Fic: The Plebe, Chapter 14

The Plebe, Chapter 14
What the Cadet Heard -- Asked and Answered -- The Invitation

“Our friends are expecting a dust-up in sector 45. We’re posting four vessels there within the next two solar days, a full Constitution class welcoming party. It’ll look damned impressive.”

Jim jerked awake at the sound of Barnett’s voice, unusually crisp and loud in his ear. It took him a few moments to realize that he’d fallen asleep, tingling legs still tucked beside him in the wing chair that concealed him, the breezy afternoon his eyes had sunk closed to now calmed to the dark of evening. The indistinct reflection in the glass window wall showed the reading room to be empty save for himself and three grey-clad officers seated behind him.

An unfamiliar voice responded, deeper and slower than Barnett’s. “What are they bringing?”

Jim had the thought to make his presence known but froze at the reply. “We don’t know yet, sir." Pike. "Our source says at least two birds of prey, maybe three. Enough to look like a legitimate attack force on the space station.”

“So we show them we’re swinging a bigger sack, they stand down. Then what?”

“We go home, they go home, honor is satisfied, and they’ll think their smokescreen worked.” Some of the habitual self-satisfaction had crept back into Barnett’s tone. “Meanwhile the real party starts in sector 89. Intel says four to six battle cruisers already in position just on their side of the neutral zone.”

“What’s the target?”

“Not much out there, which is why they think it’ll be easy pickings. One monitoring station and one comm relay.”

A pause, then a sighing exhalation, both heavy with doubt. “That’s a lot of firepower for a couple of unmanned stations.”

Pike stepped in again. “Sir, knocking out those stations would disrupt communications with our manned outpost in 87. They could attack it and we’d never know.”

“And it would cripple our ability to keep tabs on those sectors,” Barnett added. “They could push the zone millions of kilometers back toward us by the time we replaced the monitor.”

Another pause; Jim could hear the sound of a stretch and a body settling back into its chair and wished he could do the same. “Who do you want me to send?”

“Six heavy cruisers should do it. Even if their force is double what we think, they’ll be outgunned.”

“You’re telling me you want to deploy all of our active cruisers for this one pissing contest over a monitoring station?” The doubt had turned to disbelief. “Dick, if your intel is wrong, we look like fools. Or get our asses handed to us if there’s some other activity along the border that we’re not prepared for because we’ve put all our eggs in this one bullshit basket of yours.”

“Our source relayed the communication directly from the Klingon High Command. I’m confident they won’t be expecting anything in 89.”

There was no reply to Barnett’s assertion, the silence that followed it lengthening beyond the bounds of a normal conversation. Jim had just started to wonder at the odd delay when his chair was pulled abruptly backward to spill him to the floor in an ungainly sprawl; a hand seized the back of his head to drive his left cheek hard into the carpet, its mate pressing a fully armed phaser to his right temple. He strained to look upward, his sight blocked from all but one piercing blue eye that narrowed in suspicion before blinking wide.

“Jesus Christ.”

Pike shifted his grip to the collar of Jim’s jacket and hauled him to his numbed feet, the phaser still at his head. Beyond him stood Barnett, an almost comical look of astonishment on his face, and a third officer wearing the uniform of a fleet admiral.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I…” The truth sounded idiotic. “I just came in here to read. I guess I fell asleep.”

Pike’s hand, rock steady when it held the phaser to Jim’s face, now shook visibly as he holstered the weapon. “I could have killed you. Jesus, Jim.”

One brief nod from the fleet admiral and Jim was released, his hands reflexively pulling at his uniform to straighten it. “Sir, I’m sorry. I just…I wasn’t feeling well. I thought it would be all right to rest here. I didn’t know you were going to have a meeting.”

“Who's this, Chris?”

The fleet admiral’s question was more peremptory than polite. Pike had just opened his mouth to reply when Barnett cut him off. “Hachi, this is James Kirk, George’s son.” He moved forward to wrap one arm around Jim’s shoulders in an awkward hug; it was a struggle not to openly shrink away from the contact. “Our newest fourth-class cadet and my own little country mouse. Absolutely trustworthy.”

“I hope that’s true.” The admiral jerked his head toward the lift. “Show him out.”

 

***

 

Pike waited until the lift doors had closed to release his grip on Jim’s upper arm. He blew out a heavy breath.

“Sorry about the takedown. You all right?”

Jim’s cheek felt raw from the carpet burn, but he knew better than to complain. “I’m fine. Look, I’m…”

“All our offices are bugged, our comms are being monitored. The only private conversations we can have are in public spaces.” Pike turned to face Jim squarely. “I don’t think you need me to tell you that what you just overheard is classified.”

The glib assurance he had been about to voice died at the gravity of Pike’s tone. He gave a single nod.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes sir, my ass.” Pike shook his head in disbelief. “Next time, nap in your owned goddamned bedroom.”

They rode the rest of the way down in silence until the doors opened into the library foyer. Pike escorted him past the indifferent staff at the circulation desk to the outer doorway of the building.

“I’m going back up. Why don’t you go on back to your dorm.” He scanned Jim’s face as he passed him his book, retrieved from the reading room floor as they had exited. “You look like you could use a lot more sleep.”

Jim checked the chronometer: 18:43.

finneganbcg: Absolutely I’ll be working in the simulation lab Yukawa 1520 until 1900 we can meet after

“Thanks. But there’s somewhere I need to be.”

 

***

 

The door to room 1520 was still open when Jim approached, its lone occupant bent over a shoulder bag to pack it in preparation for the evening’s departure. The pale gold hair was neatly pulled back and tied against his neck, the ponytail brushing against the shoulders of the crisp white lab coat that covered the red-over-black uniform. It wasn’t until he turned at the sound of Jim’s footsteps, loud in the empty corridor of Yukawa Hall, that Jim saw the fatigue on the drawn face, the skin under his eyes almost transparent, bluish smudges revealing as sleepless a night as his own.

The smile he offered came without his usual handshake; he gestured instead toward the interior of the small lab.

“Welcome aboard the Kobayashi Maru. A.k.a., my capstone project.”

Jim stepped in, mindful of the loosely coiled loops of wire and cable that littered the floor, and let his eyes wander across the banks of tightly packed terminals, their surfaces alight with monitors and twinkling indicator lights, many of which were at least partly concealed by even more lengths of tangled cable. Finn’s sheepish laugh answered the question his look must have asked.

“This is just the software. You’ll be more impressed once the bridge mock-up is complete and all this is hidden by a bunch of consoles.”

“I am impressed. What does it do?”

“Collects and analyzes biometric data during testing. It gauges the subject’s physiological and emotional status and adjusts the program parameters accordingly, so that the test is always just a little bit too much of a challenge.”

“You’re rigging it so no one can pass?”

“I guess you could look at it that way. I think of it as customizing the experience to determine each individual’s threshold for command-level stress.” Another smile touched Finn’s mouth, and Jim noticed again how tired he looked. “I imagine you’ll pass it just fine.”

There was no irony in his voice, only a gentle approbation that Jim knew he didn’t deserve. He drew in a breath. “Finn, listen, about last night…”

“You’re going to apologize. You shouldn’t.”

“But I should have told you...”

Finn shook his head, his gaze dropping away from Jim’s face to his shoulder bag. “It was my fault. You don’t need to tell me anything.”

“But I do, please, let me.” He saw Finn’s mouth open again to expostulate with him and charged on forward. “I should have told you a lot of things. I know you thought I was older, and I let you believe that, on purpose, so you wouldn’t think of me as some boring hayseed kid.” He flushed slightly at the stinging memory of the words he had overheard his first day on campus. “And I was dishonest last night too, when I said I’d go home with you and I didn’t want to. I mean, I did, but because I like talking to you, not to do, you know, other things…”

Finn closed his eyes; Jim knew that had hurt but had to go on. “And that’s the worst thing. I knew you liked me, more — I mean, in a different way — than I do. And I didn’t say anything because I thought that if you knew I didn’t like you that way, you wouldn’t want to spend time with me anymore.” He thought he’d run out of tears the night before, but here they were back again, a burning pressure on eyes already swollen with remorse. “I’m so sorry, I really am.”

“I already knew all of that.” Finn sensed Jim’s start of surprise and opened his eyes, the lack of accusation in them somehow more damning than if they were angered. “Most of it, anyway. That’s why this is all my fault.”

“No, it’s…”

Finn held up one hand to interrupt him. “Let me finish. I knew you didn’t feel the same way, and I knew it from the beginning, from the moment I saw you in the clinic with Mitch, the way you were looking at him, how worried you were, and I knew you had no room for me. It was so clear, like it was written on your face, but I wanted to ignore it, and I did, in a way. I told myself I was just being patient, holding back to give you room so that you’d come around to me when you were ready, you know, waiting, not pushing you away. And then last night, you were just so…” He paused and shook his head again. “My God, Jim, I have no excuse. I lost my mind, lost control, and I ended up doing exactly what I knew I shouldn’t and pushed you away anyway, probably scared you too. I got what I deserved.”

“You haven’t pushed me away. I still really want to be friends.” He continued, emboldened by Finn’s vulnerability. “And I am scared, but only that you don’t want that anymore, like I threw all of that away.”

“You have nothing to be afraid of. I’m not going anywhere.” That tired smile again. “Well, except tonight, I guess. I’m heading out later for my dad’s cabin up in Michigan, the upper peninsula. I could use a long weekend away from…” He gestured with his head toward the equipment behind him. “…all this.”

Jim was uncomfortably aware that all this included him as well; the guilt was unbearable. “Can I come with you?”

The answer didn’t come as quickly as Jim expected. He watched Finn stare at his own hands, suddenly frozen on the zipper of his shoulder bag, and waited.

“You asked me last night why I was saving myself.” The words seemed dragged out of him. “That’s not what I’m doing. It’s just that I never met anyone I wanted to be with, not even close. Until you. And I’m absolutely sure about you. I know I’m not what you want or need right now, and I know there’s a fair probability that I may never be. But it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to go put myself out there for someone else just because we’re not together now.” He shrugged and pulled the bag onto his shoulder, his face lifting to meet Jim’s gaze. “Life is long. I truly believe that, Jim. I’ve already waited my whole life for you, and I’m going to keep waiting, whether it’s a week or a year or another twenty years, or until I die, or you do. If you want to be friends and spend time with me, I think you should know what you’re up against, that what I’m doing is waiting for you to want to be with me. All in. And that could be pretty uncomfortable for you.”

“You’d really do that? Wait twenty years for me?”

“I love you.” He shrugged again, the faint smile as calm as his eyes. “What choice do I have?”

 

<<Previous Chapter     Home     Next Chapter>>