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The Fire
Part 1
Kathryn sat in her ready room, just staring into space, too exhausted even to think. Elizabeth was sitting on the floor by her feet, waving a ration bar around. Usually Kathryn tried to convince her to eat it, but today she simply didn’t have the energy.
The last month had been hell. The Krenim Imperium seemed determined to destroy them, and Voyager was suffering more damage every day. The hardest blow had come three days ago, when everything on Deck 5, including sickbay, had exploded. Fortunately, no one had been killed so far, but with sickbay gone and the doctor working with only minimal equipment, it seemed only a matter of time.
The door chimed, and Kathryn said, "Come in," without looking up.
"You look like you’re a million light-years away," Chakotay said.
"Oh, I’m just a little tired. Any news?"
"Well, you know the doctor’s been worried about Kes’ baby. He wants to induce labor."
"Is two weeks really that big of a deal?"
"Apparently it is for an Ocampan. He said that if he could work in sickbay, he would do it right away, but he’s worried about trying to do it without proper equipment."
"Well, we’ll have to go with his judgement, as long as Kes agrees."
"Other than that, there’s really not much new. Neelix is complaining about the lack of fresh supplies, as usual, and Tuvok wants to…" He trailed off, a shocked look on his face.
"What’s the matter?" Kathryn asked, puzzled.
He pointed at Elizabeth. Kathryn looked, and saw that the ration bar was floating in midair in front of her. The little girl smiled and clapped her hands. Kathryn reached down and plucked it out of the air. "No," she said sternly, "that’s to eat, not to play with."
*It tastes yucky,* Elizabeth answered.
"How…how did she do that?" Chakotay asked. He still had an almost comically bewildered look on his face.
"That’s one of the things she can do that humans can’t. Now, what did Tuvok want?" Kathryn tried to change the subject as quickly as possible. These strange abilities Elizabeth had frightened her sometimes, and she hadn’t wanted anyone else to know about them.
"Wait a minute. What else can she do?" Chakotay did not want to let the matter rest.
"Well, she’s telepathic. That’s about it." She didn’t mention the way Elizabeth’s knees healed almost instantaneously when she scraped them, or the way a room would sometimes get hot when Elizabeth got angry about something.
"You’re lying," Chakotay responded.
"Why do you say that?"
"After four years, don’t you think I can tell when you’re lying?"
Just then the red alert klaxon went off. Kathryn wasn’t sure whether to be glad the conversation was ending or mad that the Krenim were attacking again. She picked Elizabeth up and put her in her playpen. *Stay here until I get back,* she told her. She and Chakotay walked onto the bridge.
Part 2
Elizabeth was alone. She didn’t like being alone, and she was only rarely alone when she was awake. Even worse, all her toys were lying on her blanket on the other side of the room, and she was trapped in the playpen. She had never tried to get out of the playpen before, but it looked like now was the time. Elizabeth looked at the playpen closely. It didn’t have a floor, just high sides. It was round, made of a lot of metal stakes with two metal bands holding it together. There wasn’t any way to change its shape. Elizabeth reached out with her mind and tried to lift it, but she couldn’t. She’d never lifted anything so big or so heavy.
She thought hard for a minute. Maybe she could lift her toys over here. But she’d never carried anything for such a long distance, and they’d break if she dropped them. She tried sliding them along the floor, but it was very hard work because the floor resisted her.
Then a new thought came to her mind. She could lift herself. She concentrated hard and felt herself rising into the air. In a moment she could see over the top of the playpen. She reached out and grabbed the top bar and stepped over, being careful to hold herself up, and then lowered herself slowly to the ground. She grinned. She had done it! She was sitting outside the playpen!
Suddenly she noticed that the room was very hot. She concentrated hard, and the room cooled. Usually it didn’t get hot when she lifted something, but she’d never lifted herself before, and she was heavier than anything else she’d ever lifted. She’d have to work on that.
She pushed herself onto her hands and knees, crawled across the room, and began to play her toy piano. Of all the toys she had been given at her birthday, it was her favorite. She could produce several recognizable tunes on it, but it didn’t have enough keys for her to play the songs she really wanted to.
Suddenly Elizabeth stopped playing. She’d suddenly become conscious that something bad was happening. She knew that the ship was "being attacked," as her mother said, but all that meant to her was that the ship shook and her mother had to rush to the bridge. This was the first time she’d ever been alone while Voyager was being attacked.
Elizabeth remembered being on the bridge during several attacks. Each time there had been a picture of a brown, kind of egg-shaped object over the picture of stars that was usually there. A long time ago, before the party that Mommy said was her birthday, there had sometimes been pictures of balls, usually blue and green and white but sometimes other colors, but now it was always the brown egg thing, and they were always being attacked.
Elizabeth wondered if maybe she could break the egg thing. She’d broken things before, always on accident, and Mommy was always upset, but she didn’t think Mommy would be upset if she broke the egg thing. Mommy didn’t like being attacked, and the egg thing was always there when they were attacked, so if she broke the egg thing they wouldn’t be attacked any more.
Elizabeth reached out with her mind to see if she could find the egg thing. Usually she only broke things she could see, but she had a feeling she didn’t need to see it. After a few minutes, she found the egg thing. It was bigger than she thought it was, lots bigger, but it wasn’t heavy at all. She did what she usually did when she broke things: she shoved it. It didn’t move very much, though, probably because it was so big. Elizabeth didn’t think she’d be able to move it very much.
Then she had another idea. Maybe she could make the egg thing hot. She didn’t know if she could make it hot somewhere else, but she didn’t like being left behind when they were being attacked, and she was determined to stop it.
Although Elizabeth was very intelligent and advanced for her age, she still operated mostly on instinct. Right now her instinct was telling her that making a certain part of the egg hot would break it, so she concentrated her energy on that spot. It worked! She felt Voyager jerk as the egg split into millions of pieces. She also felt a brief cry of terror from dozens of minds. She let out a cry of pain and curled up into a ball.
She didn’t realize how hot the room was getting.
Part 3
The battle was going as they all did. Voyager was slowly crippling the Krenim ship, but sustaining serious damage in the process. Suddenly, without any warning, the Krenim ship exploded in a burst of light.
"Mr. Kim, what happened?" Kathryn asked.
"Looks like their version of a warp core blew. But we didn’t hit them anywhere near there. I would guess it was probably an equipment malfunction."
"Well, it couldn’t have come at a better time. Damage report."
"We didn’t make out too bad this time. Just one hull breach, and…" Harry looked up, his eyes wide. "Captain, your ready room’s on fire."
"What…Elizabeth!" Kathryn gasped. She ran to the door of the ready room, but when it opened, a wall of fire faced her.
Chakotay had followed her, and when he saw that she was going to go in anyway, he grabbed her shoulders. "Kathryn, you can’t go in there. You’ll be killed!"
"I have to! Elizabeth’s in there!" she almost screamed, struggling as hard as she could.
"You’d never make it!" Now he could hear Elizabeth’s panicked screaming. Suddenly the captain jerked loose and ran straight into the fire. Chakotay gave out a groan of frustration and banged the wall. It was hot.
Kathryn pushed through the wall of fire at the door. Amazingly, she didn’t feel anything. She was surrounded by fire on all sides now, but she could hear Elizabeth screaming. She pushed towards the sound, but she tripped on some blackened object on the floor.
Now she felt pain. She felt as if she were on fire, which she essentially was. She crawled forward on her hands and knees. She broke through another wall of fire, and at last she could see Elizabeth. She was glowing. At first Kathryn thought she was on fire, but when she reached her, the little girl wasn’t hot at all. In fact, she felt wonderfully cool.
Kathryn knew she had to get Elizabeth to safety, but her body wouldn’t let her. As blackness descended, she thought she heard Elizabeth’s voice in her head: *I’m sorry, Mommy…*