Boogeymen - Mel Gilden [6]
Wesley shrugged. It was important. If he wouldn’t make a good officer, a good commander, he might as well leave the Enterprise and Starfleet altogether. He sipped his clear ether. It was cold and sweet.
“So it’s important,” Guinan said. “Captain Picard has already given you more responsibility than he would entrust to the average kid your age. You seem to be doing pretty well with it.”
Wesley shrugged again. “That’s not command,” he said. “That’s just delegated authority.”
“Oh,” Guinan said and nodded as if she understood. Maybe she did.
“I want command. Life-and-death decisions that have to be made in a split second. I need to test myself against a starship in crisis.”
“I see.” She added more seltzer to Wesley’s glass. He watched the fizz bubble and jump. She said, “How do cadets test themselves against starships in crisis without killing anybody?”
“Starfleet sets up scenarios in a holoroom at the Academy.”
Guinan smiled and raised her eyebrows.
Wesley was suddenly excited. “The holodeck, of course.”
Guinan nodded.
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You were too close to the problem. You were looking for a real solution, when in this case fantasy will do just as well.”
“Right, right. Do you think the holodeck has a command training program?”
“One way to find out.”
He thanked Guinan and left Ten Forward without finishing his drink. The turbolift took him to deck eleven where the holodeck computer told him that various training programs and subroutines were available. Wesley made his selection and entered.
He started his training in the holodeck version of Picard’s ready room and set himself problems involving real-time ship-related decisions: Should a particular crew member be promoted? What is the proper discipline for a particular infraction? What is the proper diplomatic maneuver to use when dealing with an angry or recalcitrant alien dignitary?
Wesley did not get a perfect score on any of the problems, but his rating was always in the green, or acceptable, range. According to the computer, nobody ever got a perfect score. One could approach perfection but never reach it.
Then he’d summoned up the bridge of the Enterprise on the holodeck, manned as it really was manned, except that he was the captain instead of Picard. He had tried his negotiating skills with Klingon renegades and Ferengi and was now testing them against Romulans. It was like playing a swift game of 3-D chess with the computer.
Wesley had studied the famous encounters with the Klingons, the Ferengi, and the Romulans. He had the same data the computer had, so the tactics of the adversaries were predictable within a certain range. It was the predictability that bothered Wesley. The Starfleet charge, “to boldly go where no one has gone before,” meant that predictability would be the exception rather than the rule.
The ready room was so quiet and he was thinking so hard that the pleasant female voice of the computer made him jump when it said, “Lieutenant Shubunkin is waiting for you outside the holodeck.”
“Uh-oh,” Wesley said. “Stop program.”
Since he was alone, the only thing that showed Wesley the computer had complied was that the spiny fish in the tank across the room seemed to freeze.
The computer said, “Do you wish this program saved?”
Wesley considered his alternatives. He had learned pretty much all he could from challenging the computer. It was fun, but it was basically a game for kids. He’d have to dig a little deeper, maybe design his own aliens. If he wanted Romulans again, he could have them. Their characteristics were in the computer’s permanent memory. Wesley stood up and called out, “Cancel program and admit Lieutenant Shubunkin.”
Without a sound the captain’s ready room wavered and disappeared, leaving Wesley at one side of a big room that was featureless but for a doorway and the grid markings on all six interior surfaces. The doors slid open, and Lieutenant Shubunkin strode in. Angrily he said, “We had an appointment.”
“Yes, sir. I just lost track of the time.”
“Not a healthy characteristic