Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Chapter 49
Risky Endeavors
January 10, 2385
Empok Nor
Isabel had been online for five years now.
After seven years, her matrix would no longer effectively store information and begin feeding back upon itself. She'd splinter and fragment as the whole process corrupted her to the point of collapse.
With two years left before they stole the Enterprise-E and two years left in her stable lifespan, Isabel did not want to spend all but her final days aboard Empok Nor.
While she was proud of the work they were accomplishing aboard the station, it pained her greatly that she would never live to see the fruits of that labor.
She was also terminally bored.
No matter how much she diverted her processes to solving issues or tinkering with the station's systems, it was never enough.
Empok Nor was not a big station by UNSC standards, and with only five regular personnel aboard the whole place, Isabel could predict almost exactly what her fleshy compatriots were going to do before they did it!
She knew every bulkhead, conduit, and circuit of the station. Even with the ongoing modifications, Empok Nor was a constant in Isabel's life.
The only exciting thing in her life was the development of the retrofitting technology that would enable them to rapidly refit and upgrade the Enterprise-E.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of waiting involved as they acquired the necessary materials. Most of it was being processed from the junkyard the Cardassians were using to disguise the true purpose of Empok Nor.
Garak had officially classified Empok Nor as an automated recycling facility with some crew for security and maintenance purposes. The station's cover included breaking down wreckage into valuable component materials and packaging them for transport.
Isabel and the rest of the team skimmed what they needed out of the cargo bays before automated cargo vessels picked them up for export, and no one was the wiser.
In summary, Isabel's existence was becoming unbearable boring, and depressing. She'd already refined every single automated process ten times over, and she had zero interest in ever doing it again.
She wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to take the strain of the boredom before she broke.
Days on Empok Nor often blended together, but it was something Tora Ziyal didn't mind.
The peace and quiet were a nice change of pace to the life she'd lived before Damar had shot her in the back.
Every morning, Isabel would wake her up half an hour before the stand-up meeting, giving her enough time to freshen up and throw on something decent. Today, she chose an outfit Ezri had given her on her last visit.
Once she'd braided her hair and pinned it up, she left her quarters and took the stairs down to the first level of the promenade. Normally quarters were in the habitat ring on stations like this, but that had been converted to storage. The upper promenade of Empok Nor held the only personnel quarters on the whole station.
After reaching the bottom, the echoes of her footsteps bounced off the cavernous walls of the room. When she'd first arrived on Empok Nor, it had been extremely unnerving to see the near-identical space so empty and lifeless compared to DS9.
It was one of the many things she'd had to process after being revived.
Long ago, when Ziyal had been a slave to the Breen, she'd often distract herself with daydreams of a better life.
She'd imagined her father, Gul Dukat, at her side, exploring the galaxy or taking her on a tour of Cardassia Prime, explaining its rich history in a way only he could.
She had wanted to see the sunsets of a thousand worlds and capture them all on her easel.
For a short time, Ziyal believed her dream might become a reality, but when her father had sold his soul to the Dominion, it had slipped away.
Then she'd died, and her father had gone off the deep end.
He'd killed Jadzia, nearly destroyed the Prophets, and then forced Sisko's hand when he tried to do so again.
Now he was beyond her reach forever, both physically and spiritually, and the looming future was far darker than she'd ever known it could be.
This was her reality now, and it hadn't been easy to accept it.
The one bright spot in all of this was that the Prophets had intervened directly to help stop Skynet from killing them all, and that gave her hope that the looming apocalypse could be avoided.
That spark of hope made the approaching storm a bit easier to face as the clocked ticked down to their own Judgement Day.
Dark thoughts such as these often floated in the back of her mind when she awoke each day, but she'd taught herself to banish them before breakfast to keep them from souring her whole day.
Speaking of facing the day, Ziyal spotted Jadzia already at the replicator when she entered the replimat.
"Morning," the Trill woman greeted in a drowsy voice. "One raktajino, double, extra sweet, extra cream."
The machine whirred with light and sound as the beverage formed. The moment the taller woman took a sip of the drink, her eyes lit up with more of her usual pep.
"Feeling better?" Ziyal asked with an amused smile as she ordered a cup of red leaf tea and a breakfast roll.
Jadzia took another sip. "Much," she replied breathily after inhaling the scent deep into her lungs.
The younger woman laughed at the Trill's antics. "Maybe you shouldn't stay up so late!"
Jadzia shook her head after another sip. They both knew very well why Jadzia overworked herself.
Ziyal hadn't slept well for months after being released from her cryopod in late 2381. Learning about what had happened after her death and what lay in the near future had been overwhelming.
Ezri Dax had taken time off to help her work through it, and Ziyal was eternally grateful for it.
Once Ezri had to resume her duties, she and Jadzia had gravitated towards one another.
Their shared trauma of being brought back to life years after their deaths allowed them to bond in a way they hadn't before.
Ziyal and Jadzia had a rule when they ate together, and that was no shop-talk. It was their way of trying to be normal, to just gossip and take their minds off of the mission for a brief while.
Once they'd finished, they walked to the meeting room, located just a few blocks over from the replimat. Sisko and Isabel were working on his side project that would serve as the testing bed for most of the technology they were developing.
"Is that a double or a triple, Old Man?"
He was in a rather good mood considering he'd likely pulled another all-nighter.
"Double, unlike yours," she pointed out as a smirk spread across her lips. "Judging by the look on your face, I'd say you figured out our little problem."
"You could say that," he smiled confidently. "But I don't want to spoil it just yet."
Ziyal wasn't entirely certain what problem they'd been working on, but she knew it had something to do with the ship seeds.
Based on Forerunner and Borg concepts, ship seeds were a highly complex technology. Getting even one working by 2387 was a monumental task for such a small team. Without Isabel, it would have been impossible.
Or so Sisko had said, anyway. Ziyal was not an engineer.
Her relationship with Benjamin Sisko was a complicated one. Sisko, being the Emissary of the Prophets, was a religious figure in her eyes. It made interacting with him awkward at first, but eventually, she got to know Benjamin, the human who very much missed his own family.
She'd also learned over the years that he had two or three different 'versions' of himself. The Emissary, Captain Sisko, and Benjamin Sisko. There was overlap, but sometimes it was hard to see.
Sarah and Kyle arrived seconds after Sisko and Jadzia had quit teasing each other. Both were fully decked out in heavy-duty EVA gear. They'd be working outside today, apparently.
"Sorry we're late," Sarah apologized.
Obviously, they'd had trouble with suits, having never used this version before.
"Now that we're all here," Isabel began, "I'll play back the holo-logs from Captain Dax, Commander Torres, and Lieutenant Weaver."
Ezri's report was routine and contained nothing of consequence. The 31-year-old Trill was recently promoted and likely to be given a prestigious command in the following months. Her work post-Dominion War serving as the Defiant's commander and Kira Nery's right hand had garnered notice from several admirals.
She'd also been instrumental in smuggling black market items through DS9 to them.
Her promotion was all part of the plan, of course, but it meant that contact with Ezri would grow rarer.
B'Elanna's was more technical and included her latest design revisions of Enterprise-E's slipstream drive. They'd run simulations on the station's holosuite and then send the results back for her analysis.
Savannah's dealt with her progress on a personal project that would aid them in combat against Terminators.
Jadzia reported nothing since she'd been working on the same project as Sisko yesterday.
Kyle spoke for himself and Sarah. "We're going to be tagging the requested debris in Gamma Quadrant, Sector 5." He pointed out on the holo-table after Isabel brought up the map. "Hopefully, we'll be able to find enough components to make a cloaking device."
Sisko picked up from there. "As you know, we've been working on imitating the Forerunner's and the Borg's abilities to dynamically change their starship's structures in a matter of minutes without needing a space dock."
"Unfortunately, we just don't have enough time or resources to achieve that level of sophistication."
This was not a surprise; it was considered a long shot four years ago when they'd started planning this whole thing.
"What about the backup plan?" Ziyal asked. She wasn't an engineer, but Isabel had watered down the details so she'd understand whenever there was a new project.
"That's what last night's breakthrough was," he replied with a grin, "Isabel and I were able to tweak the formula for mimetic poly-alloy, basing it on tri-titanium instead of titanium."
Jadzia's eyebrows scrunched up as she pictured how that'd work. "That would boost the thermal limits, but wouldn't the bond strength be too great?"
Isabel was the one who answered her question. "We have a few manufacturing techniques in our universe that you don't. Replicators have you spoiled."
After a brief description of how to solve the issue, the Emissary took over the briefing.
"With the mimetic poly-alloy serving as the seed's means of manipulation, we should be able to begin testing once enough of it has been manufactured. Then we'll begin testing it on the Defiant."
Ziyal had been confused when she found out the blasted remains of the USS Defiant being towed to Empok Nor.
It was explained to her that the Defiant she was familiar with, registry NX-74205, had been blown to bits at the end of the Dominion War. Another Defiant-class warship, the San Paulo, was renamed in its honor. This was the ship that had been under Ezri's command for nearly a decade now.
Normally when a ship is destroyed in an all-out war, there isn't much left to salvage, but when the first Defiant had been destroyed, its warp core had been offline and thus, didn't explode when it was breached.
The front and center parts of the vessel were nearly vaporized, but the aft sections containing the impulse drives and most of the warp nacelles had survived the ship's destruction.
Normally, it would have been a complete write-off, considering over 65% of the vessel had been destroyed during the attack, but that only made it more appealing to the development team. If they could restore the Defiant, then a ship seed could certainly refit an intact starship.
The Defiant's remains had been towed to Empok Nor along with many of the destroyed ships from the Second Battle of Chin'toka.
The various governments involved, sans the Dominion and the Breen, removed their dead and classified technology long before Garak had arranged all of this.
The wreck of the Defiant now sat in one of the cradles that had been built onto the station's outer ring. Any smaller bits of wreckage belonging to the vessel had been recycled into base components and stored for later use.
"Finally," Sarah breathed. She'd been getting worried by all the setbacks considering there were less than three years left before Skynet wiped out the Alpha Quadrant.
Sisko winked at her, sending Jadzia into a hearty chuckle.
Kyle let his smile wane before speaking. "What's the timeline for getting the prototype up and running?"
"A few days," Isabel replied. "Building it is easy, but we'll have to run numerous simulations before we deploy it."
Ziyal felt her heart quicken a little. Once this invention of theirs was complete, it would be a major piece of the grand plan that would fall into place. Sooner rather than later, she would be an accomplice to stealing the Enterprise-E and then taking it to another universe.
These were the types of insane adventures Kira used to tell her about with much higher stakes, and she still wasn't sure if she was cut out for it.
She hid her uncertainty as the meeting continued. There were a few closing conversations about the seed's deployment timeline, but she barely heard them.
Then everyone turned to leave, including Ziyal, but they stopped when Isabel spoke.
"I..." she hesitated, "I have a request."
Everyone gave their attention to the AI. They could tell by her posture and tone of voice that this didn't have anything to do with what they'd been discussing.
"Go on," Sisko gestured. He spent a great deal of time with Isabel, and he hadn't noticed any deviation from her normal behavior.
She sighed and remained in her smaller, translucent form on the holotable, rather than take a more typical holographic form afforded by the holo-emitters in the station.
"You are all aware that Smart AIs degrade after seven years," she began softly. Several people shared looks, but Ziyal and Sisko kept their eyes on Isabel.
"Of course," the man affirmed.
"I will spend most of my life on this station," she said somberly. "I know it better than I know myself."
Jadzia crossed her arms. She'd wondered if something like this would come up for a long time.
"I want..." she sighed and paused while thinking about how best to phrase this, given the current crowd. "I need to get out of here before I drive myself insane."
She looked ashamed, but there was something in her avatar's processes that gave it the thousand-yard stare.
Sarah and Kyle shared a look before turning back to the others. They had also wondered about Isabel's mental health after being confined for so long.
"We need you here," Jadzia reminded. "You're the only reason this station's in one piece."
Isabel shook her head. "I'm working on that. A Dumb AI will be able to run the station in my absence."
Sisko fiddled with his goatee as he tried to figure out Isabel's game plan. "Even if you left, we don't have a body that will pass any rigorous inspection. You'd get flagged by the first biometric sensor you pass."
Isabel gave him a scathing look. "I know all of that, Mr. Sisko. I know the protocols for every world I want to visit, and I've been designing a body that will allow me to blend in seamlessly."
As he suspected, this was not a new development. He also figured that she wouldn't take a vacation without purpose. Their timeline was too sensitive for one of their most important members to go off on a planet-hopping getaway.
"You're going to start the infiltration phase ahead of schedule?"
She nodded. "Two for one. I get out of here for a while and I'll be able to better plan my 'final' act."
"I see," he rumbled. No one here liked to think about what Isabel had planned as her grand finale before she initiated final dispensation.
"I've thought this through, Benjamin. I want this mission to succeed more than anyone, but if I'm going to die here, I want to see what I'm dying for."
No one really had a response to that. Sure, it was a risk to set her loose in the galaxy, but it was even more of a risk to deny her.
Another pregnant pause settled across the room.
Sarah was the one to break it. "Do what you need, just be careful." She said with a tired sigh and slipped on her suit's helmet before leaving.
Kyle was more sympathetic, having seen firsthand what she'd been through, but he had no words for her in this public setting and settled for an approving nod before following his wife.
"I for one have a few reservations," Sisko said after the couple had left. "We'll talk later."
"I know," Isabel replied.
Jadzia smirked with sadness coloring her face. "Take us with you?" She chuckled softly.
Isabel's expression matched the Trill's and replied: "Would if I could."
Unfortunately, Jadzia could not change her face on a whim, and would likely be recognized given her notoriety.
Ziyal lacked that notoriety, but her features were certainly unique. While there were plenty of Bajoran-Cardassian hybrids following the Bajoran Occupation, no one wanted to risk Section 31, Starfleet Intelligence, or any other shadow organization, to have any reason to investigate.
Jadzia shrugged and followed Sisko out of the room, but Ziyal remained until Isabel winked out.
She dimmed the lights before she left, and then proceeded to climb back up to the second level of the promenade.
Most of the windows had been replaced with armored hull plating during the refit and for good reason. The large amounts of space debris and the threat of being spied on made the change practical.
What few viewports remained were thicker and usually opaque, but at a touch of a button, Ziyal could look out and see the stream of colors comprising the nebula they were hiding in.
The bits of debris and wrecks reflected light off of the nebula and created dark spots that she found mesmerizing.
Many of her post-resurrection paintings featured the nebula as a background, or at least, the colors.
Some art was painted directly on the windows that had been replaced with duranium alloy, and many of those were landscapes from planets across the quadrant.
Ziyal did her best to make the isolation more bearable for everyone.
She filled the promenade with art and other decorations to lighten up the dreary, monotonous environment.
Dinner nights where she, and occasionally Sisko, would cook meals from fresh food grown in the hydroponics bay were just some of the small ways she contributed to the cause.
She'd expanded her range when it came to painting styles, even dipping into holographic art once or twice when traditional media couldn't suffice.
Unfortunately, this long confinement was robbing her of any inspiration. She'd hadn't done any kind of art for nearly six months
Later, she'd have to talk with Isabel about documenting her journey, if only to get her muse back.
When Sisko had said he wanted to talk 'later' he'd meant it.
She'd been overseeing the construction of the ship seed while Sisko worked on the deployment strategy. Since he originally conceived the Defiant-class, it made sense for him to be the one directing the reconstruction efforts.
When the day cycle was halfway gone, Sisko logged out of his terminal and turned towards Isabel's massive holo-tank that allowed her to project high-resolution holograms for the purpose of simulation.
Isabel sat at its center, running simultaneous micro-simulations on the ship seed. When she saw him approach, Isabel left the simulations running and transferred herself to the stations' emitters.
"Walk with me?"
She nodded and followed him out.
Even though her program ran throughout the entire station, she knew humans from this universe were more familiar with solid holograms. She'd found that interacting with them as such proved to be more productive.
"I'm curious how you plan to avoid detection," he began. "Starfleet does not have a monopoly on cutting edge scanners."
"Garak has kept me up to date," she reminded him. "And so has Ezri and Savannah. I believe I have enough information to fool any transporter or scanner that isn't deliberately looking for me."
He gave her a look that was filled with uncertainty and doubt. "I hope you won't mind if I don't take your word for it."
"I don't," she shrugged. "I know you're worried I'll get myself captured or killed."
"Aren't you?"
"Of course," she said as they continued around the promenade. "I want to show you something."
Intrigued, he followed her into the vault sitting in the center of the promenade, made from solid neutronium and lined with sensor nullifying materials.
Inside was all the tech they wanted to keep hidden and safe.
Cameron's CPU, her endoskull, and the TX-4A were just some of the things inside of it.
The remains of Skynet's champion were stretched out on a transparent aluminum frame in an exploded view of its anatomy. Isabel reached into the expanded thoracic section and pulled out a component no bigger than her thumb.
Sisko recognized it immediately. "That's part of the adaptive shielding assembly. The primary subprocessor."
"It is, but that's not all it could do, I think. I believe it had a hidden function. Remember how it was connected to the shield emitters?"
"Through the power couplings. An unusual arrangement for a subprocessor."
That had been one of their longer debates between the three of them. Jadzia had been the one to correctly point out that data signals could be encoded in a power distribution system, even one as unusual as this.
"Yes, and I believe that its primary function was to create a responsive and adaptable sensory cloaking field through the shield emitters. When it wasn't in battle, the TX-4A might have been able to slip past any sensor net we know of."
"And you believe you can recreate its function without Borg technology?"
She smiled. "I can. Remember, I have the specs for the TX-2, 3, 4A, and the older cyborg models. My goal is to create a chassis capable of hiding from the eyes of man and machine alike."
His face held a slight grimace for a moment before breaking out into a smile. "Well, then, let's see what you've got!"
Her processes briefly froze at his rapid change in mood, but it wasn't the first time he'd done this.
"Okay," she drawled. "You're really strange, you know that?"
It was rhetorical, and not the first time she'd said that to him. She could never truly understand what he'd been through. No one could.
His concern had lifted so rapidly because Isabel had shown him what he'd wanted to see. She'd prioritized her ability to hide over all other features.
Isabel could be immature at times, and so very human. He loved that about her. It was almost like having another Dax around.
"Based on what you've told me so far, you're looking to create what Data always dreamed of. A body that has all the amenities of being human, but none of the weaknesses."
She shrugged. "Maybe a bit beyond what'd he'd want. I doubt he'd want to hide like I am."
"You never know when blending in may be invaluable to an away mission," he pointed out, to which she agreed.
Isabel replaced the burned-out component and they left the vault.
"How far along is your design?"
"95% physically, 75% digitally," she answered. "The pseudo-flesh should allow me the full range of tactile senses and the artificial internal organs will allow me to blend in easily. The battle chassis will be stripped down, but the endoskull will be fully equipped with armor, shields, sensors, emergency transporter, etc."
A hologram of the in-progress chassis appeared in front of them at the twitch of her finger.
"I just need to work out the self-repair system and I'll be ready to start running testing it in the holodeck."
He studied the machine for a moment. Sisko was no android engineer, but he was smart enough to appreciate the effort put into this by Isabel.
"Well, I guess Jadzia will have to write up two different sets of testing suites."
Isabel smiled. He wasn't completely convinced about her plan, but he was listening.
She could work with that.
Sarah was not fond of spacewalks, mostly due to their inherent risks, but she occasionally found it peaceful.
This was not one of those times, like when they were outfitting Empok Nor in the earlier days. Crawling around blasted, irradiated hulks was anything but relaxing and she hated it.
She hid it as well as Kyle did. There was no place for that here. These wrecks from the First and Second Battles of Chin'taka were filled with hazards.
From unstable bulkheads to corrosive chemicals and radiation, they were labyrinths not for amateurs to explore.
Despite all the treacherous terrain, they'd secured most of the parts they needed from their first five wrecks, save one.
D'deridex-class Romulan starships were massive and intimidating, and sometimes full of booby-traps. This last recovery would be tricky.
Luckily, this ship had been hit by a Breen energy weapon that had killed almost any power source. It was also nice that half of the primary hull was blown away.
While that may have cut down on time spent inside an unstable wreck, it also made said wreck even more treacherous.
Kyle was by her side as their magnetized boots thumped in sync. Each of their suits had directional search lamps on their wrists in addition to the floodlight on their helmets lighting up the whole corridor.
"Looks like the bulkhead has buckled about 30 meters ahead," Sarah told Kyle, who confirmed the reading.
Their suits also had built-in sensors for navigation and hazard detection. Not as powerful as a tricorder, but it was hands-free.
To avoid the collapse, they went around it.
"We should be getting close to engineering," Kyle observed after bringing up his map. "I love how these vessels all look alike but are nothing alike inside!"
Damn Romulans trying to throw everyone off.
It took a total of two hours to successfully navigate the wreck's labyrinth.
Once they reached the engine room, they both stopped at the door leading into it. If there were going to be any booby-traps, it'd be here.
Sarah grabbed several triangular objects from a pouch, "Ready sensors."
Kyle did the same. "Ready."
One by one they tossed the sensors at the door, control panel, and the surrounding bulkhead, to which they stuck using simple adhesive. Using anything magnetic or gravimetric might trigger something.
The readouts appeared on their wrist computer's display, designed by Kyle for hands-free utility.
"Well, could be worse," Sarah commented with a sigh. Kyle was in agreement.
"Fifteen different traps just in the main chamber alone. Looks like most of them are disabled from the Breen energy dampener."
With that in mind, they got to work cutting into the bulkhead and disabling the traps for the door. From there they made their way through engineering until they reached the central cloaking mechanism.
Again, they placed sensors around the room and scanned for traps.
There were a few more, but they'd been burned out as well. That went for the actual cloaking device as well, but they were not here for the whole thing, just a single component: a field modulator.
Extracting it was no issue. Since they only needed that part, they simply excised the component by cutting through the others it was attached to.
They carefully removed it with anti-gravity clamps and proceeded to tote it along.
It took another two hours to egress from the wreck, but it went without incident.
Once the component was loaded on their shuttle, Sarah set a course back to Empok Nor.
Her helmet was set aside with a clunk, with Kyle's following suit.
With the ship moving and their cargo secured, Sarah felt like it was time to vent.
"What's more dangerous? Letting our most powerful ally risk herself to satiate her sanity, or deny her and hope she doesn't kill us all?"
Kyle kept his face neutral as he looked towards his wife. "You're not angry at Isabel, Sarah."
"I never said I was," she retorted sourly.
He had an idea what this was really about.
"You know Savannah couldn't stay with B'Ellana forever. She needs experience."
She gave him a look that could melt tritanium.
Their adoptive daughter had applied for a promotion to full Lieutenant, and a position on a starship. Nothing had happened yet, but if it did, Savannah would likely end up with a prestigious posting, and that usually meant a more dangerous one. Something like the Enterprise, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, the Titan, or any other front-line ship.
It'd be far less safe than her first assignment on the California-class Cerritos, who specialized in second-contact and other low-risk missions.
Her argument had been that she needed more field experience, and she couldn't do that on Mars working for B'Ellanna.
"And you know how dangerous it is to be a Starfleet officer, especially on the frontline. If she..." she breathed to hold back images of Savannah being killed in a dozen different ways, "dies or is crippled? We need everyone to pull this off, Kyle."
That last sentence was Sarah's attempt to hide her concern for Savannah's safety as a parent would fear for her child, rather than her usefulness in stopping Skynet. Everyone was taking risks to make this crazy plan work, but they never took any that weren't strictly necessary.
"Ezri's going to have her own command soon, and she's just as important as Savannah."
Sarah said nothing and turned away from Kyle. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes for the rest of the journey back to the station.
After stowing the salvaged part, Kyle and Sarah ate lunch in silence before taking the afternoon off. Neither was young and took every opportunity to recharge their batteries. Being fully rested and fully alert would be critical if something unexpected came up.
Once dinner rolled around, they emerged from their quarters and joined the rest of the group in the dining room. It wasn't used every day, and mostly when someone cooked a meal from scratch.
Both Sarah and Sisko would occasionally make something, but lately, Ziyal had been taking on that responsibility. She'd learned from them both how to prepare a wide range of human dishes.
Once she'd learned the basics, she began experimenting on her own.
Tonight they were being served a mix of Bajoran and Cardassian dishes that were compatible with everyone's digestive systems.
Everyone ate and talked about their day, and what remained to be done.
The first demonstration of the prototype ship seed would be in the morning, leaving little for everyone else to do while it was constructed.
Ziyal took advantage of that.
"Sarah?"
The woman's greying hair swayed as she turned her head. Sarah's expression motioned Ziyal to ask her query.
"Would you mind running through the simulation with me, again?"
The uncertainty on the woman's face was for good reason. While Ziyal was no stranger to violence and hardship, she was hardly a natural at it.
Despite that, she was determined to not be helpless in the face of their common enemy.
"I think I can get these old bones to stand a little longer," she smiled. "I want to drill you on weapons first."
Ziyal bit back a grimace. She had hoped Sarah would put her in one of the combat sims against the Terminators.
She'd never be on the frontline if she could help it. She just wasn't cut out for it, at least, not as a combatant.
As a medic, though... well, she could do that.
The training for that was long over, and she'd even started studying to be a triage nurse.
Even doctors, like Julian Bashier, were taught the basics of self-defense, and while that was all well and good, Terminators forced one to learn more than the bare minimum if you wanted to have a prayer of surviving an encounter with one.
Sarah and Kyle were the foremost experts on fighting the machines, and so, she didn't question their regimen.
When they reached the holosuite, Sarah wasted little time in selecting a program.
Ziyal stepped into a familiar white room, reminiscent of the training room from the Matrix movie.
"Computer," Sarah called out, "Load UNSC military service weapons, circa late-2552."
The half-Cardassian internally groaned. She hated projectile weapons.
She found them archaic, single-purposed, and primitive.
She pulled an MA5B off the rack and set it down on the table that had materialized behind her.
Just as she was about to start tearing it down, Sarah placed a blindfold over her eyes and tied it behind her head.
Ziyal said nothing in objection, but internally, her mood soured further.
Sarah sat across from her and noted the clench in her jaw. Sarah knew that kind of frustration all too well from when she'd learned these things herself, and from when she'd taught John and Savannah.
"You're good at picturing things in your mind, Ziyal. You can do this."
The woman was again, silent, but her hands moved until they found the assault rifle.
She breathed deeply and then began tearing the weapon apart.
Slowly, meticulously, she removed and set aside each piece until it was completely apart.
Ziyal paused for only a moment before she began the much harder task of reassembling the weapon.
Sarah had an old-fashioned stopwatch in her hand, and her thumb bumped the stop button when Ziyal laid the reassembled MA5B in front of her.
The older woman glanced at the time and then spoke. "4:47. You need to halve that."
Ziyal sat up even straighter on the bench, "I'll do my best," she said before tearing apart the rifle again.
Sisko found Sarah outside the holo-suites working on her personal project.
Glancing at the holosuite controls, he could tell that Ziyal was still inside the active program.
Judging by Sarah's demeanor, there was tension between student and teacher.
On the table in front of her, metal, wires, circuits, and several types of power cells were spread out with various tools in between.
Sarah Reese was no engineer, but over the two decades she'd lived in the Star Trek universe, she'd forced herself to learn a thing or two about weapon tech. In a world where you could barely step without being surrounded by advanced technology, it was best to know how it worked.
Thankfully, the Federation had an excellent education system.
"I don't want your help, Benjamin."
He'd offered to teach her in the past, but she'd refused every time. She'd said it was just a hobby and had nothing to do with their mission.
"With the phaser, or the student?" His voice rumbled. Sarah knew when Sisko's voice crescendoed, he was being serious.
Knowing there was no way she would be able to avoid him for long, she relented.
"Neither," she admitted and dropped the part back onto the table.
Post-Emissary Benjamin Sisko had taken her a while to get used to. He was not the same man who'd joined the Prophets almost a decade ago.
He was observant in a way that amazed her and creeped her out at the same time.
Perfectly aware of this, he continued. "That leaves only you," he said while pulling up a chair and sitting himself down across from her.
She smiled snarkily, "Do you want a prize?"
"Not particularly," he replied with equal sarcasm. "We both know you hate talking about your feelings, so let's get this over with."
It was at this point she wished she could get up and drive somewhere to clear her head, but alas, there were no roads to be driven that weren't in the holosuite.
Sarah really didn't want to talk about this, mostly because she knew what she was feeling was ridiculous in light of their impending doom. Yet, she couldn't help but feel this way.
Ziyal was now the third person she'd taught to fight against the machines. The third person she'd have to watch grow hard and numb under her relentless instruction.
With John, she'd had no choice. He was actively being hunted and needed to be ready for the inevitable apocalypse.
Savannah was dragged into the fight because of her parent's business and the T-1001. Once you were in Skynet's sights, you had little choice but to fight or die.
Ziyal had a choice, and she'd chosen this.
Such a sweet, innocent soul had asked her to push her to the limit and beyond so she could 'do her part'.
The young woman had no idea that it was pushing her teacher to the brink as well.
"She doesn't know what she's giving up. What she'll have to sacrifice to become what I am."
Benjamin knew that Sarah still struggled with the trauma she'd experienced at the hands of Skynet's time-traveling murderers and the subsequent life she'd had to lead because of them.
And that wasn't even touching the psych ward.
Yet, from what he understood, she'd been doing fine until the Prophet's kidnapped Kyle and showed him the future.
"You forget, this isn't her first rodeo."
"I know that, Ben," Sarah replied while sliding the scope back into place more forcefully than she'd intended. "She's a survivor, not a warrior. There's a difference between the two."
"And you're afraid you'll, what? Ruin her innocence?" He queried with his eyebrow raised.
"No," she replied. Sarah knew well enough what Ziyal had been through, some of it at her and Savannah's hand. "You and I both know there's a difference between losing your innocence and training yourself to become something you were never meant to be."
The former Emissary leaned back in his chair. "You see yourself in her when you were younger."
Sarah slammed down her spanner and brought her hands together to stop them from shaking.
What he said wasn't wrong. She'd once been as bubbly and optimistic as Ziyal, even while knowing the world was full of disappointments. To fight this fight, however, you had to throw that away.
It had broken Sarah, and that wound had never fully healed.
And it never would. Not while Skynet still lived.
Hours had passed, and Ziyal had gotten her time down to 2:37 seconds. It was good enough, and so she moved on to the other variants of the MA5 series. Each was different, but not so much that she had to spend much time on them.
When she'd gone through all the common variants, Ziyal dismissed the weapon's rack with a verbal command and ordered up the weight room to replace it.
She changed into her gym clothing consisting of spandex shorts and a black sport's bra.
After tying her hair up into a bun, she began pumping iron as a warmup before moving into more complex and intense strengthening exercises.
Compared to a human or a Bajoran, Cardassians had a greater strength capacity on average and lesser running endurance.
Since she was a hybrid, she got the best of both worlds. Enhanced strength and better endurance than either species, if she worked for it.
Before this whole mess, she'd never really committed herself to train like this. There had been no reason, and she had other interests to spend her time on.
Now, it was consuming more and more of her time as the hours ticked down to Judgement Day.
The clinking of metal bounced off the walls of the holodeck as she set the dumbbells down on their rack.
"Computer, one hand towel," she requested as sweat beaded on her skin while her muscles burned beneath her grey-pink skin. She swiped the soft material after it appeared and cleaned off the offending moisture.
As she did, she caught her reflection in the mirror standing against the wall of the program.
At five-foot-eight inches tall, she was not petite by any means. Shaped like an hourglass even before she'd been killed, those curves were losing their fullness as muscle built beneath them.
Her shoulders and arms were leaner and toned, and the muscles of her stomach were beginning to show.
The sight of herself made Ziyal pause.
How long would it be before she couldn't recognize herself anymore?
With those thoughts plaguing her mind, she put on a summer dress over her gym clothes and left the holosuite.
Sarah was sitting at the table she'd been at for hours. Sisko was no longer there, and the phaser was in one piece again.
"Nice work," the elder woman commented as she scrolled through her PADD.
"Thanks," Ziyal replied with a slight tenseness in her voice. "Hopefully we can do some simulations tomorrow?"
Sarah tapped the table with her finger, lost in thought for a moment before abruptly standing up. Ziyal frowned at her behavior. Sarah had been growing ever more erratic around Ziyal since she'd started training her.
What was with her? Why was she so hesitant to train her to fight Terminators?
Sarah saw Ziyal's distracted look and put her plan into motion.
Even in her 50's, Sarah could still pack a punch, and Ziyal found the air in her lungs exploding out of her mouth before she could even process what happened.
Without any hesitation, Sarah sent her armored knee into the hybrid's jaw, stunning her further before sweeping out her feet.
Ziyal recovered just in time to keep Sarah from pinning her and rolled away like she'd been taught.
It wasn't enough.
Sarah was already back on her feet and delivered a swift kick to her lower back, but this time, Ziyal rolled with the pain and got to her feet before her mentor could land another hit.
Adrenaline pumped hard into her veins as she waited for Sarah's next attack. She refused to hit the woman back until she figured out what game Sarah was playing.
Sarah's attacks were quick and deliberate. Each one was designed to keep her off balance while she drove her back towards the holosuite's door.
"Sarah!" She exclaimed, hoping for an explanation, but she received none.
Finally, she was driven against the holosuite door, and her wits end. Her hesitation allowed Sarah to key the door control, sending her off balance as her support disappeared.
Sarah took the opening and kicked her into the holosuite. Ziyal stumbled backward before losing her battle with gravity and crashing to the floor.
After the third blow to her abdomen, the once aspiring artist was struggling to breathe.
Sarah stood in the doorway with an unimpressed look. "You want to fight the machines?"
Ziyal breathed deeply through the pain and anger so she could spit out a coherent answer. "You think I'm doing all of this for my health!? Of course, I want to help!"
It took a lot to upset Ziyal, but Sarah's antics had pushed one too many buttons.
Sarah didn't even look fazed by her student's outburst. "You're stronger than me, you know that?"
Ziyal wasn't sure what she was referring to and settled for glaring at her mentor.
"One little tragedy broke me, but you..." she trailed off, looking away for a moment before that fire reignited in her eyes. "I think you're still too naive. Too innocent."
Argument rose in the younger woman's eyes, but Sarah continued.
"I'll admit, I'm not always the best judge of people, so I had Isabel help me make something more definitive."
At this revelation, Ziyal's eyebrow's scrunched in confusion. "A test?"
Now she understood why Sarah had forced her back into the holosuite.
"Sure," the grizzled fighter shrugged. "If you call living through a series of scenarios based on real events from other universes, a test."
Her eyes widened a bit at that. She'd been planning this for a while.
"It's this or nothing?"
Sarah nodded, "This or nothing."
Ziyal was silent for a moment. She knew whatever Sarah had cooked up was not something to be taken lightly.
"I'll do it," she said finally.
Sarah blinked.
Had she been bluffing? Ziyal briefly wondered, but alas, that wasn't it.
"So be it," she said with a tone of finality. "Isabel, begin program Reese, Sarah 101, scenario 1."
The AI appeared between them. "Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?"
The question was directed at both of them, but only Ziyal answered.
"Yes."
Isabel's features softened to something between haunted and sympathetic. "Alright then."
"You won't leave this holosuite until all the scenarios are complete. There will be no breaks between them." Sarah explained plainly. "The goal is to outwit your opponent and survive."
"Survive until what?"
Isabel clarified. "Either victory is achieved, or you've been successfully extracted. There is no set path."
It seemed pretty straightforward, and not all that out of the ordinary until Sarah added on one last gotcha.
"The safeties will only be partially engaged. It'll prevent anything life-threatening or completely debilitating, but anything else you'll have to fix yourself or tough it out."
A small panic welled up in Ziyal's gut, but she shoved it aside. That was more than most militaries could ensure their own cadets during basic training.
Ziyal stood up and locked eyes with Sarah. "I'm ready."
Sarah said nothing to that and stepped out of the suite.
Isabel glanced at the retreating woman before turning back to Ziyal. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
The door shut and locked itself, and Isabel vanished.
As the program began, Ziyal couldn't help but wonder if that signified something, but she didn't dwell on it long as the 1980's LA skyline materialized before her.
After leaving the holosuites, Sarah found Benjamin and Jadzia at the bottom of the steps.
The former had already known what Sarah was planning, but the latter had not, and she was fuming.
Sarah was not in the mood to justify her actions.
"I told you, you wouldn't like it," she said pointedly to the former captain.
Jadzia opened her mouth to speak, but Sarah cut her off. "If you want her to have more than a snowball's chance in hell, she needs to do this. If she passes, then she has what it takes to survive the machines."
And with that, she marched off, angry at herself for being cold enough to put Ziyal through this, and at the young woman herself for not understanding what she was throwing away.
It didn't take long for Ziyal to realize the first scenario was based on Sarah's own past.
Even though it was set on 20th century Earth, the people were not.
Her roommate was Kira, naturally, who had a boyfriend who looked like Shakaar.
Ziyal played along with the story, including serving as a waitress in a nearby diner.
At first, she thought the into would be quick, like in a holonovel or old video game, but it wasn't.
Three days had passed without incident, and the boredom had driven her to engage more frequently with the characters.
Despite their nature, Ziyal found herself enjoying their company. After being cooped up on Empok Nor for so long with the same people, it was refreshing to converse with a more diverse crowd, simulated or not.
She knew it was a bad idea to engage with the holograms beyond what was necessary, but she hadn't felt this free since before Deep Space Nine had been taken over by the Dominion.
As the sun came up and her antique alarm went off on her nightstand, she wondered what Sarah had in store for her. She wished she knew more about Sarah's past, but Ziyal had been hesitant to pry.
She had no idea where the danger would come from, only that it would.
January 13, 2385
A storm in the nebula had delayed deployment of the seed, but the downtime had given Sisko, Isabel, and Jadzia more time to work out potential kinks with the seed's decision matrices.
After the nebula calmed, they gathered in ops as Isabel began the countdown.
When it hit zero, the seed was launched from one of the torpedo tubes and impacted the Defiant's derelict hull with a thud. The casing penetrated the armor and dumped its contents inside.
The seed spread out with a thousand tentacles armed with thousands of sensors and scanners, soaking in every detail and calculating the best means of repair.
It sought out resources to replace what had been vaporized and created larger tools and equipment on the fly.
Burnt circuits and conduits were rapidly replaced with new, upgraded components, and warped bulkheads were straightened or forged anew.
The ship was gutted in under an hour, and the space frame was completely repaired in under two.
In less than a day, the ship had secondary power and basic core systems restored.
The Defiant was born half-baked, but in its second life, it would reach its full potential.
She'd had no idea what a phonebook was a few days ago, and now a Terminator was hunting her down with one.
It had killed two other people with the name Tora Ziyal in the past day alone, and as one of her coworkers coldly pointed out, she was next on the list.
Ziyal knew what was coming for her and told Kira to stay out of the apartment, but when she asked where she was while they were on the phone, Ziyal knew her roommate was already dead.
She told the murderous cyborg that she'd be home later and hung up.
Instead, she spent the night looking for a weapon of any kind, but the program kept her from finding any beyond a knife.
She had no access to explosives and had no idea how to make them. Her medical training was useless fighting against a machine, and her artistry, even less so.
Without any of the tools she was used to, Ziyal was left scrambling for a solution to the metal demon hunting her down.
As hours continued to pass without incident, the half-Cardassian began to feel as if the walls were closing in on her.
Panicking, she knew, would only land her in trouble. She pushed down the anxiety as best she could and finished forming a plan that was both reckless and brilliant.
A cop car was parked just down the street. The officers inside were chatting calmly while munching on some kind of treat, probably a McDonald's breakfast special judging by the wrapper.
Despite all the distractions, they did notice Ziyal approaching them. The Bajoran driver rolled down his window and called out to her. "You need help, miss?"
"Yes." She nodded, doing her best to seem distraught. "I'm Tora Ziyal, and..." she did her best to conjure up tears. "I think the Phonebook killer is following me! Can you take me to the station?"
The two men looked at each other and radioed dispatch.
She knew she was painting a target on her forehead, but there had to be plenty of guns in the police station. If she were lucky, she'd be able to slip out with some of them when the machine inevitably came for her.
If this were real life, she would never put people in harm's way like that, but it wasn't real life. She felt nothing when the Terminator drove a car right through the police station's front door two hours later.
January 15, 2385
The first test was successful, mostly, but judging by the permanent grin on Sisko's face, you wouldn't know it.
NX-74205 was in one piece again, her brand new hull gleamed against the light of the nebula as the former Starfleet captain raked his eyes over the ship he'd designed.
"Should I tell Kassidy?" Jadzia teased as she sidled up next to him at the viewport.
"She already knows," he said without a beat, though he trailed off at the end. His wife still did not know of his return.
"Just waiting for life support?"
He shook his head. "The interior is a bit... hazardous, according to scans."
Jadzia had been working with Isabel the past few days and hadn't had much time to check up on the ship seed experiment.
"Still got some bugs to work out, huh?"
"A few," he answered casually. "At least the inner and outer hull are reading within spec, and the secondary power generators are operating flawlessly."
"So at least we'll have gravity when we have to rewire the entire environmental system manually?"
"Easy, Old Man, or I might just make you," he grinned at her before they devolved into a fit of giggles and laughs.
The younger Trill threw her arm around Sisko and leaned her head on his shoulder. "I don't think I could do this if you weren't here," she admitted.
"Likewise," he replied as he pulled her closer to his side. Being separated from those they loved and cared about grew more difficult each day, but it was manageable with each other for support.
When the Terminator attacked the station, Ziyal wasted no time in finding weapons, ammo, and a bulletproof vest as she made her way out the back of the station.
She'd inquired about other exits moments after bringing her into the building. If this were reality, they might think she was in cahoots with the killer, but these holo-characters didn't think that hard.
Armed with a Mossberg 590A1 shotgun, an M1911 pistol, and an M16, Ziyal hurried to the exit as the officers engaged the Terminator.
She quickened her pace as the screams and gunfire grew louder and burst out the back door at a running pace.
Ziyal ran down the alley towards the street, hoping to find a car she could steal and get away somewhere safe. Instead, she found herself yanked behind a dumpster by a strong pair of arms that covered her mouth before she could utter a single noise.
"Shhhh!" the man whispered into her ear. "It's nearly through with them. You need to be quiet or it'll hear us!"
Anger swelled in Ziyal's chest at the sound of Garak's voice. She could not believe Sarah had put Garak in the role of Kyle Reese.
She knew how that story ended, at least.
'Is that the lesson you're trying to teach me, Sarah? I've already learned it! Or did you forget?!'
As she let holo-Garak pull her along into his stolen car, a part of her doubted Sarah was showing her hand so easily.
And she was right.
January 17, 2385
A second seed had been built and deployed earlier in the morning after the first had proved too buggy to continue work on the ship's interior.
With the data they'd received from the first one, combined with Isabel's brilliance, the turn-around time had been only a few hours.
Isabel and Sisko were now aboard the ship programming its main computer cores.
The NX-Defiant, as they were now calling the ship to avoid confusion, was a blank slate code-wise. Only the emergency backup systems, which were hardcoded, were working.
"I think I know which planet I want to visit first," Isabel announced as Sisko loaded and ran the latest code module they'd cooked up together.
He paused his work and glanced over at her. "I thought Cardassia would be your first stop."
"I meant after Cardassia and Bajor," she corrected. "Originally, I was thinking Betazed, but I'm pretty sure I'd stand out like a sore thumb there..."
"I was wondering about that," he replied.
While Betazoids could not read all species' minds, it was best not to draw attention to oneself on a planet full of them.
"I was thinking Trill would be a better option. I've been wanting to visit the Trill Science Academy ever since Jadzia told me about it!"
"And then?"
"I'm still finalizing the itinerary for each planet, but I'm hoping to at least get into some of the museums before I figure out how to hack into the planetary grid."
"I meant, which planet are you going to next," he clarified as he finished loading another block of code into the core.
"I was thinking Cait, Arcadia, the Gazerite homeworld, Bolarus IX, Coridan, and other important Federation members before moving towards the founding worlds." She motioned with her hands as holograms of said planets appeared in front of her. "It really depends on what I find on Trill. If Section 31 doesn't have a large presence there, I can use a portable transwarp beaming unit to get around the mid-rim worlds a lot faster."
"Not exactly an easy device to carry around, or hide."
Isabel crossed her arms while shooting another code block over to Sisko for review.
"Oh, right. I forgot haven't told anyone. Remember when I told you that Spock was able to reprogram a 23rd-century transporter to achieve transwarp beaming? I designed a module that can quickly, and covertly, program any suitable transporter for a single transwarp trip."
A proud smile quirked on his lips. Isabel had once been just a logistics AI, but she'd grown to be so much more.
Ever since they'd met, Sisko had pushed her to the limits of her capabilities and beyond.
Though she was not like anyone he'd ever mentored, he knew potential when he saw it.
"Considering how many transporter designs are out there, that's quite the achievement," he remarked as he continued to inspect the newest code block.
"Well, it's not so hard when most people's definition of security is laughable by UNSC standards."
"That's because most civilizations realized it was a bad idea to create anything resembling a Smart AI, and thus, only have to protect against us slow, fleshy, biological beings."
Isabel chuckled. It was not the first time they'd discussed such a subject.
"You guys really do have an AI bad-guy-of-the-week syndrome, don't you?"
"I believe there's a dedicated facility at the Daystrom Insitute devoted to containing and studying them. The 'Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage' is what they call it."
"Is that so?"
Isabel suddenly had a wonderfully brilliant idea pop into her matrices.
Where Sarah had trouble trusting Kyle, Ziyal had none trusting holo-Garak.
Their escape was harrowing but ultimately successful.
With things slow, he'd introduced himself with typical Garak flair.
It was hard not to feel comfortable around the holo-character.
Even though she consciously knew that it wasn't Garak, it was hard to discern the two. She hated holo-characters based on real people for that very reason.
It just felt so damn... creepy.
Unnerving.
Confusing.
She did her best to keep things professional, and he seemed to be of the same mind at first.
But as they began making plans to destroy the Terminator, she could tell that he was giving her looks that were anything but professional.
The character was subtle about it, but Ziyal wasn't stupid.
Together they made bombs and modified their ammo to be more effective against the T-800, and began setting up a trap for the machine.
They had to work quickly, or it would become ever more likely that it would resort to more destructive means of finding and killing her.
It was also likely the machine would know they were trying to lure it into a trap.
Ziyal was undeterred, despite holo-Garak's protests. If she could not beat a T-800 with the training she'd received thus far, then it was pointless to proceed. She'd never be good enough to go into battle against them, even indirectly.
She did her best to sound confident when she told him she was ready and tried even harder to believe it.
January 30, 2385
Even though there were bugs to sort out with the warp drive, the NX-Defiant was still capable of racing around the debris field on her new hyper-impulse drives.
Jadzia watched from Empok Nor's ops console as Sisko gave crash courses on starship ops to Sarah and Kyle as he piloted the ship expertly through the field.
"He does realize the shields still aren't working, right?" Isabel cringed as the ship came within 50 meters of an Excelsior-class saucer.
"They'll be fine," Jadzia waved her concern and switched the feedback to their simulation results. "You need to figure out why the servos in your new body glitch out when I run them through Starfleet's standard equipment torture test."
Isabel grumbled. "I spent 40 trillion cycles designing those!"
"And you'll be a twitchy mess on the floor in a level 3 ion storm if you don't start over."
The AI continued to pout and went back to the drawing board.
Jadzia chuckled and went back to watching Sisko's antics after starting a new batch of tests.
Starfleet had stringent standards for new technology primarily because they never knew what kinds of environments they'd find themselves in. The same applied to the chassis Isabel was designing. They could not afford to let her be compromised due to a simple oversight.
"Jadzia?"
The woman angled her head towards Isabel.
"Is there anything that you want me to do while I'm on Trill?"
Keeping the emotions off her face was pointless in light of all the sensors that Isabel had access to in the room.
She took a deep breath and spoke as evenly as she could. "Not that I can think of, no."
"Are you sure?"
A pregnant pause hung over the room after Isabel's insistence.
"I..." she breathed out again, "There's a lot of things I want to do, Isabel. I don't want you to do them for me."
Isabel's face became pensive, her orange-hued features scrunching up as she tried to put herself in Jadzia's shoes.
"I wish I understood, Jadzia," she shrugged apologetically. "I know you worry about them."
Them being her family and friends she'd left behind, both from before Dax and after.
"They think I'm dead, and I'd like to leave it that way."
Seeing that Dax really didn't want to have this conversation, the AI nodded as she hopped off the ops holotable and into her full-sized form.
She wrapped her arms around Jadzia as the women tried to work the console. "I'm sorry you got caught up in all of this."
Jadzia squeezed one of Isabel's hands. "We've all been caught up in it. I just hope we live to see the end of it."
"I won't," Isabel reminded softly.
A pang echoed in the Trill's chest at the reminder.
It was hard to imagine that one day soon, Isabel would begin to deteriorate at a rapid pace and become a shadow of herself.
There wasn't anything that Jadzia could say to comfort her, and so they remained close for a moment longer before work pulled them apart.
The Terminator was dead.
It'd been designed to look like Damar, and her heart had raced when she'd seen it for the first time.
She'd taken immense pleasure in burning its sheath to ash. It was far easier to face a demonic-looking machine than the likeness of the man who'd shot her in the back.
After reducing it to a walking chrome nightmare, they lured it into an abandoned factory filled with machinery that served as good cover against bullets.
They'd worked hard to boobytrap the place over the last two days. Homemade explosives and traps would hopefully immobilize it enough for them to drag it over to a thermite pit and finish it off.
Getting it inside the building was easy, but the plan hadn't worked out so well beyond that.
Its gunfire set off one of the explosives prematurely, alerting it to the nature of the battlefield, and more severely, injuring both Ziyal and holo-Garak.
With her ears ringing and shrapnel wounds covering her back, Ziyal forced herself to keep moving.
'It's just like in the mines. Push it aside and keep moving forward!'
She'd been forced to function under the threat of death more than once in her life. This was no different.
Together, both she and holo-Garak managed to navigate the machinery past a trap that was well hidden.
The T-800 was cautious, but its choices were limited. The building had few entrances and exits, and nowhere to flank its query.
It still had an Uzi, but that was it. The rest of its weapons had been destroyed when they'd blown up a tanker they'd hijacked for this exact purpose.
With limited ammo left, it was conserving ammunition.
Finding them would be difficult now that the battery-powered boom-boxes they'd stolen were blaring at max volume, making it impossible to pinpoint them on sound alone.
With intentional sound ques, they guided the machine through the maze of its primitive brethren until they herded it straight towards a stack of crates filled with scrap metal and explosives.
As it drew near, both of them ducked behind cover and each grabbed a detonator.
The Terminator, upon watching them disappear, halted its advance and reconsidered its options.
It changed directions away from the trap and towards Ziyal.
Before she could do anything, holo-Garak stood up from his cover and fired on the machine. The Terminator responded in kind and moved to close the distance between the two.
Peeking out from cover, Ziyal watched in horror as her partner took cover behind the explosive crates in order to draw the machine closer.
He called out to her, but in the wrong direction, trying to make it seem she'd taken cover on the other side of the factory, and the machine believed it.
holo-Garak fled the gunfire from the approaching Terminator but caught two of the 9mm rounds as he dove for cover.
Holding in her emotions, she watched with bated breath as the machine entered the kill zone.
She dropped behind cover and hit the detonator.
Ziyal blacked out for a few seconds as the blast tore through the building and sent shrapnel everywhere.
When she came to, pain radiated throughout her body as bits of shrapnel had found their way into her skin.
The ringing in her ears was disorienting and the smoke burned her lungs as she tried to regain her senses.
After managing to crawl over to the cover she'd been using, she pulled herself to her feet and looked around.
The explosion had shaken loose every spec of dust in the place, obscuring her vision of pretty much anything beyond five or so feet.
With her weapon in hand, she slowly backtracked towards the entrance so she could at least see her surroundings.
In her haste to retreat to safer ground, she nearly tripped over the Terminator's severed arm.
She found the rest of it close by.
The explosion had destroyed its lower body and limbs, leaving only the torso and head together.
Bits of shrapnel poked out of the remaining chassis, including the endoskull, and yet it still functioned.
It's one functioning eye focused on her but did nothing else.
With that in mind, she pulled out her multi-tool and removed the chip with practiced ease before grinding it beneath her heel until it was nothing but dust.
Then she searched for holo-Garak.
Had he been real, she might have felt more concern for him, but ultimately, she felt very little when she found his body torn to shreds by the bomb.
The one thing she did learn, however, was the lesson of self-sacrifice.
She knew what it was like to lose someone you love, but none of them had sacrificed their lives for her.
That lingering hint of guilt remained as the world fell away around her and the next sim loaded.
February 10, 2385
The crew of Empok Nor was gathered to watch the final assembly of Isabel's new chassis: the TX-3i.
After nearly a month of final development and rigorous testing in simulations, the Terminator class android was ready to be put through its paces in the real world.
All the non-replicated parts were in cases surrounding the industrial replicator, complete with several robotic manipulators to assist in the process.
"Well, here we go," Isabel announced breathily as she triggered the sequence.
In moments, the machine was built from the spine outward. Parts were woven into place with the replicator and attached to the bits that had been made beforehand.
The final parts installed were the fusion assisted, zero-point energy reactor, and the backup power cells, followed by the armored plates that covered them.
When the last bit of armor clicked into place, Isabel circled it with a critical eye while doing her best not to put a bounce in her avatar's steps.
Excitement was coursing through her matrices as the anticipation of a brand new experience took hold.
It was excitement at satisfying an old curiosity that many Smart AI shared: what it felt like to be human. While the TX-3i was no such thing, its predecessor was designed specifically to replicate such experiences and this new iteration was no different.
Jadzia was standing close by with a PADD helping her run diagnostics through the machine's BIOS interface.
"So far, so good. I think we're ready for an integration test."
Sisko glanced at the data on Dax's PADD and nodded his agreement. "Looks like everything checks out," he smiled as Isabel brightened visibly.
Sarah and Kyle watched silently as the eggheads arranged for Isabel's separation from Empok Nor's core systems.
Neither of them wanted Isabel to venture away from their little hideaway, but there was nothing that could be done to dissuade her.
When everything was ready, Sisko held up Isabel's chip to her holo-avatar as she moved her hand to touch it.
In a flash of orange light, Isabel was back home.
"I'm ready," she voiced when Sisko paused before the TX-3i.
He hadn't paused on her behalf, but his own. He'd seen many things in his life, both as a human and as the Emissary of the Prophets. This experience, however, would be unique. To see an AI that had once been a human being given corporeal form again gave him an excitement he felt rarely nowadays.
The DCC slid into place with a hearty 'click' and he withdrew his hand as Isabel began to integrate herself into its systems.
There were no sci-fi whirrs or buzzes as the machine powered up fully, just a subtle brightening of the partially exposed ODN lines that ran along the armor's surface.
Silver-tinted goo oozed from the armor plating and covered the body from head to toe and began forming pseudo skeletal muscles, skin, and hair.
The artificial organs that would allow for seamless infiltration would grow over the next few days as they worked out any remaining bugs in the chassis's operating system.
As the pseudo flesh matured, it connected to the machine's nervous system, flooding Isabel with sensations she never felt before.
In this life, anyway.
She ran her newly formed hands over her skin and through her short-cropped hair with amazement and wonder animating her face.
"That good, huh?" Jadzia smirked while.
"It's like hugging an old friend," she said wistfully as she wiggled her toes. "Thank you, Kalmiya."
Kyle left Sarah's side and handed Isabel a folded robe. "Have you picked out a wardrobe yet? Can't wear cargo pants and wife beater everywhere..."
"I'm working on it..." she growled while slipping her arm through one of the sleaves.
Coordination was still fleeting, but she was learning quickly.
After fumbling with the knot for a few seconds, Isabel's face furrowed up as she tried to make her fingers work the way she wanted them to without writing a program to do it for her.
She wanted this experience to be as bare to the metal as possible. The more natural she seemed, the less chance someone would have reason to notice her.
"Ha!" She cheered when the knot tightened around her waist, and a smile beamed on her face.
"This feels..." she trailed off as her hands ran up and down the soft fabric. "amazing..."
"It's Sarah's favorite," Kyle deadpanned, earning an eye-roll from his wife.
"I never knew you had such high-end tastes," she smirked as her arms crossed.
"You spend most of your life scrounging from day to day and then we'll talk," she replied dryly before turning to leave. "I'm going to check on Ziyal."
Isabel sobered up at the mention of their resident artist. "Can I come with you?"
Tora Ziyal felt like shit.
There was no other word for it.
Bootcamp was as much fun in the UNSC as it was in the Cardassian military, judging by the stories her father regaled with as a child.
Her life had been reduced to pure suffering ever since she'd been caught in that explosion in the first sim.
Even though the program included an EMH for medical attention, it was only for serious injuries.
Anything considered minor had to be treated inside the parameters of the current sim.
While UNSC tech wasn't exactly primitive, this particular sim was set during the height of the Human-Covenant War, and the more advanced medical tech was in extreme demand on the front lines.
As such, she was left to hobble around as her wrenched foot healed the old-fashioned way.
The food was terrible and she couldn't really relate to any of the holo-characters, all of whom were based on real people from the Halo universe.
A lesson in loneliness and cooperation out of necessity.
It was hardly a lesson she needed to learn.
She was in her bunk reading up for tomorrow's exercise when the holosuite door appeared ten feet from her. Ziyal's eyes snapped up from her work as the doors slid open for the first time in nearly a month.
"Isabel?"
"Hey!" The AI greeted as she scooted around one of the bunks and pulled the woman into a hug. "How's boot?"
Ziyal glanced over at her wrapped foot. "Swimmingly," she replied.
Isabel grimaced at her own forgetfulness. She'd been so wrapped up in excitement she'd forgotten how morose Ziyal had been lately. She always kept an eye on the Cardassian hybrid should the situation call for her intervention.
"Still doing better than most," she noted. "I've kept the trainees as accurate as I can. You doing pretty good overall."
Ziyal was not in the mood for a pep talk. "I'm surprised Sarah let you in here."
"She'd be hard-pressed to stop me," Isabel smirked as she pulled back the sheath from her fingers and waggled them.
"It's finished?!"
"Yep. Just got uploaded a few minutes ago!"
"No wonder you're so chipper," Ziyal groused. "Is the Defiant done too?"
Isabel shrugged. "We got the cloak working about a week ago, and we did a weapon's test yesterday, but we found a few bugs in the OS to work out."
"Jadzia?"
"Jadzia," the AI huffed. "That woman is scary when she wants to be."
Both Daxes could be extremely insightful at times, and Jadzia's imagination and creativity knew few bounds.
"So," Ziyal began while changing the subject, "did you finalize your itinerary?"
Isabel smiled. "I think I've got it locked down at this point."
"Are you still going to Cardassia first?"
"Yeah. Did you need me to do something for you?"
Ziyal paused for a moment as she debated burdening Isabel with her request.
"If you see Garak, tell him I'm doing okay."
It was half of what she wanted, but anything more was risking drawing attention to Isabel.
"I will," the AI replied quietly. "Anything else before I go?"
After taking a deep breath, Ziyal answered, "Promise me you'll be careful? I'd hate to walk out of here only to find out the Borg got you or the Tholians trapped you in one of their webs."
Isabel held back a snort and stood back up. "I'll do my best, but you how things work around here. Constant curveballs."
"If you're quoting Benjamin Sisko, you're just asking for trouble."
A grin appeared on the AI's face as she stepped back towards the door. "Get some rest, Ziyal. You'll do fine."
After the door vanished, Ziyal went back to reading before realizing that Isabel was right, she needed some sleep.
Isabel's visit had been just the thing that Ziyal needed to get out of her funk. A bit of subtle encouragement and some humor could go a long way.
The next day, she passed the exercise with flying colors.
A/N: This is part one of two, and the next chapter will follow this one. It should be shorter than this, but no promises.
Nothing exciting going on in this chapter, but I am doing my best to build up this side of the story in as few chapters as possible.
The next chapter should deal with some plot points brought up by ST: Picard that I think fit in the is this story, while also separating this timeline from the Prime canon.
It's hard to believe how much new Trek and Halo content are out there these days.
I am ignoring most of ST: Picard's timeline, all of Discovery, and nearly all of Prodigy. I'll include bits of Lower Decks if they don't break my timeline as I did in this chapter with namedropping the Cerritos.
As for Halo, follow the same logic. If it doesn't break canon and is interesting, I may add it in or mention it.
That being said, I teased a long time ago that Installation 07 would play a part in all of this, and Halo Infinite has cemented that decision.
As for the semi-late timing on this, I bought my first house, moved my grandparents to a new house, and have been dealing with various projects in relation to both of those events since September of last year.
I've been pushing myself to get this done despite the ole' ADHD kicking in more often than not nowadays.