Chapter 4 - The Truth Will Set You Free
Jack McCall sat at a table in his and Mei-Wan's quarters working at a small Comm panel. On the display, his Chief Staff Officer, Celeste Purcell was speaking to him.
"Yes, sir. I have made certain that both Admiral Simmons and Mr. Corsica have great seats for the concert tomorrow."
Jack nodded. "Hopefully the Admiral will enjoy himself and leave us alone for the next several days."
Purcell smiled on the display. "The Staff would be pleased with that, Captain."
Jack grinned. "Give the Staff my thanks, Commander. I know none of you were expecting to go through this the first thing."
"I just hope the admiral and Commander Tavak find something else to do for the remainder of the way to Kel-j'na."
"You and me both. Good night, Commander," Jack said as he reached for the control to the display.
"Goodnight, sir," Purcell said a moment before the display went blank.
Jack stood up and walked across the room to a couch and fell into it and exhaled. He was tired and he just wanted to sleep.
He looked up at the chronometer and saw 2236 on the small display. Jack wished Mei-Wan would walk through the door and they could spend a quiet evening together, but he didn't hold out much hope for that. He figured she was down in her damn Lab.
A moment later the doors to their quarters opened and Mei-Wan walked in. Jack smiled wide as she entered.
"Hi."
She stopped and tried to smile in return. "I'm surprised to find you here."
Jack spread his arms wide. "This is my new office."
Mei-Wan sat in the chair across from him. "Simmons hasn't given your Ready Room back?"
Jack shook his head. "I hear he and his Staff are up there almost twenty-four hours a day."
"Doing what?"
"Negev told me they've been working on some 'Resource Deployment Plan' for the Kel-j'na Region, but I think they're just having a continuous party."
Mei-Wan nodded.
"So, you done for the evening?" Jack asked.
She tried to look at him, but couldn't find the strength to. "I'm not sure, I..." Her words trailed off. She wasn't sure she wanted to go through with this.
Jack watched her and saw the indecision in her eyes.
"What is it, Mei?"
She looked up at the ceiling. After several moments Mei-Wan looked directly at Jack. "We need to talk."
Jack took a deep breath and sat up in the couch. "Okay."
Mei-Wan stood and walked over to the couch and sat down next to him. She stared at the floor for nearly a minute until Jack put his hand on hers. She grabbed his hand and held it as tight as she could. Mei-Wan felt his heartbeat through their clasping hands and the warmth of his skin against hers. She lost herself in the sensations.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
She looked at him. "I wish I knew."
His face echoed the concern he felt for this woman he loved more than life. "You know I'm here for you, Mei."
She stared at the floor again and took a deep breath. "You asked me why I didn't go on the expedition."
Jack didn't move. He just listened.
"Well," she continued, "I decided not to go because..." She didn't know how to say it.
Jack's hand tightened around hers. "Take your time."
She exhaled. "I didn't go because I was afraid."
"Afraid of what? The planet? Are you afraid because of what happened to Uduff and Ramirez while we were there?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Then what?"
She looked into his eyes. "I was afraid because of us."
Jack looked at her and nodded. "So was I."
Mei-Wan shook her head. "You don't understand, Jack."
"What is there to understand?" he asked.
She released his hand and stood to her feet. She couldn't decide if she wanted to sit back down or run.
Mei-Wan turned and looked at him. "I've always been honest with you, Jack. We've never kept secrets from each other."
Jack took a deep breath. He didn't like where this was going. "I've been happy with that."
He stood and walked up to her. "You can be honest with me now, Mei."
She nodded. "I went over to the Ravenscroft to see the ship."
He nodded. "Okay, I'm not surprised by that."
"While I was there, I..." She stopped.
Jack's expression hardened. "What, Mei?"
"You know my first assignment out the Academy was on the Farragut." She paused only a moment. "And that Kyle Hoffman was the head of the Archaeology Department."
Jack nodded.
She continued, "At the time I was really infatuated with him, but he never showed any interest, so there never was anything to it."
He took a shallow breath. "That was six years ago."
Mei-Wan inhaled deeply. "He was the first guy I was ever really in love with."
"Okay," Jack said softly.
"When I went over to the Ravenscroft, I found out that..." she stopped to reconsider, but she had to finish it. "Kyle told me that he loved me and always had."
Jack smirked. His irritation with Commander Kyle Hoffman had converted into a full fledged hatred. "Remind me to feel sorry for the little bastard."
Mei-Wan's eyes darted away for only a brief moment.
Jack's eyes narrowed. "Do you still love him?"
"I... I don't know."
Jack took a step back from her. "Damn it, Mei! Do you love him?!"
Tears fell from her eyes. "I came back to you, Jack!"
Jack McCall's mind lost its twenty-fourth century ideals and resorted to the instincts that had developed over several million years on a planet more than a hundred light years away. "Did anything happen?"
"What?" she asked.
"Did you sleep with him?" Jack asked with a stern, cold tone that caught Mei-Wan off guard.
"No," she started. Mei-Wan turned to look directly into Jack's eyes. "No."
"If you had gone on the Expedition, would you have?"
Neither turned from the other as Mei-Wan began to tremble.
Jack didn't need to hear any more--- he didn't want to hear more. He turned and walked toward the door.
"Jack, please! Don't go!" she pleaded.
He stopped and spun around. "Just answer me, Mei. Do you still love him?"
This wasn't turning out at all like she had thought it would. Her mind was a jumble of thoughts and she couldn't make anything come out right. She couldn't decide how she felt about Kyle. How could she tell Jack what she didn't know herself? How could she tell him what she was afraid to face?
"I'm your wife and I love you and I'm here," she said through her now free flowing tears.
Jack walked toward the door. "If you can't answer that simple question then how can our marriage go on?"
"Jack, please don't!"
He stormed toward the door and it opened in front of him. "Let me know when you've decided who you're going to love, Mei."
A moment later he was gone. Mei-Wan swayed where she stood.
"Jack, I love you!"
She fell onto the couch and finally her heart could take no more and Mei-Wan McCall cried like she never had before.
***
Jack hurried down the corridor on Deck Four toward a turbolift. Part of him wanted to hunt down the Ravenscroft and kidnap Kyle Hoffman and beat him to death, but he knew he wouldn't do that. Enough of his twenty-fourth century mind had returned to him to prevent it, but thinking about killing Hoffman felt good.
He stopped at the turbolift door and breathed deeply. Suddenly his anger changed to pain and tears filled his vision with every breath he took. He closed his eyes as hard as he could to force his agony back. The pain the Glazyalans had caused him never hurt as much as this. This tore at his very soul.
A moment before he completely lost his composure the turbolift door opened. He could hide in the lift and let go.
"Hello, Captain," said the smiling historian, Mr. Corsica.
Jack looked up and something inside him forced everything back. He was a Starship Captain again. He could hide in that.
"Mr. Corsica, mind if I share the turbolift with you?" Jack said as he entered and the door closed.
"Certainly, Captain."
The turbolift began moving. Jack took several breaths. "Where are you headed at this time of night?"
Corsica smiled. "I was talking to Mr. Evans--- a very interesting man, by the way--- and he had told me about a bar here on the ship and invited me to come by."
"A bar?" Jack asked.
"Yes, I'm sure he said it was a bar."
Jack grinned. "Where is this bar located?"
"Mr. Evans told me to go to section D-Five on Deck Thirty-three."
Jack thought for several moments about the layout of the Chamberlain. Deck Thirty-three had a lot of engineering maintenance systems, the interface systems to the main deflector, and some backup fusion reactors. But Jack couldn't remember anything about a bar or lounge on that deck. He thought perhaps Corsica had heard Hank wrong.
"Mind if I join you?" Jack asked.
Corsica smiled wide. "I'd be honored, Captain."
Two minutes later, the turbolift stopped in section D on Deck Thirty-three and the doors opened into a tight corridor. Monitoring panels filled the narrow passage with light from flashing status indicators.
"This looks interesting," Corsica said.
Jack frowned. This couldn't be right.
"I think Mr. Evans said to go down to the third intersection and turn left."
Jack nodded. "Lead on, Mr. Corsica."
The two walked down the corridor.
"So what is upsetting you this evening, Captain?"
Jack's head swung to stare at the historian. How could he know?
"I'm not certain what you're talking about," Jack replied.
Corsica nodded. "My apologies. I keep forgetting human society is rather obsessed with the concept of privacy."
"Aren't most humanoid cultures?" Jack asked, glad he seemed to have gotten them off the subject.
Corsica nodded. "I suppose you're right about that."
Jack grinned. "I had been meaning to ask you what planet you originate from Mr. Corsica."
The shorter man smiled wide. "You don't know of it."
Jack nodded. "So you don't want to tell me."
"Didn't say that. I simply stated you don't know of it. If I told you its name, what would that tell you?"
"Nothing I suppose."
"See, you figured that out. I'm sure whatever emotional crisis you're going through is something you'll figure out as well."
Corsica turned left as they reached the third intersection as Jack frowned. He wondered if the strange being was a telepath or just extremely observant.
"That's one thing I have learned about your species. You spend an inordinate amount of time and energy on your emotional entanglements. You go out of your way to get deeply involved with others of your kind and then, as it always does, things go wrong and everything goes into an exponential spiral of madness. And for what? Companionship?"
Jack sighed. Right now Corsica was making a lot of sense.
"If you ask me, your whole species would do yourselves a favor by just keeping to yourselves. Sort of a Prime Emotional Directive."
Jack would have laughed if he'd heard that on any other day, but not this one.
They reached a dead end where a recessed door stood in their path. Off to the left side of the closed passage a small touchpad hung on the wall.
Jack looked at Corsica. "Now what?"
"According to Mr. Evans, this." Corsica put his finger on the touchpad.
A noise erupted from the wall. "What's the password?"
Corsica leaned forward. "Deep Thirty-three."
After a moment the door opened and a joyful noise flooded out into the corridor. Jack followed the short historian through the doorway.
The two of them walked down a three foot wide dark passage for nearly ten feet until they reached a large man Jack didn't recognize.
"Jacket off," the man demanded.
Jack frowned and pointed to his collar. "You see these four pins?"
The man's eyes widened. "Uh, Captain. Sorry, sir."
The now flustered man looked behind him and motioned someone over. After a moment, Chief Engineer Kristen Bishop walked up with a glass full of an odd green liquid and without her outer uniform jacket. She wore just the golden engineering division shirt, uniform pants, and boots. She wore no insignia of any kind.
"What's the problem, Chester?"
The rotund man pointed at Jack. Bishop's eyes turned huge.
"Captain, what are you doing down here, sir?" she asked.
"I was about to ask you the same," Jack said as he walked past her and saw a large forty by fifty foot room with a crowd of thirty or so seated at tables and at a makeshift bar. The walls were white, but covered with handwritten mathematical equations.
"Sir, I can explain," Bishop offered.
Jack shook his head and grinned. He began removing his uniform jacket. "I'm looking forward to hearing this one."
Bishop smiled. "This was originally a water reclamation area on the original designs, but at the shipyard we found a better place for that system and couldn't think of anything else to put here, so we set it up to be a bar of sorts so we could relax after working on the ship."
Jack turned to the large man at the door and handed him his jacket. "Take care of this, Chester."
The stocky officer nodded and took his jacket.
Bishop continued as Corsica went over to the bar ahead of them. "Well, we enjoyed it so much that we could never bring ourselves to dismantle it. So, we left it."
Jack shook his head. "Do all the Oceana Class Starships have one of these?"
Bishop smiled. "No, sir. Chamberlain is the only one."
"What's the point of no jackets?"
"We come in with no jacket and no insignia. That way everyone's equal in here... sir."
Jack laughed. He could not have imagined ten minutes before that he would be laughing. He needed a place like this. He almost wondered if Corsica had planned this only after meeting Jack in the turbolift. He guessed the odd man would never admit it.
"Are the drinks real?" Jack asked.
"Oh, yes. No synthetic swill down here, sir."
Jack grinned. "I thought there was no rank or position down here."
Bishop smiled. "Okay, I'll call you Jack if you call me Kristy."
"How do I get a drink, Kristy?"
She nodded. "Just go over to the bar and ask... Jack."
He could really get used to this. Bishop walked off to join a group over at a wall where a couple of officers were writing equations that Jack thought had something to do with General Relativity. He went up to the bar and joined Corsica. The historian seemed irritated.
"Is there a problem, Mr. Corsica?"
The short man pointed at the bartender, a tall Vulcan Jack recognized as a member of the engineering department. "This gentleman doesn't know how to make a Calufa."
Jack looked at him. "A what?"
Corsica gave Jack a surprised look. "Don't tell me none of you has ever heard of a Calufa."
Jack shook his head. The Vulcan bartender remained motionless.
Corsica sighed loudly. "How did your kind ever achieve space travel?"
Jack smiled. "Just lucky I guess." He turned to the bartender. "How about a scotch?"
The Vulcan nodded and pulled out a glass. He reached beneath the bar and came back with a bottle of golden liquid. Jack watched as he filled the glass. He just hoped this wasn't some replicated concoction.
The Vulcan handed Jack the glass which he took and smiled at.
"I take it this is the real stuff," Jack said.
The Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "Real stuff?"
Jack waved him off and took a sip from the glass. He hardly noticed he had taken a drink until it reached his throat and then... total smoothness.
The Vulcan turned to Corsica. "Would you like a glass of 'real stuff' sir?"
The historian nodded. "I guess I'll have to settle for it."
Jack grinned and motioned Corsica to join him over at an empty table. A few moments later they were both sitting in a corner looking out at the others in the makeshift bar.
"Aside from the drinks, this is an interesting place," Corsica said.
"I should have expected something like this on a ship this size."
Corsica looked at him. "Is there a problem with the size of the Chamberlain?"
Jack tilted his head a bit. "According to Admiral Simmons there is. He thinks it's far too large."
Corsica laughed. "This little thing? This is nothing. I've seen vessels that make this ship look like a shuttle."
"Were they from warrior races?" Jack asked.
"Contrary to conventional wisdom, warrior societies don't survive long on the galactic stage."
"Really?"
Corsica nodded. "The largest vessel I ever saw was a cruise ship from Farlantha. Now that was a ship!"
"Farlantha? I don't think I've ever heard of that world," Jack said.
"It's in what you call the Large Magellanic Cloud."
"We've never had any indication of major political organization in either of the Magellanic Clouds."
Corsica shook his head. "You really are a backward lot aren't you?"
"I think we do okay."
"Okay? You use warp drive."
Jack waited several moments. "And?"
"Isn't that bad enough? Do you really want me to go any further?" Corsica laughed and took a drink of his scotch. Afterward he frowned.
Jack looked at his own glass. "So, what kind of lifeforms are there in the Large Cloud?"
Corsica leaned toward Jack. "First, they call it the Guladris Galaxy. Secondly, the entire galaxy is unified. One government, one economy." He started to grin. "And they have a lot more fun than people in your Federation do."
"A good thing for them the Borg are over here in the Milky Way. The Borg don't lend themselves to fun."
Corsica gave Jack a strange look. "What do you have against the Borg?"
Jack's eyes went wide. "Assimilation for one thing."
Corsica smiled. "Okay, I'll admit they have a bit of a one track collective mind, but once you get past that they aren't that bad."
"You're kidding."
The historian shook his head. "I spent some time with them for a while some number of years ago. I enjoyed it."
"They didn't assimilate you?"
"Of course they did. It's what they do."
Jack was having trouble believing this. "And you got free?"
Corsica nodded. "Yes, when I was ready to leave. They seemed to be rather broken up about it as I remember. I thought that was sweet."
Jack wondered if his drink was stronger than he imagined. Of course, Corsica might just be feeding him a line. That had to be it.
Corsica finished his glass of scotch and stared at Jack a few moments.
"Tell me about your family, Captain," he said.
Jack turned to him. "You mean me and my wife?"
Corsica smiled. "That would be interesting I suppose, but I was interested in your family history. Tell me about your ancestors."
Jack took a sip from his glass and leaned forward in his seat. "I don't know all that much really. There's an ancestor who came to the United States in the late 1800's from England I think. Though he brought the McCall name with him he's not the interesting one. His wife whose family came from Ireland was the real power of the McCall's for most of her life."
"Did she build a family dynasty?"
Jack laughed. "Nothing like that. The McCall's weren't powerful or anything. Catherine McCall made sure everyone in the family kept their nose clean and became hard working members of society."
Jack looked at his glass. "Supposedly she hated gunfighters and liquor. Wouldn't allow either in her house or in the family."
Corsica nodded. "Interesting. Mating practices in your family select for those who fit in, follow the rules, and become productive members of society."
Jack grinned. "I guess I'm the exception." He took a long drink of scotch.
"Do you ever wonder what this Catherine McCall would have thought of her descendant commanding a vessel like the Chamberlain?"
"I doubt she would have liked it."
Corsica looked around the room at the others present. He stopped to watch Kristen Bishop with several others in golden engineering shirts who were arguing some fine point about equations they were scribbling on a wall on the other side of the bar.
"Do your engineers usually write on walls, Captain?"
"Not usually," Jack said. "My guess is that's another tradition my Chief Engineer carried over from the shipyard."
"Well, they're not likely to get very far in their discussion if they can't even get basic physics right."
Jack looked over at the wall. "I'm afraid I don't remember warp field dynamics very well."
"That's not what those equations are about," Corsica stated with a frown.
Jack tried to make out the writing. "What is it then?"
"It would appear they're trying to derive the basis for a twenty-one dimensional space-time manifold. It's the rudimentary basis for wormholes." Corsica turned back to the table and looked at his empty glass. "They made several mistakes in their derivation."
Jack smirked. "And I suppose you know the correct derivation."
"Of course I do. Do I look like I come from a backward civilization?"
Jack sighed. He was certain Corsica was either drunk or seriously trying to play with him.
Jack's Comm badge chirped causing frowns from people at nearby tables until the realized it was their Captain who they were giving dirty looks to. He tapped it.
"McCall here."
Over the badge, "Negev here, sir. Admiral Simmons is asking for you to meet him in the Ready Room. We're receiving a signal from the Third Fleet."
"I'm on my way."
Jack turned to Corsica. "If you'll excuse me."
"Are you coming back?" the historian asked.
Jack finished off his glass as he stood to his feet. "I'll try."
Jack walked off leaving Corsica to himself. The short man looked around the room. He waved over the Vulcan bartender who quickly joined him.
"Yes, sir?"
"Give me a bottle of any kind of wine you have."
The Vulcan nodded and walked back to his bar.
Corsica looked back over at Bishop and the others still arguing over their equations. "I'm not sure how much more of this I can stand to watch."
