Which meant they hadn’t seen him in the course of their search. And as Pierzynski had pointed out, they were a body short…
A body who could have carried thirty-three others there to the cargo bay and arranged them on the deck. Nikolas was a good friend—he had demonstrated that on the Stargazer. If his comrades had perished and he was the only survivor, he would certainly have done what he could for them.
A drop of ice water collected in the small of Picard’s back. Was that it—the solution to the mystery of how the bodies had gotten there? But if it was, it raised more questions than it answered.
For instance, how had Nikolas survived when the others had not? And if he wasn’t on the ship, a corpse among all the other corpses, where in blazes was he?
“Captain?” said Ben Zoma over the com link.
Picard licked his lips. Was it possible that when Brakmaktin left the Iktoj’ni, he had taken Nikolas with him? Why would the Nuyyad have done that? What could he have gained by it?
The captain tried to figure it out. Unfortunately, none of the answers he came up with were happy ones.
“Sir?” Ben Zoma said, his tone noticeably more urgent this time.
“I am here, Gilaad,” Picard assured him. He looked around at his companions, addressing them at the same time. “And you will be surprised to hear what we have discovered….”
Nikolas was sitting in the Ubarrak mess hall among the fourteen Ubarrak he had carried or dragged there, eating something that reminded him of fresh mahogany shavings and curdled milk, when he heard words slither through his brain: There’s a squadron coming to meet us.
Though the advisory wasn’t accompanied by a voice per se, there was no doubt in his mind where it came from. Or why.
For the better part of a second, Nikolas considered remaining where he was. After all, he wasn’t in a position to change the outcome of what was going to happen. Why give the alien the satisfaction of seeing his horror?
But he didn’t know how Brakmaktin would react if he stayed where he was. He might cut an even broader swath of destruction out of resentment. No, Nikolas thought with bitter resolve, it’s better to go up to the bridge and take my punishment. That way, others might not have to.
Pushing his chair out, he left the mess hall and made his way through a sea of mineral deposits to a lift. In a matter of moments, he had reached the bridge level, and in a few more he came out onto the bridge.
Beyond the silhouette of the alien and his attendant projections, the viewscreen was filled to its limits by the visage of an Ubarrak captain. He was thick-necked even for someone of his species, his slitted yellow eyes blazing with impatience in the cavernous sockets defined by his brow ridges.
“I repeat,” he rasped, “this is Commander Goshevik of the Tenth System Defense Fleet. Come to an immediate halt, disengage your engines, and prepare to be boarded. Otherwise, you will be destroyed.”
Of course, the battle cruiser hadn’t communicated her business in advance. That would naturally make her the object of concern, if not outright suspicion.
And Brakmaktin didn’t do a thing to allay it. He just stood there watching the screen—entertained, no doubt, by the seriousness of the Ubarrak’s warning.
Nikolas guessed that the visual communication was only one-way. Had Goshevik been able to see who was manning the bridge of the battle cruiser, he would certainly have fired already instead of persisting in his warnings.
As it was, his patience seemed to be coming to an end, if the lowering of his brow ridge was any indication. “This is your last warning,” Goshevik croaked officiously. “Disengage your engines or die.”
Brakmaktin laughed harshly, neither replying nor altering the cruiser’s course.
Abruptly, Goshevik’s face vanished from the screen, to be replaced by an image of three state-of-
the-art warships. Each was as big and powerful as the one Brakmaktin had commandeered.
And they would be in the defenders’ weapons range at any moment. But Brakmaktin didn’t seem deterred in the least. In fact, he appeared to be looking forward to the encounter.
Nikolas knew better than to counsel him to turn back. The alien hadn’t heeded his advice before. It was unlikely that he would start doing so now.
Suddenly, the viewscreen was crammed full of azure light. Obviously, the Ubarrak had had enough.
Nikolas grabbed the console beside him and braced himself, wondering how much time would elapse before he felt the impact. Not much, he thought. And he was right.
He was jerked off his feet and slammed to the deck, reopening the cut above his eye. When he raised his head and got his bearings, he saw that a control console had exploded and was spraying hot, red sparks.
As he started to get up, the ship was rocked by a second volley, and then a third. An emergency siren went off as if the ship were crying out in pain.
Nikolas was surprised. Back on the Iktoj’ni, Brakmaktin hadn’t let matters go so far. He had fended off the Ubarrak’s first volley and then made sure they didn’t release a second one.
It made the human wonder what was different this time. Was Brakmaktin allowing the cruiser to absorb this punishment for a reason? Or had he somehow underestimated the power the Ubarrak would bring against him?
As the viewscreen cleared, Nikolas saw the defenders wheel and come back for another pass. As before, a ball of blue radiance grew as it pursued them. Then the deck bucked once, twice, and again, and a second console erupted.
Nikolas had been in battles before, and had always hoped like hell that his ship would come out on top. It wasn’t just a matter of wanting to survive. He had always believed that Starfleet was the side of the good guys.
But this time, Starfleet wasn’t part of the equation. He was on an enemy ship, chained to a madman who had more power than anyone Nikolas had ever known.
More than anything else, Nikolas wanted the Ubarrak to tear them apart—to destroy the warship and pound Brakmaktin into subatomic particles. And if that meant Nikolas’s dying as well, he had no problem with that.
It was a damned sight better than living with the knowledge that he had led Brakmaktin there.
He had barely completed the thought when the defenders reeled off another barrage. Nikolas was whipped in one direction and then the other, finally winding up at the base of a bulkhead with his side throbbing and blood trickling down the side of his face.
Peering through the thickening swirls of smoke, he caught a glimpse of Brakmaktin. The alien was standing just where he had been standing before, unmoved in every sense of the word.
But the battle cruiser had taken a beating, and Nikolas didn’t have to consult a damage report to know she couldn’t take much more. Maybe it’ll end here after all, he thought.
Then Nikolas saw Brakmaktin raise his meaty hands and turn his palms toward the viewscreen, and heard the alien utter a single syllable: “No!”
It wasn’t spoken loudly or even insistently, but the bridge echoed with it as if it were a thunderclap. And by the time the echoes died down, the pounding had stopped.
The bridge was peaceful again, tranquil, serene. The only sounds that marred the stillness were the soft trills of the surviving consoles.
Nikolas felt an urge to know what the alien had done, but he suppressed it. He was afraid of the answer.
Unfortunately for him, he got it anyway. “Look,” said Brakmaktin, a savage urgency in his voice, and pushed the human toward the navigation panel with the power of his mind.
Each of the panel’s monitors showed Nikolas a different battle cruiser—one of the three flying under Commander Goshevik’s aegis. They were bristling with weaponry, their batteries pumping bright packets of destructive energy into the eternal night.
But if Goshevik’s battle cruisers were still firing, why couldn’t Nikolas feel it? Had his alien companion simply dampened the force of their attacks?
“This is what these ships looked like a minute ago,” said Brakmaktin, answering the
human’s unspoken question. “And here is what they look like now.”
Suddenly, the images changed. The battle cruisers had become so much floating slag. And the Ubarrak who had operated them were nowhere to be seen.
Nikolas felt his breath catch in his throat. He hoped the crews of those ships had had time to escape in pods, to save themselves. But he didn’t believe it—not for a moment.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brakmaktin turn to him. He looked up, bracing himself for the alien’s insufferable leer of triumph. But that’s not what he saw.
Brakmaktin looked as if he was in some kind of pain. His cruel, shapeless mouth worked for a moment, as if he couldn’t get it around the words he wanted to say. Finally, in a voice edged with misery, he said, “It is wrong…”
And then he disappeared.
Picard was still pondering what he had learned about Nikolas as he materialized on the transporter platform.
Eager to breathe the fresher air generated by the Stargazer’s life support systems, he removed his helmet. At the same time, the doors to the room opened and admitted Ben Zoma.
His expression indicated that he had something to report. “What is it?” the captain asked as he stepped down.
“Gerda’s found another ion trail.”
“Excellent,” said Picard.
“That’s the good news,” said the first officer. “The bad is that it leads us in a considerably more interesting direction than the last trail we followed.”
Picard looked at his first officer. “How interesting?”
“If we follow it long enough, it’ll land us right in the middle of Ubarrak territory.”
The captain recalled what Dojjaron had said about Brakmaktin, and how the “aberration” would need more room to create his safe-cavern. Apparently, he meant to find it among the hundreds of worlds ruled by the Ubarrak.
The Stargazer wasn’t welcome in that part of space—not while the Ubarrak and the Federation were at odds with each other. If Picard tried to follow the ion trail, he would almost certainly end up being fired upon.
Hell, he might start a war. He could imagine what McAteer would say about that.
Of course, he had another option—he could leave the matter in the laps of the Ubarrak. They were, after all, the cause of countless Starfleet fatalities over the years.
But he knew he couldn’t abandon his mission. He had to see it through to its end—not only for the sake of the Federation, but for that of the galaxy.
And for Nikolas’s sake as well, if he was in truth Brakmaktin’s prisoner.
“What do you think?” asked Ben Zoma.
“I think we should follow the trail,” said Picard, “and hope we get to Brakmaktin before the Ubarrak get to us.”
“And that discovery you said would surprise me?”
“We will discuss it in my ready room.”
This time, Nikolas didn’t have to look very far to track down Brakmaktin. He was in the armory where the human had found him the first time.
But he wasn’t suspended in midair, luxuriating in his power. He was standing in a corner, his head hanging, the side of his fist resting against the veneer-covered bulkhead.
“Get out,” he jangled.
But it wasn’t with any real conviction. And if Brakmaktin had truly wished to be rid of Nikolas, he could have made that happen easily enough.
I don’t get it, Nikolas thought. A moment ago, he was slaughtering Ubarrak without a second thought. Now he’s standing in the corner like a mopey kid.
Suddenly, the alien turned to look back at him. He heard me, Nikolas realized, and wondered stoically what price Brakmaktin would exact for his insubordination.
But the alien didn’t lash out at him. He just gave him that pained look again, as if he were a child lost in a very deep and gloomy part of the forest.
“It is wrong,” he said again, and this time his voice was different as well—quieter and slower, as if he were thinking even as he was speaking. “It is an aberration.”
“What is?” Nikolas ventured.
Brakmaktin’s silver eyes narrowed. “I am. And any offspring who issue from me.”
Nikolas didn’t understand. Was the alien feeling sorry for himself? How was that possible when he had the power to do anything he wanted?
“You’re right,” said Brakmaktin. “You don’t understand.” And he inserted the explanation into the human’s mind—as well as a great deal more.
Nikolas had been wrong about where Brakmaktin came from. He wasn’t part of the invasion force that had penetrated Federation space—the one the Iktoj’ni had been warned about.
He was a member of a species called Nuyyad, whose name sounded oddly familiar to Nikolas. But where had he heard it?
Then he remembered. The Nuyyad was the species Captain Picard had encountered on the other side of the galactic barrier. Nikolas wasn’t serving on the Stargazer yet at the time, but he had read about the mission shortly after he came aboard.
The Nuyyad were aggressors, conquerors. And they had had their sights set on the Federation—apparently, even after the Stargazer crippled their preparations for an invasion.
Brakmaktin had been part of a scouting expedition—an attempt to gauge the strength and scope of the Federation, so the Nuyyad could strike without delay once they had replaced the depot the starship had destroyed.
But a portion of the vessel’s shielding had gone down at a critical moment. Brakmaktin had been exposed to the barrier’s energies, transformed into something that grew more insanely powerful by the moment.
The barrier, Nikolas thought. Of course.
Why hadn’t he thought of it before, when he was trying to decide if the alien could have been as powerful as those legendary superbeings? Maybe because no one on the Stargazer had been exposed to it or transformed by it, so it hadn’t seemed real to him.
But Brakmaktin was real. Real enough to make a husk of everyone on the Iktoj’ni except Nikolas. Real enough to erase the minds of one Ubarrak crew and obliterate three others.
And until now, he hadn’t seemed to have any regrets. But he had only been concealing them. He had regrets so massive even he couldn’t bear the burden they imposed on him.
Not because he had murdered and maimed—the Nuyyad had no strictures against that behavior. In fact, they encouraged it. No, it wasn’t what Brakmaktin had done that he regretted. It was what he had become.
In Nuyyad culture, a warrior had to be perfect in body as well as in spirit. Any attribute that diverged from the norm was worthy of disdain, and when it bestowed on an individual an unfair advantage in battle, it was a reason for him to be cast out.
Throughout primitive times, banishment from a Nuyyad community had inevitably resulted in death. But the banished one never protested, because he was repelled by his uniqueness every bit as much as his brethren were.
Brakmaktin was as radical a variation on the Nuyyad theme as anyone could have imagined. However, he had been so taken with his power and the rate at which it was growing that he hadn’t seen himself in light of the taboo.
Until now.
“I am an aberration,” he groaned.
Nikolas didn’t argue with him. Quite the contrary. “And aberrations are cast out.”
“Yes,” said the Nuyyad, his silver eyes narrowing even more. “Cast out—as they should be.”
Nikolas chose his words carefully. “My people have had some experience with what’s happened to you. Maybe we can do something to treat your condition.”
Brakmaktin tilted his head as he studied the human. “Treat…? Are you saying your people can make me as I was?”
Truthfully, Nikolas didn’t know if that was possible. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t even think it.
What he said was, “I think they could. But they would have to examine you first. Put you through some tests.”
Nikolas was fabricating his story as he went along. But he was careful not to make it sound too pie-in-
> the-sky. Otherwise the Nuyyad would get suspicious.
Brakmaktin struck his chest with his fist and said, “I would do anything to be as I was. Anything.”
The human liked the sound of that. “We could rendezvous with a Starfleet ship. It wouldn’t take more than a day if we send a message out now.”
The Nuyyad regarded Nikolas, his brow deeply furrowed. “Starfleet is part of the Federation—I learned that from my captain. And we were to have waged war on the Federation.”
“You’re an outcast,” said Nikolas. “That’s our first concern. When we’ve addressed that, we can worry about war.”
Brakmaktin’s eyes screwed up. “You would help me after all I’ve done to you…and to your people?”
“That’s part of our job as officers in Starfleet. We’re trained to help people in need—regardless of who they are or what they’ve done.”
The alien stared at Nikolas. “What kind of warrior helps someone who killed his comrades and stole his ship?”
“We don’t consider ourselves warriors,” the human explained. “At least, not first and foremost. More than anything, we’re explorers. We’re after knowledge.”
“Knowledge is important,” Brakmaktin conceded. “Many a victory is built on it.”
“And not just victories,” said Nikolas. “Scientific discoveries. The kind that may be able to restore you to what you were before you crossed the barrier.”
“Your Federation,” the alien said thoughtfully, “is very different from the Nuyyad Alliance.”
“I imagine so,” said the human, pleased with where this was going. “With a little luck—”
“It is weak,” Brakmaktin added, “and vulnerable. I see now why my people made it a target.”
Nikolas swallowed. “I wouldn’t call it vulnerable, exactly…”
“Of course not. You are a product of it, which is why you yourself are weak.”
The human felt a surge of resentment, but he didn’t let it sway him from his objective. “Weak or not, we would like to help you. If you like, I can contact Starfleet right now.”
The Nuyyad mulled the offer for what seemed like a long time. Then he said, “I will consider it.”
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