Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (36 page)

“Subcommander…!” There was an edge of desperation in Reaves’s voice now, and he turned hurriedly to his own crew. “Number One, activate the loading-monitors at full and free mobility—cut in full internal lighting. Exec, patch the signals through to the main screen. Insert mode—over
that.
And for God’s sake, hurry!”

It was common practice for a vessel’s cargo spaces to have track-mounted surveillance cameras, and there was one in each of
Vega
’s holds. The pictures they transmitted were high-definition, good enough to read the labels on the bulk flasks of Saurian brandy in hold
A
or the stenciled
THIS WAY UP
instruction on crated medicinal drugs. Certainly good enough to show if anything was amiss—or if anyone was there.

“Look, Subcommander! Can’t you see? There’s nothing that shouldn’t be there!”

Tr’Annhwi looked, not especially interested, and began to turn away. “Three minutes,” he said. And then his head snapped back toward the screen. “There! Something moved!”

“You’re imagining—” Reaves started to say, but shut his teeth on the words as tr’Annhwi leveled a phaser at his face.

“Close your mouth or I’ll burn another one in your head to keep it company,” the Romulan snapped. And to the still-active communicator in his left hand:
“Ie’yyak-Hnah!”

The screen went blank for an instant, then flicked back to a tactical sketch of a Federation liner with computer-graphic splatters of blue fire raking all across its belly.

And at the same instant,
Vega
’s substructure howled in protest as she was gutted. The vessel wrenched out of line in three dimensions at once, flinging both crew and intruders into bulkheads or onto the shuddering deck. Alarms and people alike were screaming. The bridge consoles overloaded in a convulsion of sparks and choking smoke, the screen was flashing
HULL INTEGRITY VIOLATED
and nobody was paying any attention….

Leonard McCoy clambered stiffly to his feet, coughing the stink of seared insulation from his lungs. He was bruised and shaken, his spine hurt from the three-way whiplash, and he was appalled that the Romulans had actually made good their threat. In that one instant, in the warship of one state firing on the unarmed civilian vessel of another, it had gone beyond piracy to war. And he was right in the middle of it.

Or was he…? The bridge extractors cut in and began to clear the smoke, and the first thing he saw was tr’Annhwi on hands and knees on the deck. The second was the expression on the subcommander’s face. It was a mingling of rage and terror such as McCoy had seldom seen on any face; terror at the consequences of a panicked action, and at the consequences yet to come, and fury at being placed in such a situation by all the circumstances which had led him there. Worst of all, the quickest way tr’Annhwi could cover his blunder would be by blowing
Vega
to subatomic particles. Maybe he might not be as ruthless as that, but his last overreaction and the way that he looked now made him more dangerous than the coldest, most efficient starship captain would ever be. Because tr’Annhwi had already shown that he might act without thinking, and he was scared enough to do it again—except that this time people were going to die….

Unless he was distracted.

McCoy stood up, the first man on the bridge to do so, straightened his rumpled, smoke-stained jacket, and met the stares and the leveled weapons with as much equanimity as he could summon. “Subcommander tr’Annhwi, I’m on your list. The name’s McCoy—of the
Enterprise.
”

He had gone beyond butterflies in the stomach; it felt like three heavy cruisers on maneuvers in there, but it was still worth it just to see the way tr’Annhwi’s face changed. At first the Romulan plainly didn’t believe him, then wanted to believe and didn’t dare, and finally decided to make quite sure.

The making-sure was brief, and fortunately painless. No matter that
Vega
bridge was smashed, the Romulan frigate’s computers were still in perfect working order—and their intelligence data on a trio of much-sought Federation officers, there by no coincidence at all, made short work of providing a tri-D likeness. It arrived in a flicker and hum of transporter effect: a fat dossier with squat blocks of Rihanha charactery on its cover.

Tr’Annhwi looked at it; then at McCoy, then back at the dossier. McCoy already knew that Romulans frowned when deep in thought. If he hadn’t, one look at the subcommander would have made him sure of it, because the crease between tr’Annhwi’s brows was indented deep enough to put his brain at risk.

The pictures under study weren’t at first familiar, and seeing them only by inverted glimpses didn’t help.
Where did they get…?
McCoy started to wonder, then recognized the background details and guessed right. They had been taken from the deck-monitor system of the only—so far—Romulan vessel he had ever boarded (and even that had been a Klingon-built
Akif-
class D7 battlecruiser).
Hers….
Ael’s sister’s-daughter’s ship,
Talon.
“She’s your
niece?
” He could remember his own voice quite clearly, and its near-squeak of astonishment. Somehow one never thought of enemies with families; brothers or sisters, fathers or daughters. It made keeping them distanced, keeping them enemies that much easier.

And then all of a sudden there was one enemy who was commander of a warbird and at the same time an aunt—and a mother.
A mother who killed her own son in the name of honor and justice.
Mnhei’sahe,
they call it. I call it murder. And yet I stood by, knowing what she was about and pretending not to know, and not wanting to know. And I took her thanks afterward and said nothing.

“Close enough,” said tr’Annhwi grudgingly. There was a cheated air about him, as if having started violence he would as soon have gained his answers after more of it. “Take him.” Two disruptors nudged McCoy, in chest and spine.

He looked down at the weapons with disdain—there was no longer any point in being scared, or at least obviously so—and glanced in the subcommander’s direction. “Are you expecting me to pull a phaser out of somewhere, sir? Or run? I’ve had ample time for both—yet here I am.” He pushed the nearer, more aggressive rifle to one side and smiled just a bit at the helmeted young trooper who carried it. “Put that away, son, before somebody gets hurt. Subcommander tr’Annhwi, now that you’ve got what you came for, let these people”—his wave took in the bridge crew and by inference everyone else aboard
Vega
—“be about their business.”

“No.” The Romulan shook his head in a very Terran gesture of denial. “Dr. Mak’khoi, even without you I find this ship fascinating. Worth a closer look, especially—” His communicator squawked a summons, and when he opened a channel, the voice on the other end sounded very urgent.

“Subcommander, we have a long-range contact. ID is NCC-2252, Federation light cruiser
Valiant.
Closing speed is warp seven. May I recommend immediate—”

Tr’Annhwi made an irritable noise and his officer went silent. “Yes, another look indeed,” he muttered, “but not here.” The orders he snapped back at Centurion tr’Hheinha were too fast for McCoy’s translator to make sense of all the words, but “rig for high-speed towing” came through quite plainly. As did “battle stations.”

“This is an active shipping lane, Captain.” Tr’Annhwi turned to Reaves, using Anglish again and plainly proud of his ability to speak it. “
Avenger
has made her presence known to three other vessels, but yours has taken up more time than my schedule allowed.” He smiled, that thin and far from pleasant smile of a man with all the aces in his pocket. “Mine, and that of the Starfleet local-patrol ship. Normally we would have had some hours in hand, but our earlier acquaintances seem to have cried wolf-in-the-fold. We are therefore returning to more friendly space. With you and your ship as our guests.”

“I won’t let you—”

“By doing
what?
” This time tr’Annhwi didn’t bother with anything so overt as pointing his phaser at the outraged captain. He just let the situation speak for itself; and it did so, very clearly.

Reaves tugged in a halfhearted way at his uniform tunic, more for something to do with his hands than through any hope of making the ripped and filthy garment anything like presentable. It was obvious that those hands wanted to reach out and take the smile clean off tr’Annhwi’s face, together with his more prominent features. The Romulan could see it as clearly as everyone else on the bridge. But he—all of them—knew that it stopped at wanting. With holes already blown in his ship, Reaves wasn’t about to take any further chances.

“Not to worry, Captain h’Reeviss.” Tr’Annhwi made the placatory gesture of holstering his phaser, although he didn’t order the other Romulans to follow suit. “Your crew and passengers have nothing to fear. After our experts on ch’Rihan have checked your ship properly, it will be repaired and all of you released to go your way.” He looked a little sideways, at the only person on the bridge still held at ostentatious gunpoint. “All but the war criminal Mak’khoi.” The communicator, still activated and in his hand, squeaked several worried noises involving approach vectors. Tr’Annhwi raised one eyebrow. “And he comes with me now.
Aihr erei’Riov.
Ra’kholh,
hteij ’rhae.
”

“Hteij ’rhae. Lhhwoi-sdei.”

“Hna’h….”

As the
Avenger
’s transporter beam engulfed him in scarlet shimmer, the last thing that McCoy saw was tr’Annhwi’s smile—

—an unpleasant smile, that survived quite unscathed and if anything had grown wider during the transition.

“Welcome aboard, Doctor.” The courtesy was decidedly mocking now, delivered by someone in an even greater position of strength than before. “This is
Avenger.
Neither so large nor so impressive as
Enterprise,
but bearer of a worthy name. And an apt name, Dr. Mak’khoi”—the smile was fading fast—“because it is best you know that I had close kin serving on both
Rea’s Helm
and
Battlequeen,
which your
Enterprise
destroyed. It would be joy and
mnhei’sahe
for me to take their death-vengeance upon you. Take him out of my sight.”

McCoy doubted that it would do him any good to tell the Romulan that
Battlequeen
had been destroyed by Captain Rihaul’s
Inaieu
and not by the
Enterprise
at all. Whatever was said would be the wrong thing to say, and in tr’Annhwi’s present mercurial mood, saying anything at all was downright dangerous. He let two helmeted security troopers hustle him off toward what he presumed would be the brig, and was silently grateful that tr’Annhwi’s orders required him alive, unharmed, and in one piece. McCoy had a feeling that without such orders, his time aboard the
Avenger
would be notably unpleasant….

As he lay back on the thin, hard bunk, he could feel jolts running through the Romulan frigate as it engaged tractor beams and locked them on
Vega,
but the lurch as its warpfield was extended around the damaged vessel knocked him off the bunk and onto the deck beneath it. McCoy swore viciously, rubbed at two fresh and three renewed bruises, considered lying down again, and did. But until the warship was well under way and the subharmonic drone of her main drive was making his teeth shake in their sockets, he lay on the floor.

They entered Rihannsu homespace in ship’s night. McCoy hadn’t been asleep, just leaning back with his crossed arms behind his head, looking up into the darkness and thinking the sort of convoluted thoughts men think when they can’t sleep. And then the darkness became bright, and tr’Annhwi stepped through the afterimage glow that was all that remained of the force-shielded door, and he was smiling again. McCoy was growing very tired of that smile.

“Well, here you are,” the Romulan said.

There was something nauseating about an enemy commander trying to be avuncular, and McCoy’s glare and nonStandard suggestion both escaped before he thought of what effect they might have on his continued health.

Tr’Annhwi’s smile only widened even further. “Oh, not me, Doctor,” he said. “Not for some while yet. But you, quite possibly—and certainly quite soon. They are capital charges, after all. Now get up. You
do
want to see your ultimate destination, don’t you?”

McCoy did; he wanted to see anything, anywhere, just so long as it was different from the four walls of the cell where he had been for almost three days. “Which is?” he said, swinging his feet to the deck.

“Ch’Rihan,” said tr’Annhwi. He said it again as the planet rotated slowly on the
Avenger
’s main screen, while he lounged in his center seat and McCoy stood uncomfortably flanked by armed guards right behind it. “We are now in a geosynchronous parking orbit above the city of i’Ramnau. The place where you will spend your last few days before going to Ariennye—the hell you wished on me with such feeling, Dr. Mak’khoi—by whatever painful route your judges decide. After they have done with you and the news is known, perhaps the Federation will be more respectful of Rihannsu space, and lives, and secrets.”

“Subcommander”—one of the crewmen on the cramped little bridge swung his seat around and took a translator from his ear—“Fleet Intelligence personnel and a scanning team are en route from the surface. Commander t’Radaik requests that the prisoner be made ready for immediate transfer to her shuttle. You are invited to accompany him. I have readied Hangar Bay Three for immediate turnaround and—
what in the Elements’ name!
”