Second Chances: Chapter 67
Stardate 52725
December 2375
San Francisco, Earth
"Hey, Bakos, I'm here to take over," Lt. B'Elanna Torres called out as she entered the Pathfinder communications lab.
"Thank the gods," Ensign Bakos called in reply. She waited until Torres had joined her at the work station before continuing, "This is the most boring duty ever."
"You're supposed to working on other things when you're on duty," Torres pointed out. Bakos waved dismissively.
"I ran out of work about three hours ago," she said. "I'm been occupying my time with bad romance novels since then."
Torres smiled. "I'll send over some of my Klingon romance novels." Bakos brightened.
"Sounds fun!" she exclaimed. She grinned again before nodding over to the controls. "Here are the sectors I searched during my shift, so you'll get this next chunk. There are," she glanced at a chronometer, "fifteen minutes left on this sector. Don't forget to record your greeting, or you'll be sending out my greeting for the next twelve hours."
"Not my first time on duty," Torres reminded her. "Any big weekend plans?"
Bakos beamed. "I have a date," she said, her eyes twinkling with excitement.
"Oh?" Torres asked. "What does he do?"
"He's not in Starfleet, thank the gods," Bakos said emphatically, then frowned. "I actually don't know what he does," she admitted. "I met him a triathlon last weekend, so pretty much all I know about him is that he looks really good in a triathlon kit."
"That's a good place to start," Torres said with a grin of her own. "Wait. How did you meet him at a triathlon in December?"
"Argentina," Bakos explained. "Bonus: he's Argentinian." She waggled her eyebrows, and Torres laughed.
"Are you bringing him to the promotion ceremony on Monday?"
"Gods no," Bakos said quickly, and Torres laughed again as she waved Bakos away.
"Enjoy your date," she said. "And your last weekend as an ensign."
She took the seat that Bakos had vacated and reset the console to her controls, the sector map on the left monitor and her students' final projects on the right. She was only teaching one class this semester—Comparative Systems—but even with only one class, she had a lot of grading to do in the last three weeks before the end of the semester. Having the students do a final project was more interesting than a final exam, but grading them was a lot more work for her.
If this duty shift went the same as her last few, she'd make a lot of progress in her grading in the next twelve hours.
Her timer chimed, and she moved the array to the next sector. "U.S.S. Voyager, this is Lt. B'Elanna Torres from Pathfinder, please respond," she recorded. She transmitted the message, reset her timer, and returned to her grading.
Compared to other buildings around the Presidio, the CRC had taken relatively little damage, little enough that instead of dedicating the time necessary to move the communications, astrophysics, and communication engineering systems to a temporary building, they had just waited until the repair crews finished up. In all, they lost a week and a half of work due to the attack. Compared to the construction that still, two months after the attack, was ongoing at both Starfleet Medical and Starfleet Headquarters, they considered themselves fortunate.
Despite Nicki's predictions that the war was winding down, the Breen attack seemed to heat things up again. Sydney had taken command of Starbase 204; that close to the Breen Confederacy, they needed someone with her tactical experience to take over, even though she had had no interest in ever commanding a station or ship. The Fleet had been reconfigured to account for this new threat from a neighbor that shared a long border with the Federation; the Taurus had been one of the ships moved and was now based out of Starbase 204, so she actually saw Jens a lot more than she had as Admiral Huang's adjuvant. Owen and Alicia were temporarily taking care of Kajsa, Stephanie, and Alex; the younger two would go out to Starbase 204 during the winter holiday to live with Sydney, while Kajsa, almost halfway through her secondary school career at Tucker, would stay on Earth. And seemingly, mostly in Torres' apartment, which brought Ainsley and Navi over. It was like she was raising a trio of fifteen-year-olds in addition to her own preschooler.
The timer went off again, and she repeated the procedure, moving the transponder signal from the MIDAS array another sector, sending the signal, and resetting her timer. It was probably futile, but Barclay had gotten excited about the possibilities, the way he always did whenever a new idea to contact Voyager crossed his mind. They had wasted six months on the transwarp probes; she hoped that he was still looking into other possibilities while they explored using the MIDAS array, so they didn't waste another six months on this idea.
In the meantime, it was slow going. They were able to create micro-wormholes, just large enough for communication signals, by firing tachyon beams at a pulsar. The problem was, the communication signal through the micro-wormholes was very narrow, hence the need to send a new transmission, sector by sector. Dakotah Cohen had extrapolated Voyager's most likely position; for the last two weeks, the Pathfinder officers had been pulling 12-hour shifts to point the MIDAS array in an ever-expanding spiral from that 'most likely' sector.
She was more than halfway done reviewing her students' final projects when she moved the array a little after 0200, and within thirty seconds, her console chimed. Distracted by a particularly creative way a cadet had decided to integrate a Romulan shield generator into a Federation system, her eyes didn't even leave that monitor as she leaned forward to tap the console. *We've got to stop meeting like this, Torres.*
Her eyes snapped over to the other display to see a read-out of an active commlink. She was connected. To Voyager.
And Tom was being a smartass on an official channel.
She couldn't help the smile that tugged at her lips. Two could play at that game, even though she could already see Owen's eyeroll when he reviewed the comm in the morning. "You're the one who keeps disappearing on me, Paris," she shot back, and was rewarded with a chuckle. "What are you doing responding to ship's hails at zero-two?" she asked.
*I'm in command,* he replied. *It's my last night commanding gamma shift, then I get two days off before I return to alpha. You have great timing, as always.*
"Tom Paris in the captain's chair," she teased. "It's too bad we can't get visual, because I would love to see that."
*To be fair, I am sitting at the helm,* he informed her. That made more sense. *What about you? What are you doing hailing the Delta quadrant at zero-two?*
"Duty officer," she explained. "Lt. Barclay came up with a way to talk to you, but we didn't know exactly where you were. For the last two weeks, we've been taking turns sitting at this work station, repositioning the array and hoping to get a response."
*There's that perfect timing again,* he said. *Is Izzy there?*
"At zero-two?" she asked him, then snorted. "Hopefully, she's asleep, but your parents are push-overs and Syd's kids are also there, and neither of those is conducive to a normal bedtime." She glanced at the readout and frowned. "This is fun, Tom, but we'll be lucky to get four more minutes out of this link. I'm sending you the backlog of letters from home as well as my asks for engineering."
*Received,* he said a second later, then, *Jeni, please send Lt. Torres the ship logs since our last transmission and the letters home. Hail the captain and see if you can wake her up, and then get Lt. Carey on the line.*
"We got them," she informed him when the package finished downloading.
*I have Lt. Carey,* an unknown voice said in the background. *Still working on a response from Captain Janeway.*
*Joe, I have Pathfinder on the line,* Tom said.
"I sent a list of diagnostics and information requests," B'Elanna said. "Now that we know where Voyager is, we should be able to connect frequently and share information back and forth."
*Hey, Torres,* Joe Carey said. *It's good to hear your voice. Are you still working the transwarp project?*
"We've tabled that for now," she informed him. "Our best bet currently involves artificial singularities. The results from those diagnostics will let us know if we can pursue that or explore other options."
*I have Captain Janeway,* the female voice in the background cut in.
*Good morning, Lieutenant.* To her credit, Captain Janeway hid the fact that she had been woken from sleep very well.
"Good morning, Captain," Torres replied. She glanced at the display for the commlink and did some rapid calculations. "This commlink will be open for about another minute."
*I'm assuming Lt. Paris remembered to send you our logs and collects of letters home,* the captain said, and Torres smiled.
"Yes, sir," she replied. "I wouldn't say he's been the model of professionalism, but I'll keep him anyway."
Captain Janeway chuckled. *I'm glad to hear it, Lieutenant.*
Torres smiled again before getting back down to business. "This means of communication is going to be more reliable than the last," she explained. "We should be able to send messages back and forth every day, and with any luck, we'll be able to get it configured for visual as well. Lt. Barclay can work with your engineering and operations system on the commlink as early as next duty shift. I sent a list of diagnostics to Lt. Carey, which I'll be using on refining a theory to use artificial singularities as a means of long-distance space travel." She saw the edges of the connection begin to fray on her monitor. "We only have a few seconds left, Captain, so I'll close by saying that it's good to hear your voices. I'm glad Voyager is okay."
*It's good to hear from you as well, Lieutenant,* Janeway said. *I'll let Lt. Paris give our closing remarks.*
The connection almost cut out, but held out long enough for Tom to say, *I love you, B'Elanna. I'll see you soon. Give Izzy a kiss for me.*
She smiled; she wished it would be soon, wished he was there to give Izzy a kiss himself. "I love you, too, Tom. Stay safe."
And the connection was gone.