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“I don’t want to leave you!” Grant protested as he scrambled for maneuvering room.

Worf feinted backward toward the main door and swung around long enough to blast it open with his boot. Then he twisted back in time to rake his blade across Ugulan’s chest, driving the head Rogue back a step.

“Out!” he shouted to Grant. “Run! Get to the police!”

“Oh, damn—” Grant looked around frantically, glanced upward and saw something, then clasped a heavy brass vase from a cloisonné table.

Using both hands and every excuse for a muscle he owned, he heaved the vase into the air toward the ceiling. It sailed in an arc, its own weight soon compromising the flight, and tumbled end-first as if Grant had cast a bowling pin. At the apex of its flight it slashed through the giant crystal chandelier. The thousand bangles of cut glass barely affected the vase, but the glass was blasted to bits. With a harplike chime, the chandelier dissolved. Needles of glass rained down upon the startled Rogues, who never even had time to raise their arms to cover their faces. Glass scalpels rocketed downward, slicing their cheeks, scalps, and eyes, embedding in their hands, popping through the fabric of their Rogue uniforms to impale their arms and shoulders.

Worf made a maniacal leap toward Grant and the open main door. In midair he felt a dozen glass shards drive into his left hip and leg, but his head was clear.

And Grant was clear!

The two of them skidded to the brick deck of the veranda and crashed into an iron table and chair set. The chairs clanged on the veranda’s circular brick rail and tumbled over, but the table stayed up and Grant landed under it.

Worf’s pelvis and leg were gripped by pain, and he felt blood drain down his leggings. He shoved himself to his good foot and hauled Grant out from under the table.

“See? You are a true warrior,” he complimented as he hauled Grant down the curved stairs toward the courtyard. A blotchy trail of amethyst-colored blood smeared the steps behind him.

He glanced back at the veranda. Goric staggered out, clawing at his right eye. Blood covered his face and he was completely disoriented, gasping with pain and fear. After him came Gern, then Tyro, both picking at blades of glass embedded in their heads and arms. Ugulan staggered out, staring viciously, with the central tine of the chandelier protruding from his shoulder. He balled his fists around a dagger in one hand and a large spear of glass in the other, and roared with fury.

“Uh-oh,” Grant gulped. “Think we made him mad?”

“I hope we made him insane! Come!” Worf urged and pulled Grant into the tiled expanse of the courtyard.

Each step sent blistering pain up and down his left side as the shards of glass continued to drill into skin and muscle. Grant dodged under Worf’s arm and gave him some support, but on the veranda Ugulan, Mortash, and the other Rogues were overcoming their own injuries, or at least becoming insensitive in the blur of their fury and insult. Their future was shuffling away across the courtyard, and they meant to throw a rope on it.

If that meant dying on the tile, so be it!

“They’re coming,” Grant gasped. “They’re halfway down the stairs … they’re making it onto the tiles … oh, man, we’re gonna be butchered—”

“You go,” Worf choked. “Run for the police.”

Struggling with Worf’s considerable weight, Grant glanced behind them again. “No chance, bub. We go, we go together.”

“You cannot fight Klingons!” Worf spat out his contempt. “Not even those Klingons!”

“Wish I had a flare gun or something—”

“Grant, they will not kill me. Klingons do not attack fallen Klingons.”

Now who was lying?

But Grant, unfortunately, was not fooled. “Oh, not those Klingons! What’s with you? Competing with Mrs. Khanty for Flimflam of the Month? They’ll kill you and eat you!”

“Too gristly,” Worf grunted as he slipped to one knee.

Hauling Worf to his feet, Grant heaved. “Don’t try to snow me anymore, will ya? We just gotta make the outer gatehouse.” He cast another nervous glance at the staggering