Chapter Text
Abol Tay floated in the vacuum of open space, serenely quiet, with only the light of a relatively nearby star causing the tumbling, tilting rocks all around him to even reveal themselves as in motion.
“Should I be offended you’re taking a side-trip when we’re on shore leave?”
The voice brought him back to the comfortable bed where he lay beside his Zandra, the two of them having just woken up a few moments earlier, after their first night on the Mikhal Traveler world.
It also made him flush with embarrassment.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, turning onto his side. His beautiful Zandra was on her side, facing him, her hair tied back beneath one of the sleeping cloths she tied it up in overnight, and her beautiful dark brown eyes full of a teasing sparkle. “I don’t know why it keeps happening.”
“Tay seems to find relaxing a problem,” Taitt said, reaching out and stroking his cheek. “Your symbiont is an action addict.”
“Except all Tay wants to look at are asteroids, for some reason,” Abol said. “I’d understand if it were that spatial rift Gara’s friend wants to explore, but…” He raised one eyebrow. “I keep finding myself looking at… rocks.”
“Okay, now I am a little offended,” Taitt said.
Abol gathered her in his arms and pulled her against his chest, where she snuggled in. Neither of them were tall, and they fit each other so comfortably. Sometimes, when he looked at her or held her like this, the reminder of just how incredible she was—and how full and wonderful his life had become—would draw his breath up short. He closed his eyes against the swell of utter gratefulness…
…and felt Tay start to slide away again.
No, he told himself, and the sensation stilled.
Though Sahreen Lan had told both him and Kes that being joined to a symbiont with no previous host would most likely make them feel a desire to explore—something they already both had—the Tay symbiont had found a way to tap into Abol’s telepathic—or, technically, clairvoyant—gift of looking elsewhere.
At first, it had frightened Abol. If it happened during a crisis moment, and his concentration was needed when his mind was quite literally elsewhere, what might happen? But Lieutenant Stadi had helped him realize it was only happening when he was tired, or—more often—bored. Since then, Abol had realized allowing Tay to take him on those mental journeys meant they happened less often, and at his own whim.
Until they’d arrived on this planet, that was.
“You’re worried,” Taitt said.
Abol squeezed her. It was impossible to hide things from his Zandra, and most of the time, he didn’t try. “Perhaps a little. I might ask Lieutenant Stadi it—”
On the simple bedside table, Abol’s combadge chirped.
“Daggin to Abol.”
Zandra smiled up at him, then reached up and past his shoulder to hand it to him.
Abol tapped it. “Abol here.”
“Ah, Abol,” Daggin’s voice said. “Could you meet the rest of us today?”
“The rest of us?” Abol said.
“Lieutenant Stadi would like some help with something, from the Chorus.”
Zandra lifted her chin to look up at him again, and gave him a little nod in answer to the question he was about to ask.
“I can,” Abol said.
*
Back at camp, Stiles and Russell sat side-by-side by the river, both holding steaming cups of Voyager-blend Kona coffee Russell had brought, from a supply Stiles thought hadn’t even existed of late—when the coffee trees produced, what bounty they created didn’t tend to last long, and in Stiles’s experience ended up mostly in the cups of the senior staff, most specifically Doctor Fitzgerald—but somehow Russell had a packet, and Stiles had decided to ask no questions.
Stiles thought Russell’s shoulders seemed less slouched now, after their long hike.
“Thank you,” Russell said now, and Stiles took a good look at the man. It wasn’t just his shoulders, it was the lines by his eyes, which were back alongside Dennis’s soft smile.
“Any time,” Stiles said. “I meant that.” He took a swallow of coffee to cover the awkwardness of the whole talking thing.
Russell laughed.
“What?” Stiles said.
“I’m sorry,” Russell said, shaking his head with another chuckle. “Your face.”
Stiles shook his head. “I already told you. I’m crap at this… stuff.”
Russell’s laugh at that was all the louder, and he drank coffee instead of replying.
“You know,” Russell said. “When we first got here, to the Delta Quadrant, I mean, Lieutenant Taitt spent an overnight shift on the Bridge, at the Science Station.” He glanced at Stiles. “This was when you were gone, actually. The Li Nalas was off looking for someone or something. It was before we merged the crews.”
“A friend of Kes’s,” Stiles said. “A Talaxian. You didn’t miss much missing him, trust me. Said we looked like a bunch of scruffy pirates, and that she should run away from us as fast as possible.” He shook his head. “It was ugly, actually. She stood her ground, told him he’d disappointed her, and that she wasn’t going to leave the people who’d saved her life…” He let out a small snort, remembering. “You know, at the time, I was surprised. She seemed so small and kind of frail, but saying that now makes me laugh. Now I know her.” He looked up. “Sorry. Go on.”
“I had the night shift on the Bridge, and I saw Taitt the moment she’d finished the math,” Russell said.
“The math?” Stiles said.
“She’d done the work to figure out the distance between the Ocampa sector and the Idran system,” Russell said.
“Idran system,” Stiles said, frowning as he tried to place it, then realizing why he knew it. “The Bajoran wormhole.” The far end of the wormhole, in the Gamma Quadrant.
“Ninety-four years,” Russell said. “From Ocampa to the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the Bajoran Wormhole. Ninety-four years.” He took a long, deep breath. “Or, straight back to the Alpha Quadrant in seventy.”
“You know, I never even thought of it,” Stiles said, shaking his head. “It never occurred to me not to just aim straight for home.”
“Taitt knew the danger of the Delta Quadrant,” Russell said. “Me, too. I saw the moment she realized it. She looked at me. We weren’t close or anything, on the Enterprise, but we knew each other’s face, and I was one of the forty-seven.”
“Forty-seven?”
“Oh,” Russell shook his head, laughing. “During the Enterprise’s run-in with the Borg—the liberated Borg—the Enterprise had to get away from the Borg ship, and forty-seven of us were left behind, though thanks to Taitt, almost all of us were recovered, eventually.”
“That’s when she blew up the Borg ship with a star?” Stiles said. He’d heard the story, albeit without much in the way of details.
“Yep. Six weeks on board as a Science Officer and she destroyed a Borg ship,” Russell said, smiling. Then the smile faded. “Darian and I ended up hiding in a cave, mostly.”
“Darian?” Stiles raised an eyebrow, hearing something in the way Russell said the name.
“Darian Wallace. He’d been asking me to have dinner for weeks before that, and then after I said yes.” Russell lifted his chin. “Huddling in a cave with someone with the unknown hanging over your head does tend to lend one a different perspective.”
“Sounds like life in the Maquis mine, frankly,” Stiles said. “Plenty of relationships started that way. Ram and Stephen, for one.”
“Really?” Russell said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, first they punched each other.”
Russell blinked, and Stiles laughed. “Okay, so maybe it’s not exactly like Starfleet officers would have done it.”
“Well,” Russell said. “After, we made a go of it, until I was transferred to Voyager, when we should have stopped, but tried to do the distance thing. I… sent him a letter, when we met that Romulan through the micro-wormhole. Told him to…” He waved a hand. “Well. Anyway.”
Stiles nodded. His letter had gone to his sons, and though he hoped they didn’t blame him for being so far away, he knew they’d be angry at him. Disappointed, also. And he imagined his words were poor comfort, even if he’d allowed himself to write words he’d never had spoken.
“The problem is,” Russell said. “Captain Cavit is still waiting for my report.”
“On the Borg,” Stiles said.
Russell nodded. “Thing is, Sam? All I want to do is pick up a PADD, an write the word ‘run,’ and hand it to him.”
*
Veronica Stadi had never particularly leaned into the heritage granted to her people by the four gods—or, as she preferred to think of it, evolutionary science given four personified philosophical forms to her ancestors who didn’t quite yet understand such things as DNA—and it wasn’t the first time in the Delta Quadrant she wished she’d spent more time listening to her mother’s teacher as he droned on about Rixx or the others.
Because something was wrong, and she’d be damned if she could quite put her finger on it.
“Thank you for coming,” Stadi said, looking around the group she’d gathered, and realizing just how much she’d come to rely both on their ability and their friendship.
Cir and Eru sat together at one corner of the large table where they’d all gathered in the Lodge, and their expressions were so typical it almost made her laugh; Cir serious, and protective, his arm around Eru, who aimed her open, concerned expression in Stadi’s way.
Kes Aren and Abol Tay, who’d arrived with Li-Paz and Zandra Taitt, leaned forward, listening as she spoke of vague senses and odd feelings, and to their other side, Daggin, T’Prena, and Setok seemed to aim three identical gazes their way: logical curiosity, and—in T’Prena’s case, at least—a rather detached measure of what could pass for disbelief at most of what she was saying.
“I’m so sorry,” Gara said, striding in with Zahir beside her just as Stadi finished what was, even to her own ears, a rather slim assessment of a situation that really did come down to little more than just “something feels wrong.”
“Sounds like a darkling,” Cir said, once she’d finished speaking. His deep voice broke the silence that feel as she finished.
“I do not believe I am familiar with that reference,” T’Prena said.
“It’s an Ocampa story,” Kes said. “A spirit of ill fortune.”
Stadi remembered the words of Dimaro, about the aliens with the reputation for conjuring ill luck.
“That seems unlikely,” T’Prena said, the Vulcan woman speaking with her usual splash of understatement.
“I didn’t mean literally,” Cir said, with a small smile. “But those stories, about our people, the comra, the spirits—they speak to our heritage and gifts and it sounds similar.”
“He’s right,” Eru said. “What our people called darklings is most likely latent, untrained telepathic ability.”
“The stories of darklings do align with some of what we’ve since learned about our own empathic ability to sense the emotional states of others,” Daggin said. “Among our own people, we simply ascribed it to a spirit, rather than someone else’s anxiety or worry or ill intent.”
“Your sense of anticipation could mean this is prescient,” Kes said, nodding.
“But I’m a Betazoid. I’ve never had—” Stadi started to say, then paused as she realized she was wrong. “I was about to say I’ve never had premonitions before, but I have. When those other versions of you two, the ones displaced from the future, were on Voyager.” She looked at Abol and Kes.
“How do you think the Chorus might help?” Setok said, surprising Stadi by speaking up. He’d been reticent for a while now about his abilities, ever since they’d been so abused by the death-defying Teiran, but her sense of T’Prena and Daggin’s son had more determination to it than anything else.
“Well,” Stadi said. “First I was wondering if any of the rest of you were having any issues, but it sounds like you’re not.”
“I haven’t,” Cir said. “But I don’t tend to.” As always, he was as comfortable with his relative lack of telepathic ability as he was honest about it. He glanced at Eru. “Eru?”
She bit her bottom lip. “Now that you ask,” she said. “I thought I might have been simply imagining it, or that it was just a function of being around so many new minds—and new species, which can often be a bit jarring—but…” She took a moment, as though she was considering her words with real care. “I’ve wanted to leave.”
“Leave?” Stadi said.
“To get back to Voyager,” Eru said. “I thought I was just feeling an odd nostalgia or desire to be comfortable in our quarters, but…” She looked at Cir. “Now that I’m saying it out loud, I couldn’t say it wasn’t more.”
Stadi felt Abol’s desire to speak a moment before he did so, adding in his own confession a moment later. “I’ve found myself elsewhere quite a bit,” he said, and the group shifted to look at him, knowing exactly what he meant by elsewhere.
Except for Zahir, who titled his head at Gara. She gave him a little nod that said she understood, and would explain later, and he seemed content with that.
“You said something like that yesterday,” Li-Paz said, glancing at Kes. “That you liked the view, but preferred the sight of stars at warp.”
“You’re right,” Kes said, nodding slowly. “I don’t think I’d truly noticed, but you’re right.”
Stadi watched Gara, whose eyes widened somewhat, but her gaze met Stadi’s with a similar acknowledgment.
“The Mikhal are a people of travellers,” Eru said. “I wonder if their drive to move on is affecting us, on a metaconscious level.”
“You mean we’re influencing you?” Zahir said, and to his credit, he sounded upset by it. “I promise, we’d never intentionally—”
“No, no, Zahir,” Stadi said, holding up one hand. “When Eru says ‘metaconscious’ she means something like unconscious, but telepathically. Telepaths aren’t always aware of the influence other minds are having on them, and—as she pointed out—there are multiple new species on this planet.” She considered it. “It’s possible one or more of them are having his effect on us, unintentionally.”
“Perhaps working together, you might all find the root of this influence,” T’Prena said.
“We can certainly try,” Daggin said to his mate, then turned to face the other Ocampa, including his son. “If you’re all willing?”
They agreed, and the relief Stadi felt must have been obvious to them—especially Gara, who aimed a small smile her way—and then, a moment later, Stadi felt them gather together telepathically, each one echoing each other. Stadi listened, passively taking part, but not intruding as each individual presence in front of her grew into a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.
Only when the Chorus was fully formed did Stadi allow herself to be drawn into it, her thoughts joining those of her students alongside T’Prena. How much stronger they were these days, and how much more guided and focused they could be.
And, hovering at the core of their power, the minds of Eru, Abol, Kes, Cir, Daggin, Gara, and Setok circling around herself and T’Prena, Stadi felt it again: the darkling.
The Chorus reached out and grasped it as though it were a thing alive, and it didn’t vanish. Stadi could feel her lips turn up in a smile, even as the odd, anticipatory sense of worry and trouble settled.
Time to see just who was walking over her grave.
*
Fires erupted in a series. First one, then another, then a third, each one with a massive detonation that shook the ground they stood on before spreading to the next…
Where are we? Stadi couldn’t see beyond the fires, and couldn’t even truly see what burned, let alone where she stood.
Here, Abol’s thoughts took the lead, as they so often did when the Chorus needed to send itself elsewhere. The dim blackness that surrounded the flames brightened bit by bit as the next explosion, and then another, tore up more of the ground around them.
Ships. The explosions were ships. Larger than shuttles, but not much…
Mikhal Traveler ships, mostly.
The landing pads, Stadi thought.
The explosions picked up in pace and intensity, whole frames lifted and tossed as though they were made of tissue instead of tritanium alloys. And it wasn’t just the ships, Stadi realized with horror, as her gaze slid to the horizon and she saw multiple buildings aflame, including the hospitality towers were already ablaze.
The main Lodge erupted in a fireball followed by a thunderclap, and a thin line of smaller explosions ripped apart the street and pathways, moving between the Lodge and the next building, which exploded, and then the next and the next…
It’s some sort of cascade, Setok’s thoughts broke through. It’s like it’s following the power feeds between the buildings.
Is this is why we want to leave? Kes now. If this is coming…
The darkling twisted in their grasp.
They sense us. Eru’s thought came with alarm. They know we’ve felt them. Know we’ve seen this.
A pulse of something dark and twisted lashed out from the darkling, and Stadi braced her mind for the impact, shoring up her mental defences in the ways she’d been taught since her telepathy had manifested as a young woman and—
Nothing happened. The explosions vanished, the view vanished, and now they were all simply thoughts and minds in a soft, echoing group once again.
Setok? T’Prena’s voice was cool and calm, of course, but edged with curiosity.
I have it, Setok’s reply wasn’t quite as cool or calm, but a measured attempt to be. It won’t hurt any of you.
Stadi realized that somehow, even within the Chorus, Setok had managed to construct a kind of cage around the darkling, cutting off whatever it was they’d been seeing in the process, but keeping it away from their minds.
It’s trying to leave, Setok reported.
Let it go, Stadi thought.
The darkling vanished, and they were once again just a group of people sitting around a table.
Zandra Taitt leaned forward. “What’s wrong?” she said. “You all look worried all of a sudden.”
“Zahir,” Stadi said. “What can you tell us about the power systems of this outpost?”