Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [96]
Initially, he had decided it made sense for the chief of security to check up on a prisoner like Asmund—one who had proved both so brutal and so resourceful. But by the time he was descending in the turbolift, he had been honest enough to admit—if only to himself—that there was more to it than that.
He was curious about this female—and had been since the beginning. After all, she had been raised on the Klingon homeworld. She had been exposed early on to the customs and traditions he had missed—that is, until he sought them out as a teenager.
But he was also repelled by her. She was an anomaly—neither human nor Klingon, but a strange admixture of the two. Just as Worf himself was—and that was what made him so uncomfortable.
Up until now, his repulsion had dominated his curiosity. He hadn’t exactly avoided her—he was too busy avoiding Morgen—but he had managed to keep busy enough with his duties to prevent any chance meetings.
Then there had been the incident in the holodeck, and he had had a more compelling reason for shunning the woman. As long as she was a suspect in the murder attempts, he could not afford to have his vision clouded with emotion. What if he came to respect her? To like or even admire her? It could only have been an encumbrance in the discharge of his duty.
And of course, once he realized it was she who had made the attempts on Morgen and the others, personal contact had been out of the question. She had become an adversary, and a deadly one.
But now, with Asmund sequestered in the brig, his curiosity had come to the forefront.
Why? Because she had committed a violent crime—more than one, in fact. And because of the possibility that her Klingon upbringing, in some way—twisted or otherwise—had had something to do with it.
Hadn’t there been a fear deep inside him, since the day he arrived at the Academy, that the Klingon in him would rise up at the wrong time—with grisly results? That a superior would confront him in the heat of an armed conflict and pay the price? Or that a crewmate would simply surprise him in the gym—and regret it for days afterward?
Gradually, on a purely rational level, he’d discovered that his fear was unfounded. He’d learned that he was sufficiently in control to subdue his instincts, dysfunctional as they sometimes were in the context of accepted Starfleet behavior.
That had driven his anxiety into a dark corner of his psyche. But it hadn’t kept it from gnawing at him.
Now he could see the product of his fear—given flesh and substance. Given reality. What was the expression? There but for fortune…
It was the real reason he was coming to see Asmund. Because he had to determine for himself if her immersion in Klingon ways had had any bearing on the murders she’d attempted. He had to know to what extent Asmund herself was responsible—and to what extent it was the fire in her blood.
One final turn of the corridor and the brig came into view. In accordance with Worf’s orders, there were two gold-shirted security officers—Burke and Nevins—standing guard outside. Despite the fact that the facility’s force field had been activated.
After all, Asmund had already proven her ingenuity in using shipboard technologies to her advantage. She might have had the foresight to tamper with the brig—just as she tampered with the holodeck and the food service system. It was a long shot, given the highly secure nature of the detention area—but why take chances?
The security officers straightened at his approach. He acknowledged them with a nod. “At ease,” he said. Then, turning to Burke, who was the senior of the two, he asked: “Problems?”
“None, Lieutenant. Commander Asmund hasn’t said a word for hours.” He paused. “Any luck with the other knife, sir?”
Inside the detention cell, Asmund was sitting by herself, watching the conversation on the other side of the transparent energy barrier. She was looking at the Klingon in particular. Worf met her gaze for a moment, then turned back to Burke.
“No,” he told the man. “No luck. At least, not yet.”
“I guess it