by Diane Carey
And his words. When he talked to us about space … he was a hero then.
Kobayashi Maru.
I flinched. It appeared on the screen and my heart started fluttering.
Across the lab, Commander Chekov was involved with the other seventy-four maneuvers in the Posnikoff series and not paying attention to me. Good thing, because I was sure he could hear me sweat.
Perhaps he felt my eyes, for he chose that instant to glance at me. “Problem?”
“Uh … no, sir … just something tangling these codes. Some heavily encrypted data spliced onto the program for a mission.”
“You shouldn’t be playing with that.”
How the hell did he know!
I clicked on the word Kobayashi, hoping to clear the screen before he tapped in, if he hadn’t already, and up came another font, a mock-graffiti sprayed across the mission title.
“Tiberius was here.”
The chair sunk under me because its pedestal melted. Next went my legs and after that my spine.
Chekov pushed away from his console and strolled over to sweep up the puddle with just my cerebral cortex sticking out like a straw.
“David … you’re not supposed to be in that file.”
My head rattled. I was nodding. “Do you want me to cancel it out, sir? I’ll have to ask you to crosscancel … the thing won’t let me out.”
“I know.” He leaned on the top of my screen housing. “I froze the database.”
Did he have the noose tied too? I looked up at him. “Why, sir?”
“Because I’m not the one who should decide whether or not you’ve breached privacy.”
With a sinking stomach I watched as Chekov opened his communicator. “Chekov to Captain Kirk. Please join me in lab Delta Foxtrot right away.”
“Hmmm … a little stroll down memory lane.”
James Kirk’s voice was mellow and unrevealing as he bent over my shoulder and looked at his own personal files.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the only cadet in the room mourned pitifully. The only slime, the only slug, the only worm sweat.
“Sorry for what?” Kirk surveyed me with that sizzle in his eyes. “You’re the only one who’s ever had the nerve to look. It was right in there the whole time, and nobody else ever checked. Go ahead. Scroll the scenario. Won’t get you anywhere.”
Well, now it was an order. What could I say?—I don’t want to, sir? Please don’t make me?
I tapped the board.
The specs of the Kobayashi scenario ran before me. Nothing outlandish … a stranded Federation passenger freighter inside the Neutral Zone … no Starfleet ship allowed in there … atmospheric leakage … survivors begging for help. Seemed like any average program, except that this one wouldn’t let the player win.
The player could choose not to go in, of course, but nobody did. A refusal to assist a ship in distress would be the blackest mark anybody could imagine on a performance record. We’d all learned that our first semester at the Academy.
Then the good stuff showed up. I peered at it with aching eyes, then turned in astonishment to Captain Kirk.
“You cheated!”
He gave me a little shrug and a nod. “Changed the rules of the game.”
“But why?”
“Because there’s no such thing as a no-win scenario. And I don’t like to lose.”
He crossed the room to a replicator and pulled up a cup of coffee. I pivoted in the seat and asked, “Isn’t reprogramming the simulator against the rules?”
He didn’t say anything, so I looked at Chekov and asked the same question silently this time.
Chekov raised his brows and refused to commit.
Kirk blew across the top of his cup of coffee. “After I beat the Kobayashi Maru, the administrators talked about tightening the rules, but they never did it. In fact, I got a commendation for original thinking. I learned to anticipate my enemy. Even if my enemy is just a computer.”
There was something in there I should remember, but I couldn’t make any sense of it. How could anybody anticipate an unknown?
Since I was in this deep anyway, might as well sink all the way.
“If you used this to cheat, then the Academy wouldn’t be able to test how you handled a no-win scenario. Winning would be a foregone conclusion if you altered the programming in your favor.”
“I didn’t program it in my favor,” Kirk said. “I didn’t program a victory at all. I only made it possible to win. I still had to do the winning.”
Chekov just leaned there on the counter, one hip up on the edge, his arms folded and one hand pressed to his mouth and behind that hand he was grinning at my expense. Oh, if there just weren’t a rule against striking a senior officer…
“Forester,” Kirk began, noticing that my attention had strayed just a hair.
“Sir?”
“I hear your science officer’s under confinement. Has anyone in your crew been pushing you to get him out?”
He knew, and still he was making me say it.
“Well, yes, sir…”
“Good crew,” he said. “You were faced with two choices. Gratify your crew by leading them in the wrong but popular action, or let them down by making an unpopular decision that left regulations intact.”
That little break-in incident wasn’t my favorite subject of conversation.
I gazed at the deck, at Captain Kirk’s boots. “Yes, sir.”
Kirk moved, just enough to make me raise my eyes. “Looks like you already faced a no-win scenario.”
Was he congratulating me for breaking into the lab? Was there a senior officer in this place, on the grounds, or in space who could actually say what he meant at any given moment?
This wasn’t a time to be unsure. Was he going to make me guess?
“Do you want me to close the file down, sir?”
He sipped his coffee. “Suit yourself. And get my Klingon heavy cruiser working.”
A simple nod to Chekov made the commander shove off the counter and fall in behind the captain as they both headed for the door.
“Captain,” I called, pushing out of my seat—and I was pretty sure it left an impression on a key portion of my anatomy.
Kirk only half turned. “Question?”
“Which option did you choose? On the Kobayashi Maru.”
He regarded me with the teasing amusement I’d never get used to, and then did what he did best—said nothing, and said it all.
“The winning one.”
Chapter 12
“This is the Kobayashi Maru. We have struck a fission percussive mine … we have hull ruptures … position, Gamma Hydra, section 10. Life support systems failing—can you assist us, Lexington … can you assist us?”
“Data on the Kobayashi Maru, Mr. Sturek.”
On the science monitor over Sturek’s head, a raft of data scrolled out about a big ship, a cruising freighter.
“Crew of eighty-one,” Sturek read off, boiling all the numbers down to what mattered. “Three hundred passengers.”
I felt my brow crease. “Three hundred…”
“Life support is at critical failure … eighteen dead. Can you assist us!”
“Plot a course to the Kobayashi Maru.”
I knew those words were expected of me, there was no way around them, but speaking them rubbed my throat raw. There was an option to abandon the crippled ship, but no cadet would ever take it. That would be an automatic loss. A negative score count.
“Course plotted,” Jana said. Her voice was quaking.
“Take us in.”
Corin, nodded, but only once. “Helm’s answering.”
The starship around us seemed to swell … there was a difference about this program, a new feeling, new sounds. These weren’t the sounds and sensations of a science vessel. The sounds were deeper, thicker, the beeps and and whirs more complex, the scanners brighter and more detailed. This was a starship.
“Warning: entering Neutral Zone.”
�
��We’re in violation of treaty, Captain.” M’Giia informed, by the book.
“Red alert.”
The whole bridge lighting scheme shifted slightly into the red, and our eyes adjusted.
“Shields up,” I ordered. No point waiting until the last minute.
Was I anticipating? I had some idea of what was coming—conflict, battle, but no idea just what I’d be facing. Klingons, of course, but how many and in what formation?
I’d had courses in maneuvering and battle strategy, I knew all the textbook moves and all the proper responses that would go down in my log as having done my best, the right thing at each point, yet somehow I wasn’t reassured. This scenario, unlike most, wasn’t designed to test what I had memorized. It was going for something completely else.
Before us on the big screen, the elliptical form of the Neutral Zone was etched out in a grid pattern of red lines on the black curtain of space, with the entry point now behind us. In the middle of this big gap in Starfleet restricted space was one of the daring who crossed the Neutral Zone without protection, taking risks like this day’s. The Kobayashi Maru, in distress.
“Captain!” Corin blurted suddenly. “Reading a Klingon warship fine on the port bow! Range, seventeen hundred kilometers. Reading a firing sequence!”
“Here we go,” I muttered, then tossed over my shoulder, “Open hailing frequencies. Corin, weapons on line.”
“On line, aye. David—Captain, two more ships,” Corin rasped. “Approaching on a parabolic course, twenty-two thousand kilometers broad on the starboard stern.”
Then he coughed slightly, as if the words had dried him out.
“Double shields astern,” I ordered.
At the nav console Jana swallowed hard and tapped her board. “Double shields astern, aye.”
Three ships. That changed everything. Any time more than one ship on any side entered a battle situation, there had to be organization. There had to be cooperation and method, patterns and plans. In my mind I ran through all the known Klingon techniques for a three-ship assault on one ship.
“Frequency open.” M’Giia’s voice was thready too. “They’re hailing us, Captain—audio—”
“This is Captain Gorolock of the Klingon Empire. You are in violation of the Neutral Zone treaty. This is your trial. How do you plead?”
“This the Starship Lexington. We are on a rescue mission and have no hostile intent.”
“Guilty as charged. Prepare to die.”
Grasping the arms of the command chair, I stood up. I just couldn’t stay in that chair very long. I just couldn’t.
“Positions of the Klingon warships,” I requested.
Corin glanced at his board. “They’re all moving. Coming into some kind of spiral pattern around us. I think it’s designed to keep us from turning without facing at least one ship.”
On the screen, one of the warships swept past above us, and a few moments later a second one came by on the lower part of the screen. They were cooperating. If they decided to fire on us, which they would, they’d coordinate their firing sequences the way a boxer hits an opponent—to keep the wind driven out of us and never let us take a breath.
“Keep our shields to them as much as you can. M’Giia put him on visual.”
My nervous anticipation started to sizzle into something else.
The screen flickered away from the view of the Kobayashi Maru, disabled, adrift on black sky, and provided a full-faced vision of a particularly slick-looking Klingon. Unlike most Klingons, this one had his hair tightly braided and draping across his ridged forehead and down to his shoulder plates. Dressed in polished leather body armor with brass bolts and clips, he was majestic and settled in his command status, not scraggly or brutish at all, like most Klingons I’d seen pictures of, and I realized for the first time that I’d never seen a Klingon in person.
And this was designed to startle me, to bust the stereotype before I had a chance to take refuge in it. Worked.
Fine.
“Captain Gorolock,” I greeted with a harsh tone, “Federation citizens are in immediate distress. There is no time to send for a civilian rescue ship. On my authority, Starfleet is taking charge of the rescue. As soon as we effect beaming of the passengers and crew on board, we’ll evacuate the Neutral Zone. Stand down, or we will defend ourselves and the freighter to the fullest of our ability.”
Gorolock’s grand voice filled my bridge. “And who are you to dictate policy in the Neutral Zone?”
This was it. Now we’d see if I selected right.
“I am…”
Captain James T. Kirk.
“I am Captain David Forester.”
On the wide vision of the Klingon bridge, Gorolock sat back in his chair, his eyes abruptly wide, and his mouth hanging open. Then, unexpected, his eyes lit up, his whole face took on a sheen of delight and joy.
“Forester!”
He stared and stared at me.
I blinked back like a stunned fish.
Now, I hadn’t expected that reaction, that succulent, slurping astonishment. I’d expected something quite different—after all, I’d reprogrammed the simulator myself!
Cadet Kirk had found three choices when he reprogrammed the computer in his favor all those years ago. One, he could dumb down the Klingon artificial intelligence and make the captains fight clumsily, make mistakes, and miscalculate. Two, he could weaken their armaments and shields, just make everything less potent and the ships easier to beat. Three, he could program the simulator to make the Klingons respect and fear him personally. A pre-programmed reputation.
I had no idea which James Kirk had picked, but I’d gone for the third option—make the Klingon captains dread fighting the great David Forester. That way, I could keep a little of my self-respect. After all, how much respect could I cling to if I made the enemy weaker? If they feared me, this was only a psychological advantage. I’d still have to fight them, fullforce and outmaneuver them in open space.
But now, in this instant as I read Gorolock’s vicious eyes and saw his posture change, and watched the faces of the Klingons on his bridge crew who came into the frame, my stomach sank and my skin began to shrivel. My blood went cold as I looked into Gorolock’s unmasked delight.
I’d made a critical, blistering error. Much more than a simple mistake, I had completely underestimated my enemy. Instead of inflicting them with dread, I had just announced to a pack of rabid hounds, “Here I am, fresh red meat.”
Gorolock leaned forward now, as if to push his elegant face into my bridge. His voice lowered to a hungry whisper.
“What a prize you shall be!”
Then he snapped something in Klingon at his bridge crew and the screen swept back to a view of space and the powerful warship churning past our bow.
Jana turned and looked at me, her face a mask of horror.
“Uh-oh…” Corin sat frozen to his controls, staring at the screen.
Drenched in the glue of my own miscalculation, I started shaking. Those weren’t humans—why had I expected them to react like humans? I’d thought the reprogramming would make them hesitant to attack, might hold back, might even run.
Under the eyes of my crew, I gushed out a rough sigh. “Oh, God, I screwed up…”
“They’re breaking formation,” Corin gasped. “No pattern now—they’re not taking any headings I can track! David, what should I do?”
“Uh—evasive maneuvers.”
Was that the voice of a captain? That dull, muffled sound?
“Just what I always wanted,” Corin sighed. “An exercise in futility. Why not?”
“They’re firing!”
But the ship that fired on us wasn’t the one directly in front of us—it was one of those at our stern. Not Gorolock’s ship. What did that mean?
The bridge rocked and went a shade darker as the red alert lighting intensified and other lights flickered and went dark.
“Return fire,” I said. What else?
Gorolock was th
e one who had contacted us, had spoken for the others, so why hadn’t he been the first to fire?
My crew went about their jobs fatalistically now—I saw it in their movements, in their faces. They were trying to get the best scores they could in a losing situation. We’d had a chance of winning for just a flicker, then my mistake kicked in and we were facing the noose. My psychological advantage was shot to hell.
“Engineering,” I asked over the hum of power-up, “can we throw a tow beam on the Kobayashi Maru while we fight?”
Robin’s face was pale and sweaty. “Only by sacrificing firepower almost thirty percent.”
“Don’t do it.”
“Acknowledged.” He sounded relieved, but didn’t look it.
“Emergency vector to heading four zero four, Corin.”
Strange, how calm my voice sounded. Was I fatalistic now too? Had I given up?
“They’re all attacking!” Jana shouted. “All at once! Are they supposed to do that?”
“I thought there were attack patterns!” Corin said, struggling to maneuver through the sweeping warships as they looped past the main screen and were tracked by other screens around the bridge. The circle of screens gave us an idea of where those ships were in relation to the body of our starship, almost as if the monitors were windows. Of course, there weren’t any in the ceiling or the deck, and from time to time the ships just disappeared, tracked only by the statistical data on other monitors. I had to keep my eyes in twenty places at once.
Of course, each sweep of each ship gave me an idea of where they were heading. “Jana, handle the phaser banks. Fire at will.”
“Who’s Will?” she mumbled, but she started shooting.
Phaser fire whined from our banks, shot upon shot, striking the enemy shields and skittering across the energy bubble, and were answered by shot after shot from the three Klingons, but not in any order. Their attacks had gone completely random.
“I’ve never heard of this,” I uttered, trying to think as the bridge rattled and smoked around me. The smell of burning carpet and frying electrical connections made me dizzy, but somehow pared my thinking down.
