ONLINE THE NEEDS OF THE MANY

by Michael A. Martin

  Until that day on Vulcan.

  Was that because the outcome of the fight was more in doubt than in those earlier battles you mentioned?

  No. That is not to say that I ever felt any certainty that I would prevail. One never does when going into combat. All a warrior can really do is optimize the odds in his own favor as best he can, and then… fight. Allow his body and his weapon to become one, and press his every advantage forward. Begin improvising and continue to improvise in one unending, fluid motion, according to the ebb and flow of combat, until his enemies lie dead at his feet.

  So you let your warrior’s training take over. Since you’re here telling me the tale, you obviously prevailed.

  Obviously. However, I have no recollection of the fight itself. I can remember only its aftermath. It was as though I had blacked out during the battle, and recovered consciousness moments after finishing it. I remember the creature completing its transformation into a perfect duplicate of me, right down to my hospital attire and the bandages wrapped around my chest. And I remember the thing lunging toward where I stood, near the middle of the room.

  The next thing I recall was standing before the medical-waste disposal unit, my hands locked around the creature’s neck—around my neck—just as I finished forcing it backward into the open chute, where it lost its grip on the chute’s edge and fell into the teeth of the disintegration beams.

  You shoved a creature as big as you are into a medical-waste disposal unit? That sounds like one big machine. Why would a Vulcan hospital keep something like that around?

  I wondered that myself, until a hospital administrator explained it to me. With few exceptions, what Vulcans choose to entomb after death is largely intangible.

  Vulcan’s tendency toward a purist Syrrannite way of life has become a lot stronger over the past few decades. Maybe the stress of war has forced them to work harder to maintain their logic.

  Perhaps. Regardless, once they have preserved a deceased person’s thoughts, their attitude toward the disposal of corpses is almost… Klingon.

  So after they save the katra, they just dump the rest of the body down a disintegration chute?

  Or they employ more traditional cremation techniques. Like we Klingons, most Vulcans regard the bodies of their dead as mere empty shells, and they treat them as such. The circumstances forced me to use the hospital’s corpse-disposal system as an expedient weapon. My first recollection following my struggle with the qa’meH quv was the sight of its body—which appeared identical to my body—flash-disintegrating in the crossfire created by the disposal beams. Recalling that sight has always been nearly as disturbing as the memory gap that preceded it.

  Isn’t it unusual for Klingons to have blackouts like that during combat?

  The Vulcan doctors did not believe it to be a cause for concern, especially considering the extent of the injuries from which I was recovering. Besides, such lapses are not entirely unheard-of among uninjured Klingon warriors, though I had never had one before and have not had one since. Like many warriors, I have experienced occasional episodes of what a human might describe as “berserker fury” during the heat of battle.

  Regardless of whatever tricks a warrior’s mind might play in the midst of a battle, his spirit is never absent from the fight—not even when the combat is particularly strenuous. We merely store our more inopportune emotions—especially the one you humans describe as fear—into small and unobtrusive packages. These we relegate to the farthest corners of our minds in order to keep them out from underfoot.

  We do not banish memory, however. We Klingons relish honorable victory too much to do that. After all, who would sing of a victory that neither the vanquished nor the victor can remember?

  So why do you think you have no recollection of overcoming the Undine who tried to replace you on Vulcan?

  I do not know. But it does not matter. It is merely a distraction, one that I let go nearly twenty years ago, just as I have always put aside any other distraction whenever it becomes necessary to do so. Besides, the actions I took immediately after the fight should have laid the entire matter to rest.

  What actions were those?

  I insisted that the Vulcan medical staff run a thorough analysis of any biological residue my attacker might have left behind inside the disposal unit. And I asked both the Klingon Defense Force and Starfleet to double-check the Vulcans’ initial DNA analysis, just to be on the safe side.

  On the safe side of what? Were you afraid… were you concerned that the creature you’d pushed into the disposal unit had survived somehow?

  Not exactly. It was just that what I did remember of the fight had begun to trouble me.

  But you said that all you remember was the sight of the creature tumbling into the waste chute.

  And the fact that the honorless qa’meH quv had been trying to duplicate me exactly, right down to my injuries and bandages.

  But doesn’t it stand to reason that the creature would do that? Wouldn’t it have roused the suspicions of a highly logical group of Vulcan doctors if they had seen an injured but convalescing General Worf replaced with a General Worf who was suddenly, miraculously unscathed?

  I thought that as well, at least at first. But then I began to wonder why the creature had failed to give itself a clear advantage over me in the fight. Why didn’t the thing use a weapon?

  Maybe he—maybe it had gotten overconfident. Maybe it just assumed that you were still too weak after your ordeal aboard the Narada to pose much of a threat.

  But that does not explain why the creature would place itself in exactly the same weakened state as my own. It seemed to me that the qa’meH quv had made the odds between us precisely even, which makes no sense. Either of us might have ended up in that waste disposal chute. Add to that the brief gap in memory, which conveniently prevented me from recalling any details from the fight itself…

  Worf trails off. I think I finally understand where he’s going. Despite his denials, he does indeed know fear. In fact, over the last few decades he’s become one of its most intimate companions.

  You weren’t completely sure which one of you actually won the fight. You couldn’t be certain that you weren’t the one who’d been reduced to carbon ash in the chute.

  No. I was Worf, son of Mogh, just as I had always been. Just as I still am now.

  But there was obviously some doubt in your mind. I mean, if the process that the Undine used to change themselves into humanoid doppelgängers was so perfect as to enable them to escape detection most of the time, then it had to be possible for it to work too well from time to time.

  I know of a number of… incidents that tend to support that notion. But I will not speak of them here for security reasons.

  All right. Putting the notion of “unconscious Undine sleeper agents” aside for the moment, can you tell me if either the Federation or the Klingons learned anything critical about the Undine from your encounter?

  The KDF* engineers took possession of the scanning device the creature had discarded during the fight, and subjected it to a thorough analysis, as Starfleet did a short time later. The data kept the analysts busy for years. Both the Federation and the Empire learned a great deal about the mechanics of the creatures’ transformation process. That proved invaluable throughout the war in developing new methods of uncovering qa’meH quv infiltrators.

  Including Undine infiltrators whose disguises are so perfect that they don’t know that they’re Undine infiltrators?

  I continue to consult with engineers from both the Federation and the Empire on such matters even now.

  A brief but unmistakable frisson of doubt clouds Worf’s gaze, but he covers it swiftly with a heavy spackling of Klingon stoicism. As the interview ends and I return to my lodgings to make my preparations for departure from Donatu V, I wonder how many unsuccessful scans for Undine DNA Worf will force himself to endure until he’s finally able to convince himself that the right person won the fight that fateful day on Vulcan.r />
  Only then does the nature of the sacrifice that the Undine forced upon Worf come sharply into focus for me. And that cost seems inestimable, particularly when reckoned in the only currency that has any real, enduring value to a Klingon. After all, the one thing that any Klingon warrior prizes more highly than anything else is the exultation that can only come from a victory in battle, honorably won.

  Now, thanks to the Undine, Worf can never again trust such a victory, or risk taking it at face value.

  EXCERPTED FROM AN OFFICIAL FEDERATION

  COMMUNIQUé, TRANSMITTED

  STARDATE 76422.5*

  TO: J’mpok, son of Q’thoq, Chancellor of the Klingon Empire and leader of the High Council

  FROM: Grebav of Tellar, Secretary General of the Federation Security Council

  … The Council protests, in the strongest possible terms, yesterday’s incursion by the Klingon Defense Force into the sovereign space of the Gorn Hegemony. The Federation has worked in good faith for many years to forge a workable peace between the governments of the Klingon Empire and the Gorn Hegemony, and can only regard the Empire’s present action as both ill-considered and counterproductive. The Council appeals to Chancellor J’mpok and the Klingon High Council to reverse this rash action before forces become fully engaged on both sides of the conflict. The Council further recommends a cease-fire, concurrent with an immediate return to the negotiation tables at Khitomer for high-level talks between Chancellor J’mpok of the Klingon Empire and King Slathis of the Gorn Hegemony.…

  JAKE SISKO, DATA ROD #Y-11

  Press Room, Nanietta Bacco Stadium,* Pike City, Cestus III

  Captain Kasidy Danielle Yates† walks to the wide window that overlooks the playing field, which the groundskeepers are grooming this afternoon in preparation for an evening game between the Pike City Pioneers and the Prairieview Greensox. One of the ballpark workmen is hoisting a banner up the flagpole just behind the center-field fence. The breeze spreads the canvas out, proudly displaying the stylized covered-wagon-and-baseball logo of the Pike City Pioneers.

  Judging from Kasidy’s easy smile and ubiquitous laughter, motherhood and grandmotherhood have agreed with her at least as much as her decades-long career as a freighter captain ever did. And despite everything she’s been through—the disappearance of her husband (my father, Benjamin Sisko) into the Bajoran wormhole following the allied invasion of Cardassia; the perpetual uncertainty of trying to raise a family in the long shadow of uncertainties cast by Bajor’s enigmatic Prophets; and the nerve-wracking Undine War years—she looks much as she did when she lived with my dad aboard Deep Space 9. Here, at historic Bacco Field, the cradle of a special kind of human renaissance, where bleachers ring the manicured expanse of aquamarine native grass beneath a vault of cerulean blue, it is easy to understand the reason for Kasidy’s agelessness.

  The ancient pastime of baseball, it seems, has a way of keeping a person young.

  I suppose you can guess why I wanted to speak to you here as opposed to anywhere else.

  Ruth Field. There’s certainly a lot of history here.

  It’s Bacco Stadium now, Kasidy. Try and keep up.

  Jake, I’ll start calling this place Bacco Stadium after President Bacco finally stops grousing about the name change, and not before.

  Fair enough.

  Well, Jake, whatever you call this place, you obviously chose it because the home-team dugout here was the closest I ever came to actually having anything to do with the Undine War.

  I thought that coming back here might jog your memories about the Big Game a little bit.

  I take it you’re referring to the game you wrote about in your Collected Stories. “The Gorns of Summer,” I think you called it.

  “The Gorns of Summer” was only a piece of fiction, Kas. I based it on the Big Game of ’Eighty-Nine, but only very loosely. What you and Uncle Kornelius* actually did that day, on the other hand—well, that was something very real and valuable. If not for the two of you, the Federation would have lost out on a major diplomatic opportunity. If that had happened, who knows how the war might have turned out.

  Nobody can say. Which is why I’ve tried not to get into the habit of bragging about it.

  All modesty aside, Kas, that game really ought to earn both you and Kornelius Yates a solid place in history. At least if there’s any justice.

  A place in history. Ouch. I don’t think I’m quite ready to go into a glass display case just yet, Jake. Isn’t it enough that my brother’s baseball jersey is up on a wall at the Pioneer Pub?

  Nope. Because they also serve who never swing a bat or shag a fly ball.

  All right. I’ll talk to you. Just remember one thing, Jake: there’s no “I” in team. Whatever the Pioneers accomplished that day was a group effort.

  Hey, I know the game as well as you do, Kas. I’m a Sisko. Let’s start at the beginning. Where did the idea for playing such an unorthodox game come from?

  It was definitely a Kornelius idea. My brother missed his calling—he should have been a diplomat. Hell, after helping put the league* together and then running the Pioneers for as long as he did—not to mention playing alongside them all those years—he had all the right qualifications to serve as a Federation special envoy.

  Anyway, the Klingon Empire and the Gorn Hegemony were at each other’s throats in those days. The situation hadn’t grown into a full-blown war yet, but out here this close to the core of Gorn territory† we could see the writing on the wall pretty clearly.

  As I recall, Ambassador Worf managed to convince Chancellor Martok to agree to let the Federation mediate the Empire’s dispute with the Gorn.

  That’s right. But the Gorn weren’t such an easy sell. After all, Martok considered Worf a member of his family.

  While the Gorn didn’t even belong to the same phylum.

  Let’s just say that young King Slathis wasn’t the cuddliest adversary Worf had ever encountered—even for a reptiloid. “The Lizard King” had ascended to the throne less than three years earlier, after old King Xrathis died of old age. Slathis was aggressive and ambitious, and he wasn’t old enough to have any clear firsthand recollection of the blood his people had spilled in prior battles, even as recently as the time of the Dominion War. Worst of all, he seemed to feel he had something to prove. Daddy issues, maybe.

  Anyway, he was perfectly happy to get sideways with the Klingons at every opportunity. And to spark a quadrant-spanning Klingon-Gorn war that the Federation would have had to get into up to its neck because of our Khitomer Accords commitments. And this was all going on at the same time that Starfleet was encountering its first real trouble with the Undine.

  So Worf had convinced Martok to allow the Federation to mediate a truce with the Gorn. But the new Gorn leader didn’t see Worf as an honest broker because of his relationship to the House of Martok.

  Exactly, which was why King Slathis wouldn’t agree to any Federation mediation conducted by Worf. In fact, the only Klingon diplomat who ever seemed to get any traction with King Slathis was Ambassador B’vat, who offered his services as mediator between Martok and Slathis.

  But B’vat didn’t represent the Federation, or any other third party. How could the Gorn have thought of him as an unbiased negotiator? After all, B’vat was a loyal Klingon.

  I think that’s still open to debate, Mister Historian. Of course, a lot depends on one’s definition of “loyalty.” Sure, B’vat was loyal to the Klingon warrior ethic, at least as he defined it, which was pretty much in old-school terms—he thought that the Klingon Empire should try a lot harder to live up to its imperial reputation by doing a lot more conquering and a lot less negotiating. In B’vat’s mind, only a perpetual state of war could keep the Klingon Empire sharp. He was a hard-line Duras supporter back during the Klingon Civil War of ’sixty-eight, though he also somehow managed to worm his way into Chancellor Gowron’s good graces once he realized he’d been backing the wrong side.

  That’s an impressive acco
mplishment. Most Klingon chancellors don’t get to that office by being overly forgiving. Or trusting.

  B’vat was a rare bird. Very charismatic, as Klingons go, and that enabled him to find a way to convince Gowron of his loyalty. B’vat was a born salesman. He could have sold a Risan horga’hn to a Vorta. But he was also a very sneaky sonofabitch. I remember overhearing Worf describe him as having the heart of a Romulan and the soul of a Ferengi. And Martok once said the man was “slick as targ-snot.”

  Yet after replacing Gowron as chancellor, Martok never saw fit to do anything to break up B’vat’s growing power and influence on the Klingon High Council.

  Even though the Klingon Empire was on the winning side of the Dominion War, the Empire was pretty badly beat up after the invasion of Cardassia. Martok had to get busy with the job of rebuilding, and that meant walking a fine line between honoring Klingon tradition and doing a few things differently going forward. And there might have been an element of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” going on there as well. So Martok still had some poisonous snakes living in his garden when the troubles between the Klingons and the Gorn began.

  From what little I know about the Gorn, I find it hard to believe that either charisma or salesmanship could have convinced King Slathis that B’vat would be an honest broker for peace.

  You’re right. Because the idea of a mediated peace wasn’t what B’vat actually wanted to sell. And it wasn’t what Slathis wanted to buy, either. Slathis wanted a war between the Gorn Hegemony and the Klingon Empire. And because B’vat had an old-school take on Klingon foreign relations, that was exactly what he wanted as well.

  So there you were, visiting your brother, Kornelius on Cestus III on the eve of what looked to be a very nasty Gorn-Klingon conflict—a war within a war, really, because the Federation was already quietly locking horns with the Undine all across Federation space and beyond. And the two of you suddenly decide to propose that the Gorn and the Klingons resolve their dispute with… a baseball game? Seriously?