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Worf, as the ambassador to Qo’noS and a Klingon who had lived most of his life within the Federation, had been one of many diplomats invited to attend, given his unique perspective on both governments.

Before he left Qo’noS, though, several matters had demanded his immediate attention. He had to sign off on the latest reports from Emperor Vall on taD, look over the fifth draft of the resolution between the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly regarding the incident on Traelus II, approve half a dozen visas, read over an application from a Bolian opera company to tour the Empire, and several other niggling matters that had all started to blend in Worf’s head.

Then he was informed that the Defense Force vessel that was supposed to convey him to the conference had been detained by an emergency. Worf’s aide, Giancarlo Wu, had managed to get a Starfleet vessel to divert to the Klingon Homeworld. It couldn’t go to Khitomer, but could at least drop him off at Starbase 24, which was only a few hours away by shuttle. Given that it was the nearest Federation base to Khitomer, Worf was sure he’d be able to get a ride from there.

Then another crisis reared its head, involving some Tellarites who had managed to get themselves arrested on Mempa V. It was the sort of trivial stupidity that Worf was usually happy to fob off on Wu, and indeed he did so this time as well—but it meant that Wu would not be able to accompany him to Khitomer. Worf had been ambassador for four months, and he was quite sure that he would have committed several dozen homicides by now if it hadn’t been for Wu’s organizational skills, cool head, and ability to deal with irritating minutiae.

So Wu went off to Mempa and Worf boarded the U.S.S. Musgrave, a Saber-class ship that was rather small and had no guest quarters. For an eighteen-hour trip that was going through the ship’s alpha and beta shifts, this probably didn’t seem an issue to the Musgrave’ s captain—a polite, if terse, human named Manolet Dayrit—but Worf had been hoping to take advantage of the opportunity to catch up on sleep. Instead, Captain Dayrit installed him in the conference lounge, and he spent the time catching up on paperwork.

On arrival at Starbase 24, Dayrit informed him that a runabout, the St. Lawrence, was already scheduled to take one ambassador to Khitomer, and they could take Worf as well. He still had an hour, so he headed for the bar hoping for a prune juice to settle him down.

Then again, his last trip to Khitomer had not gone as planned, either.

“Attention, Ambassador Worf. Please report to Landing Pad F. Ambassador Worf to Landing Pad F, please.”

Finally, he thought. He drained the rest of his raktajino, placed the padd in his jacket pocket, and strode out of the bar.

As he walked purposefully down the corridor toward the landing pad, a voice sounded out from behind him. “My goodness, if it isn’t Mr. Woof!”

Worf felt a knot tie in his left stomach. Not her, he thought. Please let that have been my imagination.

No such luck. Worf stopped walking and turned around to see Lwaxana Troi, daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed, and general bane of Worf’s existence. For a time, Worf had pursued a relationship with Deanna Troi, one of his crewmates on the U.S.S. Enterprise and Lwaxana’s daughter. That relationship had eventually ended, and one of the many benefits to that was that there was no danger of this woman becoming Worf’s mother-in-law.

As always, Lwaxana was overdressed. Worf wore a simple brown tunic, black pants and boots, and a thick, ankle-length black leather coat decorated with both the Klingon and Federation insignias, in which he hid several weapons. Lwaxana, on the other hand, wore un elaborate fuchsia dress with numerous buttons and fastenings that probably took her hours to get into. The dress was decorated with a blue flower pattern—it gave Worf a headache just to look at it. Her hair was equally