Starfleet Academy Page 9

  Opening the communicator, he said, “Malan here. Aye, sir,” and waved for his crew to gather. In the few seconds it took to assemble them, he patted M’Giia on the shoulder. “We’re behind you, even if your own crew isn’t.”

  “Thank you, Frank,” she said.

  “M’Giia!” I attempted. “Our futures are on the line. We’ve got our own work to worry about, and I want you to ignore what he’s saying.”

  “Ignoring things got my family killed.” Her voice was as flat as the floor, cooler than Sturek could even manage. “I know how to survive.”

  “Yeah, she knows,” Malan agreed. He took her arm and led her out of the lounge, flocked by his training crew and a couple of other crews. “Forester, keep your losers away from us.”

  The lounge fell into a tense peace, and on the big screen was a report about the Academy marching musical corps.

  There went Malan, and M’Giia was with him.

  “That lady is going to blow like a volcano one of these days,” Corin said, following them out with his gaze.

  “I’m worried about her,” Jana admitted.

  Robin glanced furtively at each of us. “Maybe she’s just taking it really well. She’s so under control…”

  “That’s not under control,” I told him. “That’s over-control, and I don’t think it’ll hold.”

  Corin leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I got my scores up and Robin got his up, and now we got this. You’d better come up with something to break her out of it,” he suggested, “or all our hard. work is going right out the airlock.”

  “We can’t let her fall apart,” Jana said.

  Beside her, Sturek nodded, but said nothing.

  “She won’t fall apart,” I assured, as if I knew.

  Jana shot me a warning glare. “Andorians are prickly, David. This ice-queen act is bizarre.”

  “She’s a diplomat’s daughter,” I tried. “Maybe she’s just bearing up.”

  “She’s paying a price,” Corin said. “We’re all gonna pay it if we don’t get her to break out.”

  Now my communicator chirped and Commander Chekov’s voice made a terse order. “Cadet Forester, report to the science lab Delta Tango.”

  I flipped open the communicator. “Forester, acknowledged.”

  Corin was still looking at me. They all were.

  Spreading my hands, I complained, “Come on! I’m a team commander, not a priest!”

  “She just needs an excuse to blow off steam,” Jana said. “You could think of something, couldn’t you?”

  Corin cuffed me in the knee. “Where’s that command thinking, huh?”

  Sturek buffeted the moment with a loaded expression of sympathy and doubt. Jana kept glaring at me. Robin’s eyes were wide with anticipation.

  Yeah. Where was it?

  Lab Delta Tango was in the Cornwell Systems Analysis Building, and getting there across the breadth of the Academy grounds sucked up a good ten minutes, all of which were clogged with everything from therapy to a good slap for M’Giia. What did I know about the psychological repercussions of bottled grief? I’d never even had a pet cat die. My cat was eighteen and still mousing.

  I hurried down the stark white corridor of the Sys-An building and went all the way to Lab Delta Zebra before I realized I’d gone too far. Doubling back, I broke into a run and surged through the doors of Tango at full skid.

  And inside—well, of course—was Captain Kirk.

  Why not?

  Commander Chekov was there too. They both looked up in time to see me bump into a sink. Nice going, Grace.

  “Good morning, Captain!” I blurted to cover my stumble. “Morning, Commander—”

  “Morning,” Kirk responded. “You in the mood for a privilege, Forester?”

  “Oh … at your service, sir.”

  “Come over here.”

  If only I could get there without skinning a knee—

  He held out a computer cartridge. “I’ve got something that’s got to stay in this room. This isn’t Academy business. This is Starfleet business. Top security classification. Understood?”

  I looked at Chekov, but he wasn’t offering any clues. His eyes were gleaming, though, as if he was proud of me. A voice in the back of my head kept murmuring garbage scow, garbage scow.

  “Top security, sir?” I asked. “You mean, command cadets only?”

  “I mean Starfleet senior flight officers only,” Captain Kirk corrected, and that was a heck of a correction. He’d leaped about as far from cadets as he could get without bringing in the Admiralty. “This is for real captains to practice on, cadet.”

  Real captains, practicing. The whole idea hit me with unexpected impact. I’d always imagined that the learning process ended with command of a ship—guess not.

  Kirk was standing there, waiting. So was Chekov.

  Next move seemed to be mine.

  “Understood very clearly, sir,” I told him with what I hoped was a decisive tone.

  “You’ve been assisting Mr. Chekov with the installation of the new simulator matrices. I want you to help him with this one, and make it a priority.” He handed me the computer cartridge. “These are the design and weaponry specs on a new Klingon heavy cruiser. I want you to incorporate them into a simulator program and give it a top security code status with the access code ‘Sultan’s Great Day.’”

  The cartridge was warm in my hand. I looked at it rather foolishly. “Sultan’s Great Day. Aye, sir. Captain … why are we war-gaming a ship that belongs to an empire we’re trying to make peace with? And why use the Academy’s simulator instead of the real starships?”

  He eyed me with a dangerous sidelong gaze. Ouch.

  “Because there are possibilities we need to prepare for that we shouldn’t look like we’re preparing for,” he said. “Carry on, Mr. Forester.”

  He glanced at Chekov one more time, then strode with great self-satisfaction toward the door and out into the corridor.

  Had M’Giia been right all along? Was Starfleet preparing us for war even as the Federation jockeyed for passivity? Was one a cover for the other?

  “What’s wrong with you today?” Chekov sidled toward me.

  “Oh … few problems with my crew, sir.”

  “Skill?” he asked. “Technical? Station postings?”

  “Personal, sir.”

  “Ah. There’s no manual for that.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Trouble with your Vulcan?”

  “Sturek? Oh, no, sir. Why do you ask?”

  “Sometimes there’s trouble with Vulcans,” he said with a wise shrug that explained exactly nothing.

  My shoulder actually went up a notch, trying to imitate that shrug. Must be some kind of officers’ secret shrug.

  “Your Mr. Sturek is in Lab Delta India right now,” Chekov told me. “He’s working on fragments from the ship that attacked Bicea.”

  Suddenly interested, I took a rather impolite step toward him … I thought it was a Klingon ship!”

  That shrug again. “We have the fragments … might as well analyze them.”

  “Commander, how did we get fragments of a ship that got away?”

  “Captain Kirk went out yesterday and scoured the atmosphere and the ruins of the settlement. He found bits of the attack ship broken off by planetary defenses. There is no match to any metallurgy on the planet, so we’re going to take next step.”

  “Why, Sturek?” I asked. “Why use cadets at all on something this big?”

  “Because it’s big,” he answered cryptically. “No one knows the research is being done here. We can have peace and quiet, and keep our eyes on you. And because Captain Kirk trusts Vulcans. He’s funny that way. Now, specifically with your crewman, what’s the trouble?”

  For a moment I paused, not knowing whether he was asking as a commander or as an adviser. I’d had both, but they were always different people. What was his role here at command school? Were the courtesies different?

  We
ll, after all, he did ask, didn’t he?

  “My communications specialist lost her family in the Bicea attack. It’s eating her inside out, but she’s not letting us help. She’s just going on with her training as if nothing happened. It’s a lot harder to manage a crew than it looked in the manuals.”

  “Of course,” Chekov allowed. “Starfleet gives the most challenging cadets to the most capable command school students. Bringing out the best in them will bring out the best in you. It’s an old Russian technique. Captain Kirk saw something in you, and something in the way your team acted out their roles during the mock terrorist attack. I’ve seen him do that before, but only twice in all these years. One of those command cadets is now a Fleet starship first officer, and his entire training crew is still with him. The other team … they washed out. All of them together.”

  Was there something wrong with the temperature control in here?

  “You’re saying,” I began, “that my crew has no options. We stay together and deal with whatever comes. Sink or swim.”

  “Smart boy.”

  I shook my head. “But I don’t know what to do. I can handle the technical aspects of their work, but how do I break through shells like the one M’Giia’s putting up around herself?”

  Chekov leaned on the sink counter and held up an illustrative finger. “Before I joined the crew of the Enterprise, I served aboard a survey ship with a commanding officer like that. Very hot temper, but thought getting angry was unprofessional. As long as she exploded from time to time, she was the most charming person on board. If she held back … uch! If you want to help your communications officer, get her to express herself outside the simulator.”

  “I can’t pick a fight with her, sir! It’s against regulations—it’s against … just … and the crew’s personality problems aren’t really the commander’s domain, are they?”

  “Everything that happens on the ship is the commander’s domain. A captain who pays attention to the temperament and morale of his crew can count on that crew when he really needs them. ‘A captain who pushes his crew out of the nest will have a crew who really flies.’ Another old Russian saying.”

  Casting him a pathetic, mournful sort of look, I muttered, “Old Russians never had to deal with Andorians.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself. If you’ve made it to command school, you’ve probably made someone mad before. So … do it again.”

  “Thank you, sir…”

  “Thank me after your scores go up. Let’s get this heavy cruiser onto the simulator. We’re going to need it.”

  Pushing off the counter, he tapped the cartridge I was holding.

  The cartridge lay in my hand passively, stirring curious questions and reaching out much farther than this lab.

  A Klingon warship, different from those before it, a new heavy cruiser that the Klingons shouldn’t even be building, given the stipulations of the treaty with the Federation. Code name: Sultan’s Great Day.

  I held it up. “Sir, does this mean the Klingons are Starfleet’s next target?”

  Chekov strode toward the computer complex in the middle of the lab and without looking back at me waved a hand.

  “Never mind what it means.”

  Installing the new Klingon heavy cruiser program took the entire rest of the day and half the night with just the commander and me working on it. We couldn’t ask for help, because the whole thing was classified.

  The rest of the night I barely slept, tortured by night thoughts of Klingons and failure, M’Giia and war, command and washing out. When reveille sounded, I was relieved to roll out and put an end to the long jumbled hours.

  Drill, breakfast, then simulator. And no sign of Sturek.

  He was always present at drill and breakfast, but not today. Was he still in the lab, working on those ship fragments? Maybe that was why Captain Kirk liked Vulcans—stamina.

  I dragged myself to the main bridge simulator, and my team was already there, which I was glad to note. As a commander, I’d rather have been last to arrive than first and have to scoop up my crew from six different places.

  Corin was at his helm, playing with the new programming. Jana was on her knees at the base of her navigation console, closing the access panel. Over at engineering, Robin played his board like a piano, though I had no idea what he was doing since we hadn’t started yet. At least he seemed more contented than the last time I’d seen him. M’Giia hovered over the science station, which would’ve been Sturek’s place if he’d been here. That was her job—take over science if the science officer went down or fainted or got a cramp or something.

  “Okay, crew,” I greeted them, pushing off my fatigue, “Ready to take on the Klingons?”

  M’Giia turned. “I wish it wasn’t just a simulation. I’d like to pulverize them for real.”

  Rather than dropping to the command deck. I moved along the upper deck toward her. “I don’t like that attitude, M’Giia. This isn’t doing you any good.”

  “What isn’t?” Her brows came down.

  “As long as you act this way, you’re putting us all at risk, and I want you to stop. Get help or do whatever it takes. Going into missions with suppressed rage endangers us all.”

  “This is fake!” She swept her hand along the science console. “It’s a simulator!”

  “Someday it’ll be real,” I provoked. “And you’ll kill us all.”

  A purple vein hardened on her neck. “Are you trying to start a fight?”

  “You’re an Andorian. You haven’t got the guts for a fight.”

  “I’ve done nothing to endanger our standings!”

  The space between us closed. “I think you have.”

  “Start the simulator and I’ll show you there’s no cause to worry!”

  “We’ll start when I’m satisfied we can all work at peak efficiency and not a moment before.”

  “You want efficiency?” Her eyes flared and her antennae went stiff and straight.

  She reared back and let fly a purposeful punch, awkward but plenty effective as her sharp fist drove into my stomach.

  “Aw—” I choked and doubled over. I’d braced for a slap in the jaw!

  The punch drove the air from my lungs and I slid to one knee.

  “M’Giia!” Jana dropped what she was doing and vaulted to the upper deck, where she held M’Giia back.

  Corin knelt beside me. “Wow—David, you okay?”

  “Jana!” M’Giia gulped. “Let go of me!”

  As he kept me from toppling over, Corin looked up at her. “Why don’t you leave him alone? You’re losing control!”

  “It’s okay, Geoff,” I gasped. “Wasn’t really … M’Giia doing the … hitting…”

  M’Giia pulled out of Jana’s grasp and knelt in front of me.

  “David … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you!”

  As I blinked at her through watery eyes, I saw the sheath of coldness peel off, revealing a pain in her eyes and a regret in her manner.

  “I’ve been bottling up,” she said. “I never thought I’d take it out on anyone.”

  “Feel better now?” I asked.

  She shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know … I don’t know.”

  She and Corin helped me to my feet, and Corin said, “Can I hit you now? Maybe we can bring up my scores too.”

  Chapter 9

  Navigation class. One of the most critical elements of the education process at the Academy, and I was having trouble paying attention. Hadn’t seen Sturek in a couple days and I was starting to get concerned. Was he sacrificing his training and his attendance to Academy work in order to analyze a scrap of metal from some ship, just to find out it was the Klingons, as we suspected all along?

  How could the senior officers demand that he give up so much of his precious training time? Why didn’t they just get Starfleet scientists to do their work? Why drain Sturek and my whole team in the process?

  Why didn’t I ask?

  Captain Kirk was right h
ere, right now, hovering over a large table cluttered with old-style laminated ocean navigation charts, and most of the command candidate team leaders were clustered around him as he demonstrated how to read the two-dimensional charts.

  So why didn’t I just open my big mouth and ask?

  “Starfleet Command kicked like mules when I made them put ocean navigation in the Academy curriculum,” captain Kirk was saying. “Wait till I tell ’em I want naked-eye signal recognition.” He plucked through the charts, picking up several and putting them back down. “Where’s Chesapeake Bay?”

  Beside him, Commander Chekov didn’t miss a beat. Between Baltimore and Norfolk, sir.”

  Grinning, Chekov held up a rolled chart.

  Kirk needled him with a glare, then snatched the chart.

  “All due respect, sir,” Frank Malan began from the other side of the table—he and I were as far apart as we could get and still be in the same c1ass. “We’ll never be out on an ocean.”

  Chekov looked up. “You’ll be on one next semester, cadet.”

  “But why?”

  Kirk tapped the laid-out charts with the rolled one. “Before you learn to navigate in three dimensions, you should know how to navigate in two.”

  “But what good would that do in space?” Malan persisted.

  To my dismay, I found myself agreeing and said, “We’ve got positional verification guidance on starships, sir.”

  James Kirk tortured me with a long death-ray glare. “Do we?”

  Oh, God…

  “Sorry, captain,” I muttered.

  “And who says you’ll command a starship?” he went on, still drilling me.

  I glanced around at the other command candidates. “Well … every commander wants a starship, sir….”

  “What would you want a starship for?”

  Hoping to make up, I straightened and said, “They’re the most important ships around, sir!”

  “If, you think that way, Forester,” he drawled, “I hope you never command one.”

  “Odds are with you there,” Malan shoved in, enjoying my predicament.

  I shot him a glare behind the captain’s back, but Kirk didn’t miss it. He was still looking at me.