Following our return from the previous mission I’ve been plagued with the dreams again. Half corridors, explosions, those three words…Mabrin continues to insist on sending me to the councillor, not that I think anything will heal these wounds by now.
Anyway, with Borgtopia off the map it’s been good to be back at Earth, even if from a distance. It’s been too long. We received our orders from Captain Edgeworth, now there’s a card! There is concern that the relationship with the Klingon Empire is strained or worse frozen and war is coming. Quit why they would choose our crew for a mission in dicey waters (diplomatically speaking) is beyond me, but it’s not my place to question the admiralty. We may be uncouth, but “we are nought if not successful” as my Academy tutors would say.
We have been ordered to an asteroid that come Klingons appear to be occupying. We believe there is another Iconian gateway there, so we’re on the hook to get that into Federation hands not cause a diplomatic incident.
Realising we’d not get much of use from Edgeworth on this we bade him farewell and began what we do best…off book research.
I decided to reach out to General Korrin (I owe Marriner at least a case of Romulan ale for that introduction!) to try and get some insight from the Klingon side of things. Apparently they’re looking to expand the empire (thankfully away from the Federation border) and expect many glorious battles ahead.
Korrin was able to share that the asteroid in questions is known locally as Kcharra and was once a mine, which fell into disuse as it was too hard to mine and the Klingons didn’t really have the infrastructure to make it cost effective.
Knowing we would be walking into the Empire with little to offer the Captain facilitated the acquisition of some experimental weaponry and we also managed to acquire a number of casks of good quality blood wine. With any luck these will grease the wheels of cooperation.
Not long after we set off for Klingon space.
We weren’t met with resistance or hostility - unless you count a particularly unhelpful dock worker. Klingon Greetings 101 worked, a kick to the knee and a forehead to the face. I may have overdone it, but I got enough of his respect to get the Captain some answers. This led us to a bar, well more of an indoor brawl with libations, where we met General Orthon.
Orthon, tasked with training new recruits to the Klingon forces was lamentful of his Grand Nephew who didn’t seem to have the Pagh for war. So, after a chat we offered to take his Grand Nephew (Kreng) with us to Kcharra and then on to a glorious (or at least honourable) end - though I imagine this will actually be a position in Starfleet.
We rendezvoused and then set off for Kcharra.
Upon approach we were hailed and then met Dijin’ka Koress who is actualy the high priest of a temple on the asteroid. The mine was to extract the neutronium that the asteroid is predominately made of - which would certainly explain why the mine failed, this stuff must be almost impossible to mine effectively.
Anyway we learned that Kcharra was the consort of Kahless and as such has a religious following, although their numbers have been low for some time. Their central tenet of belief is that all Klingons must die in glorious battle to reach Stovorkor.
Much to our surprise we discovered that an ageing Starfleet cultural anthropologist named ‘Vallerie Beaumont’ had been present here for some time, studying the cult. It appears that she passed away which is believed to be of natural causes, however we are yet to establish any of this.
I am personally eager to learn more from Beaumont’s study journals and of Kcharra and her impact on Klingon culture…