Star Trek: The Empty Chair (45 page)

It also worried him that he had an armada, though theoretically it should have been a delight. And indeed, at this point, the night before their engagement,
everything
was worrying him. To be one of the movers of so massive a chunk of history would possibly be more enjoyable after the fact—if he survived it, and if he didn’t screw up. But the night before the engagement, as Jim studied the battle plan, and revised it and revised it again, there seemed to be so many ways to screw up that he found himself increasingly willing to be relegated to footnote status.

Jim sat at his desk and paged back and forth through the display on a padd, revising, adding a thought here, changing a troop disposition there, consolidating a couple of movements in another spot.
There should have been another attack,
he kept thinking, as he corrected and altered and shifted minor puzzle-pieces around in his master plan.
This would have been a great time to hit us, just to keep us off balance, to give us something extra to think about. Why haven’t they even sent some light craft out this way, some skirmishers?

He rested his chin on one hand, studying the screen.
Do they really just not have the equipment to spare? Or are they suckering us again somehow?
The paranoia was biting him hard, now.
All these people on all these ships
…some
of them have to be Rihannsu agents. After all, if, on as little a ship as Ael’s, the crewman who was almost her best friend could be an agent, a person well known, absolutely trusted
…

He sighed and put the thought aside one more time. There were many more things to deal with. Jim told the padd to send the latest copy of the plan over to
Kaveth
and
Tyrava
and
Bloodwing,
and then pushed back and stared at his desk, the viewer, the padd. He hardly saw them. What he was seeing was the space around Eisn. The positions of the twin worlds this time of year in relationship to the other uninhabited planets in the system, the orbit of Grand Fleet’s headquarters around ch’Rihan, the defense satellites, the ships that would be awaiting them, their dispositions…

He closed his eyes and rubbed his face wearily.

The comm beeped. Jim reached out and hit the button. “Kirk here.”

“Jim,”
McCoy’s voice said.
“I have a message for you from
Tyrava.”

“What?”

“Veilt says, ‘Tell your
vhai’d
Captain to stop obsessing and leave us be for the night!’”

Jim sighed. “It’s all very well for him—”

“Yes,”
McCoy said,
“it is. And he’s right. So shut up and let it lie for a while. Come on down to rec and I’ll give you some of Old Doc McCoy’s Overwork Remedy.”

“I don’t feel like drinking, Bones.”

“Of course you don’t. But it was a kick in the pants I had in mind. Just get down here before I send security for you.”

There was no arguing with McCoy in this mode. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Out.” He got up.

His door buzzed. “Come,” he said.

Spock was standing there. “Captain,” he said.

Jim grinned ruefully. “The doctor—”

“—is, as the idiom would have it, ‘throwing his weight around,’ yes,” Spock said. “We can do little but comply at such times.” He looked at the captain’s padd. “Before he spoke to me, I was about to contact you about your last draft of the plan.”

“Was there something missing?”

“Captain,” Spock said, “reading it, I was reminded of the ancient Vulcan proverb about the masterpiece. It says that a minimum of two entities are required to create one: one to hold the brush, and the other to hit the first on the head with a hammer when it’s finished, because the holder of the brush so rarely can tell that it is long since time to stop.”

Jim’s grin widened. “You two are ganging up on me again. All right. But before you ask,” he said, only losing a little of the grin, “the answer to the question you haven’t asked is: Scared. Scared to death.”

Spock tilted his head a little to one side. “If you are planning to become a telepath, Captain, there may have to be changes in our watch-standing schedules. It can be most disconcerting hearing another being think on a regular basis.”

Now Jim’s grin went wry. “Have you been to see Scotty and K’s’t’lk yet?”

“I have.”

“And how are they doing?” Jim went over to the closet to get out one more uniform tunic. It was astonishing the kind of sweat you could work up with nothing but a padd and a stylus.

“As regards the transporter interdiction,” Spock said, “very well indeed. Mr. Scott’s staff have installed his equipment on both of the Great Ships, and Mr. Scott has tested the field-generation system out to about fourteen thousand kilometers. It does not focus particularly well, but it does not need to. Even a small transporter malfunction is sufficient to render those working with a transporter most unwilling to use it until the malfunction vanishes.”

Jim pulled the new tunic on. “Good. How about the jamming?”

“The modalities the Free Rihannsu forces were using at Artaleirh should serve us again,” Spock said. “I have been working with some of the technical staff on
Tyrava
to improve
the volume of space that can be affected. While it is possible that the ch’Rihan-based Rihannsu will have jamming of their own that will be as effective, we have been equipping every party of the mobile forces with at least one of the low-tech comm pods you set Mr. Scott to construct.”

“Just hope they don’t figure out in time how to jam them too.”

“Captain, as technologically advanced a people as the Rihannsu are not only unlikely to immediately recognize the technology we will be using, but unlikely to be able to come up with a quick answer to the problem. Their sciences have been deeply affected by their mindset, and by and large they have been increasingly directed, not toward exploration or analysis of the new, but management and control of situations already extant.”

“All right,” Kirk said. He headed for the door, taking a deep breath and almost wishing he didn’t have to ask the question the answer to which was going to scare him the most. “And about the nova bomb?”

Spock shook his head. “I have heard nothing from my father as yet,” he said as they left Jim’s quarters, “but then I would not expect to. The return message would have to come directly, rather than by boosted relay as it went out, and there would be a considerable delay. We can only hope that Sarek has been able to reach the President in time.”

Jim sighed. “And then he’ll do…what?” He shook his head. “You can’t destroy what you can’t see. And they won’t uncloak that thing until the last minute, I’m sure of it.”

Spock nodded. “However, as regards getting that news to Earth, Mr. Scott and K’s’t’lk have begun testing the new settings for the resonance inducer, but with an additional purpose in mind, not just the disruption of a star’s seeding or of the detonation of the nova bomb, though they are still concentrating on that as well. They feel that they may be able to use the equivalence-induction technique on a star to transmit
a message directly to Earth’s solar system, via the sun itself.”

Jim raised his eyebrows at that as they paused outside the turbolift’s doors. “Do they seriously think they might get some results with that?”

“They do,” Spock said. “The main difficulty is that there are no suitable stars along our present course on which they might safely test the technique.”

Jim shook his head again. “We’re getting short of time, Mr. Spock. Assuming we would have time to divert long enough for a test—which I’m not sure we would—what’s the nearest star that would be suitable?”

“Eisn,” Spock said.

Kirk groaned softly. “That wouldn’t be optimal.”

“No,” Spock said. “I would say not.”

The lift’s doors opened; they got in. “Main recreation,” Spock said, and the lift doors closed.

They rode in silence for a few moments. “Spock,” Jim said, “you’ll be pleased to hear that I’m learning something from this experience.”

“What are you learning, Captain?”

“That I may be an admiral, but I still don’t feel like one.”

Spock put up one eyebrow. “I gather that you find this an inopportune time to have come to that particular conclusion.”

“You have no idea.” Jim rubbed his eyes.

“Captain,” Spock said, “I have the fullest confidence in your ability for this task.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Jim said, “and the problem is,
so does everybody else but me!”

Spock looked at him, and the expression was serious, but not somber. “Jim,” he said after a moment, “that uncertainty is a weapon in your hand. You will use it, I am sure, as effectively as the others with which chance and the moment have provided you. And all of us, who are equally part of that weapon, will do what we must to fulfill the mission that Starfleet has assigned you. On that you can depend.”

Jim swallowed. “Thank you, Mr. Spock,” he said. “And don’t tell me that thanks aren’t logical!”

The lift doors opened. “The thought had not occurred to me, Captain,” Spock said.

Together they headed down the hall to main recreation. Once again, as they headed in, the place was quiet, but because of the rearrangement of some of the more critical shift rotations to take the battle scheduling into account, a lot of people seemed to have opted for an early evening. Across the room, though, over by the poker table, various crew were lounging and talking quietly. Ael was there along with McCoy and Chekov and Sulu and a few others.

As Jim and Spock approached, Ael put aside the padd she had been reading and stood up to greet them. “Captain,” she said, “if your presence here means you are done with that for the moment—” She threw a sideways glance at the padd, then back at Jim.

Jim grinned and sat down. “Mr. Spock was threatening to hit me with a hammer.”

“Captain,” Spock said, “I was merely repeating an adage. Such behavior in actual practice would seriously contravene—”

Ael and Jim began to laugh together. “And as for you,” Jim said. “Anything to add?”

She shook her head. “Without further data,” she said, “further planning is idle. But now that you are finished, and I have finished looking over your plans as Veilt and Thala have, I can retire. In six hours, it will all begin, and begin to end.” She leaned back and stretched, looking around her. “I have enjoyed my last night here.”

“I wouldn’t start calling it
that,”
McCoy said.

She laughed gently at him. “Shall I try to hide the possibilities from myself, or you, McCoy? I think not. It may be my last night on
Bloodwing,
as well, if the Elements so please, but there I must be. I must be seen to lead the battle
group into the system, from my own ship’s bridge. After that, when it comes time to take our battle to the planet—there, too, I must be. My credibility is about to become as much a part of our battle array as anything with a warp drive attached.”

“Well,” Jim said, “once the transporters go down for everything in the neighborhood of the Hearthworlds, those of us who’re going planetside with the troops will all need to be on
Tyrava,
but you’ve got the timings for that. Once Grand Fleet HQ has been dealt with, and we achieve local-space superiority, we’re going to have to get our boots down on the ground along with everyone else.”

Ael passed a hand over her eyes. “That remains my last nightmare, Captain. I cannot get over the fear that we will at some point find ourselves halfway over Mount Eilariv and unable to get in touch with our people because of the planet-based jamming.”

Jim looked up and saw Scotty coming across the room toward them, with K’s’t’lk in tow. “As it happens, for a change, I think I have a straightforward answer for one of your problems.” He looked up at Scotty. “Have you got our widgets, Scotty?”

“Aye,” Scotty said, and pulled something out of a little case he was carrying. “It’ll piggyback onto a communicator. You’ll just need to stretch the usual slipcase a little.”

Jim took what Scotty handed him: a small, silvery-cased device that looked to Jim like a communicator, though rather slimmer.

“This is it?” he said, turning it over in his hands.

“Aye,” Scotty said.

Kirk flipped it open. The controls inside were minimal, and again rather like a communicator’s. “I thought it’d be bigger.”

Scotty shook his head. “Not at all,” he said, and handed a similar device to Ael.

She studied the sleek little thing. “Another communicator?”

“Not the usual kind,” Scotty said. “’Tis a radio.”

Ael looked bemused. “A what?”

“Here,” Jim said, “let me show you the wavelengths.” He reached over to the poker table, brought up its undersurface gaming screens, hit the control that linked them out into the ship’s main computers via the games computer’s interface, and called up a diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum.

He pointed. “Right there,” Jim said.

Ael stared. “But why ever would anyone use
that
range for communications?” she said, bewildered. “That whole part of the spectrum is endlessly vulnerable to every kind of jamming and natural interference. Even the sun can render it useless in active times!”

“Over long distances, of course it can,” Jim said. “But over the short haul, when you have line of sight, it works pretty well. Add a ship in orbit that’s able to act as a relay and overcome the line-of-sight problem in difficult terrain, and you have a perfectly workable solution when everyone around you is jamming more technologically advanced comms.”

Ael looked over the little object and shook her head. “Tr’Keirianh will be completely fascinated. I pray these work as well as you say they will.”

“We’re betting they will,” Jim said. “The basic concept goes back to a battle on Earth a few centuries ago when a technologically advanced power—for that time, anyway—went up against an opponent that was less well provided with the newest equipment. The vessel had long range propellant-based weapons that shot solid projectiles, and the computers that worked out the firing ranges and elevations for the weapons were calibrated for the most modern weapons that might be brought against them. The vessel’s opponents, however, only had small flying craft called Fairey Swordfish,
which dated back easily two decades, and had long since been left behind by faster and more advanced craft.”