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  “And I am more than prepared to vouch for him, Captain,” said Christopher. “Marius has spent many years in intensive therapy…‘reprogramming,’ for lack of a better term. He is now as harmless as you or I.”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite that way, Doctor,” said Bethom with a thin smile. “If you think Captain Calhoun is harmless, then you’re doing him a grave disservice.”

  “What is that thing?” asked Kebron, obviously unable to contain himself.

  “Oh, this?” Bethom looked casually at his shoulder. “You know, I’ve gotten so used to it, I sometimes forget it’s there. Its name is Gribble.”

  “The same one from twenty years ago? Long-lived,” said Calhoun.

  Bethom nodded. “I created it to last. Starfleet was generous enough to allow me to keep it as a pet.”

  “Captain, we’re on a slight deadline,” Burgoyne reminded him softly.

  “Yes, of course. Dr. Bethom,” Calhoun said cautiously, “we have a bit of a…situation with one of our crewmen. One I’m hoping that you can do something about.”

  “One of your…crewmen?” said Bethom, looking bewildered.

  Christopher said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Captain, how Dr. Bethom could be of service to one of your people. Although I assure you that we here at the Daystrom Institute would be more than happy to assist—”

  “You’ll understand in a moment,” said Calhoun, and he tapped his combadge. “Calhoun to transporter room. Send him down.”

  After a moment, there was a humming in the air, and a familiar shaggy white form materialized. He was still in his bonds, semi-hunched over, and he looked up at Bethom with open suspicion.

  Bethom looked as if a slight sneeze would be enough to knock him over. “Oh my God,” he said. He started to move toward Janos, but Kebron put a hand up, blocking the way.

  “I wouldn’t,” Kebron warned.

  “Is it him…?” Bethom turned and looked eagerly at Calhoun. “Is it him?” Calhoun nodded. Bethom appeared ready to pass out from sheer joy. “I don’t believe it! I’d…I’d always assumed he…and in a Starfleet uniform! Who thought to dress him up in a Starfleet uniform?”

  Janos spoke with a low growl. “The people who thought I should join Starfleet.”

  “But…this is miraculous!”

  Other men whom Calhoun took to be scientists were coming toward them, gathering closer, gaping in awe at the casual conversation between what should have been an inarticulate beast and the man who had created him.

  “Yes, miraculous!” insisted Bethom. “I can’t believe you’re still a—”

  Then he stopped abruptly, looking like a child caught out with his hand deep into the cookies.

  “Still what?” asked Dr. Selar.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing…”

  “Alive,” Janos said quietly. “You were going to say ‘alive,’ weren’t you?”

  “All right…yes. Yes, I was,” said Bethom with a defiant edge to his voice. “Frankly, I’m amazed that Federation scientists didn’t dissect you down to the smallest molecule. Look at him, my friends,” he continued, his voice getting louder as if he were a ringmaster talking to an impressed audience. “You’ve heard tell of my earlier deeds. The ‘abominations’ in which I engaged. See it for yourself. Look at the ‘great evil’ of my earlier work.”

  There were whispers among the scientists who had pressed in to see him closer up. They were clearly impressed, and several of them were actively congratulating Bethom when Janos himself spoke up. “You all are aware that the science which crafted me…is illegal. Correct? You know this. Yet you seem to be acting with overt admiration. I can’t pretend to understand.”

  Several of them were too overwhelmed by Janos’s articulate question even to speak. One of them finally managed to say, “You would be amazed how many fields of science were abominated before the slow-witted or shortsighted were able to catch up to them. Once upon a time, the mere act of speculating that the sun did not orbit the Earth was enough to risk death at the hands of foolish authorities.”

  Kebron glanced at Burgoyne. “Wait. The sun doesn’t orbit the Earth?”

  “Starfleet swears they sent a memo about it,” said Burgoyne.

  “Captain,” Selar said with a bit of annoyed urgency, “perhaps it would be best if we did not lose focus—?”

  “Yes. Of course. The problem, Doctor, is this—”

  Abruptly his combadge beeped. He tapped it, knowing even before he did so what he was going to hear. “Calhoun here.”

  “Captain,” came Soleta’s guarded voice, “company will be arriving within the hour….”

  “On my way. Dr. Bethom, Dr. Selar and my crew will explain the situation. If you have any interest in what happens to Janos, you’ll cooperate and extend whatever help you can. Soleta, one to beam up.”

  Within moments the air crackled around Calhoun and he vanished.

  “Well,” said Dr. Bethom, clapping his hands together and rubbing them briskly. “Our services have been requested by the illustrious Captain Calhoun. We shall do what we can to attend to them. I do have one question, however, before we get started.”

  “Anything you wish to know, Doctor, we’ll be happy to tell you,” Burgoyne said. “What’s your question?”

  “Who’s ‘Janos’?” asked Dr. Bethom.

  Then

  “I believe it was a trap.”

  The proctors had spoken to each of the cadets in turn and dismissed them until only Calhoun and Shelby were remaining in the conference room. Calhoun was aware that Shelby wasn’t looking at him. He could practically see the anger radiating from her. He kept telling himself it was not his problem, but hers.

  The male proctor was Professor Little, and the female was Professor Crown. Crown tended to pose like a curious hunting dog sniffing out inconsistencies and uncertainties. Little, by contrast, sat back with an open manner that seemed to invite people to open up to him.

  Crown leaned forward when Calhoun had made his assessment. “A trap?” she echoed.

  “Yes, Professor,” said Calhoun. “I believe there was a significant likelihood that the Kobayashi Maru was actually a trap laid by the Romulans.”

  Calhoun could see it was taking much effort for Shelby to keep her tongue still. She knew that the proctors—Crown in particular—would not hesitate to cut her off if she interrupted the debriefing.

  “Upon what do you base this rather intriguing conclusion?” asked Professor Little.

  “I believe the damage that the freighter was alleged to have sustained was such that it would have had to float for many hours to reach the point that it did.”

  “You believe this,” said Crown. “Did you ask for verification of this belief from your science officer? Or your conn officer?”

  “No,” said Calhoun. “I was already certain. Therefore I didn’t see any need to ask about something I was sure of.”

  “And if you were wrong?”

  “I knew I wasn’t.”

  “But if you were.”

  “The thought never occurred to me,” he said.

  Crown and Little nodded almost in synch, then made some silent notations in their padds. “Go on,” said Crown.

  “It was my belief that the ship could not have gotten that far into the Neutral Zone in its helpless state without being detected earlier,” Calhoun continued. “That indicated two possibilities to me. Either the Romulans came upon the derelict ship during a secret excursion outside the Neutral Zone, towed it to that point, and then used it as bait. Or the ship did indeed drift into Romulan space and the Romulans, upon discovering the vessel, simply waited for some starship to try and rescue it in hopes of capturing the starfleet vessel.”

  “To what end?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “Research and development. Or perhaps as an excuse to resume hostilities. I don’t know for sure.”

  “And so you decided the best course of action would be to destroy the freighter?”

  “Yes. Their engines may ha
ve been off line, but they still had fuel. I knew that rupturing their fuel sources would set off a chain reaction to which the Romulan ships would be vulnerable since they were so close.”

  “And so you escaped,” said Crown.

  “Yes, Professor.”

  “And the crew and passengers of the Kobayashi Maru died. All three hundred and eighty of them.” Crown leaned forward again, interlacing her fingers. “Cadet…we’re dancing around something here. You know, I know, we all know it was simply a simulation. Would you be able to do what you did so easily if you were out in the depths of space and the same thing happened?”

  “Actually,” Calhoun said without hesitation, “it would be easier.”

  “Easier?”

  He nodded. “Since I knew the lives of my crew were not really at stake, I took a little more time to consider possibilities before I did what I did.”

  “A little more time?” Little checked his records. “According to my notes, between the time that you rejected your first officer’s suggestion of contacting the Romulans, and your giving the initial kill order, it was no more than five seconds.”

  “That seems about right, yes.”

  “To you, that’s considering possibilities?”

  “It’s more than twice as long as I ordinarily would have taken,” replied Calhoun.

  Crown’s gaze was fiery. “Cadet…aren’t you concerned that you’re being a bit cold about all this? We’re talking about human lives…”

  “Yes, Professor, we are,” replied Calhoun coolly. “And unless I’m recalling incorrectly, the number of lives—human and otherwise—aboard a starship is roughly three times what it was on the Kobayashi Maru.”

  “It was supposed to be a rescue mission!” blurted out Shelby, unable to contain herself. “It was supposed to be a test of character!”

  Little was obviously about to say something, but Calhoun spoke before the professor could. “To you, perhaps. To me, it was simply a day in space. Better than some, worse than others. A rescue mission? No, Shelby. It was a war scenario. The Kobayashi Maru wandered into a war zone. And when innocent people wander into a war zone, they tend to die. If I could have saved them, I would have. But I realized very quickly that I could not. We’ve been taught the Romulans don’t take prisoners. Is that correct, Professor Little?” Little nodded. “If I’d stayed to fight it out, we would have died. If I’d simply escaped, they would have died slowly at the hands of their captors, and the Romulans would just have held on to the ship and tried to pull in other unwary travelers. What I did was merciful. It gave them a quick death, which is sometimes the only gift you can bestow on someone, and it enabled us to send several ships filled with the enemy screaming into the next life. A test of character? Here’s my character: I want to get my people home alive. The first rule of war is ‘Survive.’ I tend to think that’s the first rule of space as well. Exploration, the search for new life: You can’t do any of that if you’re dead. You called me ‘cold,’ Professor Crown. The vacuum of space is pretty damned cold.”

  “And tell me, Cadet,” Little said slowly, “what if you were ordered to fly a suicide mission. One that needed to be done, but the odds were nonexistent that you’d come back. Would you do it?”

  “Yes,” said Calhoun. “But…”

  “But what?”

  “I’d do it alone.”

  Crown looked as if she wanted to say something else, but then reconsidered and didn’t. Calhoun sat quietly as they made some further notes. “Thank you, Cadet,” Little said finally. “You may go.”

  He rose, headed for the door, and then stopped with his back still to them. “I just…I want to make it clear,” he said.

  “Make what clear, Cadet?”

  “I said that, if it happened in real life…it would be even easier than the scenario.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s not the same thing as saying it would be easy. In my mind…in my heart…I’d always hear their death screams, even though they were swallowed by the silence of space. And I’d know that, even though they were dead anyway, it would still have been death at my hand. Mine.” He shook his head. “No. Not easy. Not at all.” And then he walked out, the door hissing shut behind him.

  Shelby sat there, feeling embarrassed and horrified for Calhoun. She turned back to Crown and Little, sitting there like inscrutable Buddhas. “Professors,” she said, “I am so, so sorry for all this. Calhoun’s behavior…it’s because of me.”

  “Because of you?” asked Crown, leaning forward, her lips puckering in an “o” shape. “And how, Cadet, was it because of you?”

  “Cadet Calhoun…well…” She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “He reacted to the simulation the way he did because he knew that I was one of the people who worked on it this year. We’re…well, we’re involved, you might say, and because of that, the things he did, the decisions he made…I think our relationship colored it. And I think you should take that into account in making your assessment of…”

  “Cadet Shelby,” said Little crisply, “believe it or not, we are not blind to the likelihood that crewmen on a starship can and will become involved with one another. We have made many mistakes over the centuries, but robbing people of their basic, genetically hard-wired…enthusiasms…is not one of them.

  “One of the things any Starfleet crewman must do is be able to balance his or her emotions and personal relationships with his or her responsibilities to ship and crew. One cannot give a cadet a ‘free pass’ simply because emotional issues may have been involved.”

  “But in this case…don’t you see, he didn’t take it seriously and that’s my—”

  “He didn’t take it seriously?” Little looked bewildered, as did Crown, who was glancing at her own notes. “Cadet Shelby, we’re not about to read you chapter and verse of our assessments of Cadet Calhoun’s attitudes, but I think it should be obvious to anyone that he took the Kobayashi Maru most seriously indeed. His responses were thoughtful, considered, and very heartfelt. Obviously Starfleet doesn’t recommend the firing upon, or destruction of, helpless vessels. But sometimes a Starship captain has to make very hard choices. Brutal choices dictated by the cold equations of space. Mackenzie Calhoun showed a willingness to do that far beyond his years or Starfleet training, and he did not back down from his choices. That’s command material.”

  “Professor Little is correct,” agreed Crown. “In point of fact, Cadet Shelby, in my opinion, the one who did not take the simulation seriously was you.”

  “Me?” Shelby thought she was losing her mind. “Me? Professor, with all respect, on what basis could you possibly think that I wasn’t taking it seriously?”

  Crown rocked back in her chair. She looked stunned, as if she couldn’t comprehend why Shelby even needed to ask. “Cadet Shelby…your commanding officer in the scenario gave you a direct order. A direct order. You refused to obey it. Point-blank. Then, once the danger was passed, you uttered a profanity and further tried to attack him.”

  Shelby’s mouth moved. She willed words to come out. None obliged her.

  “Cadet Shelby,” said Little, and he was speaking so softly that she had to strain to hear him. “I would like to ask you a simple question, and I’d like a yes or no answer, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  “No…no trouble at all.”

  “Good.” There was no hint of amusement or even mercy in his eyes as he said, “In all your studies here at the Academy, in all the tests you’ve taken, the texts you’ve pored over, the many lectures you’ve attended…in all of that, have you ever learned the definition of the word ‘mutiny’?”

  I’m going to kill Mackenzie Calhoun, thought Shelby.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Now

  Zak Kebron wasn’t happy.

  He wasn’t happy with the situation as it currently presented itself in the Daystrom Institute. He wasn’t happy that, at that moment, the Excalibur was apparently in some sort of face-off with the Enterprise, and he wasn�
�t there.

  And most of all, he wasn’t happy with Dr. Bethom.

  Yes, granted, Bethom had agreed to do all he could to aid Janos. At that moment, he was subjecting his “creation” (as he liked to call Janos, which just irritated Kebron all the more) to a barrage of mental and psychological tests using in-depth devices and mental probes that were beyond anything the Excalibur could possibly have offered.

  And he was doing so under the watchful eye of Dr. Christopher, who, as it turned out, was not only Bethom’s “overseer” but also the top professional at the institute. There was nothing going on at the institute that Christopher didn’t know about. If Christopher was willing to vouch for Bethom—Christopher, a man who had clearance at the highest levels of Starfleet—then certainly that should be that. Plus Burgoyne and Selar were overseeing matters as well.

  Except Kebron couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t.

  As a result, while Janos underwent a series of examinations in Bethom’s labs, with Christopher, Burgoyne, and Selar watching every move, Kebron began reading the various institute log entries from Dr. Christopher and his immediate staffers. It was no problem for Kebron to access the files. His security clearance was as valid at the Daystrom Institute as it was on the Excalibur.

  He read the materials closely and slowly began to get an uneasy feeling, a feeling that grew more and more uneasy the longer he read the entries.

  Kebron admired the hard-boiled detectives because they were as subtle as a hurricane in a feather factory, and Kebron likewise didn’t have a subtle brick in his body. Consequently, he headed straight toward Bethom’s lab, barreling down the center of the hallways, huge arms swinging in what was apparently a leisurely fashion but would easily have crushed the face of anyone who chanced to get near. He arrived at the room which he knew housed Bethom’s lab and entered unannounced.

  He saw that Janos was strapped to a glittering horizontal silver table, now held by electronic clamps all along his arms and legs. He was even more securely restrained than he had been before. He was covered all over with diagnostic tools that Kebron expected were feeding tons of information about Janos’s “inner-ear infection” (as they’d taken to referring to it). Janos barely looked in Kebron’s direction, and when he did he gave no indication of welcome, or even acknowledgment that Kebron was there. Instead he simply gave a small sigh and went back to looking at the ceiling. Doctors Christopher and Selar and Commander Burgoyne were speaking in hushed tones with one another, but Kebron could hear words such as “genius” and “brilliant” being bandied about…at least by Christopher. Selar and Burgoyne remained noncommittal, although they were smiling and nodding. Actually, Kebron realized, Burgoyne was nodding and smiling. Selar looked detached. It was nice to know there were some things one could count on.