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?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Her smile betrayed her.

"At first, we didn't hear anything, and they kept advancing. Then two of the cruisers broke off course and moved away."

Thaitla carefully returned to her beer, and swirled the glass slightly as she talked.

"The Klingon commander, uh, Kurg. He messaged me. Said he'd never been spoken to like that by a woman before. Not even his wives - or mother."

The pom pom sleeked back and her tail switched about as she recalled her short-lived glory.

"Kurg declared single combat. If Hermes won, he swore not to contest our rescue mission."

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann didn't bother trying to disguise his admiration. It was one thing to have the temerity to insult a squadron full of Klingons while racing across the Neutral Zone. But to spit in the face of disaster and shame the enemy into evening the odds for you? No one could appreciate that better than an Orion.

"Damn. That's some serious cluros."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

She hid her knowing smile behind the rim of her beer glass, giving her just enough time to wipe it off her face. She knew that word, but she wanted to hear more.

"Cluros?"

Her golden eyes sparkled a little as she continued to relax, that nagging voice in her head warning about little green men surprisingly compliant in the face of the rapport-building and alcohol.

[Jorann Lokar]

It was a morsel of bait he knew a xenolinguist couldn't resist. But he let her see him search for a definition in the glowing racks of multicolored liquor behind the bar, just to add to the intrigue of cross-cultural pollination.

"Oh! Well, it's, uh... literally it's 'cold.' It's like bluffing a table full of card sharks when all you've got is a pair. Controlling the situation with nothing but charm and a smile. Like you did with the Klingons. It means you keep your cool no matter the circumstances, through pain, or joy, fear, or arousal."

He ticked his gray eyes meaningfully toward hers.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

The mention of arousal caused the pom pom to puff again, a betrayal Thaitla quickly quashed by whipping her tail tip out of sight. If this was an Orion trap, and it very well still might be, she might be facing a snare as diabolical as the Kobayashi Maru, and they both knew ultimately how that ended up for her.

Stilll conceding a playful smile through it all, she reminded him of that track record.

"Well unfortunately, my cluros has its limits, such as starship combat, even when it's one to one."

The Caitian's face grimaced a little.

"...and I suck at starship combat. Kurg crippled my ship. He didn't even need two other cruisers."

Arriving at the sting of her little disgrace, Thaitla downed the rest of her beer, letting the glass smack the countertop as she set it down.

"Ka-boom."

As much as she wanted to, she wasn't able to remain mad or to feel all that sorry for herself. Somehow the act of confession made it...well it didn't heal all wounds, but it was a great painkiller. The awkward silence passed, and she smacked his shoulder lightly with the back of her hand.

"Alright, I showed you mine, now you show me yours."

Aghast at the accidental double entendre, the hidden pom pom once again revolted, and she stammered out.

"Simulation. Ahem, how you lost."

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann noted the frizzy tailtip but covered up his grin with another pull of rum. Whichever way his luck turned tonight, he was seriously beginning to enjoy Thaitla's company. Pity they'd be boarding ships in a matter of weeks, and unless the Mayflower had a last-minute switch at communications, they'd be going their separate ways.

"I'll have you know Orions are the finest storytellers in the galaxy," he said. "Settle in, this is a good one."


Three weeks ago

"Captain, I've got a distress signal on all frequencies Bearing three one nine mark zero zero nine. Inside the Neutral Zone, sir."

It was one of the universal laws of dramatic determinism, known to every species that had ever swapped tales around a campfire. The butler did it. If you see a gun in act one, it'll be fired by act three. If you're flying solo along the edge of the Klingon Neutral Zone, there are going to be Klingons.

Jorann spun his captain's seat toward the viewscreen. "On speakers, Mr. Prouse."

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

Frowning, the Orion cadet punched up a report on the Maru on his rightside console. Old fuel carrier. Crew of three hundred. Flight plan unknown. "Do you have a fix on the Kobayashi Maru's position?"

"Yes, sir. Approximately five hundred million kilometers from our position."

"Ms. Antos, any sign of Klingons in the area?"

The Andorian science officer peered into her dynascanner, and the strip of green light shone aquamarine against her pale blue face. "Nothing on short-range scanners. Long-range indicates multiple warp trails, but I can't resolve them at this distance."

"Repeat, this is the Kobayashi Maru requesting assistance from any vessel that can hear us. Our situation is desperate. Please respond."

G.P. Hendorff turned his blocky, goateed face toward Jorann from the first officer's post. "Captain, if we respond, we'll be violating the Organian treaty."

"Thanks, G.P., file that under obvious," Jorann replied, and he slouched back into his seat with his green fingers steepled over his stomach. "Well. A Federation starship certainly can't risk an interstellar incident, now can they?"

He received a chorus of haunted looks from all around the simulated bridge. At least he knew he had their attention. He switched on the ship-wide intercom.

"Engine room, this is the bridge. Deactivate primary flow regulators and run on auxiliaries. And pump a little waste plasma into the exhaust, about fifteen parts per million."

"Captain, that'll kill our efficiency, not to mention violate Starfleet environmental regulations--"

"Thank you, Mr. Barr, just get it done. Prouse, kill the running lights and shut down all IFF transceivers."

"Sir, that's against the Interstellar Maritime Code--"

"Yeah, I know, it's a pattern. Gont, change our deflector variance to twenty-one microseconds. Kenichi, take the governors off the phaser capacitors and charge to one hundred ten percent. Prouse, open channel two-one-nine-point-six to the Kobayashi Maru."

"Sir, that's not an approved Starfleet--"

"Thousand gods. Mr. Prouse!"

"Uh, yes, sir."

Jorann rubbed his temples as the comm. officer scanned to the appropriate frequency. Cluros, he thought. Stay cool.

"Channel open, sir."

His gray eyes snapped open, challenging the vast expanse of hostile space on the viewscreen. "This is Captain Jorann Lokar of the Orion Privateer Fortune's Folly. We are monitoring your situation, Kobayashi Maru. How may we assist?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

She was starting to unpeel the insanity of the Kobayashi Maru and to understand some of the reasoning. Jorann's decisions were things she could've never even considered. Changing the ship settings to completely change how their ship looked on sensors?

"Like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Unless the Klingons had a visual fix on your ship, they'd never know a Federation ship was in the zone."

It seemed like such a good idea, too. And yet, he'd also failed. Before she heard the finale though, she flagged down the bartender.

"Andorian Julep."

With that brief diversion, she was back at attention full for Jorann's story.

[Jorann Lokar]

"Well... maybe a sheep in wolf's clothing," Jorann replied. "But, yeah, that was the idea. And it seemed to be working, too..."


But then...


"Range?"

"Two hundred thousand kilometers."

"Any sign of pursuit?"

"Negative, captain."

"You could just say 'no,' you know that? Bridge to all decks, prepare for the evacuation of the Kobayashi Maru. Man all transporters, including cargo pads. Don't be choosy, if it's organic pick it up. Medical personnel, prepare a triage unit in the main cargo bay. Tactical, prepare to drop shields on my mark."

It was like the electric thrill you got before a heist. Not... that Jorann had participated in any heists, mind you, but stealing three hundred survivors from the jaws of the Klingon Empire had to rank among the greatest pirate coups of the last century. Jorann could feel the electricity on the bridge, and his crew, many of them veterans of the no-win-scenario themselves, had to feel it, too.

"We're closing in on transporter range," exclaimed Gont, the Tellarite navigator, as if he didn't fully believe his instruments.

"Captain!" Lieutenant Antos whipped her head around from sensory. "Three contacts just dropped out of warp, two million kilometers off the port bow. Klingon battlecruisers, D7-class!"

"Kulor moh garag ahn chi-moh," Jorann swore under his breath. "Helm, put the Maru directly between us and the Klingons. Prouse, open a channel. The Orion channel, for gods' sakes."

Prouse flinched and dialed it in. "You're on."

And with a deep breath, Jorann recovered his cluros. "Gentlemen, this is Captain Lokar of the Orion vessel Fortune's Folly. We're currently engaged in a salvage operation, but if you're interested in doing business, I can offer you some rare Federation technology for a fair price."

He cut the channel and looked to his crew.

"They're increasing their speed," said Antos.

"You know, I don't think the Klingons like Orions much better than they like Starfleet," G.P. whispered a little too loudly.

"Yeah, thanks, I know that," Jorann replied. "Kenichi, drop shields. All transporters, lock onto targets and energize. Put the Klingons on screen."

They were visible now, the lean and long-necked warbirds, implicitly predatory. He switched on the comm again. "I can't help but notice that you're deep in the Federation Neutral Zone. That could get you in a lot of trouble with the Federation. But, hey, who are we gonna tell?"

"Sir, warp signatures closing from behind us," Cadet Antos hissed.

Jorann slammed the channel shut and pulled up his tactical viewer to see two more Klingons drop out of warp on flanking vectors. "Nine hells! That's impossible! That's... that's navigationally impossible, unless they were waiting..."

"Captain, our shields are still down," Gont murmured.

"Transporter crews, how many survivors do we have?" Jorann demanded.

"About fifty, sir. We can't clear the pads fast enough."

"They're in weapons range, sir!" Kenichi said.

"Shields up!"

The first volley rocked the simulator so hard that he wasn't sure if they'd gone up in time. Disruptor bolts from five vectors sent the ship spinning on its virtual axis.

"Transporters have overheated! We lost ten passengers in the buffers!"

"Shields are down to sixty percent -- no, forty-seven!"

"Do we have weapons?" Jorann shouted.

"Phasers have overloaded, but we have torpedoes!" Kenichi said.

"Lock torpedoes..."

Jorann sent a wild glance at his tactical viewer, which seemed to be full of Klingons, shields thickest in the front, which served them well when they were rounding up a helpless prey like pack hunters. Their meager compliment of torpedoes would be about as good as throwing rocks at this point.

The simulator shuddered under another savage blow, and Jorann gripped his consoles to keep from spilling to the deck. "Lock torpedoes on the Kobayashi Maru!"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"On the freighter?!"

By this point, Thaitla was halfway into her julep, and caution had been mostly abandoned. Her tail switched in a wide arc, a further testament to her renewed confidence.

"But why the Kobayashi Maru? What would the Klingons care?"

Admittedly, the Caitian had absolutely no better idea to supplant if she was in his position, and had been jumped by five cruisers.

[Jorann Lokar]

"It's a fuel carrier, remember? Two big tanks full of deuterium fuel, plus a couple thousand tonnes of uncut dilithium. One torpedo to each tank, that thing went up like a supernova."

Jorann drained the last of his rum with careless aplomb. "I didn't really have time for orders at that point, so I shoved Gont out of his chair and took the helm myself. Set an emergency course at warp 2 straight through the fireball. Of course, that put us deeper into the Neutral Zone, but I figured we'd have room to loop back around and warp safely back to Federation space."

He felt the need for something a little stronger, and he scanned over the ornamented bottles occupying the top shelf. Aldebaran whiskey? Nah, better not order a drink the same color as himself.

"And that's when we hit the gravitic mine. I'm sorry, mines, plural. Turns out there's a field of them."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"Right...they do tend to travel in groups, er, fields."

A sympathetic grimace crossed her features.

"Let me guess, pyrotechnics, a cruel admonishment for a loss of all hands, and then the floodlights coming on in the simulator as the Admirals came out to...judge you."

Leaning a little precariously over the bar, she swirled the drink in her hand with an impish expression.

"Here's to us honored dead."

And Thaitla downed the Julep.

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann glanced regretfully at his empty glass, but he tipped it to Thaitla in salute anyway. "And may the crew of the Kobayashi Maru never be rescued. It's all those bastards deserve."

Moments later he had a snifter of Antarean brandy, and she had something colorful whose name he hadn't quite caught. "So, you from Cait? What brings you to Starfleet Academy?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

This was probably a bad idea, but she'd doubled down on it at least one drink ago, so here's to whatever she was drinking that was orange and that the bartender had assured her all the girls like.

Now pivoted on her barstool to fully face the Orion, Thaitla sipped at the cocktail through a twisty little straw before answering.

"I was actually enrolled at Stanford for a year, after graduating from Uni back home. Majored in English and Xenolinguistics there, decided to go for my doctorate, and maybe do some academic research. Met a friend who was a cadet, and she was doing the same work I was doing. Kept telling me that the real work in xenolinguistics was out in deep space on starships, where you go and meet new people face to face. The more I kept writing case studies and dissertations, the more I started to like her idea."

The Caitian smirked a bit, her tail flipping up and gliding back down.

"Told my parents, and they flipped out. They'd invested a small fortune putting me through a year at Stanford, but I figure it's better to get disillusioned after one year instead of three, right? They kept telling me that it was just a collection of macho kids who wanted to play war. Honestly? Between the football and basketball games at Stanford, it's a breath of fresh air."

Sipping again, she grinned.

"But surely you see plenty of Caitians, even on Earth. We've been a bit space crazy since first contact. I want to know about you, Jorran. Aren't Orions usually uneasy around all this law and order?"

[Jorann Lokar]

He laughed then. "Yeeeaaaah, we're not exactly known for playing by the rules. If you told me five years ago I'd be wearing a uniform, I probably would've said you had Rudellian brain fever."

Jorann took a measured sip of his brandy and found himself staring straight ahead across the bar, finding constellations in the light reflecting off of shelves of multicolored glass.

"But, you know, my people have always been explorers. We've always been reaching to the stars for new sights and new experiences. I don't want to waste my days on some musty freighter flying the same routes over and over again. I want to see things no one in this quadrant has ever seen before. To meet new life forms I could never have imagined. I want to explore strange, new worlds in a galaxy far, far away."

He turned toward Thaitla with the stars in his eyes. "The final frontier can be a dangerous place. But exploring it is our last, best hope for peace."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

That elicited a laugh, a dangerous action with a straw still stuck in her mouth. Thaitla coughed a bit, settling down as she set her drink aside.

"You sound just like that recruiting holo! I feel motivated to explore too!"

Not one to be needlessly cruel, Thaitla leaned a bit against the bar.

"So, you'd place being an explorer above being a bad boy, then?"

[Jorann Lokar]

He leaned his own elbow against the bar and tilted his head to match her angle. "Depends on who I'm with. They're not always mutually exclusive."

Jorann swirled his brandy in the bowl of his glass and looked at Thaitla over the rim. "I prefer to think of myself as an adventurer. You like adventures, Thaitla?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"That..."

She pressed a finger at his chest.

"...is a loaded question, Jorann. Adventures are implicitly challenging, aren't they?"

She leaned back, almost as a dare, a coy expression on her face.

"Like the Kobayashi Maru?"

[Jorann Lokar]

"The greater the challenge, the greater the reward," Jorann replied, and a grin spread across his face. "Maybe we should give the Kobayashi Maru another chance. Or did you have a better idea?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

She could just tell him that she was above this, and that she was onto his game the moment she'd seen him. But goalposts were shifting and she wasn't convinced of the truth anymore. Between the drinks and the actual charm he had (even if some was artificial), she was loosening up. Gone was the sting and embarrassment of her loss today. Maybe she wanted to have fun too. If losing the Kobayashi Maru wasn't the end of her career in Starfleet, then maybe taking a fancy in an Orion who was probably up to no good wouldn't kill her either.

Either way, she'd play. But he'd probably lose.

Thaitla took his hand and got up off her barstool, with the implicit understanding that he'd follow.

"Come on."

[Jorann Lokar]

0530 Hours PDT

The next morning


Jorann Lokar, the newly appointed captain of Starfleet's flagship, had just finished shooting down a dozen Klingons and the Kobayashi Maru for good measure when his buxom Vulcan yeoman approached him with a PADD to sign and asked him if, perhaps, there was room for one more in the captain's chair, but, sorry my dear, the chair must be respected, though maybe once the shift is over we can go down to the nightclub in the engine room that somehow abuts on the San Francisco harbor, if only we could get the chief to do something about that damned buzzing noise--

The Orion came to his senses gradually enough to take the edge off his headache, and he reached out from the sheets to tap his communicator and stop its rhythmic vibrating on the end table. Then he cracked his eyes open and took stock of his situation. From the dull-gray light of pre-dawn in the windows, he could see a standard Academy dorm room that was a hell of a lot better decorated than his own. The sheets were cool and silky, definitely not Starfleet issue, and lying next to him was something warm and silkier. It wasn't an altogether bad way to wake up.

He rolled his head to the side and took a moment to appreciate Thaitla's collection of curves, which were only theoretically concealed by the sheer sheets. She was peaceful in repose, blessed with the sort of statuesque grace that ought to be captured in charcoal. But Jorann was no artist, and, well, it'd sure be a shame to disturb such a pretty picture. And anyway, after a late night of clubbing around Fisherman's Wharf, plus the horizontal calisthenics that followed, she needed her rest.

Jorann carefully slid himself toward the edge of the bed, freed one leg from the tangle of sheets, and dropped his foot to the thin carpet. But then he heard rustling from the other side of the bed and a soft, purring moan, and he quickly pulled his foot back up and feigned sleep. The last thing he needed was a clingy cuddle session.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Thaitla's usual morning routine involved a good stretch (which took no less than five minutes), the hottest shower she could stand, and then whatever else she had time for. On the good days, that was a vegetarian breakfast and yogurt. On the bad days, it was a hurried thermos of coffee and a pinch of profanity as she raced for the door.

The moment her feet hit the hardwood floor, she knew what kind of day it was going to be. Her head still felt swimmy from the night before. Somewhere deep within her, a nagging voice that had been strangled by alcohol and Orion...whatever the hell Orions do to people...that voice had a second life, and was shrieking in her head.

Stupid, stupid stupid. She mouthed silently, aware of the figure still in her bed. Attempting to salvage grace from her situation, Thaitla began her much-needed stretch, pausing in the midst when it was clear that she was too weebly to be arching her back on her tiptoes. She frowned into her body-length mirror adjacent to the bed and her desk, looking at the sad state of her hair, and trying to work out exactly how to salvage it all in time for morning assembly. She stretched low, bringing her hands down to the floor so that her wrists intertwined her ankles as her head tucked to her kneeEEEEES....

...a little stumble, and she recovered. Still, the remnants from last night were barreling into the order of her morning routine, and it was pissing her off. The Caitian stood back up, a look of contempt as she whiffed her own morning breath. She padded over to her desk chair, donned the bathrobe that was draping over it, and headed towards the bathroom, pausing at the door to turn back to her desk. Thaitla looked at the green cadet snoozing in the rumpled sheets, swiped a PADD from the drawer nearest her, and retreated to the shower.

Thaitla turned the hot water on, but didn't get in immediately. Instead, she began working on the PADD, typing up a message.

[Jorann Lokar]

As soon as he heard the hiss of the shower, Jorann sprang into action. The sheet went fluttering down the length of the bed, and he stepped right into his boxers where they'd pooled on the floor. His black undershirt, crumpled at the foot of the bed, went on next, and then his uniform trousers, which had been draped haphazardly over the back of the chair by the desk - he didn't know if it was Thaitla's or her roommate's. He spotted his jacket hanging on the corner of a bookshelf and his boots piled by the door, but first he needed his socks... socks... oh, there was one. He could get by without the other.

With his communicator gripped in his teeth, the Orion cinched up the belt around his trousers and bandy-legged over to his boots. He was wriggling his bare, green foot into one of them when the bathroom door swished open again.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

That Caitian trait of being easily startled kicked in, and Thaitla bounced back a half pace, her tail going stiff. The surprise quickly turned to something else when she saw Jorann in his present situation, and pieced it all together.

"You're ducking out on me?"

Her eyes rolled as a breathy incredulous laugh boiled over.

"Of all the...that's such a...a...Orion thing to do!"

Finding the missing mate to Jorann's lone sock, she balled it up and threw it at him. Advancing, she prodded at his shoulder with her PADD.

"I get it, we're both adults with careers and responsibilities, and yeah, we probably have better things to do than pretend last night was anything more than...whatever it was, but kajeh, not even breakfast, or coffee, or hell, just bye?"

[Jorann Lokar]

"Oh, I was wondering where that - woah, watch it!"

She was stronger than she looked, and Jorann found himself stumbling into the bookshelf at his back with one boot half-on. He snatched the PADD out of her hand as a matter of self-defense.

"So I didn't want to wait around naked while you showered. It's not like you invited me to join you. Hey!"

She'd swiped for the PADD, and he reflexively held it up out of her reach. Suddenly curious, he thumbed through the document in the active editing window.

"'Dear Jorann, last night was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did. Sorry I couldn't stick around to say goodbye. Help yourself to the fruit in the fridge if you want something on your way out. Best of luck with your career, Thaitla.' Huh."

Jorann offered the PADD back to its owner with a look of bemusement. "I guess that's the Caitian thing to do?"

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Caught with her hand in the cookie jar and with her moral high ground collapsing underneath her, Thaitla glowered a little, at last snatching the PADD back before tossing it on the bed.

"Well, at least it says something..." began her lame defense, which irritated her when she heard it coming out of her mouth.

She paused.

Her eyes narrowed.

"You just wanted to be the first one out, didn't you?"

[Jorann Lokar]

"And you wanted to leave me alone in your room with a nothing but a note and a fruit cup," Jorann replied. "I hope you were at least going to leave the sock on the doorknob."

He stepped past her and reached for his jacket.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"We don't use a sock on the door, my roommate and I we..."

Thaitla's mouth gaped and she threw her hands up.

"...why am I even telling you that?!"

Before Jorann could get his jacket, she intercepted it, holding it in such a way that she was between the Orion and his duty-required article of clothing. She gave him the haughtiest of smirks.

Yes, she was being that petty.

[Jorann Lokar]

He folded his arms, about to spit off something petulant. Then he shrugged.

"If you wanted a souvenir, babe, all you had to do was ask."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Thaitla grit her teeth in frustration, turned, and headed back into the bathroom with her 'hostage'. The door slid shut, but she spoke loudly enough to be heard through it.

"I'm getting a shower! If you even think about leaving before me, I'm throwing your jacket in and leaving it in a wet heap!"

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann rolled his eyes up to the heavens. "You know, you're not really convincing me that I made the wrong decision."

He sighed and glanced around at the kitschy tapestries on the walls until he heard the shower's stream interrupted by a body stepping under the spray. Then he sidled over toward the front door. No sock on the knob, huh?

"Don't mind me," he yelled. "I'm just gonna take a look at your door."

Yes, he could be that petty, too.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

The voice was faint through the water and the door, but still audible.

"Oh no, you've completely undone my den of ill repute! The Federation will never be the same again!"

Head full of lather, the Caitian stared at a fixed point on the wall and shouted at it in Kolari.

"Natessi eignas chenda su nuva thantana masa minsha ku Jorann nash!"

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann leaned out the door and grabbed the edge to keep it from retracting all the way into the wall. He didn't see anything immediately obvious on its outer surface.

"Hey, that's pretty good," he called back. "You almost sound like my little sister."

He released the grinding door and swaggered back into the room. "So, what, do you mark it with pheromones or something? My nose probably isn't quite as good as yours."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"What?!"

Making a face of disgust, Thaitla hurriedly went about rinsing her hair.

"I'm not a housecat! I picked up a communicator and called her! Ugh!"

Finally resolving the hair crisis, the Caitian quickly went to work with the rest of her, applying body wash to her loofah and scrubbing angrily.

"Besides, do you really want to start asking about pheromones, Orion Fly?"

[Jorann Lokar]

"What?"

Jorann turned toward the bathroom door and gave his underarm a quick sniff.

"Well, if they bother you that much, you should've let me have the shower. You didn't seem to mind last night."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

"I...well I..."

Finally rinsed off, she didn't waste a moment, killing the water while she snatched her towel from it's perch on the rack perpendicular to her shower stall. Drying fastidiously, she continued to talk through the wall.

"Look, it's not a big confessional here. You're a cute guy, yeah, and it was good sex, yeah that too. I had a good time."

Thaitla was having trouble articulating why she was mad, while stepping over the things she obviously wasn't mad at all about, and that was...well...making her mad.

"I don't think I'm over the Kobayashi, Jorann. I'm not used to losing."

[Jorann Lokar]

Jorann rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Well, you shouldn't be used to losing. Losing sucks. But we both know the Kobayashi Maru is a rigged game. Get 'em down to a one-on-one fight, and the Klingon captain probably turns into the second coming of Kahless or something."

He vented a sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose in an effort to chase away an oncoming headache. It wasn't from drinking - by a happy accident of biology, Orions didn't get hung over. But he still wasn't sure he was up to playing counselor through a bathroom door to a woman he'd met and bedded just last night.

When he spoke again, it was with uncharacteristic frankness.

"Look, Thaitla. You're smart, you're talented, you're great company, and you're smoking hot. You've got nothing to be ashamed of. If you feel like I took advantage of you, then I'm genuinely sorry. That wasn't my intention."

[Thaitla K'prerr]

The door to the bathroom whooshed open again, and Thaitla returned to her room with her hair wrapped in a towel and her robe cinched around the middle. Her tail slinked out from a slit she'd altered by hand, since nobody bothered selling Caitian clothes on Earth, it seemed.

"It's cheating. I know it's cheating. I know I shouldn't be mad about it, but I'd probably pick a fight with a little kid for their candy right now just to get a win in my system."

Thaitla hurried past the Orion to sit at her desk, beginning the process of triage to determine the minimum amount of makeup she had to bother with to get out of her dorm on time. Compact in hand, she swiveled in her seat to look at him again.

"So it's not you taking advantage. I mean, it is, but I'm giving as good as I'm getting, and so I hooked up with a sympathetic ear and a tight ass."

Tracing eye shadow as she talked, Thaitla broke her attention away from Jorann.

"I just woke up a little bit tipsy and a little bit petty, and I guess being a bitch is my easy win."

Something almost passing as guilt crossed her face, and her tail tucked around the post of the chair.

"Essha, that's not even an apology. Let's just...can we...let's just get ready and leave together. I'm not mad, it's just absurd."