Three - Michael Jan Friedman [27]
Without hesitation, he launched himself in the other Pandrilite’s direction, his right hand reaching for the phaser while his left grabbed for the fellow’s throat.
The intruder cried out and pressed the trigger on his weapon, but by then Vigo had thrust it off line. The seething, red beam shot past his ear and struck the bulkhead behind him.
Vigo heard the wail of tortured metal, but he didn’t have time to examine the damage. He was too busy using his grasp on his assailant’s throat to smash the fellow’s head against the wall behind him.
Flesh and bone struck the duranium surface with an audible thud, an indication of the considerable force behind the blow. But the intruder was a Pandrilite. It would take more than that to knock him out.
A second time, Vigo slammed his adversary’s head into the wall. And a third. Then he switched gears, pivoted into the intruder and wrenched at the phaser as hard as he could.
As he had hoped, it came free in his hands. But his adversary hadn’t quite had all the fight knocked out of him. No sooner had Vigo gotten sole possession of the weapon than he felt a fist bludgeon the back of his neck.
Fireworks went off in the weapons officer’s brain, but he [77] didn’t dare falter. Driving his elbow into the other Pandrilite’s ribs, he sent him staggering backward. Then he whirled and lashed out with his foot at his adversary’s chin.
The impact snapped the intruder’s head back and sent him flying into the wall. Immediately, Vigo turned the setting on the phaser to stun—but as it turned out, he didn’t have to use it. His assailant slid to the floor and lay there at an awkward angle, unmoving.
Finally, Vigo had a chance to get his bearings. Think, he told himself, as he drew in a deep, welcome breath. If there’s one intruder, there may be more.
Just as the thought crossed his mind, he heard the rasp of voices out in the corridor. They were coming from off to Vigo’s right, where Sebring and Runj had their quarters.
At least one of the voices was deep and resonant enough to belong to a Pandrilite. And it was giving orders, the same way Vigo’s assailant had done.
Another voice sounded like it was protesting. The more Vigo listened, the more it sounded like Runj. No one else at the installation was likely to be slurring his words so badly.
Like Vigo, it seemed, the Vobilite had been assaulted in his sleep. Maybe Sebring as well.
But it took a security override to get into someone’s quarters—or else an intimate knowledge of the door-locking mechanism. How could the intruders have gotten either one of those things?
And where were the installation’s security officers? Why hadn’t they detected the intruders’ arrival in time to lock the place down?
Vigo forced himself to put such questions aside for [78] the moment, knowing he had more immediate concerns. The voices in the corridor were getting closer by the second.
“Antazi!” one of them called.
It was a Pandrilite name—probably that of the fellow who had woken Vigo up. Apparently, his compatriots wanted to know if he was all right.
Vigo answered—in his own way. Swinging out into the corridor with his phaser at the ready, he fired at the first unfamiliar face he could find—another Pandrilite, as it turned out. The beam catapulted Antazi’s friend into the air and dropped him on the deck, unconscious.
But there was another big, blue figure right behind him, a phaser in one hand and Sebring’s arm in the other. Seeing his comrade go down, he extended his weapon in Vigo’s direction—but as he fired, the human lowered his shoulder and spoiled his captor’s aim.
It was all the opening Vigo needed. His phaser beam speared the intruder and sent him skidding down the corridor, bereft of his senses.
“Nice shot,” said Sebring, disarming the Pandrilite who had woken him. He had a nasty-looking cut over one eye. “These guys friends of yours?”
Vigo knew that the human was only half-serious. Still, he said, “I’ve never seen them before in my life.”
But they were all Pandrilites. He found that curious,