The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 2 Page 18

  Settling back into her seat, Gothmara adjusted the heat again and wrapped her furs around her. I am too old to be subjected to the indignities of the battlefield, she decided. How good it is that this soon will end.

  * * *

  Pharh didn’t understand what had just happened, which annoyed him more than it usually did when things he didn’t understand happened. He was under the distinct impression that whatever he had just missed was important, not only for him, not only for Martok and his family, but for the entire empire and perhaps even many of its neighbors. Martok looked strange. Which you would think I’d be used to by now, Pharh thought. Every time I turn around there’s something going on with this guy. On more than one occasion in the past several days he had wondered if perhaps his friend suffered from some sort of neurological ailment. Stares into space a lot, Pharh had noted. Talks to thin air a lot. Doesn’t sleep enough, either. Bet there’s a pill you could take for whatever he’s got. But, no, Martok’s problem wasn’t a neurological disorder; Martok’s problem was a surfeit of destiny. Too much destiny is bad, he concluded. Too much destiny is how you find yourself too often in a disruptor’s crosshairs. Pharh was glad that destiny had more or less ignored him. You’re just an anonymous little Ferengi and that’s a good thing to be.

  Characteristically, this line of thought did not address how “an anonymous Ferengi” could find himself in his current circumstances, but irony had never been Pharh’s strong suit. While he might not be in destiny’s crosshairs, he was, undoubtedly, in the blast radius of destiny’s hand grenade, though he did his level best not to think about that.

  Without so much as an “Ahem!” or a scraped stool leg, as one, the thirteen warriors stood. “She’s found us,” Okado said.

  “Who?” Pharh asked, but even as he asked he knew it was a foolish question and regretted it. “Oh, right,” he said when Martok glanced askance at him. “Her. Never mind.”

  “What do we do?” Martok asked, clenching his fingers, clearly wishing he had a weapon in his hands. “Stand and fight?”

  Starn turned to Angwar. “Down here, we could defeat many of them. We know these tunnels.”

  If Angwar considered the plan, he did not do it for long. “You are correct. We would defeat many, but not all.” He closed his eyes and seemed to be listening. “Several hundred, including Hur’q.”

  “And how many of you are there?” Pharh asked.

  Angwar turned to him, but, surprisingly, did not try to pin him to the ground with the annoyed look most Klingons specialized in. “Thirteen,” he said.

  “That’s it?” Pharh asked, not able to stop himself. “Your great secret warrior society numbers thirteen?”

  “How many did you think there would be?” Okado asked, cackling with a peculiar private glee. “Our order rarely leaves Boreth, so very few know we exist. Besides, few Klingons find our cold and relative quiet to their liking.”

  “Good food, though.”

  “Thank you, kr’tach. My honorable mother’s recipe.”

  “Enough, Pharh,” Martok said, his voice firm. Whatever had happened between Martok and the katai, the old, indecisive Martok was gone. “Find me a weapon and warmer clothes. We need protection against the elements.”

  “As you command,” Angwar said, bowing, and all the other katai followed suit, even Okado, who, near as Pharh could determine, more or less ran the show. Angwar puts a lot of feeling into his bow, Pharh thought, bowing like he means it. For a moment, Pharh almost felt like bowing, too, until he remembered that this was Martok, the guy who had broken into his garage and stolen his Sporak and hadn’t even paid for it yet. All right, sure, he was the chancellor of the Klingon Empire—such as it was, currently—and, somehow or another, the focal point of a lot of weird, pseudo-mystical craziness, and these guys seemed to think he was pretty important…

  So Pharh bowed, too. Martok raised an eyebrow at this, but let it go without comment as they all filed out of the room and into the corridor.

  “Where will we go?” Martok asked Angwar, who seemed to be the leader now that the talking was finished.

  “Up to the surface,” Angwar answered. “We’ll split up when we get there and lead the main body away. You should attempt to kill Gothmara.”

  “She’s here?!” Martok asked, surprised. “How do you know? And why would she come?”

  “She’s here because she knows you are. And as to how? Same answer. She has to be. Soon, Morjod will, too, as will all the other players. None of them has any choice.”

  “Frinx it all,” Pharh said under his breath, winded from the fast pace through the dark halls. They came to a wide chamber with walls hung with weapons, armor, and clothing.

  “You have a comment, little kr’tach?”

  “Never mind,” Pharh said.

  “Go ahead, Pharh,” Martok said as he lifted heavy leather armor off a hook. The well-oiled hide squeaked when he slipped it down over his head. “You’ve never hesitated to speak your mind before now.” When Martok tugged on a pair of straps, the armor was pulled tight around his broad chest and then he twisted back and forth, feeling for the places where it gave. Dissatisfied, he swiftly undid the straps and threw the armor onto the dusty cavern floor.

  “The way you talk, like all of this is all already written, like everything is already written,” Pharh said as he began to inspect the thick furs hanging on the walls. When he had transported down, he had only been outside the caverns for a few moments, but it had been enough to tell him he would require some protective garments.

  “Everything has been written,” Angwar said, lifting a huge bat’leth from a stand. “Our role is to act our parts with conviction. Conviction is the key ingredient.”

  “I thought honor and discipline were the key ingredients.”

  “They are the method by which we reach the place where conviction can be brought into play,” Angwar said, whipping the weapon back and forth in midair, testing its balance. “Once you understand that, everything else falls into its appointed role.”

  “What about me?” Pharh asked, pulling a large fur down from a shelf and wrapping it around his shoulders. “I don’t think I have a role and I don’t believe my part is already written.” On the wall, previously covered by the fur, he found a small, round metal shield. An artisan had pounded a picture into the metal, a Klingon woman standing on one leg who held a sword in one hand and a cup in the other. Out of curiosity, Pharh took it down and slipped the shield onto his forearm. Surprisingly, it fit perfectly. This must have belonged to a skinny Klingon. “What do you say to that?” he asked Angwar.

  “I would say, kr’tach, that your role is to play the skeptic and that you play it with conviction.”

  Pharh rolled his eyes. “With logic like that, there’s no winning against you guys.”

  “Let us most devotedly hope so,” Martok said.

  Pharh turned to him and saw that a suit of armor had found his friend’s approval. The jet black leather seemed to drink in the light and the glistening silver gauntlets and greaves reflected it back threefold. Reaching up onto a shelf, Martok pulled down a bundle, quickly tore away the front of the wrappings, then laughed. “It would seem you’ve been waiting for me,” he said to the object, then finished unwrapping and lifted it onto his head. The helmet settled down over his head, fitting perfectly. In the low light, Pharh perceived there was something odd about the helm, but it wasn’t until Martok turned toward Angwar, now fully armored and holding a torch, that the Ferengi understood what was wrong: The helmet had no left eyehole. Many centuries in the past, a smith had closed the hole with a rough patch and placed the helm on the shelf awaiting … what? A man not yet born?

  Around him, the other katai were all outfitted, even old Okado, and arrayed in a loose formation around Martok.

  “I suppose this means we’re ready to go,” Pharh said, finding his place behind his friend and slightly to the left. He was blind there and might need a shield.

  “How close are they,
Angwar?” Martok asked.

  Angwar, on Martok’s right, closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. When his eyes opened, he said, “Close. Moving fast now. They were being careful for a while, looking for traps, but now they’ve grown bold.”

  “There are no traps?” Martok asked.

  Angwar grinned. “What would be the value of putting traps where your opponents would look for them?”

  * * *

  To Martok, each stone hall looked the same as the last. But Angwar, running easily two paces ahead of him, never hesitated at any of the many junctures. First left at a T-intersection, then right at a split into two branches, then right, then left, then left again. Lamps flared into life as they neared, then dimmed as the group passed. All the while, Martok was aware that the ground sloped gently but inexorably upward. The katai, for whatever reason—or the people who had first carved these tunnels—did not much care for stairways, though there were places on their road where they passed shafts on either side which obviously led up toward the surface and delved deeper down into the complex.

  To Martok’s left, Pharh huffed and puffed as he ran, though Angwar was not setting a brutal pace. In fact, it seemed to Martok that the katai wanted their pursuers to make up some of the ground between them. At every fourth or fifth juncture, the guide would call for a stop and he would listen to Martok knew not what. He prided himself on having keen hearing, but even he could not clearly hear Gothmara’s horde until they were quite near. Not surprisingly, considering the size of his ears, Pharh heard them at the same time. “There,” the Ferengi said. “You hear that?” They had been running steadily for fifteen or twenty minutes and Pharh was gulping air, but he seemed to be able to catch sounds between gasps.

  Martok nodded. There was an echo, a low, ominous thrum in the air, as if many feet were slapping against stone all at once. “How far to the surface?”

  “Not far,” Angwar answered.

  The air suddenly seemed closer and Martok detected a heavy musky scent. Hur’q, he thought. And enough that I can smell them. “Then let’s go,” he said.

  Moving so silently that not even his armor squeaked, Angwar turned and led them up the corridor. Fifty paces up the slope, Martok felt chill air on his face. Behind him, he heard a roar and a shout as the pursuing horde spotted their quarry. The sound gave Pharh’s heels wings and he surged ahead of the rest. Ahead no more than thirty meters there were no more torches, but only the dim glow of natural light, and then, turning a corner, Martok was almost blinded by the glare. The howl of the wind across the plains swallowed the sounds of their footfalls, but not the roar of the Hur’q as they surged up behind them.

  “Turn!” Martok shouted. “Turn and fight!” They would be cut down ignobly from behind if they did not, but Angwar only shook his head and pointed at the young woman who had sat at the end of the line of stools. She skidded to a halt and Martok tried to stop, too, but Okado, always the last in the group, grabbed him by the arm and with surprising strength dragged him on up the ramp to the surface.

  Martok was a large, heavy man, however, and could not be moved easily. Okado forced him on by the strength of the grip on his arm, but there was just enough time to see the first line of Hur’q surge up out of the tunnel toward the woman. Drawing her bat’leth, she stood patiently, and as the Hur’q swung its great arms down at her head, she stepped to the side almost without moving a muscle and let it race past. The second monster closed on her. She dove for the ground, swinging her bat’leth down into the base of its neck as it ran past her. Howling, the monster crumbled, its head lolling to the side on a thread of gristle. Before it hit the ground, the woman rolled to the side, landing in a bent-knee stance, her weapon raised to ward off the blow from the first Klingon warrior up from the tunnel.

  The warrior died less than two seconds later, his abdomen sliced open with a single stroke. The next wave—a Hur’q and two Klingons—were upon her in seconds, but the woman was more than prepared for the task.

  Martok stood openmouthed, astonished by the grace, dexterity, and precision of her blows. “How long…?” he asked.

  “… Can she keep doing that?” Okado asked. “I don’t know. She was not one of my students. Long enough for us to escape.”

  “But what of her?”

  “She serves,” Okado said. “And she does it with conviction.”

  Behind them, another Hur’q bellowed its death.

  “But if we are captured, it will be for naught,” Okado said. Martok looked behind him and saw the others waiting at the top of the ramp framed against the blue sky. Grim-faced, he turned away from the katai warrior woman and ran toward the open air.

  * * *

  “What is it?” Gothmara shouted. “I can’t hear you over all the shouting.” One of her generals—she couldn’t remember his name—yelled back at her, but his voice was drowned out by the screams in the background.

  “We’ve found them!” he bellowed, struggling to be heard. “They’ve exited to the northwest of your current position and are headed out into the plain!” What sounded like several dozen simultaneous disruptor shots echoed in the narrow space where the general was standing. Someone nearby shouted, “We got her!” A ragged cheer erupted over the communicator.

  “What’s happening, General?” Gothmara asked. “Who did you bring down?”

  Breathless, the general replied, “A warrior, my lady. We have defeated her.”

  “And Martok?”

  “He is nearby, my lady, and will be ours soon.”

  “Excellent.”

  Over the communicator, Gothmara heard a deep groan, both from the General and many of the troops, including one of the Hur’q.

  “What is it, General?”

  “At the top of the slope, my lady. Another one. An old man, I think.”

  “An old man?” Gothmara asked. “Then shoot him!”

  “We are trying, my lady. We are trying.”

  Gothmara checked her portable scanner to see how many warriors she still had arrayed around her and how many waited in hiding. Perhaps she needed to dispatch more experienced hands to help with the hunt. Perhaps, even, she needed to go herself. It wouldn’t be the first time she had to take a hand in such matters. However, even as she activated her scans, Gothmara saw that she would need to reconsider her options. Energy signatures registered all around her as warriors beamed in. Hur’q who had been hunkered down against the cold suddenly stood and shook the snow out of their shaggy coats.

  Martok’s defenders had arrived.

  Very well, Gothmara decided. The moment has come.

  * * *

  The cold struck Drex like a blow to his sternum, knocking him backward and leaving him breathless. Cursing his own arrogance, Drex tried to keep his head clear, to orient himself, but the wind and blowing snow made it almost impossible. Darok had tried to explain this to him—how the weather would be worse than any foe, more dangerous and debilitating—but Drex had ignored the old man’s prattlings.

  Where was he? The dusky predawn prevented him from identifying anything but snow and ice. When Drex tried removing a personal scanner from inside his tunic, his freezing fingers fumbled and dropped the device into the ankle-deep icy slush. He knelt down and patted the ground, but the snow’s frozen kiss burned his fingers. I’m going to have to call for a beam-out, Drex thought, and though his violently chattering jaw ached, it was not half as bad as the pain of humiliation.

  Even as he carefully reached up to his belt for his communicator, a huge, shaggy shape rushed at him from out of the snow, vaulted over him, and charged toward a faint, blue outline that Drex could barely make out in the middle distance. The searing sizzle of a disruptor bolt cut through the gloom, and the shaggy shape stumbled. Another shot and the shape ceased to move.

  Drex had been so engrossed in the spectacle that he had stayed kneeling in the snow, which he now realized had been a bad idea. I cannot feel anything below my knees. Worse, the cold had seeped deeply enough into his bones tha
t he no longer possessed the energy to care.

  The blue outline approached him, but Drex was too weak to lift his head, let alone his weapon, but the desire to live, to find his father and avenge his mother, burned brightly in him and he once again groped at his belt, this time searching for his disruptor.

  Time slipped past in uneven fits and starts and he knew the cold was truly burrowing its way into his brain.

  Suddenly, he felt a spot of warmth bloom on his shoulder and flow down his arms and back. Moments later, Drex could flex his fingers, but then knew pins-and-needles agony as the blood in his hands once again began to flow. Looking up, he found that the blue-sheathed person stood before him, the two of them linked by the peculiar glow. The sounds of the wind now seemed muted, too, and Drex realized he could once again stand.

  Darok, still touching Drex on the shoulder, handed him a small gray and silver box with a small blue dial on the side and an adhesive strip on the back. “When I let go of you, the shield will drop, so strap this onto your wrist first, but don’t turn it on yet. Nasty disruption pattern.”

  Drex nodded, fumbled a little, his fingers still clumsy with the cold, but managed to get the box strapped on. Darok released his grip, taking the blue glow with him, and the cold immediately dug its claws into Drex. When he twisted the dial up to high, the cobalt glow oozed up his arm, then down his back and into his legs, banishing the frost.

  “What is this?” Drex asked, standing, studying the device.

  “Something Kahless had made. Anyone who didn’t have heavy-weather gear was issued one. Somehow, he knew you wouldn’t be dressed properly.” Darok’s face split into an uncharacteristic grin at some private joke. “My grandmother would have chewed your ear off about not wearing a warm garment.”

  Drex reached up and absently touched his ear. Which one? he wondered and made a mental note to ask his father about Darok’s family. “How long will the battery last?” he asked.

  “Long enough,” Darok said. “If you find anyone who’s in bad shape, just touch his shoulder or arm until he warms up, then send him back up to a ship or into the cavern entrance. It’s just ahead,” he pointed. “That way.”