August 2378

San Francisco

He spoke flawless Federation Standard, possessed perfect visual acuity and hearing abilities unmatched by human ears. All the tests to which he had been subjected confirmed as much, yet Icheb sat stunned senseless as the tribunal announced its verdict, somehow unable to process what was happening.

“The tribunal finds that the two former Borg drones brought to Federation territory by Admiral Kathryn Janeway of the U.S.S. Voyager are legally sentient individuals, with all of the rights and privileges that status conveys.  Annika Hansen, being born on Earth, is hereby granted full Federation citizenship.  Icheb is granted permanent refugee status and will be free to seek full citizenship after a period of one Standard year, provided he maintains eligibility under Federation law …”

The room exploded with sound.  He felt someone clap him on the shoulder, hard – Tom Paris, sitting behind him.  Reporters and observers alike were shouting over each other.  The noise level was unacceptable, and Icheb resisted the urge to cover his finely enhanced ears with his hands.  Beside him, the JAG attorney was saying something to him, congratulating him.  Still Icheb sat in shocked silence, absorbing everything but taking in nothing.

For four long months he had been in virtual confinement while the Federation argued over what to do with him.  He had been provided with temporary quarters, outside which a continuous security detail had been posted.  Starfleet assured him it was for his own safety, but Icheb was quite confident he could take care of himself.  Deep down, he knew the truth.  They were afraid of him.  Afraid of him, and afraid of Seven.

Seven.  He looked across the courtroom to where she sat, looking as stunned as he felt.  Although they could not communicate by neural link, she seemed to sense his gaze and looked his way.  Their eyes met.  For a long moment, they just stared at each other, sharing in the strange moment.  Then Icheb saw something ever so slightly change in Seven’s expression.  It would have been imperceptible to anyone but him, but something in her crystal blue eyes betrayed the barest hint of a relieved, encouraging smile.  She nodded at him once, and he nodded back.  He was so grateful she was there with him.  It had been a long four months without her.

Both he and Seven were allowed to receive visitors, but had not been permitted to visit each other without supervision.  Both were rarely permitted to leave their assigned quarters.  For the last four months, Icheb had spent his days alternately continuing his Academy studies and discussing his case with his lawyer.  By night, he had spent a lot of time in thought.

“Order!” the Bolian head of the tribunal cried, slamming his gavel down on the long, curved podium at which he and his colleagues sat.  “Order,” he added, more quietly, as the din died down slightly.  Icheb could still hear the chatter going on throughout the room, but his ears hurt less now.

“As to Icheb’s continued studies at Starfleet Academy, they have been approved.  You may begin attending lectures and labs with the rest of the sophomore class when classes resume next week.  Security will be increased at the campus in light of the anticipated controversy over this decision.  Best of luck to you, young man.”

Again, the room exploded with noise.  Icheb sat shell-shocked, unable to believe any of what he was hearing was really true.  He had been created as a living weapon, fed to the Borg like a poison pill by his parents, killed thousands of drones and dozens of sentients, been rescued and rehabilitated, and then transported 50,000 light years from his homeworld only to be placed under house arrest and interrogated for months.  Now, after weeks of debate, he was finally free.

He felt like an automaton, part of the Collective once again, as he dazedly shook hands with his attorney and took his first few steps as a truly free person.  Immediately, he was surrounded by people, some familiar, some not, many with microphones in hand, extended toward his young, freckled face.  He searched the crowd desperately for a friend.  Seven, The Doctor, someone he could latch onto. 

Suddenly a friend found him.  Icheb had never been so grateful to see B’Elanna Torres.  Her half-Klingon features were drawn and tense as she elbowed through the crowd and firmly shoved them away from him.  Her husband, Tom Paris, followed close behind, looking vaguely amused at his wife’s aggression. 

“Back off,” B’Elanna warned the throng.  She spoke in the commanding tone of a Klingon warrioress, and not a one of them was willing to risk disobeying the order.

When she reached Icheb, she stood facing him and put one hand on each of his shoulders.  She was shorter than he was, but she looked him in the eyes.  To his surprise, she suddenly pulled him into a tight hug.  When she released him, she didn’t let go of his shoulders.  “Congratulations,” she said simply.  “You’d better study hard, because I expect you to report to Utopia Planitia in three years.  We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Edmonton

“Mom.  Have you seen my Oilers shirt?”  John Quigley shouted across the small flat in the general direction he had last seen his mother wandering.  He ran a hand through his sandy blond hair in frustration, feeling anxious for no particular reason other than he was eager to finish packing and head for the transportation hub.  Still, he couldn’t leave without his lucky Oilers shirt.  His stepdad had given it to him a week before he finally left for good.  Maybe it was silly, but he didn’t want to go to Starfleet Academy without it.

Lynn Quigley emerged from the short hallway to their two bedrooms holding a glass of universe-knew-what-kind of alien liquor in one hand and his t-shirt in the other.  The liquor was bright green, and even from across the room, it smelled like the inside of a Tellarite’s ass.  She swayed as she walked.

John resisted the urge to roll his eyes and start a fight.  He didn’t have time for her shit today.  Not on the day he was finally escaping the hell he called his childhood home.

“The sonic laundry fucked it up,” said his mother, in a brutally casual tone.  She tossed him the shirt.  “Sorry.”

John caught the shirt and held it up for examination.  It was covered in holes.  It looked like his mother had taken a pair of scissors to it, and he wouldn’t put it past her.  After all, the sonic laundry hadn’t ever put a hole in anything before.  He shot his mother a baleful glare.  “Thanks,” he muttered, trying hard not to reveal the depths of his hurt or anger.  He wadded up the shirt and shoved past Lynn to go to his room, where his suitcase lay open and waiting.

Any guilt he’d had over leaving his mother dissipated as he crammed the damaged shirt deep into the corner of his suitcase, wedging it under a pile of boxer shorts.  Sure, he could replicate a new t-shirt, but that wasn’t the point.  The point was that the last gift his stepfather – the man who’d raised him from toddlerhood to ten – had given him was ruined, and he was sure Lynn had done it just to get back at him for leaving her like both of her ex-husbands had done.

She was his own mother, and she was a crazy bitch.

With a weary sigh, he slammed his suitcase shut and fastened the lock.  Once again, he dragged a hand through his hair, mussing it.  Then he made a final check of his room, looking it over one last time before he left to start his new life in San Francisco.  He took in the sight of the athletic trophies on the dresser, the holos of him with a seemingly endless parade of friends … friends who’d been fun to party with, but never really got to know him since he held them all at arm’s length.  It was embarrassing in these modern times to have an addict for a mother – someone who had every help available to her, yet refused to take it.  She loved drinking more than she loved anything else, including her own son.  He wondered how long she would last without him there to call the medics when she went too far.

He left his room and headed for the front door.  His mother was standing in the kitchen, pouring herself another drink.  “’Bye, Mom,” he said, without fanfare, as he crossed the small living area.  “I’ll call you when I get there.”

Lynn raised her glass in his direction, but didn’t answer.  She had that glazed look in her eyes that showed the liquor had finally allowed her to escape whatever the hell she had spent his whole life running from.  John knew he wouldn’t bother to call her.  What would be the point?  She’d be passed out by then.

He opened the front door to their street-level apartment and hefted his suitcase over the threshold.  Slamming the ancient steel door behind him, he hesitated for a moment and looked up and down the street he’d grown up on.  Memories of street hockey, fist fights and firecrackers filled his mind, along with kisses stolen from girls under streetlamps late at night. 

He wouldn’t miss this place, not really.

With a growing sense of hope and determination, he headed for the transportation hub.  The high-speed train that would carry him to San Francisco would leave in a little more than an hour.  Everything would be different now.  He couldn’t wait to get started. 

For a brief moment, he wondered if he was really up to what the Academy would demand from him, but he quickly pushed the thought aside.  He had worked hard for this, and he had made it. 

This was his way out.

Morgantown

 “You know, you don’t have to do this, honey.  You can defer a year, work here on the farm, figure out if this is really what you want to do.  It’s a big commitment.”  Elise O’Connor looked pleadingly at her youngest daughter, her large green eyes begging her baby not to go. 

Maren O’Connor rolled her eyes in amusement and exasperation.  “Mom, Parents’ Day is in a month. I’ll be home for Thanksgiving.  Seriously … I’m only a transport away.  Give it a rest already.”

Paul O’Connor sidled up to his wife and snaked an arm around her, pulling her close and kissing the top of her rapidly graying blonde head.  “She’s right, Ell.  She’s grown and she’s ready for this.  Hell, I’m pretty sure she’s been ready since the day she was born.”

Maren grinned.  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad.” 

She shifted from one foot to the other excitedly, feeling like a little kid on Christmas morning.  Starfleet was all she had ever dreamed of since she was a tiny girl lying on the endless grass outside her family’s weathered old farmhouse, looking up at the stars and tracking the tiny points of light she knew represented starships and transports and all kinds of people traveling the galaxy.  Flying one of those ships had always been her dream.  Getting accepted to the Academy had been her primary goal.

She checked the chronometer on her pocket PADD and quickly shoved it back into her pocket with an apologetic glance toward her mother.  She knew this was hard for Elise, letting her go.  Maren had always been independent and headstrong, and she knew her mother worried.  She wished she could somehow explain that this was what she was meant to do … that if God really had a plan for her, this had to be it, because every cell in her body told her she belonged in space.

Her fourteen-year-old brother Seth managed to tear his eyes away from his holo-game long enough to notice his sister’s bags were packed and she was standing near the door.  “Mar, are you leaving?” he asked.  He was obviously trying to sound nonchalant, but the look on his face gave him away – he was going to miss his big sister. 

“Can I have her room now?” Seth asked Elise.

Fine.  Maybe he wasn’t going to miss her.

“Can’t you wait until we get in the skimmer before scavenging my leftovers?” Maren asked, with false irritation.  She walked over to the sofa where he was sitting and ruffled his dark blond hair.  “Come visit me some weekend,” she said.  “I’ll show you around.  Maybe you’ll decide the stars are for you after all.”

Seth wrinkled his nose at his sister’s touch, and looked skeptical.  The younger boy had seemingly inherited his mother’s homebody gene.  He was perfectly content to sit in his room for hours programming holosims and writing algorithms.  Maren loved that stuff, too, but she saw no reason at all why she couldn’t do it in space.

“Hug your sister,” Elise commanded from her spot near the door.

“Mom,” Seth groaned, giving Elise a pained look.

Maren grinned and jumped over the back of the sofa, landing next to her little brother.  Giggling evilly, she gave him a sloppy, wet kiss on the cheek and gathered his skinny teenage body into her equally skinny arms, squeezing him tight.

“MOM!” Seth hollered, squirming in Maren’s grasp.

“Beg for mercy,” Maren ordered him, matter-of-factly.

“I’m glad you’re leaving,” Seth retorted shrilly, but the corners of his lips pulled into a smile despite himself.

“Beg for mercy,” Maren repeated, “or I'll give you the ear eel.”  She freed one arm and licked a finger, moving it threateningly toward his ear.

“Ahhh!” Seth screamed.  “No.  Stop.  No.  Okay, okay.  Mercy.  Jesus.”

“Seth,” their mother said disapprovingly.

“Sorry.  Jeez.  Sorry.” 

Maren released him and smirked at him triumphantly. 

“There’s something really wrong with you, you know,” Seth told her, shaking his head.

“I love you, too,” Maren replied. 

With a last fond look at her brother, she got up off the couch and joined her parents at the door.  She opened her arms to her mother, who pulled her into a tight embrace.  Maren could hear her sniff the tears back as she held her tight.  “Mom,” she whispered.

Elise pulled back and wiped the tears from her eyes.  “I know, I know.  You’re going to be fine.”

Maren gave her mother’s shoulder a last squeeze and a compassionate look, then turned to her dad.

“Ready?” she asked him, with forced brightness.  Her mother’s tears had sobered her mood up considerably.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Paul replied.  He picked up Maren’s two suitcases and Maren picked up her daypack.

“I love you, Mom,” she said, turning back to Elise.  “I’ll be home before you know it, you’ll see.  And you’ll come to Parent’s Day.  Won’t that be great?”

Elise nodded and gave her a long, appraising look.  “Be good, Maren,” she said.  “Don’t forget God.”

“I won’t, Mom,” promised Maren.  She stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out her rosary.  “See?”

Elise nodded and smiled through her tears.  “Good girl.”

And with that, it was time to go.  Paul and Maren walked out to the skimmer for the thirty-kilometer trip to the transportation hub in town.  Maren looked around at the farm she’d grown up on and found herself tearing up, to her surprise.  She quickly decided it was just her mom’s influence.  As her father launched the skimmer and piloted away from the house, the tears evaporated as quickly as they had come. 

This was the moment she had been waiting for her whole life – her first step toward the stars.

“Is something wrong?”  Seven’s voice cut through the overload of thoughts traveling through Icheb’s cortical array.  It was more of an accusation than a question. Icheb looked up in surprise.  Despite his enhanced hearing, he hadn’t heard her come in.

“I was looking for the PADD with my class schedule,” he told her.

She raised her eyebrows.  “It is in your hand.” 

Icheb looked down and his eyes widened in surprise.  He was, in fact, holding the device. 

One corner of Seven’s full lips quirked upward as if she was fighting a smirk, but she quickly regained control.  She looked at Icheb critically.  “Your anxiety is apparent,” she told him.  “Are you certain you do not wish me to accompany you to campus?”

Icheb shook his head emphatically.  “I have to do this on my own, Seven,” he said.  “It’s my second year.  I will be fine.”

Seven frowned disapprovingly.  “It is your first year living on campus,” she reminded him, “and your first time meeting the other students.  Our reception so far has not been … pleasant.”  Her concern was evident as she looked at him.  “I am willing to go with you.”

As Seven had been speaking, Icheb had been full of nervous energy, constantly shifting his physical position and searching his memory to recall whether there was anything he still needed to do to prepare for his first day of classes.  Now, he stopped and gave her his full attention.

“I know you are, Seven,” he said, looking into her cool blue eyes.  “I appreciate your care and concern.  But this is something I have to do myself.”

Seven held his gaze for a long moment and then nodded.  He knew she didn’t like it, but he thought she understood. 

If they had been anyone but who they were, they might have hugged.  Instead, Seven held out one cybernetically-wired hand.  “I will hold your PADD so you do not … misplace it,” she said, her eyes shining with amusement.  With a sheepish smile, he handed it over.  “Now go retrieve your things.”

*****

“Welcome to Carmichael Hall.”  The human third-class cadet sitting behind the “P-Z” sign flashed John a gorgeous smile.  Her straight, chestnut brown hair was pulled into a ponytail high atop her head, and her wide blue eyes framed by long, dark lashes.  “Name?”

“John Brendan Quigley,” he answered, with a flirtatious grin of his own.  Next to the pretty brunette, behind the “H-O” sign, was a Bolian girl, also attractive, but John had heard horror stories about guys who had gone too far with Bolians. 

The human girl fished around in the container of PADDs behind the sign.  “Quinn … Quimby … Quigley.  Here we go.”  She grabbed a PADD which screensaver prominently displayed his name.  “ID?” she asked him.  He pulled out his Federation ID card and showed her.  She handed over the PADD.  “Room 408-A,” she said, with another flirtatious smile.  “Welcome to Starfleet.  I’m Kali Evans.  I’ll see you around.”

John blushed.  “See you around,” he echoed, with a solicitous grin. 

This place was already amazing.

*****

Maren rolled her eyes as the tall, good-looking blond boy ambled away from the check-in table, looking extremely pleased with himself.  She had been standing there for a good thirty seconds waiting for someone to notice her.  Finally, the Bolian girl looked up.  “Hi, welcome to Carmichael Hall,” she said, in subtly accented Standard.  “Name?”

“Maren O’Connor,” she answered.  “Middle name Siobhan.”  She rubbed at her shoulder a little where the strap to her travel bag was digging in.

The Bolian flipped through her crate of PADDs until she found the right one.  “O’Connor, Maren Siobhan,” she said, marking something on her own PADD.  “I will need your ID.”

Maren already had it out.

“Thank you,” the Bolian said.  She handed Maren the PADD.  “You are in 312-B.  Your roommate is Rachel Quinteros.”

Maren frowned and looked down at her PADD, swiping it with a finger to get to the main screen.  Quinteros.  Where had she heard that name before?  Quickly, it dawned on her.  Quinteros had been the officer in charge of the Bynar integration project.  Maren remembered reading about it extensively back in grade school.   She had found the Bynars’ society fascinating, and their skill with technology awed her.  She wondered if her new roommate was any relation.

“Thanks,” she told the Bolian, who nodded, looking right through her.  Maren smirked.  Apparently, she wasn’t sufficiently tall, male and handsome to earn recognition by these two.  She glanced over at the young Vulcan man sitting behind the “A-G” sign.  He sat there efficiently doing his job, apparently impervious to the shameless flirtations of the two women with whom he was working.  Maren grinned and shook her head as she walked away.  This was going to be an interesting year.

*****

The Academy was even more beautiful in person than it had been in holoimages or through the windows of the skimmers that had carried Icheb back and forth between his temporary residence and the courthouse.  Sleek metal towers stretched into an unusually brilliant blue sky.  The sun was shining brightly on this late summer day, and a few small cumulus clouds drifted high above the crowded city. 

His few possessions filled only one large travel bag, which was slung over his left shoulder.  In his free hand, he carried the PADD with his room assignment and class information.  As he walked toward the dormitory where his private room would be, he attempted to match up the class locations on his schedule with the buildings all around him.

So absorbed was he in this task that at first, he did not notice the other students noticing him.  That is, until his sensitive ears picked up the sounds of people talking.

“That’s him.  The Borg they brought back from the Delta Quadrant.”

“Seven of Nine?”

“No, Seven of Nine is the woman.  This one has a name.  I can’t remember it.”

“I can’t believe they let him in.”

“I know.”

Icheb looked up from his PADD in the direction of the conversation, his ears growing hot with the knowledge that he was being discussed.  Two human cadets were standing under a shade tree, staring at him and talking to each other quietly.  He knew they didn’t realize he could hear them.  When he looked up, they looked at him in surprise, then quickly looked away. 

Then Icheb noticed they hadn’t been the only ones watching him.

He stopped walking, lowered his PADD to his side and looked around.  There were a number of other cadets nearby, and most of them were staring at him with varying levels of hostility.  He could hear simultaneous conversations going on nearby, and most of them were about him.

“A fucking Borg drone.  Starfleet has really lost it this time.  What are they thinking?”

“I don’t know, he looks kind of normal. Is that really him?”

“Look at that thing on his face.  It’s a goddamn ocular implant.  He can probably see right through your clothes.”

. . . .

“That bastard won’t last the week.  Can you imagine what Atherton is going to do to him?  Holy shit, I almost feel sorry for him.”

. . . .

“I heard they gave him a private room.”

“Well would you want to bunk with him?”

“No, I guess not.”

Taken off guard and a little embarrassed, Icheb put his head down and quickly resumed walking toward his dorm.  As he passed by the other cadets, it looked like there was a force field perimeter around him.  People stepped back, into the shadows, into the grass, off the path, making sure to stay many meters away from him.  Most weren’t shy about staring.

He hurried toward his room. 

*****

Whoever Aaron Henson was, he had awesome taste in music.  John recognized the familiar rock beat pounding through the door before he ever entered his code.  He couldn’t help moving his head in time with the music as he tapped in his security code.  The door slid open to reveal a sparsely but comfortably furnished two-bunk room with a window overlooking the gardens. 

“Nice!” he exclaimed, with genuine enthusiasm.

One of the two beds had an open suitcase full of jumbled clothing on it, so he tossed his stuff onto the other bed.  “Hello?” he called out.

A redheaded, blue-eyed kid stuck his head out of the lavatory.  “Hey, you must be John.  Give me a sec, I’m just putting my shit away. This lav is fucking tiny.”  His accent was not North American, but it wasn’t quite British or Irish, either.  John’s best guess was that the kid was Australian. 

He smirked.  At least Starfleet hadn’t matched him up with some uptight Vulcan.  He walked over to the window and looked down at the gardens.  The pathways were full of cadets – some walking empty handed, but many more lugging travel bags and suitcases.  The girls, on the whole, were gorgeous.

“Hey,” Aaron’s voice spoke up behind him.  John turned around to face him.  His new roommate was a lot shorter than he was, but at 1.93 meters, most people were.  Aaron stuck out his hand.  “Aaron Henson.  Nice to meet you.” 

John took his hand and gave it a shake.  “John Quigley.  Where’re you from?”

“New Zealand,” Aaron answered.  “Christchurch.”  Ah, so that was it.  “How about you?”

“Edmonton.  It’s in North America.”

“I know where it is,” Aaron replied with a lopsided grin.  “Great skiing there at Banff.”

John smiled.  “Yeah, there is.”  After a brief and awkward silence, he gestured toward the speaker sitting on one of the two desks.  “I love this album.”

Aaron’s eyes lit up.  “Yeah?  I saw them in concert last year in Sydney.  God, that was great.  They’re coming to San Fran in December, you know.  Awesome show.  Don’t miss it.”

John couldn’t help but grin.  Something told him this assignment was going to work out just fine.

*****

When Maren arrived at her assigned room, she was annoyed to see the door was jammed open by a hard-sided suitcase.  Do you know what that does to the gears? she wondered.  She stepped over the suitcase and entered the room.  She was surprised to find it filled with other cadets.  A curvy, pale-skinned Latina girl with a head full of black curls sat on one of the two beds, surrounded by five others – three men and two women.  Two of the guys were human; one was Andorian.  One girl was Bolian, and judging from her deep black eyes and penetrating gaze, the other was probably Betazoid.  They had been talking and laughing animatedly, but as Maren cautiously entered the room, they stopped short and shared at her expectantly.

“Uh, I think I’m in the right place?” She pulled out her PADD.  “312-B?”  She tapped at the touchscreen to bring up her dorm assignment. 

“Maren O’Connor?” the Latina girl asked. 

Maren glanced up from the PADD.  “That’s me,” she acknowledged, with a hesitant nod.

The girl grinned.  “You’re in the right place.  I’m Rachel Quinteros.  Welcome to Starfleet.”

“Thanks.”  Maren smiled nervously.  It was awkward enough meeting a new roommate, but she hadn’t counted on doing it in a room full of mostly upperclassmen.  All three boys were third-class cadets, and the Betazoid girl was a second-class.  Only Rachel and the Bolian were plebes like Maren.

With an apologetic smile toward the group, she lugged her things over to the remaining empty bed and heaved them up onto the mattress.  She decided to start with her suitcase full of tech crap, because the idea of the upper-class boys watching her unpack her underwear was mortifying.

As she zipped open the bag, the others again grew quiet and turned their attention to her.

“Wow, what is all that?” Rachel asked.  Maren looked over and realized that the five cadets were staring at her curiously.

Maren glanced down at the contents of the bag.  She shrugged, feeling heat creep into her cheeks.  “Um, it’s just stuff I thought might come in handy.”  She had three different toolkits in the bag – one for small electronics, one for larger machinery (like the door she suspected would be broken by the end of the day), and one for everything else.  She also had a dozen PADDs of varying vintage, each used for a different purpose.

Rachel raised her eyebrows skeptically while the upperclassmen shared a private giggle.  “Well … at least you’re prepared?” she offered, but added, “You know they provide that stuff in class, right?”

Before Maren could respond, there was a grinding noise and then a loud snap.  They all looked at the door in surprise … except for Maren.  She simply shrugged. 

“Don’t worry about it.  I’ll fix it.”

The early morning heat was uncommon for San Francisco, even in late August, but Icheb wasn’t going to complain about it.  It was beautiful outside.  The sun’s radiation pleasantly warmed his skin, exposed as it was by his athletic uniform shorts and t-shirt.  He felt self-conscious about the scars all over his body and the stray stubs of two old implants protruding through the skin on his upper arms, but there was nothing he could do about that.  Regulation called for the uniform.  After the hostile reception he’d had upon his arrival the day before, he realized it was obvious to the other students what he had once been, anyway.

Feeling physically energetic after six hours of regeneration, he walked at a brisk pace toward the track and field complex, which was right next to the bay’s edge.  The overheated atmosphere looked almost liquid with refracted light, shimmering above the concrete, glass and landscaped surfaces.  He could see the bay was already crowded with watercraft, as people took advantage of the warm weather and sought to enjoy the waning days of summer.  Out on the field, hundreds of cadets were assembling in groups, some stretching, some talking, many eyeing the incoming freshman class with curiosity.

Icheb quickly found his own group among the others, thanks to an instructor holding a large card that read ‘Class III Squad 24.’  He was among the first to arrive, and immediately began stretching to warm up his muscles.  As he did, he looked around the field at the other groups and took it all in.  Never before had he been around so many people his own age.  

Never had he felt so alone.

The instructor, a tall, pale-skinned Vulcan male holding a PADD and whose t-shirt had four stripes on the sleeve, indicating he was a first-class cadet, walked over to where Icheb was on the ground stretching. “Name?”

“Icheb.” He gave the Vulcan a wary look, but the older boy simply marked something on his PADD and moved on to the next cadet.

A few meters away, a human boy was also stretching.  When Icheb said his name, the boy looked over in surprise. His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of the implant on Icheb’s face.

“You’re the drone.”  His voice was filled with disdain.

Icheb shot him an irritated glance.  “I am not a drone. I am an individual and a Starfleet cadet.”

The boy glared at him.  “The Borg took my mother at Wolf 359.  Excuse me if I don’t roll out the welcome mat.”

Icheb met his gaze.  “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely, but his voice sounded defensive to his own ears. He couldn’t help it. He was already tired of apologizing for things he had no control over, and he had a feeling he had just barely begun.

“Whatever,” the boy muttered.  He quieted as the Vulcan walked over to him.

“Name?”

“Eric Atherton.”

The Vulcan marked something on his PADD.  “Admiral Atherton’s son,” he noted aloud.

Eric nodded.  “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Sir,” the Vulcan countered.

“What?”

“You will address me as ‘sir,’” the Vulcan clarified, “or Squad Leader Tivrik.”

“Oh, right.  Of course, sir.”

About thirty meters away, someone started shouting loudly.  Icheb turned away from Tivrik and Eric to see what was happening.  Just across the grassy field, a short, stocky first-class human cadet was screaming at a group of fourth-class cadets in formation.   She had singled out a slender blonde human and pulled her in front of the group.  With his enhanced vision, Icheb could easily see that the girl looked embarrassed and terrified. 

“How did you qualify for the Academy not knowing your left from your right, Plebe?!” the instructor screamed at her.  “Twenty pushups, go.”  The older girl didn’t even give the younger a full second of reaction time before screaming, “What are you waiting for?”

The girl quickly dropped to the grass and began doing push-ups.  The other fourth-class cadets in her group looked on with varied expressions ranging from amusement to horror.

“You call those push-ups?” the instructor yelled at the blonde.  “I’ve seen Elaysians with better arm strength than that.  You’ll be washed out by Friday, O’Connor, mark my words.”

Icheb could see the freshman blush bright red as she forced her body into more perfect form and redoubled her efforts.  He felt a rush of compassion for her.  Whatever she had done, he couldn’t imagine it had warranted this type of public punishment. 

“On your feet, Cadet Icheb.” Tivrik’s voice cut through his thoughts and he realized he was the last one in his group still stretching in the grass.  “Unless you envy the fate of that plebe.”

Icheb jumped to his feet and joined his squadmates in formation. 

He couldn’t resist casting one last glance at the girl. 

*****

Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.  Maren counted pushups in her head as she tried desperately to figure out how things had gone so wrong, so fast.  It was barely six-thirty in the morning and her PT instructor was already screaming at her.  Fine, she had fallen briefly out of step.  Had the Vulcan girl really needed to point it out so the instructor could hear?

It’s a competition, Maren, she reminded herself. The truth sat in her empty stomach like a stone.  The first year of the Academy was nothing but a fight to the proverbial death to see who would make it – Darwinism at its finest, survival of the fittest.  By the year’s end, easily a third of them would wash out, and most wouldn’t be leaving by choice. 

Maren’s cheeks flared hot, not with embarrassment, but with anger.  She might have been angry at the smug Vulcan girl for playing the game so well, but she was angrier at herself for screwing up.

It wouldn’t happen again.

She managed to get through the rest of formation drills without error.  Then their squad leader, Tanith Benson, led them over to the track. 

“Fifteen hundred meters, on my mark.  First one to complete gets ten minutes’ extra shut-eye tomorrow morning.  Last place meets me here at oh-five-hundred.”

A race.  Maren’s heart beat a little faster as she anticipated a chance to redeem herself.  Running had been a huge part of her life back home.  When she wasn’t conjuring up new mathematical formulas or tinkering with tech, she was on the trails around her parents’ house, running and thinking and dreaming about the future.  She was fast.  Really fast.  She had won the regional championships for cross-country four times in a row, with a final race time fast enough to qualify for the Federation Olympics, if she had bothered to try out.  Recruiters never understood her when she told them she wasn’t interested.  But running races wasn’t going to help her fly a starship.  

She eyed her competition as they spread out across the wide track.  Most of her squadmates were either human or Betazoid.  She would probably beat them all.  Two were Andorian.  They would be tougher.  Mostly, though, she eyed the Vulcan.  If she defeated no one but her, she would be satisfied.

When Tanith gave the signal, twenty-six pairs of feet took off running down the track. It didn’t take long for Maren, the Vulcan girl, and an Andorian boy to pull ahead of the pack.  It was obvious that the competition was between the three of them.  No one else was even close.

At first, Maren hung back a bit, conserving her energy.  A 1500 wasn’t a long race for her, but she would need every bit of strength if she planned to overtake the other two at the end.  Even so, she couldn’t resist trying to psych the Vulcan out.  In a short burst of speed, she caught up to the dark-haired girl, whose pixie haircut revealed her perfectly pointed ears, and matched her pace. 

“You won’t defeat me,” the Vulcan told Maren calmly, without looking over at her.  “I possess superior strength and endurance.”

“You also possess an attitude problem,” Maren replied, between controlled breaths.  “You didn’t have to do what you did.”

“I demand excellence of my colleagues as well as myself,” the Vulcan answered.  “You were in error.  I merely corrected you.”

Maren didn’t bother to reply.  She simply accelerated.  I’ll show you excellence.  If she had to sprint the rest of the way to prove herself to this Vulcan, she’d do it.

The element of surprise carried her about ten meters ahead of the Vulcan before the other girl reacted and increased her own pace, quickly catching up.  In response, Maren ran even faster, struggling to maintain her form and breathing as she sprinted around the track.

They had long since passed the Andorian boy, but Maren didn’t notice.  She was too caught up in the furious rhythm of her sneakers hitting the track.  No sooner did one foot hit the ground then the next one followed, again and again and again.  All she knew was that she had to stay ahead of the Vulcan girl, and so far, she was pulling it off.  She didn’t notice a crowd had formed, yelling and cheering at the spectacle.  

The finish line was now in sight.  Maren could sense her adversary closing the tiny distance between them.  She could hear the Vulcan’s breathing, heavy now, almost labored.   The sound alone gave her satisfaction.  Superior strength and endurance, my ass.  Her own heart pounded and she had lost firm control of her breathing at least 100 meters ago, but she was close, so close.  Victory was so near she could taste it.

She crossed the finish line just a hundredth of a second before the Vulcan, to the sound of at least two dozen cadets screaming.  Among them a small group of humans chanting “Earth!  Earth!  Earth!”  Maren couldn’t help but smirk as she slowed herself down.   Beside her, the Vulcan girl also slowed to a stop, showing no reaction to her narrow loss.

“Well done, cadets,” Tanith said to the pair, noting their finish times on the PADD she carried.  “O’Connor, you’ve earned a late morning.  Congratulations.”  The aggressiveness the instructor had showed toward her earlier was gone, replaced by a grudgingly admiring tone.  As the slower cadets started arriving, she turned her attention back to the finish line to record their times.

Still out of breath, Maren turned to the Vulcan girl and extended her hand.  “Good race,” she said, panting.

The Vulcan was also still breathing hard.   She ignored the proffered handshake and simply nodded.  “Your speed is impressive for a human,” she conceded.  “Your emotional control, however, is not.”  With that, she walked away to cool down, hands on her narrow hips and sweat trickling in rivulets behind her pointed ears. 

“That was awesome,” a nearby brown-haired boy with a faint California accent said.  “It’s not often you get to see a human smoke a Vulcan in a race.”

Maren smiled between deep breaths, still pacing back and forth.  “I hardly smoked her,” she said.  “I’d bet my last credit that will never happen again.  She wasn’t expecting me, that’s all.”

“Still,” he said.  “Nicely done.”

“Thanks,” she grinned.  She accepted congratulations from a few of the other impromptu spectators, then rejoined her squadmates for dismissal.  As Tanith announced the top three times, she learned that the Vulcan girl’s name was Sukari and the Andorian boy was Ehraan. 

The moment PT ended, she made a beeline back to her dorm.  All she wanted was a shower and a fresh start.  She couldn’t wait to put on her cadet uniform and get on with the academics.  That afternoon, she’d have her first flight control class.  She imagined herself at the helm a starship and smiled.  No matter how many Sukaris she faced at the Academy, she wasn’t going to let them get in the way of her dream.

****** 

John Quigley had never been so ready for lunch. His first full morning of actual instruction at Starfleet Academy -- now that the waivers had been signed, the orientation briefings concluded, and the lectures on the rules and regulations completed -- had tested his wits, his intellect, and even his body beyond his expectations. The prospect of sitting down for a few uninterrupted minutes of sustenance was incredibly appealing. 

As he headed for the bank of replicators along the wall at the back of the main Academy replimat, he was so preoccupied by his anticipation of the meal ahead that he almost missed noticing the short, tentacled alien skimming across the floor on an anti-grav platform. At the last moment, he quickly jumped to the side to avoid a collision, but in the crowded replimat, it was impossible. He didn’t hit the octopus-looking cadet, but he slammed into someone else -- hard. He heard a startled cry and then a crash, and spun around to see who he had run into.

Sprawled out on her back on the floor was another human first-year cadet, her uniform now covered in broccoli soup as her tray slid to a stop a few meters away. As the fallen young woman pushed herself up to a sitting position, John’s breath caught. She was pretty, with blonde hair pulled into a simple knot at the nape of her neck, green eyes, and a slender frame. She also looked shocked and like she was about to tell someone off. He guessed that person was him.

“I’m really sorry, are you okay?” he asked, mortified. The blonde cadet looked up at him, her lightly freckled cheeks flushed with indignation, but to his surprise, her expression instantly changed when she saw his face, and she started to giggle.

“What’s so funny?” John asked, confused.

The girl pointed to him, still laughing. Great, just great, thought John. “You should see the look on your face,” she said, and as she looked down at her soiled uniform and spilled lunch, she started to giggle harder. “Oh, my God,” she gasped, “this is so appropriate after the morning I just had. Help me up,” she requested, trying to get her giggles under control, and reached out a small, almost fragile-looking hand. As John took it and helped the soup-covered cadet to her feet, he was pretty sure he might have just learned the meaning of ‘love at first sight.’

“I’d offer to buy you a replacement lunch, but it’s all free,” he said, a bit lamely. “Can I help you get cleaned up, though?”

The young woman smiled. “Sure. Can you grab me a few napkins?”

“I think you might need more than a few,” John quipped as he headed for the last place he had seen a napkin dispenser. When he returned to the scene of his crime with a thick stack of napkins, the thin blonde had already gathered up the parts of her lunch that weren’t dripping down her uniform and piled the remains on her tray.

“I’m so sorry,” John repeated, once again blushing with embarrassment. “I was trying not to hit that kid who looks like an octopus and I didn’t see you behind me. I’m so sorry.”

“Well, it’s probably difficult for you to see all of us little people,” the girl teased.  John blushed even harder. “How tall are you, anyway?”

“One point nine-three meters,” John replied. He didn’t know what else to say, and an awkward silence settled over both of them for a moment. Then John said, “Look, I know I just knocked you to the ground and all, but would you like to have lunch with me? I don’t really know anyone but my roommate yet and he’s --”

“I don’t know anyone, either,” she interrupted. “My roommate is a legacy and she knows all kinds of people and so she doesn’t really need me, I guess, and you wouldn’t believe the day I’m having, and ...” she trailed off, then quickly apologized, “I’m sorry, I’m babbling.” John raised his eyebrows in amusement at the sudden rapid-fire flood of words gushing out of the girl and smiled. She smiled back almost shyly and said, more slowly, “I’d love to make a friend. My name’s Maren O’Connor.” She offered her little hand again, and John shook it as if trying not to break it, even though her grip was pretty firm.

“John Quigley,” he replied, consciously trying to smile the smile that had worked so well on the girls back in high school. The problem was, this wasn’t high school, and something about this girl was shaking his normal confidence. He wasn’t sure what it was. She wasn’t that stunning ... more like the high end of cute. There was just something about her that had grabbed his attention.

They quickly dumped her spilled lunch into the recycler, then she wiped the front of her uniform as best she could and they grabbed new lunches from the replicator. After a few laps around the crowded seating area, they finally found an empty table. As they sat down, John noticed a small piece of broccoli stuck in Maren’s hair, and without thinking, reached out to grab it.

As Maren looked at him strangely, he held up the offending vegetable and said, “You had broccoli in your hair.”

“Thanks,” she said, blushing. She paused as if trying to think of something to say, and went with the standard, “So, where are you from?”

“Edmonton. What about you?”

“Morgantown, West Virginia. For the Academy, that makes us practically neighbors,” she joked, looking around at the many species collected in the replimat, from planets spread across half the galaxy.

John grinned. “I guess,” he said. “But I’m thinking you’ve never played hockey.”

Maren laughed. “No, ice hockey isn’t real big in West Virginia. Field hockey, though ... I was pretty good at that. Cross country was my sport, though. Four-time regional champion,” she added.  Suddenly, she paused as if remembering something; then grinned to herself, looking incredibly self-satisfied.

“Impressive. Maybe we should race sometime. I’m pretty fast, I think I could take you,” he teased her.

“I’d like to see you try,” she replied with a confident, but friendly smile. They sat in silence for a few moments, eating their lunches. John stole a couple of glances at the pretty cadet as he chewed his sandwich.

“So why are you here?” he finally asked.

Maren gave him an odd look and held up her soup spoon. “Lunch,” she said, as if it was obvious.

John rolled his eyes. “Not here, here. I mean, what brought you to the Academy?”

“Oh,” said Maren. “Same as everyone else, I guess -- this is how you get a starship.”

“Command track, eh?” John asked with a smirk. “And what is a little girl from West Virginia going to do with her own starship?”

“See the universe,” she replied with a smile. “What about you? What brings you to the Academy?”

John almost winced as he thought about his real reasons for being here. Underlying every goal he might have here was the single goal that drove everything else in his life -- escape. “Same as you. Get on a starship, see the galaxy,” he replied, but he knew his attempt at a carefree smile had fallen flat. 

Maren looked at him critically, and for a moment, John thought she could see right through him, but then she returned his smile. “Command track?”

“I hope so,” he replied. “We have to get through the first year, first,” he reminded her.

She sighed. “Tell me about it. I thought I was smart and tough until I came here. It’s the first day of classes and I’ve already been humiliated four times, not counting our little lunch incident.”

John winced. “Sorry about that,” he reiterated.

Maren’s eyes grew wide. “No, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said quickly.

“It’s okay,” John said. “You thought the look on my face was funny, though, you should have seen yours,” he added with a smirk. Maren pursed her lips in mock irritation, but her eyes danced with humor. John suddenly imagined himself kissing her, and quickly looked down at his plate, feigning inordinate interest in his replicated meal.

 “You’re blushing,” Maren pointed out. “You do that a lot. At least five times in the last ten minutes. The first-class cadets are going to have a field day with you if you don’t find a way to stop that. Any sign of weakness ... ” she trailed off. Yeah, well, as long as you’re not in my squad, I won’t have a problem, John thought. 

“I’ll get right on that,” he replied wryly. “So, how did you get humiliated four times this morning?”

Now it was Maren’s turn to blush, and John felt bad for asking. She sighed, and explained, “Okay, first thing this morning, during PT, I fell out of step with everyone else and this awful Vulcan called me out.  So the drill instructor screamed at me and made me do pushups in front of everyone and told me I’d be washed out by Friday. I know they’re supposed to do that, but it was still awful. Then, later, I sat in the wrong class for five minutes before I realized it, and had to get up and leave. The instructor yelled at me for getting up, and then the instructor in my assigned class yelled at me for being late and made me do seventy-five jumping jacks in the back of the lecture hall, which seemed to please a few of the guys in the class to no end, which was really embarrassing.”

I’ll bet, thought John, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as his body reacted to the mental picture she’d just painted for him.

“Next time, same class,” she continued. “Introductory Survey of Federation Cultures. I was trying to show off to make up for being late and asked a question I thought would make me sound really intelligent, only I mixed up the Argosians and the Algolians and of course, there just had to be an Algolian in the class who got mad at me and set me straight in front of everyone. And then on the way here, I got lost and asked for directions from a second-year, but I forgot to say sir, and he made me do more pushups, on the walkway, while a bunch of people stood around and laughed at me. Oh, and then, after all that, I got knocked down by some guy in the replimat.” She smiled weakly at John.

“Well, ‘some guy’ is sorry about that. And I’m sorry your morning was so terrible,” he said sympathetically, glad nothing that bad had happened to him this morning.

“It can only get better from here, right?” she asked.

John decided to be bold. “I hope it’s getting better now,” he said suggestively, with his best flirtatious smile.

Maren blushed again, and looked down at her tray, smiling, but her smile faded when she saw the nearly dried soup on her jacket. She looked back up. “I have to go,” she said. “I have to get out of this stained uniform before my next class or I’ll end up doing more pushups and jumping jacks, and I don’t know how much more of that I can take.”

“Can I walk you to your room?” John asked. “I won’t let you forget to say ‘sir’ when we ask for directions,” he added teasingly.

Maren smiled. “Forward, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, I -- ” 

“Relax, I’m just teasing you. I’m pretty sure I can find my way back, though. But if you ever want to look me up, I’m in Carmichael Hall. 312B.”

“Hey, that’s my dorm, too,” John exclaimed. “408A. Now we really are neighbors.”

“I guess we are,” she replied. She smiled at him and stood up with her tray to take it to the recycler. “It was nice running into you, John Quigley,” she said, grinning at her own silly pun.

John grinned. “Likewise. Let me know if I can do it again sometime,” he joked. She shot him a last amused smile and walked away. He watched her retreating form and didn’t even try to hide his admiration at the view. She was damned cute. Not too short, but not tall either, maybe one-point-seven meters. A little on the thin side, but it was an athletic thin, like someone who ran a lot. Cross country, he recalled from their conversation. He wondered if he would see her again.

He would make it happen, he decided. 

“Fresh start, take two.”  Maren spoke out loud to her reflection in the mirror as she zipped up the second uniform jumpsuit of her first day at Starfleet Academy.  The girl staring back at her was the same one she’d seen every day for eighteen-and-a-half years – thin and wiry, pale skin, a smattering of freckles across her nose, and eyes the same color as the lichen that grew on the trees near her family home.  But the uniform, dark gray with red shoulders designating her desire for command, somehow transformed her. 

Taking a deep breath, she combed out her long, fine blonde hair with her fingers, twisted it back into a neat bun and pinned it into place.  She appraised her reflection one more time and stood up a little straighter. 

If nothing else, at least she looked the part.

It had been a rough morning, she thought, as she shoved her first, soup-stained uniform into the sonic laundry unit.  Nothing was going as she had planned.  Instead of impressing her classmates and instructors with her intelligence and physical skill, she had spent the better part of the day struggling to recover from foolish mistakes.  She felt strangely out of her element so far.   She hoped it was just that the incident in PT with the Vulcan girl had started her off on the wrong foot. 

Making a new friend had soothed her a little, despite the embarrassing incident that had started it all.  She barely knew John Quigley, but she already liked him.  He seemed friendly, warm, encouraging, and competitive without being nasty or underhanded about it … unlike certain Vulcans, she thought, twisting her mouth into a pout.  She had to admit that he was really attractive, too – tall and athletic, with a tousled mop of sandy blond hair, chiseled features, and piercing blue eyes. 

Not that she expected a romance to blossom.  They were, at their core, competitors, and besides, her dating experience was limited to one awkward prom night and a fumbling walk to second base.  Honestly, between her studies and her extracurricular pursuits, she’d never really had much time for boys.

Her next class was Introduction to Flight Control.  Earlier that morning, she had barely been able to contain her excitement at the thought, but now, there was a disturbing apprehension mixed in with her anticipation.  What if I screw this up, too? 

She had dreamed of piloting a starship her entire life.  The goal had carried her through 13 years of straight As in classes far above her grade level and numerous activities designed to make her application to Starfleet Academy shine.  But the only practical experience she had with flying was operating the family skimmer and a handful of anti-grav farm vehicles.  Without family connections to Starfleet or the space travel industry, there simply hadn’t been much opportunity for her to try her hand at real piloting.  She was pretty decent in a simulator, but a part of her knew – and dreaded the fact – that the real thing wouldn’t be the same at all.

She checked the chronometer on her desktop LCARS unit.  12:47. Thirteen minutes until she faced her lifelong dream for the first time.  After everything she’d done to get here, she hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be a nightmare.

*****

Icheb had not expected the Academy to be easy.  And yet … it was.  His first day of on-campus training had been far less rigorous than any instruction he had ever taken from Seven, Tuvok or Captain – now Admiral – Janeway. 

So far, he had outperformed all of his peers in every class he’d attended.  In PT, he was the fastest.  In Comparative Xenobiology, he’d already known most of the answers, and a quick scan of the text revealed there wasn’t much the class could teach him that the Borg hadn’t already uploaded to his cortical array.  His experience in Astrophysics II was similar.  It appeared the crew of Voyager had compensated for his enhanced intelligence by making his coursework much harder than it needed to be to earn a commission.  He was grateful for it, but his current classes were less stimulating in comparison. 

In a sense, though, he realized he wasn’t really at the Academy to learn astrophysics or genetics, even though those were the specialties he had chosen.  He already knew more than most Starfleet officers about both fields, along with many others.  The real reason he was here was to learn about Starfleet.  Learn more about humanity.  Make the Federation his home.

As he headed into his Advanced Engineering Survey class, he was disappointed to see Eric Atherton there already, sitting in a gallery seat near the door.  The admiral’s son looked up from the PADD he had been reading as Icheb walked in, and the expression of disgust on his face was obvious, even to Icheb, who often had trouble reading human emotions. 

“Great, here comes the drone,” he muttered.  It wasn’t meant for anyone else; he had said it under his breath, but with his enhancements, it was easy for Icheb to hear.

He purposely chose a seat far away from Eric, toward the far side of the room, where anyone who looked at him would see the right side of his face and not the left side with its ocular implant.  He looked around the lecture hall as he waited for class to begin.  He counted 95 chairs in the gallery area – a small class, by Academy standards.  Down on the floor in front, there were twenty lab tables arranged lengthwise in two long rows of ten.  Behind them was the instructor’s desk, and behind that, a large holographic screen.  The instructor had yet to arrive.

The other students filed in and took their seats.  To Icheb’s relief, no one seemed to notice him.   He sat scrolling through his PADD, pretending to review the class material and trying to blend in as much as possible.

Sometimes he wondered if he would have been better off on Wysanti with Mezoti and the twins, Rebi and Azan.  He missed them.  They had been like siblings to him, and he had fit in with them.  Even so, he suspected he would have been unhappy on their world.  There was nothing like the Federation there … no organization devoted to peacefully exploring the stars, no sleek starships destined for uncharted worlds, and no promise of a truly clean start – away from his parents, away from Brunali, away from the Borg. 

But the clean start he was hoping for was only a childish fantasy.  If the last five months of interrogation and isolation hadn’t proven that, the past two days of first contact with his fellow classmates certainly had.  Some gave him curious stares.  Some avoided him.  But many were openly hostile, and they seemed to have intimidated even the curious ones into treating Icheb like he didn’t belong. 

Outside the Academy perimeter was even worse.  There were protesters outside today; he had seen the news coverage on a viewscreen in the replimat during lunch.  Many of them had lost family members or loved ones to the Borg, and they carried signs and voice amplifiers, shouting angrily about betrayal and risk and Trojan Horses – a concept Icheb was familiar with from his previous studies of ancient Earth literature.  It was obvious they considered him a “Trojan Horse” for the present day – no doubt sent by the Borg to destroy the Federation from within. After a stunned moment watching them, he had hastily replicated a nutritional supplement and retreated to his room, deciding isolation was preferable to the suspicious glares of his fellow cadets.

Now, the instructor for his engineering class finally arrived, and everyone stood at attention to salute him.  Commander Ih’irin was a middle-aged Andorian, tall and lanky, with prominent antennae and close-cropped hair that was so bright white it seemed to take on a violet cast next to his blue skin.  His uniform tunic was not the gold of the operations division, but the teal that represented the sciences.  A theorist, Icheb speculated.  He was encouraged by that.  Having had extensive previous experience with applied engineering, he would prefer to study pure theory in this class.  He found it much more interesting.

“At ease, cadets,” Ih’irin told them, after returning the salute.  “Please, sit down.”  The 71 students Icheb had counted, including himself, obediently complied. 

“Welcome to Advanced Engineering Survey,” Ih’irin told them.  His voice was forthright and confident, and loud enough that Icheb thought it would have reached the very back of the room even without the assistance of the microphone embedded in his desk.  “You are here because the faculty has deemed you the most promising third-class cadets in the area of engineering.  I expect excellence from all of you,” he said matter-of-factly.  “Those who fall behind will be moved to the Intermediate section.  My office hours are Thursdays from 1100 to noon.  Please make use of them if needed. Now, activate your PADDs and bring up the start page for today’s lecture.”

Icheb appreciated the how the commander avoided discussing irrelevant subjects.  His instructor in Comparative Xenobiology, a Betazoid doctor, had spent twelve minutes and thirty-one seconds at the start of class telling them about her personal life.  She was married to another Academy instructor, also a Betazoid, who taught military history.  They had three children aged 14, 12 and 9.  They enjoyed Earth but missed their home and visited whenever they could.  She was an avid diver and had written 13 separate textbooks on aquatic biology, each covering a different planet.

It wasn’t that Icheb had found her words uninteresting.  It was just that he kept waiting for her to draw a direct connection to the topic they were supposed to be studying, Comparative Xenobiology, and she never did.  When she was finished talking about her personal life, she simply stopped.  Only then had she directed their attention to the class text. 

At least she hadn’t asked everyone to introduce themselves like the Astrophysics instructor had.

As Icheb brought up the class lecture supplement on his PADD, the lights dimmed in the lecture hall and the holographic screen activated behind Commander Ih’irin.  Icheb could see that at least twenty-three of the other students had activated subtitles in their native languages on their devices.  The main viewscreen displayed four Starfleet vessels of progressively advanced propulsion, their engineering sections highlighted and magnified. 

“Today we will review the evolution of interstellar propulsion in Starfleet, beginning with the Warp 5 project, then moving through subsequent generations of warp drive and on to more recent, exotic modes of transport.  We’ll also touch on speculation about technology still in development, including quantum slipstream drive and transwarp corridors … ”

Icheb found himself listening to the lecture and storing it in his cortical array, but struggling to stay engaged.  He had already memorized most of this information, thanks to the Collective, and what they hadn’t uploaded to his memory, he had learned simply by living and working on Voyager. 

As he sat there, bored by the lecture’s content and fighting his growing preoccupation with the protests going on outside the Academy’s perimeter, he wondered, not for the first time, if joining Starfleet would prove to be a mistake.  He looked around at the other students, some of whom looked equally bored, and some of whom were looking at Commander Ih’irin with rapt fascination and dutifully tapping out notes on their PADDs.

He wondered if there was any chance he would ever be able to call them friends.

*****

“Welcome to Beginning Flight Control.  I’m Lieutenant Commander Silai Jiri.”  The dark-haired instructor’s long ponytail bounced behind her as she glanced around the crowd.  The petite pilot was standing on a small platform in the middle of the simulation hangar in front of a group of forty or so first-class cadets, and she was still shorter than a few of them – including John, who guessed he was easily thirty centimeters taller than she was.

She was hot, he decided.   Definitely no more than thirty, with a fit body, nicely sized breasts and a pert ass.  The form-fitting flight suit she was wearing left little to the imagination, and he had to fight to keep a tiny smirk of satisfaction off his face.  Not only was he going to learn to fly, he would be taking his orders from by far the most attractive teacher he’d yet met.

Suddenly, she looked right at him.  “You,” she said, pointing at him.  “What’s your name?” The expression on her face was pleasant enough, but her voice could only be described as “commanding.”  Her no-nonsense tone stopped him in his tracks, and he bit back the flirtatious smile that he had instinctively been about to give her.  Clearly, this was not a teacher who would be taking any shit.

Wiping the smirk off his face, he forced a more neutral expression, then stood up a little straighter and cleared his throat.  “John Quigley, sir,” he answered.

The commander gave him a smile that could only be described as malevolent.  “Great.  Cadet Quigley.  Glad to have you here,” she said.  Condescension dripped from every syllable.  “Now stop ogling my tits and ass and pay attention,” she ordered.

Heat rushed into John’s face, and he gave the instructor a quick, stunned nod.  A number of cadets snickered, but a sharp look from Commander Jiri shut them up.  A few rows ahead of him, a blond head turned around.  It was Maren O’Connor, the girl from lunch.  She was looking at him, wide eyed, with an expression that was equal parts amusement and empathetic horror.  He didn’t know whether to be pleased to see her again, or humiliated that she was witnessing this. 

Beside him, a Deltan boy nudged his arm. “She’s Betazoid,” he murmured under his breath. “Watch where your mind goes.”  John glanced over at the boy, still blushing.  His classmate offered up a sympathetic shrug. 

Shit, John thought.  Mind readers.  Instantly, he realized Jiri had probably heard that, too.  Sure enough, she glanced his way; then tossed him another evil smile. Bitch, he almost thought, but he somehow managed to stop the word from fully forming in his head.  Instead, he looked for Maren’s blond head in the crowd to give his senses something to do.

Meanwhile, Jiri explained that their first day would be a sink-or-swim – “well, fly-or-crash,” she quipped – shot at the flight simulators to assess their skill.  “Those of you who display proficiency above this course level may be given the opportunity to test out,” she told them.  “The simulators will automatically adapt to your skill level, so don’t bother lying to the setup screen to make it easier on yourself.  If you’ve got experience, either real or simulated, there will be a place to enter that in.  Just keep in mind that this is a much more sophisticated and realistic simulation than the commercially available sims, so don’t tell it you’re an expert pilot if all you’ve done is play 147 hours of Warbird Combat 3.”  She smirked at one boy in the class knowingly, and he blushed. “If you’re a novice, that’s fine,” she said.  “It will start off with the basics and gradually increase the challenge as the system assesses your natural skill.  But if you tell it you’re a beginner and it senses you’re not, I’ll know about it, and dock you points for being both lazy and dishonest.”

Up in front, Maren’s hand went up.  Commander Jiri glanced over at her.  “You.  What’s your name?”

“Maren O’Connor, sir.”  She sounded nervous, her voice both faster and higher-pitched than it had been at lunch, but her words were crisp and clear.  “Are mechanical malfunctions and troubleshooting part of the simulation, or is it more like an obstacle course to test our piloting skill?” she asked.

“That will depend entirely on what the system thinks you’re capable of handling,” Jiri answered.  “For most of you, no, it will not throw engineering dilemmas at you.  If it does, you probably belong in a more advanced class.”  She nodded approvingly at Maren.  “That was a good question.  Anyone else?”  She looked expectantly at the class. 

While a few other students asked questions about the assessment process, John willed his mind blank.  He dared not look at Commander Jiri.  He didn’t know why it had never occurred to him that going to a school full of telepaths might be more than a little awkward, or that one of his commanding officers might be a smoking hot mind reader with a mean streak.  (Although that, he decided, was just fucking unfair.)  He couldn’t wait to get in the simulator, where his mind would be occupied by trajectories, speed and contacts – physical stuff, stuff he could control, avoid, or demolish.

Sure enough, his discomfort evaporated the moment he sat down behind the controls.  He hadn’t flown so much as a skimmer in his life, but one of his favorite places to escape to when he had the credits was the massive holoarcade at the old West Edmonton Mall.  Flight simulators ranked up there with fighting sims as the best way to kill a few hours when it was just too cold even for ice hockey.  He and his friends liked to have dogfights, which he had usually dominated with a combination of excellent fine motor control, quick reflexes, a good mind for tactics, and a fearlessness that bordered on the asinine.  He knew his biological father had been – and probably still was – a shipping pilot.  If he hadn’t made it into the Academy, he might have done the same thing.     

He answered the short questionnaire on the setup screen truthfully (novice pilot, casual commercial sim experience) and fired up the sim.  As the control panel configured itself, he found himself at the helm of a type 2 shuttle.  Warp capable.  He smirked at that.  But he could see on the viewscreen that he was sitting on a landing pad in the middle of an impressively built-up alien city, surrounded by giant arcologies and plenty of air traffic.  Sensors indicated the city was on the third of five planets in a densely populated binary star system.  For this simulation, it was pretty clear he’d be using thrusters and impulse only.

His assignment was to navigate to a space station orbiting the fifth planet and rendezvous with a starship docked there.  As he entered the launch sequence, an artificially pissy voice warned him that he hadn’t been cleared for takeoff.  Shit.  Sheepishly, he apologized and asked for clearance.  When it was granted, he took off, and smoothly maneuvered the shuttle through the heavy air traffic until he was clear of the city’s airspace.

He made it to the station with minimal issues.  His weakness was obviously that he didn’t know the ‘rules’ of real space flight.  The system zeroed in on this, and threw a lot of technicalities at him – right-of-way issues, approach protocols, even a space lane closure due to a search and seizure operation – and docked him a few points here and there for what mostly amounted to minor traffic violations.  Then again, he recalled hearing that such violations carried a penalty of death in some cultures, so maybe it was kind of a big deal.  For the most part, though, he deftly completed the simulation and felt quite pleased with himself when the screen displayed “Simulation Complete.  Assessment Level: 3.5.  Score: 8.4/10. 

When he exited the simulator, his good mood came to a quick end.  Not everyone looked as happy as he felt.  Two simulators over, Maren O’Connor was desperately begging Commander Jiri for another chance in the simulator.  Her voice trembled, and she was fighting back actual tears.

“Look, I think I messed up on setup,” she was saying.  “I thought I put in ‘novice,’ but I must have hit something else by mistake.  Please let me try again, Commander.  I can do this; I know it.”

“O’Connor, there’s no mistake,” Jiri retorted, looking down at a PADD.  “The system was set to level 0.0 and you still managed to crash within three minutes. Six times.  That’s impressive – maybe even record breaking.  But you don’t get to try again.  You’re a novice; there’s no shame in that.  That’s why you’re in this class.” She turned to walk away.

Maren wasn’t having it.  “Wait, Commander, please,” she cried out.  “Please,” she repeated, more quietly, this time.  “I think I know what I did wrong.  Please just give me one more shot.”  John winced at how desperate she sounded.  He knew she’d had a bad day, and that this was probably just the last straw for her.  He hoped for Maren’s sake that Jiri’s mind-reading powers let her realize that, too.

Jiri stopped short and slowly turned to face Maren.  “Attention, Cadet,” she ordered, low and controlled. 

Maren instantly complied, sniffing back tears, drawing herself up to her full height and staring straight ahead at the shorter woman. 

“I tried saying it the nice way, now I’m going to say it the Starfleet way,” Jiri told her.  “This assessment is complete.  Your placement in this class is confirmed.  Your objection has been noted, and my decision will not change.  One more word out of you, and I will recommend your reassignment to a track that better suits your skill set.”

Maren swallowed back tears and nodded.  “Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“What was that?” Jiri asked sharply, holding one hand to her ear.  “I couldn’t hear you.”

Maren gulped again.  “I said, yes, sir,” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Good,” Jiri said, locking eyes with her and nodding.  Then she gestured toward the perimeter of the hangar.  “Twenty laps,” she said.  “Go.”

****

After class, John waited for Maren just outside the door to the simulation hangar.  She walked out with her head down, nose in a PADD, her face puffy and eyes rimmed red from fighting back tears.  She didn’t notice him, or pretended not to, so he caught her by the arm.  “Hey.”

She stopped walking and looked up, tensing at his unexpected touch, but she relaxed a little when she saw his face.  Her mouth opened as if she wanted to say something, but then she seemed unable to find the words.  She looked as if she might cry again at any second, so John rushed to fill the silence.  “Jiri’s kind of a bitch, eh?”

Maren exhaled sharply, a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a bitter laugh.  “I made a fool of myself in there,” she said, closing her eyes.  “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking you have to be the best,” John replied.  “But you can’t be.  Not here.  This place is insane.”  Off in the distance, behind an old iron perimeter fence, he could see a crowd of people with colorful signs, protesting the Borg kid they’d let into the Academy.  Case in point, he thought to himself.  No mere human could ever hope to outperform a Borg drone, either academically or physically.  Or a Vulcan, for that matter.  Or an Andorian.  The list went on.  He and Maren might have been star performers in their little Earth hometowns, but here, they would be lucky not to wash out.  Hell, he hadn’t even made it in the first time he had applied, meaning he was probably a year older than Maren.

She opened her eyes and gave him a baleful look.  “I don’t need to be the best,” she said. “But I’ve never failed like that at anything in my life.  It just … oh, I don’t know,” she sighed.  “On top of everything else that happened today, I guess it was just too much.  I snapped.”

“That’s what they want,” John said, taking her by the arm and escorting her in the general direction of Carmichael Hall. “Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

Maren sighed and leaned into him a little, letting him guide her toward the dorms.  “How did you do?” she asked, looking up at him curiously.

“On the assessment?” he asked.  Maren nodded. 

John shrugged lightly.  “I did okay.  I didn’t test out, but I came pretty damn close.  I figure if nothing else, maybe that means an easy A.”  He immediately felt bad for saying it to her, given how bad she felt about how poorly she’d done, but to her credit, she didn’t seem hurt by it.  “Maybe I can help you,” he offered.  “If we can get some holosuite time, I can show you some of the sims I learned on.  Maybe it would help.”

Maren offered him a weak smile.  “Maybe,” she said, with a half-hearted shrug.

“Okay, wait, stop,” he said, coming to a sudden halt.  “What is this ‘maybe’ crap?  You’re never going to make it with that attitude.  No way are you going to let them defeat you on the first day.  You’re the girl who let me sit with her at lunch after I knocked you flat on your ass in front of everyone.  No way are you giving up that easily.”

“I’m not giving up,” she protested, starting to walk toward the dorms again.  “I’m just … tired, I guess.  It’s been a long day.”

John jogged a few steps to pass her, and stood in front of her to cut her off.  She stopped and looked up at him with an expression that was somehow questioning, impatient and amused, all at the same time.  She had a really expressive face, and for the second time that day, he imagined kissing her lips, which were currently screwed up into an impatient pout.  He blushed, grateful this girl didn’t have the same mind-reading skills as the bitchy flight control professor. 

“Okay, look,” he said.  “Come out with me tonight.  Forget this day ever happened.  My roommate and I are going to check out a club nearby.  It’s supposedly the best one within stumbling distance, if you know what I mean.”  Maren smiled at that.  “Come on.  I promise it will be fun.  You’ll forget how bad today was, and tomorrow can be a brand new start.”

She looked up at him, equal parts hope and skepticism.  “I have homework,” she pointed out, “and so do you.”

“So?  We’ll do it now,” he replied confidently.  “We’ll go back to the dorm, get our shit done, and have something to look forward to when it’s all over.”  He smiled at her, this time effortlessly managing the devastatingly effective grin he’d used on the girls back in high school.  “So?” he asked.  “Are you in or out?”

She gave him a long, conflicted look, and for a minute, he was sure she was going to say no.  But then her mouth quirked into a little half-smile.  “All right, I’m in,” she said.  “But first, you’re helping me with my flight control assignment.”

Long before they could see the club, they could hear it.  The thumping bass beat of the live band was clearly audible even from half a block away. As Maren walked between John and Aaron, she felt weirdly hyped up, and very out of place.  Going out on a school night was not her style.  Going out with strangers was also not her style.  Going out with attractive male strangers was even less her style.

But John had been persuasive, and really, he was right: She was desperately in need of a lower-pressure situation.  Given the choice between A) hanging out in her room alone, stewing over the day, or B) spending the evening with John and his roommate, she figured the healthier option was almost certainly B.  Back at the dorm, she’d probably wind up crying into a pillow … or worse, calling her parents.  And the last thing she wanted was to make her mother doubt her readiness for this even more than she already did.

As they neared the nightclub, John flashed her an excited grin.  She smiled back despite herself.  She had to admit it was hard to resist his charm, even if she had a feeling she was one of many, many women he was working over with that smile – especially after Commander Jiri had called him out that afternoon.  She smirked at the memory, but her smile faded as she remembered the disaster that had followed.  Keep your mind off it, Maren, she told herself, forcing herself to smile brightly at John again.  

The club was about a fifteen-minute walk from campus, in the Ambassadorial District just across from the Bolian Embassy.  According to Aaron, who seemed to have done a lot of advance research on San Francisco’s nightlife, it had opened just last year, and was currently the most popular spot in town for cadets and other young adults to mingle. 

Sure enough, there was a line of about forty people queued up at the door waiting to get in, and easily half of them were wearing Starfleet Academy uniforms.  The three of them joined the line, right underneath the animated holographic sign that hovered above the entrance. The club’s main logo was rendered in Bolian script, but underneath, in smaller letters, was a subtitle in Standard: “Immersion Club.” 

Aaron had told them the club had an ocean theme, but instead of using holotech to simulate an underwater environment, the Bolian owners had shipped actual sea water and aquatic life from Bolarus IX and erected giant fish tanks in place of walls, making the club part bar, part exobiology exhibit.  Back at the dorms, Maren had wondered aloud if they could get extra credit if they took notes on the different species.  Aaron had emphatically declared her a hopeless nerd.

As the door opened in front of them to let a group ahead of them enter, the noise from inside the club exploded out onto the sidewalk.  Maren could hear someone half-screaming, half-singing a fast-paced neo-rock song she’d never heard before.  The words were in Standard, but the voice was definitely not human; the singer’s range was way too broad for that.  The song competed with the steady roar of dozens or maybe even hundreds of voices shouting at each other in the packed club, clanging glassware, and laughter.  Feeling nervous and a tiny bit exhilarated, she glanced over at John.  He met her gaze and grinned. He looked utterly thrilled to be there.  Maren was less sure about the situation, but smiled back anyway.

After about twenty minutes, it was finally their turn to be let in.  The bouncer checked their Starfleet IDs and waved them through.  As the door slid open ahead of them and the trio was again blasted with sound, Maren cast a slightly anxious glance at John. He wasn’t looking at her at all – his eyes were fixed on the dark entry in front of them – but then his hand was on the small of her back, warm, strong and oddly comforting, as he gently but firmly guided her through the door.

Inside, they all stopped short while their eyes adjusted to the much dimmer light inside the club.  Almost all of the club’s lighting was environmental, and almost all of it was inside the tanks lining the walls and ceilings.  Quite a few of the exotic alien sea creatures glowed, giving off their own eerie light.   It really did look like you were standing at the bottom of the Bolian world ocean, with nothing but a lantern and a few bioluminescent fish to light your way.

“This is fucking unreal,” John half-said, half-shouted, looking straight up at an enormous, bright yellow creature that looked like a cross between a jellyfish and a shark.  His hand was still on the small of her back, which she normally would have found distracting, but even the thrill of a cute boy’s attentions couldn’t compete with the view overhead.  She gaped at the animal, too.

“I told you we could have gotten extra credit,” she said aloud, but there was no way anyone else could hear her in the utter chaos of the noisy club.

As her eyesight adapted to the dim environment, she looked around at their fellow clubgoers.  In addition to hordes of cadets, there were quite a few young civilians there, some from Earth, but many alien.  Not surprisingly for a Bolian bar, the majority of the alien civilians were blue-skinned and bald.  On a stage in the center of the club, a gray-skinned woman with spiky white hair wearing not much more than strategically applied bioluminescent body paint was belting out songs in an impossibly flexible voice. 

For a long moment, Maren just stared, totally captivated by everything she saw.  There was nothing like this in West Virginia.  Hell, she was pretty sure there wasn’t even anything like this in Washington, D.C., where she’d gone to school prior to the Academy.

“Come on,” John said, pressing his hand into her back.  She suddenly realized they were blocking the entrance, and she hurried to get out of the way of the door.

“I’ll get the first round,” Aaron proclaimed.  He marched over to the bar, looking like he knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing – unlike John and Maren, who were both a little wide-eyed with awe as they trailed behind.

Suddenly, Maren was surprised by the sound of someone calling her name.

“Maren!”  It was a female voice. Maren turned around in surprise and searched for its source. A human girl emerged from the throng on the dance floor, grinning, a head full of shiny black curls bouncing around her round face.

“Rachel!” she cried.  She glanced over at John, who was giving her a questioning look.  “My roommate,” she explained. 

As Rachel bounded over to them, Maren saw she had a couple of friends in tow. One was a Bolian girl Maren recognized from the day they had moved in.  The other was a human third-class cadet, a wiry, curly-haired blond boy she had never seen before.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” Rachel shouted over the noise as she reached them, glancing around at the wild environment.  She gave an almost apologetic shrug and a little smile. “I wouldn’t really have thought this was your scene.” 

“It’s not,” Maren admitted flatly, raising her voice to be heard.  “I’m here with friends.”  She gestured toward John.  “This is John Quigley.  John, this is Rachel Quinteros.”

Rachel looked John up and down appraisingly; then shot Maren a knowing smirk, making it obvious she approved.  She grinned at him.  “Nice to meet you,” she shouted.  She motioned toward her friends.  “This is Shaex Balat,” she said, indicating the Bolian, “and Eric Atherton.”  The older boy nodded at John and Maren. 

Aaron returned then, cradling three glasses of some unidentifiable liquid, bright blue with swirls of orange.  “Bolian Sunset,” he announced cheerfully.

John reached over to take two of the drinks off his hands, handing one of them to Maren.  She eyed it suspiciously. 

“What’s in it?” she asked Aaron, wrinkling her nose and giving it a curious sniff.  It smelled fairly inoffensive.  Fruity, kind of soapy.  A little like shampoo, if shampoo was 40 proof or better.

“Some kind of Bolian squid ink,” Aaron said.  “Male and female, that’s the orange and blue.  Put that in your nerd report.  Plus a couple of shots of some fruit-flavored rum-like thing I can’t pronounce.”

Maren blanched a bit, but John grinned at her with that annoyingly effective smile again, the one that made her not want to spoil his fun.  “Bottoms up,” he said, and boldly took a swig of the alien concoction.

She was going to need to develop some kind of immunity to that grin, she decided.  However, she realized, now was not that moment. With a weaker smile of her own, she lifted the glass to her lips and took a sip.

To her relief, it was pretty good, and not terribly strong.  There was sort of a sweaty, salty undertone to it, which she guessed came from the squid ink, but mostly it just tasted like rum and fruit juice.  Feeling more sure of herself, she smiled and lifted her glass to the group.  “Cheers.”  John and Aaron grinned and toasted her back as the others watched with amusement.

On stage, the band finished up another loud, fast number, then changed gears, switching to something a little slower and softer.  Maren didn’t immediately recognize the language, but Shaex’s eyes lit up.  “I love this song!” the Bolian girl exclaimed.  She eyed Aaron speculatively.  “You’ll do,” she announced, grabbing his hand.  The redheaded boy barely had time to put his drink down on a nearby table before Shaex dragged him out onto the dance floor, but he didn’t appear to mind. 

Rachel glanced at Maren and John and smiled knowingly.  “Come on, Eric,” she said to her remaining friend.  “Let’s dance.”  Maren caught on immediately – her roommate was purposely leaving the two of them alone together.  Her stomach dropped.  “Catch you later, Maren,” Rachel said, as she led Eric onto the dance floor.

Maren couldn’t help but panic slightly as she watched them go.  It had been one thing to come here with John and Aaron.  But alone with John, even in the middle of this crowd, it suddenly had the feeling of a date.  She had only met him that afternoon.  And she was terrible at dating. 

Taking a sip of her drink, she forced herself to turn toward him and smile.  “So,” she said.  “We’ve been ditched.”

“Not if we join them,” John pointed out, shrugging.  He gave his drink a stir, watching the colors swirl together in the glass; then gestured toward the dance floor.  “Want to?” he asked.

Maren blushed, feeling awkward.  “I really can’t dance.”

John laughed. Gently, he reached over and took hold of the top of her head with his fingers, turning her face to look at where Aaron and Shaex were dancing.  He leaned in and spoke directly into her ear.  “That’s okay. Neither can they.” 

His breath was warm against her skin, and his sudden closeness made her feel a little off-balance.  Still, she couldn’t help but giggle at the sight.  It was true.  Aaron had no rhythm and appeared more interested in staring at Shaex’s well-developed breasts than showing off any kind of moves.  Shaex herself had at least a little more talent, but she was way more confident than her skills deserved.  As Maren looked around the dance floor, she had to admit that the vast majority of people out there looked ridiculous, especially the cadets.  She laughed.  “You’ve got a point.”  

“See?” John asked, with a conspiratorial grin.  He leaned in even closer and lightly rested his arm around her shoulder.  “Come on.  You can’t be that bad.”

She stiffened slightly at his touch.  John was free and easy with his physicality in a way she had never been, at least not around people she didn’t know well.  Especially boys.  It wasn’t that she didn’t like to be touched.  It just made her aware of her own body in a way that made her hyperfocus on her flaws.  Her skinny limbs.  Her tiny breasts. Her limp, fine hair.  The smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, made worse by working outside on the farm all summer.  She wasn’t all that vain, but John’s arm around her shoulders reminded her that although she was supposed to be a woman, she looked and felt more like an awkward child.  Especially when it came to romance.  

“Right,” she said.  “I can’t be that bad.” She fought back a fresh wave of embarrassment as she remembered she had told herself the exact same thing before flight control class that afternoon. Feeling the heat rush into her cheeks, she quickly took a gulp of her drink and set it down hard next to Aaron’s on the table.  “Fine, let’s go,” she said, before she lost her nerve.  Abruptly, she walked out onto the dance floor, leaving a surprised John rushing to catch up.

It turned out John wasn’t any better at dancing than anyone else.  He was so tall that it was awkward when they tried to hold on to each other, and his rhythm was off, unlike her own, which had been honed by countless hours of piano practice.  But she had to admit he was a lot of fun.  His ongoing commentary about the people around them kept her giggling nonstop through a trio of Bolian pop songs, and she felt her nervousness melting away. 

Finally, the band finished their set and went to take a break.  As they walked off the stage, the sound system took over, playing a prerecorded track of something very hard, loud, fast and Klingon. 

As soon as the song began, people all over the dance floor erupted in cheers – including John, who looked as excited as the rest of them.  But Maren was totally bewildered.  “What is this?” she shouted over the din, looking up at him quizzically.

John looked incredulous for a moment, but then a look of understanding crossed his face and he laughed.  “This really isn’t your scene, is it?” he shouted back with a grin, shaking his head.  Around them, almost everyone on the dance floor was singing at top volume along with the band.  The noise was deafening.  “This is ‘Iw HIq nga'chuq may' 'ej,’” John yelled over the din.  “It’s an ancient Klingon drinking song, but Warp Infinity turned it into a club song a couple of years ago.  It hit number one on at least five planets. I can’t believe you never heard it.”

Maren blushed. “I was kind of busy that year,” she shouted, with a lame shrug.  She looked around at all the people happily screaming the foreign lyrics and felt like a complete outsider.  “What does it mean?”

“Bloodwine, sex and battle,” John explained.  “Only cruder.”  He shrugged theatrically.  “You know. It’s Klingon.”

Maren nodded.  She was still dancing, sort of, but on autopilot – the song didn’t have any discernible rhythm, and it seemed to have a prescribed set of dance moves all its own, which she didn’t know.  She suddenly felt totally out of her element. 

John seemed to sense her unease, and grabbed her by the arm.  “Let’s go get another drink,” he suggested.  “The line should be nothing during this song.”

Feeling relieved, and somehow guilty for feeling that way, Maren followed him back to the bar.  It was still loud there, but it was nothing compared to out on the dance floor.  John led her to an empty table and pulled out a stool for her, then went over to the bar and retrieved two synthales and one large glass of water, which he set in front of Maren. 

She shot him a grateful smile.  “It’s that obvious I’m an amateur?” she asked, with a sheepish smile.

“I didn’t even think you’d agree to come out tonight,” John said.  “You’re doing great.”

Maren smiled down at her glass and took a sip of water.  It was cool and refreshing after being on the crowded dance floor, pressed up close against this boy she hardly knew.  What would your mother think of this? she asked herself.  She knew the answer.  She’d probably be pleased.  She had always encouraged Maren to try to have a childhood.  To try and have a little more fun.  You’re a child, Maren, she used to say all the time.  Too young to be so single-minded.  Have you ever stopped to consider that there’s an entire universe out there beyond Starfleet Academy?

Of course Maren had.  That’s why she had to come here in the first place, so she could explore it to the fullest.  She knew that in the long run, she would never be happy if her travels were limited to places other people had already visited.  She wanted to see new sights, break new ground, make new discoveries. 

Tonight, having fun with a boy in a bar seemed like a strange new frontier of its own.

She reached for the synthehol and took a sip of that, too.  “So what’s your specialty going to be?” she asked him.  “I mean, besides command.”

John looked down at his own glass, swirled his synthale around a little, and shrugged.  “I was torn between flight control and tactical,” he said.  “In the end, I declared tactical just because the classes looked more interesting.  I still might switch.”  He looked at her tentatively.  “Did you … uh, you know, ever consider anything other than flight control?”

Maren frowned, then shook her head and stared down at the bubbles in her glass.  When she had told John that afternoon that flight control was her lifelong dream, the look on his face had been … worried.  Skeptical. It still stung to remember what a disaster her first class had been. “No,” she admitted, just loudly enough to be heard.  “Piloting was my dream.  I just assumed it would come as naturally to me as everything else always did.” 

She had been a child prodigy.  When it came to academics and other pursuits, she had failed at nothing.  Some of her junior high and high school papers on physics had been published in academic journals.  She had won numerous prestigious awards in math.  In cross country, she had run fast enough to qualify for the Olympic trials.  She was good at everything she did, almost unnaturally so, and if she wasn’t good at it, she just didn’t do it.  (Dating, for instance.)  Even though her upbringing hadn’t afforded her the opportunity to pilot much of anything beyond a skimmer, she had just assumed she would succeed at that, too. 

Only now was it striking her that maybe her luck had run out.

“Hey, it’s only the first day,” John said as gently as he could while raising his voice to be heard in the crowded club.  “You had a rough start.  That doesn’t mean it won’t get better.”

Maren looked up from her glass.  Across the table, John smiled at her encouragingly.  She found it incredibly reassuring.  “You’re right,” she said with a weak smile of her own, trying hard to believe it.   

Out on the dance floor, there was suddenly a commotion.  As the Klingon song ended, Maren heard someone shriek and an audible gasp went through the crowd.  Then an opening formed in the sea of bodies as people parted to let someone through. 

It was her roommate, Rachel.  Her face was pale, but her cheeks were flushed, and she looked extremely upset.  Behind her, an angry-looking Eric Atherton was pushing his way through the crowd, trailed by Aaron and Shaex, who both appeared shocked and anxious. 

In a matter of moments, Starfleet security was everywhere, having appeared seemingly out of thin air.  Maren and John watched, stunned, as they apprehended someone in the crowd – an Orion man who looked a few years older than they were – and dragged him off the floor.

Maren leapt off her barstool to meet Rachel.  “What’s going on?” she asked.  “What happened?”

It was Eric who answered.  “That green-skinned bastard grabbed her,” he seethed. 

“And then Eric punched him,” Rachel snapped, throwing him an angry glance.  “Come on, we have to go.”

Maren’s eyes widened and she instinctively put an arm around her roommate.  “Are you okay?” she asked with concern.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw John’s posture stiffen noticeably.  She glanced over at him and realized he was staring in the direction of where the officers were questioning the Orion.  He looked ready to go pick a fight himself. 

“He was all over you!” Eric shot back at Rachel.  “He was totally out of line.  What he did was illegal.”

“So is punching people in the face,” Rachel retorted.  “I had it under control,” she added, her dark brown eyes smoldering with resentment.  “I didn’t need your help.”

“Like hell you didn’t!” Eric exclaimed.  “His hand was halfway down your jumpsuit.”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Rachel said miserably.  “Before security comes to question us.”  Still looking flustered, the curly-haired girl glanced back at the Orion before hurriedly leading the way toward the exit.  Eric raced to catch up with her.

Maren started to follow them, but then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw John take a step in the opposite direction, toward where the Orion was being questioned.  She turned and immediately realized he was headed for a confrontation. 

Without thinking, she reached out and caught him by the hand.  “Hey, not so fast there, slick,” she protested, tugging him backward.  “You’re not security yet.  They’ve got it handled.  You heard Rachel.  Let’s go.” 

When he glanced back at her, Maren dropped his hand in surprise.  The easygoing, friendly boy she’d been flirting with all afternoon was gone, suddenly replaced by someone much more dangerous.  His brilliant blue eyes were filled with unmistakable pain and no small amount of anger.  He looked ready to kill someone, or at least force someone to spend some quality time with a bone regenerator.  She got the impression that if he did start a fight, it would be far from the first time.  Jekyll and Hyde, she thought, her own emotions going to red alert. 

“Hey,” she said to him, more firmly this time.  She grabbed him by the elbow and held on. “I said, security has got this handled.  Come on.  Let’s go.”

For a long moment, John just stared back, all fight-or-flight intensity.  There was a touch of confusion there, too, as if he had momentarily forgotten who she was and why she was there.  Then something changed in his expression.  The dark edge was still there, but he seemed to remember himself.  Shrugging off her touch, he cast a last angry glance over at the Orion, but nodded his assent and followed Maren’s lead. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, with a sullen shake of his head.  Maren thought he mainly looked sorry that he hadn’t gotten the chance to lay out the offender.   “I just hate guys like that.”

Aaron and Shaex fell into place on the other side of Maren as they escaped through the front door out into the cool evening air.  Rachel and Eric were a few meters ahead of them, still arguing in heated tones.  Aaron gave his roommate a curious look.  “You okay, mate?”

John took a deep breath and slowly blew it out.  “Yeah, fine,” he said, unconvincingly. 

Maren turned her head to give John a questioning look of her own, but either he didn’t notice, or pretended not to. After a moment’s indecision, she reached out and gave his hand a cautious little squeeze.  He looked over at her in surprise, his expression guilty and conflicted. 

She met his gaze and raised her eyebrows, a silent question of her own.  She didn’t believe for a second he was really okay, and she had the weird feeling that whatever had just happened back there had very little to do with either Rachel or the Orion.  There was a familiarity and a quickness to John’s anger that implied, at least to her, that it was barely contained beneath his friendly, outgoing exterior.  But she wasn’t going to ask him about it openly, at least not right now.  She barely knew him, really.  And there were too many people around.  Maybe if it had been just the two of them. 

But it wasn’t.

She gave his hand another quick squeeze and tossed him a look that said, “I’ll listen if you ever want to talk.”  Then she let go of his hand and slipped away, jogging a few steps ahead to catch up with Rachel and Eric, who had stopped yelling at each other and were now walking in sullen silence.

“Are you really okay?” she asked Rachel.

Rachel nodded.  “Fine.  Really.”  She gestured toward Eric, tilting her head in his direction.  “Eric here just thinks he’s my dad, or my big brother or something.”

“I do not,” Eric said irritably.

“You do.  You were just as bad last year at Applicant Weekend,” she said.  “I swear to God, Eric, if you don’t stop cockblocking me, I’m going to tell your dad what you said you would do to that drone.”

Maren frowned.  “What drone?”

Rachel looked back at Maren.  “There’s some ex-Borg kid in a couple of Eric’s classes this year,” she explained.  “The Voyager brought him here from the Delta Quadrant.  It was on the news a lot in April when they first got back.”

“Right, I remember,” Maren said.  She had seen some protesters outside the gates on her way to and from classes earlier in the day.  She’d gathered a lot of people were upset about the admission of a former drone to Starfleet Academy.  Just five years removed from the Battle of Sector 001, it was completely understandable.  But it didn’t really bother her that they had let him in.  Honestly, she found the whole concept of the Borg intriguing, albeit horrifying.

“Well, Eric wants to kick his ass.”

Maren pulled a face and looked at Eric in surprise.  “What, is that a hobby of yours or something?” she said, before she could stop herself.

Rachel burst out laughing.  Eric looked less amused.

“The Borg took my mother when I was ten years old,” he said, with an angry glance at Rachel, who immediately stopped laughing.  “He doesn’t deserve to be here.  He should be in prison, having his memory files downloaded by Starfleet Intelligence.”

Maren frowned.  “I’m really sorry,” she said quietly.  She hesitated for a long moment, just thinking about what that must be like.  “Wolf 359?”

Eric nodded.  “Yeah.  My mom was on the Princeton.  She was the CMO.”

“I’m really sorry,” she said again.  But then something struck her. “Wait, so your mom is one of them, now?” she asked. “Borg, I mean?”

Eric nodded slowly.  “Yeah.  I mean, I guess so.  I don’t know what happened to her after they took her on the cube.  But I assume they assimilated her.” The pain in his voice was evident, and it was clear he didn’t like to think about this topic much at all. 

But Maren couldn’t let it go.  “So if someone pulled her off the cube and brought her back here, would you want someone to kick her ass?” she asked Eric.

Eric looked over at her sharply.  Even in the dark, she could see his eyes flash with anger. “Of course, not.  But that’s different,” he said.  “She’s my mother, a Starfleet officer.  This kid is just some drone.”

“How do you know?” Maren asked.  “Maybe he has a family somewhere, too.”

“If he had a family, he would have been returned to it by now,” Eric retorted.  “He’s just a kid.  Borg larvae.  He was probably assembled in a factory somewhere.”

“You don’t know that.  Maybe his family was assimilated, or maybe they died or something.”  Maren wasn’t sure why she was defending this kid she’d never even met.  She just thought Eric was being really unfair, and between that and the punch he’d thrown at the club, she was growing to dislike him more with each passing moment.

“Whatever,” Eric said dismissively, returning his attention to Rachel.  “It’s not like I’m really going to beat his ass, Quint.  The fucker has 24-hour security posted on his dorm floor.  I’d never get him alone.”

“That’s the only thing stopping you?  How reassuring,” Rachel said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.  “I’m sure your dad will be thrilled to hear it.”

“Jesus, Rachel.  Would you stop with the threats?  I was just trying to help you out before that asshole molested you.”

“Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I wanted to be ‘molested?’” Rachel fired back.  “I’m not twelve years old anymore.  I have sex.  Regularly.”

“With guys like that?”

“Sometimes,” Rachel said. 

“He was confusing you with his pheromones or something,” Eric retorted.  “I refuse to believe your taste is that bad.”

“My taste is none of your business, Eric.”

“That guy was pure sleaze.”

As the two continued bickering, Maren intentionally slowed her pace, dropping back to walk with the others instead.  Aaron and Shaex had seemingly hit it off and were busy making small talk, filling each other in on the details of their lives before now and what had brought them to Starfleet Academy.  Beside them, John walked in silence. Maren couldn’t tell if he was still angry about what had happened at the club, but he was definitely subdued.

“Atherton’s a bit of an asshole, eh?” he said quietly, as Maren fell into step beside him.

She glanced up at him and smirked.  “You noticed that, too?” she asked. 

An awkward silence settled between them; then John said, “Look, I’m sorry about what happened back there.  If I had known Atherton was such a jealous fuck, I’d have ignored the whole thing.  I’m not – I mean, I don’t usually go around …” he trailed off and sighed.  “I mean, it’s not like I normally go around beating the shit out of people.”

This close to the Academy, there were barely any street lights, but even in the dark, Maren could see the tense way John was carrying himself.  He dragged a hand through his hair in frustration.  “Anyway, you probably think I’m an asshole, too.  I’m sorry.”

“No, I don’t,” Maren told him.  She wanted to say more – to tell him that it hadn’t escaped her, the way his anger had seemed to be so much more personal than just a feeling of offense on behalf of some girl he didn’t even know. That she could tell he was hurting somehow and she wished she could fix it.  But now didn’t seem like the right time or place.  “I had a good time tonight, up until the end,” she said, instead.

Beside her, he relaxed a little.  She couldn’t see his relieved smile, but she could hear it in his voice.  “Yeah, I did, too,” he said.  He gave her a playful little nudge.  “Although we gotta work on your appreciation of Klingon music.”

Maren snorted wryly and nudged him back.  “Is that what they call it?” she quipped.  “I thought it was just noise.”

“Come on, that really understates it, don’t you think?  You need a better word.  Clamor.  Cacophony, maybe.”

“I wouldn’t have figured you for a wordsmith,” she said, smiling.  Playing along, she added, “Ruckus.  Hullaballoo.”

He laughed.  “Holy shit, you are from West Virginia, aren’t you?”

“Born and raised,” she grinned.

As they walked through the Academy gates and headed toward Carmichael Hall, they fell into a comfortable silence.  Beside them, Aaron and Shaex kept up their constant stream of chatter.  Ahead of them, Rachel and Eric walked in a silence as stony as theirs was comfortable. 

The day’s earlier heat had totally evaporated into the starlit sky above.  This close to the bay, the night air was cool and damp. Involuntarily, Maren shivered.

“Cold?” John asked her. 

Sensing what was about to happen, she hesitated, but nodded anyway.  Predictably, he slipped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.

She was grateful for the warmth, but her heart sped up as she wondered what in the world she was doing.  After just one day at the Academy, she didn’t recognize herself.  From her dismal performance in flight control to her decision to go out drinking on a school night to her budding – whatever this was – with John Quigley, this was not the same Maren O’Connor she had spent her entire life perfecting. 

Even as she let John guide her toward their dorm, she forced herself to focus on the future.  Classes.  Training.  Exams.  The stars.  With this attractive stranger’s arm around her, the here and now felt too exciting, and she couldn’t afford to get sucked in.   She was thankful when they finally entered Carmichael Hall – minus Eric, who lived in a different dorm – and the bright lights and crowds of fellow plebes abruptly killed the mood. John let his arm fall away from her shoulders as they headed for the elevators.

“So, this is my stop,” she said, awkwardly, when they reached the third floor.  Rachel had taken the stairs out of impatience fueled by anger, but Aaron, and Shaex – who lived on the sixth floor – were still alongside them. 

“I’ll walk you there?” John ventured, putting a hand out to stop the door from sliding closed. 

Maren shook her head.  “It’s okay,” she said, a little too quickly, as she stepped out of the lift.  She had felt safer, more comfortable somehow, in the dark of the club and during their walk back.  Now, in the bright lights of the hallway, she felt exposed, as if everyone could see how lost and unsure she was after this long, strange day.  “I’ll see you in class,” she told him.  “Thanks again for tonight; I had a great time.  It was nice to meet you both,” she added, nodding at Aaron and Shaex.

John looked confused and maybe even a little bit hurt at being brushed off, but he shrugged it off quickly and gave her one of his frustratingly charming smiles.  “Yeah, see you in class,” he said.  He pulled his hand away from the door.  As it slid closed between them, Maren let out a long, slow breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“For the life of me, I can’t understand what you see in that girl.”  John blushed as Aaron started in for what seemed like the millionth time on what he derisively called ‘John’s nerd fetish.’  “She’s the most awkward, repressed human being I’ve ever met,” the redhead said, tilting his desk chair backward and giving John a critical look.  “And a terrible pilot, too.”

Two weeks into his first year at Starfleet Academy, John had found a sort of rhythm to his new life.  Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons were high points, because he got to see Maren in flight control.   But Aaron was right; she was terrible at it, which was becoming sort of hard to watch. 

He turned away from the mirror, where he was unsuccessfully trying to neaten his hair before that afternoon’s class.  He needed a haircut, badly, but hadn’t had the time.  He made a face at his roommate.  “Will you shut the fuck up already?” he asked. 

Aaron ignored him.  “Look at you, standing there primping like a Sheila,” he said.  “It’s shameful, really.  Do you think that girl gives two shits about your fucking hair?”

John rolled his eyes and tossed the comb on top of the dresser in surrender.  He had to admit the Kiwi had him there – it was impossible to believe that Maren gave two shits, or even a single shit about his hair.  Actually, if he was totally honest, it was increasingly difficult to believe that Maren gave a shit about anything but bringing up her abysmal score in flight control. 

It had been two weeks since they’d gone to the club, and since that night, Maren had somehow managed to evade every single one of his advances.   She wasn’t unkind about it – in fact, he wasn’t entirely sure she was even doing it on purpose.  But despite all the flirting they had done that first day of school, she had frozen up at the end of their night out and hadn’t really thawed out since. 

They’d had lunch together a half-dozen times, along with a couple of study sessions, and once he had managed to snag a holosuite once to run some flight sims.  She didn’t seem to mind spending time with him, but all of the signals she was sending out said “Don’t even try it.”  He wasn’t sure if she was uninterested, or scared, or just really academically intense, but for the first time in his life, he found himself totally enthralled by a girl, yet unable to force himself to act on it.

“You’re going to spacedock today, ‘aye?” Aaron asked, shaking him out of his thoughts. 

John turned around and nodded, thankful for the subject change.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Should be pretty slick.  I haven’t been up since our field trip to Lunar in sixth grade.”

“Best view in the universe, for my money,” Aaron replied.  “Went with my dad to McKinley on a business trip once.  They couldn’t pry me away from the viewport.  I was eight.  I cried like a bitch when it was time to go.”

“That’s because you are a bitch,” John teased him, but it was a good-natured jab.  He probably would have done the same thing at age eight.

Taking a last look in the mirror, he tossed off a half-assed salute to his roommate.  “See you tonight,” he told him as he strode toward the door.

“Likewise.”

*****

“Maren, it’s thirteen hundred hours.  You’re going to be late.”

Maren started as Rachel’s voice broke into her thoughts.  She looked up from her bunk, where she had been sitting cross-legged and bent over a PADD as she studied the text for her Elementary Warp Theory class with a troubled frown. 

“What did you say?” she asked. Sitting up straight and rubbing at her forehead, she struggled to gain her bearings.   Thirteen hundred hours?  That can’t possibly be right.  I’ve only been at this for a few minutes, right?  If Rachel was right, she’d missed lunch completely, and now – Oh, my God, she thought, I’m going to be late.

She couldn’t be late today.  Not on the day they were finally going to visit Spacedock.  Frantically, she tossed her PADD aside and leapt off her bunk, gathering her hair into a loose knot and securing it with an elastic she’d been wearing on her wrist.

“What the hell are you working on?” Rachel asked.  “You haven’t budged since I was in here last.  That was three hours ago.”

Maren tried to pull herself out of her thoughts.  “Um, warp theory,” she said distractedly.  “I think there’s an error in the chapter six text.  I’ve been trying to work out the correct equation, but I want to be sure before I go to Commander Nguyen with it.”

“You know warp theory?” Rachel asked with surprise.  “And wait, you’re on chapter six?”  Her roommate looked confused.  She was in the same class, just a different section.  Both classes were only on chapter three.

Maren nodded absently, while peering at her reflection in the mirror above her dresser.  “God, I look like hell,” she muttered.  Her eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed from the time spent staring at her PADD.  Out of sheer desperation, she grabbed a tube of lip gloss and applied it until she looked slightly less corpse-like.  Then she pulled a face and tossed the gloss back on top of the dresser. 

She turned back to Rachel.  “Yeah, I read ahead in the text.  I’m having so much trouble with flight control that I figured I’d jump ahead with the engineering stuff because it’s so easy.  That should free up extra time to practice in the simulators.”

Rachel gaped at her.  “You think warp theory is easy?” she asked in bewilderment.

Maren gave her a funny look.  “Yeah, it’s just Elementary Warp Theory.  It’s pretty simple, just basic subspace geometry and a little astrophysics.”

“You know that stuff flummoxed our ancestors for thousands of years?” Rachel asked.

Maren rolled her eyes.  “It’s the 24th century, Rach.  It’s not that complicated.”

Rachel looked skeptical.  “Then why do I have a C-minus?”

“Because you like to party more than study,” Maren replied flatly.  She wasn’t about to judge Rachel, but facts were facts. 

Rachel shook her head vehemently.  “No one in our class is doing as well as you,” she said.  “You’re the only one in the entire plebe class with a perfect score in warp theory.  You’re doing well in almost everything.  If it wasn’t for that damned flight control class, you’d be number one.”

Maren frowned.  “Tell me about it,” she muttered.

*****

Maren had never felt like a screw-up before her arrival at Starfleet Academy, but for the past two weeks, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during flight control, she had felt like a total failure.  In every other class she had, she was performing spectacularly, but for reasons she could not comprehend, she simply could not maintain control of a spacecraft.  It was as if there was a disconnect between what her brain was telling her and what her hands actually did at the controls.  The results were so disastrous that her classmates had given her the nickname “Crash O’Connor.” 

At this point, she could tell Commander Jiri was barely tolerating her presence in class.  The diminutive pilot treated her with a mixture of pity and contempt, and had more than once hinted that Maren might be better off choosing another discipline, and fast.   But Maren stubbornly refused to admit defeat.  It had only been two weeks.  Surely she would get the hang of it sooner or later.  Wouldn’t she? 

At least today was different.  Today, there were no simulators, no quizzes, no checklists.  Today, they were going on a field trip – into space.

Maren had never been to spacedock before.  She’d been to Lunar twice – once on a grade-school field trip like everyone else, and another time for a math competition.  Another time, when she was little, her family had taken a vacation to the low-grav amusement park on Ganymede.  But this was different.  This would be her first chance to get and up-close look at real Starfleet starships – warp capable, fast enough and powerful enough to take her anywhere she could imagine. 

“Do you want the window seat?” John offered, as they boarded one of the three runabouts that would take their class up to the station.  They could have easily transported, but it was Academy tradition to fly them in, just for the experience.

“Are you kidding?” Maren said.  “Of course I do!”  She might have felt bad, but honestly, the boy was nearly two meters tall.  It wasn’t as if he would have any trouble seeing over her head.

They found two open seats next to each other and Maren took the seat by the viewport.  John settled his lanky frame down beside her.  She could tell he was trying to act totally cool, like he did this every day, but the expression on his face betrayed a hint of the same exhilarated anticipation she felt. 

She grinned at him.  “This is going to be awesome.  All those ships.  I can’t wait.”

“Can’t wait to what?  Crash them?” quipped a voice behind her.  She turned around and glared at the speaker, a Tellarite boy whose name was, fittingly enough, Jerk. 

“Oh, fuck off,” John cut in, making a rude Tellarite gesture.  Jerk grunted back a Tellarite insult in reply, which the universal translator politely refused to translate into Standard.  Maren rolled her eyes at him and turned back around in her seat. 

“Jerk,” John muttered under his breath. Maren couldn’t help but snicker.  The two of them exchanged a glance, and then erupted into giggles.  Jerk.  It was his literal name.

“All right, quiet down,” ordered a commanding female voice.  Maren craned her neck around again and instantly stopped laughing as she saw that Commander Jiri had decided to take the same runabout they were on.  She suppressed the urge to groan out loud.

Still, nothing could totally ruin the moment as, a few minutes later, the runabout powered up and lifted off the tarmac.  Maren watched in awe as the Academy spaceport, then the campus, then San Francisco, and finally the whole world fell away from them at astonishing speed.  It wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before, but it never got old, watching the Earth recede below.

The inertial dampers gave the impression that they weren’t moving, even as space rotated around them.  The beautiful blue planet shifted out of view, and soon they could see Earth Spacedock in all its massive glory, along with two starships on approach or departure – a Nebula class and an old Miranda class – and dozens of smaller vessels. 

“Oh, my God,” Maren breathed, giddily.  Beside her, John leaned in, trying to get a closer view.  She scooted back a little in her seat to let him see better, and he shot her an appreciative grin.  Their eyes met briefly, and she felt her face flush.  She forced herself to look away, back out toward the approaching station, before she got caught up in the excitement of the moment and did something stupid, something that might reveal how much she liked him.   

Entering the enormous docking bay made her feel incredibly small.  The giant doors, meant to accommodate massive starships, easily swallowed their small craft and its companions with seemingly endless room to spare.  Inside, the vast space was filled with docks of all sizes, many occupied by majestic, full-sized starships – not just Starfleet vessels, but alien ones, too.

“Holy shit, this is amazing,” John whispered in her ear.  Breathless, all she could do was nod.

Ten minutes later, they had docked and made their way through the station to one of the Earth observation decks, where they were welcomed by a harried-looking but kindly human commander.  “Welcome to Spacedock,”he said, after returning the cadets’ salute, “and welcome to Starfleet.  I’m Anthony Libresco, one of the lead engineers here at the Dock.  I’ll be accompanying you on your tour of the facility today.” 

‘Accompanying’ turned out to be exactly the right word for it.  Although Libresco outranked Jiri, he let the Betazoid woman take full control of the tour, barking information at them in her rapid-fire staccato as she led them from place to place.  From the observation deck, they went to a mission briefing room.  From there, they went to central traffic control.  After that, they toured operations, communications, cartography, and planetary defense.  Then finally, finally, it was time to explore the drydocks.

As they circled back toward the docking facilities, John nudged Maren and directed her attention past Commanders Jiri and Libresco and up ahead, where a massive window overlooked the interior bays.  “Would you look at that,” he whispered. 

Her eyes grew wide as she took in the view.  From inside the runabout, they had seen quite a few starships as they docked, but this was totally different.  Through the transparent aluminum viewport, hundreds of feet tall, she could identify dozens of different ships.  They almost didn’t look real from this vantage point – more like extremely detailed models.

Commander Libresco led them through a security checkpoint and into the nearest drydock, which Maren was only slightly disappointed to realize held a smallish cargo transport, not a full-sized starship.  Well, of course they’re not going to let a bunch of cadets feel up a Galaxy class, she reasoned. Still, the vessel in front of her was little more than a shipping container with warp nacelles.  Even so, she had to admit it had a certain elegant efficiency to it, despite the fact that it wasn’t going to win any beauty contests.  She wondered what it was like to pilot the thing.

As they stepped out onto the platform that surrounded the little cargo ship, Jiri directed their attention to the signs all around them – both printed and holo – which read “WARNING: Variable gravity area.”

The signs were everywhere – both on the floor and hovering translucent in the air.  They were large, they were yellow, and they were impossible to miss.  Even harder to miss was the verbal warning the station’s computer gave whenever anyone approached one of those areas. 

But Maren wasn’t listening.  Beyond the platform and the little cargo vessel, she had caught sight of a sleek Intrepid-class easing its way past them.  Beyond that, a brand new Nova class was having registry numbers painted on its hull.  Both ships looked almost close enough to touch, and they took her breath away – not to mention all her attention.  She drifted closer and closer to the edge of the platform, trying to get a better look. 

Her timing couldn’t have been more perfect – or any worse.  Just as Jiri was shouting in her drill sergeant voice, “Variable gravity area.  That means you step over that line, there is no gravity,” her feet left the floor, and her lunch nearly left her stomach.  She cried out in surprise, and the whole class turned to look.

“I didn’t ask for a demonstration, O’Connor!” Jiri yelled, as Maren flailed about trying desperately to control her trajectory.  Unfortunately, it had been years since she’d been in zero-g, and she was obviously rusty, as she only succeeded in flipping herself upside down relative to the others. 

She knew there was a weak force field that would stop her from drifting too far from the platform, but that didn’t help the panic she felt as her internal compass told her there was no such thing as up or down even as her eyes told her she was floating above an abyss hundreds of meters deep.   She tried again to propel herself toward the platform, but by now she was high enough that if she crossed back over the line, she’d fall hard, and it would hurt. Now what am I supposed to do? she wondered helplessly.

All around her, Spacedock staff were laughing.  Some of her classmates were, too, although quite a few others looked horrified.  “Nice going, Crash,” she heard someone say.  In the middle of it all, Commander Jiri stood glaring at her, her face screwed into a look that would have brought Maren to tears had she not been so concerned about how she was going to get down.

She could never have anticipated what happened next.  She expected a lecture.  She expected to be disciplined.  But most of all, she expected help.  What she was not expecting was for Jiri to calmly return her attention to the class and announce flatly, “We’ll continue the tour.  Come this way, and watch your step.”

Maren’s classmates unanimously blanched at this command, and looked up at her as if to ask, Isn’t someone going to do something about this?  But they followed orders.  Jiri was clearly evil and quite possibly insane, and no one appeared willing to risk her wrath – not even Libresco, who looked as if he felt sorry for Maren, but had obviously decided to let Jiri handle her cadets however she saw fit. 

“Are you coming, O’Connor?” Jiri yelled back over her shoulder, as she and the rest of the class headed further down the platform.  Maren couldn’t stop herself from shooting the instructor an angry glare.  She looked to the spacedock staff for assistance, but they had all either gone back to working or were too busy laughing at her. 

Then she realized one person had stayed behind to help. 

“Having fun up there?” John asked.  He was gazing up at her with a devilish smirk – a combination of compassion and amusement that made her blush furiously. 

She shot him an irritated look.  “Yeah, I’m having a blast,” she retorted.  “Are you going to get me down or what?”

He stood right at the edge of the yellow line, feet firmly planted on the gravity plating, and reached out for her.  “Give me your hand,” he told her. 

Awkwardly, she stretched out an arm, trying not to send herself into a spin as she did so. John stood on tiptoe, reached up and grabbed hold of her wrist.  It was a good thing he was so tall, she realized, or he might not have been able to reach her.  He pulled her down just far enough so that they were face-to-face, hers floating upside down in front of his, but he held her at arm’s length, keeping her on the other side of the line. 

“All right,” he said, “we’ve got to coordinate this so you don’t hit the deck.”

In an instant, she realized he was right.  He couldn’t come and get her because he’d lose his footing, too.  But if he just pulled her back down, gravity would grab her and she would fall headfirst into the platform faster than he could possibly catch her. 

“Just hold onto my hand and slowly turn yourself so you’ll land feet first, okay?” he said.  “Then I’ll pull you forward.”

Wordlessly, she nodded.  She did exactly as he said.  Using his hand as leverage, she twisted herself until her feet pointed toward the platform and pulled herself down until they were nearly eye-to-eye. 

“Okay, get ready,” he said, and tugged her forward.  Her stomach did a flip as gravity took hold.  As her feet hit the platform, she nearly lost her balance, but he easily caught her and set her upright.

“You okay?” he asked. 

Maren nodded miserably, but then, unexpectedly, she started to cry, the tears springing to her eyes before she could stop them.

John looked at her in surprise.  “Hey,” he said gently, touching her arm.  “It could have happened to anybody.”

“But it didn’t,” she said, choking back a sob.  “It happened to me, just like everything else in this stupid class.  Jiri hates me and I’m never going to be a pilot.  I’ve never failed at anything in my life and all I seem to do in this class is screw up.  I can’t even walk without getting into trouble.” 

John looked like he might have liked to argue with her, but ultimately, the facts were on her side.  Instead, he put an arm around her and awkwardly hugged her close.  “Come on,” he said quietly.  “Pull yourself together and let’s go catch up with the others.”

Sniffing back tears, Maren wiped her cheeks off with her fingers.  She forced herself to take a deep breath; then nodded her assent.  Silently, she let John take her by the arm and lead her down the platform to rejoin their classmates.   

“You cannot survive solely on nutritional supplements,” Seven told Icheb severely, as she watched him once again sucking lunch through a straw in the solitude of his own dorm room.  His desktop LCARS display showed her pretty face was twisted into a disapproving frown.  “Come to dinner tonight.  I haven’t seen you since you began attending classes.”

“I’ve been busy studying,” Icheb said, but it was a lie.  His coursework was so easy that he had been spending most of his time doing his own research and assisting B’Elanna remotely as she worked on developing some of the technologies Voyager had encountered in the Delta Quadrant in anticipation of a possible return mission.

“I understand,” said Seven, “but nevertheless, you require more varied nourishment, as well as social interaction.  I’ll invite The Doctor to join us.”

“Holograms don’t require nourishment,” Icheb pointed out.

“No, but The Doctor has expressed concern about your well-being.  Perhaps an evening spent with you will reassure him.”

Icheb couldn’t help but smile at that.  “In other words, you both miss me,” he said with a small smirk.

The barest hint of a smile appeared on Seven’s face, but it was contained entirely within her eyes.  Her mouth stayed stubbornly fixed in position – a disapproving frown.  “Our feelings are irrelevant,” she said, in a voice so haughty Icheb knew she had to be teasing him.

Despite himself, he grinned, shaking his head.  “Fine, I’ll come,” he assented.  The last of the protesters had finally departed the front gates of the Academy a few days earlier, leaving him feeling slightly less confined.  It seemed possible that he could make it all the way to Seven’s apartment on foot without attracting notice – an opportunity he relished.  He hadn’t had much chance to explore the city outside the boundaries of the Academy.  Both the architecture and the history intrigued him.

On screen, Seven looked pleased.  “Very well,” she said.  “I’ll notify The Doctor.  Plan to arrive by nineteen hundred hours.”

“Understood,” he replied. 

After a final farewell nod from Seven, the transmission cut off and the screen went blank, leaving Icheb once again alone with his thoughts.  Despite his affection for Seven and The Doctor and his happy anticipation at spending an evening in their presence, he suddenly felt anxious.  He knew they were worried about his transition to life at the Academy, and after nearly three weeks, he had nothing positive to report beyond his flawless grade point average and his top ranking in the class of 2381. 

It was 18 days into the semester, and he had yet to make a single friend.  Aside from Eric Atherton, who hated him, and the TAs and student instructors whose duties required them to speak to him, he had conversed with exactly six other students so far.  All of the conversations had been awkward.  All had been in class settings where the instructor required them to pair off or work in groups on an assignment.  One-on-one, students seemed afraid of him.  In the group setting, his classmates had tried to pretend they didn’t hear him speak. He had noted, however, that they were quick to write down the solutions he offered for various questions and problems.

At this point, only his love of the stars and innate stubbornness were keeping him from seriously considering another career path.  Seven had taken a series of exams and been granted a full doctorate.  She would be working as a civilian scientist, albeit contracted to Starfleet for her expertise in Borg technology.  Perhaps he could be of similar use. 

But the stars tugged fiercely at his heart.  He knew it was irrational – in his travels with the Collective and on Voyager, he had amassed a great number of perfect memories of stars, along with many other fascinating and beautiful phenomena, which he could recall at will and view in exquisite detail.  He could access even more by visiting the observatory, or any stellar cartography classroom on campus.  And if he really wanted to see them up close with his own eyes, it wasn’t impossible to be assigned to a scientific vessel as a civilian (although given his reception at Starfleet Academy so far, he couldn’t imagine a crew that would take him without being ordered to do so).

Still, his work with B’Elanna felt important.  If he wanted to travel the galaxy in its entirety – and he did, there was no doubt about that – he would need much better technology than anyone in the Alpha Quadrant had access to in order to make it happen.  Sticking with Starfleet was his best chance at making sure that technology would be there when he was ready.  Besides, aside from Seven, everyone he admired, both past and present, was a Starfleet officer.  He couldn’t deny he wanted to wear the uniform, too.

With a small sigh, he pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up, tossing his empty glass and straw into the recycler and grabbing his Academy-issued PADD.  His next class was in thirteen minutes and he wanted to get there early to take a seat before anyone else did.  He checked his hair in the mirror above his dresser to ensure all the strands were in place.  Satisfied with their perfection, he swallowed the feeling of dread at the thought of spending the next two hours with his classmates and headed out the door.

****

For the second time in a week, Maren was in space.  Not even the fact that she hadn’t yet been cleared for flight – not even supervised flight, to her embarrassment – could spoil the view from up here, as John Quigley expertly eased their training shuttle into standard orbit above the moon.  Below them, the glittering lights of Tycho City and its suburbs spread out in an intricate pattern of hubs and spokes, looking not unlike the spiderwebs that glistened in the early morning dew on the backyard lawn at home.  Enchanted, Maren gazed down through the viewport, forgetting for the moment that she was supposed to be watching John demonstrate how piloting was done.

Frankly, she was tired of watching him succeed where she kept failing, tired of listening to Jiri’s lectures, and tired of the Martian boy in the seat across from hers who kept pointing out how lame the Lunar colonies were compared to the much newer, larger ones on Mars.  So she zoned out, tracing patterns in the lights with her eyes and wondering if there was any chance it would be her turn to fly during this semester – or this lifetime.

J.Q. – that’s what she’d taken to calling him lately, since he was one of seventeen Johns in the freshman class – seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself as he did the required lap around Luna before requesting clearance to land.  This was the second training course – take off from the Academy spaceport, navigate to Luna, achieve standard orbit, do a lap, and land.  Winston, the Martian kid, had already done it, and now it was John’s turn.  Having yet to complete the first course, Maren was just along for the ride.

“O’Connor, pay attention,” Jiri snapped from the co-pilot’s seat.  Maren glanced over and saw the Betazoid had turned around in her chair to glare at her. 

By now, she was too used to Jiri’s chastisement to be flustered by it.  “Sorry, sir,” she said, quickly returning her attention to John’s hands at the shuttle controls.  She watched enviously as his long fingers deftly manipulated the interface.  It was as if he had been born for this.

When they were cleared for landing, John brought the shuttle down so smoothly that Maren barely felt it when they touched the tarmac.  This earned him a rare appreciative grin from Jiri.  “Very nicely done,” she said.  Maren could see John’s ears turn red as he blushed at the commander’s praise.  She struggled to tamp down her envy and be happy for her friend.

As soon as John had secured the shuttle, he turned around and beamed at Maren.  “Not bad, eh?” he asked, clearly proud of himself.

Maren forced herself to smile back at him.  “You were great,” she said sincerely.  It was true – he was a natural at this.  She just wished she was, too.

“All right, plebes, that’s it,” Jiri said, taking John’s place at the controls.  “Time to head home.”  She would be flying them back, as an Earth landing was much more difficult to navigate than takeoff.  Maren checked the chronometer on her PADD.  14:37.  Just 23 minutes until the end of class, and a weekend off from Jiri’s evil glare.

“O’Connor.  Get up here.”  The instructor’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she looked up in surprise.  “Yes, you.  That’s your name, right? Deities know I’ve yelled it enough the last three weeks.  Get your scrawny Terran ass up here and into the chair,” she said, motioning toward the co-pilot’s seat.

Maren was too stunned to reply, but quickly complied, lest she open herself up to more abuse from the bitchy Betazoid.  As she brushed past John on her way to the front of the cramped cockpit, she caught him staring at her with those big blue eyes of his, looking somewhere between sympathetic and concerned.  Embarrassed, she averted her gaze, and took a seat beside Commander Jiri.

“All right, O’Connor.  I want you to tell me what to do.  Don’t touch the controls.  Just talk me through it.  I don’t trust you not to crash this thing, but I need to know you’re keeping up with the class reading.”

Maren bit back a sigh and did as Jiri said.  It wasn’t fair.  She knew the procedures as well as anyone.  So why couldn’t she execute them?  Dispassionately, she walked Jiri through the pre-flight check and departure procedures, making no mistakes.  Within minutes, they were once again high above Tycho City.

The trip back to Earth was a quick one.  Behind her, Maren half-listened to John and Winston talking about their plans for the weekend.  John was going to a concert in Seattle with his roommate.  He had asked her to come along, but Rachel had already invited her to a party.  She was pretty sure she wasn’t going to go, but it had made a convenient excuse to turn John down.  Until she figured out what the hell she was going to do about this class, she had no business skimming off to Seattle to see some band she’d never even heard of – to say nothing of the mental energy she would have to expend navigating her confusing feelings for John.

She still wasn’t completely sure whether he was interested in her, or just felt sorry for her.  He was a consummate flirt – she had personally watched him chat up dozens of girls, all with that same infuriating grin she found herself so thrown by whenever he used it on her.  They had a pretty solid friendship for only having known each other a few weeks, but judging from the cliques she saw forming all around her, that was par for the course at the Academy.  In a place like this, you needed allies fast.

On the viewscreen, she watched as the planet of her birth grew larger and larger ahead of them.  She could almost make out South America through the swirling cloud cover.   She was about to turn to tell John to look up front when she heard Jiri curse under her breath in Betazoid as the console suddenly started beeping.  She looked over at the instructor in alarm.  “What is it?”

Jiri was frantically tapping at the controls, but they seemed not to be responding to her touch.  “I don’t know,” the pilot said.  “I tried to reduce our speed and the controls froze up.”  She kept tapping intently at the interface, but nothing was happening.  Maren couldn’t tell from the Betazoid’s expression whether she was more shaken up or pissed off.

“What does that mean?” Winston asked from the back of the cockpit.  His voice was suddenly an octave higher, and Maren realized he was scared.

“This console is a new design,” Jiri explained.  “They’re still working out the kinks. I tried to reserve an older trainer but this was all they had available.”

Maren cast her a sidelong glance.  “You can fix it, right?” she asked, eyeing the controls herself.  She’d had to troubleshoot glitchy equipment hundreds of times back on the farm.  When it came to making broken systems work, she was a natural.  Never had she thought it would come in handy in space, but a shuttle couldn’t be that much different than any other machine, could it?

Jiri glanced over at her.  “Maybe,” she said noncommittally, pressing her lips together in a thin line.  She looked up at the viewscreen, where Earth was looming uncomfortably large.  “But probably not before we hit atmo.”  She shook her head and returned her attention to the controls, looking frustrated.  “I’m a pilot, not an engineer,” she muttered under her breath.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” J.Q. swore quietly.  Maren shot him a look.  His face was drawn and his knuckles were pale as he gripped the armrests of his chair.  He was scared, too, she realized.  Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to her to be frightened yet.  She was more concerned about figuring out what was wrong and how they were going to fix it. 

Beside her, Jiri tapped her combadge.  “Commander Jiri to Earth Spacedock, do you read?”  Maren craned her neck to peer out of the side viewports, hoping to catch a glimpse of the station, but all she saw was black space, and on the viewscreen, Earth, growing closer by the second.

“Commander Silai Jiri to Earth Spacedock,” Jiri tried again.  “Do you read?”

“This is Earth Spacedock,” came the reply over Jiri’s comm.  “How can we assist you?”

“I’m on a training shuttle with three cadets, headed for San Francisco.  My control panel froze up and we’re coming in hot.  There’s no time for a full system reboot, we’ll burn up on re-entry before that happens.  Requesting immediate emergency assistance.”  Jiri didn’t wait for a reply from Spacedock before standing up and turning to face the others.  “All three of you, get EV suits on, now.  If they can’t get to us – ”

Winston and J.Q. wasted no time.  In an instant, they were out of their seats, prying off the cushions to access the emergency EV suits stored underneath.  Maren, however, kept staring at the controls, analyzing the system layout and looking for a possible solution.  Just as Jiri’s combadge crackled to life again, she reached out with both hands, wedged her slim fingers into the crack where the access panel covered the EPS conduits and wiring for the controls, braced herself with her feet, and yanked on the panel as hard as she could.  The housing came free and clattered to the deck.

“Spacedock to Jiri.  We’re tracking your location.  You’re too far away for our tractor beams,” the voice on Jiri’s comm said.  “We’re trying to get a transporter lock on you and your cadets.  We’ll send the Tigris after the shuttle.”

Jiri was staring at Maren in obvious surprise and no small amount of anger, but kept her focus on the matter at hand.  She slapped her combadge.  “Understood, Spacedock.  Keep us advised.”  As soon as she was finished acknowledging the transmission, she shouted at Maren, “O’Connor! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Maren was already on her knees underneath the console, peering up at the relays.  She immediately saw the problem – a section of the user interface hardware had overheated and failed, taking the main input converter with it.   She frantically traced the tubes and wires surrounding the partially melted mess of plastic and alloy with her eyes, looking for a way to reconnect the impulse engines to the user controls without accidentally disconnecting something worse, like life support. 

Suddenly, she was grateful for her struggles in this class so far – she had spent so much time studying control layouts that she had the locations of every system burned into her memory.  It took her only seconds to plot out an alternate path between the interface and the impulse engines.

“I think I can fix it,” she said, yanking her head out from beneath the console and looking up at Jiri.  “There’s a burned-out relay in the primary interface grid.  I just need to route power around it.  We’ll lose telemetry, thrusters, and weapons, but I can give you enough control of the impulse engines to keep us from hitting atmo.”

“Get your EV suit on, cadet,” Jiri ordered.  “You’re not an engineer, and we don’t have time for this.”  

“Please, sir,” Maren begged.  “I swear I can do this.  It will only take a few seconds.  Just grab me a toolkit.  Please.”

“Maren!  What are you doing?” John cut in, his voice urgent.  “Get your EV suit on.”  He eyed the viewscreen nervously, two-thirds of which was now filled with Earth.

Maren ignored him and looked up at Jiri.  “Commander,” she pleaded. 

Jiri gave Maren a long, hard look, then spun on her heel and lunged for a storage compartment embedded in the starboard bulkhead.  She grabbed a small toolkit out of the compartment and tossed it to Maren, who easily caught it, with a grateful look.

“Spacedock to Jiri, we’ve got magnetic interference near your location.” The voice on the comm crackled with static.  “Be advised, we’re having trouble getting a solid transporter lock.  The Tigris has been dispatched.”

Jiri slapped her badge.  “Keep working on it,” she snapped, then looked down at Maren.  “Now or never,” she said, with an ominous edge to her voice.  She turned to the boys.  “Go stand next to the hatch,” she told them, grabbing her own EV suit out of a nearby compartment and beginning to pull it on.  “Prepare for emergency evac.  O’Connor, you’ve got thirty – ”

“Done,” Maren cut her off, with a breathless edge to her voice, as she hastily fused the relay she’d cannibalized from the secondary grid into place.  The job had been quick and dirty, but it had worked – there was now a clear path of lit circuitry from the control panel to the impulse drive.  She scrambled out from under the console and threw herself into the co-pilot’s seat.  “If you want to stop this thing, now would be a good time.”  She glanced up at the viewscreen, where the Northern Lights now filled the screen. 

Jiri stared at her for a fraction of a second, stunned; then in a flash, she was back in the pilot’s seat, manipulating the interface at breakneck speed.  Slowly, the surface of the Earth stopped rushing toward them, briefly froze in place, then started to recede as Jiri threw the shuttle into reverse.  Behind her, Maren heard one of the boys let out a long, trembling sigh of relief through the speaker on his EV suit. 

Whoever it was, she couldn’t blame him.  Her own heart was suddenly pounding in her chest and her hands had stared to shake as the adrenaline rush caught up with her.  I can’t believe I just pulled that off.  In the moment, she had been so sure of herself, so confident in her abilities.  Now that they were safe, the fear she should have felt all along was setting in.  What if I’d killed us, instead?

She didn’t have time to think about it.  Suddenly, EV-suit-clad arms wrapped around her from behind the co-pilot’s chair and someone kissed her on the cheek, hard.  “Way to go, Maren!” J.Q. exclaimed, squeezing her so tight it hurt, not even bothering to hide the relief and enthusiasm in his voice.  “Where did you learn to do that?”

Maren blushed deeply at the praise – and the kiss – but tried to keep her composure.  This was the first moment of actual competency she’d shown since setting foot in Jiri’s class on the first day of school.  She wasn’t about to screw it up by acting unprofessional. 

“I used to fix stuff all the time back on our farm,” she explained, trying to smooth out the shakiness in her voice.  “Heavy machinery, antigrav lifts, power tools, skimmers.  This isn’t that different.  More sophisticated, but a machine is a machine and a system is a system.  They make sense to me, I guess.”

“Well, you saved our asses,” J.Q. replied with a grin, tousling her hair with a thickly gloved hand and pressing another quick kiss to her temple.

Jiri brought a swift end to the party.  “You also disobeyed a direct order,” she interjected, fixing Maren with a critical look.  “You’re very lucky that worked, or I’d have your ass on report.”

“Yes, sir,” Maren replied, sounding appropriately contrite.  She chose not to point out that if it hadn’t worked, she’d probably be too dead for Jiri to report her.  After all, she noted as she looked around at the others, she was the only one not wearing an EV suit.

“We’ll talk when we return to San Francisco,” Jiri said coolly.  “For now, take a seat.  It looks like you’ll be getting another trip to Spacedock.”

****

After the Tigris had tractored them to Spacedock and they had beamed back down to the Academy, Jiri took Maren aside.  “Cadet O’Connor, a word with you?” 

Maren exchanged a glance with John and nodded, giving him silent permission to go on ahead to the dorms without her.  His blue eyes flicked cautiously over to Jiri and back, and he gave Maren a grim but encouraging smile before heading out of the transporter room.

“Yes, sir?” Maren asked cautiously, when he and Winston had both gone. 

Jiri glanced at the transporter tech.  “Not here,” she said.  “Come with me.”

Reluctantly, Maren followed Jiri out of the transporter room, which was just off the front lobby of the Commandant’s building.  The commander led her down a short hallway to an empty conference room and used her ID to unlock the door.  As it slid open, she motioned Maren in, then followed behind her into the smallish chamber. 

Maren tried not to flinch as the door slid shut behind them.  Alone in a room with Silai Jiri was not a place she wanted to be.  She turned to face the flight instructor, standing at parade rest.  Jiri looked at her appraisingly. 

“That was nice work up there, cadet,” she said.  “You may have disobeyed orders, but you saved Starfleet the cost of a new shuttle, and spared me an awful lot of paperwork.  So we’ll keep your insubordination between us for now.”

“Thank you, sir,” Maren said.

“You’re welcome.  But that’s not what I brought you here to talk about.”

“Sir?” Maren gave Jiri a questioning look.

“I think you’ve made a mistake, O’Connor, and I want to offer you a deal,” Jiri said.

Maren couldn’t hide her look of surprise. “I don’t understand.”  What kind of deal?

“I had a look at your entrance exams before class today,” said Jiri. “They show an incredibly strong aptitude for engineering, and your little stunt up there this afternoon would seem to back that up.  And yet here you stand, beating your head against a tritanium bulkhead, striving to become a pilot, a career path for which you have the least aptitude of any student I’ve ever had the displeasure of failing.”

“Sir, it’s only the third week,” Maren protested. “I’ll catch on, I know I will.”

“O’Connor, I’ve seen your other grades.  You’re a very smart girl with stellar marks in every class but this one.  I know you’ve done the math.  You’re failing this class so hard you’d have to pull a miracle out of your ass overnight and give a flawless performance on every test, every simulation from here on out just to have a chance at moving on.  That’s not a good way to start a career in flight control.”

Maren’s shoulders drooped slightly.  She had, in fact, done the math, over and over again.  Late at night when she couldn’t sleep, she did the math, and worried herself sick about how to tell her parents she was failing at the very thing she’d spent her life working so hard to achieve. 

“Look, O’Connor, here’s the deal,” Jiri said.  “It’s too late for you to drop this class without penalty, but I want you to do it anyway.  If you do, I’ll give you a C instead of the F you’re well on your way to earning and recommend you for the advanced engineering track.  It’s a big honor.  Fewer than ten plebes have ever made it in.  All you need is to get your current engineering professor to sign off, and you’re good to go.  If you hate it, you can always come back and try flight control again later, maybe after you’ve had some private lessons or something.  But if you don’t want a big scarlet F on your transcript marring that pretty, pretty GPA of yours, I highly suggest you take my offer.” 

“And if I don’t?” Maren asked, her voice quiet.

“I think you are far too smart for that.”

For a long moment, Maren stayed silent, weighing her options.  “When do I have to decide?” she finally asked.

“I’ll give you the weekend to think it over,” Jiri replied.  “You have until 09:00 Monday morning.”

“She wants me to quit.”  Maren flopped miserably onto her bunk, hugging a PADD to her chest like it was a child’s doll.  She looked over at Rachel, who was sitting at the desk she’d long since repurposed as a vanity, carefully applying makeup for her planned night out.

Rachel glanced over at her with an expression that was sympathetic but not entirely surprised.  Despite her morose disposition, Maren had to fight not to smirk at the sight, as her roommate had applied only half of her “party night” false eyelashes, making it appear that there was a rather large spider hanging out on her left eye.

“Well then, you have to quit,” Rachel said after a beat, her voice matter-of-fact.  “She will make your life a living nightmare if you don’t.”

“You mean more than she has already?” Maren quipped, carefully tracing the edges of the PADD with her fingers.

Rachel set her supplies down and turned to give Maren her full attention.  “Look, Roomie.  You are failing.  I’ve only known you three weeks, but that’s enough time to guess that you’ve never failed at anything in your life.”  Her eyes flicked to the shelf above Maren’s bed, where alongside holos of her family and friends back home, a few of her best awards and trophies sat – her silver medal from the all-Earth cross-country finals.  Her high school diploma from the UFP Academy for the Intellectually Gifted – Washington, D.C. campus, denoting her status as valedictorian.  A few papers she’d had published in academic journals from as far back as junior high.  No, Maren Siobhan O’Connor was not a girl who failed at things. 

Except, apparently, the one thing she’d wanted most since she was a little girl.

“This is what I’ve wanted my whole life, Rach,” she protested.  “How can I just quit?  And how could I have been so stupid?  There are kids here who have been flying real shuttles since they were old enough to reach the controls.  Why didn’t I fight harder for my parents to send me offworld for high school, go military prep on Mars or something?” 

She knew the real answers, of course – she hadn’t been ready to leave home yet,  she wasn’t interested in the military applications of Starfleet, and she loved her quirky little school in Washington, where weirdo geniuses like her could relate to each other.  She’d even gone to prom there, and had her first kiss – something she was sure would never had happened at any other school.

“You are no soldier, Marencita,” Rachel replied, returning her attention to the mirror as she began to apply the other half of her ridiculous spider lashes.  It occurred to Maren that if Rachel used half the focus she put into getting ready for parties into her Academy studies, she’d probably have perfect marks.  But then, Rachel didn’t have to worry.  Her uncle was Captain Orfil Quinteros.  She’d get whatever easy assignment she wanted after graduation, as long as she didn’t screw anything up too badly.

“Look, Maren,” Rachel was saying, as she stared intently at the mirror on her desk.  “If Jiri wants you to quit, you’d better do it.  She is one vindictive bitch.  If you fight her on this, she’ll haunt you for the next four years.  Trust me, Roomie, you do not want that.”

Maren sighed and pulled the PADD closer to her chest.  “She offered me a deal.”

Rachel set down her tools and whirled around, wide-eyed, looking slightly less silly this time, since both her eyes now matched.   “What do you mean, she offered you ‘a deal?’”

Maren met her roommate’s gaze miserably, unfazed by her apparent shock.  “She said if I transfer into advanced engineering, she’ll let me go with a C on my transcript instead of an F.”

Rachel’s mouth dropped open.  “What in the infinite multiverse made her say that?” she demanded.  “No plebe gets into advanced engineering unless they’re, like, the next Montgomery Scott.”

Maren shifted uncomfortably on her bed and stared up at a tiny defect in the otherwise smooth ceiling.  “I sort of saved our asses on that training shuttle flight today.”

Rachel frowned.  “You’re not cleared for flight.”

Maren shook her head.  “No, I was just along for the ride.  Jiri was piloting.  It was a new shuttle, glitchy.  The control panel froze up as we were on approach to Earth.  In the time it took for Jiri to figure out that Spacedock wasn’t going to be able to pull us out of freefall, I figured out the problem and rewired the controls.  It wasn’t perfect, but we didn’t die.  The Fleet even got its brand-new shuttle back intact.”

For a moment, Rachel appeared speechless.  “You had one hell of an afternoon, didn’t you?” she finally asked, shaking her head in disbelief.  Then her face took on a thoughtful expression.  “How did you know how to do that?”

Maren shrugged.  “I didn’t.  I just guessed,” she said.  “Ever since I was a little girl, I just got machines.  They make more sense to me than people most of the time.  I used to tinker with all the equipment back home al the time, fix it, make it better.  The shuttle wasn’t that different.”  She glanced Rachel’s way.  “I used to study your uncle’s work with the Bynars, too, you know.  I think I envied them a little bit.  Amazing technology, everyone working toward the same goals, effortless communication, no misunderstandings, total efficiency, superior skill.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow, then snorted.  “The same could be said about the Borg, Roomie, and people aren’t exactly lining up to be assimilated.”

Maren shrugged again.  She’d had that thought before, herself.  “I guess it’s different because the Bynars have free will,” she said.  “I wouldn’t want to be part of a slave mind.”

“Hmm.”  Rachel squinted thoughtfully at Maren for a moment through her long fake lashes. “Well, if you don’t take the deal Jiri’s offering, you’re not nearly as smart as all that shit up there would suggest,” she finally said, waving a perfectly manicured hand at the accolades above Maren’s bed.  “Silai Jiri does not make deals.  She makes enemies.  No.  Victims.  Washouts.  And advanced engineering?  That class is for the top few percent of second-years.  Eric Atherton is in that class, and he’s only there because the Admiral pulled strings to get him in.  Maren, you must take this deal and run with it.  Or you might as well go home.”

Maren gave her a pained look.  “But I don’t want to major in engineering,” she said, sounding childish even to her own ears.  “Can you imagine being stuck in a windowless engine room for years on end while everyone up on the bridge sees the stars, new worlds, first contact?”

“Can you imagine being on the flagship?” Rachel countered.  “Because that is where a freshman who enters the advanced engineering track will go.  You take this deal, you could wind up on the Enterprise,” she said.  “Don’t be stupid.  You have the rest of your career to chase the pilot’s chair.  Right now, you take this chance and run.”  As if for emphasis, she pointed at the cross-country trophy above Maren’s head.  “You’re good at that, remember?”

Maren wasn’t convinced, but she gave her roommate a half-hearted nod.  “I’ll talk to Commander Nguyen.”

Rachel beamed at her with bright red painted lips.  “That’s my girl,” she said approvingly. “Now, are you sure you don’t want to come to the party?”

****

Maren did not want to go to the party.  The thought crossed her mind to contact J.Q. and ask him what he thought of Jiri’s offer, but he was probably already halfway to Seattle by now and surrounded by friends.  The remaining names on her short list of confidants all ended in “O’Connor,” and there was no way she was going to tell any of them what was going on before she’d made a decision.  So she headed for Commander Nguyen’s office, hoping he hadn’t yet packed up for the weekend.

She activated the buzzer on his door and was relieved when she heard his lightly Vietnamese-accented voice respond, “Come in.”  When the door slid open, she walked into the office and bit back a smirk at the total disarray that was the Commander’s desk.  It reminded her of her own desk back at the dorm, or in her bedroom back home. 

The youthful-looking, dark-haired engineer was still seated behind his desk, tapping intently at the display console.  He was so deep in thought that he didn’t even look up to acknowledge her when she entered the room.

After an awkward moment’s silence, Maren gently rapped on the wall with one fist and quietly cleared her throat.  “Commander?”

Nguyen looked up from his desk display as if surprised to see her standing there, despite the fact that he’d invited her in just seconds before. 

“Ah, Miss O’Connor,” he said.  “Nice to see you.”  He frowned and glanced at an old-fashioned wall chronometer mounted on the wall beside his desk.  “A bit late on a Friday evening to be looking for a debate on warp theory, isn’t it?” he asked.

Maren squirmed nervously.  She considered making her apologies and bolting for the door, but Rachel’s words echoed in her head -- “Don’t be stupid.  You have the rest of your career to chase the pilot’s chair.  Right now, you take this chance and run.” 

“Actually, I’m not here to talk about warp theory, Commander,” she said, taking a cautious step toward his desk.  She took a deep breath.  “I’m here to discuss a possible transfer out of your class.”

At that, Nguyen gave her a knowing look.  He snapped off his desk display and gave her his undivided attention, for the first time in ... well, for the first time ever, as far as she could remember.  “I assume Commander Jiri presented you with her offer,” he said, with just the barest hint of a smile tugging at his thin lips.

Maren blinked in confusion.  “How did you know about that?” she blurted out, forgetting to even say ‘sir.’

Nguyen’s smile grew a little larger.  “Miss O’Connor,” he began, “No one gets into advanced engineering without my approval.  The ‘deal’ Commander Jiri offered you today was one I made with her. I was already considering recommending you for the advanced engineering track.  Silai just asked if she could use the opportunity as incentive.  I readily agreed.”

Maren opened her mouth to speak, but Nguyen held up a hand to stop her.  “The truth is, you’re way past this class,” he said.  “You finish your work before everyone else, you ask too many questions that are beyond your classmates’ comprehension, and on the several occasions that you have debated me on matters of advanced subspace theory, you have been right.  I contacted your secondary school and the dean said you had a habit of cleverly modifying all sorts of technology, without any training at all.  And according to your application file, you’ve already been published in three major academic journals.  But none of that changes your failing grade in flight control.”

Maren blushed furiously.  “Commander, if Jiri would just be patient with me, I know I can get the hang of it.  I’m new to flying.  I grew up on a farm in West Virginia.  I haven’t had the access, the advantages some of my classmates had in getting early cockpit experience.  You’ve seen my IQ tests, Commander.  There’s no way I won’t succeed at flying if I just keep working hard enough.”

“Piloting is more art than science,” Nguyen replied.  “Some of the greatest pilots in the fleet nearly flunked out of their academic classes.”  He steepled his fingers behind his chin and peered up at Maren.  “No one is going to deny that you’re a genius,” he told her quietly.  “But your aptitude lies elsewhere.  You seem to inherently understand the geometry of space and time.  You’re a natural at systems development.  And don’t think for a second that the whole Academy brass hasn’t already heard about that little stunt you pulled today up in that shuttle.  O’Connor, you have a bright future in Starfleet.  But it’s not going to be in a pilot’s chair.”

“With all due respect sir, I’d rather be on the bridge than in the engine room,” Maren protested.

Nguyen gave her a sympathetic smile.  “I understand that piloting seems more exciting and glamorous than engineering,” he said. “All I’m asking you to do is try it.  I think you have the potential to be a real standout.  If I’m right about you, you could have your pick of assignments upon graduation – maybe even the flagship – but to be perfectly blunt, you’re not going to be anywhere near that position if you stick with flight control.”

He turned and reached for one PADD among the piles on his desk and handed it to her.  To her surprise, the screen was already locked with her name on it:

ENGR 290 – S1

ADVANCED ENGINEERING SURVEY

CDT. 4th CLASS O’CONNOR, MAREN

“O’Connor, I can’t force you to do this, but I hope you’ll at least give it some thought,” Nguyen said, as Maren stared at the display.  “It would be a shame to waste natural talent like yours.  Elementary Warp Theory is beneath your skill level.  I’m sure it seems boring. I think you’ll change your mind once you see how exciting engineering can really be.  There’s more room for questions and theories and debate in the advanced class, and I think you’ll fall in love with it.”

Maren sighed heavily.  She knew this was an honor, and she knew it was the smart thing to do if she wanted to avoid terminally screwing up her career GPA with a failing grade in flight control.  But she was embarrassed that Jiri had apparently given up on her after only three weeks, and she already had a massive workload.   Was this advanced engineering class going to rob her of what little sanity she had left?  Then again, engineering had always been her easiest grade, and she did rather enjoy bouncing theories around.  After a long moment’s hesitation, she nodded.  “Okay,” she said, trying not to sound defeated.  “I’ll try it.  Thank you, sir.”

Commander Nguyen smiled.  “Very well, Miss O’Connor.  Report to classroom A-4 on Monday afternoon.  Your new instructor will be Commander I’hirin.”

“Yes, sir,” Maren replied, trying not to let her conflicted feelings show too plainly on her face.

“Dismissed,” said Nguyen, with a smile.  “Don’t be a stranger, Cadet,” he added. “Something tells me you’re going to be fascinating to watch.”