Star Trek - Day Of Honor 02

by Armageddon Sky

  "No wounded," Bashir said firmly. He held the other officer's gaze to make sure his commitment to this was clear. "If they aren't completely healthy and uninjured, I won't take their blood." First rule of emergency medicine avoid creating new victims.

  George nodded solemnly. "Understood. You hang tight until I get back." Then he trotted briskly into the deeper cave, leaving Bashir feeling cold and unaccountably alone.

  "Honor grants you the right of restitution." K'Taran waited until the doctor flicked a glance at her, then continued formally, "Traditionally, your family would inherit the right should you no longer be able to exercise it yourself. But as you have no family here... I will take whatever action you require of me. By my own hand."

  Taking the empty water bottle from the xirri, Bashir shook his head to stop the little native from running off for another refill. "What are you talking about?" he asked K'Taran.

  "If you ask me, I will kill myself." She lifted the bottle from his shaking hands and carefully wrapped it with its own bloody irrigation tubing. "A life for a life."

  Bashir snugged the bottle and its tubing back into the kit, shaking again and feeling a little sick. "Don't be ridiculous. I don't want you to kill yourself."

  "Then what? Should I maim myself in equal measure?"

  "Stop it," he said firmly. There was only one hypo of system stimulant left, and he wasn't sure he wanted to use it just yet.

  K'Taran surprised him by slamming the kit shut almost on his fingers. "No!"

  Bashir jerked away from her slightly, pushing himself back against the wall. Some distant awareness knew he'd moved the bones in his leg again, but what the spinal didn't fully quench surprise had already washed away.

  "Do not leave me with this dishonor on my name!" K'Taran bent over him fiercely, her breath hot against his face and her eyes bright with a pain rivaling his own. "I have done you a terrible wrong. I know from your face that even Human blood will not erase it. Please... allow me to balance the debt."

  He tried to imagine offering up his life for anything when he was only fourteen. Then he thought about Dax and Kira, trapped God only knew where as the sky fell down around them, and he wondered if it was really worth raising such impassioned children when they only grew up to be inflexible, impassioned adults.

  "There's only one thing I want." He made himself relax, but stopped just short of touching her hand. "Go find my friends. There's room enough for everyone down here, your grandmother's people included. But I can't go to them now. Do that for me."

  At first he thought she might refuse him. The mention of her grandmother darkened her brow ridges with anger, and her jaw muscles bunched in frustration. Then her eyes strayed for only an instant to his twisted, bloody leg, and all her adult determination returned with leonine grace. "I will take the duty," she solemnly announced. "Will you accept this as honorable restitution for my crime?"

  The last painful knot of fear loosened its grip on Bashir's heart. "I will."

  She nodded once, grimly, and sprang to her feet with all the vigor of a warrior marching into honorable combat even though she'd almost certainly lose. Perhaps that was all that was really facing her now. Still, Bashir put out one hand to stop her before she could launch herself toward the outside. "I have one more favor to ask of you."

  K'Taran hesitated, eyes dark and flinty with suspicion. "Our honor is in balance," she told him. The doctor shook his head, suddenly strangely embarrassed at having been misunderstood, as though caught in a grave imposition. "Not an honor debt," he assured her hastily. "A favor." Then, swallowing hard, Bashir sat as straight as he could, and clenched his hands behind his back. "I was wondering if I might impose on you to set a fractured bone. ..."

  According to Dax's autistic tricorder, they were halfway back to the main Klingon encampment when their communicators chirped again. This time, Dax could actually hear as well as feel the signal, although there was still an odd metallic flatness to the high-pitched sound. She waited a moment for Kira to tap her pin and answer, frowning at her when she didn't.

  "Aren't you even going to acknowledge the captain's hail?" It was one thing to contemplate disobeying orders when it came to evacuating without Julian, Dax discovered, and quite another to simply ignore the chain of command.

  "That's not the Defiant hailing us," Kira answered. "It's the wrong frequency."

  Dax took a breath, realizing that for once her aching ears hadn't lied to her about a sound. "Why would someone else be hailing us?" she asked, then answered in the same breath. "The Klingons."

  "From Kor's ship?" Kira shook her head. "If they knew we were here, they'd either beam us out or phaser us. No, this has to be someone who wants something from us..."

  Their communicators chirped again, strangely high and urgent. "Should we just ignore them?"

  "Probably," Kira said. Her dark eyes met Dax's in a mutually thoughtful look. "But what if it's the group who took Bashir?"

  In response, Dax tapped her communicator on. "Jadzia Dax here," she said calmly. "Identify yourself."

  "I am sending coordinates." The shock of hearing Gordek's gruff, graceless voice on the other end of that connection was only exceeded by the shock of his next words. "Come and help us, or I will have the Cardassians destroy your ship and all aboard it."

  Dax lifted her hand to break the connection. "Cardassians?" she asked Kira in astonishment. "How could a member of epetai Vrag's exiles have any control over the Cardassians?"

  "The same way he could have a subspace communicator," Kira shot back, her face hardening to reveal the ruthless guerrilla leader she'd once been. "Because he's been dealing with the Cardassians all along."

  Dax blinked at her for a long, disbelieving minute. "Dealing in what? Armageddon isn't exactly brimming with galactic treasures."

  "That's what we're going to find out." The Bajoran tapped her communicator pin on. "Send your coordinates, Gordek," she said shortly. "We'll be there."

  The Klingon grunted and rattled off a string of planetary coordinates, then cut the connection as rudely as he'd opened it, giving Dax no chance to tell him that those numbers meant nothing to her. "He must be using Cardassian plotting data," she told Kira in frustration. "I have no idea where this location is."

  "Could we focus in on his communicator signal, if we could get him to turn it on again?"

  Dax gave her tricorder a jaundiced look. "Not unless O'Brien beams down and fixes this first."

  "I don't think the captain will let me do that," said a totally unexpected Irish voice from her communicator. "But if you really want to have a heart-to-heart chat with your friend Gordek, I may be able to get you there."

  "Chief?" Dax demanded. "Were you listening in on that transmission from the Klingons?"

  "We've been scanning every frequency for your signal, old man, ever since the EM surge of the comet impacts cleared." That was Benjamin Sisko's familiar coffee-dark voice, sounding more impatient than relieved. "What took you so long to report in? Didn't you think we'd be worried about you?"

  Kira and Dax exchanged slightly guilty looks. "We wanted to ascertain the condition of the Klingon refugees at the main encampment first, sir," Kira said at last.

  "And give Dr. Bashir a little more time to show up before you abandoned him?" It was never easy to fool Sisko, Dax thought wryly, especially when what you were trying to do would have been his first instinct as well. "Are you two all right?"

  Kira's answer to that was more confident, if no more accurate. "Just a few bumps and bruises, sir. Request permission to stay on planet and investigate the nature of Gordek's dealings with the Cardassians."

  "Granted with pleasure, Major," Sisko said grimly. "We're currently out of Kor's firing range, so we can drop shields long enough to beam you and Dax straight to the origination point of Gordek's signal."

  "Any idea how many Klingons are with him, Captain?" Dax asked.

  She heard the mutter of an unfamiliar voice on the bridge, then Sisko said, "Long-range sensors indic
ate at least a dozen life-signs there, although not all of them are strong. Watch yourself, old man."

  "Yes, sir." Dax dropped her hand from her pin and braced her aching muscles for the jerk of transport. An instant later, the smoke and downed trees of the tuq'mor vanished, replaced by a crackling red-gold inferno. Dax barely had time to squint her eyes shut against the glare before a pair of fierce hands seized her shoulders and dragged her closer to the fire.

  "This is your fault!" Gordek's dark mane of hair was half-seared on one side, but his blistered face held more fury than pain. "Your shield generator didn't protect us when the comet came! Look what came of it!"

  "Look what came of not telling us the truth!" Kira might have been half the Klingon's size, but her determined shove and angry scowl still backed him a step away from Dax. With her vision tempered to the glare, Dax could now see the charcoal ghosts of three pole buildings engulfed in the flames. The sprawled bodies of several dead Klingons rimmed the edge of fire, as if they'd been dragged out only far enough to be checked for life-signs before their rescuers dropped them and went back for more. The injured had been moved to the shelter of the one building left standing, built where the damp wall of tuq'mor around this forest clearing had deflected the cometary blast. A handful of Klingon hunters looked up from that sanctuary, then came to ring Gordek, Kira, and Dax in a deadly circle.

  Dax took a slow, steadying breath and turned to watch their backs, making sure the phaser on her hip faced Kira rather than the exiles. "Why is this our fault?" she demanded, aiming the question at the hostile watchers rather than Gordek. "We never claimed that shield would save you from a direct impact. And we offered you evacuation to our ship -- you're the one who insisted on staying here!"

  That sparked a mutter of unease around the ring of fierce, furrowed Klingon faces. Dax pressed the advantage, pointing a finger at the Cardassian communicator Gordek still carried in one meaty fist. "If you would rather wait for the Cardassians to evacuate you than have the Federation do it, that's fine. But where are they now that you need them? Are they braving the Klingon blockade? Have they responded to your calls for help?"

  It was a shot in the dark, but it went home. Two of the hunters turned scowling faces toward Gordek. "Why aren't the Cardassians here?" one demanded. "We told them we had the last geset for them days ago. Didn't they promise to evacuate us?"

  "That was before the Starfleet ship was here!" Gordek snapped back at them.

  "So? If our homeworld was dying, as they claim theirs is, would we not invade Hell for the cure?" growled an older, battle-scarred Klingon. He pulled out a vial of golden brown fluid from one tattered pocket and held it up to catch the firelight. Its high-tech polytex surface glittered anomalously bright in this primitive setting. "What is the character of their honor, these Cardassians you have bound us to, Gordek? They will not brave a single Klingon ship for the drug they say saves their children's lives! I say we let their children die!"

  He dropped the vial contemptuously to the ground, then wrung a shout of protest out of Gordek by smashing it with one heavy, booted foot. "That is our passage out of here!" the Klingon house leader growled as the frothy yellow liquid ran and puddled underfoot. An unpleasantly caustic smell rose up from it -- not familiar, but evocative of something else Dax knew. She frowned and juggled out her mud-encrusted tricorder, then ran a discreet analysis of the fluid running between her boots. The display panel flickered, then coughed up a response in enigmatic Vulcan machine-code.

  The older hunter spat into the spilled geset, making his opinion of it offensively clear. "I see no Cardassian ships here to rescue us," he said brusquely. "All I see here is an outcast from a once-noble Klingon House -- a small creature who cannot salute the sky." Gordek snarled in wordless anger at that insult, his shoulders rolling for a roundhouse punch that Kira's lifted phaser stopped in midswing. The big Klingon took a step back, glaring down at her and breathing hard between bared teeth. "Our wounded die while we dither here! You should be transporting them up to stasis on your ship, as your doctor did before."

  "No." Dax's harsh voice jerked the Klingon's furious glare over to her instead. "I may not know the character of the Cardassians' honor, Gordek, but I know the character of Benjamin Sisko's. He'll defy the blockade to evacuate innocent Klingon refugees, but he won't give shelter to a single Klingon traitor."

  Her accusation ignited the roar of response she'd expected from all the hunters. "Who calls us traitors?" demanded a younger, dark-skinned male. "We have done nothing to betray the Empire!"

  "Except sell this to the Cardassians." Dax lifted her tricorder to show the frowning Klingons the Vulcan chemical symbols it displayed. "According to my instrument, this is the active ingredient in that geset you just spilled on the ground. And if any of us were Human, we would be dead now."

  Kira scowled down at the yellow rivulets trickling toward her boots, stepping back to make sure none of them came into contact. "What is it?"

  "Drevlocet," Dax said simply.

  Even the Klingons hissed in response to that statement. "The neurotoxin that the Jem'hadar used to murder hundreds of Humans at the Hjaraur colony?" Kira growled.

  "Yes. One of the native animals -- I'm guessing the banchory, considering the number of them you've killed -- must synthesize it naturally, as a defense against the biting insects here. It's been outlawed in every military convention signed in the Alpha Quadrant since Hjaraur." Dax fixed Gordek with her coldest look. "But you've been purifying it and stocking it up for the Cardassians. What did they promise you to get you to make this drug for them? It must have been something worth turning down our offer of evacuation."

  "A return to the Klingon homeworld?" Kira asked shrewdly.

  Gordek snarled and spit toward their feet. "As if I would gratify that fool Gowron by giving him a chance to exile me again. No, they said they would give us our own ship and escort us through the wormhole, so we could disappear into the Gamma Quadrant. It was a high price, but they said they were desperate to cure their home planet of ptarvo fever."

  "Ptarvo fever?" That made Kira snort. "That's about as lethal as a foot cramp!"

  Another wash of discontent rumbled through the surviving Klingon hunters. "Then why would they pay so much for this drug?" a younger one demanded, brow ridges clenched with suspicion.

  "Because it can be chemically modified to attack almost any humanoid race -- Romulans, Vulcans, Trill, and Klingons as well as Humans," Dax said flatly. "In fact, the only species whose neural matter we know it can't affect are the Cardassians." She aimed another ice-cold gaze at Gordek. "Did you know, when you agreed to purify this drug for them, that it could be turned against your own people ?"

  "No!" The exile's roar was loud, but the undertone of guilt in it rang clear to Dax's ears. "How could I? We didn't have the equipment to know they were lying!"

  "No," said the older, scarred hunter. "But we knew they insulted our honor by the way they forced us to bargain our lives for this drug. We should have refused to deal with them from the beginning." He turned toward Dax, dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. "We have been in exile many months. Are the Cardassians at war with the Humans now?"

  "Not yet," Dax said. "But they are certainly at war with the Klingons."

  "Then they will use this drug against the Klingon Empire?"

  "Quite possibly," Kira agreed, her voice caustic. "When it comes to war, Cardassians don't pay much attention to ethical conventions."

  The older Klingon took a deep breath, eyes closing for a long, bitter moment. "Epetai Vrag was right. We should have resigned ourselves to this new life, and relinquished any hope of honorable redemption. Now we have endangered our entire race through our dishonorable striving."

  "And what if we have?" Gordek snarled savagely. "Did the Klingon High Council care that they had endangered us when they abandoned us on this death-trap planet? Our crime was misplaced loyalty, nothing more! Should that condemn us to bear the brunt of heaven's wroth and die beneath this Arma
geddon sky, just for the sake of our honor?"

  Silence followed his words, a silence filled with the sullen crackle of dying flames. Then the scarred older hunter spat again, this time aiming his contempt directly at the leader of his house. "Batlh potlh law' yIn potlh puS." Then he raised his long hunter's knife and stabbed it deep into his own throat.

  Kira gasped and stepped back from the sudden rush of bright Klingon blood, but Dax had been steeled for it. She knew this proud warrior race almost as well as she knew her own. From the moment she had discovered what geset really was, she had known no honorable Klingon could survive learning he had doomed his own people with it.

  The ring of hunters watched their eldest fall to his knees in indomitable silence, then slowly collapse face down in the frothy yellow toxin. Then, with a wordless glance of agreement, all beside Gordek drew their own knives. "Before I die, I will hold the knife for those wounded who are still conscious," said the dark-skinned youngest, and the others nodded. He turned slitted obsidian eyes toward Dax. "You can transport the others up to your ship to heal, but you must promise afterwards to give them the truth. And a knife."