Forged in Fire

by Michael A. Martin

  There was only one problem: he hadn’t reckoned with just how narrow the vent was in places, particularly where it turned sharp corners. And the fact that the acoustics inside the air duct seemed to amplify every sound tenfold made him nervous almost to the point of paralysis.

  At least that meant that he could hear what the raiders were up to as their harsh, throaty speech reverberated along the narrow length of the metal conduit he was still attempting to transit despite the claustrophobically close quarters.

  “There’s the main directory,” Hikaru heard the pirate leader saying.

  “Might as well be written in Romulan,” said one of his men.

  “To your eyes, perhaps. But I see real potential here.” Hikaru could hear something that sounded like admiration in the albino’s voice.

  “Potential for what?” asked another one of the pirates.

  “Weaponization, for one thing.”

  Hikaru froze for a moment. Though he had never heard it before, the word “weaponization” evoked a frightening picture of Mom’s years of careful research into plant and microbial life being turned from its rightful purpose — feeding the Federation’s ever-increasing population — and used instead to create pain and disease and death.

  Determination not to let any such thing happen overcame Hikaru’s momentary paralysis, but only barely. He continued inching forward, and arrived at another vent grille a seeming eternity later. Curling into a ball, he turned his body in the small space, braced his back against the air conduit, placed both feet against the aluminum grille, and pushed his legs forward with all his strength. The grille resisted. He relaxed his muscles, took a deep breath, and tried again, taking care not to make any noise as he strained. No good. Undeterred, he took a breath and tried it a third time.

  A moment later the grille flew free from the aperture that held it and clattered to the hard floor tiles outside.

  Although the thing weighed little and had fallen less than half a meter, it made a clatter that could have awakened the dead.

  • • •

  “What was that?” Cheb shouted from directly behind Qagh.

  Startled by both Cheb’s surprised exclamation and the echoing clang that had precipitated it, Qagh nearly knocked the portable memory core from atop the lab’s main computer terminal. The noise, which sounded like something metallic falling or being dropped, seemed to have come from a nearby room located just beyond the far west side of the lab.

  Scowling at Cheb, Qagh moved the memory core away from the edge of the monitor and allowed it to continue downloading data. He rose from the chair where he’d been working, drew his long-barreled hand laser, and motioned with his free hand toward Cheb and the rest of his men.

  “Somebody out there might be trying to be a hero,” Qagh said as he walked cautiously toward the door, his weapon preceding him. “So let’s give him a hero’s welcome, shall we?”

  • • •

  The junction box that controlled the electrical power inputs to both the lab and the adjacent house was right where Hikaru remembered it, in a narrow utility vestibule just outside Mom’s lab, a place that both his parents had warned him many times was off-limits. He supposed they would discover eventually that he had broken that particular rule perhaps as many times as they had reminded him of it.

  It didn’t take long to find the particular switches that Dad had identified as the most dangerous ones. He wrapped his sweat-slicked fingers around them. Absurdly, he found he was looking forward to stern parental lectures once this was over, as if he were anticipating Christmases that might never come.

  His hands strained against the stiff metal levers, finally throwing all of them into the position that Dad had said could overload every circuit in both buildings.

  • • •

  A light fixture built into the ceiling abruptly exploded, showering the windowless corridor outside the main lab room in a short-lived plume of sparks.

  Abrupt, absolute, total darkness followed, punctuated by Qagh’s own curses.

  “Hand lights!” Qagh shouted, enraged. A fumbling, confused few moments later, the beam of Horen’s palm beacon speared the darkness.

  “What happened?” Cheb asked.

  “Lights went out,” Horen said, the beam jiggling as he shrugged.

  Geniuses, Qagh thought, shaking his head in disgust. “Someone overloaded the lab’s electrical circuits.”

  Realization kicked him squarely in the gut. The lab’s computers are running off those circuits, he thought. My memory cores, too. His lungs suddenly felt constricted, and he fumbled one-handed at the inhaler lashed to his belt. He sucked in a dose of his most current pharmaceutical cocktail while still holding his pistol at the ready. His breathing calmed, he tucked away the inhaler, stepped over to Horen, and grabbed the palm beacon out of his hand.

  Then he began retracing his steps back to the main computer as quickly as he could manage.

  • • •

  Doing his best to stay silent, Hikaru listened to the raiders’ angry voices from the relative safety of the air conduit. The emergency lights had just come on, casting a dim, gloomy light throughout the lab complex, and he regarded the fact that they hadn’t discovered him yet as nothing short of a miracle.

  “Get anything?” one of the pirates asked. Hikaru assumed that the emergency circuits must have also reactivated the automated translation matrix, or else he probably wouldn’t have been able to understand a word any of them were saying.

  “It’s fried,” growled another voice. Hikaru immediately recognized the harsh, angry tones of the pirate leader.

  “You won’t get anything but data fragments off that core in the shape it’s in now,” said another of the albino’s men.

  Hikaru’s fear gave way, at least a little, to a sense of triumph. Fried computers and ruined data storage modules were just one of the catastrophes his parents had worried that he might cause by playing with the junction box controls. But yesterday’s forbidden mischief, it seemed, had just become today’s brilliant, life-saving improvisation.

  “QI’yaH!” cried the albino. The translator evidently couldn’t parse what was no doubt a pungent curse, but the murderous frustration in the raider’s voice was abundantly clear.

  “What are we going to do now?” Hikaru heard one of the pirates ask.

  Several long heartbeats passed in silence as Hikaru sat in his hiding place, straining to hear the results of the pirate leader’s deliberations.

  “We’re going back to the shuttle,” the albino said at length, his voice laced with gravel and hostility. “Then back to the Jade Lady.”

  “What about the ‘hero’ down here who turned out the lights on us?”

  “Run a scan and find him. Then kill him, along with anyone else in the compound who might still be alive.”

  Hikaru’s heart raced. He gasped, though evidently not loudly enough to give away his position in the air conduit. But soon, no amount of stealth would be enough to hide him.

  “Ghuy’,” said one of the pirates, uttering what had to be yet another toxic curse. “Whatever trick our saboteur pulled also scrambled the hand scanner. I’ll need at least a kilaan or two to recalibrate it.”

  “Then forget it. Let’s go.”

  Hikaru leaned back in his narrow crawlspace, relief flooding his body like a tsunami engulfing a beach.

  “We’ll blow this complex to atoms from orbit,” the albino said.

  Fear abruptly regained its desperate grip on Hikaru’s heart.

  • • •

  Hikaru was relieved to discover not only that his parents were still breathing, but also that they were beginning to stir. Whatever weapon the raiders had used on them must have had a stun setting.

  But he also knew that he had no time to waste on rejoicing.

  “Mom! Dad! We have to get out of here.”

  Dad blinked blearily up at him as he rose to his elbows. Mom was beside him, already rising to her feet.

  “Hikaru, why are yo
u still here?” Dad asked as Hikaru and his mother helped him get his feet beneath him. “I thought we told you to run and hide.”

  Captain Hunter wouldn’t have just snuck off to hide, Hikaru thought, but thought better of saying it aloud. The last thing he wanted was to set off another one of Dad’s “where is Starfleet when we need it out here on the wild frontier?” rants.

  “We all have to get away from here,” Hikaru said. “And fast.”

  “Calm down, honey,” Mom said, wrapping her arms around Hikaru. Tears streamed down her cheeks, belying the carefully schooled calmness of her voice. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Hikaru said impatiently, and gently broke free of his mother’s embrace. He grabbed her hand, then Dad’s, and began pulling them both toward the family room door and the exit beyond with all the strength an eleven-year-old could muster.

  They stood rooted in place, like a pair of Ganjitsu’s old-growth trees. “Are the raiders still here somewhere?” Dad wanted to know.

  “No. I got up on the roof and saw them fly off.”

  “Then why do we need to leave in such a hurry?” Mom asked.

  “Because they were pretty mad when they left. They didn’t find anything they wanted, because I . . . did some stuff to the computers.”

  Mom’s eyes widened in surprise. Then she smiled and ruffled Hikaru’s hair. “Good thing I just backed up all my data off-site.”

  Dad’s eyes widened as well, but he looked more frightened than pleased. Hikaru could see at once that he understood the danger.

  “How do you know they were angry, son?”

  Hikaru tugged on his parents’ hands again. “Because I heard the leader say he was gonna blast us from space.”

  Mom and Dad briefly exchanged shocked looks. Their feet came unrooted a moment later, and the trio ran together, still hand-in-hand, toward the door, and the forest beyond.

  • • •

  As the shuttle’s engines roared back to life, Qagh noticed that he was feeling feverish again. Annoyed at his own weakness, he wiped the beads of cold perspiration from his rumpled brow.

  He said nothing to the other members of his raiding party during the little ship’s brief flight back into orbit about the border planet, whose once-promising green surface now seemed to mock him through the shuttle’s forward window from over four hundred qelI’qams below. He sat in brooding silence as Horen deftly maneuvered the landing craft back into the Jade Lady’s docking port.

  His raiding team and the rest of the Lady’s crew seemed to sense his foul mood immediately, and parted to allow him instant passage through the freebooter vessel’s maze of narrow corridors as he stalked directly to the bridge.

  As he entered the cramped control room, Qagh was gratified to note that neither D’Jinnea nor Ganik was present; that meant he’d be able to ask forgiveness rather than permission for what he was about to do. He grinned savagely, giving vent to but a minuscule portion of his rage as he pushed Golag out of the main gunner’s chair, where he’d evidently been either drilling or daydreaming. The other young Klingon appeared to be considering retaliating, then clearly thought better of it after being swept by Qagh’s glare and glimpsing the pale man’s carefully sharpened teeth.

  “What are you doing?” Golag asked as Qagh took his seat and began tapping a quick sequence of commands into the weapons console. A series of winking green lights made it obvious that he was powering up the forward laser cannon.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Qagh growled. He paused to wipe a bead of sweat out of his eyes, irritated by the brief interruption.

  “You look unwell, Qagh,” Golag said. “More than usual, I mean.”

  Qagh ignored the other man and continued pressing buttons. “You noticed. I’m touched.”

  Golag grunted. “And you’re getting ready to blow something away down on the surface.”

  “Very good. Your powers of deduction are indeed nothing short of extraordinary.”

  Qagh noticed a look of suspicion darkening Golag’s dull brow. “Does Ganik know about this?”

  “Fek’lhr take Ganik,” Qagh said as he finished fine-tuning the coordinates on the target lock controls. “This is my affair.”

  He slapped the “initiate” button with his palm. A heartbeat later, the small tactical monitor above the weapons console displayed a swiftly spreading amber-colored blossom of fire.

  That’s better, he thought as he watched the complete immolation of nearly a square qelI’qam of border-world wilderness. Anything that lived in the lab compound wasn’t living anymore.

  • • •

  2248

  The Jade Lady

  Qagh had been back aboard the Jade Lady for less than a quarter-kilaan when the hatch to his small berth slid open unexpectedly. Looking up from the small workbench where he developed most of his ad hoc medicaments, Qagh was unsurprised to see Ganik’s wide-shouldered frame coming through the narrow hatch.

  “Hope I’m not interrupting anything important, Qagh,” Ganik said, a snide edge to his voice.

  “Only the usual — research that my life literally depends on,” Qagh said, pushing aside the microscope and the petridish to which it was attached. “But does that really matter? It’s not as though you knocked before you came in.”

  The Orion grinned, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t have to knock, Qagh. I’m the boss, remember?”

  Qagh shook his head. “My boss, maybe. But not the boss. Unless, that is, you want us to make your move against D’Jinnea before we reach Qav’loS.”

  Ganik’s grin collapsed, and a shadow of fury darkened his broad face from a gentle leafy green to the color of a Romulan’s blood. He quickly closed the hatch behind him and dogged it shut before turning back to face Qagh.

  “Nicely done, Qagh,” the Orion pirate hissed, pitching his deep voice low as though still worried that someone might overhear him even through the closed door. “Why not simply post a mutiny announcement on the crew bulletin board?”

  Qagh answered with a chuckle that gave way to a momentary coughing fit. “It’s bad for your blood pressure to worry so much, Ganik,” he said after he’d gotten his breathing back under control.

  “And if D’Jinnea discovers what we’re up to before we’re ready for her, it’ll be very bad for us both.”

  “I tend to doubt that,” Qagh said.

  The older man replied in a low growl. “What makes you say that?”

  Qagh turned his chair so that he faced the huge Orion, but he didn’t bother to rise to his feet. “As long as D’Jinnea continues to need what my research produces, she won’t be able to afford to do anything permanent to me,” he said. “So if she were somehow to get wind of what’s in store for her, I think she’d probably place all the blame on you.”

  The hulking Orion’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Ungrateful whelp. I should have left you to die in the snow when I had the chance.”

  “That might have been a boon for us both,” Qagh said, nodding. “But what’s done is done. You can’t get rid of me now, can you? My research has been as profitable for you as it has been for D’Jinnea. You get weaponry, plus the means to block the pheromones she produces to keep you and the rest of the males on this ship in line.”

  “Assuming you ever get the formula right. It never lasts very long.”

  “It will be perfected in time. Like all my other labors on your behalf. Like every new bioagent I’ve developed to allow D’Jinnea to shave more decades than I can count off her true age. Neither of you could afford to dispense with me — even if you really wanted to.”

  “That’s quite a theory to test with your life.”

  “My life has been in my own hands for a long time, Ganik. The prospect ceased to frighten me when I was still in my teens. Just as you ceased to frighten me.”

  Ganik took a single deliberate step forward, towering over Qagh, his clenched fists reminding the sickly Klingon of demolition equipment.

  “Just remember
one thing, you spindly little freak,” Ganik said, grabbing the front of Qagh’s shirt and lifting him slightly from his chair. “The ‘research’ you have to do just to keep yourself alive wouldn’t be possible without my protecting you from the rest of the crew.”

  “Don’t forget D’Jinnea’s bankroll,” Qagh said quietly, trying to keep his countenance as emotionless as that of a grandmaster of klin zha. “Neither of us would be able to exist without her resources — which I’ve noticed she’s been lavishing more and more on younger members of the crew lately. Have you seen the way she looks at Cheb and Golag these days?”

  “What are you talking about?” Ganik said through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, please. You must have realized by now that she wants someone younger in her bedchamber. Isn’t that why you finally found the courage to make a move against her after all these years?”

  The Orion’s jaw muscles drew as tight as suspension-bridge cables, and he seemed to be seriously considering snapping Qagh’s neck, which would have been a trivial expenditure of effort for him. In his own way, Ganik was every bit as vain and egocentric as the youth-obsessed D’Jinnea. Qagh began to wonder uneasily if he’d finally pushed the old man slightly too far.

  As if on cue, the intercom unit on the bulkhead crackled to life. “Ganik,” said the sharp yet sultry voice of the real boss, the commander and namesake of the freebooter Jade Lady. “I need to see you in my quarters. Now.”

  Qagh contained his sigh of relief, but allowed a grin to spread slowly across his face. Though he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t his imagination, he thought he could see beads of sweat starting to form near the crown of Ganik’s shorn green scalp.

  “Sounds like you have a serious problem, Ganik,” Qagh said quietly.

  “And bring that scrawny albino with you,” D’Jinnea added.

  Ganik set Qagh gently back into his chair, and returned his grin with a rictus that chilled the smaller man’s blood.