Reunion - Michael Jan Friedman [100]
The big man reached over the console and took hold of the front of Picard’s tunic. “Youcom You delayed me, or I would’ve killed them all by now-scrambled them in transit.” His lip curled. “I wanted you to watch, Captain. I wanted you to see your friends die—that was the worst thing I could’ve hoped to do to you.” His face was just inches from Picard’s. It was a shaman’s mask of pure, writhing hatred. “I never should have cut it so close. I should have scrambled you too, and been done with it. I just didn’t think you’d fight so hard.” Trembling with rage, Greyhorse let go of the captain with one hand and started resetting the transporter controls. Picard grasped the man’s wrist with both hands, but he couldn’t seem to break that monstrous grip.
“Maybe I can’t scramble them, was the doctor muttered. He looked up, his eyes suddenly alight. “But I can still scramble you. was He turned his attention back to the board. “And don’t expect anyone to stop me from outside; I made sure they couldn’t interfere once I got started.” .
Picard believed it. He knew what kind of technical expertise Greyhorse had demonstrated, in his other attempts at violence. “Carter,” he gasped, still fighting to get air into his lungs. He needed time-to get his strength back. To make the room stop spinning. “Carter-why?”
The big man sneered at him. “Why? You have the gall to ask that-after you andtripped Gerda of her honor? Of her life?”’* The captain shook his head. “No,” he got out. “I only stopped her… from killing Morgen…”
“Lies!” the doctor cried. With one hand he pulled Picard halfway up over the transporter console. His other hand curled into a claw and hovered just over Picard’s face. “You dishonored her! You deprived her of her right to suicide! And then you dishonored me—by
making me the instrument by which you saved her!” Spittle clung to the corner of his mouth. “Do you know how she looked at me afterward? How she hated me? For that alone you deserved the worst torture I could devise. But her hatred wasn’t the worst of it—the worst was what happened in that rehab colony.” His large brow rippled painfully with the memory. “Klingons aren’t humans. They’re not meant to be put in cages like beasts—day after day, month after month. It deprives them of everything that makes them Klingon …” He swallowed hard. “It changes them.”
Picard knew it would be no use arguing that rehab colonies weren’t cages. Greyhorse was mad-truly mad. He felt another surge of vertigo wash over him and fought to keep himself from succumbing. “I saw her after she came out,” the big man went on. His upper lip curled back. “She wasn’t the same. She wasn’t Gerda. I wanted to hold her, to help her after all she’d been through-but she told me to just go away, to just get the hell away from her.” A sob came up from deep in his massive chest. “She said I was no good for her. That she’d paid for what she’d done, and she didn’t want to be reminded of it.”
Another sob, worse than the first. He shook with it. “I thought that she’d change her mind—get over it-and we’d be together again. And then …” His eyes went blank. “And then she died, and there was nothing left for me to think about—except what I would do to the ones who hurt her.”
Past Greyhorse, Picard saw something happening to the transporter room doors. They were glowing in a couple of places-with a distinct pinkish radiance. Phasers, he realized. Of course. Security was trying to burn its way in.
But he couldn’t let Greyhorse know-not until it was too late. Quickly, he looked away.
How long would it take for Worf to cut his way in? At one of the higher settings, only a few seconds. But, there was less control that way. He might burn through and hit someone inside-someone like the captain-so he’d be using a lower setting. And how long then? A minute? Maybe two? Could he stall Greyhorse that long?
As if in response to Picard’s silent question, the doctor punched in the balance of the transporter’s instructions and came around the console-jerking