The Klingon's onyx-chip gaze leapt instantly to Bashir, but skidded away again before allowing interpretation. "You are here because of the Federation shuttle that crashed yesterday, out in the tuq'mor." His deep voice made it a statement rather than a question.
"Yes." Dax never broke her own gaze away from Gordek's. "Did you find any survivors at the wreckage site?"
"None," said the Klingon curtly. Bashir's rush of bitter disappointment was sliced off unexpectedly by Gordek's next words. "We found no bodies, either. We had to hike several miles of tuq'mor to reach that ship. Whoever rode in it left long before we got there."
Kira frowned at him. "Are you the ones who made it crash?"
A throaty rumble of what might have been Klingon threat or Klingon laughter. Bashir always found it hard to tell the difference. "Yes, of course. We attacked a Federation ship and destroyed it, then immediately beamed ourselves down and built this village, threw away all our technology, armed ourselves with spears, and then waited for a comet to destroy us." The points of his teeth gnashed when he grinned, but Bashir still wasn't sure if he was amused or angered. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"What she wants to hear," Dax said clearly, "is whether you are the reason that the ship was attacked, not whether you are the ones who attacked it."
"Ah." Gordek's gaze swung back to the Trill, his oddly angry amusement fading to a more recognizable emotion. Surprise. "You know what we are, then?"
"I think so," she said calmly. "Will you tell me, or are you going to make me guess?"
"Guess." The Klingon spat over one shoulder as casually as a Human might gesture with one hand.
Dax said something long and intricate in Klingon, something that made a muscle jerk in Gordek's cheek, as though something had stung him. "Vrag" he said reluctantly, and the Trill nodded as though that single word had brought enlightenment. She took a step back from the glittering shield, looking for all the world as if she expected it to drop now. Bashir and Kira followed her back to where Heiser and Ledonne had waited for them, wearing matching looks of concern and bafflement.
"What did you just say?" Bashir demanded. "Are they going to let us in to treat the wounded, or are they sending us away?"
"They'll let us in." Dax sounded more somber than usual. "They may not be happy about it, but they don't have anywhere else to turn for help. They're ada'ven -- political exiles from the Klingon Empire, sent here to live out the rest of their lives in isolation from their society."
There was a long silence, filled only with the muffled groans and stirrings from the wounded. Gordek was limping over to the central firepit, beyond which Bashir could just see the actual shield generator. Its glittering duranium husk was roughly cobbled to an equally out-of-place portable power supply. Both looked like standard Federation issue to Bashir.
"How did you know?" Kira asked at last, while Gordek fiddled with the field controls. The wall of force that separated them from the Klingons began to waver and ripple, as if an unfelt wind was blowing through it.
Dax sighed again. "I didn't recognize the House of Gordek as any traditional Klingon clan. Starfleet intelligence has noticed that for the past year any small Klingon house that comes into conflict with Chancellor Gowron quickly disappears from view. I think Gowron's decided to put his past experience with the House of Mogh to use by duplicating it on other politically inconvenient families. All I did was name those houses, until I came to one that made him blink."
"Vrag," Kira repeated.
"Yes. Unfortunately, of all the exiled houses, that's the one I know the least about. They could have been thrown out for being pacifists or for wanting to start an outright attack on the Federation. We should be –"
The shield rippled one last time, then vanished. Bashir promptly crossed into the center of the Kling-on encampment, drawn by the universal sounds of suffering that he could now hear clearly.
"-- careful," Dax finished behind him, ruefully. He could hear her and Kira following along, but his attention now was locked to his medical tricorder and the flickering vital signs it guided him toward.
The little alcove trampled into the brush wall was more just a place to dump the wounded than any real attempt at an infirmary. Bashir covered the last meter with a few quick strides and knelt beside the first in what seemed an impossibly long line of patients. Heiser had already headed for the other end of the line, tricorder and medkit in hand, while Ledonne positioned herself near the middle. Bashir would suddenly have given an arm for another dozen medics, all of them only half as good as these two.
The female now laid out before him was still young by Klingon standards. Her brow ridges were fully carved, but twelfth-year incisors only showed perhaps five or six years' worth of wear. A depressed skull fracture had been bandaged with only a single strip of fine-weave cloth, and not even so much as a half-cured hide had been spread over her to keep out the chill. Of course not -- Klingons should be strong enough not to require coddling. Even when they were more than half dead. Grey matter in the tangle of her hair, and no reflexive response from either pupil. Bashir closed her eyes with a gentleness he suspected she wouldn't appreciate, and moved on to the next body in line.
Gordek circled behind the doctor, limping to a stop just outside Bashir's range of vision. Bashir could feel the Klingon's stare on him as he compiled tricorder readings on the patient, a burning itch on the back of his skull. "What happened here?" he asked, more to tell the Klingon he knew he was being watched than because he really needed to know.
That gained him only another streak of spittle, this one landing distressingly close to his tricorder. "What do you think? You must have seen the sky as you came here."
"Comet impact," Kira translated. It sounded as if she spoke through clenched teeth, and Bashir was oddly glad to know he wasn't the only one reacting badly to Gordek's blend of anger, aggression, and reserve. "When did it happen?"
"Three days ago, just at sunset. We saw a streak across the sky, but we have seen many such streaks in the last few months. This one was different. This light came down further into the sky, then exploded around us, like a photon torpedo."
"Lower atmosphere burst," Dax said. "The most damaging kind of impact."
Gordek grunted. "Several of my house were killed outright. Others have died since. But there are still enough of us left to survive." The statement was almost defiant, as if he thought they might have some reason to question. "After we found the wrecked Federation ship, I knew we would be fine. The shield will keep us safe from any more explosions in the sky."
Straightening carefully, Bashir took a moment to sterilize his hands before he moved on to the next critical patient. Dax watched in silence while he knitted ribs and sutured the punctures they had made in the skin. Klingon physiology was remarkable in many respects, not the least of which was their ability to stoically endure damage that would have killed a human or a Trill within hours.
It was Kira who resumed the interrogation. "When you were stripping the wreckage, did you see any evidence of where the crash survivors might have gone?"
Gordek spat again, this time in her direction. It was apparently an all-purpose expression of scorn rather than a personal comment. "Following tracks in the tuq'mor is a fool's errand. There was a trail close to where your ship crashed, one that I followed northwest from here. It continues another half-day's walk to the main settlement."
"Main settlement?" Dax inquired, while Bashir reached the last patient in his third of the row. He had added an open pelvic fracture and lateral pneumothorax to his list of casualties, and reached to tip first Heiser's, then Ledonne's tricorder screen to a readable angle so he could add their lists to his before Gordek answered the Trill's question.
"It is where the epetai keeps those loyal to her, a warren of burrows in the middle of the tuq'mor." He spat again, more fiercely this time and in a direction away from them. "All underground, the better to rot and die where they stand!"
Bashir exchanged enlighte
ned glances with Dax. "No wonder you got so few humanoid readings on this planet," he said softly. She dipped a single thoughtful nod in agreement.
Kira pushed in front of Gordek, either oblivious to or determined to ignore his growing belligerence. "Could the survivors from the crashed Federation vessel be at this main settlement?"
"They might." Gordek stepped back, his broad face emotionless but his onyx-cold eyes skipping from one to another of them with a look of unexpected calculation. "If I tell you how to find it," he said, "will you send down phasers and a permanent power generator for our new shield?"
"You want to stay here?" Bashir tried not to sound too appalled by this loyalty to any planet that had doled out such ruthless punishment for crimes that were none of its affair. He couldn't help noticing Dax's matching frown of surprise. "You've got at least six critical injuries so far, plus another four who might not die but who need bones regrown or limbs regenerated." He glanced behind him, and was only half-startled to find both Dax and Gordek so close that he bumped them with his shoulder when he turned. "I'd like to beam them up to the ship right away."
"You have doctors on your ship who can tend to Klingon warriors?"
Bashir made himself scowl back into Gordek's accusing glower. "No. But we have stasis facilities that can keep them alive until we get to a better equipped sick bay." Although he found it hard to believe this Klingon cared overmuch how many of his people did or didn't survive the journey. Thinking of the first young woman with her brain in her hair, he offered more gently, "We also have a morgue, if you'd --"
Gordek waved off the suggestion with a whuff of disgust. "The dead are dead." He looked as though the sight of his dead people annoyed him. "Leave them."
"There will be more dead," Dax warned him. "Even with the shield, you can't survive a direct comet strike."
The Klingon leader's glossy black head lifted in a faint echo of Worf's towering pride in his heritage. "I prefer to die under a killing sky than to accept mercy from my enemy. You may transport my people to your ship for treatment," he added to Bashir arrogantly. "But you will beam them down again along with the power generator I have asked for. Is it a bargain?"
"Yes." Kira overrode Dax's more tentative response with the crisp confidence of someone who'd been a field commander for longer than she'd been an adult. "You have my word of honor as a Bajoran."
The thick muscle of Gordek's cheek spasmed again, but whatever had startled him apparently wasn't worth commenting on. "I accept that," he said promptly. "And you have the word of honor of one who will be epetai someday."
CHAPTER 3
KIRA FELT THE difference in this new Klingon encampment even before the transporter had fully released her. Sunlight -- harder and hotter, with no ocean breeze to mitigate its strength -- cut patchwork patterns through shadow too woven and deep to come from trees; peaty-smelling mud leveled the ground with flaccid puddles; and the volume and snarl of the voices crowding about her reminded her abruptly that, even on the best of days, Federation personnel had no reason to expect a warm reception from Klingons.
Unfortunately, it was a little late to voice that kind of pithy observation. Solidity raced through her limbs with an almost electric shock. With it came the full return of sight and sound and movement. She had barely jerked away from the first Klingon who lunged to grab her arm when Dax's shout took over where the transporter had left off. "Kira, don't! Julian, don't fight them!"
Not that they had much choice -- one thick, stone-hard arm snaked around Kira's middle while someone else seized her wrist and pinioned it between two hands. She couldn't even see Bashir, only hear his thin hiss of pain somewhere behind her. Her teeth gnashed so hard they hurt, but she didn't use her free hand to gouge anybody's eyeballs. She thought Dax should at least appreciate the heroic proportions of that restraint, considering how incomprehensible Kira found the whole concept of passivity.
She estimated more than four dozen Klingons just within the sweep of her eyes, most of them drifting in menacing orbit around her, Dax, and Bashir. Another unseen handful held them all immobile. Bandages, rough splints, even a pair of crutches lashed together from twists of local wood. Nothing in sight like the massive injuries they'd left Ledonne and Heiser to tend at Gordek's camp, but also hardly representative of this encampment's entire populace. Although surrounded by the same tangled brush growth that had bordered the shoreline, this campsite was many times larger and obviously more permanent. What might have been trees, except that they'd been planted upside down, punctuated the huge clearing, dotting the edges and even marching a way into the brush. Klingons sat comfortably atop arching roots-that-should-have-been branches, emerged curiously from the cavernous hollows dug under the enormous barrel trunks, looked up from where they etched intricate symbols into the still-growing wood to expand on patterns already months -- if not years -- old.
A tall, white-haired female climbed with unhurried dignity from the depths of the largest tree-cavern. Her head plates braided into an elegant arch from the bridge of her nose to the peak of her skull, and hair that must have been longer than she stood tall had been coiled and woven into a regal coronet. Kira didn't think she'd ever seen a Klingon so obviously old, or so impressive.
Striding through the corridor that suddenly appeared before her in the press of bodies, the matriarch halted less than an arm's length from the prisoners to fold her hands in front of her polished bronze belt. She regarded them with aristocratic reproach.
"TlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'?"
"Yes." Dax spoke up without waiting for either of the others to ask for a translation. "But my friends speak only Standard."
The Klingon measured Kira and Bashir together with a single flick of her eyes, the way a hunter casts off unnecessary tissue with a single sweep of his knife. "There is no honor in exploiting your enemy's confusion." She managed to convey a wealth of disdain, even in her graciousness. "I am Rekan, epetai of the House of Vrag."
Not the House of Gordek, Kira noticed, and was not too surprised by that. Rekan epetai Vrag listened to Dax's introductions with an almost Vulcan stoicism, only tipping her head once with interest when the lieutenant commander said her own name. "You are a Trill."
Even Kira could tell that wasn't a question. Dax nodded.
"Were you once called by the host-name Curzon?"
The Trill seemed to weigh her answer carefully, studying Rekan's face as though looking for her words in that queenly sculpting of planes and angles. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "I'm sure Curzon would have remembered such a striking female."
If Rekan found the remark as condescendingly masculine as Kira did, she didn't show it. "I never had the honor of meeting Curzon Dax while he was among us. But he was said to be an extraordinary man." She delivered a short, glancing blow to whoever stood behind Kira, the way a ghar-wolf cuffs at its offspring. Just that quickly, the grip on Kira's throat and arm was released. Rekan epetai Vrag stepped back, but only far enough to prevent physical contact between herself and the outsiders, not far enough to suggest a retreat. "You have come to retrieve your soldier."
Kira glanced sideways at Dax, and was relieved to see the Trill more concerned with the health of her tricorder than her own rough handling. Bashir rubbed gingerly at one biceps, but seemed none the worse for wear. Neither of them seemed to have noticed the odd nature of that statement. Kira frowned and turned back toward the older Klingon female. "Soldier?"
"From your crashed ship," Rekan said calmly. "We have been waiting for you to come retrieve him."
"There's only one?" Bashir's dismay roughened his normally smooth voice. "There should have been over thirty, most of them scientists and older people."
The Klingon leader shook her majestically silvered head. "We have seen none of those. We have only one young male Human, wounded." Her mouth compressed in a smile that showed none of Gordek's aggressive baring of teeth. "And all he will tell us is his name, rank, and identification number. He says he is a communications officer. We as
sumed he was from a downed warship."
Kira frowned back at her. "He's from a Federation research vessel, sent here to observe the comet fall," she informed the exiled Klingon leader. "Your people shot it down."
"My people?" The Klingon matriarch lifted her chin in either interest or amusement, Kira wasn't sure which. "Look around you. We have no ability to shoot anyone down."
"But if it wasn't for you –"
Bashir interrupted with the sidelong scowl that Kira knew meant he'd had enough of unproductive truculence. "Can we have this discussion later, please? I'd like to see my patient."
"Ah." Rekan nodded as if something had been vaguely puzzling her but was now resolved. "You are a doctor. I understand now. Follow me."
Bashir did so without pause, leaving Kira hesitating in the center of the main exile colony. Dax gave her a wordless nod, but that didn't do much to reassure her. After all, this was the same Trill who thought coming down to this comet-battered planet was a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Still, when Dax swung past her to catch up to Rekan's long, purposeful strides, the barrage of hostile glances Kira could feel pouring out of the myriad hollows and caves was enough to speed her steps as she followed.
Star Trek - Day Of Honor 02 Page 5
