Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages Read Free Page A

command on Cuirass .
    Ael was quite satisfied. There was only one more thing she lacked, one element missing. She had spent a good deal of money during that last trip to ch’Rihan, attempting to encourage its presence. Now she had merely to wait, and keep good hope, until time or Federation policy produced it. And once it did…
    The screen chimed quietly. “Ta’rhae,” she said, turning toward it from the port.
    Tr’Khaell appeared on the screen again, his sweat still in evidence. “Khre’Riov, na’hwi, reh eliu arredhau’ven—”
    Four and a half minutes, Ael thought, amused. T’Liun’s reading speed is improving. Or tr’Khaell’s shouting is. “Hnafiv ’rau, Erein.”
    The man had no control of his face at all; the flicker of his eyes told Ael that there was something worth hearing in this message indeed, something he had been hoping she would order him to read aloud. “Hilain na nfaaistur ll’ efwrohin galae—”
    “Ie, ie,” Ael said, sitting down at her desk again, and waving a hand at him to go on. News of the rather belated arrival in this quadrant of her fleet, such as it was, interested her hardly at all. Wretched used Klingon ships that they are, they should only have been eaten by a black hole on the way in. “Hre va?”
    “Lai hra’galae na hilain, khre’Riov. Mrei kha rhaaukhir Lloannen’galae…te ssiun bhveinu hir’ Enterprise khina.”
    Ael carefully did not stir in her chair and kept most strict guard over her face…slowly permitting one eyebrow to go up, no more. “Rhe’ve,” she said, nodding casually and calmly as if this news was something she might have expected—as if her whole mind was not one great blaze of angry, frightened delight. So soon! So soon! “Rhe’. Khru va, Erein?”
    “Au’e, khre’Riov. Irh’ hvannen nio essaea Lloann’mrahel virrir—”
    She waved the hand at tr’Khaell again; the details and the names of the other ships in the new Federation patrol group could wait for her in the computer until her “morning” shift. “Lhiu hrao na awaenndraevha, Erein. Ta’khoi.” And the screen went out.
    Then, only then, did Ael allow herself to rock back in the chair, and take a good long breath, and let it out again…and smile once more, a small tight smile that would have disquieted anyone who saw it. So soon, she thought. But I’m glad…. O my enemy, see how well the Elements have dealt with both of us. For here at last may be an opportunity for us to settle an old, old score….
    Ael sat up straight and pulled the keypad of her terminal toward her. She got rid of Tafv’s letter, then said the several passwords that separated her small cabin computer from the ship’s large one for independent work, and started calling up various private files—maps of this quadrant, and neighboring ones. “Ie rha,” she said as she set to work—speaking aloud in sheer angry relish, and (for the moment) with utter disregard to what t’Liun might hear. “Rha’siu hlun vr’Enterprise, irrhaimehn rha’sien Kirk….”

Chapter Two
    C APTAIN ’ S PERSONAL LOG , Stardate 7504.6:
    “Nothing to report but still more hydrogen ion-flux measurements in the phi Trianguli corridor. Entirely too many ion-flux measurements, according to Mr. Chekov, who has declared to the bridge at large that his mother didn’t raise him to compile weather reports. (Must remember to ask him why not, since meteorology has to have been invented in Russia, like everything else.)
    “Mr. Spock is ‘fascinated’ (so what else is new?) by the gradual increase in the number and severity of ion storms in this part of the galaxy. He will lecture comprehensively and at a moment’s notice on the importance of our findings as they relate to the problem—the implications of a shift in the stellar wind for the sector’s interstellar ‘ecology,’ the potentially disastrous effects of such a shift on interplanetary shipping and on the economies of worlds situated along the shipping lanes,