Dark Matters_ Ghost Dance (Book 2) - Christie Golden [37]
Jekri stared. Slowly, Dammik smiled. "I am not a telepath," she said softly, "but it does not require one to read your mind. Why else would you come to us with such an offer of clemency?"
Jekri chose not to protest "Then help me," she said.
They began by doing a group meditation. Jekri was jumpy and anxious to plunge right into more active exercises and had trouble following Dammik's instructions to calm her mind and slow her breathing. Her mind was as active as a nei'rrh, flitting from branch to branch, idea to idea. Reluctantly, she admitted that Dammik was right about her. She did not have the level of control she wanted; she merely had suppression. That was something quite different.
"Keep bringing your mind back to the rhythm of your breath." Dammik's voice floated to Jekri, who had not, at that moment, been concentrating on the
rhythm of her breath but rather on the Empress, Lhiau, and her chances of success. She did not want to concentrate on her breath, she wanted to-
No. This was the key. In her heart of hearts she knew it. Control began here, at this moment, with this single thought, this single breath. There. She did it once, she could do it again. She inhaled, held the breath for an instant, exhaled through her nostrils. It was not so hard.
"Now," said Dammik, "go deeper. Feel the breath in your blood, in every cell. Loosen your jaw" Jekri's was clenched, and obediently she parted her upper and lower jaw, keeping her lips closed. Better.
Go within. Inside was the control she sought. At the very core of Jekri Kaleh's identity, safe from fear, from worry, from desire. She found her inner center, and approached it with not a little awe. All her will, her determination, her grit-it was not these things that were her strength. It was this quiet pool in the cavern of her soul. She could almost see it as a cavern, cool and dark and moist. In her mind's eye, she knelt at the obsidian pool that was her heart, cupped the liquid, and drank deep of her inmost self.
This would be her shield. This would be her victory.
This would break Lhiau's hold on the Romulan people.
The thought was joy incarnate.
INTERLUDE
THE RECOGNITION WAS VAGUE, BUT IT WAS THERE. THE
Entity knew this place, though it could not determine how. Names came into its consciousness: Baneans. Numiri.
There had been people here once. Feathers? Something about feathers, and a knowledge of the mind. Great science was here, and great rage. Now, there was only a desolated planet. Any life that was here was primitive: grasses, microbes, bacteria. Great sorrow welled inside the Entity, for the presence of the wrong things was great here, and it knew it was their darkness that had turned a cool war into devastation.
It swept through the star system, mourning. It em-
braced the barren planet and obtained knowledge, it did not know how, that pain and torture had been pan of the depletion of the planet. The Baneans had used their knowledge of the brain as a weapon, forgetting higher, more enlightened goals; the Numiri, not needing much urging, had retaliated with a violence that had forever rendered this planet unable to support life.
Were they extinct, the Baneans and the Numiri? Had they slain one another down to the last individual? The Entity did not know. But one thing was certain: the dark matter had done this. The Entity gathered the wrong things up, containing them, purging the poor wounded planet from their continuing malice, and, grieving the tragedy, moved on.
THE BRIDGE WAS ILLUMINATED WITH BLOODRED LIGHT.
On the screen were eight heavily armed vessels of a race as yet completely unknown to the crew of Voyager.