Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [83]
“Stop!” shouted Storm.
Intrigued, Rahatan glanced at her. “Why should I?”
“Because you cannot kill him until you have killed me first. And that is something you will never accomplish.”
A smile returned to the Xhaldian’s face. “Is that a challenge?”
The mutant shrugged. “If you like.”
“You’ve made a mistake.”
“Have I?” Storm asked.
“A big mistake,” Rahatan told her, reeking of confidence. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”
“I see,” she said. “I am overmatched?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“I am taking my life in my hands?”
“That would be another way.”
Storm’s eyes narrowed. “Under the circumstances, what do you propose I do? Give up?”
He shrugged, his expression becoming almost playful. “You’re a handsome woman. I think I could find a place for you. Next to me, maybe.”
“You are too kind,” she told him, her voice free of hostility. “But I think I will take my chances against you rather than alongside you. You see, I have faced your kind before.”
“My kind?” he echoed.
Storm nodded. “You are powerful, no doubt. But what you have gained in power, you have lost in visual acuity.”
His forehead creased. “What are you talking about? My eyes are as good as they ever were.”
She shook her head. “You only see the things your power can obtain for you. You’ve lost the ability to look into your heart … and discern right from wrong.”
His eyes blazed, and he gestured to the corpses he had buried. “You think it’s wrong to kill someone who’s trying to kill you?”
“I think it’s wrong to kill anyone,” Storm insisted. “There is always another way, if one tries hard enough to find it.”
His mouth twisted. “I can only think of one way to deal with insects—and that’s to crush them underfoot!”
She didn’t lose her composure. “Then perhaps you are not as powerful as you have come to believe.”
A cry of rage tore from him—and with a sound like thunder, the earth cracked open between Storm’s feet. In a heartbeat, the crack became a fissure and the fissure became a gaping crevasse, causing the mutant to lose her footing and slip into the widening hole.
No! thought Riker.
But there was nothing he could do to save her.
“That will teach you to question my power,” the earthmover bellowed, shaking a fist at the departed Storm.
Suddenly, Riker saw Rahatan forced back from the edge of the fissure—not by anything solid, but rather by a lusty, howling wind that seemed to emerge from its depths.
The first officer knew it didn’t make any sense for a wind to be rising out of newly cracked earth. Still, he wasn’t complaining—because a moment later, that same wind lifted Storm into sight, her uniform and silver hair whipping all about her, her head held high.
She’s alive! Riker realized. Alive and whole—or at least, no more injured than she had been when this started.
Surprised and frustrated, Rahatan gave voice to his fury. Then he brought his arms up as if he were lifting weights. The ground around him shuddered and groaned miserably, and two large chunks of earth and masonry tore loose from their foundations.
The Xhaldian gestured again, flinging the fingers of one hand in Storm’s direction. Instantly, one of the chunks of earth went hurtling at her.
But as Riker had learned, the mutant knew how to take care of herself. She countered with a gesture of her own, destroying the missile with an explosive flash of blue-white lightning.
Even before all the debris had fallen to the ground, Rahatan hurled the other chunk of earth. But Storm created another lightning bolt and demolished that one as well.
By then, Rahatan’s allies must have decided the combat wasn’t going their way. One of them, a specimen with luminous eyes, raised his Draa’kon disruptor rifle and took aim at the airborne mutant.
But before he could press the trigger, Riker nailed him with a phaser beam. The transformed slammed into the mound of earth behind him, his weapon sliding out of his hands.
Turning to Rahatan’s other supporters, the first officer fired at each of them in quick succession. The one with the