Forged in Fire Read online

  Though the hour was late, she opened a channel to a specific suite located among the VIP quarters on deck eight.

  “Commander Rand to Ambassador Curzon Dax. . . .”

  • • •

  Sulu lay on his bunk in the darkness, gazing into the distant, warp-field smeared stars that were sprinkled across the void beyond Excelsior’s hull. He was glad he hadn’t been so presumptuous as to have his things moved into the suite of rooms officially designated as the captain’s quarters. Of course, there hadn’t yet been time even to pack up and store the late Captain Styles’s personal effects.

  There’s no point wasting energy thinking about the captain’s quarters anymore, he thought, opening his palm to the dim glow of starlight and Excelsior’s warp field. One of the rank insignia from his uniform jacket glinted faintly in his hand. Its angular silver hourglass shape, bisected by a pair of braided gold bars, identified him as a full commander. It was a rank he had been proud to attain, and an insignia that he had always worn with chest-swelling pride.

  But now it seemed to represent only a barrier he might never succeed in crossing, a membrane he might never penetrate, despite a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice. It was an impregnable gate that had slammed shut, separating him from the rank of captain, perhaps forever.

  All because he hadn’t been able to resist chasing a ghost from more than forty years in his past.

  Reaching across the bed, he tossed the insignia onto the low table beside him. He tried like hell not to think about it anymore, but failed completely.

  I’m at loose ends, he thought, all because of a loose end.

  Fueled by both his hard-earned fatigue and the hypnotic glow of the distant stars, sleep began slowly enfolding him in its warm embrace.

  Loose ends.

  As he started his descent into the weightless freefall of slumber, all he could think of was the mysterious cloaked shuttle that the albino’s ship had launched when he and the Klingons had been Qagh’s captives. He had never discovered its purpose or destination. Besides the albino himself and the microbial time bombs he had planted, it was the most serious loose end that both he and the Klingons had failed to track down.

  He could only hope that that particular loose end wouldn’t return to haunt any of them.

  FORTY

  Early 2290 (the Year of Kahless 915, early in the month of

  Xan’lahr; Gregorian date: January 13, 2290)

  The freebooter ship Jevqem

  Seated on one of the small lab’s narrow stools, Qagh frowned deeply at the biotechnological inventory report on the padd that Nej had just handed him. The hand that held the padd shook slightly, and he quickly switched hands to conceal his momentary weakness.

  But he knew he couldn’t conceal his deeply angry and near-despondent state of mind as he considered the seriousness of the blow that his foes had dealt him.

  “I had virtually everything I needed to create a weapon that could have leveraged the High Council into doing nearly anything I wanted it to do,” he said, shaking his head ruefully as he studied the grim figures on the padd for what might have been the hundredth time. “I could have threatened to wipe out whole planetary biospheres unless they let me alone. Then came my kinsman and his motley band of brothers. Now all those years of effort might as well have been deliberately thrown down Qul Tuq’s gravity well.”

  “You shouldn’t lose hope, Qagh,” Nej said, his dusky face a mask of concern.

  Though the albino knew Nej was merely playing his customary role of concerned physician, he found himself snarling at the man. “I would be delighted to see some justification for that spectacularly unfounded bit of reasoning. I can never gain control of the House of Ngoj. I was foolish to believe that I could, or that I even wanted to. The whole weight of a culture that rejected me — a society of which I am not overly fond to begin with — will never permit it, no matter how many weapons I develop and deploy.

  “I may not survive this, Nej. Not only has my work been set back by years — including the work that keeps my . . .condition at bay — but the armed forces of two galactic powers have compromised some of my best sources of raw biomaterials.”

  Nej lapsed into silence at this, stroking his bearded chin as he made a show of choosing his next words with extreme care. “Those two galactic powers will soon have reason to afford us both a more appropriate level of respect,” he said.

  Qagh’s despair immediately yielded to irritated puzzlement. “What are you talking about, Nej?”

  Nej displayed his sharpened teeth, apparently eager to ingratiate himself to the freebooter. And a strange light that Qagh saw only rarely burned behind his eyes, much more strongly than ever before.

  “I speak of the blow that I have already struck, in secret, against the weaklings on the Council who would discuss capitulation with the Empire’s enemies,” Nej said, smiling beatifically. “I wasn’t going to speak of it until I was more certain of the results. But considering your present state of mind —”

  “What have you done, Nej?” the albino said, interrupting, all at once feeling chilled by the madness he saw emerging from behind the elderly doctor’s eyes. He rose from his stool, set the padd down upon it, and approached Nej, studying him closely.

  “I recently finished the design work and protein synthesis on another new retrovirus,” Nej said. “And I’ve already deployed it.”

  The albino’s eyes grew large with astonishment. Was this Nej’s way of staging a coup, like the one Qagh himself had undertaken decades ago aboard the Jade Lady?

  “You released a new retrovirus without clearing it with me first?”

  Nej raised a placating hand. “It’s just a little side project — one that Hurghom and I first began working on after the Council discommendated me as punishment for the SermanyuQ grain-virus fiasco.”

  Qagh swallowed hard and he closed his eyes. His head hurt, making him wonder if it was already time to medicate again. “What is the nature of this new virus?”

  “It is highly contagious, and should prove most reliably lethal to members of those Houses that wronged me over the SermanyuQ affair. I trust I needn’t remind you that many of those individuals also took part in humbling the House from which you originated.”

  Qagh could scarcely believe his ears. Had he been so wrapped up in the intricacies of biochemically maintaining his own existence from month to month and week to week — to say nothing of his own plans to avenge himself against his enemies — that he had missed Nej’s slide into a reckless vendetta-mania of his own?

  Or perhaps the old man had simply been driven mad by his long years of exposure to so many exotic bioagents. Maybe we’re both insane after living so much of our lives out on the margins of the frontier, he thought.

  “You were the one responsible for launching the small auxiliary ship,” Qagh said. “The one that disappeared the first time my kinsman came aboard the Hegh’TlhoS.”

  Nej nodded enthusiastically, as though he believed he had somehow cheered his employer up. “Though the small cloaking device it carries is quite a power drain, the craft ought to reach Qo’noS quite soon, if it hasn’t done so already. Once there, it will release my virus into the atmosphere. It should take but little time thereafter for the pathogen to reach its intended targets.”

  The Houses of the High Council, or their successors, won’t take this lying down, the albino thought as his surprise and bemusement swiftly metamorphosed into a hard, cold rage. He reached for his belt, and his hand landed on the butt of the small disruptor pistol he habitually kept there.

  “All I wanted to do, Nej, was to stay alive with the purpose of punishing and plundering Kor’s ancestral House for abandoning me during my infancy. I wanted to hold the big bioweapons in reserve, to keep the Council at bay.

  “But you, Nej, have gone too far.”

  Qagh drew his weapon then and fired it into the other man’s chest in a single fluid motion. It was Nej’s turn to look astonished, at least for the instant i
t took for his suddenly lifeless body to fall backward to the deck. The albino looked down upon the dead man in disgust, and watched as the remnants of the strange, mad light slowly faded from his eyes.

  The Council might have no choice now other than to declare total war upon me, he thought as he holstered his disruptor. He had always enjoyed the warm, comforting feel of a freshly fired disruptor when he returned it to his belt. Today, however, he almost regretted it.

  Almost.

  Nej may have just brought the entire power structure of the Klingon Empire right down on top of me, he thought. Unless . . .

  FORTY-ONE

  Early 2290 (the Year of Kahless 915, early in the month of

  Xan’lahr; Gregorian date: January 13, 2290)

  Qo’noS

  Seated at the sparsely populated outdoor food gallery near the TlhIng Veng laboratory and office complex where he worked whenever the Klothos returned to Qo’noS for repairs, Dr. Hurghom gazed contentedly into the gray, late-afternoon sky.

  A warm breeze tickled the back of his neck as he caught his first glimpse of the meteor. None of the dozen or so other diners present, most of them smooth-headed QuchHa’ people like Hurghom himself, had taken any overt notice as yet of the slender trail of fire that crossed the sky as they conversed over trays of steaming bregit, hot bloodwine, cool but still-writhing gagh, and tankards of warm, bitter bahgol.

  At least he’d thought the descending missile was a meteor, until its fiery trail abruptly changed course, as though intent on reaching the most densely populated sections of the city before completing its terminal plunge to Qo’noS’s surface. Hurghom also thought it strange that a meteor would be pursued by military fighter craft — and this object was being chased by a pair of the sleek, one-man vessels, both of whose forward disruptor tubes were throwing lances of fire in a thus-far vain attempt to shoot their quarry from the sky.

  The small crowd of diners seated at the tables nearest to Hurghom’s had finally begun to notice the drama that was playing out just above the eastern horizon and that was approaching with the rapidity of a lowland desert gale. A few startled exclamations escaped from the watchers as a pair of pale red disruptor beams converged at a critical point in the air just above the city’s administrative district.

  The object, which Hurghom stubbornly continued to regard as a meteor in defiance of abundant evidence to the contrary, suddenly exploded in a spectacular amber flash. The swiftly dissipating nimbus of fire and smoke dropped a fine but faintly visible rain of debris over the qelI’qams-distant city core.

  One by one, the other diners rose and exited, perhaps to check in with friends or family at the city core, or else returned to their interrupted meals and conversations.

  Hurghom, who lacked both a mealtime companion and an appetite, could not simply ignore what he had just seen. Leaving a payment chit on the tray beside his half-finished gladst salad and chech’tluth flask, he rose and crossed the food gallery, following the main boulevard that led toward the city core.

  If that thing wasn’t a meteor, then what was it? he wondered as he looked up and down the street, hoping to catch an inbound hoverskimmer. Unfortunately, none were visible at the moment among the early flurry of commuter traffic.

  Could it have been a small attack ship?

  Unbidden visions arose of planets suddenly shattered by stealthy projectiles — the very fate that had befallen the Earther-allied world Coridan about a century and a half earlier.

  Ignoring the grinding aches in his bones, Hurghom forgot about the hoverskimmer and continued walking along the boulevard’s walkway. He quickened his pace, weaving and dodging through and around the small clusters of tradesmen and shoppers moving between the street’s various shops and offices. Vehicular traffic on the far side of the street itself was light, since few vehicles were taking the inbound lanes that emptied into the city core. Traffic in the outbound lanes on Hurghom’s side, however, was beginning to proliferate as a small but steady stream of low-floating hovercars tried to beat the most congested part of the daily commute from TlhIng Veng to the metropolis’s sprawling suburbs and exurbs.

  Hurghom noticed that an oncoming skimmer — one headed out of the city — was moving erratically, weaving in and out of its lane, causing other vehicles to swerve to avoid collision. At least a half-dozen vehicular alert-alarms began keening shrilly, eloquently conveying the displeasure of their drivers. Hurghom was momentarily frozen in place even as several of the passing pedestrians on either side of him began to take notice and cry out.

  The massive skimmer abruptly swerved across four lanes of traffic.

  And it was headed straight for Hurghom.

  Something struck the scientist in the back, momentarily winding him as it pushed him forward. He thought for a moment that one of the other vehicles had somehow hit him while trying to evade the skimmer, then realized he had been half-tackled by a young man who was evidently intent on getting him out of harm’s way as quickly as possible, without wasting too much of his energy on gentleness.

  Engines gunning, the hoverskimmer hurtled past, missing him by little more than a hand’s breadth as it crashed head-long into the wide glass façade of a blademaker’s shop. The skimmer came to a halt only after half-burying itself in the building. Passersby scattered and milled about, the faces of men, women, and children all presenting only slight variations on the basic theme of extreme surprise.

  “You weren’t fast enough, old man,” said Hurghom’s rescuer, whom the scientist recognized now as a warrior clad in full military regalia; perhaps he had been on his way to purchase some of the blademaker’s wares. Like Hurghom, the young man’s forehead was smooth, though it was creased with concern at the moment.

  “Never mind me,” Hurghom said, only now realizing that the young warrior was still clutching him by both biceps. He shrugged himself loose from the warrior’s iron grasp and pointed at the skimmer, whose motors were now audibly shutting down, probably in response to some built-in safety protocol. “There must be people in that vehicle who require far more attention than I do.”

  The warrior nodded, then turned and made his way toward the front of the skimmer, carefully picking his way through the pile of tangled but still-settling debris. Although the jumble of wrecked masonry and torn metal posed a not-inconsiderable hazard to him, years of service aboard a Klingon battle cruiser forced Hurghom to follow the warrior inside.

  Because the sliding door near the front of the skimmer had evidently been jammed open during the crash, it took only moments for the warrior and Hurghom to get inside the vehicle.

  Immediately in front of Hurghom, the warrior knelt beside the apparently unconscious middle-aged QuchHa’ woman who was slumped in the driver’s seat. No marks were visible on her, apart from some bloody mottling across her smooth forehead.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she shrieked incoherently. “It rained down from the sky!” was all Hurghom could understand.

  “What?” asked the warrior. “What rained down from the sky?”

  “Death,” she said, then issued another scream before becoming both silent and motionless.

  “She is dead,” the warrior said. “The crash was too much for her.”

  Groans came from the dozen or so seats behind that of the driver, from those who had sustained injuries from the crash as well as from others whose foreheads displayed the same mottling as had the driver’s. Hurghom was willing to wager that many of those present who had already lapsed into motionless silence had also followed the skimmer driver into Gre’thor’s grasp.

  “She did not die from the crash,” Hurghom said. He understood now with a bedrock certainty that the missile that had just been destroyed over TlhIng Veng had nevertheless accomplished its terrible mission.

  Both of Hurghom’s QiVon cracked loudly as he knelt beside the dead driver’s body. His hands trembled slightly as he removed a small glass vial from his tunic pocket and carefully filled it with a sample of the blood-tinged fluid that oozed
from the sores on the woman’s mottled forehead.

  “What are you doing, old man?” the warrior said brusquely. “That woman is beyond help. Her body is now merely an empty shell.”

  Hurghom carefully capped the sample vial, then allowed the scowling warrior to help him back to his feet.

  “You’re right, of course,” the scientist said. “But she may be able to help many others who are similarly afflicted yet still live.” He held up the vial for the warrior’s inspection.

  “This is the death that rained down from the sky?” the warrior wanted to know.

  “Maybe not,” Hurghom said, tucking the little vial back into his tunic pocket. “If I can get this sample back to my lab quickly, that is.”

  And if the malady to which we have both just been exposed doesn’t get the better of me first.

  Glancing out the hoverskimmer’s rear window, Hurghom could see another half dozen passersby beginning to stagger and fall.

  Fear at last made itself evident on the young warrior’s face.

  “Come with me,” the warrior said as he moved toward the skimmer’s broken front door. “I have a vehicle parked nearby.”

  • • •

  This has to be the work of the albino, Hurghom thought as he labored alone in his lab over the biosample he had taken in the crashed skimmer.

  Thanks to the warning he had dispatched to the Klingon Defense Force, all the High Council’s scientific resources were even now being brought to bear against the biological attack against TlhIng Veng.

  Or so the Council’s lower functionaries had told him.

  Hurghom was certain, however, that only Klingons of the HemQuch variety, rather than smooth-headed QuchHa’ people like himself, were welcome on the teams that were seeking a cure for the malady that was even now beginning to spread generally across Qo’noS. Otherwise, why would the Council have neglected to tap the considerable expertise of the chief medical officer of the I.K.S. Klothos?