by Diane Duane
“What would that be, Captain?” Mr. Sulu said.
“That its very presence here implies that I’m not going to be allowed into the fight,” Jim said.
“Ah, well, sir,” Sulu said, smiling slightly, “that’s the price of admiralty, no matter what the poem says. Not blood; safety.”
“Relative safety,” Jim said. “Don’t remind me.” He frowned as Sulu reached over to the helm console, touched a control, and the display rotated. “I enjoy a good session of battle strategy as well as the next man, but having to sit in the background and watch other people enact it? That’s another story.”
“Don’t think we have much choice, in this case,” Sulu said. “We’re the flag carrier. It’d be pretty careless in terms of the whole engagement for us to allow them to shoot us up. Ael would be annoyed.”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “She’d be annoyed!” he said. “Oh, well, we can’t have that.”
Sulu chuckled, making his way back around to his proper side of the console to sit down and make a few more adjustments to its controls. Jim came to look over his shoulder. Sulu worked for a moment more, then looked up. “But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?” Sulu said. “It’s not just us we have to keep intact. It’s her.”
“Particularly her,” he said. “Whether Starfleet likes it or not, she’s become invaluable to the future stability of the Empire.” And also because, he thought, despite the wonderfulness of the little widget that tr’AAnikh brought us, it’s not going to be anything like enough to satisfy the parameters in my sealed orders. I’m going to need a whole lot more technology than that. And she’s going to be the only one who can give it to me.
“What’s our ETA to Augo now, Mr. Sulu?”
“Twenty hours, Captain.”
“Of which I’m going to have to spend about ten getting used to this,” Jim said.
“Oh, not more than five,” Sulu said. “You wouldn’t want to miss the poker game.”
Jim put his eyebrows up. “Mr. Sulu—”
“You’d better be there, Captain,” Sulu said. “Mr. Tanzer will inform on you to Dr. McCoy if you don’t.”
Jim sighed. “You people are all plotting against me. I’m beginning to understand how Ael feels.”
Now it was Sulu’s turn to put up the eyebrows. “Could be dangerous. I mean, in terms of long-term strategic goals.”
There was something slightly peculiar about the way Sulu said that. Maybe the strange way it struck Jim showed in his face, for Sulu quickly turned and started being abnormally busy with his console. Could it be, Jim thought, could there be the slightest possibility that my crew have seriously started to think that Ael—that the commander and I are an item?
He blinked. And then he turned away and grinned a rather sour grin to himself. Well, why shouldn’t they? Starfleet certainly does.
The idiots.
The only thing that bothered Jim was that his crew, as he well knew, were not idiots.
He turned back to look at the nascent tank display. “When will that be ready, Mr. Sulu?”
“About an hour, Captain,” Sulu said, not looking up.
“Very well. I’m going down to the mess for some lunch. Give me a call when it’s ready.” He headed for the lift. “And Mr. Sulu—what time is that poker game?”
“Twenty hundred, Captain.”
The lift doors closed.
Twenty hundred came with surprising speed. Jim walked into recreation to find it fairly quiet. There were some people involved with a tank game off to one side—Jim glanced at it in passing and noted a large Klingon war fleet being more or less cut to pieces by some people from biochemistry—and some others having a small impromptu smorgasbord. His attention, though, was focused on a large round baize-covered table over near the main windows, where cards were being dealt. Scotty was there, and K’s’t’lk; Uhura was there, and Sulu, and Spock, and McCoy; and Ael and her chief engineer, tr’Keirianh. There was an empty chair with its back to the windows. Jim wandered around and took it. “What’s the game?” he said.
“Seven-card stud,” Sulu said, “jacks are wild.”
Everyone was drinking Romulan ale. Jim looked at the jug on the nearby service table, thought of what was going to start happening in fifteen hours, and hesitated.
“Oh, come on, Jim,” McCoy said, “you know I can detox you in twenty minutes. Don’t be such a stick.”
Jim sighed. A moment later a glass was in front of him with three fingers of ale in it. Sulu started to deal.
“Now let me see if I have this correct,” Ael said. “Each player receives two cards facedown and one card faceup. Initial bet is twice the aunt—”
“Ante,” Uhura said. “Commander, I’m sorry, the homonym routine is still giving me grief.”
“Play goes clockwise from the opener,” Ael said. “One invokes ‘call’ or ‘raise’ if—”
“It’s easier to just play,” Sulu said. “Come on, Scotty, you open and show her how it’s done.”
They played. Chips were pushed into the center of the table, and the ebb and flow of the game began. Jim was watching Ael’s play with some interest, as was McCoy on the other side of her. She seemed to be doing fairly well. Then suddenly she lost almost all her pot. This happened again about twenty minutes later, and Jim, watching, at that point noticed something strange: Ael was squinting at her cards, not just when she got new ones, but all the time. He leaned toward her.
“Too much ale, Commander?” he said, only slightly teasing. “Need a detox? I’m sure McCoy can tailor something for you.”
“No, that is not the problem,” Ael said, sounding a little puzzled. “However, I cannot seem to do much with these cards. The symbols really are too much alike for me.” She looked over at McCoy. “Perhaps we could use those you showed me earlier?”
Jim was bemused by the faintly shocked look McCoy suddenly acquired. “Uh, I don’t know.”
Harb Tanzer, passing by, looked down at McCoy. “Problem?”
“Harb,” McCoy said, “do you have a spare New Waite deck around here? One that isn’t used routinely for more serious purposes.”
“I have a few in their original wraps,” Harb said. “Half a moment.”
Shortly he was back, and not long after that Jim found himself involved in one of the most peculiar poker games he had ever experienced. A full house acquired all kinds of additional nuances when it actually involved pictures of what appeared to be relatives of the crowned heads of Europe, some of them holding extremely sharp objects and looking prepared to use them. The other players seemed more amused than annoyed by the change, and once the extra cards in the deck had values attributed to them, the game proceeded without too many more hitches—except as regarded Jim’s hands, which seemed uniformly poor for the better part of the first hour.
“Hit me,” Scotty said.
Ael threw him a most peculiar look. “With what?”
“It’s just an expression,” K’s’t’lk said. She was studying her own cards with some bemusement. “Do three cups beat two pages?”
“Only in three-trump stud,” McCoy said.
Ael’s expression got more confused all through this. As the game went forward, Jim saw that she was regarding the cards in her hand with not much more comprehension than she had shown with the standard Rider deck. “I am not entirely sure what to do here,” she said at last.
Such an admission was unusual from Ael, and provoked various kinds of advice. “Get a sandwich,” Sulu said. “Have some more ale,” Scotty said, and reached behind him for the jug.
McCoy put his hand down, got up from his chair, and went around behind Ael to look at her hand. She glanced up at him. He raised his eyebrows.
“Okay,” he said, “I see the problem. Let’s try something else.” He glanced around the table.
“Three-trump stud?” Sulu said.
McCoy shook his head. “Tournament Fizzbin.”
Jim opened his eyes at that. “Tournament Fizzbin?”
&nbs
p; “Dealer invents a new version,” McCoy said, and went around the table, starting to collect everybody’s cards. “Come on, Scotty, hand ’em over; that hand wasn’t so great. Sulu…Good. All right. Come on, Ael. You get to invent a version of Fizzbin.”
“I do not know the original,” she said, looking completely at a loss. “It was not in Hoyle.”
“No indeed,” McCoy said. “Jim, would you elucidate?”
Jim grinned rather helplessly and took the deck. “All right. So each player gets six cards, except the one on the player’s right, who gets seven.” He started dealing. “The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays.”
“Is today Tuesday?” Sulu said, suddenly suspicious.
“It’s got to be Tuesday somewhere, Mr. Sulu,” Scotty said.
Spock raised both eyebrows at this, but said nothing. “Stipulated,” Jim said. “Now, two jacks is a half-fizzbin, but you don’t want three. Three is a shralk. You get those, you get disqualified.”
“You do?” Ael said, beginning to smile slightly.
“Absolutely. Now look there: Sulu’s got two jacks. That’s good. Now he wants a king and a deuce.”
“Except at night,” McCoy said, looking over at Ael’s cards. “In which case he wants a queen and an ace.”
“How is ‘night’ determined?” tr’Keirianh said. “If playing aboard ship, does ship’s time prevail? Or is it always considered to be night in space?”
“Yes, and if members of more than one ship’s complement are involved,” Ael said, “must a consensus of the players be obtained?”
“Only in leap year,” Jim said.
“When the moon is full,” said Sulu, straight-faced.
“Now wait a minute,” K’s’t’lk said. “Whose moon?”
“And why should a year leap?” Ael said.
It went on in that vein for some time, and more ale was ingested to assist the philosophical and scientific arguments that ensued. Eventually a game started, and Jim was none too sure of who started it, but the structure of its rules became unnervingly fluid, even by the somewhat freewheeling standards of the man who’d invented Fizzbin.
Play went forward. It wasn’t just a game, but play in the older sense of the word. Jim got a clear sense that none of the people around the table felt like being too rigorous about rules on the night before a day that was principally going to be full of the rules of engagement. The only thing we haven’t done yet is fifty-two pickup, Jim thought, leaning back in his chair, as the laughter got more sheerly goofy. Except with this deck I don’t think it’s fifty-two. Fifty-six? Seventy?
He shrugged and got on with it. Another round began—Ael started it, this time—and before long the table was foundering in an uproar of laughter, with whole piles of chips changing hands from second to second. Only Spock held aloof from the laughter, but Jim wasn’t concerned. He had long learned to pick up on the amusement carefully concealed behind his first officer’s eyes. When the deck came around to him, Jim found himself forced to surpass his wildest output of that strange time on Sigma Iotia II.
Much more madness ensued. And it must have been at least two hours later when Jim noticed that Scotty was leaning back in his chair, rubbing his eyes, and tr’Keirianh, to his immense embarrassment, could not quite stifle a yawn.
Jim stood up, stretching. “It’s time. Gentlemen, ladies, thanks for your company. I have an early morning, and so do all of you. We’d better go get some rest.”
The players rose and started to say their good nights, heading for the doors. Ael paused by Jim and gave him a weary smile. “Not a night I will soon forget,” she said, “assuming the Elements spare me for long memory.” She glanced over at McCoy. “But a word with you first, McCoy. For you, everything is a diagnostic.”
McCoy raised his eyebrows. “Nothing could have been further from my mind.”
She cuffed his shoulder in an amiable way. “You are incorrigible,” Ael said.
“And you are a talented observer,” McCoy said. “Message? If there was one, it would have been just this: in some situations, the only sane thing to do is change the rules. Just make sure you change them your way.”
She gave him a look. Then, in company with tr’Keirianh, Ael went off to the transporters, and to Bloodwing, with an unusual expression on her face. McCoy and Jim stood together and watched them go. The door to the rec room slid shut behind them.
“What was that about?” Jim said.
“Tension relief,” McCoy said. “I’d say it worked. And for your part, I think you enjoyed being reminded of a time when the situation was no worse than having a couple of guys pointing machine guns at you.”
“Oh, come on, Bones, it was worse than that. The Iotians—”
McCoy shook his head. “Never mind that. What time will things start getting crazy in the morning? Just so I know when to start securing the various valuables.”
“Beginning of alpha shift,” Jim said. “We’ll be dropping out of warp and going on red alert about an hour after that.”
McCoy clasped Jim’s shoulder, then headed out. “Call me if you need anything.”
Jim nodded and turned to stand for a few moments regarding the stars streaming past the big glasteel windows.
He stood there in the quiet for a while. “Something, Captain?” said the voice of Moira, the rec computer.
“No,” Jim said. “But thanks.”
He went to bed.
FIFTEEN
Six hours later, just before the end of gamma shift, Jim was sitting in the center seat, looking into his new tank. Sulu was right, he thought. You could really get used to this. The question is, am I used enough to it now?
The bridge crew had been coming in early as well. Spock had been there before him, and as Jim had come in, had simply handed him a padd full of status reports. “Enterprise is ready,” he said, and went quietly back to his station, plainly not wanting to disturb his captain’s train of thought.
Jim had gone through the reports and confirmed that they said, in rather more words and detail, simply what Spock had said. In particular, the ships of the joint fleet had checked and double-checked their connections to Enterprise’s, Bloodwing’s, and Tyrava’s joint command-and-control system, and everything was operational. Every ship’s movements would be repeated into the holographic tank at the front of the bridge, where Jim would very shortly start his admiralty-level work.
Now he sat in the center seat, watching all his people doing their job in their normal calm, and started to endure the worst part of such an engagement: the waiting.
“Enterprise.”
“Tyrava?” Jim said, relieved.
“Warp egress in three minutes, Captain,” Veilt said. “We will be at optimum pre-battle envisioning position, ‘above’ the system.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jim said, and went to sit in the center seat again. “Do you have more recent disposition data for me?”
“Coming over now.”
The display in the tank changed. Jim walked over, peered down into it, counted the little sparks of light that he saw there. “Veilt,” he said, “I’d really like to know where those other thirty ships are.”
“Forty,” Veilt said.
Jim passed a hand over his eyes. “Another ten?” he said. “When did we hear about these?”
“Within the last hour,” Veilt said. “Captain, I would suggest that the ‘fog of war’ has begun to descend in earnest. Our earlier discussions suggested that there is no way Grand Fleet has this much materiel available. However, we cannot be certain, as they have not taken us into their confidence.”
“Noted,” Jim said. He put out a hand, and without a word Spock stepped up beside him and put a padd into it, with the battle plan already brought up to the correct page. He pulled the stylus off the padd and started making notes. “I’m sending you some emendations to part three that take the new numbers into account.”
“We have four versions of part three already, Captain.”
“Y
ou’re about to have six. Do you want to disseminate it, or shall I ask Bloodwing to handle that?”
“We will handle it gladly, Captain. We have many more personnel available to double-check the translation.”
God knows how many of whom aren’t really on our side, Jim thought. But this was no time for paranoia. “Thank you, Veilt. And sir—if by chance we have no other time for this before things get busy—the Elements’ own luck to you.”
There was the briefest pause. “Captain, the same to you, and I think the saying is, ‘and many more.’”
Jim smiled. “Out. Uhura, Bloodwing?”
“Bloodwing,” said Aidoann’s voice. “My apologies, Captain. I am not used to these automatic connections either, but the khre’Riov says that they will save us much time.”
“Is the commander there yet?”
“On her way now.”
“Egress in two minutes,” Sulu said.
“Right,” Kirk said. He hit the button on the center seat that gave him all-call; that at least still worked in the normal way. “All hands,” he said as calmly as he could, “battle stations, battle stations. This is no drill.”
The sirens started to whoop. Jim had to smile at himself at that point. Habit could make you say funny things, especially when this was a scheduled maneuver, and every soul inside this vessel knew perfectly well that this was no drill.
After a couple of moments the whooping stopped. “Ready to drop out, Captain,” Sulu said.
“On the mark, Mr. Sulu.”
The warp engines died back to a whisper, and instantly the ships and other bodies displayed in the tank snapped into new positions. Jim could see the whole system laid out before him in three dimensions…and once again he was pleased at how, for once, random effects had worked in their favor. The two planets around which the Grand Fleet facilities orbited, or on which they were sited, were nearly in opposition to one another—one of them at aphelion, and one of them at perihelion in an orbit that was very skewed from the system ecliptic. “I make that about four hundred million kilometers apart,” Kirk said, looking over his shoulder at Spock.