Forged in Fire Read online

  “So,” Dax said, apparently addressing all three Klingon captains at once. “Which one of you am I hitching a ride with?”

  Before anyone had time to answer the Trill ambassador, Kor noticed a blinding brilliance issuing from the ceiling above. The light fixtures, he thought as he covered his eyes with his arm. He realized, too late, that the laboratory’s lights were probably the only things the assault team hadn’t taken apart during several booby-trap sweeps.

  Kor simultaneously felt a supremely energetic jolt seize his body, instantly setting his entire nervous system ablaze.

  The pain, though tolerable, was thankfully brief. Blackness engulfed him, embracing him as tightly as the arms of a lover.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Early 2290 (the Year of Kahless 915,

  late in the month of Doqath)

  The freebooter ship Hegh’TlhoS

  “Tlhab jIH DaH, bI’par’Mach Ha’DIbaH puqloD!”

  Kor heard the hoarsely shouted expletives, though he wasn’t certain he was entirely conscious. He felt he was burning alive, his skin crawling, his muscles twitching uncontrollably. Slowly, he opened his eyes, but regretted it instantly when the harsh light beyond his eyelids blinded him.

  The lights, Kor thought, recalling his last moments of consciousness on Mempa II. He must have laid a trap in the ceiling light fixtures and triggered it remotely. Kor could only wonder why his kinsman had waited so long to draw his snare closed. Had he run afoul of the measures Kor and the others had taken to inhibit transporter use at the Mempa lab?

  Something hard smashed abruptly into the side of Kor’s face. His zygomatic bone shifted slightly, accompanied by a sickening crunch, and he could feel at least one of his teeth dislodge from his jaw. His mouth immediately began to fill with blood.

  “The last of you petaQ are finally awake,” a male voice said. It dripped with hatred, and its tlhIngan was accented by the dialects of various species from across the Empire and beyond.

  Despite being immobilized by some sort of head restraint, Kor spat out a tooth, along with a mouthful of blood. He did his best not to flinch as he very gingerly opened his eyes again. “Who dares to strike me?”

  “This is why I wanted to save the introductions until all of you were awake,” the hostility-steeped voice said. “I hate repeating myself. Especially to the walking dead.”

  Noting that his body spasms seemed to be lessening in intensity, Kor struggled to turn his head in the direction of the voice, fighting the heavy forehead strap that pinned his head to the cold slab beneath him. He saw Koloth and Curzon Dax strapped to nearby tables, similarly restrained at the forehead, chest, forearms, wrists, and midsection. Each of them was stripped to the waist, bodies and faces covered in bruises and freshly bloody cuts.

  The room appeared to be a laboratory of some sort, though it currently bore a stronger resemblance to an abattoir. A standing figure stepped forward, blocking Kor’s view of the other captives. Kor looked up at the man’s face and saw him, their saboteur, their quarry, and for the moment, their jailer.

  The sickly albino Klingon, an abomination born of Kor’s very own ancestral house.

  “Captain Kor of the House of Ngoj,” the albino said in malice-saturated tones. “Here are the rules of my interrogation room, gentlemen. I will tell you anything I choose. I will ask you anything I choose. If you don’t answer any given question to my satisfaction, I will torture you. If you ask something of me, I may answer you, but I will also torture you. If you shout out some chest-thumping threat, I will torture you for that as well. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Only a coward would torture a captive!” It was Kang’s voice, coming from Kor’s left.

  “Interesting point, that,” the albino said, crossing out of Kor’s sight but brandishing a small, gleaming metal object just before he did so. A moment later, Kor heard five small thudding sounds, delivered in quick succession, followed immediately by Kang’s barely restrained groans.

  He’s just stabbed Kang, Kor thought. Since he didn’t know whether or not the blows had been fatal, he decided to focus instead on testing his bonds, looking for any opportunity to break free.

  “You see, not having been raised in Klingon society,” the albino said as he returned to Kor’s line of sight, “I have not been inculcated with all the high-sounding noble rhetoric about Klingon honor and the warrior spirit and so forth.” He set the small, blood-streaked blade he had just used on Kang onto a nearby counter, from which he picked up a towel to wipe the lavender fluid from his bony, pallid hands. “This, despite the fact that, as you can see, I am a Klingon. Just not the right kind of Klingon.”

  He smiled down at Kor, and in that instant Kor knew that the albino knew the truth of his heritage, and the secret of their linked bloodlines.

  “When the Orion slavers took me on board as their mascot — or perhaps I was their pet — they considered me just as much an aberration as Klingon society no doubt would have found me. They named me Qagh, considering it humorous that I would forever be known as a ‘mistake.’ ” He turned toward Koloth, spreading his hands. “Did you know that I had reached the age of sixteen before I even learned what my name truly means?”

  “Where are the other warriors that accompanied us to Mempa II?” Koloth shouted angrily.

  The albino tilted his head and smiled. “Either you weren’t listening to the rules, you don’t believe what I say, or you actually like torture,” he said, his voice greasily smooth. “Personally, I prefer to believe it’s the latter.”

  The albino moved out of view for several moments, then returned, holding a heavy metal spanner in one hand, and a handful of purplish goo in the other. “Your men will probably end up in Sto-Vo-Kor, even though they were disintegrated where they lay before they regained consciousness,” Qagh said. “It’s a pity, though, that they won’t be able to see it when they get there.” He opened the goo-covered hand and dropped the pulpy mess it carried squarely onto Koloth’s bare chest.

  Horrified, Kor recognized the shredded remains of several eyeballs within the bloody clump of tissue and fluid. Though his warrior’s spirit screamed its need for vengeance, it could not prevent his gorge from rising.

  “But that’s not quite all,” Qagh said, bringing the wrench down several times in quick succession on Koloth’s forearm and hand. Though the sound of breaking bones was clearly audible, Koloth didn’t utter a sound, instead maintaining a rigidly stoic mien. Qagh quickly scooped up some of the mess he’d left on Koloth’s chest and stuffed it into the Klingon captain’s mouth.

  “I warned you,” Qagh said, as Koloth spat out the horrid mouthful, which rolled down the side of his face. “But at least I also gave you the answer to your question. Don’t you feel good about that?”

  Qagh turned away. “Although this is the first direct contact I’ve had with you, I was there on Korvat. In disguise.” He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful, then continued. “I have to confess that I’m at something of a loss as to why three such distinguished military captains would chase after me — other than you, Captain Kor — as well as this young Trill diplomat and his traveling companion.”

  He’s going to reveal our mutual secret, Kor thought, a notion that almost made him feel relieved at the prospect of dying shortly thereafter. At least the shame I face will likely die in this room. But what did he mean about Dax’s “traveling companion”?

  “I’m also impressed by your resistance to my bioagents,” Qagh said, once again moving out of sight. “I had assumed that the four of you would have been reduced to handfuls of granulated dust long before now. I suspect —” He paused, and Kor heard the unmistakable hiss of a hypospray coming from his left.

  “I suspect that some clever Federation scientist must have worked up some kind of counteragent with which to inoculate you,” he said as he crossed back into view. He pressed something cold and metallic against Kor’s skin, and despite a burning sensation like that of hungry targ-mites devouring his nerve endings, Kor fe
lt something new invade his body.

  Qagh crossed over to Koloth, a large hypospray in his hand. “It had to have been someone on the Federation side. It’s not like most of our scientists to have worked out a counteragent, and I know what most of the Empire’s allies, colonies, and client worlds have been working on.” He chuckled coldly for a moment. “After all, I’ve raided a significant proportion of their research laboratories over the last few decades.”

  The albino now moved toward Dax, who had remained nearly still since Kor had regained consciousness. He was clearly awake and in pain, but had apparently not provoked the Klingon throwback as had the other captains.

  “I studied you all quite closely while you were unconscious, and my crew was getting us under way in our cloaked vessel,” Qagh said, addressing Dax. “My scans were surely less invasive than any of the injuries that either I or my men have inflicted on you. And yet they revealed far more about you than I suspect you would ever have told me voluntarily — even if you thought doing so might save your life. Or should I say, ‘lives,’ Mister Dax?”

  He injected Curzon Dax with the same hypospray he had just used on Kor, and then placed his hand, palm down, on Dax’s lower abdomen. Addressing his other prisoners, the albino said, “For instance, did the good ambassador ever tell you that he shares his body with some manner of parasite? Not just any parasite, mind you, but one that contains a complete consciousness, and seems able — at least as far as I can tell — to communicate with its host in some subtle manner. No, ‘communicate’ is not the right word. ‘Commune’ might better describe the phenomenon.” Qagh eyed the supine diplomat with malicious curiosity. “I wonder whether all Trill are joined to nonhumanoid life-forms in this fashion, or if this fusion is unique to our esteemed Ambassador Dax?”

  Kor felt far too traumatized to be shocked any further. He saw that Dax was regarding Qagh stoically, even though the muscles in his abdomen were tensing and moving. Is that his fear of what the albino might do next? Or is that where the parasite lives? Kor was beginning to doubt that he’d live long enough to answer either question.

  As if reading his mind, Qagh turned and looked directly into Kor’s eyes. “Hmmm,” the throwback said, grinning. “And you, oh ruler of the House of Kor, son of Rynar of the House of Ngoj . . .” He left Dax unmolested and moved back into the center of the chamber, nearer to Kor. “I can see it in your eyes. You already know the truth. When did you discover it, I wonder? When did the great and noble Kor learn that the two of us have more in common than anyone else here could possibly be aware?”

  He turned back to Koloth and grabbed him by the jaw, forcing his head into a direct line of sight with Kor. “Did he tell you that we were cousins? That I am the rightful heir to the house of Ngoj, from whose residual wealth Kor’s own House was built?”

  Kor felt shame burning him now, an internal immolation far more intense than the sensations caused by whatever bioagents Qagh had just injected into him.

  Qagh shook Koloth’s jaw. “Answer me, Captain. Or I will . . . feed you again. Or perhaps take your own eyes as trophies. Did you know Kor’s shameful secret?”

  “No, I did not,” Koloth said in a dead, lifeless voice.

  Kor saw something change behind Koloth’s eyes as the other captain regarded him. Hatred? Disgust? Anger, certainly. But were those sentiments aimed at Kor or the albino? And would it even matter in whatever scant time remained before Qagh murdered them all?

  “I did not tell them,” Kor said to Qagh, his shame outstripping his dread of whatever further pain the crazed throwback might deliver. “I had heard stories of your birth, but only as rumors, cautionary tales designed to scare members of my House as children. It wasn’t until I learned of your age — and then saw the genetic evidence from your sabotage on Korvat — that I was able to guess that you might be the shame of my House, made flesh.”

  “Very good,” Qagh said, smiling and releasing Koloth’s chin. “You answered without asking a question. And I actually believe you are telling the truth. No doubt you intended to kill me before my heritage became known to your fellow warriors.”

  “Your heritage doesn’t matter!” shouted Kang, filling Kor with relief that his old friend still lived. “I would kill you now, if you had the courage to face me like a warrior.”

  “Has the loss of blood made you so forgetful, Kang?” Qagh asked. “I said before that the way of the warrior has been denied me all my life.” He sighed heavily and moved back out of Kor’s field of vision, no doubt to torture Kang once again. “Besides, it is a philosophy in which I have no real interest anyway. I prefer to gather influence and power through means of my own.”

  Kor heard Kang gasp, and felt a spray of something wet splatter across his own bare torso. “Enough, Qagh!” he shouted. “We will give you no more answers, nor feed your sadistic desires. Kill us now, and be done with it!”

  Qagh suddenly loomed over him, staring down into his face from mere SanID’qams away, close enough so that Kor could smell the rankness of the pirate’s breath. A spray of dark purple blood spattered the chalky skin of his cheek. “Nothing would please me more than removing this obstacle that stands between me and my control of a noble Klingon House. And to do the honors, allow me to present another ghost from out of Qo’noS’s checkered past.”

  Kor looked over his chest and was shocked to see the Klingon who stepped forward in answer to the albino’s introduction. The last time he had seen Dr. Nej was at the central military infirmary on Qo’noS, where Koloth had regained his HemQuch forehead ridges. He had heard rumors subsequently that the physician had been disgraced shortly thereafter, evidently as punishment for some failure related to the creation of a biodesigned life-form, the yIH-eating glo’meH predator.

  Nej said nothing as he neared Kor, his expression unreadable. In his hand was a large, wickedly sharp scalpel, crusted with purplish grue.

  An electronic beep came from elsewhere in the chamber, followed by a female voice. “Captain Qagh, we have a problem.”

  The albino withdrew from his discomfiting proximity to Kor. “What is it?” He sounded impatient.

  “We show an unauthorized launch of one of the small, warp-driven shuttles.”

  “Who launched it?” Qagh asked, his voice rising in evident anger.

  Kor saw a strange look flicker across Nej’s features for a moment, as if he was remembering something — or concealing it.

  “Unknown, sir,” the woman responded.

  “Destroy it!” Qagh ordered.

  “We targeted it immediately upon launch, sir. Unfortunately, it cloaked itself before we were able to open fire.”

  The albino roared in displeasure, and brought his fist down hard onto Kor’s crotch.

  His gorge again rising, Kor’s muscles strained in response to the blow. He barely heard the next words of his long-lost cousin.

  “I don’t know how you did it, but you won’t live long enough for it to matter!”

  Qagh angrily snatched the scalpel out of Nej’s hand and slashed it down toward Kor’s exposed neck.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Early 2290 (the Year of Kahless 915,

  late in the month of Doqath)

  The freebooter ship Hegh’TlhoS

  The scalpel slipped effortlessly through Kor’s neck, but to Qagh’s surprise, this was not because the tissue was soft or the blade was sharp; it was because Kor had disappeared in a cascade of green-gold sparkles of light.

  Roaring in anger, Qagh looked up toward Kang, then whirled to see the spots where Koloth and Dax had recently been restrained. All he caught was a brief afterimage of Koloth as he disappeared, his broken fingers raised in a rude Klingon gesture.

  “They’ve beamed out!” Nej said, startled into stating the obvious.

  Qagh whirled toward him, wielding the scalpel. His bloodlust and anger might have ended the physician’s life had the Hegh’TlhoS not violently shuddered to one side at that moment. Half the tools in the infirmary slid across the counterto
ps, many of them clattering to the far-from-sterile floor that tilted beneath the freebooter captain’s feet.

  “Captain, we’re under attack!” the voice of the Hegh’TlhoS’s Orion navigator said, slightly distorted by the ship’s comm system. “They’re firing at us even though we’re still cloaked!”

  “Raise shields! Evasive maneuvers!” Qagh shouted, steadying himself against one of the room’s medical tables as the ship rocked again. He heard a loud, rumbling sound coming up from one of the lower decks, followed by a brief roar. The hull’s been breached, he thought ruefully. “I’m on my way to the command deck.”

  Nej hurried after him, following at a respectful distance. “The prisoners must have been carrying hidden transmitters of some kind,” he said. “There’s no other way their rescuers could have pinpointed their location.”

  “Obviously,” the albino snapped. “Despite all of your searches and scans, they apparently went unfound.”

  “I am a physician and a biological researcher, Captain,” Nej sniffed as the pair made haste toward the forward section of the modified freighter. “I am not a subspace radio engineer. I respectfully suggest you focus your attention on the problem at hand rather than on blame. For instance, how do we know that our guests didn’t leave more small transmitters behind? If one of their ships could achieve a transporter lock, they may be able to continue targeting us in spite of our cloak.”

  “Then I shall make sure that nothing gets left behind,” Qagh said, punching the pad on the wall next to the command deck’s entrance. The door slid open obediently.

  The vessel’s cramped bridge was in chaos, and Qagh could see on his viewscreens that the three Klingon battle cruisers were indeed firing purposefully, rather than blindly, at the Hegh’TlhoS.

  If they can see through our cloak, then simply running will do us no good, the albino thought. I must confront them.

  “Keep the cloaking system running at all costs!” Qagh barked. “Continue evasive maneuvers. And get a scrub team to make certain that our other recent Klingon guests really left nothing behind after they were disintegrated.”