Chapter 4: Preparing to Fail

USS Da Vinci
Troyius Sector beta quadrant
Stardate: 58105.4

Chell walked through the ship, chastising himself for his big mouth. "Why do I always say things like that." He thought. "It always gets me in to trouble." Back on voyager it was the same for him, he never knew when to keep his mouth shut and it got him in to trouble, especially in the earlier parts of the journey. He though he had gotten over it, he managed to find a place on voyager where he fit in and people respected him, even despite his quirks. Even Tuvok had become friendlier towards him, well he no longer asked him to run laps around cargo bays which was probably as close as Tuvok would get to being friendly but no his mouth had done it again and he didn't know how he was going to get out of it this time. "If we survive this surely the captain will boot me of the ship soon, and then what will I do?"

While deep in thought he almost literally bumped in to P8 blue, who was wearing several very heavy looking pieces of equipment in in three of her arms, making her stumble.

"I'm sorry specialist." He said. 'I should have paid attention to where I was going, here let me help you with that."

It's okay Chell, and I told you it's Pattie, we are all deep in thought I think Chell don't worry about it."

"I'm so stupid… sorry Pattie, wait where are you going with all that equipment anyway?"

"Again you worry too much Chell." Pattie responded with her characteristic chuckle. "I'm heading towards airlock 4 doing an EVA to modify our hull as we discussed, and maybe help with the cannon installation afterward." She continued while looking at the uncomfortable looking Chell. "You have EVA experience don't you?"

"Yes I do, well not an incredible amount but I manage."

"Care to join me, it would make the work go a lot faster and I can certainly use the company, and it would certainly distract you a bit she continued silently."

"Are you sure, wouldn't you rather have someone else with you?"

"You'll do fine Chell, I'm sure of it." Pattie replied as they made their way to the airlock.

Corsi and Tev where hard at work on figuring out the specifics on adapting Starbase size cannons for starship use, and a starship not designed for cannons as well. Usually engineering wasn't Corsi's forte but she happened to know something about making big cannons work and it was her idea after all.

"No all of this won't work!" Tev complained "There's no way we can generate enough energy to power all eight of these cannons."

"Who said we need all eight." Corsi responded. "I just need to know how much you can give me."

"Three on full power, we could install more but the effectiveness would drop of."

"No three will do, we don't want to lose power by over stretching the system." Tev was a bit taken aback by the seemingly new found engineering expertise in his commanding officer, and apparently it showed because Corsi quickly added. "Hey I know guns, and you don't spend as much time with you engineers as I have without picking up some tricks."

"it seems so, now where should we place these, I would suggest two fore, and one aft would be an ideal…"

"No on a ship as manoeuvrable as Da Vinci you don't want to waste such a powerful weapon on the rear, we'll put them in the front, two on either side of the saucer, maybe near the shuttle bay to make installation easier and one on the ventral of the secondary hull to give full coverage."

"Alright." Said Tev, slightly taken aback at Corsi's decisiveness, being used to usually being right on everything. "I guess that is a better option, I shall trust your expertise in the matter."

"Wow." Thought Corsi. "He really has come a long way." Then out loud she said: "good lieutenant now let's get working on this we don't have all day."

"Yes of course commander, but may I ask you a question first?" now it was Corsi's turn to be taken aback Tev's voice had none of the usual superior attitude in it associated with the rather self-absorbed Tellarite.

"I believe you just did." Corsi quipped but after getting nothing but a puzzled look for the old joke, she continued. "Never mind Tev ask away."

"Well, in your opinion as a security expert and tactician, do we well…"

"Stand a chance?" Corsi finished for him. "Honestly I don't know, logically Chell is right, and we stand no chance but we have faced many no win situations before and survived, and so has Chell so who knows."

"But if that's the case maybe we need to change tactics, find a different solution."

"Like what Tev? There is no solution people smarter than us have looked for one for decades, and even if we don't stand a chance what's the difference, we are still going to fight, to the bitter end if need be to protect what we stand for."

"You're right of course commander, I shouldn't have brought it up."

"Don't worry about it, we 're all worried now let's get back to work."

Bart and Soloman were walking to the computer lab, on their way to work on the shield frequency rotation algorithms.

"Could you try and explain your idea a little bit further Bart?" Soloman asked.

"Well the basic idea is from an old form of coding called a book cipher." Bart answered, glad he had something to distract him from where his mind actually was. "Where you'd use a written text to develop a code to write your messages in. Without the exact text there's no way to break it. Back in the day they would use a single passage to encode the message but with current computing we could use entire works of literature to encode a sequence."

"That sounds interesting, but where do the linguistic algorithms come in?"

"Well the Borg really know their coding as you know, so I wondered what would happen if you run the text in question through the universal translator several times, from for example English to Klingon to Rihannsu and so on. I can't think of a better way to randomise something which is already pretty random."

"That's a very innovative idea Bart, and it doesn't surprise me that it took a linguist to think of it.

"So do you think you can make it work?"

"I don't see why not, do you have any specific text in mind?"

"I was thinking." Bart answered choking up a little. I was thinking The Lord of the Rings, Anthony introduced me to that book, he… he used to love it." He continued hardly holding back the tears he desperately didn't want the Bynar to see.

"Bart are you al right, wait did you say used to love?" Soloman replied slightly confused at the sudden change in Bart's demeanour.

Bart couldn't hold it back much longer "Anthony died Soloman." He said. "His ship was destroyed defending Starbase 234."

Soloman was at a loss for words, he knew how much his friend cared for his former mate, even if they had been apart for several years now. He knew what Bart was going through, having himself lost his mate 111, the one who made him whole a long time ago. Finally he managed to say: "I am so sorry bart, is there anything I can..."

"Thank you Soloman" Bart interrupted him. "There isn't, many more people will die this day and neither Anthony or I are more important, we have a job to do."

"He was more important to you Bart." Soloman thought, but decided not to say as they continued on their way.

Sonya was crawling through a jefferies tube, busy rerouteing some power couplings to aid Pattie's plan to reinforce the structural integrity field. She was all by herself, it was a one man job of course but at these times she really felt the loneliness of command. With the more lacks standers of the ship and the close bond she had developed with her crew mates it usually wasn't that obvious but now alone in a jefferies tube of the ship she commanded which was headed towards war it really hit her. Most captains wouldn't have done this kind of dirty work themselves, but then again Sonya Gomez was not just any captain. Back in the days before she was promoted the Da Vinci was a regular Starfleet ship, used to ferry the SCE team around from assignment to assignment. This however caused some conflict of interest which was abused by a federation ambassador Gabriel Marshal years ago putting Sonya in an impossible situation. Luckily Captains Gold and Scott had realised this and when it became time for Gold to retire they decided it was time to change things up.

The Da Vinci would become a ship permanently assigned to the star fleet corps of engineers, with Sonya in full command of both the SCE team and the ship itself. Sonya's lack of regular command training would be counter balanced by making Corsi her first officer and stand in captain for when Sonya was busy with SCE assignments. This way the corps had a much clearer chain of command and would hopefully avoid unfortunate incidents like the Rhaax incident. The really surprising things is that it worked, the ship run fine and even though it was pretty strange to be the only starship captain to wear a gold uniform in the entire fleet. SO far it had been going so well that before the invasion started Scotty was supposedly in talks to extend the system to more SCE ships when it was time for their current captains to move on.

Right now though this was little help to Sonya, all alone hard at work, with nop one to talk to about her fears, and doubts.

Despite the seriousness of the situation Chell was pretty exited, while he was suiting up he had been overly modest to Pattie earlier. He didn't just have some EVA experience, he was pretty damn good at it and he knew it, Chell rarely felt comfortable or like he had a skill that outmatched his crew mates but this was one place he knew he shone. He had always been comfortable floating in a space suit, enjoying the freedom. The last time he had done any extra vehicular activity was just before Voyager made it home, installing the ablative armour generators to Voyager's hull.

As he finished suiting up Pattie walked in seemingly not concerned about getting suited up herself.

"Are you ready Chell?"

"Yes ma'am, ready to go when you are."

"I told you it's Pattie, well the equipment is already in the airlock so let's go shall we?"

"Okay, but um Pattie shouldn't you suit up to?"

"I am Nasat Chell my people don't need those cumbersome suits, I can stay out in the vacuum for several hours before I need to breath, and than this will do" she said pointing at a mask like device on her equipment belt.

"Oh, sorry I knew that, I must have forgotten." Chell responded apologetically.

"Don't worry about it, lets go."

Soloman was worried about his friend, he could see Bart at work on the linguistic algorithms seeming not having anything else on his mind. Soloman however knew better, he could see the pain in his eyes, and remember the hurt in his voice. He wished he could help his friend, but Bart had always been a private person in many ways. Soloman knew the pain his friend was going through better than most, and knew that there was very little comfort he could offer Bart but he decided to try anyway.

"Bart if you want to talk about it you know I am here right?"

"Soloman it's not like I don't appreciate it but I really have no right to your pity, this is not like what happened to you and 111." This confused Soloman, and for a moment he didn't know how to respond, how was it different he wondered, Bart clearly loved Anthony.

"What do you mean Bart?"he finally said."How is it so different, you loved Anthony and clearly still did."

"Of course I still loved him, but I ruined it, pushed him away. I couldn't be enough for him, I was to selfish and ruined the best relationship I have ever had!" Bart didn't seem sad any more he seemed mad, mad at himself.

"It's not your fault Bart, not that you pushed him away and certainly not that he died."

"You just don't understand Soloman, it's..."Bart was interrupted by an incoming message. After quickly checking the sender he shouted.

"It's Anthony!" Soloman saw his friend's excitement only to see it disappear when Bart saw the time stamp on the message.

"it's from before the battle." Bart said sadly slumping back in his chair crestfallen.

"You should read it Bart, you never know what it says he might have been off the ship at the time for some reason and even if he wasn't you should hear what he had to say."Bart seemed to consider this for a while, eventually opening the message. Soloman could see the tears start coming from Bart's eyes as he was reading the message, eventually ending up in all out crying. In a very weak voice Bart muttered.

"He was going to forgive me, he would have taken me back."

"I am so sorry Bart." Soloman muttered not knowing what else to say.

"It's okay Soloman, thank you for getting me to read it, I needed that." Bart answered softly. "We have work to do though and we should get back to it" he continued clearly having found some comfort in the letter.

Chell was amazed to see Pattie skittering around the ship's hull, seemingly not even bothered by the change in environment.

"And I thought I was good at EVAs' he thought to himself. "What a fool I was." they were making their way to the shuttle bay, having just finished the modification on the structural integrity field nodes. In the bay Commander Corsi and Tev would be waiting with the phaser cannons to be installed on either side of the bay. They already installed the ventral cannon when they were there for the ventral node. Normally they would probably have used one of the worker bees to install the cannons however that was not really an option while the ship was at warp. Chell felt so slow using his suit's thrusters to move compared to the lightning quick Nasat skittering across the hull.

"Are you alright their Chell?" he heard Pattie say through his helmet's com."

"Yes patty, I just need to make sure not to stray to far from the hull, you could go ahead if you want."Chell responded not wanting to slow Pattie down.

"No it is all right Chell, I will wait for you, I can't do much there without you anyway." Pattie said cheerfully, not really realising the inferiority Chell was feeling. "We are almost there anyway.

Moving on they saw Corsi had already opened the doors and was standing in the shuttle bay next to the two cannons waving at them, they went through the forcefield and started pushing one of the cannons out in to the vacuum from here on it was an easy process to install the cannons to the previously prepared power couplings, and ion weld them in to place. It took about half an hour for both of them to be installed, when done they headed back through the shuttle bay to re-enter the ship. Pattie was moving to Chell to help him remove his helmet, but she quickly saw he didn't need the help. They were all alone in the bay, Corsi had moved on to another duty a while back.

"Thank you Chell, you did a great job: I couldn't have done this anywhere near this fast on my own."

"You're kidding right?"Chell answered confused.

"What do you mean?" Pattie answered even more confused.

"I was only holding you back!" Chell answered agitatedly. "The one thing I can do well and you just blew me out of the water in it." Pattie finally understood the origin of Chell's frustration, sometimes humanoids still confused her.

"You were of great help Chell, there's more to EVA work than just getting from A to B and you can't help being a humanoid and needing the help of a cumbersome suit. If you want the truth here it is, I don't think I know any other humanoid on this ship who could have helped me as well as you just did. I meant what I said Chell."

Not really knowing how to respond to such praise Chell muttered a simple "Thank you." but this was the first time he started feeling like a true member of the Da Vinci crew.