Sensors reveal that the planet's surface is teeming with non-humanoid life...and a single humanoid life-form. The life-form turns out to be a terrified young Sagran female child wandering alone at night in a city devoid of other humanoids. The child's level of development is equivalent to that of a human five-year-old. She carries a ragged doll that looks a little like a ballerina. The city is beautiful and seems to have been abandoned only recently. However, sensors reveal that the non-humanoid life-forms are all around, hidden from view.
The child, Luma, says that she is looking for her family. Luma says that her family was sleeping, but she woke up and wandered off. Now, she's lost…and the city is full of "monsters" called the Skilla.
Seven and Chakotay promise to help Luma. When Chakotay allays Luma's fears and makes her feel better, Seven is impressed. Chakotay's empathy and compassion are among the "admirable qualities" that led her to use his image in her holodeck fantasy in "Human Error."
Seven's tricorder detects active machinery in one location at the center of the city. Since the dense arrangement of structures precludes taking the shuttle further into the city, Seven, Chakotay, and Luma set out on foot, heading for the machinery.
As they cross the darkened city, Chakotay, Seven, and Luma hear snarls, hyena-like cries, and the sounds of shattering glass in the distance. They notice the dead bodies of small animals and damage to the buildings. They catch fleeting glimpses of ominous shadows in the moonlight and dark figures darting from the edges of their beacon beams. According to the tricorder, dozens of the non-humanoid life-forms--the creatures known as the Skilla--surround them.
As Chakotay, Seven, and Luma go further, the Skilla become bolder. They screech and hurl objects. Individual creatures race close and veer off, probing their defenses; though the creatures are still unseen, Chakotay and Seven hear claws clattering on the pavement and smell a strong odor like that of vinegar.
Chakotay finally tags one of the Skilla with a phaser rifle blast. The thing lets out a terrible shriek…but it moves so fast that Chakotay and Seven still don't get a good look at it. All they get is an impression of fangs and spines and glowing red eyes.
After the phaser blast, the Skilla withdraw, and Chakotay, Seven, and Luma continue to head for the center of the city. Chakotay and Seven wonder if the Skilla have killed all the humanoid life-forms…and if so, how Luma managed to survive.
Luma is still terrified, and Seven calms her with a story. The story, about a lost little girl who finds friends who help her, is as much a thinly veiled version of Seven's own life story as it is about Luma's own plight. Seven doesn't finish the story, but promises to tell Luma more later. Chakotay tells Seven that she is good with the child, and Seven enjoys the fact that he has taken notice.
When the creatures attack again, and a hurled rock hits Luma in the head, Chakotay and Seven take her inside a deserted house. According to the tricorder, Luma has a mild concussion. As Chakotay and Seven examine her, the Skilla swarm over the house.
Chakotay and Seven decide to hole up in the house until morning to see if the Skilla are nocturnal and will leave by daylight. Luma becomes sleepy, and Chakotay and Seven resolve to keep her awake to diminish the danger from the concussion.
While they wait in a barricaded room, Chakotay turns Luma's attention to her doll. She says that the doll is a dancer, and he says that it looks like a ballerina from his home planet. He says that Seven likes ballerinas, which perks up Luma…and intrigues Seven, who is pleased that he remembers a personal detail that she once told him (in the episode "One Small Step," season 6).
Next, Chakotay tells Luma a version of his own story, about a boy who tries to protect his home and ends up lost far away. Every time Luma tries to doze off, Chakotay revives her interest with new plot twists in the story. (Seven watches and listens admiringly as he tells Luma the story.)
Hours later, as the Skilla continue to scrabble over the house, Luma asks Seven if she has any kids of her own. Seven says that she doesn't. Luma asks if Seven wants to be a mommy, and Seven says that she hasn't given it much thought. Luma says that Seven should be a mommy, because she's so good with kids. Chakotay agrees that Seven has a way with kids, which he has seen in her interactions with the Borg children on VOYAGER as well as with Luma. He says that she should consider having a family someday. He says that she would be missing something special without experiencing the love of a family, which is something he hopes to experience someday himself. Seven says that love is irrelevant. Chakotay says that love is intangible, but far from irrelevant.
When daylight comes, the tricorder reveals that the Skilla have withdrawn. Chakotay, Seven, and Luma step outside…only to discover that the city is shrouded in thick fog. They set out again for the city center, though tricorder readings, bestial cries, and the sounds of destruction make it clear that the creatures are still active throughout the area.
Luma says that she's hungry, so Chakotay breaks into a shop to get food for her. As Luma eats, Seven continues the story of the lost little girl, telling how the girl regains her memory while traveling on a ship. When Luma asks Chakotay what happened to the boy he was telling her about, he resumes his story, too. He tells Luma that the lost boy found himself on the same ship as the lost girl. Luma catches on and says that she has the perfect names for the characters in the story: Chakotay and Seven. Chakotay laughs, and Seven smiles.
After Luma finishes eating, the three of them walk on through the fog. Luma starts getting sleepy again.
Suddenly, the tricorder detects a pack of quickly approaching creatures. Chakotay and Seven adjust their phaser rifles to a wide-beam setting and fire into the fog. The creatures seem to be growing resistant to the phasers; they slow down but keep pressing forward. Finally, they stop. When Chakotay and Seven start moving again, however, the creatures follow. They keep pace, staying just out of sight in the fog, unseen and unrelenting.
Chakotay and Seven know that they are close to the city center, so they keep moving. They walk back-to-back, with Seven carrying Luma and Chakotay keeping a phaser rifle trained on the fog behind them. Luma is half-asleep, in spite of the excitement.
To keep Luma awake, Chakotay and Seven continue the story, alternately telling the girl's and boy's sides of it. Then, at Luma's suggestion, Chakotay begins telling Seven's side of the story, and Seven tells Chakotay's. They both say some nice things about each other in the process, things that hadn't been said before.
As they get closer to the functioning machinery at the center of the city, Seven detects faint bio-signs in a heavily shielded underground chamber…humanoid bio-signs, and lots of them. Seven and Chakotay theorize that the Skilla drove the humanoid life-forms to live underground. They also decide that it is imperative to get Luma down there as soon as possible, in the hope of finding medical facilities to treat her injury.
The tricorder reveals an entrance point to the underground chamber, but when Chakotay, Seven, and Luma approach it, creatures emerge from the fog and block the doors. Finally, the creatures are fully visible; they have heads like Chinese dragons, razor-sharp claws, six-legged bodies covered in poison-tipped spines, and tails like scorpions. As one pack blocks the entryway, the pack that has been following Seven, Chakotay, and Luma charges forward from behind.
After a harrowing battle, Chakotay and Seven reach the doors…only to find that they are locked, and the lock requires the entry of a code. Just then, more of the creatures surge toward them. While Chakotay fires at the creatures, Seven talks to Luma, who can barely stay awake but says she once learned a song about the code. The problem is, Luma's so sleepy that she can't quite remember it.
Seven tries to get Luma to perk up and jog her memory, but Luma continues to fade. Finally, when Seven promises to finish the story once they get inside, Luma becomes engaged enough to recall the song and sing it. Seven derives the code from the words of the song and enters it on the hatch's keypad.
The doors open, and Chakotay, Seven, and Luma get inside just in
time. They close the doors behind them and find themselves facing an open gateway. A sign on the gateway warns them not to wake the sleepers, who must rest once a year for three months while the Skilla horde runs rampant over the world.
Luma says that this is where her family is. When Chakotay and Seven carry her through the gateway, they see vast caverns filled with thousands of sleeping Sagra. According to the tricorder, they are in a state of deep hibernation. The machinery detected earlier is ventilation equipment.
There are no conscious Sagra to turn to for help with Luma, and no medical facilities. However, Seven discovers that Luma's bio signs perfectly match those of the other Sagra. Luma's sleepiness has not been due to the concussion, but the natural reflex of a body returning to a state of hibernation.
Chakotay and Seven help Luma find her family, and they lay her down among them. Before she falls fully asleep, however, she asks Chakotay and Seven to finish the story.
"I have a better idea," says Chakotay. "Why don't you finish it?"
Luma does as he asks. "And Seven and Chakotay fell in love," she says, "and lived happily ever after." Then, she gives Seven her dancer doll because Chakotay said that Seven likes ballerinas.
Later, after traveling back to the shuttle via a network of underground tunnels to avoid the Skilla, Chakotay and Seven are heading for a rendezvous with VOYAGER. Seven admires Luma's ballerina doll. Chakotay asks if she would like to see a ballet sometime in the holodeck, perhaps "Swan Lake." He asks casually if she might like to see it with him.
"Perhaps," she says, playing it cool, though she is secretly pleased that he asked.
FAIL CALL: Star Trek: Voyager: Distant Shores: "To Be Continued" – FAIL or UNFAIL?
UNFAIL! Temporarily...
The editor approved the outline and gave me the go-ahead to write the story. I dove into the assignment, determined to produce a top-notch tale that would lock down my spot in Distant Shores. I'd already put so much effort into writing pitches and proposals for this book, I didn't want to end up cut from the final product.
Did I make the grade?
FAIL CALL: "To Be Continued," the full story – EPIC FAIL! The editor said the story just wasn't working for him. It was strictly a fail at this point.
But I wasn't going to give up so easily. I had one trick left up my sleeve--the Voyager story I'd written for the Strange New Worlds IV contest a few years earlier. "The Secret Heart of Zolaluz" was sitting on my hard drive, collecting dust (figuratively). I still loved it and thought it deserved to see the light of day.
So I took a shot. I presented "Zolaluz" to the editor (without telling him it had been rejected from Strange New Worlds). What was the result? Would all my work have been in vain, or would there be a surprise victory after all?
FAIL CALL: "The Secret Heart of Zolaluz" – FAIL or UNFAIL?
UNFAIL! The editor bought "The Secret Heart of Zolaluz" for Distant Shores! It turned out to be a perfect fit, too. The theme of the anthology was the exploitation of opportunities missed in the TV series. In that vein, "The Secret Heart of Zolaluz" unearthed the source of at least some of the motivation that enabled Seven of Nine to rise above her horrific past.
The whole Distant Shores saga had a happy ending for me. "The Secret Heart of Zolaluz" has earned some fabulous reader reaction over the years; I've gotten as much great response for that story as any other Trek story I've written. And "To Be Continued" evolved into another story, retitled "One Awake In All the World," that appeared in the science fiction anthology Destination: Future. "One Awake in All the World" was called out in a starred review of Destination: Future by none other than the illustrious trade magazine Publishers Weekly.
S.C.E.: The Cleanup
As "The Secret Heart of Zolaluz" found a home in Distant Shores, I continued to pursue other possibilities in the world of Trek publishing. For example, I made another run at the Starfleet Corps of Engineers (S.C.E.) e-book series. This time, I developed and submitted a proposal for an S.C.E. novel titled The Cleanup.
I came up with the idea for The Cleanup while wondering what might have happened to all the ordnance left behind in the Alpha Quadrant after the Dominion War. Abandoned munitions would pose a threat, just as minefields do in today's former war zones. I thought that cleaning up high-risk sites after the war would be a job that naturally would fall on the shoulders of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers.
I built on the central idea by bringing in the Miradorn, a race introduced in the Deep Space Nine episode, "The Vortex." The introductory episode hinted at various aspects of the Miradorn species, such as the existence of "twinned Miradorn" who function as two halves of a single being, and the Miradorn's reputation as "a quarrelsome people." Later, another Deep Space Nine episode revealed that the Miradorn had signed a nonaggression pact with the Dominion during the war. This made them the ideal focus for the story: they had a shady past, and we knew just enough about them to want to know more. I had plenty of opportunities to do some world-building, and I tried to make the most of them by exploring as many Miradorn people and places as possible.
While the central species was in place from the beginning, I changed the focus characters of The Cleanup significantly from the early planning stages of the story. Originally, Soloman was the heart of The Cleanup, bonding with Em-Lin, a Miradorn woman who lost a twin in a tragic accident. As the story developed, however, Assistant Security Chief Vance Hawkins pushed his way onto center stage. I brought in Vance to show that there were some lingering hard feelings in Starfleet because the Miradorn had sided with the enemy in the Dominion War. Before long, Vance took over Soloman's role altogether, at first feeling resentment when he was forced to work with Em-Lin and eventually developing a real respect and friendly affection for her.
Carol Abramowitz also forced her way into The Cleanup after being left out of the original outline. With her cultural expertise, Carol was the perfect person through whom I could explore the many facets of the Miradorn homeworld, Mirada. Like Vance, she was also a lot of fun to write. I enjoyed putting Carol through one comical predicament after another, then shifting gears and immersing her in apocalyptic chaos as a Dominion secret weapon wreaks havoc on Mirada. Just as Vance confronted dark corners of his own soul in The Cleanup, Carol endured a crucible that tested her inner strength and resilience when she was faced with overwhelming circumstances.
Star Trek: S.C.E.: The Cleanup – FAIL or UNFAIL?
Twin Miradorn women work to restore artifacts in a holy shrine in a cave under the surface of Zasharu, a moon of Mirada (homeworld of the Miradorn). The Miradorn (see DS9: "Vortex") are a race of twins, with each set of twins considered a single being. During the restoration work in the cave, one of the twins--Or-Lin--is killed by a booby trap. Em-Lin, the surviving twin, spots Dominion technology in the rubble.
The da Vinci is summoned to Zasharu. It turns out that an abandoned secret Dominion facility is hidden in the caves, a remnant of the Dominion War. The presence of the facility is not surprising, as the Miradorn signed a nonaggression pact with the Dominion (see DS9: "A Call to Arms") and ended up collaborating with the Dominion during the war. Once Federation friendly, the Miradorn allowed the Jem'Hadar to use Zasharu as a supply depot (Mirada's system is a midway point between Cardassia and the Federation) though the Miradorn did not know that the Jem'Hadar had set up a facility in the caves below the shrine. Since the facility is shielded by an ore that obstructs sensors, no one knows everything it contains, though the fact that it is surrounded by deadly booby traps suggests that a weapons cache might be present.
Because of their role as Dominion collaborators, the Miradorn are not on good terms with the Federation. New political leaders desperately want to regain the UFP's favor and have even renamed their homeworld "New Mirada" as a symbol of their fresh resolve. However, the UFP has not been quick to forgive. The Miradorn asked for help reluctantly...and did so chiefly because of an impending hajj-like pilgrimage converging on Zasharu in a matter of days. Millions of pi
lgrims will be pouring in from all over the quadrant to make their biennial visit to the shrine of Ho'nig. The safety of the pilgrims is at stake...as are the economic benefits of the pilgrimage. Losing the economic boost that comes with the pilgrimage would be a severe hardship for Mirada, which was not left in great shape at the end of the war.
The S.C.E. team is assigned to remove any weapons and hazards from the Dominion facility. When the team members beam down, they meet up with Em-Lin, who knows the site better than anyone and will serve as their guide.
As the team members excavate the site, they also unearth their own feelings about the turncoat Miradorn. Most members of the group act coolly toward Em-Lin (though she claims that she had nothing to do with the Dominion collaboration). Soloman, however, sympathizes with Em-Lin's loss of Or-Lin, her "other half," and makes a strong connection with Em-Lin.
The S.C.E. team makes its way through a series of Jem'Hadar booby traps of escalating complexity and ferocity. The traps range from cloaked, disruptor-armed spheres to bio-seeking explosive projectiles. Several members of the team are injured before all the booby traps are defeated and deactivated.
Inside the facility, the S.C.E. team discovers elaborate Dominion instrumentation with an unknown purpose. The equipment unexpectedly activates, which the S.C.E. team members blame on their own tampering, and the results are catastrophic.
The Dominion machinery transmits waves that burn through the minds of the Miradorn on Zasharu, causing bursts of telepathy followed by agony, coma, and death. As the effect spreads, the S.C.E. team members scramble to shut down the instrumentation that is causing it. They discover that the device's activation was caused by a system malfunction, not S.C.E. tampering, but they are unable to prevent the transmission of a trigger signal that activates an identical device on the surface of Mirada. This twin of the Zasharu device does the same thing to the Miradorn on Mirada as the first device did to those on Zasharu.
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