The Kobayashi Maru Read online

  "Remember the parameters of the scenario?" Chekov asked. "We're at war."

  "So you turn guerrilla?"

  The accusation stung more than he'd expected. "I turn practical. We don't know who the assassin is, we don't know what he or she is capable of. If this were real life, you wouldn't be complaining."

  She shook her head slowly. "Don't be so sure of that, mister."

  Chekov searched her pale eyes for some sign of uncertainty or weakness, but found none. Finally, he turned away with a frustrated sigh. "You don't understand…"

  "And don't patronize me! I'm not a child!"

  "Then you should know that sometimes the good guys get ugly, too!" he shouted in return.

  "But when does it stop? When do we stop fighting fire with fire and decide not to take the easy way out by just killing all our competition? That's not what Starfleet is about and you know it."

  "It's a scenario, Sasha!" he insisted, resigned to lose this fight no matter what he said. "It's like the Kobayashi Maru: It isn't real. They're testing our reactions and resourcefulness, not our morality. Whether we're supposed to admit it or not, everyone knows that no one dies! I know that—you know that! That means we're all going to behave differently than we would in real life!" Her jaw muscles twitched as she fingered the paperweight, but she wouldn't look up at him. Taking her chin in one hand, Chekov tipped her eyes into the light and said gently, "Sasha, in real life, I wouldn't blow up my own starship just to spite the Klingons!"

  She pulled her chin out of his hand and dropped her gaze once again. "I wonder, Pavel," she said, very softly. "Sometimes, I just wonder."

  "Sasha…"

  "I just wish I knew what we were being tested for!" Her voice betrayed something between frustration and anger, but she didn't object when Chekov moved closer to slip an arm about her waist. "It's like the Kobayashi Maru. They don't run that test just to find out how long it takes a Klingon war fleet to kick our butts—they run it to find out who gives up, who goes down fighting, who never notices that the battle's over. They want to know everything about us…" She sighed, a soft, hollow sound that seemed to echo some insecurity Chekov didn't share. "If I knew what they really wanted," she admitted finally, "I'd feel a lot better about this."

  "They want us to be strong," Chekov told her, wishing he could grant her his belief. "Whatever we do—whatever their reasons—they want us to prove that we can deal with anything Starfleet might ask of us. That means we do our best to win, even when our best makes us seem cruel or hard."

  She laughed once, and looked at him. "It's the fact that you're so sure you know what winning means," she told him baldly. "It's the fact that you think it's so easy that has me worried most. I think you'll find that you're selling yourself and Starfleet short."

  Chekov awoke the next morning to the sound of phaser fire and shouting. Sasha, stretched out beside him on the inner office's only sofa, rolled to her feet with silent grace, her eyes trained, cat-like, on the outside door. Recognizing the voices, Chekov caught her by the shoulder and hissed, "It's Baasch! Lock the door!"

  Sasha darted across the room to slap at the door control, twisting the locking mechanism until the status light flashed from green to red. In the office beyond, Cecil's voice could be heard above the others, shouting at Cantini to move something into a more defensible position; Chekov could barely make out the words, and suspected the specifics didn't matter much anyway. Swearing under his breath, he pulled Sasha away from the door, toward the desk on the other end of the room.

  "We should go out to them," she insisted in a hoarse stage whisper. "They're going to get slaughtered!"

  Chekov's mind still chased itself about, trying to figure out how someone had survived long enough to get past his protection on the door. "We can't help them."

  "We should die trying!"

  He almost laughed aloud. "And prove what? That we aren't any more serious about this scenario than anyone else on this station?" Besides, he had no desire to grant Baasch his wish by giving himself over to an easy kill.

  A phaser bolt landed on the closed door, making the steel and plastic sing. Chekov herded Sasha toward the hollow under the desk as he cast about the room for some escape.

  She caught the desktop with one hand and refused to be pushed under. "They're our friends!" she insisted. "We can't just leave them out there!"

  "Yes, we can." A ventilation grate on the wall above the sofa was the only avenue of escape not involving a rush through the forces outside. Chekov knew from his pilfered map just how erratic and treacherous the ventilation shafts could be; nothing short of impending death of a very real and excruciating nature could inspire him to dare those steep and winding passages.

  "You keep insisting that this isn't like real life." Sasha, still standing, looked back and forth across the room as well. "Just keep in mind that everybody will be alive in the real life following this scenario, and they're all going to be really ticked off at us!" She hefted the paperweight in one hand. "Use this," she said, handing it across the desk to Chekov. "You can knock out the grate, then we can hide under here. They'll think we went through the ventilation system, and we can vacate the offices after they're gone."

  Chekov smiled as he took the weight. "You're better at this than you like to admit."

  "I don't believe in doing things by halves."

  Each of the clips on the ventilation grate shattered after only a single blow. Chekov broke three of them, leaving the grating askew, as though he and Sasha had tried to pull the grate back into place during their hasty departure. The paperweight he left on the sofa.

  The hollow beneath the black-and-silver desk was never designed to conceal two Starfleet cadets; they only fit in the space after three minutes of thoroughly embarrassing rearrangement, and that was only when they sat hip-to-hip with their knees in their own ears. Sasha had just adjusted the castered chair across the opening when the door between the two offices blew. Chekov held his breath as light footsteps crossed the room just beyond the desk's outer wall. Every muscle in his legs was suddenly cramped and aching, the need to move almost unbearable as he listened to the intruder step up on the couch and lift away the broken grating. He saw Sasha raise a hand to cover her mouth, her jaw clenched and her eyes closed; apparently, he wasn't alone in his discomfort.

  "…Damn…" The voice, soft and muffled, was swallowed almost to nonsense by the ventilation duct. Then the footsteps recrossed the office, and were gone.

  Sasha exhaled loudly. "Can I move now?" she whispered.

  Chekov shook his head. "Wait a little longer," he whispered in return. "Make sure they're gone."

  They waited for nearly an hour. The cramps in Chekov's legs were very real by now; he felt dizzy from their constricted positions. Still, it wasn't until he heard a cleanup crew in the office outside that he deemed it safe to exit.

  Sasha fell onto her side in exaggerated agony, pushing the chair away with enough force to bounce it off the wall. "I'm crippled for life! I'll never walk again!"

  Chekov crawled out behind her, pleased to hear Sasha's laughter again after her earlier ill humor. He nodded toward the door. "Is the cleanup crew gone?"

  She stumbled to her feet and half-ran, half-limped to the exit. Holding herself off to one side as she keyed open the door, she darted a quick look into the other room. "Yeah," she confirmed with a nod. "All clear."

  "Good." Chekov terminated his stretching when he felt something twinge in his shoulder. "I may never recover from this."

  "I'm not going to live to recover if I don't get to a bathroom!" Sasha glanced into the outer office again. "Pavel, I'm headed for the ladies' room down the hall. Wait for me."

  He nodded, still working at his stiff shoulder. "Don't take long—I want to get food, too."

  "I'll hurry," she promised. Then she slipped into the next room and disappeared.

  Chekov gave her a moment to make it some distance down the hall, then headed into the outer office himself. Nothing of the ambush r
emained; even the three phasers Chekov had used in the booby trap had been taken by the cleanup crew. He tried not to let their loss annoy him; he could always obtain more.

  The desktop computer screen was still dark. Chekov paused on the side of the desk closest to the outside door—wanting to hear Sasha's return in time to terminate the conversation—and powered up the mechanism. "Computer," he summoned, in quiet Russian.

  "Good morning, Gregory L. Jao," the computer replied.

  "Please monitor all intercom outlets and report coordinates where you detect activity."

  "Yes, Gregory L. Jao."

  Chekov glanced into the hall for Sasha; there was no sign of anyone in any direction. He ducked back into the office, prepared to wait yet for the computer's response, and was surprised when it greeted him with, "Two beings detected at coordinates 456-779-340, four beings detected at 55-56-47."

  Chekov waited for it to continue. When it didn't, he pressed, "Are there any others?"

  "Only yourself, at coordinates 147-90-423. Do you wish me to reassess my findings?"

  "No…No, computer, that's fine." He unfolded the map across the top of the desk. The computer's reported coordinates were several floors apart, both sets quite a distance from his present location. If he and Sasha were survived by only six other students, he could only hope the group of four was Baasch's squad. Tracing a finger along several of the deck plans, he memorized the quickest route between the admin offices and the smaller of the two groups, all the while conscious that Sasha would rejoin him soon. He wasn't certain how she'd respond to discovering his relationship with the computer, but he knew he was going to tell her; the computer offered too many advantages to just abandon it now that the scenario was so close to ending. Besides, having Sasha as a co-victor didn't feel as much like a compromise as he'd expected.

  "Computer, isolate floors one through seven, and decks twenty, twenty-two…"

  In the distance, hollow rumblings heralded the descent of the ponderous bulkhead doors. Chekov left open only a two-deck span on either side of both parties—enough to give them the illusion of freedom, if they chose to migrate. He would worry about confining them further when he and Sasha drew near the sites.

  "Will that be all, Gregory L. Jao?"

  He nodded as he closed the map, then realized the gesture was lost on the computer. "Yes, computer. Thank you."

  "You're welcome."

  Smiling at the incongruity of technological courtesy, he leaned over the desk to switch off the screen. Outside, the hallway was still silent and empty.

  Chekov trotted down the open corridor without bothering to draw his phaser. He knew the locations of everyone still "alive" on the station; there was no one to defend himself against on this level, as no one was functional here besides himself. That thought carried with it a cold shudder of realization; he slowed his gait to a hesitant walk.

  No one. The computer reported no activity on this level except for Chekov in the admin office. That meant Sasha had either departed the level, or was no longer active. He had a feeling he knew which it was.

  Dropping to his knees, he dug down the front of his singlet for the map, balancing it on one hand as he flipped the panels apart with the other. The admin level flashed onto the screen, littered with the cobalt blue indicators he'd been setting to highlight his own trap locations. Fifty meters down the hall from the admin office, the women's restroom was littered with flashing blue.

  Chekov groaned and buried his face against the map. He was a dead man. Even if Robert and the others never learned that he'd set traps all about the Aslan Station, Sasha had already divined the fact. She would know who booby-trapped the bathroom, and she would kill him.

  He scrambled to his feet and ran the last few meters to the bathroom. The door slid aside at the slightest touch; inside was as silent as the hallway. "Sasha?" Unlike admin, he hadn't planned on reentering any of the booby-trapped bathrooms, and so had left no options for bypassing the traps. The phasers fired as soon as someone rounded the first bend in the room. Chekov stayed carefully in the doorway and called her name again.

  He retreated to an intercom panel once he was convinced even Sasha wouldn't keep silent so long for the sake of a joke. Thumbing the audio switch, he summoned the computer with a listless sigh.

  "Monitor all intercom outlets and report coordinates where you detect activity."

  The same groups appeared—two and four—only the two-person group had relocated by a deck; the four-person party still kept to the library.

  "Close down the bulkheads to the nineteenth floor," he said. "If the two people at coordinates 425-457-77 move outside the room they currently occupy, seal that room behind them."

  "As you wish, Gregory L. Jao."

  He headed for a lift without thanking the computer. Less than eighteen hours into this scenario, he planned to finish it before the twenty-four-hour mark arrived, if only he could reach deck nineteen before his quarry found some way to bypass the bulkheads. First, he'd have to stop by the engineering storeroom where he'd pilfered his first collection of timers and triggering devices; he still had seven phasers with which to construct a little insurance.

  The two on the nineteenth floor were annoyingly easy to dispatch. Chekov found them arguing in the hallway outside one of the bulwarked rooms, each apparently blaming the other for having locked the door on their way out. Chekov stunned them before they even knew he was there.

  He sat on the floor while the cleanup crew came for the bodies, meticulously wiring phasers into a series and affixing them to his belt. One of the cleanup technicians peered at him curiously while lifting a body onto a stretcher. "What're you making? A toy train?"

  Chekov didn't look up from his work. "A bomb."

  "Ah." The tech nodded sagely at his companion. "Starfleet's finest," he assured the woman with him. They both giggled as they wheeled the litters away.

  Chekov ignored their laughter. He'd told Sasha he wouldn't sacrifice an entire Federation starship just to spite the Klingon Empire, and he still believed that was true. He also believed it was his duty as an officer to make his own death or capture too expensive a goal to be worth the enemy's efforts. In the real world, that might not mean the destruction of a fully crewed Constitution-class starship, but it could mean voluntary death in the face of inevitable defeat—death that carried the price of many lives other than his own. Baasch, no doubt, would miss the irony in the gesture, but it wasn't intended as revenge against the other cadet. Not entirely, at least.

  Chekov tucked the last phaser into the array, then set about secreting the multicolored wires out of sight behind his belt. With the whole apparatus cinched about his waist again, it looked like nothing more than an equipment belt crowded with a half-dozen extra phasers. Only Chekov knew about the wire threaded down the left sleeve of his singlet, or about the wire loop near his ring finger that he could tug with almost no effort at all. No one else would see the tiny Rube Goldberg that would trigger the first phaser on his belt at almost the same moment it fired the second, and the third…

  Chekov fingered the wire peeking out of his sleeve. "…boom…" he murmured to himself.

  In real life, the enemy would no doubt have circuit detectors, or personnel trained in search and remove. But, as Sasha had so testily reminded him, this wasn't real life. Nor was this real death. It was all a test to which someone else had constructed the rules, but which Chekov didn't intend to lose; even if all he could do was assure no one else won it, either.

  The door to the library was locked.

  Chekov frowned at the sealed bulkhead, toying with the loop of wire that brushed against his wrist and trying to decide why something as prudent as a locked door should make his spine tingle and his muscles ache as though he were guiding a starship into battle. True, he hadn't instructed the computer to seal this bulkhead; he'd cordoned off the rest of the deck, half hoping this group would show a bit more initiative than the last. They hadn't even left the library, though, and now he
'd discovered the door locked from the inside without even a guard placed in the hall. He wondered if Baasch were somehow aware that Chekov was the only one left they had to face—if he were waiting just on the inside for the Russian to override their lock. When Chekov entered, Baasch would shoot him.

  Growling low in frustration, Chekov backed away from the door. If there were only some way to force them out, to be more sure where they were, what they were doing. He remembered an intercom only a few meters down the corridor and trotted back to it while still considering his plan. "Computer."

  A longer pause than he expected, then: "Yes, Gregory L. Jao?"

  "Can you still verify four life forms in the library?"

  Another pause, longer this time. "Yes, Gregory L. Jao."

  "Can you pinpoint their locations within the library?"

  "I'm sorry, Gregory L. Jao, but my audio monitors are not designed for that level of accuracy."

  Chekov drummed his fingers against the wall, his thoughts chasing each other round and round like angry birds. If he knew where they were—if he knew what they were doing—if, if, if! "Computer," he continued, wrestling his thoughts under control long enough to choose a course of action, "can you override the manual lock on the library door?"

  "Of course, Gregory L. Jao. My system is—" An infinitesimal pause in the middle of its answer this time; Chekov wasn't sure why, but the quirk worried him. "—designed for convenient use by administrative personnel. Would you like me to perform such an override now?"

  "Yes."

  This time the heartbeat of silence was acceptable. Then the indicator light a dozen steps down the hall moved silently from red to green, and the computer announced simply, "Done." Chekov relocated the wire loop in his sleeve, tucking it further out of sight as he returned to the library door.

  He shadowed the wall during his approach, triggering the door sensors at the last possible moment. The breathless hisss as the door whisked aside seemed almost too loud to bear.

  The inside of the library was dark and cavernous. Floor-to-ceiling displays paneled off alcoves where terminals sprouted from the tops of long tables. A maze of shelves—housing a dusty, woody-smelling collection of antique printed paper books—zigged and zagged across the first few meters in front of the door. Chekov crouched lower than the tallest shelving unit and eased his own phaser into his hand.