“They’re not living anymore,” Brakmaktin noted, as if he were talking about nothing more significant than a swarm of annoying insects.
But then, as far as he was concerned, he was.
“That one?” asked Picard.
“Aye, sir,” said Gerda.
The captain was peering over her shoulder at the star map she had called up. It showed him a system with eighteen planets, only two of which were large enough to boast of an atmosphere.
The ion trail they were following—represented on the map as a thin yellow line—led directly to one of those two planets. Picard didn’t know the Ubarrak name for it, but it was listed on the map—and in the Federation’s data banks—as Epsilon Morazh III, a dilithium mining world.
Of course, there was no rock-solid proof that Epsilon Morazh III was Brakmaktin’s destination. But if he meant to go elsewhere, it seemed unlikely that he would have cut through a star system, much less through the coordinates of a particular planet.
“How long?” Picard asked.
“At our current speed,” said Gerda, “not quite fourteen hours.”
They were only barely inside the acknowledged borders of Ubarrak space. Fourteen hours wouldn’t take them that much farther. With a little luck, they would reach Epsilon Morazh III before the Ubarrak cut them off.
“Captain,” said Paxton at the com station, “sensors show ships approaching. Three of them.”
Picard frowned. And without a little luck, they will intercept us long before we reach Epsilon Morazh III.
“On-screen,” he said.
As Paxton had indicated, there were three vessels, and there was no question that they were Ubarrak. They were so big and dark they looked like holes in the sea of stars.
At least, at first glance. A close examination would show each ship equipped with a half dozen wicked-looking weapons ports, any one of them capable of destroying the Stargazer with a well-placed energy projectile.
“Hail them,” Picard told Paxton.
The communications officer set to work. A moment later, the image of the Ubarrak squadron gave way to a different image—that of an Ubarrak captain.
He was as powerful-looking as any of his people, his slitted yellow eyes set deep beneath dark ridges of thinly sheathed bone. Rather than remaining still as he considered Picard, his head moved in small, quick jerks, as if he were an animal watching for signs of an attack.
“Identify yourself,” he said.
“Captain Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Federation Starship Stargazer. And despite appearances, I assure you that we have come only to help you.”
The Ubarrak laughed. “You’ve helped us, all right. You’ve shown us that we need to tighten our border patrols. Now drop your shields and prepare to be boarded.”
“Wait,” said Picard. “You’re making a mistake. We’ve come to address a threat to you and your people.”
The Ubarrak hesitated, if only for a moment. “What kind of threat?” he demanded.
Ah, thought the captain. He has gotten word of it. But of course, he didn’t know what it was.
“There is a being on one of your worlds more powerful than anything you have ever encountered. He has likely destroyed the crew of an Ubarrak warship. We have pursued him here in the hope of keeping him from killing anyone else.”
“That will not be necessary,” said the Ubarrak. “An entire squadron has been dispatched to deal with him.”
Damn, Picard thought. “They don’t have any idea what they’re up against. Send word that they’re to be withdrawn immediately, before they’re destroyed.”
The Ubarrak sneered, though Picard didn’t believe that the fellow’s heart was in it. “You believe this being can stand up to twelve Ubarrak battle cruisers?”
Picard began to tell him—but before he had gotten more than a couple of words out, one of the other Ubarrak drew his captain’s attention. Remarks were exchanged, too low for the human to make out. But when the Ubarrak captain turned back to his viewscreen, all the color had drained from his face.
“The squadron,” he said in a voice like dry sticks rubbing together, “has been destroyed—its hulls riddled with holes and its crews drawn out through them into the void.”
Picard’s jaw clenched. “I am sorry.”
The Ubarrak’s eyes screwed up beneath his brow ledge. “If you know something about this, speak quickly.”
Picard was only too happy to oblige.
Nikolas watched the pit Brakmaktin had created in the center of the cavern fill with a fiery-hot soup of molten lava.
Only the most desirable caverns on the Nuyyad homeworld boasted firepits, and none had one so broad and deep. But Brakmaktin had the power to endow his cavern with the best of everything.
Nikolas knew that because Brakmaktin’s mind had opened to him again—just as it had on the warship, when the alien was summoning the human to the armory. And it was staying open, giving Nikolas access to Brakmaktin’s thoughts.
Not all of them—just those on the surface, waiting to be acted upon. But that was enough to answer some of the questions Nikolas had been asking since he woke on the Iktoj’ni.
Such as why it was so important to Brakmaktin to manufacture a cavern for himself. And why he had tried to do it in even the unlikeliest of places.
He wanted to reproduce. And unless Nikolas had misunderstood, the Nuyyad could do it asexually.
Nikolas had read about the Magnians. He knew that barrier-induced talents could be passed from generation to generation. And if Brakmaktin were the only parent, his children would be as powerful as he was.
He tried to imagine a dozen Brakmaktins. Two dozen. So far, Nikolas hadn’t seen anything stand up to the original. What could possibly stand against all those copies?
All the more reason for Brakmaktin to be stopped. But not by Nikolas. He had tried over and over again, and only succeeded in showing how ineffectual he was.
All he was good for was showing Brakmaktin around the galaxy. And how pleased he was to have made that contribution.
Nikolas’s only question now was, how had he obtained this window on Brakmaktin’s mind? The last time, it was a temporary side effect of the alien’s telepathic intrusion. But Brakmaktin wasn’t calling Nikolas just then. He was too busy creating a hellhole to warm his offspring.
So what was going on?
Nikolas didn’t know.
Twelve and a half hours from Epsilon Morazh III, Picard sat back in his ready room chair. “Then we are in agreement?” he asked the Ubarrak captain, whose name was Alartos.
The Ubarrak scowled from the captain’s monitor screen. “We are,” he said.
Alartos would guarantee the Stargazer safe passage through enemy territory. Then he would escort the Federation vessel back the other way—assuming she survived her meeting with Brakmaktin.
Picard counted himself fortunate. Alartos was a much more open-minded individual than most Ubarrak the Federation had encountered. Nonetheless, the fellow seemed ill at ease with the deal to which he had acquiesced.
In Picard’s experience, the best way to meet a problem was head on. “You look uncomfortable,” he observed.
“I am,” said Alartos. “We Ubarrak are accustomed to working alone, not collaborating with other species.”
“I know,” said Picard. “However, it is clear that you cannot handle Brakmaktin without help.”
“Quite clear. Nonetheless, there are those among my people who would frown on the concessions I have made.”
Picard thought of McAteer. “There are such people in every species.”
“Just so there are no misunderstandings,” said Alartos, “know that we will be monitoring your sensor equipment. You would do well to limit your scans to the superbeing’s location.”
Picard smiled. “I assure you, I did not bring my ship here to spy on you.”
“However,” said the Ubarrak, “you will have the opportunity to do so. Take my advice and avoid the temptation.”
The captain didn’t respond well to threats, even veiled ones. However, he couldn’t let his ego get in the way of his mission. Not if he wanted to keep Brakmaktin’s hands off his galaxy.
“I would be foolish to ignore your counsel,” he told the Ubarrak.
That seemed to pacify the fellow. Without another word, he broke the com link.
Picard drew a breath and let it out. He had shared a good deal of information with Alartos. However, he had also withheld a good deal of information—specifically, what he knew of the barrier, the Nuyyad, and Magnia.
After all, the Ubarrak might be tempted to use the barrier to create supersoldiers. They might decide to recruit the Nuyyad as an ally in their conflict with the Federation. And they might see Magnia as a resource as well.
Alartos’s people had plenty of leverage in their dealings with the Federation. Picard didn’t wish to give them any more.
Nikolas watched Brakmaktin sleep, curled up in a raised alcove on the far side of the cavern.
Minutes earlier, the Nuyyad had walked the perimeter of the firepit, admiring his handiwork as the lava below him bubbled and spat, casting him in a feral red glare. Then, without warning, he had floated up to the alcove and lain down, and closed his eerie silver eyes.
At the time, Nikolas couldn’t figure it out. Brakmaktin was capable of tearing apart starships and digging shafts in solid rock, but he still needed a nap now and then? And hadn’t he said he didn’t need sleep?
It didn’t make sense. However, with the Nuyyad asleep, there weren’t any thoughts Nikolas could capture to get an answer.
Then that changed. There were spurts of mental activity, each one briefer than the one before it. Finally, they stopped altogether, but not before Nikolas had skimmed enough from them to piece together an explanation.
If Brakmaktin looked peaceful and—strange as it sounded—vulnerable, it was because he was. He had entered a low-energy, low-awareness state, just like any Nuyyad who had begun the demanding process of asexual reproduction.
Back on Brakmaktin’s homeworld, he would have been protected by his clan at this time because he wasn’t in a position to protect himself. But he had no clan around him here, no one to watch over him while he was dormant. All he had was the height of the alcove he had created, which would represent a difficult climb—but not an impossible one.
To that point, Nikolas had been unable to hurt the Nuyyad with his pitiful human physicality. But if he tried it now, while Brakmaktin was in dreamland, with one of the stalactites shattered in the Ubarrak’s attack…
Suddenly, the human’s hands snapped together, as if drawn by an invisible force. And though he couldn’t see anything binding his wrists, he couldn’t pull them apart again.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Brakmaktin raised his head and peered at him with eyes that were still half-closed. “Given a chance,” he said in a slurred, sleepy voice, “you would kill me. So you will not be given a chance.”
Nikolas made a sound of disdain. “You’re afraid of me? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“No,” said Brakmaktin, without the least hint of irony in his voice. “You have heard funnier.”
There was no lying to him, no possibility of it. After all, he knew Nikolas’s thoughts as intimately as Nikolas did.
Brakmaktin put his head down again and went back to sleep. And Nikolas wondered what curses people would use to revile him after the Nuyyad’s offspring overran the galaxy.
Picard considered the image displayed on his viewscreen. It was that of a green and blue world, like many in the M-class category. However, it boasted only a single large landmass, which covered perhaps a third of its surface.
There was an Ubarrak battle cruiser in orbit around the planet, but the Stargazer’s sensors had already determined that she was devoid of life signs. Obviously, that was the vessel in which Brakmaktin had arrived.
And Nikolas as well, if he had survived that long. As to where he was now—on the planet’s surface with Brakmaktin or lying dead on the cruiser—that was still a mystery.
“Thirty thousand kilometers,” Gerda reported, responding to the instructions the captain had given her earlier.
“All stop,” said Picard.
“All stop,” Idun confirmed.
After all, there was no telling how far Brakmaktin’s power could reach. No way to know at what distance he could detect the Stargazer and tear her apart.
But if they hung back too far, they wouldn’t be able to accomplish what they had come to accomplish. So they established a position and remained alert for signs of trouble.
As per the captain’s agreement with Alartos, the Ubarrak vessels stopped alongside the Stargazer. But they wouldn’t remain there forever. Even with what had happened to their sister squadron, they would move in at the first sign that Picard’s plan was going awry.
And quite clearly, they would perish. But that wouldn’t prevent them from doing their duty.
“Open a channel to Commander Alartos,” the captain told Paxton.
“Aye, sir,” said the com officer. And a few moments later: “I’ve got him.”
Picard asked for a visual. Abruptly, Alartos’s visage filled the viewscreen.
“Brakmaktin is down there,” the Ubarrak confirmed. “According to security reports, he appeared yesterday in the middle of a major city, killed indiscriminately, and dug a hole half a kilometer deep. We are transmitting the coordinates.”
“Thank you,” said Picard.
He needed the data for Gerda to run a pinpoint scan. Otherwise, finding two sets of alien life signs an indeterminate distance below the crust of a fair-sized planet would have been too monumental a task to consider.
The captain watched his navigator work for a minute or so. Then she turned to him and announced, “Two life signs, sir. One appears to be human. The other is…something else.”
Picard nodded. Brakmaktin…and Nikolas. The ensign had survived after all.
“It seems you’ve found him,” Alartos observed.
“So it does,” said Picard.
“We will be watching,” said the Ubarrak, and terminated the com link.
The captain turned to Wu and said, “You have the bridge, Commander.” Then he headed for the turbolift.
Now that they had tracked Brakmaktin to his lair, it was time to see what they could do about him.
Chapter Fifteen
PICARD STOOD IN Transporter Room 1, his arms folded across his chest, feeling more useless than he had ever felt in his life.
He turned to Refsland, the transporter operator on duty. “Should they not be here by now?”
Refsland checked the chronometer on his control panel. “They’re not due for another couple of minutes, sir.”
The captain frowned. He may have agreed to let the Magnians take the point against Brakmaktin, but he still didn’t like it. He was, after all, accustomed to fighting his own battles.
Just as he thought that, the doors slid open and a half-dozen Magnians walked into the room. They were all outfitted the same way—with black boots, black togs, and the black phaser rifles that Simenon had found so impressive.
And there were six more Magnians in Transporter Room 2, and six more in Transporter Room 3. Eighteen specially trained operatives in all. They looked formidable enough to him. But then, he wasn’t a being who had been radically transformed by the unimaginable energies comprising the barrier.
Picard looked up at the intercom grid hidden in the ceiling. “Idun?” he said.
“Aye, sir?” came the helm officer’s response.
“Take us in—and let me know when we are in transporter range.”
“Acknowledged,” said Idun.
Picard turned to Refsland. “On my mark, effect transport.”
“Aye, sir,” said the lieutenant.
Picard had already seen Refsland rig the transporter console so that the ship’s other platforms were slaved to his controls. That way, h
e could send all the Magnians down at the same time.
The wait was longer than Picard had expected. No doubt, Idun was exercising as much care as possible, not wanting to leave the ship open to unnecessary peril.
Finally, he heard her voice crack like a whip across the transporter room: “We’re in range, sir.”
The captain turned to Refsland. “Now, Lieutenant.”
The transporter operator manipulated his instruments. And on the platform, the Magnians began to grow insubstantial.
Little by little, columns of yellow-white light formed about them, encasing them, supplanting them. Then they were gone. And a moment later, the columns of light faded as well.
Picard looked to Refsland. It took the lieutenant a second or two to check the results in the other transporter rooms. Then he raised his gaze to meet the captain’s.
“All done, sir.”
Picard nodded. “Helm,” he said, “withdraw.”
“Aye,” said Idun over the intercom.
As she pulled the Stargazer back out of transporter range, Picard’s thoughts were with the Magnians, who were in for the fight of their lives—and then some.
He just hoped their confidence was not misplaced.
As Brakmaktin slept, Nikolas wrestled with his invisible bonds. However, they were still too strong for him. All he managed to do was rub the skin off his wrists.
Cursing under his breath, he slumped back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes. There’s got to be a way to get Brakmaktin, he told himself. I’ve just got to think of it.
Suddenly, Nikolas sensed that something had happened in the cavern. He didn’t know what it was or how he knew, but he was certain of it—and it made him sit up and open his eyes.
That was when he saw that the place was crawling with people. Human-looking people, all of them armed with phaser rifles. And the nearest of them, a man with a red moustache, was signaling for him to be quiet.
Damned right I’ll be quiet, Nikolas thought.
Then, with a jolt of fear, he realized that he shouldn’t be thinking anything. Not when it might rouse his monstrous captor from his sleep.
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