Star Trek: The Empty Chair Read Free

bridge, appeared.
“Captain, I would like to make known to you Courhig tr’Mahan stai-Norrik, who leads the local defense fleet. I believe his title, if the locals were much for titles, would translate as ‘commodore,’ if by that you mean the most senior-ranked of a nonmilitary captain-group.”
    The image on the screen divided. Standing on a bridge that was, if anything, even more cramped-looking than Ael’s, was a short, round Romulan with close-cropped bristly gray hair, wearing what looked more like a businessman’s dark one-piece suit than any kind of uniform. His round face, wrinkled like that of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors, made Jim think of a bulldog—one that wasn’t angry yet, but was looking forward to becoming so.
“Captain,”
hesaid,
“whatever relations between the Federation and the Empire have been until now, please believe me when I say that you are very welcome here.”
    “Sir, I thank you,” Jim said, “but one thing I’d very much like to clear up is exactly where the local government stands on what is about to happen here.”
    Tr’Mahan smiled slightly.
“Captain, both from the Imperial point of view and from that of my cohabitants here, I am the local government. As much of it as the Imperium routinely paid any attention to, at least. ‘Planetary governor’ would probably be a good rendering. I am native to Artaleirh, involved in politics here for a long while before I was chosen by the Imperium, they thought, as a good candidate to get the taxes in and keep the locals in line. But I do not have that much power anymore—not after the way we have been treated over the last decade. So I have taken this opportunity to change jobs.”
    There was a wicked look in his eye, but his expression also looked a little tentative, as if he were wondering how Jim would take this. “The job security,” Jim said, “might not be much like that of your earlier position.”
    “True,”
tr’Mahan said.
“But it seems increasingly preferable. We have had many years during which the rulership of the Imperium over our system has become increasingly irksome—our resources depleted and wasted on military adventurism, our rights curtailed. For perhaps the last decade and a half, as you reckon time, the great families here and other political activists have been investigating other options. Finally, having made ourselves sure of how many other worlds around the Imperium share our way of thinking, we chose this time to move. We informed the Imperium ten days ago that we would no longer deal with them except as an independent entity. The dispatch of a cruiser task force to enforce our ‘loyalty’ and collect hostages was the result. They have given us no choice: we must fight.”
    “With what?” Jim said.
    “We have five small vessels, which I believe you would rank as ‘light cruisers,’”
tr’Mahan said.
“I speak to you from one of them,
Sithesh.
These vessels have been…attached? commandeered?…from the first Imperial forces to visit us in an attempt to enforce their demands.”
    “Not, I would take it, with their cooperation,” Spock said.
    “Indeed not, sir. We were fortunately able to keep the Grand Fleet from discovering what had happened to the captured ships for some days, but no more—this being part of the reason those nine much more heavily armed ships are now on their way here.”
    “I take it you’ve re-ID’d all the captured vessels by now.”
    “We have, Captain. We will be passing that data on to your communications officer when I finish here. Now, the light cruisers are by themselves too few to engage the biggest of the incoming ships effectively. However, we also have nearly three hundred smaller vessels, formerly in civilian service, now all fitted with phasers or single-shot photon torpedoes. Singly and scattered, they would not be worth much in a major engagement, but as a whole coordinated microfleet, they will be of value.”
    “If not deployed too