Star Trek: The Empty Chair (50 page)

K’s’t’lk’s little ship fell down from
Tyrava
toward ch’Rihan at great speed, and Jim and Ael and Spock braced themselves in the seats that K’s’t’lk had had the ship grow for them. She was nested in a spiky, glassy contraption up at the front that was almost certainly a control console, not that Jim could either see any controls or how she was operating them. The fore end of the ship appeared from inside to be not so much transparent as simply missing, which was a good trick, since the ship had been seemingly opaque and completely portless when they boarded her. Through the transparency, the planet appeared to be diving straight at them at a truly unnerving velocity. “Uh, T’l,” Jim said, “perhaps a little braking?”

“I thought you were in a hurry, Captain,” K’s’t’lk chimed.

“Yes, but I don’t know if I meant
this
much of a hurry!”

“Nearly there,” K’s’t’lk said. So they were; they shot through several levels of cloud toward the pass west of the city, and came out in hazy sunlight, plunging toward the mountainous terrain like a falling star. The terrain grew, spread from side to side of the view, became all the view there was. And then, nearly at the foot of one mountain, they simply stopped in midair, with no jerk, no slightest jar or feeling of deceleration of any kind.

A moment later they were on the ground, tilted slightly downward. “Sorry about the tilt,” K’s’t’lk said, “it’s steep here. Screens are up. Phaser rifles are in the clips by the door. Make sure your armor’s active before you step through the outer shield.”

Part of the side of the ship unwove itself. Cautiously Jim stepped out, followed by Ael and Spock, and got his first up-close sight of the battlefield.

Taking it all in required a few moments—not surprising, for what Jim was looking at was partly obscured by the fume and smoke of the Firefalls themselves, not two miles away, and the carnage that had already begun to impose itself on an
already wild and inhospitable landscape. Jim and the others were standing just upslope from nearly the highest point of the old road that runs down from the Mehleifhi Highlands down into the plain where Ra’tleihfi sits by its river. Scattered along the lower reaches of the pass below them were perhaps fifty thousand Imperial Ground Force troops—very confused, very frightened, and very outnumbered. The view down the long, curving pass was largely hidden by dust and smoke and blowing fumes from the Falls. Through this pall, the fire of disruptors and phasers stitched an uneasy, sporadic ground-based lightning. All the slope down from the mountain was afire with burning vegetation and crashed ships, large and small—all the detritus of war, swiftly creating itself. It was the kind of warfare that naval officers were usually spared seeing, and it was no easier to bear, for Jim, than watching the Fleet action had been.

They watched
Tyrava’
s and
Kaveth’
s ground forces rolling down that valley both on foot and in mechanized floating armor. Their passage was hardly uncontested; in some places there was fierce fighting. Phasers, disruptors, various kinds of explosives were in play—almost everything but nuclears, since both sides had plans for this land that did not involve making large portions of it uninhabitable. The lower part of the pass appeared to have been mined—both sides were avoiding it—but the upper part of the pass was quiet and clear. As Jim looked up that way, he saw a number of lightly armed Romulans who had been standing and watching K’s’t’lk’s ship come down. Now, seeing its occupants standing outside it, a number of these people put their weapons down and started to walk slowly down toward Jim and the others, their hands out to either side to show that they were empty.

Inside the ship’s extended shield, the landing party lifted their weapons, watching the strangers come. And as they got closer, the foremost of the people approaching, a young
woman, suddenly struck Jim as being familiar. He gazed at her as she got closer—a woman in some kind of booted overall, soot-stained, with dark hair bound back tightly. And then he knew her face, even though it took him a moment because she had been dressed so very differently the last time he saw her.

She came up just outside of the shield and stopped. “Captain Kirk,” she said. “Commander—”

“Arrhae!” Ael said. “Elements, woman—are all the Senators finding such rough housing and handling as you seem to have found?”

Arrhae shook her head. “I don’t think so. But as for you, you’re very welcome. There are many people here who have been waiting for you. They knew you’d come here first.”

“After all, this was your family’s land, once,” said the man who was standing just behind Arrhae. “Before they took it from you. And, anyway, you’ve been saying all this while that you intended to retire here and become a hermit.”

Ael’s jaw dropped. Then she closed her mouth again. “Now by my Element, how came you to know that?”

“Commander,” the man said, “not all the information that was leaked from
Bloodwing
fell into unfriendly hands. Some of it came to those who were intent on helping you. As we’ve been doing now.” He looked around. “This place would have been fairly strongly held, except that a great many of us…interfered.”

“Well, I thank you, and you will tell me more of this later, I hope,” Ael said, “but first, how stands the city?”

Arrhae shook her head. “Yesterday much of the civilian population began to flee, despite the government’s orders that they should stay where they were. Word got out somehow, you see, that the Senators were evacuating.” She smiled gently. “And when the world’s rulers leave in such a hurry, why should the ruled remain? Some did stay in place, true, but despite the government’s increasingly noisy calls that
they should take arms and go out and defend their city, they have not been moving.” She shook her head and smiled. “Indeed, the question is how much government there is around here at the moment. The Senators, as I say, have withdrawn wholesale to their country estates all over the planet. They will not fight. And the Praetorate is fled. After all, they could look up and see what everyone else could.” She glanced up through the clouds at the disastrous and expanding cloud slowly moving across the sky, getting ready to set at the moment, like a gigantic furry star. “They saw the defense satellites taken down, and Grand Fleet Headquarters fall. I think they know quite well that their power is done.”

“And the Three?” Ael said.

Arrhae shook her head. “No one knows where they are, Commander General.”

“But the odds would seem good,” said the man standing next to Arrhae, “that they are somewhere on the planet. There has been a tremendous amount of confusion since transport became nonfunctional in this part of space.” He smiled slightly. “So unless they’ve managed to find a craft fast enough to get them through the cordon that is being thrown around even as we speak—” He looked at Kirk. “—and that seems unlikely, then they are still here somewhere. I doubt that it will take too long to find them, either. Doubtless some forward-looking citizen will turn them in.”

“It would seem,” K’s’t’lk said, cocking various eyes up at Kirk, “that your plan is working.”

Kirk looked down into the valley, where the phaser and disruptor fire was slowly growing more distant from the position where they stood. “It looks that way at the moment,” he said. “But I’m not willing to get too excited about it all just yet. There’s still the city to deal with. And after that, one thing that right now is feeling a lot more important to me moment by moment.”

“Yes,” Arrhae said. “The nova bomb.”

“It seems like news is traveling faster than usual around here,” Jim said. “Well, we need to find the Three just as fast as we can. But we can’t get started on that until someone makes it publicly plain to both these planets that things are going to be run a little differently now.”

“The Senate, then,” Ael said. “The only other piece of equipment I need is in K’s’t’lk’s ship.”

“Let’s go, then,” Jim said. And he smiled, though it had a grim edge to it at the moment, and his fears for Earth were growing with every second. “Nine-j.”

“You and your lists,” Ael said, turning back toward the ship.

“They’ve worked, haven’t they?” Jim said.

“That will be proven when we strike the last item out.
Deihu,
will you ride with us? The Senate will need to be recalled when things grow quiet again, and your advice will be uniquely valuable.”

“My pleasure, Commander-General,” Arrhae said. “But Ffairrl comes with me.”

“Very well,” Jim said. “T’l, kill that shield, let them in, and let’s get out of here.”

The city had a strangely empty feel, though it was hardly as if all the people had left. Some Rihannsu could be seen looking down from nearby office and government buildings at the strange little ship that landed on the plaza outside the Senate, and at the group that came out of it and paused to look down the great empty avenue reaching away from it. The sound of sporadic disruptor fire could be heard at the edges of the city, but there was none here.

One last figure climbed out of the ship: Ael, with the Sword in her hands. There she stood for a moment, looking around her, and actually shivered. “I did not think I would live to see this,” she said. “On my Element’s name, I did not.”

Spock got his tricorder out. Jim pulled out his communicator. “Scotty?”

Nothing happened. Jim sighed. “I keep forgetting,” he said, and pulled out the little radio instead. “Scotty?”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Lock onto Spock’s tricorder signal. We’re going to need systemwide video for this. Replace the jamming signal with it.”

“Aye, Captain,”
Scotty said again.

They walked away from the ship, toward the doors of the Senate. Slowly Jim became aware of people standing at the edges of the plaza, watching them as they made their way across it to the doors. Some of those people started to follow them. “Captain,” Spock said softly, glancing at them.

“We’re carrying a bud-off of my ship’s shields with us, Captain,” K’s’t’lk said. “I’ve got range enough to carry it as far as the Senate building. But once we get inside, the structure is going to interfere.”

“Good enough,” Kirk said.

They came to the doors, and here, on the very threshold of the place, Jim saw Ael hesitate. Behind them, the crowd of Rihannsu who had been following now started to gather and grow, but they didn’t press forward. They waited. The high air was beginning to be full of Free Rihannsu ships patrolling, but all those people’s attention was on the woman standing before the closed doors.

“Some of the marks are still here from where I landed
Bloodwing,”
Ael said in a small voice. “They have not even finished the repairs.”

“There’ll be plenty of time to set your house in order later,” Jim said. “But first you have to get
in
there.”

Then Kirk’s radio crackled again. “So much for the historic moment,” he said. “Kirk here.”

“Captain, you’d better hear this!”
Uhura said.
“Local broadcast, low power, I’ll patch you in.”

They heard the voice, then—dry, even, almost mild—and Kirk saw Arrhae go pale.
“—a matter of honor,”
it was saying.
“And those who have struck at our heart, will now find that we strike at theirs. Those who have fouled the Hearthworlds of the Rihannsu Star Empire will now find their own hearth going cold. Invaders, aliens, enjoy the light of our sun briefly, while you may still enjoy anything, for the light of your own star will shortly be gone. Enjoy what the traitress’s empty promises have bought you: Your own destruction.”

“Scotty, the jamming!”

“Seems not to have affected whatever signaling modality they were usin’, Captain. If they’re sendin’ some signal to activate the nova bomb, we can’t stop it!”

Jim swore. “Beam us up!”

“We’d have to raise the interdict to do that. And if we do that, those devils will use the moment to get away!”

Kirk turned to K’s’t’lk. “I take back everything I said about your brakes. How fast can you get us back to
Enterprise?”

“Come find out!” she said, and turned and ran back toward her ship, all those legs glittering.

Kirk ran after her. Spock glanced around, thrust his tricorder into Arrhae’s hands, and went after Kirk. And it was only as Kirk was climbing back into the ship that he turned for a split second, remembering, to look at Ael, standing there all alone.

She stared back and then gestured at him furiously:
go!

It was only a matter of a few seconds to get out of the atmosphere. Horrified as he was, Jim was still surprised that he wasn’t able to feel even the slightest flush of heat as they plunged up through the air. “How can this ship
stand
that?”

“J’m, I do a lot of work in stellar mechanics,” K’s’t’lk said as they flashed toward the tiny shape in orbit that swiftly resolved itself into
Enterprise.
“For that kind of thing you
need a ship that can work in the corona, or even deeper. How’s a little friction going to bother me?” Her legs danced in and out among the controls as she lined her little ship up with the hangar bay. “Sc’tty?”

“I’m on my way down,”
Scotty answered. He sounded out of breath.
“Captain—you know what we’re going to have to do.”

“What?” Then Jim swallowed. “You mean, with the probe—” His mouth went completely dry. “Scotty,
you haven’t finished testing it yet!”

“We’re about to finish that right now, I think,” K’s’t’lk said.

“No,” Jim whispered.

K’s’t’lk shot in through the hangar doors. “Force field only, Sc’tty, he’ll be going right out again.”

The force field came open in the gap between the hangar bay’s physical doors, and the area began to pressurize. “Come on, hurry,” K’s’t’lk said, climbing out of her seat. “Hurry!”

The pressure came up and the door of her craft opened. They all piled out. The corridor doors opened, and Scotty burst in through them, pushing before him an antigrav sled with a long, sleek torp casing loaded on it.

“You said it yourself, Captain,” Scotty said between gasps as he came up beside K’s’t’lk’s ship. The ship abruptly extruded a long set of thin spidery legs from inside, lifted the torp casing carefully, and pulled it into the body of the vessel; the door knitted itself closed again. “It’s aye better to have the sun collapse than ’tis to have it explode. And besides, this’ll probably work.”