by Diane Carey
“I’m not willing to accept that. This thing is intelligent and that means communication. We’ve got to find a way to talk to it. What if we try antielectrons?”
He shook his head wearily. “The matrix would explode. Matter can’t exist with antimatter.”
“So it explodes. What’ve we got to lose?”
He dragged his hands back to the console and arranged another piece of the fragment into the analyzer. “First, antiprotons.”
The analyzer hummed, and then the plate exploded, blowing shredded pea-sized bits all over Sturek.
“Sorry … you okay?” I asked.
He brushed the splintered junk off his cheek. “Yes. As expected.”
“Try the antielectrons. But look—try it this way. Set it up to mimic the cybernetic patterns. Let’s see what it does with something it recognizes.”
Sturek blinked up at me. “What is the logic for that?”
“Well, if I want to speak to something, I speak in something it already knows, don’t I? Let’s see if it responds.”
“David, any sentience may be an illusion. They could be cosmic parrots.”
“Parrots don’t build starships. And they don’t attack colonies. This thing has a brain and I’m going to find it.”
Maybe he was tired, maybe he just didn’t understand my stab in the dark, but he shrugged and tapped the computer console, feeding in my wild attempt to talk to the cybership’s bits. This was like having one brain cell from a human being and trying to see if it spoke English. All we had to do was get a positive response, and Captain Kirk would be justified in demanding that Starfleet’s supergeniuses take it from there and find a way to communicate.
Who the hell are you and why are you attacking outposts?
“David … David!”
Vulcan reserve hit the floor. Sturek jolted back and stared at the readout screen.
Lights and neural responses scrolled wildly.
“It recognized the pattern!” I cried. “It’s answering! Sturek, we did it! It’s not a spoken language, but there is a sentient pattern! That’s the trick—we can’t make it follow corporeal thinking, so we have to imitate its thought process! By mimicking a cybership’s every move, a Federation ship can develop a rapport! Come on! We’ve got to get this to Captain Kirk!”
“It is my honor and privilege to award Cadet David Ross Forester with the Commandant’s Medal of Meritorious Service and the Starfleet Call of Duty Award. I now confer upon you the rank of second lieutenant. Congratulations, Mr. Forester.”
Cheers rose to the prisms of the ceremonial hall at Starfleet Academy, but I heard only the first surge of noise before my brain went a little numb.
The field of cadets applauding me were in full dress for graduation. In the front row, in positions of honor, sitting with Captain Kirk, Captain Sulu, and Commander Chekov, were my crew—Corin, M’Giia, Jana, Robin, and Sturek. We were officers now.
I looked at my crew and nodded. I was especially proud to see Sturek wearing his Commandant’s Medal of Achievement. He deserved it.
In spite of our success, I keenly felt the stinging absence of Frank Malan and Faith Gage, much more than I’d expected to. Their dismissal had busted the chances of a ten-year no-expulsion record for Starfleet Academy, and I knew I’d had a hand in that. Oh, sure, they’d probably have caused a lot more trouble if I hadn’t gummed up their works, but still I felt saddened that the whole episode had to happen and regretful that I had to be part of it.
The two-story windows crackled with sunlight off San Francisco Bay as Commandant Rotherot clipped the medals to my uniform and shook my hand.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “report to docking bay twelve at eight hundred hours. Your entire crew will be there waiting for you.”
“My crew, sir?”
“Yes. It doesn’t happen very often, but your entire command team has turned down their postings to continue serving with their training captain. Congratulations, David.”
Astonished, I looked down at Corin, Robin, Jana, M’Giia and Sturek. They seemed to know he’d just told me that.
And all the feelings of regret fell away.
“Docking bay twelve, eight hundred hours. I’ll be there, sir. We’ll all be there!”
“This way, Mr. Forester. You’d better learn the route.”
My legs were scarcely more than twists of thread as James Kirk led me into the one place in the universe I’d never expected to be standing—the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
This was the real starship, right here, hovering in her box dock, which glittered outside the main screen like a Christmas decoration. Hovering here in elegant repose as we’d all come in on the docking shuttle, the starship glowed under the work lights like a swan in starshine.
And the first thing I noticed as we walked onto the bridge was the scent of the place—not like the simulator at all. The simulator smelled musty and sooty because of the frequent blasting that went on inside it. This place had a light aroma of tidiness, of freshly polished bulkheads and vacuumed carpet. That’s what happened to the starship every time she made port. Her crew—not maintenance from the starbase, but her own crew—cleaned her up and made her shipshape before embarking for shore leave.
Suddenly I wanted to buff something.
“She’s been in spacedock for six weeks now, and she’s ready for a shakedown,” Captain Kirk said casually, speaking about the great ship as if she were his favorite riding horse.
“Mr. Sturek, right over there. Ensigns Corin and Akton, the helm … Ensign M’Giia, communications … Mr. Brady, main engineering is right over there.”
I was shaken from my amazement by the sight in my periphery of Robin coming past me and running his fingers along the engineering console of the big ship. On my right, Sturek stood at the science station, not touching it at all. It was as if he stood in a museum, appreciating the work of a great master.
I smiled. I knew what he was feeling.
Then it hit me again—this wasn’t the simulator!
Chekov and Sulu came in after my crew, fondly touching the equipment, right at home here. My crew, though, wasn’t sure at all what to do. They responded politely when spoken to, but we all were a little drugged.
“Once around the solar system, Mr. Forester,” Captain Kirk said then, dropping to my side next to the command chair.
Stunned, I turned to look at him. “Sir?”
He waved his hand toward space on the main screen. “Take her out, shake her down, and then come back and pick me up in the morning. But be aware, if you bring her back with so much as a scratch, I’ll file your ears to points.”
Was he talking about…
He took my elbow then and almost scared me out of my skin.
“Right there, Mr. Forester. The command chair.”
He gestured to the all-important place as I stared in bald shock. Take the command chair?
Behind him, Sulu and Chekov were grinning.
“Thanks to you,” Kirk said, “we know how to communicate with the cybership. Your work with Mr. Sturek is paying off. Tomorrow we’re going out to deal with the crisis. You started this mission, and it’s up to you to finish it.”
Overwhelmed, drawing strength from the supportive gazes of my own crew, I stepped up onto the command platform and lowered into the command chair as if it were hot and sizzling.
“This is an honor, sir,” I struggled.
Kirk didn’t smile, exactly, but he held out his hand to me and clasped mine with unexpected warmth. Around us, the beautiful bridge shone, and its crews, past and future, beamed with pride as the torch was passed.
On the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, flagship of the United Federation of Planets, of which I was now a representative, Captain James T. Kirk clasped my hand a second longer than was necessary. He spoke to me with a resonance that would carry through my life in Starfleet, as ever long that would someday be…
“Wherever you go,” he said, “go boldly.”
Diane Carey, Starfleet Academy