THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST Read online

Bobbie Ray and Starsa looked pleased with themselves. Even Reoh relaxed. But Jayme, Titus, and Moll knew better.

  “You would be good cadets if only you could work toward something constructive,” Brand added. “Since T’Rees is on field assignment, he won’t receive the formal reprimand that will be placed on each of your records.”

  Titus was glad to hear he wouldn’t have to explain this to their Vulcan quadmate. He thanked whatever gods there were that T’Rees was temporarily on field assignment at Starbase 175.

  Brand’s severe tone eased somewhat. “Because you conscientiously notified the authorities about the cavern you discovered containing the calcified human bones, I have decided not to place you on probation.”

  Titus finally began to breathe easier. They had just barely gotten off probation from their first Quad reprimand, and it felt like he’d been waiting forever for the next tryouts to join the Parrises Squares League.

  Titus shifted. “Excuse me, Admiral?”

  “Yes, Cadet?”

  “I checked before we went down, but there are no rules against entering the access tunnels.”

  Brand raised one brow. “No, but there are rules against doing something that can get yourself killed. You do admit you nearly got yourselves killed?”

  He swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  Brand turned to Moll Enor and Nev Reoh. “And you do admit that taking a sonic cutter down there was dangerous? The maintenance workers have to shore up that region. You could have destabilized the entire fault zone.”

  “Yes, sir!” they both answered immediately.

  Brand considered them seriously for a few moments. “I won’t ask what possessed you to venture into the caverns in the first place, however it was a smart move to have a backup team ready.” Titus couldn’t look at the smirk on Starsa’s face. “But I warn you that another Quad reprimand will require that you re-do this academic year—the same class, same Quad next year.”

  “Oh, no!” Starsa exclaimed, then quickly put her hand over her mouth.

  “Oh, yes,” Brand assured her. “In Starfleet, we either win together or fail as a group. Here at the Academy, when a group regularly fails together, then we find that it serves in the long run to give them additional time to work things out.” She actually smiled. “It saves wear and tear on your fellow officers later on down the line.”

  All of the cadets looked a little queasy at the prospect of repeating their hard work. For the first-year cadets had the hardest time. Rarely were field assignments given to unproven freshmen. They would be stuck at the Academy, stuck in their Quad, for another year. While everyone else they knew would venture into the galaxy, serving temporary duty on starships and starbases from here to the borders of the Romulan, Klingon, and Cardassian territories.

  The others glanced at Titus more than they had in the beginning. He suddenly knew how Jayme must have felt the last time they stood in Brand’s office—like all the silent blame for their punishment was being heaped on her head.

  “We’ll do better,” Titus assured Admiral Brand, taking it on himself to speak for all of them.

  She fixed her all-seeing gaze on him. “Make sure that you do.”

  Chapter Three

  “BE SURE TO TELL ME what it’s really like,” Moll Enor insisted to Bobbie Ray. “Describe exactly what happens into a tricorder and send me a copy.”

  Bobbie Ray rolled away, pulling a pillow over his face. “Come on, you’ve seen the holos like everyone else.”

  “That’s not the same as being there.” Moll Enor crossed her arms, realizing it was impossible to make the spoiled Rex understand what a unique opportunity he had. By next month, Bobbie Ray and his parents would be visiting the Bajoran sector, where a stable wormhole had recently been discovered. Moll was absolutely certain that the view from the newly designated Starbase, DS9—watching the wormhole open to another part of the galaxy, millions of light-years crossed in an instant—would be vastly different than merely looking at a holo-image.

  “You’re so lucky your parents are taking you,” Jayme told him enviously. “The Endeavor will be leaving the Cardassian border and probably won’t get anywhere close to the Bajoran sector this summer. But my aunt is hoping we do get into Klingon territory while I’m visiting.”

  “I wanted to go with friends,” Bobbie Ray said from under the protective shadow of the pillow. “But Mother keeps talking about ‘losing me’ and how we have to spend more time together.”

  “I’ll take your place,” Nev Reoh offered. But his tentative joke had too much yearning in it to amuse anyone.

  Moll bit her lip, ducking her head. It was Reoh who should go to Bajor now that the Cardassian occupation had ended—not Bobbie Ray but Reoh, the former Vedek who had never set foot on his own homeworld. From his tone, she could tell he hadn’t been able to arrange passage during the upcoming summer break. Yet he had been all smiles lately, too pleased with the liberation of his people from the Cardassian occupation to talk about his own thwarted desire. Moll liked him even better for that.

  Titus stood up, his hands on his hips. “Are we here to finish our Quad project or gossip about our summer vacations?”

  “We’ve only got to test it again and we’re through,” Moll Enor reminded him.

  “Then we’re through for the year!” Starsa exclaimed, clapping her hands. “No more classes for two months!”

  “Then let’s do it,” Jayme agreed, rocking forward on her knees to examine their proton chain-maker one last time. “Where’s the sample?”

  Even Bobbie Ray rolled over and watched their preparations. A limen stalk was placed in the receptacle where the target laser fell on a crosshair.

  Moll moved closer to watch Jayme and Starsa, their resident engineers, work over the chain-maker. Moll’s contribution had been the data on proton structure and characteristics. One of her specialties was astrophysics, and she had suggested using protons, the chief constituent of primary cosmic rays. Titus and Jayme had wanted to use an antiproton chain, figuring it would be more dramatic, but the others voted down the idea because of the large containment field that would be necessary to hold the chain-maker and its fuel.

  “Kind of simple, if you ask me,” Jayme grumbled, not for the first time.

  “It’s brilliant!” Starsa contradicted, laughing. “It’s a variation on an old idea. Instead of a molecular beam, we’re narrowing the focus to protons. That means it can be used for ultrafine incisions.”

  Titus held up another limen stalk, jabbing it at his neck as if the errant vegetable was attacking him. “The dreaded limen stalk! That’ll teach ‘em!”

  Everyone laughed, but Nev Reoh tentatively said, “If we can indicate that genes can be cut in living tissue without damage, that would be a genuine contribution.”

  Titus patted him on the back. “Sure, you just keep thinking that. All I want to do is ace our Quad project and report to the moonbase for shuttle-supply duty.”

  The cadets went back to talking about their plans for summer vacation as Jayme ran through the preliminary sequence, heating the gas and mixing the vapors. Even T’Rees confided that he planned to go back home to Vulcan before beginning his last year at the Academy.

  No one had asked Moll what she was doing, and naturally, she volunteered nothing. It was a little-known fact of Trill physiology that some needed to return to the pool periodically after being joined with a symbiont. The first two years of a host’s joined life was usually spent in or near the Institute, adjusting to the memories and new sensations. Since Moll was a first host, she didn’t have the memories—except of the pool and some sort of common mental bond that all the symbionts shared before joining. But she did have the strange sensations, feeling different than she used to be, yet not anything in particular.

  Maybe she didn’t need to go back to the pool, but in a very real way, it was the most familiar thing she had left. More familiar than her parents and her family, left so long ago and not by her choosing.

  Suddenly Moll Eno
r realized Jayme was looking right at her, that strange fascination in her eyes. She was pointing to the lever that would release the proton beam. “Do you want to open it?” It was your idea to use protons.”

  The others nodded, mostly not caring one way or the other. Moll stiffly went over to the chain-maker, shying away from the questioning smile in Jayme’s eyes, wondering as always why the younger woman always seemed to be watching her. Not for the first time, Moll thought that maybe she should confess she wasn’t as interesting as Jayme obviously thought. That contrary to the popular stories about Trill, there was no one inside her body except for her. No extra lives, no superior wisdom, no exciting stories to tell. But now it would only be another few days and their Quad would scatter to the four corners of the galaxy, to return to Starfleet next year to a new Quad and new roommates.

  “It’s been a memorable year,” Moll Enor told them all as she flipped the lever.

  Since she was closest, she was the first to see the fine trail of smoke that rose at the contact of the beam with the limen stalk. She was turning in question to Jayme when the beam exploded.

  Jayme hit the floor next to the bed, flung there by the percussion wave. Moll Enor landed next to her, but she didn’t open her eyes. At first, all Jayme could see was the smoke and destruction in the room. Starsa’s gasps sounded painful, and Titus was swearing in Antaranan, a pungent language for a frontier colony.

  “Moll,” Jayme called softly, coughing, then tried again. Before she could get really worried, Moll opened her eyes and blinked up in confusion. “Are you okay?”

  “I bumped my head, I think,” she said, sitting up and avoiding Jayme’s supporting hand.

  Vaguely disappointed, Jayme went to help the others. Starsa’s arm and back had been burned right through the uniform. Echoing down the hall, from somewhere in her room, her medical monitor began to beep.

  Jayme ran for her biogenerator in the drawer next to her bed. T’Rees had more experience with Starsa’s various injuries, so Jayme gave him the generator and went to Titus, who was still sitting on the floor, looking dazed.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” She knelt down to examine the long cut on his cheek caused by some of the flying wreckage. “Protons are one of the most stable subatomic particles you can work with. Maybe the velocity selector was creating two discrete beams and they got crossed somehow.”

  Starsa was pale beneath T’Rees’s arm. “That would have blown up the Quad.”

  Bobbie Ray was sitting bolt upright, staring at the blackened wall and the melted table where the chain-maker had once sat. “It did blow up the Quad!”

  “I meant the entire building,” Starsa retorted. “That was nothing as far as proton explosions go.”

  “Oh, really?” Bobbie Ray asked. “Why didn’t you mention this little fact about proton explosions before we started this project? We should have stuck with my idea.”

  “Your idea was illogical,” T’Rees told Bobbie Ray. “We were required to complete a Quad project, not a sports competition.”

  “Now we don’t have a Quad project,” Titus reminded everyone. “Now we are in very deep trouble.”

  Nev Reoh ran into Jayme’s room, having fetched another biogenerator. She snatched it from his hand.

  “Hold still,” Jayme ordered Titus, making him turn back to her so she could aim the biogenerator at the cut. “You’re lucky it didn’t get your eye.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Titus agreed sourly. “Then we’d be in sick bay right now, reporting the failure of our Quad project instead of waiting another twelve hours for the review board to convene.”

  “What happens if we don’t hand a project in tomorrow?” Starsa asked through gritted teeth.

  Jayme finished swiping the biogenerator over Titus’s cheek and jaw, taking away the last reddening. “Then we get a Quad reprimand.”

  “But if we get another reprimand—” Starsa started.

  “We have to repeat the year!” Titus finished for her.

  Moll pushed herself up unsteadily, making her way to the remains of the chain-maker. Nev Reoh joined her, staring down anxiously. “Maybe there’s some way we can salvage it,” the Bajoran suggested.

  “Salvage?!” Bobbie Ray exclaimed, gesturing to the remains. “There’s nothing left of it! Eight months work down the drain.”

  Moll took Jayme’s tricorder, silently gesturing for Jayme’s permission. She nodded as Moll began a systematic sweep of the destroyed device. Meanwhile, Jayme told Starsa, “Stop squirming, you’re making T’Rees miss huge spots.”

  She turned her biogenerator on Starsa, relieving T’Rees who stood and surveyed the ruin with an almost satisfied expression. “I would like to remind everyone that I am on record as objecting to this choice of Quad project.”

  Titus turned on T’Rees. “You’re just calm because you know you won’t have to repeat this year like the rest of us.”

  Stiffly, T’Rees replied, “I am calm because I am a Vulcan.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d like to see how a Vulcan takes it when an entire year’s work gets blown out the window!”

  “There is no need to raise your voice,” T’Rees said mildly.

  “That’s easy for you to say!” Titus yelled.

  Quietly, Moll turned to Jayme. “I’m reading minute traces of copper ions in the lead chamber. Are they supposed to be there?”

  Jayme went to look at the tricorder. “It could be from the barrel of the slot. I think it had some copper in the superstructure.” Moll was doing a subatomic survey of the chain-maker. “Why bother?” she asked. “It didn’t work.”

  “Now what are we going to do?” Bobbie Ray wailed. “I don’t want to take quantum physics again!”

  T’Rees placed his biogenerator back in the pouch. “We report the failure of our project to the review board.”

  “No, we’ve got to come up with something else,” Starsa insisted.

  “Something we can do in one night that will look like it took the entire year to make?” Titus asked. “I don’t think so.”

  The sounds coming up the lift tube were familiar to the Quad. “Hsst!” Bobbie Ray called out, his sensitive hearing the first to pick up on their visitors. “It’s the medical team.”

  “Quick,” Titus ordered Starsa. “Get back to your room. You go with her, T’Rees. Tell them you just had a little accident—nothing important.”

  T’Rees stayed right where he was. “I am incapable of lying.”

  “Jayme, you go then,” Titus said in exasperation.

  Starsa slipped out of the room with Jayme right behind her. She turned to say, “Better clean up in here in case they come in.”

  Titus gave her an affirmative signal and Jayme left, thinking everything was at least partially under control. But the medical team took an unusually long time examining the burns, which both girls admitted came from Starsa’s contact with a malfunctioning proton device. They were worried about the traces of radiation they found in her skin caused by the beta decay. They had to explain that the breakdown was supposed to take place inside the lead-chamber, during the spontaneous transformation of the neutrons in the nucleus of the sulfur atom that would release the protons. Jayme thought it was fascinating the way the medics traced the exact amplitude of the beta decay, comparing the magnetic polarization of the nucleus against the spin vector of the electrons.

  The medics checked Jayme, too, and when there were no traces of beta decay in her skin cells, they asked to see the accident site. Jayme was impressed by their through investigation of the room. But the others had already removed the slagged table, and the blackened wall was covered by a colorful bedspread that usually adorned Bobbie Ray’s bed. Jayme wondered why she hadn’t thought of putting up some sort of decoration in this half of the room. Maybe then she wouldn’t have been haunted for so many months by the departure of Elma. That’s why she had offered the space for their Quad project, to give the others a good reason to come over and keep her com
pany.

  “You’re clean,” the medic finally told Titus. To Jayme, she said, “Good work on that cut. Nice edges for an amateur.” As she murmured her surprised thanks, the medic added, “You know we have to report this.”

  Bobbie Ray flung himself down on the bed again. “Report everything! It doesn’t matter. The review board will know soon enough.”

  “Take that up with the Superintendent,” the medic said with a shrug. She gave Starsa a reassuring pat. “Just get some rest and you’ll feel better. You’re already 80 percent acclimated, so next year should be much easier on you.”

  “Thanks,” Starsa said as the medic left. “Great, I’ll be raring to go and we’ll all be stuck here again. We’ll never get off-world assignments if we have to stay first-year cadets. It’s humiliating!”

  Jayme glanced around. “Where’s Moll? With T’Rees?”

  Rom shrugged. “She cleaned up the debris and packed a few pieces in that bag of hers. Then she left.”

  “You let her go?” At Titus and Bobbie Ray’s nod, Jayme exploded, “How could you? She got hit on the head! Something could be wrong with her.”

  “She’s fine!” Bobbie Ray said defensively. “She was poking around in that mess, muttering about acid catalysts and oxidation. I figured it was some kind of astrophysics thing.”

  “Do you see any stars in here?” Jayme demanded. “She could have been delusional. And none of you even noticed.”

  “Hey, she can take care of herself,” Titus protested. “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen anyone take better care of themselves. We better start worrying about what we’re going to show that review board tomorrow.”

  “Today,” Starsa corrected, chewing on her thumbnail.

  Titus glanced at the chrono. “Great, today. The day we all get put back a year.”

  Jayme was shifting back and forth uneasily. “I think we should look for Moll Enor. Something could be wrong with her. It doesn’t sound like she was thinking rationally.”

  “Maybe you should start looking for an explanation for all this,” Bobbie Ray pointed out. “It was your idea.”