Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [1]
Several days earlier, Starfleet had warned the cargo hauler about a wave of unidentified aggressors boasting formidable weaponry. But it hadn’t said anything about ship’s corridors turning into subterranean caves.
“After all,” the behemoth continued, in the same discordant voice, “you are going to be a big help to me.” He smiled, exposing a rampart of thick, blunt teeth as his mouth stretched from one side of his face to the other. “A big help.”
Nikolas didn’t like the sound of the remark. “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears.
It gave him a moment’s pause. Had he suffered some damage in the attack after all, beyond the cut over his eye and the painful stiffness in his limbs?
The alien didn’t answer Nikolas’s unspoken question—not out loud, anyway. But as the silver orbs in his eye sockets glowed brighter, Nikolas heard something in his brain.
My doing, said the monster, in a small, harsh whisper. All my doing.
A telepath…? Nikolas thought.
And the alien’s smile spread even wider, though the human wouldn’t have believed it possible. He seemed to be taking pleasure in Nikolas’s discomfort.
But it’s not enough, the colossus breathed in Nikolas’s mind. I need more.
Suddenly, the human felt a shiver rise from the depths of his being and take hold of his entire body—a shiver of shock and helplessness, because the alien wasn’t just speaking inside his head anymore. He was dredging up memories.
The death-scream of a thousand finger-sized quadrupeds on Mercker V. The bitter stench of tortured metal after a grisly shuttlecraft crash. The glint of sunlight off an old woman’s hair on a fertile moon of Samito III…
The alien wasn’t gentle about it, either. He stalked about Nikolas’s mind without conscience or compunction, probing and prodding, not caring what he damaged in the process.
Semi-sentient life-forms slithering under the surface of an inland sea. The feel of scales on the naked thigh of his Heiren lover. The bite of homemade ouzo on his tongue, setting fire to his throat and then his brain…
The intruder thrust himself into every fold and crevice of the human’s experience, sampling and rejecting, violating privacies great and small. Nothing stopped him, nothing was off-limits.
Nikolas couldn’t stand the feeling of invasion. It filled him with such revulsion, such self-loathing, that he wanted to escape his own skin. Concentrating with all his might, he tried to expel the alien from his brain.
But he couldn’t. It was like trying to wrestle an enraged mugato. And just as Nikolas realized how powerless he was against the invasion, how utterly overmatched, the alien began to thrust even deeper into his consciousness.
Nikolas could have given in to it. He could have allowed his captor to run roughshod and saved himself even greater discomfort. But he didn’t. He continued to struggle.
It was a futile gesture. The alien was simply too strong, too determined. So Nikolas wasn’t surprised when he felt himself submerged in a raving, synapse-shattering wave of pain…or when he felt his consciousness slip away again into the depths of a slow, black sea…
Jean-Luc Picard gazed across his desk at the strapping, blue-skinned officer who had come to see him. He knew exactly what his visitor wanted.
Still, he allowed Vigo to broach the matter his own way, in his own time. The Pandrilite had earned that privilege with his valor, his dedication, and his unswerving loyalty.
“You’ll recall what I told you about Pandril,” said Vigo. “What Ejanix told me before he died.”
“I do,” said the captain.
Ejanix had been Vigo’s mentor and close friend. Prior to his untimely death, he had insisted that their homeworld—a supposed utopia in which all classes of society were supposed to thrive—was riddled with tyranny and injustice. Vigo