A Time for War, a Time for Peace - Keith R. A. DeCandido [42]
Two beams from Breen disruptors shot out from between the doors as they opened. One harmlessly hit the center of the shaft. The other was off-center, and struck a glancing blow on Worf’s left elbow. The entire arm went numb and fell to his side, his fingers hanging loose, and the phaser tumbling out of his grip and falling down the shaft, making a clattering noise as it went.
This, Worf thought, is not good.
The doors opened three-quarters of the way to reveal two Klingons in stewards’ outfits.
Using his legs and right arm to propel him, Worf leapt from his perch on the turboshaft ladder right at the pair of them. He had no particular plan in mind; it was a desperation move, borne of the hope that they weren’t expecting quite this kind of frontal assault.
Even as Worf flew through the air toward them, one of them shouted, “It’s hi—” with the final consonant cut off by the impact of an ambassadorial chest with his face. Worf and both Klingons tumbled to the floor.
There was no art to Worf’s attack, nor in the melee that followed. Worf simply flailed with his one good arm and both legs in an attempt to do damage to his opponents. One of them managed to punch Worf in the gut, but neither of them were able to do much beyond that. At one point, one of them dropped his disruptor. As he bent to pick it up, Worf kicked him in the face, which sent him stumbling backward.
A second later, that Klingon’s screams echoed into the walls, and faded as he fell down the turboshaft he’d fallen into after Worf’s kick.
His companion scrambled to his feet and stood at the open doorway. “Pek! Pek! You petaQ, you killed him! I’ll—”
Whatever it was he was going to do was left unsaid, as a shot from the disruptor the late Pek had dropped caught him square in the chest, and he fell to the floor, dead.
Worf, still lying on the floor, but now holding Pek’s weapon, let out a long breath. He got to his feet, using the disruptor’s stock to balance himself in lieu of his now-useless left arm. Once upright, he holstered the disruptor into his belt, then reached down and grabbed the other disruptor. Even if I can’t fire both at once, better to have a backup, he thought, angered at the loss of the Ferengi phaser. Few things disheartened a warrior more than losing a good weapon, and the phaser had proven an excellent one.
“Vark, I’m on my way back.” That was Rov again. Tucking the disruptor under his left shoulder, Worf awkwardly reached into his left pocket with his right hand to pull out the tricorder. “Dohk, Gimor, report.”
“Nothing on three. We’re moving up to four.”
Worf examined the readings, and saw that the human remained in place, one Klingon was now climbing the emergency stairway back up to the tenth floor—presum-ably Rov. Four Klingons were now on the eighth floor, leading Worf to assume that B’Eko had been left behind to protect Torvak. A wise precaution.
“Krant, Mukk?”
Worf moved quickly, kicking the Klingon’s body so it too fell down the shaft. If Rov was getting reports, the lack of reply on this floor would lead someone to investigate. Finding no bodies would delay action more than finding a single one, and give Worf more time.
“Nothing on seven yet.”
“Larq, Pek?”
Silence greeted Rov’s request. With both disruptors holstered in his belt, Worf awkwardly climbed over to the ladder with one arm. At once, he realized he couldn’t close the door behind him, as he needed his only good arm to hang on to the ladder.
“Larq, Pek, report!”
Unfortunately, Worf had to use the shaft—the Klahb people were using the emergency stairs, and now he especially needed to minimize confrontations that weren’t on his own terms.
“Dohk, Gimor, move up to five, find out what’s happened to Larq and Pek.”
“They probably shot each other,” either Dohk or Gimor said, and the other laughed.
“Do it!” Rov yelled at a volume