The Murdered Sun Ch. 18: Holodeck Truth, Child Empress Riva, and Baby Tom Paris
Star Trek: Voyager #6 - The Murdered Sun
By Christie Golden
Copyright 1996
Previous: Janeway’s Science Fight
Next: Final Thoughts
Chapter 18 is the exhale after the explosion. Garai cooperates. Janeway gets stage fright. A child empress walks into the holodeck. And Tom Paris becomes a namesake on Veruna Four in the best possible way.
Captain’s log: what changed
Stardate 43897.1. Garai cooperates now that most of the fleet is disabled. He is intelligent and thoughtful. Janeway has hope.
Destroyer is crippled but life support works. Survivors from damaged ships are aboard. Tractor beam locked on. Brief stop at Veruna Four, then Akeras in forty-seven minutes with Viha Nata and entourage.
Destroying Sun-Eater bought Veruna Four more than a century of habitability instead of twenty-five years.
Janeway almost logs the news about Kaavi and Anahu. It pleased her. It touched Paris, though he claimed something got in his eye. Personal log material: they became lifemates, visited the hatching pit, a male child imprinted within three hours, and they named him Tom Paris.
Formal log praises Paris’s leadership, Kim’s research, and notes Kim declined to present his findings. After discussion with Chakotay, Janeway and Chakotay will present jointly to Nata and Empress Riva. In an unusual fashion.
Janeway’s stomach might be stage fright.
The holodeck negotiation
Janeway, Viha Nata, and Garai wait in the empty holodeck. Yellow grid on black. Nata is painted for formal ceremony, token cloth, blue around wise eyes, yellow and red symbols on her coat. Proud but tense.
Garai stands armored and nearly still. He offered to remove his helmet as goodwill. Janeway asked him to keep it until the empress arrives.
Too much blood and anger for small talk.
Chakotay opens the door with barely suppressed mirth. “I present to you Her Excellency, the empress Riva, ruler of Akeras and the Akerian Empire, queen of the Valley of Suns, mistress of the Tikkari Isles, lady of the Faith and keeper of the Word.”
Viha Nata gasps. Janeway raises an eyebrow.
Large lambent yellow eyes. Fawn fur. Long snout, white teeth. Jeweled braided mane. Metal at her throat. Lace overtunic and shawl. Restless decorated tail.
And youth. Riva stands barely over a meter and a half. A human ten-year-old. The empress is a child.
Riva sees Nata. “You… but you are no monsters!”
Nata finds her voice. “Neither are you.”
Garai activates a throat instrument, removes his helmet, drops to one knee. He tells Riva the Verunans are not mindless monsters. The warriors have known for centuries. They deliberately misled Akeras to keep military power from Blessing. It was wrong. He is sorrier than he can say.
Riva, confused and angry: they were told monsters good only for labor. They have never seen Verunans before.
Garai explains the ceremonial masks. Verunans were not supposed to know they were enslaved by people like themselves.
Chakotay drops the bigger bomb: Akerians and Verunans are the same race.
Nata is offended. “Impossible!”
Chakotay lays out the evidence. Desert Akeras bred lighter cooler fur. Jungle Veruna Four bred mottled fur and duller plant-eating teeth. Same race, different environments.
Nata connects the dots: the colony ship. Was Akeras another colony?
Riva bristles: they are founders, not colonists.
Janeway asks both to listen. They keep history through storytelling. Chakotay knows this. Akerians know the great tales too. Present findings as a tale. Holodeck images can illustrate. Both leaders nod, Nata more reluctantly.
“Computer, begin program Kim Seven.”
Darkness. Riva gasps. Garai moves protectively. Janeway hopes this is right.
Program Kim Seven: the K’shikkaa story
Chakotay’s voice fills the room.
“Long ago, before even your recorded time, the K’shikkaa dwelt on their planet, a world far away from this place.”
A holographic Sentinel appears. Taller than Garai, more reptilian, spiny horns. Common ancestor.
“Their sun would soon die. They sent colony ships to every habitable world they could reach.”
Ships launch from the hologram planet toward a red star. Nata cries “The First Place!” Riva whispers “The Great Palace!” Both are K’shikkaa colony ships.
One ship lands on rich Veruna Four. Stories become myth. They forget origins.
A second ship reaches harsh Akeras. They forget too. Maybe a third went through a wormhole portal to cousins unknown.
“The sun went nova.” Explosion slams into the wormhole entrance. Distorted, expanded, it swallowed part of the galaxy and one innocent planet: Blessing.
Far end collapsed. Planet trapped in a shrinking pocket. Centuries passed. It would have been crushed and ejected as nebula. Normal space restored. Except the Akerians found it.
Early sublight Akerians ventured in, found ruins, called it Blessing. Learned gravity waves and faster-than-light travel. Empire heart.
“But they also discovered the Verunans. Gentle, strong, weapons long forgotten. Blessing made them arrogant. They took the Verunans.”
Garai looks ashamed. Riva looks like she might cry.
Janeway continues. Three hundred years ago the pocket shrank faster. Akerians siphoned Veruna’s sun hydrogen into the concavity. It worked. The concavity stopped shrinking. The cost was deadly.
“It became Sun-Eater,” Nata says, voice breaking. “They deliberately murdered our sun!”
Riva’s eyes flash anger. Janeway stops the fight. “This is the past. It cannot be changed. Only the future can. Listen, learn, forgive.”
Chakotay: past merges with present. Nata leads Verunans who rediscovered history and fought. Riva leads Akeras. Sun-Eater and Blessing are gone. Both peoples remain.
Soul colony ship can reactivate. Akerian tech can help Verunans find a new home. Veruna’s sun still dies eventually, but the planet has a century now. Same race. Never meant to be enemies. Allies. Sisters.
Nata admits letting go of hate is hard. Riva quietly: “It is more difficult to ask for forgiveness.”
Janeway talks Federation. Many worlds, many peoples, histories of fighting, now working together. Chakotay steps closer: they are one crew. These two have the same heritage.
Nata tells the starving man tale. Riva finishes the keeper-of-the-Word version: poorest man shares last yissh fruit, orchard grows, feeds the city.
Surprise and pleasure on similar reptilian faces. Garai nods and smiles, calm finally on his spirit.
Aftermath: Kaavi, Paris, and late-night tea
Back on course to the Alpha Quadrant. Janeway has herbal tea she has not touched. Stars streak past the window.
Chakotay visits late. Neither could sleep. “Quite the encounter.”
Janeway thinks especially for him. He understands them. Almost Maquis-adjacent traditions. Furrier, but same weight of history.
Both peoples seemed willing to cooperate. Janeway points out Voyager had to. Chakotay says not really. They could have walked separate paths. Nata and Riva saw themselves in each other.
Janeway asks if he still blames her for Cardassian peace, for Earth taking Maquis land. He says no. Ancient history. Present and future matter. Friends now. Whatever comes, friends even if enemies.
She promises the same. He warns about caffeine. She says herbal tea. Mother hen. Good night.
Janeway sips rosehip tea. Comforted. She helped build a bridge between peoples who should never have been divided. She can sleep.
Elsewhere, Chakotay races a laughing animal spirit in a landscape that never was.
The twist that lands
Riva being a child reframes the whole Akerian propaganda machine. Garai’s confession about masks and lies hits harder when the person who was deceived is ten years old.
Kim’s research becomes a holodeck myth. Chakotay narrates like he was born for it. And naming a Verunan hatchling Tom Paris is the kind of sincere weirdness that makes early Voyager novels memorable.