And Brakmaktin? He just stood there, spearing Nikolas with his eyes. He didn’t gloat, didn’t boast of how skillfully he had set up his little drama. But then, he didn’t have to.
He had achieved his victory. He had shown Nikolas that he couldn’t compete—not with a being whose power was so great it had yet to learn its limits.
Nikolas’s demonstration of how badly Brakmaktin needed his company, his attempt to deceive the Nuyyad into turning himself in to the Federation…Brakmaktin had paid him back for those impieties a thousandfold. He had found the worst wound in Nikolas’s psyche and ground a hot poker into it.
And though Gerda Idun had been Brakmaktin’s creation in the first place, it didn’t make his act of destruction any easier to bear. As far as Nikolas was concerned, it was still murder.
Nor was it Gerda Idun alone who had died. Something in Nikolas had died as well. It had endured the loss of one Gerda Idun, but it wasn’t strong enough to endure the loss of another.
“I’ll kill you,” he found himself whispering to Brakmaktin. “Somehow, I’ll kill you.”
The alien’s mouth opened as if he were laughing, but no sound came out. Then he turned away and went to stand in his usual place before the viewscreen.
“You’ll see,” Nikolas breathed.
“I see this,” said Brakmaktin, his voice surrounding the human, battering him from every direction.
And the image of Admiral Mehdi vanished from the screen. An M-class planet took its place—the same one Nikolas had seen before the Nuyyad began to deceive him.
Far from having left it behind, they were a good deal closer to it. In a few hours, it would be in Brakmaktin’s grasp.
Chapter Thirteen
“YOU’VE GOT TO STOP,” Nikolas told Brakmaktin, unable to stand it any longer.
He hadn’t believed anything could move him after what happened to Gerda Idun. He had imagined himself immune to suffering—that of others as well as his own.
He was wrong.
Nikolas had discovered that fact shortly after Brakmaktin pulled their ship into orbit. That was when he destroyed the first disruptor emplacement in the planet’s defense system, an island-based facility that looked like a high-tech octopus. Brakmaktin caused it to misfire, turning its energies back in on itself and creating an inferno of smoke and flames.
Then he had done the same thing to a second emplacement, and a third, and all the others in the hemisphere that faced him. And he had placed the images of their destruction on the viewscreen that once served the ship’s Ubarrak crew, but now labored under the whip of a different master.
And it wasn’t just the Ubarrak’s ordnance that had been destroyed. The disruptor emplacements were all heavily manned. Nikolas could tell from the bloody carcasses that lay strewn about the perimeter of the blasts, and the suffering of those who hadn’t been fortunate enough to die.
As much as he wanted to turn away, he couldn’t—Brakmaktin made certain of that. He compelled Nikolas to witness the carnage whether he wanted to or not.
But the Nuyyad hadn’t prevented Nikolas from speaking. “You’ve got to stop,” he said a second time. “You can’t just keep killing people.”
His companion’s nostrils flared. “Why not?” he asked in a voice so thunderous it was painful to listen to.
“Because it’s wrong,” Nikolas insisted. “Those Ubarrak were just defending themselves.”
“Which,” the alien rumbled, “was why they had to be eliminated.” Rising from the captain’s chair, he stretched his monstrous arms over his head, obviously stiff from sitting in one place. “And they will not be the last.”
“What do you mean?” Nikolas demanded.
The alien’s silver eyes slid in his direction. “What do you think I mean? I need something the Ubarrak have. They will fight to keep it until they see the futility of doing so.”
“Look,” Nikolas suggested, “maybe I can convince them to let you do as you please. Maybe I can make a deal.”
The alien looked disdainful of the idea. “They are not deal-makers. I can tell.”
Already? Nikolas wondered. Could his companion read minds that were so far away? Or was he just making an inference, based on the viciousness of the Ubarrak’s response?
“It’s worth a try,” he said, indicating the com panel with a gesture. “What have you got to lose?”
But Brakmaktin didn’t seem to be listening to the human anymore. His silver head was turning as if something else had drawn his attention.
Suddenly, the image on the viewscreen changed. It showed Nikolas yet another battle cruiser coming to the defense of the mining world, her weapons ports glowing as she sliced through the void.
Brakmaktin’s mouth pulled up at the corners. No, thought Nikolas, having seen that expression before.
But there was nothing he could do about it. He could only watch as the warship was wracked by a series of gaudy explosions, starting at her bow and working their way aft to her nacelles. Finally Brakmaktin got to her warp core, and the cruiser shook herself apart in a paroxysm of azure fury.
Nikolas bit down on his dismay. The ship was gone, but there were still lives he could save on the surface. “Let me contact them,” he begged the Nuyyad, “see if I can—”
But before he could get the words out, he realized he wasn’t on the ship anymore. And neither was Brakmaktin. They were in a sunlit plaza, surrounded by a soaring landscape of dark, spire-topped buildings. In their Byzantine splendor, the buildings had a vaguely Klingon feel to them.
The alien had transported them into an Ubarrak city—and they weren’t alone. They had appeared in the midst of perhaps a hundred and fifty Ubarrak citizens, clustered in groups of four and five throughout the plaza.
Understandably shocked by the intruders’ appearance, the Ubarrak began backing away from them. But they weren’t backing away fast enough for Nikolas’s taste.
“Run!” he shouted. “Get out of here!”
He recalled what Brakmaktin had done to his crewmates on the cargo hauler, and later to the Ubarrak on the warship. He had no reason to love these people, but he didn’t want to see them die the way the others had died.
The Ubarrak were still hesitating, wary but not scared to death as they should have been. They were wide-eyed, but with curiosity as much as with fear.
“Run!” Nikolas yelled—this time twice as loud as before, stripping his throat raw with the effort.
Then he realized that the Ubarrak couldn’t understand him. Nikolas wasn’t wearing a Starfleet combadge, so there was nothing to translate his speech.
Still, they must have heard the urgency in his voice, and seen his expression, because they seemed to take the hint. One by one, they wheeled and began running away.
For a moment, Nikolas thought they might make it. Then he saw Brakmaktin’s eyes glow with a fierce, familiar light, and he knew the Ubarrak had no chance.
Males, females, even children…they all uttered strangled cries and collapsed. They were dead before they hit the ground, inert bags of flesh and bone and blood.
The only ones still standing were Nikolas and Brakmaktin. Everyone else was sprawled in waves radiating away from them, looking like the victims of a massive concussion.
Nikolas didn’t know how the Nuyyad had killed them, and didn’t want to know. It would only make the stone of horror in his throat that much harder to swallow.
And why had Brakmaktin cut the Ubarrak down? Why had he seen fit to destroy them?
Not because they posed any threat to him—they were running away, after all. Not because they could have hurt him or stopped him or even slowed him down.
He just wanted to see them dead. And because he had the power, he had made it happen.
Just then, Nikolas heard a low hum, like a swarm of angry bees. He looked about for its source.
“Ah,” said Brakmaktin, lifting his face to the flawless blue-green heavens. “It is about time.”
Then Nikolas saw a speck on th
e horizon, between two of the buildings surrounding them. As he scrutinized it, it grew larger, and the humming grew proportionately louder.
Finally, the human saw what it was—a blunt, black vessel, not much bigger than one of the Stargazer’s shuttlecraft. But it maneuvered rather easily in the atmosphere, obviously having been designed to move at low altitudes.
It had a symbol on its flank—a fiery yellow eye. The city’s security force, no doubt. They had come to address the disturbance in the heart of their jurisdiction.
“Go back,” Nikolas whispered helplessly.
But he knew the Ubarrak in the vessel wouldn’t do that. They couldn’t. It was their job to protect the other Ubarrak. How were they to know the kind of power they were up against, or the nature of the being charged with it?
As soon as the vessel came to rest, the door in its side slid open. And one by one, the Ubarrak inside it disembarked. There were a dozen of them in all, disruptor pistols lodged in their fists.
They were dressed in stark black uniforms with gold trim, not unlike the crew of the Ubarrak warship. Their expressions were stern, business-like, not the least bit afraid. And they trained their blasters on the offworlders as if they would be only too happy to fire them.
One of the Ubarrak came forward and speared the Nuyyad with a look of indignation. “What is your purpose here?” he asked, his voice rough and impatient.
Brakmaktin didn’t grace him with an answer. But as the Ubarrak waited for one, something bizarre happened. He and his fellow security officers turned their weapons away from the invader—and trained them on each other instead.
Nikolas saw what was going to happen and tried to warn the Ubarrak. But his words froze in his throat. Obviously, Brakmaktin didn’t want to hear them.
In any case, it was too late for a warning to make a difference. The Ubarrak were locked into position, looking down the barrels of each other’s weapons.
Their arms trembled as they tried to regain control of them. But it was useless. They couldn’t break Brakmaktin’s hold. They weren’t strong enough.
No one was.
Nikolas launched himself at Brakmaktin, trying to stop him—but it was like hitting a wall. Though the human recoiled in pain, the Nuyyad didn’t even seem to feel it.
All at once, the Ubarrak began to fire at each other. And of course, their aim was perfect, since it was actually Brakmaktin’s. In a heartbeat, they were all lying dead on the ground, blackened holes oozing in their chests.
At least he can’t do any more harm, Nikolas told himself. There’s no one else around to kill. Then Brakmaktin proved him wrong.
In the blink of an eye, they were standing in a different part of the city, a different plaza. And there the Ubarrak were only beginning to hear about the alien, judging by the groups into which they had clustered.
Brakmaktin gave them firsthand experience, creating a series of blue-energy storms in their midst. The Ubarrak who were touched by them jerked like puppets and slumped to the ground, and the rest of them began to run.
Nikolas wanted desperately to do something—but what? Out of frustration, he took a swing at Brakmaktin’s face. But before his blow could land, it was encased in the monster’s massive, four-fingered hand.
“You don’t need to do this!” Nikolas told him. “They’re not security officers—just let them go!”
Brakmaktin spared him a glance, so cold and distant that the human wasn’t sure his presence had registered at all. Then the Nuyyad flung him away like a rag doll.
Nikolas spun through the air, cringing at the prospect of landing. As fate would have it, he came down on a clump of corpses instead of something harder.
He didn’t look at their faces. He just dragged himself to his feet—precisely as Brakmaktin unleashed another blue-energy squall among the Ubarrak who were still in sight. They fell as the others had, twitching horribly as they died.
In the wake of all that death, there was a great, sad sigh of wind—and then silence. Brakmaktin stood in the center of it, amid more than a hundred corpses, the most perfect predator nature had ever devised.
Then he looked at the ground in front of him, extended his hand palm upward, and began to dig.
Chapter Fourteen
ONCE AGAIN, Picard gathered his officers and a few of his guests around his briefing room table. Last time, they had spoken in generalities about the approach they would take when they caught up with Brakmaktin.
That was before they had followed him to the brink of Ubarrak space. Now it was time to speak in specifics.
“I have met with my acting weapons officer,” said the captain, “and he believes we can strike effectively at Brakmaktin with phasers from a low orbit. The question is how vulnerable the Stargazer will be at that range.”
Dojjaron shook his head disapprovingly. “That is not the question at all.”
Picard looked at him. “Then what is?”
“The environment Brakmaktin creates will be a subterranean one—like the caverns in which his clan has given birth to generations of offspring.”
“In other words,” said Daniels, “your weapons won’t be able to reach him. But we can beam down a team that can.”
The captain frowned. “What if the composition of the planet’s crust prevents site-to-site transport?”
“Then our team will find another way,” said Serenity. “But they will get down there, I assure you.”
Picard tried to think of a third option—and couldn’t. Apparently, I have little choice in the matter.
“Very well,” he told the Magnians. “We will do it your way. However, my transporter operator will have orders to beam your people up at the first sign of trouble. Is that understood?”
Daniels nodded. “It is.”
The captain would have preferred to attack Brakmaktin from a distance. But if the Magnians’ approach stood a better chance of success, so be it.
Nikolas thought Brakmaktin had worked quickly on the warship, but that was nothing compared to the speed at which he was working now.
Stalactites and stalagmites were building at what had to be a centimeter a second, awash with water dripping steadily from the cavern ceiling. Each deposit seemed to yearn for its opposite, lovers too long denied each other.
Nikolas could see this happening by the cavern’s only real light source—Brakmaktin himself, his body aglow with an energy that had shriveled and finally disintegrated his clothing, and was probably responsible for his hair falling out. The Nuyyad stood in the center of what had been a stark, featureless vault, arms held wide, head thrown back in triumph.
At last, he could create what he had been constrained from creating before—whatever its significance. Nikolas still didn’t know what the cavern meant to Brakmaktin, though it was clear it made him feel better to be in its embrace.
The only other faint spot of light in the enclosure was in one of its corners, where the sun’s rays angled down along a straight, smooth-walled shaft. It was by this means that Brakmaktin and Nikolas had reached that depth in the first place.
There was no longer any possibility of the human’s escaping his captor. Even if Brakmaktin forgot about him, he would never make it up the shaft.
So he sat there on the cavern floor and watched, and wondered what further horror would befall the Ubarrak of that world when the Nuyyad finished his masterpiece.
Suddenly, everything shuddered. Nikolas looked around, wondering what had happened. Then the cavern shivered again, but this time with greater force.
A milky, half-grown stalactite plummeted from above and shattered on the stone floor, not three meters from Nikolas’s foot. Then there was a third vibration, as if an immense hammer was striking the planet’s crust.
An earthquake? Nikolas wondered.
Brakmaktin looked up, his eyes glowing fiercely. “We are being attacked,” he said, his voice immense in the confines of the cavern.
Attacked by whom? Nikolas wondered. The Ubarrak?
Of
course. They had located the pest that had dug a hole in their world and were trying to exterminate him.
Despite the danger to himself, Nikolas wholeheartedly cheered the effort. He was happy to die if it meant Brakmaktin would die as well. That was a trade-off he could accept.
The cavern vibrated with another volley, cracking a few more fledgling cones off the ceiling. As they smashed themselves to pieces around the Nuyyad, he pointed a thick, stubby finger at the unseen source of the attack.
But before he could strike back, the cavern took its worst pounding yet. The ground shivered and cracked around them, and stalactites fell like rain.
Clearly, the Ubarrak knew the kind of power they were up against, and they were giving their countermeasure everything they had. But would it be enough?
Nikolas was still wondering when something appeared at the opposite end of the cavern. Wondering what it might be, he scrambled closer to get a better look.
What he saw was a thick, twisted piece of metal, dark gray in color. Considering the shape it was in, Nikolas could only guess at its original dimensions: a couple of meters across, maybe three in length?
He saw Brakmaktin looking at him, a cruel smile on his face. Clearly, he found the object amusing.
“What is it?” Nikolas asked.
“A section of hull,” said the alien. “From one of the fighters that attacked us.”
As he spoke, a second such object appeared. And then a third. And they were followed by a great many more, so many that Nikolas soon gave up counting them.
And the pounding had stopped. The cavern was still again, as peaceful as before.
Nikolas stared at the mangled hunks of metal, helplessly absorbing their significance. “You ripped those ships apart,” he asked, “didn’t you?”
The Nuyyad shrugged his immense shoulders. “Just enough to spill their contents into the vacuum.”
“Their contents…” Nikolas repeated numbly. His eyes felt hot, like pent-up magma. “You mean their crews—the living, breathing beings inside them.”
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