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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 ship’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.

I must have blacked out at that point. When I came to, I was on the bridge of the Orion ship, lying in a corner where soft, purplish lighting bathed me in violet shadows. Worf was hunkered down next to me, watching the bridge officers apply themselves to their various tasks.

On the vessel’s diamond-shaped viewscreen, I could see two Abinarri ships. As I looked on, one of them was stabbed by a bolt of disruptor fire. A moment later, the vessel shivered and exploded in a flare of pure, white light.

“Got him!” exclaimed the weapons officer, an awkward-looking fellow with four arms and jet black skin.

“We’ve still got one more!” roared the being in charge a ponderous female with wrinkled, gray flesh and eyes like tiny, glittering diamonds. “Target and fire, Mastrokk!”

With an effort, I sat up. Every part of me felt bruised to the bone, but the ringing in my ears seemed to have stopped for the most part.

My lieutenant turned to me. “Captain …?”

Weakly, I held up a hand. “I’m all right,” I assured him, though it came out little more than a whisper.

Then I remembered, and my throat constricted.

“Where’s Abby?” I asked him.

Worf jerked his shaggy head.

Following the gesture, I saw her. Abby was lying in another corner of the bridge, surrounded by Thadoc, Dunwoody, and three of her other crewmen. Even in the eerie, purple lighting, she looked paler than the living had a right to be.

My god, I thought.

I remembered what Abby and I had said in the turbolift just a little while earlier. “We’re getting out of here,” I had told her. “We can’t allow ourselves to think any other way.” And she had replied, “Whatever you say, Picard. But just in case we don’t …”

I got up on shaky knees and started across the bridge. The Klingon grabbed my arm as gently as he could, hoping to restrain me but I shrugged him off and kept going.

It can’t be, I told myself. Not after we’ve come so far.

Thadoc and the others looked up at me as I approached. Their faces were grim, their eyesockets dark and hollow-looking though not half as hollow-looking as Abby’s.

Sinking to my knees in front of them, I reached out and touched her cheek with the back of my hand. It felt cold, waxy to the touch.

“Abby,” I said.

Suddenly, her eyelids fluttered. A moment later, she opened them and took in the sight of me.

It took me a second or two to come to grips with my surprise. “You’re not dead,” I observed wonderingly.

Abby’s mouth pulled up at the corners. “No,” she agreed weakly. “But I think you may be.” She shook her head. “You look awful, Picard.”

I grinned, though my skin was so bruised, it hurt mightily to do so. “As matter of fact,” I told her, “I feel awful.”

Just then, someone yelled “Fire!” It turned out to be the female in charge of the vessel.

Before our eyes, the last of our attackers spasmed and blew herself to atoms in a moment of terrible splendor. Abby frowned.

“The last of them?” she asked. Apparently, she hadn’t had her eyes closed the whole time.

I nodded. “The last of them.”

Madigoor

“THEN IT WORKED?” asked the Captain of the Kalliope.

Hompaq grinned at the thought. “The warbird blew up and took your enemies with it?”

“So it would seem,” said Picard.

The Klingon pounded the table with her fist. “Well done!” she rasped. “A feat worthy of a warrior!”

The captain nodded. “Thank you, Hompaq. Of course, I would rather have settled our differences with the Abinarri another way …” He shrugged. “But as I noted, they didn’t leave us a great many options.”

“But why did your lieutenant have to come and get you?” asked Flenarrh. He leaned forward in his chair.