—- Starfleet Academy, Classroom —-

The building, as it had ever been, was mostly glass and chrome. Like one of those historical Apple stores that had once existed everything seemed clean and prone to fingerprints. Captain Adriana Cruz adjusted her uniform from the USS Seattle and watched as students’ wandered the halls. To her they had once been her contemporaries and now they seemed like children in their uniforms indicating what year they were, and what educational specialization they were in. She slipped past a gangle of students to enter a classroom pushing a glass door open and standing silently at the back of the room.

A woman with greying hair was pointing at the weak points of a Borg Cube. Or what they assumed were the weak points. She too was in a uniform, though hers indicated that she was a Command officer and that she was an instructor there. She noticed Cruz and smiled, giving the students their reading for the next week and dismissing the class.

”Well Captain Adriana Cruz,” she said as the students cleared off, some pausing to look at the officer at the back of the class but none overly impressed. Adriana Cruz was not famous, and they had all seen a Captain before, heck the course was being taught by a Captain. To them Cruz might have been in charge of the facilities’ janitorial team rather than a starship on the frontier between Klingon and Romulan space.

”Ma’am,” Cruz said, out of force of habit more than anything.

”We’re both Captain’s now call me Camila,” the woman said.

”That feels weird, Camila,” Cruz said testing the name as if it might break.

”You lived with me for two years, you should be used to it,” Captain Camila Delgado said.

”I always called you ma’am,” Cruz said. In a way despite the formality the woman was more a mother to Adriana Cruz than her own mother had been. Coming from a broken home, with no advantages in life, it was here at Starfleet Academy that she’d grown from the Mexico City street rat into something else. An officer worthy of Starfleet. When she’d needed housing, and adult guidance Captain Camila Delgado, also from Mexico City had seen potential and took her in. 

”That you did,” Camila nodded, smiled and began to put away her PADD in a leather messenger bag. 

“I have my own ship now,” Cruz said, caught somewhere between wanting to be modest and wanting to brag about her achievements to the one person in the world that had believed in her. She wanted Captain Delgado to understand that the effort that she’d put into a young Adriana Cruz had paid off.

”USS Seattle, I know. I Captained one of the first Intrepid-class ships. A Rhode Island-class is quite an achievement for a new Captain,” Delgado said.

”It’s small but we get by,” Cruz said, “I have a good crew.”

“And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,” Captain Delgado said, quoting an old navel poem, “Though a good crew helps a lot. A Captain is only as successful as the crew that she had behind her. What would Captain Kirk have been without Ambassador Spock, or Captain Picard without Data?”

Cruz nodded, “I was taking some extra training. I kind of got the Captain’s chair suddenly so they’ve decided to put my through a few days of courses. Were you free for dinner?”

Delgado nodded, “There’s a good sushi place off campus, let’s go there.”

”I haven’t had sushi since I lived here,” observed Cruz. She’d never felt replicator sushi was up to the standard of good sushi and none of the Starbases that she’d visited had been as fresh as those resturants on the Pacific. Unlike the food that she’d grown up with in Mexico City, she found that you had to do sushi right, or it was all kind of bland.

As the pair left the classroom Captain Delgado nodded, “Well then you‘re in for a treat. I’ve got two more classes but I’ll meet you by the shuttle loading dock at six o’clock.”

Though the Starfleet Academy on Earth was mostly human Cruz saw everything from pointed ears of Vulcans to the blue heads of Bolians as she walked around campus. She made it to her next class easily enough and sat through a lecture on first contact, and was amused to see that the USS Seattle’s disastrous first contact where the male crew members had all been poisoned was mentioned as to what not to do. Not that half the ship almost dying was a laughing matter, but when she’d been an Academy student most of their references had pre-dated the Enterprise C, and not been at all current.

The courses were not particularly intensive, and did not come with any grading. It was not as if they were going to take the USS Seattle away from her, it was just a refresher of what to do and what not to do now that she had moved from First Officer to Commanding Officer. The fact was the days of too many good officers and too few ships was almost inverted now, as since Fleet Day and the Borg attack Starfleet was struggling to put enough Captains in chairs.

The sushi place was a small restaurant located beneath some apartments about twenty minutes away from campus. Orders were inputed on a touch screen at the table and then a plate of sushi materialized at the table. Years ago it would have come past on a conveyor belt, allowing patrons to pick and choose the pieces they wanted to.

”They offered me a new command after Fleet Day,” Delgado said, “An Excelsior II.”

Cruz nodded sticking a piece of roll in her mouth, “Those are nice, you obviously didn’t take it?”

Delgado nodded, “I’m not young anymore. There’s no more horizons for me to conquer. I like teaching and I’m good at it. I’d be a fine captain again, but realistically even if my knees were better I’m not going to run around fighting the Gorn or whoever attacks us next.”

”Could still be the Borg,” Cruz said.

”They’re nothing if not persistent,” the teacher agreed.

”Awhile ago I found my father, or rather his family found me. Turns out I have a half-brother and half own a winery,” Cruz said.

”So you’re half important now,” teased Delgado.

Cruz smiled, “Half. Anyway my brother’s retired from the fleet and is asking me to as well. I’m not going to but it’s tempting sometimes, being offered this life that’s far more idyllic than anything I could have imagined.”

”I can’t tell you what to do with your life, but you’re meant to do this. I don’t say that to every student I have, and I don’t take every student into my home and feed them either,” Delgado said, “You’re more than  someone who works at a winery.”

Cruz nodded and ate her next piece of nigiri, a salmon on rice. It was not as if she was thinking of leaving Starfleet, but it was good to be told that she was making the right choice in at least for now leaving the winery business to her brother. Her future was in the stars, no matter how idyllic life on Earth might present itself as.