Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [31]
Nikolas had seen species that were violent by nature—the Klingons, for instance—and those that killed without quarter. But he had never seen anyone sit in the midst of the fallen and act as if they weren’t there.
Swearing softly, the human planted himself by another of Brakmaktin’s victims and hooked his hands under the fellow’s armpits. He was about to drag the Ubarrak to his feet when the poor bastard began to tremble.
Before Nikolas knew it, the trembling evolved into a series of jerks, the Ubarrak’s head pounding the deck as if he were trying to free himself from his benefactor’s grasp. Though the Ubarrak was brain-dead already, Nikolas couldn’t let him smash his skull to pulp. Slipping beneath the Ubarrak’s head, Nikolas held on to him and absorbed the impacts as best he could.
As it turned out, they didn’t last that much longer. A minute at most. Then the Ubarrak just went limp in Nikolas’s arms.
The human pressed his fingers against an artery in the Ubarrak’s neck, feeling for a pulse. There wasn’t any. The Ubarrak wasn’t just brain-dead anymore—he was dead altogether.
And Brakmaktin continued to sit there with his back to them, staring at his screen.
Something snapped in Nikolas then—not just because of what had happened there on the battle cruiser, or even what had happened on the Iktoj’ni. It was because of what hadn’t happened.
Sliding the Ubarrak off him, Nikolas came forward and planted himself in front of Brakmaktin, blocking his view of the screen. The alien looked at him, his eyes moving almost imperceptibly, but he didn’t say anything. Being a telepath, he may have believed he didn’t have to.
But Nikolas wasn’t a mind reader. He wanted—needed—to ask his questions out loud.
“You destroyed everyone except me,” he spat, his eyes as hot as coals in their sockets. “Why?”
The alien remained silent, his features as immobile as those of a stone sculpture.
Nikolas grabbed the console that separated them and leaned forward until his face was centimeters from Brakmaktin’s. “What do you need me for?”
Again, no answer was forthcoming.
“Why do you keep me around?” the human demanded, his voice taut and strained.
Still no response.
“There has to be a reason,” he insisted.
If there was, Brakmaktin didn’t seem inclined to share it with him.
Consumed by anger and frustration, Nikolas did something he wouldn’t have done in a calmer and wiser state—he pounded his fists on the console, daring the alien to take offense.
But Brakmaktin still refused to acknowledge him. He just went on staring as if Nikolas weren’t there.
No, the human resolved. You’re not going to get away with that. Not anymore.
He didn’t care what Brakmaktin did to him. He just wanted to wipe that condescending expression off the alien’s ugly face.
“You know what I think?” he said, his voice ringing from one end of the bridge to the other. “I think you’re scared. I think you look out at the universe and all you see is not-you, and it scares the living hell out of you.”
The alien made a sound he no doubt intended as a gesture of dismissal. But Nikolas heard something in it that told him he was on the right track.
“And you need someone like me,” he went on, “to remind you what it was like to be just Brakmaktin—before he gained all his power and became someone else.”
The alien’s nostrils flared, but the rest of him remained as it was. And Nikolas couldn’t stand that.
“Go ahead,” he snapped in Brakmaktin’s face, “prove I’m wrong, dammit! Destroy me!”
The words were out before he realized how stupid he was to utter them. What was he trying to accomplish—other than getting himself killed, maybe?
But somehow, he didn’t feel that he was in any jeopardy. He felt that he was right. And if that was so, Brakmaktin wouldn’t kill him any more than he would kill himself.
The monster glared at him with his silver orbs, his brow ledge lowered in restrained fury. Destroy me, he echoed ominously in the human’s mind.
And for just a second, Nikolas’s blood ran cold, because he thought Brakmaktin might actually do it. Then the alien turned away,