“Let me tell you of my experience of the Academy, of Starfleet. From someone born and raised far away from Earth”, Ayres cast his face down, his eyes raised to keep focus on Vennock, his chief medical officer. They were standing near the door from the conference room back to the bridge of the Sacramento, the two people last to leave and now caught in a conversation that Ayres would have preferred to avoid.

“Smooth corridors, manicured lawns, bright-eyed cadets,” he sighed, a resignation, not anger, “everything was clean and orderly. I don’t think I saw anything broken or tarnished for four years”.

“Why should it be broken? The Academy is a symbol as much as a place. Starfleet is well-resourced and the Academy is where it begins”, Vennock cared, Ayres could tell, but was not someone to dress her questions in platitude.

“It didn’t have to be so perfect. The galaxy has multitudes and many of those experiences are far more difficult than whether to take in the view from a shuttle or the efficient travel of a transporter”, he sat back down in his chair, committing to the conversation and gesturing for Vennock to do the same, “Where I grew up, Aurorath Bay, things were built once and left to rot. The Academy felt unaware of my reality, a distant otherworldly place that it was hard not to resent”.

“Places of learning have been places of exception long, long before the Federation. Would you have preferred the environment to make others uncomfortable? Or for your training to be ineffective because nothing was repaired?” Vennock held an empathetic expression, but one without pity.

“No. I suppose the point is that those four years were not the best of my life. They were a hell of an improvement of the hell from which I came, but learning to live in a completely new manner – and – learning to be an officer wasn’t the easiest process”.

Hostage Simulation, Starfleet Academy, 2376

Cadet Herman Groff was the team leader for the simulation. Groff was born on Earth, the son of a Starfleet admiral, and had often brought up that fact in conversation. Ayres remembered observing Admiral Groff during the first few weeks after commencement and wondered how the composed, seemingly charming and capable admiral had raised his son to be such an asshole.

The simulation conditions were simple: de-escalate the conflict, rescue the hostages, and ensure no-one was killed. They were a team of three: Groff commanding, Ayres and a Bolian cadet named Zill in support. They were only a few months into their training but Ayres was confident enough in Zill. She was grounded, a little cautious, but sensible.

The instructor began the simulation and the Holodeck reconfigured into the large, dimly lit interior of a freighter. There were cargo containers stacked in tall rows all around them and they could hear shouting coming from behind one of the rows. Ayres gave a short laugh, without mirth but one of recognition: he was familiar with places like these, they were where, as a child, he had hidden in order to learn from traded PADDs, or stolen from in order to have something to trade for the PADDs.

Groff unholstered his phaser and tapped at the controls for a few seconds. Ayres looked at him with a furrowed brow and opened his hands in a questioning shrug.

“Preparing for terrorists”, Groff postured, “set your phasers on a wide band”.

Ayres looked at Zill and back to Groff, “A little premature”.

“It’s an order”

Ayres felt his adrenaline rise but breathed in through his nose and responded levelly, “Sir”.

Zill and Ayres repeated the process of unholstering and tapping their phasers. Ayres then returned the phaser to his holster. Zill hesitated for a moment but did the same.

Groff marched forward toward the shouting, the other two cadets falling in line behind him. They turned the corner and were confronted by a scene from a holonovel. There were six kidnappers and an equal number of hostages, all Human, the latter grouped in the middle of an improvised barrier of small cargo containers. The kidnappers were spaced evenly around the group and armed with rudimentary tools, seemingly equipment used for moving and opening cargo. All the people, kidnappers or hostages, were dressed in the same style of civilian dress: fairly standard in the Federation, a little old and worn but not torn or distressed.

“I’m Commander Groff”, the cadet projected his voice, sounding far more imperious than a moment previously. Ayres could not stop a short exhale at ‘commander’ Groff’s roleplaying but kept his focus on the kidnappers.

“Thank you for coming, officer”, one of the kidnappers, a middle-aged woman with cropped grey hair, standing to the left of the row of short containers, took a few steps forward, “we caught this lot”, she gestured at the group of hostages, “they were cracking the containers and rummaging through”.

“Put down your weapons and line up over there”, Groff waved his phaser toward the far wall of the freighter’s cargo bay.

“I said we caught them”, the woman looked stern but confused.

One of the kidnappers, an older man holding a tool that looked like it was used to heat seal metal containers, waved his tool in the direction of the hostages, “Bloody swine, deserve a beating!”

Groff fired his phaser in the direction of the first woman, the wide beam setting colliding with her, two more of the kidnappers closest to her, and two of the hostages. They all went down hard. The woman’s head collided with one of the low cargo containers with a sickening sound.

Ayres was taken aback, startled by Groff’s violence and uncertain what to do next. The simulation had other ideas: programmed to respond dynamically to the cadet’s actions, the man with the tool charged at Zills, the tip of the tool sparkling with superheated solder. The other kidnappers reacted similarly, trying to cover the distance between them and the cadets as quickly as possible.

Judging the distance well, Ayres slightly bent his knees and propelled his considerable mass toward the man charging Zills. His shoulder connected hard with the hologram, the hard-light man feeling more hard than light. Ayres and the man tumbled diagonally across the path of Zills and Groff, skittering across the deck in a mess of entangled limbs.

Zills ran forward toward another of the kidnappers just as Groff, taking two steps back, fired his phaser a second time.

An instant before the beam impacted Zills, the holodeck abruptly re-materialised. The sudden return to the black and gold lines was a shock to the cadet’s senses. Zills looked wide-eyed at Groff. Ayres was on the floor, cushioned against the side of the wall with his hair looking like an unkempt birds’ nest. Groff held his phaser up, fearfully frozen in a moment in time.

Staring at Groff with barely-contained rage, Ayres twisted away from the wall and used his arms like a panther, gathering speed and preparing him for a sprint toward the other cadet.

The arch appeared.

Lieutenant Commander Stelkar, unusually tall even for a Vulcan, paced quickly into the holodeck. He held up his hand toward Ayres. The gesture was a simple one but the command – and Stelkar’s expression – took the wind out of Ayres’ anger.

“Cadet Groff, follow me. Cadet Zills, Cadet Ayres, please join Lieutenant Harris in the debriefing room”.

Conference Room, USS Sacramento, 2402

Captain Ayres tapped the edge of the conference table and started to stand, “I never saw Groff again. He washed out”, he stood up straight, motioning the doctor toward the door, “That was my first lesson. The first one that really stuck out. I judged the Academy incorrectly, according to the old rules. I thought that Groff was untouchable because of who his father was. The Academy was a far better place than I thought.”

Vennock followed Ayres toward the door, “But it was still too fucking clean”, he winked at the doctor as they re-joined the bridge.