Star Trek: Voyager: Children of the Storm

by Kirsten Beyer

  “What’s that?” he asked, not turning back, but slackening his pace a little.

  “Willem was the one who originally concocted this mission, over Kathryn Janeway’s strenuous objections, I might add. But he did it with my full support.”

  No one had ever confirmed this; however, Chakotay had always assumed it to be true. He remained silent, hoping she would come to the point quickly. He wasn’t sure why Eden would bring this up now, and frankly, he wasn’t in the mood to pick at the scars of a wound that were so recently healed.

  “Looking back, Willem was right to fear what the Borg might do, though his obsession with them is certainly easier to understand knowing that he was a member of Species 8472.”

  “You didn’t have to be an alien spy to know that the Borg were a threat,” Chakotay said flatly.

  “The thing is, the more I think about tomorrow, the more I begin to believe that Admiral Janeway was right too.”

  This stopped Chakotay in his tracks. Inhaling sharply, he turned to face Eden. Twilight was gathering around them. He had designed the program so that he would reach the hike’s end at sunset. With Eden along, it appeared he was going to miss that.

  “How so?” he asked as evenly as possible.

  Eden stopped, her ebony skin turning her face to an unreadable mask in the fading light.

  “With or without the Borg, maybe there are some parts of the galaxy that are just too dangerous for us to explore right now.”

  “Kathryn said that?” Chakotay asked, taken aback. It didn’t sound like her.

  “Why else would she have been so dead set against this mission?” Eden wondered aloud. “It had to have been more than sparing her former crew another extended tour of the area. She gave her life in an attempt to prevent it,” Eden finally said, her voice heavy with trepidation.

  Chakotay knew this, though the knowledge had been given him in confidence. The thought suddenly struck him that Eden might somehow blame herself for Kathryn’s fate.

  “Permission to speak—” Chakotay began, but she cut him off before he could finish the request.

  “Don’t ever ask me that again,” she said testily.

  “I was simply—” he tried again.

  “No,” she admonished him. “I appreciate the courtesy, but somehow every time you ask permission to speak, I get the feeling you just want me to prepare myself to hear something unpleasant. You and I are leading this mission for the next three years. I trust that whatever you have to say is worth hearing. I have to, because apart from you and Counselor Cambridge, there’s really no one else for me to confide in. So can we drop a little of the formality going forward?”

  Chakotay was actually relieved to hear this.

  “Of course,” he said, stopping short of calling her by her given name. Taking a deep breath he went on, “I just wanted you to know that though Kathryn went out to investigate that cube ostensibly to assess its potential threat and the necessity for this mission, a pack of ravenous weasels couldn’t have kept her away from it.”

  Eden chuckled in spite of herself. “Really?”

  “You had to know her,” Chakotay said with a nod. “The Borg have driven more than a few of Starfleet’s finest to recklessness. Even after we’d managed to escape them the first time we encountered them in the Delta Quadrant, she couldn’t leave well enough alone. There were times she almost seemed to go out of her way to antagonize them, despite the risks to herself and the crew. She always had her reasons, mind you. She wasn’t totally irrational on the subject. But the minute that cube appeared in the Alpha Quadrant, I could have told you she’d be on her way to see it for herself.”

  “You know this how?” Eden asked sincerely.

  Chakotay paused. He’d never shared this much personal information with Eden, and wasn’t sure he was ready to start. But she was right that they were going to have to begin to build some bridges between them for the next three years to work. Probably for the next three days to work, he admitted. There was no time like the present to begin.

  “For months after Kathryn died I blamed myself for her death. I convinced myself that if I’d been there, she never would have taken such a foolhardy risk. But that was my pain, lying to me. Kathryn always did exactly what she wanted to do, never more nor less. She would never have been satisfied with anyone else’s reports about that cube. She would have known in her gut that somebody had missed something, and short of its destruction, nothing could have assured her that it truly posed no threat. Taking her choices on myself was wrong. It was disrespectful of the woman she was. And what’s more, had she survived the Borg attack and witnessed the devastation firsthand, and Command still decided to launch this fleet, she would have been first in line asking for the right to lead it.”

  He paused to see if his words were sinking in. Eden’s face was inscrutable in the gathering gloom.

  “Kathryn didn’t make decisions from a place of fear. She knew too well that most things worth doing came with their fair share of risks, and she met those dangers with her head held high. She might have questioned Command’s choice to launch this fleet with so many other pressing priorities in terms of rebuilding the Federation after the attack, but once the determination was made, she would never have shrunk from it. Just as the people she led all those years didn’t shrink from it when they were ordered on this mission.”

  Eden stepped toward him into a patch of light cast by the waning sun. Free of the shadows, he saw a new sense of relief on her face.

  “I wish I’d known her better,” she said softly.

  Chakotay nodded.

  “Would she have been able to sleep tonight?” Eden asked.

  “She’d be on her third pot of coffee by now,” Chakotay replied honestly. “But, you never know. We might find our three ships with damaged drive systems, just waiting for us to show up.”

  Eden tried this thought on for size.

  “Possibly,” she agreed. “Was Kathryn also an eternal optimist?”

  “She tried to live in hope,” Chakotay replied. “She had to.” And taught me to do the same, he refrained from sharing.

  Eden looked for a moment as if something else had come to her mind that she wanted to say. Chakotay watched as she intentionally raised her internal shields and pulled away from him.

  “Computer, arch,” she said softly as a doorway appeared out of thin air hanging over the side of the trail.

  “Thank you, Chakotay,” she said sincerely. “I think I will try and get a little sleep now. But it will be less troubled than it might have been,” she added.

  “Good night, Captain,” he replied.

  Once she had gone, he continued to the top of the last hill, wondering as he walked less about what she had shared with him, and more about what she was clearly still hiding.

  “Daddy, read!” Miral shouted petulantly.

  “Daddy is still working, my love,” B’Elanna replied firmly. “Harry is going to read you your bedtime story tonight.”

  Harry had actually been looking forward to spending a little time with B’Elanna and Miral once he went off duty, and had enjoyed watching Miral climb all over the furniture with her last burst of energy, clearly fighting sleep for all she was worth.

  “Which story do you want?” B’Elanna asked in a tone that would brook no refusal.

  Miral huffed a little, eyeing Harry like the enemy before saying softly, “Timmy Targ.”

  “Timmy and the Targ it is,” B’Elanna agreed readily, selecting an aged and tattered book from a small box of Miral’s toys. “Now let’s get you tucked in.”

  Miral fell in line behind her mother and actually accepted being put to bed rather gracefully. Once she was under her covers and had had three good-night kisses from her mother, Harry set himself opposite her and gingerly opened the book. It was a story he’d never seen before, and the copy was so ragged he worried it would fall to pieces in his hands.

  “He’s doing it wrong!” Miral called to her mother, who had almost made
it out of the room before this outburst. Harry, who had yet to read a word, only looked up at B’Elanna with chagrin.

  B’Elanna turned back and obviously saw the problem. “You have to sit next to her, Harry, so she can turn the pages,” she advised him seriously.

  “Oh,” Harry said quickly, moving to settle himself beside the little girl. “Is this better?”

  “Read,” Miral ordered with a yawn.

  B’Elanna was clearly stifling a giggle as she left the room and Harry dutifully did as ordered. He was only three pages into Timmy’s adventures when Miral yawned again with what looked like her entire face, turned away from him, and closed her eyes. Harry remained beside her for a few more minutes, basking in the sight of innocent slumber, before quietly rising and returning to the living room, where B’Elanna sat studying a stack of padds.

  “Did she make it through Timmy saving little Tusk?”

  “No,” Harry replied, suddenly wondering what danger was going to befall poor Tusk. “Timmy was just taking Tusk for a walk when she fell asleep.”

  “Figures,” B’Elanna said with a smile. “She was totally wiped out.”

  Harry allowed the last hour to replay in his mind, trying to match B’Elanna’s description with the child who had been scaling the walls fifteen minutes earlier.

  “She doesn’t get that testy unless she’s really tired,” B’Elanna assured his dubious gaze.

  Harry settled himself next to B’Elanna, putting his feet up on the small table that sat before the couch and leafing through the book to quickly learn Timmy’s fate. As he did so he said, “Can I replicate another copy of this book for you? I think this one is pretty much done for.”

  B’Elanna shook her head, taking the book from him. “Thanks, but no.” She spent a few moments gently turning pages, then said, “You won’t find it in our databases anyway. It’s one of a kind.”

  “An antique?” Harry asked.

  “Not quite yet.” B’Elanna smiled. “My father wrote it for me when I was about Miral’s age. There weren’t a lot of Klingon books for children, and none that featured a human character with a Klingon pet. So he created this. I think he was hoping it would help me understand that I wasn’t so unusual.”

  “Did it?”

  “I don’t remember,” B’Elanna replied, her eyes misting up a bit. “I’d actually forgotten all about it until we got back to Earth. My dad really wanted me to get in touch with him, and he sent a package for me to Owen and Julia’s with a letter. This was part of it.”

  “Wow,” was all Harry could think to say. He knew B’Elanna’s relationship with both of her parents had been difficult. He took a moment to realize how lucky he’d been to have his own adoring mother and father.

  “Miral loves it,” B’Elanna said wistfully.

  “Does she know where it came from?”

  “Not yet,” B’Elanna replied. “I think she’s a little young to hear about my tortured family history.”

  “She really is a beautiful little girl, B’Elanna.”

  B’Elanna smiled more openly now. “Thanks.”

  “So what’s it like being fleet chief?” Harry asked to direct the conversation to more neutral territory.

  “Fantastic,” B’Elanna replied, setting her own work aside and taking a long sip of raktajino. After a moment, she added, “For the most part.”

  “For the most part?”

  “It’s going to be the hardest job I’ve ever done,” B’Elanna said, “except for one, of course.”

  “It should be harder than running Voyager’s engine room,” Harry said. “But you’ll have access to a lot more resources than you used to.”

  “I wasn’t actually talking about Voyager,” B’Elanna chided him gently. Seeing Harry’s blank face, she added, “I was talking about being a mother.”

  “Oh, right,” Harry said, his face reddening a bit.

  “It’s okay, Harry,” B’Elanna said lightly. “You can’t really understand it until you do it. Someday it’ll be your turn.”

  “You think?”

  “I know,” B’Elanna assured him. “You have ‘potential great father’ written all over you.”

  “And that’s something that’s attractive to a woman?” Harry teased.

  “To the right woman, yes.”

  Harry wondered silently if she was talking about Nancy Conlon. He hadn’t yet had a chance to ask her out, but he’d noticed B’Elanna’s ham-handed attempts to bring the two of them together. He’d already decided that he and Nancy should figure out on their own if there was really anything there before doing too many “couples” things with B’Elanna and Tom. Much as it sucked to break up with one person, it was a lot harder when too many others felt they had a stake in the game.

  “Tell me something,” B’Elanna interrupted his thoughts.

  “Shoot,” he replied evenly, hoping it wasn’t a question about Conlon.

  “What are we really doing out here?”

  Harry paused, unsure of what she was asking. “You mean the fleet?”

  B’Elanna nodded solemnly.

  “You heard the admiral,” Harry began, then remembered that B’Elanna hadn’t actually been aboard when the fleet launched. “Oh, no, you didn’t.”

  “Let me guess,” B’Elanna said. “We’re exploring the unknown and hoping to make lots of new friends?”

  “Sort of,” Harry replied. “We’re also trying to make sure that the Borg are really gone.”

  “Eden granted me access to the files we have on the Caeliar. Seems to me they were pretty clear about their intentions.”

  “Yes,” Harry agreed, “but it’s not the kind of thing Starfleet is going to take their word for. The Borg killed billions of people in their last attack. We can’t risk another, now or ever.”

  “But it seems like a lot of resources to risk on an intelligence gathering mission,” B’Elanna argued. “The devastation in the Alpha Quadrant and Starfleet’s losses were massive. You’d think we might be more useful closer to home, helping with the rebuilding efforts.”

  “We’re not the last nine ships the Federation has, B’Elanna.”

  “Nine,” B’Elanna said softly.

  “We’re going to find the other three,” Harry said assuredly.

  B’Elanna stared ahead, lost in thought.

  “What are you worried about?” Harry finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” B’Elanna replied. “I just think there’s more to it than either of us knows right now.”

  “Why?”

  B’Elanna shook her head, but did not meet Harry’s eyes.

  “I can’t say.”

  Something in her tone made Harry wonder if she really couldn’t or wouldn’t.

  Lieutenant Devi Patel, Voyager’s chief science officer and resident xenobiologist, had never been inside Counselor Hugh Cambridge’s quarters. She’d never actually had cause to seek out his services, and looking about her now, she wondered if she would ever want to. Though she didn’t think of herself as overly fastidious, the current state of the counselor’s quarters made her wonder how anyone could possibly think, let alone help people, in the middle of such a mess.

  Padds, bits of stone and parchment, odd relics and statues, large astrological maps, and what looked like scraps of ancient texts were strewn everywhere. She didn’t bother to try and pick her way across the room when she entered. Instead, she stood placidly in the doorway waiting for the counselor, who was currently on his hands and knees poring over some sort of diagram and making careless notes with a heavy black chalk of some kind, to address her.

  After a few moments he looked up and seemed almost surprised to see her there. His eyes glowed with feverish intensity, and he looked like he hadn’t changed his uniform or shaved in days.

  “Ah, Lieutenant,” he greeted her brightly. “Come in, come in.” He rose and crossed to her, stepping over the detritus in his way.

  “You wished to see me?” Patel asked, remaining firmly where she was.
<
br />   “I did,” Cambridge replied, nodding several times. “You are our xenobiological specialist, yes?”

  “I am.” Patel didn’t know what unnerved her more, the utter disarray of the room or the almost manic frenzy of the man whose job it was to keep the rest of the crew on an even keel.

  “Excellent,” Cambridge said, clearly oblivious to her reticence. “And you did your thesis on the most ancient known humanoid species.”

  “The Progenitors, yes,” Patel said, nodding warily. That thesis was over a decade old, and she couldn’t begin to imagine his interest in it now.

  “Why did you conclude that they are not the common ancestor they stated themselves to be?” he asked.

  “You read my thesis?” Patel asked, shocked.

  “In less than ten minutes,” Cambridge replied. “Probably not your best writing, but you were young,” he added. “As it is, however, you stand among only a handful of other scientists in your conviction that many of our galaxy’s humanoid species do not, in fact, share this mutual ancestor.”

  Patel tried and failed to hide her shock. The paper she had written was hundreds of pages in length, and she doubted seriously it could be fully digested by anyone in less than a few hours. Searching her memory, she finally replied, “As I said, deeper analysis of the various strands of DNA encoded into their message don’t sustain that argument. There are obvious similarities, but there are also vast differences which, to my mind, cannot be accounted for by simple evolutionary or environmental factors. To me this suggests that no single species could possibly have been the predecessor of all humanoids.”

  Cambridge stared so hard at Patel that she almost wanted to take a few steps back. Only the door behind her prevented her from doing so.

  “And you still stand by this claim?”

  “May I ask why you need to know, Counselor?” Patel summoned the courage to ask.

  “You may not.”

  His response was so sharp, Patel almost felt she had been slapped across the face.

  “I admit, it’s a charming notion, this idea that a single species gave rise to us all,” Patel said evenly. “But we do not possess a single example of this ancient DNA. Working backward from the DNA of various humanoid species, there are too many missing links to state unequivocally that we all arose from the efforts of a single species. I agree it is possible that some may have, but we will never be able to prove it, given only what the Progenitors left for us in their computer code.”