I.K.S. Gorkon Book One: A Good Day to Die

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  The captain checked the time—it was only a few more minutes before another bat’leth drill with B’Oraq.

  Good, he thought as he looked again at the padd with the K’mpec’ s report on Brenlek. I’m in a fighting mood.

  Rising from his chair, he once again listed to the right. “Qu’vatlh!” he cursed.

  He exited the office and headed straight for the bridge’s turbolift. Morr fell into step behind him seamlessly as ever. “I will be on the holodeck,” he said to Kornan, who now sat at the first officer’s station.

  Wol was heading to the armory when she encountered two bekk s—Maris and Trant from the seventh. They both acknowledged her with a quick nod, then went back to their conversation. She might have been a Leader, but she was still only from the fifteenth. Her rank gave her the respect granted by the nod, but no more than that.

  Trant had a full, well-trimmed red beard with two braids that protruded down from his chin. For his part, Maris’s beard was somewhat weak—just a couple of thin moustache hairs that grew out of the area above the corners of his mouth and some hair on his chin. They went on with their conversation, which appeared to be about the grooming habits of Avok, the Leader of the seventh.

  Lieutenant Toq then climbed down from a ladder. Wol stood at attention at his arrival, and the two bekk s did likewise, though with less dispatch. “Lieutenant,” she said.

  “As you were,” Toq said quickly. This was Wol’s first time meeting the young lieutenant, though she had heard nothing but good things about him. According to G’joth, he had been a bridge officer who challenged the second officer when his carelessness almost got the ship destroyed. Since winning his duel and taking over the position of third-in-command, he had excelled at the position. Krevor had opined that he should have been given the first officer’s position after Tereth’s death. Meeting him now, Wol saw why that had not happened—Toq was barely old enough to have a beard, much less be one life away from captaining a warship.

  As was proper, the three of them fell into step behind Toq. Maris and Trant continued their conversation. Maris said, “I like your new beard.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Maris laughed. “It just means that I like what you have done.”

  “No one laughs at me and lives, Maris.”

  Trant’s voice was unusually harsh for one who had just been paid a compliment. Wol was about to say something when Trant struck Maris with the back of his hand, sending the other soldier sprawling onto the deck.

  Maris immediately unsheathed his d’k tahg. “So you want a fight, do you?”

  “Your jealous rantings do you ill,” Trant said with a sneer, doing the same with his own knife.

  Wol could not believe what she was seeing. She supposed that Maris could be jealous, but she had heard nothing to indicate it in the bekk’ s tone.

  “Why would I be jealous of you?” Maris said.

  “Stop this!” Wol barked.

  “Stay out of this, Leader,” Trant said. “This is between me and the dead man who dares to laugh at me.”

  Maris shook his head. “Stupid petaQ. I was complimenting you!”

  Trant thrust his d’k tahg with a shout. Maris eagerly blocked it and screamed a shout of his own. The two of them were suddenly a mass of limbs, fighting with no art, no skill. Punches, kicks, and knife strikes hit seemingly at random.

  “That is enough!” Toq cried. “Leader, help me pry these two infants apart, so I can send them to their cribs!”

  Nodding, Wol reached for Trant’s arms, grabbing one easily and pulling it behind his back. Trant growled and tried to stab Wol by thrusting his d’k tahg backward, but he had no leverage, and Wol was able to grab his other arm and keep him in place with a simple hold.

  Meanwhile, Toq hooked his left leg around Maris’s shin and brought him down. Maris let out a cry of pain, even as his d’k tahg clattered to the deck. Toq reached down, grabbed Maris by his sash, and yanked him violently to his feet.

  “Look at yourselves! Brawling over a beard? You are warriors of the seventh, and yet you behave like children!” Toq slammed Maris into the bulkhead. Then he reached down and picked up the bekk’ s d’k tahg. “This is a symbol of honor—of your very self. It should be saved for honorable combat. By using it for such a frivolous gesture—and by letting it be taken from you so easily—you dishonor yourself and this ship. I am ashamed to serve on the same vessel as the likes of either of you.” He added this last to Trant, still struggling and failing to break Wol’s hold.

  “He insulted my honor!” Trant shouted.

  Wol rolled her eyes.

  Toq spit on the deck. “He did no such thing. Are you so desperate for a foe that you manufacture one from the air?”

  Trant hesitated. “Perhaps. But when there is no foe to be had—”

  “Then you wait until one presents itself.” Toq walked up to Trant and spoke directly into his face. “There is no glory in this type of brawl. If you think there is, you belong in a tavern with drunken laborers, not on board the Defense Force’s finest vessel.” He looked at Wol. “Let him go.”

  Wol released her grip. Trant yanked his arms free in an unnecessary gesture of defiance. Then he sneered at Toq. “You have made an enemy this day, Lieutenant.”

  “I have done my duty as second officer of this ship, Bekk. And this will be reported to QaS DevwI’ Vok and to Lieutenant Lokor.”

  Wol spoke up, then. “That is not necessary, sir.” With a glower at Trant, she added, “And you have made no enemies this day. This is a matter for the troops. We will see to it.”

  Toq stared at her. A youth he may have been, but he was no fool. He knew that it was his duty to report this, but he also knew that it would only serve to cripple the seventh to no good end.

  “You are to be held responsible for their behavior, Leader,” Toq said. He handed Maris his weapon, then turned on his heel and continued to the mess hall.

  As soon as the lieutenant was out of earshot, Wol looked at both troops.

  “We are in your debt,” Maris said. “We would probably be on waste-extraction duty with the two-seventy-fifth right now if you—”

  “You are very much in my debt, both of you,” Wol barked. “You have both indeed made an enemy today, but it is not Toq—it is me. I swear to you, if I learn of any dishonorable behavior on either of your parts, I will kill you both. And I will collect on that debt, of that you can both be very sure.”

  Maris had the good grace to look vaguely contrite. Trant was still snarling.

  Then Wol turned on her heel and continued to the armory without another word.

  For the first time in nine weeks, Leskit laid eyes on Kurak.

  It was in the mess hall, which had gotten progressively quieter over the course of the last couple of months. Leskit remembered the dark days on the Rotarran, when they had lost engagement after engagement with the Dominion. The mess hall had always been quiet there, too, and the number of incidents among the crew rose to dangerous proportions. It took a successful rescue of the cruiser B’Moth and a victory against the Jem’Hadar to finally restore joy and honor to the ship. But the Rotarran was just a bird-of-prey with a comparatively tiny crew. This was a warship with a complement of almost three thousand. If this enforced inactivity went on much longer, it would make the Rotarran look like a party.

  At first Leskit was surprised to see Kurak. She generally preferred to eat in her cabin. Of course, he thought with wry amusement, perhaps the toned-down atmosphere suits her nature. Leskit had considered contriving some excuse to go to engineering at various times over the past two months, but he couldn’t convince himself of anything that wouldn’t make him look foolish. Besides, while Leskit himself was sure of his own motives, he was less sure of Kurak’s.

  The last time they’d seen each other was in his cabin on this very vessel months ago, as he was preparing to ship back to the Rotarran. He had been hoping for one final coupling, but she was due in engineering.

 
; “Perhaps some other time,” she had said, in a tone that gave Leskit hope.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Or perhaps,” and here she had reverted to the harsher tone, the one that kept all the engineers on the Gorkon in constant fear for their lives, “I will curse your name and never speak to you again.”

  Leskit had laughed, then. “I believe that’s what my mate said to me the last time we spoke.”

  “A wise woman, I’d say. Good-bye, Leskit.”

  Yes, he thought now, the next move is most definitely hers. And, since she’s had nine weeks to make it, I suspect that that is the end of it. Ah, well.

  However, as Leskit moved toward the “secondary bridge” to join Rodek, Toq, and Kornan, Kurak approached him. She held a plate of gagh—the quartermaster had finally taken some out of stasis, which, according to Kornan, had been done by way of improving morale. Leskit wondered why Kornan hadn’t ordered it sooner. In fact, Leskit’s own plate was piled high with the serpent worms, lathered in grapok sauce, and garnished with a bit of taknar gizzards.

  “Commander,” he said formally. “What do you want?”

  “It is good to see you, Lieutenant. How is your mate?”

  Leskit smiled. “You’d have to ask her. Our son is doing well, however. You’ll be happy to know that his poetry is improving with age.”

  Kurak scowled. “It could hardly get any worse.”

  Leskit had given Kurak a love poem his two-year-old had composed. It had been a ploy to get her to laugh, and at that—and other things—it worked marvelously.

  “Was there anything else, Commander?”

  “I simply wanted to tell you to be careful when you’re leaving orbit. You tend toward a course that fights the planet’s rotation. It’s an unnecessary strain on the engines.”

  Snorting, Leskit said, “It’s also an irrelevant one. This ship is hardly a fragile—”

  “I’m giving you an order, Lieutenant. Take better care of the engines.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Finally, Kurak smiled. “Then I will be forced to take action.”

  With that, she turned and left the mess hall, plate of gagh in hand.

  “What did the commander want with you?” Kornan asked as Leskit sat down.

  Toq grinned. “Finally picking up where you left off?”

  “What do you mean?” Kornan asked.

  Leskit bit into his gagh. “Our chief engineer expressed a concern over my handling of the Gorkon’ s exit from standard orbit.”

  Rodek laughed. “That’s it?”

  “What more would she want?” Kornan asked.

  “Probably what they had before,” Toq said to Kornan with a mouthful of gagh, then turned to Leskit. “Unless she found you inadequate.”

  “Unlikely,” Leskit said. “She probably realizes that she won’t be able to improve on perfection.”

  “For what it’s worth, Leskit,” Rodek said as he finished off his pipius claw, “you are the only one who has fired that particular disruptor. Her bed’s been as empty—”

  “As yours, Rodek?” Kornan said angrily. “Except I am sure in Kurak’s case it is by choice.”

  “I wouldn’t presume to guess what goes on in that woman’s head, Commander,” Rodek said—with, Leskit noted, only partial deference to Kornan’s rank.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Leskit said after a brief, ugly pause. “As I said, she probably couldn’t improve on perfection.”

  Toq gulped down some bloodwine. “There are more attractive women on this ship. Some of them are very athletic.”

  “Yes, well, that’s the only exercise they are likely to get,” Rodek said with disdain, “unless we find a planet worthy of our time and attention.”

  Gnawing on his gizzards, Leskit said, “That’s the problem with having the unknown as a foe. Sometimes it doesn’t show up for the fight.”

  “Why do they send us on such a mission?” Rodek asked. “Are we Starfleet vessels that waste time charting solar systems and studying quasars? We’re warriors. We should be engaging enemies in battle, not making maps for the generals back home.”

  “Others have engaged in battle,” Toq said. “The Kravokh and the K’mpec have both—”

  “I don’t care about the other ships!” Rodek ripped off a piece of ramjep meat from the bone. “We won a great victory on Narendra III, our captain has been inducted into the Order of the Bat’leth, and this is our reward?”

  “Patience,” Leskit said, “patience. You can rest assured, we will see battle before long.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Rodek asked.

  “Because the one constant of traveling in space is that nothing remains constant. Yes, we’re bored now, but it won’t last. It never does.”

  Toq asked, “Getting philosophical in your old age, Leskit?”

  “Perhaps. But you would do well to make use of my experience, boy.”

  “I am not a boy,” Toq snapped. “And I am also your superior, Lieutenant.”

  Leskit grinned. “My humblest apologies, Second Officer Toq, sir. I did not mean to undermine your authority.” Silently, Leskit was impressed. The boy’s grown a spine in the last few months. Good. The child who’d challenged the former second officer and killed him without any great effort had truly become a warrior. It had been hard to judge that, what with over two months of tedium, but the fire was there—and, more crucially, the assuredness.

  We’ll need that once our foe—whoever or whatever it is—decides to show itself.

  Leskit noted that Kornan had been silent. Then, without warning, the first officer gulped down the remainder of his chech’tluth, slammed the mug down on the table, glared at Leskit, then got up to leave the mess hall without a backward glance.

  “What was that?” Toq asked Leskit.

  “How should I know?”

  “You’ve served with him,” Rodek said.

  Angrily, Leskit said, “That doesn’t make me his keeper.” He finished his own bloodwine, then got up and chased after Kornan. His words to Rodek and Toq notwithstanding, Kornan’s sudden sullenness was more in keeping with the old Kornan, the one who skulked about the Rotarran like one possessed by jatyIn, and Leskit hadn’t the first clue what brought it on. And given the other growing similarities between this ship and the Rotarran of late, it’s best to cut this behavior off at the neck where possible.

  He caught up with Kornan in the corridor. “Now what—”

  Kornan whirled on him, his d’k tahg unsheathed. “Understand something very important, Lieutenant —she’s mine, unless I say otherwise. You would do well to stay away from her.”

  Leskit looked down at the blade in shock. Kornan had never pulled his blade on Leskit in all the years they’d known each other, except for good-natured sparring; based on the look on Kornan’s face, what the first officer was thinking was neither good-natured nor as harmless as sparring.

  “Who, Kurak?” he asked. “You and she are—”

  “We will be. I have sworn it.”

  Unable to suppress a bark of laughter, Leskit asked, “Have you sworn this to her? She might, after all, have something to say on the subject.”

  “That is not relevant.”

  “Oh, you think that, do you? In that case, my good friend, I suggest you pray fervently that Kahless himself returns to help you, because he’s the only one that will stay her wrath if you cross her.”

  Leskit then turned his back on his comrade and reentered the mess hall. Part of him expected the d’k tahg to lodge itself in his back, but Leskit was fairly certain that Kornan wouldn’t stab a shipmate in the back over a woman.

  Of course, he hadn’t expected Kornan to take an interest in Kurak—nor for her to return the favor, though all the evidence indicated that she hadn’t yet.

  Let them do as they wish, Leskit thought, suddenly feeling very tired. I’m too old for games. As Toq said, there are other women on this ship.

  B’Oraq watched as Klag sparred with Morr. The young bekk wa
s one of the most proficient bat’leth fighters on the Gorkon—which was both why he had been assigned to be Klag’s bodyguard and why Klag now used him as a sparring partner as he relearned the weapon.

  At first, Klag had fought against holographic foes, but the captain himself found them unsatisfying after a certain point. They were useful in order for him to refamiliarize himself with the basic maneuvers—the parries, the thrusts, the defenses—but in order to truly regain his form, he needed to fight against a foe with instincts.

  And nobody on this ship has better instincts than Morr, she thought.

  Certainly Klag didn’t. The captain was trying his best, and Morr was very obviously holding back, yet Morr still had the upper hand.

  Klag swung his bat’leth around, leading with his right hand. Morr parried the blow easily by holding his bat’leth vertically braced against his entire left arm, then raised that arm upward to parry, throwing Klag backward. He then guided his weapon around into a downward stroke with his left arm, which was a much slower maneuver than doing the same with his right—which would have been a quick upthrust, as opposed to the full second it took to bring the weapon back down with his left arm. B’Oraq knew that Morr was doing this to make things easier on Klag, and wondered if Klag himself realized it.

  Metal clashed against metal as Klag—barely—was able to parry the blow. Had Morr chosen to thrust with his right arm, Klag would not have been able to defend himself.

  Nine weeks, and he can barely defend a simple thrust. This is not good.

  What concerned B’Oraq the most was that the only thing she saw in Klag’s eyes was fatigue. No fire, no bloodlust—and not nearly enough interest in what he was doing. That’s been a shipwide problem these past few weeks.

  Again, Klag swung around, leading with his right arm, and again Morr parried, but this time he simply shoved his weapon forward, then rotated the weapon ninety degrees, slamming the outermost of the four blades into Klag’s left forearm. His uniform protected him from the blade, but the impact was sufficient to make him lose his grip on the bat’leth. Morr then slammed the hilt into Klag’s jaw, and the captain fell to the deck.