The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 2

by J. G. Hertzler

  Data with emotions: Alexander fervently hoped that he would have a chance to see that before he died.

  A tremendous explosion rocked Rotarran, sending Alexander tumbling to the deck. Alarms blared, panels flashed warning lights, and every station on the ship called the bridge asking for advice, instructions, or simple reassurance. Alexander righted himself (Ezri didn’t look like she had moved at all), started to respond to the first call, but then saw the two blinking messages on his status board:

  In one minute the ship would be within their damaged transporters’ limited range.

  And, more pressing, Chak’ta had shot off their port nacelle, requiring that reserve power be fed into the shields.

  All the energy Alexander had set aside for the transporters would be gone in seconds.

  * * *

  Gothmara watched the tiny symbols that represented her son’s forces move through the narrow valley toward the circular plain where Martok’s pitiful band waited. She recognized the place from her explorations, the only unfrozen body of water on Boreth. A geothermal vent at the bottom prevented the lake from freezing solid. When she had been searching the area for other Hur’q, she had also studied the lake bed, hypothesizing that the Hur’q had used the geothermals to power their bases, but had never found any evidence to support that supposition.

  While the lake was not a particularly deep body of water—hardly a “bottomless pit”—she wondered what would happen if a large explosion took place at its center. If, against all expectation, Martok’s forces began to win, she might have to crack the ice. She had tried every other way she knew to kill the man; drowning might have to do.

  Again, her communicator beeped, but she knew it wasn’t Morjod. She knew his signal intimately. One of the ships in orbit was trying to contact her, but Gothmara did not wish to be bothered. Leaning closer to her sensor board, she absently reached over and switched off the channel. Nothing happening in space right now could be more interesting than what was occurring before her.

  * * *

  Halfway down the canyon, the katai encountered a column of perhaps two hundred running warriors led by Kahless. When they spotted Martok, the troops began cheering, but Martok, seated behind Angwar, silenced them with a chopping motion and pointed them back toward the lake. “Did you take out the guns?” he questioned.

  Several of the commanders looked at each other and then one of them spoke up. “I think so, General. Most of them.”

  Martok cast his glance heavenward in frustration. Gods of Qo’noS preserve me: Most of them! “Go back and take all of them! Stop acting like a rabble! Be an army!” He pointed his bat’leth at the emperor and shouted, “Kahless, array them in the Columns of Koloth.”

  “It shall be done, Chancellor!” Kahless turned to the two warriors beside him and said, “Carry out the chancellor’s orders: Six columns with sixty men each arranged in wedges. Array them around the perimeter where the enemy will enter the field.”

  One of the two warriors hesitated. “Three hundred sixty, sire? I don’t know if we have …”

  “Do your best, then,” Kahless said. “And take the guns!”

  Kahless rushed up to Angwar and Martok and asked in a low voice, “How many?”

  Neither man answered at first, but finally Martok had to say, “We do not know for certain. The way the ground shook, I’d say easily two thousand and perhaps more.”

  Kahless looked grim, but was undeterred. “They will fight for you, Martok. You know that.”

  “They may die for me, Kahless, and no one will ever know because Gothmara will see to it that there is no empire left.”

  “We must prevail,” Angwar said.

  “We must move,” Starn shouted over the rising tide of drumbeats. “If we are to do anything at all.”

  Angwar nodded and spurred on his jarq. Martok left behind the emperor and the bulk of his column to see what he could do with those remaining on the lake. No doubt I will find my son there, he decided. And perhaps I will discover what happened to Worf.

  As they rounded the last corner that led to the lake, Martok thought he saw the body of a man wedged between two rocks, but the jarq moved too fast and he could not see if the warrior was alive or dead. One more unknown warrior if we do not succeed, he thought, then bent his will to the coming battle.

  * * *

  On Rotarran’s smoke-choked bridge, Ezri Dax lifted her helmet and, just before locking it down into the collar, shouted, “WE’RE GOING IN!” She didn’t know why she said it. Anyone still alive on the bridge knew the destination; it just seemed appropriate to announce their forthcoming doom.

  On the monitor she saw a circular plain covered with tiny scurrying dots. Some ran to the left, some to the right, and others stood stock-still, no doubt more than a few of them pointing up at the red and smoking point of light headed their way.

  Get ready, Martok, she thought. Special delivery coming your way.

  19

  About a quarter of the way across the ice plain, Pharh guessed that the mass of battling warriors were about two hundred meters away, all of them manfully (or womanfully) bashing one another. Going toward them, actually attempting to find his way into the mass of these fighters, even with the shield the katai had given to him strapped to his arm, ran counter to every instinct he possessed. Well, not instinct really. Instinct has nothing to do with it, he thought. Common sense tells me that running into a mob of Klingons and giant monsters is a bad idea; I don’t need instinct to tell me anything.

  But Pharh went forward anyway. Reflecting on what Darok had said, he realized that he still had no definitive reason for his behavior except that he didn’t have any other ideas that would make a bit of difference. Would finding Martok and standing by him make a single bit of difference? Pharh had no clue, though he knew for a fact that not finding Martok and not standing beside him would make no difference at all. And with everything that had happened to him over the past several days, the idea of making a difference had become important to Pharh.

  He earnestly trudged along for several minutes—he was not a fleet-footed Ferengi—but concluded that he wasn’t getting any closer to the mass of the warriors since the fighting appeared to be moving farther away. Feeling ridiculous, Pharh stopped, panting heavily and sweating through the inner layers of clothing despite the freezing wind. He squinted, studying the figures against the blue-white background of the ice-encrusted canyon walls. Was he seeing an optical illusion?

  The sun had climbed high enough in the cloudy sky that most of the ice field was bathed in an eerie luminescence, as much light reflected back up to the eye from the ground as fell from the sky. In between his gasps, he heard distant, isolated grunts and cries as tricks of the wind carried random sounds to Pharh’s sensitive ears.

  Frax it all, they’re getting farther and farther away! Where in Eternal Bankruptcy are they going? Squinting, he thought he saw a gap in the far wall, but why would the warriors be going that way? As Pharh approached the center of the plain, he passed isolated couples of combatants who still circled one another warily, like pairs of lovers in some archaic dance. The Ferengi gave these pairs and trios as much space as he could, but, in truth, he did not have to try very hard. Even to his untrained eye, he could tell that anyone still fighting for Morjod was doing so for ego’s sake. Klingons, he understood, were like that sometimes.

  All the Hur’q, Pharh noted with satisfaction, were dead, their bodies half-buried in the snow, their backs and necks chopped repeatedly. Apparently, when a Hur’q fell, warriors on all sides made sure it stayed down.

  Starting across the field again, though at a less determined pace, Pharh saw that most of the warriors had passed into the canyon. Martok must be in there, he decided, and altered his course slightly to the west in order to go that way, though his Ferengi common sense was asserting itself more strongly. It’s one thing to think you can cross a field of warriors, maybe ducking and weaving in and out between fighters until you find your … your… He
was stuck. Though he knew he was the kr’tach, Pharh did not know what the other guy in the pair was called. He shook his head. Whatever … Pushing through a bunch of packed-together warriors will be a completely different problem, especially since most of them don’t know who you are….

  Confidence ebbing away even as the cold began to ooze up into his boots, Pharh halted. “Well, skritz,” he said, facing the trial every well-meaning but sensible person faced under similar circumstances. “This isn’t nearly as heroic as I’d hoped.”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than he heard an explosion ripple across the plain. Though the crack wasn’t fantastically loud at his location, Pharh’s sensitive hearing told him that the sound had been amazingly loud wherever it had begun. Turning his head from side to side, he attempted to track the thudding vibrations back to their source and found he was tipping his head backward and facing into the east, out toward the wide gap that led onto the circular plain.

  Up there, he thought. Quite a way above the horizon. It’s a gray dot.

  If it was a missile, it was the slowest, worst-directed missile imaginable. Weaving back and forth across the sky, the gray dot trailed a thick, black tail of smoke, the kind he associated with the smokestacks of loading equipment that was destined to become part of someone’s insurance claim.

  He heard another dull thud—the wump of a ship without shields breaking the sound barrier—and the gray dot hopped, skittered to the left, then recentered itself.

  He thought, That leaves out a meteor. Whatever this thing was, someone was driving it. Someone was trying to bring in a ship, though slowing down enough to make a safe landing would be problematic. He cocked his head to the side and realized the dot was growing a lot faster than he preferred seeing.

  Again, Pharh considered the wide open plain and, finally, all the tumblers clicked into place. “Skritz again,” he said, and scanned for possible escape routes. Turning toward the canyon, he headed down the only path that offered even a chance of salvation. As he turned, he ran into the first of the Klingons who fled the valley. Pharh spun around, desperate to keep his balance, because right behind the first Klingon he spotted Klingons number two through three hundred hot on number one’s heels. Everyone was leaving the canyon as quickly as they could.

  Pharh tried getting their attention, waving his arms and fending them off, but the warriors ignored him. Probably that was a good thing; if anyone had paid him any mind, they would have sliced him in half. He noticed that while the Klingons were running, they weren’t precisely fleeing. Most of them had a very specific goal in mind.

  “STOP!” the Ferengi shouted over and over. “LOOK TO THE SKIES! UP THERE! LOOK! LOOK!” No one spared him a glance.

  Finally, one of the lady katai reined in beside him on her smelly beast and asked, “What is it, kr’tach? Why are you here? Why aren’t you with your kr’mact?” (One question answered, Pharh thought.)

  “I would be if I could find him,” Pharh shouted, “but, listen, we have more important problems right now.”

  “Such as?” the katai asked sardonically.

  “That!” Pharh shouted, pointing up into the sky.

  She looked where his finger pointed and he had the grim satisfaction of watching her eyes widen. She said a word he suspected that nice lady Klingon warrior priestesses aren’t supposed to know. After fumbling at her side for what seemed an eternity, she drew a bone horn decorated with silver filigree letters around its border and blew as if her life depended on it, which it did.

  Everyone within a hundred-meter radius turned to look at her. Naturally, Pharh thought, and she pointed heavenward.

  Approximately one hundred and fifty Klingon warriors—maybe more since it’s always difficult to estimate under those kinds of circumstances—uttered the same word the warrior priestess had used (or slight variations) and began running like frinx for the edges of the circle.

  And Pharh, easily the slowest person on the ice as he pelted for the perimeter, had the satisfaction of thinking, At least I did something important.

  * * *

  Wings stretched wide, thrusters screaming, Rotarran slashed through the lower atmosphere, hull burning, her damaged warp nacelle sputtering coolant that turned into black smoke upon contact with the oxygen-nitrogen mix.

  Ezri braced herself against the navigational console, the fingers of her clumsy gauntlets almost too large to manipulate the control surfaces. The question was no longer if she possessed the necessary piloting skills, but whether Klingon engineers built airframes tough enough to take the punishment she was asking Rotarran’s to endure. Watching the flight-path indicator overlaid on the main monitor, she pointed the ship down the pipeline and tried ignoring the alarm Klaxons that told her she was flying too fast, too low, with too little reserve energy in the shields. She possessed the piloting knowledge, if not the skill, of the fifth Dax host, Torias, which told her that the ship could stand the strain. Of course, there was the nagging doubt of what Torias could possibly know about Klingon ships, but Ezri told that little traitor voice to shut up.

  At the edge of her vision, the armor’s indicator lights nagged her about the rise of carbon-dioxide levels in the suit, but Ezri switched off the sensor. Suffocating was the least of her worries. In fact, considering her other options, asphyxiating inside her armor was one of the more pleasant prospects facing her.

  At least the Chak’ta was leaving them alone. Couldn’t take the g’s, she guessed. “Ha!” Ezri shouted triumphantly. “Coward!” No one else on the bridge seemed to find any of this remotely amusing, which led her to wonder if the carbon-dioxide problem might already be worse than she had guessed. No time to check now, she decided, feeding the rest of the reserve power into the landing systems and bringing the nose up. Let’s find out how well they built this thing….

  * * *

  Standing on a high shelf overlooking the mouth of the canyon, staring out over the frozen lake, Martok was unexpectedly reminded of a youth who had lived in Ketha when he was a boy. This boy—Gort, if memory served—had taken a particularly savage delight in focusing a beam of sunlight with a piece of quartz onto the nests of colony insects called tak. Oh, how the tak would scurry when Gort managed to set a twig or leaf aflame. The tiny bugs would run hither and yon in a panic, none of them able to comprehend the baffling fate that had befallen them. Gort would laugh and laugh as he watched, then sometimes stamped the fire out so he could start another. Other times he would let it burn, but, honestly, in Ketha, who even noticed another fire burning? More particularly, who cared about some maddened insects?

  As Klingon warriors, katai, and Hur’q monsters exited the canyon, they all behaved similarly: brake to a halt, stare up into the sky at the smoking fireball, then frantically look for someplace to hide. Desperate, a few struck out for the caves on the opposite shore. Quite a number tried turning around and heading back down the canyon, but Morjod’s forces flowed out too quickly and any warrior who attempted to force his way past was facing a test not unlike trying to swim up a waterfall. The bulk of the, Martok guessed, two thousand warriors, simply fled to whatever spot looked well protected.

  Knowing that one spot was no better than another, Martok decided to stay where he was. After conceding that there was nothing he could do about the situation, he resolved to stand and watch it play out, if for no other reason than to honor whoever was aboard the plummeting ship. A mighty struggle was taking place above him, he knew. He had seen many a crashing ship in his day and he knew that the vessel he watched was not out of control. Someone was guiding in a Bird-of-Prey to this exact spot under the worst possible circumstances. Martok thought of only one person who would be insanely confidant enough to attempt such a thing.

  The ship had to be Rotarran and his mad brother Worf had to be at the helm.

  Despite initial appearances, the ship had enough room. The pilot had started his run far enough back that he would be able to fire his reverse thrusters in time and grind to halt on the plain j
ust shy of the entrance to the frozen lake.

  “Wings up now,” Martok muttered as the ship’s flight path leveled out. “And keep the nose up.” Worf must have heard him. Just like a living raptor, the wings flared back as the belly came down and the nose of the ship was jerked back. “Good!” Martok cheered. “Now fire thrusters.”

  But there was no slowing the ship down. Instead, the ship’s belly skipped across the surface of the ice, slid to port, somehow straightened, then overcompensated and slid to starboard. A wave of chipped ice flew up in Rotarran’s wake and chunks of ablated armor spun off to either side where the shields failed.

  Against all hope, Worf managed, briefly, to keep the nose up and the belly level. As the Bird-of-Prey sluiced back to port, any pretense of a controlled landing was forgotten; the ship rolled up onto her flank, shearing off the wing at the base. Now physics would play out until the inertia was used up.

  Skipping and sliding like a child’s sled that had escaped on a steep hill, Rotarran twirled across the plain stern first, then the bow again, then the stern. Finally, the lower hull screeched up over a low bank, sheets of hull plating peeling off like scorched skin, and for a stunning moment, the ship was briefly—and for the last time—airborne. When it crashed back down again, the icy surface of the lake splintered, mirrorlike, and crumbled. The sound of the hull screeching as it slid under, the slosh and burble of the waves, and the crunch of the floes against one another, all these sounds echoed unnaturally in the frozen valley.

  Frigid water lapped up over her nose and Rotarran sank with barely a ripple.

  * * *

  Pharh gaped openmouthed as a crack in the ice crept right up under his feet and continued on toward the shore. He looked over his shoulder and considered retreating back toward the mouth of the canyon, but, no, Klingons were still pouring out, drawn by the sound of the crash. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell who was loyal to Martok and who to Morjod, though he had a suspicion they knew, because small constellations of soldiers clustered together into larger, denser clumps as they joined their comrades.