cave were precisely what he feared them to be.
His feet growing heavier with each step, he entered the cave. He knew that he was potentially heading into danger, but he trusted his instinct to alert him to any such hazards. Furthermore, on some level, he simply didn’t care. If something was lurking within, then he was essentially inviting it to take its best shot. He would either kill it or he would be killed, and at that moment he wasn’t sure which outcome was preferable.
He moved slowly through the dark, his eyes adjusting immediately to the dimness as they typically did. To some degree it didn’t matter; his nose would have been able to guide him even if he’d been stumbling around sightless.
Bastards. Bastards, kept going through his mind, stoking the fire in his chest that was helping to propel him forward when so much of him simply wanted to give up.
M’k’n’zy stopped just short of the first body, his foot nearly bumping up against it. He knelt next to the corpse and discovered it to be one of his lieutenants, a young woman who had possessed a steely gaze and a projected sense of invincibility. In that regard, she had reminded M’k’n’zy of himself. The reality, however, had proven to be other than that which she had believed, as evidenced by her corpse. The right side of her face and much of the right side of her body had been burned away. It might have been from the superheating of the enemy’s armor or perhaps an unleashed blast of power that had broiled her flesh. M’k’n’zy supposed that it didn’t make much difference either way. Dead was dead.
So were a number of the others.
Bodies were scattered all over the cave. There was blood everywhere, on the ground and spattered against the interior wall, mixed in with scorch marks indicating that considerable power had been unleashed. It was painfully obvious what had happened: The enemy had tracked them there somehow, found them, and attacked. M’k’n’zy’s people had put up a valiant defense; that much M’k’n’zy was able to discern by looking at the scuff marks on the ground. From those he could determine how many people had been engaged in battle and exactly how the fight had gone, even if the bodies hadn’t been lying there to inform him of what he already knew.
He sagged to his knees, momentarily overwhelmed. How long had they been waiting for him? Did they die thinking that M’k’n’zy was already dead and their situation hopeless? Did they hold out hope for a rescue right up until the last moment when the life had fled their bodies?
“I’m sorry I let you down,” he whispered.
Then he began counting.
Within sixty seconds, he determined that several people were missing. That meant one of two things: they had managed to escape, or else they had been taken prisoner. The former was far more likely, because this particular enemy wasn’t big on taking prisoners.
Either way, it meant that M’k’n’zy could still save some lives.
He had not noticed anything on the ground at the entrance to the cave, but that was because he hadn’t been looking. His awareness of what was awaiting him in the cave had distracted him. Now, though, he scrutinized the ground, looking for a hint of where the survivors had gone, and—even more important—if there was some way that he could follow them.
Any other eye would have been stymied in the attempt, but M’k’n’zy was quickly able to discern small fragments of dirt, broken stone, and marks that served to tell him with clarity which way his people were and what their condition was.
He set off after them.
And as he did so, he couldn’t help but ponder the fact that mere decades earlier, he had been a youthful warlord, his clothes little more than tatters, his shaggy mane of hair hanging askew around his shoulders, leading his Xenexian comrades against a foe determined to crush them. It was during that time that he had made a name for himself, a name that had united the Xenexians and made them a formidable race that would never again allow itself to be conquered. It was also a name that had attracted the attention of one Jean-Luc Picard, a Starfleet officer who had taken an interest in the young M’k’n’zy and had suggested to him that a career in Starfleet was a path worth pursuing. M’k’n’zy had taken him up on his offer after much consideration, and eventually he had