Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [57]
But before he could get the words out, he realized he wasn’t on the ship anymore. And neither was Brakmaktin. They were in a sunlit plaza, surrounded by a soaring landscape of dark, spire-topped buildings. In their Byzantine splendor, the buildings had a vaguely Klingon feel to them.
The alien had transported them into an Ubarrak city—and they weren’t alone. They had appeared in the midst of perhaps a hundred and fifty Ubarrak citizens, clustered in groups of four and five throughout the plaza.
Understandably shocked by the intruders’ appearance, the Ubarrak began backing away from them. But they weren’t backing away fast enough for Nikolas’s taste.
“Run!” he shouted. “Get out of here!”
He recalled what Brakmaktin had done to his crewmates on the cargo hauler, and later to the Ubarrak on the warship. He had no reason to love these people, but he didn’t want to see them die the way the others had died.
The Ubarrak were still hesitating, wary but not scared to death as they should have been. They were wide-eyed, but with curiosity as much as with fear.
“Run!” Nikolas yelled—this time twice as loud as before, stripping his throat raw with the effort.
Then he realized that the Ubarrak couldn’t understand him. Nikolas wasn’t wearing a Starfleet combadge, so there was nothing to translate his speech.
Still, they must have heard the urgency in his voice, and seen his expression, because they seemed to take the hint. One by one, they wheeled and began running away.
For a moment, Nikolas thought they might make it. Then he saw Brakmaktin’s eyes glow with a fierce, familiar light, and he knew the Ubarrak had no chance.
Males, females, even children…they all uttered strangled cries and collapsed. They were dead before they hit the ground, inert bags of flesh and bone and blood.
The only ones still standing were Nikolas and Brakmaktin. Everyone else was sprawled in waves radiating away from them, looking like the victims of a massive concussion.
Nikolas didn’t know how the Nuyyad had killed them, and didn’t want to know. It would only make the stone of horror in his throat that much harder to swallow.
And why had Brakmaktin cut the Ubarrak down? Why had he seen fit to destroy them?
Not because they posed any threat to him—they were running away, after all. Not because they could have hurt him or stopped him or even slowed him down.
He just wanted to see them dead. And because he had the power, he had made it happen.
Just then, Nikolas heard a low hum, like a swarm of angry bees. He looked about for its source.
“Ah,” said Brakmaktin, lifting his face to the flawless blue-green heavens. “It is about time.”
Then Nikolas saw a speck on the horizon, between two of the buildings surrounding them. As he scrutinized it, it grew larger, and the humming grew proportionately louder.
Finally, the human saw what it was—a blunt, black vessel, not much bigger than one of the Stargazer’s shuttlecraft. But it maneuvered rather easily in the atmosphere, obviously having been designed to move at low altitudes.
It had a symbol on its flank—a fiery yellow eye. The city’s security force, no doubt. They had come to address the disturbance in the heart of their jurisdiction.
“Go back,” Nikolas whispered helplessly.
But he knew the Ubarrak in the vessel wouldn’t do that. They couldn’t. It was their job to protect the other Ubarrak. How were they to know the kind of power they were up against, or the nature of the being charged with it?
As soon as the vessel came to rest, the door in its side slid open. And one by one, the Ubarrak inside it disembarked. There were a dozen of them in all, disruptor pistols lodged in their fists.
They were dressed in stark black uniforms with gold trim, not unlike the crew of the Ubarrak warship. Their expressions were stern, business-like, not the least bit afraid. And they trained their blasters on the offworlders as if they would be only too happy to fire them.
One of the Ubarrak came forward and speared the Nuyyad