Second Chances: Chapter 61

Stardate 52346
July 2375
AR-558
Chin'toka System

Lt. B'Elanna Torres was in the middle of a discussion with Lt. Riccobono, one of the communication engineers on her team, when Commander Mike Garcia entered the cargo bay where the engineering team was mustered. "Lt. Torres," he greeted with a nod.

"Sir," Torres replied. She gave Riccobono an apologetic smile and joined Garcia, who was heading the security team down on the planet.

"My team is about ready to beam down to the planet," he said. "Captain Sisko reported that the Jem'Hadar threat has been neutralized, but I want to confirm that for myself before your team joins us. We have the medics with us, Dr. Sanders and her nurse will be coming down once the causalities have been stabilized. Is there anything you need from us at the moment?"

"No, sir," she replied. "My team is ready to get to work."

He nodded. "If anything happens on the surface, I need your people to continue working. We'll take care of the fighting. We're here to support your mission." She nodded her agreement. He glanced over at her team, a frown on his face. She wondered if he was assessing their combat abilities; she had done the same. They were almost entirely research engineers, and combat abilities were usually not required in a communications lab. "Are you sure you want to take the cadet?" he asked, his voice lowered. Her eyes narrowed; they had been over this already. He didn't want Nu down there, she replied that Nu was part of her team and was going. He tried to pull rank, but that ended very quickly when Torres threatened to comm Admiral Huang and get his take on the matter. She had met Sydney's boss a few times and found him to be pretty relatable, considering he was the Chief of Starfleet Operations. He trusted Torres, probably because Sydney told him to, and she was confident he would have her back if necessary. Commander Garcia didn't seem to think it was necessary, but still didn't seem happy about taking a cadet into a situation that had been an all-out battle only a few hours before.

"Cadet Ku Lia Ika Nu stays with me," she said emphatically. "She's an important part of the team and we don't have time to switch out her job with anyone else." They really didn't know what to expect when they got down to the relay station; they had never actually seen one. One of the earlier teams to defend AR-558 had taken holos of the station, and Jupiter Station had used those to create a program, but Torres could only guess at what things actually were. The team had been practicing their roles in that holographic mock-up for the last week, but she knew that everything would be different once they saw the real thing.

It was an hour later that they beamed down to the planet, phasers at their hips, phase rifles slung across their backs, toolkits on their shoulders. Torres saw Commander Garcia talking to Lt. Commander Worf and Captain Sisko. "Riccobono, go ahead and get started," she instructed the engineer as she peeled off to talk to the senior officers. They had anticipated this, too, and he gave a nod as he led the team of 23 engineers toward the communications relay.

Worf was the first to notice her approach and stepped back from Garcia and Sisko. "Lieutenant Torres," he greeted. "I did not anticipate your arrival."

"Starfleet is short on experts in Dominion tech," she replied. He nodded once to that. She forced herself to relax; she was on edge around him, probably because her experiences with Klingons were not overly positive, and he was even more extremely Klingon than the Klingons on Qo'nos. "I heard about Commander Dax," she said softly. "I'm sorry."

He looked away as he gave another single nod. "She awaits my arrival in Sto-va-kor," he replied. "I am sorry you lost contact with Lt. Paris again." She knew better than to complain about not getting to talk to her husband to a man whose wife was dead, so she just nodded at that. "How is Isela?"

She smiled involuntarily—gods, Nicki was right, she had become such a mother—and said, "She's good. We just had her fourth birthday party before I left. She's playing on a U7 soccer team that my niece coaches."

He frowned slightly at that. "Soccer is a good game, but she should be careful," he declared. "Human children are fragile."

Torres snorted. "She's mostly human," she reminded him. "And she's playing with girls two years older than her. How is Alexander?" she quickly asked, mostly to keep him from telling whatever gruesome story he had about why he felt the need to caution her about Klingons playing soccer with humans.

He straightened even further at the question. "He is doing well," he declared. "He is now the weapons officer of the Ya'Vang. He does not make as many mistakes as he once did."

Torres stiffened again at that last sentence, because it was like she was listening to her mother again. Miral couldn't give a compliment without qualifying it, either. Maybe full Klingons just had a hard time being proud of their part-Klingon children. Something they probably should have considered before having kids with people who weren't fully Klingon.

She wished Worf well and checked in with Captain Sisko, only to be questioned yet again about her decision to have a cadet on the mission. She assured the captain that she would keep Nu safe, wished him a safe journey back to DS9, and headed toward the communication relay.

Torres saw Chief O'Brien talking to a petite and absolutely exhausted Trill in a teal uniform. She gave Torres a thin, tired smile as she approached. "Lt. Torres," the Trill greeted. She turned to O'Brien and said, "I'll see you back on the ship," and then walked off.

"Do I know her?" Torres asked with a frown. She was accustomed to people recognizing her—she was the only half-Klingon in Starfleet—but the Trill officer seemed like they were more familiar.

"That's Ezri Dax," he said, and she frowned.

"Younger sister?" she guessed. O'Brien shook his head.

"New host," he explained. She frowned again.

"But Worf..."

"It's complicated," O'Brien said. She decided she didn't need more explanation. "Lieutenant, I have some bad news," he said somberly. "We lost the Jem'Hadar fighter, a few days before we left DS9. They were trying to do the delivery run here."

She had a quip on her lips about being surprised it had lasted as long as it had and him misjudging her emotional attachment if he felt the need to tell her in person that it was lost. And then she realized he wasn't just talking about the ship itself. If it had been in battle, there had been people on it. Her eyes widened in realization. "Lt. Glass and Petty Officer Pagano were among those lost," he said.

She felt like she had been hit right in the chest. She couldn't look at the chief and all but collapsed against the stone wall as she reeled with this new information. She hadn't even realized Glass wasn't on Mars, which wasn't unusual for the intelligence officer, and she found she had a hard time grasping the fact that he would never again abruptly appear in her office with a new duty or task for her, because her mind was stuck on the second half of his revelation.

Brynnlyleigh Pagano was dead.

Torres would be the first to admit that she wasn't that good at correspondence, and she herself didn't post much on social media—her most common posts were questions about the S-class shuttle in a group dedicated to shuttle restoration—but she did follow what other people posted. Less than three weeks before, Pagano had pictures from her promotion ceremony to petty officer. A few weeks before that, it was that she was engaged to be married. October in New York; she wanted her father to walk her down to the aisle. "I was going to go to her wedding," Torres murmured. Although ceremonies still weren't her thing, she had been honored to get an invitation and was looking forward to seeing her former mechanic again.

"Joey is a communications tech on DS9," O'Brien said. "Their parents all live in the same neighborhood in the Bronx—"

"But they didn't know that until they had already gone on a few dates," Torres interrupted. Pagano had told her the story. She rubbed her eyes. "All she wanted was to get married and have kids," she said. "She was so good with Izzy." Izzy. Did she even remember the young mechanic who had liked to play with her when she was a toddler? "She was a good person."

"One of my best," O'Brien said. "She lived and breathed that ship. There wasn't a component on it that she didn't know backwards and forwards or couldn't fix blindfolded." Torres didn't have the words to tell him that she wasn't talking about Pagano's mechanical ability, but the fact that she was a genuinely good person.

"I need to get to this," she said abruptly, straightening from the wall. She paused before walking away. "Thank you, Chief. For telling me in person."

He nodded. "Stay safe," he said. She gave a nod and turned and went to join her engineers.

As immersed as she had been in her work of trying to access the data in the Dominion communication system, Torres barely registered Nicki's arrival or announcement that the Veracruz was leaving orbit and anticipated returning in three days. Her team began their rest-work cycles, but she powered through, the way she did. She didn't know what time it was when she heard the explosion; it wasn't in their protected room, but nor was it all that far away. She looked up from her work to see everyone else also looking around. "Houdinis," Nu said matter-of-factly. "That's what the last group here called them. I heard them talking about them. Subspace mines."

"They left us instructions on how to detect and disable them," Chief Nieto volunteered.

Torres glanced around; she had ten engineers in the room with her at the moment, the others on their rest cycles. Of the ten, Nu was probably the most familiar with Dominion tech. "Chief, you and Cadet Nu get working on that," she said. She saw Commander Garcia enter the room and turned to him.

"I don't know how, but the Jem'Hadar are back," he said grimly. She nodded.

"Chief Nieto and Cadet Nu are going to get started on the subspace mines," she said. He frowned.

"I need your people to stay in here, where it's protected," he said. "The field infirmary is also in a protected area."

"Subspace mines don't care about your protected areas," she snapped. "That's the point!" She heard another explosion, maybe further away than the first. "People need to stop moving until they can be detected, and to do that, my team needs to be able to do their jobs!"

"Is that the right job for a cadet?"

"With all due respect, sir, the only person who knows more about Dominion weapons is Lt. Torres," Nu chimed in. She gave a wide grin and blinked her inner eyelids. "If I have your permission, sir, the sooner I get started, the sooner we'll see them."

He frowned at her, then barked at two of security team to stand guard over Nieto and Nu as they worked. Torres snorted and returned her attention to her work; subspace mines didn't care about people standing guard.

It didn't take Nieto and Nu long to detect the mines, and then they immediately got to work defusing them. Torres was barely peripherally paying attention to their work, focused as she was on the communications relay they needed to tap. She was pretty sure she had finally found the relay to access the stored data when she heard another explosion. This was one softer than the others, but also much closer—in the same room, she realized—and then she heard a scream that didn't sound human. Because it wasn't.

When she spun to see what the commotion was, she saw Nu, clutching her chest, bright orange blood on her hands, as she collapsed to the floor.