Spirit Walk_ Enemy of My Enemy (Book 2) - Christie Golden [32]
Kathryn disappeared. Blue Water Dreamer disappeared. Slowly, fading reluctantly, Sekaya followed suit. Chakotay saw himself staring at the chamozi on a log, the image he’d spotted while on Earth with his father. The chamozi, scrawled on a rock on a distant moon. The chamozi, written in chalk on the surface of Loran II. The best bait imaginable, it combined Chakotay’s curiosity, deeded to him by the Inheritance of the Sky Spirits, and guilt over his father’s death.
The pain in his head changed. It softened, slightly, but became warmer. Suddenly standing before him was the alien whose name he had never known, but whose ancestors had genetically bonded with his ancestors, and who pressed his hand to Chakotay’s heart and—
Chakotay’s eyes flew open and breath rushed into his lungs with a gasp. All at once, he knew. He would have figured it out before, but at the outset he had been so groggy, and then later distracted by worry for his sister and the pressing need to escape.
The Changeling, in the form of Arak Katal, had somehow contrived to send a Gul after Chakotay. Not to capture and punish the crew of a Maquis ship, though that’s what Evek had believed, but to capture and analyze one single, specific human being. For whatever reason, Crell Moset wanted to take samples from Chakotay, to finish his analysis of the colonists of Dorvan V.
Did you know that you were the only inhabitant of Dorvan V who ever left the planet? And I’m a completist.
Chakotay had wondered at that comment, about the megalomania that would drive a man to such lengths just to experiment on a lone representative of a not-in-considerable population. He had thought it trivial, an example of a mind so obsessed by ego it could think of nothing else. But now…
“Chakotay?” Sekaya’s voice, rich with concern. “Are you all right? I thought when he put you under that…” Her voice trailed off.
Normally he would speak quickly, to reassure and comfort her. But now Chakotay was too busy sorting out his thoughts, trying to grasp them and mold them into something coherent before they slipped through his fingers.
He turned his head to regard his sister. “I know what Moset wants,” he said, his voice harsh and raspy, as if it had been unused for some time. “What the Changeling wants. They want—”
“The Sky Spirits,” the Changeling said at the briefing, after the troublesome Kaz and Patel had finished their presentation and every single member of his senior staff had turned to stare, slightly open-mouthed, at their captain.
Kim, Campbell, and Vorik nodded after staring only a short time. They had been the only ones on Voyager when Chakotay had had his little ancestral adventure. The Changeling looked around at the others, forced himself to look a little amused and abashed, and said, “It’s a long story.”
“I think we should hear it even if it takes a hundred and one nights,” said Astall.
“A thousand and one,” said Lyssa, softening the correction with a friendly grin.
“Oh,” said Astall. “Well, perhaps we don’t have quite that much time. But I’d like to hear any explanation for this, Captain.”
“As would I,” said Marius Fortier, staring at Chakotay with what the Changeling thought was rather a rude and blatant curiosity.
He sat back and sighed. Fortunately, this was a tale he knew perhaps even better than Chakotay himself. It was a tale he’d immersed himself in for years.
Ever since they’d trapped him in that hated body of Andrew Ellis, and he’d dreamed of becoming free…
“It seems that over forty-five thousand years ago, Earth was visited by benevolent aliens. They saw a race of primitive people in the far reaches of the world. These people didn’t have a language, and knew only how to use the crudest tools and fire. But apparently, there was a passion for the land and the