Chapter 14

B’ELANNA TORRES stared, disbelieving, up into the face of her mother. For a long moment, their gazes locked, and then Miral rolled onto the ground, releasing her daughter.

“Mother,” B’Elanna breathed. “I did it. I really did it. I found you.”

Miral snorted. “I think rather that I found you, little one. Don’t you know that building a fire in the wilderness is a sure way to attract trouble?”

Torres stared. Part of her wanted to cry. She couldn’t believe it. After all she’d undergone, after leaving a husband and an infant behind, all she was getting from her mother was still more criticism.

The other part of her was angry. How dare Miral do this to her?

But Miral had risen and moved over to the campsite. [168] She took a sharp breath and turned eyes glowing with renewed appreciation on her daughter.

“You made a kill, ’Lanna. A good kill. But you should have eaten the meat raw. It is not so cold that you need a fire’s warmth to survive.”

Finally, B’Elanna found her voice. “Well hello, B’Elanna. Glad you’re not dead. Hope you had a good seven years in the Delta Quadrant. Thanks for coming to find me, for leaving your husband and your friends and your career and your three-week-old infant daughter and caking yourself with filthy—”

“Daughter?” Miral had picked up a stake and had been about to take a big bite of the roasted meat, but now she stared. “You have ... you have a daughter?”

Torres blinked hard. She would not let her mother see this weakness. “I do. I got married, and I gave birth to a daughter nine weeks ago. I left her when she was three weeks old to come find you. I’ve been away from her for two thirds of her life because of you. What was this all about, Mother? Why did you put me through this? I could have died out here, for no good reason!”

She realized she was shouting now. The pain was almost unbearable. This was not how she had imagined encountering her mother. B’Elanna had envisioned a joyful reunion, with hugs, even. Maybe. But at the very least she expected some gratitude for undertaking the Challenge.

“A grandchild,” Miral said, her voice going strangely husky. “I have a grandchild. A granddaughter. What ... what is her name?”

And then B’Elanna couldn’t help it. She was exhausted, drained physically and mentally. She let the tears come, tried to speak, failed, tried again.

[169] “We named her ... we named her Miral.”

And then her mother was in her arms, squeezing tightly, tightly, and Torres heard the sounds of sobs and wondered which of them was crying.

Candace Roske was a huge fan of the holodeck. She was grateful beyond words that the Voyager crew had clearly been fans as well. She imagined that the holodeck was a necessity, if you were lost out there in the Delta Quadrant. Probably kept more than a few crew members sane.

Just like it was keeping Roske sane. It was very, very boring on Voyager these days.

She’d tried out several of the already-programmed scenarios. Many were obviously designed simply to give the participant a good workout. Others were very restful—she particularly liked the Polynesian resort and the moonlight sail across Lake George. The governess one she abandoned after a few tries, and she’d really enjoyed visiting the oddly sunny Irish town of Fair Haven, although she thought the pub owner seemed a bit mopey.

But by far her favorite scenario was “The Adventures of Captain Proton.” As someone with a great deal of familiarity with designing holodeck programs herself, Candace found it easy to adjust Constance Goodheart’s program and insert herself as the character. Instead of being scantily clad and screaming all the time, “Constance,” as played by Candace, was as smart, cool, and fun as Proton himself.

She had gotten the message to report in and was a bit annoyed by it, but hey, Watson was in charge. She [170] wanted to finish up the firefight, though, and with an hour to report in, she thought she’d make it in time.

Candace ducked as laser blasts whizzed past her in all their black-and-white glory. She ducked behind a rock and returned fire. The flying saucer settled down, the small dome on its top glowing, and a ramp extended.

Candace couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. The aliens were hilarious. They had large eyes at the end of waving stalks, and these six cute little arms and legs—oh, this was a good one, all right. She wanted to pick them up and cuddle them.

That was, until they started firing. The rock beside her vaporized. Candace—Constance—dove for cover, rolling as she hit the powdery soil, firing as she went.

“Constance!” a voice cried, and she looked up to see the Captain himself waving frantically at her. “Over here!”

In this version, Captain Proton was a good-looking blond man with piercing blue eyes. She’d gotten to know that face ... and that body ... pretty well, as she’d programmed a slow-growing but sweet romance between the good Captain and his noble assistant.

He’d managed to erect some kind of shield that seemed to be deflecting the alien fire. Candace took a couple of deep breaths, readied herself, and sprinted the short distance. She dove for cover, and Captain Proton’s arms. As they landed hard on the soil, she thought he looked surprised.

They lay, heart to heart, eyes locked, breathing heavily from exertion. She lowered her head and kissed him. Normally, he liked that, but this time he seemed shocked and struggled away.

[171] Candace brushed at her long red hair, which had escaped from its braid and was now falling into her face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well,” said Captain Proton, reaching casually for her weapon and inspecting it, “don’t take it personally, but I don’t think my wife would approve. Sorry, Constance. Computer, disengage safety protocol.”

And before Candace could even form the question, Captain Proton lifted her laser weapon, now set on “Render Unconscious,” and fired point blank.

Tom Paris looked down at the limp form of the admittedly attractive “Constance Goodheart.” He thought of the pressure of her lips on his and shook his head wryly.

“No,” he said aloud as he tied up the unfortunate guard, making sure the knots were sufficiently tight to keep her bound but not painful and removing her comm badge, “B’Elanna would definitely not approve.”

“I do not approve,” said Miral firmly. She was feasting on her daughter’s kill, licking her fingers. B’Elanna smothered a smile.

“I didn’t think you would.”

“Was that the reason you chose the human?”

“No,” B’Elanna replied. She wasn’t angry. Her mother’s fierce, practically rib-crushing embrace had bled most of the anger from her. “I chose him because I fell in love with him. He is intelligent, and brave, and attractive, and funny.”

“Bah,” snorted Miral, opening her mouth and exposing sharp teeth as she took another bite. “Humor is too prized among humans. Better to be courageous and have honor.”

[172] “He does.” B’Elanna wasn’t arguing, she was simply stating a fact. Her coolness did not go unnoticed by Miral, who paused in her chewing.

“I thought you unchanged, ’Lanna,” she said. “A little while ago. But you have proved me wrong. You do not rise to the bait as once you did.”

“Don’t give me too much credit,” B’Elanna replied. “I still get very angry much too easily. And,” she admitted, “sometimes for the wrong reasons.”

“You are young yet,” her mother said. “It has taken me all my life to learn such lessons, and I am not sure I have learned them fully myself.”

B’Elanna hesitated. She had told Miral all about Tom and her namesake. But there was so much more to tell. She had been gone so long, and so much had happened to her.

And of course, there was the Barge of the Dead.

“Mother ... Commander Logt told me you had a vision while I was gone.”

Despite her evident hunger—Miral was thinner and more sinewy than B’Elanna had ever seen her—the older woman stopped eating.

“It was powerful,” she said, softly. “The more so because of how close to death I was.”

“What?” B’Elanna cried. “You were sick? They never told me that.”

Miral chuckled. “Of course not. To tell you of my weakness would steal my honor. I was very sick indeed, my little one. I was halfway between the worlds, at the very least.”

Slowly, in soft, hushed tones, Miral Torres began to speak of her vision. B’Elanna hung on every word, [173] hardly daring to breathe lest she miss something. So much of B’Elanna’s own memory of her vision had faded, as such things did, but there was enough for her to realize that somehow, despite all logic, she and Miral had shared the same vision.

When Miral had finished, B’Elanna spoke. She told of finding the ancient bat’leth, of not being able to separate what was real from what wasn’t, and the support her captain and her husband had given her on this potentially deadly trip to make peace with her mother and herself.

“I was so afraid that you had died, and that this was the only way I could get to say good-bye,” B’Elanna finished, knowing her voice was thick. “And then when I came back and Father told me you’d died on the Challenge, I thought it was true.”

Gently, Miral laid a hand on her daughter’s knee. “If it were true, that I had died while you were gone, I would have gone straight to Sto-Vo-Kor. Your courage in the vision lifted my dishonor—if, indeed, there was any real dishonor to be lifted. Perhaps that, too, was only in my mind.”

She turned and cupped B’Elanna’s face in two hands. “Child ... you are your own person, but I need to know: Are you Klingon?”

B’Elanna opened her mouth to answer, but there were no words. Was she Klingon? Was she human? Was she a harmonious blending of the strengths of two great peoples, or was she a mongrel, a mistake? She thought of how intensely she wanted to “spare” little Miral her Klingon traits—her heritage. It had been Tom’s love of that part of her, too, that had helped her [174] see that she would have been making an enormous mistake.

She had sensed that this Challenge was scouring her, searing her, stripping away all that did not serve her innermost self. But what did that leave?

Who did that leave?

“I—I don’t know yet, Mother. I just don’t know.”

She thought she saw disappointment in Miral’s face, but her mother managed a smile. “There is time yet for you to know. Having a child of your own will force you to look at yourself in ways you cannot imagine. Believe me, I know. Let us rest. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

Now B’Elanna was confused. “But I assumed you wanted me to undertake the Challenge properly—to spend at least six months fending for myself in the wilderness.”

“I did,” Miral replied. “But I did not know you had a mate and a child. A baby, “no less.”

“But my honor—”

“There is great honor in tending to the needs of a child one has brought into the world,” Miral replied. “In fact, there is no greater honor. Why do you think I strove so to bring you to your heritage?”

B’Elanna blinked, startled. “I thought it was because you wanted me to be like you—to love all things Klingon.”

“You thought I did it for myself?”

“Well—yes, I did. Didn’t you?”

Miral considered the question. “I love my bloodline,” she admitted.. “I am so proud to be Klingon. We are a great and noble people, and if our ways are different [175] from those of others, then so be it. But I believed that you needed to understand both sides of your heritage. That was my duty to you. My task, as it were. Had I not done what I could to show you the glory of what you are—not half of you, but all of you—I would have been remiss as a mother. Did I ever insult your father or his people?”

“No, you didn’t. And you could have, easily. Especially when he left us.”

“To do so would be to make you feel bad about being part human. I wanted you to feel proud of your human blood. I wanted you to be proud of your Klingon blood as well. I wanted you,” she said, stroking B’Elanna’s mud-caked hair, “to be proud of yourself. If I failed to ascend to Sto-Vo-Kor it would not have been because I didn’t make you Klingon. It would have been because I didn’t help you find your own pride.”

B’Elanna stared at her mother’s face, so familiar and so strange after all this time. Could she have been that wrong about Miral’s motivation?

And if so, what else had she been wrong about?