The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [13]
Viha Nata shook her head in disbelief and sorrow, then continued.
"Time came and went. We grew used to seeing the Akerian violators in our skies. Our telescopes revealed that there was a harmony between the Akerians and the hole in the heavens. They flew in and out and seemed to make it a sort of home."
Her manner of speaking was rhythmic, almost a chant. Chakotay knew at once that these were people with a strong oral tradition.
Perhaps there were written records, but history was clearly kept alive by verbal communication. He was so lulled by the power of her cadence that he almost missed the most vital statement of Nata's speech: that the Akerians flew in and out of "the hole in the heavens." He turned to Janeway and saw her own face alight with eagerness. But her diplomacy won out, Janeway permitted the alien to continue at her own speed.
"Three hundred turns ago, the hole in the heavens grew cruel and became Sun-Eater. Now, we do not know how much time is left to us. Our days on Veruna have numbers, and we believe that the Akerians have done something to make that so."
"Have you tried negotiating with the Akerians?" the captain asked, putting her hands behind her back and pacing back and forth.
Nata's reply was vicious, blistering, and apparently untranslatable.
"They would not understand the meaning of the word!" she spat. The Viha's visage changed with her quick anger, and she snarled. Chakotay caught a glimpse of powerful yellow-white teeth. "How can one negotiate with a race who hides their faces? Who comes and takes our people and murders our children?
"No, Captain, we came to the reluctant conclusion twenty turns ago that our only chance is to fight back. We had some knowledge and technology, our inheritance from the Ancestors. To that we have knowledge gleaned from Akerian debris. We have learned now how to build vessels that soar in the darkness of space. We have stolen their knowledge as they have stolen our future. Our weapons and ships are no match for theirs, but we will not let them despoil our planet and take our people anymore."
She was standing now, her hands flat on what was clearly a desk Chakotay saw that her body was mostly humanoid. widening at the hips to flare into what he suspected were powerful thighs and legs. He mentally added a long, reptilian tail to his image of the Verunan. He was almost immediately corrected. A full sweep of a tail similar to that of a horse flicked quickly into his vision, then out again. Viha Nata snorted, then forced herself to sit down.
"Forgive my outburst. But you see, I am one of the leaders of this planet, the keeper of the knowledge granted to us by the Ancestors. I am a Viha, a protector of my people. You cannot imagine how it feels to watch the fertile land being scorched by a sun who no longer cares, to see plants and animals dying by the thousands. To know that your people have only a few generations at most before they are... forever gone."
Her words cut Chakotay's heart to the quick. The Verunans, physically so different from him, had a closer grasp of the Indian's relationship to his world than most of his fellow humans. Every fiber of his being cried out to help these people.
They were not only dying, but their whole world was dying. And if, as he suspected, these people believed that everything--earth, sky, star, plant, cloud--had a "spirit," then they were constantly being surrounded by needless, senseless, incomprehensible death.
The thought was nearly intolerable.
He turned in his chair to Janeway, the words, Let us help them!
on his lips. But he did not, could not, speak them. The Prime Directive forbade it. And for better or worse, he had agreed to uphold Starfleet regulations. He wished, at this moment, that he had not.
On Janeway's face was empathy and the evidence of her own internal struggle. Chakotay knew her to be a person of great depth and wisdom and passionate caring. But her hands were tied even more so than his.