Damn it!Will thought. He’d known better than to let Paul egg him into this stupid game, and now it had all gone sour, as he’d somehow known it would. He made a quick decision and hoped it was the right one. “He’ll never live long enough on the surface for your team to get there,” Will said. “I’m going in to pick him up.”

“Negative, Cadet,”the voice instructed. “Don’t try that. Just wait for us.”

“Riker out,” Will said, and broke off communication. “Computer,” he said out loud, as much for his own benefit as for the computer’s, “we’re going in.”

“Inadvisable,”the computer argued. “Atmospheric conditions are too severe.”

“Nevertheless,” Will explained. “We’re doing it. Shields at full power.”

The computer is obviously smarter than I am,Will thought. It knew this was a fool’s errand. But it complied with his commands, and he started the pitched descent toward Phoebe’s icy surface. As the shuttle entered the ion storm, Will felt it buffeted about in spite of the presence of the shields, and he knew that without the shields he’d be a dead man for sure. Of course, it’s early yet,he thought.

But something happened as he piloted the small craft down, through the battering of the storm and the entry into Phoebe’s thin atmosphere. Where flying had been mechanical for Will, something at which he was skilled but which he had to think through, now, suddenly, he was doing it all almost unconsciously. His hands made the right moves across the control pad, manipulating the pitch and yaw of the ship as it dropped closer and closer to the surface, controlling the direction and speed, following the locator beacon that Paul had, at least, managed to deploy. He did it all smoothly and without hesitation, as if he’d been flying all his life, and even when he realized what he was doing he was able to keep doing it. Concern for Paul had taken the self-consciousness out of piloting the ship and the abilities that had become ingrained through hours and hours of practice and training had taken over.

Phoebe grew enormous in the viewscreen, its surface rugged and terrifying. Vast chasms of ice whipped past beneath him, and tall jagged cliffs. If he had to land on this moon, he realized, they’d both be waiting for the emergency team from the flight base, and the chances were that neither of them would survive. He would try to avoid landing, even though that left only one option, and it wasn’t much better. But as he neared the locator beacon he prepared himself to take it.

He tapped his combadge again. “Paul, can you hear me?”

There was no response. Maybe this was all moot, he knew. Still, he had to take the chance. “Paul, do you read me?” No answer.

That didn’t matter. He was closing fast and his best shot, maybe his only shot, was coming up. Leaving the ship’s control on autopilot for the moment, he turned to the transporter controls. Scanning for Paul, he was almost surprised when the transporter got a lock almost immediately. He was very near, then—otherwise the ion storm would have interfered. But he couldn’t transport Paul on board with the shields up, and lowering them during an ion storm, this close to the moon’s surface, was virtually suicidal.

It was also the only thing he could do. With Paul’s coordinates locked, he braced himself as best he could. “Shields down,” he said, following it with “Energize.”

As soon as the shields went down the shuttle was pounded by the storm, driving it into a downward spiral. Will fought for control, but the moon’s harsh surface spun sickeningly toward him. “Shields up,” he muttered, struggling to find voice with the g-force pulling at him. The deflector shields returned to full power, or as much as they had left to give after being bombarded by the storm, offering Will a modicum more control of the shuttle. But he was still dropping fast, spinning like a top.

So instead of trying to fight the spin, he decided to go with it. He turned into the spin, and pointed the nose down instead of attempting to pull up. For a moment, the surface was right there in front of him and he was certain he’d miscalculated. But in the next moment his maneuver paid off—he had turned completely away from the surface and was skimming above it upside down. His stomach lurched but he knew that he would live for at least a few more seconds. Now he pointed his nose down farther, except down was up. Once he was a safe distance off the surface he righted the shuttle. Getting out of Phoebe’s atmosphere and away from the storm was a relatively simple matter now. He blew out a sigh of relief, and then remembered why he had gone down there in the first place.

“That’s some nice flying,” Paul Rice said from behind him.

“Paul!”

“Now I suppose you’re going to expect me to slavishly devote my life to you or some such nonsense,” Paul said. He sat down in the chair next to Will’s, hardly looking the worse for his experience. “Well, you can forget about that.”

“I could beam you back down there,” Will warned with a smile.

“And miss your own medal ceremony?” Paul asked. “I can’t see it. Not you, Riker. Or should I say, golden boy?”

“Golden boy?” Will repeated. “We’ll both be lucky if we’re not expelled.”

“If I had died, you’d be expelled,” Paul ventured. “Since I didn’t, we’ll probably get by with a reprimand.”

“A reprimand?You broke their ship!”

“Wasn’t much of a ship,” Paul countered. “I think it was broken to begin with.”

“Well, yeah,” Will admitted. “It was. Good choice, Rice.”

“I was still winning, wasn’t I?” Paul asked. “Bum ship or no.”

“That’s true, you were ahead,” Will said. “I was going to pass you on the home stretch, though.”

Both cadets laughed then, and kept laughing most of the way back to the Flight Training Base.

* * *

“It was amazing, Will,” Felicia said when she saw him. She’d greeted him with a hug and a big kiss, which Will found pretty amazing in itself. “Ambassador Spock was brilliant, of course. And so nice!”

“You got to meet him?” Will asked her, full of envy. They were in her room, and she was beaming as if she had just now finished shaking the ambassador’s hand.

“Yes, at a reception afterward. He was warm and friendly and even a little bit funny.”

“Funny?” Will echoed. “We are talking about Spock the Vulcan, right? Not some other Spock?”

“Well, you know, not the kind of funny that you see in Estresor Fil’s cartoons, but wry.”

“I guess I can see wry,” Will said. “I’m glad you had such a good time.”

She hugged him again, and then sat him down on her bed, with one hand clutching his arm and the other resting across his thigh. “I did, Will, I really did. I just kept wishing you were there. You’ve got to watch the speech, though, even if you don’t get to meet him yourself.”

“Well, maybe one of these days,” Will said. “Assuming I don’t get kicked out of the Academy.”

Felicia’s beautiful lips made an O shape. “Kicked out? What do you mean?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard,” he said. “Bad news usually travels fast around here.”

“I haven’t heard anything, Will. What’s going on?”

He told her about the unauthorized race, the theft of the shuttles, and Paul’s misadventure on Phoebe. He didn’t leave out any details, and when he was finished she had a look of total shock on her face.

“Will, you stupid dumb idiot! I am so glad you’re okay. But how lame can you possibly be?”

“How many degrees of lameness are there?” he replied. “Because I guess I’m pretty far down the list.”

“And you don’t know yet what your punishment is going to be?”

“I’m supposed to report to the superintendent in ...” he looked at his chron. “Twenty-two minutes. With Paul. I guess we’ll both find out then.”

“Can I go with you?” she asked, stroking his arm solicitously.

“Better not,” he suggested. “Guilt by association, you know. Save your own career.”