The Jackal's Trick

by John Jackson Miller

  “Long night?” he asked Dax as they walked the grand halls of the Kinshaya Temple of the Gods.

  “And a long day. And another night. You should have been there, Captain.” The Trill smiled broadly at him. “I taught your barkeep some delightful new concoctions.”

  “I’m sure you’ve got quite an arsenal.”

  Flanked by their security detail, the two looked up in wonder at the immense structure around them. Duranium-reinforced marbled columns rose nearly twenty meters to a ceiling far above. Sulu was sure he was not the first to wonder how the Kinshaya, whose forward limbs served half the time as another set of legs, had ever been able to build the place.

  “We are supposed to be impressed,” Dax said.

  “Mission accomplished. I guess our goal is to see that they put even more industry into architecture rather than weapons.”

  “Leave that to me.” Since the Kudao events, Dax had been charged with looking for ways to defuse tensions with the Klingon Empire. His theory was that conflicts anywhere near the Federation’s border just served to concentrate Klingon hardware in the region, creating instability.

  The Kinshaya were poorly understood by the Federation, but their ultrareligious culture was known to be a xenophobic morass. They loved to poke the Klingon bear and were doing so again, potentially upsetting hopes that the Empire would direct its expansion toward deep space.

  A tasseled Kinshaya with regal blue fur clopped down the hall toward them. Her wings flared, showing their golden colors. Dax and Sulu introduced themselves.

  She responded in a high-pitched voice somewhere between a purr and a chant. “Federation heathens, welcome. Have you come to repent?”

  Sulu and Dax looked at each other. The Trill gave him a wink and a smile. “We come for an audience with the most great Pontifex Maxima, whose wisdom is known throughout the stars. She who is called Urawak. Have you seen this magnificent blossom?”

  Pontifex Urawak shuddered. “Flattery from a sure heretic. But you come at a time of wonders which even you cannot deny.”

  “You refer to the Year of Prayer, just begun,” Dax said. He looked to Sulu. “At the end of every thirty-year cycle, the Kinshaya cloister for a year to pray for the return of their gods.”

  “I see.” Sulu was happy to see Dax really had brushed up.

  “If you would truly see, follow me,” the Pontifex said. “Prophecy has been answered!”

  The security officers were asked to surrender their weapons; Sulu protested, but Dax waved it off as expected. Afterward Urawak brought them through a wide arch into the large dome.

  Sulu gawked. There, across a fiery chasm on an immense circular dais, rested a dragon. That was the only word Sulu could think of to describe it: a silver serpent, ten meters tall, resting on folded Kinshaya-like legs. Its wings, tucked behind, looked large and functional. Its eyes burned red as steam escaped from its forked proboscis. Its whole body shimmered with an otherworldly glow.

  The chamber evoked hell in some religions, perhaps in the Kinshaya one also. Pillars of flame leaped randomly from the gap surrounding the giant’s roost. Kinshaya of many colors knelt around the outside of the ring, chanting.

  The Pontifex advanced into the chamber and made the Kinshaya equivalent of a curtsy. “Great Niamlar, behold the unbelievers.”

  The creature’s enormous head lifted from its position of repose, and Niamlar spoke in a voice that sounded like the whistling wind. “You come to disturb my faithful.”

  Sulu looked at Dax, who gamely stepped forward. “We do not . . . Great Niamlar, is it?”

  “Of course it is.” Urawak glared at the visitors. “Niamlar, one of the Thirty-One, gives us the bountiful blessings of her house.”

  “I see. And what is her house?” Dax asked.

  “War,” Niamlar said, and the fiery plumes fluttered against her breath.

  With all the Kinshaya paying attention to the creature, Sulu surreptitiously removed his tricorder from a pocket and silently activated it. He was pretty sure he couldn’t look at any readings of the creature without offending his hosts, but he hoped to at least record part of the event. Niamlar’s mighty frame went into motion. “I am Server and Protector,” she intoned as she circled the platform. “Shield and lance of the Kinshaya, guardian against the great demons.”

  Sulu knew this part. “Demons. You mean . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  On the floor of the platform, an aperture opened. A post arose from the trapdoor, with someone chained to it. It was a Klingon, Sulu saw—wide-eyed and stunned.

  The monster circled back and regarded the prisoner as someone whose arrival was expected. “I have spirited from the frontier a great general among the infernal ones. He will see how Niamlar protects her people.”

  Chants from the Kinshaya rose, all demanding death. Niamlar’s great jaws opened.

  The captain whispered in the envoy’s ear, “Curzon, we have to stop this.”

  “Agreed.” Dax shrugged. “Any suggestions?”

  U.S.S. EXCELSIOR

  ORBITING YONGOLOR

  Tuvok had seldom started a watch on no sleep—and yet, he found the science station a welcome refuge. No matter where he had gone aboard Excelsior since the day of the ambassador’s arrival, Dax had found him—and always when the ambassador was on his way to the club to “relax.” The Vulcan had always attempted to beg off, his duties to escort Dax having long been since discharged. But the Trill was a force of nature.

  Not a bad thing in a diplomat, Tuvok observed, and perhaps that was the lesson Commander Rand hoped he would learn. If so, he had learned it, and that was enough. He longed to study anything else, but there was not much of interest around Yongolor. He adjusted the controls, searching for anything remarkable. Perhaps the star’s magnetic field held some secrets that would advance Starfleet’s knowledge of—

  The reading from one of his sensors spiked high. It returned to normal an instant later.

  Curious. Tuvok adjusted the system’s sensitivity and restarted the test. Perhaps there was something here of note after all.

  Thirty-seven

  ZAMLOCH

  ORBITING YONGOLOR

  Korgh had awakened in the dark, shackled to the post. In his drugged haze, he’d heard the rumblings above, heard the chants. Assuming the Kruge family nobles had found some way to humiliate him, he’d readied himself to give them a piece of his mind.

  Then the trapdoor above him opened, and he had been elevated into a bright room with a colossal monster breathing in his face.

  “Back, fiend!” he yelled, futilely pulling against his chains. Wrenching from side to side, he saw flames, chanting Kinshaya—were there humans? He had never heard of the existence of anything so large, so foul. The drooling creature backed away for several moments. “Free me to fight,” he yelled, “or leave me be!”

  Fire raged in the creature’s eyes—and then it appeared in its maw, opening wide. Korgh saw the flames envelop him, felt the heat like a dry wind. He closed his eyes and screamed—

  —only to materialize a second later along with the post and chains in some sort of an atrium. The place was all white, with another high ceiling; it was as if he had gone from an infernal temple to an antiseptic surgical theater.

  “One baked Klingon, coming up,” said a bipedal creature of a sort Korgh had never seen. He was all nose, it seemed, with a breathing apparatus of some kind stuck in his mouth. “Take him down, folks.”

  Under the watch of several guards armed with disruptors, two technicians wearing headsets unchained Korgh from the post. The links dropped to the deck, and he moved to strike one of the techs—only to fall.

  “Easy there,” the blue-skinned creature who’d greeted him said. “We tranked you up pretty good.”

  “Who are you? What is this?”

  “I’m a truthcrafter. This is a job. You’re a Klingon, and you’re a prop.” The speaker listened to his headset and gestured to the guards. “Get him off the transporter pad. We’r
e about to bring the lady back from the planet.”

  “This is a starship?” Bewildered, Korgh allowed himself to be moved to the side of the cavernous chamber. A glow filled the room, forcing him to avert his eyes. When he looked again, the monster was there, leering at him from its platform.

  Korgh tensed, ready to wrest free and run, but he stopped when the abomination spoke words he never expected: “Good job, everyone.”

  Another flash, and in place of the creature stood a tall, slender female with pale skin and long, braided white hair. An egg-like knot sat in the middle of her forehead, flanked by two cranial ridges that extended from her skull almost like a pair of horns. She wore a gown of flowing burgundy—but as she walked from the pad, the garment appeared to change colors in the light.

  “Any trouble from the Starfleet visitors?” her aide asked.

  “None. If the Excelsior’s sensors could see us, we’d know by now.” She noticed Korgh. “Ah! We meet again.”

  He eyed her with suspicion. “You are that . . . that thing?”

  She snickered. “In a way. I am Napean by race, a practitioner by trade. This wonderful ship is the Zamloch. And I,” she said, long fingers on her neck, “am called Jilaan.”

  “And I am Korgh—Lord of the House of Kruge. You will release me!”

  Jilaan looked at the guards and then back at the green man who was apparently her aide. “Oh, Lallabus,” she said in her singsong voice. “Your people kidnapped a lord?”

  Lallabus scratched his bald head. “I guess we screwed up.”

  “Maybe not,” she said, walking around the restrained Korgh. “Some of those Klingon houses control a lot of assets. Maybe they’ll give us something to get him back.”

  “Our emitter needs service badly,” Lallabus offered.

  Korgh growled. “What is this babble about?”

  Jilaan smiled at him primly. “We were about to send you home, Lord Korgh. But now I think we’ll keep you.”

  U.S.S. EXCELSIOR

  ORBITING YONGOLOR

  “It just vanished.” Putting the napkin on his plate, Sulu snapped his fingers. “Gone, just like that. And a second later, the platform Niamlar was on disappeared, along with the fountains of fire.”

  “All gone?” Commander Rand looked across the mess table at him in amazement. “No transporter effect?”

  “It sure didn’t look like one,” Dax said. “The thing was enormous.”

  Sulu tapped his finger on the table, explaining, “I’ve transported whales. But I agree. My tricorder said the thing was there. It even read heat from the flames—though it didn’t feel nearly as warm in there as it probably should have. Odd.”

  “Poor Klingon,” Dax said. “This Niamlar thing breathed fire, and he vanished in a puff of smoke. There was nothing left of him.”

  “Nothing we could do,” the captain said. “Niamlar then called for all Kinshaya to tithe to the temple. She said once she was satisfied with the offerings, she would bring back another Klingon—a much more important one—and then ask for a devotional act.”

  “A crusade, I’m sure,” Dax said. “The total war we were hoping to avoid.”

  Sulu nodded. “And when Niamlar disappeared, the Pontifex said we must have offended her and ordered us out.”

  Dax emptied his wineglass and glanced around the room. He could see Tuvok lingering at another table, his meal finished. The Trill gave a little wave, but Tuvok seemed not to notice it.

  “What does this do to our mission?” Rand asked.

  “The Kinshaya are convinced a god has commanded them to carry out a holy war,” Sulu said. “It’s not up to us to find out whether or not this god is real.”

  “Real?” Rand winced. “You don’t mean you believe what you saw?”

  “Some beings really do have powers that would make them seem godlike,” Sulu said. “Remind me to tell you about Trelane—or the thing we found beyond the Great Barrier. We need to consider all the possibilities. There may actually exist a being called Niamlar, and it might be the same being at the center of Kinshaya mythology. On the other hand, it could be a pretender. The Excalbians wanted us to think Abe Lincoln and Kahless had come back to life.”

  “If it’s the Kinshaya’s own scheme,” Rand said, “they won’t welcome our interference.”

  “Let’s say we learned someone else was playing them,” the ambassador said, “someone from offworld, for personal gain?”

  “Then we’d bag them.” Sulu rose and excused himself.

  Rand stood. Seeing Tuvok, she nudged Dax. “There’s a familiar face.” She called the Vulcan over. He approached, dutifully, if reluctantly. “I was just leaving, Ensign,” Rand said. “Perhaps you could keep the ambassador company while he finishes.”

  “Certainly, Commander.” He sat in her chair—and immediately seemed to Dax to be the most uncomfortable dinner companion he’d ever had.

  “Did you hear our story, Ensign?”

  “It would be wrong to eavesdrop on a private conversation.”

  Dax twirled the ends of his fork on his plate. “Don’t make me tell a joke about ears, Tuvok. I’ve been trying to behave myself.” He set the fork down, put his elbows on the table, and rested his chin on his templed fingers. “I believe you have heard quite a bit. You’re a science officer, so you’ve studied the captain’s tricorder readings. You know what I think, Ensign?”

  “I do not.”

  “I think you have a theory. A theory that you would love to share.”

  Tuvok stiffened. “I have provided my theory to my immediate superior officer. It is his responsibility to decide whether it merits further consideration.”

  “Aha. So your superior has the ears that don’t hear everything. I have seen it many times. So why don’t you just tell me your theory?” He looked at Tuvok and grinned. “I know you’re dying to . . .”

  Thirty-eight

  ZAMLOCH

  ORBITING YONGOLOR

  The lights in the thrumming chamber blinded Korgh. He had gathered from those who had placed him inside that it was some kind of imaging device, studying him and all his movements. Two minutes inside had made him hate it; two hours had pushed him to the brink. He put his hands before his face. “Turn these damn lights off!”

  The cylindrical compartment rotated—and he saw a dark and blurry figure standing outside the opening, arms outstretched. She cried, “ ‘Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight!’ ”

  As the guards pulled him from the chamber, Korgh rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the speaker. It was Jilaan in yet another dress, this one a cascade of black frills. “What are you babbling about, woman?”

  The woman smiled. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” she said. “A Terran story of time travel, long before it was possible. The speaker was using his knowledge of an eclipse to fool primitives.”

  “ ‘Release me or I will kill your kin and drink their blood.’ The Klingon opera The Death of K’pash,” Korgh said, angrily eyeing the guards.

  “Amusing.” She swept into an aisle between dozens of technicians hard at work at various interfaces. Korgh had gathered that Jilaan and her crew were tricksters, using their equipment to fool the Kinshaya.

  Jilaan hovered above one of her workers and studied the readouts from his screen. “Mmm. That would have gone faster, Lord Korgh, had you followed our directions.”

  They had asked him to perform a variety of actions, from assuming various poses to doing calisthenics. He had ignored them. “I am not your puppet to command.”

  “But you will be, in a sense. It is why my people borrowed you—”

  “Borrowed!”

  “—we have never had a good Klingon model to work from. It’s hard to get close to your people.” She looked back at him and smiled. “You’re a testy species, but likable.”

  She walked to a doorway and beckoned, and the guards led him into another room. There, he saw a life-size
d doppelgänger of himself standing in a squared-off area and looking bored. “Morath’s bones!”

  “Ooh, good line,” Jilaan said. She turned to Lallabus, who stood nearby. “Make a note of that one.”

  “Yes, master.”

  Korgh stepped toward his double. No one stopped him as he reached out to touch it. It was a strange feeling—and a stranger sight still—as his hand passed through the other Klingon’s shoulder with only partial resistance. “What is this?”

  “Oh, holograms and force fields,” Jilaan said, “and more I shouldn’t talk about.”

  “It does not react.”

  “There needs to be an actor inhabiting the character. We didn’t have time to model you before you were needed for my scene down on Yongolor—that’s why we beamed you straight onto our set. But you did a fine job.”

  “I don’t believe any of this. You play gods?”

  “And more.”

  “I suppose simpleminded dolts like Kinshaya deserve no better. You could never do this to Klingons,” Korgh said. “We killed our gods. We fear no demons.”

  “You seemed afraid of Niamlar,” Jilaan said. “And we don’t just do gods. Wherever there is a great figure who commands respect, we can move masses.”

  “To what end?”

  “To say we did it. Stories. A lot like your songs, I should think.”

  “Foolishness.”

  An aide brought her a message. “Well, well,” Jilaan said, reading it. “It looks like we have another actor in our midst, after all.” She smirked at him. “We’ve checked into your story, ‘my lord.’ Your House of Kruge does exist, and there are quite a lot of people who claim to be the head of it. But nowhere did we find anyone by your name in connection with it.”

  Korgh groaned in frustration. “Of course not, you old fool. I have yet to claim my legacy. But the house is mine.”

  “A lot of good it’s done you,” Lallabus interjected, his words whistling through his breathing apparatus. “You had barely enough on you for a week’s food.”