A Burning House

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “But there wasn’t one!” G’joth said.

  “Then we create one for the story!” Konn laughed. “Come now, G’joth, you know how opera must be. The audiences will not accept it if there is no love story. When Father’s first production of this played at Ty’Gokor, the greatest cheers came after the final love song after General Talak’s assassin kills Commander Tereth.”

  G’joth snarled. “Tereth was killed at Narendra III when—”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure she died with honor, but that does not fit the needs of the story. And that is of no concern, for the opera has already been written, and I would not dare to change Father’s words. No, what I require from you, G’joth, is your memory of the fight between Captain Klag and Me-Larr of the San-Tarah.”

  As he said that, they all reached the top of the stairs in succession, which emptied onto the stage itself. Surrounded by rows and rows of rising seats, and the almost deafening silence of the empty amphitheater, G’joth suddenly felt very small.

  The woman put down the box and removed several items, the first of which was a headpiece, which she handed to Gowrik. He placed it on top of his head and suddenly, with that and the klongat cloak, he almost looked like one of the Children of San-Tarah. In truth, he looks like he killed one and is wearing his fur as a trophy, but it will do for the purposes of theater. Were this being recorded instead of staged, the aliens would be re-created more precisely, but symbolism was always enough for the opera. From his studies of the history of opera, undertaken after he first attempted to write one, he knew that this was a recent development, that operas used to go to great lengths to re-create the original events with holographic trickery and complex costuming, but the trend over the past seventy-five years or so was to return to the older ways of performing opera, the way it was supposedly done in Kahless’s time.

  The other three items in the box were bat’leths. She handed one each to Gowrik and Kenni. The third, presumably, was for Klivv. As soon as they took them, G’joth realized that they were not real bat’leths. The one manner in which modern theater tended away from the time of Kahless was in the use of weaponry. In the old days, performers used real weapons. When performances became ever more enhanced with false images and illusions, the weapons followed suit. But when theater became more stripped down, the weaponry remained false. It had always struck G’joth as hypocritical—and dishonorable.

  But that was the least of the problems. He said, “The Children of San-Tarah did not use Klingon weapons.”

  “I am aware,” Konn said. “However, we already have the bat’leths. To create new weapons would force us to go over budget, and Father would kill me.”

  G’joth sighed. “I cannot provide you with advice as to the accuracy of the fight if you are not using the same weapons. For that matter, for the captain’s duel against Talak, he used a mek’leth.”

  The woman, whom G’joth assumed to be the prop master, spoke for the first time. “Can’t use a mek’leth.”

  “Why not?”

  She indicated the upper rows with her head. “Can’t see them from the high seats.”

  Snarling, G’joth said, “Very well.”

  Then he heard panting and running feet, both noises growing louder. A short, squat man came onto the stage. He had broad shoulders and small, beady eyes.

  Angrily, Konn said, “You are late, Klivv. If you are late again, I will kill you and replace you with a performer who is punctual.”

  Klivv spoke in a high, whiny voice. “The aircar was late.”

  G’joth was aghast. This little petaQ looked more like the captain’s traitorous brother Captain Dorrek than like Klag, and sounded more like a Ferengi than a Klingon.

  The prop master held out his bat’leth, which he took. “Which are we doing first?” Klivv asked.

  “The duel with Me-Larr. This is Bekk G’joth. He serves on the Gorkon and will provide technical advice.”

  Klivv’s beady eyes grew wide. “Really? Oh, that is excellent! I will speak with you when rehearsal has ended, honored Bekk. There is much I may learn from you about the great Captain Klag.”

  “Of course,” G’joth said, though he wondered what excuses this little toDSaH would contrive to avoid being accurate. Then again, perhaps he is not as maddening as his director.

  “Take your stations,” Konn said. He and Kenni, as well as the prop master, moved to the edge of the stage. G’joth joined them a moment later. Klivv and Gowrik, meanwhile, went to center stage, each holding his bat’leth.

  “Computer,” Konn said, “begin playback of soundtrack for Act 2, scene 9 of The Battle at San-Tarah.”

  Some rather bombastic music began playing, and G’joth remembered the other thing he disliked about Reshtarc’s operas: the noise. The best operas, to G’joth’s mind, kept the music simple to allow the singers free rein. After all, the music was there only to support the singers. Reshtarc, though, subscribed to the theory that the music was the important part, with the words being only the grapok sauce to garnish the meat of the instrumentation.

  As soon as the music started, Gowrik and Klivv got into character. Gowrik hunched downward, almost pulling his body into the cloak, which, G’joth realized, was meant to emphasize his cloak and mask to the audience. As for Klivv, he danced back and forth lightly on his feet. It looked quite elegant and graceful, and it made G’joth’s crest ache.

  “No,” he said, “this is wrong!”

  “Computer, cease playback,” Konn said. The music stopped, which G’joth saw as a kindness. “What is wrong, G’joth?”

  “Klivv. Those movements are wrong.”

  Frowning, Klivv asked, “Does Klag not move like that?”

  “Nobody moves like that when wielding a bat’leth. It is a two-handed weapon, and a heavy one. Proper use of it requires that one’s footing be solid.” He walked over to Klivv and took the prop bat’leth from his hands. Sure enough, it was lighter than G’joth’s d’k tahg, much less a real bat’leth. “You must stand with your feet slightly inverted, your hip thrust slightly outward, and dropping your stance so that your center of gravity is lowered. That provides you with stability. Otherwise, at the first clash of blade on blade, you will fall down.” He shook his head. “This is the first thing you are taught when you learn the bat’leth. Children know this.”

  “Perhaps,” Konn said, “but that is not what will play to the high seats. We will continue.”

  Angrily, G’joth handed the bat’leth back to Klivv. To his credit, Klivv inverted his feet slightly after taking the weapon back.

  Then Konn said, “Klivv, cease that idiotic stance. Do it the way it was choreographed. Computer, restart playback.”

  G’joth started thinking up ways of killing his sister.

  Fourteen

  The Lukara Edifice

  Novat, Qo’noS

  B’Oraq clambered to her feet, the smell of burning plastiform and acrid smoke climbing into her nostrils. The aircar, she remembered from seeing its descent toward Novat, was an old Yivoq—those things had thruster packs that burned quickly and catastrophically with any kind of impact.

  She ran toward the pyramid structure of the office building that the car had crashed into. Most everyone else was either running away from it or standing and staring.

  There was a guardsman talking on a wrist comm, and when he saw B’Oraq, he whipped out his painstik and said, “Stay back! The guard will be by to put this out.”

  Although she was in civilian garb—a brown tunic and loose black pants—B’Oraq had thought to wear her rank insignia on the sleeve of her tunic, and she turned her right arm toward the guardsman. “I am Lieutenant B’Oraq of the Klingon Defense Force, and you will let me pass!”

  The guardsman hesitated. Had she been in uniform, there would have been no question. Even a lowly bekk in the Defense Force outranked anyone in the Imperial Guard.

  “Who is your supervisor,” B’Oraq then said, “so I may tell him that his subordinate is a foolish little chuSwI’ who�
��”

  The guardsman lowered the painstik and stood aside.

  “Tell the fire crews to wait for my signal before em-placing the force fields.” The Imperial Guard’s mandate included not only maintaining Klingon law on the homeworld but also disaster control. In case of a fire, they had ships that would project a force field around the fire until it was smothered. Technically, they were under no obligation to wait until people were evacuated, but that, B’Oraq knew, was due to a tendency to think that anyone caught in a fire was automatically dead. B’Oraq knew better, and she was not going to let any more people die than she absolutely had to. It was for that reason that she swore an oath to personally maim that guardsman with his own painstik if his delay caused her to lose anyone.

  B’Oraq ran toward the conflagration. She heard a scream to her right and ran toward it. Klingons tended not to scream when in pain, so this had to be a critical case. In no time, she traced the scream to a man lying on the pavement, a twisted, charred chunk of metal impaling his left leg near the groin. Blood soaked the pant leg. She watched for a quick moment, trying to judge if the blood flow was pulsatile or not, but she couldn’t be certain. Could be the artery or the vein. Of course, I don’t have my hand scanner with me. She knelt down next to him and said, “I’m a doctor. Hold still.”

  “I was trying to run away from that khest’n lunatic, and this thing hit me. Get it out!”

  She took the man’s wrist in her left hand and found his radial pulse. It was tachycardic, to her lack of surprise. Then she lightly touched the protruding end of the shrapnel and felt the metal throb. Closing her eyes, she focused on the thrum of the metal that transmitted to one hand and compared it to the flow of his blood from the radial pulse going to her other hand. She was hoping for a disconnect between the two, because the venous return should lag by a mere fraction of a second.

  But they matched perfectly, which meant it hit an artery.

  Quickly, she made a visual inspection of the man and patted down his back—to his obvious annoyance. Miraculously, there were no other visible wounds. With the amount of debris that had been flying around, he was lucky to be hit only once.

  “Stop touching me and get this thing out of me—if you truly are a doctor,” the man said with a snarl.

  “If I remove it, you’ll bleed to death in a matter of minutes. Not that that isn’t tempting. However…” She unholstered her disruptor, smiling at how appalled her teachers at Starfleet Medical would have been if they knew she was armed while giving a talk at a medical conference. But given the reception I was expecting…

  She used the disruptor to slice off the ends of the shrapnel, which reduced the danger of something or someone hitting the protruding ends and making things worse until she could get him to a proper medical facility. In aid of that, she activated her wrist comm with the intention of having this man beamed up to the Gorkon—she did not trust any planet-based medical facility, especially since most of the planet’s physicians were a quarter qelI’qam away at the conference and not at their posts. Of course, they could be there in an instant, but then there was the issue of their catastrophic lack of competence.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t send him to the Gorkon right now, because the only trained medical person currently assigned to the ship was B’Oraq herself, since Gaj had been put to death.

  “I’ll get you to a medical facility soon. Wait here,” she said.

  “I am not likely to go anywhere,” the Klingon said through clenched teeth.

  Smiling the most encouraging smile she could manage—which probably confused the man, but human medical training had corrupted her in several ways—she got up and ran to see who else needed her help. The smoke was thick, and she ran in a low crouch. No point in both polluting and flash-frying my lungs while trying to save lives. The heat, which had started out intense, was starting to build, baking her face and hands.

  “B’Oraq to Gorkon.”

  “K’Nir.”

  Grateful that the second-shift commander had answered rather than, say, Kurak, B’Oraq said, “Lieutenant, is there power to the medical bay?”

  “No.”

  “Please make it so—there was an aircar crash in Novat and I’m about to send several patients to the ship.”

  “Doctor, that’s not authorized by—”

  “It’s authorized by me, Lieutenant. If you want, I’ll contact Captain Klag at home and disturb his leave to authorize this, but how do you think he’ll react—”

  “I’m diverting power to the medical bay now, Doctor.” A pause. “And when Commander Kurak lodges her inevitable complaint, I’ll direct her to you. Out.”

  I suppose I deserved that, B’Oraq thought as she ran toward a woman lying facedown on the pavement. And I wish that just once I could get something accomplished without having to resort to intimidation.

  As she got closer, she smelled the stench of burning hair and saw that the woman’s shirt had been burned off. Those same burns probably took her hair, which was singed at the ends and quite short.

  A single glance at the woman’s back and spinal ridge confirmed her worst fears. The skin of the affected region was white, nearly translucent, with wormy ropes of purplish-pink blood vessels visible beneath. But she knew that the blood inside those veins and arterioles could no longer flow. These were third-degree burns, and the blood in those vessels had been boiled and then had coagulated. As expected, an area of second-degree burns—skin reddened, blistered, cracked—rimmed the perimeter.

  She checked the woman’s breathing and then her radial pulse—with all those burns, B’Oraq didn’t risk contaminating the woman’s damaged flesh any further by touching her neck to try for a carotid pulse—and it was thready and rapid but strong enough. The woman was unconscious, which B’Oraq saw as a blessing, given how painful the burns probably were.

  Then she heard a wonderfully familiar voice. “What may we do to help, Doctor?”

  Getting up and turning around, she saw Kandless and Valatra, the latter still in her full Defense Force uniform, which had no doubt got them past the guardsman. “I need you two to beam to the Gorkon with this woman and that man over there.” She pointed to the man with the shrapnel. “You’ll find state-of-the-art equipment there. If you need anything, talk to Lieutenant K’Nir on the bridge. I’ll keep doing triage down here and will send up patients as I find them.”

  “Of course,” Valatra said.

  Kandless hesitated. “I’m not authorized to perform medicine on a Defense Force ship—”

  “I’ll authorize it, Kandless, and I’ll take responsibility,” B’Oraq said. Then she hesitated. “But it’s probably best if Valatra takes charge while on board. Valatra, go stand with the other patient. Signal the Gorkon when I nod to you.”

  “As you command, Doctor,” Valatra said with a quick salute, then ran over to the man with the shrapnel.

  B’Oraq reactivated her wrist comm. “B’Oraq to Gorkon. K’Nir, there are two people with me—beam them, but not me, directly to the medical bay. You will then be contacted by a Defense Force doctor named Valatra—beam her and the person next to her to the medical bay. I will be sending more patients as well. Treat any request from Valatra as if it were from me.”

  She nodded to Valatra, who activated her own comm. Shortly thereafter, all four disappeared in a red glow.

  Running closer to the flames, now crouched even lower, B’Oraq found more bodies, but these were beyond her help. Some were being consumed by the fire, some had shrapnel that penetrated the heart or head or spine.

  Then she found someone who still had a weak, hitching pulse and shallow respirations. She had him beamed to the Gorkon with instructions to take him ahead of everyone else.

  Finally, she got to the crash site itself. Flames danced all around her, heat conducting through the metal of her armor and boots to make it feel as though her flesh was being boiled. I can’t stay here much longer. And if these flames start to spread, I wouldn’t put it past the guard to go ah
ead and activate the force field without my signal.

  Looking up, she saw that an Imperial Guard ship was approaching this position. I’d better hurry.

  There was only one place left to look: the aircar itself. Climbing over debris, she pushed her way into it, jumping over burning consoles, coughing half a dozen times as she inhaled smoke. She cursed herself for not holding her breath, as she knew full well what kind of damage that smoke and heat would do to her throat and lungs, but done was done. She had to find the pilot—if he was alive, he needed to answer for his crime. If he was dead, then he already had.

  She found him draped over the flight console. He had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. She pried open his eyelids, and both pupils were dilated.

  That gave her pause. Pupillary dilatation normally did not occur for approximately seven hours postmortem. If his pupils are blown now, it could be herniation of the brain stem through the foramen magnum. An intracranial bleed?

  She swept her eyes over the surrounding area: the console, the viewscreen (currently showing the static of a destroyed image translator), the chair. Of course, there was no restraining harness—that was a battle even she gave up fighting. She saw no sign of an impact on any of the bulkheads or equipment.

  Lightly brushing aside the pilot’s shock of black hair, she saw a stellate bursting of the skin along his crest. A moment later, she was able to pick out a minute stain of blood amid the static on the viewscreen. The wound itself showed only oozing, nothing that suggested a massive bleed. But head wounds bled insanely. Which means his heart had stopped pumping prior to his impact with the viewscreen. The impact itself was certainly enough to kill him all by itself. And then there were the blown pupils…

  So perhaps an intracranial bleed, something that would create enough pressure that the only direction the brain could go is down. A herniation of the brain stem through the foramen magnum, and death would’ve been nearly instantaneous—no chance for him even to react.

  To make matters worse, this wasn’t just some Klingon flying an aircar into a building. He wore Defense Force armor and had the rank insignia of a captain. Under other circumstances, she might be willing to let the flames consume his unworthy corpse, but all was not as it appeared here. She needed to perform a proper autopsy, one that she knew would not happen unless she took it upon herself.