Chapter 3 – Shaken and Stirred
An hour later, they were all loaded back
onto the Athena, doing their final checks before takeoff.
Mei-Wan went to her quarters to get out of
the dusty clothes she had been wearing on the surface of the planet. She was
about to settle into her bunk and rest for a few minutes when her door chimed.
“Come in,” she called out.
Ghadani stepped through the door. “Did you
want to have dinner soon?”
“Sure.” Mei-Wan smiled and walked up to Dani. “You want to spend
the night here in my quarters?”
“I would very much like that,” Dani replied.
Mei-Wan put her arms around Dani. “I’ll be glad to get back home.
I miss having time with you.”
“We have spent time together on the
ship,” Dani replied as they stepped apart.
“It’s not the same,” Mei-Wan replied. “I
don’t like having our every interaction watched in an attempt to determine
where our relationship is at every given moment.”
“I find that quite humorous.” Dani
placed a hand on Mei-Wan’s arm. “But I enjoy having
you to myself too.”
Mei-Wan loved how interior lighting
played across Dani’s translucent blue skin. It always appeared as if the light
were passing through a prism.
“We’re you still going to teach me how
to play that game?” Dani asked.
“Chess?”
“Yes.”
Mei-Wan grinned. “Yes, I think you’ll…”
Suddenly, Mei-Wan felt as if a concrete
block had slammed into her head.
“Oh god…” she murmured. “It’s
happening.”
“What?” Dani asked, taking Mei-Wan again
into her arms.
“I’m shifting through time,” Mei-Wan
said. “I can feel it.”
She forced her eyes open, afraid she
might never see Dani if the timeline changed in the wrong ways. Her vision was
blurred as it had been all the other times. “No, please…”
The pain started to subside. Mei-Wan
looked up. “You’re still here?”
“Yes,” Dani replied. “I do not feel as
if anything has changed.”
“And we’re still on the Athena?”
“I believe so.” Dani looked about Mei-Wan’s quarters. “Everything seems to be in the same place
as before.”
“But you wouldn’t notice a difference if
it had changed,” Mei-Wan said. “I’m the only one cursed with that.”
“My people do notice changes in time,
not as clearly as you have reported to me, but we do notice them.”
Mei-Wan took several breaths. “It’s over
now.”
“Perhaps something insignificant was
changed,” Dani said.
“Maybe,” Mei-Wan replied. “I’ll check
the information files and see if anything jumps out as being different.”
“But are you okay?” Dani asked.
Mei-Wan smiled. “Yes.” She kissed Dani.
***
“Any contract from the Zhukov?”
Jack asked the next morning as he entered the bridge.
“Nothing,” Lieutenant Flanora answered from communications. “I am continuing to
send inquires, but…”
Jack nodded and watched the stars
streaking by on the viewscreen. They would be at the missing ship’s last known
location within two hours.
“I’ll be in the deck seven lounge,” Jack
said as he turned to Loftus. “Call if anything changes.”
“Aye, sir,” she replied.
***
Jack found Marie already waiting for
him, wearing her admiral’s uniform.
“That thing fits you well,” he said as
he stood across from her.
“Fortunately, my uniform won’t be
changing soon.”
“You know something I don’t?” he asked.
“Get your food.”
Jack quickly went to the replicator,
gave the unit an order, and thirty seconds later, had a plate with bacon and
eggs. He returned to the table and sat across from Marie.
“Okay, out with it,” he said.
“This isn’t for general release yet, but
the packet of information I got with my promotion stated the duty uniforms were
going to change in the next few months.”
“Again?!” Jack almost yelled. “We’ve
only had the current ones a year.”
Marie shrugged. “It seems no one in the
admiralty is happy with them and the decision was made to change again.”
“This happened right before the Dominion
War,” Jack said. “Anything else you’re not telling me?”
“A lot of things,” she said with a grin,
eating some potatoes. “But I doubt a listing of all the hand phasers and
shuttlecraft in Starfleet would excite you.”
“I wasn’t excited about the uniform
thing.”
“Yes, you were,” she said. “Just not in
a good way.”
Jack chuckled. “I suppose I’ll get used
to the new ones like I did these.”
“You always did seem to adapt well to
changing circumstances, and making a splash with what you had at hand,” she
said as she resumed eating her potatoes. “I’d heard a rumor you had beaten the Kobayashi
Maru back at the Academy. None of my instructors would talk about it, but…”
“No one’s supposed to talk about it,” he
said, staring at his own plate.
Marie smiled. “I am an admiral now. I
suspect you’re able to tell me.”
Jack looked at her. He wanted to, but
Temporal Investigations wasn’t a group he wanted probing into his life again,
especially now. “I’m sure you can find the records if you go looking.”
She shook her head. “I heard a lot of
people talking for years afterward about you having beat the test.”
“I did get a measure of satisfaction out
of that.”
“Legend over truth?” she asked with a
grin.
“In this case, it’s better for everyone
involved.”
***
Jack returned to the bridge which was
now a hive of activity as they dropped out of warp.
“Where have you brought us?” he asked
Kadan Loftus.
Loftus turned to Melissa.
“A system that’s never been explored,”
Melissa said. “RKC 34561.”
“Doesn’t even have a name?” Jack asked.
“Not yet,” she replied.
Loftus joined in, “I checked their orders. The Zhukov was
here on a mineral survey.”
“That’s odd for a system which has never
been explored,” Jack said. “How many planets?”
“No idea,” Loftus answered. “I asked Sunita
to do long range scans to give us as much information as possible.”
Sunita Mahajadan turned from her science console to
address Jack. “Twelve planets, two habitable, but only one, the fifth planet,
with any sort of civilization.”
“What kind of civilization?” Jack asked,
intrigued.
She touched several controls. “About
five million inhabitants, mostly in small villages, but there is one
centralized city with five hundred thousand. And…” She frowned. “They have
fusion reactors.”
“Any ships in orbit?” Loftus asked.
“No, and that includes the Zhukov,
but there are a number of satellites,” Sunita answered. “They are not armed.”
“Odd the population is relatively small
with that level of technology,” Melissa said.
“Unless this is a colony,” Loftus replied.
“We’ll have to be careful since we have
no confirmation they have warp technology, and given we have no information on
the location of the Zhukov, we’ll have to assume they never made it down
to the planet or…”
Sunita’s panel chimed. “Sir, I have located
a matter-antimatter reactor deep under the large city. It appears to be
generating a low level subspace field which makes use
of the transporter impossible.”
“A subspace field is the precursor to
warp technology,” Loftus said.
Jack had a lot to weigh, but they needed
to find out what happened to the Zhukov.
“Take a small team down to the surface,”
Jack said to Loftus. “Try to avoid being seen by the populace. Also see how far
along they are with their subspace field technology. But also find out if
there’s any evidence anyone from the Zhukov made it down there.”
“Aye, sir,” Loftus replied. She looked
forward. “Burton, Nakano, and Mahajadan, you’re with
me.”
Jack sat back in his command chair as
the four officers left the bridge. After a moment, he turned to Melissa at the
Ops station.
She smiled. “You wish you were going
down there too, don’t you?”
He nodded.
***
Jack had spent the last hour in his
ready room, having found waiting on the bridge unbearable. It did give him a
chance to catch up on the new day’s reports, but that irritated him rather than
soothed him.
His door chimed.
“Enter,” he replied.
Marie walked up the stairs into the
ready room. She stopped at the top of the stairs, gazing about the chamber.
“Wow! Ten of my last ready room could fit in here.”
“This was originally supposed to be an
observation lounge,” Jack said. “Thinking the Oceana class ships would
be commanded by admirals, leading a fleet into battle against the Borg, and a
long list of others threats, the designers decided the ship needed a ready room
large enough to fit such glorious ambition.” Jack grinned a moment.
“Fortunately, such grandiosity met reality and lost.”
“I heard the class had a number of
design problems.”
“Still does,” Jack replied. “But we
manage to keep her sailing in spite of them.”
Marie nodded as she turned to face Jack.
“But it has to be nice to retreat here sometimes.”
“It’s my place to get away from it all,”
Jack said. He held up a PADD. “Except from reports.”
“The Borg say resistance is futile, but
they haven’t come up against the Starfleet bureaucracy yet. That’s our true
secret weapon.”
Jack smiled for a moment.
“I hear you have some people down on the
surface,” Marie said.
He nodded.
“That’s the one thing about being a
starship captain I won’t miss.”
He leaned forward. “You trying to talk
me into taking that promotion?”
“I think it would be good for you.” She
paused a moment. “Besides, our generation has had its day. Time to make room for
the next one.”
“Sounds like you want to put me out to
pasture,” Jack said.
“I think you’ve still got a lot to offer
both Starfleet and the people who care about you.”
Jack was about to take a more personal
direction in their conversation when the intercom chimed.
It was Melissa. “Captain, we’re
receiving word from Loftus on the planet.”
“They find anything?”
“They’re under attack.”
