Honor Bound

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  B’Oraq shook her head and chuckled.

  “Something amuses you, Doctor?”

  “The entire situation. Two years ago, if you’d told me that a Klingon captain would view first-aid training as a tactical advantage, I’d have said you were insane.”

  Klag smiled. “These last few months have taught me of the efficacy of being able to return whole warriors to the field of battle.” The words were B’Oraq’s own, chosen deliberately. Klag had been raised with the same disdain for medicine that most Klingon warriors had, viewing such treatment as a weakness. B’Oraq had shown him that it was, in fact, a strength, one which he himself had embodied by allowing her to fashion him with a new right arm.

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  Nodding, Klag took his leave of the medical bay. There was still much to do before Talak—and whoever might have answered Klag’s call to arms—arrived.

  H’Ta, son of Kahmar, turned the battered old viewer off. The face of some captain named Klag faded from it.

  He removed the Order of the Bat’leth medallion from the viewer and stared at it. The light from the late-day sun that shone through the window reflected off the tarnished metal. The medallion had sat in a trunk for years. H’Ta had not even thought about the Order since shortly after his induction. Indeed, he remembered his induction as clearly as he did only because the ceremony was interrupted by an attack, which eventually revealed that the man everyone believed to be General Martok was in fact a changeling infiltrator from the Dominion.

  H’Ta returned to duty after that. Later on, the real Martok was restored to the Empire, and now he ruled it as chancellor. But that was of little concern to H’Ta, for Martok’s triumphant return to his people happened at about the same time that H’Ta had lost his leg in battle against the Jem’Hadar.

  Placing the medallion in the pocket of his one-piece outfit, H’Ta grabbed the metal pole that leaned against the wall of the small room and braced himself against it in order to get up. Then he hobbled over to the doorway to his sitting room and into the bedroom. They were two of only four rooms in the house, the others being the bathroom and the kitchen. H’Ta didn’t need much, after all.

  Using the pole as a substitute leg, he worked his way back to the trunk. When he had come home from the day’s work, the trunk had been beeping. It had taken him several minutes to locate the source: the Order medallion, buried under all his other Defense Force accoutrements.

  H’Ta wasn’t even sure why he kept them all. His d’k tahg, his armor, his medals—all had tarnished with lack of care over the last three years. There was no good reason to keep them, and every reason to throw them out.

  He didn’t care what new purpose the Order of the Bat’leth had been put to by Martok. As far as H’Ta was concerned, his membership in that august body ended when the Jem’Hadar blew his leg off. H’Ta had killed the Dominion soldier for that action, but his career ended then. A warrior could not go into battle with only one leg.

  So he returned home to Galtran. Kahmar, H’Ta’s father, was a farmer, as was his father before him. The House of Varrin, of which they were respected members, owned most of the farms on Galtran, providing nourishment for the people. For a long time, H’Ta was ashamed of his family’s work. Songs were sung about farmers, but they were halfhearted, insincere paeans to those who fed the warriors who fought for the Empire. As the third son, he had no obligations to the family, and so was free to pursue a career in the Defense Force. In fact, his family encouraged it—his exploits in battle could only aid the family honor, and indeed his induction into the Order achieved that as well.

  But then came the endless battles, the blood, the hardship, and the viciousness of the foes. H’Ta did not shy from battle, but he did grow weary of it. By the time the Jem’Hadar took his leg, he was ready to end it all, but saw no way to do so without sacrificing his honor, and that of his family.

  Now, though, he had put the carnage behind him. He worked on the family farm, bringing sustenance to the Empire. H’Ta was content to let those more suited to battle have songs composed about them. He had his small house, his duties in the fields—mostly involving navigation of a plow, easily accomplished by a one-legged person—and the satisfaction of his work.

  H’Ta, son of Kahmar, had no more use for battle. Let Captain Klag wade in blood. H’Ta preferred fertilizer.

  Chapter Three

  Klag entered the bridge at a dead run after he received Kornan’s summons, his bodyguard hard-pressed to keep up with him. “Report!” he barked upon his entrance, before the aft doors could fully open.

  “Five ships are entering the system,” Kornan said from the first officer’s position. He looked up at Klag. “They are not Talak’s fleet.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir—one is a Vakk-class ship. There is no such vessel assigned to Talak.”

  Klag’s heart sang. If it wasn’t Talak then it had to be the Order. Five ships. We may win the day yet. Plus, he knew he had a few more allies coming….

  He turned to Toq. “Identify them—quickly!”

  Toq was, of course, already working his console. “Computer is confirming identity beacons now, sir.” He looked up. “There is a K’Vort-class ship, the I.K.S. Taj.”

  That made Klag’s heart sing anew. Commander T’vis of the Taj was a past inductee into the Order, and the ship’s captain, B’Edra, was an admirer of Klag’s. They had met at Klag’s induction ten weeks earlier, and he had been hoping that she would rally to his side—and not only because she commanded so powerful a ship.

  Toq read from his console. “Two are B’Rel-class birds-of-prey—the I.K.S. Slivin and the I.K.S. Qovin. The Vakk-class cruiser is the I.K.S. Vidd. And the last is a Birok-class strike ship.” He looked up and smiled. “The I.K.S. Ch’marq.”

  “That is Grakal’s ship, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir,” Toq said, still smiling.

  “Who is Grakal?” Kornan asked.

  “One of my fellow inductees,” Klag said. “I had hoped he would respond.” Still, he was not as heartened as he might have been. Birds-of-prey and strike ships had their place in battle, but as support. The Vidd and the Taj would be of use, but only the Gorkon itself had enough firepower to seriously challenge the general’s own Vor’cha-class cruiser. And the general also had three of the Karas-class strike ships, which were more powerful than the older Birok class.

  Of course, our firepower will be superior to all of them because we will have some within the subspace eddies, he thought. “What of the modifications?”

  Kornan said, “Lieutenant Rodek is in engineering, aiding Commander Kurak in the modifications to the probes. The commander wishes to lodge a complaint about the unnecessary tampering with her equipment.”

  “Of course she does,” Klag snarled. Kurak’s truculence was not improving with time as he’d hoped. It would seem I will have to address that. He had hoped that Kurak would adjust her attitude in a favorable direction, but she had, if anything, grown worse. “How soon will they be ready?”

  “Their last report indicated that most of the probes would be done by the end of the shift.”

  “I want them all done by the end of the shift. Have her bring in additional personnel if necessary.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Klag turned to Toq. “Have the eddies been fully mapped yet?”

  Toq nodded. “Leskit has plotted several courses for navigation through the eddies.” Then he smiled. “I’m afraid any plans you have to kill him will have to wait—I believe he is the only person on the ship who can handle the maneuvering properly.”

  Klag grinned. “Pity, that.”

  “It’s all part of my cunning plan,” Leskit drawled from the pilot’s station. “I’m trying to make myself indispensable.”

  “Some of us would settle for useful,” Klag said, then dropped the grin. “Prepare the full navigational data. I wish to inspect it.” He walked toward his chair. “Contact the approaching ships, Toq. I would speak
with our potential allies.”

  Kornan followed him toward the fore of the bridge. “Potential?”

  “We are asking a great deal, Commander. I do not know all these captains—and some of them are responding to a call made to members of their crew. For example, I know that the Taj is here because of its first officer, not Captain B’Edra. I wish to speak to them, know their minds, their hearts, before I will trust them enough to call them allies.” Slowly—after over half a year as captain, he had yet to grow tired of savoring this particular action—Klag sat in the command chair.

  Kornan took his seat at the first officer’s position to his right. “Understandable, Captain.”

  “The ships are responding, Captain,” Toq said. “The commander of the Vidd claims to speak for the convoy—Captain K’Vada wishes to speak to you.”

  Interesting, Klag thought. They have already convened a discussion—probably when they encountered each other growing closer to the star system. That explains why they came in on the same vector. They picked each other up on long-range and met. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not, but chose to be cautiously optimistic. “Activate screen.”

  The image of San-Tarah on the main viewer was replaced with that of a sour-faced man with a fairly simple crest. “Greetings, Captain Klag. I am K’Vada, and I wish to thank you.”

  “For what?” Klag asked cautiously.

  “For one thing, your summons enabled me to solve a personnel problem. For another…” K’Vada’s face broke into a smile that made the captain look like a predator about to consume its prey. “My Order medallion was buried in a drawer, long since forgotten. I am grateful for the reminder of what it means to be a Klingon.”

  “That is good to hear, Captain, because our worth as Klingons will be put to the test. All the ship captains will gather in the Gorkon wardroom in half an hour. We will form our strategy.”

  “I hope that includes a way to find the planet in question. We’re barely able to detect it.”

  Klag smiled. “We can do far better than that, Captain. All will be revealed in half an hour. In the meantime, we will send you the sensor modifications we made in order to detect the planet.”

  “That will be appreciated. Half an hour, then.”

  “Screen off.”

  From behind him, Toq spoke. “Sir, we’ve received the latest dispatches from Command. Brenlek has officially been made part of the Klingon Empire. A planetary governor has been appointed—and General Talak is now proceeding to do the same for San-Tarah.”

  Normally, this news would be greeted with cheers—the bringing of another world under the heel of the Empire was often cause for rejoicing—but the bridge remained quiet.

  Klag rose smoothly from his chair—without listing to the right, he realized after he did so—and said quietly: “It begins.” He turned to Kornan. “I will be in the wardroom preparing for the meeting. Have Lokor escort our guests when they arrive.”

  “What you ask is impossible.”

  Kornan tried to control his reactions to Commander Kurak, made more difficult by how contradictory they were. The chief engineer both maddened and enthralled him. She was one of the most attractive women he’d ever met, yet he had done a poor job of ingratiating himself with her. Knowing ahead of time from reading the Gorkon’s records that Kurak’s relationship with the ship’s command structure had been a difficult one, Kornan had done everything he could to make their professional relationship smooth. To improve matters, he found her attractive, and she reciprocated the feeling—at least at first. But then there was the disastrous marine combat on San-Tarah, an engagement that Kurak—who numbered sailing on wind boats among her most passionate hobbies—led and on which Kornan had served as crew. Its poor outcome had led Kurak to excoriate Kornan and everyone else involved.

  Her anger, her fire, her fury only served to make her more attractive to him.

  This fond desire, however, warred with an equally fond desire to have her killed for her insolence. He was still her superior officer, after all. They stood now on the outskirts of the engineering section, the rest of the staff giving them both a wide berth—or, perhaps, simply avoiding Kurak herself. From what Lokor, the security chief, had reported, discipline in engineering had remained balanced as any petty squabbles were superseded by a fear of Kurak’s wrath combined with a healthy respect for the fact that nobody wanted her job.

  “Make it possible.”

  Kurak barked a derisive laugh. “Were I capable of altering the laws of physics, then, perhaps, I could get the work done sooner, but if I could do that, we would have won our combat mission at sea.” She glared at Kornan as she said that.

  “If you need more staff, you may—”

  “I have already conscripted both engineering shifts working double time. No one else on the Gorkon has the training, and the time it would take to instruct them would be longer than the time that would be saved by the extra pairs of hands.” Kurak gripped her left wrist with her right hand. “On the bridge, you deal with honor and glory and duty—vague concepts that can neither be quantified nor controlled. Here, I deal with mechanical reality. It is unyielding, it is unbending, and no amount of screaming from you or the captain will change that. So tell Klag that he will have approximately seventy percent of the probes modified by the end of the shift, with the rest done as soon as possible after that. If that does not satisfy him, then he can have me killed and replace me as chief engineer.” Kurak smiled most unpleasantly. “However, should he do so, I can guarantee that the percentage of completed probes will be much less than seventy. Which will also be the case if you don’t stop pestering me!”

  Kornan didn’t think it was possible to be this aroused and this furious at the same time. They stood, face-to-face, for a long moment. He smelled the raktajino on her breath, mixing with the other scents of her body, and had to fight down simultaneous urges to rip her uniform off and to run her through with his d’k tahg.

  He finally spoke. “I will convey your words to the captain—all of them.”

  “Good. If there isn’t anything else, Commander?” She almost sneered the rank.

  “Yes. The captain also wishes you to find a way to make the disruptors function amidst the subspace eddies. His exact words were: ‘Kurak claims to be the finest engineer in the fleet. I should think this task would be within her capabilities.’ ”

  Kurak snorted. “Yes, if I had a proper research team and several months to test possible retunings of the disruptors, then I might—”

  “This is not the Science Institute, Kurak!” Kornan bellowed. “This is the Defense Force. I have been willing to accommodate your eccentricities in light of your brilliance, but I begin to see now why all the reports filed by Klag, Drex, and Tereth on your performance of duty read like they did. You will perform your duties as chief engineer of this ship, is that understood, Commander?”

  “Of course, sir.” Kurak then turned on her heel and went to one of the consoles. The bekks staffing that particular station scattered like glob flies in the presence of a grishnar cat’s tail.

  Advancing toward a turbolift, Kornan tried to figure out how to construct his report to the captain. In his two and a half months serving as Klag’s first officer, he had come to see how the Gorkon’s commander had gained his peculiar reputation. When Kornan had been told of his assignment as the vessel’s first officer, the first thing he had done was inquire about the man he’d be serving under. He found no shortage of opinions. But for every ten warriors he queried about Klag, he received twelve different answers. He was, at once, the bravest captain in the fleet and the most cowardly, the mightiest warrior and the weakest, honorable, fair, dishonorable, treacherous, brutal, merciful, merciless, inspirational, divisive. In his time on board, Kornan had found that, in his own estimation, the positive impressions were more prevalent than the negatives, but he could also see how Klag had come by so odd a legacy. He was like a flag atop its pole: yielding when necessary, but always rooted with a sol
id base.

  Kornan knew that he was unworthy of serving with such a captain. He had thought himself ready for the responsibilities of second-in-command of a warship, but the past ten weeks had proven that to be a fallacious assumption. Years of serving on the Rotarran under a collection of underachieving, honorless petaQ in command only served to highlight Kornan’s own inadequacies in the same position now. He did not stand for the crew, he did not serve his captain. At best, he held his ground, not advancing enough to conquer, though defending sufficiently not to retreat.

  He was adequate.

  What a horrid epitaph for a warrior.

  As he entered the turbolift and instructed it to take him to the bridge, Kornan admitted something else to himself: This taking up of arms against General Talak would do nothing to change the gossip about Captain Klag, and might indeed cement all the negative feelings and eliminate the positive. But deeds, not gossip, paved the way to Sto-Vo-Kor, and whether or not they won the day, Kornan knew in his heart that the Gorkon would serve the cause of honor no matter what.

  And if I cannot be worthy of such a battle, at the very least I will prove myself not to be unworthy of it.

  Sometimes, that was all one could hope for.

  “You realize that what you propose is treason.”

  Klag had resigned himself to the fact that not all those who answered his summons would necessarily be pleased with his course of action, but he had at least maintained some hope that they would all be enthusiastic. What was even more disheartening was that the sentiment was expressed by Captain B’Edra. Admittedly, Klag thought, it is not entirely unexpected. She is the only person in the room who has not been inducted into the Order.

  She, Klag, and the other commanders of the ships that had answered Klag’s call were in the Gorkon’s wardroom. B’Edra had declined a seat, instead standing against a bulkhead near the entrance. Klag also stood, but at the other end of the table. Captain K’Vada and Commander Grakal sat on one side, with the two captains of the birds-of-prey—Ankara of the Slivin and Daqset of the Qovin—facing them on the other side. The last time Klag saw Grakal, he had been unconscious after the all-night drinking binge that preceded the induction ceremony—and even when they’d first met, Grakal had partaken quite liberally of the bloodwine. In sobriety, his eyes had a fire that Klag had not seen on Ty’Gokor, and an intelligence as well.