Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [48]
Obal hadn’t yet arrived on the Stargazer when she breached the barrier and clashed with the Nuyyad, but he had familiarized himself with the events of that time. So he knew how unlikely it was that the crew’s hopes would be realized.
The Nuyyad were, after all, brutal, remorseless combatants. If Brakmaktin’s powers were anywhere near as impressive as people said, he was the single most formidable individual in history—not just Federation history, but the history of the galaxy.
As Nikolas’s closest friend on the ship, Obal wanted to retrieve Nikolas more than anyone. And as an admirer of Captain Picard, he wanted to have confidence in the captain’s abilities.
However, he did not have confidence. He was frightened for his friend. And though he would do anything—sacrifice anything—to get Nikolas back, he was afraid it wouldn’t be enough.
Nikolas whistled softly at the reading on the Ubarrak control panel.
Standing beside him, Gerda Idun took on a look of concern. “What is it?”
“Nothing bad,” he assured her. “Just the opposite. We’re making amazing time.”
Her hand on his shoulder, she angled a look at the panel for herself. “That is amazing. If our ships could go this fast for more than minutes at a time, we would never have needed to kidnap Simenon. How does Brakmaktin do it?”
Nikolas shrugged. “How does he do anything?”
He didn’t want to say more in case the Nuyyad was listening in on them. Brakmaktin had remained in the armory ever since Gerda Idun’s appearance, making his presence felt only in the velocity the ship was maintaining.
As to how he was accomplishing it…it might have had something to do with their warp field geometry or the efficiency of their dilithium interface. Nikolas could probably have worked out the details if that were all he had to worry about. But he had to concentrate on the big picture, in case the Nuyyad emerged from his sanctum and threw Nikolas a curve.
“I wonder if there’s a barrier in my universe,” said Gerda Idun, her eyes losing focus for a moment.
The remark would have been cause for concern if she were truly from another frame of reference, and she could have challenged a Klingon-Cardassian alliance with a cadre of superbeings. But that wasn’t going to happen.
“I don’t know,” Nikolas told her. “I suppose it’s possible. Probable, even.”
“Then maybe,” said Gerda Idun, “we’ve got a barrier-enhanced Nuyyad as well, and he’s just too far away for us to have heard of him yet. And if there is someone like that, maybe he’ll find a Klingon world to his liking instead of an Ubarrak one.”
Why not? Nikolas mused. He was on a ship that was maintaining a speed it had no right to maintain, sitting beside a woman who shouldn’t even have existed. And their unseen companion on this voyage was the unlikeliest component of all, in that he was responsible for the other two.
So why not a Brakmaktin in that other universe? And a bride of Brakmaktin too, since Nikolas was in a generous mood?
Of course, he still had no idea why it had been so important to the Nuyyad to reach that mining planet. But if everything panned out as the human hoped, he would let someone else figure it out.
“No response from the helm?” Gerda Idun asked.
Nikolas tried the pertinent controls—to no avail. “Not yet,” he replied.
He would have felt better if Brakmaktin had unlocked the helm controls and allowed Nikolas to pilot the cruiser. But he imagined that would come in time.
And if it didn’t, it didn’t really matter. All they had to do was get near Federation space and send a message. And even if Brakmaktin decided to keep them silent, for some arcane reason, Starfleet would still notice an Ubarrak warship in its backyard.
The only fly in the ointment was the Federation’s lack of a “cure” for what had happened to Brakmaktin. Eventually, the alien would realize he had come a long way for nothing.
What would he do at that point? Would he blow up and destroy everything in sight? There was no way to know. And before Gerda Idun’s appearance in the corridor, it wouldn’t have mattered to Nikolas either way.
But things