Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [12]
Lt. Sovar, a security officer with bronze skin and a brush of blue-black hair, was manning the tactical console. He looked up from his monitors, seeming to sense the captain’s scrutiny.
“Lieutenant,” said Picard, “hail the station. Tell them I would like to speak with Admiral Kashiwada.”
“Aye, sir,” Sovar replied.
Before long, Kashiwada’s countenance replaced the image of the starbase. By the frown lines around the man’s mouth, the captain could tell the X-Men’s stay was proving stressful for the admiral.
“Jean-Luc,” said Kashiwada. “I see you made good time.”
It was a joke, of course. Starship travel was precise. Seldom did a vessel vary from its schedule by more than a few minutes.
“I was eager to see you in person again,” Picard replied.
“More likely,” said the admiral, “you were eager to see my guests. As you may have guessed, they are eager to see you as well.”
The captain smiled. “I imagine they are. I trust their visit with you has been mutually profitable?”
Kashiwada grunted. “That would be one way to put it. I’ll meet you in our transporter room, Jean-Luc. Say, in … half an hour?”
“Half an hour will be fine,” Picard assured him.
“Excellent,” said the admiral.
His face disappeared, the image of the starbase taking its place. But Kashiwada’s expression remained with the captain.
Quite clearly, it hadn’t been a happy one.
Chapter Four
ERID SOVAR WALKED out of the fortress’s low, stone mess hall last and alone. But then, that wasn’t unusual. More than most of the transformed, he mainly kept to himself.
As he emerged from the coolness into the hot, crowded yard, Erid hugged the high, curving wall on his right. That way, he could protect himself from the rays of the sun and the indignity of another energy fit.
Others among the transformed had the same problem. Erid had learned that over the previous couple of days, as the prisoner population had grown from twenty to just under thirty. In fact, fully five or six of them possessed powers triggered by sunlight.
Like him, those individuals kept to the shadows as best they could. And in the rare instances where they forgot to do so or defied fate, and their powers ran rampant, the guards on the ancient battlements buried them in a storm of stun fire.
Of course, some fits seemed to take place without any provocation at all. Suddenly, one of the transformed would emit a web of electrical energy or grow twelve feet tall. And while they were trying to come to grips with what had happened, the guards would turn them into convulsing wretches.
Erid shivered at the thought. It had become almost as hard for him to watch such an event as to experience it.
Of course, not everyone was quite so sensitive to the feelings of others. Some seemed hardly to care at all. But then, the transformed at Verdeen were as diverse as any cross-section of the population.
The youth was reminded of that fact as he skirted the yard, watching his fellow prisoners meditate, or exercise, or talk in small groups. No two of the transformed were exactly alike.
There were shy, quiet types, and those who were loud and angry about what had happened to them. There were friendly, compassionate people, and those who hated everyone they looked at. There were young men and women who were frightened and wanted only to go home, and those who seemed to barely mind their imprisonment.
What’s more, they had all changed in different ways. Even with his enlarged, purple blood vessels and the loss of his blue-black skull brush, Erid was hardly the most grotesque of them.
Some of the transformed had grown an extra set of arms. Some had sprouted horns or some similarly peculiar appendages. Still others had seen an alteration in skin texture or eye color. Only a fortunate handful seemed to have undergone no outward change at all.
Their powers were unique as well. Where one had become immensely strong, another had become lightning-quick. Where one could draw energy from everything around her, another could turn solids into liquids or create illusions in the minds of others.