—- USS Selene, Shuttle Bay 2 —-

The students shuffled about as Lieutenant Thomas Winfield glanced over a PADD.

After days of flying at high warp the ship had slowed to impulse speeds in a barren segment of the Triangle to tweak the engines and to do some small craft assignments for the students. Some of them had handled fighters back at the Academy but this was the first chance most of them had had to launch and return from an in motion starship.

“Alright, you’ve all done this in simulations. But this will be the first time many of you have done it in real life. This isn’t the holodeck, there’s no safety protocols on so if you crash into an asteroid you die,” Winfield said, deciding not to sugar coat the potential risks. He’d been put in charge of the Luna’s small crafts months ago, and the role had transferred over to the Selene. It was a credit, he supposed, to the Captain that she had not put her new husband in charge despite being of a higher rank (at the time) and looking for a role on the ship that was more prestigious than taking the Delta Shift.

Gesturing to the shuttle craft they had sitting out on the flight deck he said, “Okay William Gakor, you’re up first. Take it out, circle that rock out there and fly back. Simple stuff.”

It was not as simple as all that of course. Though they had tractor beams assisting with the landings and the USS Selene was not taking any extensive or complicated maneuvers for most students it was the first time they’d affected a hanger landing like this. It also did not seem quite so simple to Gakor, but he waited patiently as the other students all took their time. Finally after he let them go first it was turn, and he entered the type 8 shuttle (the Horae) and took the pilot’s chair. Lieutenant Winfield settled into the chair next to him, watching as he flew them first out of the Selene and then after a trip around the asteroid back towards the shuttle bay.

“Slow down a bit,” Winfield said.

Gakor who wanted to post the best time did not slow down. Winfield uttered a small curse as the shuttle came in fast and hard, before Gakor hit the breaks trying to control its forward momentum. It hit the ground of the shuttle bay had, snapping off left side landing strut and screeching across the hull before slamming into the back wall. The Lieutenant looked like he wanted to murder the cadet, but after a deep breath he stood.

“Well, that was something,” Winfield said making a note on his PADD as he got out of the co-pilot’s chair and made his way out of the Horae. He looked at the shuttle’s exterior and made another note.

“We’ll get this fixed up for your next lesson, but maybe we could all spend a few hours in the simulation before next time?” Winfield said adding, “Don’t you think Cadet Gakor?”

Gakor wished the solid metal floor of the engine room would swallow him whole, and only nodded. The other students didn’t look at him, which was for the best as he was currently turning a deep shade of red from the embarrassment.
 

— USS Selene, Cetacean Operations —

The cadets were silent as Lieutenant Scchhttt’aaakkk spoke, his words changed from the clicks and whistles that dolphins used while on Earth’s oceans to whatever language the cadets spoke by the ship’s universal translator. Scchhttt’aaakkk spoke to them about the stars, about the experience of making sense of an infinite pool of the abyss. Though dolphins, and eventually whales had not been the first Earthly species to reach the stars, that had been humans, they had actually had their attentions on the cosmos long before humans speaking to interstellar probes while the monkey men were still working on fire.

A large blue whale also swam in the tank, a linguist he had his own projects and was not due to teach the cadets today. He ignored them, and they tried to ignore him as they focused on the smaller talkative dolphin. Of course ignoring a blue whale was not an easy task, and most of the students had not seen one up close as there were few whales on Starfleet’s teaching staff at the Academy.

Cadet Jura Ibile took notes, stellar cartography was a minor of hers, and something she might was to pursue. Although Scchhttt’aaakkk’s speech was mostly aspirational and not focused on anything that would appear on a test one day, she was the kind of student who took notes on everything, just in case. It might make it a bit harder to study later, but it was worth it in her mind.