The Jackal's Trick

by John Jackson Miller

  And then there was Cross. Korgh studied Odrok’s display screen. If Cross acted according to plan, he would have boarded the Ark of G’boj as Kruge and declared the latinum to be filthy blood money sent to a traitor. He then would have entered the code, saying he was sending the treasure to the heart of a black hole. Of course, he would be sending it someplace else, for his cohorts to loot at their leisure. “Is the tracking hardware still operational?”

  “Yes. I told you they would never inspect the bases the stacks of latinum bricks were sitting on; too heavy to move. I will know their destination soon.”

  “Excellent. I am going to hail my grandson aboard Jarin,” Korgh said. “Ignore what I said to Lorath; his son will have glory of his own. I will see to it.”

  Odrok stared, her eyes tired. “Everyone will be rewarded,” she said limply.

  Korgh forestalled the usual theatrics. “Go to bed, Odrok. It will all be over shortly. Then we can discuss the future.”

  Forty-eight

  PHANTOM WING VESSEL RODAK

  LANKAL EXPANSE, KLINGON EMPIRE

  “So the old man, Lord Kruge, looks at us and says, ‘With this act, I send the riches of the wicked into oblivion.’ And then he turns around and pushes the button, and tells us we all have to beam off Ark of G’boj before it launches.”

  Leaning against a metal counter in the sickbay, Zokar laughed with incredulity. “So five minutes ago I watched from the bridge as enough latinum to buy a star system warped off to a black hole! Can you believe it, Worf?”

  Worf didn’t know what to believe anymore, but at least he was feeling better. The Unsung might not have had much use for medical technology, but Zokar seemed to know how to use a hypospray. He had speeded the breaking of Worf’s fever—though only after manacling Worf to the table first. Since then, Worf had lain in solitude, his existence apparently unknown to anyone else, save for Sarken, whom he had not seen since her betrayal.

  Zokar’s behavior was unlike that of any of the other discommendated he’d met. Starting with the bottle in his hand: bloodwine, found in some recent raid. Zokar had brought the bottle aboard hidden in a canvas bag—opening it here, with Worf.

  “Morath’s bones, I have missed this,” Zokar said after taking a drink. “The others don’t know what they’re missing.” He eyed Worf. “We were cloaked. How did you beam aboard?”

  “How did you beam through Enterprise’s shields?”

  Zokar laughed. “Fair enough. Keep your secret. I will not try to pry it from you.”

  “Why am I here?” Worf asked. “You saw your Fallen Lord. Why didn’t you tell Kruge I was here?”

  “I told you, I wanted to talk to you first. This is the first chance I have had.” Zokar set down the bottle and wiped his mouth.

  “I saw you on Thane,” Worf said. “You did not speak with me.”

  “I didn’t need to,” Zokar replied. “I already knew all about Worf, son of Mogh, the Starfleet officer. I was the one who told the exiles about you.”

  Worf’s eyebrow arched. “Then you are not native to Thane.”

  Zokar laughed. “No. I was born where you once lived—on Khitomer.” He watched Worf’s expression and laughed again, even more heartily. “If that surprises you, wait until you hear this. We were both discommendated over Khitomer too.”

  Worf’s eyes went wide. Forty years earlier, his parents had died when the Romulans attacked Khitomer; twenty years after that, the venal Duras family had falsely accused Worf’s father of betraying the colony to the Romulans. Worf had volunteered to accept discommendation to prevent a civil war, a conflict that soon became unavoidable. Half a lifetime ago for Worf; he preferred not to think about it.

  But his encounter with the Unsung had dredged it all up, and now Zokar was picking at the wound. “How could you have been discommendated over Khitomer?” Worf asked. “I have never heard of you.”

  “You wouldn’t have,” Zokar said, bottle again in hand. “I was charged forty years ago. You were still a runt, and I was a raw recruit. I wanted to prove my worth in battle, to serve aboard a ship like this.” He gestured around him. “The chance never came. I kept getting foolish, mundane jobs—piloting supplies back and forth to the colony.”

  Zokar paced from the counter and stared into the corner of the room. “The day the Romulans attacked, I was piloting a shipload of munitions to Khitomer. Every weapon, every explosive you could ever need for defense. In fact, I was overloaded—which I discovered when I dropped out of warp short of the system. Warp drive, impulse—everything was shot.”

  Worf’s eyes narrowed.

  Zokar pivoted. “Imagine it, Worf. There I was, sitting in space, hearing the cries of our people as the Romulan curs slaughtered them. I had an arsenal, but no way to get it to them. No one answered my hails.” He winced. “It was agony.”

  Worf knew too well. He had only survived the Khitomer massacre buried in a pile of rubble. He watched Zokar finish the bottle. “Someone came for me,” Worf said. “And you?”

  “Eventually. No one believed my story.” His face reddened. “I was accused of sabotaging my own systems.”

  “They thought you a coward?”

  “They said I’d stopped my transport short of Khitomer when I heard there was a battle. Some even said I was in league with the Romulans. Can you imagine?” He crushed the bottle in his hand, sending shards onto the deck—and lacerating his hand. Blood coursed from it. “I’d never even met a damned Romulan!”

  Worf understood how it could have happened. Feelings still ran high over Khitomer many years later.

  “My gut ached, Worf. My own brother had been killed. People I had known all my life. When the Council wouldn’t let me join the war to avenge them, I begged to be permitted Mauk-to’Vor, so I could join them in death.” He looked at his dripping hand. “They wouldn’t have it. My blade was taken. Their knives were drawn. I lost my soul.”

  Worf knew the feeling.

  Zokar kicked at the glass on the deck. “The Empire scraped me off its boot, like filth. And like filth is how I lived for the next thirty years.” He stared directly at Worf. “It was during that time that I learned you had lost your name over Khitomer, and that you had regained it. But there was nothing out there that could bring my name back.”

  “How did you find Thane?”

  “I’d spent years working just for scraps. I cut metal at a graving yard. Hot, filthy work.” He gestured to his stump. “I lost my left hand in the factory long before Thane took the rest of my arm. Losing my hand finished me as a laborer—and should have ended me altogether, but someone at the plant knew I was discommendated. I didn’t merit speaking to, but he spoke to me. He said there was a place in the Klagh D’kel Brakt where people like me lived, together.”

  Worf’s attention was piqued. “Someone directed you to Thane? Who?”

  “I never asked names. I was just glad for a way out. A tramp freighter took me. The pilots were hirelings—they didn’t even speak Klingon. They beamed me down and left without ever setting foot on the planet.”

  “How were you received?”

  “Routinely. They’d had newcomers before, arriving the same way. They showed me how to survive on Thane—and I was mostly successful.” He raised his stump of an arm and grinned. “When I didn’t die after the first season, it looked like it could be a good thing. I could live just as everyone else did—and of course the hunting was good. I thought I might even find a mate.”

  Zokar’s hopeful expression gave way to a scowl. “But I didn’t realize that Potok had been so hard on everyone. The elders took every opportunity to remind us that we were nothing, lower than vermin. Soon, I missed the Empire. At least there Klingons ignored me. The exiles beat themselves up, constantly. I wasn’t exactly tempting to women hoping their great-grandchildren would escape from their forebears’ shame. Under Potok’s rules, I was part of Generation Zero.”

  “You were poison.”

  “Hearing of Kruge set me free, Worf. He set me f
ree.”

  Worf shook his head. “Zokar, you of all people must know the truth. Kruge has been dead for a century. This story of his survival is a fable, a lie. I do not know how he has accomplished it, but you are being tricked.”

  Zokar slammed his bloody fist on the counter, rattling medical instruments. “I don’t care if he’s a Changeling, Worf. He is saying the right things. Things people like me have never heard.” He shook his head. “These descendants of the exiles—Harch, Valandris, even little Sarken—were judged before they drew breath. They had no dreams, because Potok never allowed them any.” He thumped his chest. “But I existed as a Klingon before discommendation. I had dreams. I never got my chance, because of the words of the high and mighty. That is over now. Now I fight!”

  “Whoever this ‘Kruge’ sends you to fight.” Worf strained at his bond. “There is no honor in battling the wrong enemy.”

  “Kahless’s honor, the Empire’s honor!” Zokar grabbed Worf’s neck and leaned low over his prone captive. “What do I care about that? I didn’t come from a house like you. I didn’t have Starfleet to crawl to when I was condemned—and I didn’t have the chancellor’s ear to help me get my name back!”

  “You have a chance now,” Worf said, feeling Zokar’s breath. “Forget the charlatan. Convince the others to stop this madness, and I swear I will accompany you all to Qo’noS, for you to tell your story!”

  “Why?” Zokar released Worf with a shove. “So they can discommendate us for seventy generations this time?”

  “So the children of your squadron might live. They might have a better chance before—”

  “Oh, no.” Zokar shook his head vigorously. “We will go to Qo’noS, Worf, but only under Kruge’s flag. I owe the Empire for how I was treated—and the Romulans, for what they did.” Anger seethed in the elder Klingon’s eyes. “If I kill enough people, eventually I will get to someone who deserves it.”

  Worf held his gaze for a long moment. “You are lost, Zokar.”

  “And you are in prison. Again.”

  A moment’s silence—broken by the chirp of Zokar’s communicator. “Zokar, it’s Harch. Where are you?”

  “Dealing with a problem. What is it?”

  “Lord Kruge wants your advice on a local landing site. He wants to stage a muster of all his most loyal.”

  “On my way.” Zokar deactivated the device and headed for the door.

  Worf called out. “Do you go to tell ‘Kruge’ I am here?”

  “I wasn’t going to, but now I might.” He looked back and glared. “We are brothers, of a sort—brothers in Khitomer blood and the blame surrounding it. I had thought to keep you safe a while longer because of it. But after this talk, I am close to forgetting what we have in common.”

  “That should be easy to do, for we are nothing alike. If you do not believe in honor, whether a man is your brother or not cannot possibly matter.”

  Zokar left and sealed the door.

  Forty-nine

  OMICRON LANKAL

  KLINGON EMPIRE

  The muster was hastily called, and yet it seemed to Valandris that Lord Kruge had been planning the event all along. The man was like that, acting on sudden inspirations yet leading them to places he seemed to know all about. Perhaps this was what it was like to grow old, Valandris thought. The people of Thane lived short lives in a small area. To reach past a century traveling the stars, one might naturally develop encyclopedic knowledge.

  Kruge had certainly chosen a good setting for their gathering. The box canyon on Omicron Lankal’s frigid surface was easily the warmest place on the planet. Volcanic vents supplied the depression with gas jets; the first arrivals had lit them, transforming them into spectacular pillars of heat and light. The result was a natural amphitheater in the ice, open to the cold starry sky above.

  As Valandris descended one of the snowy pathways into the arena from Chu’charq’s landing site, she marveled at both the setting and the turnout. The area could accommodate everyone: all the warriors who had fought and desired to keep fighting for Kruge. Only children and invalids had remained aboard the eight vessels that had landed, and the three birds-of-prey on orbital patrol had transported down their warriors, leaving only skeleton crews.

  “This place is amazing,” she said, watching her own breath crystalize in the air. “Lord Kruge found it here, already formed?”

  Ahead of her on the path, Zokar looked back and sneered. “You people. This was an old deuterium mine—I dug that path over there myself, thirty years ago. Lord Kruge asked me for a good local site for his muster.”

  “Never missing a chance to make yourself look good,” she replied.

  He smiled at her. “I haven’t even gotten started. I’ve got something on Rodak that’ll make me his number one general.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You’ll see. I caught something the great hunter Valandris could not.” Zokar’s companions laughed and converged around him as they reached the floor of the depression.

  Valandris worked her way through the crowd and saw the rostrum her advance team had crafted from empty cargo containers. It would be enough to allow Kruge to address his most loyal warriors—a group to which she’d always thought she belonged. Looking at the stage—and then at all the other excited attendees—she wondered how much she deserved to attend. Valandris had been on her best behavior since Spirits’ Forge; there were no more writings of Kahless to be read. She had shown her loyalty at the treasure ship, executing Kruge’s orders—and the guards—without question.

  She was surrounded by almost everyone she had ever met. How could she possibly feel alone?

  RODAK

  OMICRON LANKAL

  With every passing hour, Worf felt his strength returning. He didn’t know if it was the hypospray or if the virus had run its course—but it was of cold comfort. He could tell from the sounds of the ship that it had landed somewhere; his time was running out. Again and again, he had tested the bonds that held him to the table. He had been tied down with leather straps cut from uniforms. It had been a long time since he’d heard anyone outside. When someone worked the door, he assumed it was Zokar or someone sent by the exile. He was wrong.

  “Sarken.” He turned his head and looked at the little girl. She had her satchel over her shoulder, as usual. “Why are you here?”

  “Everyone is gone,” she said. “Kruge is holding a muster outside. There’s nobody on this deck at all.”

  “Did Zokar go too?”

  “Yes. He said he was going to tell Kruge you were here.” She looked away, and Worf’s heart sank. “He was acting funny—and his breath smelled. Worse than normal, I mean.”

  “That would be the bloodwine.” Worf nodded in the direction of the glass fragments on the deck. “Watch your step.”

  Sarken looked up at him with eyes wide. “Worf, did you know who my dad was when you—”

  “When I killed him?” Worf took a deep breath. “Yes. I had met Tharas. He had been my guide in the camp.” He looked at her. “But I did not know he was your father.”

  “Would you have killed him if you had known?”

  Worf was silent for a moment. “Tharas had come to kill me. I had no choice.” He looked at her. “But if I had known you—and the kind of person you are—then, yes, I might have looked for another way.”

  She smiled weakly. “That’s what I wanted to hear.” She opened her satchel and produced a d’k tahg. Worf’s eyes widened as she brought it closer to him. He flinched. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I feared you wanted revenge.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, starting to work on his bonds with the dagger. “Besides, if you caught tharkak’ra, you most likely got it from me. You’ve suffered enough.”

  She cut through the strap holding his right hand to the table. He took the weapon and went to work on his other bonds. “No one else is on the deck. How long will they be gone?”

  “I don’t know. But you’d better hurry.”
<
br />   OMICRON LANKAL

  KLINGON EMPIRE

  A transporter glow heralded the arrival of Kruge and N’Keera. The high priestess wore a fur wrap to protect her small frame from the cold, but Kruge looked no different.

  No, Valandris thought from the front row. He looked radiant and magnetic, just as he had when she’d first seen him on Thane. It was as if someone else had undertaken the exertions of the past weeks, as if there were a default Kruge state that he could magically transform into at will. It was a foolish thought—but it seemed to fit. He was their lord Kruge.

  And when he spoke in this place, his words boomed across the canyon, echoing off the walls. “You have done well!”

  Cheers erupted, raucous and prolonged. N’Keera stood solemn throughout it, her hands together out of sight inside the sleeves of her garment. Kruge reveled, raising his hands to the stars and taking in the adulation.

  “You have done well. But you have not done enough. For while we have grievously harmed the people who wronged you, they will try again—at a place called Ghora Janto.”

  He asked them to repeat the name, and the Unsung said it as one.

  “When we destroyed the bribe Kersh received from the Romulans, it angered many people she made promises to. The so-called lord of her house is her puppet, a mere housekeeper elevated to stand in as her spokesman. The Defense Force has discharged her. Her position in the Empire is finished—but she still has time to hand over the worlds my house holds to the enemy. Kersh will meet them at Ghora Janto, where she intends to surrender the house’s battle cruisers and begin life as the owner of an estate on Romulus.” He looked to the audience with a canny smile. “You will see that she never gets to lovely Beraldak Bay.”

  The Unsung erupted with more cheers.

  “When we do this, your revenge—and mine—will be complete. We will take the territory that was rightfully mine and use it to build a new Klingon Empire, free from the influences of—”