Second Chances: Chapter 26
A/N: This chapter is by request. And I'm still on my iPad, so formatting is still weird.
Stardate 50894
December 2373
Mars Station, Mars
Lt. B'Elanna Torres had entered the Starfleet Technical Academy and was on her way toward the Salvage course she taught at 1000 when she was intercepted by Chief Kiyashko. "I'm teaching your class today, sir," the petite repair chief announced.
"Really?" Torres asked with a frown. She pulled out her PADD, but couldn't find any notation that she wasn't teaching that morning. "Why?"
"I think that's above my paygrade, sir," Kiyashko replied. "I was just told that you're needed elsewhere and that I needed to fill in."
"Well, okay," Torres said slowly. She didn't know what was going on, but had a feeling that the pieces would fall into place shortly. "We're on chapter 17."
Kiyashko pulled out her own PADD and found the relevant chapter. "Warp core salvage," she said, sounding pleased. "That's my favorite."
"Mine, too," Torres admitted. "Whatever they have me doing instead better be good." As if on cue, her PADD chirped with an incoming message. It was encrypted, which was not surprising; almost all of her messages had been encrypted since she started working on the Jem'Hadar ship. Once she pressed her thumb to decrypt, the message hardly became any clearer: 1000 meeting at CBHQ.
Commander Winters had a tendency to be succinct, but this was ridiculous.
She bid Chief Kiyashko luck with the lecture and hurried over to the headquarters building for the Construction Battalion, heading toward the flurry of activity around the conference room. "Aren't you supposed to be teaching a class?" she asked Lt. Commander Amartey as she slid into a seat next to him.
"Aren't you?" he asked in reply.
"Any idea what this is about?" Lt. Commander Jordan Anderssen, another project officer, asked. The line of project officers in their usual chairs along the back of the room shook their heads in unison.
Commander Winters entered a minute later, followed by Lt. Glass and two other officers who had that vague Starfleet Intelligence look about them, and the assembled officers all rose. "As you were," he said, waving them back to their seats. Without preamble, he continued, "A few hours ago, a Borg Cube destroyed the colony on Ivor Prime." There was a collective sharp inhalation, but the officers were disciplined enough not to murmur amongst themselves. "It appears to be headed for Sector 001."
"Toward us?" one of the ensigns blurted out.
"Pretty sure it's actually aiming for Earth," Lt. Kos, the maintenance company commander, said dryly. Winters shot them both a warning glance.
"As of now, we're in combat mode," Winters continued as if the interruption hadn't happened. "Repair is the top priority. Lt. Gonzalez, as such, you're on point." Torres' replacement as the Repair Company commander nodded solemnly. Torres knew he was up for the responsibility; she was a better engineer, but he was a better commander. "Projects are on hold. Lt. Torres, you and your crew will now be a platoon under Repair. Try not to take the demotion personally." She smiled slightly and the room as a whole gave a much-needed chuckle. "Anderssen, Sei, Polley, same for you. Amartey, since you don't have a crew—" He cut himself off and looked up with a frown. "You haven't had a crew in a while. Why are you still here?"
"Must be my charming wit," Amartey said with a smile.
"That must be it," Winters said dryly. "You're coordinating the efforts with the Tech Academy. Make sure we don't put in any student mechanics who are going to break things."
"That's a pretty tall order," Amartey said.
Winters acknowledged that with a quiet snort. "Jmin, we're getting a shipment of third and fourth year engineering cadets from the Academy. Same orders for you as Amartey—make sure they don't break anything."
"Baby officers and baby mechanics," Lt. Commander Jmin mused. "This isn't combat mode, this is babysitting."
"Have you tried babysitting?" Torres asked. "It's pretty much being in a constant state of combat mode."
"Speaking of babysitting," Amartey said, turning back to Commander Winters, "what are we doing about childcare?"
"Childcare?" Winters asked with a frown.
"We're in combat mode," Amartey pointed out, "which will mean long hours. Torres, Kos, and I are single parents. Rolof, Smith, and Pasman have kids and their partners are out in the 'Fleet. McCullough and Gupta—"
"I get it, Amartey," Winters interrupted. "A lot of officers in this room have kids. Even more of our mechanics and chiefs have kids. A lot of people take station assignments for family reasons. Myself included. What is your point?"
"If we're working on repairs at all hours, who will be watching our kids?"
Winters frowned, and then turned to his adjuvant. "Semich, give me three courses of action for childcare within the hour. And no, one of the courses of action cannot be 'leave the kids alone at home, unsupervised.'" He turned back to the group. "Commanders, you have an hour to get me a list of all of your people with childcare needs and a count of all children 17 and under who may need childcare." He glanced around. "Anything else?"
"I hope I don't need to remind anyone in this room, but everything we've discussed this morning is classified," one of the unnamed Intelligence officers said. "No discussions with anyone. Including family."
"Most of us have family on Earth," an ensign said in disbelief. "You want us to just sit here and leave them unaware of a Borg threat?"
"What's the alternative, Ensign?" the Intelligence officer asked. "Evacuating nine billion people from Earth? World-wide panic?"
Torres felt sick to her stomachs at the realization, and saw from the expressions of her colleagues that they felt the same way. "I'm not happy about it, either," Commander Winters said after a long minute, "but Commander Estes is right. We can't risk word of this getting out and starting a panic. No word of this gets out. Understood?"
A murmuring of "aye, sirs," was given by the assembled officers, and then Winters dismissed them to begin their preparations. Torres went straight to rarely-used office, typically preferring to work in the dry dock office or directly on the Jem'Hadar ship, but the Jem'Hadar ship had already been locked down while the project was on hold.
"Computer," she said. "Open encrypted comm-link to Commander Sydney Wyland."
Sydney must have been sitting at her desk, because the comm immediately connected. *So you've gotten the news,* she said as a greeting.
"Is this a credible threat?" B'Elanna asked.
*As credible as it gets,* Sydney said, a sharp edge to her voice that hid a tinge of fear. *All of this time spent learning Dominion tactics, and now we have to go back to the goddamn Borg. Good news is, it'll be over one or way or the other real quick.*
B'Elanna knew that that was a Paris thing, to resort to sarcasm when they got scared or frustrated. Tom did it far too often, Nicki was a regular offender, and if things weren't so serious, B'Elanna would tease Sydney about being more like her siblings than any of them liked to admit. "What are we going to do?"
*I'm guessing you're going to be repairing ships. I'm going to be studying tactical reports and making plans that'll go out the window as soon as the first shot is fired.*
"Thanks, that cleared things up." Fair was fair; she could be sarcastic, too. "What about Izzy?"
Sydney finally looked up from the PADD she had been studying. *What do you mean?*
"Where's the safest place for her?"
*On Mars,* Sydney said automatically. *You keep her there on Mars.* She looked down, then around, as if making sure no one was listening. *Mom and all of the kids are getting on a transport in two minutes. She's rented one of the vacation houses, and if anyone asks, she's just taking the grandkids to visit their aunt and cousin on Mars.*
"Just Alicia and the kids?" B'Elanna asked. "What about—"
*I'm going to be here, trying to direct traffic,* Sydney interrupted. *Dad is going to be doing whatever it is that admirals do when there's an eminent attack. Nicki's a Starfleet physician. She's going to be preparing for casualties. And Jason joined a civilian disaster medical response team so he could be with her.* She paused slightly before adding, *And the Taurus is heading to the front lines.*
B'Elanna had forgotten about Jens, because Jens was fairly forgettable, but with those words, everything clicked into place. Space was dangerous. Sydney had lost her brother to it and had probably lost several classmates, former crewmates, friends. They got reminders every day of just how dangerous it was, and now they were facing an enemy that they knew to be brutally ruthless. If they made it through this without losing anyone else, it would be a minor miracle. Sydney had broken the rules for her mother, kids, and niece and nephews because she was worried about her husband. She couldn't control her husband—actually, as the adjuvant for the Chief of Starfleet Operations, she could have, but she never would—but she could control the civilians she loved, and get them as far away from the projected conflict as possible. It was only one planet over, but it was the best she could do.
*Kajsa and Ainsley are old enough to help with the little ones,* Sydney pointed out, continuing as if she hadn't mentioned her husband's ship. *Mom will comm you when they get to the house so you can drop off Izzy.*
The words almost took B'Elanna's breath away, even though she knew she should have expected them, especially after Kwasi's question at the staff meeting. She would be too busy to take care of Izzy. She knew she should count herself as fortunate—she had her mother-in-law and nieces to take care of her daughter, when most of her colleagues didn't yet know what they would do with theirs—but even with all the work she had on the Jem'Hadar ship and her coursework and teaching at the Tech Academy, she had always made time for Izzy.
*I need to get to a meeting,* Sydney said abruptly. *Comm me when you get a chance. Good luck.* She signed off before B'Elanna could wish her the same.
The hardest part about being responsible for repairs was that the job didn't start until everyone else's was finished, which left the thousand or so members of the Construction Battalion watching the conflict on Starfleet frequency 1486, which was playing on every available monitor and screen. "Shit," someone breathed. Nobody else was able to speak, or pull their eyes away from the monitors.
The front line was shattered in minutes. The cube had broken through and resumed its course toward Earth. A few ships were doggedly pursuing, firing when they could, and none of them could tell if the cube had been affected at all.
They saw with their own eyes just how much damage there was, but they still had a few hours before any of the ships would arrive at Utopia Planitia. B'Elanna took the time to head over to the vacation houses. She read Izzy a story, kissed her goodnight, and reminded her to be good for her grandmother and to listen to Ainsley and Kajsa.
She found Alicia outside, sitting apart from where Ainsley, Kajsa, and Stephanie were giggling around a firepit. She wanted to tell Alicia what she had seen of the attack and how swift and brutal it had been, but knew that that would help no one. "They have no idea what's going on," Alicia said quietly. "I told them it was just a surprise trip to Mars with Grandma. I'm surprised Ainsley hasn't figured it out. Maybe Kajsa and Stephanie are distracting her from the fact that we've never done this before."
"Thank you for watching Izzy," B'Elanna said. Alicia waved dismissively.
"You know I would never turn down a chance to see my granddaughter." B'Elanna knew that Alicia meant that about all of her granddaughters—and her grandsons—but she also knew that Izzy meant more, or maybe just something different, than they did. Because she was all that Alicia had left of her only son. "Sometimes I really hate Starfleet," she continued, so quietly B'Elanna wasn't sure she had heard her. She turned to her mother-in-law to see tears shining in her eyes. "I would never tell her, but I was so relieved when Nicki didn't want to go the Academy. I thought, thank the gods, at least nothing will happen to this one. Sydney was always Owen's, and Tom was so unpredictable that none of us knew what he would do until he did it, but at least Nicki would be safe. And then in the course of six months, I lose my son and the one daughter I thought was safe decides to go and join Starfleet. That broke my heart, B'Elanna. It will never heal after losing Tom, not all the way, but every time I see Nicki in that uniform, it's like another tiny stab to my heart. I can't lose another one of them. One of you. I won't survive."
B'Elanna wished she knew how to tell Alicia that she would survive, because she was one of the strongest women she knew, because every time she fell apart, she was able to pick herself back up and put herself back together, even as the rest of the world appeared to go on without missing a beat. She wished she could tell her that they would be okay, that Owen, Sydney, Nicki, Jens, and Jason would all be okay, that the Taurus was intact and its first officer unharmed, that someone, somehow, would be able to stop that Borg cube before it got to Earth, that Alicia would be able to take seven of her grandchildren with her back to Earth and would see the eighth in a few weeks when they got together for Christmas. But she didn't. She gave Alicia a hug, wished her a good night, and promised to comm when she got a break in her repair schedule. And then she got to work.