STAR TREK®: SEVEN DEADLY SINS by Dayton Ward

Author:Dayton Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GALLERY BOOKS
Published: 2010-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

Kang

As soon as he walked into Supervisor Kobyk’s office, Kang spoke without preamble. “Why is Sorkav still alive?”

Kobyk—clutching his warnog for dear life, as usual; Kang thought his liver must have been constructed from rodinium—stared at Kang as if he were a glob fly he wished to swat. “What?”

“The question is a simple one, Supervisor. Why is your chief of security still alive?”

“Because he’s good at his job and therefore hasn’t been killed.”

Kang almost laughed in Kobyk’s face, but this was hardly a laughing matter. “There are many ways that Sorkav may be described. ’Good at his job’ could never be one of them.”

“Captain, you do not understand.”

Folding his arms across his chest, Kang said, “No, I do not. That is why I posed the question, Supervisor. Make me understand.”

Kobyk opened his mouth as if to speak, then stopped. Then, he started again. “These incidents have been solely due to the QuchHa’ getting the notion that they are treated more poorly than the HemQuch.”

Kang had to admit to being impressed that Kobyk said those words with a straight face. “A notion no doubt bolstered by a QuchHa’ having his throat slit and the death being ruled an accident, while a HemQuch dying in the same manner led to the death of a QuchHa’.”

“My brother does not discriminate.” Then Kobyk smiled. “He treats all the miners like the scum that they are. These are laborers, Captain, not high-born Klingons like you and I. They must be ruled with a heavy gauntlet.”

“We are all ruled by a heavy gauntlet, Supervisor. Yet somehow your mine has difficulties that no others do.”

Kobyk slugged down the remainder of his warnog, slammed the mug onto his desk, and said, “He is my brother! Of course he’s an incompetent toDSaH, but he is family.”

Shaking his head, Kang said, “All the more reason to put him out of your misery.”

“Oh, my misery will only begin there. Do you honestly believe, Captain, that I hired that fool willingly? And do you know what agonies I will face from our family if I am the one to condemn him to death? Believe me, the House of Kamarag is not to be trifled with.”

Kang had no sympathy for Kobyk’s plight, but he did understand it. He knew of the supervisor’s House, and knew that, if he’d been forced to keep Sorkav safe, he could not condemn him to death—no matter how wretched at his duty he was.

Kobyk continued. “Believe me, Captain, no one will be happier if you and your fellow captains contrive a way to have a d’k tahg plunged into Sorkav’s chest. But that order cannot come from me.”

Even as Kang considered his response, a security alarm rang out through the speakers in the office.

The two masked men attacked Jurva while she was on her way to the transporter room.

She was just coming off her shift and was eager to return to the Voh’tahk, where she could get edible food. Her mid-shift meal had been taken in the mine’s mess hall, and Jurva would sooner eat human food than that bland, tasteless garbage again.

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