Chapter Text
“All graduate cadets please report to your supervisors in hangar five. Mission training commences at 8:00.”
On his way out of his barracks cabin, Cris stopped at the mirror above the sink and gave himself a last, quick once-over. He tugged at his uniform, pulling it smooth at the waist and ran his hands over his shoulders, making sure no dust or spots were blemishing the dark grey fabric. He straightened the Starfleet badge attached to the left side of his chest, polished to a sheen, as were his boots. A close shave had taken care of the smattering of stubble on his jaw. Everything looked neat and tidy for this important day, as Starfleet Academy regulations required.
Cris’ hair, however, was an entirely different matter. Cutting it shorter than usual had not helped getting his thick black mop under control. It stuck out behind his ears and at his neck, curling insistently, and a particularly stubborn tuft on his forehead refused to be flattened by however many amounts of water he applied. Considering that Deltan blood ran in his father’s side of the family, leaving most of the men more or less bald, what happened on Cris’ head was plainly ridiculous.
“¡Concho!” he muttered at his mirror image, once more and futilely running a hand through his hair before he gave up. It would have to do.
In the elevator to the hangar deck, he met one of his classmates. The young Frenchman looked as pale and unapproachable as usual, nodding cooly when Cris stepped inside.
“Rios,” the cadet greeted, his ice blue gaze immediately making Cris feel judged.
“Lafère.” Cris nodded back and turned his back to his classmate. They rode in uncomfortable silence.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Olivier Lafère. He was smart, the best of their class, and he treated everyone with the same sparse politeness, keeping mostly to himself in their free time. Yes, there was a certain aloofness to him, but Cris had seen Lafére’s pointy ears under his long hair, and even though his classmate was only partially Vulcan, it explained the arrogant attitude. And if anyone knew about the struggles of being mixed-species, it was Cris. He wouldn’t hold it against him.
What made him so insecure around the Frenchman was that he couldn’t read him at all. His Deltan heritage made Cris highly empathic. While he couldn’t read minds, he could usually read someone’s emotional state. But Lafère gave him nothing. Whenever they sat in class together or were paired up for training, the half-Vulcan was a closed book, not only impenetrable in terms of gauging his mood, but also completely immune to Cris’ inherent Deltan charm. It was an unsettling experience - and one of the reasons why Lafère always bested him at close-combat practice. Cris’, used to foreseeing his opponents’ movements, remained unnervingly blind when it came to Lafère’s tactics. And he didn’t like losing.
“Any idea what ship they’ll assign you?” he asked over his shoulder, attempting polite conversation against his better judgment.
“Yes.”
Silence.
Cris groaned inwardly. Why was he even trying?
“Care to share your thoughts with me?” He didn’t quite manage to erase the annoyance from his question.
“Combining the training missions I’ve already flown with the remaining potential combinations of crew members and the ships at the Academy’s disposal, there is a high probability I will be commanding either an Antares-class ship or a Federation Attack Fighter today.”
Cris heard no doubt in the young man’s voice that he would be given a command post for this final and most challenging training mission, although their temporary ranks were yet to be announced by their supervisors, as was the composition of their crews.
“Or it could be a new ship we haven’t seen yet,” Cris said, somewhat defiantly.
“Unlikely.”
The elevator pinged and slowed to a stop, putting an end to their non-conversation. The doors slid open and released them into the wide hangar deck. Not bothering to wait for Cris, Lafère immediately took off in direction of the training section in hangar five.
Cris stayed behind for a moment, looking around. In the three years of his training at Starfleet Academy, the feeling of awe had never quite left him at the sight of the vast flight hangar. Ships of all sizes were sitting in their docks, engineering crews flitting about to service them, the blue horizon stretching endlessly beyond the transparent walls of the hangar. A Constellation Class ship was hovering in the biggest arrival bay, its sheer size making Cris’ heart beat faster. The USS Adventura was just releasing its crew to the outside world, a string of officers, cadets and supplementary crew stepping down from the transporter pads in the Welcoming Area to disperse in various directions.
A small group of them walked past him, and two young women in the blue uniforms of medical trainees turned their heads and looked at Cris, giggling and blushing. At first, he wondered if it was his stupid hair, but then he felt a wave of physical attraction wash over him, and the girls stopped, excitement in their eyes.
Cris froze in sudden terror.
Oh no. Had he forgotten to-
“Cadet!”
Voice cracking like a whip, a young female officer stepped between him and the girls. She couldn’t be much older than Cris’ twenty-one years and was pretty in a no-nonsense kind of way, her riotous blond curls contrasting attractively with her dark skin-tone, and yet she seemed to tower above him, arms crossed, face like thunder.
“Yes, ma’am!” He straightened to stand at attention.
The communications officer frowned disapprovingly at him. “Am I under the correct impression that you forgot to apply your DP-antagonist serum this morning?”
Behind her, the two girls kept whispering and giggling.
“I… I’m not… sure,” Cris stammered, mortified.
Not fully Deltan, he didn’t have to sign an Oath of Celibacy when he entered Starfleet, but his Deltan genes came with certain… pitfalls. Ever since reaching adolescence, his pheromones had made him irresistible to the opposite sex, and, for everyone’s sakes, he was required to take a daily dose of specialized medication to dampen the effect.
Today, he’d been so excited that he must have forgotten.
“Well, I am sure,” the officer said wryly, casting an annoyed side-glance at the smitten girls. “I could smell your Deltan signals from ten feet away.” She herself seemed to be largely immune to Cris’ involuntary mating call, although he could feel conflict slipping into her resolve.
“I’m… I apologize, ma’am,” Cris stuttered. This hadn’t happened to him in months, and he felt terrible. As much as his Deltan gifts came in handy sometimes, the surplus of pheromones was a curse that needed to be managed, at least until he’d reached twenty-five and the effect would lessen. “It was an oversight. I didn’t mean to be causing any trouble.”
The black woman huffed. “Better get to your cabin then and rectify that,” she said, not unkindly now, “before you actually do cause trouble. And you two!” She turned around and made a shooing gesture at the medical trainees. “Get a grip! Move! Nothing to see here.”
The girls looked thoroughly disappointed, but they nodded and, reluctantly, trudged off to the Medical Faculty.
“On my way, ma’am,” Cris said as well and turned on his heels, his cheeks burning shamefully now. “Apologies, ma’am.”
The coms officer grunted and waved him away, and Cris hurried back to the elevator, giving every female-looking being he came across a wide berth as he returned to his cabin. At least his fellow-classmate, Lafère, hadn’t witnessed the incident. Half-Vulcan or not, he’d never let him live this one down.