The deck swam under his feet. The peeling bulkheads wavered past like
veils of mist. He didn't know whether he was moving or not, but he
kept on while the enormous weight bore down on his quivering brain, a
mountain tilting, falling, seeking to smother out the fury that was all
he had to fight with.
Fury for himself, defiled and outraged. Fury for Jen, with the red
scars on her shoulders. Fury for Hugh lying dead under an obscene
killer, fury for all the generations of decent people who had lived and
died in slavery so that Shannach's time of waiting might be lightened.
He saw Galt's face, curiously huge, close to his own. It was stricken
and amazed. Trevor's bared teeth glistened.
"I beat him once," he said to the Korin.
Galt's hands were raised. There was a knife in his girdle, but he had
been bidden not to use it, not to kill. Only Trevor could make the ship
to fly. Galt reached out and took him but there was an unsureness in
his grip, and his mind was crying out to Shannach, "You could not make
him stop! You could not!"
Trevor, who was partly merged with Shannach now, heard that cry and
laughed. Something in him had burst wide open at Galt's physical touch.
He had no control now, no sane thought left, but only a wild intense
desire to do two things, one of which was to destroy this monster that
had hold of him.
"Kill him," said Shannach suddenly. "He's mad, and no one can control
an insane human."
Galt did his best to obey. But Trevor's hands were already around the
Korin's throat, the fingers sinking deep into the flesh. There was a
sharp snapping of bone.
He dropped the body. He could see nothing now except one tiny point of
light in a reeling darkness. That single point of light had a red key
in the center of it. Trevor reached out and pushed it down. That was
the other thing.
For a short second nothing happened. Trevor sagged down across Galt's
body. Shannach was somewhere else, crying warnings that came too late.
Trevor had time to draw one harsh triumphant breath and brace himself.
The ship leaped under him. There was a dull roar, and then another, as
the last fuel bunkers let go. The whole bridge room rolled and came to
rest with a jarring shock that split the ports wide open, and the world
was full of the shriek and crash of metal being torn and twisted and
rent apart. Then it quieted. The ground stopped shaking and the deck
settled under Trevor. There was silence.
Trevor crawled up the new slope of the bridge room floor, to the
shattered lock and through it, into the pitiless sunlight. He could see
now exactly what he had done. And it was good. It had worked. That last
small measure of fuel had been enough.
The whole after part of the hulk was gone, and with it had gone all but
a few of Shannach's Korins, trapped in the lower holds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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