Starfleet Academy: The Edge

by Rudy Josephs

  He really should have that bruise looked at, though.

  She went back to the assignment, finishing up the last of the alien greetings when she felt a new presence hovering. Multiple presences, actually. When she looked up from her PADD, she saw four older cadets circling in that way people do when they want to seem casual even though they’re really trying to intimidate you.

  It wasn’t that hard to figure out why. The math was simple enough: four cadets. Three empty chairs at her table.

  Normally, she wouldn’t give in so easily, but she’d finished the assignment, and was regretting choosing the library for studying.

  She collected her belongings more slowly than she normally would, making them wait even longer for the table. Serves them right for being rude. Once she had the last of her things in her backpack, she rose from her chair and left.

  The vultures descended before she was barely steps away. She shrugged them off as she made her way out of the library and into the brilliant sunshine of a San Francisco afternoon.

  It seemed a waste to spend such a gorgeous lunch hour studying, but she had a week’s worth of homework to plow through and only had a half hour of free time before her next class.

  She would have gone back to her room, but spending time with Gaila, her roommate, was not conducive to studying. A nice enough girl, but her priorities were skewed. Partying was as important to her as passing. Uhura figured that there was a fifty-fifty chance she would graduate.

  With her room out of the running, very few options were left. She could try to commandeer a classroom, but she’d probably spend the rest of the lunch hour trying to find an empty one. What she needed was someplace out of the way, where no one would bother her.

  The observation deck!

  The answer was so simple; she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t thought of it earlier. She’d been up to the observation deck on her orientation tour. The guide had told her group that it had the most spectacular view of Sausalito across the bay. She’s also said that the only time anyone came up there was during the school tours, which happened in spring. The rest of the year, everyone was too busy studying to take the time to stop and enjoy the view.

  It seemed unlikely that it was true, but Uhura decided to take a chance and check it out. The worst she would do is waste some time, and she was already doing that.

  Uhura went back to the main building and took a turbo lift up to the topmost floor. She re-created the trip by memory since she hadn’t been up there since her tour more than eight months earlier.

  It was exactly where she remembered it and exactly how she’d been told it would be: totally empty.

  She couldn’t believe her luck. It was the quietest spot she’d found since she started at the Academy. Utterly silent and utterly empty. It didn’t matter that there were no chairs. She slid down to the ground and set herself up in the corner, getting right to work on the rest of her assignments.

  She didn’t even look up once to glance at the view.

  Kirk ran his hands along Lynne’s shoulders, kneading the muscles in her upper back. She looked very tempting dressed down in a white tank top and sweatpants. It was a nice change of pace from the standard red uniform he’d seen her in every other day of their first week at the Academy.

  Even with his jacket unzipped, Kirk felt trapped in that very uniform. He was still dressed in the standard attire all the cadets wore on campus. Even though he wasn’t usually one to care about fashion, it had already grown tiresome after one week.

  There were variations on the uniform theme. The women wore skirts. The uniforms for physical activities were less restrictive. Blue uniforms were worn for command tests. It didn’t make much difference. They’d all signed up for this monochromatic prison of conformity. At least it was comfortable.

  His hands slipped down to the small of Lynne’s back, running along the smooth fabric of her top.

  He’d come over to her dorm room straight from his final class of the week. It was only meant to be a stop on his way to his quarters. A momentary distraction so they could firm up the details on their date later that evening.

  Somehow, he hadn’t managed to leave.

  When Lynne had met him at the door, the exhaustion was clear on both their faces. As much as he wanted to spend time with her away from campus, he simply wasn’t feeling the energy to get cleaned up and hit the town. A first date shouldn’t feel like a chore, but the idea of doing anything that didn’t involve sleep felt like too much work.

  Lynne had felt the same way. Thankfully, she was the one to bring it up. The massage was Kirk’s way of making up for not taking her out on that date.

  Although, now that he was doing all the hard work, Kirk wasn’t entirely sure that she was the one deserving the massage since she’d been the one to suggest they postpone the date. This was after she’d suggested the idea of a date in the first place. He didn’t mind, though. He liked the feel of his hands on her skin, the warmth of her body heat radiating through the thin fabric of the shirt she wore.

  His fingers explored the soft spots above her waist, tickling her gently as he went to wrap his arms around her neck in an embrace.

  Lynne pulled away before he could entrap her, lying down on the bed in a closed-off manner. “Sorry,” she said. “Not tonight, dear. I’ve got an entire body ache.”

  “Tell me about it,” Kirk said dryly, rising off the bed to stretch out his right leg. His ankle had been bothering him on and off since the survival race the weekend before.

  Lynne watched him as he paced the room. “You’re limping again.”

  “Can’t beat those advanced Starfleet observational skills,” Kirk said with a wince. Every now and again the pain would shoot up his leg if he put it down wrong. “Think I aggravated it yesterday during drills in Basic Combat Training.”

  “You should get that checked,” Lynne remarked.

  “It’s just a little pain,” Kirk said. “Nothing to worry about.” He’d been hurt worse before. Usually by other people. He wasn’t about to show up in the infirmary because of a little ache. The last thing he needed was for word to get back to those guys who had attacked him back in Iowa. Kirk hadn’t even seen them during the survival race, so they must have been way back in the pack. No surprise. They’d be the first ones wanting to see the son of George Kirk fail.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  “You know what they’re doing, right?” Kirk said. “Trying to get us to pack it in the first week. See who washes out. They’ll ease up after a while.”

  “Doubt that,” Lynne said, sitting up. “The easing-up part. I’m with you on the idea that they’re trying to force us to fail. But I don’t have any intention of washing out. They can throw anything at me—a Klingon, even—I’ll take them all on.”

  Kirk found her confidence attractive. He found a lot of things about her attractive.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

  “Why do you think?”

  Lynne drifted back onto her bed. The move was more from exhaustion than enticement. “I don’t know if I can think anymore. My brain is mush.”

  “I hear that,” Kirk agreed. He’d been told before that his eyes were his best feature. He’d been aiming them at her with the full force of his seductive skills. He hadn’t expected her to go jumping into his arms when he gave her his patented “Kirk stare,” but he had hoped for a more welcoming response.

  The Academy was already killing his mojo. How was he going to get through another three years of that?

  He picked up the snow globe on her desk. Fittingly, it was a small model of Starfleet Academy, encased in glass and liquid. When he shook it, confetti rained around the campus. “Get this at the bookstore?”

  When he received no response, he turned to see that Lynne’s eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. She’d fallen asleep on him! Kirk sighed. This was shaping up to be the worst date ever, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t technically a date.

  Kirk tr
ied not to take it personally. Her quiet snores were a result of the week they’d been through, not a reflection upon his company. Kirk considered curling up beside her. She looked so peaceful in her sleep. The softer side to the tough cadet he’d been getting to know. Like a concrete fist wrapped in a kidskin glove.

  He stayed on his feet, not wanting to move too fast. They had only known each other a week. She might not appreciate him slipping into bed with her, even if his intentions were just to rest. He also didn’t want to risk being found asleep when her roommate got back. The Academy had rules about cohabitating. Kirk didn’t much care for those rules, but he didn’t need to get into trouble his very first semester.

  Kirk moved over to her window, debating if he should stay or go. She might only be out for a couple minutes. It wasn’t worth calling it a night. Not yet, anyway.

  Down on the quad, cadets dressed in uniform and in regular street clothes were making their way across the campus in the fading daylight. Some were on their way out for a night on the town. Upperclassmen mostly, Kirk figured. They were used to the intense training schedule by now. Plus, none of them were limping.

  Millions of people across the universe would kill to gripe about their first semester at the Academy. For most people, getting into Starfleet wasn’t as easy as just walking into a shuttle and saying, “Sign me up.” Kirk had only managed to do that because the recruiting officer, Captain Pike, had vouched for him. The Kirk family name had carried him the rest of the way.

  If he’d stopped to think about what he was signing up for, maybe he would have reconsidered. The first few months at Starfleet Academy had been more than he’d expected. The Desert Survival Course had only been the beginning.

  Reveille was piped through the dorms PAs at 0530 every morning. It was a throwback to Earth traditions of old. Kirk wasn’t exactly an early riser back home, but he managed to pull himself out of bed the Monday following the race, and immediately discovered that his banged-up ankle was going to be more of a problem than he’d thought. A quick sonic shower had relieved some of the pain, but not enough to get him moving at his usual pace.

  Kirk hadn’t been the only first-year cadet dragging that morning. Lynne had barely let out a groan when he passed her on the way to Exochemistry, although she had managed a smile that fueled him all the way to class.

  The other first-year cadets in his seminar were just as groggy. He’d caught more than a couple of students dozing off, their chins dropping onto their chests.

  Mornings didn’t get any easier after that first one. The pain in his leg had mostly subsided—until that damned Andorian wrenched it again in Combat Training later in the week. The blue goon had been grandstanding to get some girl’s attention.

  Kirk couldn’t entirely blame the guy. He’d been doing the same thing.

  Lynne mumbled something in her sleep. Kirk couldn’t make it out, but it pulled his thoughts back into the present. He really didn’t want to spend his first free Friday night in San Francisco nursing his wounds in his dorm room. “Lynne,” he said softly. “Monica?”

  The only response was another indistinguishable mumble.

  He’d wait her out a few more minutes. If she did wake up, maybe they could watch an old movie on the vid screen or something. That would make for a nice first date.

  The lights came on across the Presidio, bathing the grounds in a white glow. He could make out part of the Golden Gate Bridge from Lynne’s window. All he could see from his room was the wall of the administrators’ building.

  His thoughts drifted back to his first week at the Academy. His classes had been much harder than he’d thought they would be. He was already struggling to keep up.

  Kirk would never admit that to anyone. In truth, there was no one at the Academy he’d feel comfortable admitting it to. Kirk was never really big on friends back home. Most of the guys saw him as competition. For what, Kirk was never sure. He held his own with girls and at school, but he never really cared enough about anything to present a real challenge. It was more about the win with Kirk.

  Could be that was why he had trouble making friends.

  Griping about the Academy with Lynne was one thing. He wasn’t ready to share with her the genuine fear he felt about not making it through. That was something he couldn’t imagine sharing with anyone.

  Sure, there was Leonard McCoy, or Bones, as he preferred to call his friend. Bones was as skeptical about the Academy rules and regulations as Kirk was, but he knew that Bones felt right about being there.

  Kirk didn’t always feel the same way. But where would he go if he didn’t stay at Starfleet Academy? Back to Iowa? His stepfather had pretty much burned all of Kirk’s bridges to home. With all the places on the planet he could live—all the places in the universe—he’d hung around the homestead far longer than he should have. Now that he was free, he could go anywhere.

  He still couldn’t believe he’d handed off his motorcycle to the first guy he saw before he boarded the Academy shuttle. Sometimes his “leap before you look” attitude led to regrets. Some regrets were immediate. Some came later. But they always came.

  He kissed Lynne on the forehead before making his way to the door. His date wasn’t happening tonight. As he stepped into the hall, the pain in his ankle flared up again. He’d have to ice it when he got back to his room. Or was he supposed to put heat on it?

  He didn’t know.

  Another couple weeks, Kirk thought. He’d give the Academy another couple weeks. Maybe a month, at the most. Then he could decide whether or not this place was right for him.

  If it didn’t kill him first.

  Several weeks later . . .

  The body lying on the biobed left an indistinct form in the sheet covering it. It wasn’t clear if it was male or female, human or some other alien race. It just lay there, motionless.

  McCoy couldn’t believe it had already been a few weeks since he took that death trap of a shuttle to Starfleet Academy. And he still wasn’t permitted to approach the body until after the senior medical officer entered the room.

  It was worse than his days at medical school at the University of Mississippi. At least back then he’d been allowed to dissect a fetal pig in his first week.

  McCoy hadn’t realized when he signed up to be a medical officer just how much emphasis there’d be on the “officer” part. His days were filled with command training, combat lessons, and Federation rules and regulations. The bright spot came from the few advanced medical classes he had that had an emphasis on alien physiology. He was learning more about alien races than he’d ever learned at his old school.

  At Ole Miss, maybe eighty percent of his medical training had covered the human body. At the time, he’d had no plans to ever leave the planet Earth. The aviophobia he suffered from kept him on the ground, dreaming of living out his life as an old country doc.

  He would have, too, if not for an ill-advised marriage at a young age, to a wife who eventually made him want to flee the planet. Divorce changed his plan of having a small-town medical practice and found him signing up for Starfleet Academy in the hope of finding a new dream.

  As a member of Starfleet, McCoy was being exposed to many more alien races than he would in that small country town. The promise of travel to worlds that had yet to be discovered outweighed his fears of space travel. All those new peoples and new diseases. New weaponry that could be aimed at a starship. New biological warfare never even considered on Earth.

  It was mind-boggling the number of ways a person could die in space.

  What in the world was I thinking?

  Death had brought McCoy back into an examination room today. His first autopsy as a Starfleet cadet. It was not on a fetal pig. That much he could tell from the outline of the body under the sheet.

  Dr. Charles Griffin had been vague when assigning McCoy to this case. His instructor had waited until the last student filed out of Forensic Anthropology before he would even begin to explain why he’d held the cadet back. E
ven then, Griffin didn’t say anything more than to order McCoy to go to exam room forty-seven and not tell anyone what he was up to.

  That was the easiest part of the assignment. He didn’t know what he was up to.

  The door to the exam room opened, giving him a start. McCoy wasn’t normally the nervous type. At least, not when he was firmly on the ground. But everything about this situation made him nervous. And suspicious.

  “Marta?” McCoy wasn’t expecting any other cadets, much less his surly lab partner.

  “Dr. McCoy,” she replied with a formal nod. Dr. Marta Peteque reminded McCoy more of a Vulcan than a human. In the short time that he’d known her, he’d never seen her crack a smile. Pity the poor patient who had to deal with her bedside manner.

  “Need something?” he asked.

  “I was looking for an open exam room to practice my diagnostics techniques.” Her eyes gazed over McCoy’s shoulder to the body on the table. “What’s going on in here?” Peteque asked, her eyebrows raised.

  “Just waiting for Dr. Griffin,” he said.

  She nodded to the body. “Extra credit?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “Any reason you didn’t think to include me?” she asked. “We are lab partners.”

  “Not my call,” he said.

  There were at a standstill. She clearly wanted to know more. McCoy didn’t have anything else to tell her; wouldn’t have said anything even if he did.

  “Guess I’ll try next door.” She made a sharp turn, and left the exam room.

  The door didn’t even have time to shut before Dr. Griffin walked in. “What was Dr. Peteque doing in here?”

  The abruptness of his question threw McCoy. “Said she was looking for a place to study.”

  “That didn’t seem curious to you?” Griffin asked.

  “No more than anything else going on here,” McCoy replied. “Secret meetings in exam rooms. Unidentified bodies on the table. Feel like I’ve walked into some mystery.”