The Valiant - Michael Jan Friedman [92]
Picard didnt lower his weapon. After all, there was still a lot that had to be cleared up. Thats far enough, he told the Kelvan.
Jomar stopped in his tracks. Is something wrong?
Picard declined to answer the question. Put Santana down and back away, he said.
The Kelvan hesitated for just a moment. Then he knelt, placed the colonist on the curved surface and retreated from the spot.
Picard pointed to Santana with his phaser. Gilaad, he said, make sure shes still alive.
Ben Zoma tucked his weapon away and moved to the womans side. Then he felt her neck for a pulse and looked back at his friend.
Shes still with us, all right. I
Before he could get another word out, the tube filled with a hideous, high-pitched scream and Jomar began to change again. Faster than Heard would have thought possible, his human attributes melted away and a swarm of long, dark tentacles took their place.
Picard raised his phaser and aimed it at the center of the monstrosity. But before he could press the trigger, he felt something clammy close around his hand. With a twisting motion that nearly broke his wrist, it wrenched the weapon out of his grasp.
By then, Ben Zoma had drawn his phaserbut he wasnt quick enough either. As Picard watched helplessly, Jomar snatched the mans phaser away with one tentacle and lashed him across the face with another.
Ben Zoma crumpled, stunned or worse. Picard started forward to help his friend, but a moist, black tentacle grabbed hold of his ankle and a half-dozen others knocked him off his feet
Looking up, he saw a pair of tiny, gray orbs glaring at him above an obscenely pink maw. He tried to crawl away, but he was still held fast by the ankle. Unable to escape, he watched helplessly as a swarm of tentacles slithered toward his throat.
Picard fought some of them away, but he couldnt fight all of them. He felt a tentacle snare one of his wrists, then the other. And finally, as he growled out loud with the effort to free himself, he felt a third tentacle begin to close around his throat.
The Kelvans grip tightened and Picards breath was cut off. He tried to claw at the muscular piece of flesh around his windpipe, but his wrists were too well constrained. Deprived of oxygen while his exertions made his need for it even more urgent, he saw darkness closing in on him.
Ben Zoma, the second officer thought. His friend was his only chance nowif he was still alive.
Suddenly, there was a flash of red light. Phaser light Picard was certain of it. But Jomars tentacle didnt let go.
Then he saw the flash again, even brighter than beforeand this time, it had some effect. The Kelvan seemed to stagger under the impact and lose his grip on his victims wrists and ankle.
A third flash, and Jomar lost his stranglehold as well. Picard slumped to the floor and drew in a deep, rasping breath.
His instincts told him to runto get out of range of the Kelvans deadly tentacles. But he resisted the impulse and did something else entirely. He sought out his captors faceif it could indeed be called a faceand drove his fist into it as hard as he could.
The yellow eyes bunked and the pink maw let out a blood-chilling screamnot out of pain, Picard thought, as much as surprise. Apparently, the last thing Jomar had expected was a punch in the nose.
It threw the Kelvan off-balance and made him that much more vulnerable to what followedan intense, red stream of directed energy that got through the mess of dark tentacles and hammered Jomars grotesque torso.
The Kelvan collapsed, his long, snakelike limbs flying in every direction. He looked disoriented, his maw opening and closing, his gray orbs half-lidded with dark fleshbut not yet out for the count.
Then yet another blast battered his slimy black head and it lolled to the bottom of the tube, senseless.
Picard kicked away a tentacle that lay across his foot and turned to his rescuer. He was eager to thank his friend Ben Zoma for his dramatic and timely phaser assault.