The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 2

by J. G. Hertzler

  “So, it must be completely destroyed,” Pharh said.

  “Not completely,” Martok murmured. “Not necessarily. The sensors on this ship aren’t good enough to pick up faint life signs. There may be someone left alive down there. I have to find out.”

  “‘Have to’? You really think? Because from where I’m sitting, I think waiting somewhere for Worf or Drex sounds like a better idea. You know, safety in numbers?”

  Martok looked up at Pharh and for a moment his contemplative manner dropped to be replaced by the more familiar Angry Martok. “You chose to come,” he said.

  “I didn’t expect this to be a suicide mission,” Pharh retorted, “though upon further reflection I’m not sure on what I based that assumption. I mean, so far, that’s been more the norm than the exception.”

  Martok stared at him for a moment, his single eye narrowing into a glare, but then, unexpectedly, his face split into a satisfied grin. “Pharh, you speak with the voice of common sense.”

  Hope rose. “So you’re going to do what I said?”

  “No,” Martok replied, standing. “But it’s good to know what common sense would dictate. I will do precisely the opposite. Gothmara won’t expect that.”

  Exasperated, Pharh said, “Or maybe she knows you pretty well and this is exactly what they’d expect you to do.” He looked down at the scanner. “And, besides, if you’ve seen them, haven’t they seen you by now?”

  “Undoubtedly. Our cloak isn’t sophisticated enough to defeat their sensors.”

  “Why aren’t they coming after you, then? Or at least shooting?”

  Martok opened an equipment locker and began inspecting the contents. Moving slowly and deliberately, he hefted a large, heavy weapon off a pair of magnetic hooks and checked it carefully. “Excellent,” he said to himself, then addressed Pharh. “If they pursue, I’d only run. If that’s truly Gothmara—and I’m growing convinced that it is—she doesn’t want me to run. She would like a confrontation.”

  “And you’re going to give it to her?” Pharh asked. “Why? Because you’ve decided it’s time to do something stupid?”

  The Klingon tossed a heavy sack onto the deck and pulled at drawstrings, deliberately unfolding a mottled white and gray coat and coverall that seemed to shift and shimmer in the light. “Again, excellent,” he said, impressed. “I wonder who stocked this ship.” Reaching down, he lifted out a pair of thick-soled boots and deposited them on the deck. “And to answer your question, I’m doing this because it’s what I want to do. Not Kahless or Worf or Gowron or even Sirella, but me. If Gothmara or Morjod are here, then it’s time I go see them. It’s what’s meant to be.”

  Pharh snorted derisively. “I thought you didn’t believe in destiny.”

  Sitting down and lifting his foot so that his boot was practically in Pharh’s lap, Martok replied, “I don’t. I never have, but it would appear that destiny believes in me. Now help me with my boots.”

  Twenty minutes later, Martok was dressed in Klingon cold-weather gear, had a heavy pack full of survival equipment strapped to his back, and was carrying the large, nasty-looking weapon. “Do you think you could use this transporter if I called you?” he asked Pharh.

  Pharh studied the interface. “Probably. I could study it while you’re gone.”

  “Good. I may need a fast beam-out if things don’t go well.”

  “Please explain to me a scenario where things do go well.”

  “Hmm,” Martok considered. “I kill Gothmara, defeat her son’s army of Hur’q, and restore order and sanity to the Klingon Empire. How does that sound?”

  “Everything except ‘order and sanity’ in the Klingon Empire,” Pharh replied. “I don’t think that’s possible as long as there are any Klingons living in it.”

  “You may be correct, Pharh.” Stepping onto the transporter pad, he asked, “What about the ship? Assuming things go the way you seem to be figuring.”

  “You mean, can I fly it? Probably, but not cloaked, though.”

  “Don’t worry. They won’t chase you if you try to leave. There is no honor in killing an unarmed Ferengi.”

  “You see? That’s what worries me about Gothmara and her guys. I don’t think they subscribe to that whole honor idea. They would think it would be great fun to kill an unarmed Ferengi. Maybe even more fun.”

  “That,” Martok said as flipped up his head and fastened a scarf over his mouth, “is the reason why I must go down to the planet. The galaxy could not tolerate Klingons without honor. It would have to exterminate us and I cannot allow that to happen. Press that white control. Please.”

  Pharh pressed the button. As the transporter beam began to scramble Martok’s molecules, the Ferengi called, “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said today….”

  11

  Martok had set the transporter to deposit him a hundred meters away from the edge of the monastery grounds in order to give him a chance to survey the area from a place of concealment. Had he conducted a meteorological scan, he would have known that there would be no problems with concealment. Situated on a mountaintop near the planet’s only sizable ocean, the monastery was periodically pounded by fierce blizzards, and one of these was currently under way. Martok could barely see more than a meter in front of his face. If not for the survival suit and the tricorder to point the way, he would have died of exposure in minutes. As it was, half the devices in his pack began to beep before he had crossed more than fifty meters, all of them warning him that they would crack open and die if not soon treated with tender, loving care. Martok ignored the cacophony and plowed ahead through the knee-deep snow.

  By the time he reached the front gates, half the electronics, including, unfortunately, the heavy disruptor, had died. Pausing only long enough to toss away the weapon and remove the cover from his bat’leth, Martok moved forward, carefully picking his way across the broken, snow-covered square.

  Gothmara had been very thorough. Not a single building or section of wall remained whole. Though they were covered by six inches of new snow, Martok recognized that most of the irregular hard-angled shapes before him were chunks of stone, slabs of concrete, and spars of structural steel. From previous visits, he recalled that many of the buildings in the square between the gate and the mountainside caverns had stood four or five stories high; now none was higher than his shoulder.

  Wasting precious breath, Martok cursed Gothmara and Morjod, moisture condensing inside his mask and freezing in his whiskers. Was no act too dishonorable? This sacred place had been the seat of the Klingon soul for centuries. Down through the ages, whatever conflicts there were within or outside the empire, always this place had been protected, honored, because legend had it that the original Kahless had vowed to return to his people from here. To destroy the temples of learning built around that promise was an unthinkable act of desecration.

  During a momentary lull in the wind, Martok heard a sharp snap as he stepped gingerly over a chunk of ice-encrusted stone. He trod on graves, he knew. He wanted to dig beneath the snow, to announce each of Gothmara’s victims before the gates of Sto-Vo-Kor. Standing erect, Martok swung the bat’leth before him, and the blade glowed dully in the fading sun. Snow-flakes danced and swirled in the wake of its passage.

  “Revenge,” he hissed. “For all of you.”

  The door to the caverns gaped wide. After scanning the area, Martok slipped between the doors and stepped quickly into the shadows within. Once he was indoors, low torches guttering in sconces and oil lamps hanging from the ceiling lit the way, but Martok knew that many of these were holographic effects. After all, what was the sense of depending on burning oil on a planet with no natural resources? Obviously the monks had wished to project an image to their visitors. Still, for Martok’s purposes, a few real, oil-burning lamps might save him, should the monastery lose power.

  Holding his breath, Martok listened intently, but heard only the wind whistling through the door and the rhythmic clinking of the lamp chains as the
y swung to and fro. Satisfied for the moment that he was unobserved, Martok slid along the wall from pool of shadow to pool of shadow until he came to the narrow stone staircase that led deeper down into the bowels of the mountain. A faint whiff of drier, warmer air greeted him as he began his descent, reminding him to remove his face mask and lower his hood. Half-melted snow slipped off his head and shoulders and plopped onto the stairs. Unbidden, memories of Sirella in the dungeon under the imperial palace and his vain attempt to rescue her slunk out to assail him, and he felt unequal to his task. Why not just wait for Worf and the others?

  Then, remembering the pitiful sound of the bone cracking under his foot, Martok gripped his bat’leth and moved down the stairway, stopping on every third or fourth step to listen. Halfway down, he heard a soft, wet rasping, the sound of someone desperately trying to breathe, but afraid to inhale deeply. Martok doubled his pace, but continued to move cautiously. Ambush was very much on his mind. He had not forgotten how Morjod had concealed the Hur’q in a pocket of subspace, and though he doubted the equipment to do this again was easily transportable, he watched every shadow carefully.

  At the bottom of the stairs, in a pool of shadow beneath a guttering lamp, a monk lay facedown, his back rising and falling rapidly. After scanning the area and finding nothing, Martok moved to the monk’s side and pulled out a field medkit from his pack. He was not experienced enough with a medical scanner to do anything more than search for injuries, take vital signs and receive suggestions for treatment. Unfortunately, the wretched machine offered a prognosis without hope, but Martok tried to make him comfortable.

  He was an older man, white-haired, but with a strong chin and a noble brow. Martok thought he recognized him as he helped the man into a half-seated position, and said so.

  “I’m Korath,” the old cleric said, his words coming between gasps. He wouldn’t lower his arms from his gut, and Martok’s quick scan told him it was because his arms were the only things keeping his internal organs inside him. The pain must have been indescribable and Martok was impressed that the man hadn’t passed out from shock. “I was once a master of this place.” He shook his head. “No more.”

  “Who did this? Was it Morjod? Gothmara? Did they have soldiers or Hur’q?”

  Korath, alas, was too far gone. His eyes moved wildly from side to side, not focusing on anything, but saw only who knew what strange and terrible sights. “I welcome the end,” he murmured. Blood coated his gums and teeth. “An empire that would turn on itself deserves to fall. It’s an offense to Kahless….”

  “Kahless is coming,” Martok said, hoping the monk would take some comfort from the idea.

  Korath either didn’t understand him or wasn’t listening at all. “Why?” he asked. “Why return to rule over fools and madmen? What is the point?” He lifted his head and stared up at the oil lamp. “Better,” he murmured, “to let it all burn. Let fire take it all.”

  Then, deep in Korath’s chest, something wet tore loose or burst under unknown internal pressures. The cleric gasped, tried to inhale, and a viscous bubble of blood and bile burst out from between his lips. The scanner beeped furiously and the recommendation screen flickered and flipped through half a dozen unavailable resuscitation regimens before finally freezing on the “Stasis not an option” screen. Martok considered holding open the old man’s eyes and screaming for him, but recognized it would certainly alert anyone nearby of his location. No, better to find the remaining monks, assuming there were any, and permit them to perform the death rites.

  Putting away the medical scanner, Martok was unprepared for the oppressive silence. Following after the usual shipboard noise on the shuttle, then Pharh’s chatter and the howling winds upstairs, the gloomy stillness felt ominous. The long, narrow hallway was to his back and, feeling a tingling at the base of his spine, Martok looked over his shoulder. Another lamp hung from the ceiling ten meters away, barely bright enough to light the circle of hallway directly beneath it. No one was there.

  Turning back to the cleric, Martok considered searching him. Possibly he was carrying a useful key or passcard, something Martok could use to find his way deeper into the caverns.

  Behind him, Martok heard the sound of a sharp click on stone and a throaty hiss. He closed his eye, almost sighed with resignation, but fought down the urge and turned around to look.

  Gothmara stood just inside the small ring of light the oil lamp projected, casting a long shadow before her. Two Hur’q, both hunched over almost double in the low-ceilinged corridor, flanked her. “Hello, Martok,” she said, her voice calmly casual.

  Martok lifted his bat’leth with one hand into the first defense posture and loosened his sheathed knife with the other. “You killed my daughters,” he said flatly. “You killed my wife. I will kill you now.”

  “I didn’t kill your wife,” she replied. “She killed herself. Too bad, really, because I rather liked her. Did she tell you we talked for quite a while when I had her? She seemed clever—cleverer than you at any rate. You’re so predictable, Martok. Would that hunting you down were more challenging.”

  In the narrow, low hallway, Martok knew he had some advantages. The Hur’q were built for long, sweeping attacks, and the constricted quarters would be a liability to them. They probably had energy weapons, though Martok couldn’t see them from where he stood. A disruptor would even the odds, and he once again began to internally curse the idiot who had built the battery pack on his abandoned weapon. He needed more time to consider his options and that meant making her talk more. “Sirella indeed was wise, though much too kind. She pitied you, the scorned woman, cast aside and unwanted.” None of this was true, of course. Sirella would have judged Gothmara even more harshly than Martok did, but he wasn’t going to mention that at the moment.

  As she took a step forward, Gothmara’s shadow became longer and more tenuous, less humanoid and more akin to the monsters she had bred. “Your targ-bitch’s pity means nothing to me,” she snarled.

  “Of course not. The small offering of a noble lady’s pity matters little when your son sits on the throne!”

  Gothmara tilted her head to the side and touched her chin. Martok was shocked to realize he remembered this peculiar gesture as a sign of genuine confusion. “My son?” she asked. “My son?” Shaking her head back and forth in disbelief, Gothmara said, “You still don’t see, do you? Morjod is a tool, an instrument, and a blunt one at that. He was never meant to rule. I created him so that he would lay waste to the empire. Without my restraining hand, he’s out there right now …” She waved her hand generally toward the far horizon. “… randomly destroying whatever crosses his path.” She laughed, then said conspiratorially, “Recently, I’ve been playing a game that I’d like to share with you. Games are never fun unless someone else plays, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t play games,” Martok muttered. She had stopped moving and her pets weren’t showing any signs of initiative, so he knew he still had a few seconds to plan.

  “You should. Games might make you less of an old grouch. Look at yourself, Martok. You’re younger than I am, but you’re weak, scarred, beaten down. Wouldn’t death be a relief now? A little quiet time?”

  “Have you forgotten your game?” He didn’t like the direction the conversation was going.

  “My game! Of course.” She seemed to suddenly realize how far away from the Hur’q she had moved and crooked a finger at them. “Here,” she said, and the pair moved up to flank her. When one of them moved, Martok saw a telltale glint of polished metal. One of them at least has a disruptor. “I’ve been trying,” she continued, “to figure out who will kill Morjod. Will it be the Federation, the Romulans, or ‘his people’? Sooner or later, one of the other powers will have to step in. Maybe Morjod will attack their ships. Maybe he’ll even convince the Defense Force to attempt an invasion of Romulus or Earth. He can very persuasive if he wishes, you know?”

  “You altered his voice the way you altered your own?”

&nb
sp; Gothmara laughed delightedly, then said, “You figured that out? How clever of you.” Her tone of voice for that sentence was different than for any previous and Martok felt a shiver run up his spine. He had been prepared for it, expected it, knew what it meant, yet still he felt a jolt of pride in having her tell him he was clever. Clutching her throat, Gothmara coughed. “Maintaining my voice can be difficult if I don’t treat my vocal cords with the proper compounds.”

  “You expect him to fail?” Martok asked. “What foolishness! A strategy that anticipates failure? A Klingon battles to victory. You have no plan, Gothmara.” He glanced up at the lamp above him and wished there were some way to know for sure whether it was real or holographic—and, if it was the latter, then whether it carried its own battery pack.

  “This is my plan: To do to you what you did for me. For you to die, but before you die to strip everything away from you. To see you suffer. Is there anything left that I can do to you? Have you suffered enough yet?”

  For the rest of his life, Martok never knew if he chose that second to attack because it was the right moment or because he could not face the thought of answering her question. He flipped the knife up into an overhand grip and threw it. Naturally, both the Hur’q leaped in front of Gothmara, as they no doubt had been programmed to do, precisely as Martok had expected. His throw was flawless, and the blade flew straight and true into the metal plate that held the oil lamp behind them to the ceiling. He had concluded that this was the plan least likely to fail. If the lamp was real, the plate would break and the lamp would fall to the ground. If it was a hologram, the plate was the likely power source and he might be able to short it out.

  Not stopping to see which was the case, Martok swung his bat’leth over his head and struck at the lamp above him. It was, in fact, real, and his blow, in addition to smothering the flame, cracked open the basin, spilling the oil into the path of the oncoming Hur’q. The lamp behind the creatures was also extinguished, so suddenly the hallway was quite dark.