“You would commit genocide?” Valeris said carefully. “Destroy an entire civilization?”
“I’d relish it,” Rein replied, nodding. “And that night I would sleep untroubled, knowing I did the universe a kindness. You understand that, don’t you? You see what we share?”
“I understand you,” said Valeris, her words without weight. After a moment she tried another tack. “But if the Klingons have done so much to hurt you, and now you have the power to strike back at them, why do it from behind a mask?”
“Were you not paying attention, woman?” Drell demanded. “Did you miss the part about Azetbur’s thugs running wild across Krios, killing our kinsmen?”
Rein watched her reactions, looking for any signs; she gave him nothing. “For now we strike from the shadows.”
“You hide,” Valeris corrected. “Disguised, using the name of discommended Klingons. Are you content to let the ghosts of the House of Q’unat take the credit for the Thorn’s victories? Do you not wish the Empire to know who has wounded it?”
“Now who is trying to goad who?” Rein shot back. “To reveal ourselves now would be premature. The tyrants believe they wiped us out after the purge of Chang’s network, so we let them stumble on in ignorance. We’ve silenced Kaj and her subordinates . . . It serves the Thorn to have our enemies chasing shadows.” He leaned closer. “Because, Valeris, when we strike again, they will never see it coming. And only then, as the ashes choke the skies of their crumbling Empire, when it is too late for them to strike out at the civilians on our homeworld . . . then we will show our faces.”
Drell smiled distantly. “Just in time to dance on their graves.”
“I wanted to see that.” The words were faint, the voice weak. Valeris saw Rein whirl and race back to the medical capsule where his brother lay. The support pods were of a comparatively crude design—Klingon military models, by the look of them. The units had been created for triage medicine, she noted; they had not been built for the kind of patients Drell was caring for.
“Colen?” Rein craned over the observation bubble at the far end of the pod, and she glimpsed movement inside, fingers scraping along the inside of the container. The Kriosian shot a look at his subordinate. “Open it,” he ordered.
Drell hesitated. “That’s not a sensible idea,” he said. “The boy . . . I mean, he won’t—”
“Do it now!” Rein shouted.
The healer frowned and nodded. “All right. Back away. Let me get in there.” Drell worked a control pad on the surface of the pod, and with a whine of servos, the upper half of the capsule retracted backward. Immediately, the stink of sickly body fluids hit Valeris’s senses. She smelled decay.
Colen’s hand emerged. It was trembling, the shapes of the bones visible through papery, pale skin. Rein clasped it and sat next to his brother. “I’m here,” he told him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” The words were a rasp. “My choice, Rein. For all of us. It has always been our choice.”
Valeris watched. She knew little of how Kriosians approached mortality and she was curious. Drell stood at her shoulder. “Do you see?” he asked, his voice pitched so it would not carry. “Do you see this, alien?”
Colen coughed, a harsh, racking spasm that brought up thin bile. Rein held his brother until the agony subsided.
“His pain is considerable,” she observed. “How long has he been in this condition?”
“Days now.”
Valeris glanced at the healer. “If his death is assured, would you not consider euthanization to ease his suffering?”
Drell scowled at her. “It’s not our way.”
“But it is your way to let one of your own linger on in crippling agony?” There was no accusation in her words, only the stark truth.
He looked away. “For your own good, don’t speak to me again.” Drell crossed to the medical monitor.
Rein managed a smile for his sibling. “You have been so brave. You make me proud. Mother and father would say the same if they were here to see this. The Thorn grows strong from your effort, Colen. The tyrants will . . . ” He cast a fleeting look back at Valeris. “They will know your name.”
Colen tried to lift himself up and look up at her through milky cataracts. “Is that . . . the Vulcan?” he managed. “Kallisti?”
Rein nodded. “Her name is Valeris. She says she shares our fight.”
The younger man gave a pained chuckle. “I hope she’s ready . . . to follow the path as far . . . as far as it goes.” He settled back into the pod.
Drell flinched as the sensor readings on the monitor twitched and shifted. The blinking indicator of the heartbeat tracker stuttered and went dark, panels of data showed null returns. “Rein—”
The Kriosian let his brother’s limp hand drop from his grip, and with infinite care he reached out and closed Colen’s eyes. “It’s ended.” Rein stood, his back to them, and dabbed at his face. When he had composed himself, the man turned around and Valeris saw the firm mask of determination he had set in place over his expression. “His death won’t be in vain,” Rein told her, controlling his tone. Valeris could sense the turmoil he was keeping in check, and it was clear he could barely manage to do so. Still, she said nothing, and let him find his way through the moment. “The Thorn will bring the tyrants to their knees, and we will write the names of the fallen . . . We will write them high.” He snapped his fingers at Drell. “Give me your communicator.”
The healer obeyed, handing over an oval clamshell unit. “What are—”
Rein silenced him with a wave of his hand. He was still looking directly at Valeris. “I pay this cost,” he said to her. “I do it with no question. Will you do the same?” Rein tapped the TRANSMIT key without waiting for her to reply. “Gattin, answer me.”
“I’m here,” the Kriosian woman responded within seconds. “Colen?”
“Gone,” Rein replied, almost dismissive of the question. “It’s time,” he went on. “Is the bird-of-prey secured?”
“That Orion brute was still alive. Found him in the cargo bay. Dead now, though.”
“Good. Assemble the men. We’re going ahead with the next strike.”
“Now?” said Valeris. She hadn’t expected the Thorn to move so quickly.
Rein ignored her. “Get the Klingon and the Starfleet spy from confinement, bring them up to the landing bay.”
“What are we going to do with them?” asked Gattin.
“Pick the one you want to die first,” the Kriosian said, meeting her steady gaze. “Valeris can execute them for us.”
17
Thirty Years Earlier
Nidrus Gamma
Nidrus System
Federation-Klingon Border
“Are you afraid, Valeris?” said her mother. “Speak honestly.”
The young girl buried her hands inside the folds of her brown traveling robe and looked up at the woman. Her parent’s dark hair still hung disordered and unkempt from where she had fallen against the inside of the groundcar during the ambush. A slight bruise, shading emerald, marred the otherwise smooth profile of her face. She was, by Vulcan aesthetic standards, considered quite agreeable in aspect.
“I am not afraid,” Valeris said, holding her voice steady with effort and care. “Fear is an unproductive emotional state.” She rubbed at her wrists where tripolymer tapes wound them against one another. Everyone in the room was similarly bound.
Her mother scanned her face. “You are not being entirely truthful.” Before her daughter could respond, she dropped to the grubby, dusty floor of the storeroom and leaned closer, making their conversation confidential. “Remember your exercises,” she said. “It is important we do not allow ourselves to become distracted.” She paused. “And for future note, fear is not an unproductive state.”
“Father says—”
“Fear,” her mother continued, “is an intuitive reaction to outward danger stimuli. Study it as a warning, and address it, but do not allow it to overwhelm y
ou.” Pointedly, she looked across at the humans who had been in the vehicle with them. Valeris sensed their anxiety coming off them in waves. The driver, one of the simianoid natives of Nidrus, was weeping into his long-fingered hands.
“What is going to happen to us?” she asked.
“Do not concern yourself with that,” said her mother. “Do as I told you. Consider this a lesson.”
Those words were something that Valeris had often heard throughout her childhood, and despite her hopes that their repetition would lessen after her successful passage through the kahs-wan ritual, the reverse seemed to be true. She had hoped that being given permission at long last to accompany her parents on their duties for the Federation would mark the beginning of a new chapter in her life. It had been more of the same, just on alien worlds and in starship cabins rather than on the plains of Vulcan.
She did as she was told, running silently through the focal mantras, looking around the space, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. Walls of cracked thermoconcrete supported a heavy wooden roof, shafts of pale yellow sunlight from the Nidrusi star angling across the dusty interior through cracks in the planks. Judging from the bales of vacuum-sealed grasses stacked poorly on the far side of the room, Valeris guessed that they were most likely inside one of the freehold farming complexes that dotted the countryside of Nidrus Gamma.
It was a matter of concern for her that she had not applied herself toward a more accurate determination of where they were located. After the chaos of the attack on the bridge, the explosion of the fuel cells in the groundcar, and the gunfire . . . she was reluctant to admit that her fear reaction had, as her mother had warned, briefly overwhelmed her analytical thought processes. It was only after they had been traveling for some time in the vehicle driven by their abductors that it occurred to Valeris she should have been monitoring the speed and direction of travel from beneath the sackcloth hood over her head.
She looked down at the floor and felt a cold burn across her cheeks. Her reactions continued to shame her, and she forced them away, burying the sensations deep.
Along with the rest of the group in the groundcar, Valeris and her mother had been brought here at the barrels of a dozen weapons, in the hands of hulking, muscular figures who did not show their faces and did not speak. However, she had been on Nidrus Gamma long enough to know that they did not smell like the natives. These people were off-worlders, just like the Federation diplomatic party.
Then the door to the storeroom opened and her questions were answered.
A thickset man in a dark uniform with metallic copper accents entered and stalked across the room toward them. The humans reacted with gasps of terror as they recognized the profile of a Klingon warrior. His accented cranial ridges were heavy and broad, layered with a web of scarring. His skin had an oily, swarthy tone to it, and a thin black beard accented his face. He had a pistol in his hand. The warrior radiated threat like heat from a fire.
The Nidrusi driver got to his feet as the Klingon approached, holding out his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Please!” he began. “I am not with them! I am only a servant!”
Without breaking his stride, the Klingon spun the disruptor around in his grip and cracked it hard across the driver’s face. Blood sprayed from his shattered nasal bone and a few droplets settled on Valeris’s cheek. The Nidrusi collapsed in a heap, clutching his ruined snout and moaning.
Valeris stiffened, as motionless as she would have been if a wild le-matya had entered instead. With great delicacy, her mother reached up with a small kerchief and dabbed away the driver’s blood from Valeris’s face.
“Speak only when you are spoken to!” shouted the Klingon, turning his fierce expression on the mother and daughter. His breath was hot and coarse with the scent of raw meats.
Valeris remained stoic inwardly; the shameful rush of powerful emotions struggled at their bonds. She was not yet thirteen Vulcan summers old, and the girl had no wish to die on some dusty agricultural world hundreds of light-years from home.
The Klingon pulled a data slate from his tunic and scrutinized it. Something like amusement crossed his feral face, and he called out in his own language. Two more of his kind entered the storehouse, one a statuesque female carrying a heavy equipment case, the other a male with an athlete’s build. This male carried himself with a swagger, and Valeris recognized him at once. It was the commander, the one she had glimpsed from the observation gallery during her father’s meetings, a series of bronze-colored insignia tabs glittering on his uniform. The thuggish warrior had given him a deferential nod.
The commander took the slate, glanced at it, then handed it to the female. “You are T’Kio, wife of and assistant to Sepel,” he told her mother, “of the Federation Diplomatic Service.” He sounded out the words as if they meant something that sickened him.
“You have forcibly abducted us and broken several Nidrusi laws,” said Valeris’s parent. “Your actions constitute an interstellar incident. Your government will be notified. A formal complaint will be made.”
The Klingon went on as if she had never spoken. “Your husband,” he said, lingering over the words. “Does he love you?” He glanced down at the girl. “You and little . . . Valeris, isn’t it?”
Her mother fell silent. She became impassive, reflecting nothing.
The commander went on. “I have always wondered if that’s possible. Or are they passionless things, the marriages between your kind? A deed done only for the sake of propagating the species?” He gave Valeris an indulgent, sneering smile, showing his teeth.
Valeris couldn’t stop herself: she felt compelled to answer. “My father cares for us both.”
It was exactly the reply the Klingon wanted. “For your sake, child,” he said, “I hope so.”
He nodded to the female, who unlimbered the case and set it up on legs that she extended from the bottom of the container. The thug went back to the door and closed it halfway. Valeris got a glimpse of what was outside: she saw more farm outbuildings and the cab of the hover-truck that had brought them here.
Her attention returned to the case as the Klingon woman opened it to reveal a suite of military communications gear. There was a complex sensor head and a monitor screen that unfolded like a book.
The woman worked an inset console, then looked up. “Sensor mask is in place. Ready to transmit.”
The commander nodded. “Hail them.”
“What do you hope to achieve?” said one of the humans, a clerk on her father’s staff. “The Nidrusi have already made their decision. It’s done. You can’t change anything! The negotiations are over!”
The Klingon gave a curt nod. “Yes, they are.”
Today was they day they were going to leave. The groundcar was taking Valeris, her mother, and the others back to the spaceport. Her father and two senior staffers from his party had remained in the capital to confirm the final details of the local government’s agreement with the Federation; the intention was that they would join them after sunset. It had been a problematic few weeks on Nidrus. Valeris wanted to leave. Now she began to wonder if any of them ever would.
Her father had told her, in one of his usual lectures, that while the Nidrus system itself was relatively peaceful, it sat in a zone of space that was considerably more hazardous. The indigenous ape-like species were relative newcomers to the galactic stage, having developed faster-than-light travel only in the last few decades, and until recently the Nidrusi had remained unaware that their worlds existed on the borders of the Klingon Empire. They had made contact with the United Federation of Planets and expressed interest at overtures of alliance—and the moons of Nidrus Gamma had a wealth of dilithium that would serve them well for interstellar trade, enough to pique Federation interest.
Nidrus was a nonaligned world, and that meant the Klingon Empire, under current treaty stipulations, could also tender an offer to the planetary government.
Ambassador Sepel of Vulcan had been dispatched aboard a civilian courie
r to put the Federation’s case to the Nidrusi. The Klingons had arrived with a battle cruiser to show their flag.
Valeris was encouraged by her parents to observe the ambassadorial mission. They had both made very clear their expectations for their daughter: that she was being groomed to follow them into the diplomatic service. How Valeris’s own intentions for her future factored into this had never been addressed.
From the start, she knew how the discussion would go. The natives, a race of peaceable beings who respected hard work, fair play, and directness, did not respond well to the veiled threats and braggadocio of the Klingons. Valeris agreed with the Nidrusi.
The Klingons were the antithesis of everything Valeris had grown up with: they were all raw emotion and aggression, noisy and dangerous. If forced to put a description to it, she would have said they frightened her.
“They cannot be trusted,” she had told her father at the end of one day’s round of talks.
“What do you base that statement upon?” he asked.
Valeris should have told him that her assertion was drawn from readings of past conduct on the part of Klingon commanders, or on cultural observation of their behavior patterns. Instead, she was truthful. “An instinct.”
Sepel told his daughter that instincts were for animals and not rational, intelligent beings, then dismissed her.
At first, the Klingons paid lip service to the Nidrusi demands for an evenhanded negotiation. But as it became clearer that the natives were veering toward accepting the Federation’s offer, they became belligerent. Finally, the Klingons threw off the last pretense at diplomacy and warned the governors of Nidrus that rejecting the Empire’s demands would not end well for them.
Star Trek: TOS: Cast no Shadow Page 27
