I.K.S. Gorkon Book One: A Good Day to Die

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Yes. This is our chance to add to the Empire and make us even stronger. You will give our orders to the crew when the primary shift reports, and then you will take us to the Kavrot Sector.”

  “It will be an honor to do so, sir.”

  “Then report to your station, Commander. I will be on the bridge shortly.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kornan turned and left the office.

  Leskit hung back for a moment. “As I said, Captain—much, much more boring.”

  “That order was for you both, Leskit.”

  “Of course, Captain,” Leskit said with a slight bow. “After all, we can’t trust these younger pilots to find their way to the Kavrot Sector.”

  “Actually,” Klag said with a grin, “I simply wish to have someone convenient to blame when we get lost.”

  Leskit laughed, and exited the office.

  That left Klag alone.

  Now to get up out of the chair.

  The trick, really, was not to think about it. When he didn’t focus on it, he got out of the chair with little difficulty. But the presence of a new first officer made him all the more self-conscious, which was why he made sure that Kornan and Leskit were dismissed. This way, when he did list to the right—and he knew that he would—he would not be shamed.

  Why is this so difficult?

  After putting it off for several minutes, he finally got up from the chair, and stumbled to the right. “Qu’vatlh!” he cursed in anger.

  I will conquer this, he swore. I will not let this defeat me.

  He entered the bridge just as Kornan was finishing providing the Gorkon’s new mission to the crew. “And so we go for the glory of the Empire!”

  The bridge was full, with both the primary and second shifts present. All of them cheered at Kornan’s words.

  Almost all of them, Klag amended with an amused look at the operations console. Toq was at his station, as duty required, but his eyes were half-open, and he did not cheer. Indeed, the volume of the cheers seemed to cause him pain. Next to him, Lieutenant Rodek, the first-shift gunner, looked at the young second officer with combined amusement and pity.

  Kornan turned to Klag and nodded. Klag nodded back. Kornan then said, “Second shift dismissed.” As the officers and bekks filed out toward the turbolifts and the rear exit, Kornan once again regarded his commanding officer. “The crew stands ready, Captain.”

  Klag moved to his command chair and sat in it.

  “Our enemy stands waiting for us, Commander—let us face it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kornan sat in the first officer’s chair to Klag’s right. “Lieutenant Leskit, set course for the Kavrot Sector. Proceed at full impulse, then execute at warp eight when we have cleared Ty’Gokor.”

  “Setting course and executing, as the commander commands,” Leskit said with a smile.

  Klag looked down at the medal that symbolized his latest honor. There is an entire sector out there that has not heard the songs of Kahless. But they will hear them, loud and clear.

  Leskit announced, “We have cleared Ty’Gokor.”

  “Execute,” Kornan said.

  The Gorkon went into warp, heading out into the unknown.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Wol walked up to the door that led to the QaS DevwI’. The twenty who served as the troop commanders on the Gorkon had their workstations in the room on the other side of the door. Wol, who was among the transfers from the Mekbel, had been given orders to report to Vok, the first among the QaS DevwI’. She had expected to be assigned to one of the middle groups. To be assigned to the most prestigious of the twenty was an honor indeed.

  The Chancellor-class ships had a complement of one thousand five hundred soldiers, broken into three hundred five-soldier squads. Each of the twenty QaS DevwI’ commanded fifteen squads. Vok commanded the first through fifteenth. First Squad was, of course, the elite. Those five received the highest duties, including serving as the personal guards to the senior staff. The Leader of the first was the captain’s personal bodyguard. Wol had no chance of attaining such a lofty position, but she hoped perhaps to be assigned to Ninth or Tenth Squad and be able to work her way up.

  “Enter,” sounded a voice from the other side of the door, which parted noisily to let her in.

  The room was cramped, with twenty small desks in groups of ten that were face-to-face with each other. Only one was occupied: the one on the far left as she entered. The Klingon who sat at it was a barrel-chested man with stringy brown hair that extended to his neck. His facial hair consisted only of a small mustache and a chin beard. He stared at the computer screen on the desk, then looked up when Wol entered. As he did, a huge smile spread across his face.

  “Come in, come in! You must be Bekk Wol. I am Vok—welcome to the Gorkon.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, coming to an attentive pose to the right of the QaS DevwI’s workstation.

  “I’ve read your file, Wol. You’ve been a credit to your ships. I’m especially impressed with your work securing the station at Mempa IX during the war.”

  Given that she had disobeyed orders to accomplish that, she was grateful to hear Vok say so. Krantor, the superior whose orders she disobeyed, was kind enough to die in the fighting and was never able to report it, and the other troops supported her because Krantor was a fool.

  Wol said none of this. “I was merely one of many, sir.”

  “Don’t be so modest, Bekk. Mempa IX was a crucial battle, and your ability to adapt to the circumstances speaks well of you.”

  At that, Wol shot Vok a look. Does he know—? But that was impossible. With Krantor dead…

  “In any case, we’re lucky to have you here, and I’ve decided to have you fill a vacancy. The Leader of Fifteenth Squad was rotated off-ship. You will take his place.”

  Wol tried to control her reaction. “Leader, sir?”

  “Of course.” He laughed, a hearty one that came from the deepest recesses of his large belly. “Did you think I called you here simply to assign you as a mere soldier? I have received fifty new troops, Bekk. If I called each of them in here to hand them their assignments, we’d be deep in the bowels of Kavrot by the time I was finished. No, simple troop assignments are posted on the duty roster. Leaders, however, I prefer to notify personally.”

  Vok rose from his chair and started pacing around Wol, who continued to stand attentively. His corpulent form caused the medals on his uniform to clank as he walked, his boots treading heavily on the deck. Yet, for all his swagger, he retained a smile that reminded Wol of her uncle.

  An uncle I’ll never see again, she thought bitterly, then put the thought aside. Her days as a member of the House of Varnak ended long ago.

  “Don’t think I’m doing you a favor here. You’ll have to earn the title of Leader, and if I think you haven’t, you’ll be sent to the three hundredth without a moment’s hesitation.”

  Wol repressed a shudder. The three hundredth was the lowest of the low. They were the troops who considered assignment to waste extraction a better day than most.

  “However,” and that smile was still there, “I doubt it’ll come to that. Anyone who can think on her feet the way you did at Mempa knows how to lead warriors into battle. Or into whatever else they may face. And that will be the biggest issue. The fifteenth is the lowest of my groups—you’ll be, in essence, the worst of the best. That means you’ll have the most to prove. I expect you to prove a great deal to me.”

  “I hope to go beyond your expectations.”

  Again, the belly laugh. In fact, Vok put his hands over his stomachs as he did so. “Well said, Wol, well said!” He walked back to his desk, grabbed a padd and a small piece of metal, and handed both of them to her. “These are your troops,” he said, indicating the padd, and then handed her the piece of metal, adding, “and this is your insignia. All four of your troops have been serving on this ship since its shakedown—but this is their first time under my command. Your job is to make sure they’re worthy of their promotion.�
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  “And that I’m worthy of mine?” she asked without thinking, then immediately regretted it.

  However, Vok just smiled. “That, too.”

  Wol looked for a moment at the small pin that denoted her as a Leader. It would be placed over the small symbol on her uniform’s right biceps indicating that she was a simple bekk. Now she declared to all that she was something more than that.

  Vok sat back down, the chair creaking from having to accommodate his girth. “You’re dismissed, Leader Wol.”

  Nodding, Wol turned to leave. Then she stopped at the door and turned back around. If he’ll accept one breach of protocol, perhaps he’ll accept a second. “Sir, at Mempa, I was simply following orders.”

  That prompted a third belly laugh. “If that toDSaH Krantor actually gave those orders, I’m a ramjep bird. Now then, I believe I dismissed you. I have work to do, and so do you.”

  Still smiling, he went back to his computer screen. Satisfied, she turned and left.

  So, he knows Krantor. Or, rather, knew him. That explains a great deal.

  Never in her wildest dreams had Wol expected this. Her status as a Houseless female had left her options fairly limited. Even within the Defense Force, she never expected to advance beyond that of a soldier. To be given the responsibilities of a Leader was more than she could have hoped for.

  Though still less than I could have been….

  Wol tried not to think about the past, about her time as the daughter of a great warrior—or her intended mating with a fine warrior that she herself sabotaged when she instead bore the child of the man she truly loved. Her lover was killed; her son was given to a cousin; she was exiled. She had wanted to die with her lover, but even that was denied her—and her father could not bring himself to have her put to death. As if his discomfort mattered more than my ability to regain my honor. But the House of Varnak did what was proper, not what was right, and she found herself going from a life with limitless options to one with very few.

  So she changed her name and joined the Defense Force.

  Years of service were mostly uneventful. She moved from post to post, doing her duty, slaying the Empire’s enemies, and getting noticed by no one, save the occasional fellow soldier in need of someone to help keep a bunk warm.

  Until Mempa IX, when Krantor tried to get them all killed and she stopped him, enabling them to take the base from the Cardassians instead of losing it so soon after the fleet had reconquered the world. Not willing to die to suit the whims of a fool, nor to allow Mempa to fall back into Dominion hands, she took over the operation, fully expecting to be killed for her effrontery, but secure in the knowledge that the day would be won. To her shock and gratitude, the only one who died was Krantor, and the rest of the squad stood by her. The fool was given posthumous credit for a victory he did not earn, and Wol was able to continue serving the Empire.

  The day, only a few months previously, when she learned that the House of Varnak had been eliminated, thanks to its participation in a failed coup against Chancellor Martok, had been bittersweet. Most of her family was dead, and she lived on, when by all rights it should have gone the other way around.

  The one thing she had never been able to find out for sure was whether or not her son survived—in part because she had never been able to learn his name. The cousin who had taken her child in had many sons, and Wol never knew which was hers. Of course, if he did live, he was a man without a House also, since Varnak was disgraced and eliminated.

  And she, who was once disgraced, was now a Leader.

  She worked her way toward the barracks, located on the ship’s centermost deck. The troops were housed in bunks that were arranged by squad. The deck consisted of a maze of corridors, each wall taken up with five bunks inset into the bulkhead that were stacked from deck to ceiling. Each bunk was two meters in length, one meter in width, and half a meter in height. That two meters of space and whatever you could cram into it was the only thing you could call your own if you were a Klingon soldier. The Leader got the bottom bunk, which could be climbed into easily from the deck; the others were accessible via a ladder.

  It didn’t take long for Wol to locate the fifteenth set of bunks, located in the forward section of the deck. She was not surprised to find that her few belongings had been placed at one end of the space that would serve as her two meters for the duration of her tour on the Gorkon.

  A man roughly the size of a small asteroid approached the bunks from the other direction. Wol blinked in amazement. This bekk made Vok look diminutive.

  His face—round, and with a thick black beard that covered his cheeks, mouth, and chin—gazed down at her. His wide shoulders blocked out the ceiling lights, casting a massive shadow on Wol. “I am Goran.”

  “I am Wol, your new Leader.”

  Goran pointed a massive finger at her belongings. “I need to sleep in that bunk.”

  Wol started. The Leader always had the bottom bunk. It was the way of things. “That bunk is mine, Bekk.”

  “I need to sleep in the bottom bunk.” Oddly, there was no threat in Goran’s voice, merely a statement of fact. “If I don’t, the bunk will break. It is because I am the biggest and the strongest.”

  Wol quickly called Goran’s service record up on her padd, and took particular note of his weight. The bottom bunk had the added reinforcement of the deck itself to support Goran’s considerable bulk. The material of the upper bunks by themselves might not be sufficient. And the only way to prove otherwise was to risk Goran crashing through to her own bottom bunk. Not really worth the risk.

  “Very well, Bekk. You will switch my belongings with yours and take the bottom bunk.”

  From behind her, a voice said, “An opera?”

  Wol turned to see two warriors approaching. The older one had waist-length white hair and a horn-shaped beard; the younger had squinty eyes and light brown hair. The latter had spoken.

  “Yes, an opera,” the older one said in reply. “You have something against opera?”

  “I have nothing against good opera.” The younger one was scowling. “I doubt you have the stuff to create such a thing.”

  The older one laughed. “Perhaps I don’t. But I believe that I can provide something no other opera can.”

  Facing the two warriors, Wol asked, “And what would that be, Bekk?”

  “Who are you?” the younger one asked belligerently.

  “Who do you think she is, petaQ?” the older one said quickly, elbowing the younger one violently in the ribs and pointing at the insignia on her right biceps. “You must be our Leader.”

  “I am Wol.”

  “I am G’joth, son of Ch’lan,” the older one said, then indicated his comrade. “This young idiot is Davok, of the House of Kazag.”

  To Wol’s annoyance, Davok’s eyes went to the left biceps of her uniform, which was bereft of any decoration, indicating that she had no House. By introducing him only by House rather than lineage, G’joth indicated that Davok had not been born to Kazag, but was brought into the House for other reasons.

  Wol had neither House nor mother to identify her. “Is there a problem, Bekk?”

  “No, Leader. Not yet.”

  “Ignore him,” G’joth said quickly. “The rest of us do.” He looked over at Goran, who had just clambered into the bottommost bunk. “Goran? Is that you?”

  Goran looked up at G’joth. “Hello, G’joth. Are you in this squad also?”

  Laughing, G’joth said, “Indeed I am. Oh, this will be glorious. There’s no one on this ship I’d rather have at my back than the big man.”

  “Thank you, G’joth,” Goran said. “You can rely on me. Uh, you too, Leader Wol.”

  Wol acknowledged the amendment, then turned back to G’joth. “So what is this new perspective your opera will award us?”

  “A true warrior’s perspective. How many operas were written by actual warriors serving in the Defense Force? Oh, sure, some officers have gone on to compose some fine works, and of
course you have the usual drivel about the lowborn merchant who becomes the greatest general who ever lived, but those are never actually written by lowborn merchants.”

  Laughing, Wol said, “Or by great generals.”

  “Good point.” G’joth returned the laugh. “I will tell the truth.”

  “You’re a fool,” Davok said, climbing up the ladder to his bunk, which was the topmost. “Operas aren’t about truth.”

  “Most operas aren’t. Mine will be.” G’joth climbed up behind him to his own bunk right under Davok’s, the padd on which he’d been composing his great work tucked into his belt.

  Another warrior approached, this a woman with straight black neck-length hair, holding a small duffel.

  G’joth noted her arrival as he settled into his bunk. “Krevor! So you’re our fifth.”

  “It would seem so, G’joth,” the woman said.

  “Nice to have the ambassadorial bodyguard make it to Vok’s elite,” G’joth said with another laugh.

  This one’s as jovial as Vok, Wol thought. No wonder the QaS DevwI’ chose him….

  “I am Leader Wol. Welcome to the fifteenth.”

  “I am Bekk Krevor. I hope to bring honor and glory to our squad.”

  “We shall see. You’ve served as a bodyguard to ambassadors?”

  Krevor nodded. “On our mission to taD, I was assigned to guard Ambassador Worf for the mission. I defended him against al’Hmatti rebels.”

  “Filthy toDSaH,” Davok muttered from his bunk above.

  “What was that, Bekk?” Wol asked.

  G’joth spoke up. “Davok and I met Ambassador Worf on Narendra III. Davok is just bitter because the ambassador shot him.”

  “I was not expecting it,” Davok said defensively. “He has no honor.”

  Krevor said, “The ambassador is one of the most honorable warriors I have ever met. If he shot you, I’m sure he had good reason.”

  “Oh, he had excellent reason,” G’joth said. “Davok was awake at the time, you see.”

  In response, Davok simply turned over, his back to the rest of them.