Toq awkwardly strapped the spear to his back with his left hand, then looked down at himself and the san-chera.
He was covered in dirt and mud and water. He was bleeding profusely from his chest and right arm, his own blood mixing in with the yellow ichor of the san-chera that covered most of his body. It felt like at least eight ribs were bruised or broken. All feeling had fled from his right arm, and he was fairly certain that several teeth had come loose. His So’HIp had been torn to ribbons, and was now taking on the colors of the blood that covered what was left of it.
It was the best he had felt in years.
Still focusing past the pain that he knew intellectually was in his entire chest and right arm, he leaned down, grabbed the san-chera by the scruff of the neck with his left hand, and pulled.
The beast did not move.
Toq closed his eyes. He put the pain aside, as Lorgh had taught him. He gathered his strength.
He was a Klingon. He had defeated his prey. Now he must take it back and claim the prize. The captain, the ship, his crewmates, the Empire were all counting on him. The moment Worf had taken him on his first hunt seven years ago led him on a road that brought him to this place, and his greatest triumph as a hunter. He would not fail now.
Screaming his rage, his anger, his determination to the heavens, he again grabbed the san-chera and pulled.
This time, the dead creature was lifted from the ground.
Resting the creature’s head on his shoulders, Toq started walking eastward, dragging the san-chera behind him.
Hours passed in a haze. The first of the suns set. Toq trudged through the underbrush. Recalling that this planet, according to his scans, was rich in koltanium, he occasionally wondered if the san-chera were made of that superdense ore, so heavy was the weight of the prize on his back.
But he continued onward.
His legs felt like bricks. He had no idea how he managed to keep them moving. All feeling had fled from his chest, right arm, neck, and stomachs. It was as if he were a head floating over two legs, somehow carrying the weight of a massive animal that seemed to grow heavier with each second. Indistinct brown-and-green shapes that he assumed were trees and bushes swam in his field of vision, but he simply trudged past or through them, uncaring. What energy he had was devoted solely to the task of moving forward.
Finally, he arrived at the first city of the San-Tarah—what the natives called their Prime Village. Klingons and Children of San-Tarah both stared openmouthed and silently at him. Or perhaps the roar of blood in his ears drowned out whatever they might have been saying.
In the center of the Prime Village stood Me-Larr and other members of their Ruling Pack. Klag and B’Oraq were also present. The latter rushed to Toq’s side as soon as he dropped the san-chera at the feet of his captain.
“I bring you the prize, Captain. May it bring honor and glory to our—”
Toq found himself unable to continue speaking. Or standing. He collapsed to the ground.
As B’Oraq ministered to him, Toq caught sight of another san-chera. Its shaggy coat was a light brown. It had been decapitated, its head resting on a pike not far from the body.
It was also but three-quarters of the size of the san-chera Toq had subdued.
Me-Larr spoke, and even through his exhaustion and the pain that he could no longer keep in check, Toq heard the astonishment in the alien’s voice. “You have brought down the chera-mak.”
“What is the significance of that?” Toq heard Klag ask.
“It is the greatest of the san-chera. It has even been known to eat the flesh of the Children of San-Tarah. Our cubs tell stories of the chera-mak to frighten each other . It had been believed unconquerable.”
“You will find, Me-Larr, that the Klingon Empire considers nothing unconquerable—simply not yet conquered.”
“Perhaps, Captain Klag, perhaps. In any event, the first contest goes to you.”
Toq thought he heard a cheer of “Victory!” as he fell unconscious, but he wasn’t entirely sure….
CHAPTER NINE
Leknerf sighed as the scanner picked up six more grapok-sauce stains on the mess hall’s rear bulkhead. At this rate, he thought, I’m going to be here all night.
Quartermaster had, of course, chosen the night after both gagh and racht had been served for dinner to be the one when the mess hall got its regular scrubdown. This meant that Leknerf would be spending most of the night seeking, locating, and destroying any grapok -sauce stains before they had the chance to draw vermin. Other sauces were easier to clean up because they tended to spill in clumps. But, since grapok sauce was favored for the serpentine foodstuffs, it tended to spatter in little droplets all over the place. Most of the stains couldn’t even be seen with the naked eye—especially given how maddeningly dark Klingons kept their rooms—hence the need for a scanner to find them all.
Gripping the stain remover with one tentacle, the elderly Pheben examined the readout with one of his three eyestalks to verify that it was set for grapok sauce, then placed the device on the wall and activated it. Seconds later, all the sauce in the immediate vicinity had been reduced to its component atoms.
Still, as jobs went, it could have been worse. At least Leknerf had a place to sleep, regular meals, and a steady if small paycheck. It was better than some jeghpu’wI’ could hope for. As natives of worlds conquered by the Klingon Empire, jeghpu’wI’ occupied the lowest stratum of Klingon society. Even Houseless nonwarrior Klingons had higher places by virtue of being of the right species. All jeghpu’wI’ could hope for was work that was beneath even the lowliest of Klingons.
However, Leknerf had little to complain about—especially now. With the end of the Dominion War, assignments to Defense Force vessels were much less risky than they had been. Many of Leknerf’s friends had suffered the same fate at the hands of the Jem’Hadar that the grapok sauce had at Leknerf’s own tentacles during those terrible two years. Leknerf had been lucky in that most of his assignments had been to space stations and planetside bases. He didn’t draw a shipboard job until the last few weeks of the war, and that vessel made it through with barely a scratch.
As Leknerf turned one of his eyestalks to the scanner to search for more sauce stains, the sound of the mess-hall door opening reached his ear. A second eyestalk swiveled toward the noise to see Commander Kurak enter. Leknerf’s objection to the intrusion died on his tongues. For one thing, while he could sometimes get the crew to stay out of the mess hall during a cleanup period, he had no chance of ever convincing an officer to abide by that rule. Quartermaster, perhaps, could keep one of them out, but not a lowly jeghpu’wI’ maintenance drudge.
Besides, Leknerf liked Kurak. She was one of the few Klingons on the entire ship who even paid attention to him, and the only one of those who was ever nice to him.
“Greetings, Commander,” he said. Phebens’ two-tongued mouths meant they pronounced the Klingon language with a noticeable lisp, though Leknerf had made an effort to curtail that lisp as much as possible—if for no other reason than to avoid the inevitable gibes from Klingons on the subject.
“Hello, Leknerf. I’m sorry for intruding on your cleaning, but I crave some rokeg blood pie.”
“Of course, Commander,” he said as the scanner picked up some more droplets of sauce in the seam between bulkhead and deck. That’s going to be a challenge for the remover, he thought as he applied the device.
“Computer, activate replicator, authorization Kurak wa’maH Soch chorgh vagh.”
The replicator in the center of the mess hall, shut down at this late hour in the midst of the second shift, hummed to life at the sound of Kurak’s voice and access code.
“Rokeg blood pie.” She turned to Leknerf. “Would you like to join me?”
“I can’t, I’m afraid. Quartermaster said this place had to be spotless by the time first shift starts or he’d slice off a tentacle.”
Kurak snorted. “That’s novel. I would’ve thought he’d just threaten t
o kill you.”
“No, ma’am. Quartermaster says jeghpu’wI’ don’t get honorable deaths.”
Walking over to a table proximate to Leknerf’s location, holding a plate with an entire blood pie occupying its center, Kurak said, “Typical.”
“Suits me, ma’am. He cuts off a tentacle, it grows back. He kills me, I pretty much stay dead.”
“Your tentacles grow back?” Kurak asked as she sat. “I didn’t know that.”
Leknerf didn’t have anything he could really say in response to that, so he moved on to the next set of stains—this time it was bloodwine, which was halfway up the bulkhead and on the ceiling. Leknerf had long since abandoned trying to figure out how the stains in the mess hall came about. His imagination just wasn’t that good, and, on the few occasions where he’d found out, the reality was far more bizarre than anything he could come up with.
After a moment, Kurak spoke through a mouthful of pie. “I have to admit, Leknerf, I envy you sometimes.”
“Can’t imagine why, ma’am,” Leknerf said honestly while he waited for the remover to vaporize the bloodwine.
“Your tasks are simple, your responsibilities nonexistent. There are times when I crave that even more than I’m craving this blood pie right now.” She took another bite.
“I suppose, ma’am, but at least you can leave whenever you want.”
“Not really.”
Leknerf frowned. “How’s that?” The scanner found more grapok sauce in a corner. Leknerf set the remover back to sauce from bloodwine and applied it.
“Family obligations. Right now, I am the only able-bodied member of my House who can serve, so I must do so. I had hoped that the war ending would have relieved me of that, but I am not so fortunate.” She took another bite of pie. “It could have been worse, I suppose. We could have lost the war.”
Wincing at the bits of blood pie that were shooting onto the floor because of Kurak’s talking with her mouth full, Leknerf said, “Suppose that could be viewed as worse, yeah.”
“You disagree?”
The remover finished with the sauce. “From my point of view, ma’am, the difference between cleaning up after Klingons and cleaning up after Jem’Hadar isn’t much. In fact, it’s probably easier, since I hear that Jem’Hadar don’t eat.”
Kurak laughed at that. “An excellent point.” She stopped laughing, and let out a long breath. “I still wish sometimes—”
She cut herself off. “Wish what, ma’am?” Leknerf prompted. He really didn’t care much what Kurak wished, but he enjoyed the pleasant conversation. He had so few of them, after all.
“You’re familiar with what’s happening down on the planet?”
The scanner located an upended plate of heart of targ that had gotten wedged under one of the tables. Leknerf started moving chairs aside. “I’ve heard people talking about it. Some sort of competition between us and the aliens down on the planet. I heard Lieutenant Toq won the first one.”
“Yes, a hunting exercise. I’m told the animal he captured made a fine feast.”
One eyestalk turned toward Kurak, signaling Leknerf’s surprise. “You weren’t there?”
“All things being equal, I’d rather stay on the ship. The last thing I want to do is leave those imbeciles under my command alone in the engine room.”
“Ah.” Leknerf, having cleaned up the heart of targ remains, slithered over to the dirty-plate bin. A mechanism would carry the dish he deposited there to the galley, where it would be cleaned.
“Unfortunately, the second contest is a different matter. It’s maritime combat.”
Leknerf had no idea what that meant, and said so.
Kurak chuckled, spitting more pieces of the blood pie onto the floor. “I suppose you wouldn’t know. The aliens down there still use boats to travel across water.”
“Boats?”
“Yes, vessels made of wood that are powered by the wind.”
“Why not just swim?”
Again, Kurak chuckled. “It is difficult to move people in bulk that way.”
“You’d know more about it than I would,” Leknerf said, though he still didn’t understand why you’d use one of those boat things when you could swim.
“Yes, and that’s the point.”
Now Leknerf was completely confused. “What do you mean?”
Kurak waited until she swallowed a piece of pie before continuing. “Long ago, Klingons also used wind boats. My family has several such—antiques in our possession. They’ve been restored, and my mother taught me how to operate them when I was a girl.” Kurak smiled. “I always enjoyed that—taking one out onto the River of Tolnat. I haven’t been back on a wind boat since before the war.” The smile fell. “Now, several of my shipmates have been assigned to take one of these boats and engage in sea combat against the aliens. They’re using a primitive projectile weapon.” She shook her head. “There is a huge difference between navigating at sea and in space. Leskit has been assigned to do so, and he will get them all killed.”
“I thought you Klingons liked dying in battle.”
“Some do.” She took another bite of pie. “But at the very least, they should die well. There is no glory in dying while making an idiot of yourself. And that is what they will do, unless—”
The scanner told Leknerf that the only stains left on this side of the mess hall were those recently made by Kurak. “Unless what?” he prompted when Kurak’s hesitation went on for several seconds.
“Unless I volunteer.”
“So why don’t you?”
Slamming her fist into the table, Kurak said, “Because I do not want to! I hate this ship, I hate the Defense Force, I hate this mission! I want nothing to do with any of it! I certainly have no interest in furthering the cause of this foolish combat ritual that the captain and the aliens have concocted.” Then she leaned back in her chair. “And yet, the sea is calling to me. It would be an opportunity to enjoy myself for the first time since I joined the Defense Force, and probably the last chance I will have to do so before this obscene mission ends.” Kurak looked up at Leknerf. “I do not know what to do.”
To Leknerf’s surprise, it seemed that Kurak was looking to him for advice. This took Leknerf aback, and he needed almost a full minute to formulate his reply. “Commander, you’re looking for advice on how to choose. I’m jeghpu’wI’. I’ve never made a choice in my life. I just do what they tell me.”
Kurak stared at the Pheben for several more seconds. Then, throwing her plate and what was left of the blood pie on the floor, she made a disparaging noise and stormed out of the mess hall.
Sighing, Leknerf slithered over to the plate and reset the remover for rokeg blood pie.
B’Oraq sat on one of the rocks that overlooked the large body of water—which the Children of San-Tarah simply called the Great Sea—munching on a local fruit and a piece of leftover san-chera from the night before. The twin suns baked the surface in refreshing heat, the wind blowing in from the sea to keep that heat from being overly oppressive.
Of the five contests, this was the one that B’Oraq was at once eagerly anticipating and dreading. The former because she’d seen wind boats—humans called them SeylIng SIp s—when she was at Starfleet Medical. One of her classmates had taken her to a display at the Hudson River on Earth that was truly a glorious sight: travel with no propulsion save what nature provided.
The dread derived from her shipmates’ near-total lack of experience with wind boats.
Only Kurak knew anything about such endeavors—and wasn’t that a surprise to one and all? B’Oraq thought with a smile—and she was but one of ten who were assigned to the boat. In fact, Klag had put her in charge, despite the fact that Kornan, also, was given wind-boat duty and he outranked her. Kornan, however, was willing to accept the “demotion,” given the engineer’s proficiency.
“May I join you?”
B’Oraq looked up to see an older member of the Ruling Pack standing nearby—at least B’Oraq assumed he
r to be older, given the gray that flecked her otherwise brown fur. The doctor had not heard the alien approach, and even now, the San-Tarah kept a respectful distance.
Since an attack was unlikely under these circumstances, and there was plenty of room on the rock, B’Oraq said, “Yes.” As the San-Tarah sat on the other end of the rock—as far from B’Oraq as possible—the doctor said, “I am B’Oraq, the ship’s doctor.”
“I am Te-Run, Elder of the Ruling Pack. I’m afraid I don’t understand the word ‘doctor.’ ”
“My purpose is to heal the injured, cure the sick.”
Te-Run said nothing in reply to that; indeed, she said nothing at all. B’Oraq wondered why the old woman had chosen to sit with her.
Finally, B’Oraq spoke. “May I ask a question?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you have these wind boats? I was under the impression that you lived off the land.”
“During the warm times, we do. When the weather grows cold, prey is sparse, and the plants wither. Before that time, we go on the Great Hunt. Across the Great Sea are the san-reak.” Te-Run bared her teeth. “They make the san-chera look like insects. One san-reak can feed all the Children of San-Tarah for an entire cold season. But it takes many hunters to subdue one, and they only live on an island across the sea.”
Nodding in understanding, B’Oraq said, “So once a year, you use the wind boats to bring warriors to the hunt?”
“Yes.”
“Then why the weapons? What are they called, tallyn?”
“Yes. The san-goral live in the Great Sea and will sometimes feast on its travelers. The tal-lyn are to protect the Children of San-Tarah from the san-goral.”
I.K.S. Gorkon Book One: A Good Day to Die Page 13