• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Our comrades looked surprised to see us. But for some reason, they didn’t seem relieved. Suddenly, I realized why that might be. The insight sent chills up and down my spine.

I searched their faces more closely. The five of them seemed tense, fearful, as if they perceived a danger more urgent and immediate than the general threat of invasion.

Almost as if they had already encountered the enemy … as if he were close enough to shoot them in the back if they didn’t obey his commands.

“Commander Astellanax,” called the Yridian. “I’m glad to see you.”

“And we, you,” the first officer replied. “Didn’t you hear the captain when she told you to take cover?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “We did. In fact, the three of us were on our way to a cargo bay to do just that.”

Her voice trembled ever so slightly. Perhaps I wouldn’t have heard it if my suspicions hadn’t been aroused already, or if I hadn’t been human, too. But I did hear it and I could delay no longer.

Without a word to any of my fellow bridge officers, I moved past them. And not only them, but the crewmen we’d encountered. To forestall the questions I knew would follow, I held up my left hand. Then I planted myself against the wall, took a breath, and waited.

I expected the Cardassians to burst out of concealment at any moment, eager to spring their trap. They didn’t disappoint me.

Aiming carefully, I took out the first one with a beam to the center of his chest. As he went sprawling, a second one appeared and took hasty aim. Fortunately, he managed only to sear the bulkhead above my head. And he never got off a second shot because I shot first.

But there were other Cardassians behind them. They poured out into the corridor like locusts nearly a dozen of them firing their lethal beams at anything that moved. And since we had orders to reach engineering, we stood our ground and fired back.

The corridor became a lurid, screaming vision of hell, lances of seething energy crisscrossing madly in midair. My back pressed against the wall, I fired this way and that, trying to make out my nearest adversaries between flashes of fire.

Then, just as I was spearing one Cardassian with my phaser beam, I saw two more coming at me. Both of them had me in their sights and there was no time to beat them to the punch. So I did the only thing I could think of I threw myself at them.

Not at their weapons, of course, because that would have spelled disaster. Rather, I launched myself at their ankles, hoping to knock them off their feet in the manner of an ancient Terran bowling ball.

I was fortunate. They missed me and went down in a heap of tangled limbs. But my phaser was kicked out of my hand in the process, leaving me a lot more vulnerable than I had planned.

As the first Cardassian tried to get to his feet, I planted my hands on the deck and lashed out with my foot, knocking him unconscious with a blow to the head. Then I hurled myself onto the other Cardassian.

He turned out to be a more formidable opponent than I had expected. First, he snapped my head back with a teeth-rattling blow to the jaw. Then, reaching for my throat with both his hands, he squeezed my windpipe until he had cut off my air supply.

I tried to wrench his hands away, but it was no use. He was too strong. As I felt myself blacking out, I struck him in the face.

A second time.

And then again.

The third blow was the charm. It loosened his grip on me, enabling me to suck in a desperately needed draft of air.

Turning the tables on the Cardassian, I hit him in the throat with the heel of my hand. And as he gasped for air, his eyes popping as if they wished to escape their sockets, I knocked him senseless.

That accomplished, I cast about for my fallen phaser and found it less than a meter away. I was just about to close my fingers on it when a boot came down on my hand rather painfully.

Suppressing a yelp, I looked up and saw a Cardassian soldier aiming his weapon at me. This time, it seemed there would be no escape. But no sooner had I thought that than a bright red beam punched my enemy in the