Day 2 (Monday)
Spock and Schmidt were on their nineteenth lap of patrolling the exterior of the building. The campus was well lit and fenced in, so it was obvious to Spock their presence was simply a kind of formality designed to impart an appreciation of the responsibility for the lives of one's crew while simultaneously depriving them of needed sleep.
Schmidt was particularly loquacious and seemed entirely enamored with the opposite sex. He had given Spock his opinion on every single female in their squad and was working his way through the instructors when Spock asked if he ever spoke on other topics.
"Well, sure, I guess," he mumbled. "But is there anything better than the ladies?"
"I suppose it is a matter of opinion," Spock answered.
"What, they don't have girls on Vulcan?"
"Of course there are females on Vulcan," he retorted. "They are essential for the perpetuity of the species."
"The what of what?" Schmidt laughed.
"Reproduction."
"So… you only care about girls for their baby boxes?"
"I presume you are referring to reproductive organs," Spock replied, mildly surprised by Schmidt's increasingly deplorable euphemistic language.
"Yeah, as a-"
"Females have value beyond their capacity to bear offspring," he interrupted, stopping in his tracks to stare at his squad mate.
"Well, sure, but they also have amazing-"
"I do not care to discuss this matter further," Spock said, tucking his hands behind his back and resuming his brisk pace.
After another hour, Leslie Saxena and Angelica Spooner arrived to relieve them.
"Hey Angie," Schmidt cooed, flashing a brilliant smile at the slim, dark-skinned girl. "Can I call you Angie?"
"Yeah, whatever," Spooner muttered, keeping her eyes half closed and snatching the flashlight out of Schmidt's hands.
Spock handed his flashlight over to Leslie Saxena and he and Schmidt returned to the barracks. At the duty desk, he stopped to fill out the log as per the instructions posted on the wall. Schmidt kept walking and was halfway across the room when Spock stopped him.
"You are required to sign your name to the log for accountability," he insisted.
"Sign it for me. I'm beat," Schmidt said, resuming his course toward the stairs.
"That is not the proper procedure," Spock argued. "Come sign the log."
"Or else what? You'll tell on me?" Schmidt sneered, entering the stairwell and slamming the door behind him.
Spock deliberated how to annotate Schmidt's refusal to comply with a simple request and settled for penning an extensive statement on the matter before ascending the stairs himself. The rumble of deep snoring trailed down the hallway and grew considerably louder when he entered the room. The door slammed gently behind him, and from over on the female side a shrill voice screamed, "I swear I'm gonna kill the next inconsiderate ass who slams the door!"
"Shut up, you whiney brat!" one of the males shot back.
"He did not just tell me what to do!" she hissed in reply.
The bickering continued as Spock quietly moved over to his bed. Schmidt was already lying face down on the upper bunk, naked except for a pair of white socks. Spock briefly stared at Schmidt's disturbing lack of modesty before sitting down on his bottom bunk and beginning to untie his shoes.
The bed squeaked and creaked at the slightest movement, and soon someone was yelling at him again to keep the noise down. Eventually he settled in between the crunchy sheets, finding their ability to insulate him against the cold temperature of the room inadequate. He was also too tall for the bed and his feet hung ten centimeters off the end and Schmidt's heavy breathing from above caused the entire bed to gently sway.
It seemed that as soon as he drifted into sleep, he was roused by the excruciating sound of screeching music. His squad mates were yelling, but their voices were being drowned out by melodies that sounded like songs for teaching children primary concepts.
"Why?" Schmidt roared, nearly falling off the top bed onto Spock.
"Red and orange, green and blue, shiny yellow, purple too, all the colors that we know, live up in the rainbow…"
Spock struggled to make sense of what was going on when a booming voice interrupted the song over the loudspeaker.
"Rise and shine, trainees! You have fifteen minutes to muster downstairs for the morning's run. Get there!"
The music resumed, this time singing a chorus about elementary shapes. From just around the dividing wall, he could see Leslie Saxena sitting on the floor with her knees curled up to her chest and muttering to herself.
"Aren't there Federation laws against torture?" Schmidt squealed before uttering a long string of obscenities.
As much as Spock was quickly learning to tolerate the human tendency toward exaggeration, the piercing sound was hurting his ears. He quickly donned his shoes and left the room. He could feel a headache emerging and tried to breathe deeply to meditate the pain away, but cadets from other squads were bumping past him to race down the stairs.
The sun had yet to crest the horizon in the distance but the pale glow of the dawn indicated its emergence was soon to come. Condensation from the grass wetted his socks; he greatly disliked being wet. Soon the other members of Sigma Squad joined him on the grassy lawn, each looking worse than the next. Exhaustion and defeat were written into their posture and they all looked listlessly at the ground with half-open, bloodshot eyes.
"Wow, you guys look terrible!" Morrison declared cheerfully, approaching the formation with a swaggering gait. "But that's ok, because I feel great! Welcome to your very first day of training. Are you motivated, trainees?"
Spock and about half the squad murmured, "Aye, sir," which greatly incensed Morrison and resulted in a quick commencement of doing pushups for their low morale.
"Fake motivation is still motivation, trainees. You will be excited to train today, or you will lie about it. Is that clear?" Despite the absurdity of being ordered to lie about his delight in physical punishment, Spock did the same as everyone else and yelled, "Aye sir!"
"Did you like my preschool music this morning, trainees?"
"Aye, sir!" they lied in unison.
"Then you are all weird! Keep pushing!"
When Morrison was finally satisfied, they began thirty minutes of stretching and warm-ups that became intermingled with more mass punishment for minor and even non-existent infractions. It was logical to conclude there was an arbitrary standard at play, and therefore it was impossible to predict what might trigger further torment. He had resigned himself to this last night upon meeting his instructors, but judging by the looks on his squad mates' faces, it was apparent they had not.
At the conclusion of stretching, they reformed into a squad of two columns and marched into the street to begin their morning's run. Spock stood at the head of it with the Denobulan, whom Spock believed was called Rylax. Morrison stood just to Spock's immediate left and issued the order to begin.
It was a painfully slow jog. As a Vulcan, his larger chest cavity, superior lung capacity, efficient circulatory system, and long legs made running easy, but when combined with Earth's weaker gravity and oxygen-rich atmosphere, the exercise failed to even induce a change in his heart or breathing rate. Soon Morrison was running around the formation to make sure they remained together, and Spock took advantage of his absence to focus on meditation. He breathed in and out slowly, focusing on ridding himself of his headache.
"Am I boring you, Trainee Spock?" Morrison roared in his ear, startling him back to a more alert state of consciousness. "Is this run too slow for you?"
"No sir," Spock replied, already aware Morrison intended to increase the pace regardless of his answer.
"You could have fooled me," Morrison snapped. "Trainee Spock is asleep up here, Sigma Squad. How about we pick up the pace just to keep him engaged?"
Morrison quickly doubled their speed and the squad broke out into a run. He could hear the pants of labored breathing from his squad mates behind him, but still Morrison ran faster. Spock kept a steady pace with him, unaffected by the increase in speed.
"We can stop when Trainee Spock is no longer bored by our morning workout," Morrison yelled, though Spock could easily detect strain in his voice.
Soon they were sprinting. To his right, he could see Rylax starting to struggle and could hear most of the footfall of his comrades beginning to fade into the distance. Before long, they returned back to the barracks area, having completed their five-kilometer run in slightly less than fifteen minutes. Spock and Morrison were the first to arrive on the lawn, immediately followed by Rylax, who had fallen slightly behind and seconds later by Angelica Spooner, who collapsed on the grass and began dry heaving.
The other members of Sigma Squad began trickling in and Morrison left to collect the stragglers. Susan Spencer limped in last, cherry-cheeked and dazed with her white-blonde hair plastered to her sweaty face. Morrison sent her to medical and then resumed yelling at the trainees under his command. Spock noticed a slight hobble to Morrison's gait as they initiated cool down stretches, but he strode angrily amongst the squad, eventually stopping in front of Spock.
"You don't look like you even broke a sweat, Trainee Spock," Morrison said in a tone that sounded falsely sweet. "Why is that?"
Spock stood at attention for Morrison, looking calmly into his eyes and seeing nothing but some very intense emotion he could not adequately name.
"Vulcans naturally possess a higher degree of cardiovascular fitness and endurance," Spock answered.
"Well, since you don't ever seem to get tired, how about you pull a shift on guard every night until you graduate from this course, just to help your buddies out?" Morrison said, his voice growing quiet.
Spock nodded slowly, but then had the presence of mind to add, "Aye, sir."
They were given a short amount of time to perform hygiene and change into their gray uniforms. They moved in a rhythm that was somehow both rushed and lethargic. As they trudged up the stairs, Schmidt stomped past him, glaring and muttering, "Thanks a lot, Seabiscuit."
"I am unaware of that term, but I deduce it is some form of insult," Spock said, but Schmidt had already turned his back and resumed climbing the stairs ahead of him.
"Maybe more like a backhanded compliment," replied a female voice half a step behind him.
"Clarify," Spock said, turning to see Spooner.
"Seabiscuit isn't a term; he was a famous racehorse from like, centuries ago," she explained.
They reached the top of the stairs and held the door for Spooner and waited for Leslie Saxena who was still only halfway up the last flight of stairs.
"I think I'm dead," Saxena whined.
"And yet you speak, demonstrating that you are alive," Spock replied, allowing her to pass and then following her into the hallway that led to their barracks room.
She gave him a quizzical look and looked like she was about to say something but thought better of it. As they entered the room, she turned to him and gave him a pleadingly serious look and said, "Is there any chance the next time we go on a run, you could, you know, maybe not try to qualify for the Olympics?"
She didn't wait for his reply and instead went over to her bunk, grabbed her towel and a small bag and walked in the direction of the female lavatory at the opposite end of the room. Spock did likewise, and upon entering the male lavatory, was immersed in an uncomfortable steam fog.
He had never taken a water-based shower. Vulcans as a general rule did not prefer to be wet, and centuries before had invented more efficient sonic-impulse cleansing systems. He took the unoccupied stall at the end and set to work attempting to clean himself as best as possible. The end result left him feeling only slightly less dirty, but now he was covered in a soapy residue that the water had failed to adequately remove.
The next hour passed in a blur of standing in more formations, eating breakfast, marching all over the training campus, more mass punishment, and then standing idly in formation while Morrison and Quinones conferred between themselves for the better part of an hour. Susan Spencer returned from medical bay, and then soon they were marched from the southern gates of the campus and quickly entered a footpath in the woods.
Spock recalled Quinones had mentioned the day would be consumed by "trust-building and confidence exercises," though he was unable to deduce further specifics. They marched four kilometers up several steep hills and he could feel parts of his feet beginning to hurt.
The pain continued to increase until he felt a warm, wet feeling along the backs of his ankles and between his toes. He was rapidly forming blisters from the stiff new boots and the humid air. Judging by the increasingly ginger steps of his squad mates, he inferred they were experiencing similar problems.
Eventually they crested a particularly steep hill and arrived at a wide field covered with various apparatuses featuring walls, ropes, elevated beams, and trenches. Morrison called the group to a halt and they gathered into a horseshoe formation around him.
"Listen up, trainees," he drawled. "Today is about getting to know your squad mates. You will learn to trust each other, listen to each other, work together, and if I get my way, be dirty and miserable together."
"I don't know how I'm going to do all of this stuff," Leslie Saxena moaned to no one in particular. "Even my earlobes are sore."
"I don't know about you, but I have blisters on my heels that feel like they're about the size of dinner plates," Hadrian Scrivner replied to her as they approached the first obstacle.
Spock was slowly beginning to understand humans had a need to express discomfort aloud, but he could not construct a useful explanation for why. It was logical to assume the strenuous activity of the past thirty-six hours had taken a heavy physical toll upon them all, and stating the fact did nothing to change it.
They filed into a single column and started to negotiate the course as a group with Quinones leading the way. The initial obstacles were easy. They climbed a rope ladder to a balance beam three meters off the ground, traversed it, and came to a metal pole that they hung from and pulled themselves along hand over hand.
When he landed, Spock looked ahead and saw Quinones emerging from an underground culvert, soaking wet and covered in mud. Schmidt was already cursing under his breath and getting down on his hands and knees to crawl through the long tunnel and a short time later, Sigma Squad was splashing through it behind him.
Their brand new gray uniforms were now caked with a thick layer of mud and as they continued to negotiate the course, they acquired grass stains, tears, and even a few bloodstains. The obstacles became increasingly difficult and dangerous, as evidenced when one of his male squad mates fell from a rope bridge and hit the hard ground with a discernible crunch, forcing them to stop the course while Morrison called for a medical transport.
They resumed the training once he was evacuated, though Spock sensed an added trepidation among his comrades. The final obstacle was a tall metal ladder with a height of approximately twenty meters that fed onto a platform. Morrison began climbing it and once he was halfway up the apparatus, he motioned for Rylax to begin.
"I can't do this," Spencer muttered.
Spock glanced at her and noticed her face was an even paler shade than usual. "You have negotiated the other obstacles satisfactorily. I fail to see how this one is different."
"You fail to see?" she growled. "It's so high."
"Does that present some added difficulty for you?" Spock asked.
"Yeah. I'm afraid of heights."
"A fear of heights is illogical," Spock remarked. "A high place presents no danger."
"Falling does," she snapped.
"Then it would seem the source of your anxiety has more to do with elementary principles of gravity."
Spencer sneered at him, crossed her arms, and walked toward the front of the group. The rest of the squad ascended the ladder and soon he was alone with Spencer when Morrison motioned for the next person to begin. He looked at her and she crossed her arms and began shaking her head.
"Is there something wrong, trainee?" Quinones yelled, stomping over to them.
"I- I- I just- I can't," she stammered.
"You," Quinones said, snapping his fingers at Spock and pointing to the ladder's first rung. "Go."
As Spock scaled the ladder, he could hear Quinones employ a series of tactics that ranged from helpful encouragement to vicious threats. Eventually, he climbed out of earshot and reached the platform, where he waited with Morrison and the rest of the squad for thirty minutes until Spencer finally appeared. The whites of her eyes were completely red and her cheeks were wet. She crawled onto the platform on her hands and knees, but didn't stand up.
"You scared, Trainee Spencer?" Morrison laughed, slapping his knee and standing from the beam he had been sitting on.
"Yes," she breathed. "Yes, sir."
"Honesty. That's fine," Morrison yawned. "But you got up here, and that's half the battle. The other half is getting down."
A broad smile broke across Morrison's face. The fresh tears that began to cascade down Spencer's cheeks fascinated Spock; he was aware that humans often cried from physical pain and emotions such as grief or even anger, but it seemed the phenomena could also be the result of fear.
"The way I see it is, there's only two ways to get down – you can climb down, or you can fall down," Morrison jeered.
She began to shake and someone whispered, "Come on, is this really necessary?"
Morrison perked up and looked at the rest of the squad and roared, "It absolutely is, Schassler. If a twenty meter ladder reduces you to tears, what's gonna happen when a Klingon attack fleet has you cornered in some remote system? Are you just gonna find a corner and have a little boo hoo?"
Despite his cruel methodology, Morrison's logic was sound.
"Get off my tower, Schassler," Morrison barked, pointing to the rope. "And when you get to the bottom, do pushups until everyone gets down."
Schassler moved to the edge, crouched, took a thick rope between his hands, and began descending backward from the high platform. The descended one by one and Spock was about to take his turn when Morrison stopped him and pointed at Spencer.
"Now, Spencer. You're up," Morrison announced.
"No, please," she panted.
"This isn't a choice. If you don't do this now, I will push the paperwork through to send you home before the day is over. Do you really want to quit Starfleet on your first day because you were scared?"
It took ten minutes, but she eventually made her way to the edge and gripped the rope so hard her knuckles turned white. She wavered and began to hyperventilate.
"Listen to me, Spencer," Morrison said, getting down on his hands and knees to put his face even with hers. "You are getting off this tower one way or another. You can climb down that rope willingly in the next five seconds, or I will put my boot in your chest and-"
She screamed and started to fall backwards but caught herself. Her knees shook so hard that they knocked together, but unexpectedly, she started to descend. Spock examined Morrison and saw a huge grin on his face and he stood up and clapped his hands like a delighted child. His joy was apparent, but what Spock could not determine was whether it was produced by tormenting Spencer or at Spencer's eventual compliance with his demands.
He logically concluded there had to be some sort of safety mechanism in place to prevent serious injury as a result from falling. They were told the purpose of this course was confidence building, not natural selection.
After they had all reached the bottom of the tower, his suspicions were confirmed when Morrison jumped the twenty meter distance from the top of the platform to the screams of a few of his squad mates. He was quickly slowed about halfway down before gently landing on his feet by what appeared to be some kind of buoyant force field. He laughed in a strange-high pitched way and sauntered up to Spencer.
"Did you really think I was going to push you to your death, Spencer?"
She said nothing, and Spock shifted his gaze from her to the rest of Sigma Squad. Most were staring at Morrison in varying shades of awe and disbelief, but he noticed Schmidt in particular was staring at him with something that bordered more on disgust.
They spent the rest of the morning completing more obstacles, including a five-kilometer endurance course over rough terrain that included crawling through more culverts, scaling high walls, and low crawling through sand, grass and mud. His muscles were beginning to ache from the strain of such constantly grueling physical activity, and the blisters on his feet grew larger and burned.
By mid-afternoon they marched back to the training campus in similar states of exhausted, aching, and hungry. They were given about three minutes to eat lunch and he kept his head down and ate as quickly and efficiently as he could. He could not deny his squad mates probably accrued more nutritional supplement through the abandonment of utensils, and he was both internally mildly disgusted and impressed as he watched Schassler eat an apple and a slice of bread out of both hands simultaneously.
After lunch they were herded to a large outdoor shed and given rakes, gardening shears, and bags and set to work cleaning up the landscaping around a number of administrative buildings. Spock's hands had numerous splinters from the wooden obstacles and ropes from earlier in the day, but he was easily the tallest person in his squad and consented to trim stray limbs from many of the taller trees.
"Join Starfleet they said. Be an engineer they said. Apparently what they really meant was do my lawn work," Schmidt complained.
"The work is neither complicated nor impossibly arduous," Spock replied.
"I wasn't talking to you," he snapped.
"Then who were you talking to?" Rylax answered with a peaceful grin.
Schmidt shook his head and stomped off to the other side of the building, and Spock continued to prune overgrown branches while Saxena stacked them into a pile. They worked together without speaking, which seemed a noted reversal of her chatty candor when he had first met her. Her face was red and he surmised she was sustaining too much exposure to the local star's ultraviolet radiation.
He suggested she go work in the shade and she nodded languidly and complied without comment. Spock continued to cut low-hanging branches from a row of trees flanking a high cement wall. His sensitive hearing picked up several familiar voices on the other side.
"I'm telling you, there's something wrong with that guy," Schmidt insisted.
"I think that's just the way Vulcans are," Spooner replied. "They're, you know, logical."
"There's logic and then there's being a psychopath. He didn't even flinch when that Rollins guy fell. I bet he broke his back. And then when Morrison jumped – nothing. That's not normal."
"Maybe he's just tougher than you," Spencer retorted.
"Yeah, says the girl who cries when she's scared," Schmidt mocked.
"Is there ever a single moment in the day when you're not a giant ass?" Spooner interjected.
"Oh come on now, Angie," he clucked.
"That's not my name," she growled.
He heard rustling from behind the wall and about a minute later Spooner turned the corner and seemed surprised to see him. He looked at her but said nothing as he continued to prune the tree's branches.
"Need any help?" she asked, strolling up to him slowly with her hands in her pockets.
"If you would collect the branches and stack them into that pile, that would increase the efficiency of this task," he replied.
"Schmidt!" Quinones roared from several buildings away.
Schmidt jogged around the side of the building, was startled at the sight of Spock, but then made his way over to Quinones. Spock and Spooner continued their work without talking for a time, until she finally said, "That guy is such a pig."
"To whom do you refer?"
"Schmidt," she answered.
"May I ask why it is that humans have a tendency to use euphemisms relating to livestock?"
"Huh?" Spooner asked with a half smile, pausing as she collected the branches.
"Yesterday I was told I was as 'healthy as a horse.' Again this morning I was compared to a long-dead racehorse of considerable fame, and just now you called Trainee Schmidt a pig."
She chuckled slightly and shrugged, crouching again to resume picking up branches. "You are fast though."
"You also ran remarkably well for a member of your species," he answered.
She scoffed, brushed the hair out of her eyes with her wrist, frowned, and said, "Thanks, I guess. I ran track as an undergrad. You?"
"Clarify," he replied, lowering his arms from cutting branches to stretch them.
"Did you, I dunno, do sports? Go to college?"
"I possess a degree in astrophysics from Shi-Kahr Academy."
"What are you going to study here?"
"General science, with an emphasis on computer engineering and physics," he answered.
"I take it you want to be a science officer then?" she asked, stretching her back out.
"I have not yet decided."
"My undergrad is in exobiology," she said, putting her hands on her hips and staring at him indifferently. "I'm wanting to stay in a specialized field and do research. That's really why I joined Starfleet I guess. You can be an exobiologist on Earth, but probably not a very good one. Besides, my whole family is in Starfleet, so it was kind of expected of me. Do you have family in Starfleet?"
"Not many Vulcans choose service in Starfleet," he explained.
"So what made you join?"
Spock was excused from answering her increasingly personal and uncomfortable questions by Schmidt, who walked up and punched him in the shoulder. "Thanks a lot, you pointy-eared psycho."
"I do not understand the source of your anger," Spock said, turning his body to face Schmidt squarely and lowering the hedge-trimmers.
"You wrote a whole damn essay on how I 'refused' to sign the log last night!" Schmidt snapped.
"It is the truth," he retorted.
"No, I said to 'sign my name for me,' but instead you hung me out to dry."
"Would it have been so difficult to follow procedure?" Spock asked.
Schmidt gritted his teeth and laughed and motioned to Spooner, "Do you hear this guy?"
Spooner shrugged and made herself busy collecting more branches.
"Well, thanks to you, I have a guard shift every night this week," Schmidt hissed.
"Perhaps your punishment will serve as a reminder to adhere to the correct protocols next time."
Schmidt approached him and stopped just centimeters from his face and said, "Don't forget, I sleep on the bunk right above yours."
"I presume you are making a threat," Spock answered.
Schmidt shrugged his shoulders, made a foul gesture, and stomped away. When Spock was finished trimming the tree branches, he began helping Spooner and Saxena neatly stack them on the edge of the lawn.
"How are you doing?" Saxena asked Spooner.
"Well, let's see, I've marched my feet into bloody stumps and all I can think is how much I'm looking forward to eating boiled vegetables for dinner and going to sleep on sheets with a thread count approaching that of wicker and an itchy wool blanket that probably kept horses warm in World War I and reeks of dick dander and despair. So yeah, that's how I'm doing."
The two women roiled with laughter, eventually dropping the branches they were carrying and sitting down on the grass in tears. Spock couldn't understand the course of their mirth, and the tears streaming down their cheeks only further confused the matter.
Sigma Squad continued to work until dusk and then ate dinner. He found he ate each meal more readily, caring less about the heavy way it settled in his stomach and more about replacing lost energy stores. At their meal's conclusion, they returned to the barracks where they collaborated with the other squads to clean the interior of the building.
At 2100 hours they retired to bed, but Spock reported downstairs for his newly earned nightly duty shift. Instead of roving guard, he was tasked with re-cleaning the downstairs common area, despite the fact that it had been scoured just thirty minutes earlier.
The nature of the assignment was a curious cascade of illogic. He was being punished for appearing bored on the morning's run and then performing better than Morrison had expected when his instructor had pushed him harder, and his punishment was to waste time, energy, and supplies mopping a floor and cleaning windows that had only had half an hour to accumulate dirt.
At 2300 hours, he made his way upstairs and despite his best efforts to keep the noise to a low level, was yelled at by his squad mates for being too loud. He took his things to the latrine to shower, and when he sat down on the low bench and removed his boots, he uttered an uncharacteristic gasp.
His white socks were completely crusted with dried greenish blood. He had blisters running the length of his heel, on his largest and smallest toes, and a strange loose clump of skin on the balls of his feet.
He took extra time in the shower, and though the soap made his skin uncomfortable and he disliked breathing the steam, the amount of dirt and grime circling the drain warranted an extended session. He donned his Starfleet athletic clothing and walked back to his bunk.
Schmidt was facedown on top of the blanket and snoring at a considerable level from the top bunk and was once again naked, excepting a pair of white socks. Spock tucked himself into the sheets and was nearly asleep when the door burst open and the room was filled with the shrieking of some kind of brass instrument.
The members of Sigma Squad started yelling and swearing and Schmidt fell from the top bunk and hit the floor with a loud thwack and yelped. Spock sat up and covered his ears from the painful sound.
"I hope you don't mind, trainees!" Morrison bellowed. "I practice my trumpet at night, but they said I was making too much noise in the cadre break room, so I decided to come play some music for you! It doesn't bother you, does it?"
Spock slowly reclined back onto the bed and along with the other members his squad muttered, "No sir."