“Lieutenant Junior Grade Jackson Taylor Smith, get in here…”

Lt. Commander I’bina’s stern matronly voice still rang in his earns three months, seven days and oh about three and a half hours later. He knew, at that very moment his career in Starfleet was over.

Except it was worse than that. His career in Starfleet was very much still going, but here he was, demoted back to Ensign. After spending four years working towards his chance to take on a team leadership position, finally getting the promotion to JG, finally getting that chance…

He blew it on his very first away team. They were supposed to contain a large riot on the colony of Drendar VII. An outlying political movement had preyed on the insecurities of the outer colony’s youth, and the in power jurisdiction had ignored it for far too long. When the riots got to the point where it threatened their charter as a Federation Colony, Starfleet had to step in.

He knew the area they were beaming into was dangerous and rioters were actively threatening innocents. He knew that all phasers were set to stun. He knew the protocols. And when he got down there, he was facing rioters who were kids.  Teenagers, many of them younger than him, and his brain went into analysis paralysis. He started wondering what the colony had done to get people so young to do such violent things. He hesitated to even call the order to fire phasers at an oncoming mob to stun them.

People got hurt. Ensign Sa-Vill’a made the call because he couldn’t. Now here he was, Ensign Smith once again, and Lieutenant JG Sa-Vill’a was leading the team he left behind.

Commander I’bina questioned him for two hours and at the end she said with a tone that his grandmama would be proud of, “Jackson, you’ve got a good heart and good intentions. You made a mistake and I made a mistake. You’re not ready to lead teams. But that doesn’t mean you’re getting drummed out. Don’t take this as a loss, take it as an opportunity.”

His voice had cracked at that point, looking up at her with a jaw so squared that it looked like a reinforced dam to shield away the welling emotion behind his eyes. “But it’s a demotion and a transfer.”

“It’s a fresh start and you need one. A new crew, people who you don’t know and who don’t know you. Trust me.” Decades of experience oozed through her voice, in a way that was almost reassuring. “This is the best course for you Mr. Smith.”

He straightened up holding the emotion inside and gave her a proper and formal “Yes, Ma’am.  Thank you, Ma’am.”

And she smiled at him. He realized only later that she meant what she had said. She really did believe this was the best move for him to develop into the officer he wanted to be.

But living through the middle of it felt like hell.

~*~

He should have started on the USS Calistoga sooner, but the Blackout fell in the middle of his transfer. He finally got onto the USS Floston, an Akula class frigate, retired from active service, now pressed into service as a Starfleet personnel transport to help get some sort of movement through this trying time.

Everyone onboard was a Starfleet officer or a direct family member, trying to get to a new posting. He had been on this ship for three weeks now and tomorrow – finally – he would reach his final destination and be able to start life over again on the USS Calistoga.

The ship had gotten lean on passengers as they traveled further and further out. At first that afforded some welcome breathing room, but now it was starting to feel empty. Jackson’s nervous pacing had landed him in the ship’s tiny lounge staring out at the viewing screen wondering if each passing star was under the blackout or not. His head twitched as the lights flickered, hoping that they hadn’t hit another patch of blackout. His already frayed nerves couldn’t handle another delay.

His already frayed nerves jumped when a voice called out to him.

“You look like you seen a ghost!”

He turned, oh so slowly, knitted his brows in confusion and then looked down until he came face to face with a gangly teenager who looked like she was in the awkward stage where her arms and legs were growing faster than her torso could keep up with.

He drew in a short breath. “No, just hoping we don’t get another delay.”

“Yeah, I’m sick of those.” she offered back with a chatty tone.

He paused before answering trying to take her in. She was blue skinned, with white curly hair, and a bifurcated ridge going down her face. His mind reeled as he had never seen a Bolian with hair before. Or one that was such a pale shade of blue. But he also had met a lump sum of six Bolians in his entire life and figured that was a pretty small sample set. Her cheeks still had chubby dimples when she smiled, which Jackson remembered his younger sisters having in their early teens.

She was chatty, the sort of chatty that indicated she wanted to take her mind off of something. As he looked up to the lights, praying they didn’t flicker again, he could give a pretty decent guess why.

“Have you been on the Floston long?” he asked, slowly heading towards one of the chairs in the lounge.

“Four weeks and six days.” She followed him and flopped onto the couch across from him. “What’s your name?”

“Uh, Jackson.”

She eyed him with that bratty gaze, unafraid to challenge someone, that only a teenager could perfect. “Uh. Jackson, are you sure?”

His eyes widened. “No, just Jackson.”

She smirked at him and raised one finger as if she was going to start calling him JustJackson next, but he put both hands up and corrected.

“Jackson.”

They met each other, eye to eye, on the field of verbal warfare and she gave the slightest nod. He had won the sparring match. For one moment he thanks the cosmos for his younger sisters. But he would never tell them that.

“Good to meet you, Jackson, I’m Tyva!”

He nodded, smiling a little bit. “Good to meet you, Tyva. And where are you headed?”

“Starbase 339.” She waved a hand, “Hopefully we’ll get there tomorrow.”

Jackson nodded. That has his stop as well – not his final destination, but it was where the Calistoga was docked. “Hopefully. I’m headed there, too.”

Her eyes lit up a bit. “You’re heading out on one of the ships? What class?”

Jackson was taken a little aback by the question, before it clicked that anyone onboard was either a Starfleet enlisted, a Starfleet officer or family of a Starfleet enlisted or officer. Starfleet kids tended to delight in such things in the way other kids delighted in tales of giant robots or dinosaurs. Actually wasn’t a starship a different form of giant robot?

She waved at him a little and he realized he was lost in thought. He straightened up, and answered. “Oh, California class, do you know it?”

“Sure do!” She sat up, proud to share how she knew. “Minerva and I used to watch the ships dock at Deep Space 53, and see who could call the correct class first.” she leaned in, conspiratorially. “I always won.”

Jackson put his hand up in defeat, not wanting to get a full hour lecture on starships from a teenager, and offered a trademark Jackson ‘I’m smiling so we don’t have to talk about this anymore’ Smith smile ™. “I bet you did!”

“So what’s the ship?” she learned forward all the more curious.

He sighed a bit, and kept the smile up, trying to dismiss the topic with a nervous wiggle of his fingers. “The USS Calistoga, ever heard of it?”

Her eyes went on fire. “Oh yes!” her grin could have burned a hole into him. “My Dad’s gonna be your commanding officer!”

Ensign Jackson Taylor Smith wanted to wither away in his seat. How could he possibly start his career on a brand new ship by making a bad impression on the Commanding Officer’s daughter?

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes, really!” She beamed back proudly.

Well, she didn’t look offended in the slightest and maybe one day Jackson Smith would wonder why he was so afraid of what everyone thought of him, including chatty blue teenage girls, but in the moment he felt like he was a bug under a spotlight, waiting for a pin to be stuck through him.

“That’s… awesome.” he said with a tone that clearly fell short of awesome. I haven’t met the CO yet.”

In fact he had never met the CO of the USS Kaladar. The highest rank he interacted with was the department chief, Lt. Commander I’bina. He couldn’t imagine meeting a commanding officer.

Undeterred, Tyva smiled as if this was not any sort of problem. “I could introduce you!”

“That’s OK!” Jackson said a little too fast for comfort. “Thank you, I mean.  But I’m sure your Dad is busy. And we launch tomorrow so we have to get there and get onboard and get everything ready and…”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff to do,” she shrugged. “But if we black-out again there’s gonna be nothing to do but wait.”

That was a veiled threat. A not very threatening threat from Tyva’s point of view, but an absolute death sentence from Jackson’s.

Jackson drew in a long, slow breath. “Well, then if we black out, come find me. But for now I should go pack. Up my stuff. And get ready.”

She gave him a critical side-eye that said she wasn’t buying his explanation, but she also didn’t have any leverage to keep him. “Have fun packing?”

He stood and gave her a pleasant lunar gesture of farewell. “It was lovely to meet you miss Tyva and I hope our trip is safe and sound.”

She stayed seated but waved at him. “Good luck on the Calistoga Mr. UmJackson!”

He tapped his temple like he used to do with his sisters and pointed at her in the gesture of ‘you got me!’ before he beat a quick, but reasonably graceful retreat.

And then, in the quiet of his quarters, he gave a prayer to any and every god in the universe that might hear him to please not hit another blackout and get them to the Calistoga as quickly as possible.