Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (19 page)

He ran out, seething. The corridors were alive with his people, and with Romulans, too, scrambling for posts. He dashed into the lift at the end of officers’ country and found tall pretty Aidoann already in there, breathing hard. “Where’s the commander?” he said, as the doors closed on them.

“Beamed back over to
Bloodwing,
Captain,” Aidoann said. She looked at him with those big brown eyes of hers, and Jim had a sudden thought that she looked rather like Uhura, the same slant to the eyes…. “Sir—” she said.

It was the first time any of them had called him anything but “Captain.”
Something cultural?
he wondered. But whatever, suddenly she wasn’t a Romulan anymore; she was a young crewperson, looking nervous before a major engagement. “Antecenturion?”

“Do you have things you believe in?”

Impossible not to answer such directness. “Yes,” Jim said.

“I hope They’re with us now,” Aidoann said. “Those three will blow us all to Areinnye if they can.”

“Aidoann,” he said, grateful that he could pronounce that word at least, “your commander and I have other plans.”

She grinned at Jim, a quick flash through the otherwise Romulan intensity. The bridge doors opened for them.

I just hope they’re the same ones,
Jim thought, and swung down toward the center seat.

Spock got out of it with his usual quick grace and hurried back to his station. “Captain, we are running slightly ahead of schedule,” he said over his shoulder as he went. “Registering a group of large masses at most extreme sensor range. Their location and arrangement agree closely with
Bloodwing
’s estimates for ephemerae of Levaeri V and its primary. The station is not yet detectable. On the revised schedule, we are now five minutes from scheduled ‘breakaway.’”

“Good. Mr. Mahasë”—Jim turned to the gray-haired, gray-skinned Eseriat who was holding down Uhura’s post, with Aidoann standing by if she should be needed. “Get me engineering.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Engineering, Scott here…”

“We’re running fast, Scotty—in range a bit early. How are Uhura and Freeman doing?”

“They’re just helping my people put the finishing touches on the last buoy,”
Scotty said.

“Fine. Load one of them up; we’re about to lay an egg.”

“Already in photon torpedo tube one, Captain.”

“All right. Hold on to it, Scotty; I’ll let you know when. Thirty seconds tops. Out. Aidoann, please call
Bloodwing
and give them the prearranged signal.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. And then, after a moment, “
Bloodwing,
this is
Enterprise;
t’Khnialmnae.”

“Tr’Rllaillieu,”
said Subcommander Tafv’s voice, cool and calm as usual.

“Subcommander, we have an emergency,” Aidoann said, not having to fake a small tremor in her voice. “A small party of Federation personnel have broken out of group detention—”

Mahasë killed the frequency between the two ships. Jim hit the intercom button on his chair. “Okay, Scotty,
now!
”

The ship held steady as always, but there was a small muffled noise, much quieter than the usual dull thump of a photon torpedo on the way out. “Buoy away, Captain,” Chekov said, “heading one eighty mark minus twenty.”

“Activate it.”

Chekov hit a control on his board. “Operational, Captain. Subspace communications are jammed.”

“Allcall,” Jim said to Mahasë; and when he spoke again his voice rang through the ship. “Battle stations, battle stations! Secure for warp maneuvering!” He made a kill-it gesture at the Eseriat. “Screens up, gentlemen, deflectors on full. Mr. Sulu, kick the engines up to warp three. Break out of
Bloodwing
’s tractors and maneuver at your discretion. Closest Romulan vessel—”

“
Rea’s Helm,
sir.”

“Lock on phasers. Fire at will. Mr. Chekov, photon torpedoes—”

“Tubes three through six charged and ready—”

“Mr. Sulu, why aren’t we moving!”

“
Bloodwing
has increased power to her tractors, sir—”

Why that—! She was supposed to—
“Break them,” Jim said tightly.

“Engine overheat, Captain—”

“Risk it. Break free!”

Sulu’s hands swept over his board. “No good, sir—”

“Increase warp.”

“Sir, no result,
Bloodwing
’s too close—”

“
Rea’s Helm
has put its shields up, Captain,” Spock said, staring down his viewer. “Hailing us.”

“Ignore. Mr. Chekov, fire on
Bloodwing.
”

Aidoann’s head jerked up; her face was ashen. “Shielded, Captain—” Chekov said.

“I note that. Scan for weakest point and fire phasers right there. Look for areas of screen overlap, those spots are sometimes poorly protected—”

“Shields going up on
Wildfire
and
Javelin,
Captain,” Spock said. The ship shuddered as something hit the screens. “Fire, Captain,” Spock added. “From
Bloodwing.
Phaser fire, clean hit on number six screen, screen efficiency decreased to sixty percent—”

Damn! Damn! DAMN!
“Return fire at will, Mr. Chekov. Mr. Sulu, if you don’t break those tractors in about a second, I’m going to tell Lieutenant Renner who stole her clothes from poolside last month!”

Next to Chekov, who was firing the phasers in blast after blast, Sulu went pale. Jim didn’t see what he did, but the ship lurched mightily, and suddenly space on the screen in front of them was clear again. “Damage?” he said.

“Minimal,” Spock said. “A very quick burst at warp eight, most precisely angled. Well done, Mr. Sulu.”

“Yes,” Jim said, sweating and grim, but grinning nonetheless.

“Four clean hits on
Bloodwing,
Captain. Her forward screen is down to thirty percent efficiency, and her port screen has failed altogether. Further fire—”

“Forget her,” Jim said. “Sulu, Chekov,
get me those three ships!
”

“Positions on screen,” Spock said. There they were in schematic:
Bloodwing
lying a little to one side, coming after
Enterprise
but losing speed;
Rea’s Helm
closing in from port and above,
Wildfire
coming in faster yet from the starboard,
Javelin
arching around toward the rear. “Mr. Chekov, watch out for him—”

“Firing rear tubes, standard spread,” Chekov said, eyes flickering back and forth from his board to the screen. “Recharging.”

“Clean misses,” Spock said. “
Javelin
is in evasive maneuvers. Dropping back—now closing again—
Rea’s Helm
is in close approach—”

“Fire!” Jim cried at exactly the moment Chekov did so. White fire lanced away from the
Enterprise,
hitting the Romulan ship exactly in a screen overlap zone over a nacelle. There was one of those seemingly month-long pauses, and then
Rea’s Helm
blew up, blazing, matter and antimatter making a small sun of her. Sulu brought
Enterprise
curving about and threw her right into the expanding cloud of debris, letting the deflectors take it.

“Steady on, Mr. Sulu,” Jim said, leaning forward in the center seat. “We’re leaving a trail—”

“Yes, sir, I know,” Sulu said. “Warp six—” He was working on his console again, while behind them sensors showed
Wildfire
screaming in from the starboard,
Javelin
trailing somewhat, and
Bloodwing
at the rear of the pack, building speed but still far behind.

“
Wildfire
is closing,” Spock said calmly. “Firing to her port—” Spock paused a moment, looking down his scanner. “Explosion, Captain. She has destroyed jamming buoy.
Wildfire
’s range now five hundred thousand kilometers—four hundred thousand—”

Sulu’s eyebrows went up as his hand flickered over the console. Jim watched him with uneasy delight. He was doing something Jim had seen done in starships in warp, but always at slower speeds: deforming the warpfield itself, broadening and flattening it forward, tightening it to the rear. And the ship was responding in the only way she could—slowly, gracefully nosing downward as she flashed through the
Helm
’s remains, then nosing down faster, harder, pitching forward until she was literally flying “vertically,” nacelles and the broad side of the disk forward.

It was not a position a ship could fly in for more than a few seconds, in warp. Yet if this worked…“Mr. Sulu—” Jim said.

“I know, Captain,” Sulu said, and kept
Enterprise
rolling forward—a slow somersault through otherspace at seven hundred twenty times the speed of light, while behind her, seeing nothing but the unchanged shape of her defensive screens,
Wildfire
came charging in—right into the teeth of her forward phasers. If Sulu could get her around in time! She was flying “diagonal” now, easing out of it, flattening out—flying upside down and backward, and right into their faces, now here came
Wildfire,
firing phasers—“Hits on number one shield, number three shield,” Spock said, beginning to sound a touch grim now, “number one buckling, Captain; reinforcing—”

“No! Belay that!” Jim could feel Spock glancing at him, ignored it for the moment. “Another hit on number three,” Spock said, “down to twenty percent—”

“Ready, Mr. Chekov?”

“Ready, Captain—”

Wildfire
swelled on the screen, coming right down their throats, and now that the Romulan ship could see what was happening, it was too late—
“Now!”

Mr. Chekov pounced on his board.
Enterprise
’s deadly forward phasers lashed out where
Wildfire
had expected only the lesser rear ones, or photon torpedoes. And suddenly,
Wildfire
was gone in a bloom of light—

—Javelin,
following behind, vanished.

“Cloaking device,” Spock said.

“Defeat it, Mr. Spock—”

“The cloaking countermeasure is not functional, Captain, it’s a function of subspace communication.”

Oh no!
Jim stared at the empty screen, in which there was nothing but
Bloodwing
now, soaring in toward them faster than she had been.
He’ll go off in some other direction—

He stared at
Bloodwing,
and it hit him. “Mr. Chekov, fire! Everything we’ve got, right at her!”

“Captain!” That was Aidoann, a child’s cry for a betrayed mother.

Chekov fired, photon torpedoes and phasers both at once. “Sulu, hard about!” And at the same moment
Bloodwing
’s phasers lashed out at the
Enterprise—

—and their combined armament hit what lay directly between them, what Jim had somehow known would be using
Bloodwing
as cover, only from in front. “Spock, the shields!” he cried, but Spock had already reinforced them. Nothing else saved
Enterprise
from the point-blank explosion of another starship right in front of her. She screamed through the wreckage and the swiftly dying fire, while
Bloodwing,
plunging toward them at warp five, angled up and over them, deforming her own warpfield in a crazed, congratulatory victory roll.

“They do that too….” Jim said, slumping back in his seat.

“Local traffic, Captain,” Spock said sharply, looking down his scanner. “A small ship, bearing—Too late. It’s cloaked.”

“Our friend the ‘crawling slime,’” Jim said “LLunih.”

“I would say so. Evidently he suspected
Bloodwing
of complicity with us—and sacrificed his ship to test the theory.”

“A wonderful person,” Jim said. “Hail
Bloodwing.
”

The screen lit up. There was that cramped little control room, and in it, Ael, sweating rivers and looking haggard.
“Captain,”
she said,
“is your ship all right?”

“We’re fine. Ael, you know more about ‘the better part of valor’ than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Probably. Why do you think I went to dinner with LLunih the other night? I wanted to see what he had hidden in his engineering room—and I got him to show me. It was an Imperial courier: that little creature in which he just saved his skin. Some day I shall have it for a pot-scouring rag.”

“His courier ship?”

“That too. What could I do, until you deployed your jammer and I knew it was working, save increase my efforts to hold on to you as if your escape was genuinely a surprise? He will report to the Senate in doubt now—knowing that you apparently
willingly
fired on me to kill—and thus keep us both clear of the suspicion of complicity. They will argue—and the ship that might have gotten here from Romulus in four hours will perhaps not come for ten, or twenty.”

“I have a question for you.”

“Ask.”

“What the devil took you so long to figure out that the damn buoy was working?!”

“Captain, our sensors are not as good as yours, especially in the high ranges, you know that…. I could know nothing until my subspace communication with one of the other ships failed.”