Diplomatic Implausibility (16 page)

“You misunderstand me, Doctor,” Klag said, his mouth twisting into an expression of disgust. “I have no interest in grafting one of those foul contraptions onto my shoulder.”

Blinking, B’Oraq said, “In that case, Captain, I’m—well, confused. What other way can we ‘do something’ about your arm?”

“After our last conversation, I took a look through the files in your medical database—to see what I can expect from my Federation-trained medical officer. I noticed that the precursor to prosthetic attachments was live transplants.”

The doctor couldn’t help but laugh. “Captain, transplants are an outmoded, barbaric form of medicine. You
can only use a limb from a recently deceased Klingon with the same blood type as you, and your body may reject even a compatible transplant. With the prosthetic, there’s a ninety-five-percent chance of success—with a transplant, even if I can find a viable donor, there’s only a sixty percent chance at best.”

Klag slammed his one fist onto the biobed. B’Oraq hastily switched off the bone-knitter. As it was, Klag’s actions moved his body sufficiently that B’Oraq came within a crest’s-breadth of fusing one of Klag’s ribs to his lower aorta.

“I am a
warrior!
Perhaps you do not know what that means, Doctor, but I do. I will not place a machine on my person and call it part of me. If I am to restore my warrior’s prowess by replacing my arm, I will do it with the limb of a warrior.”

“Captain, if you wish me to heal you, you have to sit still,” B’Oraq said, trying to keep her voice calm. But her head was swimming. She struggled to keep her hand steady as she turned the bone-knitter back on. “Let me understand this correctly. You not only wish me to perform an antiquated medical procedure on you that may not even work, but it has to be with the limb of a warrior. Not just any Klingon whose biology is compatible with yours.”

“Whether it is biologically compatible is irrelevant.”

Maybe to you,
B’Oraq thought, but wisely chose not to say out loud.

“What matters,” Klag continued, “is whether or not the arm belongs to someone who is worthy of having his deeds continued on my person. Your task, Doctor, will be to assemble a list of donors. You will make whatever medical determinations need to be made, but I will approve the
list on the basis of their worthiness to be part of the Hero of Marcan.”

Shaking her head, B’Oraq said, “Sir, the chances—”

“Those are my orders, Doctor. Are you finished?”

Moving the bone-knitter down toward Klag’s hip, she said, “With the ribs, but there’s still—”

She was interrupted by the door opening once again. Leskit and Kurak entered, the latter supporting the former, who had a long gash in his left thigh. They were both out of uniform—in fact, they were out of almost everything, each wearing only a long, loose shirt.

“You didn’t tell me you had a sword there,” Leskit was saying.

“I never expected us to make it all the way to—Captain!” she said quickly upon sighting Klag, who sat up at the intrusion.

B’Oraq took Leskit from Kurak and brought him to another biobed. “What happened?”

“Slight accident with a sword,” Leskit said. “It’s minor.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” B’Oraq examined the wound. In fact, Leskit was right, it wasn’t that bad. The cut was long, but not very deep, and would be simple to repair.

However, since the captain’s injuries were more serious, B’Oraq handed Leskit a bandage. “Put pressure on it. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

She started repairing Klag’s pelvic fracture. B’Oraq was more than a little surprised. She hadn’t thought Kurak the type to engage in a shipboard liaison, least of all with Leskit. Such an act required a level of frivolity that B’Oraq hadn’t given the engineer credit for.

But then,
she thought,
it seems to be my day for being
surprised by the personnel of this ship.

As she finished knitting the fracture, the alarm went off. Toq’s voice sounded over the speakers:
“Alert status!
All hands to battle stations! Captain Klag to the bridge!”

Klag, naturally, stood. Knowing full well she wouldn’t get to finish the sentence, B’Oraq started, “Captain, you—”

“—will finish this after the battle, if we are still alive.” As he headed to the door, he looked at Kurak and Leskit. “Commander, report to engineering. Lieutenant, with me.”

The pair exchanged a glance. They were out of uniform.

Before they could say anything, B’Oraq said, “Lieutenant Leskit needs medical attention, Captain, he—”

Klag looked at Leskit. “Can you sit upright?”

Shrugging, Leskit said, “Yes.”

“Do your hands work?”

“Oh,
yes,” he said with a grin. Kurak actually looked away at that. B’Oraq fought to contain her reaction.

“Then you can fly the ship. You’re with me.”

The three of them left the medical ward with dispatch.

B’Oraq looked around at the now-empty room. She wondered if boredom might not be so bad.

She sat down to compose a letter to Beverly Crusher. She had to share today’s news with the one person who could properly appreciate it.

The cave into which Worf and Krevor materialized was, if anything, colder than the council chambers. Worf would not have believed it possible, especially since this tunnel was rock rather than ice.

It was also dark—even more so than the
Gorkon.
There was a light source farther down the corridor, but it took a few moments for Worf’s eyes to adjust. He and Krevor
moved up against the wall, which angled inward. The tunnel was barely taller than Worf himself, and his head kept brushing up against the tiny stalactites on the tunnel roof.

Krevor held a hand scanner. She whispered, “Sir, readings are sporadic. I can’t get a fix.”

Worf peered over at the
bekk’s
scanner. “The hand scanner isn’t as powerful as the shipboard sensors,” he whispered back, “and the concentration of Element 604 is especially high here—which is probably why the rebels chose it. Here.” He made a few adjustments, and the scan quality improved.

“Thank you, sir. There are four al’Hmatti coming this way.”

Worf nodded to Krevor, who moved into an alcove, out of sight. Worf moved to the center of the tunnel.

He could hear the al’Hmatti before he could see them. They spoke in their native tongue, which shared a certain guttural quality with the Klingon language.

A light moved toward Worf slowly around a bend, then the al’Hmatti themselves came into view. One held a hand lamp and walked on her hind legs, albeit stooped over; the cave could not accommodate the average al’Hmatti at full height. The others were on all fours. Unlike the ones Worf had seen in the council chambers and on the satellite, these al’Hmatti all had indulged in some form of bodily decoration and/or modification. Some wore necklaces (only females, he noticed), others wore earrings, many wore both. A few had let their fur grow out in spots and braided it, or tied it in a ponytail or topknot. Some had shaved their fur, exposing the skin underneath—which, to Worf’s surprise, was a deep black color, in stark contrast to the light-colored fur.

All four of them had the same pattern shaved into the
sides of their heads—some on the left, some on the right.

“Greetings.” Worf’s voice echoed in the tunnel. “I am Ambassador Worf of the United Federation of Planets. I would speak with your commander.”

An al’Hmatti bellowed three words, one of which was
Klingon,
and then three of them—all but the one holding the hand lamp—shifted their weight to their hind legs and moved to unholster their disruptors.

Before they could do so, Worf had unholstered his own disruptor and fired a shot over the al’Hmatti’s furred heads.

“No weapons, please,” he said. “I wish to discuss terms with your commander.”

One of the al’Hmatti said, “We will die before we ‘discuss’ anything with you conquerors!” and then continued taking out her weapon.

“Don’t do it,” said Krevor, who appeared behind the al’Hmatti, as planned. She placed her disruptor’s muzzle into the neck of the al’Hmatti who had spoken.

Then two disruptor shots fired from around the bend, missing Krevor’s head by millimeters.

“Death to the Klingons!” one of the al’Hmatti cried.

All four al’Hmatti went for their disruptors. Worf fell to the ground while firing two shots. He stunned two of the rebels before they could fire. Krevor shot a third—the one she had gotten the drop on. The fourth fired a shot that would have hit Worf had he not ducked. Worf took out that fourth al’Hmatti with another shot.

Krevor was then hit in the shoulder with another blast from behind. As she fell, she fired back; Worf heard a scream a moment later, indicating that she’d hit someone.

Time,
he thought,
to end this.
As he ran over to Krevor—ducking a disruptor blast—he shrugged out of
the backpack in which he’d been carrying the scattering field generator. When he was at Krevor’s side, he activated the field.

The disruptor fire stopped.

Several angry shouts came from down the tunnel as the al’Hmatti tried to fire disruptors that would no longer function. The scattering field would only keep the disruptors inactive for a few minutes—
but that should be all I
need,
Worf thought.

“I would speak with your commander!” Worf repeated.

An al’Hmatti with gray fur ran toward Worf on all fours, moving with tremendous speed for one of such bulk. Worf barely had time to unsheath his
mek’leth,
and did not have time to use it.

The al’Hmatti leapt at Worf, who fell backward to roll with the impact. The al’Hmatti tried to claw and bite Worf, but she hadn’t expected him to roll. The two of them tumbled over into the tunnel wall. Worf managed to angle it so that the al’Hmatti took the brunt of the impact.

Hissing, the al’Hmatti tried to bite Worf’s neck. At the last second, Worf twisted himself so that she bit his left shoulder instead. Her teeth penetrated the thermal suit.

Worf grabbed the woman’s muzzle with his right hand and, with his left, stabbed her in the side with the
mek’leth.

She let go and screamed, giving Worf the opportunity to throw her off of him—an action that took all of his considerable strength. She fell to the floor, blood darkening the fur on her right side.

He looked over to see Krevor struggling with a white-furred male al’Hmatti. He swiped at her with a giant paw, which she partly dodged. Instead of taking her head off, it only scratched her right cheek and ripped out some of her
black hair. She had holstered her disruptor and unsheathed her
d’k tahg.
Now she slashed at the al’Hmatti with it.

Like her, he dodged; like him, she drew blood anyhow, following the move with a punch to the al’Hmatti’s stomach. It had no effect on the al’Hmatti that Worf could see, as the alien then lunged forward, hissing. Krevor ducked and rolled under the lunge and took another swipe with the
d’k tahg,
this time at the side of the al’Hmatti’s neck.

The al’Hmatti had fallen to the ground on its stomach, but he got up quickly. Worf was about to move to aid Krevor, but that proved unnecessary, as she took another swipe at his neck. The al’Hmatti bled from four wounds, two in the neck, one in the upper chest—and one, to Worf’s surprise, in the stomach, where Krevor had punched him.
She must have blades in her gauntlets,
he thought.

The last cut to the neck did it. The al’Hmatti stumbled backward, clutching pointlessly at his neck with black-padded paws, failing to stanch the blood that flowed freely from the wound.

Worf and Krevor turned to face the other al’Hmatti, who circled cautiously around the Klingons.

The combined smell of al’Hmatti and Klingon blood was intoxicating. Pain wracked Worf’s left shoulder, sending his brain into a pleasant haze. He felt the adrenaline churn within him, heard the cry of his warrior’s heart. His mind’s eye could see the al’Hmatti lying bloody at his feet.

For the briefest of instants, Worf let the pure Klingon within him come to the fore, let the bouquet of the blood wash over him. It would be so easy to give in completely and show these creatures what a true warrior was capable of.

But these weren’t creatures, these were sentient beings
fighting for their home. And he was here as a diplomat, not a warrior. It was time he acted like one.

Decades of living among humans had forced Worf to learn how to suppress his natural Klingon urges with relative ease. He straightened as much as he could in the cave and dropped his
mek’leth
to the ground. As he turned to Krevor, he grabbed his shoulder where the al’Hmatti had bitten him, putting pressure on the wound. “Drop your weapon,
Bekk.”

“But, sir—” Krevor gave a vicious snarl. Her own bloodlust was rising as well.

“Now!”

Trying and failing to keep the disgust off her face, Krevor dropped her blade.

Worf turned to the al’Hmatti, who still circled the two Klingons, most of them on all fours. “I am the Federation ambassador that
you
requested! If you wish to end the fighting, you will listen to me—if you do not, I will alert Governor Tiral and he will obliterate this base!”