Star Trek: Voyager: Children of the Storm

by Kirsten Beyer

She’s abandoned you and she won’t return until you do your job. You have to solve this. You have to make this right. You have to make her proud.

  But despite his certainty, he hesitated to open the door. Behind it, Alana was surely waiting for him, her face wrenched in inexplicable agony, her hands dripping blood as they reached out to him in supplication.

  “No!” he shouted, forcing the image from his mind and stumbling into his mercifully empty lab.

  “Computer,” O’Donnell rasped through his parched throat. “Continue sample analysis.”

  “Please specify sample designation,” replied the maddeningly patient voice of the ship’s computer.

  “CR-H-94978-K,” O’Donnell replied, not caring where in the sequence the analysis began.

  “Sample CR-H-94978-K fusion failed. Transcription error detected.”

  “Continue in chronological order,” O’Donnell requested, as his head began to clear.

  “Sample CR-H-94979-K fusion failed. Transcription error detected. Sample CR-H-94980-K fusion failed. Transcription error detected.”

  By the time the computer reached sample CR-H-94991-K, the darkness had begun to recede. His hands were clammy and his breath still came too quickly, but he knew the worst of it had passed.

  I can fix this, Alana, he promised her. You’ll see.

  He seated himself on his stool before his data terminal as the computer droned on, reporting error after error in his latest batch of samples, until its voice took on the quality of white noise.

  He was standing before Genov-see’s burled-wood desk before he knew what had hit him.

  “The land in question has been privately held for nineteen generations,” the minister thundered.

  “And if the quorum doesn’t see fit to nationalize it now, tens of thousands of residents in Neshan and Plaro will starve come winter,” Liam replied just as forcefully.

  “You were brought here to help us solve this problem, Lieutenant O’Donnell,” Genov-see went on vehemently.

  “You’ve seen the estimated yields for the land we currently have under cultivation, and you seem to have at least a rudimentary grasp of mathematics. What is your alternative?” Liam fired back.

  “You promised us yields would quadruple within the first three planting seasons. Are you really the best the Federation can do?”

  “And the yields would have if your quaint notions of botanical purity hadn’t restricted several of our hybridization schedules, Minister,” Liam said.

  “The health of our people is my only concern. For thousands of years the Kressari have thrived by providing the quadrant with the most structurally pure botanical lines.”

  “Spare me the history lesson. And spare me your sanctimonious lies. You don’t need to select for purity anymore, you need to select for yield volume. You’d rather allow thousands of your people to starve than disappoint the ancestral elite that put you in power. The end of the famine cycles is within your grasp, but you won’t risk your seat on the quorum by redistributing land lying fallow because it’s owned by the lazy, self-serving bastards who put you in office.”

  “Minister, I am sorry to interrupt, but there is an urgent message for Lieutenant O’Donnell.”

  “It can wait,” O’Donnell spat, unwilling to allow his anger with Genov-see to cool, even for a moment.

  “I am assured it cannot,” the page replied.

  “Captain?” Fife’s voice brought him immediately to consciousness, if not alertness.

  O’Donnell turned sharply.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  A faint glimmer of hope in Fife’s eyes extinguished instantly.

  “We have just entered the debris field. Our captors seem adept at avoiding contact with the largest pieces that might damage us during our progress.”

  “Our captors?” O’Donnell asked, trying to clear his head.

  “The Children of the Storm,” Fife reminded him dubiously.

  “Aren’t all children borne of chaos?” O’Donnell spat harshly. “It is only our desire to exert some sense of useless control over the madness all around us that permits anyone the arrogance of trying to continue their genetic line.”

  Fife seemed genuinely confused.

  “Are you all right, Captain?”

  In a sickening flash O’Donnell remembered where he was and, more important, what Fife was talking about.

  “It’s their debris field,” O’Donnell said, steadying his voice. “They must be masters at navigating it by now.”

  Fife nodded, a little relieved. “I thought you’d want to know that Quirinal is gone.”

  O’Donnell’s chin fell to his chest.

  “Destroyed?” he finally asked.

  “We monitored a battle for several minutes and then Quirinal vanished. Vincent believes they successfully brought their slipstream drive on line and escaped.”

  O’Donnell didn’t bother to hide his surprise.

  “Good for them,” he said.

  “Url is searching for a way to weaken the field surrounding us. He should have something in the next hour.”

  “Fine.”

  “In the meantime, Falto believes we are on course for the heart of the system that lies beyond the field. There’s nothing particularly notable about it, as best we can tell for now. There are no planets capable of sustaining humanoid life.”

  “Keep me apprised of our progress,” O’Donnell said, dismissing him.

  “Captain?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who were you talking to when I arrived?”

  O’Donnell’s eyes narrowed.

  “What did you hear?”

  “Something about land lying fallow and self-serving bastards,” Fife ventured.

  “I was talking to myself,” O’Donnell tried to toss back casually.

  “I only ask because … that is …” Fife struggled a moment to summon up his courage. “We know the Children of the Storm are capable of possessing the bodies of telepaths.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not telepathic, isn’t it?” O’Donnell shot back.

  “What I was going to say, Captain, is that Url suspects their telekinetic abilities might allow them to infiltrate the minds of nontelepaths as well. He’s studying the sensor readings we first took of the aliens. He hasn’t finished his work, but—”

  “Order him to finish it as quickly as he can, Commander,” O’Donnell interrupted him. “Obviously, if that’s true, we need to know. But you’re not going to find evidence of it in my lab.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “Aye, sir.” Fife nodded and exited briskly.

  After a moment, O’Donnell turned his attention to the files now waiting on his terminal; they contained all available data on the Children of the Storm.

  Don’t worry, Alana. I will not let this madness have its way.

  He knew in his heart, however, that the madness usually did just that in the end.

  Determined to slacken its pace, however, he began to analyze those who had captured his ship and could easily, within seconds, end the lives of everyone aboard.

  Even without Alana’s help, the mental exertion had its usual calming effect.

  Chapter Fifteen

  STARDATE 58456.9

  U.S.S. VOYAGER

  Tom Paris could hardly believe his eyes. In the ten hours it had taken Voyager to reach the source of Quirinal’s distress signal, he had imagined dozens of versions of what they might find. None of them came close to the real thing.

  The main viewscreen displayed an image of Quirinal, or what had once been the massive ship, resting at an angle against a range of mountains, capped a few hundred meters above the top of the saucer section with the last of the winter’s snow.

  Among the many breaks Quirinal had apparently caught in their mad rush to escape the Children of the Storm was exiting the slipstream corridor near a system containing a Class-M planet. The planet was devoid of humanoid life, though it
was home to a vast variety of plants, and thousands of different animal species roamed its plains and filled its skies and oceans.

  Dotting the valley that lay at the base of the mountain, several kilometers of which had been cleared by the ship’s obviously rough emergency landing, an encampment had been created where the ship’s survivors had taken to living for the past two and a half weeks. Several large chunks of the ship’s hull were missing, and the result reminded Tom of a scarred carcass whose innards have been plucked out by scavenging vultures.

  Soon enough, the visual of the ship was replaced by the face of an officer Tom remembered from several of the prelaunch mission briefings, Lieutenant Psilakis. Sharp brown eyes greeted them, though several yellowing bruises dotted his face, mingling with dirt covering his cheeks, hands, and ragged uniform.

  “I’ve never a seen a more beautiful sight than Voyager, Captain Eden,” Psilakis said cheerily. Tom could well imagine his relief.

  The image on the screen began to distort, and Eden turned sharply to Lasren.

  “What’s the problem, Ensign?”

  “Interference on their end, Fleet Commander,” Lasren replied. “Their power is fluctuating.”

  “We’re on the last of our emergency backup modules,” Psilakis grinned. “You didn’t arrive a moment too soon.”

  “Where is Captain Farkas?” Eden inquired.

  “She’s alive, but in critical condition,” Psilakis replied. “She faced down several … um … intruders before we got the slipstream drive running. Doctor Sal has been watching her day and night. She thinks it’ll take more time, but the captain will pull through. The rest of the senior staff is still undergoing evaluations. They were compromised during the attack. I’ve assumed command in the meantime.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been through hell,” Eden rightly surmised.

  “I’ve had better weeks,” Psilakis agreed.

  “We’ll get emergency teams down to you as soon as possible,” Eden advised him. “And I’d like to begin my review in sickbay.”

  “Understood,” Psilakis said, nodding. “Pardon me, but is the admiral with you?”

  “We’ve had our own challenges the last few weeks, as well,” Eden said dryly. “I’m in command of the fleet now. I’ll be happy to explain when we see you.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Psilakis said. “Quirinal out.”

  As his face disappeared, Eden turned to Chakotay. “Can Seven of Nine repeat the trick she did to locate Quirinal’s signal?”

  “Possibly,” he said.

  “We have to contact the rest of the fleet as soon as possible. They’re over forty thousand light-years from our present position, but we need Achilles out here yesterday.”

  “And Galen,” Chakotay added.

  “But I’m not going to leave these people alone one day longer to make that happen.”

  “I’ll speak to her, and then join you in the transporter room.”

  With a nod, Eden turned again to the viewscreen.

  “It could have been worse,” Paris offered.

  “But not much,” Eden replied.

  U.S.S. QUIRINAL

  “Well, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes,” Doctor Sal said congenially as Eden and Chakotay entered sickbay. Voyager’s CMO, Doctor Sharak, had already been dispatched to the valley to attend to the medical needs of those in less critical condition. One of the few blessings Quirinal could count was that the location of sickbay had prevented it from suffering too much damage in either the attack or the “landing” they had made on the planet’s surface. Every ounce of power the ship could spare was being routed to sickbay, and thanks to Sal and her staff’s efforts, an amazing number of wounded had been moved out of critical care in the last few weeks. Only two now remained under constant evaluation: Captain Farkas and Chief Ganley.

  “Hello, El’nor,” Eden greeting Sal warmly.

  Chakotay was busy trying to adjust his feet to a comfortable position. Though the deck was solid beneath him, it sat at a slight angle thanks to the ship’s resting position.

  “And who might this tall drink of water be?” Sal said, extending her hand to Chakotay.

  “Captain Chakotay.” He grinned, not at all offended by her forward manner.

  Sal raised a quizzical eyebrow. “The same Captain Chakotay who used to command Voyager?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Huh,” Sal said, considering him a little more carefully now. “Nice tattoo.”

  “Thank you.” He smiled again.

  “And Psilakis tells me you’re now commanding the fleet?” Sal demanded of Eden.

  “It’s a long story,” Eden replied.

  “I can’t wait to hear it,” Sal replied. Turning to Chakotay, she added, “You get used to the list, Captain. I swear my left leg is going to be permanently shorter than my right if we ever get this ship in space again. And I’ll probably have a constant crick in my neck.”

  “Sounds like that is the least of your problems right now,” Eden suggested.

  Sal replied with a gallows laugh. “You want them in alphabetical or chronological order?”

  “I understand Captain Farkas remains in critical condition,” Eden said.

  All traces of mirth fled from Sal’s face. “She was exposed to the heat and atmospheric toxicity of dozens of explosions before she transported out. I’ve placed her in a coma until the damage to her lungs has time to repair itself. I’ll let her tell me when she wakes up how much cosmetic work she wants done on the rest.”

  Gesturing them toward a single room surrounded by a transparent wall, Chakotay caught his first glimpse of Regina Farkas. She rested peacefully enough beneath a sheet, but her visible bare arms and chest were covered with surgical bandages, and a neural monitor was affixed to her forehead.

  “How were the Children of the Storm able to board the ship?” Eden asked.

  “Remember how we were worried that they could possess the bodies of telepaths?” Sal said, and Eden nodded in response. “Turns out we should have thought bigger.”

  “What do you mean?” Chakotay asked.

  “The psionic force field we devised works like a charm, but everybody not protected by it is a potential victim,” Sal said grimly. “As best we can tell, of the hundred and sixteen crewmen they compromised once the attack began, none of them have any psionic abilities at all. But all of them were alpha shift officers, and almost all of them have reported odd dreams just before they went on duty. We think that’s how the Children of the Storm accessed their minds.”

  “While they were asleep?” Eden sought to clarify.

  Sal nodded. “They all remember attacking their fellow crewmen and, as you can imagine, they feel like hell about it. But the consensus is that they couldn’t control their bodies. It was like they were watching themselves and were unable to resist, no matter how hard they tried.

  “All of their neural scans have been clean for weeks now, but Psilakis still doesn’t want to return them to duty. Given that he fought eight of them personally before single-handedly taking control of the bridge, getting us this far and then landing the ship, I can’t say I’m willing to fight him too hard on it for now. Commander Roach is spitting nails, he’s so mad, though. He’s dying to get back on duty.”

  Eden and Chakotay shared an uneasy glance. “We’ll look into it,” Eden assured Sal.

  “So in answer to your original question, one of the ensigns in our shuttlebay basically welcomed a single sphere on board. From there—Psilakis can explain it better than I can, but a number of smaller spheres broke off from the main one and infiltrated the ship. We had a hell of a time containing them, and a couple hundred of our crew members were injured or killed in the battle to do so.”

  “Were you able to make contact with the Children of the Storm during the attack?” was Eden’s next question.

  “Oh, yes.” Sal nodded. “Regina followed first-contact protocols to the letter, for all the good it did her. All they kept saying was that
they would take what they called ‘the life’ and that we were destroyers of worlds.” Sal lowered her voice. “They fired first, though, Captain. They destroyed Planck without warning, and after that, Regina fought back to defend the rest of us.”

  “I’m sure she did everything she could, El’nor,” Eden readily agreed.

  After a moment, Sal asked, “Did Demeter make it?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Eden replied. “But we’re going to find out.”

  • • •

  After the first ten minutes spent examining Phinn’s work, both B’Elanna and Conlon were dumbstruck, partially by his ingenuity but more by how determined he was to remain cheerful in the face of catastrophe.

  “What’s my option?” he asked, when Conlon had voiced this compliment.

  Neither she nor B’Elanna had a good answer for him.

  That said, from the moment she stepped into what remained of main engineering, B’Elanna had doubted that Quirinal would ever fly again. What was traditionally an ordered space was a tangled mass of conduits and power distribution nodes, arranged in what initially appeared to be a completely random and haphazard way, though in time the method to Phinn’s madness became clear enough. Massive chunks of debris had been piled in corners. Most consoles had been removed, exposing the circuitry within, and deck and wall plates had been tossed aside to allow for direct access to functioning components. Fine particulate matter sat atop every surface save Phinn’s command station. Most of the engineers working in the area had developed chronic coughs in the absence of functioning environmental controls.

  The slipstream drive had been completely fried during the single jump Quirinal had made to safety. The warp core was in one piece, but had been disconnected for the time being.

  “Job one,” Phinn explained, “is to keep what little power we have flowing to our most sensitive areas. The bridge has been dark since we landed, except for sensor checks every few hours. The crew has been relocated outside the ship. The weather has held, which has helped tremendously, though our remaining crew quarters wouldn’t have housed half of them, even if I could keep them warm and lit. We have fifteen functioning replicators, and all of our emergency foodstuffs are rationed daily.”