When she had leisure at last to retreat to her study, she found a data solid sitting on the desk.
Ael i-Mheissian t'Rllailleiu, the youngest khre'Riov in more than 200 years, on whose name people had been heaping praise these last three tendays, paused confused in the doorway for long enough that one of Tafv's house-fvaiin managed to slip past her into the room, where it began exploring her scroll-rack contentedly.
"Hloal," Ael said over her shoulder.
The servant paused. "Yes, hru'hfirh?"
"I thought I'd put everything away before I left," Ael said. "Has someone been in here?"
Hloal padded back down the hall and peered into the study. "Oh, yes, that. It was delivered, a season ago, or so? The messenger said no one but you was to view it, but of course you were on your ship. I'm the only one who comes in to clean, hru'hfirh, on my honor."
Ael nodded and said, "Of course. Well, it's waited a season, it can wait a few minutes longer. Take my son's pet out, please." She circled the desk to drop into her chair as Hloal took the fvai by the collar. It rattled its crest in protest at being led from its new discovery, but went peacefully enough. The door slid shut.
Ael did not immediately begin to investigate the minor mystery, instead sitting back in her chair, luxuriating in the feel of it. It wasn't that the furnishings on her ship were uncomfortable, precisely, but the Fleet did not have resources to spare on well-stuffed cushions and soft leather, even for a commander's quarters. Eventually, however, rubbing her hands over the arms of the chair palled, and she sat up straight to pick up the solid.
It was labeled with only two of her names, written in precise characters; she did not immediately recognize the hand. Staring into the crystal, pretty though it was, seemed unlikely to get her any further data, so Ael tapped the desk to bring the screen of her computer up. She had to think for a moment to recall the pass-phrase she'd set. Before inserting the data solid she set aside a secure area of her computer, having no desire to spend a day of her precious leave cleaning the system if there were something hostile in her odd little gift. The solid clicked into the reader-socket and, after a moment of thought, presented her with a question: Do you wish to play The Banners of s'Mnerol?
Bemused, Ael told it that yes, she did. Tafv had had a few of these, when he was young enough to be entertained by such; they were little stories, suited to a child's understanding, in which the child was encouraged to make choices to guide a character through peril and adversity with honor. They generally taught lessons that Ael thought worthy, if simplified. She had not seen this one before. The program asked her for her name and she gave it, and then spent a few minutes watching as the story was framed for her; then her character appeared, standing in a great banner-hung hall, and Ael decided to embrace the absurdity.
Twenty minutes later, she was prompted to choose one of several pre-written lines. "It is as mnhei'sahe requires," Ael read obediently.
The computer beeped, and she frowned at it. The progress of the story on the screen froze and then flicked to black. "Voiceprint confirmed," the computer said, in its normal voice. "You may play the message now."
Ael stared at the screen, suddenly on edge. She was no stranger to secret messages, of course, but this seemed entirely unlikely for anyone who might have occasion to send her one. The Fleet's encryption style did not run to whimsy, nor would they have sent a message that could sit unheard for so long; her own private channels of information had methods to be used in case of emergency, and embedding something important in a child's diversion was not one of them.
"Play the message," she said slowly, wondering if this might be some sort of trap to discredit her. Her recent triumphs in the Outmarches notwithstanding, there were those who disliked her, both despite and because of her successes. But she was curious, and if the message contained something that the Fleet needed to know, she could turn it over to them.
A man's face appeared—an old man, very old if she was any judge; older than her father had been when he died, and possibly older than he would be if still living. The cast of his features puzzled her until he began to speak, in formal, exact Rihannsu but with an accent she couldn't place. "Greetings, khre'Riov t'Rllaillieu," he said. His voice reminded her of Liha, a bit, low and resonant. "If matters are well with you, then they are well with me also. I am Spock cha'Sarek of Vulcan."
Ael felt her eyes widening in shock. News of the events in Federation space had spread rapidly, in the civilian population as well as through the Fleet; the destruction of Vulcan had met with a mixture of satisfaction and sympathy. Ael herself had no patience with those who claimed it was only what the Vulcans deserved, and deeply disapproved of the man who had engineered the destruction; vengeance was only fitting, but a whole world—even Vulcan—for one man's error was beyond the bounds of mnhei'sahe by any standards. Nirroh tr'Fverain had been a madman, and in her opinion his name should have been written and burned. Though it was rendered awkward by the rumor that accompanied the news: that tr'Fverain did not yet exist, that he had come from the future, along with a Vulcan named…
"When you make inquiries, you will discover that Spock cha'Sarek is also another man, serving as first officer on the Federation ship Enterprise." He said the name of the ship in Standard, but Ael recognized the sound; it was Starfleet's flagship, and it and its ridiculously young captain had played a major part in stopping tr'Fverain's madness. "He is...me. My younger self. If you have heard that Nirroh and I came from the future, that is correct."
The old man paused, and an expression of deep sadness crossed his face. Ael wondered at it; the vaunted Vulcan control seemed to be little in evidence here: though perhaps he was merely feigning, to arouse her sympathies and thus deceive her more easily. But the heaviness in his voice seemed all too sincere when he continued, "Included on this solid is the astrographic data for the star you call Llarennith. It will be a hundred and fifteen years on ch'Rihan before the star goes nova, but when it does both your worlds will be destroyed. Use that century well, and find a better solution than the one that failed in my future. I will release the information to your government by other means as well, but I felt it wiser to spread it through as many channels as possible. A friend of mine would have called it 'suspenders and belt'. So much for the debt I owe your people. Now, the debt I owe you."
He paused again and seemed to settle himself. "In my youth, I served in Starfleet, as my young counterpart does now. Sometimes that service required of me things that I found personally distasteful. My duty once was to obtain a piece of Rihannsu technology, and my captain and I agreed between us the best way to do so. We worked a deception upon the commander of the little fleet that happened upon us in the Outmarches. We were successful. She was disgraced. I learned later that her name was written and burned."
Ael sat perfectly still as the old man—Spock, or so she must call him—spoke the name, but it was not her own; her own she could have borne, but he gave the names, all four of them, of her sister-daughter, and her heart clenched in her side. Ael said softly, "Pause," and the computer chirped obediently. She sat for some minutes in an attempt to compose herself, watching the old face motionless on her screen as if he could see her in return, or as if she would be able to read anything he didn't intend her to. When her breath came easily again she told the computer to resume, and tried not to let Spock's pleasant voice soothe her.
"She told me her fourth name, I think, in an attempt to win me over," Spock said. "I do not know how much of her interest was feigned, though I can hardly pretend to be indignant if it were wholly so; I lied to her and cannot despise her for doing the same to me. But we—my captain and I—did not intend for our deception to cause her destruction as it did, and it has, since, sometimes weighed on me that we did not realize what the depth of her punishment might be. So, khre'Riov, tell your sister-daughter to beware the Enterprise; though it seems likely that matters have changed enough that my younger self and his captain will never be sent on that mission, or that some other Rihannsu ship will encounter them, I have had occasion to note that the timeline is stubborn, and it may yet be as I recall."
"Things have changed—many things. People I knew as well as I knew myself are all but unrecognizable to me. So it is possible that everything I know is useless, but I try to warn you all the same, because it is what mnhei'sahe demands of me—though perhaps not as my cthia, my logic, would dictate. Your sister-daughter should beware the Enterprise, but you, khre'Riov, beware these things: Sunseed, and Levaeri V. I think it unlikely in the extreme that the latter will come to pass, for this simple reason: it required Vulcans." Spock made a wry face, belying the loathing Ael could hear, faint but distinct, in his voice. "We are not so easy to come by, these days. But Sunseed may."
She waited, as quiet as if he were in the room in truth. "You have no reason to believe me," Spock said at last. "Your people distrust me and mine, and for good reason; I have been here long enough to know that that, at least, has not changed. But it was my duty to try. Life to you, and mnhei'sahe, or as my people would say: live long and prosper." He raised his hand into range of the pickup, in that strange spread-finger salute that Vulcans used.
Ael sat at her desk for a long time before she could bring herself to watch the message again.
Jim was pleased that he had bothered to look up Romulan naming conventions when he was researching the people he and Spock might have to deal with; it meant that he understood what the t-prefix on the House name meant, and thus he wasn't surprised when the commander—the Romulan rank, as he understood it, was more equivalent to commodore—who appeared on the main screen was a woman. What was surprising was that she was tiny; Jim doubted the crown of her head would meet his chin and her command chair looked almost too big for her. Any impulse to think of her as childlike was thoroughly quashed, however, by her steady dark eyes.
"Navigational malfunction," she repeated.
"Yes," Jim growled. It wasn't difficult to sound harsh, at least; he hated the cover story he'd been handed. One of Komack's clever ideas, probably.
T'Rllaillieu appeared to think that over for a long moment, gazing off to the side, and then she looked back into the viewscreen with one eyebrow elegantly raised in an expression that was straight out of Spock's playbook.
One of Jim's talents was reading people, even people of species he was unfamiliar with, and this one was both fairly familiar and not bothering to be subtle in the least about the fact that she didn't believe one single word of what he was saying. Jim carefully didn't let the anticipation show. All he needed was transport to her ship—any of the ships, though it would probably be Bloodwing itself...
"Well then," t'Rllailieu said calmly, "while I can't allow you to proceed any farther into Romulan space, I am not so churlish as to threaten you for an error you could not help. We will remain here while you make your repairs, of course, but Command will not grudge me the time overmuch."
"What?" Jim blurted. In his peripheral vision, Spock and Bones both tensed and Jim was glad they were out of range of the video pickup. The Romulan woman smiled at him. It was an unexpectedly charming smile, and it implied that she and Jim shared a secret. "You will make your repairs, and then we will escort you from the Neutral Zone," she said, "and there is no harm done. If that is agreeable to you, Captain?"
Jim blinked, and blinked again, and though he had no idea why she was choosing to humor his ridiculous cover story, it was clear that she was—and this op was blown, pure and simple, before it could even get properly started. He felt the grin spreading on his face and didn't try to stop it. "Lady," he said cheerfully, "I think you had better call me Jim."
Later, he got Uhura to look it up in the Romulan translator files, and honestly he couldn't blame t'Rllaillieu for laughing.