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Worf took a moment to find the com unit, which was in Kl’rt’s ear. Worf inserted the device in his own ear.

Even as he did, Rov said, “Close the channel, wait for Gitak and Akor to check in.” Then the device went dead.

Worf kept it in his ear in any case. It might prove useful.

The door to the stairwell opened to reveal two more Klingons. Worf snarled, leapt behind Murphy’s desk, and fired his phaser, now set to kill. I need only one prisoner.

As he crouched behind the large metal desk, he heard the thump of a body falling to the floor, meaning his aim was true and he had only one foe to face.

Two disruptor blasts whined as they went over Worf’s head. Then he heard a voice both in his ear and from across the room. The shrill report of the disruptor meant that Worf actually heard the Klingon’s words more clearly over his stolen com unit.

“This is Akor. Kl’rt’s down, and the ambassador’s still here. He took out Gitak. I need backup.”

“I’m sending B’Eko and Kralk.”

Allowing himself the tiniest of smiles, Worf took out the tricorder even as another disruptor blast fired over his head, this one on a different trajectory. Akor was not staying in one place, keeping Worf pinned behind the desk while he moved closer. Worf would have given him credit for good tactics, save for his breaking radio silence. That meant Worf could use his tricorder to home in on the transmission.

A moment later, he’d done so, backtracking Akor’s movements in order to predict where he’d be in a moment.

Disruptor shots continued to fire over his head, even as Worf crawled around to behind the desk, right under the chair on which Murphy’s dead body sat. He aimed his Ferengi phaser through the legs of the chair at a spot just past the other side of the desk.

Five, four, three, two, one.

He fired just as Akor came into view. The shot only glanced his shoulder, unfortunately, and so Akor was able to return fire even as he fell backward. Fortunately for Worf, the shot hit harmlessly on the metal chair. The type of Breen disruptor the stewards were using affected only living tissue, doing no damage to inorganic objects.

Worf fired again, taking advantage of the larger target presented by Akor when he fell. This time, his aim was dead-on; Akor got off one shot that fired into the ceiling before he died.

“Akor, what happened?” Rov asked over the com unit. “Akor!”

Climbing up from behind the desk, Worf bent over to pick up Kl’rt’s unconscious form and slung him over his shoulder in a firefighter’s carry. Rov’s voice continued to blare into his ear as the ambassador brought Kl’rt to the turbolift doors.

The embassy had only one turboshaft on the lower levels, though there were two turbolifts. As the structure widened in all directions, the shaft forked, providing passage on both the east and west walls from the sixth floor up. At this second level, however, there was just the one and, according to Worf’s tricorder, both lifts were stopped at the top level and had been deactivated.

That suited Worf fine. He needed only the shaft, not the lift itself.

Utilizing the manual override, Worf pried the lift doors open, then picked Kl’rt back up. The shaft had emergency ladders inset into the walls on the three nondoor sides; Worf grunted from the weight of his prisoner as he clambered over to one of them and then started climbing down.

If one inspected the plans for the Federation embassy, one would see, besides the aboveground portions, an extensive basement level. If one had security clearance above a certain level, one could see a different set of plans, which included a subbasement that wasn’t even accessible to all those who had clearance to know about it. Worf was among the latter.

However, there was a second subbasement that almost nobody knew about and wasn’t on any plan of the building that existed. Worf suspected that the number of people who did know of it could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

The ambassador himself was aware of its existence only because of a family connection. A high-ranking member