"So there I was, struggling for air against a tidal wave a thousand feet high, the Starfleet commander himself in one hand while I swam with the other, when what rears its ugly head not ten feet in front of me but ol' Ogopogo herself, all five-hundred feet of her, a maw full of razor sharp teeth, snorting death from her nostrils! Well, that brave Starfleet commander took one look at her and fainted dead away, but luckily I still had my trusty harpoon gun in hand, so I--"
"Wait a minute! I thought you said you were swimming with the other hand," observed One-eyed Tom from across the poker table.
"Of course," replied West hurriedly. "Swimming with one hand while holding the harpoon gun in the other." He casually adjusted the cards in his hand while surreptitiously eyeing his opponents, gauging their reactions to the slight lapse in continuity.
"No, no," corrected One-legged Tom from One-eyed Tom's left. "Ya said ya had the Starfleet bloke in the other hand."
"Well, of course, I had him in the other hand," shot back West impatiently. "But I let him go to pull out the gun."
"Was that after the Starfleeter fainted out in the middle o' Blue Lake?" asked One-armed Tom sarcastically from One-eyed Tom's right, which the other odd-limbed Toms espoused with a round of derisive snickers.
"Hey, wait another sec," interjected Three-armed Thomm. "I thought the tidal wave was caused by a meteor, not some imaginary lake monster!"
Making a great show of trying to keep his temper, West folded his cards and laid them face-down on the poker table, then looked slowly up at the four quasi-limbed beings facing him with their comically grim countenances. "By the Great Bird of the Galaxy, you boys are dense!" he scolded in a pitying tone of voice designed to anger, because he knew that angry men didn't think straight. "Ogopogo is no figment of my imagination, gentlebeings. Plenty of people have seen the lake monster ever since there's been people living on this planet." He'd been studying the quartet all through their poker game, so he was confident that this would be sufficient distraction to divert their attention from his colorful retelling of his harrowing adventure with Commodore Hunter. Sure enough, he was right.
"Yar, I seen 'er once meself," said One-legged Tom.
"Aww, yer as full of poodoo as West there," countered Three-armed Thomm, his normally thin voice rising to an even more nasal pitch in the excitement. His bulbous, orange, Edoan head bobbed and dipped in agitation.
One-legged Tom slammed his cards down on the table and spun to face Three-armed Thomm. "Ya callin' me a liar, offworlder?" he shot angrily.
"Look who's calling who offworlder, you blue-skinned pile of tribble droppings!" shouted Three-armed Thomm, slapping down his own cards and almost upsetting the card table. He stood abruptly on his three spindly legs squaring off against the Andorian, but One-legged Tom rose to match Thomm's stance. One-eyed Tom and One-armed Tom shoved back their chairs, hurriedly calculating which combination of missing/extra limbs would prove most advantageous and therefore whose side they should take in the inevitable altercation.
West meanwhile, was making himself as small as possible, inching toward the edge of his seat, ready to sprint for the door as soon as the fighting started, intent on using the chaos to escape before the others remembered that it was his colorful storytelling that was the start of all this in the first place. Some people just don't appreciate a good imagination, he thought to himself.
One-legged Tom wasn't in the mood to be called a pile of tribble droppings, and he explained his inclination to Three-armed Thomm with a wild roundhouse swing to the head. Three-armed Thomm's Edoan reflexes easily allowed him to dodge the attack, and to lunge at the Andorian before One-legged Tom regained his balance. The two staggered against the card table, knocking it into the other two Toms and West. The cards which West still held in his hand were flung away as he flailed about trying to keep from tipping over backwards in his chair, and fate took care of the rest. Amid the clatter of poker chips and crash of empty beer bottles, the cards landed face-up in the center of the table.
The small room suddenly became as still as a graveyard. All four Toms were frozen in mid swing, staring at the cards. West saw his life flash in front of his eyes. One-eyed Tom was the first to break the silence.
"Well I'll be a mugato's uncle!" he declared. "It looks like we've got a cheater here, boys." He released One-armed Tom's furry throat and lowered his fist, and the other Toms followed suit, turning their full attention on West and his cards.
"Four aces, West?" asked One-eyed Tom, pointing at the cards. "That's a pretty amazing hand." He stepped closer to the table and reached to flip his own five cards over. Two sevens, two fours. And an ace. "Last I checked there were only four aces in a deck." He dropped the cards and took a threatening step towards the still-seated West. "Got any last words, human?"
West grinned cherubically. "Anyone up for a good game of fizbin?" he asked, then dove for the table. Grabbing two of the legs, he upended it in Three-armed Thomm's face, sending him staggering back against One-armed Tom. In the same motion, West yanked One-legged Tom's wooden peg leg out from under him, snapping it off at the amputated knee and used it to come up One-eyed Tom's blind side and smack him in the head with it. Seeing his chance, he dropped his makeshift club and made a mad dash for the door.
Three-armed Thomm was there however, blocking that avenue of retreat, so West changed course slightly and dove headlong for the window. With an ear-splitting crash of breaking glass, he dove through the pane and out into the night air. Too late he remembered that their little poker game was being held in a second story room above the saloon, so flap his arms as vigorously as he might, he didn't fly away but plummeted earthward like a neutronium brick.
Luckily for him, but very unluckily for them, a pair of burly dock workers were loitering directly beneath the window smoking their cigarettes, and served very nicely to break West's fall. He handed with a mighty Oofff! right on their necks, and all three went down in a bruised pile.
From above, West heard shouted curses from the Toms, who were leaning out the broken window and making angry gestures, but there was no time to recover from his impromptu plunge. A phaser beam from one of the angry Toms above struck the dirt at West's feet, blasting a smoking hole in the street, and the burly dock workers were recovering from having a full-grown man land on their heads.
West picked himself up, favoring his left leg which he'd twisted in the fall, and ran down the street as fast as he could, two burly dock workers and four dim-witted aliens all named Tom hot on his heels. He had only one chance to escape a lynching. Ducking through a narrow alleyway, he headed in as straight line as he could for the small spaceport at the outskirts of town where his ship waited for him.
As long as he had the cover of these dark alleys and recesses in and amongst the buildings, he was relatively safe, but there was a long stretch of open tarmac between the last building of Lake Town and his ship which he'd have to run across during which time he'd be a sitting duck for whoever had that phaser. Yanking out a small remote from an inner jacket pocket as he ran, he began punching in commands. He had one last surprise for the Toms.
Reaching the edge of the tarmac and ignoring protests from his twisted leg, he vaulted nimbly over the flimsy chain-link fence running along its perimeter, and sprinted the last hundred yards to his goal, the squat ship laying in the middle of the field, the S.S. Rocinanté
Immediately, phaser bursts began flying all around him -- the Toms had caught up with him. Their mistake, thought West triumphantly, and pressed a stud on the remote he carried. Suddenly, the sizzling hiss of the phaser beams was joined by a new racket, a staccato clatter coming from the direction of the Rocinanté. From atop his ship, a small turret had emerged and swiveled with deadly accuracy towards the group chasing West. Twin autocannons sprayed out a hail of bullets, cutting up the tarmac mere feet in front of them.
The Toms and the burly dock workers skidded to a halt, still shouting angry slurs at West, his mother, and the horse he rode in on, but were smart enough (surprisingly) not to challenge West's defenses. Autocannons might be outdated technology, but a depleted uranium slug ripping through your innards would kill you just as dead as a particle-beam weapon set on 'disrupt'.
West reached the ramp underneath the Rocinanté, then turned. Waving to the six enraged and frustrated pursuers, he called back to them. "No hard feeling, boys! Better luck next time!" Then he ducked up into the ship, the ramp rose off the tarmac, sealing him in, and moments later, the Rocinanté lifted away in a billowing cloud of dust, leaving behind six beaten and bruised men vowing revenge.
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