Star Trek: Voyager: Children of the Storm Read online

  “I WANT YOU ALL TO PROMISE ME SOMETHING,”

  NEELIX FINALLY SAID.

  “Name it,” Chakotay replied.

  “As long as you’re all here in the Delta Quadrant, I want to hear of your progress. Captain Eden has promised to make regular contact, but I want to hear from all of you as well. I have my hands full on New Talax, but even from a distance, I’ll always feel a part of this crew.”

  “Consider it done,” Chakotay assured him.

  “Do you have any idea where you’re headed next?” Neelix asked.

  No one did until Chakotay said, “Have you ever heard of a species that call themselves the Children of the Storm?”

  Neelix had to confess, he hadn’t. “They don’t sound terribly friendly,” he observed.

  “Who are they?” the Doctor asked.

  Chakotay sighed. “I don’t want to turn this lovely evening into a mission briefing, but I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”

  Pocket Books

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ™, ® and © 2011 by CBS Studios Inc. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of

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  First Pocket Books paperback edition June 2011

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  Cover design by Alan Dingman; cover art by Michael Stetson

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0718-5

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0722-2 (ebook)

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  Acknowlegments

  About the Author

  For Anorah …

  my grace

  Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.

  —Mahatma Gandhi

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE

  Children of the Storm takes place concurrent with and immediately following the events of Star Trek Voyager: Unworthy, from late May to mid-July 2381.

  Prologue

  U.S.S. QUIRINAL

  Standing just inside what had once been the doorway to the U.S.S. Quirinal’s main engineering bay, Captain Regina Farkas felt the adrenaline-fueled tension of the last hour dissipate as a strangely calming thought flitted gently into her mind and found a place to settle.

  It’s a pity so few of us are allowed to choose the time and manner of our death.

  Cold comfort, to be sure, but certainly better than the fate of the billions of Federation citizens who had suddenly found death raining down on an otherwise ordinary day just a few months earlier when the Borg had invaded the Alpha Quadrant.

  Though Regina had faced the possibility of death more times than she cared to remember in her forty-nine years of service to Starfleet, she was surprised by the serenity descending upon her now that the die was well and truly cast. If death had once seemed like the unwelcome relation one was forced to invite to major family gatherings, Regina now found herself completely prepared to walk across the room and shake the bastard’s hand.

  Not that she wanted to die. Like those who had worn the weary mantle of command before her, and those who would someday rise to take her place, she had her fair share of regrets. But as she mentally filed them away as “forever undone,” she decided that peace was easier to embrace when you didn’t doubt for a moment that you had spent the majority of the time you’d been given doing the thing that made you feel alive.

  In Regina’s case, that had been exploring the vastness of space, leading others on awe-inspiring journeys into the unknown. Though the practical reality certainly came with stretches of the mind-numbingly boring, those were easily eclipsed by the unimagined sights, the exotic tastes and fragrances, and the sheer variety of life, both simple and complex, that thrived within the many systems she had been fortunate enough to visit as she traveled among what had always seemed like the infinite stars of the galaxy.

  The hard and basic truth of this moment was that she had no real choice. Or, rather, she had made the choice that now brought her such certainty years ago, when she had accepted her first command. And perhaps some small part of her had known even then that in choosing the life of her dreams, she was also choosing her ultimate fate—the probability of it, anyway, if not the finer points.

  The acrid tang of the air, which the room’s environmental processors were failing to clear, the suffocating heat that rose from the deck, the sweat matting her white bangs to her forehead and trickling down her back, the pulsing ocher glow of the emergency lights, the weight of the compression rifle she cradled in one arm, the glowing panel of the portable beam emitter she had seconds to target, and the uncomfortable itch of the leather band she had just secured around her wrist were the vivid details of a picture that had been drawn the day she’d accepted that her life was to be one of service—a picture that had been hazy and unfocused until these last few precious seconds had finally caught up with her.

  Mechanical whines, hisses, clanks, and the occasional grunt behind her were the last symphony she would hear. True, they weren’t her beloved Khachaturian, but they would suffice. Focusing on them made it easier to block out the distant intermittent shouts and phaser discharges coming from elsewhere on the deck—nerve-racking reminders that the battle for the lives of her six-hundred-plus crew members would continue even after she was gone.

  A crackle of static over the comm system interrupted her reverie, followed by the voice of Lieutenant Psilakis from the bridge.

  “Two hostiles and eight escorts are approaching your position, Captain.”

  Only two?<
br />
  She smiled grimly before replying with a simple “I know.” Her tricorder had told her as much forty-five seconds earlier.

  As she imagined the hostiles dancing through the hall toward her, her tight smile widened. They were coming to finish what they had begun. They were hell-bent on destroying her and her ship. But there was still an infinitesimal possibility that they would not succeed. Standing between the Children of the Storm and their ultimate victory was a terrified but ingenious lieutenant junior grade, Phinnegan Bryce. It was still possible that he would succeed in bringing the slipstream drive on line to hurtle her badly damaged vessel far from the peril they now faced. This was a task he alone could perform, and she was duty bound to give him as much time as she could to finish his work, even if it was the last thing she would ever do.

  “A few more seconds, Captain,” Phinn called, no longer bothering to try to sound brave.

  I know.

  “Best possible speed, Lieutenant,” Farkas shot back, wishing she could inject a little of the absurd hope she had already pinned on him into his lanky frame.

  Instead, Phinn’s palpable terror caused her to grip her rifle a little more tightly.

  Relax, the captain reminded herself, drawing breath from the center of her body. It wouldn’t do for the suppression beams to miss their target because she was holding unnecessary tension in her trigger finger. Once they were successfully established around the hostiles, her calm would have to be maintained as she faced the Children’s escorts, who would undoubtedly rush into the fray to free them.

  Farkas’s eyes danced over the heavy pieces of exposed metal framing the doorway. Jagged and twisted into a tangled mass, they were painful reminders of the destructive power of the enemies she was about to face. She could only imagine what the rest of her ship must look like now, given what had transpired in the last hour. En route to engineering, she had glimpsed gaping wounds edged with sharp tritanium spikes and surfaces rotting under the corrosive heat and radioactive power of the Children’s ruptured energy shells. By now, almost every deck could have suffered such violence.

  There was a shrill bleep as Phinn activated the shipwide comm. “All hands, prepare to go to slipstream velocity on my mark.”

  For the love of the gods, get on with it, Lieutenant, Regina refrained from saying aloud.

  “Five … four … three …”

  Two.

  Two of the alien spheres she had first seen in the logs of Captain Ezri Dax of the Aventine rounded the corner of the hall and came into view. If they hadn’t been so ominous, Regina might have found them beautiful. Truth be told, the explorer in her heart found them utterly and horribly magnificent.

  Inhaling sharply, and holding her last breath, Captain Regina Farkas activated the suppression beams. Orange light shot forth and froze the spheres in place.

  A single shot whizzed by her head and sent her rolling to the ground. Coming up, she raised her phaser rifle and with deadly accuracy opened fire on her own people.

  Chapter One

  STARDATE 58450.2

  U.S.S. VOYAGER

  “Well, that’s just overkill,” Harry Kim said glumly as he surveyed the line of cannons dotting the ridge that separated him and his fellow unnamed slave, Tom Paris, from Chaotica’s castle.

  “Chaotica was never much for subtlety,” Tom reminded him, unable to hide his exhaustion.

  “Yeah, but this isn’t Chaotica,” Harry argued. “It’s Cambridge.”

  “You haven’t spent enough time with our counselor, Harry,” Tom tossed back. “The man makes Chaotica look positively restrained.”

  Much as he wanted to, Harry couldn’t argue with that. Though Hugh Cambridge had joined Voyager’s crew almost three years earlier, Harry had never found the time or the inclination to really get close to the man. Even during the last of what Harry remembered as the relatively good times aboard Voyager, an extended exploratory mission to the Yaris Nebula, Harry had avoided the counselor. The seemingly ceaseless battles of the year and a half that followed, coupled with the string of losses of those he held dear and his own near death, should have thrown him more regularly into Cambridge’s path. Maybe if they had, Harry admitted to himself, he wouldn’t feel quite so lost now. Then again, he had always assured himself that he could handle whatever the universe threw at him, right up until he discovered that he simply couldn’t.

  And this is Cambridge’s idea of therapy? Harry thought bitterly. Covered in smelly, tattered rags in a monochrome desert beside the man whom he had once counted as a brother but whose presence now only fired his rage, Harry decided he’d been right not to seek the counselor’s services. The sooner he and Tom captured the damn castle, the better. Then he could cross this toilsome exercise off his list, get back to the solitude of his quarters, and figure out what the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life and career.

  A grimace of pain Tom failed to hide caught his attention.

  “What?” Harry demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not your problem,” Tom replied tersely.

  “Just tell me,” Harry insisted without softening his tone. “If you’ve got an issue that’s going to hinder our ability to get over that ridge, I need to know about it now.”

  “I’m fine,” Tom shot back.

  “You’re not.”

  “Look, you’re not chief of security right now, buddy,” Tom reminded him. “You’re Unnamed Slave Number Two, and Unnamed Slave Number One can handle a sand flea–bitten, pulled hamstring without your assistance,” he added hotly.

  Since when are you Unnamed Slave Number One? Harry wanted to ask, but held his peace. They’d been trudging through the desert for what felt like forever, and pulling rank, or forcing Tom to admit that it didn’t exist here, wasn’t going to solve their mutual problem. Typical of Tom, anyway.

  He settled for stating the obvious. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?”

  “Nope,” Tom agreed, “but I think I know what would.”

  Harry doubted it but shrugged anyway. “Let’s hear it.”

  Tom slapped the back of his neck and immediately began scratching at yet another bite as he laid out his plan. “I’m going to head south. The castle’s drainage system has an opening just past the walls, and if I can make it inside …”

  Harry had already found multiple flaws with this suggestion, not the least of which was that getting to the south wall would take hours he was no longer prepared to spend on this exercise in futility.

  “Even assuming you get that far, which you won’t,” Harry assured him, “didn’t we destroy that drain in Episode Thirty-nine?”

  “‘Captain Proton and the Mean, Bad, Dirty, Stinking Robot’?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah.” Harry nodded, almost cracking a smile.

  “Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I’ll find a way in.”

  “No, you’ll die trying,” Harry insisted.

  Tom paused long enough to offer Harry a cynical grin. “Better me than you.”

  “Since when?” escaped Harry’s lips in surprise.

  “Since forever, Harry,” Tom said more seriously.

  Harry was genuinely taken aback.

  “Oh, come on, Harry,” Tom answered his unspoken doubt. “You know I’d die for you. It’s not a long list, granted. And you’re not at the top of it. But right below B’Elanna and Miral, there’s you.”

  “You don’t have to … I mean …” Harry began, but found himself at an uncomfortable loss for words.

  “Apparently, I do,” Tom went on. “Ever since B’Elanna and Miral got back you seem to have forgotten the years and years of stuff between us that equals me dying for you should the occasion call for it. And even though you don’t believe me, that was still true when I wasn’t telling you that B’Elanna and Miral were still alive, which, by the way, was as much about protecting you as it was them.”

  Tom had pleaded his case dozens of times since their “counseling” sess
ion had begun the previous morning, but Harry wasn’t buying it. He understood the circumstances: a mad Klingon sect wanted Tom’s daughter dead. But in Tom’s place, Harry could never have lied about his desperate plan to save Miral. He could never have let his best friend believe that two of the people he loved most in the universe were dead. For Harry this betrayal was clear evidence that Tom didn’t trust him, which after ten years of friendship was impossible to comprehend. Harry felt adrift in a lonely sea of frustration he could no longer find the energy to attempt to describe.

  “Fine,” he snapped. “You’d die for me.”

  “I would.”

  “Fine.”

  “I would, Harry.”

  “So you said.”

  “And I’m going to, right now,” Tom added emphatically as he pulled himself up off his belly to begin his southern march.

  Harry rose to a seated position, watching Tom trudge away. He knew he should follow. Even with two functioning hamstrings, Tom wasn’t going to get within half a kilometer of that drain on his own. But Harry didn’t really want to follow anyone anymore. He wanted to find his own road, and somehow reclaim the optimism that had once made him unique among his peers. He used to enjoy his life. He suddenly realized how much of the problem he now grappled with was the fact that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt anything approaching joy. The hours he and Tom had once spent on this very holodeck used to be the highlight of any given day. A new question caught him by surprise.

  “Can you just tell me one thing first?” he called out.

  Tom halted but didn’t turn around as he answered, “Sure.”

  “Why isn’t this fun anymore?” Harry asked simply.

  At this, Tom did turn to face Harry, and the cockiness that had always been his best defense was nowhere to be seen.

  “You really have to ask?” Tom said with genuine sympathy.

  And then it hit Harry harder than the body blow he’d felt when he’d first read B’Elanna’s and Miral’s names on that fraudulent casualty list.

  “We’ve been living the real thing for too long, haven’t we?” Harry said.