Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [69]
“Hey, I know him.”
“Can you revive him?”
Riker nodded slowly.
She leaned close to his ear.
“Do it.”
Riker got up and went over to the lab table. He put his hand under Data’s back and felt for the switch.
Data’s eyes suddenly popped open. He looked at Riker bending over him.
“Commander Riker. I am pleased to see you alive, sir.”
“Ummm, likewise, I think.”
“You aren’t sure, sir?”
“Ummm … I don’t know.”
“Oh.” The android was nonplused. He looked about him at his surroundings. The room was largely devoted to tools, spare parts, and emergency rations. Amoret was searching frantically among the tools in the cabinets.
Riker stared at her.
“Don’t I know her from somewhere?”
“Sir,” said Data, “she was the woman we were arrested with at the ore factory.”
“Oh.”
“Commander, I have no wish to offend you, but you seem a bit … slow. As in simple-minded, addlepated.”
“I feel a bit slow, but it’s getting better.”
“And that is a strange hairstyle, sir,” said the android, looking at Riker’s partially shaved scalp. “I trust it was not voluntary.”
Amoret threw Riker a wrench.
“We’ll explain later,” she said to Data. “He’s been through a lot.”
Riker started working on the bolts holding Data down.
“You just get them started,” said Amoret, “I’ll back them off the rest of the way by hand.”
The concrete doors boomed. Someone was using heavy equipment on them.
“It’s worn off now,” said Riker after a minute had passed. “Whew, and I thought Klingon tea was rough stuff. You in one piece, Data?”
“Apparently so, sir. I performed a diagnostic when you powered me up. Some mechanisms in my thoracic section have been exposed, as a preliminary stage of disassembly, but I do not seem to have lost any memory sectors.”
“That’s enough, both of you.”
They looked over at the new interlocutor.
Picard stood a few feet away, brandishing a long piece of metal pipe.
“Number One, please get away from Mr. Data.”
“Captain, sir, you’re a bit confused. You can feel that, right?”
“It’s wearing off. Just a stun from the weapon she threw into a detention room,” he said, pointing to Amoret. “I know what’s what.”
The doors boomed again.
“No you don’t, sir. You’ve been brainwashed.”
“I’ve been saved, Will, not brainwashed. Now I order you to stop what you are doing, and give yourself up to the people outside.”
Picard advanced a step.
“Keep loosening those bolts,” Riker said over his shoulder to Amoret, as he walked forward to meet Picard face-to-face.
“Be clear on this, Will. I’m ready to break your bones to save you.”
Picard swung the pipe and Riker spun out of the way.
“I’d even rather see you dead than suffering a lifetime with the Allpox,” said Picard.
Riker feinted at Picard, then tried to grab the pipe. Picard dodged and swung again. The pipe struck Riker’s shoulder blade.
A white-hot pain shot up and down Riker’s body and bounced around in his head. He stumbled back. For an instant a memory seized him: that fight with his father when they were both grown, the betrayal he’d felt as his father had rained blows on him with the heavy anbo-jyutsu staff.
Riker shook off the memory. Picard came at him again, swinging the pipe at his head. Riker dodged like a boxer. He heard the pipe whistle past his ear, and had an idea.
“Captain, do you remember any of this fiction: ‘To hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image’ …”
“Damn it, Will!”
Picard dropped the pipe and put his hands over his ears.
Riker reached down and threw the pipe across the room. As he came back up Picard struck him across the jaw.
Riker put his arms up to block another blow, then struck back. He caught Picard above the eye, but it wasn’t enough to knock the man out. The captain had always been in prime shape. Riker knew he’d have to hit him seriously, and knew he’d have to be willing to hurt him.
“This body is not my captain—my friend Jean-Luc,” he told himself. “This body was just a vehicle for someone that is no longer here.”
He swung hard, connecting with Picard’s chin, and the