Possession - J.M. Dillard [106]
Quickly, Data, Riker, and Troi briefed him on all that had happened while the Enterprise had been under seige.
“I should’ve listened to you,” he told Troi, when she was finished. “I should’ve beamed those things out into space, and to hell with the Vulcans and their research.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered if you had, Captain,” she said wryly. “Skel has been harboring the infection inside him since his childhood—something of which he was completely unaware.” She paused, letting Picard digest the horrific fact. “I’m afraid you’re needed on the bridge now, sir. We’re having a small problem with some … visiting starships.”
In the vast silence of Ten Forward, Skel sat at the bar, one hand clutching the smooth shining counter as he trembled, struggling to resist Troi’s siren call. The other hand gripped a phaser, set to kill. His mind was a swirling battlefield where two forces collided: the entities—full of venomous rage and desire, who felt the lure of the counselor’s emotions, yet would not yield—and his true Vulcan self, who felt no hunger, yet struggled desperately to push himself away from the counter, to stand, to turn and move toward deliverance.
Beneath it all, T’Reth’s soft voice urged her son to be strong, to have hope.
But the entities were too strong, and so Skel sat, shivering, waiting, struggling to loose his grip on the weapon, to change its setting—and failing.
Soon. Troi would come to him soon.
And so he sat, trembling, waiting, until at last he heard the doors open behind him. He did not turn, did not move except to draw the hand that clutched the phaser close to his body, so that the others could not see it.
Behind him, the deep voice of the Klingon: “Counselor, let me stun him now!”
And the soft reply: “No, wait …”
Skel listened to the sound of their footsteps, waiting until the last instant to rise, wheel—
In less than a heartbeat, T’Reth shrilled in his skull. Take care! He is armed—
At the same instant, Troi screamed. “Look out! He’s armed!”
Unwillingly, Skel squeezed the phaser’s trigger.
Before him, the three Starfleet officers parted like a wave as the dazzling shaft of phaser beam streaked between them, then seared a black smoking scar into the far bulkhead. The dark-skinned Klingon had seized Counselor Troi and pulled her to one side; meanwhile, a golden blur hurtled toward Skel and seized his wrist with impossible speed and strength.
Before Skel could so much as blink or fire, he found himself staring into Commander Data’s pale bland countenance and realized that the android had wrested the phaser from him.
The entities within Skel roared. He swung with his free arm at the android, then shuddered with shock as his fist met a firmness more unyielding than bone.
Data never reacted.
The rage and pain fed Skel’s entities. With a manic surge of strength, the Vulcan lashed out again, but the android seized both his arms and held him fast. Skel hurled his body at the android, slamming them both off-balance to the deck.
Data rolled so that the Vulcan lay with his back pinned against the deck. “You can only hurt yourself, Skel. I shall not release you.”
Even as the entities within him bellowed their fury, the Vulcan within him watched with relief as Counselor Troi approached. Her dark eyes were masked by a VISOR, similar to the one worn by La Forge; despite his outer turmoil, Skel realized the device’s purpose. A small part of him welcomed it …
Yet without us you will die! You must resist her—do not look! You have lived with us too long.
He squeezed his eyes shut, delaying the inevitable. Beneath the overlay of panic, a cooler voice whispered, Do not be afraid, Skel. At last, we are delivered… .
Trembling, he opened his eyes, yielding to the sweet pull of Troi’s vulnerable emotions, of her fear. As he stared into the VISOR’s gleaming facets, it lit up dazzlingly, as though kissed by blue lightning.
The image left him blinded for an instant; he blinked, then released a long deep sigh at the interior lightness, the profound silence,