“Sound reasoning,” Ineti replied, offering a paternal pat on the younger man’s shoulder. “Klingon commanders are notoriously ill-tempered and impatient. They want an enemy to reveal itself and announce its desire to do battle. They’re not in the habit of sitting idle and waiting for a ghost to appear.”

“Still, we wait,” Sarith said, now talking in a normal tone of voice that echoed across the otherwise silent bridge. “Once they go to warp, we’ll restore main systems.” She was satisfied that the frantic tactic of disabling primary main power might well have been the one thing which had saved the Talonfrom detection. An appropriate notation would have to be included in her next report back to Romulus. The Science Ministry, which had developed the prototypical cloaking technology more than a century earlier and had spent the interim constantly introducing modifications and improvements, certainly would want to know about the results of the very radical field tests to which the latest model of their creation had just been subjected.

In the meantime, Sarith and the Bloodied Talonhad but one objective: Continue their mission.

“Prepare a course for the Palgrenax system,” she told Ineti. “We need to see what the Klingons find so interesting there.”

20

The balcony outside Governor Morqla’s office exploded.

Leaping from the chair situated near the open door, the Klingon felt heat wash across his face as the wooden deck burst into flames, ignited by the crudely improvised fuel bomb hurled from someone on the ground outside the building. No doubt whoever had thrown the primitive explosive had been hoping for it to land inside the room, but their aim obviously was lacking.

Drawing his disruptor pistol from the holster strapped along his right hip, Morqla stepped closer to the doorway, ignoring the flames licking those sections of the burning balcony nearest him. Peering down from his perch on the second floor of the stone building, he saw three native Palgrenai scampering across the open courtyard of the small town square. Their drab woven clothing blended with the bland façades of nearby structures, and the claws on their bare feet churned up the dry soil as they ran toward a smaller building. The villagers moved with surprising speed despite their bulk, though even from this distance it was easy for Morqla to tell that the oldest of the trio could still be only an adolescent.

He saw harsh crimson disruptor bolts follow after the Palgrenai, evidence that at least one of his subordinates still retained a functioning brain within his thick skull as they responded—albeit belatedly—to the pitiful attack. The energy blasts tore into the ground behind the three upstarts, then into the stone wall of the squalid structure as the villagers disappeared behind it, no doubt heading for the perceived security of the dense forest surrounding the settlement.

Yet Morqla found himself smiling. Despite the laughable tactics and net result, the youths’ audacity still was quite refreshing.

Even the whelps are joining the fight now. Perhaps thesejeghpu’wI’ have some redeeming qualities after all.

The door to his office opened, and two subordinates rushed in, disruptors drawn and searching for threats. Seeing the flames working to consume the balcony, the senior bekklooked to Morqla. “Governor? Are you injured?”

Waving the question away as he returned his weapon to its holster, Morqla replied, “Of course not.” He turned and headed for the door leading out of his office. “Extinguish that fire.”

Morqla hurried down the wide, low-ceilinged hallway and bounded down the stairs to ground level, remembering only at the last moment to duck his head and to be mindful of the shorter steps constructed for Palgrenai physiology. An open door led to the courtyard, beyond which stood a quartet of troops from his garrison. They had taken up defensive positions behind the waist-high stone wall separating the courtyard from the grounds immediately surrounding the building that Morqla had chosen to be his headquarters.

Like the two soldiers up in his office and most decidedly unlike himself, these subordinates were QuchHa’,Klingons descended from an offshoot of his native race but whose forebears had fallen victim to the strange genetic mutation that affected many of his people nearly a generation ago. QuchHa’were small and weaker and did not possess the prominent bone structure dominating the cranium.

So far as Morqla was concerned, many of these lesser Klingons also were weaker in a number of other ways, particularly in their sense of honor and the ways of the warrior. He had no idea whether this was but one of the multiple reasons why so many QuchHa’had been cast out from most sects of Klingon society, or whether in fact it was a consequence of that banishment. He did not care, either. Those who served under his command had proven themselves to be at least competent soldiers, ideally suited for the most unglamorous duty to which they had been assigned on this all-but-forgotten dust ball of a planet. Their lack of honor—real or perceived—might prove their undoing, but they had sworn to serve the empire, and that was all he required of them.

Morqla exited the building, noting as he did so that the late-afternoon humidity seemed even more oppressive than normal. Waves of heat rose from the rooftops of the nearby buildings, and dust kicked up by the comings and goings of people across the dry dirt of the courtyard lingered in the air. Taking stock of the situation, he was pleased to see that there appeared to be no other evidence of attacks on any of the other structures—particularly those housing members of his garrison.

Still, in accordance with regulations, soldiers around the town square were in the process of rounding up those Palgrenai villagers outside at the time of the attack. Occupation orders stated in terms devoid of ambiguity—orders conveyed to the Palgrenai in their own languages once translators had devised a means of communicating with the primitive people—those taken into custody would be questioned, possibly tortured, and summarily executed…if not already dead.

Some of the villagers resisted attempts to arrest them, but their squat, ungainly bodies were no match for the large, muscular physiques of his own troops. To Morqla, the Palgrenai, with their dark, oily hides, their short extremities, and the large, angular ears that drooped from the sides of their narrow, hairless heads, appeared almost reptilian, perhaps resembling what might result were a targ and a Denebian slime devil able to mate and produce offspring.

Such comparisons were not at all easy to dismiss, particularly in light of the Palgrenai propensity to slobber over anything and anyone within their reach. It was not uncommon to see villagers with dried and fresh drool coating the edges of their mouths and even their clothing. While he had not yet had the misfortune to witness a Palgrenai in the act of consuming a meal, Morqla reckoned it could not be that far removed from watching a herd of bolmaqat a feeding trough.

The less time spent envisioning that,he decided, the better. How such a species had managed to rise even to the level of civilization the Palgrenai currently enjoyed was a mystery that likely would baffle Morqla for the remainder of his days. With luck, he one day would die in glorious battle and be spared the need to ponder such inane questions.

“Report!” he shouted as he stepped further into the small yard in front of his headquarters building.

One of the soldiers—Morqla could not remember his name but saw from the rank insignia on his uniform that this QuchHa’was the highest-ranking bekkamong the quartet—snapped to attention as he replied, “A covert attack by insurgents, Your Excellency.” Pointing up toward the still smoldering balcony outside Morqla’s office, the subordinate added, “They used crude explosives, but only managed the one attack before they were driven off.”