Obsidian Alliances

by Peter David

“—a bad idea, yes. Unfortunately, Gul Evek had other ideas. Trust me, if we hadn’t gone into the Badlands when we did, misaligned injectors would’ve been the least of our problems.”

  She got nose-to-nose with him—or as close as she could, given their differences in height. “Oh, please, you’ve been dodging the Alliance for a year now. And Evek’s got all the brains God gave a glob fly. You could’ve gotten away from him with one hand tied behind your back.”

  “I didn’t want to take the chance. Besides, I trusted you to keep the ship together. Are you saying you can’t handle a little trip to the Badlands just because some injector’s offline? That’s not the Kate Janeway I hired. Maybe I should let Annika take over.”

  She laughed viciously. “Go ahead! It’ll be fun to watch the ship explode as soon as you go to warp.”

  “Face it, she’s twice the engineer you’ll ever be,” Chakotay said with a sneer.

  “She’d be lucky to be half the engineer I am. Maybe I should let her take over. There’s plenty of people in this rebellion who need a good mechanic. Smiley can’t be everywhere, after all.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and do that?”

  “Maybe I will!”

  “Good!”

  “Good!”

  Then he grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her close to him, and kissed her with violent intensity, his lips pressed hard against hers, their tongues snaking around each other as he pressed her close by grabbing the back of her head.

  She wrapped her arms around him and tightened her grip, pressing their bodies together. Frantically, she started unfastening his shirt. He in turn started clawing at her coverall, to very little effect. She had gotten his shirt off, and he stood there bare-chested, still kissing her while trying and failing to get the coverall off.

  With a sigh of frustration, she broke off the kiss. “Oh, for crying out loud.” She undid two flaps and the coverall dropped completely off her shoulders and fell to the floor with a whump.

  He smiled appreciatively at her naked form as he removed his pants.

  Chakotay had no idea how they wound up, twenty minutes later, under the matter/antimatter reactor, which was clear on the other side of the engine room. All he remembered was a hungry exploration of Kate’s flesh, smooth but for the calluses on her hands and feet from her time in the mines on Cestus III. One of the many things he loved about sex with Kate was that wonderful contrast of hard and soft.

  They lay quietly together when they were both spent, a tangle of arms and legs, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat.

  After a few seconds, Kate clambered to her feet. “Next time, Chuckles, listen to me when I tell you something, all right?”

  She padded across the engine room, grabbed her coverall, climbed into it, and walked out.

  Smiling contentedly, Chakotay lay against the reactor until a crick started developing in the small of his back, and he finally got to his feet.

  Just as he located his pants and started putting them on, a familiar voice said, “Chakotay, you in here?”

  “In here, Harry.”

  The squeak of his leather outfit heralding his arrival, Harry Kim entered the engine room. “I put the prisoner in—”

  “Prisoner?” Reaching down to pick up his shirt, Chakotay paused at that word. “Neelix isn’t a prisoner.”

  “That isn’t what Seska told me. She said he was a prisoner, so I threw him in the cell.”

  Chakotay let out a long breath that was half snarl. Damn that woman. “The man was just thrust seventy thousand light-years from home, had his ship destroyed, and saw the love of his life captured by the Alliance. He’s a guest.”

  Harry’s hard face didn’t change expression. The scar that ran down from his forehead, past his left eye, and down to his chin seemed to flare a bit. “Do we know all this for sure?”

  “His story was pretty convincing, and Tuvok backed it up with some pretty solid astronomical evidence.”

  “I can make sure.”

  Shaking his head, Chakotay said, “No.” He had no doubt that Harry’s infamous interrogation techniques would get the whole truth out of Neelix, but there wouldn’t be much of Neelix left when he was finished. Besides which, Chakotay had an instinct about the alien—he was fairly sure the story Harry would get would be the same as the one Neelix told on Geronimo. “Get him out of the cell and let him join the others.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Is my entire crew going to get in my face today? “I don’t really give a damn what you think, Harry. Neelix is another victim of the Alliance, nothing more, and I promised that he’d be our guest. You and Seska have made a liar of me. Now I’m perfectly happy to choose to lie, but you made that choice for me, and I don’t appreciate it. Do we understand each other?” Without waiting for an answer, Chakotay pulled his shirt on and said, “Get him out of the cell.”

  Harry’s face had yet to change expression. “You’re the boss,” he said blandly, and turned on his heel and left, the squeaking of his leather echoing and fading.

  The “cell” was simply another cave, one smaller than the others, with only limited access. It had gained its function by remaining a piece of hollowed-out rock without the various bits of comfort and decoration that the rebellion had added to other caves over the last year or so. But still, after all he’d been through, Neelix deserved better.

  I wish I could rescue his woman, too, but that’s a forlorn hope until we get some clue where she is. Still, Neelix was an experienced pilot, and that alone would make him a useful commodity.

  First things first, though—O’Brien needs these supplies. He made his way to the cargo hold.

  5

  B’Elanna, daughter of Miral, seriously debated the efficacy of jumping atop the hardwood table and slitting the throats of the three scientists seated opposite her. They were the three project managers of Monor Base, the scientific think tank the Alliance had set up in the largest building of Ardana’s Stratos City, and B’Elanna knew she would derive tremendous pleasure from seeing their broken corpses lying at her feet, the taste of their blood on her lips.

  Well, the taste of Kurak’s blood, anyhow. B’Elanna had never tasted Cardassian blood, never having had the opportunity to kill one, so she couldn’t say how Crell Moset’s blood would taste. As for Zimmerman…She snarled. Just thinking about killing Terrans made her ill after Cestus III. Not that she could afford to kill Lewis Zimmerman in any event. He was, after all, as valued a scientist as a Terran could be, so she could not kill him without sufficient cause, and he annoyed me didn’t qualify. Miral’s intervention likely would not keep her safe a second time.

  Besides, the table was priceless, one of the few remaining pieces made from the extinct doci tree. Cleaning blood off it would cost a fortune, especially if it got in the decorative carvings.

  So she listened to the blather of Moset’s report. Or, rather, the elderly, stooped Cardassian gave his report, and she managed to keep her eyes open.

  She did not manage to keep her temper, however, once Moset said, “If I may turn the supervisor’s attention to the diagram showing our progress—”

  B’Elanna did not look at the diagram Moset called up on the screen. Instead she got to her feet and said, “Enough! I do not wish to see diagrams! I wish to know one thing, and one thing only: Can your researches provide the Alliance with anything practical?”

  Moset seemed to shrink in his chair, and he ran his hand through his iron-gray hair. “Er, well, not as yet, Supervisor, you see—”

  “Silence! That question only required a yes or no answer. From now on, Doctor, you will speak when spoken to, and answer only the questions asked. I grow weary of your delays and your toadying. Get me results, or get out of my sight.”

  “And I grow weary of you, halfbreed.”

  B’Elanna looked down to the other end of the table, where Kurak sat, a sneer on her face. The supervisor grinned. While she could not kill Zimmerman or Moset without cause, she coul
d kill a Klingon just for looking at her the wrong way.

  “You have something to say, daughter of Haleka?”

  “Yes.” Kurak got to her feet also and walked around the table, behind the cowering Moset. “You are unworthy to run this base. Indeed, you are unworthy to live. You should’ve been drowned at birth like all halfbreeds.”

  Kurak now stood face-to-face with B’Elanna, her brown eyes blazing. B’Elanna’s own eyes did not, she hoped, give away too much of her glee. She hadn’t had a good fight in ages. True, Kurak was no warrior, but B’Elanna knew she came from a House that had served the Alliance, and the Klingon Empire before it, for centuries. She could not have lived in the House of Palkar without some martial training.

  Aloud, B’Elanna said, “Regardless of who my father may have been—”

  “Your whore of a mother slept with so many Terrans, did she, that you don’t even know?”

  Don’t even care would have been a more accurate phrase. Miral loved sleeping with Terrans, as they were so wonderfully fragile, and one of them had been careless enough to impregnate her. None of them had names, though; Miral wasn’t much for conversation in the bedchamber. B’Elanna continued, “You will find that my heart is still Klingon.”

  Unsheathing a d’k tahg, Kurak smiled and said, “I will make that determination for myself when I cut it out of you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Both women looked over at the seat across from Moset, where Lewis Zimmerman sat.

  “Since this is obviously between the two of you, I wonder if I might be permitted to return to my lab? Like Doctor Moset, I can report no progress since the last staff meeting, and unlike him, I can admit it freely. I might, in fact, make better progress if I wasn’t constantly being interrupted by staff meetings. So may I be excused to get back to work while you two try to kill each other?”

  B’Elanna was torn between anger at the Terran’s effrontery and admiration for his gall.

  But before she could say anything, Kurak screamed and attacked with a surprisingly swift lunge that B’Elanna was barely able to parry with her gauntlets. Silently grateful that she had had the foresight to at least armor her wrists—the only part of her body that had such protection, which was more than Kurak had, an advantage B’Elanna planned to exploit—she pulled out her own d’k tahg. It was Miral’s, originally, and was still identified with her House, but it lacked the symbol that would have indicated that Miral had a daughter. B’Elanna never knew why Miral had never made the addition—it wasn’t as if she didn’t acknowledge B’Elanna, and she had interceded on her daughter’s behalf after Cestus III when the Alliance would have put B’Elanna to death, or worse—but it was simply the latest of her mother’s personality traits that B’Elanna expected never to comprehend.

  The first three slashes B’Elanna made were not ones she expected to strike, and indeed Kurak dodged them with ease. She was simply trying to get her bearings.

  Kurak was laughing at her. “I’ve waited a long time to slay you, halfbreed.”

  “Words won’t kill me, Kurak—and neither will you.” B’Elanna made an obvious lunge with her blade, which Kurak dodged in an equally obvious manner—one that left her right side open to a left roundhouse kick to her stomach that knocked her sideways and resulted in a crack of bone. B’Elanna immediately followed that up with a right kick to Kurak’s face, and then stabbed downward with the d’k tahg.

  However, Kurak managed to raise her arm to grab B’Elanna’s wrist with her right hand before the blade struck, then slashed at B’Elanna’s face with her own d’k tahg. B’Elanna dodged it by leaning her head back, then she head-butted the scientist, causing Kurak to let go of B’Elanna’s wrist. Kurak then let loose with a side kick that send B’Elanna sprawling.

  Both women clambered to their feet and faced each other. Kurak’s right eye was covered in blood; the spiked soles of B’Elanna’s boots had done their job well. Kurak was also breathing heavily and favoring her right side, the signs of at least a cracked rib.

  B’Elanna remained unbruised and uncut. Until that desperate side kick, Kurak had been woefully unprepared for anything other than knife strikes during this duel, making the all-too-common mistake of thinking that a knife fight meant one fought only with knives. The first lesson Miral had taught her when her mother showed B’Elanna how to fight as a child was that the entire body was a weapon. A bat’leth, a d’k tahg, a mek’leth, a tik’leth, a disruptor, a ship’s gunnery—all of those were simply tools to aid that weapon.

  “I will not be killed by the likes of you!” Kurak screamed as she wiped the blood from her eye with her sleeve.

  “You’re as poor a prophet as you are a scientist,” B’Elanna said as she feinted with a strike at her face, which Kurak raised her arms to block, then attempted a strike at Kurak’s stomach, which the scientist managed to dodge.

  Don’t get overconfident. B’Elanna could hear Miral’s voice. They’ll underestimate you because you’re a halfbreed. Your weak crest and smooth nose will give that away immediately. But just because they don’t expect you to have skill doesn’t mean they won’t.

  The fight continued for a time after that. B’Elanna could not judge how long, as she was completely caught up in the feints and blocks and strikes. Now that she knew how B’Elanna would play it, Kurak was careful not to leave herself open to a kick or punch.

  Suddenly, Kurak sliced at B’Elanna’s face with a speed and precision she hadn’t shown, drawing blood at last. It trickled down B’Elanna’s cheek into her mouth; she found the salty taste invigorating, and it gave her a desire to taste Kurak’s. She deliberately slashed wild, leaving an opening that she hoped Kurak would take advantage of.

  Kurak did, letting loose with another side kick that B’Elanna managed to roll with only because she was expecting it. Like any good scientist, she observes the data and adjusts the hypothesis to compensate. A pity this lesson will do her no good.

  Stumbling to the ground, she reached with her left hand into the hidden compartment of her right gauntlet for her weapons. They were of Terran design, originally, called churIQen, and another gift from Miral, taken off a former lover who tried and failed to escape using the circular bladed weaponry of his ancestors. Miral killed the lover and kept the weapons.

  As Kurak charged toward B’Elanna’s prone form, B’Elanna grabbed three of the churIQen and flung them. They struck the scientist’s belly with three squelchy thunks. Kurak stumbled, then, and B’Elanna administered the final blow by stabbing her in the left eye, killing her instantly. True, the churIQen would have given Kurak the slow, agonizing death she deserved, but slow deaths meant one’s opponent was still alive to try to kill you. B’Elanna preferred her foes to be deceased as quickly as possible.

  Looking over at the table, B’Elanna saw that Moset looked horrified and frightened, and Zimmerman looked bored.

  “Well,” Zimmerman said with a roll of his eyes, “that was edifying.”

  Moset said, “That wasn’t entirely fair, was it? You were to fight with daggers, not those other weapons.”

  B’Elanna grinned. “I’m alive. She’s dead. You can’t get any more fair than that.” She bent down and yanked her d’k tahg out of Kurak’s skull. Then, for good measure, she stepped on Kurak’s head, smashing her face to a bloody smear on her spiked boot.

  To the two Klingon guards who stood at the door, she said, “Dispose of this.”

  “Actually—” Zimmerman started, holding up a finger, then cut himself off and lowered his hand. “Never mind.”

  “Speak, Terran.”

  “It’s nothing, Supervisor. I was going to suggest that I might be able to use her corpse for my own work, but stepping on her head like that likely means any cranial matter is so much mulch.”

  Zimmerman’s project was an attempt to engineer telepathy in either Klingons or Cardassians, or even Terrans, thus far with no success. Any time someone died on Ardana, or anywhere nearby, Zimmerman had requested the corpse, as any brain
gave him more material to work with. He had an entire shelf filled with jars containing brains suspended in a green liquid of some sort. B’Elanna had always found it rather disconcerting, especially given the stories Miral had told her about the conquest of Triskelion.

  Aloud, she said simply, “I doubt this one’s brain would have done you much good. Now return to your labs. We’ve seen precious little results out of this base, and we’re likely to see less with her dead—not that I regret her passing, but she will be difficult to replace. Go!”

  Moset couldn’t leave the room fast enough and was gone in almost an instant. Zimmerman pushed his chair back slowly and sauntered out.

  The two guards carried Kurak’s corpse out the door, leaving B’Elanna alone in the meeting room. She took a long breath through her nose and then exhaled through her mouth, feeling better than she had in months.

  In truth, better than I have since being exiled to this place.

  She turned and retreated through the rear door to her office. Like all the spaces in the Monor Base building, it was unnecessarily large. It had a wooden desk, made of the still-common gnari-tree wood, but with decorative legs of the same design as the table in the meeting room; a small wooden chair that always put a crick in her back; two doors; and a huge window that took up an entire wall.

  That last was its one good feature, as it provided the view. Stratos City was built among the clouds above Ardana. B’Elanna could see the planet from the magnificent view half a qelI’qam above the surface. The Ardanans had built this place centuries earlier, the overseers living up here while the workers mined the zenite. When the planet was conquered by the Terran Empire, they kept the arrangement, except an imperial governor ruled from the cloud city rather than the Ardanan high adviser and council. Power returned temporarily to the Ardanan council during the brief, misbegotten reign of the Terran Republic, only to be taken forcibly by a Cardassian gul named Monor when the Alliance moved in.

  By that time, there was very little zenite left. The Terrans had been efficient in bleeding the planet dry. Since they had an entire facility in the sky, the scientifically minded Monor had converted the building where the council did their business into a place for pure research. Thus was Monor Base born.