UNLIKE THE BODY of the ensign whom Kellen had just killed, the Iraga's wound gushed no liquid onto his fist, but instead puckered around it. He felt no spine, but assumed there was one in there somewhere, and aggravated the blade across the body from side to side.
The Iraga gasped and arched backward against him. Its mouth stretched open and its limbs thrust outward. Kellen pulled it down until he could twist the tentacles around the creature's face and stuff them into its mouth and down its throat, guttering any cry it tried to make.
He waited for it to die, but it would not die. It cranked to this side, then that side, trying to pull itself free of his grip and the blade digging into its back. Soon it began to go pliant in his arms and he let it drop.
It slid down his legs and rolled to the deck at his feet, staring up at him with bitter green eyes that had no pupils.
"Security to Mr. Scott. Emergency."
Kellen looked up, and stepped to the archway. The senior engineer was reaching for the nearest panel.
"Scott here."
"Sir, Mr. Giotto here. Captain says to notify you of intruder-alert status. We've had a call from deck four. Yeoman Tamura went to ask the Klingon general if she could bring him dinner and she found Ensign Brown on the floor of the VIP quarters. He's been killed, sir, and there's no sign of the general. We're attempting a biosweep for Klingon physiology, but we haven't pinpointed anything yet."
The engineer's face turned stony, and for a moment he glared at the comm as if it had done the killing. When he spoke his voice was like metal grating on metal. "Acknowledged. Scott out." He looked up and snapped his fingers. "Mr. Hadley! Go to Security alert status two in the lower section. Double guards at every entrance. Let's clear this deck of all but assigned personnel. Arm the lot and set up in teams."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Scott. Johnson, come with me! Elliott, come down here!"
Suddenly there was confusion all over. The demons were rounded up and shuffled out of Kellen's sight. Guards with phasers jogged through, and his plans for sabotage were snuffed before his eyes.
So the plans must be altered.
He stepped back to the poisonous body, yanked his dagger clear of the Iraga's back, and quickly retracted the two claw extensions. Taking the hilt in both hands, he braced his legs wide, raised the heavy center blade as the creature looked up beseechingly at him, and brought it down with all the power in his thick upper body. The blade crunched through the Iraga's throbbing neck and went a finger's length into the deck.
Sawing deliberately, he ignored the free flood of white fluid and gray organs. Finally he twisted his left hand into the frantically jerking tentacles and pulled as he cut. The eyes flared as if the demon knew what was happening to it. The lips moved open, closed, open, closed, as if trying to speak to him, and there was sound from the ravaged throat that soon dissolved into a froth.
He sawed relentlessly. In moments the beast's eyes began to roll and the tentacles began to coil around and around Kellen's hand and wrist, growing thinner as they tightened. He was disgusted at the greasy sensation, but forced himself to maintain his grip and continue to pull and cut.
The neck muscles were twisted like cord and resisted even the razor-sharpness of his dagger blade. The bones of this demon's throat grated fiercely, but he gritted his teeth and applied his strength, and soon the Iraga's lips peeled back to reveal its pointed teeth, and its head flinched off into his hand.
Kellen stumbled back with the force of his own pulling as the last of the ligaments snapped. Before him the Iraga's body winced and jolted, its long fingers scratching at the deck, air sucking with futile desperation into the exposed tube endings through which it had been breathing only moments ago. It was trying to live.
He had no idea whether it would succeed, but he had its head and that was what he needed. Now there would be movement, action against the Havoc, which he had let slip through his grip by failing to destroy the Havoc ship from within when he had the chance. Since then, everything that had happened had done so because of the price of his own life.
He would not make so great an error again. The Klingon who stopped the Havoc would be the icon of the next age.
And more, far more, the disaster to his people and all people would be shoved back into the maw of legend.
With his gut-stained hand he shoved his blade into his belt and clawed for the communicator. The instrument nearly slipped between his wet fingers. If it fell, it would ring the deck as loudly as a klaxon and they would come and find him.
He brought the instrument to his lips. "Qul. Qul. Activate transporter. I have the proof!"
* * *
"This is a mighty odd invasion, as invasions go."
McCoy adjusted the antigrav on Spock's diagnostic bed down another few degrees, then tilted the upper-body section of the bed so Spock could at least feel as if he were sitting up some.
The science officer's computer accesses were still at fingertip convenience and Spock wasn't moving much, but his face had lost its sea-foam pallor. The therapy of work had done him good.
McCoy wished there were something that could do some good for a furious captain whose arms were knotted at his sides and who couldn't seem to stop pacing in bitter rage.
"I've got a crewman murdered by a dignitary with whom I made a treaty, and a potential flashpoint on my hands," he snarled as he swung around and started back toward Spock after coming nose-up to a shelf full of vials. Every time he paced over there he caught a sour vision of himself in a mirror behind the shelves.
It made him madder.
He struck the nearest comm unit and for the fourth time clipped, "Kirk to Security. Progress report."
There was a pause, though he could tell through raw experience that the line was open.
"Captain, Giotto here. We've completed our biosweep. There's no Klingon on board anymore. The general must've gotten off the ship somehow."
Big surprise.
"Understood. Shields up. No more beaming unless I authorize it personally."
"Aye-aye, sir."
He snapped the comm off without acknowledging and twisted back to Spock. "Have you got anything? Anything at all?"
Spock's straight brows furrowed some as the responsibility hit him squarely between them, but he tapped on his keyboards and brought up on the screen a stylized watercolor painting of a creature disturbingly like one of Zennor's party.
"In Klingon legend, the Shushara was a winged demon, or group of demons, given to consuming unsuccessful warriors, beginning with their feet and eating its way up the body while the victim witnessed this and contemplated his failures. Like many other demons, they were ultimately banished, but promised to return with the Havoc to consume the weak. Kellen may see Zennor's crew as a manifestation of the Empire's failure to expand since the establishment of the Neutral Zone by the Federation."
"Havoc is their punishment for having let themselves be contained?"
"Yes," Spock said. He moved his hand to his lap, rather gingerly, slowly, and scooped up the crescent brooch, looking at the scratch of stars and comets upon which Zennor's civilization set its hopes. "Regarding this etching, taking into account the ten differing periods of their standard year and the speed and movement of stars, there is a legitimate corollary in the Danai research. They seem ready to jump to a conclusion, but nothing is disprovable yet. Any arrangement of stars may look like something else five thousand years later from any angle of your own choosing. I must admit, though, this is an excellent correlation to this particular stellar group, given the millennia and the constant movement of celestial bodies. I find myself deeply impressed that they managed to do this, especially from across the galaxy, Captain. The technology—"
"Not the technology now, Spock. How likely is it that this is the actual place?"
Spock let the brooch slip back onto his thigh and moved his eyes to Kirk. "Not very likely."
Kirk flattened his lips. "As I understand it, Zennor and Garamanus are competing for the loyalty of their crew. Garamanus is, more or less, the spiritual force aboard, like the priests who went on board the ships of the Spanish Armada and were the political force that the captain had to deal with. When Zennor didn't move to destroy us and the Klingons, Garamanus had a reason not to trust him. Zennor's required to take certain steps. If he doesn't take them, Garamanus can have him removed."
"And one of those steps," McCoy prodded, "is to prove that we're the conquerors, whoever they were?"
"Or that we're not. 'Conqueror' to them is like saying Kodos the Executioner to us. We have to establish that we weren't involved in the conquest that banished their civilization and that they have come to the wrong place to look for their home."
"They have ferocious religious beliefs, evidently," Spock said, "and these have taken care of them over the generations."
"But Zennor seems to be some kind of agnostic," Kirk added. "He wants our help to disprove that we're the conquerors. Their priests have settled on this area for their own reasons, and the scientists have been afraid to challenge. They put all their cultural energy into coming here, but Zennor doesn't want to come here and become just another conqueror. He has a mission inside his mission—to disprove the mission."
"Interesting," Spock murmured. "The galaxy is prohibitively huge, Captain, and they have risked everything to come to this one area. Either way, the trip is one-way for Zennor and his crew. No matter what happens, they cannot go back. They are here now. Such commitment takes great fortitude. I am impressed with Vergo Zennor for taking on convictions above and beyond belief in his assignment."
"So am I," Kirk said with a reckless sigh.
"The priests of their culture are taking this as hard fact," McCoy said, holding out a hand to Spock. Then he looked at Kirk. "They'll only take hard fact to knock it down. What're we going to do?"
Kirk glowered at the edge of the bed, not really seeing it. "If we go there and there's no such planet around the star they've targeted, or there is a planet but there's never been life on it, then their plan falls apart. Zennor wants it to fall apart, but we have to go there to pull it down."
"Vergo Zennor believes his ship can stand up to a Klingon fleet attack," Spock said. "I have checked and double-checked their vessel, and yes, it is powerful and may be able to stand down a squadron of patrollers. But a fleet of heavy cruisers—I tend to doubt."
"I don't want to find out," Kirk said. "If it comes to that, I'll have to side with Zennor. The Klingons are being completely irrational about this. They're acting on an instinctive level."
"I can understand it," McCoy offered. "Our crew's having the same reaction. And so am I. These people look … I don't know, familiar somehow. Even though I've never seen anything that looks like any of them before."
"Regardless, I've got a decision to make. Do I violate Klingon deep space now that I've put my foot in this? Or do I abandon Zennor at the Neutral Zone and see to myself? No, scratch that. I've made a commitment to the situation."
The doctor frowned. "Jim, shouldn't you ask permission from Starfleet Command before you make any tactical movements farther into Klingon space?"
"I've already been given permission once. Why ask again and give them a chance to say no? Those orders aren't withdrawn. The mission isn't over. It's still my option. I won't hand that option away to a bureaucrat. All right, Spock, you've found a thread—follow it. In the meantime, I'm going to let Zennor set the pace. He knows the pressures he's dealing with and I believe him when he says he wants to knock the knees out from under the driving forces. There's a short road to defusing this situation and unfortunately it leads directly into Klingon territory."
Scooping up the crescent brooch, Kirk rubbed his thumb across the etching on the inner curve, then held it out before them.
"This is it, gentlemen," he said. "If we can disprove this, the invasion falls apart."
The crew of the Imperial patrol cruiser Qul shrank back like beaten children, huddled into the recesses of the bridge, and covered their faces with shuddering hands. Before them writhed the unthinkable, the incarnate, twisting between the fingers of General Kellen as he held high the proof of Havoc.
Kellen felt like a living beacon as he held the straining tentacles of the Iraga before his witnesses.
"All screens on! Broadcast this on all frequencies to the squadron and on long-range to the fleet and all Imperial receivers, wide dispersal! There will be no more doubt!"
No one moved. Aragor, Mursha, Karg, Rek, Horg—they all stared with eyes like eggs at the thing in his hands, which stared back with its slowly blinking green eyes and moved its lips in ghastly beckoning at them.
"Quickly!" Kellen roared. "Before it dies!"