A Time for War, a Time for Peace - Keith R. A. DeCandido [6]
The system obligingly came online a moment later. Before pushing the panic button a second time, Worf called up the views from the security recorders in the embassy. He needed intelligence before he proceeded further.
In every room, he saw people in the white shirt-and-pants outfits of kitchen stewards, armed with Breen disruptors, rounding up the embassy staff.
One member of security unholstered her Starfleet phaser and tried to fire it, only to have the weapon fail. In another part of the embassy, two more security personnel, armed with Klingon disruptors, did likewise, and their weapons also failed.
The perpetrators of this assault not only disabled security, but must have engaged a scattering field to neutralize any Federation or Klingon weapons. Worf offered silent thanks to Nog. The first Ferengi in Starfleet, the young lieutenant had given Worf the phaser as a going-away present when Worf departed Deep Space 9 to become ambassador. Nog had promised that it was immune to most known forms of tampering and might come in handy someday. He was right.
Growling deep in his throat, Worf examined the security monitors. As unthinkable as it may have seemed, the embassy was under siege and in imminent danger of being taken over.
Worf assumed that the fifteen new members of the kitchen staff were the primary instigators. The security monitors revealed that a dozen Klingons were herding the staff to the large meeting room at the center of the embassy’s top floor. With Kl’rt down at his feet, that left three unaccounted for—assuming that Vark is part of this. Mag, the head of personnel, apparently was not, as he was one of the ones being walked at gunpoint to the meeting room.
So, Worf noticed, was Alexander, currently being brought to the stairwell on the ground level.
Then the screens all went blank again. Whoever tampered with security is keeping an eye on those systems. He attempted his personal reactivation code a second time, but it had no effect.
I will have to make do with the intelligence I have so far.
Running back into his office, Worf retrieved a tricorder and his Starfleet combadge from the drawer of his desk and shoved the former into his pocket. They functioned independently of the embassy systems and wouldn’t be affected by the sabotage.
To his total lack of surprise, use of the combadge garnered no reply. If they are capable of a scattering field to neutralize weapons and of deactivating embassy security, they are equally capable of blocking communications. Still, he pocketed the combadge in case he might need it, and moved back out into the hallway.
“Kl’rt, respond.” Worf recognized the voice as that of Vark, coming from Kl’rt’s prone form, indicating a communications device somewhere on the stunned steward’s person. “He isn’t answering.”
“All right,” said another voice that Worf did not recognize. “Gitak, Akor, get to the second level and find out what happened to Kl’rt.”
A third voice, that of Karra, spoke: “Why send two people to stop a mere diplomat?”
“He’s not a mere diplomat, he’s a decorated warrior who served in Starfleet for fifteen years in security and strategic operations. He’s the most dangerous person in this embassy.”
Vark growled. “Damn you, Rov, if you had waited until after Worf was gone like I suggested—”
“Then we wouldn’t have our most valuable hostage, would we?”
Worf wondered if Rov knew that they already had their most valuable hostage’s son. If he didn’t, he would soon; Vark knew Alexander from the latter’s many visits.
The ambassador needed to get off this floor immediately.
Checking his tricorder, he saw that the only life signs in the building that weren’t in the meeting room were the two on this level—his and Kl’rt’s—and thirteen moving about the embassy.
This has been a very efficient operation. Worf knew he had to conceal himself in order to plan a counterattack. Fortunately,