“I’ll wait outside,” she said. “But I want to know what happens as soon as you get out.”

“Deal,” Will agreed. “If I get thrown out you can make me dinner to console me. If I don’t, you can make me dinner to celebrate.”

“There are ... various ways we could celebrate,” she said with a sidelong glance.

“If you’re suggesting what I hope you are,” Will said, “I don’t want to think about it until after I’m out of Superintendent Vyrek’s office. I swear that Vulcan can read minds. Even without a mind-meld.”

“Then I’m not going to tell you what I’m suggesting,” Felicia declared. “Until after.”

Twenty-seven minutes later, Will and Paul were standing at attention in the superintendent’s office as she paced in a circle around them, hands clasped behind her back. Captain Pendel, their flight instructor, and Admiral Paris were also in the room, but both men stood back and let the superintendent have the floor. “You are lucky that I am a Vulcan, gentlemen, and not a human. Because a human, at a time like this, would have a very difficult time controlling her anger. You are both, for the most part, excellent cadets, with admirable records. But you are both headstrong, impulsive, and apparently lacking in any kind of what you call common sense and what I call reason. You stole— stole—vehicles from the Academy’s Flight Training Base. One of those vehicles was in for repairs, but you somehow were not even aware of it. You, Mr. Rice, managed to crash that vehicle into one of Saturn’s moons without killing yourself. You, Mr. Riker, disobeyed a direct order and flew into an ion storm in order to rescue the foolhardy Mr. Rice. The fact that you are both standing here is an affront to the laws of probability, not to mention the regulations of Starfleet. Does that about sum it up?”

“It seems to, sir,” Will said, suitably chastened by her monologue.

“Yes, sir,” Paul agreed.

“You are both in your last year,” Superintendent Vyrek continued. “I should put you back a year. But Starfleet can use your skills sooner rather than later. And I would have to put up with you both for another year, and that aggravation, I assure you, is more than I can bear. Therefore, I will not punish myself and my instructors in such a fashion. Instead, I will put a strongly worded reprimand in each of your permanent files. And I will advise you not to be brought back to this office again, for any reason, during your final months at this Academy. If you are, I will not even take the time to talk to you, but will summarily expel you. Am I understood?”

“Loud and clear, sir,” Paul said.

“Mr. Riker?”

“Yes, sir,” Will answered. “Understood, sir.”

“The fish incident was bad,” Superintendent Vyrek said. “This is far, far worse. Do not let it happen again.”

“Yes, sir,” both cadets replied in unison.

“I have nothing more I care to say to either of you,” the superintendent said dismissively. “But I believe Admiral Paris does.”

Owen Paris stepped to the center of the room and stood in front of the cadets, looking them up and down as if on an inspection tour. “Gentlemen,” he said. “That was quite a stunt you pulled. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

“We are, sir,” Paul said.

“As Admiral Vyrek says, you are lucky you’re not both dead. You do realize that, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Will replied. “We do.”

“You went down on one of Saturn’s frozen moons, Rice. And you went after him, Riker, even though it meant flying with no shields in an ion storm, less than a kilometer from the surface.”

“That seems to be an accurate description, sir,” Will said.

“Stupid. Incredibly stupid.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I docked both your grades the last time we were here together, didn’t I? After what Admiral Vyrek so astutely refers to as ‘the fish incident’?”

“Yes, sir, you did,” Paul said. “And my squadron had to repeat the class.”

“The second time you took it, your grade improved, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, it just improved again. Both of you. Out of a possible one hundred points in my class, you both score one-fifty.”

“I’m sorry, sir?” Will said, not quite understanding.

“You were stupid, both of you,” Admiral Paris explained. “By all rights your frozen corpses should be up on Phoebe. But you survived. I teach a survival class. I haven’t had any students show me what you two have, ever.”

“Yes, sir,” Paul said. Will was still at attention, eyes front, but he could hear Paul’s smile in his voice.

“But, sir—” he began.

“Just say ‘yes, sir,’ ” Paul instructed him.

“Yes, sir,” Will repeated, catching on. “And thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me,” Admiral Paris said. “Just stay out of trouble. A few more months, okay? I think even you two can do that.”

“Yes, sir,” both cadets responded.

“You are dismissed,” Superintendent Vyrek said from her desk. Her voice was weary. Will suspected he’d be weary too if he had to deal with cadets like himself all the time.

Outside, Felicia waited for him. She ran to him when he exited the building, arms wide, and he caught her in his own and scooped her up. “A reprimand in my file,” he said. “And Paris raised my survival grade.”

“So it’s celebrating and not consoling?”

“That’s right,” he affirmed.

“Oh, goody,” Felicia said. She nuzzled against Will’s neck and nipped the flesh there with her teeth. “Then I can tell you what I was suggesting earlier.”

“I’m not sure we need to really talk about it,” Will said, his lips urgently seeking hers. “In fact,” he mumbled against her mouth, “talking may even be counterproductive.”

Felicia broke away from him and started to run. “Oh, we can talk,” she shouted back over her shoulder. “Until we get back to my room. After that, I think we’ll be much too busy.”

And she was right.

Chapter 26

The last couple of months, Will had learned, were definitely the hardest. He had heard about schools where students could basically skate through their last year, but Starfleet Academy was not one of those. Here, course work got progressively more difficult from the beginning to the end. When he was finished at the Academy, a cadet needed to be able to step from the campus onto a starship or starbase, where the lives of others might depend on his knowledge, experience, and reactions. There could be no slacking off.

So he saw Felicia when he could, but mostly he bore down and worked. He closed himself in his room when he wasn’t at classes, usually alone—because when Felicia was there, they found it hard to focus on their work—and studied. He had, for the time being, set aside most other activities. Outings with friends, athletics beyond a minimal daily workout ... those were important but not as important as making up the grade handicap that had been with him from his first year. He had made great progress, he knew. His grades had improved every year, and he’d become much more confident in his own abilities. But he still had those lousy first-year grades on his record, and if he was to be satisfied in his own performance he wanted to balance them out with exceptional grades this time.

He was in his room, as usual, the night Dennis Haynes knocked on his door in something like a panic. The rapid-fire pounding startled Will, who was deeply immersed in a text on the geological specifications of Class-G planets of the Ophiucus sector. He pushed himself away from the desk, still caught somewhere between two worlds, his eyes not wanting to leave the computer screen because he didn’t want to have to find his place again in the discussion of the effect of cooling magmas on crystallization processes. Finally he forced himself to abandon the screen because he knew the door was locked. Specifically so I wouldn’t be bothered,he thought, so how well did that work?

When he opened the door Dennis stood there, his face flushed as if he’d been running, his brow wrinkled, mouth turned down in a frown. “I can’t do this, Will,” Dennis said without preface. “I just can’t do it.”