Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [37]
He turned as sharply as that, and strode toward the exit.
As Zaidan’s boots clunked on the conduit deck and he dipped his head to keep from bumping it, a pitiful voice sputtered across the deck.
“I want one chance …”
Zaidan stopped and turned. “What?”
“One chance,” Kozara begged. “Be my son for one more chance.”
“What chance?”
“I will hunt Bateson down and kill him.”
Waving both hands, Zaidan spat his contempt. “Who cares about that? So he would be dead! So what?”
Crushing his knuckles across his mouth and rubbing saliva into his beard, Kozara tried so hard to think that the old scar on his skull turned darker. There was every stress in his face short of blood coming from his eyes.
“I will … I will destroy … I will … his entire crew came through time with him, you said?”
“Yes!” Zaidan snapped. “So what?”
“There is a chance!” Kozara bolted, suddenly coming to life. “If his entire crew came through, then I am vindicated!”
“Why?” his son demanded.
“Because there is a Klingon operative on his staff.”
Kozara lowered his voice and made the wild statement as calmly as if he were once again giving the order to dock. His satisfaction ran deep and cold through his crew.
But Gaylon threw it off. “We had no way of knowing Bateson would be waiting for us that day! How would you have known to put a spy on him?”
“Bateson and I had clashed before, and Bateson and others,” Kozara said, enjoying the sudden upper hand. “The spy was assigned to the Typhon Expanse. I and others knew that even if Bateson were drawn away, he would be there when we tried to return.”
“Why did this operative fail to help us that day?”
“How could I know that?” the old captain barked. “But if that person is still alive, then he has been working on that new starship all this time. Think of it!”
“You are fantasizing,” Zaidan insisted. “There is no such person.”
“Doubt me, then. I may not be Kang or Koloth, but I am a commander in the Klingon fleet and there are things I know. If my information is right, there was on that day a Klingon operative on Bateson’s ship. Not a Klingon, but a human doing Klingon business. For that man, only three years have gone by. His loyalties may yet be in place. We shall see when we come up against Bateson and his new ship … what advantages he can give us.”
Kozara circled his command chair with a flicker in his eye such as Gaylon had never thought to see again. Gaylon dared say nothing to this wild new turn of possibilities. Could it be? Was there a wink of hope in the murk?
“I will kill Bateson,” Kozara promised, “and I will smash the Federation’s new starship at the same time. No … not enough. Even more, I will make the entire Federation hate what they have built! For all time, I will vilify the name of Enterprise!”
Zaidan shifted his considerable weight and tilted his head to one side. “How will you and one miserable old ship destroy the new starship?”
“I do not mean to destroy it,” his father said. “I mean to possess it.”
Something about those words made Zaidan pause, Gaylon noticed. The son had spent his life scheming to overcome his father’s shortcomings, and as such he was no stranger to clever schemes. His restraint now showed that. A chance was a chance.
Or something about the idea—to do such an outlandish thing, to even conceive of it, took some courage, some cleverness. Zaidan apparently saw a glimmer in his father which he had ceased to believe existed, perhaps believed had never existed at all. But there it was. Kozara had somehow spoken magical words.
And Kozara saw the change. His senses were not so stultified that he missed his advantage.
He swung around, then around again, until he caught the attention of his entire bridge crew.
“Yes!” he sang out with his ages-ago voice. “Listen, all of you! Gaylon! Zulish! Veg! Kuru! All of you—you will help me! We will stay together and escape failure’s maw with a victory such as none