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

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without
having engaged us, at peril of their lives. All we require now is patience, of which we have plenty, and they have little.”
    And luck,
Jim wanted to say, but once again he restrained himself.
    “Captain,” Sulu said, “the Grand Fleet ships are rearranging battle order. The two that were attacking the planet have come ’round the far side now.”
    “Joining up with the supercruisers?” Jim said.
    Sulu shook his head. “Coming our way, to feel us out, I’d say. The corvettes are hanging close to the supercruisers. It’s another split of forces.”
    “Thank the Elements!”
Ael said from
Bloodwing. “Can it be they’re not even aware what they’re doing?”
    “In normal circumstances, I’d wonder what they’re teaching people in the Strat/Tac classes at Grand Fleet,” Jim said. “Maybe they’re nervous about what happened to the ships they sent in and haven’t heard from again. I guess I might be, in their place. But meantime, whichever Element makes people throw away good sense or good battle order when they’re angry, let’s definitely thank
that
one. Mr. Sulu, this is what you were waiting for.”
    “Aye, Captain,” Sulu said; and in his voice Jim heard something he had heard only very rarely before—an edge of anger, and of relish in the anger, that would have been out of place anywhere but here. Sulu was a kind man, normally, but he had seen things today that, from the sound of it, had at least for the moment wrung some of the kindness out of him. “Khiy?”
    “Tr’Mahan signals that the smallships are ready to take the field,”
Khiy’s voice came from
Bloodwing. “Are you?”
    “Going now,” Sulu said. “Turn them loose.”
    In the background, from Uhura’s station, Jim could hear a faint chatter of messages, all speaking one or another dialect of Rihannsu—the traffic between the little Artaleirhin ships as they moved into position. “Uhura,” he said, “is all that in the clear?”
    “Yes, Captain.”
    “Is that wise?”
    She looked over her shoulder and smiled very slightly. “Captain,” she said, “have you ever been to Glasgow?”
    “Uh, once.” It had been one of those long-weekend holidays; Scotty had taken him. To Jim’s embarrassment, he could remember very little of the weekend.
    “Did you understand the locals?”
    “Now that you mention it…” That was one of the things Jim
had
been able to remember about the weekend: that Glaswegians, after a few pints, sounded unnervingly like Klingons. He had found it difficult to believe that he and they were all speaking the same language, and their tendency to greet every sentient being in the street with the phrase “Hey,
Jimmy!”
had already given him a crick in the neck by the end of the weekend’s first night.
    Uhura grinned. “Captain, children at school in the Rihannsu outworlds all learn the ‘made speech,’ the original recension of Rihannsu, as a
lingua franca,
but their local and planetary dialects vary from it hugely, not just in idiom but in etymology. Not to mention vowel shifts and other complications unique to a constructed language turned out ‘into the wild,’ where the ‘wild’ is light-years wide rather than just thousands or tens of thousands of miles. If any of the Grand Fleet people
not
from this system can make out more than one syllable in ten of what these people are saying, you buy me a hat and I’ll eat it.”
    “Let’s worry about the hat later,” Jim said. “How many of the Grand Fleet personnel
are
likely to be from this system?”
    “Captain,”
Ael said,
“not nearly enough, or we might not now be in this position. The Hearthworlds always have the advantage in placement and promotion in Fleet. To get past the barriers set in their way, commanders must be most extraordinary—and all too many of those are winnowed out early.”
Now it was she who sounded bitter.
“No one at command level in these ships comes from Artaleirh. No ships with such command would be