Poker Interrupted

He stumbled at one of her blows, and she threw him down again as his arm came free. She was on top of him immediately, locking her arm under his shoulder and rapidly catching him in a three-quarter nelson. He bucked underneath her, legs kicking out and trying to break the hold. Halvorsen's muscles were straining, but she just about managed to keep him pinned.

He shouted out something incoherent, spitting onto the floor. The human didn't budge, the hold secure, but her opponent did not seem about to submit, and while he seemed weakened, he was hardly about to collapse. Halvorsen gritted her teeth and held on for dear life, wondering how long she would need to keep this up for, and whether she could.

She had forgotten the other Klingons in the room, but remembered when the other man shouted something short and incomprehensible and banged his fist three times hard on the wall of the room. Laska joined in, stepping onto the mat in front of the struggling pair. At first nothing happened, but after another shout from the medical officer, the scarred warrior finally went limp.

Halvorsen climbed off him, panting, face red from the exertion, tucking her shirt back in as she did so. The Klingon was not moving except to draw ragged breaths, his face invisible to her, down towards the floor as it was.

The other Klingon man clapped her on the back, and she saw a wide grin on his face. "Qapla'!" he said, before walking out of the room.

Laska, she saw, was also smiling, teeth white against her dark face. The medical officer handed over Halvorsen's uniform tunic, and motioned for them both to leave the room. The defeated warrior remained where he was, making no move to follow them, although she fancied she heard him grunting and moving to get up as the door slid shut behind them.

"Murakh is unpopular," Laska said to her, her voice lowered, "which means that, as soon as word of this gets around, you will not be. You made the right decision. Qapla', indeed."

-***-

The ships 'mess hall' was, as it turned out, Halvorsen's first clear example of how Klingon ships really did differ from Federation ones in matters other than aesthetics. In Starfleet, even on one of the larger ships, like the Endeavour, most food was replicated. Indeed, for humans and many of the other races, that was the way it often was on their homeworlds, too. Cooking and manual food preparation wasn't entirely a lost art, but it was hardy a common skill, either. The security officer had to admit that she hadn't had food that wasn't replicated for well over a year.

But the Tarantula had a kitchen. It seemed wasteful, with all that need to carry supplies, but it seemed that the Klingons thought nothing of it. All the food available at the counter was decidedly real, and some of it hadn't quite stopped moving yet.

Halvorsen was relieved, however, to discover it wasn't all quite as bad as rumour had it. Most of it was actually cooked, at least partially, although much of it would have alarmed a vegetarian. She selected a steak, which came with some small alien vegetables and odd-looking greyish brown items that, honestly, could have been anything. She didn't like to ask what sort of animal the steak had come from, and it probably wouldn't have meant much to her if she had. But, still, it was surprisingly normal food, compared with what her imagination had conjured up.

The mess hall was also, she reflected as she sat down opposite Laska, rather noisier than anywhere on the Endeavour. Klingons were a boisterous lot, and the fact that, at least tonight, warnog ale seemed to be the only drink available might have had something to do with that. At any rate, there was loud singing, good natured shouting and raucous laughter.

It wasn't really her idea of a good time; she preferred discipline and focus. A Vulcan ship would have been preferable to this, but she was here for a reason, and she had to put up with what she had. Fortunately it seemed that, as Laska had predicted, word of the incident with Murakh had got round, and seemed to have done her reputation the power of good. The Klingons were evidently respectful of her, if not exactly friendly, and there was no open hostility, nor any attempt to call her out again.

She wondered how long that would last.

"A little after midday tomorrow, ship time," said Laska. Halvorsen blinked, before realising that she hadn't spoken out loud, and the Klingon woman had to be referring to something else. "We should reach the planet then, and begin our operation. If all goes well, you will be back on board your own ship in three days' time. In the meantime, try to look like you're enjoying yourself, will you? I don't know what it's like in Starfleet, but we like to let our hair down off duty."

"I'll try to bear that in mind," she replied, somewhat stiffly. She didn't really do that sort of relaxation, and, frankly, didn't much approve of it in others. But these were aliens, and, if the Federation insisted on anything, it was that you didn't interfere with foreign cultures.

As she spoke, another Klingon moved up to the table and sat down next to her. He was a young officer, with somewhat paler skin than many of his fellows, a trimmed beard and pure black, shoulder-length hair.

"We have other forms of entertainment," said the newcomer, "there is rarely a quiet moment on a Klingon ship. You will find something that you like."

"True," said Laska, "there is a quartet from engineering performing a section of Shevok'tah gish here tomorrow evening. If we're back in time. " Halvorsen's thoughts on spending an evening listening to Klingon opera must have registered to the Klingon woman because she quickly added, "although it's not mandatory, and, frankly," she leaned over the table, and said in a quieter voice, "they're not actually very good, so you won't be alone if you stay away."

"There might be other experiences you might want to try," said the young man, "you might find some things to be more pleasurable than you might think."

Halvorsen realised with shock that he had paused in his eating to sweep his eyes up and down her body, visibly admiring the tight fit of her uniform and the curves beneath. She put down her knife and glared at him, a stare that would have quelled any junior officer on the Endeavour.

Somewhat surprisingly, it actually seemed to work on him, and he looked a little taken aback, and, she had to say, somewhat disappointed. "Not all the same," he muttered cryptically, and turned to listen to the conversation of his fellows further down the table, his interest in her apparently over.

Laska leaned over again, "Kurdok is a young man," she whispered, "rather a hothead. But Klingons are an honourable people, nobody will try anything."

They had better bloody not, thought Halvorsen to herself. She was not one for fraternising, even with her own species, let alone another.

-***-

The mattress on the bed in her quarters was thin and stiff, but Halvorsen had no problem with that, and managed to get a surprisingly good night's sleep. She followed her usual routine in the morning; a series of callisthenic exercises followed by a freezing cold shower. There were, in her opinion, a few Starfleet officers who could do with the same; it might keep their minds off of more immoral pursuits.

At first, she thought it best to remain in her cabin, avoiding any provocation of the Klingon crew. But after an hour of sheer boredom, she decided that it would do better to be seen about. This afternoon, she might need them to guard her back, and that was going to be hard enough to do without them thinking she spent her days hiding.

As it turned out, she faced no further challenges that day. The Klingons seemed to have accepted her presence, at least for the time being. She caught a few resentful looks, but for the most part, the crew just got on with whatever they were doing. One young Klingon woman even gave her a quick smile and what seemed to be a victory gesture before turning away. Laska had said that the warrior she had defeated yesterday in the gym was unpopular, and Halvorsen suspected that this might well relate to that.

The call to the bridge came slightly earlier than she had been expecting it, but Halvorsen never relaxed on duty, and was as ready for it then as she would have been later. She went up to the bridge strait away, pressing down her uniform again as she did so, the Starfleet com badge already gleaming.

The bridge was about what she would expect for a ship the size of the Tarantula if, like the rest of the vessel, dimly lit by Starfleet standards. It had all the usual consoles, in the angular metallic style that Klingons seemed to find aesthetically pleasing, red and orange symbols scrolling across the screens. The console that appeared to control the weapons was proportionately larger and more prominent than she would expect, but whether that was because the ship was better armed than similar Starfleet vessels, or the designers had just thought it was more important, she couldn't tell.

Starfleet would, naturally, be interested in what she could tell them of her host's tactics and capabilities, but they knew there would be nothing she could tell them about Klingon engineering and control systems that they did not already know. She really wasn't here as a spy.

Captain Adjur stood in the centre of the room, somehow dominating it with her presence despite her small stature. Her dark eyes were hard, sometimes darting about the room to keep an eye on all of the bridge crew, gloved hands clasped behind her back. Her first officer stood to one side, watching the planet displayed in the viewscreen ahead of them, and the small freighter orbiting above it. Laska was nowhere to be seen.

"We have confirmed," said the Captain, her voice clipped and precise, "that the vessel is O'Leary's ship. From intercepted communications, we believe that he is currently on the planet's surface, engaged in his trade."

"He should die," said Rel'kor, succinctly.

"Yes," agreed the Captain, "but today is not that day. Starfleet have given us the information to locate him, and in, return, we allow them to capture him, and do whatever it is that they do with their prisoners. There are times that cooperation is useful, and the House of Khurless also gains from this operation in other ways. So, today, we take him alive, and hand him over, as we have agreed. Our House keeps its word, does it not?"

"Of course, Captain."

"I understand, Lieutenant Halvorsen, that Patrick O'Leary has evaded capture by your people many times?"

"He is devious," she agreed, not pointing out that the gun runner had done the same to the Klingons. The Federation was more concerned that O'Leary sold advanced weapons to cultures not ready for them, but the Klingon Empire, she suspected, was more concerned about the challenge to its own power. "Are we sure that we have got him this time?"

"We are currently under cloak, so his vessel cannot see us. The moment we drop the cloak, we beam down, then put a jamming field in place to stop him - or anyone else - beaming off the planet. Then we blow his ship out of the sky. The survival of his crew was, after all, not part of our deal. Then it will be up to the away team to capture him, and ensure that, this time, he does not escape."

"I am ready," replied the security officer.

"Good. I have seen what I need to. Rel'kor, you have the bridge. Halvorsen, with me."

"You're going on the away team?"

The corner of Adjur's mouth twitched, in what might have been as close as she could get to a smile. "Wouldn't miss it," she said, patting the pistol at her hip. It wasn't a design the human recognised. A custom made sniper's pistol, perhaps, with an enlarged power pack to boost the punch. She wondered if it had a stun setting.

-***-

Halvorsen ducked down behind a stack of crates as a disruptor shot blasted into the wall just behind where her head had been. O'Leary and his Gorn mercenaries had been waiting for them, and the firefight had begun in earnest before they had even reached the pre-fab dome from which the gun runners had been operating. The only positive sign was that they clearly hadn't been able to beam out, and Halvorsen could only imagine that the Tarantula was currently engaging their souped-up freighter in orbit.

The criminals were, at least, trapped down here with five angry Klingons and a Starfleet security officer.

Or they had been to begin with. One of the four warriors that the Captain had brought down was already out of action, caught by some automated defence. Nobody had bothered to provide him with medical aid, and, naturally enough, he hadn't asked for any, so he was still lying out in the scrubby desert outside, too injured to stand. Although, so far as Halvorsen could tell, he'd probably live if the fight didn't go on for too much longer.

A couple of blasts thudded into the crate, but it seemed solid enough to take it for now. An explosion rang out from somewhere, shaking the whole of the dome. Another trap, perhaps, or else one of the Gorn had hand grenades. Halvorsen took the opportunity to pop her head up from her hiding place, scanning the area, phaser ready.

She saw one of the Gorn, and fired at him, but he ducked away just in time, and the shot went wide. Halvorsen ducked down again, and ran along behind the crates, in the alien's direction, keeping her head low, but hoping to approach him from another direction.

As she did so, she spotted a panel that had come loose from one wall of the dome. It looked to have been popped out deliberately, with no sign of weapon fire, but it was quite hidden from the direction from which the Klingon team had entered the dome. She glanced out of it, and saw boot prints in the rough sand, heading away.

She paused for a moment, unsure of which direction she should go. But the sound of more firing from behind her persuaded her that the remaining Klingons were still holding their own against the Gorn. Meanwhile one of their opponents - and one with human-sized feet - was making his getaway across the desert. Halvorsen ducked through the hole in the wall, and headed out.

She was facing a rocky slope, some distance away across open ground that would leave her exposed to anyone looking from up above. The Captain had sent one of her warriors round the back when they entered the dome, in case of just such an eventuality, but he was nowhere to be seen. Neither was O'Leary, who had obviously vanished somewhere into the rocks up above. If only the sand had been softer and deeper here, she could have followed his foot prints, but she wasn't that skilled a tracker.

She spun as she heard a sound behind her, and found her gun levelled at Captain Adjur, stepping through the gap in the dome wall, the sun bright on her coffee-brown skin.

"Two of my warriors still standing," said the Captain, "one of his Gorn. Won't last long. So let's go get him. Cover me."

Without another word, the small Klingon was sprinting across the open space towards the foot of the ridge. Acting from instinct, Halvorsen crouched down, phaser held high as she scanned the rocks above. Nobody fired back, and soon the Klingon was in cover, beckoning at her to follow.

She ran as fast as she could, feeling the adrenaline rush as her long legs carried her across the gap in less time than it had taken the Captain. Once again, fortunately, nobody took a shot, and soon she was skidding in the dust, ducking behind the rock that concealed the Klingon woman.

"Now where?" she asked, barely out of breath from the run, and eager to continue the fight.

It must have showed in her eyes, because she caught an approving look from her alien fellow, before her face went hard again, and she scanned the slope above them with her dark eyes.

"That way," she said, pointing with a gloved hand, "broken twig on one of the bushes. Recent. Scuff mark on the edge of the flat rock just above it. Follow me."

Halvorsen followed the leather-clad figure ahead of her as they both scrambled up the slope. It was rough and rocky, a difficult passage if you did not know exactly where you were going, but Adjur seemed to have it all perfectly in hand, pausing at intervals to pick up on her quarry's trail. The human woman could do nothing but follow, her phaser at the ready... although it was clear which of them would get the first shot off if O'Leary came in sight, and she held no doubts about the Klingon's marksmanship.

As it happened, though, it was their target that fired first. The beam blasted into a bush, setting it on fire as Adjur rolled out of the way behind a large rock. The path up ahead looked even steeper than that so far, and, having just dropped a metre or so behind when her foot slipped on a loose stone, Halvorsen realised that that same slope now hid her own presence from whomever had just fired.

She froze in place, even before Adjur held out her free hand in a 'stop' motion, the other still gripping her pistol.

"I can see you," called out a voice from up ahead.

It was human and male, leaving Halvorsen in no doubt as to who it belonged, even if the accent was hidden by the universal translator's rendering of the words into her native Norwegian.

"Not quite, or you'd be shooting now," replied Adjur, gesturing back at the human.

Halvorsen immediately got the gist of what the Klingon wanted her to do. The gestures might not have been exactly the same as the hand signals used by Starfleet, but they were close enough that the meaning was clear. She crept a little further back down the hill.

"Enough to know you're on your own; my tricorder only picks up one of you. Did my Gorn friends pick off the rest of you, or did you just leave them behind? Either way, one of you, one of me, and I've got the advantage."

Halvorsen grinned to herself, realising just how O'Leary had made such a crucial error. Adjur had doubtless worked it out, too, but now it was time for the human to carry out the Klingon's plan. A plan that had just been made that much easier.

"Think I'm just going to sit here?" called out the Captain, from behind the rock.

Halvorsen knew that her ally had to keep O'Leary talking, but fortunately, that wasn't proving too hard. She continued to move.

'Ally'? Had she really just thought that about a Klingon? The camaraderie of action and shared threat did odd things to you sometimes. But, yeah, why not? For the moment, there was no reason she couldn't trust the other woman, no matter her origin and ultimate loyalties.

"Wondering where your other warrior went? I left him down near the bottom of the slope, but not without a little gift. See, I strapped a bomb to his chest after I stunned him. I've got the trigger right here. If you get close, I'll use it. Hardly an honourable death, I'd say. I mean, you might not care for your warriors' lives, but I'm guessing dishonourable death, that's not something you'd want for them, am I right?"

"Might kill you before you hit the trigger."

"Nah, you'd be out from behind that rock if you thought that was the case. Though, to be honest, maybe you will, and I get to pick you off. Blast a hole through your forehead. Even Klingon skulls aren't that thick."

"You'd know that from the other warrior."

"No, he's stunned. I told you."

"You're not the type. He's already dead, and we both know it. There's no bomb." There was silence; she'd obviously got him there, and Halvorsen felt slightly more at ease with the plan. "So there's no threat," called Adjur, "for what it was worth."

"I can still blow your head off."

"Which is your other mistake."

"Try it and see. Come out where I can shoot you. You're not scared, are you?"

"Honour does not mean stupidity. And you still made a mistake. Saw me coming so far off because you've got that tricorder rigged to signal the presence of Klingons, ignoring any other life forms. Which is how you know there's no others with me."