“Engineering, this is Captain Mogh, respond!”
Again, nothing. This is not simply an attack—we are sabotaged.
But Mogh’s first thoughts were for his family. “Kahlest, take Worf to the sub-basement.”
Holding up his bat’leth,Worf said, “I wish to fight beside you, Father!”
“No!” Mogh closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “I need you to protect Kahlest. No harm must come to her, Worf, understood?”
“I understand, Father. I will die before I let anyone harm her.”
Let us hope it does not come to that,Mogh thought, now more grateful than ever that he had allowed Lorgh to talk them into leaving Kurn behind. “Good,” he said. “Go!”
Before he could say anything to his mate, she spoke. “We have been sabotaged by whoever it was Lorgh sent you to find.”
Mogh shook his head. I knew I loved this woman for a reason.“Yes. I do not know who to trust—except you. Go to the engineering section, see if you can re-establish the shields. I will go to the control room and see if anyone there still lives.”
The entire complex was then rocked with a tremendous impact. Mogh lost his footing and fell to the ground, which seemed to buck and weave beneath him despite being made from the strongest rock available.
Kaasin, of course, had maintained her footing. She moved toward him, concern for her mate overriding a warrior’s preference not to be helped in any way. Mogh waved her away. “Go to engineering! Quickly!”
Nodding, she turned and ran toward the access ladder.
Clambering to his feet, Mogh ran in the opposite direction toward the control room.
The base shook twice more during his sojourn, and Mogh fell over one of those times. Plasma fires erupted all around him. The stench of burning plasti-form and damaged equipment only served to get his blood boiling. The Romulans will pay for this—and so will the traitor.
To Mogh’s confusion, the door to the control room was closed. It had never been closed in all the weeks he had been here, and did not understand why it was shut now. Worse, the privacy seal had been engaged.
His own code overrode that, of course, but in the time it took him to enter it, the base was rocked yet again.
When the door rumbled open, a stench like rotting meat assaulted Mogh’s nostrils. He recognized it instantly as SIp,a gas that rendered one comatose—if left untreated, it could easily lead to death. It was part of the control room’s security system, meant to provide the option of incapacitating intruders to leave them alive to be interrogated.
SIp’s dense green color also resulted in reduced visibility if used in an enclosed space. Covering his nose and mouth with his hand, Mogh made his way through the jade miasma to the environmental control console in order to clear it. He almost tripped over the prone forms of L’Kor and Gi’ral. Saboteurs were, in Mogh’s experience, unlikely to gas themselves, so the two of them were no doubt innocent.
Worry about that later,he thought. As soon as he activated the scrubbers to clean the air of the SIp,he sent out a distress signal and ran a diagnostic on all systems.
To his horror, the Romulans themselves lowered the shields. They had the access codes!
The base had also stopped shaking, and Mogh was now reading multiple transports to the surface. The Romulans had sent down ground troops to take care of whoever was left.
That number was small. Sensors registered very few life signs, and several were in this room. Mogh turned around and looked over the unconscious forms. He recognized most of the regular staff, but conspicuous by his absence was Commander Moraq—he wasn’t in his office or the control room. Could he be the traitor after all?
The base shook again, but this was not from disruptor fire. On one of the security viewers, Mogh saw a massive explosion from one of the secondary laboratories in one of the smaller compounds near the base. From the looks of it, the compound’s generator overloaded.
Based on the reduction in life-sign readings, two hundred Klingons died in that explosion alone.
Unfortunately, sensors, environmentals, and communications were all Mogh could get to operate. All tactical systems, from the shields to the ion cannons, had gone offline, and nothing Mogh could do would reactivate them. The saboteur did his work well.
Mogh was no longer sure if it was Ja’rod or Moraq or someone else entirely who was responsible for this treachery—for this murder—but Mogh swore he would not rest until the deaths of all these good people were avenged. This was nota good day—or a good way—to die.
Then he heard a humming sound behind him. Mogh whirled to see half a dozen Romulans materialize in the room. Mogh had his disruptor out before they could coalesce into their natural form, and killed two of them before he felt the heat of one of their disruptor beams slice into his torso.
As he fell to the ground, his final thoughts were of Kaasin and his son Worf, and of Kurn, who would be the only one left to carry on the family name.
Centurion Tokath shook his head as he looked at the three corpses—the two antecenturions the Klingon had killed before Antecenturion Belear cut the Klingon down. “Senseless. The control room was supposed to be gassed.”
Belear knelt down over another Klingon body. “This one is not dead.”
“Neither are these others,” said another antecenturion.
“That one probably entered after the gas. Senseless,” Tokath repeated. He had served loyally in the Romulan military for decades, but as he grew older, he found that he had less and less taste for death. Perhaps it is time I retired.He had hoped that with the insanity of Praetor Dralath’s regime a thing of the past things might improve, but governments were, he had decided, inherently insane. What is madder, that the Klingons would develop a biogenic weapon or that our response would be to murder four thousand Klingons?
Either way, Tokath had lost his taste for combat.
Aloud, he said, “No doubt he is responsible for the distress signal we detected.”
The young antecenturion snorted. “As if that matters. The Klingon ships in this sector have been led to the Morska system. We have nothing to fear from—”
“Centurion!”
That was Belear, who now stood at one of the control room consoles. “What is it?” Tokath asked.
“Sensors are detecting a ship approaching at high warp!”
Damn those fools in the Tal Shiar, they assured us that Kang’s fleet would be distracted!
Tokath walked over to the display—only to see that the configuration of the ship was all wrong, as was its course. The ship wasn’t coming from the Morksa system, it was coming from the Federation. “It’s Starfleet,” he said after a moment. “They must have been near the border and picked up the distress signal.” More foolishness. The commander had not bothered to jam the signal when it began to broadcast, just before Tokath was sent to the planet. The commander had faith in the Tal Shiar’s information, forgetting that Starfleet had a tendency to come to the aid of—well, anyone, truth be told. The Federation’s desire to help people was as pervasive as it was predictable, and that it wasn’t anticipated as a possibility distressed Tokath. Have I lost the taste for combat, or merely for those who run it?
“Gather up the prisoners—him, too,” he added, pointing at the Klingon they had shot. “The doctor might be able to revive him.” He contacted the mother ship. They were going to need to leave sooner rather than later if they didn’t want to risk a confrontation with Starfleet. Tokath doubted that the commander wished a repeat of Narendra III, after all…
Kaasin arrived in the engine room of the Khitomer Base just in time to see Commander Moraq cut down by a disruptor fired by Ja’rod.
The engine room housed all the control systems and power for the entire base—with the exception of a few of the compounds holding the secondary laboratories, which had their own power sources. She carried only one weapon—a disruptor pistol that Mogh had given her years ago. It had gone unfired, aside from the occasional bit of target practice, for all the time she’d owned it, as Kaasin always came armed with her best weapon: herself. Besides mok’bara,she had mastered several martial arts forms, including some from the Federation. She had every faith in her ability to take on even an armed foe with just her hands and feet and teeth.