The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 1 Read online

  Alexander leaned back against the window, felt the panes and frames give with a bit of pressure, and decided they were probably not transparent aluminum. Good. He drew his disruptor and the mob, as one, inhaled its breath and held it. Also good. He spun quickly and shot out the window, jumped down to the ground, and was halfway across the street before the last shards had chinked onto the pavement.

  He counted to himself as he ran down the slick cobblestone street. If he only made it to three before the shouting started, he was dead. If he made it to ten, he would probably make it to the intersection and get away.

  Five … six … seven …

  A roar went up behind him, and then he heard glass shattering, masonry crumbling, and name-calling: the holy trinity of mob sounds.

  His father, Alexander knew, would find a defensible position, prepare his weapon, and turn to face his foes. Alexander was exactly a good enough warrior to admit that he wouldn’t know a defensible position from a hole in the wall. He spotted an alley across the street. That’ll do. … An alley might be narrow enough that he would be able to avoid facing too many at once. If no one in the first wave or two had a disruptor, he might stand a chance. There was even the possibility that the hypothesized mind-altering effect of Morjod’s transmission might wear off if enough time passed.

  Behind him, Alexander heard the stomp of heavy boots and the growl of angry voices. He caught names—Worf’s and Martok’s—and then, every few seconds, someone would joyously howl “Morrrr-jodddd!” and the mob would roar again. What the hell is going on? Alexander wondered. Could it all be just the pent-up rage of Klingons who have been forced to behave? And then he cursed himself. Will thinking about this keep you alive for even a few more seconds, you fool? Concentrate on the job at hand!

  Alexander’s footfalls echoed louder as he ran into the mouth of the alleyway. A disruptor shot cracked off the stone building to his right just as he sidestepped around some trash containers, and then he slipped in a greasy puddle, almost knocking over some old crates. Back at the mouth of the alley, the mob seemed to hesitate for just a second. They were enraged, but these were all seasoned veterans. None of them would do anything as stupid as rush headlong into a narrow passage without a moment’s scouting. Alexander frowned. This was bad.

  The alley jigged to the left, narrowed, and then turned again to the right. Okay, better. This is better. The mob will slow down. Adrenaline pumping through his veins now, he felt like his feet had wings. Then, turning the corner, he ran face-first into a poured plasteel wall, the kind that seems to grow in random places all across cities like Qo’noS, usually because somebody in the distant past had grown tired of strangers using their backyard as a shortcut. It was eight feet high and, Alexander guessed, topped with some variation of razor wire.

  Alexander tried thinking like his father, to analyze and devise a tactical solution. Go forward? Impossible. Go back? Not an option. Listening to the sounds of his pursuers threading their way through the narrow turn, he decided they must have been acting cooperatively. Only one option left, Alexander decided, and felt the hormonal rush drain through his heels into the damp street. Checking his stance, he reset his grip on his weapons (sweaty palms) and tried to make peace with the idea of dying. A lot of things I would have liked to have done, he thought wistfully. Including … well, just about everything.

  When the first row of attackers inched into view, Alexander’s spirits rose. There were only three of them, none of them very large and none familiar. Maybe the effects of whatever influence was upon them were wearing off and his shipmates would find him. Then the trio shuffled forward and Alexander saw the second rank behind them, each of them armed with a disruptor, which they had obviously used to “motivate” the first rank. His heart sank. Obviously, the first three were only cannon fodder, meant only to make Alex waste his disruptor charge.

  “Oh hell,” Alexander whispered. He had learned precisely enough tactics to see how the rest of the story was going to play out. He would have time to vaporize the first row of men as they left the relative safety of the narrow turn, but that would give the second row time to close on him. Someone would grab his weapon and someone else would trip him and then they would be on him, like a pack of lions on a jackal. In that last moment before he pressed the trigger, Alexander reflected that he had felt like that too often in his life: like he didn’t have a choice.

  And then, at that moment, two very remarkable things happened almost simultaneously.

  The first was a dark shape dropping out of the sky between him and the first rank of attackers. The form—a Klingon male, Alexander thought, though he could not be certain because of a heavy hooded cloak—made practically no sound as it hit the cobbles and rolled to its feet. The hooded man quickly sidestepped his way past the first rank of attackers and was in among the second rank before any one of them could react. He disarmed all three of the larger warriors with a single sweep of his bat’leth, then curled himself into a tight ball and back-flipped under the legs of the man behind him.

  All this unfolded in the space of moments between Alexander’s deciding to fire his weapon and actually pressing the trigger. The hooded warrior, somehow, had anticipated this and uncurled from his tumble just under Alexander’s extended arm. He hooked the tip of the bat’leth over Alexander’s wrist and yanked it downward so that the beam struck the cobbles at the attackers’ feet. The resulting explosion scattered the first two ranks of attackers like tenpins.

  Unfortunately, there was a third rank—three really big Klingons—and they rushed forward with weapons drawn. The hooded warrior stepped forward, tripped the first with an outstretched boot, then caught the blade of the second with the edge of his bat’leth. Alexander managed to gather his wits and swung the blunt end of his d’k tahg into the solar plexus of the third, knocking him back into the opposite wall. Then, while the tripped warrior was trying to untangle his legs, Alexander cold-cocked him with the butt of his disruptor. He was fairly certain these men were innocent pawns, he decided, and he didn’t want their blood on his hands.

  The hooded figure turned the last warrior’s attack away with an elegant parry, then butted him once in the midsection with the dull curved edge. When his attacker doubled over, the hooded figure lifted his knee sharply and there came a soft popping noise. The last man standing fell over like a load of dirty socks tumbling down a laundry chute.

  Alexander turned toward the hooded one to thank him, but the warrior was still poised for battle. What now? Alexander wondered. Is he looking for another fight? But, no, he saw. He wasn’t. The warrior tipped his head so that Alexander would look behind him.

  There had been one more attacker, though this one had stayed in the narrow place long enough to see how things would play out. He was grinning savagely, mostly because he was holding a disruptor, one of the big, old-fashioned kind that warriors with poor self-esteem liked to carry around to enhance their self-image. It was pointed at Alexander’s back. Unfortunately, there was nothing the hooded warrior could do unless he could make a standing jump straight up over Alexander’s head. Incongruously, Alex found himself thinking, Well, that would be something to see. …

  Then, the second remarkable thing happened.

  Alexander was expecting that the next thing he was going to hear would be a sharp, merciless, metallic click (which would be followed by a flash of light and the beating of the oars as the Barge of the Dead pulled up to the curb to wait for him). Instead, what he heard was a soft, slightly wet thud. The savage grin collapsed and the man’s eyes crossed. He dropped to his knees and seemed on the verge of collecting himself when there came a second thud.

  A tiny form dressed in a garish green and gold suit stepped out from behind him. It was, Alexander saw, a Ferengi. He was carrying a heavy cast-iron cooking implement. “Sorry,” he said in barely comprehensible Klingon. “Had to go find something to hit someone with.” He held up the frying pan and stared at it, obviously trying to remember the word.

&
nbsp; “Frying pan,” Alexander said in Federation Standard.

  “Right,” the Ferengi said in the same language.

  “Well, thanks,” Alexander said. “I think you just saved my life.”

  The Ferengi waved his hand nonchalantly. “No problem,” he said. “Happy to do it.” He looked down at the prone form. “Do you think I killed him? I wouldn’t want to have to get involved in some kind of blood feud.”

  “I doubt it,” Alexander said, holstering his disruptor. “We have thick skulls. It takes a lot to crack one open.” He extended his hand, Terran fashion, to shake. “I’m Alexander Rozhenko,” he said. The Ferengi introduced himself as Pharh. “If there’s anything I can ever do for you, please just track me down and ask.” He glanced at the hooded warrior and explained, “I mean, I think I’m experiencing a profound life change right this moment, but if I live through it, I owe you both.”

  The Ferengi didn’t appear to know how to respond to this, so he focused on the more mundane aspect. “Alexander Rozhenko?” he asked. “Doesn’t sound Klingon. Are you from around here?”

  “Not really,” Alexander said. “But more than you, I believe. Maybe you should find someplace to hide or get to an embassy or something. I think that the world is going a little crazy.”

  The hooded warrior stepped up beside Alexander and tugged at his arm. “Wise words, young warrior,” he said from the depths of his robe. He, too, extended his hand, to shake the Ferengi’s. Alexander saw that the warrior’s hand was deeply seamed and carried many scars. “Time for us to go, young Alexander. The battle is joined.”

  He tapped a control on his wrist, and a line with a bar attached dropped from the sky to their feet. Alexander looked up and saw the dull blue pulse of antigravs. Some kind of aircraft, he decided, modified to be nearly silent. That explains how he got here, anyway. Alexander grabbed the line and set his foot on the bar. “It’s not like I have any options,” he said before he realized what he was saying. Part of him, he understood, was simply too curious not to go along with his mysterious benefactor.

  The warrior put his foot on the other side of the bar and seemed to chuckle. “There are always options, young warrior,” he said. “Though sometimes you have to look hard to find them.” He tripped a switch with his toe and the bar rose smoothly into the air. Below them, Alex watched as the Ferengi disappeared up the alley toward whatever destiny awaited him.

  As the blue antigravs grew larger before his eyes, Alexander found himself muttering, “And today started out so well.”

  5

  CAPTAIN K’TAR DIED saving the general.

  Seconds after sensors detected the decloaking ships, the first barrage sliced into the Negh’Var’s outer hull before the shields came online. Martok clutched the captain’s chair as the deck rolled under his feet.

  The general and K’Tar ducked to the side as a power conduit over the captain’s chair burst and exploded in a shower of sparks. The breaker cut in before there was any serious electrical damage, but not before the explosion fed back into a nearby air-filtration unit, blowing out its compressor and, worse, the contaminant container. Martok—like most Klingons—had an extremely acute olfactory sense and he reeled as the black, effluent mist settled over him. Several bridge crew members retched or gagged, but no one left their station.

  K’Tar waved his hand in front of his face. “Smells like Romulans in here!” he shouted, and the crew laughed bawdily. In lowered tones, he said matter-of-factly to Martok, “Chancellor, I’ve told the shipyards about that design flaw. Could you ask them to correct it?”

  Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, Martok said, “Anything you like, Captain.”

  At strategic intelligence, as he always did when he had served as Martok’s first officer, Worf assumed his Starfleet persona and began to calmly recite damage reports off a status display: “Secondary shield generators are gone; aft thrusters disabled; seventy-percent drop in power from the warp core.” He glanced up at Martok, then overcame his instinct and locked eyes with K’Tar. “Captain, the board does not show it, but there must have been a direct hit in the engineering section. We must assume primary power will fail any moment.”

  “Contact the fleet,” K’Tar ordered the comm officer. “Inform them of our position and request assistance. Operations: divert all remaining power to the shields and ready primary disrup …” K’Tar’s voice trailed off as his eyes traveled to the ceiling. A fine thread of dust trickled onto the back of Martok’s neck.

  Before he could react, Martok heard the grating creak of a large weld tearing loose. There came a sharp pressure of a hand against his shoulder and he found himself lying across the navigation console. He felt a heavy thud up through the deck and several people shouted out simultaneously.

  With a glance, Martok analyzed what must have happened: only one weld had let go, so the filtration unit had swung down as though on a hinge and pendulumed through the space where he had been standing like a giant’s sledgehammer. Three-quarters of the way through the swing, the second brace must have let go and the full weight of the unit had crashed to the deck. The filtration case, which had already been cracked open, must have burst on impact, and now several weeks’ worth of accumulated dust and filth boiled up into the air. Seeing proved difficult, but Martok knew where both he and the captain had been standing and who had shoved him out of harm’s way.

  “K’Tar!” he shouted, and plunged into the billowing cloud of grime, digging for the captain under the blanket of dust. As soon as Martok knelt beside him, he began a quick but systematic triage. K’Tar was breathing, but only barely. The machine pinned him from the waist down, and Martok could tell from the way his body was twisted that his spine must be shattered. Carefully lifting K’Tar’s head, the general wiped away grime from his eyes, mouth, and nose. K’Tar’s eyes fluttered open, then rolled back into his head as he stifled a cry of agony.

  Half of the bridge crew clustered around them and began to offer help. K’Tar’s eyes snapped open when he heard them and snarled, “Back to your posts!” All but two of the crew complied immediately, returning to their stations without another sound. The last two looked to Martok to be no more than children, probably first-year cadets pushed into active duty to fill out the depleted ranks. Even through his pain, K’Tar must have seen the uncertainty in their eyes. “You cannot help me now,” he said, and his voice faltered even as he spoke. “Defend the chancellor.”

  The pair stared at their captain, and Martok was surprised to see that one of them was Tamal. He suddenly realized how much she reminded him of the first commander he served under as a bridge officer, Captain Kevas.

  The woman had been brilliant, ruthless, and terrifying: the nearest thing to a deity Martok had seen to that point in his life. The thought of watching godlike Kevas die, as Tamal now watched K’Tar die, pierced him like an assassin’s needle.

  Tamal stared at her captain for several long seconds, and then slowly slid her eyes off him and up to Martok’s face.

  Morjod’s words have taken root in this one, he thought, and knew he would have to watch Tamal carefully from now on. “Obey your captain,” Martok barked, and knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that he had spoken wrongly.

  Her eyes glittering with anger, Tamal snapped a smart salute. Both officers returned to their posts and Martok knelt down in the filth next to K’Tar.

  “Watch her,” K’Tar said, following Tamal with his eyes. “I won’t be here. …” The words trailed off and harpooned as a wave of pain washed over him.

  “I will, old friend,” Martok said. “You honor me with your sacrifice.”

  K’Tar tried to respond, but before he could say anything, he turned his head and retched. Martok held the captain’s head as K’Tar’s life’s blood ran down over his hands, sticky and warm.

  When his airway was clear again, the captain wheezed, “Tell my wife … I died thinking of her.”

  “I will,” Martok promised. “And I will write a son
g in your honor. …”

  Surprisingly, K’Tar laughed at that, and blood bubbled up between his lips. “All right,” he sputtered. “But get someone else to sing it. You have …” He tried to draw a great breath, but from the sound of it there was nothing left inside him to catch it. “… a terrible voice.” He smiled. “Always meant to tell you that …”

  “If you had,” Martok said, smiling back, “I would have killed you.”

  “You could have tried, my chancellor,” K’Tar whispered. “You could have tried.” There came a small popping sound and Martok thought that K’Tar was laughing, so he laughed along with him. When he looked down into the captain’s eyes again, Martok saw that they were glazed over. Without thinking, he put his thumbs on the captain’s eyelids, forced them open, then tilted back his own head and roared at the void. All around him, from their stations, the bridge crew joined his bellow, announcing that K’Tar, captain of the Negh’Var, was standing at the gates of Sto-Vo-Kor. It was, Martok knew, meant to be a howl of victory, a moment of joy that the life of this warrior had had a noble end, but hot anger threatened to taint the joy, anger at the needless death of this fine officer. Here is a death that should not have been. He should have lived to fight a thousand battles more, he thought, praying to Kahless that he would have the opportunity to disembowel Morjod in K’Tar’s name.

  Martok dropped K’Tar’s head back into the dust and stood. The deck shuddered beneath him as the general settled into his command chair. “Worf,” he called. “Tell me who we’re fighting.”

  He was already mindful of the possibilities, but he wanted Worf’s analysis. This attack might be a coincidence, he knew. It might have nothing at all to do with Morjod, and be a sneak attack from the Dominion or a Cardassian ship looking to settle a score. Possibly, Morjod had made an alliance with the Romulans. If so, he wouldn’t be the first idiot Klingon to make such a mistake. Should that be the case, however, even the Negh’Var would be hard-pressed to defeat more than one of the big D’deridex warbirds. …