Captain's Table_ Dujonian's Hoard Part 25

On the viewscreen, a half-dozen Abinarri slid toward us. One by one, their weapons spat red fire at us. I was able to dodge some of the blasts, but not all of them.

The bridge was wrenched this way and that, sending us sprawling over our control panels. I thrust myself back and regained my chair, only to be flung to the deck by another energy a.s.sault.

A console exploded, sending pieces of hot metal spinning across the bridge. As black smoke twisted up from the thing, I saw one of our men slump against Abby. It was a.s.sad.

He was dead, his throat a gaping wound.

With a stricken look, Abby lowered him to the deck. Then she took in the carnage all around her.

"Mr. Worf?" she said, her voice thick with emotion.

"s.h.i.+elds at thirteen percent," he told her, reading the information off his monitors. "The starboard phaser array is down."

Thadoc chimed in with more grim news. "Damage to decks four and five as well now."

I took us through a twisting turn, eluding one volley after another. It worked better than the other maneuvers I had attempted, buying us some time. But not enough, I told myself.

At this rate, we wouldn't last another ten minutes. Nor, I thought, would the mercenary vessel. The Abinarri were simply too good at this game, and we didn't have the resources to change the rules.

Then it came to me perhaps we had the resources after all. Perhaps we had just what we needed.

Madigoor

"AND WHAT WAS that?" asked Bo'Tex, unable to contain himself.

Robinson laid a hand on Picard's shoulder. "Don't get our friend the Caxtonian too excited," he advised. "He's capable of smells you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy."

"I'll keep my pheromones to myself," Bo'tex promised. "I only want to know what came next."

"Obviously," Dravvin concluded, "our friend came up with a scheme. He's all but said so."

"Yes," said Bo'tex, "but what scheme? Did he transport a tiny bit of antimatter onto each of the enemy's s.h.i.+ps? Did he use his tractor beams to send one Abinarri cras.h.i.+ng into the other?"

Picard shook his head. "We did neither of those things. For one thing, we were on a Romulan vessel, and they don't carry antimatter."

"That's right," said Flenarrh. "As Picard told us, they get their power from an artificial singularity."

"What's more," Picard noted, "transporting antimatter is a ticklish business. A very ticklish business. I've yet to see the containment field that would allow antimatter to pa.s.s through the pattern buffer."

"But what about using your tractor beams?" asked Bo'tex. "That would've been a good idea."

"It might have been," Picard replied, "except for two things. First, the Abinarri were moving too quickly for us to get a lock on them. Second, our tractor capabilities had been disabled by that time."

The Caxtonian nodded judiciously. "I see."

Hompaq grunted disdainfully. "It's clear what he did. He deployed his escape pods and smashed them into the enemy's vessels. By the time he was done, the odds were more in his favor."

"Not a bad notion," Picard conceded. "That is, if we had still had any escape pods to deploy. When we took over the warbird and forced the Romulans to evacuate, they took anything and everything in the way of auxiliary vehicles. All they left us was a single shuttle, and it wasn't quick enough to catch up with an Abinarri a.s.sault s.h.i.+p."

Robinson looked around the table. "Any other guesses?"

No one seemed inclined to venture one not even the gecko, apparently.

The Captain of the Kalliope smiled. "So ... what did you do?"

Picard smiled, as well.

The Tale

AS I SAID, a plan had begun to form in my mind. I turned to Abby and described it to her as briefly as I could.

She looked back at me, her pale blue eyes red with smoke. "Let's do it," she replied.

"Mr. Worf," I said, "establish control over the s.h.i.+p's transporters. Then contact the mercenary and tell our friends we'll be beaming over."

The Klingon had overheard our discussion. Under the circ.u.mstances, he could hardly question the wisdom of it.

"Aye, sir," he responded crisply.

I looked at Thadoc, apologizing in advance for what I was asking of him. "It'll be for only a minute," I said.

He glanced at me, knowing how long a minute could be in the heat of battle. "Take your time," he told me.

Turning the helm over to him, I got up and headed for the lift. Abby was a step ahead of me. We got in, punched out a destination code, and watched the doors close behind us.

As the compartment began to move, I drew a breath of untainted air through my burning, smoke-ravaged throat. Letting it out, I drew in another.

Abby had slumped against the wall and closed her eyes for a moment. Half her face was black-and-blue, and the shoulder of her tunic was ripped open, exposing a patch of burned skin.

"It won't be much longer now," I told her.

She opened her eyes to look at me. "Either way, eh?"

I grasped her firmly by her shoulders. "Listen to me," I said. "We're getting out of here. We can't allow ourselves to think any other way."

Abby smiled a sad and weary smile. "Whatever you say, Picard. But just in case we don't"

The doors to the lift opened then, revealing the residential corridor where the Romulan commander had had his quarters. The place was almost shockingly pristine, untouched by the chaos that had scarred most of the warbird.

Abby and I exchanged glances. There was no time for her to finish what she'd begun to say. But then, she didn't have to.

Together, we raced down the winding corridor and slid to a stop in front of the commander's door. It opened for us without hesitation and we scrambled inside only to find the place filled with smoke.

As it billowed out at us, encompa.s.sing us, I cursed and used my hands to clear a path for myself. Little by little, cough by throat-searing cough, I made it across the room to the spot where Abby had discovered the Klingon self-destruct device.

The mechanism was still lying on the floor where we left it, amid the selection of engineering implements Abby had gathered for me. Dropping to my knees, I picked the thing up and inspected it.

"Is it intact?" Abby asked, hunkering down beside me.

"It seems to be," I replied.

As I had told her on the bridge, it would be a lot easier to resurrect the thing than it had been to kill it. Still, it would take some time and at the moment, time was in short supply.

The warbird shuddered terribly under the impact of another volley, forcing us to grab what we could to secure ourselves. A second or two later, the s.h.i.+p shuddered again.

"The Abinarri are closing in," Abby observed ruefully. "Thadoc can't elude them."

It came as no surprise to either of us. The fellow had the use of only one hand, after all, and I hadn't done much better with two of them.

Concentrating on the task before me, I began searching for my trusty charge inverter. The smoke made the job difficult, to say the least.

"Do you see it?" I asked.

Abby knew just what I meant. "No," she said after a moment. "Maybe it rolled away."

Eyes smarting, I groped about for it. Finally, I located the inverter near a leg of the commander's divan.

"Got it," I told her.

"Then get to work," she said.

My plan was a simple one, really. We would reactivate the self-destruct mechanism, set it, then beam off the Romulan vessel with the rest of the crew. Since the Abinarri had demonstrated an affinity for working at close quarters, we would allow them to do just that ...

... until the moment the warbird's power source exploded in a frenzy of natural forces. Then if all went according to plan, the oppressor's s.h.i.+ps would be caught in the blast.

As I said, a simple plan. But for it to work, I had to blow up the warbird before the Abinarri could.

Trying to see through the haze of smoke, I picked out one of the circuits that had fed the self-destruct device and began reactivating it. Unlike the last time, I worked in silence.

Abby and I could converse later, I thought. That is, if both of us managed to survive.

With some trouble owing to the stinging sensation in my eyes, I managed to restore the first connection. No sooner was I done than the warbird jerked again, sending me sprawling against the divan.

I bit my lip. Had the shock come a second earlier, I might have sent an unwanted charge through the circuit and blown up the s.h.i.+p prematurely. It was not a cheery thought, as you can imagine.

Abby helped me right myself. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Right as rain," I a.s.sured her.

Spurred to a new sense of urgency, I went after the second connection. Again, we staggered under the force of the enemy's barrage but this time I was prepared for it. Grinding my teeth together, I revived the energy flow and wiped sweat from my brow.

"Is it my imagination," I asked, "or is it getting hotter in here?"

"Hotter," Abby confirmed. "The d.a.m.ned Abinarri must have knocked out our life-supports."

I chuckled grimly to myself. The enemy seemed determined not to make this easy for us. Rude of them, I mused, as I turned my attention to the third and final connection.

It was trickier than the others. Apparently, I had done too good a job rendering it ineffective. The s.h.i.+p bucked and shook all around me, reminding me how little time I had to accomplish my task.

Sweat trickled into my eyes, making them smart even worse than before. The smoke was making me cough rather violently, which didn't help matters, and I was beginning to feel light-headed from a lack of oxygen.

Still, I plugged away with the Romulan charge inverter. And in time, I restored the deadly connection.

All that was left was to set the timer. I gave us three minutes to reach the transporter room and pulled Abby to her feet.

"Done?" she asked.

"Done," I said.

"Will it work?" she wondered, as I tugged her across the room in the direction of the exit.

"It had better," I replied. "Otherwise"

I never finished my sentence. Indeed, my entire reality seemed to turn inside out in a single, blinding moment.

The next thing I knew, I was stretched out on the deck ears ringing, pain awakening with spectacular results in the whole right side of my body. Abby was lying beside me, inches away, her face turned away from my own.

I tried to speak her name, to no avail. I tried to extend my hand, to reach for her, but I couldn't do that either. In fact, I could barely roll my head to a.s.sess our situation.

Yet when I tried it, something strange and miraculous and thoroughly horrifying greeted my eyes through a break in the smoke. I found myself staring at the spattering of distant suns outside the s.h.i.+p and not through the protective medium of an observation port. The stars were standing there before me, big and fierce and naked in the void.

How was that possible? I asked myself. How could the stars have invaded the sanct.i.ty of our vessel?

Then I saw a flicker of blue-white current and, deep in the folds of myself where my mind still functioned, I understood. The hull had been breached, I realized but the warbird's structural integrity field was still holding our atmosphere inside.

And us as well.

But that could change at any moment. Another well-aimed blast and the integrity field would shatter as well, allowing us to be sucked out into the vacuum. And I was too dazed, too battered to do anything about it.

Worse, we had less than three minutes before the warbird destroyed itself. Perhaps by then we had only two minutes, or one or a matter of mere seconds. I had no way of knowing.

Abruptly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. Not Abby, but something else. Someone else, I realized. A powerful-looking figure, making its way toward us through the roiling fumes.

He loomed closer and I recognized him. It was Worf.

Kneeling, he gathered me up and slung me over his shoulder. Then he slung Abby over the other. Finally, rising under the weight of his double burden, he turned and headed for the exit with some urgency.

I was upside down, bouncing helplessly with each step, but I had an inkling of where we were going. We entered a lift, exited again, then negotiated corridor after spark-filled corridor.

After what seemed like a long time, too long for the warbird to still have been in existence, we arrived in the s.h.i.+p's transporter room. Worf set Abby and I down on the transport grid, crossed the room to work the controls, then joined us a second later.