Hell's Heart

by John Jackson Miller

  It was a small rectangular box, no larger than the palm of his hand. He was gripping it when he heard a sound from behind. His head whipped back—and he saw Valandris standing in the anteroom, pointing her rifle inside the doorway and looking furious.

  “Get out of here,” Valandris called in a low rasp. “Now!”

  Caught, Worf looked again at the curtain. He could still try to see who, if anyone, was beyond. Instead, he looked at the small paperboard packet in his hand. Swiftly, he jammed it up his left sleeve and stood, his hands raised. She eyed him warily as he backed out of the lounge—and quickly followed him through the anteroom and outside.

  “What were you thinking?” Valandris said as soon as they were outside the hut. “This place is not for you. It’s not even for me!”

  Worf’s guards, having finished with the invaders, were running up the slope toward them. She lowered her weapon as they approached the hut. Worf looked behind him to the door of the building. His chance was past. “I was looking for your leader.”

  “No one goes looking for him.” Aware she was still on the Fallen Lord’s stoop, she looked behind her to the door and spoke in hushed tones. “He goes looking for them!”

  “That’s right. He already dispatched you to steal Kahless and to kill the nobles.”

  “Not this again—”

  “Then perhaps something else.” His right arm shot out and grabbed her wrist, drawing the alarm of his guards. “I know what you did to the old man!”

  “Not so loud,” she whispered. “What old man?”

  “You have the old man imprisoned. Potok. The founder of this colony.”

  “Founder?” She wrested away—and the guards stepped to either side of Worf, their disruptors pointed at him. “A founder should actually found something worthwhile. He created ­misery—for generations unborn.”

  “He was doing what he thought was right.”

  “No, he was doing what you thought was right—your empire and its traditions. He made sure everyone felt worthless, no better than the animals we hunt. All while making sure we honed our technical skills for a return to glory—but it wouldn’t be our return, nor our glory. He made us nameless placeholders. And the bastard wouldn’t die. Even blind, he sat there pronouncing all the time.”

  “Until you hung him from the rafters.”

  “I’d have been for him taking the yoke, like Kahless. But our lord decided against that. It was one of the first things he did, last year, when he arrived.”

  Prodded by the guards, Worf clasped his hands behind his head. Conveniently, it turned his arm so no one could notice anything hidden in his sleeve. “Who is this Fallen Lord? I assumed it was Potok—because he fell from honor.”

  “Potok was never a lord. You have it wrong. We call him the Fallen Lord because he is the lord who fell—to his death.”

  “And yet he lived,” called a deep gravelly voice from behind.

  Worf turned. A Klingon dressed in the ash-gray garments of a high cleric stood in the doorway of the hut. And ash was the operative word, for his face was a jigsaw of tissue, burned long before. Kahless had said he was sent to the pit by a scarred old man, and this person certainly was. Bushy white eyebrows appeared to be the only hair on his head; Worf suspected none would grow anywhere else.

  “So this is Worf, son of Mogh,” the old man said, stepping into the light. “I wonder if you recognize me.”

  “I—” Worf started to say he did not, but the eyes made him stop. So intense, so full of self-assurance. And the voice, while rougher, reminded him of one he had heard just days earlier, watching the historical records with Picard. “No,” Worf said, taking a step back down the hill. “It is not possible.”

  “Then I have done the impossible.” A canny smile crossed his charred lips. “I am Kruge—and I have returned!”

  Fifty

  Worf was as sure of it as anything he had ever said in his life. “You cannot be that Kruge.”

  “Yet there is only one,” the scarred man said gruffly as he wandered about his sanctum. “I am he.”

  Worf stood again inside the building, in the study where Valandris had found him earlier. She and one of the guards had been invited in, as well, to watch over him; both looked terribly uncomfortable. It was clear to Worf that neither had ever been invited inside their lord’s sanctum.

  But the old Klingon had done exactly that, having wanted to speak to Worf in private. Studying one of his wall hangings, the self-proclaimed Kruge spoke again. “Tell me why you doubt me.”

  Worf had plenty of reasons, but one was enough. “Kruge died on the Genesis Planet while battling James Kirk, just over a hundred years ago.”

  “I was there,” the old man snapped, looking back at Worf in anger for the first time. “I don’t need to be reminded.”

  “Maybe you do. History says that Kruge fell into a sea of fire.”

  “Interesting. Did history see me land?”

  “What?”

  The old man hobbled around the perimeter of the room, favoring one leg over the other. “Kirk and his Vulcan cohort were transported off the Genesis Planet at the last instant. Is it so hard to believe I could have done the same?”

  “Transported where? By whom?” Worf knew enough about the story to discount the whole idea. “The Enterprise crew had control of your vessel.”

  “Ah, yes. My bird-of-prey.” Ancient eyes narrowed. “A vessel they had no idea was present, when they first arrived in the system.”

  The Fallen Lord stopped talking and made his way to the great chair, allowing Worf time to consider the implications of what he’d said.

  “You mean you had a second bird-of-prey in the area? History has no record of that!”

  “History has no record of that—nor should it.” Reaching the chair, the Fallen Lord flashed a canny half grin at Worf.

  A wispy young Klingon woman swept in, unbidden, from behind the curtain. “My Lord Kruge,” she said, helping him to sit.

  Wincing, the scarred figure settled back and let out a pained groan. The woman left his side for the curtained area and was back in a few seconds with a mug. She placed it carefully in his hands.

  “Thank you, N’Keera,” he said as she retreated again. “I take my raktajino chilled,” he told his visitors. “I have had my fill of heat.” The old man sipped.

  After a few moments, the scarred lord spoke again, staring into his cup. “As you can see, Worf, I was already afire when I was transported off the Genesis Planet. The blazing heat—the pain—was unimaginable. Healing took years. Walking took still longer.” He gestured behind him. “If it were not for the care provided by N’Keera’s grandmother—and later, her mother—I would not be here today.”

  Worf didn’t believe the tale, but hoped by prodding he could trip the old man up, potentially unspooling the truth. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you had survived? You could have returned to the Empire and led your house.”

  “I intended to.” The Fallen Lord took a deep breath. “But during my convalescence I had heard stories about my greedy relations squabbling over my estate—and then deciding to share it equally. The warriors who would have been my allies had already been defeated and discommendated. There was nothing left worth leading after that.”

  His eyes filled with malice, and his tone grew darker. “And there was only one thing I had wanted, and it was stolen from me. Long before I was able to seek revenge on Kirk, I learned he had been killed.”

  “The incident aboard Enterprise-B.” Worf knew from Captain Picard a lot more had happened after the accident in which Kirk had been lost.

  “I certainly would have sought Kirk sooner, had my body allowed it.” Aged eyes closed. “Instead of punishing him, the Federation restored his rank. The Empire tried him and failed to put him to death.” Opening his eyes, he looked sideways at Worf. “There was a Worf at that trial,
too, wasn’t there?”

  Worf thought it better to say nothing. This “Kruge” certainly knew his history.

  The old man set aside his cup and forced himself to stand. “It had all passed me by. This body was a parched shell. Empty, useless—as was the Empire.” Walking to Worf’s left, he stopped before a tapestry showing, in highly stylized manner, the major features of the Beta Quadrant. “Would that I had died before I saw peace with the Federation. It grows and grows, a cancer across the stars.”

  “Nations join the Federation of their own free will,” Worf retorted. “And the Empire is an equal partner.”

  “There is no such thing as an equal partnership.” The would-be Kruge jabbed at the map with a bony finger. “Places that should have belonged to the Empire bow instead to the Federation. Even this nebula is surrounded by the Federation. I would never have allowed that.” Invigorated by his outrage, he limped over to Worf and gestured at the Starfleet uniform. His voice became a hiss. “I would have seen a Klingon dishonored before allowing him to be dressed up like a Federation lackey.”

  Worf stood his ground. “I serve with honor.”

  The scarred Klingon regarded Worf for a long moment. “You may think so,” he finally said. He shuffled back across the room. “For myself, I saw no path. So when I was healthy enough, I became a wanderer, disdaining all things. Traveling only with my aides in N’Keera’s family—and wondering what place there was in the cosmos for true drive and ambition. Klingons no longer have it.”

  Worf looked at Valandris—and saw that she had been hanging on his every word. Then he saw the old man was looking back at her. “Which brings me to this place,” he said. “I had heard whispers of a planet where the discommendated went to congregate. I was curious to see what sort of people would be beneath the contempt of a weakling Klingon Empire.”

  “He appeared to us,” she said, almost in a trance.

  “Hail our lord,” said N’Keera, reappearing carrying a walking stick. She placed it firmly in the old man’s hand. He stepped past Worf, making for the antechamber and the exit beyond. Valandris and her companion prodded Worf to follow.

  When he did, he found the Fallen Lord outside, looking down from the hill at a gathering of Klingons. They were gutting the creatures that had attacked the camp. “I found these people,” he said, with reverence. “They have lived for a century without politics, without knowing greed—without any of the distractions of the outside galaxy.”

  He walked partially around the corner of his home and stopped. Worf and his guards followed. At the foot of the hill, young Klingons were engaged in mock battles with a variety of weapons. “Isolation, Worf, has given them unparalleled focus. Space in which to hone their talents.” He smiled. “It took countless generations for the Klingons to became the apex predators of Qo’noS. The Unsung have taken less than a hundred years to tame this world.”

  Worf stared at him. “You named them?”

  “The Unsung? Yes. One of my old lieutenants, Potok, had brought them here. I found he had kept two things alive in the people. First, a memory of who they once were and who their forebears served; that is how every Klingon here knows and respects me.”

  His expression darkened. “The second thing was shame. I realize now he used my name as a cudgel, to remind them of how they had failed my memory, of how low they had fallen. He stripped the very names from the people, causing them to wallow in their disgrace. He doused the fire inside them, that which separates Klingons from lesser beings.”

  “He killed us,” Valandris said, her voice full of resentment. “He smothered us all in the crèche.”

  “When I found out, I punished him. And I set to work breaking the chains that held Valandris and her kin.” He glanced back at Worf. “And I had tools at my disposal.” He looked behind Worf and gave a command: “Now.”

  Worf turned to see that N’Keera had followed them outside. She held a communicator. “Now.”

  He saw motion in the sky—and for a moment, he thought it was some distant flock of flying beasts descending. But as his eyes focused, he realized it was a bird-of-prey uncloaking as it made its approach to the compound.

  And then another appeared. And another. And another, all swooping downward from different directions toward the clearing east of the Hill of the Dead. Worf saw the bird-of-prey that had carried him was not the only one the Unsung had. Nearly slack-jawed, he counted as the vessels settled onto the soft ground. Eight. Ten. Twelve?

  He’d suspected it had taken the Unsung extra force to attack Gamaral, but certainly not this much. “Where did you get those?”

  “I had them built years ago, when I still had my house. They waited for me—just like my people here waited for me.” The old man gestured to the squadron proudly. “I call them the Phantom Wing. They will be the hammer with which I forge a new future—with the Unsung at my side.”

  “Hail Lord Kruge,” N’Keera said. “A living dagger, forged in fire.”

  Worf looked at the ships in continued disbelief—and then back at Valandris. His glance provoked her to speak.

  “My lord,” she said, “we would have the son of Mogh join us. He is of our kind. He has been discommendated.”

  “I told you that ruling was reversed,” Worf snapped. “The crime my family was charged with was disproven. I earned my name back.”

  “Did you?” The one who called himself Kruge chuckled darkly. “A name so easily given back could just as easily be taken again—by a regime as rotten as the one on Qo’noS.”

  “You are wrong,” Worf said. “Martok is a just chancellor. The Empire has risen to new heights of honor and achievement.”

  “Ah, yes—it is why your prefabricated ‘emperor’ retired. All is great and glorious under the Federation’s stooge.” The Fallen Lord limped back to Worf. He pulled at the collar of Worf’s now-ragged uniform, bringing him so close the Starfleet officer could feel the old man’s breath. “Imagine, Worf, if all Klingons trained as the Unsung live. You would not need false examples. You would not need songs. Their deeds would speak. Every Klingon would be emperor. Every Klingon would be worthy of the name unforgettable.”

  Worf looked into the cracked face and spoke with conviction. “It is your ‘deeds’ that concern me. Vengeance against the unarmed is not honorable.”

  Piercing eyes stared back. Then “Kruge” released Worf and turned away. “I make my own rules.”

  Worf called after him. “You must free Kahless and Potok.”

  “Potok’s fate is sealed—and the clone must pay the price for his presumption.” The old man looked to Valandris. “Return Worf to his place of holding. I will decide what is to be done with him shortly.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “In the meantime,” he said, gesturing toward the birds-of-prey, “rally the Unsung for an assembly tonight at midnight. Gather before Chu’charq. You struck my cowardly relations from hiding. This time, I would send a message that shows the Klingon Empire our full force—so they will know what awaits those who pretend to have honor.”

  Worf saw Valandris’s face brighten. “Is it time, then?” she asked with breathless zeal.

  “It is. Your training period ends at midnight. Tomorrow dawns the day of the Unsung!”

  Fifty-one

  “Could he be like me?” Kahless’s voice creaked from dehydration. “Could this Kruge be a clone?”

  “I do not know,” Worf said, bringing more water into the kennel. He’d scarcely had time to think on it, having been on medic detail since being returned to the pen by his guards. Checking on Potok, Worf had found the general drifting between fitful sleep and moments of delirium. Soon afterward, Kahless had been escorted back from his shift, a work session that had left the emperor haggard and pale. Worf had explained his encounter on the Hill of the Dead while trying to tend to Kahless’s cuts and bruises.

  Worf was sure “Kr
uge” was an imposter, but he hadn’t yet figured out how the act was being pulled off. He was fairly certain he wasn’t a hologram, given the surroundings; Kruge had walked outside the hut, where there was no sign of any devices. A clone was something he hadn’t considered before.

  “The scars made it difficult to tell how old he was,” Kahless said. “How old did you say he would be now?”

  “I do not know Kruge’s age at death,” Worf replied. “I believe he would now have to be at least one hundred forty, maybe more. I am not sure. He’d had an active career.”

  “I was aged to maturity and awakened—perhaps they could have aged him even more. But how would you produce scars like he had?”

  Again, Worf didn’t know. “What matters now is the Unsung. He’s leading them, and they are following, like members of a cult.” He had almost been able to understand Valandris’s grievances before—but this new development suggested something ominous. “He’s gathering everyone for a message he intends to broadcast.”

  Kahless stared into the pail of water before him. “I should have fought. Now I barely have the strength. Can we stop them?”

  “I cannot see how.” Letting out a deep breath, Worf sat down against the kennel wall across from Kahless. The past few days had been so trying. Not as bad as they had been for the emperor or Potok, and the Kruge family nobles had endured the ultimate hardship. Those reasons explained why he had pushed himself to remain awake and aware as much as possible, to use the relative freedom he’d been granted to find out as much as he could.

  It hadn’t been enough.

  Lifting his left hand, Worf rubbed the sweat from the ridges on his forehead. In that moment he noticed—or, rather, remembered something: the packet he’d slid up his sleeve. It had sat there, snug and forgotten, since his initial foray into the hut on the hill; meeting “Kruge” and nursing his fellow prisoners had preoccupied him so much he hadn’t even felt it. Worf pulled up his sleeve and reached for it.

  The worn paperboard box had once had a colorful picture on it; Worf could now only see the faint outline of a domed building between three towers. English words were barely visible beside it: Century of Progress.