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“Mr. Worf,” I said, “establish control over the ship’s transporters. Then contact the mercenary and tell our friends we’ll be beaming over.”

The Klingon had overheard our discussion. Under the circumstances, 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, encompassing 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 ship 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 ships 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