Requiem - Michael Jan Friedman [68]
“Perhaps,” Picard conceded. “However, you will not.”
The question in the captain’s mind now was where to go from here, With the power-source crisis firmly fixed in the front of his mind, he hadn’t had time to make any longer-range plans. Now he had no choice.
The problem, of course, was that he hadn’t yet figured out a way to contact Riker. And until he did, it would be impossible for him to formulate a real plan of action. On the other hand, he couldn’t stay here—or anywhere in the colony, for that matter. That left just one option: taking to the hills.
Before he could withdraw, however, he saw the man with the red beard glance over to the corner of the room. Following the glance, Picard saw the intercom unit on the wall—and remembered that there might be engineers elsewhere in the facility. Engineers who would rush to his prisoners’ aid upon hearing a call for help.
Seeing that the captain had caught on to his intention, the bearded man either took the initiative or panicked. Either way, the result was the same. He darted in the direction of the intercom, moving more quickly than anyone his size had a right to.
Picard had no choice but to try to stun him. Tracking the man with his phaser, he pressed the trigger. In almost the same instant, the phased energy beam lanced across the room and struck its victim square in the shoulder.
As the captain expected, it knocked the bearded engineer off his feet. But he had also expected it to deprive him of consciousness—and that it did not do.Though the man was woozy, he was still in control of his senses.
Bad news, Picard remarked silently. Very bad news. Apparently, the phaser had all but expended its power reserves. Leave it to me, he thought, to be afflicted with a guard who forgets to recharge his weapon.
Nor was he the only one who’d grasped the situation, he noted. A couple of the colonists, including Travers, were looking at him with slitted eyes, wondering if he was as vulnerable as they thought.
“That phaser’s out of energy,” the commodore growled. “Now’s our chance. Get him—before he can escape!”
As the engineers started to move forward, the captain hurled his weapon into their midst. Then, casting a last, grateful glance at Julia, he spun about and took off for the exit.
As he reached the doors, they started to part. Picard braced himself for the wash of hot air—and felt something close around his ankle, causing him to fall forward. As he caught himself with his hands, he looked back and saw that Chief Engineer Hronsky had begun to emerge from his phaser-induced siesta.
Shifting his weight forward onto his hands, the captain lashed back at Hronsky with his free foot. It caught the man in his jaw, snapping his head back. For the second time in the last several minutes, the engineer slumped senseless,
Then Picard was diving out through the open doors, squinting against the sudden glare of the desert sun and trying to remember the general direction of the place where he had been found. Not that there was any advantage in returning there, but it seemed as good a destination as any.
Riker sat in the middle seat of the Enterprise’s command center and stared at the blue-green world pictured in the viewscreen. According to its last survey, it boasted no less than three presentient species, each one the master of a different continent, each one more or less on an evolutionary par with the other two.
Things would get interesting there in the next several million years. But that was someone else’s concern. All the first officer cared about right now was whether or not a single sentient being had been transported there accidentally by an alien space-and-time machine.
Rubbing his eyes, Riker could hear the quick, sure tapping of Worf’s fingers as they moved over his controls. Without looking, the human knew that his tactical officer was studying his monitors, trying to expedite the operation of the ship’s sensors as they completed their planetary scan.
The Klingon, at least, had used his rest period to get some legitimate shut-eye. The first officer envied him that.