Adagio

A fic by: Raven W. Catz

"Arietta Knight. Emphasis: computer programming. Career track: Science officer." It always surprises me how austere our school records are. I suppose the essentials are all that Starfleet needs to know about its cadets, but still. You're being groomed to serve on a Starship, to live where you work, potentially for years at a time, and all they want to know is what you majored in? What about your personality? What about the time you spend away from the engineering room, off the Bridge, away from the banks of computer terminals?

Starfleet hasn't asked me where I came from. Space, by way of Detroit, in case you were wondering. I hail from the seat of industry in the Midwest, though I was born on a Starship. My father was Chief Medical Officer of the USS Constitution, my mother one of his nurses. I grew up splashing in the clear waters of the Great Lakes. I guess my family wanted me to grow up somewhere finite. They chose my father's old hometown. Something about the schools being better on Earth. They did have a point. Schooling on a Starship was still woefully inadequate, concentrating the curriculum on the primary mission of each ship. On Earth, things were much more comprehensive. In school, I studied a lot of things, but I settled on computer programming. Something was comforting about spending my days staring at long strings of code. Speaking to a voice that always answered with a detached indifference was soothing. Maybe that explains why, at the Academy, most of my friends are Vulcan. That, and… well, I never bother much with socializing. It's not that I'm shy, and it's not that I'm unfriendly or prudish. I'm just always… busy.

Arietta tapped her datapad dismissively, storing away her latest journal entry. Almost fluidly, she slipped the pad into her schoolbag and swept up her wavy, dirty blonde hair, twisting it into a tight bun. Somehow, she still felt out of place among her friends if her hair was down. Tonight was Tuesday night, and her weekly study session would be starting soon.

It wasn't as if the Vulcans would judge her in any way for her long, unruly hair. It was a special breed of Vulcan that entered Starfleet to begin with, but it was still odd to be the only girl in the room twisting a curl around her finger as she drilled herself in programming code. Arietta waved the thought out of her head as she straightened her Cadet's sweater and strode out the door of her room.

This study session would go much like every other Tuesday night. It began with discussion, the newest topics, any personal weaknesses that should be addressed. Soon, it would move on to a self-guided quiz, with each of the cadets working against time and each other to complete the most recent assignment. They always did this. Call it… the Vulcan equivalent of a game. There was no true competition, not in the human sense. Simply the satisfaction of knowing your homework was done, and it had been checked and approved by your peers.

This particular Tuesday, however, quickly deviated from the normal routine, at least in Arietta's opinion. It wasn't as if the plan for the evening would change. But the roster, three of Arietta's best Vulcan friends plus herself, had been altered slightly. Twenty minutes into discussing the difficulties of reprogramming computers that had been built by non-Federation civilizations, a fifth individual joined the session.

Arietta had seen him before. In fact, he was somewhat familiar, as he frequently assisted the computer sciences department in the lower level classes. Arietta had never seen him among the upper level students, however. He was tall and thin, not atypically so, for a Vulcan. He scanned the room in silence, wearing the typical expression of casual disinterest that Arietta had grown very familiar with. He sat at the far end of their table in silence. None of the others even acknowledged his presence. And Arietta would have followed suit except that he was STARING, pointedly, at her. Periodically, his eyes would dart to one of the other Vulcans, if they made a particularly valid point, but they otherwise remained trained on Arietta. And he remained silent.

Arietta's hand found a tendril of hair that had escaped her bun, and began playing with it absently, her only giveaway that she was nervous. She was aware that the visitor had zeroed in on this action, and she abruptly placed her hand back on the tabletop. She pulled out her datapad and textbook, and her comrades did the same. Mercifully, she soon found herself engrossed in their assignment, too busy to notice their visitor further.

The rest of the night passed in typical fashion. Homework was completed swiftly, Arietta finishing nearly as swiftly as her contemporaries. Upon revision of the work, it was discovered that she would have had the highest score, having found two errors in a string of code that had eluded her friends. Finally, with a casual note that next week would be the last session before exams, everyone began packing to leave. It was then that Arietta realized that their guest was still present. He remained seated, watching her as the other Vulcans swiftly scooped up their things and filed out. Arietta, flustered, stared pointedly at the table, stuffing her paper notes back into a file. Stuffing this into her bag, she turned back to retrieve her datapad, only to find it hovering a few feet off the table, in the hands of the stranger. He said nothing, peering at the pad for a moment. His lips twitched in an unreadable expression, and he placed the pad in her hands. Startled, she took it, and sidestepped him silently, retreating down the hall and back toward her dormitory.

Arietta shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Class hadn't even started yet, and still she was nervous. What if he came to observe class? She turned to one of her classmates, a Vulcan named T'Lin.

"Did you notice last night?" Arietta insisted, for the tenth time. "He spent the whole night STARING at me. It was so uncomfortable."

"Impossible." T'Lin replied. "You are imagining. Besides, we have been in this class 127 times already, and never once has Spock attended or assisted. There is one week before exams. Your fears are invalid."

"What's going on?" Stephanie Chan, one of Arietta's fellow humans plunked her bag down with a thud. Arietta jumped.

"Arietta believes that Commander Spock will be observing class today, a notion that is, in human vernacular, utterly ridiculous."

"But why was he staring at me?" Arietta asked, a whine beginning to creep into her voice. T'Lin looked at her sharply.

"You were imagining. I have told you this seven times already, and I shall not tell you again. You admit yourself that he observed all of us in the discussion. Perhaps the professor suspects someone of cheating…"

"You think they think I'm cheating?" Arietta asked, exasperated. "Just because I'm studying my ass off to keep up with three Vulcans? Do they know how much time I spend poring over our assignments?"

Arietta was quickly hushed as the professor, a stately, older man, strode into the room. Beside him, much to Arietta's horror, was Commander Spock. He simply nodded to the class, and picked through the room, silently taking a seat behind Arietta. T'Lin turned and looked at her, expression nearly unreadable, save for the single cocked eyebrow that gave her away.

"Is there something wrong, Cadet?" His voice was carefully measured. T'Lin quickly turned back to her books.

"No, Commander." She muttered, leafing through her text.

Arietta could feel the hair on the back of her neck standing on end for the next hour. She could barely pay attention to their review lectures. Frantically, she swept her mind for the questions she had wanted to ask, before she wouldn't get another chance. But her mind was a useless blank, for the first time in who only knew when. The worst part was that she was getting nervous for no reason. Perhaps Commander Spock was sent to see if she had been cheating. It would be hard to deny that her actions were consistent with those of a cheater. Though she knew she had nothing to fear, she was still livid that someone would think such things. It was true that she had the top grade in the class, a feat in itself among a class of Vulcans. But Arietta had studied day and night for that honor. Accusing her of cheating simply because she was human was… primitive and ignorant, something she couldn't believe a Vulcan would be capable of.

And as the lecture continued, she felt her nerves turn over solidly to irrational anger. How dare he sit behind her, breathing down her neck, peering over her shoulder. How dare he think her inferior simply because of her human upbringing. She found herself clutching her datapad tersely, crescent-moon shaped marks appearing on the screen where her fingers dug in angrily.

The class dragged on forever as Arietta sat, mired in her aggravation. Everything about the class was eating at her. And after class, she still had to go to the library, put the finishing touches on her thesis. Or was she supposed to have cheated on that as well?

Finally, she realized that class was over. She hastily stood and began stuffing things into her bag, a beat behind the rest of the class. Again, as she reached for her datapad, she was irritated to find it in the hands of Commander Spock, who was now standing silently beside her.

"I kinda need that for my homework." She snapped. He looked at her, cocking an eyebrow, face still maddeningly unfazed.

"My apologies." He handed it back to her, and she dropped it unceremoniously into her bag.

"If you'll excuse me, Commander, I have work to do. We can't all be as effortlessly intelligent as you are." She muttered darkly.

"I was wondering, perhaps, if I could have a minute of your time, Cadet Knight."

Arietta sighed audibly and put down her bag. She rounded on him, glaring.

"For what? I have a lot of work to do. Look, I'm sorry I'm not naturally talented, like everyone else in this class, but I'm not a liar, and your implications that I might be are entirely—" She trailed off, seeing his sharply raised eyebrow.

"Cadet Knight, I'm not sure what you are talking about, but your record is exemplary. I am here to inform you that you have been offered a position as a Junior Science Officer aboard the USS Enterprise, effective upon your graduation. I wished to inform you last night, but I did not wish to keep you, as you seemed to be in a rush."

Arietta collapsed into her seat. She stared at Spock dumbly.

"You… you weren't spying on me to make sure I'm not cheating?" She asked slowly.

"Are you cheating, Cadet Knight?"

Arietta shook her head.

"Then it would not be logical to assume that you were."

Arietta continued to sit, staring dumbly in Spock's general direction. At length, he prompted her gently.

"Cadet?"

"Hmm?" She looked up. "Oh… right. I have to work on my thesis." She picked up her bag and began retreating.

"And, uh… sorry. For snapping at you. I mean… Sorry."

"Your apology is unnecessary, Cadet Knight. I will see you on campus?"

"Uh… yeah."

Arietta stumbled numbly across campus as a haze of drizzle began to fall. She barely registered this fact until she was already safe inside the library. Fidgeting with the hem of her now uncomfortably damp cadet's sweater, she wandered up the stairs to the computer terminal she had reserved for the semester.

It was only then that the reality of the situation washed over her. Welling up inside her, in waves, came choking sobs and disbelieving laughter. She put her head down at the desk, a detached part of her watching the race to see which of her conflicting responses would tumble out of her first. And then, it hit her.

"Oh my god, what have I done?" Her head flew up from the desktop. Cadets around her began shifting in their seats, some giving her a side-eye, others moving uncomfortably away. With a groan, she pulled out her datapad and began listlessly flicking through it for her thesis. She had lost her temper in front of a superior officer. A superior officer on the ship to which she would be assigned. For the next FIVE YEARS.

"I might as well just crumple this whole thing up and throw it in the trash." She thought to herself, looking over her thesis dully. "My career's over before it's even started."

But she began reading it over, again, anyway. Even if she was assigned to programming the Enterprise's automatic waste recycling system for the next five years, she supposed it would at least still say USS Enterprise on her resume…