Hell's Heart (11 page)

Nineteen

K
orgh crept from boulder to tree. He had worked his way higher on the mountainside, heading for a point above where the trespassers had gathered. There were half a dozen or more, all Klingons, clustered outside the alcove that allowed access to Mount Qel'pec. They held portable lights, but all were directed at the opening. He edged closer to where the ground bulged, just over the cavern entrance.

He yelled as he leaped, announcing his presence as a warrior should. His boots struck the face of the intruder in the rear of the pack, and both tumbled off the trail and into the darkness. His victim's body cushioning his fall, Korgh recovered quickly and buried his dagger in the trespasser's neck. Shouts came from above, and lights flashed in his direction. It was a fatal mistake for those who held them, as Korgh drew his disruptor and fired at those illuminating him.

Three dead. Korgh ran, scaling the meters back up to the landing outside the cavern. His opponents dashed for the cover the cave entrance offered. Shots were fired wildly from within. Korgh sought refuge to the right of the aperture. He had the fiends trapped. He knew they would not be able to get past the bio-scanner and gain entrance to the facility. But neither could he make a frontal assault. He longed for a grenade to root the interlopers out.

Finally, the disruptor blasts from within stopped. A female Klingon voice called out. “Who are you? This place belongs to Commander Kruge!”

“I know that,” Korgh shouted. “Which of Kruge's idiot cousins do you serve? J'borr? Kiv'ota?”

“We serve Kruge!”

“Kruge is dead.”

“Common knowledge! This place remains his. It is no place
for the likes of—” The female voice stopped. Korgh's brow furrowed. There was chatter within the cavern—heated discussion.

Then, after a moment, the woman inside spoke again in a calmer voice. “Korgh?”

There was no sense in hiding who he was. “I am Korgh, son of Torav. I run this facility for Kruge.” He straightened, feeling pride return for the first time in weeks. “I am his heir!”

“I serve Kruge as well,” the woman said. “I am Odrok!”

Odrok?
Korgh's mind flashed back on the face of someone he had met twice before. She had been Kruge's top engineer before the Twenty were recruited; he hadn't seen her in years.

She appeared now, carefully stepping from the cave, backlit by one of the portable lights. “It is you,” she said as her eyes adjusted. The thirtyish Klingon woman reminded Korgh of his late mother: a face frozen in a permanent scowl. She had his mother's nasal voice too. “We thought you were a scavenger, here to loot.” Companions cautiously joined her from behind, gawking at where the light bearers had been disintegrated. “But what have you done, Korgh?” Odrok said. “These are the Twenty!”

“Not so many now,” Korgh said, indifferent. Knowing their identities only confirmed that they deserved death. The
cha'maH
had abandoned their posts—or worse. “What have
you
done, Odrok?” He lunged forward and grabbed at her arm. “
Where are my b
irds-of-prey?
”

“I was doing as Kruge commanded—”

“Kruge is dead—and he gave command of this facility to me, not you.” He pointed his disruptor in Odrok's face. “How do you even know about it? You haven't even been around. You are a traitor!”

“I am loyal, Korgh!” Odrok spoke passionately. “I have been away on another assignment for Kruge—looking in on the works of another house's engineers.”

“You, a spy?”

“An obedient follower, committed to her house's lord.”

Korgh lowered his weapon slightly. Yes, he could see Kruge employing industrial espionage; the commander worried about the other houses. And Odrok, connected to the House of Kruge only by a cousin's marriage, would have been a good choice for the mission. But he could not understand why she was here. His eyes narrowed. “Kruge told you about this place, yes?”

She nodded. “That, and more.”

“Do you know where my starships are?”

“Your—?” Odrok, apparently thinking better of questioning him, stopped before finishing her sentence. “I can take you to them. But we have to do something first, and quickly. It's why we came back.” She looked at his disruptor and up at him plaintively. “It would go much faster with your cooperation.”

“It is you who will cooperate with me—if I do not kill you after I hear your story. Start talking, and I will decide.”

P
HANTOM
W
ING
V
ESSEL
C
HU
'
CHARQ

O
RBITING
A
ESIS

“Odrok! This is Kruge. You will go to Mount Qel'pec on Gamaral and convey what is there to Aesis. Maintain absolute secrecy . . .”

Korgh had no doubt that the months-old message Odrok had played for him was from Kruge. It felt good to hear his mentor's voice again, but the feeling was doubly tinged with regret. Over Kruge's passing—but also over how similar Odrok's message was to the one he had received.

It was clear. Korgh was not the only person Kruge had given secret directives to. Rationally, that made sense; running a large and important house required the aid of many, and Kruge liked to limit what his various minions knew. But Korgh hadn't thought of himself as just another minion.

It felt like getting slighted from beyond the grave.

One thing was for sure: standing now on the bridge of
Chu'charq
, one of the Phantom Wing vessels, he had no doubt that Odrok had followed the commander's orders precisely. Aesis, the star outside, was a blotchy mess of a blue dwarf, throwing off smears of plasma around its midsection. Eleven other birds-of-prey, all ships of the Phantom Wing, orbited within the halo of particles. The vessels were barely detectible by Korgh's naked eye as he looked out the port; even uncloaked as the starships now were, no one could have found them unless they knew where to look.

Gamaral, on the other side of the Empire from Aesis, was a quiet place for construction—but it was remote, and had always been a little too near territory the Federation was colonizing for Kruge's tastes. The commander, who had never intended for the completed vessels to remain there, had ordered Odrok to go to Gamaral and relocate whatever starships were finished. Korgh thought back to months earlier, when he had left Mount Qel'pec to tell Kruge the squadron was completed. Had he waited even a week, he would have been present when Odrok first arrived. He would have gladly helped her. Or, rather, he would have supervised.

In fact, Odrok had used an emergency procedure that Korgh had earlier developed with his engineers: a method for moving a dozen birds-of-prey with only twenty people. Skeleton crews of five each had moved four ships at a time to Aesis, parking three in orbit with all officers returning to Gamaral aboard the fourth. After four trips under silent running, the entire Phantom Wing was relocated. And then, following Kruge's orders, Odrok's people had waited at Aesis.

And waited, and waited. When Odrok and the Twenty finally learned of Kruge's demise, they had struggled with what to do. They had learned of General Potok's movement only after it was far too late to do anything. The Twenty's loyalty did lean toward Kruge's military allies, but without leadership they weren't about to go flying off to support anyone.

Odrok had won the day with her demand that Kruge's orders
be honored, even in death. Their lord had decreed that no one in his or any competing family should learn about the Phantom Wing. That meant returning to Mount Qel'pec to destroy the facility. That task had brought Odrok and
Chu'charq
to Gamaral a final time. Kruge had given Odrok a bypass code to enter the mountain, but only Korgh could command the computer to trigger the explosive charges that would bring the ceiling down. Korgh did so, delighted to leave the mountain forever. He then left with the engineers for Aesis on
Chu'charq
, with Odrok wisely yielding Korgh command.

Chu'charq
, like all the ships of the Phantom Wing squadron, had been named for a kind of predatory beast. Korgh had thought that at least one should be named in honor of Kruge himself, given his mentor's record of conquests, but there would be time to think about that later. He had plenty to consider now that he had people to command again. It had relieved Korgh that he had finally found someone who answered to him.

“Why,” he asked as he sat in the command chair, “did Kruge not contact me to move the birds-of-prey?”

Odrok looked over at him from the engineer's station. “You said yourself, sir, that you were already warping away from Gamaral to see him. And I believe he wanted me involved regardless.”

“You say he gave you no information about why he wanted you to move the squadron here?”

“You have heard the recording. All Kruge said was that we would be making modifications to the Phantom Wing vessels.”

Korgh scratched his beard. It was short again, since his hermit days on Gamaral had ended. “This location is nearer the Mutara Nebula. Could he have wanted to use the ships to test the Genesis torpedo?”

“I don't know. He did not say.”

“Think! Could it be anything else?”

“Yes. I had just sent him a report on technologies I had
discovered during my . . . my
reconnaissance
of other houses. Some are quite surprising—and several would have been of use aboard birds-of-prey.”

Korgh raised an eyebrow. “I want to see that report.”

Odrok nodded. “I disposed of it as he ordered, but my initial notes remain. We can recompile it and transfer it to your station's data system.”

“Good.” He looked about and saw that Odrok's companions were following her example, treating Korgh as in charge. The
cha'maH
were outside familial politics; they still honored Kruge's wishes, and that meant continuing to mind Korgh. It probably helped that he had killed a few of them back on Gamaral.

While the engineers worked on getting his report, Korgh sat back in the command chair and again regarded the star Aesis and the ships orbiting it. It all made sense to Korgh at last. Mount Qel'pec had spoken to Kruge's desire for security; it was a home for the Twenty, but it had also been their place of quarantine, preventing any leaks.

But Kruge was always thinking about the next technological step—and that required mobility. As backward as humans were, even their ancients had the military concept of the flying camp: a unit behind friendly lines that went wherever it was needed. Korgh believed that was what Kruge intended the Phantom Wing to be: mobile design and testing labs that Kruge could park anywhere on short notice. Mount Qel'pec was a hard target, vulnerable to infiltration or destruction. But by placing the Twenty—and all his future geniuses—aboard the Phantom Wing, Kruge had devised the perfect secret laboratory. And because there were twelve different ships, it would have been possible to segregate and shuffle personnel from ship to ship so that no one person knew too much.

Except, Korgh thought, for whomever Kruge would have appointed to command the flotilla.
That would have been me
, Korgh told himself—and he had reason to believe that. Hadn't
Kruge put him in charge of Mount Qel'pec? Would Kruge have really trusted Odrok, who was no warrior, with the task? It was laughable.

At the same time, Korgh realized, he rarely knew Kruge's mind. He hadn't known of Genesis, of Odrok's orders, or of any plans for the Phantom Wing's future. Korgh had only learned Kruge had a lover, Valkris, after accidentally overhearing a conversation; even then, the commander's tone betrayed no affection.

His mentor strove to be the perfect Klingon warrior, armored against all weakness; Korgh saw Kruge's reticence as strength. Korgh would carry himself the same way now.
He
was Kruge's heir, public profession of adoption or not;
he
led
the true House of Kruge.

But he only had the rump remains. His few engineers were neither trained nor enough to take one ship of the Phantom Wing into battle. He needed real crews, experienced in battle, if he wished to achieve his aims. Korgh had already figured out a solution for that.

He could hardly wait to get started. “Hurry with that report, Odrok. We have an army to find.”

Twenty

U.S.S. E
NTERPRISE
-
A

O
UTSIDE THE
B
RIAR
P
ATCH

A
dvancing knowledge, Spock knew, required going places that logical beings might otherwise avoid. Bacteria that caused illnesses certainly thrived in sewers, but a few that
cured
diseases had been found there, too. Benevolent and intelligent species had been discovered on planets with the most poisonous atmospheres. Such things would go forever unnoticed by the squeamish or fearful. A truly enlightened researcher took the necessary physical precautions and put personal preferences aside.

Then there was Leonard McCoy,
Enterprise
's chief medical officer, who had just stepped out of the turbolift near Spock's science station. Laying eyes on the bloody blotch of a nebula filling the main viewscreen, he declared, “Ugh! I've seen prettier wounds.”

Seated, Spock looked coolly up at McCoy. The Vulcan thought to remark about how McCoy's decades of surgical experience should have inoculated him against squeamishness, but instead he took a different tack. “The nebula is not here for your aesthetic enjoyment, Doctor. It simply
is
.”

“And it
is
ugly.” McCoy walked onto the bridge, his wince never going away as he looked at the imagery from outside. “It looks like it came out of the egg backwards.”

Spock experienced it entirely differently. Red and orange gases fought for dominance, nearly smothering the glow from the infant stars within. But he knew—from inference, and from
Enterprise
's sensors—what those gases were composed of and why they refracted the light in the peculiar way they did. Certainly, conditions within the nebula were inhospitable—
but to the trained mind, that made it all the more likely to contain undiscovered secrets.

“It is called the Briar Patch,” Spock said. “Named by Arik Soong. The Klingons call it Klach D'Kel Brakt. Kor fought a battle here with the Romulans over a decade ago.”

“I can't imagine either side wanted it,” McCoy said. The other set of turbolift doors opened, and the doctor turned to see James T. Kirk striding onto the bridge. McCoy gestured to the main viewscreen. “Look what you've brought us to.”

Kirk glanced at it for only a second. “You've seen one, you've seen them all. Status, Mister Sulu.”

“Holding outside the nebular boundary,” Hikaru Sulu said from the helm position, eyes fixed forward. “To the extent there is one.”

“You don't intend to go in there?” McCoy asked the captain.

“Why not? Other people have.” Kirk rounded his chair and sat down. “But this is still a new ship. I'd hate to ruin the paint job.”

This
Enterprise
was still new, just awarded Kirk and crew weeks earlier following their successful rescue of Earth from an alien probe that had wanted, of all things, to talk to whales. It could no longer really be called a shakedown cruise, given the several adventures that had already transpired. One of them had brought them to this region, right on the border of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants on the outskirts of Federation space—where Starfleet had asked
Enterprise
to deploy probes to gather information that would assist navigation.

It would not require entering the nebula. Spock's fingers worked the control interface. “Probes are away.”

Ahead, four shining objects could be seen rocketing from
Enterprise
into the nebula. Smaller than photon torpedoes but twice as bright, the glowing devices nonetheless disappeared into the multicolored haze within seconds.

“Receiving telemetry.” What came next was no surprise to Spock, as it had been known for years. “Encountering meta
phasic radiation in the stellar debris. The probes are slowing down.”

“One-third impulse would appear to be the maximum acceleration in this region,” Sulu said. “Another reason to detour.”

The science officer's eyes narrowed. The probes' sensors were active, but something was pinging back that was more solid than the rest of the supernovae remnants. “Contacts within the cloud, mark two-five-seven.”

The captain, who had appeared to Spock only vaguely interested until now, ordered, “Feed it through the tactical systems for identification.”

Seated ahead of Kirk, Pavel Chekov took a look at the data stream. “They are ships. Large, bulky.”

“Out here?” Kirk straightened. “On screen.”

Chekov redirected the sensors from one of the probes to the main viewer. Seven freighters sat motionless in a dark maroon cloud. “Freighters, Captain. They appear to be Klingon.”

That got Kirk's full attention. His eyes locked on the display as images from various angles showed the vessels in greater detail. The squat ships were spare and angular in design, with no visible weaponry. But they could hold a lot of Klingons. “Military transports?”

“They are not in any registry,” Chekov said. “There are no running lights. They appear derelict.”

“I don't buy that,” Kirk said. No ship really needed running lights except in spacedock as an aid for workers on EVA, and they could hardly be of much use in the nebula. He glanced at Spock. “Speculation.”

“None without further information. The probes do not have the ability to detect life signs.”

“We do.” Kirk shook his head. He leaned forward, seeming to have made a decision—and then he paused, as if changing his mind. Finally, the captain leaned back and clasped his hands together. “Distance to vessels?”

Spock knew what he was thinking. “Out of conventional
weapon range. But not out of sensor range. We can scan them safely, Captain.”

Kirk nodded. “Edge us in, Mister Sulu. Not a millimeter farther than we need to go.”

McCoy leaned against the railing to the command well. “So much for not going in. It's a sargasso—careful we don't get stuck.”

Spock thought to educate the doctor about the differences between sea and space travel, but determined it would not be a useful dialogue.
Enterprise
was on its way, shaking as it struck resistance from the first of the nebular gases. The captain was right: others had traveled here before, including Starfleet vessels. Successful transit meant knowing what to expect and adjusting.

The colors outside
Enterprise
grew more pronounced as they edged in.
McCoy would probably call it “garish
,
”
Spock thought. But his attention was on his scope and what it showed. “Seven vessels confirmed.” He activated a control, and the
Enterprise
's sensors replaced the feed from the probes. “Increasing magnification.”

There were no lights of any kind visible in the Klingon ships' ports. Kirk studied them, looking hard to perceive any threat. “Life signs?”

“Plentiful, as far as our sensors can detect.” Spock checked. “Two to three hundred personnel. I am encountering some distortion.”

“Not military transports, my eye,” Kirk said.

“They could be colonists.”

“In this neighborhood? I doubt it.”

Spock was tempted to say that a place where no one wanted to settle was a place no one would want to invade, but he decided debate was premature without further data. He increased the magnification once again—and the lead freighter came into clearer view. The metallic surfaces of the vessel had a dingy coloration, and the ports were glazed completely over.

“Significant particle contamination from the debris fields.” Spock looked closely at his scope. “I surmise they have been adrift for some time. Only low-energy consumption, perhaps just enough for life support.”

“Or waiting in ambush,” Kirk said.

Spock turned from his interface to look directly at the captain. “It is not logical. These are not warships.”

“They could be the bait,” Kirk replied, putting his fist against his chin. “
Kobayashi Maru
. We go farther inside this mess to rescue a freighter, only to be attacked. Spock, it's a classic trap.”

“Only these freighters are not transmitting a distress call—and they would have no expectation that
Enterprise
or any potential victim would be in the region.”

“Curiosity and the cat,” McCoy said. He ran his index finger past his neck in a slicing motion and made a glottal noise.

Spock ignored the doctor—a well-practiced maneuver—and studied the captain instead. Since the death of Kirk's son, David Marcus, at the hands of Commander Kruge's warriors on the Genesis Planet, the captain's resentment of all Kling­ons had reached an understandable, if regrettable, pitch. Kirk seemed now to be struggling with several choices. Bounding in to offer aid, Spock suspected, was not on the captain's list.

“If I may suggest,” the Vulcan said, “there is no danger in talking to them.”

“Talking to Klingons,” Kirk said, with an exasperated sigh. “That's never worked before.” He shook his head. “Hail them, Uhura. Mister Sulu—we're not going any farther inside this mess. If they don't want to come out to talk to us, they can have this little rat's nest all to themselves.”

•   •   •

The metaphasic radiation of the Briar Patch, Uhura had discovered, caused a variety of communications problems. It took fifteen minutes to establish contact, and that was intermittent at best. Transmissions were garbled at this distance and barely
cleared as they approached; closing the distance was allowed very reluctantly by Kirk.

The communications issues didn't seem insurmountable; perhaps starships decades or centuries hence would have fewer issues conversing inside the zone. That was one of Starfleet's hopes in having the
Enterprise
deploy probes. But when a response finally did come from one of the freighters, it might as well have been garbled for all the sense it made.

“We hear you,”
a Klingon voice said.
“Go away.”

“Charming as usual,” McCoy mumbled.

“Please clarify,” Uhura said. “Are you asserting Klingon territorial control over this region?” The area wasn't exactly contested, whatever had happened earlier with the Romulans. Nobody really wanted it.

But the freighter's answer had stymied them all.
“We are not Klingons. We are not in distress. Leave us alone.”

They clearly were Klingons. Chekov had finally chased down the ship in the databanks; it was an obsolete freighter model once manufactured on Qo'noS. And the speaker's voice, to the best it could be heard, was confirmation enough.

“This is nonsense,” Kirk said. “Shields up. We're leaving.”

Spock raised an eyebrow as the shields were raised. “They are not threatening.”

“Then they're fine where they are. I'm not bringing this ship any closer—whoever they say they are or aren't.”

Spock put the magnified imagery he had been looking at up on the main viewscreen. “Captain, we are in no danger—but I suspect the Klingons are.” He stood and walked to the view­screen, pointing out the multiple points of desiccation on the freighters' hulls. “They have been in the Briar Patch long enough to foul most of their systems.”

The imagery spoke more convincingly than Spock could. Intake manifolds were completely caked with foreign matter, particles that only served to attract more.

Reluctantly, Kirk looked over to the engineering station,
where he had called Montgomery Scott up to view the vessels. “Do you concur?”

“Aye. They're not goin' anywhere.”

Kirk, exasperated, looked to McCoy. “They may not
want
our help.”

McCoy shrugged.

Returning to his station, Spock gave Kirk a few moments to ruminate. Then he glanced in Uhura's direction and offered, “Captain, may I speak with the Klingons?”

Kirk gave a smile that wasn't very convincing. “Be my guest.”

“Freighter captain, this is the
Enterprise
's science officer,” Spock said over the comm. “We have examined your vessels. You have neither impulse nor warp capacity. Have your engineers examined your systems?”

A pause. Then, the response:
“We have no engineers.”

Uhura turned off the feed from the bridge while Kirk looked to Spock. “Your play.”

Spock signaled for Uhura to reopen the channel. “Are you passengers?”

Another pause.
“We are all passengers.”

“All? There are
no
service personnel?”

“We are all passengers.”

“What is the condition of your life-support systems?”

“It is not important.”
The signal was cut from the transport.

“All passengers, no engineers, no life support.” McCoy smirked. “That sounds like the worst cruise ever.”

Scott spoke up from his station. “They're in the severest part of the Briar Patch. With all the corrosion, I doubt they'll still have life support in a week.”

Kirk was unmoved. “I'm not getting any closer.”

“I believe,” Spock said cautiously, “that local conditions would not prevent achieving a transporter lock.”

“I'm not sending anyone over there. Instant hostage.”

The last word seemed to Spock to rankle in the captain's mouth. But as understandable as Kirk's reasons for being
suspicious of Klingons were to Spock, he found the kneejerk response discouraging.
Perhaps
, Spock thought,
there is an answer that would inoculate the
Enterprise
from
the risk.

With a few moments of thought, he had it. Motioning to Uhura to reopen the channel, Spock said, “Freighter captain, we want to render aid, but we need to meet one of you face-to-face to discuss the terms of our cooperation. This must take place aboard our vessel. Will you do this?”