“May as well let me go, then.” He didn’t bother to point out that if Belo hadn’t used him as a punching bag, he’d have been a lot more functional.
“Ha! Everybody has a purpose.”
“True, but some of us object to being told what ours is by a thug holding a gun.”
Her shoulders bunched and she started to raise her weapon, as if to club him with it. At a look from the other one, she lowered it again. “Come with me,” she said, ignoring his remark. “We’ll find something you’re good at.”
Kirk followed her up the winding path instead of down. At the top, she led him along a trail that skirted the decked building where he’d seen Klingons. They cut between buildings that were made from local stone, gray but shot through with veins of red and gold. The structures were functional, with little artistry put into their design, but lovely in an understated way; the stone caught the morning light and shone with its own radiance. The constant booming noise grew louder, and he realized they were heading for the smelter.
He could feel the heat intensify as they neared the massive stone structure. Chimneys sprouted from a slanted roof, dozens of them, each one spewing smoke into the sky. The booming noise was louder than ever, but he could hear other sounds now, clanging and hammering and more that he couldn’t distinguish from the overall din.
At a huge doorway, another pair of armed Victors, both men, met them. “Here’s one more,” the woman escorting Kirk said. “He’s damned useless, but maybe you can do something with him.”
“Looks strong enough,” one of the men said. He was tall and lean, with a red mustache that drooped over a cruel mouth and an appraising glint in his eyes. “We’ll find a place for him.”
“If not,” the second added, “we always need fuel for the fires.” This one was shorter and broader through the chest and shoulders, with a wide stance and a neck like a bull. He chuckled at his own joke, but the dryness of that laugh made Kirk wonder if it was really a joke at all.
The woman left him. The two men looked him up and down, as if making sure he’d fit in the furnace. “Hauler?” the thin one asked.
“I think so,” the other replied.
The thin one grabbed Kirk’s arm, squeezing hard. “Let’s go, you.”
The interior of the building was one vast space, broken into multiple functions. Kirk didn’t know much about the smelting process, particularly as it had been practiced centuries ago on Earth—or, probably more applicable here, as it was practiced on Qo’noS. He doubted the Klingons had provided current technology. Although they had been breaking the treaty, presumably for years, they still wanted to maintain some deniability. Their contributions to Neural’s level of technology were almost primitive enough that they could be denied. At least unless somebody examined them closely.
As he was marched through the place, sweat pouring from him in rivers, Kirk saw other slaves, most of them shirtless and similarly glistening. Some tended a massive furnace connected to a gigantic bellows. The booming noise Kirk had been hearing was the machinery that drove the bellows: water from a diverted section of river drove a pair of gargantuan paddlewheels that in turn operated metal levers, and the levers opened and closed valves that sent great puffs of air into the biggest furnace Kirk had ever seen. The furnace supplied the heat that had already caused him to soak his clothing in sweat, and the valves slammed closed with thunderous impact. The levers groaned and creaked as they moved, creating the cacophony that Kirk feared was deafening him more with every moment he spent inside the building.
Laborers, some so muscular that Kirk assumed they had been at this for years, shoveled piles of the mined ore into vats. The vats were moved over grates through which the furnace’s heat was directed, and then other workers tipped the melted slag into long steel channels. Kirk couldn’t follow the entire process from where he was, but he knew the basics—the ore was heated to separate the desired metal from the minerals surrounding it, then some other metal was blended in to give it the desired properties. Leutrinium needed to be hard but flexible, with a high melting point, to serve its purpose in the Klingon power plants. Whatever was pulled from the mine was too pure and had to be cut with something else—Kirk couldn’t tell what—to strengthen it.
He felt stronger today than he had before, the beating a day further in the past, but his ribs were not yet healed. He didn’t know what it meant to be a hauler, but it sounded like hard, demanding work—as, no doubt, every job in the mine was, except the ones performed by armed Victors.
He soon found out.
Once the metals were combined, they were poured into rod-shaped molds and cooled. Then workers took the rods, rolled them on long tables, and inspected them for imperfections such as air bubbles that might result in cracking or popping under the conditions in which they would be employed; they then piled the ones that passed onto carts with small, heavy metal wheels. As a hauler, Kirk found, his job was to lug those carts—loaded with hundreds of two-meter leutrinium rods—by their T-shaped handles across the floor and outside and down a pathway, which eventually led to a flat surface that was paved with stones scorched by incredible heat, on which a Klingon freighter waited with its loading bay doors open.
The first cart that he took by himself, after assisting another worker with one for training purposes, almost got away from him. After the doorway to the smelter building, the path had the slightest decline. The other laborer had known about it and compensated, so Kirk had barely noticed it. But when he was hauling one by himself, with its half a metric ton of leutrinium rods, momentum took over on the down slope and the thing started to roll of its own accord. There was a wide turn before the landing pad, and if the cart didn’t make that turn, it would go off the paved path and out into a stretch of open dirt and scattered weeds. If even one wheel hit that dirt, the cart’s weight would make it sink, and even if it didn’t tip, he would have to unload it to get it back on the path, then reload it and start it rolling again.
As the cart gathered speed, Kirk alternated between pushing against the handle in an attempt to slow it and trying to wrench it to the right to keep it on the path. His ribs screamed at the effort. He thought he would double over with the pain, but he kept pushing and pulling, hoping to slow and steady it. His shoulders had never had such a workout.
He backed up, ever faster, leaning into the handle as he did, understanding with every passing moment the futility of one man trying to control a great weight if it didn’t want to be controlled.
He was James T. Kirk, and he would not be defeated by an enemy as simple as a rolling cart.
He changed his approach slightly. He couldn’t bring enough force to bear to keep it from rolling, so instead of pushing back against it, Kirk switched to turning the handle, and therefore the front wheels, this way and that, back and forth. When it threatened to tip over, he lessened the angle of the turn but kept up the motion, and after a few frightening minutes, the pathway leveled out.
By then the cart was well over to the left, and that wide right turn was coming up. The cart was still rolling too fast. It hadn’t crushed him or left the path, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He wiped his hands, one at a time, on clothes so soaked with sweat that it hardly dried them, and gave a final yank to the right. Every muscle in his body objected; he thought his ribs would snap under the strain.
But the cart shifted, and he was able to use its momentum to wheel it around the turn and toward the pad.
When he reached it, fighting for breath, sweat plastering his clothes to his skin, using every ounce of strength he possessed to muscle the cart the last four meters, the ship’s Klingon crew stood there, laughing at him. He didn’t get the joke until they informed him that he—and he alone—would have to unload the cart and carry the rods into the bay. The first time, some of the crew had helped him and the laborer showing him the ropes. This time, no one offered. He wouldn’t be able to take his cart back for another load until this one was emptied.
One of the Vic
tor overseers stood with the Klingons, as amused as they were by his struggle with the cart. As Kirk started unloading it, carrying rods three at a time into the freighter, he said, “What happens if I take the rest of the day to get this load taken care of?”
The Victor shrugged. “How long it takes is up to you,” he said. “But every hauler has to move ten carts a day. You don’t sleep until you finish, so if you take all day, you may never sleep again.”
“Ten carts?”
“Since this is your first day, we will count the one you helped with as your first. That leaves you only eight to go.”
“Thanks a lot,” Kirk said, fearing as he did that sarcasm was lost on this guy.
“But when we tell the man you helped that it counts as yours, you will have made an enemy, because he will have lost one. Let it be your choice, then—an enemy among your own kind, or one more cartload to contend with.”
Kirk considered for only a moment. He was already exhausted, his muscles laced with pain. But he would need every ally he could get, if he was to make a difference here. “Never mind,” he said, hoisting up five rods with a grunt. “Nine carts to go.”
* * *
Long after the sun had set, Kirk walked back toward the pit, exhausted and starving. He hoped there was food saved for him, but the meager rations provided by the Victors didn’t go far. A single Victor guard, with her ever-present rifle, accompanied him. She’d had a meal, and grease still glistened around her mouth.
A door to the building nearest the pit, the one on the decks of which Kirk had seen Klingons, opened as they approached. A trio of Klingons emerged, accompanied by a Victor with a thick mass of dark hair and a heavy mustache. He wasn’t a big man, but he carried himself with an air of command—or, more accurately, Kirk reflected, an air of wished-for command. His manner was subservient toward the Klingons, but Kirk doubted that it would be with his own people. He’d met enough petty tyrants to recognize the type at a glance.
“. . . if we could only have some more advanced technology, we could increase production,” the Victor was saying. “Since you have ships that can travel through the skies, surely there are wagons more advanced than those that we use in the mine. Dragging those ore cars from the depths of the pit to the smelter costs us time and kills more workers than anything else. If you saw—”
A Klingon with a short stub of a beard and a haughty manner interrupted him, his tone as stern as that of a mother disciplining a consistently wayward son. “Will it always be thus with you, Apella? I want, I want. Workers are cheap, and we are satisfied with the mine’s output. Why must you always seek to ‘improve’ that which needs no improvement?”
“I only wish to be of service to the empire,” Apella said. Kirk remembered that name—Tyree had told him that Apella was the governor here, and he had heard the name once, before that. “You know, honored Krell, that I serve the empire’s interests in all things.”
“I know you think the empire’s interests mirror your own,” Krell said. “You think more, more, more will please me, and you will be rewarded in kind, with more power, more influence. What pleases me is consistency. I want to know that what I have promised will be delivered. Our production capacity meets the empire’s needs. Your laborers are of no concern to me. I have provided the resources you need and will entertain no additional pleas for more. Need I remind you that there are plenty more like you who would love the opportunity to serve us?”
“Others, Krell? None as faithful as I have been, none so loyal to you and to the great cause of Qo’noS.”
“If you would continue serving that cause, then give me what I demand, not what you think I want.”
The Victor didn’t quite throw himself to the ground at the Klingon’s feet, but Kirk gathered he wasn’t far from it. “Of course, Krell. As I always have.” The Klingons were already walking away from him, but still Apella pleaded his case. “And as I always will! I have never failed you. You know that. I never will, Krell.”
Give it up, Kirk thought. You can’t win.
The Klingons strode away without a glance back at Apella. Kirk and his escort reached him at that moment, and the Victor, surprised to hear footsteps approaching him, whirled around. His gaze took in a laborer and a guard, and his expression turned to one of dismissal.
But then he focused on Kirk. His eyes went wide with shock and then something Kirk took as recognition. At the same instant, Kirk recognized Apella, and the whole scene rushed back to him.
He had told Rowland about going into the Village on his last trip to Neural, on a reconnaissance mission. He and McCoy had found a forge and were nearly discovered there by a Villager and a Klingon. They’d had to knock them both down to escape.
The voices he’d heard tonight had sounded familiar, but it wasn’t until Apella had looked at him so intently that he knew why. Apella had been the Villager, and Krell the Klingon, on that occasion. Krell had promised Apella riches beyond imagining, promised him that he would be the leader of a whole world.
Apella didn’t say anything to him now, but as Kirk passed him and continued toward the pit, he could feel the man’s gaze boring into his back. Kirk knew he had been recognized—he just didn’t know how. Apella hadn’t seen him that first time, or if he had, it had only been a glimpse. He and Bones had charged the men and escaped. They’d collected Tyree and left the Village before any significant alarm could be raised.
Kirk knew why he recognized Apella—and Krell—but why did Apella recognize him?
Twenty-Two
Kirk collapsed in the shallow recess he shared with Rowland and Tyree, certain that he could close his eyes and sleep until the end of time. But Rowland brought him a bowl of food, a few scraps of meat and some vegetables past their prime, cooked up in a weak stew. “Here, Admiral.”
Kirk mumbled. “Just spoon it into my mouth.”
“Really . . . ?”
Kirk opened his eyes. “No. I’m tired, not dead. Thanks for saving me some.”
“Where were you today?”
“Hauling leutrinium rods at the smelter. Believe me, digging’s a better job. Keep it if you can.”
“It’s that bad?”
Kirk scooped the stew into his mouth, using the meat in lieu of utensils. “You have no idea.”
“Diggin’ was the same.” Rowland flexed his hands. “I’ve got blisters on my blisters.”
“They’ll callous over eventually.”
“I know. Until then, though, it feels like the shovel’s made of fire every time I touch it.”
“We’ll get out of here.”
“How, sir?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Our deadline’s comin’ soon.”
The day the Captain Cook came back into communicator range. The communicators might as well have been in orbit, too, for all the good they did Kirk. But if their captors had searched them on that first day, if they’d carried the communicators or phasers, the Victors would have them now.
“I’m aware of that. If we don’t report in, Captain Grumm will report our absence to Starfleet.”
“We hope.”
“We can’t not hope.”
“When that happens, Starfleet will send a starship. At least. Maybe more than one. And if they come in and engage the Klingons . . .”
“There could be trouble.”
“There could be war. The Klingons have blatantly violated the Organian Peace Treaty. There’ll be consequences. But I’d rather not have Neural caught in the crossfire.”
“Can that be avoided, Admiral?”
“I hope so. I have to try.”
Giancarlo slumped against the wall. “Hopin’ again. Hopin’s not much of a plan.”
“Do you know what sets us off from lesser animals, Mister Rowland?”
“Opposable thumbs?”
“The ability to wonder about tomorrow. About all our tomorrows. And the corresponding ability to hope that they’ll be better than today. More than that, we hav
e the ability to extend that hope, to apply it, not just to ourselves, but also to other people. Strangers, even. I’d like to see Neural’s tomorrows be better than today. If they’re stuck in the middle of interstellar war, they might not get that chance.”
“But what can you do about it? Or we, rather. We’re stuck here.”
“For the moment. And I haven’t figured out precisely what to do about it, any more than I’ve figured out how we get out. What I’m thinking”—Kirk stifled a yawn, but he knew there were more coming, and soon—“is that if I can get the Victors and the Freeholders on the same side—”
“Sir?”
“Okay, I know it’s a reach, but stay with me. If we can get them both to declare the Klingons unwelcome here—and while I’m not certain, I believe that since both groups now encompass many more tribes than they used to, they make up the lion’s share of the world’s population—then the Klingons will have to leave.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Under the terms of the treaty, they’ll have to. If they don’t, the Organians can force them to. With the Federation’s full support.”
“They’re already in violation of the Treaty.”
“You and I know that. But they’re keeping a light footprint here. In a day, I expect, they could vanish and leave behind no trace of their presence here, unless someone analyzed the technology they’ve left behind. And that’s primitive enough not to be proof. Not at first glance. The Freeholders could complain, and we could back them up. But the Victors could deny everything. They’d make it hard for anyone from the Federation to inspect their facilities, and they’d do everything they could to cover up for the Klingons. By the time substantial evidence was found, the Klingons would be long gone. But if the Victors and the Freeholders both protest the Klingon presence, they will either leave or be forced out.”
“Which could still involve Neural in a war.”
“It could. But with the two local powers on the same side instead of at each other’s throats.”
Serpents in the Garden Page 17
