The Battle of Betazed - Charlotte Douglas [68]
With the first surge of hope in days, Lwaxana looked up from her listless son, who lay cradled in her arms. “Any contact from Starfleet?”
Chaxaza’s glance fell on the ill youngster, and her enthusiasm wilted. “None. But it may come soon.”
Lwaxana pushed the boy’s tousled curls back from his tiny forehead and absorbed the dry heat of his fever through the palm of her hand. “Barin is almost out of time.”
Biting back tears, Chaxaza spun on her heel and rushed away.
With a weariness that made her feel older than her years, Lwaxana placed Barin on his small cot and wiped his limbs with a damp cloth in a futile effort to reduce his fever.
“Water,” he choked through a parched throat.
Lwaxana reached for her cup and held the last drops of her water ration to his lips. He drank greedily, emptying the vessel. “More.”
Tears filled her eyes. “There is no more, my darling Barin. Not until the men return from the river tomorrow morning.”
The boy was too ill to protest further. He had contracted the Rigelian fever the previous day, and the disease had progressed rapidly. Without ryetalyn, he had no chance of recovery, and with the increase of Jem’Hadar patrols in every village within a hundred kilometers, no one had been able to obtain more of the medicine.
Three other children of the resistance cell had died after the night Enaren had been forced to take Okalan’s life, but since then, the doctor had discovered an antidote. Processing a serum from a relative with a matching blood type, he had transfused antibodies from the vaccinated adults into the ailing children. The serum did not cure the fever, but it prevented the disease from killing its victims. Since the introduction of the serum, not a single child had perished.
Until now.
When Barin was stricken, Lwaxana had begged the doctor to use her blood to produce a serum of antibodies for her son.
“Your son is only half Betazoid,” the physician had replied with deep sadness in his tired eyes. “An infusion of serum created under these conditions from pure Betazoid blood might kill him outright.”
“But the fever will surely kill him if we do nothing!”
“We must wait—”
“For what? A miracle?”
“There is always the possibility the next scouting party might return with ryetalyn.”
Lwaxana had shaken her head in despair. “We might as well wish the Jem’Hadar off-planet. Both possibilities are equally remote.”
The doctor had laid his hand on her shoulder. “You will know when the time comes. Call me. If there is no hope, then the serum will do no harm.”
His words echoed in her memory. She felt the fever rising in Barin’s rugged little body, draining the life from him, and sensed the time to alert the doctor had come.
Shoving wearily to her feet, she stumbled to the opening of her sleeping niche and drew back the curtain. “Chaxaza?”
Her cousin hurried toward her from the common room, her face drawn with fear. “Barin?”
Lwaxana shook her head. “He is still with us. But the doctor must come quickly. Please, find him.”
She dropped the curtain and returned to her son. As a leader of her people, she was required to be strong, to represent hope, to keep up their spirits. But as a mother, she had already lost one child. Her darling Kestra had drowned when she was a beautiful little girl of seven, and her death had devastated Lwaxana so terribly, she had repressed the memory for over thirty years. As a result, Deanna had been a grown woman before she’d learned she’d had an older sister.
Losing Kestra had almost killed Lwaxana. Compounding that blow had been the deaths of Ian Troi and Timicin, the two loves of her life. Now she faced the death of her only son, the beloved child of her older years. She knelt and buried her face in his cot, letting her tears flow.
Footsteps sounded in the tunnel, and the fabric covering the sleeping niche was brushed aside. With tear-stained cheeks, Lwaxana glanced up, expecting to see the doctor.
Instead, she discovered Sorana Xerix, but the woman lacked her usual haughty expression. Worry lined her forehead and bracketed her