Chapter 25

On board the Tori

Janae watched the rearview of the female Xeno as she walked down the hallway to his ready room. She walked to the table she reached forward and placed a diskette on the center of the table. Pinching her fingers over the diskette she drew it up from the center of the diskette and around the table a projection of space and two planets emerged. Taking her index finger, she poked the one planet that sat in the center, "This is Abarra, she is the tech planet our people would raid to get their inventions and enhance them." When she poked the planet, an image of a bustling technologically advanced city appeared with sleek tall buildings. The people were humanoid with a bluish cast to their skin.

"They are peaceful and rely heavily on their technology to keep them safe from . . . " She turned and poked the second planet. "This is Minorit, they were originally Abarrath's they fractioned off much as the Romulans did with Remus and the Klingons did with Qo'noS and Boreth. The difference was they went further with their tech and they are the ones that took the blueprints for a cyborg human and made the Borg. They are a lot more darker with their tech and they are best left alone."

Mara, Modak, and Janae studied the two planets, Janae poked the planet that she had called Minorit and watched expectantly as the planet's main tech city came into view and there they saw something similar to the Borg cubes. "So you are saying the Borg originated here and what, how did they get into the galaxy that they originally made contact with Picard and the Enterprise." He looked up at the attractive female waiting for an explanation.

She got a guarded look and appeared to be weighing her response as she thought about his question. "Here," she pinched a dark obilisque shaped looking building and enlarged it in the three dimensional hologram. " . . . That is not a building but a portal. It can open up in just about any section of the various galaxies in deep space. It is like a stable worm hole that they use to go through and search for tech. They went to the Delta Quandrant looking for a race that they could conquer and use for experiments. There they found a group on an isolated planet, they were like the ancient amazons mostly females with male drones to do their work. When the Minorit approached the race of female warriors, their Queen made a bargain with their Queen and she was the first to go and receive what they called upgrades. After that you know the rest of the story in your archives."

She stepped back focusing on the planet Abarra. "Now this is the ones we are the most interested in forming an alliance. Your job will be to go to them on our behalf and offer a peace offering." She smiled and watched the reaction to the crew. Janae was considering his options.

"Why? What kind of peace offering are you making?" He looked at the neatly kept city of Abarra and then to the Minorit. Glancing up at her he noticed she had a smirk on her face. She cocked her head and considered his question and he got the feeling she was thinking about lying to him then she sighed and shrugged and said.

"Me. You will offer them me. I am the most perfect of their creations being returned to them fixed." She bowed low. "I am Sineri a perfect protocol android that has the ability to shrink or enlarge at will. I also have been given free will in my programing and they will wish my return." Janae, Mara, and Modak were dumbfounded.

"You mean she is like that Android Data?" Mara looked form Synergic to Janae and then Modak.

"I am far superior to the Android that is a part of the Enterprise crew known as Data. I am Synergic a synthetic humanoid protocol android. They were on the right track when they first developed me. But when the Xenites stole me from their lab and brought me back, they made improvements on me. Unlike the prototype that the Minorits used to make their Borg, I am the complete and perfect blend of two technologies."

"Then why not just present yourself to them. If they want you back, they should welcome you in your prototypal form with open arms and jubilation!" Janae spoke sarcastically. He was beginning to get the feeling he was being used and he did not like th feeling edging up his back.

She smiled and walked to a chair and sat with strict posture, folded her hands neatly in her lap and tilted her head. "Because they would not trust that I am not programed to be destroyed if they try to take me apart. They have trust issues with the Xenoliths. You are a neutral party and they know you have been stealing tech from what they feel are their enemies for years now. Surely you did not think you were getting in and out clean? I mean that body armor and those other little trinkets were left for you to steal just like I was. Except this time, in my reduce form you brought me back so I could hire you for this job."

"Damnit, I told you we should bypass that planet Janae now look what you have us involved in and for what?" Mara did not trust the synthetic human android. She wanted to unplug her power cell and shoot her out an airlock.

Modak sat back, his dark face set in a stone like look of contemplation. He folded his arms over his chest and stroked his chin. "I think we give this little lady her due and see what comes out of this. If we get some high polished Tech we can sell it to the cleric. The armor saved M'lar the last time."

Janae sat down and propped his feet up on his desk. "So you want us to negotiate with the Abarrath with you as our bargaining chip. What will I get in return?" He was looking at the bottom line.

Syn smiled. "I will give you the tech to my prototype, and in that tech is the ability to enlarge or shrink your form. It is up to you if you think that is valuable enough to barter. With that tech you could shrink yourself down small enough to get past any security system and breach about any secured place. Or you could enlarge yourself being enough that you could squash an opponent. It is up to you if you think it is valuable enough to do our bidding."

Mara harrumphed and stormed from the room muttering about foolishness and idiotic ideas and getting them all killed. Janae watched her leave then turned and nodded. "It is a majority vote and I am saying yes. What about you Modak?"

"I say we give it a shot. I am sure the cleric would like to give some of his warriors that tech and then they could go into after the Molarites and appear in their tunnels and attack. It might be amusing to see their reaction to seeing all those Cleric guards appearing from no where and beating the crap out of the upstarts" Modak's laugh started at the pit of his chest and grew up and became a rumbling guffaw just thinking about them almost craping their pants.

"Then I guess we are in. You want to program in the coordinates?"

Boreth Outside the Caves of the Volkarian Wolf People

The hoover craft drifted to a stop, M'lar closed her eyes, took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, stood, nodded and exited the vehicle. She wore a robe over her cleric's gown. Taking the robe off, K'Ter'r noticed she had worn her red metallic gown with the low plunging neckline, the split in the skirt showed her thigh high red leather boots with spiked, heels, and on her head she now pulled her crown of her office. Around her neck she wore the bird of prey rising from flames bearing a bat'leth.

K'Ter'r saw the entrance to the caves and was perplexed as she walked to a solid wall to the left of the opening. Lifting up her hands she called out. "I HAVE COME! ALLOW ME ENTRANCE JANQUIN!" K'Ter'r had followed behind her and stopped at her side as her guide and guard.

"Sir, overhead look!" That was Far that had watched the crevasses from above. K'Ter'r looked from above and stepped back watching a huge winged creature take flight and dive right for M'lar.

"M'lar watch out!" K'Ter'r had pulled his weapon when he felt his hand stayed with a flick of her hand. His hand was frozen so he could not fire at the huge bird that dove with talon claws extended heading straight for M'lar. She stood her ground and did not move, as she bird grew closer she called.

"True image!" Her words were softly uttered and before K'Ter'r and M'lar the figure of the huge bird shimmered and the image of a male Klingon of about forty appeared floating down to the grown in golden robes. He stood before M'lar and smiled.

"You have grown into quiet the beauty my dear Lady M'lar. I take it you got my summons?" He turned and studied K'Ter'r but addressed Far. "I see the symbiotic species had trapped himself inside the barbaric captain. My apologies for you dear Faritili, I am sure you wished you had chosen M'lar over Captain K'Ter'r but he is an old and trust warrior."

"Oh my he is good, he can see through to your mind K'Ter'r and he knows you fairly well having never met you before. Give him my sincere and appreciative gratitude for his felicitations."

K'Ter'r wanted to growl, instead he started to tell Janquin what Far had said. "The run say to tell you. . . . "

"Not necessary to tell me I heard him in your mind. Just as you I am sure dear Captain does not find sharing your body with another he is there to do you more good than harm and he is as irritated with your dietary selections as you are with him wanting to talk all the time in your mind. I would say you should learn to get along with one another because I fear you are stuck with each other until your demise Captain. Far is a lot older than you or for that matter some of my brethren and we have lived for over ten thousand years."

He turned waved his hand in front of the solid mountain and an opening appeared. "Which is the reason we shall have to parley for your HmfiC my dear." He waited for her to step in front of him, "Which is why you are here, come my dear and you Captain may take up your position as her guard at the entrance of the great testing hall. The others would not wish you to be present for this meeting. They know M'lar they do not know you and I apologize dear Far, should you have come in your normal form they would have I am sure welcomed you with open arms."

"Oh my well I cannot disengage from the Captain it would surely be the end of his life should I do such a thing. So, I will just monitor it from the outside in the doorway if that is acceptable?" This treating K'Ter'r as an outsider was beginning to upset K'Ter'r

"I might as well not be here at all. Treating me like an outcast or worse like I was not even here at all." He mumbled and this sent Far into a hysterical chuckle.

"Not hardly dear Captain. You should not take this personally, they don't and I surely don't either. Now quit pouting and let us just follow to the chamber door and take up position there. I can monitor what is happening through the door." The voice had a placating but disciplinarian tone to it.

M'lar entered into the great hall of testing and remembered it well the first day she had met Bi'Anka. Standing in the center of the room was Bi'Anka looking irritated and next to her was a handsome, strong and much younger looking HmfiC. M'lar sighed deeply walked to her friend's side and took up her position as arbiter. "I have come, shall we get this over with and ell me what you want in return for releasing HmfiC back to my father?" She did not bother to look up but noticed Bi'Anka was glaring at the dark cave entrances that lined the ceiling

"They are there and they are arguing with one another. I won't do it M'lar. I will not be their incubator, and they should not penalize HmfiC for inhaling the waters, he only took a small amount and he would not tell anyone of his lapse, he has sworn an oath on his life and your life for that. They are petty and they want a female to bare them children. They are dying off and they need to start a new generation. I refuse to be their incubator for their young." She folded her arms over her chest and stood defiant before them. "I SAID IT BEFORE AND I SAY IT AGAIN! I REFUSE! DO NOT EVEN GO THERE WITH ME! DO NOT THINK YOU CAN FORCE ME INTO THIS ALLIANCE TO BE YOUR INCUBATOR FOR YOUR WORMY BRATS!" She was angry and M'lar cocked an eyebrow and turned looking at her.

"Then the offer is not going to be for you. I will offer another for them to inseminate. They will need viable eggs and sperm to accomplish this and from what I heard Bi'Anka your eggs are not viable." She turned and looked at the handsome faced man before her. "Is that the deal to get my younger HmfiC back?" She had drew herself up to her full height of five feet two inches and in her heels now stood at five six still far shorter than the man in front of her. Her bearing was noble and her eyes were narrowed waiting for him to respond.

"We need two females to bear us sons. We shall inseminate them artificially and they will deliver. Then on the sixth moon of each calendared year, you will provide us two more females to be inseminated artificially until we have replenished our race. The last of our female ancients has passed the time of child bearing. She still bears eggs but cannot give birth. We have but three females left and we need to use their eggs and our sperm and have a surrogate until such time we have a thriving race once again. We estimate this will be complete after sixteen years of your calenderer time. At that time the females that will be birthed will be able to take over the process of bearing our children and producing their own viable eggs. We keep the race pure."

M'lar nodded. "Let me take this request back to my father and I shall personally select your female surrogates. My question is will they stay here or will they be allowed back at Temple where we can monitor their pregnancy to make sure nothing happens to them and then return them here for the time of the birth?"

From over head there was a buzz of softly whispered discussions being carried on between the high council of the Volkarian ancients. K'Ter'r wondered what was going on and he got his answer from Far's ability to disseminate what was being said overhead. "They are wrestling with the idea of having the vessels out of their control but they know that M'lar will secure them safely and if anything goes wrong with the pregnancy they can handle saving the child better in temple than here."

"You can hear them arguing?" K'Ter'r was impressed as he heard Far translating the buzzing and whispering hissing noise over head.

"Oh yes, and they know I am here with you and they just asked me to ask you to step into the center of the room at M'lar's side."

K'Ter'r appeared in the doorway and stepped into the chamber, feeling awkward and suddenly, the control of his body was taken and his eyes went milky white and he walked into the room and looked up bowed low to those over head and waited for the question they had for him."

A deep hallow sounding voice called below. "How is it that you found yourself in the body of the barbarian captain little one?"

"My ship crashed on Qo'noS and my host was killed on impact, the good Captain was investigating the crash and he was knocked unconscious and he was about to perish when I found myself in him repairing his body. I apologize for interrupting your discussion but if I might interject my thoughts on this matter if it will please you." He bowed again and smiled and on K'Ter'r's face it looked like a grimace from a lot of gas he was about to expel. "Oh dear I forgot he does not like to smile." He apologized to the Captain and the group and from over head there was a sound of chuckling.

Another deep voice echoed down below. "You have a thought on this little one please enlighten us as to your thoughts."

"I was merely going to suggest that the remaining females which I detect are five and not two as you indicated have viable eggs but are unable to bear the children. You should harvest the eggs, inseminate them, then place them in an incubator and you could have your female population quicker and it would not put the women from the temple at risk of loosing your children."

Again there was a hiss and a buzz and M'lar sighed deeply and spoke to Janquin. "We have found incubator born babies do not have the right temperament for what we wish them to do, they loose something by not hearing the heartbeat or the emotions from the mother. They are usually devoid of that special part that makes them Klingon, in your case Volkarian. There is a reason that the female was designed to bear the children. The child learns from inception from the mother." She waved her hand expressively and turned to Far. "I apologize Far but we are not looking for automations to fill a gap they desperately need to fill. My suggestion is we provide you with the mother that can nurture your young from the time of conception until birth. How long does the mother need to carry your young?"

Again a hissing buzz and Far smiled and that grimaced look made K'Ter'r look sheepish with his grin. "It was only a thought my dear Madam Cleric. Not meant to be a perfect solution just an idea if you cannot find females to volunteer for this request they are making."

Janquin turned to peer up and then to M'lar. "Gestation for our kind is up to six months, then the birth will occur. Much the same as you Klingon females carry your young for six months because you are a warring race your births if you mate with one another go for six months. Of course if you cross breed then it will be longer. Our kind just as your kind only needs six months to develop."

M'lar nodded, looked at K'Ter'r, "Please far quit making him smile is really does look like it is painful for him and its more a grimace than a smile. My postulants will volunteer because it is necessary to keep our race relations between the Volkain healthy and in tact. "With the influx of those from Qo'noS I am sure some of they would gladly step forward and volunteer to be a surrogate. We've had surrogates on this planet for years so it will be a matter of advising them they are needed and why. So if this is acceptable, and as my father's head guardsman has pledged to die before he reveals where he found the fountain of youth to anyone may we call this an agreement and see my personal guard and my father's guard back on their mission?"

She smiled at Bi'Anka winked at her and turned to look at Janquin. Janquin turned to peer up at the darken recesses and waited. Once again the room was filled with a hissing buzzing noise from those overhead. "They are debating, this could take a while, we might as well have a seat." Janquin nodded to the shadows to his left and three wolf males walked out carrying seats for everyone to take a seat. Bi'Anka growled when she was offered a seat. HmfiC shifted uncomfortably. He was still adjusting to being a forty-year-old warrior instead of a sixty-year-old warrior. He shifted and declined the chair.

M'lar's back was hurting and her feet were not happy in her spiked heels so she took a seat with Janquin and watched as Far accepted the seat for K'Ter'r. "His feet are hurting and his back is moaning and he is feeling grumpy while I have control." Far had relaxed the smile on his face and sat primly awaiting the debate. "They are nearly done with the argument for now they are arguing for the against and there are only two against the twelve. But they are diplomatic enough to allow them their say."

It was so odd to hear that prissy sounding voice coming from K'Ter'r it almost made M'lar chuckle and she ducked her chin o hide her amusement. She slowly let a deep sigh escape and glanced to Janquin. "Will you be a donor Janquin?" She watched him shift uncomfortably and look down. "I will be one of the twelve that will donate but we will not know whose child has been placed in the surrogate that was part of the agreement that was made between us all. We need to treat them equally, even though I am the head council member, my brother Marquin will be a donor too and we do not always agree on all issues. In this case we both agreed it would be wise to not show favoritism to the younglings. They should all be treated as equals."

M'lar nodded, "I understand. I just recently found out I have a sister that I had no idea existed until my mother confessed she gave birth on Earth to a daughter. To think that it could have come down between her or I as the Supreme Cleric. In this case it was my birth that was first and here on Boreth. My father did not think I would make a good cleric and had hoped one of my brothers would take up the mantle but they chose other careers. With my brothers seeking careers outside the temple it left the post open for me to assume on reaching my sixteenth year. The sad part of this is, my sister has no clue that we are related and she thinks she is full human and she hates Klingons." She sighed and wished it had been different between them.

Janquin could feel her conflicted emotions over this dilemma in her life. She had not noticed that HmfiC had reacted to her confession with surprise and Bi'Anka had sighed whispered softly to him. "Margo is her sister. Ashira had her frozen fertilized egg altered so she could give birth to her on earth. That was while she was working undercover on earth spying on the head of Star Fleet."

HmfiC hid his surprise and nodded and continued to stand stoically erect and quiet. Finally overhead the room had grown silent. "They are taking the vote now and soon should have a decision as to how this will be handled." Far had spoke softly since the buzzing had ceased he felt it respectful to keep his tone low too.

Janquin stood and helped M'lar to stand. "They have a decision and they are requesting that one of your female family members be a surrogate, she will need to bare only one youngling but that will secure the treaty between us and make peace for your guard's inhaling the life waters."

Bi'Anka stepped forward. "No, the cleric cannot bear a child for the Volkain ancients she is the Cleric and must remain pure." She was growling low knowing exactly what they were trying to do and she was angry. M'lar lifted her hand to silence Bi'Anka

"They did not say me, they said someone from my house and I have cousins that would gladly step in and take that position and would consider it a debt of honor. So be it, we shall bind the agreement by blood sharing?" She looked at Janquin and from over head a glowing form of another giant bird appeared and drifted down from the deep recesses of the caves above. He floated down in a less intimidating way. Once again M'lar lifted her hand and spoke softly. "True image!" The form shimmered and another that looked like Janquin took up position next to his brother. "Marquin? What brings you down from overhead?"

"The blood sharing must be done by two council members with you Madam Cleric." He withdrew his blade and drew it across it palm, handed the blade to Janquin who drew it across his palm and then to M'lar who drew it across her palm. From the darkening recesses on the left another Volkain wolf brought a bowl out and held it in the center of the three who had formed a half circle. One by one they lifted their hands and squeezed the blood into the bowl allowing their blood to mingle. When the blood sharing was ended, each took the bowl and drank from the bowl.

M'lar found the taste bitter but it was done and she had secured her friend's release, held the treaty between the Volkain and the Cleric's. Stepping back she bowed to those above and walked regally from the room. Janquin and Marquin smiled and watched her leave and waited. "Bi'Anka and Far you might wish to go to you mistress, she is about to fall unconscious. She has taken the blood of two ancients and her system is about to go into shock. Once she has passed the test and is awake, tell her we will expect the first female from her house before the waning of the next moon."

The three nodded bowed to those above and hurried after their mistress. It was up to M'lar to separate the poison from the blood she had just drank to survive the test of the ancients. They had no doubt she could do it, they just hoped they she knew she could survive the blood of the ancients.

This ends the Klingons of Boreth; join me for the next installment of Klingons of Boreth, For a Father's Honor. Where we pick up with Bi'Anka and HmfiC continue to hunt down and destroy the bloodline of Daedalus. Will Janae find out he has bitten off more than he can chew when he meets the Abarrath? With the Havoq outfitted will Far drive Captain K'Ter'r over the edge of sanity? Finally how does M'lar adapt to being on the Havoq and under the command of Star Fleet what lies in store for them as we continue to the story of Klingon's of Boreth!