"A Romulan warrior does not fear great odds," said Valak. "Are you afraid, Picard?"

"I have been afraid for my crew and for my ship ever since this whole thing started," said Picard. "Your arrogance and your inflexibility and your d.a.m.ned Romulan aggression will get all of us killed."

"I am not afraid to die."

"Nor am I, if it is for a good cause," Picard said. "But what cause is being served here? The occupants of this vessel are merely defending themselves against an invader, and that invader is you, Valak. I cannot say I do not sympathize with them."

Valak watched the lights drawing ever closer, moving in from all directions. Although he tried, he could not quite hide his anxiety. He's young, Picard thought, and undeniably a brilliant officer, but he has never truly been put to the test before. The might of the Romulan war machine and his skillful use of it had made his early victories easy. But now, perhaps for the first time in his life, Valak was truly under pressure, caught in a crisis that seemed completely beyond his ability to control.

Over half of the Romulans who had beamed down to the ark had disappeared, and those who remained had lost confidence in Valak. They kept glancing toward him nervously, looking for leadership, but Valak did not know what to do. Faced with what clearly appeared to be overwhelming odds, he had dug in like a cornered animal and prepared to make a stand. He either could not or would not consider any other options.

"Whatever we accomplish or fail to accomplish here no longer makes any difference," Valak said in a fatalistic tone. "When none of the away teams return to the Syrinx, Lord Kazanak will realize my mission here has failed and he will obliterate the ark. So either way, we shall probably all die here."

"Then why not attempt to negotiate?" Picard said. "What have you got to lose?"

Valak stared at him curiously. "You know, Picard, I have always sought to understand humans, in particular, the top field commanders of Starfleet, because I believed the best among the humans had the most to teach. I see now I was wrong. There is nothing I can learn from you, and I do not think I shall ever truly understand you. I expected you to resist me to your dying breath, to fight me with every last measure of energy you possessed. I expected you to be a difficult and challenging opponent. On all those counts, you have been a disappointment. I did not think your spirit could be broken so easily."

"You are correct in at least one thing," Picard replied. "For all your scholarship, you have failed to understand us. When pressed to the last extremity, humans will fight, and you will find them formidable opponents. But we have learned that violence and aggression are the least desirable options, and we employ them only when no other choice is left. When you seized my ship, you closed off as many options for resistance as possible, but you never pushed us to the point where we had no choice except to fight or die."

"I was merely determined to take you alive, if possible," said Valak.

"And as long as there is a possibility, however slight, that we can resolve our differences through negotiation without destroying one another, I am determined to pursue it," said Picard.

"Negotiation is the way of cowards," Valak said contemptuously.

"No," said Picard. "It is the way of an enlightened species, Valak. For all your advancement, you Romulans still seek to subjugate and conquer rather than to cooperate and coexist in peace with others. The Federation does not want war with the Romulan Empire; we have not yet exhausted all the options for peace. And you Romulans hesitate to begin an all-out war with the Federation because for all your contempt of us and our so-called weakness, you are wary of our strength. We may never leave this place alive, but as long as we are alive, there is a chance that we can resolve this situation without violence. Even if it is only a slight chance, it is worth taking. Violence is easy, Valak. You say you seek the stimulation of a challenge. Then choose the more challenging alternative."

"Unfortunately I do not believe there are any alternatives in this situation," Valak said.

"Then let me try to find one," said Picard. "Let me go out there and see if I can communicate with them."

"Let you try to run away, you mean?" said Valak, misinterpreting the request. "No, Picard, you are my prisoner, and my prisoner you shall remain. If I accomplish nothing else, I shall at least have the satisfaction of having beaten you."

One of Valak's men shouted and fired his disruptor. Immediately the others started firing as well. There was movement out there, but they could not really see what they were shooting at. The Romulans were all keyed up and they poured their fire out into the darkness. It was impossible to tell if they were hitting anything, but Picard heard shouts, in Romulan, and realized they were coming from the figures out there in the darkness. And then it hit him. In the darkness.

"Cease firing! Cease firing!" Valak shouted. "You fools, you are shooting at our own people!"

The firing died down as Valak's confused warriors stared out into the slowly dissipating darkness. Picard glanced up and saw that the ark was entering its day cycle.

"Commander Valak?" a voice shouted at them.

"Talar?" As Valak lowered his weapon, Picard suddenly lunged toward him. He seized Valak's disruptor just below its emitting cone and quickly wrenched it out of his grasp. He had moved so quickly that before the startled Romulan even had a chance to react, Picard was behind him, twisting his arm up behind his back.

Valak cried out with surprise and pain, and the other warriors turned toward him, their eyes widening with shock when they saw Picard with their commander at his mercy.

"Tell them to drop their weapons," said Picard, twisting his arm up behind him and reaching around his neck with his other hand to press the emitting cone of the disruptor up beneath Valak's chin.

"Never!" Valak said. "Shoot!" he called out to his warriors.

"If you shoot, then your commander will die with me!" Picard called out.

They hesitated.

"Shoot!" Valak shouted at them, as Picard started to back away with him. "Shoot, I command it! Shoot us both!"

Valak struggled against Picard's grasp, but Picard twisted his arm up even higher, causing what had to be excruciating pain.

"Hold your fire!" Talar called out.

Valak continued to struggle, forcing Picard to apply more pressure. There was a loud crack and the Romulan gasped with pain as his arm snapped. He ceased to struggle momentarily, allowing Picard to quickly shift his grip, encircling Valak's throat with his arm while keeping the other warriors covered with the disruptor.

"I have no time to deal with your heroics," Picard said as he applied pressure with his forearm against Valak's throat, choking him. "Stay where you are!" he shouted as the warriors started to move toward him.

Picard continued to back away slowly as Valak's struggles diminished. Then the Romulan's body sagged as he lost consciousness. Picard waited a moment, continuing to apply pressure to make sure Valak wasn't faking. Then he quickly bent down and swung the Romulan up onto his shoulder firemanstyle. He continued to back away slowly, covering the others with Valak's weapon.

The Romulans slowly moved forward and spread out, knowing he couldn't cover all of them. Then, one by one, they collapsed to their knees, dropping their weapons and grabbing their heads before they fell to the ground and remained motionless. Only Talar remained standing, gazing at Picard steadily as all of the missing Romulans came up behind him.

Picard felt Valak's deadweight across his shoulders and realized that he could not run while carrying the heavy Romulan. He would never be able to outdistance them. He felt absolutely helpless. There was nothing he could do.

And suddenly he realized that he was living out his dream.

The heavy weight on his shoulders, being separated from his crew and powerless to help them, fighting the instinctive urge to run ... this was the dream. He felt his stomach muscles knotting up and decided that whatever happened next, he would face it his way, the way in which he had been trained, the way he had always believed in. He put the disruptor down, then eased Valak off his shoulders and stood up straight.

"I come in peace," he said, holding his arms out from his sides to show that his hands were empty.

And as he watched, Talar and the others began to change.

"I am sick and tired of your ceaseless whining and complaining!" Worf shouted, angrily.

"And I'm sick and tired of you!" Arthur shouted back. "Ever since they brought us here, you've done nothing but give orders! You're not the captain! Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are, anyway?"

"I am the senior officer!" Worf shouted. "It is my duty to take charge in the absence of Captain Picard and Commander Riker!"

"Well, I don't remember anyone putting you in charge!" Arthur replied angrily.

"You are being insubordinate, crewman!"

"And your stupid plan to escape is going to get us all killed!"

"Be silent, fool!"

By now they had the attention of the guards, who had started moving in toward them, their weapons held before them. At the back of the crowd that had gathered around Worf and Arthur, Tyler waited, watching the Romulan guards intently. The people around him moved in toward the argument, extending themselves diagonally in a way that effectively screened Tyler from the guards' view. He started inching toward the back of the shuttle bay.

"I will not be silent!" Arthur shouted. "I have no wish to die simply because you want to be a d.a.m.ned hero! If you want a pointless warrior's death in battle merely to satisfy your stupid Klingon pride, then that's your business, but there are children here, and I will not allow you to endanger their lives!"

"You will not allow it?"

"That's right! I've had it up to here with your d.a.m.ned Klingon arrogance!"

"Shut your mouth, crewman, or I will shut it for you!"

"Take your best shot, you Klingon freak! I've had about all I'm going to take from you!"

Worf snarled and swung at Arthur, connecting with his jaw. Arthur went down, but he was up in an instant, charging the Klingon in a headlong rush. He ran at him full tilt and hit him in a football tackle, carrying him backwards to the deck. The others surged around them, shouting and calling out encouragement.

"Get him, Worf!"

"Take him, Arthur! Hit him!"

"Kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"Give it to him!"

The guards ran toward the prisoners, clubbing them with their weapons and trying to push their way through the crowd to reach the two antagonists. Tyler sprinted to the bulkhead and ran toward the shuttles at full speed, not even daring to glance back and see if any of the guards had spotted him. He expected them to fire some warning shots or, worse yet, fire into the crowd-a risk they all knowingly faced-but instead, the overconfident guards actually waded into the crowd of prisoners-an unexpected bonus that changed everything. The maintenance panel for the outer bay doors would have to wait for now. Two of the guards had remained behind, by the entrance to the shuttle bay, but their attention, at least for the moment, was on the conflict. If even one of them happened to glance in his direction, Tyler knew he'd be spotted in an instant and it would all be over. Right now, speed was everything.

He had taken off his boots and socks, and he ran barefoot so as not to make any noise, although his footsteps would have been drowned out by all the shouting anyway. He sprinted like a track star, pumping with his elbows, and managed to reach the shuttles parked at the far end of the bay without being seen. He plunged through the open hatchway of the nearest shuttlecraft and jumped into the pilot's seat. Whatever you do, he thought, don't give me a hard time starting, please. He hit the b.u.t.ton for the engines and as they whined to life, he risked a glance out the front viewport.

The two Romulan guards who had remained near the doors looked toward him with astonishment and he saw them shout out to the others, but a full-scale melee had broken out at the far end of the shuttle bay. The other guards suddenly found themselves being attacked by the prisoners and borne down by the sheer weight of their numbers.

"Come on! Come on!" said Tyler, gritting his teeth.

The shuttlecraft rose off the deck as the two guards raised their weapons, and Tyler slammed the stick forward. The Romulans fired. One of them rushed his shot and it missed, but the second guard's shot struck the shuttlecraft. Tyler felt it rock as it moved forward, picking up speed as it accelerated toward the two guards. They started backpedaling toward the doors, but before they could fire again, Tyler banked the shuttlecraft sharply, trapping them between its hull and the wall of the shuttle bay. He felt the impact as he struck the wall, crushing the two guards against the bulkhead. Then he shoved the stick forward once again and the shuttle flew ahead, just above the floor, until he brought it even with the entrance to the shuttle bay and landed it, wedging it firmly against the doors.

He then jumped out and raced over to where the two guards had fallen, knocked out by the impact of the shuttle. He grabbed their disruptors and ran back toward the others. With the crowd surging all around them, the Romulans had no opportunity to fire their weapons. All they could do was lash out, using them as clubs. A number of the hostages had fallen, bleeding from their wounds, but a number of the guards had fallen as well.

Three guards managed to break free of the crowd and raised their weapons to fire. Tyler fired the two disruptors, one in either hand, and dropped the Romulans.

Worf had already killed three guards with his bare hands, and as he tore another one off Arthur, he felt a jarring impact on his neck and shoulder and sank to his knees. As the Romulan behind him raised his disruptor to finish him off, a fierce, high-pitched scream cut through the other noise as Alexander landed on the Romulan's back. The guard struggled to throw him off. Worf got to his feet and smashed a hard right into the guard's chest, crushing his rib cage. The Romulan went down. Worf looked at his son and nodded proudly, then swept up the guard's weapon and waded back into the fray.

It was over quickly, and all of the guards were dead. They had grown overconfident from watching over prisoners who had been docile up to this point. They had never expected all of them, even the women and children, to turn on them. As Picard had told Valak, when pushed to the last extremity, humans would fight, and when they did, they were formidable foes.

Worf quickly took charge, ordering some of the crewmen to see to the wounded while Tyler and Arthur disabled the bridge controls for the outer bay doors. Then Worf started herding all the others toward the shuttles and a.s.signing some of the men to help carry the wounded. Tyler had said the guards by the door did not have time to raise an alarm, but he knew that the Romulans could discover their escape attempt at any moment. They would discover it for certain the moment the computer registered the malfunction as the bridge controls for the outer bay doors were disabled.

"Quickly, quickly!" he urged the others. "Get aboard the shuttles! There is no time to waste!"

"Sir," one of the medical corpsmen said, "we've got at least three dead and six critically injured."

"We must take them all with us," Worf said. "Hurry! Get them aboard the shuttles."

"There's too many of us, sir," said one of the other crewmen. "With that other shuttle blocking the entrance doors, we've only got three shuttles left. They'll be dangerously overcrowded."

"We have no other choice," said Worf. "We cannot leave the wounded and the dead behind. Their sacrifice was not made in vain. They will get off this ship!"

"Understood, sir."

As the hostages boarded the shuttles, Tyler and Arthur worked feverishly at the maintenance panel. "Come on, Tyler, for G.o.d's sake!" said Arthur. "Can't you hurry it up? If they open the outer doors before we're ready, we've all had it."

"I'm doing the best I can," said Tyler. "This isn't the Enterprise, you know. I've got to figure out how these d.a.m.n circuits are wired and I can't exactly run a diagnostic. Now shut the h.e.l.l up and let me think!"

Worf came up to check on their progress. "The shuttlecraft are almost filled," he said. "We do not have much time. Perhaps you should simply concentrate on opening the outer doors."

"No," said Tyler, "the bridge controls have to be disabled before we can open up the outer doors ourselves, otherwise they're liable to override us from the bridge before the shuttles can get out."

Worf nodded. "Very well. Do the best you can."

"There! I think that does it," Tyler said. "I hope."

"We'll find out soon enough," Arthur said tensely.

"Okay, is everyone aboard?" asked Tyler.

"Go on, sir," Arthur said to Worf.

"Good luck," said Worf, running back toward the shuttle.

"You go with him," Tyler said to Arthur.

"But what if-"

"Go! Just get that shuttle over here fast, so that when I open up the outer doors, I can get inside in one h.e.l.l of a hurry."

"All right," said Arthur. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"So do I. Now get!"

Tyler waited until everyone was aboard and the shuttlecraft had started their engines. Two of the shuttles had their hatches closed, ready to move out. The other one still had its hatch open, with Worf standing in the opening, watching. As all three shuttlecraft lifted off, it was obvious that they were overloaded. They rocked slightly as they rose unsteadily several feet above the deck. The shuttle with the open hatch moved closer to Tyler. "Now, Tyler!" shouted Worf.

"Well ... here goes nothing," Tyler said, as he made the connection. There was the heavy sound of machinery engaging, and the outer bay doors began to open.

At almost the same time, two things happened. The alarm siren went off throughout the ship as the bridge controls registered the malfunction, and the air in the shuttle bay started to rush out into the vacuum of s.p.a.ce. Tyler leapt for the shuttle as soon as he heard the machinery gears engage, but the suction of the air rushing out the shuttle bay caught him almost at once. For an instant he actually hovered in midair, the forward momentum of his leap halted by the suction, and Worf reached out and grabbed his wrist just before he was sucked out. Holding on to the shuttle for all he was worth with one hand, while clutching Tyler with the other, Worf strained against the pull as the air inside the shuttle bay whooshed out into s.p.a.ce.

"You've got to close the hatch!" Tyler shouted. "Let me go!"

Worf grimaced as he struggled to pull Tyler in. "We all ... go ... together!" he shouted over the noise of the air rushing out. Then Arthur was behind Worf, being held by a chain of his fellow crew members as he leaned out and grabbed Tyler's arm just above where Worf was holding on to his wrist. Together they managed to haul him in.

"The hatch!" Worf said. "Quickly!"

It was already closing, and the other shuttles began moving out through the doors, as soon as the gap grew wide enough. Moments later all three shuttlecraft had left the ship and were moving toward the Enterprise. Tyler and Worf both lay breathless on the floor of the shuttle, surrounded by their crewmates as the lifesupport system in the small vessel pumped in air to breathe. Tyler looked up at Worf and sighed with relief. "Thanks," he said. "I owe you one."

"You may buy me a drink when we get back aboard the Enterprise," said Worf.

Tyler smiled. "Deal," he said.

Riker and Geordi had to break into the arms lockers in the ordnance section of the Independence, but their efforts yielded them an unexpected bonus. They found two unopened crates of early Type I phasers and a crate of carefully packed and sealed sarium krellide power cells. It was all Geordi La Forge could do not to whoop with joy when he opened up that crate and found all the seals still intact. Properly sealed and stored, sarium krellide power cells held their charge indefinitely, and even after thirty years, the intact seals meant that the cells had not decayed.

We're in business, Riker thought, as he gave La Forge a thumbs-up. Now we've got at least a lighting chance. As the others broke open the seals and started to load the cells into the phasers, Riker said a silent prayer of thanks to the supply officer of the Independence. And he resolved never again to give his own supply officer a hard time about redundant requisitions. This one had probably saved their lives.

Riker helped them unpack the phasers, break the seals on the power cells, which came a half dozen to the pack, load them into the phasers, and then place the charged phasers back in the crates. They each took one phaser for themselves and placed them safely in the outer pockets of their suits. Then, carrying the crates of phasers, they started to make their way back to the Enterprise.