Looking Back

Posted on Sat Jul 28th, 2018 @ 7:31pm by Captain Charybdis MacGregor

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Future Tense
Location: Starfleet Command, "The Captain's Ready Room" lounge
Timeline: 2285
Tags: BonneChanceTrio, Patrick

"Time, time, time... see what's become of me..."
~Paul Simon

'The Captain's Ready Room' was an exclusive lounge at Starfleet Command that was reserved strictly for starship captains. Whether a freighter, a station or a heavy cruiser, only those with the 'candy wrapper' insignia were allowed into this particular club (or those higher who for some reason were still driving a ship around) and it was most definitely a 'boy's club'. Leather overstuffed chairs, brandy snifters and cigars, dark wood paneling, murmured conversations, dim lighting and pretty waitresses who knew how to smile along at anything.

Starship captains worked hard and it was expected that they played hard, and while the fleet was slowly becoming a bit more cosmopolitan, some things were slow to change. Lady officers might not be wearing miniskirts and tights any longer, but the boy's club was something of which the old guard was understandably reluctant to let go.

"Say lassie, why don't you fetch me another Saurian brandy?" asked an older man in one of the smaller chairs at a round glass-topped table, as he patted the server on her taut and rounded rear. She moved off wordlessly to fetch it for him, and a moment later the empty glass was removed while a fresh one took it's place. He turned to smile his 'Joe Cool' smile at the server that worked so well for him, when he noticed that the arm attached to the long-nailed hand was uniformed, and traveling up that arm led to a rather curvaceous figure in a Starfleet uniform.

A captain's uniform.

Violet eyes he hadn't seen for twenty years looked down at him, and the left eyebrow raised as the left side of her mouth curled into a smirk that he had never forgotten. He inhaled, and even through the haze of cigar smoke, he recognized that scent... it was her, all right. She had changed her hairstyle a bit and she wasn't dead like she was supposed to be, but impossibly, there she was, standing next to him in a modern uniform.

With captain's insignia rank. In The Captain's Ready Room.

"Hello, Captain... may I join you?" she asked as she slid into the chair opposite him without waiting for his reply.

"What... how..." he looked around to see if anyone was watching or if cameras were nearby. "Is this some sort of a joke? Because if it is, I'll tell you right now, it is not the least bit amusing."

"Calm down, Patrick," she said with a roll of her eyes. "No, this is not funny, nor is it a joke. How is through spatial distortion and the relative effects of antimatter as a propellant while inverting warp fields in a planetary gravity well while releasing a chroniton burst- I'm publishing a paper on it, but it will be rather classified I suspect. And what is because I saw that you were on Earth and I wanted to see you and talk with you while I had the chance."

Eyes narrowing, he tossed down his brandy and called for another. "You... they made you a Captain? Let me guess... blackmail? Extortion? I heard about your little trick with the shuttlecraft and that you had survived." His expression was one of bitterness, and she could tell his demeanor hadn't changed much, nor had his attitude. He managed to make the topic of her survival sound like an accusation.

"You could say that, I suppose. I should advise you, by the way... Starfleet Intel may contact you for an interview within the next few days about maintaining certain details as classified by order of..." he waved off her statement dismissively and nodded.

"I know the drill. So here you are, twenty years later, looking not a day older." He looked her up and down through the glass tabletop while she raised an eyebrow at him. "You look good, lassie... you lost some weight?"

"I realize that it has been twenty years since you saw me last, Patrick, but I last spoke with you two weeks ago, in my perception." She looked down at the drink she held in her hands on the table in front of her, then slowly back up at him. "The last words we exchanged were... less than pleasant. So I thought that perhaps..."

The old officer's face darkened- approaching seventy, the years had worn on him considerably, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse and filled with venom. "You betrayed me. I gave you your freedom and I let you do as you pleased and I asked for nothing of you in return, and you left me wounded as soon as you got what you wanted, your precious rank. You never cared about me... you used me to get what you wanted and then you left me and the ship high and dry... which made a valiant recovery and kept moving forward without you just fine. Then you cooked up this little scheme to leave me high and dry and get away from the mess you left behind!"

"This 'little scheme'... the shuttlecraft accident...?" she began before he cut her off.

"Oh, don't pretend you didn't have it all planned out from the very beginning. You and your little girlfriends, all so close... I knew what was really going on. And then you faked your own deaths and you just hopped and skipped your way here, and now you're probably screwing some admiral to get yourself a ship of your own. What, you're not going to try to take the Bonnie from me? Color me surprised, I would have thought that would have been more your style. Traitorous bitch," he mumbled into his drink.

As he spoke her gaze narrowed, and a slow smile crept over her face. "I'm so glad we had this little chat, Captain. As I said, it has only been a few weeks for me since last we spoke... and I see that not only have the years been less than kind to you, they have improved neither your manners nor your understanding of women or the universe in general." She moved to get up, then paused as he spoke.

"You know nothing of me or what I do or do not know. How dare you to presume," he spat, and she sighed.

"You were the first man to whom I ever offered my heart, Patrick. And I thought that you were worthy of it... and so long as I did nothing but give, you were. But I needed more than a 'big strong man'... I needed a brave man, a worthy man. And you were not that man then, and you certainly are not that man now. I hope that your wife and children adore you... not long ago at all, I would have envied her. Now I will spend my future days thanking my lucky stars that is not me."

"Goodbye, Captain. Oh, before you begin another line of invectives- I know how much you do love to get the last word- do you see that man over there at the bar?" She waved at a handsome admiral seated on a barstool, who rose and waved back as he approached with a smug smile and a certain swagger. "You may recognize him. Tonight I'm going to see if his philandering reputation has a foundation in truth, and I expect that even if it does not, he will be charming and delightful company... unlike yourself."

Wrapping her arm around that of the most celebrated admiral in Starfleet, Captain Charybdis smiled her most winning smile. "So whatever you have to say, please, feel free. Otherwise... goodbye, Captain O'Conner. Perhaps I'll see you again in another twenty years..."

If he had a response, she didn't hear it over the sound of her own cheerful laughter.

 

RSS Feed