Without hesitating, Picard pointed to the viewscreen, where the hulking Connharakt dwarfed Counselor Troi's tiny shuttlecraft. "Target," he cried, "and fire!"
The taste of blood in her mouth, Troi tried to lift herself offthe deck of the Pike. Abruptly, she felt a strong pair of hands pull her up the rest of the way.
Turning, she saw that it was Colossus who was providing the assistance. He wasn't just lifting her, either. He was using his metallic body to shield her from a shower of hot sparks.
The shuttle's cabin was in disarray, her control panels sputtering, plumes of smoke wafting forward from the ruin of her propulsion system. However, everyone was still alive.
At least, for the moment.
"Are you all right, Counselor?" asked Lt. Glavin, one of the security officers who had accompanied her to Xhaldia's surface.
"She's just fine," Wolverine interjected. He eyed Lt. Stephenson, the shuttle's helmsman. "Now, if it's okay with you, soldier, I'd just as soon get outta here before those bozos lambaste us a second time."
"I'd be glad to," said Stephenson, "if we still had engines, or even thrusters. But that blast threw everything offline."
Troi peered out the forward observation port, where the Draa'kon vessel blotted out halfthe stars. In a matter of moments, its disruptor beams would lance out at them again and finish the job they started.
Suddenly, the counselor saw the Connharakt raked with blood-red phaser beams. The Draa'kon ship's shields seemed to flicker under the impact.
It gave Troi an idea. It was a longshot, granted, but nothing short of a longshot would save them at that point.
She approached a small secondary console in the aft quarters of the shuttle. Its side was blackened, but it seemed basically intact.
The counselor tried to touch it, but it was too hot for her to handle. She turned to Colossus, whose metallic body seemed capable of withstanding almost anything-including intense heat.
"Hurry!" she told him. "I need you!"
Picard was about to give the order to fire again when the Connharakt spat another green disruptor bolt at the Pike.
The bolt's energy enveloped the shuttle, obscuring it from the captain's view. Then the craft appeared again-but only long enough for him to watch it explode in a spectacle of white light and antimatter-fueled fury.
My god, thought Picard, his heart sinking in his chest.
He stared at the viewscreen, where all that was left of the Pike was a raggedly expanding collection of debris. He tried to come to grips with that fact, to absorb it.
Troi ... dead? It didn't seem possible.
The counselor had been with him since he took command of the EnterpriseD years earlier. She hadn't just been a skilled and respected colleague. She had been a close and valued friend.
And now ...
The captain swallowed. He felt empty. Numb.
Nor was it only Troi he had lost in the explosion. Wolverine and Colossus had been destroyed along with her-and five of his surviving security officers as well.
"Sir?" said Lt. Yeowell, who was manning Ops in Data's absence. Picard turned to him.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
Yeowell smiled hopefully at him-a strange thing to do at such a time. "Sir, I picked up evidence of transporter activity just before the shuttle was torn apart."
Picard looked at him, ready to grasp at any straw. "Transporter activity?" he repeated.
"Yes, sir. But the away team didn't transport back to the Enterprise."
The captain looked at him. "Then ..."
He turned to the viewscreen, where the Connharakt seemed to be veering away from the Enterprise. Was it possible ... ?
"They've beamed onto the bridge of the Draa'kon ship," Yeowell reported, confirming Picard's suspicion.
"Hold your fire," the captain told Ensign Suttles.
After all, their own people were at risk on the Connharakt. All they could do for the moment was wait and see what happened.
High Implementor Isadjo grunted as he studied his scanplate, where one of the Connharakt's pale-green disruptor beams had finally stabbed an Enterprise shuttle craft.
Before the Implementor's eyes, the scanplate blanched with white light. When it cleared, there was hardly anything left of the enemy craft. Vessel and crew had been destroyed.
It was meager compensation for what Picard and his people had done to the Draa'kon's plans on Xhaldia. However, Isadjo had yet to expend his energy stores. With a little luck, he would yet wreak havoc on- "Implementor!" roared one of his officers.
Scowling, Isadjo turned in his command pod-and took in a sight he had never imagined he would see, even in his wildest lodge visions. As difficult as it was to believe, his bridge was peppered with Enterprise intruders.
As the Implementor watched, spellbound, the enemy aimed their weapons and fired. His own people did the same. There were shouts of pain and surprise, and a series of thuds as Draa'kon bodies hit the deck.
In the melee, an energy inverter was punctured. It spewed thick, yellow gas across the bridge, making it difficult to see anything-except, of course, the energy bolts that continued to lance in every direction.
Slipping his own weapon free of its sheathe, Isadjo got up from his pod and peered into the hissing, yellow miasma, waiting for an enemy to show himself. None did. But a moment later, one of the Implementor's officers came hurtling out of the fog, his face bleeding freely from four parallel cuts.
Isadjo cursed and took a step forward, trying to catch sight of a likely target. But before he could get very far, another of his officers spun free of the gas cloud, his tunic ripped and bloody.
The Implementor didn't like what was happening. His gill-flaps fluttered uncontrollably. His lips pulled back and a cry of rage filled his cranial cavities.
"Show yourselves!" he demanded of the enemy. "Face me like warriors!"
As if in response to Isadjo's order, a trio emerged from the fog. One was Ettojh, his second-in-command, who was staggering backward under the influence of a powerful blow. Another was Cyggelh, his helmsman.
And the third ...
The third was a figure clad in yellow and blue, with a mask covering half his face. The invader was grinning, as if he liked nothing better than fighting for his life in close and dangerous quarters.
He wasn't armed with a directed-energy device like his comrades. In fact, all he had in the way of weapons were the long, sharp clawlike things protruding from his knuckles.
Nonetheless, he used them effectively. Before the Implementor's eyes, the yellow-and-blue one slashed Ettojh's disruptor from his grasp and delivered a savage kick to his midsection.
Isadjo's helmsman took advantage of the moment to fire, but the invader ducked and evaded the blast. Then he leaped on the Draa'kon like a ravening beast, sending him slamming into a bulkhead with skull-rattling force.
As the helmsman slumped to the deck, Ettojh tried to grasp the intruder from behind. That too proved to be a mistake, as the yellow-and-blue one flipped Ettojh over his back.
Before Isadjo's second could get to his feet, the invader was on the move again. The Implementor saw a rib-cracking kick, followed by a backhanded swipe of the masked one's claws, and Ettojh went skidding limply across the deck.
Then the invader turned to Isadjo himself. "Hey," he said, "I'll bet you're the creepy crawler in charge. I mean, you are the biggest, fattest guy around."
Isadjo trained his weapon on the madman and sent a bolt of green fury at him. A moment later, the masked one was gone, enveloped again by the billowing gas cloud.
There, thought the Implementor. That would teach him to take the Draa'kon lightly.
Suddenly, the invader came flying out of the cloud at him, all feet and claws and savage grin. There was no time to run, no time to fire again. There wasn't even time for Isadjo to brace himself as the enemy's boot heel smashed him right between the eyes.
Captain Picard eyed the image of the Connharakt on his viewscreen, waiting for a sign.
"The Onizuka is entering Shuttle Bay One," Rager reported. "And the Voltaire is hailing us."
"What's the Voltaire's position?" asked Picard.
"Off the port bow," said Rager, "at a distance of half-a-million miles."
"Open a channel," the captain instructed her.
It was Worf's voice that came to them. "How can we help?" he asked.
Picard explained the situation. "Right now," he concluded, "the best any of us can do is stand by."
The Klingon didn't like the idea, but he bowed to it. "Standing by," he agreed.
Almost a minute went by. The captain took a breath, let it out.
Then he heard a small exclamation from Suttles at tactical. "Sir," said the ensign, "I have an audio message from the Connharakt."
The captain frowned, preparing himself for anything. "Put it through," he responded.
For a heartbeat, there was silence. Then Picard heard a familiar voice.
"Captain," it said, "this is Counselor Troi. I'm happy to tell you we have taken control of the Connharakt."
Picard looked at Rager, then at Yeowell. "Taken control?" he repeated, savoring the moment.
"That's correct, sir. High Implementor Isadjo and his bridge officers put up quite a fight, but in the end they were no match for us. Wolverine was particularly persuasive in that regard."
"I see," said the captain, supressing a smile. "May I assume, then, that the Connharakt will no longer be attempting to split us like an overripe melon?"
He could imagine the counselor grinning at his gallows humor. "You may indeed make that assumption, sir."
Picard nodded. Once in a while, one of his officers performed a feat that simply astounded him. This was one of those feats.
"Good work," he told Troi.
The answer had an undercurrent of pride in it-and fatigue as well. "Thank you, sir."
Chapter Thirty-two.
PICARD TOOK NOTE of the tricorder in his chief medical officer's hand as he followed her through the interlocking doors of Holodeck Two. When the doors closed behind them, he found himself in a large, well-lit room with the stark, sterile appearance of a laboratory.
At the far end of the room, hovering in some kind of antigravity unit, a man was peering into a microscope. Taking note of his visitors' entrance, he looked up from his work.
"Dr. Crusher," Xavier said, his voice calm and commanding at the same time. "I've been wondering when you would return."
Then he turned his gaze on the captain, and a flicker of something like amusement crossed his features. Nor was it difficult for Picard to see why. As the doctor had warned him, he and the professor bore a passing resemblance to one another.
Xavier touched a button and his antigravity unit came closer to the captain and his colleague. He stopped it within a meter of them and studied Picard more closely.
"Mon semblable, mon frre," the professor said.
The captain raised an eyebrow. "The Wasteland, I believe."
Xavier nodded. "It pleases me that Eliot has survived into your twenty-fourth century. Indeed, now that I think about it, it pleases me that he exists in your continuum at all."
"He and a great many others, I am sure," said Picard. He came forward and extended his hand. "My name is Jean-Luc Picard, Professor. I command the vessel on which this holodeck is located."
"Yes," said Xavier, glancing at Crusher. "The doctor has spoken of you-highly, I might add. However, I imagine you came to speak of something other than poetry."
"That's true," the captain told him. "On the other hand, I'm hardly qualified to assist you and Dr. Crusher in your research."
His curiosity piqued, the professor tilted his head slightly. But he didn't press. He waited for his visitor to go on.
"As Dr. Crusher has no doubt informed you," Picard said, "your X-Men are my guests at the moment. In fact, they proved helpful when complications arose in our dealings with the Xhaldians."
"I am quite pleased with them," Xavier admitted.
"And they with you," the captain replied. "In fact, that was what spurred me to speak with you. Not one of them has missed an opportunity to refer to you in the most glowing and reverent terms-even when the individual in question may not be reverent by nature."
The professor grunted softly. "I believe I know of whom you speak-and, yes, he often surprises people on that count. But ..."
"I just wanted to meet you," said Picard. "And applaud what you've done. Given the X-Men's disparate personalities, it cannot have been easy."
Xavier took the praise in stride. "No more difficult, I imagine, than commanding a starship with more than a thousand people on board."
The captain smiled. "Touche." He looked at Crusher. "I suppose I should leave you and the doctor to your work now."
"She tells me it's of some importance," the professor replied, clearly understating the case.
"It was a pleasure making your acquaintance," said Picard. And with that, he turned to go.