The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [73]
Lwaxana clutched her heart as the color came back into her face. “Thank the fates.” She leaned against a lichen-infested tree trunk as she recovered from the shock. “That was far too realistic for my peace of mind. You’re quite sure that she survived?”
“P-pretty much.” In truth, he was slightly less confident than he would have liked. This holodeck had been acting up, after all; who was to say if the safety protocols were one hundred percent reliable? Certainly it wouldn’t be the first time that a faulty holodeck program put someone in genuine danger; Geordi liked to joke that the Enterprise’s holodecks tried to kill them at least once a year. At the moment, that quip didn’t seem very funny.
Ro had taken a calculated risk. The odds were in her favor, but still…
“I found them!” A camouflaged frog dropped from the treetops, splashing down in their path. His extended claws glinted in the moonlight. Barclay gagged on the pungent odor emanating from his slimy secretions. “Over here!”
“Finally!” Povz’s voice croaked from the Tadigean’s comm. “Hold them there, Jhirm! Don’t let them get away!”
The looming amphibian blocked them with his bulk. “They’re not going anywhere.”
“W-we’ll see about that,” Barclay said, feigning confidence. He shoved Lwaxana behind the widest cypress and stepped between her and their foe. Inspiration struck and he snapped off a low-hanging tree branch, which he brandished before him like a sword. Hours spent playing D’Artagnan in a holographic recreation of The Three Musketeers emboldened him. “En garde!”
Watch out for those poison tears. He fixed his gaze on the parotid glands behind Jhirm’s eyes. The fleshy sacs pulsed, giving Barclay a split-second warning. He dived beneath the water just as the neurotoxin sprayed from the corners of the amphibian’s eyes. Barclay held his breath, loath to swallow any of the fetid water, then scrambled to his feet to the right of his batrachian adversary. The point of the broken branch stabbed Jhirm right in his poison gland. The Tadigean yelped in pain.
“I shall speak with my sword, sir!” Barclay crowed, doing his best to stay in character. For better or for worse, he felt considerably more courageous facing the enemy as D’Artagnan than as himself. He wiped the slimy water from his eyes. “One for all, and all for Starfleet!”
“Hot-blooded filth!” Real tears, not poison, leaked from his eyes. “Are all primates insane, or are you more brain damaged than most?”
He slashed at Barclay with his claws, but the embattled lieutenant deftly parried the attack with his makeshift rapier. The claws scarred the fresh bark, but the sturdy limb held together. Bending a knee, Barclay ducked beneath Jhirm’s attacks and thrust.
The pointed branch passed through the frog’s flesh and bones without leaving a scratch.
Huh?
Encountering no resistance, Barclay stumbled forward, almost falling face-first into the pond scum. He withdrew the branch, which still looked solid enough, and waved it back and forth through the startled Tadigean’s torso. The wooden sword was suddenly intangible.
Another holodeck glitch, Barclay realized. Just when I didn’t need it.
This never happened to D’Artagnan…
Fortunately, Jhirm was momentarily transfixed by the sight of the insubstantial weapon passing harmlessly through his flesh. “How in the Heavenly Hatchery—?”
“Excuse me, Mister Jhirm,” a female voice called out. “If I could have your attention…?”
The baffled amphibian spun around to find Lwaxana standing a meter or so behind him. She pulled back on a leafy cypress branch with both hands, so that it was as taut as a coiled spring. “Stay right where you are, please.” She released the branch, which snapped forward into Jhirm’s face, hitting him with the force of a reverse tractor beam. The impact flung him backward into the unyielding mass