Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [53]
“I’ve got it all here,” Grant mourned. “Just nothing to tie her to all this illegal stuff. The bees swarm around this dragon lady, and none of them ever stings her. She’s just never quite close enough to anything bad that happens. She has these things done by the Rogues or by her gardener’s wife’s jester’s grandmother.” He slumped further and crushed his hand over his weary face. “Ooooh, I just gotta get something … folks are dying.”
Worf pushed up from the chair. “You need rest.”
“Mmm, can’t. Gotta keep picking. And you gotta go, too. You’re on duty in the governor’s corridor in fifteen minutes. If you don’t show up, you could end up on her bad side. And believe me, pal, we don’t want to get on this dame’s bad side. Don’t worry. I’m okay. I’m just …”
“Frustrated,” Worf filled in. “As am I. This is not my kind of enemy.”
“Heck, I know,” Grant chuckled. “No live grenades for you to fall on, then try not to grunt when they go off. Nah, she’s more in my line of work, anyway, Wuff. After all, they sent you here for a whole other reason than they sent me. You’re here to get attention and beat people up and growl and make Ugulan look like a U-gu-rangutan.” Pointing at the computer, Grant said. “This is me. I just gotta get inside somehow, to some source of private records. A terminal inside the shielded area.”
“There must be a way,” Worf said. “I will contact you. Be ready.”
Standing over his old friend, Worf saw a man who often seemed a clownish, uninteresting computer technician with a rather simple assignment. Indeed, Worf often found him quite annoying. Yet he was a man in whose heart beat a code of honor as strong as any Klingon’s. Much stronger than the P’taks who served with Khanty, and feared her for reasons Worf could not understand.
If Worf had found this mission unsatisfying, it suddenly bored itself deeply into his mind and heart. If he had been shamed by the actions of the Rogues, he now took those shames personally. He wanted a good end to this, not for the people of Sindikash or the integrity of the Federation, but to redeem Klingon honor, to wipe the stain of the Rogue Klingons actions from the galaxy, to make certain that Alexander, just now learning the meaning of honor, would have no reason to feel ashamed of his Kiingon heritage.
He ran over and over again in his mind things he should say to Grant. Mission partners should be able to offer each other sustenance. Old friends, even more.
As inadequacy plagued him, Worf found his thoughts straying to Alexander. Was he nurturing his son, or only raising him? Hadn’t he seen the same expression in Alexander’s face as he just saw in Grant’s? A search for elusive peace of the soul?
“I will get you inside, Grant,” he said. “I promise you that.”
The corridor provided sanctuary and distraction. The colors were like the streets and buildings of Sindikash. Earthy, moody. The walls were hung with carpet-woven tapestries rich with deep colors—beet, plum, copper, wedding cake white, mustard, otter brown. Mosquelike doorways to other offices and tiled moldings offered a prevailing spirit of the exotic. Elaborately colored stencils mapped the walls. The bushy brown skins of bison served as rugs and chair coverings.
In Worf’s time here, he had found the Seniards to be generally enthusiastic and decent, charitable and honest. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of them failed to see that others were not so noble, and that they were being led around by their noses. Soon they would suffocate.
The offices were deserted. The mansion was in nighttime repose. The aides and pages had gone home or retired to their quarters. Mrs. Khanty was down the corridor, in her own private chambers.
Worf was here, guarding the executive suite, where Odette Khanty had chewed the heads off the Rogues, and where the governor lay, as he had for many weeks now, in the silence of his coma, monitored from the clinic