14

Footprints.

If someone had reported that a ship had dropped down out of the sky, scooped up Martok, and carried him away into the clouds, she would be disturbed, but not as much as this disturbed her. If someone had “witnessed Martok ascend bodily into the heavens with the aid of nothing more than tiny wings that had sprouted from his ankles, that would have disturbed her, but not as much as this.

Footprints.

For the better part of the past two days, her patrols had swept the area, checked every centimeter of the cliff face searching for Martok, but all they had found was a pair of dead Hur’q and then, ten hours ago, a new report: almost-filled footprints in the snow. If the storm had lasted for another hour, two at the most, there would have been nothing, no footprints, and she would—Gothmara admitted it to herself if no one else—have felt [193] some anxiety, some uneasiness, but would have only assumed that the body was buried. Sensors were, after all, almost useless on Boreth because of the cold.

But this—this was much worse.

Footprints.

Gothmara rose from behind her desk and walked around her lab inspecting the status of various experiments. She hadn’t been here in several months and most of the projects had either gone to ruin or been put in stasis by the lab programs when interesting results started to show up. Pausing briefly to inspect each station, she glanced at the status reports without truly seeing any of them. She was glad to be back inside the Hur’q base she had found all those years ago, if only because no one knew its location. Her Klingon officers found it distressing. Too bad. She needed to be here, as did her pets.

Where did the footprints go? There was only one way to find out for sure and so she had sent out the first patrol—a squad of Klingon soldiers—almost ten hours ago to backtrack the trail, but they had never returned. Five hours ago, she sent out the second patrol—three Klingons and three well-behaved Hur’q—and they had not returned either.

So, a fourth patrol was dispatched: six Hur’q and twelve Klingons. Perhaps she was being overcautious, even paranoid, but these were dangerous times. After all, she was destroying an empire. Some people might be expected to resist.

The lab computer said, “Request for access.”

“Who?”

“Commander Q’ratt and Hur’q number twenty-two.”

“Together?” She had not been expecting this. The Klingons and the Hur’q would work together when she [194] insisted, but there was no reason for number twenty-two to come up with Q’ratt.

“Number twenty-two,” the computer explained flatly, “is carrying Commander Q’ratt.”

“Ah,” Gothmara said, comprehending. “Admit them.”

The Hur’q carried the parts of Q’ratt that were still more or less contiguous into the lab’s anteroom and allowed the bits to slide onto the floor.

“Report,” Gothmara said. “Quickly.”

“My lady,” Q’ratt rasped. “We followed ... the trail to a cavern ...” He gasped and a drop of blood slid down out of his nose over his lips. “Side of the mountain.”

“Which mountain?” Gothmara asked. She already knew the answer, but couldn’t hold her tongue. There was no other mountain, after all.

Q’ratt knew it, too, and knew he had little time left to explain. “To the north,” he said, breath rattling in his throat. “Ten kellicams. The beast knows where.”

“Where are the others?”

“Dead. All of them.”

“Even the Hur’q?” She tried to keep the astonishment from her voice, but then realized, What’s the point? He’ll be dead soon and the beast doesn’t care. “Who did it? How many?”

“One,” Q’ratt said, answering the only question that seemed to matter to him. “He was hiding under the snow. Came up when half had passed over him.”

“One?” Gothmara shrieked. “One what?”

“One man,” Q’ratt sighed with his final breaths. “One demon. One warrior. He was ... glorious.” Then he lowered his head to the floor and died. The Hur’q sniffed Q’ratt’s remains curiously, then glanced at Gothmara.

“Do you know where the cave is?” she asked it.

[195] In its fashion, it reassured her that it did. A warm meal, however, would be appreciated before it had to lead the way.

She waved at the body. “Take it outside,” she muttered. “I don’t need to listen to you eat. Then assemble the troops. All of them.”

The Hur’q purred, picked up the remains of Q’ratt, and lurched out through the door.

One warrior, she mused. Astonishing.

Later, ever so briefly, Gothmara would recall that she had not asked whether this single warrior had been killed or if Q’ratt and number twenty-two had been permitted to escape.

 

“Martok,” Kahless said, staring at the Ch’Tang’s long-distance sensor scan of Boreth. “I am here. Where are you?”

“Is that the shuttle there?” Darok asked softly.

“Yes.”

“And I count—how many? Seven other ships?”

“Yes.”

“They will fall before us like grain before the scythe.”

“Yes.” They had found Ngane’s fleet; all seventeen ships were prepared to lay waste to the traitors who had so ignobly murdered their general.

“But you’re not happy.” It was a statement, not a question.

“It means nothing if Martok is dead.”

Darok sighed. While he agreed that this was true, he did not wish to be confronted with the fact. “Whatever fate he has found, it was his own decision.”

Kahless glanced at him. “Thank you for stating the obvious.”

[196] “You’re welcome,” Darok said with a tip of his head, “though I would add that nothing is ever obvious where the general is concerned.”

“It fascinates me,” Kahless responded, “that you speak to me, your emperor, in such a tone, while you continue to refer to Martok as ‘the general,’ despite the fact that he is, in fact, a chancellor.”

Darok furrowed his brow. “I have served the general and his family for most of my life. Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that without the general, I would probably not be alive today.”

“And I?” Kahless asked.

“You are someone whose picture I see on coin and whose face is frequently carved into statuary.”

“Ah, well. There we have it.” He looked around the bridge and seemed to Darok to be able to perceive the mood of every man and woman around them. “If they learn Martok is dead, will they still fight?”

Darok nodded. “To their last breath.”

“And if he lives?”

“No force in the universe will stop us until we find him.”

Kahless grinned. “Prepare for the attack.”

Darok rose and signaled to the communications officer. “Alert the fleet,” he said. “Assume battle formation. Prepare to drop cloaks in five minutes. We go to find Martok!”

The bridge crew roared its approval, then erupted into a frenzy of activity. General, Darok thought. We are ready to die for you. But we would prefer to live for you.

 

Padding down the hall in his bare feet, feeling the cool slap of every step against the soles of his feet, Martok [197] marveled at how well he felt. What had they done to him while he was unconscious? Microsurgery? Perhaps a complete nanobiological refurbishment? He had heard that these kinds of procedures were available in some systems, but did not believe they were performed on any Klingon world, let alone by a group of monks in the bowels of a mountain under an ancient monastery. But if none of these things had been done to him, then what had happened? Feeling like a boy again, the pains from his most ancient injuries, poorly knitted bones, and badly healed muscles of decades past had dissolved—as if the injuries had never happened. After walking down the long, dimly lit corridor for what seemed an eternity, Martok began running, not because he was impatient, but because he enjoyed the pure sensation of blood pumping through his veins.

They emerged from the shadows so quickly that Martok hadn’t seen any movement. Both of them were plain-enough-looking Klingons, no larger or taller than he himself, yet as soon as they stood before him Martok was aware of their power. Seeing them, he instinctively took a step backward, nearly crashing into Pharh. Most of the way, the Ferengi had been a half-dozen steps behind him, panting heavily from the effort of keeping up. He staggered to a halt beside Martok and gasped an epithet.

“Sorry,” Pharh said when he caught his breath. “You scared me.” Possessing a graciousness that surprised Martok, Pharh introduced the two Klingons as Starn and Angwar.

“I am forever in your debt,” Martok said to the pair.

“There is no debt” Angwar said. “You are as a brother, father, and son to us.”

“Does that mean you get three gifts for every holiday?” Pharh asked.

[198] “Pharh, be quiet,” Martok said, expecting a sour face from Angwar, but was surprised to see him smile.

“I apologize,” Angwar said. “We do not mean to be cryptic. Much of what has occurred to you in recent days requires explanation. Starn and I were just coming to get you so that you could speak to Okado, our eldest brother.”

“Then please take me to him,” Martok said. “I have many questions.”

“Will your kr’tach accompany us?”

“If he can correctly judge when to keep his mouth shut,” Martok said with a withering sidelong glance, “then yes.”

“I promise to be good,” Pharh said meekly. “Especially if there’s more food.”

“We will see what we can do,” Angwar said, then turned to lead the way.

 

“My lady?” One of her Klingon retainers stood at her lab door. He was an older man, one of the handful Gothmara had spared at the monastery, mostly because she liked the fact that he could enter and exit a room quietly.

“Yes?” she said distractedly. The search teams were sending in reports every ten minutes and she did not wish to take her eyes off the com screens. “Quickly—tell me.”

“Yes, my lady,” the old man said. “Ships are entering orbit. Many ships.”

“Morjod?”

“No, my lady. Not your son. Enemies—attacking your ships.”

“Klingon or ... ?

“Klingon.”

Quickly and efficiently, Gothmara ran through the possibilities: Kahless, some ally of Ngane’s seeking [199] revenge, Worf , or an alliance of all three. Mentally tallying the options, she concluded that this was not the worst of all possible outcomes. The most they could have was a thousand warriors and likely many fewer. If she could tempt them with an offer of a swift victory, their ridiculous warrior pride would not permit them to refuse. She would instruct the captains of her ships to beam down the bulk of their troops and let the attackers destroy the nearly empty starships. Then they would land their men on the surface and she would have all her enemies in one place. If by that time she had Martok’s head in her hand, she would break their spirits and Morjod would go unopposed. And then, oh, how the empire would burn.

A gamble, but an appealing one.

“My lady?” the retainer interrupted.

Irrationally, Gothmara slashed her nails across the little worm’s throat. If she had been wearing her gloves, the blow would have probably crushed his larynx (she was much stronger than she looked), but since she was not, his throat opened along a thin red line. The worm’s eyes opened wide and he clutched at his throat, but swiftly he became too weak to even raise his hands. Blood pumped out between his fingers in awkward, pirouetting sprays, and he lost consciousness, collapsing to the ground.

Gothmara managed to avoid the worst of the deluge, but the soles of her boots quickly became sticky as she carefully stepped around the body. That was careless, she decided. I should have let him call the ships first.

 

“This is too easy,” Darok said.

Kahless studied the reports from the attack on Gothmara’s ships and he was forced to agree. Four of the six ships were already flaming balls of plasma falling into [200] Boreth’s atmosphere. One of the other two would be crushed soon enough and the sixth had surrendered as soon as her captain had realized who commanded their attackers. Kahless could scarcely countenance it. A Klingon surrendered.

And all of this was accomplished without a single lost ship on their side.

“She must have most of her men on the surface,” Darok continued gloomily.

“I agree,” Kahless said, looking at the scans of the surface near the monastery. He was not familiar with all of the conventions for the ship’s scanners, but he recognized the shape of mountains, the concentric rings that indicated water, and the sweeping lines that meant open ground. “But where? The mountains in this area are cut through with tunnels and caves. We cannot scan deep enough from this distance and if we move in too close, we will be vulnerable to ground-to-air missiles.”

“Do we know she has them?”

“Can we assume she does not?” Kahless asked. “Gothmara has had many years to prepare her defenses here.”

“Hmmm.” Darok seemed to be staring off into the middle distance, but Kahless had, in their short association, learned the value of waiting for Martok’s advisor to process information. Despite the man’s sometimes too-cavalier tone, Kahless enjoyed Darok’s attitude. They were, he knew, two of a kind: two terrible old men who had survived to their respective ripe old ages through a combination of guile, ruthlessness, and endurance. In short, Kahless liked Darok because in a slightly different universe he might have become him. Pointing at a section of the mountain to the north of the [201] monastery, Darok said, “If I were her, this is where I would be.”

“Why there?” Kahless asked, looking at the spot where Darok was pointing midway between the open ground and the mountains. He noted also that many tiny red and green dots were beginning to appear seemingly out of thin air.

“First, because ships could land there, near the frozen lake, but still be screened from the monastery by this ridge of hills.”

“I see ...”

“And the supply of fresh water. Not too many other places on Boreth where that would be easily obtainable.”

“Agreed,” Kahless said. “And well reasoned.”

“Thank you,” Darok said. “Also, I noticed that, oh, approximately three hundred men and several dozen large creatures are exiting this particular mountain.”

“Ah, yes,” Kahless replied dryly. “The red and green dots.”

“Life signs.”

“And here?” Darok pointed at three large gray spots blooming on the side of the mountain. “Anti-ship guns.”

“So no landing?”

“No. But if I recognize the configuration—and I do—then she cannot aim them at the ground.”

“But she might have gun emplacements to cover the field.”

“She might,” Darok agreed. “But this doesn’t look like an attack formation. These men ...” He pointed at the dots fanning out from the mountainside, all of them headed north of the monastery. “They’re searching for something.”

“Martok?”

[202] “Is there anything else on this ball of ice that’s worth looking for?”

“Alert the fleet captains,” Kahless ordered. “Prepare ground troops for an assault.”

“Ngane’s crews are all light. Each vessel has barely enough crew to maintain vital systems.”

“I place great faith in your ability to inspire them, Darok. I am guessing you have a gift for such work.”

The terrible old man smiled. “That would be correct, my emperor.”

 

The round-shaped council room where Angwar and Starn had led him was located deep in the mountains lit by torchlight, it felt neither stuffy nor was smoke-filled. Either hidden modern technology was at work or the katai stronghold was extraordinarily well designed or perhaps both. Regardless of what “magic,” seen or unseen, created the environment, Martok felt as if he’d taken a journey outside time where an ancient era coexisted with the present. That he’d come home to a place he’d never been. The sensation simultaneously comforted him and made him uneasy. He had questions. Many questions. And the katai patiently answered each one.

“Why did we heal you?” Okado asked, repeating Martok’s last question. “For many reasons.” The Katai Master was, Martok thought, the most ancient-looking Klingon he had ever seen. Older than Kor he was, older than his father, older even than Darok (if such a thing was possible), though he did not act old. In fact, he reminded Martok of a young boy, though that might be attributable to the fact that Okado reminded him of, more than anything (and here was a puzzle for another day), Alexander Rozhenko. Okado sat placidly on a low stool [203] in the center of a half circle of thirteen stools, each one to his left and right slightly higher, each person visibly younger. The two warriors on the extreme right and left (one a man, one a woman) were approximately Drex’s age and sat on stools so tall that their legs did not reach the ground.

Martok affixed the label “warriors” to these men and women despite the fact that none of them wore armor or carried weapons. He knew they were warriors the same way a master carpenter would recognize good wood without even needing to rap on it with his knuckle. “Forgive me if I fail to understand your meaning, Katai,” he asked. “The last I remember, I was dying. Yet, here I am, less than two ...”

“Three.”

“... three days later and not only am I healed, but I feel better than I have in many years. And I remember my dreams now, if I can call them dreams.”

“Do you?” Okado asked, eyebrows raised. He seemed inordinately pleased to hear this. “What dreams do you refer to?”

Martok shifted uneasily on his feet and behind him he heard Pharh struggle to stay silent. “All my dreams,” Martok said. “But especially the dreams of Kar-Tela, my father, and Lukara.”

“Your dreamworld is rich with complexity,” Okado said, eyes flashing merrily.

“Pardon, but I don’t believe that’s the issue at hand.”

“Then what is?”

“The issue ...” Martok began, frustrated, but then his innate sense of self-preservation took control. Angering or threatening these warriors would be worse than foolish; it would probably be fatal. Calming himself, he [204] began again. “I am troubled that I do not yet know who you are, what your interest in me is, and what you have to do with my father.”

While none of the thirteen men and women stirred a centimeter, Martok sensed a shifting in the subtle spaces between them, as if each was looking into the eyes of all the others and smiling in affirmation. “Ah, ha,” each was saying. “Here we are at last.”

Rising from his low stool, Angwar spoke first. “As for your first question, we are the katai. If you have been paying attention to your dreams, you know the meaning of the word.”

“Firebringers,” Martok recalled. “Yes, I remember now.”

“Correct. We are the last true disciples of Kahless, the father of our order. Though we are based here on Boreth, we have lived among our people for as long as we have called ourselves Klingons. Some of our artifacts suggest that we were here before the coming of the Hur’q. These caverns,” he said, pointing over their heads, “were carved from this sacred mountain in a twilight time that has long been lost to memory.”

Quickly absorbing Angwar’s meaning, Martok responded, “Your brotherhood is older than recorded history. You must know of life on Qo’noS before the Hur’q.”

Angwar shook his head. “No, you misunderstand. The Hur’q destroyed almost all that they found. While these catacombs survived, no records were preserved. Rather ...”

“You are the records,” Pharh inserted.

Martok felt he was almost accustomed to these [205] interruptions, but he could not stop himself from saying, “Pharh!”

But Angwar laughed in a manner most un-Klingon, enjoying the Ferengi’s impetuousness. “No, do not chastise your kr’tach. He is correct. The old tales speak of the Two Thousand who survived in the most inhospitable reaches of Qo’noS’s arctic reaches, as far from the Hur’q as they could go and still survive.”

“The Two Thousand?” Pharh asked. “Someone ... ?”

“It’s a legend, Pharh,” Martok explained. “A group of warriors who carved out a fort in an icy cliff where they waited out the Hur’q invasion.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very Klingon thing to do,” Pharh commented.

“It was in a time before the word ‘Klingon’ meant what it means now,” Angwar said. “Martok is correct in every respect except one: these men and women were not warriors.” As soon as he said this, he corrected himself: “Not exclusively warriors. They were, in fact, much more. They were wise men and learned women, teachers and scholars, priests and preservationists. And, yes, they knew how to fight.” He grinned. “Very well. When the Hur’q departed, some of the Two Thousand left Qo’noS as well. Others emerged as some of the greatest men and women of their era. As our world began to heal, others joined our order, or so the stories say.”

“And what happened to them?”

Angwar stepped back and a young woman near the edge of the group slipped down from her high stool. Martok felt himself deeply moved by the depth and clarity of her eyes and the nobility of her manner. Here is a woman that Sirella would have been proud to call “sister.” Then, remembering his two murdered girls, he felt [206] his heart swell in his chest: Or daughter, he finished. If only Lahzna and Shen could have learned of this place. What might they have accomplished here?

As if taking up her part in a play, the young woman bowed, then said, “Time passed and Qo’noS began to develop a new character. No more were we the hunters and gatherers, weavers and artists of the days before the Hur’q. A harder people grew up in their place. They were brave, true, and fearsome warriors, but they lacked discipline and rigor.”

“They forgot what Kahless tried to teach them,” Martok said.

“Yes. Kahless taught Klingons the value of honor and discipline, knowing it was the only way to harness the terrible energies our fear produced.”

“Fear?” Martok asked, shocked. “The Klingons fear nothing.”

The woman shook her head. “And this is the lost wisdom of Kahless,” she said. “The greatest lesson that he taught was simply this: We Klingons should fear nothing except ourselves. No one could destroy us except ourselves.” She paused here and allowed Martok to inhale deeply and release his breath slowly. Continuing, she added, “This is a harsh lesson, one our people have forgotten. Why this is so, we cannot say, but we katai have made it our law. We do not forget.”

“Only the Klingon can destroy the Klingon,” Martok said softly. “Yes, I see it is so. Always with us it has been the battle without and never the one within.” Nodding his head, he looked up and down the line of the thirteen men and women. “I have been fighting the wrong war,” he said. “I believe my father tried to warn me of this.”

“Urthog was a man of great wisdom,” Okado said, [207] “but not, alas, a patient man. Sensing that you might have a great destiny, he tried to explain our teachings to you too soon, I think.”

“Or perhaps I was too dull-witted to understand them,” Martok said.

Okado shrugged. “Who can say? The point, as you might say, is that your destiny has brought you here. And unless I miss my guess, much about the fate of the Klingon people will be decided before the sun again sets over this mountain. Blood will stain the snow—most of it Klingon—but we will settle this today and you, the son of my old friend, are the pivot point, the edge of the bat’leth, upon which it all depends. What, Martok, would you now do?”

Martok hesitated, mindful of forces in play that would never let him forget whatever he said next. His mind was troubled because, on one hand, he knew in the pit of his being that the katai spoke truly. His people, the Klingons, were on the verge of self-destruction; their improperly channeled energies would ignite the galaxy, turning all against them. They possessed all the attributes they needed to become the great people they hungered to be, but they were out of balance. Though they paid lip service to the concepts of discipline and honor, their actions had become a sad pantomime, their hearts locked in the past.

My people need something to remind them of the old virtues, he decided, but also they need to see how these virtues can fit into this new galaxy. They need ...

An example, my husband.

The words rang as clear as if she stood beside him and spoke into his ear. Martok did not turn his head. Slowly, he had acclimated to the idea of a spirit world [208] that occasionally intruded on his own. So he closed his eyes and listened to Sirella’s voice, trusting fully, as ever, in anything she said.

“What about Kahless?” Martok asked, and the katai seemed to think the question was directed at them.

“The monks were too literal,” Starn said. “It was not the body of Kahless that our people required or even his mind, though both these things have value.”

Our people need a leader like Kahless, Sirella whispered, who will fight with his heart.

Martok’s eye, which had been closed, snapped open as he recalled the vision of the battle in the Jem’Hadar camp and his father reaching into his chest.

Then you had better use this, Urthog had said, showing Martok his beating heart.

“Long ago,” Okado said, “Kahless promised to return to his people, on Boreth. The Katai have waited ever since. We believe that wait is over.”

You must become the leader they need, Sirella whispered.

And though he never knew precisely to whom he was speaking, Martok answered, “Yes.”