A Burning House

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

Gripping the cold metal, Wol pulled, the bars cutting into her fingers, but they did not budge.

  “Kahless’s hand, woman,” Tabona said, having apparently just gotten a look at Wol for the first time, “put some damn clothes on, would you?”

  “I heard the sounds of battle,” she said, getting to her feet. “There was no time to dally.” She turned to the big man. “Bekk Goran?”

  “Yes, Leader?”

  “Remove the trap from Bekk Kagak’s brother’s arm.”

  “Yes, Leader.” Goran strode forward, put his huge hands on the bars, and yanked them apart. The trap shattered into several pieces with an ear-splitting snap.

  Then, with a gentleness that seemed to shock Tabona, Goran guided Furhrman to his feet.

  “Bring him inside,” Tabona said. “I’ll care for him in a moment.”

  “Yes, Grandmother,” Goran said.

  That prompted a snort from Tabona, but Wol could see how Goran, after only two days, considered Tabona to be a surrogate grandmother. Even those who didn’t call her that spoke her name as if to say “Grandmother.”

  Goran moved toward the house, B’Ellor walking alongside him. Though her brother was injured, B’Ellor was mostly looking up at the big man.

  Wol said, “The bone was broken in several places, Tabona. It will take weeks to heal even with decent medical care.” Months of serving with B’Oraq had made Wol forget what most Klingon doctors were like, though the disgust with which Tabona described that option served as a fine reminder.

  “Yeah, I’ll have to change his workload, keep him off anything involving lifting. That’s not the real problem, though—I can account for work alterations due to injury, happens all the time. But the fights are in two days, and we don’t have a fighter.”

  Kagak stepped forward, puffing up his chest, a gesture that would have been more impressive while wearing something other than a nightshirt. “Yes we do, Grandmother.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, boy, you haven’t got Fuhrman’s skills—and he wasn’t gonna beat Lak in any case.”

  “I am Fuhrman’s brother, Grandmother. It is my duty to take his place. And besides which, I am a soldier of the empire. I have battled against many foes—Lak is simply the latest one.”

  Wol wasn’t so sure. For all that Defense Force soldiers were supposed to be trained in hand-to-hand combat, most of the time warriors fought with some manner of weapon. “Kagak, are you sure?”

  “The family honor is at stake,” Kagak said, his chin thrust forward.

  Tabona rolled her eyes. “Oh, spare me that nonsense, boy, this is serious.”

  “Who else will face Lak?” Kagak asked.

  “Worse comes to worse, no one will.” Tabona started walking toward the house. “Fuhrman’s the only one who stands a chance, anyhow.”

  Kagak followed his grandmother. “The family cannot go unrepresented! We will lose our honor!”

  “We’ll lose a lot more if you put your fool head in the ring and get it handed to you.” Tabona shook her head. “But you’re right, I’ll never hear the end of it if we don’t send someone. And maybe the Defense Force taught you something useful after all these years.”

  Wol chuckled at that as she went with Tabona and Kagak into the house. She assumed Fuhrman was in good hands, and she needed her rest. She suspected she would be spending a great deal of time the following day going over the particulars of fistfighting with Kagak.

  Hours later, she was awakened again, but this time by the bellowing of two Klingons. At first she thought it was a call to battle. Then she placed the second word as being “jIH,” and she realized that she was hearing two people taking the Oath of Marriage.

  Realizing that this was even less of a call to battle, Wol went back to sleep.

  Twenty-three

  Kilgore Landing Bay

  First City, Qo’noS

  Toq and Ba’el disembarked from the D’jaq, met by a stooped, elderly Klingon wearing tarnished Defense Force armor. “You must be Commander Toq,” the old man said.

  “Yes.”

  “Lorgh sent me. He told me to tell you to go ahead to the Kilgore transporter station. Your friend’ll be taken to the embassy, and you’ll be taken to meet with him.”

  “What of—”

  “I’m here to take care of the Rom body.” He shook his head, his wispy white hair flying in all directions. “Damn pointy-eared petaQpu’, lettin’ their damned corpses take up space that could be used for practical purposes.”

  As the old man entered the D’jaq, Toq started walking toward the transporter station. Ba’el struggled to keep up. “Toq!”

  “What?”

  “You hardly said a word the entire trip back.”

  Weakly, Toq said, “I thought you wanted to be alone with your grief.”

  “You could have asked me—but that would’ve meant talking to me. What did I do, Toq?”

  Toq stopped walking and regarded this woman who had been his childhood friend. But I stopped being a child a long time ago. “It is nothing you did, Ba’el,” Toq said truthfully. “There was more to this journey than avenging the loss of our families.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “I am sorry that L’Kor and Tokath died. At least we know that they died well.” He looked away. “Better than everyone else on Carraya.”

  He proceeded to the transporter station, Ba’el trailing behind him.

  The transporter operator nodded to Toq, who stepped on the platform.

  Ba’el stood next to the console and said, “Toq?”

  “Yes.”

  “I…I don’t know what to do now.”

  “Talk to Worf. He will help you as he helped me.” To the operator: “Energize.”

  A red haze surrounded Toq’s vision, and Ba’el and the transporter station grew indistinct. After a brief instant of all red, the haze coalesced into a similar transporter station, albeit in a darker room and with Lorgh standing at the console.

  Toq had no idea where he was. The Kilgore Landing Bay was designated for I.I.’s exclusive use, but everyone knew that. Lorgh’s own offices would be in a secret location that Toq doubted remained in the transporter logs more than a second after his materialization.

  Stepping off the platform, Toq pulled a padd out of his pocket. It was the one he had been studying after his argument with Tokath on the D’jaq. “Greetings, Father.”

  Lorgh regarded Toq with squinted eyes. “What concerns you, my son?”

  “Gorrik is dead. So are L’Kor and Tokath. Only Ba’el survives of those who have lived on Carraya these past eight years.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She expressed a desire to see Worf, so I sent her to the Federation embassy.”

  Nodding, Lorgh said, “Good. I have already spoken with Worf, and we both agreed that it would be best for her to travel to the Federation. Her half-breed status would leave her unwelcome in Klingon or Romulan space.” He indicated the door. “Come, let us retire to the mess hall.”

  Toq followed Lorgh out of the station’s door, down a drab, dark corridor, and into a dark room that was filled with empty tables surrounded by long benches. It was about half the size of the Gorkon mess hall. Toq had seen no one else since beaming over—he wondered if anyone else was assigned here, and if not, why the mess hall was so large.

  Walking to a replicator, Lorgh said, “Computer, two warnogs.”

  With a mild hum and a brief glow, two mugs appeared. Lorgh grabbed them and handed one to Toq. “Qapla’,” he said, holding one of them up.

  Toq took the mug and returned the salutation, but did not drink.

  After they sat at one of the long, empty tables, Toq spoke, his voice echoing off the walls of the huge space. “Father, I read the dossier on the House of Gannik that you provided for me.”

  “I expected you to.”

  “In it are transcripts of a communication between L’Kor and Gannik that indicate that he was scheduled to come to Khitomer. I also found a description of Gannik’s holdings that inclu
ded a weapons research company that was providing matériel to Khitomer—but none of it was on the official manifests signed by Commander Moraq. And then there was your own report regarding the secret development of metagenic weapons on Khitomer by Chancellor Kravokh without the knowledge of the High Council. I wondered why that report was in there, so I looked again at what Gannik was providing to Khitomer—and much of it could be used in the development of metagenic weaponry.” He looked angrily at Lorgh. “Is this why all my friends died, Father? Is this why my parents died? Because Gorrik wanted to know if L’Kor knew his father’s role in Kravokh’s conspiracy?”

  Lorgh chuckled. “Is that what you believe? I gave you all the pieces to the puzzle, Toq. I wondered if you would be able to deduce it from the evidence I provided, but you came to the wrong conclusion.”

  Toq slammed the padd down in frustration. “You speak in riddles!”

  “That is what I do for a living, you young fool,” Lorgh said angrily. “But for your benefit, I will speak plainly. Somehow, the Romulans learned about the weapons being developed. It might have been the spy that I sent Worf’s father to Khitomer to find—”

  “Ja’rod,” Toq said, “of the House of Duras.”

  “Yes,” Lorgh said testily.

  Toq knew that from Worf’s own public record, which Toq had studied at great length after his arrival on Qo’noS. He had wanted to know everything there was to know about his benefactor. The truth of Ja’rod’s dishonor had been revealed to the public shortly after Gowron ascended to the chancellorship, which he had done with the aid of the House of Mogh.

  “Or it might have been someone else. Ultimately, it does not matter—the Romulans learned of it and attacked the outpost, taking care to divert all Defense Force vessels away first. The Romulans did their work well—all the evidence of Kravokh’s weapons development was vaporized in the attack.”

  Toq shook his head. “I do not understand. Why did Gorrik attack Carraya and take L’Kor?”

  “Gorrik wished to know what truly happened at Khitomer—so he could profit by it. The House of Gannik had fallen on hard times, as Turok was the first of a series of bad investments over the past three decades. He used the last of his resources to set up that base you found him at and learned of Carraya from one of Martok’s enemies on the High Council—Kopek perhaps, or Krozek. He knew L’Kor and his father were close and thought L’Kor might know the truth.”

  Rising to his feet, Toq cried, “I still do not understand! Why did you send the three of us?”

  “I told you: Carraya must be kept secret. And so must the truth about Khitomer. Kravokh’s reign is known as a golden age among our people, and it must remain so. It was Kravokh who brought us out of the dark times following Praxis, Kravokh who made us a power in the quadrant again. That must remain his legacy, not as one who circumvented the High Council for his corrupt ends.” Lorgh gulped down his warnog in one shot, some of it dripping into his gray beard.

  Finally, Toq began to understand. “You told me before that not all your fellow I.I. agents were aware of this. That is true of Khitomer as well, is it not?”

  “Yes.” Lorgh smiled, apparently pleased that Toq had finally worked something out. “In truth, I fear for I.I.’s future. There are many newer, younger agents who attempt to manipulate the High Council for their own ends. They claim it is for the good of the empire, but I am not convinced of that. If this information fell into their hands—”

  “So you used me.”

  “Of course I did, my son.” Lorgh leaned forward. Toq could smell the warnog on his breath. “You wish to play at being I.I.? This is what it means. Oh, and don’t give me that look, boy—the only way to get at the file on Khitomer in the padd I gave you was to use a code that I never provided for you. For that matter, there was the code word you used with B’Etloj on Elabrej.”

  Toq’s eyes grew wide. “You know about that?”

  “B’Etloj told me. She was angry, not because you used the code word but because I never told her that I had any other protégés besides her.” He chuckled. “In fact, I have several, though they are ignorant of each other, and you are not any of them. You are very clever, Toq—it is why you are now first officer of the Gorkon—but there is a line between being clever and being dangerous, and you are dancing on it like a trigak in heat.”

  Lorgh got to his feet and went back to the replicator, ordering another warnog. After it materialized, he turned to face Toq, who was still sitting and nursing his own as yet untouched mug. “A toast, my son—to Tokath and L’Kor and the rest of the prisoners on Carraya.”

  For that, Toq was willing to drink. “To Pitzh and Q’Idar—and all the others of Carraya IV. May they sail with the Black Fleet in Sto-Vo-Kor.” Even if Toq believed in the afterlife, he knew that all of Carraya’s inhabitants would be on the Barge of the Dead, if anywhere, but what did it matter? It was all fiction—half-truths told to convince Klingons that there was more to the universe.

  As opposed to Lorgh’s stock-in-trade, which were half-truths told to convince Klingons that the universe made sense.

  After gulping down his warnog, Toq got up, turned his back on his surrogate father, and walked out, heading back to the transporter room. He had a ship to report back to.

  The sensation of being transported filled Ba’el with a thrill of wonder.

  She’d been transported only a few times before the attack on Carraya, and that was when she was a girl, and her parents had grown tired of her endless questions about the supply ship that made regular trips to the planet. So she’d beamed up that she might see what a spaceship looked like. That desire had been satisfied, and she also got to see what home looked like from orbit—which was an amazing sight—but the thing she took with her for all her days after that was the wonderful tingly feeling of being transported.

  For years after that, she always asked to be transported every time the supply ship came, and sometimes her parents and the supply ship captain indulged her. But as she grew older, she found new things to interest her, and she stopped asking, which she knew came as something of a relief to Tokath and Gi’ral.

  After Worf, of course, she never asked either of them for anything again.

  Klingon transporters were even more wonderful than Romulan ones. Less tingly but more comforting—where the technology of her father’s people was like a mild shock, that of her mother’s people was more akin to being wrapped in a blanket.

  She materialized on the platform of a brightly lit room. On one wall was a blue emblem with three stars on it. Ba’el assumed this to represent that Federation Toq had spoken of to her.

  Three people in strange black-and-gray-and-gold uniforms were in the room, one behind the console and two standing by the door. The latter two were armed with weapons that bore a vague resemblance to the disruptors the Romulans on Carraya carried but in silver rather than green. Ba’el had never seen a species like this before, but they seemed unfinished, somehow. Smooth, flat foreheads, stunted ears, very little hair—they had almost no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever.

  A fourth was present as well, though he wore a brightly colored outfit. “You must be Ba’el,” he said. “My name is Giancarlo Wu—Ambassador Worf’s aide. If you’ll come with me, please?”

  Nodding, Ba’el stepped down off the platform and followed Wu out a door that slid apart at her approach. The technology had impressed her when she first saw it on Lorgh’s ship—all the doors on Carraya were operated by hand.

  Wu led Ba’el down a carpeted corridor. Her feet sank slightly into the dull orange rug. The bright walls were covered with tapestries and paintings that Ba’el found soothing, which she assumed to be the point. She passed doors that appeared to be made of wood with intricate designs on them.

  After turning a corner to another similar corridor, Wu turned again, and a set of doors slid apart with a quiet hiss. Ba’el followed him through the doors, which led to a small enclosed chamber. Wu said, “Second floor.”

 
The doors shut with the same hiss and then the chamber moved. Belatedly, Ba’el realized this was a turbolift. She’d used them on the supply ship but only there—everything on Carraya was at ground level.

  Where the lifts on the Romulan ships had always made her nauseous, this one was quite smooth and pleasant. She wondered if that was due to Klingon or Federation engineering.

  With a barely perceptible lurch, the lift slowed and stopped, and the doors parted again. Another unformed being—human?—sat at a wooden desk in the corridor that this lift emptied into.

  “Hi, Giancarlo,” the person at the desk said. “And you must be Ba’el. The ambassador’s ready for you.”

  “Thank you, Carl,” Wu said. He led Ba’el to a set of doors that parted at his approach.

  Ba’el found her breath catching in her throat at what she saw.

  The back wall of the huge room which she entered was made up of three windows that looked out over a magnificent cityscape. After growing up amid the modest structures of Carraya, to see such magnificent structures that climbed high into the cloud-filled sky took Ba’el’s breath away. A dark river flowed tempestuously through the center of the metropolis, and she could see one particularly imposing structure atop the highest ground near the river—she assumed this to be the Great Hall, the center of Klingon government.

  Inside the office, she saw a large wooden desk. The desk contained a workstation and several padds. The screen of the workstation was lit up with the image of an old Klingon being attacked by another Klingon whose face was masked.

  Sitting at that desk was the man she loved.

  Until this very moment, Ba’el hadn’t been sure how she felt. True, she’d fallen madly in love with Worf practically from the moment she first saw him on Carraya. Yes, she was younger then, and Worf was an impressive figure, appearing mysteriously, telling strange stories of worlds far beyond their experiences—plus he smelled wonderful. He opened her eyes to so many things.

  As the years passed, though, Ba’el wondered how much of that was youthful enthusiasm mixed with nostalgia. Did she love Worf or just the memory of Worf? And was she fixated on him now because she had nothing left?