Star Trek: The Empty Chair (35 page)

Now all that remained was to see whether she had correctly focused tr’Anierh’s mind in the direction she desired. But as the pilot handed her up into the car, Arrhae smiled, remembering something her mother had told her so many years ago.
A lie gets stronger the more truth you mix with it.
She had told a lot of truth today, but in such a way as to bounce back ruinously on those whom she was sure were already taking aim at her. Now they would have not one target, but two, and the rebound from the second might be fatal for her enemies, and might buy the friends far out in the interstellar night some time to save their world, and hers.

There was nothing to do now but wait, and think what to do next.

Arrhae leaned back against the cushions of the car as it lifted off, closed her eyes, and began.

Aboard the
Enterprise,
now under way with the Free Rihannsu fleet and making for Augo, Jim sat in the center seat and looked thoughtfully at the strange arrangement that was being erected between the viewscreen and the helm console. Right now there was a framework of light there, just green grid lines in the air, filling the whole space from floor to ceiling, and off to one side of it Sulu was standing and looking at it in a speculative way.

“Two-D isn’t going to be enough, sir,” Sulu had said to him. “Eventually they’re going to have to design better displays for us. There’s simply no way any engagement commander should seriously be expected to manage an extensive 3-D encounter in two dimensions. It makes no more sense than if the Academy tried to teach you fleet maneuver tactics by drawing them for you on a chalkboard, or pieces of paper.” Sulu shook his head at the idea. “But I don’t see why we should be crippled by waiting for what they see fit to install. This rig should help you see what’s going on around us a lot more clearly.”

“Don’t think I’m fooled, Mr. Sulu,” Jim said. “This is all just part of your secret master plot to turn my bridge into a tank game.”

Sulu smiled a very secretive smile, verging on the archetypically inscrutable. “Those tank games have been played out up here often enough, Captain, and as a result, we’re still breathing.”

Jim gestured helplessly, shaking his head, and got up out of the center seat, walking around the helm console. Several people from engineering were busily installing 3-D and holographic image implementers in or on all those consoles nearest to the main viewscreen. “Are you sure we’re going to have enough room for this to do me any good?” Kirk said.
“It looks like a tight fit for what we’re going to have to be able to see.”

Sulu nodded. “It’s fully and automatically scalable, a lot more so than the viewscreen ever was. Believe me, Captain, you’re going to find this an incredible improvement. Mr. Chekov and Khiy and I learned a whole lot from Artaleirh. We were working in 2-D there, and still managed to pull it off. This, though, is going to work a whole lot better.”

Jim glanced up at the engineering staffers, who were climbing down from the stepladders or levitating pads they were using. “Looks like we’re ready,” Sulu said. “Okay, Ali, give it the goose.”

Into the green-gridded space between the helm console and the front viewer, the schematic of the Augo system suddenly sprang into being in three dimensions. Jim walked about halfway into it. Immediately, he could see the disposition of the various worlds—the two innermost planets with the Grand Fleet refueling bases on them, the one supply base farther out in the system, and the planets’ small orbital defense networks. He could also see, rather annoyingly, a cluster of lights in coded colors, representing about thirty Rihannsu capital ships posted to the area. “The display’s showing the most recent data from
Tyrava,”
Sulu said. “What you see there will update in real time when we’re in the system. Right now we’re only getting half-hourly squirts with the ship-disposition details.” He stood there, favoring the display with a rather jaundiced look as he walked around it.

Jim was doing the same, for entirely different reasons. “It’s a beautiful piece of work, Mr. Sulu. There’s only one problem with it.”

“What would that be, Captain?” Mr. Sulu said.

“That its very presence here implies that I’m not going to be allowed into the fight,” Jim said.

“Ah, well, sir,” Sulu said, smiling slightly, “that’s the price
of admiralty, no matter what the poem says. Not blood; safety.”

“Relative safety,” Jim said. “Don’t remind me.” He frowned as Sulu reached over to the helm console, touched a control, and the display rotated. “I enjoy a good session of battle strategy as well as the next man, but having to sit in the background and watch other people enact it? That’s another story.”

“Don’t think we have much choice, in this case,” Sulu said. “We’re the flag carrier. It’d be pretty careless in terms of the whole engagement for us to allow them to shoot us up. Ael would be annoyed.”

Jim raised his eyebrows. “
She’d
be annoyed!” he said. “Oh, well, we can’t have
that.”

Sulu chuckled, making his way back around to his proper side of the console to sit down and make a few more adjustments to its controls. Jim came to look over his shoulder. Sulu worked for a moment more, then looked up. “But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?” Sulu said. “It’s not just us we have to keep intact. It’s her.”

“Particularly her,” he said. “Whether Starfleet likes it or not, she’s become invaluable to the future stability of the Empire.”
And also because,
he thought,
despite the wonderfulness of the little widget that tr’AAnikh brought us, it’s not going to be anything like enough to satisfy the parameters in my sealed orders. I’m going to need a whole lot more technology than that. And she’s going to be the only one who can give it to me.

“What’s our ETA to Augo now, Mr. Sulu?”

“Twenty hours, Captain.”

“Of which I’m going to have to spend about ten getting used to this,” Jim said.

“Oh, not more than five,” Sulu said. “You wouldn’t want to miss the poker game.”

Jim put his eyebrows up. “Mr. Sulu—”

“You’d better be there, Captain,” Sulu said. “Mr. Tanzer will inform on you to Dr. McCoy if you don’t.”

Jim sighed. “You people are all plotting against me. I’m beginning to understand how Ael feels.”

Now it was Sulu’s turn to put up the eyebrows. “Could be dangerous. I mean, in terms of long-term strategic goals.”

There was something slightly peculiar about the way Sulu said that. Maybe the strange way it struck Jim showed in his face, for Sulu quickly turned and started being abnormally busy with his console.
Could it be,
Jim thought,
could there be the
slightest
possibility that my crew have seriously started to think that Ael—that the commander and I are an item?

He blinked. And then he turned away and grinned a rather sour grin to himself.
Well, why shouldn’t they? Starfleet certainly does.

The idiots.

The only thing that bothered Jim was that his crew, as he well knew, were not idiots.

He turned back to look at the nascent tank display. “When will that be ready, Mr. Sulu?”

“About an hour, Captain,” Sulu said, not looking up.

“Very well. I’m going down to the mess for some lunch. Give me a call when it’s ready.” He headed for the lift. “And Mr. Sulu—what time is that poker game?”

“Twenty hundred, Captain.”

The lift doors closed.

Twenty hundred came with surprising speed. Jim walked into recreation to find it fairly quiet. There were some people involved with a tank game off to one side—Jim glanced at it in passing and noted a large Klingon war fleet being more or less cut to pieces by some people from biochemistry—and some others having a small impromptu smorgasbord. His attention, though, was focused on a large round
baize-covered table over near the main windows, where cards were being dealt. Scotty was there, and K’s’t’lk; Uhura was there, and Sulu, and Spock, and McCoy; and Ael and her chief engineer, tr’Keirianh. There was an empty chair with its back to the windows. Jim wandered around and took it. “What’s the game?” he said.

“Seven-card stud,” Sulu said, “jacks are wild.”

Everyone was drinking Romulan ale. Jim looked at the jug on the nearby service table, thought of what was going to start happening in fifteen hours, and hesitated.

“Oh, come on, Jim,” McCoy said, “you know I can detox you in twenty minutes. Don’t be such a stick.”

Jim sighed. A moment later a glass was in front of him with three fingers of ale in it. Sulu started to deal.

“Now let me see if I have this correct,” Ael said. “Each player receives two cards facedown and one card faceup. Initial bet is twice the aunt—”

“Ante,” Uhura said. “Commander, I’m sorry, the homonym routine is still giving me grief.”

“Play goes clockwise from the opener,” Ael said. “One invokes ‘call’ or ‘raise’ if—”

“It’s easier to just play,” Sulu said. “Come on, Scotty, you open and show her how it’s done.”

They played. Chips were pushed into the center of the table, and the ebb and flow of the game began. Jim was watching Ael’s play with some interest, as was McCoy on the other side of her. She seemed to be doing fairly well. Then suddenly she lost almost all her pot. This happened again about twenty minutes later, and Jim, watching, at that point noticed something strange: Ael was squinting at her cards, not just when she got new ones, but all the time. He leaned toward her.

“Too much ale, Commander?” he said, only slightly teasing. “Need a detox? I’m sure McCoy can tailor something for you.”

“No, that is not the problem,” Ael said, sounding a little puzzled. “However, I cannot seem to do much with these cards. The symbols really are too much alike for me.” She looked over at McCoy. “Perhaps we could use those you showed me earlier?”

Jim was bemused by the faintly shocked look McCoy suddenly acquired. “Uh, I don’t know.”

Harb Tanzer, passing by, looked down at McCoy. “Problem?”

“Harb,” McCoy said, “do you have a spare New Waite deck around here? One that isn’t used routinely for more serious purposes.”

“I have a few in their original wraps,” Harb said. “Half a moment.”

Shortly he was back, and not long after that Jim found himself involved in one of the most peculiar poker games he had ever experienced. A full house acquired all kinds of additional nuances when it actually involved pictures of what appeared to be relatives of the crowned heads of Europe, some of them holding extremely sharp objects and looking prepared to use them. The other players seemed more amused than annoyed by the change, and once the extra cards in the deck had values attributed to them, the game proceeded without too many more hitches—except as regarded Jim’s hands, which seemed uniformly poor for the better part of the first hour.

“Hit me,” Scotty said.

Ael threw him a most peculiar look. “With what?”

“It’s just an expression,” K’s’t’lk said. She was studying her own cards with some bemusement. “Do three cups beat two pages?”

“Only in three-trump stud,” McCoy said.

Ael’s expression got more confused all through this. As the game went forward, Jim saw that she was regarding the cards in her hand with not much more comprehension than
she had shown with the standard Rider deck. “I am not entirely sure what to do here,” she said at last.

Such an admission was unusual from Ael, and provoked various kinds of advice. “Get a sandwich,” Sulu said. “Have some more ale,” Scotty said, and reached behind him for the jug.

McCoy put his hand down, got up from his chair, and went around behind Ael to look at her hand. She glanced up at him. He raised his eyebrows.

“Okay,” he said, “I see the problem. Let’s try something else.” He glanced around the table.

“Three-trump stud?” Sulu said.

McCoy shook his head. “Tournament Fizzbin.”

Jim opened his eyes at that.
“Tournament
Fizzbin?”

“Dealer invents a new version,” McCoy said, and went around the table, starting to collect everybody’s cards. “Come on, Scotty, hand ’em over; that hand wasn’t so great. Sulu…Good. All right. Come on, Ael. You get to invent a version of Fizzbin.”

“I do not know the original,” she said, looking completely at a loss. “It was not in
Hoyle.”

“No indeed,” McCoy said. “Jim, would you elucidate?”

Jim grinned rather helplessly and took the deck. “All right. So each player gets six cards, except the one on the player’s right, who gets seven.” He started dealing. “The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays.”

“Is today Tuesday?” Sulu said, suddenly suspicious.

“It’s got to be Tuesday
somewhere,
Mr. Sulu,” Scotty said.

Spock raised both eyebrows at this, but said nothing. “Stipulated,” Jim said. “Now, two jacks is a half-fizzbin, but you don’t want three. Three is a shralk. You get those, you get disqualified.”

“You do?” Ael said, beginning to smile slightly.

“Absolutely. Now look there: Sulu’s got two jacks. That’s good. Now he wants a king and a deuce.”

“Except at night,” McCoy said, looking over at Ael’s cards. “In which case he wants a queen and an ace.”

“How is ‘night’ determined?” tr’Keirianh said. “If playing aboard ship, does ship’s time prevail? Or is it always considered to be night in space?”

“Yes, and if members of more than one ship’s complement are involved,” Ael said, “must a consensus of the players be obtained?”

“Only in leap year,” Jim said.

“When the moon is full,” said Sulu, straight-faced.

“Now wait a minute,” K’s’t’lk said.
“Whose
moon?”

“And why should a year leap?” Ael said.

It went on in that vein for some time, and more ale was ingested to assist the philosophical and scientific arguments that ensued. Eventually a game started, and Jim was none too sure of who started it, but the structure of its rules became unnervingly fluid, even by the somewhat freewheeling standards of the man who’d invented Fizzbin.

Play went forward. It wasn’t just a game, but play in the older sense of the word. Jim got a clear sense that none of the people around the table felt like being too rigorous about rules on the night before a day that was principally going to be full of the rules of engagement.
The only thing we haven’t done yet is fifty-two pickup,
Jim thought, leaning back in his chair, as the laughter got more sheerly goofy.
Except with this deck I don’t think it’s fifty-two. Fifty-six? Seventy?