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

by Diane Duane

  “They could have,” said tr’Anierh. “And we cannot now spare the resources to send another task force to drive them out of that space, even if they are still only there in whatever force they used to take it. The situation is worsening on the other client worlds, and there are persistent rumors out of Augo that something is about to happen there.”

  “The Klingons wouldn’t dare come so close!” tr’Maehllie said, almost in a hiss, and tr’Anierh knew he was meant to take it for another rage starting, but he knew by the sound that tr’Maehllie’s reaction wasn’t anger. It was fear.

  Tr’Anierh knew that fear too, but was not going to waste time railing against circumstance. “This is what we have always hoped would never happen. Civil unrest at home while we start to prosecute a war.”

  “War I don’t mind!” Urellh shouted. “Elements only know we’ve been waiting for a chance to deal with the Federation once and for all, and it’s almost upon us—a matter of days only—but why does this have to happen now? We cannot handle both them and the Klingons at the same time!”

  Perhaps this is something you should have considered earlier, tr’Anierh thought, and did not say. You were always so sure that they were not capable of moving quickly, but that’s not what the monitoring satellites tell us. “It’s a pity that we cannot get the Klingons to attack the Federation instead of us,” tr’Anierh said. “A shame that our diplomatic contacts have always been so ineffective and short lived.”

  “Au, they despise us,” tr’Maehllie said. “Possibly even more than we despise them. They would do nothing that would help us, no matter how much it benefited them.” He got up and started pacing again. “And for once the vhai’d Federation is not moving with its accustomed sloth. No, ships are coming into the near-border starbases from all over. They are going to enter our space in strength, in a matter of days, and overrun all the near side of the Outmarches! All those planets will be lost at least for supply purposes, the only other reliable supply for dilithium except Artaleirh—”

  “That is not what the cipher traffic indicates,” tr’Anierh said. “The latest dispatches suggest that they will come through the Outmarches, yes, but then hold on the near side and try another diplomatic initiative to keep the war from going any further.”

  “That’s the old cipher,” Urellh said, annoyed. “They know we’ve broken it; we’re being fed disinformation.”

  “No,” tr’Anierh said. “This is the new one. It was more susceptible to breakage than they believed. Someone got lazy, or hurried, about the code, and reused elements of the last one, so we have an advantage they were not suspecting.”

  “Well, wonderful,” Urellh said. “But this is no better. ‘Diplomatic initiative!’ Do they truly think we’d ever agree to such a thing while they were inside our own space? I’ll tell you what it is, tr’Anierh. They’re going to block our escape on that side, and then sit there and wait for the damned Klingons to come down on us and do their work for them! And when that’s done, and the Klingon fleets are well reduced by the exercise of destroying us, then the Federation will come down on the Klingons in their turn and finish them! Nothing will be left for thousands of parsecs around but space that the Federation owns—and all our worlds in ashes, to be terraformed by them and their culture planted on top of ours, as one plants the alefruit tree where the volcano’s been!”

  Urellh lurched up out of his chair, and tr’Anierh saw that he was about to start breaking things again. “There’s time still to avoid that eventuality,” tr’Anierh said, “and that’s done by ending the civil unrest, and stopping the fight that’s about to happen at Augo. There we will meet them, and there we will destroy them, and the Klingons will think again about meddling with us—if we can but hold our nerve. Both Empire and Federation look for us to panic, now, and I for one do not intend to give either of them the satisfaction. Time enough for that when we actually see the Klingons in our own space, rather than just hearing them boasting about it at a distance. If they did destroy Bloodwing, fine; they’ve saved us a job. We can broadcast the news that the woman’s been reduced to plasma, and the Sword with her. Cut off the head and the body may stagger about for a little while, but it’ll fall down at last; the rebellions will disintegrate, and whatever anger remains for the theft of the Sword can very profitably be laid at the Klingons’ door. Then we deal with the Klingons if they do indeed make any incursions into our space.”

  “I should prefer better Intelligence of Bloodwing’s destruction,” tr’Maehllie said.

  “So would I, but we have no leisure to send a forensics team out there right now,” tr’Anierh said. “Let us wait and see what we hear over the Federation’s monitoring satellites. That particular keyhole is proving very profitable to listen at, and whatever else we might say about them, the Federation’s intelligence network is nearly as well developed as ours. If the Klingons did indeed destroy our ships at Artaleirh, and Bloodwing with them, then I’d wager we will soon hear confirmation about that from the Federation side. I’d think they’d be relieved, for the damned woman has been as much an annoyance to them as to us, almost. With her dead, they might even be willing to look aside from the loss of life at RV Trianguli, once we’d driven the Klingons away, and they saw which way the wind was blowing. Meanwhile, we have the Senate to manage, defenses to man, work enough to keep us busy until matters clarify themselves. Grand Fleet in particular is growing restive with the recent losses; they’re preparing battle plans for Augo already. We’ll need to spend this afternoon doing our own research on the system, so they don’t think we’re going to simply take their word for everything; that’s no way to run a military.”

  Urellh sat still for a moment. Then he looked up at tr’Anierh. “For all your annoying ways,” Urellh said, “you are a steady head when there’s trouble. This will not be forgotten.”

  “That’s as may be,” said tr’Anierh. “But whatever happens, we have no time to tear at each other’s throats right now—there will be teeth enough at them shortly. We will be wanted in the city shortly; come ride with me.”

  “Let me take a moment to change,” Urellh said.

  He went out of the retiring room. That I much doubt you’ll do, tr’Anierh thought. But let’s see if you manage at least to contain yourself over the days to come, so that it doesn’t become necessary to raise your blood pressure one last time.

  ELEVEN

  The gathering in main recreation was scheduled to start, as usual, around the time alpha shift came off duty. Only a little after that, Jim slipped in. It was an early arrival for him; he’d had a long day, what with getting caught up on paperwork that had been allowed to slip since the unfolding of events at RV Trianguli and Artaleirh. Now he wanted a while to unwind, and also to watch the crew come in. But at least forty people were there before him, starting the business of denuding the buffet tables and gossiping at maximum speed. Jim knew what they were gossiping about.

  There’s a leak somewhere in the command crew, was always his first thought, but the truth was simply that the Enterprise’s crew were intelligent people, who could read the gestalt and feel of their vessel nearly as well as Jim could. They knew something was up. Even just looking at it from the strictly logical point of view, Jim thought as he paused by one of the tables to get himself some iced tea, everyone understands what we’ve just been through. These people know their history and their politics. You don’t get assigned to a starship by isolating yourself from the doings of the planetbound. It is, after all, the planetbound who determine, at a remove, what we do.

  He stood there watching as more people came in, heading straight for the food and drink, laughing, hailing friends from other departments. From behind Jim a voice said, “Smart move to get here early. You’d think nobody ever fed these people.”

  Jim turned to see Harb Tanzer, the head of recreation, watching the increasing numbers at the tables. “I thought you said you usually kept some of the best dishes for later in the evening.”

  “It’s
becoming a challenge,” Tanzer said, and nodded at a small group of crewmen gathered down at the end of one of the tables. “Scotty’s bad kids down there keep sneaking in and reprogramming the food delivery systems when they think I’m not looking.”

  His smile was just a little more somber than usual. “How have they been?” Jim said.

  Tanzer shook his head. “I doubt you really need to ask me. You can feel the air.”

  “A little tense.”

  “A little tense,” Harb said. “But let’s give it a while and see how things go. Look, there come the first instruments.”

  Jim glanced off to one side and saw that Lieutenant Penney from data analysis had come in with a guitar over his shoulder, closely followed by an ensign Jim didn’t immediately recognize, carrying an electronic violin. “Always a good sign,” Harb said.

  “Mostly of off-key singing.” Jim smiled a little.

  “If I ever heard any of that in here, I wouldn’t admit it,” Harb said. “Is the Romulan contingent coming in this evening?”

  “Ael will be here,” Jim said, “and some of her people, but probably not for a while yet. There’s still a lot of tidying up going on over on Bloodwing, I understand.”

  “Fine,” Harb said. “We still have a separate processor set up for them. I’ll see that they know where it is. Forgive me, Captain, I haven’t got all the conversation pits set up yet.”

  “Go on,” Jim said, and Tanzer headed off across the room. Jim got himself that iced tea, settled into an unoccupied conversation pit over at the edge of things, underneath the huge windows that looked aft of Enterprise into space, and did his best to relax.

  It took some doing, for both the threat to Earth and the upcoming battle at Augo kept coming into his mind, and Jim kept finding himself trying to think of measures he ought to be taking, things he had missed. He had to keep pushing those thoughts out of his mind again. This is recreation, Jim thought. This is where you’re supposed to let that go, if only for a little while. So recreate yourself!

  He leaned over the media table that sat in the middle of the pit and tapped at it to see what Harb had loaded into the master rec computer at the moment. There were all the usual games—endless card games, including the rather bizarre “four-and-a-half-handed” module of Fizzbin that Chekov had been building for some months now; every kind of board game, including a huge volume of “fairy chess” variants, in two, three, and four dimensions; and games of every other kind, including roleplay, historical, strategic, geometric, spatial manipulation, and thousands of others, imported from no telling how many other planets.

  “Looking for something in particular, Captain?” said a voice seemingly out of the air. It was Moira, the personality that Harb had had added to the rec computer the last time Enterprise was in for a major refit.

  “Peace in our time?” Jim said under his breath.

  “You might as well ask for the Holy Grail while you’re at it,” Moira said.

  Jim laughed under his breath. The “For Argument’s Sake” personality module was an out-of-the-box augmentation that could be applied to most stand-alone computer systems with enough memory. But Moira’s sense of humor, and “her” tone of voice, always made Jim think of McCoy—and since recreation was a department of medicine, reporting directly to the ship’s surgeon, Jim wasn’t particularly surprised by this. “If you did have it stashed around here somewhere,” Jim said, “I’d be nervous about keeping it on board right now.”

  “If I understand the stories correctly, if it was here, it could probably take care of itself. Is there anything else I can get for you, Captain? There are some new things added to inventory over the last couple of weeks. Something in a poker simulation, perhaps?”

  “Why bother simulating poker?” Jim said.

  “It’s an interactive tutorial. Some of the Romulans were inquiring about it.”

  “Aha,” Jim said. He looked across the room and saw Spock approaching, with his Vulcan harp under his arm. “It can wait for the moment, Moira. You might want to bring up a chessboard, though.”

  “How many dimensions, Captain?”

  “Three,” he said. “Bring up the last game that Mr. Spock and I didn’t finish.”

  “A week and a half ago,” Moira said, “before we arrived at RV Trianguli.”

  Jim shook his head in mild astonishment. That seemed about a year ago, but then life had been seeming to pass at a rather accelerated rate lately.

  Spock, about to step down into the pit, paused. “Captain, if you are otherwise occupied—”

  “Not at all. Please sit down, Mr. Spock. Why the ryill? Are you playing tonight?”

  “I think not,” Spock said, “but Mr. Scott and K’s’t’lk are deep in discussion of some rather abstruse physics, and I think Commander Uhura may want to continue following the Hamalki version of the discussion in the musical mode.” Spock put the harp down a few feet away on the cushions of the pit and examined the 3D chessboard that Moira had used the media table’s transporter to materialize. “You are sure you wish to resume this game, Captain?” Spock said, giving him one of those looks through which the amusement was absolutely not supposed to show, yet did. “I predict mate in twelve.”

  “Ah, but whose?” Jim said.

  Spock raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

  “Go on, Mr. Spock,” Jim said. “White to play.”

  They played, not hurrying. The room kept on filling up. Within fifteen or twenty minutes, there were maybe eighty or ninety people in there, a significant proportion of alpha shift, and the noise level was approaching what it ought to have been at one of these functions. See, Jim thought, they’re relaxing. You should too.

  “Check, Captain.”

  Jim looked down at the board with annoyance. “Sorry, Mr. Spock.”

  Spock briefly glanced up at the room. “Doubtless the noise level is making it difficult for you to concentrate.”

  “Spock,” Jim said wryly, “I don’t think that’s the problem, but thank you. It’s actually mate in six, isn’t it?”

  “After that last move,” Spock said, “yes.”

  Jim turned his attention back to the board. After what seemed like only a few moments, an amused voice said from behind him, “I have studied his games as carefully, but it does me little good. Your tactics, at least, I can understand.”

  Jim looked up, surprised. Ael was leaning on the back of the conversation-pit sofa, looking down ruefully at the board, while Uhura leaned over the other side of the pit to pick up Spock’s ryill.

  “I thought I would have spotted you coming in,” Jim said. “My apologies.”

  “Captain, none are needed,” Ael said. “How you could have spotted anyone through this crowd, that would have been the mystery.” She looked over toward the buffet tables, where new food was constantly materializing, and vanishing nearly as quickly. “And more are coming, I see.”

  Jim glanced at Spock. “Maybe we should resume this later?”

  Spock nodded; Jim reached down to touch the table, and the board and pieces were transported away. Ael slipped into the pit to sit a little apart from Jim. “I received a copy of the proposal you sent to Veilt tr’Tyrava,” she said.

  Jim nodded. “And?”

  The look Ael gave him was quite matter-of-fact, so much so that Jim wondered if she were trying to get a rise out of him. “Well,” she said with a very slight smile, “we already have evidence of what you are worth as a tactician in the small scale. But now I see you have increased the aunt significantly.”

  “‘Upped the ante,’” Jim said. “Commander, have you been taking language lessons from K’s’t’lk?”

  “No,” Ael said, and laughed. “But there have been some poker lessons. After Mr. Scott discussed the game with my master engineer earlier, he and his crew became enthusiastic, so Mr. Scott was kind enough to send tr’Keirianh some tutorials. They took my fancy as well when he showed them to me. The game is complex and interesting, and from my crew’s point of view, a
ny new way to redistribute their personal wealth is always welcome. But the idiom—I was sure I had it right. Or is the translator failing again?”

  “It’s the homonyms,” Uhura said, glancing up. She had been checking the harp’s stringing; now she touched its “on” control to give the old-fashioned solid-state electronics time to warm up. “They’re always a weak point in the present implementation of the translator. They keep promising they’ll fix it in the next version.” She glanced over at Ael. “I’ll have a word with it, Commander—patch you in a module of games terminology to suit those tutorials, and a translation of Hoyle as well, if I can find one I can adapt quickly.”

  “Thank you, Commander. I take that very kindly.”

  Uhura wandered off into the crowd. Spock glanced at Jim, asking without words whether he should leave. “No, stick around, Spock,” Jim said.

  Ael gave him another look. “I thought our language was rich in peculiar idiom, but yours is far more so. I would not have thought of Mr. Spock as particularly adhesive.”

  Spock bowed his head to her slightly. “That reassures me, Commander.”

  “English is like that, I’m afraid,” Jim said, “It doesn’t so much borrow words and idioms from other languages and cultures as chase them down dark alleys, bludgeon them into submission, and go through their pockets.”

  Ael raised her eyebrows at that. “Well, Captain, one bit of business before we abandon it for the evening. I heard from Veilt earlier. He continues to analyze your proposal along with Courhig and some other members of his own crew. Doubtless he will have some suggestions, and I will have some for you as well. We must meet tomorrow to discuss them. But this I can say…”

  She paused. Jim looked at her, then realized she was indeed hesitating for the sake of his reaction. “If I’d made you wait that long before we fired at those torpedoes running up your rear at RV Trianguli,” he said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”