The Brave and the Bold Book Two

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “I need to check on the pilots—” She started to get up from the QongDaq, but Worf put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  “They are both fine—as are my pilots. They are attempting to dismantle the forcefield that surrounds the runabout.”

  She got up anyhow, despite the ambassador’s hand. “Where are we?”

  “The shuttle’s systems are offline. However, according to the readings we have been able to obtain with hand scanners, we are on Narendra III.”

  B’Oraq shook her head in confusion. “Narendra III? Why would McCoy bring us here?”

  “I do not know,” Worf repeated.

  “Didn’t Spock and McCoy serve together in Starfleet?”

  Worf nodded. “For many years on the U.S.S. Enterprise.”

  A half-remembered history course came back to her. “And the Enterprise was destroyed at Narendra III. Perhaps this is connected?”

  “Unlikely,” Worf said. “The Enterprise that sacrificed itself on this world was not the same one that the ambassador and the admiral served on.” He took a breath. “If you are all right, Doctor, I will continue to aid the others in attempting to bypass the forcefield.”

  “Of course. I’ll—I’ll help.”

  B’Oraq had expected some kind of objection, but the ambassador simply nodded, and they both exited the aft chamber of Klag’s personal craft and went to the fore. She found herself admiring the ambassador. She had only met him once before, when the Gorkon brought him to his mission on taD, but she had had very little interaction with him then. He’s quite attractive, she thought. And if memory serves, his mate died during the war. Perhaps when this is over…

  She cut the thought off, filing it away for later use, assuming they got out of whatever mess McCoy had put her into.

  She saw her two pilots—Davok and G’joth—and two humans in Starfleet uniforms all bent over a console.

  Upon Worf and B’Oraq’s entrance, the human male stood up. “The forcefield’s definitely being powered from the outside, sir. And all this ship’s systems are completely dead.”

  B’Oraq looked over at the viewport. She hadn’t even realized that the only light source in the aft compartment had come from the viewport in there, and now she realized the same was true of the flight compartment up front. When night fell on Narendra III, they’d be plunged into darkness. Although, she thought, there was light in the corridor, too. She then inhaled; the air didn’t seem to be stale. “Is life-support also cut off?”

  G’joth said, “Yes, ma’am. However, the forcefield is air-permeable, and the rear hatch is still open.”

  That explained the light in the corridor—she had only to have looked behind her to have seen that.

  “How soon until sunset?” Worf asked.

  Davok answered. “Five hours.”

  Nodding, Worf said, “Then we have that long to come up with a way to overload the forcefield. I will need all the weapons on board this ship, and any handheld devices—scanners, communicators, anything with an independent power source.”

  “What are you planning?” B’Oraq asked.

  Before Worf could answer, the human female said, “You want to try to create a pulse to knock out the forcefield?”

  “That is my intention, Ensign McKenna.”

  Making a snorting noise, Davok said, “That may work on Starfleet forcefields, but these are Klingon fields. They are made of sterner stuff.”

  “I would suggest, bekk, that you hope your assumption is incorrect if you wish to get out of here.”

  Davok snarled, but said nothing.

  The five of them worked, cannibalizing anything they could lay their hands on—even some of the dead equipment from the shuttle itself. B’Oraq’s medical equipment had been removed—along with the shuttle’s armory stores, though Davok, G’joth, and Worf all carried weapons on their persons that had not been taken—so she felt particularly helpless. Her technical skills were nonexistent—that’s what engineers were for. Her only use would be if someone was injured. And then what? I can tell them to put pressure on their wound or watch helplessly if they need more than that. I have no bandages, no scanners, no alcohol—

  Suddenly, a thought occurred. She went back into the aft compartment, and found what she had hoped would be under the QongDaq: half a case of bloodwine.

  Worf had followed her. “What did you find?”

  “Bloodwine. I’m attempting to assemble what medical equipment I can, and this is the closest to a disinfectant we have.”

  The ambassador looked pensive. “We may be able to use that as well—for weaponry.”

  B’Oraq frowned. “You’re going to drink your enemy to death?”

  “No.” Worf almost smiled.

  He was remarkably taciturn for a Klingon. She wondered why that was. A by-product of living among humans, no doubt, she thought. Having lived among them herself during her time at Starfleet Medical, she knew how fragile they could be—most were physically incapable of handling Klingon passion.

  He continued. “Have you ever heard of a human weapon called a Molotov cocktail?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “It involves lighting a fire on a rag attached to the neck of a bottle of alcohol.”

  Understanding, B’Oraq nodded. “Of course. You get a fire grenade.”

  “Of sorts, yes. Since we have needed to use the weapons to power our—device.”

  Now B’Oraq smiled. “‘Device’?”

  “We have yet to come up with a name for it,” Worf said dryly. “Lieutenant Falce wishes to call it ‘Fred.’”

  “As good a name as any,” B’Oraq said with a shrug.

  “I prefer more—direct terms.”

  “Yes, but ‘forcefield overloader’ doesn’t have much poetry to it.”

  “True. Shall we return to the fore?”

  “I will be right there,” she said. “I want to see if there is anything else I can use in case someone—”

  A scream came from the fore compartment.

  B’Oraq sighed. “Gets hurt.”

  Both doctor and ambassador ran back up front to find the human male—what was his name? Falce?—on the deck convulsing.

  The woman—McKenna—said, “There was feedback—somebody didn’t align the circuits properly.” This last was said with a look at Davok.

  Predictably, Davok responded by unsheathing his d’k tahg.“Are you accusing me of something, human?”

  B’Oraq knelt down beside Falce. He was a young human of considerable height for his species—which made him average by Klingon standards—with close-cropped black hair. At present, all that hair was standing on end, thanks to the shock he’d received. B’Oraq felt naked without her scanner, but the galvanic response of Falce’s skin was already lessening. She suspected this was an intense, but brief, surge of electricity through his system.

  “What—what—what—what happened?” Falce managed to ask.

  “This idiot didn’t align the circuits the way he was supposed to,” McKenna said.

  “That is enough, woman!” Davok cried, and lunged at McKenna with his blade. G’joth made no move to stop him, but simply stood smiling.

  Worf started to move to intercept the bekk, but before he could, McKenna herself deflected the attack and, in one smooth motion, relieved Davok of his d’k tahg. Then she twisted his arm around to his back, immobilizing him. It looked to B’Oraq like a poorly executed mok’bara maneuver—probably something from some human martial art.

  Then she threw Davok to the floor. G’joth bent over, picked up Davok’s d’k tahg, and handed it to his fellow bekk with a smile. “I think you dropped this, Davok.”

  Growling, Davok snatched the blade and started to get up, when a deep voice rang out in the shuttle.

  “Enough!” It was Worf. “If you wish to squabble like children, do it another time! We have work to do!” In a quieter voice, he said to Davok, “If you wish to challenge Ensign McKenna, do so after the crisis has passed. But not now.”

 
; “When a woman spreads lies, there is always time for a challenge!”

  Worf then grabbed Davok by his chestplate and pulled him close with one hand. With the other, he held the device that they had been working on. B’Oraq hadn’t even noticed Worf picking it up.

  “You were aligning these circuits when I went aft moments ago. They are now misaligned, and Lieutenant Falce is injured. Did she spread lies or simply state facts?”

  Davok’s face contorted, but he said nothing.

  Worf let go of him and turned to B’Oraq. “How is he?”

  “I think he’ll be fine.” B’Oraq hoped her voice carried more confidence than she felt. “He needs to take it easy for a bit—and stay away from any live current—but he should recover.”

  “Good.” He turned to the others. “We will finish this so we can overload the forcefield and leave this shuttle. Then we will find who has done this to us and we will defeat them. Personal issues can wait. Am I understood?”

  “Perfectly,” G’joth said jovially and with a large grin.

  “Understood, sir,” McKenna said.

  Davok said nothing. Worf turned to him. “Am I understood?”

  “You don’t have any authority over me, petaQ. You are a traitor to the empire twice over who gave up a life of glory to be an ambassador of fools. I will not follow your orders.”

  “Very well,” Worf said.

  Then he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket, took out a tiny hand phaser, and fired it on Davok, who collapsed to the deck.

  B’Oraq dashed over to the fallen bekk.“It was on stun,” Worf said. The doctor checked Davok over and saw that he showed all the outward symptoms of a phaser blast on the stun setting—which meant that he’d sleep not-very-peacefully and wake up at some point in an even worse mood.

  But that was for later. “I take it,” she said, “that you figured stunning him was better than his getting in the way?”

  Worf nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Good plan,” G’joth said. “Davok is not a true warrior. He is simply a boor. Shall we continue working? I believe we should start by realigning these circuits.”

  “I like that plan,” Falce said, sitting up and moving over to the workstation they had set up. Looking at Worf, the lieutenant asked, “By the way, Mr. Ambassador—how many weapons you have on you?”

  Again, the not-really-a-smile. “Enough.”

  While the quartet worked, B’Oraq picked Davok up—not making any effort to be gentle—and laid him down on the QongDaq in the rear. With the power out, she couldn’t seal the room, but at least he’d be out of the way there.

  “Doctor,” McKenna said when she came back to the fore, “this thing is set to give off a level-four nelaron pulse. Will that have any negative impact on us?”

  B’Oraq thought a moment. “For how long?”

  Falce said, “As long as it takes to bring the forcefield down.”

  Closing her eyes, B’Oraq juggled figures in her head. Then she opened them. “At level four, we should be fine as long as you don’t go over five minutes.”

  G’joth laughed a hearty laugh. “That is hardly an issue. This thing will burn out after three minutes.”

  “In that case, Ensign, I’d say no negative impact whatsoever.” B’Oraq smiled.

  A few minutes later, Worf announced that they were ready. B’Oraq noticed that the phaser Worf had used on Davok was now part of the device, as well.

  McKenna placed the device—which looked like nothing else to B’Oraq but a piece of surrealist sculpture she’d seen on Earth—next to one of the bulkheads. The forcefield went all around the ship, so the device could apparently be placed anywhere.

  “Activating nelaron pulse—now.”

  On now, McKenna touched a control. A low-level hum started to build in intensity.

  Forcefields were generally only visible when they were interfered with: when they turned on, when they were turned off, and when someone or something touched them. So when B’Oraq saw a flicker in the field, she felt a similar flicker of hope.

  Then the forcefield crackled and went offline.

  Half a second later, the device that they had constructed exploded in a shower of sparks and a small fire.

  G’joth immediately reached for the fire extinguisher that sat under the copilot’s seat and used it to put the small fire out. The chemicals probably weren’t good for the device, but an explosion was far worse.

  “Well, the good news,” Falce said, “is that we got the field down. The bad news is that there’s no way in hell we’ll be able to reconstruct this thing—and we lost some of our most potentially useful equipment—including all our weapons.”

  B’Oraq smiled grimly. “Isn’t there some kind of human expression about lemons and lemonade?”

  “What is a lemon aid?” G’joth asked. “For that matter, what is a lemon?”

  “A foul drink made from a foul fruit.” With a more playful smile at McKenna and Falce, B’Oraq added, “No surprise from a race that can’t even handle bloodwine.”

  “Hey, I like bloodwine just fine, thanks,” Falce said, returning the smile. “It makes a dandy lubricant when I have engine trouble.”

  “Enough,” Worf said, though in a gentle voice. “Let us see what we can find outside.” He turned to B’Oraq. “Doctor, it might be best if you remained behind.”

  “I can take care of myself, Ambassador. And I want to know what is going on here, and I can’t very well learn that sitting here.”

  “You are just a doctor,” G’joth said dismissively.

  “I can use my d’k tahg just as well as you can, G’joth. Better, probably, since I’m trained in, shall we say, surgical strikes?”

  McKenna snorted. Falce tried to hide a grin.

  G’joth stared at her for a second, then burst into laughter. “Very well, Doctor. We shall face—whatever it is that has taken us together.”

  Nodding, Worf said, “Let us proceed.”

  B’Oraq was glad no one had argued. On top of everything else, she had no desire to be alone in the shuttle when Davok woke up.

  Worf led them out through the open—and now usable—rear hatch. Behind him were Falce and McKenna, then B’Oraq, with G’joth bringing up the rear.

  PAIN!

  The moment they were all out of the shuttle, she felt intense pain in her skull that made her earlier headache seem meaningless.

  As she fell unconscious for the second time in as many days, she decided that staying in the shuttle might not have been such a bad idea….

  Chapter Thirteen

  COMMANDER TERETH GAZED OVER THE BRIDGE of the Gorkon and was content.

  She had requested this posting the instant she knew that it was available. Tereth had gone far in her career because she had always had a good instinct for picking winners. It had been a necessary survival skill. The House of Kular was not an especially powerful one when Tereth was a girl, and she was the only child left. Her parents had hoped she would mate well and bring the House glory that way, but she had been mated twice to men who subsequently died before they had a chance to forge a path of honor that would bring Kular to greater glory.

  But neither of those mates had made her crest ache. They were adequate par’machkai, but nothing spectacular.

  So, though her doddering father was the ostensible House head, she took over running the House herself—behind the scenes, of course, since women were not permitted to be House heads without special dispensation from the High Council, which Kular was hardly in a position to get.

  When Gowron—an outsider and political agitator—campaigned to be considered a worthy successor to the aging Chancellor K’mpec, Tereth had insisted that Kular back him, even though Duras—a councillor from a most influential House—seemed the favorite. Her parents had argued, but she insisted. Besides, their debts were huge, their prospects growing dimmer with each turn. They had very little to lose.

  Sure enough, Gowron eventually became chancellor, Duras died i
n disgrace, and the House of Kular reaped the benefits. Gowron forgave many of Kular’s debts, paved the way for others to be easily repaid, and also sponsored Tereth’s application to become an officer in the Defense Force.

  Since then, she had flourished. She had served with Captain Akhra when he took the Cardassian world of Hranish. Given the opportunity to serve directly under General Talak, she chose instead a less prestigious post with Captain Huss as part of the general’s armada. Once again her instincts proved prophetic: Huss was soon inducted into the Order of the Bat’leth, then went on to win several major campaigns against the Dominion.

  Her crest ached again when she encountered Klag on Qo’noS when the latter was recovering from Marcan V. She kept an eye on him, and he soon was given one of the mighty Qang-class ships. He, too, was destined to join the Order, and within a month of his shakedown cruise, he had an opening for a first officer and no viable candidates on-ship.

  As with so many others Tereth had chosen as patrons, Klag seemed odd on the face of it. He had served on the Pagh for an absurdly long time without promotion or attrition, and even though he was rewarded for his actions on Marcan V, he was also given no say in his own command crew. His exploits to date were satisfactory, but he had won no great victories, defeating only simple foes—Kreel, Kinshaya pirates, jeghpu’wI’ rebels. Still, Tereth’s instincts had not failed her yet.

  The Gorkon pilot, a newly assigned youth named Vralk, recently promoted to lieutenant and still with a sad excuse for a beard dirtying his face, said, “We are at the last known position of the captain’s shuttle, Commander.”

  “Full stop.” Tereth strode to her position on the captain’s right. To Toq, who stood at the operations console behind the captain’s chair, she said, “Report.”

  “I am picking up the shuttle’s warp signature, Commander,” Toq said. “Its heading is 156 mark 7—right on course for Qo’noS. They were traveling somewhere between warp five and warp seven-point-five.”

  Tereth nodded and turned to Vralk. “Set course 156 mark 7, execute at warp five.”

  Vralk acknowledged the order and set a course.

  “Toq, inform me if the warp signature changes.”