STAR TREK: DS9 - The Left Hand of Destiny, Book Two Page 7

  Still, she had to admit that she was gambling, and that thought, too, made her smile. Her father had been famed far and wide across the empire as a strategist. His meticulous plans had been the ruin of many a Federation and Romulan general, but only Gothmara had known his true character. At heart, Kultan had been a gambler. In every one of his great victories, there had been a moment when fate, destiny, could take a hand and turn all to ruin.

  And finally fate had betrayed him.

  As she made her way deeper and deeper into the cave, past the broken, craggy floor near the mouth, the way became easier. She even fancied that it was growing warmer, but though this at first seemed like foolishness, a figment of her imagination, the farther back she traveled, the harder it became to contradict the sensation. Soon, Gothmara saw that there was even a haze in the air, condensed water—steam—released from sliver-wide cracks in the ice. A surfacing underground hot spring, she decided, which would account for the crack.

  Stepping into a wide chamber, she swept her lamp in a quick arc over the ice wall, quickly catching a fleeting [73] glimpse of something. Even before she flicked her wrist back, before her mind could even process what she saw, Gothmara felt the breath squeezed out of her lungs. An ancient fear ran down her spine and into her pelvis. Without knowing how or why, she shifted her feet, bent her knees, and tried to run. She tripped then, fell down face-first, and tore open the fabric over her hands and knees. The lamp flew from her hand and skittered across the cracked floor.

  Sobbing with pain, Gothmara tried to rise, but all strength had fled. She hunched her shoulders, waiting for the blow to fall, for the giant hand to press her down to the floor, for the claw to rend her flesh. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, and, distantly, she heard the sound of water dripping against rock. Her heartbeat slowed, the rush of air in her lungs slowed, and then ... and then ...

  The blow never came.

  Gathering her courage, Gothmara rose to her knees, then stood and walked slowly across the cracked ice to where her lamp lay shining against the wall. The cone of illumination it cast half revealed and half hid a large, gray, lumpish shape in the ice, but she resisted the temptation to look directly at it until she had the lamp in her hand.

  Light is the thing, she decided. Light will reveal all—tooth and claw.

  She held the lamp up and saw it there before her, frozen as if in midleap, the bane of Klingon nightmares, the stalker in the shadows for every Klingon boy and girl since any of her people could remember.

  Frozen, it hung before her as if it had been here waiting for Gothmara—a chunk of destiny locked in time—the Beast, the Monster, and hers forevermore: a Hur’q of her own.

  * * *

  [74] Here Kahless paused in his reading.

  No one spoke for several seconds, each of them absorbing the visions transmitted by Gothmara’s words and Kahless’s voice. It was impossible, Darok decided, not to be impressed by the immensity of the discovery and even the discoverer’s bravery. Still, there were questions that needed to be asked—he knew that—but he was glad to have someone else ask them.

  “Did you know they were there, Kahless?” Worf asked.

  The emperor shook his head. “The monks never mentioned anything about it to me. And why would they? It is possible that none of the brothers and sisters even knew the reason the valley was forbidden. Such things sometimes get lost with time.”

  “Did she find others or only one?”

  “No whole bodies. She went back several times with scanners, but found only bits and pieces. The first—it might have been left for dead or have been a sentry or manning the outpost—who knows? Documents or recording devices, of these she found none, but knowing Gothmara as I feel I do now, she may never have looked. I do not think she cared.”

  Martok asked, “So Boreth was the site of a Hur’q outpost like the one Worf, Kor, and Jadzia discovered during the war?” This was new information to Darok, who was just about to ask what they were talking about, but the Ferengi spoke up first.

  “Hellooo,” Pharh called. “Not following you.”

  “Almost four years ago,” Worf explained, “my wife, Jadzia Dax, Kor the Dahar master, and I discovered a planet in the Gamma Quadrant which must have been a base for the Hur’q long ago. He looked meaningfully at Ezri, but avoided Martok’s eye.

  [75] Predictably, the Ferengi missed or, more likely, ignored the more important point in favor of the lesser, but more salacious detail. “I thought she was Dax,” he said, nodding at Ezri.

  “I am,” the Trill acknowledged. “Ezri Dax. Jadzia was my symbiont’s previous host.”

  “But you two aren’t married,” Pharh said.

  “No.”

  “But you served together? In Starfleet?”

  “Yes, on Deep Space 9.”

  “The station where the Grand Nagus used to be a maintenance worker.” The Ferengi’s voice was devoid of any note of surprise or incredulity. He was just trying, Darok decided, to keep the facts straight.

  “Rom. Yes.”

  “Okay,” Pharh said, shaking his head slowly, putting it all together. “But you’re still part of Martok’s House.”

  “That’s right.” Dax was obviously fighting the urge to laugh. The general rolled his eyes heavenward.

  Pharh hunkered back down against the wall and muttered, “You people lead very complicated lives. No wonder you all look so tired.”

  Martok grunted his approval. Even Worf and the other male Klingons chuckled or guffawed, each according to his nature. Lady Sirella merely appeared annoyed, and Darok decided it would be best to struggle for neutrality, though inwardly he agreed: their lives were extraordinarily complicated sometimes.

  Kahless laughed, but when he resumed his tale, Darok saw that the lines around his eyes suddenly were deeper and his voice grew as cold as he imagined the caverns of Boreth were. Answering Martok’s question, [76] he said, “From Gothmara’s notes, it seems that the Hur’q base on Boreth is much more extensive than the one where they found ... the one Worf and Dax visited. Fortunately for us, Gothmara found no functioning machinery, or our troubles might be even worse than they are. But she had what she needed to create an army for her son, who was by that time already accumulating power in the council.”

  “That’s not at all what I expected you to say,” Dax said, shaking her head. “I thought you were going to tell me she found some kind of wondrous machine that allowed her to clone Hur’q from thousand-year-old DNA. But that’s not the case, is it?”

  “No,” Kahless said, and Darok knew that this was the reason for the shadows gathering around his head. “Something much worse. Unlike the techniques she employed to create me from centuries-old blood, what remained of the Hur’q could not be recreated the same way. She needed to find a compromise, and so she combined the long dead with the living to bring into being these abominations we now face.”

  Even before Dax or Worf, Sirella seemed to grasp the meaning of the emperor’s words, and by some strange osmosis, so did Darok. Then, despite his best intentions and finely honed instincts, he said, “You mean ... she combined the Hur’q DNA with living tissue?”

  “Yes,” Kahless said. “Using a mutagenic virus that she had already perfected, she ...”

  But Darok interrupted the emperor. “Combined it with what?”

  Kahless paused and let a stony silence descend, not because he was angry, but because the question distressed him. Finally, he said, “She was on a planet [77] covered in ice and snow. Devoid of native life. Gothmara used what she had at hand.” Kahless looked at Martok, who had clearly already leapt ahead,’ then at Worf and the captains, Dax, and last at the Ferengi. Finally, he answered the question. “Klingon DNA,” he said. “She made the Hur’q out of Klingons.”

  7

  Ezri mentally retreated from the discussion as soon as she understood what Gothmara had done on Boreth. The others, the Klingons, all reacted more or less the same way—with various shades of anger and disgust—but it was
obvious that the perversion motivated them, while Ezri felt enervated. What am I doing here? she asked herself. What can I possibly have to offer these people? They’re preparing themselves to fight monsters out of mythology and an evil sorceress and all I can think about is how out of place I am. ... No! Back on Sappora VII in my room with my books and my music and my holos ... The thought of her room made her see the irony of it all. What were all those books, music, and holos about? They were tales of heroism and adventure, both historical and fictitious. She had stacks of Trill mythology, tales of the Qieltau and accounts of the travels of Evu, supposedly the longest-lived symbiont on the planet (though there was some doubt about the veracity of Evu’s claims).

  [79] As a girl, she had read and reread biographies of Surak of Vulcan, the logs of the first Enterprise, the great mythological fiction of other worlds. How many times had she longed to accompany Ch’Vras, Thruzen, and Zheffra on their quest to hide the Rings of Narath-anazhe? The stories, in part, had inspired her to join Starfleet, to become like those heroes she dreamt about.

  And now here she was in the presence of truly larger-than-life adventurers and all she could think about was how little she offered. If Gothmara needed therapy (and Ezri imagined she could use years of counseling, if not a lifetime of it), she was their woman. But dueling with resurrected demons wasn’t exactly Ezri’s forte. She wasn’t afraid of physical danger—she had faced more than her share of that in the past couple of years—but it was difficult to accept the idea that she had a vested interest here. But then she chided herself; of course it wasn’t her (Ezri’s) problem. It was Dax’s problem, and she was Dax. And whether or not Ezri believed she had the abilities to do right by House Martok, Dax knew she did. I suppose this is one of the times when I’m just going to have to trust the slug. She shook her head, as if the action would redirect her focus to the conversation at hand. It sounded like the outrage over Gothmara’s experiments had receded and Kahless had again picked up the story of the time he spent on Boreth.

  The clone was, she had to admit to herself, not exactly what she would have expected given Worf’s descriptions of the emperor: less the warrior king and more like one of the monks he lived among on Boreth. There was something almost mystical about him, as though he did not live on the same plane as everyone else. He reminded her of someone, but it required [80] several more moments of distracted thought before she put the pieces together. Of course, she realized, and almost snapped her fingers. Benjamin, on one of those days when he was feeling especially “Emissary.”

  “... When I learned that Gothmara had succeeded in creating her pseudo-Hur’q and was planning to give them to Morjod to use as an army, I left Boreth as quickly and quietly as I could. As you may guess, it was not a simple matter for me to travel anywhere—least of all the planet of my birth—without being noticed, but I have learned a few tricks.” He grinned in a most unimperial manner, like a little boy pleased with some small cleverness. Then, sobering, he continued: “But I was too slow. Gothmara was better organized than I had anticipated and by the time I reached the home system, Morjod had struck.” Turning to Martok, he confessed, “I sat in a departure lounge at Ja’Gokor and watched the Negh’Var enter orbit over Qo’noS. When the news feeds said you were going to meet with me in the Great Hall, I knew what was about to happen. ...” Kahless hung his head sadly. “I am sorry, Chancellor, for what has befallen you and your house. If I had moved more quickly or unraveled these secrets sooner, none of this might have come to pass.”

  Fascinated, Ezri watched Martok’s reaction to Kahless’s apology. “Emperor,” he said, struggling for the right words, “Kahless, what else could you have done? You found my son and my brother, then rescued both my wife and myself. It is I who should be paying tribute to you.” He paused, listened, clearly hoping nothing else would be required. When Kahless did not respond, he asked, “How did you make it to Qo’noS then? Alexander said you found him within hours of Morjod’s attack.”

  [81] Holding up his hands to indicate the hull of the ship, Kahless said, “Shortly after the attack, I found that the crew of the Rotarran was on the station awaiting their captain. They had just completed repairs and were chafing to be under way, disappointed that they could not meet the Negh’Var in orbit. I took command and told them to head for Qo’noS at best possible speed under cloak, which they did.” Smiling fondly, the emperor concluded, “She is a good ship, Chancellor. I can see why you favored her.”

  “But you were not the only one in this room, Emperor, who was away from Qo’noS when Morjod attacked.” Martok gestured at Ezri and asked, “How has the Federation responded to the crisis on Qo’noS?”

  Considering her response carefully, Ezri replied, “I’m not privy to the inner circles of diplomatic activity, but I can tell you what has happened on the station. Colonel Kira is concerned. Admiral Ross contacted her shortly after he received word that something had happened in the First City and, I think, inquired whether I had heard from Worf. At that time, I hadn’t and told her so.”

  “And since they learned that Morjod’s forces took over their embassy?”

  “Morjod claims they were safeguarding the embassy during a period of civil unrest. The Federation has not accused him of anything, only asking to speak with their people, which he has allowed,” Ezri said. “Everyone is treading very carefully. No one wants another breakdown in relations, especially since neither the Federation nor the empire is in a position to wage another war.”

  “And the Romulans? Are they aware of this situation?” Sirella asked.

  “They would have to be fools or blind not to be aware of it. Never underestimate the Romulans’ ability to [82] collect intelligence. But the Romulans won’t attack anyone until they know they can win; that’s their way.”

  “So for now Morjod is safe from outside interference?” B’Tak asked, every word clipped and angry.

  Before Ezri could answer, Worf came to the rescue.

  “The Federation will not act against him,” Worf explained. “Not unless he expressly withdraws from the Khitomer Accords. He may publicly accuse the Federation and me of every crime imaginable, but unless he violates the treaty with some overt action, Starfleet will only listen and wait.” He looked around the room at the sullen faces and finished grimly: “Which is why we must strike now.”

  “Explain,” Martok ordered.

  “This is a critical time for Morjod,” Worf said, and held up one finger. “He has publicly stated that Federation influence is responsible for the decay of the empire, yet he has not withdrawn from the Khitomer Accords. Why? Because he has not consolidated his power. Every reasonable citizen will give him time to plot war against the Federation, but how long will they wait before the Defense Force takes matters into its own hands?”

  Martok laughed heartily. “Ah, my brother, you are more of a political creature than you would ever willingly admit.”

  “I credit it to your influence,” Worf retorted. Continuing, he said, “As he senses his time growing short, he will accelerate his plans. He has his generals and council members in key positions, all of them spreading propaganda, but they cannot stall indefinitely and neither will everyone believe them. Morjod will resort to repression and force if he has not already. Does anyone know if he again penned his pet Hur’q after we left Qo’noS?”

  [83] No one spoke up until Darok said, “I will check with the bridge,” then rose, walked to a small monitor near the refreshment stand, and began to speak in low tones.

  “In any case,” Worf continued, “the more time passes, the more desperate he will become.”

  “But what of Gothmara?” Sirella asked. “She does not seem the sort to me to do something either desperate or foolhardy. She will restrain her son.”

  “I agree,” Martok said. “But she could be distracted or goaded into an imprudent act if we choose our target carefully.”

  “And a great victory will rally your supporters throughout the empire!” Drex shouted as he rose to
his feet. “We must retake Ty’Gokor! Surely many of the warriors at the command center are still loyal to you! No matter what tricks his mother wields, by now all the true warriors will have recognized that Morjod is nothing but another politician.” He spit the word out as if it left a bitter tang in his mouth.

  “Be careful, my son,” Martok said sardonically, “I am as much a politician as Morjod.”

  “Never, Father. You are a warrior, the general who led Klingons to victory. ...”

  “Stop,” Martok said holding up his hand. “Let me consider your idea, because I believe it has both merits and flaws.”

  “Consider, my brother,” Worf said cautiously. “Who controls Ty’Gokor?”

  “Yes, my very thoughts: the Yan’Isleth, Gowron’s former elite guard. Do we know where their allegiance has fallen?”

  “I don’t think that requires much thought,” Kahless [84] remarked. “The Yan’Isleth has little love for either you or me. They were Gowron’s. I undermined them and you, Martok, almost disbanded them.”

  “I wish now that I had.”

  Kahless shook his head. “The people would have interpreted it as petty vindictiveness. Your offer to allow them to continue to control Ty’Gokor was a wise compromise.”

  “So that now they will fight us,” Martok said.

  “Undoubtedly,” Worf observed. “But if we won, it would be counted a great victory, the kind of victory that would draw many to your banner.”

  “Yes,” Kahless agreed, “but only a military victory. Some Klingons might see it as a sign to rise, but probably only those who are already prepared to do so. And then the empire would be divided and we would fight on for years and years.”