Star Trek: The Empty Chair by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online

rubbed his forehead, hit the comm button on his chair. “Scotty.”
    “Aye, sir.”
    “If we
had
to break away for the star—”
    “We can’t do it, Captain,”
Scotty said.
“Not without warp, and I haven’t got that for you. Another two hours. If anyone’s going to do it, it’s got to be
Bloodwing,
or one of the other lads out there.”
    Jim was watching the little tagged light in the display that was
Bloodwing.
She was not moving in the slightest; she stood to her position. “Uhura,” he said, “get me Ael.”
    Uhura touched her console, nodded at him.
    “I hear you,
Enterprise,” Ael said.
    “We can’t just let them sit there and take what’s coming,” Jim said.
    “We can and
will,” Ael said,
“as they have insisted is their right to do. I like this no better than you do, Captain, but we have had this out with Courhig, and neither he nor those people on Artaleirh will thank us for changing tactics now.”
    Jim sat up and pushed his back against the back of his chair. Finally he nodded. “I just want you to know…” he said, and trailed off.
    “I too detest this,”
Ael said,
“should you be in any doubt.”
    Spock was looking down his viewer. “The Imperial vessels are moving into low orbit over the planet. Analysis suggests the initiation of a series of attack runs.”
    “I grieve for their folly, Mr. Spock,”
Ael said.
“But for nothing else.”
    Jim sat there, feeling the sweat trickle down his back inside his uniform.
Those people down there have to know what’s going to happen now,
he thought.
They’re braver than any human population I know would be, under the circumstances.
The problem was that such bravery, in humans, was often closely coupled with fanaticism, and had in the past been associated with many terrible deeds. It was hard, now,to view such stoicism as strictly sane.
But these people aren’t human, just humanoid, and it does no one any service to project our ethos onto them.
    Now
Elieth
and
Moerrdel,
two of the cruisers, streaked in past LPO levels, and lower still, deep into the upper levels of the Artaleirhin atmosphere, and began to fire. Jim would have closed his eyes, except that doing so was the coward’s part.
The least I can do is watch their sacrifice.
    The first target was a large city down there on the side of the planet most visible to scan, a city by a big bay. Jim looked at it and thought, rather sickened, of how very much it resembled San Francisco. As the disruptors struck down from
Elieth,
he thought,
It’s my job to prevent this kind of thing, to protect civilians from being killed in this kind of fight. And I can’t do anything.
    A haze of smoky blue fire rose up from where the disruptors were striking. Jim could have wept—
    —until he realized that the disruptors were having no effect on what was
underneath
that blue fire. He stared at the screen as the disruptor fire briefly stopped, and the blue glow shrugged itself up and away from the city into a bump, a wobbling half bubble, an immaterial dome.
    Jim straightened in the center seat, then looked around at Spock. At his station, Spock was gazing down his scanner intently. “Force field,” he said. “Unusual waveform, hexicyclic. Quite robust.”
    The blue dome covered what had to be hundreds of square miles. A renewed hail of disruptor fire fell upon it from
Elieth,
and then from
Moerrdel
behind it, and a spread of dissociator torpedoes came down as well. Jim found himself holding his breath again, waiting for the blinding light and the kicked-up dust and smoke to disappear.
    “The fields are holding,” Spock said, still gazing down his viewer. “The Imperial vessels are scanning the planet, probably looking for the power sources of the fields. But I suspectthat search will be futile. The power sources are too well shielded—I cannot detect them either.”
    To Jim’s practiced ear, Spock’s voice betrayed a hint of what sounded like amusement. The obscuring dust and smoke was already