Star Trek: The Empty Chair (52 page)

The nearest of the crowd actually backed away a little, as if they were afraid the Sword might leap out of her hands and
do something unexpected. And then, gradually, the movement transmitted itself back to the rest of the crowd. Slowly they began to move away. The rearmost of them turned and began to leave.

Ael watched them disperse. Beside her, Arrhae watched them go as well, and lowered Spock’s tricorder. She glanced over at Ael. “Commander-General, are you all right?”

Ael looked at her in surprise, and then laughed. “I was just lost in contemplation of my own folly. For somehow I was expecting something else. Do not ask me what!” She rubbed her eyes, which suddenly felt impossibly grainy. “But now…”

She let the hand fall, and laughed again. “Now my work is done,” Ael said. “Or very nearly so. Shortly, tomorrow morning perhaps, I will no longer have a job. And it feels very strange! For I have only had this one job, all my life, it seems.”

Arrhae reached out and took Ael’s little radio from her. “
Enterprise?”
she said. “I think perhaps you might send a shuttlecraft for the commander. She will need a ride back to
Bloodwing,
or wherever she wishes to go.”

“On its way,”
Uhura said.

Ael let out a breath as Arrhae handed her back the communicator. “Where else would I wish to go?” she said.

Arrhae quirked an eyebrow at Ffairrl, and said nothing, as Ael looked out across the plaza and down the great avenue, silent again under the sun.

At Noon the next day, the plaza was full. The next morning, when
Bloodwing
landed there again—quite cautiously, off to one side in a space pointedly prepared for it, and in company with one of
Enterprise’
s shuttlecraft—the whole place was simply packed full of people.

Kirk and Spock and Scotty and McCoy got out, as did Uhura and Chekov and Sulu, all in dress uniforms. K’s’t’lk followed them, ununiformed as usual. The group looked around at the crowd, who eyed them with curiosity, but not nearly as much as Jim had been expecting.

“What’s our percentage of the gate?” McCoy muttered.

“Shush, Bones,” Kirk said under his breath.

They walked toward the doors of the Senate; the crowd parted for them. As it did, one of the side hatches of
Bloodwing
opened, and Ael’s crew came out, one by one, all in Grand Fleet uniform. They formed up into a double corridor between
Bloodwing
and the doors.

Then Ael came out, also in Grand Fleet uniform, but without the marks of rank, and in her hands she held the Sword. At the bottom of the ramp she paused for a moment, looking around. Then she walked briskly down between her people, who saluted with fists to chests in the old way as she passed.

At the doors, Ael and the group from the
Enterprise
met. Jim smiled at Ael. She smiled back, though a little somberly. “I think they are ready for us,” she said.

“Then let’s go in.”

Ael went to the doors. Slowly they swung open.

There, in its many concentric rings, the Senate sat. Every Senatorial seat was full. But missing were the seats held by almost all the Praetors. Of the twelve, only Gurrhim tr’Siedhri stood in his place, rising as all the others did as the Sword reentered the chamber. Gathered all around the rings of Senatorial seating were a great crowd of noble House Rihannsu, politicians of every stripe, and members of families influential in business and public life. These stood silently and watched, and all their eyes were on what Ael carried.

Behind her, walking up slowly into the center of that great gathering, Jim saw something most unusual start to happen. He motioned with his hand to his people, and all of them stood still where they were. All around the circle, the Senators and all the rest who stood there to watch were beginning to drop to their knees as Ael passed. Jim had never seen such a gesture from Rihannsu before. It seemed illegal, somehow.

Ael walked up to the dais where the Chair still sat, unhurt. She held the Sword up in front of her, and for the space of several breaths it was the focus of every eye in that place. The sunlight that fell through the piercing of the dome onto the Sword seemed to illuminate everything else but the curve of that black sheath. Ael looked at it with a terrible, edged satisfaction, and slowly put the Sword back down across the arms of the Empty Chair.

Then she stood away, and turned.

The people on their knees did not get up.

“It is done,” Ael said. “It is over.”

Many eyes looked up at her from all over the room, but no one moved.

Ael began to look disturbed. “What are you waiting for?”

Gurrhim rose. “I believe they look for some word as to what part you will take in the remaking of the Empire.”

Ael’s eyes widened. “We have many things of more import
than that to consider at the moment. There are two planets’ worth of battle damage to repair, thousands and thousands of Rihannsu dislocated in the uprisings who must be housed. Fires to put out, roads and public works to rebuild—”

“And a people to be led,” Gurrhim said.

Ael stared at him. “Ah, no. Gurrhim, are you mad? The doctor’s medications have unseated your wits at last. Your children will be furious with me.”

“His children,” one of Gurrhim’s sons said, coming up beside his father, “are in complete agreement with their father. And enough of talking around your name as if you weren’t here, no matter how many times it might have been written or burned. T’Rllallieu, enough of your prevaricating! You have done your part so far. Now you must do the rest of it!”

There was a mutter of agreement from around the floor. Ael looked from face to face of those nearest her, and in all cases looked away again hastily—the expression of a woman who does not like what she sees, and seeks a better answer elsewhere. “Doubtless I will take some small part—”

“You will
not!”

Quite a few people looked around in shock as the youngest of all the Senators got up off her knees and came out of the crowd to stand there looking at Ael. And then she turned to the rest of them.

“Will you let her off so easily?” Arrhae cried. “She has risked everything, again and again, for your sakes. She deserves better at our hands! She has given us back our
mnhei’sahe,
she has taken back the sun for us to live under again, and driven off the shadow that has spread over us all this while, sapping our strength, killing our pride. She has brought her fate upon herself, and are we mad to let her escape it?”

The rest of the crowd was starting to get up off its knees now. The closest of them started to move in toward Ael a little.
She moved just slightly, once, like a woman who felt she wanted to run, but she held her ground.

“We are an Empire,” Arrhae said. “Perhaps it is time now we had an Empress.”

There was silence at first. Then a very subdued mutter. Then the mutter grew to a grumble, and the grumble to a roar. “The Empress!”

It was a word Jim had never heard before in Rihannsu, and he glanced to one side and saw McCoy say it once, softly, under his breath, trying it out:
“Llei’hmnë.”

Ael looked horrified beyond belief. “This is nothing but a road to tragedy. You are dooming yourselves! We are never best led when only one leads.”

“But never before did so many
choose
to be led!” Arrhae said. “You are no Ruling Queen. Nor will be! We know you too well. Her way was to order others where she herself would not go. That’s not what you have done.”

“It is the sheerest folly!” Ael said. “No possible good can come of such power concentrated in only one pair of hands!”

“It would never be such,” Gurrhim said, “and you know it. We would look to see the legislative powers restored to their old puissance. If they had an Empress looking over their shoulders to make sure their jobs were being done correctly, then such would be all to the good. And as for the rule of the many, too much we’ve seen of late how those many may pull in three or twelve different directions, each serving his own interests at the expense of the others’ and those they represent. Perhaps the little Senator here is right. Perhaps it is time that we went down a new road.”

“The Empress!” some of the people in that vast hall began to shout again. “The Empress!”

Once more the scattered shout turned into a roar. Ael looked helplessly over at Jim. He returned the look.

“This can only be an error!” Ael cried over the noise.
“The blood of your brothers is on my hands today. To make such a decision now—”

“It
must
be made now,” Gurrhim said. “You know what danger it brings our people not to be ruled. For the moment, an Empress is what we need. You proved yourself apt enough to war. Are you afraid of failing to manage the peace?”

Jim thought he could see the answer to that behind her eyes, and he entirely understood it.

After a moment, she held up one hand. The shouting dropped off to silence; this too seemed to unnerve her. “We will hear what the captain says,” said Ael.

“Me?” Jim took a few steps forward, looking around. “I don’t think
they
need to hear me. Sounds like
they
know what they want.
You,
though—” He walked up to her. “You’ve known for a long time what you wanted. Your people, free to make their own choices, rather than being dragged into them. Now it sounds like they’re making a choice. You’ve devoted your whole life to bringing about this set of circumstances, in which they could choose their own road. Now—” He smiled. “—suddenly you’re going to part company with them again? I don’t think so.”

She was standing close enough to him now that she could be heard even when she spoke very softly. “Jim,” she said, “you are serving me very ill, after all my good usage of you in the past.”

Suddenly someone else was standing beside Jim. “Oh, you think so, do you?” McCoy said, speaking as quietly as Ael had. “Well, you’d better just be quiet now and take your medicine, because you’ve brought this on yourself. Admit it: you didn’t think it through, did you? Oh, you saw
this
moment, all right! You saw the Sword back on its chair again, and all the rotten politicians and plotters and schemers chucked out on their kiesters, and then you had some hazy image of how it would be afterward—good politicians somehow magically rushing into the vacuum left by the old ones.”
McCoy snorted. “Wishful thinking of the first order, Commander. You’d never fight a battle that way. Whatever made you think you’d be allowed to just fade away afterward?”

Jim, looking sideways, thought that it was a good thing his back and McCoy’s were presently turned to the great assembly gathered before the Chair; that way none of them could see the sarcastic look McCoy had fixed on Ael. She looked from him to Kirk. “I would have thought that was what happened to old soldiers in your world,” Ael said, sounding a little forlorn. “And what in your world or mine is a ‘kiester’?”

“We’ll discuss that another time,” Jim said. “Meanwhile,
think,
Ael. Stay in office long enough to get things stable, and then bow out if you have to. But things are very broken loose right now, and they
need
you. More to the point, Starfleet needs you.
You,
sitting here, are the only one who can ensure that they’ll leave you alone until you can put things back together again. And the Klingons will, too. You can always abdicate later.”

She shook her head, more in indecision, Jim thought, than negation. “‘Office!’ You heard them—you heard what they want to call me! I will
not—”

“Ael,” Jim said. “Remember the Fizzbin tournament?”

She blinked at him.

“Change the rules,” Jim said. “If you’re the first Empress of the Rihannsu, you get to change the rules. In fact, you get to
invent
them. Invent a new game!”

He watched the thoughts moving around behind her eyes—or at least he tried to. It was always a chancy business, trying to anticipate what Ael was thinking. Perhaps aware of his attempt to assess her thought, she bowed her head.

Then she looked up. “All of you,” she said to those who were still on their knees, “stand up. I will not be one of these bow-and-scrape rulers who judge their own power by how much they can see of their subjects’ backs.”

The shouting started again, especially among Ael’s crew, and in many cases, the shouting was composed as much of laughter as of praise.

“I will not sit in that chair,” Ael said. “Someone fetch me another, and put it to one side. In that I will sit.”

She sounded fretful, like someone being held to a bargain they never intended to keep. “Captain?” Spock said.

Jim glanced at him. “Would you excuse me for a moment?” Spock said.

“Huh? Sure, Spock, go ahead.”

Jim watched with some amusement as the Senators on that side of the chamber rustled about a little, as Gurrhim went down among them and then went out of the room. A minute or so he came back with a chair not too dissimilar from the one across which the Sword lay.

McCoy let out an annoyed breath. “I thought I told you
no lifting.”

Gurrhim chuckled and ignored him, putting the chair down by the Empty one. Ael turned and was about to sit down in it, when a voice said, “One moment, madam.” Spock’s voice.

Everyone turned to look. Then suddenly there was a great pushing back out of his way among those who were gathered nearer the doors, and many of the Senators craned their necks to see what was coming—and stepped back when they saw.

Through the middle of the Senate came Spock, holding something dark in his hands. The whole room rose as they saw it and recognized it as what it was: another S’harien, his family’s heirloom, cousin to the Sword itself. Spock stopped in front of Ael as she stood in front of her own chair, and held the sheathed sword up.

Around them on the Senate floor, dead silence reigned. In a single swift and economical gesture, Spock unsheathed the S’harien. In all that sudden quiet, the sound echoed fiercely,
and the light from the piercing in the roof glinted blindingly on the steel. In Spock’s hands, the sword looked most improbably deadly.