Star Trek: The Next Generation: Starfleet Academy #4: Capture the Flag Read online

  Nobody could see the worry in Geordi’s eyes, but he sat stiffly, waiting for more information.

  Emma Pantano smiled slyly. “I think you’ll find the game we play on Saffair very interesting. The planet has approximately one-half the gravity of Earth. Whatever you weigh here, you’ll weigh half that on Saffair. You should be able to jump twice as far, run twice as fast. You’re going to have a lot of fun, believe me.”

  She checked her watch. “I haven’t got time to explain more now. Report to Transporter Room One at oh-seven-hundred hours on Tuesday morning. Your other instructors have been notified, and most of you will have to work all weekend to get a jump on your class assignments. If you have any social plans, you’d better cancel them.”

  Social plans, thought Geordi. That was something he didn’t have to worry about. However, combat training sounded like something he should worry about, even if Lieutenant Pantano called it a game.

  “Don’t bring any luggage,” she added. “Everything you need will be furnished. Class dismissed.”

  CHAPTER

  2

  The setting sun glinted off the water in San Francisco Bay and painted a golden sheen on the sleek buildings of Starfleet Academy. This was Geordi’s favorite time to go walking in the gardens that snaked throughout the campus. It was late summer, but somehow the irises, crocuses, and daffodils were all still blooming.

  Geordi didn’t know what the colors of the flowers really looked like, but he could see their inner glow with his VISOR. It relaxed him. He was still excited from the gym class and the promise of his first training mission. But he was still worried about his future. Today he had won, but what did that mean? He would always be different from cadets like Pettey and the dark-haired young woman.

  Geordi wandered off the path to get a closer look at the stream that flowed through the garden. Its coolness actually looked blue in his infrared field of vision, and its soft babbling was like music. He was standing on the mossy bank when a voice barked at him:

  “Get off my liverwort!”

  Geordi jumped back and looked around for the source of the angry voice. A little old man in dirty pants rushed up and shook his spade at him. “That’s not grass you’re standing on—it’s ground covering!”

  “I—I’m sorry,” stammered Geordi. “It all looks the same to me.”

  “Oh, I see,” said the little man. “You must be La Forge.”

  “You know who I am?” asked Geordi in amazement. He hadn’t met many people at the Academy who cared enough about first-year cadets to learn their names.

  “Certainly,” said the gardener. He bent down and tried to fix the plants that Geordi had crushed. “I know everybody here, and everybody knows me.”

  “You’re Boothby,” said Geordi, remembering the stories he had heard. “How come I never met you before?”

  “You never stood on my plants before. That’s a sure way to meet me.”

  Geordi smiled in spite of the man’s grumpy attitude. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Well,” said Boothby, “at least you have an excuse. The others are just plain clumsy.” Content with his repair work, the little man stood up. “So how do you like the Academy?”

  “Okay,” answered Geordi.

  “Only okay? Coming here is supposed to be the chance of a lifetime. It’s the greatest school in the Federation, so I’m told, and you say it’s only okay?”

  Geordi started to walk away. “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “You don’t bother me,” said Boothby. “I’m nosy. That’s how I know everything. You don’t think you’re gonna make it here, do you?”

  Geordi shrugged. “Like you said, I have an excuse for making mistakes—I’m blind.”

  “So you have an excuse to fail,” said Boothby. “To quit, if things get tough. I’ve got news for you, La Forge—the Academy is tough on everybody. I’ve seen them come and go. The high and the mighty. The ones you think can’t miss do miss. The ones you think won’t last a year go on to be admirals.”

  He looked down at his beloved plants. “Training Starfleet officers is a lot like gardening. You pick ones you think will do well, nurture them, and hope for the best. Sometimes they still refuse to grow. Sometimes the ugliest, scrawniest weeds do better than pedigree rosebushes. Am I making sense, La Forge?”

  Geordi smiled. “Yeah.”

  “What’s your major field?”

  “Engineering,” answered the cadet, touching his VISOR. “Technology has helped me a lot, and I want to give something back. I might also specialize in navigation.”

  Boothby nodded, and for the first time the old gardener smiled. “Selflessness—that’s a good trait for a Starfleet officer. Remember, La Forge, this school isn’t preparing you just for good times and high adventure, but for the bad times, too.

  “There will be times when you’ll get passed over for promotion, or you’ll get an assignment you don’t like. Or maybe you’ll command a ship that’s about to be torn apart, and all you can do is prepare your crew to die.” Boothby pointed to the sky. “Remember, it’s not just you out there.”

  Geordi nodded. “I’ll remember. Say, do you know anything about the combat games they play on Saffair?”

  Boothby chuckled. “You’re going to Saffair, huh? Well, plant your flag high.”

  “Plant my flag high?” asked Geordi, puzzled.

  “You’ll know what I’m talking about. Now, I gotta get back to work.”

  Geordi started off. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Boothby.”

  “You, too,” said the gardener. “But, La Forge, I don’t care if you are blind—stay off my liverwort!”

  In his quarters Geordi pored over his notes from a lecture on starship hulls in his Basic Engineering class. Tritanium, duranium, aluminum crystalfoam, ceramic polymers—so many materials and alloys were used in a starship hull, he didn’t know if he could keep them all straight. Not only that, he had to learn how welding, bonding, forcefields, and warp speeds affected each one.

  This will take a lifetime to learn, he thought glumly. Maybe that was the point. Even four years in Starfleet Academy couldn’t really prepare you to be a Starfleet engineer. Maybe it would only prepare you to keep learning for the rest of your life.

  He took off his VISOR and rubbed his pale sightless eyes. Oh, that feels good, he thought. No one realized the concentration that was required to “see” with the complex instrument. He had to force his optic nerves to accept a variety of inputs that they were never intended to accept. Then he had to force his brain to interpret the strange impulses.

  He stretched his arms and relaxed, looking around the room at total blackness. When Geordi allowed himself to be really blind, it was like taking at relaxing nap. By the luck of the draw, Geordi didn’t have a roommate.

  Maybe it wasn’t luck, he thought suddenly. Maybe they figured a blind man would be stumbling over a roommate.

  A knock sounded on his door. Geordi fumbled for his VISOR and quickly replaced it. He walked across the small but neat room and opened the door.

  To his surprise, it was two of his teammates from the victorious gym team: the stocky dark-haired young woman and the tall Andorian.

  The young woman barged right in. “La Forge, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Call me Geordi.”

  “Geordi.” She smiled. “I’m Jenna Pico. This is Altos. He doesn’t say much.”

  “Altos,” Geordi repeated, and the big Andorian nodded in greeting. “What can I do for you?”

  Jenna shrugged. “Well, a bunch of the kids in our class are getting together at the Bratskeller to talk about our upcoming mission. Want to come along?”

  Geordi paused before answering. He had heard about the Bratskeller, a popular off-campus restaurant, and this was the first time anybody had asked him to go anywhere. Geordi wanted to go, but there was just one problem.

  “I’d like to,” he said, “but I’ve had an exam in Basic Engineering moved up to Monday. I really h
ave to study.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Jenna. “All work and no play makes Geordi a dull cadet. Besides, you have to eat, don’t you?”

  “My treat,” said Altos. He tried to smile, but his blue face only grimaced.

  Well, thought Geordi, it’s not every day you get invited to dinner by an Andorian.

  “All right,” he agreed. “But I can’t make it a late night.”

  The Bratskeller was about six blocks off campus, and the cool evening air felt refreshing as they walked. It was good to see a cross-section of people, thought Geordi, not the usual bunch of somber cadets and busy instructors. Whether they were going out for the evening or were on their way home from work, San Franciscans always looked like they were having fun.

  “This is great!” he enthused.

  “Is it?” asked Jenna. “I grew up about fifty kilometers south of Frisco, so this is no big deal for me. Where are you from?”

  Geordi sighed. “It would take the rest of the night to tell you all the places I’ve lived. I was born in Africa, but I left there when I was still in diapers. My parents were both in Starfleet—my dad was a researcher and my mom was a command officer. They tried to get assigned to the same stations, but it didn’t always work out that way.

  “I spent several years in the Modean system, where my dad was studying invertebrates. Then I spent time with my mom, near the Romulan Neutral Zone.”

  “Not fun,” observed the tall Andorian.

  “Oh, no,” said Geordi, “I thought it was great fun! I had the run of this giant outpost. We were trying to make the Romulans think there was this huge colony there, when there was really just a few of us and some jamming equipment. I was just a kid—I didn’t know how dangerous it was. But the best times were when my mom and dad got assigned to the same ship. There were lots of ships.”

  Jenna sighed. “You sound like a natural for Starfleet. I’m used to this big city—I don’t know if I could go to some lonely outpost for years at a time.”

  Geordi chuckled. “Funny, I was just as scared about coming here and leaving those lonely outposts.”

  “Home is where you hang your hat,” said the big Andorian.

  Jenna looked doubtfully at him. “I don’t think you could wear a hat, Altos.”

  The Andorian touched one of his antennae. “No, but I could hang one right here.”

  The trio laughed as they continued their evening walk. They came upon an old tavern sign that was hanging over a stairway. The stairway descended under an old building.

  “We’re here!” announced Jenna. “The Bratskeller.”

  Geordi looked doubtfully at the stairs. “I know my vision isn’t the same as yours, but this looks more like the entrance to a cave.”

  “Skeller means ‘cellar,’” answered Jenna, starting down the stairs. “Just because it’s underground doesn’t mean the food isn’t good. Do you like bratwurst and sauerkraut?”

  Geordi gulped. “I don’t know.”

  But he knew the German food smelled good as soon as Jenna opened the door. Altos ducked and went in after her, and Geordi followed them into the inviting darkness. He was still absorbing the strange sights and smells when they heard several voices.

  “Jenna! Over here!”

  Jenna was the popular one, and Geordi and Altos just followed along. Geordi was glad to see several of the cadets from his gym class, including the Vulcan, T’Lara, the Tellarite, the Saurian, and the albino woman. There was also somebody he wasn’t glad to see—Cadet Pettey. He tried to ignore the tall blond cadet as he exchanged greetings with the others.

  “Hello,” he said to T’Lara.

  The pointy-eared cadet nodded. “Hello, Cadet La Forge.”

  “Please call me Geordi,” he said with a smile. “Uh, do Vulcans have first names?”

  “None that you would be able to pronounce.”

  Geordi had never made small talk with a Vulcan before, but he was willing to try. “Are you excited about going on the training mission?” he asked.

  “Excitement is not an emotion I allow myself,” answered T’Lara, “but I am anticipating the trip to Saffair. May I ask you a question?”

  “Please do,” said Geordi.

  “Without your VISOR, are you totally blind?”

  Geordi had heard Vulcans were direct. “Yes, I am.”

  “It is not possible to correct your blindness by any means other than the VISOR?”

  “Well,” said Geordi, “some doctors have suggested experimental procedures, but they all have a lot of risks. The VISOR works, in its own way, and it doesn’t have any bad side effects.”

  “Very logical,” agreed the Vulcan. “I believe you have a colloquial saying for such logic—‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

  Geordi laughed. “We have a lot of good sayings, but we don’t follow them very often.”

  The tall blond man shouldered his way between them. “Hi,” he said to T’Lara, “I’m Jack Pettey.”

  She nodded. “My name is T’Lara.”

  Geordi was completely blocked from the slim Vulcan’s view, and he forced his way around Jack Pettey. “Hey,” he said, “we were having a conversation here.”

  Pettey ignored him and grinned at T’Lara. “I didn’t know that Vulcans went in for parties like this. What else do Vulcan females do for fun?”

  “Fun?” she asked quizzically.

  Geordi had a decision to make. Pettey had clearly cut in on their conversation, but there were plenty of other cadets he could talk to. Should he challenge the big kid or walk away? He looked up at the cadet’s massive shoulders and knew he had to do something. But what? First, he had to get his attention.

  Geordi took a deep breath and said, “I enjoyed beating you guys in gym class today.”

  That got his attention. Jack Pettey turned and looked down at the shorter cadet as if he were looking at a bug. “What did you say, pip-squeak?”

  “La Forge,” said Geordi. “Not pip-squeak.”

  Pettey squared his shoulders. “You know, pip-squeak, we’re not on campus here. Nobody can stop me from mopping the floor with you.”

  “I can,” said Geordi. He could feel his heart thumping.

  Conversation around them had stopped, and everyone was staring at them. If there was going to be a fight, Geordi was more worried about his VISOR getting damaged than anything else.

  Pettey smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. He used his height to tower over Geordi. “Let’s go outside—just the two of us.”

  “I cannot allow that,” said T’Lara calmly.

  Jack Pettey looked down at her and sneered. “You stay out of this. He’s been asking for it.”

  “A fight between two cadets from our class would reflect negatively on the entire class,” she replied.

  “Yeah?” he snarled. “And how do you propose to stop us?”

  Then the Vulcan did something strange. She reached up to his neck as if she were going to pluck some lint off his collar. As soon as her fingers touched him, his eyes went wide. A second later the big cadet crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

  “Wow!” gushed Geordi. “How did you do that?”

  “Vulcan nerve pinch!” said the Tellarite, leaning over the fallen cadet. “Well done!”

  T’Lara added, “The explanation requires considerable knowledge of the human nervous system.”

  “Never mind,” said Geordi. “If I ever choose up sides for anything, I’m going to choose you first.”

  T’Lara cocked an eyebrow. “That would be logical.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Tuesday morning was crisp, especially at 0700 hours. Geordi could see his breath as he walked across the commons toward Transporter Room One. It looked like bursts of blue in his infrared vision. He shivered a bit, because he had followed Lieutenant Pantano’s instructions to the letter—he hadn’t brought anything, not even a jacket. All he wore was his Academy uniform.

  He could see other cadets converging on the transport
er room from different directions. One of them was the Neo-pygmy, whose name he didn’t even know. Geordi had never really seen how, dark his own skin looked, but he couldn’t imagine he was any darker than the small cadet who walked ahead of him. The Neo-pygmy was half as tall as Geordi, and Geordi considered himself short.

  “Hey, wait up!” he called.

  The small cadet looked around as if he didn’t know he was being hailed. Then he finally saw Geordi jogging toward him.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Geordi held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Geordi La Forge.”

  The cadet shook his hand eagerly. “Kareem Talo. Hey, you were really great in that game the other day.”

  Geordi shrugged. “I just stuck around long enough to do some good.” He glanced at his watch—they were still several minutes early. “We can slow down and talk a while,” he suggested, happy to make another friend.

  “Okay,” said Kareem. “I’ve been meaning to ask you—are you from Africa?”

  “Originally, yes,” answered Geordi. “But I left when I was very young. I’ve heard a lot of stories, but I’m afraid I don’t remember anything about it.”

  Kareem sighed. “We Africans like to celebrate our diversity. Can you believe I was bred to be this short?”

  “Well,” said Geordi, “I know the Neo-pygmies take great pride in their heritage. After all, Pygmies are one of the oldest races on Earth.”

  “Yeah,” muttered Kareem. “It was okay in Central Africa, where there are millions of us, but in this place I wouldn’t mind being your height.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having your eyes,” said Geordi.

  Kareem laughed. “Okay, so we’re not perfect. So what are we doing here?”

  “I’m doing what both my parents did,” answered Geordi. “I really can’t imagine what life would be like if I weren’t in Starfleet. What are you doing here?”

  “Trying to prove you don’t have to be tall to make it in Starfleet.”

  “You don’t have to prove anything,” said Geordi. “Just be who you are, and do the best you can. That’s what I keep telling myself.”