But what she would remember was Ben Zoma’s kindness. Even more than before, she was glad she had decided to transfer to the Stargazer.
Picard was going over the Gary Mitchell logs yet again, hoping to glean some tiny but useful bit of data he had missed, when he heard the chime sound at the door of his ready room.
“Come,” he said.
As soon as the door slid aside, Serenity walked in. It didn’t take a former lover to see that she was not happy.
“I understand you had a discussion with Dojjaron,” she said, not even bothering to sit down.
“I suppose he discussed it with you,” said Picard.
“He did.”
The captain smiled. “I am surprised he let you near him. After all, if you had touched him, there would have been hell to pay.”
“He’s a Nuyyad, Jean-Luc. Surely you’ve learned that people from different worlds have different customs.”
That rankled. “He went after one of my crewmen, Serenity. Should I have ignored the fact?”
“I don’t think you appreciate what it took for him to come here, alone and unarmed.”
Picard shrugged. “He had plenty of motivation, if Brakmaktin is the aberration Dojarron claims he is.”
“But that doesn’t mean it was easy for him. You have to understand how he thinks—how his species thinks. If we were the Nuyyad of another clan, we would have roasted him on a spit and fed him to our pets by now.”
“So he is uncomfortable in our midst?”
“Not just uncomfortable,” said Santana. “Terrified.”
The captain chuckled. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Terrified,” Serenity repeated grimly. “It’s instinctive, Jean-Luc—programmed into his genes. You don’t dwell among your enemies. You get the hell away from them.”
And yet Dojjaron had defied his instincts, because the stakes were high enough. That was as good a definition of courage as any, Picard supposed.
“All right,” he said. “I will take his feelings into account next time I speak to him. But it would be far preferable if he did not make it necessary.”
“I’ll tell him,” said Serenity.
Then she departed Picard’s ready room as brusquely as she had entered, leaving him to his logs.
Chapter Twelve
“FOURTEEN MINUTES and five seconds,” Nikolas said, glancing at the chronometer set into the upper right-hand corner of his Ubarrak control panel.
That was how long it would take them to get within com range of the nearest Federation outpost. Of course, that was only his best guess, but he had confidence that it was a good one.
Gerda Idun was sitting at one of the other bridge consoles. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so excited.”
He turned to her. “I thought my galaxy was going to be enslaved and I was going to have to watch, and now it’s possible none of that will happen. Instead, I get to be with the love of my life. Is it any wonder I’m excited?”
She rolled her eyes. “When you put it that way…”
He felt uncomfortable with Gerda Idun being so far from him—a few meters, at least. She hadn’t been that far away since he found her in the corridor.
However, Brakmaktin had relinquished control of the bridge half an hour earlier, and Nikolas didn’t want to make any mistakes. Hence, his concentration on the helm controls and Gerda Idun’s on the communications panel.
“Tell me again about Earth,” she said.
He had done so several times before, but she never seemed to tire of it. Of course, it was a subject world in the universe she thought she came from, its cities subjugated or destroyed. And he made sure never to tell her about the same place twice.
“There’s a city called New Orleans,” he said, “at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where it meets the Gulf of Mexico.”
“I’ve heard of it,” said Gerda Idun.
“The old part of the city is called the French Quarter. It’s a neighborhood of narrow streets with jazz bars and trinket shops and some of the best restaurants in the world.
“The best of them, for my money, is a Creole kitchen called Sisko’s. It’s a hole in the wall, really, just starting out. The guy who owns it does all the cooking himself, so everything comes out the way he wants it.
“Man, your mouth waters as soon as you walk in. The gumbo, the jambalaya, the rémoulade…nobody makes a rémoulade like Sisko. And the crawfish are as sweet as sugar cane.
“But what I really remember is Sisko’s baby boy—must have been just a few months old the night I was there, and already the kid had a pair of lungs on him. I swear he drowned out the horn music from next door. It got to the point where his dad couldn’t hold him and serve food at the same time, so he looked around and stuck me with the little guy.”
Nikolas smiled to himself. “Go figure, he quieted down as soon as I cradled him in my arms. Got this look on his face too, like he was in heaven. One of my pals told me I had a knack with kids, but Sisko just laughed.
“Then I got a whiff of the kid and I realized why. It wasn’t me who had quieted him down. It was a bowel movement.”
Gerda Idun couldn’t stop smiling. Nikolas’s story hadn’t been an elegant one, but he guessed it had hit the spot.
He checked the chronometer again. “Nine minutes and twelve seconds. Last chance to head back to the comforts of Ubarrak space.”
“You know,” Gerda Idun said, “you’re a very silly man.”
It was exactly what the original Gerda Idun had said back on the Stargazer. “Am I?”
“Without a doubt,” she told him.
Nikolas basked in her presence. She wasn’t the Gerda Idun he had known before, but that mattered less and less all the time. She was exactly the way Gerda Idun would have been if she had been transported to Nikolas’s universe a second time.
“What are you going to say?” she asked. “When we establish a com link, I mean?”
He hadn’t given it any thought. “This is Andreas Nikolas of the cargo hauler Iktoj’ni, seeking assistance…or something like that.”
“But you’re not on the cargo hauler Iktoj’ni,” she pointed out. “You’re on an enemy warship.”
“It won’t be a problem,” Nikolas assured her. “I’ll explain before they get too suspicious.”
Of course, they would scan the cruiser and find at least one human profile. But they would also find a Nuyyad lurking in the ship’s armory. And what about Gerda Idun? How human had Brakmaktin made her? And if she was something else, how difficult would that be to explain?
You see, sir, I was held captive by an alien superbeing, but then he fell apart and made this woman for me. A starship captain might have a few problems with that.
“Six minutes and fifty seconds,” Gerda Idun announced. “You’d better tell them to bring their best sensors.”
“Don’t worry,” said Nikolas, declining to share his concerns. “I will.”
He rechecked his monitors. Just about everything was working fine, despite the damage they had sustained in battling the Ubarrak. Brakmaktin had left them in good shape.
“Come to think of it,” Nikolas said, “maybe I won’t mention the Iktoj’ni after all. Maybe I’ll tell them I’m an ensign assigned to the Stargazer.”
“That’s not true,” she cautioned him.
“Not anymore. But we may get better service if I let them know I was one of them.”
Gerda Idun shook her head in mock disapproval. “Deception and cronyism. I’m ashamed to know you.”
“I don’t blame you,” Nikolas said.
Five minutes and six seconds.
“On the other hand,” said Gerda Idun, “who am I to talk? I lied to you about how I wound up on your Stargazer, and then tried to kidnap your chief engineer.”
“Water under the bridge,” he said.
Besides, it wasn’t she who had done those things. It was the woman she had been modeled after.
“I imagine your friends on the Starg
azer will be happy to hear from you.”
“No doubt,” said Nikolas.
Of course, they had no idea what he had been through. But they would, as soon as word spread about Brakmaktin.
He wished he hadn’t ever left Starfleet. He could admit it now—he missed his friends pretty badly. And Obal in particular. Wouldn’t he be surprised when he saw Gerda Idun at Nikolas’s side again.
That is, if they lived long enough to see him.
Two minutes and forty-five seconds.
“Think it’s worth a try?” Gerda Idun asked.
Nikolas knew exactly what she was talking about. “Why not?” Sometimes conditions allowed the network to operate at better than rated efficiency.
She worked at her console for a moment. Then they waited. But after a minute or so, there was no response.
“Too early,” he said.
Gerda Idun nodded. “But it won’t be much longer.” She glanced at her chronometer. “Only a minute and eighteen seconds.”
“And counting,” he added.
“And even if your calculations are off a little,” she said with an admirably deadpan expression, “it probably won’t be by much.”
Nikolas looked at her. “Are you saying I’m incapable of figuring out something as simple as a subspace signal decay rate?”
“I must have been thinking about someone else.”
“That would explain it.”
“Thirty-three seconds,” said Gerda Idun.
Now he was really excited.
Apparently she could tell, because she didn’t say anything more. She just watched the chronometer on her board as he was watching his. Twenty-five, he thought. Twenty. Fifteen.
Without Gerda Idun’s comments to distract him, Nikolas was preternaturally aware of the sounds around him. The hum of the engines, louder than on any other vessel he had known—the Iktoj’ni included. The warbling of those consoles that still functioned as they registered minute fluctuations in engine temperature, plasma flow, shield strength, and a hundred other aspects of operations. The almost inaudible buzz of a damaged data conduit.
Ten seconds to go.
If Brakmaktin hadn’t appeared to gum up the works by then, he probably wasn’t going to. But he had to know they were just seconds away from contacting the Federation. Only a fool would ignore the possibility of the alien’s changing his mind.
Five seconds. Four. Three.
All right, Nikolas thought. So I’m a fool.
Two…
One.
It was time.
Pressing a rectangular stud on her control panel, Gerda Idun sent out a hailing signal on the most commonly used Starfleet frequency.
Come on, Nikolas thought. Don’t keep us waiting.
A minute later, he got his wish. “This is Admiral Mehdi at Starbase Three-Two-Five. With whom am I speaking?”
Mehdi? Isn’t he assigned to headquarters on Earth? Obviously, a few things had changed since Nikolas left the fleet.
“It’s Andreas Nikolas, sir, formerly of the cargo hauler Iktoj’ni and the Stargazer, seeking assistance. Your sensors will tell you that I’m piloting an Ubarrak battle cruiser, but there aren’t any Ubarrak aboard.”
A pause. “You’d better explain, Mister Nikolas.”
“An explanation,” said Nikolas, “is on its way, sir.”
Had he offered a verbal one, Brakmaktin might have overheard and taken umbrage with it. That’s why Nikolas had put the full story in data form into a subspace packet, which the alien was more likely to just ignore.
“I’m receiving it now,” said Mehdi. Another pause, longer than before. Then he spoke up again. “Am I reading this correctly, Mister Nikolas? Are you saying there’s a Nuyyad aboard your ship?”
“Yes, sir,” Nikolas confirmed.
“I hope he’s nothing like the Nuyyad who destroyed our colony on Arias Three.”
Nikolas’s mouth went dry. He knew that colony. “Destroyed…?”
“The monster leveled the place, erased all traces that we’d ever been there. And killed more than five hundred Federation citizens in the process.”
Nikolas checked internal sensors. They told him that the armory was empty of life signs. Brakmaktin was gone.
And from what the admiral was saying, he had found his way to Arias III. There couldn’t be two such Nuyyad running loose in their part of the galaxy.
But how could Brakmaktin have left the warship? And how could he have reached Arias III so quickly, when Nikolas’s ship had only just made it within com range?
Nikolas didn’t know. But he did know how the alien had chosen the colony as his destination. He had plucked it out of the human’s mind, just as he had plucked the Ubarrak mining world.
He had allowed Nikolas to think his nightmare was over. But in fact, it had only begun.
“Andreas?” said Gerda Idun.
He turned to her, knowing that she, at least, would understand. After all, she had been with him every step of the way, and she hadn’t suspected treachery either.
Idiot, Nikolas called himself. Of course she didn’t. All Gerda Idun knew of Brakmaktin was what he had told her. All she knew of anyone was what he had—
He stopped in mid-thought. There was something wrong. His mind raced, trying to untangle it.
The admiral who answered his hail just happened to be one he had heard of—even though Mehdi was supposed to be back on Earth. And the colony that had been attacked—by coincidence, that was one Nikolas had heard of too.
And Brakmaktin had done the impossible getting there—slipping off the warship without anyone’s knowing, and reaching Arias III at a speed no spacegoing vessel could achieve.
He was powerful, but was he that powerful? Or was it all an illusion, drawing on the data he had found in Nikolas’s mind—starting with Mehdi’s voice over the com system and continuing with Nikolas’s sensor check of the armory? Certainly, Brakmaktin was capable of that.
Suddenly, the human heard a voice that was at once like Brakmaktin’s and drastically unlike it. “Yes, an illusion,” it confirmed, filling the bridge with its presence. “But where does it begin? And where does it end?”
Nikolas didn’t know what that meant. He turned to Gerda Idun, but she just shrugged.
Then he thought to glance at the navigational monitor on his console, and saw that the ship hadn’t moved from the coordinates she occupied when Brakmaktin revealed his pain. They were in exactly the same place.
But how can that be? Nikolas wondered.
All the time he had spent with Gerda Idun, returning to the Federation at top speed while Brakmaktin appeared to have sequestered himself in the armory…was it possible it hadn’t really happened? That it had all been Nikolas’s imagination?
I’ve been played for a fool, he thought.
Just then, he caught a glimpse of something off to his left—something large and silvery that hadn’t been there before, in the vicinity of the console at which Gerda Idun had been sitting. Feeling his throat constrict, Nikolas whirled to see what was going on.
What he saw made him want to scream.
The silvery thing was Brakmaktin, every visible part of his body glowing now with the light that had previously come from his eyes alone. And he was looming over Gerda Idun, dwarfing her with his bulk, as he absorbed her body into his.
One of her legs and her right hand had already vanished into the alien’s midsection, as if into some kind of quicksand, and the rest of her was being pulled in afterward. And though she didn’t seem to be in any physical pain, the terror in her eyes drove daggers into Nikolas’s heart.
He cried out, though not with words. His emotions were too raw, too primitive to be expressed that way. And as he was crying out, he launched himself across the bridge.
It enabled him to catch Gerda Idun’s hand as her other leg started disappearing into Brakmaktin. The pull was inexorable, irresistible. Nikolas couldn’t even begin to free her.
But he tugged nonetheless, h
is feet skidding as they sought purchase on the deck, until Gerda Idun screamed in agony. Her shoulder was coming out of its socket, unable to bear the strain of the forces exerted on it.
But what else could Nikolas do? Just watch her get sucked in like a bug in a Venus flytrap?
“Andreas…” she groaned, though he couldn’t tell what she was exhorting him to do.
Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe for her, as for him, there was no answer to her predicament. There was only the bottomless fear and sadness that went with the realization.
Nikolas looked up at Brakmaktin, hoping he could appeal to him somehow and make him stop. But there was no mercy in the alien’s eyes, no inclination toward clemency. He appeared to have evolved beyond such petty notions.
“Let her go!” Nikolas begged. “Take me, if you want—just leave her alone!”
It accomplished nothing. Gerda Idun continued to sink, up to her waist, her ribcage, her armpits.
And still Nikolas pulled, not so hard that it would hurt her but enough to slow her progress. Still, it was a losing battle. Her shoulders disappeared despite his efforts, leaving nothing but her head and the arm he was hanging on to.
“Andreas,” she said again, her eyes locked on his.
But it wasn’t because she wanted him to work harder. It was an expression of resignation, an acknowledgment of what she saw as inevitable.
“No,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, his eyes wet with tears. “I won’t let you.”
But the alien claimed her throat, her chin, her mouth. Then, agonizingly, he claimed her eyes as well, and the rest of her head. It all slipped away.
But her hand was still in his, her fingers strong and alive and callused, holding desperately on to the only vestige of life she had left. Until finally, that too began to sink into Brakmaktin, to the wrist and then beyond.
Nikolas would have held on, would have sunk in after Gerda Idun without protest, but he couldn’t. To her, the alien was a permeable membrane. To him, Brakmaktin couldn’t have been more solid.
So when Gerda Idun’s fingertips came free of Nikolas’s and slid from sight, there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing but sink to his knees and bite his lip to keep from weeping.
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