Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (67 page)

“…It’s all right.”

Ael’s eyes dwelt on him for a moment more.
“That must yet be seen,”
she said, and she bowed her head, and cut the connection.

Jim sat there for a while, frowning, thinking.
She may not be alone in the doing-an-injustice department,
he thought.
Think of the shock of being betrayed, not just by a co-officer, but by your own son.
The thought was profoundly uncomfortable. He wanted to turn away from it, but forced himself to face it regardless. The loyalty of his officers and crew, not unquestioning but utterly reliable, was something Jim had come to take for granted, like air to breathe. He could not conceive of life on
Enterprise
without it. Ael, though, having had something very like that with her own crew, had now seen that seemingly solid ground fall away from under her feet. And across that suddenly shifting, crumbling landscape, she was now walking into what would be, if Jim was right in his guesses, the greatest challenge of her career: if indeed she considered that she had a “career” left as such. At any rate, it was a situation from which she would emerge alive and triumphant—or dead. He could still hear that proud, cool voice saying, “Flight would not be my choice…it will solve nothing.” One way or another, unresolved details aside…she was still resolved to fight. And all this without knowing, any longer, if she could completely trust her own crew.

Once burned…
Jim thought.
But it all still comes down to trust. If this situation is to be survivable—she’s got to learn to trust me.

And can she ever?

He sighed, then got up and went off to have a shower, and see about a meal.

Many light-years away from 15 Trianguli, two men sat in a dim-lit room, awaiting the arrival of a third. The two scowling around them at the high-ceilinged, tapestried, weapon-hung surroundings, which were unusually rich and splendid even as high-caste Klingons reckoned such things, a twilight of crimson and dully gleaming gold. The two Klingons were also scowling at one another, for normally, had they met in the street, they would have attacked one another.

There was blood feud between Kelg’s House and Kurvad’s, a feud that both Houses had cultivated with pleasure for a decade. Unfortunately, the House in which the two enemies now sat was senior to both of theirs by centuries, and the man whom they awaited was so high-caste that any feud must needs be set aside until they had discharged whatever errand he might set the two of them. The necessity did not make the waiting any easier, though, and the silence between them was broken by the occasional snarl. That, at least, propriety permitted. Kelg entertained himself with thoughts of what else he would do, some time soon, when circumstances brought him and Kurvad together in some less ritually restrictive environment.

For nearly half an hour they had to sit in the dimness, waiting. Somewhere nearby the noon meal had been served, and Kelg’s gut growled at the smell of choice viands, the smoky hint of
saltha
on the air, the scent of bloodwine. But nothing was offered them. Kelg sat there fuming at the insult until the great black carved doors swung open, and K’hemren walked in. Kelg and Kurvad stood to greet him, then sat down again.

“I will hear your report,” said K’hemren, reaching behind his tall chair. The scent of the feast to which they had not been invited swirled in the air around them as the doors to K’hemren’s counseling chamber closed.

“They are finally moving,” said Kelg, determined to speak the first word at this meeting in Kurvad’s despite, and as much intent on drowning any sound his gut might make. “And doing it with surprising openness. No hiding it…no cover stories.”

“Beware the
targ
without a bone in his mouth,” said Kurvad, sneering, “and the Romulan without a lie in his.”

“The cliché is true enough,” said Kelg. “And what are we to make of what they are doing? Not what they
want
us to, surely?”

K’hemren had brought out from behind the tall chair a long, curved, extremely handsome
bat’leth.
This he now laid in his lap. “It is toward the Federation that they move,” he said, glancing up. “And some interesting pieces of news have come to us, through their own news services, and even via messages routed through our own message networks.”

Kelg and Kurvad looked at him curiously, but he did not elaborate. Finally Kurvad said, “The arch-traitress whom they’ve all been yelping about the last couple of months apparently has gone to ground in Federation space. Seems that she may either be about to ask them for asylum, or else she has done so already…I am none too clear on the details.”

Kelg, laughing at him, got up and began to pace. “They will never give it to her! She would become an occasion of war, and if there is one thing they never want, it is a war!”

“She has already become such an occasion,” said K’hemren, thoughtfully stroking the
bat’leth,
“and she is indeed now in their hands. Yet they have not sent her back across the Zone, which would have been the most straightforward response.” He smiled slightly. “But there is a reason for that, it seems.”

Kelg paused. He and Kurvad looked at K’hemren curiously.

“She has been with Kirk,” K’hemren said, “in
Enterprise.
”

Kurvad spat on the floor and leaped to his feet, beginning to pace as well, though at the mandated safe distance from Kelg. “I thought ill enough of human manners,” he growled, “but the man mates with aliens, with animals, as well? It is intolerable—”

“…that one who behaves so, nonetheless also beats every ship of ours he meets?” K’hemren looked down at the
bat’leth
in amusement. “Maybe so. But his victories cannot be denied him—may the last Dark only devour him soon.”

“That the two of them should be conniving together—” said Kelg. “It bodes ill for someone.”

“The Romulans, I think,” said K’hemren. “That one does not love her people. She has betrayed them before. So she meets with Kirk, as before, to hatch out some new betrayal.” He smiled slightly. “But then she is a madwoman. Her niece was betrayed by Kirk and his half-breed first officer, and yet the woman blames her own people for what happened to the niece. Irrational.”

Kelg stood still for a moment, thinking about that irrationality and what might be made of it, if the circumstances were right. The woman had been deadly enough in her way; the thought of somehow pushing Kurvad into her path was amusing. “One could wish she would only turn on Kirk some fine morning and tear his throat out,” said Kurvad.

“It would be too much to ask of the universe,” said K’hemren. “Meanwhile, these ship movements…”

“They concern me,” said Kelg, beginning to pace again, though more slowly now. “The Romulans would not dare move toward battle unless they had acquired something which made them completely fearless.”

“You underestimate them,” said Kurvad. “They have the strength to conduct a little border war, surely….”

Kelg sneered at the idea, typical of Kurvad’s witlessness and cowardice, and was amused by Kurvad’s outraged look. “Have they indeed! They didn’t react to our attack on Khashah IV—what is it they call it? Eilhaunn? They withdrew their forces, they
let
us take it!”

“A trick. While they do that on the one hand, on the other they move directly into Federation space—”

“With all of seven ships!”

“Do you think me a complete fool? There have been many more ship movements than that in Romulan space near where the Zone meets Federation space, over the past two weeks. And similar movements where the Zone comes close to our own space! Once again they use the Zone to cloak their own movements. And their new cloaking device is in use as well; who knows what they are letting us see just to distract us from what we can’t see elsewhere?”

Kelg laughed again. “There are no great strategists among them…”

“There do not have to be!” K’hemren roared. Kelg stopped, shocked still for the moment. “They are afraid—which makes them dangerous. And more, they have no hope!”

K’hemren’s vehemence silenced both Kelg and Kurvad for a moment. “We have closed down our relations with them much too tightly in recent months,” he said. “Now they have no hope in dealing with us…and one should never leave one’s enemy without hope. First of all because it is a weapon in one’s own hand, sunk in their guts, which one can twist when one needs to. But secondly because an enemy without hope swiftly becomes an enemy with nothing to lose!”

It was good sense in its way, but Kelg was reluctant to admit this. “The chancellor,” he muttered, “is not going to have much patience for these philosophical discussions. He is going to want to know how many more planets we have taken since we spoke to him last. It does not take a thought admiral to see that the present answer will not please him.”

K’hemren shrugged, studying the
bat’leth
’s steel, and turned it over in his lap. “Even the chancellor cannot have everything his own way,” he said. “It would be a fool’s act to attack any more worlds before hostilities break out. Let the fog of war descend first. Under its cover, many attacks can take place, and no one will know whose responsibility they are.”

“No one who does not bother analyzing the ion trails and residues,” said Kurvad.

“Kurvad, are you
entirely
without a spleen?” Kelg cried, taking a few steps toward the other, but not so many as to come close enough to him to entitle him to retaliate physically. “There will be no time for forensics when this war breaks out in earnest! Our business now is to designate targets for when it
does
break. We need metals, heavy and light; and we need slave labor. Those we will be able to get in plenty from the worlds around our bridgehead at Eilhaunn.” He did not add what use his House, involved in the attack on that planet, would be able to make of those resources; they would shortly be rich, and the riches would buy them the influence with the chancellor’s advisers that they had never been able to afford before. After that, the Romulans could go to whatever hell they preferred. Kelg’s House would have more important things to think about.
Maybe even, someday, the seat of Empire itself—
“The damned Romulans will have their hands full with the Federation, anyway. They are concentrating most of their forces on that side of the Zone.”

“Not all of them—”

“All the ones that would cause us trouble! And the Federation is taking the bait, moving their own ships into that sector as well. Now at last comes our chance to take back much of what was left in the Federation’s hands when the curst Organians interfered. The Federation has left their flank too unguarded. Only a little while more of ship movements like this, in which they seek to overawe their enemy and keep him from fighting, and they will have unbalanced themselves enough so that the enemy which
does
want to fight will be able to move in and start a real war, not this pitiful little border skirmish!” He spat on the floor again and turned away; seen only as a shadow, a slave crept in to mop up the spittle.

Somewhere distant in the great house, voices were lifted in song. Cups could be heard clanking, at that feast to which Kelg had not been invited.
But that will change. Soon the feasts of triumph will begin, and I shall be foremost at them all—and Kurvad’s skull will be bound in steel and used as a spittoon.
“What else have you to report, then?” said K’hemren.

“Nothing else,” said Kelg. “When must we return?”

“I don’t know,” said K’hemren. “I must first speak with the chancellor. Go back to your fleets and get them ready for battle. I will contact you when he has orders for you.”

“Will it be war?”

“I think that will probably be unavoidable,” said K’hemren, with a smile.

Kelg and Kurvad did the only thing they could conceivably have done together: they leapt up from their chairs and shouted for victory. K’hemren stayed seated, stroking the
bat’leth
’s pattern-welded steel. “Yes,” he said, “you will have your chance at both the Romulans and the Federation, I make no doubt. But beware lest some unhappy fate throws you in the path of Kirk and that bitch-traitress of his.”

“It would be no unhappy fate for me,” said Kelg. “My brother served with Kang, and came to grief at Kirk’s hands.” The images of what revenge he might take if the man ever crossed his path had long been the delight of his idle moments. Now, there was at least a chance that they might come true.

“And my cousin,” said Kurvad, “when he served with Koloth: the same.”

K’hemren said nothing. “Go back to your ships,” he said, “and wait.”

Kelg glared at K’hemren for just a second or so, for he had not declared their errand complete: they could not try to kill each other, as they had been longing to do.
But there’ll be another day,
Kelg thought.
Is not war full of unfortunate accidents?
He headed out of the room with only a single angry glance at Kurvad.

Behind him, as the door shut, he caught a last glimpse of K’hemren, not hurrying out to his interrupted feast, but sitting quietly in the chair, in the dimness, stroking the
bat’leth,
thinking.

That evening there were a lot of people in the rec deck. There was no special event arranged—nothing but the usual scatter of games, conversation, occasional music or song, and people moving around and eating and drinking casually. Still, Jim could, after long experience, feel the tension in the air—the sense of there having been a very close call—and could also feel it discharging itself. But this was what rec was for, at its best; this was one of the reasons why the recreation department was classified as part of medicine, and reported directly to McCoy. McCoy was in fact here as well, as much for his own discharge of tension as to keep an eye on everyone else—though which reason was more important to him, Jim thought he knew.

There were, as Jim had intended, a fair number of Rihannsu in attendance—though for Starfleet’s peace of mind, and indeed Jim’s, they were all in here, and not wandering around his ship without supervision. The food processors were proving extremely popular, and when Jim came down from the balcony where he had been keeping an eye on things to greet Ael shortly after she entered, he found her standing with a disappointed look next to one of them. To K’s’t’lk, beside her, Ael was saying, “It is rather unfortunate. I have something of a savory tooth, and
kheia
is very choice…and something we could not normally afford to have on
Bloodwing,
I can tell you that.”

“Problems?” Jim said.

“My crew, the greedy
hlai,
have eaten all the
kheia,
” Ael said. She glanced over at Aidoann, who was standing nearby with a pair of tongs and a plate that was very nearly empty. “Is this
mnhei’sahe,
then? To starve your commander?”

Aidoann shot Jim an amused look, and then held out her plate, and her tongs, handles first, to Ael. “We exist to serve,” she said. Laughter came from the various other crew around her, Khiy and tr’Keirianh the master engineer, who were eating just as fast as they could and seemed in no rush to make gestures of self-sacrifice.