by Jeri Taylor
He quickly realized that wasn’t the way to dispatch a Cardassian. He couldn’t get his hands around the wide bands of cartilage. He gave one quick chop to the throat and heard a heartening grunt of pain, and then, using his grip on the man’s neck cords, let out a huge yell and began hammering his adversary’s head against the rock.
The Cardassian kicked at him, raked his face with his hands, thumbs probing his eyes, but Chakotay kept screaming and pounding, smashing the man’s skull against stone, all the rage of his pain driving him, ignoring the sudden pressure he felt on his eyeball, twisting his head to elude it, pounding, pounding, remembering his violated home, his parents, the friends of his childhood.
He wasn’t sure how long the man was still before he realized it. He dropped the neck cords and shoved himself off the Cardassian, whose head lolled awkwardly to one side, the back of his head a matted sponge of blood and bone.
Exhausted, dizzy, perspiring, gasping for breath, Chakotay put his hands on his knees and bent over, needing blood to his brain. Things stopped spinning and he slowly stood upright, hearing once more the strange plaintive cry of the trapped snake. It was hungry, and had been denied a potential meal. How long would the Cardassians keep it down there, starving?
He knew others might have been alerted, but he wasn’t going to resist the sudden compulsion. He stripped the Cardassian of clothing, and then dragged his body to the pit and rolled it in. There was a sudden cessation of the serpentine squealing, and Chakotay peered over the edge.
The wrist beacon was still illuminating the pit, in which the massive reptile was slowly entwining the Cardassian’s body in its coils, not realizing that its work had already been done. No matter. In time, it would feed.
He moved to the first isotane canister and activated it, used his tricorder to insure that the chain reaction had begun, and then touched his combadge. “Chakotay to Liberty. One to beam up.”
In the seconds before dematerialization, it struck him that in Starfleet’s mind, he was now not only an outlaw, but a murderer.
Afterward, there was no particular remorse for the act, which, though passionate, was in self-defense. But what enveloped him instead was far more profound, and far worse.
He had somewhat expected that taking a Cardassian life would expiate the rage and grief that he felt after the destruction of his home village. He had promised vengeance, and had taken it. A debt had been paid.
But there was no satisfaction in it. Instead, the leaden weight of an awful realization had lodged in his heart, crowding out everything else, spreading, eating like a cancer through his mind, consuming everything.
His last words to his father had been spoken in anger.
Kolopak had died with the memory of his son’s furious rejection of everything he stood for. His soul had been burdened by the venom of Chakotay’s anger, his death tainted by that estrangement. His father believed in an afterlife— was he now doomed to carry that last awful moment with his son throughout eternity?
It was unbearable. Chakotay moved in a daze, thinking of nothing else, feeling nothing else, stunned and distraught. He announced that they would take a brief respite from their guerrilla actions, and they put down at one of the secret strongholds the Maquis had established on friendly planets. Chakotay shut himself in his quarters under the pretense of scrutinizing future plans, but in fact he was in the grip of a paralyzing apathy, unable to wrench his mind from the overwhelming guilt that had enveloped him.
Seska, of course, tried desperately to draw him out, preparing food for him herself and bringing it to his quarters, where it usually went uneaten. She’d even scoured the planet for edible mushrooms to make him a soup which he favored, certain he would show some enthusiasm for her efforts.
She entered the spartan quarters of the stronghold and put the tureen down in front of him, lifted the lid, and stood waiting for his gratitude.
He tried to offer a smile, but it was wooden and off-center. “Thanks” was the best he could offer. She regarded him for a moment and he hoped his silence would induce her to leave, but she stayed put. She placed her hands on his shoulders, kneading the muscles with strong fingers.
“You’re so tense . . . you need to relax,” she said suggestively. Her hands went to his face and she leaned to kiss him. He turned his head.
Stung, she backed off and he rose, facing her. “I’ve been thinking this for a long time,” he said, “so it’s not a sudden decision. It’s not right for us to have an affair.”
Her eyes widened in shock and surprise. “Why not?” she queried, and he heard in her tone the willingness to fight. He held up his hand as though to block any further statement.
“Not while we’re working together like this. It interferes with the work we’re doing.”
“No, it—” She was prepared to debate, but he wasn’t going to get drawn in.
“Don’t. Please.” There was an edge to his voice that she heard, and she subsided. There was a long moment between them, and then she took a breath.
“You’ve been under a lot of stress. I understand. If you need some time off, that’s fine. I just want you to know I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
It seemed easier to accept this than to assure her that wouldn’t happen, so he gave her a curt nod, and thereby kept her hopes alive—a mistake, as he was to learn years later.
As his malaise continued, he desperately wished he could ask his father for advice. What could he do to shake the terrible languor that had beshrouded him?
When he realized the answer, he chided himself for not having realized it immediately. He procured an Akoonah from the people of his planet and prepared to go inward, where his father had told him all answers would lie.
“Akoochimoyah . . . Akoochimoyah . . .” This time he used the ritual chant of his people, and slipped easily into the vision, finding himself almost instantly in the woods of his homeworld once more. He looked around for the snake, eager to tell it of his adventure with its more malignant relative, but the brightly colored serpent wasn’t in evidence. He began walking, searching for the clearing, but the landscape had changed somehow, and he no longer felt he knew just where he was.
Further, the sky had darkened, and a wind began to swirl the leaves and kick up dust. The temperature dropped noticeably, and Chakotay was no longer comfortable. Something was amiss.
He heard footfalls behind him, and turned to peer into the dark woods, but he could see nothing. Then the sounds of steps came from another direction entirely, and he whirled, trying to locate the unseen presence.
Footsteps began sounding from all directions, all around him, getting louder and louder, like rumbling thunder. He turned in circles, fearful, awaiting the appearance of a dread apparition, realizing now that this inner journey was to be his punishment for his anger and disrespect toward his father.
He would accept whatever happened. He deserved whatever the quest might bestow on him.
He closed his eyes, listening to the deafening sounds, feeling the forest floor vibrate with the intensity of the steps of thousands of beings, marching inexorably toward him.
Then there was silence.
He opened his eyes and saw his father standing before him. Chakotay’s knees suddenly buckled and he staggered, sinking onto the damp floor of the forest.
“Hello, Chakotay.” It was indeed his father’s voice, his father’s wise eyes and gentle countenance, his voice which rang with love. Chakotay felt his eyes sting with gratitude for this chance to see him once more.
“Father,” he said in a choked voice, and saw Kolopak smile and put a warm hand on his shoulder.
“You’re surprised, I know. You didn’t expect to see me.”
“I had a spirit guide. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.”
“Apparently you need me, as well.”
“How can that be?”
“It could only be if that’s what you want.”
The rush of joy Chakotay felt was so intense he alm
ost lost consciousness. Never had he been so elated, so exuberant. He hadn’t lost his father, after all—he was there, inside him, accessible, for the rest of his life. He felt a laugh begin in his throat and he opened his mouth to shout it out, but instead he burst into tears.
He sat on the forest floor, sobbing, as his father knelt by him and held him. He cried out his pain, and his loss, and his confusion, and when he was done he looked up at Kolopak with swollen eyes, and saw his father smiling at him.
“Things will be better now,” he promised, and Chakotay knew that, as usual, his father was absolutely right.
The arrival of several new people to the Liberty was the beginning of a series of problems. Each of them had their strengths, to be sure, but their presence caused other difficulties which, although subtle, were to have a far-reaching impact on the crew.
The first was B’Elanna Torres, the half-Klingon engineer they rescued from Cardassians. She brought a wealth of technical expertise to the group, but her arrival seemed to send Seska into a paroxysm of jealousy. Seska tried to disguise it, and insisted she had nothing but the highest regard for B’Elanna, but it was clear she was deeply threatened by this new female presence.
The recruiting of Tom Paris to the Liberty was a move Chakotay at first approved, then gradually came to regret. He was a first-rate pilot, but he had an arrogance that was annoying, and Chakotay also began to wonder if he could be trusted. He’d lied about the deaths of three of his friends in order to save himself from censure; he lacked strong character. And it was clear he was attracted to B’Elanna, which only served to complicate the tangled emotional relationships he had to deal with.
When Chakotay had heard there was a disenchanted Starfleet Vulcan who might be interested in becoming a freedom fighter, he responded with alacrity. He’d had a Vulcan on board earlier, a pilot named Setonak who had returned to his home planet to recover from wounds, and Chakotay had always appreciated the calm and steadying presence on his bridge. Tuvok was much the same, a seasoned and unflappable veteran whose cold logic Chakotay found valuable, especially among this group of hotheaded rebels.
Things had come to a head with Tom Paris fairly early on. Chakotay had ordered the ship for its first foray into Cardassian territory, a short reconnaissance run to test the perimeter for defensive measures. Things had gone well and they had actually gathered some data on a weapons depot that was secreted on a small moon, and were heading back to the demilitarized zone when they stumbled on a surveillance probe.
“It’s scanning us,” said B’Elanna from her post on the bridge.
“Send out a polaron beam, see if you can block the scan—” Chakotay had begun, when suddenly the probe exploded before their eyes.
“What was that?” B’Elanna asked.
“That was me,” replied Tom Paris, with the cocky edge to his voice that Chakotay had come to dislike.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I fired on it. Took it out.”
Chakotay’s wrath began to well up, though he tried to keep his voice calm. “I don’t remember ordering you to do that.”
“I took it on myself—”
“On my bridge I give the orders. You don’t take it on yourself to do anything. Is that clear?”
A flush emerged on Tom’s cheeks, and Chakotay knew he was angry as well. “I didn’t realize this was a mini-Starfleet. I thought we were expected to think on our feet.”
The fact that Paris was challenging him in front of the others added to Chakotay’s ire. “Thinking is one thing. Acting without an order is another. All you’ve managed to do is alert the Cardassians that we’re here. Stop arguing with me and start getting us the hell out of here.”
The two men held a bitter look for a long moment, then Tom finally turned away and began working his controls. From that point on, things were tense between them, until the point that Tom abandoned them. It was good riddance as far as Chakotay was concerned.
Of course, that was all before the great adventure that had changed their lives, before the flight into the Badlands that ended with their strange experience at the hands of an entity known as the Caretaker, before he met and joined forces with the captain of the ship Voyager, before his Maquis group and her Starfleet crew combined and then became stranded in the Delta Quadrant, before he learned that Tuvok was in fact an agent working for Starfleet who had infiltrated his ship—and before fate ironically threw Tom Paris right back in his lap, probably for the rest of his life.
But it was all made worthwhile by one thing: having met and worked beside the remarkable woman named Kathryn Janeway.
CHAPTER
3
WHEN CHAKOTAY FINISHED TALKING, HE REALIZED THAT every one of his group had been listening, rapt. “I didn’t mean to go on and on,” he apologized, realizing he had revealed more about himself than he had ever expected to.
“That was interesting, sir,” said Harry sincerely. “Commander Nimembeh did the same thing to me at the Academy—ordered me to take laps in my boots. But the outcome was a little different.”
“Tell you what, Ensign,” replied Chakotay, “tomorrow night you can tell us all about it. Maybe by then we’ll even have a campfire to tell our stories around.”
“I didn’t have nearly as interesting a life as you. Everyone will be bored.”
Chakotay clapped him on the shoulder. “I doubt that. I’d especially like to hear your experiences with Nimembeh.”
Harry finally agreed, and they all went to sleep, feeling closer, more bonded, at the end of this day than they had at the beginning.
• • •
Harry’s sleep was fitful, because the night life of the camp was not a tranquil one. There was a chorus of cries and groans that was even more disturbing in the dark than it was during the day. In the distance he heard the shouts of conflict, and then a horrible shriek. He glanced up at the wall to see if this behavior provoked any response from the guards, but there was none. Apparently they were content to let the roiling mass of prisoners see to itself, dispensing rough prisoner justice.
Harry tried not to let himself think of home, of the quiet gardens his parents cultivated, of the soft music his mother played on an ancient instrument, of the utter harmony and serenity of that life. It was far away now, and he’d been through one severe test after another since he’d joined Voyager. He was harder, tougher, more capable than ever. He could survive this latest challenge, would survive it. Fleeting memories of Nimembeh flickered in his mind and he felt a moment’s nostalgia for the man who had once been his tormentor.
He turned over on the ground, looking for a comfortable position. The ground didn’t seem to have retained the heat of the day, and felt damp. The night air was as chilly as the daylight had been scorching. The elements weren’t kind on this planet.
He wasn’t sure when he realized someone was crawling toward him. A dark shape about fifteen meters from him, silhouetted by the flickering light of someone’s fire, moved with agonizing slowness toward the outer periphery of the Voyager group, where Harry lay. Once he spotted the prowling form, Harry’s senses were alert. He saw the huddled shape, on all fours, picking its way through a scattering of other sleeping forms, stopping occasionally as though to gauge its progress and assess whether its stealthy approach had been detected.
Harry watched intently, breathing deeply as though he were sound asleep. The creeping form was now only about three meters away, still stopping every few seconds and looking around, testing the air like an animal. Harry couldn’t see any of its features, only a black shape that moved against the background of the distant campfires.
When the dark form reached his feet, it stopped, and was still for a long moment. Harry waited, tensed, ready for the being to make its move.
When it came, it was anything but what he expected. A hand reached out and gripped his leg gently, the soft touch of a cat’s paw, while the other tugged smoothly at his boots. Swiftly, he sat up and lunged forward, grabbing for the ha
nd holding his leg.
He heard a surprised gasp, and then he flung the person on his back, quickly straddling him and shoving both arms over his head into the ground. “Nice try,” he began.
And then he realized he was looking at a young woman, barely more than a girl, who was staring up at him with terrified eyes. “Don’t hurt me,” she breathed.
Harry instantly leapt off her, and had time only to notice that she had hair as black as his own, a heart-shaped face, and unusual eyes that flashed with a strange color which he couldn’t clearly make out in the darkness. And then she was gone, springing up and scrambling off like a wild animal suddenly set free.
That brief glimpse of her face haunted him for the rest of the wakeful night.
“Let’s go. Everybody up.” Chakotay’s voice knifed through Harry’s sleep like a cleaver. Harry realized he had finally fallen asleep, and deeply, only now to be roused by his commander. He opened scratchy eyes to the bright glare of the sun and realized the air was already baking hotly. His mouth was cottony.
“There are things we need,” continued Chakotay when everyone had shaken off sleep and was sitting or standing. “Containers for storing water. Materials to build shelter. Fuel for fires. It’s usually possible to barter in a place like this. I’d suggest you offer your jacket or your undershirt. If you give away your shoes you might be in trouble.”
“What about our combadges?” asked B’Elanna.
“Some of us can offer combadges, but I don’t want to lose more than two or three. I’m not sure they’d be as desirable as good clothing, anyway.”
Tuvok joined in. “No one should venture off alone. No fewer than two people in a group, preferably three or four.”
And so they set out for their first full day in the place their captors called Area 347, but which the Voyager crew quickly dubbed Hellhole. Harry moved out in a group that included B’Elanna and her young Vulcan engineer, Vorik. Harry didn’t tell anyone, but he had a double agenda on this day: bartering for the items they needed—and finding the young woman who had crept up to him last night.