SYMBOLS

CHAPTER 4

The High Councilor had his fingers outstretched toward the image of a tall stone tower that was elevated high above the crowded streets. There were four red uniformed sentinels at the top of the structure, keeping watch over the city from above. They were monitoring the city, while Zeron monitored them.

"Guards of my battalion," Zeron said, pointing to the four sentries.

He twisted one of the dials and the magnification increased again. The image was then very clear and Janeway looked at the faces of the four guards, who all seemed oblivious to the fact they were being spied upon.

The streets of the Anawin City were crowded and wind-swept, and Janeway noted the citizens of the planet were almost as alike as clones. Zeron pointed out various landmarks and monuments, as he verbally guided her around the city. He gave her a brief outline of the proud history of his people and praised the highly skilled craftsmen who had designed the stone buildings. Then he stopped talking and quietly, reverently, he paid homage to the earliest progenitors who had founded the now vastly overpopulated Anawin City.

Suddenly, he turned his attention to one of the crowded streets. Janeway saw him raise his hands from the panel of dials and buttons and rub his chin in thought.

"I believe we have an incident. This could be interesting for you," Zeron said. He lifted his index finger and pointed at one of the miniature people, a woman with long red hair, who was moving very quickly down a narrow pathway between two buildings.

Moments later, they were engulfed in sound. The Conference Room reverberated with the woman's frantic screams for help and cries of "murder!"

Zeron pressed a button and activated a short, high-pitched siren that began to wail in the Anawin City. He then shouted commands to his seemingly absent, but obviously listening, battalion.

Janeway searched the city streets. Her senses had been heightened by the High Councilor's increased animation. She was pleased to learn Zeron was communicating with a defense force stationed on the planet. She'd been concerned that Chakotay would go to red alert if he encountered a fleet of battle-ready ships in his vicinity.

The High Councilor was certainly formidable in command. His orders were direct and concise, while his responses seemed almost automatic.

Janeway wondered how many times Zeron had played out this scenario before, to the point where he could respond to a crisis situation with such well-rehearsed precision.

Watching both the High Councilor and the scene going on below them, she saw a pack of red uniformed guards descend on the frantic woman from every direction. Zeron's ground troops had rapidly responded to the communication signal he'd transmitted from the station.

Two guards then broke away and ran toward the entrance to a nearby stone edifice. A large crowd was also gathering in the courtyard outside the entrance to the old sandstone building. The sound of their bellows for bloody retribution seemed to be the loudest noise being relayed from the planet's surface.

"The offenders have been caught," one guard shouted into his lapel, over the din of the people.

"Your success will not go unrewarded," Zeron replied. He relaxed his hold on the panel in front and turned to face the captain.

Janeway looked into his eyes. She'd never seen them so alive. At that moment, his whole persona seemed to radiate the light of victory.

Then she heard Neelix gasp.

Neelix hadn't shifted his gaze away from the crowded street. He seemed fascinated by the close up view. His attention was focused on the entrance to the sandstone building, where a guard stood in the doorway with something limply draped across his bright red shoulder.

"What is it, Neelix?" Janeway asked. She couldn't see anything that might account for him catching his breath in such a way.

"It's a child." Neelix's voice was strained.

Zeron increased the magnification so she could see the distant guard more clearly.

Neelix was right. The limp object, slung like a sack of potatoes over the guard's shoulder, was a little girl.

The noise from the planet erupted into a mighty cheer as the crowd caught their first glimpse of the captive. The accused was only a child, but it didn't seem to make any difference to the crowd.

A few civilians separated from the masses. They broke through the guard line and struck out forcefully at the motionless child. But despite the hands that reached out and pounded and jostled the little girl, she stayed in place. Her body was still loosely hung over the guard's shoulder and she didn't slide from that position, until one passer-by took a firm hold on the child's long red tresses and rotated her floppy head, so everyone could see the little girl's partly closed eyelids and semi-comatose expression.

The crowd was unrelenting in its violence and they continued to beat the child's body, until a second assailant, a young woman, was pulled from the same building.

The guard who dragged the young woman's blood-soaked body down the old stone steps appeared as unforgiving as the crowd of onlookers. He walked with his hands clasped so tightly around the assailant's wrists that his knuckles shone white.

Janeway could see the guard's biceps outlined through his red uniform. The weight of the woman's unconscious frame, bouncing over the uneven surface, must have made his arm muscles ache. But he refused to stop and continued walking backward, dragging the body along the dusty, wind swept road.

With every step taken by the guard, fists reached out from the crowd in retribution. The crowd was violent, rowdy and utterly merciless. Collectively, they had already judged the young woman, and independent of her crime or motive, they had deemed her to be guilty. Janeway looked on the scene in horror. Her only solace was in knowing the woman, near to death, would no longer be aware of their inflictions.

Zeron maintained the high level of magnification and the view was uncomfortably close. Janeway took a quick glance at Neelix, with his gaze fixed on the parade of unruly citizens following alongside the two captives. He didn't seem to be experiencing the cavalcade of emotions that were roaring through every nerve in her body.

"I've seen more than enough!" she said and turned her back on the window. Still her individual protest seemed to go unnoticed by the High Councilor, and once her eyes were away from the heartless image she found nothing to distract her from the horrific pictures that still danced in her mind. Forced to relive the scene over and over, she repeatedly recalled the way the young woman's head had bounced and collided with each rise in the land's surface. She stared down at the floor with her arms crossed in front.

Then Zeron turned around. It took only a few seconds for him to register the captain was no longer sharing in the celebration of his guards' efforts, and in response, he flicked off the magnification.

The picture was then similar to the viewscreen image Janeway was more familiar with. She returned her attention to the window and saw the sun reflecting off the Anawin planet and the silver-gray undercarriage of Voyager docked high above them.

"Captain Janeway..." Zeron interrupted her thoughts. "You seem somewhat disturbed by the scene you just witnessed. Do you not realize a great battle was won today? The capture of dissidents can only be seen as a triumph for the Anawin people."

Janeway could feel her heart racing and she shot Zeron a look of anguish. She'd just witnessed a comatose child and an injured young woman being pummeled beyond recognition. Yet Zeron had seemed unaffected by the sight, untouched by the brutality of the capture, and even now there was no grief or remorse, only pride in his glorious conquest.

"High Councilor, in our culture we try to find non-violent solutions to our problems. We cherish life. And we look at children as the hope for our future."

A subtle smile tugged at the corners of Zeron's lips before he reclaimed his stone face.

Janeway thought about her choice of words. She hadn't expected that reaction from him and it worried her. Pondering each sentence, she stopped midway. 'We cherish life.' From the display she had just witnessed, the Anawin race obviously did not. She'd inadvertently let down her guard. If Zeron was looking for a potential weakness in humanity he now had it, and Janeway felt her uneasiness grow, as she tried to block out the mishap of words that still festered in her consciousness.