by Diane Duane
“I’m not sure that’s what I meant.”
“Neither am I. But in any case it is mnhei’sahe. The bondage beyond reason, beyond hope or pain or escape. The bond that not even betrayal can break—only snarl around the heart until the betrayer’s heart scars. The bond of word, of choice. Unbreakable.”
“Death—”
“Death avails nothing against it. Your parents, your own brother who is dead—oh, yes, we know. What use is intelligence but for the knowing of one’s enemies? Have you come to love your relatives any less for their being dead? Or perhaps more?”
The captain said nothing.
“So you see the nature of this bondage between beings who fight the same fight,” Ael said. “A going in the same direction, for a little while, or for a life, that’s all that’s needed. The decision to go in company. Liking—” Ael shrugged one shoulder. “What need have allies of such a thing?”
“None,” the captain said, “I’m sure.”
They walked along in silence a moment longer. Then Ael paused by a curious thing—a table with a holographic projection above it of a cube divided into many smaller cubes, eight of them to an edge. “What is this?”
“Four-dimensional chess,” said the captain. “Are you familiar with the game?”
“No.”
The captain smiled at her, and a very odd smile it was, one that made Ael curious. “If we have time—”
“I would be delighted to learn. Now, if you like; I dare say I can spare a few minutes to learn the rules.”
That smile got wider, and the captain pulled out one of the chairs that stood by the table, offering it to her. But neither of them had time to sit down; that infernal whooping began again. Heads went up all over the room, and a lot of the people who had been talking to Ael’s folk excused themselves hurriedly and ran out.
“Red alert,” the Vulcan’s calm voice said, made gigantic over the ship’s annunciator system. “Battle stations, battle stations. This is no drill.”
The captain slapped one hand down on a switch on the game table. “Kirk here.”
“Captain, we have a Romulan vessel at extreme sensor range. K’tinga-class vessel, ID’ing as Romulan ship Javelin.”
“They’re early,” Ael said, alarmed.
“Have they hailed us?” said the captain.
“Not as yet, but they will soon be within range to do so.”
“We’re going to need some more of your people up on the bridge, Commander. Mr. Spock, are Antecenturions Aidoann and Hvaid up there?”
“Affirmative, Captain.”
“Have them handle any communications that come in. No visual until everyone on the bridge is covered by an armed Romulan. Transfer control to the auxiliary bridge immediately and send Mr. Sulu and Mr. Chekov down there to handle things.”
“Done, sir.”
“Good. Give me allcall. Commander—”
“This is t’Rllaillieu,” Ael said, astonished at how her voice echoed in this flying cavern. “Rihannsu, report at speed to your assigned posts. Helmets all, and make sure any distinguishing insignia of Bloodwing about you are removed. If in doubt about any necessary action, consult with your ‘prisoners.’” She allowed herself a slight laugh on the word; the captain looked grim, but his eyes danced all the same. “Remember, you are Cuirass crew; do nothing to attract attention to yourselves when we are monitored! Honor to you—and mnhei’sahe. Out.”
The captain was looking at her quizzically. “I wished them luck,” Ael said.
He shook his head. “I thought that word meant ‘love.’”
Ael quirked half a grin at him. “What use is a word that means only one thing? Besides, in this context, they are nearly the same….”
He looked bemused, but only for the instant; then he was all officer again, hard and ready. “You may have something there. In the meantime, I think you’ll be needed on the bridge. Mr. Spock,” he said to the intercom, “our presence has been requested at a little theatrical. Would you care to join me in the brig?”
“My pleasure, Captain. Bridge out.”
The humor in the Vulcan’s voice was so little concealed and so dry that Ael had to laugh again; but the laugh lasted for only a breath, fading at the captain’s look. “Madam—” he said.
“I will care for your bridge,” said Ael. And she turned and was off, hurrying, and feeling his eyes in her back like the points of spears.
Very strange, it felt, to sit there in that soft chair at the heart of airy openness, staring at the big screen and waiting. Ael’s heart pounded and her hands were sweating, as they always did before an engagement. She cursed them, as she always did, and rubbed them on her breeches. Around her, her own people failed to notice this business, as usual, and made themselves useful at strange consoles and odd instruments. The only thing missing was Tafv, but he was on Bloodwing, lying low for the moment; after all, Cuirass was not a place where he belonged. Aidoann was on Bloodwing, pretending to be commanding it in Ael’s absence; the commander, Aidoann would be telling Javelin, was aboard Enterprise making it secure and supervising the tapping and recording of its computer library. Hvaid and N’alae sat at the helm console; Khoal manned the science station, and Lhian the communications board. How cool they all looked, how very competent…a shadow of the look they had been wearing down in the recreation deck, while the Enterprise people had been watching them. And how I sit here and twitch like a broody hlai, Ael thought. Fire burn it, we can build a device that can cloak a whole starship, but we can’t find a way to keep people’s hands from sweating—
“Communication from Javelin, khre’Riov,” said Lhian, exactly as if they were back on Bloodwing.
“Accept it,” Ael said.
The screen wavered and settled down, and Ael took a long breath and relaxed. Oh, that bland, round, foolish, familiar face. It was LLunih tr’Raedheol, and the Elements had been kind to her after all, for if anyone in space needed killing, it was this one. A coward and a fool, and one who thought everyone else was just like him, too lazy to do more than exhibit just enough energy to keep Command off his back. “Commander tr’Raedheol,” Ael said, companionably enough, “welcome to the Outmarches. You see we have found something rather interesting floating around out here….”
“Yes,” LLunih said, and the greed, jealousy and hate distilling behind LLunih’s eyes should have killed the man on the spot. Unfortunately, he was immune to his own venom, like the nei’rrh he was. “So Command said. I should appreciate the opportunity to beam over and examine this tremendous prize for myself.”
And try to figure out a way to cheat me out of it, you mean, Ael thought. “Oh, LLunih—may I call you LLunih?”
“Do,” said the repulsive creature, and smiled.
Ael kept herself from shuddering in loathing. “I couldn’t allow that as yet. We are still in the process of learning to handle the command systems aboard this ship. Its officers are understandably annoyed with us, and they have not been as cooperative as would have been wise. These screens, for example; we were working with raising and lowering them, this morning, and we thought they were down—but in an evil moment someone from Cuirass tried to beam over and hit a ‘phantom’ screen of which our intelligence had failed to warn us. An outgrowth of the cloaking device, actually; quite clever.” She smiled whimsically. “But unfortunate, since one of my minor officers is now floating around this part of space, reduced to his component atoms.” Oh, I will pay for that one sooner or later…. “Until we’re sure, I would rather you didn’t take the chance….”
“Oh, Ael, I quite understand….” She lost his next few words, thinking of the old saying that a soiled name may only be washed clean in blood. He has enough of it in all that flab to wash all four of them clean, I’ll warrant. We shall see.
“…find it hard to not want a look at the famous Captain Kiuurk….”
“Oh, as to that,” Ael said, looking wicked, and not having to try too hard this time, “I dare say I could let you see a bit of
what would please you. In fact, I have been hearing complaints from the captain concerning his present lodging; I was about to go down there and settle them with him when you called. If you will hold a moment, you may watch the proceedings.”
“Surely.”
Ael rose and nodded at Lhian: the screen went blank. “Warn them,” she said.
“Khre’Riov,” Lhian said, with one of his dark-browed looks, “we’re being scanned. Shields are up, but there’s some signal leakage, and anything on ship’s channels might be overheard—”
“True,” she said. “Well thought. Wait till I’m about halfway down the deck eight hall, going toward detention; then pick me up on visual and pipe it over to Javelin, following me. Hvaid, come along.”
Young Hvaid leaped up from his post, and the two of them hurried into the lift. “Detention, deck eight,” Ael said. “Hvaid, when the lift stops, run ahead and warn the captain and his officers. Tell them who has called and that we must play this very broadly; LLunih is stupid and unsubtle, and nods and winks will not do. If we do convince him, though, he’ll convince the other ships when they arrive, and save us the trouble of doing all this again. Then you’ll have to run about to the various departments and tell everyone not to say anything damning on the ship’s intercom until we are sure we’re not being scanned, or can find a way to plug the leaks. Find some others of us to help you. Pull Lyie and K’haeth and Dhisuia off their posts; they’re quick on their feet.” The lift stopped. “Go now!”
Hvaid ran off down the hall. Ael leaned against the open door of the lift for a long, easy count of twenty, doing her best to slow her breathing down. It did not slow much, but finally she had to get out and walk, and found that the trembling in her knees wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. “Are you with me, Javelin?” she said cheerily to the air, using her upward look to disguise a glance around the corner she was approaching. Scan could not see it, but Ael could see Hvaid hurrying out of the door to detention, around another corner and out of sight.
“We see you, Ael,” said LLunih.
“Good. Here we are—”
She swung around through the door into detention and saw the sight that many of Rihannsu had long desired to see: the captain of the Enterprise and his formidable officers, one and all, crammed into a cell in the brig and every one of them looking ready to commit murder that would have no laughing about it. There was the good doctor, his strange blue eyes flashing, and handsome Uhura looking as if she wanted a knife; and Mr. Scott with arms folded and eyes narrowed. He turned away from the sight of Ael as she came in; a pretty touch, she thought, and probably based on reality—for Mr. Scott had not yet forgiven her for the wounding of his precious engines. Even the Vulcan looked murderous—though in a restrained and decorous fashion. And the captain, the courteous, genteel captain, was from the look of him far gone in a cold rage that would have done the best of Ael’s old commanders proud. Ael nodded the outer guards away from the forcefield controls on the door—poor Triy and Helev, looking as grimly triumphant as they knew how, and, Ael suspected, ready to break up laughing as soon as they knew they were no longer watched.
“Captain,” Ael began, courteously enough; but the captain didn’t let her get any further.
“It is about time you found your way down here, lady,” he said, with a stateliness of language that sorted bizarrely with his anger. “What are you doing with my ship! And my crew! You are in violation of—”
“You are in a poor position to be talking about violations, Captain,” said Ael, motioning Triy to kill the forcefield. “You were the one we caught in the Zone—”
“Surely you would not mind if my crew watched this, Ael,” said LLunih’s voice from the intercom.
“Who the devil is that!” the doctor shouted.
“Of course not,” Ael said, as she stepped into the room and her eye fell on Nniol, who was doing inside guard duty.
O, by my Element, Ael thought, for Nniol’s sister was on Javelin, and there was no possible reason for him to be on Cuirass—and there he was, his face shielded by a fortuitous angle for the moment, but the instant he moved a breath’s worth, or she did, the pickup would catch him all too clearly. Her back was to it, at least; her eye flashed alarm at Nniol—there was nothing else she could do—
Then the fight broke out. At least it would have looked like a fight to any observer who did not stand where Ael did, who did not see the captain swiftly cock back one fist and turn a little in the doing, just enough to exchange glances with the doctor. The doctor instantly put his head down and economically, savagely, butted Nniol in the gut with it. Nniol doubled over, his face safely out of the way of the pickup; but on the way down he clubbed McCoy two-handed and sidewise in the legs, and the doctor came crashing down on top of him, concealing him further. Mr. Scott and the Vulcan got in the way, but Triy and Helev, shouldering in past Ael and the captain, shoved or slapped them back out of trouble—rather easily, in the Vulcan’s case, though the phasers pointed at his midsection and at the captain, and their meaningful looks, might have had something to do with it. And as for the captain’s punch, that had started all this, it never fell. Ael blocked it, hard, blocked the second one harder, heard something snap, and didn’t dare hesitate, but carried through, slamming the man backhanded across the face. He went flying, crashed up against the wall, sagged down it, didn’t move.
Ael glared at Uhura and Scott and Spock, who stood at bay in the corner of the cell, with phasers held on them. “I had thought to offer you honorable parole,” she said, “but I see now it would have been a fool’s act. Have them bound,” she said to Triy. “All their other people, too; I dare say this boorishness and treachery is typical. And tend to this one.” She nudged Nniol with her boot. Nniol, who lay sprawled face down under the doctor, stirred and groaned, but very prudently did not move otherwise.
Ael stepped over the carnage and out of the cell, dusting herself off. “LLunih,” she said, while Helev assisted the doubled-over Nniol out of the cell and Triy sealed the cell up again, “I would stay for conversation, but you see that I have business to be about—interrogations and so forth; and these people are not going to make it easy for me, that’s plain. I do hope you’ll excuse me.”
“Any assistance I can offer, Ael—”
“LLunih, I will surely ask. In the meantime, I would count it a kindness if your navigator and mine would consult together, so that yours can match my course.”
“Certainly.”
“Then a good day to you; I will pay you a courtesy call tonight or tomorrow, if you would be so gracious as to receive me. Perhaps we might have dinner.” Though I say nothing of keeping it down for long.
“Ael, I would be delighted.”
“Until later, then.” She turned back to the glaring group in the cell and eyed them until Lhian said from the bridge, “They have closed channels, khre’Riov. Shall I send a security detachment?”
“No, we’re secure,” Ael said. “As you were, Lhian.”
“Commander.”
—and she stepped forward and killed the forcefield, and bent down hurriedly to the captain, as the others did. “That crawling slime,” she said bitterly as she helped the captain to his feet. “He so loves the sight of others’ shame that he cannot resist spreading it around for the delectation of his whole crew. Captain, I have done you a great discourtesy! I shall do you a better turn some other time.”
The captain, for the moment, found nothing to say but a groan. She helped him stand from one side, while Spock assisted him on the other, being very careful of the injured arm. “There’s this good at least come of it all,” she said. “LLunih will gossip so to the commanders of Rea’s Helm and Wildfire of how he saw Enterprise’s great captain struck down that they will give us no trouble. In fact, I would lay money on the creature’s having recorded it to show them. —Doctor, I heard something break, I didn’t mean to hit him that hard—”
The doctor was running a small whirring scanner up and down th
e captain’s left arm. “Greenstick fracture of the ulna, Commander; that’s this forearm-bone here. Nothing serious. Jim, are you slipping in your workouts? Since when do you cross-block backward like that?”
“You could do it better?” said the captain, looking humorous through his pain.
“Well, I—”
“Never mind. Commander, that was the youngster you were going to send back?”
“Yes. I had no idea he was going to be here, though, else I would have warned him out….”
“Murphy’s Law,” the Captain said. “At least we managed to cover for him. Nice work, everyone. —Bones, how long is it going to take to regenerate this thing?”
“About an hour. Less if you don’t squirm when it itches.”
“Captain,” Ael said, “who was Murphy, and what was his Law?”
“One I should have learned the last time,” said the captain. “Never eat at a place called ‘Mom’s’; never play cards with a man called ‘Doc’; and don’t start fights with Romulan commanders.”
That was when the punch came that the captain did not telegraph; and it slammed Ael back against the nearest wall so hard that the effect was the same as being hit twice, once in front and once from behind. She rebounded from the wall, tried to stand, staggered. Things spun.
“But if you do start one,” the captain said with an absolutely feral grin, “always finish it.”
The room would not stop rotating; and Ael’s mind was in such a whirl of rage, relief and merriment that she scarcely knew what to do. “Captain, your hand,” she said, holding hers out and considering—just briefly—showing him that trick of N’alae’s that he had so admired. But there would be no honor in doing it to an injured man…. He took her hand, and then grinned.
