Star Trek: The Hand of Kahless (12 page)

The rental room in Aviskie Column Five was dark, and finally quiet, and damp with room fog and perspiration. The incense in the bedside holder had burned out a little while ago.

Light lanced in, and cold outside air. Vrenn rolled off the bed, fingers arched to claw: on the other side, the Gunner had been just a little faster, and was already saluting.

“Come with us,
Lieutenant,
” Ensign Merzhan said. Behind him were a Navy Commander with a silver Detached Service sash, and two armed enforcers, from the port complement, not
Blue Fire
’s.

Vrenn saluted: it did not occur to him to disagree. “I’ll dress—”

“Why?” said Merzhan. The Commander made a tiny gesture, and Merzhan’s face froze. The officer said, “Go ahead.”

Vrenn pulled on trousers and boots and tunic, and finally his vest and sash, waiting for someone to stop him donning the rank marks. No one did. The Gunner stood at parade rest.

“Let’s go,” the Detached Commander said, in a voice with less character than a ship’s computer’s. He looked at the Gunner, eyes not so much appraising as measuring her. “We weren’t here.”

“Nobody was,” she said, and as Vrenn was led out he thought that she did not sound frightened at all: just rueful.

Vrenn sat in a bare conference room, windowless, with three Naval officers: Koll, the Commander who had come to his rental room, Commander Kev of
Blue Fire,
and Captain Kessum of
Two Fingers.
Vrenn had not seen Kodon. All the Security men had gone, so they were certainly watching by other means.

“This is not a tribunal,” Koll said, “nor any other sort of official meeting. In fact, this meeting is not taking place, and never will have taken place. Is this understood?”

“Perfectly,” Vrenn said.

Kev nodded. Koll put a rectangular object on the table; an antenna rose from it, and several small lights began to flicker. Vrenn realized that the Detached officer, whatever he was, was quite serious about the nature of the meeting: now, not even Security would be listening.

Commander Koll said, “As a result of certain Romulan decrypts, we have learned of a series of secret negotiations between the
Komerex Romulan
and a faction within the
Komerex Klingon.
Had these discussions resulted in a treaty, a neutral zone would have been established between the
Komerexi,
supposedly inviolable by either side. While such a treaty has often been proposed in the Imperial Council, and discarded, this group might have been able to enforce the support of an agreement presented as an accomplished fact….”

Vrenn felt his liver shift in his chest. He knew one proponent of Rom Neutral Space, only one. The idea was related to the principle of center control in the game called
chess.

“…an excuse for destruction of Klingon frontier vessels on charting or colonization missions, having no effect at all on Romulan incursionary forces—”

“Commander,” Kev said, “that’s background.” Kev looked at Vrenn, with his impaling eyes; Vrenn tried to puzzle out what the look said.

“Yes, correct,” Koll said. “The point is that now the treaty conspirators have been identified. Among them is Thought Admiral Kethas epetai-Khemara.” Koll gave Vrenn his mechanical, measuring look. Kessum tapped a hand on the table, the two-fingered right hand that gave his ship its name.

Kev said abruptly, “The point is this. Squadron Leader Kodon thinks that you are not involved in this conspiracy, and are too good an officer to be disposed of for the sake of mere caution. I agree with both points. Now, we have worked very fast, faster than Security can follow,
we think,
so listen carefully. There’s an independent command waiting for you, if you want it. A small frontier scout, but it’s Navy, and it doesn’t have to be a
khesterex thath
if you stay as clever as you’ve been.”

Vrenn sat very still. He wondered if the stars above this world were clothed or naked now. Here was his ship, then; here too was its price.

“If the one hesitates,” Captain Kessum said formally, “for the breaking of the chain of duty, let certain terms of the negotiation be stated.”

Kev said, “The Roms wanted some proofs of the negotiators’ intent. They wanted information on the next frontier raid. They got it.”

Vrenn said, “Did the one—”

“The one knew,” said Commander Koll. “The one verified it.”

So there was only the
komerex zha,
Vrenn thought, and the pieces of the game were only bits of wood in the fire. “The Navy honors me,” he said, “and where I am commanded, there I shall go.”

“Kai kassai,”
Kev said softly, but his look was still steel needles.

Vrenn said, “If I might take formal leave of Squadron Leader Kodon—”

Captain Kessum said stiffly, “This one is here for Kodon.”

Yes, of course, Vrenn thought.
Blue Fire
lived, but
Death Hand
was dust. And there was the question of strategy, that least Klingon of Sciences, whose practitioners made strange things happen; as Kev had said once before,
If you did plan this, do not let it be known.

“…it is of course understood that you will not operate in this part of the frontier.”

“This need not be said,” Vrenn said.

“Then it’s done,” Koll said, and reached for his sensor jammer.

Commander Kev said, “You’ll have to change your name now.”

Scout Captain Krenn was eighty days out on an exploratory cruise when the recordings arrived, scrambled with Krenn’s personal cipher; there was no originating label.

He watched the taped deaths of Kethas and Rogaine twice through. They were competent kills, as the law of assassination specified: that indeed was the reason for taping at all.

Krenn was pleased to see that Rogaine fought very well, stabbing one assassin, blinding another with her nails after her body had hypnotized him. It served the fool right for such carelessness.

Kethas fell near his gameboards, firing back as he collapsed, upsetting the Reflective Game set that had been his favorite. Kethas’s hand closed on the green-gold Lancer, and then did not move. The camera swung away. On the second play, Krenn stopped the image, enlarged it; he realized that the epetai-Khemara had not been reaching for the game piece, but toward his consort’s body.

Krenn stopped the tape again, thinking to rewind and watch for Kethas’s look, exactly as Rogaine died; but he did not do so.

The record covered only two of the house
kuve.
Little black-furred Odise was shot from a balcony, fell, landing in a wet and messy heap. Tirian they stunned, and agonized for a time, then carried aloft in a flier. His tunic was slit down the back, and the scars of his wings shown to the camera. Then they flung him out, perhaps twelve hundred meters above the dark twisted mass of the Kartade Forest. Krenn did not rerun that scene.

He burned the cassette, thinking,
It simplifies things enormously when honor claims are absent.

Krenn stepped out onto the Bridge. The Helmsman saluted, not too sharply, and the Science officer turned. They were enough Bridge crew; it was a small ship. But a Navy ship, and perhaps not a dead command.

“Anything of interest?” Krenn asked Sciences.

“Dust and smaller dust,” Specialist Akhil said. “Your message?”

“Some bureaucratic housecleaning.”

Akhil laughed. Then he said, “Is this a good time to ask a question, Captain?”

“As good as any.”

“My oldest uncle was on a ship under a Captain of the Rustazh line. Are you any—”

“They’re all gone,” said Krenn tai-Rustazh. “The name was free for use.”

“So you
are
starting a line,” the Helmsman said.

“Why else would anyone be out here?” Krenn said. “To play the Perpetual Game?”

Then he laughed, and the Scientist and the Helmsman joined in.

“We’ve got the ship on tractors, Captain.”

“Pull it in.
Zan
Kafter, keep the guns hot: one through the command pod if her energy readings change.”

“Affirm, Captain.” The crew of
Imperial Klingon Cruiser Fencer
went to work, towing in the depowered but intact Willall starship: it was their twelfth such prize, and they knew the drill.

Captain Krenn vestai-Rustazh sat back in the Command Chair, folded his hands and rested his chin on them. The Willall vessel showed up magnified in the forward display: a boxy thing, without a hint of Warp physics in the design. Willall ships all looked like outdoor toilets with warpdrive nacelles wired on. But those ridiculous-looking ships had made a very serious dent in Imperial space.

They didn’t have any strategy, beyond just raiding the next planet they stumbled across. They didn’t know any tactics, either, other than shooting and swooping.
Willall
was shorthand
klingonaase
for their name for themselves, which fully translated said in much more grandiose fashion that they were the race which would command all the possible realities.

But they fought like—“like drunken Romulans” was a popular expression, here on the other side of Empire from Romulan claims. And their junk ships could absorb a lot of fire, and put out a respectable volume.

Still, even determined shooting and swooping only did so much. “Tactics are
real,
” Krenn told his crew.
Fencer
had proven it, destroying Willall until Krenn was bored with that.

He and his Engineer had put on environment suits and gone probing through one of the Willall wrecks. They found a couple of weak structural points, where low-intensity disruptor shots would break the main superconducting lines to the warp engines, sever the Agaan Tubes. So now they didn’t destroy Willall; they wrapped them up and sent them to the Emperor.

“Got her readings, Captain,” Akhil said from the Sciences board. “Life, armed, all small weapons. No ship’s systems above emergency levels.”

“Transporter clear?”

“No spikes, no transients. Safe enough for the Emperor.”

Krenn nodded. “Communications, open to the prize’s Bridge.”

The image was fuzzy, made up of scan lines: Willall vision technology was no superior to the rest of it. Half-a-dozen aliens were looking up at the monitor. They always reminded Krenn of unbaked dough, or putty sculptures; soft and colorless.
Kuve.

“I am Krenn of the
Fencer,
” he said, slowly enough for the translation program to keep up. “I have destroyed your ability to resist the Empire. If you attempt any further hostility, I will destroy you. Is this understood?”

The Willall spoke, a sound like bubbles in stew. Several of them were talking at once; they had some kind of group command structure, and the Security analysts had not decided which of them did what. The cube was worthless: agonizers made Willall nerves fall literally to pieces.

“It is understood,” the translator finally said. “The group is in isolation. It ceases.” The aliens put their hand weapons in a pile on the deck.

Kuve,
Krenn thought again. Yet they were correct, of course; had they not disarmed…well. There were several things he had done, in the course of a dozen captures.

This game was beginning to bore him as well, he knew.

“I will put Klingons aboard your ship. Some of these will repair the damage to your engines. When this is done, your ship will proceed to a world of the Empire, and there surrender.

“You may, as you choose, pilot the ship yourselves. However, there will be Klingons aboard to prevent errors in navigation, and others to protect the navigators and engineers. You will interfere with none of these, and aid them as you can.”

The Willall crew flooped agreement. Krenn broke the link.

He went aft to the transporter room, for a last word with the prize crew. They were in a high enough mood: it would be easy duty, with a good welcome waiting for them when they turned the ship in.

“Ensign Kian,” Krenn said.

“Captain?” Kian looked like he had just won a banner in the Year Games. He would, however briefly, have full charge of a starship: never mind that it was not a Navy ship, or even a Klingon ship.

Krenn indicated the portable computer Kian carried. “Don’t use that unless you have to. You’ll be in command;
command.
”

“Of course, Captain.”

The small computer contained a special set of navigational routines, in the event that the Willall refused to cooperate. They had never yet done so, at least, not as far as anyone knew. Two of Krenn’s prizes had never arrived, but many things could have happened, and in tin-plate ships like the Willall, who could tell?

Klingons would have found a way to attack their captors. Romulans or Andorians would have, even if they were all certain to die. Humans and Kinshaya were almost too devious to leave alive as prisoners. Even Vulcans, Krenn supposed, would use all their logic to find a flaw in the terms of surrender.

But these Willall just obeyed. Like any servitors. Perhaps the geneticists were right, and something in the
kuve
blood and flesh made
kuve.

Krenn thought that was a stupid idea, but it was a private thought.

Akhil stepped out of the lift, went to the transporter controls; the petty officer there stepped aside at once. The prize crew straightened up to full attention: the Captain’s own transporter operator made this an authentic heroes’ sendoff.

“Ready to transport,” Akhil said.

“
Zan
Kian,” Krenn said.

“Captain?”

“Take care of our ship.” He had chosen the possessive very carefully.

“This need not be said, Captain.”

Krenn nodded. “Energize,” he said, and Akhil pushed the control levers. The crewmen and Marines dissolved into spindles of light and were gone.

Krenn stroked his forehead ridge, his jaw. “I’ll be in quarters, ’Khil.”

“I’ve still got some of that Saurian brandy,” Akhil said.

“Not this time.” Krenn got into the lift car. “If I’m still there when Kian calls, ring me. Won’t do to give formal leave from the bath.”

Akhil said, not at all lightly, “You’re thinking too much again, Thought Ensign.”

Krenn grimaced as the lift door closed. He’d never found out where Akhil had heard of that title. But the Executive was careful never to use it except when they were alone. Just Krenn and Akhil and Security’s monitors.

It was just possible, Krenn thought, as he undressed and slid into hot salt water, that he did think too much. Could a Scientist believe that? Even a Klingon Scientist?

Of course,
he thought, as his senses began to dim. He had only known one Klingon who trusted all in thought. And the epetai-Khemara was dust six years.

Chiming woke Krenn. “I’m awake, ’Khil, I’m awake,” he lied, stumbling out of the bath; he remembered to suppress vision before turning the intercom on.

It was not Akhil, but Kalitta, the Communications officer. “Captain, I have a yellow-2 priority from Navy command. It’s an immediate recall of
Fencer.
To Klinzhai, Captain.”

“Yellow priority,” Krenn said. It was not a question: he could see the lights on Kalitta’s board. Yellow-2 didn’t mean the galaxy was exploding, but it was close enough. And to the
homeworld?
“Open link to Ensign Kian, aboard the prize.”

“Acting.” The picture stuttered and blanked: Kian appeared, through Willall scan lines. “Acknowledging
Fencer,
” he said, looking slightly puzzled.

“Stand by,
zan
Kian.” Krenn grabbed a gown and tossed it on, then switched on his vision pickup.

“Captain?”

“We’ve been called home, Ensign. Warp 4 plus. No more time to spend on that thing, and we can’t drag it along; prepare to transport and we’ll cut it loose.”

Kian looked startled, and angry. Krenn thought that was reasonable; he felt the same way. The Ensign said, “We’ve got less than a third of a shift’s work left, Captain. Zero problems so far.”

“This is a priority recall, Ensign. We don’t have a third of a shift to wait.”

Kian stared up at the screen. Krenn saw him chew his tongue. Then he said, “A moment, Captain. We’ve got some transmission problems.” He reached for his portable computer. “You’re breaking up very badly, Captain. I don’t know if it’s safe to transport—”

Krenn almost laughed. “That’s a good try, Kian, but you’re perfectly clear to me.”

Kian stopped with his hand on the black case. “Yes, Captain,” he said calmly, “I suppose I am.”

Krenn did laugh then.

Kian said, “Leave us behind, Captain.”

“You’re still depowered. Suppose you can’t start the engines? This is the frontier; you might eat each other, but you can’t breathe vacuum.”

“We’ll get power. I’ll take responsibility.”

Krenn’s smile froze. Even bold young Ensigns did not say that very often. Not and mean it, and Krenn could see Kian meant it. “And the rest of your crew? What about them?”

“It’s my command, Captain Krenn.”

Krenn looked into the hot yellow eyes on the sketchy screen, wondering if he had really looked like that, when Kodon first gave him
Blue Fire
’s conn. When he became a full member of the club.

“Yes, Ensign,” Krenn said finally. “Your command. Bring home glory. The
klin
is already in you.”

“Captain.” Kian saluted, and then broke the link on his superior officer: Krenn had to grin. He wouldn’t have given the old starburst time to rethink, either.

Krenn killed vision again, hit the Call key. “Captain to Bridge. Prepare to cut tractors and get under way. Tell engineering Warp 4 is expected, 4.5 would be better.”

Akhil’s voice said, “Transport signal’s clear.”

“No one’s transporting. The prize goes as she is.”

“Affirm,” Akhil said, sounding cheerful, or satisfied, or both. Krenn wondered if Kalitta had left the link open, on the Bridge…well, if he hadn’t wanted it heard, he wouldn’t have said it.

Kalitta said, “Statement to the crew, Captain?”

“Just tell them we’re ordered to travel. Krenn out.” He snapped the link, said to the air, “Unless you know something I don’t?”

Just this once, he hoped Security was listening.

It took
Fencer
112 days to reach the Klingon homeworld: she had been far enough on the fringe of the spiral arm that Warp 4.85 was possible for the first twenty-plus days, and the Engineer was muttering about a record. The officers and crew were talking too: not many had visited Klinzhai itself, and fewer still had lived there: to them it was the ultimate of leave worlds, paradise with hotel service.

So the three-cruiser escort waiting for them in high orbit was a surprise to most of
Fencer
’s complement. So was the strict warning about leaving the escort’s “protection”—that is, their cones of fire—or launching shuttles, or transporting down. Only one aboard was authorized to leave the ship—and Krenn was not surprised, not really. He was in fact rather pleased to be beaming down alone; it meant his crew was safe, for now.

He was met at the discs by a Security team in dress armor, wearing light weapons; they were polite, which did not at all mean that Krenn was not under arrest. He did not waste effort asking the team leader questions.

Krenn was taken through empty corridors to a room that might have been in one of the Throne City’s better hotels. But its door would not open after the Security team departed. The communicator and the computer screen were both
khex.
There were no windows.

The meal slot did function: Krenn punched for pastry and fruit juice, and sat contemplating a clearprint on the wall of a D-4 cutting up a Kinshaya supercarrier.

The thing he liked least about particle transporters, Krenn thought, was that the signal could be relayed; one could not really know where one was going. He
might
be in the Throne City, or someplace very different. Even aboard a ship: but he felt the gravity and doubted that.

The door opened, and three Klingons came in, and Krenn got his first real surprise.

One of them was Koll, the Commander who had come for him six years ago. He still wore the silver sash of Detached Service, but now had a Captain’s stars. There was a heavyset Admiral with a parcel under his arm, and a tall, powerfully built Security officer without badges of specific rank—which meant, very high rank.

“Captain Krenn, I am Captain Koll.”

Of course,
Krenn thought;
we’ve never met.
Krenn was a little glad, in a backhand way, to have the Security supergrade there: whatever this meeting was, at least it would exist.