Hell's Heart

by John Jackson Miller

  Something erupted from the bog behind him, dousing him with spray. Looking back, he saw something dark and alive struggling with the escape pod. The vehicle’s exterior lights appeared and disappeared behind tentacles. That was the thing the pod had struck on the swamp floor, he realized. The sound of rending metal only urged him on. There were times to be squeamish about swimming in ooze. This wasn’t one.

  Grunting, he fought his way ahead. There was an edge far beneath somewhere, he realized; hummocks of vegetation were just visible up ahead. Soon, he was only up to his chest, then his waist. At last, he struggled onto the island of brambles. Fallen foliage stretched ahead toward a rise: something akin to dry land. Knowing the creature would find the pod unpalatable, he scrambled forward.

  Dripping and drained, Worf collapsed to his hands and knees. He would have stayed there longer, had he not heard the meep-meep coming from the device on his back. He moved the transponder onto the ground and switched off the beacon. At the moment its only sure audience was the Unsung; once they targeted his location, they would come for him.

  They had the advantage of having hunted in these areas. But his life signs were hidden by his gear, and he expected his helmet comm might be able to pick up their chatter. Presuming “Kruge” didn’t simply send a bird-of-prey to raze the entire swamp, that would even things up a little—but only a little. Worf cursed himself for not trying to locate any of the weapons cached inside the escape pod, for some were surely there.

  No, the emergency transmitter had been the important thing, his real weapon. He could not defeat the Unsung. But Worf knew that the Fallen Lord’s message would energize the efforts of those searching for him. He had tried to give anyone watching the broadcast a clue as to where in the Briar Patch he was; the emergency transmitter would bring them the rest of the way.

  It meant making a target of himself for the entire time it was operating. He let out a deep, exhausted breath—and remembered the labors Kahless had endured, before his monstrous murder. Worf could do no less to find justice for his friend. He switched on the beacon again and replaced it on his back. Then he ran into the night.

  Fifty-eight

  “We’ve got him,” Hemtara said. Seated on Chu’charq’s bridge, she activated the audio. The beacon sounded clearly.

  “Where?” Valandris asked.

  “The Spillway.”

  That figures. Of all the directions Chu’charq had to be facing, of all the escape pods Worf could have taken, he’d happened to luck into the one combination taking him into a zone just as deadly for her people as it might be for him. The rounded basin that Omegoq was located in had been breached by a quake, causing the contents of the crater lake next door to funnel in; that had created part of the surrounding swamp. But it also had let in an untamed menagerie—and the flow generally undermined the raised paths that crisscrossed the area. Whole hunting parties had simply vanished beneath its forested canopy.

  There had to be another way. “Can you get a fix on the beacon and beam Worf along with it?”

  “If he set the transmitter down, we’d only beam it here—and then we’d never find Worf.”

  “Can’t you adjust the targeting scanners to tell?”

  “I’m not sure how to do that.”

  Valandris didn’t hear that often from her companions, least of all Hemtara—but it was understandable. Yes, Potok had insisted that the exiles not let their technical skills atrophy, and during the past year Lord Kruge had arranged for additional training. But there had been too many crash courses.

  She was about to suggest something else when the Fallen Lord entered. He looked more composed than he had on the surface. “My lord Kruge,” she said, bowing her head. “We’ve located Worf.”

  “Transport a team to him, now.”

  Holding her rifle, Valandris stepped forward. “I was thinking we might fly to him, instead.” She gestured back to the bridge controls. “It would be less risky—”

  The old Klingon responded gruffly. “All the ships of the Phantom Wing are still loading for our journey. That cannot be delayed. And you know what else needs readying.” He shook his head. “Find him yourself, Valandris. If you cannot kill him, keep as close to him as you can. If there is time, we can bombard him from above as we depart—using your team’s location to target him.”

  Valandris saluted. “We will find him.”

  Before her lord could respond, a noise came from down the hallway behind him. A low moan, speaking words that were inaudible. Valandris looked to him. “What’s that?”

  “Something I need to attend to,” he said as he turned. “You have your orders. Qapla’!”

  THE GREAT HALL

  QO’NOS

  Korgh had not been in a physical clash in a long time—­notwithstanding the recent sham at Gamaral, when the Unsung had been instructed to avoid killing the House of Kruge’s gin’tak. Yet he’d found the past few hours as thrilling as any combat he’d ever participated in.

  The councillors, a deeply interested audience for the updates being delivered by Martok’s aides, had remained on the floor, responding to every bit of news with battle cries. He’d worked the room, making sure the heads of the other houses knew how direly he, too, longed for the destruction of the nest of assassins. He was older than many present, including the chancellor; when he spoke of the need to strangle the new vor’uv’etlh in the crèche, they believed him.

  At the same time, Korgh knew the sequence of events that was transpiring on Thane—as well as what things were about to happen. What he didn’t know was exactly where in the schedule Cross currently was. Only Odrok had the ability to communicate with Thane through the chain of secret repeater stations, and they were in the process of self-destructing.

  The Enterprise, according to subspace broadcasts, was at the vanguard, screaming forward. It had encountered the same thing again and again: every repeater satellite the Starfleet vessel approached exploded. The incoming signal each repeater had been receiving was easily detectable, subspace breadcrumbs leading Enterprise farther along the trail. That trail had resolved into a spiraling path to the Briar Patch; by skipping ahead, several Klingon warships had caught up with Enterprise and were sending reports back too.

  That was all as he’d intended. The commanders of those vessels were, as the chest-thumping Martok had been certain to mention, associated with his house. Korgh learned with satisfaction that his son Lorath’s ship was still some ways off. Enterprise and Martok’s cronies would find a nasty surprise waiting for them—presuming that they did not arrive before Cross completed his preparations.

  The chancellor stood at a table that had been set up in an alcove in the council chamber, evaluating points on a holographic map. Martok had been at pains to ensure the High Council knew everything that was going on at the very second it happened. An aide entered reporting contact from a commander in the field. “Pipe the channel into the chamber so all may hear,” Martok said.

  “Commander Melk aboard Ghanjaq reporting, Chancellor.”

  “Cousin! What is your news?”

  “Seven repeater stations have self-destructed,” the woman said. “We are continuing on to the eighth.”

  Martok consulted the new point of light on his holographic map. “No doubt—the aim is the Klach D’Kel Brakt. The transmission trail is likely to break up as you enter it. You should leave Enterprise to the trail and head onward to the nebula to begin searching.”

  “I cannot, Chancellor. Enterprise has already left.”

  Korgh raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “We are the lead vessel in the search. Picard told us he was pursuing another lead and departed.”

  Korgh frowned. This was a surprise. Had Enterprise detected something that would cause it to arrive at Thane before Cross was ready? He turned to face Martok. “What kind of cooperation is this, if they abandon the hunt?”

 
Martok shot him a testy look. “I was just ordering our ship to leap ahead. I would not doubt Picard had the same idea.”

  The chancellor and his advisors returned to their analysis. Stepping away from the crowd, Korgh quietly fretted. What could Picard possibly have found?

  U.S.S.ENTERPRISE-E

  EN ROUTE TO THE BRIAR PATCH

  They have almost made it too easy, Picard thought.

  He had been suspicious from the start. The investigators were all being led somewhere at a pace of the assassins’ choosing. Why else would these Unsung still be sending their message? They were presenting their hunters with a trail.

  But Enterprise was off that trail now—heading for the Briar Patch at warp speed, following a lead suggested earlier by Riker on Qo’noS and corroborated by his team on Titan. “Glinn,” Picard said, “let’s see it again.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Dygan activated a control, and a freeze-framed image appeared on the viewscreen. Much expanded and enhanced, it depicted one of the shots of the horde of identical Unsung warriors, all standing beside their lances and looking in the same direction.

  All identical but for one, who was turned slightly to the side. The figure was pointing upward with his lance—and there was something attached to the weapon, affixed face-outward just beneath the blade. “Magnify,” Picard said.

  The view closed in. “No doubt,” Šmrhová said. “That’s the ace of clubs.”

  Riker had seen the card in just a fleeting moment, but impromptu conferences with the Titan and then Enterprise convinced the admiral he wasn’t crazy. Picard had seen images in which soldiers from Earth’s wars had affixed items and decals to their weapons and combat helmets for luck. But this was the only occurrence of any kind of personalized gear at all in the crowd—a human artifact in a Klingon colony that had been detached from interaction with the galaxy for who-knows-how-long.

  More interesting was the fact that the individual was clearly using his weapon to point to a location in the sky. Who among the Unsung but Worf knew that Will Riker had informally referred to a nebular formation in the Briar Patch as the Ace of Clubs on a previous trip? It was possible that the anonymous helmeted warrior was Worf, and that the card and lance were being used as both an identifier and a signpost. If so, it was something Worf’s captors would never have suspected—and a clue that only a handful of viewers light-years away would have gotten.

  Worf would have expected Riker to see the broadcast—and that some analyst would have eventually spotted the playing card. It was good luck—and Riker’s good eyes—that had produced a possible break. It had been enough for Picard to take Enterprise off the looping trail to the Briar Patch. “Lieutenant, report.”

  “I wouldn’t expect the planet he’s on would be in a Bok globule,” Dina Elfiki reported from the science station. “We’re operating under the assumption he’s pointing at it. Based on the latest survey, the nearby nebular structures are oriented such that there are only a few degrees of sky from which the formation would look like a club. Enterprise traversed that region on the way to Ba’ku, which is where Worf and Riker saw it.”

  “But the ace was not visible from Ba’ku.”

  “No, sir. However, there is one star system with candidate planets in that ascribed area.” Elfiki looked up at the captain. “It has never been explored.”

  “It’s about to be,” Picard said. The Klingons were already hard on the trail of the satellites; if his hunch was wrong, no time would be lost. But if it was Worf, then the commander had likely witnessed Kahless’s execution. Every minute Worf remained there he was in jeopardy.

  The captain looked to his right, where La Forge sat in the first officer’s chair. “Check the modification of our deflector shields,” he ordered. “The Briar Patch wreaks havoc on impulse drives. We’ll want every advantage when we drop out of warp.”

  “I’m already on it,” his chief engineer replied.

  Picard looked past him to Šmrhová. “Your challenge is even more complicated, Lieutenant. We’re going to need away teams at the ready—and we need to prepare for a possible counter­assault. Post sentries at every sensitive system aboard Enterprise, in case they try to board us again in response. I think it’s safe to assume the people who recorded that message are spoiling for a fight.”

  The security chief looked back at him confidently. “All three shifts are called up, Captain. We’re ready for a rematch.”

  Reassured, Picard leaned forward in his chair. He watched the stars flying by on the viewscreen and took a deep breath. If that was you, Number One, hang on . . .

  Fifty-nine

  THE SPILLWAY

  THANE

  The Unsung were out there. Their armor’s characteristics had rendered the warriors invisible to the enhanced infrared vision that Worf’s helmet provided—but that worked both ways. They could not easily see him, so long as he made few sudden moves.

  The squads looking for him—there were at least three—were in a hurry, and the noise they made had given Worf an advantage. Every so often he deactivated the beacon for several minutes at a time while he moved to where the search teams weren’t. Then he would turn it on again—and watch the teams in motion as they tried to make their way to him. Like him, they were restricted to the pathways weaving between the marshy areas, and only some of them intersected.

  Only once had he actually seen his pursuers. On his trip to the compound with Valandris, he’d seen several petrified trees arched across various paths. They had been purposefully moved and shaped, he’d realized; the Unsung clearly used them as hunting stands while in the swamp. While the transponder was off, he’d climbed atop one of the larger ones and clung there, five meters above the pathway, as four Unsung warriors went right beneath him. They had disruptor rifles; weaponless, Worf wasn’t likely to be able to overpower more than two, even if he landed on top of them.

  So Worf had stayed, waiting until they departed. From this vantage point, he had noticed something: a dark mass just off the side of the path, half-immersed in the fens.

  Alone again, he crawled down and crept over to it. It was a lesser valandris, one of the flying beasts that had attacked during his arrival. No, he was astonished to realize—it was the beast that had attacked them. The hilt of a blade could just be seen, still embedded in the brute’s neck.

  There was no doubt: the monster was dead. But it had survived a long time with its injuries, expiring recently. The luminescent food sacs on its belly still glowed, though they were only barely connected to the mother creature’s scaly skin.

  Looking back up the path—and then at the petrified arch—Worf made a decision. Cautious not to shake the corpse enough to rupture the sacs, he crawled onto the giant’s form, working his way toward the dagger as quickly as he dared. Every second he lingered increased the odds he would be seen—and every second the transponder was inactive meant he was not calling for help. He had to work fast.

  The wound was dried, he found; it took effort to free the dagger. Then he was in the water, doing surgery with it. The next step required him to remove his breastplate, leaving only his unshielded tunic; if his idea failed, no armor would save him.

  Stressful minutes later, he was finally ready. Clinging again to the top of the massive twisted arch, he removed the transponder from his back and reactivated it. Then he picked the direction opposite the one where he’d last seen the searchers and hurled the unit up the trail.

  The transponder sat a dozen meters away now, half-­embedded in the muddy path. Either the durable device still worked, or it didn’t; one way or another, he was committed. Worf sank back down onto the trunk and waited.

  U.S.S. ENTERPRISE-E

  THE BRIAR PATCH

  “There’s something,” La Forge said, seated in the first officer’s seat on the bridge. “Captain, it’s an emergency beacon, emanating from the planet up ahead. It appears to be Klingon in ori
gin.”

  Picard looked to his left. “Tell me about it, Lieutenant Chen.” Chen was in the counselor’s chair at his invitation; while there was no such thing as an expert on the Unsung, she had studied the House of Kruge. Since the revelation that Potok’s exiles were involved, she had been working up profiles of what assets might be available to them.

  “It belongs to an escape pod from a B’rel-class bird-of-prey,” she said, consulting her interface. “Transmitting on a frequency the Empire retired eighty years ago.”

  “Any identification code?”

  “None, either current or obsolete. The pod’s not on the registry the Klingon Defense Force shared with us.” Chen offered, “It has to belong to one of the Phantom Wing ships, sir.”

  “I agree,” Picard said. “Red alert. Shields up. It may be a trap.” As the clarion sounded, he focused on the viewscreen and the blotchy planet, small but growing, amid the oranges and maroons of the nebula. There was still no sign of any activity in space—but the captain expected that could change soon. “Begin transmitting our findings continuously to the Klingon investigators aboard Ghanjaq. They may not get the message in this soup, but we have to make the effort.”

  “Long-range sensors indicate dense life signs on the planet,” Elfiki said. “Animal, vegetative. I also mark artificial structures clustered in one location: in a crater on the night side. No humanoid presence detected.”

  “They’re down there,” Picard said. The Unsung’s armor, he knew from Gamaral, made a wearer’s life signs difficult to read. He had enough information to decide from the several contingency plans they’d concocted. His security chief was already off the bridge, preparing to execute whichever one he named. “Lieutenant Šmrhová,” he said into his combadge, “prepare assault option Delta.”

  “Confirm Delta. Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Confirm Delta,” La Forge repeated. He touched the controls at his chair’s interface. “We are now using the navigational deflector to emit a wide-range tachyon spray.”