“Wait,” I said, “we?”
“I will need help,” Galen said.
* * *
“That’s an amazing opportunity,” Phillipa said. “You’re not going to turn it down…”
We were outside the academy library. Soon after Phillipa mentioned she regularly had lunch there, I found her and made a point of returning every day with a different culinary delight, which wasn’t difficult given the abundance of food replicators on campus. Still, I was making creative choices unfamiliar to her. Today we ate a lamb vindaloo. It was the kind of romantic gesture that I’ve long since abandoned.
“Of course not,” I said, and meant it. I was being offered the opportunity to be the protégé of the Federation’s greatest archaeologist, putting me in a position to possibly inherit that title myself.
“That’s a relief,” Phillipa said. “We will be quite a couple.” She smiled and I leaned to kiss her. For a while she had playfully discouraged my more assertive romantic overtures, but recently I’d worn her down. Phillipa was ambitious; she saw Starfleet as an opportunity to put her own stamp on galactic law. She took pride in her unusual track of law school and then the academy, and there was something that appealed to her about the road I was on that might lead me to chase archaeology at the expense of an academy career.
That evening, I returned to my room with Phillipa to find Corey and Marta there.
“Pack your bags, Johnny,” Corey said.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“We’ve got into the flight school on Morikin VII,” Marta said. “The three of us.” Several weeks previously Corey and Marta had convinced me to apply for training on Morikin VII. It was an elective the academy offered, a ten-week elite flight instruction on a remote world.
“I didn’t know you’d applied to Elite Flight,” Phillipa said. I had actually forgotten about it, assuming that among the 12,000 cadets in the academy, there was little chance that I would get in. I had a feeling that Corey must have had something to do with our acceptance. It was too much of a coincidence.
“What are you looking at me for?” Corey read the suspicion in my expression. Corey had gotten very good at breaking rules and not getting caught.
“You’re not going, are you?” Phillipa said, less as a question than a demand.
I was conflicted. I was half a step from leaving the academy altogether, and I certainly didn’t see myself on a path as an elite pilot. And yet, the idea of getting a chance to be stationed on a faraway planet with my two good friends, learning how to fly state-of-the-art ships…
“Have a nice time,” Phillipa said, and left the room. I had gotten lost in a bit of a reverie, and hadn’t noticed that I’d hurt her feelings. I ran out after her.
“Phillipa, please stop.” I caught up to her outside the building and grabbed her arm.
“Let go of me,” she said.
“Let’s just talk…”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t want to get in the way of your little jaunt with your drinking buddies.”
“It’s just ten weeks…”
“Ten weeks with Marta…” Phillipa said, and this was the heart of it. She wasn’t comfortable with me having such a close friend who was a woman. The fact was, I thought Marta was very attractive, but I was in love with Phillipa, or at least I thought I was, and I’d told her as much.
“You have to trust me,” I said.
“I will,” she said. “If you don’t go.” I don’t know what it was about this request, but it rankled me. It showed that Phillipa didn’t trust me. I couldn’t accede to it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I want to go.” I saw in her reaction a flash of hurt and vulnerability, but only a flash.
“Fine, go,” she said. “I’m going to go, too.” She turned and walked off. I didn’t quite know how it happened, but our relationship was over. I wandered back to my room, a mass of confusion. Corey and Marta were still there. I told them what happened.
“I’m really going to miss her,” Corey said.
“Corey,” Marta said. Corey, admonished, gave me an apologetic look.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It probably wasn’t meant to be.” I was hurt, but also a little angry. It would be a while before I let myself miss her.
“We’re going to have the time of our lives,” Corey said. I smiled. His enthusiasm was infectious enough that I momentarily forgot my rejection. It was exciting; I was about to go to a new world. And I wouldn’t see Phillipa again for over twenty year.
* * *
“Probably don’t want to unpack your clothes until I fix the moisture problem,” the captain said. Marta, Corey, and I were crammed into one of the small shelters on Morikin VII. There were three cots, three dressers, and one closet. And it was raining inside. There was something wrong with the environmental controls and moisture was dripping off the ceiling. “Maybe one of you can give me a hand…”
We had just arrived after a two-week flight on the U.S.S. Rhode Island, an antique class J freighter resupplying the flight school. It was my second trip into space and it was only marginally more exciting than my first. My cabin, such as it was, at least had a porthole, and the captain, a jovial man named Griffin who ran the ship with his family, had no problem with giving the three of us the run of his vessel.
It turned out the ship was a lot more pleasant than our destination. Morikin VII was not a very hospitable place. The atmosphere was a combination of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and sulfuric acid, and the winds often reached hundreds of kilometers an hour. When we arrived we expected to find a state-of-the-art facility; instead we found quite the opposite. We were beamed into a darkened cargo storage warehouse, one of several domed structures connected to each other by underground tunnels. There was a man about sixty, waiting for us alone. As he approached, I was surprised to notice that he was wearing the rank of captain. We stood at attention.
“At ease,” the man said with a smile. We relaxed somewhat. “I’m Captain Kirk.” Captain Kirk? The same name as the famous starship captain? It was impossible of course; he was much too young, and James T. Kirk had been dead for decades. I decided it must just be a coincidence.
We introduced ourselves, and he led us out of the warehouse on a short tour of the facility, which was only made up of five domes: the warehouse, his quarters, our quarters, a common area for meals and recreation, and a hangar. Corey and I had speculated on the journey what kind of cutting-edge craft we would get to fly. What we saw in the hangar deck surprised us.
“These are class F shuttlecraft,” the captain said. We were looking at two dilapidated transports, showing signs of age and wear.
“They’re like fifty years old,” Corey said.
“More like seventy,” Kirk said, with a wry smile. I think we weren’t the first disappointed cadets to be under his charge. He then took us to our waterlogged quarters. Marta and I helped him repair the reclamation controls, the source of the problem. He then served us a simple meal of some kind of broiled meat with mashed potato, which he prepared himself. He plated our food, showed us where to clean up when we were done, then went to his quarters and left us alone.
“No replicator?” Corey said. “This has to be some kind of joke.”
“I feel that we’ve done something wrong,” I said. Marta looked at us; she seemed to know more than we did.
“You guys know who that is, right?” she said. “That’s Peter Kirk, James Kirk’s nephew.” I’d forgotten that the famous Captain Kirk had a nephew; though he’d entered Starfleet, his career had not been as notable as that of his famous relation.
“That can’t be,” Corey said. “Did he commit some crime we don’t know about? Sleep with the Federation president’s daughter or something?”
“No,” Marta said. “He started this school. It was his idea.”
“His idea,” I said, “to create a terrible place for cadets to spend ten weeks?”
“Every cadet who has gone through the pro
gram has gotten a prime starship posting upon graduation,” Marta said. “He must be teaching something.”
The next day he went through a thorough maintenance check of one of the shuttlecraft, then took us for a flight. It was a rough ride leaving the atmosphere; once we got into space it became quite boring. Kirk did not engage us in much conversation beyond familiarizing us with the shuttle controls. He had us take turns flying the ship; it was a leisurely flight to some outlying asteroids. Kirk indicated one of the larger ones.
“There’s a Nausicaan mining base there,” he said. “Probably want to avoid it.” The natives of the planet Nausicaa had been a surly species, historically pirates, only recently reaching an uneasy peace with the Federation. Corey, Marta, and I tried to get a look at the base; it was built into the side of the asteroid. Extending from it were two docking arms with Nausicaan fighters docked.
“They have a base in Federation space?” I said.
“It’s been here for over a hundred years,” Kirk said. “I think they have a claim.” He then turned a ship around to return to Morikin VII, taking back the controls to re-enter the atmosphere. Once back in the hangar, Kirk ordered us to complete another maintenance check on the ship, even though we’d done that before we took off. But as we examined the aged craft, we saw that flying in Morikin VII’s atmosphere had caused a lot of damage; the ship needed quite a bit of attention. This ended up being our daily routine: maintenance session, a flight into space, then another maintenance session. Despite all our preparations, we often faced mechanical and electrical failures while flying, and Kirk insisted on letting us fix them ourselves.
Kirk himself seemed something of an enigma. He didn’t talk to us much outside of his lessons, and he cooked for us every night, always some kind of food native to his homeland Iowa. We tried to ask him questions about his career, but he didn’t seem that interested in talking about it. And though I was filled with curiosity about the man who was his uncle, it seemed impolitic to ask.
Eventually, he began taking us up one at a time, to see how much we could do on our own. On my first solo flight, I successfully piloted the shuttle out of the atmosphere. Once in orbit, however, I noticed an imbalance in one of the engines. In order to check it out, I needed to leave the helm.
“Pretend I’m not here,” Kirk said. “What would you do?” I realized he wasn’t going to help me, so I put the ship on automatic pilot and headed to the engine compartment in the rear of the ship. Before I reached it, there was a small explosion.
I turned. Kirk was slumped back in his chair, and the control panel was on fire.
I grabbed the fire extinguisher and doused the flame, then went to Kirk. He was unconscious, his face slightly burned. I pressed my finger against his neck and thankfully, there was a pulse.
I would have to tend to him later. I looked at the console; the automatic pilot must have shorted out. The control readouts indicated the main engines were off. The short must have triggered an automatic shutdown. I hit the emergency restart for the engines; the cycle would take two minutes. That’s when I noticed our position.
The shuttle was being pulled down to Morikin VII. I would burn up in the atmosphere long before I could restart the engines. The only power I had was in the attitude jets, which were separate from the engines, but they wouldn’t give me nearly enough power to escape the pull of the planet. I clicked on the communicator.
“Mayday! Mayday! This is shuttlecraft one. Morikin base, do you read?” It was a futile effort—the communication system was out—and frankly I didn’t really believe that Corey or Marta would have any suggestions for me about how to handle this. I looked out the porthole: Morikin VII was filling the view. I would be entering the atmosphere in seconds. I was lost.
“Bounce…” It was Kirk. He was fighting his way to consciousness.
“What, sir?”
“Aim toward the planet…” he said. His voice was weak. “Bounce… off…” He fell back into unconsciousness.
Bounce off what? The planet? That didn’t seem likely. Then I remembered something from my studies of ancient spacecraft, about how they used to skip off the atmosphere to slow their descent. It was just a matter of hitting it at the proper angle. I took the controls, and turned the craft directly down into Morikin VII.
The shuttle started to rock, buffeted by atmospheric turbulence. The temperature inside rose as the outer skin began to heat. I pulled the shuttle up hard.
At first the turbulence didn’t stop, and I thought I had miscalculated, but then saw the planet begin to fall away out the porthole. The shuttle steadied, and I was in a low orbit.
The engines’ restart sequence completed; I had power again. I pushed the throttle forward to move out into a higher orbit, then grabbed the emergency medical kit and tended to Kirk’s wounds. He was not seriously injured, and came round after a bit.
“It worked?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“My uncle taught me that,” he said. I took this as permission to say something about his famous relative; I had missed the wistfulness in the way he said it.
“He was one of my heroes growing up,” I said.
“Mine too.”
“What was he like?”
“You probably know him as well as I did,” Kirk said. The heartbreak apparent in his voice spoke volumes, and I decided this would be the last conversation we would have on the subject.
* * *
After almost ten weeks on Morikin VII, we felt changed. The mundane routine combined with the poor living conditions and the moments of true terror dealing with old, unreliable equipment had given Corey, Marta, and I a strength and confidence that we’d never had before. It made us all a little cocky (although, in Corey’s case, it just made him more so) and led to an incident which would have dire ramifications for me.
Eventually, Kirk let us take the shuttles up by ourselves, and one day I was flying out toward the asteroid field. I wanted to get a closer look at the Nausicaan station. We’d had no contact with the Nausicaans, and I’d never met one face to face, though the images I’d seen made me very curious.
I’d brought my shuttle to within a few hundred kilometers when my communication panel lit up.
“Alien vessel! State your purpose!” The voice was rough and intimidating. I should have just turned the ship around and fled back to Morikin VII, but I was too curious and overconfident.
“Cadet Picard,” I said. “I’m stationed on Morikin VII. My vessel is in need of repairs. Request permission to dock.” I wanted to get a look inside that base.
“Request denied!”
“Your base is inside Federation space,” I said, “and Federation law requires that you help ships in distress.” There was a long pause; I didn’t know why the Federation let the Nausicaans, who were not part of the Federation, keep a base in our territory, but I made the assumption that they wouldn’t want to do anything overt to disrupt that.
“You may dock,” the voice said.
I pulled the shuttle up to one of the empty docking arms, and a mooring tube extended to my hatch. I opened it and entered the base. I walked through a cold, dank corridor lined with piping, leading to a catwalk overlooking an ore mining and processing facility. The interior of the asteroid had been carved out; conveyers carrying buckets of ore moved slowly out of a massive cave. Miners, presumably Nausicaans, in environmental suits oversaw the dumping of the ore into a giant fusion furnace, where it was melted. It was both primitive and impressive. Before I could admire it for too long, I was confronted by two Nausicaans.
“Hello,” I said.
They were both much taller than me, had ashen skin, large manes of hair, and small tusks surrounding their mouths. They were very intimidating, an obviously predatory species.
“What is wrong with your ship?” the lead Nausicaan said.
“Just a problem with the guidance control,” I said. “Shouldn’t take too long to fix. I was wondering if I could use your bathroom?”
“Bathroom?” The lead Nausicaan looked like he would kill me without a second thought. “No, you will not use our bathroom.”
“Federation law requires that you provide sanitary facilities to ships in distress.” I was now lying, there was no such law, but I didn’t think these two would know. I tried to walk past them, but the leader grabbed me by the collar.
“Get your ship repaired and get out!”
“Let go of me,” I said. I looked him hard in the eye. He laughed, and brought his hand up to strike me.
“Puny human,” he said.
I immediately hit him in the center of his chest. The move surprised him, and he was momentarily winded. The other turned to pull out a knife, but I kicked it out of his hand and hit him in the throat.
I turned on the lead Nausicaan, who had gotten his breath back. He swung his large fist at me, but I grabbed it and threw him over my shoulder. He landed on the other Nausicaan, and they both flew back onto the floor of the catwalk. I had clearly overstayed my welcome.
“On second thought, I don’t need the bathroom,” I said, and ran back through the mooring tunnel to my shuttle, closing the hatch behind me. I started the engines, and disconnected from the docking arm, flying away from the base at full speed. I was initially concerned about being pursued but no craft followed me. The two Nausicaans probably wouldn’t make a fuss, I’d just embarrassed them, and as I headed back to Morikin I laughed heartily, exhilarated by my daring.
Soon after, Corey, Marta, and I left Morikin and returned to the academy. I quickly found that I had a new problem. The classroom had very little appeal to me. I’d survived an adventure, and found myself more easily distracted from my studies. I also discovered a new confidence with women, one that is often excused in men as “youthful indiscretion,” but was really an insensitive indulgence. I was self-centered, unconcerned with the feelings of the women I pursued. I would pursue them with abandon and cast them aside without a second thought. It was shamefully superficial, and I often find myself mortified by my memories.
STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JEAN-LUC PICARD Page 6
