Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [36]
He had barely completed the thought when the defenders reeled off another barrage. Nikolas was whipped in one direction and then the other, finally winding up at the base of a bulkhead with his side throbbing and blood trickling down the side of his face.
Peering through the thickening swirls of smoke, he caught a glimpse of Brakmaktin. The alien was standing just where he had been standing before, unmoved in every sense of the word.
But the battle cruiser had taken a beating, and Nikolas didn’t have to consult a damage report to know she couldn’t take much more. Maybe it’ll end here after all, he thought.
Then Nikolas saw Brakmaktin raise his meaty hands and turn his palms toward the viewscreen, and heard the alien utter a single syllable: “No!”
It wasn’t spoken loudly or even insistently, but the bridge echoed with it as if it were a thunderclap. And by the time the echoes died down, the pounding had stopped.
The bridge was peaceful again, tranquil, serene. The only sounds that marred the stillness were the soft trills of the surviving consoles.
Nikolas felt an urge to know what the alien had done, but he suppressed it. He was afraid of the answer.
Unfortunately for him, he got it anyway. “Look,” said Brakmaktin, a savage urgency in his voice, and pushed the human toward the navigation panel with the power of his mind.
Each of the panel’s monitors showed Nikolas a different battle cruiser—one of the three flying under Commander Goshevik’s aegis. They were bristling with weaponry, their batteries pumping bright packets of destructive energy into the eternal night.
But if Goshevik’s battle cruisers were still firing, why couldn’t Nikolas feel it? Had his alien companion simply dampened the force of their attacks?
“This is what these ships looked like a minute ago,” said Brakmaktin, answering the human’s unspoken question. “And here is what they look like now.”
Suddenly, the images changed. The battle cruisers had become so much floating slag. And the Ubarrak who had operated them were nowhere to be seen.
Nikolas felt his breath catch in his throat. He hoped the crews of those ships had had time to escape in pods, to save themselves. But he didn’t believe it—not for a moment.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brakmaktin turn to him. He looked up, bracing himself for the alien’s insufferable leer of triumph. But that’s not what he saw.
Brakmaktin looked as if he was in some kind of pain. His cruel, shapeless mouth worked for a moment, as if he couldn’t get it around the words he wanted to say. Finally, in a voice edged with misery, he said, “It is wrong…”
And then he disappeared.
Picard was still pondering what he had learned about Nikolas as he materialized on the transporter platform.
Eager to breathe the fresher air generated by the Stargazer’s life support systems, he removed his helmet. At the same time, the doors to the room opened and admitted Ben Zoma.
His expression indicated that he had something to report. “What is it?” the captain asked as he stepped down.
“Gerda’s found another ion trail.”
“Excellent,” said Picard.
“That’s the good news,” said the first officer. “The bad is that it leads us in a considerably more interesting direction than the last trail we followed.”
Picard looked at his first officer. “How interesting?”
“If we follow it long enough, it’ll land us right in the middle of Ubarrak territory.”
The captain recalled what Dojjaron had said about Brakmaktin, and how the “aberration” would need more room to create his safe-cavern. Apparently, he meant to find it among the hundreds of worlds ruled by the Ubarrak.
The Stargazer wasn’t welcome in that part of space—not while the Ubarrak and the Federation were at odds with each other. If Picard tried to follow the ion trail, he would almost certainly end up being fired upon.
Hell, he might start a war. He could imagine what McAteer would say about that.
Of course, he had another option—he could leave the matter in the laps of the Ubarrak. They were, after all, the cause of countless Starfleet