Gulliver's Fugitives Part 19

"You aren't Jean-Luc Picard," he said. Then he looked at Ferris and played his last card.

"I'm a Federation Marine, Ferris," Riker lied. "I've been in combat worse than you've ever dreamed of. I've had my legs blown off and rebuilt and I've gone for weeks without food and water and still had the strength to kill." Riker spoke the lies with all the false fervor he could muster.

Then Riker tried the bait. "You-you're not a fighting man. You're a housecat. You've never had a real fight in your life. I can take you or any of your soldiers one-on-one no problem. Right now. We'll use the same weapons, you choose them."

Ferris nodded slowly.

"I'd like to take you up on it. Maybe you're a good soldier, maybe not, but one thing this soldier knows is how to finish his mission."

Ferris turned to the technician.

"That's enough time wasted. Let's go."

Ferris motioned for Picard to stand back. Picard seemed concerned yet hopeful, like a man about to witness an organ transplant.

There was a knock at the door.

"Go ahead," Ferris told the technician. "Blank him. We'll take care of the door."

The technician flicked a switch. Her equipment made a buzzing sound. Riker's eyes were clenched shut.

The knocking at the door continued. One of the CS men opened it. An object flew in, hit the wall, and landed on the floor. It was a small white canister emblazoned with the CS logo.

"d.a.m.n it!" shouted Ferris. He dove for the canister, but by the time he'd touched it, the grenade had gone off with an insipid peeping sound.

Ferris' movements became slow. His expression turned imbecilic. He picked up the canister and stared at it uncomprehendingly. He turned it over in his hands, then shook it like a rattle.

The other CS men, the technician, and Picard all looked at each other torpidly.

"I was ..." said the technician vaguely.

One of the CS men covered his mouth and started to giggle.

Amoret came into the room cautiously. She saw that the grenade had taken full effect. She saw the cart full of equipment, heard it buzzing. She slapped all the switches to their off positions and the buzzing stopped.

She pulled the cap off Riker and struggled with his restraining straps. Sirens started outside. Her sweaty hands slipped on the smooth leather and the chrome buckles.

She jerked Riker to a sitting position. His eyes roved like twin hobos. It was solely the effect of the thought grenade. She'd turned off the blanking equipment in time. His mind would be intact after the grenade-effects wore off.

She pulled him up. Then she grabbed Picard with her other hand and heaved them both toward the door. They were as docile as sleepy toddlers.

She looked up and down the corridor for a moment, then ducked back in the cell. She unhooked a thought grenade from her belt, tripped the safety and the activator, then leaned back out and threw it.

She waited for a few seconds after she heard the little peep. Then she pulled Picard and Riker out the door. The van she'd liberated from the disk-vault was parked right outside. A bit farther down the corridor, a group of CS men stood blinking and scratching their heads, stopped in mid-a.s.sault. The thought grenade lay at their feet. One of them started to play with it as though it were a soccer ball.

Amoret opened the back of the van and pushed Riker and Picard in, then ran around to the front. As she climbed into the cab, she saw a phalanx of one-eyes come whipping around the corner behind her.

She floored the power pedal and the electric van took off.

She careened around the bends in the corridors and kept her head low. She knew the van itself would partially protect her and her pa.s.sengers from the radiation guns, at least from fire coming from the rear.

But the van couldn't protect itself. The radiation from the one-eyes behind her crackled and arced across the metal surfaces inside. Her poor pa.s.sengers huddled together in the back like animals bewildered by lightning.

A CS man stepped into the van's path and raised his weapon. Amoret ducked. A bright sheet of errant voltage rippled inside the cab. Amoret's hands jerked off the wheel, shocked by the energy, and the van banged and sc.r.a.ped against the side of the corridor.

She swerved around another corner and saw her destination. Down this ramp ... The long descent allowed her to pick up speed and gain distance from the one-eyes.

Before her were doors stenciled "Clean Room 3." She kept her foot jammed on the pedal, braced herself, and slammed into the doors.

The van ended up inside the lab. Several technicians backed away from the van. On a table near them, Data was strapped down, lifeless.

Amoret activated her last thought grenade, opened the van window, and threw the canister. She ducked down. When the little peep sounded she caught just a taste of the numbing wave, but it wore off in a moment.

She drove the van forward until it b.u.mped against the base of the lab table. The lab technicians stared at her, heads c.o.c.ked like baffled puppies.

"Whuh?" said one.

She gave the van more juice and pushed the table toward the next set of doors, which were standing open. Thick blast doors; the next lab room doubled as an emergency shelter in case of insurgent attack.

Once she'd gotten the van and the table inside, she swung the heavy doors closed and threw the magnetic bolt. Then she looked around and picked up a wrench. She smashed it repeatedly against the switch until sparks flew and the switch was dead.

She then opened the back of the van and pulled out Riker and Picard. The two men stumbled onto the floor and looked blankly at her and each other.

"Sit," she said, pus.h.i.+ng Riker into a chair. "You have to wake up."

She slapped his face several times.

"Cut it out," he said irritably, waving her off as if she were a fly.

"No! You have to wake up!"

The concrete doors clacked against their stops. The CS were trying to get in.

She slapped him again. "What's your name?"

"William."

"William who?"

Riker looked at the doors, heard them being struck repeatedly from outside.

"Someone is at the door," he said frowning. "Shouldn't we let them in?"

"No! You need to wake up!"

He shook his head, trying to get rid of the cobwebs.

"What happened?"

"They almost deleted your mind, that's what. And they're going to have another chance, if we don't do something right now."

"Why do I feel so ..."

"I had to use a thought-numbing grenade to get you free."

"Oh ..."

Riker looked at the inert, synthetic-skinned form on the table. He broke into a broad grin.

"Hey, I know him."

"Can you revive him?"

Riker nodded slowly.

She leaned close to his ear.

"Do it."

Riker got up and went over to the lab table. He put his hand under Data's back and felt for the switch.

Data's eyes suddenly popped open. He looked at Riker bending over him.

"Commander Riker. I am pleased to see you alive, sir."

"Ummm, likewise, I think."

"You aren't sure, sir?"

"Ummm ... I don't know."

"Oh." The android was nonplused. He looked about him at his surroundings. The room was largely devoted to tools, spare parts, and emergency rations. Amoret was searching frantically among the tools in the cabinets.

Riker stared at her.

"Don't I know her from somewhere?"

"Sir," said Data, "she was the woman we were arrested with at the ore factory."

"Oh."

"Commander, I have no wish to offend you, but you seem a bit ... slow. As in simple-minded, addlepated."

"I feel a bit slow, but it's getting better."

"And that is a strange hairstyle, sir," said the android, looking at Riker's partially shaved scalp. "I trust it was not voluntary."

Amoret threw Riker a wrench.

"We'll explain later," she said to Data. "He's been through a lot."

Riker started working on the bolts holding Data down.

"You just get them started," said Amoret, "I'll back them off the rest of the way by hand."

The concrete doors boomed. Someone was using heavy equipment on them.

"It's worn off now," said Riker after a minute had pa.s.sed. "Whew, and I thought Klingon tea was rough stuff. You in one piece, Data?"

"Apparently so, sir. I performed a diagnostic when you powered me up. Some mechanisms in my thoracic section have been exposed, as a preliminary stage of disa.s.sembly, but I do not seem to have lost any memory sectors."

"That's enough, both of you."

They looked over at the new interlocutor.

Picard stood a few feet away, brandis.h.i.+ng a long piece of metal pipe.

"Number One, please get away from Mr. Data."

"Captain, sir, you're a bit confused. You can feel that, right?"

"It's wearing off. Just a stun from the weapon she threw into a detention room," he said, pointing to Amoret. "I know what's what."

The doors boomed again.

"No you don't, sir. You've been brainwashed."

"I've been saved, Will, not brainwashed. Now I order you to stop what you are doing, and give yourself up to the people outside."

Picard advanced a step.

"Keep loosening those bolts," Riker said over his shoulder to Amoret, as he walked forward to meet Picard face-to-face.

"Be clear on this, Will. I'm ready to break your bones to save you."

Picard swung the pipe and Riker spun out of the way.

"I'd even rather see you dead than suffering a lifetime with the Allpox," said Picard.

Riker feinted at Picard, then tried to grab the pipe. Picard dodged and swung again. The pipe struck Riker's shoulder blade.

A white-hot pain shot up and down Riker's body and bounced around in his head. He stumbled back. For an instant a memory seized him: that fight with his father when they were both grown, the betrayal he'd felt as his father had rained blows on him with the heavy anbo-jyutsu staff.

Riker shook off the memory. Picard came at him again, swinging the pipe at his head. Riker dodged like a boxer. He heard the pipe whistle past his ear, and had an idea.

"Captain, do you remember any of this fiction: 'To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image' ..."

"d.a.m.n it, Will!"