The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [41]
"Lightning?" asked Torres, who up until that statement had been following Anahu perfectly.
Paris was glad she'd brought it up, not him. He'd embarrassed himself sufficiently for one day.
"Lightning resonates at a consistent frequency of eight cycles per minute," Anahu explained. "If you take enough readings, you can, as I said, calculate the overall temperature." He dropped his head slightly as if suddenly bent by the weight of the knowledge itself. "The temperature has risen steadily over the last hundred and fifty turns, which is how long we have been monitoring it. You have scented the death such an unnatural rise has left in its wake. Soon, nothing will be able to live on Veruna Four."
"The oceans have risen to devour the land," said Viha Nata, her voice falling into the singsong chant she had used a few times before.
"Birds fall from the skies. Fruit rots on the vine.
Children die in the pits, slain before they take their first breaths.
Clouds obscure the dying sun, and lightning and thunder are our constant companions. And all this," she said, her voice rising into anger, "we owe to the Akerianssss."
"You can't be certain of that," said Chakotay.
Viha Nata whirled on him, pain and impotent rage in her great yellow eyes. Her voice was thick.
"There was no distress in our peaceful skies until three hundred turns ago. I do not know what they did--perhaps no one will never know--but they have done something incomprehensibly terrible. Can you not understand the depth of the atrocity they have committed, Commander?
They have murdered our sun!"
CHAPTER 8
For the second time in as many days, Janeway lay awake in her quarters.
This time, though, her mind was not filled with thoughts of loved ones seventy thousand light-years distant. She lay thinking of the Akerian ship and its quiet dead, of Viha Nata's tears, of the concavity known as Sun-Eater.
When Harry Kim's voice interrupted her musing, her own voice was wide awake as she replied, "Janeway here."
"Captain, I think I may have some important information for you."
"Haven't you been to bed yet, Mr. Kim?"
"Um... no, sir. Ma'am. Captain." An awkward pause, then "I was just too curious."
"I understand." She smiled. "What do you have for me?"
Another pause. "Well, I kind of need to show you as well as tell you."
"Very well. Wake Lieutenant Tuvok, and I'll meet you both in my ready room in about ten minutes."
"Aye, Captain." The young man's voice was filled with barely restrained glee. He'd found out something big, that was for sure.
Seven minutes later Janeway entered her ready room and found Kim and Tuvok already there. Kim, of course, had admitted not sleeping, and she had a sneaking suspicion the Vulcan hadn't seen his bed either.
"Don't you ever sleep?" she asked with a tinge of amused exasperation.
A lift of his black eyebrow was all the Vulcan granted her by way of an answer.
Kim couldn't keep quiet anymore. "I've spent the last several hours sifting through every record they had--histories, personal logs, everything," he said, his body taut and his handsome, open face alight with excitement. "And, Captain, what they've learned, what they've done..."
Janeway raised a calming hand. "Compose yourself, Mr. Kim."
He blushed. "Sorry. I tried to put everything in some kind of order to present it to you. May I proceed?"
"By all means, go ahead." His youthful enthusiasm was contagious, and she sat down and leaned forward for a better view as he activated the viewscreen.
What appeared was a graphic depiction of two solar systems. Kim served as narrator, occasionally bending over Janeway to point things out as he talked.
"This," he said,