Kobayashi Blues

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack

The snapping of heels against the marble flooring of the Jonathan Archer School of Tactical Science somehow stood distinct from the milling of dozens of other pairs of shoes of cadets. Not a single pair of those other shoes dared step in the path of the clacks, and the cadet causing them. Her red uniform swished at the pleats as she walked with her crisp and rapid pace. If that wasn't enough to keep a lane clear, the Caitian woman's tail swished behind her like a boat's wake.

Clack clack clack clack clack clack clack

Her golden eyes blinked repeatedly, she wasn't going to make a scene in here. No, never. Not here. Her cheeks felt hot as she walked, and she kept her hands close by her sides clenched into fists. Four years of excellent marks in Uni. A year of excellent marks at Stanford for her doctorate. Even when Uhura convinced her to leave Stanford behind for San Francisco and Starfleet, she'd managed three years of success. A total of eight years in the sun, only to be suckerpunched by this.

She couldn't even think the word failure. It made her feel like throwing up.

Clack clack clack clack clack clack clack

Finally, open air. Thaitla wasted little time going down the school's stairs to the main Academy plaza below. Finally outside, she could at least try a pathetic attempt at damage control. Avoiding eye contact with anyone, lest they somehow smell the fresh failure on her, Thaitla reached in her cadet uniform's breast pocket, pulling out a small rectangular case - Marlboro Extra Ultra Light 100's - now with 50% pseudonicotine. The box's cover was a myriad of animated signs displaying the surgeon general's warning in every Federation standard language.

Thaitla opened the box, which ejected a cigarette into her hand at the same time an audio message played:

Thank you for enjoying Marlboro. Please do not enjoy Marlboro while pregnant. Consult your physician for safe and reliable methods to give up smoking if it is your life choice to do so.

It was all background noise. The Caitian cadet tapped a button on the cigarette's elongated filter, which caused the end of the cigarette to automatically ignite. Three angry puffs, three angry exhalations. She stood there in her own world, mad at it all and with no real answers.

"Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit."

[Jorann Lokar]

Say what you will about San Francisco. Sure it was crowded, overbuilt, and, in all the blocks where Federation neo-industrialist architecture had overrun the old construction, boring as hell to look at. But at least they'd gotten the weather right. Eighteen degrees centigrade, a steady wind off the bay, sunlight pounding down out of a cloudless sky? If Jorann closed his eyes, it could be midsummer on Kolar. That was nothing to sneeze at, considering the Kolari midsummer came around once every twenty-four earth standard years.

"Jorann, will you get off your minty fresh ass and give me a hand with this?"

Cadet Jorann Lokar lifted his head off the grass and found himself squinting not into the ice-blue brilliance of Rigel but the garish, acrid yellow thing humans called a sun. On the park bench just outside kicking distance sat his roommate, a towering, balding brick of a human being fretting over a PADD full of navigational problems from Commander Kosinski's Applied Warp Theories II.

The Orion cadet sighed and lifted himself onto his elbows. "Which one are you on now?"

"Number seven. A 200,000-tonne starship traveling at warp six passes within five billion kilometers of a cosmic string fragment with one hundred solar masses. Calculate the total dynamic deformation of the starship's warp field."

"Thousand gods!" Jorann rolled up to a seat and scrubbed the grass clippings form his fiery copper hair. "Cosmic string fragment? Kosinski must be hitting the Romulan ale again."

"Dude, I need help. This is like Klingon to me."

Jorann sighed again and rubbed Sol's afterglow out of his eyes. "A cosmic string is a one-dimensional phenomenon. Just factor it as a point gravitational source. Couldn't be simpler, G.P."

"Yeah, for you, maybe." G.P. scowled at his screen as he punched some figures into it. "I'm a criminal science major. I don't even know why I'm in this course. Okay, point gravitational source. Then what? Hey, Jorann!"

Jorann squinted across the crowded plaza, left, right, then back center as he encountered his own gravitational source. Caramel skin. Legs that went forever. Delicately pricked ears and a gently swishing tail.

"Woah, hang on there, Zephram Cochrane, I'm picking up a distress signal."

G.P. turned his broad face toward the crowd. He didn't take long to find what had caught his roommate's attention.

"What, the Caitian?" he said. "Oh ho, no man, don't go there. That's a no-win scenario. Believe me, I've tried."

Jorann had already climbed to his feet and begun dusting the grass off his crimson cadet uniform. "You've tried. Well, that's your problem right there."

"I'm serious, dude, that's the wrong tail to chase."

The Orion cadet gave him a look full of reproach. "Who said anything about her tail? Seriously, man, get your mind out of your pants for once."

Jorann left the speechless G.P. and stepped seamlessly into the passing crowd. It hardly took a starship navigator to loop around behind her, just out of her peripheral vision, and softly approach the distraught Catiain from her blind side.

"Hey," he said, altruistic concern writ large on his lime-green features, "are you all right?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Agility and grace were very strong Caitian traits, and Thaitla had heard on more than a few occasions how jealous her alien friends were of that. Of course, the downside of that was a trigger reflex and the tendency to get easily surprised.

"Aiya!"

Her entire body flinched at the unanticipated question, and she lost her cigarette mid-spasm. Watching it smoulder on the ground, she reluctantly snuffed it before looking up at the Orion who had asked the question.

"No, I'm not all right, not at all, I just failed a test and I never, ever, ever fail tests, and now I have to figure out how to tell my parents, and I'm sure they're going to guilt trip me to three hells and back and tell me that I should've just stayed at Stanford, and if I don't have enough to hear about from THAT talk, I'm sure my roommate will be just GLOATING about her internship with Doctor Daystrom, and even if she doesn't mention it, she'll be rubbing my face in it as indirectly as she possibly can, and..."

She paused, a manic look on her face as she took a deep breath.

"...that's probably too much."

A small spherical device floated down from above, pausing above the crumpled cigarette, which it promptly vacuumed up from the ground. It floated to eye level, and dispensed a small dataslip from a slot in the front.

"Littering citation. That will be one demerit, Cadet."

Thaitla grit her teeth.

"AND NOW I'M A LITTERBUG!"

Before she could light off into another phase of her tantrum, she paused.

"Wait, aren't you in my protosentient studies class?"

[Jorann Lokar]

It was like watching a kitten wrap itself more and more hopelessly in a ball of yarn. Pathetic, adorable, and oddly appetizing. By the time she came to the end of her despondent soliloquy, Jorann was clamping down on a smile.

"Yeah, I tend to stand out in a crowd. These crowds, anyway. I'm Jorann. Jorann Lokar."

He put out a hand in a conspicuously human gesture, but he didn't know the Caitian equivalent. "Kinda looks like you just got Marued."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Orion - probably. She listened for a tell in his voice, but he had pretty clean english. She'd never met an Orion before, but their reputation tended to travel even better than the green aliens who carried them did. Guardedly, she took Jorann's hand.

"Thaitla K'prerr."

She shook his hand, and that's when he let the little offhand revelation fly. The Caitian cadet's face turned pure dumbfounded. She felt like she'd been the butt of a joke.

"How'd you know?! That simulation is...broken! It has to be! The only thing that damned sim tested was my blood pressure! Does the dean know about it? I...I need to write a letter, a strong letter. Do you know how much that simulation weights your Officer's Evaluation?"

She looked at his face, and saw none of her outrage. Far from it, he was trying to swallow a smile.

"It's not funny!"

[Jorann Lokar]

Oh, by the thousand gods, this was too much. Whatever remained of Jorann's poker face was rapidly dissolving into a shit-eating grin wide enough to swallow a nebula.

"No, no, of course it's not. Oh, gods, sorry. You're communications, aren't you?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"You're not supposed to discuss the Kobayashi Maru simulation with underclassmen. It's a part of the honor code!"

Her eyes were wide with shock, and suddenly her forehead met the palm of her hand.

"Idiot! No wonder they don't want anyone talking about it to JC's. That would spoil the surprise, and the nervous breakdown, and the..."

Her head slowly raised from her cupped hand, and she looked at Jorann in a strange light.

"So then...did you...?"

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann nodded, still grinning. "Three weeks ago. Damn, was I pissed."

He glanced around as if searching for spies in the crowd, then dug his hands deep into his pockets. "So, there's one more part of the test you have to take. Well, it's more of a tradition, really. The dead share some pints up at the Firsties' Lounge, away from the prying ears of the underclassmen. What do you say we take the edge off the day?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

This was a pickup, wasn't it? It had all the trappings. Despite the nagging sense of an impending Orion trap, Thaitla had plenty of rational, if not cool, reasons for agreeing. She didn't drink, much in the same way she didn't smoke. So, it was a really good time to start drinking.

"Drown my destroyed-ship sorrows, or spend a few hours on an angry letter that probably won't get read. I love angry letters, but you've got a deal. Come on."

Her spirit was no longer destroyed, now merely limping on auxiliary power. She walked with her Orion counterpart to the infamous upperclassmen-frequented lounge, just off Academy grounds.

[Jorann Lokar]

They found their way to the end of the bar that ran the length of the back wall of the lounge. Set against the light panels that covered the countertop, Jorann's Rigellian rum glowed like something molten - honey-gold wreathed in swirls of cherry red and fiery ocher and smelling like an Orion bazaar, sweet and spicy all at once.

"At the beginning of the year I got together with some of last year's grads and bought them an entire case of Saurian brandy. We must've been up past oh-four hundred drinking ourselves out of our minds, and I heard secrets I'd give anything to scrub out of my brain. And they still didn't say a word about the Kobayashi Maru."

Jorann took a generous swig of his rum and laid it back on the bartop with a clink. "I've heard it's different for every cadet. I mean, the plot's the same. But somehow they take your psych evals and then they tweak the parameters, change some of the details just so they can twist the knife a little harder. Sadists, the lot of 'em."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"That's devious. So, it's not a stock simulation, but instead they cook up your own personal nightmare, then?"

Not wanting to start feeling sorry for herself on anything stronger than a bottle of Budweiser Classic, Thaitla sat next to Jorann, her tail curled around her waist with the tuft in her lap as she propped her elbows on the counter.

"Is it pass/fail? They make such a big deal of it leading up, telling us this is where all of our lessons tie in. I mean, I even went back to brush up on warp theory and engineering, and I hated that class."

The Caitian paused to swill a bit of beer, punctuating it with an exasperated sigh.

"Maybe I can talk to the dean. Schedule a retake. It doesn't seem fair. How many people do you know who passed it? They can't fail out half their cadet corps, can they?"

[Jorann Lokar]

The Orion laughed - gently, because he could see the Caitian was still sore about it. "Thaitla, nobody passes the Kobayashi Maru. It's designed to be impossible. I don't know what they grade us on, but it sure as nine hells isn't the mission outcome."

He took another pull of his rum and set the glass back on the bartop. The ice cubes jangled as they hit bottom. "If you retake it, you'll be only the second cadet I know of to try. And the other guy's an ass. Don't worry, if your grades are as good as you say they are, you're gonna be fine."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

The more Thaitla heard about the Kobayashi Maru, the more it just infuriated her. The only thing keeping her on task was the assumption that sane people were rational actors. Obviously, plenty of people made it through Starfleet Academy, even after taking a massive test that nobody was supposed to pass, with grading criteria that apparently nobody knew. Okay, so it was sounding a bit insane in that way even still.

"So you're told to prepare for a comprehensive test, and to cram anything and everything, then you take the test, fail, and then someone somewhere in a little dark room just randomly checks boxes on your jacket file?"

She killed her beer, then feeling a bit more bravado and comfort in this shrine of losers, flagged down the barkeep for a second.

"You know the worst part of it? I had a really good solution. A damn good one. Even if I move on and don't hear a peep about this stupid test, that's gonna stick with me. I want to find that little man in that dark little room and punch his lights out."

[Jorann Lokar]

"Get in line. If the Academy ever lets slip who runs that test, he's gonna turn up stuffed in a Jefferies tube on a one-way mission to Kronos."

Jorann followed suit and ordered another rum, because it was only polite to keep pace. And while an Orion rum packed a lot more of a punch than the piss-thin swill Thaitla was choking down, he knew his limits to the molecular level. He could drink a Gorn under the table, and had, under far less friendly circumstances. A bookish Caitian shouldn't be too much of a threat.

"So, what was it?" He caught her questioning eyes over the rim of her beer glass. "Your solution."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Thaitla wet her lips again with her beer, setting it aside to finally lay bare her pride and shame. Relaxing a little more, her tail began to uncoil from her middle.

"I played to my strength - communications. Maybe that's what they wanted me to do, I don't know."

Three hours ago

She told herself it wouldn't affect her, but she was lying. Sitting in the chair at the center of the bridge, even of a mock-up, had her pulse racing. Thaitla made an effort to keep her tail in check, and indeed she sat almost too stiff in maintaining the facade, her tall lithe figure keeping a vantage over the entire bridge.

This could be for real one day was the giddy fever thought she pushed out of her mind as she began her log entry.

"USS Hermes Captain's log, stardate 2258.17. On orders from Starfleet command, we are on a patrol assignment parallel to the Klingon Neutral Zone."

The helm followed her basic query, aligning the Hermes a scant 500,000 kilometers from the neutral zone periphery. It was close enough to ensure their sensors could peer a good distance into the neutral zone itself, but far enough away to account for any necessary deviations. They didn't have to cruise for long, however, and Thaitla was ready for something to happen for her to react to.

In the seat she was used to at the communications terminal, Cadet Ban Park-Jun (now under guise of a Lieutenant for the sim) turned in his seat.

"Captain, I'm picking up a distress signal on wide band."

"Coordinates?" 'Captain' K'prerr asked, already with a good inkling of where they'd find them.

"Bearing three two zero mark three five one." came 'Lieutenant' Surol's ice-calm Vulcan reply. The viewscreen called the ping, squarely within the shaded grid of space they were making pains to avoid.

"Do we have audio of distress signal?"

"Patching it in, sir."

Thaitla's eyes unconciously looked upward as she listened to the static-choked distress.

"This is the Kobayashi Maru. We have struck a gravitic mine. Our propulsion systems are offline, and life support systems are failing."

On her feet, the Captain moved to the comm station.

"Get me registry and readouts for that ship, Lieutenant."

Lieutenant Ban's terminal brought up a cross-section for the Kobayashi Maru which was an antiquated neutronic fuel carrier with a listed manifest of 300 crew. That number caused the Caitian's tail to twitch. You don't cause a galactic incident if a shuttle goes off course, according to her inner calculus, but for three hundred lives? You might very well.

"Helm, prepare to intercept the Kobayashi Maru, full impulse. Bring us to yellow alert."

"Captain..."

'Commander' Vijay Ramapradesh was immediately at her side, and for good reason.

"...if we go in, it's a clear breach of the Organian Treaty."

Thaitla could feel the inexorable flutter of butterflies in her stomach, as she looked at the cadet she usually sparred with off duty at the racquetball court.

"It's an obvious rescue mission. If the Klingons want to lodge a complaint..."

"The treaty doesn't carry exceptions for rescue or emergency intervention."

Captain K'prerr's legs felt heavy as she walked back to her seat, easing back to sit. Gone was her rigid posture. Now, she sat at the edge of the cushion, leaned forward, with a tail that had lost it's timidity, snapping here and there.

"Objection noted. Yeoman, enter it into the logs. Carry out my orders."

"Aye, Captain."

[Jorann Lokar]

"Yeah, that's how they start you off. Contradictory mission objectives. There've been a few cadets that just let the distress signal go. Big mistake. See, there's failing, and then there's failing."

Jorann tipped up his glass for another mouthful. "So, how far did you get before you saw your first Klingon?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Well so far, he knew the score. Thaitla again took a sip of beer, continuing her exposition.

"At about ten million kilometers, we lost the distress signal, and that's when they showed up."

Back in the simulator

"Captain! Three Klingon D-7 cruisers on intercept, coming up fast!"

Captain K'prerr's mouth dried a bit. Three? God's mercy...

"Red alert, intensify deflector screens foward and ready phaser banks."

She'd passed her starship tactics course, but it never felt like an organic process. Against one ship, she knew how to assert supremacy. Two was a challenge. Three?! She caught herself before she looked around the bridge to ask for help.

"Hail the Klingons and inform them of our intent!"

Lieutenant Ban shook his head.

"They're not responding to our hails. They're approaching weapons range in thirty seconds."

Thaitla dug her nails into her chair's armrests. Think, dammit, think. Think like a Captain.

"I, uh..."

"Captain, we're outnumbered and outgunned. We won't last out here if we hold our course."

The Caitian looked at Commander Ramapradesh as his words laid bare the dilemma.

"Open a channel to the Klingons."

"Captain, they haven't responded to our previous hails."

"Direct line! On me! Carry out my order!"

The shout caught her comms officer off guard. Ban nodded, switching the feed live.

"You're on, sir."

Thaitla rose to her feet, even though the channel was audio only. She needed room for her diaphragm to work. When it did, the voice that came out of her was sharp, loud, and latent with the kind of snarls and guttural noise that a human would find difficult to summon, but a Caitian xenolinguist could certainly fake.

"I see three neutered pups and not a warrg among any of you! Go back beneath the skirt of Fek'lhr's whore and suckle her rancid milk, you who trade your bravery and honor for numbers!"

Klingonese fortunately got the saliva working, a useful feature considering she chose to punctuate her statement with a very audible spit onto the floor of the bridge.

And then there was silence. Thaitla's eyes barely tracked over to Vijay before snapping ahead. The Indian's expression showed surprise, and she wasn't at all convinced it was an act.

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann looked back in wide-eyed wonder at the sweet-looking, leggy Caitian sitting on the next bar stool. Then he rubbed a little beer-rimed spit off the countertop with his napkin.

"Uh, sorry, my Klingon's a little rusty."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"Oh God, sorry!"

Natural Caitian tendencies rebounded her into a frenzy of self deprecation and cleaning as she fastidiously went over the same spot three times simultaneously with her own napkin.

"It's just, I..."

Caitians didn't blush, but they had other tells. Her tail tuft puffed out like a pom pom, and she carefully worked to smooth it out as she roiled in embarassment.

"...the things I said were awful, and I just started shouting and all of it came out. I think I used every bit of Klingon swear and profanity I could pack in. It all just started coming out like in tongues."

Instinctively, she pressed her hand to her mouth, then once again returned to smoothing out the pom pom.

"If my mother heard even half of what I said, she'd send me off to a convent!"

[Jorann Lokar]

The Orion laughed and gave a low whistle of appreciation. "I'd like to hear you swear in Kolari sometime. You sound like a natural. So how did the Klingons take it?"