by Diane Duane
Jim swallowed. “Thank you, Mr. Spock,” he said. “And don’t tell me that thanks aren’t logical!”
The lift doors opened. “The thought had not occurred to me, Captain,” Spock said.
Together they headed down the hall to main recreation. Once again, as they headed in, the place was quiet, but because of the rearrangement of some of the more critical shift rotations to take the battle scheduling into account, a lot of people seemed to have opted for an early evening. Across the room, though, over by the poker table, various crew were lounging and talking quietly. Ael was there along with McCoy and Chekov and Sulu and a few others.
As Jim and Spock approached, Ael put aside the padd she had been reading and stood up to greet them. “Captain,” she said, “if your presence here means you are done with that for the moment—” She threw a sideways glance at the padd, then back at Jim.
Jim grinned and sat down. “Mr. Spock was threatening to hit me with a hammer.”
“Captain,” Spock said, “I was merely repeating an adage. Such behavior in actual practice would seriously contravene—”
Ael and Jim began to laugh together. “And as for you,” Jim said. “Anything to add?”
She shook her head. “Without further data,” she said, “further planning is idle. But now that you are finished, and I have finished looking over your plans as Veilt and Thala have, I can retire. In six hours, it will all begin, and begin to end.” She leaned back and stretched, looking around her. “I have enjoyed my last night here.”
“I wouldn’t start calling it that,” McCoy said.
She laughed gently at him. “Shall I try to hide the possibilities from myself, or you, McCoy? I think not. It may be my last night on Bloodwing, as well, if the Elements so please, but there I must be. I must be seen to lead the battle group into the system, from my own ship’s bridge. After that, when it comes time to take our battle to the planet—there, too, I must be. My credibility is about to become as much a part of our battle array as anything with a warp drive attached.”
“Well,” Jim said, “once the transporters go down for everything in the neighborhood of the Hearthworlds, those of us who’re going planetside with the troops will all need to be on Tyrava, but you’ve got the timings for that. Once Grand Fleet HQ has been dealt with, and we achieve local-space superiority, we’re going to have to get our boots down on the ground along with everyone else.”
Ael passed a hand over her eyes. “That remains my last nightmare, Captain. I cannot get over the fear that we will at some point find ourselves halfway over Mount Eilariv and unable to get in touch with our people because of the planet-based jamming.”
Jim looked up and saw Scotty coming across the room toward them, with K’s’t’lk in tow. “As it happens, for a change, I think I have a straightforward answer for one of your problems.” He looked up at Scotty. “Have you got our widgets, Scotty?”
“Aye,” Scotty said, and pulled something out of a little case he was carrying. “It’ll piggyback onto a communicator. You’ll just need to stretch the usual slipcase a little.”
Jim took what Scotty handed him: a small, silvery-cased device that looked to Jim like a communicator, though rather slimmer.
“This is it?” he said, turning it over in his hands.
“Aye,” Scotty said.
Kirk flipped it open. The controls inside were minimal, and again rather like a communicator’s. “I thought it’d be bigger.”
Scotty shook his head. “Not at all,” he said, and handed a similar device to Ael.
She studied the sleek little thing. “Another communicator?”
“Not the usual kind,” Scotty said. “’Tis a radio.”
Ael looked bemused. “A what?”
“Here,” Jim said, “let me show you the wavelengths.” He reached over to the poker table, brought up its undersurface gaming screens, hit the control that linked them out into the ship’s main computers via the games computer’s interface, and called up a diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum.
He pointed. “Right there,” Jim said.
Ael stared. “But why ever would anyone use that range for communications?” she said, bewildered. “That whole part of the spectrum is endlessly vulnerable to every kind of jamming and natural interference. Even the sun can render it useless in active times!”
“Over long distances, of course it can,” Jim said. “But over the short haul, when you have line of sight, it works pretty well. Add a ship in orbit that’s able to act as a relay and overcome the line-of-sight problem in difficult terrain, and you have a perfectly workable solution when everyone around you is jamming more technologically advanced comms.”
Ael looked over the little object and shook her head. “Tr’Keirianh will be completely fascinated. I pray these work as well as you say they will.”
“We’re betting they will,” Jim said. “The basic concept goes back to a battle on Earth a few centuries ago when a technologically advanced power—for that time, anyway—went up against an opponent that was less well provided with the newest equipment. The vessel had long range propellant-based weapons that shot solid projectiles, and the computers that worked out the firing ranges and elevations for the weapons were calibrated for the most modern weapons that might be brought against them. The vessel’s opponents, however, only had small flying craft called Fairey Swordfish, which dated back easily two decades, and had long since been left behind by faster and more advanced craft.”
Ael’s eyebrows went up. “You are about to tell me,” she said, “that the firing solutions of the higher-tech vessels could not cope with the—Swordfish?” She smiled at the name.
“They shot the hell out of the battleships,” Jim said. “It was a fluke, yes, but it worked. There have been times since when it’s proven smart to look back for one’s tech instead of forward.”
Ael looked thoughtful. “So all our people who go dirtside are going to be equipped with these,” Jim said, “and Tyrava and Kaveth have been fabricating them to Scotty’s specs at considerable speed. Every assault group will be equipped with these—at least one to every fifty people, and sometimes more. So the assault on Ra’tleihfi won’t have a chance to get too much out of hand.”
Ael shivered. “Just the words trouble me, now that they are so close to being made real.”
“It’s the kind of commander who wouldn’t be troubled by them,” McCoy said, “who’d be giving me cause for concern.”
“I agree,” Jim said. “And though I understand your discomfort, this is what you came to do. Time to do it. Meanwhile, I’m going to turn in shortly.” Jim glanced at McCoy. “Bones, just this once I want one of your mildest sedatives.”
The doors to the corridor opened. “I’ll get you that presently.” McCoy got up and headed over that way.
“We’re at a little less than T minus ten hours,” Jim said to Ael. “I’ll be up in six hours. At that point, as per the plan, we’ll send out the smallships and cruisers that will be acting as skirmishers. They’ll test the system’s outer defenses and get firsthand Intelligence as to the disposition of Grand Fleet’s big ships. Once we’re sure where they are, we start messing with their minds.” And at that point he grinned rather ferally. “Not that they won’t have been well messed with already. There’s nothing so effective against an opponent as rendering him uncertain of the effectiveness of his carefully crafted battle plan at the last minute. And there’s some more of that still to come.”
He glanced across the room. Gurrhim was heading toward them, progressing steadily, though still with the general air of a man who was somewhat sore in various parts of his person. “Captain,” he said.
“Sir,” Jim said, and stood up. “How are you feeling?”
“I have been better,” Gurrhim said, looking around at them all, “but considering that without the good doctor I would simply be feeling dead, I will not complain.”
“See that,” McCoy said, ambling along behind Gurrhim, “an appreciative
patient. There had to be one or two of them left in the galaxy.”
Jim raised his eyebrows, but refused to rise to the bait. “So now’s your time to take center stage,” he said to Gurrhim. “Did the recording of your speech go all right?”
“It did,” Gurrhim said, “for all that I am no great speech-maker.”
Ael looked up at him and laughed. “Disinformation is in your blood, you noble fraud. How many times have I heard you on the floor of the Senate, bending them all to your will?”
“If anyone was swayed at such times,” said Gurrhim, “it was not by my rhetoric or my sentiments, but by my stock portfolio. After all, when you have no choice but to buy your food from a certain stallholder, you listen to his maunderings and nod respectfully until you’ve agreed at a price and can walk off with a full basket.” His grin wasn’t nearly as sour as it might have been. “But the story will be far different now. All I now have to sell the government is quatchmilk; and just hearing my voice will be to them as if they were drinking it by the tankardful.”
He eased himself down into one of the neighboring chairs. “Now, however,” Gurrhim said, “the point is to have them hear me. I left Lieutenant Commander Uhura completing the preparation of the raw video. She told me it would be ready to transmit about the time I arrived down here. So are you sure you can get the message to my Havrannsu through the jamming, Captain? For apparently it has already begun.”
“We’ll get it through,” Jim said. “Scotty?”
“Aye,” Scotty said, “we will. Jamming’s only effective up to a certain point. If you’re willing to punch enough power into a given signal, over limited distances, the jamming fails. And Tyrava has power to spare—more than our laddies down below are expecting, I’m thinking. We’re going to feed the gentleman’s video into a narrow-band hyperhet blast that’ll go through any kind of jamming they’ve got like a hot wire through ice.” He glanced down at K’s’t’lk. “And once that’s taken care of, we can test a duplicate transmission through the resonance inducer at short range.”
“Scotty!” Jim said. “The last time you did that you—”
“It’s not going to be that kind of test, Captain!” K’s’t’lk said. “This is a wholly different effect. We’re just going to get the star to ‘exhale’ a tachyon burst encoded with a copy of the transmission. If we can get Eisn to do that, then once we’ve set up the equivalency resonance with the sun, we can hook an entirely different message to it. Such as one keyed to destroy the nova bomb before it gets into the sun—”
Jim was starting to get nervous. “It sounds nice, but are you absolutely sure that there wouldn’t be any untoward effects on Eisn?”
Scotty and K’s’t’lk looked at each other. “Well…”
Ael saw the look. “Not with my star, you do not! I have no desire to save my worlds from the Praetorate only to set them on fire!”
Jim wholeheartedly agreed. “Belay it, you two. We have enough problems right now. K’s’t’lk, have you got your ship ready?”
“Of course, Captain. I had her beamed over to Tyrava this morning. When the troop carriers go out and we go with them, she’ll serve as admiral’s gig for the engagement. She’s better equipped for this kind of work than any of Enterprise’s shuttles would be.”
“Very well.” Jim got up; the rest rose with him. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s go to our rest. Sleep well—and wake up sharp.”
The Enterprise crew and Gurrhim said their good nights and headed off. Only Jim and Ael were left, looking out those great windows.
“We have come a very long way,” Ael said quietly. “And there is no refusing the rest of the course laid out for us—the course we laid out ourselves.”
Jim shook his head. After a moment he said, “There was an old story on Earth about how someone went out in the dark and heard a great voice calling from the sea, ‘The hour is come, but not the man.’” He looked out at the dark. “I guess we all come up against that sooner or later. The fear that we’ll be insufficient to the moment, somehow, and betray the future.”
Ael nodded. “I have no fear of that in your regard. You have kept faith when many another would have turned and gone his own way.”
“And so have you,” Jim said. “You’ve been serving this particular dream for a long, long while. So, let’s get some rest. And in the morning, let’s go make the future happen.”
She bowed her head to him. “A fair night to you,” Ael said, and left.
A few minutes after the doors shut on her, Jim went as well, leaving behind him a room full of nothing but silence and darkness, and the light of the stars pouring past Enterprise as she plunged toward her next battlefield.
NINETEEN
Six hours later Ael was standing behind her command chair, intently studying the viewscreen on Bloodwing’s bridge.
Gurrhim stood there in front of the cameras with that blunt, bluff farmer’s look that anyone who had seen him on a news channel in recent years would well have recognized; and he stood there in the robes of a Praetor. Elements only know where he got those, Ael thought. Then again, it is not beyond belief that someone on Enterprise manufactured them for him. Certainly he had little but a hospital robe on him when he came.
“You see me standing here,” he said, “despite having been told that I was dead. I have no regret in telling you that the reports were premature.” He smiled slightly. “The Elements have plainly purposed otherwise for me. And in me now, you see the truth of the old saying that chief among all Elements is the element of surprise.”
Ael had to smile. It was just like him to trot out these hoary old proverbs even at such a time, and the chuckle that went around the bridge told her that her crew was amused as well. But see how sly the old creature is, she thought. No generated hologram version, no fake Gurrhim, would come out with such old-fashioned saws at a time like this, but the genuine article could not be prevented.
“Now I come to tell you,” Gurrhim said, “that those who lied to you about my death have been caught in one lie too many. I have come to cast that lie back in their teeth—and I come with friends. One of them I suspect you will know. I will not say her name now. I am as conservative about such things as many of you. But there can come a time when a burned name can be rewritten and spoken again.”
He looked into the recording device, intent. “The government of our worlds, which is our right, has been wrested from our hands. Once upon a time, all the voices in our world had a right to speak. Perhaps for convenience’s sake, they did it through representatives—but now those representatives have less voice than ever they had. The people of our outerworlds are disenfranchised. The people of our inner-worlds are learning the taste of tyranny. They feed it to us in small doses, spoon by spoon, thinking we will get used to the flavor, like children being coaxed to eat something that will be good for them. But in no way is what has been happening in our worlds good for us! It is time to turn our faces away from the spoon, and push away the plate, and overset the table, and get up and walk away. When governments murder those who speak the truth, it is time to get new governments.”
He paused for breath. It seemed that this still sometimes came hard to him. “At any rate, I am done being ‘dead’ now; so there is work to be done. To landholders of mine, and cousins and more distant relatives of our House, I say, now is the time to stand to arms. Await my coming. The government, hearing this, be assured, will cast me as a traitor. They will cast those among you who rise up to support me as traitors too. They will seek to raise up your neighbors against you, and sow dissension in your ranks. You must allow them to do no such thing! If they set you to killing one another, they have already won. To those uncertain of my motivations, or my desires, I say, wait. Close your doors and do nothing. Free Rihannsu must not make war upon one another, for it is what the corrupt ones most desire. To my sons and daughters, I say, this is the time that we have long expected. You know what action to take. Prepare to receive many guests. To all you minions and secret spi
es of the corrupt Tricameron, lying in secret among us these many years, foisted upon us in order to keep us subject, I say to you, make your farewells. Countrymen, here are their names.”
Ael glanced around her. “Elements about us, who knew what weapon those young men from Gorget brought us?” She shook her head as the recitation of names Gurrhim had begun went on and on. “How long has he been carrying that list in his brain? And what kind of uproar will break out now?”
Aidoann shook her head. “Khre’Riov, whatever the Praetorate and the Senate think in terms of our plans—whether they think that the invasion is going to happen on ch’Havran or not—they are going to have a busy day ahead of them. At least their poor tools on ch’Havran will.” She, too, shook her head in admiration. “If they thought there was civil unrest there before…”
Ael shook her head. “I see house-burnings, and all manner of trouble. And see again the old sly-boots’ cleverness. How he gives even those who are uncertain of him evidence of the spies they have long suspected live among them. They will love him for that.” She straightened up. “Well, we will see what happens now. What is our position?”
“We are one tenth of a light-year from Eisn,” Aidoann said. “We will be at the rendezvous point noted in the plan as five-d in approximately three minutes.”
“And that is well,” Ael said. “Engine status?” It was more than the engine she was inquiring about.
“Khre’Riov,” tr’Keirianh said from his station, “we’re ready.”
“And the singularity?”
“Functioning quite normally, khre’Riov.”
“Pray it continues to do so,” Ael said. “This would not be the time for a malfunction.”
“We’re agreed,” tr’Keirianh said.
“And the weapons?”
“The augmentations seem to be in perfect order, khre’Riov,” tr’Keirianh said. “All we need now is something to shoot at.”