by Diane Duane
“There was supposed to be a lovely evenly generated ionization effect that propagated right around the corona,” K’s’t’lk said, sounding mournful. “Not just a coronal mass ejection like that, all lumpy and asymmetrical.”
“I thought it worked rather well,” Ael said, sounding dubious.
“But not the way it was supposed to,” K’s’t’lk said. “Captain, Commander, I am mortified. We were very nearly all roast.”
“You mean toast,” Sulu said.
“Toast, thank you.”
“Nonetheless,” Ael said, “we are all alive…a situation on which I would have been unwilling to suggest odds when I first saw what was waiting for us. If a few adjustments in your version of the process need to be made, well, that is the history of science. But meantime, the effectiveness of the tuned-shield approach against the Sunseed routines is very neatly proven.”
“Assuming one knows the frequencies to which the shields must be tuned ahead of time,” Spock said. “Assessing and tuning them when the star cannot be analyzed ahead of time, but must be assessed at the same time, will be a considerable challenge.”
“I leave that to the three of you,” Jim said. “Meanwhile, we have another problem. There were seven Romulan ships in Federation space when they had no business to be there. I don’t suppose that was the diplomatic mission….”
“If it was, we have committed nearly as serious a breach of protocol as they did,” Ael said dryly. “But I very much doubt they had anything to do with the ships we are still expecting.”
“So do I.” Jim sighed and rubbed his face. “Commander Uhura, prepare a message with a record of what just happened here and prepare to send it off to Starfleet, suitably encrypted.” For the moment he was willing to put his concerns about possibly broken encryption aside. If the Romulans could decode this message, let them. It would give them something to think about. “No technical details for the moment, though; keep it dry. Let me see it when it’s done. I’ll be in my quarters for a little while.”
“Bridge?”
Jim punched the comm button again. “Problems, Bones?”
“Nothing serious, but I’m glad you told me to fasten things down, down here. What the devil was that?”
“I’ll have Uhura send you down a recording to view at your leisure,” Jim said, and grinned. Now that it was over, grinning was possible again.
“Thanks loads. Out.”
Jim turned to Spock. “Mr. Spock, when is the task force due?”
“Twenty-eight hours and eighteen minutes from now, Captain.”
“Very well. Let’s get whatever repairs need to be done out of the way, and take the evening off. Keep the shields up, though, except as necessary. Commander, perhaps some of your crew would join us for dinner, and afterward.”
“Our pleasure, Captain.”
“Excellent. Maybe you would call me in my quarters in a few minutes? There are some things we should discuss.”
“Certainly, Captain. Out.”
Jim got up, went into the lift, and tried to order his thoughts. After a pell-mell encounter like the one of the last few minutes, sometimes this took a while. But he busied himself with one of the breathing exercises Bones had taught him, and shut his eyes while the lift hummed along, concentrating on seeing space as a calm place again, full of cold and silence and the fierce pale light of the stars. By the time the lift doors slid open again, things were better…except in one regard.
The call was waiting on his viewer when he came in and sat down in front of it. At the sound of his movement, Ael looked up. She had moved down to her own cabin from Bloodwing’s bridge.
“So you were right,” she said, “about the ambush.”
“And so were you.”
“I? I did nothing but agree with you.”
“True.” Jim leaned his elbows on the desk, laced his fingers together, and put his chin on them. “And without discussion. Which suggests to me that you had previously had your suspicions as well…which you did not exactly spell out to me.”
She went quiet at that. “I dislike being thought merely paranoid,” Ael said.
“You also dislike being wrong,” said Jim.
“Yes,” Ael said, “but more lives than mine, or mine and Bloodwing’s, are on the line here. Various people’s actions in the Empire will be powerfully influenced by ours…and many innocents may live or die according to what those people do, when news of what has happened to us will make it back to the Two Worlds.”
“It won’t be brought back by those ships.”
“No.” There was a brief pause. “Even now, Jim, even after what we went through at Levaeri, when my son, my own son, turned traitor and tried to take your ship, and he and all the people who turned with him suffered the penalty for such betrayal—even after that, I still believe there are still most likely agents of the Empire aboard my ship; crew who did not reveal their affinities then, but conceal them still, passing messages back to ch’Rihan when they can. I did not dare generally reveal my thoughts about what might be waiting for Bloodwing at 15 Trianguli if we had kept to the original schedule; and I did not tell my crew at large that we were going to divert to Hamal first, or that we would leave it accompanied, instead of going alone to 15 Tri. Now behold what has happened…for Bloodwing comes to the spot where it was intended to wait alone, and finds seven Rihannsu ships waiting. And now no ship will go home to ch’Rihan to tell what happened; which is a good thing.”
“Commander,” Jim said.
Her eyes widened a little at his tone.
“How the hell am I supposed to trust you,” Jim said, “if you won’t trust me?”
She made no answer to that right away. After a moment, Ael glanced down at her desk. “I see that I have done you an injustice,” she said. “Habit…can be very difficult to break.”
“Something for you to talk to your chief surgeon about, maybe,” Jim said. He was angry, but he wasn’t going to let that affect him any more than necessary. “God forbid I should criticize you for calculating…your calculation has saved both our lives, once or twice. But there’s no reason for you to do it alone. Especially when it’s my crew’s lives on the line, as well.”
She was silent.
“In the meantime, I was right, and you were right, to take the course of action we did. And you’re right about this too: regardless of how many spies may still be aboard Bloodwing, we now have enough evidence for my own purposes that there are intelligence leaks fairly high up in Starfleet, and those leaks are reaching straight back to ch’Rihan. Very few people at our end of things knew when you were supposed to be at 15 Tri, alone, to meet the task force that will shortly be arriving. My problem is that, after what’s happened, they’ll know that I have reason to suspect those leaks. This may translate into a loss of advantage for me, depending on how high up the leaks go…and I’m damned if I know what to do about it.”
“They will not know that,” Ael said, “if I tell them that I convinced you to accompany Bloodwing there.” Jim opened his mouth. “They will half believe that anyway, Jim; for Starfleet cannot at the best of times be very sanguine about our association. Certainly they must look at it and see all manner of things that are not there.”
Jim closed his mouth again. After a moment he said, “Interesting idea.”
“And this I will be glad to do when the task force arrives,” Ael said. “It seems like the least I can do…by way of apology.”
Their eyes met. After a second, Jim let out a breath. “Let’s see if it’s genuinely necessary,” he said.
“Very well.”
“Meanwhile,” Jim said, “the presence of those ships themselves is evidence that you were right in more than one way. There will be a war, now. Their presence in Federation space, without permission given beforehand for the transit, was itself an act of war according to the terms of the treaty that established the Zone…which tells me that someone in your government is getting ready to throw that treaty right out the window, no
matter what Starfleet decides to do about you and Bloodwing and the Sword. From our two points of view, that certainly is going to change things.”
“Yes,” Ael said softly. “It will.”
“I want to discuss this with you further,” Jim said. “But let’s leave that for this evening, when your crew are here as well. That way there’ll be a little less notice taken when you spend a good while talking to me…in places where we can’t be overheard, by your crew or mine.”
She briefly gave him a rather wicked look. Jim flushed. “Not like that,” he said crossly.
“Indeed not,” Ael said. “The thought was furthest from my mind.”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “Why, thank you. I think.”
“You are very welcome. What time shall I begin the leaves, Jim?”
“A couple of hours.” She reached out for the control for her viewer.
“Ael,” he said.
She paused, looking at him thoughtfully.
“…It’s all right.”
Ael’s eyes dwelt on him for a moment more. “That must yet be seen,” she said, and she bowed her head, and cut the connection.
Jim sat there for a while, frowning, thinking. She may not be alone in the doing-an-injustice department, he thought. Think of the shock of being betrayed, not just by a co-officer, but by your own son. The thought was profoundly uncomfortable. He wanted to turn away from it, but forced himself to face it regardless. The loyalty of his officers and crew, not unquestioning but utterly reliable, was something Jim had come to take for granted, like air to breathe. He could not conceive of life on Enterprise without it. Ael, though, having had something very like that with her own crew, had now seen that seemingly solid ground fall away from under her feet. And across that suddenly shifting, crumbling landscape, she was now walking into what would be, if Jim was right in his guesses, the greatest challenge of her career: if indeed she considered that she had a “career” left as such. At any rate, it was a situation from which she would emerge alive and triumphant—or dead. He could still hear that proud, cool voice saying, “Flight would not be my choice…it will solve nothing.” One way or another, unresolved details aside…she was still resolved to fight. And all this without knowing, any longer, if she could completely trust her own crew.
Once burned… Jim thought. But it all still comes down to trust. If this situation is to be survivable—she’s got to learn to trust me.
And can she ever?
He sighed, then got up and went off to have a shower, and see about a meal.
Chapter Four
Many light-years away from 15 Trianguli, two men sat in a dim-lit room, awaiting the arrival of a third. The two scowling around them at the high-ceilinged, tapestried, weapon-hung surroundings, which were unusually rich and splendid even as high-caste Klingons reckoned such things, a twilight of crimson and dully gleaming gold. The two Klingons were also scowling at one another, for normally, had they met in the street, they would have attacked one another.
There was blood feud between Kelg’s House and Kurvad’s, a feud that both Houses had cultivated with pleasure for a decade. Unfortunately, the House in which the two enemies now sat was senior to both of theirs by centuries, and the man whom they awaited was so high-caste that any feud must needs be set aside until they had discharged whatever errand he might set the two of them. The necessity did not make the waiting any easier, though, and the silence between them was broken by the occasional snarl. That, at least, propriety permitted. Kelg entertained himself with thoughts of what else he would do, some time soon, when circumstances brought him and Kurvad together in some less ritually restrictive environment.
For nearly half an hour they had to sit in the dimness, waiting. Somewhere nearby the noon meal had been served, and Kelg’s gut growled at the smell of choice viands, the smoky hint of saltha on the air, the scent of bloodwine. But nothing was offered them. Kelg sat there fuming at the insult until the great black carved doors swung open, and K’hemren walked in. Kelg and Kurvad stood to greet him, then sat down again.
“I will hear your report,” said K’hemren, reaching behind his tall chair. The scent of the feast to which they had not been invited swirled in the air around them as the doors to K’hemren’s counseling chamber closed.
“They are finally moving,” said Kelg, determined to speak the first word at this meeting in Kurvad’s despite, and as much intent on drowning any sound his gut might make. “And doing it with surprising openness. No hiding it…no cover stories.”
“Beware the targ without a bone in his mouth,” said Kurvad, sneering, “and the Romulan without a lie in his.”
“The cliché is true enough,” said Kelg. “And what are we to make of what they are doing? Not what they want us to, surely?”
K’hemren had brought out from behind the tall chair a long, curved, extremely handsome bat’leth. This he now laid in his lap. “It is toward the Federation that they move,” he said, glancing up. “And some interesting pieces of news have come to us, through their own news services, and even via messages routed through our own message networks.”
Kelg and Kurvad looked at him curiously, but he did not elaborate. Finally Kurvad said, “The arch-traitress whom they’ve all been yelping about the last couple of months apparently has gone to ground in Federation space. Seems that she may either be about to ask them for asylum, or else she has done so already…I am none too clear on the details.”
Kelg, laughing at him, got up and began to pace. “They will never give it to her! She would become an occasion of war, and if there is one thing they never want, it is a war!”
“She has already become such an occasion,” said K’hemren, thoughtfully stroking the bat’leth, “and she is indeed now in their hands. Yet they have not sent her back across the Zone, which would have been the most straightforward response.” He smiled slightly. “But there is a reason for that, it seems.”
Kelg paused. He and Kurvad looked at K’hemren curiously.
“She has been with Kirk,” K’hemren said, “in Enterprise.”
Kurvad spat on the floor and leaped to his feet, beginning to pace as well, though at the mandated safe distance from Kelg. “I thought ill enough of human manners,” he growled, “but the man mates with aliens, with animals, as well? It is intolerable—”
“…that one who behaves so, nonetheless also beats every ship of ours he meets?” K’hemren looked down at the bat’leth in amusement. “Maybe so. But his victories cannot be denied him—may the last Dark only devour him soon.”
“That the two of them should be conniving together—” said Kelg. “It bodes ill for someone.”
“The Romulans, I think,” said K’hemren. “That one does not love her people. She has betrayed them before. So she meets with Kirk, as before, to hatch out some new betrayal.” He smiled slightly. “But then she is a madwoman. Her niece was betrayed by Kirk and his half-breed first officer, and yet the woman blames her own people for what happened to the niece. Irrational.”
Kelg stood still for a moment, thinking about that irrationality and what might be made of it, if the circumstances were right. The woman had been deadly enough in her way; the thought of somehow pushing Kurvad into her path was amusing. “One could wish she would only turn on Kirk some fine morning and tear his throat out,” said Kurvad.
“It would be too much to ask of the universe,” said K’hemren. “Meanwhile, these ship movements…”
“They concern me,” said Kelg, beginning to pace again, though more slowly now. “The Romulans would not dare move toward battle unless they had acquired something which made them completely fearless.”
“You underestimate them,” said Kurvad. “They have the strength to conduct a little border war, surely….”
Kelg sneered at the idea, typical of Kurvad’s witlessness and cowardice, and was amused by Kurvad’s outraged look. “Have they indeed! They didn’t react to our attack on Khashah IV—what is it they call it? Eilhaunn? They withdrew th
eir forces, they let us take it!”
“A trick. While they do that on the one hand, on the other they move directly into Federation space—”
“With all of seven ships!”
“Do you think me a complete fool? There have been many more ship movements than that in Romulan space near where the Zone meets Federation space, over the past two weeks. And similar movements where the Zone comes close to our own space! Once again they use the Zone to cloak their own movements. And their new cloaking device is in use as well; who knows what they are letting us see just to distract us from what we can’t see elsewhere?”
Kelg laughed again. “There are no great strategists among them…”
“There do not have to be!” K’hemren roared. Kelg stopped, shocked still for the moment. “They are afraid—which makes them dangerous. And more, they have no hope!”
K’hemren’s vehemence silenced both Kelg and Kurvad for a moment. “We have closed down our relations with them much too tightly in recent months,” he said. “Now they have no hope in dealing with us…and one should never leave one’s enemy without hope. First of all because it is a weapon in one’s own hand, sunk in their guts, which one can twist when one needs to. But secondly because an enemy without hope swiftly becomes an enemy with nothing to lose!”
It was good sense in its way, but Kelg was reluctant to admit this. “The chancellor,” he muttered, “is not going to have much patience for these philosophical discussions. He is going to want to know how many more planets we have taken since we spoke to him last. It does not take a thought admiral to see that the present answer will not please him.”
K’hemren shrugged, studying the bat’leth’s steel, and turned it over in his lap. “Even the chancellor cannot have everything his own way,” he said. “It would be a fool’s act to attack any more worlds before hostilities break out. Let the fog of war descend first. Under its cover, many attacks can take place, and no one will know whose responsibility they are.”
“No one who does not bother analyzing the ion trails and residues,” said Kurvad.