Cerulean Stars - Chapter 119

Chapter 119

Stardate -298333.5 - August 31, 2024 - 22:32:09

Taking a moment to glance down the maintenance passage before turning back to watch O’Brien work on the lock of the metal gate that was the only thing currently separating them from the Sanctuary district. Nerys had to bite back her urge to tell the engineer to hurry it up, since she knew that was just the familiarity of their circumstances and not any real perception of danger that was bothering her.

“You know.” O’Brien put forward, the suddenness of it nearly enough to make Nerys jump in surprise. “I still can’t get over how weird it was to see Brooks with blonde hair.”

Personally, Nerys felt like it had been weird to see the woman looking like a human at all, but she wasn't going to mention that in front of Starfleet given how touchy they could get about that sort of thing.

“Honestly.” O'Brien continued, heedless of Nerys's thoughts on the matter. “Always kind of figured she'd have, well, you know, blue.”

“Not ta say it's because she's blue or anything.” He quickly added on. “It's just that Brooks always comes off like the type of woman who wants to stand out in a crowd and Keiko says blue's her favorite color.”

“You don’t have to convince me of that last one, Chief.” Nerys offered, shaking her head in bemusement at the memory that dredged up. “I’ve heard her go off more than once about not being able to wear the color without looking naked.”

An audible click sounded out and with a push from O'Brien the metal gate swung open.

The engineer looked down at the flat digital device Brooks had given him for a moment before nodding. “Okay, looks like we just have to follow the passage for another couple hundred or so meters and we'll be able to come up in the district.”

“Assuming that map she found is accurate.” Nerys added with a grimace as O’Brien pocketed the lockpicks.

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Stardate -298333.47 - August 31, 2024 - 22:47:58

“Aren’t you curious?” Jadzia asked impishly as she looked up from interfacing one of tricorders the two had left behind into their makeshift data storage system.

“About? Raine returned, not exactly sure what the Trill might be talking about given everything that seemed to be going on.

Jadzia stared expectantly at her for a moment before shaking her head. “The older version of you.”

“Not really.” Raine offered after considering the question for a moment. “I mean.” She looked down at her breasts for a moment before looking back at Jadzia with a wry grin. “I suppose it would be nice to know if I’ll still be this perky when I hit four hundred. But knowing anything about her life would just be depressing given she should have vanished the moment Kira and O’Brien transported down to rescue us.”

“Well, that’s certainly a cheery way to look at it.” Jadzia muttered as she returned to working on the tricorder.

Raine sighed, knowing that tone well enough at this point to not want to deal with what would follow if she didn’t at least give Jadzia something. “Okay, I kind of want to know if I managed to sleep with any historical figures.”

And how many different aliens she had run into that had been played by Jeffrey Combs, but Jadzia wouldn’t get that particular joke.

The Trill continued working in silence for a moment before turning to Raine with a look of extreme skepticism on her face. “Really? That’s it?”

“You’ve known me for three years!” Raine exclaimed. “I’m not that deep of a person.”

She let out another sigh. “And it’s not like I can’t guess what I would have done given I already have the backup plan for that situation figured out.”

“You do?” Jadzia said in an odd tone.

“Of course.” Raine confirmed with a nod. “Hitch a ride with Guinan to El-Auria and lay low there for as long as possible.”

Or if the timeline was already irreversibly ruined, going around putting out as many fires as possible. Because nobody wanted the Sphere Builders terraforming the galaxy, and well, T’Pol was absolutely on her time travel fuck it list.

“But wasn't El-Auria–” Jadzia began, only to catch herself and glance over to the bedroom door with a cringe.

“Historically important?” She finished awkwardly.

Truthfully Raine would have preferred Ba'ku since as a planet it was entirely unimportant and uncared about by anyone of note until the events of Insurrection. But she didn't know how she would explain her knowledge of that particular hidden gem to the others, or convince Sisko, Jadzia, and Bashir to spend hundreds of years living there.

“Yes, but you'd all be dead long before things got to that point.”

Jadzia winced, and her hand unconsciously went to rest over belly where the Dax symbiont sat.

“Your choice would be Sisko and Bashir.” Raine offered, desperately fighting to keep the grin off her face.

“My choice?” Jadzia repeated in confusion.

“To father your children so you'd have someone to pass the Dax symbiont down too.” Raine explained as she lost her fight and grinned at the other woman. “I'd have probably offered to do it myself of course, but I don't think our children would be compatible with the symbiont.”

The look of horror on Jadzia's face nearly broke the Asari completely. “Me and Benjamin!?”

“He seems to have done a pretty good job with Jake.” Raine added in before scrunching her brow together slightly. “Well, outside of the whole older woman obsession.”

“He still sees me as Curzon!” Jadzia protested.

“So you're saying you would have chosen Bashir then?” Raine prodded, unable to help herself given how rare it was to get this kind of flustered reaction from the Trill.

“Yes! No! I–” The tricorder interrupted whatever else Jadzia was going to say with a warbling beep that she focused on like a savior. 

“Okay.” She continued after a moment in a more composed tone. “The uplink is stable, the compression algorithm is done compiling, and I’ve cleared ten kiloquads of memory space on top of what we already put together.”

A kiloquad was roughly analogous to a petabyte under Earth’s current memory storage standards. Not particularly large Raine knew given the digital archive they were aiming for was currently sitting at a good 50 petabytes. But the compression algorithm would hopefully be able to do enough heavy lifting on that front that they’d have enough free memory left over for picking up a few of the secondary archives they’d identified.

“Do you want to do the honors of starting the download then, or should I?” She asked the other woman.

“It’s your plan.” Jadzia returned with a smirk, motioning to the hodgepodge of a laptop with a sweep of her arm. “You can push the button.”

Pouting slightly at Jadzia, Raine reached over and hit the enter key on the laptop.

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Stardate -298333.4 - August 31, 2024 - 23:24:51

The history records Benjamin had read about the Bell Riots hadn’t been particularly detailed on just how Gabriel Bell had been able to pull off everything he did. Which hadn’t been a problem at the time, or something he thought would ever be one, however reality seemed to have decided it should be. 

Because keeping BC and his men from taking their psychosis out on the hostages was practically a job in and of itself, and he still hadn’t figured out how they were actually going to keep history even remotely on track.

“We can’t just think of ourselves, BC.” He snapped, staring the other man in the eye till he broke eye contact with Sisko. “There are ten thousand people living here.”

BC gripped his shotgun, nervously drumming his fingers on the barrel for a moment before glaring back defiantly. “Well, let them get their own hostages.”

“No, Bell is right.” Webb interjected with a shake of his head. “This is an opportunity for us to be heard. To let people on the outside know exactly what's going on in here.”

Benjamin focused his gaze back on BC and put on his best Curzon grin. “You want to make demands, I'll give you some demands. We tell them if they want the hostages back, they've got to shut down the Sanctuaries. 

“And reinstate the Federal Employment Act.” Webb added, nodding in approval.

BC scoffed and pulled his hat back slightly. “Why don't you have them throw in a couple of silk shirts or maybe a penthouse in Singapore while you’re at it. Cause there are no jobs let here. Not for us, anyway.”

“They'll find jobs.” Benjamin told him, projecting the absolute certainty that came along with knowing it had actually happened. “They'll have to. Because after tonight, they won't be able to ignore us anymore.”

“All right. All right, we'll do it your way.” BC finally acquiesced. “I'll log onto the Interface and I'll tell them that we want the District closed.”

“Not you.” Benjamin said, pointing over at Webb while desperately hoping the less stable man wouldn’t push things. “He's got the face. He's got the family. He's the guy next door. And that's what they need to see if we’re to have any chance of this working.”

For a moment it looked like BC was going to argue, and Benjamin readied himself just in case it came to a fight. However the unstable man seemed to think better of it, and yanked down on his hat before stalking off towards where Bashir was holding the hostages.

Webb waited a moment for BC to be out of hearing distance before turning to Benjiman with an odd look. “Before we get to that, you wouldn’t happen to know a down on his luck looking Irishman, would you?”

Benjamin bit back his immediate hope that it might be O’Brien having found a way to come rescue them and instead pretended to consider the question for a moment before giving a cautious nod. “I might have run into someone like that before, why?”

“Ran into him and an angry looking woman with short hair who were searching for a pair that fit you and your doctor friend's description when I was out gathering up help.” Webb answered. “Something else we need to worry about?”

Letting out an exhale of relief as that all but confirmed it, Benjamin shook his head. “No, in fact it might actually be good news if the two are who I think.”

An annoyed look flashed across Web's face. “I suppose you're going to want me to try and bring them here then?”

“Could be the answer to at least some of our problems if you did.” Benjamin offered with a nod. “O'Brien used to be an engineer before he fell on hard times, and he’ll be able to get that message of ours to a lot more eyes than I can on my own.”

Webb considered that for a moment before letting out a tired sigh. “All right, but if that woman ends up stabbing me you better let that doctor friend of yours patch me back up.”

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The entryway door opened once more, and Benjamin let out a breath of relief as an oddly human looking Kira Nerys walked in with Miles O'Brien and Webb following mere steps behind her.

“Kira” Benjamin greeted, grinning in sheer relief at the Bajiran woman. “It's good to see you.”

Kira smiled awkwardly back at him. “It's good to see you too… Old friend…”

Benjamin cringed, not sure how Kira was suddenly so bad at improvisation given what he had seen her pull off in the past.

“It's all right.” He covered for her. “Webb already knows that I'm Gabriel Bell.”

“I sure do.” Webb interjected in a tone that left Benjamin somewhat unsure whether the other man was actually buying the story at this point or not.

He offered a nod to O’Brien before continuing past Benjamin and towards one of the back rooms.“I'll go record that message and leave you three to catch up.”

Giving the man a moment to depart fully, Benjamin jerked his head towards the corner of the room farthest away from the various guards in the room before walking over himself.

“Good to see you again, sir.” O’Brien offered in a whisper once they were there.

Benjamin offered a relieved smile to the pair. “You too, Chief. Did you run into Brooks or Dax?”

Kira nodded. "They’re holed up in a hotel a couple kilometers from here.”

That was one worry off Benjamin’s plate at least, and he really hoped he survived long enough to hear just how that ended up coming about given the person he was currently pretending to be had a historical ticking clock of about a day hanging over his head.

O’Brien glanced over to the men they had guarding the doors for a moment before frowning at him. “Gabriel Bell?”

“The real Bell got killed saving Bashir about six hours ago.” Benjamin confessed with a grimace. “So I’m taking his place to keep the timeline on track.”

The two exchanged an uncomfortable glance before Kira took the initiative. “I take it you won’t be wanting to leave then?”

“I can’t.” Benjamin told her grimly. “If Bell’s not here to keep the hostages safe, there’s a good chance history will go completely off track.”

They exchanged another glance, and it was clear to Benjamin at this point that there was something the pair were working themselves up to telling him.

“About that.” Kira finally began. “The Federation kind of sort of, well, I guess vanished about two hours before we beamed down.”

For a moment it felt like a giant void was reaching up to swallow Benjamin whole, but he ruthlessly crushed the alarm back down and turned a severe look on the pair.

 “I’m going to need you to tell me everything.”

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Author’s Notes: Sorry for the delay, this was originally supposed to release on friday but I kind of wrenched my neck/back so wasn’t able to get it done by then.