Forged in Fire Read online

  Sulu allowed himself a small but gratified smile. It was a relief to know that the admiral wasn’t simply out to foil him arbitrarily. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Then I wish you a better day, Commander. Harriman out.”

  The screen suddenly reverted to its default display of the blue-and-white emblem of the United Federation of Planets, though the tranquil colors did little to assuage Sulu’s overall annoyance with the current situation regarding the albino and the Klingons. Harriman’s intransigence was understandable, if frustrating. The political ramifications of taking action or not taking action both held pitfalls, though the ones on Harriman’s side of the argument seemed far less obvious than those on Sulu’s; while Harriman’s course was arguably safer politically, Sulu could only see it as damning, at least for himself.

  He suspected that if push came to shove, even Cutler would want to chase down the albino for killing Captain Styles, Chief Engineer Lahra, and the security personnel she had lost on Korvat. I’m just not sure she would support me defying Starfleet’s direct orders, he thought. She seems to be barely this side of having me declared unfit for command as it is.

  He poured himself a new cup of green tea from the pot on the desk, and inhaled the subtle aroma of the blend. It was small comfort, but at this point, he would take whatever succor he could. If I ever do get permanent command of Excelsior, he thought wryly, I may prescribe a mandatory teatime. The thought of his command staff sipping tea on the bridge brought a small smile to his face.

  A few minutes later, having collected his thoughts, Sulu called Rand to patch in a call to the Klothos and pipe it onto the screen in front of him. Moments later Kor’s face appeared, though the Klingon seemed to be speaking from somewhere other than his ship’s bridge, perhaps from his quarters.

  “Captain Kor, I’m afraid I can’t give you the good news I’d hoped to deliver,” Sulu said. He quickly recounted a severely edited version of his conversation with Harriman, but tried to make certain that Kor understood that he, Sulu, was more than willing to accompany the Klingon fleet into battle, and would certainly do so if only his hands weren’t figuratively tied.

  “This doesn’t surprise me,” Kor said, his voice gravelly. “In the midst of a political struggle, true warriors are often the first to chafe against the chains of enforced restraint.” He actually looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suspect that had this attack happened in Federation space, we would have been similarly barred from taking action without clearance from your authorities.”

  Sulu tried not to let his surprise at Kor’s perspicacious comment register on his face. “Very wise, Captain. I suspect that you are correct. As it stands, we will aid you in whatever manner we can, whether that be through Doctor Chapel’s inoculations, or by sharing whatever intelligence our long-range sensors and probes may be able to pick up.”

  “Our repairs are nearing completion,” Kor said. “I expect that we will be on our way within a few hours. Do we need to evacuate Ambassadors Kamarag or Klishat from your vessel?”

  Sulu shook his head lightly. “No, I think it’s best for their health if they remain in isolation right now. Doctor Chapel assures me that it’s still touch-and-go for both of them. And we don’t consider it any inconvenience to continue their treatment here. However, we will want to be certain that all our personnel return to Excelsior soon, including Ambassador Dax.”

  Kor’s expression changed slightly at the mention of Dax’s name, but Sulu couldn’t quite read what that meant. “I will let you speak to the ambassador privately,” he said.

  The screen blanked and several moments passed until Curzon Dax’s image appeared on the monitor, a tangle of power conduits and engineering components visible behind him. “Captain Kor has brought me up to date on the situation, Commander, as well as on your orders,” Dax said. “Unfortunately, I won’t be returning to Excelsior.”

  For the second time in minutes, Sulu was surprised. “You are aware, Ambassador, that Starfleet’s orders not to enter Klingon space apply to you as well.”

  “I’d say that’s debatable, Commander, since I answer to my superiors in the Diplomatic Corps and the Federation Council rather than to Starfleet Command,” Dax said, sounding both resolute and regretful. “And I am also aware that if we have no representation among the Klingons as they beard this particular albino dragon in his lair, the High Council will ultimately not only take offense, it will view our absence as a sign of weakness on the Federation’s part.”

  “I just made the same argument to Admiral Harriman,” Sulu said, feeling a twinge of pleasure that he and the young Trill ambassador had assessed the situation so similarly. “It didn’t fly with my superior. Do you think it’ll fare any better with Sarek?”

  Dax raised an eyebrow in a fair approximation of a Vulcan’s wordless interrogative glance. “I hadn’t heard that Ambassador Sarek had regained consciousness yet.”

  “He hasn’t. Doctor Chapel says he’s put himself into a Vulcan healing trance, which means he could come to at any time, ready to get right back to work. Do you really think that he would approve of your undertaking a risky mission deep inside Klingon territory?”

  “Possibly not, Commander. But until such time as he actually does regain consciousness, I am charged with making all the on-the-ground diplomatic decisions.”

  Including, evidently, making the decision to be insubordinate, Sulu thought, suppressing a chuckle at the Trill ambassador’s bravado. “Then I trust that you are also aware, Mister Ambassador, that I could have you beamed back over to Excelsior, your on-the-ground diplomatic decisions notwithstanding.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Dax cocked his head, regarding Sulu. “If you feel that I am making an error in judgment, then by all means, abduct me from this ship. In this matter, I feel that direct action on my part is not only appropriate, but prudent.”

  He’s definitely got the courage of his convictions, Sulu thought, noting that Dax was taking the exact kind of action he would have taken if the option were open to him; he would have traded places gladly with the young Trill at this moment if he could have. Looks like my first impression of him was a little off the mark.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Ambassador,” Sulu said, taking a sip of his tea. “And I hope that you and the Klingons find the saboteur, with or without our direct help. He has a lot to answer for.

  “Godspeed, Curzon Dax,” he said. “And good hunting.”

  PART III:

  AMONG THE LIONS

  Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

  — Anaïs Nin (1903–1977)

  TWENTY-ONE

  Early 2290 (the Year of Kahless 915,

  late in the month of Doqath)

  The Klingon escort fleet

  Kor looked up from the data that was scrolling slowly across his desktop terminal when the buzz of the visitor alarm intruded brusquely upon his thoughts.

  “Enter.”

  The door to his quarters rasped open long enough to admit Dr. Hurghom, who immediately crossed to the desk where Kor was working.

  “I see you are studying the data from Excelsior,” Hurghom said as he looked over Kor’s shoulder at the terminal. Only one favored by his House for decades would dare take such a liberty. But Kor no longer paid much heed to such intrusions on the part of his chief medical officer; after all, he could have easily blanked the screen before Hurghom caught a glimpse of its contents had he wished to do so.

  Kor froze the scrolling data. “I have already all but committed it to memory. When we finally catch up with our quarry, I want to be ready for him.”

  He was determined to know the albino’s secrets, particularly those that directly affected the volatile fortunes of Kor’s ancestral House. Fortunately, the Klothos carried an old-style mind-sifter, which Kor was eager to apply to that purpose, using whatever intensity level might prove necessary. Having developed th
ese psionic interrogation aids more than a century ago, the Klingon military had employed them much more commonly during earlier times, when the front-line service of large numbers of smooth-headed QuchHa’ warriors was still a novelty that the High Council feared might be vulnerable to infiltration by Earther spies and saboteurs.

  “Have you also examined Doctor Chapel’s medical information, Captain?” Hurghom asked.

  Kor frowned. “Only the broad summary, which has a rather disturbing implication. I forwarded the data to your office in the hopes that you would examine it in depth.”

  “I have already done so,” the elderly physician said, nodding as he deposited himself on one of the hard, severely right-angled chairs that fronted Kor’s desk.

  “I am hoping you will tell me that I have come to the wrong conclusion,” Kor said, though he could sense already that this was a forlorn hope.

  Wearing a grave expression, Hurghom shook his head. “I only wish that I could, Captain. However, the genetic profile that Doctor Chapel assembled from the DNA remnants gleaned from the conference hall on Korvat leaves absolutely no room for doubt: the hostile we seek is a son of the House of Ngoj, born in the Year of Kahless 844, according to sealed court records that the mother, the Lady Moj’ih, had failed to have destroyed. The child had always been presumed slain as a weakling.”

  Kor sat back in his chair and took in the news in contemplative silence. A defective male child — a weak, anemic albino whom the official records showed had been euthanized, according to time-honored Klingon tradition — had indeed been born to the House of Ngoj that very year, now some seven decades gone. But the odds against that infant having somehow survived until the present day seemed all but insuperable.

  “Is there no possibility you’ve misinterpreted the data?” Kor said.

  The scientist once again shook his head. “Only one in approximately five hundred million Klingon children is born with this particular cluster of genetic defects. Besides, I monitored the child’s in utero development myself. I was present when he was born, and have maintained copies of his medical records until this very day — including his DNA profile. There is no mistake.”

  “But how can this be, Hurghom? All such weaklings are euthanized at birth. Klingon law makes no allowances, or exceptions.”

  “True enough,” Hurghom said with a shrug. “But if someone merely spirited the child away rather than killing it as legally prescribed, it would not be the first time someone had seen fit to set aside the law in favor of some other agenda.”

  “So the albino brigand who disrupted the Korvat conference — and may yet have killed Ambassador Kamarag while he was about it — is really a new-found scion of my disgraced great aunt.”

  Though he still could scarcely believe it, he knew he had no choice other than to accept another related and equally incontrovertible truth: control of the recently rehabilitated House of Ngoj — the very House that Kor had labored all his life to rebuild after the scandals of decades past had crippled it nearly irreparably — might well be wrested from his grasp by an older cousin, a yur blood relative long thought dead.

  “This albino’s very existence is a blot on the name of your House,” Hurghom said, unnecessarily stating the obvious so far as Kor was concerned.

  Kor focused a gaze of laserlike intensity on his old friend. “Not as long as the unfortunate facts surrounding his origins remain known only to the two of us.”

  Hurghom’s smooth brow crumpled slightly. “I am, as always, the soul of discretion. Did I not help the Lady Moj’ih conceal the source of her greatest shame for most of her life?”

  Though Hurghom had not mentioned it explicitly, Kor knew that he was speaking of his great aunt’s Earther-smooth QuchHa’ forehead. It was a characteristic that both Kor and Hurghom still shared, even in an age when many other QuchHa’— including Koloth — had found gene-alteration therapies capable of restoring their cranial birthright.

  But in the House of Ngoj, the genes responsible for the hated smooth-forehead trait remained entrenched in the family genome, having proved stubbornly resistant to Hurghom’s every retroviral remedy. As with all QuchHa’ families in the Empire, this condition had gained its so-far unbreakable grip on the House of Ngoj’s gene pool during the Plague years, though the Lady Moj’ih had managed to keep it hidden with prosthetics throughout her life in an effort to preserve the HemQuch prerogatives of power that her clan had enjoyed since time immemorial.

  Prerogatives that Kor had spent his entire career working to regain for his House, in defiance of both societal prejudice and the persistence of his disconcertingly Earther-like appearance.

  Kor favored Hurghom with a weary smile. “I will continue to rely upon your discretion. And your loyal service.” He knew, after all, that his continued support of Hurghom’s ongoing genetic research constituted his House’s best chance of ridding itself of its Earther genetic baggage. It was the surest chance of regaining the legacy of Kahless without recourse to the subterfuge the Lady Moj’ih and her parents had employed.

  The House of Ngoj had already labored long and hard over the past several decades to restore a significant fraction of its lost honor; how much faster might it rise in both power and prestige if its members no longer bore the burden of the QuchHa’?

  “Though the High Council has never mentioned any knowledge of the brigand’s ancestry, they have offered a sizable bounty in exchange for his capture,” Hurghom said, interrupting Kor’s musings. “Do you intend to collect it?”

  Kor sighed. There was no denying that the House of Ngoj was still nowhere near as wealthy as it once had been, despite his best efforts to recover his family’s scattered holdings and lost prestige. And he certainly could not deny that riches frequently compensated for all manner of other deficits.

  After a long pause, he announced his decision with an emphatic shake of his head. “As much as I have to admire such a one simply for surviving in the face of such very long odds, I have only one choice open to me: to kill him. I can afford to forgo the Council’s bounty better than I can afford to risk airing the albino’s secret.”

  “So we will simply track him down and kill him,” Hurghom said, sounding vaguely disappointed. “A prudent option, to be sure. But also wasteful.”

  “If at all possible, we will capture him first. Perhaps he can be used to advance your research before I send him to Gre’thor.”

  Hurghom seemed to relax at that, though he still looked skeptical. “And what will be your cause for killing him, Captain? The honor of a family that must deny any association with him?”

  Kor grinned. “Certainly, though that rationale is for your ears alone.”

  “Then what cause will you invoke for killing him rather than handing him over to the Council for trial and execution?”

  “Why, the preservation of galactic peace,” Kor said. He grinned ironically, remembering how the skies over ’orghenya’ were once black with the massed fleets of both the Klingon Empire and James Kirk’s yuQjIjDIvI’, the Federation.

  “After all, Hurghom, what higher cause is there?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Stardate 9009.4 (Early 2290)

  U.S.S. Excelsior

  “When do you expect him to wake up, Doctor?” Cutler asked.

  “Vulcan healing trances run their own course,” Chapel answered, forcing a slight smile. “No buzzer rings when they’re done.”

  “Is there any danger if we interrupt his trance?” Sulu asked. He looked as if he hadn’t slept much in the last few days since the attack on Korvat, and Cutler didn’t look much better off.

  Chapel reached over to a countertop nearby and grabbed a large hypospray. “I’m fairly certain Sarek is about ready to regain consciousness,” she said. “We’re just going to help give him a kick-start.”

  She adjusted the control mechanisms on the hypo, and was rewarded by the sight of several liquids swirling into a mixture in a clear vial set within the device. Turning, she pressed the hypo against Sare
k’s neck. The Vulcan lay prostrate on the table, small, fine-tuned proximity sensors attached to his head and chest, feeding data into the overhead biobed monitoring equipment. His breathing was barely discernible, but visible all the same thanks to the slight rise and fall of the linen sheet that covered him from the torso downward. Chapel depressed a button, and a short hiss was audible near the entry point where the hypo met Sarek’s neck.

  “The clarinoxamine and gebatex should help stimulate Sarek’s norepinephrine levels, while balancing his serotonin, chlorotonin, and dopamine output against his neuromodulators,” Chapel said as she put the hypo back on the counter. Unless the delicate parliament of neurochemical messengers that drove the Vulcan brain could be “booted up” in an orderly fashion, the neurophysiological consequences could be grave, ranging from stroke to cardiopulmonary shock to complete neural collapse.

  Staring down at some controls next to the biobed, Chapel tapped in several sequences of precise commands. “The rest of the work will be done through electronic neurostimulus. If all goes well, the ambassador should be fully conscious within a few minutes.”

  “Looks like you’ve upgraded your methods for reviving Vulcans from their healing trances since we were on the Enterprise,” Sulu said.

  Chapel made a face. “Slapping a patient awake was never something I was comfortable with. After the day I watched Doctor M’Benga revive Spock, I worked on developing a technique that didn’t involve assault.” She glanced back at Sarek. “If this doesn’t work, though, perhaps we’ll have to give the old-fashioned way one more try.”

  “Chemicals and electrostimulus are certainly more humane,” Sulu said, mustering a smile. It was a sight she hadn’t seen on his face since she first had come aboard Excelsior a week ago.

  “Keep it up, Hikaru, and you’ll find out just how humane,” Chapel said. She almost regretted being so familiar with Sulu in front of Cutler — who seemed lost by their banter anyhow — but decided against it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her discomfort alter my relationship with one of my oldest friends.