Paint and Powder

A Star Trek anthology by Andrew Joshua Talon

DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager et al are the property of CBS Television, and creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.

Protostar: Kobayashi Maru

By Sora Neki

"Again!" Dal R'El roared.

"Computer, halt program."

Dal suddenly sat up in surprise, spinning around in the holodeck's recreation of a Galaxy-class captain's chair. "Um, Protostar! Hey! Um, didn't realise you were... here."

Protostar chose to let that one go.

Instead, she looked around the simulated bridge. "Kobayashi Maru, huh?" She smiled. "Would you believe this scenario is nearly a hundred years old? It's only received minor updates in all that time - Birds-of-prey instead of Battle Cruisers, the Enterprise-D instead of the unlettered Enterprise. It's so old, Enterprise's avatar wasn't included in it. All those who take it insist it remain as much the same as possible."

Shifting her heavy furs around (and making sure her ice pick didn't get underneath her), she dismissed the hologram of Montgomery Scott and sat down at the Engineering station, swiveling her chair around to face Dal.

"Why? So they can watch the next batch of recruits suffer through it?" Dal grumbled.

"In part." Protostar covered her mouth and quietly giggled at Dal's surprised expression. "Oh, don't be so surprised. Some of the best stories to come out of Starfleet Academy have been the zany attempts to 'beat' the Kobayashi Maru."

Dal opened his mouth, paused, then closed it. "Why'd it sound like you put 'beat' in quotes?"

Protostar hid a wry smile. "Would you like a hint?"

"Yes, please." Dal groaned. "I've been running this stupid scenario for hours! I just... I haven't figured out yet how you're supposed to beat it!"

"Well, that's actually the first question you should be asking." Protostar leaned back in her chair. "What does 'beating' this scenario look like?"

Dal stared at her in blank confusion. "Uh... what?"

Protostar sighed. "In a race, you win by reaching the goal line first. In a fight, you win by disabling all of your opponents. Here, you win by...?"

Dal blinked. "Uh... blowing up all the bad guy ships? This is a fight."

"It easily dissolves into one." Protostar agreed. "Poor Kobayashi Maru is actually in the wrong here - the Klingons are fully within their rights to punish her for being in the Neutral Zone. They're always happy to have a fight, and with your arrival they see a chance for a glorious one."

"So... this is a fight?"

Protostar sighed again. "No, Dal. The challenge here is to resolve the situation of a civilian freighter under attack by Klingon warships. How you resolve that is up to you."

Dal frowned, then smirked and leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. "All right then. Let's see how you handle this one."

Protostar blinked, then rolled her shoulders. "As you wish."

She adjusted the scenario so that she was in the captain's chair, leaving Dal to yelp and fall down as the chair underneath him disappeared. Over the simulated bridge speakers came the infamous distress call.

"Uhura, contact the Klingons!" Protostar barked. "Inform them that the Maru did not intend to violate the Neutral Zone and plead for leniency." As the communications officer got to work, Protostar activated the comm in the captain's chair. "All transporter rooms, prepare to beam up the crew and AI of the Kobayashi Maru as fast as possible. Weakest lifesigns first!"

"Captain, we'll need to lower our shields to beam up the crew of the Maru!" The hologram of Odo objected.

Protostar nodded. "We can't take that many Birds-of-prey in a fight regardless. Helm, prepare evasive maneuvers. Tactical, do not fire unless fired on first!"

"Captain, the Klingons are rejecting our calls for leniency - they're saying that the lives of the crew of the Maru are forfeit, and so will ours be if we protect them!" The holographic Uhura interjected.

"Keep them talking for as long as possible, we only need - "

"They're firing!"

The viewscreen was enveloped in a great big fireball, and the lights dimmed on the bridge. Scenario failed.

"Hey..." Dal said, picking himself off the floor. "You didn't succeed either."

Protostar brushed herself down, and stood up out of the captain's chair. "No, Dal. The Klingons in this scenario are particularly belligerent, and don't respond even if you remind them of their treaty obligations or invoke third-party moderators. They can't be talked down." It felt kind of racist to her, but apparently most actual Klingons found the scenario hilarious.

Dal stared at her, still confused. "So... it has to be a fight then."

"If," Protostar held up a finger "you somehow defeat the three Birds-of-prey in front of you, you still have to deal with the other two under cloak sneaking up behind you." A second finger went up. "If you somehow deal with them, another nine Klingon ships of much heavier classes warp in, and the saboteurs in your engineering section become active." Four fingers were raised now. "Assuming you somehow deal with all of that, the Klingons declare your attack on their forces in the Neutral Zone an Act of War and retaliate in kind." Protostar clenched her fist. "You cannot win this fight."

"I... don't get it. It's unbeatable?" Dal looked totally lost now. "But then why..."

"The real test of the Kobayashi Maru is how you choose to fail it." Protostar clasped her hands together. "Do you fail to defeat the Klingons in battle, as you were doing? Do you fail trying to rescue the Maru, as I did? Even your first response, not trying to rescue them at all, is a valid answer."

"Wait, you saw that?!"

Protostar covered her mouth with a mitten-covered hand and giggled warmly. "Whose brain do you think is running this holodeck, Dal?"

Dal didn't answer immediately, instead looking over the frozen forms of the holographic bridge officers. "But... they hated the idea of not rescuing the Maru."

"Yes, Dal." Protostar nodded. "But part of that is because you made it sound like you didn't want to rescue the Maru because you were lazy. Those were people's lives to them, Dal - not points in a game."

Dal still looked confused, so Protostar sighed again. "Let's reframe this to something more familiar, shall we?"

The bridge of the Enterprise vanished, replaced with Protostar's own bridge. Out the window, Dal could see the crystalline spires of Tars Lamora - they were back where he had found the Protostar in the first place.

"Let's say you never managed to extract me from the rock." Protostar explained neutrally. "And, thinking fast, you managed to beam up half of the miners before the Diviner can set up a jamming field."

"Beam up? Huh?"

"...you get them on board. Janeway and I will explain later."

"Oh. Okay."

The holodeck shimmered again, and the various chairs on the bridge were filled with various members of the Forgotten that Dal knew by appearance. Protostar pointed out the window, and looking where she was indicating Dal could see the red glowing eyes of Drednok, skulking in the dark.

"Now at this point the Diviner and you are at a stalemate. You can hold out for years inside me thanks to my replicators, and I can keep the Watchers at bay with my phaser banks. However, I can't shoot through the colony without risking the lives of the other half of the miners, and if the Diviner gets impatient enough he might fire on me first with Rev-12. But for now, things are calm."

Protostar waves a hand, and with a yelp one of the holographic miners disappears and reappears in the mouth of the tunnel, just out of line-of-sight of Protostar's phaser banks. The simulation froze.

"Now one of the miners has been caught outside my protection with two broken legs. You don't know how, but you know that unless you go out there yourself, that miner is dead."

"But if I go out there..." Dal said, and Protostar could hear the fear the boy thought he had repressed in his voice. 4000 light-years away, and the boy was still afraid... "The Watchers will get me."

"Only if Drednok doesn't."

"But if I don't go, the miner will die."

"Yes."

"And if I don't try... the miners will lose all faith in me. They'll think I can't protect them." The light of understanding was slowly appearing in Dal's eyes.

Protostar nodded. "Dal, being captain isn't all privileges and telling other people what to do. Sometimes, you are responsible for directing the crew in situations were there are no winning options. All you can do..."

"...is decide how I'm going to lose."

Dal stared out the window at the miner, whose name he didn't even know, for several minutes, thinking. Without turning, his shoulders slumped. "I think I get why Starfleet is so obsessed with this thing."

Protostar waved a hand, and the holodeck deactivated. "It's a puzzler, that's for sure." She said in a much lighter tone.

"I still think this thing is cheating." Dal grumbled.

"There was another captain who thought that." Protostar smiled. "He's the only one to ever 'beat' the scenario."

"Huh?!" Dal looked shocked. "B-but... we just agreed it was unbeatable!"

"It is." Protostar smirked, then disappeared. "He cheated right back."