The Third Nature -Book One of the Triad
Voyager fantasies by Lt Taya 17 Janeway
_______Months Later_______
chapter eighteen: like learning to live again
The Daer-on-Naiad was steeped in quite solitude. It was the late afternoon, when the forest around them was alive with the soft cries of crickets and the rustling of the wind. Every now and then, the whistle of birds could be heard, migratory creatures passing from the northern regions over the river Hy to beyond Licknok Moor to escape the cold spell up north. From somewhere within the schoolroom, the children laughed.
In this blissful scene came the sharp metallic jarring of swords.
A curved bat'leth sliced through the air and clashed with a similar weapon, the sharp blade glinting in the sunlight. Grunting, its wielder aimed another parry at the midsection of her opponent, and was met with another quick riposte.
Her opponent executed an agile backflip, putting some distance between them, then unleashed a wall of Fire at her. Raising her bat'leth with a cry, she deflected the pulse with her own sleight-of-hand. The backwash crashed unexpectedly onto her opponent, and she tumbled backwards. Wasting no time, she leaped at her opponent and pressed the curved inner blade of it against her throat.
Her opponent raised a silver eyebrow. "Looks like you've won- again."
B'Elanna Torres chuckled and stepped away from Seven. "No offense, but after months of sparring with Nydea, you're almost no challenge. She's a formidable fighter."
"As are you," replied Seven as she stood up, brushing the powdery dust off her brown unitard. "Perhaps you should consider having a match with Tuvok. He is well trained in various forms of combat, and despite being unversed in magic he possesses relatively fast reflexes. He would be a worthy partner."
"Well, I keep that in mind in case I ever get bored," said a voice from beside them. The two women turned to see Janeway leaning on the trunk of a sturdy scarletwood at the edge of the clearing. Janeway smiled and held her hand out to Seven. "I haven't sparred in a while. I'm getting out of practice." In understanding, Seven tossed her the bat'leth, and she caught it by the handle. "Let's see how I fare against the great B'Elanna Torres."
Torres rolled her eyes at her captain's underhanded flattery, then swung her bat'leth at Janeway's face. Janeway barely had time to block the blow when another came. And another. Torres attacked, fast and furious, driving Janeway back towards the forest. She backed up against a tree, trapped, and all seemed lost. Torres swung her bat'leth one more time-
-and Janeway abruptly ducked, lodging Torres' bat'leth into the tree. Janeway quickly came back up, her bat'leth against the side of Torres's neck.
Torres quirked up a corner of her lip. "Ducking is considered dishonorable," she said dryly.
Janeway shrugged. "It helped."
"Honor is irrelevant," commented Seven, but the ex-Borg had the beginnings of a smile on her lips.
Torres shook her head as her captain stepped away from her. "I need more practice."
"I just got lucky," said Janeway. "You'd probably win on a rematch."
"On the battlefield, there is no rematch," said Torres, extricating her blade from the tree. "I can't allow my opponents to get lucky."
"Well, looks like you'd better arrange that match with Tuvok soon, then," said Janeway. "After all, Myriam says that our next battle will probably be against the capital city itself."
"The final showdown?" Torres raised one eyebrow. "But we have so many other fronts to fight on other planets. How about Danir? Without it we won't be able to control the main trade routes, and we've barely made a dent in their defenses."
"When the Empress falls, so will the rest of the Preeminence," said Seven firmly.
"Oh, is this some prediction you and your little friends made sitting there in your little room with all your little crystal balls?" Torres put her hands on her hips, bat'leth still held in one hand. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"We needed confirmation from Myriam," said Seven calmly, taking her bat'leth back from Janeway. "Besides, the battle is still a fair while away. We have adequate time for preparation."
Janeway nodded silently at the information. In the months since their arrival in this dimension, Voyager had led more than a few battles, some on Algaroth, some on other planets within the Preeminence. In the time between, they had immersed themselves in the local culture and customs. It was like learning to live again: learning to live in a place which was so different from where they'd come from. Even the men had found some time to hone their skills when they were travelling the interstellar void, their active warp bubble masking their use of magic from the Empress. Starfleet technology was vastly superior to that of the Preeminence, owing mostly to the fact that they didn't have the powers of magic to back them up in the twenty-fourth century. Working together with a team of dedicated engineers, Janeway and Torres had come up with several modifications to their present technology to accommodate higher-order manipulations, and as a result they had slightly bettered their odds against the Preeminence.
Torres scowled. "If they drop an attack on us out of the blue, we'll be finished," she said, waving her bat'leth for emphasis.
"That won't happen," said Seven crisply with certainty.
"And I suppose that's another prediction you've made, Seer?" asked Torres with a touch of sarcastic emphasis on Seven's title.
"It is a mere logical conclusion from the analysis of our tactical situation, Warrior," Seven jibed in return, likewise putting emphasis on Torres's title. The dry humor in their words, however, couldn't be mistaken. Over the past few months of training with and against each other, the animosity between the two had more or less toned down into a fond, mutual dislike. Neither would admit it, but the Klingon and the Borg had grown fairly inseparable in their own right.
Janeway smiled at the light-hearted bickering between the two women. Fond rivalry had its history between the Seers and Warriors as well. Where the Seers meditated and predicted, taking everything into consideration, calculating every outcome and drawing on higher inspiration, Warrior were rough and impetuous, taking action in the heat of battle, unquenchable and unpredictable. Seers mocked Warriors for being overtly rash, and Warriors poked fun of Seers for being over-calculative.
"Did you want to tell us something, captain?" Torres asked Janeway abruptly, turning back to her.
"Only that Seven is late for her lesson with Kes and Tuvok, and Myriam wants to speak to you."
Seven inclined her head. "Indeed. The time must have… slipped my mind." She closed her eyes, and with a small gesture of her hand, transported the bat'leth back into the weapons store fifty meters away, beside the war room. "With your permission, captain, I'd like to return to Voyager."
Janeway held out her hands. "No-one's stopping you," she said with a smile. "Besides, I'd be the last one to incur Kes' wrath."
Seven tapped her commbadge and requested for a beamup. She faded away in the column of the blue sparkle, back to Voyager, currently in orbit around Licknok Moor.
Torres stepped up to Janeway, brows puckered in concern. "Myriam wants to see me? Why?"
Janeway took her arm and led her to the war room. "Not just you. All the higher-ranking Warriors. She wants to coordinate the plans for the next battle." Her voice took on her lower tone. "Only the Warriors are going to be involved in the planning for this battle," she said.
"The final showdown?" asked Torres, her steps slowing.
Janeway nodded. "At least, that's what she told me. And the rest of the daer."
Torres sucked in a deep breath. "Looks like this meeting is going to be a rather big one, then."
Chakotay was waiting for them at the doorway to the war room. "The meeting has already started," he told them. Torres nodded, palmed the bronze doors and walked in as the large structures swung open silently.
Janeway stood staring at the door for a moment after it shut. Chakotay carefully draped one hand over her shoulders, and she did not object. Over the past few months, she'd devoted the precious spare time that she'd had to coaching him on the most elementary Casting, skills so simple and which required so little manipulation of the Fire sphere that it wouldn't alert Nayrn of their whereabouts behind their shielding. She was an adept teacher, and she'd spent an unreasonable amount of time with him when she should have been off teaching more promising students, such as Tieran, or Naomi.
He brushed her mind gently, as he had been taught to do, to avoid detection. Don't you have lessons?
"Oh…" She snapped her fingers in annoyance, her expression fixed into a grimace. "Damn."
He steered her sideways. "The children's room is over there," he said. "Want me to take you there?"
She punched his arm lightly, laughing. "I can find my way there, thank you very much," she said dryly. "So I got us lost in the Delta Quadrant, but my sense of direction isn't that bad."
He didn't reply to her jest, instead watching her retreating silhouette in silence. You didn't get us stranded in the Delta Quadrant, precious, that was me. He shook his head and was about to beam back to Voyager when something slammed into his back with the force of a ten-gale storm. He stumbled to his knees, and the blast of hot air on the back of his neck told him who it was.
"Tieran! That's enough. Why aren't you back on Voyager?"
The young tigress leaped off his back, teeth bared in a snarl. At half adult size, Tieran was five feet long and weighed a monstrous four hundred and seventy pounds. Dazzling white fur, reddish-orange stripes; and blazing jade eyes. With six more growing months to go, the feline wielder of Scarlet Fire was shaping up to be a formidable force. As Myriam herself had said, "If that cat had been human, I'd fear for my position right now." As it was, the only thing that seemed to be impeding Tieran right now was her four-footed form. She certainly possessed enough intelligence and wit to challenge any human.
She forgot to take me, raged the tigress, pacing. I shall tell Tuvok.
"Telling Tuvok won't help much," Chakotay told her. "He can't do anything to Seven. Is this the first time she's forgotten to take you back to Voyager?"
He'll think she's losing focus, said Tieran. He'll make her meditate more, and she hates meditating. She says it's inefficient.
"Come on," he said, standing up and aiming a playful cuff at the feline's neck. In a couple of months time he would have to stop doing that, in the interest of preserving his arm. "She didn't mean it. I'll take you back to Voyager."
The tigress snarled, but otherwise said nothing.
As Chakotay was about to tap his commbadge, a slight movement to his left caught his attention. "Who's there?"
"It's only me," said a small voice. It was Bryanna, hiding in the shadows of the war room. "I'm just playing with a few of my friends."
Tieran growled softly. There are others here.
Chakotay craned his neck to see the other children. "Who are your friends, Bryanna? Aren't they supposed to have a lesson with the Emissary now?"
Bryanna remained silent, scuffing the toe of her boot in the dirt floor of the daer, not looking up.
"You can tell me," Chakotay prodded. "I won't tell the Emissary why they skipped lessons."
Bryanna hesitated some more, then shook her head. "They don't have to go for lessons," she said softly. "They're ghosts. You can't see them, ordinary people can't, and only a few can sense them. Even less can see them, much less play with them."
"Ghosts?" asked Chakotay in disbelief.
"Dead people who can't or won't go back to where they came from. Many children." Bryanna spoke quietly. "Nobody knows I can do this," she said, glancing backwards. "These children… they are lost in a strange new place, away from everyone they love. They're different, they're alone. The world they live in is different. They have to learn how to live all over again. It's very sad." She shrugged. "So I play with them. It makes them feel less bad."
Such compassion. Chakotay was about to speak, but she interrupted him. "Could you please not tell my mother, or any of the other grown-ups?"
"Why not?" he asked her.
She twisted her fingers together. "I- I don't want to be left out because I can see ghosts. People think it's a bad omen, like I will do something bad because I can see them. They all think ghosts are evil."
"But they're not?"
"They were just people like you and me before they died." Bryanna's eyes grew slightly moist. "Please don't tell?"
Chakotay couldn't refuse. "Tieran and I will keep it a secret," he said. The child moved back into the darkness with a small smile as Chakotay tapped his commbadge and beamed back to Voyager with Tieran.