Demands of Honor

by Kevin Ryan

For a moment, the councillor looked at him in surprise, and Karel said, “You cannot even die with honor.” Then he twisted the knife and pushed the dying man to the ground. Kneeling down, he wiped the blood on his blade onto the councillor’s tunic and said, “You will never cross the River of Blood, you pathetic slime devil. To Gre’thor with you.”

  Then Karel got up and turned away from Duras. He headed for the transporter and hit the button on the intercom. “Beam me up.” He was glad when the transporter beam took him. He did not want to spend another second in Duras’s presence.

  Fuller could hear a loud rumbling even over the noisy hum of the ore hauler as it headed down the shaft at high speed. Tremors, he thought immediately. The captain had said there might be some instability at the end. That was why he had wanted Fuller to have help for this task, but that was impossible. Fuller could not and would not ask anyone else to do what he had to do. The burden and the responsibility would be his and his alone.

  Even at nearly terminal velocity, the trip took minutes, and Fuller could feel the temperature rise as he got closer and closer to the planet’s molten core. Checking his tricorder, Fuller confirmed that he was close. He started decelerating and saw the chamber. It was easy to find since it was large and the only one with large equipment inside it. Bringing the hauler to a stop, he jumped to the ground. Then he turned and faced the ore hauler, which hung in the air over the shaft. Taking out his phaser, he took aim at the controls and fired. There was a flash but the hauler was still. It took three shots in the end, but the hauler finally shuddered in space, then dropped like a stone.

  Fuller didn’t give it another thought; he had known from the beginning that this mission would be a one-way trip. Hell, he had known it as he sat at the computer terminal in his apartment where he had listened to the message of condolence from his son’s captain. It was then that he had decided to reenlist.

  Fuller surveyed the equipment. The kinetic explosive device was about ten meters high, less than half that wide. There were control circuits nearby and some sort of cooling mechanism. He knew the physics behind such a device, which turned the unimaginable energies of a warp reaction into pure, kinetic force. The charge in the duffel bag could put a stop to that process, but Fuller would never use it. The device would fulfill its deadly purpose.

  Fuller was glad that the landing party would be safely on the ship. However, he found that he was troubled by what would happen to Adon and his people. He did not wish for their deaths. He understood them and saw the potential there. However, he also saw how easily they had been corrupted by the malevolent force of the Klingon Empire.

  He had had a chance to stop the spread of their sickness twenty-five years ago and had failed out of his own weakness. He would not fail now. And perhaps killing the crew of the Klingon ship would not do much to change the conflict that would come, but it would accomplish one thing: it would kill the Klingons who had taken his son. These Klingons, at least, would kill no more children.

  There would be civilian casualties in this operation, but war always required such sacrifices. Nevertheless, the thought still troubled him, but Fuller wondered if the concern was nothing more than habit—nothing more than training.

  A tremor shook the floor and Fuller heard a deep rumbling again. The tremor quickly became a shudder, and soon the ground was pitching around him. Out of reflex, he threw himself to the ground, away from the mine shaft. Stones and earth fell around him, and the shaking was so great that he was tossed from his stomach to his back.

  Then there was the pop of an explosion, and Fuller wondered if the tremor had somehow done what the charge in his bag was supposed to do and destroyed the kinetic bomb. The shaking stopped and he saw that the device was intact. The cooling mechanism, however, was in pieces.

  Fuller felt a sharp pain in his shoulder, and another in his thigh. A piece of metal was in his leg. He instinctively reached down with his right hand and pulled it out. The wound bled freely.

  Femoral artery, his mind supplied with detached professionalism. It was bad. He didn’t have long, but on the other hand he didn’t need long. He just needed to see this mission through to the end. Working quickly, he tore a piece of cloth from his tunic and made a crude tourniquet. He pulled it as tight as he could and judged that it would slow the bleeding enough to let him last the few minutes that remained.

  He crawled over to the kinetic device finally, pulling himself up and resting against it. You can’t let those people die, a voice in his head said.

  Yes, I can, he replied, and he knew it was true. He had long since stopped worrying about his soul. His only concern was to do what was necessary for his son.

  His son …

  You can’t …

  Then Fuller recognized the voice. It was Sam’s. It was asking him, was he the kind of man who would kill thousands to seek his own revenge? Whatever he had been in the past, the answer to that question was now yes.

  But Sam would never do it, he thought. His son had been a better man than him, from his earliest youth to the end of his too short life.

  After bearing Sam’s death, he had thought he could bear anything, but he realized that he still feared one thing. He could not stand to shame himself in the eyes of his son—eyes that had always looked on him with an admiration that he had hardly deserved.

  What would those eyes think of what he was doing now?

  What would his son think of him now?

  Almost without conscious thought, Fuller reached around and pulled at the duffel bag he still had slung over his shoulder. His left arm wasn’t working well, but he was able to manage with his right. The charge fit into the palm of his hand, and Fuller studied it for a moment. Then he quickly hit the button to start the timer and lifted it to the outside of the kinetic explosive. The magnetic surface of the charge immediately locked on the bomb, and Fuller realized it was done.

  The charge would destroy the kinetic device and spare the planet … and spare the Klingons who had killed Sam. A final failure to taunt him. Well, it wouldn’t taunt him for long.

  Fuller felt light-headed and realized that he might not live long enough to see this mission through, after all. The circle of blood on the ground around him was growing. He started to feel a chill and knew what it meant.

  Fuller had seen too many of his friends and shipmates die to think he would escape their fate. The thought of his own death had not troubled him for a long time. Since that day twenty-five years ago, he’d known he would eventually join his many fallen shipmates on the wall of Starfleet Command. However, he had always thought that his son might visit that wall and remember him rather than him paying his respects to Sam there.

  Now Sam would never make that trip. And there would be no one else to do it, certainly no family. A name among many to be viewed by schoolchildren as they visited Starfleet. Sam had been his only real legacy and now he was gone.

  Fuller had not thought in years about the few religious beliefs that he had gotten from his mother and grandparents, but he found himself thinking about them now. Perhaps there was something after death. Perhaps there was a place of forgiveness, a place where fathers who had failed their sons might find them again. A place where people found peace even if in their hearts they knew they didn’t deserve it.

  In the past he would have found such thoughts silly, but they comforted him now. As a haze fell over his mind, he imagined that he would find his son again and that Sam would welcome him, not because he deserved the welcome, but because Sam was a good man … a better man.

  The thought was so pleasant that he felt even the pain in his body fading away. Then he found that his doubts were replaced with certainty. He would see Sam again. Soon, he knew he would have to stop fighting and let go … of everything.

  Long ago, he had locked away all those that he had lost. He could feel that breaking now. They started to come, Andrews, Caruso … too many others, and finally Sam. He felt them all, as if they had died the moment before. The tears came, and fo
r the first time in his career he didn’t fight them.

  And then it started to pass, or to fade.

  The world seemed to shrink around him. Breathing.

  In.

  Out.

  His work was done. It was time for him to see his son.

  Then a light flared across his vision … so the light was real. The stories were real. Well, then, that meant that Sam would be there.

  No, a voice inside him said. Not yet.

  There was movement. Sound. Someone was near.

  “Sam,” he said as he struggled to open his eyes, tried with all of his strength to open them to see his son. He opened them for a moment, long enough to see a familiar face and a red uniform.

  Sam?

  Then there were voices, hands on him. He felt himself fading, then he was lifted into the air. Then he was inside … but inside what he did not know. Something touched his arm, a prick of pain. Then there was movement, the floor under him was rising.

  Something pressed against his shoulder and there was a hiss. Hypospray, his mind supplied.

  A bit of the darkness lifted, then a bit more. He looked down to see a tube running into his arm, one running into each arm. His head cleared a bit more and he saw a face looking down on him. For a moment, he thought it was Sam, but then he realized it was Ensign Parmet.

  “We’ve got you, sir,” Parmet said. “You’re in a shuttle.”

  He heard a voice—Quatrocchi’s—counting down from ten. He also realized that he could feel strong vibrations in the deck of the small craft. They were moving fast, and judging from the sound of Quatrocchi’s voice, it was going to be close.

  “… one, zero,” Quatrocchi said.

  There was a moment of nothing, just the sound and feeling of the acceleration of the shuttle. Then the blast wave hit them. Fuller knew that even if the charge worked, the energy in the kinetic explosive would still have to be released, thought not as kinetic force.

  The shuttle shook violently and Fuller felt Parmet throw himself over Fuller’s body. Then the craft steadied and Quatrocchi said, “We’ve cleared the shaft.”

  Fuller felt some of his strength returning, enough to lift his head to see his squad all around him. “You all had orders,” he whispered.

  “Yes, sir, we disobeyed them,” Parmet said pleasantly. Then he pulled out his communicator. “Parmet to Enterprise. We need emergency transport. Please have a medical team standing by for Lieutenant Fuller.”

  “Why?” Fuller asked.

  Something passed over Parmet’s face, something that Fuller didn’t understand, and Parmet said, “Sir, I owe everything to you.”

  Then the transporter took him.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “HE’S COMING AROUND NOW, JIM,” McCoy said. “You can talk to him, but not for too long.”

  “Understood, Bones,” Kirk said as they entered the room. Michael Fuller was lying on the bed, just opening his eyes, when Kirk approached.

  “Fuller, you’re going to be fine. Just take it easy on that shoulder and stay off the leg for a few days,” McCoy said, and Fuller nodded. “Now, if you don’t have any other creative ways of damaging yourself planned, I have other patients to tend to.”

  When McCoy left, Kirk asked, “Michael, how are you feeling?”

  Fuller pulled himself to a sitting position. “Fine, I’ll be back on duty in no time I’m sure, Captain. The mission?”

  “Completed. You destroyed the device and no one was injured in the final blast.”

  “Good.”

  “Michael, what happened down there? You disobeyed a direct order.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t want to put any of the squad at risk.”

  “You put the mission at risk.” For a moment, Kirk could almost not believe that he had said that. He had known Fuller for fifteen years and he would never have thought such a thing was possible.

  “My pride … I am sorry, sir, and of course, I will accept whatever consequences you think appropriate.”

  Kirk studied the man’s face and was sure of two things. First, something had happened down there. And second, Fuller was not going to tell him what it was. The lieutenant had completed the mission and Starfleet owed him a bit of indulgence—certainly Kirk owed him enough. But he had to make one thing clear.

  “Michael, I can’t have insubordination on my ship.”

  “I can promise you that it won’t happen again, sir.”

  Whatever had happened on that planet, Kirk believed Fuller. “Take a few hours to rest and then I’ll need your report.”

  “I’ll start right away, Captain.”

  Kirk left and headed to the bridge. He still had one rather large headache to deal with, though he had an idea about how to do that. Stepping out of the turbolift, he said, “Mister Spock, status of the Klingon vessel?”

  “Sensors show no power to drives or weapons. Thirty-two life signs aboard.”

  Those thirty-two people had mutinied against Captain Koloth, but now they sat on the ship. Kirk couldn’t allow the ship to stay in Federation space, nor could he allow Koloth and his crew to remain on the planet. And he certainly couldn’t have them on the Enterprise, even temporarily—as if they would agree to such a thing.

  “Approaching Klingon vessel,” Spock said.

  “As soon as we are in range, I want a tractor beam on them,” Kirk said.

  A moment later, Spock said, “Tractor beam engaged.”

  “Mister Sulu, geostationary orbit, directly over the mine,” Kirk said.

  “Aye, sir,” Sulu said.

  “Captain, may I ask what you are planning?” Spock said.

  “Mister Spock, this is a problem for the Klingons to settle. Koloth has access to the transporter in the mine. They will have to use it to settle their differences and get the hell out of our space. If they can’t get their ship operating, we’ll tow them to the border and give them a push.”

  A short time later, Sulu announced that they were in position.

  “Disengage tractor beam,” Kirk said. “Mister Sulu, give us some room.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Uhura, get me Captain Koloth,” Kirk said.

  Karel would have preferred it if Duras’s soldiers—he still could not call them warriors—had fought well, but he found some release in the battle just the same. They had inflicted a few casualties when Karel’s force retook the ship, but not many.

  At Koloth’s suggestion he had taken just thirty-two warriors to defeat the thirty-two surviving traitors, but it had ended quickly. Without their sniveling leader, Duras’s Klingons were nothing.

  “The entire crew is back on board,” Karel announced.

  “Repair estimate?” Koloth said.

  “Impulse engines are back online now.” Koloth raised an eyebrow and Karel said, “We retook engineering first. Work started before the last of the traitors were killed. We should have warp power in four hours.”

  “Excellent, prepare to break orbit.”

  Karel understood the captain’s impatience. They had won against Duras, but they were sitting nearly defenseless in Federation space. Kirk was an honorable foe. Karel understood that, and so did Koloth now, but the indignity was too great.

  Karel wished he had met and spoken to the man who had been his brother’s human captain and who had won both Kell’s respect and allegiance.

  In time, anything was possible, but first both the Federation and the Klingon Empire would have to survive one another. However, at the moment, he was most concerned that the empire survive its own failings. External enemies could be guarded against and fought, but enemies who moved among them? Klingons like Duras? How could a tree fight its own rot?

  How could the empire prevail in a war with the Federation with Klingons such as Duras on the High Council itself? Duras was now gone, and Karel’s brother’s spirit was avenged, but he was not fool enough to think that Duras was the end of the dishonor in their leadership.

  The empire would
have to change, to adapt or perish.

  Karel, son of Gorkon, would do what he could to see that the empire built from the strength of Kahless’s blood would not perish. For now. He would enjoy the knowledge that his brother’s killer was dead. And though it had been Karel’s own hands that had taken Kell’s life, he was now certain that the real murderer had been Duras, who had sought to take honor, then life.

  For the first time since he had heard news of his brother’s death, the portion of Kell’s spirit that resided in Karel’s own blood was quiet.

  Uncle stepped forward into the clan meeting pit and said, “Your father saved our world and our people from the green-skins. Now you have saved us from their masters, the Klingons. The clans have spoken to one another and we see that we need to speak with a single voice. We would like you to be that voice, Adon, son of Gorath.”

  “I do not have my father’s wisdom or his strength, but I will do what I can. We have all won a great victory today, but the danger is not passed. A great and terrible war will soon rage in the space above our skies. We cannot afford to choose the wrong ally, or no ally at all. Gorath wanted us to have a chance to learn, to eventually join the races in space as equals. I still believe that is what we should do. But we shall do it now with a powerful ally, a Federation which has fought with us twice now and shown their friendship.” It was not much of a speech, Adon thought, but the people around him did not seem to notice and cheered his words just the same. He knew he was not his father, but he would do his best to safeguard his father’s people.

  “Kirk waits,” Bethe said. She was at his side, where she had been since the news of his father’s death and the arrival of the Klingons. Now, he realized, she was standing even closer. Then he looked in her eyes and saw why.

  He smiled to himself that he had not seen it before, though now that he had, he did not think he would be able to look at her and not see the truth of it. Leaning down and without another word, Adon kissed her. She was surprised, but not unhappy, and returned the kiss.

  Pulling back, he said, “Let us go meet the human.”