Starfleet Academy

Chapter 1

The City by the Bay

"So Captain…or…can I call you Christopher?"

"You're new to this aren't you?" said Pike, in a tone that was blunt but not unkind. The Denobulan in the chair facing him fidgeted a little.

"Well yes…but don't worry I have a degree in Xenopsychology from…"

"The Phlox Institute. I know, you've adopted the human custom of displaying your degree on the wall. Congratulations, by the way. I know how prestigious that place is. You must be a bright young man."

"Thank you" Dr. Zefix couldn't help but smile a little at this before pressing on with some determination "But of course we're not here to talk about me"

"Sorry, it's a defense mechanism but I'm pretty sure you picked up on that." The doctor made a note on his PADD.

"Yes but…if you know what you are doing why do you continue to do it? Unless you are testing me which honestly I don't appreciate."

"I'm not that arrogant or that big of an asshole. I know most of what's wrong with me. If I may use an engineering metaphor, any moron can tell when a warp core is offline. It takes a genius to fix the thing."

"That is a good point but…Christopher…" He had to admit that calling Captain Pike by his first name felt inappropriate but if he kept focusing on rank he would never stop being intimidated by the man and that wouldn't serve either of them. "It lets you off the hook; thinking about things that way." Pike rearranged his arms so that he no longer rested them on the arms of the chair. Dr. Zephix felt a little relieved. He hadn't been in Starfleet long but one of the pieces of advice he had paid close attention to was something Dr. Boyce had told him about posture; "You know most humans cross their arms when they're being defensive? High-ranking officers, they try not to do this too much. They worry that their crew might pick up on it. You know they're uncomfortable when they sit the way they do when they're in the captain's chair. Rigid arms, straight back, leaning slightly forward. That means their bracing themselves."

"That's not untrue." Said the captain, shifting he weight yet again "But I didn't say it was impossible, I just meant it was hard."

"Fair point. We'll come back to that later. But what I really want to get to is how you feel about your new assignment"

"That's a nice way of asking me how I feel about being declared unfit for command and getting pushed into the jobs for the dumb pretty boys, fuck ups and relics."

"Don't you think that's an unfair judgment upon recruitment and teaching? Training cadets is no easy job"

"Sorry. I forgot some people actually want to do that and some have to for family reasons. Neither of these apply to me. I'm here on earth because my best friend told the brass that I was crazy" Zefix cleared his throat and double-checked Pike's medical file.

"I know you know there's a difference between "crazy" and "exhausted""

"Yeah and I also know the difference between "tired, needs to take a couple months leave" and "is in serious danger of breakdown, you can't trust this guy not to blow up his own ship, maybe a straightjacket is in line here…" Pike passed his hand over his face in an irritated gesture "I get it ok…I know I'm being hyperbolic here. But I'm sorry. You asked me how I felt and the answer is "shitty". I feel hurt and betrayed and weak and powerless. I'm humiliated and I'm angry. I feel like I let everyone down… I'm not the man they thought I was. I'm not the man I tried to be. So yeah, the short answer is I feel like shit. Right now I hate this assignment and would beat the tar out of it if that were physically possible. But you ask me how I feel next week and I'll be more reasonable and soon I'll be able to pretend I don't care then I'll have adjusted to it, because that's what people do. We done here?"

"Well that's…um… I suppose we are for now, I suppose…if you want us to be, but we will talk about all of this." Zefix knew he shouldn't be letting the man go like this but he felt he needed some time to come up with a rejoinder to the torrent of frustration that had just blindsided him.

"Thanks, I'll see you next Thursday but now I've got dinner with an old friend"

Pike opted to walk rather than take a cab. Now that he was out of a climate-controlled therapist's office and alone in the familiar city feeling real air on his face he begun to feel better. He knew the Denobulan was just doing his job and the sessions would get easier as he became resigned to babysitting cadets and hoping that eventually someone would be nice enough to give him another ship. It wasn't that he didn't believe in counseling, hell he was the first person to suggest to people that they seek help if they needed it. It just didn't work very well for him. Maybe he'd just gone over to the Phil Boyce Method for maintaining mental health, the main doctrine of which was that alcohol was a much better treatment option than medication. But of course if it hadn't been for Phil he'd still be in command of the Yorktown.

He took deep breaths and tried to concentrate on the city around him. During his lifetime more and more of the beautiful ancient buildings were disappearing in favor of modern constructions. It was a shame, to Pike a great deal of San Francisco's charm lay in the eclectic mix of the old and the new. An excellent example of this was the way ancient ethnic enclaves like Chinatown now coexisted with Non-Terran communities like the Orion district and Little Andoria. His destination was the former and he found it. As he walked down the familiar side street he pretended not to notice the knowing smirks he was getting from other human males heading in and out of the clubs which announced the presence of live green women in Standard, English and Orion. He went past them to a cluster of apartments and knocked on the door of one of them. It was opened by an unfamiliar Orion male.

"What do you want, pinkskin?"

"Is that Chris?" came a yell from an unseen woman at the top of the stairs

"Who's Chris?" asked the stranger glaring at him.

"That would be me. Illyiana's expecting me so if you'd get out of my way that would be much appreciated" The Orion must have picked up on the look of 'You don't want to mess with me tonight' Pike was sending his way because he stepped to the side and let the captain pass.

"Fine I'm leaving now!" he yelled "But you tell that psycho daughter of yours that no one treats my son like that. You hear me? Your lucky he's not pressing charges."

Pike climbed the short flight of stairs and walked into the kitchen where was greeted with a hug from the beautiful green woman he'd come to see.

"God Chris it's been forever. I've missed you! Did you always have this much grey in your hair or is that new?" Though Pike had intended just to give her a friendly hug then break apart but they were still holding each other. Old habits always died hard with him. She had a few grey hairs herself but in a way that made it clear that she died it back to her usual jet-black on a regular basis.

"Wow, you really know how to make a guy feel good about himself"

"Sorry baby, not my line. How's about I just make you feel good instead?" She replied in a tone that said she knew how cheesy her innuendo was but couldn't care less and before he knew it she'd pushed him down onto her kitchen table and had begun unbuttoning the front of her dress. Old habits apparently didn't even bother dying with them. Before she could finish disrobing he pulled her down on top of him and kissed her for the first time in years.

"I missed you too, Illiyana. I really did" She smirked at him as if to say "well duh" and they resumed kissing with greater intensity. Pike was just about to reach down and try and do something about the fact that his clothes were inconveniently on his body when a female voice interrupted them from the doorway.

"Oh sorry mom, I didn't know you'd have someone over…also can you guys try and stay as clothed as possible if you're going to be on the kitchen table, or at the very least clean it afterwards?" Pike desperately tried to stand up only to be pushed back down by Illiyana

"I can do whatever I like young lady this is my house and if you don't like what I do you don't have to live here. Honestly you sound so Terran sometimes" Pike managed to get free and sit up on the kitchen table; a position that though failing to erase any of the awkwardness gave him back a little dignity.

"I am Terran. If you didn't want me to be you should have stayed on Orion." grumbled the girl. She looked to be in her late teens, maybe early twenties at the most. She looked a lot like her mother but that might just be that they had the same phenotype. Thick dark hair, full lips without the black lipstick her mother wore. Also they both had dark emerald green skin, as opposed to the lime or yellow green color that was more common. This was due to Illiyana's having come from a fairly rural sparsely populated continent on her home planet.

"I meant human sweetie"

"Says the woman who has a human spread-eagled on the table…hey Captain Christopher Pike right?" Pike couldn't tell if the girl's recognition made him feel kind of proud or more embarrassed.

"Where do think you got your taste for men in uniform from?"

"Its not a taste. Starfleet guys are used to aliens therefore less annoying questions." She looked at Pike a little nervously "I'm D'Nal by the way."

"D'Nal of course. I'm sorry I didn't recognize you it's been so long. Don't…don't…I made this situation awkward. Your mother and I are very old friends and I was…we, well we're going out to dinner…"

"Oh crap I forgot about our reservations. Let me get dressed, I'll just be a minute." Illiyana darted out of the room leaving her daughter and her sometimes lover together.

"Who was that?" Pike asked D'Nal gesturing towards the stairs to indicate the man who'd just left

"Oh just my ex's dad. Things did not end well between us and so he thought he could get his way if he came over and bullied my mom. Its…its just too stupid" Pike took that as a cue not to enquire further so he just nodded and changed the subject.

"You say you hang around with cadets…have you ever thought about it for yourself, as a career option?" He didn't know why he was saying this. He supposed part of him wanted to practice his recruiting pitch and figured that the girl would be a good test case. Maybe it was an instinct. Maybe it was just the fact that he'd given too much of his life to this to say what he sometimes thought, that joining the Fleet was just asking the universe to mess with you.

D'Nal averted his gaze again "I, um…I don't think they'd want me. I've kinda got a criminal record"

"So did I. Any felonies?"

"No, just a couple of shoplifting charges and…I seem to get in bar fights a lot."

"Then you're good." There was a brief silence, or near silence for it was punctuated by Illyiana swearing from the other room and throwing things around the room.

"What's your rap sheet look like if I may ask?"

"I've also been known to appreciate a good bar fight in my day. Now I mainly break them up what with being a responsible adult and all. Also if you want to know something I was too young and hadn't finished high school."

"How did you get in? Are they really not picky or did you hack into the system or something?" Pike was pretty sure he heard the shower on in the other room, and the kind with water too, not a sonic.

"Archer just looked the other way, thought I had potential apparently. I know why they make you finish your education before enlisting but I feel like I learned everything I need to know at the academy. Of course I went to school on one of those godforsaken terraformed colonies that they only check in on every thirty years, it was a mess." As soon as he finished this thought he realized that he had somehow said the wrong thing by the look on her face. All D'Nal said though was

"Yeah, I know those places."

They were interrupted by Illyiana's return in a very tight black and silver dress, with a plunging neckline and two long slits up the side.

"You look lovely, where are we going?" he asked

"That Vietnamese place in the New Ferry Building with the great view. What were you two talking about?"

"The Captain was asking me if I'd ever considered a career in Starfleet." Illiyana whipped around and glared at Pike

"No! Chris…no! I cannot believe…"

"I was just asking her if she'd thought about it!" Protested Pike

"You are not turning her into a redshirt! I will not have my only daughter work as a target practice for bored Klingons!"

"First thing, Security personnel…" Illyiana visibly rolled her eyes "Redshirts have very high survival ratings considering the duration of the kind of missions we work and the amount of unknown and hostile species we encounter. Redshirts do not always die. MACOS especially…"

"No!"

"Anyway I never said "redshirt" she could be science, command, communications…there are a lot of different specialties"

Illiyana snorted "Yeah this girl sure looks like command material to me"

"Hey!" said Pike and D'Nal in unison

"Honey take it from someone who knows you. Starfleet is not for you. You do realize that you have to take orders people for a start"

"Mom if you knew me you'd realize that that is the one thing you could say that would make me go over to a recruiting center right now."

"You know what, I am late for my dinner reservation but we are going to talk about this later." She grabbed Pike by the arm and proceeded to pull him out the door. "I'll be back sometime tomorrow morning."

"Honestly Chris, what were you thinking?"

"I thought the spring rolls were great. I don't know what your problem was." They were lying together in the bed of Pike's new apartment staring up at the ceiling.

"You know what I mean. I was talking about my daughter" Pike took this as his cue to get up and pull on his clothes, he'd never been good at arguing naked. Illyiana remained among the rumpled bed sheets glaring at him.

"What on earth possessed you to try and recruit her? I realize you have this thing for hopeless cases…"

"Is that how you'd characterize D'Nal? I suppose I just thought that she could use her proclivities for good rather than property destruction. Also did that guy at your place call me pinkskin? I thought only Andorians used that one."

"Fine, we don't have to have this conversation. Just add it to the list of stuff we don't talk about." Pike rolled his eyes so hard at this one it was almost audible

"I have no problem talking about any of this. Most of the conversations we consider off limits are designated that way by you, if I may point out. Anyway I'm sorry. I didn't mean to corrupt your daughter. I always thought you felt that I worked for a benign if naïve organization. Or was that just part of your act to get asylum…"

"I do. I just don't share your assumption that bar fights are a mark of character."

"For your information, I don't try and recruit every drunk I come across. I just think that D'Nal seems like a good kid but a fight magnet." In response to this she got up and walked over to the window, clearly caring nothing about whoever might be watching and stood by his side looking out over the Presidio. All she said was;

"I suppose that's a fair assessment." In a way that made it clear that the subject was closed for the night. Then after a long silence she asked;

"So is it good to be home?"

"This isn't home. My home is currently headed out on routine patrol of the Neutral Zone without me. I know that's kind of a clichéd thing for a captain to say…"

"Yeah, well… its also a little clichéd for a starship captain to be with a green girl but…" She made a gesture with both hands as if to say 'but here we are'

"You're right…here we are"