Second Chances: Chapter 56
Stardate 52068
March 2375
San Francisco, Earth
Lt. B'Elanna Torres reminded the Dominion Technology class that they would be beginning the unit on sensors and antipolarons on Friday and to read the relevant sections in the technical manual before then, and then she dismissed the class and had to stop herself from running out of the room.
It was Wednesday, but more importantly, it was Voyager letter day. The transmission should be coming through a little after noon, give or take an hour, and class ended at 1130.
Cadet Ku Lia Ika Nu—Nu, as she liked to be called, as she complained that humans couldn't quite say her name properly, another thing Torres sympathized with—fell in step behind her as they headed from Scotty Hell to the CRC. "I've been making progress with the primary literature search," Nu offered. "I hope Seven of Nine wrote back with answers to my questions, though."
"I'm sure she will," Torres replied absently. "She seems very… efficient." Nu's first task with Pathfinder was to do a review of Federation data on Borg transwarp conduits. Seven of Nine, the former Borg drone who had become part of Voyager's crew a year or so before, had tried to modify Voyager's warp drive to create a transwarp conduit and nearly caused a warp core breach; Joe Carey was less than excited to give the technology another try, but Torres wasn't willing to let any potential avenue go unexplored. She wasn't sure what she, a second classman propulsion major, and a small team of engineers and mechanics could come up with that a former Borg drone hadn't already tried - a former Borg drone who had the collective memory of the millions or billions of Borg drones who opened transwarp conduits on a regular basis - but it seemed the obvious first place to look when it came to finding a way to modify Voyager's engines to get them home faster.
Well, other than putting Nu on a research project to explore ways to make dilithium more efficient, but she was sure the Xahean would walk out of Pathfinder never to be seen again if she even suggested giving her a dilithium project.
Torres felt a wave of disappointment when she entered her office and saw her bare desk. When transmissions came in while she was teaching or at home, they left a PADD with her letters on her desk. Nothing to worry about, she scolded herself. Although the timing of the transmissions was inexact, they weren't expecting it to arrive until 1215, and it wasn't yet 1145. They had time before the communications section would start investigating what was going on, and she had her own work she needed to be doing. In addition to Nu's research on transwarp, she had two other teams working with members of the Theoretical Propulsion Group on other possibilities—slipstream and something involving quantum warp theory, which was too much like physics and not enough like engineering and always gave Torres a headache whenever she tried understanding it—and brilliant but socially awkward ensign with a Ph.D. in engineering physics who was working on artificial wormholes.
A lot of possibilities, a lot of projects, and Torres wasn't doing any of it. She was teaching classes and reading reports and growing increasingly antsy for unknown reasons. Unknown reasons that she knew she should discuss with Dr. Bayrote, but she wasn't that antsy yet.
She knew she had two choices: she could sit around and drum her fingers on her desk until the transmission made it through from Voyager, or she could get some work done. Given the constraints she already on her time, it was hardly a difficult decision; she couldn't afford to waste any time drumming her fingers, not if she wanted to get out of the office at a reasonable hour, get Izzy home, fed, and to sleep, and prepare her lessons for the next day. And with that in mind, she began to work through reports.
As she often did, she lost track of time, not realizing the hours that had gone by until Nu knocked on her open office door. "I ran into something I need your help with, Lieutenant," the cadet said, a PADD in her hand. Torres automatically reached for it, and Nu handed it over.
"Is this from Seven of Nine?" she asked, briefly scanning the text.
"No, I haven't heard anything from the comms people yet, sir," Nu said. "This is from my literature search of Borg transwarp conduits. There's something about that Borg threat from a year and a half ago, but when I tried to access the data, it's classified."
Torres blinked back the memories of her anxiety and fear, the long days at work repairing ships after the attack that had ended as abruptly as it began, the deep-buried curiosity about why the Borg hadn't stormed Earth as they had feared or how they had been stopped. "I'll look into it when I get a chance," she promised, copying the data onto her own PADD before handed the original over. She glanced at her chronometer; after 1500. The transmission from Voyager should have come through, although they knew they had a several hour window on either end. "No word from comms?" she repeated.
"No, sir," Nu replied, blinking her inner eyelids. Torres frowned and tapped her combadge.
"Torres to Barclay," she hailed. When she had been given the future propulsion projects with Pathfinder's sudden and abrupt growth, the awkward lieutenant had been put in charge of communications engineering.
*W-we haven't gotten an-anything yet, Lieutenant,* Barclay replied without a greeting. Before Torres could ask if they had started looking into it, her combadge chirped with another message.
*Cohen to Harkins, Barclay, and Torres,* the stellar cartographer said. *Can you come to the Pathfinder astrometrics lab?*
Both Torres and Nu left her office, the cadet peeling off to go to her workspace in the propulsion engineering lab and Torres heading for the turbolift. She ran into Commander Harkins on the way, and he raised his eyebrows in greeting. "Any idea what this is about?" he asked.
"No, sir," she replied. "We were supposed to get a transmission today. It's late." He frowned, and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was—that Cohen had an explanation for why they hadn't heard from Voyager yet, and it wasn't good.
With the influx of data from Voyager, the astrometrics and stellar cartography sections of Pathfinder had grown almost as much as the engineering sections, and with that growth came a new lab, one with enough space for everyone and a screen almost twice as large as the one in the old lab. Currently, that giant screen was displaying the communication network they had come to depend on over the last three and a half months, Lt. Cohen and a group of officers and cartography techs up at the controls. "Cohen," Harkins said as a greeting. The stellar cartographer glanced behind her and held up a finger before turning back to her tech with a few more instructions.
"Sorry about that, sir," Cohen said a minute later as she joined them. "Things have been really busy here for the last few hours."
"What's going on, Lieutenant?" Commander Harkins asked.
"I-is this about th-the transmission?" Lt. Barclay asked. "From Voyager?"
"Yes," Cohen said with single nod. She gestured at the screen behind her. "We're not receiving anything from the Hirogen network. Nothing from Voyager, nothing from test signals… It just went dark."
"Were w-we able to receive any messages from Voyager before it-it went dark?" Torres was glad Barclay asked so she didn't have to.
"No," Cohen said, glancing apologetically at Torres. "We don't know when or why it went dark, either. We didn't detect anything until we didn't get the transmission today."
Harkins, Barclay, and Torres all looked at each other and then back at Cohen. "Does Admiral Paris know?" Torres asked. The sudden pallor to Lt. Cohen's face was enough of an answer.
"I was hoping you could do that, sir," Cohen admitted. Torres rolled her eyes and sighed, but didn't waste her time arguing.
"Torres to Admiral Paris," she said, tapping on her combadge.
*Go ahead, Lieutenant,* he replied.
"Sir, I'm here with Commander Harkins and Lieutenants Barclay and Cohen. We have bad news. It'll be easier to show you in person. We're in the Pathfinder astrometrics lab."
*I'll be there in five minutes. Paris out.*
Torres glanced around at her fellow officers, then focused on Cohen. "You're going to have to brief him," she said forcefully. "He's not scary."
"You want me to be the one to tell him that we lost our only means of communication with his son?" Cohen asked in disbelief.
"You told me that we lost our only means of communication with my husband!" Torres exclaimed, and Cohen's already nervous pallor went a few shades lighter, her eyes wide with surprise and a little fear.
"I am so sorry!" she said quickly. "I didn't even think about—" Torres cut her off with an impatient wave of her hand. She didn't blame Cohen for the Hirogen network going dark, after all, and she actually appreciated that Cohen thought of her as more of a colleague than a Voyager family member.
And now that she had time to think about it and process it, she realized she wasn't even surprised that the network had failed, and that she had been expecting this since the first transmission went through. She was disappointed for sure, but not surprised.
Admiral Paris appeared a few minutes later. "Commander, lieutenants," he greeted, nodding at each in turn before his eyes settled on Harkins. "I understand there's a problem?"
"Yes, Admiral," Commander Harkins said with a grave nod. "I think Lt. Cohen is the best to explain it."
Owen's eyebrows rose expectantly as he turned to Cohen, who looked like she was going to faint. "At ease, Lieutenant," he said. "Let's hear it."
"Yes, sir," she said quickly. "Uh, Lt. Barclay asked us to do a diagnostic of the Hirogen network. The transmission from Voyager didn't come in on time, and the Dominion network checked out on their diagnostics." She went on to explain, in more detail than necessary, the diagnostics they ran and the how they discovered that the network was dark.
"Do you know what happened?" Paris asked.
"No, sir," she said with a shake of her head. "I have techs seeing if we can get a view of the closest node with the existing sensors we have in the sector and the sensors the Romulans gave us access to, but we haven't gotten anything yet. We don't even know if the node is still here or not. We still don't know how the network was powered. Is powered? There's a lot we don't know. Sir."
"Then let's take a closer look."
"Sir?" Cohen asked, confused.
"The closest node," he explained. "It's not far from Federation space. A team can go take a closer look."
"Sir, it's a lot closer to Romulan space," Harkins pointed out. "They are our allies now. We can ask them to take a look for us."
Owen raised his eyebrows. "They may be our allies for now, Commander," he said. "But that doesn't mean I'm ready to share everything with them. Lt. Cohen," he said, turning to the cartographer. "What is our closest station to the node?"
"Uh, DS5, sir," she replied quickly. Paris nodded and turned back to Harkins.
"Coordinate with Captain Jobe to get a team of engineers out to that node. Let's see if there's anything left there. Lt. Barclay." He frowned slightly as he turned to the engineer. "Did any of the transmission come through?"
"No, sir," Barclay replied. "I-I'm sorry, sir."
Owen nodded once, then turned to Torres. "Are you and Izzy coming over for dinner tonight?"
She hadn't planned on it, but nodded anyway. "We'll be there," she promised.
That night, after a dinner of disappointed quiet, after B'Elanna had put Izzy to bed and finalized her lesson plans for the next day, she again stared out to the stars from the lanai of the apartment. She grabbed her PADD and opened up the dictation program, and began a new message.
"Hey, Tom," she started. "I don't know when I'm going to get the opportunity to send this. We lost contact with you today."