Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Empty Chair

  “This is the Free Rihannsu world of Artaleirh …

  “We are the tool of no empire anymore, and the toy of no Senate. We are our own world under our own sky, and we now take that sky back to ourselves, in arms with those who know what freedom is worth, and who will help us be slaves no more. Live or die, we have nothing more to say to you, tools in the hands of tyrants!”

  The announcement from the Grand Fleet ships persisted only a few moments longer, then simply broke off, in mid-playback, as if whoever had been playing the recording simply could not believe the response. Behind Ael, Aidoann listened to the silence that followed, and let go a soft hiss of anguish. “Khre’Riov,” she said. “If this doesn’t work, all those cities, all those many people—”

  Ael sat silent and watched the curves of the starships’ courses become more acute as they neared the planet.

  “Khre’Riov, can we not stop it? Let us stop it!” Aidoann whispered. “If we move quickly enough, we could seed the star—or have tr’Mahan give the order.”

  Ael shook her head. “I will not,” she said, her voice terribly steady, far more so than her heart. “You heard Courhig. You heard our kinswoman down there. The Art3eleirhin have made their preparations. They know how this battle must unfold, for their freedom’s sake. Their choice is made. Now we must honor their intention, or condemn them to the loss of their own honor, forever.”

  “But Ael—!”

  She would not answer.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. www.SimonandSchuster.com

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  Dedication

  In memory of DeForest Kelley … now immortal in the realm of archetype, remembering that long-ago sore throat

  of James Doohan … revealed during an Everglades boat ride as a possible relative

  and of Mark Lenard … first of all the Romulans, recalling a long train journey down to London and a masterful analysis of the politics of rebellion

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A work that stretches over such a long period of time always carries in its train a great number of people who need to be thanked for their help. Some of them would be:

  The noble and excellent Dorothy (D.C.) Fontana, without whom there would be no Romulans.

  The staff of the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia, who helped me sort out where (at that point) it seemed most likely that the Romulan Star Empire might lie.

  My former housemates at “SMOF Central” (or as it was called by some, “The House of Dangerously Single Women”) in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania: Sara (then) Paul, Wilma (then) Fisher, and Teresa (then) Renner, all of whom watched the first installment of this series being written, and didn’t pull me away from the work to make me shovel the driveway more often than absolutely necessary.

  My long-suffering agent, Don Maass, who—knowing that his client has a long-term and incorrigible soft spot for this particular patch of the genre—simply rolls his eyes in a genteel and forgiving kind of way every time he hears me say the words “Star Trek.”

  All my Star Trek novel editors, all of them endlessly patient with me—from Dave Stern and Kevin Ryan, on through John Ordover, right on down to Marco Palmieri and Keith DeCandido, not forgetting, of course, the memorable Mimi Panitch, the original inspiration for Ael.

  And last but never, ever least, Peter, who “hot-bunked” the work on The Romulan Way with me on what was supposed to be our honeymoon—a whole book written “chapter about” in a shade more than two weeks—and thereby proved in his own person the truth of the Rihannsu saying that the Ruling Passion is truly and gloriously unreasonable.

  Thank you all!

  Wage a clean war.

  —Balthasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

  Was none who would be foremost

  To lead such dire attack;

  But those behind cried, “Forward!”

  And those before cried, “Back!”

  And backward now and forward

  Wavers the deep array;

  And on the tossing sea of steel

  To and fro the standards reel;

  And the victorious trumpet-peal

  Dies fitfully away.

  —Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome, L

  The Elements lead those who will … And those who won’t, They drag.

  —tr’Hmaellieh, Contemplations

  ONE

  WHEN ENTERPRISE AND BLOODWING dropped out of warp together in the Artaleirh system, the tension on Enterprise’s bridge was considerable. The ship was on red alert for safety’s sake, though Jim had told Uhura to kill the siren, which was no longer doing any good as regarding alertness, but only getting on people’s nerves. Spock was bent over his scanner, intent, and as the warp drive’s hum faded down into silence, Jim said, “Report.”

  “Long range scan shows no other vessels incoming at this time,” Spock said.

  McCoy, standing behind the center seat, gave Jim a thoughtful look. “‘What if they gave a war and nobody came?’”

  “Fat chance,” Jim said. “We’re just early. Now we have to see what use we can make of whatever extra time we have.”

  He looked at the schematic of the system that the front viewscreen was now displaying, courtesy of Spock. Artaleirh was a big star, an F0 “demigiant,” with a big solar system: twelve planets, mostly sunbroiled rocks or gas giants of various sizes and types, along with the asteroid belt that was the system’s main source of wealth, in the third orbit out from the sun. The planet in the fourth orbit, also called Artaleirh, hung small and bright and faintly green in the distance—just visible from here, maybe a hundred million miles out, as a small, very bright disc with the same kind of morning-star albedo that Earth showed from about the same distance.

  “I’m receiving a hail from Artaleirhin system control,” Uhura said. “They know who we are, but all the same they’re welcoming us to ‘Free Rihannsu’ space….”

  Uh-oh, Jim thought. The first salute. He remembered how much trouble the poor Dutch governor had gotten into, six centuries or so ago, when first the flag of a country three weeks old had been dipped to his fort in San Juan harbor—and how dipping his fort’s flag back, thus officially recognizing the salute as that of another independent nation, had plunged the Netherlands into a diplomatic broil that led, however eventually, to war. Well, this is the reverse of that situation, Jim thought. But they will know what an answer, or the lack of one, means.

  Then again, if we haven’t caused a diplomatic incident yet, probably this is the time. Th
is was one of the things the Federation had been waiting for: to give the enemy of an enemy a chance to prove that it was a friend. “Thank them, Commander,” Jim said, “and tell them I hope to have time to talk to them more about their new name for themselves and their space later on.” Asking questions like, And how are you planning to defend yourselves after this initial engagement is over? For one battle was no war; if the Romulans really wanted to take this system back, they had the resources to do it.

  “Bloodwing is hailing us, Captain,” Uhura said.

  “Put her on.”

  The screen shimmered into a view of Bloodwing’s little bridge. Ael was standing there; behind her, Jim caught a glimpse of something on her command chair that surprised him. He shot a glance at Spock, then said, “The locals seem surprisingly friendly, Commander.”

  “They have reason to be, Captain. They see you as part of their salvation—though it comes in an unexpected shape.”

  “And how do they see you?”

  Ael’s look was fairly wry. “Oh, some of the epithets being bandied about right now are embarrassing enough. Not to mention premature. For my own part, I refuse to be hailed as ‘savior’ of anything until it has actually been saved. Especially since I am, at best, a convenient excuse. Meanwhile, we have other business. Maintaining so high a speed on the way here has given us some slight advantage that we must now quickly determine how to use, for those nine Imperial ships are incoming.”

  This was an update which Jim had very much been wanting. “When?”

  “The Artaleirhin local-space command and control center estimates four hours until the cruisers arrive. This is not based on any direct sensing yet; the range is still too great. But messages have been passed on via subspace communications from other star systems friendly to Artaleirh, indicating that the subfleet has passed their way at speed.”

  “I would have thought those ships would be coming in cloaked,” McCoy said.

  “Indeed they will be, Doctor, but as you know, there are ways to defeat cloaking protocols,” Ael said. “At least enough to read some insufficiently shielded signal through them. Such defeat measures are wasteful of energy and betray one’s own position. But when the facility is planet-based, why not? For not even we know how to hide a whole planet—not yet.”

  “A cloak’s main strategic usefulness is out in open space, Bones,” Jim said. “Where your opponent either can’t spare the energy to defeat your cloak, if he knows how, or grudges the energy because it’s needed more for propulsion or weapons. Ael, we need to confer right away with the Artaleirhin; I need to know more about the strategic possibilities of this system so that we can decide where to make our stand.”

  “Captain, I will arrange it,” Ael said. “I will call you again in twenty minutes.” The screen flicked back to the view of the Artaleirhin primary as Enterprise coasted in past it, toward the colony planet.

  Jim gazed at the screen. “Spock, I want you to do an in-depth survey of the system. Let’s see what our best tactical options are, depending on which way the attacking force comes in. Engineering.”

  “Scott here. Captain, I hope you’re not expectin’ us to go anywhere sudden after that run! We’ve got to swap a new dilithium crystal into the warp engine array; the old one’s developed a stress fracture due to all that time at high warp, and it’s no longer dependable.”

  Jim frowned. “How long’s that going to take you, Scotty? Looks like there’s about to be a battle here in four hours.”

  Scotty made one of those sucking-in-your-breath sounds that Jim knew all too well meant there was trouble that not even Scotty could finesse his way out of. “It’s only an hour or so to do the actual swap, Captain. But then there’s the matter of testing and calibrating the new crystal. No two are ever really alike, no matter what the cutters say, and tryin’ to use standard calibrations for a new crystal is a sure way to damage other parts of the engine, or even to blow the crystal itself if it’s stressed too much before it’s run in. Which it would be in battle, no way around it.”

  “How long is the test cycle going to take you, Scotty?”

  “I’d hate to spend less than three hours on it, sir.”

  “You may have to, if things heat up.”

  “Then I’d best get started now.”

  “Scotty, one thing first! Sunseed—”

  “Aye,” Scotty said, “we were considering the option of seeding this star if worse came to worst. And it’s a good candidate for induction. But Captain, there’s a question as well of what other friendly forces will be in the area—or may turn up suddenly and get blown to bits for their pains because they didn’t have the right screen tunings beforehand. And there’s the question of the planet’s atmosphere: will it be able to stop the worst of what’s going to come out of the star if we do seed it? K’s’t’lk’s working on the atmospheric propagation predictions, and on the shield-tuning algorithms; she’ll be passing them to Mr. Spock shortly, for dissemination as you see fit. But the tuning algorithms’ll need fine-tuning when the process actually starts, and we may be a wee bit busy then.”

  Jim sighed. “We’ll have to see how it goes. Do what you can, Scotty.”

  He turned to Spock, who had come down from his station to stand by the center seat, gazing at the tactical view of the system that he had restored to the viewscreen. Jim glanced at the asteroid belt and said, “Mr. Spock, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes, Captain, and without the benefit of extraneous instrumentalities.” Jim threw Spock a look at what sounded like a joke, but his first officer didn’t glance away from the screen. “In any case, the venue is certainly suited to the classic planetary defense strategies of Orondley and Indawal as developed for Starfleet during the so-called ‘early colonization engagements’ of the late 2100s, and implemented at the battle of Donatu V, among others. And the Artaleirhin have the advantage in that they have forced the Empire to respond from a considerable distance, so that any move they make, even cloaked, is quickly telegraphed, and any major commitment of forces would leave the Empire stretched thin in other areas.”

  “So you’re saying the situation looks favorable?”

  “There are the usual imponderables associated with a large engagement, Captain,” Spock said. “Much can go wrong, or right, in a surprisingly short time, and the skill, or lack of it, of the commanders is also an issue. But there are also factors with which I think the Imperium may not have reckoned.” He glanced back at the monitor over his science station. “That asteroid belt, even to a cursory scan, betrays multiple energy sources that do not match well with a mining operation, even a large and well-established one; there are too many of those sources, too widely distributed. While the attack seems to have been hastily contrived, I would suspect the defense has been some time in preparation.”

  “Yes,” Jim said. “Well, all right, continue your analysis and see if you can get a sense of exactly what’s going on out there in the belt besides what’s being openly advertised. Meanwhile, in fifteen minutes, you and I should meet in my quarters for that transmission from Ael.” Jim got up, glanced over at Uhura. “All stations to remain at yellow alert, Commander. I don’t want to wear anybody down, but the idea that there might be some gate-crashers at this party has been giving me indigestion.”

  He headed out.

  Many light-years away, in the neighborhood of Eisn, a conference was taking place in a small, bare, snoop-proofed room overlooking the Senate dome. Three men stood there—or rather two of them looked out the window, and behind them, one paced, restless, furious, waiting for the single small telltale light in the wall to turn blue.

  Finally it did. “Did it get away safely?” were the first words out of Urellh’s mouth.

  “As far as we can tell.”

  “What do you mean ‘as far as we can tell’? Who do we have to ask to find out for sure?”

  “Urellh,” said Armh’n, “our people in the field dare not query the device at the moment. It is still too clo
se to where numerous Federation forces are operating. If they get even a hint of its presence at the moment, they might well be able to hunt it down. Let it proceed quietly for a few days at least, until its signal will be so swamped in larger amounts of code traffic and other routine signaling that no one will notice it. Then we can find out what we need to know. A few more days makes no odds.”

  “I want to know,” the Praetor muttered. But for the moment he seemed to decide to let the subject rest. “What about Artaleirh?”

  “The Fleet will be there in a matter of hours,” tr’Anierh said.

  “They are to chastise the planet immediately, and then turn their attention to finding that woman,” Urellh said. “She must be destroyed without delay. Word of what happened to end the negotiations will certainly leak out—damn those treacherous neirrh who stole Farmer Gurri out of Gorget’s very infirmary! But we can at least slow it down.”

  “Once the Fleet handles Artaleirh—”

  “Assuming they can,” Urellh snarled. “The under-commanders are so divided among themselves at the moment, the Fleet Master Admiral tells me, that they can hardly even fly in the same direction. This blasted infection is spreading, and I don’t doubt some of it has been spread by you two.” He glared at tr’Anierh.

  “This seed’s of your sowing, Urellh,” tr’Anierh said, more mildly than he needed to. “A couple of years ago you were all for ‘strengthening personal ties with the Fleet,’ as you called it. Of course what you meant was, ‘wresting its individual commanders’ loyalties to oneself so as to render the Grand Fleet Admirals largely powerless in any crisis.’ And as you did so, then so did we all; for what one of the Three does, we all do, in self-defense if not out of policy. Why should it be any news to you now that the commanders are now studying to dance to their masters’ harps—that is to say, ours? And why has this outcome surprised you?”

  “If we were unified in our opinions,” Urellh said softly, “it would not matter.”