Amon smiled. “Of course.”
He left. It’s not like I need all my waiters tonight in any event,Kurrgo thought sourly, looking at all the empty tables. Usually this was the busiest time of night, yet only a quarter of the restaurant was full. He looked around the restaurant walls, covered as they were with assorted Klingon memorabilia: weapons, Klingon artwork, a fake SoSnI’tree, and more weapons. Perhaps I should make the décor more Cardassian.
His redecorating thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of three men and one woman wearing military uniforms.
No, there was a fifth with them—a stooped-over figure whose face Kurrgo could not see. At first, Kurrgo thought they were bringing a drunk in off the street, especially since the fifth figure wore civilian clothing.
Kurrgo scowled. He had little use for this world’s military. Klingon soldiers were warriors, creatures of honor and duty, worthy of the highest place in Empire society. Cardassian soldiers, though, were just thugs with uniforms. Upon the newcomers’ entrance, he immediately moved to the front of the restaurant to greet them before they could come any further inside. “What do you want?” he asked, trying to maintain at least a facade of pleasantness, though he clenched his fists so tightly, his fingernails drew blood.
“This creature says he belongs to you, Klingon,” one of them said. He gave a signal to the one dragging the fifth figure, who tossed said figure to the floor between him and Kurrgo.
Only then did Kurrgo get a good look at the figure, and realized that it was a Klingon, his face bleeding from several cuts and covered in bruises, one eye completely sealed shut from the swelling.
It took him a moment to recognize Larkan.
“He is one of my waiters!” Kurrgo knelt down to check on the young man. He was breathing normally, if a bit raggedly.
“I—am—all—right,” Larkan managed to say, spitting out blood and a tooth or two as he did so.
Standing upright, Kurrgo faced the lead Cardassian. He kept an old disruptor pistol in the back room, but he’d never get to it in time. Even the bat’lethon the west wall was too far to do him any good. Besides, I will not endanger my customers.“Who did this to him?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“He was out after curfew.”
Kurrgo blinked. “What curfew?”
“The curfew that was announced this afternoon. All Klingons are to be indoors after sundown. No exceptions.”
Tightly, Kurrgo said, “I was not informed of this.”
The officer looked around. “Yes, I can see that you don’t have any monitors in here. Why is that, I wonder?”
“My customers come here to get away from Cardassia, to get a taste of tlhInghan’a’.”There was no adequate Cardassian way of expressing the word, which basically meant “Klingon-ness.” “To have a Cardassian face prominently displayed would spoil the ambience.” Clenching his fists once again, he added, “I have all the necessary permits to—”
“I do not carewhat permits you have, Klingon!” The officer spit on the floor. “This restaurant is an abomination. It offends the memory of every Cardassian who has died at Klingon hands, and will be shut down. Your waiter will be arrested for violation of curfew. You will be escorted to your home. We will no longer allow your kind to walk about freely where you can poison our children and murder our people.”
At first Kurrgo was aghast. He had now moved on to furious. “This is myproperty! You cannot—”
“This is Cardassianproperty,” the officer said, standing face-to-face with Kurrgo. “We simply allow you—or, rather,” he added with a supercilious smile, “allowedyou to use it to poison our people with your vile foodstuffs. But that is over now. I have orders to close this—establishment. If you need a place to work, I’m sure the mines on Bajor could use someone of your bulk.” Raising his voice for all to hear, he continued: “Everyone please leave the premises immediately. This restaurant has been shut down. Anyone left within these walls in five minutes will be arrested for trespassing on Central Command property.”
“You cannot do this.” Kurrgo spoke the words even though he knew them to be a lie—never mind that he had indeed bought the land ten years earlier. Cardassia was a military dictatorship, after all, and that meant that people did what the military said. Now the military had, in the person of this petaQof an officer, declared his deed of ownership to this restaurant null and void.
There were four of them and only one of him. They were trained in combat, where Kurrgo knew a few knife tricks that might allow him to hold his own in a one-on-one brawl. Against these odds, he’d be torn apart.
He decided to wield one last weapon. “Gul Hallitz is one of my regular customers. I do not think he will be pleased by this.” In truth, he had no idea one way or the other how important Hallitz was in the grand scheme of Cardassian Central Command, nor what influence he could wield, but at this point Kurrgo had little to lose.
The officer just laughed at that, as did his fellows. “Gul Hallitz is the one who cut the orders to shut this charnel house down.”
So, there it is.Kurrgo had hoped it would not come to this. But if they closed his restaurant, he had nothing. He doubted he would be able to make a third attempt to open such an establishment, and he could not live with the shame of returning to the Empire a failure twice over. If they insist on taking my life’s work, they shall do so only by stepping over my corpse to do it.
Without any warning, he struck the lead officer on his neck under his chin. It was an especially vulnerable spot for Cardassians if one aimed it properly, and Kurrgo did—it was no doubt why they had evolved such tough chins, to protect that weakness. The officer went down like a sack of HaroS.
He turned to face the others, but they were too fast. Each of them had unholstered phasers and started firing.
As the phaser fire burned his flesh and muscle, as the pain lanced through his body, as the screams ripped from his throat, Kurrgo thought, My death may not be worthy of song, but I died defending my land. I could have hoped for no better end.
As he fell to the floor, he heard the voices of the Cardassians.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” A cough. “Hadn’t expected that.”
“Who’s Gul Hallitz, anyhow?”
“I have no idea. I just thought I’d twist the knife in that alien scum’s heart is all.”
Laughter.
Oddly, the treachery brought comfort to Kurrgo as he died. At least my customers are loyal…
Chapter 18
Qo’nos
Of all the mountain-climbing excursions Arn Teldin had taken on dozens of worlds throughout the quadrant, this trip to the Sutor mountains on Qo’noS had been the best yet.
The biggest problem with Cardassia II, where Teldin grew up, was its near total lack of mountains. Teldin had always felt the urge to climb, ever since he was a small boy trying to scale the tree in his backyard. The first time he went off-world was when his father’s business took him to Chin’toka III, to a city near the Likra mountain range. His father wouldn’t let him climb then—he was only seven—but Teldin studied climbing when he went to school, becoming a champion. He won dozens of competitions and left his mother living in constant fear for her son’s life.