Star Trek: The Hand of Kahless (47 page)

As Picard and his comrades materialized on the perimeter of Muuda’s estate, the first thing that struck the captain was the heavy-handed showiness of the place. It was not a tribute to elegance by any standard, Klingon or otherwise.

All around the low-lying
m’ressa-
wood structure, there were ornate fountains of polished marble and overgrown
tran’nuc
trees and elaborate stone paths leading through seas of ruby-red fireblossoms.

And statues. Lots of statues.

Ironically, the largest of them depicted Kahless’s epic struggle with the tyrant Molor. In this particular piece, they were locked in hand-to-hand combat, their
bat’leths
broken and lying in pieces at their feet. Both were bleeding from a dozen wounds, eyes locked, muscles straining in a life-or-death battle that would decide the fate of a civilization.

The clone had apparently noticed the statue as well. “Nice likeness,” he grunted matter-of-factly from beneath his cowl. But he said nothing more on the subject.

Of course, if the scroll were to be believed, Kahless’s encounter with Molor had been of a different nature. But if the clone wasn’t inclined to comment, Picard wouldn’t either.

There was no evidence of a security system on the grounds or around the house. Apparently, Muuda had spent all his
darsekmey
on his esthetic, unable to imagine that his deeds would come back to haunt him.

But haunt him they would, and with a vengeance. Picard and his allies would see to that.

Proceeding along one of the wildly meandering stone paths, the four of them made their way to a window in the back. Worf peered inside, then turned to face the others.

“There are warriors inside. Females as well,” he said, his mask muffling his voice. “But they all appear to be asleep, some with bottles of
warnog
in their hands.”

Kurn grunted. “Drunk. Muuda must have thrown a party with his latest infusion of blood money.”

Kahless nodded. “The same sort of blood money he used to buy this estate and furnish it with heroic images. I say we burn it down and him with it—give him a taste of what he did to those children.”

“
After
we’ve dragged some information out of him,” Kurn noted.

“Yes,” said the clone. “Afterward, of course.”

The captain looked at them with some alarm. But Worf made a gesture of dismissal, indicating it was only talk. The Klingons wouldn’t incinerate these people any sooner than Picard would.

It wouldn’t be honorable. And to some Klingons, honor was still an issue.

“Come on,” said the lieutenant.

He moved to the next window and looked through it. This time, the captain saw Worf’s lip curl in disgust. When he turned to them again, he didn’t report out loud as before. He just tilted his head to indicate Muuda was inside.

Kahless didn’t hesitate. Taking out his
d’k tahg,
he turned it pommel-first and smashed the window glass. Then he vaulted through the aperture, oblivious to the shards that still stuck to the frame.

In rapid-fire succession, the others followed. As Picard leaped through the ruined window, he saw a one-armed Klingon lying in a bath of faceted obsidian, surrounded by three levels of steps. Despite the noisiness of their entrance, Muuda was still unconscious.

But then,
warnog
had that effect. Warriors had been known to sleep for days after a particularly generous dose of the beverage.

Not so the two females who had shared Muuda’s bath. Eyes wide, they slithered out of the water and ran for the door, naked as the day they were born. But Kurn blocked their way, his drawn dagger enough of a threat to stop them in their tracks.

They hissed at him. “Let us go,” one of them insisted, showing her teeth. “We have done nothing wrong.”

“Get back,” the governor instructed, obviously not in a mood to argue the point.

Worf grabbed a couple of robes hanging on a wall rack and threw them at the females. “Clothe yourselves,” he told them. “Then find a corner and be still. Cooperate and we’ll leave you unharmed.”

Ultimately, the females had little choice. Catching the robes in midair, they put them on and relegated themselves to a corner of the room. But even then, they were far from docile-looking.

Having dealt with Lursa and B’Etor of the House of Duras, the captain knew how big a mistake it would be to underestimate the “gentler” Klingon sex. He resolved to keep an eye on the females until they were done with their business here.

Advancing to the bath, Kahless walked up the steps and reached for Muuda’s hair, which lay spread about his shoulders. Grabbing a lock in his fist, the clone tugged without mercy.

Crying out, Muuda brought a bottle out of the water with his good hand. Out of instinct, he tried to strike Kahless with it. But the clone batted it away. A moment later, it shattered on the floor, leaving an amber-colored pool on the stone.

“Muuudaa,” growled Kahless, drawing the name out, making it plain it left a bad taste in his mouth.

The Klingon in the bath looked up at him through bloodshot eyes, still half in an alcoholic stupor. But he wasn’t so drunk he didn’t know what kind of danger he was in.

“Who…who are you?” he stammered.

The clone took out his dagger and laid its point against Muuda’s cheek. “I will ask the questions here,” he said.

Realizing this was no dream, the Klingon swallowed. “Yes,” he agreed. “You will ask the questions.”

“You bought two bombs from a pair of armory workers on Ter’jas Mor,” Kahless told him. “Bombs intended for use in an academy on Ogat. But you didn’t see them planted yourself. You were merely a go-between—a middleman. Who was it you bought the bombs for?”

Muuda swallowed again, even harder than before. Obviously, he was thinking of what would happen to him if his employers discovered he had identified them. But he also had to be thinking about the more immediate danger—the masked intruders in his bath chamber.

Noting Muuda’s indecision, the clone flicked the point of his dagger, breaking the skin of the Klingon’s cheek. He winced as a droplet of lavender blood emerged.

“I asked you a question,” Kahless hissed. “I expect an answer.”

Muuda glared at him. “All right,” he said, slurring his words. “I’ll tell you. Just let me up. It is cold in here.”

The clone shook his head. “Not a chance,
p’tahk.
You will have plenty of time to warm yourself when we are done here. Now who was it?”

Seeing his ploy wouldn’t work, the Klingon acquiesced. He told them not only who was involved in the plot, but the role each of the conspirators had assumed in it.

It was just as Kahless had been telling them all along. These people were some of the most highly placed officers in the Klingon Defense Force. And there was one name that was not associated with the Defense Force, but was nonetheless more important than all the others.

“All well and good,” said Worf. “But what proof do we have that this
ko’tal
is telling the truth?”

The merchant licked his lips. “There is a way to prove it,” he replied. And he informed them of it.

When Muuda was done, the clone took his knife back and sheathed it. “That is more like it,” he said. “Now we leave you to your newfound wealth and your companions. But trust me, coward, when I say you will not have long to enjoy them. The innocents you killed will not soon be forgotten.”

Picard saw the look in Muuda’s eyes. The Klingon believed it. No doubt, it would take the pleasure out of his revels, knowing how short-lived they would be. At least, the captain wanted to think so.

With a jerk of his shaggy head, the clone advised them it was time to withdraw. The warriors in the house might come out of their drunken sleep at any moment, and it would be tempting fate to stay and lock horns with them.

Instead, Kahless slipped out of the window, and the others followed. Before Muuda and his females could sound the alarm, Picard saw the glimmer in the air that signified their transport.

Kahless and his men had barely settled in when Molor’s army began to move, charging headlong without the least bit of caution. After all, the enemy’s warchiefs expected the rebels to be helpless and exposed. Thanks to the warning Kahless had received, they were neither.

He waited only until Molor’s soldiers had moved past them and were on the verge of the rebel camp. Then, with guile and fury and righteous indignation, he attacked. The tyrant’s men never knew what hit them.

The outlaws cut through them like a scythe, harvesting death, irrigating the ground with the blood of their adversaries. Kahless searched for Edronh across the battlefield, but never found him. It wasn’t until later that he realized why. Apparently, Morath had found him first and showed him the error of his ways.

In the end, Kahless routed Molor’s men, sending away half the number that had come after him. It was his second great victory in three days. More importantly, it showed his followers they could go nose-to-nose with the best-trained army in the world.

When the combat was over, and Kahless was surveying the field with Morath at his side, he remembered another bit of advice he had gotten in his dream. Unfortunately, he could not take it literally.

A lock of hair was not a good thing to make a weapon of, no matter how cleverly it was twisted. Nor was the crater of an active volcano any place for a man who still clung to sanity.

Still, Kellein’s directions made a kind of sense if one looked at them the right way. A sword like that would be more than a means of killing one’s adversaries. It could become a symbol.

Of self-reliance. Of freedom. And ultimately, of victory.

“I need a metalsmith,” Kahless said out loud.

Morath looked at him. “Right now?” he said.

“Right now,” the rebel confirmed. “And so he will have something to work with, I will need twenty swords plucked from the hands of the enemy’s corpses. And of course, whatever he needs to make a smithy.”

His friend grunted. “Did you hear about this in your dream as well?”

Kahless nodded. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

As it happened, there were several metalsmiths among the rebel forces. The best one was Toragh, a man with short, gnarly legs, a torso like a tree trunk, and biceps each the size of a grown man’s head.

“You want what?” asked Toragh, after Morath and Porus had brought him to Kahless’s tent.

A second time, the rebel chieftain showed the metalsmith what he wanted, carving the same shape into the soft dirt. “Like so,” he said. “With a grip here in the center, and an arc here, and cutting edges all around.”

The metalsmith looked at him as if he were crazy. “I have been at this for twenty years, and I have never heard of anything like this. How did you come up with it?”

“Do not ask,” Morath advised him.

“Where I got the idea is not important,” Kahless added. “What is important, metalsmith, is whether or not you can make it for me.”

Toragh stroked his chin as he considered the design in the dirt. Finally, he nodded. “I can make it, all right. But it will not be easy. A weapon like this one will require a steady hand at the bellows, or the balance will be off—and balance is everything.”

“I will work the bellows myself if I have to,” Kahless replied. “Rest assured, you will have everything you need.”

Toragh eyed him. “And you’re certain this will help us to tear down the tyrant?” He seemed skeptical.

Kahless laughed. “As certain as the bile in Molor’s belly.”

Propelled by only a fraction of its impulse power, Kurn’s craft drifted ever closer to the subspace relay station that hung in space dead ahead. Picard had seen plenty of such stations before, but never one operated by the Klingon Defense Force.

The difference was pronounced, to say the least. Though the station’s sole function was to transmit data from one place to another, its architecture was so severe as to look almost ominous. The captain wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out to be better armed than some starships.

It wasn’t long before they got a response from the station. A lean, long-faced Klingon with a thin mustache appeared on the monitor screen set into Kurn’s console. His garb suggested that he was in command of the facility.

“Who are you and what do you want?” the Klingon grated. His eyes, one dark brown and the other a sea green, demanded an answer.

In any other culture, Picard knew, this would have been a sign of disrespect, perhaps even a challenge. However, Klingons did not waste time with amenities. They simply said what was on their minds.

Still, Kurn put on a show of anger. As he had explained minutes earlier, the best way to deal with a bureaucrat was to seem even more annoyed than he was.

“I am Kurn, son of Mogh,” he grated. “Governor of Ogat and member of the High Council.”

The station commander’s eyes narrowed. “I have heard of Kurn. But for all I know, you could be a slug on the bottom of Kurn’s boot.”

Worf’s brother made a sound deep in his throat. “Then look for yourself. Bring up my file image and compare it to what you see.”

The station commander wasn’t about to take anyone at his word. Barking an order to an offscreen lackey, he glared at Kurn—as if trying to decide what to do with him if he
wasn’t
the council member.

A few moments later, the same lackey whispered in the station commander’s ear. A look of confusion passed over the Klingon’s face, like the shadow of a cloud on a sunny day.

“You do indeed appear to be Kurn,” he said finally. “But according to our information, Kurn is supposed to be dead.”

Fortunately, Worf’s brother was prepared for this. Tossing his shaggy head back, he laughed out loud. “Dead?” he roared. Abruptly, he leaned forward, so that his face was only a couple of inches from the monitor. “Tell me, son of a
targ
—do I
look
dead to
you?
”

The station commander swallowed. “No,” he conceded, “you do not.”

“Then lower your shields,” said Kurn, pressing his advantage, “and prepare for our arrival.”

The Klingon on the relay station hesitated—but only for a moment. Then, looking as if he’d just eaten something distasteful, he turned and barked an order over his shoulder.

“Our shields have been lowered,” he reported. “You may beam aboard the station whenever you please.”

That was Picard’s cue. Still wearing the cloak he had used on Ter’jas Mor, he picked up the hood and brought it down over his face. After all, it would arouse instant suspicion if a human were to beam aboard alongside Kurn.

Since Kahless and Worf might also have been recognized, they donned their hoods as well. Only Kurn went bareheaded.

Picard and his lieutenant set their disruptors on stun. However, their companions, Klingons through and through, did nothing of the sort.

Worf’s brother then reached for the remote transporter controls set into his armband. He tapped out the proper sequence and glanced at the captain—as if to make certain he was ready for what would follow.

Picard was ready, all right. The next thing he knew, he was standing on what appeared to be the relay station’s main deck, almost face-to-face with the Klingon he’d seen on the monitor.

Kurn interposed himself between them, so the station commander wouldn’t be tempted to try to peer inside the hood. Of course, that didn’t stop the other Klingons present.

Each of them looked up from his duties and wondered at the newcomers. The captain noted that the Klingons were all armed—not that that was a surprise. And he was certain
their
disruptors weren’t set on stun.

“I want to download secured transmission records,” Worf’s brother announced. “My ship’s computer is ready and waiting. All I need is your help to get past the security codes.”

The station commander glanced at Picard, Worf, and finally Kahless. Then he turned back to Kurn.

“You travel in mysterious company,” the Klingon observed.

“My choice of companions is not your concern,” Kurn snapped. And then, to throw out a bone: “A man in my position finds the best bodyguards he can, Klingon or otherwise. Now, the help I asked for?”

The station commander frowned. Obviously, this wasn’t going to be as easy as they had hoped.

“You have not yet stated your reasons for coming here,” he maintained. “It’s one thing to allow you entry, considering your position with the Defense Force. But to circumvent the security codes, I would require clearance from the homeworld. I have not received any such clearance.”

Kurn grunted. “And if I told you I was here on Council business? And that the Council does not wish its dealings to be known beyond these bulkheads?”

The station commander thrust out his beardless chin. “In that case, I would
still
require some form of—”

Kurn didn’t allow him to finish his statement. Instead, he backhanded the Klingon across the mouth with a closed fist, sending him staggering into a bulkhead. When the station commander looked at him again, there was hate in his eyes and lavender blood running down his chin.

But by then, Worf’s brother was aiming his disruptor pistol at the Klingon’s forehead—just as his companions were pointing theirs at the various other personnel on the station.

Kurn took a step closer to the station commander, keeping his weapon level. The look in his eyes said he wouldn’t think twice about using it. In fact, he might relish the experience.

“Thank your ancestors I am a merciful man,” Kurn bellowed. “But I will not ask you again.” He tilted his head to indicate the communications console at one end of the room. “Do it—or you will wish you had.”

Suddenly, Picard heard a shout from somewhere behind him. He whirled just in time to see yet another Klingon emerge from behind a sliding door—a Klingon with a weapon in his hand. He must have been working in a storage area when Kurn’s group arrived.

And now, he had returned to the main deck—only to see his comrades held at disruptor-point. Under the circumstances, the man’s reaction was understandable. The captain sympathized.

But that didn’t mean he was going to stand there and present an easy target for the Klingon’s disruptor fire. Ducking to his right, he watched the disruption beam pass him and strike a bulkhead, where it disintegrated a good part of the thing before its destructive energies wore themselves out.

That could have been me,
Picard told himself. At the same time, he returned his adversary’s blast—crumpling the Klingon where he stood.

It might have ended then and there. However, their comrade’s entrance gave the stationkeepers the chance they’d been looking for. Or so it seemed to the captain, as the place turned into a chaotic mess of hurtling bodies and flailing limbs, not to mention the occasional errant disruptor beam.

“Watch out!” cried a familiar deep voice.

Before Picard could determine what he had to watch for, he saw Worf rush past him—in order to meet another Klingon head on. The human winced at the bone-jarring sound of their clash, and was only slightly relieved when he saw his officer had come out on top.

A disruptor beam sizzled by his ear. Turning, Picard aimed at the source of it and let fly with a beam of his own.

It hit a stationkeeper’s hand and knocked the pistol out of it. And before he could recover, Kahless slammed his fist into the Klingon’s jaw, sending him sprawling.

But before the captain could seek out another target, he felt something strike him in the back of the head. There was a moment or two that seemed very long, much too long, and then the floor rose up to meet him with a sickening impact.

Tasting blood, Picard turned his head to see what was going on. Something descended on him—something big and dark and powerful-looking. He was about to lash out at it with the heel of his foot when he realized it was Worf.

“Captain,” said his tactical officer, evincing obvious relief. “When I saw you go down, I was afraid they had—”

Picard waved away the suggestion. “The point is, they didn’t,” he said. With Worf’s help, he got to his feet and surveyed the place.

About half the stationkeepers were unconscious. The rest of them were gone without a trace. Fortunately, the station commander was among those who still remained.

With Kahless’s help, Kurn dragged the Klingon over to the main console and placed the commander’s hand on the appropriate padd—the customary Defense Force security bypass. Abruptly, the console lit up with a pattern of green and orange lights.

“Qapla’,”
said Kahless, smiling.

“Qapla’
indeed,” agreed Kurn, as he set out to download the transmission records. It only took a minute or so, once they had access to the system. Had it been a Federation system, it wouldn’t even have taken that long.

“Your computer has the information?” the clone asked.

Worf’s brother nodded. “The transmission is complete.”

“Good,” said Kahless.

Lifting his disruptor pistol, he trained it on the console and fired. The thing was consumed in a matter of seconds.

“Now,” he declared, “these burden beasts will be unable to call for help when they come to.”

In fact, the “burden beasts” in question were already stirring. Picard looked at Kurn, who nodded once and worked the controls on his armband.

The captain drew his next breath on Kurn’s ship. Kahless snorted, a sound of triumph. Worf eased himself into the pilot’s seat and brought the ship about as his brother went to the sensor panel.

Picard joined Kurn. “No sign of any transmission, I trust?”

Without looking up, Kurn shook his head. “None. And to my knowledge, there are no backup systems. Klingons are not enamored of redundancies.”

Except when it comes to parts of your anatomy,
the captain thought, remembering how Worf’s biological redundancies had enabled him to walk again after his back had been broken. But as with so much else, he didn’t say it out loud.

“Wait,” said Kurn. “There
is
a transmission.”

Kahless came over to see it with his own eyes. “I do not understand,” he said. “I destroyed the communications panel. You all saw it.”

“It is not coming
from
the station,” Worf’s brother explained. “It is being sent there from somewhere
else.
”

The emperor snorted. “That’s more like it. What does it say?”

Kurn brought it up on his monitor. Of course, Picard couldn’t read Klingon very well. He had to wait for the others to provide a translation.

But after only a few moments, he could tell that the news was not good. Suddenly, Kahless blurted a curse and turned from the console.

The captain looked to Kurn. “What is it?” he asked.

“It is about the scroll,” Worf’s brother told him. He glanced at the emperor. “It was tested for authenticity—and it passed. Apparently, even the clerics of Boreth are now satisfied the thing is authentic.”