Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [43]
So much shame, he thought. To want refuge from an enemy I could lift with one arm. I must be getting old.
He hurried into his quarters, glancing around as he ducked behind the curtain of wooden beads and through the heavy oak arched doorway.
In the small chamber, utilitarian in spite of the warm carpets on the walls and the stenciled ceilings, Grant hunched over a portable computer terminal whose screen cast a shifting glow upon his tired face.
“How are you doing?” Worf asked.
Ross Grant shook his head in strange admiration. ” Captain Picard’s plan worked great. You’re in tight with her. She’s dismissing two of Ugulan’s choices from being her husband’s private guard and installing you. Must’ve been some dilly of a cargo on that freighter.”
“We are not even certain what the cargo was,” Worf rumbled. “Can you find out?”
“I tried. Couldn’t find it. Could be chemical poison for agricultural sabotage,” Grant said. “She could strangle a whole planet by holding their crops hostage. She’s into that lately.”
“With her name involved?” Worf asked hopefully.
Grant shook his head and tapped at his computer. “Hell, no such luck! She’s good. Damn, is she good. I never saw anybody with this much strata of coverage. We could only prosecute about halfway up to her. But look at this—one by one, everybody associated with her is being arrested. Her organization could crumble in ten minutes if we could find the one link tying her to all the stuff she’s doing. It’s weird, Worf—she’s doing so much illegally that it’s hard to get everything in your head that she’s doing, but somehow that creates a tapestry that she just hides behind. She just shrugs and acts like she can’t understand why anybody would be mean to her. But she’s got this ruthless inner person—”
“I know,” Worf commented. “She bolted the Rogues to the wall with words alone. She inflicted mortal fear into fully grown Klingon warriors. There is something more to her. They seemed in terror for their souls.”
“They did? Wish I’d seen it! Bet it was a party.”
Relaxing for the first time in hours, Worf sighed. “They were actually afraid of her.”
“Why not? I sure am.”
Grant leaned back, grimaced, stretched his arms and winced at the stiffness in his back and shoulders. Then he tapped his computer readout screen with one finger.
“I’ve got her whole organization in here. The Fed’s right—she’s jockeying to take over the planet and break off from the Federation so she doesn’t have to follow anybody’s rules but her own. Sindikash’ll be a fortress of crime, and its people will be trapped inside. I got it all. Mountains of it. But there’s nothing to tie her to it. Without that one shred of evidence linking her to a major crime, something that can be prosecuted, something simple enough for the people to understand, the planetary authorities won’t have dink to go on.” He looked up at Worf, his eyes drawn and tired. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Continue working,” Worf said. “Be a Rogue. Do your job. Then … we’ll be here when she makes a mistake.”
Grant looked up at him. “She doesn’t make any, ever!”
“Everyone does.” Putting his hand on the precious computer console with its raft of criminal charges aching to be made, Worf fixed his gaze on Grant. “You and I are inside now. We will be here when she makes her mistake. Or we will arrange one.”
Jean-Luc Picard watched the spider catchers from a deck tilted fifteen degrees, expecting them to turn back, now that Justina was aground, and make some different sort of assault.
But they didn’t. They kept hauling on their oars, scooping their comrades from the water, and rowing out of range.
“Captain! Captain!”
It was the helmsman calling. Picard almost answered.