DIPLOMATIC IMPLAUSIBILITY

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Wu nodded. “Of course.”

  To Worf’s surprise, Krevor, standing in the still-open doorway, spoke. “Why investigate them?”

  Worf regarded her. “An interesting question. Do you think I should not, Bekk?”

  Krevor quickly stood at full attention. “My apologies, sir. I spoke out of turn.”

  “You did not answer my question. Please, come in and speak freely.”

  With only a hint of hesitation, Krevor entered the room, the door closing behind her. “Prime Minister em’Rlakun is obviously loyal to the empire. As is Governor Tiral.”

  “So you feel that my investigating them is disloyal?”

  “I didn’t say that, sir.”

  “No, but you did think it.” Holding up a hand to stave off Krevor’s protest, Worf added, “It is all right, Bekk. Your confusion is understandable. Prime Minister em’Rlakun does appear to be loyal. But appearances are deceiving, and I believe that she was lying to us—both regarding her loyalty, and regarding her knowledge of the rebels. I wish to confirm my suspicions.”

  “I have something, Mr. Ambassador.” Wu held up his padd. “It’ll take a while to do a complete search, of course, but the governor did specifically request three months ago that the prime minister put a stop to all seditious publications. The governor, in fact, made it the parliament’s top priority.” He handed Worf the padd. “Since that time, the number of seditious publications has risen. Dramatically. Now, admittedly, that could just be due to incompetence on the prime minister’s part. . . .”

  Gazing at the padd, Worf said, “Perhaps. But I doubt it. Keep searching. Meanwhile, I will investigate those rebel movement reports that em’Rlakun claimed did not help her or Tiral.”

  “May I be of service, sir?” Krevor asked.

  Worf looked at the guard. He was tempted to make use of her—but he wasn’t sure he could trust her any more than he could Tiral’s guards. Klag had made his disdain for Worf quite clear, and Krevor could be one of his agents.

  “That is not necessary. You may return to your station.”

  Krevor nodded, and took her position outside.

  Chapter Five

  “WHY IS IT THAT EVERY TIME I see you, brother, you’re eating something?”

  Kori laughed at the image of his brother Larok, an action that caused him to spit some of his stewed bok-rat liver onto the viewscreen. Wiping the food away with his hand didn’t help—it left a liver stain right on Larok’s wide forehead and the right half of his brown mane.

  “Bad timing, brother.”

  “No, I think it’s just that you’re always eating. Havenothing better to do on that freezer unit of a planet?”

  Again, Kori laughed. “The planet’s called taD. Since you’re patrolling this sector, Captain, you should know that.”

  It was rare that Kori got to speak in real time with his older sibling. But Captain Larok of the I.K.S. Sompek was in this sector, so instant communication was possible for a change. Since Kori had gotten the job on taD at the topaline refinery, his contact with family was sporadic.

  Mostly, that was how he liked it.

  “Of course, my heartfelt apologies, brother,” Larok said with a small laugh. “Oh, you’ll be happy to knowthat Command finally saw fit to send me a new gunner.She’s quite a woman. You’d like her—she has hair thecolor of flames.”

  Kori leaned forward. “Sounds nice. I don’t suppose you could come here and introduce me to her?”

  “And risk incurring the wrath of the Hero of Marcanand the son of Martok? Not even for your libido would Ido that, Kori.”

  Frowning, Kori asked, “Martok’s the new chancellor, right?”

  Larok shook his head. “Sometimes, brother, I despair of you.”

  “I just don’t follow politics.” Kori shrugged. “Mine is a simple existence: I wake up, Grul yells at me, I yell at the al’Hmatti, and at the end of the day, we’ve refined more topaline, and I go to sleep.”

  “And no doubt you’ll die in your sleep.” Larok sneered as he spoke. “If Father were alive today ...”

  “But he isn’t, is he? He died a glorious death fighting the Romulans. Mother died a glorious death fighting the Cardassians, and our dear sister died a glorious death fighting the Jem’Hadar. I’m sure you’ll get your glorious death soon enough. And I’ll be right here, eating my bokrat liver and living happily on.”

  “You’ll suffer in Gre’thor, brother, and your life ofleisure has not prepared you for living amongst the dishonored dead. We, however—”

  “I know, I know,” Kori interrupted, “you’ll all be in Sto-Vo-Kor. The sad thing is, you really believe that.”

  Larok’s face darkened, and he started to speak. Then he took a breath and let out another laugh. “Must we always have this argument?”

  Kori shook his head. “Apparently, we must.” A light on his console beeped. “I’m afraid I must go, brother. Duty calls.”

  “As does mine.”

  “And I still think you should stop by here and introduce me to that redheaded gunner of yours.”

  “Perhaps after the Gorkon has departed, if we’re stillin the sector.”

  “Your generosity, brother, is overwhelming. Screen off.”

  Larok’s laughing face faded from the screen, leaving only the liver stain.

  Stuffing the last of the liver into his mouth, Kori called up a status report to see why the alarm had lit. It turned out to be a minor problem with the load from the southern tap.

  Thumbing the intercom, he said, “Ge’Tvrona.”

  An angular al’Hmatti face appeared on the screen. “Yes, Kori? What’s so funny?”

  The liver stain obscured ge’Tvrona’s right eye, and Kori found it highly amusing for some reason. “Nothing,” he said quickly, forcing a serious expression onto his face. He was a supervisor, after all. “There’s some sort of problem with the load from the southern tap. It’s not going through the processor properly. See what the problem is. We haven’t been late with a shipment yet; I don’t want to start now.”

  “Of course.”

  “And when you’re done, stop by my office. The shift ends in an hour, and I could use some help with this last bottle of bloodwine.”

  Ge’Tvrona bared his teeth. “Excellent! I look forward to it!”

  “Screen off.”

  Kori leaned back in his comfortable chair and rested his hands on his ample belly. It’ll be good to share some bloodwine with ge’Tvrona. Kori liked the al’Hmatti who worked for him, and they liked him. All in all, they weren’t bad, for jeghpu’wI’.

  He gazed around the tiny office that barely fit his corpulent form, the console, and the chair he sat in. It may have been small, but dammit, it was his office. And he was content. Let Lorak get himself killed out there in space in the mistaken belief that there’d be a reward at the end. Dead was dead, as far as Kori was concerned. He’d rather sit here and drink bloodwine with his friends.

  Another alarm went off. He checked his console, but nothing was indicated. Then he realized that it was the red light over the door. Kori had never seen that light go off, and it took him a few moments to remember that it meant an intruder alert.

  Why would we have intruders here? We’re a refineryon the hind end of an ice planet that nobody gives a targ’s hoof about.

  Of course, there were all those reports about rebel activity that Supervisor Grul kept yelling at him to read. I suppose I should read them at some point, but why bother? It’s not as if it affects me directly.

  Leaning forward in his chair, Kori went through the computer to find the procedure for what to do in case of an intruder alert.

  Then he heard disruptor blasts.

  At least, Kori assumed they were disruptor blasts. They certainly sounded like a blaster of some sort, but Kori didn’t recognize it. Since Kori knew every sound that every piece of machinery in the refinery made, he knew it wasn’t just one of the lasers malfunctioning.

  This is bad.

  Suddenly, th
e viewscreen lit up again, this time with Takus’s face. Takus was the chief engineer, and the calmest person Kori had ever met. So the look of panic on his face rather surprised him.

  “There is a bomb in the refinery, repeat, there is abomb in the refinery! Grab a weapon and abandon therefinery—and if you see any rebel scum, shoot them onsight!”

  “Rebel scum?” Kori cried, but Takus wasn’t on a two-way channel.

  “Kiln and I are going to try to disarm it. Everyoneelse, get out of here—but take as many of those rebels asyou can!”

  “Why are rebels attacking us?” Kori asked, but Takus’s face had already faded. Not that he would have answered in any case.

  The power went out in the office. Since the office had no windows, the room was now plunged into pitch darkness. Kori hated the dark, and felt a panic well up inside him.

  The green emergency lights went on after a moment, alleviating the panic.

  But he was still frightened.

  Calm down, he told himself. What would Larok do?

  He thought a moment. Exactly what he was told: grab a weapon and abandon the refinery.

  Kori reached under the chair and grabbed the disruptor that Grul had made him keep there. Then he went to the door, opened the panel next to it, and pulled the emergency lever. The door obligingly slid open.

  The corridor, like his office, was bathed in dim green light. It had been years since Kori had actually fired a disruptor, and the weapon’s weight felt odd in his hand. He would have preferred to be holding one of his bloodwine bottles.

  Panic started to overtake him again when he realized that, if the bomb went off, he’d lose his bloodwine. He’d spent a fortune on it. . . .

  Stop it, he admonished himself again. Just get out ofhere. Worry about the rest of it later.

  Turning a corner, he heard a roar. He whirled to see an al’Hmatti leaping at him. Crying out in panic, he fired his disruptor—

  —and absolutely nothing happened.

  The al’Hmatti collided with him, and they both fell to the floor. Kori couldn’t breathe, as the impact had knocked the wind out of him.

  Whoever this al’Hmatti was, Kori didn’t recognize him. True, most of them looked more or less alike to him, but he’d never met one with the fur on its cheek shaved like that.

  It climbed up onto all fours, straddling Kori. “Time to die, Klingon,” it said.

  Then it spasmed, glowed a dark red color, and fell on top of Kori.

  The impact of its dead weight was, if anything, worse than when it attacked. “Get this thing off me!” he cried. He hoped that the person who had shot the al’Hmatti—he was pretty sure that red glow was from a disruptor blast, though the green light made it seem darker than usual—could hear him. He didn’t have sufficient breath to yell again.

  After a moment, when Kori was convinced he’d be trapped under this damn creature forever, someone rolled the dead al’Hmatti off his stomach.

  “Kori,” said the Klingon who now stood over him. It was one of the new security guards that the governor had appointed—Kori couldn’t remember his name. “I should have known.” The guard picked up Kori’s disruptor and examined it. “This is out of power, you toDSaH!”

  No wonder it didn’t work, Kori thought, yanking the disruptor out of the guard’s hands. He looked down at the al’Hmatti corpse. “I’ve lived on this planet for a year, but I never appreciated how big they are before.”

  “I’ll escort you out. Move!” The guard didn’t sound pleased with the idea, but Kori was relieved. He didn’t relish facing crazed al’Hmatti armed only with a useless disruptor.

  They ran through the corridors, Kori trying to keep up with the thinner, younger guard.

  “Hurry up, you fat fool,” the guard said, “or I’ll leave you behind.”

  “Hey, you’re supposed to do this kind of thing. I’m supposed to sit in an office.”

  “And eat all the bok-rat liver you can find,” the guard said, spitting disdainfully. “You make me ill.”

  They turned a corner to see another al’Hmatti. “Die, rebel!” the guard said, but Kori recognized the al’Hmatti as ge’Tvrona.

  He said, “No, don’t shoot! He’s all right, he works here, he’s a friend.”

  “A friend? He’s jeghpu’wI’.” But the guard did lower his disruptor.

  Ge’Tvrona loped toward them on all fours. “What’s going on, Kori?”

  “Some rebels are attacking. They put a bomb somewhere. Takus and Kiln are trying to disarm it now. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Damn,” ge’Tvrona said.

  Then he turned and mauled the guard, slicing his throat open with a quick slash.

  Kori stood in shock as the guard fell to the ground, blood pouring from his neck. The guard tried to get off a disruptor shot, but it fired harmlessly into the ceiling.

  “Ge’Tvrona, what’re you doing?”

  “Killing a Klingon. It seems to be the only way to get rid of you.” There was a harshness to ge’Tvrona’s voice that Kori had never heard before.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course not. You’ve never understood us. You just rape our planet.”

  “I—ge’Tvrona, I thought we were friends!”

  “Friends?” Ge’Tvrona let out a nasty laugh. “I’m jeghpu’wI’.”

  Then ge’Tvrona grabbed the guard’s disruptor, stood on his hind legs, and shot Kori.

  Every nerve in Kori’s body felt like it was set on fire.

  Then he felt nothing. He knew he had collapsed to the ground because now all he could see was the green-tinged ceiling, but he felt no impact. The green light started to fade to black.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” a distant voice that must have been ge’Tvrona’s said. “I’m afraid the shipment’s going to be late.” A laugh followed. Then: “This is ge’Tvrona. The Klingons are trying to disarm the bomb. You’d better send someone down there.”

  Kori heard nothing after that.

  After a moment, he saw nothing.

  The faint ozone smell that always lingered in the refinery faded, as did the scent of the guard’s blood.

  Even the taste of the bok-rat liver faded from his tongue.

  His last thought was: I hope I was wrong about the afterlife.

  Tiral paced agitatedly around Klag’s office on the Gorkon as Worf gave the governor and the captain a report of the meeting with em’Rlakun and the follow-up research he and Wu had done. Actually, it was more of a waddle than a pace, given Tiral’s girth. Also present was one of Tiral’s guards—Klag had asked that he remain outside with Krevor and Klag’s own guard, but Tiral had insisted that the guard had to be in the same room with him any time he left the confines of the satellite. To Worf’s relief, Klag had at least convinced Tiral to order the guard to holster his disruptor.

  As Worf suspected, the prime minister had performed very few of the tasks Tiral had assigned her that directly related to dealing with the rebels. Worf handed Tiral the padd on which Wu had compiled the report. Tiral glanced at it, then snarled and threw it across the room. Worf had anticipated this action, which was why he had transferred the report to one of the Gorkon’s padds.

  “She will die immediately,” Tiral said.

  “That would be unwise,” said Worf. “Then the rebels will know we are on to them, and they will go deeper into hiding. As it is, there has been no rebel activity since the Gorkon’s arrival yesterday.”

  “That could be a coincidence,” Tiral said.

  “Possibly. But it is more likely that they are keeping a low profile as long as the Defense Force has an official presence here—and they would not wish to create a bad impression on the very Federation representative they have asked for. But as long as they think that we do not know of their inside person, they will believe they have an advantage. And they have quite a large one, as it is.”

  Klag frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I have studied the reports the governor’s security st
aff made regarding rebel activity. The rebels have been surprisingly successful, and the governor has had great difficulty in capturing any of them.”

  Glaring at the governor, Klag said, “Perhaps that can be attributed to poor management.”

  “Watch your tone, Captain,” Tiral said.

  “My tone?” Klag stood up from his desk. “When I first arrived here last week, Governor, you were more than happy to blame the High Council for your misfortunes. Since I came back, however, it seems to me that most of the blame can be laid at your feet.”

  Worf stepped in. “The answer to why the rebels are so successful cannot be found so simply, Captain. No one is capable of that level of incompetence.” Both men looked inquisitively at Worf. “As I said, I have studied the reports. The rebels have appeared seemingly out of nowhere and returned there when they were finished. There is no evidence of any kind of transporting technology at work—all sensor scans have turned up negative. While it is true that the governor’s security force is made up primarily of Defense Force rejects and cowards, they are generally capable of reading a simple scanner.”

  Tiral cursed. “I should have known. I appealed to your sense of honor, Captain. Instead, I get lies, insults, and slander against my staff!”

  “If I commit slander, Governor,” Worf said, walking over to pick up the padd Tiral had thrown, “then so do you. I merely quoted your last report to the High Council.”

  Worf thumbed the padd over to the appropriate report and handed it to Tiral. The governor regarded the padd’s screen, and his own words, angrily.

  Klag sat back down at his desk. “Since you say that putting the prime minister to death is unwise, Ambassador, I assume you have an alternative? Beyond simply leaving her alive so as not to alert the rebels, that is.”

  “Yes.” Worf took the padd back from the scowling Tiral. “I suggest that Commander Drex be assigned temporarily to Governor Tiral, in order to aid him in putting the rebels down. It will not raise suspicions among the rebels, as it is the sort of assignment one might expect.”