The Captain's Oath

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Zemrok City, Acamar III

  “I keep telling ya, Jim, you dodged a phaser beam.”

  Kirk glared at Gary Mitchell, who strolled alongside him and Azadeh Khorasani through a street bazaar in the central district of Zemrok City, capital of the politically prominent Liu Region and host to the ongoing peace talks between Acamar III’s rival clans. Those talks were what Kirk needed to concentrate on right now, and Gary’s well-meaning romantic advice didn’t help. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Mitchell took a bite out of the cralluck wrap he’d picked up from one of the vendors, a concoction of seasoned avian meat and root vegetables wrapped in the leaves of something called shemras. “I’m just saying,” he went on with his mouth full, “there’s no point in brooding over Jan. I saw right away that it was never going to work, that you were just repeating the same mistake you made with—”

  “Gary, I mean it.”

  “But the past is the past. That’s my point. Now you’re free to look to the future. Broaden your horizons. Experiment, play the field. Keep your options open and have some fun. You want to be an explorer, so explore the endlessly varied wonders of the female half of humanity. They aren’t all blond scientists, you know.”

  Kirk rolled his eyes, despairing of ever getting his friend off this topic. Gary Mitchell’s interest in women was parsecs wide and a centimeter deep—the opposite of Kirk’s proclivity to fall deeply and devotedly for one woman at a time. Granted, in the wake of losing Carol and Jan, the idea of pursuing a few more casual, safely inconsequential love affairs had its appeal. But Kirk doubted he could ever be a superficial womanizer like Gary.

  Khorasani had been doing her best to ignore the men’s conversation, chewing on her own vegetarian parthas wrap and checking out the vendor booths the trio passed. “Hey, what’s this?” she called out with interest, plowing through the crowd of Acamarian pedestrians (who parted readily at the approach of the statuesque, uniformed woman with the gleaming bionic arm) to reach a kiosk where a bulbous-browed K’normian trader was hawking a variety of knives and bladed weapons.

  Moving closer in Khorasani’s wake, Kirk recognized several of the blades—d’k tahg, mevak, tajtik, mek’leth. “Klingon weapons,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Khorasani said, hefting a particularly nasty-looking qutluch with appreciation. “Authentic ones, too.”

  “Imported directly from the Empire itself,” the vendor boasted. “All tested in actual combat, all guaranteed to give you an edge—ha-ha—in whatever blood feud you wish to pursue.”

  “Oh, I’ve got nothing against anyone in particular,” Khorasani said. “I just admire fine craftsmanship.”

  “Of course, of course. They also make excellent display pieces, gifts . . .”

  Kirk looked over the deadly collection with distaste. He shared his helm officer’s admiration for weapons as collector’s pieces, but he couldn’t forget the source of these particular weapons, or ignore the fact that they were being openly hawked as tools for clan warfare. “Were you in the Empire recently?” he probed. “Who supplied you with these weapons?”

  The K’normian quailed at Kirk’s suspicious tone, paying greater attention to the uniforms the three officers were wearing. “I assure you, sir, my sources are legitimate. Weapons are not exactly hard to come by in Klingon space—and we are not in Federation space, so there are no restrictions on their import.”

  Khorasani, however, noted her captain’s disapproval. After one more longing look at the knife, she handed it back to the trader. “Sorry. Not my color.”

  “Well, if you’re not in the market for blades, perhaps I can make it up to you by offering you some of my more . . . special wares?” He gave her a suggestive smile. “I have recently received a new shipment from a . . . discreet but reliable source. The finest Klingon erotica in the sector.”

  Kirk exchanged a stunned look with Mitchell. “Klingon erotica?” the captain asked.

  “I don’t want to know,” Mitchell said, emphatically shaking his head. “I just do not want to know.”

  But Khorasani looked intrigued. “Well, in the interests of scientific curiosity . . . promoting interspecies understanding . . .”

  “Azadeh, there are some things humans were not meant to understand.”

  “Come on,” Kirk told them both. “We’ll be late for the first session if we dawdle any longer.”

  He drew them away. Mitchell came willingly, but Khorasani threw a wistful look back at the kiosk. “Sometimes you amaze me, Azadeh,” Mitchell went on.

  She smirked. “Only sometimes?”

  “I mean, I would’ve thought you’d hate everything about the Klingons.”

  “Why should I?” she answered, brandishing her prosthetic. “It’s thanks to them that I have this gorgeous arm. If anything, I owe them my gratitude.”

  “For almost killing you?” Kirk asked, bewildered.

  “I’ve killed more than a few of them,” she said after a moment, her light tone faltering. “Probably maimed some as well. In my mind, I had no choice. They probably felt the same way. So who am I to blame them?”

  “I doubt the noncombatants they’ve slaughtered and enslaved would feel the same.”

  “I wouldn’t expect them to. And it’s not like I approve of the things the Klingons do to innocent people. But they’re hardly the only species prone to violence. The Acamarians are just as bloodthirsty, and we’re trying to help them. Because we know we’re the same way.”

  “We used to be the same way,” Kirk countered.

  Khorasani shook her head. “Fundamentally, biologically, we’re still the same as we ever were, no matter what social veneer we try to put on. We’re still killers by nature, even if we choose not to kill today.” Kirk studied her, intrigued by her words. Maybe the Acamarians could stand to hear them.

  Mitchell noticed his frown. “What’s on your mind, Jim? You seemed awfully bothered by that vendor having Klingon goods.”

  “Authentic Klingon goods. And right when the Klingons are trying to infiltrate this planet.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen Klingon attempts to gain footholds on unaligned worlds before. They send military advisors, energy weapons, explosives. When they don’t just send in shock troops and bombers.” He gestured back at the kiosk. “That back there . . . selling their blades as collectibles, marketing their—literature . . . That’s more like propaganda. Trying to win hearts and minds. That’s subtler than the Klingons I know.”

  He reflected on his misstep at Shinohara’s World, how he’d been outplayed by an opponent who saw more moves ahead than he did. “I have a feeling there’s nothing more dangerous than a subtle Klingon.”

  * * *

  The venue for the peace talks was the Council Hall, a heavily fortified edifice in the heart of Zemrok City, and the historic meeting place of the Council of Clans. The Council was one of the ways the Acamarians attempted to maintain some kind of order and cooperation among their fractious, feud-prone clans, a place for the clan leaders to gather and negotiate trade deals and alliances, reconcile disputes, and address shared, planetwide problems such as the resource shortages and environmental crises that were caused or exacerbated by the ongoing clan wars. But according to the Starfleet briefings Kirk had studied, the Council was often a token institution at best, for the clans remained politically independent and were rarely unified in opinion or policy even within themselves, except where matters of clan rivalries and blood vendettas were concerned.

  The current peace talks had been organized by the largest, most successful alliance of clans, built through generations of intermarriage and trading partnerships so lucrative that they created a strong disincentive for blood feuds, or at least encouraged the member clans to limit blood vengeance for murders to the actual murderers instead of their entire families. The Interclan Alliance was pushing for a strengthening of the Council, giving it the clout to regulate and limit blood feuds or even enforce less violent alternative means of redressing grievanc
es. Apparently a large segment of the Acamarian populace was sick of the endless violence and suffering resulting from their clan leaders’ prideful vendettas, and there was a growing movement to establish a strong Ruling Council that could outlaw blood feuds altogether. A recent, particularly brazen attack on an Alliance hospital, killing dozens of innocents uninvolved in the feuds, had intensified the demands for change and convinced several resistant factions to attend the talks. Yet this movement was opposed by traditionalist voices insisting that abandoning blood vengeance for attacks on one’s clan would mean abandoning the very essence of Acamarian identity. This, naturally, was the side that the Klingon Empire’s representative was here to advocate.

  Kirk was surprised upon his first meeting with the imperial envoy. The man wore the uniform of a Klingon battleship captain, but he looked unlike any Klingon Kirk had faced before. It wasn’t because he belonged to the subtype of Klingon that looked almost human, for Kirk had encountered some of those in the past. No—what made this Klingon so different was the way he carried himself. The goateed, widow’s-peaked captain approached Kirk’s party without the usual aggressive, threatening swagger of a Klingon warrior. He strode with confidence, to be sure, but it was a relaxed, almost debonair self-assurance. He even offered Kirk a charming smile, clicking his heels together and offering a slight bow as if they were Victorian gentlemen running into each other at the opera. “Ahh, you must be the young Captain Kirk I’ve been hearing so much about. A pleasure, sir. I am Koloth, son of Lasshar, at your service.” He extended a hand.

  Kirk only let himself be nonplussed for a moment. If this Koloth wanted to play at being charming and debonair, he would find that he’d more than met his match. Smiling, Kirk returned the handshake with firmness and warmth. “My dear Captain Koloth. The pleasure is surely mine. How refreshing to meet a Klingon versed in diplomacy rather than combat.”

  Koloth’s eyes flashed, but he maintained his genteel façade, merely a bit more stiffly. “I assure you, Captain, I am equally well versed in both. As I believe you may have learned last month at—what did you call it—Shinohara’s World?” His smile widened, growing more smug. “I do hope for your sake that your own diplomatic skills are more polished than your battle strategies. But we shall see inside, shall we not?” He offered Kirk one more bow. “Good day, Captain,” he said before striding off toward the debate hall.

  “Damn.” Gary Mitchell sidled up to Kirk, shaking his head. “I see what you mean about subtle Klingons.”

  Khorasani scoffed. “Only you would think that act of his was subtle. What a slimeball.”

  Kirk controlled his reaction. Koloth was clearly the sort who relished playing mind games with his adversaries. He could have been falsely taking credit for Shinohara’s World to dishearten Kirk. But if he were capable of a ploy like that, he might just as easily have been the genuine strategist behind the Klingons’ victory there. Best, then, not to make the same mistake of overconfidence.

  * * *

  “The greatest lie on Acamar is that vengeance balances the scales.”

  Surima, chieftain of the clan Kayok, paced the debate floor before the assembled Council of Clans, her melodious but powerful voice resonating through the hall. The middle-aged chieftain was a slight, dark-haired woman, appearing almost human to Kirk’s eyes save for the vertical crease bisecting her forehead and the clan markings tattooed across her left cheek.

  “Everyone can see this is a lie,” Surima went on. “When one of us is wronged even slightly, the clan is compelled to retaliate with even greater force, to warn all rivals of the dreadful cost of crossing them. And yet all rivals feel the same way, of course. So when they are attacked with greater force, they must strike back even more violently. Far from bringing balance, the cycle of revenge quickly escalates.

  “There was a time when such feuds, brutal though they were, nonetheless could be carried out with limited effect. Our clans held less territory or were migratory. A vendetta could drive one clan away from another’s lands for good, so the enmity would endure but the bloodshed would burn out. If close neighbors warred on each other, at worst they would wipe each other out with minimal impact on other clans, so the feud would not spread farther.

  “Yet now we live in a modern world,” Surima went on, her voice rising. “Our population is far larger, our space to roam diminished, our lands and peoples far more interconnected. Clans depend on their alliances with one another to thrive, and a crime against one clan must be avenged by all its allies, spreading the violence still further. At the same time, our weapons have grown deadlier, far more likely to take the lives of bystanders and draw even more clans into the feud. Rather than burning out, our vendettas now routinely grow out of control, engulfing whole regions, even whole continents. Blood feuds only end when one clan is too devastated to fight anymore, or is exterminated altogether.”

  Surima’s delivery had continued to grow sharper, her initial soft-spoken manner now replaced by a compelling intensity. Kirk had seen other noteworthy leaders use much the same rhetorical style to capture the attention of their listeners, and he had tried to emulate their example. “Every clan knows this will happen,” she went on in the tone of an accuser. “Every clan knows that by following the ancient traditions of vengeance, they only bring further destruction on themselves and their neighbors. Every clan knows that the economic cost of such a feud will require them to slash spending on economic growth, medical care, worker salaries, infrastructure repair, and countless other necessities of life. Every clan knows the loss of lives and the destruction of property will weaken them even further.

  “And yet we still retaliate. We still escalate. We still perpetuate the mindless reflexes of our ancestors, knowing the material cost, because we are more afraid of the intangible cost of losing pride, of appearing disloyal to our clans and our traditions. We place our hate for our rivals above our love for our own, and we feel any damage we bring down upon ourselves and our clanmates is worth it so long as we can convince ourselves we’ve hurt our enemies more.

  “But there is another way. The Interclan Alliance has proven it. We have built bonds of trust between clans through intermarriage, diplomacy, and trade. We have instituted a system of laws that designates specific penalties for transgressions—penalties directed only against the individuals who transgressed, and accepted by their clans when guilt is proven, so no further retaliation is sought.”

  The chieftain of the Lornak clan, a burly, long-haired man named Zylnas, rose to his feet and protested, “And by so doing, you make yourselves weak and expose yourselves to attack! We have seen this in the recent massacre at Naraga Hospital. Not merely an attack on your territory, but a slaughter of helpless children, the infirm, the elderly. This atrocity is an outrage to all Acamarians, Alliance or not. If you do not find the culprits and retaliate against their clan in greater force, you merely embolden them to massacre other innocents!”

  “We shall identify the culprits,” Surima countered, her more delicate voice nonetheless overpowering his with its calm strength. “But we shall punish them according to the same laws we apply within the Alliance. Because those laws are the source of our strength, not our weakness. They show others that we will deal with them fairly, that they may unite with us in trust and be stronger together than apart. By extending the same treatment to all, without as well as within the Alliance, we shall grow the Alliance further—perhaps, one day, to all of Acamar, once we finally set aside our ancient addiction to vengeance and are ready to join the galaxy as a united, peaceful people.”

  “What a revealing choice of words.”

  Having drawn the crowd’s attention with his acerbic interjection, Koloth rose and offered a slight bow. “Forgive the interruption, but I could remain silent no longer,” the Klingon envoy said. “Esteemed councillors, if I may . . . what Chieftain Surima clearly means is that she wishes to suppress Acamar’s long-standing traditions of clan loyalty and honor in order to appease the squeamish values of the Fe
deration. She hopes to reduce your proud people to a tamed and neutered client state of the Earthers.”

  Kirk laughed out loud. It was only partly a ploy, but it succeeded in getting the attention of the room. “Captain Koloth is one to talk,” Kirk spoke out, rising to his feet. “The Acamarians have dealt with the Klingons before. Surely you are all aware that they are the ones who wish to tame and possess your world, as they have possessed and enslaved many others.”

  Koloth’s eyes flashed, but he still retained his cool. “The esteemed Captain Kirk is correct that the clans of Acamar know the ways of the Klingons. They know we, too, value the honor of our families and clans, our Great Houses. That we do not hesitate to fight for their honor when they are injured. That we value the blood of our kinsmen above all else, and therefore will always repay its spilling in kind, swiftly and decisively.

  “It is because of this that we understand the Acamarian people. We honor your ways and we admire your warrior spirit. We wish to nurture your martial traditions, not muzzle them as the Federation and their toadies seek to do.”

  “What the Klingons want,” Kirk countered, “is to use your internal conflicts against you. To arm one side and help it conquer all others, after which they will be puppet rulers doing the Empire’s bidding. I’ve seen them do it before.” His eyes locked on Koloth’s. “I’ve stopped them from doing it before.”

  “Captain Kirk is right,” Surima intoned. “It is our division that makes us vulnerable. We pit our strengths against one another, and thus any outsider who co-opts one faction can use it to weaken all the others. It is only by recognizing that our common bond as Acamarians outweighs our differences that we can survive in this contentious galaxy.”