Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [11]
“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