The Jackal's Trick

by John Jackson Miller

  The battle ended, she and her companions found Kruge alone in the fortress—the so-called Spirits’ Forge—walking around carrying a lantern as one hypnotized. Sensing the arrival of his warriors, he spoke. “I built this fort. More than a hundred years ago, back when I added H’atoria to my holdings. To the holdings of the Empire.”

  “I had heard of this place before,” Zokar said, flicking the blood from his knife. “It was a forge before the Borg struck. Afterward it became a mighty citadel—holding the respect of many.”

  “Once, perhaps. But you know how my family treated my holdings—just as you know how the Empire failed you. These ‘Sentries’ were all bluster—minions of the would-be nobles you faced on Gamaral.”

  “They are dead,” Valandris said.

  “Cutting the head off the beast was but a start. The serpent still writhes.” Kruge turned, his ancient face lit by the lantern. “I no longer fear the fire. We will turn this forge against them—and leave only ashes.”

  Kruge spoke to a handheld communicator, and an instant later, N’Keera appeared, transported from Chu’charq. Valandris stoked the brazier at the center of the common room. Looking about, she saw tapestries on the walls, along with several cabinets holding scrolls and books. N’Keera stepped toward a small desk and located a padd, which she read from.

  “My lord, it appears a team from the Empire is arriving tomorrow to install transporter inhibitor towers along the walkway to the landing site.”

  “Then it begins. She is coming,” Kruge said. “We knew she would.”

  Valandris looked up. “Who is coming?”

  “There is someone you did not slay on Gamaral,” N’Keera said. “Kersh, granddaughter of J’borr. All that was vile in our lord’s family now exists in her person. She has invited our enemies, the Romulans and the Kinshaya, here to H’atoria in order to bargain the world away.”

  “And brokering the arrangement is none other than our ridiculous excuse for an ally, the Federation.” Kruge snorted. “Does anyone here doubt their intent? They mean to carve the limbs from the imperial body before Starfleet deals the death blow.”

  N’Keera’s voice lowered. “We even have reason to believe that Kersh is in the pay of the Romulans.”

  “That’s not right,” Zokar said. He gripped his d’k tahg tightly. “Let her come. I will cut her in two.” Zokar had experience with Romulans, Valandris knew. She suspected it had something to do with how he was discommendated years earlier.

  Raneer, crouching beside the main doorway leading south from the fortress, called back. “The Sentries on the path have not moved.”

  “Their shift ends when the first moon rises,” N’Keera said, gesturing toward an alcove where clothing was stored. “Take the Sentries’ garb and gear. Mask yourselves against the gases as they do. And when you reach their stations to relieve them, you will slay them and cast their bodies into the purifying flames.”

  “If they are worthy,” Kruge said, “they will emerge from the fire just as I did. And truly this place will be a forge for spirits. But I hold little hope for them. No, the only spirits I hope to hone here are yours.”

  Valandris watched as Zokar and the others eagerly began stripping off their armor in preparation for their new disguises. Another ambush for the Unsung. Worf, she knew, would certainly not approve.

  Nor, she suspected, would the person whose name Ernor had spoken in death.

  With N’Keera busy distributing the Sentry’s gear, Valandris stepped tentatively toward Kruge. He noticed her. “Yes?”

  “Those we attacked,” she said. “They called for Kahless.”

  “As they whimpered and died?”

  “No. They were searching for him—expecting to find him.”

  “Did you smell the breath on the Sentries before you slew them?” Kruge laughed. “The louts were stinking drunk when I found them, Valandris. It is all they do here—I suspected as much. It was a small thing to lure them outside with a ruse. Kahless was the name I chose, but with superstitious fools like these, any would have done.”

  Valandris nodded. Kruge’s explanation made sense.

  But as she looked around, she saw only the sacred scrolls and volumes. She wondered where the empty bloodwine bottles were.

  ACT TWO

  THE WOLF’S DISGUISE

  2386

  “It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.”

  —William Ralph Inge

  Sixteen

  SPIRITS’ FORGE

  H’ATORIA, KLINGON EMPIRE

  “ . . . a Klingon who kills without showing his face is no Klingon at all.”

  Valandris sat with her pack on the floor of the fortress’s mess hall and ate as she read from the aged book. After Kruge and N’Keera had beamed back to Chu’charq to rest, Valandris had found the tome in a protected place amidst the belongings of the Sentries. Given the book’s place of respect, Valandris had been surprised that the volume wasn’t in better shape. It had been read nearly to tatters.

  The book reprinted the qeS’a’, an ancient text supposedly bearing the teachings of Kahless the Unforgettable; the words she had just read constituted the Third Precept of the ancient warrior’s code. That such a code even existed was news to her. The elders on Thane had said nothing about it to their offspring. That was their philosophy: since they had been discommendated, with seven future generations of their descendants similarly condemned, there was no need to teach their children and grandchildren a heritage they could never strive for. History and tradition connected an individual to the past, to something greater. Discommendation was all about being cut off.

  That was the most generous interpretation for her lack of knowledge. Valandris saw darker motives. General Potok was all about keeping control of his community, and that meant keeping the young in the dark, with no ambition or pride. He had kept them asleep—only to be roused the year before when the Fallen Lord arrived to tell them they deserved better.

  Potok had been overthrown, but it had not brought about a reintroduction of Kahless’s teachings. The resurrected Kruge styled himself as a new warrior prophet, distinct from and better than the ancient Kahless. He’d actively discouraged them from asking about their past; Kruge told them he had already seen all the strengths and weaknesses of Klingon society, and that he was crafting something different. Kruge’s words were the only ones that mattered.

  And yet, something made Valandris uneasy.

  Killing the captain of the watch and several of his companions had only been the start of her activity at Spirits’ Forge. As Kruge and N’Keera commanded, she had dressed in the gear of a Sentry, walked out onto the land bridge in the still-moonless night, and in synchronicity with similarly garbed Unsung had fired her disruptor at the guard she was pretending to relieve. The Sentries’ job was to stand watch protecting the fortress. They had never considered danger could come from the fortress, dressed in friendly colors.

  The tactic was nothing new. She had a lifetime of stalking and pouncing on prey. She had launched surprise attacks on both Dinskaar and Enterprise in sensor-proofed combat gear. But it wasn’t until she talked with Worf, on Thane, that she’d realized that Klingons saw combat differently. Battle, the ancient Kahless had contended, revealed the inner spirit—and in such a hallowed activity deception had no place.

  She had read the section of the qeS’a’ again and again, struggling to understand. Didn’t Klingons spend enormous resources developing technologies to cloak their spacecraft? A hundred years’ work had been put into the cloaking systems of the Phantom Wing. While cloaked, they could operate their transporters and even fire—and while some of the later émigrés had told her the latter was somehow taboo, she couldn’t understand a culture that simultaneously praised forthright activity while making deception easier.

  Worse, the rules—more accursed Klingon rules!—forgave acts that had harmed her own. She had been thinking about her last mome
nts on Thane for days. Worf had killed her cousin and childhood friend, Tharas, and had defended himself by citing the tenets in the very book she was holding. Worf had announced his presence to Tharas before striking, and that made it all right? Tharas was still dead, his young daughter fatherless. How many of her people’s lives on Thane had been made miserable because of the Klingons and their damned honor?

  And yet . . .

  As she had started killing sentients in Kruge’s name, Valandris had found something inside her at odds with the way she was going about it. She had felt the same thing earlier on the causeway, incinerating the guard she had surprised. The kill had been unsatisfying. Looking back, she felt the same about Ernor as well. Would she regret striking at the Enterprise next?

  And Valandris was still at pains to understand her response to Worf on Thane. Not only had she freed him after Tharas’s death, but she had alerted him to Kruge’s plan to immolate Worf’s would-be rescuers in the Unsung compound. All for the man who murdered her best friend.

  If it was murder. She didn’t know anymore.

  What was she becoming?

  Booming laughter erupted from the corridor. Several of Zokar’s crewmates from Rodak entered the mess hall through the door beside her, chatting happily about their exploits. They proceeded toward the pile of backpacks that had been beamed down. Suddenly self-aware, Valandris quickly shoved the book underneath her own pack on the floor.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” Valandris said, before she even saw who had spoken.

  Zokar stood over her, smiling. “Dinnertime at last. Let me see what they sent you.” He leaned down to grab at the pack with his sole arm—and she yanked it away from him. In the act, the book beneath slid between Zokar’s feet.

  Her hand shot out for it—but the older Klingon stomped on the book with his boot. “What’s this?” Reaching for it, he brought it upward. His eyes widened as he read from the cover. “Oh.”

  Valandris stood. The others were looking at them now, she saw. Neither she nor Zokar had ranks, but everyone saw the unofficial ship leaders as rivals—and under Kruge, that had increasingly become the case.

  “Where’d you get this?” he asked.

  “Something I found. It’s nothing.”

  “I agree it’s nothing. Nothing but trouble.” Pivoting, he marched through the doorway into the next room, which held the great glowing furnace open to the infernal underground rift. Valandris followed, as did several onlookers. With a whisk of his hand, Zokar sent the book sailing into the kiln.

  “No!” Valandris said, starting for it. A second later, she was on the ledge of the open kiln, trying to find any part of the volume. Burning pages fluttered over the hell pit, and she clutched at them.

  Zokar hauled her back from the edge. “Are you mad, woman?”

  Not mad, but angry. Valandris wrenched away from Zokar and punched him in the nose. Laughter rose from the other spectators. She spun and gave a withering look that silenced all.

  Zokar wiped the blood from his nose with a growl—and then laughed it off.

  She gave him her next bad look. “What did you do that for?”

  Standing by the fire, his eyes gleamed. “Trash should be burned.”

  “Have you even read it?”

  “Have I read it?” Incredulous, Zokar gawked at her. “Val, that claptrap is drilled into our heads in the crèche.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Damn right. I was discommendated by the Empire, Valandris. Personally. Not some ancestor of mine, like you people.” The bald Klingon pointed to the smoking brazier. “And believe me, this qeS’a’ business is nothing but guff. Chains made of words, to enslave you to people long dead—people who may never even have existed.”

  “So Kahless wasn’t real?”

  “The clone? I cut his jugular. The blood was real enough.” Several listeners laughed.

  “No, I mean the first Kahless.”

  Zokar groaned in aggravation. “The scholars go back and forth on that. But that’s not important. It’s what they do with the things they say he said.” He jabbed at his chest with his index finger. “They puff us up with ideas that we can belong in their heroic afterlife—but only if we do everything their way. And if they find you lacking? Forget it. There is no appeal.”

  That brought a rumble from the others present. Certainly, it took nothing to convince the Unsung of the Empire’s corruption.

  Zokar continued. “Kruge’s different. He’s got a plan. You saw the broadcast he sent: he called us ‘the children the true Kahless deserved.’ That wasn’t just a slam at the people who discommendated us. He’s willing to use Kahless and their other symbols, to hijack them, to transform them—to turn them to our ends. We’ll remake society our way. Then we’re the gods.” That elicited whoops.

  “Maybe.” Valandris turned and found her backpack. She had lost her appetite. Before she exited, she looked back at Zokar. “How long ago did they discommendate you?”

  “Forty years ago, just about. I was even younger then than you are now. And believe me, nothing’s changed.”

  He eyed her, and she stared back. Then, after a moment, she said, “I believe you.”

  She could do nothing else. Zokar had made perfect sense—and no one in the room had more experience with the Klingon Empire. She knew he was probably right.

  But she didn’t know if she deserved to be a god.

  Seventeen

  ORION PIRATE CAMP

  AZURE NEBULA

  Since the Unsung had slipped past Enterprise in the Briar Patch, Picard felt as if he was chasing shadows. The squadron had the ability to range too far—and too many craft in and around the Klingon Empire had cloaks similar to the Unsung’s, except for Object Thirteen. That was why he had been willing to entertain La Forge’s wild transporter scheme: there was little chance that it would be used.

  Things looked different when standing beside the fresh landing gear imprint left by one of the starships of the Phantom Wing. Heavy rains had washed away many of the traces of footprints, but there was no doubt that a massacre had taken place. Enterprise had discovered corpses strewn everywhere in the Orion pirate camp, rotting in the mud.

  Gloved and masked, his wife and chief medical officer emerged from the hut nearest the landing zone. Picard stepped away from the rut and tromped over to meet her. Spotting him, Beverly Crusher pulled off her protective mask.

  “Status?”

  She exhaled a deep breath. “We’re transporting bodies directly to the morgue. We count eighty-nine dead Orions, as well as fourteen members of five different species.”

  Worse than Gamaral, Picard thought. “Other species. Klingons?”

  “No. We suspect they were hirelings or slaves. The Unsung killed them all.” Crusher predicted his next question. “It happened sometime between three and seven days ago. We’ll narrow it down in the autopsies.”

  “I won’t keep you.” He gave her a sympathetic look. It was dismal work, but it had to be done.

  Over his shoulder, Picard could see Šmrhová directing her forensic experts. She had everyone out today: looking at the signs of battle, trying to determine the order of events and number of attackers involved. “Report.”

  “We still think it’s just two birds-of-prey,” Šmrhová said. “At least that’s all that landed. We’re getting good prints from inside the camp structures, matching those we found on Gamaral. Possibly twenty or thirty attackers.”

  “And no evidence of Unsung casualties.”

  “Correct, but that might not mean anything. They’re armed with disruptors. I could see the Unsung vaporizing their dead if they wanted to hide their involvement.”

  It occurred to Picard that with disruptors involved, the number of Orion dead might be far higher. “So at a minimum the cultists succeeded against odds which at best were four to one.” He shook his head. “Anything else?”

  “Aye, Captain. The Unsung—or somebody—evidently took some materials from t
he storehouse. It’s been ransacked.”

  “They’re foraging. That could be what this was—a raid to resupply.” The violence seemed out of proportion with a mere looting run, but everything the Unsung had done so far was extreme. “Could they have learned of this place from their earlier raid on Dinskaar?”

  “Possibly. But it’s what they took that’s strange. They left behind a lot of food, drink, and other necessities—even spare dilithium crystals. But we can see from the inventory manifest that a lot of the hard currency and luxury items are gone.”

  The concept struck Picard dumb. What would the Unsung need with money?

  “I doubt we’ll be able to figure that storehouse out,” she admitted. “There are traces of a lot of different beings having been in the place. It’s a mess.”

  The enslaved workers—or someone else? Picard figured he’d better get out of the way if he wanted that answer. “Thank you, Lieutenant. This is excellent work.”

  “I knew once we got Qo’noS to filter the candidate signals, we’d be able to track Object Thirteen,” Šmrhová said. It had brought Enterprise here—although long-range sensor readings were inconclusive as to where the Unsung had gone. “I’m looking forward to catching up with them and trying out Commander La Forge’s plan,” she said.

  “As you were.” Picard smiled warily and withdrew.

  He’d been unsurprised at his officers’ drive. La Forge had been sitting center seat when Unsung agents had infiltrated the Enterprise over Gamaral. On the planet below, Šmrhová’s security teams had allowed Unsung assassins to slip in from the forest to assassinate their targets. Worf had been unable to stop the murder of Kahless, and he now felt that he had to complete a quest in the clone’s name.

  Picard understood how his officers felt; he felt the same. Each of them needed redemption. But could he allow it if it jeopardized the seekers?