The Bloodwing Voyages

by Diane Duane

  She poured herself a cup of herbdraft from the sideboard. “My appetite will be worth nothing until this searching is over,” she said. “This will suffice me for now. Meanwhile, Ffairrl, will you do something for me?”

  “Certainly, noble deihu.”

  “I am minded to accept young tr’AAnikh’s apology now,” she said. “He has shown himself contrite enough that I can afford to be gracious about his lapse. You know where his quarters are?”

  “I can find them, deihu.”

  “Go do so, then, and tell him he may wait on me without delay as soon as he has completed the other errand I gave him. Say just that to him.”

  Ffairrl bowed. “I will deliver your message exactly so, deihu.” He made for the door.

  “Oh, and Ffairrl—” He paused. She smiled very slightly, with a conspiratorial look. “When he arrives, I will wish to be private with him for an hour or so. See to it.”

  “But, lady, if the searchers come while—”

  “Certainly nothing is going to happen until they have left,” Arrhae said, sounding scornful. “On that you may depend. Now go.”

  He went.

  Arrhae glanced at the cupboard. The little cloaking sphere lay in a bottom drawer, under a pile of bodysilks. Where can I possibly hide it so they will not find it? If they—

  The door signal went off.

  She got up and went to answer it. The door slid open to reveal six people, three men and two women in the gray-on-black of ship’s security, and one in intel black and green, all bearing various kinds of scanning equipment. “Noble deihu,” the intel officer said, “we beg your pardon, but we—”

  “Yes, yes, come in and get it over with,” Arrhae said, “so that I can get back to my firstmeal before it grows cold.”

  They filed in and walked around the room, which soon filled with the hum and buzz of their scan equipment. Arrhae sat down and drank her draft and pointedly ignored them all, fighting not to look as nervous as she felt, while they went into Ffairrl’s little galley, all over her suite and into her bathroom, scanning every piece of furniture in the place, and every drawer and cupboard. But the moment she was dreading, the sound of one of their scanners going off as it discovered something suspicious, never came. Finally one of them opened the clothespress and started scanning in there, and when he was finished, even started opening the drawers.

  Now or never. Arrhae looked over at him, the last one left looking for anything; the rest were gathered together in the middle of the room, comparing readings, plainly having had only negative results. In a voice dripping with lazy scorn, Arrhae said, “If with all your high-priced machinery you have found nothing, I think you may safely leave off pawing through a Senator’s intimates, fellow. Unless you and your comrades prefer to find yourselves pawing through something far less attractive, on your account, when we get back home…”

  The security man, who had been about to open that last drawer, started straight up as if shocked. “Close that up straightway,” the intelligence officer said, irritated, “and come along. Deihu, a thousand pardons for troubling your morning.”

  And out they went.

  Arrhae sat right where she was for a few seconds, trying to find her composure again. It not only kept poor Gurrhim from being detected, she thought, but it has protected itself from detection as well.

  The small relief did nothing to assuage her greater concern. Well. If this does not qualify as a great need… For something in her was saying, Keep that man alive. Whatever you do, keep him alive!

  Arrhae got up, waved the door locked, and went to get the sphere. For the next little while she sat in the bathroom with the door closed, hurriedly speed-reading her way through the holographic projection it produced of its documentation. And by the time the door signal went again, she was ready.

  She stuffed the sphere into her breeches pocket and went to answer the door. Tr’AAnikh was standing there, looking somewhat apprehensive.

  “Deihu…” he said.

  “Come in,” Arrhae said. “And sit down. We must have a talk…”

  The building in which the Senate kept its administrative offices was only across the Avenue of Processions from the great domed building itself, but even so close, no whisper of the noise of reconstruction came through the plasteel of the window that made up one whole wall. Everything was silent in the small, bare retiring room where the three men now stood. It looked as if it should have echoed, for there was not so much as a stick of furniture in it, and the floor and walls were bare. But every word spoken sounded almost painfully anechoic due to the damping devices in operation. No force known to Rihannsu science could see or hear what was happening in that room…which was the way the three men wanted it.

  “We should at least get it back.”

  “There’s no point in it now, Arhm’n! It’s a liability. Trying to save it will only multiply the chances that she’ll somehow escape alive. And we cannot permit that now. We have to kill her immediately, while we have the chance.”

  “I’m not saying that’s a bad idea. You know how I feel, Urellh! But the Sword—”

  “It no longer matters. There’s far worse to deal with now. If we’re concerned about keeping our people in line, well, the Klingons will be giving us more than enough fuel for that fire momentarily. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise; nothing unifies a people like a good war, eh? But whatever happens, if we are not to have Artaleirh, they certainly cannot be permitted to have it. The place is going to be destroyed anyway; it makes little odds which of us does it now. No news will come from there to ch’Rihan and ch’Havran that we don’t permit to come…and after the fact, we can present that news any way we like. But there’s time to worry about that later.”

  “My people in the Fleet will handle it. But the Sword—”

  “Let it be lost, for Fire’s sake, Arhm’n! It’s her the damned Artaleirhin are after, not what she stole. She is poison, that woman! Kill her now before she becomes some kind of symbol for noble rebellion.”

  “Before the sickness spreads any further,” said the third man. “And the Sword is also likely to be contaminated forever after by its association with her; it will be no more use to us as a symbol. The news of its loss can be managed, too. As that of tr’Siedhri’s death, when that finally happens.”

  “Damn the man, is he unable to cooperate with anything? I thought he would have died by now—”

  “Still ‘critical,’” Urellh said. “Well, he can’t last long in Gorget’s infirmary; he needs surgical routines with which they’re not equipped to provide him. And their master surgeon knows which way the wind is blowing; he’ll do nothing heroic. Never mind Farmer Gurri—he’s paid for his treason, and he’ll soon be mucking out the Elements’ stables. As for t’Rllaillieu, Arhm’n, capture and trial are now the wrong way to handle her. She must die immediately, before she can do any more damage.”

  There was a long silence. Arhm’n looked at tr’Anierh.

  “Expediency,” tr’Anierh said, “I think, requires this of us now. This unrest is caused—and spread—by uncertainty. The best way to settle the unrest is by providing the rebels and would-be rebels with a certainty they cannot contest: that she is finally gone, forever, beyond any possibility of rescue, exculpation, or pardon. Let us make it unanimous, Arhm’n. In the present circumstances, we three must not be seen to be divided. Too much rests on it.”

  The silence stretched out.

  “Tell them to go ahead with it, then,” Arhm’n muttered. He stood watching them taking the scaffolding away from the great dome across the way. “Problems may be multiplying at the moment, but shortly their number will decrease by one…one very large one.”

  Sleep forsook Jim early that morning, after only a few hours, and would not come back. The clock was ticking toward Fox’s deadline, and the tension ruined his sleep. By the time he had breakfast and got up to the bridge, it was still only seven hours until the meeting at which Ael’s status would be clarified, and everything woul
d blow up, one way or another. And there had been no answer from Ael, even though Jim knew she might send none even if she agreed with him. Her concerns about the security of information on her own ship could well be behind the silence.

  On the bridge, Mr. Spock was standing at his viewer, looking down it steadily, making delicate adjustments at one side of it, and he did not look up at the sound of the lift doors opening and shutting. Jim went and sat down in the center seat, and when the morning duty yeoman came to him with the order-of-the-day padd, he said softly, “How long has he been at it, Nyarla?”

  The tall, dark-haired yeoman glanced over at Spock and said as softly, “At least since I first came in, Captain—three hours and fifty-four minutes ago.”

  Jim nodded as he looked down the padd and initialed the bottom of it. A Syan had a circadian-based clock in her head as accurate as Spock’s, for different reasons, so the phrasing was nothing unusual. But her presence here was. “You’re not supposed to be on for a couple of hours yet,” Jim said.

  She raised her eyebrows. “After I finish budding,” she said, “I’m always on edge. Present circumstances…”

  “Understood,” Jim said, and handed her back the stylus and the padd. “Did that go smoothly, by the way?”

  “No problems, Captain,” Nyarla said. “Except, as usual, the new personality is starting to complain about wanting her own quarters.” She put up her eyebrows, looking resigned. “Same as always. ‘Twelve’s a crowd…’”

  “Well, let the doctor know if it starts to be a problem.”

  “I will, sir.” She headed for the turbolift. Jim raised his eyebrows, once again making a mental note to ask McCoy exactly how he dealt with a crewmember who budded off a new subsection of her brain, and hence a new personality, every eight months or so. Though probably McCoy would refuse to tell him much, on confidentiality grounds.

  Sulu came in as Nyarla went out. He relieved the duty helmsman and started checking out his console. Jim glanced over his shoulder and saw that Scotty’s station was empty. “Commander, has Mr. Scott come on duty yet?” he said to Uhura.

  “Came in and went out again half an hour ago, Captain,” she said. “He’s down in engineering with K’s’t’lk and a couple of his staff, going over some new Sunseed numbers, he said.”

  Jim nodded. Everything running with the usual efficiency, but a little ahead of schedule. Everybody else around here is getting as twitchy as I am, he thought. It can be a good thing…within reason. If the tension gets so great that it starts affecting response times…

  Spock straightened up, though he was still looking down at the scanner as if he distrusted what he had been seeing. Jim glanced back at him. “The Romulans still busy with their long-range scanning, Mr. Spock?”

  “They are,” Spock said. “But that is not my concern at the moment.”

  “It’s not?”

  Spock left the science station and came down to stand by the center seat. “The scanning I have been monitoring is of a sort I have not seen in previous encounters with Romulan vessels,” he said. “It suggests they may have made some theoretical breakthroughs in their understanding of the nature and structure of subspace, and further analysis will be interesting. I have begun work on such analysis. But while monitoring the scanning activity, I also detected some interesting energy readings from two of the ships, Pillion and Hheirant.”

  “Interesting? In what way?”

  Spock raised his eyebrows. Jim had seen this expression before; it was that of a Vulcan who cannot admit to annoyance, but is experiencing it nonetheless. “Our own scans seem to be detecting power generation from within both Pillion and Hheirant considerably in excess of what ships of their size should require either for maximum projected propulsion or for maximum weapons use, or, for that matter, for both together. And if this were not in itself cause enough for interest, I am unable to determine from exactly what system aboard these ships the power in question is being generated, except that it does not appear to be directly associated with their engine rooms.”

  “Some kind of weapon we haven’t been told about?” Jim said.

  Spock let out a breath. “Insufficient data,” he said. “Our own scans are not proving as efficient as they should, especially considering that we are at such close range. I have recalibrated our scanners twice within the last three hours, with only marginal improvement in the resulting scans.”

  “And it’s nothing to do with Mascrar being in the way?”

  “No, Captain.”

  Jim thought for a moment. “Some variant on the cloaking device?”

  “That is a theory that had occurred to me, Captain, but the typical waveform signature of the cloaking device we know is missing. That does not, of course, rule out the possibility that a new one has been developed, and there are some waveforms presenting in the scans from Pillion and Hheirant that I do not recognize, but there is as yet no evidence to support the conjecture that they are associated with new cloaking technology. They could, for example, be parasitic on the ships’ communications systems. But unless I can improve the quality of our own scanning, there is no way either to confirm this or to rule it out.”

  Jim’s attention went to the main viewscreen. He could just catch sight of one of Gorget’s long, swept-back nacelles below the curve of Mascrar. “There’s a lot of new technology out there,” he said. “Some of it has plainly been brought to impress us.”

  “But what I am picking up is not associated with the newer ships, Captain. Pillion and Hheirant are two of the older K’tinga-class models.”

  “Well, stay on it, Mr. Spock. I’ll be interested to see what you find.”

  Spock nodded and went back up to his science station. The turbolift doors opened, and McCoy came ambling in. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “that anything’s happened to make them have that meeting early.”

  “What do you think?” Jim said.

  “Well, hope springs eternal…”

  “Oh, Doctor,” Uhura said, “while you’re here—a message just came in for you from Speedwell, from the ambassador’s office.”

  “For me?” McCoy said. “What the heck do they want from me?”

  “It’s nothing they want from you. They have something for you. A package. It came over from Gorget, apparently, with this morning’s documents exchange.”

  Jim looked at McCoy, wondering. McCoy raised his eyebrows. “Did they scan it? Do they have any idea what it is?”

  “The ambassador’s assistant says it checks clean for explosives or other dangerous devices. He says it’s a bottle.”

  McCoy smiled slightly. “Ale, I bet,” he said. “Shows you what the explosives scan’s worth. Ask them to beam it over, would you?”

  “They’ll be doing that shortly.”

  “Fine, I’ll go on down and get it.”

  Uhura chuckled then. “My, we’re busy this morning. Captain, I have Commodore Danilov waiting for you, scrambled.”

  “Put him on,” Jim said.

  The screen flickered, and there was Danilov, looking pleased. “Jim,” he said, “I wanted to thank you again for that message you sent.”

  “No need, Commodore,” Jim said, rather surprised.

  “I disagree,” Danilov said. “We just got in a message from one of the Zone monitoring stations. Long-range scan shows that a number of Romulan vessels that were patrolling the other side of the Neutral Zone near here have pulled out.”

  So Fox was right, Jim thought. They’re starting to blink.

  Or so it seems.

  “There’s something else you should know about,” Danilov said. “Apparently things are breaking apart somewhat among the Romulan negotiation team. One of the Praetors, Gurrhim tr’Siedhri, is in the infirmary aboard Gorget, subsequent to an assassination attempt.”

  “Good Lord,” Jim said. “How is he?”

  “No details,” Danilov said. “Fox thinks this is symptomatic of a serious split among the senior negotiators. We’ll see what happens at the meeting l
ater.”

  “Have we heard back from Earth yet about Ael?” Jim said.

  “We have,” Danilov said. “Later, Jim. Speedwell out.”

  The screen flicked back to its view of Mascrar and the other vessels orbiting on this side with Enterprise. Jim sat back in the center seat and let out a breath of exasperation. I am not cut out for this diplomatic work, he thought.

  Nonetheless, he settled in to wait.

  Half an hour or so later, McCoy was leaning against the console in transporter room two, trying to control his impatience and failing. “What’s keepin’ those people?” he said.

  “Something to do with the assassination attempt aboard Gorget,” said the transporter chief. “None of the diplomatic people are where they’d usually be. The transporter chief over on Speedwell says she sent most of the ambassador’s people over to Mascrar. The rest could have used another transporter.”

  “Typical,” McCoy muttered. He reached out to the comm button, hit it. “Speedwell, this is McCoy aboard Enterprise. Can somebody please track down this package or bottle or whatever it is that the ambassador’s office is holding for me? I have other things to do today…”

  “Hold on a moment, Doctor,” said a somewhat bored male voice. Then another voice, a female one, said, “Chief Perelli, shuttle bay. We’ve got a kind of long box here. It’s annotated as ‘bottle’ on the docs manifest the courier brought over this morning.”

  “That’s sounds like what we’re after. Would you run it up here?”

  “Sure thing. Sorry for the delay, Doctor. This is medicinal, right?”

  McCoy grinned. “If you get a chance to come over here, I’ll let you see how medicinal.”

  A few minutes later there was a sparkle on one of the frontmost transporter pads, and a box wrapped in silvery prismatic plastic appeared. “Thanks, Chief,” McCoy said, going over to pick it up.