Within a few minutes, Toq said, “Warp signature lost, Commander.”
That was fast, Tereth thought. “Feed the coordinates where you lost it to Lieutenant Vralk. Bring us to that position and then full stop, Lieutenant.”
Both Toq and Vralk acknowledged and carried out their orders.
At the coordinates, Vralk said, “All stop, Commander.”
Tereth got up and walked over to the operations console. “Toq?”
“I have the signature, Commander.” He looked up from his readings. “The heading is 211 mark 1.”
Vralk turned around to look at Toq. “That brings them right to the Laktar system.”
Tereth blinked. The Battle of Laktar was one of the more vicious skirmishes of the Dominion War. Captain Huss’s fleet had arrived at the tail end of it, but the battle was over by then: it was a victory for the Empire, but the radiation that infused that system from the sheer volume of destroyed ships made any kind of sensor scan impossible.
Anticipating Tereth’s question, Toq said, “The warp signature goes right through the radiation, Commander. We cannot track them any farther.”
Tereth muttered a curse.
“Something else, Commander,” Toq said. “The discrepant reading that was found on Earth and Bajor is also here. It was not present when we first encountered the shuttle’s warp trail, but it is here now.”
“Have you determined what that reading is?”
Abashedly, Toq said, “Not yet, Commander.”
Tereth kept her smile to herself. Toq took great pride in his work, something Tereth had done her best to encourage. He had the makings of greatness in him. “The next time I ask that question, Lieutenant, I expect a different answer.”
“Yes, sir!” Toq said.
Leaving Toq to his work, Tereth walked over to the helm control. “Vralk, project the shuttle’s course ahead. I want to know all the possible places they could have gone.”
Vralk punched up a display on his console. “I am afraid that list is very long, Commander.” Tereth was pleased that Vralk had already projected the course, but had not been foolish enough to volunteer the information before Tereth was ready for it. “The course takes them directly through the Ch’grath Stellar Cluster.”
Tereth growled low in her throat. Vralk said, “Commander, I—”
She waved him off. “It’s not your fault, Vralk.” She bared her teeth. “If my displeasure was with you, you would not be able to apologize.”
“Yes, sir,” Vralk said quickly. The boy had only been assigned to the Gorkon for a week. He will learn the protocols soon enough, she thought, or he will be reassigned. She smiled, remembering Bekk Kelad’s thoughtless burst of laughter at Captain Klag’s unfortunate—and temporary—difficulties adjusting to his new limb. Tereth had thought her captain to be courageous in putting his own ability to fight over outmoded medical practices and allowing Dr. B’Oraq to give him a new limb. An adjustment period was to be expected, and it hadn’t affected his ability to lead them so far. If it did, Tereth would deal with it, as any first officer would—and as long as it didn’t, any who dared to mock the captain would pay for it.
Kelad certainly had been paying. His assignment to waste extraction was not due to end for another two months.
Since Toq was occupied with his sensor sweeps, Tereth went directly to the ensign at the communications console to Toq’s left. “Send to all ships, planets, and outposts in the Ch’grath cluster to be on the lookout for the captain’s shuttle.”
“Yes, sir,” said the ensign.
Again, Tereth looked around the bridge. Vralk kept the ship in position for Toq to make his sensor sweeps. Next to Toq’s operations station, Lieutenant Rodek stood impassively at the gunner’s position, presumably ready to go into battle if needed. Behind the two of them, the four gunner positions sat empty for the moment. The other secondary stations remained staffed and occupied.
At this point, Tereth realized, she needed to inform Klag of their progress. Until Toq found something substantial—or something else happened—there was nothing more to be done without orders from her commander.
“You have the bridge, Toq. I will be with the captain.”
Toq’s head was pounding when Tereth walked up behind him.
“Lieutenant, why are you still here?”
Toq looked around the bridge. He was currently sitting at one of the two science consoles, taking advantage of its ability to do more in-depth study than the more general applications of his operations station. Ironically, it was the same post on the bridge that he had served at when he came on board the Gorkon—and from which he warned the second officer, Lieutenant Kegren, that there might be an explosive device in the debris of a Breen ship. Kegren ignored this warning, and the ship was almost destroyed by such an explosive. Toq challenged Kegren, with Klag’s support, and defeated him; Klag rewarded him with the post of second officer.
As he looked around, he realized that none of the same people were on the bridge anymore—aside from himself and Tereth. He checked his chronometer and saw that his shift had ended almost half an hour earlier. Since he had been in charge of the bridge, he should have noticed that. And, for that matter, noticed Tereth returning from the captain’s office…
“I have not yet determined what this sensor reading is, Commander,” Toq said in answer to the first officer’s question.
“And you will not if you die of starvation. You have not eaten since you came on-shift, and you are of no use if you collapse from hunger. Go eat.” Toq started to object, but Tereth didn’t give him the chance to speak. “You have been staring at those waveform patterns for over an hour, Lieutenant. You need a distraction. This is not a request.”
Tereth had an odd style of giving an order in such a way that it felt like she was doing you a service by giving it. Toq wasn’t sure how she did it, but he found himself getting up from the science console and exiting the bridge via the turbolift.
He was late for the evening meal, but since tonight was B’Elath’s turn to sing the traditional song before dinner, Toq didn’t consider that a hardship. B’Elath always sang the dreadful “Campaign at Kol’Vat,” and always sang it very badly.
She finished the song just as Toq walked in. She had ended on the tenth verse instead of singing all fifteen, which no doubt pleased all the inhabitants of the mess hall.
Toq grabbed a plate of pipius claw and bregit lung, then tossed some gagh into a bowl, grabbed a mug and poured it only half full of bloodwine—he was going right back on duty after dinner—and went to sit with Rodek and Vralk.
As he sat, Toq asked, “Why do we keep letting that woman massacre that awful song?”
“You mean she has done that before?” Vralk asked with revulsion.
Rodek nodded. “Many times.”
“And she has not been killed to spare our ears the damage?”
Toq laughed at the young pilot. “Not yet, no.”
“I do not know if you’ve noticed, Toq,” Rodek said, “but every time she sings before dinner, the next day we are victorious in battle.”
Frowning, Toq said, “That is ridiculous.”
“It is the truth.” Rodek ate a piece of skull stew, but kept talking as he chewed. “The first time she sang was the night before we arrived at taD and destroyed those rebel ships. The second time, we engaged those marauders on Galtra the following day. The third—”
“You are right,” Toq said, as he thought back on their missions. Then he smiled. “No doubt it is better to die gloriously than to risk hearing her sing again.” All three shared a laugh at that, though Toq noticed that Vralk’s laugh was strained. “I suppose that bodes well for my abilities.”
Swallowing his bok-rat liver, Vralk asked, “How?”
“I will soon determine who our foe is, and we shall defeat them tomorrow.”
“So you haven’t unlocked the secrets of the sensor reading?” Rodek asked before sipping his own mug of bloodwine.
“No,” Toq
said with annoyance. “Commander Tereth ordered me to get dinner.”
Muttering into his liver, Vralk said, “That is all she does is give orders.”
Rodek barked a laugh. “She is the first officer, fool. Giving orders is her duty.”
“Her duty is to find a mate and provide him with sons.”
Toq rolled his eyes. Vralk was the third pilot they’d had on the Gorkon since Lieutenant Leskit was rotated back to the Rotarran, and each one made Toq miss the old toDSaH even more. Leskit had been a fine dinner companion and a good comrade. Vralk was the latest in a series of idiots Command had sent to poorly fill his boots.
“Feel free,” Toq said, “to challenge her authority, Vralk. I am sure she could use the d’k tahg practice on your hearts.”
Rodek joined Toq in a laugh. Rodek, Toq noticed, had lightened up considerably these past few months. When Toq first signed on, he would happily have taken the humorless gunner’s life as he had Kegren’s, but Rodek had shown signs of acquiring both a sense of humor and a zest for life. He still performed his duties as gunner with all the passion of dead racht, but he did his job well.
Vralk, on the other hand, looked like someone had poisoned his bok-rat liver. “Laugh all you wish, but we could not possibly have a less worthy first officer than a woman.”
“Spoken like someone who never served under Drex,” Rodek said, wiping grapok sauce off his face with his sleeve.
At that name, Vralk’s eyes grew as wide as saucers. “The son of Martok? You served with him?”
“He preceded Tereth as first officer,” Toq said as he chewed on his pipius claw. “The captain had him transferred off the ship as fast as he could.”
“Then the captain is a fool,” Vralk said unhesitatingly.
Vralk had spoken just as Rodek was sipping his bloodwine, and the gunner gave out a bark of laughter that caused the wine to spill all over the table. Rodek set the mug down and said, “Perhaps you should challenge the captain, then, since you think him to be so—unworthy.”
At that, Vralk squirmed. “Well, no, but—Drex is the son of the chancellor! He deserves respect!”
“Respect must be earned, boy,” Rodek said.
“And your commanding officers deserve respect, as well,” Toq added. “Klag and Tereth have led us well, and you will find no one on this ship to support your cause.”
“Really?” Now Vralk sounded more sure of himself. “You mean to tell me that all twenty-seven hundred warriors on this ship support a captain who mutilates his body and a female first officer?”
Toq looked at Rodek. “He sounds like a Ferengi, doesn’t he?”
“Laugh if you want,” Vralk said. “But if I did challenge the authority of those in charge, do not be so sure that I would be acting alone.”
With that, Vralk swallowed the last of his liver and got up and left.
Rodek laughed as heartily as he ever did. “Yet another fool pilots the ship. I never thought I would wish for Leskit’s return.”
Toq, however, did not return the laugh. “Is he truly a fool, Rodek?”
“Of course he is. Only a fool would challenge Klag—they’d be dead before they could get near him.”
“On the bridge, perhaps. But what of the troops? The engineers? We do not know their thoughts.”
Polishing off his bloodwine, Rodek said, “Troops are loyal to their commanders unless given good reason not to be. Has Klag given such a reason?”
“His arm.”
Rodek snorted. “He has made himself a better warrior. Don’t tell me you believe that stupidity about ‘hiding the scars of battle.’”
“No,” Toq said quickly, and he meant it. On Carraya, he had grown up with Romulan medicine. Indeed, the one aspect of life in the Empire that Toq did not appreciate was the appalling state of Klingon medicine. One of the many reasons for his contentment on the Gorkon was the fact that their physician studied in the Federation. “But if a young fool like Vralk believes it…”
Rodek looked sour—or, rather, more sour than usual. “I will speak with Lokor.”
Lokor was the head of on-ship security, and generally knew everything that occurred on the Gorkon. Rumor had it that he was also with Imperial Intelligence, but Toq had always discounted those rumors. Surely there was an II operative or two on the ship, but Toq doubted that II would place someone in so obvious a position as security. Indeed, Toq suspected that Lokor himself spread those rumors for his own purposes.
“And what if Lokor is one of the people who is against the captain?”
“Then I will kill him,” Rodek said simply. “And anyone else who is disloyal.”
Toq dropped some gagh into his mouth. As they wriggled down his throat, he said in as grave a tone as he could muster, “And I will help you.” He wanted Rodek to know he was serious. Toq felt more at home on this ship than he had anywhere else since he left Carraya, and he would not let a young petaQ like Vralk ruin it.
Klag was on the holodeck, about to commence his first bat’leth drill since getting his new arm, when the call from the bridge came.
“We are receiving a hail from the Enterprise , Captain.”
That was Toq, Klag noted, still on duty. The young second officer had taken a dinner break, but otherwise refused to rest until he determined what the odd reading was at the shuttle’s divergent point. Every resource of the Gorkon’ s considerable sensor power had been trained at this region of space, thus far to no avail. But Klag had confidence in the young man.
“I will be right there. Summon Commander Tereth as well.” A pause. “Progress, Lieutenant?”
“All I have been able to determine, sir, is that there are some superficial similarities between this energy reading and the one given off by the Malkus Artifacts.”
“Which tells us nothing we do not already know,” Klag said as he shut down the holodeck.
“No, sir.”
“Continue scans. Out.” He let out a breath. In a sense, he was grateful. He had been hoping that B’Oraq would be present for his first drill. If the call from the Enterprise was good news, perhaps they’d rescue her before he’d have the chance to engage in the drill, and she could indeed be there for it.
Klag didn’t bother changing into uniform, since he didn’t want to keep Picard and Riker waiting, so he went to the bridge dressed only in mok’bara clothes—a tight-fitting white cloth shirt and pants.
Ensign Morketh, currently staffing the gunner position, gave Klag an odd look as he entered. The look was mostly directed at the captain’s shorter, lighter, squatter right arm, which was more visible in the mok’bara shirt than it was in his more elaborate uniform.
“Speak, Ensign Morketh,” Klag said.
Morketh seemed surprised at the instruction. “I—have nothing to report, sir.”
“Good. Mind your post, then.”
“Yes, sir,” he said quickly.
“Enterprise standing by,” Toq said. Klag nodded in reply.
Tereth—in full uniform—entered the bridge a moment later. As she did, Klag sat in his chair—as usual, falling rather than sitting with his arms. “Screen on,” Klag said to Toq.
The bridge of the Enterprise replaced the starfield on the main viewer. Picard and Riker were present, with Data and a Trill female visible in front of them, and a human female behind them.
“Progress, Captain Picard?”
“After a fashion, Captain Klag. We’ve picked up the St. Lawrence ’s warp signature, but it takes it to the Ch’grath Stellar Cluster. There are hundreds of possible destinations.”
Klag filled Picard in on their own discoveries. “It seems likely that both ships are going to the same place.”
“The question being where.”
“We have found the same peculiar reading that was at the other sites, as well. The reading does not appear until right before my shuttle changed course. Thus far, we have only been able to learn that it is similar to the Malkus Artifact energy.”
“That was true of the St. L
awrence as well, and Mr. Data’s conclusions were similar.”
Klag wondered if Toq took any pride in the fact that his accomplishments were the same as those of Starfleet’s legendary android officer.
Speaking of whom, Toq said, “Sir, we’re receiving a message from the U.S.S. Musgrave.”
On the viewer, Riker frowned. “If memory serves, the Musgrave was the ship that took Ambassador Worf from Qo’noS to Starbase 24.”
“Tie the communication in, Lieutenant,” Klag said.
The viewer went to a split-screen image, with the much smaller bridge of the Musgrave now occupying the right-hand side, and the Enterprise bridge confined to a smaller space, focused on Picard, on the left-hand side.
The Musgrave captain, a round, blocky human with thick black hair and an indeterminate neck, said, “This is Captain Dayrit of the Musgrave. I see I got both of you—good, saves me from having to call you both.”
“I am Klag of the Gorkon. You have something to report, Captain?”
“Yes—we’re on our way to an emergency in the Trivas system, so we can’t investigate this ourselves, but—we found the St. Lawrence while en route to Trivas. It’s headed toward the Dorvan system.”
Tereth started. “That’s in the old Federation/Cardassian Demilitarized Zone.”
“And, ironically, one of the subjects of discussion at the Khitomer conference,” Picard said with a nod.
Riker added, “It’s also not especially close to the Ch’grath cluster.”
Dayrit let out a breath. “As I said, we’re answering an emergency call, or we’d investigate it ourselves.” He made some kind of odd human noise. “Now I’m sorry I didn’t take the time out to drop the ambassador off at Khitomer.”
“I doubt that would have made a difference, Captain. We’ll investigate this further.”
“Thanks, Captain. Captains,” he amended with a nod to Klag. “Musgrave out.”
The screen returned to just the image of the Enterprise.
Tereth walked over to the pilot’s station. “Vralk, set course for the Dorvan system, maximum warp.”
“Yes, sir,” Vralk intoned.
“Ensign Perim,” Riker said with a smile, “do likewise, if you please.”
The Brave and the Bold Book Two Page 18