Chapter Text
“Hot date for the convocation ball?” Admiral Vance asked Captain Ake slyly during one of their summer meetings. Kelrec bit back a sigh and tightened his grip on the PADD: this again.
Last year there hadn’t been a proper convocation. The Athena had arrived four days into term, full of students, and the Academy-only ceremony had been limited to speeches by the two of them, capped with a two-squadron flyover and real fireworks.
This year, they were pulling out all the stops in a joint ceremony. The madness was planned to kick off with an officer’s banquet and ball, continue for three more days, and end with a formal convocation address to the entirety of the assembled cadets. From dawn to well past dusk there were plans for committee meetings, special sessions, diplomatic functions, reunions, and other self-congratulatory social events. Naturally, the only question in San Francisco was: “Do you have a date?”
“The hottest,” Ake confirmed. “Have you ever met Ambassador Nils?”
The two chatted about Nils for a time. Apparently he was a Romulan from a colony world, formerly of the Star Empire, and enjoyed long distance running and traditional archery. Kelrec wasn’t sure how much longer he — or his PADD — could take hearing the man’s shoulders described to that level of detail when the conversation shifted to him.
“And you, Kelrec?” Vance asked.
He should have expected it. Over the last year he’d gone from enabling his cadet’s pranks to a solid working relationship between himself and Ake, so, of course, everyone except his mother expected him to be happy. It was hard to tell if Vance didn’t see the writing on the wall - Kelrec was going to be the War College’s last chancellor - or maybe if he simply didn’t care. The fleet admiral could be slippery when he needed to be.
“No one yet,” Kelrec answered honestly.
They both frowned at him.
“Specialist Krebs is available,” Ake said.
“Earth is running security, so Audrey is off for the night,” Vance added.
“The University of Berkeley doesn’t come back until a week after we do, maybe Professor Marchaire or—”
Stars. They were going to keep going until they found him a date. “I have someone in mind!” Kelrec snapped.
“—Professor Zhāng?” Ake finished, only slightly cowed.
Like most of post-Burn Starfleet, Commodore Ada Kelrec kept her postings on twenty-six hour Bajoran time. Now that Zeeren was on Earth, their time zones lined up once every thirteen days, and at 19:00 San Francisco time, they would have a holocall. He would sit on one sofa in his office and drink tea, while his mother would appear to sit on the other and do the same.
Kelrec knew better than to hope she would let convocation go unmentioned.
“The opening banquet is quite the event, do you have a date?”
“No.”
“Did you ask Izadora Shotwell? She’s doing an exchange on Earth, studying tidal turbines, and Uncle told me she was quite taken with you.”
“No.”
“You should,” Ada pressed, setting her teacup down somewhere outside of the transmission. She sat just a little taller. Alarm shot through him; Kelrec knew the signs. Once she gathered her arguments he was in for another round of overprotective parenting.
“I’m considering someone else,” he said flatly, hoping it would work again.
“Considering? You don’t have time to consider. You’re seventy-one and we both know these are the last years of the War College; I’m working to get you a ship. Without a captaincy it’ll be a small one, but it keeps open the path to promotion. That said, Earth is your best chance to find a partner and the banquet is an irresistible invite. The diplomats breakfast, too, for the right kind of woman—”
“I said, I have someone I’m considering.”
“I’m just looking out for you. It’s not going to get any easier to meet someone on a small ship, and a captain should have a partner. Besides, your father and I want to be spry enough to spoil our grandkids.”
“Of course mother,” he said, taking another sip of his tea to keep from sighing, “just let me ask her first? And if it doesn’t work out I’ll call Izadora.”
“That’s all I ask. I love you and I’ll see you at the ceremonies,” she said, standing up. Kelrec did the same.
“Love you, too,” he said. They gave each other a slight bow (the Kelrecs were not physically demonstrative even in person, and a holo call made touch impossible) before his mother cut the connection.
She did love him, she just wanted things that were impossible.
Three years ago, the charter class of Starfleet academy stood in front of Captain Burnham and committed themselves not only to Starfleet but also to the liberal arts and sciences. Despite preparing everything to reopen the Academy when Doctor Kovich asked, Commander Kelrec remembered being skeptical of the entire concept. The War College produced officers; what kind of student would give that up to be a consultant or a specialist?
He knew better now.
The USS Discovery was a science vessel. Its crew, no matter their division — including security — considered themselves Starfleet first, scientists second, and then people, diplomats, and so on. Soldier wasn’t even on the list, although they’d been capable soldiers when needed. He remembered the internal discussion about if it was even possible to come up with enough weapons to retrofit Discovery. It had been moot: they’d insisted on no more than upgrading what little they had and the resulting armament was less than what most shuttles carried.
After being sent as an observer, Lieutenant Willa had complained loudly about the Discovery’s engineering department. But under her dissatisfaction at the crew’s unprofessionalism, he’d heard genuine fear. Ensign Tilly had known what a CME was even before Willa had asked for a definition, and Tilly had also immediately understood how it was relevant to the situation.
Similarly, when the Discovery, more or less in it’s spare time, figured out the source and cause of the Burn, the idea of science and diplomacy as the heart of Starfleet was rekindled at the admiralty, and they’d decided to re-open Starfleet Academy.
They’d called on him, as the chancellor of the War College, to set it up. Kelrec had thought being appointed Acting Chancellor to Starfleet Academy was a waste of his time. Still, he’d pulled up the old curriculum requirements and instructor exams from before the Burn, sent a few pro-forma requests to the crew of the Discovery and to the few remaining active and retired officers who’d attended it way back when, and called it a day. He hadn’t thought it would last, and dreaded folding its students back into the War College and training them up to standard.
Then the Discovery had somehow stopped the Dark Matter Anomaly.
Eighteen students in the charter class grew to fifty-four in the second year, and Kelrec had grown more serious about recruiting science teachers. His crowning achievement was commissioning Tinn Valaak of the NSA as a Lieutenant to teach exochemistry (and at Valaak’s insistence, inexplicably, Xenomythology).
When the shared campus was announced, it was Acting Chancellor Kelrec who had coordinated the build-out with San Francisco, Acting Chancellor Kelrec who had hired out the full staff and finalized the curriculum, and Acting Chancellor Kelrec who had overseen the construction of the USS Athena. There was every expectation that the admiralty would simply drop the ‘acting’ and promote him to a rank commensurate with the joint chancellorship.
His mother had planned a celebration — down to the replicator pattern for the floral arrangements — and was only waiting for the formal announcement to send the invitations.
Three weeks before the start of term, at the oversight committee meeting, Admiral Vance had announced that he believed he had the leverage to convince Captain Ake to return to Starfleet and accept the position of Chancellor.
Captain Nahla Ake, resigned in disgrace Nahla Ake, returned to Starfleet as the Chancellor of Starfleet Academy. She couldn’t even treat the position with enough respect to wear a uniform. There went his dreams of promotion: part-Lanthanite Chancellor Nahla Ake was going to be dancing shoeless long after Kelrec was walking with a cane.
Still, over the course of the Academy’s first year he’d made an uneasy peace with his planned obsolescence and an only slightly easier peace with his counterpart. They’d gotten past the Vitus Reflux off-gassing and the rehearsal dinner with the Kometa Fish (which, despite his fears, had been genuinely helpful in preparing him for the Alpherati.) They’d been on the path to genuine colleagues when the tragedy at the Miyazaki happened, and they’d cemented their working relationship trying to figure out what Braka was up to.
When Captain Ake, with less than half a ship and what would barely qualify as a skeleton crew — made up mostly of cadets — had solved the omega-mine issue it had become clear to Kelrec, mind and body, heart and soul, that if that was what was needed to run the Academy, then he was never going to be the chancellor.
Commodore Ada Kelrec hadn’t made the same peace with the direction Starfleet was headed, the pending closure of the War College, or her son’s career path. But she wasn’t one to focus her energy on things she couldn’t change: even before the convocation events had been announced, she’d been laser focused on finding him a partner.
Zeeren Kelrec’s problem was that he did not have someone in mind. He had not invited anyone to any event. Citing a nebulous “someone” had worked on everyone from Chancellor Ake to his mother and bought him some weeks of peace.
Now, the convocation-opening officers’ banquet and ball was less than a week away, and Kelrec was almost as frantic as he had been when trying to choose a wine for the Alpherati. No matter what it took, he was not calling Izadora Shotwell.
Unfortunately, other than show up alone and have everyone resume their matchmaking ten-fold, he had no idea what it would actually take for him to not make that call.
“And I’ve got rolling eight week theater seminars, we’re aiming for two plays a month—you’re not listening,” Lieutenant Tilly said. They’d had curricula review meetings since he hired her. Even after Starfleet Academy had been transferred to Chancellor Ake, Tilly just kept showing up in his office for them.
“My apologies, my mind is … elsewhere,” Kelrec said. Which was kinder than he had no background in theater, very little interest, and absolutely nothing of use to say about it.
“Thinking how long the War College is going to last?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“I was your first professor,” she said, “it is to me.”
“First professor at the Academy. I have a full staff at the War College.”
“And a full class of students there too, but I bet Tinn Valaak or any of the half-gross would see right through you.”
“The half-gross?”
“What the first two Academy classes from HQ are calling themselves. They’re on the Athena, now, but they missed the excitement last year. Compared to a class of over two-hundred with the equivalent of Nova Squad holding court in the Atrium… why would anyone remember the charter class of eighteen that risked so much to come when Starfleet called? Or those who followed; there’s exactly seventy two of them total: half a gross in old English.”
He thought on that a moment. When he’d handed the academy over to Ake, when he’d taken over his new campus for the War College, he’d forgotten about those kids — the half gross — too. Tilly hadn’t. Those kids were hers and they were not slipping through the cracks.
He could see why the crew of the Discovery had elected her as their XO when she was an ensign.
Her PADDs were powered down and she was packing them away; apparently the work portion of this meeting was over. But with the way she was looking at him; she was waiting for a response and wouldn’t be leaving until she got it.
“It’s not just the end of the War College,” he confessed, looking around the grey walls of his office, “but this isn’t the place.”
“I know just the one,” Tilly said.
It was a sign of how desperate he was that he followed her to what turned out to be a dark bar with about eight seats and three booths in the basement of a positively ancient building in the old part of San Francisco. The walls were exposed brick, the wood paneling was real, and strings of wired LED lights hung from the ceiling rafters.
Kelrec never went out with his colleagues: work was work, and if you let emotions and friendship get in the way things got messy.
“It feels almost like home, you know?” Tilly said.
He looked around, “Having grown up on a station above Jalilei Prime, I can confidently say, I do not.”
“Programmable matter as far as the eye could see?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I grew up in a time where we still trotted out the Vulcans who’d been there for First Contact and Admiral Archer gave the speech every Founding Day. Honestly, I guess we’re lucky the Federation was still here when we arrived.”
Kelrec had never thought about it like that. The barkeep set down a pitcher of pale beer and a plate of fried wedges in front of them.
“They have a real kitchen,” Tilly said, “potatoes from the Central Valley and everything. Try it.”
“French fries?” he asked.
“Fries,” she agreed. “But only fried once and not in the French style. We could have gotten them with cheese, but it’s from real milk, and even replicated cheese and I don’t get along, plus most people with non-human ancestry can’t digest it—”
“Do you have this conversation often?”
Tilly shrugged and poured them both beer. “With varying levels of awkwardness. Backwards twenty-third century ensign here.”
“Lieutenant,” he corrected.
“Fine, Lieutenant. I served with Spock, you know? And he was the first hybrid. We didn’t know it was possible before him, and now someone might be one-eighth Romulan and it’s just Tuesday.”
“Surely that’s more of a Monday event,” he said in lieu of disclosing his own non-human heritage.
“You’re funny, you know that?” she said, taking a sip of her beer.
“Funny enough I’ve backed myself into a corner,” he muttered into his own glass.
“Dish.”
“Everyone—” he started.
“Define everyone,” she cut in with the voice of command. He knew, academically, that she was capable of it but…
“Admiral Vance, Captain Ake, my mother, at least three of my instructors, and the boldest of my cadets,” he said in a single breath. “They were all asking if I had a date for the convocation events—”
“And you told them you did.”
“I said that I had someone in mind and then RSVP’d to everything with an unspecified plus-one.”
“Close enough. So everyone assumed you had a date, but you don’t and for some reason you’re not comfortable turning up alone.”
“How do you know?”
“We wouldn’t be here, eating fries, having this conversation, if you actually had a date or were willing to go without one.” Tilly toasted him with a wedge.
“Fair,” he said miserably, “I thought about saying it didn’t work out, but then I realized Ake would mother me like a cadet and she’d have some stranger on my arm before the second course of the opening banquet.”
She whistled. “Stop me if I’m out of line, but I could go with you. Tell Ake that you couldn’t say anything when you thought I’d be on tour, but since I’m here with the half-gross — be sure to mention them to her — ask her if she can swing my duty shifts so I’m free to accompany you.”
“What?!”
“You’re looking for a fake date, right? I’m volunteering. Just because Mir is the poster boy of the Academy right now doesn’t mean they can forget about the rest of us. Also, I like non-replicated food—” she waved another potato at him —“and dancing.”
“You don’t like Mir?”
“I enrolled in the Academy two years after Kirk. I didn’t like him either.”
Kelrec felt his brain all but short out at comparing Mir to Kirk. He fell back to an earlier part of the conversation, “You’re volunteering to be my fake date?”
“Yep. Between only being a lieutenant and being off campus almost all last year I didn’t get an invitation to the ball or anything else. I’m presuming you get a plus one for everything that’s fun… So if you’re willing to play fairy godfather, what’s our agenda?”
He projected the entire commencement program between them in lieu of answering. Tilly refilled their glasses and swiped through the projection as if she had been born to the technology. It was an odd feeling to be working through their plan, a pitcher of beer, and a basket of fries like they were friends, but Tilly was like this with everyone. It wasn’t anything special.
In the end she’d decided to accompany him to the officer’s banquet and ball, eat lunch together between their sessions on the second day, attend the War College Reunion dinner that night, and the diplomat’s breakfast the next morning with him. After that, cadet orientation ran until the early afternoon and then they were at liberty until the next day’s commencement address: he was speaking and Tilly was chaperoning a group of first years.
“And I get to stand at attention with them for the duration of the thing,” she grumped. “At least boots have improved in the last 930 years, but I am not looking forward to the crick in my neck from looking up at you and your fancy speeches.”
“I assure you, I have a very practical and yet inspiring speech planned. It will cover the service tenets of the War College.”
“Really?” she laughed. “Looking forward to it. But I promised Jett that I would be at her and Lura’s party for the Discovery crew tonight, so I’ve gotta go before I’m late enough that she starts searching. Send me what you’re wearing to the ball so I can come up with a dress to match.”