Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [27]
The words sounded familiar. Similar words had triggered the entire mission Worf was on, and he couldn’t shake the sensation of having been through this before.
The odor of blood by the gallon still wafted in Worf’s nostrils. Such a visceral reaction boiled inside him that he could barely keep from challenging every last Rogue here and now. Bitter embarrassment electrified him—he had defended the indefensible. Commissioner Toledano had been right about the grim murders on that transport.
He was among Klingons, and he should feel at ease, yet he did not. He must pretend to be their comrade, yet he could barely make himself do it.
Yet I must.
The vision of the thirty-some dead innocents, the mutilated witnesses who were not even spared their own eyes, and the sorrowful disillusionment in Captain Picard’s face haunted him more with every minute.
And all the arms were still missing.
“Starfleet!” Ugulan choked out from the pilot’s seat at Worf’s side. “I told you someone was spying on us!”
“They patrol this space,” Worf fiercely shot back, despising himself for even speaking to such a being. “We took our chances. Chance went against us.”
“It was probably you!”
“You never had a mission fail before I came?”
“Curse your skull! Put the automatic defenses on! We have to try to outrun them!”
“Ridiculous. We have to fight them.”
“That is Starfleet!”
“So it is. And you are a frightened woman in man’s armor.”
Nettled by shame and broiling inner fury, Worf poured all his frustration into goading Ugulan. He had to control himself—restrain himself from driving his knuckles into Ugulan’s mouth and out the back of his neck. Not yet … not yet …
He concentrated on the screen.
The air in the cockpit was hot. He was sweating under his Rogue uniform. He hated the uniform. He hated the screen. He hated everything.
What had made these Klingons become what they were? What had driven them from their loyalty and honor to the strengths that made the Empire survive? He had managed to fight them and win in the square in Burkal City, and that gave him a clue. Were they simply inadequate? Had battle training been too rigid for them? How had someone like Ugulan ended up doing the bidding of a human woman?
The answer might be here, now. Ugulan wanted to escape at the sight of one Starfleet shuttle. Where were his parents? Who was his family, and were they ashamed? Was their name ever spoken in their own land anymore?
He thought back to the names of the dishonored families whose power in Klingon society had been lost, and wondered—was he flying with their sons? With the fathers of disgraced Klingon boys who would pay all their lives for the dishonor here?
His hands played on the controls with a hunger so deep that his fingers hurt. The shame of pretending to be one of them boiled beneath his skin. Mission or not, he could not banish the nausea of humiliation.
On the cargo ship’s forward screen—the only screen that could pull up a view of outside—the Starfleet scout angled toward them, its small, tight body gleaming in the light of the nearby sun.
Piloted by Ugulan and the other Rogues, the freighter was old and underteched, the perfect kind of ship to be completely ignored by Starfleet or anybody else. Odette Khanty had counted on that. Worf knew this shipment was organized by the governor’s wife, and that it was a shipment of something illegal according to Federation interstellar trade regulations, but Grant had been able to find no shred of recorded evidence that led back to her.
Odette Khanty was ahead in the polls, but only slightly, and she wanted an edge. Her husband’s injury had pushed her ahead for a while, but now sympathy was beginning to wear off. She needed to boost public opinion in her favor again, and Worf was riding in her way of doing that.
This freighter was Odette Khanty’s latest plan. It was loaded with illegal goods and headed for Cardassian space, but it was never intended to arrive there. It was supposed to