The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 2 Page 2

  “Of course,” Ezri said.

  “So you know how chaotic the situation is already and how much worse it’s likely to become. They took over embassies. Being a Starfleet officer isn’t going to carry any weight. In fact, if half of what we’ve heard about this Morjod is true, it could work against you.”

  “If I were going anywhere near the Klingon Empire—and please note the use of the conditional—what makes you think I would even mention the fact that I’m a Starfleet officer? Being on leave means I’m just Ezri Dax, civilian.”

  Kira almost smiled at that. Almost. She appeared to have more to say on the subject, but while she had been among those to question most stridently Jadzia’s decision to uphold Curzon’s blood oath six years ago, if there was one thing Kira understood, it was personal necessity. “Go,” she said. “Be careful.”

  Ezri rose and walked toward the opening office doors, trying hard not to move too quickly. “I will,” she said.

  “Say hello to Worf for me.”

  “I will,” Ezri said, then stopped midstride on the threshold, abashed. “If I see him,” she continued, then stepped through. The doors hissed shut before she could hear Kira’s response.

  * * *

  Drifting at a constant velocity near one of the larger chunks of undifferentiated rock, Ezri dozed as the Wardrobe’s sensors delicately scanned the asteroid field. Her charts did not name the formation, but listed it as one of many medium-sized, unremarkable clusters that studded the Klingon outmarches. Ezri had already considered sending in several new names to the chart makers, except, alas, she suspected they would object to her more colorful sobriquets, especially since many of them used less than polite anatomical references.

  “So help me, Worf,” she said after checking the coordinates for the third time in an hour. “You’d better not have gotten yourself killed already.” Worf had piggy-backed these coordinates onto the transmission he’d sent her on DS9, obviously counting on her knowing him well enough to check. She stared out the shuttle’s main viewport and wondered if she could slink back to the station without anyone noticing she had left. (“Me? Away? What gave you that idea? I’ve been here the whole time.”) Probably not.

  It was possible, of course, that Worf was in the vicinity, but there was no way her little shuttle’s sensors would detect a cloaked ship. If he was nearby, though, why wouldn’t he attempt to contact her? Assuming he was still alive, the most likely answer was that he was waiting for some sort of sign or password. The remaining members of the House of Martok—however many of them there might be—would be feeling mighty paranoid. Perhaps the direct approach would be best.

  Tuning the Wardrobe’s tiny little subspace transmitter to all channels, Ezri sent the message “Worf, I’m here. If it has to be ‘now,’ then you’re going to have to come find me.” She had hoped the reference to Worf’s single-word message would give him the reassurance he desired, but she wasn’t expecting it quite so suddenly.

  The Wardrobe’s sensors beeped furiously as five Klingon vessels simultaneously decloaked around her, three birds-of-prey and one K’t’inga-class battle cruiser. The communications monitor flickered to life, and Ezri was shocked by how Worf looked even more grim and careworn than usual. “Hello, Ezri,” he said, his expression melting a bit.

  “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for you out here?”

  Worf glanced off-screen, then looked back at her. “Two hours and forty-two minutes.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “We could not risk revealing ourselves until we were certain it was you.”

  “You don’t have sensors?”

  “Many of these asteroids contain trace amounts of kelbonite,” he explained. “It makes it difficult to scan.”

  Ezri knew about kelbonite. Not only did it inhibit sensor scans, it made it nearly impossible to get a transporter lock. “So I’m going for a spacewalk?”

  “A short one, yes. Do you have an EVA suit?”

  “Yes,” Ezri quipped. “A very stylish one with large purple flowers on it. You’ll love it.”

  As usual, Worf was not certain how to respond when Ezri joked with him. He gave her a quizzical half smile, then said, “We will turn the ship at your stern so that our airlock is pointed toward yours.”

  “That would be great, Worf. And have a nice warm drink ready for me. Spacewalks always make me cold.”

  “I will see to it. Come as soon as you can.”

  “I will. Oh, and Worf?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s good to see you.”

  Worf glanced over his shoulder, obviously checking to see who was in earshot. Reassured, he looked back at her and said, “It is good to see you, too, Ezri. The House of Martok is honored by your presence.”

  “You tell the House of Martok it has a lot of explaining to do.”

  3

  All of the Klingon ships—including Ch’Tang, B’Moth, Ya’Vang, and Orantho—were familiar to Ezri, all having visited DS9 either before or during the Dominion War, but it was into the Rotarran’s airlock she slipped, though only after the other four had taken up defensive positions around it. Wardrobe’s docking port wasn’t compatible with its Klingon counterpart, but once Ezri had sidled alongside the Rotarran, stepping from one ship to another across the void was the work of seconds. Worf awaited her outside the inner hatch, his expression carefully neutral upon seeing her purple-flower-covered EVA suit. “I might be able to find you something more …suitable later.”

  “What—it’s not warriorly enough for you?” Ezri said, uncoupling the light helmet. He helped her climb out of the suit, then directed her to the door.

  Memories of the Rotarran—not her own, but Jadzia’s—overwhelmed her as soon as they stepped into the passage. In comparison with Starfleet vessels, the air was more humid, the lighting dimmer, and the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen in the atmosphere slightly higher, making Ezri feel a little giddy. And there it was—a smell both Curzon and Jadzia had associated with Klingon vessels, an odor unique to their culture that they probably didn’t even notice or maybe did and just liked.

  Every time she came aboard a Klingon vessel, Dax noted it. She smiled at the memory of Curzon trying to explain it to a young Ben Sisko: “It’s something between the smell of frying bacon, old-fashioned petroleum oil, and the yeasty smell you get off truly exquisite beer.” Only two of those smells (bacon and beer) were even in Ben’s sensory vocabulary, and since he had never been much of a beer drinker, let alone an exquisite beer drinker, combining their smells hadn’t made sense to him. And petroleum oil was a concept wholly lost on a modern twenty-fourth-century lad. Benjamin might have been unable to truly appreciate “essence of bird-of-prey,” but it never failed to evoke a response in Dax. Damned if it didn’t make Ezri wonder when was the last time that she had eaten. Either her stomach was growling or, again, maybe it was the symbiont.

  Walking up from the stern of the ship toward the bow, Ezri took longer strides, threw her shoulders back, and breathed in more deeply, partly in an effort to keep up with Worf’s long-legged stride, but also because this was how she imagined the crew of this ship must all walk.

  And then she noticed that there was no one else in the corridor.

  Observing her questioning expression, Worf said dourly, “We are spread rather thin.”

  “So I see. How many?”

  “Among the five ships: approximately fifteen hundred.”

  Ezri whistled ominously. Struggling to remember the complements for the various warships, she asked, “That’s about … half strength?”

  “Closer to one-third.”

  Ezri winced.

  “But they are the finest soldiers of the empire.”

  “They’d have to be to keep these ships in operation.” She almost asked, “When do you all sleep?” but then she saw, even in the low light, the dark circles of fatigue etched under Worf’s eyes. There was a light there, too. A touch of fever? “How is Martok taking all
this?” she asked.

  From the low murmur of annoyance, Ezri knew this was precisely the sort of question Worf did not want to discuss, but she was feeling rattled and fell back on her counselor’s training, part of which was collecting intelligence.

  Worf must have been even more exhausted than she thought, because he snapped, “Jadzia would not have asked such a question. She would not have had to.”

  Stopping in her tracks, she retorted, “Jadzia isn’t here. I am. And though I can call on Jadzia’s memories of Klingon inter- and intra-familial politics, it would be tainted—yes, tainted —by her view of things. Jadzia loved Klingons. She had a very romanticized view of all of you. So did Curzon. I, on the other hand, do not. You summoned me knowing that I think there are some fundamental flaws in Klingon philosophy, or, at least, in how it’s being expressed currently. I would not make the mistake of walk-ing into a room full of warriors who are looking for a way to prove how valuable they are to their chancellor without first getting a sense of said chancellor’s mood. Am I making myself clear?”

  Worf stared at her, his bushy eyebrows so high up on his prodigious forehead that they looked like they were ready to crawl up into his scalp. Finally, after several seconds, they both crept down to form a level horizon and he nodded once. “Yes, I understand. This is your way.” Ezri knew that the words and concepts Worf attempted to form in his mind were not things that came easily to him. While Klingons enjoyed, even indulged themselves in, their passions, they were not, culturally speaking, a species that enjoyed discussing same. “Martok is … resistant. He does not seem to understand that he must embrace the destiny that has been laid out before him.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want that destiny.”

  Worf shook his head impatiently, then looked down at Ezri as if he was once again reminded to whom he spoke. “One does not want or not want one’s destiny. One accepts it … or not. Not accepting one’s destiny creates strife and disharmony.”

  “For that person or for everyone else?”

  “Both.”

  “Worf,” Ezri said. “I might not have every detail about Klingon culture at my fingertips the way my last two hosts did, but I have to say I don’t remember ever hearing any of this before. Is there some cache of Klingon wisdom that you’ve been hiding from outsiders for all these years?”

  Now Worf stared deep into Ezri’s eyes and, looking back, she was able to study more closely the thing that she had thought was a glimmer of exhaustion-induced fever. No, she realized. Not fever, not exhaustion: exultation. “Worf,” she said breathlessly. “You’ve been having visions, haven’t you?”

  He smiled—not so rare a thing for Worf as he might like to think—but there was a note of something in it that Ezri could only describe as beatific. I am in so much trouble.

  As she walked, she was continuing to ponder what confluence of events might have brought Worf to this place when she nearly tripped over something—no, make that someone—lingering in the narrow hallway outside the conference room: a Ferengi of Nog’s approximate age, but, from the look of his long, gangly arms and legs, about half again his height. Without getting a better look at him, it was difficult to say exactly how large this utterly unexpected figure was, but he was doing his best to make himself as invisible as possible. Stopping where she stood, she blinked, shook her head, and blinked again, but the knotty little ball of Ferengi wearing a shabby gold-and-green-striped suit didn’t vanish as she expected a hallucination should. The knotty little ball waggled a few fingers in her direction; she waggled back. She glanced over at Worf, who seemed to be reading her mind, but the only explanation he offered was a quick roll of his eyes. Later, he was saying. When we have time. Lots and lots of time.

  A few paces down from the Ferengi, they paused before a door long enough for the security sensors to scan and clear them. Ezri understood that this was standard procedure on many Klingon ships, but she recalled that Martok held such practices in disdain. “If I cannot trust the least of my crew,” he had said once, “then I do not deserve to be their captain.” Obviously, times had changed.

  The door slid open and they stepped into what passed for a conference room on a Klingon ship. Unlike the large, comfortable work areas on Federation starships and certainly nothing like the Cardassian-designed cavernous spaces on Deep Space 9, this cramped, narrow room was obviously meant to be as uncomfortable as possible, a room where orders were issued, not where options were discussed.

  Looking around the room, studying the occupants’ faces, Ezri was not surprised to find that nearly every person exuded a profound discomfort. As a rule, Klingons despised meetings. Why discuss when a warrior should act? This, Ezri believed, was part of the empire’s problem: an unwillingness to examine the situation at hand and choose the proper course based on the situation’s specifics. Instead, most Klingons believed battle-fever-infused decision making to be superior to logical decision making. To be faced with the present dilemma, one that required measured discussion, analysis, and planning, must be disquieting for the lot of them. Few, if any of them, knew precisely how they’d arrived at this moment; fewer still had any inkling about what the future held.

  Seated at the center of the long, crescent-shaped conference table was Martok, wearing neither his chancellor’s cloak nor even a general’s regalia, but the simple garb of a Defense Force soldier. Rather than looking like he was in charge of the meeting, to Ezri’s eyes he evinced the posture of a caged Tika cat, eager to flee the room for the bridge the moment Sirella took her eyes off him. He must absolutely hate having to sit here. To be political in a crisis must be repugnant to him, she thought. Restless to the point of fidgeting, Martok periodically twisted from side to side, drilling his gaze on the tabletop or at his open hands, but rarely into the eyes of the others in the room. Something terrible has happened, Ezri realized, her counselor’s training coming to the fore. He’s blaming himself for whatever has happened to the empire. He’s even trying to punish himself—wearing a common soldier’s uniform—but none of the others is allowing him to suffer the way he thinks he ought.

  Studying his posture more carefully as they approached the table, Ezri sensed a frosty zone of uncertainty and shame radiating from Martok’s back toward Sirella. While Ezri had never met the imperious lady of House Martok herself, Jadzia’s experiences with her before her wedding to Worf were among the most indelible memories of Dax’s previous lifetime. Sirella stood as tall, straight, and proud as she had on the day Jadzia—the supplicant daughter-in-law—had greeted her at the door of Dax’s quarters, but there was a palpable sense of fatigue around her. No wonder, Ezri thought, considering what she’s been through. There had been scant information from Qo’noS since Morjod had destroyed the Great Hall a week before, but if the small amount they had was to be believed, Sirella had been captured and held prisoner until Martok and Worf and a small contingent of warriors had rescued her a few days ago. Ezri could only hazard a guess at what might have passed between her and Martok that caused this icy animosity. If half of what Worf and Ben Sisko had told her about the Martok marriage was to be believed, the single word that best defined their relationship was “heat,” whether the heat of battle or the heat of passion.

  Seated on Martok’s right was his son Drex, a young warrior whom Ezri had only met once or twice in passing during the war. From Jadzia’s recollections as well as her own impressions, she believed Drex to be what she considered the personification of the contemporary Klingon warrior—arrogant, fearless, quick to anger, and, most of all, proud. He possessed none of his father’s patience or humor and very little of his wisdom, though Drex had always seemed to enjoy the high esteem of his fellow warriors, which was, Ezri thought, precisely the problem. While Martok and Worf possessed most of the qualities that represented whatever greatness remained in the empire, Drex embodied the attributes that hastened its ruin.

  Beside Drex was a bowed, white-haired figure that Ezri recognized as Darok, gin’tak to House Martok. He and Jadz
ia had shared a warm, open friendship based largely on the fact that Darok had known Curzon in his youth. Consequently, they shared an understanding that endured long after the old Klingon could no longer tolerate the blustering and posturing of the young. Ezri had first talked to Darok during the rocky adjustment period following her joining. Recalling the encounter, she was certain that he had been puzzled by her own confused sense of “knowing, but not knowing,” if not outright annoyed. Still, when Darok caught sight of her standing beside Worf, he inclined his aged, gray-maned head at her in a nod of greeting.

  On Martok’s left were two empty chairs, obviously meant for Worf and herself, and then, beside these, was Worf’s son, Alexander Rozhenko. Surprisingly, rather than looking stressed or uncertain (his usual expressions), Alexander appeared more calm and at peace with himself than Dax could remember seeing him since … well, ever. He gave her a tight-lipped smile, then pointed his chin at the seat beside his own, obviously pleased to have her there.

  At either end of the table, two to each side, sat four Klingons Ezri had never met, three men and a woman, clearly the captains of the other Klingon ships. None of them said or did anything as Ezri and Worf entered, but in their stillness she sensed a vague foreboding. How could they not be anxious, she thought, considering their leader’s anxiety? Observing pinched weariness in every pair of eyes she met, Ezri wondered if this whole group might benefit from a hearty meal, several kegs of bloodwine, and a long nap. What was it about Klingons that made them think they were above the needs of their bodies, redundant systems or not?

  Her eyes flickered over the last character in the unfolding drama, trying to ascertain his identity. The broad-shouldered, snowy-haired Klingon was the only one who was not looking at her, but instead stood at parade rest beside the room’s only window, watching the tumbling asteroids. And though he seemed utterly absorbed by the dance of gravity and inertia before him, Ezri knew he was equally aware of everything that was happening in the room behind him. It was, she decided, as if he were a chess master who was thinking not only about the play of stone bodies and space outside, but also about the pieces behind him. Nothing would happen, nothing would begin to move until he turned around and gave them all his attention, and then, perhaps, the pieces outside would cease to wheel and collide.