The Brave and the Bold Book Two - Keith R. A. DeCandido [91]
But he could not. Somehow, the minds of all the people on both ships were unavailable to him. That had never happened before.
So he sent his ships off to attack and destroy the vessels, then turned his attention back to J’lang—
—just as Worf knocked the sculpting tool out of J’lang’s right hand with a chopping motion. He then converted that motion into a jab with his elbow to J’lang’s face. As J’lang stumbled backward, Worf grabbed J’lang’s left wrist, effectively neutralizing the d’k tahg, then yanked J’lang forward. J’lang stumbled toward Worf; Malkus tried to put up some kind of defense, but Worf then stopped J’lang’s forward motion by grabbing J’lang’s right shoulder with his left hand.
Malkus retreated from J’lang’s mind as the sculptor lost consciousness, another victim of that be-damned Vulcan attack. He transferred his active control to Roka.
Spock and Roka seemed to be evenly matched with the bat’leth, at least. Roka had mostly been on the offensive, but Spock had parried each blow with the ease of the expert that Malkus knew full well he wasn’t.
With a downward slash, Roka managed to entangle Spock’s bat’leth and drive it to the grassy ground. He used his left elbow to jab Spock in the jaw, then disentangled his weapon from Spock’s and swung upward.
However, Spock was able to duck backward and not be struck. Then he raised his own bat’leth in defense of Roka’s next thrust.
They sparred for a moment, neither side gaining the offensive. Roka used Kilog’s gambit against Spock, followed up by B’Arq’s defense. According to Roka’s memories, B’Arq’s defense was impenetrable.
With an underhanded swing, Spock penetrated Roka’s use of B’Arq’s defense, knocking the bat’leth out of Roka’s hands. Spock then slammed the leading edge of the bat’leth into Roka’s side.
Malkus cursed as Roka fell to the ground, unable to move. He gazed upon the two ambassadors with fury as they stared at each other.
Worf raised an eyebrow. “Fascinating. Your penetration of B’Arq’s defense was—familiar.”
Spock half-smiled. “It should be, since I learned it from you. An excellent technique, if I may say so.”
“Thank you. We should continue. Malkus may send more of his thralls against us.”
You don’t know the half of it, Klingon, Malkus thought angrily. He reached out to the pawns that had gone to the shuttle—
—only to find that five of the six were still engaged with the quintet from the shuttle. The sixth was dead, a d’k tahg having slit his throat. If the remainder broke off their attack to go after Spock and Worf, they too would be cut down.
Then Malkus laughed to himself. The solution was simple: the four Klingons who had been defeated here and the one dead at the shuttle were of no use. So Malkus sent those shards of his consciousness to B’Oraq, Davok, G’joth, Matthew Falce, and Hilary McKenna.
That gave him a full ten pawns to send after Spock and Worf.
Soon they’ll all be dead….
“New course, 287 mark 9—execute!”
“Train disruptors on the Rikmok.”
“Weapons locked.”
“Vralk, execute course now!”
“Prepare to fire on my mark.”
Kira heard the voices in the background, but barely focused on who was talking. Her primary concern was the field of range belonging to the fore port disruptor array. There were three of them, each had four viewscreens, one large and three small. Each screen showed a ninety-degree field, with the large one showing the ninety-degree area that the disruptor was currently trained in, the other three showing the remaining two hundred and seventy degrees. Her job was a simple one—identify any targets that came in range of any of the three disruptors under her purview, train the weapon on that target, and fire. Of course, with the speed at which ships moved and the comparatively limited range of the disruptors, that didn’t leave her—or her three counterparts—many opportunities to fire, but they were only a small part of the Gorkon’ s arsenal.
She tried not to think about what the Bajoran