Star Trek: The Empty Chair (46 page)

Ael’s eyebrows went up. “You are about to tell me,” she said, “that the firing solutions of the higher-tech vessels could not cope with the—Swordfish?” She smiled at the name.

“They shot the hell out of the battleships,” Jim said. “It was a fluke, yes, but it worked. There have been times since when it’s proven smart to look back for one’s tech instead of forward.”

Ael looked thoughtful. “So all our people who go dirtside are going to be equipped with these,” Jim said, “and
Tyrava
and
Kaveth
have been fabricating them to Scotty’s specs at considerable speed. Every assault group will be equipped with these—at least one to every fifty people, and sometimes more. So the assault on Ra’tleihfi won’t have a chance to get too much out of hand.”

Ael shivered. “Just the words trouble me, now that they are so close to being made real.”

“It’s the kind of commander who wouldn’t be troubled by them,” McCoy said, “who’d be giving
me
cause for concern.”

“I agree,” Jim said. “And though I understand your discomfort, this
is
what you came to do. Time to do it. Meanwhile, I’m going to turn in shortly.” Jim glanced at McCoy. “Bones, just this once I want one of your mildest sedatives.”

The doors to the corridor opened. “I’ll get you that presently.” McCoy got up and headed over that way.

“We’re at a little less than T minus ten hours,” Jim said to Ael. “I’ll be up in six hours. At that point, as per the plan, we’ll send out the smallships and cruisers that will be acting as skirmishers. They’ll test the system’s outer defenses and get firsthand Intelligence as to the disposition of Grand Fleet’s big ships. Once we’re sure where they are, we start messing with their minds.” And at that point he grinned rather ferally. “Not that they won’t have been well messed
with already. There’s nothing so effective against an opponent as rendering him uncertain of the effectiveness of his carefully crafted battle plan at the last minute. And there’s some more of that still to come.”

He glanced across the room. Gurrhim was heading toward them, progressing steadily, though still with the general air of a man who was somewhat sore in various parts of his person. “Captain,” he said.

“Sir,” Jim said, and stood up. “How are you feeling?”

“I have been better,” Gurrhim said, looking around at them all, “but considering that without the good doctor I would simply be feeling dead, I will not complain.”

“See that,” McCoy said, ambling along behind Gurrhim, “an appreciative patient. There had to be one or two of them left in the galaxy.”

Jim raised his eyebrows, but refused to rise to the bait. “So now’s your time to take center stage,” he said to Gurrhim. “Did the recording of your speech go all right?”

“It did,” Gurrhim said, “for all that I am no great speech-maker.”

Ael looked up at him and laughed. “Disinformation is in your blood, you noble fraud. How many times have I heard you on the floor of the Senate, bending them all to your will?”

“If anyone was swayed at such times,” said Gurrhim, “it was not by my rhetoric or my sentiments, but by my stock portfolio. After all, when you have no choice but to buy your food from a certain stallholder, you listen to his maunderings and nod respectfully until you’ve agreed at a price and can walk off with a full basket.” His grin wasn’t nearly as sour as it might have been. “But the story will be far different now. All I now have to sell the government is quatchmilk; and just hearing my voice will be to them as if they were drinking it by the tankardful.”

He eased himself down into one of the neighboring
chairs. “Now, however,” Gurrhim said, “the point is to have them hear me. I left Lieutenant Commander Uhura completing the preparation of the raw video. She told me it would be ready to transmit about the time I arrived down here. So are you sure you can get the message to my Havrannsu through the jamming, Captain? For apparently it has already begun.”

“We’ll get it through,” Jim said. “Scotty?”

“Aye,” Scotty said, “we will. Jamming’s only effective up to a certain point. If you’re willing to punch enough power into a given signal, over limited distances, the jamming fails. And
Tyrava
has power to spare—more than our laddies down below are expecting, I’m thinking. We’re going to feed the gentleman’s video into a narrow-band hyperhet blast that’ll go through any kind of jamming they’ve got like a hot wire through ice.” He glanced down at K’s’t’lk. “And once that’s taken care of, we can test a duplicate transmission through the resonance inducer at short range.”

“Scotty!” Jim said. “The last time you did that you—”

“It’s not going to be
that
kind of test, Captain!” K’s’t’lk said. “This is a wholly different effect. We’re just going to get the star to ‘exhale’ a tachyon burst encoded with a copy of the transmission. If we can get Eisn to do that, then once we’ve set up the equivalency resonance with the sun, we can hook an entirely different message to it. Such as one keyed to destroy the nova bomb before it gets into the sun—”

Jim was starting to get nervous. “It sounds nice, but are you absolutely sure that there wouldn’t be any untoward effects on Eisn?”

Scotty and K’s’t’lk looked at each other. “Well…”

Ael saw the look. “Not with
my
star, you do not! I have no desire to save my worlds from the Praetorate only to set them on fire!”

Jim wholeheartedly agreed. “Belay it, you two. We have enough problems right now. K’s’t’lk, have you got your ship ready?”

“Of course, Captain. I had her beamed over to
Tyrava
this morning. When the troop carriers go out and we go with them, she’ll serve as admiral’s gig for the engagement. She’s better equipped for this kind of work than any of
Enterprise’
s shuttles would be.”

“Very well.” Jim got up; the rest rose with him. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s go to our rest. Sleep well—and wake up sharp.”

The
Enterprise
crew and Gurrhim said their good nights and headed off. Only Jim and Ael were left, looking out those great windows.

“We have come a very long way,” Ael said quietly. “And there is no refusing the rest of the course laid out for us—the course we laid out ourselves.”

Jim shook his head. After a moment he said, “There was an old story on Earth about how someone went out in the dark and heard a great voice calling from the sea, ‘The hour is come, but not the man.’” He looked out at the dark. “I guess we all come up against that sooner or later. The fear that we’ll be insufficient to the moment, somehow, and betray the future.”

Ael nodded. “I have no fear of that in your regard. You have kept faith when many another would have turned and gone his own way.”

“And so have you,” Jim said. “You’ve been serving this particular dream for a long, long while. So, let’s get some rest. And in the morning, let’s go make the future happen.”

She bowed her head to him. “A fair night to you,” Ael said, and left.

A few minutes after the doors shut on her, Jim went as well, leaving behind him a room full of nothing but silence and darkness, and the light of the stars pouring past
Enterprise
as she plunged toward her next battlefield.

Six hours later Ael was standing behind her command chair, intently studying the viewscreen on
Bloodwing’
s bridge.

Gurrhim stood there in front of the cameras with that blunt, bluff farmer’s look that anyone who had seen him on a news channel in recent years would well have recognized; and he stood there in the robes of a Praetor.
Elements only know where he got those,
Ael thought.
Then again, it is not beyond belief that someone on
Enterprise
manufactured them for him. Certainly he had little but a hospital robe on him when he came.

“You see me standing here,”
he said,
“despite having been told that I was dead. I have no regret in telling you that the reports were premature.”
He smiled slightly.
“The Elements have plainly purposed otherwise for me. And in me now, you see the truth of the old saying that chief among all Elements is the element of surprise.”

Ael had to smile. It was just like him to trot out these hoary old proverbs even at such a time, and the chuckle that went around the bridge told her that her crew was amused as well.
But see how sly the old creature is,
she thought.
No generated hologram version, no fake Gurrhim, would come out with such old-fashioned saws at a time like this, but the genuine article could not be prevented.

“Now I come to tell you,”
Gurrhim said,
“that those who
lied to you about my death have been caught in one lie too many. I have come to cast that lie back in their teeth—and I come with friends. One of them I suspect you will know. I will not say her name now. I am as conservative about such things as many of you. But there can come a time when a burned name can be rewritten and spoken again.”

He looked into the recording device, intent.
“The government of our worlds, which is our right, has been wrested from our hands. Once upon a time, all the voices in our world had a right to speak. Perhaps for convenience’s sake, they did it through representatives—but now those representatives have less voice than ever they had. The people of our outerworlds are disenfranchised. The people of our inner-worlds are learning the taste of tyranny. They feed it to us in small doses, spoon by spoon, thinking we will get used to the flavor, like children being coaxed to eat something that will be good for them. But in no way is what has been happening in our worlds good for us! It is time to turn our faces away from the spoon, and push away the plate, and overset the table, and get up and walk away. When governments murder those who speak the truth, it is time to get new governments.”

He paused for breath. It seemed that this still sometimes came hard to him.
“At any rate, I am done being ‘dead’ now; so there is work to be done. To landholders of mine, and cousins and more distant relatives of our House, I say, now is the time to stand to arms. Await my coming. The government, hearing this, be assured, will cast me as a traitor. They will cast those among you who rise up to support me as traitors too. They will seek to raise up your neighbors against you, and sow dissension in your ranks. You must allow them to do no such thing! If they set you to killing one another, they have already won. To those uncertain of my motivations, or my desires, I say, wait. Close your doors and do nothing. Free Rihannsu must not make war upon one another, for it is what
the corrupt ones most desire. To my sons and daughters, I say, this is the time that we have long expected. You know what action to take. Prepare to receive many guests. To all you minions and secret spies of the corrupt Tricameron, lying in secret among us these many years, foisted upon us in order to keep us subject, I say to you, make your farewells. Countrymen, here are their names.”

Ael glanced around her. “Elements about us, who knew what weapon those young men from
Gorget
brought us?” She shook her head as the recitation of names Gurrhim had begun went on and on. “How long has he been carrying that list in his brain? And what kind of uproar will break out now?”

Aidoann shook her head. “
Khre’Riov,
whatever the Praetorate and the Senate think in terms of our plans—whether they think that the invasion is going to happen on ch’Havran or not—they are going to have a busy day ahead of them. At least their poor tools on ch’Havran will.” She, too, shook her head in admiration. “If they thought there was civil unrest there before…”

Ael shook her head. “I see house-burnings, and all manner of trouble. And see again the old sly-boots’ cleverness. How he gives even those who are uncertain of him evidence of the spies they have long suspected live among them. They will love him for that.” She straightened up. “Well, we will see what happens now. What is our position?”

“We are one tenth of a light-year from Eisn,” Aidoann said. “We will be at the rendezvous point noted in the plan as five-d in approximately three minutes.”

“And that is well,” Ael said. “Engine status?” It was more than the engine she was inquiring about.

“
Khre’Riov,”
tr’Keirianh said from his station, “we’re ready.”

“And the singularity?”

“Functioning quite normally,
khre’Riov.”

“Pray it continues to do so,” Ael said. “This would not be the time for a malfunction.”

“We’re agreed,” tr’Keirianh said.

“And the weapons?”

“The augmentations seem to be in perfect order,
khre’Riov,”
tr’Keirianh said. “All we need now is something to shoot at.”

Ael smiled slightly and looked at the screen. “Show me tactical,” she said to Aidoann.

The screen showed her a two-dimensional representation of the armada. Only the largest ships, and
Kaveth
and
Tyrava,
showed as actual shapes;
Enterprise
and
Bloodwing
and anything smaller than they showed merely as a spark of light, in the scale that was needed to express all the vessels that were there.
Enterprise
and
Bloodwing
were near the forefront, and a great curve of other vessels, such as those captured from Grand Fleet at Artaleirh and renamed, hung back just behind them. The whole array of vessels went to define the rest of a rough half-sphere, and the array was pointed roughly at Eisn in the distance, the tiniest possible golden globe. At such a distance, the planets were not visible. But Ael, knowing from what point she looked down on the solar system, knew exactly where they were.
Soon now,
she thought.
Very soon.

“Dropping out of warp now,
khre’Riov,
as per schedule,” Aidoann said.

Ael merely nodded. Though she had had much to do with the making of this plan, she would now have but little room for the spur-of-the-moment action that so routinely characterized engagements in her world. This game was being played on a different level. In some ways, it was much like Mr. Spock’s chess—but in others, it was less a game than a dance. I step here, you step there, or if you step that way, then I step another; all planned, everything anticipated. The rigor of the structure would have seemed stifling, except that
it was better, in this situation at least, to be stifled than dead. Dead folk could not complete the job they had come all this way to do.