Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (97 page)

“Right.
Tom?
”

“Got it. Our other patient’s okay, I’ll circulate. Here’s the cuproplasm. The AV’s cloning.”

“What did they do to this man besides shoot him?” M’Benga said softly, starting to patch another of the bursting major coronary vessels.

“Precious little,” McCoy muttered. “Which may have been their intention. Because, good God, man, I would have thought those people’s medicine was a little more sophisticated than
this.
Look at those burns. Is laser cautery and autografting the best they can do? Got to do something about that after we tend to the major organs. Lia, there’s another leak in here, he’s losing what blood pressure he has,
hurry up!
”

“Plasm’s running, Doctor—”

“Start another, and
find that leak!
”

“Bones,”
Jim’s voice said,
“will he live?”

“Maybe. Depends on him. I’ll let you know. But meanwhile we should be grateful that whoever tried to kill him was in so much of a hurry. Now let me get on with this!” McCoy finished patching another of the vessels attached to the heart.

“That’s the other three big vessels idioplasted,” M’Benga said. “The fuse is good and tight. Want me to ’plast that one?”

“Yes, and then start regenerating the nerves while I re-butt those tears in the ventricle and weld them,” McCoy said, using the protoplaser to mark two torn pieces of tissue and touching the control that would make the pressor function in the manipulation field pull them together. In the holographic image they met, and he drew the protoplaser down the juncture. Granular scar tissue grew and spread between them in its wake, welding them together. “Then start resealing the simulpericardium. We’ve got to get this thing going again real quick.”

M’Benga was silent for a moment, then swore under his breath. “The nerves aren’t responding.”

“Goddam alien myelin! Never mind, right now we’ll concentrate on the mechanical aspects.” He started sealing another tear in the upper left ventricle. “Will you look at the thickness of this heart muscle? Let’s hope it’s diagnostic of more kinds of strength than one, because it’d be real annoying to lose this man in post-op. Meanwhile, if we patch it right, it may actually hold. Tom,
let’s go, we need more idioplast here!
”

“
Bloodwing
’s responded, Captain,” Uhura said. “But just with her course. Mr. Sulu has it now.”

“She’s accelerated to warp nine, Captain,” Sulu said. “Heading deep into Romulan space—what we would call the neighborhood of 450 Arietis.”

Jim shook his head. “Well, don’t lose her, Mr. Sulu. Match it.”

“We may ha’ no choice but to lose her after a while,”
Scotty said from engineering.
“We canna maintain warp nine for long.”

“Warp ten now, Captain,” Sulu said, shaking his head. “Sir, she shouldn’t be capable—”

She sure wasn’t at 15 Tri,
Jim thought.
“Bloodwing!”

No reply.

“
Bloodwing,
reply!”

Nothing.

Jim’s face set hard. “Mr. Spock—”

“Enterprise,” Ael’s voice said,
“apologies for the delay. We had a technical problem. Are you intact?”

“Yes. But others aren’t. Ael, where the hell are you going?”

“Not to ch’Rihan, if that is what you thought,”
Ael said.
“I have no interest in chasing
Gorget
and
Pillion
just now, though I confess to interest in the new technology
Pillion
used to attack us. But for now we can safely let them go. Those who attacked us have paid the price. Meanwhile, I have an urgent appointment in the Artaleirh system. What I must know is, are you coming?”

“You’d better believe it,” Jim said. “I am not letting you out of my sight. And when you finish whatever it is you have in mind at Artaleirh, you are coming back to Federation space with me…or else.”

“When we are done at Artaleirh, Captain, I will gladly come back with you, if you still insist. And if, by that point, Starfleet does. But for the next sixteen hours, which is the time it will take us to get there at this speed, let us allow the matter to rest. We have trouble enough ahead of us.”

“Which is another thing. Scotty, can we
do
sixteen hours at this speed?”

Scotty sounded annoyed.
“With adequate warning, aye. And with constant attention. But we’ll suffer some failures and burnouts as a result, and we’ll need downtime afterwards, a couple of days’ worth for sure. And are we expected to fight when we get wherever we’re going?”

“Of a certainty,”
Ael said calmly.
“There are nine Grand Fleet vessels meeting us there. None of them, I think, are expecting
Enterprise,
but when they see
Bloodwing,
they will certainly be intent on destroying it, and I feel sure they will try to extend the courtesy to you as well.”

Scotty was muttering under his breath. Jim could hardly blame him. “I take it, though,” Jim said, “that you’re expecting help of some kind.”

“Yes,”
Ael said.
“This will be a major engagement, and if conducted properly, it may much shorten this war. I rejoice that you will be present, for your appearance will give the Rihannsu fleet as much pause as the presence of all the other ships that will be arrayed against them.”

It was flattery of the most outrageous kind. Still, flattery had to contain a kernel of truth in order to work at all. Jim smiled through the anger…just a little. “And another thing,” Jim said. “Since when can
Bloodwing
maintain this kind of speed? What the devil have you done to your engines?”

“Well,”
Ael said,
“since we left home space, Master Engineer tr’Keirianh has been experimenting with a propulsion concept our people came up with a while ago. Grand Fleet had abandoned it as too dangerous an idea and sent it back to the researchers for more work. But you know how engineers are, once a better way of doing something is suggested to them. Tr’Keirianh simply could not let it be, and eventually he found a way to make it work. If one creates a small local singularity and connects it to the warp engines—”

“Oh, no,” Jim said softly, and rubbed his forehead gently, where the headache was already starting. Practically in unison with him, “
Oh, no!
” Scotty said, from down in engineering.

“Why?”
Ael said.
“Have your people had problems with such a thing? It certainly is somewhat experimental, and it will take a good while yet to work all the bugs out of it. The singularity has a tendency to fail without warning. But K’s’t’lk said—”

“
Uh-
oh,” Jim said.
Bugs indeed!

“What’s the matter? K’s’t’lk says that the design is one which her people have been using for some years. She had a look at what tr’Keirianh had done and changed a couple of connections in his basic design, but that was all.”

“He would have worked it out in a month or so anyway, at the rate he was going,”
K’s’t’lk said, from down in engineering.
“All I had to do was show him the equivalent system in my own ship. He sorted out the details very quickly.”

“Ael,” Jim said, “why didn’t you tell me you had this?”

“Because for a good while it refused to work except intermittently,”
Ael said.
“When we tried to use it at 15 Trianguli, it failed us when we greatly needed it. But today, at least, it is working. How much better it might work yet remains to be seen. Theoretically it could be pushed as high as warp thirteen. Maybe even more. For the meantime, though, we will hold it at nine, so that you can keep up.”

Jim raised his eyebrows. “Nice of you, Commander. I have a few things to deal with here. Would you excuse me for a little while?”

“Certainly, Captain.
Bloodwing
out.”

He stood up from the center seat and rubbed his face for a moment. “Mr. Sulu,” he said, “if she does anything sudden, I want to know immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to look at Spock. Spock was bent over his scanner again.

“Spock,” Jim said, “what is it now?”

“Captain, I am once again picking up that peculiar waveform we detected earlier.”

“
What?
Don’t tell me another cloaked Romulan ship is on our tail.”

Spock straightened, looking surprised. “Not at all, Captain. The waveform is presently coming from sickbay.”

Jim’s eyes widened, and he headed straight for the turbolift. “Mr. Sulu, you have the conn. Come on, Spock, let’s see what gives. Then you and I need to go down to my quarters.”

An hour later they were still there, and Jim was just putting a data solid away in the little safe near his desk. Spock stood to one side, turning over and over in his hands the little green metal sphere that the young Rihannsu officer tr’AAnikh had handed over to them.

“So you see my problem,” Jim said softly to Spock as he touched the buttons to reprogram the combination and lock the safe.

“Yes, Captain,” Spock said. “It is considerable.”

“I’ll be informing McCoy about this as soon as he’s out of surgery,” Jim said. “But I’m afraid the orders don’t permit me to confide in the crew…at least not yet. We may have problems.”

“It is always difficult to predict the future with any accuracy,” Spock said, “but I suggest that you may be overestimating the severity of this problem.”

“I just hope you’re right. Meantime…” He looked at the little sphere. “What can you make of that?”

“I believe it will prove very useful,” Spock said. “Further analysis will reveal whether its technology can be exploited on a larger scale. If, as I think—”

The intercom whistled. Jim hit the control on his desk. “Kirk here.”

“A message has come in from Starfleet Command, Captain, via relay from RV Trianguli.”

“Yes?”

“It’s Code One, sir.”

Jim swallowed.

“I’ll be right up.”

On
Bloodwing
’s bridge, everything was very quiet. Ael sat there with only tr’Hrienteh for company, looking out as the stars poured past them in the darkness.

“It is,” tr’Hrienteh said, “a normal physiological reaction to the stress of battle, Ael. You know that.”

“Of course I know it,” Ael said. “But surely it is folly to reject sorrow simply because one has just had a victory.” She sighed. “Such as it is. What of poor
Lake Champlain,
then? Its crew did not think to die on this mission. And as for those who sought, however indirectly, to protect us, this is a sad repayment of their wish to do us justice. Yet at the same time, our own people broke their own truce at the first second they could…and if one will deal with such folk, well, that has its dangers. If the Federation was not clear about that before, they are now.”

She looked grimly out at the stars. But the grimness could not hold; the sorrow came back to replace it.

Tr’Hrienteh shook her head. “There is no harm in second thoughts,
khre’Riov.
”

“As long as I do not act on them,” Ael said. “I have chosen this path. To turn from it because of pity for blood shed now will make that bloodshed worthless. I must go all the way through, for their sakes, for the sake of all those who will shortly die; else it means nothing.”

She stood up. “Ask the crew to assemble in the workout room,” she said. “This will only take a few minutes. But there may not be time when we reach Artaleirh.”

Jim and Spock stood looking over Uhura’s shoulder at the screen, where the text version of the message was scrolling. Its detail filled the whole screen, but one part of it mattered most.

Jim’s mouth was dry. “I hoped we would never have to see this again,” he said softly. It had been the Klingons the last time Code One came through, and there had been more than enough deaths in that awful time, enough destruction and terror, before the Organians had abruptly brought that war to a close. This time, though, they showed no sign of interfering. Jim wondered one more time whether this meant the Organians were either gone or merely bored with dealing with lesser races, or whether humans and Romulans did not have the kind of joint future—bizarre as it sounded right now—which they had predicted that Klingons and humans would someday have.
I think we’re on our own this time,
he thought.
But will we have the sense to end it as quickly as we can, or will we all get stuck again in the old habit of killing “aliens” for fun?

There was no way to tell. The only thing that was certain was that the Second Romulan War had begun.