“…and the worst of it,” Hor’keth, son of Tela-bur, of the House of Lorkoth said, waving a drumstick like a baton to emphasise his point, “is that I missed the Battle of Deneb!”
“You were hunting Dominion raiding parties,” la’ Tor’bel, the Klingon to Hor’keth’s immediate right, added. “Leaving me to meet your obligations.” His tone hinted at displeasure for the reminder, a hand coming up to unconsciously rub his jaw as a memory of years past came back to him.
“No one I trust more to keep my promises,” Hor’keth boasted as he shifted sideways to slam his shoulder into Tor’bel’s, who weathered the assault well. Hor’keth barked a slight laugh as Tor’bel smirked just slightly.
The two of them were a study in contrasts. The rough, tumbled and battle-scarred Hor’keth, who wore the evidence of his contests with pride. He wasn’t a man who needed to put on airs of machismo like so many other Klingons seemingly needed to. He had the evidence about his person of the fights he’d fought and won. And then there was Tor’bel, who bore no scars, whose uniform was pristine and unmarred. Vanity about his appearance was obvious, but one also didn’t get to his age and rank without evidence of the battles he’d fought.
“No, no,” Hor’keth blurted out before anyone could interrupt him. “I take it back. The worst of it is there weren’t more Dominion forces to fight! Oh, the battles we could have had,” he wistfully said, the same drumstick waved about, glaze dripping down his hand. “I fear the best chance we could have had to stop that uppity brat from seizing the chancellorship went up with the Dominion surrender.”
Given the tenor, those seated near to Hor’keth had no choice but to be party to his conversation, and so, Dr. Stirling, a student of history itself, decided to invite herself into the debate.
“If I may,” Dr. Stirling offered gently, her voice far softer than the meaning it conveyed. “I would hazard that the sentiments that give rise to a leader such as Toral are seldom felled by one moment or one conflict. I am curious, HoD Hor’keth, what you have seen from the inside that explains why your compatriots chose to throw their muscle behind a man you describe as an uppity brat?” Personally, she would have described Chancellor Toral as a revanchist, militarist, ethnonationalist populist with authoritarian and imperial-expansionist tendencies, but alas, that was too long for pleasant conversation and might have sparked a diplomatic incident.
“He promises children and fools easy solutions to difficult problems,” Hor’keth replied, his tone shifting downwards but not completely away from boisterous. “He promises them glory and easy conquests, and he points to the weakness of the Republic or the softness of the Federation. And like all Duras going back centuries now, he fails to realise that behind the pleasant words and open arms, the Federation not only knows how to fight, but fight with such conviction and honour that our forefathers forged an alliance with yours because…” His grin returned in full force. “Good allies are hard to come by.”
“Respectfully, HoD, allies for what?” Dr. Stirling asked discerningly.
Hor’keth stared at her for a moment, the wind momentarily stripped from his sails, not following what the petite, ash-haired woman was getting at.
Dr. Stirling was neither diplomat nor soldier. She was simply a historian, and that afforded her a different lens. “It is easy to rally support from the disgruntled, but it is much harder to make the disgruntled into anything else,” she posed. “What are these difficult problems for which your people seek relief?” Only by acknowledging the specifics of those problems could men such as Hor’keth find a way to supplant the movement that had put Toral on the throne.
“The difficult problem is the Klingon condition itself,” Hor’keth grumbled. “We need conflict, a challenge, a fight. It is far, far easier for the foolish to take that literally. Conflict. Fighting. War.”
His response was refreshingly thoughtful, Dr. Stirling thought to herself, and she did not disagree. Across Klingon history, it had been the same story on repeat. Some might argue it was in the eye of the beholder, but the Empire had always appeared at its strongest, its most unified, when it had an enemy to rally against. “If the dream is as Ambassador Drake describes, is that not the very antithesis of that condition? Or could peace not be the ultimate challenge?”
“We need a challenge, Doctor,” Hor’keth said carefully. “Peace is challenging. More so than war, I reckon. But the bigger challenge is redirecting Klingon efforts and attitudes. Without that, the easy path is always going to be there, tempting fools to tread it.”
“History warns us that ethnonationalist populists, once entrenched in the halls of power, do not go easily into the night,” Dr. Stirling added, holding no punches. “There’s a fight to be had there too, isn’t there? And I suppose the question is whether there are those willing to have it?”
“There are always those willing to have it. Some of them are the same fools the idiots lured, turned and redirected with that same promise of an easy fix to a difficult problem when it finally becomes too obvious to ignore. Others, others…” Hor’keth trailed off for a moment, lip curling as he ripped at meat on his plate. “Others because they can see Klingons can be more than just clumsy warriors and fighters, destined to fade into obscurity as history passes us by. Klingons honour warriors, but we remember the poets and song-writers. And without them, who would even remember the warriors?”
“I cannot help but note you speak in the abstract, HoD Kragor,” Dr. Stirling observed, raising an eyebrow as if to provoke a response. “But I suppose the question, then, is whether you are one to have that fight? Or are you one of the ones destined to fade into obscurity?”
