Rum And Coca-Cola

Posted on Nov 19, 2016 @ 3:36pm by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on Nov 19, 2016 @ 3:37pm

Mission: Aftermath

= Rum and Coca Cola =
(cont'd from "The Prometheus Protocol")

LOCATION: BAD WOLF

SCENE: Cockpit

STARDATE: [2.16] 1119.1207

In the immediate aftermath of the Neo-Essentialist Crisis and the Siege of Earth, Raxl Dreyton had found life to be more or less the same on the other side of the conflict as it had been before he’d gotten himself involved. When Selyara had been taken into custody by Federation authorities, Rax had decided it may not be too long before he got pinched as an accessory to whatever crimes they had been planning to lay on her, and though his life would surely be much simpler (not to mention safer) if he spent some time cooling his heels in a security cell, Rax would still rather take his chances on the outside.

So here he was: back on his ship, flying away from Earth at several times the speed of light. He was still broke, his problems with the Ferengi crimelord Riss (as well as a handful of equally unpleasant fixtures of the galaxy’s underworld communities) had not gone away, and he was still nursing a collection of ugly bruises he’d received in his fight with Mr. Johnson or in the final raid on Edgerton’s underwater bunker. These things, Rax was used to… but the 7-year old repeatedly kicking the back of his pilot’s chair? That was a new wrinkle in his day.

From behind him, the kicking came again: thump-thump-thump.

Rax turned around in his seat to frown at Ben Crichton, in the chair that would normally be used by whoever was manning the science station in Raxl’s modified runabout. The science station was no longer there - Rax had long ago tossed most of the scientific stuff in an effort to squeeze more speed out of the BAD WOLF’s warp engines - but the chair was, and Ben looked like he had been melted into it: his head was propped less than halfway up the chair’s backrest, with most of his body laying on the seat, and his legs dangling out over the edge of the chair to swing back and forth. Ben was kicking his legs out steadily, striking the back of Rax’s pilots seat at a metered tempo. The boy wasn’t looking at him, though- he was staring up at the ceiling, his lower lips thrust out.

“Hey,” Rax said. The boy rolled his eyes down to look at Rax. “Give it a rest with the kicking, huh?”

“I’m bored,” Ben frowned at him.

“Why don’t you go watch something on my entertainment console?”

“You said I can’t use your entertainment console,” said Ben.

“Oh, right.” Rax wasn’t used to having children aboard, and had neglected to install any kind of content-screening program for the entertainment console he’d set up in the living area towards the rear of his ship. As a perennial bachelor, Rax had more than a few things loaded on the console that would not be appropriate for young eyes.

“Maybe you can go wake up your dad,” Rax offered. In the rear of the ship, Jake Crichton was stretched out on Raxl’s bunk, snoring softly. Crichton had been through quite a lot over the last few years (**Join the club,** Rax thought uncharitably, in those moments when he wasn’t being his best self), and from the stories Rax had heard, sleep had never been high up on the engineer’s list of priorities. Now that things in the Federation had finally started to settle, there was time for everyone to catch up on the things they needed, and when Rax had noticed Jake yawning and fighting to keep his eyes open in the co-pilot’s chair next to him, the bounty hunter had insisted that Jake go on to the back of the ship and catch some much needed rest. Jake had needed to get to Bolarus as quickly as possible, and Rax had been looking for an excuse to put Earth in his wake, and so the bounty hunter had agreed to act as Jake’s chauffeur - and now, de-facto babysitter.

“I’ll watch the sprogs,” Rax said, nodding towards Dahlia and Ben, who at that point in the trip had been perfectly well-behaved. The two kids had been excited that they were finally, after all these months, going to be reunited with their mother, and their good mood had made them both very agreeable.

But the trip to Bolarus was long, as had been Jake’s nap, and there was precious little for a precocious 7-year old to do aboard the BAD WOLF other than annoy the person driving, and Ben Crichton had committed himself to this task with aplomb. Dahlia was better, though for someone not used to dealing with children, only just so; she’d perched herself in the co-pilot’s chair and proceeded to chew off Rax’s ear for the next several hours, asking questions about the workings of the ship, what the various buttons and controls on the cockpit console did, and rattling off the technical details of the various systems and subsystems installed in the ship. Even at 12 years old, Dahlia probably knew more about starship design and engineering theory than Rax did himself - a side-effect of living under the same roof as Jake Crichton, most likely. When it became clear that they had gone far beyond Rax’s own meager expertise, Dahlia had switched from asking questions to giving lectures.

“You didn’t uninstall the aft-EM scanners correctly, I bet,” Dahlia was saying. She’d punched up a schematic of the BAD WOLF, and was tut-tutting her way over the various modifications Rax had made in the years since the ship had come into his possession. As Rax watched, Dahlia called up a readout of the ship’s power draw, and called his attention to a single line far down on the list, which looked no more or less important to Rax than did anything else on the readout.

“You can see it here,” Dahlia continued, pointing to the screen.

Behind him, Ben kicked the back of Raxl’s seat once again. Rax tried his best to ignore it. “See what?”

“You’ve got a 4% power draw going to hardware you don’t even have attached to the ship anymore,” Dahlia said, shaking her head gravely. “Jake says you can’t just tear bits and pieces off the ship - it’s the guts of the machine where the real work gets done. Jake says you might make the ship go faster or look sleeker, but without performing a proper uninstall of ship’s components, Jake says you’ll wind up dumping a lot of energy into systems the ship doesn’t know it no longer has.”

“Does he now,” Rax muttered.

“Mmm-hmm,” Dahlia nodded. “You should let Jake and me take a look at it, Mr. Raxl. I bet we could have your ship in tip-top shape in a week or two. We could do it as a thank you for giving us a ride to Bolarus.”

“Oh, no,” Rax said, shaking his head, trying not to show his terror at the prospect of spending even more time cooped up with the Crichton family. “Really, I don’t--”

“We could give it a racing stripe,” Dahlia offered. “Or we can paint flames on the nose of the chassis. Jake says those kinds of things make ships go faster.”

Rax felt a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Oh he does, does he?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Dahlia nodded again. “Jake’s really good at engineering. He says I’m really good at it too. I want to design starship when I grow up. Maybe I could design one for you. Jake says--”

“Hey, why don’t we put on some music?” Rax cut in, no longer able to stand the incessant stream of words pouring out of Dahlia. Rax reached out, activated a control, and suddenly the sounds of the Andrews Sisters crooning “Rum and Coca-Cola” filled the cockpit. Behind him, Ben kicked the back of Raxl’s chair again. Rax ignored it, and began nodding his head in time with the beat.

“What is this?” Dahlia asked, her voice pitched loud so it could be heard over the music.

“This here’s music, girl!” Rax said. “Probably not much like whatever pop stuff you kids are into these days, but I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.”

“I don’t like it,” Ben whined from behind him.

“Give it a chance.”

Ben was silent for all of five seconds, then repeated his judgement. “I don’t like it.”

Rax sighed. “Well maybe next time you can drive.”

“I can drive now,” Ben said, perking up for the first time in at least an hour.

“That was a figure of speech, kid,” said Rax. He sighed, and counted the hours until they reached Bolarus, and tried not to think about how much quicker they might get there if he’d properly uninstalled his aft-EM scanners as Dahlia had suggested.

=[/\]=

Scene: BAD WOLF living area

Jake Crichton wasn’t sleeping. He’d managed to doze at the borders of sleep for about an hour or so, but thoughts of Xana had kept crowding his thoughts until finally he’d given up. He sat on the edge of Raxl Dreyton’s less-than-comfortable bunk, his wedding ring balance on the center of his palm. He was staring at the gold loop, and thinking about everything it represented; love, sure, but many other things too. Commitment. Compromise. Sacrifice.

He wanted to see Xana. He’d come to treasure those months they’d spent together aboard the PHOENIX, living as a family again. Even with the spectre of the Neo-Essentialists haunting their every step, it was the closest they’d come to the kind of happiness they’d had in the early days, aboard GATEWAY Station. That had been during the Dominion War, and the immediate aftermath; more death, more destruction, the galaxy burning around them but Jake and Xana didn’t care. They had their kids, they had each other, and they could handle anything.

It was the other part - the part when peace returned and their lives had settled into routine - that had been the hardest. In spite of the deep reservoirs of love he felt for his family, Jake’s heart was always out there, among the star, and it wasn’t long before his gaze started to drift upwards. He wanted adventure, he wanted excitement, he wanted to feel like he was making a difference. But he also wanted Xana, and his children, and for them he was willing to try. He’d put on a brave face, tried to acclimate himself to life on Earth, at Xana’s beautiful family estate. He’d put out feelers, and thought he could get a steady position teaching at Starfleet Academy. He’d tried his best.

But it wasn’t what he’d wanted, and Xana knew it. The tension between them grew, until eventually Jake had, without talking to her, accepted a position aboard the USS Sherwood. He had left his wife, and his children behind and returned to the stars.

He still regretted that decision, but before he could make amends, he’d been swept up in the Neo-Essentialist crisis, and through all of that, Jake had idealized that abandoned life with Xana and his children, and peace and safety, in his mind. It had kept him fighting, helped him to continue to stand up for the ideals of the Federation as best he could even when they had been hunted as fugitives. And now, that life - and everything that came with it - was in reach once more, and while Jake wanted desperately to hold his wife again, he couldn’t help but feel a great weight settling onto his shoulders. He wasn’t sure he could do it again.

And, worst of all, there was the cold certainty which had coiled itself around his heart, the certainty that Xana Bonviva wasn’t going to wait for him anymore.

From the cockpit, Jake heard the muffled sounds of music. He grinned; Raxl Dreyton was a crude, irresponsible mess, but underneath the dirt there was a good man. He’d offered to give Jake and the kids a lift without asking for anything in return, and now he was putting up with the probably terminally bored Ben and Dahlia. Jake knew what a handful those two could be, and decided maybe it was time for him to let Raxl off the hook.

He rose and started for the door to the cockpit, when a blinking light on one of the BAD WOLF’s comms consoles. He thumbed the control, and the screen lit up with an incoming FedCom news brief:

**************************************

+++ FEDCOM BREAKING NEWS

+++ HUMANS NO LONGER PERMANENT COUNCIL MEMBERS

+++ FEDERATION GOVERNMENT MOVING TO VULCAN

+++ STAY TUNED FOR LATEST HEADLINES

*************************************

Jake read the display once, then once again, certain that he must have misunderstood the words the first time around. Humanity had been stripped of its position as permanent fixtures in the Federation’s leadership. After everything they’d done… after everything *Jake* had done…

Jake called up more news about the Council’s landmark decision; he read over the reasoning, cringed at the list of humanity’s homegrown threats. But there was a balance; humanity had also acted, time and again, in defense of the Federation and its protectorates. Humanity’s contribution to the galaxy could not be understated, and they had their right to sit with the galaxy’s best and brightest.

**Best and brightest…** Jake thought. **Sounds like what Edgerton might say.**

He shook his head. This was one thing too much, and he didn’t have time for it now. He turned off the console and continued towards the cockpit. But even as his thoughts returned to Xana, a nagging thought pulled at the back of his mind, a thought which he could not banish, perhaps because he didn’t really want to:

The Federation might need him once again.

=[/\]=

Shawn Putnam

A.k.a.

Jake Crichton

Chief Engineering Officer

USS PHOENIX

And

Raxl Dreyton

Babysitter Extraordinaire

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