“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.