Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [126]
As Zevon stiffened in pain against him, he found the entry wound, and blessedly an exit.
“It’s just a flesh wound, I think.” Weakened by relief, he grinned at Zevon. “You just got a good poke!”
Fighting the shock of having been stabbed, seriously or not, Zevon winced and nodded but couldn’t manage to let go of Stiles just yet.
Stiles had other ideas. He twisted around and glared at Orsova. “You missed, you filthy ox!”
Orsova slammed an elbow into Jason Bolt and smacked Zack in the face, driving him back. After that, though, he didn’t attack anybody, instead crossing to the port panel where the longrange scanner was showing a clear picture of the constellation ship getting smaller and smaller as it ran.
“Voice! Voice, save me!” he cried. “Beam me away, Voice! I did what you wanted! Where are you! Come for me! Voice!” But nobody came to rescue him. “Pathetic,” Stiles commented.
Apparently just now realizing he was in deep trouble, Orsova cranked around and glared as if trapped in a box. He could do nothing as Stiles closed on him, pressed his fingers into the flesh at Orsova’s throat, backed him tight up against the portside scanner panel. “I was afraid of you? You’re just a quivering little coward when you’re standing alone, aren’t you?”
“You better not hurt me!” Orsova pressed backward against the panel. “The Voice is coming back for me!”
“Not soon enough.” Letting loose a dozen years of frustration-and even anger at himself, that he’d been haunted for a third of his life by the face now crimping before him Stiles bent Orsova back over the panel until he could push no more. Orsova choked and gagged as Stiles’s knuckles kneaded into his throat.
As Orsova’s face flushed from copper to almost beet red with strain, quite abruptly, even absurdly, the satisfaction meter began to fall. Stiles glared into the hated face, saw the panic and desperation, and snarled as if looking into a garbage pit. But he stopped pushing. He even let go a little.
“Damn,” he uttered. “You’re just a toothache! You’re not even worth hitting!”
To the obvious amazement of everybody around him, he pulled Orsova back to his feet and let him reel.
Stiles found himself strangely amused and pleased at Orsova’s pitiful display. Over there, Travis was smiling at him in some kind of ironic pride. That felt good.
Shaking his head, he leaned one hip against the helm and commented, “At least I was worth beating up!”
His crewmen rewarded him with a laugh and a round of applause that made him feel like-well, like royalty.
“Just stay there, you puscup;’ he said to Orsova. “You’re as imprisoned as I was. Dr. McCoy, would you have a look at Zevon, please? Zack, escort the doctor around the other side of the helm, away from this mulchy moron.”
Playing out his win, he freely turned his back on Orsova as if his former guard were hardly more than a bug on the wall. For the fast time, he turned his back on his greatest fear, the ghost of all his nights, and completely dismissed him.
He turned instead to Zevon, as Dr. McCoy probed the Romulan’s wound. “How is he?”
“Superficial,” the elderly doctor confirmed. “Hardly raising a welt. Punched through the skin, scored the intestines-no ruptures, though. Let me have a better look….”
He drew around his medical tricorder and a scanner and started taking readings.
“All right, Zevon,” Stiles began firmly, “you can have what you want. In fact, you can have more than you want. I’m going to take you back to that stupid planet and dump you there with your wife, just like you want. And then I’m coming back into space and demonstrate to you exactly what a Federation promise means.” Leaning forward with theatrical flair, he announced, “I’m going to build your barricade.” “You, yourself?.” Zevon challenged.
From the other side of the bridge, Sykora gasped, “Zevon, can he do it?”
“NOV’ Her husband flinched as McCoy scanned him. “He certainly cannot possibly do it. The barricade needs raw materials, infrastructure, parts, support-.Federation interest will fade before the barricade is built.”