Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [98]
She handed the tiny pile over to one of the Rogues, then snapped her fingers. Another Rogue handed her a metal stick, about a meter long with a bulbous handle, and she pressed a switch with her thumb. She didn’t look at Worf, but she moved toward him.
“All of you, pay attention,” she said, “so nobody will ever do this to me again. I want—”
She paused, noticing Data’s pathetic body hanging from the cord.
“That’s not the same one,” she said.
“No,” Ugulan told her. “Grant is behind you.”
She looked around, saw Grant’s body on the floor, and seemed satisfied just that easily.
Once again she looked at the metallic stick.
“This is a T’kalla prod,” she said. “It’s stronger than a cattle prod. From Alak IV. We use it on our bison because buffalo fur is so thick. Almost as thick as your hide, Worf.”
Abruptly, she swung the stick around and thrust it into Worf’s rib cage.
Electrical shock ripped through his body, choking out a grunt and crackling through the metal grid behind him.
And his brain began to fry.
Chapter Eighteen
EVEN WHEN MRS. KHANTY took the stick away, the electricity snapped and sizzled through Worf another two or three eternities.
He coughed and fought, but only when he shuddered down the last surge and his gasping steadied did Mrs. Khanty speak again.
“Now pay attention” she said, glancing around at the ten Rogues. “The parts of his body will never be found. You think you have imagination? Think you’re scary? Wait until you see what I do with this man.”
Now she turned to Worf again.
“The election is tomorrow, you know. Your plan backfired. People on this pissant planet are believing that it was a Starfleet plot to kill my husband. Before this, I stood a chance of losing the election. If that happened, my empire would collapse. But, thanks to you and your dead friend over there, I’m going to sweep it. My polls are higher than ever. Everything you wanted to stop is going to happen. All because you betrayed me.”
“I never betrayed you,” Worf choked. “You never deserved my loyalty. You never had it. You showed no loyalty to anyone. Not the people, not the children, not even your husband.”
She twisted the handle of the buffalo prod, and the instrument began a faint hum. She had powered it up.
She reached out and poked him again with the prod. Dzzzzt —
Electricity bolted through Worf even more jarringly than before, and sent him crashing against the grid. Mrs. Khanty watched and waited for the snapping and sizzling to die down, until Worf was groaning and gasping.
As he gasped, she said, “My husband was a patsy. He couldn’t make a decision. He was a wind sock. Whatever the day demanded. His goals were a mile wide and an inch deep. I was the only one who had a vision.”
“You … had … ambition,” Worf coughed, “not vision.”
She clicked the buffalo prod up another grade until the rod hummed angrily, then zapped him again, this time in the hollow of his shoulder.
Dzzzzzzaaat—
The surge was blinding. He stiffened in agony, and his entire side went numb. When she drew the prod back, Worf sagged and began twitching uncontrollably. In his periphery he saw Riker and Crusher gazing at him with tortured eyes, and he hoped they would keep quiet. He knew what he was absorbing, and knew their human frames would be blown to rags with very little of this.
Looking at the Rogues again, she said, “There’s got to be buffalo pee in the water on this colony. I dress like Bo-Peep and tell them there’s no evidence, and they think it’s the same as saying I didn’t do anything. And thanks to Worf, no matter how much I control, no matter who I kill for the next ten years, I’ll be able to blame it on Starfleet. Not everybody’s as hard to kill as my husband. It took two tries to finally get rid of him.