficulties…at the talks. Not a breath of it is to come out on ch’Rihan and ch’Havran; they may say that Gorget has come back for instructions, if they like, while the other ships remain engaged elsewhere. Control of the information may be more difficult farther out, but we can still make our presence felt. Tell Intelligence to get out there and offer swords to a few of the most outspoken of the reporters. And help them along a little bit if they don’t understand the gesture. That kind of thing is what Intelligence is best at, anyway.”

  Off Urellh went, growling orders to the four directions and the five winds as he went, while his sweating attendants hurried to keep up with him; and tr’Anierh watched him go. Beside him, Armh’n did not move.

  Both their own groups of attendants hung back for the moment. There in the momentary quiet, tr’Anierh said softly to Armh’n, “I am sorry to hear of your loss at the talks.”

  “That idiot,” Armh’n said. “Plainly he got caught in the middle of someone else’s game, or in one of his own, as if I thought him capable of playing any game with the slightest degree of subtlety. Well, something may come of this anyway. Once I finish overseeing the interrogation of the pertinent crew on Gorget, we may be able to accuse the Federation of old Uncle Gurri’s death, if nothing else.”

  “We have accused them of a great many other things, but nothing has come of it,” tr’Anierh said. “This, I think, will not trouble their sleep.”

  “Other things soon will,” Armh’n said, more softly still. “Especially if they like sleeping with the lights on.”

  Jim and Spock were down in Jim’s quarters when the desk monitor whistled for attention. Jim swung around behind his desk, hit the button. “Kirk here.”

  Ael’s image, from Bloodwing’s bridge, appeared. “Captain, I would like to make known to you Courhig tr’Mahan stai-Norrik, who leads the local defense fleet. I believe his title, if the locals were much for titles, would translate as ‘commodore,’ if by that you mean the most senior-ranked of a nonmilitary captain-group.”

  The image on the screen divided. Standing on a bridge that was, if anything, even more cramped-looking than Ael’s, was a short, round Romulan with close-cropped bristly gray hair, wearing what looked more like a businessman’s dark one-piece suit than any kind of uniform. His round face, wrinkled like that of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors, made Jim think of a bulldog—one that wasn’t angry yet, but was looking forward to becoming so. “Captain,” he said, “whatever relations between the Federation and the Empire have been until now, please believe me when I say that you are very welcome here.”

  “Sir, I thank you,” Jim said, “but one thing I’d very much like to clear up is exactly where the local government stands on what is about to happen here.”

  Tr’Mahan smiled slightly. “Captain, both from the Imperial point of view and from that of my cohabitants here, I am the local government. As much of it as the Imperium routinely paid any attention to, at least. ‘Planetary governor’ would probably be a good rendering. I am native to Artaleirh, involved in politics here for a long while before I was chosen by the Imperium, they thought, as a good candidate to get the taxes in and keep the locals in line. But I do not have that much power anymore—not after the way we have been treated over the last decade. So I have taken this opportunity to change jobs.”

  There was a wicked look in his eye, but his expression also looked a little tentative, as if he were wondering how Jim would take this. “The job security,” Jim said, “might not be much like that of your earlier position.”

  “True,” tr’Mahan said. “But it seems increasingly preferable. We have had many years during which the rulership of the Imperium over our system has become increasingly irksome—our resources depleted and wasted on military adventurism, our rights curtailed. For perhaps the last decade and a half, as you reckon time, the great families here and other political activists have been investigating other options. Finally, having made ourselves sure of how many other worlds around the Imperium share our way of thinking, we chose this time to move. We informed the Imperium ten days ago that we would no longer deal with them except as an independent entity. The dispatch of a cruiser task force to enforce our ‘loyalty’ and collect hostages was the result. They have given us no choice: we must fight.”

  “With what?” Jim said.

  “We have five small vessels, which I believe you would rank as ‘light cruisers,’” tr’Mahan said. “I speak to you from one of them, Sithesh. These vessels have been…attached? commandeered?…from the first Imperial forces to visit us in an attempt to enforce their demands.”

  “Not, I would take it, with their cooperation,” Spock said.

  “Indeed not, sir. We were fortunately able to keep the Grand Fleet from discovering what had happened to the captured ships for some days, but no more—this being part of the reason those nine much more heavily armed ships are now on their way here.”

  “I take it you’ve re-ID’d all the captured vessels by now.”

  “We have, Captain. We will be passing that data
on to your communications officer when I finish here. Now, the light cruisers are by themselves too few to engage the biggest of the incoming ships effectively. However, we also have nearly three hundred smaller vessels, formerly in civilian service, now all fitted with phasers or single-shot photon torpedoes. Singly and scattered, they would not be worth much in a major engagement, but as a whole coordinated microfleet, they will be of value.”

  “If not deployed too soon,” Spock said. “There is great danger if they are brought into play before the most powerful of the Imperial vessels are disabled or destroyed.”

  “Which brings us to the coronal injection protocol you have been calling Sunseed,” tr’Mahan said. “We would ask you not to use this instrumentality unless you absolutely must. Doubtless you would prefer not to anyway. But first of all, we would rather not recklessly endanger the planet—some of us still desire to live there after all this is over. And secondly, your description makes it sound as if the effect would almost infallibly destroy any ship that hits it with its screens incorrectly tuned, and we do not want to destroy those ships.”

  Jim nodded, though he had been afraid of this. “You want more prizes.”

  Tr’Mahan looked slightly bemused. “Your translator may have a fault, for it is using a word indicating what one receives on winning a game.” He grinned. “If this is a game, we play for the greatest stakes: our lives and our world’s freedom—or at the very least, the right of its people to seek their freedom elsewhere. But yes, Captain. It is difficult for powerful ships like yours to disable one another without doing massive damage that will take very prolonged repair at a space-dock facility. And destruction is all too likely if someone misses, or misjudges the status of another’s screens. Small ships, however, are more nimble than the big ships in a combat like this, far more maneuverable at the lower speeds that intersystem combat mandates.”

  “As long as you can enforce those low speeds,” Jim said.

  “That,” said tr’Mahan, “is what our asteroid belt is for.”

  Spock was already nodding, for this was a part of the classic tactics-set he had mentioned to Jim. “It is a useful strategy, Captain, one that has proven its effectiveness elsewhere. The crucial factor, of course, is forcing an opponent to engage you there.”

  “And once we have forced such an engagement,” tr’Mahan said, “we can concentrate our efforts on disabling the attacking vessels. Once taken, they will be valuable additions to our fleet.”

  “Just how are you planning to make this fight happen where you want it?” Jim said.

  “The incoming fleet will almost certainly initially attack the planet,” said tr’Mahan, “to try to make the battle happen there instead. But there will be no response to that attack. If they wish to engage us, they will do it where we please.”

  Jim nodded again, very slowly, thinking that these people must have nerves of steel, or an extremely angry planetary population, to willingly take such a stance. “All right. If you’re thinking along these lines, there are doubtless sites in the asteroid belt that the Imperium feels you’re more likely to defend even than the planet. That would probably be the best place for us to position ourselves.”

  “The central dilithium processing facility is as important to them as to us. They will attempt to secure it, or if they cannot do so, to destroy it so that it will be no use to us either.”

  “Or to the Klingons,” Jim said, “should they turn up.”

  “Yes, Captain. Though there has been no sign of them as yet, we are still alert to that possibility.”

  “All right.” Jim thought for a moment. “If you’ll pass the coordinates you suggest via my communications officer, I’ll have a look at them and give you my thoughts within a few minutes. Ael?”

  “I have seen them, and knowing this system from previous visits, I find the suggestion a good one,” Ael said. “I await your opinion.”

  “Right. Meanwhile—” He looked hard at tr’Mahan. “In a ‘surgical’ operation like this, as regards attempting to take the ships of the incoming fleet, first of all, they’re likely to try to self-destruct.”

  “We have protocols by which we hope to keep that from happening,” tr’Mahan said.

  Do you indeed? Another interesting new development. “But the other matter is potentially more painful. You’re likely to lose a significant number of your little ships to both firepower and confusion.”

  “Our pilots understand that,” tr’Mahan said. “They are willing to take the risk, and to pay the price, or they would not all still be out there in the belt, waiting, as they have been for several days. Such long waits out in the dark and the cold give plenty of opportunity for second thoughts, but we have had very few defections.”

  Jim glanced at Spock, now understanding the source of some of those extra “energy sources” in the asteroid belt that he had mentioned. “But, Commodore—”

  “Please, Captain. Tr’Mahan is good enough; I haven’t yet done the service to earn me such a title, and taking names to oneself without justification is only tempting the Elements.” The man eased his bulk down into his command chair. “I understand your concerns. Courage and luck are not enough: skill is needed too. I can say only this: before I was a planetary governor, when I was just starting to be a politician, I was also a dilithium miner. I am used to working out in that belt. Some reflexes don’t get lost over time, and are quickly recovered in life-or-death situations like this. The rocks are not close together, of course, but working at substantial fractions of lightspeed can make them seem so, and in such circumstances, my pilots and I may show you a thing or three about rock-dodging that you didn’t previously know.”

  “I hope so.” Jim let out a breath. “You also have to understand that as far as saving those big ships for you goes, I’ll do what I can within reason. But as for myself, if things get too hot for Enterprise, I’ll blow up just as many of them as I have to.”

  “Feel free,” said tr’Mahan, and he grinned. “In the aftermath, we will simply tell the Empire that we have all their ships, and are keeping some in reserve. By the time they find out the truth, they will have many other things to worry about. But in any case, if we cannot have those ships, they are better destroyed. They’ll not then make trouble for us later, when we move on ch’Rihan.”

  Jim had to smile slightly himself. He was beginning to like this man.

  Ael said, “A number of other systems, Captain, are watching to see what happens here. If we can make a success of this engagement, they will come out into the open and join us.”

  “We get to be the pebbles that start the landslide,” Jim said. “Better than being at the bottom of the slope watching it come down, I guess.” He pushed his chair back. “I’m going to go look at your schematics now.”

  “Your communications officer has them,” tr’Mahan said. He paused and added, “My own ops officer tells me that a subspace message just in from the monitoring buoys associated with a nearby system confirms the approach of those nine ships. They are coming in together, from the galactic north-polar direction. For us, that is a dive straight into the system, most likely toward the planet, at an angle nearly perpendicular to our local ecliptic. My ship is presently in orbit around Artaleirh. If you’ll follow me out on impulse, I’ll show you where we will make our stand.”

  “We’ll be right along. A pleasure to talk to you, tr’Mahan. Let’s meet again after this is over.”

  “Preferably while still breathing,” tr’Mahan said, grinning again.

  His image flicked away. “Ael,” Jim said, “give me a few minutes.”

  She nodded; the screen went dark. Jim got up and headed for the door, Spock right behind him.

  TWO

  A few minutes later Jim came up into the bridge with Spock. “I have a lock on Sithesh, Captain,” Sulu said as they entered. “Following them into the belt.”

  “Very good, Mr. Sulu. Spock, let’s have the detailed schematic of the belt.”

  Spock brought it up
on the main screen. It was not a dangerous place for small ships working at small fractions of impulse, nor was there any reason that it should be, with the average distance between even the smaller bodies a matter of hundreds or thousands of kilometers. Nonetheless there were places where gravitational “knotting” and other minor perturbational drifts brought the asteroids clumping closer together than usual, sometimes only ten or twenty or fifty kilometers apart. For little ships, again, the situation was manageable. But for starships…

  Sulu was looking at that schematic as closely as Jim and Spock were. “It’s the briar patch, Captain,” Sulu said softly, “and we’re not even going to wait to be thrown in.”

  “No, but the other guys are going to get scratched as badly as we will,” Jim said. “Worse, because they don’t have you.”

  Sulu grinned, and indicated a small bright blot on the screen. “Sir, is that the dilithium processing facility?”

  “That’s it,” Jim said. “Some strange motions on some of the asteroids in that area.”

  “They’re probably nudged around a lot by casual propulsion effect from the ships servicing the facility,” Sulu said. “You’d be surprised how even just chemical jets can affect these asteroid systems over time. And all kinds of other random perturbations occur in a setup like this. Sometimes the rocks even bang into each other.” He looked thoughtfully at the schematic. “Sometimes, you can make them bang into each other.” He glanced over at Chekov, raising his eyebrows. Chekov’s eyes narrowed, and he produced the shadow of a nasty grin.

  Jim began slowly to smile. “Mr. Sulu,” he said, “maybe you want to talk to some of our—” Enemies? Allies? In a situation like this, terminology could too easily slip and cut you…now, or retroactively. “—cocombatants out there about what you see as possible options.”

  Sulu nodded. “Uhura, would you get me Antecenturion Khiy over on Bloodwing?”

  “Right away.”

  Shortly thereafter Jim sat in bemusement while Chekov immersed himself in a very comprehensive recalibration and fine-tuning of the controls for the ship’s tractor and pressor arrays, and Sulu and Khiy immersed themselves more and more deeply into a discussion about very-large-set-enumeration algorithms and best-guess mass determinators and other flights of what sounded like technological fancy—except that Sulu was plainly in deadly earnest, and so, to judge by his voice, was Khiy. Their voices and Chekov’s held something of the barely contained excitement of children who have found a new and interesting way to break things, and have been told by their too-permissive elders to go find out how well it works. Jim got up out of the center seat and glanced at the chrono. It was at least two hours until anything would start to happen, and he was already in that paradoxical state where he wished it would happen now, while also wishing he had at least another day to prepare.