Kahless - Michael Jan Friedman [44]
Not so with the other one, the youth Kahless had wrested from Worf’s shoulders. He was blackened beyond recognition, a lifeless husk. But in the chaos within the building, there couldn’t have been any way to tell that.
Worf had just grabbed him and run.
As for the lieutenant himself, he was on all fours, helplessly coughing out the acrid fumes that had invaded his lungs. As someone came and took the living child away, Picard went to Worf and laid a hand on his powerful shoulder.
The Klingon’s head came about sharply, his eyes smoldering no less than the inferno from which he’d escaped.
Shrugging the captain off with a growl, he got to his knee and turned away.
Picard wasn’t offended. He understood. His security officer had been reduced to instincts in his attempt to save those children. And his instincts were not pretty by human standards.
No, he realized suddenly-there was more to it than that. A great deal more. Standing, he recalled the story he had read several years earlier in Worf’s personnel file.
As a child of six, Worf had accompanied his parents to the Khitomer outpost, on the rim of the Klingon Empire.
It was an installation devoted to research, to scientific pursuits. Nonetheless, the Romulans attacked the place without warning, brutally destroying the four thousand Klingons who lived there-Worf s parents included.
Buried in the rubble, in danger of suffocation, Mogh’s son would have died too-except for the Starfleet vessel Intrepid, which arrived in time to search for survivors. A team located a faint set of life signs in the ruins and began digging. It was Sergey Rozhenko, a human, who saved the Klingon’s life and later adopted him.
The captain could only imagine what it had been like to be trapped in all that debris, small and alone, despairing of assistance yet hanging on anyway. Or how Worf had felt when he’d seen the stones above him coming away, to reveal the bearded face of his savior.
That’s why he had refused to leave those two children behind. That was the force that had impelled Worf from the conflagration against all odds. The Klingon remembered the horrors of Khitomer. He could not do less for those students than Sergey Rozhenko had done for him.
Even as Picard thought this, he heard a call go up, a wail of pure and unadulterated pain. A moment later, a second call answered it, and then a third. Before he knew it, every survivor, child and adult, was crying out to the smoke-stained sky above them. Worf too.
This wasn’t the death song the captain had heard before-the ritual howl of joy and approval meant to speed a warrior’s soul to the afterlife. This was an admixture of fury and anguish, of ineffable sadness, that came from the darkest depths of the Klingon heart.
Those who died this day had been denied the chance to become warriors. They had been slaughtered like animals on the altar of greed and power. And no one here, Picard included, would ever forget that.
The murderers of these children had to be brought to justice. There was no other way the captain would be able to sleep at night.
“Whoever did this,” said a hollow voice, “was without honor.”
Picard turned and saw it was Kahless who had uttered the remark, his throat raw from crying out. And he was standing beside Kurn-hardly an accident.
Worf s brother didn’t turn to look at the clone. But in his eyes, the captain could see the reflection of the burning academy. Kurn’s jaw clenched, an indication of the emotions roiling within him.
“Obviously,” said the governor, in a soft but dangerous voice, “the conspiracy is real. And this attack was directed at me, on the assumption I would move to help you uncover it.” He grunted. “Me, a member of the High Council-as if that meant anything.”
“The question,” Kahless responded pointedly, “is what you are going to do about it.”
This time, Kurn looked at him. “What I will do,” he said, “is put my loyalty to the lovers aside-and help in whatever way I can.”
The clone nodded, satisfied. Then, despite the weariness they all felt, he went back to see to the survivors,