Part 20 (2/2)
”Come on,” he rasped. ”d.a.m.n it, man, it's down to you and me!”
The captain nodded and sought out his phaser rifle. Finding it, he raised it and sighted on the nearest grouping of Gorn. And seeing their serpentlike faces, the inhuman savagery dripping from their fangs and lighting their eyes, he almost pressed the trigger.
But in the end, he didn't. Because, first and last, he was Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprise. And no matter what cruelties he had witnessed this day, he could not mar the future.
It proved his undoing. Together, the Gorn trained their weapons on Picard and fired. The last thing he saw was the white-hot fury of their converging disruptor beams.
Picard had braced himself for the hideous sensation of being plucked apart by the Gorn's disruptor fire. But as he knelt there, he was surprised to see that they had missed him somehow. And that wasn't all that surprised him.
He was no longer in the wreckage of the colony's administration building. He was somewhere else, someplace that looked vaguely familiar. And then he guessed where that was-and what had happened to him.
Judging by the look of the chamber he found himself in, he was back on the alien s.p.a.ce station. And the flash he had seen, the white-hot flare that he had mistaken for the blaze of disruptor energies, was nothing more than the aura given off by the aliens' transporter process.
He had no sooner come to that conclusion than the door on the far side of the chamber slid up-and revealed Commander Data standing in the corridor outside. The android beckoned, making no mention of the captain's torn and dirtied garb.
”There is no time to explain, sir,” he said, his voice tinged with just the slightest hint of urgency. ”We must get to the shuttle.”
The shuttle? Picard wondered. Why not the Enterprise itself? Then he realized: the Enterprise would have been needed to search for him.
”I'm coming,” the captain promised. And he traversed the chamber in several quick, long strides.
Once out in the corridor, Picard could see why time was of the essence. Taking note of the light patterns that ran helter-skelter along the length of the bulkheads and back again, he realized that the station was caught in the throes of another mounting power surge. And if he'd had any doubt, the thrumming in the deck confirmed it.
”This way,” said the android, leading the captain down the corridor. As Picard looked about, it seemed to him that they were in the area between the control room and the airlock-headed in the direction of the latter.
He hoped that Data had corrected the problems that the captain had encountered earlier. Otherwise, shuttle or no shuttle, the same kind of transport might take place-or maybe even something worse.
In the few minutes it took them to reach the airlock, Picard could hear the telltale hum rise and fall several times. The light panels were flas.h.i.+ng on and off so quickly, they seemed to blur. Surely, the station couldn't take much more of this.
Finally, as they negotiated the curvature of the corridor, O'Connor came into view. With an equipment kit hanging from her shoulder, she was waiting outside the airlock, her hand on its control plate. No-beside the plate, Picard realized-where she or someone else had installed a set of b.u.t.ton controls. The captain recognized the thin line of circuitry and the generator below it as standard Starfleet equipment.
Excellent, he thought. We're in good shape, then. All we have to do is get into the shuttle and shove off.
Then Data spoke up. Addressing O'Connor, he asked, ”Have you heard from Commander La Forge or Lieutenant Barclay?”
The woman didn't seem happy about the news she had to impart. ”Commander La Forge received some sort of shock, sir. He's unconscious. Lieutenant Barclay is trying to bring him back here on his own. I would've gone after them, but-”
”But you were told to stay here,” Data finished. ”And you obeyed orders.” Abruptly, he turned to Picard. ”Shall I attempt to expedite their arrival, sir?”
The captain nodded. After all, Barclay and La Forge had risked their lives to bring him back here. He wouldn't abandon them unless and until it was absolutely necessary.
”By all means,” he told the android. ”Get going.”
As Data took off down the corridor, Picard turned to O'Connor. ”You did what you were supposed to do,” he a.s.sured her. ”You remained at your station.”
She nodded, only half-consoled. ”Aye, sir.”
Then, to pa.s.s the time as much as anything else, he asked, ”Have you allowed for the failure of the outer door as well?”
”We have, sir,” she a.s.sured him. ”There's another switch like this one, inside. Also, we set up force field projectors-so if the outer door somehow opens before we want it to, the field will keep the atmosphere intact.”
Picard expelled a breath. ”Good thinking.”
O'Connor nearly smiled, despite her fear for her comrades. ”Thank you, sir.”
Outside, through the window in the airlock door, the captain could see the shuttle. It waited only to be boarded.
Inside the corridor, the humming and the flas.h.i.+ng lights suddenly stopped-and then resumed again a second later with almost maniacal intensity. Picard swallowed and craned his neck to see a bit farther around the curve of the hallway.
Come on, he urged silently. We cannot wait much longer.
And then, as if in answer to his mental summons, he heard a distant tapping on the deck, which grew stronger the closer it came-a tapping like footfalls. At last, the three of them-Data, Geordi, and Barclay-rounded the bend. The android had hoisted the chief engineer over his shoulder and was pelting along at a torrid pace. Barclay, red-faced and panting, was doing his best to keep up.
At the same time, the captain heard a bellicose roar come to life in the bulkheads-the same kind of roar that had presaged a stationwide overload and his transport through time and s.p.a.ce. Scowling, he tried to ignore the strobing light trails all around them.
”Open the inner door,” he commanded.
Almost before he finished uttering the words, O'Connor had pressed the green b.u.t.ton under her hand. Immediately, the door slid up, allowing them access to the airlock. The outer barrier, and the invisible forcefield just inside it, were all that separated them now from the vacuum.
As Data came to a stop in front of them, Picard got a better look at Geordi. He was relieved to see that the engineer was moving, if only barely. With luck, his injury would be something they could treat on the shuttle.
Removing a remote-control unit from the kit on her hip, O'Connor established a link with the craft's computer and prepared to open the door.
But before she could clear all the security protocols, the station seemed to jerk sideways beneath their feet, sending them sprawling into one of the bulkheads. Energy pulsed through the place with such intensity it made the deck s.h.i.+ver beneath the captain's cheek.
Forcing his every sense to focus on the task at hand, he dragged himself up off the floor-and noticed the remote-control device lying not a meter away. Being closer to it than O'Connor, he scooped the unit up and tapped in the rest of its instructions.
Fortunately, the thing hadn't been damaged when it struck the deck. The shuttle door hissed open.
”Get in!” cried Picard, barely able to hear himself over the dangerously increasing hum. And to underscore the need for urgency, he helped O'Connor up and guided her in the direction of the shuttle.
By then, Data was already slipping inside, with Geordi still slung over his shoulder. But Barclay wouldn't enter until the captain and his fellow engineer had preceded him.
A chivalrous action, Picard noted-though right now, practicality was a lot more important than chivalry. As soon as O'Connor was safely inside the craft, he shoved Barclay in after her.
However, as the captain himself prepared to follow, the airlock and the corridor outside it were bathed in a surge of stark, white brilliance. Blinded by it, Picard lost sight of the shuttle entrance-and then lost his balance to boot.
Just as he imagined he was about to go careening again through s.p.a.ce and time, he felt something grab the front of his tunic and jerk him forward. There was a sound of something heavy locking into place, and the roar of the station was suddenly gone.
As his vision cleared, the captain realized he was on the shuttle, with Reg Barclay kneeling over him. The thin man looked apologetic.
”Sorry, sir,” said Barclay. ”But there wasn't time to be ... well, a little gentler.”
”Quite all right,” Picard a.s.sured him. Sitting up, he caught a glimpse of Data in the pilot's seat. The android was manipulating the controls as only he could.
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