Forged in Fire Read online

  The eyes he’d taken would have to be disintegrated as well, of course. Qagh hated to lose any of the trophies he had just gone to so much trouble to collect. But if his crew performed up to his expectations, the sacrifice would prove more than worthwhile. We’ll have control of their ships — and their lives — soon enough, he thought with a rueful smile.

  “They know we’re here, Captain!” exclaimed one of the Orion helmsmen. “We no longer have the element of surprise in our favor. Shouldn’t we be retreating?”

  “I have something else in mind,” Qagh said in a tone that made clear that he would brook no further argument. Despite his crew’s fear of the Klingons, the albino felt confident that his people would neither quibble nor complain. After all, they lived or died by his decisions, regardless of the outcome of this particular battle.

  • • •

  I.K.S. Klothos

  “Continue firing!” Kor shouted as he retook his place in the elevated chair that dominated the center of the Klothos’s bustling bridge. Since there had been no time for him to attire himself for battle, he remained stripped to the waist, his many livid if superficial injuries somehow enhancing his authority as he led his men into battle yet again.

  “We’ve lost our weapons lock on them just after beaming you back aboard,” said Kat’re’q, a female bekk, barely sparing a glance in Kor’s direction as she worked at one of the starboard duty stations. “We must have lost our lock with the other transponder signals when they raised their shields.”

  “I don’t give a HIvje’ of warm targ nIj why you lost the target!” Kor exclaimed. “We know where they were. Some of our weapons fire has to have hit them, so there must be some debris out there that we can follow back to them. Find something that you can lock onto!”

  “I have conveyed the same instructions to the Gal’tagh and the QaD,” Koloth said from the rear of the bridge. Hurghom, the Klothos’s chief medical officer, was doing his best to treat Koloth’s broken forearm and fingers with a handheld osteoregenerator, despite the captain’s adrenaline-fueled pacing. Curzon Dax was nearby as well, helping Dr. Hurghom’s semi-capable assistant to patch the stab wounds and cuts on Kang, who had also insisted on coming to the bridge rather than wasting precious time in the Klothos’s infirmary. Kang’s treatment consisted mostly of quickly sterilizing and closing the thankfully superficial wounds, then covering them with an antiseptic foam that sutured most such wounds cleanly and quickly without depriving a warrior of whatever braggable scars he may have earned.

  As he watched the Trill ambassador work, Kor had to admit that he owed the young man a great deal of credit. Dax’s idea of having subcutaneous subspace transponders inserted into their jaws prior to their mission to Mempa II had saved the lives of four members of the assault team. Without Dax’s precautions, the entire landing party would have been butchered. The tactic had also greatly increased their chances of finding and defeating the wily albino. Kor wondered for an instant whether the idea had originated in Curzon Dax’s humanoid brain or if it had come from the sentient parasite he apparently carried with him. They’d had no time to discuss this surprising revelation — or Kor’s own dark secret — since they’d been beamed back aboard the Klothos.

  “Captain Kor, we’ve got a lock on several additional signals now,” the helmsman said, drawing Kor’s distracted attention back to the matter at hand. “And they’re coming from our men’s transponders!”

  • • •

  The freebooter ship Hegh’TlhoS

  The albino grinned at the images that filled his viewscreens. The three Klingon ships were falling right into his trap. They had expended considerable firepower shooting into the volume of space where the Hegh’TlhoS had been, and now they were making it clear that they had trained their sights toward the region where he had just dumped the last traces of the Klingon assault team. He felt certain that nothing remained aboard the cloaked freebooter ship that might reveal its position to the searching Klingon warships.

  Qagh knew that his people remained nervous, if still obedient — after all, they were still well within weapons range of the Klingon vessels — but none of them had dared to give voice to their fears. After all, they knew as well as the albino did that as long as the ship’s cloak continued to hold, they would be safe from detection on their new heading.

  At least until such time as he decided to play the next card in his hand.

  He hadn’t forgotten the unauthorized shuttle launch that had distracted him earlier — and which might even have revealed the presence of the Hegh’TlhoS to the Klingons’ sensors — but investigating that matter would have to wait until after he’d resolved the current crisis. Right now, Qagh knew he had to keep his attention focused tightly on exploiting his next clear opportunity to lessen the odds against him — or perhaps even to eliminate his pursuers once and for all.

  “Are all torpedoes armed?” he asked, not even bothering to look over toward his ordnance chief.

  “Yes, Captain,” came the crisp response.

  “Tell Bront to transfer all the power he can spare to the forward shields now,” he said.

  “And on my mark, we move.”

  • • •

  I.K.S. Klothos

  “Still nothing, Captain,” the navigator said, scrutinizing the computer panels in front of him.

  “It has been nearly thirty tups since we last detected any traceable signal from the albino’s ship,” Koloth said, growling. “From the trajectory of the corpses, it is clear that the albino dumped them in great haste — just before fleeing like a whipped targ.”

  Kor nodded as he continued studying the forward viewscreen. All three of the warships had launched fusillade after fusillade into the empty space where they had first detected the presence of the albino’s vessel, in addition to firing in almost every direction save directly at each other. And yet they still had found no evidence of debris from the pirate ship, no vented atmosphere, no radiation, no warp trail, and no bodies save those of their own warriors.

  “He is cunning,” Kor said finally. “He has waited patiently before, like a sea pochtoQ waiting for a ghargh to wriggle into its open maw. I don’t believe that he has left the system.”

  “Then where is he?” Kang shouted. He had been noticeably more irritable than usual since returning to the Klothos. Despite Dr. Hurghom’s expert but hasty medical ministrations, he seemed to be sweating profusely, as though battling a fever. “How long do you intend to wait to find him, when he may well already be on the way to his next raid?”

  “I agree with Kor,” Curzon Dax said, stepping forward. “The absence of any kind of warp trail at all leads me to believe that the likeliest possibility is that he is still here.”

  Kor watched closely to see how the other two captains were reacting to Dax’s suggestion. Irrespective of whatever might be living inside him, the Trill had shown significant bravery and intelligence so far, well in excess of any of their expectations. Perhaps because of this fact, neither Koloth nor Kang reacted negatively to Dax now, although neither of the other Klingon captains seemed willing to give his supposition much credence.

  “If you wish to stay here, Kor, then you certainly may do so,” Koloth said, pointing toward him with his already half-healed hand. “I will return to my ship and find a way to chase this aberration, rather than remain idle.”

  “I shall do the same,” Kang said. He approached one of the communication consoles and toggled open a particular channel. “Gal’tagh, lower shields and prepare to beam me over.”

  As Koloth gave a similar command to the QaD, Kor silently considered his options. Other than the demands of the albino’s terrorist ambitions, and those imposed by his chronic medical condition, nothing about the actions of Kor’s unwanted kinsman had been predictable; not only did he appear to defy the laws of nature merely by existing, he seemed to survive by defying both luck and logic as well.

  Kor rose from his chair and was about to speak when a brilliant fireball erupted on
the main viewer. A missile of some sort, a plasma torpedo from the look of it, had just exploded in extremely close proximity to Kang’s vessel, the QaD, blowing away much of the K’t’inga-class battle cruiser’s starboard wing in the process.

  Perhaps half a heartbeat later, the Gal’tagh exploded in a massive blast, plasma and atmosphere igniting and reigniting in cascading bursts as hull metal and internal components arced away from the conflagration in a shower of tiny fragments.

  The shockwave produced by the Gal’tagh’s sudden demise rocked the Klothos, but in the one or two lups that it took the three Klingon captains and Dax to regain their footing, the albino’s ship hove up from below the rapidly expanding debris cloud where the Gal’tagh had been mere moments earlier.

  Qagh’s vessel had barely cleared the debris field’s fluid perimeter when it began to slowly re-cloak, its image shimmering like a very deadly mirage. In the last moment before the freebooter ship vanished from sight, Kor saw its engine nacelles ignite as it prepared to go into warp, fleeing from all the torture and murder and sabotage its cowardly master had wrought.

  Kor was barely aware that he was automatically yelling orders to fire on the albino’s ship, even as the cacophony created by alarm klaxons, and his busy bridge crew, and Koloth’s blood-chilling howl to Sto-Vo-Kor on behalf of his abruptly slain subordinates, all competed for his attention.

  With a calm born of countless previous life-and-death struggles undertaken in the unforgiving cold of space, Kor assessed the tactical situation. The Gal’tagh was destroyed, though its captain still lived; the QaD was crippled, but was probably repairable; and the Klothos was altogether unharmed.

  He purposely saved my ship, Kor thought, his rage rising well past anything he had ever experienced before. He actually felt shooting pains in his heart.

  He saved my ship because it carries the markings of the House of Ngoj.

  And he intends to take that house back.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Early 2290 (the Year of Kahless 915,

  late in the month of Doqath)

  I.K.S. Klothos

  Dax expected the tensions between the three Klingon captains to bring them to physical blows at just about any moment. Seated in the Klothos’s surprisingly spacious captain’s mess, he watched in silence as a thoroughly healed-looking Kang pointed an accusing finger across the slate-gray tabletop at Kor. Koloth, who also appeared to be recovered from the physical wounds he’d sustained at the albino’s hands, simply sat nearby, quietly glaring at the still bruised-faced Kor from across the wreckage of the countless eel-like bodies they had all just eaten. Dax had partaken of the alien meal as well, despite his lack of enthusiasm for the live and energetically wiggling creatures.

  “You’ve known all along that the albino was your kinsman,” Kang snarled, rising from his chair. “Haven’t you?”

  “What of it?” said Kor, also getting to his feet. Dax felt his stomach lurch, only in part because of what he’d just eaten.

  “What of it?” Koloth replied with icy mockery, while remaining in his seat. “He could challenge you for control of your House. He might even succeed, should he prove wily enough.”

  “The affairs of my House need not concern either of you,” Kor said. Glaring at Dax, he added, “Nor are they the business of any outworlder.”

  “It is a matter of the gravest concern for all of us, Kor,” Kang said, the knuckles of both his large hands supporting him as he leaned forward across the table. “My people, and Koloth’s as well, came out here to work alongside your crew in the search for the albino. Koloth’s crew have given their lives for this purpose. Until now I had believed we were all acting on behalf of the Empire — without regard to the power or prominence of any particular House.”

  Kor’s eyes narrowed. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet, which Dax regarded as an extremely bad sign.

  “Kang. Do you accuse me of putting the fortunes of my own House ahead of those of the entire Klingon Empire?”

  Kang answered coolly, but without hesitation. “I do, Kor.”

  Koloth finally rose and took several deliberate steps away from the conference table. Though he arguably had more reason than anyone else present to be angry with Kor — Koloth had lost both his ship and his crew, after all — he merely leaned against the far wall, folding his arms before him in a gesture of disdain, evidently content to watch what Dax feared was about to unfold between the other two Klingon captains.

  He knows how foolish this is, but he’s not going to lift a finger to stop it, Dax thought. He was horrified not only by the notion that Kang and Kor might kill one another, but also that in doing so they might destroy whatever store of trust he had built up between their Empire and his Federation over the past several days.

  The smooth foreheads of the two old friends had both become corrugated with rage, while a third, possessed of a skull whose prominent ridges recalled those of the great Kahless himself, looked on.

  Dax knew he had to do something, even if that something placed him between a pair of erupting volcanoes.

  Two right hands reached for daggers.

  Someone shouted “Mevyap!” in badly accented Klingonese.

  Both right hands froze in mid-motion. The daggers remained in their scabbards, though tense fingers hovered nearby. No one else spoke. Three pairs of dark, hooded eyes sought Dax out, pinning him down with angry curiosity. Dax felt like an insect about to be consigned to an entomologist’s killing jar.

  He realized only then that he, Dax, had been the source of the badly articulated Klingon cry — and that he’d used a term he had picked up in the engine room of this very ship.

  Another voice, a wisp of memory centered as much down in his belly as up in his hindbrain, spoke, using words that had to be intended for Dax’s ears alone.

  “Well, say something, dummy,” Emony said.

  Sound advice for a diplomat, he thought. He took a single deep breath and continued over the precipice, though he supposed he’d already crossed the point of no return when he’d first entered Klingon space.

  “The great Houses of the Council are balanced on a d’k tahg’s edge right now,” Dax said as the three Klingons continued watching him closely. “Particularly with regard to whether the Empire should seek peace with the Federation, or renewed war. Any sudden, unexpected power shift within or between any of those Houses could decide the course of history with far greater finality than any number of Korvat conferences could. As long as the albino remains free to disrupt our governments’ efforts at détente, the future stands a very good chance of turning out very badly.”

  “You have made my point for me, Dax,” Kang rumbled.

  Dax shook his head emphatically. “Then I must not have made my point particularly well. I’m trying to make you understand that the political stakes are just too high for you to be allowed to place the future in jeopardy simply because you’re feeling slighted. That is both petty and unworthy of Klingon warriors.”

  “Take care, stripling,” Koloth said as he took a single ominous step toward the table. “Kor should not have kept his kinship to the albino a secret from us. At the very least, it has cost me my command.”

  “That may be so,” Dax said. He gestured toward Kang and Kor. “But if these two end up killing each other over Kor’s family secret, then it soon won’t be a secret from anyone. And what do you suppose will happen then?”

  Three pairs of dark eyes regarded him with pensive sullenness. None of the souls behind those eyes, however, seemed eager to argue against his point.

  “Until the albino himself decides to do something irrevocable with this information, it’s in the best interests of both the Empire and the Federation that we all work to keep it from spreading any further,” Dax said, pressing his advantage. Addressing Kang and Koloth specifically, he continued. “I know that Kor can trust you both to keep the albino’s lineage a secret, just as I trust the three of you to respect my secret.” He placed a hand against his abdomen, where
symbiont and humanoid had joined to become a single, entirely new creature. “The three of you want to do right by your Empire, because you’re all men of honor — even when you’re behaving like petulant schoolchildren.”

  “You dare much,” Kor said in a tone that closely matched the one he’d used to address Kang just prior to their abortive knife fight.

  Uh-oh, Dax thought, half expecting Kor’s thirsty blade to emerge after all. Sarek always said I tend to talk too much for my own good.

  “He does dare much,” Kang said, addressing his fellow Klingons. “But for the right cause.”

  Koloth nodded, and the sudden appearance of his icy grin might have chilled the blood of even the most battle-hardened Romulan. Addressing Kang and Kor, he said, “His personal observations aren’t wrong, either. Particularly the part about the two of you being petulant schoolchildren.”

  I think I said all three of you were petulant schoolchildren, Dax thought, knowing better than to push his luck by saying it out loud. Instead, he said, “But schoolchildren who fought like warriors against the Romulans almost twenty years ago in the Briar Patch conflict.”

  Dax watched the three Klingon captains carefully as they considered his words. All four men were now engulfed in a silence that was quickly transforming the almost unbearable tension in the room into something that felt nearly companionable.

  “Klach D’Kel Brakt,” Kor said quietly, interrupting the moment.

  “Excuse me?” Dax said.

  “It was called the Battle of Klach D’Kel Brakt. Not ‘the Briar Patch conflict.’ ”

  “Of course,” Dax said. He allowed the silence to descend again, at least for a few moments.

  “Now that we’ve settled that,” he said at length, “the four of us really ought to get back to work.”

  And to Dax’s gratified surprise, they did.