by Dayton Ward
“I do not believe we are so foolish and shortsighted as to allow such a thing,” K’lotek countered. “Chancellor Kesh is no fool, nor are the other members of the Council, even those who have only recently been seated.”
Komor turned, leveling a stern gaze at his companion. “Even Gorkon?”
Smiling, K’lotek shook his head. “You may not agree with everything Gorkon brings to the Hall, old friend, but it is hard to discount the things he says. He also has many supporters. Kesh knows this, as he knows that Gorkon and those who share his views may well represent the future of the Empire.”
Deep in thought, Komor faced the throne, as if trying to draw strength from the centuries-old symbol of Klingon power and purpose. Hearing K’lotek’s words, he dismissed them with a wave of his hand.
“It is Gorkon himself who concerns me now. He is up to something, I think, something which he has chosen not to share with the rest of the Council.”
The expression on K’lotek’s face changed to one of concern. “What makes you say this?”
Reaching into his robe, Komor withdrew a data cartridge and held it up for his friend to see. “This is the record of a subspace communication made by Gorkon to the Gal’tagh, one of the escort vessels that took our diplomatic entourage to the Federation starbase for the peace talks. The Gal’tagh left the starbase several hours ago in order to return to its normal duties. Ordinarily, Gorkon would have no reason to contact the ship directly.”
“You have a record of the transmission?” K’lotek asked.
Komor, having returned the data cartridge to the folds of his robes, had begun pacing the length of the chamber, and K’lotek walked alongside him. “The message was encoded, using a nonstandard encryption scheme. I have assigned its decoding to my staff, but I find this development most unsettling.”
K’lotek moved to a computer workstation and punched in a series of commands. The screen filled with lines of harsh red Klingonese text.
“Koloth commands the Gal’tagh,” he noted. “So far as I know, Gorkon and Koloth share no past. He is a capable commander who has served the Empire with distinction. I doubt he would be swayed into doing something questionable, even by someone on the High Council.”
“He has had an almost flawless career,” Komor added. “The only blemish on his record is that incident on the Federation space station when he commanded the Gr’oth.” Komor disdainfully remembered the event, where it had been necessary to destroy Koloth’s ship and the millions of abhorrent tribbles infesting it. Even after that, the curse of the fuzzy parasites had continued, and they soon began to find their way onto outlying Klingon planets by way of merchant freighters and other independent spacecraft that did not employ Klingons as crew members. Now, twenty years after that initial contact, complaints of tribbles nearly overrunning remote colony planets or annexed worlds frequented by heavy merchant traffic were commonplace.
Koloth, for his part, had fared much better than his ship. His good standing with several members of the High Council enabled him, after only a short time, to gain command of another battle cruiser, the Devisor.
Deactivating the computer station, K’lotek turned back to face his friend. “What could Gorkon be after that would require Koloth’s services?”
“I am already seeking the answer to that question,” Komor replied. “Before this diplomatic mission began, I saw to it that we had loyal servants aboard both ships. They answer to the Council above all else, including their captains.” It had not been an honorable tactic, Komor admitted silently. The original mission for the covert operatives assigned to the two escort vessels was to conduct simple surveillance and reconnaissance. After all, how often did Klingons get to board a Federation starbase? Even with the heightened security measures they were sure to face during the peace talks, an alert spy could still gather valuable intelligence.
Now it seemed his careful planning would prove even more useful.
“Will you be able to contact your operatives on Koloth’s ship?” K’lotek asked.
“We shall soon see,” Komor replied. It would take some time to get a covert message through to his agent on the Gal’tagh.
No matter, though. There was much work to be accomplished here in the meantime. Chief among his concerns was to learn just what activities had been consuming Gorkon’s time of late. His thoughts wrestled with what he might find.
What have you done, Gorkon, and what does it mean for the Empire?
Chapter Twelve
IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT by the ship’s clock, and as she sat in the Enterprise ’s command chair, Uhura was thankful for the quiet atmosphere permeating the bridge of the mighty starship at this late hour. During this new vessel’s shakedown cruise several months earlier, she had begun volunteering to take the conn during gamma shift. Earlier in her career, she had become proficient enough in the navigator’s position that she could take over in a crunch situation, but it hadn’t been until recently that Uhura had felt the need to expand her horizons to other shipboard duties. Taking the conn, in effect taking command of the ship while the captain and the first officer were otherwise occupied, was a satisfying change of pace from her regular duties as communications officer. Besides, the relative peace offered by the overnight shift permitted her plenty of time and little pressure to learn the various other systems controlled from the bridge.
It also gave her a lot of time to think.
And right now, she was thinking that something odd was going on.
At first she had been concerned when she heard that Captain Kirk had fallen ill from food poisoning while at the formal dinner on Starbase 49. She’d felt better, of course, when she’d learned that Dr. McCoy had been able to treat his condition, after which Kirk had been ordered to remain in sickbay for observation. While Kirk was recovering, Spock would take temporary command.
And then things started to get suspicious.
The captain was out of touch, for one thing. Uhura had served with Kirk for over twenty years and had seen him injured on numerous occasions. While recovering from all of those instances and as long as he was conscious, Kirk had always kept in close contact with the bridge. It was out of character for him not to have contacted the duty officer at some point, regardless of the current work shift.
On top of that, one of the Klingon ships had left the starbase, heading back into Klingon space at high warp. There had been no notice of their plans to depart, not that Uhura would have expected an explanation from the commander of a Klingon battle cruiser. Still, she couldn’t imagine not having picked up some kind of information on the new development.
Her thoughts were distracted by the sound of turbolift doors opening. Swiveling the command chair around, she saw Chekov stepping onto the bridge. He remained standing in the turbolift alcove, the lines of concern on his face deepened by the shadows created by suppressed lighting helping to simulate ship’s night. Seeing his expression, Uhura rose from her chair and moved to join him.
“Something’s going on,” he said in a low voice as she joined him. “Sulu and I had plans for a light workout tonight after dinner, but when I went to meet him, he wasn’t in his quarters. He’s not in the gym, or anywhere on the ship so far as I can tell.”
Uhura nodded, grateful for the opportunity to discuss her uneasy feelings with someone she knew she could trust. “Sulu was with me after dinner tonight when he was ordered to return to the ship by Spock. That’s the last time I saw him. When I asked Spock about it, he told me that Sulu had been given some kind of special classified assignment.”
Her expression melted into a frown as she added, “The thing is, there’s no record of any command orders being received, just a scrambled subspace communiqué that Spock requested, even though the call originated from Captain Kirk’s quarters.” Who had they talked to back at Starfleet Command? That message was obviously at the heart of the unusual orders Sulu had received.
She told Chekov about the abrupt departure of the Klingon vessel. An idea was wor
king its way up from the depths of her mind, and she didn’t like what it had to say.
“You don’t think Sulu might be on that ship, do you?” Chekov wondered aloud, echoing Uhura’s unspoken theory. “No, that doesn’t make any sense.”
Uhura shook her head. “No more than the idea of Captain Kirk not checking in, even from sickbay.”
A sudden thought begged for her attention.
Could Sulu and the captain both be on the Klingon ship? Uhura’s mind swam with the possibilities. What kind of secret mission into Klingon space would require the help of Klingons?
It was a crazy notion. Almost.
She rubbed her eyes in an effort to relieve some of the tension she was beginning to feel. The soothing sounds of the bridge and her nice quiet graveyard shift with its low stress level was fading under the gentle yet persistent onslaught of their joint brainstorming. They’d seen too much over the years to accept anything unusual at face value.
“I’m starting to get that red alert at the back of my neck.”
She’d heard the captain speak of that peculiar sense on occasion, the instinctive feeling that something alarming was going on, somewhere. Uhura had always figured the trait was either something one was born with, as Uhura believed Captain Kirk had been, or else it was something one learned to develop, along with the numerous other talents and abilities one needed to command a starship.
“You and me both,” Chekov agreed. Then, with a slight chuckle, he added, “If you’re starting to get those extra senses the captain seems to have, maybe it’s finally time you thought about pursuing the command track.”
Smiling at that, Uhura glanced around the bridge once more. She had never seriously given thought to commanding her own ship, but sitting in the center seat on occasion, with the comforting embrace of the ship’s nerve center surrounding her, provided her a sense of power and responsibility she had rarely felt elsewhere. Experiencing it helped her understand what drove someone like James Kirk, and even her friend Hikaru Sulu, to command. The captain made it seem effortless, and even Sulu’s own abilities had progressed rapidly. Uhura had no doubts that a starship command was in his future.
As for her?
It really didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Chapter Thirteen
“MMMMMMMM. There’s nothing like home cooking to warm the stomach and let you know you’re loved.” Garrovick took a seat on the unyielding rock floor of the mining cavern, chuckling at Sydney Elliot’s dry verbal attack on their lunch just as he had at some variation of the joke countless times during their captivity. As he peered into the metal cup and examined his own meager portion of the bland, pale gruel serving as their midday meal, he tried once again to imagine it was oatmeal.
Once again, he failed.
He shrugged, knowing the tasteless concoction wouldn’t kill him. On the contrary, it succeeded quite well at providing needed nutrients and vitamins that kept him healthy and able to remain productive in the mines.
As he ate, he once again felt the throbbing in one of his teeth. The dull ache that had started a few days earlier had grown to the point that he was almost constantly aware of it. Garrovick suspected a cavity was forming in one of his molars, the latest casualty of his deficient diet. Sooner or later he’d have to request permission to visit the camp doctor and see about getting the tooth removed. Having experienced Klingon dentistry three times before over the course of his captivity, he did not relish the prospect, but he couldn’t risk infection. In this stark place they called home and given the prisoners’ generally weakened condition, even the most minor infection could be fatal.
“Look on the bright side, at least it’s not moving.”
The group looked up as Chief Robert Kawaguchi joined them. As he sat down next to Sinak, the Vulcan replied, “Mr. Kawaguchi, we have had some variation of this conversation at regular intervals since arriving here. One would think that a different observation might present itself to you at some point.”
“When the menu improves,” Kawaguchi shot back, “so will my observational skills.”
Garrovick smiled slightly as Sinak nodded thoughtfully in his direction, a wry expression playing on the Vulcan’s otherwise impassive features. Sinak had told him once before that he had long ago accepted the human penchant to invoke humor in nearly every conceivable situation. Though he doubted he would ever fully understand this, he had seen its positive contribution to their present situation. Logic dictated that any method which could bolster morale among his companions should be utilized to the most efficient extent possible. The Vulcan therefore continued to provide the openings from which Kawaguchi could pursue this odd compulsion.
Whereas Sinak was an almost stereotypical Vulcan, always calm and controlled, Kawaguchi was much more animated both in voice and movement, the type of person one would expect to be the center of attention at a party or a bar fight. An enlisted man, the chief had been one of the crewmen charged with overseeing the Gagarin ’s vast array of sensors, while Sinak had been one of the ship’s communications officers. During any normal voyage, meetings between Sinak and Kawaguchi might have been limited to chance encounters in the mess hall or passing by one another in a corridor. Fate had nevertheless cast them together, their shared experiences during the past several years and the fact they had shared a prison cell for most of them forging an unbreakable bond between the two men.
“I heard the guards talking,” Ra Mhvlovi said from where he sat leaning against the rock wall of the massive tunnel with the remnants of his paltry meal. “They’re probably going to move us to another section of the mine tomorrow. Looks like a new vein’s been discovered.”
To his right, Ensign Cheryl Flodin looked up in response to Mhvlovi’s words. “That’ll mean we probably have a chance to exceed the quota, and that means Korax will be happy.” Absently she rubbed her bald head, having long ago forgotten how her shoulder-length auburn hair felt when she ran her fingers through it. Like the work details and the bland food, the lack of hair was just one more prison reality she had long since come to accept.
In those rare moments of quiet that presented themselves in the middle of the night, locked in her cell with Mhvlovi, Flodin allowed her guard to drop and let the cascade of feelings she normally kept in check to wash over her. She dreamt of performing her duties aboard the Gagarin as part of the ship’s engineering staff. She wondered about the man she had been destined to marry and what might have become of him. She worried about her father, a widower only a few short months prior to the Gagarin ’s departure on its ill-fated last mission. Had the crew been presumed dead? Her father’s health had not been good before she’d left. How had he handled the news of his only daughter’s disappearance? Thoughts like these had threatened to consume her on many occasions, and it was only the support of her closest friend and cellmate, Ra Mhvlovi, that got her through the rough times.
Sitting next to her as he often did, Mhvlovi was the emotional rock she had clung to over the years of their captivity. The friendship they had cultivated had enabled her to withstand the worst that life as a prisoner could offer. Mhvlovi was a typical Efrosian, with skin a deeply hued orange and piercing cobalt blue eyes that looked as if they could penetrate cast rodinium. Flodin remembered how, on the Gagarin, Mhvlovi had looked almost regal in his uniform and with his mane of flowing white hair and matching mustache. The hair and mustache were gone, of course, and his uniform had been replaced long ago with the standard gray one-piece garment that all prisoners wore. Still, despite everything that had happened to him during the past years, Mhvlovi managed to retain some of his dignity and poise.
“Here,” Garrovick said to Flodin as he handed his cup and the remainder of his meal to the ensign. “Eat this. You’re starting to look thin.” Flodin, who had been a computer specialist aboard the Gagarin, had always been slight of build, a condition that had been compounded by the substandard nutrition she and the others had received during the initial years of their imprisonment. Though
conditions were better now than they had been originally, the rest of the group still periodically supplemented Flodin’s diet with portions of their own meals to help her maintain her health.
Appraising the contents of the cup as well as her own, Flodin frowned. “I think they call this type of action ‘cruel and unusual,’ Commander.”
“It’s still better than the stuff they’ll pump into you if you keel over on a work detail from not eating.” Garrovick had nearly succumbed to malnutrition during the previous year. The dietary supplement the camp physician had inflicted upon him had been near torture, with his insides feeling as though they were fighting to turn themselves inside out. Trips to what passed for the prisoners’ lavatory facilities had been both frequent and painful. Garrovick swore he’d never come near the vile “nutrients” ever again and his companions, having witnessed his ordeal, seemed to take a greater interest in the prison menu after that.
Wiping his brow, Garrovick’s hand came away damp with perspiration. The hot season would come early this year, all right. Humidity covered everything and everyone like a thick blanket. Breathing was difficult, especially during physical labor such as mining. Even down here, several hundred meters below the surface, the temperature was still uncomfortably high, and the heat generated by the portable laser drills exacerbated the problem. Though they were allowed plenty of water to drink and were given rest periods throughout the day, it did little to alleviate the long-term effects of the exertion composing the bulk of a prisoner’s existence.
A horn sounded several dozen meters away at the small portable workstation for the Klingon in charge of the work detail, signaling the end of the meal period. All around the Gagarin officers, prisoners began to rise and shuffle into columns to be marched back to the area of the mine being worked today.