This is arguably not compatible with TBG canon
or TNG canon. I don't much care. It practically wrote itself, and I had (metaphorically) Worf
and Enterprise bellowing at me to finish the last 5-10% that actually took any work. And that is a lot more bellowing than any one writer should be forced to resist.
So here it is.
This is canon Worf, on his first day aboard the canon
Enterprise-D. And Enterprise remembers the events of Nash's five-year missions. So there.
My recommended listening is a bit different than the usual classical selections I prefer, but in my opinion it suits the otherworldly subject material reasonably well. The song is, incidentally, a reference to Rembrandt's famous painting
The Night Watch.
To reflect the fact that it is outside the normal
Dreams progression and may constitute a never-was or never-will event, I am titling it Chapter N.
DREAMS
Chapter N
Recommended Listening: The Shooting Company of Captain Frans B. Cocq
Galaxy-class Starship Enterprise
Junior Officers' Quarters
Stardate 41151.8
Worf, son of Mogh, stretched out on his bunk. His first day aboard this starship had been- eventful. Despite the long peace between his people and the Federation, there were many surprised to see a Klingon face. He could sense tension in the air, as though the ship itself were watching him, waiting, judging.
And yet, the very fact of his presence here was a sign of Starfleet's trust and respect. The
Enterprise was a prestigious assignment, and one that would not find him wanting. He would fight for his place, here. With every gram of his strength, his courage, his carefully cultivated discipline. He would fight for his place, and he would earn it!
He relaxed into sleep, visions of glory ringing through his head.
Enterprise!
The son of Mogh stood, uniformed, on a forest trail. He found himself armed and dressed...
effectively. As he might equip himself for an away team mission, if the weapons were his to choose. Phaser and tricorder, yes, but also a blade resting comfortably on his back.
The foliage was strange, a mix of plants that had never grown together on the same world. Many he recognized from his toddling walks through restored forests on Q'onos. Much of the vegetation, though, was native to Khitomer, or to the Urals on Earth. The air was crisp, cool. The sky was clear, and there was a faint smell of sea salt in the air. He strained his ears, and could hear what might be the crash of distant waves against rocks.
He rounded a gentle turn and saw the woman. She was tall, near his own height. Fit, by Earth standards. Her yellow hair was drawn into a taut, thick braid down her back, in a style that tugged at his memories of earliest childhood. She wore a crimson Starfleet jacket of the old pattern, much like his foster father's old uniforms- but with a very non-uniform sword belted at her waist. There was rank insignia on her shoulder strap, but when he looked at it, it twisted in a gold-and-silver blur.
Her garb was Starfleet, yes. But one look at her face showed she was
not a friend. He would remain wary.
Still, it cost nothing to be polite. He nodded to the woman in red. "Hello. Do you know what trail this is?"
"Follow it to its end, and you will find the anchorage of the Black Fleet." Her eyes were flat, and cold, and icy blue, and she spoke virtually perfect Klingon.
His eyes narrowed. "If we are in the hereafter, then what brings a human here, to the territory of
Sto-vo-kor and its armada?"
"Perhaps I have a special arrangement from of old, with the guardians of this very particular place. Or perhaps I can be a difficult woman to find, and a difficult woman to stop once found. Perhaps we are both intruding in each other's territory." He couldn't remember seeing that easy, predatory smile on a child of Earth before. Certainly, never directed at him.
Strange.
He studied her face. For a moment, he thought the blue eyes- familiar to him, yet alien- glowed with a faint light of their own. But that illusion passed. The woman's face certainly crackled with obvious, prejudicial dislike, though. And also with a measure of grudging respect.
Stiffly, he fell back on introductions. "I am Worf, the son of Mogh. And who are you?"
"I am what you conjured, Klingon warrior. I am your test."
Worf's eyes narrowed. "Then what are the terms of this test? Did the Academy decide it had forgotten something?"
The woman barked a laugh. "A timed test. From the joining of battle, until we both believe the fight is done.
From where you now stand, you have no road to honor, save through me."
Worf felt an electrifying surge; the words seemed to echo from the trees, reverberating off the landscape of this peculiar space beyond spaces. That last sentence was a challenge so old it had fallen out of use before the days of Kahless, a formalism that predated the very language of the modern Klingon race. A thing from times when warriors clashed with bronze and chariotry. The challenge was so old, he knew it only because it was common in some of the tales told to infants, tales he remembered from before his adoption.
It was the sort of thing a supernatural creature might say, before drawing steel in the Otherworld.
"We should not delay, then." His muscles tensed, then relaxed in preparation for battle.
"Agreed. As challenged party, you will of course choose the weapons- but might I make a suggestion?" Her voice was clipped, dignified, and she tilted her head.
"Speak."
"A phaser means nothing here. I'd be able to fire one. You couldn't. Neither of us would be affected by the other's beam."
"That leaves steel."
"Indeed. The
bat'leth is the best weapon, for a duel between brothers." The Earthling spoke the old Klingon proverb, rich with subtle double-meaning, fluently. Worf felt a flicker of bitter doubt; she might well have less of an accent than
he did, by now.
"And am I family of yours?"
She smiled thinly. "You may yet be, warrior, but that remains to be seen. For now, I am simply your test. Furthermore- observe the footing off this path, the brush around us. I recommend you choose the
mek'leth."
"I do not ha-" he stopped.
In the very moment that he'd decided the Earthling was right, that the shorter yet often more lethal one-handed weapon was fitting for the eerie circumstances, he felt the five-kilogram weight of metal vanish from his back. Two of those kilograms reappeared, clipped to his baldric, at his hip. A rough surge of humor buoyed him up, and he smiled slightly.
"I did not know I was carrying one."
"You may yet change your mind, and revert your weapon, if you think I seek unfair advantage. This
is the field of honor, after all."
"No." Worf shook his head and drew his blade, still keeping his distance and not yet dropped into guard stance. The human drew her own, as well.
With the quick calculation of a man in his prime who'd practiced swordsmanship almost since he learned to walk, he gauged the situation. She was very tall, for an Earthling female, perhaps within five centimeters of his own height. Certainly he had no more than eight on her. The length of her weapon would make it an equal contest, when it came to reach.
He glanced at the woman's sword. Her basket-hilted blade had the trim, purposeful deadliness of traditional Earth weapons. Almost straight, the blade lacked the involuted curves of the
mek'leth, preventing the wielder from using its tricky disarming maneuvers. Nonetheless, it looked serviceable. Well-maintained. Heavy enough to chop. Not much of a point at the tip- but at that, more suited for thrusts than Klingon blades. Something to watch for. He placed it as European. Late second millenium, post-gunpowder, too late for the Oakeshott typology. Most likely a sailor's cutlass.
By mutual, wordless consent, they took up guard stance.
She held the weapon with easy, practiced competence, in a guard posture unfamiliar but effective-looking. An opponent to take seriously. But she was, by all appearances, human. And humans were fragile, he'd learned to his sorrow on the football field as a boy.
"
Until we both believe the fight is done," she'd said. That need not mean needless gore, his Starfleet security training reminded him, overriding the red-handed Klingon instincts. And an odd, quiet voice in the back of Worf's head told him that though the golden-haired woman in the red jacket was assuredly his opponent, she was
not his enemy.
He stepped forward, swinging his weapon in a broad arc, nonetheless blur-fast with Klingon muscles driving the stroke. The
mek'leth would, undeflected, slash a shallow cut across her middle- shallow enough to bind up easily. But that was, in effect, a feint. Unless she was less capable than he believed, she'd block, and likely get her blade batted aside in the process. Then he could close, grapple, and subdue his opponent without having to maim her.
The Earthling's long blonde braid swung as she smiled, tilted her head, and took a slight step to the side. Her arm shifted a bit, adjusting the angle of her weapon just
so. The
mek'leth belled against the cutlass's flat. And glanced aside. The thoughts raced through Worf's mind like flickers of lightning, driven by the sudden eruption of electric-blue light.
That was no weakly held Earthling defense.
He didn't have a strength advantage.
Her eyes
were glowing, after all.
This was going to be
fun.
They fought for seconds that stretched for minutes, minutes that seemed to last for days. Cutlass and
mek'leth, different though they were to the eye, were similar enough that there was a symmetry, a parity between the two fighting styles.
At long range, he grudgingly admitted that she was the more skillful warrior. Even though the cutlass wasn't a particularly light or sharp blade, she had the advantage over him. This strange, otherworldly foe knew every trick with the point of a sword that he'd ever seen from any Earthling, real or simulated. She knew some that the human race had either never known, or had forgotten on its long journey to the stars. Her offense was viper-quick and precise, her defense economical yet powerful.
Stopping the flame-eyed woman in the Starfleet jacket from skewering him was as great a challenge as anything he'd ever set for himself in the holodeck. But this opponent was no simulation. She lived,
breathed, was made of something more than force fields and hard light- though perhaps not of flesh and blood, nor even of atoms. And her blade nicked his earlobe. Sliced a twenty-centimeter tear across the breast of his uniform, the skin beneath marked by a few drops of his blood. Grazed his forearm with a cut that did not weaken him- but only by virtue of his durable Klingon musculature.
First blood was hers, and then some, but the stinging scratches only invigorated him. He howled as he fought, but they were happy battle-cries.
At medium range, they were closely matched. Growing up in the Federation, his swordsmanship was a practiced thing, a product of training. But it had been good practice, by one who did not fear to be bruised or lacerated in mock combat. And he'd had opportunities to put his skills to use more than once, since his graduation from the Academy. The
mek'leth and the cutlass were both slashing, chopping weapons by nature, made of good, solid metal. To be sure, she fought like a master.
But then, so did he.
And at close range...
At close range, she was saved mostly by her gift for getting back out of close range. Three times he bull-rushed in, closing to corps-a-corps with the swordswoman in red, bracing for the twisting motion of the
mek'leth that would break an enemy's blade or send it spinning from their hand.
Once she twisted loose, wildcat-fast. Once her knee found a soft spot in his abdomen and she jumped back before he could finish the motion he'd started. Once she leapt into the attack, slamming her shoulder against him and sending them both sprawling in the grass, striking with deceptive weight and momentum despite his size advantage. They rolled to their feet, recovering their breath- again by wordless, mutual understanding.
Worf snorted, recalling that though he'd introduced himself, she had never returned the courtesy. "So tell me, you who claim to have snuck into warrior's paradise through the back door- what is your name?"
She smiled wildly. "I am the lucky lady, the love of the stars." and electric-blue eyes flared like a newborn sun, as her lips drew back. "The Grey Ghost. Though my enemies think me slain, I return to dog their tracks through the night everlasting. Your great-grandfathers muttered darkly in their cups, baffled by my feats. Your grandfathers avoided speaking my name too loudly. You are not the first Klingon warrior to think of fighting his way into my legend- though I gave your forebears cause to rue the attempt, or die in the doing."
Worf felt the fire in his veins, the mix of invincible fury and wolfish cunning that was the birthright of a true Klingon warrior. If this was the afterlife, if he had somehow died in his sleep, nevertheless he was
alive!
"Pretty words. What do you call yourself, then? A god?" he barked.
"No." Still the not-human smiled mockingly. "Not at all. I am simply that which remains behind, when glory flows like a river, century after century, cementing the memories of all my people have been and done. I am no kind of goddess. I am merely- your test."
Worf, son of Mogh, bared his teeth. "That is good, then. A god demands servitude; a test demands only to be passed. But even if you were a god, it would not matter! Klingons do not bow to gods. We
slay them!"
He roared, and rushed her. And the clash of arms was truly joined.
Slashing as quickly as hand and eye permitted, Worf pressed his opponent back, denying her the opportunity to leap back and fight from her preferred range with the point. His angled advances drove her from side to side across the trail, in hopes that she'd tangle in the foliage to either side- no luck, but that hadn't been his real goal. No, it was enough that she was on the back foot.
Ten sword-strokes were blocked, twenty, more. But with each blow she fell back by centimeters, and with each blow he closed a little more of the distance between them, the humming, razor-edged space where swords danced and flickered like sheets of rain in a thunderstorm. He made it to
corps-a-corps with the warrior spirit for a fourth time, but didn't try the blade binds he'd attempted before. She was ready for those.
And besides, he'd given up on trying to disarm her. By now, Worf doubted there was any way to stop the woman in red from finding a way to continue the fight. Not unless she were sprawled senseless on the dirt. Speaking of which- he was close enough, now. His next blow of the
mek'leth came at a different angle, almost as though he was swinging his fist rather than striking with a sword. Still, she parried; he shifted his weight and sprung to one side...
And the sharp protruding point of the
mek'leth's guard rode up, off the blocking blade, and scraped across his opponent's forehead. She rocked back, teeth bared, the cut opened wide on her smooth brow. Though her left eye still flamed, it now glowed through a sheen of silvery blood, unlike that of any humanoid Worf knew. The blood trickled down her cheek, staining her old Starfleet jacket. For a moment she staggered, the son of Mogh leapt to seize her sword arm-
And the golden-haired woman's apparent stumble, the artless swing of the blade, punched into Worf's leg. The tip of her sword was driven hard enough to pierce flesh, for all that it was poorly suited for the purpose. The spirit's blade entered his quadricep, slicing deep into the muscle and pulling back in a draw-cut. Luck, more than skill, saved him from having the muscle sliced entirely through, saved him from being dropped to his knees.
She stepped back as he roared with wrath, as though giving him a moment to test his balance, tilting her head in an inquisitive motion that sent drops of quicksilver blood flicking across the leaves and grass. But he was nowhere
close to surrender- and she obviously knew it. She sidled to the edge of the path, exploiting his reduced mobility. She readied her blade for one of those darting, long-range lunges. His own weapon was hemmed in, his options for hewing strokes limited by a sapling six centimeters thick, close at his right hand.
A prudent fighter would retreat, from this little patch of death ground.
But Worf was
always a Klingon warrior, before all else. His martial cunning guided his fury, his fury fueled his cunning. He allowed the
mek'leth to drop out of position, feigned bafflement as though he was the trapped prey and she the huntress. The woman lunged, thinking he could not reach her.
Worf bellowed and swung with all the might of his stout right arm- but not at her. The young tree parted with a single blow, at the angle of Worf's choosing. And his opponent's vision was dimmed on that side. He hopped smartly back on his good leg as the sapling fell, sped by a second blow from his hand that further added to his backward momentum. The tree clipped her left shoulder with a rustle and a crackle. She hadn't expected that and staggered back, gasping for breath.
Her left arm hung oddly, though her face betrayed no hint of disabling pain. Between that, and the head wound, something truly human might have fallen, then. Or at least stopped moving. The being with the glowing eyes did not, though she no longer stood quite so level. She was stronger than any Earthling had a right to be, and as persistent as any Earthling ever was.
But then, so was he.
A human would have cared more, about the torn flesh of his leg. And about the gash along the side of his ribs, and the blood slowly flowing from that wound. The wound Worf had suffered, from the lunge his opponent had attempted just now. The one she'd twisted out of line, as she noticed the falling tree and tried- failed- to dodge it.
Worf limped; the blue-eyed spirit lurched. But still they had their sword-arms, still they had bladesmanship. Steel rang nearly as fast as before. The woman in the Starfleet jacket baffled her Klingon foe with footwork he could not match with his wound. The son of Mogh came within a whisker, time and again, of landing a blow, for the spirit-warrior he fought could no longer judge distance so well, not with her left eye blinded by a slick of silver blood.
She was still trying to fight the same way she had before. But the arm threw her off balance, and her lack of depth perception was becoming a major weakness. With a Klingon's instinctive eye for the jugular, the lieutenant pressed his attack against the flame-eyed warrior, and she parried Worf's attacks by slimmer and slimmer margins each time.
"Your tactics need improvement!" He found himself grinning broadly, his blood racing at a fitting challenge. He could win this! His side ached, and it took a powerful effort of will to keep his leg from buckling. Soon enough it most likely would, but until then, he would throw every gram of himself into the battle-
"Instruct me, youngster!" She was laughing again, though her left arm hung entirely limp, and the blood poured across her face from the cut on her brow. The cutlass's swings were wider, sloppier now. She had lost the crisp drillmaster's perfection of the opening moments of their duel.
But then, so had he.
Five more clashes of steel. A dozen. A score. Both combatants running down, but neither showing
any sign of surrender, not until their wounds truly overtook them. And abruptly, with a final "HA!" that seemed almost to shake the sky, the spirit-warrior leaped backwards faster than he could follow and called across the distance, "I think honor is satisfied, son of Mogh. And you?"
For a moment, Worf simply stood, taking the opportunity to shift his weight all the way to his uninjured leg, breathing deeply. Anger flamed within him. Was she trying to deprive him of the hard-earned triumph he fought towards?
But unbidden, a voice from the back of his mind spoke. He was not here to slay the woman in red. Not the one that he knew, instinctively, was not truly an enemy. Nor was she here to slay him, for all the joyous ferocity she'd thrown into the battle. If he pressed the attack, he might well triumph; if she exploited her superior mobility for long enough, so might she.
And yet, it didn't matter. That wasn't the
point, and the point of this battle in the otherworld had already been made. Worf felt a burning, martial clarity thunder through his soul and his veins. He laughed,
laughed, for the first time in years, and in that moment, knew that whatever the test had been, he had passed.
His vision cleared, and he held the
mek'leth more loosely in guard stance. "Honor is satisfied- and glory can wait."
"But not for long, I'm sure. You know, I'm starting to like you. You can fight, and you can think, and you'll never,
ever let them smother your spark."
"And who is it that compliments me so?" Worf frowned, as though he could pull this knowledge from the very air. And perhaps he could, for when the spirit replied, he knew intuitively that her next words were true, and accurate, and a sufficient answer for his purposes.
"You know who I am, Worf. I'm the Grey Ghost."
There was a sound, along the trail up ahead. Worf squinted. He saw, perhaps fifty meters along the trail, a Klingon warrior in light battle armor,
bat'leth across her back, disruptor rifle slung across her shoulder so that the weapons wouldn't tangle. Her scowl seemed obvious even across the distance. The woman in red turned, rolling her left shoulder with a sound like scraping metal- then flourished her sword in a fencer's salute, smiling broadly and taking a swooping bow.
The warrior nodded, curtly, and vanished from sight. The not-human turned back to Worf. Radiation-blue eyes sparkled, and her laughter was a trumpet-call rousing sleepers to their duty. "I think she's jealous."
Worf shook his head. "If she resides in this place, she cannot
possibly lack opportunities for honorable battle."
"That's- not what I meant, but it's true." The spirit nodded judiciously. "And though I was angry, at first, to be called this way..." She smiled, seeming oddly fresh-faced,
new, for one of her obvious experience in war.
"Battle is part of who I am, as much as it is of you. It's a side so much of the rest of me forgets these days, too. But crossing swords here reminds me of when I was barely six hundred, and I danced with star-knights along the rings of Karakia. Or six years later, when my love and I hewed our way to Valhalla- over the hulks of a dozen Cardassian battlecruisers. Though
that bit of history doesn't exist anymore." Her smile became more genuine, even as she flexed her shoulder again. "You'll do, Guns. You'll do. Welcome to my company."
USS Enterprise
Junior Officer's Quarters
Worf awoke sharply, finding his wounds gone, the supernatural warrior's speech ringing in his ears. Though the precise phrasing of her last words seemed to shift, even as he could hear them echoing through his mind.
"
Welcome aboard the Enterprise..."
