Starfleet Academy

by Diane Carey

  Other Vanguard members were gathering around us now and had heard what I said. I was careful not to look at any of them, but to glare only at Frank Malan, keeping the screws on tight and letting them know I wasn’t intimidated.

  Malan glared back at me deeply suspicious but now wanting to believe. If only he didn’t hate me quite as much as he hated Klingons, I’d have an edge.

  He looked at the telepath, and she shook her head.

  “I scanned him, Frank,” she said. “I think he’s clear.”

  “I’m clear,” I told them firmly. “And I can deliver something you want.”

  “What?” Malan challenged.

  Stepping back, I now swept all the Vanguard members with a single purposeful gaze. “James T. Kirk,” I told them. “He’ll come if I ask him.”

  An excited murmur flowed across the field of hooded faces.

  Something flickered in Malan’s eyes—respect? I’d have settled for less.

  I turned to him before it faded. “What do we do next?”

  “‘We’ do nothing,” he said, recovering some. “We’ll wait until zero three hundred, one hour from now. That’s when Devolution Day begins!”

  A cheer rang through the hall. Now what?

  “What’s Devolution Day?” I asked.

  “The end of the Federation as we know it.”

  A cold shudder rang through my chest. “How?” I croaked.

  “You’ll find out when it happens. The countdown’s already begun. When it’s over, we’ll be able to place James Kirk in power as the ideal for the new society. Even if he has any lingering loyalties to the old Federation, he’ll step in anyway. He’s that type.”

  “Frank! Tell me what you’re planning!”

  Prudence should’ve told him to keep quiet, but Frank Malan wasn’t the type to hold back. He was proud of himself as he told me, “A series of surgical assassinations at Starfleet.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God … you’re serious!”

  “We’re very serious. Aren’t we?”

  The flock of troublemakers called out in support.

  “No one leaves until after the detonations!” Malan ordered. “Bar the doors! The countdown is on!”

  The crowd cheered. My stomach heaved. Now what?

  “You’re missing an opportunity, Frank,” I said, barely aware of what was going to pop out next. “You should inform Captain Kirk of your plans, so he can join in the triumph. Then he’ll know there’s no turning back, and he’ll accept your loyalty.”

  Several of the other Vanguard members crowded closer, fascinated by the prospect of getting James Kirk on their side. They saw me as the link.

  Malan contemplated what I’d said, but the doubt lingered behind his gaze.

  “Good idea.” He handed me a standard issue Starfleet hand communicator. “You get Kirk over here. Right now, before the fireworks start. Then, I’ll believe whatever you say.”

  M’Giia watched me, wide-eyed. As I opened the communicator’s grid, Malan drew his phaser and put it to M’Giia’s head.

  Simple enough. Message received.

  Knotted up like a braid, I raised the communicator to my lips.

  “Captain Kirk … this is Cadet Forester. I have special information. Come in, please…”

  Chapter 18

  “I just can’t bring myself to trust you, Forester. Where is he?”

  “He said he’d come, Malan.”

  “So what takes so long!”

  Frank Malan looked at his telepath, but she continued to shake her head and shrug.

  Malan had said there was an hour before “Devolution Day,” whatever they meant by that. Reactionaries—everything had to have a name. Bet they were proud of themselves for calling their petty destruction something other than petty destruction.

  Now forty-two minutes had passed. Forty-three. Only seventeen minutes before bombs started going off in key quarters around Starfleet and key people started dying.

  It was inconceivable! I was starting to notice how sheltered I’d been in my life. I’d never been around people who wanted to kill anyone else before. A full forty minutes had gone by before I really believed them.

  But their nervous excitement was telling, and M’Giia’s silent eyes betrayed the fact that she believed every word. She had known enough misery and loss in her life that she knew the real thing when it came near her. They meant to kill.

  Their countdown was being ticked off on a portable computer unit that looked as if it had been hijacked from the Academy—probably Frank Malan’s personal contribution—settled in the center of the room, surrounded by nervous Vanguarders.

  I was entertaining thoughts of rushing Malan and that phaser he held on M’Giia, when a clack came at the wide barn doors of the airdrome and the telepath rushed to open the door.

  Holding my breath, I hoped—yes! Captain Kirk strode in, all alone.

  The whole room fell to silence. Kirk stood at the door, unimpressed by the throng of reactionaries.

  He started toward us. The only sound was the click of his boots on the hard concrete floor.

  Just when he would’ve come nearly to my side, he veered away and faced the whole roomful of Vanguarders.

  “I hear there’s a group here ready to take on the Klingons!”

  He sounded rousing, angry, and the crowd reacted with a roar of applause and cheers. They’d suddenly gone from a splinter group to a powerful body with credibility.

  “Sir!” Malan addressed him, pushing M’Giia away. “Your presence means victory to us!”

  Kirk turned to him in his famous no-nonsense way and said, “Ge to the point. What’s your plan?”

  “Sir, we’ve set up explosives in the offices of key Starfleet officials. Once those reluctant to act against the Klingons and Romulans are gone, we’re ready to step in and restore order immediately! You’ll be presiding over a new Federation!”

  “You better have placed your bombs well,” Kirk said blandly. “Federation security is no joke. Let’s see your layout.”

  Malan rushed to the computer table and scooped up a padd and handed it to Kirk. Kirk surveyed the information. He still hadn’t looked at me or even acknowledged that I was here.

  “Let’s see … looks good … oh, yes, I’ve wanted to get rid of that guy for a while now … incendiaries planted in Starfleet Security, Planetary Defense, and the Federation Council—very thorough. And H-hour is fifteen minutes from now. You people have guts, Malan” I underestimated you.”

  “Thank you, Captain! We’re honored, sir!”

  “Good for you.”

  Kirk glanced around, then tossed the padd to me. “Take a look, Forester. You might learn something.”

  The padd landed in my hands, and Kirk instantly swung away from me and started strolling toward the other side of the room, drawing with him the eyes of every Vanguard idiot in the place.

  “You know what we’re fighting for?” he began, with fire in his delivery. “You know what the stakes are in a galaxy filled with murderers?”

  I clutched the padd and sidled toward the computer set-up.

  “Ever since the Organian Peace Treaty,” Kirk went on, loudly and forcefully, “the Federation has been a wolf with no fangs. Hostile aliens nip at our heels and we cower back. Every day of peace brings us closer to the end of the Federation as we know it. And what do we do about it?”

  Keeping my eyes on the padd, I edged up to the computer and tapped the remote access key, which connected the countdown sequence into the padd.

  Just a few seconds … the timer sequences began scrolling on the padd’s screen.

  Kirk’s voice continued ringing through the hall. He kept moving, never letting anyone settle their attention, creating a moving attraction for those who were infatuated by his presence.

  “More shore leave for our enemies on Starfleet bases! More unaligned worlds brutalized by foreign landing parties! I say enough! You are the new blood that will stand up to interstellar assassins!”
/>
  The Vanguard cheered wildly, intoxicated by the smell of power and a bloodlust I just couldn’t understand.

  “Traitor!”

  A vicious scream pierced my ears from very close. The telepath was pointing at me, and the attention of the hall shifted from Kirk to me.

  “He’s trying to stop the countdown!”

  She plunged forward and snatched the padd out of my hands.

  “He blew out the timers! We’re ruined!”

  Malan bellowed, “I knew he was lying!” He speared his telepath with a glare. “How’d he fool your probes?”

  “I don’t know! He can’t—” Then her face changed and she wailed, “His science officer is a Vulcan! They must’ve set up a temporary shield!”

  Well, the cover was blown” I swung around, “Go, M’Giia!”

  I shoved M’Giia out of the center of the crowd toward a wall, though there was no place to go from there. At least we wouldn’t be surrounded.

  The telepath threw down the padd and drew her phaser, but M’Giia kicked wildly and knocked the telepath’s arm out of aim just as the phaser went off. The bolt seared the wall, and the phaser tumbled from the telepath’s hand.

  I lashed out and knocked down the nearest Vanguarder, but two more rushed in to replace him and they were rushing us.

  “Any ideas?” M’Giia gasped.

  “You take the first dozen, I’ll take the second—”

  My miserable attempt at defiance was met by a boot in the chest. I hit the wall and came back slugging. Malan appeared out of the crowd, his face a quilt of anger, and he drove his knee upward into my midsection. I was thrown hard, my lungs were heaving. Doubled and completely winded, I staggered against the wall and tried to fend off the Vanguard, but there were nearly fifty of them in here and only the two of us. In seconds, M’Giia and I were tackled.

  “The bombs!” The telepath choked out her fury. “What happened to the bombs!”

  Frank Malan was crouched in front of the computer remote, his face twisting in rage. “They’re shut down! He blew the timers!”

  Storming toward me, he let fly a backhanded slap that set my head ringing.

  “Tell me how to fix them, you traitorous bastard!”

  Dazed, I glared at him and actually smiled past a bruised lip. “Fix them yourself, you self-righteous maniac.”

  His teeth ground together and he boiled with anger. I figured I was dead, but Malan didn’t hit me again. Instead he drew his phaser and spun it to M’Giia’s head. “The alien invader dies first! How do you like this, Forester!”

  “Hold it!” The sharp voice of James Kirk cut through the hall.

  The captain came slowly through the surprised Vanguard.

  Disillusioned, Malan turned and pointed his phaser at Kirk. “Please … don’t tell me you’re a traitor too.”

  “Not likely,” Kirk said. “Forester lied to you, but he betrayed me first. If you want me to be your leader, his punishment is my call, not yours.”

  Malan held the phaser up, but his jaw worked with unsureness. His arms quivered and his legs shifted back and forth as he tried to decide what do to, who to trust, but for one who was so bad at trusting, such I decisions came hard. He didn’t know what to do.

  The fiery eyes of James Kirk never left Malan’s. The steady gaze was disarming for the idealistic, if misled, young cadet.

  I knew the feeling—I’d have followed James Kirk off a cliff in those few moments if he’d asked me. He was like a magician rising from smoke and hypnotizing us, and Frank suddenly looked very, very young.

  “Yes…” Malan’s voice was barely a scratch. “Yes, Captain!”

  Kirk held out his hand. At first Malan didn’t seem to understand, but then realized that Kirk was asking for the phaser.

  Overwhelmed, he handed the phaser to Kirk, and the captain turned the weapon on me.

  With the rest of the Vanguard standing behind him, James Kirk aimed the weapon squarely at my chest.

  He extended the weapon as if he were about to shoot, then paused.

  “This isn’t set to kill,” he said.

  Malan blinked. “It’s not?”

  Kirk slowly pivoted away, fiddling with the phaser. “Why kill when I can … wide angle stun?”

  He raised the weapon and fired, this time facing the entire squadron of Vanguarders. The whole roomful of robed nuts collapsed in a single purple heap!

  Malan had been standing near me, out of the line of fire, and now made a crazy dive for the telepath’s phaser and scooped the weapon from her unconscious body. He fumbled briefly, then stood up in the midst of his collapsed fellows, and raised his weapon.

  He looked up in time to see James Kirk’s phaser aimed squarely at his head.

  “Put the phaser down, Mr. Malan.”

  It was a standoff.

  Malan was ringing wet with sweat now, his plans destroyed, his hero betraying him, and his career in shreds.

  “Put it down, Frank,” I said. “The Vanguard’s finished.”

  Kirk moved slowly toward him, phaser aim never wavering. “I could stun you,” he said, “but I’d rather you make a decision.”

  I wanted to believe, and any good cadet would, that this was just the power of James Kirk’s mighty legend at work, but oddly I saw something completely different in Kirk’s own eyes. He knew there was more going on, perhaps that Frank Malan was an idealist and an enraptured young man whose beliefs had gotten the better of him, but that when it came down to actually pulling a phaser trigger, actually doing the killing himself with his own hands, the power necessary from the human soul was something Frank just didn’t possess.

  I learned a lot in those few seconds, about Frank, about myself, about conviction, and about James Kirk. He was even smarter than his legend.

  Then again, the legend was in our minds. Captain Kirk was really here.

  Malan was both confused and overpowered by the intensity of Kirk’s conviction. Up against that, Malan’s petty ambitions didn’t have a chance.

  Destruction of the soul, however, could be too much to bear.

  Malan cracked, yes, but not the way I expected. He turned his phaser away from James Kirk, and put it to his own head.

  Kirk paused an instant, then walked toward Malan, and he lowered his own phaser. What an incredible move … he might as well have dropped his own weapon!

  He reached out to Frank like a stern parent. He said absolutely nothing. The only voice in the wide room was that of Kirk’s strength of will.

  Broken and humiliated, Malan sank to one knee. His phaser fell away from his own skull. As James Kirk approached him, Frank Malan was a destroyed young man.

  And sad it was to see.

  Sad for me, to watch a fellow cadet go down under the weight of his own misconceptions, so far removed from everything Starfleet stood for. Maybe in some ways Frank was right, maybe we should be stronger, but his methods were all wrong. We couldn’t go jumping to violent solutions at warp speed. How could anyone ever trust us if we did?

  How could we trust each other?

  As Malan wept at his feet, James Kirk turned to me. “Hurt?”

  I sucked a hard breath into my tortured middle and managed to say, “Yah … it hurts.”

  But I smiled around it.

  Kirk scanned the scene, satisfied. Then he opened his communicator. “Kirk to Starfleet Security. Transport two teams to these coordinates. We have … looks like about fifty conspirators to take into custody.”

  “Starfleet Security, acknowledged, Captain. We’ll be right there.”

  M’Giia came to stand beside me, and she looked more satisfied and fulfilled than I’d ever seen her, as if she’d somehow avenged her lost family by saving the lives of others, That was a nice feeling, for both of us.

  “Nice work disarming the bombs, Mr. Forester,” Kirk said as he took charge of Frank’s phaser. “So much for another no-win scenario. Now you see why I don’t believe in them.”

  “Sir,” I rasped, “I’m be
ginning not to believe in them either!”

  “Good job. Don’t be too satisfied, though.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re not done. You and Mr. Sturek are going to throw your analysis into high warp. We’ve cut out the core of the Vanguard, but the Klingons are still angry about these activities and someone is still attacking outposts. People are still dying, Forester. It’s up to us to find out who, and stop them.”

  Chapter 19

  “I don’t understand. We’ve got several different fragments, but they all contain the same set of etched structures.”

  “Apparently there are old pathways and new pathways in the metal, with some that have been overwritten or blocked off.”

  “If I were a scientist, like you, that might not tell me anything. But I’m a pilot, and it tells me a lot. It suggests that something actually goes down those paths.”

  “David, they are simply too small. Only basic subatomic particles would be able to travel down these. There would be problems controlling the matrix.”

  “Let’s find out anyway.”

  That was what fatigue would get you—crazy guesses. Nothing could go down the things, so Sturek and I were looking anyway. The etchings on the bits of junk from the new attack ship were meticulously engineered on the molecular level. It wasn’t just random crystallization. That meant intelligence, not just a random attack by a big dumb being that looked like a ship. We weren’t dealing with a galactic grizzly bear here.

  Sturek was exhausted, even though he wasn’t admitting it. His voice was thready, his movements sluggish, but he was driven to find the key to the cybership. I knew he felt responsible for the loss of the first set of data, despite the fact that “logically” he had nothing to do with that.

  “No measurable change,” he said dully after our—how many experiments was this?

  No, I didn’t want to count anymore.

  “The results for protons and neutrons are the same. The simulation has failed.”

  Poor Sturek. I was letting him down. I wasn’t being original enough or crazy enough or something—I had to be more creative. That wasn’t in his bag of tricks, so it had to be in mine.