Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (89 page)

That had been a while ago, though. People did change and learn. Jim had heard of no further disasters with Fox’s name attached to them.
And Starfleet must think he’s the best we’ve got at the moment,
Jim thought. He hoped with unusual fervor that they were right.

He also wondered what one who understood the nuances better than anyone on the Federation side was making of it all…

“Captain,” Ael said, allowing herself to start to sound irritated, “you must not so misconstrue me. This is
not
a matter of whim, but one of personal honor, and as such cannot be deprioritized. Indeed, I had not thought your people went in much these days for instruments of torture, but I see I have yet much to learn.” She leaned forward in her command chair and gave Captain Gutierrez, on the viewscreen, a fierce look. Behind her was a soft rustling of uniforms and creaking of chairs as a shift change took place—Aidoann and the day crew coming on—but it was happening much more quietly than usual. Ael’s people were listening with an intensity that suggested they were very interested, or very amused, or both.

“Commander,”
said Captain Gutierrez, moving uncomfortably in his own center seat,
“please, it’s just a figure of speech. I simply mean that we cannot turn up in the neighborhood of
Mascrar
without security precautions first being in place.”

“There are six Federation starships there, two of them most outrageously overweaponed, if I understand even the public specs for
Sempach
and
Speedwell,
” Ael said, “not to mention
Mascrar,
which is closer in strength to a planetary-level defense installation. How much more security could you need?”

She shook her head at him as he started to speak. “Captain, my people have been foully maligned!” Ael said. “It is an act of dishonor for me to sit here and keep mum, as if fear or shame motivated me!
Mnhei’sahe
requires that I return with all due speed to defend my people’s reputations as reasoning, thinking beings. Not to mention the reputation of
Bloodwing,
a vessel worthy of a better assessment than ‘antiquated’!” She let the scorn show a little.

“Oh, come on, Commander. We have a saying: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’”

She shook her head in mock wonder. “Such violence in idiom surprises me from the representative of a purportedly peaceful people.”

“Commander, it’s a
children’s
saying. It means—”

“Elements protect me from your children, then!”

Aidoann, behind her, cleared her throat softly. Ael glanced at her and shook her head. It was a planned interruption, but it was not needed at the moment.

Gutierrez looked put out.
“It means that just because they call your ship names, that’s no reason to overreact—”

“Indeed? I seem to remember that Captain Kiurrk’s crew once nearly precipitated a diplomatic incident because some Klingon called the
Enterprise
a ‘garbage scow.’”

“That was different,”
Gutierrez said.
“If the captain—”

“Sir,” Ael said. “The insult that has been leveled at my crew is not one I can let slide. I swore to be their good lady and to lead them faithfully and well. Their long loyalty to me requires I take action to defend them. Even your culture, surely, supports the right to directly confront one’s accusers when accusations so unbearable are made! Now, Captain, you must call the commodore, or whoever else you feel you must consult about this matter, and see to it that whatever ‘security measures’ are required are put swiftly in place—for I will
not
linger here another two days while that slander on my crew lies smarting in my mind, and those who committed it sit about congratulating themselves. One standard day I give you. Then I will make my way back to the location of the talks…with you or without you. And we shall see what happens then.”

Gutierrez swallowed again. Ael thought with secret amusement that she could almost hear him swallow, the only sound on her bridge except for the soft purr of the life-support systems and the occasional
beep
or
tck
of a touched control or closing circuit.

“Commander,”
Gutierrez said,
“you know I can’t permit that.”

The temptation to say
And how will you stop me?
was strong, but would have been unwise. It would have made him start thinking too actively about ways to do so. “Perhaps you cannot,” Ael said, “but a good way to see that it does not become an issue is to speak to the commodore immediately. We will talk again when you have done so.”

She glanced over at tr’Hrienteh and flicked the finger of one hand up the other wrist. Tr’Hrienteh killed the connection. “Answer no hails from
Ortisei
for the next four hours or so,” Ael said, “and raise the shields. I will speak no more to Captain Gutierrez until he has better news for me.”

Aidoann swung down from the engineering station, where she had been running some engine checks.
“Khre’Riov,”
she said, “you can’t think that any of us take Hloal’s mouth-wind at all seriously.”

“
Au,
not at all,” Ael said. “But Captain Gutierrez does not know that. Nor do I mean him to.” Nonetheless she sat back in her hard command seat and smiled. “All the same, I find our good fortune hard to believe. Their arrogance has made them foolish, Aidoann. We lie here sinking in deep water, and they throw us a line, giving us an excuse to be right where we want to be.”

“Always assuming,
khre’Riov,
that it was not their intent to play us so.”

Ael cocked an eye up at Aidoann. “This cautious tone becomes you, cousin; you are growing into the habits of command. But the thought occurred to me some while ago.” She leaned back, crossing her legs and making herself as comfortable as she could in that hard seat. “Yet I do not credit it. They are too far from remembering how true honor motivates action to use it effectively as a trap. When we do appear, and what must happen, happens, it will have been their own foolishness that brings it down on their heads. Meanwhile, we must prepare ourselves. We may have to move more quickly than in just one standard day. I must see tr’Keirianh immediately.” She got up. “Call the engine room and tell him I am on my way. I want to see those new propulsion models, for my heart tells me that in some hours, we will need them.”

In the neighborhood of RV Trianguli, aboard
Sempach,
the scheduled briefing between the negotiating team and the top-level officers of the starships on site had been going on for half an hour or so. Ambassador Fox had finished delivering the précis of the negotiations that had led to the morning’s “public” session, and a shorter one of the afternoon’s work. Now he pushed the padd away and sat back in his chair at the briefing-room table, as the stars slid slowly past the window and the great bulk of
Mascrar
began to slip into view.

“It’s actually going relatively well,” he said, “despite the apparent ultimatum we were offered. It’s standard enough tactics in talks like this to go ‘hard’ after the opposing party gives you a ‘soft’ response to the initial proposals—or what are supposed to be the initial ones. You’ll all have noticed that the initial Romulan official proposal was a lot milder than expected on the issues that really concern us, though more robust in other areas. The Neutral Zone, specifically.”

From where he sat between Spock and McCoy, Jim looked up as sunlight reflected from
Mascrar
began to flood into the room. “It’s the ‘softness,’” Jim said to Fox, “that is concerning me at the moment. I would have liked to see the incident at 15 Trianguli discussed in rather greater detail.”

Danilov looked over at Fox, then at Jim. “That,” he said, “is a matter which Starfleet Command has decided not to press any further, with a view to advancing other discussions considered more pertinent at the moment.”

Spock glanced in Jim’s direction. Jim folded his arms so that he wouldn’t start drumming his fingers on the table. “Commodore,” Jim said, “with all due respect, this does
not
strike me as a way for Starfleet to improve or augment the respect with which its ships are treated when they travel into debatable space.”

“Captain,” said Danilov, “I know what you’re thinking. You were the one stuck in a tough place and getting shot at. But you got out of it with your skin intact, as you usually do—and now we have other fish to fry.”

Oh no,
Jim thought. He had always been warned of what happened when a ship started to become legendary for something. Soon it started to be taken for granted that the ship would always do what it had managed, sometimes by the skin of its teeth, to do until then.

“Commodore, I’m sorry, but I have to emphasize this,” Jim said. “What if some other ship, not
Enterprise
with her admittedly laudable record for getting out of trouble, had happened into the situation we found waiting for us at 15 Tri? And had not come out of it? It would unquestionably have been a
casus belli.
But because we escaped, through good luck and bloody-mindedness, the subject is just going to be allowed to fall by the wayside?”

Danilov looked at Jim and said nothing. “They are going to draw certain inevitable conclusions from this,” Jim said. “And the wrong ones. That we are so afraid of going to war that we will make considerable concessions to avoid it. Giving Romulans this idea is a major error. The location of the encounter is no accident, but the encounter itself is a message written in letters half a light-year high. They were not merely testing our preparedness in that part of space, but seeing whether we would call them on it. We didn’t. We’ve apparently bent over backwards to let them weasel out of it! And now they have the answer they want. They’ve seen that they can commit a major breach of the treaty, an attack on a ship nominally under Federation protection, fairly deep in our space, and get away with it.”

“Permission to speak freely,” Danilov said softly, “granted.”

Jim fell silent.

“Captain,” Danilov said, “you’re overstating the case. Fifty planets are not the same as one ship. Those worlds are populated by Federation citizens—”

“Was
Bloodwing
granted free passage through Federation space, or not?” Jim said. “Were her people given asylum here, or not?”

Around the table, some of the most senior officers looked at one another uncomfortably. Jim knew why, for the legal position was still being “clarified” at the Federation High Council level, and no one wanted to commit themselves without having at least a clue of which way the Council would jump.
Politics!
Jim thought, and looked at Danilov. Danilov returned his gaze, his face not changing.

“The camel’s nose is in the tent, gentlemen,” Jim said. “And the rest of it is going to follow. I must protest the way the negotiations are going in the strongest possible terms.”

He looked at Fox.

“It seems we’re fated to be on the wrong side of these arguments, Captain,” Fox said. “My instructions from the Federation Council are very clear, and they give me little latitude for improvisation in some regards, no matter what my personal feelings on the subject might be.”

There it was, as clear as his position would let him say it:
I don’t approve either, but I have my job to do.
Jim breathed out.

“Ambassador,” said Captain Helgasdottir, “allow me to say a word here.”

All heads turned to her. Birga Helgasdottir pursed her lips and folded her hands together.

“I agree with Captain Kirk,” she said. “If this matter of the incursion at 15 Trianguli is not pressed with the Romulans now, and vigorously, we are all going to suffer for it later.”

Danilov gave Captain Helgasdottir a look not quite as annoyed as the one he had given Jim. “I’m sorry to find opinion so divided,” he said, “when for the time being, the execution of policy must continue to go the way it’s presently going. We must wait the forty or so hours left us, let this move of the game play itself out, and see how the Romulans react. There have been some early indications of a softening in their position; we’ll see what further ones turn up tomorrow, after subspace messages have had time to make their way home to the Empire and back here again. But the whole situation is riding on a knife-edge at the moment, and if any evidence of divisions among us reaches the other side, it could wreck everything. I expect you all”—he glanced around the table—“to conduct yourselves accordingly.”

Helgasdottir was wearing a tight look that suggested clearly enough to Jim how little she liked this, but she nodded. The other starship captains—the tall blond Centauri, Finn Winter of
Lake Champlain,
and the slender dark-maned Caitian, Hressth ssha-Aurrffesh of
Hemalat
—nodded too. They kept their faces neutral, but Jim got the strong feeling that neither of them felt any happier about this than he and Helgasdottir did.
They know,
Jim thought,
it could be
them
all alone out in the dark the next time…

The meeting went on for a little while more, mostly dealing with administrative business and the movement of various supplies and resources among the gathered ships; it was unusual enough for so many Starfleet vessels to meet away from a starbase or between scheduled resupply or careening stops. Finally, Danilov stood up and said, “That’s all for now, ladies and gentlemen. Dismissed.” As the group rose with him, he glanced at Jim. “Captain Kirk, would you stay a moment?”