Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [65]
Suddenly, he knew where the energy came from, because the explanation had been planted in his brain. The things inside the invaders were stars—tiny, unformed balls of nuclear fusion. And they were consuming their hosts with a continuous barrage of insane, subatomic fury.
The invaders should have died instantly. But instead they remained alive somehow, shuddering in an agony no living being should ever have known.
Skin and bone turned to white ash, and still the invaders kept twitching under the influence of the unholy lights inside them—their mouths open, their arms raised in a plea for mercy that went unheard. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they began to fall apart, to crumble.
In the end, there was nothing left of them. Nothing at all.
Brakmaktin raised his massive arms and howled like an animal, celebrating his victory over those who had wished to destroy him. And he continued to howl as he floated down from his alcove, making the cavern walls throb with the force of his jubilation.
The web of blue lightning came back and played all around him, glorifying him. As if he were himself a force of nature. No—a god, thought Nikolas. A savage, brutal murderer of a god.
And it wasn’t just the newcomers Brakmaktin had killed, because hope had died with them.
Picard sat in the observation lounge among Serenity, Dojjaron, and several of his officers, and watched Serenity’s facial expression as she telepathically followed the exploits of her comrades on the surface. She looked alert, vigilant, like an animal guarding her young.
Clearly, she would have preferred to be part of Daniels’s team, and there was no question that she would have been an asset there. She was a Magnian, after all. She had powers normal humans did not, and she knew how to use them.
However, she hadn’t been trained as the others had. And her function there was not to fight. It was to coordinate between Picard and Dojjaron above and the task force below.
“What is taking so long?” asked Dojjaron, jarring the others in the room with his presumptuousness.
“Quiet,” said Serenity, an edge in her voice, speaking brusquely to the Nuyyad for the first time in Picard’s memory.
Suddenly she stopped speaking, and her expression changed. Her eyes lost their luster, her skin its color.
“What is it?” the captain asked.
“They’re gone,” she said.
Picard’s jaw clenched. “Not all of them, surely?”
Serenity drew a ragged breath. “All.”
There was a solemn silence as the implications of Serenity’s announcement sank in. Then Picard said, in a voice as steady as he could make it, “What went wrong?”
Dojjaron rumbled a curse. “Brakmaktin’s slumber was too shallow. He should never have woken so easily.”
“But he did,” said Simenon, “didn’t he?”
Picard looked to the Nuyyad to observe his reaction to the gibe. He expected a sharp retort at the very least, if not an all-out physical assault.
But all Dojjaron did was shake his head. “He’s not Nuyyad anymore. He’s something different now. He’s unpredictable.”
“He is still Nuyyad,” Picard insisted, “or he wouldn’t have made this nest of his, or withdrawn in the first place. He is still one of your people. And somewhere in his brain or his body, there is still a weakness we can exploit.”
Dojjaron made a sound of disgust deep in his throat. But he didn’t hit anyone. Instead, he brought his hand up to his face and appeared to weigh what the captain had said.
“There’s got to be something,” Picard said.
The Nuyyad looked up at him with his dark eyes. “Maybe there is,” he conceded. “But there is no guarantee that it will work.”
“Tell us anyway,” said Serenity, pale but still looking determined.
“It may be possible,” said Dojjaron, “to extend Brakmaktin’s withdrawal. To make it more like a normal span.”
“How?” the captain prodded.
“The withdrawal is triggered largely by ambient temperature. By raising the temperature in the cavern, maybe we can put Brakmaktin back to sleep.”
“How