Education of Heroes: Charles Tucker
By Jane
Category: Challenge, Drama
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Enterprise is the property of Paramount.
Author's Note: Part of the Education of Heroes challenge at EWB.
Summary: Cadet Charles Tucker has a wall to climb.
He lay face down in the mud, tasting the earth as he drew urgent painful breaths. Lieutenant Dembitzer was yelling at him, calling him every kind of useless.
Charles Tucker loathed Lieutenant Dembitzer. Nothing was ever good enough for the physical training instructor. Wiry, weather-beaten and grey-haired, he must have been nearing retirement, but age had apparently not wearied his sadistic streak.
"On your feet cadet. Let's see you get your pathetic little body over this wall." The officer's voice contained a threat as well as a command. It threatened humiliation, shame.
Charles concentrated on the muscles in his arms and legs and his feet gradually struggled to find a hold in the slippery ground. The wall loomed in front of him. It was tall and every single hand and foothold was smeared with mud from where his fellow cadets had gone before him.
He had fallen from near the very top, winding himself badly as he crumpled to the sodden ground. His hand was bleeding from where he'd made a hapless grab for a handhold. Damn it, he'd nearly completed his first ever perfect run over the obstacle course until then.
He forced himself back to the bottom of the climb and winced as he took hold with his injured hand. His muscles groaned as he dragged them back up the wall.
++++++
Standing in the shower an hour later Charles tried to wash away the physical training session. The mud and the blood drained away, leaving him with leaden muscles and the sharp sting of Dembitzer's words.
"You don't get a second chance at the wall in real life cadet. Let's hope they never put people's lives in your clumsy hands."
In the officer's presence he was overwhelmed with self-doubt. He knew very well that his marks in engineering were the highest, not only from the current crop of cadets but ranked him alongside some of the best the space service had ever seen. But he needed more than technical know-how if he was ever going to make it into deep space. They wouldn't take someone who was about to endanger a mission by falling off a wall.
He knew he was not one of the fittest cadets. That had been a shock at first. He hadn't made it onto any of the Starfleet sports teams even though back home he was local champion at half a dozen things. A whole lot of folks back home had had high expectations of the young man when he was selected for Starfleet.
Rolling his head he gradually let the tension out of his neck muscles as the intense jet of water massaged his back. Finally he stepped out of the shower and dried himself. He changed into a clean cadet uniform and brushed his hair furiously.
In the cadet lounge a group of students were hotly debating the physical training instructor as Charles collapsed onto one of the sagging sofas.
"Has he ever used anyone here's name?" asked Joanna Benzie. The young woman was dextrously braiding her long red hair, still wet from the showers.
Everyone shook his or her head. Dembitzer either called everyone cadet or simply used insults to address the students.
"He called us 'ladies' the other day. Y'know, in that real leering way. Sexist dinosaur," said Alicia Plozza. "And what's with him giving Tucker such a hard time?"
Charles shook his head, trying to laugh off the comment. But the fact that the pretty Alicia had evidently noticed him falling off the wall was yet another thing that would keep him awake that night.
"Bitter and twisted," said Graham Gatton, who sprawled across a sofa wearing shorts, one muscular leg casually dangling over the arm of the seat.
"Well, imagine," he said. "I reckon he's spent his whole life in Starfleet and never once made it into space. Year after year he trains cadets and watches them blast off into space. Whatever the Vulcans might say, we're getting faster and faster, further and further every year. Benny Dembitzer's never left Earth. Not once. I bet he's not even been to Jupiter Station."
Silence fell over the room as each cadet contemplated a life without ever leaving the planet. For the first time Charles thought of the instructor with a certain amount of pity. But he also felt a twinge of fear. Lieutenant Ben Dembitzer's thwarted ambition was too close to home. If he carried on this way in physical training he could end up teaching basic warp mechanics, while his students took the galaxy in their stride.
++++++
Thoughts had indeed kept him awake. A letter from his brother had arrived, starting: "Hey spaceman, how's things?" That hadn't helped.
He stood in the darkness on the training field, now marginally drier than it had been during the afternoon. The wall towered over him. It seemed even taller in the darkness. He took a deep breath then hauled himself quickly up the first few handholds.
Halfway up he stopped as a cloud passed in front of the moon, plunging him into deeper darkness.
"Keep going Mr Tucker, you can't be afraid of the dark." The voice came from below him. He recognised it as the voice of Lieutenant Dembitzer although reason said it couldn't be. Whoever it was had used his name, and he'd never heard Dembitzer speak with so much encouragement.
He fumbled above him feeling for a handhold. Found one. Then tentatively his toes searched the wall. Finally he was able to move further up the climb. The moon reappeared. He glanced down and saw Dembitzer, his hair silver in the moonlight. Shock made him lose his grip and he slithered back to the ground, swearing under his breath.
Dembitzer sat down on a fallen log and patted the space beside him for Charles to sit down. "You keep trying, that's good," he said. "But you're bloody useless at climbing."
"Yes sir," said Charles.
"Now tell me why this matters to you so much. I hear your teachers in physics and engineering are already running a pool on when you're going to win the Cochrane prize," said Dembitzer.
"Sir, I want to do deep space exploration sir, I don't want to be stuck here on Earth," he blushed, realising what he'd said, and then he realised what the instructor had just said and felt himself blush some more.
"Stuck on Earth like me, eh?" chuckled Dembitzer, somehow mixing kindness and irony in equal measure in the laugh.
"Young man, my life hasn't been without adventure. I was in the Earth Peace Corps. You think Earth has been a haven of peace and tranquillity ever since the Vulcans arrived?" asked Dembitzer. "I'm afraid violence and hatred are facts of human nature and they rear their ugly heads from time to time even now - don't you read the newscasts?
"Whenever someone got greedy for land and tried to move a village, we were there to defend the villagers. Whenever the anti-technology extremists tried to blow up a research station, we defused the bombs - or sometimes we failed." For an instant Charles thought he saw a shadow of sadness on the instructor's face, but it could have been a passing cloud.
"When evil madmen built mountain strongholds and tried to take over the world, we raided their lairs."
Charles wondered if he was joking with that last point, although he seemed remarkably serious.
"I've been in the jungles and the mountains. I've seen the oceans from submarines; I've skied in Antarctica. Earth's planet enough for me," he went on.
"But you, Mr Tucker. For you there is the galaxy. Go and climb that wall."
+++++
Charles Tucker stood on top of the wall and looked up at his future. The night sky was dazzling, filled with promise of untold adventure and peril.
Then he looked back down at the grey-haired veteran. The man had seen so much, done so much without ever leaving the planet. Like a loving parent he had made Earth a home safe enough for Charles to be able to leave it, confident that it would still be there no matter where he went.
Charles danced a few giddy steps along the top of the wall feeling freer than he had since the day he had arrived at the academy. The expectations of his friends, family and teachers were lifted from his shoulders. He felt so light he could fly.
"Yeeee-hah!" he shouted to the moon, the stars, to the Earth as he leapt skyward in a burst of joy.
He thumped into the muddy ground and rolled onto his back, bathing in the starlight and grinning.
"Idiot," muttered Dembitzer, smiling.
The End
He lay face down in the mud, tasting the earth as he drew urgent painful breaths. Lieutenant Dembitzer was yelling at him, calling him every kind of useless.
Charles Tucker loathed Lieutenant Dembitzer. Nothing was ever good enough for the physical training instructor. Wiry, weather-beaten and grey-haired, he must have been nearing retirement, but age had apparently not wearied his sadistic streak.
"On your feet cadet. Let's see you get your pathetic little body over this wall." The officer's voice contained a threat as well as a command. It threatened humiliation, shame.
Charles concentrated on the muscles in his arms and legs and his feet gradually struggled to find a hold in the slippery ground. The wall loomed in front of him. It was tall and every single hand and foothold was smeared with mud from where his fellow cadets had gone before him.
He had fallen from near the very top, winding himself badly as he crumpled to the sodden ground. His hand was bleeding from where he'd made a hapless grab for a handhold. Damn it, he'd nearly completed his first ever perfect run over the obstacle course until then.
He forced himself back to the bottom of the climb and winced as he took hold with his injured hand. His muscles groaned as he dragged them back up the wall.
++++++
Standing in the shower an hour later Charles tried to wash away the physical training session. The mud and the blood drained away, leaving him with leaden muscles and the sharp sting of Dembitzer's words.
"You don't get a second chance at the wall in real life cadet. Let's hope they never put people's lives in your clumsy hands."
In the officer's presence he was overwhelmed with self-doubt. He knew very well that his marks in engineering were the highest, not only from the current crop of cadets but ranked him alongside some of the best the space service had ever seen. But he needed more than technical know-how if he was ever going to make it into deep space. They wouldn't take someone who was about to endanger a mission by falling off a wall.
He knew he was not one of the fittest cadets. That had been a shock at first. He hadn't made it onto any of the Starfleet sports teams even though back home he was local champion at half a dozen things. A whole lot of folks back home had had high expectations of the young man when he was selected for Starfleet.
Rolling his head he gradually let the tension out of his neck muscles as the intense jet of water massaged his back. Finally he stepped out of the shower and dried himself. He changed into a clean cadet uniform and brushed his hair furiously.
In the cadet lounge a group of students were hotly debating the physical training instructor as Charles collapsed onto one of the sagging sofas.
"Has he ever used anyone here's name?" asked Joanna Benzie. The young woman was dextrously braiding her long red hair, still wet from the showers.
Everyone shook his or her head. Dembitzer either called everyone cadet or simply used insults to address the students.
"He called us 'ladies' the other day. Y'know, in that real leering way. Sexist dinosaur," said Alicia Plozza. "And what's with him giving Tucker such a hard time?"
Charles shook his head, trying to laugh off the comment. But the fact that the pretty Alicia had evidently noticed him falling off the wall was yet another thing that would keep him awake that night.
"Bitter and twisted," said Graham Gatton, who sprawled across a sofa wearing shorts, one muscular leg casually dangling over the arm of the seat.
"Well, imagine," he said. "I reckon he's spent his whole life in Starfleet and never once made it into space. Year after year he trains cadets and watches them blast off into space. Whatever the Vulcans might say, we're getting faster and faster, further and further every year. Benny Dembitzer's never left Earth. Not once. I bet he's not even been to Jupiter Station."
Silence fell over the room as each cadet contemplated a life without ever leaving the planet. For the first time Charles thought of the instructor with a certain amount of pity. But he also felt a twinge of fear. Lieutenant Ben Dembitzer's thwarted ambition was too close to home. If he carried on this way in physical training he could end up teaching basic warp mechanics, while his students took the galaxy in their stride.
++++++
Thoughts had indeed kept him awake. A letter from his brother had arrived, starting: "Hey spaceman, how's things?" That hadn't helped.
He stood in the darkness on the training field, now marginally drier than it had been during the afternoon. The wall towered over him. It seemed even taller in the darkness. He took a deep breath then hauled himself quickly up the first few handholds.
Halfway up he stopped as a cloud passed in front of the moon, plunging him into deeper darkness.
"Keep going Mr Tucker, you can't be afraid of the dark." The voice came from below him. He recognised it as the voice of Lieutenant Dembitzer although reason said it couldn't be. Whoever it was had used his name, and he'd never heard Dembitzer speak with so much encouragement.
He fumbled above him feeling for a handhold. Found one. Then tentatively his toes searched the wall. Finally he was able to move further up the climb. The moon reappeared. He glanced down and saw Dembitzer, his hair silver in the moonlight. Shock made him lose his grip and he slithered back to the ground, swearing under his breath.
Dembitzer sat down on a fallen log and patted the space beside him for Charles to sit down. "You keep trying, that's good," he said. "But you're bloody useless at climbing."
"Yes sir," said Charles.
"Now tell me why this matters to you so much. I hear your teachers in physics and engineering are already running a pool on when you're going to win the Cochrane prize," said Dembitzer.
"Sir, I want to do deep space exploration sir, I don't want to be stuck here on Earth," he blushed, realising what he'd said, and then he realised what the instructor had just said and felt himself blush some more.
"Stuck on Earth like me, eh?" chuckled Dembitzer, somehow mixing kindness and irony in equal measure in the laugh.
"Young man, my life hasn't been without adventure. I was in the Earth Peace Corps. You think Earth has been a haven of peace and tranquillity ever since the Vulcans arrived?" asked Dembitzer. "I'm afraid violence and hatred are facts of human nature and they rear their ugly heads from time to time even now - don't you read the newscasts?
"Whenever someone got greedy for land and tried to move a village, we were there to defend the villagers. Whenever the anti-technology extremists tried to blow up a research station, we defused the bombs - or sometimes we failed." For an instant Charles thought he saw a shadow of sadness on the instructor's face, but it could have been a passing cloud.
"When evil madmen built mountain strongholds and tried to take over the world, we raided their lairs."
Charles wondered if he was joking with that last point, although he seemed remarkably serious.
"I've been in the jungles and the mountains. I've seen the oceans from submarines; I've skied in Antarctica. Earth's planet enough for me," he went on.
"But you, Mr Tucker. For you there is the galaxy. Go and climb that wall."
+++++
Charles Tucker stood on top of the wall and looked up at his future. The night sky was dazzling, filled with promise of untold adventure and peril.
Then he looked back down at the grey-haired veteran. The man had seen so much, done so much without ever leaving the planet. Like a loving parent he had made Earth a home safe enough for Charles to be able to leave it, confident that it would still be there no matter where he went.
Charles danced a few giddy steps along the top of the wall feeling freer than he had since the day he had arrived at the academy. The expectations of his friends, family and teachers were lifted from his shoulders. He felt so light he could fly.
"Yeeee-hah!" he shouted to the moon, the stars, to the Earth as he leapt skyward in a burst of joy.
He thumped into the muddy ground and rolled onto his back, bathing in the starlight and grinning.
"Idiot," muttered Dembitzer, smiling.
The End