by Diane Carey
“Granted,” Chekov said. “But report to the science lab in the morning. You’re going to learn about simulators from the inside as well as from the command chair.”
“Aye, sir!”
I hadn’t meant to yell, but that’s the way it came out.
A rush through the Academy dorm complex gathered most of my crew and we made the fifteen—okay, sixteen—minutes. By the time we reached the soccer grounds, we were already winded and I, who had done the most running, was cursing the practice of not using our comm badges during off hours. Oh, we wore them, but we weren’t supposed to use them unless an officer authorized emergency contact.
During my first year, I’d been annoyed by that practice, but gradually got the idea that it existed to make life harder on cadets. That was the whole idea of any military academy—harder, not easier.
Well, today…
The idea wasn’t to play soccer, and we weren’t. We were using soccer balls and kicks and twists and dives to improve our physical condition, in a relay between command teams. I’d been doing this kind of thing for two years already, of course, as part of the usual Academy torture, but I was finding out that the senior command candidates were particularly brutal, and one of those turned out to be good old stonyfaced Frank Malan himself. He’d arrived on the field before I did, which made me plenty suspicious about just why he’d been the one to come get me off the simulator bridge.
After a half hour, I was stumbling.
I’d gathered the whole crew, except for Robin, who’d disappeared into the ethereal mist. On all these acres of training grounds and research facilities and simulation complexes, why was he out of touch with his command team?
Just as a fleeting fear struck me that Corin’s attention to that girl might’ve shoved my shy ex-roommate off the deep end of the Bay cliffs, I veered into a textbook maneuver to get the ball away from one of Frank Malan’s brawny team and the maneuver completely betrayed me. The textbook hadn’t figured on Frank Malan.
He appeared out of the sun—just like those old World War One stories!—and met me halfway through my beautiful execution of a spin kick. His foot found my shin, crippled my spin, and I went down hard, buffeted only by the strong hot breeze off the Bay.
I rolled onto a bruised hip, grimacing, my whole leg gone numb. “Ow—”
Frank stumbled back a couple of steps and stared down at me, his melonlike biceps glistening under the California sun.
“That’s what you get for perfection, plebe,” he ground in.
Gathering one breath just so he wouldn’t have the last word, I grumbled, “I’m not … a plebe.”
He smiled. Why was he so pleased about that?
Turning away, he waved to his team and called them to gather up from the reaches of the field, where they were sparring with my crew.
As I lay there wincing, the Jefferson Rose Garden mockingly winked at me from the sparkling complex of Starfleet Command on the crest of the foothills, gazing down its traditions at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I moaned. “Shut up, would you?”
Malan’s crewmates were closer than mine, so they got here first. Was this a pattern?
“You all saw that, right?” Malan said loudly, to his gathering command team. “This is what I mean. That’s what you get for following regulations and being a good soldier. It’s no way to survive. There’s got to be more to command than regulations, or an android could go out and do it.”
I tightened my burning muscles and forced myself to my feet before Jana, M’Giia, Corin, and Sturek could reach me. Wouldn’t look good to have them all helping me get up. They drew up on either side of me, and they were all watching Malan as he pranced before his team. Did they admire him?
“You’re right, Frank,” M’Giia said, panting from her run. “The best captains make things up as they go.”
“Especially Kirk,” Corin offered. “He broke the regs all the time. He was the only cadet ever to beat the Kobayashi Maru No-Win Scenario on the bridge simulator. I’d sure like to know how he did that one!”
Oh, great. Hero worship. Another fine hurdle I had to knock down—and for my own hero.
“He was also brought up on court-martial charges,” Jana pointed out.
“And he came out of it just fine.
“But because of the court-martial,” Sturek said, “he was demoted from admiral to captain. I do not believe within human culture that is considered to be ‘just fine.’”
Geoff Corin turned to me. “David, when you’re a captain, won’t you want some flexibility?”
The eyes of my team and Frank Malan’s collection of neo-gladiators locked on to me. Real answer, correct answer, appropriate answer, or admit this was all a mystery to me yet because command was a lurking unknown…
I cleared my throat. “That’s what I’m in the Academy to learn.”
Mm, not bad.
“You should be a diplomat, not a captain,” M’Giia snapped before my brilliance could sink in. “Regulations like the Prime Directive are fine for the idealists in the Federation, but if Starfleet faces an overwhelming threat, then we need to do whatever’s necessary.”
The sun turned her crayon-blue skin to blistering azure and made her white hair almost impossible to look at without getting sore eyes.
“It’ll be our duty to enforce Federation law,” I insisted, sticking to what I’d been taught, hoping that, like protocol, it would buoy me up.
Corin actually laughed, but nothing was funny. “If carnivorous nomads from the depths of space attack you and start eating your neighbors, you won’t stop to check regulations. You’ll open fire. The only diplomacy I’d need is a phaser bank.”
“Whatever’s necessary.” M’Giia nodded, managing to agree with Corin and with herself at the same time.
She moved a step closer to Malan.
“M’Giia’s absolutely right!” Malan crowed like a politician, swinging around to address our two teams and the handful of strays who had come over to see what was happening. “The Federation expends too much of our resources coddling all these uncivilized races!”
I blinked. Had he just changed the subject? What was this all about?
“What?” I muttered. Raising my voice, I asked, “What??”
Malan swung to me. “Forester, these other races don’t value the same things we do. They don’t deserve the tolerance the Federation shows them.”
Pushing between Sturek and Corin, I faced him. “Just what ‘races’ are you talking about, Malan?”
“The Klingons, the Romulans—and everybody like them! Who else, junior? You been in a box for two years or what? They’re aggressive and vicious, and they’re hostile toward races like us, and here we are trying to keep the peace with them!”
“And it’s caused us nothing but problems,” M’Giia added fiercely. “If it hadn’t been for the Organian Peace Treaty, we’d have seen the complete destruction of the Klingon Empire by now.”
When had I lost complete control?
“Look, we got a couple of decades of peace and quiet out of that treaty. It gave us time to work some things out.”
“Peace,” Jana put in, “isn’t just the absence of war. Peace is solving real problems.”
Enthusiastically, M’Giia added, “Holding two sides apart doesn’t solve anything. Before the Treaty, we were beating the Klingons. Without it, we could’ve finished the job!”
Getting the feeling I was holding something apart, I turned to her. “Why are you taking this so personally?”
Her face flushed almost purple. “When I was a child, I was stationed with my aunt and uncle and four cousins on Lursen Prime. The Klingons staged a massacre there. Everybody I knew was slaughtered. Even the children. Four thousand seven hundred forty-two Andorians.” Her voice lowered, and somehow became easier to hear, and took on a notable dry rasp. “I was the sole survivor.”
God, that sun was hot. Sole survivor. What would that be like?
Everyone looked at her. After a few se
conds, they all looked at me.
What could I say?
Shifting my feet, I met her accusing gaze. “The massacre on Lursen Prime was before the Organian Peace Treaty. I understand what you’re saying, but it doesn’t apply to today.”
“Today,” Malan broke in, “the Klingons are on the rampage again.”
“Well, we better start polishing our phasers,” Corin said spicily. “You too, Frank. They could be here any minute! I’m so scared!”
“With your scores,” Jana drawled, “I’d be scared too.”
“Oh, a zinger! Ow!”
“Shut up.” I pushed him back and faced Frank Malan again. “I don’t know what bug you’ve got in your ears, but don’t try to incite my crew to violence. We’ve all got our hands full with the new training schedule, so let’s just stay away from each other. Deal?”
“Oh, deal, deal,” Frank mocked. “You can just tell the same thing to the Klingons when they show up. Deal?”
He motioned to his team, and they flocked away from us, encouraging other onlookers to break away too, and leaving my team standing in a sweaty clutch under the morning sun.
Casting a pathetic scolding glance at my biceps and wondering just why they couldn’t do that, I noticed a movement in my periphery and lashed out with a quick hand.
Pulling Corin around from his attempt at escape, I asked, “Where do you think you’re going? We have to talk about your simulator performance.”
“Do we have to talk right now?” He glanced at the others.
“Yes, we have to talk right now.”
He shrugged. “I know my sim scores aren’t the best, but scores aren’t everything, you know. Don’t bother preaching. I know why I’m here. I’ll concentrate harder. We’ve got our hands full.”
“I know that,” I said. “A command school curriculum is double the standard Academy work.”
“I’m not failing,” he insisted.
“Failing isn’t the question. Your scores can bring down the whole team. Don’t you get it?”
“Don’t worry, Forester,” he said with an edge. “I won’t blow the team scores.”
“Better not,” I told him.
He bristled. “Don’t lecture me, man. I’m not your puppy like Robin Brady.”
There was more to say, but he was obviously embarrassed and that was tough for a guy like Corin to swallow. This wasn’t productive.
So I decided to be unproductive in another direction.
“Speaking of Robin, any of you seen him?”
Jana huffed. “Have you checked about six feet behind Faith Gage? He’s probably dogging her tracks and weeping.”
“Come on. He’s not that shy.”
“He better be shy,” Corin said, “if he gets between me and a woman I’m interested in.”
Jana glanced at M’Giia, then back at Corin. “He probably can’t run fast enough to get between you and any woman you’re trying to chase.”
“You’ll never know, Rocky,” Corin tossed back.
Well, this was slightly rotten. Handling a crew was harder than I thought. Why couldn’t we just stick to rules and regs and say a lot of aye-sirs and do our jobs and that would be that?
They moved off, more and more space edging between them with every step. I lagged behind, watching their tense postures.
Behind me as I glanced, Frank Malan and his team strode off, laughing and clapping each other and roughing each other up as if they’d all come out of the same womb.
My team … the spaces were getting wider. The silence throbbed.
Would we ever be friends?
Should we be?
“Something veering out of the nebula’s core—reading six renegade vessels on attack approach! Seven!”
“Red alert. Shields up.”
“Shields, aye.”
“Reading a rupture of shield stability! They’re not holding!”
“Double power to the deflector grid. Drain the warp core if you have to, but get me some shields. Corin, port your helm, forty degrees Z-minus, one-half impulse.”
“Renegade vessels are splitting up … four coming around to port—”
“They’re heading us off! Corin, counter that maneuver! Robin, we’ve got to have shield power!”
“If I skim that much off the warp core, we won’t be able to go to hyperlight.”
“If you don’t, we’ll never get out of this nebula—”
Booom—fzzzzzz—crack
“That’s it … shields are gone…”
“Thrusters off line. No more engine power.”
“Program shut-down,” came the amplified computer voice. “Your ship is surrounded by Venturi renegades. Your shields are down and you are out of power in a blanketing nebula. Scores will be posted at eleven-thirty hours.”
“That’s it. We’ve lost.”
“Again.” M’Giia bolstered Jana’s comment with a glance of annoyance toward me.
“Time?” I asked.
Corin looked at his helm. “Took us exactly five point six minutes to get trapped like a fish in a net.”
Beside him at the navigation console, Jana ran the numbers. “We held out sixteen seconds longer than the last time, but we lost ground in the maneuver.”
“So we’re ahead, but we’re behind.” I slumped in the command chair—yes, I’d finally made myself sit in it. After all, it was just a simulation. Just a fake. Pretend.
So why did I ache as if I’d been through the real thing?
Around us, the bridge was dusted with battle damage, fritzing and burping with sparks and smoke. Did a real starship ever get this beaten up?
“Not good,” I said. “There’s some combination of moves or decisions that gets us out of these situations. I just can’t find them. And, Robin, you took way too long to respond with those warp field shifts. Geoff, I’ve got to have quicker action from you too.”
Waving at the smoke puffing from the “damaged” helm, Corin cranked around in his seat. “I can’t make a move until you make a decision, boss.”
“Look, I’m not letting myself out of the blame,” I told him wearily, “but once I make the decision, your hands have to snap on the controls, or we slip. Dead’s dead, after all. And ‘boss’ isn’t the way you address your commanding officer.”
“Oh, right,” he droned. “Remind me when I get one.”
Jana, Robin, and M’Giia looked around from what they were doing. Sturek was the only one who managed to keep his eyes on his controls, but I noticed his shoulders tense just a little.
Robin moved forward toward the rail, his lips parted as if he had something to say, and he fixed his eyes on Corin, but when Corin looked up at him, the lips clamped shut.
“Got something to say, lover boy?” Corin taunted. “Or did you just swallow a bug?”
The pain of embarrassment and crippling shyness crimped Robin’s face. Whatever he’d had in his mind to say, he couldn’t get it out. If he’d meant to defend me, or to finally challenge Corin about this girl they both had in their sights, the intent fizzled out.
“Okay,” I said with a relenting sigh, “let’s clean up this mess.”
Not my most shining command moment. Academy protocol gave me the right to yell at Corin, at the very least to order respect out of him, but what good would that do? The respect was in the uniform, they told us, but there had to be more to it than that.
After all, Frank Malan was wearing a uniform.
No one looked at me as they spread across the deck, plucking up bits of cable and blown panels. Most of this stuff was meant to fall apart in some way or another, and we knew the engineers came in from time to time and redesigned the wrecker programs, but fake though it was we still had to clean it all up for the next team.
They weren’t fooling anybody—all this blowup-cleanup process was to get us used to just how a ship’s bridge was put together. By the time we got to a real starship, we’d know every little bolt, conduit, chip, and cell, because we’d have put every one into and o
ut of place two hundred times.
Made me wonder what they did to train maintenance crews.
“Hey!”
“I don’t need your help, Corin!”
“You sure don’t! Anybody who wants to rush out and stir up trouble with the Klingons doesn’t need help from me!”
“Then let go!”
Oh, not now—I swung around and found Corin and M’Giia playing tug of war with a fallen cable. On the upper deck, Robin had turned to stare at them, and even Sturek was looking this time.
One good yank from Corin wrested the cable from M’Giia’s hands, which only seemed to anger her.
“I don’t have to start trouble,” she said. “The Klingons can get away with anything they like, as long as they leave no witnesses. Well, I’m a witness!”
“Hard to prove without evidence, M’Giia,” Jana pointed out.
“Evidence?” M’Giia leaned over the helm console toward Jana. “What about facts? Who gains the most from breaking a treaty with the Federation! The Klingons! Who gains most from covering up their tracks! Klingons!”
“Again,” Jana said, “no proof that the attack on Bicea was staged by Klingons.”
M’Giia stepped back. “Maybe there’s not, and maybe there is.”
I stepped between them. “Are you saying you have proof, M’Giia?”
She leaned toward me. “I’ve heard Starfleet has sensor logs showing unknown ships in Federation space near the Klingon Neutral Zone. If it’s not the Klingons, then who else could it be?”
On the science deck, Sturek moved to the bridge rail. “Circumstantial evidence,” he pointed out. “Our surveys of that area are incomplete. What do you think, David?”
His question took me completely by surprise. In my experience, Vulcans weren’t prone to ask much—just answer. Then again, wasn’t that kind of parochial of me? Expecting people who looked alike to think and act alike?
With a crew of this makeup, I’d better quit that pronto.
Still, being asked to come to a conclusion by the princes of conclusions—I felt the hot seat come up under me.
“Well,” I began, “having sensor logs of unknown ships isn’t what I’d call proof, but this morning Commander Chekov canceled our work on the simulator programming. He wouldn’t say why.”
