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. Hell, 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 passed, 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 assault a woman sexually.
"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 stiffs
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,
brushing 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 ship 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--t 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 pass 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 analyze 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 headfst 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.
For a moment she had considered the idea of making
a grab for the gun, but a tentative step she had
taken toward it quickly dissuaded her of that notion.
Maror's hand was firmly on the grip, and she had
a feeling that if she'd pulled at the gun, it would
simply have told him, without any shadow of doubt,
precisely where his target was located.
And right now she did not want to be a target.
That was why she had chosen that moment to make a bid
for freedom. For she had sensed, beyond any doubt,
that Maror really had had enough. That he was beginning
to realize that his flight was hopeless and was becoming
angry enough and frustrated enough to take that realization out
on anyone who happened to be near.
In other ^ws, he was genuinely ready to kill
her as the likelihood for her serving any
purpose faded.
So she ran.
Maror sputtered in indignation as he lurched
to his feet, pulling at the snakes. The
snakes, for their part, were uniformly startled to be
removed so unceremoniously from their natural
watery habitat. The shock caused them to lose
their grip on Maror, and he was able to yank them
free. He threw them back down into the water with
loud splashes, spun, and roared Deanna's name
in a frenzy. He even fired blindly into the
jungle with his weapon and by blind luck
came within two feet of blasting Deanna's head
off.
There was no rational reason for him to pursue her
at that point. Dashing pell-mell through the jungle
the way she was, the odds were that she was just going
to get even more lost and maybe even run headlong
into something that was lethal. Whatever pleasure that knowledge
might have brought him, however, was diluted by the fact
that she had royally embarrassed him. And that was
something that he was simply not going to tolerate.
With a howl of vexation he lashed his weapon around
himself and took off after her.
It wasn't difficult to track her. Her
rush through the jungle left a series of broken
branches and crushed shrubbery in her wake. He
could have followed the trail if he were blindfolded.
Deanna hadn't been sure if he would try
to chase her, or whether he would be happy just to be
rid of her. She was banking to some degree on the
latter. When she heard the crashing of the jungle
underbrush behind her, her heart sank.
She looked around desperately, trying to find
some sort of weapon, or perhaps some place to hide
so that he would run past her. But no place
seemed to be sufficient shelter.
She dodged to the right and stumbled on an
outstretched root. She fell forward, catching
herself by hitting her palms against the ground, and she
felt pain stab through her forearms. She lifted her
right hand and found a small, pointed rock, which she
wrapped her fingers around for reasons she didn't
even fully understand. Then she scrambled to her
feet and kept going.
She heard his pursuit getting closer and
closer. Between the noise of shoving shrubbery
aside, and his loud and constant string of profanity,
it was hard to miss him.
His blaster roared behind her and she could feel the
heat. He must have used it, she realized, to clear
away some underbrush so that he could make better
time. She would have given anything to have some sort of
weapon or tool like that.
For one insane moment, she envisioned Will Riker
coming to her rescue. Striding forward like some great
hero, showing up out of nowhere at the penultimate
moment, drawn there by fate, happenstance, and that
incredible timing that always seemed to accompany such
last-minute saves. She wanted it more than
anything, to believe that such things could occur in real
life. Because it would mean that in real life
people really could be drawn together not because it was the
intelligent or smart thing to do, but simply because
not to be together would be completely wrong. It would
mean that in real life there were greater things than that which
her mind could grasp, analyze, and study.
She wanted him. Gods, she knew that, had
known that all along, and she had been such an
idiot to fight it for all sorts of reasons that
had made sense then but now seemed pointless. If
only she had that time back. If only she could
see him again.
But she knew, in her heart, that that wasn't
going to happen. It was up to her; live or die,
it was up to her, and there would be no rescue, and the
chances were extremely good that in a few minutes,
there would be no Deanna Troi either.
Abruptly the ground in front of her angled
upward sharply. She'd come to the base of some
sort of small slope. It would take her more time
to make her way up it, but backtracking wasn't
possible. She took a deep breath and started
upward. Roots and small outcroppings of rock
provided her with handholds that sped her on her
way.
But they did not speed her nearly enough, and
suddenly she heard a triumphant yell from behind
her. She tried to climb higher, but a hand
wrapped around her foot.
"Got you, you Betazoid bitch!" growled
Maror.
She screamed, her fingers clawing for purchase,
but he dragged her down toward him and spun her
around so that his face was mere inches from hers. "You have
been far more trouble than you could possibly be
worth," he snarled, "and I'm going to ..."
In her palm she felt the hardness and sharpness
of the rock she'd grabbed mere moments before. She
didn't hesitate as she brought the pointed end
around and slammed it squarely into Maror's
forehead.
>
The Sindareen raider shrieked, a high-pitched
sound emanating from the sides of his throat, as
blood trickled down his face. Deanna,
animalistic, fighting for her life, twisted the
rock around and tried to drive it farther into his
forehead. But the Sindareen was far too strong. With a
roar he shoved Deanna back, but she maintained
her grip on the rock as she fell and it tore
loose from his forehead. More blood poured freely
down his face.
He shoved one hand against it to staunch the wound as
he approached her, his gun trembling because of the
sheer fury filling him. "You--!" And his rage was
beyond his ability to articulate, so he stammered out
again, "You--!"
He dropped down on top of her, pressing his
full body weight against her. She squirmed under
him but couldn't dislodge him as he pressed the gun
squarely against her stomach and snarled, "Belly
wound. Very slow, very painful, and you'll die
anyway. It's what you deserve. You've ruined
everything--"
"I didn't--"
"Shut up! You never shut up! But I'm
going to shut you up! I'm going to blow a hole in
your--"
And from above them, a voice spoke in a tone that
was deliberately cool and controlled. "Back
away from her."
Maror looked up and his already pale face went
one shade lighter. Deanna twisted her head
around, her eyes wanting to confirm what her ears and
her mind had already told her but she still couldn't quite
believe.
Riker was standing about ten feet higher up on the
slope. He held a phaser, aimed squarely
at Maror. He was dressed in survival gear,
with a utility jacket, and a supply belt
strapped around his middle containing food rations, a
patch holster for the phaser, and other miscellanea
in small pouches.
His emotions flooded over Deanna, he being
open to her in a way that no one outside of her
closest friends or her mother ever was. Relief
mixed with fear, all carefully bottled up so that
he could present an image of utter composure
to the frazzled and desperate Sindareen.
"I said back away from her." Riker's
phaser wasn't wavering. "Put your hands over
your head."
"ationo, Federation man!" snapped Maror.
He twisted his body around, his legs wrapped
around Deanna's middle and exposing no part of
himself to a clear shot. "No, you're going to put
your phaser down! You're going to put your hands
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