Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [66]
“A great deal,” said Dojjaron. And he went on to say exactly how much.
It was a great deal. “In other words,” said Picard, “until it is almost beyond the limits of human endurance.”
The Nuyyad shrugged. “You would know that better than I.”
The captain looked around the table. “All right. We need to raise the temperature in the cavern and we need to do it quickly. Any ideas?”
“I have one,” said Kastiigan. With a deepening of the purple in his jowls, he described it to Picard. “And it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to prepare.”
“Do it,” said the captain.
But before the words had left his mouth, Kastiigan vanished—and he wasn’t the only one. All Picard’s officers were gone, and so was the table around which they were sitting. What’s more, he wasn’t in the Stargazer’s observation lounge anymore. He wasn’t on the Stargazer at all.
He was in a cavern, standing face-to-face with the silver-eyed monster called Brakmaktin.
One moment, Ben Zoma was watching his friend Picard address Kastiigan. The next, the captain seemed to vanish.
It happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, that at first Ben Zoma thought the fault lay with his senses. Then he saw the expressions of bewilderment around the table and realized that the captain had indeed disappeared.
“Computer,” he said, “locate Captain Picard.”
“Captain Picard,” came the reply, “cannot be located on the Stargazer.”
Then, right on the heels of the computer’s response, came another. It was from Refsland, the transporter chief.
“Commander,” he said, “the transporter in Room Two just conducted a site-to-site transport. I tried to report it to the captain, but he didn’t respond. He’s—”
“No longer on the ship,” said Ben Zoma, finishing the thought. “I understand, Lieutenant. Just get him back.”
“Aye, sir,” came the response.
“It’s Brakmaktin,” said Santana, confronting what no one else would. Her eyes were wide with pain and apprehension, even wider than when her task force was wiped out.
Dojjaron made a sound of disgust. “This is not going well.”
Ben Zoma felt like slugging him, but it wouldn’t do Picard any good. “Mister Refsland,” he said, trying to contain his anxiety.
“Sir,” said the transporter operator, his voice coming back over the intercom, “I can’t get a lock on him. Something’s blocking our sensors.”
Ben Zoma could feel his heart pounding against his ribs. “Keep trying,” he said.
But he knew it wouldn’t be any use. Obviously, Brakmaktin wasn’t content anymore waiting for his enemies to beam down to him. Now he was beaming them down himself.
“We’ve got to do something,” Santana implored the first officer.
“We will,” he said, pulling himself together. Because if he didn’t, his friend had no chance at all.
It took Picard a moment to accept the fact that he wasn’t on the Stargazer anymore—that he was, in fact, in Brakmaktin’s cavern below the planet’s surface.
And that it was the Nuyyad who had brought him down there.
“Welcome,” said Brakmaktin, his voice beating against the captain’s ears like a clap of thunder.
It was one thing to imagine the transformation the Nuyyad had undergone and quite another to witness it firsthand. It was not just Brakmaktin’s eyes that glowed with a fierce, silver light—it was his body as well.
And it was not merely giving off illumination. It seemed to Picard that it was vibrating as well, as if it contained too much power to remain in phase with reality.
Certainly, the captain had anticipated an attack of some kind, even at as great a distance as that between Brakmaktin and the Stargazer. He had known that was a possibility. But to suddenly appear in Brakmaktin’s presence? That was something he simply had not anticipated.
How did he do it? Picard wondered, needing to anchor himself in something real and concrete.
More than likely, the alien had harnessed one of the ship’s transporter units. Otherwise, he would have had to coordinate all the millions of minute operations required to disassemble a living being, send his molecules streaming across a vast distance, and