Chapter 4 – Life Moves On

Monday, April 2, 2384…

Mei-Wan should have been happy. A week earlier, her team had submitted their paper to the Proceedings of Federation Archaeology for peer review. This was going to be the crowning achievement of her career as an archaeologist, not only sealing her in the pantheon of great scientific achievement, but changing how humanoids viewed themselves and their origins for millennia to come. Her team’s work on this was beyond exemplary. Each one of them had distinguished themselves as not only researchers on par with the best in history, but had done so as a family, something she would cherish for the rest of her life.

Anyone else would have been brimming with joy, exploding with elation.

But Mei-Wan was at the lowest point in her life. Seven months later, she hadn’t crawled out of the abyss of despair she had fallen into when Dani had become two instead of one being. They would have been preparing for their wedding at this point, planning where they’d be living over the next five years. But none of that would happen now.

“You going to order?” asked the green skinned Kel-j’na cook behind the counter.

Mei-Wan felt a nudge against her left shoulder. She turned to see Susan Tanega pointing toward the counter.

“You go ahead,” Mei-Wan said. “I’ll order after you.”

“I already ordered,” Susan replied.

“Oh,” Mei-Wan said, looking up at the menu again. “Give me two servings of Tragalic.”

“Hot sauce?” the cook asked.

“Mild,” she replied.

The cook nodded and went to the metal containers producing steam behind him.

This corner food counter was at the edge of the human section of the capital city on Kel-j’na. Because of its location, many of the signs in the area were in human languages such as English, Chinese, Spanish, and Russian. Mei-Wan and Dani had discovered this small culinary miracle on one of their long walks a year ago, back when…

Mei-Wan shook the thought from her mind. She peered about the narrow streets surrounding them. The buildings in the Kel-j’na section of the city were pilled one on top of another forming something of a canopy like Mei-Wan had seen in the deep rainforests of Earth. The Kel-j’na seemed to like it that way. There were few humans in this part of the city, and the few who were present looked as if they had fallen on hard times.

Why didn’t they just go home to Federation space? Mei-Wan wondered.

“You okay?” Susan asked.

“Sure,” Mei-Wan said with a smile. “Couldn’t be better.”

Susan frowned. “I thought after Christmas you’d…”

“It still hurts, okay?”

“I’m not saying it shouldn’t,” Susan said. “You need to find a way to…”

“Don’t tell me to move on,” Mei-Wan said as they both stood waiting for their food. “I hate that.”

“I was going to say, move forward,” Susan replied. “You’re at a high point in your professional life and you should be able to enjoy it.”

Mei-Wan shook her head.

“Are you going to be like this at Neelon and Nick’s wedding next month?” Susan asked.

“I was thinking of staying home.”

“You can’t,” Susan said, her eyes wide. “They’re part of your team, they’re your friends.”

Mei-Wan looked up, closing her eyes. “The idea of being at a wedding is almost more than I can bear.”

“Might be the best thing for you,” Susan said. “Experience the joy life can bring to two people you care about, and maybe it will break the logjam in your own heart.”

“I don’t know,” Mei-Wan muttered.

Dani had made Mei-Wan whole again after having been broken, first by the disintegration of her marriage to Jack, and then the pain of losing the Todd Nakano of an alternate timeline. No, she didn’t lose him. She consciously walked away. The combination had nearly shattered Mei-Wan, but Dani had managed to help her put it all back to together again, to make the universe make sense again. Now it was all rubble once more.

Susan stared at her for several moments. “You remember back at the Academy when LeAnn or Robin or I would come to you, crying our eyes out about some relationship which had fallen apart?”

Mei-Wan nodded.

“You’d sit there, listening to us wail about how our lives were over, how we’d never find anyone else so great as whoever it was who had broken our hearts, and you’d tell us how we’d wake up the next day with our whole lives ahead of us.”

“I didn’t have any idea what I was talking about,” Mei-Wan said, wondering how she could have been so simple-minded back then. “I’d not been in a single relationship with anyone up to that point. You were all foolish to listen to anything I had to say.”

“But you told us exactly what we needed to hear,” Susan replied. “And I’m telling you now like you told me half a dozen times. You’re going to wake up tomorrow with your whole life ahead of you. It’s up to you to decide what that life is going to be like, and what its story is going to be.”

Mei-Wan frowned as the cook slid their orders across the counter toward them. “I really said that?”

Susan nodded.

“And it worked?”

“Not at first,” Susan said. “And it didn’t make the hurt go away. But it showed us what we needed to be focused on—the future.”

“I can’t even conceive of the future.”

“What kind of life do you want for yourself?” Susan asked.

“That’s just it,” Mei-Wan said as they walked away from the corner food counter with their steaming food. “I don’t know what I want out of life any longer.”

***

Jack McCall walked up to the shuttle, checking its hull for any noticeable damage the last shift might have caused. Once he'd gone around it in a full pass, he was convinced it looked to be in the same shape he'd left it.

He got into the pilot's section, fired up the reactor, and glanced back at the passenger section. Again, everything looked to be in order.

While the work wasn't exciting, it was intended to be anything but, it did keep him busy and allowed him to put his piloting skills to use, and more importantly, it provided the resources required to keep the ranch up and running, and in his possession rather than that of the Pierce Valley Historical Society.

“A man can't even control his own land anymore,” he grumbled.

Jack knew that was the wrong way to think of it. By any normal set of circumstances, he shouldn't even have access to a piece of property like that. Starship captains could amass a collection of resources to get smaller places, but the larger ones had been in families for generations, and even in those cases, there were strict controls on what could and couldn't be done with the property. He’d known of only one place in Sicily which somehow had evaded such controls. How, Jack had no idea.

It was his nineteenth century expectations which had set him up to be so irritated by the situation, but he had built that house. He had cleared off the land after purchasing it with hard earned money. He hadn't gotten it by sitting around in an office, babysitting some control panel which might only need tending for one minute every ten years. It had been twelve hours days of heavy lifting, back breaking work which had gotten him the money, and then the land. Jack had been proud of that accomplishment five hundred years in Earth’s past. A freak accident had sent him back in time, but he damn well made the best of it while he was there for five years.

If he wanted to have the kind of control he expected, he'd have to go back to the nineteenth century and live out his life back then.

Jack chuckled.

He expected Starfleet and more importantly Temporal Investigations might be less than enthused by that prospect.

He settled into his pilot's seat and put on his headset.

The earpiece crackled with a female voice. “Hey, McCall... you ready to go? What's up? You takin’ a nap or something?”

“Just checking the ship.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Everything is just fine.”

“You are cleared for takeoff on route nine. Estimated flight time one hour, five minutes to San Francisco.”

“Acknowledged,” Jack replied. “Preparing for flight path insertion.”

“Happy trails.”

Jack frowned at that tag the dispatcher added every day he took the ship out.

The ship maneuvered as it always did--adequately.

Within two minutes, he was sailing across North America toward the West coast. He'd have passengers to pick up once he got there, and then the flight back, and most likely another set of passengers to go out to San Francisco, and yet another set for the return flight and the end of his day. It wasn't exciting work, but it was adequate like so much else in his life these days.

An hour later, Jack set the ship down in his assigned landing bay in San Francisco. Stepping outside, the air inside the hanger was much warmer than it had been in Chicago, more like it had been that morning at home on the ranch.

The ship handled twenty passengers, all who had to sign in at the station fifty feet away from his landing zone. They would likely start to filter out in the next few minutes. He'd check the manifest on his pilot's panel, and when his load was all present and accounted for, he would lift off for the hour and five minute flight back to Chicago.

According to the list for today, he was going to have a full load.

A few minutes later, the first of his passengers, a group of four Andorians made their way to the ship and climbed in, taking seats at the back of the passenger compartment. They were busy chatting amongst themselves so much, they didn't even notice Jack as they entered the ship. But that was normal. Most people didn't pay much attention to him.

Since taking the job, Jack had wondered if he had shown the same kind of indifference to the people who had shuttled him around from place to place over the years. He had to admit he probably had.

The minutes to takeoff counted down as more of his passengers climbed aboard.

It was nearly time to go when Jack turned to walk back inside the ship himself, but he stopped when he heard a shout from behind him.

“Hey! Wait up!” a male voice called out.

Jack turned to see a man and a woman, both in Starfleet uniforms running to the shuttle.

“We just got our seats on this flight,” the man said as they came to a stop in front of Jack. “Check your...” The man stopped and stared at Jack. “Oh my god!” he shouted.

Jack wondered what this was about.

“You don't remember me, do you?” the man asked.

“I'm sorry,” Jack said. “I see a lot of people on these flights.”

“No, you idiot,” the man said with a grin. “I haven't taken this flight before.”

“Oh,” Jack said.

The man laughed and turned to his companion. “This my dear, is where old starship captains go to die.”

“Really?” she giggled. “Who is he? Someone famous?”

“Jack McCall.”

The woman giggled again.

Then the man’s face registered with Jack's memory.

“Now you remember, don't you?” the man asked.

“Mulligan,” Jack murmured.

Peter Mulligan smiled wide. “That's right, Captain. You do remember making a point of dressing me down in front of that jerk Kalkani, don't you sir?”

“I remember you loafing about, and Kalkani doing the actual work,” Jack said, refusing to back down from his earlier assessment of this officer.

“Check out the rank pins, McCall,” Mulligan said, pointing at his collar. “That's right. I'm a lieutenant commander now. A week after you left, I got a promotion. Captain Hayden noticed my abilities, and made me tactical officer, second shift.”

“This is the guy who was commanding the Chamberlain before I came aboard?” Mulligan's companion asked. “Not much to look at.”

“Lani, this is the great Captain Jack McCall!” Mulligan said with a laugh. “Look at where he's at now--piloting a shuttle from San Francisco to Chicago.”

“You flew farther bringing us from Utopia Planitia to San Francisco than he does all day,” Lani said with a frown.

“That I did,” Mulligan said. “But this is what failed starship captains get stuck with.”

Jack glared at Mulligan knowing if he wanted to keep the job, he couldn't very well deck the little shit. He needed the job to keep the ranch. And he wanted a shot at flights to and from the Moon, and one day flights to Mars.

“We need to get moving,” Jack told them, pointing to the entrance of the shuttle.

“Are you trying to speed us along, McCall?” Mulligan asked. “You ever hear the old saying about the customer always being right?”

“Since you didn't pay for this ride, you're technically not a customer,” Jack said. “But I'm not speeding you along. If you want to stand here all day, be my guest. The shuttle however, will take off in two minutes as scheduled.”

“I think I know a pilot who's going to get a bad review for his hospitality,” Mulligan said.

“Definitely,” Lani agreed.

“Knock yourself out,” Jack said, turning and entering the shuttle.

When the two minutes were up, Jack activated the door mechanism, and started the engines. He glanced back and saw Mulligan and his friend settling into their seats with frowns.

On the flight back to Chicago, Jack kept running through his mind why Hayden would promote a shithead like Mulligan. He certainly wasn't the kind of officer who deserved a promotion. More importantly, why the hell would Melissa sign off on it? As XO she'd had to approve it.

Wait.

Jack was stunned this thought hadn't hit him any earlier. Why was the Chamberlain at Utopia Planitia? And more importantly, why hadn't he heard from Melissa?

He looked up at the clock on his pilot controls. It would be nearly an hour before he'd get a chance to contact Melissa to see what was up, and when she might come to visit him at the ranch.

But she had to have known they were coming here for several weeks. Why hadn't she contacted him?

***

“I can't tell you.”

Jack was ready to tear into her. “Why the hell not?”

“You know I’m not allowed to relate operational information about a ship or class of ships to a person or persons not in Starfleet,” Melissa said over the comm.

Jack caught himself before he exploded. “Okay... okay.”

“Thank you,” Melissa said, finally relaxing just a bit.

“But why didn't you tell me you were going to be in the sector?” he pleaded.

“Because I didn't want to get your hopes up,” Melissa said. “It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to get away for at least several weeks.”

“How long are you going to be in the system?”

“Don't know.”

“Damn it, Melissa...”

“How many times was I left waiting for you when some situation required your time?”

He nodded. “Several.”

“And why aren't I being accorded the same understanding I gave you?”

He smiled. “Because I'm an idiot.”

She grinned. “Only on occasion.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” she said. “If I can get away, I'll try to let you know. But don't count on seeing me anytime soon.”

“Is it that bad?”

She frowned. “Jack...”

“I know, I know.”

“Then don't press me on something I really wish I could tell you about, but can't.”

“Okay,” he said.

“How did you find out?” she asked.

“A certain Lieutenant Commander Mulligan took my shuttle from San Francisco to Chicago today.”

“Mulligan?” Melissa's eyes narrowed. “Tactical, second shift.”

“Idiot.”

“He's not...”

“Oh yes he is,” Jack insisted. “A year ago, I reprimanded him for sloughing off his work,” Jack said. “He's unprincipled, mean-spirited, condescending, and frankly, unfit to be an officer.”

“I didn't see anything about a reprimand on his record.”

“I wrote him up,” Jack said. “I'm sure of it.”

“The captain asked me to see to it he be given more opportunities aboard the ship,” Melissa said. “I haven't noticed anything out of sorts about his work since he's been promoted.”

“He has family connections,” Jack said.

Her eyes narrowed. “You mean the kind like having a father who is an admiral?”

“It's not the same thing,” he said, irritated she was throwing his father at him. “I...”

“Had your father's best friend, yet another admiral, cleaning up your messes. That was how you put it back around the time we got married, wasn't it?”

Jack let out a long sigh. “Okay, what's your point?”

“The point is, he's been doing his duties quite well lately,” Melissa said. “Perhaps, like you, he realized he needed to clean up his act.”

“I doubt it,” Jack said. “He gave me a lot of shit about being a failed captain today.”

“He did that?”

“Along with a number of other insults.”

Melissa's jaw tightened. “I'll watch him more closely then.”

“You might want to go over his duty reviews with the people who supposedly wrote them to make sure someone hasn't been sanitizing those like what happened to my report.”

“I'll look into it,” Melissa said. “He didn't tell you why the ship was here, did he?”

“If he had, I wouldn't have asked you,” Jack said. “No, he was too busy giving me a hard time about being a shuttle pilot.”

“I hope it didn't...”

“No,” Jack said with a chuckle. “He's an asshole.”

Melissa smiled. “You're going to run into people like that doing that kind of job.”

“He was the first,” Jack said.

“It's been pleasant otherwise?”

“For the most part,” Jack said. “At least I'm flying again.”

She turned for a moment. “Look, some people I can't talk about are coming aboard, and I'm supposed to meet them.”

“Go,” he said. “Call me when you can.”

“I love you, Jack.”

“Love you too.”

The display went blank.

Jack was glad their conversation ended up more pleasant than it had begun. His anger had subsided, and they appeared to still be on good terms. He had to watch his anger flaring up like that in the future.

-GO TO CHAPTER 5-