Star Trek: Voyager: Children of the Storm

by Kirsten Beyer

  “Thank you.”

  “Was it true?” B’Elanna asked frankly.

  Eden paused, confusion flashing across her face. “Of course it was,” she finally replied.

  “Then I have a question,” B’Elanna went on. “Why are two dozen ships that no one could ever mistake as anything but war craft sitting in a classified bay aboard Achilles?”

  Eden’s chin fell and a deep sigh escaped her lips. “I was wondering when you might think to ask about them.”

  “I’ve been a little busy,” B’Elanna replied. “But it’s bothered me ever since I saw them. They’re not like any other Starfleet vessels I’ve ever seen: single-pilot, phaser banks and torpedo launchers, obviously intended for short-range close-combat situations. What possible use could a fleet ostensibly out here to make peace have for ships like that?”

  “There are two,” Eden replied evenly. “The first is experimental, the second is defensive. Both the Dominion War and the recent Borg invasion have designers at Starfleet reconsidering every single aspect of our armaments. Years of peaceful exploration haven’t made the galaxy a safer place, much as we might hope otherwise. We’re not looking for any fights, but if they come our way, we must be as prepared as possible to face them with minimal losses on our part. Command has chosen to provide us with these vessels for our use should the need arise. The eight ships that remain in our fleet are certainly imposing, but in a combat situation where sheer numbers would make the difference, our fleet would more than triple in size.”

  “Am I to understand that these ships would only be used as some sort of last resort?”

  “The choices I made over the last month should allay any fears you might have otherwise. I could easily have chosen to launch them, along with the rest of the fleet, and simply attacked the Children of the Storm with every weapon at my disposal. I chose not to do so for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that we still had other options on the table.”

  “I want to believe you,” B’Elanna said. “But it’s difficult. I’m also not sure who would fly them should the need arise.”

  “Achilles has several special operations pilots on board who trained on them before we left the Alpha Quadrant. As I said, I have my doubts that they will ever see use out here, but if we need them, I sleep a little better at night knowing we have them.”

  B’Elanna considered Eden’s words and the sincerity with which they’d been spoken. Finally she asked, “Why does it feel like the Starfleet I was raised respecting, even when I wasn’t sure I could be a part of it, doesn’t exist anymore? You said we can’t let our fears turn us into something other than what we have always professed to be. But what if that’s already happened?”

  “Starfleet is and always will be worthy of your respect and the best service you can possibly offer it. But like any organization of individuals, some are better than others at upholding its highest principles. Our job is to make sure we are walking every day on the right side of the line, even when the path is difficult to see. Possessing a weapon does not obligate us to use it. But we should not allow everything we have built for generations to fall into oblivion simply because we were unwilling to use every single resource at our disposal in its defense,” Eden replied.

  “Then why keep them secret?” was B’Elanna’s final question.

  Eden considered the question. “That was Willem’s call.”

  “Admiral Batiste no longer commands this fleet.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Eden said thoughtfully. “I’ll brief the other captains tomorrow,” she seemed to decide right then and there. “I’ll leave it to them to determine how best to disseminate the knowledge among their crews.”

  B’Elanna sighed as some of the tension she’d been holding in her shoulders released. “Thank you, Captain. Though maybe I should be more careful what I wish for.”

  “What do you mean?” Eden asked.

  “I don’t care who you have ready to fly them, I can think of one former pilot who’s not going to sleep peacefully one more night until he’s had a chance to test one.”

  “Thankfully, Commander, that is not my problem to solve,” Eden said with a knowing smile.

  STARDATE 58537.9

  U.S.S. QUIRINAL

  Regina Farkas had toured every bit of her reconstructed ship in the last week, including the bridge, but as she paused before stepping onto it this morning, she felt the same internal flurry of excitement she had felt the first day she had boarded Quirinal.

  It’s probably just the smell of new starship, she chided herself.

  Or maybe it’s the fact that you never thought you’d have the chance to do this again, a wiser voice suggested.

  It was true that the last coherent memory she had of Quirinal’s near destruction was the certainty that she was about to die, and the peace that thought had brought her. Now she wondered how she could ever have entertained the notion. Her unsought reprieve had energized her in a way she could never have expected. If life had seemed precious to her before, it now gleamed with a luster she could not remember ever experiencing.

  El’nor had suggested firmly that once they were under way, Regina should avail herself of their counselor’s services. Farkas had suffered a trauma, no matter how pretty a face she tried to put on it now, and she needed to deal with that lest it rear its head when she least expected it. If she’d needed evidence beyond her own troubled reckoning of her last day of consciousness several weeks earlier, she found it in the difficulty some of her people were still having in working as cohesively as they once had. Psilakis and Roach presented the greatest difficulties, as Psilakis had refused to return any of the crew that had been compromised by the Children to active duty until Voyager had arrived and Captain Eden had given the order. She understood Psilakis’s reticence, but also knew that this particular chapter of their past needed to be put behind all of them. Roach had agreed, but Farkas sensed it would take time until the bonds of trust that had been broken could begin to heal.

  Regina had already scheduled a series of appointments for herself, but despite El’nor’s well-founded concern, she did not fear … well, anything these days. Every day before her was a gift. That was true for everyone, but few took the time to see it that way.

  If Regina had made any mistake in the past, it had only been to forget that while, as the Klingons believed, today might be a good day to die, it was an infinitely better one to live.

  She had been smiling internally when she stepped onto the bridge, but as her senior staff erupted in a spontaneous round of applause as she moved to take her seat, that smile lit her entire face.

  “It’s good to see all of you too,” she said, settling into her chair. “Status?” she asked of Commander Roach.

  “We’re ready to depart,” he replied.

  The rest of the fleet was orbiting the planet, awaiting Quirinal’s launch. She almost envied her fellow captains the view they would have of the next few minutes.

  “Helm,” Farkas said calmly, even as her insides tingled with pleasure at the thought of all that lay before her, “take us up.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Ensign Hoch replied.

  With those words, Quirinal lifted from the surface of an unnamed world that by all rights should have been its grave. As dense banks of white clouds cleared and her ship climbed to the heavens, Farkas said a silent prayer of thanks. She had never really doubted her life’s choices, even when they led her into darkness. The blackness above now beckoned and in it depths, dotted with distant stars, she felt only hope. Though it might be a pity that few could choose the manner of their death, the greater tragedy by far was in failing to choose a life this filled with promise.

  Epilogue

  U.S.S. VOYAGER

  As usual, Afsarah Eden was having a hard time sleeping. Rather than fight it, she had chosen to spend a few hours alone on the holodeck. Among her personal files was a program she had not run for years. Tonight, however, it beckoned.

  Occidon’s Parush Deser
t had once been home to hundreds of nomadic tribes. Its northern edge was bordered by high stone cliffs in which countless caves had been carved and where archeologists had spent years analyzing the illuminated texts that decorated the walls. Most of them were creation stories detailing the romances of Occidon’s single sun and the four sisters, or moons visible in the night sky. When Jobin and Tallar had taken her there as a young girl, they had made sure to point out the dozens of different stories contemporary peoples had created to explain the nature of their existence. Unlike many similar civilizations, Parush’s inhabitants had been unique in that they seemed perfectly agreeable to disagreeing among themselves about their origin stories. Whereas other cultures at similar stages of their development had usually fought bloody wars meant to prove the supremacy of their beliefs or gods, these people had seemed to accept early on that new ideas could be a source of richness and strength. A story did not necessarily have to be true to be of value, especially when truth was difficult or impossible to know. Above all, these people had cherished the rights of all individuals to their own beliefs, and their ability to embrace this challenging concept meant that thousands of examples of these priceless works of art remained for history to study, despite the fact that those who made them, as well as their descendants, had long ago turned to dust.

  Eden loved the caves, and often retreated to them when seeking solitude, but tonight she chose to sit beside one of the many hot springs that still bubbled up from the base of the canyon. An intensely dry heat still came off the desert in waves, even now that night had fallen and the four sisters danced above, but a soft wind whispered through the canyon, chilling the air enough to eliminate the oppressive heat.

  As she reflected upon the last several weeks, she found herself emphasizing less than she had for the rest of her people the good they had managed to salvage from this near disastrous turn of events. She did not doubt her actions once the die was cast, but given what had been lost, Eden did wonder at the choice Command had made in ordering the mission in the first place. As commander of the fleet, part of her job was to put the best possible face on their orders for those who served under her. But she’d be damned if she didn’t consider their orders a little more carefully in the future, weighing risk against potential reward and bucking Admiral Montgomery or anyone else necessary if she did not feel that there was an appropriate balance between the two.

  She was surprised to hear footsteps approaching and worried that duty might be about to call.

  “May I join you, Captain?” Chakotay’s voice asked as he stepped toward the spring and into a beam of moonlight.

  “Please,” Eden replied, gesturing for him to take a seat beside her next to the small bubbling pool of water.

  “Is anything wrong, Chakotay?”

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Just restless tonight.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “This place is magnificent,” Chakotay said once he’d settled himself cross-legged on the ground.

  “You should see it in the daytime,” Eden replied. “The caves above are the really amazing part.”

  “Where are we?”

  “The Parush Desert,” Eden replied. “Occidon is an uninhabited planet in the Beta Quadrant.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Chakotay said, “but never had a chance to see it for myself.”

  “I was there when I was a child,” Eden offered.

  A comfortable silence fell between them. The heat and pleasant soft gurgling of water seemed to have the same calming effect on Chakotay that they’d always had on Eden.

  “Your remarks last night were very appropriate,” Chakotay said, breaking the silence.

  Though Eden hadn’t really been looking for a review, she was gratified to hear it. “I hope it’s the last such gathering of our people for the next few years.”

  “No argument there,” Chakotay agreed.

  “Was there something on your mind?” Eden ventured.

  Chakotay shrugged. “Not really, although I did want to tell you that I probably didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt you deserved.”

  “Every call we had to make along the way was tough,” Eden said. “Things could have gone either way at several points, and I think we were lucky it all worked out the way it did.”

  “If I’d had my way, we might still be at war with the Children of the Storm right now.”

  “I doubt it,” Eden replied. “I’m pretty sure they could have taken us long before now.” After a moment she added, “But that’s not why I refused to engage them sooner than we did.”

  “I know,” Chakotay said sincerely. “I had a brief discussion with Hugh a few weeks ago, and he made me realize something I haven’t really wanted to face.”

  “What was that, if I may ask?”

  “While we may learn to accept loss, we shouldn’t learn to like it. I’ve had to make peace with too much of it in the last few years. What bothers me is the fact that each time something else is taken, I seem to feel it less.”

  Eden gazed at him thoughtfully. “There’s only so much we can absorb before we become numb.”

  “But surely that’s no way to live.”

  Eden sighed. “The night before we discovered the Children’s mother, I was doing a lot of thinking about exactly what does make life worth living.”

  “Did you reach any conclusions?”

  “The first was that I can think a problem to death. The second was that if I’m going to make mistakes, they’re going to be big ones from now on, as long as they come from the right place.”

  “That sounds a little scary,” Chakotay admitted.

  “My losses most definitely pale in comparison to yours. But that’s only because I have risked less in the past, both personally and professionally. I need to trust others more, but to do that, I have to trust myself. Pain is frightening, and unavoidable. Suffering, however, is optional.”

  Chakotay turned away for a moment, then nodded slowly.

  Finally, Eden said, “Even though I helped select all of the officers of this fleet, O’Donnell surprised the living hell out of me in the last few weeks. I don’t know how much of his personal history you know, but his tragedies are some I don’t even like to think about. And still, he rages against the universe, completely determined to do what others believe impossible. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the utter gall of a man who can create brand-new life-forms with such seeming ease.”

  “It’s interesting,” Chakotay said, “how sometimes the universe puts people exactly where they need to be when they are needed most.”

  “You think the universe has a plan for all of us?” Eden asked.

  “I’ve seen enough coincidences like this to make me believe it’s as reasonable a position as any other,” Chakotay replied. “I’m not saying I always like the universe’s choices, but over time, they bend toward progress, if not absolute harmony.”

  “Hm,” Eden said. “It’s a nice thought.”

  Chakotay started to rise, and Eden joined him. Before he could offer a polite reason for leaving, she said, “There’s another large spring just over there,” indicating an area just south of their position. “There are some ancient remains of a public bathing area you might find interesting.”

  Chakotay smiled. “You’ve heard of my humble passion for archaeology?” he asked.

  “It’s one we share,” Eden replied as she directed their steps toward the ruins. “Though you come by it more honestly than I.”

  “How so?”

  “I was raised by two men who spent the vast majority of their lives studying such places,” she said. “They dragged me from one fascinating planet to the next as a young girl.”

  “So it’s in your blood,” Chakotay noted.

  “I don’t know,” Eden replied honestly.

  Chakotay turned a puzzled face to hers. “Captain?”

  “There’s something I’d like to tell you, Chakotay,” Eden said, suddenly certain that if she wa
s going to begin to live according to her words, she had to start somewhere. Perhaps it had something to do with her recent admission to Cambridge and the passion with which he’d embraced the hunt. It might also have been B’Elanna’s not so subtle reminder the previous night that secrecy had its place, but not necessarily among those who were prepared to live and die by your orders. Or maybe it was simply that Eden wanted to trust others with more of herself than she was accustomed to sharing up to this point. Before Willem, she had felt incredibly alone most of the time and had convinced herself that she liked it that way. Once he had left her she had locked herself away behind her daily duties and responsibilities, unwilling to risk that sort of pain again. It had felt safe.

  But it was no way to live.

  “Before I do, though,” she went on, “I wonder if you could do me a favor?”

  “Of course,” Chakotay replied.

  “Duty is one thing, but when it’s just us, you should call me Afsarah,” she said.

  It was difficult to tell in the dimness if Chakotay’s face flushed, but there was no mistaking the sense of relief in his smile.

  “Okay, Afsarah,” he said. “It’s a lovely name, by the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what did you want to tell me?”

  “It’s kind of a long story, and I’m not sure yet how it ends. But it has a lot to do with the reason I accepted command of Voyager and, subsequently, the entire fleet.”

  Chakotay nodded. “Intriguing,” he offered.

  You have no idea, Eden thought.

  “It starts fifty years ago on a planet not that different from this one. You see, when I was a little girl …” she began.

  The conversation lasted for hours, but Eden had no doubt once it ended that she had chosen well in sharing what she knew of her past with Chakotay. He had embraced the mystery every bit as enthusiastically as Cambridge, along with her determination to allow it to unfold in its own time.

  What Eden knew for certain when Chakotay had finally bidden her good night was that the universe had become a significantly less lonely place.