Forged in Fire Page 43

  A single fat tear began rolling slowly down her cheek. “Because unlike Qagh, some of his enemies are honorable and trustworthy men. And because I had nowhere else to go.”

  Kang’s anger dissipated like a summer squall over the mountain peak on Qo’noS that bore his name. He had never before encountered such a portrait of hopelessness as he saw now in Ylda — a woman so desperate that she had no one to turn to other than a vengeful enemy. In this woman’s presence, he found it difficult to remain anchored to the hatred that had sustained him for all these years, thanks to the blood oath.

  Now, to his immense surprise, he could feel very little save pity for the bedraggled woman who sat beside him. I am indeed getting too old for this, he thought, becoming more than a little disgusted with himself. I have grown weary, and therefore soft. Like the Empire itself.

  Right or wrong, Kang decided to adopt a tack other than intimidation and torture. Catching the attention of the Orion waitress again, he waved her over to his booth. He reached into his armored tunic and withdrew a small coin purse, from which emerged a respectable pile of both latinum strips and Klingon darseks.

  “I want you to prepare some comfortable quarters for this woman,” he said, pushing the heap of coins and slips across the table toward the waitress. “See that they are well provisioned with food and drink, and clean clothing as well. You will advise me when all is in readiness.”

  After the waitress had finished enthusiastically scooping up the unanticipated windfall and disappeared, Kang turned his attention back upon Ylda.

  She couldn’t have looked more surprised had he suddenly drawn a mek’leth and stabbed her through the heart with it.

  “Now will you share the albino’s whereabouts with me?”

  She opened and closed her mouth several times, like a beached spikefish vainly gasping for air. “He will still find me and kill me.”

  “Only if I fail to find him and kill him first,” Kang said. “But I have waited many, many years already to enjoy that privilege. So perhaps I can afford to abide a while longer, while you are in your room cleaning up, resting, and considering my . . . request.”

  Yes, he thought. I am weary, and I am old. But I am also patient. There would still be time aplenty to bring bloody justice to the albino; all he had to do in the meantime was to build a bridge of trust between himself and this woman.

  Just as Curzon Dax once did for me, Koloth, and Kor.

  “Thank you,” Ylda said.

  Kang watched with a mixture of fascination and envy as a second distended tear followed the trail its elder brother had blazed down her cheek. It had long been his understanding that among many sentient races, including Earthers, tears were thought either to reveal joy or to wash away sorrow. Though the Klingon people’s lack of tear ducts prevented Kang from shedding tears for either reason, the hardships he had endured since DaqS’s death sometimes made him wish he could weep.

  “Do you have children?” Kang asked gently.

  She nodded, her eyes flashing as still more tears struggled to escape.

  Kang reached again into his tunic, from which he withdrew a small holocube. He activated its imaging controls with a flick of his thumb before setting the cube down in the center of the table.

  The fiercely grinning face of his beloved, long-dead little boy DaqS suddenly appeared, hovering just above the cube like an apparition summoned by one of the mystics of ancient Qo’noS.

  “Then let me tell you of the life and death of my firstborn son,” Kang said, smiling gently as memories of pleasanter times returned. “And of the lives and deaths of the sons of my blood brothers, Kor and Koloth.”

  There will be time, Kang thought. Then he began to recount his tale of happiness and woe, of love and death, of outrage and revenge.

  And he watched the flow of Ylda’s rapidly dwindling supply of tears.

  Acknowledgments

  As ever, any errors or fubars contained in these pages are the sole responsibility of the authors. But even though only two names appear on the spine of this novel, legions of others contributed invaluable assistance in the work’s creation. Among those who merit special commendations are: Marco Palmieri, an editor without whose inexhaustible patience and expert guidance this book could never have completed its arduous ten-year journey from brilliant initial idea (Marco’s) to gigantic finished manuscript (ours); I.K.S. Gorkon author Keith R.A. DeCandido, who contributed his unparalleled expertise in Klingon culture, language, technology, metaphysics, and calendar calculations; the kind and indulgent folks at the Daily Market and Café, where much of Mike’s portions of this novel were written; Dr. Marc Okrand, whose volumes on the Klingon language were constant companions; David Gerrold, whose furry creations (seen in “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “More Tribbles, More Troubles”) played a small but pivotal role in the Klingon history depicted herein; Michael Jan Friedman, whose gorgeous 1999 hardcover volume New Worlds, New Civilizations provided valuable reference specific to both Klingons and tribbles; Dayton Ward, whose 2002 novel In the Name of Honor provided valuable literary continuity references regarding Klingon dermatology, and who (with coauthor Kevin Dilmore) enriched the Klingon vocabulary in 2006’s Star Trek Vanguard: Summon the Thunder; Susan Wright’s “Infinity” (from 1999’s The Lives of Dax), which gave us Excelsior chief engineer Lahra as well as a previous visit from both Dr. Christine Chapel and Torias Dax; Majliss Larson, whose 1985 novel Pawns and Symbols named two vessels commanded by Kang; Vonda N. McIntyre, whose Captain Hunter (commander of the border ship Aerfen) and much of Hikaru Sulu’s family history were referenced previously in 1981’s The Entropy Effect and 1986’s Enterprise: The First Adventure; Julia Ecklar, whose 1989 novel Kobayashi Maru debuted Hikaru Sulu’s great-grandfather Tetsuo Inomata; Geoffrey Mandel for his Star Trek Star Charts (2002), which provided an invaluable reference to “galactic geography”; Diane Duane, whose 1997 novel Intellivore supplied some nifty Trill place names; Phaedra M. Weldon, whose story “The Lights in the Sky” (published in 1998 in the first Strange New Worlds anthology) shed some light on the time-frame of the launch of the U.S.S. Enterprise-B; Peter David, whose 1995 novel The Captain’s Daughter established a great deal about Demora Sulu’s relationship with her father, and whose 1994 audiobook Cacophony introduced Lieutenant Terra Spiro; David R. George, whose Serpents Among the Ruins (a 2003 novel) and “Iron and Sacrifice” (a story in 2005’s Tales from the Captain’s Table anthology) have charted the voyage of Demora Sulu for many parsecs beyond the boundaries of this tale; L. A. Graf (aka Julia Ecklar and Karen Rose Cercone), whose 1998 Captain’s Table novel War Dragons debuted some of the characters found in these pages, including Transporter Chief Renyck, engineer Tim Henry, and Dr. Judith Klass; Judy Klass, the author of the 1989 TOS novel Cry of the Onlies, who graciously allowed the author of War Dragons to drag her aboard Excelsior as the chief medical officer’s namesake in the first place; Michael and Denise Okuda and Debbie Mirek, whose Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future (1997 edition) remains indispensable even in the current age of wireless broadband internet service and hot-and-cold running wikis; Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton, Ricardo Villagran, Peter David (again), Bill Mumy, and Gordon Purcell, whose many and varied Star Trek comic-book tales helped to guide our take on Captain Styles; Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, whose 1990 novel Prime Directive also provided useful background pertinent to Styles and Excelsior; John M. Ford, whose 1984 novel The Final Reflection introduced the Klingon strategy game of klin zha, along with much else about Star Trek’s archetypal warrior race that has since become canonical; Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, crafters of excellent novels and fine Romulan sherawood office furniture (as advertised since 2004 in the Vulcan’s Soul hardcovers); Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy, whose respective efforts as scenarist and director of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) gave us the U.S.S. Excelsior in the first place; James B. Sikking, who breathed life into Captain Styles for the cameras in the aforementioned film; Jacqueline
Kim, who provided our only canonical glimpse of Demora Sulu in Star Trek Generations (1994); Walter Koenig and Grace Lee Whitney, for their immortal portrayals, respectively, of Pavel Chekov and Janice Rand; Michael Ansara, William Campbell, and John Colicos, who brought the Klingon Warriors Three to life, in both “smooth” and “chunky” flavors; and George Takei, who has earned those captain’s bars many, many times over.

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