• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Blocked by the table, the sergeant drove forward anyway and leaped into the air, took two steps across the tabletop, spread his arms, dagger down, and dive-bombed Data where he stood.

Barehanded, Data’s arms shot up; he clasped the sergeant’s nubby silver uniform with both hands and parried the man over his head. ff Data had simply completed the arch, the sergeant would’ve landed on Crusher, but Data’s shock-fast computer brain measured the pivot-angle, force, velocity, energy-and he twisted exactly right. The sergeant bellowed his shock and surprise, slashed downward with his blade-raking Data across the back of the neck-and then flew into the wall as if shot from a cannon. Though it looked as if he had just struck the velvet drapery, his body made a distinct thok of bone and armor striking against sheer rock. He crashed onto the corner of the vanity and thence to the floor.

Enraged, the three other guards now charged in unison, vaulting and smashing past the furniture. Data’s hands struck out like cobra tongues, skirting the slashing blades of his attackers with such blinding speed that two of the guards cut each other instead of him and stumbled back. The third received a kick in the gut and was thrown off. The first guard now flew from his position on the floor and jumped onto Data’s back, clinging and grimacing viciously while trying to position his knife at Data’s throat. Data merely turned under them as freely as a weathervane, his expression completely unfazed. Sentinel Iavo, astounded by what he saw, rushed between the table and the couch, his ceremonial dirk’s long blade golden in the firelight, as he drove it forward into Data’s ribcage. There the blade lodged.

Data reached over his head with one hand to clasp the clinging sergeant by the hair and down with the other hand, to grip Sentinel Iavo’s dirk hilt as it protruded from his chest. Crusher winced as the three men waltzed together.

Behind her, Ansue Hashley’s gasps and gulps narrated every move, and he somehow had the sense to stay back, no matter what he thought he saw.

“He’ll be slaughtered!” Hashly empathized. “That knife-it’s in him!”

Restraining herself from idle boasting, Crusher said, “Don’t worry yet. Data’s the best concealed weapon around.”

In a spin of color and firelight, the sergeant slammed to the floor at Crusher’s feet, dazed, his face bleeding, lungs heaving, weapon completely missing. Crusher stooped and heaved him up onto his knees. “There you go. Keep fighting:’

She stepped back, watching tensely to see if the seed of guilt she’d planted would sprout quickly enough to turn the tide. Already she sensed a half-heartedness in the Romulans’ effort-or was she imagining it?

With a prideful roar, the Romulans surged back into the fight just as Sentinel Iavo and one of the other guards crashed into the couch and drove the whole thing fight over backward, dumping them into a stand of shelves, whose contents came shattering down upon them. “You’re making a mess;’ Crusher commented.

“I shall be happy to tidy everything later, Doctor;’ Data responded as he whirled and took a blaze of vicious stabbings to the arms and upper body and blocked hard-driven blows that were meant for his face. In return he drove his fists, knuckles, and the heels of his hands into the soft tissues of his opponents. “By the way, I am expecting a communiqu? from the empress’s first cousin’s physician on Usanor Four. Would you mind activating the channel?” “Oh, sure.”

Completely rattled by the casual conversation going on while they were panting like dogs, the Romulan guards let their anger get the better of them. Data’s hand-eye coordination was at computer speed, he had the strength of any ten Romulans all equalized throughout his body, and he wasn’t getting tired. When the next one came within grasping range, attempting to body-blow Data to the floor, Data instead grasped the man fully about the chest and heaved him into the air, propelling him up and into the comer.

“Data, it’s getting out of hand. Wrap it up as soon as you can.