Starfleet Academy Read online

  Kirk nodded at Chekov, then looked at me.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Uh—” I licked my lip, but that didn’t help. “Um…”

  He drew a long breath, giving me one more second, then insisted, “The name, right now.”

  “Uh—Cadet David Forester, sir.”

  Turning again to the audience, Kirk said, “Cadet Forester survived. The rest of you are dead. So is your commandant and your command school’s senior captain.” He motioned to Sulu and Rotherot. “Not good things to have on your headstones.”

  He moved away from me, forward on the stage, until all eyes were fixed on him. His voice carried through the hall.

  “Now you know that non-action has repercussions, just as action does. Sometimes a rash decision now is better than a thoughtful one five minutes from now. You’re about to go into command training on the most technologically advanced simulators in the galaxy. Don’t treat them like simulators. You never know what’s real and what’s not. What you learn at this Academy you’ll be taking with you … out there.”

  He pointed upward, at the vaulted ceiling, at the sky, at space beyond both. The field of cadets looked up, and so did I, as if we could actually see space through James Kirk’s eyes.

  “And out there,” his voice carried majestically, “everything’s real. You answered the most profound call in history—commanding a Starship crew.”

  He paused as the backstage crew got the display screen moving again. The frozen ship passed on by, and blended into an aerial view of San Francisco, and Starfleet Headquarters.

  Captain Kirk brought us down to Earth with a single step forward.

  “Starting today,” he said, “you better be ready. There are damned few second chances, but plenty of first ones. They’ll fall on your shoulders. You’ll be the ones to open the galaxy. You’ll be Starfleet.”

  A moment of silence fell, chased soon by applause breaking out from the cadets like bells ringing. Another moment, and that applause blended with cheers.

  Commandant Rotherot stepped forward to James Kirk’s side, and motioned for the cadets to sit down.

  My legs felt like rubber. I wasn’t going to faint, was I? Did they want me to go back to my seat or what?

  “Captain Sulu?” Commandant Rotherot gestured to the lectern.

  “Sit down, everyone,” the “assassinated” captain said as he took the lectern, and he paused a moment as the field of cadets uneasily lowered into their seats again. “I am Captain Hikaru Sulu. I’ll be with you the next two years before I take command of the U.S.S. Excelsior.”

  Behind him, on the huge display screen, a view of Earth was decorated brilliantly by the passing of the great new class of starship in standard orbit. Heavy and complex, the Excelsior slowly passed in tribute to her future captain.

  “It’s my job,” Sulu went on, “to create the Starfleet commanders of the future. I’ll test you on your ability to manage your crew. Remember, you’ll no longer be judged solely by your own conduct, but also by the conduct of those you command. And now, in case you don’t already know … I’m privileged to present my friend, our distinguished guest … Captain James T. Kirk.”

  I stood aside as James Kirk took Sulu’s place, as if none of this had happened at all! How could he be so—

  My breath stuck in my throat when the big backdrop blended to a crisp, touchable vision of the new Enterprise—NCC1701-A. There was no mistaking that ship. Refit and sparkling, the fleet’s flagship soared slowly past behind her famous captain. They were together right here in this room, before my very eyes.

  What was I supposed to feel?

  “Welcome to command school,” James Kirk said, as casually as if none of the staged attack had happened at all. It was as if we all had a joke to share. “You’ve just embarked on the most challenging course the academy has to offer, and also the most rewarding. It’s often said that command cadets are the best of the best. And it’s also said that I commanded the best ship and the best crew. You want to know the truth? There’s no such thing as ‘the best.’ One ship may be brand new state-of-the-art technology, but it also might have countless bugs to work out. Another ship may be a hundred years old and shake like a rattle, but the bugs are long gone and that’s why she’s a hundred years old.”

  He paused, looked out over the field of command candidates, and his eyes twinkled with deep-laid tease. Behind him, the gorgeous new Enterprise passed by, and what came behind her choked up every throat and brought a tear to every eye….

  There, gigantic on the screen behind her captain, was Starfleet’s greatest lady, the very first Enterprise, the oldest, the toughest, the one that had gone the farthest back when far was really far. She looked simple to us now, her muscular lines basic and her hull plates flashing like polished eggshells. Her red sensor disk was a target against the sky, or a pulsing heart against history.

  The blood fell right out of my face. I was as white as that ship.

  Now the ship faded away, replaced by a field of atmosphere-blue, and upon that was imposed the brassy delta shield symbol of Starfleet, with a brass ring around it as tall as the whole screen. There the display paused, and let Captain Kirk take over our complete attention.

  “The same goes for your crew,” he said, his voice mellow and captivating. “They may be technical wizards, but if they can’t work as a team, their skills are useless to you. When you meet your crew you’ll find a thousand abilities and talents and flaws all crackling against each other. And that’s where you come in. Those of you who succeed in building a team will be among the elite few who take us to the stars. Good luck … fair weather … and never forget that risk is your business.”

  The hall full of cadets stared at him, overwhelmed. So did I. Was he telling us that all those “best and brightest” phrases were just wishful good publicity? That’s what it sounded like—and he would know, wouldn’t he?

  I had the feeling we’d gotten the greatest advice we could be given in ten years of experience, and James Kirk had given it to us in ten sentences.

  After a humbling pause, somebody way in back stood up and started applauding. Then, like rising tide, everybody did. Soon the hall was a sea of cheers.

  I was still looking for my hands when Commandant Rotherot came forward again. “Cadets, you’re dismissed to meet with your advisers. Good luck.”

  The rubber legs only shuddered when I tried to move. Cold sweat skittered beneath my uniform. That wasn’t very best or brightest.

  A few steps from me, Captain Sulu moved up to Kirk’s side with an evil grin. “Did you trip on purpose?”

  “I’ll never tell,” James Kirk said with a smirk.

  Commander Chekov hopped up onto the stage. “I love to watch the cadet’s faces when we do something like this. I wish we could do it every year!”

  “They’d wise up if we did,” Kirk droned, unimpressed with himself. He pointed to me then, and I thought I’d been shot. “Captain Sulu, I want you to put that kid in charge of those kids.”

  Now he swung that pointing finger around to the Vulcan, the dark-skinned guy, and the two women. Maybe I was a little slow, but I was getting the idea that these were cadets too, snagged for their first undercover mission.

  “Done,” Sulu said bluntly.

  Kirk turned and stepped right up to me, drilling me with the most unflinching eyes I’d ever seen. “Forester … good name. Gives you a lot to live up to.”

  Having no idea what he was talking about, I was afraid to agree. “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  “The name Forester has been synonymous with high seas adventure since the first Horatio Hornblower novel. C. S. Forester taught me how to command a ship.”

  Oh, great! I stammered, “But that’s not—”

  “Not fair having to live up to someone else’s reputation?” Kirk anticipated. His sharp eyes carried an undefined glint. “You bet it isn’t. Just wait till you have to live up to your own. And by the way, next time try to hit the bad
guys. Dismissed.”

  He turned away from me. Just like that. Just turned as if all this were nothing.

  Robin tentatively climbed up onto the stage, keeping shy of the cluster of legendary men, and swerved to my side as if I could protect him from them.

  He took my arm. “David, that was great! You all right?”

  I choked up a voice to tell him I was fine, but something else squeaked out.

  “I hit James Kirk…”

  Four hours later, my stomach was still quivering and an echo looped in my head. I hit James Kirk. I hit James Kirk….

  “Cadet? This way.”

  A door panel slid open in front of me, and Commander Chekov gestured me through the entrance onto a gunmetal gray carpet. The first thing I noticed was the sanctuarial quiet of the setting.

  Around me was a representation of the pulse of the settled galaxy—the bridge of a starship.

  The breath left my body as if I’d been punched by a brawny senior. The simulator bridge—a model of the Federation’s brilliant center of expansion, the brain of Starfleet. As I looked around at the buffed braces and efficient arrangement of control panels, Captain Kirk’s words flowed back into my head … And out there, everything’s real.

  Commander Chekov led me down to the center deck, where the command chair stood in calm repose, facing the wide main screen.

  I touched the chair’s black leather, and his eyes said sit down, but … I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  There were already other people here. Four … five.

  Chekov nodded at the upper deck, where Sturek, formerly the Vulcan terrorist, stood enraptured by the science station, very focused.

  “That is Cadet Sturek, your science officer,” he said quietly, pointing.

  “Yes, sir,” I told him. “It threw me when he came in shooting during the ceremony. I’ve never even seen him swat a fly before.”

  “Mmm.” The commander didn’t seem impressed by the fact that I was impressed. His thick Russian accent added a certain finality to his cryptic promise. “I hope you like each other, because you’ll be together for a long time. Over there is Geoffrey Corin.” He pointed at the black cadet, the same guy I’d smooshed into the stage deck. Now he was standing on a stool with his head in the bridge rafters, doing something to the lighting. “Your navigator,” Chekov finished. “He comes from a wealthy family on Alpha Centauri.”

  “Alpha Centauri? But he looks human.”

  “He is. The Federation has had a colony there for thirty-two years,” the commander explained. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “No, sir, I guess I didn’t.”

  “He has trouble taking Starfleet seriously.” Chekov eyed Corin in a critical way. “He was up for command candidacy, but he didn’t like the responsibility. He’s here because he can shave days of a warp journey with navigation tricks. But there are risks to that kind of success. As team leader, you’ll have to judge those risks.”

  My stomach twisted.

  “Jana Akton, your helm officer,” Chekov continued, nodding at the young human woman with the brassy blond hair tightly bound on top of her head, the same one who had led the way in from the auditorium wings. “She comes from Rigel Twelve mining colony in the Levintine Expanse. A rough place to grow up … even the weather is against you. She has a touch for subwarp piloting, but had some trouble with the technicals. That also will be where you come in.”

  Was he enjoying doing that to me?

  Chekov turned to the command station, where Robin already had panels off and circuits exposed. “Your engineer, Robin Brady, you also know.”

  “Yes, sir. We’re roommates.”

  “Not anymore. Now, as leader, you’ll have your own cabin. Privilege of command. How Brady learned to rip and patch warp drive out on the Rio Grande, I’ve no idea. We chose him for his ability, but also because you know him and we feel it’s good to have someone you know on your team.”

  He leaned one elbow on the command chair—I couldn’t imagine doing that—and nodded at the Andorian woman. Her blue skin and ice-white hair caught the cast of the ceiling lights. She seemed almost to be made of dust, standing there at communications, playing the board testily, avoiding the others with aloof superiority.

  “Your communications officer is Vanda M’Giia,” Chekov said. “Daughter of a prominent Andorian diplomat. That means upper-upper class on Andor, in case you don’t know that either.”

  He was doing it on purpose.

  “I’ve never heard of an Andorian taking on a challenge like Starfleet,” I said. “Hope she can handle it.”

  “If not,” Chekov said, “it will be your duty to fire her.”

  Shifting nervously from one foot to the other, I lowered my voice. “I hoped to get a command someday, sir … but I sure didn’t think it’d be on the first day.”

  “Well, it is.”

  His bluntness took me by surprise. I’d hoped for a comforting word of wisdom. Guess I wasn’t going to get one.

  “You’re scheduled to fly your first simulator mission in about fifteen minutes,” Chekov told me.

  “Make your first log entry, introduce yourself to your crew, and then will come your trial by fire. I hope you’re ready for it.”

  He pushed off the command chair as if it were just an old couch and headed for the entrance with a swagger in his step that left me tense.

  I touched the command chair’s comm panel.

  “Cadet’s log, first entry. Cadet David Forester logging on…”

  Chapter 3

  “Receiving over fifty distress calls … all garbled … there’s tremendous interference in this whole sector—”

  “Sensors are reading heavy impact residue and massive clouds of particle dust and warp exhaust.”

  “Does that mean there was a battle?”

  “Very likely. If so, it was widespread and sudden.”

  Before us on the main screen, the hulks of dozens upon dozens of alien ships floated derelict. Or at least they appeared derelict. I didn’t recognize the configuration at all. They weren’t ships from any culture I was familiar with, and judging from the confusion on my crew’s faces, they didn’t know either—

  “Did they fight one another?”

  “Possibly,” Sturek said, and adjusted his controls for more specifics. “However, all these ships are of the same general design, same interior pressure and life support systems, which leads me to conclude they are of the same race.”

  “So did we stumble on a civil war? Or should we search for attackers?”

  He straightened and turned. “There are several options.”

  “How fresh are those readings, Sturek?” I asked. “When did this happen?”

  “Spectral integrity indicates the residue is fresh within the past sixteen hours.”

  “Then this just happened. We’re not looking at a graveyard or a scrap holding area. What’s the—”

  Behind Robin, the engineering console suddenly crackled, all the lights flashed, and half the screens went dark. Was the simulator broken?

  No—couldn’t assume that.

  We’d been mapping the Golgotha solar system, sensor sweeping each planet and not finding much worth noting—which was my first clue that mapping wasn’t the point of this mission. There wasn’t much here, just gas giants, barren moons, and enough space dust to make the whole solar system look like a big cloud. If anybody could live on these planets, which they couldn’t, they’d have a mighty ugly sky to look at.

  Then we’d picked up an electromagnetic pulse that couldn’t be natural, so we went looking for it. Now we were staring through the thick mud of space dust, faced with a field of more than fifty derelict ships whose design we didn’t recognize.

  So much for mapping. Who could lose fifty ships and not notice?

  “Scan for life signs, Mr. Sturek,” I ordered, puffing up a little. I took comfort in the protocol. One thing at a time, by the book.

  “Scanning,” he responded, and bent to his sensors.r />
  “Do you want me to keep mapping, captain?” Jana asked.

  I should’ve thought of that. “No, suspend mapping for now. Lieutenant Corin, move us in slowly. Ensign Akton, plot a course through the center of the field of ships so we can get Perspective.”

  Wow—captain, lieutenant, ensign … sounded so strange to refer to each other by those ranks. We were nowhere near them, of course, in regular life. Maybe by the time we actually got there, they’d sound more right than they did here and now.

  Jana turned and looked at me from her position at the nav console. “You want to just go right in there?”

  Sturek was looking at me too. “That may be ill-advised.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Whatever damaged these ships could be lurking nearby,” he suggested.

  “Or this could be a trap.” Jana mentioned.

  At the engineering console updeck, Robin added, “Or there could be high-intensity residue … y’know … harmful to our propulsion.”

  Damn, I hated good points. I really hated that I hadn’t thought of those.

  “All right. Sturek, scan the area for any other vessels that could be hiding in the system. M’Giia, try to identify the ones we can see. Jana, plot a loop around the field of ships and recon the solar system. Let’s put on a sensor grid that’ll selectively search for any ship movement other than what we can see. And let’s catalog the derelicts—who should do that?”

  M’Giia glanced at me. “I should do it.”

  “Okay, you do it. Corin, put the phaser banks on line.”

  “Phasers,” Corin responded with annoying laziness, “on line, aye, oh, big chief.”

  “M’Giia, any identification on those ships?”

  “No, sir, I’m not picking up any identifying signals, and the instruments don’t recognize any emissions as familiar.”

  “Well, open a broad hailing frequency, then.”

  “You want to speak to all those ships at once?” she asked.

  “As many as possible.”

  “Hailing frequency open, wide band.”

  Stalking the back of my command chair, I couldn’t make myself sit down where the captain was supposed to sit. This wasn’t exactly a shuttle’s cockpit. Maybe after I killed a few invaders or arrested a few smugglers, I’d feel different.