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Then he had to get up.

Not, on the face of it, a difficult chore, but one that had presented more of a challenge these last few months.

It was a simple maneuver, one that Klag had performed without a conscious thought for most of his life: brace himself on the arms of the chair with his hands and push upward into a standing position. Then came Marcan V and the crash of the I.K.S. Pagh that had severed his right arm at the shoulder. He’d spent several months getting used to doing things with just the one arm—and eventually coming to the conclusion that he was a lesser warrior with only one good limb.

Then M’Raq, Klag’s father, died.

It had taken him just a few weeks to adjust to having only one arm after Marcan V, but it had been months since Dr. B’Oraq had grafted M’Raq’s right arm onto Klag’s shoulder, and still he was not accustomed to the new limb. For one thing, M’Raq was built differently from his son: shorter, squatter, and with a right arm that was three centimeters shorter than Klag’s left.

So now getting up from a chair became a major production. His left elbow bent more than his right elbow in order to brace himself. And no matter how many times he got up, he always listed to the right when he rose upward. Of course, he was conscious of this, tried to avoid it, failed, and listed even more to the right when he did so.

All this was magnified tenfold when he was on the bridge. He was the commander of a ship full of warriors. He had not had a say in his command crew when he was given the Gorkon, and they left much to be desired—at first. But over the months he had been their leader, they had turned into a crew that Klag would match against any in the Defense Force.

They deserved better than a captain who got out of his chair like an old woman.

Sure enough, he pushed himself upward and listed to the right. He did not, at least, stumble. Taking advantage of this, he quickened his gait toward the door to his office, keeping most of his dignity intact.

I will conquer this, he thought with anger. He had considered simply remaining standing when on the bridge, but that would be akin to admitting defeat. He had not admitted defeat when facing a Jem’Hadar squadron without benefit of a right arm on Marcan V; he was damned if he was going to do it now for so simple a thing as getting up from his chair.

“Commander Tereth, you have the bridge,” he said.

The crew said nothing, of course. One of the bekk s at the sciences station to Klag’s extreme left had snickered the first time he’d been on duty when Klag rose from his chair. Klag had not seen the bekk since.

He had Tereth to thank for that.

There were many reasons the Gorkon crew had come together over the past few months, but Klag gave Tereth most of the credit. With the welcome departure of Drex—the son of Chancellor Martok, and who had inherited none of his father’s honor—from the first officer’s post, and with his second officer, Toq, still too new to the position to be considered for promotion, Command sent Tereth, daughter of Rokis, to be his new second-in-command.

Klag entered his office and sat in the chair behind his desk—a much less onerous task, since the ship’s artificial gravity was on his side and he could simply fall into the seat without the use of his uncooperative limbs.

Putting it out of his mind, he activated the small viewscreen on his desk. The face of General Talak appeared on it. Klag controlled his reaction. Talak was of the House of K’Tal, the same House that produced Captain Kargan—may he suffer in Gre’thor for all eternity, Klag thought—the captain’s hated former commanding officer. The general had the same crest as Kargan, and the same perpetual scowl, though not nearly so fat a face.

“Captain Klag. Your request to search for your private craft has been granted—after a fashion.”

Klag frowned. That was unusually vague. “What do you mean?”

“The disappearance of your craft would normally not be worth taking you