Star Trek: Voyager: Children of the Storm

by Kirsten Beyer

  “Psilakis!” she grunted as her chest began to heave with exertion and the tops of her thighs started to burn. “Damn it, Lieutenant, what is your status?”

  Again, there was no response. Somewhere in the distance, she swore she heard phaser fire.

  Throughout the first several minutes of Quirinal’s encounter with the Children of the Storm, Engineering Chief Ganley had remained optimistic. His people were keeping their heads, doing their respective jobs with a minimum of chatter. The ship’s systems were responding perfectly, and so far, from his position, there was little he could do to aid the captain’s efforts beyond maintaining the status quo. It gave him some comfort to know that an armed security detail of ten officers had been positioned at the entrance to engineering, on rotating shifts, for days. As engineering was one of the most sensitive areas of the ship, it made sense, given the number of unknowns they were facing, to have extra precautions in place.

  Ganley had begun his own analysis of the alien vessels, however, the moment they had become visible on sensors. Part of this was curiosity, and part of it a desire to find a way to eliminate any threat they might pose without too high a body count on either side.

  The computer told him that the energy field that composed the shell of the aliens’ vessels was electromagnetic but, at the frequencies displayed, should not have been capable of holding the atmosphere within it in the presence of the high gravimetric fields created by the vessel’s motion through space. What was troubling was that the shell obviously did perform this function more than adequately. When he had read the initial reports that concluded that the aliens were traveling through space by the power of thought, he had doubted this premise. It was all good and well in theory, but in practice didn’t really seem possible.

  He was now being forced to rethink those doubts.

  The atmosphere within the spheres obviously maintained the hundreds of life-forms present within them. Clearly those life-forms created the energy shell, but the mechanism by which they did so was unknown. Ganley almost wished there was a way to get a closer look at one of them without venturing out into space. Apart from indicating the existence of hundreds of distinct sentient, noncorporeal beings with high telekinetic powers, the computer was incapable of providing a molecular or submolecular analysis. It seemed that the same energy field that kept them safely contained as they moved through space also effectively shielded them from deep scans. Without knowing more about the actual life-forms, the computer was having a hard time predicting the effects of the numerous hypothetical deterrents Ganley was trying to simulate.

  He had begun to toy with the idea of attempting to transport one or more of the aliens on board, should the situation escalate, when the configuration of the alien vessels had shifted. He had recorded every detail of their merging and the destruction of Planck. Grim as it was, this should have provided more raw data for the computer to chew on, but apart from recognizing the shifts in resonance frequencies, the computer still could not tell him how the Children of the Storm were doing what they did.

  Ganley had been absorbed in a number of new theoretical premises when the captain ordered the bridge to open fire. He noted that the aliens were susceptible to phaser fire, even at relatively low power settings, but the sheer number of them and the alacrity with which they adjusted their courses meant that destroying all of them with phasers alone was going to take longer than Demeter, which was also completely surrounded, probably had. It seemed, however, that any threat they posed to Quirinal could be mitigated.

  He had believed this right up until the moment the captain had notified the crew that they had been boarded.

  The relative silence in engineering had been replaced by an outbreak of concerned conversations coming from all of his people.

  “Everybody stay focused,” he called out, as much to buoy their confidence as anything. Federation ships had survived boarding and near assimilation by the Borg. Surely they could handle a few telekinetic spheres.

  He quickly began reading the internal scans and analyzing the location and trajectory of each of the intruders. The largest sphere was located in the rear shuttlebay, and six others now moved throughout the ship. They didn’t seem to be approaching any particularly sensitive areas, except for …

  “Lieutenant Ganley,” Lieutenant Sanchez’s voice sounded over the comm. “Intruder approaching engineering.”

  “I see that, Sanchez,” Ganley replied softly. “I trust you’ll hold them off.”

  “We’ll do our best, sir. Sanchez out.”

  Ganley reconsidered his options. He wanted to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. A few seconds later, he transferred all essential engineering commands to his station and ordered the eleven crewmen he was currently supervising to leave their posts and arm themselves to stand as reinforcements to Sanchez’s team.

  His people moved swiftly and efficiently into position as Ganley threw every single spare bit of power he had into an emergency field around the warp and slipstream drives, knowing full well that his people were sitting on the closest thing any starship had to a bomb. Should the matter/antimatter core be breached, that would effectively be the end of the story.

  Steadying himself and working as fast as possible, he constructed a simulated suppression beam. He’d already heard the captain report that a level-ten force field couldn’t hold them. If he was going to protect his core, he had only minutes to create something that would.

  “Hold your positions until I say otherwise,” Sanchez advised his team. “Take out the sphere’s escorts, stun setting only, but do not under any circumstances hit that sphere.”

  His team knew better than to question his orders, and settled for brisk acknowledgment.

  Moments later, two officers stepped into view ahead of a small floating sphere. There was something so serene in its motion, it seemed almost impossible that it was approaching with deadly force.

  “Rivin?” Sanchez said softly.

  “I’ve got the one on the left,” Rivin barely whispered.

  And I’ve got the other, Sanchez thought. They fired simultaneously, and the sphere’s escorts fell to the deck.

  The sphere paused briefly, then resumed its forward motion. Sanchez had no idea what it intended to do. There was no way it was getting through the tritanium doors now closed over the entrance to engineering.

  “Sanchez to Psilakis. We’ve got a single sphere approaching engineering. Have you found a way to contain it?”

  “You can’t fire on it. Fall back,” Psilakis ordered briskly.

  Sanchez knew Psilakis was right, but he couldn’t stomach abandoning his post or Ganley and his people. Still, an order was an order.

  “Break off!” Sanchez said. “Move to section twelve.”

  Everyone began to move, double quick, as Sanchez kept his eyes trained on the sphere. He watched as it came to rest just outside the door to engineering and the atmosphere inside it began to churn.

  He had no idea what to make of this development, but every cell in his body told him that it wasn’t good. His team was eighty meters down the hall, and he suddenly wondered if that would be far enough.

  “Ganley, get all of your people away from the main door,” Sanchez ordered, then turned to run.

  He had just reached his team when an explosive force struck him from behind and sent him face forward onto the deck.

  He inhaled sharply on impact and immediately felt his lungs begin to burn.

  Phinn hadn’t started to worry until he’d heard the captain’s announcement that the ship had been boarded. Ever since he’d been a cadet he had used boring tasks like guard duty as an opportunity to force his mind to solve complex problems. Having completed the harmonics algorithms for his matrix, he was busy mapping circuits when the captain’s voice had alerted him to the fact that he really should be paying attention to the task at hand.

  A sharp inhalation from Sadie caused him to turn.

  “What?” he asked.

  Her wide
eyes were glued to her tricorder. She nodded for him to look. A single sphere and two crewmen were approaching two hundred meters from their present position.

  Phinn immediately tightened his grip on his phaser and turned in the direction from which the sphere would approach. After a moment’s consideration, however, he turned back to Sadie.

  “They’re not coming for us,” he whispered, hoping to calm her. Her face had gone white and telltale beads of perspiration trickled down her forehead.

  “You can’t know that!” she hissed back.

  “Between us and them is engineering,” Phinn replied calmly. “If you were an alien trying to take the ship, what would you target, a couple of junior crewmen or the heart of the ship’s power?”

  Phinn noted that after considering his words, her breath was coming in a longer, deeper rhythm.

  “They don’t know we’re junior crewmen,” she offered.

  “Just calm down, Johns,” Phinn suggested as soothingly as possible. “There’s a team of Starfleet’s finest security officers ready to engage them at the doors to engineering right now. They don’t stand a chance.”

  Sadie’s eyes narrowed. “We should move into position to back them up.”

  Phinn knew she was right, though he honestly believed he was of more use to Quirinal alive and continuing to build his matrix than risking a suicidal run toward the aliens. Still, he knew his duty.

  “On three then?” he said.

  Sadie nodded.

  “One,” she said.

  “Two,” Phinn added.

  “Wait,” Sadie said sharply.

  Angling her tricorder for Phinn to see, both noted the security team retreating from the area.

  They exchanged puzzled glances.

  Phinn then returned his eyes to the tricorder, studying the team’s movements. When they had come to rest, he asked, “What’s in section twelve?”

  “Weapons and emergency supply storage,” Sadie replied.

  Phinn hadn’t heard a single shot fired, so it was hard to imagine what other weapons they might need. He was, however, willing to grant the security team the benefit of the doubt. Still, since they were armed only with their phasers, the chances that he and Sadie could do much good had just gone from slim to none.

  What the—

  An earsplitting concussive burst made it impossible for Phinn to finish that thought.

  • • •

  Farkas knew she needed to get to the bridge, but the sound of weapons discharging inside her ship made that a secondary concern.

  She stepped out of the Jefferies tube on deck seventeen, section one, and moved as swiftly as she could toward the sounds of conflict.

  Rounding a corner, she noted that at the end of the hall, a group of security officers were standing with their backs to her. She hurried toward them, but they were so focused, none of them noticed her approach. She had almost reached them when she caught sight of Sanchez running for all he was worth toward them.

  A riotous, violent explosion shook the deck, sending Sanchez down and pulling Farkas’s feet out from under her. The captain landed hard on her back, and for a moment, the pounding and ringing in her ears made her head swim and her stomach churn.

  An acrid smell assaulted her nose as a wave of intense heat washed over her. She pulled herself up off the deck and held her breath until she had gained the supply locker and grabbed an emergency rebreathing mask. She noted that the others were assisting Sanchez into a mask of his own, though he coughed blood and writhed in agony.

  “What was that?” Farkas wheezed through her mask to the nearest officer.

  When he turned to reply, she saw the naked fear on his boyish face.

  “They’ve accessed engineering, sir,” he replied.

  The thought terrified Farkas as she paused to prioritize the dangers she and her crew now faced. If one of the spheres had detonated, and nothing else could account for such an explosion, there would be massive damage to the area directly around engineering and possibly to the decks immediately above and below. The captain forced her mind to focus on the noxious odor that had sent her instinctively reaching for a mask. It was more than burned conduit and melting deck plates. Coolant, she realized … which meant engineering had been breached, but clearly not destroyed. If it had been, all of them would be dead right now. Her exposed flesh felt as if the heat still rolling down the corridor was searing it.

  She grabbed the boyish officer by the arm and said, “Get Sanchez to sickbay and regroup at the nearest designated safety zone. Wait for further orders from Psilakis before you proceed.”

  Farkas then turned back to the locker and saw three pressure suits remaining. She grabbed one and struggled to pull it on, worried that each second she lost now was one her ship could not spare—not if the aliens had reached the heart of her ship.

  Chapter Eleven

  STARDATE 58454.5

  U.S.S. VOYAGER

  The ground beneath Chakotay’s feet had been rising steadily for the last half kilometer. He slowed his steps to gather a few longer, deeper breaths before starting up the steep hill face that marked the center of this trail. His climb would continue once he’d reached its peak, but the rises would once again become more gradual. He quickened his pace, breaking into a light jog as he attacked the hill. Loose dirt shifted beneath his steps, so he began to reach for the sturdier rocks jutting out of the ground. As his breath began to come in quick bursts, he mentally pictured the view that would soon be his reward. From the top of the hill a lush green valley dotted with waterfalls should provide both beauty and peace, as well as a calm place to collect his thoughts before tomorrow’s work would begin.

  Voyager was en route to the last known coordinates of the three missing ships. Nine hours had passed since they had engaged the slipstream drive, and nine more were required before they would reach their destination. Chakotay had decided a few hours on the holodeck would help him clear his mind before he tried to sleep.

  A sharp spasm caught in his side as he considered how much shorter his first trip to the Delta Quadrant would have been if they’d had a slipstream drive. Still, even with all of its difficulties, Chakotay knew now that he wouldn’t have traded a minute of that journey. The memories he kept in his heart of the long days and nights forming some of the most meaningful relationships of his life with his crew and, of course, Kathryn, were tended like the treasures they truly were. On this night, he would have wished more than anything to see his former captain just a few steps ahead of him, racing him to the top where they could share a few moments of quiet reflection and perhaps strategize about the mission he was now facing.

  Kathryn was so real in his thoughts as he took the last long strides, reaching out for a large boulder that signaled the peak, that when he saw two black boots jutting out from the hill’s edge, he almost stopped short. His momentum carried him up, however, and he gained the crest to find Captain Eden standing above him, hands on her hips, staring out at the magnificent landscape below.

  Breathing heavily, Chakotay took a few steps past her to allow his breath to calm before turning to see why she had interrupted his last waking hour this night.

  “You actually find this relaxing?” she asked when their eyes finally met.

  Chakotay dropped his hands to his knees and raised his shoulders to give his diaphragm a little more room to work before replying, “I do.”

  “Seems to me the best part is standing right here,” she said thoughtfully.

  “No,” he decided. “The view’s hardly worth it if you haven’t earned it.”

  Eden nodded, considering this. “To each his own.”

  “Of course.” Chakotay nodded, rising back to his full height. “Was there something you needed, Captain?”

  Eden began to pace around the edge of the peak, her eyes glued firmly to the ground, though Chakotay sensed this was less to keep her footing than to collect her thoughts.

  Finally she said, “I can’t sleep.”

  “It�
��s understandable,” Chakotay replied patiently. “Tomorrow’s a big day.”

  Eden favored him with a quizzical glance. “Actually, I can rarely sleep,” she admitted.

  “Even when you haven’t lost three ships in the Delta Quadrant?”

  “Especially then. My mind just won’t settle. I’ve tried various relaxation techniques, strenuous exercise, even a few medications, but nothing seems to work.”

  Although Eden wouldn’t have been his first choice for company right now, he could easily recognize when a fellow officer needed to think out loud. Eden’s burden was a lonely one, and it wouldn’t cost him much to offer to share it.

  “Walk with me,” he suggested before turning his steps toward a long, narrow path that led to the next short climb.

  “I don’t want to slow you down,” she began to demur.

  “You won’t,” he promised her.

  Eden fell into line behind him, stepping gingerly down the path.

  “What do you think we’re going to find tomorrow?” Chakotay asked, cutting right to the heart of their shared fears.

  “Worst case, debris,” Eden said bluntly.

  “How likely do you believe that to be?”

  “The Children of the Storm stated that we were not to violate their territory again,” Eden said. “And they did manage to destroy thousands of Borg cubes, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that our ships were detected and met the same fate.”

  “If that’s the case,” Chakotay said stoically, “then we’ll accept it and move on.”

  “You say that like it will be easy.”

  “There’s nothing easy about it,” he assured her, his voice hardening a bit. “But it’s all there is when that is the reality you are facing.”

  Eden’s silence suggested she knew this to be all too true.

  “There’s something I think you should know, Chakotay,” Eden said. Chakotay noted that even though this path wasn’t particularly demanding, she was already becoming a little winded.