Star Trek: Vanguard: Declassified

by Dayton Ward

  Fisher started to ask about the creature, only to find Tavia’s hand over his mouth. “Keep still,” she whispered. “It’s about to feed.”

  Fisher continued to watch when, quite suddenly, a huge burst of water rose behind the raptor, followed by a snakelike head at least four meters wide with massive jaws that snapped shut around the creature’s body. The raptor thrashed in futility as the leviathan dragged it off the rock and down into the shrouded water.

  “My God,” Fisher said softly. “What was that?”

  “The reason Aole died,” Tavia said.

  Desai didn’t understand what Ying was trying to tell her, but seeing the tears streaming from the governor’s eyes, she felt certain she was close to something important.

  Before she could ask, both women noticed a number of colonists running south through the town square. They looked almost frantic.

  “What’s going on?” Desai asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Ying said, quickly wiping her eyes and pushing away from the table when she saw Helena Sgouros running toward them.

  “Fisher’s missing,” she told Ying. “So is Dawes.”

  “You’re sure?” Ying asked.

  Sgouros nodded. “Witnesses placed them by the hoops a few hours ago. No one’s seen them since.”

  Desai flipped open her communicator. “Desai to Fisher. Desai to Fisher, please respond.” Nothing.

  “Dawes isn’t answering, either,” Sgouros said. “If they’ve turned off their comms, they must be in the rain forest.”

  Ying cursed. “It’s Aole Miller all over again.” To Sgouros, she said, “We need to start organizing search parties.”

  “My people are already rounding up volunteers,” answered New Anglesey’s head of security. “They’re meeting at the dome.”

  “Good,” Ying said. “Take Desai into custody and confine her.”

  “What?” Desai said, as Sgouros drew her sidearm.

  “It’s for your own good, Captain,” Ying said.

  “The hell it is. You can’t—”

  “I can and I will,” Ying snapped. “This is our world, and Starfleet people with no understanding of Kadru have no business venturing into places they don’t belong, and where they aren’t welcome. If that wasn’t clear to you before, I trust it is now.” She showed her comm device to Sgouros. “Home in on my transponder signal and catch up to me after she’s been secured.”

  “Understood.” Ying took off at a run, and Sgouros gestured with her stun pistol. “Start moving, Captain.”

  Led away at gunpoint, Desai endured the humiliation of being marched through town as Sgouros’s prisoner. “Where are we going?”

  “Just keep walking,” Sgouros advised, eventually directing Desai through a side street near the edge of town, to a lot filled with several windowless sheds and construction equipment. They stopped at a structure bearing a sign that read, THERMOCONCRETE.

  With her pistol leveled at Desai, Sgouros used her free hand to unlock the shed. She yanked on the metal door, and it swung outward with a loud creak. The shed was half empty, the walls on either side stacked with sacks of powdered building material, each one looking as if it weighed at least fifty kilos—nothing Desai could use to break out once she was locked in.

  “Inside,” Sgouros ordered.

  So don’t get locked in, Desai told herself as she crossed the threshold.

  She waited until she heard the creak of the door starting to close. Then she spun around, pivoted on one leg, and kicked out sideways with the other. With a loud crack the door swung back outward, slamming into Sgouros’s face.

  Desai charged out, tackling the dazed head of security. She pressed her advantage, seizing hold of Sgouros’s wrist and banging her hand repeatedly against the pavement until she released her grip on the weapon.

  But Sgouros was already regaining her wits, shifting as if she were preparing to roll Desai off. Desai thrust the heel of her palm sharply against the taller woman’s temple, and Sgouros’s head lolled to one side as she lost consciousness.

  Desai moved into a crouch and relieved Sgouros of her comm unit. She scrolled through the personnel list, searching the more than three hundred names until she saw the one she wanted: DAWES, OCTAVIA.

  She tried opening a channel. Nothing. She selected the tracking function, and the unit’s display gave her a map of the local terrain, with a blinking arrowhead in the center. Rising numbers in one corner of the display ticked off the increasing distance. Dawes was on the move.

  And as Sgouros had predicted, the arrowhead pointed straight into the rain forest.

  Desai recovered Sgouros’s weapon and set off at a run.

  Hang on, Fish. I’m coming.

  8

  2259

  “It’s theragen,” Fisher confirmed, once Reyes, Sadler, and Shey had joined him in Dauntless’s sickbay, where the biobeds were filled with unconscious Klingons requiring intensive care. At the foot of each bed, Sadler had stationed a security guard.

  “Theragen?” Reyes repeated. “That nerve gas of theirs? What happened?”

  “Some containers that were stored in the surgeon’s bay ruptured, not that anyone would even admit that was the problem. None of them are talking. The only reason I have any hope for these poor souls is that Hallie was able to access the Klingons’ medical database, which included some very superficial molecular analyses of the agent and woefully inadequate treatment recommendations. But it gave me a place to start, and I’m happy to say I’ve been able to improve the treatment considerably.”

  “Theragen,” Reyes said again, shaking his head. “I knew Gorkon could be one cold son of a bitch, but I never imagined he was vicious enough to— My God, could that be what he’s doing on the asteroid? Turning it into a chemical weapons factory?”

  “No,” Shey said, “certainly not with the equipment in the science labs. I’ve finished looking into their capabilities, and they don’t have the capacity to be used as you’re suggesting, Captain. They’re designed for research and analysis of organic compounds, and not in any way suited for the large-scale production and storage of chemical weapons.”

  “Maybe they don’t need to be,” Sadler said. “What if the Klingons’ true objective was to refine the formula for the nerve agent, develop small samples of something even nastier, and then use the Arkenites as guinea pigs?”

  Reyes looked at Shey. “Is that possible?”

  Shey’s antennae drooped slightly. “Theoretically, yes.”

  Reyes’s hands curled into fists. The sickbay doors opened to admit Gannon, but before she could speak, the captain turned to Sadler. “Lieutenant, within the hour, I want a briefing with your recommendations for retaking Azha-R7a, with the objective of neutralizing any biohazardous materials, even if it means we have to put innocent lives in jeopardy.”

  Sadler nodded and started for the door, but Gannon stopped him with a hand against his shoulder. “Terry, wait. Captain, I don’t think this is what it seems.”

  Reyes looked at her. “And how did you happen to come to that conclusion, Commander?”

  Gannon held up a data card. “These are the files from the surgeon’s bay database on the Chech’Iw. I’ve been reviewing them since Doctor Fisher and I got back, along with General Gorkon’s Starfleet Intelligence file. And I’m now convinced that Gorkon is actually trying to develop a counteragent to theragen.”

  “Kintazh, son of Gorkon,” Gannon said, naming the young Klingon whose image looked out from the monitor at the end of the briefing room table. “Until recently, he was a weapons officer for Captain Kavau of the I.K.S. Qul qemwI’. He’s the reason all of this is happening.”

  Reyes had decided to remain standing during the briefing, and his officers followed his lead, much to Fisher’s annoyance. For the sake of his old bones, he hoped it wouldn’t be the start of a trend.

  “Kavau was a singular captain in the Klingon Defense Force,” Gannon continued. “He used theragen to quell uprisings on Klingon subject planets.
”

  “He used theragen within the Empire?” Sadler asked, and Fisher shared his surprise. From everything he’d ever heard, theragen had been used exclusively as a conquest weapon, back before the Klingons abandoned it around the turn of the century.

  “That’s what made him so singular,” Gannon said. “Officially, the use of theragen is strictly against imperial policy, chemical and biological warfare being considered dishonorable by most Klingons. That was what led to the ban in 2207. But Kavau had the backing of several powerful members of the High Council who were pushing for the use of unconventional weapons against the Federation. The councillors thought that by reintroducing theragen domestically, they’d demonstrate the effectiveness of such weapons and build more support for them on the High Council.

  “That seemed to be the direction things were going until one of the theragen tests backfired, killing three-quarters of the Qul qemwI’ crew. They were the lucky ones. The survivors were all terminal, including Captain Kavau and Kintazh. Upon learning what had happened, Chancellor Sturka ordered the program shut down and sent Gorkon to mop up. To provide cover for the High Council, this newest use of theragen was officially disavowed, the captain and crew of the Qul qemwI’ branded renegades and criminals. Gorkon’s job was to execute Kavau and the other survivors, and to destroy the ship along with any remaining stockpiles of theragen it carried.”

  “I think I see where this is going,” Reyes muttered.

  Gannon nodded. “Based on my findings, I think Gorkon couldn’t bring himself to let his son die dishonorably. But Kintazh’s status as a criminal meant that he was ineligible even for ritual death by Mauk-to’Vor, which would restore his honor in the afterlife. His only chance to die with honor was to live long enough to redeem himself. So after executing the other survivors and setting the Qul qemwI’ to destruct, Gorkon took Kintazh and several containers of theragen aboard the Chech’Iw—without advising his superiors. Then he put his scientists to work on curing his son.

  “But as we’ve now learned, the effects of theragen are beyond the ability of Klingon medicine to cope with, especially if left untreated too long. Faced with that knowledge, Gorkon must have realized Kintazh’s best chance was with Federation medical technology. The problem was, he couldn’t seek it openly; the Klingons have a long-standing distrust of alien bioscience. Gorkon would be risking dishonor for himself and, by extension, for his crew and his entire House—not to mention the wrath of the High Council—by asking the Federation for help.”

  “What does that mean for the patients in my sickbay?” Fisher asked. “Not to mention all the people I treated on their ship?”

  “It depends on whether or not Gorkon can keep the incident buried,” Gannon said. “What I believe happened next is that Gorkon hatched a scheme to save his son under the pretense of capturing enemy territory and assets—assets that included a state-of-the-art bioresearch laboratory, and a population whose customs he could turn to his advantage. My guess is that he hired a third party to infiltrate the asteroid and perform an act of sabotage that would threaten the colony sufficiently to warrant issuing a distress call, which the Chech’Iw would be in position to answer first. To throw off the High Council to his true intentions, Gorkon made the Arkenites an offer he knew they couldn’t refuse.”

  “Unbelievable,” Reyes said.

  “Now we know why the Chech’Iw didn’t have adequate medical personnel to deal with the theragen poisoning,” Fisher said.

  “They’re with Gorkon on the asteroid,” Reyes realized, “trying to treat Kintazh.”

  “It also explains why Duvadi was being kept in the lab wing,” Fisher added, “and why Gorkon was going out of his way to keep her happy.”

  Gannon nodded. “He needed her help to make sure the unfamiliar lab equipment was being used to its best effect. Her sense of obligation, the thing that ensured her cooperation, depended on his continued goodwill. Kintazh’s life depended on it.”

  “All this is about saving his son,” Reyes said, shaking his head. “Why the hell didn’t he just tell me?”

  “Sir, Gorkon was already violating custom and law, and disobeying the orders of his chancellor. If what he was really up to became known, it wasn’t just his honor that would be forfeit. He’s a Klingon general. Every man and woman under his command, and every member of his House, would share his dishonor, irredeemable even in death. Even if he wanted to divulge the truth, he couldn’t risk it.”

  “I think I get the picture now, Commander.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Sadler asked.

  Reyes looked pensive. “I think, Mister Sadler . . . I see another opportunity.”

  After learning what had befallen his ship, Gorkon was quick enough to agree to Reyes’s demand for a meeting. And while he stoically endured the dishonor of Dauntless towing the Chech’Iw back to Azha-R7a while his crew recovered from theragen poisoning, much of the wind seemed to have left his sails.

  With Fisher and Gannon at his side, Reyes faced Gorkon across the conference table in Duvadi’s office, and for once, the general wore no trace of his derisive smile. Nor were his guards shadowing him this time. Whatever transpired here, Gorkon clearly did not want witnesses from among his own people.

  “I know about your son,” Reyes began without preamble. “Doctor Fisher can cure his condition. I’m offering you that assistance, and also my assurance that I’ll back up any story you come up with to give you and your people cover with the High Council. In return, you’re going to give up your claim to Azha-R7a and its inhabitants.”

  If Gorkon was surprised by the depth of Reyes’s knowledge, his stony face revealed nothing. After a time he asked, “And if I refuse? What then? Would you withhold the cure that would save my son?”

  “No,” Reyes said. “I’m not going to play that game. I’m here because thanks in no small part to my first officer, I think I finally understand what led to this moment, and what’s really at stake for you and your boy. I’ll simply remind you that I just came from saving your ship. Your crew is mostly alive and well because of me. So I suggest you consider carefully what your honor demands at this juncture.”

  Gorkon leaned back in his chair. “So . . . you would use my own honor as a weapon against me,” he said. “Coercion.”

  Reyes shrugged. “Let’s call it a choice.”

  Shortly thereafter, Fisher was given leave to enter the asteroid’s laboratory wing, where Gorkon’s bioscientists struggled to keep a bedridden Kintazh alive. Initially, Fisher’s arrival was met with open hostility. But a few stern words from Gorkon in tlhIngan’Hol cleared the way for Fisher to gain their cooperation, assess the patient’s condition, and tailor his theragen treatment to optimize the young Klingon’s chances for recovery. It wasn’t long before Kintazh started showing clear signs of improvement.

  As agreed, Gorkon informed Duvadi that she and her people would be released from their debt as soon as his son was well enough to leave.

  Duvadi thanked Reyes for all he’d done, and for respecting the Arkenites’ customs. “I know it couldn’t have been easy for you, Captain.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Reyes conceded. “But maybe it should’ve been.”

  Days later, Kintazh was back on his feet, and the Dauntless trio returned to observe the Klingon withdrawal from the asteroid. Gorkon, his personal guards, and his son were the last to depart. The Klingons carried themselves proudly as they marched toward the transporter room, barely acknowledging the Starfleet officers watching their approach.

  What followed happened very quickly, but each instant was frozen indelibly in Fisher’s memory.

  As the Klingons entered the transporter room, Kintazh’s gaze found Reyes, and all pretense at equanimity vanished.

  Without warning, the young Klingon drew his d’k tagh, growled something in his native tongue, and lunged.

  Reyes, without even a glimmer of surprise in his eyes, easily blocked the initial attack.

  Kintazh recovered, then swiped aga
in and slashed the captain’s shoulder, drawing blood.

  Gannon, shouting, drew her hand laser.

  And suddenly, there was Gorkon. He stepped in quickly, blocking Gannon’s aim, and snapped his son’s neck with his hands.

  Fisher started forward, already reaching for his medkit, but one of Gorkon’s guards blocked his path.

  Kintazh fell on his back, and as his last breath escaped him, Gorkon knelt down, forced open his son’s eyes and roared at the ceiling.

  Into the shocked silence that followed, Fisher moved to tend to Reyes, whose injuries were, fortunately, superficial.

  Gannon stood there aghast, unable to believe what she had just witnessed. “I could have stopped him without killing him!” she shouted. “After all you did, after everything we’ve all gone through to save Kintazh . . . why slay your own son?”

  “Why?” Gorkon repeated. “You are supposed to be intelligent, Gannon. How can you know us so well, and still ask the question?” He regarded her with disdain, clearly disappointed by her lack of comprehension. “Turn to your captain for answers if they elude you, Commander. He understands . . . finally.”

  Gorkon recovered Kintazh’s d’k tagh, stained with Reyes’s blood. He handled it almost reverently. “ ‘I have thee not, and yet I see thee still,’ “ he whispered.

  Then he and his guards mounted the energizer stage, and the general called his ship for transport.

  Before the beam took him, his eyes met those of Dauntless’s captain. “Die well, Reyes.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Gorkon and his guards vanished, leaving the apparently unimportant corpse of his son behind.

  Fisher moved to check the body, and after verifying that Kintazh was dead, he gently closed the young Klingon’s eyes. The doctor shook his head. “It’s insane.”

  Gannon was still visibly shaken. “Sir, I—”

  “This was never about saving Kintazh’s life, Hallie,” Reyes said, his eyes fixed on Gorkon’s son. “You said it yourself: it was about prolonging it long enough to give him the chance to redeem himself—so he could die with honor. Kintazh died trying to kill an enemy of the Empire. That’s how he’ll be remembered. And Gorkon performed his duty by executing a member of his House who was about to commit an act of war. Honor is served.”