STAR TREK: DS9 - The Left Hand of Destiny, Book Two

by J. G. Hertzler

  No one responded to his command; he heard instead an agonized shout, then a sharp scream as the navigator’s panel exploded into metal and plastic shards. Martok ducked as soon as he saw the blue-white light, and felt something graze his temple.

  “Engineer—reroute the conn to me!” It was a long shot; he could run most of the bridge functions from the controls in his chair, but Martok could smell the fried insulation of overloaded power couplings and the sharp metal tang of coolant leaks. Morjod’s first attack had been superbly aimed. He knew precisely where to hit a cruiser like the Ch’Tang to destroy bridge functions.

  Someone scrambled up off the deck behind Martok and clawed his way to the engineer’s panel. A combination of familiar curse words and general verbal abuse indicated that Darok was still among the living. “Navigation routed to your chair,” he shouted. “Impulse only! Warp core is offline for ... three minutes!”

  Three minutes? Martok brought up the nav system. It might as well be three months! There was no way the ship could survive another fusillade, let alone the four or five Morjod could offer up in three minutes. “Tactical! Where’s the Chak’ta?!”

  “Scanners are offline, Captain!”

  Emergency lights flickered on, died, then came back on again. The gravity sputtered once more, but then Martok felt himself drawn down firmly into his chair.

  [110] “Visual?”

  Darok remained silent for several seconds while Martok listened to the ship groan and strain around him. A quick check of the damage-control systems told him everything he needed to know. Ch’Tang was dying. It was only a matter of whether she would hold together long enough for Martok to take some measure of revenge.

  Then the main monitor flickered to life, casting enough light to enable the captain to see what was left of the bridge and her crew. The conn and navigation stations were destroyed, their officers cut into ribbons when the panels exploded. The injured communication officer, her face smudged with blood oozing from a gash on her forehead, was gamely trying to raise any of the three other ships. Everyone else save Darok was either dead or so badly injured that manning a station was impossible.

  It doesn’t matter, Martok thought. I only need to know which way to point her. “A picture, Darok,” he shouted. “Static does me no good.”

  “Look now,” Darok bellowed, his voice growing hoarse from the smoke. “Dead ahead!”

  The picture wavered, the static shuffled from side to side, then finally cleared until Martok saw her: the Chak’ta, her fore guns glowing brightly, prepared to release another volley. Two light cruisers flanked her just beneath her bow. It would be difficult, but Martok thought he could thread the needle, make it past the light cruisers and into the Chak’ta’s bow before the guns tore him apart.

  Martok fed the coordinates into the system, feeling a sense of nIb’poH as the collision course was locked. Unfortunately, he thought, Worf isn’t here to beam us all down to Ketha this time. His finger hovered over the Engage button as he looked around the bridge one last [111] time. Allowing himself one luxury, he glanced back at Darok, who was busy trying to find cower somewhere in the great shivering hulk the Ch’Tang had become. “Get ready, old man,” he shouted. “We’re going to go see your mother!”

  Darok gestured toward the viewer. “You first,” he said.

  Laughing, Martok leaned forward, his back and neck straining as if the ship needed his muscles to fly. He was ready, he decided sadly, ready to die in a bright white flash, the kind he had so often seen on the edge of a blade.

  Over the comm, a familiar voice shouted, “Long live the Klingon Empire!” A fierce joy rose in Martok’s heart ... and then crashed and burned.

  On the monitor, a ship surged into view, cutting a diagonal path across the course Martok had plotted, impulse engines blasting at full power, disrupters blazing, and torpedoes flying in every direction, and with a certainty, Martok knew whose voice had been shouting a benediction to the empire.

  “SIRELLA!” he cried out as the Orantho rammed the light cruisers flanking the Chak’ta.

  On impact, a fierce explosion ripped through Orantho, torpedoes exploding in their tubes, and her bow section tearing away at the joint where it met the main hull. Now inertia’s toy, the bow section spun up against the Chak’ta’s shields and rebounded into space. Cut off from its brain, the remainder of the hull became nothing more than a careening hulk. Her engines flared, then died, and she began a slow, inexorable slide into the first cruiser’s underbelly. No shield generators or repulsion devices could withstand the kilotons of pressure, and the cruiser’s hull plating gave way in a spectacular shower [112] of sparks and released atmosphere. A critical energy conduit was severed and the cruiser died on the spot.

  The pilot of the second cruiser must have had enough warning or preternaturally sharp reflexes, because he was able to shift the bow of his craft away from the straining Orantho, but fate was not kind to him despite his skills. A stray torpedo from one of the ships—it was impossible to say which—detonated less than a ship’s length from her bow. The force of the explosion ripped through the hull plating and surged down the superstructure into the engineering hull and out through the engine manifolds. Martok recognized the chain reaction from other battles and knew that even as he watched, the engineering section was being flooded with coolant that would race down the unshuttered ventilation system. Anyone still alive on the ship would be dead in minutes, its interior a contaminated ruin.

  But luck was with the Chak’ta and her master that day. Possibly with intent, but more likely without knowing what they were doing, the shifting courses of both the cruisers blocked the force of the explosions. Chak’ta’s engines glowed brightly as she strained to pull away and Martok watched as the ship disappeared behind a cloud of glittering dust and debris.

  Martok looked down at his hand and saw that his hand still hovered over the Engage button. If he pushed it now, he might find his way through the wreckage, might be able to phi Chak’ta on the spike of his bow like a boy spearing a fish.

  You might, a voice taunted him, but your vision isn’t what it once was, husband. If you miss, what then?

  She was dead.

  He kept waiting for something to die inside him, for [113] his heart to harden like stone and to crash down in his chest, to crash him from inside, but the damnable thing kept pounding. Sparks danced before his eyes, then the monitor darkened as the Orantho’s engines surrendered to the inevitable and consumed themselves.

  He had always assumed, however foolishly romantic the notion, that when she died, he would know it, feel her loss within himself; his body would then die of its own volition, being severed from the very force that gave it life. But, here he stood, alive—though it was not possible that he live without her.

  “General,” the comm officer called. “The Ya’Vang hails us. Your son requests pursuit of the—”

  Martok snapped his head around. Drex, the fool. He’ll want to attack.

  “Tell him to go to warp if he can,” Martok shouted. “Darok? Has it been three minutes?”

  “As of ... now, yes.”

  Martok looked back down at the Engage button. Tempting, so tempting. I can be with you this day, my lady, he thought longingly. But she would berate him for cowardice, accuse him of abandoning his duty to the empire and leave him, a lone man at the gates. He would rather endure eternity in Gre’thor than roam Sto-Vo-Kor without Sirella.

  He wiped out the command and plotted a new course. “Drex will follow us,” he ordered. “Contact the B’Moth and feed them the rendezvous coordinates, but instruct them to take a different route.” He touched the controls to engage the engines and felt the inertial compensators gasp as the engines ground up to warp nine.

  Having escaped the overload from the exploding [114] ships, the monitor blinked on again and Martok found himself staring at a streaming tunnel of stars. “Is Ya’Vang behind us?”

  “Yes.”

  “B’Moth?”

  “As
ordered,” Darok said, “but following a different course.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Darok paused long, long, too long, as if he was searching for something that wasn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t be there. Finally, he said, “No, Chancellor.” Then more quietly, barely audible above the sparking, chiming, and clattering, “Nothing. Nothing is there.”

  Martok lowered his face into his hands and counted the beats of his pulse in his ears, waiting for his breath to stop, his heart to cease pumping, but it kept going on and on. It shouldn’t be true if she’s gone, he thought, and felt the merciless bite of hope. The bridge section spun away. She might have found an EV suit before the atmosphere escaped. She could still be there. “Alert the Ya’Vang,” he called to the com officer. “Tell them I’m turning back.”

  “Belay that order,” a new voice called.

  “WHAT?!” Martok leapt out of his chair and spun around in midair to face his challenger.

  Kahless stood before him, half the hair on the right side of his head seared away and a bloody stain oozing down over his cheek. His tunic was torn and charred and he cradled his arm against his body. Behind him, Pharh stood hunched over against a bridge rail, pale and gasping for breath.

  “You dare—?” Martok shouted, arms flung wide. “Get off my bridge, old man! You do not rule here!”

  [115] Shaking his head, then wincing in pain from the movement, Kahless said only, “No, I don’t.”

  Deflated, Martok lowered his aims, saying, still angry, “We have to return to search for survivors.”

  Kahless shook his head. “There are no survivors, Martok. I watched—everyone watched—from the engine room.”

  “Sirella might have ...”

  “No,” Kahless said with finality, and suddenly Martok recognized why Worf still considered this vat-grown relic to be the emperor of the Klingon Empire. When he wanted it to, his voice had a depth, a quality that could not be denied. “No one could have survived it. Your lady died to save you. If you honor her memory, you must not throw away her sacrifice on a foolish hope.”

  “But ...” Martok stammered. “But ... I do not feel any different If she was gone, I would know it. I would know. ...”

  Kahless reached out and touched Martok’s hand, and he felt something like a father’s gentle reassurance creep up his arm. “She isn’t gone, Martok. She is a part of you and you cannot be separated any more than I can ever be separated from my Lukara. But you will see her no more in this life. Lady Sirella is dead. Mourn her when you can, but what you would now do does not honor her memory.”

  Flicking a glance over at the comm officer, the sole functioning member of the bridge crew, Martok hissed only, “Cancel the order.” Then silence filled the bridge as Martok grappled with his seething emotions.

  “Martok?” Pharh asked quietly. “Is there anything we can do here?”

  “Check for life signs,” Martok replied. “Take the living to sickbay. The dead ...” He looked around the [116] smoky, rubble-strewn bridge and grimaced. “The dead we will mourn ... when we have time.”

  Hours later, when the bridge was cleared of casualties and the worst of the damage was addressed, Martok called his son.

  “Captain B’Tak is dead,” Drex explained. “I have assumed command.”

  Martok had already learned this from the casualty reports, but his son’s composure surprised him. He had expected to find Drex frothing at the mouth, ready to pursue Morjod with every ounce of strength left in his body. Instead, here was a calm, determined, even dignified ship’s captain. What had happened to Drex on Qo’noS after the Negh’Var had been destroyed? Martok realized he had not had the opportunity to ask and neither was he likely to anytime in the near future.

  “Very well,” Martok said. “And as captain, I have your first task ready for you.” He clicked a control on the arm of his chair and transferred a data file to Drex’s console. “Darok has tapped into one of the Defense Force networks and determined what happened to Ngane’s fleet. The ships we faced were the only ones Morjod was able to find or persuade to join him. Possibly Ngane told the others to flee before he was taken.”

  “The general would do such a thing,” Drex said. “I was assigned to his ship when I was an ensign. He was a great commander.”

  “Something else to avenge, then,” Martok said coldly. “The data I transmitted indicates their last known coordinates. Once we find them, we will go to Boreth. Engage cloak and go to warp eight.”

  Drex studied the data, then nodded. “Very well, [117] Chancellor. A worthy plan. Will the Rotarran know where to find us?”

  “We determined that whoever arrived first in the Boreth system would set a beacon and wait. Worf knows this.”

  “Then I will get under way,” Drex said, turning away from the monitor.

  “Wait! Drex!”

  The captain of the Ya’Vang turned back to look at him. “Yes, Chancellor?”

  Martok struggled to find the words. “Your mother ... She died bravely. ...”

  A tiny crease appeared in a fold of muscle between Drex’s eyes. “Of course she did, Father. She was incapable of less.”

  Again, Martok found himself at a loss for words and again he was surprised at his son’s composure. When did he become this man? He gathered his resources and said, “She was very proud of you, my son. She would be even more proud of you now.”

  A flicker of emotion fled across Drex’s features. He closed his eyes and touched his forehead lightly with the tip of one finger. “Thank you, Father. I will try to honor her pride in me.”

  “I know you will, Drex. Qapla’, Captain.”

  “Qapla’, Chancellor.”

  Martok turned away from the monitor, half expecting to see Kahless and Pharh there again, but they were not. Kahless’s injuries, though not life-threatening, were severe enough to require rest. Pharh had wanted only to return his room to have, he said, “a quiet nervous breakdown.” Good. Martok didn’t want anyone following him around, least of all a Ferengi.

  Darok still manned the tactical station. He hadn’t left [118] the bridge since the battle, not even to procure a cup of bloodwine to soothe his nerves. “Find someone to take your station, old man. We both need rest, and I suspect you could use a drink.”

  “And not you?” Darok asked. “We could drink to her.”

  Martok shook his head. “I will not again drink wine until I am toasting Sirella over Gothmara’s corpse.” He sighed. “Besides, wine brings dreams. I do not wish to dream.”

  “Ever again?”

  Looking around the bridge at all the unfamiliar faces, Martok reflected that this was not the conversation to be having under the circumstances. “Not right now, in any case.”

  Nodding wearily, Darok submitted the call for a relief officer as Martok strode heavily toward the elevator. “I will be in my quarters if I am needed,” the chancellor said.

  “Of course you will,”. Darok said, but it was obvious from his tone that he did not entirely believe this was true.

  The shuttle did not have a name, because Klingons rarely named small craft. When he had been stationed on Deep Space 9, Martok had been surprised to learn that all the Federation runabouts were named and doubly surprised that they were named for anything as quixotic as rivers. Still, now that he was aboard the small ship and guiding it out the Ch’Tang’s hangar door, he found himself wishing to name it, so, in his heart, he named the shuttle after his daughter, Shen.

  Ever since she had been young enough to walk, his middle child had wanted nothing except to fly. One of the lucky few for whom a passion was also a gift, Shen [119] had been an outstanding pilot from her first day in a craft. Martok had pushed her to make a name for herself as a pilot of high-performance experimental ships, but she had decided she could best serve the empire behind the controls of a fighter. Sirella had once told her husband that their daughter had not wanted anyone to think she had been given a prestigious assignment because of her father’s influence, which would h
ave undoubtedly been the case if she had done as Martok wished. “She is happy if she is flying,” Sirella had said. “That is all you need to know.”

  Bowing to his wife’s superior knowledge, Martok had given in.

  And now Shen was dead, her entire wing destroyed by Morjod in the purge of Martok’s House. Then, unexpectedly, the image of a faceless young woman wearing a charred fighter pilot’s uniform flitted through his mind. The vision came on Martok so suddenly that his hands shook on the panel and the hangar’s guidance system momentarily took control of the shuttle and nudged him out the door.

  What was that? he wondered. And why was he left thinking about the last time he had celebrated a birthday with Shen? She had been little more than a child. A cadet, he thought. He remembered the cadet’s uniform.

  Clear of the hangar, Martok engaged the cloak and sped away at top speed. Sighing with relief, he fed Boreth’s coordinates into the autopilot controls and settled back into his seat. He was on his way. Come what may, once again he had no one to take care of except for himself. Drex would find Ngane’s fleet and guide them to Boreth. In the meantime, he would investigate. Prowl around. Perform reconnaissance in preparation of their [120] arrival. He had never considered himself in the role of a spy, but there was a first time for everything.

  The door to the shuttle’s rear compartment slid open and Martok spun around in his chair. Pharh nonchalantly stepped into the pilot’s bay holding a bowl of some kind of steaming stew in one hand and a spoon in the other.

  “Hey, guess what? I finally found something Klingon I like!” He showed the bowl to Martok.

  “That’s borscht,” Martok said. “A human dish. Worf programmed it into the replicator database the last time he served on the Ch’Tang.”

  “Oh. I figured being this color it had to be Klingon.”

  “You’re not the first to comment on that,” Martok said, sighing. “Pharh, what are you doing here?”

  “Where are we going?” Pharh asked, ignoring him.