Cerulean Stars - Chapter 120

Chapter 120

Stardate -298333.3 - September 1, 2024 - 00:17:34

Sleep was one of those things that a good Starfleet officer tended to teach their bodies to take in a very intermittent manner. After all, spatial anomalies only rarely appeared on schedule, and it was almost unheard of to encounter new civilizations that ran on the same clock time as the Federation.

That was of course why Starfleet operated on a general shift system, and why Raine was awake when he combadge signaled an incoming communication.

She glanced over at the still sleeping form of Jadzia before tapping her combadge. “Brooks here.”

“It's good to hear your voice, Brooks.” Sisko's voice echoed out from the device in a low whisper. 

“Your's too, Commander.” Raine returned in a similar whisper. “I was afraid Kira and O'Brien wouldn't be able to find you with everything going on.”

“They've already caught me up on everything that's happened on your end.” Sisko put forward. “But as much as I'd like to get out of here I'm sorry to say that's going to have to wait.”

That wasn't exactly a surprise, though Raine had possessed some small hope that her presence might have changed things enough that the pair had avoided the need to replace Gabriel Bell.

“What happened?”

It took nearly ten minutes for Sisko to walk her through the familiar seeming series of events, and by the end Raine was biting her lip to keep from going off on a lecture about just how badly they had handled things.

“Is there anything you need Jadzia and I to do?”

“Maybe.” Sisko said after a moment. “O'Brien is working to reconnect the processing center to the interface so the people here can get their stories out. But if he isn't able to, we're going to need your help to cheat.”

“Cheat?” Raine repeated cautiously, not liking the sound of that word given their temporally displaced circumstances.

“O'Brien thinks he can rig the communicators up to act as a relay.” Sisko explained. “So all you would need to do is hook one of yours up to an access point.”

Raine cringed at the many many ways that could potentially backfire.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir. The moment those stories go out various governments are going to start trying to figure out how. And I lack the knowledge of local technical capabilities needed to cover our tracks with any level of certainty.”

If this were her original Earth it would be easy enough to do of course, but for all its similarities, this very much wasn’t it. And they absolutely couldn’t risk this being traced back to Guinan given how important the El-Aurian was to the future.

“We may have a way to lift the block from our end though.” She continued. “Jadzia made a connection with a man by the name of Christopher Brynner whose company runs most of the city’s public data infrastructure.”

For a moment the only sound coming across the line was silence, and then Sisko's voice returned.

“How much risk would there be with my option?”

The firmness in Sisko's tone was enough to tell Raine just how much stress the man was currently under. And once more she really wished she could explain everything to him without creating an even larger problem down the road.

“Depends on how and when I go about it.” She admitted with a grimace. “Doing it now would risk them tracking the connection back to my hotel, and from there it's a direct line to Guinan, who is critical for future events. Give me twelve hours, and I could set the whole thing up on a public network half way across the city. But that still has a risk of leading them to the hotel and Guinan if I get caught on any surveillance video.”

She could minimize that some of course, but she was a 178cm blond bombshell, and there was only so much she could do to dress down without making herself look like the textbook example of a domestic terrorist person instead.

“All right.” Sisko finally said. “I’ll trust you two to work that out on your end.”

Raine let out a breath of relief, glad he wasn’t going to order her to try and thread that particular needle. However that still left the Q led mariachi band in the room, and since it didn’t seem Sisko was going to bring it up, that left it to her.

“Sir, Gabriel Bell can’t survive this.”

“I know.” Sisko agreed, a sudden tiredness seeming to enter his voice at the admittance. “And if what your future self said still holds as accurate, we’re going to need to get out as quickly and quietly as possible after they move in to quell the riots.”

Thankfully Raine’s original plan was still workable for that. “Use the subway maintenance tunnels, we can meet up at Yerba station.”

From there they could make their way to the Yerba gardens and hide out till the transporter recall triggered. Not the best place to wait around for an hour or two, but it was close to a station and lacking in security cameras.

“I don't know where that is.” Sisko admitted. 

“Dont worry.” Raine reassured him, giving a silent wave to the now blearily staring Jadzia. “O'Brien has a map.”

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Stardate -298332.1 - September 1, 2024 - 10:50:00

“I was able to talk Christopher into helping out.” Jadzia’s voice confirmed over the comm. “Given how easy it was, I’m pretty sure he was just waiting for a good chance to come around to do the right thing.”

Very likely, though Raine wasn’t going to discount the effect his attraction to Jadzia likely had on him considering it a good chance in the first place.

“You’ll be heading back here then?” She inquired hopefully as she glanced over the mess she was currently in the process of cleaning up.

“No.” Jadzia said. “My tricorder picked up a pair of sarium krellide returns on the way over, so I’m going to see if I can hunt down our two missing communicators.”

“Focus on the pawn shops.” Raine told her. “That’s where they tend to end up in cases like this.”

It was in fact one of the main reasons why Starfleet plated the combadge version of communicators in Gold and Silver in the first place.

“I know.” Jadzia returned with clear amusement in her voice. “It’s not my first time tracking down one of Benjamin’s missing combadges.”

There was obviously a story there, and Raine was tempted to ask about it for future ribbing purposes, however that could wait till they got back to the Defiant.

“I’ll leave it to your experienced hands then, Brooks out.”

Double tapping the combadge to close the channel, Raine took a moment to stretch out some kinks that were forming in her back before glancing down at the half filled backpack she had been in the process of securing their makeshift storage system into.

“I take it you’ll be leaving then?” Guinan asked, the suddenness of her comment nearly making the Asari jump since she hadn’t heard the El-Aurian coming up behind her.

“Don’t do that.” Raine hissed as she took a few breaths to get her rapidly beating heart back under control. 

“Someone didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.” Guinan offered in amusement as she walked around to take a seat in one of the nearby chairs. “But you gonna answer my question, or not?”

With everything going on Raine hadn’t ended up getting any sleep last night, though of course missing a single night's rest wasn’t as impactful for her as it was for some older officers.

“The recall will activate in about ten hours.” She admitted as she pulled the various cords out of the laptop they had used as a network connection point. “At least, assuming something doesn’t come up that makes us have to cancel it.”

So far the dominos seemed to be lining up with the general direction she remembered things previously going. Which meant that with Kira and O’Brien transporting down they’d hopefully avoided whatever bad future her other self had lived through.

Guinan frowned slightly. “Mmm, then I suppose that thing in the sanctuary district is going to be a lot bigger than I thought.”

Raine clamped down on anything even approaching a reaction, which apparently wasn’t good enough to fool someone Guinan’s age given the way she rolled her eyes.

“You future people and your secrets.” The El-Aurian sighed before smirking slightly. ”Though if it makes you feel better, you’ve been better at keeping them than that Robot I ran into a couple hundred years back. Cause all I’ve figured out so far is that you come after him, but before those friends of yours I met a couple months back.”

“I really shouldn’t have mentioned Twain.” Raine muttered as the realization hit of just how Guinan had likely narrowed things down so much. 

“Took me a bit to remember.” Guinan confirmed with a nod. “Course, it helped that I’ve been trying to figure out…” She trailed off, frowning again before shaking her head. “Eh, never mind, you’re probably not supposed to know that.”

There was a lot Raine figured she probably shouldn’t know, which was why she had absolutely no desire to mess with time. Even though she knew that statistically speaking it was unlikely that she’d be able to avoid it given just how long she was likely to live.

Securing the last of the items that she was planning to bring back with her into the pack, she swung it over her shoulder and offered Guinan a grin. “Tell you what, someday when our timelines are finally synched up we can have a drink and tell each other all about it.”

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Stardate -298331.4 - September 1, 2024 - 16:58:56

Benjamin winced at the stabbing pain that radiated out from the bullet wound in his shoulder as he released the last ring on the manhole ladder.

“I know we didn’t exactly have any other options this time.” Bashir put forward upon seeing the look of pain on his face. “But try not to put any more strain on your shoulder until we can get back to the Defiant.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Benjamin agreed quietly, motioning to the others with his good arm that he was good to continue on. 

The trek through the underground maintenance tunnels was silent from there, an all but tacit admission that none of them wanted to tempt fate further at this point given the close call Benjamin had just narrowly avoided. 

“Benjamin?” Dax’s familiar voice called out in clear relief as they turned the corner into the subway tube. 

“Still here old man.” Benjamin confirmed with a relieved grin that quickly transitioned to a worried frown as he realized what her presence here might mean. “But I thought we were going to meet at Yerba Station?”

“Change of plans.” Brooks offered apologetically as she walked up behind the Trill. “There’s too many security officers hanging around the station so I didn’t want to risk having you around there given the picture they plastered all over the news feeds.”

“Picture?” Benjamin repeated, not liking the sound of that in the slightest given he was pretty sure there hadn’t been any pictures of Gabriel Bell when they’d set out.

Nodding, Brooks reached into her jacket and pulled out a small device, turning it on and tapping its screen a few times she finally seemed to find what she was looking for a she finally held it up so Benjamin could see the small but clear picture of himself.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t survive World War Three.” He muttered, knowing he was going to have to answer a lot of questions once they got back to their own time if it didn’t.

Putting that worry aside for later he glanced over at O'Brien. “Will the transporter be able to reach us here, Chief?”

“Should be good.” O’Brien answered after taking a moment to look around the empty tube. “We’re only about fifteen feet down and the power flow in the lines shouldn’t be anywhere near high enough to interfere with the Defiant's transporter.”

Brooks jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “There's another maintenance tunnel about a hundred meters back that would probably be safer to hole up in than the tube.”

“That will work.” Benjamin agreed.

It took less than a minute for Brooks to lead them to the metal door, and from there a few seconds at most for her to jimmy open the lock. And Benjamin let out a sigh of relief as she opened it to show the same small cubic room leading into a thinner passage as the one they’d just used to leave the sanctuary district.

The five of them filed in, only for him to stumble slightly as another spike of pain radiated out from his wound.

An arm steadied him, and he glanced down to see Kira with an oddly out of place look of worry on her face. “I’ve got you.” She looked over at Bashir. “It looks like he’s bleeding again.”

A glance down at his shoulder confirmed her diagnosis. 

“I’m fine.” He put forward to try and reassure them, knowing from the dizziness he was feeling it probably wasn’t.

“You very well are not.” Bashir said firmly. “You have a circular wound in your scapula with barely controlled bleeding.” 

The doctor motioned Kira towards one of the side walls before grabbing Benjamin carefully by his uninjured arm. “Help me lower him down.”

“So.” Brooks began in an exaggeratedly cheery tone as the two carefully helped Benjamin lower himself against the wall. “How’s everyone else’s day been?”

“Could be better.” Benjamin admitted with a pained chuckle.

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Author's Notes: This is more or less the finale of Past Tense, with the next two chapters being the two wrap up. 

Ironically, the next chapter was mostly completed before this one, so everything being willing I may be able to get it out by Friday or Saturday.