Diane Duane - Rihannsu Book Five: The Empty Chair

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 didnt pull me away from the work to make me shovel the driveway more often than absolutely necessary.

My long-suffering agent, Don Maass, whoknowing that his client has a long-term and incorrigible soft spot for this particular patch of the genresimply 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 mefrom 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 honeymoona whole book written chapter about in a shade more than two weeksand thereby proved in his own person the truth of the Rihannsu saying that the Ruling Passion is truly and gloriously unreasonable.

Thank you all!

Diane Duane has been making her living writing fantasy and science fiction for more than a quarter century, and has written for Star Trek in more media than anyone else alive. Born in Manhattan, a descendant of the first Mayor of New York City after the Revolutionary War, she initially trained and worked as a psychiatric nurse; then, after the publication of her first book in 1979, spent some years living and writing on both coasts of the United States before relocating to County Wicklow in Ireland, where she settled down with her husband, the Belfast-born novelist and screenwriter Peter Morwood. Her work includes more than forty novelsa number of which have spent time on the New York Times best-seller listand much television work, including story-editing stints on the DiC animated series Dinosaucers and the BBC educational series Science Challenge, a cowriter credit on the first-season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Where No One Has Gone Before, and (most recently) another on the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King, written in collaboration with her husband. When not writing, she conducts an active online life based around her weblog (http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit), her popular Young Wizards novel series (http://www.youngwizards.com), and her European recipe collection (http://www.europeancuisines.com), while also stargazing, cooking, attempting to keep the cats from eating all the herbs in the garden, and trying to figure out how to make more spare time.

When Enterprise and Bloodwing dropped out of warp together in the Artaleirh system, the tension on Enterprises bridge was considerable. The ship was on red alert for safetys sake, though Jim had told Uhura to kill the siren, which was no longer doing any good as regarding alertness, but only getting on peoples nerves. Spock was bent over his scanner, intent, and as the warp drives 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. Were 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 systems 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 distancejust 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.

Im receiving a hail from Artaleirhin system control, Uhura said. They know who we are, but all the same theyre 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 harborand how dipping his forts 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 havent caused a diplomatic incident yet, probably this is the time. This 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 Bloodwings 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 salvationthough it comes in an unexpected shape.

And how do they see you?

Aels 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 ones own position. But when the facility is planet-based, why not? For not even we know how to hide a whole planetnot yet.