Star Trek: Voyager: Children of the Storm

by Kirsten Beyer

  “Or,” Torres offered, “we could supplement the beam with carefully positioned antigravitational units with self-regenerating cells to ease the burden on Achilles.”

  For the first time, Phinn saw shock ripple over Drafar’s terribly composed mien.

  “Do we possess such units?” he asked.

  “We can build them,” Torres replied, “though it will add a day to your schedule. For safety’s sake, I think it worthwhile.”

  “I wasn’t aware that the Federation had adopted self-regenerating circuitry,” Drafar hurried to add.

  “It may not be regulation, but I’ve seen it work before under greater stress than this, and I’m confident it will assist us greatly here,” Torres replied evenly.

  “Very well,” Drafar replied with some reluctance. He seemed ready to say something more, when he was interrupted by a loud banging noise. The child had managed to turn the chair upright, but rather than resuming her twirling game, she was now taking great delight in simply rolling the chair into the wall as hard as she could.

  “Miral, stop that,” Torres instructed the girl, who cast a disparaging glance her way before giving the chair one last push and searching the room for something else that might be as much fun.

  “If there are no further items you wish to discuss, Commander,” Drafar said congenially, “Lieutenant Bryce and I can complete our review of the schedule while you tend to your child’s amusement.”

  At this, Torres’s face lit with a slight smile. “Actually,” she said, “I am prepared to complete the review with you and Lieutenant Bryce, after which Miral and I will accompany both of you to the surface and meet briefly with your team leaders.”

  “I hardly think Quirinal, in its present state, will be a safe place for your child, Commander,” Drafar advised her.

  “We’ll manage,” Torres said. “She’s a bright child and incredibly curious, but she also understands the meaning of the word no. She won’t be any trouble, and to be honest, Commander, the last time we met you seemed so distracted by concerns about her proper care I thought you would appreciate a chance to see for yourself how challenging and rewarding her presence can be.”

  Drafar stiffened in his chair, clearly at a loss. While he would have been well within his rights to scuttle B’Elanna’s plans, he seemed to sense the challenge B’Elanna was throwing down.

  Finally Drafar seemed to settle the matter in his head. He rose from his seat and in a few long strides crossed to Miral, who was seated on the floor with her legs splayed, still playing with the base of the chair but, as her mother requested, no longer rolling it far enough away to hit the wall.

  As Drafar knelt beside her, entering her personal space, Miral looked up at him, her eyes growing wide and her mouth falling open in something resembling awe.

  “Good morning, young lady,” Drafar said cordially. “Your mother says you are bright. I wonder if you could demonstrate that to me.” Reaching for the base of the chair, he grasped a single wheel with one hand and a spindle of the base in another and pointed out a button that released the wheel from the base. He then replaced the wheel and made certain Miral heard it slip and lock into place. “Now you try.” He once again separated the wheel from the base and handed it to her. He sat back on his heels as Miral puzzled over the wheel momentarily, then grabbed the spindle and restored the wheel to its place.

  Phinn’s smile at her success was mirrored on B’Elanna’s and Drafar’s faces.

  “Very good,” Drafar said. “Now, if you can manage all four of them, you may resume rolling the chair into the wall if you like.” He quickly removed all four wheels and placed them within Miral’s reach. Without waiting to check her progress, he rose and returned to his seat at the table.

  “Where were we?” he asked perfunctorily. Before Phinn could answer, all three of them heard the sound of the chair rolling across the floor and hitting the wall, followed by a small laugh of delight.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  STARDATE 58464.5

  U.S.S. VOYAGER

  Captain Eden was already in sickbay, standing by the still form of Ensign Lasren, when Chakotay arrived. He had been waiting in the conference room with the rest of the senior staff for the briefing when Sharak had called to inform them that Lasren would be unable to join them. Apparently his last contact with the captive Children had finally pushed him well beyond his physical and mental limits. As CMO, Sharak had stepped in and put a halt to the proceedings, very much against Lasren’s will, and had confined Lasren to sickbay until he was fully restored to health.

  Eden shifted her weight from foot to foot as Sharak gave the details of Lasren’s condition. “There should be no permanent damage, Captain,” Sharak assured her as Chakotay stepped to her side, “but he will require several days of monitoring. The chemical balance of his brain has shifted, and his electrolytes have diminished beyond safety. He requires undisturbed sleep for his body to begin to repair itself.”

  “Did he say anything before you sedated him?” Chakotay asked tensely.

  Sharak pondered the question. “His words did not follow a logical progression,” he finally said. “He talked a great deal about flying and how beautiful it was, but as to what it might be, I cannot say.”

  Eden turned to Chakotay. “He said that our arrival here had affected the Children. We need to know how.”

  “I agree,” Chakotay replied.

  “I cannot say for certain that the ensign was in his right mind at the end,” Sharak offered.

  “What do you mean?” Eden asked.

  “He had lowered the intensity of the psionic field. I worry that those he was trying to reach may have lured him too close to danger.”

  “Were they trying to kill him?” Chakotay demanded.

  “These were his actions, not theirs,” Sharak replied, obviously struggling to be absolutely clear. “But I do not know that he was fully in control of the situation any longer.”

  Finally Chakotay posed the next logical question. “Can you revive him, even for a few minutes?” He did not doubt that if doing so posed any danger to Lasren, the doctor would refuse.

  Sharak’s gaze was hard and inscrutable. “He needs rest,” he replied.

  “I am aware of that, but it will be dangerous for us to proceed without getting at least a sense of what he learned from the Children.”

  Sharak bowed his head formally, then took a hypospray from the instrument tray next to the biobed and placed it at Lasren’s neck. “A few moments only, I beg you, Captain.”

  “Of course, Doctor,” Chakotay replied.

  A dull hiss issued from the hypo and Lasren began to stir. The moment he came to consciousness, his entire body tensed briefly, until he realized where he was. As he proceeded to relax, his eyes held a feverish glow as they shifted back and forth between his two commanding officers.

  “You have pushed yourself too far, Ensign,” Chakotay said softly, “and will be confined to sickbay until you have recovered.”

  “No, please, Captain,” Lasren pleaded.

  “If there is anything you can tell us about what you experienced, please do so now. But try not to upset yourself.”

  Lasren took several quick, shallow breaths. “They heard me,” he began. “They showed me … so much.”

  “What did you see?” Chakotay prodded gently.

  “Worlds, so many planets filled with indescribably beautiful life. But not us.”

  “Not us?” Chakotay asked.

  “Not humanoids. The worlds are pristine, untouched by the hands of the destroyers.”

  Eden and Chakotay shared an uneasy glance.

  “The joy they took from these sights, I cannot describe,” Lasren went on, clearly growing more agitated.

  “Did they tell you anything about the creature we have discovered?”

  Lasren shook his head. “I don’t know if I was seeing their memories, or hers,” he replied. “Only that there was once so much happiness. Until the Borg began to move among them.�
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  Lasren’s face contorted in a mixture of pain and rage. “They ripped the life from the land,” he said, beginning to weep. “They took what was not theirs. They left nothing but death.”

  Chakotay look to Sharak and, with a regretful nod, clearly ordered him to once again sedate Lasren.

  “Wait,” Lasren said, grabbing Sharak’s arm with both of his hands.

  “You have told us more than enough,” Chakotay tried to convince him. “Now you must rest.”

  “No, Captain,” Lasren said, struggling to regain control of himself. “You must free them. They know me. They understand me. They did not hurt me. They will help.”

  “We can’t know that,” Chakotay said gently.

  “I know it!” Lasren shouted. “Please, free them. Trust them.”

  Sharak shot Chakotay a fearful look. Chakotay nodded again. “Thank you, Ensign,” he said. “Now, rest. That’s an order.”

  “Captain, please,” Lasren began again, but Sharak silenced him with another hypospray, and within seconds, he fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.

  “Keep me advised of his condition,” Chakotay ordered. As Chakotay and Eden began to walk toward the turbolift that would return them to the conference room, Eden folded her hands behind her back.

  “What’s your sense of this, Chakotay?” she asked.

  “I don’t believe he was compromised in the same way that the crew of Quirinal was,” Chakotay offered, “but I’m also not convinced that his analysis can be considered objective.”

  “Does that make it wrong?” Eden posited as they entered the turbolift, ordering it to deck one.

  “It makes it suspect,” Chakotay replied.

  “Then you believe we should not do as he suggested?”

  Chakotay was dumbfounded. As best he could tell, they still had only one ace to play in the game that lay ahead of them, and Eden seemed to be seriously considering throwing it away.

  “Halt lift,” Chakotay ordered. “I want to be perfectly clear,” he began. “It is my belief that we absolutely cannot afford to do what Lasren has suggested. We have no idea if the desire to free them was his or theirs. And we can’t know whether or not they might turn on us if we did. I’m not sure they pose much of a threat, but we’re not so far from their system that they might not be able to call in reinforcements. Never mind the fact that we might need them to negotiate for Demeter’s release.”

  Eden had listened in stony silence and, once he was finished, said only, “Lift, resume.”

  “Shall I take your silence as agreement, Captain?” Chakotay asked.

  “You have made your position perfectly clear, Chakotay,” Eden replied. “I require further information before I can make a decision.”

  The turbolift doors opened and Eden stepped out, Chakotay on her heels.

  “Captain,” he said firmly, halting her in her steps just outside the conference room door.

  “Something you wish to add?”

  Chakotay paused, momentarily unsure how he wished to proceed. Had Kathryn cut him off so abruptly, he would have known that she disagreed with him and was intent on pursuing her own course. He would argue the point with her, however, right up until she gave her orders. Somehow he sensed that Eden was still in conflict. But he couldn’t find an argument beyond what he had already said that might bring her more firmly into his camp.

  “No,” he finally said. “Only that I adamantly believe the risk of releasing them now is much too great to seriously consider.”

  “Understood.”

  “Does it matter?” Chakotay asked.

  Eden turned on him in genuine surprise. “Of course it does. Right now we have two options, neither of them particularly compelling. I’m hoping that once we receive Seven’s report, another may be added to the list. Until then, I plan to keep an open mind.”

  “Fair enough,” Chakotay replied, though in his heart he wasn’t sure he believed her.

  When they entered the conference room, Eden was shocked to see the entire senior staff crowding the windows of the room to stare down at the organism below. Ensign Gwyn uttered a sharp “Was that one?” to which Seven replied calmly, “Yes.”

  “Wow” was Gwyn’s succinct observation.

  Eden cleared her throat, and Paris, Kim, Conlon, Patel and Cambridge quickly moved to take their seats. Gwyn headed immediately for the door, saying, “Apologies, Captain. I’ve been watching the organism from the bridge and I just wanted to make sure what I thought I was seeing was actually, you know, real.”

  Eden’s lips turned upward as she said, “Take a seat and join us, Ensign.”

  Gwyn’s eyes widened, but she quickly did as ordered.

  As everyone settled, Eden turned to Seven and said, “What have you discovered about ‘mother’?”

  “The organism we are orbiting is, as you already know, not a planet but a single life-form and is unquestionably the origin of the Children of the Storm,” Seven began.

  “But the Children are not offspring as we traditionally define them,” Patel was quick to add.

  Unruffled, Seven continued, “The organism is likely tens of thousands of years old, and it did not originate in this system.”

  “What brought it here?” Eden asked.

  “We have no way of knowing,” Seven replied. “It is not likely to be disturbed here by any spacefaring species, as there is nothing particularly notable about what remains of the system.”

  “She wanted a little peace and quiet?” Cambridge asked.

  “As I said,” Seven replied a little more sharply, “we really have no way of knowing. What we do know, however, is that every few minutes, a new life-form emerges from the atmosphere surrounding the organism. This life-form is an extremely immature version of the species we know as the Children of the Storm. The resonance frequencies of the infants are incredibly weak, compared to their more mature counterparts, and there is little variety in their resonance.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Paris asked.

  “We know that the life-form is comprised of two parts, an intelligence that is produced by the organism, and a small extremophile that is then guided into open space.”

  “But again, ‘intelligence’ suggests complexity that these creatures do not possess,” Patel added.

  “We believe each child begins as a single thought, merged with an extremophile,” Seven went on. “This is hard for us to relate to because we often carry many distinct thoughts in our minds simultaneously. The creature’s thoughts, however—at least those that give rise to the Children—are singular. It is clear that in the past, a wide variety of thoughts emerged from the organism, thoughts of moving through space, of communicating with others, and thoughts of destruction. Over time, these creatures must band together and organize themselves into the configurations we have seen. It is likely they must first, however, survive the journey to find other compatible individuals.”

  “Is that why Lasren had such a hard time communicating with them?” Conlon asked. “There were only two distinct types of thoughts present in the sphere we captured?”

  Patel nodded. “Exactly. They need a communicator to talk with us, and probably a highly capable telepath on our end.”

  “I am also not convinced that many of the life-forms whose birth we have witnessed since we arrived would be classified as ‘communicators,’” Seven added.

  “Then what are they?” Eden asked.

  “I believe they are primarily anger and grief,” Seven replied. “I am comparing the frequencies we have already charted from Quirinal’s sensors, and from our scans. At best, this is an educated guess.”

  Eden nodded. She then quickly briefed the others on Lasren’s report. When she had finished, Cambridge scratched his head and said, “So essentially, the Children are sent out into the void as single, powerful thoughts that, once collected, become capable of terribly destructive actions?”

  “Lasren has confirmed our suspicion that they value simple life-forms,” Eden we
nt on. “Clearly they, or their ‘mother,’ witnessed the Borg moving through this sector and ravaging worlds for their resources. This must have angered the ‘mother’ greatly, and saddened her.”

  “And so a war was born,” Cambridge added.

  “It actually also explains their xenophobia,” Patel said. “As long as there were Borg ships in the area, they had a simple purpose. Now, that purpose is gone, but we came along with a ship filled with the one thing that gives them joy.”

  “The life,” Cambridge echoed.

  “They understand so little of life as we know it,” Patel said, nodding. “And the mother’s grief must be unspeakable, especially if she has no knowledge of the Children.”

  “You think she doesn’t know what she’s doing?” Kim asked.

  “Lasren said that her Children don’t know her, though they must have sensed something pretty powerful when we arrived because that allowed them to connect in some new way with him,” Eden said. “It is just as likely, given their life cycle, that she does not know them either. Although you would think that their work, clearing the area of the Borg, would have given her some comfort.”

  “But they could not restore the life to those decimated planets,” Cambridge said, “so what is left for her but to mourn?”

  “Can we communicate with her at all?” Eden asked.

  Seven shook her head. “There might be some telepathic species capable of making a basic connection with her, but in order to avoid risking their possession by the Children, we left all officers that fit that description behind.”

  “Didn’t your catoms allow you to communicate telepathically with the Neyser?” Kim asked.

  “Yes,” Seven acknowledged, “but they reached out to me and established the connection. I cannot initiate a link on my own.”

  “Nor should you try,” Cambridge added. “Given what little we now know, Captain,” he said, addressing himself to Eden, “it is likely that any such contact would be extremely dangerous. This creature’s thoughts come to life, and it has had thousands of years now to wallow in its despair. We’re not going to correct that kind of depression in a single conversation. Years, perhaps, coupled with evidence that life does remain beyond the systems it watched die, might do the trick, but we’re not capable of providing such evidence to it.”