Second Chances: Chapter 31
A/N: For everyone asking about Quantum Fluctuations... be patient ;)
Also, Star Trek in general has a strange perception of time. Even at maximum warp, some distances take some time to travel. I made some corrections to timelines, because I don't have to fit everything into a 42 minute chunk of time.
Stardate 51064
February 2374
Starbase 375
The two weeks of turning the ship over to the Defiant crew somehow managed to drag on and fly by too quickly, the deadline of their departure for the mission adding a frantic feeling to their instructions with the new crew about how the ship operated. "I have been on this ship before," Chief Miles O'Brien complained to Lt. B'Elanna Torres as she explained how the warp core works.
"Right," she agreed. "And your attempts to get it running when you didn't know the systems added two months to our repair timeline."
"I'd like to see you try to get a crash-landed ship flying with Jem'Hadar soldiers firing at you," he said. She raised her eyebrows.
"Let's not get in a situation that would require that," she replied. "Let me show you where these controls are on the bridge."
"I've seen the bridge!" he exclaimed, but followed her anyway.
"How do these Jem'Hadar function without a viewscreen?" Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax was complaining as they stepped onto the bridge.
"Forget the viewscreen," the Ferengi cadet—Nog?—said in response. "I don't understand why they don't have chairs."
"They don't sit," Torres commented absently. "And the controls are too wide. There was no way to place a chair that would allow you to reach everything you needed to. Best we could do was get you that mat you're standing on. Should keep your feet from getting too fatigued. As far as the viewscreen," she said, turning to Dax. "It was on the list, but would have added at least another month. And then who knows how long to reverse all the stations so that you'd be facing the viewscreen instead of the middle of the room. Starfleet Command only gave us time for primary systems."
"And the replicators?" O'Brien asked.
Torres sighed. "We tried," she said. "The systems aren't compatible. I'm still working on it."
"Captain Sisko said we have enough field rations," the cadet—it was definitely Nog, Torres decided—chimed in.
"Don't get me started on field rations," Torres said warningly. "It's doing to be a long three weeks."
"And I suppose an infirmary was too much to ask for?" They all turned to see Dr. Julian Bashir enter the bridge. "I had to put the medical supplies in my quarters."
"We'll try not to have a medical emergency while you're sleeping," Lt. Commander Dax teased.
"Starfleet biobeds aren't compatible with Jem'Hadar systems," Torres said. "It's on the list of things we're working on. The best we could do in the timeline is a cot and a medical tricorder."
"Very austere," Dr. Bashir commented.
"You're the one who wanted to practice 'frontier medicine'," Chief O'Brien said.
"I guess I should have been more careful about what I wished for."
"Lieutenant." The joking between the members of the Defiant crew stopped as Captain Sisko stepped onto the bridge, one of the virtual headsets in hand. "What can you tell me about this?"
"The neurologists at Starfleet Medical say to expect headaches, sir," Torres replied. "They said it would get better with time, once you get used to it."
"How much time?"
She shrugged. "Probably different for everybody."
He made a sound like he was thinking about that response. "Did you try it?" he asked a minute later.
"No, sir," she replied. "It's not compatible with my neurology." Dr. Zalun had been emphatic about that; emphatic enough that she wondered if it really was a matter of incompatibility or if he was concerned that it might somehow do something to trigger demyelination. He spent a lot of time concerned about that, despite the fact that her nerves and their myelin sheaths had been stable for the last five years and she tended to avoid situations that might involve snakes. "Most of my ensigns and crewmen did, though."
"And how did they do?"
She frowned. "They all got headaches," she replied. "Some were nauseated as well, some vertigo. The younger ones adjusted faster than the chiefs."
"And they say wisdom comes with age," Sisko sighed as he slipped on the headset.
Several hours into first day of what was anticipated to be a week's journey to the ketracel-white facility, B'Elanna Torres was seated in the makeshift mess hall with a ration packet on the table in front of her and her favorite thought exercise—how to make a cloak compatible with the ship's systems—on a PADD. "I'm trying to prepare for the Bre'Nan, but I have no idea where to get Var'Hama candles."
Torres blinked at Lt. Commander Dax. She recognized all the words that the science officer had spoken, but had no idea what she was talking about or why Dax thought she would. "I'm sorry?" she finally said, earning a sigh from Dax as the science officer took the seat across the table from her.
"Worf is taking these wedding preparations very seriously," Dax said. "And I'm trying, but there are just so many rituals and it seems unnecessarily complicated."
Torres snorted as she returned her attention to her PADD. She was vaguely aware of how unprofessional that was when talking to a senior officer, but figured the lieutenant commander had started it when she started talking about wedding planning. "I got married at Starfleet Headquarters to the son of an admiral," she commented. "If you're looking for advice on Klingon wedding rituals, you're asking the wrong half-Klingon." Her middle finger absently rubbed the slightly raised scar on her palm from the chuHwl', the one vaguely Klingon thing they had at their wedding, but she didn't mention that.
"That's what I suggested!" Dax exclaimed. "Well, not necessarily Starfleet Headquarters, but you know what I mean. But Worf's been dreaming about having a Klingon wedding since he was a little boy. And I've already been married five times." Torres frowned at that. "Twice as a groom, and three times as a bride." That didn't help Torres' confusion, and she was beginning to wonder if she was imaging this conversation. "I'm a joined Trill," Dax explained. "I'm the eighth host of the Dax symbiont."
"Ah," Torres said, beginning to understand. She vaguely remembered something about Trills and symbionts from her Interspecies Protocol course at the Academy, but honestly spent most of that class working on homework for her other classes. It was awkward enough having to take a class that was mostly about interspecies sex as the product of such a union; she certainly wasn't going to pay attention to it, too.
"So I figured I'd let him have this one," Dax continued, and Torres still had no idea why she was in this conversation. "But I just don't know what to do about the Bre'Nan."
"Is that the thing that's like a bachelor party but without fun?" Torres asked with a frown.
"No, that's the kal'Hyah," Dax said. "The Bre'Nan is all the posturing that the bride must do to get the approval of the mistress of the House."
"Ah," Torres said again. She smirked slightly. "I had nothing to worry about there. My mother-in-law loves me. She once said—" She stopped abruptly, the smirk falling from her face. She had completely forgotten about that moment: they were in the Parises' kitchen, working through last minute wedding plans. It was the Saturday before their wedding; she had finished her last ever track meet earlier that day, the Federation Championships, placing third and breaking a Starfleet record, and was in a giddy good mood. She couldn't believe it was her life—she exceeded her own athletic goals, was a Starfleet ensign about to start her first assignment, and was about to marry her best friend—and her giddiness had rubbed off on Alicia and Tom. Owen had long before been exasperated by their silliness and retreated to his office, leaving the three of them to finalize plans before Wednesday's ceremony. She couldn't remember Tom's suggestion, but it had made him grin and her and Alicia roll her eyes, and then Alicia said—.
Torres abruptly stood from the table headed for the door. "I need to check on the warp core," she said tightly.
"Your mother-in-law said she needed to check on the warp core?" Dax asked innocently. Torres stopped and turned to face her, and wanted to smack that teasing look right off her face.
"She said she'd be okay replacing Tom with me."
By the fourth day, Torres was spending most of her time in the ship's engineering section, because the Defiant's senior staff didn't seem to understand boundaries, but also didn't seem to know where engineering was. It was the best of both worlds: she could avoid their pesky questions and anecdotes and get work done. Although, to be honest, the ship was running perfectly smoothly and there was very little to do.
Even sleeping in the open bay with a dozen shipmates, she had gotten more rest on this mission than she had at almost any point in the last three years. And had supervised the mechanics recalibrating every weapon in the armory, given impromptu lessons on field repairs and salvage, and was somehow teaching mok'bara to three crewmen.
*Sisko to Torres,* Captain Sisko commed as she was in the middle of showing some of the mechanics what all could be used as a power cell in a pinch.
"Torres here," she replied.
*We've been spotted by the Centaur,* he said, his voice tight. She wondered if he was still wearing the headset despite the headaches. *Now would be a good time to make sure that encrypted message to our allies really works.*
"Sir, it's been transmitting continuously since we left Starbase 375," she replied. She didn't bother to point out that that's probably why the U.S.S. Centaur was the first ship they'd come across in four days, despite the fact that they were in a decently crowded part of space near a contested border, assuming they hadn't it crossed it yet. "It should be going directly to their intelligence officer."
Her words were met with a silence long enough that she thought that Sisko had closed the comm, and then he said, *They just fired in our general direction. Either something's wrong with their targeting sensors, or they were just putting on a show. We've crossed into Cardassian space and the Centaur didn't follow. There are three Jem'Hadar fighters in range. I want you all to be ready in case the gig is up.*
The gig was apparently not up, because nobody was firing on anyone, and the warp coils continued to hum along, the ship running so smoothly and the internal dampers so efficient that Torres would have sworn they were still at dry dock at UP, until some point in the sixth day. "Sir, we've dropped out of warp," Crewman Anand, commented needlessly, his eyes on the coils. Torres nodded as she tapped the controls.
"We must be at the ketracel-white facility," she said, seeing that the order to drop out of warp, and then come to a complete stop, came from the bridge. "Let's home the return trip home goes as smoothly as the trip out here."
And then the ship shook from an explosion. As Torres was slammed against a bulkhead, she wondered if maybe she should have been spending more time on the bridge after all.