Starfleet Academy Page 7

  The cadet lounge was heavy, almost as if the air itself were filled with droplets of oil. Of the fifty or so cadets milling about here, watching Rotherot’s repeated announcement or the airing of comments by various officials and media mouthpieces, no one could make himself be the first person to actually walk out the door and get about business of training.

  Eventually, we all knew, training would come to get us. Our drill instructors, our lab instructors, our senior company commanders, or our brigade commanders would find us and we’d be pounding the field again, but for now our whole beings were caught up in the drama unfolding out on the Neutral Zone, almost as far out of our influence as Valhalla. We were only cadets. It was our job to care, yet not be able to lift a finger to help.

  Someday … someday.

  Confronting Robin had been something I dreaded, but now provided a distraction from dealing with M’Giia—which was a complete mystery to me. How could I comfort somebody whose whole family had died? I never even knew anybody who died before this.

  How had I gotten to be over twenty years old and never had anybody close to me die?

  Was I just that lucky? My parents, my uncles and aunts, cousins, all four grandparents, even two great-grandparents and two great-aunts—they were all still alive. Everyone I’d grown up with, gone to all those Christmas parties and summer picnics with … they were all still alive.

  I glanced through the forest of cadet uniforms to where my crew were all sitting in one of the clutches of lounge chairs, with M’Giia in the middle. She was the only one whose face was unreadable. Even Sturek showed more emotion.

  All right, concentrate.

  “Robin, you’ve got to quit avoiding the rest of the crew.”

  His pale face and hurtful eyes told me what a moment later he spoke straight out. “They don’t need me, David. I’m just the engineer.”

  “What kind of a sentence is that?” I demanded. “Did you hear what you just said? That’s not acceptable or even true. With an attitude like that, you’ll never make it through command school.”

  “Maybe I won’t,” he said, lowering his gaze to the carpet. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for the pressure.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” I pointed out. “We’re in the boat now and we all have to row. Were you just going to avoid me too?”

  “You’ve got the others now, David…”

  “They’re not ‘others’! They’re us!”

  He wouldn’t look up. “I can’t fit in … I belong in a dark cave by myself. I should just go back to Colorado—”

  “Robin, I don’t get it. You’ve made it through two years of Starfleet Academy and been accepted to command school, and now suddenly you can’t hack it? What changed?”

  He raised his eyes without raising his chin, giving him a pathetic childlikeness, his expression filled with misery.

  “You changed,” he said softly.

  Well, that wasn’t exactly what I expected, was it?

  “I changed? How did I change?”

  “You got command, that’s how.” He looked into the carpet again. “We used to do everything together. We had the same classes, mostly. We had the same drill team. We had the same marksmanship company. We were in the same labs. Now, it’s changed. You’re my team commander. We can’t even be roommates anymore. You don’t even stay in the same barrack anymore.”

  I wanted to protest, to tell him he was wrong and reassure him that we could be the same barrack mates and lab mates and drill mates and target team we’d been for two years, but I knew he was right. The service was set up that way. Promotion had lead weights attached. One of the weights was that promoted officers weren’t supposed to fraternize with junior cadets or those under one’s command. There were reasons for that, I’d always known and understood, but I’d never been friends with a senior cadet or a commander before. Service fraternization protocol had never cost me anything before.

  I parted my lips to tell Robin he was wrong, but he wasn’t. Commanders had to be emotionally removed to some degree from their crews—otherwise, how could a leader be expected to send his best friends out to their deaths? And we all had to be ready for that. The distance had to be firmly established, or no one could stand the pain.

  Military chain of command had been like this since the raw beginnings—a necessary coolness offset by loyalty to cause and active support. We weren’t supposed to be a family. We were supposed to be a crew.

  Robin knew that. I hated that he knew it and I couldn’t fool him. I couldn’t protect him anymore. His shyness was turning into a crippling illness. If I didn’t shake him out of this, he could pay with his life, or with someone else’s.

  “You can merge your abilities with the others,” I told him. “Leaders like James Kirk had great engineers behind them. Look at all the brilliant work Montgomery Scott and engineers like him have done in Starfleet. You want to know whether or not you can measure up to him, don’t you?”

  “That’s not fair.” He looked up sharply and started shaking. “This is easy for you. I just don’t fit in!”

  “Take it easy,” I said. “I’m not trying to corner you. I want you on the team, not off it.”

  “I’ll let you down.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “David, I’m grateful for your loyalty, but I just don’t deserve it.”

  He tried to turn away, but I caught him. Exasperation came out in my voice. “Okay, let’s do it the hard way, then. You will spend time with our team, you will try to communicate more, and you will quit talking this way. That’s an order.”

  His face went pasty with hurt, but I couldn’t help that. Neither of us had ever borne the responsibility we did today. The honor of command was going sour.

  “It’s all lies!”

  I flinched at the clear bell of M’Giia’s voice cutting through the solemn crowd of cadets.

  She’d come to her feet, and was shouting at the big viewscreen.

  On the big viewscreen was a big Klingon in a big robe—a Klingon high councilman.

  “—no matter what the Federation claims. The Klingon Empire had nothing to do with the loss of the Bicea colony. However, there is bitter justice in the colony’s failure. The Federation should never have put fragile Andorians and humans on such a hostile world. Only Klingons could have tamed Bicea.”

  “Liar!” M’Giia cried again.

  One of the cadets near the viewscreen took that as a good reason to turn the volume down, and luckily the scene switched away from the Klingon councilman to somebody else.

  “What about the energy readings from Bicea?” Geoff Corin said as Robin and I joined them. “Those were Klingon disruptors!”

  “That does not prove Klingon involvement,” Sturek pointed out evenly.

  “Oh, I see! It was all those other races that live near the Klingon border and use disruptors!”

  M’Giia turned to our Vulcan teammate. “Why are you making alibis for the Klingons, Sturek?”

  “I regret your loss, M’Giia,” he told her, “but Bicea was not a critical colony, nor was it strategically placed. It is illogical to assume that the Klingons would start a war over a world that would gain them nothing. We cannot blame one race when all facts are not known.”

  “Just like a Vulcan!”

  Boy, had M’Giia’s voice changed—

  Nope—that was Frank Malan. Just what we needed.

  He shouldered his way through the parting sea of cadets. “Just like a Vulcan to deny the obvious in search of details! Using logic to soften the truth. The Klingons should be destroyed for the monsters they are!”

  A surge of agreement rose across the field of cadets. Encouraged by that, Malan swung around to face the crowd.

  “The Federation should change its whole approach to Klingons!” he went on like a country preacher. “The treaty robbed us of, the war we needed, and because of that the Klingons grew stronger! Now look!”

  “Pretty strong words, Frank.”

  My ey
es widened. What idiot had said that?

  Oh … it was me.

  His face was a plaster cast of rage as he swung around. “The attack on Bicea was an act of war. We can’t let it go unpunished!” Dropping me like a stone, he swung back to the attentive crowd of infected cadets. “We need new leaders who aren’t afraid of the Klingons! We need the Vanguard!”

  The cadets cheered him. Frustration at our impotence in the galaxy’s troubles drove them to approve of Malan’s words.

  “The races inside the Federation already live the right way. It’s the races outside that’re the problem.”

  “Vanguard?” Corin interrupted. “What’s the Vanguard?”

  “It’s a political action group that has humanity’s best interests at heart. They’re as tired as we are of Starfleet’s timid response to the Klingons. The Vanguard says it’s time for humans to take care of humans!”

  The cadets nodded again, but not quite with the same fervor as a moment ago.

  Sturek voiced the reason. “And all the other Federation races?” he asked, his presence suddenly powerful here. “What will your Vanguard do with them?”

  Malan looked at him, noticed M’Giia and the other non-human cadets—though admittedly there were very few—and backpedaled. “The races inside the Federation already live the right way. It’s the Klingons and Romulans, that’re the problem. The Vanguard calls for a sense of order in the galaxy. We want to make the Federation strong!”

  I crossed among a half dozen cadets to challenge him. Well, somebody had to, right?

  “We?” I asked. “I take it you’re already a member of this group?”

  Suddenly uneasy, Malan glared at me. “What if I were? You think I’d bother discussing it with you junior? You’ll remember my words someday.”

  Under the pats and nods of other stirred up cadets, he proudly turned away and was absorbed by his command crew and a clutch of others who liked what they heard.

  I didn’t blame them. I was frustrated too. But…

  “Sounds frightening,” Jana uttered, watching Malan leave.

  In the middle of us, M’Giia watched Malan too. “Sounds fascinating,” she countered. “They might be just what the Federation needs.”

  “Look!” someone called, and all eyes went to the big screen again.

  On the black matte of space, with only a single lonely spider nebula winking in the upper left corner, a Federation starship veered across the top of the screen, dodging between two Klingon Birds-of-Prey and firing at both of them at once.

  The crowd of cadets cheered mightily at the strike.

  “Starfleet finally struck back!” Frank Malan crowed, one arm around his science officer and the other vaulted into the air over our heads.

  A voice-over announcer spoke off the screen as we watched the Sentinel take on the Birds-of-Prey. “—was recorded this morning by a passing tanker just this side of the Neutral Zone—”

  “Who won?” I wondered aloud. “Come on, give!”

  “There were no ships destroyed, no loss of life,” the announcer continued obligingly, “but the Klingon attack ships were driven back across the Neutral Zone without fighting to the death. Federation spokespeople claim—”

  “We finally struck back!” Malan boasted, his voice drowning out the announcer. “The captain of the Sentinel showed the Federation how a real starship captain acts!”

  “The engagement ended inconclusively,” Sturek corrected, apparently disturbed by Malan’s editorializing.

  “No one here knows what the captain acted like, Malan,” I said. “Any chance for a speech, right?”

  He twisted toward me. “What’s the matter, Forester? Afraid you might actually have to go out and fight some day?”

  “Are you afraid the facts won’t support your grandstanding?”

  M’Giia appeared beside me—actually between Malan and me, and she looked admiringly at Malan. “Leave him alone, David,” she said. “He’s making sense.”

  Malan smiled, then leered at me. “Trouble with your crew, Forester?”

  “This isn’t the simulator, Malan,” I ground out. “You’re over your head. M’Giia, don’t pay attention to him.”

  M’Giia scoured me with hard eyes. “I’ll do as I please. We’ve got to stand, up to these attacks.”

  “Right.” Malan rewarded her with a pat on the back. “When we have our own ships, we’ll put the Klingons in their place!”

  “Or we’ll all end up dead,” Jana instantly shot back, before the cheers could come again. She looked at M’Giia and asked, “You’re hoping we go to war, aren’t you?”

  Frank hung an arm around M’Giia. “You’ll get your revenge. That’s the destiny of this command class. Right, everybody?”

  Another cheer rose, galvanized by M’Giia’s presence and sense of intense cause—unity with one of our own.

  Yikes.

  My hand looked about the size of a three-year-old’s as I placed it on Frank Malan’s chest and gave him a shove. With the other hand I pulled M’Giia away from him.

  “I said leave my crew alone.”

  The joy of all this attention left Malan’s face. He unhooked his science officer from under that six-foot arm and squared off with me, hovering over M’Giia like a vulture. “Captain Kirk’s favorite little boy. You wouldn’t know how to be a captain like him if a real command got dropped in your lap. We need captains like Kirk to avenge Bicea and show the Klingons we can fight back. You might as well join the Klingons, Forester. Then you can be in charge of the retreat.”

  “Frank,” his science officer protested, and pulled him back. “It’s all right,” Malan said. “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

  M’Giia moved between us, clearly leaning toward Malan as his crew pulled him away.

  “If you’re the captain of the future,” she said, “I’ll get there by myself.”

  Chapter 7

  Two not-particularly-good days later, I was back in Rotherot’s office, and Rotherot wasn’t even there.

  Captain Sulu was plenty there, though.

  “What’s going on, Forester? Cadet M’Giia’s simulator scores have dropped now. One day it’s Corin, then it’s Brady, and now it’s M’Giia. You running a tag-team program?”

  “No, sir. Her whole family died on Bicea, as you know, and she refused to take a leave of absence. Am I authorized to order her to do that, sir?”

  “No, you’re not,” He was enjoying this, I could just tell that he was. “Your team started out with a favorable boost from Captain Kirk, but believe me, that can be lost. You’re finding out about the hardest put, of command—outside influences affecting your crew. You’ll have to handle it. If this happened to her out in space, on a starship, you’d still have to deal with it and get her to do her job. It’s as much a test for you as it is for her. That’s the way the Academy sees this.”

  “That’s … asking a lot of me, sir.”

  Oh, why did I say that?

  “Her emotional condition is out of my hands, sir,” I tried again, but that one wasn’t much better.

  Sulu nodded, at first seeming to agree with me, but somehow I didn’t believe that.

  “Maybe neither of you are in the right school,” he said after a pause. He wasn’t speaking harshly, but his words were scrubbing my skin off.

  “Sir,” I began hesitantly, “has the Academy been paying attention to the activities of a campus group called the Vanguard?”

  “Not particularly. Why?”

  “I was just wondering if those speeches constitute insubordination.”

  “We do discourage political involvement for cadets, but as long as they do their duty, their politics are their own affair.”

  “Isn’t it a threat to discipline?” I asked.

  “Discipline always suffers when a crewman doesn’t believe in what he’s doing. You can’t let others affect your crew. You have to be the compass of your own crew. Know what your own beliefs are, and they’ll take their strength from you.”


  Me, again.

  “Commander Chekov’s expecting you and Mr. Sturek in the bridge simulator,” Captain Sulu went on, and evidently that other subject was done with. “There’s a new program we want to test run before we incorporate it into the general schedule. Captain Kirk’s idea.”

  “Yes, sin,” I said, trying to refocus. “I assisted Commander Chekov this morning, installing the program. I’ve arranged to meet Sturek there, sir.”

  “And I’ll be there too. Dismissed.”

  How could he say something so politely and easily and still have it come out like a threat? Just what seminar taught that little trick?

  “Aye, sir.”

  In the corridor again, just as mystified as the last time. There was a pattern here.

  Gear up for the simulator, this time with just Sturek and me, just a test run to make sure the graphics were on line and a shot would go where it was aimed.

  Right now, that was all I wanted to do. Sit down and start shooting. Get it all out. Kill a couple of CGIs. Maybe if I got the formulations just right, Frank Malan’s face would be etched on a hull plate. What a target.

  The walk across Academy grounds to the simulator dome was head-clearing, but provided no answers for me. Was this what command would be like? My crew watches each other die, then has to shake off the grief and keep working? In space was there no time for mourning?

  I hurried to the main starship bridge simulator and rushed into the entrance quickly enough to surprise the door panels and get a bump on the elbow for it.

  Sturek crouched at the main long-range sensor trunk on the upper deck, but there was no one else in sight.

  “Good—I thought I was late!”

  “You are.” Commander Chekov appeared from under the helm.

  I hadn’t seen him!

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Commander—I’m sorry, sir. No excuses, sir.”

  “I’ve loaded up the program and you boys will try it out as soon as Captain Sulu gets here.”

  Recalibrating my brain at warp speed, I nodded and met Sturek’s gaze. “Aye, sir. We’re ready.”