Forged in Fire Read online

  “Perhaps we both have a serious problem, Qagh.”

  • • •

  Even though her pheromonal output had never affected him quite as much as it had the rest of the Jade Lady’s crew, Qagh had always regarded D’Jinnea as an extremely attractive female — attractive for a green-skinned Orion, that is. Even after all the long decades she’d spent building up her various extralegal trade enterprises, she still favored the scanty garments typical of her species and gender. Though Qagh knew she had been in business for at least twice as long as he’d been alive, D’Jinnea looked extraordinarily young — perhaps thirty standard revolutions old at the outside — to have attained the degree of status and power she’d accumulated. It was only on occasions when she was truly angry that Qagh could see the faint lines that betrayed her true age.

  Occasions like this one.

  “Will you please explain why in the nine hells you blew away a lab on a world you said would be a biological treasure house?”

  “Turns out there wasn’t very much down there after all,” Qagh said, meeting her withering stare head-on so as not to enrage her further. “Or rather, whatever was there wasn’t nearly as . . . accessible as it should have been.”

  Ganik stood beside the raised settee where D’Jinnea lounged and looked down at Qagh. Qagh hated it when Ganik somehow managed to sidestep the mercurial woman’s wrath. He hated it even more when the two of them set up a unified front before him, like stern parents delivering a reprimand to a recalcitrant child.

  “And you found that frustrating,” Ganik said.

  “More than either of you can ever know,” Qagh said. After all, both Orions had stable DNA that lacked the tendency to spontaneously “wander” the way Qagh’s mutated genome did. How could either D’Jinnea or Ganik possibly understand having to depend on a steady stream of new bioscience discoveries, whether generated in his own meager lab or plundered from the work of others, just to survive from month to month, or even from week to week?

  “You’d be surprised, Qagh,” Ganik said. “Raising you as if you were my own son ought to qualify me to conduct master classes in frustration.”

  “You forced us to break orbit in a hurry,” D’Jinnea said. “And you may have caused Starfleet to upgrade the Jade Lady from nuisance to threat, Qagh. I’m not very happy about that.”

  Qagh had to admit that D’Jinnea had an excellent point. He had no good excuse for allowing his temper to get the better of him, and no viable alternative to begging his employer’s indulgence yet again. In spite of himself, he felt more compliant now that he was in close proximity to her, no doubt because of the cloud of pheromones her body produced.

  “Forgive me, Lady D’Jinnea,” he said. “I will try to keep my passions on a tighter rein in the future.”

  Deep green eyes that were far older than they appeared flashed at him. “See that you do. I can’t afford a repetition of your performance on Ganjitsu at our next stop.”

  This will be the last apology I deliver to this vain creature, Qagh thought, quietly seething. Once we reach Qav’loS, there will be no further need.

  Aloud, he said, “The Qav’loS sector is more lightly patrolled than any of the other border regions. As far as I can tell, no Starfleet or Klingon vessels have ever come within two parsecs of the one habitable world there.”

  “That’s fortunate,” Ganik said. “I would like you to help ensure that it stays that way.”

  “At least until after we have taken what we need from that world,” said D’Jinnea.

  “Your report about Qav’loS makes it sound almost too good to be true,” Ganik said, sounding neither overly credulous nor overly eager.

  Just as we planned.

  “The planet’s humanoid natives can live for upwards of a thousand standard revolutions,” Qagh said. “The reason is without doubt environmental. We merely have to send a team to the planet’s surface and isolate the cause.”

  “I trust you are certain of this?”

  Qagh suppressed a triumphant smile. “My sources of information are reliable, as always.”

  As is your endless gullibility concerning the quest for eternal youth, he thought.

  • • •

  2248

  Qav’loS orbit

  Qagh says the stuff is finally ready to use, Ganik thought. He’d better be right.

  Ganik was the first of the survey team to emerge from the docked landing craft into the Jade Lady’s cramped shuttlebay, where D’Jinnea was waiting impatiently for the team’s return. Although he hadn’t been down on the planet all that long, he saw immediately that something wasn’t quite right with his employer. Of course, he was willing to allow that she might merely have been anxious about having her two most valuable crew members off the ship and out of her immediate control for the past three days. But her teal-green pallor told him that something even more fundamental was wrong.

  Maybe her “immortality” treatments are finally wearing off, Ganik thought, pleased by the notion. Or else that albino bastard has been secretly altering those potions she’s come to depend on.

  As the rest of the planetary survey team began to emerge from the landing craft behind him, Ganik cast an uneasy eye on Qagh, who seemed more gaunt and unsteady than usual.

  “We shouldn’t have let him go down to the surface,” Ganik said quietly to D’Jinnea once he’d drawn near enough to her that no one else could hear their conversation. “I don’t like the way he looks.”

  D’Jinnea snickered. “You’ve never liked the way he looks.”

  “That’s not what I mean, D’Jinnea. I think he’s sick.”

  She looked at him as though he’d just sprouted a second head. “Of course he’s sick, Ganik. How many years has it taken you to finally notice that?”

  “I mean he’s really sick. Have you ever seen him sweat like that before?” Ganik was willing to allow that Qagh might merely be nervous about following through with their plan. But he felt certain there was more to it than that.

  “Qagh has always been . . . delicate,” D’Jinnea said, watching the albino closely as he supervised the other crew members who were unloading various crates of delicate bio-samples taken from the world below. “But maybe you’re right. Still, I needed to send him down there with you, in spite of the risk. After all, who else would have known precisely what to look for?”

  “Good point,” Ganik said as Qagh approached.

  While D’Jinnea was momentarily distracted by the intercom — Golag was calling from the engine room to explain why he’d need an extra day at least to finish cleaning the Bussard manifolds — Ganik exchanged a silent but significant glance with the white-skinned Klingon. Qagh acknowledged Ganik’s wordless signal with a nod, then reached under his cloak and withdrew a small vial, which he opened with a flick of his thumb.

  The trigger’s been pulled, Ganik thought. Like a spear already cast through an Orion spineboar’s hearts, the laboriously created contents of that vial now could not be recalled, even if he desired it; the exotic chemical compound was already making its way into the ventilation system, which would spread it quickly through the entire ship.

  It’s about damned time, Ganik thought. He had wanted Qagh to release the compound before the Jade Lady reached Qav’loS. But even though the formula appeared to have passed all the tests, Qagh had resisted doing anything with it prior to today.

  Ganik experienced a moment of fear. What if Qagh was double-crossing him? He could have just released some sort of general poison or neurotoxin, dragging his feet until after their departure from Qav’loS just to cover his tracks. But the Klingon albino, always so fastidious about maintaining his own safety, would never subject himself to that sort of risk, not even for a chance at grabbing the keys to D’Jinnea’s criminal fiefdom for himself. Dismissing his concerns as foolish, Ganik fell into step alongside Qagh as D’Jinnea led the way out of the shuttlebay and into the captain’s quarters in the forward part of the Jade Lady.

  Once the three were inside
D’Jinnea’s small but luxuriously appointed quarters, Ganik and Qagh waited in silence while their employer retreated behind a flimsy privacy screen and changed from her already abbreviated work attire to a filmy, flowing robe. Ganik knew that her behavior was motivated less by modesty than it was by a reluctance to reveal the subtle scars left by decades of surgical rejuvenation procedures. Since he’d first come aboard as an adolescent, he had seen more of D’Jinnea than he cared to.

  “I want your full report about Qav’loS now,” she said as she disrobed behind the screen. Her shoulders, visible over the top of the screen, looked blotchy and uncharacteristically stooped, like those of a frail old woman. “Give me everything that has even a chance of being useful.”

  Turning toward Qagh, Ganik said, “Your analysis, Qagh?”

  D’Jinnea seemed annoyed as the feverish-looking albino stroked his wispy beard, fixed his unfocused gaze on the ceiling, and gathered his thoughts.

  Ganik found her pent-up impatience understandable, if somewhat annoying. She had originally ordered Ganik to keep the shuttle in constant contact with the Jade Lady, transmitting every discovery and analytical result in real time. Ganik and Qagh had both worked hard to persuade her that this would be unwise, since there was no knowing who might be listening in.

  “An interesting place, Qav’loS,” Qagh said at length. “A humanoid-habitable environment, not all that different from Orion or Qo’noS. The humanoid population is divided primarily into two factions, mutually hostile to each other. We kept well clear of both, particularly the more violent of the two groups, whom the villagers called Yang —”

  “I don’t have time for a sociology lesson!” D’Jinnea snapped, interrupting. “What are the biological potentials of the place?”

  Ganik noticed the authoritative tone D’Jinnea was using. Generally, her words snapped him to full attention and all but unquestioned obedience when delivered in this manner, and he had always understood why, at least intellectually: it was the Orion male’s physiological response to the pheromonal secretions of the Orion female, which had a similar intoxicating effect on the males of many other species as well. It was, in fact, the entire biochemical basis for the Orion civilization’s essentially matriarchal structure.

  He noticed something else as well: he no longer felt any compulsion to obey this woman. Unquestioned obedience had been a part of his basic makeup for so long that its sudden absence was more than a little disorienting, despite the fact that he and Qagh had planned this together in secret more than three standard cycles earlier.

  As D’Jinnea put on her robe, glowering at him and upbraiding them both from across the top of the privacy wall, Ganik saw something utterly at odds with the sexually charged dynamo — She Who Must Be Obeyed — to whom he had sworn fealty more than half a century earlier.

  He simply saw an old woman, a yoke that had grown too heavy to bear. He saw an obstacle in his ambition’s path.

  His hand wandered slowly toward the handle of the long-bladed knife he kept in his sash.

  Qagh leaned toward Ganik and spoke in a thin whisper. “Her own DNA is probably becoming nearly as unstable as mine. Probably the cumulative effect of all those rejuvenation treatments.”

  Ganik could only wonder how long Qagh had suspected this.

  Cinching her robe about her slim waist, D’Jinnea came storming out from behind the screen until she stood in the small stateroom’s center, glaring at both men.

  “Well? Are both of my senior lieutenants suddenly dumb-struck? I’m still waiting to learn the biological potentials of the planet you spent the past three days surveying.”

  Ganik turned toward Qagh, who seemed to be ignoring D’Jinnea entirely. “How are you feeling, Ganik?” Qagh asked.

  “I feel . . . strange. Liberated.”

  “Hello?” D’Jinnea shouted. “Qav’loS, remember? I need to know about every bit of exploitable biology you found down there.”

  Of course, Ganik thought, grasping the handle of his knife in a tight grip. You’re not getting any younger, are you?

  Suddenly looking stronger than he had in years, Qagh continued to ignore her. “The pheromone uptake inhibitor ought to be taking hold by now throughout the ship, Ganik,” he said. “But there’s only one way to really test it.”

  Ganik knew precisely how to conduct that test; he’d been rehearsing the procedure in his dreams for years.

  He drew his knife, lunged toward the mortally surprised woman, and relieved her of command.

  • • •

  No sooner had Ganik formally taken charge of the Jade Lady— and announced D’Jinnea’s unfortunate accidental death to the crew — than his earlier intuition about Qagh’s declining health proved correct.

  The albino collapsed in the control room, right in the middle of an animated discussion about whether or not further visits to the surface of Qav’loS would be necessary, and Ganik wasted no time carrying him belowdecks to the medical pod. No one was available to treat the stricken Klingon, however, since Qagh himself had always served as the closest thing the Jade Lady had to a ship’s doctor.

  Fortunately, the delirious albino had managed to remain lucid enough to guide Ganik in administering a series of injections that quickly brought him back from what had appeared to be death’s proverbial door.

  Qagh rallied, and he even looked marginally less pale than usual. Ganik felt immense relief, both because he hadn’t lost a crew member whose peculiar expertise had always turned a large profit for the Jade Lady, and because he had saved a young man whom he’d raised from infancy, and whom he regarded in some respects as the son he never had. A sickly, ugly son to be sure, but one who nevertheless inspired paternal feelings that Ganik had never believed he’d be capable of experiencing.

  Back in the control room less than half a kilaan later, Ganik himself began to feel ill. The fever came first, making him wonder if something had gone wrong with the environmental controls. Immediately following this was a disorienting free fall–like sensation that prompted him to speculate that the grav plating might also be malfunctioning.

  Cheb’s sudden collapse, followed minutes later by a messy bout of projectile vomiting by Golag, convinced him that whatever had gone amiss had nothing to do with the ship itself.

  As the remaining dozen members of the Jade Lady’s crew complement fell swiftly in an apparent epidemiological chain reaction, Ganik’s earlier fear that Qagh had somehow double-crossed him returned full force.

  Why did the albino, who had been near death so very recently, seem to be utterly unaffected by whatever had felled the rest of the Jade Lady’s personnel?

  “I think I may have a partial answer to what’s happening,” Qagh said, interrupting Ganik’s dark reverie. Ganik looked over the albino’s slight shoulder at the scanners, graphical and digital displays, and microscope equipment that Qagh had linked into the autodoc’s computer.

  Ganik blinked as he steadied himself by gripping the back of Qagh’s chair. He wasn’t certain whether or not his rising fever was the culprit, but he did know that he couldn’t make any sense whatsoever out of what he was seeing.

  Fortunately, Qagh saved him the trouble of asking for an explanation. “We must have brought some pathogen or other back with us from the surface of Qav’loS,” he said.

  “How . . .” Ganik said, pausing as the deck slanted steeply beneath his feet and Qagh showed no sign of having noticed even after it righted itself a moment later. “How did your scans miss it?”

  Qagh shrugged, and replied in somewhat nettled tones. “Scanners can only scan for the things they’re designed to scan for, Ganik.”

  “Well, what’s this thing going to do to us?”

  “No way to tell for certain other than to let it run its course,” Qagh said with another shrug.

  Ganik didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “You mean you aren’t going to do anything?”

  Qagh turned away from his displays and faced Ganik, grinning up at him. “I didn’t say that.”
He picked up a small airhypo that lay in his crowded workspace for apparent emphasis.

  Ganik wasn’t sure whether he ought to feel relief or foreboding.

  • • •

  Overruling Qagh’s objections, Ganik insisted on being the last member of the Jade Lady’s crew complement to be injected with the hastily synthesized counteragent. Ganik wasn’t simply being noble; if it turned out that Qagh was administering something lethal, Ganik didn’t want to learn about it the hard way. As it turned out, everyone aboard the ship seemed to feel much better almost immediately.

  “How soon will we know whether or not this cure is going to take?” Ganik said, rubbing the burning spot on his left bicep where Qagh had injected him.

  Qagh’s sour expression told him he wasn’t going to like the answer much. “It may buy us a little time. But it’s insufficient.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that the environment of Qav’loS itself will probably do a much better job of neutralizing the virus we’ve contracted than I can. A few kilaans or so of additional exposure to the planet’s atmosphere — maybe a whole standard rotation — ought to do it.”

  Ganik’s residual suspicions recrudesced, deploying a scowl across his face. “You want to cure a disease by sending everyone down to the very place where that disease came from.”

  “I can’t think of a better solution.”

  “It’s insane.”

  Qagh folded his arms across his slight chest and returned Ganik’s scowl. “It isn’t my fault that the universe sometimes works counterintuitively.”

  A wave of weakness seized Ganik, turning his knees to water. He reached toward the bulkhead to steady himself.

  “Are you all right, Ganik?” Qagh said, a vague smile on his face.

  Ganik growled. “No, I’m not all right, damn it. I’m sick, remember?”

  “And you may get a whole lot sicker, along with everybody else aboard the Jade Lady. Unless you authorize the treatment I’ve just prescribed — and fast.”