by Rudy Josephs
A young kid Kirk met on the shuttle fell into step with them. They nodded hello. Kirk couldn’t remember his name, but he did recall that the kid hailed from the lunar colony. That might have explained the deep huffing breaths he took as he struggled to stay on his feet. From what Kirk had heard, people who grew up in one of the colonies on the moon tended to have a hard time fighting Earth’s gravity.
The Andorian first off the line had slowed his pace as well. Whether that was part of his race strategy or he was keeping stride with Uhura was unclear to Kirk. Probably a bit of both. He seemed to be flirting with her the whole time. At least, that’s what Kirk assumed. He doubted they were exchanging recipes. By the exasperated look on her face, Kirk figured the Andorian was doing about as well with her as he had.
Uhura sidestepped some kind of trigger device that sent a barrage of dirt into the Andorian’s face. It didn’t slow him any, but it was entertaining to watch.
“Friend of yours?” Lynne asked with a slight smirk when she caught him staring.
“Acquaintance.”
“Doesn’t seem like your type,” she said.
“She could be. How would you know?” Kirk asked.
“I meant the blue guy.” She picked up her pace, pulling ahead of him.
Kirk sent a smile and a shrug in the direction of the kid from the lunar colony before taking off after her.
A few long sprints and Kirk was once again beside Lynne. A couple strides more and he finally passed her. A moment later he felt her tugging on his collar. This time, he recognized it as a warning. Up ahead, several of the cadets had stopped. It didn’t take him long to figure out why.
The course had taken them to a cliff. The desert continued off in the distance, but it was much closer to sea level.
Kirk and Lynne slowed, but didn’t stop until they reached the edge. The cliff ran on for about a half mile in either direction. The left side of the cliff eventually dipped into a shallow hill that would carry them safely to the bottom. Some cadets were already running in that direction, even though it would add minutes to the race.
Lynne didn’t hesitate to join the cadets taking the direct path down the cliff’s face. Kirk was right alongside her. He dropped to the ground and went over the side, finding the hand- and footholds the cadets before him had taken.
The last time Kirk had gone over the edge of a cliff, he’d sent a vintage Chevrolet Sting Ray careening to the bottom, nearly taking him along for the ride. He was still just a boy then. He was older now, but not necessarily wiser. He maintained a steady pace as he descended the cliff, slow enough to keep him from falling, but fast enough to keep him ahead of the pack.
The kid from the lunar colony wasn’t as patient.
He zipped toward them, heading to the bottom at a dangerous rate. The kid had impressive climbing skills, which Kirk suspected had come from zero-g rock climbing on the moon. A fall from this height would hurt a lot more with Earth’s gravity than it did on the moon.
Rocks and debris came showering down on them as the kid made his progress.
“Watch it!” Kirk warned. He and Lynne were halfway to the bottom. They didn’t need a stray rock taking them out of the competition.
“Sorry,” the kid called back without slowing. Kirk kept his head down as more dirt landed on him.
He was about to shout another warning when the kid lost his grip, falling away from the rock face. Kirk reached his arm across Lynne’s back and slammed her forward into the cliff with him, hoping the kid didn’t take them with him when he passed.
They felt the air rush past as he fell behind them to the bottom. His boot brushed the back of Kirk’s uniform. The soft sound of contact made its way up to them. The kid was lying flat on his back. Eyes open. He’d fallen about a dozen meters to the ground.
Kirk scrambled down the rock. He dropped the last two meters and landed into a small depression, twisting his ankle. Kirk managed to stay on his feet, but pain shot up his leg. He’d worry about that after he checked on the kid.
“You okay?” Kirk reached for the kid’s flare.
“Fine,” he quickly replied, waving his hands at Kirk. “Fine! Don’t call for help. Just had the wind knocked out of me.”
“That was a long fall,” Lynne said when she reached them.
“I’m fine,” the kid insisted as he got up. He didn’t even wince. “It’s nothing. But we’re losing time.” He took off without another word.
Kirk shrugged at Lynne and followed after him, passing the kid with ease. He was moving slower, but he didn’t seem to be in pain. Kirk, however, had banged up his ankle pretty badly, causing him to limp while he ran, but he wasn’t about to let that stop him.
Now that they’d reached the bottom of the ravine, Kirk could finally see the finish line in the distance. A crowd of upperclassmen were gathered there, waiting to congratulate the winner. Kirk wanted to be the one accepting the adulation.
He tapped into his reserve energy and stepped up his speed, pushing past the pain.
There were far fewer racers than there had been at the beginning. Only about a dozen cadets looked to have a shot at being the lone winner. Kirk caught up with Uhura, flashing her his winning smile. She rolled her eyes and kept up her pace, ignoring him.
Kirk was pretty sure he heard a laugh from Lynne.
The Andorian was still in the lead. He’d been at the front of the pack for almost the entire race, and didn’t even seem winded. He was barely sweating. Kirk suspected that had something to do with his alien physiology. Andorians were known to perform pretty well in extreme conditions, like this desert heat.
With a final glance back at Lynne, Kirk dipped into the last of his reserve energy. Pumping his legs, he closed the distance between him and the Andorian. Kirk knew that he should pay more attention to the obstacles, but with the finish line in sight, he focused solely on getting there. He was ten long, painful, strides behind the Andorian. Whether or not Kirk fell into a hole or tripped over a rock didn’t matter at this point. It was a flat-out race.
The Andorian clearly sensed Kirk’s presence behind him. His muscular legs powered on, pulling him farther out in front.
Kirk doubled his effort, his own legs pumping harder still. Ankle throbbing. Panting breaths. Everything he’d ever learned about running went out of his head. It was just about getting to the end now.
The finish line was so close.
Kirk pushed himself as hard as he’s ever had.
It wasn’t enough.
The Andorian crossed the line three steps ahead of Kirk.
The upperclassman let out a cheer, and circled around the winner, congratulating him. Seconds later, Lynne and Kirk reached the finish line.
“Damn!” she shouted, kicking a rock and sending it flying. “We weren’t even close.”
One meter behind was pretty close as far as Kirk was concerned. “Hey, I don’t like to lose, either, but second and third—”
“There’s no second and third.” She motioned to the Andorian and his admirers. “There’s only first. The rest of us don’t exist. Of course, if we had an Andorian’s strengths, maybe we would have come in first, too. Probably used those antenna to sniff out obstacles on the course.”
“Still, we did pretty well for humans,” Kirk said lightly.
“Pretty well isn’t good enough at the Academy,” she said. Her tone was calm, but her words were full of anger. “We need to be at the top. That’s going to be hard enough when we’ve got to compete with Andorian endurance or Vulcan logic. Or haven’t you noticed how we’re, like, the only humans in the group?”
Actually, Kirk hadn’t noticed before, but he now saw that what she said was true. Uhura had come in with the next handful of racers along with the kid from the lunar colony. The four of them were among the few humans that had already made it to the finish. The rest of the racers were a collection of some of the tougher alien races in the universe.
“We’ve got four years to prove what we can do,” Kirk
reminded Lynne.
“I plan on being out of here in three,” she said, echoing the same sentiment he had shared with Captain Pike when he’d joined up.
“That kind of commitment’s not going to leave much time for a social life.”
“You taking me out Friday night would go a long way in proving that wrong. And making me feel better.”
Bold. He liked that. “Are you asking me on a date?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m giving you permission to ask me out. There’s a difference.”
“Oh,” Kirk said. “Good to know.” He started to walk away. And felt the familiar tug at the back of his collar.
When he turned back to face Lynne, her eyes were glaring playfully.
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “a night out would be the perfect way to end our first week here.”
“Some other time, Thanas. I’ve got to get these greetings translated,” Uhura said. Her fingers danced across the screen of her handheld Personal Access Display Device as she input the correct answers. Familiar alien greetings from the smooth, almost romantic Betazoid dialect to the hard consonants of the Denobulan language filled the screen.
Thanas tore the PADD from her hands and started typing on the touch screen. “Here, let me help. I know some very useful Andorian phrases.”
“What are you, twelve? Give it back.”
The smug grin on his face only annoyed her more. “Just a sec.” The smile grew as he finished typing and handed the device back to her.
She knew she shouldn’t read it, but it was impossible to delete the words without at least glancing at the screen. What he’d written wasn’t as bad as Uhura had expected, but it wasn’t anything she had any intention of agreeing to.
A swipe of her finger erased the suggestion from her assignment. The last thing she needed was her instructor seeing that.
“Very classy, Thanas.” Annoying, too, since he’d erased her last answer in the process of trying to flirt with her. She retyped the Denobulan greeting, not sure if she was spelling it correctly. She’d have to come back to it later.
“Come on,” he insisted. “Join me for lunch. Why is everyone so focused on studies here?”
Uhura turned her attention to the other students in the room. All the seats at every table in the vicinity were taken. Cadets were all hunched over their PADDs, the computer stations, and, in rare cases, books. Her table was the only one where a conversation was taking place. Unfortunately. “It is a library.”
“Did you know on Risa the word ‘library’ means ‘pleasure dome’?” Thanas said.
“You’re making that up.”
“Come to Risa with me and find out for yourself.”
She had to give him credit for persistence. “Only if I need to find out the word for ‘hello’ there.”
“Ah, that’s the problem. They don’t say it with words.”
She almost laughed at that one. His attempts were irritating, but every now and then he hit on a good one. Under other circumstances she might have even given him a chance. But the first week at Starfleet Academy was not the time for starting a relationship. Not that she was under any impression that he was looking for a “relationship,” considering all the other girls who had his attention.
Uhura turned her attention back to the assignment. It was pretty basic: translate the typical greeting of every member race in the United Federation of Planets into the equivalent greeting in English. She’d learned that in elementary school with the help of a universal translator. The challenge of this assignment came from being expected to do it from memory, without relying on technology.
However, that was not a very difficult task for Uhura. She’d even gone for extra credit by adding nonmember greetings, like Klingon, to the list. If she really wanted to show off, she’d throw in a little Romulan as well, but that one would actually take some research.
She suspected that the assignment was more of a test for the honor code than her memory. All these greetings could be easily found from a number of sources. Their instructor had specifically warned them that they were to complete the assignment from memory, not download the information from another source.
Thanas’s pale blue hand slipped onto hers. It was not only uncomfortably forward of him, but it was stopping her from typing. “You’ve heard that old Earth expression about all work and no play, haven’t you?” It was almost quaint how some aliens new to life on Earth had picked up on certain colloquialisms and used them as if they weren’t tired old clichés. “Just a quick lunch.”
Uhura had already grabbed that quick lunch consisting of a selection of alien cheeses and an apple that she could eat on her way to the library at the mess hall. She suspected that there would be many such lunches on the fly in her future. Only a few days in, and she was already buried in assignments.
Uhura slipped her hand out from under Thanas’s. Seriously. What’s with these guys who don’t take no for an answer?
“Thanas, I have to finish this so I can start on those star charts for Astrosciences,” she said firmly. “I’ll see you in Interspecies Ethics.”
That did the trick. Thanas left the table without another word. Actually, he kind of left in a bit of a huff. Probably not used to rejection. He’d been receiving a fair amount of attention since he won the survival course race at the start of the week. Why weren’t those girls enough for him? Why did he have to keep going after her?
Uhura realized too late that they weren’t in Interspecies Ethics together. It was Interspecies Protocol. Or maybe it was Combat Training. She hadn’t wasted too much time memorizing the class rosters or even observing who was seated around her. Instead, she spent every class trying to keep up with the professor, from the moment she sat down to the moment she left the room.
Well, maybe Thanas was so insulted that he’d finally left her alone.
Doubtful.
The guilt over blowing him off eased some when Uhura saw him leave the library with two other female cadets. If he could attract women so easily, why was he so focused on her? Was it just about the chase with him? If she agreed to a date—one date—would he let it go?
Probably not. With Thanas, she doubted it was about dating. He was probably interested in more. And by more, she wasn’t thinking “relationship.”
It would be nice to be in a relationship. Not to feel so alone. Sure, she had already made friends at the Academy, but they were all so focused on their own agendas that they hadn’t taken the time to know one another. It was only the first semester, but Uhura wondered if the feeling of being alone would ever go away.
“Thought he’d never leave,” the guy sitting across from Uhura said. He was one of the younger cadets she’d seen at the Academy, not counting the fourteen-year-old wunderkind she’d met at orientation. This one was probably just out of high school.
She was embarrassed that her unwanted admirer had obviously been bothering her tablemate. “Sorry.”
“Oh, no,” he quickly said. “It’s not your fault. You did everything you could to get rid of him short of stunning him with a phaser. Besides, I’m used to it. That great excuse for a cadet is my roommate.”
“Really?” Thanas hadn’t even said anything to the young cadet while he was at the table. It was kind of rude to totally ignore his roommate like that.
“I’m not sure he’s noticed yet,” he said. “After winning that stupid race, Thanas has been too busy fielding attention from everyone else at the Academy. He really only talks to me when he’s kicking me out of the room so he and his latest girlfriend can be alone.”
He’d pretty much just confirmed exactly what Uhura had suspected. If Thanas didn’t have a chance before, he was certainly never going to get one now.
“By the way, if you want some extra credit on the language assignment, put in ‘lunalai.’”
“Lunalai?”
“That’s how we say hello on the moon,” he said. “It’s not technically another language, but maybe the instructor will ge
t the joke.” He pointed to the PADD where her assignment was clearly displayed on the screen. “But I’m not so sure Vulcans appreciate humor.”
Uhura now knew why her tablemate looked familiar. He was in her Federation history class. He usually sat in the back, so it wasn’t a surprise that she didn’t recognize him right away. She held out her hand to him. “I’m Uhura.”
“Jackson,” he replied, reaching across the table.
As they shook, Uhura noticed a nasty bruise on his wrist, peeking out from the sleeve of his uniform. She immediately released his hand, worried that she was hurting him. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “What happened?”
He seemed confused by the question at first, but realized she was looking at his wrist. “This? Nothing. Tripped. Still getting used to Earth’s gravity.”
“So, you’re from the moon?”
“Grew up on the lunar colony. Artificial gravity doesn’t pack the same punch as the real thing.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the bruise. It was such a deep purple that it was almost black. “I’ll say.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “Honest.”
“It looks broken,” she said. “Couldn’t they fix it at the infirmary?”
“Really,” he insisted. “It’s nothing.”
He seemed increasingly uncomfortable with Uhura’s concern. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t like it when other people focused on her weaknesses either. She wanted to change the subject, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the bruise.
“You know, I’d better get going,” he said, lifting his PADD with his bruised arm, as if to show her that he was fine. “I haven’t eaten at all today. This place keeps me so busy, I keep forgetting.”
“My stomach would never let me make that mistake,” Uhura said.
He forced a smile, then made his way for the exit. Uhura silently cursed for allowing her curiosity to chase him away. Now she was scaring off potential friends. She could really use someone to talk to, who wasn’t interested in hitting on her or showing off.
