Star Trek: I.K.S. Gorkon - 001 - A Good Day to Die by Keith R. A. Decandido

Author:Keith R. A. Decandido [Decandido, Keith R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Adventure
ISBN: 9780743457149
Publisher: Star Trek
Published: 2003-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Leknerf sighed as the scanner picked up six more grapok-sauce stains on the mess hall’s rear bulkhead. At this rate, he thought, I’m going to be here all night.

Quartermaster had, of course, chosen the night after both gagh and racht had been served for dinner to be the one when the mess hall got its regular scrubdown. This meant that Leknerf would be spending most of the night seeking, locating, and destroying any grapok -sauce stains before they had the chance to draw vermin. Other sauces were easier to clean up because they tended to spill in clumps. But, since grapok sauce was favored for the serpentine foodstuffs, it tended to spatter in little droplets all over the place. Most of the stains couldn’t even be seen with the naked eye—especially given how maddeningly dark Klingons kept their rooms—hence the need for a scanner to find them all.

Gripping the stain remover with one tentacle, the elderly Pheben examined the readout with one of his three eyestalks to verify that it was set for grapok sauce, then placed the device on the wall and activated it. Seconds later, all the sauce in the immediate vicinity had been reduced to its component atoms.

Still, as jobs went, it could have been worse. At least Leknerf had a place to sleep, regular meals, and a steady if small paycheck. It was better than some jeghpu’wI’ could hope for. As natives of worlds conquered by the Klingon Empire, jeghpu’wI’ occupied the lowest stratum of Klingon society. Even Houseless nonwarrior Klingons had higher places by virtue of being of the right species. All jeghpu’wI’ could hope for was work that was beneath even the lowliest of Klingons.

However, Leknerf had little to complain about—especially now. With the end of the Dominion War, assignments to Defense Force vessels were much less risky than they had been. Many of Leknerf’s friends had suffered the same fate at the hands of the Jem’Hadar that the grapok sauce had at Leknerf’s own tentacles during those terrible two years. Leknerf had been lucky in that most of his assignments had been to space stations and planetside bases. He didn’t draw a shipboard job until the last few weeks of the war, and that vessel made it through with barely a scratch.

As Leknerf turned one of his eyestalks to the scanner to search for more sauce stains, the sound of the mess-hall door opening reached his ear. A second eyestalk swiveled toward the noise to see Commander Kurak enter. Leknerf’s objection to the intrusion died on his tongues. For one thing, while he could sometimes get the crew to stay out of the mess hall during a cleanup period, he had no chance of ever convincing an officer to abide by that rule. Quartermaster, perhaps, could keep one of them out, but not a lowly jeghpu’wI’ maintenance drudge.

Besides, Leknerf liked Kurak. She was one of the few Klingons on the entire ship who even paid attention to him, and the only one of those who was ever nice to him.

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