Star Trek: The Empty Chair (37 page)

That was when he saw a cluster of new sparks of light suddenly pop out at the edges of the tank display—far enough out that it resized itself automatically. Jim tried to count them, and realized he couldn’t.

“Incoming,” Spock said. “Approximately sixty capital ships of various sizes, including many of the new supercapitals.”

Jim swallowed.
Sixty! We are in deep, deep trouble.
“Remind me,” he said conversationally to Spock, “not to make the mistake of thinking that anything about this is going to go well.”

“I will make a note to do so, Captain,” Spock said.

“No warp signatures on those?”

Spock was looking down his viewer. “There were no signatures, as they were not in warp.”

Jim felt a chill. “Cloaked?”

“The probability is high,” Spock said. “There is nowhere here they could have been hiding, Captain, and no way to approach so quickly on impulse without being detected. I would suggest this is a new cloaking technology that we are seeing for the first time.”

Jim swallowed again. “At least they still have to decloak to shoot. See if this cloak has some new signature, or whether it’s a variant of the hexicyclic technology. How many supercapitals, Mr. Spock?”

“Fifteen.”

Jim sucked in a breath.
Very, very bad. “Tyrava!”

“Listening, Captain. We see them.”

“I may have to retask you.”

“But, Captain,”
Veilt said,
“I thought you told us most strenuously that retasking so suddenly would break your plan.”
He managed to sound slightly amused, even under these increasingly grim circumstances.

“A broken plan can be fixed,” Kirk said. “A broken fleet is harder. And if you have any other thoughts…”

“Three-a, Captain.”

Jim weighed the pros and cons of that. It was not an option he relished. He had been saving it for later in the engagement—
much
later. “I’ll consider that,” he said. “Five minutes. Meanwhile, go!”

“Going,”
Veilt said.

The huge ship turned with surprising lightness and speed and made straight for the biggest of the newly appeared capital ships. “All vessels,” Jim said, “engage at will as per protocol two-f.”

A wave of acknowledgments came in as large and small Free Rihannsu ships flung themselves at the capital ships nearest, with special emphasis on the C&C vessels. “Some
success with that strategy already, Captain,” Spock said. “Two C&Cs have gone down, and five capitals. Two have self-destructed.”

“We need more,” Jim said softly. “Keep a count for me. Update once per minute for the next four.”

He sat there in the center seat and his hands itched. He wanted to be hammering on his comms button to tell Scotty to give him more speed, dammit, more power to the phasers! But this time it was his part to sit, and watch, and wait, while others bore the brunt.
This is hard. Hard. I hate this.

Tyrava
went coasting in among the scattering Rihannsu capital ships, her phasers and disruptors lancing out in all directions. Shields went up, but they were no use against that hyperpowered weaponry. The attacking vessels’ shields overloaded and went down, and the phased disruptors reduced them to slag or plasma within seconds. Jim sat there watching it happen, counting ships in his head. The problem was that more kept popping out of cloak at the edges of the display, and diving in toward the fray. “Spock,” he said.

“Captain,” Spock said, “this is a phased assault. They are uncloaking in waves. It is impossible to tell how many of them might be out there.”

“Not many more, I hope,” Jim said, very softly. Even with
Tyrava,
there was only so much the present force could do.

“Now ten capitals taken by our side,” Spock said. “Two destroyed by their own vessels. Either Grand Fleet has worked out what was happening at Artaleirh, or they are simply suspicious after so many of their own ships went missing.”

Jim bit a knuckle and waited, watching
Tyrava’
s rampage. Anything she turned her weapons on was destroyed, but when thirty or so capital ships of all sizes turned and started
attacking her in unison, the outcome began to be of concern.
“Tyrava?”

“Captain,”
Veilt said, sounding a little strained,
“it may be time for three-a.”

“Spock!”

“Fourteen capitals down now and being suborned,” Spock said. “Ten more destroyed by
Tyrava.
Make that eleven. Thirty-four now attacking her.”

“Implement one-d,” Kirk said. Immediately all the smallships began attacking the ships that were attacking
Tyrava,
and that whole part of space started turning into a bright inferno of phasers and disruptors and torpedoes. But
Tyrava’
s screens were beginning to radiate in the visible spectrum, never a good sign.

Jim made up his mind. “Three-a.”

“Implementing,”
Veilt said.
“Four minutes.”

But one minute went by, and two, and the fire on
Tyrava
increased. Jim began to think,
Oh, no, I’ve left it too late. No. Please, no.
But the War Gods, if they were listening, gave no sign.
Tyrava’
s screens flared brighter, and Jim said, “Mr. Sulu, we can’t just sit here.”

“Captain,” Spock said.

Jim swallowed, and sat still.
Tyrava
began evasive maneuvers. Some of the capital ships attacking her went after her, but some of them now turned toward
Enterprise.
“Mr. Sulu,” Jim said, “best evasive.”

“Aye, aye,” Sulu said.

The warp engines came to life, and
Enterprise
peeled away from the conflict, heading up and out of the system, though everything in Jim rebelled to see her do it.
This is
not
the better part of valor,
he thought.
I don’t care what anybody says.

“Some pursuit,” Spock said, looking down his viewer. “More attention on
Bloodwing,
however.”

“Ael,” Jim said, “get out of there!”

“I have no leisure for that at the moment!”
Ael said. “
We need these capital ships; they will be vital, and the smallships need cover.”

One minute to three-a,
Jim thought. “Lure them up this way, Ael. Let us give you a hand!”

“I do not think that is going to work, Captain,”
Ael said.
“We can get some cover from
Tyrava.
Veilt is closer.”

There was no arguing with her; she was right.
Enterprise
kept her distance, and Jim sat there in increasing fury and frustration. All he could do was watch the patterns shift as four or five of the capital ships broke away from pursuit of
Enterprise
and turned back toward
Tyrava.

And suddenly space sunside went dark below
Enterprise
as another huge shape dropped out of warp hardly a thousand kilometers away and dived downward into the plane of the system. “ID coming through,” Spock said, as the vessels lit up in the tank. “
Kaveth
Ship-Clan is in the system.”

Jim let out a long breath as he watched them come. Veilt had told him that
Kaveth
was even larger than
Tyrava.
He had found it hard to believe until now. He almost dared to smile: the odds were getting evener. “Hail them and feed them the battle log.”

Uhura listened for a moment. “They have it, Captain, via
Tyrava.”
Then her eyes widened. “They say we have more incoming.”

Jim lost the smile. “Another thirty vessels are uncloaking, Captain,” Spock said. “Rihannsu.”

Jim went pale. “How many more of those things do they
have
out there?”

“Unknown. The new cloak seems to have no signature.”

That’s something Starfleet would really want,
Jim thought,
assuming that any of us survive to tell them about it.

Kaveth
was down in the heart of the battle, now, chopping up every Grand Fleet vessel within range. Not many stayed there. Some fled instantly into warp and were gone,
making Jim curse under his breath.
They’ve seen what they came to see,
he thought.
Possibly there was no other reason for them to be here at all. They won’t be absolutely sure we don’t have more of the Clan ships, but they’ll have a baseline on what we do have, and what their armament’s like.
As he watched, the thirty new ships started an englobement of
Tyrava.
Some of them began to fire, and the beams that lanced out were hexicyclics.
Tyrava’
s screens went white hot in places, just keeping the beams out. She turned and twisted away out of engagement, and a few of the new ships pursued her.

“We have to go in,” Jim said.

“Captain!” Spock said.

“Tyrava!”

“We are boosting shields,”
Veilt said.
“Sensors show that not all the new incoming have these weapons. But we cannot defend against these and deal with all the capital ships as well.”

“How can they have all these, Veilt?” Jim said. “Didn’t we adjust for bad data?”

“And for outright sabotage,”
Veilt said,
“and disinformation, yes. But there is no way they should have such numbers. They must have killed half the labor on the few shipbuilding worlds to produce this kind of result.”

Jim took a long, deep breath, counting ships. The balance was now almost sixty—forty in the Romulans’ favor. They were engagement-cutoff odds.
No, no, this is all wrong, it’s not supposed to go like this!
“All right,” he said. “Four-a.” It was the worst-case scenario: extract forces and run like hell.

“Incoming,” Spock said.

Jim wanted to cover his eyes: but he stared into the tank, watching them come.

These lights were not green, however. They were white.

His heart simply stopped.

“Starfleet IDs,” Spock said.
“Ortisei, Speedwell, Hemalat,
Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Onondaga, Kilimanjaro, San Diego, Dauntless, al-Burak, Marathon—”

“Hail
Ortisei,”
Jim said. He hadn’t dared to hope this would happen, having heard nothing for so long.

His screen lit up. There was Commodore Danilov, leaning forward and examining his own tactical display. He looked into the screen, and frowned at Jim.

“Commodore—”

“Don’t have time to yell at you right now, Captain,”
Danilov said, sounding furious.
“It’ll have to wait. Hold the flag, and shoot me your log.”

Jim gestured at Uhura. “
Out,”
Danilov said, and the screen went dark.

The wrong end of a court-martial,
Jim thought, and shivered. Then he put the thought aside as the Starfleet vessels dived into the fray.

The confusion became complete as
Kaveth
started piling into the capital ships and the Starfleet vessels began weaving and diving through the fight, ganging up on Romulan vessels in the confusion. Jim watched it all with ever-increasing frustration, even as it became plain that the arrival of the Federation vessels had turned the tide. Some of the first Romulan vessels to enter the engagement were now breaking off and running for it; some of the Federation ships pursued them into warp. Other Romulan vessels elected to fight. Mostly they found themselves facing into
Kaveth’
s gunnery. This was always a mistake. The ships with the new hexicyclic gunnery did better, but there seemed to be a problem with their shields. Several of them were destroyed one after another by
Ortisei
and
San Diego.
Together the two ships went after one last hexicyclic-gunned Romulan vessel that was fleeing past the second, smaller of the two Grand Fleet installations.

Another hexicyclic beam lanced up from the installation and caught
Ortisei
on her undershields. She twisted away, glowing—

—and blew.

The breath went out of Jim as if he’d been punched.
Kaveth
swept over, hovered over that installation, and brought every beam to bear on it at once. It slagged down.

Just a moment too late,
Jim thought.

More of the Romulan vessels fled, and were pursued at high warp by some of the Starfleet ships and the remaining Free Rihannsu vessels. Most of those who fled never made it out of the system.
San Diego
circled back to join the other Starfleet vessels in the mopping up. In a matter of five or ten minutes, it was all over: the firing finished, the smaller ships gathering together about the larger ones.

Jim sat there in his center seat and looked out at the darkness, feeling both relieved and sick at heart. “Report,” he said.

“Forty-eight Rihannsu vessels destroyed,” Spock said, “certainly a significant portion of Grand Fleet. Eighteen capital ships co-opted by the Free Rihannsu. Fourteen Free Rihannsu smallships destroyed, the capital ships
Lallasthe
and
Nesev
destroyed,
Sallai
and
Dushill
disabled. A decisive engagement.” But his voice, as he said it, was flat even for a Vulcan.

“Decisive, yes,” Jim said. He stood up. “Elapsed time?”

“Nineteen minutes, Captain.”

Jim just stood there, looking out into the dark.

“My compliments to the ships’ captains who’ve just joined us,” he said, “and I’d be pleased to see them at their earliest convenience aboard
Enterprise.
We have some catching up to do.”

It did not happen for nearly two hours, while damage control assessments were run and communications were established and other housekeeping secondary to a major engagement was completed. And when they all finally met in
Enterprise’
s biggest briefing room, Jim found it hard to
look at the captains gathered there, although he knew almost all of them and was friendly with some. There was one empty chair down at the end of the briefing-room table, to which all their eyes kept being drawn. Jim kept telling himself that it was just a coincidence, that the room just happened to be set up that way…

“Afterburner” Gutierrez was there, and Helga Birgisdottir, whom Jim had not seen since
Mascrar.
The other captains, human and nonhuman, deferred to Birgisdottir, as she was the most senior in rank and history. She sat now with her hands folded on the table in front of her, looking haunted; she and the others had just finished reviewing
Enterprise’
s logs with Jim.