The Zimonian seemed to Will to take everything said to her with the same degree of seriousness, as if mentioning that the day was warm or a dog was cute carried the exact same weight as a warning of a poisonous insect or a Romulan with a phaser. Add to that no sense of humor at all and a tendency to lecture rather than discuss, and you had Estresor Fil, who was Will’s least favorite member of Zeta Squadron, by far. She was so formal that she insisted both her names be used at all times.

She was also, he had to admit, brilliant.

Most of the work a cadet did at the Academy was done solo, but for those occasions when group efforts were needed, cadets were formed into five-person squadrons, and Zeta was his. Any Starfleet assignment was likely to be a team situation, so the cadets broke into their squadrons fairly often. There were good points and bad to this arrangement, of course. The starship atmosphere was fairly authentic, because most everyone on a starship worked with others. But it also meant relying on other people. Will was none too comfortable with that—he liked to have his fate in his own hands.

Once Will was seated, Boon looked at the group and took command, as he had a tendency to do. He was, he had told them often, grooming himself for a captaincy, and sooner would be better than later. Will thought his personal style was at odds with his ambition—he never liked to speak in public, for instance, and didn’t believe in using three words if one would do even in private. But in spite of his reticence, he was a good student and was seemingly driven by an urge that not even Will, who was plenty ambitious himself, could comprehend. “Okay, folks,” he said. “We have a challenge ahead of us tomorrow. Everybody ready?”

“Since we really can’t prepare,” Felicia replied, her dark eyes flashing as she tossed out a smile, “we’re probably as ready as we’re going to be.”

“There’s always preparation to be done, right?” Estresor Fil argued. “Admiral Paris told us enough to begin our planning. We know where we’ll be, and we know what our goal is. We might as well get started on whatever we can, while we have some time. Besides, he told us to, and that’s good enough for me.”

“In the abstract,” Will pointed out. “But not with any specifics.”

“That’s true,” Dennis added. “We know we’ll be in San Francisco. But we don’t know what part—or even if we’ll all be together.”

“I think we have to assume that we won’t be together, at first,” Felicia said. “We’ll need to find each other. Without using combadges.”

“Why don’t we go over what we do know?” Estresor Fil suggested. “And then we’ll have a more definitive sense of what we don’t know.”

Will nodded. “ ‘Know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.’ ”

“Is that more of your ancient Chinese wisdom, Will?” Felicia asked. Her accent was vaguely Latin American, and Will liked the way she pronounced certain words. She was as tall as Will, half again the height of the diminutive Estresor Fil, with an athletic, sculpted body. When she spoke, it was usually with a forthrightness Will admired, and in any physical effort she was likely to excel.

“Sun Tzu,” Will answered with a nod. He’d been reading a lot of the military strategists of Earth’s past, including Sun Tzu, Epameinondas, Carl von Clausewitz, Antoine Henri Jomini, and others.

Boon blew out an exasperated sigh and began a speech as long as any Will had ever heard from him. “If we could stick to the matter at hand,” he said. “Estresor Fil is right, as is Sun Tzu, I suppose. We’ll have very little information until we actually start, so there’s only so much we can plan ahead. But we know these things, I think. We’re going on an urban survival test. We will be spending a week in San Francisco. We aren’t allowed to identify ourselves as cadets, we’ll be out of uniform and incognito. We can’t break any laws. We’ll be following clues which will lead us to other clues, in a sort of scavenger hunt, to demonstrate our ability to infiltrate, for example, an enemy alien city.”

“Should be a piece of cake,” Dennis said.

“But that’s where what we don’t know comes in,” Will countered. “We don’t know if we’ll be transported into the city together, or separately, so we might need to track each other down. We don’t know precisely what sorts of clues we’ll be looking for, or how we’ll know the first one when we see it. We don’t know if there will be other obstacles planted in our path, although knowing Admiral Paris, I think we should count on it. We don’t even know exactly how the project ends—if we solve all the clues and find whatever it is we’re supposed to find, do we come in early? Or do we still wait out the week?”

“At least we can’t do worse than Captain Kirk,” Dennis said with a laugh. “ ‘Do you still use money?’ ” Some seventy years back, the legendary Kirk and his bridge crew, which included Ambassador Spock, had traveled back in time to the late twentieth century and had to survive in a San Francisco three hundred years removed from their own experiences. That very mission was the inspiration for this particular Academy exercise.

“They survived, didn’t they?” Estresor Fil shot back. “And they saved the world. And your whales. I would certainly consider that a success by any reckoning.”

“You’re right,” Dennis agreed, still chuckling. “They pulled it off. And we don’t even have to travel back into the past to do it, so I’m sure we’ll be just fine.”

“Who’s in command?” Boon asked. Even though the others had voted him Squadron Leader, when they faced group activities they rotated command positions so that everyone got a fair chance to lead.

“It’s our final project,” Felicia Mendoza pointed out. “I thought you’d be champing at the bit. Are you suggesting otherwise?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Boon said. “Certainly I’m the best qualified. But if somebody else has a particular interest in the job, that’s fine too.”

There was a moment of silence as all the cadets in the room glanced around at one another. Will felt a number of eyes on him and thought that maybe he should challenge Boon for the leadership position this time. Boon generally believed that he was born to lead, and took that role whenever the opportunity came up. But Will was convinced that on a starship, anyone could be thrust by circumstance into the captain’s chair, and no one who graduated from Starfleet Academy should be unfamiliar with the demands of the job.

“I think it should be Dennis,” he said at last, breaking the silence. The look on Boon’s face was one for the books—crestfallen and amazement battling for supremacy, with fury threatening to break through at any time. He actually bit his lower lip, trying to control his expression.

“Dennis?” Boon asked, unable to keep the disbelief from his voice. “Why?”

“Because he hasn’t been in charge on any of our group projects to date,” Will said. “And this is the last group project before the end of the year. Everyone needs to get a taste of leadership, and this will be his last chance with this squadron.” What he didn’t add was that he knew Dennis would never have nominated himself for the position. He was a get-along, go-along kind of guy, never wanting to make waves, always content to be in the back of the pack as long as he was included. Starfleet needed people like that, of course—there were a lot of crew members to every captain, and a lot of captains to every admiral—but every crew member would perform better if he or she understood the captain’s position too.

“Will, I don’t know—” Dennis began, but Felicia cut him off.

“I second the nomination,” she said. “Will’s right. It really is your turn, Dennis.”

Dennis’s cheeks flushed, but he went silent. Estresor Fil was the next to speak. “Dennis can do the job as well as anyone else,” she insisted.

Boon looked defeated. “If that’s what you guys think, well, it’s fine with me.” His tone indicated that it wasn’t fine, but that he wasn’t about to make a big deal about it this time. “Just keep in mind, it’s the final project of the year, and it’s Admiral Paris’s pet project. So it’s going to be a big part of our grades in his class.”