Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [88]
Crichton screamed orders like a man possessed. He looked wildly about him, up at the sky, where no CS air support was evident, and out beyond the buildings of CephCom, where no more ground support came.
But he still had his mobile radiation cannon, his one great gun that had done away with Gulliver. He reached into the turret and manually aimed the gun at Tezcatlipoca.
Tezcatlipoca stood his ground. He spoke at Crichton in an indecipherable booming language, but made no move to defend himself. He pointed at his own chest, a mirror-surface of smoke and darkness, where something throbbed redly: his heart.
Crichton’s mask-face cracked into a bitter smile as he slammed the firing button.
A great flash erupted from the gun.
The radiation reflected off the mirrored surfaces of Tezcatlipoca’s chest and returned, in equal and opposite angle, straight at Crichton.
Crichton’s frozen grimace unlocked itself and he cried out as his body dissolved. He disappeared in a cloud of vapor. A little puddle remained on top of the truck bed where he had stood.
His air strike came too late to save him.
CS jets and battlefield one-eyes filled the sky, firing their growling guns and launching their missiles and guided bombs.
The ground itself began to shake violently and the sky grew dark. A terrible wind began to blow. A female voice, the Matriarch, the voice of all living things, told Troi to lie down and absorb her protection.
And then the Matriarch and her husband, a pair otherwise known as biosphere and cosmos, Gaia and Ouranos, Awitelin Tsita and Apoyan Ta’chu, moved to re-establish natural harmony.
The CS buildings collapsed in on themselves, as earthquakes wracked the ground.
The wind reached the force of a continuous explosion and the planes were swept away like chaff.
Debris blew all over the ground, pinning Troi against a wall. Chunks of earth, wood, and plaster piled on top of her.
Suddenly the noise subsided. The wind and earthquakes had abruptly ceased. Supreme quiet.
Troi’s head hadn’t been covered by the debris and she had a clear view of the ruins of CephCom.
The mythical characters began to rise from the wreckage. They picked their way around, pulling wounded CS from the fallen structures.
Some of the CS quailed before the mythical characters. But some seemed to have been shocked to the point where they just accepted what they saw, and even welcomed the help. Some of the CS talked and laughed openly with members of the invading host.
Troi didn’t see her crewmates in the crowd. She tried to push some of the debris off her and found she couldn’t budge it.
Then she realized that she couldn’t move her body at all. She couldn’t even twitch her fingers or wiggle her toes.
She thought perhaps she had received an injury after all, but then she recognized the feeling. She had experienced it during her earlier encounters with the Other-worlders, the characters from imagination. The transformation they had tried to put her through twice before was now completed. It was as though her body had changed into a different substance. The feeling of immobility was terrifying.
She struggled and strained to move her eyes, but found them locked in their sockets.
She calmed herself as best she could. At least she wasn’t blind. She started examining the scene presented to her. She couldn’t see her body under all the debris covering it, except for part of her hand, which was extended in a reaching gesture.
It was covered with dust except for the upper edge of her index finger. The finger was dark and smooth, with flecks of sparkling material embedded in it. The finger looked like polished stone.
At that moment Troi realized that she had become a statue.
She panicked silently, cried out mentally. But no one came near her or even seemed to notice her. With her gaze now locked irrevocably straight ahead she couldn’t search for Picard, Riker and Data.
She realized that she would never be found. A statue doesn’t emit life signs. The Enterprise’s sensors