12. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
"ARE you two going to disobey any more orders today, or have you exhausted your retinue of insubordanate acts now?" asked a clearly angry Captian Rodd, who was circling in on them and squaring up to them as she delivered her dressing down. She was clearly not impressed by the latest stunt they'd pulled, even though Chief O'Brien was impressed by the technical feat they'd managed to pull, notwithstanding the moral feat; even though both could easily result in himself and Dax being kicked out of Starfleet for what they'd done. "I don't know whether to throw you in the brig, have you court-martialed or congratulate you for what you've done. Maybe you deserve all three."
Chief O'Brien stiffened a little and looked captain Rodd squarely in the eye, not as an aggressive gesture, but to show that although he had gone against orders, it had been down to a sense of conviction and moral necessity. He said "It was the only way we could save the lives of the Remans, without letting their anti mutiny detonators be activated by Korvar, and to preserve the alliance by letting them escape under the Romulans noses. I couldn't have lived with myself if we'd left them to it. We had to help them escape."
Captain Rodd put her hand up; a gesture to tell him to save his excuses. "Well both of you left us with no choice but to let them stow away on our ship, did you! Leaving aside the fact we've gone behind an ally's back for a second. It was an enormous risk to beam the Remans to the cargo bay like that; we thought enemy forces were boarding us. It was lucky a firefight was averted."
Dax spoke up. "Our plan to store the Remans transporter patterns in a diagnostic cycle in the buffers, so that we could smuggle them off the planet without their onboard lifesigns showing on the Romulan sensors, meant we had to initiate rematerialisation as soon as we could, in order to prevent irreversible pattern degradation, we couldn't be too choosy about where we materialised them once we had entered inside your shield bubble. It was a risk, but it was one that paid off. The Romulans didn't suspect a thing"
Rodd turned her back to them and clasped her hands behind her back and she said stiffly "For how long though lieutenant? You know how fast information travels these days. One of the media outlets discover that we covertly helped Remans escape, they'll have a field day. It'd be naïve to think news of this won't leak out. Especially if you've convinced the Remans that they should broadcast their emancipation to their fellow oppressed.
Despite her anger towards the pair, the captain needed to satiate her curiosity about their audacious plan, and she said to them "How did come up with the idea to smuggle them in the pattern buffers? Wasn't it risky doing that for the time they were in animation, you could easily have lost their patterns in situ "
"I told Jenvon that if you need to Maguffin your way out of a situation, you just had to think what Scotty would do, so I did just that. Just before I left the Enterprise for DS9, we found the great man himself, after he'd been found in his ship that had crash landed on that Dyson sphere we discovered that year. He'd done just what we did with the transporter, to store his pattern to survive while he awaited rescue. I just took a leaf out of his book and applied it to smuggle Remans off Zalod." O'Brien answered.
Rodd eyed O'Brien with suspicion, as if she didn't believe the story was possible. "How long was his pattern in the buffer Chief?" O'Brien smiled as he gave her the figure "Seventy five years sir. Amazing invention the transporter, isn't it sir?" "Seventy five years. Quite" said the captain who was stunned that such a thing was possible.
"But how did you fake the lifesigns, the battle in the sensor post? Who was firing those disruptors down there. That was some impressive deflection shooting, I have a hard time believing that was done remotely.
Dax said "We rigged the EM emitters and the sensors in the outpost to put out fake Reman lifesigns, as well as rigging up live disrupters throughout the base, programmed to fire blast cycles consistent with discharges you'd typically read from a ground battle. We switched the lifeform readings and disruptors off accordingly, from the Sabre to simulate casualties. But the disrupters were live, and Pya'Chl lifesigns would have been real. The Pya'Chl would have been in for a shock even though there was no-one down there, what with the unmanned disruptors firing all over the place."
O'Brien said "We say no-one, but one man remained to man the disrupter turrets. We couldn't fake that convincingly and they'd have to be fired by an operator to work as effectively as they did. Jenvon was the last to remain, to pull his part off for the illusion to play out in in full. He was beamed away, about the time the Pya'Chl ship was taken out, just before it collided with the outpost."
Rodd seemed a little awed at the sheer outrageousness of their little scheme and said "It was still terribly risky, with so many margins for error. You subterfuge was all encompassing, but the Romulans could easily have discovered the lifesigns were faked had they really studied the telemetry. They still could if they go back and double check the sensor logs they made."
O'Brien provided an explanation to how they accommodated this issue to captain Rodd. "Yes sir there was that risk to be sure, but remember that the Romulans only cared about the Remans when they knew we were trying to help them, apart from that they were content to just abandon them to die and forget about them. They didn't seem concerned that we were near that ship until we made contact. I suspect when they heard Jenvon and his men had stayed, and saw them "die" in the "battle", they were content that the Remans had gone to their deaths like good martyrs. Problem solved, and that was that as far as they were concerned. Huh what do they know?" It was O'Brien's turn to ask questions now and he said "Captain, may I make one request? I know that I probably shouldn't, not after what we did…." The captain stopped him. "Mr O'Brien, I won't deny I am annoyed that the two of you disobeyed order, but we do not churn out Starfleet officers to be mindless Borg drones. Or to view sentient life as expendable as some in the Romulan officer class might do. You acted in good conscience and as there has been no fall out, well as yet anyway – I am sure that I can have the matter overlooked and just settle for a reprimand for you both. I'm sure you'll be as keen to move forward from the whole affair, as I am."
O'Brien said graciously "Thank you sir that is very kind of you. As for my request, would it be possible for me to go and see Jenvon. He and his men weren't hurt in any way were they? Is he up to visitors yet as I'm keen to send my regards to him." Rodd was slow to answer him, and O'Brien felt a knot in the pit of his stomach, something was up and from the captain's expression, when he mentioned his name, it meant that it probably wasn't good news. "Of the twelve Remans that were beamed aboard, all were in good health aside from a few bumps and bruises you'd expect to see on front line troops, as well as some ailments that were due to the cold." O'Brien, who had tension in his voice said "But there were thirteen Remans. Jenvon?" The captain stared at the floor for a second and said "You haven't been told have you. It appears Jenvon's pattern was lost completely. I am so sorry Chief, there is no physical trace of the General we can locate. Jenvon, as far as we can tell; is gone."