The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 2 Read online

  And all of this was accomplished without a single lost ship on their side.

  “She must have most of her men on the surface,” Darok continued gloomily.

  “I agree,” Kahless said, looking at the scans of the surface near the monastery. He was not familiar with all of the conventions for the ship’s scanners, but he recognized the shape of mountains, the concentric rings that indicated water, and the sweeping lines that meant open ground. “But where? The mountains in this area are cut through with tunnels and caves. We cannot scan deep enough from this distance and if we move in too close, we will be vulnerable to ground-to-air missiles.”

  “Do we know she has them?”

  “Can we assume she does not?” Kahless asked. “Gothmara has had many years to prepare her defenses here.”

  “Hmmm.” Darok seemed to be staring off into the middle distance, but Kahless had, in their short association, learned the value of waiting for Martok’s advisor to process information. Despite the man’s sometimes too-cavalier tone, Kahless enjoyed Darok’s attitude. They were, he knew, two of a kind: two terrible old men who had survived to their respective ripe old ages through a combination of guile, ruthlessness, and endurance. In short, Kahless liked Darok because in a slightly different universe he might have become him. Pointing at a section of the mountain to the north of the monastery, Darok said, “If I were her, this is where I would be.”

  “Why there?” Kahless asked, looking at the spot where Darok was pointing midway between the open ground and the mountains. He noted also that many tiny red and green dots were beginning to appear seemingly out of thin air.

  “First, because ships could land there, near the frozen lake, but still be screened from the monastery by this ridge of hills.”

  “I see …”

  “And the supply of fresh water. Not too many other places on Boreth where that would be easily obtainable.”

  “Agreed,” Kahless said. “And well reasoned.”

  “Thank you,” Darok said. “Also, I noticed that, oh, approximately three hundred men and several dozen large creatures are exiting this particular mountain.”

  “Ah, yes,” Kahless replied dryly. “The red and green dots.”

  “Life signs.”

  “And here?” Darok pointed at three large gray spots blooming on the side of the mountain. “Anti-ship guns.”

  “So no landing?”

  “No. But if I recognize the configuration—and I do—then she cannot aim them at the ground.”

  “But she might have gun emplacements to cover the field.”

  “She might,” Darok agreed. “But this doesn’t look like an attack formation. These men …” He pointed at the dots fanning out from the mountainside, all of them headed north of the monastery. “They’re searching for something.”

  “Martok?”

  “Is there anything else on this ball of ice that’s worth looking for?”

  “Alert the fleet captains,” Kahless ordered. “Prepare ground troops for an assault.”

  “Ngane’s crews are all light. Each vessel has barely enough crew to maintain vital systems.”

  “I place great faith in your ability to inspire them, Darok. I am guessing you have a gift for such work.”

  The terrible old man smiled. “That would be correct, my emperor.”

  * * *

  The round-shaped council room where Angwar and Starn had led him was located deep in the mountain; lit by torchlight, it felt neither stuffy nor was smoke-filled. Either hidden modern technology was at work or the katai stronghold was extraordinarily well designed or perhaps both. Regardless of what “magic,” seen or unseen, created the environment, Martok felt as if he’d taken a journey outside time where an ancient era coexisted with the present. That he’d come home to a place he’d never been. The sensation simultaneously comforted him and made him uneasy. He had questions. Many questions. And the katai patiently answered each one.

  “Why did we heal you?” Okado asked, repeating Martok’s last question. “For many reasons.” The Katai Master was, Martok thought, the most ancient-looking Klingon he had ever seen. Older than Kor he was, older than his father, older even than Darok (if such a thing was possible), though he did not act old. In fact, he reminded Martok of a young boy, though that might be attributable to the fact that Okado reminded him of, more than anything (and here was a puzzle for another day), Alexander Rozhenko. Okado sat placidly on a low stool in the center of a half circle of thirteen stools, each one to his left and right slightly higher, each person visibly younger. The two warriors on the extreme right and left (one a man, one a woman) were approximately Drex’s age and sat on stools so tall that their legs did not reach the ground.

  Martok affixed the label “warriors” to these men and women despite the fact that none of them wore armor or carried weapons. He knew they were warriors the same way a master carpenter would recognize good wood without even needing to rap on it with his knuckle. “Forgive me if I fail to understand your meaning, Katai,” he asked. “The last I remember, I was dying. Yet, here I am, less than two …”

  “Three.”

  “… three days later and not only am I healed, but I feel better than I have in many years. And I remember my dreams now, if I can call them dreams.”

  “Do you?” Okado asked, eyebrows raised. He seemed inordinately pleased to hear this. “What dreams do you refer to?”

  Martok shifted uneasily on his feet and behind him he heard Pharh struggle to stay silent. “All my dreams,” Martok said. “But especially the dreams of Kar-Tela, my father, and Lukara.”

  “Your dreamworld is rich with complexity,” Okado said, eyes flashing merrily.

  “Pardon, but I don’t believe that’s the issue at hand.”

  “Then what is?”

  “The issue …” Martok began, frustrated, but then his innate sense of self-preservation took control. Angering or threatening these warriors would be worse than foolish; it would probably be fatal. Calming himself, he began again. “I am troubled that I do not yet know who you are, what your interest in me is, and what you have to do with my father.”

  While none of the thirteen men and women stirred a centimeter, Martok sensed a shifting in the subtle spaces between them, as if each was looking into the eyes of all the others and smiling in affirmation. “Ah, ha,” each was saying. “Here we are at last.”

  Rising from his low stool, Angwar spoke first. “As for your first question, we are the katai. If you have been paying attention to your dreams, you know the meaning of the word.”

  “Firebringers,” Martok recalled. “Yes, I remember now.”

  “Correct. We are the last true disciples of Kahless, the father of our order. Though we are based here on Boreth, we have lived among our people for as long as we have called ourselves Klingons. Some of our artifacts suggest that we were here before the coming of the Hur’q. These caverns,” he said, pointing over their heads, “were carved from this sacred mountain in a twilight time that has long been lost to memory.”

  Quickly absorbing Angwar’s meaning, Martok responded, “Your brotherhood is older than recorded history. You must know of life on Qo’noS before the Hur’q.”

  Angwar shook his head. “No, you misunderstand. The Hur’q destroyed almost all that they found. While these catacombs survived, no records were preserved. Rather …”

  “You are the records,” Pharh inserted.

  Martok felt he was almost accustomed to these interruptions, but he could not stop himself from saying, “Pharh!”

  But Angwar laughed in a manner most un-Klingon, enjoying the Ferengi’s impetuousness. “No, do not chastise your kr’tach. He is correct. The old tales speak of the Two Thousand who survived in the most inhospitable reaches of Qo’noS’s arctic reaches, as far from the Hur’q as they could go and still survive.”

  “The Two Thousand?” Pharh asked. “Someone…?”

  “It’s a legend, Pharh,” Martok explained. “A group of warriors who carv
ed out a fort in an icy cliff where they waited out the Hur’q invasion.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a very Klingon thing to do,” Pharh commented.

  “It was in a time before the word ‘Klingon’ meant what it means now,” Angwar said. “Martok is correct in every respect except one: these men and women were not warriors.” As soon as he said this, he corrected himself: “Not exclusively warriors. They were, in fact, much more. They were wise men and learned women, teachers and scholars, priests and preservationists. And, yes, they knew how to fight.” He grinned. “Very well. When the Hur’q departed, some of the Two Thousand left Qo’noS as well. Others emerged as some of the greatest men and women of their era. As our world began to heal, others joined our order, or so the stories say.”

  “And what happened to them?”

  Angwar stepped back and a young woman near the edge of the group slipped down from her high stool. Martok felt himself deeply moved by the depth and clarity of her eyes and the nobility of her manner. Here is a woman that Sirella would have been proud to call “sister.” Then, remembering his two murdered girls, he felt his heart swell in his chest: Or daughter, he finished. If only Lahzna and Shen could have learned of this place. What might they have accomplished here?

  As if taking up her part in a play, the young woman bowed, then said, “Time passed and Qo’noS began to develop a new character. No more were we the hunters and gatherers, weavers and artists of the days before the Hur’q. A harder people grew up in their place. They were brave, true, and fearsome warriors, but they lacked discipline and rigor.”

  “They forgot what Kahless tried to teach them,” Martok said.

  “Yes. Kahless taught Klingons the value of honor and discipline, knowing it was the only way to harness the terrible energies our fear produced.”

  “Fear?” Martok asked, shocked. “The Klingons fear nothing.”

  The woman shook her head. “And this is the lost wisdom of Kahless,” she said. “The greatest lesson that he taught was simply this: We Klingons should fear nothing except ourselves. No one could destroy us except ourselves.” She paused here and allowed Martok to inhale deeply and release his breath slowly. Continuing, she added, “This is a harsh lesson, one our people have forgotten. Why this is so, we cannot say, but we katai have made it our law. We do not forget.”

  “Only the Klingon can destroy the Klingon,” Martok said softly. “Yes, I see it is so. Always with us it has been the battle without and never the one within.” Nodding his head, he looked up and down the line of the thirteen men and women. “I have been fighting the wrong war,” he said. “I believe my father tried to warn me of this.”

  “Urthog was a man of great wisdom,” Okado said, “but not, alas, a patient man. Sensing that you might have a great destiny, he tried to explain our teachings to you too soon, I think.”

  “Or perhaps I was too dull-witted to understand them,” Martok said.

  Okado shrugged. “Who can say? The point, as you might say, is that your destiny has brought you here. And unless I miss my guess, much about the fate of the Klingon people will be decided before the sun again sets over this mountain. Blood will stain the snow—most of it Klingon—but we will settle this today and you, the son of my old friend, are the pivot point, the edge of the bat’leth, upon which it all depends. What, Martok, would you now do?”

  Martok hesitated, mindful of forces in play that would never let him forget whatever he said next. His mind was troubled because, on one hand, he knew in the pit of his being that the katai spoke truly. His people, the Klingons, were on the verge of self-destruction; their improperly channeled energies would ignite the galaxy, turning all against them. They possessed all the attributes they needed to become the great people they hungered to be, but they were out of balance. Though they paid lip service to the concepts of discipline and honor, their actions had become a sad pantomime, their hearts locked in the past.

  My people need something to remind them of the old virtues, he decided, but also they need to see how these virtues can fit into this new galaxy. They need…

  An example, my husband.

  The words rang as clear as if she stood beside him and spoke into his ear. Martok did not turn his head. Slowly, he had acclimated to the idea of a spirit world that occasionally intruded on his own. So he closed his eyes and listened to Sirella’s voice, trusting fully, as ever, in anything she said.

  “What about Kahless?” Martok asked, and the katai seemed to think the question was directed at them.

  “The monks were too literal,” Starn said. “It was not the body of Kahless that our people required or even his mind, though both these things have value.”

  Our people need a leader like Kahless, Sirella whispered, who will fight with his heart.

  Martok’s eye, which had been closed, snapped open as he recalled the vision of the battle in the Jem’Hadar camp and his father reaching into his chest.

  Then you had better use this, Urthog had said, showing Martok his beating heart.

  “Long ago,” Okado said, “Kahless promised to return to his people, on Boreth. The Katai have waited ever since. We believe that wait is over.”

  You must become the leader they need, Sirella whispered.

  And though he never knew precisely to whom he was speaking, Martok answered, “Yes.”

  15

  Even wrapped in furs, even with her personal force shield turned up to maximum, even with other enhancements fully engaged, Gothmara shivered. “By all the ghosts of Boreth,” she said, her breath steaming, “I hate the cold.” She didn’t use to, she realized. Once, long ago, Gothmara had loved these windswept, icy wastelands; her heart had thrilled to the sight of sunlight glistening on the jagged, snow-packed peaks. But those days were gone. Why? she wondered. Once, I possessed the capacity to admire things outside myself, to enjoy a vista simply for the spectacle it presented…. But here, today, looking out at the gray-blue plains of the northern reaches, she thought only of being warm again and Martok’s blood staining these lifeless reaches.

  What has happened to me? Gothmara wondered sincerely and, for a moment, for a millisecond, caught a glimpse of herself as a child in her lab, looking into a microscope and trying to unlock one of the fundamental secrets of the universe. How old was she the first time she had found her way into Father’s lab? Three? Four? Certainly no more than five, because by six years of age she had already committed to memory the fundamentals of microbiology, enzymology, and molecular genetics. He had been so proud of her, ready to believe she would change the fortunes of their House. How many times had Father said to her, “It’s all up to you, ‘Mara. With your genius as the weapon, our enemies will fall before us.”

  “And so they will,” she said aloud again, though there was no one near to hear her speak. Gothmara sat alone in the soundproofed rear compartment of the snow vehicle, her private sanctuary cut off from the roar of the dozens of engines around her. Reports from the scouts trickled down the data screens arrayed around her, but she ignored them. Much of her attention was focused on the voices inside her head, but not all of it.

  Before her was the cave.

  How had Gothmara never seen this before? After her discovery of the Hur’q base, she had diligently scanned these hills for months looking for additional installations, but had never, ever seen this place. Her logs indicated that she had been here a dozen times, but none of the scans revealed a cave mouth. Someone had attempted to hide from her, and, most infuriatingly, succeeded. While she had long ago decided that she would kill whoever it was who had rescued Martok, now she resolved to make them suffer.

  Behind her, arrayed in staggered rows, were her warriors, both Klingon and Hur’q. Neither group particularly liked working with the other, but they would do as she had instructed, the Hur’q because they had no choice and the Klingons for several reasons, the least among them fear of being torn limb from limb by the Hur’q. Additionally, the persuasive powers of her altered Voice had lulled them int
o compliance, but her hold lasted for only so long. What, then? she wondered. Do they actually believe that Morjod will lead them to glory? That some new golden era lies before them? Shaking her head in disbelief, Gothmara knew that she was not the only Klingon who hungered for destruction for destruction’s sake. At least my hatred is focused, has given me purpose, she concluded, and thought no more about it.

  Soon enough, behind her, they would come, the warriors from the attacking ships. Her scans, though feeble and fleeting, had told her enough. Currently, with the troops she had with her and those who had beamed down and were currently in hiding, she outnumbered the opposing force by almost three to one, but she reasoned that there was no way for them to know that. The invaders would fight fiercely, especially if they believed they were rescuing Martok. If she found him first and threw his mutilated corpse at their feet, Martok’s forces would cower before her. Some might even decide to join her “cause.” That would be delicious: the old retainers and the new all banded together in their delusion.

  Her intercom bleeped, the pilot asking to speak with her. “My lady,” he said. “Your warriors wait upon your wishes.”

  Gothmara didn’t like being interrupted, but she realized that she had been in her reverie for quite some time. Looking outside, she saw that some of the warriors struggled to remain standing in the cold. Tapping the control that would permit her to speak to all of her troops, Gothmara ordered, “Into the cave. Find Martok and bring him to me alive. Kill everyone else.”

  Almost gratefully, her force surged forward into the cave mouth. Well, most of them, anyway. A few black shapes remained where they were, apparently unable to move, but the Hur’q took care of them as they moved past. They required a great deal of protein, her pets, and none of the other Klingons seemed to mind. After all, shouldn’t the weak fall and be fodder for the strong?