Chapter Three

COMMANDER UHURA contorted her beautiful dark face into a snarl and spat forth a string of harsh-sounding words. Fiercely, she brandished her bat’leth, then leaped forward. Blood-red robes trimmed in black fur swirled around her.

“Son of a black-hearted dog,

My body is not thine,

My heart is not thine,

But my blade —yes, ah, yes,

This I offer to thee, I offer to thy heart!”

A mere meter away, Karglak offered his own guttural challenge, which climaxed with an earsplitting screech. He was clad in black and silver armor, and sprang forward to meet his adversary.

“In this conflict shall I scream my battle cry,

Death is but another foe to defeat.

It is you who shall board the

Barge of the Dead

In dishonor so great

That none shall remember your name!”

Their bat’leths clashed, then clashed again. Uhura’s muscles quivered under the strain and she knew a flash of fear. Good thing she kept in decent shape—

Grunting, they sprang apart. Thrice they circled, and then leapt at one another. This time Uhura felt the wind rush past her face as she narrowly avoided the curving blade. She uttered a single word with all the strength she possessed: “Qapla’!” and charged him.

Karglak fell beneath her, his own weapon knocked from his hands to skitter to a halt three meters away. Uhura straddled his waist. She was sweating profusely and breathing heavily. Under the hot lights, she could see the bare skin of her own arms gleaming with moisture.

Quick as a thought, she brought the bat’leth down and pressed it against his throat. For a long moment, they stared into one another’s eyes.

Slowly, she eased back and removed the deadly blade. He was faster, and before she knew it she was caught up in his arms, his sharp-tooth mouth pressed down on hers, and they were locked in an embrace as violent as their battle had been.

A sudden silence and utter blackness descended.

“Hey, watch the teeth,” Uhura grumbled, clambering off the most famous opera singer ever to have graced the planet Qo’noS. She dabbed at her lip gently, wincing. Her finger came away red.

Karglak leapt to his feet, gallantly extending a hand to help her up. She took it. “I regret any pain I may have caused you,” he said. “But that was marvelous! Marvelous! I was so caught up in the drama I was … how do you put it … carried away.”

She smiled at him. At least he’d agreed to start using a mouthwash during their up-close-and-personal duets. “It’s all right, Karglak. I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“As you should,” purred Lamork, the director of the specially written operetta. “Karglak is notorious for discourtesy to his leading ladies.”

“An exaggeration,” Karglak scoffed. “They are—what is your word— prima donnas. Anyone of an artistic temperament would have difficulty performing with such arrogant females. You, dear lady, are a professional.” He put his hand on his heart, and executed a bow.

The operetta would be performed in conjunction with a medley of songs that represented the finest of Earth’s musical traditions: ancient Peruvian and Aboriginal melodies, “Greensleeves,” some Gershwin tunes, two arias from Madame Butterfly, “Ole Man River,” “Bring Him Home,” China’s famous “Moon and Sun Song,” among others, and of course the famous “First Contact, First Touch” from the opera Songs from Space and Time, widely regarded as Earth’s finest musical piece since humans first made contact with other species.

Despite the bruises, scrapes, and occasional cuts Uhura was forced to endure as part of this historic extravaganza, she had to confess she was enjoying herself hugely. Music had always been a great love. When but a young woman she had been forced to choose between two promising careers: opera performer or Starfleet Officer. She had chosen the latter and never regretted it, but was delighted that her voice was now considered as valuable a tool in the peace negotiations as her diplomatic skills.

She had been surprised to learn how much Klingons loved opera, and what a long, rich history it had on their homeworld. Uhura couldn’t help but smile as she remembered stumbling through rudimentary Klingon a few months ago, when the Enterprise was attempting to rescue its. imprisoned captain. She had thought the language unmusical and unpleasant. Certainly it had challenged a human throat and tongue. But the more she heard it, the more intriguing it sounded to her, and when, at Captain Spock’s gentle suggestion, she had finally listened to Klingon opera, she had been captivated. What power it had! What grand, sweeping stories it told!

When she approached Spock with the concept of a “musical exchange,” an evening of Klingon opera and human song, he had seemed surprised. It had taken her a week or two, but she finally realized that it had been Spock’s idea all along. He had only let Uhura think it had been her idea.

She, however, had been the one doing all the work: compiling the pieces and going over them with Qo’noS’s most famous opera singer, Karglak. She had anticipated a difficult time, but to her delight and surprise Karglak was as eager as she to learn about new musical styles. They had each agreed to learn each other’s languages, if possible, to honor the other’s culture. He had taken smoothly to English and Italian, and she had to admit that despite his fearsome exterior, part of her melted—just a little—when he gazed into her eyes and sang “Some Enchanted Evening.”

The mesmerizing effect he had on her ended after the performance, thank goodness. Positive cultural exchange was one thing, but the interspecies romance made so famous by Songs from Space and Time notwithstanding, she had no desire to exchange anything more intimate.

She mopped her soaking brow and gulped water with lemon while Lamork gave them notes. “Commander, you are doing a fine job with the range of the piece, but I would ask you to reexamine your Klingon. The ‘r’ comes from the back of the throat, not from the tip of the tongue. And the glottal stops are—

Uhura sighed. “Lamork, I’ve no desire to permanently ruin my voice for one evening’s performance. If I can approximate the sound well enough to be understood, what’s the problem?”

Lamork frowned terribly. “You show disrespect for the composer’s vision, that is the problem.”

She kept her gaze locked with his, refusing to rise to the bait. “And Karglak hardly sounds French when he’s performing as Emile de Becque, but you haven’t heard me complaining.”

“Commander,” came a calm, cool voice from the back of the room. “Director Lamork. Please. We have no wish to start a new war on the eve of peace.”

The voice, of course, belonged to Captain Spock. He was out of uniform and gliding down the aisle to meet them in flowing blue, silver, and gold robes, the traditional garb of his people. “This was meant to bring two races together with a love of music, not divide them by the finer details.”

Lamork turned his fearsome glower upon Spock, but did not respond to the Vulcan’s chiding. Instead, he changed the subject. “I dare not hope,” he said, sarcasm creeping into his voice, “that you are here just to be uplifted by the music.”

“You assume incorrectly if you think that Vulcans have no appreciation for music and art, Lamork. Simply because we control our emotions does not mean we cannot appreciate beauty. Rest assured that on the night of the performance, it is unlikely that you will have a more attentive listener than myself. However, you are correct—I did come here to speak with Commander Uhura. Commander, if you please?”

Taking her lemon water with her and nodding to her fellow performer, Uhura stepped off the stage and followed Spock up a ways toward the end of the hall.

“How are the rehearsals progressing?” Spock wanted to know.

“Very well, actually,” Uhura said. “Karglak is surprisingly easy to work with, though Lamork’s a hell of a taskmaster.”

“Any sign of conflict? Resentment?”

“Not really. Except over things like accents and hitting the notes right.” She smiled, wincing a little as she did so as a brief stab reminded her of her cut lip. “It looks like artists remain artists, no matter what the culture. I don’t think there’s anything going on here except old-fashioned theater politics.”

Spock frowned, noticing her wince and the swelling on her lip. “You are injured,” he said.

“Oh, that,” Uhura said, laughing a little. “Seems our Karglak got a little carried away during our duet.”

“I would be mindful, Commander. It is my understanding that biting, especially around the mouth and face, is part of a Klingon mating ritual.”

She stared at him, her jaw dropping slightly. He raised an eyebrow. Slowly, Uhura turned to look back at the stage. Karglak was watching them and as she looked at him, he smiled and waved a little.

“Uh oh,” she said.

“No, no, no,” said McCoy, his voice rising despite the delicacy of the situation. “Remember the heart is there, not there. That’s the—” He glanced up at his Klingon counterpart. “That’s the liver, right?”

Doctor Q’ulagh frowned terribly, and McCoy got the feeling that he, too, was running out of patience with the dissection. McCoy couldn’t blame him. It had taken a lot of discussion—all right, call a spade a spade, begging—in order to convince the Klingon government to donate a cadaver in the first place. And now McCoy was watching some of the Federation’s finest give damn good impressions of medieval barbers as they hacked at the corpse.

“It is not the liver,” Q’ulagh responded, his teeth clenched and his eyes flashing. “It is the first of the two …” And the translator shut down, not even trying to translate the long flow of seeming gibberish that ensued. McCoy recognized it and nodded. The two whatziz were extraneous organs not found in any other humanoid species. He recalled what he knew to make sure he had his ducks in a row.

“These … uh … highly specialized organs secrete anti-inflammatory fluids and natural painkillers when the skin is damaged,” he said. “It keeps a warrior on his feet longer. It is part of what makes a Klingon such a fearsome enemy in battle.”

He threw that last part in on a whim. It was sincere enough, but this whole honor code thing was starting to wear a bit thin. However, when Q’ulagh visibly calmed and even nodded his head in admiration at McCoy’s statement, the elderly Southern doctor recalled a statement his mama had made many years past: You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, son.

To his relief, his team of Starfleet doctors, some of them heads of medical schools, followed his lead. The Klingon doctors accepted the compliment and the tension in the room eased.

Dr. Malcolm Simpson, one of the finest surgeons to ever grace Starfleet, continued the dissection. One by one, the mysterious Klingon organs were removed and themselves dissected. The Klingons didn’t understand it, but they didn’t have to. Their chancellor, Azetbur, had told them to participate whole-heartedly in this special meeting of minds, so that an incident like the death of her father, Gorkon, would never again happen.

To this day, McCoy had dreams about that dreadful, tragic night. In his nightmares he again straddled the dying chancellor, who looked up at him with imploring eyes. McCoy read in their depths Gorkon’s fierce desire to live, not so much for himself as for his people. Gorkon knew if this assassination attempt was successful, the tentative alliance the Federation and the Klingon Empire had formed would shatter like glass dropped on a stone floor. As it damn near had.

He vividly recalled the strange purple-magenta color of Klingon blood on his hands, searching frantically for the heart, doing everything he would normally do to save a dying human, and knowing that he was failing utterly with this Klingon.

I tried to save him, McCoy remembered crying aloud at his trial, a Klingon kangaroo court if there ever was one. I was desperate to save him.

Well, now he’d know how. And so would all these surgeons, who would teach their own students Klingon anatomy. There need never be another death on account of ignorance, not anymore. And the Klingons were learning the same things. There had been those who muttered that giving Klingons lessons in human anatomy was akin to providing them more efficient ways to butcher, but McCoy had shut up that line of talk quickly. They were becoming allies now, Klingons and humans, as unlikely as that seemed, and understanding one another physically was part of learning to understand one another culturally.

The dead Klingon was now empty of his organs. His belly and chest gaped open. The face was gone, peeled back early on in the autopsy in order to better access the brain. McCoy never liked being overlong with the dead; his job was to save the living. Seeing this corpse, which Q’ulagh had assured him had once been a proud warrior, McCoy felt sorrow brush him.

“Rest in peace,” he murmured under his breath. Straightening, he cleared his throat. “Let’s take a short break before we begin dissecting the human corpse.”

“If you have no further need of the body, we will transport it into space. It is but an empty shell now,” Q’ulagh said.

“Of course,” McCoy said, although he was a bit taken aback by the Klingon’s lack of desire for anything resembling a proper burial. Q’ulagh pulled out his communicator, uttered a few rough-sounding words, and the corpse and its attendant organs dematerialized.

As they were heading out the door, McCoy caught a whisper: “There went a good Klingon.” Stifled laughter greeted the comment.

Fortunately, the Klingons were already gone. It was also fortunate that had they even heard the muttered words they would have taken them at face value. McCoy, however, knew what they were intended to mean. He whirled and grabbed Dr. Phillip Kingston by his bloody scrubs, taking the much younger man by surprise.

“Isn’t it funny,” said McCoy softly, “how old phrases just don’t want to die? ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian’ could maybe be forgiven when uttered by a prejudiced, frightened white soldier a few hundred years ago. But I can’t believe I’m hearing it from the lips of a Starfleet officer.”

Blue eyes blazing, McCoy turned Kingston loose with a grant of disgust. “You slip up one more time, and you’re off this team.”

The blond man’s lip curled. “You can’t do that,” he said.

“The hell I can’t. This was my project from the beginning. You’re here because you’re a top-notch surgeon. But I’m beginning to think you’re not such a great human being.”

He turned and stalked off, following the rest to the break area.

Damn, damn. You think you’ve come so far, learned so much as a species, and then something like this happens.

As the late, greatly lamented Chancellor Gorkon said at that illfated dinner aboard the Enterprise not so long ago, “I can see we still have a long way to go.”