I.K.S. Gorkon Book Three

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  She aimed the circular Elabrej weapon at the circular door panel next to the circular door and fired by pressing the circular button.

  Overfond of circles, are these Elabrej. I should kill them for that.

  The door opened to reveal about a dozen Elabrej, who all looked surprised at the appearance of a hairless, naked Klingon woman aiming a weapon at them.

  Though not nearly as surprised as they were when she fired that weapon.

  Only four of them were armed and decorated like soldiers, so Wol fired on them first. As she did so, Father appeared before her. “I will only kill Kylor because I have to. I cannot—will not—kill my only daughter.”

  Which is funny, Father, Wol thought as she killed the remaining Elabrej in the room, because I killed my only son, whose existence caused you to kick me out. If I didn’t know you were already dead, I would hunt you down and kill you for putting me in a position where I would do that.

  Wol enjoyed hearing the screams of the eight who died after the soldiers. The soldiers, of course, didn’t scream. The squad leader she served under on her first assignment, a woman named Tarnax, appeared before her now. “Soldiers are trained in how to die well. Civilians, on the other hand, usually die very badly.”

  The prisoners were not in this room, so Wol left it, and the twelve corpses, behind—after pausing to pick up a second weapon from one of the soldiers. One for each hand.

  She had yet to hear any alarms. She wondered why that was.

  Then she did hear an alarm. No longer equipped with a translator, she could not understand the announcement that accompanied it.

  Not that she cared overmuch.

  When she entered the adjoining sphere, three soldiers were aiming a weapon at her; the one in the center was spouting gibberish—as if I know or care what you alien filth are saying. Wol fell and rolled on the floor, firing both weapons at once. The shots the soldiers fired at her all went over her head.

  The shots she fired killed all three soldiers. They didn’t scream.

  Wol liked it better when they screamed.

  This most recent sphere was a smaller one, and it led to a bigger one in which she found herself confronted by four more soldiers—

  —and a sphere within the sphere containing about a dozen Klingons. Eight were as naked as she was, and in terrible shape. Their hair was unkempt and filthy—and in some cases, infested—and their bodies were covered with dirt, waste product, and infected sores. The others were in stripped-down versions of their uniforms, the same as Wol was when the alien scientist—may he rot in Gre’thor—took her to his laboratory. One of the latter group was Goran, who was unmistakable, towering as he did over everyone else. She wondered if G’joth and Kagak also survived.

  “Leader? Is that you?”

  Wol knew that voice. It was G’joth. He did survive. Good.

  On the other side of the sphere was another door, and it was blasted open just as Wol started firing on the soldiers. Two of them died without screaming.

  Commander Toq, Ensign Kallo, QaS DevwI’ Klaris, and several troops came through the other door. The Elabrej soldiers did not change position, but flawlessly fired behind them.

  Then Wol remembered the alien scientist’s words before he sedated her—and before I killed him—that indicated that the Elabrej had three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision.

  Klaris and one of the troops killed the other soldier.

  Cheers came from the holding cell—holding sphere? Wol wondered, then decided it didn’t matter—as the soldiers fell and the remaining troops entered the sphere.

  Toq, however, was looking at Wol with a certain amount of confusion.

  She stood at attention. “Leader Wol reporting for duty, sir. I have come to free the prisoners.”

  Glancing up and down her naked body, Toq then grinned. “You’re out of uniform, Leader.”

  “Not my doing, sir—none of it,” she added, looking up briefly.

  “Nor is it ours,” said one of the naked Klingons. “I am Captain Wirrk. Who are you?”

  Turning toward the holding sphere, Toq said, “I am Commander Toq, first officer of the Gorkon. We have come to take you from this place.” Then he looked back at Wol. “Though it seems our efforts were unnecessary.”

  It took Wol a moment to realize that Toq was expecting a report. Skragg appeared next to the commander. “Do not simply stand there like a Regulan bloodworm—speak!”

  She spoke. “We were overwhelmed by Elabrej forces, Commander.” Wol’s words seemed to echo hollowly in her own ears. “Those of us who did not die in battle were sedated. I was taken to a laboratory. The aliens—experimented on me.”

  Toq nodded. “That explains why your tresses have been shorn.”

  “Yes, sir. However, I was able to escape. I have killed many of the enemy, sir, including the scientist who did this to me.”

  “Well done.” He turned to Kallo. “Ensign?”

  Only then did Wol realize that Kallo and one of the other troops were inspecting the locking mechanism. As they did so, she looked around the cell. She saw Goran, of course, and G’joth. Standing between them was Kagak, and next to G’joth on the other side was Zabyk. Of Yojagh, there was no sign. He must have been killed. Moq will be devastated. Wol was one of the few on board who knew about those two. I shudder to think what would happen if Lokor found out.

  But it didn’t matter, because Yojagh was dead.

  And it also didn’t matter because the fifteenth survived. Except for Trant, of course, but he barely counts.

  After a few moments, Kallo got the door open.

  Toq said, “We can arm some of you. Those of you we cannot, stand by someone who is. We have a method of escape—”

  “No.”

  That, Wol saw, was Wirrk. Despite being shorn of uniform and weapons, despite being covered in muck and barely being able to stand upright, the fury in the captain’s face was a sight to see.

  “Sir, I believe—”

  “I am the ranking officer here, Commander, and I say we will not escape this place. After what they did to me, to my ship—to my crew—I will not rest until this entire structure is razed to the ground!”

  Wol found she couldn’t argue with the sentiment.

  Yet it was Krantor, the man she disobeyed during the Dominion War, whose image she saw now standing next to Wirrk. “This one makes a lot of sense, Wol. You should listen to him.”

  Chapter Ten

  Leskit hadn’t had this much fun since that time during the Dominion War when he’d led two Cardassian skimmers into an aerial chase through the rain-spattered skies of Nramia, eventually getting them to crash into a mountain that Leskit himself had avoided hitting with his Jakvi-class strike ship by a mere eighth of a qelI’qam.

  Now he was wending his way through the turbulent atmosphere of the Elabrej’s First Planet—and how unpoetic can you get when it comes to nomenclature, the old Klingon thought, it is to weep—in one of the separatists’ conveyances. His was one of eighteen that entered the planet’s atmosphere, using the cover of a weather system over one of the smaller continents—which, Leskit was disgusted to learn during the briefing, was called the Fifth Continent—to mask their entry.

  Only eighteen people left on the Gorkon were rated to pilot aircraft, which meant they could not use all twenty-five conveyances the separatists had available. The separatists themselves refused to participate in the mission.

  Their leader, Jeyri, had argued passionately on the Klingons’ side, but all that did was convince the others to let the conveyances be used to attack sites on the First World.

  “The tactics of subtlety will no longer suffice,” Jeyri had said to his people. Most of them, Leskit noted, were paying less attention to Jeyri’s words than they were to Leskit and his fellow Klingons. Then again, Leskit thought with amusement, most of us were staring at them, too. They are strange-looking beings, the Elabrej.

  The conveyance started to bounce as an updraft hit it. Leskit struggled to compensat
e. Behind him, he heard the sound of Bekk Lojar throwing up. Lojar was there to provide weapons fire, using both a hand disruptor and an Elabrej weapon, which he would fire out one of the portholes once they came near the targets. All the conveyances were using that method, except for Captain Klag’s. They had been able to mount one of the Gorkon’s rotating disruptor cannons onto Klag’s ship.

  Between heaves, Lojar said, “You’ll get us both killed, you blind old toDSaH!”

  “If you think this is bad, you should try it when there’s really bad weather.”

  “This isn’t bad weath—” Lojar’s words were cut off by another heave.

  Luckily for Leskit’s nose, which was offended by the contents of Lojar’s stomachs that now occupied the deck, it was a dry heave. At least it won’t get any worse. “It isn’t bad weather by comparison to Nramia.” He grinned. “If we live, I’ll tell you all about that.”

  Done heaving, Lojar said, “If we live, I will kill you for this.”

  Leskit laughed.

  One of the Elabrej had a reply for Jeyri’s comment about changing tactics: “If we do alter our methods, if we do start doing physical harm to spheres and people—how, then, do we position ourselves as being better than the oligarchs? We call them uncaring, we call them murderers, we call them destructive—yet if we do as you suggest, how are we better than them? How can we say that we are providing something better if we do what they do?”

  Checking the heads-up display while trying to keep the conveyance on course was not easy for Leskit. The consoles were designed for a species that could use all six limbs while sitting in a large cushion tethered to the controls. (The cushion itself was necessary to keep the occupants secure during acceleration, since the Elabrej had yet to master artificial gravity or inertial dampers.) A Klingon could barely fit in the cushion that was built for a much smaller Elabrej, and had a difficult time operating a console meant for someone whose notions of ergonomic efficiency were quite literally alien.

  Leskit, of course, had mastered the controls inside of five minutes. There wasn’t a flying machine in the galaxy that the old lieutenant couldn’t fly—or if there was, he hadn’t found it yet.

  If only the other seventeen pilots could say the same. Or, rather, sixteen, since one of the conveyances had exploded en route, killing both its occupants. No one was sure what happened, though, having flown one of these things from the Tenth Moon here for the past several hours, Leskit could think of half a dozen possible reasons off the top of his head. The engines on these things were not the best maintained in the galaxy, nor the most efficient even if they were maintained.

  Leskit checked the altimeter, again cursing the Elabrej for their lack of proper sensor technology. The lieutenant hated having to depend on estimated measurements and the limits of visuals for his flying. Give me a good sensor reading any day. Then again, with their ability to see all around them, the Elabrej probably trust their sight a lot more.

  He activated his communicator. To do so, he had to take one hand off the controls for a moment, which caused the conveyance to buck and weave a bit. Leskit quickly got the craft under control, but not before Lojar went into the dry heaves again.

  “Something amuses you, Leskit?”

  Not realizing he’d been laughing at Lojar out loud until Klag’s comment, Leskit quickly said, “Only Bekk Lojar’s bad taste in lunch choices. I’m getting a first-hand look at those choices on the deck of our conveyance. We’re about to leave cloud cover, sir.”

  Even as Leskit said those words, the clear window that went all the way around the spherical conveyance became useful again, as the clouds dissipated. The wind shear decreased, but now they were being rained on. Looking around quickly, Leskit counted the number of conveyances that broke cloud cover with him. To his irritation, he counted only fourteen besides himself.

  “Sir, I’m only seeing fifteen breaking cover.”

  “All vessels, sound off,” Klag said without hesitation.

  Paying only partial attention to the counting off of each ship, Leskit instead noticed that one of the conveyances didn’t look right. Based on the markings, it was Ensign Go’mat, and based on the way it was descending, nobody was at the controls. Nonpilots probably couldn’t tell the difference between the two, given how subtle that difference was, but Leskit knew instantly what had happened.

  Ensign Go’mat did not count off; neither did Bekk-Jamok or Lieutenant Kass, which accounted for the conveyances Leskit did not see. We must have lost them in the stratosphere somewhere.

  “Sir,” Leskit said, “I believe that Ensign Go’mat is dead—his ship is going into free fall.”

  “Then let us hope that it crashes on a viable target.”

  Leskit chuckled. “I’m sure that will annoy the separatists no end, sir.”

  When Jeyri’s arguments had fallen on deaf ears—if the Elabrej even have ears, though I suppose they must hear with something—Klag had stepped to the fore. “You asked how attacks on military targets, how damage to important structures, how loss of life would make you better than your enemy. To that, I only have one answer: It is the only way you can be better than your enemy. You sit here on your moon, protected by the magnetic field, and hope that you will not gain the notice of your foe. You are like a chuSwI’ beast, tunneling under the ground to avoid predators, occasionally poking your head aboveground just long enough to make a few annoying noises, then scurrying back to your hiding place before anyone can step on you.

  “The process of separation is a violent one. If you truly wish to separate from your hegemony, then you must also commit to the violence that will be necessary to achieve it. To gain victory, you must fight. If you are not willing to make sacrifices, if you are not willing to face your foe across the battlefield, if you are not willing to commit to the battle—then your cause is a sham.”

  Leskit had the feeling that Klag’s words would have been more moving coming out of a mouth that was located on his chest instead of on a strange thing on top of his body where his upper arms should have been. The Elabrej’s instinctive reaction to the Klingons was so extreme that Kahless himself probably would not have been able to move them.

  Still, he mused as one of the Elabrej cities came into view, at least it was enough to get us the ships. Though Leskit had to wonder if it was Klag’s words, or simply the fact that they were scared of the Klingons. Not that it matters much—the result is the same.

  Leskit was starting to grow fascinated with the Elabrej’s obsession with the circle. Every piece of architecture, every piece of equipment, every marking he saw was circular in nature. It was as if the entire concept of the corner just passed them by. Along with the concept of a head.

  With only fourteen ships left, Leskit wondered which targets would be eliminated. The plan had been for each conveyance to take one of eighteen targets, including several military supply storage facilities, an important financial center, the military’s main headquarters and training grounds, and the homes of each of the seven oligarchs. That last had been Jeyri’s idea. “They will not be there, of course,” the separatist had said, “and most people won’t understand the significance of those targets, since the oligarchs’ places of residence are not public knowledge. I only know them from my time as a defensor. But it will send an unmistakable signal to the oligarchs themselves.”

  As if reading Leskit’s mind, Klag now spoke. “We will only attack the first five military supply depots. We will not be attacking the military training grounds.” Leskit frowned as Klag reassigned the conveyances to their new targets. They had lost four, yet Klag had removed five targets. Then the captain said, “Leskit, you are to accompany me to the commerce sphere.”

  “Yes, sir,” Leskit said, wondering why that was necessary. The captain had a disruptor cannon, after all—that was why he was taking the much larger commerce sphere.

  “Meet back at orbital position wa’maH vagh in two hours. Qapla’!”

  Twenty-seven warriors, including Leskit, a
ll returned Klag’s salutation; then the ships all separated in different directions.

  The wind shear increased as Leskit and Klag both traveled farther east toward the commerce sphere. Leskit couldn’t help but notice a lack of air traffic, which struck him as odd. Perhaps they are limiting flights in times of war. This was a problem, insofar as it made them stand out. Let us hope that the stealth technology the Elabrej use is as good as they claim it is. Given how poorly several of the conveyances did function, Leskit had his doubts.

  Switching to a short-range frequency, Leskit said, “Captain, although I’m honored to be asked to come along with you at the expense of destroying the training grounds, I’m surprised you don’t have more confidence in the ship’s disruptor cannons.”

  “I have plenty of confidence in the ship’s disruptor cannons, Leskit—it is the ship’s engineers I am less sanguine about.”

  Leskit sighed. “Sir, I’m sure Kurak—”

  Klag chuckled. “For once, Leskit, Kurak is not the problem—which, I have to say, is a relief.”

  “I can imagine, sir.”

  “No, Kurak delegated this task to Lieutenant Yaklan, something I was not told until after the modifications were complete.”

  Confused, Leskit asked, “What’s wrong with Lieutenant Yaklan?”

  “More than you might imagine. Suffice it to say, the disruptor cannon is no longer an option.”

  Leskit interpreted that to mean that whatever was wrong with Yaklan was not something Klag was about to share on an open communications line. “Understood, sir.”

  “Kurak actually seems to be doing her job of late. It is a welcome change. If she is any danger of changing back, Leskit, you will be the first to know—I trust you to make sure that I am the second.”

  “Of course, sir.” Not that Leskit expected it to matter all that much. Kurak would go her own way regardless. Leskit was just happy to have her way include letting Leskit into her cabin every night—which she had continued to do, her threats notwithstanding. And who knows? Perhaps she will actually listen to my advice. Or perhaps not. As long as she keeps letting me bed her, what do I care? Perhaps tonight I’ll bring the meyvaQ again—she really enjoyed that the last time.