The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 2 Page 20

  “Is that what it was like even back then?” Darok asked. “Even the First Empire was ruled by politics?”

  A trio of warriors fell in behind them, all of them breathing heavily as they marched through the snow. “My friend,” Kahless said. “Every group of people living together involves politics. We cannot help ourselves. It is our meat and drink. Klingons often try to pretend they’re above such petty things, but they are no different than anyone else.”

  “We are no different than anyone else,” Darok corrected.

  “We?”

  “You said ‘they.’”

  “I did?” Kahless asked, genuinely surprised.

  “You did.”

  “How strange.”

  A pair of Hur’q charged out of the mist at the small troop. Kahless and Darok did not even bother raising their weapons. Six shots rang out before the monsters were closer than ten paces.

  “I think we’re winning,” Darok said as he stepped over a Hur’q’s body.

  “For now,” Kahless said, and redoubled his pace. “But this feels too easy—calculated.”

  “I said that before.” Darok looked back over his shoulder and saw that another score of warriors had joined them; on every side, more approached through the mists. Studying faces and forms with a practiced eye, Darok determined that their force had encountered resistance, but nothing beyond their skills. Their warriors had gashes and abrasions, a few broken bones and other minor injuries, but nothing serious. Of course, those with life-threatening injuries would have been left behind for pickup, but overall Darok thought their makeshift army looked strong and, more important, confident.

  The rising sun began burning away the morning mist, revealing more about their position. Fifty meters before them was the gray hulk they had seen through the mist, now revealed to be a steep cliff wall almost two hundred meters high. To the right and left the cliff tapered away to less lofty heights, but these wings curved inward so that now the invaders stood near the center of a semicircular arena. All of Darok’s warning senses jangled. “We don’t want to be here,” he said to Kahless, and a quick glance at the emperor revealed that he had already come to the same conclusion.

  Kahless held his hand up, signaling for a halt, then made the gesture that indicated a quick retreat to the rear. Confused by the gesture, their warriors, now fifty or sixty strong, obeyed as best they could without the benefit of being organized into fighting units. We were too hasty, Darok thought. Too confident in our ability to strike quickly. We’re not organized for a long fight….

  They almost managed to escape, but the troops at the back had not seen Kahless’s signal through the mist and impeded the ranks from moving backward. Before they could be quit of the space in the center of the clearing, doors opened in the cliff walls on all three sides and the barrels of large disruptor gun emplacements were shoved out. “Break for the gap!” Kahless shouted. The warriors who could hear him reacted instantaneously, but too few could hear with the steady drone of wind in their ears; soon enough there was only the sound of shouting and screaming and gunfire.

  Darok threw himself facedown in the snow rather than attempt to cross the clearing. He was too old to make the run, especially with all the others between him and safety. The gunners must have seen him and many others around him drop to the ground and, quickly enough, they found their range. Chunks of ice leapt into the air around his head and he could hear the sizzle and pock of the snow as it vaporized.

  “K’pekt!” Darok shouted. “I am not dying here!” Rolling to his left just as a trace of disruptor bolts stitched the ground where he had lain, he scrambled to his knees, got his feet under him, and pushed himself up. Crossing the clearing in a zigzag pattern, he headed for the nearest gun emplacement, holding his nearly depleted disruptor in one hand and drawing his bat’leth with the other. He would reach the wall. He would find a throat to cut. He would, somehow, die with honor, even if no one ever knew of his deeds or sang a song about him….

  And then behind him, Darok heard a steady pounding noise approaching nearer and nearer. He dared not look back. With his target before him, he kept his eyes on the gunner, to try to guess where he might try to fire next. If the noise behind him was another gunner, one from the other side of the semicircle…? Though it scarcely seemed possible, Darok had to know. I will not be dispatched to Sto-Vo-Kor with a bolt to the back!

  But before he could determine how to look back and see what followed him, he heard another sound, one even louder than the pounding behind or the disruptor bolts in front, or the throbbing of his blood in his ears, a sound he had heard many times on the field of battle, a sound he knew well.

  Behind him, Darok heard Martok laughing. The general had come to make war on Gothmara.

  Reaching down within him, Darok found an untapped reserve and felt the fire of battle surge into his veins. He ran faster, determined that he would reach his target before his lord. He would show him: Still some fight left in these bones.

  * * *

  At the edge of the Boreth system, the Rotarran burst out of warp space, switched over to her impulse engines, and began wildly zigzagging back and forth, dropping a clutch of photon torpedoes behind her. Seconds later, General Ngane’s flagship, the Chak’ta, emerged from warp, her fore guns blazing, shields glowing azure. Despite her great size, Chak’ta easily dipped and slid with precision between torpedo bursts, taking no damage, then flung a pair of torpedoes into Rotarran’s path. Though neither missile made a direct hit, the smaller ship staggered and slowed. Her port warp nacelle glowed orange, then red, then violet. An alert engineer vented antimatter into space, but not before a shock wave ripped through the aft hull, tearing out bulkhead seams. Engineering fluids, gas coolants, and precious atmosphere that had been transported through the bulkhead spewed out into space.

  Mortally wounded, the Rotarran commenced dying, her killer screaming in her wake.

  * * *

  In his short life, Pharh believed he had done many, many stupid things, among them being born into his family in the first place (which, yes, he actually considered his own fault). Somewhere in the middle of the pack was the whole leaving-home-to-make-his-own-way-in-the-big-bad-universe thing, which had eventually led him to Qo’noS. Toward the top of the list were all the many times in the past week he had insisted on accompanying Martok. Number one on the list—that moment, in any case—was actually volunteering to sit behind Martok on the smelly jarq as it bounced and rolled beneath them across the plain. Someone had started shooting at them a little while ago, which was terrifying, but not even Pharh was self-absorbed enough to consider that his fault. Stupidity wasn’t the issue when people shot at you; ducking was.

  Sadly, Martok did not appear to believe in ducking. Martok appeared to believe in shouting and laughing and brandishing his weapon and encouraging the smelly, four-legged sacks of suet to go faster. Toward the people who were shooting at them.

  Talk about stupid, Pharh decided.

  Though moving at what felt like a tremendous rate of speed, Sithala seemed to playfully weave in and out among the disruptor bolts, almost as if she anticipated where the gunner would place his next shot. Every miss put Pharh and Martok another ten meters closer to the wall. Clutching the bellowing Klingon’s sides, Pharh risked a quick look over his shoulder to see what was happening to the katai and was surprised and happy to see that they were all still keeping pace, though maintaining a more stolid, dignified silence. They were not, apparently, quite so much the screaming type, though even across the battle-scarred field, Pharh could see Angwar’s grim smile. Whatever else, Pharh guessed, the katai knew that this was the moment for which he had prepared his entire life. Pharh only wished he could say the same for himself.

  But for what moment did you prepare yourself? he had to ask. And the honest answer (Pharh was nothing if not brutally honest with himself about his shortcomings) came back: None! Which is how you end up clutching the ass-end of someone else in the middle of a war! And the mor
e honest part of his mind asked, What do you do about it? And the answer came back: Hold on and stop complaining!

  They passed batches of Klingons fleeing from the crossfire, but as soon as they saw who was riding the jarq, the warriors turned around and heedlessly charged back into the killing field. Gunners, who moments ago had been mowing them down, were now distracted by the charging cavalry and seemed unable to find their targets. Encouraged, the foot soldiers formed up into wedges and pelted across the churned-up snow.

  After crossing the field’s center, Pharh saw only one Klingon ahead of them, a white-haired warrior whom he first took for Kahless. As they passed, Pharh saw it was actually old Darok, whom he had formerly considered the most sensible member of an insane race. And yet, here he was, staggering through knee-deep drifts up the short slope to the gun emplacements. Pharh turned around in the saddle and shouted, “What’s wrong with you!?” but there was no way Darok could have heard him over the whump-whump of the guns and the exploding turf.

  When Pharh turned back around, he was surprised to find that he could actually see what was in front of him, and this was simply because Martok was leaning down over his mount’s neck, his blade lying flat against the beast’s side. Suddenly, they were airborne, the gun muzzle was sliding under Sithala’s belly, and Martok was bringing the point of his bat’leth up into the Hur’q that had been ordered to stay there to prevent precisely this sort of invasion.

  The monster’s entrails slid out through the slit in its gut, leaving an almost too-slimy landing spot for the dexterous jarq. Martok’s mount skidded in the combined slush and blood, but kept its feet. Two Klingon gunners, both too surprised to react, stood stunned when Martok leapt out of his saddle and swung his blade one-handed in two bright arcs. Heads tumbled to the ground and their blood joined the Hur’q’s.

  Sithala danced about for a moment until his hooves found purchase. Martok pointed at Pharh. “Get down here.”

  “I’d rather not,” Pharh said, looking down. “If it’s all the same to you.”

  “It’s not all the same. Get down here or I’ll throw you face-first into the snow.”

  “Okay. Convinced.” Pharh hopped down off the saddle, almost losing his balance because of the shield.

  “Do you know how to fire one of these things?” Martok asked, pointing at the gigantic gun. There were numerous dials and sensor readouts, all of it in Klingonese.

  “Unless there’s a big, red button labeled ‘Push me’ that I’m missing, then the answer is no.”

  “Fine. Then you feed me the ammo charges. They’re over there.” He pointed at a pile of red cylinders. “Don’t drop one. They’re temperamental.”

  “What are we doing?” Pharh asked, slipping across the floor to the ammo pile.

  “We’re going to destroy the other guns,” Martok said.

  Pharh considered the layout of the cliff wall and the position of their gun, which was near the center of the semicircle. “How can we do that from here?”

  “We can’t,” Martok said, picking up a piece of line from a pile of supplies at the edge of the small chamber, then tying an end to the jarq’s saddle. “We’re going to drag it outside.”

  “Great,” Pharh said and rolled his eyes. When I have a moment to think, he decided, I need to reconsider my life goals.

  * * *

  Gothmara’s communicator chimed. It had chimed steadily for the past ten minutes, usually calls from various lieutenants and commanders requesting assistance. She had been watching the battle unfold on her sensor display and had been satisfied with the way the fight had been playing out until Martok and his friends had shown up on their fuzzy beasts. At first, she hadn’t really considered it a significant change to the order of the battle; after all, there were only twelve of them. But then, when they made it across the kill zone to the gun emplacements and began using the weapons against Gothmara’s soldiers, she remembered the mysteriously killed twenty-two warriors.

  She had stopped taking calls a few minutes ago, having given up on this position. Other problems preoccupied her now, such as how to get to a ship she could use to escape. But she recognized this chime and answered it immediately.

  “Mother?” Morjod asked.

  “Who else, my dearest?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I am now, my pet, now that you are here. Where are you precisely?”

  She could practically hear Morjod preen at her words of praise. “We’ve just entered the system and are pursuing Rotarran toward the planet.”

  “Excellent,” Gothmara said. “I’m currently engaged in an altercation with your father …”

  “He’s there? On the planet?”

  “Yes, dear. Please don’t interrupt. I’ve told you how much that displeases me.”

  “My apologies, Mother.”

  “How far are you from the planet? More importantly, can you begin beaming in troops now?”

  Morjod paused, obviously to check with the navigator and transporter chief. “In three-point-six minutes, Mother. Right after I finish off Rotarran.”

  “Fine, Morjod. That’s fine. You do that and then beam down as many men as you can to these coordinates.” She transmitted the coordinates for a field near the battle site where Martok would not be able to see them. Gothmara wanted Morjod’s father to have a few moments of false hope before she crushed him. “Then beam down yourself. The warriors will need to see you.”

  “All right, Mother. I will. One other thing, Mother …”

  “Does it involve sending down troops, dear?”

  Morjod hesitated. “No. Not really.” His voice sounded oddly petulant.

  “Then it will have to wait.”

  Morjod said, “All right. It can wait. Qapla’, Mother.”

  “Qapla’, my son.”

  17

  She doesn’t want to know, Morjod thought. Fine. She doesn’t need to know. There are things she doesn’t tell me, so now there’s something I won’t tell her. I will make it mine— only mine—and then we’ll see who will issue the orders.

  A sixth head had joined the five under the main monitor, one belonging to a navigator who had displeased the emperor. Morjod had removed the offending cranium with a single blow, a swipe so graceful that though many of the bridge crew had been surprised by its sudden, savage fury, many had also been impressed. Certainly they had all treated their emperor with even greater respect, even awe, since the headless body had slumped over his console. Sadly, she had been the best navigator aboard, and the second-best navigator—a distant second best—was struggling to maintain their course, though Morjod had been having difficulty understanding precisely why. How hard could it be to follow a ship whose warp signature you had recorded in your sensor logs?

  “Time to planet?” Morjod asked.

  “Six point, uh, seven minutes, my emperor,” the first officer responded, his tone a little too hesitant for Morjod’s taste. He liked his bridge officers to sound more assertive.

  “Weapons officer—distance to Rotarran?”

  “Ten thousand kellicams, my emperor!”

  That was a little more like it. Enthusiasm would be a key virtue in the new Defense Force he would build when he had solidified his hold on the empire. Morjod rubbed his chin and looked around the bridge from his seat. He could not see everyone at once, which simultaneously made him anxious and also reminded him of old recordings he had seen of Klingon ships. In those images, the captain’s chair had sat on a high platform—like a pedestal for a throne or a base for a piece of statuary. The idea appealed to him, and not only for his own sake but because it would benefit every captain in his fleet. “A captain should be like a god to his crew,” he said aloud. “He should always know precisely what they are doing.”

  Sensing the crew’s attempts to avoid nervously glancing at each other, Morjod smiled. He enjoyed their discomfort, reveled in his elemental unpredictability. Not only a god, he decided silently, but a storm god.

  “Weapons officer,”
Morjod said. “Disable Rotarran, but do not destroy it. Understand?”

  “Yes, my emperor!”

  “Do you know what will happen if you do not?”

  The weapons officer glanced at the main monitor, or rather, at the spot below it. “Yes, my emperor!”

  “Excellent. Fire at will.”

  The weapons officer saluted crisply. “By your command, my emperor.”

  Morjod settled back in his chair, crossed his legs, and laid the blade of his bat’leth across his legs. Though he had told no one about it, he had become attached to this weapon, the one he had taken from Martok when his mother had captured him beneath the emperor’s—that is, Morjod’s —palace. The blade was heavy and cumbersome and not at all the sort of weapon an emperor should carry, which, in Morjod’s mind, made it all the more desirable. Carrying it, he thought, made him eccentric. All the great emperors of the past had possessed some peculiar characteristic for which they were remembered. Someday, someone would ask Morjod why he used such a haggard, misbegotten old bat’leth and that would give him the opportunity to explain how he had come by it—taking it from his father while he had been trying to rescue his wife.

  “And why do you carry this rather than the splendid Sword of Kahless?” that person would ask.

  Modestly, Morjod would say something like, “Kahless’s sword is for state occasions.” Then he would pat the old piece of steel and say offhand, “It isn’t the blade that makes the warrior, but the warrior who makes the blade.” Everyone would nod approvingly, especially the grizzled old veterans. Someone would write down what Morjod said and repeat it later.

  And if no one did write it down, Morjod would kill the entire audience and bring in a fresh one. Eventually, someone would get it right.

  Studying his reflection in the polished blade, Morjod noticed a tiny nock in the edge, a subtle imperfection. Probably the edge had been chipped on the collar of someone’s uniform. Maybe I’ll throw this thing away after all, he decided. Tiny flaws were, in their way, the worst kind of all.