Star Trek: ALL - Seven Deadly Sins Page 23

  So when First Officer Kahlor contacted him in his cabin to inform him that General Korrd wished to speak to him, Kor sat up straight, set down his breshtanti ale, and activated the viewer eagerly.

  “To what do I owe this honor, General?”

  Korrd outlined the problems at Beta Thoridar. “You will meet with the Devisor and the Voh’tahk, Captain. Get that mine under control by whatever means you and Captains Kang and Koloth see fit.”

  “Which of us will be in command?” Kor asked. He didn’t know the other two captains—though Koloth’s name was familiar—what their records of battle were, nor if they were QuchHa’ or HemQuch.

  “Kang is the seniormost officer.”

  Kor hesitated, as that did not actually answer the question. When the pause went on for several seconds, the captain finally said, “Very well, General. We will change course immediately.”

  The general made a grunting noise. “Your task, Kor, will be of great importance. While Koloth supervises repairs of all the damage done to the operation, and Kang supplements the security, your task will be to find the ringleaders of these malcontents. I expect a preliminary report the day after your arrival, and daily reports thereafter. Out.”

  Kor contacted the bridge and told Kohlar to set course for Beta Thoridar at maximum speed.

  Then he called up Kang and Koloth’s records of battle.

  They were both indeed QuchHa’. From what Korrd had said, most of the problems on Beta Thoridar were related to Kor’s fellow sufferers. He smiled, realizing that they probably just needed to be reminded that they were still Klingons and should behave honorably.

  Koloth’s record revealed why his name was familiar. He had lost his previous command, the Gr’oth. It had to be scuttled following a trip to the Earth Space Station K-7, when the ship was infested. His current command had also been so infested, but this time Koloth was able to take care of it himself.

  Kang’s record was more impressive. The Voh’tahk had won a few border skirmishes with Starfleet before the formal declaration of war—the same war that was stopped by the Organians.

  Scowling at the memory, Kor switched the screen off. He hated being reminded of Organia, of having his governorship taken away by those smiling all-powerful simpletons, of having the Empire’s just war aborted.

  He gulped down the rest of his ale, then went to the bridge.

  The asteroid belt of the Beta Thoridar system didn’t look like much.

  The Klothos had been the first of the three vessels to arrive, though Kohlar reported to Kor that the Devisor and the Voh’tahk would be in-system within the hour.

  The larger asteroids were thousands of qelI’qams apart at least, with smaller fragments tumbling lazily through the void at irregular intervals. Kor’s science officer gave a report that this was likely a planetoid that had suffered some kind of cataclysmic collision that shattered it. It was heavy enough in dilithium, the officer said, that it was probably already unstable even before the collision.

  The three largest asteroids had atmospheric domes on them—one, in fact, had several. This was the primary headquarters of the mining operation.

  “Pilot,” Kor said, “magnify the northernmost dome.”

  The pilot did so, and Kor saw the crack that had been created, rendering whatever was beneath it useless to sentient life.

  Turning to his first officer, Kor said, “Kohlar, you are to investigate the workers—ferret out this malvaq bortaS group. Determine who their leaders are and bring them to me for interrogation.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  From behind him, the operations officer said, “Two D7 battle cruisers coming out of warp. Transponder code confirms it is the I.K.S. Devisor and the I.K.S. Voh’tahk.”

  Kor nodded. “Open a channel to both ships—put them both on-screen.”

  Moments later, two faces appeared, which matched those on file. Kang had a dark, brooding face and seemed to permanently scowl. Koloth was paler and more pleasant—though his smile seemed to hide the d’k tahg he was about to stab you with.

  Koloth spoke first. “You must be Captain Kor.”

  “Indeed. I have not yet contacted Supervisor Kobyk.”

  His smile widening, Koloth said, “I imagine your presence has made him apprehensive.”

  Kang’s scowl deepened. “If so, then he is an even bigger fool than General Korrd indicated. The three of us shall transport to his office immediately.”

  Koloth frowned. “Should we not communicate our impending arrival?”

  “The general told him we were coming,” Kor said with a small smile. “That should be communication enough.”

  “Precisely,” Kang said with a nod.

  Kor materialized in the supervisor’s office to find himself at gunpoint.

  Koloth and Kang had beamed down next to him, and Kang barked, “Holster your weapon immediately!”

  The one holding the weapon was a short HemQuch who wore thick-soled heeled boots, no doubt in an attempt to increase his height. He was standing next to the desk and aiming a disruptor pistol at the three of them. According to the records, this was Sorkav, the chief of security for the mine, and the brother of the supervisor.

  That supervisor was sitting behind the desk, holding a mug of what smelled like warnog in his right hand. Kobyk shared a crest with Sorkav, and they had the same wide green eyes.

  Sorkav was still pointing the disruptor. “Who are you to give me orders, QuchHa’?”

  “I am Kang.” The captain accentuated the point by stepping forward, looming over the security chief. “And I am not accustomed to giving orders twice!”

  “Sorkav, do as he says!” Kobyk said. “My apologies, Captains, but these have been difficult times. If you had warned us of your arrival—”

  Kang waved him off and started to pace back and forth across the office. “From now on, all shuttle activity in this asteroid field is restricted. Any shuttle launches must be escorted by one of our three ships. Any shuttle traveling unescorted will be fired upon.”

  Kobyk’s mouth opened, then closed. “Captain, I—”

  “Furthermore,” Kang continued as if Kobyk had not spoken, “you will transmit the specifications of the damaged dome to the chief engineer of the Devisor and you will allow the officers of the Klothos free access to your personnel.” Kang turned to Sorkav. “As for you, send all your duty rosters to QaS DevwI’ Morglar aboard the Voh’tahk. Your forces will be supplemented with security teams from my vessel. Am I understood?”

  Kor watched both brothers as Kang spoke. Kobyk seemed to deflate, sinking lower and lower into the comfortable-looking klongat-skin chair. But Sorkav smoldered. Kor had seen that expression before many times in his life. Sorkav and the man from the House of Yorgh had used the word QuchHa’ as if it were the worst epithet they could utter.

  In response to Kang’s query, Kobyk replied, “Captain, I believe that this is a bit extreme.”

  “I asked a question, Supervisor,” Kang said. “It requires a simple yes or no.”

  Squirming in his chair, Kobyk started: “We are perfectly capable—”

  Kor decided to speak. “You are hardly that, Supervisor, or the three of us would not need to be here.”

  “General Korrd asked for a preliminary report,” Koloth said. “I would hate to have to tell him that you obstructed us from the moment of our arrival.”

  Kang stepped forward and leaned over, his fists resting on Kobyk’s desk. “Am I understood, Supervisor? Or must I relieve you of your post?”

  “This is our mine!” Sorkav bellowed, his hand moving to his disruptor, but not actually unholstering it. “We will not be ordered about by the likes of you!”

  “Sorkav, be silent!” Kobyk cried. Then he looked back up at Kang. “You are understood, Captain Kang. Your instructions will be carried out immediately.”

  Then Kobyk looked back at his brother. Sorkav snarled and moved toward the exit.

  “I did not give you leave to depart, Sorkav,” Kang said
without turning around.

  Sorkav stopped and turned to face Kang. “I accept that you are here to restore order to this mine, Captain. But I am not one of your crew, and I do not require your permission to move freely about.”

  With that, he departed.

  Kor and Koloth exchanged glances, and Kor knew that their reports to the general were not going to reflect favorably upon Sorkav.

  “You must forgive my brother, Captain,” Kobyk said. “As I said on your arrival, these have been difficult times.”

  “No,” Kang said, straightening up. “For as long as we are assigned here, Supervisor, you are in no position to tell any of us what we ’must’ do.”

  Kobyk nodded. “Of course, Captain.”

  But Kor thought that the nod, while masked as a gesture of respect, was to avoid making eye contact with Kang, so the captain would not see Kobyk’s disgust.

  4

  Jurva

  Bekk Jurva had been assigned by QaS DevwI’ Morglar to supplement the security forces at one of the shuttlebay checkpoints.

  “The hand scanners they use were ancient when I was a trainee,” Morglar had told her. “I would prefer to trust readings from our scanners.”

  Jurva had served well for several turns, and she knew Morglar well enough to question his orders without worry for the consequences. So she asked, “Why am I being assigned to this detail? Surely there is—”

  “Battle?” Morglar laughed. “These are miners, Jurva, not Starfleet or Kinshaya. There will be no battle here.”

  “Then I will report to”—she stared at the data slate Morglar had handed her—“Section Chief Targ.” Her eyes widened, and she looked up at Morglar. “Surely, that isn’t his name?”

  “It’s a family name, apparently.” Morglar reached over to the controls of the data slate and called up the man’s record.

  Peering at the display, Jurva saw that his full name was Targ, son of Targ. He was also from the Kingral Hills of Mempa VIII, a backward, rural area. Jurva had served on the Defense Force base on Mempa VIII before being transferred to the Voh’tahk, and she had always found the country folk from Kingral Hills to be tiresome.

  “Very well. I shall support the son of Targ with my hand scanner,” Jurva said with a salute to her QaS DevwI’.

  “See that you do. And remember, Jurva, we are here to improve the efficiency of the mine. Try not to kill everyone who annoys you.”

  Jurva bared her teeth with amusement at her supervisor’s teasing. “I will try my best, sir.”

  She beamed from the Voh’tahk to the transporter station for Site wej, where she was greeted by three guards—one QuchHa’, the others HemQuch— all armed with painstiks.

  “I am Bekk Jurva, daughter of Pit’ton, and I have been assigned to aid Section Chief Targ.”

  One of the HemQuch said, “I am Gonn, this is Goroth.” He shook his head, then indicated the QuchHa’. “Oh, and, er, that’s Korya. We’ll take you to the section chief now, but—”

  To Jurva’s shock, Gonn hesitated. It was not an action a Klingon warrior performed readily, and she had assumed Sorkav’s security people to be warriors. She wondered if she should have revised that estimate.

  Gonn finally continued: “Please, call him ’Section Chief.’ He doesn’t like being called by his name.”

  “I can hardly blame him,” Jurva said honestly. “Take me to him.”

  “Of course.”

  As Jurva followed the three guards, Goroth spoke for the first time. “Is that a disruptor?”

  Her hand instinctively moving to her sidearm, Jurva said, “Of course. All Defense Force personnel are issued disruptors.”

  Korya muttered, “Defense Force personnel are lucky.”

  Gonn shot Korya an annoyed look, then said, “We’re only armed with painstiks. A few of the supervisors got disruptors once this whole malvaq bortaS idiocy began, but they don’t even work all the time.”

  They walked down several corridors that were carved out of the asteroid’s rock and filled with atmosphere before reaching an enclosure that looked out onto space. Jurva saw four large shuttlecraft that were obviously used to transport the miners.

  At the entryway was a table and a large force-field generator, currently off.

  “I am Bekk Jurva,” she said to the section chief, a short, broadshouldered HemQuch with a slight gut and short hair that was starting to show gray. His beard was untrimmed and he wore a giant nose ring—both typical for the shack dwellers of Kingral.

  “I am your section chief, woman.”

  “No, actually, you aren’t,” Jurva said quickly. “I report to QaS DevwI’ Morglar, and he reports to Captain Kang. I am here to aid you, not be subject to your command. And you will address me as Bekk or by my name.”

  Targ looked at his subordinates. “Do you hear that, boys? The QuchHa’ bitch wants us to treat her with respect!” He laughed, as did Gonn and Goroth. Korya, she noted, stayed silent.

  Only Morglar’s final words to her kept Jurva from killing the section chief right there. Instead she simply stared at him.

  When his laughter had finally died down, Targ said, “All right, then, be’H, this is where you will be stationed. When the miners’ shift ends, they come to this shuttlebay to be taken back to Site wa’.”

  Jurva tensed, but said nothing. The term be’H was a normal Kingral diminutive of be’Hom, which meant girl. The Kingral dialect tended to meld the sharp sound at the end of her rank with the more guttural consonant at the center of be’Hom, so it was possible that that was simply the way Targ pronounced bekk.

  Or he was deliberately insulting her. Again, taking heed of Morglar’s instructions, she let it pass.

  “Each person who wishes to pass through must be scanned. Any contraband is confiscated. Once they are cleared, they are permitted to walk through the force field, which is made semipermeable by a control that I hold.”

  For a brief instant, Jurva considered ordering Targ to give her that control, but decided not to push things.

  At least not yet.

  Instead, she asked, “What constitutes contraband?”

  “Anything that is not standard mining equipment. Writing implements used to spread the malvaq bortaS graffiti. Instruments used to sabotage shuttlecraft. That sort of thing.”

  Jurva shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. “What is the point of this?”

  Targ frowned, an action that made his nose ring abut his upper lip. “What do you mean?”

  “The miners know that you scan them when they enter the shuttlebay, yes?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then what is the point of it? This does not provide security for the mine, it simply provides the illusion of it. It would make far more sense to make the scans discreet and secret. Let the conspirators think themselves safe from scans.”

  “Look,” the section chief said, “I just follow Sorkav’s orders.”

  “Then Sorkav is an even bigger fool than I have been told.”

  Targ laughed at that, and then so did Gonn and Goroth. “You will receive no argument regarding Sorkav’s intelligence form any of us, be’H, of that you may be sure.”

  A loud siren pierced the air and caused Jurva to put her hands to her ears. Korya did likewise.

  Again, Targ laughed. “Typical QuchHa’, having to protect their weak Earther ears. That is the end of the shift. Time to begin work.”

  Gonn and Goroth took up positions near the far end of the entryway, and no doubt would patrol up and down the line that would soon form.

  Korya walked up to Jurva. “I said the same thing,” he said in a small voice. Korya was quite short, only coming up to Jurva’s shoulder, and he looked like a child with a ghIntaq spear when he held his painstik. “I told the section chief that this wouldn’t create proper security, but he told me to be quiet.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Jurva ran her hand scanner over every Klingon—mostly QuchHa’, with the occasional HemQuch—who came t
hrough the checkpoint. She found only one item that she would classify as contraband: a qutluch, the weapon of a hired assassin. The miner was unconvincing in his claims that it had been in his family for generations.

  Targ, however, was less fussy on the subject.

  “Are you aware,” the section chief informed one worker, “that gold can be used to disrupt engine systems on our shuttlecraft?”

  “That bone necklace,” he told another, “could easily be used as a weapon.”

  “Did you really think,” he told a third, “that you would be allowed to carry a bladed weapon?”

  Not wishing to disrupt the mining operations any further, Jurva waited until the final shuttle had taken off before she reached under the table and pulled out the container that was filled with the confiscated items. She pulled out the medallion he had taken off the first worker. “Tell me, Section Chief, what is the method by which one can use an incredibly valuable gold medallion encrusted with gemstones to disrupt engine systems?”

  Looking as if someone had fed him dead food, Targ said, “Our shuttle’s engines are—”

  “Your shuttle’s engines, Section Chief, are standard Type wa’maH Hut. They cannot be in any way harmed by the introduction of gold—or gemstones, for that matter—into their systems.”

  “Are you accusing me—”

  But Jurva refused to let him speak, instead taking out the bone necklace. “How, precisely, is this bone necklace to be used as a weapon, Section Chief?”

  “Those bones have sharp edges that—”

  Jurva reached out and grabbed Goroth’s wrist and yanked him toward her. She would have grabbed Targ, but he was on the other side of the table and too far away. In turn, she applied several of the edges of the bones to Goroth’s finger, hard. None of them even broke skin.

  “Sharp edges,” Jurva said after her demonstration, “that can do no harm whatsoever. Oh, and before you mention the possibility of using it as a garrote . . .” Jurva wrapped the necklace around her own neck and tightened it, causing the thin rope to break in two. “But, of course, these are maS bird bones. Very rare, very valuable—but not very dangerous.”