Into Gre'thor

Posted on Wed May 13th, 2020 @ 9:25am by Petty Officer 3rd Class S'Rina Wil'I'Ams & Petty Officer 3rd Class V'Nus Wil'I'Ams
Edited on on Tue May 19th, 2020 @ 12:37pm

Mission: Return to the Core
Location: Gre'thor, Land of the Dishonored Dead
Timeline: 2397

The sky above was as red as blood where it could be seen between the inky, black clouds, as the worlds seemed to rock back and forth. In the distance, there was the sound of lapping waves and the wailing of the Kos'Karii calling out with the voices of the long forgotten.

Creaking below were the ancient wooden planks of the great barge. The barge of the dead that carried dishonored Klingons to the dread gates of Gre’thor. The final destination for those who fled from battle. Those who cowered while others rushed into the blades of their enemies. And those of the bloodline of the hated family Duras.

The family that murdered the great Chancellor K'mpec in a failed claim to the head of the Klingon High Council. The family that betrayed the Klingon people to the Romulans at Khitomer. The family that tried to sell the sovereignty of the Empire to Romulus for power and wealth. The family whose misdeeds and dishonor would stain the honor of its progeny for every generation before, and every generation after.

Including the sisters known on the U.S.S. Hera as Petty Officers V’Nus and S’Rina, who claimed the false family name of ‘Wil’I’Ams’ to try to hide their family shame. Who joined Starfleet for a chance to earn enough of a measure of honor to avoid the fate of their family line, to suffer without honor in Gre’thor.

“There is no sleeping upon this barge, worms! STAND in the presence of Kotar!!” Shouted the voice of an old Klingon man who stood scarred and ragged, at a great ship’s wheel. Kotar, the first Klingon. He who, with his mate, killed the gods that created him and was tasked with ferrying the souls of the honorless for all eternity.

Sitting up, slowly, V’Nus blinked slightly. She could smell the salty mists of blood in the air. She could feel the splintered wood beneath her calloused hands. She could feel the barge rocking as it sailed along the great river of blood. And as she turned to look around, she saw her sister, sitting on the deck beside her. “This… this… cannot be.”

Snapping awake with a snarl, S'Rina took in the sight, then turned to face the ferryman. "We are not without honor! We are stained, yes, but we have striven to make good, to be honorable warriors! We have coup and we have victories! We have never fled! So turn this boat around right now, old man, or I'll-"

"You will do nothing, because you are nothing. You think you are the first I have ferried who cried foul? You think you are the first honorless cowards I have carried across the waves to their eternal shame? Sit down and be silent, p'tak." As he spoke the snarling Klingon warrior rose, arms bowed and flexed, before she launched herself at him- and through him, impacting on the keel of the ferryboat with her forehead as he proved to be intangible. "I am a ghost- you cannot hurt me, you cannot change the course of this vessel, and you cannot change your fate."

"Look- there, is the shore. And lo, your ancestors come to greet you," the Ferryman declared, as on the shoreline they approached stood two female Klingons, wearing distinctive armor that the two Klingon sisters knew all too well- the Duras sister, Lursa and B'etor. Their most hated, dishonored relatives. Their mother, and their aunt.

A low growl started in S'Rina's throat as she considered leaping out of the boat and swimming the rest of the way to see if her ancestors were as intangible as the ferryman of the damned. But a restraining hand from her sister stayed her impulsive nature.

"Let us wait until we are on the shore, sister. Then we will have an eternity to make them suffer for what they did to our house," V'Nus advised. Always the cooler head of the two, she noticed they were still clad in their Starfleet Security uniforms, which seemed odd they would be identified as such in Gre'thor. The dishonored were usually stripped of all arms and armor, and forced to spend eternity using tooth and claw as weapons, while clothing themselves in what rags they could scavenge. But their ancestors appeared as they last saw them, and she and her sister were still uniformed. Which would likely make the taunting that much more pronounced from their forebears, as the ferry pulled into the dock.

The barge shuddered as it shook hard against the dock. Not far in the distance, stood the hellish gates of Gre'thor. But it was what stood before those gates that were of the most immediate interest. Lursa and B'etor stood between the gates and the boat, standing with an unearned pride for the two Klingons that were arguably the most responsible for the fall of the House of Duras.

"Look, B'etor, the spawn of your indiscretions have finally come home." Lursa sneered. The taller and older of the two looked across at her unlikely kin with contempt in her eyes. 

"Wastes of blood I should have killed along with their stain of a father." B'etor hissed through a gritted grin, leaning forward to take in her unwanted children. "They could have been great, had they not followed the fool's errand of seeking honor."

"All honor has ever granted a Klingon was a slightly different view of hell." Lursa scoffed, the two talking quickly in a back and forth cadence.

"But a better view, at least, then the one THOSE children's rags would have afforded them. So pathetic." B'etor replied with a mirthless chuckle.

"You... are a plague upon our house!" S'Rina snarled as she climbed out of the boat and sprinted for her hated ancestors. The growl in her chest rising as she did so, by the time she launched herself in a tackle with which she intended to take her mother to the ground, there was considerable momentum built up. Thus when she flew through the apparition to faceplant in the black sands, there was only mocking laughter to be heard from her target.

"HAAA! How foolish are you, child?" B'etor chuckled, rolling her eyes Lursa shook her head and continued the thought, "As easy to move into action as any mewling infant, really."

"Easier even, than poor, empty-headed Toral." B'etor mocked, referring to their nephew that they manipulated into trying to take over the empire as their puppet.

"In truth, it's hard to believe they are our kin, much less your daughters. As the humans would say, these apples fell oh so far from the tree. They lack any of our vision or cunning." Lursa said, standing defiantly, casting her eyes to the more level headed of the sisters, and her own niece, V'nus.

"No idea what it is to be a real warrior." Lursa continued, her eyes locked on V'Nus, while B'etor focused on the more rageful S'Rina, their speech bouncing back and forth from sister to sister, speaking as if one.

"To move pieces on the board from afar."
"To see the game for what it is."
"To understand that only power matters, not victory."
"That honor is a crutch for those too stupid and pigheaded to know how to play the game."

"Yet here you stand, the stain of your dishonor having dragged us down with you. Damning us, as it will damn all of our descendants moving into the future," V'Nus observed, as S'rina raged.

"You think we WANT to work in Starfleet?" she asked as she pitched a rock through the two ghosts, continuing to satisfy herself that the two could not be torn limb from limb. "To spend our time being restrained, told not to hit so hard, not to be so aggressive, not to be Klingon. Because thanks to your overreaching ambition and incompetent treachery, we had nowhere else to go. Because we have no home in the Empire, because of your two honorless targ droppings. So mock away, dishonored ancestors. You cannot do more to us than you have already done."

"Indeed. You lecture us, yet you lecture on points that were your failings. Your cunning, your treachery, your games... they brought you here. They brought us here. Had we any children, they too would be damned to end up here. Because of your unwillingness to earn what was yours, and instead seek it through craft and guile and the tactics of a gleeze'Or," V'Nus added haughtily, comparing the two ancestors to slimy creatures who dwelt under rocks whose touch was highly poisonous.

With a smirk, B'etor let out an expression of mock indignation. "Tsk tsk, we have been shaaaammmed, sister."

"Indeed. Wounded, so. Yet here we stand, on this side of the gates to Gre'thor. Clad in our armor. Not fighting madness in a neverending horror within. And oh so many years after our deaths." Lursa smirked, ever so lightly. "Perhaps, foolish niece, the hell beyond those gates is only for those self-flagellating Klingon's who believe they deserve it?"

"Perhaps you think you deserve it, daughters?" B'etor followed up with a contemptuous grin, as Lursa picked up her thread. "After all, even here you dishonor your station. Mock your duties as being beneath you. What kind of Klingons do that? And you blame us for being here."

"They must want to be here, sister." B'etor sneered.

"Or perhaps. like you, we deserve to be here," V'Nus replied as S'Rina turned with a confused grunt. "We are your dishonorable spawn. We joined Starfleet under false pretenses, we find the work we do beneath us and often without honor, and we speak disrespectfully of our command. Perhaps we recognize that we are honorless, and will bear your taint forever.:

While deep thought, contemplation, and matters of honor were not her strong suit, S'Rina had to admit, her sister had a point. "There is truth in your words, sister. Besides, they have been too cowardly to enter Gre'thor. Perhaps they plan to stand outside the gates for eternity, mocking all those who are stained by their dishonor in the generations to come... for they are too cowardly to enter and seal their fates."

"Come, sister," V'Nus took her sister's burly arm in her own, and strode past the ghosts of their despised ancestors. "We have business amongst the damned, and we have no time for cowardly shades who cannot fight, cannot be harmed and have only empty words to hurl at us... the only weapons with which they were ever proficient, I might add."

A barking laugh was the reply, as S'Rina got into the spirit. "Aye, sister. let us be damned and accept our fates, whilst these two cowards blather on about how much better off they are on this narrow strip of beach that will be their eternity... a coward's hell for the greatest of cowards."

Now, it was the specters of the Duras sisters that began to fume, anger boiling up as they turned to face their progeny as V'Nus and S'Rina strode towards the massive gates.

"No!" B'etor called out, her voice a shrieking, petulant thing. "We are the Duras sisters! We are the rightful heirs to the Klingon Empire! And you will not ignore me, you ungrateful wretches!"

"Quiet, B'etor. Let them go. They are failures in life, and failures in death," Lursa added with a snort. "Go, then. Embrace your doom like the fools you are. Too weak to accept that you could be more!"

"What will you do, now?" B'etor screamed, ignoring her older sister. "Walk arm in arm through the gates of Gre'thor? Face Fek'lahr together?! It is forbidden! You must both walk that path alone!!!"

Half turning as they reached the gate, V'Nus sneered at the ghosts of the great traitors of the Klingon Empire, whose names had been stricken and house laid low.

"If we break the rules, then what will be done to punish us? Shall we, perhaps, be consigned to Gre'thor?"

Mocking laughter was all that was heard as the sisters entered the gate.



In their quarters on the USS Hera, the sisters tossed and turned, in their dreams consigned to fighting losing battles in Gre'thor.

Through those losses, they consoled themselves that at least they were better than their ancestors- who lacked the courage to even enter the gates.