Star Trek: Voyager: Children of the Storm

by Kirsten Beyer

  It suddenly struck Phinn that she had just saved his life twice in the last few minutes. Starfleet captains were usually shrouded in a certain mystique, but this woman seemed more real and human than he’d ever imagined. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d turned to reply to his offhand greeting a moment earlier. He didn’t know why this simple gesture—half a second to meet his eyes—touched him so. In the middle of an emergency, he doubted most other senior officers, let alone captains, would have taken the time. But because she had, she’d saved both of them from being shot ignobly in the back.

  She’d had his loyalty from the minute he joined her crew, but Phinn decided then and there that he owed her more than that. He’d follow her anywhere.

  Starfleet officers were taught to multitask, but Psilakis couldn’t remember ever trying to focus on so many things simultaneously. He had sealed off the bridge to prevent further attacks from any of his fellow crewmen who had been compromised and had transferred the rest of the bridge crew to detention cells after notifying Doctor Sal that she should activate Emergency Medical Holograms to tend to them should they awaken. Sal sounded as busy as he was but promised to get to it.

  The helm, operations, and tactical were all routed to his console. Of the three, the helm was the least of his troubles. In a conventional space battle there would be enemy fire to contend with, and no autopilot system would be as effective as a living, breathing crewman at evading it. As the Children of the Storm did not possess conventional weapons, the auto program needed only to adjust course in order to target the alien spheres, and in that regard it was performing optimally.

  Psilakis had also successfully created a targeting subroutine that had already destroyed dozens of the alien vessels. Could he have given his full attention to this task, the battle might already have been won. But right now, the greatest danger to his ship by far was the presence of the intruding spheres. He was tracking the movement of seven of them through the ship and thus far had not managed to slow their progress at all. He had observed the destruction of a few taken out by errant phaser fire. Huge sections of decks three, four, and eleven were now destroyed, and the survivors were executing emergency evacuations. Apart from the single sphere that had been headed for engineering after the initial explosion, he was struggling to find a pattern—any rhyme or reason—to the movements of the others. None of them seemed to be headed for particularly sensitive areas, but he doubted their intent was as benign as it currently appeared.

  He was simultaneously taking reports from crew members who had been engaged by fellow personnel. As they were identified, he adjusted the display of their comm signals to indicate that they were, for the moment, considered hostiles. As of now, he counted forty-nine confirmed, in addition to the eight that had been manning the bridge when the battle had begun. Though he wasn’t overly concerned at present with figuring out why these particular officers had been compromised, he had noted that all of them were alpha shift personnel and would have just been coming on duty when the Children of the Storm were first encountered.

  Setting this fact aside for his subconscious to chew on, he continued to attempt to devise a strategy that would rid the ship of the intruding spheres. Nonessential crew had been ordered to congregate in designated emergency areas, as far from the paths of the floating bombs now moving through the ship as possible. Ganley’s beam appeared to be effective, and Psilakis had dispatched security teams to take out the spheres’ escorts and try to contain them with suppression beams. The next major problem was eliminating the source—the single large sphere that still hung in one of the shuttlebays. Though it had not shed any new spheres in the last few minutes, it probably still had the ability to do so. To attempt to destroy it would destroy most of the ship. The blast yield of the smaller vessels was immense, but it was nothing compared to the capacity of the single, much bigger vessel. Part of him wondered why it had not simply detonated already. It seemed the quickest way for the Children to secure their victory.

  He struggled to focus, but balancing his efforts between keeping those who could not safely fight the aliens out of harm’s way and dealing with the continuing threat of the larger sphere was pushing his concentration beyond the breaking point.

  “Lieutenant Narv to Psilakis.”

  “Tell me you’ve come up with something, Narv,” Psilakis replied as he simultaneously slammed his fist down on the console. A massive phaser barrage had just resulted in the destruction of only one sphere outside the ship. It seemed the Children of the Storm were getting better at evading his firing patterns.

  Narv had been sealed in one of deck fourteen’s science labs since the attack had begun and was working out contingencies for destroying the spheres.

  “We have to neutralize the main sphere. It’s just released another two small vessels.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Stanton is taking a security team to the shuttlebay.”

  Psilakis took a moment to study his display.

  “There are two spheres and nine of our people blocking his path,” he replied, displeased.

  “It’s not a suicide run,” Narv assured him. “They’re taking the long way. Once they get there, the objective is to manually seal the interior bay doors. You need to restore the atmospheric field. Once the door is sealed, increase the pressure within the bay to tolerance plus ten percent.”

  “That’ll destroy the shuttlebay and probably take half the deck with it,” Psilakis said, the strain obvious in his tone.

  “Not according to my simulations,” Narv replied. “But it will make the environment incredibly uncomfortable for the sphere.”

  “We’re not trying to piss it off,” Psilakis warned.

  “At the same time, we need to flood the bay with harmonic bursts to destabilize the energy shell.”

  “If that sphere blows—” Psilakis began.

  “If it stays put, five minutes will destabilize it,” Narv agreed, “but that’s not the point. Give the harmonics a couple of minutes to work and then open the shuttlebay doors and drop the force field. If the thing has any sense of self-preservation at all, it will take the escape route we’re offering it.”

  “Damn it.” Psilakis didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t have a ready alternative.

  Stanton’s team was closing on the shuttlebay, avoiding the spheres and their escorts by traveling through a series of Jefferies tubes. Psilakis checked the shuttlebay and noted the emergence of an additional sphere, bringing his count to ten targets apart from the main sphere. Much as he hated Narv’s plan, he could hope against hope that his math was wrong and that the destruction of the main sphere would take out less than ten of the adjacent decks.

  Psilakis noted the presence of one of his crew still in the bay, Ensign Yuka. Her life signs were weak. He transported her to the detention area just as Stanton’s team reached the shuttlebay.

  He entered a new firing solution into the tactical controls as he watched Stanton’s team fan out and begin to struggle with the manual overrides for the interior door. Fifty seconds later, the door was closed.

  Psilakis activated an additional force field outside the bay doors, then restored the atmospheric field, preventing the sphere from escaping into open space until he was good and ready. Hands trembling, he manually increased the pressure in the shuttlebay beyond the tolerance of any organic life-form. The sphere began to shrink, then elongate as it attempted to compensate for the pressure change.

  He then added the harmonic bursts Narv had requested and glued one of his eyes to the sensors displaying the integrity of the sphere’s energy shell.

  He watched the pressure bar climb past 100 percent of tolerance and forced himself to allow the pressure to increase. It had barely reached 111 percent when the energy shell integrity began to destabilize. Taking a deep breath, Psilakis opened the shuttlebay doors and dropped the force field. He watched in satisfaction as the sphere darted immediately through the doors, evacuating the ship and heading into open space.


  For good measure, Psilakis manually targeted the sphere with the ship’s phasers, and seconds later, it exploded.

  Sounds of celebration came over the comm as Narv said, “We’re showing the sphere has been destroyed.”

  “Confirmed.” Psilakis sighed in relief as he slowly restored normal pressure to the bay.

  “If we can trap the others with Ganley’s triaxilating containment modules, that should hold them long enough for us to clear them off the ship.”

  “Good work, Narv,” Psilakis replied. “I’ll send three more teams after the last of the spheres.”

  He was about to contact the captain when the computer alerted him to a new threat.

  A hundred new spheres had been detected, approaching Quirinal’s position. When they arrived, they would undoubtedly join with those he had not yet destroyed in open space and attempt to do to Quirinal what they had already done to Planck. He also noted that Demeter was now several thousand kilometers from its original position, still on course for the debris field. It was possible the new spheres were approaching for Demeter, but Psilakis doubted it. Given the numbers required to destroy Planck, he thought that more than enough currently made up the field surrounding Demeter to destroy it, were that their aim.

  Damn it all, he thought.

  “Bridge to Captain Farkas.”

  “Go ahead, Psilakis,” the captain replied.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news, ma’am.”

  After a pause the captain said, “Give me the bad news first.”

  Farkas hurried to engineering with Phinn at her heels as she listened to Psilakis’s report.

  “We have to get the hell out of here,” she said as soon as he’d finished.

  “What about Demeter?” Psilakis asked.

  “Assuming we survive this, we’ll come back for them,” Farkas replied through gritted teeth. The thought of abandoning Demeter to the whims of the Children of the Storm galled her, but she had to see her own ship to safety first and trust the officers aboard Demeter to do the job for which they’d been trained. She tried not to think about the fact that most of Demeter’s crew were scientists. Their tactical staff could have fit in one of Quirinal’s escape pods. But Farkas knew that to give in to that concern would likely damn them all.

  “We know they can keep up with us at high warp,” Psilakis said, apparently agreeing with her estimation of their priorities.

  “Can you bring the slipstream drive on line from the bridge?” Farkas asked.

  After a brief pause, Psilakis replied, “Negative. The computer indicates that the navigational circuits were damaged in the explosion in engineering.”

  “I can fix that, Captain,” came Phinn’s tinny voice from behind her.

  Farkas turned to see the eager young man staring at her with fervent certainty. She then turned her attention to her tricorder to take a reading of engineering’s interior before entering. The temperature was over a hundred and twenty degrees, and the environmental processors indicated the air was not safe to breath. Multiple chemical fires, coupled with coolant leaks, overpowered their ability to clear the area. Phinn had only minutes to complete his repairs, but she doubted his body could survive that long.

  Nodding to Phinn, she said, “Double back to section twelve and get a pressure suit.”

  “We don’t have time, Captain,” Phinn argued. “I can do this with the rebreather.”

  “The temperature in there—” she began.

  “Is really hot, I know,” Phinn replied. “But I can take it for the couple of minutes we have.”

  Farkas didn’t know why her gut screamed at her to take the extra minutes she agreed they didn’t have. Calculating the odds that Phinn could repair the slipstream drive before the other spheres reached her ship and surrounded it, she decided to stow her fears and replied, “All right. Psilakis, we’re going to get the drive back on line. Be ready to go to slipstream velocity as soon as the board goes green.”

  “Understood.”

  The entrance to engineering was a gaping wound. Curled, jagged metal framed the opening, testifying to the severity of the explosion. Farkas was amazed it hadn’t taken the rest of the deck with it, but she chalked it up to the size of the sphere.

  Farkas slowed her steps as they approached, and gestured for Phinn to do the same. Rounding the corner into engineering with her phaser rifle raised, she took in the destruction before her in a heart-stopping glance.

  The captain’s attention was immediately drawn to the sight of a single sphere, trapped inside a field emanating from a portable emitter. At the base of the emitter, her chief engineer, Lieutenant Ganley, lay unconscious, the skin of his face and hands blistered and bright red.

  “Farkas to emergency transport. Get Lieutenant Ganley to sickbay immediately.”

  Seconds later, Ganley disappeared in a shimmer of light, and Farkas hoped that she had not been too late.

  Phinn was rooted to the floor, staring at the trapped sphere.

  “Is that going to hold?” he asked, the terror obvious in his voice.

  “You let me worry about that,” Farkas replied briskly. “Focus on the slipstream drive, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye,” Phinn said, attempting to shake off his fear. With a nod, he disappeared into the bowels of engineering, stepping cautiously through the debris that littered every surface of the room, his face already beginning to drip with sweat.

  Farkas moved to the emitter and did a quick analysis of Ganley’s work. The field was constructed of rotating harmonics, similar to the shield frequency adjustments that had once been an effective countermeasure against the Borg. Setting aside the irony, Farkas studied the sensor readings and determined that the field had effectively neutralized the sphere. Her sense of relief was almost overpowering.

  “I’ve found the damaged circuits, Captain,” Phinn announced.

  “Good work,” Farkas said, hoping she sounded more enthusiastic than she felt.

  “Captain?” Psilakis’s voice cut through the comm system.

  “What is it?”

  “Two spheres are moving toward your position,” Psilakis reported grimly. “And they are accompanied by nine of our people. Our internal transporters are now down, so I can’t clear them for you. I have a team moving to intercept, but I’m not sure they’ll—”

  “Understood,” Farkas cut him off.

  Assuming they would arrive before Phinn had finished his work, Farkas’s options were limited to one. The approaching spheres would have to be contained in the same manner as the one Ganley had trapped. The personnel sent to allow the spheres to get close enough to do their job would have to be subdued as well. Firing a phaser rifle in the toxic atmosphere of engineering was likely to set off additional explosions. She could survive them, safe in her pressure suit, but Phinn would not. Though his mask would protect his lungs, nothing would protect his flesh from the heat or shrapnel.

  She knew what she had to do.

  It took less than two minutes for her to find two functioning emitters and load them with the appropriate containment field settings. She positioned them so that the beams would activate and hold the spheres just outside of engineering.

  Farkas then set her rifle on the floor, and keeping one eye glued to her tricorder, she began to remove her pressure suit.

  Phinn had been carrying around a mental map of Quirinal’s slipstream drive for weeks. Finding the damaged navigational circuits took seconds. Finding the replacement parts he needed was more of a challenge, but he’d cobbled them together faster than he would have believed possible. Turned out, terror was a fantastic motivator.

  He was so focused on rerouting damaged circuits and creating hasty patches for the minimally damaged ones before him that he jerked in alarm when Captain Farkas tapped his shoulder.

  The first thing he realized was that she was no longer wearing her pressure suit, but holding it in her hand and gesturing urgently for him to put it on.

  Confused, Phinn thought, Didn
’t we already cover this?

  He waited for her to explain until he realized that she was holding her breath. Phinn took a long, deep inhalation, then passed his mask to the captain.

  Farkas took a grateful breath before saying, “We’re about to have company.”

  Phinn only shook his head and pointed to her as he grabbed the suit she tossed to him.

  “Put it on. That’s a direct order!” Farkas shouted.

  “But, I’m almost—” he spluttered, wasting what little oxygen he had left.

  “Look, Bryce,” Farkas said coldly, “right now only one person on this ship can get us to safety and it’s not me, it’s you. My only job right now is to keep you alive long enough to do that. End of discussion.”

  Phinn hurried to do her bidding as she turned away, her eyes glued to the entrance from where, presumably, the attack would come. Distant phaser fire sliced through the air, only adding to his anxiety as he finally locked the suit’s helmet in place with shaking hands and took several deep breaths.

  Once Farkas was satisfied he was secure, she started back toward the entrance.

  “Captain, wait!” Phinn called, quickly unlocking one glove and removing his personal transporter.

  Farkas turned. Phinn stumbled over to her, unaccustomed to the ungainly suit, and fastened the leather strap around the wrist that held the body of her phaser rifle.

  “What the—” Farkas began.

  “It’s a personal transporter,” Phinn explained. “I know it’s not regulation, but just toggle this switch and it will take you back to my quarters.” At Farkas’s bemused shock, he added, “I know. I’m reprimanded. Write it up later.”

  “Get back to work,” Farkas replied. Phinn couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought he caught a smile before she resumed her post at the entrance to engineering.

  All he could do now was prove himself worthy of her faith and sacrifice. He had the rest of his life to make it happen.

  Psilakis estimated that the additional alien vessels would be upon the ship in less than two minutes. Allowing his auto-targeting program to eliminate as many of their comrades as possible, he was focusing exclusively on the team headed for engineering. Thirty of his people were converging on deck seventeen, but from the looks of it, they weren’t going to be able to reach the spheres or their escorts in time. It would be an unacceptable irony indeed if the captain were to succeed in getting the slipstream drive on line, only to have the effort wasted as the remaining intruders exploded near enough the core to breach it.