The Art of the Impossible

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “That poor boy,” she said when he told her about Worf. “He’s the same age as Nikolai?”

  Again, he chuckled. “A few years younger, though you would not know it to look at him. He’s twice as big as Nikolai. Doctor Tavares says that Klingons develop faster than humans.” Then he once again became serious. “There is something else.” Slowly, hoping he could convey Kahlest’s trepidation—he couldn’t really call it fear—he shared what she had told him in sickbay.

  Helena frowned. “I don’t know, Sergey.”

  Knowing it was a weak argument, Sergey said, “We did say that we wanted to have a second child when I came home next month.”

  Naturally, Helena plowed right through it. “Yes, a second baby ! Who would not come for at least another nine months! Not a Klingon boy that we’d have to take in right away!”

  “We have the space in the house.”

  “Wonderful. And how will Nikolai react? Instead of having the better part of a year to prepare him we have, what, a few days? And how will we care for this boy? Do you know what he eats? What kind of clothes he wears? Will he be allergic to the furniture? How does he sleep?”

  “Lenotchka—” He hesitated.

  “What is it?” she asked gently. Sergey rarely used the diminutive except when they were in person.

  “The boy has nothing. No home to go to. Just memories of a—a very bad place. I know because I have that memory now, too.” The smell of burnt flesh came back, unbidden, and Sergey’s quarters seemed to darken to the same dimness of that engine room he, Tobias, and the damage-control team had beamed into.

  A second passed. Two. Then Helena’s smile came back, and the room lit up all over again. “Then we will give him better memories. Bring him home, Sergey, if he will come.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “We will not regret this, Helena.”

  She smirked. “I already do. I will see you soon.”

  “Not soon enough. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  After Helena’s beautiful face faded from the viewscreen, Sergey decided to return to sickbay. He wanted to speak to his new son.

  Chapter 37

  Qo’nos

  Lorgh stood in the small room on the upper level of his home that overlooked the HoSghaj River. The room’s sole illumination came from a large candle.

  He watched the mighty river flow past his estate and toward the ocean into which it emptied.

  The mission he had sent Mogh on had not quite been the success Lorgh had hoped. The true identity of the Romulan spy was not known, which meant they did not know who his or her accomplices might have been. Still, he had accounted for that possibility, which was one of the reasons why he had insisted on Kurn remaining behind. Better still, even though Mogh and Kaasin were killed, Worf survived—according to his sources, he had been taken in by the family of one of the humans serving on the Intrepid, the Starfleet vessel that first responded to the distress signal on Khitomer.

  General Worf’s line would remain intact. One son of Mogh remained in the Federation, beyond the reach of any vengeful relations of whoever the spy was.

  The other son of Mogh would be a son of Lorgh for the nonce. Lorgh had no sons of his own, so that would provide an adequate excuse for this step. And in the long term, the boy would have other uses. Lorgh intended to make sure that Kurn was a powerful warrior, and a force to be reckoned with in the Empire. He also intended to keep an eye on Worf—see how a Klingon raised in the Federation would turn out.

  Both sons of Mogh might turn out to be quite useful to him.

  And, even if the short-term consequences were devastating, the long-term prognosis was good. The Intrepid’s presence served to drive off the Romulans—and also reveal their responsibility for the attack. K’mpec had been able to ascend to the chancellorship, a move long overdue. The truth—that a Klingon betrayed Khitomer to the Romulans—would remain hidden for now, but there was nothing to be done about that. A pity, Lorgh thought. Proof of that might send us to war with the Romulans. Instead, the members of the High Council whose Houses owed their strength and position to Romulan assistance would continue to do all they could to keep the two powers from coming into conflict. It would be K’mpec’s task to keep those forces at bay—and Lorgh’s to try to expose them—over the course of time.

  As for Kravokh, he had served his purpose—to get the Empire out of the rut that Kaarg and Ditagh had mired them in—but his Ch’gran obsession proved his undoing. It was almost worth the sacrifice of four thousand lives to speed him on his way to Sto-Vo-Kor where he would no longer ruin the Empire with his constant worrying about the past.

  Klingons could not forget their past, but it was I.I.’s job to make sure that the Empire had a future. Lorgh was confident that K’mpec was the one to bring them to that future.

  If he isn’t, then he too will be replaced. The river will flow onward.

  He walked over to the candle and unsheathed his d’k tahg. Mogh, Kaasin, you did your work well. Your sacrifices will not go unheeded. May you join the general in Sto-Vo- Kor , and may your battles continue ever onward. You deserve no less.

  Using the flat of his d’k tahg, he extinguished the candle’s flame.

  Then he went downstairs to speak to his new son.

  “You know, if you keep that up, you’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”

  Elias Vaughn had been pacing in the corridor outside the new Klingon chancellor’s office for the better part of fifteen minutes. Curzon Dax had never considered Vaughn to be the type to have an excess of nervous energy—well, to be honest, he had never given Vaughn all that much thought at all—but he seemed to be boiling over with it today.

  “Since this floor is made of rodinium, I doubt that’s an issue, Ambassador.”

  Dax smiled at Vaughn’s disdain. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “The syllables spell out the word ‘ambassador,’ yet you manage to make it sound like ‘jackass’ every time.”

  At that, Vaughn actually smirked. “Call it a gift.”

  “I’d rather call it an irritant, but suit yourself. In any case, K’mpec will see us when he’s good and ready. He is the newly appointed head of a massive interstellar empire.”

  “It feels like we’re being stalled. I dislike being stalled.”

  Dax laughed. “You have no appreciation of the Klingon mindset, Commander. Trust me, if K’mpec can’t see us, it’s because he’s too busy to see us. Klingons don’t stall. If he wanted us to sweat, he’d put us in a sauna—or just threaten to garrotte us, or some other such thing.”

  “Well, you’re the expert,” Vaughn said, using that same disdainful tone.

  The door to K’mpec’s office opened, and a surly looking guard stepped through it. “Inside,” he said, indicating the interior with his head.

  The office, Dax noted as he entered, was spare. The desk was a small piece of metal just large enough to hold a workstation and a few padds. K’mpec’s impressive girth made him look like a full-grown adult sitting at a child’s play dining room set as he sat behind it, looking over something on the screen of that workstation. Behind him, the wall was decorated, typically, with weapons, as were two other walls, as well as a rather unfortunate painting. Dax prayed that the latter was a holdover from Kravokh’s reign that K’mpec simply hadn’t gotten around to having destroyed.

  “If we were in the Federation,” Dax said as they took their places standing before K’mpec, “congratulations would be in order.”

  K’mpec looked up and smiled. “But we are not in the Federation.”

  “Indeed. So I will simply wish you success, Chancellor.”

  “What is it you want, Ambassador?” The smile was now gone, replaced by the face of a busy man who was only having this meeting because of who Dax was.

  “We have information that may be of use to you regarding your predecessor—and Ch’gran.”

  That got K’mpec’s attention. “What do you know of C
h’gran?”

  Vaughn chose this moment to make his presence known. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Elias Vaughn. At Ambassador Dax’s request, I did some digging into Kravokh’s background. I found out some interesting things about his family—and why he was so obsessed with recovering Ch’gran.”

  “Recovering Ch’gran is the desire of all Klingons,” K’mpec said.

  “For its historical value, yes. That, however, is not what Kravokh was after.”

  K’mpec frowned. “What, then?”

  Dax had been afraid of this. “You aren’t aware of what was in the records of that Ch’gran wreck they found fifty years ago, are you?”

  “There were no records.” K’mpec spoke in a low, menacing tone, as if challenging Dax and Vaughn to prove his words wrong. Unfortunately, we’re about to.

  Vaughn looked at Dax. “I did warn you that he wouldn’t know. Those records were sealed by Imperial Intelligence, not the High Council.”

  Sighing, Dax said, “Yes, Vaughn, you were actually right. I suppose the law of averages was bound to catch up with you.”

  K’mpec was now smoldering. “Of what records do you speak?” he asked, enunciating every word in a manner that Dax found quite intimidating, all things considered.

  Vaughn faced the chancellor. “The records on that wreck revealed the reasons why the Ch’gran colony was lost—it was because of a mutiny, led by Ch’gran’s second-in-command, a man named Klartak.”

  “Klartak,” Dax added, “was a member of what was then known as the House of Boral, but is more properly known these days as the House of—”

  “Kravokh.” The word sounded like wheels going over broken glass as it came out of K’mpec’s mouth.

  “Yes,” Vaughn said. “The I.I. agent who decoded the records of the Ch’gran wreck was a descendant of Klartak’s, and he is the one who sealed the records. He told no one of this, save his son. It has remained a family secret, one that has been passed down through what is now the House of Kravokh. Dax’s proviso that the Cardassians could not touch Ch’gran until the dispensation of Raknal V was determined kept the truth hidden for as long as the competition continued. My personal opinion is that Kravokh’s efforts to fortify the Defense Force were primarily with an eye toward taking Raknal by force if necessary, perhaps even invading Cardassia, if Qaolin could not win the planet for them under Dax’s terms.”

  “Ranh!” K’mpec stood angrily. “You mean to tell me that thousands of Klingons have died so that animal could protect his family’s dishonor?”

  “Not quite,” Dax said with a smile.

  That drew K’mpec up short. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s all right, Chancellor,” Dax said, “neither did I when Vaughn first explained it to me.”

  Fixing Vaughn with a penetrating gaze, K’mpec said, “Then explain it to me—clearly, if you will, Commander.”

  Vaughn inclined his head. “Of course. You see, Klartak did not mutiny until he was given the order to turn back.”

  At that, K’mpec’s tiny eyes grew wide with shock, a reaction not dissimilar to Dax’s own when Vaughn had explained it to him back on B’Alda’ar.

  “Ch’gran had no intention of colonizing space,” Vaughn continued. “His plan all along was to return here, destroy the First City from orbit, and install himself as the new emperor. His entire goal in having the fleet constructed wasn’t to pave the way to space, it was to give him a weapon by which he could take over Qo’noS. He only traveled with the fleet so far because he needed time to get the other six ship captains on his side.”

  “Kravokh was not trying to preserve his honor,” Dax said, “but that of one of the Empire’s greatest heroes. He did not wish the legacy of Ch’gran, the man who prompted your people to vault forward into space for the first time after the Hur’q invasion, to be that of a traitor.”

  K’mpec snorted. “Our people can survive the tarnishing of the occasional legend, Ambassador. We are not human children who require our parents to prettify our stories to make them palatable.” He looked away. “And we have had our share of fallen heroes in our time.” Then he looked sharply at Vaughn. “How did you obtain this information?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  Leaning forward, his fists on his desk, K’mpec said, “You will tell me the name of your informant, or I will—”

  “Do nothing,” Dax said quickly. The last thing he wanted to witness right now was these two men getting into a pissing contest. “We volunteered this information to you as a show of good faith and in the hope that our people’s good relations will continue, Chancellor. We are under no obligation to provide you with anything more than we have given you. Humans have a saying about not looking a gift horse in the mouth—I suggest you abide by it in this case.”

  “If there is a leak in I.I.—”

  Vaughn fixed K’mpec with a stern look. “Then it is your duty to plug it, sir, not mine.”

  K’mpec looked back and forth between the two men. Dax was worried that the chancellor would try to take this to the next step, which would be dangerous for all of them—most of all, though, for the Federation–Klingon alliance, which was only just being stitched back together after fifty years of fraying.

  Finally, K’mpec sat back down. “Very well. The Klingon Empire is grateful to you for bringing this matter to our attention.” He leaned back. “Since both of you were—involved in the beginnings of this absurdity, it is only fitting that you be here for the end of it.”

  Dax frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean, Ambassador, is that your arrival here has saved me the trouble of contacting you via subspace.” He touched a control on his workstation. “You will come with me.”

  Without another word, K’mpec rose from his chair and left the office. A guard fell into step behind him as he proceeded to the Council Chambers, Vaughn and a bemused Dax right behind both of them. Whispering to Vaughn, Dax asked, “What do you think this is about?”

  Vaughn shrugged. “You’re the expert.”

  “Remind me to have you beaten before we leave, Commander.”

  Soon they were in Council Chambers. Dax recognized some of the councillors from his last visit, knew others as Defense Force veterans who had been promoted to the Council. K’mpec took his place in the seat under the Klingon Empire’s trefoil emblem, a spotlight shining on his heavily lined face, and the other councillors stepped into place in a semicircle on either side of him.

  As soon as he took his seat, the room quieted down. Vaughn and Dax stood off to the side, along with other observers.

  K’mpec looked around the chamber for several seconds before speaking in a booming voice that belied his near-whisper back in his office. “As of this moment, the Klingon Empire cedes the world of Raknal V to the Cardassian Union.”

  Dax’s own eyes went wide at that one.

  “We are willing to discuss ways to obtain the Ch’gran relic through trade, but we will no longer sacrifice warriors in the wasteful manner that they have been cast aside because of the single-minded pursuit of this one insignificant planet. Governor Qaolin will relinquish his post and return to the Homeworld within one week.

  “In addition, the ban on Cardassian citizens within the Empire is lifted. It is the wish of this Council that Cardassia do the same for our people—if not, the ban will be reinstated.”

  Then K’mpec turned to one of the councillors, Ruuv. “What of the Romulan Empire’s response to the attack on Khitomer?”

  Ruuv stepped forward. “Sir, Praetor Narviat has condemned the actions of the ‘traitors’ who have attacked Khitomer. He assures us that those responsible will be punished, and offers their lives to us.”

  “As it should be,” said one councillor.

  Another said, “We should consider making a formal alliance with them.”

  “Are you mad?” said a third. “Do you believe these lies?”

  Dax put a hand on Vaughn’s shoulder, and indicated the exit with his head. They b
oth departed even as the Council’s squabbling started. “They’ll be at it for hours. I doubt that anything will come of it. Too many important Klingons owe too many important Romulans too much money. I suspect any conflict will be limited to isolated skirmishes.”

  “Much like what the Klingons and Cardassians have been doing for the past eighteen years?” Vaughn asked pointedly.

  Dax shook his head. “Much like that, yes. Well, if you’ll excuse me, Commander, I have to inform my superiors in the Diplomatic Corps that the Betreka Nebula incident has finally come to an end.”

  Chapter 38

  Cardassia Prime

  Corbin Entek’s third trip to the Obsidian Order’s public headquarters proceeded in much the same manner as his first two. He approached the sixty-story building in the culde-sac—the renovations had just been completed the month before—and was told by the receptionist to report to Room 2552. Entek wondered briefly if this meant he was not going to see Tain—with the added floors, 2552 was no longer at the building’s epicenter—but apparently Tain liked the office for some reason.

  This time a thin, white-haired man sat at the reception desk. He activated his comm unit and said, “He’s arrived.”

  Tain’s voice once again sounded over the intercom. “Send him in.”

  Tain’s viewer now showed a tactical map of the quadrant. It distressed Entek to see how small Cardassia’s territory—marked in yellow on the galactic map—was in relation to such other local powers as the Breen Confederacy, the Tholian Assembly, the Klingon and Romulan Empires, and most especially the United Federation of Planets.

  “Greetings, Entek!” As always, Tain sounded like a grandfather saying hello to a child not visited in months. “Please, have a seat.”

  Entek did so, hoping that the similarities to the previous two trips would remain intact. He had no desire to get on Tain’s bad side, not when his career had been going so well. Especially after he was able to handle Khitomer so deftly—though that was with some unknowing help from the Klingons themselves…