Part Three
Some distance away from the unfolding tribble-based calamity on the Bounty, Klath was digging a hole through the floor of Toran's main residence.
The Klingon paced back and forth across the rough, hardened floor of the anteroom that he, Karn and K'Veth had been taken to by Toran's honour guard. Where they had been told to wait. And they had waited. For hour after hour. Mostly in silence. Without any further contact from any of Toran's people. They hadn't even been offered any sort of refreshment.
While Klath paced, the other two Klingons were sitting on a couple of firm, unyielding high-backed chairs next to a small table in the corner of the anteroom. Another chair, presumably meant for Klath, remained empty. He hadn't used it at all. Instead, he had been feverishly threatening to wear a groove into the solid ground throughout their entire time here.
K'Veth could see that the incessant pacing was beginning to irritate Karn, but there was no sign that Klath intended to stop any time soon. In fact, he seemed to be determined to set a new walking distance record for Brexis II without leaving the confines of the room.
"Perhaps you should rest?" she offered eventually, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
Klath didn't respond, and simply turned around to commence his latest return leg back across to the other side of the room.
"You should listen to her," Karn offered, failing to hide his irritation, "You have no idea how long they plan to keep us here."
Klath looked back at where they were sitting, the hope inside him now very much at the forefront of his thoughts.
"Toran has agreed to look at our cases. This is a very encouraging step. And yet you both sit there so calmly. Do you not feel the hunger inside you, to be back within the Empire?"
"Nothing has changed," Karn retorted with a scoff, "We are still exiles, without honour. And for all we know, Toran simply felt it would be more entertaining to have us wait here all day, enduring yet more humiliation, before he kills us."
Klath ignored the younger Klingon's cynicism, even if the same thought had occasionally popped up in his own head when the hope had allowed it to.
"You should both stand while we wait," he offered instead, gesturing to where they were sitting.
Karn's face creased into a slight sneer as he recognised a chance to annoy the other Klingon right back, leaning back in his chair and lazily crossing one leg over the other.
"Why? What good would that do?"
Klath bristled with frustration at the level of disdain the younger man was showing. The passion he felt inside at being back within the Empire almost made him respond to his dismissive comment by drawing his faithful bat'leth from where it was slung behind his back and wiping the sneer off Karn's face that way.
But instead, he managed to control himself, and hit back verbally instead.
"Your father has given you both a chance to restore your honour. Toran has shown us all respect we do not deserve by accepting us into his residence. And you have shown nothing but insolence since we began this journey. Do you really think this is how you win back your standing in the Empire?"
Before Karn could fire off another retort, Klath aimed a fierce kick at the leg of his chair, with almost enough force to topple it over.
"Now. Stand up!"
Karn flashed his teeth at his fellow Klingon in a further act of defiance. Then, the deadlock was broken from elsewhere, as K'Veth stood from her own seat and stepped over to Klath's side, staring down at her brother.
"He is right, Karn," she hissed, "As Klingons, we should show the proper respect."
Klath resisted the temptation to look over at her, and kept his attention solely on Karn, who looked from him to her and back again with a mocking sneer.
"Well, well, if it isn't Kahless and Lukara. If I had known I would be in the presence of such greatness, I would have-"
He was silenced by another kick to his chair from Klath's foot.
"Are you going to stand, or do I have to drag you to your feet and impale you to the wall with my blade?"
Just for a second, it looked as though Karn was going to continue to resist. But in the end, he opted for a more passive piece of defiance, rising out of his seat as slowly as he possibly could and ending his piece of theatre by gesturing at his stance once he was done.
"Now what?" he growled at Klath.
"Now, we wait."
"For how long, exactly?"
"For as long as it takes."
With that statement, and without waiting for any further questions, Klath turned away and resumed his impatient pacing up and down the room. Once his back was turned, Karn shot K'Veth a sharp glare, but she kept her own focus on the pacing form of the other Klingon, growing more intrigued with every action he took.
"Earlier, on the landing pad, how did you know?" she asked, "How did you know that Toran would not just send us away when you gave him that option?"
Klath was a little irritated that his vitally important pacing was again being interrupted, but for some reason, he felt compelled to answer her.
"I did not," he admitted, "But I had to let him know that I was aware of that option, and that the decision was entirely his to make. He was then able to appear benevolent and merciful in front of his guards, rather than weak, or easily swayed."
"And that is important to Toran," K'Veth nodded in apparent understanding.
"It is important to any Klingon. But especially to a member of the High Council. You cannot rise to such a position without taking care to maintain your public image in such a way. A weak Council member will not last very long."
K'Veth considered this latest lesson in Klingon culture, even as Karn folded his arms in front of him with an unimpressed glare.
"Perhaps," she mused, "Our father has not been as thorough in his teaching as he claimed."
"Perhaps," her brother muttered, "None of that will matter if we are successful here."
As he spoke, he fixed K'Veth with a particularly knowing look. One strong enough to cause her to feel compelled to nod back in understanding.
Klath, for his part, failed to pick up on anything particularly suspicious in Karn's comment. Instead, he continued to plough his furrow in the floor of the room.
Had he been more attentive, he might have spotted something. But he was now entirely at the mercy of his ever-growing feeling of hope. A feeling that had been well and truly cultivated ever since they had arrived, and he had taken in the sights, sounds and smells of the Empire once again. His warrior's passion inside was growing stronger with every passing minute.
So he continued to pace the room. As he had done for several hours already.
Waiting for his redemption.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"One thousand, three hundred and sixteen."
Natasha reported the total from the screen of her tricorder, after she and Sunek had joined Denella, Jirel and the ever-growing pile of tribbles in the Bounty's engineering bay.
After a second, the tricorder quietly beeped an alert.
"Correction. One thousand, three hundred and seventeen."
Next to her, Jirel shook his head and sighed. With some help from Denella, he had managed to extricate himself from the pile of tribbles that had buried him so entirely. None of the creatures seemed to care as he had clambered out over them. They had just kept chirping. And multiplying.
Natasha continued to wave her tricorder across the pile of fur.
"And the good news is, they're all healthy."
"That's not good news," Jirel countered, "That's very, very bad news."
"It's good news for the tribbles."
"How the hell did this happen?" Denella asked in tired exasperation, "We went through a complete decontamination back at Mentok colony. They wouldn't even let us return to orbit until they'd checked and irradiated every square inch of the ship."
To the frustrated Orion's side, Sunek was struggling to prevent another thoroughly amused grin from fully cultivating across his face as he gestured to the mass of tribbles.
"Looks like they missed a spot."
She shot him an irritated glare as she waved her own tricorder in the direction of the conduits above their heads.
"And who knows what else they've got up to inside there. No wonder we've been having system failures. Damn things have probably eaten their way through half our vital systems by now!"
"Hang on," Sunek chimed in again, "I thought these things only went into turbo replication mode when they were well fed."
"That's the general idea," Natasha shrugged, "Food goes in, tribbles come out."
Her tricorder beeped again.
"Specifically: One thousand, three hundred and eighteen tribbles."
"Then, apart from a bunch of our power relays, what the hell have they been eating? What, they brought a packed lunch with them?"
Natasha paused. For once in his contradictory life, the Vulcan had actually asked a perfectly reasonable question about the situation they had found themselves in. And it was a question that she didn't have an immediate answer to.
"Ok, what they're eating isn't the big issue here," Jirel interjected, "The issue is what we're going to do about them."
"Why do we always have to do something about them?" Natasha sighed, thinking back to the slaughter on Mentok colony.
"Because they're eating my goddamn ship!" Denella spat back, entirely reasonably.
"Also," Jirel added, stifling a grimace, "If any of those Klingons out there get wind of this, Klath's not gonna be regaining any sort of honour here."
He glanced at Denella, who nodded back sadly. While Jirel still didn't exactly want Klath to leave, he also really didn't want this to be the reason he stayed.
"So," he continued, "What do we do?"
"I'm gonna have to strip everything down," Denella sighed, "I've heard reports of what these things do when they get into your machinery. We'll have to organise a full physical diagnostic of every component."
"Can't exactly do that right now," Jirel countered, "Unless you wanna explain to the High Council member why we're casually fumigating our ship for tribbles in his favourite parking spot?"
"Ugh. Right. So, what else can we do with this pile of-"
Another beep.
"One thousand, three hundred and nineteen tribbles."
The Orion engineer shot a withering look at the human doctor with the tricorder.
"That's really not helping, you know."
"Transporter?" Jirel offered, chewing his lip thoughtfully.
"With our old transporter?" Denella tutted, gesturing to the growing mountain in front of them, "By the time we've filled each pad and beamed them off, we'll have a dozen more of the things to deal with. Besides, where are we even beaming them to in this little scenario?"
Jirel considered this and offered a deep sigh in response, in lieu of an actual answer. In the brief silence that followed, Natasha's tricorder beeped again, but she elected against offering a fresh update on the running total.
"We've got a bigger problem than the ones onboard," she reluctantly pointed out instead, "We just potentially carried a few special guests into Toran's compound in those sixteen crates of vintage bloodwine."
Jirel and Denella shared a worried look, then spun around to the other two.
"Didn't you check?" the Trill asked accusingly.
"Were we supposed to?" Sunek offered back.
"Yes!" Jirel snapped, pointing to the pile of tribbles, "Clearly, you were supposed to!"
"Ok," the Vulcan griped, "Here's a quick list of things I don't usually think to check our cargo for when I'm offloading it. One: Horta eggs. Two: Crystalline Entities. Three: Quantum singularities-"
"I think he gets it," Natasha cut in, as her tricorder beeped again.
"Great," Jirel sighed again, stomping in an annoyed arc around the tribbles, "So we're totally and completely screwed, are we?"
There was a long pause. Eventually, and slightly reluctantly, Sunek stepped forward.
"Alright, fine, idiots," he tutted, "You lot take some tricorders, get out there and go check the cargo, and I'll deal with all of…this."
He gestured dismissively at the pile of tribbles. The others looked back at him, waiting for some more information that didn't seem to be coming.
"You wanna give us a bit more on that?" Denella asked.
"Probably best you don't know the details. But I'll need someone's help to verify a quick trip back to orbit with the guards down here. Also, for insurance purposes, you should probably make sure everything in your cabins is fully stowed."
He turned and started back towards the Bounty's cockpit, before pausing and turning back with an enigmatic grin on his face.
"And by 'stowed', I mean, like, really nailed down."
The three faces looking back at him dropped to the floor in unison.
"Um," Jirel managed, "Please don't say you're planning on flying back into orbit, blowing all the outer hatches and dumping one thousand, three hundred and tw-"
"Thirty one."
"-Thirty one tribbles out into space?"
Sunek considered the phrasing of the question, then shrugged again.
"Ok. I won't say that."
With that, he turned back and exited the engine room. The others looked at each other for a moment with slight uncertainty.
"He's not really gonna…?" Natasha asked eventually.
"What? No. Nah. No way," Jirel replied with a firm shake of his head.
"He's just messing with us, like always," Denella nodded in affirmation.
Everyone in the engine room looked at each other again, then at the chirping mass of tribbles next to them. Then, Jirel turned on his heels and hurried towards the exit.
"I…might just go seal off my cabin."
The other two quickly followed.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The great hall of Toran's residence was just as imposing as the rest of his estate.
It was positioned at the very centre of his main residence, and took up a sizeable chunk of the floor plan. The ceiling of the room itself seemed to reach up at least two or three stories into the building, and great stone columns supported the structure at strategic points.
Klath, Karn and K'Veth were led into the hall as one, flanked by the two guards who had come to fetch them from the anteroom.
When the guards had arrived, all three of them had still been standing, as per Klath's command. None of them knew exactly how long they had been left waiting in the end, but it had been several hours. Still, Klath had barely stopped pacing throughout. And even now, he strode into the room with an air of pride and confidence.
Inside, he felt his warrior's passion continuing to grow. He felt stronger with every minute he was spending back inside Klingon territory, as if he was absorbing some sort of invisible energy directly from his surroundings. And, although he was still trying to ward off such thoughts, the sense of hope inside him was growing as well.
Because of that, even though he had been on his feet for almost the whole day now, he felt refreshed and invigorated, his body's needs being fed by the fire of his ever-growing fervour.
The guards led the trio to the head of the main hall, where an imposing throne-like chair was positioned on a high podium.
It was fairly obvious to all concerned which one was Toran's seat.
Klath stood formally in front of the empty chair, clasping his hands behind his rigid back, while Karn and K'Veth took up positions next to him. The guards stepped to the side of the room, and for a moment, nothing happened. Just when it appeared as though they had been led into this room simply in order to be ignored in a slightly different environment, a heavy door to one side of the hall opened, and Toran strode in, still decked out in his full regalia.
While Karn and K'Veth both watched him approach the throne, Klath continued to stare straight ahead, his head held high, as the Council member's heavy bootsteps paced across the hard floor of the room.
Once Toran was seated, he took a further moment to look over the three Klingons in front of him, mulling over his words.
Klath's heart was beating faster inside his chest. The hope was now unashamedly allowing himself to believe.
Eventually, Toran spoke, his booming voice echoing around the vast and somewhat sparse expanse of the hall.
"Klath, son of Morad. Karn, son of Mortath. K'Veth, daughter of B'Eleya."
A pause. Klath drew himself up even taller.
"I have reviewed each of your cases, and the reasons for each of your discommendations, based on all of the information in the High Council records. Just as I gave my word that I would do. And you have all dutifully waited for my decision. That has been noted."
Something inside Klath made him begin to question the situation. There was something in the tone of Toran's words that gave him cause to suddenly doubt himself.
"Having so reviewed them," Toran continued, "And having considered each of them wisely, I have concluded that there are no cases to be answered here."
Klath felt himself falling.
He was tumbling down an open ravine, into a dark, endless chasm.
Alongside him, although he couldn't see their reactions, K'veth glanced down at the ground, while Karn simply offered a slight sneer and a shake of his head, as if he hadn't been expecting any other possible answer.
Ignoring all of their reactions from up on the podium, Toran remained seated, and simply waved a dismissive hand at the three of them.
"Now, as you knew before you arrived here, I am a tolerant man. So I do not intend to have my guards deal with three dishonoured Klingons in my presence as they might wish to. You are free to return to your ship, and leave."
He paused, and leaned forwards in his chair, eyeballing each one of them in turn.
"But do not return to this place. Or to any Klingon territory. Take the stench of your dishonour far away from us."
Klath was still falling. He was desperately trying to find something to grasp, to arrest his plunge. But there was nothing to cling onto. He was falling away from his pride, and his hope. And towards something else.
A consuming pit of anger.
Before he could stop himself, he found himself stepping forwards, towards Toran.
"That is all you have to say?" he growled.
If Toran was surprised by his outburst, he didn't allow it to show. His two guards stepped towards the snarling adversary, but he waved them off with a flick of his hand, keeping his attention on Klath at all times.
"What more would you have me say, son of Morad?" he asked, "Or do you now plan to beg, just as I warned you not to do before?"
Klath's eyes narrowed. He felt the blood lust beginning to curdle in his veins.
"I will not beg," he snarled, "I travelled here to offer myself in service to the Empire once again, and to prove that my dishonour was not-"
"The Empire has no need for you," Toran grunted back, "A wasted journey."
The Council member leaned back in his throne once again, happy that the matter was settled. Klath remained where he was. He felt a hand on his arm, trying to pull him away. His instincts told him it belonged to K'Veth, but he ignored it and snarled at Toran again.
He fell further down, consumed by the darkness of the chasm, of the humiliations he had endured and of the pain he had suffered.
And he reached for his bat'leth, drawing it from behind his back with a carefully practised motion.
"Defend yourself!"
The guards stepped forwards again, but Toran dismissed them just as casually as he had done the first time. The imposing Klingon stood from his throne in his full battle dress and stared back at Klath where he stood with his blade poised. Klath maintained his aggressive posture, preparing for the battle he had just instigated. He took deep breaths as his heart pumped with adrenaline.
But Toran made no attempt to draw his own weapon from its sheath on his back. He simply continued to stare.
"No."
The single word cut through Klath's soul like a dagger.
Toran slowly stepped down from the podium and boldly stood within striking distance of Klath's weapon, entirely at ease with the situation he was in.
"A challenge from a dishonoured Klingon…is no challenge at all."
Klath felt his body burning with anger and humiliation. All hope had been extinguished.
He also knew, as Toran clearly did, that there was nothing he could do about it. Even if he did lash out with his bat'leth and take down the defenceless man in front of him, that would merely seal his own fate. The guards would retaliate in seconds, and killing an unarmed Klingon would merely serve to cement his eternal dishonour.
If Toran had drawn his weapon and fought, at least he might have died in battle. There would have been some honour in that. But instead, Toran offered nothing. Having refused his case for restoration, he now refused him the satisfaction of the fight.
Behind him, Karn and K'Veth both watched on with rapt attention at the fresh dose of Klingon drama that was playing out in front of them.
"What's the matter, son of Morad?" Toran leered at him with a knowing look, "I thought you preferred your enemies to be defenceless?"
Klath's mind was filled again with an image of the bridge of the IKS Grontar. And his final act as captain in the Defence Force. One that Toran was clearly well versed in. The fresh shame caused him to falter. He lowered his weapon.
Toran shook his head with disgust and turned his back on him, a fresh act of disrespect towards the still-armed Klingon. Without another word, he strode back out of the great hall.
Klath could offer nothing more. The shame overwhelmed him. The hope had gone. His plunge down the ravine continued.
If he was dishonoured before, now his humiliation was complete.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Jirel, Denella and Natasha cautiously approached the front gate of Toran's residence.
Each of them were armed with nothing more than a tricorder and their best disarming smile as they slowly approached the two imposing members of Toran's honour guard that stood on watchful sentry duty.
Moments earlier, after a not inconsiderable amount of hassle from the Brexis II transit authorities, and an even less inconsiderable amount of righteous indignation from Natasha about the morality of what he was proposing, Sunek had taken off in the Bounty, bound for orbit. Her complaints had only been quelled when Sunek had promised to flood the ship with anesthizine gas before he dutifully blew the hatches and solved their tribble infestation.
Which had left the others with the job of checking the cargo, to make sure they hadn't just introduced tribbles to Brexis II itself.
And the first part of that job involved getting back past the guards with some manner of plausible excuse.
"What are we telling them, exactly?" Denella muttered to Jirel as they neared the gate.
The guards had already taken note of them as they approached, regarding them with curious expressions, but keeping their sharpened mek'leth weapons sheathed at their waists for the time being.
"Just relax," Jirel replied confidently, "I'm gonna turn on my natural charm."
Natasha couldn't help but lean across to Denella from her other side and mutter into her ear.
"We're going to die."
They reached the guards before Jirel could offer a retort. So instead, he fired up his promised charm.
"Hi there," he smiled at the distrusting faces of the guards, "We're just, um, doing a quick check on the cargo we delivered before. Standard procedure."
The taller of the two guards looked the Trill up and down before responding.
"What sort of standard procedure?"
Jirel kept his natural charm pointed squarely at the guard, grinning winningly.
"Nothing to worry about. We just need to double check, make sure it's all accounted for. You know?"
The guards glanced at each other, visibly unconvinced by both the charm and the excuse.
"There were sixteen crates in the delivery," the shorter guard replied, "And you carried sixteen crates into the stores."
"Do you have trouble counting that high?" the taller one added with an amused grunt.
Jirel smiled warmly, using his reserves of charm to calmly absorb the mocking edge to the comment.
"Heh. Good one. But, um, the thing is that this is a random…spot check. Gotta do it for, y'know, audit reasons."
The guards glanced at each other again. To the still-smiling Jirel's side, Natasha worked hard to suppress a weary sigh.
"Audit reasons?" the taller guard echoed.
Jirel gently opened the taps of his natural charm a little further, a little surprised at quite how much of it he was needing to use.
"Hey, you know how it is, right? If I had a slip of latinum for every auditor that's gotten on my case for missing a random spot check this year, I'd have five slips of latinum, y'know?"
He chanced a particularly fine winning smile at the pair of heavily armed Klingons, ratcheting up his charm to maximum levels.
The guards shared another, longer glance. While they were certainly not being charmed, they were reaching the point where they were simply keen to do anything to stop talking to the perma-smiling Trill in front of them as soon as possible. Eventually, the taller guard grunted and stuck a thumb out in the direction of the stores.
"Do your checks," he muttered, opting to get rid of the Trill by the most expedient means available, "But do them quickly. Toran wishes to prepare that bloodwine for his gathering with the other council members tomorrow."
"See, that's why I like Klingons," Jirel replied, his charm continuing to ooze out, "Very understanding people. I've always said so-"
"Quickly," the shorter guard hissed, underlining his colleague's point.
With that cue, Jirel dialled back the charm a tad, and just nodded back, as Denella and Natasha gently pushed him through the gate in the direction of the stores. As soon as they were out of earshot, the Trill glanced over at the two women.
"See? All it took was a little charm."
Denella shook her head patiently and forced a smile as they walked on, while Natasha just muttered to herself.
"We are definitely going to die…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
"It was terrible. To witness something like that."
"That may be your opinion. I found it quite entertaining."
The two Klingon siblings continued to bicker as they sat in the same anteroom as before, where they had all been led back to after their fractious audience with Toran.
They were supposed to have returned to the Bounty to leave immediately, but the guards had informed them that the ship had temporarily returned to orbit, and had instead led them back here to wait for it to return.
Unlike before, Klath had not stood around in the room for long. He had almost immediately slipped out into the small outside space next to the anteroom without saying a word. Leaving Karn and K'Veth to debate what had just happened.
"Karn," K'Veth said admonishingly, "You cannot mean that. You have to see that we have all lost here. Not just Klath."
Karn's sneer returned to his face as he leaned back in the high-backed chair.
"There was never any real hope for our restoration here, K'Veth. You know that. Even Mortath knew that. We have carried our family's shame on our shoulders since the day we were born. And we will carry it until we die."
"But Klath-"
"If he had deluded himself into believing that the Empire was actually about to welcome us back with open arms, then so much the better. For my entertainment, anyway."
She went to retort again, but he stopped her with a pointed scowl.
"You know what our mission is, sister."
K'Veth mustered a stiff nod. She knew that well enough, and she had been prepared to carry it out when it had first been explained to her. But since then, she had met Klath. And something had changed.
She looked towards the door of the anteroom that Klath had disappeared through some minutes before with a sad gaze.
"He has suffered far more than we have."
"I do not care," her brother grunted dismissively, "It is only a pity he didn't slay Toran when he was given the chance. That would have made things even more simple."
She flashed her brother an angry snarl, then stepped towards the door. Karn watched her walking with a distrusting air.
"Do not allow yourself to get distracted, K'Veth," he called after her, "I will not allow your weakness to let our family down."
She didn't acknowledge his comment, and kept on walking.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Klath heard the door opening behind him, but he didn't turn around.
He stood with one leg raised up on the low stone wall that delineated the small outside area from the rest of the grounds of Toran's homestead, propping up his bat'leth on the limb as he sharpened the blade with a small rock.
The blade didn't actually need sharpening. He had taken particular care to ensure it was in top condition on their journey to Brexis II. An action he now realised had been a complete waste of his time. Much as all of his actions had been throughout this whole process. From accepting Mortath's open invitation to join the tribble hunt back on Mentok colony, to taking on the delivery of vintage bloodwine, to venturing all the way into Klingon space, and finally to his appeal to Toran. Every single one a complete waste of time.
He could see now that he had allowed himself to be consumed by a fantasy entirely of his own construction. The folly that he might actually get his honour restored. The idea that the Empire was ready to forgive his crimes in the Tygon Nebula.
His imagination had run away with itself, and he had been duly humbled. And now, he had nothing more to do but to sharpen his bat'leth. To distract from his humiliation, and from his grim reality. And also because he needed to be alone.
Except now, someone was infiltrating that solitude.
"Has the ship returned?" he asked, still with his back to the door.
"No," K'Veth replied, as she approached him.
"Then leave me."
He dragged the rock across the blade for emphasis, sending a shower of sparks into the air. She paused mid-step, but didn't retreat. Instead, she altered her course to walk over to the edge of the stone wall a little further along, giving Klath a wide berth.
"It was a bold thing you did back there," she motioned as she gazed out at the expanse of Toran's estate.
Klath paused in the middle of another motion down the blade and snorted without amusement, gritting his teeth as he did so.
"It was a foolish thing," he retorted bitterly, "A desperate act from a disgraced warrior. Toran's response was exactly what it deserved."
"What else could you have done?"
"Nothing. The decision had clearly been made. Reacting as I did merely brought further shame to me and my house."
He returned to his work, even as K'Veth's curiosity was piqued. She saw the slightest of openings for her to probe a little more into the background of the Klingon who was starting to fascinate her.
"Your house," she replied, "How many more are there in the House of Morad?"
Klath paused in his work and looked up and off into the distance. Although part of him felt as though the conversation was drifting worryingly close to small talk territory, and personal small talk at that, he found himself feeling oddly compelled to answer her in a way he didn't with other people.
"None. I am the last of my house. When I die, my house dies with me. And it is now clear that it will die a coward's death, in exile."
He spoke entirely matter of factly. But inside, he felt a rush of anger. K'Veth nodded in understanding.
"Karn and I will have a similar fate," she noted, "And…perhaps this was all our fault."
Klath paused midway through another run of the rock down the blade and looked over at her for the first time since she had arrived. Despite his swirling emotions inside, his own curiosity had been piqued by that comment.
"I do not understand."
She looked down at the ground, not sure how to continue without jeopardising her and Karn's task. But also feeling the need to offer him an explanation. To try and ease the humiliation he had just suffered in some small way. Eventually, she looked back up at him.
"Earlier, you told me that it is not proper to discuss a Klingon's discommendation."
"It is not. As your father should have taught you."
K'Veth stifled a slightly bitter smile.
"Perhaps there are many things Mortath has not taught us correctly. Because I was not entirely truthful earlier. Like us, Mortath has also never seen the sun rise on Qo'noS."
"K'Veth," Klath cautioned, "You do not need to explain-"
"It was our grandfather," she continued, ignoring his suggestion, "Mortath's father. He was the one who brought shame and dishonour to our family. Nearly a century ago."
Klath wanted to stop her from going any further. That was the right thing to do as a Klingon, after all, rather than hear the tale of her discommendation. But just as he had felt compelled to answer her question earlier, now he felt compelled to listen to her story.
"His name was K'Rath, son of Targan. And he was part of the Khitomer conspiracy. Not at the highest levels, but an investigation found that he had assisted their efforts. He provided classified information to the conspirators about Chancellor Azetbur's security arrangements, and as part of the High Council's tribunals after the conspiracy failed, he was exiled before Mortath was even born."
She looked over at Klath with a defiant expression. Not quite self-belief, but perhaps an approximation of it by someone who had never truly felt it.
"Perhaps such a crime is too much for our family's name to ever be redeemed. And perhaps our family's shame also brought your case down with us, by association."
Klath pondered this new information as he set the rock down and returned his bat'leth to its sheath behind his back with a practised, fluid motion.
Part of him resented her for revealing so much about her discommendation, even after he had told her that this was not the way Klingons did things. Although, he had to concede to himself that he hadn't even attempted to stop her. But part of him also felt sympathy for her. After all, if what she was saying was true, then the root of her family's shame truly was too great for her to ever hope for redemption. And he was surprised at how unhappy that fact made him feel.
But either way, he knew that even if her own family's wrongdoings dwarfed his own, that wasn't the reason that he was where he was.
"You are mistaken," he pointed out eventually, "Toran will have judged our cases individually. Your situation will not have impacted his decision on me."
He glanced back out at the grounds beyond the stone wall, grimly taking in the facts of his own dishonour once again, back on the Grontar's bridge. But his senses weren't so distracted to ignore the fact that K'Veth used his momentary distraction to take a step towards him.
"Do not come closer," he cautioned with a snarl.
She stopped on the spot, but didn't back away. Klath worked to ignore the passions that were being stirred up inside of him once again.
"I thought that after all we had endured today, you would not deny yourself some…company."
Klath grimaced again, as a heady new mixture of feelings blended together inside him to accompany the shame, the anger and the humiliation.
But regardless of the desires he might have towards her, he knew that there was now no way he could ever act on them. Not after the humbling he had endured. How could he act on such feelings when he no longer had any respect for himself. So, not for the first time since he had met K'Veth, he reacted to her advances entirely dismissively.
"You thought wrong," he grunted.
This time, she didn't back down. She remained where she was and snarled at him.
"Liar," she spat out.
He jerked his head over to her, feeling his body fill with a fresh burst of anger at this latest, somewhat unexpected, assault on his character. But she stood firm and stared back at him.
Such was the depth of his internal strife at this point, he even found himself considering reaching for his freshly-sharpened bat'leth, despite her unarmed status. But he resisted the temptation for such a direct approach to this particular frustration.
"If that is all you have to say to me," he growled, keeping the violence implied, "Then leave me."
With that, he turned his back on her, ignoring the irony of him performing the same action that Toran had done to him back in the great hall.
K'Veth stared at the stubborn Klingon's back and snarled again. Her conflicting passions inside were burning just as intensely as those inside Klath. And much as he had considered a violent solution, she gave half a mind to charging at him and knocking him to the ground. But she quickly regained control. And instead opted to walk back over to the door, acquiescing to his wishes.
"This may not mean anything from a Klingon like me," she muttered back to him as she reached the door, "But with everything I have seen of your actions here, I think you may be the most honourable Klingon that I have ever met."
Klath didn't react. He simply stared out at the grounds of Toran's residence, and pictured the bridge of the IKS Grontar, until he heard the door close behind him.
Then, he sighed deeply, pulled his weapon from behind his back and reached down for a rock.
And began to sharpen his bat'leth once again.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"This one's clean as well."
Jirel called out from the far side of the haphazard pile of crates in the corner of a somewhat dank storeroom on Toran's estate. Around the rest of the pile, Denella and Natasha ran their own tricorders around and studied the readings that the devices returned.
"No tribbles here either," Natasha reported.
"Hey," the Orion woman tutted, "Ixnay on the T-word. We don't know who might be listening."
Natasha stole a glance around the rest of the storeroom. They certainly seemed to be alone enough, but it was such a huge space that it was hard to be completely sure. All around the room, which seemed to have been carved out of the bedrock of Brexis II itself, were stacks of supplies for the entire estate. Not just food and drink, though both of those appeared to be plentiful enough, but piles of building materials and electronic components as well.
Still, seeing no sign of any Klingons listening in, she clambered over to the final set of crates and continued her scans. As they worked on in silence, she reluctantly decided to address a nagging question that she wasn't quite sure she wanted to know the answer to.
"What exactly are we planning on doing if we find any…additional cargo in our audit?"
"We deal with them," Denella replied with a shrug as she stepped across to another crate.
"Kill them, you mean?"
The Orion looked over at her and rolled her eyes at this latest attempt at a guilt trip.
"No, I mean we take them in, and spend the rest of our lives travelling the galaxy, finding the right billion or so people who want to adopt one of them."
Natasha's face shifted into an unhappy glare in response to Denella's sarcasm, as her tricorder chimed out another negative result.
"What if we just explained what happened? I'm sure they'd understand."
"Really?" Jirel smirked, "You have any idea what sort of punishment we'd be in line for if they found out we smuggled a bunch of these things into the house of a High Council member?"
"Not really."
Jirel paused, suddenly looking slightly less sure of himself.
"Well…neither do I, off the top of my head. But we're dealing with Klingons, so I'm assuming it's gonna be something very painful."
"Besides," Denella added, still entirely oblivious to how badly their colleague's efforts at redemption were going, "We'd be completely ruining Klath's chances if we-"
She paused as her own tricorder chirped out another result.
"Huh. This one's clean as well."
The trio of Bounty crew members looked around at the pile of crates. The ones that they had now completely finished scanning their way through, without turning up a single living specimen of polygeminus grex.
"Ok, am I crazy," Jirel asked, "Or did we just totally get away with one here."
Natasha glanced around again, double checking that they hadn't missed anything in their haste to get their job done.
"All sixteen crates are here. These are definitely the ones that me and Sunek unloaded off the ship, and not a trace of a…T-word."
An unmistakable sense of relief descended over proceedings, as Denella clipped her tricorder back onto the belt of her oversized overalls.
"Well, if that's everything, and we're not gonna need to make plans to go into the animal rehoming business, then I say we go see if Sunek's back with the Bounty yet. Cos I've got a hell of a lot of repairs to do on that poor ship."
"So what else is-"
Jirel didn't get any further with his quip. Because he was distracted by something he spotted on the ground of the store room, next to one of the crates.
"Huh."
He picked the object up and studied it. He didn't need a tricorder to identify what he was pretty sure the shiny silver wrapper was.
"Does, um, this look like an energy bar wrapper to anyone?"
"I guess so," Natasha replied with a shrug, as she cast an eye over the item in his hand, "I guess even Klingons can't eat raw meat for every meal."
Jirel ignored her comment, because there was something still nagging at the back of his mind. He stepped around to the rear of the crate next to where he had found the wrapper.
"What is it?" Denella asked, a little confused.
"Just…something Sunek said earlier. When he asked about what those things back on the Bounty had been eating all this time…"
His voice tailed off as he saw something else. He crouched down next to one of the crates and gestured to the others.
"Um, guys…?"
Denella and Natasha stepped over to get a look at what he was seeing.
There was a gap in the side of the crate. Not a clean hole, or some sort of ventilation spacer that was designed to be there. Instead, it was a rough and uneven hole, as if something had chewed its way out from the inside.
The three of them turned in unison to look at the stacks of food on the other side of the storage room, and the earlier sense of relief was replaced entirely by one of dread.
They slowly stepped over to a large stack of dark green containers that towered up to twice their height, and peered around the corner of the stack. The rear of one of the food containers was now open, and whatever had been inside had been mostly consumed. And it had been consumed by the large chirping pile of very contented tribbles, which had clearly decided to go forth from the crate of bloodwine and multiply.
The trio of Bounty crewmates stared at the sight in silent shock for a second.
"Alright," Jirel managed eventually, "Nobody panic, ok?"
Seconds later, the sound of panic suddenly filled the storeroom. Except it wasn't coming from them, but from the pile of tribbles, who had switched from chirping happily to growling and writhing with sudden trepidation.
"That's weird," Natasha noted, "They usually only react like that when they're near a-"
"Treachery!"
The three of them whirled around again, to be confronted by the two guards that had let them through to the stores a little earlier.
From their perspective, they had walked in to see what was taking so long with this supposed random spot check of the bloodwine. Only to find the Trill, the human and the Orion in their master's stores, seemingly initiating a tribble-based invasion of the premises.
And so, without missing a beat, both of them drew their mek'leths from their belts and aimed the deadly blades at the newcomers.
"Ok," Jirel conceded, "This is probably a good time to panic."