After promising not to harm anyone else—and a forced apology to Lallabus—he had been allowed to stay aboard as a laborer. Raiding loot from their marks took muscle and an ability to work fast, and he was nothing if not a good organizer. Korgh had even participated as a character in a few of Jilaan’s illusions, usually those set in places where her puny apprentice was fearful to go. He had learned much about acting and dissemblance; talents he considered distastefully Romulan or human, but nonetheless of possible use some day.
His real motive had been to learn about the truthcrafters’ technology in order to appropriate it—but it was completely beyond him. He had not built the starships on Gamaral; he had managed those who did. He longed to have Odrok or one of her coworkers around. But the Klingon moon Praxis had exploded in the interim, throwing the political situation into flux; like most ships, Zamloch had steered clear of the Empire.
It proved an infernal, maddening year to be away from Klingon space. Chancellor Gorkon’s daughter—how was she in charge of anything?—made peace with the Federation at Khitomer, with none other than Kirk and Spock involved. Kruge would have been mortified. Korgh could delay his revenge no longer.
When the Zamloch approached Klingon space, he prepared to take his leave, carrying a bag holding what he’d earned. It wasn’t enough to hire crews; Praxis had sent inflation in the Empire soaring. But it would be enough to keep Odrok and her Phantom Wing engineers supplied for years if necessary.
When the time came to depart, Jilaan called him into her study—a bizarre section of the ship where someone had fooled with the artificial gravity to make furniture sit on overheads and bulkheads. She spoke to him from a colossal high-backed chair. “When anyone leaves our company, Korgh, it is final. The Circle’s secrets must be protected. You may seek us out, but you will never find us.”
“I will simply wait until you need a Klingon prop again—and allow myself to be kidnapped.”
As if floating on air, her chair rotated so he could see her wan smile. “I will miss you,” she said, appearing older than he’d remembered. She was wearing flowing white. He had never seen her in the same clothing twice. “I realize you and your kind are bred for war, but I hope you found our travels of interest.”
“I did,” Korgh allowed, “though I do not understand some things. Back on Yongolor, you never intended to send the Kinshaya to war with the Empire, did you?”
“No, we were just there to take what we needed—and to see all the tributes they made to Niamlar.” Her minions had brought back images of hundreds of monuments from all over the Holy Order’s territory. “Those will be good fodder for The Annals.”
“Those who worship you would kill for you, if you told them to.”
“I try not to do that. It’s a matter of personal preference. Certainly there are practitioners who’ve sent people to their deaths—even prompted mass suicides. It’s a cheap thrill, and there’s no art to it. It defeats the purpose.”
“Which is?”
“To fool a society so absolutely that you become embedded in their civilization’s mythology. That’s when a feat goes immortal. I’ve done it on a dozen worlds in my career—it’s why I’m Illusionist Magnus. I wouldn’t have accomplished much, though, if I made a habit of wiping out everyone who saw my performance.” Jilaan sighed. “Ah, times have changed, Korgh. Gone are the days when we did grand things for the sake of transforming reality. It is all about survival now. It’s a pity.”
Hearing her regretful tone, a notion dawned on him. “What if I were to invite you and your people to assist me in taking control of my house?”
“Duping Klingons?” Her eyes widened as she considered the idea. “No one in the Circle’s ever tried, so far as I know.” She paused. “But what’s in it for me? And don’t tell me you’re going to lavish wealth on us after the fact. We don’t work on spec.”
Korgh frowned. He knew he had only one asset hidden away. He had no choice but to offer it. “What . . . what if I could trade you a Klingon vessel with our latest cloaking technology?”
“You have such a vessel?”
“I do. And I could arrange for ongoing technical assistance for your cloaking device—which you and I both know requires constant updating to stay ahead of Starfleet.” He didn’t pause long to wonder if Odrok would agree or approve. She worked for him. “I could have a bird-of-prey here within days.”
Jilaan was impressed. “You are full of surprises. Why didn’t you offer that at the start?”
“I did not trust you.”
She laughed. “That’s a good reason.” After thinking for a moment, she shook her head. “My answer is still no. It doesn’t sound like a problem conducive to one of our ploys. I remember what we found out about the House of Kruge. You have a lot of different rivals, and it seems like they’re already entrenched. I’m not going to be able to fool them one by one.”
Korgh agreed that could be a problem. “But what if I could get them all in one place?”
“What if you could? You’re trying to get these people to part with the things dearest to them—wealth, power, title. That means they won’t be easy marks. It’s no good tricking them for an hour. The set-up’s going to have to be a very long game.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes. And that’s too long for my crew. It’s the same problem as before—we don’t know much about Klingons. There’s any number of places where I could trip up, be given away.” Jilaan studied him. “Now, if you could do that groundwork yourself—”
“Me?”
“You’re a Klingon—and the interested party. Nobody better to get close to these rivals of yours and soften them up. Didn’t you say that they were not aware of your existence?”
“Yes—no. I don’t know. I would probably have to change my face and name—no Klingon would do these things.” Korgh grimaced. “And I loathe the so-called nobles. I could never stand to be around them, holding my tongue, pretending to be another.”
“Your loss, my dear. But I think a day will come when you might well decide any sacrifice is worth it.”
Korgh straightened. “May I never live so long.” He took his bag and left.
ACT THREE
THE HUNTER’S TRAP
2386
“Some days you get the bear. Some days the bear gets you.”
—William Riker
Forty-one
PHANTOM WING VESSEL RODAK
LANKAL EXPANSE, KLINGON EMPIRE
Worf was sick and hurt. And he was convalescing in an ODN access room not much larger than a storage locker.
Since his botched beam-in to the Rodak, the commander had holed up in the tiny room off a workshop area, just across the hall from where he had arrived. His surmise had been correct: the Unsung never bothered with the room or its closet. It was at the end of a corridor, on the way to nothing. Occasionally, warriors entered the room farther up the hall, but that was it.
Worf knew the basic B’rel-class design and had studied the schematics of the Phantom Wing vessels well. Well enough to realize that on this deck, he only had one option: a support room far aft had systems he might be able to use to sabotage Rodak’s cloak, or otherwise give away the ship’s position to anyone watching. The problem was that to reach the room, he needed to traverse main engineering—normally one of the busier areas aboard.
But Rodak was no normal ship, nor the Unsung a regular crew. Its engineers had nothing like a duty schedule, Sarken had said. Sometimes, those present gathered at the far end of the cavernous room for lessons on running a starship. At other times, when the vessel was not in flight, the false Kruge occasionally ordered the crews of all the Phantom Wing ships to the meeting rooms to hear his remotely delivered addresses.
The opportunity to reach his destination was there. But while Worf’s plan was sound, his body was not. He had discovered that the first night, sleeping hunched over on the cold deck of the closet. A fever overtook him, clouding his mind and causing his bones to ach
e. The morning after he arrived, he was almost too woozy to stand.
Sarken had brought him food and water, and he continued to treat his leg, assuming he had an infection. Nothing had helped. He worried that the transporter had erred in reconstituting him. It had certainly failed to predict the compromised state of the catwalk.
Twice the fever subsided enough for him to venture into the main area of the workshop. He had grown momentarily excited upon discovering a padd, but he soon realized it was detached from any kind of subspace network. Its sole contents seemed to be instructional text and schematics, as well as audio recordings of a Klingon woman giving lessons in starship operations.
Worf had absconded with it back to his hiding space and studied it when he felt well enough. He listened to the narrator’s voice playing softly on the device. Her elocution suggested a woman of education, perhaps even of Mempa Institute caliber, and two other things were clear. She knew everything about the Phantom Wing vessels, and she knew she was teaching exiles whose interaction with technology had been sparse.
In his best hour, Worf discovered the padd had been initialized more than a year before—and that he was the first to access its files. Sarken had told him there were dozens of them aboard, one at every duty station. Whoever had provided the Phantom Wing to the Unsung wanted to be certain they understood what they were doing.
The quandary occupied his thoughts as he tried to sleep. Starfleet’s working theory had been that General Potok, the founder of the exile colony on Thane, had sent an ally to return with one of the ships of the Phantom Wing. That individual, or some associate, was possibly behind the Kruge doppelgänger. But the existence of the padds combined with previous facts—including the inside information the Unsung had used for the Gamaral attack and the communications satellites that once led to Thane—suggested something else. Whoever was responsible for weaponizing the discommendated exiles had three things in plentiful supply: resources, technical know-how, and time.
That suggested a hostile government—but that only sent Worf’s feverish mind into a swift spiral of suspicion. He was amid another maddening catnap when the secret knock he shared with his helper sounded outside the door.
The door opened and Sarken entered carrying a new bucket and a satchel over her shoulder. The first he had no need to ask about: the nearest head was on deck five. The pack, which she opened as she knelt, contained dried rations, a canteen, and a rag. She moistened the cloth and put it against his forehead.
“Where are we?” Worf asked.
“Still in that black spot with no stars. We’re just sitting here.”
Worf understood. He’d gathered from her reports that the Unsung were on another mission. Perhaps they were hiding in a void, preparing. Or maybe they were lying in wait.
“I heard your name today,” Sarken said as she mopped more sweat from his face. “They told me you attacked everyone on Thane after they executed the clone. The one they called Kahless.”
Worf sighed wearily. He knew this was coming. He looked up at her. “Did you say anything?”
“No.” She wrung the cloth into the bucket. “But why did you do it, Worf?”
“Because the clone was a person, and that person was my friend.”
“Oh.”
Worf struggled to sit up straighter. His answer seemed to satisfy her—but only to a point.
“Why did my people want to kill your friend?”
“They were told to by the man who leads you.”
“Lord Kruge?”
“That is what he calls himself, yes.” Worf felt too horrible to go into the topic of impersonation. “He saw Kahless as a threat.”
“Why?”
“Because of the ideals he stands for. Honor. Loyalty to family and friends. If your people had known Kahless, they would never have harmed him—or anyone else.”
He took the open canteen she offered and drank thirstily. It aggrieved him that the malady he suffered from, whatever it was, represented maybe a minute’s work for Enterprise’s medical staff to cure. Meanwhile, medical equipment was the one thing Rodak didn’t seem to have. Whoever had provisioned it hadn’t thought much about prolonging the lives of its occupants.
Sarken passed him some of the accursed protein crackers—all his stomach could tolerate. “Do you have children, Worf?”
“I do,” Worf answered between bites. “His name is Alexander. He is an adult now. An ambassador.”
“What’s an ambassador?”
“A sort of messenger between friends. I do not see him as much as I would like.”
“Most parents on Thane don’t spend much time with their kids. Everyone kind of raises us together.”
That made sense to Worf. Discommendation was tied to lineage, so the family would not have been at the center of exile life. “My parents died when I was young,” Worf said.
“Were there wild animals? That’s how my mother died.”
“No. There was war. People called Romulans attacked the planet I was living on. My parents died. I was raised by the people who rescued me.”
“I was sad when my mother died,” she said, rocking back and forth as she sat beside him. “But my father started talking to me more after that. He was the one who told me about you, and how you made the other Klingons not hate you anymore. They let you be one of them again.”
Worf’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps the man could be an ally in the sense that Valandris was—someone who understood who Worf was and was reluctant to harm him. “What is your father’s name?”
“Tharas.” Sarken pursed her lips. “He died too—back when we were leaving Thane.”
Worf stopped chewing—and felt his throat contract. Earlier, in his own escape from Thane, he had killed Tharas in honorable combat.
Appetite gone, he swallowed and passed back the remaining food. Eyeing her, he chose his words carefully. “Sarken, did they tell you how Tharas died?”
“Valandris called me from Chu’charq after we left Thane. She just said he didn’t come back. He was still out in the jungle when the camp blew up.”
Then Valandris kept the facts of his death secret, Worf thought. What did that mean? Had she wanted to spare the girl’s feelings? Or had she not wanted to spoil the reputation Worf had?
Sniffling, Sarken wiped her face. “We were just starting to spend more time together too. He was teaching me how to hunt. But then Lord Kruge came, and he started spending all his time helping him.” She frowned. “I hate the Unsung, Worf. I want my home back.”
“You can make a home in another place,” Worf said, “as I did. And as Alexander did. You simply need the chance—and the right people.”
“I guess.” She packed her satchel and stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I think they’re about to do whatever they’re going to do. Don’t go out into the hall.”
There is no danger of that happening, Worf thought. But their conversation had given him something else to worry about.
Forty-two
PHANTOM WING VESSEL CHU’CHARQ
LANKAL EXPANSE, KLINGON EMPIRE
Where the hell is Kahless?
Cross thought it for the hundredth time while he hobbled onto the bird-of-prey’s bridge as the elderly Commander Kruge. He approached the engineer’s station.
“Hemtara,” he said. “Scan this vessel for life signs.”
“Again? The previous three scans had no unusual results,” she said. “I do not understand, my lord. Is someone aboard who should not be?”
This time, Cross had prepared an answer for the question. “Chelvatus III was home to many Klingons loyal to the Empire. If someone sensed our vessel’s presence while we were there, they could have put an operative aboard then.”
“I do not see how. We were cloaked the entire—”
“Do it!” he barked. “And do not include the bridge in your scan.” The truthcrafters’ projected facsimiles of Kruge and N’Keera were designed to fool biometric sensors, but there was no reason to take chances. “Do as I say
, or I will forget your loyalty.”
“Right away, my lord.” Hemtara set to work.
Cross saw that Shift was watching him. Disguised as N’Keera, she sat by his command chair with a book on her knees. No words were necessary between them; she knew the problem as well as he did. Days had passed, and they still had no idea where Kahless had gone—and they only had the roughest idea of how he had escaped.
Gaw’s truthcrafters aboard Blackstone had been taking turns monitoring the storage room aboard Chu’charq; after watching days of apparent drinking by the clone, their attention had been waning for a while. But the breaking point had arrived when the squadron put in at Chevatus III. Many of the Blackstone staffers had either been out selling the goods taken from the Orions or had been working on Cross’s future project. In focusing on how to make Cross look like the original Kahless, they had let the current one go.
The only evidence from Blackstone’s sensors had been Kahless, carrying a bundle of some kind under his arm as he stepped to the back of the storeroom, past the limits of their static surveillance. Suspecting that the clone had clambered up the pillar of crates, Shift had nimbly scaled the tower to inspect. In the overhead, she’d found a ventilation shaft that sloped downward, following the shape of the dorsal blister atop the port wing. There it reached a junction that curved toward the main body of the bird-of-prey. Afraid of becoming trapped in the darkness, Shift had returned. If the clone had gone that way, he could be anywhere aboard Chu’charq.
Yet the life sign scans had said he wasn’t.
That left Chelvatus III. When Shift had returned, Jilaan’s Annals book in hand, from Blackstone, Kahless had not stirred; that meant he might already have been gone by then. If the clone had found his way off Chu’charq somehow, could he have sought refuge among the Klingons of the outpost? There had been no disturbance in the village before Chu’charq left and certainly no word had come from the Empire that Kahless yet lived.
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