“I do not carewhat permits you have, Klingon!” The officer spit on the floor. “This restaurant is an abomination. It offends the memory of every Cardassian who has died at Klingon hands, and will be shut down. Your waiter will be arrested for violation of curfew. You will be escorted to your home. We will no longer allow your kind to walk about freely where you can poison our children and murder our people.”
At first Kurrgo was aghast. He had now moved on to furious. “This is myproperty! You cannot—”
“This is Cardassianproperty,” the officer said, standing face-to-face with Kurrgo. “We simply allow you—or, rather,” he added with a supercilious smile, “allowedyou to use it to poison our people with your vile foodstuffs. But that is over now. I have orders to close this—establishment. If you need a place to work, I’m sure the mines on Bajor could use someone of your bulk.” Raising his voice for all to hear, he continued: “Everyone please leave the premises immediately. This restaurant has been shut down. Anyone left within these walls in five minutes will be arrested for trespassing on Central Command property.”
“You cannot do this.” Kurrgo spoke the words even though he knew them to be a lie—never mind that he had indeed bought the land ten years earlier. Cardassia was a military dictatorship, after all, and that meant that people did what the military said. Now the military had, in the person of this petaQof an officer, declared his deed of ownership to this restaurant null and void.
There were four of them and only one of him. They were trained in combat, where Kurrgo knew a few knife tricks that might allow him to hold his own in a one-on-one brawl. Against these odds, he’d be torn apart.
He decided to wield one last weapon. “Gul Hallitz is one of my regular customers. I do not think he will be pleased by this.” In truth, he had no idea one way or the other how important Hallitz was in the grand scheme of Cardassian Central Command, nor what influence he could wield, but at this point Kurrgo had little to lose.
The officer just laughed at that, as did his fellows. “Gul Hallitz is the one who cut the orders to shut this charnel house down.”
So, there it is.Kurrgo had hoped it would not come to this. But if they closed his restaurant, he had nothing. He doubted he would be able to make a third attempt to open such an establishment, and he could not live with the shame of returning to the Empire a failure twice over. If they insist on taking my life’s work, they shall do so only by stepping over my corpse to do it.
Without any warning, he struck the lead officer on his neck under his chin. It was an especially vulnerable spot for Cardassians if one aimed it properly, and Kurrgo did—it was no doubt why they had evolved such tough chins, to protect that weakness. The officer went down like a sack of HaroS.
He turned to face the others, but they were too fast. Each of them had unholstered phasers and started firing.
As the phaser fire burned his flesh and muscle, as the pain lanced through his body, as the screams ripped from his throat, Kurrgo thought, My death may not be worthy of song, but I died defending my land. I could have hoped for no better end.
As he fell to the floor, he heard the voices of the Cardassians.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” A cough. “Hadn’t expected that.”
“Who’s Gul Hallitz, anyhow?”
“I have no idea. I just thought I’d twist the knife in that alien scum’s heart is all.”
Laughter.
Oddly, the treachery brought comfort to Kurrgo as he died. At least my customers are loyal…
Chapter 18
Qo’nos
Of all the mountain-climbing excursions Arn Teldin had taken on dozens of worlds throughout the quadrant, this trip to the Sutor mountains on Qo’noS had been the best yet.
The biggest problem with Cardassia II, where Teldin grew up, was its near total lack of mountains. Teldin had always felt the urge to climb, ever since he was a small boy trying to scale the tree in his backyard. The first time he went off-world was when his father’s business took him to Chin’toka III, to a city near the Likra mountain range. His father wouldn’t let him climb then—he was only seven—but Teldin studied climbing when he went to school, becoming a champion. He won dozens of competitions and left his mother living in constant fear for her son’s life.
With adulthood came responsibility, of course. It was all well and good to indulge in one’s fantasies as a youth, but Cardassia gave him a home and a life, and in return for that, he owed the state service. He became an archivist for the Central Command library, soon rising to the position of chief archivist. Eventually, after a long and distinguished career during which he revolutionized Central Command’s record-keeping abilities, he retired, determined to spend the rest of his life traveling the galaxy and climbing mountains.
He’d climbed peaks all over Cardassian space and on several Federation worlds. The trip to Qo’noS had been expensive, but worth it. Klingons, for all their peculiarities, had a fondness for preservation of nature, so the wildnerness of Sutor was left mostly untouched by the ravages of industry and technology. It had been the purest climb he’d had since his school days.
Even as he waited for the transport that would take him back to the First City, where he would find lodgings before heading back home to Cardassia in the morning, he missed the sensation of rock under his hands, the searing cold air slicing into his lungs, the feel of the wind through his white hair—more, he missed the soundof the wind. When the transport arrived, he planned to compose a letter to his mother—still alive, and well cared for by the state—telling her of the adventure. His mother had long since given up being worried about her son’s jaunts across the galaxy. Whether or not it was old age or just resignation to the inevitable, she at least no longer tried to talk him out of it, and pretended to enjoy hearing about his adventures.
It was only after he’d been at the kiosk for fifteen minutes that he noticed the odd looks he was getting from the Klingons around him.
Teldin had never given much thought to Klingons. Until coming to Qo’noS, he’d never even met one. He didn’t like the way they all tended to snarl and bare their teeth and shout. But then, they probably didn’t like how quiet and unassuming Teldin himself was, so he figured it all balanced out. Besides, they let him climb their mountain, and he couldn’t bring himself to be too badly disposed toward them.
“Hey! Cardassian!”
Blinking, Teldin turned to the large Klingon who spoke. “Are you talking to me?”
The Klingon, who was a broad-shouldered young man with a thick beard and a wild mane of red hair framing a heavily ridged crest, laughed heartily. “Do you see any other Cardassians around, old man?”
“Er, no. Can I help you with something?”
Another laugh. “Why, yes! Yes, you can, Cardassian! You can tell me why you’re here!” The Klingon walked up to Teldin and stood face-to-face with him. The Klingon’s breath was beyond foul—it smelled like something that had lived a very unpleasant life died in the man’s mouth. Teldin knew that Klingons had odd taste in food—he was grateful that he’d packed his own rations before leaving Cardassian space—but this was beyond the pale. “You don’t belong on a Klingon world, old man!”
“I’ve—I’ve been climbing the Sutor p-peak.” Teldin started to grow nervous. He was just a retired archivist, after all. In good shape for a man his age, but against one of these brutes—who lived for combat, or so he had heard—he wouldn’t stand a chance. Where is that transport?