Chapter 11 - Transit
After they'd gone over their mission so many times each of them could recite it backwards in their sleep, Jack decided to give his four crewmates aboard the Abdiel a break from their routine of the last two days. Falco had retired to his quarters, Melissa had turned in as well, and Hank was on the bridge monitoring their journey to Nybiros. Jack was due to relieve him in another two hours, so he decided the best way to pass that time was to satisfy the gnawing of his stomach.
He sauntered into the messhall on Deck Two and was surprised to find it already had an occupant.
"Mei?"
Startled, she looked up from her bowl of ice cream. "Jack, oh it's you."
He grinned as he made his way to the replicator. "Mind if I join you?"
"Sure." She slid the small chess board she'd been studying off to the side, then returned to her bowl.
Jack walked his roast beef sandwich and coffee over to Mei-Wan's table and took the seat across from her. "You're jumpy tonight."
She only shrugged.
He peered at the now half empty bowl she took another spoonful from. "Neapolitan? The replicator not programmed for mint chocolate chip?"
"I decided to try something different." She kept her view focused on the bowl. "Natalie Fowler suggested this."
Jack nodded and took a bite of his sandwich. He hadn't expected there to be a lot of conversation between them, but the ever-lengthening silence finally became too much for him. "You're quiet."
Another shrug. "Is there really all that much for ex-spouses to talk about?"
"I hope we're more than that." He set his sandwich down. "I'd like us to be more than that."
Finally her eyes joined his. "Look, this is hard for me."
"You want me to go?"
He could tell she was rolling the option around in her mind.
"No," she said. "I'm sorry. I guess I'm worried about how tomorrow is going to go."
"That's okay," he said taking a sip from his steaming cup of coffee. "I'm worried too."
A brief smile crossed her features before she spooned another morsel of ice cream.
Knowing it wasn't a good thing to dwell on the fears about an upcoming mission, Jack changed the topic. "You looking forward to your new assignment?"
From the smile on her face, Jack decided he'd found the right thing for them to talk about.
"You remember the kind of dream assignment I used to always talk about where I could take my pick of archaeological sites, especially ones that nobody had ever heard of?"
"I remember," he said.
"That's what this is and more." She let her spoon rest in the bowl. "I'll be free to investigate any world in the Kel-j'na Region I choose, with a team of over a hundred specialists from a dozen fields." Her smile widened. "And the only people I have to answer to is the Archaeological Council back on Earth."
"Are you leaving Starfleet?"
She shook her head. "Technically, I'll still be in Starfleet, but the Institute will be mine to run as I see fit without some..." she stopped and looked at him.
"Some starship captain peering over your shoulder?"
"Something like that," she said with a smirk.
"Is it what you really want, Mei?"
"Yes, can't you tell?" she asked with a confused look.
"I just wanted to be sure you were going to what you wanted rather than running away from..." He hesitated to make sure he chose the right words. "...life on the Chamberlain."
She was quiet a lot longer than he would have expected.
"Yes, it's what I really want." She smiled as she took another bite of ice cream. "I've had enough of living on starships. Being back in the nineteenth century gave me an appreciation for being around nature, feeling the wind blow through my hair again."
"It does have its lure." Jack's mind drifted back to his cattle ranch in Nebraska.
"Do you miss it?" she asked, bringing him back to the twenty-fourth century.
"Some of it," he said with a sigh. "Not the hardships, the pain, the death, but I guess a measure of that comes with any way of life." He finished the last bite of his sandwich. "After five years of herding cattle, I'm enjoying the chance to sail the stars again."
"I'm glad for you, Jack." She stared into her bowl.
Jack at first got the impression there was something in it she was fixated on, but as the seconds passed, he became convinced the bowl was the last thing on her mind.
"Everything else going well for you?" he asked.
"What?" she asked, startled.
"Aside from your career?"
She absently stirred the remaining ice cream. "To tell you the truth, I thought it'd be easier."
"What, life in general?"
"No, I..." She finally looked at him. "The divorce."
Jack cradled his coffee cup in his hands. This was the very topic he hadn't wanted to talk about, but he could see it was troubling her.
"You seem to be dealing with it so much better than I am. Maybe it didn't..."
"Maybe it didn't matter as much to me?" he asked with a frown. "Come on, Mei. You know better than that. When you were missing, I almost tossed my career, my ship, even more away because I'd said and did things that I'd never get a chance to make up to you." He set his cup down. "If it seems that it's been easier for me, remember I had five years to sort through a lot of things."
"What about when Hank and I found you? Didn't any of the uncertainty return?"
"Yeah, for a while. But then I realized how different you and I were, how different we'd always been. I figured you'd gotten a chance to see other possibilities for your life--- options you'd never considered."
Mei-Wan set her bowl aside. "Something like that," she muttered.
"You think maybe that's what's troubling you?"
The look on her face suggested to Jack he'd hit a mother lode of emotion she hadn't wanted tapped, or perhaps that she wasn't even aware of.
"How?"
"Possibilities mean there are choices to be made," Jack said. "That's something you've never been particularly at ease with when it came to your personal life."
"At ease?" she said with a sad laugh. "That's an understatement. Try terrified."
He reached across the table and took her hand in his. It surprised him that she didn't resist his gesture of compassion. "You're always more worried about the things you'll miss on the road you don't take, rather than what you've got on the road you do take."
Jack felt her hand grip his.
"You're right." Mei-Wan nodded. "That's exactly how I am with my personal life." She joined his gaze. "But I hate it."
"The hardest things to change are our own attitudes, Mei. For some of us it takes five years of back breaking labor for the Universe to get through our thick skulls."
"I wonder what it'll take for me."
"Whatever you need."
Mei-Wan pulled her hand back, then slid her bowl back in front of her and ate the last remaining chunks of ice cream. "You know, sometimes I wonder how our marriage would have turned out if we'd been the people we are now back then."
"We were who we were, Mei. We learn from our mistakes and hopefully do better the next time."
"But the pain. It all seems so pointless."
"Good can come from bad beginnings if the people involved choose to make it happen," he told her, hoping it might give her some comfort.
Figuring it was probably time he changed the subject, Jack pointed to the chess set. "You up for a game?"
"Sure," she said with a smile.
***
Syronus walked onto the observation deck of the lead vessel of the G'voda armada assembling to combat the immanent attack by Starfleet. From this vantage point he would watch the ships under his command eliminate the threat to his world, and then he would lead them to the homeworlds of their enemies. After what, to any other being, would have seemed an eternity, Syronus would witness the defeat of the humanoids.
Justice would finally be done.
He observed the positions of his ships on a nearby display. Yes, everything was in place.
"What delusion are you living under today, Syronus?"
He spun about, having completely forgotten about the creature being held there. But he was not unhappy. "Before I have you dismantled and your parts analyzed, I wanted you to watch the G'voda accomplish what has been impossible for the Borg."
"What miraculous heights do you reach for now? Godhood?" the Borg Queen asked with a thin smile.
"The end of the Federation," Syronus said. "Our ships will crush them with an ease which will shock every humanoid in the Galaxy."
She gave him a curious look through the energy field surrounding her. "Do not underestimate them, Syronus."
"I take it that admonishment is a result of your repeated failures against them."
"What you see as failures are only necessary steps toward the inevitable. Once the humans are assimilated, the Borg will possess the very determination they now use against us. It is only a matter of when, not if."
Syronus's glowing, mechanical eyes flared brightly. "After today, it will be a matter of never for all the descendants of the Ancient Progenitors." He read data concerning early warning buoys on a display. "When we finish with the humanoids of the Federation, we will turn our energies to your drones, my dear."
A grin emerged on her face. "The level of your ignorance is truly amazing. Not only do you fail to understand the Borg, but the very nature of your own actions."
"We understand ourselves quite well, Abomination." He returned his attention to the Borg. "We have dedicated everything we are to preventing a travesty on a scale you could never hope to comprehend."
"You are destruction incarnate, Syronus, nothing more." She laughed. "You substitute some pathetic moral framework for the calling all life must answer. You speak of a travesty, you are nothing but that."
"I hardly think you are in a position to lecture me." He stepped to within a foot of the energy field holding her. "Your entire history has been one of death and destruction."
"We are on a quest to perfect and preserve what you would destroy. When that quest is fulfilled, the chaos brought by those like you will come to an end."
"The G'voda are eliminating a disease which never should have existed. More than anything else in this Galaxy, you are the embodiment of the horrors of that infestation."
She regarded him a moment. "You are incapable of perfection. You are dead, nothing but the animated husk of a plant which has long ago withered and died."
"I am going to enjoy pulling you apart," he said. "Piece by piece."
