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The doors sweep open and Kirk looks onto the bridge with a mug of freshly made hot cocoa from the mess hall. It’s from a batch of Ensign Tiant mom's recipe that had been boiled in a real pan and not churned out of the replicator. He takes a second to appraise the state of the night shift in their natural state. From the threshold of the lift, he sees his various crewmembers hunched over their monitors and instruments, although the usual readings onscreen and the inky, star speckled darkness had been replaced by the visuals of a long-range call.
Since he hadn’t been noticed yet, perhaps because they weren’t expecting him to return so quickly, instead of making his presence known, Kirk walks slowly with a finger on his lips to the screen.
"If you are looking for a deeper understanding of the intricacies of Telaxian combat rituals then you should read Karlov’s latest study on-”
"Mr Spock, when I asked you to take the con, I don't believe it was a free pass to skive off."
The Vulcan doesn’t jump, but he does turn his head slowly before levering himself out of the chair. "Captain, I can assure you there is no skiving.”
“Everything's shipshape, Captain.” Chekov calls over his shoulder.
“While colloquial,” Spock inclines his head, “I believe the phrase is apt."
Up on the main screen, pale lips part in a toothy smile that creases up the darker facial markings in a way that cheek dimples would for humans. "James T, it is good to see you."
Her voice is a little stilted when speaking to him, but no less warm. In the few weeks grounded in Yorktown while the ship was getting fixed up and having the bees pulled out of her, like thorns from a lion’s paw, Jaylah had stuck close with the crew. When she had inevitably put in her application to join the Starfleet Academy on Yorktown, it was with his recommendation copied in, along with various other crew members’ glowing endorsements.
"Likewise, Jaylah." Kirk tips his head as he makes his way to his quarters, but then turns just as the doors slide back. "You should have a read of Kopoborrow’s latest article. It has an interesting segment on Klingon tribal differences and battle clothing. "
Onscreen, she nods seriously, fingers skimming along her tablet to make a note.
"However, Karlov’s book is a critical read on how certain practices and combative language can shape a species’ perspective on war.” Spock interjects quickly and her eyes flick back and forth across the screen between them.
Kirk sighs, "I'm sure Jaylah has more fun things to do than read brick-sized books. Give yourself the time to get out there and have the full Starfleet experience, join some societies, an engineering club or two."
She thinks it over. "I have already met many of my neighbours, I left my door open like my welcome pack said, and played the beats and shouting."
The grin plastered on Kirk’s face wavers in confusion for a second before he nods along. "Yeah, I guess that's one way to make friends. Glad to hear you're settling in."
“Is anyone sitting here?”
“No, you’re good.”
Jaylah places her tray down and climbs into the bench, focused utterly on her food until the cadet on the other side of the table cleared his throat awkwardly as if he were about to start talking to her.
And then he does.
“So, you’re one of the new ones too?”
“Yes.”
“I... I think I’m in your block.”
“Maybe.” Jaylah's attention returns back to her plate in the silence that follows, prodding at the root vegetable mix before scooping a forkful and chewing tentatively.
The food inside the mess hall where all the tutors and professors and students ate was always accessible. On her first visit, she had piled her plate high and tipped four handfuls of bread rolls into her bag with the intention of taking it all back to her room, only to find out that the doors remained open almost all hours, and that she could simply come back when she was hungry, unlike Altamid where the food in her hands had to be earned from snares and traps or outright stealing.
“You’re the one who plays classical Earth music...”
She puts down her fork to scrutinise the other trainee. His plate was almost finished, but he had stopped eating when she sat down, and his nerves seemed to be stringing out in the leaden silence as he waited for her to speak again. “I haven’t seen you on my floor.”
“I meant, it’s cool, I haven’t heard much classical stuff before, so it’s kind of interesting in a loud...way. No, I’m two floors down. I’m Clive Imlico, by the way.” He stretches out his human hand, and she shakes it. “I’ve actually got something for you. I was going to try and find your room, but seeing as you’re here, I thought I could give it to you now.”
He pulls up his bag and lifts out a container before pressing it into her hand.
Jaylah feels the weight of whatever was inside tip sideways, and how it’s coupled with something small impacting something else. “Why have you given this to me, Clive?”
“It’s not from me, it’s from my mom, kinda, and my aunt.” He clears his throat under Jaylah’s stoic gaze. “My aunt’s on the Enterprise. It’s a thank you, for helping to bring her back, for everything really.”
She stares down at the container in her hands, something that she’d not had in years, a one-sided trade. “What is it?”
“Ah, so, my mom knows how to cook, and that’s her way of giving back to people. Any festival or new neighbour or just any excuse really, and she’s there cooking, none of the replicator stuff. She really went to town at the weekend when she saw on the news that you’d enrolled here too.” Clive pops open the lid and pushes the container back towards her. Packed tightly between the four sides of the box were rows of little dumplings stacked on top of layers of thin paper.
“You’ve got the sweet ones here, and those square ones are spicy. And these…. have a mix of some of those vegetables you’ve got on your plate, but with sesame on top. That’s a kind of seed you can find on Earth.”
“Thank you, Clive.”
“Well, you’re welcome.” His nerves had melted away over the course of their conversation, and he almost manages to finish a sentence without stumbling over his words. “After hearing the story, about what happened...my mom just wanted you to know that what you did was very brave.”
Jaylah lets her lips slide back across her teeth and flashes a smile as he excuses himself for a class and goes to put his almost empty plate in the steel cage where it would be taken away and washed, and the scraps tossed into a recycler. It was a novelty from her childhood she hadn’t thought she’d see again.
When she heads back to her room, she puts down her bag and slings her jacket over the chair before picking the box back up. Then she goes to knock on the next door up the corridor. From inside, there’s a scrape of chair legs on the floor before some heavy footsteps get closer, and Jaylah takes the extra moment to stand a little straighter before the door opens up. It’s not to brace herself, she knows it, but somehow it helps.
The Andorian’s forehead creases get deeper, but before she can say anything, Jaylah speaks, “Hello, Neuno. I saw your note. I have headphones for my beats now.”
The look of relief on the Andorian’s face is apparent. “That’s...good news, because I have three coursework deadlines at the end of this week and I was about to claw my own face off. The music was fine the first night, and then after the fourth night in a row, it’s just...loud.”
“Do you want a dumpling?”
Neuno cranes her neck forwards at the open container. “Are those homemade? They smell homemade?”
“Yes.” It’s the second longest conversation Jaylah’s had with someone outside of a classroom, and she finds she likes it.
“So, what’s what?”
She relates the different types, and then watches as Neuno selects one of the round, sweet ones and takes a bite. “Yeah these are good. I need to get back to work, but maybe sometime next week we can go out for food. The mess hall’s good, but you really need to get into Yorktown’s restaurants if you want to taste something halfway decent.”
“Can I ask someone else?”
“To come along? Yeah. What’s the saying in Standard...the more, the happier?” She scoffs, “You get it. I need to study more, but I’ll see you next week, neighbour.”
She heads back into her room, leaving Jaylah to shove two dumplings into her mouth and slip back into hers to face another stack of reading and the broken air con unit she had pulled off the wall from her chemistry lab to fix in her own time.
"You've got to round it out more."
"I know, I know!"
Nyota makes a raspy noise at the back of her throat and then pauses as Jaylah attempts to copy. “It’ll come with practise.”
Jaylah squints in disbelief down the video feed. “How long did it take you?”
“Two weeks, I think.”
Another groan of frustration crackles down the line and is accompanied by the heavy thump of a fist whacking the table. “I’m not getting this. I will fail this class and be told to leave.”
“You learnt Standard from the clips and audio recordings left on an almost destroyed starship.” Nyota leaned forward and folded her arms on the desk. “What’s the real problem?”
“I am not a good learner.” Jaylah snorts, and kicks back in her chair. “Their rules are stupid, and things go round in circles.”
“It can be frustrating, but you know how to make things work for you. You had to learn to work that way in order to survive. Now, you get to learn how to make it work for a ship, how we work together and use each other’s strengths.” As Jaylah falls silent, biting on her own cheek, Nyota takes the opportunity and continues on. “Knowing the rules is a good thing, but understanding why they matter is important. Out here, we can be so far away from everything, it can mean everything to know how the crew around you are thinking and working.”
“I got a demerit today.” Jaylah confesses eventually, not wanting to look up and see her own sour reflection in the screen. “Don’t tell Scotty.”
When Nyota shakes her head, she can feel a platitude coming, a little string cast out from thousands of lightyears away, and Jaylah feels it’s useless to her so she carries on filling up the silence, “The Admiral called me into her office-”
“Wait. The Admiral?”
“She said that if I collected any more demerits, I could compare scores with Captain Kirk.” When she had been standing in her office, Jaylah had been unsure if it was an absolute scolding because the comparison didn’t sit so awfully for her, but now she’s revisiting the conversation, she can’t help getting lost in her thoughts again.
“She said the same thing you did, knowing the rules is a good thing, so you know how to break them.”
“That’s not quite what I meant.” Nyota sighs heavily, “But I’m sure Kirk would agree with you.”
Looking away from the screen, Jaylah allows a second, more acidic confession to escape her. “They think, I’m...I’m feral.”
Nyota presses her lips together and thinks carefully on her next words.
For a split second, she sees a woman who isn’t sure of her place in the universe; from finding her way off a planet she wasn’t even sure she could ever leave and then a woman who found that her future lay in a thousand splintered pathways from the moment she stepped off the ramp of the Franklin and onto Yorktown pavement.
That there’s a weight that comes from knowing that the choices she would go on make when forging her career in Starfleet would shape the way her life would be, in wide ways, more so than the ones she made while hiding and purely surviving.
To suddenly have so many options when there were none, and while joining a whole new civilisation, was a tricky thing to navigate. “But you know who you are, Jaylah. And you know who you want to be.”
The conversation sticks with Jaylah for weeks after and she keeps trying to answer the unspoken questions that plague her, like bees buzzing around her head as she learned how to wrestle with them. Eventually, the roll of demerits slow and she settles into the cohort of cadets better.
Although she never walks with any less purpose, Jaylah becomes comfortable within the walls of the Academy and underneath Yorktown’s folded sky.
Two years after she joins the Academy at Yorktown, Jaylah passes enough exams to be transferred to the Starfleet headquarters on Earth to complete her training.
Her flight is midmorning, and she packs up her bag early so that she can sit outside in the main plaza. These were the last few hours she had inside the fragile little bubble floating in the darkest corner of space that was Yorktown. She had somehow been able to call it home, for the short amount of time it was, and there was a dull pain in her chest she had felt only once before, as her house tore out of Altamid’s atmosphere.
“We heard you were leaving today, so we wanted to come and say safe travels.”
It takes her a moment to realise that the voice was talking to her, and when Jaylah turns around, she sees Ben and Demora Sulu.
The little girl steps up, “You have to call so we can eat dinner together. It’s not the same on screen, but Daddy says teleports don’t work that far.”
The construction around her chest tightens and then loosens. “Yes.”
“Once a month. You have to promise, like I promised to learn to run faster.”
“I do promise.”
Demora thrusts a hand drawn card into her leg before wrapping her arms around, and Jaylah takes the crumpled paper into her hands, turning it over to see the glittery coated front, Good luck!
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you.” Ben tells her as they clasped arms, “I think you’ll like Earth. And make sure you check out the waves near San Francisco, they’re great for surfing.”
“What is surfing?”
“A sport, on water. I’ll send you the holo-vids.”
The night drills, Jaylah had decided, were the worst.
Even after double linguistics crammed into her schedule and an over exuberant first year blowing up the engineering lab she preferred to spend her downtime in, it was the night drills that, as her human roommate said, took the biscuit.
It isn’t the alarms blaring out or the hasty rush to pull on her uniform and make her way to the training hall for instructions which annoy Jaylah, it’s the sleepy grumbling and the low murmur of confusion that ripples through the huddle of trainees as they receive their instructions and find that they would have to complete the gruelling trek off-Earth.
But she stands ready and feels the prickle of electricity at the back of her neck.
If this was unexpected, then how would they cope with anything else?
“Pick your teams. Groups of four.” The Lieutenant Commander barks out, “Any stragglers in thirty seconds will be paired up by me. Go!”
In the dark, Jaylah feels people pushing past her, bumping into her shoulders. She backs off as everyone attempts to find classmates and friends, but what she wasn’t expecting was to be pulled backwards herself to join a group of three. She can see the flash of teeth from both Neuno and Clive, and from a short Tellarite she had seen in classes before but hadn’t spoken to, who quickly introduces herself as Sav and immediately begins to complain about Earth’s night-air.
“It’s cold, it’s great!” Neuno argues back.
“Groups, head to the launch bays. You’ll each be assigned to a ship, given basic equipment, and trackers. Your assignment this evening is to start from the drop off point and navigate to the pickup point before time runs out.”
“Orienteering. I bet it’s going to be one of the mining asteroids.” Clive whispers to the group as they set off for the space port.
The little optimism they muster on the short flight over is quickly diluted when the ship drops their quartet off in the middle of the barren landscape. They watch in solemn silence as it rises back up in the air to repeat the same and scatter the remaining teams onboard.
All of them had been given a pack containing basic med supplies, rations, and they had the option of choosing a non-lethal weapon from the crates onboard the ship. Neuno, Sav and Clive had opted for a stun blaster each, but Jaylah’s hands automatically drifted to the heavy staff lying at the bottom of the crate.
Five hours in, sweat covered and tired from running from a lightning storm, they find themselves in trouble when Sav slips down an unstable cliff edge, rolling and bumping the whole way down until she is stopped by a larger rock formation that winds her completely. They follow her path down carefully, and Neuno successfully diagnoses the worst of her injuries as heavy bruising and a nasty fracture.
Neuno’s forehead crinkles up. “You’re not going anywhere quick on that leg.”
“It’s not so bad.” Jaylah crouches down beside her and aids with strapping the leg up to a strut she’d pulled from her pack.
“But she can’t walk on it, can she?” Clive frowns over her shoulder. “I don’t like saying this, but this field assignment is the most weighted thing this year, if we fail it, we’re probably going to have to repeat the whole year again.”
“No, just me.” Sav says, wincing as he helps her back to her feet. One of her tusks is coated with green blood smeared over from the multitude of scratches over her face, and she leans sideways to keep the weight off her leg. “You’ve got to go on without me. This is my second time around. I failed last time too. I walked straight into a mud swamp.”
She reaches for the tracker dangling off Neuno’s belt which would alert the commanding officer for extraction, but Jaylah snatches the tracker up from her hands and stuffs it into her jacket. “Stop it. You are not failing now. We are not failing.”
She steps away from the tall stacks of rocks behind them to study the layout of the map against the landscape in front of her. The shadows were lengthening but the air was still and calm, much more traversable compared to the lightning storm they had pushed through. A few more jabs at the touchscreen has her new course plotted out, overlaying the original given by the tablet programmed for the task. It skirts some of the more treacherous paths lined with trees, perhaps containing some wild creatures, and winds around an area of mine shafts, but it’s more direct and she feels like it’s familiar territory.
“We need to go now. This way.”
Sav wavers on the spot, like the rest of them, she’s exhausted and the thin atmosphere was draining their energy quicker with every passing hour. “We’ll lose points from going over the time limit. Just leave me here! It makes sense!”
Looking over her shoulder, Jaylah’s pale eyes glint in the fading light. “We are not leaving you behind. This is a team.”
“She’s right. Besides, you’re the best pilot in our class. If this was real, we’d need you to fly us off this rock.” Neuno slips an arm under Sav’s shoulder and hoists her up. “Who’d have thought it? An Andorian and a Tellarite.”
“That’s Starfleet for you.” Clive snorts as he takes her other arm. “Come on, Jaylah’s orders.”
“Less talking, more walking.” Jaylah instructs, and leads them down the new path.
Three hours later, as the last of all the teams to return, they arrive at the pickup point and get herded onto the ship where a medical stream cadet sets about scanning Sav’s leg. Her solo complaints about the freak lightning storm go on longer than all the pre-flight checks. By the time they take off, notes had been compared across all the groups and the ship was full of dozing trainees, Jaylah’s team included.
Their marks get issued the next morning, and she flips the tablet over when the notification dings in. As expected, they had been docked points for being the last to arrive, but they hadn’t fared so badly overall, and Sav would be pleased to know she wouldn’t have to repeat the year.
But when Jaylah scrolls down further she sees they all received a merit for cooperation despite adverse conditions and a new kind of calm snaps over her skin.
It’s a hubbub of noise and movement all over the ship and Scotty sidesteps across the narrow corridor to let an eager crewman hurry off towards the transporters. The captain laughs when the young man is followed by a few more of the crew in quick succession yelling their apologies when they realise just who they're barrelling past now that he's out of his command golds.
There was always a scrum to the surface with everyone keen to plant their feet on solid land, back on Earth, after all this time. For all the roaming they did, no one couldn’t deny there was something special about coming back to the blue and green marble they called home.
“It's the lass' final set of exams this week. I thought I'd swing by for a little moral support."
"Not a bad idea." Kirk nods as they fall back into step. 'What's on the cards?
"Usual lot, Kobayashi Maru, and a second go around for the combat test. Apparently, she broke the instructor's collarbone last time, so they’re hoping for less lethal force or something."
"Ouch." Kirk winces in mock sympathy which Scotty could wholeheartedly agree with. "It's a shame they don't weight survival skills more. Imagine if there was an assessment on traps and snares, she'd go down in Starfleet history with those marks."
That gets a chuckle out of him. "And your plans, Captain?"
"Bit of this, bit of that. You might see me around there, I have a few meetings. And Admiral Archer called, wanted to invite me over to see his new dogs."
Scotty clicks his tongue, glad that his work did all the talking for him. "Just the regular schmoozing with the bigwigs, eh?"
"Yeah pretty much, but it keeps us in their good books." Kirk claps him on the shoulder as they prepare to part ways in the transporter room. "Tell Jaylah I wish her luck. Finals are hell, but she's good, there's nothing in them to worry about."
"Will do, sir."
The grin slips into a wince as they round the final corner to see even more of the crew heading down the corridor to the transporter room. “How long do you think the line’s going to be?”
Scotty’s returning grin is wistful. “I dunno, depends on whether you want to pull rank, sir.”
Kirk slides into the room just as the crew are being picked. The pair of invigilators with matching clipboards and inscrutably composed expressions acknowledge him with curt nods because he had sent word ahead that he was interested in observing a test, for old time’s sake. They were more than happy to approve his request now that he was an esteemed member of Starfleet.
"I choose my crew from the individuals in this room?" Jaylah asks, with the same level of concentration as if she were tracing back a loose wire and checking for frayed strands.
But beyond the level tone in her voice, there is a look in her eye that Kirk recognises, like for like, and he slides his attention back at the invigilators who were seemingly ignorant to the reason behind her repetition.
Oh, this should be good.
"Yes, you choose from the individuals in this room." The one with the pen clipped to his notepad confirms it flatly.
Jaylah’s next words roll out in an instant and eject what little, stress-laden air there was left in the room as quickly as blowing an airlock. "I choose James T as pilot."
The other invigilator’s neck spines flick outwards, "No, you can't-"
"Actually gentleman, as someone who picked apart this test several times over, I do believe those are your own rules." Despite the low murmur of confusion between the rest of the mock crew, Kirk passes the two invigilators and comes to stand beside the rest of the selected mock crew ready to take on the U.S.S Kobayashi Maru under Jaylah’s command. "Reporting for duty, Captain."
The simulation goes the same way it always goes.
The principle aim of it hadn’t changed. The purpose of the test was to unearth the potential qualities in cadets that Starfleet requires of its officers, focusing on those which can't be taught in classes or acquired from readings. It is inevitably something to be experienced, and learnt from, no matter the outcome. Beyond Spock’s rigorous subroutines, they imagine it to be a kindness, in a way, to allow their students to experience an inevitability and prepare for it.
But no one gets that at the time, they fight against the simulation and its programming holds fast against countless desperate finalists and their justified but useless cramming.
When Jaylah's time comes, her fingers tighten around the arms of the captain’s chair, and she fires out her orders fast. There’s a steady control within the cramped mock bridge, even as the situation crumbles and the test inches towards the event they all dread.
The lights flicker and the red alert blares loudly.
Following her orders, Kirk navigates them through a spiralling debris field while knowing that in reality, his console would have been blown to hell and back and any incoming ship-wide reports would have been deafening.
Over his shoulder, Jaylah sits in the captain’s chair with a mix of anger and patience and determination that makes him glad he found the time to stop by. Because there's always a few moments, right at the very end of the Kobayashi Maru, which are weighted more in the invigilators' marks.
He had read over the assessment outline during the long days of boredom in deep uncharted space when being so far away from everything known made the past seem like a familiar and welcoming territory. He had parsed through Spock’s guidelines on marking how a candidate chooses to address their crew in their final moments knowing that there is no way out.
It was something that he had failed at too many times; he had missed the point of it all so spectacularly while trying to avoid the plain truth.
But she had been here before, and had already faced the consequences of an unfair choice. She had survived it, and understood that in the moment, it had meant making the hardest choice of all. That it wasn’t something that anyone could run for, not if they wanted to do the right thing.
“Mute the alerts, Kirk.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Jaylah unclenches her fingers one by one from the chair’s arms until they lay flat on the side panels and the din in the room subsides. Slowly, she stands and turns away from the destruction on the viewscreen, facing her crew with a sobering look.
She speaks to them, and her softer tone doesn’t temper the confidence brimming over, even now. "You are crew. You are family. Starfleet is our home. Thank you for everything."
Her words ring heavy with emotion as her eyes skip over each person in the simulation room, and Kirk understands that they were not just for those sitting and standing around their consoles waiting their own turn at the test.
They were also for a father she had lost a long time ago.
Although she doesn't need it, Kirk sends his congratulations when Jaylah passes with flying colours, and once again when gains her ensign stripes and receives her official posting within the fleet.
She sends him back a brief holo-vid asking how long she would need to serve on another ship before requesting a transfer to the U.S.S. Enterprise.