The Hall of Heroes

by John Jackson Miller

  The facts had no time to sink in. The commanders of four colossal Kinshaya battlespheres chose that moment to decloak and open fire.

  KINSHAYA BATTLESPHERE FERVENT-ONE

  ORBITING KETORIX PRIME

  The Breen had few oaths, but Roje found one to swear anyway.

  Wave after wave of the Rebuke had moved across the Klingon border, taking station in systems long coveted by the Kinshaya. Narendra. H’atoria. Pheben. And most importantly, Ketorix, industrial capital of the House of Kruge—and ancestral home of that late commander, who had so vexed the Kinshaya and whose name they still feared.

  That fear was to have been conquered today, once and for all—and it would have been. The test run against the No’Var Outpost had been successful; the Breen had counted on a certain interval before news of the place’s destruction went out. But the defenders were aware now, precious minutes before the general attack was to have begun. Roje didn’t understand why. No other ships had been on their sensors at No’Var. Who possibly could have sent out the warning?

  No matter, he thought. He could hear the hordes of Kinshaya below decks, pounding their feet, ready to be transported down to Ketorix to begin their attack. They would sever the territory of the House of Kruge from the Klingon Empire and destroy one of its most important armorers in one swift, crushing blow.

  “Commanders in other systems are moving in,” Bishop Labarya said. “We await your blessing, Breen-ally.”

  “Commence general operations,” Roje ordered.

  “The infidels will be ended. Niamlar guide us.”

  HOUSE OF KRUGE INDUSTRIAL COMPOUND

  KETORIX PRIME

  “They’re not here,” Tengor reported.

  “What do you mean?” Korgh asked. He rubbed his eyes. Exhausted, he had fallen asleep in his office, waiting for Tengor’s call. “Who’s not here?”

  “The people you said we would find at Balduk, Father. They’re not here. Should we return?”

  Feeling his muscles cramp as he straightened in his chair, Korgh clasped his hands together and gritted his teeth. He couldn’t believe he had to explain it again. “The fugitives’ ship will be under cloak, Tengor. They will see your force and decloak. Then you will strike.” He tried to think of what else Shift might try. “Or if they should somehow transport directly from their cloaked vessel to our transports, you will kill the boarders—and then detonate torpedoes in the nearby area until their ship is revealed.”

  “Well, they’re not decloaking. I’ve got a huge number of ships here, Father—and the captains are all restless. How long do we wait?”

  “As long as it takes. You tell them they serve me. End transmission!”

  Korgh shook his head. He had waited and waited—for that?

  He rose, feeling numbness in his leg. His blood circulation had been cut off due to his odd posture dozing in the chair. Korgh limped across the room to the window and drew back the curtain. He started to shield his eyes, knowing already he had slept until nearly noon waiting for his moron of a son to—

  A blaze of light blinded him—and a second later, a shockwave struck the building, shattering the window and throwing the old man backward. Clamorous sound reverberated through the structure.

  On his knees, Korgh coughed and clawed at his eyes, trying to sweep away any grains of debris. The transparent aluminum in the pane had snapped into large chunks, not pulverizing—but there was other dust in the blast. His eyes adjusting, he crawled toward the gaping aperture and saw a blazing crater where one of his factories had been. Sirens blared.

  He felt someone touch his back. “Father!”

  Korgh remained by the window, now perilously open to the ground far below. “What—what—?”

  Tragg pulled him away from the brink. “All the alarms are going off across the planet,” the younger Klingon said. “Ketorix is under attack!”

  In that instant, Korgh, who as a young man had never gotten to fight the battle he wanted, realized that war had instead come to him.

  ACT THREE

  THE LINE OF FIRE

  2386

  “Khrushchev reminds me of the hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger’s skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.”

  —John F. Kennedy

  Thirty-seven

  CATHEDRAL OF STATE

  JANALWA

  Shift could not see it, but she could hear it: the sound of jubilation, of a promise kept. The bells of the great church echoed through the structure, growing louder every time someone opened a door to the outside. Whenever that happened, she could also hear the roar from Ykredna’s supporters, gathered out on the circle.

  The cheers were for a guaranteed victory; a bloody retribution long owed to the infidel Klingon Empire. They were for the restoration of ecumenical rule, after a disastrous flirtation with liberalization under the Devotionalists. And most of all, they were for her, or rather, for the character she was playing.

  Shift found it invigorating. For the first time, she truly understood the appeal that the Circle’s kind of impersonation had for Cross. The Breen had given her the power to escape her past life by putting on a mask. The truthcrafters could make her appear as anyone at all.

  It was easy to get carried away. But she would not, because Shift was a professional, and because she understood the other game that was being played. The Kinshaya were cheering, yes, but they had no idea who the triumph really belonged to. It would be the Breen Confederacy that would reap the spoils.

  Ornamented with flashier regalia than ever, Pontifex Maxima Ykredna marched into the rotunda and made her respects to the Great Niamlar. Shift’s creature form responded with a flourish of wings.

  “’Aya, O Divine One,” Ykredna said. Guards entered behind her, prodding along the former Pontifex, blindfolded. “I have brought the heretic Yeffir before you, Great Niamlar, that she might be judged. Devour her as you did the Klingon heathen brought before you on Yongolor so long ago.”

  Shift caught her breath as she saw what had been done to the old female. Where feathers had been remained only broken quills, and her fur was caked with grime. Yeffir’s head hung low—but when she lifted it, she spoke with a spirit unbroken. “I do not recognize your dominion, Niamlar. There are other gods, gentler and wise. To surrender to violence is to lose.”

  “Hear the words you use,” Shift said. “Surrender. Loss. You wither in shame.” As Niamlar, she stamped about the marbled floor. “Leave the apostate bound here—alive, her eyes open that she may suffer as she witnesses the triumphs she would have denied my children.”

  “We will do as you say.” Ykredna turned, reared up on her hind legs, and slapped Yeffir’s face with her right hand. “Speak your treason no more.”

  Shift watched as Ykredna’s toughs chained Yeffir off to the side and ripped away the blindfold. The Orion-turned-Breen was glad the Kinshaya had gone for it. There had been a way in Jilaan’s original Niamlar illusion design for her character to seemingly kill another; it had been done to Korgh, way back when. By the Blackstone using a transporter beam on the victim, Shift could give the impression she was incinerating someone.

  But no preparations had been made to use the tactic, and she didn’t want to spring it on Gaw’s truthcrafters. The last thing she needed was to attempt something and fail.

  She heard a tone in her earpiece. A full status report was in from the Empire; it was time to return to Blackstone to receive it. As Niamlar, she declared, “I go to the astral plane to support our brave and patriotic friends. No true believers will fall this day.”

  Ykredna looked up, startled. “Will . . . I mean, when will you return, Great Niamlar?”

  Shift wasn’t surprised by the question. The members of the Episcopate had been edgy all along about her suddenly disappearing, as Jilaan’s Niamlar had done so many years ago. Particularly Ykredna, who had so much on the line—especially now that most of her most militant followers were off fighting with the Rebuke. But Sh
ift wasn’t going for long. “I will return and give you an accounting of the victories in my name. Let the bells ring across all our worlds. The time for the Holy Order is ended. This Year of Prayer will be remembered as the year you became the Holy Empire!”

  The ethereal-looking flames rose up around her—and in a flash, Shift was back aboard the Blackstone. Smiling and out of breath, she toweled off a layer of sweat. She didn’t know how Jilaan’s programmers had managed to make their hologram generate heat, but she certainly felt it, even in her Breen-designed jumpsuit.

  Four minutes later, she was back in the cooling comfort of her Breen armor—and presentable for her colleagues on the bridge. Chot Dayn looked back at her from his status displays. “You should have had the Kinshaya put Yeffir to death. It would have been more efficient. She could give us trouble in the future.”

  She had been wondering what he would criticize this time. Dayn had not seen the project he could not micromanage. “Yeffir is powerless. She serves a greater purpose as an example.”

  “You fear to kill?”

  “Not at all,” Shift said. Try me sometime, you insufferable boor. Fortunately, the subject was easily changed. “You called me with an update?”

  “The Rebuke, as you call it, has just been unleashed across multiple sectors.” Dayn gestured to the blinking circular icons in several locations on his star map. Vessels appeared with the symbol of their respective forces, be they Klingon, Starfleet, Romulan, or Breen. Most were scattered across the Beta Quadrant, with few near the theaters of war. A Klingon cluster appeared frozen way out at Balduk. “Attacks are under way.”

  Shift was startled. She looked at the time. “This was earlier than we’d planned. Did someone discover the test strike at No’Var?”

  “No one could have. Our searcher vessels in the Empire did not report noticing anyone headed that way.” Dayn crossed his arms. “At least thus far, we have not had to include our search ships in the attack.”

  “Roje wanted to leave that as a last resort,” Shift said. The longer the Breen could be seen as innocent bystanders, the better. In the meantime, the fact that every Breen searcher had a Klingon escort meant that the Confederacy already knew the location of many of the Empire’s ships.

  Shift couldn’t have been more pleased—and Dayn’s grudging acceptance that the plan was working was a delicious bonus. The domo’s snitch, so long a critic of Roje, was realizing which way the wind was blowing.

  “There is the potential here to redraw the map of the Beta Quadrant,” Dayn said. “With your illusions, the Kinshaya become our slaves, even as the Kreel are theirs.”

  “And their territory, ours to use as we see fit.”

  Dayn made a wide two-handed gesture indicating a broad area of the map. “Between the Order’s original territory and the new conquests, the Confederacy could hold a massive swath of the Beta Quadrant.” He pointed. “We effectively create a rearguard threat to the Federation.”

  “Who are friendless in the region thanks to the Unsung,” Shift added. “Do you still doubt this stratagem, Chot Dayn?”

  “It has moved too fast,” Dayn said. “Given more time, we could have assembled a larger force—brought more of the liberators and other Kinshaya warships into it.”

  “Surprise would’ve been lost,” Shift said. “Between the disarray caused by the Unsung and Korgh’s redirection of his home fleets, our best chance is now.”

  Dayn shook his head. “By all reports Korgh was ascendant in the Empire. You could have blackmailed him at a later time.”

  “When? After the Unsung were found, and the Klingon vessels were all back on station? Or after all his lies were found out? We had to act. Your master, the domo, understood.”

  “The domo is master to all of us, Chot Shift.”

  “Of course, Chot Dayn. Good luck to you.”

  I despise you, she thought as she walked from the bridge into the illusion control center. Bureaucratic backbiting had been the one thing Shift had never liked about the Confederacy. Her operations, whether on Janalwa or Thane, had provided respites. Even Thionoga, where she had been inserted as a prisoner a little more than two years earlier in an attempt to either recruit Ardra for the Breen or to learn where truthcrafters could be found.

  That fact she had recently shared with Gaw, in between her sessions as Niamlar. It came up again as she spoke with him now.

  “I still can’t believe you really knew the lady,” Gaw said. “It makes sense. I should have known you just didn’t show up at the bar on Sherman’s Planet looking for a drink.” He looked at her. “I guess you really are a better practitioner than Cross.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and meant it. Gaw had always treated her decently, and she admired the respect he paid his trade. “Are you still offended by what we’re doing?”

  “It’s different, that’s for sure. Nobody’s ever used truthcrafters in the name of a state before.” Gaw removed his recently-returned pince-nez for a quick polish. “Oh, sure, we mess with states all the time—we take them over and cash in. But that’s playing around compared to what you guys are pulling.” He stared at her. “How long do we have to do this?”

  “That’s beyond my station to know,” she said. Indefinitely was not a word she wanted to use with him. “Just know that it’s working.”

  “Good. Any word on Buxtus?”

  “He’s improving. He said he wishes he were here and for you to keep up the good work.”

  Shift patted the Ferengi on the shoulder and headed off to rest before her next performance. Even a god deserved a break.

  Thirty-eight

  HOUSE OF KRUGE INDUSTRIAL COMPOUND

  KETORIX PRIME

  The entire galaxy, it seemed to Korgh, had gone mad.

  Since the House of Kruge chose it for its administrative base, Ketorix Prime had never seen a hostile act by a foreign power. It had even been spared in the Borg Invasion. Certainly, it was far enough from the frontier that the Kinshaya would never approach it.

  And yet at least five Kinshaya battlespheres were in orbit over Ketorix, as near as Korgh could tell from reports. Maybe more, but certainly not less—such was the confusion caused by the wretches’ attacks on the satellite defense platforms and their repeated and ongoing bombardments of the surface. The blast that had taken out his window appeared to come from a bomb targeting his headquarters; the Kinshaya had just been a few hundred meters off.

  After extracting Korgh from the ruins of his office, Tragg had called the home guard, which had belatedly activated the defensive energy shield over the city. Korgh, meanwhile, had a very brief—and extremely pointed—subspace conversation with his other son. Tengor, who had never fathomed why he was being sent to Balduk in the first place, mawkishly swore to return and save the house’s holdings. But it would take time before his forces could arrive. Korgh knew they could not be counted upon. The Klingons at Ketorix would have to make a stand.

  Rebuffed by his father’s refusal to leave, Tragg had transported across the compound to the military garrison to consult with his underlings. Korgh spent the time as calmly as he could, changing into his uniform and donning a disruptor. He then stepped out into the atrium, where he went to choose a bat’leth of importance from the family’s war museum. It would be a historic day, one way or another.

  He grew increasingly frustrated as he heard explosions outside, either against the shield or outside its protective zone. Shift had deceived him, clearly—but how in the name of Gre’thor had she managed to sell him out to the Kinshaya? Jilaan had tricked those dunces easily decades before; they were no tactical geniuses. How would they even have the sense to mount such a broad surprise invasion, much less the hardware?

  He found the bat’leth he wanted—one wielded by Kruge himself against the Kinshaya—frustratingly out of reach. The lights were low and he wasn’t going to fumble about looking for the stepstool. In the end, he settled on the commemorative mek’leth from the ceremony at Gamaral. It galled him to fight a de
fense with the names of Kruge’s other heirs etched upon it, but he couldn’t be choosy now. It might even add to his story.

  The glows from a large number of transporter effects caught his eye, and Korgh turned to face the new arrivals. It was Tragg, alongside a dozen warriors from the home guard.

  “News?”

  “Our ground forces are spreading out across the area,” Tragg said. “I am so new to the office I have never had the chance to drill them. I’m not certain exactly how they’re deployed.” He gestured to the other warriors. “This detachment is for you, here at the headquarters. I joined them—there was no sense guarding an empty barracks.”

  Battlesphere disruptors fired from orbit struck the shields outside, sounding like thunder. “What word from the Defense Force?”

  Tragg’s expression turned dour. “We do not know. That first barrage before we activated the shields destroyed our main communication station. We are trying to get through by other means.”

  “What was the last our people heard?”

  “Most of the Defense Force ships were in other sectors, searching for the Unsung. The few that weren’t are likely already engaged. Kersh is at Pheben. I haven’t heard what’s happened in the other sectors.”

  “More glory for us,” Korgh said, straightening. Surely, he thought, even if Narendra fell, someone would arrive at Ketorix in time—and the possibility of reinforcements invigorated him. He pointed to the closest two warriors. “There is broadcast equipment in the alcove outside my office. Bring it. I will address the worlds under our banner. Commercial and personal ships can be used against the invaders.” He turned toward the massive statue of Kruge slaying the Kinshaya. “I will speak in front of that. It will put steel into our citizens’ bones.”

  U.S.S. TITAN

  PHEBEN SYSTEM

  These people know what they’re doing, Riker thought as a barrage to Titan’s shields shook the vessel. He braced himself against the doorframe to the ready room he had just exited. Another impact struck just as he was ready to start moving again.