Captain's Table_ Dujonian's Hoard Part 24

"We're engaging an enemy," Abby told him.

"Who is it?" asked Gob.

She whirled in her seat, her eyes spitting fire. "I told you it's an enemy. That's all you have to know."

"That's what you think," Corbis snarled. He pointed a long, thick finger at Abby. "I'm done fighting, done putting my life on the line. I want to see that treasure I've been waiting for!"

"Get off my bridge," Abby told him sternly.

The Pandrilite advanced on her. "Like h.e.l.l I will."

She stood up and faced him. "I told you to leave the bridge, Mr. Corbis. If I were you"

Before she could complete her warning, the Pandrilite belted her across the face. Unprepared for that kind of force, Abby flipped backward over her center seat and landed on the floor.

Then, before anyone could get to her, Corbis drew his weapon and put it to her head. I exchanged glances with Worf and Thadoc, but there was little any of us could do at the moment.

"Don't you see?" Corbis snarled at his comrades. "There's something going on here they don't want us to know about!" He turned to me, his eyes red-rimmed with fury. "Isn't that right, Starfleet sc.u.m?"

I swallowed. "You don't know what you're doing, Corbis. We've got to act quickly or we'll be destroyed."

It was no more than the truth. The Abinarri would likely take us for an enemy whether we entered the fray or not. We had to undertake evasive maneuvers or we would be ripped open.

Corbis's eyes narrowed dangerously. "We'll act quickly all right. We'll get the h.e.l.l out of here." He glared at Thadoc, who had risen halfway out of his seat. "And we'll do it now, won't we or I'll vaporize your precious little captain!"

"Don't listen to him," Abby said, wiping blood from her mouth. "Let him kill me. Just don't abandon those people down there."

The Pandrilite made a sound deep in his throat. "So there are people down there. Is that what this is about?"

Abby didn't say anything. No doubt, she regretted having opened her mouth at all.

"Is that why you came through Hel's Gate, dragging the rest of us along?" asked Corbis. "Is that why you risked the life of everyone aboard this s.h.i.+p? What happened to the h.o.a.rd, Captain? What happened to riches beyond our wildest dreams?"

"Yes," said Gob, his grotesque nostrils flaring wildly as he took a step toward Abby. "What about those promises you made us?"

"I made no promises," Abby told him. "I"

Corbis silenced her with a jab from the barrel of his weapon. "Shut up," he said. "I've had my fill of your lies."

"I've got an idea," said Gob, grinning greedily. "We'll take the warbird and make a run for it. Then, when we're on the other side of the Gate, we can sell her to the highest bidder."

"That's what you think," I countered. "Once the Romulans find out you have their s.h.i.+p, you won't live long enough to find a buyer. They'll reduce you to atoms first."

"He's right," Abby groaned, despite the weapon held to her head. "Your only chance is to stay here and"

The Pandrilite jabbed her again in the temple. "I thought I told you to keep your mouth shut."

It was all I could do to keep from charging at him.

Madigoor "YOU SEE?" SAID Dravvin.

Flennarh nodded. "You called it, all right. You said Pandrilites were trouble, and here's the proof of it."

The gecko looked appropriately astonished.

"Enough of that," Bo'tex declared. "I want to hear how Picard here got out of his spot."

"So do I," said the Captain of the Kalliope.

"What did you do?" asked the Caxtonian.

"Weren't you listening?" Hompaq snarled. "He said there was nothing he could do."

"Actually," Robinson explained, "that's a figure of speech. At the time, it seems there's nothing one can do. But inevitably, one finds some way to prove oneself wrong."

"And do something," Dravvin interpreted.

"Exactly," said Robinson.

"True," Picard noted. "At least, most of the time. In this case, however, there was literally nothing we could do. Nothing at all, if we valued Red Abby's life."

Robinson looked at him. "Nothing? Literally?"

"Nothing," Picard confirmed.

"Then how was she saved?" Flenarrh asked.

"Perhaps she wasn't," Hompaq pointed out. "Perhaps she died at the hands of the Pandrilite."

Dravvin snorted. "That would suit you, wouldn't it?"

"It would indeed," said the Klingon.

"It's not a matter of what would suit us," Robinson reminded them. "It's a matter of what was. Either Red Abby died on that warbird or she didn't there's no middle ground."

Everyone at the table looked to Picard the gecko included.

"As I was saying," he continued, "I restrained myself from making a run at Corbis. As for the possibility of the Romulans taking their s.h.i.+p back, Gob seemed thoroughly unimpressed."

The Tale THE TELLARITE LIFTED his chin at me and snorted. "The Romulans," he said, his beady eyes gleaming, "are a risk we'll be glad to a.s.sume. At least we'll know who we're fighting and why."

Corbis pointed to Thadoc with his free hand. "Get us out of here now, half-breed or your captain's a dead woman!"

But before Thadoc could respond, the bridge jerked savagely beneath us. Corbis lost his footing like everyone else and grabbed a bulkhead for support. Seeing my chance and knowing I might never get another one, I threw myself across the s.p.a.ce between us.

The Pandrilite fired at me. Somehow, his bloodred beam missed and vaporized a section of bulkhead instead. I grabbed for his phaser, and my momentum slammed us into a console. Then the deck jerked again and we went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

As we hit the floor, I tried to roll on top of him, but he snapped my head back with a blow to the jaw. Gritting my teeth, I got hold of Corbis's wrist and slammed his weapon-hand against the metal surface beneath us.

Once. Twice. And again.

The third time proved to be the charm. Crying out, Corbis relinquished the weapon, bellowing as it fell from his battered hand.

Quickly, I kicked it away. It skittered across the floor. Of course, by that time, the Pandrilite's weapon wasn't the only one I had to worry about. There were phasers discharging all around me, their beams crisscrossing wildly in the close quarters of the bridge.

As I tried to gather myself, I felt a cl.u.s.ter of powerful fingers close on my throat from behind. I tried to claw them loose, but Corbis was too strong for me. I could feel my windpipe closing, my air supply shutting down.

Little by little, I felt myself lifted into the air. Before I knew it, my feet were dangling inches above the deck.

I kicked backward while I still could, felt my heel hit the Pandrilite in the s.h.i.+n. It made him drop me to the deck, but it didn't loosen his grip one iota. If anything, it tightened it.

I could feel the blood pounding ferociously in my temples, see the darkness closing in at the edges of my vision. My hands and feet were beginning to lose all sense of feeling.

Then I remembered something I had learned not so long ago. Something I had seen a young woman do in the gym on the EnterpriseD, under the tutelage of her Klingon instructor.

I could only hope it worked as well for me as it had for her.

Groping for one of Corbis's wrists, I found it and took hold of it as Worf had demonstrated. Then I turned it and twisted as well as I could, considering I could already feel my eyes popping out of my skull.

The Pandrilite cried out and went spinning over my hip, just as if he had been propelled by a phaser blast. I made a mental note to thank Worf if and when I had a chance to speak with him again.

Taking the deepest breath I could, I put some oxygen back in my bloodstream. Then I advanced on Corbis, hoping to capitalize on the surprise I had dealt him.

Unfortunately, it was he who dealt the surprise. As he came up, he had a phaser pistol in his hand either the one he had lost earlier or someone else's. The Pandrilite's eyes were feral with hatred as he raised the weapon and pointed it at me.

But before he could press the trigger, a bright red beam knocked him off his feet and slammed him into a bulkhead. I heard a crack and saw Corbis slump to the deck, his neck bent at an impossible angle.

Impossible, that is, for someone still alive.

Turning, I saw where the beam had come from. Abby was on her knees behind me, a phaser pistol locked in both her hands. When she realized Corbis was no longer a threat, she lowered it.

I looked around in the unnatural quiet. Gob was lying on the other side of the bridge, the side of his face blackened beyond recognition. Corbis's two other companions were dead as well.

Thadoc stood up from behind his helm console, which featured a smoking hole the size of a phaser beam. He seemed whole, though or at least, no worse off than before.

Worf hadn't been quite so lucky. His tunic was charred and ripped open in the vicinity of his rib cage and blood had begun to soak into what was left of the material.

"Are you all right?" I asked him.

He nodded. "Fine."

That didn't tell me anything. He would have said he was fine if he was writhing in agony on his deathbed.

Suddenly, the warbird lurched under the heaviest barrage yet. A plasma conduit broke, unleas.h.i.+ng a stream of white-hot vapor. The viewscreen sputtered and went dead for a second; when it came back on, it was plagued by wave after wave of static.

Through them, I could make out more than a dozen triangular s.h.i.+ps. They were coming at us from different directions, waiting until they got closer before they opened fire again.

And why not? We had yet to protect ourselves or get a shot off. It must have seemed to them that we were dead in the water which would be true enough if we didn't act soon.

I flung myself into the helmsman's seat. At the same time, Worf took charge of the tactical panel. Cradling his wrist again, Thadoc deposited himself beside me at navigation.

"Report!" cried Abby.

"Damage to decks seven and eight," Thadoc grated. "One dead. Dunwoody's team is making repairs."

"All weapon arrays are still functional," Worf growled. "s.h.i.+elds down forty-two percent."

"The helm's responsive," I noted. That was the good news. "But the warp coils seem to have taken a beating. We could be limited to impulse power at any moment."

Abby frowned, her cheek bruised where Corbis struck her. "We'll worry about that if and when it happens. Evasive maneuvers, Picard. Let's see what you can do with these Abinarri."

If she had hoped to inspire me with a challenge, it was unnecessary. My desire to keep us alive was inspiration enough.

"Hang on," I said grimly. As I noted before, Romulan vessels weren't known for the effectiveness of their inertial dampers.

I engaged the impulse engines and executed a turn that took us out of the Abinarri's midst. However, they were on us again in a matter of moments, stinging us repeatedly with their energy weapons like a swarm of bees on an intrusive bear.

"Fire at will!" cried Abby.

It wasn't necessary. Worf was already attending to it.

On the viewscreen, two of the Abinarri vessels glowed with the force of our disruptor barrage. A second later, another Abinarri was dealt a glancing blow. But if they were damaged, it didn't stop them from harrying us.

The enemy seemed to prefer working at close quarters. That didn't surprise me in the least. As I'd noted in our last encounter, their weapons were significantly more effective that way.

But beyond any practical considerations, I got the feeling that was simply the way these people liked to hunt. Very likely, it was the way their ancestors had done it by surrounding their prey and bringing it down through sheer weight of numbers.

I was determined that this prey wouldn't go down so easily. Working furiously at my controls, I negotiated the maze of enemy vessels and emerged from it a second time.

But a second time, the pack caught up with me.

Worf did his best to hammer at the Abinarri, managing to score several more hits. One s.h.i.+p even exploded in a paroxysm of blue fury. But as before, the Klingon's efforts didn't seem to faze the survivors.

"Shake them!" cried Abby.

"I'm trying!" I bellowed back.

I looked for the mercenary vessel, hoping it could offer us some relief. But my monitor told me our ally had troubles of her own. Like us, she was besieged on all sides.

On the other hand, the mercenary's attackers were fewer in number. They must have understood that she was the weaker of us and focused their efforts on the warbird.

Suddenly, one of the aft stations sparked savagely and began to flame. Someone grabbed an extinguisher and began to put the fire out, but the station next to it ignited as well. Smoke began to fill the bridge, searing our throats and making our eyes sting.

"s.h.i.+elds at twenty-eight percent!" Worf reported over the din. "Starboard phaser banks partially disabled!"