Second Chances: Chapter 16
A/N: I have quite a few chapters in reserve, and am eager to get to them, so I'm going to give you two chapters a week as long as I keep being productive and keep ahead. Enjoy!
Stardate 49579
June 2372
San Francisco, Earth
Lt. B'Elanna Torres lifted Izzy to her hip as the shuttle came to a stop. "Down!" the toddler shouted.
"In a minute," Torres replied as she grabbed their bag. Her patience was already worn just about as thin as it would get from spending the last three hours trying to keep her daughter from disturbing any of the other passengers on the Mars-Earth shuttle, and wondered for the third time in the three months since they moved to Mars why she went through this hassle. In this case, it was for Izzy's first birthday party the next day, and then the Starfleet Marathon with Sydney the following day.
The whole weekend was going to be painful. A toddler's birthday party with far too many people—including John, whom she still didn't like but promised Navi she'd try to—and then too many kilometers with a sister-in-law who was too competitive. And then she would have to turn around and repeat the whole damn shuttle experience on Sunday evening to return back home.
She and Izzy joined the group of officers waiting to beam down to Starfleet Headquarters, and a few minutes later, they found themselves in the main transporter room at Headquarters. "Down!" Izzy insisted again, struggling against her mother's hold.
"Izzy!" Torres snapped, getting the attention of a few passing officers. She took a deep breath. "We're almost at Grandpa's office and there are a lot of people here. I'm going to carry you until we get there, okay?"
When she didn't get a response, she looked over at her daughter to see Izzy giving her an angry look. Well, at least she was going to be quiet about it. For once.
They arrived at Owen Paris's outer office a few minutes later, and as promised, Torres set Izzy down as soon as the outer doors closed behind them. Izzy immediately began running around in circles. "Good morning, Lieutenant," said the admiral's new aide, a small Haliian lieutenant in the teal of the sciences. Her eyes briefly darted to Izzy before returning to Torres. "He's in there with Dr. Sanders," she added.
"Thanks," Torres replied. "C'mon, Izzy. Let's see Grandpa and Aunt Nicki."
"Au'cki!" Izzy exclaimed, changing direction to head toward the now-open door to Paris' inner office.
"Hey, bug," Nicki said, turning toward the door at the sound of Izzy's approximation of her name. She bent down in her chair to pick up the toddler. "And, hello, B'Elanna. How was the trip?"
Torres sighed as she collapsed into an empty chair. "She doesn't do boredom well. Almost like she's related to Tom." She picked up on the fact that she interrupted a serious discussion, and a quick glance at the chronometer told her that Nicki should have been in clinic for another twenty minutes or so. "No clinic today?"
"My last patient before lunch cancelled, so I figured I'd wait for you and this little Paris-ite here," she explained. She gave Izzy a kiss on the head before setting her back down on the ground, and then glanced over at her father before continuing, "We were discussing assignments," she said.
"Are you going somewhere?" Torres knew Nicki's hybridology training would be completed in about two months, and wondered if Starfleet Medical was large enough for two hybrid pediatricians.
"I'm pregnant, so no," Nicki said matter-of-factly, making Torres blink in surprise.
"Congratulations," she said.
"Thanks. The first trimester is kicking my ass. This was a lot easier when I was a decade younger." She rolled her eyes. "It's another boy, so Ainsley is currently not talking to either me or Jason. Coming to a delivery room near you in February. But I was going to be staying at Starfleet Medical anyway. Solaris has been in San Francisco since graduating from Hopkins and has been itching for an opportunity to go anywhere else. He's headed toward DS9."
"DS9?" Torres echoed with a frown. She remembered her conversation with Starfleet Command, then Captain Sisko. "That's right in the middle of two different wars. I doubt there are that many kids on DS9 right now, hybrid or otherwise."
"He's not going as a hybrid pediatrician," Sanders explained. "More of special advisor. We're still learning about the Jem'Hadar, about their biology, anatomy, physiology. We hybridologists learn how to evaluate the medical needs of people we don't have data on. When we do that for hybrids, we have the knowledge of both parental species to fall back on, but we're still better at it for new species than other physicians. That's what he's going to be working on." She glanced over at Admiral Paris, and then back at Torres. "That's not what Dad and I were talking about, though."
"Let's replicate lunch here," Paris interjected. "I'd rather not discuss this in the mess. Even the Admiral's Mess."
Torres frowned, trying to figure out what was so sensitive that it couldn't be discussed in public. She knew about the attacks in Paris and on the power grid, of course—even living on Mars, she couldn't escape news of Earth—but when the whole thing seemed to resolve itself as soon as it had happened, she stopped thinking about it. She was largely uninterested in politics, as long as politics remained uninterested in her and let her continue to do her engineering in peace.
She wondered if Owen's hesitancy was an indication that that might not continue forever.
They replicated lunches and moved to the conference table, while Izzy played with some of the toys that Owen kept for when his grandchildren stopped by; B'Elanna knew that there was no point in trying to get Izzy to sit with them and eat. She'd let them know when she was ready for food. "The attack on Earth really worried Ainsley," Sanders said between bites of her salad. "Even though she knows, on an intellectual level, at least, that the whole thing was orchestrated. She's back on her worry about me joining Starfleet, and I have to admit, there are moments I wonder if she has a point."
"If the Changelings are going to attack Earth, I doubt Denver is going to be any safer than San Francisco," Torres pointed out.
"I don't think it's my physical location that has her worried. I think it's the idea that I'm going to be deployed on a ship somewhere that's significantly more dangerous than either Denver or San Francisco."
"You're pregnant," Torres pointed out. "They're not going to send you anywhere outside the system until your baby is at least six months old. And for all when know, this will be over by then."
"I don't think we can count them out that quickly," Owen said. Both his daughter and daughter-in-law turned to him, eyebrows raised. He raised his hands defensively. "I'm not going to say anything either of you isn't cleared for," he said. "But I can say that a lot of scientific and exploratory projects are being moved to areas with more clearly defined defensive results."
Nicki had grown up with her father's stories and lectures, and B'Elanna was enough like her father-in-law to know how that when he wanted to say something, the best thing to do would be stay quiet until he did, and sure enough, he resumed speaking. "I want this all to be over in the next month or so, but I just don't see that happening. I've never seen this level of preparation from Starfleet. Not during the Cardassian wars, the Galen border conflicts, the Tzenkethi war, or even when the shit was hitting the fan with the Borg. We're facing a more cunning enemy than we've ever encountered before. We can't focus our attention on the Dominion while we're dealing with this Klingon-Cardassian business going on, and because Changelings can be anywhere and anyone, nobody trusts anybody. After all, Leyton almost succeeded in a military coup." He looked pained at that, and Torres felt a surge of guilt that she hadn't thought about the betrayal he would feel that one of his fellow admirals—maybe his friend?—would do such a thing. "And I've had so many blood tests over the last two months that I'm a little amazed each time that I have any blood left." He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Nicki, you're not going anywhere for more than a year, and if this business is still going on when your parental deployment waiver is lifted, Starfleet Medical caps deployments at 90 days. You'll be fine."
"A lot can happen in 90 days," Nicki pointed out.
"A lot can happen in a year," Owen replied. "This whole thing might be over by then, one way or the other. No need worrying about it now. You can tell Ainsley I said that." He turned to his daughter-in-law and sighed again. "You will not believe the number of questions I've had from my colleagues about my Klingon daughter-in-law and how she can help the war effort." Torres snorted and rolled her eyes, and Owen smiled slightly. "That's pretty much what I say," he agreed. "You have a very important job right now. We're anticipating needing a lot of repairs as things heat up. Nobody's going to be reassigning a repair company commander, even though we will both probably have to explain a number of times about why a half-Klingon engineer isn't the panacea we need in this Klingon situation. When your command is up next year, though, it's harder to say what's going to happen."
"I'm not leaving Izzy," she said emphatically.
"You might not have a choice," he replied.
"I will resign my commission first," she promised. "Starfleet already took away her father, Owen. I'm not going to let them take me, too."
He looked sad at the words, but he nodded slowly. "I know," he said. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there." His eyes traveled between the two women again. "I didn't mean for this to get doom-and-gloom," he admitted. "We've got uncertainty ahead of us, but not for a while. In the meantime, we keep doing what we're doing. We're Starfleet officers; sometimes, that's all we can do. And until then," a large grin spread over his face as he turned to his granddaughter, now spinning around in a circle while holding a toy ship over her head. "We have a one-year-old to spoil. Get over here, Izzy. Grandpa wants to play shuttles, too."