The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 2

by J. G. Hertzler

  Martok flattened against the wall, waited for the predictable two or three shots up the hall, then ducked and ran as fast as he could up the stairs. The satisfying crash behind him followed by screeching and hissing could only be one or both of the creatures slipping in the spilled oil.

  Tempted though he was to turn and take his chances with the monsters in the dark, Martok ran as fast as he could, taking two or three steps in a bound. Yes, the desire to stay, to have an end to it all, was almost overwhelming, but a strangely familiar voice—an old woman’s voice—spoke silently into his ear. It said, “Not here. If there is to be a last stand, make it under the naked stars.”

  Martok gulped air and felt the thrill of battle sing through his veins. Let them come, he thought. Maybe she has taken all that I held most dear, but as long as I live, I can still deal death. Elated, he cleared the last three steps without touching them. The sharp bite of the wind from the open door burned his face, but he ran swiftly into the night, to battle beneath a canopy of stars.

  * * *

  Below, down the stairs, through the narrow door, in the dark hall, Gothmara struggled to her feet. Unfortunately, the only way she could manage was to grasp hold of her creature’s powerful limbs, which were covered in short, spiky guard hairs that she loathed to touch, especially now that they were coated in oil. Letting go of the Hur’q’s quivering leg, she gripped the rough wall, scraping her hands and arms. “Go,” she ordered, her voice low and ominous. “Kill him.”

  The monsters growled their ascent and bounded up the stairs baying, their blades and other weapons jangling against the stones. And though no one remained behind to hear her words, she repeated them with the reverence of sacred text. “Kill him.”

  * * *

  Night had fallen. Crossing the snow-covered square, Martok stepped in a crack between two stones and almost broke his ankle, but the heavy boots saved him by keeping his ankle stiff. He tumbled to the ground, cracked his shoulder on a rock, but then rolled to his feet and was off again, running in long, loping strides, running low, trying to weave in and out of the wreckage. His breath came hard—fighting was one thing but running something else again, and he was an old man, or so he kept telling himself. Old man, old man, old man, he repeated inside his head over and over, each word the beat of his heart.

  Passing out through the arch, he heard the large double doors slam open behind him. Two hundred, maybe two fifty meters behind me, he thought. With their stride and speed over open ground, the Hur’q would close that distance in less than two minutes. He had to find a spot to make a stand, someplace where they wouldn’t be able to attack him in tandem or, better yet, somewhere he could stop long enough to call Pharh. If he trusted the Ferengi’s technical ability more, he would have considered stopping now, but it would be too close a thing.

  Out in the open field, with no broken stones beneath him, Martok tried lengthening his stride, putting more power into every step, but the snow was too deep and before he had gone more than five meters, he did little more than hop from hole to hole. The drifts wouldn’t slow the Hur’q down, he knew; he had to reconsider trying to call Pharh. Martok slid to a halt and patted his pockets, searching for the communicator. All the bulges felt the same to him through the thick cloth and so he began to randomly unzip pockets, yanking out whatever he found, then tossing it into the snow when it wasn’t what he wanted. The swirling winds drowned out every other sound so he couldn’t hear how close behind his pursuers were, but then there came a hideous, ululating shriek that was whipped and spun through the frosty air.

  The sound was like an electrode applied to the base of his spine; Martok leaped forward, almost helpless before the impulse to run. More biochemical tinkering, his calm and rational core explained, but muscle and sinew and instinct shouted, Run!

  Boreth’s small moon was barely bright enough to cast a sliver of light through the thick cloud cover. Between the wind and the thick blanket of snow, Martok’s world narrowed down to the two meters he could see in front of him and the soft explosions of every footfall sinking into the white powder. His heart slammed against his chest wall and his breath came in ragged gasps as sweat poured off his face, freezing as it trickled into his beard. Three more steps and I turn, he thought, rationality almost lost. Two more steps and I lift my weapon. He anticipated a claw slashing through the back of his coat, then his skin, then his spine. A step more…

  One leg sank into the powder up to the hip and there came a lurching, stumbling sense of space beneath him. The bank crumbled away and only the thick sheet of older packed snow around his leg prevented Martok from tumbling over the cliff. Thrusting back with the leg that was still on solid ground, he rolled onto his back and stabbed the bat’leth into the ground. Snow slid down around him, slithered from under him, disappeared into white space and twirling night. Gasping, he dragged himself back from the precipice, looking back over his shoulder as he felt the ground rumble beneath him. The Hur’q pounded across the field toward him. Did they know about the cliff? Could they see him where he lay? Perhaps if he kept his head low, they would run right past him right off the cliff….

  Despite his gasping for air, despite his fear, Martok tilted his head back and laughed up into the pitiless black sky. Of course they won’t run off the cliff. …Weary beyond his ability to express, weighed down with snow, the tips of his fingers numb, Martok rose, shook his wet hair out of his eyes, and found his stance. If they ran headlong at him at least he would take one with him.

  He felt rather than saw the first one coming, a sudden increase in air pressure before him, and then two giant eyes, black as obsidian, emerged from the white curtain. Without thinking, Martok threw himself back, bracing the bat’leth with both arms, point against the ground, and kicked up just as the giant’s body fell on him. The point of the blade slashed into the pelt just below the creature’s throat and ripped a hole down the length of it as Martok tossed it over his head toward the cliff. The monster’s viscous blood gushed down over his head, making him feel warm for what seemed the first time in months. It screamed as it tumbled away, not an animal cry, but a screech filled with anger and fear and frustration.

  The momentum from the blow took Martok back to the edge of the cliff and it was only the point of the bat’leth stabbed into the ground that kept him from falling over. Slick with blood, pummeled by the Hur’q as it had run over him, Martok pushed himself into a sitting position, then realized he might not have the energy to do any more. His fingers and toes were numb and his knees wobbled when he tried to stand.

  Somewhere in front of him, screened by the thickening curtain of snow, Martok heard a hiss, then something like a muttered curse. This Hur’q, it seemed, was not too anxious to get closer, almost as if they had met once before. Martok wondered if this was one of the band that had been in the First City for his aborted execution. He had killed two of its brothers that day and now a third. Hur’q, he suspected, were not accustomed to being daunted.

  Holding the bat’leth like a cane, Martok pushed himself up, feeling ribs shift inside his chest. One of them must have pierced a lung, too, because he struggled in taking deep breaths. Last, and worst, the leg he had shattered the day he was forced to flee Qo’noS was fractured again. He could barely set any weight on it.

  The Hur’q circled to his right, looking for an opening. Martok saw the steam of its breath rising in the frozen air and heard the crunch of snow beneath its feet. Martok lifted his blade and the beast growled. It prowled around to the left, suddenly feinted in at him, then swiftly withdrew when Martok did not swipe at its head.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that.” He coughed, spitting black spots out onto the snow, though the lung puncture might be the least of his worries. With each passing second, strength drained out of him and he felt a strange, unaccountable pressure in his chest around his heart.

  Off in the distance, another creature howled; more of Gothmara’s pets on the prowl. Almost as if it could not control itself
, the Hur’q before him threw back its head and howled in response, and Martok knew he had his chance.

  When the distant voice echoed across the plain again and the beast before him lifted its head to respond, Martok struck. If not for the deep snow and his shattered leg, the blow would have been perfect, but as it was, all he did was slash the monster’s jugular. Blood jetted out onto the snow, but life did not flee the Hur’q’s body. Snapping its head forward, the beast launched itself at Martok, who was ready for it. He aimed to deflect its attack, to give its heart time to finish the job, flutter and fall silent, but the edge of the cliff was too close and his body too battered.

  The pair of them, monster and warrior, scraped to a halt at the lip of the precipice and, for a brief, thrilling moment, Martok thought he might be able to keep the blade pressed against its nose, to hold it, just long enough. Its eyes grew dim and he could feel its breaths coming shorter and shorter. Death would come. Its head would drop onto the ground and Martok would climb up over the corpse, find his communicator, and Pharh would get him out of there before the other Hur’q found him.

  And then the ice shelf crumbled from beneath them both.

  Falling, tumbling backward, Martok curled himself into a ball and felt the monster’s body close around him. It was dying, of course, or dead and its muscles were contracting, but there was still something so strange about it. When they found him—if they found him at all—it would look like the Hur’q had taken him into its arms. What will they make of that? he wondered, and then they hit the first outcropping of rock and he thought no more.

  * * *

  On the lip of the ragged ice shelf, Gothmara shone a light down into the dark vale and said to two of her creatures, “Find him. Bring back his body.” One of the Hur’q made a questioning noise and she replied, “Don’t be ridiculous. If you eat him, what will we have to show to his son?”

  The monster made a contrite noise, then slowly, carefully began to creep headfirst down the steep, icy cliff wall.

  * * *

  Below, in the Hur’q’s embrace, Martok felt life ebbing away. He was warm again and part of his mind knew that this was a bad thing, but he didn’t care. Warmth felt delicious or, at least, not being cold was soothing. On his face, each snowflake’s kiss felt like a tiny coal. As his heart began slowing, the seconds lengthened. He refused to die with his eyes closed and so he exerted all his will and gazed up into the night sky. Each flake of falling snow looked like a star. Searching for breath within his chest, he tried screaming, to let Sirella know he was coming, but the wind outside stole his last breath.

  The night sky was unexpectedly eclipsed by a ragged shape, and then he felt two strong arms pull him up from the Hur’q’s embrace.

  “Is he alive?” a voice asked, and Martok found he was ever so slightly surprised that he could understand the language.

  “Barely,” another replied. “The monster’s body protected him or he wouldn’t be.”

  “We have to get him back. We have to keep him alive.”

  “I know that,” the second one replied. “I’ll have to move carefully, though. Two more of her beasts are coming down the cliff.”

  “Then you go. I’ll stay and take care of them.”

  “Are you sure? Against two of them? I could send help.”

  “Don’t be insulting,” the first one said. “Go.”

  As the second speaker began his journey, Martok felt consciousness fade. He would die now, he knew, and that was fine. Death would be warmer than being alive. Let the fire come, he thought. Let it all burn away.

  Part Two

  “I accept your lives into my hands.”

  12

  “Is that it?” Worf asked, pointing at the sensor display. “Is it?”

  “Could be,” Ezri said distractedly, obviously tired of hearing the same question asked over and over again. Alexander was tired of hearing it and he had only been on the bridge for a couple of hours, which meant Ezri must be near the point of wanting to take a swing at his father. After a fashion, it was interesting watching them interact and even more interesting to watch Worf pace back and forth across the bridge, almost leaping out of his skin every time the sensors alerted them to a speck of approximately the right size, shape, and metallurgical composition.

  In other, much more important ways, watching his father and Dax work was torturous, which was why Alexander didn’t spend any more time on the bridge than was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, now it was necessary; Worf had scheduled him for a shift as environmental officer. Not wanting to watch his father and Ezri snarl and spit at each other for eight hours wasn’t an excuse to ask for a shift swap. Everyone else on the ship had been watching them for the past forty-eight hours too.

  More than once, he had wanted to say, “This is what you get for dropping a priceless artifact into a remote region of Klingon space.” One of the bridge crew had made a lame joke about looking for a mIn in a gagh pit, but Alexander considered this an inadequate comparison. A gagh pit, no matter how large, was a finite thing. It had edges and could be searched in a sensible, logical manner. Space, on the other hand, well, space had no edges. Newtonian forces (or, on Qo’noS, Kl’Vokian forces) being what they were, you gave something a push and it kept going unless (Kl’Vok’s second law) something smashed into it.

  About twenty-four hours ago, the ongoing “discussion” between Worf and Ezri, without either of them knowing it, disintegrated to the level of one of Alexander’s grandparents’ semi-daily dialogues:

  “Where are the codecards to the back shed?” Sergey would bellow up the stairs.

  “Wherever you left them last!” Helena would holler back.

  “I put them right here on the table!”

  “Then they’re on the table!”

  “They’re not on the table! I looked on the table and they aren’t there so you must have moved them!”

  “I haven’t touched them! Who was the last one to use the thing? Not me—you! So you must still have them! Check your pockets!”

  “I don’t have to check my pockets! I know I don’t have them…!”

  And on and on and on. Alexander had learned, as a boy, to simply close the door to his room and turn up the audio on the holotank. On the bridge of the Rotarran, Alexander lacked both a door to close and a holotank to turn up.

  Countless variations on the same conversation replayed over the hours.

  “Where’s the Sword of Kahless?”

  “Wherever you left it!”

  “We left it in this sector of space!”

  “You were the one who programmed the transporter!”

  “Then it’s got to be here! You’re just not looking in the right place! Check your coordinates!”

  “I did check my coordinates! You check yours!”

  And on and on and on.

  The quarreling almost made him feel homesick for Qo’noS, the planet where everyone was trying to kill them, cut them up into chum, and feed them to the Hur’q.

  The tale his father had told him during their voyage was almost unbelievable. On the very mission during which Worf, Jadzia, and Kor had located the abandoned Hur’q outpost in the Gamma Quadrant almost four years ago, they had also recovered the Sword of Kahless—probably the most revered and legendary icon of the Klingon Empire—lost when the original Hur’q had plundered Qo’noS a millennium ago.

  And though going into detail about the events that immediately followed its discovery clearly made his father uncomfortable, whatever had happened led the three of them to decide together that the time for the sword’s return had not yet come. It had to wait, as Worf had put it to Kor, until it was destined to be found.

  Now, apparently, Worf had come to believe that the time had come. As a symbol of restoration and renewal that, according to legend, Kahless himself had forged in the heat of the Kri’stak volcano when he first united the Klingon people, Klingons everywhere would follow whosoever wielded it. That was its power. And at this pivotal moment in Klingo
n history, Worf had come to believe beyond any doubt that Martok, and he alone, was the rightful heir to that power.

  But to ensure that it would be a Klingon who would one day find it, Worf and his companions had returned from the Gamma Quadrant and set the Sword adrift in a remote region of Klingon space, on the fringes of an Oort cloud. And while Worf had a general idea of the coordinates the Mekong’s onboard computer had randomly selected when they’d beamed out the ancient bat’leth, he lacked the expertise necessary to pinpoint the exact present location of the sword … which presumably had been tumbling end over end through a comet-strewn region of space for the last four years.

  It was for that very reason that Worf had felt compelled to call upon Ezri. Jadzia’s specific memories of the details of that event, as well as her formidable skills as a scientist, would both be needed to give them the best hope of finding the Sword as quickly as possible.

  Suddenly, Ezri, who had been slumped against the edge of the science console, jumped up out of her chair. “That’s it!” she shouted. “I saw it!”

  “Where?!” Worf asked, pointing at the communications officer. He wanted the image posted on the main viewer.

  “Wait …” Some of the enthusiasm leaked out of Ezri’s voice and she sagged back against the console. Alexander had to remind himself that while Trill were not as frail as humans, neither did they have the stamina of Klingons, particularly Klingons on a mission. Worf had been awake for four or five days without anything more than a nap or two and the worst he would experience was some stiff muscles and eyestrain. Physiological redundancies allowed Klingons to endure prolonged physical demands with few side effects: one of the many reasons why they were such formidable opponents.

  But frayed nerves showed when Worf repeated himself: “Where?”

  “Hold on a minute!” Ezri said. She wiped her eyes with her fingertips, then stared into the viewer. Several seconds of twiddling controls did not produce any results. “I can’t lock on,” she said, her voiced edged with frustration.