Hell's Heart

by John Jackson Miller

  “I’m looking for my husband, Lord Udakh.”

  “As was I.” Regrettably, Worf did not say. “Computer, locate Klingon guest Udakh.”

  “Lord Udakh is in holodeck three.”

  Lady Udakh gave a derisive snort. “Your computer should call him the honorable lord. Have it fixed, right away.”

  Worf said nothing, knowing that, fortunately, the holodeck was just ahead. Still more fortuitously, the lord was fully dressed when the doors opened—though the same could not be said for some of the holographic Klingon and Orion dancers surrounding the honorable lord’s throne.

  “Damned Federation device,” growled the fat old man. One-armed and somewhat older than his wife, Lord Udakh was hairless but for tufts at his ears and chin, dyed a ridiculous black. Caught in his den of debauchery, he shook his fist at Worf. “I asked for privacy!”

  “You did not,” Worf said. “The system did not indicate it.”

  “Your system lies!”

  “You lie!” shouted Lady Udakh, entering through the archway behind Worf. She beheld the holographic dancers, now modestly cowering behind her husband’s gilded chair. “You told me you weren’t going to use this accursed room. Computer, end program!”

  The entertainers vanished, as did the garish furnishings—including the throne, causing Lord Udakh to land on his considerable rump. Worf stepped quickly forward to help the old noble up. “It was a mistake,” the old man said. “I had come to pay my respects to my cousin J’borr.”

  “Lord J’borr is in holodeck two,” Worf said.

  “And Udakh despises him,” his wife said. She looked daggers at her husband. “Tell the officer how you tried to have one of these rooms built at home, before I stopped you!”

  Udakh grumbled as he brushed himself off. “I am not your prisoner. I am the sole heir to Commander Kruge—”

  “Just like all the other ‘sole heirs.’ And if you give yourself a heart attack, what happens to me?” Lady Udakh shook her finger at him. “I’m going to keep you alive, old man, whether you want me to or not!”

  Worf wasn’t surprised by the exchange. It was not traditional for Klingon females to inherit the running of great houses; Azetbur, who famously became chancellor in Kirk’s time, had been an important exception. Udakh had only unwed daughters, Worf had learned; whatever sliver of claim his line had to the House of Kruge rested on Udakh staying alive.

  While Udakh and his mate argued about the future, it was the old man’s past that had prompted Worf to seek him out. The commander had wearied of playing Kahless’s dinner companion, but the emperor had shown little interest in venturing out, even to exercise. The clone had always considered combat workouts, holodeck-assisted or otherwise, a sad substitute for action, and that had not changed.

  As Enterprise left Klingon space to head toward Gamaral, Kahless had reluctantly admitted he needed to know something about the events he was to commemorate. The problem, Worf found, was that while the records supplied by the Empire spoke much about the historic may’qochvan that followed the battle of Gamaral, other details were few.

  He didn’t expect to find much about the military officers who’d led the uprising, of course; their disloyalty had been deemed so shameful at the time that the names of the conspirators had been blotted from the official histories. Meanwhile, the Kruge family nobles present at the battle were mentioned frequently and prominently.

  And yet, somehow amid all the plaudits, the accounts managed to say very little about what the nobles actually did. There was no order-of-battle, no discussion of specific engagements or wounds inflicted or suffered.

  Reluctantly, Worf realized there was only one way to learn more—and he steeled himself for it. Seeing the Udakhs in verbal melee, he forced himself to step between them. “I have been talking to the others, Lord Udakh, about the great battle—”

  “Why? They can’t tell you much,” Udakh said. The squat Klingon adjusted his robe. “The heroics were all mine.”

  “I see.” Worf glanced at Udakh’s missing arm. “A battle wound from Gamaral?”

  His wife laughed. “That was lost when I caught him with a serving woman.” It was on a tropical vacation far from medical attention, she elaborated; the wound from the skewer grew gangrenous. “I would have been within my rights to quarter him.”

  Udakh’s irritation rose. “Enough!” He started hobbling from the chamber, pushing past his wife.

  Worf followed him outside, hoping to hear more about the battle. “The House of Kruge brought five K’tinga-class battle cruisers to Gamaral,” he said. “You were aboard one?”

  “Of course. Ours forced their lead general’s vessel to the surface. The miserable traitors! A glorious fight. One for the ages!”

  “You fought hand-to-hand, then?”

  “I led those who did. My role was very important, very important.” Udakh stopped in the hallway and looked up at Worf. “It was a magnificent battle—everyone knows about it. Surely you’ve heard the tales before?”

  “No.”

  “And you call yourself a Klingon.” Looking back, Udakh saw his wife approaching—which caused the old man to quicken his pace. “Look, I don’t have time for stories, Commander. You’ll hear all you want at the celebration, I’m sure.”

  “I am sure,” Worf said. He stepped to the side to allow Lady Udakh to follow her husband down the hall. By the time the bickering started again, Worf was walking in the opposite direction, thrusters on full.

  • • •

  Worf had never been fond of senior staff meetings, but the one Picard called together in the final hours before their arrival at Gamaral had been a gift. It had meant he’d only had time for eight more frustrating visits with other nobles. He didn’t think he had the patience for nine.

  Family historian was one of Galdor’s roles, and Worf had expected that the gin’tak might be able to tell him more about the battle than people who were actually there. But the first officer had only caught glances of Galdor in passing. The gin’tak had been in constant motion since boarding Enterprise, too busy to talk. The commander fully understood. He’d only had to deal with the Krugeites for a day. Galdor was their keeper for life.

  The gin’tak had definitely made an impression on Picard, who was in communication with Admiral Riker when the meeting convened.

  “Are the personalities manageable?” the admiral asked.

  “It really hasn’t been a problem. They have quite the wrangler in Galdor.” Picard grinned and shook his head. “Now, there’s a man who would make short work of the worst diplomatic summit.”

  “Great. He can have my job.” Riker explained his latest dilemma: he had delivered Alexander Rozhenko to Qo’noS, just in time to find that the Kinshaya had disinvited themselves from the H’atorian Conference. “Martok swears he didn’t do anything to provoke them—though it doesn’t take much. The Kinshaya are claiming offense that we’d schedule a summit during a religious holiday.”

  Geordi La Forge chuckled. “Every day’s some kind of holiday with the Kinshaya.”

  Chen piped up, “If I may, Admiral—Commander La Forge is right. The Kinshaya may be in their Oraculade. Every thirty-first celestial year they spend deep in prayer, imploring their gods to return.”

  “A year,” Riker said. “Great. Are they allowed to do anything else?”

  “Oh, sure,” Chen said. “But I wouldn’t put it past them to use it as an excuse to beg off the negotiations.”

  “Unfortunately, none of this works without them—or the cooperation of the House of Kruge. But sounds like you and Galdor have that part well in hand.” On the screen, someone handed Riker a padd, which he quickly scanned. “And speaking of the gin’tak—I just got a message. The Klingon High Council has dispatched Galdor’s oldest son, General Lorath, to arrive after the ceremony with a cruiser to ferry the nobles back home.”

  W
orf watched Picard. The captain appeared to be breathing a sigh of relief. He was certain Picard didn’t mind playing host on the way to Gamaral in the name of diplomacy, but Worf knew that Picard had dropped an ever-so-subtle hint to Galdor that Enterprise had a mission to get back to. Evidently Galdor had caught the hint and worked something out.

  One by one, the attendees around the table provided reports on the preparations for the busy day to come. Aneta Šmrhová, chief of security, had the floor the longest. Security of the celebration site would shift from the Federation’s advance team to Enterprise as soon as it reached Gamaral; she had already conferred with her opposite numbers with both the Diplomatic Corps and the event management specialists on the scene. Gamaral had few permanent inhabitants, most of its territory having been protected by the Federation as a nature preserve. The entire population had been screened and would be kept away from the memorial site.

  “A network of surveillance probes has been deployed throughout the system at our request,” La Forge added. “That should give us plenty of warning if anyone drops by who’s not invited.”

  “Sounds good,” Riker said. “And protection against cloaked vessels?”

  “I have a team working on a plan for that,” Šmrhová said.

  “Excellent. That sounds good, everyone.” Riker paused. “Only I haven’t heard from everyone. Commander Worf? How’s the emperor?”

  “He is well.”

  “Well?”

  Worf inhaled, unsure of how much to say about what he thought about Kahless. He was concerned about how the clone had changed since his self-imposed exile, but he decided it would not honor the emperor to air his thoughts in this setting. And, besides, he had something else troubling him that he could speak of.

  “Kahless asked me about the Battle of Gamaral, wondering what it was he was expected to commemorate. I admitted I had heard of it, but that I needed to speak to some of those who were there.” He frowned. “This I have done.”

  “And?” Picard asked.

  Worf recalled that Riker was on Qo’noS. “I do not wish to dishonor our guests—”

  “This is a secure connection, Worf. Speak freely.”

  “I had heard whispers, but never believed it could be true—especially not given Kruge’s reputation,” Worf said. “This is the most decadent, indolent house in the Empire—and I cannot believe there is enough courage among any of these so-called nobles to swat a glob fly.”

  Worf’s words hung in the air for a moment, and he sat uncomfortably as they did. Then the room broke into laughter. Including, remotely, Riker, who was the first to speak: “That’s ‘freely,’ all right!”

  The first officer, embarrassed by the response, shook his head. “It gives me no joy to say this. This was one of the great houses—but I knew it only by reputation. These people are not simply difficult to deal with. They have no honor—and the younger generations appear no better. And no two stories about Gamaral are remotely the same. All that is agreed upon is that the disloyal general and his adherents were overwhelmed by superior force—with the survivors taken back to Qo’noS for trial. But I can find no one who fired a torpedo, who held a blade.” He paused, the words weighing on him. “They all say they fought, or that their forebears did. I am simply not sure any of them ever knew how.”

  “They aren’t what one would expect from Klingons,” Picard admitted. “And yet the house seems to be thriving, based on what I saw at Ketorix. Is it because of Galdor?”

  “I would say it is entirely Galdor,” Chen said. “I don’t think any of the nobles have any responsibilities whatsoever. He keeps them on their estates, living apart and feeling in charge, and while they’re out of his hair, the house prospers.”

  Riker appeared to take it all in. “Well, this is useful,” he finally said. “Maybe that’s why Galdor and Martok thought our putting on a show would earn us the house’s appreciation. We advance the family legend for them.”

  Worf was certain that was true. But he was less certain of something else. “What should I do now?”

  Picard looked across the table at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Kahless asked me to give him a historic account of the battle. Let us say that the nobles were present only as witnesses. The fighting, if any, they might have left to mercenaries.” His eyes widened. “I think that is entirely possible. What, then, do I tell Kahless? He would sooner honor . . . I should not say.”

  Worf felt he had said too much as it was. But Picard appeared to realize the gravity of what he was talking about. He looked with alarm at Riker. The admiral rubbed his left temple. “We need this to go well, Worf. All this work . . .”

  Worf stared at the table. “I know.”

  “I do too,” Riker said after a pause. He shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing else to be done. You have to tell him the truth. Let the chips fall where they may. I know who’ll have to pick them up.”

  Seven

  VALANDRIS’S EXPEDITION

  OUTER EDGE OF THE GAMARAL SYSTEM

  The three space tugs were mighty vehicles, far larger than anything Valandris had seen during her secret sojourn in Federation space. Each ungainly vessel hauled a rectangular container four hundred meters long and three hundred meters across. According to the manifest obtained from Leotis, each cargo unit contained enormous stone blocks and columns crafted by the finest artisans. Giant puzzle pieces, they would be beamed to their proper locations on the surface, where they would form a colonnade arcing around a stone plaza.

  It made sense, Valandris thought; no one was going to dig a quarry on Gamaral for a single day’s fete. But it was hard to celebrate the cleverness of people engaged in such a misguided effort. No matter: she would have something to say about that soon enough.

  Sadly, the Orion crime lord hadn’t lasted ten seconds in battle with her. But Leotis’s information had been accurate in all respects, including when the tugs would arrive at Gamaral. Valandris’s ships had waited under cloak in the outer reaches of the system, poised like so many hensyl waiting for the vessels to emerge from warp. They moved swiftly once the mammoth haulers arrived. The tugs were within firing range in seconds—but that was not what she was here to do.

  “Close in.” Valandris still wore her face-obscuring environment suit; they all did. There would be no time to suit up later. “We’re in the corridor. Stay on your approach vector.”

  The vocabulary of the starship still sounded odd in her mouth. Valandris had been born to hunt things on land, not ships in space. But she, and her people, had taken to it quickly. Stalking was stalking: a starship was just another weapon. There was no weapon she could not learn to use.

  Still, it was a tricky thing, navigating in close to the tugs when three of her cloaked companion vessels were doing the same. But each of their captains had an assigned trajectory, and they had trained for this moment incessantly over the past several months.

  “Closing on the cargo module,” Raneer said. “Contact in four, three, two . . .” A soft clang resounded through the ship’s innards. “Footpads down.”

  “Deploy magnetic field.” Valandris rocked forward in her seat—and fell back into it as their starship came to a halt.

  “We’re level and locked,” Tharas said from the seat beside hers. “Riding pretty—like a mote fly landing on a jinarkh.”

  Maybe, Valandris thought, but we’re a 200,000-tonne insect. And one of four—as the other three cloaked ships would have performed the same action on the other exposed sides of the shipping container. The two other haulers were also now unwitting hosts to four riders apiece. “Listening station—has the beast stirred?”

  “The tug crew is talking about us,” replied a voice from behind her. “Sort of. They think their cargo shifted on exiting warp.”

  “They don’t notice they’re carrying riders?” Raneer asked.

  “Our effect on their deceleratio
n is being attributed to local conditions. It helped that all our ships landed at the same instant. Our cloaks are working.”

  They certainly seemed to be. Valandris could see the other two tugs through the viewport ahead of her. They, too, each bore invisible riders on their cargo compartments. She couldn’t detect anything there at all.

  But someone else would be looking with better eyes than hers. Contacts were already appearing on her monitor: small probes, scattered through the planetary system and covering the approach to Gamaral. And when the tug rolled, her scopes caught a glimpse of one of their objectives.

  She quickly put it on the main viewer, with magnification. “It’s here,” Raneer whispered. “Enterprise.”

  “Stay alert. We may have to move.”

  U.S.S. ENTERPRISE-E

  ORBITING GAMARAL

  Enterprise had been at Gamaral for an hour, which was more than enough time for La Forge to get a handle on operations in the system. The Federation’s advance team had done a good job, he saw from the engineering station on the bridge; the probes were in place monitoring the approaches to the planet.

  With the captain and Worf attending to other business, La Forge had yielded the center seat to Lieutenant Commander Havers; the engineering interface had larger displays, better to get the full picture of what was in the system. La Forge was looking over the Gamaral system’s shoulder—and for the last ten minutes, someone had been looking over his.

  “You’re tied in with the probes now?” Gin’tak Galdor asked, continuing to stand behind the engineer.

  “That’s right.” La Forge pointed to static points on the display before him. “We’re scanning all approaches to the system with multiple sensors.”

  “Excellent.” Galdor smiled. The Klingon had been an amiable shadow, at least. “You appear to be looking at everything out to the sixth planet.”

  “Seventh,” La Forge said, reframing the image before him. “Nobody’s going to drop in unannounced.” He looked back at Galdor. “Er—were you expecting anyone to?”