Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [24]
Not nearly as motivated as he was now.
But then, if all went as they hoped, Picard and his crew would be confronting an equally powerful being before long. They needed to secure any advantage they could. And if reading ship’s logs might identify a weakness in Brakmaktin, the captain would go over them a thousand times.
It had already been a valuable exercise, reminding him of parts of the story he had forgotten—for instance, that Mitchell’s increasing disdain for his colleagues had led to his telekinetic strangulation of a lieutenant named Lee Kelso at the lithium cracking station on Delta Vega.
Mitchell could have merely knocked Kelso unconscious and still kept him from acting as an inconvenience. However, he decided to murder the lieutenant instead.
Brakmaktin had displayed the same cold-blooded disregard for sentient life in dealing with his crewmates on the Nuyyad scout ship. According to the lone survivor, Brakmaktin hadn’t hesitated or shown his victims any mercy. He had simply closed their throats, cutting off their air supply and asphyxiating them.
However, in Mitchell’s case at least, there was still room for a more personal variety of punishment—something driven by vengeance rather than expedience. That much was clear in his dealings with James Kirk, Mitchell’s captain.
According to the logs, Mitchell and Kirk had become friends at Starfleet Academy and worked together on two previous assignments before coming to the Enterprise. Kirk’s logs reflected his affection and admiration for Mitchell, even when the latter seemed no longer to be himself.
Mitchell had no doubt started out with similar feelings about his captain. In fact, he had risked his life to save Kirk’s at least once. And even after his exposure to the barrier energies, Mitchell seemed to harbor a certain respect for Kirk.
But in time, that respect turned into something else. Resentment? Embarrassment? A need to dissociate himself from his past? It was hidden beneath a veneer of dispassion and indifference, but it was there nonetheless.
Why else would Mitchell have forced Kirk to bow down to him and lift his hands in supplication? Why would he have opened an empty grave at Kirk’s feet, or created a headstone with the captain’s name on it? Why else except for the fact that he still felt a kinship with Kirk, and hated himself for doing so?
Mitchell could have destroyed his old friend many times over, both on the Enterprise and on the barren surface of Delta Vega. But he had refrained. He had felt compelled to castigate Kirk rather than simply eliminate him.
And in the end, it cost him dearly, because it gave the captain an opportunity to enlist the other player in their little drama—Elizabeth Dehner, resident psychiatrist and budding superbeing in her own right.
Like Mitchell, Dehner had been suffused with the energies in the barrier, and had begun to evolve into something more powerful than Homo sapiens. But Mitchell was so impressed with himself, he didn’t think twice about letting Dehner stand next to him as he humbled his friend Kirk.
Apparently, he hadn’t entertained the possibility that Dehner would turn on him. But as Kirk was driven to his knees, he pointed out to Dehner that Mitchell would kill her as soon as she became a threat to him, spurring her to level an attack against Mitchell then and there.
The two mutated beings exchanged bolts of crackling blue energy until Dehner was near death. But her efforts had drained Mitchell, temporarily robbing him of his power.
Picard wished he had someone like Dehner to help him now. Unfortunately, even if she had survived, she would have become as bad a threat as Mitchell.
The captain would have to settle for the Magnians, the only other beings in the galaxy who enjoyed even a measure of barrier-enhanced power. Unfortunately, their combined mental abilities—impressive as they seemed to Picard and his crew