“Martok,” he called, voice husky with surprise. “Something is wrong.”
“Of course something is wrong,” Martok said, slashing off another strip with his bat’leth. “He’s dying from blood loss. ...”
“No. Something else. Look!”
Martok looked. Morjod had not lapsed into shock. If anything, his movements, jerky before, were becoming positively spastic now. His arms and legs, his entire body, vibrated. Even as they watched, flesh split and reknit around bones that were growing longer and thicker. Martok heard a stretching and snapping noise that could only be tendons.
Morjod began to groan, shaking his head back and forth in quick, sharp wrenching movements. He reached up to his face, but could not move his arms.
Martok tried holding the boy down until the spasms passed, but the tremors became worse. The cuts on Morjod’s face had healed, but now new ones formed as the muscles beneath grew at a furious pace. His teeth shattered as his jaw re-formed; sharp new incisors pierced the raw, pink flesh. The orbits of Morjod’s eyes turned into putrid butter, sloughed away, then seemed [308] to reharden as the eyes themselves grew wider and darker.
“Get away, Worf,” Martok shouted. “A weapon! I need a weapon!”
Whatever hint of intelligence that had once been in Morjod’s eyes faded before the transformation completed. When the body ceased to shiver and shake, the creature, the Hur’q, climbed to its feet and tore at the tatters of clothing still hanging on its lanky body.
Martok rolled to his feet even as the beast that had been Morjod first tried balancing itself on its long legs. No sooner was the Hur’q standing than it swiped one of its long-clawed hands at Martok’s head. The general lifted his arms to block and found that someone had put the Sword of Kahless in his hands. Daring only to glance behind himself for a moment, Martok saw a bent, white-haired warrior step back into the crowd. Darok? he wondered.
Warriors all around them drew their disruptors and aimed at the monster’s head and chest, but Martok shouted, “No one fires!”
No one did. The Hur’q looked from side to side, searching for a way out of the ring, but, finding none, began to hiss at the faces and shining weapons. There was almost, almost a kind of desperate knowledge behind the monster’s movements, as if some sliver of identity still lived within it.
But that could not be true. Martok could not accept that.
Martok stepped forward and the creature stepped back. It raised a weapon and slashed at Martok, but only succeeded in cutting itself on the sword’s edge. [309] Wounded, it howled and drew back, the warriors behind it shuffling out of range of the long, clawed feet.
Then, leaping to the right, Martok waited for the monster’s eyes to track after him so he could flick the blade, shining reflected light into its eyes. Squinting, the Hur’q turned its head away and at that moment, Martok rolled forward under its sweeping arms, leapt up, and pierced its heart with the tip of the blade.
When he had fought Hur’q back on Qo’noS, he had barely been able to cut their flesh with a bat’leth, though admittedly it had been an old blade he had recovered from a city guardsman. The Sword of Kahless, though, easily sliced into the beast’s flesh.
Martok struck a vital organ and the beast that had been his son gasped, falling forward, leaning its weight into the blade. Blood flowed out around Martok’s hands and he saw that it was now a deep indigo blue. She changed even the color of his blood, Martok thought. I will find you, Gothmara, and you will hope that the Fek’lhr of Gre’thor treats you with more mercy than I.
Tugging on the bat’leth, Martok twisted his son onto his back and tried to lower him to the ground as slowly and gently as possible. More blue-black blood gushed up between the creature’s lips and Martok believed it actually sobbed. It extended an open hand, and Martok saw that it held a communicator. Its oversized lips and jaws moved spastically as it tried to form a word, but could not.
Even now, he calls her. Martok took the communicator from his son’s hand. “I am sorry, boy,” he whispered, cradling its head. “I will make it right.”
* * *
[310] In the crowd around the chancellor and his dead son, one of the younger warriors began to raise a cheer, but others turned on the poor, ignorant soul and hushed him. Others waited for Martok to hold open the creature’s eyes and begin the howl, reasoning that as he had done it for the Ferengi, would he not also do it for one who had once been a Klingon? But Martok did not. Instead, he sat for a long, long time with the creature’s head cradled in his lap, head bowed, blood leaking down over his hand and over his legs. He did not mourn openly, not even in the stilted way that Klingons do for the loss of loved ones to illness or untimely death. He appeared to only be meditating, though about what no one would ever be able to say.
Finally, after a time, the wind pierced through even the thickest armor and the assembled warriors began stamping and patting their arms and legs for warmth. The sun headed toward the horizon, though none knew for sure how long it would take to set. To all the day had felt endless.
“What will you do now, my brother?” the Federation diplomat asked at last.
The chancellor lowered the head of his son to the ice, picked up a piece of tattered banner, and cast it over the corpse. Looking at his brother, he growled softly, “Find his mother.”
For the first time since Morjod’s death, Martok saw those standing around him, waiting patiently for their orders. “Go,” he said. “Gather the dead and tend to the wounded before they freeze. The battle is over. We have won.”
And everyone looked around at the cliffs, down through the cleft, out to the plain, and saw the frozen [311] bodies of their brothers and sisters, and realized it was true. But, still, strangely, no one raised a victory shout. They had won, but all understood the price.
Historians said in future ages that this was the moment when the second age of the Klingon Empire began. A single figure, an older man cloaked in gray watched the moment pass, nodded in approval, and began tending to the dead.
21
Martok showed the communicator Morjod had been clutching to Worf and asked, “Assuming he used this to speak to his mother, can you determine where she was?”
Worf studied the device, crumpled around the edges where the mutated Morjod had been clutching it, and put on his pensive face. “A Khac mark seven,” he mused. “Not very durable.”
“I’m not asking for a quartermaster’s review,” Martok replied through gritted teeth.
“I understand, brother,” Worf said, and sighed. “But the casing has been crushed, the interior electronics exposed to the atmosphere ...”
“And ... ?”
“I do not know if there is anything ...”
Alexander, who stood near his father, extended his right hand and asked, “May I?” Worf handed him the communicator. Alexander popped the outer casing away from the electronics, studied the interior for a moment, [313] then pulled out his tricorder. After attaching a pair of leads to the communicator, he tapped on the communicator controls for several moments until a thin wisp of smoke emerged from it.
“You’re burning out the power source,” Worf said.
“I know,” Alexander said, studying his tricorder. Satisfied, he handed both devices to Martok. “All the data is on there.”
Martok looked at the tricorder display. The frequencies of the communicators that last spoke to Morjod’s were listed along with a time and location stamp. “These coordinates?” he asked.
“About three klicks back through the canyon,” Alexander replied, pointing.
Regarding Worf questioningly, Martok asked, “This is the son you’re always worried about?”
Worf, surprised but obviously pleased, shrugged. “Once,” he replied. “But not as much anymore.”
“Good. Assemble the katai and ask them to join me here. To find Gothmara, I will need their familiarity with the terrain.”
Worf nodded and grinned fiercely. “As you command, Chancellor.” He ran d
own the small slope and quickly disappeared into the deepening gloom.
When he was gone, Martok slipped the tricorder into his belt. He asked, “How much cold can this take?”
“More than you can, sir,” Alexander replied. “You’re going after her?”
“Yes,” Martok said, turning up his collar against the wind. “Unless you think you can stop me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, sir. But I will be obliged to tell my father when he returns.”
[314] “I know. But it will take him a little time to catch up. When he does, this will all either be over or ...”
“Right, sir.” Alexander extended his hand in the human fashion and Martok took it. “Good luck, sir.”
“Thank you, Alexander. In the past several years, there have been few acts that I have felt were as uncompromisingly correct as taking your father and you into my house.”
The boy smiled shyly and then his expression turned serious. “Why are you doing this, sir? Why risk yourself? After all, you are the ...”
“I’m the chancellor,” Martok said. “Yes, I know. If my wife were here, she would ...” He paused then and considered. What would Sirella say? He would have to grow accustomed to asking himself that for the remainder of his life. “I believe she would inform me that I am a fool, which is something I already know. All men are fools eventually for something. It’s how we know we are men.”
Alexander laughed at that. “So, the man first and chancellor after?” he asked.
“I would not trust a chancellor who was not a man first. Would you?”
“No,” Alexander said. “Not unless she was a woman.”
Now Martok laughed, then clapped the boy on his back. “You should spend more time with my son, Drex,” he said, wrapping his cloak tighter around him. “He could learn a few things from you.”
With that, he turned and headed up through the cleft to the canyon and the plain beyond. Three kilometers, he thought wistfully, bowing his head against the wind. I am too old for this sort of thing.
None of the ships responded to her call. As the vehicle bounced the last several hundred yards to her hidden [315] compound, Gothmara allowed herself, for the first time that day, to worry. Moments ago, when she had ordered the driver to proceed, she had discovered that he had disappeared, because of desertion or a misunderstanding Gothmara could not guess. Her immediate thought had been I can drive a vehicle, so she climbed in the cab and activated the controls. Unfortunately, she had never figured out how to activate the heater and was now chilled to the bone. Even her fur-lined gloves could not keep out the cold; she worried that her fingertips might be slightly frostbitten. “Fingers are simple enough to repair,” she said to herself. “Once I get back to the lab.”
But was returning to the lab a good idea? Martok knew its location. If Morjod had not been able to defeat him in single combat ... Even if the mutation had occurred as she had planned, Gothmara conceded that Martok might have defeated him. Very frustrating, she thought, fuming. I can’t go back to the lab. Then where?
Ah. Of course. As she had been thinking earlier, her cave compound was not far from here. Much safer in many ways and, best of all, secret. She would use the communication equipment to contact one of the ships and use the Voice on an officer, convince him to beam her aboard. And then? she thought. And then I will fight another day. ... First, she needed to warm up and regroup. Gothmara checked the coordinates on the navigational array (This I configure out, she seethed, but I can’t find the heater!) and changed the vehicle’s heading.
Fifteen minutes later, Gothmara pulled up before the cave mouth and slid out of the driver’s cab, her feet as frozen numb as a pair of ice blocks. Stumbling clumsily, she staggered to the compound’s hidden door and spoke the password to the voiceprint security module. Seconds [316] later, the door opened, releasing a cloud of deliciously warm air. Gothmara hobbled inside and stood before the heating units, her fingers and toes pinched by a not entirely unwelcome ache as blood began flowing again. After several minutes of basking, she whispered, “Thank the gods,” an almost playful squeak of pain in her tone.
“The gods have had nothing to do with this, Gothmara,” Martok said.
Feeling foolish, she closed her eyes. The door, she thought. Very careless, but then, discomfort always makes me less cautious. “Then, our son ...”
“Morjod is dead. Though you hardly have the right to call him son,” Martok intoned portentously. “He gave me this before he died.” Something silver and electronic clinked on the ground near Gothmara’s feet. “I think he wanted me to find you.”
“Why?” Gothmara asked. “So we could reconcile our differences and be reunited?”
“I doubt it,” Martok replied humorlessly.
The man never had any grasp of irony.
“In the end, he knew he had been tricked. I think he wanted me to kill you.”
“Somehow, I doubt that,” Gothmara said. Unless my hold on him slipped even more than I thought. Gothmara unbelted her long cloak and flapped the long tails around herself. “It has grown very warm in here,” she said distractedly, then turned her attention back to Martok. He held the Sword of Kahless before him now, ready for a trick, for a surprise attack. Ready for anything. Almost anything. “Morjod was my puppet even as you once were, my old lover.”
“No,” Martok droned, stepping forward. “Never. You [317] deceived me once, long ago, but never again. In the name of the Klingon people, I hereby charge you with treason and murder. You will accompany me back to Qo’noS to answer for your crimes.”
Gothmara laughed. The man was delightful when he was full of himself. Reaching around to the small of her back, she twisted her hips as if loosening joints and removed a small vial from the inside of her belt. Pinching the top just so, she waved her arm before her and, concentrating, summoned her Voice. “Treason?” she asked. “All I have betrayed was a corrupt government. And murder? Who has died?”
“Who has died?” Martok sputtered. “Who has died? Thousands have died! You murdered my comrades, my daughters, my wife!”
“Wife?” Gothmara asked, her voice filled with confusion. “You are such a simpleton, Martok. Don’t you recognize what’s right in front of you?”
And even as Gothmara said the words, Sirella stepped out from behind a pillar. She wore a pair of manacles on her wrists and appeared disheveled, even underfed, but not too much worse for wear considering how long Gothmara had been holding her prisoner.
Martok blinked. Shook his head, but the figure before him remained the same. Morjod must have beamed her off the ship just before it was destroyed. A trump card that he gave to his mother in case things fell out badly for her. But he would not let the witch manipulate him. She had made her last mistake, taunting him, letting Sirella come within his grasp. Two steps, three at the most, and his love would once again be by his side; he [318] would be able to protect her. His head fairly swam at the prospect of being able to make up for his past errors.
“Sirella,” Martok said, and reached out to her with his right hand, the bat’leth hanging by his left side. “Stand behind me. We’ll free your hands later.”
“As you command, my husband,” Sirella said, and moved into the circle of his arms.
As you command? Martok wondered. What has Gothmara been drugging her with? But he could not resist the temptation to touch her, to encircle his wife in his arms and feel as if, even for a moment, he could protect her.
“My love,” Sirella said, and brought her hands up to his chest. “I have missed you.”
“And I you, Sirella,” Martok replied. “But do not stand between me and that witch or she may ... Oh.”
As cold as he was, the knife blade sliding up into his midsection was by far the coldest sensation Martok had ever felt. A sliver of ice cut into his belly and now Sirella probed with it, searching for his heart so that she could freeze it. The shock rattled up and down his nerves, making his knees wobble and his fingers numb. His weapon was a dead wei
ght in his hand, gravity too strong to defy.
Trying to turn away from her, Martok felt the d’k’ tahg tear into his chest wall. Muscles quivered and he smelled a terrible odor that meant she had nicked his intestines. “Sirella?” he asked weakly, bending forward, unable to stand erect. Staring up into her face, he tried to ask “Why?” but was unable to breathe.
But it was not Sirella before him. He saw a dim gray outline, a flowing shape that danced before his eyes. A woman, yes, but not Sirella. She held something in her hand, but not a tiny knife. This woman held in one hand a simple wooden cup and in the other, something that [319] gleamed brightly. He had seen this object before and, smiling, the woman tried to remind him of its name before she disappeared. When she vanished, Gothmara stood before him and Martok startled to awareness. Ah, yes, a bat’leth.
He raised the blade one-armed and swung. Just before it connected with her neck, Gothmara’s eyes widened.
Martok overbalanced and fell on his back. That’s done it, he thought before he passed out. But Sirella will be very angry with me. ...
EPILOGUE
TWO MONTHS LATER
Martok awoke in his favorite chair, realizing that he had fallen asleep during the meeting with Admiral Ross. Once, he would have found this irritating and would have been profusely apologizing to the Federation officer, but he had been back on semiactive status for less than two weeks and everyone had been very decent about letting him occasionally have a nap. Besides, Worf was with him; he would be taking notes. Many, many notes that he will want to review with me later. ... Martok sighed. This was the price for surrounding himself with conscientious operatives.
STAR TREK: DS9 - The Left Hand of Destiny, Book Two Page 26