Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [67]
That was impossible, even for a being as powerful as Brakmaktin. Wasn’t it?
Again, Brakmaktin battered the captain merely by speaking. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Captain Picard.”
“You know who I am?” Picard asked.
“I’ve known about you for some time. Your name was one of those I found in Nikolas’s head. That was why I kept him alive so long—so he would eventually lead me to you. But fate seems to have made that unnecessary. It placed you in easy reach, giving me a chance to even the score with you.”
Even the score? Picard thought. For what?
“For the things you did to my people,” said Brakmaktin. “The terrible, inexcusable things.”
Picard couldn’t help thinking: I did what I had to do.
“Liar,” the Nuyyad growled, his voice clamoring menacingly in the confines of the cavern. “You did not have to destroy our ships and our depot—and all those who operated them.”
He went on to give a list of the kinsmen destroyed by the Stargazer—a mother’s brother, a mate’s sister, a relative whose relationship was so distant and convoluted that there were no words for it in Picard’s lexicon. But the captain could tell from Brakmaktin’s tone that these were grievous losses.
“We had no choice,” Picard explained. “Your people were preparing to invade our space. They set a trap for us using the Magnians.”
“It was our right to do so,” Brakmaktin insisted. “It was what we have always done.”
“What about our rights?” asked the captain.
“You have none!” the alien thundered. “You are not Nuyyad! You are weak, and weaklings must be conquered!”
Picard recoiled inside from the display. However, he didn’t expect that he would get anywhere by groveling—not before someone who came from a warrior race. If he had any chance at all of surviving the encounter, it would be by earning Brakmaktin’s respect.
“We showed that we are not weak,” he said. “The Nuyyad outnumbered us, but we fought anyway, and we prevailed.”
It occurred to him that the claim might anger Brakmaktin. But instead, it seemed to arouse a curiosity within him. He tilted his head as if to get a better look at the human.
“Strange,” he said. “You speak like a warrior. Yet you look so frail, so soft.”
In truth, it was the Nuyyad who looked soft. However, Picard refrained from pointing that out.
“Perhaps we are soft on the outside,” he said. “But on the inside, we are as tough as anyone.”
“Really,” said Brakmaktin. “It will be interesting to see if you are as tough as you think.”
Picard wondered what his captor meant by that. Then he began to get an inkling.
He could feel it in his belly—a fullness that hadn’t been there before. A liquid sort of fullness. It was growing, pressing against the lining of his stomach, climbing into his throat—and bringing the sour taste of bile with it.
What is happening? Picard wondered.
He might have tried to ask the question of Brakmaktin, but it was no longer possible. Not when the tide inside him was rising into his mouth, filling it…
And it didn’t stop there. It streamed out the captain’s mouth and nostrils, as if he were a poolside statue at an ornate Rigelian resort. And it kept coming up, liter after liter, spewing over his lips and chin and splashing on the stone floor.
But as quickly as the water was emerging from him, it didn’t relieve the agonizing pressure on his insides. That kept increasing, making him feel as if his stomach were about to burst.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. Because as terrible as Picard’s pain was, even more terrible was the fact that he couldn’t breathe. With his mouth and nostrils full of rushing water, there was no place for the air to go in.
He was starved for oxygen, desperate for it. But he couldn’t give in to the urge to inhale, because then his lungs would fill with water and he would start to cough, and that would set off a chain of torment that might kill him altogether.
So Picard stood there and endured Brakmaktin’s torture for as long as he could, his mouth open, his arms wrapped about his middle. But in time, the lack of oxygen took its toll. It began to