Star Trek: Voyager: Children of the Storm

by Kirsten Beyer

  Tearing his eyes away, he directed them toward Ensign Gwyn, who sat absolutely still at her console, her eyes glued ahead.

  Preliminary scans were already well under way, so Chakotay decided to fill the time with a question. “Well, Ensign Gwyn, how do you feel about your hunch now?”

  There was an expectant pause as Gwyn turned slowly in her chair. Chakotay tensed at the first sight of her face, normally an open catalogue of dozens of thoughts and emotions. The eyes that met his were unusually blank.

  “Ensign?” he asked again, his voice tinged with concern.

  After a few more seconds, she blinked rapidly, shook her head, and smiled, “Sorry, Captain. I’m not getting anything.”

  Chakotay sensed a rebuke coming from Eden, but before she could speak, Lasren’s replacement at ops, a trim, white-haired ensign named Waters, reported, “Captain, I believe we’ve found something.”

  “Can you be more specific?” Eden asked immediately.

  “It’s definitely a life-form.”

  “Living in the atmosphere, or is there a surface below?” Chakotay asked.

  “I mean the entire body, sir,” Waters replied. “The whole thing is a single life-form.”

  Cambridge studied the display, and for a moment, all thoughts of further tormenting Seven were replaced by unabashed wonder. In a man who felt the universe contained little that could surprise him any longer, it was an unusual sensation.

  Seven was busy manipulating a computer-generated schematic of the body. Rows of numbers and scientific notations crawled upward along the right side of the massive screen, but Cambridge preferred the view of the actual planet fixed on the screen’s left side.

  Grayish brown mists swirled intensely below, forming smaller circles centered by massive black holes that stared up at him like angry eyes. Bright flashes of orange and red plasma crackled intermittently, ripping across the atmosphere with violent brilliance. Although he knew it was only in his imagination, the entire body seemed to wail with cosmic grief.

  “The Children of the Storm indeed,” he said softly.

  Seven raised her hand to her chest to tap her combadge, but before she could do so, a single red flash burst from the surface and floated upward.

  “Did you see that?” Cambridge asked, unsure of himself.

  “I did,” Seven replied softly, quickly tapping on the console, undoubtedly demanding some sort of explanation from the ship’s computer.

  The spectacle was repeated four more times in the seconds it took for the analysis to complete itself, though the flashes varied greatly in hue, from a pale bluish to sickly yellow and orange.

  “What are those?” Cambridge asked.

  “We are witnessing birth, Counselor,” Seven replied in a hushed tone.

  “Those are the Children of the Storm?”

  “Not as we encountered them,” Seven corrected him, “but as they began their existence thousands of years ago.”

  As Cambridge watched, these tiny specks of light danced ever upward, struggling to free themselves from the tempest below. He found himself involuntarily rooting for them, certain that even the bleakness of space had more in the way of comfort to offer them than the hellish wasteland from which they rose.

  “It’s no wonder, is it, their propensity for violence?” Cambridge mused.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at their mother.”

  “I don’t believe you possess sufficient data to extrapolate anything about the creature’s nature from its outward appearance,” Seven suggested.

  “Maybe not,” Cambridge allowed, “but if that were my home, I’d want to get as far from it as possible.”

  “They are acting on instinct,” Seven advised. “Each individual is expelled from the body with great force and simply continues along an individual trajectory until it has cleared the atmosphere. In this state they are incredibly simple and fragile.”

  “Like most infants.”

  “But unlike most, they do not, over time, take on the physical appearance of their parent.”

  “As far as we know,” Cambridge said.

  “No,” Seven insisted. “They will never possess sufficient mass to aggregate into anything resembling this creature. I’m not even convinced that they are offspring, as we traditionally think of them.”

  “Then what are they?” Cambridge asked.

  “I cannot … that is to say …”

  Cambridge watched her struggle for a moment, searching for the right word. It was so unlike her it puzzled him.

  “Don’t worry about being right, Seven, or even being precise. Some discoveries are best described by scientists; others, by poets. What does your heart tell you this is?”

  “I believe the life-forms that eventually become the Children of the Storm begin here, as this creature’s thoughts,” Seven finally said.

  “Fascinating,” Cambridge replied.

  Lasren’s efforts to reach the Children had left him utterly exhausted. Although from time to time he was convinced that some of them had been attempting to connect with him, either the strength of the psionic field protecting him or the limits of their abilities had left him no closer to true contact.

  Doctor Sharak had finally ordered him to suspend his work for at least a few hours for some much-needed rest. As he gently removed the neural scanner from Lasren’s forehead, his tricorder, which was patched into a small sensor array running continuous scans of the sphere, emitted several shrill, sharp beeps.

  Lasren immediately silenced the alert and studied the display. Both the resonance strength and the activity level of the Children encased in the sphere had just risen exponentially.

  He immediately tapped his combadge. “Lasren to the bridge.”

  “This is Chakotay, Ensign. Is everything all right down there?”

  “The activity of the Children has increased beyond anything we have witnessed so far. But I cannot account for it.”

  “That’s all right. We can. We believe we have located the Children’s ‘mother.’ You should report to the briefing room right away.”

  “With your permission, sir, I’d like to study this a little further.”

  “Ensign, you are weakened,” Sharak interjected calmly.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lasren insisted. “Captain?”

  “Join us as soon as you can, Ensign. We’ll await your report,” Chakotay replied.

  Without bothering to allow Sharak to reconnect the neural scanner, Lasren bolted past him into the cargo bay and stood as near the edge of the psionic field as he dared. Even at the current intensity of the field, strange new sensations began to bombard him. When the sphere was transported aboard, he had been given a small device by Conlon that allowed him to adjust the field’s strength on his own. Resolved, he reduced the intensity by the standard three degrees that had, thus far, been absolutely safe.

  A wave of emotions crashed over him, but he held his ground. Imaginary wind cried out all around him, buffeting his body. What he was experiencing was too chaotic for him to make sense of it beyond its initial intensity, until he found himself running at impossible speed through the Muoni canyon. His feet didn’t even touch the ground. The moment he came within sight of the falls he felt himself fly upward as if desperate to embrace them. Moments later they receded into the distance as he continued to rise above them.

  Looking down, he saw the valley far below, a tapestry of vivid greens, blues, and browns more beautiful now than he remembered. Every single blade of grass, every leaf, every twig, every drop of water glowed with its own distinct brilliance until the light overwhelmed him, forcing him to turn away or risk blindness.

  And still he soared upward.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  STARDATE 58463.9

  U.S.S. GALEN

  As the Doctor ushered B’Elanna and Miral into the quarters they would occupy aboard Galen, B’Elanna was both moved and delighted to see that the main area of the Doctor’s living space had been transformed i
nto a playroom for Miral. As the entire space, apart from the desk and data terminals linked to the rest of the ship, was a holographic creation, the new configuration hadn’t involved a great deal of heavy lifting on the Doctor’s part, but tremendous care had obviously gone into every detail of the contents.

  A large soft, circular mat embedded with brightly colored letters and numbers lay on the floor. As Miral rushed over them to reach a small climbing dome, B’Elanna noted that a photonic representation of each symbol she touched rose up from the floor and bounced in the air as the computer’s voice began a lesson. “C,” the computer said as a bright yellow C floated at what would have been Miral’s eye level had she paused long enough to notice. “‘C’ is for ‘cat.’” From thin air, a small a and t rose from the floor and tumbled over to join the c, spelling out the simple word. “Can you say cat, Miral?” the computer asked.

  “Cat!” Miral shouted from the top of the climber, and the computer rewarded her by turning the word cat into a small ginger-colored kitten that meowed its congratulations, which was almost but not quite enough excitement to bring Miral down from her perch.

  And the mat was only the beginning. Brightly colored blocks and soft balls were piled on one side of the mat, along with a touch-activated easel Miral could use for art or practicing letters and numbers.

  Books, puzzles, and other small toys were also strewn about. Turning to the Doctor, her eyes alight, B’Elanna said, “This is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much.”

  “While we were en route, I prepared a full week of lessons as well as dozens of subject-specific teachers for her,” the Doctor enthused. B’Elanna had seen him pleased with himself in the past, but at this moment he might have burst with pride. “I know you are scheduled to report to Achilles right away, and I will be working for the next several hours on the surface of the planet with Doctor Sal, but our little Miral will be quite safe in the care of William Shakespeare, who will be providing her morning lessons, and Reg has promised to check in on her in an hour or so.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” B’Elanna admitted, “but we’ll have to start the formal lessons tomorrow.”

  The Doctor’s face fell dramatically as he asked, “Why? I assure you she will be perfectly safe and well occupied.”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” B’Elanna hurried to assure him. “I just … that is, I need her with me today.”

  “You’ll be much too busy to tend to her properly,” the Doctor chastised her. “She is an incredibly active young lady, and—”

  “I know,” B’Elanna interjected. “I’m actually counting on it.”

  Clearly appalled and disappointed, the Doctor sighed with the passion of one of his operatic divas. “I simply don’t understand.”

  B’Elanna planted a quick peck on his cheek as she placed an arm over his shoulder. “I’ll explain tonight. I promise. And please believe me when I tell you, I’ve never seen anything as wonderful as what you’ve created here. I’m going to steal all of your programs for our quarters on Voyager when we’re done here.”

  This seemed to placate the Doctor’s wounded hopes a little. “I don’t believe they will function optimally anywhere but here,” he noted.

  “You’re probably right,” B’Elanna granted him. “Even when Voyager gets back, she should probably plan to spend as much time here as she can.”

  Finally some of the Doctor’s prior luster returned. “Most definitely,” he encouraged her.

  “Then I guess we’d both best get to our work,” B’Elanna said.

  The Doctor nodded amiably as B’Elanna crossed the room to collect Miral from the climber.

  “Come on, darling,” B’Elanna called to her. “You’re going to help Mommy with her work today.”

  In truth, it was the only thing she could have said that would have captured Miral’s imagination enough to bring her down from the structure. As B’Elanna took her daughter’s hand, a short man dressed in the garb of one of Earth’s sixteenth-century nobles appeared in the center of the mat.

  “Oh, brave new world, that has such people in’t,” he proclaimed pompously.

  Mindful that the program was probably written to give the Doctor a detailed report of its interactions, B’Elanna replied, “I’m sorry, William, but you’ll have to excuse your pupil for the morning. Hold that thought, though.”

  She left the program running, though, possibly for the first time ever, at a loss for words.

  U.S.S. ACHILLES

  Phinn had grown so accustomed to putting one fire out after another during the two weeks Quirinal was planet-bound and isolated from the rest of the fleet that the past two days had felt like a dream he never dared believe would come true. Fleet Chief Torres and Voyager’s chief engineer, Lieutenant Conlon, had made sure that every resource they could spare were his for the asking. Achilles had arrived several hours earlier. A swarm of technicians had descended upon Quirinal and had begun the work of clearing wreckage and refuse, along with power restoration to every area of the ship that was functional. The delight on Psilakis’s face when Phinn had made his morning report had done much to lighten the lieutenant’s spirits, despite the fact that his regular visit with Doctor Sal had confirmed that Captain Farkas remained in critical condition. Phinn hardly dared hope that Galen’s arrival would change that, though he’d heard rumors about an amazing holographic doctor stationed aboard who might find something that Sal had missed.

  The thought that his captain had sacrificed her life for his was Phinn’s heaviest burden to bear. Over the past several days, when the work had been desperately hard, the decisions had been heart-wrenching, or the hours had been mentally and physically withering, Phinn had taken strength from Captain Farkas’s resolve in the face of much dimmer odds. He now lived on the fantasy that one day she would open her eyes and he would be able to report that her engineers had restored her ship to fighting shape. Watching Voyager’s and now Achilles’ crew work, that fantasy seemed closer than ever to becoming reality.

  He had boarded Achilles almost an hour earlier for a briefing with Commander Drafar to begin discussing repair priorities, fully expecting to meet with Commander Torres at the same time. When she finally arrived, leading a young girl who would never be mistaken for anyone but her daughter by the hand, Phinn assumed that she had been detained by personal needs. He knew Voyager had already departed, presumably to determine Demeter’s status, and rescue them if possible. It was altogether likely that Commander Torres had been unable to secure child care for the day and had arrived only to check in on the meeting before leaving the work in Commander Drafar’s capable, and extremely large, hands.

  Commander Torres took her seat after instructing her daughter to sit quietly for a few minutes in a large chair at the end of the table, which, lucky for the little girl, turned on its base and seemed destined to provide hours of entertainment. Turning to Drafar, Torres said lightly, “We’re ready to begin.”

  Drafar had stared at the child from the moment she entered the way Phinn might have stared at something stuck to his shoe. However, the commander didn’t miss a beat as he advised Torres that the meeting was already well under way and handed her a padd that undoubtedly contained the revised repair schedule.

  Torres had seemed extremely capable but also quite warm and amiable to Phinn, until Drafar addressed her. As her child began making soft whooshing noises to correspond with her chair’s spinning, Torres turned a hard face to Drafar and asked, “Why was I not informed that the meeting’s start time had been changed?”

  “I saw no reason to trouble you, Commander,” Drafar replied cheerfully, while casting a dismissive glance at the child. “I was certain you would have other pressing duties to attend to, and after thoroughly reviewing your repair and reconstruction schedule while we were en route to this system, I did not doubt that you would not take issue with the few minor alterations I saw fit to make. I had every intention of briefing you whenever you arrived.”

  Torres’s face softened a bit a
s she replied perfunctorily, “In the future, I would appreciate being advised of any meeting or schedule changes prior to their implementation, Commander. My first duty is to the fleet, and I do not take the responsibility lightly, nor do I intend to cede that authority to anyone. Do we understand one another?”

  “Of course,” Drafar replied neutrally.

  Torres then took a few moments to review the padd while her daughter managed to spin the chair fast enough to topple it on its side. Phinn expected that most children her age would have cried for comfort after such a fall, but the hardy young girl picked herself up and, after kicking the chair with her little foot for good measure, began the painstaking process of attempting to stand it back up. Torres glanced at her but did nothing to assist her. Drafar’s mouth actually opened in apparent alarm at this unruly turn of events.

  “You’ve managed to trim two days off the schedule I had created, Commander,” Torres said approvingly.

  “My people will work twelve-hour shifts for the next twenty-six days,” Drafar said. “And two days is a conservative estimate. I fully expect that once we get under way, we might eliminate another two or three days.”

  “Who designed this tractor mechanism to right the ship and hold it above ground during the third week of repairs?” Torres asked.

  “I did,” Drafar replied proudly. In Phinn’s estimation, he deserved every bit of praise for it. Phinn had no idea how this most delicate maneuver might be accomplished until he’d seen Drafar’s schematics.

  “I’m not surprised, Commander,” Torres replied, obviously pleased, “but I am concerned about the drain on Achilles’ power systems.”

  “It will be a strain, but not unmanageable,” Drafar replied.