Survivors - Jean Lorrah [21]
“Is that why you go all out in the practicum?” In that class, their positions were reversed-the first time Yar had not led the class when it came to physical activity.
“I have to, if this old body is going to keep up with all the young ones.”
“Dare! You’re not old!”
“I’m over thirty,” he said.
“By less than two years.”
He shook his head with a rueful smile. “In our business, age encroaches very quickly if you don’t keep up every moment. My reflexes are as good as yours, Tasha, and I can still outshoot you-“
“I’m practicing!”
“-but even with modern medicine the injuries inherent in security work take their toll. I’ll never be as flexible as I used to be, because my back was broken on Twenginian.”
“What? You never told me-“
He shrugged. “The spinal cord wasn’t severed. They got me to sickbay, and in a month I was back on duty. I can pass all the medical tests, well within tolerances. But I know I can’t meet my old standards. And unless I keep up daily practice, against the strongest, sharpest opponents available my abilities will degenerate.” He stared blankly for a moment, at something not in the room with them. “I’ve seen it happen. I won’t let it happen to me.”
Although Dare quickly changed the subject, Yar later took advantage of her security clearance as a final-term cadet to look up Starfleet records of what had happened to Dare on Twenginian. Everybody knew about the Seeker’s routing the secret nest of Orions from that Federation planet, but the details were classified.
Although he had been Chief of Security of the Cochrane, a small scouting vessel, Dare had been Assistant Chief on his next two missions, on progressively larger ships. In each succeeding mission he had been in charge of more personnel, with more responsibility; the assignments, despite the title, were promotions.
On Twenginian the away team had been headed by Chief of Security Venton Scoggins, a man with over twenty years of experience in Starfleet. The record showed flatly that when trouble broke out he did not reach the scene in time to prevent his assistant from being injured. There was no reprimand, nothing to indicate that the man had been remiss in any way.
The Seeker continued its mission against the Orions. By the time they reached Conquiidor Dare was on his feet again-and Scoggins assigned him to lead the away team that freed over two hundred Federation citizens from Orion slavery and made Darryl Adin a hero. When the mission ended, Scoggins tendered his resignation and retired from Starfleet with full honors.
Yar read between the lines: Scoggins felt responsible for Dare’s injury, and resigned before anyone else got hurt under his command.
But Yar was too young to worry about failing reflexes. As for Dare-well, any man who could beat a whole class of senior Starfleet cadets in the toughest security practicum ever devised certainly had nothing to worry about!
Yet the subject of age kept coming up in Dare’s speech. “You young people,” he called his classmates until one day when they were working together on a homework assignment in tactical theory, Yar retaliated.
“All right, oh wise old man-show me from your vast experience how to take that hill with seventeen aggressive and well-armed Mercaptan warriors guarding it, when you have only three security personnel!”
There was no such thing as a Mercaptan warrior, the unrepentantly hostile beings were totally imaginary creatures who increased in ferocity and eccentricity as each new class of cadets passing through the Academy added to their characteristics. Currently, they stood three meters tall, had scales, fur, claws, fangs, and hand-held photon torpedoes.
“Treat it like chess,” Dare replied to Yar’s outburst.
“Like chess?” she asked, confused. She didn’t particularly like chess, while Dare was proficient