Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [51]
Stiles stared at him briefly. How could anybody be so casual with a sentence like that coming out of his mouth?
“The m-” Nope, couldn’t get it out of his own. “God… I don’t get it… I just don’t get this at all….”
“Indeed?” Ambassador Spock offered a solemn gaze. He did look amused! “A hero’s welcome is a mystery to you after your Meat sacrifice, Ensign?”
“I didn’t sacrifice anything,” Stiles argued, keeping his voice way down while the speaker’s boomed over the P.A. sys-tem. “I crashed into a mountain, and sat there about to wet my pants because I was afraid of the big bad aliens. I must’ve looked like a kid to you !”
“You were a kid,” the ambassador blithely told him, startlingly familiar with the vernacular.
Dr. McCoy leaned forward a little. “My eighth psychology textbook, Spock,” he explained, speaking from the comer of his mouth. “
Chapter Four.”
The ambassador looked past Stiles to the doctor, and they communicated with a few eye movements. After a moment of this, Spock leaned back. “I see.”
They were both silent for several minutes while listening-or pretending to listen-to the princess of somewhere happily welcoming the famous survivor Ensign Stiles and all the various dignitaries to her star system. Stiles heard part of her words as if listening to a training tape. The words bore no attachment to himself, except that he had the feeling he was getting into deeper and deeper trouble. When they found out what really happen~- “Stiles.”
Maybe he should stand up and just explain what occurred and the mistakes he made and then offer to quietly retreat while they went on with their party. Would it be a good idea to compromise Starfleet’s perception, point out this big mistake, right here in front of all these people? He’d hardly spoken to anybody but Zevon for so long… get up and talk to this crowd? His knees started shaking. “Kid. Psst.” “Huh?”
McCoy still didn’t turn to speak to him, and kept his voice barely above a whisper. “Now, listen and listen good. You did all right four years ago. Some deskbound paperpusher sent a bunch of kids into a tricky, dangerous political powderkeg without an experienced senior officer “
“Without briefing them about what they could be facing,” Spock took over, very quietly, “to rescue some very important personnel-“
“With Romulans all over the place and riots going on,” McCoy interrupted. “They took a pack of untried kids barely out of officer school, with no black space experience at all, and sent you into a civil war and said, ‘Go, do.’”
“Without a second thought,” Spock added, “you took the initiative, sacrificed yourself, and allowed everyone else to get out alive. Then you kept yourself alive in an untenable situation long enough to be rescued. You are a hero, young man, by any measure.”
Stiles felt his legs quiver, his hands grow cold as they spoke to him of these indigestibles as if telling tales of some unconfirmed legend. The crowd of dress uniforms, court gowns, and Sunday best shifted before his eyes and swam with applause as the speaker handed over the podium to the next one.
“Twenty-one-year-olds fail to see themselves as young,” the ambassador explained, able to speak up now in the cover of the applause. “They lack the perspective of experience. In Starfleet, they are frequently older than everyone else around them. That is the curse of being a ‘senior in high school,’ if you will.”
“You’re one of the older kids,” Dr. McCoy said, “so you figure you’re not a kid at all. I’m bigger than everybody, so I’m big. Kids feel as if they should know everything. Starfleet handed you a situation that should’ve gone to a lieutenant. You improvised. You did what you thought was right. We don’t damn people for inexperience.”
“To you,” Spock added, “your mistakes looked like crashing failures. To me, they simply looked like inexperience.”
Now the ambassador did turn and fix him with those eyes nobody could look away from. “All these people are proud of you.” “And you deserve it,” the doctor finished. “So shut up.” Another