Flunking Out
Posted on Dec 13, 2016 @ 12:38am by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on Dec 13, 2016 @ 12:39am
Mission: Aftermath
= Flunking Out =
(cont’d from “Witness For The Prosecution”)
LOCATION; Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco, EARTH
SCENE: Training Holodecks
STARDATE: [2.16] 1212.2111
**Oh that’s right,** Jake Crichton thought, as he glanced around at his simulated surroundings and watched as his simulated crewmates went about their simulated tasks.. **I’m supposed to pretend this is real, aren’t I?**
LOCATION: USS LAURENS, on patrol somewhere along the Federation/Romulan border
SCENE: Bridge
STARDATE: [2.16] 1212.2111
Captain Alana Belloch leaned forward in her chair.
“Sensor sweep?” the captain inquired of the young female Trill seated at Ops. The Trill consulted the readouts on her console, then turned back to Belloch.
“No reading.”
Belloch frowned, and leaned back in her chair. “They’re out here somewhere, I can feel them.”
“What do they feel like?” Jake Crichton asked from the ExO’s seat, next to Belloch. He was doing his best not to sound bored; he’d taken holodeck training missions before, mostly during his time at the Academy and at the culmination of his Advanced Command Training course. But after nearly ten years spent in the field, facing down real problems, it was hard to take the forced intensity of holodeck simulations seriously.
“Like… Romulans,” Belloch said, glancing at Jake as a look of confusion passed briefly over her simulated features.
“Would you say that’s more smooth, or tingly?”
Belloch’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re not going take this seriously, Mr. Crichton, I’m sure I can find someone else willing to take up your position.”
**They saw me coming a mile away,** Jake thought.
“Sorry, sir,” he said.
“Good,” Belloch said. “Recommendations?”
“Scan for tetyron particles.”
It was the obvious answer, and it made the scenario feel like an elaborated version of a multiple choice test. Despite the feeling of the leather on the chair beneath him, despite the faint scent of the bridge’s recycled atmosphere, despite the superficially genuine reactions of the crew manning stations all around him, Jake couldn’t help but look at the scenario as a fairly straightforward set of interconnected problems. Here they were, ostensibly on patrol along the Romulan border, following up reports of recent incursions by Romulan warships. Starfleet tests had a way of being just enough to one side of cut-and-dry that Jake wasn’t *positive* of what to expect, but he had a pretty good guess: either they’d stumble across a Romulan patrol, or the patrol would ambush them. It would turn into a firefight, which the obviously overmatched LAURENS was to have no chance of winning. Captain Belloch would likely die or be incapacitated, leaving Jake to assume command and see the LAURENS through her final battle.
Towers had said that Starfleet no longer ran the Kobyashi Maru test, so Jake supposed a victory might even be possible… but the artificial nature of the whole thing was making it difficult for Jake to muster up a strong opinion either way. This isn’t what the real job felt like. This environment was to static, too controlled, to feel real. Jake had seen real; he’d seen the air filling with smoke as plasma fire raged out of control. He’d heard the final screams of officers, his own men and women with *real* lives and *real* families to which they would never return. After that, games in the holodeck felt like little more than elaborate cartoons. And this was supposed to prove his readiness to serve as First Officer aboard a starship?
Beside him, the imaginary Captain Belloch nodded her assent to her imaginary Ops officer. “Do it.”
“I’m picking up a faint tetyron trace,” the Ops officer reported, a split-second too quickly, almost as if she were speaking a preprogrammed response that someone had already queued up… though Jake supposed maybe that was just his imagination.
Captain Belloch glanced over, and cleared her throat. Jake, realizing he’d missed his cue, sat up in his seat. “Uh, coordinates?”
**I have to say ‘coordinates’ for you, too?** he thought.
“370.236,” the Ops officer said. “Sir, the tetyron trace has changed direction and is heading directly for us.”
“It must be the Romulans,” Belloch said.
**Here we go,** Jake thought. He stood up - he wasn’t sure why, but it felt like the right thing to do - and took a few steps closer to the viewscreen. “Yellow alert. All hands to your stations.”
“Tetyron signal still approaching,” said the Tactical officer from behind them. “Distance: 2000 kilometers and closing.”
Captain Belloch stood and took a few steps forward to stand next to Jake. The two of them stared at the main viewer, which of course showed nothing except the empty expanse of deep space, but Jake supposed they were cutting a rather dashing figure for any painters or sculptors who happened to be watching.
“Options?” Belloch asked - or prompted, Jake guessed.
“Hail them,” Jake said, not to Belloch but to the Trill officer at Ops. That was protocol; the first move in a situation like this was to attempt to establish communications. In Jake’s experience, captains had a way of forgetting protocol, which he supposed was why they needed first officers to begin with; you had to have someone around who could talk the boss down off the ledge.
The Ops officer sent out the hail, then looked back at them and shook her head. “No response.”
“Tetyron signal at 1500 kilometers,” said Tactical.
Okay, so talking was out. Like he was ticking items off a checklist, Jake turned to Belloch and shrugged. “Full power to shields?”
Belloch frowned at him, then turned to look at the Tactical officer - a young human, who reminded Jake vaguely of Jonathan Maynell, one of his Engineering officers aboard the PHOENIX.
“Target the tetryon signal,” Belloch ordered. “Prepare to fire photon torpedo on my order.”
“That feels like an overreaction,” said Jake.
Belloch snapped her head around to face him. “Do you have something to say, *Commander* Crichton?”
Jake caught the virtual captain’s emphasis on rank. “Respectfully, Captain, that signal hasn’t done anything yet. I think it’s premature to blast them out of the sky.”
“And an order to ready weapons is not an order to fire them.”
“That’s--” Jake started, then realized Belloch had a point. His cheeks reddened, and he dropped his gaze. “Uh. No, I suppose it isn’t, captain.”
“800 kilometers,” reported Not John from Tactical. “If it is the Romulans, they’ll be in weapons range any second.”
“Open a channel,” Belloch said. “This is Captain Alana Belloch of the USS LAURENS. Unidentified signal: you are on a direct course with our position. Break off your approach and identify, or we will have no choice but to defend ourselves.”
The Captain let a moment of silence draw out on the bridge - Jake thought they were using melodrama to really good effect in training sims these days - before the Trill at Ops looked guiltily back at Belloch and shook her head. “No response.”
“Tetryon signal at 300 kilometers.”
“Commander?” Belloch asked, looking at Crichton. Jake frowned; something inside him was still resisting the impulse to open fire. On one level, the whole thing just felt too easy for the swerves he’d come to expect from training simulations; on another, he didn’t like the idea of being the one giving the order that killed a few thousand people… not even imaginary Romulans.
“Recommend we take evasive action,” Jake said.
He had to hand it to her programmers; Belloch turned and nodded her agreement to the Ferengi at Flight Control. The LAURENS pitched hard to one side - Jake spared a moment to reflect on how, real starships had inertial dampeners to diminish the sensation of movement the holodeck was now attempting to simulate - just in time for the cloaked object to carom off the LAURENS’ shields. The ship rumbled - or the holodeck pretended it did, anyway. Not John was frantically working over his console now.
“Shields down to 60%,” he reported. “Whatever that was, it hit us hard! A direct hit and we’d have lost all shielding!”
“What about the tetryon signal?” Jake asked. “Did the impact destroy it?”
“No sir!” said the Trill at Ops. “It’s moving away from us and picking up speed!”
“Coming around for another pass?” Jake asked, looking at Belloch.
“I admire your dedication to peaceful resolution, Commander Crichton, but enough is enough, don’t you think?”
Jake still didn’t like it; so far, the only thing they had to go on was a tetryon trace and collision that, while it had rattled their teeth a little, hadn’t actually done that much damage. He also couldn’t remember suicide attacks being a major part of Romulan playbook.
“I don’t think it’s the Romulans, sir,” Jake said.
“Crichton, they’re coming around to hit us again,” Belloch said. “If you’re wrong--”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re in a room full of rocket scientists,” Jake said. He leaned to one side, looking past Belloch and towards the FCO station. “Helm, plot the object’s predicted course and prepare evasive maneuvers.”
“Belay that order.”
“Really?” Jake looked back to Belloch. “That felt like a good order.”
“Commander Crichton, you are relieved of duty,” Belloch said.
“Oh, hey, come on now--”
“For insubordination, and conduct unbecoming of a bridge officer!”
“It’s not the Romulans!” Jake said, rolling his eyes. “If they were trying to destroy us, they’d have opened fire already. We sent out a hail alerting them that we’d detected their position, but they didn’t alter course or take any defensive action. They were going to let us blow them out of the sky, which you’re still practically begging me to do at this point. We see them, we know they’re coming, and we can get out of their way. At this point, there’s no reason to engage with lethal force. Hell, let’s shoot a probe at it before we shoot a torpedo!”
“Lt. Carter,” Belloch said, turning to Not John at Tactical. “Have your men escort Commander Crichton from the bridge immediately.”
“Don’t bother,” Jake said. “I’ll show myself out.”
Jake turned, but the archway and doors had already appeared behind him. The doors opened, and Alex Towers stepped across the threshold and onto the simulated bridge of the USS LAURENS. None of the bridge crew reacted to Towers’ presence, but Jake noticed that, upon his arrival, they had all seemed to forget about Jake, too.
Jake looked back at Towers. The marine was glowering down at him, his expression the same as it always was but somehow darker, like there was a storm raging behind his eyes. Jake’s mouth suddenly went dry. Behind them, the Trill at Ops said, “Tetryon signal at 300 kilometers and closing.”
“Open fire!” Belloch said.
Towers didn’t react to any of this; he kept his eyes fixed on Jake.
“Was that fun for you?”
“Don’t you want to at least end the pro--”
“The simulation isn’t over,” Towers said. “Was that fun for you?”
“Sir, I’m sorry,” Jake said. “This whole thing feels like a game.”
“A game,” Towers repeated.
On the viewscreen behind Jake, a spread of photon torpedos raced out from the LAURENS. The two on the end seemed to miss their mark, but the two in the center impacted something, exploding in twin flares of brilliant light. Towers ignored this too.
“Direct hit!” reported Lt. Carter - Not John - from Tactical. “Sir! The object survived and is still closing!”
Jake turned to look. What could have survived a direct hit from a photon torpedo?
The object - whatever it was, Jake never found out - slammed directly into the USS LAURENS. It tore through the starship’s damaged shields, ripped through ablative armor and deck plating, before bursting out the other side, trailing a cloud of mangled debris and bodies in its wake. The crew - the virtual ones, anyway, not Jake or Towers - were thrown violently from their various stations as their consoles exploded around them. Fire seemed suddenly to be everywhere. Red alert klaxons and the acrid stench of simulated smoke filled the air as a structural support sheared its way from the bulkhead and fell with a crash, neatly bisecting the tactical station and, presumably, whatever was left of Lt. Carter. Belloch lay beneath the smashed remains of the captain’s chair, her twisted body already starting to smolder in the rapidly spreading flames. There were a few screams, most of them drowned out by the alarms and explosions, that were quickly cut off.
Jake and Towers stood a few feet apart, totally unaffected, as the USS LAURENS died around them. Towers, who was standing in the middle of a simulated fire seemingly without even realizing it was there, sighed.
“What you need to learn,” he said, “is that you don’t know everything.”
=[/\]=
LOCATION: Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco, EARTH
SCENE: Holodeck antechamber
Jake stepped off the ruined bridge of the LAURENS and back into the real world. The simulated ship dissolved behind him as Towers stepped out into the hall. The large metal doors of the holodeck closed behind him.
“What the hell was that?” Towers asked, crossing his arms.
“I figured you were tossing me a curveball,” Jake said. “Shooting first and asking questions later seemed too obvious a solution.”
“I’m not talking about the scenario,” Towers said. “You had a complete command breakdown on the bridge, in full view of the crew, and in the middle of a Yellow Alert situation. So what the hell was that?”
Jake sighed. “I’m not cut out for this job, sir.”
“I’m getting tired of talking you into this.”
“I mean it,” Jake said. “In the engine room, the captain tells me what he wants, then he gets out of my way and lets me do it. On the bridge, I’m what? Some parrot, there to tell the captain what she’s already thinking?”
“Your job is to advise the captain, then carry out her orders,” Towers said. “You didn’t seem to want to do either.”
“Her orders were to open fire on something we knew nothing about,” Jake said. “Makes sense if you’re the one who programmed her, I guess.”
“Watch it, Commander,” Towers said. “I’m not a simulation, and I have the pull to get your ass busted back down to ensign if you don’t stow the attitude.”
“My apologies, sir,” Jake said, through gritted teeth. “But her plan got the ship killed, remember? Whatever it was, it didn’t budge after she stuffed two torpedos down its throat.”
“Yeah,” Towers nodded slowly. “She called it wrong. That’s normally where you come in, but instead of supporting her, you decided to pick a fight. You killed the LAURENS as much as she did, Crichton, and it’s very important you internalize that if you’re going to take this test again.”
Jake looked up. “Again? I just blew it in front of who knows how many fleet officials.”
“You did,” Towers said. “Fortunately, this is a process. You’re in the hole right now, but there’s time for you to climb back out. But you need to think real hard about whether or not you want to be here, Jake, because you’ve run out of goodwill with me. I have better things to do than watch you embarrass yourself.”
Without another word, Towers stormed past Jake and around the corner. Jake watched him go, then rubbed at his eyes. He wondered what Xana and the kids were doing.
=[/\]=
Shawn Putnam
A.k.a.
Jake Crichton
Chief Engineering Officer
USS PHOENIX