Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [4]
He looked sadly at the remaining passengers, whose throats had been cut.
“Those were the lucky ones,” he added as his heart twisted in empathy. Innocent passengers, on a safe, welltraveled spacelane.
Worf splashed toward them, his legs bloody to the knees now. “Forensics will be making a complete investigation, but so far tricorders have failed to pick up any physical clues. There may be some dusty residue of skin tissue, but it will take some time to sort those out and do DNA identification.” The Klingon stepped a little closer, and spoke more intimately than Picard had ever remembered him doing. “Sir, whoever did this … we are dealing with people who have no honor at all.”
The weight of that was evident in the tenor of his voice, which seemed somehow deeper than Picard had ever heard it. Worf was deeply disturbed, and there was enough of his upbringing among humans left in him to let his feelings show.
Toledano turned a shade greener and sidled closer to Picard. “I’m sorry to say, I have a pretty good idea who did this.”
Picard glanced at Worf, then frowned at Toledano. “Well, speak up, Commissioner, now’s the time.”
The nauseated Federation official steeled himself visibly. “We’re pretty sure … it was a band of Klingons.”
Worf stiffened. “Impossible!”
“I’m sorry,” Toledano said again, but he seemed certain.
Suddenly furious, Worf confronted both Picard and the commissioner so powerfully that even Picard felt the threat in that posture. “Klingons do not arbitrarily torture anyone! Klingons will kill—but not like this!”
Toledano gathered his voice. “You know more about Klingons than I do, obviously, but… I ‘m sorry, but that’s what I think we’ve got here.”
“We’ll discuss it back on the Enterprise,” Picard interrupted, seeing where this was going.
“Klingons do not behave this way!” Worf continued.
Picard shot him a warning look. “I said later, Mister Worf.”
Clamping his mouth shut, Worf blew his fury out his nostrils.
“At the moment,” Picard said, “we have a few more troubling questions. For instance,” he went on tightly, “where are the arms?”
His crew and the commissioner glanced about, as if expecting to see a pile of ripped-off limbs in some corner. Such a presence would be dreadful. Its absence was somehow more so.
As the stink of the slaughter suffused the air around them, and Engineer Jensen shuddered in the doorway, driven mute by the horror of his first boarding-party mission, Commissioner Toledano managed the two steps to bring him to Picard’s side. Pale as the thirty-plus victims, visibly holding down his supper, he lowered his gaze briefly to the bloody carpet, then raised it to Picard.
“Captain … I think we’d better talk.”
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expediency, and by parts.
Edmund Burke
Chapter Two
“NOW YOU UNDERSTAND the kind of people we’re dealing with. We have the specter of Sindikash, an entire planet, becoming a planet of criminals, a haven for the worst the galaxy has to offer. They’ll take the whole sector down. We’re right on the edge.”
Federation Commissioner Perry Toledano crushed his hands into each other over and over, as if to wipe off the blood with which they had all been so thoroughly saturated. How surreal it had been, to board the Enterprise again and hurry off to separate quarters, to change clothing before many of the crew had to be exposed to the stink of uniforms saturated to the knees with blood. What a strange thing for a captain to have to consider.
“Why did you say that the Klingon Empire was involved in this?” Picard asked.
“I didn’t say the Empire was involved,” Toledano explained. “I said there were Klingons involved.”
Worf smoldered so hotly it seemed his chair could have melted out from under him. “And I told you Klingons do not behave in that way.”
“These Klingons do.” Toledano offered a