Part 22 (2/2)

He swung his gun up and aimed at her. ”Ask for your life.”

With a small shrug of her slim shoulders, she said evenly, ”Please do not kill me.”

He stared at her in disbelief. ”You call that begging?”

”No. I call that asking. To be honest, it's pointless. You'll kill me or not. I can't stop you. Begging will demean me and accomplish nothing. I see no advantage to it, and I won't do it.”

With a roar of unbridled fury, he stalked over to her and grabbed her by the back of her head. He yanked down hard, and the angle in which he pulled her skull made her mouth open involuntarily. He shoved the barrel of the gun into her mouth, angling it so that the ray blast would be certain to blow her brain up through the top of her skull.

”I said beg,” he repeated.

Her eyes rolled up to regard him for the briefest of moments, and then up into the top of her head. Her breathing slowed, and her entire body went limp.

For an instant he thought she'd pa.s.sed out, but then he realized what she had done. She'd put herself into a trance, or into some sort of deep meditative state. When she was like that, nothing he could say or do would bring her out of it until she was ready to be brought out. He could blow her brains out and she would never know or feel it.

So there he was, feeling like something of a fool. You couldn't threaten someone who wasn't aware of you. Which meant either he should kill her or not. If he killed her, he had a corpse and nothing to hold over any of the Fed men should they catch up with him. There was no point to it. h.e.l.l, there was no point to any of it.

With a curse he released her and took some small measure of satisfaction in watching her thud to the ground like a bag of stones. Then he perched himself on the rock that she had occupied moments before and stared down at her, waiting for her to come out of it.

Slowly, after some minutes, she did. She lay there. staring up at him.

”You wonder why I haven't killed you yet?”

She tilted her head slightly and said, ”You hope that I will serve some purpose in the near future.”

The membranes on his neck fluttered a bit faster as he asked, ”And have you wondered why I haven't raped you?”

”You're not a rapist. A thief, yes. A killer as needed. But not a rapist.”

Maror studied her. ”You're that certain?”

”I wasn't at first.” She drew her knees up under her chin. ”At first I was terrified that you might do that. When the two of us were the only survivors of the crash, I was certain you might take that course. But as time has pa.s.sed, I have begun to have a sense of you. Prolonged exposure to you has enabled me to get an empathic feel for you that I didn't have before.”

”Keep your empathic feelings to yourself.” He walked toward her and yanked her rudely to her feet, as if to try to make up for the fact that he wasn't the type to a.s.sault a woman s.e.xually. ”I still can't believe,” he grumbled, ”that you survived the crash when others of my men didn't.”

”I was not tense,” she said simply. ”I had relaxed myself. Your men were tense. The stiffness resulted in the internal injuries that killed them.”

”Thank you for that diagnosis,” he snarled.

He led her through the jungle, watching carefully all about him for any sign of pursuit.

Deanna, for her part, took the opportunity to expand her senses and get a feel for the life that throbbed all about her in the jungle. It was rare that anyone really ventured any real distance into the Jalara, and rarer still for anyone to be out this far. In a way she found it exciting. She just wished that that excitement wasn't coming at the expense of those who loved her.

She was certain that her mother must be frantic by now, and not for the first time she silently cursed the fate that had made her half-human. Had she been full Betazoid, there was a great likelihood that she would be able to send free-ranging thought broadcasts as far back as the city. Summon help right to the spot where she presently was. It wouldn't matter that geographically she didn't have a clue as to her whereabouts. They would simply be able to sense her.

But her ability to send and receive was diluted by her human heritage. She needed greater proximity to be at all reliable. And out here, in the middle of nowhere, proximity was not exactly easy to come by.

Birds fluttered past her, and she had to step carefully to avoid treading on a small serpent that slid past her. It was not poisonous, but she had no desire to injure something innocent. The thing she found most heartening was that she had sensed the creature's presence rather than seen it.

The vegetation around them was thinning out, and ahead of them was a cleared area that prompted Maror to let out a sigh of relief. It was a watering hole.

He turned to Troi. ”Even you have to be thirsty. You're made of ice, but ice requires water.”

”I'm hardly made of ice,” she said, brus.h.i.+ng strands out of her face and trying not to let the fatigue she felt be betrayed in her voice. ”That water will taste as good to me as it does to you.”

”That's very comforting.” He gestured with the gun. ”You first.”

”Thank you.”

She went to the water and knelt down before it. The rips in her dress exposed more skin than she would have liked, but at this point there was no use getting overly concerned about such things. She cupped her hands, scooped up water and brought it to her lips, sipping gingerly and being careful not to take the big gulps that her impulses urged.

He frowned as he watched her. ”You drink like a bird.”

”There's no point in overdoing it,” she replied evenly. ”if I overindulge, the result will simply be stomach cramps. I see no advantage to that.”

”Fine. Fine. Do what you want.”

She looked at her reflection in the water and moaned softly. Then she shoved her hands in once more, wetting them thoroughly, and brought them up to her face, making an effort to wash away as much of the dirt as possible. After a few moments she studied the result and decided that, while it wasn't perfect, at least it was an improvement.

”You realize,” she said, ”that you're not heading anywhere in particular. You're just marking time. You have no one waiting to pick you up. No rendezvous. No secret hideout.”

”I've never been caught. I take tremendous pride in that. I'm not about to get caught now, no matter what. Besides, I'm betting that they stop looking for us. They've probably found the s.h.i.+p by now. They found the bodies of the others. Maybe they'll even continue the search for a couple of days. But sooner or later, they'll conclude that we couldn't have survived-that we probably fell into a... what did you call it?”

”Mud pit,” she said evenly.

”Right. Mud pit. Or maybe a ravine. Or maybe even got eaten by some huge animal they didn't even know hung about in these woods. They won't search for us forever.”

”Oh, yes, they will,” she replied with quiet confidence. ”I don't believe they'll ever stop. And neither, in all honesty, do you.”

”Really? Then why am I going to all this trouble if it's so certain that I'll be caught?”

She turned and looked at him with her ebony eyes. ”You are afraid. You are afraid of whatever actions might be taken against you by Starfleet. Afraid of giving up some measure of your freedom. So afraid, in fact, that you would much rather live a handful of days fighting for survival, but free... than you would live many days, or months or even years, in captivity or under the supervision of the Federation.”

His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

After one more brief pa.s.s of the water over her face, she rose and pointed to the water. ”All yours.”

He nodded and gestured for her to step away from the water. ”You know, I was just tired of you before. But now I'm really, really sick of you. All you're doing is slowing me down.” He crouched in front of the water and scooped some up. He was able to bring it to his mouth and continue to converse at the same time. ”You yammer at me. You a.n.a.lyze me. You try to make me feel like some sort of coward. I'm starting to think that whatever minimal use you might have had as a hostage would pale next to the sheer, selfish pleasure I'd feel at blasting the top right off of your pretty little-”

She kicked him in the small of the back.

With a yell, Maror stumbled forward, wet soil slipping beneath him, and he fell headfirst into the water. He floundered around and was about to pull his upper body out when some inquisitive water snakes, which Deanna had sensed were in the area, came to investigate and did so by wrapping themselves around Maror's throat.

Deanna, for her part, bolted.

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