While down, Tragg looked back between the rear legs of Kruge’s graven Kinshaya victim—and saw the thing that Korgh only heard, bumping along the floor toward them. “Grenade!”
Tragg covered his father’s body as a sphere of destruction filled the atrium. The base of the statue deflected the brunt of the energy, but could not fully protect the Klingons from the sonic assault and the blazing heat.
And then, just as Korgh thought he would never hear or see again, he heard a sickening crack—and looked up to see the nightmare shape of Kruge and the Kinshaya falling toward him. He seized his motionless son and rolled, just as more than a thousand kilograms of statue came smashing down onto the floor.
Gasping for air in the rubble, the old man clawed at the debris in the darkness. Feeling heat-scarred flesh, he struggled to uncover Tragg. The brunt of the collapse had missed both of them, but Tragg’s left leg beneath the knee was crushed.
Through the smoke, he saw the Kinshaya disruptor bolts begin again. Scrambling over the wreckage, he found a bat’leth, shaken off the wall in the chaos. Kruge’s. That would do. He clambered over the top of Tragg’s body and raised the bat’leth in defense as the Kinshaya charged, weapons before them. There were three—no, more. Korgh tried to hold his ground, but there were so many. He dropped his weapon and wailed. “Kahless, help me!”
Disruptor fire lanced over his head from behind, tearing into the Kinshaya and slowing their advance. Someone passed on his left—another on his right. There were two figures in the darkness, both engaging the Kinshaya with mek’leths. They chopped at the invaders, driving them back. His body covering his son’s, Korgh stared spellbound, wondering who his saviors were. Had Tengor’s people finally arrived?
Another Kinshaya fell. One of the Klingons turned back to look at him. “Are you all right, my lord?”
“W-Worf?”
Korgh was still trying to process the fact when a lone Kinshaya charged from the hall that led to his quarters. Rifle drawn, he brought it to bear on Korgh, preparing for what would be a point-blank shot. The other Klingon turned and hurled his mek’leth with such force that when it struck the neck of the galloping villain, the Kinshaya’s whole body was flung several meters backward.
Korgh looked back at the body in astonishment—and then at the warrior who strode over to reclaim his weapon from the corpse. Korgh could not make his mouth move.
The Klingon looked back at him and grinned. “Yes, yes. I am Kahless, and I have returned. I think that is what you were going to say.”
Korgh’s eyes widened—and he thought himself mad. He collapsed over his son’s still-breathing but otherwise motionless form. He wept. “Do not judge me, Kahless!”
“Here, here,” Kahless said, approaching and climbing over the debris to reach him. “Do not fear, brave grandfather. You have done well.”
Worf, satisfied that the attack was done, clambered toward Korgh and Tragg. “This warrior needs medical attention,” he said of the prone figure.
“He is my son,” Korgh said. He looked back and forth between the Klingons helping him up. “Kahless? Worf?”
Worf nodded. “It is the emperor. You must not have heard yet—the emperor was never slain.”
“Never slain!”
Kahless growled. “Yes, I was kept alive by a Betazoid trickster named Cross—he who impersonated Kruge and created the Unsung. Cross is dead. I am not.”
Korgh’s lip trembled as Worf studied Tragg’s wounds. He looked into space. “Did—did Cross say who put him up to that?”
Kahless looked at Worf as if the question was unexpected. “No,” the clone said.
Dizzy with the news he had not been found out, Korgh looked up—and saw a bird-of-prey hovering overhead through the shattered skylights.
“It is Chu’charq,” Worf said. “We saw your office had been blown open. She beamed us into it.”
“I wanted to land Cob’lat on your roof,” Kahless said, “but its damage was too great, and it had to be abandoned. There is but one ship left of the Phantom Wing.”
“The Phantom Wing,” Korgh parroted. “Yes.” He stood up, mindless of the tattered and torched state of his uniform.
“The battle beyond seems to have stopped. Victory is ours.” Kahless pointed up to the bird-of-prey. “We will get your son aid. Rest now.”
“I—I must attend to my house,” Korgh said.
Worf and Kahless looked at each other—and at the mess the atrium had become. “Clean another day, Lord Korgh,” Worf said. “We do not know if hostilities will start again.”
“I must attend to my house.”
Korgh found a path around the debris and dead bodies and into the long hallway. There, through the darkness and down the hidden staircase, he made his way to the shuttle. There was only one person who could save him and his house now, and he had little time to reach her.
FINALE
THE WORK OF AGES
2386
“The work, my friend, is peace. More than an end of this war—an end to the beginnings of all wars.”
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, undelivered address for April 13, 1945, the day after he died
Fifty-two
FIRST CITY
QO’NOS
Korgh’s frantic flight to the capital had been littered with difficulties right from the start. The secret shuttlebay in the Ketorix compound was beneath a courtyard strewn with debris from the Kinshaya attack; the doors had resisted opening. Escaping had required putting the thrusters to full throttle and forcing the exit, a dangerous maneuver in such a small space.
Anguish had followed as Korgh ascended and saw what the Kinshaya had done to his beloved compound. For fifty years as gin’tak, he had rebuilt and modernized the factories, bringing the House of Kruge back from irrelevancy and making a better life for hundreds of thousands. The sight of so much of his work in ruins pained him utterly, and he had struggled not to dwell on it. Warriors died and buildings fell. His cause had to live on.
Korgh’s next problem had come upon achieving orbit, when the skies—initially empty but for the smoldering husk of a Kinshaya battlesphere—suddenly grew crowded. A Klingon Defense Force squadron arrived from warp, followed thirty seconds later by Tengor and his flotilla of home guard vessels. In the race to save Ketorix, Korgh’s pathetic middle son had come in dead last.
The sight of Korgh’s shuttle—the only thing in motion—had drawn the attention of the Defense Force battle cruisers, which hailed demanding that he halt. Having no time to linger and identify himself, Korgh went immediately to warp, course-correcting later on.
The isolation of the long flight had given him time to brood—and to plan. Things had changed, and were changing, even as he made his way across the Empire.
Reports revealed something he’d forgotten: he had not cut off his final broadcast from the atrium. The wall-mounted sensor had remained active, somehow surviving the devastation of the grenade blast. Klingons everywhere had seen his and Tragg’s desperate dash back into the museum, and the statue-toppling blast that had followed; they had also witnessed the triumphant return of the Emperor Kahless, soon surrounded in the scene by the handful of surviving adult members of the Unsung.
The exiles reportedly had come to stand behind their deeds before the leader of the house, but Korgh had gone and Tragg was unconscious. The last he had heard was that the Unsung were in the hands of the Defense Force. Tragg’s condition concerned Korgh, but it was more important that neither Kahless nor the Unsung seemed to have connected Buxtus Cross to him.
A lengthy classified report sent to him from the chancellor’s office was another mixed bag. The Blackstone had been captured in Kinshaya space, having played a role in prompting the invasion; the report did not detail how it had been captured, but clearly it had never gone anywhere near Balduk. However, neither the vessel nor its truthcrafters had yielded any information about who hired them to create the Unsung. At least Cross had been as good as his word on that. Only Cross and the co
ntemptible Shift had ever known Korgh’s name.
Shift, the report held, had vanished—presumably spirited away by her Breen collaborators. Korgh tasted bile when he saw that phrase. How long, he wondered, had the Orion woman been in their employ? Long enough to destroy his grandson’s starship, likely, and to arrange their nefarious invasion scheme. She had simultaneously tricked Korgh into diverting his home guard and the Kinshaya into attacking. His masterstroke had been a hundred years in the making; hers had been hatched in far less time.
The good news was that Shift was gone and, at least thus far, the Breen had gone silent following their implication in the failed incursion. The Romulans were openly furious with their Typhon Pact ally. The Klingon Empire was busy driving out Breen “searchers” on pain of death. Korgh swore he would not give Shift and the Breen the chance to exploit him again. He had to make his vulnerability irrelevant.
He had found Qo’noS in a state of pure jubilation when he landed. Some glee was because of the successful defense; while Ketorix took the brunt of the assault and Pheben IV had seen significant industrial damage, the toll in other systems had been limited to orbital emplacements. But Klingons loved a story, and no one could resist the tale of Kahless, back from the dead to lead the Unsung from their pit of shame on a quest to drive the Kinshaya away.
The euphoric mood was part of the reason Korgh had chosen a remote landing site on Qolkat’s estate. There was no benefit to his speaking about the events; no message of his could compete with that. Besides, any claim he might make to a heroic stand on Ketorix could lead to questions about why he had ordered his forces away in the first place.
Lord Qolkat was full of news, all of it bad. The accursed Starfleet vessels Enterprise and Titan having acted heroically, Martok and Riker considered their positions strengthened. The two had announced that the chavmajta, postponed during the emergency, was to be held later in the week, after Riker made his return. It would even come before any judgment of the Unsung. Work on the Federation consulate was being stepped up, with additional Klingon laborers being hired to finish the job. There was no lack of applicants, Qolkat had said. The Federation had friends again in the First City.
Korgh had immediately convened a meeting of his High Council allies at Qolkat’s estate. He had sought to stiffen their spines, to keep them onboard for his chavmajta walkout. Ultimately, he had been forced to offer several of the house’s holdings, lesser places untouched by the Kinshaya, in trade for their support. Satevech and Grotek had asked for so much that he wondered if they had Ferengi blood. Who had ever heard of getting control of a star system in exchange for standing up and walking out a door?
Yet he knew that if he succeeded, none of that would matter. All the star systems of the Empire would be his. It could be done—with the help of the one person who had supported him the longest.
Disguising himself, Korgh used the personal transporter in Qolkat’s home—a luxury of the very rich—to beam into a run-down neighborhood in the Old Quarter. There was no time to walk there, and his bruises from the battle would have made it agony. Deposited in the alleyway beside a familiar hovel, he entered and scaled the stairs, his muscles crying at every step.
He found the door partially open. He looked inside and called out. “Odrok?”
There was no answer.
Korgh’s breath quickened. His accomplice for the past century had departed after their last argument on Ketorix, swearing never to return. She had left his thoughts since then; he had assumed she would go back to her residence on Qo’noS to drink herself to death. But he needed her now—and pushing the creaking door all the way open, he worried that he had arrived too late.
Odrok appeared from around the corner. Looking haggard, she carried an armload of drained bloodwine bottles. Korgh couldn’t tell if they were empties from today or a long time ago, but she seemed sober enough when she spoke. “I am not surprised to find you here.”
“Yes,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “Much has happened.”
“Tell me no more.” She trudged past him to the window and dumped the bottles outside. Korgh heard them shatter on the pavement.
“They say that Tragg is on the mend.” He shuffled awkwardly. “I cannot be with him, of course.”
She looked back at him, eyes tired. “What do you want, Korgh?”
No “my lord,” he thought. There was nothing to do but get to the point. “I have a job for you,” he said, crossing the room.
“I figured as much.”
He stepped to the window and pointed across town. “I need you inside the Federation Consulate.”
She looked blankly in the direction he was pointing. “I cannot see how,” she said, turning away to resume her cleaning. “You remember the takeover of the original embassy by Klahb, the rebel group, a few years ago. Security has increased since.”
He looked back at her and managed a grin. “The Federation Consulate has invited Klingon workers in to finish the auditorium in time for this week’s chavmajta. Qolkat’s house has connections—and he owes me favors. You can be one of those selected.”
“To do what?”
He looked through the door to her bedroom—and to the mirror that doubled both as a secret transmitter and the door to a hidden closet. “I know you have explosives and remote detonation equipment. Before Martok and Riker speak, my allies and I will walk out. No one else should leave the stage alive.”
No emotion crossed her face as she listened. She shook her head. “It has come to this?”
“I have been pushed to it.”
The Klingon woman let out a sigh. She rubbed her wrinkled chin. “Why should I do this deed?”
Korgh managed to avoid grimacing. It gnawed at him, but there was no other way. He stepped toward her with an embarrassed smile. “Do this,” he said, “and I will take you as my mate, as you once asked. You will head the House of Kruge with me, Odrok—just as you had hoped to do with my mentor long ago.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You lie. You said you would never do this.”
“I have tried to succeed without you these last days, and I have failed.” He quickly took her hand. It trembled—from lack of drink, he imagined. He steadied it with his other hand. “You have been the one with me all these years, Odrok. You took me to the Phantom Wing. You learned how to find the Circle of Jilaan. You put me in touch with Shift and Cross. You helped make the Unsung and my ascension happen. It is right that our final years be spent together—in triumph.”
Odrok looked at their clasped hands for a long moment. Then she turned her head so her gaze was on the bedroom and its secret closet. Finally, she pulled her hand away and asked, “How is it to be done?”
“This is the name of Qolkat’s man,” he said, placing a small card on her table. “I am told the stage and podium will be the last things to go in. You will join the workers installing the sensor package as a senior inspector. With your knowledge, that should be easy—and I know you have ways of concealing what you bring in. You will then hide the explosive in an opportune location.”
“Who will have the trigger?”
“You will. Watch the broadcast of the event from here. Once we have left, when Riker or Martok begins to speak, that will be your cue. Count twenty seconds and detonate.”
She looked at him. “Will you want your own defeat switch, should the plan need to change?”
“Of course. Leave it in the dead drop near the Great Hall.” He put his hands on her frail shoulders. “You always think of everything—Lady Korgh.”
She pushed his arms away, strode toward the door, and opened it. “Go. I have work to do now and do not want you here.”
That is fine with me, Korgh thought as he exited. Just get it done.
Fifty-three
PHANTOM WING VESSEL CHU’CHARQ
QO’NOS
Valandris looked out the port at the First City and marveled. She was surrounded by excited children—and indeed felt as a child herself, seeing the Klingon capita
l for the first time. On this flight, she was merely a passenger on Chu’charq, a ship she had come to consider her own.
Kahless had insisted on returning to Qo’noS only in the company of the Unsung, something that the authorities had grudgingly agreed to. The most expedient method involved traveling aboard Chu’charq, where forty-six children—plus one infant—already had billets. Klingon Defense Force officers manned the bridge stations and walked the halls as sentries; all were easily identifiable not just by their uniforms, but also their facial protectors, suggested by Worf as a way to keep them from catching tharkak’ra.
“The Klingons finally confront the Unsung,” Kahless had joked, “and it is the Empire’s warriors who must wear the masks!”
Worf had added at a different moment that with Kahless aboard, Chu’charq was technically qeylIS wa’, the designated imperial transport. After a hundred years, the last surviving ship of the Phantom Wing had finally made it into official service—at the top.
Humor had otherwise been sparse for much of the flight. Beyond the fact that none of the exiles knew what the future held for them, only thirteen adults, counting Valandris, had survived the assault at Ketorix. All who had been attached to Krencha had been lost when the battlesphere they boarded was destroyed. Several of Chu’charq’s crew, including Dublak, had died boarding the ship of the Breen leader. Of the two crews that had fought in the surface action, only five Klingons had survived the fight, including Kahless, Worf, and Bardoc.
Sixty remained of a population of three hundred. Four in five, gone forever. The statistic took Valandris’s breath away.
The only thing that brought it back was the children, all of whom had been saved by her preparations—and her dogged will to make sure that Chu’charq emerged whole. The youngsters in her ready room squealed with delight as they caught their first sight of the Great Hall.
“Do you see it, Valandris?” Sarken asked. “It’s bigger than our whole village!”
“It must be, to keep all the animals outside,” she said. Weeks earlier, Valandris would have said “inside”—or something else even more acerbic. But she didn’t feel that way now. It was something to see, Valandris thought, majestic and impressive, the symbol of a people who knew they had something to be proud of.
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