Hell's Heart (30 page)

Fifty-seven

U
NSUNG
C
OMPOUND

T
HANE

W
orf's boots tramped noisily on the deck plating as he ran. Darting into
Chu'charq
after losing his weapon in the scuffle had been a decision made on impulse; he stood no chance against the multitude. He had no desire to sacrifice himself, not when he had a chance to warn others of the Unsung.

It had been the right choice. As near as he could tell, every member of the Unsung who could wear armor and carry an
akrat'ka
had been on the surface as part of the muster. He'd only seen a few Klingons during his mad dash through the bird-of-prey; children and elders, they'd simply gotten out of his way, assuming he was supposed to be there. They only realized he wasn't when his pursuers entered, shouting; but they were armed only with lances, unable to fire at him.

That couldn't last. If there was one thing birds-of-prey had plenty of, it was weapons lockers. Seeing one up ahead on deck five, Worf tried the door. Locked. He kept ­running—only to collide with an armored warrior exiting the mess hall. Worf punched hard, smashing the shorter Klingon against the access way. A second shove sent his opponent hurtling backward into the hall. There were ­others inside, he saw—having cut through the room in search of him. Worf quickly cycled the door shut and continued running forward.

The long central corridor lay ahead, spanning the neck of the bird-of-prey on the way to the bridge. He wasn't going to be able to launch
Chu'charq
on his own—much less with a
mob in pursuit. But he might have time to use its comm to send a ­message—hopefully, something a lot better than what he had tried to do outside.
That
had been a ridiculous, futile effort. Worf could only hope that
Chu'charq
's bridge crew had attended the muster.

Entering the bulbous bow of the spacecraft, he saw small transporter rooms to either side of the hallway. There was no sense even trying; he'd tried the transporters a deck below and found them pass-code protected. He skidded to a halt just before the door of the bridge—and found it, too, locked against entry.

There were voices inside: high-pitched. More children, he supposed. But if they had sealed the door behind them, then they likely had seen it as a place of refuge against their intruder. They had been warned about him. Worf backed away from the door warily. By entering the central corridor, he had trapped himself. At any moment, one of the other ships could beam armed personnel to the bridge. That would be the end of it.

He turned back up the hall heading aft. Another weapons locker; another door sealed tight. Worf could hear the distant approach of yelling warriors, nearing the end of their chase. He stood firm, gathering his strength and resolve, ready for the final fight.

“Death . . . before . . . chains . . .”

The words did not come from up ahead—but rather, behind him somewhere. From the weapons storage area, or maybe the office behind the bridge? It sounded less like a war cry than an anguished, drunken wail. “Death before chains” was the Eighth Precept of Kahless the Unforgettable—but somehow, something in that voice sounded like the other Kahless. His friend, now the martyr.

Ignoring the approach of his enemies, he looked around, hoping to hear the voice again. He did not. But as his eyes
darted about, they lit on something he hadn't considered before: the door to a chute, only to be used in absolute last resort, when it was better for a Klingon to live to fight another day.

He tried it.
This
door was unlocked.

•   •   •

Outside, Cross didn't want to set foot on
Chu'charq
until Worf was captured or killed. As Kruge, he bellowed angrily, “I want answers!”

Valandris ran toward him. “My lord,” she said, breathless, “we found Worf's guard bound in the kennel.”

“So it
was
Worf.” Cross waited for her to catch her breath. “What else?”

She held out her hand. “I found this thing in the dirt near the entrance. We don't know what it is.”

“My cards!” Cross said, breaking character for an instant. He snatched the pack away from her.
What was Worf doing with these?

And now—quite by coincidence—he lifted his eyes from the pack and saw a single card on the ground, trampled and dirty near a fallen
akrat'ka
. He knelt beside it. Cross saw some kind of gummy material was on the back of the card. He leaned down and reached for it—

—and was bowled over by a sonic blast. Something travelling at high speed and low elevation rocketed over his head; it felt like someone had fired artillery at him. Valandris dove toward him, covering his body.

When he rolled over, he saw a blazing contrail tracing back to the neck of
Chu'charq.
Turning his head to follow it, Cross saw an escape pod hurtling outward at extreme speed. An unguided missile, it had clipped the eave of his hut and soared over the Hill of the Dead, out of sight.

Valandris realized what had happened first. “That was Worf!”

You think so?
Cross thought. This time, he didn't have to fake the rage he often spoke with as Kruge. “After him!”

•   •   •

It was not the Klingon way to run from conflict; escape pods only existed for use in the event of a malfunction or when the survival of warriors served a greater tactical good. Bird-of-prey pods tended to be of high quality, able to survive reentry onto a variety of planets.

But as Worf had quickly found after overriding the safety mechanism, they were not designed to be launched while their parent vessels were parked.

In populated areas.

Surrounded by jungles and swamp inside a crater.

Worf did not see what building the pod smashed through; it was rotating so violently he couldn't see much of anything through the forward ports. He felt the collision, however—and his armored form was jolted again, when the green pod caromed off the surface and went skyward once more.

The near-impervious construction of the passenger hold kept him alive, but the second impact meant the end for the pod's attitude control system. Worf held on to his restraints with all his might as the lifeboat spiraled. The interface before him reported a confused stream of telemetry data: high speed, but not much elevation. The series of jolts that followed was different: the capsule seemed to be skimming off something soft. With a last, lazy twirl, the escape pod buried itself in blackness.

Brackish liquid oozed against the port. The vessel had landed in a swamp, Worf realized. As bad as that was, the fact that secondary thrusters had finally decided to light was worse. The force of their impulse drove the pod down, threatening to bury it at the bottom of the ooze.

It would have, had the escape pod not struck something massive in the guck. It changed the pod's orientation, directing the sputtering engine's thrust downward. It was enough to reach the surface—but not enough to free it from the slough.

Worf wasn't going to wait to see where it went next. Unstrapping himself, he fired the explosive bolts that held the hatch shut. As the door disappeared into the dark, the recoil from its expulsion sent the pod spinning and bobbing. Water gushed in from outside.

Seeing it, Worf thought about removing his helmet. He reconsidered, remembering that the Unsung gear hid his life signs from any pursuers—and there were certain to be some nearby soon. Worf knew the pod had a subspace transponder that had gone live the second he exited
Chu'charq
.

He also knew it had been designed to be removed in case of emergency. He fumbled for and found the latch that locked the device to the control systems. It removed cleanly—and as he pulled it off its supports, he saw the half-meter-wide device had straps tucked beneath so that it could be carried on someone's back. Throwing one of the straps over his shoulder, he tried to stand—and immediately was knocked back down as the pod rocked crazily.

It is sinking again
, Worf realized. The thruster had finally died—but it was more than the weight of the incoming deluge carrying it downward. Clambering onto the acceleration chair with the transmitter on his back, Worf reached for the opening above. He pulled free from the pod and splashed into the warm quagmire—where the weight of the armor and the transmitter nearly took him under. Having either was surely a mistake, but it was too late to do anything. He had to stay afloat.

Something erupted from the bog behind him, dousing him with spray. Looking back, he saw something dark and alive struggling with the escape pod. The vehicle's exterior lights appeared and disappeared behind tentacles. That was the thing the pod had struck on the swamp floor, he realized. The sound of rending metal only urged him on. There were times to be squeamish about swimming in ooze. This wasn't one.

Grunting, he fought his way ahead. There was an edge far beneath somewhere, he realized; hummocks of vegetation were
just visible up ahead. Soon, he was only up to his chest, then his waist. At last, he struggled onto the island of brambles. Fallen foliage stretched ahead toward a rise: something akin to dry land. Knowing the creature would find the pod unpalatable, he scrambled forward.

Dripping and drained, Worf collapsed to his hands and knees. He would have stayed there longer, had he not heard the
meep-meep
coming from the device on his back. He moved the transponder onto the ground and switched off the beacon. At the moment its only sure audience was the Unsung; once they targeted his location, they would come for him.

They had the advantage of having hunted in these areas. But his life signs were hidden by his gear, and he expected his helmet comm might be able to pick up their chatter. Presuming “Kruge” didn't simply send a bird-of-prey to raze the entire swamp, that would even things up a little—but only a little. Worf cursed himself for not trying to locate any of the weapons cached inside the escape pod, for some were surely there.

No, the emergency transmitter had been the important thing, his real weapon. He could not defeat the Unsung. But Worf knew that the Fallen Lord's message would energize the efforts of those searching for him. He had tried to give anyone watching the broadcast a clue as to where in the Briar Patch he was; the emergency transmitter would bring them the rest of the way.

It meant making a target of himself for the entire time it was operating. He let out a deep, exhausted breath—and remembered the labors Kahless had endured, before his monstrous murder. Worf could do no less to find justice for his friend. He switched on the beacon again and replaced it on his back. Then he ran into the night.

Fifty-eight

“W
e've got him,” Hemtara said. Seated on
Chu'charq
's bridge, she activated the audio. The beacon sounded clearly.

“Where?” Valandris asked.

“The Spillway.”

That figures.
Of all the directions
Chu'charq
had to be facing, of all the escape pods Worf could have taken, he'd happened to luck into the one combination taking him into a zone just as deadly for her people as it might be for him. The rounded basin that Omegoq was located in had been breached by a quake, causing the contents of the crater lake next door to funnel in; that had created part of the surrounding swamp. But it also had let in an untamed menagerie—and the flow generally undermined the raised paths that crisscrossed the area. Whole hunting parties had simply vanished beneath its forested canopy.

There had to be another way. “Can you get a fix on the beacon and beam Worf along with it?”

“If he set the transmitter down, we'd only beam it here—and then we'd never find Worf.”

“Can't you adjust the targeting scanners to tell?”

“I'm not sure how to do that.”

Valandris didn't hear that often from her companions, least of all Hemtara—but it was understandable. Yes, Potok had insisted that the exiles not let their technical skills atrophy, and during the past year Lord Kruge had arranged for additional training. But there had been too many crash courses.

She was about to suggest something else when the Fallen Lord entered. He looked more composed than he had on the surface. “My lord Kruge,” she said, bowing her head. “We've located Worf.”

“Transport a team to him, now.”

Holding her rifle, Valandris stepped forward. “I was thinking we might fly to him, instead.” She gestured back to the bridge controls. “It would be less risky—”

The old Klingon responded gruffly. “All the ships of the Phantom Wing are still loading for our journey. That cannot be delayed. And you know what else needs readying.” He shook his head. “Find him yourself, Valandris. If you cannot kill him, keep as close to him as you can. If there is time, we can bombard him from above as we depart—using your team's location to target him.”

Valandris saluted. “We will find him.”

Before her lord could respond, a noise came from down the hallway behind him. A low moan, speaking words that were inaudible. Valandris looked to him. “What's that?”

“Something I need to attend to,” he said as he turned. “You have your orders.
Qapla'!
”

T
HE
G
REAT
H
ALL

Q
O
'
NO
S

Korgh had not been in a physical clash in a long time—­notwithstanding the recent sham at Gamaral, when the Unsung had been instructed to avoid killing the House of Kruge's
gin'tak
. Yet he'd found the past few hours as thrilling as any combat he'd ever participated in.

The councillors, a deeply interested audience for the updates being delivered by Martok's aides, had remained on the floor, responding to every bit of news with battle cries. He'd worked the room, making sure the heads of the other houses knew how direly he, too, longed for the destruction of the nest of assassins. He was older than many present, including the chancellor; when he spoke of the need to strangle the new
vor'uv'etlh
in the crèche, they believed him.

At the same time, Korgh knew the sequence of events that was transpiring on Thane—as well as what things were about to happen. What he didn't know was exactly where in the schedule Cross currently was. Only Odrok had the ability to communicate with Thane through the chain of secret repeater stations, and they were in the process of self-destructing.

The
Enterprise,
according to subspace broadcasts, was at the vanguard, screaming forward. It had encountered the same thing again and again: every repeater satellite the Starfleet vessel approached exploded. The incoming signal each repeater had been receiving was easily detectable, subspace breadcrumbs leading
Enterprise
farther along the trail. That trail had resolved into a spiraling path to the Briar Patch; by skipping ahead, several Klingon warships had caught up with
Enterprise
and were sending reports back too.

That was all as he'd intended. The commanders of those vessels were, as the chest-thumping Martok had been certain to mention, associated with his house. Korgh learned with satisfaction that his son Lorath's ship was still some ways off.
Enterprise
and Martok's cronies would find a nasty surprise waiting for them—presuming that they did not arrive before Cross completed his preparations.

The chancellor stood at a table that had been set up in an alcove in the council chamber, evaluating points on a holographic map. Martok had been at pains to ensure the High Council knew everything that was going on at the very second it happened. An aide entered reporting contact from a commander in the field. “Pipe the channel into the chamber so all may hear,” Martok said.

“Commander Melk aboard
Ghanjaq
reporting, Chancellor.”

“Cousin! What is your news?”

“Seven repeater stations have self-destructed,”
the woman said.
“We are continuing on to the eighth.”

Martok consulted the new point of light on his holographic map. “No doubt—the aim is the Klach D'Kel Brakt. The trans
mission trail is likely to break up as you enter it. You should leave
Enterprise
to the trail and head onward to the nebula to begin searching.”

“I cannot, Chancellor.
Enterprise
has already left.”

Korgh raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“We are the lead vessel in the search. Picard told us he was pursuing another lead and departed.”

Korgh frowned. This was a surprise. Had
Enterprise
detected something that would cause it to arrive at Thane before Cross was ready? He turned to face Martok. “What kind of cooperation is this, if they abandon the hunt?”

Martok shot him a testy look. “I was just ordering our ship to leap ahead. I would not doubt Picard had the same idea.”

The chancellor and his advisors returned to their analysis. Stepping away from the crowd, Korgh quietly fretted.
What could Picard possibly have found?

U.S.S.E
NTERPRISE
-
E

E
N
R
OUTE TO THE
B
RIAR
P
ATCH

They have almost made it too easy,
Picard thought.

He had been suspicious from the start. The investigators were all being led somewhere at a pace of the assassins' choosing. Why else would these Unsung still be sending their message? They were presenting their hunters with a trail.

But
Enterprise
was off that trail now—heading for the Briar Patch at warp speed, following a lead suggested earlier by Riker on Qo'noS and corroborated by his team on
Titan
. “Glinn,” Picard said, “let's see it again.”

“Aye, Captain.” Dygan activated a control, and a freeze-framed image appeared on the viewscreen. Much expanded and enhanced, it depicted one of the shots of the horde of identical Unsung warriors, all standing beside their lances and looking in the same direction.

All identical but for one, who was turned slightly to the side. The figure was pointing upward with his lance—and there was something attached to the weapon, affixed face-outward just beneath the blade. “Magnify,” Picard said.

The view closed in. “No doubt,” Å mrhová said. “That's the ace of clubs.”

Riker had seen the card in just a fleeting moment, but impromptu conferences with the
Titan
and then
Enterprise
convinced the admiral he wasn't crazy. Picard had seen images in which soldiers from Earth's wars had affixed items and decals to their weapons and combat helmets for luck. But this was the only occurrence of any kind of personalized gear at all in the crowd—a human artifact in a Klingon colony that had been detached from interaction with the galaxy for who-knows-how-long.

More interesting was the fact that the individual was clearly using his weapon to point to a location in the sky. Who among the Unsung but Worf knew that Will Riker had informally referred to a nebular formation in the Briar Patch as the Ace of Clubs on a previous trip? It was possible that the anonymous helmeted warrior was Worf, and that the card and lance were being used as both an identifier and a signpost. If so, it was something Worf's captors would never have suspected—and a clue that only a handful of viewers light-years away would have gotten.

Worf would have expected Riker to see the broadcast—and that some analyst would have eventually spotted the playing card. It was good luck—and Riker's good eyes—that had produced a possible break. It had been enough for Picard to take
Enterprise
off the looping trail to the Briar Patch. “Lieutenant, report.”

“I wouldn't expect the planet he's on would be
in
a Bok globule,” Dina Elfiki reported from the science station. “We're operating under the assumption he's pointing
at
it. Based on the latest survey, the nearby nebular structures are oriented
such that there are only a few degrees of sky from which the formation would look like a club.
Enterprise
traversed that region on the way to Ba'ku, which is where Worf and Riker saw it.”

“But the ace was not visible from Ba'ku.”

“No, sir. However, there is one star system with candidate planets in that ascribed area.” Elfiki looked up at the captain. “It has never been explored.”

“It's about to be,” Picard said. The Klingons were already hard on the trail of the satellites; if his hunch was wrong, no time would be lost. But if it was Worf, then the commander had likely witnessed Kahless's execution. Every minute Worf remained there he was in jeopardy.

The captain looked to his right, where La Forge sat in the first officer's chair. “Check the modification of our deflector shields,” he ordered. “The Briar Patch wreaks havoc on impulse drives. We'll want every advantage when we drop out of warp.”

“I'm already on it,” his chief engineer replied.

Picard looked past him to Å mrhová. “Your challenge is even more complicated, Lieutenant. We're going to need away teams at the ready—and we need to prepare for a possible counter­assault. Post sentries at every sensitive system aboard
Enterprise
, in case they try to board us again in response. I think it's safe to assume the people who recorded that message are spoiling for a fight.”

The security chief looked back at him confidently. “All three shifts are called up, Captain. We're ready for a rematch.”

Reassured, Picard leaned forward in his chair. He watched the stars flying by on the viewscreen and took a deep breath.
If that was you, Number One, hang on . . .