Second Chances: Chapter 63
Stardate 52348
July 2375
AR-558
Chin'toka System
Lt. B'Elanna Torres was aware it was the middle of the night in San Francisco. She was also aware that there was an active fire fight not too far from where she stood. She wasn't terribly concerned with either at the moment.
Commander Garcia looked like he had had better days, and looked like he just wanted to get this over with so he could go back to the battlefield and get that over with. Admiral Huang looked like he was half-asleep in his office at home. Ensign Bakos was the duty officer at CRC and looked like she wanted to be anywhere but on that comm at that moment. And she had no idea who the commander was on the line, but he had that distinct 'Starfleet Intelligence' look about him.
"Sorry to disturb you in the middle of the night, sir," Commander Garcia started the conversation.
*What's the situation, Commander?* Huang asked, getting right down to the point.
"Not great, but we're holding, sir," Garcia replied. "There were at least two columns of Jem'Hadar. Less now. I don't know where they came from or how they got here, but it's pretty obvious they're after the communications relay. We're keeping them a good distance back from it."
*Lt. Torres?* Admiral Huang asked.
"We've established a link with CRC. They're downloading the data as we speak."
*Approximately 18 more hours, sir,* Ensign Bakos chimed in.
"Sir, I'm going to get right down to the point," Torres said. "The Jem'Hadar are going to keep coming and trying to retake the relay station, as long as it's here. I suggest we either dissemble it and take it with us or destroy it. We're prepared to do either as soon as the download is complete."
*Sir, the data from the relay station could provide invaluable,* the Intelligence commander protested. *We need to keep it active as long as possible.*
"It isn't active," Torres pointed out. "The Dominion can bypass relay stations. They've been doing that ever since we took AR-558 a few months ago. We can access the data that was stored in the station, but we can't access the network itself, not from here. Once we're done downloading the stored data, its usefulness ends."
*Can we bug it and give it back to the Dominion?* the Intelligence officer asked. Torres snorted.
"They're not stupid, sir," she pointed out. "We can keep rotating troops in and out and keep holding this rock, but it's going to cost a lot of lives and without much gain. Or we can tear it down, take it back with us to the CRC, and learn more about how the Dominion communicate."
"I agree with Lt. Torres' assessment, sir," Commander Garcia chimed in.
Admiral Huang didn't need much time to think about it. *How long will it take you to dissemble the relay, Lieutenant?*
"Less time than it'll take for the Veracruz to return to pick us up," she replied. She actually didn't know how long it would take, and wouldn't until they got started—which they probably wouldn't be able to do until the CRC had finished downloading all the data—but they still had more than two days until the Veracruz returned and she figured they'd probably be able to get it done by then.
*Sir, I really think we need to explore options to tap into the Dominion's communication network,* the Intelligence officer protested again. *What we could get could be invaluable.*
"This node is not active," Torres repeated emphatically. "There's nothing to tap into. I don't know where they control their communication network, but it's not here. It might even be back in the Gamma quadrant, for all I know. The Dominion has turned it off and won't turn it back on unless they retake AR-558 and confirm that we hadn't tampered with it. We'll be able to get more from it by studying it at the CRC."
*I agree with Lt. Torres,* Admiral Huang said after some consideration. *Keep us posted, Commander, Lieutenant. Operations out.* His section of the screen went dark before anyone could argue. The intelligence officer glowered, and then he went dark as well.
*I'll comm you if I notice any change to the download,* Ensign Bakos said. *Lt. Barclay has day shift after me, which is good. He's probably already monitoring the situation from home.*
"He's probably in the holodeck," Torres countered with a roll of her eyes. "Thanks, Bakos. We'll try not to rope you into any more comms with admirals tonight." Bakos snorted her agreement before signing off, leaving Torres and Garcia.
"How are things out there?" she asked.
"Not bad, not great," he replied. "We outnumber them, which helps. I think they were counting on their mines having a bigger effect than they did." He paused, then asked, "The cadet okay?"
"Her name is Nu," Torres replied, annoyed, "and she's fine. I think her ego took the brunt of the damage."
He grunted and made his way toward the chamber's exit. "I'll check in on you in a couple of hours. In the meantime, we're keeping the fighting as far away from you as we can."
"We appreciate it," Torres replied. He waved a hand and left.
Torres sighed and turned to study the relay station, already mentally breaking it down into the constituent parts and trying to figure out the best way to dissemble it in a manner that would allow them to reassemble it and power it back on once they got back to San Francisco. She had a rough idea of how they would do it, but she was going to need help to get the details. And for at least part of it, that help had to come from a cadet who was currently nursing a bruised ego.
She gave her orders to the engineers, mechanics, and comms techs in the room, and then headed back to where she thought the rest spaces were. She wasn't at all surprised to see that Nu was awake, studying something on a PADD. She looked up at the sound of Torres entering and looked almost like a kid getting caught reading under the covers instead of sleeping. "I have a job for you," Torres said, and Nu scrambled to get to her feet to follow Torres. As they walked, Torres explained the situation and how they needed to dissemble and pack the whole relay station. "I need you to map the communications node," she said. She knew Nu could do it, because she had covered it in both the Dominion Tech course and the Advanced Communications Network Engineering course.
"Yes, sir," Nu said, fighting to keep from grinning and failing.
"I need you to make me a promise first," Torres said. She stopped walking and faced Nu.
"I won't mess with any more mines," Nu said quickly.
"Well, good," Torres said. "But what I was going to say is, you need to promise me you'll take an explosives course next year. If you're going to be defusing mines, you better learn how to do it without blowing yourself up."
This time, Nu didn't bother to try to hold back her grin. "Yes, sir!"
They still had six hours left of the data download when the engineering team finished mapping the relays and making a plan of action for how to dissemble the station. Knowing that they couldn't begin until that was done, Torres ordered all but the comms tech monitoring the data download to get something to eat and try to rest.
The makeshift mess hall was crowded with soldiers, and now that she was listening for it, Torres realized she couldn't hear any sounds of battle. She didn't know if that meant that they had killed all the Jem'Hadar or if the Jem'Hadar preferred to fight at night, but she knew better than to think that it meant that all was well and all would be safe.
She and Nu replicated some rations—she had no idea what Xahean rations were, but they came in a drink form—and found some seats against a wall. Torres was exhausted, and she could see that her cadet was as well, but her initial impressions had been right—Nu was the right person to bring along for the job, and they'd undoubtedly still be working to map the relays if she had brought someone else in her place. "I found out when we got here that one of my former mechanics and one of my training officers from plebe summer were killed a few days ago," Torres said abruptly. "Sorry I took that out on you."
Nu blinked her inner eyelids. "My plebe company commander died when the Borg attacked," she said after a long pause. "She was engineer on the Budapest. She was Mizarian; there are even fewer of them in Starfleet than Xaheans and she really helped me learn to adjust to Earth and to Starfleet. She told me which classes I should take and which professors to avoid. She was a good friend. I miss her."
"Good company commanders make a difference," Torres said. Nu's eyes shown with amusement.
"I didn't marry mine though, sir."
Torres laughed. It felt good to laugh, amidst the exhaustion and the dirt and the terribly tasteless rations, and Nu looked pleased with herself. "More trouble than it's worth," she joked. "Especially when they come with sisters-in-law like mine." She lapsed back into silence, thinking of what Sydney had said about the pain of losing her brother and wondering how that had compared to her uncertainty about losing her husband or certainty about losing a former protege. "I guess none of us will emerge from this war unscathed," she observed a moment later.
"Xaheans don't fear death," Nu said conversationally. "We are returned to Xahea and become one with the planet, and the planet is one within us. We are connected, as has been the natural balance between our people and our planet since our birth." She paused and tapped her ration bottle softly with one claw. "Maybe it's because I've spent most of the last three years on Earth, but I've found that the thought that my friend is no longer alive makes me sad."
"Humans fear death," Torres said. "I think it's the fear of missing out. There are multiple mythologies built around the idea of watching over loved ones after dying, or being reborn and returning to Earth, all because humans really don't like the idea that something may happen after they die and that they'll miss it. Klingons fear a dishonorable death, so the mythologies there are built around glorifying an 'honorable' death in order to avoid a 'dishonorable' one." This was reminding her too much of her sessions with Bayrote after Voyager disappeared, with the two of them researching various mythologies surrounding death in order to find something that she could latch on to and help her accept that Tom was dead. Nothing ever stuck, which spawned another long series of sessions about how not finding a death mythology she liked was symbolic of the fact that she never allowed herself to feel like she fit in and was so sure that she never would that she didn't even think she'd fit in after she died.
"And you?" Nu asked, and while this had been a pleasant apology-and-bonding moment, Torres felt no need to unpack years of therapy onto her cadet.
"I have no desire to die any time soon," Torres replied simply as she rose. "Let's get some rest. The sooner we get that relay station dissembled, the sooner we'll be done with these Jem'Hadar and the less likely it is that either of us gets to find out which mythology is actually true."