Star Trek: Starfleet Academy #2: Aftershock

by John Vornholt

  “Computer,” he said, “I’d like to call a number in Georgia.” He gave the number and settled back in his chair.

  “Your name and account?” asked the computer.

  McCoy answered with his name and his academy account. He still had plenty of credit to make calls, as he hardly made any.

  McCoy twisted nervously in his seat as he waited to be connected. He still didn’t know what he was going to say. When his father’s lined, cheerful face appeared on the screen, he nearly began to cry.

  “I have bad news, Dad,” he blurted out.

  “You didn’t flunk out, did you?” his dad asked with concern.

  “Not yet,” answered McCoy. “But I can’t come home over the winter break, at least not until the end of it.”

  McCoy’s father looked even sadder than when he thought his son was flunking. “Oh, I see. Well, everybody will be disappointed. What have you got, some extra studies?”

  “Not exactly.” McCoy had never been good at lying, especially to his dad. It was a family trait to stick with the truth. “Dad, I got in trouble for doing something stupid. To make amends, I joined a service club, Disaster Relief, and we have training next week.”

  A smile creased his father’s face. “Disaster relief can get pretty rough. You take care of yourself, Son. There will always be lots of other times we can be together.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” McCoy wasn’t so sure about that. After medical school, Starfleet could ship him off to the farthest corner of the galaxy, and his dad wasn’t getting any younger.

  “As soon as the training is over,” he promised, “I’ll let you know if there’s any chance of me getting home.”

  “Just do a good job, and make us proud of you.” Th older man must have seen something in his son’s eyes, because he asked, “Are you happy there?”

  “No, not really,” admitted McCoy. “But I’ve made too many mistakes already, so I’m going to stick it out at the academy. I don’t want to fall behind again.”

  “It doesn’t matter where you finish the race,” said his dad, “only that you finish it. Don’t worry about us, we’ll save you some catfish.”

  McCoy smiled. “Thanks, Dad. My love to everybody. Good-bye.”

  “Bye, Leonard.” His dad smiled, but his lower lip quivered a bit.

  The cadet turned off the computer, and the screen went blank. He sat staring at the dark phosphors for a moment, wondering if he would ever know what he really wanted. He hadn’t gone home for years, so why should he be so upset about missing this trip? What did he really want—all of space, or a small town in Georgia?

  It just seemed as if there wasn’t enough time to do anything. Not enough time to study, to visit his family, or figure out where he was going with his life. How could someone even find the time to have a girlfriend?

  His luck had to get better, decided McCoy. Despite what the Vulcan had said, he knew there was such a thing as luck. Right now, his was all bad.

  Chapter 3

  A week later, McCoy’s luck still hadn’t changed. He was crouched on the floor of a burning building, knee-deep in hot ashes. There was no fresh air, because he was breathing from a tank on his back. Searing flames lapped up the oxygen and pressure-cooked his padded fire suit.

  The tricorder! he told himself. He could barely see in the thick smoke, even with his helmet and faceplate. The sweat was running down his back from the hot suit, and he just wanted to get out of there and jump in a lake.

  Get the tricorder! his mind ordered. McCoy fumbled for the contraption on his utility belt—every movement was difficult with the thick gloves. He finally pulled the medical tricorder out and began scanning for life signs.

  He found a life sign—weak enough to be a dying child—about fifteen meters away. The child was under a fallen metal oven, if that was possible. Anything was possible, McCoy told himself, in this hellish aftermath of a meteor striking a defenseless planet.

  McCoy staggered to his feet in the heavy gear and ran for the spot where he detected the life sign. He again consulted his tricorder, and the readings were definite but fading. He had to act fast, and his only course was to try to move the teetering oven. It seemed to be pinning the child under fallen floorboards.

  He grabbed the oven and tried to budge it. A twinge of protest from the muscles in his back made him realize that he wasn’t strong enough. Then he remembered that he had help in the form of several exotic pieces of equipment.

  McCoy took the forcefield brace out of his side pocket. The instrument was no bigger than a flashlight, but it could hold up a ceiling. It was overkill to use it to lift an oven, but there was no time to think of something better. He had to save that child!

  With a twist, he set the device to what he hoped was enough outward force to move the oven about a meter. Unfortunately he didn’t set it for a gradual release, and the forcefield bounced the oven onto its side. The sudden weight crushed the floorboards underneath, and the oven disappeared in a cloud of sparks and smoke.

  McCoy gulped and peered into the crater where the life signs were. After waving away the smoke, he could see the girl! She was about ten years old and pinned under chunks of the wall. If she was alive, it was only barely—she looked unconscious.

  He fought the temptation to check for a pulse—the tricorder said she was still alive, and he would save time by believing it. As the flames roared all around him, the medic-in-training tried to remember the exact steps he had to take.

  First he slapped a locator badge on the girl’s chest, then he gave her a hypo with ten cc’s of stimulant to survive the transporter. After doing that, McCoy backed away, stumbling, and touched the button on the side of his helmet.

  “Alpha-nine to base!” he shouted, his own voice ringing in his ears. “One to beam up, critical! Locator one-zero-zero.”

  “Transporting,” answered a businesslike voice. “She’s very weak.”

  “Just get her,” muttered McCoy. The last thing he wanted to hear was that the child had been lost in a transporter beam. That was the way he feared to go, and he hated those unnatural contraptions. Flames began to soar all around him, and McCoy scuttled on his hands and knees out of the burning building.

  As he sprawled into the grass and looked up at the bright blue sky, he wondered if he had made a mistake. Actually, a lot of mistakes. Starfleet Academy was just one of them. He yanked off his helmet and breathed the damp air of San Francisco, and even it smelled good.

  “Score seventy-five,” announced Captain Raelius. Despite the heavy suit, McCoy jumped to his feet.

  “But, sir, didn’t I rescue the child?”

  The dark-skinned, gray-haired woman gave him an icy glare. “Yes, but you destroyed our floor in there. On a real site, you could have taken out the entire floor with that stunt. Next time check the timing on the brace.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Raelius put her hands on her hips. “Now we’ve got to wait while our crew has to turn off the fire and resurrect the oven. Your overall time was also slow, Mr. McCoy, although you administered the hypo efficiently.”

  She glanced at the replay of his performance on her screen. “You still have to familiarize yourself better with the equipment. You passed, but it was a less than sterling performance.”

  McCoy still breathed a huge sigh of relief. “I just didn’t want to lose the survivor, especially in the transporter. Maybe it would help for me to see it done. Could I watch somebody else go through it?”

  The captain nodded and opened up her communicator. “Raelius to Clayborne, how are the repairs coming?”

  “We’re almost done, sir.” McCoy could hear scuffling footsteps over the tiny device. “All right, Captain, we’re clear. You can ignite when ready.”

  Raelius nodded to the control tower in the center of the training yard. At once, the row of decrepit buildings burst into flames. Fingers of fire lashed out the open windows. Fortunately the entire structure was fireproof. It was still a very realistic simulatio
n, thought McCoy. A little too realistic.

  “Send the next one,” ordered Captain Raelius into her communicator. She glanced at her screen. “That would be Cadet Spock, the Vulcan.”

  McCoy peered over the captain’s shoulder to watch a lithe figure cut bravely through the flames. True, the Vulcan was wearing a fire suit, but it was as if he didn’t even know fear of the flames. He stood calmly in the center of the burning building and consulted his tricorder.

  “Nobody is expected to actually lift the oven,” Raelius told McCoy. “So at least you had the right idea.”

  Satisfied with his readings, Spock strode through billows of smoke and into the kitchen. He swiftly located the robotic child under the floorboards, hung his tricorder on his belt, and moved toward the oven.

  “He’s going to try to lift it,” said McCoy with a smile.

  “Almost everyone does,” remarked the captain.

  But Spock didn’t try to lift the fallen oven. With complete confidence, he bent down and picked up the oven as if it were a box of feather pillows. Then he carefully set it down in the most secure part of the room.

  McCoy and Captain Raelius gaped at one another. “I heard they were strong,” muttered the captain, “but that’s strong.”

  The Vulcan’s movements were uncannily rapid and sure as he administered the hypo to the robot and put a locator badge on her chest. As calmly as if he were reporting the weather, Spock said, “Alpha-ten to base. One to beam up, critical but stable. Locator one-zero-zero.”

  “Transporting,” replied the voice of the nonexistent chief. “Got her cleanly.”

  “Spock out.” The Vulcan didn’t run from the burning building as McCoy had—he calmly checked his tricorder to see if there were any other life-sign readings. Only when he was satisfied that the building was clear did he stroll into the sunlight.

  “Well done!” said Captain Raelius. “Mr. Spock, you scored one hundred percent and set a record time for this exercise.” She glanced at McCoy. “If you want to know how to do it, that’s how you do it.”

  “Yeah,” said McCoy thoughtfully. “Good job there, Spock.”

  The Vulcan looked matter-of-factly at the humans. “A satisfactory job, no more. I hope to improve upon it.”

  “You could say ‘thanks,’” grumbled McCoy under his breath.

  “Mr. McCoy,” said Captain Raelius, “you have the medic’s course on bandaging and compression at eleven-hundred hours. Get some lunch, and we’ll see you back here at fifteen hundred.”

  “Yes, sir,” said McCoy. He trudged off wearily in the heavy fire suit.

  After several hours of bandaging robots until his fingers were stiff, McCoy’s luck took a turn for the worse. He reported back to Captain Raelius, who put him at the front of the line. His mouth gaping, McCoy stared at one of his worst nightmares—a long ladder that stretched upward into infinity.

  Actually the ladder extended to a fifth-story window, but it sure looked like infinity. The narrow metal rails and rungs looked as flimsy as spiderwebs. He would almost rather join the cadets across the street, who were flying around with jetpacks on their backs.

  The sight of the ladder brought back a childhood memory, when workers had left a ladder up to his family’s roof. Being a dumb kid, he tried to climb it. He got most of the way and froze when the ladder began to creak. That creaking sound was the killer—it was the same thing that scared him about Ferris wheels.

  In the roof escapade, they ended up having to call the police to rescue him. They might have to do that again, thought McCoy, because now he was supposed to climb five times that far. It couldn’t possibly be safe way up there, creaking and swaying in the wind.

  “Go on,” said Captain Raelius at the base of the ladder. The ladder was attached to a hovercraft that looked sturdy enough, but McCoy had seen it flying only a few minutes ago. He didn’t care that it was now parked sturdily on the ground. There was nothing in that fifth-floor window that he wanted to see.

  “I don’t suppose that medics can be excused from this exercise?” asked McCoy meekly.

  “No exceptions,” answered Raelius. “We have a man up there watching for you. All you have to do is climb the ladder, put the locator badge on the victim, and call for backup. In less than two minutes.”

  McCoy nodded bravely. At least he didn’t have to wear a thick fire suit, only a protective helmet, first-aid kit, and rescue equipment. Just a little climb up a ladder, he told himself. Pretend it’s a steep set of stairs.

  He forced his legs to move, and he walked unsteadily onto the hovercraft. Taking a deep breath, he stepped upon the first rung. When nothing terrible happened, he kept going up, rung after rung. To his surprise, it wasn’t too bad.

  Then his backpack began to cut into his shoulders as he kept reaching higher. His utility belt, which had felt light on the ground; suddenly weighed him down like a ball and chain. His arms were already weary by the time he was level with the first floor, and he had four more to go!

  McCoy was okay until he made the mistake of looking down. The ground and streets below him sloshed around like a pool of water. He found himself getting woozy, as if he were standing on a diving board in the hot sun, ready to dive in.

  That’s concrete down there! he told himself. McCoy forced himself to look upward, but that wasn’t much better. The ladder still looked like gossamer threads that wouldn’t hold a fly, and the open window looked so far away that it was only a rumor.

  Also McCoy knew that he had to keep his legs moving, or he would blow the two-minute time limit. And he didn’t want to have to do this again! With that thought in mind, he kept his legs moving one rung after another, but the only place he could stand to look was at his hands.

  To look up was bad—to look down was terrible.

  He supposed he was about halfway up the ladder, and he was getting into a rhythm with his climbing. Then that famous San Francisco wind started howling. A gust hit him and the ladder swayed and creaked.

  McCoy hugged the metal rails with both arms, and he thought he could survive the wind. But the groaning of the ladder set his teeth to gnashing. McCoy forgot what he was doing and looked down. The ground didn’t even look real anymore—it was like a map or a toy. The only reality was that he was swaying around on a creaky ladder fifty meters in the air!

  Keep climbing! McCoy told himself. There’s an open window only a few meters ahead.

  Suddenly the window became more than a crazy goal, it became his salvation. He wasn’t even thinking about the pretend victim on the fifth floor—he was thinking about saving himself and getting off this infernal ladder.

  McCoy’s legs began to pump all by themselves, and he kept climbing hand over hand, up and up. Only fear was making his body work, but it was doing a great job. When he actually got close to the window, he was surprised to see a trainer gazing at him.

  “Move it, Cadet,” urged the trainer. “Your time limit is almost up.”

  McCoy was still thinking only about getting off the ladder as he scurried the last few meters. The wind was wailing at this height, and a seagull glided lazily past him. McCoy kept his eyes fixed on the welcoming window, looking nowhere else. Finally he vaulted headfirst through the open window and tumbled gratefully to the floor.

  The trainer looked down at him with disgust. “You have ten seconds.”

  Without a moment to think, McCoy leapt to his feet and turned on his tricorder. He rapidly located the robotic dummy in a bedroom and rushed there. Counting off the seconds as he ran, he pulled a locator badge out of his pack and slapped it on the dummy’s chest.

  Then he snapped open his communicator. “Alpha-nine to base,” he announced. “One victim found, unconscious. Request backup.”

  “You made it with one second to spare,” said Captain Raelius. “Not well done, but done. Come on down.”

  McCoy sighed gratefully. He turned to the trainer and smiled. “How do I get out of here?”

  “What do you mean, how do you get out of
here? Down the ladder.”

  “Down the ladder?” gasped McCoy.

  The trainer scowled. “Do you think there will be a lift or a transporter everywhere you go? In an emergency, you can’t trust the lifts or transporters. So it’s back down the ladder for you.”

  McCoy’s shoulders slumped. This was going to be even worse than climbing up had been, because now he would have to look down to see where he was putting his feet. And the first step was going to be the hardest, as he had to back out the window and onto the ladder.

  At that moment, the idea of quitting the Disaster Relief Service Club seemed very sensible. Even logical. But the trainer was right, too. There was no point learning to climb up a ladder if he couldn’t also learn to climb down.

  “Clamp your safety line to the top rung,” said the trainer. “That will make you feel safer when you start down.”

  “Thanks.” McCoy pulled the clamp of his safety line from the belt on his waist. The line was on a spring that loosened if pulled slowly but tightened if pulled quickly in an emergency. He did feel safer after he fastened the clamp to the top rung of the ladder.

  Nevertheless, McCoy didn’t like sticking his legs out the window and dangling them in space. He was very relieved once his feet finally landed on a rung and he could stand. He couldn’t leave his safety clamp fastened to the top rung, so he unfastened it and started down, slowly and steadily.

  McCoy wanted desperately to get to the ground, but he was in no hurry. He got back into a rhythm and began to feel as if he would survive this experience. He discovered that he could look at his feet and avoid looking at the woozy ground so far below. He was going to make it!

  Suddenly the ladder jerked hard, and McCoy was tossed over the handrails. He lunged for the rung and held on while his legs swung loosely under the ladder. With his heart pounding, he fought to get a grip on the damp rung. Below him, people were running in confusion, or maybe it just looked that way from fifty meters in the air.

  His fingers began to slip. “Help!” yelled McCoy.