STAR TREK: DS9 - The Left Hand of Destiny, Book One Read online

  The visitor chuckled, then stepped from the shadows, almost but not quite within Sirella’s reach. She was smaller than Sirella by almost half a head and wore a simple black robe that accentuated the curves of her hips and slender waist. Only the lower half of her face was visible by the dim emergency light, but Sirella could see that her mouth was wide, her teeth small and unpointed, and her lips red. There were no visible lines of age around her mouth, which was baffling. How could this woman be Morjod’s mother? She isn’t old enough to have children!

  Smiling, the visitor said, “Then just one question and I will leave. Answer it or not, I do not care, but I think you will see that there is no possible way it could further imperil either yourself, your family, or your husband.”

  Sirella considered briefly and decided to take a chance. “I will answer your question truthfully,” she said, “if you answer one of mine.”

  “As you will, Lady Sirella. And to show my good faith, you may go first.”

  [205] Sirella did not hesitate, but asked the question that had been plaguing her since the attack on the First City: “What has happened to my children?”

  “Ah. So, more a mother than a wife.”

  “No,” Sirella said defiantly. “But I know my husband must be at least at liberty or you would not be here wasting time with me.”

  The smile, a moment ago so charming, disappeared and her tone lost some of its warmth. The visitor turned away from the cage and Sirella realized she, too, stood in the freezing ankle-deep water. It was a small thing, but significant. She may be a lady, but she is no comfort-addled dilettante. “Very well,” she said. “Drex is missing. Our forces pursued him out of the city and into the countryside near your estates, but then we lost him.”

  His father’s son, Sirella thought. The visitor continued: “Your eldest daughter, we knew, was on patrol aboard her ship, Korrin. We believe she attempted to leave Klingon space when she learned of the destruction of the Great Hall. No word has come back of her fate, but small craft like the one she piloted have a limited range and she was far from any inhabited world.”

  Shen, Sirella thought. But no. Do not give in to despair. “And your youngest, Lazhna,” the visitor said, and here her smile grew wide. “She fought well. You should be proud.”

  Though she had been steeling herself for precisely this kind of news, Sirella felt as though her heart had stopped beating. A pain swelled in her chest, hollowness. Lazhna was gone, cleaved away from her in a single, jagged stroke. Her knees bent and the ache in her shoulders grew intolerable. Lazhna. My child. My little [206] warrior. She had been, in so many ways, the most difficult of her three children, the most surly and unresponsive, but always, deep in her heart, Sirella had to admit to herself (if no one else) that Lazhna was her favorite. And why? she asked herself. Because she was the one least like me. She was something new in my life, something that I could not control or entirely understand. Lazhna was the girl I wished I might have been if I had been given the chance.

  She almost sagged against the bars of her cage, but then Sirella thought of Drex and Shen. “Ask your question,” she commanded, “then leave me.”

  Her visitor had leaned slightly closer to the cage, her waist bent, the better to drink in Sirella’s pain. Just a little closer, she thought, and then we will play other games. But Morjod’s mother did not comply. Instead, she asked, “How old were you and Martok when you first met?”

  The question startled Sirella. The woman had said that she would not ask any question that had strategic value and Sirella, strangely, had believed her, but this? How was this relevant? But a promise was a promise, so she responded, “I was in my twenty-first year and Martok ...” She thought for a moment, remembering the first time she had laid eyes on the man she would take as husband. It had been only a few years after he had repelled the Romulan attempt to seize Shivang’s flagship and he had become famous through the Defense Force, though just as infamous because of the lowly status of his family.

  Sirella had not cared. His proud bearing, his calm, observant nature, and the obvious high regard his crewmates held for him had instantly transfixed her. Here, [207] she had thought, is a man of destiny. And only a woman of destiny should be permitted to claim him. And so she had. “Martok was twenty-five, almost twenty-six. It was the year ...”

  “I know what year it was,” the visitor snapped, all of her forced cheer suddenly evaporated. “I know,” she said again quietly, as if to herself. She stepped back into the shadows and, raising her head, said, “Good-bye, Lady Sirella. Tomorrow you will die. Do it well or not, as your courage permits. I can say for certain that it is not a death that I would want.”

  And, with that, Sirella knew she was alone. She raised her hand and almost, almost touched the bars to steady herself, but at the last moment lowered it. They might still be watching, after all. Someone, she knew, was always watching.

  Worf’s ribs ached, though it was not an entirely unpleasant pain. In the insulated darkness inside his own head, he tried to figure out why this might be. The most probable cause of his present condition would be injury-related. Sedation produced odd mental side effects, though he could not remember ever feeling this way when he had been under sedation in the past. The potions, pills, and powders that Starfleet doctors had used to put him under made his teeth throb and his bladder feel like it had shrunk to the size of a peanut. This sensation, this gray woolly fuzziness, felt quite pleasant in comparison with his experiences with Starfleet Medical.

  The other possibility had potential: He might be dead. If he was dead, it certainly wasn’t what he had expected death to be like. He’d painted a mental picture of a tenor [208] choir singing jajlo’Sto-Vo-Kor, a radiant sun glinting off the glorious gates, and bloodwine gushing from stone. His wife, the magnificent Jadzia Dax, would be waiting for him, bat’leth in hand, a hint of feral seloh in her eyes.

  Death didn’t sound too bad.

  Worf tried lifting his hand to feel his way to a light of some kind, but his hand remained limp, as if the muscles were gone, at his side. He knew this sensation should concern him, but he couldn’t work up the energy to be upset.

  A voice said, “Wake up, Worf.”

  Jadzia’s voice, lam here, par’machkai! He tried snapping open his eyes, but found he could not. Or maybe he had, but the gray wool was too thick for any light to penetrate, so he murmured, “I am awake.”

  “Then open your eyes.”

  Seeing Jadzia again offered him hope. Shaking away any fuzziness lingering in his mind, he opened his eyes without hesitation, but the dreamlike quality did not lift.

  Worf stared up into a circle of blurry faces and, beyond that, into the sky. Jaroun was there and behind him and to his right was Martok’s son, Drex. Warriors, both. They must have died noble deaths. To the left, just at the edge of Worf’s field of vision, was old Darok, looking somehow simultaneously concerned and inconvenienced. Darok moved aside so another face could move into view: Alexander. He reached out to pat Worf on the shoulder. “Hello, Father,” he said.

  Perhaps I am not dead.

  Worf tried to say, “Hello, Alexander,” but the sound that emerged was something between a croak and a wheeze. Someone handed a clay cup to Alexander, who [209] then held it to his father’s lips so he could drink. The water was warm and flat, and there were some chunks of either vegetation or wood splinters in it, and it was the most delicious thing Worf had ever drunk. He finished it all, then nodded his head. “Thank you, son,” he said, and Alexander smiled gratefully. A thought welled up from nowhere and Worf found himself asking K’Ehleyr’s question. “Are you doing what you want to do?”

  Confused by the question, Alexander glanced to his left to look at someone Worf could not see. Whoever it was must have signaled the boy to answer, because he said, “I’m here with you, Father. So, yes, sure I’m doing what I want to do. Why?”

  Worf considered for a moment, then croaked, “Because if you would rather do something else, you should.�
��

  Alexander smiled then, grateful, and Worf thought he saw a hint of a tear in the corner of the boy’s eye. So much like his mother, he thought.

  “I’m fine, Father. For now I’m fine.”

  The person to Alexander’s left moved into view now, and it took Worf several seconds before his identity registered, so different did he look than he had the last time Worf had seen him. The figure extended his hand, and he and Worf greeted each other after the fashion of old comrades, hands locked around each other’s forearms. Then, with little apparent effort, he drew Worf up to his feet and asked warmly, “How are you, Worf?”

  Worf was surprised to find that the answer was “Fine. I am fine.” He felt none of the aches or pains he had expected to feel after having had a ceiling fall on him.

  “Have you enjoyed your dreams of late?” he asked.

  [210] Worf regarded him curiously, but without rancor. “They have been,” he said, “illuminating.”

  “Excellent, Worf. That is excellent, but it is time to get up now, my friend. We have far to go and have a great deal of work to do.”

  And much to his own surprise, Worf felt himself grin with anticipation. “All right,” he said, and felt the weight lift from his chest. “Tell me what I must do.”

  13

  “WHAT THE HELL is happening on Qo’noS?”

  Colonel Kira Nerys, commanding officer of Starbase Deep Space 9, knew that Admiral Ross must be upset; he was not a man who employed casual profanity. She could sense his frustration through the viewscreen. Unfortunately, she lacked any information that might alleviate that frustration.

  She had, of course, received and read the Starfleet Intelligence report earlier that day, but the information therein had been scanty at best. Reading between the lines of all the usual intel nonsense and conditionals, the gist of the report was “Something on Qo’noS blew up, but we don’t know what and the Klingons are saying, ‘Blew up? Nothing blew up.’ ” It was, Kira strongly suspected, something political, if the word could truly be said to apply to an entire species of large, armored men and women who enjoyed swinging heavy metal objects at one another’s heads. When they liked each other. She [212] sighed. “I have nothing to add to the official report, sir.” Ross pursed his lips and gave her a look that eloquently conveyed his opinion of empty responses.

  In Kira’s experience, the admiral could usually be depended on to be understanding, if not sympathetic, when he didn’t receive the answer he wanted. This, apparently, was one of the rare occasions when he expected her to improvise some nonsensical suppositions to make him feel better. The Federation Council must be leaning pretty hard on Starfleet for answers, she thought. Unfortunately, she literally had nothing to offer him. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what you expect me to know that you don’t. Starfleet Intelligence has more resources than anyone on the station or on Bajor. If it means anything at all, I’ve checked our logs and we have about forty-two Klingons on board the station right now, which is, I admit, extraordinarily low in comparison to recent days, but ...” And here Kira shrugged. “The war is over. Chancellor Martok went home, and my impression was that it was going to be one hell of a party. Can you blame them for wanting to go home?”

  Ross grimaced and settled back into his chair. “No,” he muttered. “Of course not. I wouldn’t have expected anything else. And thank you for checking the logs.” Ross rubbed his chin and asked, “Do you notice anything unusual about who was or wasn’t there?

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “The Klingons on board the station—did anything about them catch your eye? Any common denominator?” “Well, sure. Most of them are from the same ship.” She punched a couple of keys on her desktop comp, checked the docking and repair records, and then tapped the commands to transmit the data to Ross. “The [213] Kem’A, a scout ship. It lost its main deflector array in a minor argument with an asteroid. If you read between the lines of the repair report, the engineers were left with the impression that someone was taking some unapproved target practice and found himself a pocket of hydrogen or methane in a rogue comet.”

  “Ah,” Ross said, studying the report. “Boys will be boys.”

  “Not this time,” Kira said. “The gunner was a woman.”

  “All right. That accounts for ... what? Twenty-six of the forty-two. What about the rest?”

  “Ten are merchants, all known, all accounted for. Two are in the brig. Too much bloodwine on an otherwise slow night at Quark’s.”

  Ross nodded. He had been in the bistro on nights like those.

  “The other four are diplomatic personnel.”

  Ross’s eyebrows shot up in question. “Do we know them?”

  “We know of them,” Kira explained. “You’ve met three of them yourself: Sor’cha, Mubarak, and Klow.”

  Ross nodded, recognizing the names. “And the fourth? Let me guess: former second-in-command on a Vor’cha-class cruiser? Communications officer at a Romulan embassy?” Kira shook her head twice. Ross searched his memory for likely candidates. “Aide to a High Council member?” Kira raised a single finger and touched the tip of her nose.

  Ross smiled grimly. “What’s his name, who did he work for, and what’s he pretending to do here?”

  “Her name is Marasa and she used to work for council member Tor’ash. Name mean anything to you?” Ross shook his head and Kira replied, “Me, either, so I [214] asked Dax to do some research for me.” She pulled up a file on the desk comp and read, “ ‘Tor’ash is a key figure in a small but active coalition of conservative’—read that ‘reactionary’—‘council members around which a nucleus of several other traditional’—read that ‘xenophobic’—‘splinter groups have formed. Unlike most of the other members in this coalition, Tor’ash has seemed to make it a policy to keep a low profile; however, observers’—I think the word you want here is ‘spies’—‘have stated that council member Tor’ash does not seem to possess a natural inclination toward such self-effacing behavior.’ ” Kira glanced up at Ross. “It worries me how easily she falls into this kind of language.”

  Ross shrugged. “She’s a counselor. And sometime before that, an ambassador.”

  “Scary combination,” Kira muttered, then continued reading. “ ‘It is not known at this time who might be influencing the council member or how wide his or her activities are. There are several candidates among the best-known political infighters, but none has yet shown conclusively that he or she possesses the resources or the will to inflict significant damage on the Klingon Homeworld or, more significantly, the First City.’ ”

  Ross grimaced. “Dax knows what happened.”

  “Admiral, everybody knows. But no one wants to say anything about it until the Klingons come forward and either ask for help or make some sort of statement. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t directed at the Federation or its allies. Either the empire is experiencing internal strife—and it’s not like we haven’t seen that before—or they’ve got a technological disaster on their hands and they’re embarrassed about it. If so, it [215] wouldn’t be without precedent. I know the Klingons once managed to blow up one of their moons. ...”

  Ross nodded. “Yes, Praxis. Over eighty years ago ... Indirectly it led to the Khitomer Accords.”

  “Right. Well, doing the same thing twice in less than a hundred years, and this time in their capital city ... Maybe the Klingons want to try to settle something on their own before they announce it to the quadrant.”

  Ross rested his thumbnail against his lips, a gesture that Kira had noted usually meant he was about to make a decision he didn’t like. “In the absence of any other explanation, that’s what Starfleet Intelligence has decided is the most likely scenario.”

  “Hasn’t anyone on Qo’noS reported anything?” Kira asked. “There’s a Federation embassy, isn’t there?”

  “Unfortunately, we’ve been out of contact with the embassy since the alleged crises started,” Ross said. “It
may be equipment problems related to the present circumstances ...”

  “But it’s impossible to say for sure,” Kira finished for him. “Communication from Qo’noS is nothing if not erratic.”

  Ross nodded, lines of exhaustion and frustration tight around his eyes. “So, I thought I’d try a different angle and find out if Ambassador Worf has contacted anyone on Deep Space 9.”

  “Ezri, you mean.”

  Ross nodded.

  Kira knew that Ross made it a policy not to become enmeshed in the personal lives of his subordinates, but he had spent enough time on DS9 to learn a great deal about the sometimes painfully complex web of social interactions. For example, he knew that Ezri Dax and Dr. [216] Julian Bashir were currently taking the first, tentative steps in forming a romantic relationship. He also knew that the previous Dax host had been married to Worf.

  “I don’t think Ezri has heard from Worf,” Kira replied. “But if she had, and what he told her had any strategic value, she would have reported it to me.”

  “I can accept that,” he reluctantly agreed. “I assume you’ll inform me if circumstances change?”

  “Immediately, Admiral.”

  “All right then. Ross out.”

  Kira turned from her viewscreen and looked out her window at the stars. In all likelihood, if Worf had contacted Ezri, there was a good chance she wouldn’t inform Kira, strategic information or not. For years, she’d watched Jadzia Dax trot off on all kinds of crazy escapades to fulfill obligations made by Curzon Dax. From what she’d seen from Ezri so far, Kira believed that Dax’s unbroken streak of unfailing loyalty to the Klingon people would continue. And honestly, knowing that someone with Dax’s abilities might ultimately help the Klingons deal with the mess they’d made for themselves made Kira feel a lot better.