“Every battle is brand new,” he said as he stood at the front of the classroom, hands clasped behind his back. “But the elements that make it up have been around forever. The flank, the feint, the siege ... these have been practiced since the first bipeds picked up sticks and attacked the band next door. You are not, ladies and gentlemen, likely to invent any new maneuvers, any new tactics, in the course of your Starfleet careers. So the key to success is in how you apply the old ones, how you combine them to new effect. And that means being thoroughly conversant in them.”
This was nothing new to Will. Kimball had said basically the same thing on the first day of class, expressing the importance of knowing military history inside and out. For his part, Will was sure he’d finish this class near the top. He’d studied the history of strategy and tactics on his own, ever since his father had told him bedtime stories of Napoleon and Alexander and Hannibal. He had realized early on that he would never be the biggest kid in school, or the strongest, or the fastest. But he could still be big and strong and fast enough, and he could amplify his own skills by the application of strategic thinking.
“You have, ladies and gentlemen, occasionally pleased me, and sometimes disappointed me, with the essays I expect from you,” Kimball continued. “This one will be a little different than most. Rather than examining a particular battle or the work of a master tactician, I want you to research an individual soldier. I want you to delve into the life and career of a man or woman who fought on the fields of battle, famous, infamous, or unknown, and I want you to tell me, in this essay, what that particular soldier did, right or wrong, that resulted in victory or defeat. If the soldier you’re studying survived, I expect to discover why. If not, why not. Understood?”
There was a chorus of “Yes, sir” from the assembled students. Kimball gave a due date and a few more detailed instructions, and dismissed the class. Will met up with Dennis Haynes on the way out of class. “This should be kind of interesting,” Dennis said. “A little different, like the old man said.”
“Do you have any ideas yet?” Will asked him. “Anyone you’d like to research?”
“The first thought that came to mind was James T. Kirk,” Dennis told him. “But then, I figure he’ll get a dozen of those.”
“You’re better off picking someone less well known,” Will agreed. “Less competition for original ideas, less chance that Kimball will have already reached his own conclusions.”
“Harder to find source material, though,” Dennis said as they walked across the open campus. “If I pick someone who’s not well known.”
“There are ways around that,” Will told him. The sky was the color of lead, and cloudless, and the air carried that metallic, charged tang that it sometimes did when it seemed as if the weather might assert itself.
“What about you?” Dennis asked him. “Got any ideas? You’re always so good at coming up with creative twists.”
“I’ve got a couple of possibilities in mind,” Will said. This was a lie, though. He had made up his mind as soon as Kimball had described the assignment. He owned, thanks to his father, the diary of an ancestor named Thaddius Riker, who had fought in the American Civil War. That’s who he was going to write about—his own kin.
He and Dennis were continuing across campus toward their next class when Will noticed a familiar, dark-haired shape walking toward them. “It’s Felicia,” Dennis said.
“So it is,” Will noted. He hadn’t talked to Felicia much since the end of the last school year. He had thought that maybe she was interested in him, during Admiral Paris’s survival project. But after the project’s disastrous end, he had come out the superintendent’s office and she had been gone, halfway across the Quad, lost in conversation with Estresor Fil. He had kind of expected her to be waiting for him, and when she wasn’t he became convinced that his typical luck with women was holding, and he had only imagined that she might be attracted to him. Embarrassed by his own ineptitude, and moody and depressed at being, once again, stuck on Earth all summer, he had avoided contact with almost everyone he knew. The longer he had gone without talking to anyone, the more shy he had been when he’d seen them again. With Paul and Dennis and some of the others, he had fallen quickly back into old routines once school started up again. But with Felicia, he had never been able to overcome that double dose of awkwardness. And this year, they had no classes together. The few times he’d run into her it had been with a lot of people around, and he’d managed to avoid having an actual conversation with her.
Now as she approached, he saw on her lovely face a sly half-grin.
“Excuse me,” she said, projecting a naiveté that he knew was an act, but which he found somehow appealing anyway. “You look a lot like a young man I used to know. His name was Will Riker. Have you ever heard of him?”
Will had to laugh. “Yes, Felicia,” he said. “Yes, I’m a big fat loser. I admit it. I’m sorry.”
“I was thinking along those same lines, Cadet Riker,” she said. “Though a little stronger, perhaps. Hello, Dennis.”
“Hi, Felicia.”
“I don’t suppose you’d mind leaving Cadet Riker and me alone for a little while,” she said, still directing her words to Dennis. “Will and I need to talk about how he’s going to atone for his foolish and, may I say, ungentlemanly behavior.”
Dennis seemed a bit flabbergasted, but she had made it clear that she was demanding this, not really asking, and he responded with his typical good humor. “I ... uh, sure. I’ll leave you two alone. Send Will’s pieces back in a bag when you’re done with him.”
“I’ll do that, and thank you for your consideration.” She stood with her hands on her hips, watching Dennis get beyond earshot, then faced Will. Her stance was determined, and Will figured he was in for a severe admonishment. Which I no doubt deserve,he thought. Not that that’ll make it any easier to hear.She pointed to a nearby bench, and they both sat down.
“Felicia, I—” he began, hoping to ward off the brunt of her attack with some kind of excuse. But he didn’t really have one, and she didn’t give him a chance to get it out anyway.
“Be quiet, William Riker, and let me talk. I get the distinct impression that you’ve been avoiding me, ever since September. I also have the feeling that if I hadn’t made a point of ‘accidentally’ being outside your classroom today, I still wouldn’t have seen you. What I’d like to know is what terrible crime I committed to deserve this exclusion from your life, because I must have done something.”
“You ...” Will began, and then he stopped because he didn’t know where else to go. “It isn’t anything youdid, Felicia,” he said. As he spoke he watched a bird struggle to lift a crust of bread nearly as large as it was. He knew how the bird felt. “I ... I had a rough summer, I guess. And then that kind of led into a rough year. I’ve been busy, you know, trying to knuckle down and get my grades up.”
“Even so ...”
Will shrugged. “I guess I’m not always good at understanding women.”
Felicia stared at him, open-mouthed, as if he had just emerged from a particularly disgusting cocoon. “Understanding women? It isn’t like we’re a separate species, much less a non-humanoid alien life-form, Will. We’re just like you, only with some different parts.”
He felt duly chastised. “I guess it’s those different parts that throw me off.”
“You don’t have to let them. It’s those different parts that make things interesting. Anyway, how would you feel if you knew I had avoided you for the last six months?”
“I didn’t realize you hadn’t been,” Will offered. “I mean, I wasn’t so much avoiding you as just not seeking you out. And I thought ...” He stopped, once again not quite sure how much he wanted to say, or in what direction he really wanted to take the conversation. “I think I thought you weren’t interested in me. In being friends with me.”