Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption by Vonda N. McIntyre Page B

on the dispersal equations until early that morning.
    “She was when I left our room,” he said. Like Jedda, Zinaida was a Deltan. Deltans tended to work and travel in groups, or at the very least in pairs, for a Deltan alone was terribly isolated. They required emotional and physical closeness of such intensity that no other sentient being could long survive intimacy with one of them.
    “Okay, you’d better wake her. Vance, Del, Misters Computer Wizards: I want you to start transferring everything in the computers to portable storage, because any program, any data we can’t move we’re going to kill—that goes for BH or BS or whatever it is, too. So get to work.”
    “But where are we going?” Del asked.
    “That’s for us to know and Reliant to find out. But we’ve only got three days. Let’s not waste time.”
     
    The doors of the turbolift began to close.
    “Hold, please!”
    “Hold!” Jim Kirk said to the sensors. The doors opened obediently, sighing.
    Lieutenant Saavik dashed inside.
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “My pleasure, Lieutenant.”
    She gazed at him intently; Kirk began to feel uneasy.
    “Admiral,” she said suddenly, “may I speak?”
    “Lieutenant,” Kirk said, “self-expression does not seem to be one of your problems.”
    “I beg your pardon, sir?”
    “Never mind. What was it you wanted to say?”
    “I wish to ask you about the high efficiency rating.”
    “You earned it.”
    “I did not think so.”
    “Because of the results of Kobayashi Maru? ”
    “I failed to resolve the situation,” Saavik said.
    “You couldn’t. There isn’t any resolution. It’s a test of character.”
    She considered that for a moment.
    “Was the test a part of your training, Admiral?”
    “It certainly was,” Jim Kirk said with a smile.
    “May I ask how you dealt with it?”
    “You may ask, Lieutenant.” Kirk laughed.
    She froze.
    “That was a little joke, Lieutenant,” Kirk said.
    “Admiral,” she said carefully, “the jokes human beings make differ considerably from those with which I am familiar.”
    “What jokes exactly do you mean?”
    “The jokes of Romulans,” she said.
    Do you want to know? Jim Kirk asked himself. You don’t want to know.
    “Your concept, Admiral,” Saavik said, “the human concept, appears more complex and more difficult.”
    Out of the blue, he thought, My God, she’s beautiful.
    Watch it, he thought; and then, sarcastically, You’re an admiral.
    “Well, Lieutenant, we learn by doing.”
    She did not react to that, either. He decided to change the subject.
    “Lieutenant, do you want my advice?”
    “Yes,” she said in an odd tone of voice.
    “You’re allowed to take the test more than once. If you’re dissatisfied with your performance, you should take it again.”
    The lift slowed and stopped. The doors slid open and Doctor McCoy, who had been waiting impatiently, stepped inside.
    All this newfangled rebuilding, he thought, and look what comes of it: everything’s even slower.
    “Who’s been holding up the damned elevator?—Oh!” he said when he saw Kirk and Saavik. “Hi.”
    “Thank you, Admiral,” Saavik said as she stepped off the lift. “I appreciate your advice. Good day, Doctor.”
    The doors closed.
    Jim said nothing but stared abstractedly at the ceiling.
    Doing his very best dirty old man imitation, McCoy waggled his eyebrows.
    “Did she change her hair?”
    “What?”
    “I said—”
    “I heard you, Bones. Grow up, why don’t you?”
    Well, McCoy thought, that’s a change . Maybe not a change for the better, but at least a change.
    “Wonderful stuff, that Romulan ale,” McCoy said with a touch of sarcasm.
    Kirk returned from his abstraction. “It’s a great memory restorative,” he said.
    “Oh—?”
    “It made me remember why I never drink it.”
    “That’s gratitude for you—”
    “Admiral Kirk,” Uhura said over the intercom. “Urgent message for Admiral Kirk.”
    Jim turned on the intercom. “Kirk