Chapter Five​
Class-M planet Alanthal
The native Alanthalians of this continent favored sweeping, palatial architecture, not completely dissimilar to Terran French Baroque or the Green Period of Efrosian construction. It was into this mélange of blocky but garishly ornate buildings and buttresses that Lar’ragos materialized.
It took him less than a second to feel the presence of others nearby, entirely too close for comfort. He spun around, reaching for the phaser sidearm he’d requisitioned in the transporter room. With the weapon not yet halfway out of its holster, Lar’ragos came face-to-face with a chagrined looking Lieutenant Leone, decked out in an unfastened tactical vest hastily thrown on over his uniform and cradling a phaser rifle. Two of Europa’s Starfleet Marine contingent flanked the young officer.
“XO’s orders, sir,” Leone launched preemptively.
“Where the hell from?” Lar’ragos asked hotly.
“Simultaneous beam-in from transporter room three, Captain.”
Lar’ragos grunted sardonically. “Well, in that case, welcome to the party.” With that he turned and walked away, his three-man security detail trailing behind him.
The locale appeared to be a central government complex, with ostentatious bureaucratic buildings interspersed with meticulously cultivated gardens and park areas. If the planet had been subject of an attack by either or both of the intruder species, it certainly hadn’t happened here. The only things that appeared out of place were mobile Klingon surface-to-orbit torpedo batteries and disruptor cannons that had been stationed in courtyards and some of the park grounds.
The complete absence of people did trigger Lar’ragos’ suspicion, however. “Take a scan. Is there anyone around or is this all for show?”
One of the Marines tapped at the combat tricorder built into his forearm gauntlet. “I’m reading both Alanthalian and Klingon lifesigns in the surrounding structures, sir.”
The Klingon security team that intercepted them was good, very good. Lar’ragos usually had a sixth-sense for knowing when he was being watched, but the stealth-suited commandos were on them in an instant without having registered on the Marine’s tricorder.
A dozen disruptor toting men became visible simultaneously as their mimetic armor deactivated.
Lar’ragos cast a suddenly mischievous glance over his shoulder at Leone and the Marines before looking towards what he assumed to be the commanding officer of the intercept cadre. In his most guttural Klingon, Lar’ragos proclaimed, “Take me to your leader!”
They and their Klingon escorts entered a cavernous audience chamber, now emblazoned with Klingon banners bearing the imperial trefoil.
The venue was conspicuously devoid of native Alanthalians, none of whom Lar’ragos had yet laid eyes on. Brigadier Gan’Louk was seated in a large, throne-like chair, surrounded by portable computer work-stations manned by Klingon technicians. Holographic screens projected onto the walls between the gaudy imperial banners denoted activity in orbit as well as on the planet’s surface.
Lar’ragos moved away from his escorts, making a beeline for Gan’Louk. A Klingon bodyguard who interceded crumpled to the floor so quickly Leone hadn’t the opportunity to see what his captain had done to the man.
Gan’Louk looked up from a padd, clearly unimpressed and seemingly unconcerned. “That was uncalled for, Commander,” he assessed gravely.
‘What is the meaning of this outrage?” Lar’ragos hissed, his whole frame vibrating with barely contained anger.
Gan’Louk fixed the El Aurian with an inscrutable expression. “Specify.”
“You’ve invaded and conquered a pre-warp civilization as well as started hostilities with two intruder formations!” Lar’ragos fairly shouted.
“Your ship went in to transwarp drive over a standard month ago and vanished, Commander,” Gan’Louk explained in an unaccountably reasonable tone. “Now you emerge from the ether, unaware of how events have unfolded in your absence, yet frothing at the mouth and making unwarranted accusations.”
Lar’ragos pointed a visibly shaking hand at the Klingon general. “You just couldn’t pass on a chance to try and show me up, could you?”
“Have care, Commander. My patience with your theatrics wears thin,” Gan’Louk warned. “I allowed your unauthorized intrusion into what is now Klingon territory, and have thus far been a cordial host.” Gan’Louk rose to his feet unhurriedly, his eyes locked on Lar’ragos. “I am the commanding general of this theater, and I will tolerate no more insolence from you.”
Lar’ragos was unmoved. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours to gather your people and get off th—“
The crack of Gan’Louk’s back-handed strike reverberated throughout the largely stone chamber, followed by the echoing slap of Lar’ragos body hitting the floor and the surprised grunt the blow drew from him.
“Perhaps you did not hear me, Pava?” Gan’Louk stood his ground atop the dais, near the chair, looking down at where Lar’ragos lay sprawled on the ground. “You’re obviously not yourself, which is a pity. If we are going to settle our differences, I’d rather you be in full command of your inestimable abilities.”
Leone and the Marines stood by, their hands kept carefully away from their rifles as the Klingon commandos continued to hold them at disruptor-point.
Lar’ragos scrambled to his feet, his face a rictus of outrage, his eyes burning with an unnamed fury. “Get down here, and let’s do this,” he called out.
Gan’Louk threw off his outer cloak, revealing a powerful body moving beneath a thin fabric covering. Though his armor paid homage to traditional Klingon garb, it had obviously been designed to allow for ease of movement, with segmented plates that shifted fluidly with the brigadier’s frame. He spoke not another word, but stepped down to the level occupied by Lar’ragos.
Lar’ragos struck, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion in comparison to the brigadier. Gan’Louk blocked Pava’s blow and responded with a lightening-quick grab and throw that resulted in Lar’ragos rolling inelegantly across the cobblestone-like floor before finding his feet again. “You see that I did not blind you, nor tear out your throat as you taught me,” Gan’Louk spoke as if lecturing to a class of students.
Again, Lar’ragos rose to his feet, his gaze fixated on Gan’Louk. “You arrogant little shit,” he growled between clenched teeth. He moved forward with surprising speed from a dead stand-still as Gan’Louk stepped back to absorb the oncoming fury of his attack.
A flurry of blows followed, parried by equally fast defensive counters before the two men closed the gap between them and grappled furiously. Lar’ragos dropped to the ground, executing a leg-sweep that accomplished nothing more than eliciting a laugh from Gan’Louk as his leg absorbed the impact like the trunk of some great, unmoving tree.
In response, Gan’Louk reached down and snatched Lar’ragos up by the scruff of his uniform jacket before throwing him a full five meters across the chamber to collapse heavily to the floor. “Clumsy,” the brigadier assessed. “Clumsy and slow. Today, it would seem, is not your day, Pava.”
Lar’ragos let loose a guttural cry as he charged headlong towards the general. Gan’Louk stepped to the side gracefully for someone of his size, delivering a crushing closed-fisted blow to Lar’ragos’ sternum that stopped the smaller man cold in mid-stride. The El Aurian’s whole body shuddered with the force of the impact, and he sank slowly to his knees as a soft groan escaped his lips.
“I did not stop your heart,” Gan’Louk continued, “nor did I break your neck.”
Lar’ragos shook his head, rallying his reserves as he attempted to rise.
Gan’Louk touched a hand to the nape of Pava’s neck, performing a textbook Vulcan nerve pinch that immediately rendered Lar’ragos unconscious. The brigadier lowered Lar’ragos gently to the floor before standing to address the other Starfleet personnel.
“Return your captain to your ship, and tell your first officer to beam down as soon as practical,” he commanded. “Inform your ship’s surgeon that Lar’ragos is likely suffering from the aftereffects of a temporal fugue, brought on by your transwarp displacement. An infusion of neutrally-charged chronometric particles directed at his hippocampus might theoretically correct his condition.”
Gan’Louk directed his grim visage at Leone. “Do you understand your orders, Lieutenant?”
Dominic licked his lips unconsciously before replying, “I do, sir.”
The brigadier turned his back on them, waving a hand dismissively in their direction. “Then be gone.”
USS Europa
Lt. Commander Wu stalked into Sickbay, a hint of flame in her typically tightly controlled expression. She spotted the new chief medical officer examining an unconscious Lar’ragos on a biobed as a pensive looking Dominic Leone stood off to one side.
“What happened?” Wu asked, never one to mince words.
Leone came to attention as Wu’s presence registered with him. “I’m guessing a grudge match, sir. The captain started in on the brigadier, even dropped one of his security detail, and then the two came to blows. It—uh, didn’t last long.”
Wu turned to address the boyish looking Doctor Reskos. “What’s his condition?”
There was a prolonged pause as the willowy physician studied his med-scan results on a nearby monitor. “He’ll make a full recovery, Commander,” came his casual reply. The thin, delicate looking man spared the XO a quick glance, his features registering annoyance at her interruption.
“What are the extent of his injur—“ Wu began.
“Working,” Reskos cut her off mid-sentence. “We’ll talk when I’m finished.”
Rather than take offense at the doctor’s terseness, Wu turned back to Leone. “Why didn’t you try to stop him, Lieutenant?”
Leone stiffened ever so slightly at the implied criticism. “Well, it’s a toss up between common sense and the squad of heavily armed Klingons pointing distruptors at me, sir.”
Wu blinked, seeming to assimilate and dissect Leone’s response before replying. “Understood. You’re not to breath a word of this to anyone, understood? Make sure those Marines solid copy that order as well.”
“Yes, sir,” Leone responded. “The general said he wanted you to beam down as soon as possible. Not certain it was an order, but I took it that way, sir. He also offered some possible treatment advice for the captain that I passed on to the doc.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed.” Wu turned away from him abruptly and started towards the exam table.
Leone nodded curtly and stepped out the nearest exit, wisely keeping his smoldering thoughts to himself.
Wu moved closer to the exam table in time to see Lar’ragos come suddenly to life, flailing wildly, one of his hands connecting solidly with Doctor Reskos’ jaw with a resounding crack. Wu raced forward, ready to catch the doctor’s crumpling form, but the man hardly seemed to acknowledge the attack.
The doctor had absorbed the blow gamely as he pressed a hypospray to Lar’ragos’ neck, sending the captain back into the warm embrace of unconsciousness. “Unhelpful,” Reskos murmured. “Now you’ve a broken hand to go along with all your other injuries.”
He continued his examination for another five minutes before surrendering the captain’s care to a subordinate and finally acknowledging Wu’s presence. “I have an initial report for you, Commander,” Reskos announced softly.
“Go ahead.”
“His injuries are serious, but not life threatening. Blunt force trauma, likely the result of his sparring match with the brigadier.”
“He was acting peculiarly after we dropped out of transwarp, disoriented somehow...” Wu struggled to put a name to what she’d observed.
“Ah, yes,” Reskos nodded enthusiastically, motioning Wu towards a large display set into a bulkhead. He called up a rotating diagram of Lar’ragos’ brain. “The brigadier was very helpful in that respect, actually. He alerted us to a potential imbalance in the captain’s hypothalamus, which seems to have been an accurate diagnosis.”
The neurological scan expanded, zooming in on an interior portion of the brain atop the brainstem, about the size of an almond. “El Aurians' are hypersensitive to chronometric variances, such as the one we experienced when we emerged from transwarp at the wrong temporal coordinates. Such variances create a biochemical cascade in the hypothalamus, leading to the production of a number of fight-or-flight related neurotransmitters, hormones, and endorphins. That’s what caused the aberrant behavior you witnessed, sir.”
“Is there a cure?” Wu inquired.
“A treatment, yes. Bathing his hypothalamus with neutrally charged chronitons, as the brigadier recommended, has essentially reset the captain’s system. Once I’ve flushed the offending neurotransmitters from his system and he's got some rest, he should be ready to resume duty.”
Wu appeared skeptical. “So, the Klingons couldn’t have caused this, triggered it somehow?”
“I’d hardly see how,” Reskos replied. His face shifted through a series of expressions, finally settling on one that evoked dubiousness. “Is this right?” he asked.
Despite the topic of conversation, Reskos’ naïve inquiry had nearly made her smile. “Yes, that’s an adequate facial expression, given the circumstances.”
Reskos appeared pleased. “Good, thank you. I’ve been working hard at that. It’s quite amazing that I’d previously paid so little attention to humanoid non-verbal communications. Now that I’m expected to use them, I occasionally find myself at a loss as to which ones are appropriate.”
Wu shook her head. “It doesn’t help that you look like a sixteen year-old boy, Doctor.”
Reskos’ jaw dropped open in a look of abject horror. “Really?”
Wu sighed. “Too much, Doctor. That expression should be saved for when we’re boarded by the Borg. Now, if you don’t mind, back to the captain?”
“Yes, of course. Ah—where were we?”
“You were about to poke holes in my theory that the Klingons were somehow behind the captain’s biochemical crisis,” Wu prompted.
“Yes,” Reskos agreed. “I don’t see how they’d have the capability to direct such a precise reaction. Besides, it doesn’t really seem their style, does it? Subtlety, I mean?”
Wu cocked her head to one side. “The Klingons can be especially devious, Doctor. They were already practiced at cunning when my ancestors were first learning to walk upright and yours were… well, whatever the hell they were doing several hundred-thousand years ago.”
The doctor’s youthful visage smiled brightly. “We’ve been spaceborne for nearly twenty millennia, Commander. We were exploring the cosmos even then, albeit very slowly.”
It hadn’t been until his species’ First Contact with the nascent Federation that the Medusans had discovered the promise of warp drive.
“Then how can you explain why a Klingon general not only doesn’t kill the captain for daring to lay a hand on him, but then correctly diagnoses his rare condition?”
Reskos laughed aloud at that. “Why, Commander, that’s the first mystery I solved!” He walked over and lifted one of Lar’ragos’ hands. “I took genetic samples of the tissues the captain had come in contact with in order to help diagnose any possible transmitted pathogens being responsible for his condition. As you might imagine, due to their little dust up, the captain has more than a few cellular samples from Brigadier Gan’Louk on him.”
Wu was tiring quickly of the doctor’s conceited slow-reveal of his own diagnostic prowess. “And?”
“The brigadier is only half-Klingon, Commander. The other half of his genetic makeup is El Aurian.”
A long pause followed as Wu computed that new information. “You don’t suppose—“
“Oh, of course. That’s the first test I ran. Gan’Louk is confirmed as being Lar’ragos’ son.”
Wu uttered a series of colorful invectives that left Reskos clearly impressed. “Can I use some of those, by chance?”
The XO headed for the exit, not wanting to make the increasingly enigmatic Gan’Louk wait for her any longer than necessary. “Not while you’re in that body, you don’t. Honestly, Doctor, you’re over a thousand years old, I’m surprised they couldn’t find a Soong-class android body more suited to your age.”
“But…” Reskos replied to the closing Sickbay doors, “…I like this one.”
* * *​
USS Europa
The gentle daylight crescent of the planet below was visible through the observation lounge’s forward facing viewports. Two officers sat at the briefing table while Wu stood looking out at Alanthal, her back to the others.
“He’s not going to wait forever,” Counselor Liu remarked. “Especially not after the show the captain reportedly put on down there.”
“I need a game plan first,” Wu countered, her attention still fixed on the glittering ring of debris that reflected shimmering sunlight in high orbit of the planet.
“If the doctor is correct about Gan’Louk’s parentage, I’d advise that you keep away from that topic, sir.” This from Pell Ojana, seated one place over from the counselor. “Many Klingons are still highly xenophobic when it comes to matters of ‘racial purity’. It’s very likely Gan’Louk has managed to keep his mixed species origins secret, or he’d never have attained so high a rank in the Defense Forces.”
Wu turned to look at her advisors. “How far might he be willing to go in order to protect that secret?”
Liu and Pell exchanged glances and the Bajoran answered, “No telling, sir. The fact that we’re still here in orbit is a good sign. The captain’s provocation, however inadvertent, would have been sufficient reason for a less patient Klingon commander to destroy us.”
“We’re still awaiting a reply from Galaxy Station,” Liu noted, “so we don’t know if Gan’Louk and his expeditionary force even have permission to be out here in this capacity.”
Wu smiled darkly. “Klingons don’t tend to ask for permission to do much of anything, Counselor.”
Liu held up his hands in a gesture of submission. “Perhaps so, Commander, but somehow I doubt even a Klingon general wants to get on Admiral T’Cirya’s bad side.”
“Okay,” Wu nodded to herself. “I’ll go down and apologize for the captain’s actions, and seek clarification as to the Klingons’ intentions.”
“I wouldn’t apologize, sir,” Liu offered. “They might perceive that as weakness, which would be worse than the original offense of insubordination.”
"Agreed," Pell threw in.
“Then what do I say to the brigadier?” Wu snapped out of frustration.
“Ask for orders,” Pell suggested. “That infers we recognize Gan’Louk’s authority, whether or not Starfleet Command has sanctioned his presence yet.”
“Fine… good, I’ll do that,” Wu remarked as she moved for the exit.
Pell stood to intercede before Wu reached the door. “I should go with you, sir.”
Wu shook her head. “With the captain out of commission, you’re the only experienced command officer aboard while I’m planetside. Someone has to mind the store.”
In response to Liu and Pell’s earnest expressions, Wu said, “I’ll take Dominic with me, but that’s all.”
* * *​
Leone was waiting for Wu in the transporter room, and inclined her head towards the lieutenant as she entered. He was once again wearing a tactical vest and carrying a compact phaser rifle.
“Is there anything I should be on the lookout to prevent you from doing down there, sir?” he queried innocently, earning an icy look from the XO.
“Okay, I had that coming,” she replied grudgingly as she mounted the dais and took her place on a transporter pad. “I apologize for my earlier comment. After speaking with Liu and Pell, it’s clear that any further provocation would almost certainly have resulted in Starfleet casualties.”
“Nice of you to say, sir,” Leone said as he stepped atop his pad.
“If things go sideways down there, be prepared to fight our way out,” Wu instructed. “Energize.”
Leone’s response was lost in the hum of the transporter beam.
* * *​
Planet Alanthal
The Klingon command center bustled with activity as Wu and Leone were escorted to where Brigadier Gan’Louk was conferring with a number of harried looking logistics officers.
The general was delineating orbital paths on a three-dimensional wire-frame hologram of Alanthal’s immediate vicinity in-system. “The survivors from the ships we lost will need integrated into the crews of intact vessels that suffered the greatest losses,” the general ordered. “Scavenge whatever weapons and equipment we can from the wrecks and set them adrift in high orbit. We can use their hulls as bulk repair material for any future damage sustained by our larger warships.”
He dismissed his subordinates and turned to face the new arrivals. “Commander Wu, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” The large Klingon extended a hand to her in an unusually human gesture.
Wu shook the hand firmly, concealing her surprise well. “Thank you, sir.” She gestured to Dominic. “This is Lieutenant Leone, our chief security/tactical officer.”
Gan’Louk inclined his head towards Leone. “We’ve met, though not officially,” he said, referencing the earlier unpleasantness with Lar’ragos. “You did well to hold your ground without inviting a response from my soldiers, Lieutenant. It is not easy to stand by and watch a well-regarded superior self-destruct.”
Leone began to reply, but Wu silenced him with a raised hand as she answered, “The incident with our captain was unfor—“
“There is no need for human apologies,” Gan’Louk interjected. “And my issues with Lar’ragos are personal in nature, not professional. He and I will settle matters between us at a later date. Until then, we have a job to do here, wouldn’t you agree, Commander?”
“Yes, sir.” Wu answered smartly.
Gan’Louk traced lines in the air with a finger, changing the holographic image to reveal four triangular markers set at equidistant orbital points around Alanthal. “We’ve identified what we believe to be four Amon satellites. Though our sensor resolution is not as fine as your ship’s, we Klingons have over a century of experience with cloaking technology.”
“Sir,” Wu interjected. “May I ask as to the nature of your presence here? We’ve not yet received updated orders from Galaxy Station.”
“All of Taskforce Vanguard’s available ships were already tasked to other vital missions,” Gan’Louk explained without a hint of annoyance. “I volunteered the Klingon Expeditionary Force to go in search of Europa, as well as attempt to carry out your mission in your absence, should we fail to locate you.”
“I see, sir,” Wu offered.
“So, yes, we have the official authorization of Admiral T’Cirya to be here, Commander,” Gan’Louk added with just a hint of a smile. “After all, we in the Empire know how secretive the Federation has been about this threat to the entire quadrant.”
“My query was intended only to gauge the level of cooperation I’m able to offer in the absence of direct orders, General.”
Gan’Louk replied with a dry, “Of course,” before adjusting the holographic image to now include the ring of debris Wu had observed from Europa. “The attack fleets of the Briari and the Mok had already engaged in a battle for domination over the planet when we decloaked. I offered both species the chance to surrender peaceably. Fortunately for us, they were too foolish to accept my generous proposal.” He directed a toothy grin at Wu. “Pity there was nobody here to inform them that Klingon mercy is almost a contradiction in terms.”
“Both groups were completely destroyed?” Leone inquired.
“Not entirely. The Briari formation fled along their original course, yet at only one-third their previous strength. The Mok proved more stubborn. The few thousands of them that survived our onslaught have been settled on a marginally Class-M moon in orbit of the system’s second planet.”
Wu drank in the graphic, asking, “No sign of the Amon as yet, I presume?”
“No,” Gan’Louk confirmed with a detectable hint of regret in his voice. “However, with the slaughter of the Briari and Mok, we must have filled their energy reservoirs to near bursting. They will come soon enough.”
“And if they don’t?” Leone asked.
“Then we’ll employ Starfleet’s tactic of threatening the collection arrays themselves.”
Leone let out a slow breath. “Because that worked so well for everyone last time…”
* * * ​
Planet Krowtanai
Delta Quadrant
“Defensive screens have failed!” barked the weapons officer, blood leaking out from under his combat helmet.
“What the four hells are they?” the archon gasped as he clutched the arm of his command chair against the listing deck as the warship’s inertial dampeners began to fail.
“They… they are Borg, Archon!” cried a green recruit sensor officer, his voice cracking with panic.
The Archon knew of the Borg, the scourge of the Delta Quadrant, having once glimpsed one of their tactical spheres at the edge of the Righteous Hammer’s sensor range. As a young novile the cruiser to which he was assigned responded to a Krowtonan colony that had been attacked by the Borg, only to find the settlement and everyone it contained had been scooped off the face of the world.
The Borg were a force of nature; plodding, patient, advancing inexorably until their opponent had ground down, overwhelmed and assimilated. Whoever was attacking the Krowtonan homeworld in the guise of the Collective were a passionate people, and if his senses were not deceiving him, they they harbored a vicious streak that rivaled that of his own race.
Another salvo of corkscrewing missiles slashed from the nearest facet of the cube, punching through the screens of a half-dozen other Krowtonan warships, sundering all but one of them as the archon looked on in horror. Collimated beams of brilliant white scorched across the mighty orbital shipyards, blasting apart those vessels unfortunate enough to have been at anchor when this assault began.
“Route all remaining emergency power to the engines,” the archon ordered. “Our lives are forfeit, so long as our gods and our nation survive!”
“Collision course set,” the helmsman announced without hesitation, prompting a swell of pride in the archon’s chest.
“Prepare to execute.” The archon punched a series of coordinates into his display with a shaking hand. “Bring us to this course, to maximize our angle of impact against the cube’s nearest face.”
As Righteous Hammer maneuvered into position, a passing missile fractured into twenty independent disks, each one affixing itself to the cruiser’s shield bubble at equidistant intervals along the deflector’s perimeter. They emitted a focused gravimetric pulse that the shields failed to recognize as hostile, and allowed to pass through the barrier. Once inside, however, the pulses overlapped and combined, creating a brief, nanosecond-long flux that instantly liquefied all organic tissue within the vessel.
Righteous Hammer now drifted, sans crew, a lifeless tribute to the macabre genius of Amon weapons design.
* * *​
The Fire Eaters of the Krowtonan Guard burned in what at least some of their many victims must have savored as an especially ironic death.
Dozens of their mighty warships drifted, some smashed beyond operability and others beyond recognition. The great conflagrations on the planet below raged so mightily that they could be seen from orbit as plumes of ash-laden smoke stabbed the sky and were swept across vast swaths of land and sea by the planet’s trade winds.
The Krowtonan Ascendancy was an autocratic theocracy that had spread from a single world to encompass hundreds of star systems. Trillions of sentient beings now lived and died under the merciless specter of the Krowtonan pantheon of deities. Those species which could not grasp the grandeur of the Krowtonans' gods because of their biological or cultural makeup had been wiped from the faces of their respective worlds in successive waves of bloody jihad in order to make room for those more malleable in their beliefs.
The dreaded Fire Eaters, the elite of the Krowtonan Guards forces, fancied themselves religious warriors whose ferocity was gifted them by these same gods. They held themselves to be the finest combatants in the galaxy, having never before met their match.
Until today.
Zeischt of the Amon directed the assault on the Krowtonan homeworld with a surgical level of precision. The mighty Amon cube devastated all ships and orbital installations in range while cadres of Amon warriors transported to the surface to engage the Krowtonan Guard in close-quarters-combat.
The newly ensconced Amon BattleMaster was flanked by a dour Vulcan, the Starfleet Lieutenant Verrik, who watched the pitched battle with undisguised distaste.
The millennia-old Warlord Jalahar looked on silently as his protégé unlimbered the full might of their tribe’s weaponry for the first time in centuries. He remained unsure and suspicious of the newcomer’s motives, but Jalahar could not deny the new energy that Zeischt and his companions had brought to the Amon people.
Zeischt toggled a close up of the gravitic pulse weapon’s deployment against Righteous Hammer, musing to himself, “I’d call that a successful test.”
“Another of your weaponized horrors?” Verrik asked with poorly disguised contempt.
“Careful, Lieutenant,” Zeischt chided lightly. “You might have an emotional episode if you keep carrying on this way.” He spared the reticent Vulcan a quick glance. “You know who these people are and what they represent. The crimes that the Krowtonan people have visited upon their subjects are nearly equal to the depredations of the Husnock.”
“And so you kill them for what? Sport?” Verrik accused.
“This tribe has not had to enter into direct combat in centuries, while our enemy has been sharpening their teeth against some of the Alpha Quadrant’s most potent nations. If they were within our range, I’d have attacked the Dominion. The Jem’Hadar would have made for an excellent opponent. As it is, we’ve had to settle for the Krowtonan Guard.”
Verrik replied, “Despots often try to legitimize their actions, striving for moral equivocation.”
Without looking in Verrik’s direction, Zeischt asked, “Tell me, Lieutenant, are you more unsettled at the fact that we’re toppling a sadistic theocracy, or that a Vulcan is leading the invasion force on the surface?”
Verrik elected not to reply, and instead turned his attention to the holograms of the pathetically one-sided space battle raging above the planet.
Zeischt triggered the comms, opening communication with their primary planetary invasion contingent. “WarCom to BattleLeader One, do you copy?”
A’lasha’s voice came in clearly, tinged with authentic glee as her forces sliced through the stunned Krowtonan opposition in the now crumbling streets of their capitol city. “What’cha got for me, Sandy?”
Zeischt couldn’t help but smile at the Vulcan woman’s persistent flippancy. “You’re really trying to make me regret my giving you a physical body again, aren’t you?”
The woman’s laugh carried across the comms. “Absolutely, BattleMaster. Look upon your works, ye mighty, and despair!”
“Well, when you’re done insulting the poetry of my birth world, be advised that you should expect stiffer resistance as your forces approach the Citadel. Comms intercepts indicate they’ve pulled back into defensive positions, rather than coming into the streets to meet your approach.”
“That would explain why we’ve met so little push back the last few kilometers. You promised me hyper-religious zealots dying with the names of their sundry gods on their lips.”
Zeischt laughed lightly. “You weren’t complaining when you beamed into the midst of their celebratory parade. I’ll say this for you; you know how to make an entrance.”
“The revolution will be televised, motherfuckers!” A’lasha cackled as her troop skimmer slalomed between burning skyscrapers.
“You’re about two kilometers from their holiest of holies, BattleLeader. Odds are, you’ll find the fanaticism you’ve been looking for.”
“And what should I do with this Oticulon artifact when I’ve pried it from their cold, dead hands?”
“Desecrate it,” Zeischt replied. “Use your imagination. The more horrific the better. I want the Krowtonan’s slave species to see how vulnerable their overlords actually are, and how their vaunted gods didn’t intercede to save them.”
“One act of breathtaking religious sacrilege coming up, oh exalted BattleMaster. And yes, I’m twirling my hair around my finger like a mischievous Terran schoolgirl when I call you that. I trust you’ll discipline me later.”
Zeischt snorted as he moved to terminate the comlink. “WarCom most definitely… out.”
He turned to face Verrik’s scalding expression. “You know, I think I’m really more of a fan of the Classic Vulcan mindset. No offense intended.”
* * *​
USS Europa, Sickbay
Lar’ragos sat up a little higher on the biobed. “So, how big a hash of things did I make with the Klingons?” he asked, his face an unaccustomed mix of contrition and embarrassment.
“The Brigadier hardly batted an eyelash, Captain,” Wu replied, seating herself on a stool next to Pava’s bed. “He says you two will have it out later. In the interim, however, he’s focused on our mutual assignment of coaxing the Amon… Sandhurst’s Amon, into making an appearance.”
“What’s Command’s take on all this?” he inquired.
“Gan’Louk has T’Cirya’s sanction to be out here, and Galaxy Station says to give the Klingon Expeditionary Force full cooperation. As for your little dust-up with him, I’ve neglected to mention that to Command.”
Lar’ragos was not one given easily to expressions of shock, but his countenance registered his surprise. “Really?”
“As far as I’m concerned, sir, it’s a personal matter between you and the brigadier.”
He took a moment to process that. “I appreciate that, Wu.”
“One thing in return,” she countered. “You can’t ever call me, ‘First’ again.”
His ironic smile was confirmation enough, but still he added, “Done and done, Commander.” Lar’ragos slid his legs over the edge of the bed and pulled himself up into a sitting position.
“Sir? Going somewhere?”
A small sigh escaped Lar’ragos. “Time to go and try to fix things with the Kling…” he trailed off. “No, that’s not right. I need to mend an old rift with my son.”
* * *​
Klingon Compound
Planet Alanthal
Lar’ragos entered, flanked by two Klingon commandos, both of whom evidenced a casual lethality that was unnerving in its subtlety. Given that their race was not partial to restraint, the silent professionalism of these men spoke volumes about their leader, Brigadier Gan’Louk.
Gan’Louk rose to his feet at the El Aurian’s arrival. The Klingon stood a good thirty centimeters taller than the Starfleet officer, and outweighed him by at least fifteen kilograms.
The general dismissed the commandos with a wave of his hand, his flinty expression regarding Lar’ragos with undisguised distaste.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Brigadier,” Lar’ragos began.
Gan’Louk merely stared, scrutinizing Lar’ragos as one might do an insect under glass.
Lar’ragos met the larger man’s gaze, and just like that, all diplomatic pretense and military protocol dropped away, collapsing into an emotional chasm half a century in the making.
“It’s time for truth between us,” Lar’ragos said simply.
“By all means,” Gan’Louk spat in Klingon. “Speak and begone!”
Lar’ragos walked across the seized office that Gan’Louk employed as the headquarters of his expeditionary force’s occupation of the alien world. He took a long moment to pour himself a goblet of bloodwine from a bottle prominently displayed on a counter top. As he did so, Lar’ragos noted, “In all my four-hundred years, I have taken only one wife. Your mother. I despair that you never knew her.”
“One of your Klingon ‘toys’?” Gan’Louk sneered, turning Pava’s own words against him.
“If I led you to believe that, then I have yet another sin to atone for.” Lar’ragos turned around to face the general, taking a draught of the bloodwine. “Good. This is the ’38.”
“You left her to die at the hands of a rogue house,” Gan’Louk countered. “Love must have a different meaning in your peoples’ tongue.”
“Our people,” Lar’ragos corrected. “You’re half El Aurian, as much as you’ve tried to hide that fact.”
“You know full well that I’ve buried the truth of my mixed heritage. Do have done otherwise would have meant certain death.”
Lar’ragos raised the goblet in a wordless concession of Gan’Louk’s assertion. “I know what you were told. However, I did not leave her to die, and she was never in the hands of House Ket. She was seized by your uncle while I was away fighting the Tholians with the Defense Forces. You only survived because your nurse and a handful of your family’s loyal bodyguards spirited you away from Qo’noS.”
“Je’Korl?” Gan’Louk frowned. “You dare accuse the man who raised me of killing his own sister?”
Lar’ragos took another long drink from his flagon of bloodwine, girding himself. “After your grandfather’s death, Je’Korl was free to act without restraint. He’d protested my marriage to Kelendra from the beginning, and only his father’s iron will stayed his hand. The old warrior died while I was away on the Gossamer Campaigns, and your uncle took control of the house.”
“Lies,” Gan’Louk seethed, but there was a noticeable trace of uncertainty in his voice.
“I can no more lie to you than you could to me. It’s part and parcel of our gift, or our curse, depending on your perspective."
Gan’Louk turned away, his body visibly knotted with tension.
“I tried everything I could think of to rescue her, and on one occasion I very nearly succeeded. Je’Korl decided…” Lar’ragos’ voice faltered. He cleared his throat and continued, “He decided that executing Kelendra was the only way to ensure I could not recover her. The dishonor of her having taken an alien into her bed and then into their father’s house was so great that Je’Korl cut her throat with his own hands.”
Still facing away from Lar’ragos, Gan’Louk asked simply. “If what you say is true, how did I come to be raised by this very same man?”
Lar’ragos finished the wine, dropping the goblet to the floor with a metallic crash. “I joined with House Ket, your family’s ancient enemy. I was blinded by anger, desperate for vengeance, so much so that I allowed myself to be manipulated by Lord Ket. I helped to raise and train an army to destroy House Rokown, an army that Ket instead used to back K’mpec’s rise to the chancellorship.” Lar’ragos stepped over to a point just a few paces behind Gan’Louk, raising his eyes to examine a replica of Kahless’ bat’leth that hung below a flag bearing the Klingon trefoil. He reflected silently on what the symbol and the Klingon people had once meant to him.
His voice lowered as his throat constricted with the memories of those dark days. “Ket betrayed me, captured the both of us, and handed you over to your uncle as a peace offering between your two houses. As it happened, Je'Korl had discovered that he could not have children of his own. So, raising his nephew allowed the family bloodline, however secretly tainted, to continue. Ket did make the fatal mistake of believing me too valuable to kill, insisting that I continue to train his personal guard. But by the time I escaped his clutches and took my revenge on him, you were already a young man, and you called Je’Korl ‘father.’
Gan’Louk turned slowly to face Lar’ragos, his arms folded protectively across his chest in an unconscious gesture of defensiveness. “You found me on H’atoria.”
“Your uncle sent you to the finest martial academy in the empire,” Lar’ragos acknowledged. “And they in turn just happened to hire an alien outworlder as an unarmed combat instructor.”
“That first day,” Gan’Louk said in a surprisingly gentle voice, “I sensed… something. A familiarity, a comfort in your presence that I couldn’t explain.”
“We had two good years together,” Lar’ragos admitted. “Being your personal combat tutor afforded me the kind of access that would have been impossible otherwise. To your credit, it didn’t take long before you guessed the truth.”
“I’d heard the rumors since I was old enough to talk, whispers of ‘halfbreed’ and ‘bastard’,” Gan’Louk confessed. “But I felt the connection between us, the bond of blood. Once you began to teach me to listen, and how to use that skill in battle, I knew I was not fully Klingon.” The general’s expression tightened, became tinged with suspicion. “After you’d acknowledged the truth of my heritage, helped me to hone my gifts, you left me. Again.”
Lar’ragos shook his head. “I had no choice. Je’Korl’s agents found me out. If I hadn’t fled, I’d have been killed.”
“You could not take me with you?” Gan’Louk inquired with the voice of a man, but the words sprung from the long-buried agony of the child deep within.
“Where, son?” Lar’ragos asked. It was the first time he had ever addressed Gan’Louk by that title. “Drag you with me as a refugee to the Federation? What kind of life could I have offered you? You were raised to be a soldier of the empire, to lead men in battle, to bear the crest of your house.” Lar’ragos dared to reach out, grasping Gan’Louk gently by the arm. The general stiffened, but did not otherwise resist the gesture.
“Rokown was a great and noble house,” Lar’ragos continued, “the power and resources of which you now wield as its head. I could offer you nothing comparable. Instead, I tried to impart to you the skills you’d need to secure a successful future for yourself. Tearing you away from your Klingon family and your culture would have been an act of pure selfishness on my part.”
“No,” Gan’Louk spoke quietly. “It would have been the act of a father.”
A long silence followed, finally broken by Lar’ragos. “I have a belly full of regrets from my life, but leaving you behind is not one of them. I look at the man you’ve become, the leader, the husband and father. You are the best parts of two worlds, Gan’Louk; you possess your mother’s soul and your father’s steel. You have all of my strengths, and none of my weaknesses.”
“Why now, Lar’ragos? What is to be served by revealing this now, of all times?”
“The Amon are coming,” Lar’ragos replied simply. “I don’t know what will happen, or that any of us will survive what’s next. I wanted you to know that whatever you think of me, I am proud to be the father of such a man.”
Gan’Louk bowed his head in acknowledgement, and when he spoke his voice with thick with emotion. “You have had your say, father. Go in peace.”
“So I have,” Lar’ragos agreed. He moved for the exit, turning back to address Gan’Louk one last time on the threshold. “May peace find us all in the days ahead.”
“Perhaps it is too El Aurian for me to say, but I wish for the same,” Gan’Louk answered.
* * *​