Pathways - Jeri Taylor [31]
“Good for you. I wish you well.”
“Your homeworld is in the demilitarized zone. Surely you have feelings about this.”
He felt himself take a deep breath. It was impossible to explain to her, in one sitting, the complexities of his relationship with his people. “My people will do what they do. They don’t pay a lot of attention to me.”
“Join us, Chakotay. We need trained, disciplined people like you. Many of us are former Starfleet personnel. You could be in a leadership position—we need you.”
“Sveta, I wish you the best. But I’m part of Starfleet. I have no intention of leaving—even if I don’t agree with them about the treaty.”
“What is that supposed to mean? You disagree with them but you’ll continue to follow them, like a sheep?” Her voice had taken on an uncharacteristic passion. “I don’t remember you as that hypocritical.”
“This isn’t my fight, Sveta. I won’t take it on.”
She eyed him briefly, then nodded. “If you change your mind, you can reach me this way.” She slipped a padd into his hand and stood up. “It really is your fight, you know,” she offered, and then she walked out, her tall, slim body proud and straight.
Chakotay finished his ale, but it had turned sour somehow, and the aftertaste was bitter.
Captain Gordon’s face was pale but she was composed. “We have incomplete reports because the situation is chaotic. And of course, we have no official presence in the zone.”
He nodded, trying to turn himself to stone. He didn’t want to hear what he knew he was going to hear.
“But the attack on Trebus was sudden and devastating. Apparently there’s widespread destruction. The Federation will send in a humanitarian ship with food and medicine, but Starfleet can’t go near the place.”
“Can I join the supply ship?”
She looked directly at him. “Officially, no. You’re part of Starfleet and your presence would be illegal. Unofficially . . .” Her voice trailed off and he understood what she was saying.
“Captain, I request a leave of absence. I haven’t taken vacation for quite a while and I need a few weeks off. Do I have your permission?”
“Granted. How soon do you want to leave?”
“Immediately.”
“Good luck, Chakotay. I’ll hold good thoughts for you.”
He nodded, unable to get a word past the lump that had formed in his throat. He headed for his quarters and began to pack.
Four days later he was on his homeworld.
Of the village in which he had grown up, nothing was left. Only piles of rubble, some still smoking, gave any indication that once it had been a place where gentle people lived in close harmony with the land.
There had been nothing gentle in their destruction. Thermalite weapons had incinerated the village, creating a firestorm that had raged at sixteen hundred degrees centigrade, a temperature at which iron melted. The stone of their dwellings had been transformed into glass, fused into desperate shapes, gnarled and twisted as though the stone itself were convulsing in agony.
The people were essentially cremated, turned in moments of searing agony from happy, peaceful villagers tending their crops and playing with their children into puddles of ash that scattered in the winds of the firestorm. There would be no good-byes, no burials, no mementos of loved ones. They had simply vanished.
Chakotay stood in the devastation of his home village, absorbing every image that assaulted his senses. A vile odor permeated the air from a smoky film that hung over the site, the residue of the thermalite weapons. He would remember that smell forever.
The grotesque, twisted shapes of fused stone stretched before him, a vast detritus field of contorted forms, an ugliness that stained the earth. He would remember that sight forever.
But what was most painful of all was the stillness. Once, this village had hummed with the sounds of daily activity, of people working, talking, singing. The laughter of children at raucous play was always present, in the meadow and the woods, the shrill, exuberant sounds of young