"Comet impact," the engineer said unnecessarily.
"OI'yaH! Ghuy'cha' gu'valth!" Kor's curses were as magnificently extravagant as his flowing silver-streaked mane. With absentminded ease, he warded off a slashing attack from Worf, then smacked his bat'leth against the back of his pilot's chair to express his displeasure. "You're supposed to be flying us through these things, D'jia, not watching the fight!"
She curled her lip without ever breaking her gaze away from the main viewscreen. "What fight? All I've seen is a bat'leth practice, and not a very good one at that."
"Answer my question!" Kor snarled, seemingly oblivious to Worf's cat-silent approach right up to the second when he turned and struck at the Starfleet officer, hurling him halfway across the deck with the power of his bat'leth blow. Blood trickled from Worf's nostrils. "Why are we suddenly hitting comets?"
"We're not." Another shuddering impact hit the Klingon ship, making the female pilot curse pretty magnificently herself. "They're hitting us. All of a sudden, none of them are where they're supposed to be!"
"Well, take evasive action!"
"I'm trying!" The Klingon ship looped and danced through the thickening platinum haze of debris that seemed to be closing around them. Sisko's stomach lurched, feeling the drag and kick of uncompensated inertial fields. "But something keeps disturbing them, and it's throwing them right at us!"
"What a coincidence." In one fluid motion, Kor tore his engrossed engineer away from his damage reports and threw him back toward Sisko, then met Worf's next bat'leth thrust with a blade-locking twist and jerk. "I don't suppose your ship had anything to do with that, Worf, son of Mogh?" he growled into the younger man's blood-streaked face.
"No," Worf said with exhausted honesty. "They are far from here by now, deflecting other comets away from Cha'xirrac."
Kor's furious roar drowned out the wet, hollow sound of a bat'leth sinking deep into flesh, but it couldn't drown the involuntary scream of pain that followed. Sisko didn't have time to see who was hit -- he was too busy bracing himself against the ship's drunken swoops to meet the engineer's next blow. Rather than try to parry this one, he used the same maneuver he'd seen Kor try on Worf -- dropping to one knee so that his opponent's blade whistled over his head, then lunging up with the wicked tip of the bat'leth.
The blade hit the Klingon engineer's rib cage at what seemed like an awkwardly obtuse angle, but to Sisko's immense surprise, it slid over one rib and under another to bite deep within his burly chest. The engineer staggered back, looking more dazed than hurt, and peered down at the bat'leth still protruding from his chest. "Good aim," he croaked, then collapsed unconscious at Sisko's feet, a bright trickle of blood oozing from the wound. Grabbing at the nearest bulkhead to steady himself, Sisko stared down at him, still not quite believing he had won.
The female pilot glanced over her shoulder. "Beginner's luck," she said in disgust. "You bruised his gla'chiH -- the shielded nerve plexus in his chest. He's out for a day at least." She jerked her chin at Sisko, scowling. "Go ahead, pull the bat'leth out. Nothing will hurt him now."
Sisko did as she said, watching the trickle of blood slow as the wound closed. Then he jerked his head up, suddenly becoming aware of the silence around him. Not a single clash of bat'leths, not a thud of falling bodies disturbed the ragged sound of exhausted and pain-racked breathing.
He looked for Worf first, anxiously, and found him in exactly the position he'd most feared. His tall tactical officer lay sprawled across the empty weapons panel, one arm dangling brokenly and the other locked above his head in Kor's massive fist. The Dahar Master had leaned all his considerable weight on his opponent, keeping him trapped despite weakening struggles. When the point of Kor's bat'leth dug into his throat, deep enough to spring a bright pulse of blood out with each beat of his strong heart, Worf stopped struggling and just scowled up at him.
"Qapla'." Despite his swollen and blood-wet face, Worf sounded as stubbornly indomitable as ever. It was hard to believe he had really lost. "The Suv'batlh belongs to you, Dahar Master. Now kill me."
CHAPTER 11
"IS THE SUV'BATLH mine? On all counts?" Kor glanced over his shoulder, frowning when he saw his engineer recumbent at Sisko's feet. It wasn't until his gaze skated past them toward the third pair of fighters, though, that his face darkened to the consistency of a thundercloud. "Kitold! How in the name of the dead Klingon gods did that happen?"
His weapons officer stepped forward, swaying as another comet thundered off the aft shield. One hand was locked around his battle-gloved forearm to hold his dislocated arm in place. The greenish pallor of his face told Sisko he wouldn't stay on his feet much longer.
"It was subterfuge," he said hoarsely. "The Changeling pretended to be more weary than he actually was, in order to lure me into position for his strike."
Sisko's gaze went past the wounded Klingon to Odo, whose mock-Klingon armor flowed back into the constable's usual pristine uniform even as he watched. "Is that true?" he demanded.
Odo gave him a stiff nod of acknowledgment. "It seemed like a legitimate maneuver. I admit, I did alter my appearance to a certain extent to achieve the deception, but it is not as if I can turn pale or sweat with fear. Nothing about my shape-shifting ever endangered my opponent."
"It was trickery!" insisted the young Klingon.
"More like strategy." Kor yanked his bat'leth abruptly from Worf's throat, releasing him to stagger back and clutch at his own wounded arm. "You were taken in by the oldest warrior's trick in the book, Kitold! You deserve to lose that arm, but I don't want to smell your corpse all the way back to the home-world. Go put yourself into a medical stasis chamber -- now!"
The wounded Klingon growled in ungrateful acknowledgment before he pushed past Sisko, heading toward the bank of stasis lockers at the back of the main deck. Worf watched him go, then turned a puzzled gaze on Kor. "Wej Heghehugh vay', SuvtaH SuvwI'? If someone has not yet died, how can a Klingon warrior stop fighting?"
Kor snorted, richly scornful. "Only a fool takes a death that means nothing. I didn't get to be a Dahar Master by being a fool." He reached out to steady Worf as the younger male staggered, either thrown off- balance by the ship's evasive swerves or perhaps just noticing the pain of his many wounds. The only thing splashed on Kor's robe, Sisko noticed wryly, was blood wine. "Dujeychugh jagh nIv yItuHOo'. There is nothing shameful in falling before a superior enemy. Through the luck of your captain and the wiles of your Changeling, you have won the Suv'batlh you challenged me to, Worf, son of Mogh. What is your will of me?"
Worf opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, the female pilot swung around at her console, pale eyes blazing. "Captain! Security alert! Those comets that keep hitting us -- I think they're being deflected by a vessel entering the system!"
"What?" Kor cursed and shoved Worf aside, diving for his command chair. "Identity of vessel?"
"I can't tell!" The young Klingon sensor technician pounded on his unresponsive panels. "My instruments can't even penetrate the mass of comets gathered in front of it! The debris is a hundred times more dense than it should be. Whoever it is, they must have followed the ice-giant's orbital track all the way into the system, collecting debris with their tractor beams the whole way."
"Cardassians!" Kor said with disgusted certainty. "Who else would apply themselves so diligently to such a coward's strategy?" He threw an ironic look at Sisko. "Gul Hidret is probably scanning the system as we speak, hoping to find the charred remains of both our ships."
"Possibly." Sisko took a step closer to the view-screen, as if that could somehow make the unknown vessel appear out of the icy haze. It didn't, but the silent, dusty curve of Armageddon's horizon swung into view as the female pilot looped around a particularly thick comet cluster. He felt his gut twist with foreboding. "How many comets is that unknown ship pushing in front of them?"
"Ten thousand, maybe more," the sensor technician said grimly. "All gathered into a space of only nineteen cubic kilome
ters and accelerated to a quarter impulse speed."
That made Kor's breath whistle out in shock. "In what direction?" he demanded. "Toward us?"
"No." The female pilot glanced up at the blood-colored image of Armageddon on the viewscreen, pity flickering in her cold Klingon eyes. "Toward the planet."
Sisko and Odo exchanged appalled looks. "The away team," Worf said hoarsely. "We must notify them."
"To let them prepare for their deaths with honor." Kor nodded gravely. "It is a reasonable request. Boost their comm badge signals through our transmitter, Bhirq."
Sisko slapped a hand to his chest without even waiting for the Klingon technician to reply. "Sisko to Kira, Sisko to Dax."
"Dax here." Her calm Trill voice brought a reminiscent smile to Kor's face, one that faded into regret an instant later. "Go ahead, Benjamin."
"A Cardassian battleship has just swept up ten thousand comet fragments and launched them toward Armageddon," Sisko said, with brutal curtness. "You've got to beam out, now!"
"Understood." The advantage of having a subordinate with three hundred cumulative years of experience was that she knew when to ask for details and explanations, and when not to. "Time to impact?"
"Forty minutes," said the Klingon pilot. "Max."
"Then we might have a shot at getting everyone on the planet into shelter. Julian and the crash survivors have taken refuge in a deep cave system. If we can get there, we should be immune even to the impact of ten thousand comets." Dax's voice had taken on the steely determination that meant she wasn't going to take "no" for an answer. "Permission to stay on planet, Captain?"
"Granted," Sisko said, scowling. "Just be damned sure you're inside that cave in thirty minutes, old man, not out gathering up some last DNA samples from an endangered plant."
The Trill science officer made a wordless noise of amusement. "Don't worry, Benjamin. The plants down here can take care of their own DNA without any help from me. Dax out."
Kor glanced at Worf, who was quietly dripping blood across the empty weapons panel that propped him up. "You could make your Suv'batlh request the phasering of these Cardassian comets," the Dahar Master said suggestively. "Every one we shoot --"
"-- becomes a cluster of smaller ones and spreads the destruction even further," Sisko said flatly. "And there are far too many to deflect with our shields, even using both our ships."
Odo gave the older Klingon an ironic look. "In any case, wouldn't those actions violate the honorable exile of your countrymen?"
Kor spat toward the comet-clouded viewscreen. "The Cardassians have already done that, Changeling."
The viewscreen flared with wild static for a moment, then resolved into a forced transmission from the Defiant. O'Brien's bleak gaze scanned across them, unable to focus on Sisko since the Klingons weren't transmitting back. "Captain, sensors have picked up the arrival of the Olxinder on your side of the planet, pushing a forced impact wave of twelve thousand comet fragments in front of them. The away team says you know about it. I'll wait ten minutes for your orders, then start flying through the field, trying to target the largest and most destructive fragments. O'Brien out."
Worf groaned, not entirely in pain. "The Defiant's shields cannot survive the onslaught of twelve thousand comets!"
"Ten thousand," the Klingon sensor tech interrupted peevishly.
"So what is your Suv'batlh request, Worf, son of Mogh?"
Kor repeated impatiently. "To save your shipmates by making us sacrifice our own ship to the comets?"
"No," Sisko said, before his wounded tactical officer could reply. "Our request is to consider this system from now on as a joint Klingon-Federation protectorate. Correct, Mr. Worf?."
His tactical officer nodded, with the utter trust in his commander that had won Sisko's appreciation from the first. "And to cede to Captain Sisko any rights won by me in the Suv'batlh combat." Worf fell to his knees with a massive thud that Sisko felt across the deck. "I fear I will not remain conscious long enough to exercise them."
Kor scowled. "The second of those requests is reasonable and I agree to it. But what sense does the first make?"
"It gives us the joint ability to defend this system from the Cardassians," Sisko retorted. "And prove to the entire galaxy that they are not only smuggling banned neurochemical weapons, they are also destroying an ecosystem they don't own to obtain it."
Kor's scowl grew more thoughtful. "You think they didn't just bring those comets in to hide behind? You think they actually planned to wipe out everything alive on that planet, just to get their hands on the last dregs of drevlocet?"
"That sounds like a rhetorical question to me," Odo said caustically.
Sisko took a step forward, ignoring the angry ache of strained shoulder muscles. "Your ship is cloaked, just like the Defiant, and we know the Cardassians aren't very good at detecting ion trails. They won't know we're here until we fire our weapons, either at the comets or at them. If we let them think what they want to think -- that we destroyed each other battling over this planet, and left the coast clear for them to move in, I have a hunch they'll incriminate themselves exactly forty minutes from now."
"So we play dead, while the planet beneath us dies?"
Sisko grimaced. "I don't like that either -- but all our people should be safe and I trust my science officer when she says the planet will recover. What we do have time to save is the rest of the Alpha Quadrant. Now, are you going to cooperate with us, or does our Suv'batlh request have to be the self-destruction of this ship?"
Kor gave that ultimatum the fierce snort of disdain it deserved, since Sisko never had any intention of enforcing it. "What about the House of Vrag? If any live after the comet deluge, are they going to be rescued against their will?"
"Federation policy only allows us to evacuate planet residents who wish to leave." Sisko never thought he would live to be grateful for diplomatic equivocation. "The House of Vrag will get to decide their own fate, and preserve their own honor."
The Dahar Master mulled that over, then jerked his head in a satisfied Klingon nod. "That will satisfy the High Council, provided there are no more traitors like that garg-carcass you sent here for disposal. When we get back to the homeworld, I'm going to have to decontaminate my stasis chambers just to get the stink of him out of them."
At that moment, Worf slumped into unconsciousness with a violent crash of armor. Sisko cursed and sprang to catch him before he rolled across the deck.
"We need to beam him back to the Defiant for medical attention," he said to Kor. "And I need to tell O'Brien not to fly into that comet storm. Have you accepted our Suv'batlh conditions? Is Armageddon now a joint Klingon-Federation protectorate?"
"No." Kor grinned wickedly at Odo's startled frown. "But Cha'xirrac is." Sisko threw the elderly Klingon an exasperated glare. He was starting to see why Kor and Curzon Dax had gotten along so well. "Then my first request as coprotector of Cha'xirrac is for you to beam me back aboard the Defiant. We'll patrol opposite sides of the planet -- whoever first detects the Cardassians beaming down to the planet after the comet impacts gets to confront them, but it has to be on a wide-open channel. Agreed?"
"Agreed." Kor glanced up at the viewscreen, no longer hazed with icy glitte now that they had escaped the Cardassian-gathered swarm. Distant light bloomed in the planet's dust-stained atmosphere, the harmless high-level explosion of a natural comet collision. Sisko's gut still jerked with dismay, anticipating the inferno to come. "Provided there is a planet left for them to beam down to."
"I can't believe you thought this was a good idea."
Kira bent as low as she dared, ignoring the twinge in her lower back, pretending her thighs and knees and ankles weren't screaming complaints loud enough to wake all of Armageddon's past extinctions. "You've got to admit," she grunted, grabbing Dax's arms and hauling back with all her might, "it does give us some advantages."
They toppled to the burn-scarred tuq'mor canopy one on top the other. Eyebrow arched, Dax tos
sed a look at the Klingons still struggling to climb the tangled brush as she extricated herself from Kira and rolled clumsily onto her back. "Let's hope it's advantage enough."
If it wasn't, then they were no worse off than they'd been on the ground. Give or take a few fall-related injuries. At least she and Dax weren't pinwheeling their arms or lurching about with one hand always in contact with the tuq'mor. She watched Rekan's two honor companions crack the scorched surface of the canopy more than once as they stumbled into the formal Suv'batlh wedge. If Dax and K'Taran could lead their opponents over some of the more fire-weakened surfaces, they might be able to keep their footing even when the heftier Klingons broke through. Kira, on the other hand, had a feeling epetai Vrag would be harder to displace than her less-dedicated counterparts. She would hang onto Kira's throat with her teeth before she fell.
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