Again K’Nir whimpered.
“I did not hear you. Speak louder.”
“Please don’t.”
“Please don’t what?”
“Please don’t tell them.”
He crouched down next to her and put his hand on her throat. Tightening his grip, he said in a very low, very dangerous voice, “Please don’t what?”
Gasping for breaths that would not come, she croaked, “Please don’t, master!”
Letting go of her throat, he stood back up. “Give me a reason why I should not go tell Yaklan right now that you are a traitor to their cause.”
“What reason would you like me to give you, master?”
Throwing his head back, Lokor laughed heartily toward the ceiling. Then he swiveled his head back down toward her, the ends of his braids tickling against the small of his back. “Very good, K’Nir! Very good! You may stand up now.”
Slowly, unsteadily, K’Nir rose to her feet, still whimpering. However, she let her arms fall to her side so Lokor could see her in her glorious nudity—including the bruises that he had inflicted upon her.
“You have one hour until your shift commences,” Lokor said. “You have that long to use whatever means are at your disposal to persuade me not to tell anyone of your betrayal.”
K’Nir smiled. “Because you are an honorable man and you would not lie to fellow warriors?” Gone was the whimpering.
Lokor smiled right back. “Do you truly think I care about behaving honorably toward those who would murder the captain?” Then he smacked her again. This time, she fell to the bunk, smashing her jaw on the corner of the metal surface.
She struggled to her feet. Lokor could smell the blood that now pooled beneath her nose and in her mouth.
Smiling, she leapt at him and began in earnest her convincing.
Half an hour before the primary shift was to end, Kurak entered the bridge. This surprised Rodek, as he could not recall a single time in the nine months since the Gorkon left the shipyards for its shakedown cruise that the chief engineer had set foot on the bridge.
“The Gorkon is ready to leave the surface.”
Rodek blinked. “I thought we would not be prepared for another two days.”
In all the years that Rodek had known the chief engineer—they also served together on the Lallek during the war—the gunner had never seen Kurak smile until now. “So did I. It seems that I’m better than I thought I was.”
Snorting, Rodek said, “Nobody’s as good as you think you are, Kurak.”
Rodek’s jaw fell open at the second unfamiliar gesture from Kurak in a row: a laugh. “Perhaps not—in that case, I am better than Captain Klag thought I was. In any event, we can get under way immediately.”
“Lieutenant!”
Turning at the sound of Kal’s voice from the operations console, Rodek said, “What is it, Ensign?”
“Sir, I have been able to penetrate the magnetic field. We can now send and receive communications from off-planet.”
“Well done, Ensign. Contact the captain.”
Nodding, Kal said, “Yes, sir.”
Moments later, Leskit’s voice could be heard over the speakers, albeit laden with static. “—skit to Gorkon, we are taking heavy fire from the enemy. Survivors have achieved escape velocity, but we do not have sufficient power to make it back to the Tenth Moon. If you can hear us, for Kahless’s sake, get out here and help us. Talk to Jeyri, do something!”
Rodek shook his head. Leave it to that old razorbeast to survive an attack. “Leskit, this is Rodek.”
“It’s about time somebody answered. I assumed that with Toq and Kallo off-ship, you’d be useless.”
“What is the captain’s status?”
“He’s alive, but the communications in his conveyance are down, so he’s left the futile gesture to me.”
“Not so futile, my friend,” Rodek said with a grin, “and we need not involve ourselves with the Elabrej. Kurak has repaired the Gorkon, and we can get under way immediately.”
A pause.
“I will inform the captain. And I will ravage that woman like she’s never been ravaged before when I get back.”
Kurak smiled again. “Such confidence, Leskit. What makes you think I want you anywhere near me?”
A longer pause. Laughter started to spread throughout the bridge.
“Rodek, my good friend, next time, please tell me when Kurak can hear me when I’m talking about her.”
“What would the fun be in that, my good friend?”
“I will kill both of you when I’m back on board. Speaking of which, how soon can you get here?”
Rodek looked at Kurak, who shrugged. “Two hours—perhaps one and a half if the checklist goes faster than expected.”
“We’ll be here. I have to sign off to inform the captain—I can speak with him on his personal communicator, but if I use this frequency, I’ll blow it out.”
“I take it your mission was successful?” Rodek asked.
“Oh, most definitely. We lost about ten ships, but we did considerable damage to the Elabrej.”
“Sir,” Kal put in, “I’m receiving news broadcasts—as well as one of the pirate broadcasts from the separatists. Whatever the captain did, it created quite a stir.” The young ensign grinned. “The Elabrej are running scared, sir.”
“Of course they are, Ensign,” Rodek said with a grin of his own. “That is how all enemies of the empire wind up.”
“The most devastating blow was to the government sphere,” Kal added.
“Wait a moment,” Leskit said, “the government sphere wasn’t one of our targets.”
Rodek blinked. “The separatists?”
Snorting, Leskit said, “Please—they could barely be talked into lending us these firetraps.” Then, suddenly, Leskit burst out laughing. “You know, we left Toq attacking the government sphere. You don’t think—?”
“That he didn’t get that glorious death he promised us in the mess hall just yet?” Rodek shook his head. “It would seem not.”
“Since we have two hours, I’ll see if we can raise him. See you soon, Rodek. Out.”
Chuckling, Rodek retook the first officer’s chair. “Commander Kurak, if you’d be so kind as to get us under way.”
“Of course,” Kurak said in as respectful a tone as she was ever likely to use, before heading toward the turbolift.
“Ensign Kal, tell the QaS DevwI’ to bring the troops back on board.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door rumbled aside to let Kurak enter the lift, but there were three occupants already: Lieutenant Yaklan, Ensign Zaloq, and Ensign Krat. Yaklan had no reason to be on the bridge, especially with Kurak already here—who, Rodek wondered, is watching engineering?—and Zaloq and Krat’s shift—they staffed the gunnery and communications consoles during the second shift—did not start for twenty more minutes.
Rodek was about to ask them what they were doing here when they each unholstered disruptors and fired.
Ducking to avoid the blast, Rodek pulled out his own weapon. Lokor told us this had been dealt with! he thought angrily as he fired, the shot taking Krat out.
He could see Kurak struggling with Yaklan, which unfortunately spoiled his shot, so he aimed for Zaloq.
The world suddenly went white around Rodek as a disruptor blast struck him directly in the face. Agony coursed through his crest and features as he fell to the deck.
To Rodek’s complete confusion, his last thought as he mercifully fell into a coma was: You did this to me, Worf….
Chapter Twelve
Toq sat on the shoreline, waiting for Mal Sanchit to return. After he and his team had emerged from the access tubes and swum to the surface, Toq activated the signal that would tell Sanchit to return with her conveyance to take them back to Vor Viralas’s home sphere.
The commander had expected—or at least had hoped—to return with roughly the same number of warriors as he left with, possibly more. Instead, he had consid
erably fewer, a state of affairs he had only anticipated if they failed.
But we did not fail. Wirrk and his crew will die in battle, not on the table of some Elabrej laboratory.
That prompted him to look at Leader Wol. Unburdened by a uniform, she had had the easiest time swimming to the surface during their escape. After they emerged from the water, G’joth had lent her the top of his uniform. Still, she looked peculiar with her head shaved. Her eyes were haunted, as if she were possessed by jatyIn. She was standing alone, staring out at the water. The rest of her squad—G’joth, Goran, and Kagak—stood in a cluster nearby. Toq smiled in admiration. A show of support, that they are nearby, but not interfering.
He got up and walked over to where she stood. It might not have been proper for the others of the fifteenth to speak to Wol without her permission, but Toq was the first officer.
At his approach, Wol stood at attention. “Yes, Commander?”
“Stand easy,” Toq said with a wave of his hand. “You did very well today, Leader. Your distracting the Elabrej forces probably helped us gain access to the prisoners as easily as we did. You served your ship and your empire with distinction.” Then he looked up at her smooth crown. “And made quite a sacrifice as well.”
At that, Wol laughed, running a hand over her shaved head. “Indeed, sir.” She stared back over the ocean. “The Elabrej scientist who—who did this to me seemed amazed that Klingons had any concept of language. I think he believed us to be thralls—mindless savages who fight at the command of some greater master.” She shook her head. “I wonder if that is how all Elabrej see us.”
“Most do not see us at all,” Toq said. “They see only the foe they have to face. I had the opportunity to see several of their news reports—they view us only as a monstrous enemy.”
“They do not greet their foe face-to-face,” Wol said. “It was a pleasure to kill them.” She lifted her arm, and Toq saw that she still held the Elabrej weapon she’d taken. She tossed it in the air and caught it unerringly as it came back down.
Toq smiled. “I see you have a trophy.”
“Whatever the other flaws of the Elabrej, they do create fine weapons. I will keep this as a memento of my—of our victory today.”
“Your head is not enough of one?” Toq asked with a laugh.
“Several years ago, circumstances—” She hesitated. “I was forced to cut my hair down to the scalp. It grew quite long within a matter of days. So this memento will not last long.”
“Good.” Toq put a hand on her shoulder. “You are a fine warrior, Leader. You handled the entire mission—starting with the revelation that you had an I.I. traitor in your midst—with honor. I consider it a privilege to serve on the same vessel as you.”
“Thank you, Commander.” Wol looked over at G’joth, Goran, and Kagak.
Toq followed her gaze. G’joth looked concerned, oddly enough; Goran was large and impassive as always, and Kagak looked as concerned as G’joth. Concern for their commander—it speaks well of Wol’s leadership….
“If you’ll excuse me, sir,” Wol said, “I have something I need to say to my squad.”
“Of course.”
As Wol moved away, Toq heard a whine start to build in the air. Looking up, he saw that Sanchit was coming back.
Then his communicator activated, and he heard words he had all but given up hope of hearing: “Klag to Toq.”
“Captain!”
Several of the warriors around him perked up at that. Kallo ran over to him. “Is that the captain?”
Ignoring the idiotic question, Toq said, “Where are you, sir?”
“In orbit. I confess, Toq, I had feared you lost until I learned that the government sphere had been attacked again.”
“You gave us a mission, sir,” Toq said matter-of-factly.
“Indeed, I did. We have been busy as well.”
Quickly, Klag filled Toq in about meeting a group of separatists on the Tenth Moon. Toq interrupted that with a laugh, prompting him to tell of his own encounter with the separatists, and how they had lost contact with the Tenth Moon contingent.
“It seems, Toq, that we’ve joined forces without even realizing it.”
“Yes, sir. Where is the Gorkon?”
“According to our last contact with them, they will be here within two hours. However, our own ships are deteriorating. I assume that loud noise I hear is a ship landing?”
“Yes, sir—Mal Sanchit, one of the separatists, is bringing us to one of their headquarters.”
“Excellent. Provide the coordinates for that place, and we will join you until the Gorkon arrives.”
“Yes, sir! I will have to get them from Sanchit. Wait one moment.”
Toq ran toward Sanchit’s conveyance, a song blossoming in his heart. In truth, his words to the separatists notwithstanding, he feared that the Gorkon had been destroyed in battle, and that he, Kallo, Klaris, and the others would be trapped on this misbegotten planet for the rest of their lives. He was quite relieved to learn that this would not be the case.
First Defensor Vor Ralla had no idea who the aide was who ran into his office sphere yelling at the top of her lungs, but whoever she was, he fully intended to have her shot. This had been one of the worst days in Ralla’s long career as head of the Elabrej military. Reports from the sky were that the aliens were routing their forces. The plasma weapons did their job even better than anticipated—which was good, as the missiles were wholly useless against their defenses—but the Elabrej conveyances had absolutely no defense against the aliens’ odd energy weapons. And then there were the ground assaults, from the commerce sphere to the residences of the oligarchs to the government sphere itself.
They also attacked the ostensible military headquarters, but since the first encounter with the aliens, Ralla had moved Defensor HQ to a secret location on the Ninth Continent.
It was the government sphere attack that had Ralla the most concerned; the sphere had gone quiet with no new information coming out of there for over an atgret. When he’d been appointed to the job of first defensor so many ungrets ago, Ralla could not imagine a circumstance under which the hegemony would be in any danger of falling. The government was stable and prosperous, the only disaffection coming from a group of inefficient malcontents. Now, though, he was starting to think that, even if they were able to drive off the aliens—something Ralla didn’t truly think his military to be capable of—the hegemony would be badly wounded, perhaps fatally.
So an aide coming in bleating at him did nothing to improve his mood.
“We found them! We found them!” All six of the aide’s legs were waving so fast they were practically invisible.
“Found what?”
“The separatists, sir!”
That got Ralla’s attention. “Explain.”
“We intercepted a transmission made between two of the aliens. Most of it was in their gibberish, but they spoke with an Elabrej, who revealed the location of their stronghold on this planet.”
“Where?”
“That’s the amazing thing, sir—it’s at the estate of Vor Viralas.”
Ralla thought his limbs would shrivel up and fall off his body right there. “Did you say Vor Viralas?”
“Yes, sir.”
When Ralla first learned of the existence of the alien creatures, it had nearly destroyed his entire view of the world. Only his three dozen ungrets of military training kept him from devolving into a panic. He had covered himself well, even scoffing at the first cleric’s skepticism, all the while sharing in it. It simply did not occur to Ralla that the clerics could be wrong about the Elabrej’s place in the world, and so when they were proven wrong so spectacularly, it almost destroyed Ralla.
It was probably that experience that allowed Ralla to deal with this latest intelligence with more aplomb. Once, the news that a Vor strata was involved with a tiresome group of rebels against the very system that gave the Vor their rightful place at the top of hegemony society would have been
greeted with derisive laughter. Indeed, Ralla had received intelligence on more than one occasion that indicated ties between Viralas and the seps, but Ralla had always dismissed it. Such a thing was simply not possible.
But so were malformed, hideous alien beings murdering hegemons by the hundreds.
Ralla regarded the aide. “You’re absolutely sure of this?”
“I can play the recording for you if you wish, sir.”
Normally, Ralla would have considered such a step unnecessary—he trusted his intelligence people implicitly, or he never would have given them the jobs they had in the first place—but this was too big, and the response too outrageous to be ordered without definitive proof.
Reaching into her pouch, the aide removed a recorder and activated it.
First he heard the gibberish of the aliens. Then he heard a distinctively Elabrej voice say: “The home of Vor Viralas—it’s located at the third finger of the fourth arm of the Second Continent.”
His left hindleg waving in irritation, Ralla said, “It’s only been a few digret s, and already the seps have taught these aliens our cartographical methods.”
“Yes, sir. Should I call Second Defensor Vor Bramma?”
Ralla hesitated. Ordering a military attack on the grounds owned by a fellow Vor strata was unprecedented. Then the moment of hesitation passed. This entire war is unprecedented.
“Yes. Have him assemble a strike team. Their target is—” He let out a puff of air. “—Vor Viralas’s estate. And inform the oligarchs of what we are doing and why, including a copy of that recording. They will want an explanation.”
“Yes, First Defensor.”
“And may Doane grant mercy to all of us for what we do,” Ralla muttered too quietly for the aide to hear.
I.K.S. Gorkon Book Three Page 23