Chapter Six
Meetings
The sun was actually out, sending long shadows through the mess hall. If the day followed the usual pattern, the clouds would build back in by noon, and it would probably snow again toward evening, but John was unreasonably heartened by the slanting light. With Woolsey already on his way to Earth, it was nice to have something cheerful to look at. He added another of the orange egg-things to his tray — he’d pretty much decided he liked them, especially with a side of the spicy chopped vegetables that Pollard optimistically labeled “salsa” and turned away from the line, looking for a table in the sun. It looked as though half of Atlantis and most of Daedalus’s crew had had the same idea, and it took him a minute to find an empty spot. It was tucked in a corner, half in shadow, but that would change, and he lengthened his stride to get there before anyone else could claim it.
“John!”
That was a voice he hadn’t heard in years, but it was still unmistakable. “Mel?”
He set his tray down, turned to see Mel Hocken coming toward him, the Daedalus flight suit explaining her presence. He swallowed his first question, said instead, “Wow. It’s great to see you.”
“You, too.” The sun was gleaming in her red hair, her shadow falling long and straight away from the window, and her smile was as dazzling as ever. His eyes slid across the patches, and his eyebrows rose.
“302s? Nice.”
“I’m in command of Daedalus’s wing,” she answered, and the pride in her voice was almost thick enough to touch.
“Congratulations,” John said, and meant it.
“To you, too,” she said. “Mind if I join you?”
“Be my guest,” John said, and they settled together at the table. It was, of course, one of the ones that wobbled badly. He swore, and Mel put her foot firmly on one of its feet, pinning it in place.
“Hell of a place this is,” she said.
“That’s not Ancient technology,” John answered.
“I wasn’t talking about the table.” She took a careful sip of her coffee, decided it was real, and took a longer drink. “I mean all of this. What a sight!”
“Yeah,” John said. He remembered his own first days on Atlantis, the shock of coming around corners, down stairs, to find another gorgeous vista, the towers gleaming against the sky, metal curved and cut to frame yet another perfect view. “It’s — something else.”
He wished he’d thought of something better as soon as the words were out of his mouth, but she nodded in agreement. “Yeah. It really is. A girl could get used to a place like this.”
There was a faintly smug note in her voice that made John look up sharply. “You’ve got the gene.”
“Yep.” Her smile was definitely smug, and John couldn’t stop his own delighted grin.
“Damn! That’s excellent!”
“It’s recessive, not naturally expressed,” she said. “I took the treatment a while back, right after I got assigned to the SGC. But I’ve never been much of anywhere that it mattered.”
“It matters here, all right,” John said. “We should get you checked out in the puddlejumpers, and try you in the chair — ” He stopped abruptly, remembering that she was with Daedalus, had her own responsibilities, and she nodded more seriously.
“I’d like that.”
“There have been some times when we’ve needed everyone with the gene to lend a hand,” John said. “The first time we flew the city, we ended up in the edge of an asteroid field, and we literally got everybody here who had the gene to take up a jumper and blast a path for us. It was a little hairy, especially for the folks who hadn’t ever flown one and used the weapons at the same time, but it worked.”
Mel shook her head. “Man, playing Star Wars never gets old.”
John laughed. “I’m serious, and I’m serious about the chair. We’ve only got two people who can fly the city, and if there’s any chance that you’re a third…”
“I’ve only got the recessive,” Mel said, but her face was eager.
“It’s not a 302,” John said, “but it’s — ” He shook his head. “It’s like nothing else.”
“I’d like it,” Mel said again.
She looked past him, her eyes fixing for a moment, and John glanced sideways, curious to see what had caught her eye. Teyla had just left the breakfast line, was coming toward them with a smile of greeting, and this time John knew his smile was the smug one. “Yes. She is.”
“Hmm?” Mel’s innocence was a little forced, and John’s smile widened.
“Hot. Very.”
Mel’s eyebrows flicked up. “Good to see your taste has improved.”
“While yours — ” Teyla was in earshot now, and John finished, “Remains exactly the same. Teyla, I’d like you to meet a very old friend of mine, Mel Hocken. She’s in command of Daedalus’s 302 wing.”
“A pleasure,” Mel said, and John could see the laughter in her eyes.
“Any friend of Colonel Sheppard’s is a friend of mine,” Teyla answered, and they shifted their trays to make room for her.
Lorne looked up as someone leaned in the door of his office. “Hi, Major.”
“Cadman,” Lorne said, pleased to see her still in one piece after spending the last couple of years back at the SGC. She looked both unscathed and cheerful, wearing the jumpsuit of the Hammond’s crew rather than the Atlantis uniform he remembered her in. “And I hear it’s Captain now,” he said. “Congrats. How’s Earth?”
“Still there, but not as interesting as space,” she said, coming in, a tablet computer tucked under her arm. “And thanks. How’s Atlantis?”
“Never a dull moment,” Lorne said. “The Hammond’s a pretty ship.”
“Isn’t she? Colonel Carter’s pretty unhappy about having scratched the finish already. You know, you can repair it but it never gets that new-car smell back, I guess.”
“I think the new-car smell wore off in Atlantis a few thousand years ago, so at least we don’t have to worry about that.”
Cadman grinned. “I remember now. This was a weird place to work.”
Lorne raised an eyebrow at her. “You mean compared to a spaceship?”
“Definitely weirder,” Cadman said. “I ran into Carson Beckett on my way up here. That was awkward.”
“You mean the whole working with your ex thing, or…”
“The whole working with my ex’s clone thing, actually. At least we split up before he was cloned.” She shook her head. “And I can’t believe that sentence just came out of my mouth.”
“I get that a lot,” Lorne said.
“It was kind of freaky, though,” Cadman said. “I mean, more than usual Atlantis levels of freaky. Because… we did split up, but we had this whole thing, and when I heard he died I was pretty upset. And this is kind of like finding out that, no, he was a prisoner of war for a year while we thought he was dead, only it’s not actually him, right? He remembers when we were going out, but we never actually…” She turned up her hands unhappily.
“We’ve all gotten used to treating him like he’s Dr. Beckett, only with about six months he can’t remember,” Lorne said. “It’s just easier than worrying all the time about what the whole clone thing really means.”
“That being the six months between when he was cloned and when he died.” Cadman shook her head. “I mean, General O’Neill was cloned once, and now there’s him and his clone, so his clone can’t really be him, right?”
“Maybe it would be easier to just think of it as if this were Dr. Beckett from an alternate universe.”
Cadman looked at him, her head to one side. “I am going to pretend you didn’t just say that like that would be more normal.”