What next? the captain thought, light-headed with shock.
Then he felt his face begin to burn and he knew. Brakmaktin had sliced open the skin from Picard’s forehead down to his chin, and was starting to pull it away from bone and blood vessels.
The captain set his teeth and endured the Nuyyad’s torment. But it was terrible to think he hadn’t a face any longer. At least I cannot see myself.
But suddenly, perversely, he could. There was an image in his mind of the skin being stripped to the edges of his hairline and then being pulled even further, taking his scalp along with it.
The worst parts were his eyes. Deprived of the lids that shaped and protected them, they stared back at him with unrelenting intensity, piling dread on top of dread.
Help us, they seemed to say. We cannot stand it any longer.
The captain no longer had a mouth, so he couldn’t scream. All he could do was howl like an animal.
But the torture didn’t stop. Picard felt his chest turn into a blaze of agony as Brakmaktin peeled away the flesh there as well, revealing the captain’s chest cavity with its rib cage and its stubbornly beating heart.
Next came his feet. Then his legs. Then his belly and his back, until his skin lay at his feet and there was nothing recognizable left of him. Just bones and blood and organs that somehow managed to keep working, though they were open to the elements and the flesh that had contained them was gone.
I am dead, Picard thought. Or I might as well be.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the process began to reverse itself. His skin stood up and began to fold itself back onto his body, starting with his feet and his legs and gradually working its way up.
His hands were last. He used them to feel his face, to assure himself that it was back where it had been. It was. He was whole again, intact, as if he had never been dismantled in the first place. Even his clothes had been restored.
And the pain he thought would never end…was gone.
“You endured that well,” Brakmaktin observed.
The captain believed he understood now. It wasn’t enough for Brakmaktin to merely kill him. Perhaps in someone else’s case that would have been enough, but not in Picard’s. The monster wanted to torture him, humiliate him—reduce him to a shuddering gobbet of flesh and bone in order to exact his full measure of revenge.
“Look,” Picard said, his voice echoing, “I don’t blame you for being angry with me. But had our positions been reversed, you would have done the same thing.”
The Nuyyad shook his head. “No. I would not have stopped at destroying the depot. I would have gone on to destroy every Nuyyad I could find, until I myself was destroyed.”
“Then you understand,” said the captain.
“I do,” Brakmaktin told him. “I understand that you are the enemy. And the enemy must be conquered.”
And he started to raise his hand.
“Listen to me,” Picard said, remembering a tactic that had worked for a different captain against a different superbeing. “You are intent on giving birth here, in this lair you have created. But what will happen when your offspring start to grow?”
The Nuyyad looked at him, his eyes narrowing.
“They will each become as powerful as you are,” Picard continued, “but without your wisdom. There is no telling the sort of damage they will do—initially only to each other, perhaps, but later on to you as well.”
Brakmaktin thrust out his chin. “You think they will conspire against me? Try to destroy me?”
“Just as soon as the opportunity presents itself,” the captain assured him.
“I agree,” Brakmaktin spat, a look of amusement taking over his alien features. “They will try to topple me—and they will succeed. I would expect no less from a brood of true-bred Nuyyad.”
Damn, Picard thought. What else could he say? How could he reason with a being capable of pulping him with a single thought—and reconstructing him with another?
Maybe he couldn’t. But I can push that being over the edge. “Your children will be aberrations,” he cried out, allowing a note of revulsion to crawl into his voice. “They will be outcasts and monsters, just like you.”
As the echoes of his prediction died, it appeared that he had given Brakmaktin pause. And since his bones hadn’t yet been turned to jelly or his heart to stone, the captain pressed on.
“Is that how you want your clan to think of you?” he demanded. “As the monstrosity who remade a galaxy in his abhorrent image?”
Brakmaktin looked stricken. He put a meaty hand over his face, hiding it from sight.
Is it possible that I got through to him? Picard wondered.
Then Brakmaktin removed his hand, and the captain could see that his adversary’s eyes were glowing more brightly than ever.
“Yes,” the Nuyyad hissed, filling the air in the cavern with a crackling blue fury, “that is exactly what I want.”
Then he held out his hand, palm up, all four thick fingers outstretched—and Picard knew by the nucleus of pain growing inside him that this time his ordeal would be a fatal one.
Nikolas was getting ready to rush the Nuyyad, regardless of the outcome, when he spied a glimmer of light in a remote part of the cavern—a part that hadn’t had the benefit of illumination previously. At first, he thought it was his imagination, a result of the punishment he had taken. Then he realized that his mind wasn’t playing tricks after all.
It was real. And in the next moment, it grew from a glimmer into a fully formed column—one whose like Nikolas had seen a hundred times before.
It was the visual effect created by a site-to-site transport. Someone else was beaming down into the cavern—and doing it all alone, by the looks of it.
But who could be naive enough to do that, after an entire platoon had been destroyed by Brakmaktin? Who would even contemplate it?
Then the column of light faded, and Nikolas got his answer. Of course, he thought bitterly, as the figure in Starfleet red and black took on form and substance.
And revealed himself as Kastiigan.
Nikolas believed he understood—all too well, in fact. Kastiigan had expressed what seemed like a death wish ever since his arrival on the Stargazer. It made sense for him to have joined his captain in the cavern, where that wish was certain to be granted.
But if Kastiigan thought that sacrificing himself was a good idea, Nikolas definitely did not. He wished he had the power to send the science officer back where he came from, before Brakmaktin unleashed his wrath on Kastiigan as well.
Unfortunately, Nikolas couldn’t do that. He couldn’t even save himself, much less some fool of a science officer.
Brakmaktin’s massive head turned toward Kastiigan, his gaze fastening on the newest sacrifice offered up to him. Leaving Picard alone for the moment, he raised his hand in the direction of the science officer.
No, thought Nikolas.
But before Brakmaktin could do anything to Kastiigan, Kastiigan did something to him.
He touched a device in the palm of his hand—a device Nikolas hadn’t even realized was there. He wasn’t sure what sort of device it was, but he knew one thing…
It was getting hot in the cavern—incredibly hot. In a second or less, the ambient temperature had shot up well past the level of human tolerance.
Unable to breathe, Nikolas used his manacled hands to tear open the collar of his jacket. That didn’t give him much relief, though. The air was too hot, too thick to draw easily into his lungs.
But what was happening to Nikolas was nothing compared to what was happening to Brakmaktin. The Nuyyad’s head began to loll as if he couldn’t control it. Then, suddenly, he toppled and hit the ground. And after a second or two, it appeared he wasn’t getting up.
After what Nikolas had seen him do, after all the power he had displayed, it was a shocking sight. What’s going on? the human wondered.
But Kastiigan didn’t seem surprised by Brakmaktin’s reaction. He just pulled
out his phaser and started firing.
And this time, the unconscious Nuyyad couldn’t keep the beam from hitting him. It bludgeoned him, seared his silver skin, sent him skidding and rolling across the floor of the cavern.
Nikolas understood now. Somehow the heat had put Brakmaktin back in his dormant state, using the power of his body’s own mechanisms to subdue him. But his sleep was even deeper than before, so deep he didn’t know what was happening to him.
Kastiigan kept up the barrage, battering the Nuyyad, burning him, punishing him. His beam slammed Brakmaktin into a wall, pinned him there, and assaulted his cellular integrity. As powerful as the alien was, even he could take only so much of this before his body started to break down.
Nikolas couldn’t believe it. He was watching something he wouldn’t have dreamed possible. If Kastiigan continued his assault much longer, it might put an end to Brakmaktin.
But the bigger surprise was how the human felt about it. Despite everything Brakmaktin had done to him, to the crew of the Iktoj’ni, to the Ubarrak, to Captain Picard…Nikolas found himself feeling sorry for the alien.
Because, through his link with Brakmaktin, he could feel the Nuyyad’s pain. All the things Brakmaktin had said in the armory of the Ubarrak ship—they were true after all.
He hated what he had become. He thought of himself as an aberration, a blight on the universe.
And more than anything, he wished he could die.
But Brakmaktin’s Nuyyad instinct for self-preservation was too strong. It wouldn’t let him succumb. And that was why, as helpless as he looked, he began defending himself.
Blue lightnings shot from him, protecting him, staving off the force of Kastiigan’s phaser beam. Then some of the lightnings sought the science officer, trying to strike back at him.
The alien still wasn’t awake—not completely. But he was awake enough to put up a struggle in his defense, and to gradually stagger to his feet.
Finally, one of the lightnings found Kastiigan and sent him sprawling. His phaser fell from his hand and clattered on the stone floor, finally coming up short against a budding stalagmite.
His antagonist disarmed, Brakmaktin approached the Kandilkari, meaning to finish him off. But before Brakmaktin could reach his intended victim, he was attacked from another quarter—because Picard had gotten hold of Kastiigan’s phaser.
Like his science officer, the captain blasted Brakmaktin with all the energy at his disposal. In his still-weakened state, the Nuyyad was driven backward into the ground.
But it didn’t take him as long to recover as it had before. His lightnings swirled around him, shielding him, and then went for Picard as they had gone for Kastiigan.
They were more efficient this time. Within seconds, the captain was whipped off his feet and sent crashing into the surface behind him. His phaser didn’t fall far from him—but before he could reach for it, Brakmaktin gestured and sent it flying into the nearby firepit.
Then he advanced on the sweat-drenched Picard, skirting the pit as he did so, lightnings playing furiously around him—still not fully in control of his senses, but more so with each passing moment.
Soon he would shrug off his malaise completely. The captain would be destroyed, and Kastiigan after him, and after that there would be no one left to stop Brakmaktin.
He and his brood would run roughshod over this world, then over the others held by the Ubarrak. Eventually, Brakmaktin would rule the entire galaxy—and he would do it for as long as he lived.
It was the worst thing that had ever happened, and their last chance to stop it was slowly but surely slipping away. Soon it would be gone altogether.
Stopping in front of the cornered captain, the pit beside him, Brakmaktin raised his hands to unleash a storm of destruction. But for an inexplicable second, he paused.
And in that moment, the words Destroy me shot into Nikolas’s brain.
The last time he had heard them, Brakmaktin was echoing the human’s arrogance, mocking it. Or was he? Even then, the alien may have been plagued by what he had become.
But now, there was no doubt. Part of him, at least, wanted to be destroyed. And he was goading Nikolas into attempting it before his instincts moved to prevent it.
It was doubtless the last chance anyone would ever get to kill Brakmaktin, and Nikolas seized it.
First, without help from his manacled hands, he lurched to his feet. Then he launched himself into a run, reckless and headlong.
Making his way across the cavern in that dead, airless heat seemed to take Nikolas forever. The closer he got, the more light-headed he got, and the more he expected Brakmaktin to turn around and blast him.
But it didn’t happen. Miraculously, Nikolas got within five steps of the monster. Four. Three. Two…
With his last stride, Nikolas lowered his shoulder and slammed into Brakmaktin as hard as he could.
As strong as the Nuyyad was, he could have rooted himself to the ground and turned his flesh the hardness of rock. But when Nikolas plowed into him, he wasn’t rooted at all. He was as vulnerable to attack as any other creature of flesh and blood.
So he went sprawling in the direction of the firepit. But Nikolas had hit his tormentor so hard, he couldn’t stop himself from sprawling as well.
With a sense of accomplishment that far outweighed his dread, the human saw the fiery, spitting surface of the lava rush up to meet him like an immense, savage man….
It was with abject horror that Picard watched Nikolas tumble over the brink of the firepit and vanish from sight.
The captain scrambled after him, hoping Nikolas had landed on a ledge where he could still be reached. But when Picard looked down into the roiling lava, there was no sign of either Nikolas or Brakmaktin. It seemed that both of them had been destroyed.
Gone, the captain thought, overcome with a dark, hollow sense of resignation. Nikolas is gone.
He turned back to Kastiigan to make sure that his science officer, at least, was all right. But to his dismay, Kastiigan was nowhere to be seen either.
Picard wrestled with the observation, trying desperately to come to grips with it. Where had Kastiigan gone? He wiped the sweat from his brow, wishing he could think more clearly. But the heat was too debilitating, too oppressive….
Then, all of a sudden, it vanished—and the cavern along with it—and the captain was standing on a transporter platform instead of a rough stone floor.
In the same moment, he realized what had happened to Kastiigan, because he was standing at Picard’s side. With Brakmaktin no longer able to prevent their beaming out, both of them had been reeled back to the Stargazer.
And they weren’t alone. There was a third individual alongside them on the transporter platform, lying on his back with his face twisted in pain.
“Nikolas!” the captain blurted.
“Stand aside,” said Greyhorse, nudging Picard out of the way. “We’ve got to get him to sickbay.”
The next thing the captain knew, a medical team was descending on Nikolas, maneuvering him onto an anti-grav stretcher. In a matter of seconds, he was being rushed out of the transporter room.
Picard felt a hand on his arm. He turned and saw Kastiigan grinning at him, happier than the captain had ever seen him.
“Lieutenant,” said Picard, grinning back. “You are alive.”
“Nonetheless,” said the science officer, “I am grateful. I will never forget what you did for me.”
“Nor will I forget what you did for us,” said Picard. “You displayed great courage down there.”
Kastiigan waved away the notion. “It’s kind of you to say so, sir. However, I am a Kandilkari. We do not prize our lives above those of our colleagues.”
That might well be the understatement of the millennium. The captain was about to say so when the doors to the transporter room opened again, admitting Serenity Santana.
She stood there staring at him for a second, looking as if she were angry with him about something. Then,
without warning, she pelted across the room and threw herself into his arms.
“I thought—” she began, her voice a little huskier than usual. Then she took a ragged breath and added, “Never mind what I thought. I’m just glad to see your face.”
Picard smiled. “Not as glad as I am to see yours.”
After all, they both knew how close he had come to never seeing anything again.
Chapter Seventeen
AS SOON AS PARIS HEARD about the Magnians, he queried the ship’s computer regarding Jiterica’s whereabouts. It told him that she was in her quarters.
And that’s where he found her, sitting on her bed, the boots of her containment suit planted on the floor. If he had harbored any doubts as to whether she knew, he harbored them no longer.
Paris could see it in her face—a kind of awkward, open-mouthed grief. But then, it was an emotion she hadn’t had occasion to express in the past.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She didn’t answer him. She just stared at the flexible gloves of her suit.
He had hoped that Jiterica wouldn’t take Stave’s death so hard. After all, she hadn’t known him for very long. But clearly, she was struggling with it.
Paris had seen her look lonely at times, and depressed, but never like this. Never heartbroken because she had lost someone for whom she felt…affection.
He didn’t use the word “love.” She couldn’t have loved him. Not the way she loves me.
Sitting down beside Jiterica, Paris asked, “Is there anything I can do?”
She remained silent. And it was a cold silence, a silence she didn’t mean to share with him.
What did I say? he wondered.
Finally, Jiterica spoke. “You didn’t like him.”
It was true. He hadn’t liked the way Stave carried himself or the look in his eye, and he had hated the liberties the fellow had taken with Jiterica.
“I didn’t like the way he treated you,” he said.
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