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

  Replicating a raktajino, she raised her mug in what she hoped was the general direction of Klingon space and toasted to Martok, Worf, and the empire. Whatever they’d managed to get themselves into, Kira was confident Chancellor Martok was the one to get them out.

  Pharh asked, “Are we going in?”

  Martok didn’t answer, but only stared through the Sporak’s windshield at an ochre glow. It was, Pharh knew, light from the First City, and it had grown larger and brighter the closer they came to its dark walls.

  [217] First Pharh looked at Martok’s profile, the light from the dashboard casting heavy shadows în the mass of scar tissue around his eye, then glanced out the window at the tiny shack on the other side of the road. They were idled on a narrow gravel strip that served as a parking lot for the eatery or inn or whatever it was. Pharh had noticed several other places like this along the roadside in the past hour and had decided they were the Klingon equivalent of refreshment stands. After they had passed the last one, Martok had said, “Stop at the next one,” and then gone silent again. It might be nice to go inside, he thought, and have a, well, not a hot meal necessarily. Klingons didn’t go in much for hot food. They tended, he had noticed, to prefer things that were either cut into glistening chunks or served in slimy, wriggling blobs, but these were usually either cold, at room temperature, or, at best, steaming from their own quickly dissipating body heat. Still, it was better than nothing, and if he was lucky the place would serve cranch, the green goo that Pharh had largely subsisted on for the past several weeks. He had recently learned that cranch was a kind of algae grown in large vats and was usually served to very young children and/or pets. This made Pharh wonder about Klingon parenting (and pet ownership), but it didn’t stop him from buying it by the gallon jug. The thick, gritty texture and the smell of fermented plant made him think of home and the theoretical meals that Moogie was supposed to have made if Moogie had made meals, which she hadn’t, but there he was getting into muddy wish-fulfillment waters again.

  One way or another, his stomach was tightening into little knots and making ominous noises. Pharh was startled to discover that the idea of glistening chunks or [218] wriggling masses of alien meat was starting to sound appealing. He asked again, “Are we going in?”

  Martok didn’t answer.

  Maybe he didn’t like the look of the place, though why make Pharh stop driving if it wasn’t safe? The Sporak vibrated roughly beneath him, the throb of the engine reverberating inside Pharh’s empty gut. He was sick of the vehicle, sick of the way it didn’t so much roll as lurch along the road. He was sick of the layered-in smell of old garbage and the sharp tang of leaking coolant. He needed to get out of the damned thing, if only for a little while.

  He cast his mind back a few hours, to when he had thought to tell Martok about the fight in the bar a couple of days ago and the mob’s pursuit of the one young warrior—Alexander, a funny name for a Klingon—and the sudden appearance of the cloaked warrior. “All very dramatic,” he had said. “Just like something out of a space-adventure holo.” The only thing missing had been a swelling soundtrack, maybe a crack of punctuating lightning. Oh, and a female character. No ladies had been anywhere in sight unless you counted that one with the murderous gleam in her eye who had been carrying the big nugget of corrugated steel, which Pharh, a seasoned veteran of such scenarios, did not.

  Martok had grown very quiet after Pharh had told him this story. Sirella, his wife, would be executed the next day, which would account for some of the old Klingon’s distraction, but Pharh had a feeling there was more to it than that. The gears were turning. A plan was coming together, Pharh thought, something amazingly devious and clever.

  “I think I need to use the washroom,” Pharh said. “Maybe they have one. And a drink would be good, too. [219] Some delicious Klingon bloodwine. Mmmm. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

  Martok didn’t stir. You had to admire that kind of concentration. Wheels were just whirring away, Pharh figured. Had to be something fiendishly clever, whatever it was, but when was he going to share it? Over supper, perhaps. That seemed sensible, but then doubt began to trickle in: Was there anything sensible about Klingons? Was there anything sensible about someone who traveled with Klingons, but didn’t know where they were going or what they would do when they got there? What’s happened to me? Pharh wondered. Why am I doing this? I have other options. I could go home. Get out of the vehicle now, find a ride to a spaceport, and hire a ship. I would have to use credit, but that would be all right. I’d find some way to pay it off ... eventually. And I could even go home. My parents would make me suffer, make me stand on the doorstep and beg, but only for a day or two at the most. It wouldn’t cost much. ... Just my pride, and what Ferengi ever gave two strips of gold latinum for his pride? Pride is nothing. It’s the thing you have left when you have nothing left. ... And at this, he paused and rephrased the sentence so that it came out, It’s the only thing I still have that I can call my own.

  Pharh reached over and poked the general in the side with his finger. “Mr. Chancellor, sir,” he said. “What are we doing?”

  Martok stiffened suddenly, inhaled sharply, and glanced about. “Sirella,” he said absently, fixing his one good eye on Pharh. “Where?”

  “Here,” Pharh said, his appetite and his determination draining out of him. “We’re right here. Outside this ... [220] place. An inn, I think. You told me to stop at the next one. Are you hungry?”

  “What time is it?”

  Pharh pointed at the chrono in the dashboard. “Going on midnight.”

  “Then we’re not too late?”

  Pharh shook his head. “No, of course not. The execution is tomorrow morning. We have ...” He calculated. “We have about ten hours, maybe more, to go about twenty klicks. That’s more than enough time. I figured you would want to stop and get something to eat, tell me our plan, figure out what we would do to prepare.”

  “Our plan?” Martok asked. “There is no our here. I get out here and start walking. You turn this thing around and go back where you came from or where you’re going next.”

  Pharh felt heat rise on his face. “But you owe me,” he said.

  “Yes, I owe you,” Martok said. “I owe it to you to keep you alive because you will almost certainly die if you come with me.”

  “And if you don’t take me, you’ll almost certainly die,” Pharh retorted. “Or are you expecting your army to protect you?”

  Expressionless, Martok reached down into an inside pocket and pulled out a piece of jewelry. Pharh saw it was a ring. Martok held it out, waited for the Ferengi to extend an open palm, and then dropped it. The ring was unexpectedly heavy, and even by the dim light of the dashboard Pharh could see that it was little more than a worn, unadorned piece of metal.

  “What’s this?” Pharh asked.

  “The chancellor’s ring,” Martok answered. “They [221] took it off Gowron’s body and gave it to me. I’ve never worn it—wouldn’t have until the ceremony—but I’ve always carried it with me. Now it’s yours. Payment, one way or another. If I survive, you bring it back to me and I’ll reward you. If I don’t, it should be worth a lot to someone, somewhere. A collector’s item. Or perhaps the new chancellor would like it.” He grinned deviously. “He’s not going to get it from me, though.”

  Pharh hefted the ring in his hand and considered. There could be no question that such an heirloom would be worth a considerable sum. When things calmed down, he could sell it or trade it for ... well, just about anything. He wouldn’t have to go crawling back to his family or sell himself into indentured servitude to some bank or loan shark (Pharh was enough of a Ferengi that the two were practically synonymous in his mind). It was a considerable amount of profit for several hours of driving and a moderate amount of terror. All he had to do now was lie low and wait for the waves of chaos to settle down. No matter what, eventually events would begin to resume their usual course. That was how business worked. He closed his fingers around
the ring. “All right,” he said. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  Martok looked out the windshield again at the glow on the horizon. “I can’t think of anything else at the moment,” he said, then cracked open the passenger-side door and the warm, rank breath of the Ka’Toth plains began to seep in.

  Slipping out onto the ground, the general began to close the door, then stopped halfway and reopened it enough to poke his head in. “On second thought,” he said with a wry grin, “do me a favor. Afterward, if you [222] find yourself in a position to tell anyone about me, exaggerate nothing. Don’t make me bigger than life.”

  Pharh frowned in confusion. “But, General, you are bigger than life.”

  “I’m not a general,” Martok said.

  “All right, Chancellor.”

  “Or that.”

  Pharh sighed and gripped the ring tighter in his hand. “Then what are you?” he asked.

  “Just a Klingon. Just a man.”

  “Who’s looking for his wife.”

  Martok nodded once.

  “Well, then, good luck.”

  “In Klingon, we say ‘Qapla’.’ It means, ‘Success.’ ”

  “Then Qapla’.”

  “Qapla’, Pharh, son of ... What was your father’s name?”

  “Just Pharh will do,” Pharh said.

  Martok nodded once-again and repeated, “Qapla’, Pharh. May your storehouses grow ever fatter with wealth and your account books always balance.”

  Pharh laughed and said, “You have spent time around Ferengi,” but Martok didn’t hear him. Pharh watched the tall figure hunch into himself and raise the hood over his head before he disappeared into the night. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea for him to go inside and ask about cranch, Pharh decided, so instead he turned the Sporak around with a series of convoluted reverses and ground gears, then headed back down the road into the east and the rising moon. There was a lot of road between him and the landfill, but, somehow, Pharh doubted he would run into anything he couldn’t handle.

  14

  AS DAWN APPROACHED and the streetlights of the First City began to dim, Martok concluded that his plan was going about as well as he could expect. He was in the city, near the site of the Great Hall, and had managed to find a guardsman who was stupid enough to let Martok kill him and take his uniform. He was surprised that Morjod had kept the guardsmen on duty, since they were usually more closely allied with some sort of civilian authority, but perhaps that was just one more indication of how deep into the power structure the usurper had penetrated. It didn’t matter. Martok’s only concern was that guardsmen wore helmets where Defense Force soldiers did not, offering him a way to maintain his anonymity, and that there might even be a logical reason why a guardsman would be inside the Emperor’s Palace.

  Still, he was beginning to wish he had not let Pharh take the Sporak. The last kellicam’s walk to the city [224] center had felt like eternity. His pain from cramping leg muscles had been exceeded only by the excruciating ache of his feet. Fortunately, the deserted-looking home he had broken into really had been deserted, and both their larder and medical-supply cabinet had been well stocked. In fact, in the last two hours, Martok had noticed that many homes inside the city limits appeared to be deserted. Either Morjod had been making arrests or, more likely, civilians had decided it was time to visit their distant relations. Martok couldn’t condemn them. It was one thing to be asked to fight in a war or to take sides in a revolution; it was quite something else to back a coup. Perhaps more Klingons had come to that conclusion than Morjod had anticipated. They might, Martok reflected, even be willing to fall in behind a deposed chancellor if given the opportunity. Martok shook his head, finding the thought distracting. Whether he had a future as chancellor didn’t matter. Not immediately, anyway. Rescuing his wife came first. After Sirella was safe, after he had ascertained what had happened to the children, then he would decide what to do about the chancellorship and Morjod. For all he knew, the usurper might be precisely what the Klingon people wanted or needed. Or deserve, he thought wryly. Not even Kahless had shown up to say anything one way or another, though Martok had to consider that the emperor was either in Morjod’s power or dead. Strange how few people had even mentioned the clone emperor’s name in the past few days, almost as if they had all been looking for an excuse to forget him.

  He shrugged and felt the unfamiliar straps of the guardsman armor bite into his back and shoulders. [225] Pulling on the helmet, he scanned the area, memorizing the location of doors, stairways—potential escape routes—should he come back this way. From the silence, he determined that the area surrounding the palace must be mostly empty, so he felt safe moving deeper into the compound.

  As dawn approached, the periwinkle sky brightened, lending him light to see by. He passed through winding alleys and small courtyards, each step bringing him closer to Sirella. He mentally mapped each section, noting which alleys dead-ended and which might be a good hiding place, should he require one. After twenty minutes of twisting and turning through the mazelike passageways, Martok crossed the deserted square to the Emperor’s Palace, the identification card he’d lifted from the guardsman snugly cupped in the palm of his hand. If it didn’t work, he would attempt a diversion. Martok knew that he didn’t stand much of a chance if forced to fight his way in and then out again.

  The disgraced lady was being held in the emperor’s gaol, the first person to be so honored in many hundreds of years. Morjod had heavily publicized her location, so Martok anticipated a trap. What he hoped was that Morjod and his conspirators had planned on defending against a much larger group, possibly even an army or a guerrilla strike. A single guerrilla, on the other hand, would be difficult to prepare for. Though the odds were heavily stacked against him, he knew that stealth was the one weapon that could conceivably defeat Morjod’s layers of security.

  The adjoining plaza where the Great Hall once stood had been cleared of all but the largest chunks of debris. Where the most ancient of Klingon edifices had once [226] risen above the city was only a shallow crater half a kellicam across. Cracked stone and concrete edged the crater, but raw earth filled in past the three-meter mark, most of this churned up into mud by heavy demolition equipment. The openness of the setting would make it difficult to stage a rescue in the crater, should circumstances require that approach. Crude bleachers ringing the sides assured that hundreds if not thousands of citizens with unknown loyalties would be in attendance. I will have to rescue her before she is removed from her holding cell.

  In the center of the crater, Martok could see carpenters still putting the finishing touches on a platform where stood the execution device. Martok had seen pictures of the cha’ta’rok—literally the “machine that tears”—in history books, but he had never imagined that he would see a working model. In the days before the original Kahless had unified the empire, some nefarious genius had created the device, intending it to be both an instrument of execution and a test of a warrior’s strength. The concept was deceptively simple: the victim was strapped down to a platform and four long flexible poles were pulled toward him or her. The poles had leather thongs at their ends and these were tied to the victim’s arms and legs and around the neck. On a signal from the chieftain, the executioner would release the straps that bound the victim to the table and then the stays that kept the poles bent. If the victim was weak or had simply surrendered, the poles would instantly snap back into position, pulling his or her arms, legs, and head from the sockets. It was a messy, intentionally humiliating death, but, by the standards of its era, mercifully quick.

  [227] Conversely, if the warrior was strong, he could keep the poles from snapping away for minutes or, as had been reported in legends, for hours at a time. Every young warrior was told the story of Mighty Borma, who won his freedom by holding the poles bent for so long that the tops sprouted roots that grew into the earth. Even with the thrilling, heroic stories the cha’ta’rok had inspired, its creation had not been,
Martok concluded, the Klingons’ finest hour.

  Beyond the crater, on the opposite side of the plaza, Martok crossed the gardens fringing the palace walls. Dingy gray ash coated the usually lush grounds. Plants and trees were still alive—it had only been two days since the attack—but Martok was surprised that Morjod’s vanity hadn’t compelled him to have them cleaned. During his visits here, he had become friendly with one of the gardeners, an old woman named Gratach, who had been tending the emperor’s gardens since Urthog’s day. Because she reminded him of Darok, Martok had enjoyed his conversations with her. Could Morjod have been so unwise as to imprison or dismiss Gratach? It seemed inconceivable, but there wasn’t any other explanation. Except ...

  Of course. She had been part of the receiving party at the Great Hall. Gratach would have wanted to see him enter the Hall and take the oath. Staring at the dirty trees, Martok clenched his fist. Thousands must have died yesterday! Reaching up, he took a leaf between his fingers and brushed it until pale green showed. I shall avenge you, too, old woman. ...

  Beyond the gardens, Martok noted pairs of guards on duty at every corner and at all the palace entrances. The guardsmen and the Defense Force patrolmen [228] appeared to be exhausted and oblivious of everything save the workmen at the center of the crater. He moved slowly, purposefully, toward a particularly droopy pair of guards, a satchel that he had found in the guardsman’s kit folded under his arm. The sound of the workmen cranking one of the winches almost made him stop to listen, but then he maintained a courier’s weary pace toward the secondary entrance he had chosen.

  The pair of guardsmen beside the security barrier barely glanced at Martok as he swiped the identification card through the scanner, though one asked him to identify himself.