The Kobayashi Maru Read online

  "The Kobayashi Maru is a no-win scenario," Howell explained. "In real life, you only get to face this sort of failure once. But it's something every commander has to be ready for." He gestured toward the smoke-grimed panel in front of him. "No matter what you do, the computer adjusts for it, and compensates. We've drawn knowledge from every commander who ever lived—none of them could beat this computer now. There will always be more Klingons, more damage, less time."

  Kirk nodded, understanding better than he thought Howell realized. "It cheats."

  Howell's laughter surprised him. "Of course it cheats! Because the point of the scenario is to not let you win! That's all the computer's programmed for. That's all it knows."

  "But that isn't fair," Kirk argued. He folded his arms stubbornly across his chest. "When you said I could take this as many times as I wanted, was that a lie, too?"

  "No." Howell shook his head. "You can take it until hell freezes over. Or until the end of the semester, whichever comes first. But it won't make any difference."

  "Then why tell me this? Why not let me do it and do it and do it, just like everybody else?"

  "Because," Howell smiled thinly, "everybody else doesn't. No one's taken this test twice in over twenty years." The smile faded, and Kirk thought he sensed true concern in the admiral's dark eyes. "I thought telling you the punch line might change your mind. I didn't want to see such a fine student waste his time on losing."

  When he stepped off the dais, Kirk tried to do it with a determination worthy of gods. He wasn't sure if he succeeded; he felt abysmally small. "We'll see," was all he said to Howell as he stepped down.

  The World Library annex in Old El Cerrito had nothing on the Kobayashi Maru. Not a single book, or article, or footnote reference in even the most obscure journal in the galaxy.

  Of course.

  Kirk drummed his foot as he waited for the shuttle that would return him to the Academy, damning himself for even hoping write-ups existed (especially after his failure to find any references in the Academy's own library). The fourteen tapes in his jacket pockets clicked like out-of-tune maracas as the December wind whipped all around him. Kirk jerked the front of his windbreaker closed, then crossed his arms in frustration.

  The Kobayashi Maru didn't exist outside the confines of that damned simulator. No one spoke of it, none of the textbooks mentioned it, none of his exhaustive searches of the Federation computer banks found even the vaguest reference to anything by that name—not even a real spaceship. If it weren't for his own dreams, Kirk could almost imagine he'd never really taken the test at all.

  He couldn't count how many times in the last month he'd tossed awake at night, angry and sweating, only to spend the rest of the night in the barracks' bathroom plotting strategies. The fine line between failure and winning had gnawed at his soul; after the failure of his first computer searches, he acquired information on other military defeats. If he couldn't learn success from the masters, he would learn failure from them, instead.

  Some of the defeats were foolish, so easy to overturn that they were hardly worth consideration: Earth's own George Custer at Little Bighorn, who would have slaughtered the Cheyenne if he'd only waited for the rest of his troops; Babin at Rukbat V, who would never have deployed his sixth fleet to the system at all if he hadn't been too obsessed with owning Rukbat to pay attention to the rumors of Romulan ambush. Others were honest defeats that the commanders at the time could never have changed: The Hoshe Offensive throughout the Magellan sector (Earth didn't know about the transporter in those days); Fr'nir at Gast, whose soldiers died slowly from kurite poisoning before anyone knew what kurite was.

  After the battles, then, he studied the commanders. Garth, Babin, Shaitani, Hoshe—Igga, Korrd, Friendly John, Von. Biographical information and statistics on their battles reeled about his head every waking moment. He dreamed the battle of Tiatris only last night, and he won it, too, despite the odds. Where Friendly John had been food for the mihka, Kirk had routed the mihka into the sea. He even remembered how—now, when he was awake, he could recount every move he'd made, every order given. And they were brilliant. All of them.

  Sitting on the shuttle between the Academy grounds and the library, he sketched and figured and planned, until he could overturn all those historic victories as if they were preschool disputes. Some of them he could overturn in less time than it took to enact the original conflict. Some of them he could avoid altogether. Some of them he could end before they would even be considered started.

  And on the heels of such successes, his thoughts always turned to Kobayashi Maru.

  In so many ways, the test was more complex than anything he could find in his historic references. The computer knew everything, no matter how obscure or unlikely; Klingon reinforcements could arrive out of nowhere, no matter that the Neutral Zone never hosted more than four unreported Klingon cruisers. Kirk had piles of handwritten notes hidden under his mattress at the barracks—notes that sometimes resembled flowcharts more than battle plans. Twelve times now he'd constructed winnable strategies to the Kobayashi Maru; twelve times he'd countered his own schemes by beefing up the computer's knowledge, increasing the Klingon forces. It was like trying to win a war against God—no matter what he conceived of, more Klingons could always converge, or simply not take damage, or fatally damage his own ship with weapons that shouldn't have penetrated the screens.

  Kirk was bound by the laws of physics, while nothing bound the computer but some programmer's sadistic imagination; without the framework of reality within which to work, literally anything could happen.

  So Howell was right: Kirk would lose. Every time. "It's the nature of the game."

  But it wasn't fair.

  When Kirk stepped off the shuttle he found the Academy quad predictably empty. The midwinter rain having chased most of the students inside for the weekend and upcoming finals didn't help. Kirk would have stayed to study himself, but Saturdays were the only time when he could venture off-grounds to the library, and he didn't want to waste what might be his last chance to collect data before the end of the semester.

  Halfway across the windy quad, Kirk spotted a solitary figure beneath the arch of one of the elevated walkways. A bulky parka smothered the individual's identity, but the flared black trousers marked him as a member of Starfleet; grinning, Kirk redirected his course to join his snowsuited comrade.

  He didn't realize it was Constrev until he stepped up alongside and the lieutenant glanced at him curiously. The computer expert's pale blue eyes looked so appropriately chilled inside the parka hood that Kirk had to laugh. "What are you doing out here?" he asked when Constrev returned to studying the back end of the quad.

  "I'm attempting to adjust to the weather," he replied. "I shall be studying at the Academy for two more Earth years, and would like to be able to leave the buildings in the winter." He was trying to sound reasonable, but the defensive edge to his voice betrayed that others had asked him this same question today.

  Kirk nodded agreeably, turning to follow Constrev's gaze so that the sight of the parka wouldn't move him to laughter again. "You're lucky the Academy's in San Francisco," he commented. "Most Humans don't even consider the weather here to be cold."

  "I am not most Humans." Indeed, it was a very rare Human that was born and raised on Vulcan.

  When Constrev volunteered nothing further, Kirk asked, "It doesn't get cold on Vulcan?"

  "They have a winter season," Constrev allowed, "but not so severe as this. The summers are much warmer, as well, and approach fifty degrees centigrade when the year is not bad."

  Kirk whistled appreciatively. "I thought Humans boiled at that temperature."

  "Not me."

  They stood, side by side, for several silent minutes; Kirk watched a flock of dry leaves chase themselves across the flat stone, trying not to personify the skittering dervish as some army he should try to outmaneuver. It only half worked, and he made himself look some other way as the leaves settled into a
silent pile again.

  "Where have you been today?" Constrev asked him. He had been watching the leaves as well, and Kirk couldn't help but wonder if he somehow knew what Kirk was thinking.

  "The World Library annex," Kirk admitted. "I was looking for more information on the test." If Constrev knew, there was no sense trying to deny it.

  Constrev shook his head, jamming his hands deeper into his parka pockets. "I would never travel so far from the buildings on such a cold day."

  "Where I grew up," Kirk told him, "this isn't cold. During the winter in Iowa—that's the area of Earth where I grew up—the temperatures can get down to as much as sixty degrees below zero centigrade."

  Constrev made a distinctly unhappy noise. "I suppose you have snow as well?"

  Kirk sighed. "Where the land is mostly flat, the snow lies across it like icing on a cake. And the morning sunlight turns it so bright it hurts your eyes to look at it—like a whole sheet of stars just packed together on the fields until there isn't even space between them. And you can roll it up into snowmen, or pack it together with your hands to throw at your brother." He smiled in memory of more than a dozen Iowa winters, with his fingers numb and stupid as clay, his breath rushing out of him in feathery clouds of steam. "I couldn't even begin to explain all the things snow can mean to someone who grew up with it. Snow is more than just chemistry. It's a whole part of growing up."

  Constrev didn't answer for a long time. After a moment, Kirk glanced over at his friend, surprised to find Constrev staring attentively across the empty quad as though valiantly trying to envision the world Kirk depicted.

  "Maybe I'll take you to Iowa someday," Kirk added, feeling suddenly foolish. "It's easier just to show you."

  Constrev nodded absently. "You have a poet's soul, James Kirk," he stated seriously. "Why do you wish to spend all your time making war?"

  "I don't want to make war," Kirk told him.

  "You study this test," Constrev pointed out. "You spend more hours in the libraries than you spend in your own bed. You study destruction and tactics. Isn't this war?"

  "No," Kirk countered. "It's a principle." He stepped in front of Constrev to break the instructor's eye contact with the nonexistent snow. "I don't believe in the no-win scenario," he told him. "I don't believe it's fair to ask students to accept a concept I don't think is valid."

  "The no-win scenario is the basis of our universe," Constrev replied. "Depending on which point of view you employ, someone always loses."

  "That's garbage."

  "If you always win, someone else must lose. Isn't that so?"

  The thought bothered Kirk profoundly. He fingered the computer tapes, suddenly embarrassed and frightened to think that so much of his personal philosophy could be shattered with so simple a statement. "It's not the same thing," he argued, albeit weakly. "Losing and not winning aren't the same thing. I believe you can lose. I believe you can die. I don't believe there's such a thing as a situation that's impossible to win."

  Constrev studied his face for a moment, his pale eyes disconcertingly earnest. Turning away, he stated at last, "Perhaps you are right. But if what you tell me about this test is true, it isn't intended to accurately represent reality. So why concern yourself with it?"

  "Because…" Kirk stopped, his train of thought suddenly stymied by the idea blossoming in his mind. "Because it isn't real," he gasped as the idea took form. "Because it isn't fair. It cheats!" He caught Constrev by the shoulders and shook him joyfully. "It cheats, Constrev! Which means I don't have to play by the rules, either!"

  Constrev looked uncertain. "I believe tampering with test results is frowned upon."

  "Two negatives make a positive, don't they?"

  "But cheating twice—"

  "Makes for a fair test," Kirk cut him off. "Trust me on this—I'm a command cadet."

  Kirk darted into the cadet barracks a breathless seven minutes before the wake-up call. Curled up beneath his bedcovers, fully clothed, he crammed a handful of quilt into his mouth to muffle his panting. What's happened to me? he wondered, somewhat horrified. Only a few weeks ago—before the Kobayashi Maru—staying out beyond curfew was unthinkable. He'd been the good little soldier, considering without doubting; questioning without disobeying. Now, he felt at war with his superiors over a philosophical issue he'd never even considered before. A war that would end at precisely three minutes after ten today. His heart hammered excitedly at the prospect.

  When the wake-up call sounded, Kirk's bunkmate didn't even ask why the young cadet was under his covers, boots and all; Kirk assumed the other man had seen this often enough in the past few days to excuse Kirk's idiosyncratic sleeping habits as beneath mention. You'll see, Kirk told him silently as he hastily tucked down the covers on his own bed. Soon everyone will be able to guess where I've been nights…

  His first two classes came and went with all the speed and grace of a dying man dragging himself across the desert. At ten o'clock he was released from class to report to the simulator. Cadets craned in their seats to watch him stride stiffly for the exit; he wondered what they would say if they knew his hands were cold and his mind was numb with indecision. He wondered what admirals Howell and Walgren would say when the test was over.

  A collection of students from the security division already milled about the bridge set when Kirk arrived. He reported to the monitoring officers, then took his seat at the command chair. He felt as if he were walking through cold jelly, moving so slowly that everyone must see that he was hindered by his vague sense of guilt—that he was actually afraid of going through with this, even after investing so much time and scheming. The arms of the command chair were unyielding beneath his grip.

  Kirk had the test nearly memorized by now. He watched the cadets around him frown seriously over their instruments until the helmsman turned to request coordinates for avoiding the Klingon Neutral Zone; Kirk could have cued the senior officer who was serving at communications: "Captain…I'm receiving something over the distress channel."

  The words, "Put it on speakers," sounded clear and confident, even though his mouth felt impossibly dry.

  "…imperative!" a frightened voice whispered through a symphony of static as the comm officer obeyed Kirk's command. "This is the Kobayashi Maru, nineteen periods out of Altair VI. We have struck a gravitic mine—"

  Kirk didn't wait for the plea to finish—he'd heard it too many times to care for the artifice anymore. A certain amount of cooperation was expected, however, so he pretended concern as he asked, "Kobayashi Maru, this is the U.S.S. Potemkin. Can you give us your position?"

  "Gamma Hydra," the distant voice replied. "Section ten."

  "The Neutral Zone," the navigator gasped. Kirk leaned on his fist to hide a smile.

  "…hull penetrated—life support systems failing!

  Can you assist, Potemkin?"

  I don't know why I'm smiling, Kirk marveled, still masking his grin. Flunking out of command school is hardly funny. He had a dreadful premonition that "out" was exactly where he was headed. So far, nothing about the test had differed—not by a second or a syllable. Had he done it? He was hardly a computer expert.

  "Potemkin? We're losing your signal—can you assist?"

  "Take us in," Kirk ordered, straightening. He didn't even ask to see the stats on the fuel carrier. He'd looked at them the first time he took the test, hoping to gain information; he'd looked at them the second time, hoping to maintain the illusion that he didn't know what to expect; this time, he didn't even care.

  "Captain, that would be in direct violation of treaty," the executive officer began.

  "I'm well aware of that, thank you." But if I'm going to go down, I may as well go down in flames. "Helm, raise shields. Just in case."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  The computer had barely finished warning them that they were now entering the Klingon neutral zone when the communications officer yelped, "I've lost the signal!" and the science officer reported, "Three Klingon cruisers
closing on our stern!"

  "Evasive action!" Kirk called, gripping the arms of his chair in anticipation of the blow he knew was coming. It jolted the simulator, exploding the helm console into flame, before any of his bridge crew could acknowledge.

  "Full power to screens!"

  A lithe young woman stepped over the "dead" helmsman to stab at the controls. "Screens are dead, Captain."

  Kirk spared only a short glance of irritation at his "dying" navigator. He slammed one hand on the arm of his command chair, wishing he could hurt something besides himself with the gesture. "Contact the Klingon vessels. Tell them we're on a rescue mission!"

  He stared accusingly at the viewscreen, knowing Howell and the others were watching, and wanting to burn them with his anger; black space and three gunmetal blue war dragons stared back at him in sinister silence. He didn't even realize the communications officer had never responded until the executive officer prompted, "The captain told you to raise the Klingon commander, Mister."

  The communications officer stammered helplessly for a moment. Kirk swung the command chair about in time to see the communications officer close his eyes as if in apologetic prayer and timidly touch a button. "Coming on screen now, sir…"

  Kirk couldn't help uttering a short cry of surprise.

  "This is Commander Kozor," announced a guttural voice, distorted by the intership band, "of the Kh'yem" Behind the rough baritone, Kirk could hear other computer-generated Klingons growling and bustling as they went about their computer-generated duties. "You have entered Federation Neutral Zone against treaty. In name of Klingon Empire, Kh'yem declares war!"

  Jerking about in his chair, Kirk endeavored to assume what he hoped was an expression of cultured confidence (the Klingons might not be able to see him, but the monitoring officers certainly could). "This is Captain James T. Kirk, of the U.S.S. Potemkin." It was the first time he'd ever said his name that way; the sheer excitement of it made him short of breath. "We are on a rescue mission in search of a civilian freighter registered with the United Federation of Planets. We mean no harm, but we will defend ourselves if necessary."