Broken Bow - Diane Carey [2]
So who was primitive, and who wasn’t?
If Ican make a person like Dad be honest with me, then I can do it with other people, too. I’ll think about this later, and figure out what I did right. Then I’m gonna use it on somebody. I’ll make the Vulcans talk!
And I’ll make them say they’re sorry to you, Bad. Because they should be.
As if hearing Jonathan’s thoughts, Dad stood up and tapped the lid back on the blue paint. Then he reached for Jonathan’s hand.
“Come on, son.”
Jonathan took a leaping step, because he knew. “Where’re we going?”
“To the Spacedock.” Dad drew a long breath and nodded in agreement with himself. “It’s time for you to see the real thing.”
CHAPTER 1
Thirty Years Later ...
OKL’HMA!
Failed! I have smashed my craft, and now I flee to live!
Die here? In rows of weeds and seeds? This is no way to die! Suliban! The savage pawns must not have what I know. Escape is not cowardice! Run!
Thus he ran from the smelling wreck of a noble craft that had carried him so far, whose flawed intakes he had not been able to mend in time. The wreck would distract them. It was Klingon to its core and it would serve till the end, spewing a curtain of smoke to hide him in the stalks.
Who was on this planet? Who had made the stalks into rows as tidy as a mOghklyk’s spine plait? What beasts were here who built the land into squares, the buildings into squares, and the fences into squares? Were they also square?
Klaang ran, ran like a fear-driven child, but with anger also, which kept him leaping harder with each step. The gravity here—he could run faster than on Qo’noS. His bulky body served better here and seemed young again. He knew he was big, even for a Klingon, but here he sensed an advantage. Suliban animals would lose him in this weed field.
Then the blasts began, and he knew he was wrong. The stalks beside him burst into flame and withered, blackened. A glance over his shoulder told him they were after him even through the smoke and weeds. He saw their mottled faces, heard their weapons, and sensed their insult.
“Hah!” A burst of new energy, driven by the stink of burning plants, drove him faster toward the square buildings he had seen as his craft rushed overhead to its death. A good death in battle for a good old craft, to go ferociously into the dust and flame with scars of Suliban attack. The future would know about it.
The Suliban weapons spat bitter fire at Klaang as he ran. The alien countryside lit up in great expanses. Ridiculously, he tilted toward each shot; escape would be preferred, but if there was no escape, he wanted to die boldly. He was running to save the mission, after all, not himself. His conscience and his duty were in conflict.
But to die with Suliban disruption in the back—who would tell how it really had been for him? Why he died with wounds in his back?
Could he run backward?
He was about to try when a port opened in the nearest building and an alien emerged, bright in the face and round in the body, with hairless chin and narrow shoulders and cloth on its head. Shock broke across its expression, and it disappeared back into the swinging port.
Klaang angled away from that building and went for the silver tower to the side. It was windowless and tall, suggesting an inner confusion and a possibility of darkness in which to conceal himself.
The door was large enough for him, made of thin metal and bracings. He pushed it shut and slammed the rod that obviously bolted the door.
Would Suliban be stopped? Klaang stepped back into the darkness and looked at the door. A thin sliver of light