My Enemy My Ally

by Diane Duane

  "Nice work," Jim said, and both Uhura and Freeman looked exceptionally pleased. "Now I need another four hours of it. Uhura, have Lieutenant Mahasë cover for you on the Bridge till you're done. Both of you scoot!"

  They did. Jim watched them go, and Ael moved around to join him and McCoy. "If we're to be in battle in four hours," she said, "I'd best go see to Bloodwing and make sure my people are ready."

  "Sounds good to me, Commander. Bones, I'm about ready for my nap. Have me paged at point six, unless something requires my attention sooner."

  "Right."

  Ael went off in one direction, and the Doctor in another. Jim just stood there for a moment, watching them both out of sight—then headed down to his cabin, via Engineering, thinking very hard about chess.

  He was still thinking about it two hours later, after his nap turned into a tossing-and-turning session, and even one of McCoy's mild soothers left him completely awake. On Jim's desk screen, the ship's computer had obligingly translated the chesscubic's holographic display of McCoy's game with Ael into a 2D graphic, and displayed it for him. It made a fascinating study—the first moves sure on McCoy's part, tentative on Ael's; then roles reversing—McCoy moving with more of an outward show of caution, apparently seeing what Ael would do if offered the run of the cubic. There was a point at which the computer recorded a long interval between moves; she had hesitated. Jim could almost see those cool eyes of hers across the cubic, suddenly lifted to assess not only the tactical situation but the man who sat across from her—who was, at the moment, himself a tactic. And then came a series of moves that were, to put it mildly, insulting. She became "polite" to McCoy. She moved out into the cubic, but genteelly, almost as if not wanting to beat him, almost as if they were playing on the same side. McCoy put up with it for about ten minutes, then timed about half his pieces out, preparing to dump them on her like a ton of neutronium in six very visible moves. He could seem insulting too, when it suited his purposes.

  And she derailed Bones as totally as Bones had derailed Spock. Three of her pieces timed out, not even critical ones. Three moves later, McCoy's pieces all came back—into cubes that were suddenly no longer vacant. Annihilation, all over the board. McCoy had one stronghold left for his king and both of his queens.

  Ael sacrificed both her queens to his—and checkmated his king with three pawns and a knight fork.

  Her first game.

  She didn't even care, Jim. Chew on that.

  He did. It tasted awful.

  —and the red alert sirens started whooping, and there was no time to waste worrying anymore. Trust her, he told himself bitterly as he leapt up from the chair, pulling the velour on over the undertunic. Or don't. But make up your mind.

  He ran out, seething. The corridors were alive with his people, and with Romulans, too, scrambling for posts. He dashed into the lift at the end of officers' country and found tall pretty Aidoann already in there, breathing hard. "Where's the Commander?" he said, as the doors closed on them.

  "Beamed back over to Bloodwing, Captain," Aidoann said. She looked at him with those big brown eyes of hers, and Jim had a sudden thought that she looked rather like Uhura, the same slant to the eyes. . . . "Sir—" she said.

  It was the first time any of them had called him anything but "Captain." Something cultural? he wondered. But whatever, suddenly she wasn't a Romulan anymore; she was a young crewperson, looking nervous before a major engagement. "Antecenturion?"

  "Do you have things you believe in?"

  Impossible not to answer such directness. "Yes," Jim said.

  "I hope They're with us now," Aidoann said. "Those three will blow us all to Areinnye if they can."

  "Aidoann," he said, grateful that he could pronounce that word at least, "your Commander and I have other plans."

  She grinned at Jim, a quick flash through the otherwise Romulan intensity. The Bridge doors opened for them.

  I just hope they're the same ones, Jim thought, and swung down toward the center seat.

  Spock got out of it with his usual quick grace and hurried back to his station. "Captain, we are running slightly ahead of schedule," he said over his shoulder as he went. "Registering a group of large masses at most extreme sensor range. Their location and arrangement agree closely with Bloodwing's estimates for ephemerae of Levaeri V and its primary. The station is not yet detectable. On the revised schedule, we are now five minutes from scheduled 'breakaway.'"

  "Good. Mr. Mahasë"—Jim turned to the gray-haired, gray-skinned Eseriat who was holding down Uhura's post, with Aidoann standing by if she should be needed. "Get me Engineering."

  "Aye, sir."

  "Engineering, Scott here …"

  "We're running fast, Scotty—in range a bit early. How are Uhura and Freeman doing?"

  "They're just helping my people put the finishing touches on the last buoy," Scotty said.

  "Fine. Load one of them up; we're about to lay an egg."

  "Already in photon torpedo tube one, Captain."

  "All right. Hold on to it, Scotty; I'll let you know when. Thirty seconds tops. Out. Aidoann, please call Bloodwing and give them the prearranged signal."

  "Yes, sir," she said. And then, after a moment, "Bloodwing, this is Enterprise; t'Khnialmnae."

  "Tr'Rllaillieu," said Subcommander Tafv's voice, cool and calm as usual.

  "Subcommander, we have an emergency," Aidoann said, not having to fake a small tremor in her voice. "A small party of Federation personnel have broken out of group detention—"

  Mahasë killed the frequency between the two ships. Jim hit the intercom button on his chair. "Okay, Scotty, now!"

  The ship held steady as always, but there was a small muffled noise, much quieter than the usual dull thump of a photon torpedo on the way out. "Buoy away, Captain," Chekov said, "heading one eighty mark minus twenty."

  "Activate it."

  Chekov hit a control on his board. "Operational, Captain. Subspace communications are jammed."

  "Allcall," Jim said to Mahasë; and when he spoke again his voice rang through the ship. "Battle stations, battle stations! Secure for warp maneuvering!" He made a kill-it gesture at the Eseriat. "Screens up, gentlemen, deflectors on full. Mr. Sulu, kick the engines up to warp three. Break out of Bloodwing's tractors and maneuver at your discretion. Closest Romulan vessel—"

  "Rea's Helm, sir."

  "Lock on phasers. Fire at will. Mr. Chekov, photon torpedoes—"

  "Tubes three through six charged and ready—"

  "Mr. Sulu, why aren't we moving!"

  "Bloodwing has increased power to her tractors, sir—"

  Why that—! She was supposed to—"Break them," Jim said tightly.

  "Engine overheat, Captain—"

  "Risk it. Break free!"

  Sulu's hands swept over his board. "No good, sir—"

  "Increase warp."

  "Sir, no result, Bloodwing's too close—"

  "Rea's Helm has put its shields up, Captain," Spock said, staring down his viewer. "Hailing us."

  "Ignore. Mr. Chekov, fire on Bloodwing."

  Aidoann's head jerked up; her face was ashen. "Shielded, Captain—" Chekov said.

  "I note that. Scan for weakest point and fire phasers right there. Look for areas of screen overlap, those spots are sometimes poorly protected—"

  "Shields going up on Wildfire and Javelin, Captain," Spock said. The ship shuddered as something hit the screens. "Fire, Captain," Spock added. "From Bloodwing. Phaser fire, clean hit on number six screen, screen efficiency decreased to sixty percent—"

  Damn! Damn! DAMN! "Return fire at will, Mr. Chekov. Mr. Sulu, if you don't break those tractors in about a second, I'm going to tell Lieutenant Renner who stole her clothes from poolside last month!"

  Next to Chekov, who was firing the phasers in blast after blast, Sulu went pale. Jim didn't see what he did, but the ship lurched mightily, and suddenly space on the screen in front of them was clear again. "Damage?" he said.

  "Minimal,
" Spock said. "A very quick burst at warp eight, most precisely angled. Well done, Mr. Sulu."

  Yes," Jim said, sweating and grim, but grinning nonetheless.

  "Four clean hits on Bloodwing, Captain. Her forward screen is down to thirty percent efficiency, and her port screen has failed altogether. Further fire—"

  "Forget her," Jim said. "Sulu, Chekov, get me those three ships!"

  "Positions on screen," Spock said. There they were in schematic: Bloodwing lying a little to one side, coming after Enterprise but losing speed; Rea's Helm closing in from port and above, Wildfire coming in faster yet from the starboard, Javelin arching around toward the rear. "Mr. Chekov, watch out for him—"

  "Firing rear tubes, standard spread," Chekov said, eyes flicking back and forth from his board to the screen. "Recharging."

  "Clean misses," Spock said. "Javelin is in evasive maneuvers. Dropping back—now closing again—Rea's Helm is in close approach—"

  "Fire!" Jim cried at exactly the moment Chekov did so. White fire lanced away from the Enterprise, hitting the Romulan ship exactly in a screen overlap zone over a nacelle. There was one of those seemingly month-long pauses, and then Rea's Helm blew up, blazing, matter and antimatter making a small sun of her. Sulu brought Enterprise curving about and threw her right into the expanding cloud of debris, letting the deflectors take it.

  "Steady on, Mr. Sulu," Jim said, leaning forward in the center seat. "We're leaving a trail—"

  "Yes, sir, I know," Sulu said. "Warp six—" He was working on his console again, while behind them sensors showed Wildfire screaming in from the starboard, Javelin trailing somewhat, and Bloodwing at the rear of the pack, building speed but still far behind.

  "Wildfire is closing," Spock said calmly. "Firing to her port—" Spock paused a moment, looking down his scanner. "Explosion, Captain. She has destroyed jamming buoy. Wildfire's range now five hundred thousand kilometers—four hundred thousand—"

  Sulu's eyebrows went up as his hands flickered over the console. Jim watched him with uneasy delight. He was doing something Jim had seen done in starships in warp, but always at slower speeds: deforming the warpfield itself, broadening and flattening it forward, tightening it to the rear. And the ship was responding in the only way she could—slowly, gracefully nosing downward as she flashed through the Helm's remains, then nosing down faster, harder, pitching forward until she was literally flying "vertically," nacelles and the broad side of the disk forward.

  It was not a position a ship could fly in for more than a few seconds, in warp. Yet if this worked … "Mr. Sulu—" Jim said.

  "I know, Captain," Sulu said, and kept Enterprise rolling forward—a slow somersault through otherspace at seven hundred twenty times the speed of light, while behind her, seeing nothing but the unchanged shape of her defensive screens, Wildfire came charging in—right into the teeth of her forward phasers. If Sulu could get her around in time! She was flying "diagonal" now, easing out of it, flattening out—flying upside down and backward, and right into their faces, now, here came Wildfire, firing phasers—"Hits on number one shield, number three shield," Spock said, beginning to sound a touch grim now, "number one buckling, Captain; reinforcing—"

  "No! Belay that!" Jim could feel Spock glancing at him, ignored it for the moment. "Another hit on number three," Spock said, "down to twenty percent—"

  "Ready, Mr. Chekov?"

  "Ready, Captain—"

  Wildfire swelled on the screen, coming right down their throats, and now that the Romulan ship could see what was happening, it was too late—"Now!"

  Mr. Chekov pounced on his board. Enterprise's deadly forward phasers lashed out where Wildfire had expected only the lesser rear ones, or photon torpedoes. And suddenly, Wildfire was gone in a bloom of light—

  —Javelin, following behind, vanished.

  "Cloaking device," Spock said.

  "Defeat it, Mr. Spock—"

  "The cloaking countermeasure is not functional, Captain, it's a function of subspace communication."

  Oh no! Jim stared at the empty screen, in which there was nothing but Bloodwing now, soaring in toward them faster than she had been. He'll go off in some other direction—

  He stared at Bloodwing, and it hit him. "Mr. Chekov, fire! Everything we've got, right at her!"

  "Captain!" That was Aidoann, a child's cry for a betrayed mother.

  Chekov fired, photon torpedoes and phasers both at once. "Sulu, hard about!" And at the same moment Bloodwing's phasers lashed out at the Enterprise—

  —and their combined armament hit what lay directly between them, what Jim had somehow known would be using Bloodwing as cover, only from in front. "Spock, the shields!" he cried, but Spock had already reinforced them. Nothing else saved Enterprise from the point-blank explosion of another starship right in front of her. She screamed through the wreckage and the swiftly dying fire, while Bloodwing, plunging toward them at warp five, angled up and over them, deforming her own warpfield in a crazed, congratulatory victory roll.

  "They do that too. . . ." Jim said, slumping back in his seat.

  "Local traffic, Captain," Spock said sharply, looking down his scanner. "A small ship, bearing—Too late. It's cloaked."

  "Our friend the 'crawling slime,'" Jim said. "LLunih."

  "I would say so. Evidently he suspected Bloodwing of complicity with us—and sacrificed his ship to test the theory."

  "A wonderful person," Jim said. "Hail Bloodwing."

  The screen lit up. There was that cramped little control room, and in it, Ael, sweating rivers and looking haggard. "Captain," she said, "is your ship all right?"

  "We're fine. Ael, you know more about 'the better part of valor' than anyone I've ever met."

  "Probably. Why do you think I went to dinner with LLunih the other night? I wanted to see what he had hidden in his engineering room—and I got him to show me. It was an Imperial courier: that little creature in which he just saved his skin. Some day I shall have it for a pot-scouring rag."

  "His courier ship?"

  "That too. What could I do, until you deployed your jammer and I knew it was working, save increase my efforts to hold on to you as if your escape was genuinely a surprise? He will report to the Senate in doubt now—knowing that you apparently willingly fired on me to kill—and thus keep us both clear of the suspicion of complicity. They will argue—and the ship that might have gotten here from Romulus in four hours will perhaps not come for ten, or twenty."

  "I have a question for you."

  "Ask."

  "What the devil took you so long to figure out that the damn buoy was working?!"

  "Captain, our sensors are not as good as yours, especially in the high ranges, you know that. . . .I could know nothing until my subspace communication with one of the other ships failed."

  Jim sighed and said a bad word in his head, for that was true. "All right, Commander. We'd better get started for Levaeri V. . . ."

  "I agree. I'll be over in Hsaaja in a few moments."

  Jim looked at her, not liking what he was thinking. "What do you need Hsaaja for?"

  "I don't need it," Ael said, "but you will. One of your warpdrive generators is destroyed. Your second one will be needed to power its companion along the 'least expected' course out of the Levaeri system. Another will be dropped in the system itself. The last one we'll install in Hsaaja and send on Llunih's trail—thereby slowing down his report to the High Command a bit more. Even minutes may be precious later."

  Jim nodded. "Ael," he said regretfully, "that's a sweet little ship. . . ."

  "If I'm dead," she said drily, "I won't be able to fly him anyway."

  And suddenly the light dawned, and Jim sat straight up in his chair and said, "Ael—that was five warpdrive generators—"

  "So it was," she said. "Wasn't that how many you ordered made?" She smiled at him wickedly, and closed the channel down.

  Damn the woman!!

  Thirteen

  "Captain, would you kindly hand m
e that little silver spanner there?—no, the other one."

  "Commander," said the Captain, "is it going to be 'Captain' all the way back from Levaeri, too?"

  Ael looked up from the hatch in the floor of Hsaaja's cockpit, pushed a strand of sweaty hair out of the eye into which it had fallen, and said, "Oh. You think we are going to make it back, then?"

  "Commander—"

  "You may call me 'Ael.' The Doctor does. Even Mr. Spock does." She bowed her head again, reaching down into the guts of the autopilot and starting the last of the connections to the jamming apparatus.

  "Well … I wasn't quite sure I'd been given permission. You 'gave' us your name. But it's not the same. And permission to the Doctor, and Spock, is not necessarily permission to me."

  That was perceptive of him, an insight she wouldn't have expected to reach. "You're quite right," she said. "I was withholding it."

  He started to ask why, then stopped. That, too, was something she wouldn't have expected; restraint. Just as well; she wasn't certain of the reasons herself. "As for you," she said slowly, touching a connection open, reading the charge on it, and closing it again, "I can't quite pronounce the name after 'Captain.' And it's unwise to mishandle names."

  "You said that before. . . ." He looked thoughtful. "Can you say 'Jim'?"

  She gasped and started to laugh, so hard that she almost dropped the spanner. And when she was sure she still had it, and looked up again, the Captain looked so bewildered that it just made her laugh harder. "Oh, Elements," she finally managed to say, sitting back against the seat cushion of the pilot's chair, "is that truly your self-name?"

  "James, actually. 'Jim' is a contraction. . . ."

  "Oh, oh my." Ael started laughing again, still harder, so that all she could do was sag back against the seat and wave the spanner weakly at him. Reaction, she thought clinically, in some remote part of her. Wouldn't t'Hrienteh look askance at this? or even the Doctor. . . . And indeed the poor Captain was looking rather askance himself. "No, no," Ael finally managed to gasp, when he showed signs of getting up and leaving. "Oh, Captain. 'Jim.' Jim, I will call you that gladly, but I beg you …"