Starfleet Academy: The Edge

by Rudy Josephs

  He didn’t have to see the small gathering of cadets in the middle of the expanse to know they were there. A section of lighting was mysteriously blacked out. The bridge was lit brightly enough to keep traffic moving smoothly, but the shadows would sufficiently hide any illegal activity.

  Kirk strolled up to the gathering, immediately noticing that Thanas stood out from the crowd, acting like he was in charge though Kirk doubted he’d organized it.

  “No uniforms, plebe,” an upperclassman said upon Kirk’s arrival. It was the same cadet that fired the starting phaser for the survival course race. Kirk had since learned his name was Crayton.

  Everyone but Kirk was in civilian clothes. He suspected Thanas had purposefully forgotten to mention that detail earlier. Kirk took off his jacket to give himself a freer range of movement for whatever he was about to get himself into. “You want me to strip down?”

  “Not necessary,” Crayton said.

  “Maybe we should take a vote,” said a girl whom Kirk didn’t know.

  Crayton ignored her, focusing on Kirk. “Just remember next time.”

  Kirk found that “next time” comment interesting. How often did this thing happen? Did Jackson know about it? Andros? “You guys do this often?”

  “No questions either, plebe,” Crayton barked.

  Kirk had enough trouble with authority figures who were actually authority figures. He was having serious problems with this upperclassman acting like he was someone. And the whole “plebe” thing was especially annoying. Still, Kirk didn’t expect them all to just open up and admit that they’d gone to some clinic to make themselves better cadets. He was going to have to earn their trust.

  That didn’t mean he could ask questions. Kirk flashed a smile to the girl who suggested they vote him stripping down. “So what’s the deal here? We diving? I thought there was a force field under the bridge to keep jumpers from going over.”

  “Not diving,” Crayton said. He pointed to the tower that was about halfway from where they stood and the mainland. “Think the other way.”

  Kirk’s eyes rose up the suspension cable to the tower two hundred meters above him. It was dark up there with the lights off, but he could still make out the top. Barely. It was quite a climb. “Not very death defying with that force field to catch us.”

  “It’s been disabled,” the cadet said. “To make things interesting.”

  That would do the trick.

  “Sounds good,” Kirk said. “Do I get to go first?”

  “Not so fast,” Crayton said. “There’s a line. Starts with the cocky Andorian.”

  “The cocky Andorian gladly gives up his spot for the obnoxious human,” Thanas said.

  “Guess that’s me,” Kirk said. “Unless there are other obnoxious humans around here.”

  Nobody laughed.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Kirk said. The sooner he proved himself, the better chance he’d find out some information. Nobody was going to warm up to him for free, especially not with Thanas there.

  Kirk hopped up onto the suspension cable, straddling it while he considered the best way to make his ascent. He knew it was stupid to attempt it without climbing gear, but that was the point. All he had to do was move from cable to cable on his way up, not look down, and he would be fine.

  Easier said than done.

  Kirk started up the metal orange cable, pulling himself hand over hand. He’d never been scared of heights, but he had also never climbed a bridge before. It was a daunting task. At least the climb wasn’t straight up. The suspension cable started out at a low incline, getting steeper the farther up he went. It would be tough at the end, but the starting point was fairly easy.

  He wondered if he fell, which would be better: to land on the road with the cars speeding by or to fall smack onto the glassy surface of the bay. It didn’t make much difference, really. He’d be just as dead either way.

  He was halfway to the tower when he realized just how stupid agreeing to this was. The climb was getting harder. The metal clasps he grabbed to pull him forward were becoming more difficult to hold onto. There were other ways of getting information. Kirk didn’t even know if these people had anything to give.

  But he couldn’t stop what he was doing. He was only a few minutes from reaching the top. He wasn’t about to give up, no matter how dangerous.

  The light from a bolt of phaser fire distracted Kirk. He nearly lost his grip on the cable. “What the hell?”

  Another bolt of phaser fire struck a meter below him.

  “Hey!” he yelled down. Laughter rang out from the bridge. He could barely make out the other cadets in the darkness, but he was pretty sure that Thanas was the one holding the weapon.

  Another blast struck above him. Either Thanas was a lousy aim, or he wasn’t firing to hit Kirk. Probably his way of making things more interesting. As long as Kirk kept at a steady pace, he should be fine.

  Kirk continued to work his way up as random phaser fire lit up around him. The extra light actually made his climb easier, which he suspected was not the point. Didn’t matter. He was more than halfway there.

  That’s when he heard the yelling.

  Kirk was surprised that the voices reached him from all the way up there. The wind must be carrying them. He wasn’t sure who was arguing, but he was kind of glad that the phaser fire had stopped. Maybe he could make it to the top before it started up again.

  He’d only traveled a few more feet when an errant bolt of phaser fire struck above Kirk’s hand. It wasn’t a direct hit, but close enough. He felt the deadening sensation of being stunned. He clamped onto the cable with his legs, but the reflex of pulling his hand away was enough to jar him loose.

  He fell.

  Fate had sent him to the waterside of the bridge. Didn’t make any difference. At that height, he was already dead.

  Kirk braced himself as he dropped the length of the tower.

  The vehicles on the bridge continued along their way, unaware that he was about to die. Odd that noticing the traffic flow was going to be one of his last thoughts.

  Then he saw Lynne racing toward him. Running at an incredible speed.

  A heartbeat later she launched herself off the bridge, latching on to him midair, twirling their bodies so that they were falling feet first.

  “What the—!”

  Before he could say more, Lynne stunned him with a phaser.

  Then the world went black.

  The shock of the cold water slammed Kirk back into consciousness. It was nothing compared with the surprise of being alive. He fought the reflex to take a breath and swallow a lungful of the San Francisco Bay as he sank deeper into the water. He calmed himself and took stock of the situation. A fall like that was impossible to survive—much less have both of them survive—but he could feel Lynne kicking away from him in the darkness.

  He started after her, kicking with the strength returning to his legs, quickly realizing he couldn’t tell up from down in the dark. The need for a breath was growing stronger. He forced himself to stop thrashing long enough to allow the natural buoyancy of his body to float him toward the direction of escape. Once he’d figured out where up was, he resumed kicking. But would he run out of air before he made it to the surface?

  Kirk pulled against the water with his hands, kicking out with his legs. He’d survived a fall almost from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. He wasn’t going to let weak lungs do him in.

  The last few meters were the toughest, but he soon felt his body break the surface. His lungs burned as he sucked in the fresh air, taking it in with deep, gasping breaths. It took several intakes before he could breathe normally.

  “Monica!” he yelled.

  “Over here!” she responded. She was only a few meters away. They swam toward each other and embraced, glad to be alive.

  “How in the—,” Kirk started to ask.

  Lynne cut him off. “Later. Save your energy. We’ve got to swim to shore.”

  Kirk’
s muscles strained against the wet clothes that clung to his body. His teeth chattered. His body ached. Suddenly he had even more questions, but none of them were as important as getting to shore.

  He kicked off his boots and angled himself toward the shoreline of Baker Beach. It was farther than he’d ever swam in his life, but there was no other option. Having come off just being stunned, he wasn’t sure if his struggle was from the water or the residual phaser fire.

  Lynne took to the bay like she was born in it, and had to intermittently stop to tread water and wait for him. After a while Kirk told her to swim ahead, not wanting to be the reason she caught hypothermia. She fought him, but he finally convinced her there was no reason they both had to die for his stupidity.

  Part of him expected Thanas and the others to report their disappearances. The Academy and local police could have easily had search parties out looking for them mere minutes after they’d hit the water.

  The other more logical part of him knew they were on their own. That was the risk of something like climbing the Golden Gate Bridge with people you didn’t know. Honor codes weren’t adhered to when the activity went against the code from the start.

  Kirk swam on. The dark, hulking mass of shoreline grew closer, but he had trouble judging the distance without enough light to guide him. He had nothing but his thoughts for company as he pumped his legs. He didn’t want to focus on those thoughts or the questions that came with them.

  He didn’t have a choice.

  Kirk was lucky to be alive. He knew that. To survive a fall from the bridge was unlikely enough. But a fall from near the top of the tower had to be impossible.

  Even more incredible than that, he couldn’t understand how Lynne had saved him. Shooting him actually made sense. She’d wanted his body to go limp. It was the rest of it that was entirely nuts.

  He’d heard stories of people who had survived falls from bridges before. A tale about some construction worker who dropped a wrench and fell when he reached after it. The wrench hit the water first, breaking the surface. If it hadn’t done that, hitting the water would have been like hitting solid ground to the construction worker.

  Had Lynne broken the surface for him? If so, why wasn’t she dead? She’d put her life in extreme danger to save him. Was she as impetuous as he? Or did she know she had a good chance of making it?

  Those last questions rolled over in his mind as he made the final dash for shore. When he reached solid ground, he was too tired to think. He collapsed onto the beach, shivering from the cold, thrilled to be alive, to rest.

  He heard sand-muffled footsteps running toward him. “Jim!” Lynne called. He could sense the relief in her voice. She bent down to scoop him into her arms, sharing the little warmth her body generated. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

  Kirk rested in her arms for a few minutes, too tired to speak. All he could do was listen to the words of the girl he’d thought he was falling for. “What kind of bonehead stunt was that?” Clearly, her fear outweighed her concern. “You could have died. What were you trying to prove?”

  “N-N-Not proving a-a-anything,” he said. “F-Finding . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He also couldn’t ask how she’d recovered so quickly.

  “Don’t tell me you did this for McCoy,” she said. “There are other ways to get information.”

  Sure, in hindsight that was a reasonable thing to say. Somehow, he hadn’t thought that earlier.

  “Don’t say anything.” She pressed herself closer to him. “Just sit for a minute.”

  He enjoyed the feel of her body against his. Quiet moments like this were missing from what passed for a relationship between them. Their schedules were so busy. Classes so stressful. It was a shame that they needed to almost die to get this time together.

  Kirk’s body needed to recoup, but his mind did not. It only gave him more of a chance to formulate the questions he didn’t want to ask. Even worse, once he was able to speak clearly again, he knew he was putting future moments like this in doubt.

  “How did you do that?” he asked. “How did you survive that jump? How did we survive?”

  “Luck,” she said in a most unconvincing tone, and Kirk didn’t buy it.

  “You knew when you jumped off that bridge that you’d be safe,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

  She shrugged. “Not for sure.”

  “That was one hell of a risk.”

  “You could be a bit more grateful, you know. I did save your life.”

  Lynne was right, of course. But that didn’t change the facts. This wasn’t the first fall she’d survived. Kirk never asked her what happened after she flew over the concrete wall when they’d been hoverluging. He’d just assumed she’d landed on something soft. Now he wondered if it wasn’t what she landed on, but how she landed that made the difference.

  Kirk kissed her cheek softly. His questions didn’t reflect the gratitude he felt but they had to be asked. “I’m sorry. But we both know there’s something going on here that you’re not telling me. And it’s something that could help my friend, so I have to ask.”

  “You don’t think I’m involved with that underground clinic?”

  “I think you know about it,” he answered. “I think you did something like what Jackson did.”

  “If I did what Jackson did, we’d both be dead right now,” she scoffed.

  “Not the same exact thing,” he corrected, “but something. You went to that place. You had something done to yourself.” Something that could help her survive that fall.

  Lynne stared out at the dark water in silence. Kirk knew better than to prod her further. She’d tell him the truth. There were no other options.

  He stared out into the darkness with her, squeezing her tighter to his body. Enjoying her warmth. Enjoying her touch. Their breathing fell into rhythm. Kirk’s rapid heartbeat slowed to match hers. They were one in body, but not in mind.

  When she took a deep breath, he breathed along with her, knowing she was ready to admit the truth. “In my granddad’s journal, the last one he wrote in before graduation, he filled five pages with questions. Just questions. Were his grades good enough? Did he study as hard as he could have? Take the right classes? Train as strongly as he should? There were questions about every decision he made in his four years at the Academy. Those questions were all asking the same thing: Was he good enough?”

  “So he had a moment of self-doubt,” Kirk said. He understood that. Sure, he might not show it, but he’d had those moments all the time. But then they passed. “It’s only natural that he felt that way.”

  She blew out a sigh. “I never knew if he answered his questions. He didn’t write anything in the rest of the journal about it. Or the next journal when he served his first year on a starship before transferring to the deep space mission. He never asked the questions again. Never answered them either. But I could still read the doubt on every page. He beat himself up for the tiniest mistakes. He detailed all his failures and glossed over his successes. It wasn’t like he was a screwup, you know. He was actually pretty good at his job, so far as I could tell.”

  Kirk didn’t see how this answered his question, but he wasn’t ready to challenge her on it yet. He knew she would get there.

  “But there was always that doubt,” she continued. “In himself. And then, when his ship disappeared without explanation . . . I always wondered.”

  “Wondered what?” Kirk asked. “If it was somehow his fault? That’s crazy. There are hundreds of people—”

  “Not that,” she said in barely a whisper. “Not Granddad, specifically. But what if all those people had the same doubts. What if they all questioned themselves like my granddad? What if that’s why they didn’t come back?”

  “Everyone has doubts,” Kirk assured her. “Everyone makes mistakes. You don’t know that’s why they went missing. A random spatial anomaly could have destroyed the ship before anyone had the time to react. You just don’t know.”

  “But
that’s why the training is so intense here,” she said. “So that we’re prepared for anything.” She finally looked into his eyes so he could see the fear in them. “That’s why I took some precautions to make sure I would always be ready.”

  “What did you do?” he asked gently.

  It was clear that she probably hadn’t just desensitized herself to the pain. That would never explain her quick response. Running so fast. Jumping off the bridge at just the right time. Spinning Kirk into the right direction. Hitting the water in just the right way, saving them both.

  “Ever heard of gene therapy?” she asked.

  “You mean genetic doping?” he said. “Like with athletes? That was outlawed centuries ago.”

  “It’s come a long way since then. My genes have been manipulated to build stronger muscles and give me better endurance. To physically enhance my body to heal faster. To fight off wounds before they happen. It’s cutting-edge stuff. And perfectly safe.”

  “Not for Jackson and Andros.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know what they did, but it wasn’t the same thing. I didn’t make their mistake. I researched it. What happened to them isn’t going to happen to me.”

  “It’s still illegal,” Kirk said. “So there must be a reason.”

  “Just another dumb rule,” she said. “You mentioned eugenics before. That’s about the fear of someone trying to create a race of genetically perfect people. This isn’t the same thing. This is just a little push. Something extra to enhance what’s already there.”

  Kirk wanted to point out that some rules served a purpose, but he wasn’t the person to say that. He’d broken enough of rules in his lifetime. Besides, there was something else more pressing on his mind. “You really didn’t know that we’d survive the fall.”

  She looked down at the sand. “I had hoped.”

  Kirk wanted to be angry with her. He wanted to yell at her for being so stupid. Not because of the surgery. Because she nearly gave her own life just to save his worthless butt. But he couldn’t bring himself to say any of it.