Chapter Four
Hannah Wolf, despite her name and despite what a casual glance might suggest, was not human. She was nearly human, very close to being human, but human she was not. Neither was she really an alien, as to be an alien she would have to belong to a race that lived beneath some distant sun. She did not. She was, to the best of her knowledge, unique. This was not because the rest of her kind had been lost or wiped out, but because she was the only successful experiment.
Wolf was genetically engineered, created by a group of radical scientists fascinated by the possibilities of the human form, and inspired by the early 'genetic supermen', most famously Khan Noonien Singh. They had sought to create a super solider, a killing machine in human form. Wolf was the result of their endeavours.
A successful experiment; far too successful for the scientists who had created her. After butchering her creators, Wolf had found her way into space. She wasn't particularly bright, but she had an instinctive feel for where she was in three-dimensional space, and her keen tracking senses seemed to extend into the deep night, making her a natural navigator.
She had been created to be a pack animal, and she couldn't function alone. She searched desperately for a pack, and, being amazingly naïve and easily misled, Wolf found herself drawn into a pirate crew, her strength often put to use in ripping apart the crew of her cohorts' victim. She made her 'pack' exceedingly wealthy, and spilled gallons of innocent blood.
Eventually, Starfleet got wind of what was happening to civilian shipping, and the Endeavour was dispatched to put a stop to things. Drake smashed the pirates, and rescued the frightened and confused Wolf. She soon enough came to understand that what she had been doing up till now was wrong, and while she felt no guilt (it was beyond her simple mind) she developed the opinion that Starfleet was her new pack.
After serving on a couple of ships, Wolf now found herself back where it had all started, back aboard the Endeavour. She was too stupid to have noticed how uncomfortable her old shipmates had been around her on those other posts, or how distant some of the new ones were. She was aware that there were people who were afraid of her – she could smell the oily film of terror on them – but she understood that to be a natural human reaction to meeting something stronger than oneself.
Except…except there was no fear in Drake, and she was certainly stronger than the captain. He was not afraid of her. Neither was Alix, and that tiny little girl had to be one of the weakest people on the ship. Clever, self-confident and resourceful, yes, but not strong. She didn't understand why those two didn't fear her; it puzzled her greatly. The weak always feared the strong. Drake was comfortable because he believed himself to be in control of this beast; and he was right, to a certain extent; but Alix…why wasn't she afraid?
Unlike the block of dark-brown Klingon muscle that opened the door to her now. Here was strength! Wolf's eyes instinctively swept over his solid body, inspecting his bulging muscles, estimating the strength in them, the power he could put behind his blows. There was nothing mathematical about her calculations, they were all the product of instincts and gut feelings, but they were wholly accurate. She knew that she could take the Klingon.
She also knew that the carcass would keep her happily fed for a week or more. Her instincts were those of a predator's, and she initially gauged people by how strong they were, and how much of a meal they would make. The rest came later.
The Klingon looked at her, saw a tall human female with dark blond hair and bright blue eyes, and was thoroughly unimpressed. "What do you want?"
"I'm Lieutenant Wolf. I am to be your escort."
He scowled angrily. "Where is the Destroyer?"
"Alix Nain?"
"That is she."
"Lieutenant Nain is getting something from her quarters. She will meet us."
This 'Destroyer' thing confused Wolf. She had heard humans called by all kinds of bizarre names before – one of the pirates she had worked with had been known as 'Saw'. There was generally a reason behind these nicknames, as there had been in Saw's case, but she struggled to think of a reason why anyone might call their helmsman Destroyer. It was a powerful, dangerous name, one that might better suit Wolf than it did the soft, smiley girl.
Maybe she should ask Alix about it, Wolf supposed. Yes, that was an idea – a good idea! She congratulated herself. Alix would explain everything.
"Very well," Grownel reluctantly accepted.
"Where would you like to go?"
Grownel's bat'leth appeared in his hands as if by magic, a crescent-shaped Klingon sword that was wielded with two hands. "My blade grows thirsty. Where might a warrior go on this ship to hone his skills?"
"The gymnasium is on deck eleven."
"Lead me there."
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"It's a beautiful piece of code," Chief Engineer Horris Fran said, pushing himself away from the computer console and returning his reading glasses to the breast pocket of his lab coat. His vision was pretty much perfect, but words on a screen were a blur to him – although, oddly enough, he could read them well enough if they were printed on paper. Doctor Ilerson had suggested a surgery that could correct for this defect in his vision, but Fran had refused; he was quite happy with his glasses.
"It's annoying," Brok said. "I thought we had made the system tamper-proof."
"So did I; but there it is, tampered with again. You see how she did it? It really is a beautiful piece of work: no wonder the fault-finding software didn't pick it up." He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his bony nose. "We close one backdoor into the system, and we open up two more."
"The suggestions she made…"
"Will plug the leaks, sure. But since she suggested them I'm willing to bet she's already worked out ways around them." Fran sighed again. "This makes, what? Five pranks she's pulled with the computer?"
"Six, if you count resetting my alarm clock by remote."
He pushed himself away from the console, rose, and stared across the cavernous engine room to where the ship's warp core stood; a tall, tubular structure that pulsed with light at steady intervals, streams of matter and antimatter, regulated by a dilithium crystal, reacted within to release the tremendous energies needed to warp the starship across space. Usually the sight of Endeavour's beating heart soothed Fran's nerves, but right now it did no such thing.
"She should come and work for me in engineering; I could use someone with her computer-skills. All right…I'll pass these notes along to my boys and see what they can come up with."
"Thanks, Chief."
Brok started to make his way out of the engine room, but Fran wasn't quite finished yet and the sound of the engineer's voice made him stop. "You know, this worries me a great deal."
He turned back. "Worries?" Alix had played some jokes, yes, but they had hardly been anything that put the ship or the crew at risk: just things that caused his blood pressure to shoot up. He didn't see what the chief was so concerned about.
"Worries," said Fran, absolutely no humour on his face. "Look at the brilliance of these 'pranks', Lieutenant; so well hidden that we'd probably have never found them if she hadn't led us to them. Now, tell me what she could be capable of if she put real malice behind her efforts."
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By the time Alix reached the gym there were a lot of wounded crewmen waiting for her. Grownel was on the fencing strips, and having challenged and defeated everyone who could lift a blade, he was feeling pretty cocky.
"Human warriors. Pah!" His laughter bellowed. "There is no such thing! Not one of you is fit to fight a Klingon child. The 'mighty' Endeavour. Ha! I fear for the Empire if we are to look to you as allies in the future!"
"The perfect excuse, Alix. Draw your swords and skewer that posturing fool!"
"I thought I might."
Beaten and wounded as they were, there wasn't an Endeavour in the room who wasn't on his or her feet instantly, ready to take on the Klingon again and make him regret those words. The honour of the ship, of the whole Federation, had been insulted, and no one was about to stand for that!
The Klingon laughed again. "You people would dare to stand against me again? After I cut you down to easily? Ha, ha, ha! Are you stupid, as well as weak?"
"Try us!" Shouted Ensign Arlen Sign. He was an old Endeavour, one who had been with the ship during the last commission, and Grownel's dig at his ship had hit a nerve.
Alix prowled forward and sung out: "You've had your turn, Arlen. Let me have some fun."
"Aye aye, ma'am." Sign grinned from ear to ear. Now that Klingon bastard was going to get his just deserts. He'd been with Nain during the capture of an Orion slave ship, and he'd seen how savagely the woman fought in close-quarters, and how flawlessly she wielded her swords. Grownel was going to lose some blood.
"How about it, Grownel?" Asked Alix, facing off against him with her hands in her pockets and a cocky smile on her lips. "Fancy some sport?"
It was a pretty ridiculous pairing. Alix wasn't even five and a half feet and she was lanky; the Klingon was closer to six and a half and he bulged with muscle.
"The General speaks very highly of your swordsmanship, Destroyer," said Grownel, shifting his grip on his bat'leth so that it was comfortable. He took a step towards her; his curved blade slicing through the air in a rapid pattern of cuts and slashes. A smirk. "I shall enjoy testing it."
"If that's the best he's got, you won't need me."
"Maybe not. But how about a little humiliation before we get down to the actual duelling?"
A wicked gleam of humour passed through Kana's illuminated eyes. "I love the way your mind works!"
"He did insult the ship. Can't have that. Make him look foolish, Kana."
"He already does. But I'm sure I can add to it," she promised.
The Change swept through them both, a rush of heat that flowed through their shared body, carrying their spirits along like driftwood in a current. Alix felt her body fall away from her, felt all sensations of weight and pressure leave her. She could no longer feel a heartbeat in her chest or any weight on her feet, and while she could look down at her body and see it all there, there was no sensation of air moving across her skin, no taste on her tongue, nothing to smell. Turning her head to the left, she could see her own body – her physical body – now under the control of Kana the Destroyer, while she had assumed Kana's usual role of ghostly companion.
The Change: the secret to the successful and happy relationship between the two Nain spirits, as well as some of their extraordinary success in private adventuring. It had taken them years to develop the technique, a lifetime to master it. Every time it seemed to get a little easier: whether that was just the result of practice, or something else, neither of them chose to deliberate.
To an outside observer, there was nothing remarkable, nothing even noticeable about the Change. There was no great explosion of light and sound; she didn't float into the air and radiate brilliance in all directions; neither did her body transform into the more ghoulish image of her other self; to anyone else, it simply appeared that Nain had stopped for a moment to clear her mind – which was very true. The only visible affect of the Change was the faint light that swelled in the back of Nain's eyes when they opened again, and that was too dim to be really noticeable unless one knew to look for it there.
At least, that was the only physical affect. Kana's personality was utterly different to Alix's. Kana was a seething caldron of negative emotions; even when she was smiling anger was never far from the surface. She stood much more tightly than Alix, her limbs clenched and ready to strike, her face fixed in an expression of distaste and annoyance, her horrible eyes slits through which hatred and evil blazed.
But this wasn't a really noticeable difference, and it certainly wasn't something that would make someone immediately think: 'That girl's got a demon living inside her.' Most people just figured it was Alix getting very angry; focusing her rage.
Silently, Kana fetched her swords from Alix's duffle bag, shrugged off her jacket, and approached Grownel. She and her host were both ambidextrous, and Kana had trained Alix extensively in dual-weapon fighting techniques – they being her own personal favourite. The blades that she held now were a pair of elegant longswords that Alix had picked up from an Andorian weaponsmith some years ago. They were beautiful swords: perfectly balanced, and fitted with deadly sharp, nearly indestructible diamond blades.
"En garde!" Cried Kana, raising her weapons, one held across her chest ready to block with, the other high and poised for a slashing attack.
"What?"
"It's a challenge, fool. It means prepare to fight. And in your case, prepare to lose!"
Kana loved to taunt her foes. She loved to tease and torment her opponents with words before and during the fight: then to utterly decimate them with her swords. She drew out her victim's suffering, toyed with them until the last, savouring every moment, and unless Alix instructed her to play down her skills (usually so that any audience there might be would believe that it was still Alix fighting) she would never give her opponent an opening, crush them utterly, let them see perfectly how weak and pathetic they were, how utterly hopeless they were next to her.
In this case, her taunting served another purpose than to just amuse her. It set Grownel's blood boiling – the audacity of a human girl talking to him like that! – and he sprung at her roaring, his blade striking down and spittle flying from his lips.
Kana laughed and darted forward herself, meeting the Klingon in mid-attack. She came at him faster than he would have given her credit for, and he faintly perceived a flash as her right sword reached for his chest, before she spun away, a neat step that took her out of his path and out of his reach. His attack had missed, but so had hers, if she had launched one – Grownel could tell that he had not been cut.
He turned on her again, growled and sprang. Kana's foot came up and caught him in the top of his chest, just below his throat, sending him to the floor. His hands clapped down either side of him, arresting his fall, and it was only then that Grownel realized that he was no longer holding his bat'leth.
The crescent shaped blade was in Nain's possession, the sword in her right hand slipped neatly through the middle of the three handholds. She had stabbed the blade there when she had counterattacked that first time, and her departing spin had torn the weapon from the Klingon's hands. He had still been so mad at her insulting, so convinced that his lunge would end with his blade buried deep in her chest, that he hadn't even noticed the theft.
"You might want this. Difficult to fight without one."
"Return my blade!"
Kana appeared to mull it over. "No. I think I'd rather keep it."
Grownel surged to his feet and threw himself at Nain, sweeping a huge fist at the girl. Against Alix, this sudden burst of speed and fury might have had better results, as he did come barrelling at her at a ferocious rate, and she was only human. The Destroyer, on the other hand, was not, and to her Grownel appeared to be moving at a very leisurely pace indeed. She ducked under the blow and swept Grownel's legs out from beneath him. As he went down, her left-hand sword traced a line of pink across his chest.
"First blood!" Cried Kana.
She stepped away and gave Grownel time to rise to his feet. There was a lazy casualness in the way that she moved that told everyone who cared to look how little a threat she considered this Klingon to be. She was loudly announcing to everyone that she was playing with Grownel, that she could wipe him out at any time that she pleased.
"Klingon warrior," she snorted, observing him with disdain. Laughter accompanied her words. "Mighty fighter, indeed. You owe my shipmates an apology."
"Never!"
He came at her again, having learnt nothing from his previous failed attacks. Speed and brute strength would bring this human down, he was sure of that. Speed and strength solved everything!
The inhuman Kana hit him in the face with the hilt of her sword, and while he was reeling from that she curled around his body and took out his knees with a sharp kick. Grownel feel onto all fours, howling from a mixture of pain and rage. The Destroyer could have knocked him flat with a kick to his chest, or rendered him unconscious by a blow to the head, but she had another idea. Her lithe body wrapped around Grownel, pinning him against her, immobile. The blade of her right hand sword lay against the main artery in his throat, her lips by his left ear. "Apologise," she whispered, "or you are a dead a man!"
Death was not much of a threat when it came to Klingons, as Kana knew very well. All Klingons dreamed of dying in glorious battle – for such was the only way to guarantee a place in Sto'Vo'Kor, the afterlife for the honoured dead. Alix had said that she found the idea kind of cute, very much like the old Viking belief of a great reward for those who died fighting. Kana thought it stupid, pathetic, and utterly laughable, but she knew how to use it to her advantage.
"There is no honour in this death."
There wasn't at that, Grownel realized. Being killed by Nain…that was no dishonour, even if she was human – she was fast, strong, and supernaturally gifted. No, the dishonour was in being killed like this, helpless: execution, not death in battle.
"I was mistaken," he gasped, each word harder to say than the last. "There are human warriors."
Kana chuckled and stepped away. She did not offer Grownel any help; let the Klingon get to his feet on his own. Once he was standing, she scooped up his bat'leth from where it had fallen and tossed it to him. Hastily, he armed himself and stood ready for the next attack.
"How do you want me to fight this, oh master general?"
"Beat him, but don't smash him. Make it look believable, Kana. Let him have a couple of pokes at you."
"Hmm."
"They don't have to connect."
"They won't."
"Ready your sword, Klingon."
Grownel's attack was far more cautious this time. He closed in slowly, keeping a close eye on Kana for any early warning of a trick, testing her defences with a series of fast cuts all around her body – now low, now high, now centre torso, now high again. She blocked his every attack, her swords seeming to move casually slowly, yet always arriving in time to deflect his blade. One or two of his slices she parried, and followed up with a quick stab of her own, breaking the rhythm of his attack, but she seemed uninterested in launching a concerted offensive.
Opting for power again, Grownel determined to bash his way through Kana's defences, relying entirely on the established truth that Klingons were far stronger than humans. He threw another barrage of rapid attacks at her, driving her back a few steps, creating a gap between them big enough for him to make his lunge. He drew back his bat'leth and put his full weight behind it as he threw it forward.
Kana wasn't there; the blade slashed through empty air. The Destroyer hadn't cheated, she hadn't used her power to slow time and give herself longer to react or to speed up her own movements – the Klingon's move had been so obvious that she hadn't needed to. Alix's human reactions were fast enough to dodge around the powerful thrust, so there was no need for Kana to augment her borrowed body with any of her power. It was entirely as a human that she fought now.
Grownel was off-balance, his attack having gone so horribly wrong. Worse, his opponent was no longer in front of him; his entire unprotected left was presented to her. Kana capitalized on this, launching a restrained offensive. Her blades slashed in rapid succession, ripping through Grownel's light leather armour and biting again and again into his flesh. Pink Klingon blood stained her diamond blades, and dripped onto the gym floor, but dripped was all it did, and had Kana really wanted to, she could have made it gush.
Recovered from his fumble, Grownel took advantage of an opening that Kana had presented him with and slashed at her right leg. The Destroyer had been gambling on exactly that move, and it sealed Grownel's defeat. Her left sword deflected the attack; the right slipped in and stabbed him in the chest, right in the heart.
"You're dead," said Kana merrily.
Grownel looked down at the blade that was pricking his chest. He had been cut, and there was blood, but he was in no life threatening danger, so long as the human did not lean in on her sword. "So it would appear."
Kana wiped off her blades and returned them to their scabbards, feeling pleased with herself, her bloodlust temporarily satisfied. Alix was watching her, a proud smile on her ghostly face. "Nicely done. I don't think he's going to be shooting his mouth off again anytime soon."
"Certainly not while we're around."
Alix shook her head. "No. That was a precision attack, by the way. For an instant there, I thought you'd actually killed him."
"It was tempting. Must we swap back?"
"There's no great hurry. Enjoy yourself."
Kana grinned and delighted in her freedom. There was nothing she loved more than being physical. Being a ghostly presence was entertaining enough for a short while – and Kana would never get tired of saying inappropriate things, exasperating Alix, and insulting people to their faces without their ever knowing about it – but the real delights were reserved for the physical. A spirit could not fight, or eat, or appreciate the tastes and smells of the world around it.
Kana, like her host, was a passionate creature, and as a spirit the only person that she could share these passions with were her host. Alix was a lot of fun, Kana would not deny that, but variety was the spice of life.
No chance for passion right now, but she couldn't hope for everything at once.
Grownel was looking at her, studying her; Kana could sense it. She turned back to look at him, and was surprised to see that the big Klingon was actually smiling. He seemed pleased that she had beaten him. Why? Klingons were a proud people, and they hated to lose.
They loved a legend, though.
"You are as General Kravft said. You deserve to be the Destroyer."
"And don't you forget it!"
She left the Klingon where he was and walked over to where Wolf had been standing, watching. The genetically engineered woman wore a stupefied look that made Kana snicker.
"You look surprised."
"I…didn't know you could fight like that."
Kana shrugged. "I'm the Destroyer."
