Captain's Table_ Dujonian's Hoard Part 9

One Carda.s.sian went sprawling, propelled by the force of Dunwoody's beam. But the other invader was already taking aim at him.

"Watch out!" I cried, and fired.

It wasn't the cleanest shot I had ever made, but it had the desired effect. The Carda.s.sian spun about, his weapon falling from his hand.

Cursing, knowing how close he had come to death, Dunwoody leveled his phaser at the Carda.s.sian but his hand was trembling so badly, his beam missed by several inches. It was only with his second shot that the man hammered his adversary senseless.

Suddenly, the Oord bellowed a warning. Turning, I saw a group of Carda.s.sians materializing in the corridor behind us.

"Quick!" Astellanax cried. "Into the engine room!"

But there were Carda.s.sians materializing there as well. I saw Dunwoody retreat from my view, presumably to join a clutch of engineers already holed up behind their consoles.

I hesitated just long enough to consider our options. The Orion's advice still seemed to make sense. Engineering remained a key to control of the s.h.i.+p and it was easier to defend than an open corridor.

Firing at the Carda.s.sians behind me to keep them at bay, I made for the open doors of the engine room. So did Astellanax, Sturgis, and Murrif, and with equal haste.

Only the Oord stayed behind. Battered shoulder and all, he stood his ground, giving the rest of us time to escape.

It was a suicide stand the Oord had to have known that. But he stood there anyway, firing his phaser with deadly accuracy into the oncoming ranks of the enemy. As we charged into engineering, I heard a sound that could only have been the Oord's body hitting the deck.

At that point, I was too much in the thick of the conflict to mourn my comrade. The engine room was full of Carda.s.sians perhaps twenty in all, none of them eager to give up their foothold. They sent a barrage at us that should have dropped us all in our tracks.

As it happened, it only dropped one of us. An energy beam hit Murrif square in the face, breaking his neck with its force and his momentum slid him into an unmanned console.

I knew from watching Dunwoody that at least some of the engine room's defenders were to my left. As I returned the Carda.s.sians' fire, I retreated in that direction. Then I picked a spot between two workstations and dove full length, hoping to make it to cover before our adversaries' volley could tear me apart.

Directed energy beams crisscrossed in the air around me, scalding it with their pa.s.sage. But none of them hit me. I landed, rolled, and felt myself grabbed by several pairs of hands.

I looked up into the faces that went with them. To my relief, one of them was Dunwoody's.

"Glad you could join us," he quipped, though the sheen of sweat on his face belied the casual tone of his remark.

"Not half as glad as I am," I replied.

I glanced about. Astellanax and Sturgis had made it as well, joining the handful of engineers and a.s.sorted crewmen holed up there already. We exchanged the grateful looks of men who had risked their lives together and emerged from the experience unscathed.

The Carda.s.sians chose that moment to send a barrage into the workstation I was hiding behind. There was a wretched whining sound and a geyser of sparks, but my comrades and I remained unharmed.

Hefting my phaser, I peered across the engine room at the enemy. What I saw was not encouraging.

The Carda.s.sians were continuing to beam reinforcements into the place. If the captain had discovered a way to befuddle the enemy's transporters for a time, that time was now past.

It made me wonder if the Carda.s.sians had taken the bridge. It made me wonder if they were a.s.suming control of the Daring even as we risked our lives to save her. It made me wonder what had become of Worf, though my lieutenant had proven himself a difficult man to stop.

And it made me wonder if they had killed Red Abby.

It cut me to think so. Despite her avarice, the woman had shown herself to be a brave and able commander one of the few I had met outside Starfleet. She had won my respect.

And perhaps something more, though I was reluctant to admit it at the time even to myself.

At any rate, I had no way of knowing Red Abby's fate or Worf's, for that matter. All I could do was fire away at the Carda.s.sians in their increasing numbers, hope we could hold them for a while, and watch faithfully for a window of opportunity.

It came, all right. But not for us.

Up until then, the workstations in front of us had been our salvation, protecting us from the increasingly fierce attacks of the enemy. In a single moment, they became our greatest danger.

One by one, they began to blow up. With a sinking heart, I realized the Carda.s.sians had taken the bridge after all. And they had found a way to overload the circuitry in the workstations.

The result? Chaos.

Half of us bolted like rabbits driven from their warren only to be cut down by the invader's relentless barrage. I and some of the others stayed where we were, continuing to fight from cover as long as we could.

Unfortunately, there was no pattern to the explosion of the engineers' workstations or at least, none I could discern. No doubt, the Carda.s.sians meant it to be that way. I remember wondering whether the console in front of me would be the next to blow up.

Then I didn't have to wonder anymore.

Madigoor "IT EXPLODED?" ASKED Robinson.

Picard grunted. "Right in front of me."

"But it didn't kill you," Bo'tex observed.

"Obviously," said Dravvin.

"I was lucky," Picard told them. "All I suffered was a few burns. However, the force of the explosion was enough to knock me out."

"Then what?" asked the Captain of the Kalliope, obviously caught up in the particulars of the tale.

"I regained consciousness perhaps half an hour later," Picard replied. "I found myself in the Daring's small, gray transporter room with a Carda.s.sian energy rifle in my face. But it was only one of a dozen carried by a contingent of stony-faced guards."

"You were alone?" asked Flenarrh.

Picard shook his head. "There were some forty of us being held there."

"Forty survivors," Robinson mused.

"Precisely," said Picard.

"What about Worf?" Hompaq demanded.

"To my immense relief," Picard told her, "Worf was among that number though the Carda.s.sians had opened a dangerous-looking gash in his temple. Looking around, I saw Astellanax, Sturgis, and Thadoc as well. Also Corbis, and his friends the Oord and the Thelurian. And Dunwoody, though he was holding a limp and painful-looking arm."

"And Red Abby?" asked Robinson.

Picard nodded. "Our captain was there, too, though I didn't notice her at first. She was kneeling, tending to one of the wounded. Though she had been bruised and battered as badly as any of us, she managed somehow to maintain an air of defiance."

Bo'tex smiled. "I see where this is going."

"So can I," said Dravvin.

"This woman inspired you," Bo'tex speculated. "She gave you hope in the midst of despair."

"And when the Carda.s.sians let their guards down," said Dravvin, "you attacked them and freed yourselves."

Picard chuckled grimly. "Had you been there, you would have known an uprising was an impossibility."

"Indeed," said Flenarrh. "Charging your captors would no doubt have cost you dearly."

"I believe so," Picard agreed. "And even then, we would not have gained anything. We would still have had to escape our cargo bay."

Flenarrh leaned forward. "And with the Daring's transporters under the Carda.s.sians' control, they could have beamed in all the reinforcements they required."

"Aye," said Robinson. "Or beamed out you and your comrades, one at a time. The Carda.s.sians held all the cards."

"Still," Hompaq snarled, "if it had been me in that cargo bay, I would have gone for a Carda.s.sian throat." She glared at Picard. "And if I had died, at least it would have been a warrior's death. Only a coward allows himself to be herded like a pack animal."

Picard, of course, knew a few things about Klingon ethics. He had, after all, been the Arbiter of Succession the man who picked Gowron as the leader of the Klingon High Council.

"Only a fool wastes his life on a useless gesture," he told Hompaq pointedly. "I had a mission, remember a duty to Starfleet. In order to fulfill that duty, I had to survive my captivity."

Hompaq bared her teeth, less than thrilled with Picard's tone. For a moment, he thought she might pull a concealed weapon or at the least throw herself across the table at him. In the end, however, she made a sound of disgust and stayed in her seat.

Not that the Klingon was fearful of facing him. Quite the contrary. Rather, it seemed to Picard, she had a healthy respect for the establishment in which they were seated.

For the Captain's Table.

"As I was saying," Picard continued, "we may have thought about an uprising, but we didn't attempt one. We simply waited, exchanging grim glances, until the Carda.s.sians received an order via the s.h.i.+p's intercom."

The Tale I UNDERSTOOD ENOUGH Carda.s.sian to make sense of the order. Apparently, my fellow prisoners and I would shortly be beamed to the enemy's wars.h.i.+p. It was better than being destroyed out of hand, I thought.

A moment later, my comrades began to disappear, two and three at a time. Corbis and his friends were among the first to go. Worf, Thadoc, and Sturgis came soon after. I myself was among the last.

We materialized in a place not unlike the one we had left. Of course, the bulkheads around us were of a decidedly darker hue, and the recessed lighting gave off a smoldering, orange glow, but it was clear we were in a cargo bay.

A Carda.s.sian cargo bay. It was a chilling thought, to say the least.

Once all of the prisoners were a.s.sembled, a stocky Carda.s.sian officer entered the bay with something like a tricorder in his hand. Glancing at it, he scanned our ranks until his eyes fell on our captain, who endured his scrutiny with a scowl.

The Carda.s.sian pointed at her. "You," he said in a tongue she could understand. "Come with me."

Astellanax and some of the others looked ready to intervene. Obviously, they didn't like the idea of leaving their captain alone in the hands of the Carda.s.sians. For that matter, neither did I.

Abruptly, the issue became an academic one. The officer pointed to Astellanax as well. "You will come, too," he said.

Then he eyed the rest of us and glanced again at his handheld device. After a moment's consideration, the Carda.s.sian picked out Worf, Sturgis, Thadoc, and myself, and informed us that we would be accompanying him.

We didn't know on what basis we had been selected though I might have ventured a guess but we didn't argue with the decision. When the officer left the cargo bay, we left with him, flanked by a pair of armed guards.

The Carda.s.sians escorted us down a corridor to their version of a turbolift. The door irised open and we went inside. Then the officer punched in a destination code.

Unfortunately, I couldn't see it from where I was standing. A few moments later, the lift stopped and the door irised open again, allowing us to enter a dimly lit corridor.

I looked right and then left. To my right, the corridor wound out of sight. To my left, it ended in a rather ornate egress.

Only then did I realize where we were headed.

Remember, the Federation had been at war with the Carda.s.sians years earlier. In the course of that war we had taken some of the enemy's s.h.i.+ps. Though I hadn't personally toured one of those vessels, I had seen the schematics disseminated by Starfleet.

That's how I knew we were headed for the bridge. But for the life of me, I couldn't see what purpose our presence there was meant to serve.

The six of us were herded in the direction of two ornate doors. Just before we reached them, they parted for us. As I had predicted, the wars.h.i.+p's bridge was beyond them, as dark and smoldering with orange light as the rest of the vessel.

Like the other Carda.s.sian bridges I had seen, this one had five stations two forward, two aft, and a ma.s.sive-looking captain's chair. Graphics in gold and electric blue gleamed at us from tactical screens situated on every bulkhead.

My attention was drawn to the viewscreen, which was considerably smaller than that of a Starfleet vessel and oval in shape. It gave us a view of the Daring as she hung in s.p.a.ce, her port nacelle and parts of her hull charred beyond recognition.

I glanced at Abby. She seemed transfixed by the sight. You all know what she was feeling, I imagine. Certainly, I did. She was, after all, the captain of that crippled vessel.

The gul in charge of the wars.h.i.+p turned and took note of our arrival. He was a tall, almost gangly specimen, with the self-a.s.surance bordering on arrogance that I had come to a.s.sociate with Carda.s.sian leaders.h.i.+p.

"I see everyone has arrived," he said. He turned to Abby. "As you will note, your bridge officers are all present at least, insofar as our sensor data could identify them. In general, we took pains not to kill any more of your people than we absolutely had to."

"That was generous of you," Abby replied, no doubt meaning to inject a note of sarcasm.

But her voice was hollow, drained of energy. Of course, a stun blast would have had that effect on even the strongest victim.

The Carda.s.sian smiled. "I am accustomed to being addressed by my name and t.i.tle. From now on, you will call me Gul Ecor whenever you speak to me. Is that clear, human?"

Abby frowned. "It's clear."

"It's clear, what?" asked the gul.

The woman's eyes blazed with hate, despite her fatigue. "It's clear," she said, "Gul Ecor."

The Carda.s.sian nodded, then glanced at the viewscreen. "Unfortunately," he remarked, "I can't treat your s.h.i.+p as I have your crew. It would serve as a marker with regard to our encounter here, and that might cause me problems in the future."

He gestured to his weapons officer, whose fingers flew over his controls. A moment later, the Carda.s.sian looked up.

"Ready, Gul Ecor."

Ecor paused a moment, as if to build up the drama. Then he made a gesture of dismissal. "Fire."

Suddenly, a pair of disruptor beams shot across the viewscreen, stabbing the Daring in her aft quarters. The s.h.i.+p buckled and blackened under the barrage. Then there was a blinding burst of white light the kind that might be created by an exploding warp core.