by Diane Duane
“Get out? Why, what’s the matter?”
“Get out,” the man said, bored. “Relocation order. All the people on this list—” He flashed a padd at Hvirr, not even letting him look at it. “You’re to be out of the town in an hour. Twenty stai away by noon tomorrow.”
“But where will we go?”
The soldier had already turned his back on Hvirr, not leaving, but just dismissing Hvirr as something he didn’t have to deal with anymore. Then Hvirr realized that what he and Emni had seen on the news was happening to others, on this continent of Mendaissa—the forced relocations that had seemed so unnecessary, so sad, so distant—were distant no longer. It was happening here, happening to them.
They had gathered together everything they could: some food, some spare clothes, their credit chips, Emni’s little computer and the charger for it. One of the others who had been turned out, a distant neighbor whom they knew by sight, having seen him at market sometimes in the next town over, came to the little confused knot of them, maybe twenty people from six houses in Steilalvh village, “I know the way over the pass to Memmesh. Nothing’s happening over there, it’s safe. Come with me and we’ll all get out of here together. Have you got warm clothes? Then hurry, come on—”
That was when this unreal walk had begun. Morning, through afternoon, through night, through the next morning, the next afternoon, and night again…It was twenty minutes in the co-op flyer, this journey to Memmesh town, over the pass. Never in Hvirr’s wildest imaginings had it occurred to him that he might ever walk it. The pass was two stai up in the clouds, for Fire’s sake! But now they had come over it, gasping for air—and filled with terror, for Dis had turned dark green as he slept—and all of them had survived, the child getting his proper color back quickly. That had been this morning. Under cover of the trees, though they had been walking for a day already, they kept going, hearing the constant scream of iondrivers and impulse engines overhead—the sky suddenly alive with cruisers and government shuttles. This too they had heard about in the news: that the space around the Mendaissa and Ysail star systems was being fortified against possible Klingon invasion, that the government would protect its people—that to help it protect them, certain unreliable elements of the population were being removed from security-sensitive areas—
That was us, of course, Hvirr thought. And everyone else in this part of the country who has Ship-Clan connections. “It’s the big spaceport at Davast,” he had heard one of the people farther up the line mutter to someone else, her brother, Hvirr thought. “They’re worried about security, there have been attacks on some other planets…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. Even among themselves, those who had been driven out of the valley didn’t want to be caught talking about it. Even here, who knew, there might be spies….
But they were on the downhill side now. It was, their guide had come back to tell them, earlier in this second darkness, only a few more hours. The path had been getting easier, even if the snow was no less deep. “I only wish I knew where we were going.”
“Memmesh, dear one.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean afterwards. We can’t stay there, they won’t have room for all of us…” She looked at Dis, in Hvirr’s arms. “He’s been sleeping so much,” Emni said. “I hope he’s not sick.” She paused.
“But then I suppose we should count ourselves lucky,” she continued. “Other people had their money taken from them too, the soldiers charged them to let them get out of villages they’d been commanded to leave on pain of being shot.” The bitterness briefly showed its edge in her voice again, then sheathed itself once more in weariness. “At least we’ve still got a little…”
Hvirr did not say that he wasn’t sure it was going to do them any good. Anyone who had both Ship-Clan blood and a scrap of sense would try to get off the planet now. But there was no one who could take them, legally, and those who would do it illegally would charge the sun and both moons for passage.
“This is all my fault,” Emni said. “Because I am Ship-Clan.”
“Don’t be a silly hlai,” said Hvirr. “As if you could choose your heredity!”
He looked up, then, for ahead of them was a rustling, a shuffling. He could see the people up ahead bunching together, hear a kind of confused murmur from them. The path through the woods flattened out, there, opened up: he could see the green-blue of sky past and through the trees.
Hvirr scuffed through the snow toward them, craned his neck to see what they were looking at. Behind him Emni came up and looked too.
Down there was Memmesh village. Landed around its scatter of houses, in the thin snow sifted over its surrounding pastures, were five or six government armored shuttles, shining their hot bright spotlights around in the dark. Another shuttle came screaming right over their heads as they stood there, heading down toward the village. Down there, tiny specks of men were standing around some of the houses, gesturing with tiny, tiny guns, and men and women and children were being driven out into the cold dark night.
All their group stood there silent. Hvirr heard someone say softly, “Where will we go now?”
And Dis woke up and began to cry.
It was not a meeting of all the ship’s department heads. Jim would call for that later, when the circumstances into which they were moving were clearer to him. And when they’ve become clearer to Starfleet, he thought, hoping desperately that that hour would come soon. For the moment, all that was needed was a consultation among allies. That was likely to become thorny enough.
Ael seated herself down at one end of the table in the briefing room with her officers to either side of her; Jim took the other end of the table with Scotty and McCoy, and Spock in the angle of the table at his usual spot handy to the computer. K’s’t’lk stood, that being more comfortable for her than any of the seating presently in the room. “T’l,” Jim said as they all got settled, “I’ve sent for a proper rack for you: it’ll be here later.”
She laughed, a brief arpeggio of bell music. “It’s no issue, J’m.”
Everyone finished settling themselves, and Spock finished setting up the computer to minute the meeting. “Commander?” Jim said.
She bowed to him a little from the other end of the table. “Captain, before you spell out the details of why you have sent for me—not that I do not believe I already know—I would like to ask for your assistance. Or more specifically, Mr. Spock’s.”
“Anything, Ael.”
She produced one of those wicked smiles which had once or twice before made Jim sorry to have offered her carte blanche. But it didn’t last: he was being teased. “Mr. Spock,” Ael said, “I would welcome some assistance with an assessment and reorganization of Bloodwing’s computer systems. We are shorthanded after Levaeri V, and have been forced to automate many more of our systems than we would normally prefer. Also, both the programming and hardware we have been forced to install for this purpose are very much of the improvised sort. If you would be able to assist us, I would be in your debt.”
“Commander, it would be my pleasure,” Spock said.
“Thank you, sir. Tr’Keirianh, my chief engineer, will confer with you.” Ael looked back down at the table at Jim. “In the meantime, Captain…perhaps you will tell us what you know of the news I have heard.”
Jim nodded and glanced around the table at the others. “The Federation has received a communication from the Senate,” he said. “This came as something of a surprise…or rather, it was allowed to seem as if it came as something of a surprise. In any case, the Senate has asked permission to send a diplomatic mission across the Zone into the space in the Triangulum area: six ships. The Senate’s message said they had something to discuss with the Federation that was too important to trust to the third-party means of official communication, which are all that have been used officially for the years since the First Romulan War and the treaty that ended it. They were no more forthcoming than that, at first…but in the unofficial communications associated with the offi
cial one, there were some hints.”
“It is, of course, me they want,” Ael said. “I wonder, though, whether I should be insulted.”
McCoy gave her a look. “Insulted? Why?”
“Only six ships, Doctor? They value me too lightly.”
“It might begin with six ships, Commander,” Spock said, “but it most certainly would not stop there.”
“No,” she said, “I know that, Mr. Spock. Forgive my jesting.”
“Mr. Spock is right,” Jim said. “Where it will all stop is very much the question. Fleet has been treating the matter—not casually, of course; no feeler from such a formerly unresponsive source would ever be treated casually. But without any overt show of alarm.”
“Nevertheless,” Ael said, “I would imagine forces in the Federation quietly converging on Triangulum space and this side of the arm.”
“Not just Federation forces are moving,” Jim said. “Your people are shifting ships around as well…even with our limited sources, and the only other source of hard information being the monitoring stations scattered up and down the Neutral Zone, we can tell that much. The Klingons are moving, too.”
Ael nodded. “That I too had heard. I have become an excuse, then, for more than just my own people.”
“I would say, though,” Spock said, “an excuse that has long been sought. Am I correct?”
Ael’s smile acquired a bitter edge. “It has been sought since well before Enterprise and Bloodwing visited Levaeri V together. The Rihannsu have been feeling confined and harassed for a long time…and now, with the Sunseed routines stolen and the mind-control project destroyed after nearly fifteen years of work, both panic and fury are running high, for once more the Praetorate and Senate feel their old enemies putting on the pressure. They will feel they must do something to defuse it. But they will not be satisfied with merely defusing it at home. Their least goal will be to take me back. But a better one will be to set you and the Klingons at one another’s throats, while destabilizing the Neutral Zone as much as possible.”
Ael looked very calm, but Jim knew quite well what turmoil her mind must be in. “Leading up to that goal, and after it…” Ael said. “There are many ways this business may go. But first I must ask you, Captain—”
“What Starfleet’s intentions are toward you?”
Ael’s regard was steady. Jim hoped his was too. “They haven’t yet confided that information in me. I think they may not be sure yet which way to jump. I imagine we’ll know within a few days. Meanwhile, Enterprise is one of the ships detailed to meet the diplomatic mission, most likely because Starfleet considers it to be a name that the Senate and Praetorate respect…and because they assume that where we are, you will feel secure in being also.”
“When we eventually arrive at the scene,” Ael said, “yes; for I doubt Starfleet will want me sitting under their noses while the negotiations are ongoing. My people might be tempted to some improvident action.” She gave Jim a mischievous look. “Meanwhile, I must tell you that whatever Fleet decides, I have no intention of allowing the diplomatic mission to take Bloodwing back with them.”
“It might not be Bloodwing per se that they’re after,” McCoy said.
Ael favored him with a small dry smile. “At the end of bargaining, Doctor, perhaps not,” she said. “But the bargaining will certainly begin with nothing less. They will tell you they must have their property back, and the traitor crew that took it, and the woman who led them to do so, and the Sword she took with her when she left ch’Rihan last. As circumstances shift, they will allow one or another of the counters to be knocked off the table. Probably the ship first: then her crew. But they will by no means agree to settle for less than me and the Sword. And at the last, they will throw both of us away—kill me and destroy the Sword—rather than allow either of us to remain in your space or to escape their vengeance.”
Spock had folded his hands together and steepled the fingers, and was looking at them in a contemplative way. Now he glanced up and said, “Commander, you have said what you will not allow to be done with Bloodwing and her crew. But you say nothing of what you have planned for the other two ‘counters’ on the table.”
Her look was as controlled a one as Jim had ever seen from her. “Perhaps you would not be surprised,” Ael said, “to know that I, too, have not yet made all my choices. My own options are still falling into place, and it would be premature to speak of them until I know more of where they lie.” She sat straighter in the chair. “But I tell you now, I shall not go back with them willingly. Nor will I allow the Sword to go back. Flight would not be my choice, should worst befall; but I would consider it…except that it would help nothing. You would still be left with a war on your hands. For they will have war, now; never doubt it.”
She folded her hands too, and stared at them.
“That’s a certainty we will try to avert,” Jim said, “and at the very least, we’ll try to spoil their guesses on the way. If they get a war, it won’t be the one they want.”
“So long as it is not also the one we don’t want,” Ael said, “I am with you, Captain. So there let it rest awhile.”
“We’ve still two issues which will need resolution pretty quickly,” Mr. Scott said. “First, is there any chance they might resurrect the mind-control project that was housed at Levaeri?”
“The scientists originally involved in that project are nearly all deceased,” Spock said, “and the research could not be reconstructed without both their notes and large amounts of Vulcan genetic and neural material. We are in possession of all the first; and, Vulcan now having been warned of the danger, they will never again be allowed to acquire the second. This reduces the threat to an extremely low level, in the short term.”
“In any case,” Jim said, “the main danger would be if Vulcans were going to be involved in this operation. But the word from Starfleet is that they will not.”
“Possibly this is appropriate,” Spock said. “For there are as many Vulcans who are sensitive about dealing with or admitting their relationship to Romulans as there would appear to be Rihannsu who prefer not to think too closely about Vulcans.” He glanced over at Ael.
She bowed her head once in agreement. “Perhaps better that they should not be involved,” she said, “for the sake of the ways the relationship may find room to change in the future.”
She folded her hands and looked at them thoughtfully. “I should also mention,” Ael said, “that while I was once able to acquire information about that particular clandestine operation through my connections to the Praetorate and my family’s spies in the Senate and the government, my sources inside the Empire are now very few indeed. And while they suspect that there are more clandestine operations going on at the moment, it has proved impossible to get the slightest whiff of what they are. Alas, the government has learned its lesson after Levaeri. But it would be wise to assume that they are preparing some deadly stroke against you. You should sift all your present intelligence carefully for communications that seem to make little sense in context.”
“The second problem,” Scotty said, “is Sunseed.”
He touched a control on the computer pad in front of him. The hologram projection field came alive over the table, suddenly full of the image of a star, its great sphere burning orange-gold. “The star’s the one we seeded in the escape from Levaeri V,” Scotty said. “I’ve used its data set, and as you asked, Captain, besides the ships that followed us, I’ve added a class-M planet at a distance from the star equivalent to what Earth’s distance would be from Sol—”
Two tiny points of light came diving in out of the darkness that surrounded the star: two starships, Enterprise and Intrepid. The frequency of light in the hologram changed so that the color of the star’s chromosphere dimmed down and the corona brightened into visibility, an even pearly shimmer, about half a diameter wide, surrounding the star. It was even, anyway, until the starships dove into the corona itself and began to swing close around the s
tar. Their phasers lanced out in slim lines of light, and infinitesimally small bright sparks leapt out from them into the lower levels of the corona—photon torpedoes. “We were doing warp eleven at the time, so it’s all much slowed down, of course,” Scotty said, as the ships arced through the corona, now beginning to writhe and flare around them with horrible and unnatural energy.
The ships streaked away, out of the corona, out of view. The corona wreathed and threw out long warped streamers after them, almost like a live thing trying to catch its tormentors. The coronal streamers reached much farther out than seemed normal, on all sides now, attenuating, overextended, a rage of ionized plasma—
And then the corona simply collapsed back against the star, falling flat, vanishing. For a long horrible moment, nothing happened—
Flash! A blinding sphere of high-level ionization leapt away from the star and blasted outward. The pursuing Romulan vessels that dove into view and toward the star a few moments later were caught by it. The effect, powerful enough in its first flush to propagate into subspace, deranged their warp fields. In tiny flashes of light they were annihilated, blown to plasma, and the plasma swept away before the relentlessly expanding front of an ion storm a hundred thousand times more powerful than anything that nature could have produced.
The view changed, backed off hundreds of millions of kilometers to show a planet like Earth—laced about with the orbits of satellites, patched under its swirls of creamy weather with the sapphire blue of seas, the greens and browns of continents, and on the nightside, great spills and spatters of the lights of civilization. Past that planet, its innocent-looking star was visible, but so was the only faintly visible wall of furious ionization that was tearing toward the world through local space. “I’ve sped it up a little now,” Scotty said, “and marked it, for there’d be no seeing it this far out except with instruments. Ten minutes or so, this would take. But now—”
Like a tidal wave, completely invisible but marked as a hot blue line in the reconstruction, the ion storm struck the bowshock of the planet’s magnetic field. For a fraction of a second, a faint glitter of massive particle annihilations and alpha and beta emissions manifested itself along the intersection’s curvature, but the bowshock could offer no slightest resistance to an event of such intensity. The ion storm blasted past and through it, stripped away the planet’s Van Allen belts, and a second later swept over the world in a wavefront now some forty thousand kilometers thick.
