A Burning House

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Dax said, “We can contact him later, if—”

  Wu gave a small smile. “No need. I believe the ambassador would find a call from the pair of you a convenient excuse to end a rather onerous discussion. If you’ll excuse me for one moment, I’ll fetch him.”

  “Thank you, Mister Wu,” Bashir said.

  “Very good, sir.” With that, the screen went back to the Federation emblem.

  Bashir fidgeted in his seat. Dax, standing behind him, said, “Stop fidgeting, Julian.” Bashir sighed.

  Worf’s face replaced the emblem a moment later. Bashir had served with Worf for four years and had eventually learned to be able to tell the taciturn Klingon’s emotions from his eyes. When they widened, he was angry or surprised. When they squinted slightly, he was amused. A deep squint meant caution or respect.

  If the expression didn’t change, but his features relaxed ever so slightly, then he was glad to see you. That was the expression he had now, though Bashir suspected it wouldn’t last very long.

  “Doctor. Ezri. It is good to hear from you.”

  “I doubt you’ll say the same once we tell you why we called, Worf.” Bashir took a deep breath and filled him in.

  Worf squinted deeply as Bashir talked, and somehow he didn’t think respect was involved.

  Bashir ended by saying, “But by the time we reached Kaga’s, he had already left with some captain or other. He’s on a civilian transport back to Qo’noS even as we speak.”

  “Which captain was it?” Worf asked, which struck Bashir as an odd question.

  “Dorrek,” Dax said.

  Now the eyes widened.

  Dax asked, “Do you know him?”

  “Yes.” Worf’s voice had deepened, which Bashir did not view as a good sign. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will deal with it.”

  And with that, he signed off.

  Bashir leaned back. “Good to hear from you, too.”

  Frowning, Dax said, “Computer, display Klingon Defense Force service record for Captain Dorrek, son of M’Raq.”

  A moment later, a Klingon military record appeared. Bashir’s Klingon was a bit rusty, but he recognized his most recent posting as the I.K.S. K’mpec.

  “There’s a notation in his file that he was discommendated from the House of M’Raq by his older brother, Klag.”

  Bashir frowned. “I know that name.” He rubbed his chin. “Of course, Klag’s the captain of the Gorkon—that’s Rodek’s posting!”

  “I don’t like this,” Dax said, arms folded. “Why would Rodek leave without even waiting to speak to you with the disgraced brother of his captain?”

  “I couldn’t even begin to guess,” Bashir said with a smirk, “primarily because the nuances of Klingon feuds give me a headache.”

  “Me, too.” Dax smirked back. She shook her head. “Well, forget it. It’s Worf’s problem now. Curzon said it best: the only people who can deal with Klingons are Klingons. We’ve put the ball in Worf’s court—let him deal with it.”

  Nodding, Bashir said, “You’re probably right. I just hope for his sake that it’s relatively painless.”

  “That’s one thing I can guarantee it won’t be,” Dax said gravely. “Klingon feuds usually result in much worse than a headache.”

  Nineteen

  Kenta District

  Krennla, Qo’noS

  The three boys weren’t around when G’joth went to meet them. He had cut short his “consulting” on The Battle at San-Tarah in order to fulfill his promise to the boys from the previous day.

  Not that he minded having an excuse to bolt from the opera house. In addition to every other indignity, Klivv did no justice to the role of the captain. The only point in his favor was that he had an amazing singing voice.

  If only what he sang was worthy of his talent. Not that G’joth was in any position to judge, as he was so disgusted with the whole enterprise that by the time he started actually paying attention to the songs, he was incapable of judging them objectively.

  When he came back to the street where he’d met Kimm, Yorikk, and Gurlk, the boys were nowhere to be found.

  The guardsman who’d threatened them, though, was walking casually down the street, brandishing his painstik.

  Upon sighting G’joth, the guardsman stood at attention and saluted in the style of the Defense Force, lowering his painstik. “Honored Bekk. How may I serve you this day?”

  G’joth somehow managed not to roll his eyes. He was the last person in the empire to rail about what constituted a true warrior, but even he would admit that this obsequiousness was unbecoming. “I was supposed to meet the three boys I saw you speak to yesterday, the ones using the chicks for ghIntaq practice.”

  “I did tell them to disperse,” the guardsman said matter-of-factly. “They are not foolish enough to disobey me.”

  “I see.”

  Inclining his head, the guardsman said, “Is there anything else, honored Bekk?”

  “No.” G’joth snarled and walked away from the guardsman, who continued on his rounds.

  For his part, G’joth went to where Mother had told him that Klaad now lived. He wanted to see his childhood friends, and by visiting Klaad he might see Kimm as well and find out what had happened.

  Based on the guardsman’s words, G’joth had his suspicions.

  Klaad’s residence was similar to G’joth’s own, except the building’s façade was much more crumbled. The front door did work, though it took several seconds to slide open at G’joth’s approach; the inside smelled far worse. This building also didn’t have an intercom, so when G’joth got up to the fifth floor, he had to pound on the door with his fist.

  The door was opened with a creak of metal on dry hinges by an old man. G’joth was only a few turns younger than Klaad, but Klaad seemed decades older. G’joth had a warrior’s build. Klaad, though, with his ample belly, rheumy eyes, thin hair, and stooped posture, had let age overtake him. Klaad worked at the same construction company as G’joth’s father, Ch’lan, and therefore should have been in better condition.

  “So,” Klaad said, his voice like sandpaper over gravel, “you’re here.”

  “Yes. It is good to see you, Klaad. It has been too long.”

  “That’s hardly my fault.” Klaad did not step aside. “What do you want?”

  “I had hoped to meet with your son and his friends, as I promised them yesterday, but they were not there, so I thought—”

  “What?” Klaad said belligerently. “What did you think, G’joth? Do you wish to see my son? Do you?”

  Now Klaad stepped aside, allowing G’joth to enter a space that was even smaller than G’joth’s own: one common room that included kitchen facilities and two doorways.

  As G’joth entered, Klaad called out, “Kimm! Show yourself!”

  One of the two doors opened, and G’joth saw a young man that he was hard-pressed to recognize as the same youth who yesterday was throwing a ghIntaq nowhere near its intended target. Welts and bruises covered his beardless face, and one eye had swollen shut. Lacerations covered his arms, and he walked gingerly, as if ribs were broken.

  “What happened?” G’joth angrily asked.

  “You happened, G’joth. You made the guardsman look a fool in front of the children, and the children had to be reminded of his position.”

  Looking at Kimm, G’joth stared incredulously. “The guardsman did this?”

  In a weak voice, Kimm said, “Right…right after you left. He…he found us and…and then he started using his…his painstik on Y-Yorikk. I t-tried to…to stop him, and he…”

  Kimm trailed off, but G’joth got the idea. “I will kill him.”

  “Oh, really?” Klaad asked. “And then what happens, exactly? There are hundreds of guardsmen assigned to Krennla. They won’t touch you, of course, you’re part of the all-hallowed Defense Force—and they’ll probably tell you that you did the right thing and praise you and maybe even give you a barrel of bloodwine for your troubles. But
once you go back to that khest’n ship of yours? They’ll be out in force, and the minute my boy or any of his friends shows his face, they’ll beat it until it’s bloody. So well done, G’joth.”

  Shaking his head and clenching his fist, G’joth said, “I did not intend—”

  “No, of course you didn’t. You didn’t intend to betray all of us.”

  The lunch he’d hastily grabbed at the opera house started welling up G’joth’s throat from one of his stomachs. “I betrayed no one, Klaad! You and Krom could have come with me! I asked you to come with me!”

  Klaad was still holding the door open, presumably because he did not wish G’joth to stay for any length of time. “We have discussed this before, G’joth. Unlike you, we had families.”

  “And they would be treated better if you had come with me.” He pointed at Kimm. “Certainly, that would never have happened!”

  “A son should know his father,” Klaad said.

  G’joth shook his head. “So better that you grow flabby and old working with my father. Did they transfer you to a desk position, Klaad? Is that why you disgrace yourself?”

  That prompted a bitter laugh from Klaad. “Your father and I do not work together, you stupid petaQ, because we do not work. The company went out of business half a turn ago.”

  “No.” G’joth shook his head. “Father was at work yesterday. He is home today because of yobta’ yupma’, but—”

  “Your father lies, G’joth. I would think even you would be astute enough to see that. He preserves the illusion for the sake of you and your sister, but he does not work.”

  He knew Lakras wasn’t being paid much at the opera house, and G’joth sent only some of his earnings home, which meant that Mother’s cooking at the Andorian place was now the household’s only serious source of income.

  Looking again at Kimm, he said, “Why do you not challenge the guardsmen? They would never have done this before.”

  “Ours was not the only company that has gone out of business in Krennla, G’joth. The city produces nothing of value to the empire. Even our cultural contributions are secondary. And so we wither on the vine and eventually will die.” Klaad snarled. “In some ways, G’joth, you are right. Krom and I might have been better off going with you to fight the empire’s battles. Instead, we chose to fight one here to simply survive.”

  “No.” G’joth looked at the man he had once considered a friend with disgust. “You have not fought, Klaad, you have simply accepted. You were named for a great warrior, who served in the Defense Force a century ago, both before and after Praxis. I remember your father telling me when we were children that he hoped that you would follow the path of your namesake and bring honor to your family. I now see that it is good that you did not. Such as you would never survive in the Defense Force.”

  “Perhaps not. But at least I would have died with honor, as I’m sure you will, G’joth. Such is not my fate. So go and do that and leave this place. Krennla is a dying city, and you should not die with it.”

  G’joth stormed past Klaad toward the exit but stopped on the threshold. He looked back at Kimm, who still stood, his body ravaged by the guardsman. Then he looked at Klaad and did something a warrior was never supposed to do—but was perhaps the duty of a friend. “I am sorry for my role in what happened to your son.”

  Klaad’s face softened for the first time since G’joth arrived. “In truth, you are not to blame. It is not the first time that the guard have done this. If it had not been you, another excuse would have been contrived. The only profession that thrives in a place such as this are those who enforce the law, because lawlessness has increased.”

  “What those boys did was not lawless!”

  “Of course not, but it did disrupt order. And the guard cannot abide that.”

  A growl building in his throat, G’joth left.

  He walked the streets of Kenta District for almost an hour. As he did so, he observed that there were more guardsmen, but also more people, and those people looked worn-down, destitute.

  Defeated.

  G’joth wondered if it had always been this bad and he hadn’t noticed, or if things had indeed grown worse as Klaad had said. He recalled Leader Wol’s revulsion at the very idea of even setting foot in Krennla.

  Eventually, his feet took him to a tavern called Kravokh’s Beard. The place had been built during Chancellor Kravokh’s reign by a shipbuilder whose fortunes prospered under that chancellor’s rule, and it was filled with images of Kravokh from throughout his life. G’joth had always found the place to be irritating, but Father and his friends loved it.

  Sure enough, there they all were, sitting quietly around the large table in the corner, just as they were ten years ago.

  No, not just as they were, G’joth thought with displeasure. Ten years ago, they would not have been sitting quietly. The drinks would be flowing freely, heads colliding, songs being sung.

  Now, though, they simply sat and sipped their drinks—cheap bloodwine, from the smell of it—and had low, muttered conversations.

  Father looked up at G’joth’s arrival. “Greetings, my son. Have you and Lakras finished your rehearsals?”

  “Hers is still going on,” G’joth said. “I, however, had to depart.”

  The man who used to be Father’s supervisor, a fat old toDSaH named Korvaq, said, “Are both your children part of the opera now, Ch’lan?”

  “Did you not hear?” That was Trolk, whom Father had always described as the worst worker on any construction site. “They are portraying one of G’joth’s battles!”

  “One of my ship’s battles,” G’joth said quickly. “The director wishes me, as someone who was there at San-Tarah, to be a consultant. However, in truth this means he wishes to say that he had someone who was at San-Tarah to be a consultant. The events are jumbled, the weaponry is wrong, Klivv bears about as much resemblance to Captain Klag as a dead klongat, and I have been reminded that stage combat bears little to no resemblance to real combat.”

  “You know,” Korvaq said, “in the old days, actors had to know how to fight. There wasn’t no such thing as ‘stage combat’—if two people fought onstage, dammit, there’d be blood. Klingons nowadays, they’re soft. It’s a disgrace, really. S’what happens when commoners get in the chancellor’s chair.”

  Trolk laughed heartily, spitting his drink on the table. “You’re a commoner, you stupid petaQ.”

  “Exactly—could you imagine what a disaster it’d be if I led the High Council?”

  “Couldn’t make things any worse, I can tell you that,” one of the others, whom G’joth did not recognize, muttered.

  But G’joth was looking at his father, who refused to look up at his son. “Father,” he finally said.

  Now he looked up. Droplets from his beverage were dripping out of his stringy white beard. “Yes, son?”

  “When, precisely, were you going to tell me?”

  “I wasn’t.” He looked back down at his drink, which G’joth finally placed the smell of as being cheap warnog. “There was no need for you to know, and there is no need for Lakras to know. She has enough to worry her—and your mother makes enough that we get by.”

  “How did this happen?” G’joth asked.

  Trolk spoke with a snarl. “No one’s building anything in Krennla. And why should they? It’s Krennla. We produce nothing of use for the empire, and the empire gives us nothing in return.”

  “We produce taxes for the High Council to waste on new ships,” Korvaq said, “like that luxury liner you serve on, G’joth.”

  G’joth growled, his fists clenched. “The Gorkon has a crew of twenty-seven hundred, Korvaq. My quarters are a space smaller than this table at which you sit. And we fight to keep the empire strong.”

  “Have you looked around, G’joth?” Father said. “The empire does not feel very strong from here.”

  G’joth looked down on his father. “You have lied to your own kin and brought disgrace to our family.”

 
Korvaq stood up, his fists slamming on the table as he did so. “You will not speak to your father that way, whelp!”

  “Or what, old man? Will you throw up on me to show how valiantly you defend your putrid state?”

  “Krennla has brought disgrace, G’joth. We are simply trapped in its path.”

  “You are Klingons! When Klingons are trapped, they fight their way out, or die in the attempt.”

  Sitting back down, Korvaq said, “Then we will die. And few will care.”

  Before G’joth could respond to that, his father said, “Go, G’joth. If you will not drink with us, then leave this place. You are not welcome.” And then Ch’lan turned his body in the chair so his back was turned.

  His instinctive response to his father’s insult was to insert his d’k tahg into Ch’lan’s spine, but G’joth reined in that instinct. This was still his father, and he was not a warrior.

  None of them were.

  G’joth left Kravokh’s Beard without another word. He could have stayed and fought these drunken old fools, and probably killed all of them, but to what purpose? They were already dead; they simply hadn’t stopped moving yet.

  He went back to the opera house. Even simulated battle was preferable to this.

  Twenty

  An unnamed cave

  Kovris V

  Red-hot talons of fire clawed into L’Kor’s mind, and he screamed.

  Memories…

  …he is on the homeworld, speaking to his friend Gannik about an investment opportunity that will improve the fortunes of both their Houses…

  “Trust me, my friend, the Turok people are among the empire’s finest. Your House’s debts will be a thing of the past within the first few months.”

  …he is on a transport ship that takes him and hundreds of others to the Khitomer outpost, as replacements for the station’s crew…

  “So, Gi’ral, I hear Moraq’s a good commander.”

  “I could not say, L’Kor. We will learn when we arrive.”

  …months after he arrives on Khitomer, he learns that Turok has gone out of business…