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"There's a part that you hold that you lock down
Let it breathe, give it wings, set it free now
Time to make your mark, break the prison bars
Show them who you are"
- Joel & Luke Smallbone, "Fight On, Fighter"
/
When the news broke about the shipwreck, Jett came home to their quarters to find Lura praying.
She knelt on the carpet, incense burning in a bowl in front of her. Her head was bowed over a small holographic screen projecting from her commbadge, reading lines in Klingon script as they scrolled past - no, not just lines, but names. She was reading out the names of passengers from the destroyed ship’s manifest..
“Remember them, O Unforgettable One.” The voice that struck fear into most cadets’ hearts was lowered to a whisper. “Let their deeds be counted worthy, whether on the battlefield or beyond. Let the gates of Sto-Vo-Qor open to receive them. As our forebears laid their weapons at Your feet, we lay down our souls that You may lift them up.”
Her long hair flowed down her back, dark and glossy as licorice, as she blew out the incense and touched her forehead to the floor.
Jett took off her shoes and hung up her jacket as unobtrusively as she could, and was just about to disappear into the bathroom when Lura’s head popped back up again. She looked over her shoulder at Jett with a smirk.
“I can hear you tiptoeing, love. The spirits of the dead don’t mind a bit of noise.”
Jett could still remember a time when a phrase like that would have given her the creeps. During the war of 2256, the Klingons’ religion had been the most alien thing about them in Starfleet’s eyes. Their coffin-ships had been the stuff of nightmares. “Nothing’s more dangerous than a zealot,” her former captain on the Hiawatha had warned her once. “They have no respect even for their own lives, let alone ours.”
Thinking of Lura’s quiet reverence for the dead, Jett’s heart broke a little all over again at the ignorance bred by war.
“Didn’t wanna interrupt, that’s all.” She pulled her partner to her feet and gave her a kiss.
“You smell like sweaty teenagers.” Lura wrinkled her gray nose and gave Jett a little push. “Go shower.”
Jett saluted flippantly before turning an about-face.
/
That night’s dinner was another intergalactic fusion. Lura enjoyed unlikely combinations, perhaps because she was one herself. Jett was less adventurous in her palate (she’d eaten too many stale ration packs to take for granted the things she actually knew and liked), but she had to admit that grapok sauce over pickled cabbage had a nice burn to it. Lura liked to tease Jett about needing two bowls of yoghurt afterwards to recover, but tonight she wasn’t in the mood.
“So how was calica practice?”
“Tense,” said Jett. “Everyone’s wound up.”
“Hmph. Not surprised. How’s Kraag?”
“Off his game. Snapping at everyone, even his friends, when he’s usually the quietest kid on the team. It’s hitting him hard - the news, I mean. We still don’t know if his family was on that ship.”
Jett felt for the boy. Not knowing what had happened to your loved ones was uniquely horrible - especially when none of your peers would stop arguing about the politics involved. She had to hand it to the Doctor; that debate tournament had been the right idea. At least on that stage, the arguments would be fact-checked.
Lura tore her pipius claw in two, shards of shell scattering over the tablecloth. “A few more catastrophes like this, and he might become the last full-blooded Klingon left. But will the Council admit it? Oh, no! Mind you, Nahla’s condescension isn’t helping. I’d die for that woman, but she does get on my nerves. Still - they’d rather go extinct than accept help? I never thought my mother’s people could be such fools!”
Her voice rose so rapidly at that last word that Jett jumped, but she didn’t blame Lura in the slightest. It was a situation that would make anyone want to yell. Even at a time like this, though, Jett couldn’t help being fascinated by the way Lura lived out her dual heritage. As living proof that bonds could be forged between Klingons and other species, no wonder she was so frustrated by her compatriots’ refusal to do so.
“Was it your mother who taught you that prayer?”
“Yes.” Lura’s scowl softened a little. “When I was a child, after my grandparents died.”
“I didn’t know you were a Kahlessite.”
“Wasn’t sure I still was.” She sniffed ruefully at the air, which still held the smoky trace of incense even with the air filters whirring in the background. “But sometimes the injustices of this world are enough to drive one mad if it weren’t for the hope of a better one.”
“I’ve always thought one world was enough to deal with,” Jett admitted, “But I think I get what you mean.”
“You sound like my father's people. Freedom means everything to them - including freedom the so-called gods who once kept them enslaved.”
“Oh? You’ll have to tell me that story sometime.”
That time was not now, apparently. They were quiet for a long time as they ate, Jett shoveling down yoghurt between spicy mouthfuls while Lura demolished her crustacean as if it had personally insulted her. Jett had no doubt that the impasse between the Klingons and the Federation was still very much on Lura’s mind.
“Are you gonna talk to Kraag?”
Lura looked as startled as one of the cadets when they couldn’t answer a question in class. “What?”
“Might help, you know. Another Klingon who gets what he’s going through.”
“I’m the cadet master, not a counselor!” Lura blustered. “And just because I share half his blood doesn’t mean our lives are remotely the same. Besides, that boy has the heart of a warrior and the hands of a healer. He sewed my guts back into my belly without anesthetic, in the middle of a pirate attack. He’ll be just fine.”
Jett had to swallow hard to prevent her own guts from coming up at that graphic description. Lura had kept the scar from that operation. She wore it proudly, but Jett was only human; the memory of how close her beloved had come to death was enough to make her feel queasy. Still, underneath all her bravado, Jett suspected this was the real reason Lura was reluctant to reach out to Jay-Den Kraag. The cadet had seen her vulnerable. If there was anything a Klingon - or half-Klingon - feared, it was that.
“Yeah, because you talked him through it,” Jett retorted. “That’s your job, Cadet Master - to teach these kids to defend themselves. Show ‘em who you are. Show him who he is.”
“Do not tell me,” a hint of a growl entered Lura’s voice, “How to do my job.”
“I don’t have to,” Jett retorted. “You know it well enough already.”
Lura pushed her plate away with a clatter and leaned back in her chair. “Any more sage advice, Coach?” she said, with such a wry smile that Jett knew without asking that her advice had hit the spot.
“Yeah.” Jett smiled back. “Don’t fuck this up.”
“Impertinent human.” Sharp white teeth glistened from behind Lura’s black lipstick. “You’re lucky I like you.”
“Mm-hm, and don’t I know it?”
Lura gave Jett a look over the top of her glass of bloodwine that implied, later that night, they would get to exchange reminders of just how much they ‘liked’ each other. Knowing her partner, though, she’d take care of her duty first.
Kraag had a tough fight on his hands, but with Cadet Master Thok in his corner, he’d pull through.
And maybe, the next time she prayed, she could face her god just a little more proudly, knowing she’d done her part to lift the spirit of one of His own.