Star Trek: The Empty Chair (32 page)

A rustle went through the men and women standing there in their many uniforms—mercantile, private, some of them even old Grand Fleet uniforms—as they waited to hear what Ael had to say. She met the eyes of all the closest, one after another. “But I, too, have been waiting for you,” she said. “For a long while now, events have waited upon the people who would finally rise up to take back their Empire. And in that endeavor, I am glad—to lead you perhaps would be the wrong phrase. To be in this battle with you; to be at the forefront of it, yes. But many of you will be there too. To lend, perhaps, a sense of direction. We are all going the same way, led by
mnhei’sahe.”
She glanced around them, saw the effect of the word, was heartened. “Too long that word has been absent from the lips of those who govern us, and from their
hearts, and from their actions. Time to bring it back into government and rule again, and into the ken of those who guard our world, and deal on our behalf with other. If you have come here on that journey, right gladly I will travel with you.”

Another transporter hum came from the pad behind her. Ael looked over her shoulder, and saw Kirk appear there, and the little rustling among the ships’ captains and crews before her now died away to complete stillness. Ael smiled very slightly to herself. Here, too, was one the assembled group had not quite believed in, one who might have been a hoax. Even the sight of his ship, hanging there off 553 Trianguli, apparently had not entirely convinced some of them. “And this man,” Ael said, as Kirk walked over to her, “has come much farther than I on this particular journey, and has proven himself more completely than you can know. To my satisfaction, certainly.” She glanced over at Veilt. “And to that of
Tyrava’
s command.”

Kirk came up to stand beside her, and looked out over the group waiting there. “Anything in particular I need to say here?” he said under his breath.

Ael raised an eyebrow. “Only what you would normally say to perhaps a thousand people who were trained not to trust you, and now find they must.”

Kirk nodded fractionally. “Oh,” he said softly. “Just like Starfleet Command. No problem.”

He looked around at the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “commanders and antecenturions and civilian commanders of all ranks and styles.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’m here to fight alongside you. I’m here to help you take back your worlds.”

“And what then?” someone said, from the center of the group. The person was safely hidden away among all numbers. There was no telling who had spoken.

Kirk glanced that way. “Then, I expect to go home and
find the best possible legal representation for my court-martial.” He smiled, an edged smile with no more curve than Ael’s, but considerably sharper. “I have something of a name among my own people for stretching my orders to just the point before they’ll snap. I think I may have exceeded my reputation this time, even among my own.” He looked rueful. “But for the time being—let’s just say that there are some fights that must be fought, at the risk of refusing them and letting the world change much for the worse. This is one of those fights. And if I have a reputation in this part of the universe at all, I hope it’s for not leaving a fight until it’s finished.”

They all stood there quietly for a few moments, digesting that. Then Ael said, “What more needs saying, friends? Events are moving, and so must we. We cannot linger here long.”

Slowly a group of about fifty moved forward. The young man at the head of them said, “We need only to swear you our fealty.” And he broke off.

Kirk looked briefly confused; but Ael understood the confusion. Even among these people, rebels already in the grain, it came hard to speak the name of someone whose name had been written and burned. Ael looked at Kirk, and her smile grew an edge to match his. “Call me what you will,” she said. “I imagine there must be a calling-name for me among the volunteer fleets.”

Many of those gathered there looked at one another with slight discomfort, almost nervousness. “They call you,” said the commander nearest her, “the Sword.”

“The winged one,” said another. “The wind,” a third said. “The wind that blows, and makes things new.”

Ael flicked a glance at Jim. He caught her discomfort, perhaps. “I seem to remember,” he said under his breath again, “you telling me something about having to be careful how you choose your names…”

She nodded. “And at times like this, more so than usual.” Ael raised her head, looking at the gathered fleet-folk. “At the moment, there is one Sword on my ship that takes precedence over any other. From such a naming, I would refrain. The winged one, though,” she said, “
Hlalhif:
so let me be called, for this time. Come and tell me your ships’ names, and your own.” Then Ael laughed, and it was her turn to sound rueful. “There are so many of you, it will go hard with me to remember you all, at least on sight. I pray you, be patient with me until I learn all names as well as they deserve.”

Slowly they began to come up to her then, group by group: large groups, small ones, sometimes little gaggles of only three or five people, several times just one person by himself, all sworn to her service. There were no other words to say on such an occasion; the name was all. Giving it gave your business, your intention, to a certain extent your life, into the other’s hand. If Ael was a weapon in some other force’s hand, that she had learned to bear; but to have such a burden of weaponry, a veritable armory of souls, thrust upon her like this—it was hard. Their lives or deaths, their fates, were all on her head, now.

Next to her, Kirk stood straight, listening, his eyes dwelling on all the faces; but he said nothing. Perhaps he was able to tell from the hushed atmosphere that had fallen around them that this was not his place to speak.
But it is his place to be. I am glad that he’s here.

The recounting of names took a long time. Finally it was over; finally Ael had spoken to them all, giving them in exchange for their own names her new gift-name, in lieu of the three she could not give and the one she would not. There was nothing more to do, now, except to go into battle. “The officers on
Bloodwing
and
Enterprise,”
Ael said, “will be in touch with all your communications and weapons officers concerning command and control for this upcoming mission.
I beg you, pay the most heed to them, and carefully check the communications and coordination protocols that will be laid into your computers. In a situation like this, our coordination will prove a greater weapon than any phaser or disruptor. If we all do what we are all meant to do, victory will be ours, for our enemy counts on us being a crowd of ragged individualists who cannot set aside our personal visions long enough to cooperate. If we slip—” And then Ael shook her head. “But we will not slip. The weapon is no less sound for being untried. We will shortly teach the Empire that its head is not safe on its shoulders. If we are fortunate, if we teach it well enough, then perhaps our worlds may be spared much grief. Let us fight in that hope, and the commitment to carry on even if hope fails.”

A cheer went up from them, muted, but enthusiastic in the only kind of way that mattered. These people were determined. Ael looked at Jim, and turned away.

Standing behind the two of them, however, was Veilt. “There is one word yet to say,” he said. “My Ship-Clan is with you; I am with you. But one more thing I can say to you that will make you, and all the others, most sure.” He bent over toward Ael, and whispered a word in her ear.

Ael’s eyes went wide. Veilt looked out over the assembly. “She has my fourth name,” he said. “Should I fall, she is Clan-Chief and Clan-Captain of
Tyrava.
Her word in such case will weigh as heavily in the balance with the other Clan-Chiefs of the Ship-Clans as mine would have were I still breathing. All of you here, know this word, and know that I have given it to her. If I fall, follow her as you would follow me.” And as casually as that, he turned and walked off out of the great assembly hall into some other part of
Tyrava.
Ael and Kirk watched him go.

Slowly, the two of them went on to the pad. “Always full of surprises, that one,” Kirk said.

“You have no idea,” Ael said. If she had thought herself
burdened before, it was nothing to what lay on her shoulders now. “I must talk to you later, if you have time.”

“No problem,” he said. “Call me just before we leave. We have to do our test on the star.”

Ael nodded. “Later, then.” She stepped up onto the pad, moved to a decent distance from him, and a few moments later, vanished.

Hours later,
Enterprise
hung there in the darkness, two hundred million miles out from 553 Trianguli, waiting.

Jim, sitting in the center seat, drummed his fingers on its arm and eyed the star. It was big enough to be safely out of the dwarf category, which would have made it a little too closely a twin of Sol. But the sun was much on his mind at the moment, along with other things.

He had come away from his later chat with Ael feeling all too sobered by the newest Intelligence passed to them from
Tyrava.
It suggested that truly massive force was being marshaled against them at Augo, and Jim was already having to think of different ways to handle the increased injection of materiel, ships, and manpower.
If we ever had any kind of advantage of surprise,
he thought,
it’s gone now. Whether we have leaks or not in our own ranks—and it’s pretty likely, since there are thousands of people on our side whose allegiances and private alliances I know nothing about—somebody at Grand Fleet has got the message: better have a big engagement at Augo than any closer to home.

Dammit. They were doing such a good job at being stupid until now.

Jim sighed and focused on the task at hand. “Scotty?”

Mr. Scott was leaning over his station, making some final adjustments, straightening up again to look at the screens showing the data input and output from the field-generator probe they were getting ready to drop. “We’re all sorted out,” he said. The look on his face, though, suggested that his
inner calm didn’t even slightly match the calm he was enforcing on his voice. “Just waiting for the probe to finish its diagnostics, then we can let her fly.”

The turbolift door opened. McCoy came wandering in, looking like a man who was glad to have escaped from sickbay for a while. “Doctor,” Jim said. “Got everything strapped down tight in sickbay?”

McCoy’s eyes flickered just enough to let Jim know that he wasn’t talking about the laboratory glassware. “All’s secure.” He ambled over to Scotty’s station, peering over his shoulder at the status screen above the console. McCoy raised his eyebrows. “Looks like a whole lot of power there, Mr. Scott.”

“Aye, Doctor,” Scotty said, sounding tense, and not taking his eyes off the display. “Close on a yottawatt.”

“A yotta
what?”

“Watt.”

“No, I mean, a yotta
what?”

“That’s what I said.”

McCoy said nothing for a moment, but his face suggested that he was counting something inside his head. Scotty looked over his shoulder and saw the doctor’s perplexed look. “A great number of watts,” Scotty said, with somewhat exaggerated patience.

“Oh,” McCoy said. “How many zeroes?”

“Twenty-four.”

McCoy made a disgusted face and turned away. “Every time I think I know all the prefixes, they invent another one. It’s some kind of plot.”

“Bones,” Jim said quietly, for he could see that Scotty was practically trembling with the attempt not to hear anything McCoy was saying right now, “let it be.”

“
Bloodwing’
s hailing us, Captain,” Uhura said from behind them.

“Put her on,” Jim said.

“Captain,”
Ael’s voice said. “Tyrava
signals that they are ready to move. The new convoy signals ready as well.”

“That’s fine,” Jim said. “We’ll be ready to leave here in—” He glanced at Scotty.

“Two minutes to launch,” Scotty said. “Four minutes until the generator kicks in, and another half a minute for the effect to propagate.”

“At
this
distance?”
Ael said.
“Mr. Scott, have you managed somehow to repeal the speed of light? Tr’Keirianh will be so disappointed that you did not consult with him first.”

Scotty straightened up again, but this time he was smiling slightly. “It’s not a light-speed matter, Commander,” he said. “When the effect propagates, it drills down through several layers of subspace; that’s why it’s going to be able to do the job we want done in the first place.”

The turbolift doors slid open again, and this time K’s’t’lk came chiming in. The chiming was all in the major, a cheerful sound. “I finished its preflights, Sc’tty,” she said. “The probe’s ready to go.”

“Aye,” Scotty said, sounding more than slightly reluctant. The tone, however, didn’t bother Jim. It was one he’d heard from Scotty many, many times, usually when something was about to work quite well—though that was never anything Scotty liked to admit to himself before the fact.

Scotty looked over at the captain. “We’re ready to launch, Ael,” Jim said. “Make sure that
Tyrava
and the others are at the proscribed safe distances.”

“They are all standing away from the star at a minimum of two hundred million kilometers,”
Ael said.

It was about fifty million kilometers more than Scotty had said was strictly necessary. Jim smiled, only a little grimly. “The better part of valor,” he said.

“’Twill only mean they don’t get as good a view,” Scotty said. “The star’s optimal for our purposes.” He touched a last few controls on his console, looked down at K’s’t’lk. She
reared up on her front four legs, looked over the console with the forward rosette of eyes, and made a soft chiming sound of acquiescence.

“Ready, Captain,” Scotty said.

“Do it, Mr. Scott,” Jim said.

Scotty nodded over at Chekov. Chekov hit a control on his board, and Jim could feel the ship under him make that tiny, barely perceptible sound that said the inertial dampers were compensating for a torpedo launch.