Star Trek Voyager - 40 - Children of the Storm by Star Trek

Author:Star Trek
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781451607185
Publisher: Star Trek
Published: 2011-05-31T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

SIXTEEN DAYS EARLIER

U.S.S. DEMETER

As Commander Liam O’Donnell exited the bridge, his hands were already beginning to shake. The calm veneer he had just displayed for his crew was a performance he had perfected over the years. It was easier to do in the presence of a genuine problem as intriguing as the Children of the Storm because at least part of his mind could focus on that. The moment he was alone, however, he was forced to acknowledge the gravity of the situation, and to add this to the list of things at which he had failed in his life.

Anyone looking at O’Donnell’s file would have had a hard time seeing those failures. His record was a collection of one amazing and usually impossible accomplishment after another. Only Liam counted the lives lost in the days, weeks, months, and years leading up to his breakthroughs. Only Liam knew that the most important thing he had ever attempted had ended in abject failure and two deaths he could never accept.

Only Liam knew that he had eschewed active command of a vessel for years because he doubted his ability to function under the stress of a situation exactly like the one he now found himself in. Every life aboard Demeter was now his to save or lose, and if lost, he doubted he would ever recover.

“Alana,” he whispered, placing one slow and steady foot in front of the other, trying as best he could not to allow the familiar panic that was the prelude to failure to engulf him.

As the seconds dragged with no response, a cascade of shadows began to crowd in around him.

This isn’t my fault, Alana, he pleaded with her. Please, answer me. Everyone is doing the best they can. No one is going to die. I’ll go back to the lab and get to work. These aliens have a weakness and I’ll find it before anyone else does. You’ll see. I won’t fail you again.

Every time he repeated this thought, he believed it less.

Alana, please …

A vaguely familiar darkness asserted itself. A nauseating wave swept over him, beginning in his toes and leaving him sweating and breathless within seconds. A hand lifted to his head came down drenched.

No … nobody has died yet.

It’s been years.

Years since the walls had fallen.

Years spent patiently rebuilding them with Alana’s help.

Years since he had risked anything more disastrous than the failure of one of his experiments.

Damn you to hell, Willem Batiste. Damn the Children of the Storm, the Borg, the Delta Quadrant. Damn the entire Federation.

Placing one hand against the hallway wall to steady himself, the commander wondered how long his stomach would continue to hold its contents.

He forced his eyes to focus on a single joint on the wall, but with each breath he attempted, the sourness in his stomach ratcheted upward and a pool of tinny saliva gathered in his mouth.

Looking up, he saw a ghost standing before him. Obsidian eyes glared at him, far more menacing than the brown, rough-scaled flesh of Kressari’s Quorum Minister Genov-see.

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