The Art of the Impossible

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Without hesitation, the pilot spoke, meaning she had wisely already calculated it. “Three hours, ten minutes at warp eight, sir.”

  Turning to the chancellor, Kang said, “With respect, we should send two ships—I recommend the Aktuh and the Gowlak—and—”

  “No.” Kravokh strode to the area between the command chair and the forward viewer. “I grow weary of these Cardassian invasions of our space. Instruct the convoy to set course for Morska.”

  Kang seethed. Bad enough that an entire garrison of vessels were being wasted on a glorified publicity exercise, but this…“We do not even know that there is a Cardassian invasion of our space. And to send a dozen ships on such an errand is akin to using a disruptor cannon to hunt a single lIngta’.”

  To Kang’s irritation, that prompted a smile from the chancellor. “In the end, though, the lIngta’ is dead. Give the order, Captain.”

  Any other captain might have jumped at that point. To even question the Supreme Commander of the Klingon Empire was courting death. But Kang had lived far too long to be so easily intimidated. He had been leading troops into battle when Kravokh’s father was too small to hold a bat’leth.

  Still, challenging his authority for more than a few seconds would cause more problems than it would solve. For one thing, the other councillors—not to mention their bodyguards—would probably cut Kang to ribbons. Normally he would expect at least some loyalty from his crew, but based on his operations officer’s stammering, perhaps this was not a normal situation. Nor did he wish to force his crew to make that decision.

  So, finally, he said, “Instruct the convoy to set course for the Morska system, warp eight.”

  “Course laid in, sir,” the pilot said almost immediately. This time, Kang did not welcome the woman’s efficiency.

  “Execute.”

  Chapter 33

  Khitomer

  Mogh exited the control room with a combination of glee and regret. The former was because the shield tests went better than expected. If they were attacked by Romulan or Breen disruptors, Federation or Cardassian phasers, or even Kinshaya pulse blasts, they’d be ready.

  The latter was due to his inability to root out the Romulan spy. L’Kor and Gi’ral both expressed admiration for certain characteristics of Romulans, but neither of them showed any outward indication, and the computer searches had turned up nothing suspicious.

  On the other hand, Ja’rod was looking more promising. Mogh was still unable to eavesdrop on the man’s residence, and there were several anomalies in his service record. None of it was hard evidence, but it was enough to encourage a deeper digging. That would be more Lorgh’s task than mine.

  As he exited the control room and headed for the exit, he was greeted by Kahlest and Worf. The boy was, of course, holding the family bat’leth, as he had been when he triumphantly returned that morning with what would become the evening meal for the Defense Force troops.

  Mogh noted with pride that the weapon was clean. Knowing how to maintain the weapon was as important as knowing how to wield it—at least that was what Mogh always believed, especially given how much better at the former he was than the latter—and he was glad to see that Worf had taken that lesson to heart.

  “How was your day, my son?” Mogh asked.

  “It was all right, Father,” Worf said, sounding bored. “I want to go hunting again. Next time, I will catch the beast’s father!”

  Mogh smiled. “I am sure that you will, Worf.”

  “Have you found him yet?”

  Again, Mogh felt pride at his son’s good sense. He knew that Mogh’s mission was secret, and so never spoke openly of it outside of their cabin. “Not yet, but I have a suspicion. Now, however, is not the time for—”

  “Husband!”

  Mogh looked up to see Kaasin entering. She still wore her mok’bara shirt and pants, covered with a long maroon coat.

  “I was hoping to find you all here,” she said. “My class has ended, and I thought we should eat with the troops in the mess hall—partake of the feast our son has provided.”

  Worf’s eyes grew wide. “Can we, Father, please?”

  As if I could say no to either of you. “That is an excellent idea, my love.”

  “Of course it is.” Kaasin smiled, her gray eyes almost glowing. Mogh felt his heart sing, as it always did in her presence.

  He still recalled the day he brought her to the seat of their House, in the sitting room under the Qam-Chee tapestry and the same bat’leth that Worf now carried with him everywhere. There, Mogh’s mother gave her blessing to their union. His father, Worf’s namesake, had been on a mission, but he gave his own blessing in due course. Mogh would always serve the Empire, always do his duty, but nothing pleased him more than simply being in Kaasin’s presence.

  As they proceeded toward the mess hall, an alarm sounded.

  “Alert status. Alert status.”

  Mogh immediately ran to a workstation, and called up the current display on the tactical monitor in the control room.

  It showed several Romulan warbirds decloaking in orbit.

  Such an attack is more possible than either of us dreamed, L’Kor, he thought sourly.

  Then the display showed that the outpost shields—the same shields he had just spent the day testing—had gone down.

  Slamming his fist onto an intercom channel, he cried, “Mogh to control room! Commander Moraq, come in!”

  There was no reply from the outpost commander, nor any of his crew.

  “Engineering, this is Captain Mogh, respond!”

  Again, nothing. This is not simply an attack—we are sabotaged.

  But Mogh’s first thoughts were for his family. “Kahlest, take Worf to the sub-basement.”

  Holding up his bat’leth, Worf said, “I wish to fight beside you, Father!”

  “No!” Mogh closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “I need you to protect Kahlest. No harm must come to her, Worf, understood?”

  “I understand, Father. I will die before I let anyone harm her.”

  Let us hope it does not come to that, Mogh thought, now more grateful than ever that he had allowed Lorgh to talk them into leaving Kurn behind. “Good,” he said. “Go!”

  Before he could say anything to his mate, she spoke. “We have been sabotaged by whoever it was Lorgh sent you to find.”

  Mogh shook his head. I knew I loved this woman for a reason. “Yes. I do not know who to trust—except you. Go to the engineering section, see if you can re-establish the shields. I will go to the control room and see if anyone there still lives.”

  The entire complex was then rocked with a tremendous impact. Mogh lost his footing and fell to the ground, which seemed to buck and weave beneath him despite being made from the strongest rock available.

  Kaasin, of course, had maintained her footing. She moved toward him, concern for her mate overriding a warrior’s preference not to be helped in any way. Mogh waved her away. “Go to engineering! Quickly!”

  Nodding, she turned and ran toward the access ladder.

  Clambering to his feet, Mogh ran in the opposite direction toward the control room.

  The base shook twice more during his sojourn, and Mogh fell over one of those times. Plasma fires erupted all around him. The stench of burning plasti-form and damaged equipment only served to get his blood boiling. The Romulans will pay for this—and so will the traitor.

  To Mogh’s confusion, the door to the control room was closed. It had never been closed in all the weeks he had been here, and did not understand why it was shut now. Worse, the privacy seal had been engaged.

  His own code overrode that, of course, but in the time it took him to enter it, the base was rocked yet again.

  When the door rumbled open, a stench like rotting meat assaulted Mogh’s nostrils. He recognized it instantly as SIp, a gas that rendered one comatose—if left untreated, it could easily lead to death. It was part of the control room’s security system, meant to provide the option o
f incapacitating intruders to leave them alive to be interrogated.

  SIp’s dense green color also resulted in reduced visibility if used in an enclosed space. Covering his nose and mouth with his hand, Mogh made his way through the jade miasma to the environmental control console in order to clear it. He almost tripped over the prone forms of L’Kor and Gi’ral. Saboteurs were, in Mogh’s experience, unlikely to gas themselves, so the two of them were no doubt innocent.

  Worry about that later, he thought. As soon as he activated the scrubbers to clean the air of the SIp, he sent out a distress signal and ran a diagnostic on all systems.

  To his horror, the Romulans themselves lowered the shields. They had the access codes!

  The base had also stopped shaking, and Mogh was now reading multiple transports to the surface. The Romulans had sent down ground troops to take care of whoever was left.

  That number was small. Sensors registered very few life signs, and several were in this room. Mogh turned around and looked over the unconscious forms. He recognized most of the regular staff, but conspicuous by his absence was Commander Moraq—he wasn’t in his office or the control room. Could he be the traitor after all?

  The base shook again, but this was not from disruptor fire. On one of the security viewers, Mogh saw a massive explosion from one of the secondary laboratories in one of the smaller compounds near the base. From the looks of it, the compound’s generator overloaded.

  Based on the reduction in life-sign readings, two hundred Klingons died in that explosion alone.

  Unfortunately, sensors, environmentals, and communications were all Mogh could get to operate. All tactical systems, from the shields to the ion cannons, had gone offline, and nothing Mogh could do would reactivate them. The saboteur did his work well.

  Mogh was no longer sure if it was Ja’rod or Moraq or someone else entirely who was responsible for this treachery—for this murder—but Mogh swore he would not rest until the deaths of all these good people were avenged. This was not a good day—or a good way—to die.

  Then he heard a humming sound behind him. Mogh whirled to see half a dozen Romulans materialize in the room. Mogh had his disruptor out before they could coalesce into their natural form, and killed two of them before he felt the heat of one of their disruptor beams slice into his torso.

  As he fell to the ground, his final thoughts were of Kaasin and his son Worf, and of Kurn, who would be the only one left to carry on the family name.

  Centurion Tokath shook his head as he looked at the three corpses—the two antecenturions the Klingon had killed before Antecenturion Belear cut the Klingon down. “Senseless. The control room was supposed to be gassed.”

  Belear knelt down over another Klingon body. “This one is not dead.”

  “Neither are these others,” said another antecenturion.

  “That one probably entered after the gas. Senseless,” Tokath repeated. He had served loyally in the Romulan military for decades, but as he grew older, he found that he had less and less taste for death. Perhaps it is time I retired. He had hoped that with the insanity of Praetor Dralath’s regime a thing of the past things might improve, but governments were, he had decided, inherently insane. What is madder, that the Klingons would develop a biogenic weapon or that our response would be to murder four thousand Klingons?

  Either way, Tokath had lost his taste for combat.

  Aloud, he said, “No doubt he is responsible for the distress signal we detected.”

  The young antecenturion snorted. “As if that matters. The Klingon ships in this sector have been led to the Morska system. We have nothing to fear from—”

  “Centurion!”

  That was Belear, who now stood at one of the control room consoles. “What is it?” Tokath asked.

  “Sensors are detecting a ship approaching at high warp!”

  Damn those fools in the Tal Shiar, they assured us that Kang’s fleet would be distracted!

  Tokath walked over to the display—only to see that the configuration of the ship was all wrong, as was its course. The ship wasn’t coming from the Morksa system, it was coming from the Federation. “It’s Starfleet,” he said after a moment. “They must have been near the border and picked up the distress signal.” More foolishness. The commander had not bothered to jam the signal when it began to broadcast, just before Tokath was sent to the planet. The commander had faith in the Tal Shiar’s information, forgetting that Starfleet had a tendency to come to the aid of—well, anyone, truth be told. The Federation’s desire to help people was as pervasive as it was predictable, and that it wasn’t anticipated as a possibility distressed Tokath. Have I lost the taste for combat, or merely for those who run it?

  “Gather up the prisoners—him, too,” he added, pointing at the Klingon they had shot. “The doctor might be able to revive him.” He contacted the mother ship. They were going to need to leave sooner rather than later if they didn’t want to risk a confrontation with Starfleet. Tokath doubted that the commander wished a repeat of Narendra III, after all…

  Kaasin arrived in the engine room of the Khitomer Base just in time to see Commander Moraq cut down by a disruptor fired by Ja’rod.

  The engine room housed all the control systems and power for the entire base—with the exception of a few of the compounds holding the secondary laboratories, which had their own power sources. She carried only one weapon—a disruptor pistol that Mogh had given her years ago. It had gone unfired, aside from the occasional bit of target practice, for all the time she’d owned it, as Kaasin always came armed with her best weapon: herself. Besides mok’bara, she had mastered several martial arts forms, including some from the Federation. She had every faith in her ability to take on even an armed foe with just her hands and feet and teeth.

  However, right now she needed more than faith, she needed surety. Hence the disruptor.

  “Kaasin! I’m glad you’re here!” Ja’rod indicated Moraq with his weapon. “This animal betrayed us to the Romulans! We must raise the shields, quickly, before we are destroyed!”

  As Ja’rod moved over to the console, Kaasin looked at the prone form of Moraq. He lay in the midst of the wreckage of a console that had exploded in the attack. In fact, the entire room smelled of burning conduits. The base commander struggled to move, but it was obvious that the disruptor had done its job well. He would be dead in moments, and until then he would be unable to make his limbs function properly, the deadly beam having all but destroyed the function of his nervous system.

  But he was able to lock eyes with Kaasin. His body was failing, but Moraq’s black eyes burned with the intensity of a warrior.

  All her life, Kaasin had heard warriors—mostly old, fat ones—talk about tova’dok, the moment of clarity when warriors spoke to each other without words. She had always given those stories the same level of respect and belief that she did all their other exaggerated tales of mighty prowess—to wit, none whatsoever.

  Until now. Because when she locked eyes with Moraq, she knew that Ja’rod was lying and Moraq died trying to stop the very traitor Mogh had been sent here to find.

  Then Moraq’s eyes shut.

  “Leave him be, Kaasin! You must aid me in bringing the shields back up.”

  She turned and aimed her disruptor at Ja’rod’s back. “Face me, traitor.” Even one such as Ja’rod deserved to look his killer in the eye.

  Ja’rod did not do so, however, instead ducking behind a console and firing his own disruptor wildly. Kaasin was able to avoid the beam easily, then she too took cover behind one of the damage-control consoles.

  “And to think I thought I had you fooled,” Ja’rod said. “After all, Mogh was finally starting to leave me alone. A pity that none of us will live to see how futile his efforts were. It’s only a matter of time, you know.”

  Kaasin was still barefoot from her mok’bara class. She moved slowly and silently across the room, ignoring the mild pain of the sharpened edges of metal from the damaged consoles as they r
ipped into the callused soles of her feet. She did not speak, did not breathe, did nothing to give any indication of her position. Only her scent would give her away, but the burning-conduit stink that permeated the room would mask that.

  Besides, she somehow doubted that a Romulan-lover like Ja’rod was much of a hunter.

  “Soon our people will see the wisdom of a Romulan–Klingon alliance. Together we will conquer the Federation, the Cardassians, the Tholians—all the galaxy will be ours for the taking!”

  Keep talking, fool. She only had a little farther to go and she’d be around the other side of the console from where he was crouching.

  “You still have a chance, Kaasin—you and your husband, if he’s still alive, can lead the vanguard! Think of it! The House of Duras and the House of Mogh united! The wonders we can accomplish would be—”

  Kaasin stood behind Ja’rod and blew his head off.

  For a moment, Kaasin was concerned that she had dishonored herself and her mate by killing without showing her face—but the moment passed. He already knows what I look like.

  Stepping over the corpse without giving it another thought, she walked back to Moraq’s body, knelt next to it, pried open his eyes, and then screamed to the heavens.

  At least I was able to avenge you, Commander—I will see you in Sto-Vo-Kor.

  The hum of a transporter grabbed her attention—and that there was a hum meant that it couldn’t be a Klingon transporter, since they were silent. She raised her disruptor—

  —only to have a Romulan soldier knock it out of her hands as he materialized. The Romulan then smiled, thinking her helpless before him.

  The smile fell as she grabbed his left arm, yanked it around behind his back hard enough to break it in three places, and then broke his neck. She did not let the body fall to the floor, however, as there were three other Romulans who had come with him, and she needed the corpse of their comrade as a shield.