Star Trek: The Next Generation: Starfleet Academy #8: Starfall

by Brad

  A chime sounded, and Robert said, “That’s the shuttle. You’d better go.”

  “Well, goodbye. Take care of everything for me.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jean-Luc said. “Bon voyage.”

  Maurice snorted and stumped away, carrying his two suitcases. Robert and Jean-Luc didn’t talk until Robert started the aircar and lifted off from the landing lot. “A message came for you this morning,” he said, his voice emotionless. “Lucky for you I’m the one who took it. You’re to report to the European Testing Center in three days.”

  “Thank you,” Jean-Luc said. He stared out the window at the countryside below, hedgerows and cultivated fields and the occasional cottage.

  “Don’t thank me!” snapped Robert. “Don’t you know what you’re doing to all of us?”

  “Robert, I—”

  “This will break Father’s heart. You’re the genius of the family. You should be able to understand something simple like that.” Robert slowed the aircar to a crawl. Ordinarily Chateau Picard was only a two-minute trip to or from LaBarre, but Robert was stretching it out because he obviously had something to say. “Jean-Luc, it’s you he wants to run the vineyard, not me. What if you pass your stupid tests?”

  “I will pass,” Jean-Luc said. “I didn’t pass the last time because of Father.”

  “What? How dare you blame him? He gave you permission to take the tests.” Robert’s voice rose in anger, shook with fury. He took a couple of deep breaths and then added sullenly, “That’s a lot more than he would have done for me.”

  Jean-Luc shook his head. “You don’t understand. Yes, he gave me permission to test for Starfleet Academy, but he made it clear that he didn’t want me to pass. All my life I’ve done everything to please him. Well, that should be enough. Just this once I’m going to do something to please myself instead.”

  “And you don’t care about Father?”

  “Of course I care about him,” snapped Jean-Luc. “But it’s my life, not his. I have to do this, Robert, whether it hurts Father or—” He broke off and turned to look at Robert. “Or you,” he added quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  “I wondered when you’d think of that.” Robert’s voice held a sneer. “Yes, of course. I’ve only waited five years for my chance to win a diploma, to study off-world. If you take the tests and pass, Father will never let me go to Alkalurops. Congratulations, little bother. You’re making a fine mess for everyone else in the family.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Jean-Luc said. He felt miserable, uncertain, and childish. “You have a right to be upset with me, Robert, but remember that you can choose your own path just as I have to choose mine.”

  “Oh, that would be just wonderful, wouldn’t it? For both of a man’s sons to turn against him?”

  “No!” objected Jean-Luc. “It isn’t like that at all. I’m not turning against Father. He’s wrong about me, that’s all. I’d never be happy here, Robert, not like you. You and Father are just alike. You love the vineyard, the warmth of the sun, the sweetness of the rain. Sometimes I think you value the grapes and the wine more than you do your own flesh and blood. I’m not like you, and I’m not like him. For whatever it’s worth, Robert, I must do what I’m called to do.”

  “And you hear a different call.”

  “Yes,” Jean-Luc agreed. “I hear a different call.”

  Robert sped the aircar up again, and in a moment they were gliding in toward their own garage, behind the chateau. “I don’t want to talk about this again,” Robert said coldly. “You do whatever you have to, Jean-Luc. I can never forgive you for what you’re doing to Father, that’s all.”

  Jean-Luc didn’t answer. When the aircar landed, he got out and went straight to his room to study. He did not come down for dinner, nor for breakfast the next day. His mother took him a tray at noon, and again that night and the next morning. It was as if she knew all along that Jean-Luc would try again. He didn’t need to say anything. She just understood. She sat on the foot of his bed as he ate his breakfast at his desk.

  His room seemed strange to him now, the room of a much younger Jean-Luc. The carefully built model ships in bottles might as well have been kindergarten toys. “The worst of it is,” he said, picking up his model of the original Starship Enterprise, “is that no matter what I do, I let someone down—Father, Robert, myself.”

  His mother came to stand beside him and brushed his hair into place. “You don’t know everything about your father,” she said softly. “Would it surprise you to know that Maurice and your grandfather quarreled over the vineyard? Not once, but many times?”

  Jean-Luc blinked. “I didn’t know that. What was the problem between them?”

  With a smile Yvette said, “The problem was that Maurice was his father’s son—just as you are Maurice’s son. Oh, Jean-Luc, you don’t know how very proud he is of you. He never tells you, and sometimes I think he keeps it a secret even from himself. But he is proud of you, and part of his pride is that you are who you are: intelligent, eager to succeed, and yes, stubborn. I think some part of him would be surprised or even hurt if you did not test again for Starfleet Academy.”

  Jean-Luc sighed and put down the model starship. “It will be a very small part,” he said ruefully. “Most of him will want to kick me to the moon.”

  “Well, perhaps not that far,” his mother said, and they both had a fit of giggling.

  That made him feel somewhat better, but he kept to his room all that day, packing and reading. When he came out again, he carried his suitcase. He looked so woebegone that his mother took him quietly aside to speak to him about his decision. “If you think this is best,” she said with a smile, “you must go through with it. Not many decisions are easy, Jean-Luc. This one is at least clear.”

  “I feel trapped,” Jean-Luc admitted.

  The feeling did not leave him as his mother flew him into Paris in the aircar. Their goodbyes were brief.

  Jean-Luc joined a loose gang of other young men and woman walking toward the complex of shining white stone and glass buildings. It looked as if it might be the headquarters of a small company or the campus of a minor technological college.

  It was neither. Jean-Luc passed beneath an arch with lettering on it that read STARFLEET ACADEMY: EUROPEAN TESTING CENTER.

  He took a deep breath. Whatever happened now, it was too late to back out. He had to see it through.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Engineering. Command. Psychology.

  As he lay in bed that night, trying to sleep, the words swirled around in Jean-Luc’s mind like three birds of prey ready to swoop in for the kill. When he dozed, he could almost feel their cruel shadows passing over him, and he cringed a little.

  Engineering. Command. Psychology.

  They were his three weak points, or more precisely, two weak points and an absolute unknown. Last year his scores had been respectable in all other fields. It was the fiendishly difficult multidimensional calculus of Cochrane engineering that first tripped him up. A computer helped, but its operator had to know exactly what terms to key in and what equations to set up. Besides accuracy, speed also counted. Jean-Luc had been too cautious last year, pausing to double-check every problem before going on to the next, and he had lost valuable seconds.

  Ironically, on that test he made only three trivial mistakes in the problems he solved. Unfortunately, he ran out of time with five problems left to go and with a time score that put him down around the eighty-seventh percentile. That would have been a respectable score in a typical classroom, but Starfleet demanded ninetieth or higher.

  Command was even more unpredictable. Last year he had taken the bridge of a medium-sized reconnaissance starship for a closeup survey of a class-M planet, circa 2220, back when the Federation was at war or on the verge of war with a half dozen different alien races. Of course, the bridge had been only a simulation on a holodeck, and the planet was just imaginary. Even most of his crew had been simulated, except for his first officer,
a gray-haired Starfleet veteran, and a cool Vulcan lieutenant who observed and later explained in icy detail every mistake she caught him in. And there had been many, because in the middle of the survey a Klingon warship had suddenly appeared.

  Its commander claimed the planet for his empire, warned the Earth ship away, then opened fire without giving Jean-Luc the opportunity of replying. Jean-Luc tried to fight back, but he had neglected to check the status of his weapons. In simulation at least, the Klingons defeated him and his crew.

  The Command test would be different this year, he knew, but there was no way to predict what it might be. He could only study Starfleet history and hope that whatever simulation he faced might have some basis in past Starfleet actions.

  And then the unknown: the psychology test.

  It was different for everyone, he had heard. The psychology test evaluated a candidate’s ability to handle extreme stress. The catch was that the Academy could do that in a number of different ways. Jean-Luc had signed a release, for example, that allowed a Betazoid to monitor his thought and emotion patterns. Betazoids were all somewhat telepathic. All of them could read emotions, and some could literally read minds. It could be that a Betazoid would simply listen in to Jean-Luc’s fears and thoughts and then give him a score.

  Or, for some, the psych test was a maddening examination, full of picky detail, set at a speed barely beyond their ability to respond. The frustration would build and build until the candidate reacted to it—by getting angry, by freezing up, by giving in to despair. And there were even more elaborate and scary ways of measuring psychological fitness. This was the test that frightened everyone.

  Engineering. Command. Psychology.

  Jean-Luc woke with a start the next morning. Early sunlight slanted through the dorm window. He had fallen asleep with his head on his desk, his cheek resting on a computer padd displaying a physics text on containment fields and Jeffries arrays. He checked the time. It was just sunup, and he still had time to get in a run. That, he thought, was one of his downfalls last year—he had been physically tense, and this year he planned to work out his tension with a morning run before the tests began. He rose stiffly from the chair, stretched, and hurried to unpack his running shorts and shoes.

  In an hour he would be due at breakfast, and then he had the literary/philosophical essay to write. He had already decided to do his essay on the work of John Devlin, a twentieth-century poet and writer. Devlin’s books Where Youth and Laughter Go and When Duty Whispers Low had changed a lot of Jean-Luc’s ideas regarding the glory of war. Devlin, he decided, would have approved of Starfleet’s gradual evolution from a military service to one devoted to the gaining of scientific knowledge.

  Jean-Luc paused in the act of pulling on his right running shoe. Something was tucked into the toe. He shook it out into his hand, It was a small object wrapped in white paper, and when he unfolded the paper, he saw it bore lines of writing. It was a brief note from his brother:

  Dear Jean-Luc,

  They used to think this brought good luck. Knowing you, you will not need any. But I can’t let you go off to be tested without giving you a token of apology or without wishing you the best success.

  Your stubborn brother,

  Robert

  Robert had wrapped the note around a small silver medallion. Jean-Luc’s throat tightened a little. He recognized the gift as an ancient Saint Christopher’s medal, a token that had been in the Picard family for generations. It had accompanied one of Jean-Luc’s remote ancestors on a crusade to Jerusalem and back, and later it had gone into space with a great-great grandfather who helped to settle Mars. Maurice had given the medal to Robert when his eldest son graduated from high school—and now here it was in Jean-Luc’s hand. He smiled and put the Saint Christopher’s medal in a drawer. It wouldn’t do any harm to wear it to the tests, he thought, although he certainly wasn’t going to rely on a small piece of jewelry for the results. And he certainly wasn’t going to risk losing a family heirloom by wearing it while he ran.

  He went out into a cool, clear morning and ran for five kilometers, an easy distance and a relaxed pace. Then he showered and dressed quickly. He was halfway out the door when he remembered the Saint Christopher’s medal. With a smile, he grabbed it and slipped it on. It couldn’t hurt, he thought with a shrug as he hurried from his room.

  He ate breakfast in the commissary with the other hopeful candidates, all of them human except for Molvantar, a willowy, blue-skinned Andorian, the son of the Andorian consul for Europe. They chatted with one another in high, nervous voices about the five days of testing ahead.

  “They say that the competition is really fierce this time around,” said red-haired Sandy McCannon, a girl who had a frightening command of engineering skills. “Oh, why didn’t I go to the first testing cycle?”

  Jan Helmer, a lanky blond boy with a devil-may-care grin and a habit of working out complex navigation problems on paper napkins, said, “You know the answer to that, Sandy. Like all the rest of us, you had a point or two you had to study. You’ll pass the engineering test with no problem—but what about literature? What about history? What about command?”

  “You did not mention navigation,” Molvantar murmured, his antennae twitching. “That is my greatest worry. My father has hired tutors and I’ve logged weeks of computer time, but I still don’t understand all the concepts.”

  “All of us are dreading something,” Jan said. He raised an eyebrow at Jean-Luc. “What are you afraid of, Frenchy?”

  With an easy smile Jean-Luc said, “P1ease don’t call me that, Mr. Helmer. I have a name.”

  “Sorry, Monsieur Picard. What are you afraid of?”

  “No one thing,” Jean-Luc said and turned his attention back to his breakfast crepe. His boastful claim was true, in a way. He wasn’t afraid of any one thing. He was afraid of practically everything, every test that could trip him up, keep him out, make him fail.

  As soon as breakfast ended, an ensign herded the candidates into a small lecture room. The room had two hundred seats in it, and the candidates filled not even half of them. Jean-Luc guessed that ninety students from Europe, Asia, and the African Confederation were contending for the appointments to the Academy. Since this was the last testing period of the year, most of the Academy’s new cadets had already received their acceptances. Jean-Luc took a deep breath and wondered how many of the students in the room would make the final cut.

  He did not have long to wonder. A gray-haired woman in the uniform of a Starfleet Commander walked out onto the stage and to a lectern. “Good morning,” she said, looking out at them. “I trust you all had pleasant journeys to the testing center and a good night’s sleep last night. I assure you, you will need it.”

  A few people giggled nervously. The woman did not pause. “I am Commander Cynthia Luttrell, retired. However, as many Starfleet veterans discover, it is not so easy to retire from Starfleet. Rather than enjoying the sun and surf at Paradise Island on Walzinger’s Planet, I have accepted an appointment here as the director of Academy testing, European division.”

  She seemed to look directly at Jean-Luc with a cool, level gaze. “This morning I have reviewed the applications and the vacancies at Starfleet. As it happens, this year has seen a wave of young Vulcan applicants to the Academy.”

  Someone groaned. Jean-Luc fought back a grin. It was true that Vulcans had formidable minds, but they weren’t that good—and not that numerous. Commander Luttrell continued: “Added to the number of Vulcan applicants, we have the fact that the Academy had a good selection of candidates from the previous five testing cycles. All of this is just my way of telling you that competition will be especially stringent. Last year our center sent eight cadets to Starfleet from the July testing cycle. This year we will be able to send only one.”

  A wave of sighs and moans swept through the assembly hall. Jean-Luc felt his heart sink. His chance had suddenly dwindled from practically one in ten to one in ninety. But then so had everyone
else’s, as the dismayed expressions of the students showed.

  “I won’t say anything more to discourage you,” Commander Luttrell concluded. “The testing will begin in half an hour. Be on time for all the tests. My assistant will answer any last-minute questions you may have.”

  She suddenly smiled, a radiant smile that made her lined face look young and girlish. “For what it’s worth, candidates, I envy you. Good luck to you all, and keep your hopes on the stars.”

  A young ensign took over, answering a few silly questions with an absolutely straight face—after all, Jean-Luc thought, what did it matter if one used the old-fashioned imprimis computer padd instead of the newer models? Then it was time for the first examination. The candidates split up into smaller groups for that. Jean-Luc and fourteen others, including Sandy McCannon, wrote essays. Jean-Luc had guessed well, because one of the topics was “Discuss a work of literature from the twenty-second century or earlier that substantially altered your view of modern society.” He was able to adapt the Devlin topic handily.

  For an hour he worked at the essay, pausing occasionally to access library holdings with his computer padd. He retrieved articles and essays about Devlin, even facsimiles of Devlin’s original poetry manuscripts. He had a draft of the essay finished in ninety minutes, and thirty minutes remained for him to revise and polish it. He felt confident that he had done a good job when the ensign overseeing the essays called time and locked the essays in on his own computer padd. Jean-Luc looked over at Sandy and felt startled to see her red-faced and biting her lip.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. “I don’t think I did very well on that. Writing is not my strong point. How about you?”