The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 1 Read online

  He circled the bridge, glanced over his officers’ shoulders, gladdened to see their single-minded focus on their duties. Their minds may be here, but their hearts are in the First City, he thought. They are asking themselves, “Who do I know who might have been there?” He wished he could grant them the chance to sing their friends to the next world, but he knew intelligence was the key to making his next move. And nothing will help purge their grief like making battle on those responsible for this destruction!

  As if on cue, the tactical officer, a young female named Tamal, announced, “I have completed my scans, Captain.”

  “Report.”

  “There are no ships in the immediate vicinity. No impulse signatures.”

  “Everyone is moving under cloak,” Worf deduced.

  “A sensible precaution,” K’Tar said.

  “Then our foes have chosen not to reveal themselves,” Martok spat. “Cowards.”

  “Perhaps,” Worf said. “Or perhaps they are merely waiting for some signal to reveal themselves.”

  “Maintain communications silence,” K’Tar ordered. “Our first responsibility is to keep the chancellor secure.” He spoke the words to the crew, but his eyes rested on Martok.

  How sore was Martok’s temptation to speak up in that moment! To denounce this lurking and hiding as a coward’s response! But his heart told him that he would dishonor K’Tar, who spoke correctly, if he voiced his displeasure. When he was the captain of the vessel, he too would have put protecting the chancellor above hunting down an enemy. That the former action contradicted the latter in this circumstance frustrated him more than he could express. As chancellor, he could no longer afford to think like a soldier or even a general. He was, for better or for worse, the leader of the Klingon people, and his first responsibility was to stay alive so he could serve them. For the first time, Martok felt a glimmer of understanding about how Gowron had turned into the man he had become, a man who, eventually, needed to be put down like a diseased beast. The thought unsettled him.

  Satisfied that they were as secure as they could be without breaking orbit, K’Tar asked Worf, “Ambassador, can you tell us what happened?”

  In uncharacteristically low tones, Worf replied, “The weapon was concussive in nature, and not an energy weapon. It was very precisely targeted. My guess is that it was dropped by a low-flying robot craft.”

  “Not from orbit then,” Martok said. He had already begun to piece together several scenarios and had needed only this confirmation from Worf for it to all fit together.

  “No,” Worf muttered. “Not from orbit.”

  Martok watched as the navigator and the helmsman glanced at each other and snarled in unison. “The attackers must have a base on Qo’noS,” Tamal said. “How could security have missed a foreign power undertaking such a task?”

  We should not be talking openly about such things, Martok thought, but before he could order silence, Worf—alas, Worf!—replied, “Why do you assume it was a foreign power?”

  From all around the bridge came the sounds of suspicion and disbelief.

  K’Tar, attempting to contain the spread of the uproar, said gravely, “No Klingon would destroy the Great Hall.”

  Worf frowned, and Martok sensed him struggle with warring urges. The Starfleet officer would want to explore all options dispassionately, but the Klingon warrior sensed how dangerous these waters were. Finally, he settled on what he must have believed was a compromise: “No sane Klingon would destroy the Great Hall.”

  This observation calmed some, but made others uneasy. It was an indication of how badly disturbed everyone was that two officers as experienced as Worf and K’Tar did not end the discussion.

  “If this is true,” K’Tar said, forgetting his command, “we must find this mad targ and put it down. …”

  Martok was about to say “Enough!” when the comm officer broke in, “Transmission coming in over all public and military channels.”

  “On screen.”

  * * *

  Alexander had been working toward the outskirts of the city for less than a half hour when a public viewscreen finally crackled to life. At first, he thought he was viewing a scene from one of the many surveillance satellites that wheeled over Qo’noS. Have the comnet signals been garbled with the military’s? He craned his head over the street crowd, straining for an unobstructed view. This was the first information he—and all other citizens—had heard since the explosion. As he had made his way through the confusion of the First City, he had expected to catch snippets of news reports or hear an official pronouncement from the council. What he watched now didn’t appear to be either of those. He squinted at the screen, looking for a hint of what this transmission might mean.

  Red-soaked sunlight saturated the sky, casting an eerie light over the Ka’Toth plains outside the First City. The view changed when the camera lurched, racing toward the horizon, flashing over a blur of clouds, the dark rock walls of the city and fields. Jerking to a halt, the camera panned left to reveal the proud profile of the First City.

  But the silhouette …

  High on the central hill where the Great Hall should have stood a black cloud spiraled up into the late-morning sky. Of all the possibilities Alexander had considered while winding through the layers of the city, he hadn’t imagined that anyone would be insane enough to deliberately blow up the hallowed building.

  Before he could further absorb the image, the transmission cut away from the plains. A new camera moved, zooming toward the cloud, plunging into it, leaving him almost breathless with speed and vertigo. When the camera broke into the clear, it was bare meters above the ground, racing along the curve of the hill until it suddenly lurched over the lip of a vast crater. As it traveled, Alexander caught fleeting glimpses of debris: cracked stone and crumbled mortar, brambles of tangled wire and fiber-optic cable, lumps of deformed plasteel, and unidentifiable charred bulges that might be bodies.

  The picture on the screen winked out for a split second and then returned, this time split between two settings. The smoking crater dominated one half of the screen; the other centered on the form of a warrior clad in the traditional garb of the Klingon Defense Force. Tall and fit enough he seemed, but to Alexander’s eye, he looked too pretty to be a battlefield-seasoned warrior. He’d had dealings with those types: vain sons of high families whose primary focus was on demonstrating their superior skills before the lower houses. The warrior held a bat’leth in his left hand, his weight well and lightly balanced on the balls of his feet, the length of the blade resting in the crook of his arm.

  Show-off, Alexander thought.

  Then the camera zoomed in on the warrior’s face, light falling on him in a very precise manner, elongating his nose, casting deep shadows under his eyes, well-formed cheekbones, and unusually high forehead ridges. This is staged, he realized, knowing that honest reports from disaster sites didn’t have such a theatrical flair.

  Pulling back and swinging up to shoulder level, the camera revealed that the warrior did not stand alone on the Ka’Toth plains but was surrounded by hundreds of warriors, all of them standing silently, their respectful attention directed at the one in the center. On the crater half of the screen, another group of warriors stood along the perimeter, seemingly oblivious of the putrid smoke and dust-rain.

  A thought nagged at Alexander, and before it even had time to fully form, he heard it spoken by someone in the crowd behind him: “How did so many men manage to find their way to the center of this carnage so quickly? Why aren’t they searching for survivors?” And there was no need to respond, because everyone knew the answer: They found their way there so quickly because they created the carnage. And they aren’t searching for survivors because they know there are none.

  * * *

  The eyes always told the truth. So Martok imagined that he stood eye-to-eye with this warrior as he studied the viewscreen.

  He decided that this foe—because surely he must be a foe—possessed intell
igence, even sly wit, but his expressionless eyes evinced a chill that would never inspire fealty. A great mind could conceive clever, dangerous plans, physical prowess could make a great warrior—this foe might have both. But the eyes revealed that he would never be a great leader.

  The general bared his teeth and snarled loudly enough for everyone on the bridge to hear him. “Ha’Dlbah!” he barked, then looked around at the bridge crew for a response and was surprised when there was none. What? Martok wondered, and looked back at the screen.

  The warrior had held up his hand for attention, as unnecessary a gesture as Martok could imagine. “Warriors, subjects,” he began, his voice low, but clear. “Klingons everywhere, I am Morjod. I come before you today to proclaim myself a criminal. I alone am responsible for the destruction you see.” And as he said the words, one camera pulled back, finally offering up a clear shot of the site where the building that had once housed the Klingon soul had stood.

  The general had never considered himself an emotional man, but he felt an unfamiliar heat behind his eye. Beside him, K’Tar—a warrior renowned across the empire for his icy calm—smashed his fist down on the arm of his command chair and uttered a curse Martok had not heard used since his boyhood in Ketha.

  Still, despite this, no one stirred. Martok half expected he would have to begin tearing crew members away from the consoles to prevent them from attempting to rain down fiery death on this Morjod, but no one moved. It was, in its own fashion, as surreal and disturbing as the crater that had been the Great Hall. What is wrong with them? Martok wondered, and then realized he wasn’t doing anything, either. What’s wrong with me?

  “Before you call me enemy, know that I am a warrior for truth, a freedom fighter.” And with these words, Morjod’s voice tightened, his eyes blazed, and Martok felt an unexpected, irrational thrill in the pit of his stomach.

  “For I have on this day freed all Klingons from the grip of treachery, the treachery of the corrupt council members who waited here to meet the new chancellor. My actions have released our people from the tyranny of traitors!” With these last words, Morjod’s voice thundered and the first of many cheers rang out from the crowd around him.

  He turned around and waved his hand at the crowd of faces behind him. “Those council members of true heart,” he said, “are out here with me, safe from harm, warned long before this day of reckoning. You are liberated, Qo’noS! Saved from your downfall. You know in your hearts that this is true. Look within yourselves and ask, Does the empire not stand on the brink of ruin? Some may say, ‘Have we not just won a great victory? Did we not defeat the Dominion?’” Morjod hesitated and looked thoughtful, as if he was giving this idea serious consideration, then shook his head. “But how could this be true? Did we, the Klingons, defeat the Dominion? Be honest with yourselves if with no one else.”

  Martok heard shouts of anger and despair from the crowd on the viewscreen and more than one muttered curse from around the bridge. What?! he almost shouted. How can you—even for a moment—give credence to these half truths? Morjod’s words troubled him, and he longed to shout his angry response, but, again, his mute protests remained in his heart when he should be rallying his crew to attack. What could be wrong with me … ?

  “Treaties! Alliances! Compromises!” Morjod continued, his voice rough with anger. “The policies of this council have cost us dearly. Where once we were feared, now we are mocked. Where once we conquered, now we negotiate.” He spat out the word as though it had left a trail of slime along his tongue. “Where once we were conquerors, now we Klingons are a subject people, nothing more than hirelings, servants, kuve.” Martok’s blood rose at the use of the word, and he heard answering growls from both the bridge crew and the warriors surrounding Morjod.

  “Yes, you heard me—kuve. Lowly menials of another power: the accursed Federation.” Morjod’s voice dropped low, and the camera zoomed in on his eyes. He continued, “We may deny it to each other, my friends, but we cannot deny it to ourselves. In our warrior hearts, we know this to be true.

  “They have meddled in our politics, corrupted our culture … they have even chosen our leaders for us. And the chief architect of this insidious interference? Who do I speak of?” Martok heard the crowd’s muttered answers, but he did not have to hear them to know what they thought.

  “Who?” Morjod prompted.

  A grizzled veteran stepped forward from the crowd at Morjod’s feet and yelled, “Worf!”

  “Who?”

  The crowd roared, “WORF!”

  “NO!” Martok and Worf both shouted in response, but Martok felt as though he had wrestled a wild Grishnar cat just to say that single word. Looking upon the faces of the bridge crew, he saw all were transfixed. He had new respect for his enemy’s powers. A formidable foe would be far more satisfying to defeat.

  * * *

  When Alexander heard his father’s name invoked like a curse, he knew it was his cue to get moving again. Ducking his head, he hunched down and wormed his way through the wall of people gathered around one of the hundreds of public viewscreens he had passed.

  Behind him, he heard Morjod snarl, “Worf! Son of Mogh, the lapdog of the Federation, he who was the right hand of the human Picard, the last Arbiter of Succession. The Son of Mogh gave us Gowron—and now Martok! You see the pattern, my people, do you not?”

  His hollow laugh chilled Alexander to the core. Hearing grunts and seeing knowing nods in the crowd he was trying to extricate himself from, he pushed forward with renewed determination, resisting the impulse to continue watching. That had been the curious part, he realized. Though he knew Morjod spoke lies, Alexander had felt surprisingly accepting of his words as he listened. His voice had … a hypnotic quality that lulled his doubts. He must be using some kind of technology, Alexander reasoned. That’s the only way he could convince everyone to accept him so quickly. Such techniques were not unknown, though they had been proven to be ineffective except when used against weak-willed individuals, and though Klingons were a lot of things, weak-willed wasn’t one of them. Otherwise, why would these people, with their faces streaked with soot mingled with blood, forgive the one who had wrought this horror on them only moments before?

  Alexander had managed to reach the gate leading to the third ring before the pull of Morjod’s voice became too much to resist. He succumbed to his curiosity and turned around to watch.

  “But the arrogant Federation made a mistake. They thought we would sit by and accept their edicts. They thought they could pour wastewater down our throats and tell us to us praise it as bloodwine, but they were mistaken. They know nothing of Klingon pride!”

  The crowd cheered, pumping their fists in the air. Any minute, Alexander expected wild-eyed anger to sweep through the crowd like a brushfire. Forcing himself to turn away, he crept through a crack in the gate. His hurried walk steadily increased tempo until he ran—ran as if a city drunk with blood lust would shortly discover his presence and descend upon him, greedily tearing him limb from limb.

  * * *

  Here it comes, Martok thought. The part where he puts me on trial. Ha! Let him try!

  Morjod paused, turned, and took a moment to look up and down the line of men and women that stood behind him, even stopped and peered into the eyes of one or two. Finally, he returned his gaze to the camera and asked, “But what of Martok, the mongrel … son of No One.”

  The insult to his father … Martok’s scalp prickled, his palms itched, and his cheeks flushed. A dry mouth, gluey eye … like emerging from a drugged stupor. Martok anticipated the day where he would slit Morjod’s throat, forever silencing the voice that spoke dishonorably of his family.

  “The general has enjoyed his share of victories.” Around him on the bridge, Martok felt eyes flicking at him.

  “But at what price?” Morjod asked. “And is it not conspicuous that these great victories only began after he had been stationed at a Federation outpost? What does this mean, my brother and sister warriors?
>
  “Martok conspired with our enemies. They would aid him in battle if he agreed to assume the chancellorship as their agent. But I have taken steps to prevent this plan from coming to fruition.”

  Ah, very clever, Martok thought. Spin a web of lies and then say, “Don’t worry about this, because it will not come to pass.”

  “Today,” Morjod continued, “was meant to be the day when we would welcome our new chancellor. And the Federation ambassador who was meant to be the one who stood behind the chancellor’s chair, close enough to watch everyone, close enough to whisper his poisonous counsel into Martok’s ear. Perhaps even close enough to make sure that none of us went too near and saw something we were not meant to see?” He held up his finger and let the thought sink in, but did not linger on it. “Perhaps. But there will be no threat from the chancellor or his master, no threat from the Federation. I have made sure of this.” Morjod sliced the air with the blade of his bat’leth. “I have brought down many Houses today because it is time to begin anew. We are a fallen people, but we can rise again to regain our lost glory. It is not too late! We are Klingons!” He shot one arm to the sky, and around him rose a forest of fists. He extended his other arm, and scores of bat’leths shone red under the bloody sun. “We shall rise again and WE—SHALL—CONQUER!”

  The crowd howled its affirmation. Even around the bridge, Martok saw a few fists raised, though quickly lowered when crewmates hissed warnings.

  Morjod signaled for quiet. “But we must be careful, warriors,” he continued, his voice once again low and conspiratorial. “This will not be a simple task, or one that can be accomplished with only courage and the sharp edge of a good blade. We will be facing mighty foes. So we must have a mighty weapon.”

  The camera pulled back and revealed a large container vehicle, one typically used to move heavy equipment or herds of slow-moving animals, dropping slowly from the sky, antigravs glowing dull blue. As the large container settled, thrusters kicking up clouds of yellow grit, Morjod approached it.