Demands of Honor (28 page)

“Yes,”
Kirk said.
“And, Michael, be careful. You'll be able to find the kinetic device by its power readings, but you have to get up and down on your own. Transporters can't reach that far underground.”

“Understood, Captain.” At the moment there were things it was better that Kirk did not know. There would be no need for transporters. For Fuller, this would be a one-way trip. It was the only way to be sure that the job was finished. Fuller found that the thought didn't trouble him at all. “Fuller out.”

He collected his squad. Everyone was accounted for, though Greenberger's team had lost three people. Eleven security officers were not nearly enough for an assault on a complex as big as the mine, but Fuller knew they would succeed. He had come too far and the work he had to do was too important to fail now.

*   *   *

Kirk had a bad feeling. They had lost three crewmen already, and he had given a nearly impossible task to eleven more. If that task failed, an entire planet would be destroyed—a planet full of good people, a planet that on a previous mission still more of his crew had sacrificed themselves to protect.

It was all troubling, but they still had a chance, a fairly good one. Kirk realized that something else was bothering him, something he'd heard in Michael Fuller's voice.

He sounded like a man ready to die.

SYSTEM 7348

FEDERATION SPACE

A
DON WISHED HE STILL HAD
his flying platform. Even at a full run, it was taking too long to get to the mine. Before he and Bethe made their way around to the side of the complex, he had seen that the Klingons inside had finally gone out to fight. That meant the humans no longer needed him to open the doors from the inside.

He trusted that his people and their Starfleet allies would prevail. Now his thought was only of Gurn. The clan leader was inside the mine, close. Adon could feel his blood boiling with its call for revenge. That the traitorous coward was walking around while his father lay in the ground was intolerable. Nothing would stand in the way of his vengeance now.

A blast passed over his head and exploded into a tree
behind them. Bethe tugged at his arm while she fired back. Her weapon found its target and one of the Klingons from space fell. “Careful,” Bethe said, a rebuke in her voice. She was right, Adon would never taste his revenge if he became careless now.

Ducking back, he saw two Klingon guards standing by the small door that he had hoped would lead them inside. Adon whispered instructions to Bethe and raced across the open ground to the mine's main shaft, firing at the guards as he ran. Before they could react, he vaulted over the guardrail and landed on the catwalk that ringed the shaft on this side. Just past the railing on the catwalk was a pit that looked endless and might as well have been.

Ducking his head down, Adon heard disruptor bolts hit the ground in front of his position, while other bolts passed over his head. The cover was good, but it would not last. He heard the guards talking and then their footsteps as they approached, thinking they had Adon cornered. He heard two shots from Bethe's green-skin pistol and knew the guards had stepped into her path. He lifted his head to see them lying on the ground with Bethe standing nearby. She was shaking her head.

“Fools,” she said. Adon agreed; it was a wonder they had ever reached the stars. However, Adon had to assume that Duras's men were not the best the Klingons had to offer.

But they
were
the people that Gurn had chosen as his allies.

Together, he and Bethe headed for the area the Klingons had been guarding. As he suspected, it was a small access door. Most of Duras and Gurn's defenses were
outside engaging Starfleet and Adon's clan. And most of the soldiers left in the mine would be guarding the main entrances. The maintenance door was perfect.

There would be time enough to defeat all of their foes. For now, Adon needed to move quickly before Gurn ran like the coward he was, which would happen as soon as the clan leader realized that the battle was lost.

Inside, he and Bethe crept along quietly. In the distance, he saw a combined force of perhaps ten Klingons. It was a simple matter to avoid them. “It would take a growing season to search this whole place for Gurn,” Bethe said.

She was right, he needed to find the man quickly. “Come, we need someplace quiet,” he said to her, and led her to one room he was fairly certain no one would be occupying or watching now. In a few minutes, they were standing inside the computer simulation room where he had spent many hours. The last time he was here, he had been playing games with his friends, while his father was dying in the woods. Forcing down that thought, Adon made sure the door was closed and headed for the main computer terminal.

“Computer,” he said.

“What do you want?”
it replied in its mechanical voice. It used the dialect of Adon's people's language that the Klingons spoke.

“Where is clan leader Gurn?”

After a brief pause the computer said,
“His last communication was from the warp reactor room.”

Bethe was surprised. “How does it know?”

“The machines built by the green-skins and the
Klingons watch everything. There are listening and viewing devices everywhere. The Orions and the Klingons apparently watched their people constantly.” Adon found the idea revolting, but from what he had seen of the Orions and the Klingons, he realized that there were good reasons for watching such people. Once again, Adon wondered how anyone of his people, even Gurn, could stand with such as them.

Before he left, Adon said, “Computer. Turn off all of your listening and watching devices.”

“Done,”
the computer said. The devices could easily be turned back on, but Gurn would not think to do it. If nothing else, it would guarantee that Adon and Bethe reached the warp reactor undisturbed.

There were transport devices, called lifts, that Adon could have used to reach the reactor's level, but he did not want anyone to know he was coming. He and Bethe made their way on foot, taking several minutes to reach the ladders that would take them to the warp reactor. Inside the long shaft, they quickly climbed down to the right level and came out near the reactor.

An invisible shield had operated in the corridor in front of the reactor, but that had been destroyed in the last battle. Adon was pleased to see that the heavy door at the entrance to the reactor was open.
Gurn is leaving himself a way out,
Adon realized.

Well, he had also left Adon a way in.

Adon and Bethe crept forward. When they were less than twenty paces from the door, Adon could see that several of Gurn's clan were watching the door with weapons drawn. Interestingly, no Klingons were around. Adon guessed that the grand alliance between Gurn and
Duras had not lasted long after Gurn had failed to provide the Klingon with the promised crystals.

The reactor was a good place to hide. There was only one way in, and if the door was closed, it would take heavy weapons and much time to break through. Adon considered racing in, weapon firing, but he knew that even if he got inside, there was a good chance that Gurn's people would cut him down before he killed their clan leader.

He could feel Bethe, impatient, behind him. He lifted a hand to silence her and called out, “Gurn, you traitorous coward!”

Immediately, there was a hail of weapons fire. None of it came close to their position.

“Would you face me, the son of the man you murdered?” Adon called out. More weapons fire, this time closer as they tracked the source of his voice. When the weapons went quiet, there was the sound of voices from inside.

Adon and Bethe moved quietly to a new position. “Gurn, where are your allies, the Klingons?”

Silence this time and no weapons.

“They have abandoned you as they are trying to abandon this world. They tried to destroy it once; now they mean to finish the job.”

“You lie,” Gurn's voice said from his hiding place.

“Ask your Klingon masters, if they will even speak with you now. They wish to destroy this world and blame the humans to start their war.”

“The humans tried to destroy us,” Gurn said, but the uncertainty was clear in his voice.

“Now they fight and die to defeat the Klingons. The
fate of this planet will be decided soon, but either way you will not live to see the outcome,” Adon said. “People of Gurn's clan. Your leader is a murderer who has aided those who even now labor to destroy us all. You will never see whatever he has promised you. You can still aid the fight against the Klingons, however, and seek whatever redemption you can find in the battle.”

More voices. Raised this time.

“I seek only to face Gurn. I have no quarrel with the rest of you—at least no quarrel that cannot wait.”

“Young Adon, your father was weak,” Gurn said, arrogant defiance in his voice. “Our people needed a leader, not a fool trapped in the ways of the past.”

The words burned his blood, but Adon kept his voice even. “If my father was weak, surely you are not afraid to accept the challenge of his
young
son. Let us see who is weak and who is strong.”

“You think me as great a fool as your father. You would cut me down in an instant.”

Adon didn't hesitate. He took his pistol and tossed it toward the door. “I carry only my father's
mek'leth,
the one which gave you the wound on your traitorous face. It still carries some of your blood. I would see it carry even more.”

Turning, Adon gave a thin smile to Bethe and stepped out into the open, holding the sword in front of him.

“No,” Bethe said. He raised his hand, gesturing for her to stay where she was. To his surprise, she did, but she watched carefully, keeping her pistol ready.

“Would you face me now?” Adon said.

He saw Gurn standing inside the reactor room, looking at him in frank amazement. Nearby, Gurn had ten of
his clan. They all carried pistols, but Gurn's was the only one drawn. Gurn considered him for a moment and smiled. “Young Adon. You are as big a fool as your father. You think your challenge means anything to me? Our old ways are finished. We have a new way of doing things, new ways to power.”

With that, Gurn lifted his pistol and pointed it at Adon, who saw that he had miscalculated badly. He had been counting on Gurn's arrogance and pride to win the day, but it looked as if his cowardly determination to preserve his pitiful life was his greatest motivator.

“You shall die no better than your father did,” Gurn said.

Adon could hear Bethe moving behind him. She did not have a shot at Gurn from her position, but she would soon—not soon enough to save Adon's life, but soon enough to end Gurn's soon after.

But before Gurn could fire, two of his clan grabbed his arms roughly, while a third took his pistol.

“What is this?” Gurn demanded.

“Today, the old ways will live a little longer. You will face the challenge of the son of Gorath,” one of Gurn's lieutenants said. The surprised clan leader scanned the faces of his people and saw not a bit of support there.

“Draw your
mek'leth,
Gurn, I will not waste much time with you,” Adon said.

Adon enjoyed the moment of fear on Gurn's face. Then, slowly, the man drew his own sword, which—to Adon's knowledge—he had never drawn in battle.

Walking toward the clan leader, Adon raised his weapon. Gurn did the same, but slowly, fearfully. Adon would have preferred to kill the man while he was wearing
his look of arrogance, but Adon would kill him now just the same—for if all choices were his to make, his father would still be alive.

When he was nearly in striking distance, Adon prepared himself for his final moment of revenge. But before he could strike, Gurn exploded in movement that was faster than Adon would have thought the man capable of. The clan leader's swinging blade passed inches from Adon's head, and even then only because his body pulled his head back before his mind saw the danger.

Then his sword was up and slashing at Gurn, who parried three blows before a fourth cut across his left hand. He cried out and swung his
mek'leth,
but Adon could see that the fight was nearly over. He sliced into the clan leader's side, then again. Each time the blade found its mark, the man who had killed his father cried out.

Then Adon cut deeply into Gurn's right hand—his sword hand—and Gurn cried out again, dropping his weapon. Gurn looked up at him in stunned surprise, searching for mercy in Adon's eyes—mercy that he would not find if he had three lifetimes to look.

Hesitating not at all, Adon reared back and punched the tip of his father's blade into the chest of the coward who had murdered Gorath. Gurn grunted once, looking into Adon's eyes with a look of surprise. With a sharp movement, Adon twisted the
mek'leth
in the clan leader's chest, and Gurn fell to the floor in a heap.

Though he had lived far too long, his father's killer died quickly, his chest rising only once and then going still. It was done. Adon found that his throat was catching. There was nothing left that he could do for his father. His last task for a great man was finished.

Adon heard Bethe behind him, then felt her touch on his shoulder. The touch changed and Adon could once again feel her impatience. True, he could do nothing more for his father, but he could still do something for his father's people.

Forcing down his grief, Adon saw that Gurn's people were looking to him. One of them stepped forward and said, “I deserve no better. I followed Gurn. I took the side of those who would destroy our people.”

Adon shook his head. “Perhaps, but now there is something you can do to save them. There will be time enough for judgment later.”

“What would you have us do?” another of Gurn's clan asked.