Worf Meets His Match ====================== ********* ========================== The scene was reminiscent of some he had witnessed during his recent experiences in the Klingon Empire during the revolution. Ten Forward was a wreck, drapes smoldering, transparent duraplast tables smashed, crew members lying about like scattered children's toys. After making a quick appraisal, he slapped his comm badge angrily and growled, "Worf to Sick Bay! We need a medical team to Ten Forward, several crew members with light to moderate injuries!" His security team was already picking their way through the wreckage, seeing to immediate first aid where necessary, others questioning dazed-looking people who seemed unhurt. Worf himself stepped across what had once been a chair, and stood before the bar. Before him Guinan stood with her head cradled on her arms, bent over the bar, her shoulders shaking. "Are you injured?" he asked her gruffly, but with real concern tinging his voice. The enigmatic woman looked briefly up at him, grinning like a loon, before letting her head fall again on her arms to continue laughing helplessly. "This is not a laughing matter!" Worf told her more sternly. "What happened here?" Guinan looked up again, tears standing in her eyes from the laughter. She was still unable to answer him, but pointed across the room weakly. Following her gesture, Worf's eyes found a figure who seemed utterly out of place, a woman dressed in an immaculate white cling-suit, holding a drink and looking out the viewport at the stars. What Worf did not notice was how unusual the woman was. To another human, she would have appeared majestic, statuesque, unusually tall and heavy-built. To the Klingon security chief, she was just another fragile human, smaller than he, and likely to break if he was not cautious. Worf, always the consummate warrior, walked up to her obliquely, some vigilant reflex within him watching for a sudden move or attack. He could see from her stance and the tension in her body that she was equally aware of his approach and prepared to defend if necessary. Some part of him heartily approved, but he had a duty. "Worf, Security: I require your assistance," the Klingon announced. The strange woman ignored him, seeming lost in her reverie, but his battle training took in minute changes in stance and breathing, telling him that she was well aware of his presence. "It is a violation of regulations to refuse to answer an inquiry from a Security officer!" he growled. She turned then, all at once in a motion so graceful that it didn't even startle his reflexes into causing him to strike. But now she was well inside arms' reach, and could attack is she chose. He restrained his impulse to step back, but braced himself for possible combat. "I haven't refused you anything. You have had my full attention since you stepped into this room," she answered him at last. She had a full, throaty contralto, very much like that of the Ship's Counsellor, but unlike Deanna Troi, her accents were more fluid and almost songlike. Looking at her made even Worf, with his Klingon standards of beauty, look again. She was over six feet tall, although not yet as tall as the Klingon. Her hair was a luminescent white, caught up in braided loops all around her head, seeming like an abstract ice sculpture executed by some great artist. Despite the white hair, her face was young and unlined, and looking up at him, he saw that she had the bluest eyes he had ever seen. "What has happened here?" he asked her at last, shaking himself slightly as if to shift mental gears from his silent appraisal of the beautiful woman. "And please identify yourself!" The woman frowned a bit at his tone, crossed her arms and threw back her head, challenge dancing in her steely eyes. "Fair Marika, Aino's daughter, daughter of the Seventh Planet, miner's daughter in the foothills! Starfleet trained in engineering, learned to sing the very lightning, learned to twist the antimatter, specialist in engine systems, knows the ways of starship systems..." Worf was utterly confused by her rhythmic recitation, and angered by her lack of cooperation. He gritted his teeth, a sight that at times even caused those of his crewmates who were used to his moods to blanch, although this woman seemed not to notice. Throttling down his ancestral impulses to mayhem, he interrupted her and asked again for her name, rank, and an account of what had happened to destroy the rec area. He had hardly finished speaking his demand when she hissed at him in flawless Klingonaase, "Do'Ha' 'e' chovangvIp, nuch! Salamqangbe' 'etlhwIj!" Only Starfleet training could have kept him from killing her where she stood, as the harsh tones of the mightiest insult of his people rolled over him. What might have happened next remained conjecture, however, for just then one of his security officers approached to report on the team's findings. "Lieutenant, Sir, injuries have been treated. We've found out what happened here and have taken a suspect into custody, Sir!" Worf's dark eyes remained locked on the woman's lighter ones a moment yet, before he was able to tear his gaze away from her, force control back over his anger, erecting his training like a castle wall to avoid attacking this female human before him. "Do not leave yet," he told her. "I wish to question you momentarily!" He was able to relax a bit when she shrugged and turned back to the starscape visible behind her. After conferring with his team, he found that his instincts were in fact correct, that the strange woman had, indeed been involved. Witnesses reported that she had been challenging all comers to arm wrestling bouts, with the loser to buy drinks for the winner. She had won every round, and despite the massive quantities of alcohol she had won and imbibed, was still able to win again and again. The problem was not the arm-wrestling, however, but the side bets that were being placed as first this and then that Enterprise crewmember faced her and lost. The precipitating event for the small riot that had taken place was when one large, aggressive male sciences officer had bet an entire month's credits on his victory. He sat down to the table with the big woman and locked wrists with her, but when the word was given to begin, she folded his arm over as easily as if he had been a child. The blow to his pride was too much, and he jumped up and swung on the ice-woman, but she was suddenly not there. His fist had instead flattened a transporter technician, and the brawl began. Worf nodded his understanding, and gave appropriate orders to his team, dismissing them to their duties. Then he turned back to the woman and the challenge that she had left burning in the air between them. "That form of insult must have an answer!" he told her. "Are you aware of what you have said?" he snarled, his Klingon pride warring within him with his Starfleet training. "Of course I am aware. I have tendered you the deadliest insult of your people, as you have tendered the worst of mine to me!" she answered, her back still to him. The liquid quality of her voice seemed to negate the memory of the accentless Klingonaase she had spoken earlier. "Insult!?" he snapped, "I gave no insult!" "Oh yes you did!" she returned, "you asked me for my name and station and then INTERRUPTED my runo! My sisu DEMANDS that you make apology and amends!" Worf was not so blinded by his fury that he failed to note the keystone to this entire strange encounter. "Runo" and "sisu" --- this woman was from New Helsinki, a heavy-gravity world settled by a homogenous ethnic group from Earth back before the Eugenics Wars. The Helsinkinen were touchy, pride-conscious, and clung fiercely to their heritage. Worf had heard it said many times at the Academy that no Helsinkinen sailor, whether it was in a wet navy or in Starfleet, had ever lost a fist-fight, nor backed down from any sort of rough-and-tumble that came along. "I will apologize and withdraw my insult," he told her, fury still adding gravel to his voice, "if you will do the same." Sometimes, he thought, catering the customs of other peoples was more trouble than it was worth, especially when a warrior's soul was crying out within him for blood. Her sudden smile was like the sun leaping free of clouds. She put her hand out to him and again in that perfect unaccented Klingonaase said, "ChoHoHvIpbe'neS - batlh Daqawlu'taH!" He gravely took her hand and answered in Standard, "I apologize for my rudeness. I was not aware that I was transgressing against the customs of your people." Her grip was painfully strong, surprising him almost more than the spate of harsh syllables. This so surprised him that a small portion of his brain could only say, stunned, "Be'le'!" -- "What an exceptional woman!" She smiled again, still holding his hand tightly, and said, "I think you are a very exceptional man as well, Security Chief Worf! I have heard much about you! Please, let me introduce myself more correctly, if less formally. I am Marika, and I'm assigned to Engineering as a Propulsion Systems Specialist, rank, Lieutenant. Better?" She cocked her head to the side as she waited for his reply, making her look tiny and delicate to his amazed regard. Did I actually speak out loud? he wondered to himself. But she was waiting for his reply. "Much better," he answered, "I did not mean to misunderstand you before." He was rapidly becoming aware that for the first time he could remember, he was physically, sexually attracted to a non-Klingon woman. He disengaged his hand from her warm grasp. "I must return to my duties." he told her curtly. There was that grin again. "I did give you an imperative challenge, Mr. Worf! Perhaps when you are not on duty, you would meet me at Rec Area 4, where we will do combat, but perhaps without bloodshed a necessary element! I shall see you there!" She moved past him with that uncanny grace again, sliding by him without seeming to move, then she was gone, ducking under the arm of one the housekeeping crew that had come to set Ten Forward back to rights. ====================== ********* ========================== The time passed swiftly on Worf's duty shift. It seemed only moments since his unusual encounter with the ice-woman --- Lieutenant Marika --- and now he was going off-duty. He turned over the Security office to his relief, then on a whim queried the computer about the Helsinkinen woman. The public record held little of interest, except that it showed exceptional grades at Starfleet in Klingonaase and Empire History. With his Security overrides, he could look deeper into the record if he so chose, but he would then have to justify his decision to his commander, and he didn't want to be discussing this woman with Riker for some reason. Not yet. Marika's mandatory security and combat training results were also part of the public record, and it appeared that she had taken many more elective martial arts classes than were required for an engineering specialist. Some of his Security officers did not have as much training. He was interested to note that she was a SovwI'a', a master of the difficult and dangerous discipline of Sun'garghtaj, a type of Klingon knife-fighting that was only used in mating rituals and highly formalized duels. Be'le', indeed! Worf directed the turbolift to the appropriate deck and made his way to Rec Area Four, a gymnasium area set aside for combat training and martial arts. The annunciator chimed a moment, then the doors hissed aside to admit him, while the computer's emotionless voice informed him of a gravity differential on the other side of the threshold. Worf stepped across as if he were climbing down a stair... a wise precaution, when stepping from a normal gravity area to one which felt to be almost a full 3 G's. The temperature was also very low, in the Klingon officer's opinion, perhaps only 10C, and the deck was red-lit, as if the environmental controls were set to simulate a large planet under a cool red sun. As his eyes adjusted to the light conditions, he could make out across the room a whirling, spinning, leaping figure in silvery armor. With the crown of white hair secured tightly in braids, it could only be Lieutenant Marika. Again, Worf felt a strange stirring in his loins. He would have to move very cautiously under the extra gravitation to avoid injury, but this woman moved as though she were weightless through the heavy air. The woman noticed him as soon as he entered, but completed the complicated kata-figure before she stopped. "Computer... lights and gravity, normal!" As she spoke into the air, Worf could feel the weight gradually leaving his body, until the local gravity was back to normal. Now that the light level was also higher, he could see that Marika was dressed in full Klingon body-armor as well. "I am here!" he said in Standard, echoing the formal Klingon response of the challenged appearing at a duel. She bowed to him in the formal manner of the high Klingon duelist, and gestured beside her. There, awaiting him, was body-armor identical in every respect to her own, sized however for him. She crossed her arms and stood, challenge written in every movement of her lithe body, a sardonic smile that would have done a Klingon princess proud playing upon her lips. The thought of undressing before this woman poured molten lead through his veins, making his heart beat more rapidly and causing a definite tension between his legs. She noticed his hesitation apparently, for she said, "Will you don armor, Mr. Worf, or shall we play at draughts? The conditions agreed to specified 'no unnecessary bloodshed.'" If his skin had not been so dark, one could easily have seen the spreading flush that was heating his cheeks, but he met her eyes and began stripping, very deliberately. Marika watched every moment, carefully appraising his body as well as his movements. Carefully he laid aside his sash with its badges of honor, then pulled off his uniform tunic with a single fluid motion. He could not restrain himself from flexing the muscles in his chest a bit. Her only reaction was a slight dilation of her pupils, but her stance told him that she was not preparing an attack. Next, he stepped well away from her, and knelt to unseal the magseams on his boots, never taking his eyes off the woman for a moment as he pulled them off and set them aside as well. Lastly, he unfastened the closure of his trousers. Now her eyes were not meeting his, they were riveted instead upon the obvious bulge that was still concealed by the midnight fabric. He could see her flush, of which she seemed unaware, spreading like sunrise across her pale skin. He slowly pushed the pants down over his hips, and as his huge erection sprang free of the cloth, her tongue flickered across her lips for a moment. Then he stood naked before her, the seeming illusion of humanity stripped from him with his clothes. Marika beheld a Klingon of mighty ancestry standing before her, muscled, trained, armored within his own sinews, and as deadly as a hunting cat. Swiftly he donned the armor, guarding carefully against possible attack. Then he rose, saying, "The field is yours. What form shall the combat take?" She turned away from him then, and knelt before an ornately carved wooden case. After watching her execute katas in 3 G conditions, Worf would have hesitated making an attack, even if he were treacherously minded. He watched with true appreciation as she opened the case, revealing within two sets of weapons for the Sun'gharghtaj, the formal duel that tested a warrior's courage or passion. The silver yoDtajmey for the left hand, curved double tines wrought in starship-hull grade duralloy, gleamed like starlight, and the golden gharghtajmey, with their rippling flamelike, pattern-welded blades of iridium-plassteel, caught light against their faceted edges, throwing yellow-gold glimmers away like the decay of an antimatter reaction. "Those are antiques from TlhIngan! Where did you acquire them?" he growled, impressed against his will by the magnificence of the blades before him, distinctive in their style, the hard Klingonaase symbols etched into them proclaiming their maker's name, famous in Klingon history, a thousand years dead. "They were the gift of my QobSovwI'a," she answered. Worf nodded. The Klingon warrior who had taught her must have been very impressed with her skills indeed to have given her such blades, or (unthinkable in a human, and a woman at that) she had killed her master and taken them as spoils. Worf's already high estimation of Marika increased exponentially as he considered this. "You may select your weapons," she told him, the beautiful singing vowels of her speech rolling over him like the light from the daggers. "We will fight until there is a clear victor, or until first blood, but no further. Do you agree?" He nodded, and chose his blades. The yoDtaj he took from the set nearest him, the gharghtaj from the farthest. She took up the remaining set. As they rose, she called out to the computer in a language that he didn't know, one full of the rolling musical lilts that he heard beneath her Standard --- presumably Helsinkainen --- and the computer obligingly created a Klingon duelling triskele beneath their feet. She saluted him with her weapons, and he drew himself up in the formal stance and echoed her gesture. And the dance began. As they circled, the battle-fever rose up in Worf like a heady drug boiling in his blood. Each was assessing the other, the stance, the movement, the minute shifts of weight which were the feints of truly excellent fighters. Suddenly they rushed together, an inevitable, elemental contact. Gharghtajmey rang on yoDtajmey, yin into yang, as woman and Klingon strove, then parted, all so suddenly than an observer would have been hard-pressed to swear that contact had been made, were it not for the ringing of the blades still sounding in his ears. Worf felt his heart racing, blood pounding with an excitement that he had not felt in years, one that was far out of proportion to the stimulus of the battle. Again they met, blades sliding together, and both leapt back with identical cuts parting the armor across their chests. Neither was injured. Still they circled, like fluid predators, gauging, and now their hands moved, weaving glittering nets of scattered light as their blades dipped in and out, until waiting was at an end, and again they rushed together, so evenly matched that they might have been a work of art, a study in contrasts, the dark Klingon male and the ice-pale human woman. Each had caught the other's gharghtaj in the fork of his yoDtaj, and they strained, their arms slowly spreading to the sides, trying to free the cutting blade while keeping the opponent's trapped. Finally they stood chest to heaving chest, neither able to force the other's hand an inch, and Worf could hear his own animal-like snarling growling loudly in his ears. He wanted to howl to the moon, drink hot steaming blood, wrest this woman down to the floor beneath them and ravish her for a thousand years! By all the gods of his people! he wanted this woman, this human woman, as he had not wanted another female before. And incredibly, rising up to his nostrils like incense from an altar came the unmistakable scent of a Klingon woman who was equally ready! His mind reeled in confusion for only a second, but that was all that was necessary. The woman struck like an adder, catching his lower lip in her teeth and biting it through, drawing blood and thus ending the contest. But it was not over! With a final, convulsive heave he tore the weapons from her hands, flinging them and his own beyond the confines of the duelling floor, then seized her and brought both of them crashing to the ground. "I claim the victory!" she cried, his blood staining her chin, "First blood is mine!" "Last is mine, woman! The victory is mine! And you are mine! Deny it with your body, if you can!" She struggled furiously against his grasp, her muscles which had been developed, born and bred in a higher gravity than his native homeworld's making the fight almost perfectly even. But not for nothing was he the chief of Security on the flagship of the Federation. His combat skill, coupled with his still-increasing sexual arousal, enabled him to finally subdue her, pinned motionless, face-down on the decking, her arms pinioned behind her, his knee in the small of her back. If she could have twisted her head to look up at him, she would have seen his eyes almost totally black, pupils dilated to their utmost extent with the fury and passion the battle had engendered. His nostrils flared, sucking in great draughts of air, bringing the maddening perfume that spoke to his hindbrain of animal lust to fog his thinking. "Surrender!" he demanded. Then she did the one thing that he would never have expected, even given the fact that he knew that her training made her a specialist not only in engineering, but in Klingon culture as well. In Old High Klingonaase, she sang to him, chanting the words of the woman's surrender to her mate, the only surrender a noble-born Klingon woman would ever make. It was too much. Normally, he was somewhat frightened of human women, such fragile, breakable creatures they seemed... but now, the battle, his arousal, the taste of blood in his mouth, all these combined to make him throw caution to the wind. The female had surrendered, he would claim his spoils! And he began to tear off her armor, a process which she eagerly assisted, and together they freed them both of the constraints of clothing. If the Helsinkinen woman was surprised at the texture of his skin, armored with flexible keratin plates almost like scale, she did not show it. Instead she knelt naked, spread knees revealing the pale pink of her inner folds, and extended her hands to him, palms up. Worf seized her hands and brought his lips to her palms, dropping searing kisses into her hands. The scent of Klingon pheromones rose again into his nostrils, and he realized that this woman must have applied it as perfume before the fight, simulating the response of an aroused Klingon woman. He needed simulate nothing, as she could tell from his raging hard erection. His kisses burned along her wrists, up the insides of her arms, and he could feel her tremble against him in her need. His own need surged again, hot within him, and his kisses became first nips, then trailing lovebites along her throat and neck, as he shifted his body so that he knelt behind her. His hands circled her body and sought out her breasts, not in a caress but in a sudden violent grasp, his fingers seizing her nipples, jerking her forward, bringing her ass up hard against his cock. The woman beneath him moaned as his engorged penis seemed to writhe like a serpent, twisting into her wet and open pussy. He used his cock like a weapon, striking home deep within this opponent, his head thrown back as a Klingon warcry burst forth from his lips. He was tugging and pulling and teasing her nipples, guiding her body back against him, and she cried out in rhythm to his savage thrusts. Unlike a human male, his testicles were armored, and with his penetration of her, the firm jutting scrotum fitted firmly against her clitoris, the ridged surface stroking her like fingers, forcing her orgasm almost immediately from the stimulation of her clit. She could feel his cock inside her growing harder and larger with every thrust, his Klingon physiology much like that of a cat, locking his penis into her as they mated, and she continued to come as he pounded into her. Their coupling was like an elemental force, and the deckplates seemed to tremble beneath them as they swept together, unstoppable as the tides. Finally he slammed his cock home a final time, shifting his grip to hold her hips tightly against his as he came, pouring floods of hot come deep inside her. The powerful rippling of her tight muscles round his cock forced every drop out of him, as she continued to come. Worf didn't pull out of her right away, leaving his cock lodged deep inside her as he reached around and began to stroke her clitoris, forcing her orgasm to build to ever-higher peaks. Now that he had ridden through the first thundering wave of lust, he could marvel at the wetness of this human's cunt, the softness of her skin, and at the powerful grip of her vagina, pulsing around his still-hard cock as she continued to come in helpless submission to his skillful fingers. What stamina she had! Finally, long after a Klingon woman would have admitted defeat, she reached back between her legs and grasped his hand, wordlessly telling him that she had at last had enough. Worf wrapped his arms around her then, hugging her fiercely, and pulled her upright again against his chest.