“I guess it comes from my time tending the symbiont pools on Trill. Mind and memories…that’s all they are.” His gaze went unfocused. “And it’s hard to imagine how much loss they’ve known.”
Tuvok nodded. “It is a universal.”
Keru smiled. “But so is life, my friend. So is life.”
CHAPTER F
IVE
DROPLET, STARDATE 58525.3
Eviku nd’Ashelef sat atop the aquashuttle Holiday, having a picnic with his crewmates while watching the fish fly by.
Many of Droplet’s chordates could pop out of the water, extend their long, cartilage-stiffened fins, and glide for great distances. Many had fins that could actually flap for propulsion. Eviku had catalogued a number of them today while the Holidaycruised a few dozen klicks behind Hurricane Spot (as the perpetual superhurricane had been nicknamed), studying the storm and its effects on the ocean in its wake. The surface cooling caused by the dense cloud cover and heavy rain caused a vertical displacement of the thermocline, promoting blooms of phytoplankton that in turn promoted a feeding frenzy. Some flying piscoids had taken to the air to avoid predators in the water, while others, predatory themselves, had come in from farther afield to pursue them or to dive after piscoids in the water. Earlier today, the crew had observed a fascinating event in which a large school of piscoids had been caught in a pincer between two predatory species: below, cuttlefish-like creatures with tentacles keratin-stiffened into multiple scissorlike blades, and above, a flock of long-tentacled piscoids with dragonfly wings. Eviku had observed this pattern before on other worlds, but this had a twist. The piscoids in the targeted school could themselves take to the air for brief moments, using their fins purely for passive lift and flapping their wide tails at blurring speed to propel themselves through the air. The small buzzfish (as Commander Vale had dubbed them) had swarmed in a bait ball that was half in and half out of the water, a writhing, glittering mass that functioned as a single entity, flowing and morphing with desperate speed like a Changeling under a phaser barrage.
Once, Eviku would have found that a thing of simple beauty, but now there was more ambivalence to the sight. The beleaguered buzzfish reminded him of Starfleet, mounting desperate action to fight off the Borg but having to sacrifice so many in hopes that some percentage of the whole could survive. He took comfort in the fact that the buzzfish shoal lived on after the feeding frenzy…but at what cost! He could not help but be reminded of Germu and how much he missed her. How he had never had the chance to say good-bye. Aili’s close call yesterday had left him shaken, afraid of having to bear another loss.
Now that the drama had subsided, he was content to try to put those thoughts aside. He and the others sat atop the Holiday’s roof—which had been adapted to function as a deck of sorts—having a leisurely picnic lunch while watching the distant fireworks of a lightning storm on the periphery of the superhurricane. It was nice to be able to relax on such an agreeable planet. Not only was Droplet nice and wet, and warmer than most of Arken II, but it had a good strong magnetic field as well. Normally he had to wear his anlec’ven, an inverted-U headdress made of black magnetic material, to prevent the disorientation Arkenites experienced when removed from the powerful field they’d evolved in. Down here, he could go without the headdress, something he could normally do only in his quarters with their built-in field generator. He felt a certain affinity for the animal forms of this world, which also had evolved with an innate magnetic perception, according to the scans and examinations of numerous sampled species. It was a valuable aid to navigation on a world without landmarks.
It was also agreeable to share a recreational moment with his crewmates again. He’d spent too much time in those quarters in the past few months, alone with his private grief. He took some comfort in the distraction of an enjoyably banal conversation with Commanders Vale and Pazlar about last week’s parrises squares finals, a recording of which had come in the last data burst from Starfleet.
But Vale trailed off in the middle of excoriating his opinion on the Izarian team’s defensive strategy, staring off toward a nearby thunderhead, one of the storms on the outer edge of Spot. “What is it?” he asked, turning to follow her gaze. But he saw nothing; human eyesight was considerably better than his.
“I’m not sure.” She deliberately moved her eyes back and forth, up and down. “Not just a floater in my eye. Anybody have a pair of binoculars?” she called down the hatch in a casual yet authoritative tone. She reached down, and seconds later binoculars magically appeared in her hand. She stood and searched the sky with them. “There it is. Hey, it is a floater, just not in my eye. An inflated, translucent sack, like a jellyfish, but with some more substantial components hanging from the bottom. Reminds me of an old-style weather balloon.”
“May I see, Commander?” Eviku requested.
Vale handed him the binoculars. “Better look fast before it drifts inside that thundercloud. There.” She tried to point it out to him; with his limited vision, it took a few moments to focus on it even with help from the binoculars’ readouts.
“I see, it’s—aah!” He winced as a bolt of lightning went off right in his line of sight.
“What?”
Eviku blinked, temporarily blinded. “That…scope needs better filters. I may need to see the doctor.” The thunder arrived in the middle of his sentence. “It appears the creature’s at the mercy of the wind. Getting sucked right into a low-pressure region.” He was starting to see the shapes of the two women, which was encouraging.