A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [10]
“Aye, Commander,” came the answer. “I’ve already got them.”
“All right, then. Full impulse.”
“Aye-full impulse, sir.”
The ship surged effortlessly ahead-its progress evident only in the subtle movement of the planets on their viewer.
Troi looked at him expectantly. “So?” she prodded.
“We may have found the Mendel’s ion trail,” he said. “Though I’m not betting the farm on it. The evidence is very faint.”
There was a pause in which the same question occurred to both of them. Troi was the one who finally voiced it.
“Are you going to let him know?” she asked.
Riker weighed the particulars of the situation. “No,” he told her. Then, with more certainty, “Not quite yet. This mission obviously means a lot to him. Why raise his hopes just to dash them?”
Troi nodded but did not comment. Nor, having made up his mind, did he press her for her opinion.
Lieutenant Worf-just Worf, no compilation of wasteful syllables as was the custom among humans-set his teeth against the pain. It was terrible, excruciating. Like a flame that ate at him from within. At the corner of his mouth, a muscle twitched. With an effort, he forced it to stop.
After his unceremonious departure from the bridge, Worf had needed to burn off his frustration. It had never been easy for him to live among humans-to practice discipline, to observe the rules. Always, it seemed, there were rules, coming at him from every direction.
In this case, the rules had proven particularly onerous. He had acted out of loyalty and he had been publicly shamed for it. No doubt, the captain had believed he was practicing diplomacy. But then, really, he understood the Klingon mind and soul no better than anyone else.
So Worf had been on his way to the gym, and his locker here, even before Radzic and Pappas had walked in-discussing Picard’s all-inclusive, no-exceptions recreation order. The Klingon took note of the fact that he was no longer alone in his expulsion-but it didn’t serve to quench his fury any.
Only the rigors of battle could do that.
Worf glanced at the digital display he had programmed into the gymnasium wall. It showed him that he had been at this for thirty-two minutes and five seconds, ship’s time. Six. Seven. Eight…
The eurakoi that he held in front of him, extended at arm’s length, weighed slightly more than thirteen pounds a piece. They were made of shrogh, a metal as common in the Klingon Empire as it was rare in the Federation territories.
This was not a source of envy on the part of the Federation, nor had it ever been so. Shrogh was a fairly useless metal, difficult to alloy and too heavy to be helpful in the construction of space vessels. In fact, it was only mined at all to be employed in the manufacture of eurakoi.
Worf had discovered this particular pair in a pawnshop on Starbase 13. At the time, he had had mixed emotions about them.
Of course, there had been an eagerness to rescue the eurakoi from their ignominious fate as curiosities in the shop’s display window. To put them back in the hands of a Klingon, where they belonged.
But there had also been a feeling that the things were not his-could never be his. A Klingon was given the eurakoi by his mother’s eldest brother-that was the tradition. Any other way of obtaining them was considered tainted. Not necessarily wrong, but not quite right.
In Worf’s case, there had been no possibility of receiving the eurakoi in the prescribed manner. His immediate family was dead; he barely remembered them. Having been raised by humans on a Federation world, he had never even heard of eurakoi until they turned up in a cultural tape at Starfleet Academy.
He knew now that they had become a symbol for him then-of the extent to which he had been divorced from his Klingon heritage. Of the schism within him, across which his born-Klingon and raised-human selves constantly eyed one another with suspicion.
And so, for Worf-ironically, perhaps-the use of the eurakoi had a greater meaning than for others. It was not only his strength he put to the test, his ability