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

by Diane Duane

  Kirk ran after her. Spock glanced around, thrust his tricorder into Arrhae’s hands, and went after Kirk. And it was only as Kirk was climbing back into the ship that he turned for a split second, remembering, to look at Ael, standing there all alone.

  She stared back and then gestured at him furiously: go!

  It was only a matter of a few seconds to get out of the atmosphere. Horrified as he was, Jim was still surprised that he wasn’t able to feel even the slightest flush of heat as they plunged up through the air. “How can this ship stand that?”

  “J’m, I do a lot of work in stellar mechanics,” K’s’t’lk said as they flashed toward the tiny shape in orbit that swiftly resolved itself into Enterprise. “For that kind of thing you need a ship that can work in the corona, or even deeper. How’s a little friction going to bother me?” Her legs danced in and out among the controls as she lined her little ship up with the hangar bay. “Sc’tty?”

  “I’m on my way down,” Scotty answered. He sounded out of breath. “Captain—you know what we’re going to have to do.”

  “What?” Then Jim swallowed. “You mean, with the probe—” His mouth went completely dry. “Scotty, you haven’t finished testing it yet!”

  “We’re about to finish that right now, I think,” K’s’t’lk said.

  “No,” Jim whispered.

  K’s’t’lk shot in through the hangar doors. “Force field only, Sc’tty, he’ll be going right out again.”

  The force field came open in the gap between the hangar bay’s physical doors, and the area began to pressurize. “Come on, hurry,” K’s’t’lk said, climbing out of her seat. “Hurry!”

  The pressure came up and the door of her craft opened. They all piled out. The corridor doors opened, and Scotty burst in through them, pushing before him an antigrav sled with a long, sleek torp casing loaded on it.

  “You said it yourself, Captain,” Scotty said between gasps as he came up beside K’s’t’lk’s ship. The ship abruptly extruded a long set of thin spidery legs from inside, lifted the torp casing carefully, and pulled it into the body of the vessel; the door knitted itself closed again. “It’s aye better to have the sun collapse than ’tis to have it explode. And besides, this’ll probably work.”

  Jim started to turn to Spock for an estimate, and then thought better of it. K’s’t’lk laid a claw on the side of her little ship, and held still for a moment. “Done,” she said then. “Let’s get out of here and let him go.”

  “Mr. Scott!” Uhura’s voice thundered in the air. “We’re getting video!”

  Scotty and K’s’t’lk stared at each other. “Record it!”

  They both ran for the door, Spock close behind them, Kirk bringing up the rear. Behind them all the doors sealed: they ran for the turbolift.

  “We will have to recalculate for Eisn’s present condition,” Spock was saying, and somehow managed to say it almost conversationally, even when on the run.

  They all piled into the lift together. “But what about Eisn?” Jim was about to say, and then stopped himself. An eye for an eye, he thought. Then he felt ashamed of the thought—but not nearly as much as he might have.

  And besides, if it works—

  It had better. Because if it doesn’t, we’re all going to be sitting in the dark.

  All of them burst onto the bridge together. Spock went straight to his station and started working over it. Scotty did the same, with K’s’t’lk leaning up next to it, her own claws working over the controls to one side. Jim could do nothing but look in horror at the viewscreen, which was showing an image of Earth’s sun, getting closer and closer and almost completely obscuring the field of view.

  “Processing the image,” Spock said. “Uhura’s recording shows me a reverse angle, Captain. Our message was received. I judge that there are nearly four hundred Starfleet vessels englobed around the sun.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “But they cannot see the probe!” Scotty said. “And by the time they do, it’ll be too late. The thing will only uncloak to transport.”

  The sun grew to fill the whole field of view. Jim could see the sunspots, the swirl of the rice-grain structures of the surface, every one of them a cell of burning plasma big enough to lose a starship in. “Uhura,” Scotty said, “split the screen, give us a view of Eisn.”

  The screen split, Eisn on the right, Sol on the left. Jim looked at them and thought, How alike they are. Eisn was a little more golden—a younger star, perhaps? Or maybe the difference was just in stellar class. But it was minor. They’re so alike. We’re so alike. Why must our differences make our peoples so intent on each other’s destruction that one side can seriously want to put the other’s star out? “Impose tactical,” Jim said to Sulu.

  Gridwork laid itself over the Eisn view. They could see K’s’t’lk’s ship shooting inward on the lowest warp possible. “Is that safe?” Jim asked.

  “No,” K’s’t’lk said, “but it’s safer than what’s about to happen.”

  Jim sat down to hide the fact that he had begun to shake. The physical reaction to the day’s events was beginning to set in, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He was out of adrenaline. He hit the button on his chair. “Sickbay!”

  “On my way up, Jim,” McCoy said.

  “Jim!” Ael’s voice said from the planet’s surface. “Are they so lost to sense or propriety that they are broadcasting their crime?”

  Jim didn’t have time to answer her. “’Tis sheer hubris, lass,” Scotty said, laughing one furious laugh while working feverishly over his console. “They’ve given us the last thing we needed, the one thing: a timing. We’ve a chance now at an equivalence. And if we can get an equivalence, then—K’s’t’lk!”

  “Settings are in. Mr. Spock?”

  “Working,” Spock said. “Approximately thirty seconds.” His hands danced over the controls of the science station.

  Jim sat there and gripped the arms of the command chair. “Where are they getting their image from?” he said, as McCoy came in.

  “The probe’s spun off a secondary module,” Scotty said. “Imagery only. They meant to watch this happen, and us to see it. They’ve always meant us to.” His tone of voice was deadlier than any curse. To K’s’t’lk, he asked, “Where’s your ship?”

  “In the corona,” she said. “Waiting for injection. He’ll go straight in, dissolve himself, and turn the torp loose.”

  Coming up next to Jim, McCoy lifted a hypo, checked the contents, and shoved it up against his arm.

  “What is that?” Jim said, not looking away from the screen.

  McCoy had his eyes on it too. “Hope,” he said.

  They could see the Starfleet vessels in the distance, like little stars, growing, but they could do nothing. The probe was too fast. A phaser bolt came from somewhere, and another one, but there was no effect—they were all misses. Jim sat watching, his fists clenched in fury and dread. More phaser fire whited out the display again and again, but always the view of the sun came back, growing larger and larger.

  The sweat had broken out all over Jim, but Mr. Scott was suddenly all cold precision, and the Scots accent had gone completely out of his voice. “Locked in,” he said. “Waiting for the settings now. Spock—”

  “Momentarily,” Spock said, his hands working furiously over his console. “The sensor data are not real time. I am being forced to approximate.”

  Jim knew how his first officer hated that, but just this once he restrained himself from teasing him about it.

  K’s’t’lk shook herself all over, one terrible jangling chime. “Transporter signal! The probe’s in.” She slapped a control on Scotty’s board. “My ship’s in the sun.”

  Jim watched her and Scotty as K’s’t’lk reared up on some of her legs, leaning over Scotty’s shoulder to look at the image of Sol, already beginning to deviate from its normal spectrography. The spectrum and the lines of it changed color; the light caught in her eyes and the delicate spines
of the glassy fur on her back as she arched her forward eyes at the display in utter concentration. “Mr. Spock!” she said.

  “Now,” Spock said, and touched a control on his console, and straightened up.

  The graphs and readouts above Scotty’s station started to bounce around. “The probe’s controls are online,” Scotty said. “Adjusting for congruence.”

  “It’s got to be a third or so higher, Sc’tty,” K’s’t’lk said. “A little higher yet.” Three of her spare legs were tapping at the controls of the station next to Scotty’s, making adjustments to the probe on which they were all working. “This ought to do it.”

  “K’s’t’lk, I advise you to decrease the wormhole aperture,” Spock said, suddenly sounding alarmed. “That much energy released so quickly could completely derange the star.”

  “Too little is going to leave Earth, or ch’Rihan, or both, with nothing but a brown dwarf, Mr. Spock!” K’s’t’lk jangled. “Not much improvement on a nova!”

  “Not like that,” Scotty said suddenly. “Spock, K’s’t’lk—like this.”

  They both turned to watch an adjustment he was making. Jim sat holding his breath, not missing the irony that, after everything that had happened, everything he’d seen them through, this was all that was left to him at the end. They also serve…

  He saw Spock and K’s’t’lk both sag, not in satisfaction, but as if realizing there was nothing further that could be done. “That’s it,” Scotty said. “There’s no more time.”

  They all turned to the viewscreen. Jim’s hair stood on end as he saw Sol’s corona began to flicker, shiver—

  —and start to fail, dying back toward the star, going faint, going out.

  Jim had seen this before. He swallowed.

  “Enterprise!” came a cry over comms.

  Jim started. It was tr’Keirianh. “I have your settings,” tr’Keirianh said. “Not point six on the entasis level, Mr. Scott! Point eight! Point eight!”

  “What?”

  “Point eight!”

  “But it makes no sense, it—”

  Scotty froze. Then he reached down a hand, hesitant. The hand hovered.

  On the front screen, both Sol and Eisn began to darken.

  Scotty swallowed, and made a single change to his console. Then he closed his eyes.

  Jim stared at the screen. Sol was still darkening, visibly, as if someone was turning down a dimmer—

  —and then the dimming stopped. At the same time, Eisn darkened too.

  The silence on the bridge was total. “Oh, my God, no!” Uhura said softly.

  “Congruence,” K’s’t’lk said, just three notes’ worth of wind chime, and held her breath.

  Both stars shivered, and their surfaces began to boil with sunspots. Scotty opened his eyes again, stared at the screen. “Sweet heaven,” he whispered.

  And some thousands of light-years away, Earth’s sun began to sing.

  On the screens they could see what could also be seen by the closest Starfleet vessels, and what the population of the Earth would see in eight minutes or so, as the surface of the sun began to flare and shudder. They saw a sight like something out of old folktales or miracle stories, the sun dancing in the sky, shivering with light, vibrating like a struck gong—a thing out of an old miracle, a reenactment of stories of the ancient past in many species, when beings on many planets worshipped their stars, and the stars (so the stories said) took notice.

  The shivering propagated through space, and into subspace, each of them in its own way resounding, the emptiness proving more vocal than anyone had ever dreamed. When the shockwaves and radiation fronts that were moving through normal space struck the worlds in orbit around each of those stars, their upper atmospheres flared into light, auroral discharges more profligate than had ever been seen, as if Earth in her system, and ch’Rihan and ch’Havran in theirs, were trying to grow coronae of their own. Light flared like doomsday on the three worlds’ nightsides, and turned their daysides’ upper atmospheres pearly blue or pearly green. And from the tops of those atmospheres to their depths, in all the places where the air was dense enough to conduct sound, the song was heard.

  Some said it was like an earthquake, but buildings did not fall. Some said it was like thunder, but no lightning struck, and thunder quickly ceases where this did not. In Ra’tleihfi and every open place across the northern continent, and in every other place on ch’Rihan or ch’Havran that was turned toward Eisn; on Earth, from the North Pole down through the eastern hemisphere, from Japan to the South Pacific and into the Antarctic Circle; every being that stood out under either trembling sun heard that rumble, that inexpressible basso shivering, that single note of astonishment, in the flesh, in the bones, in the cavity of the chest, as if it were singing them. The single note, the stars’ breath, went on and on in a phrase that seemed likely never to end. Every seismograph on all three planets had a sudden and enthusiastic fit as it was drowned in an ocean of signal of which it could make no sense. Unshielded satellites shivered apart, not having been built to deal with an influx of shock or radiation like this.

  No eye could have seen the tiny streak of light that was the pressure-crumpled shape of a probe as it was spat out of Sol’s chromosphere and then lashed and further fried by the corona, now stimulated well past the usual million degrees. But the instruments saw it, and tracked the probe, or what was left of it, away from the star. Moments later a starship’s phaser found it and blew it to hell.

  On Enterprise’s bridge, though, it was some moments before anything but a stricken silence reigned. And then it was broken by just one voice.

  “They didn’t blow up!” Scotty whispered.

  “They weren’t supposed to blow up,” K’s’t’lk said. She managed to sound both scandalized and immensely relieved.

  McCoy shook his head. “Were they supposed to sound like that?” he said.

  K’s’t’lk managed to look uncertain. “I don’t know. It wasn’t in the equations. But I wouldn’t have missed it for any world you can imagine.”

  Jim stood up. He still felt shaky, but that would pass. “Mr. Spock?”

  Spock straightened up from his viewer. “Captain, I would quote you very high probabilities that Earth has not been destroyed. I think there may well have been some damage, possibly even some loss of life on orbital installations that were not able to cope with the effect—but far, far less than would have happened otherwise.”

  “Tr’Keirianh,” Scotty said, “you’re the hero of the day.”

  “Not I,” tr’Keirianh said. “I merely know my homestar a little better than you. But we will have time to argue the point. Who is the hero—the one who forges the sword, or the one who swings it?”

  “Now there’s a question,” Jim said, “and it reminds me of another one. Uhura, get me Ael.” He turned to K’s’t’lk. “Meanwhile, T’l, congratulations. But I’m sorry about your ship.”

  She laughed. “It’s all right, J’m! I’ll knit another.”

  “Ael is on for you, Captain,” Uhura said.

  “Jim,” came her voice, very softly, “what was that?”

  He told her.

  Down there before the doors of the Senate, Ael was now standing in front of a crowd that had grown into the thousands. They had been uneasy at first, muttering; the mutter had grown to a slow, low roar, but she had stood her ground. She had been about to speak to them when a voice much greater than hers had made itself heard.

  After it ceased speaking, none of them had been able to manage anything but silence. Now, however, she looked out over the gathered people, and caught the eyes of the foremost.

  “Rihannsu, hear me,” Ael said. “You heard from their own lips what those who ruled you were doing in your name. Why should it have surprised you? A long time ago they took your mnhei’sahe, and your very lives, to do with as they pleased. They took your worlds. They took your suns. And at last they took you to war against those who meant you no ill. But now they have paid the price
for that.

  “And now Eisn itself has spoken against them. Nor will it need to do so again, for an equivalency has been forged between our star and Sol. Who tries to seed Earth’s star, seeds ours at the same time.”

  The crowd became silent. “Now we will take back what was taken from us,” Ael said. “It will require some time. Let the Senate be recalled. Let the Praetorate, as many of them as can prove they had no connection to the vile crime committed today, return as well. Let the Tricameron sit tomorrow, and declare the hostilities done. And when they come here, this will return to its rightful place.” She hefted the Sword.

  The nearest of the crowd actually backed away a little, as if they were afraid the Sword might leap out of her hands and do something unexpected. And then, gradually, the movement transmitted itself back to the rest of the crowd. Slowly they began to move away. The rearmost of them turned and began to leave.

  Ael watched them disperse. Beside her, Arrhae watched them go as well, and lowered Spock’s tricorder. She glanced over at Ael. “Commander-General, are you all right?”

  Ael looked at her in surprise, and then laughed. “I was just lost in contemplation of my own folly. For somehow I was expecting something else. Do not ask me what!” She rubbed her eyes, which suddenly felt impossibly grainy. “But now…”

  She let the hand fall, and laughed again. “Now my work is done,” Ael said. “Or very nearly so. Shortly, tomorrow morning perhaps, I will no longer have a job. And it feels very strange! For I have only had this one job, all my life, it seems.”

  Arrhae reached out and took Ael’s little radio from her. “Enterprise?” she said. “I think perhaps you might send a shuttlecraft for the commander. She will need a ride back to Bloodwing, or wherever she wishes to go.”

  “On its way,” Uhura said.

  Ael let out a breath as Arrhae handed her back the communicator. “Where else would I wish to go?” she said.

  Arrhae quirked an eyebrow at Ffairrl, and said nothing, as Ael looked out across the plaza and down the great avenue, silent again under the sun.