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Tachyon

Times and Places

“Times and Places”

Stardate 0508.20

Ensign Tandaris Admiran

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“There is a time and a place for shenanigans, Cadet Admiran. You would do best to learn that quickly if you are to ever earn a pip.”

 

The voice of Commander Carlile echoed in Tandaris’ thoughts. An instructor in advanced multitronic programming, and co-inventor of the Carlile-Schmidt Isolinear Recursion Algorithm used to repair isolinear chips with corrupted data, he was probably the person who most influenced Tandaris to become an engineer. The man had been tougher than duranium and smarter than a Zakdorn. He would chew you out over the smallest inconsistency in a program or the most minor inefficiency. But like many other great men, he had done this because he knew it was necessary to make his cadets the best.

 

“Jokes might be all well and good,” Carlile’s voice continued, sounding slightly-Vulcan-like, “until you are dead.”

 

With the experience of its past hosts, Admiran knew what Carlile meant. Every aspect of a starship, no matter how many, was vital to its operation. If even one thing went wrong, then the whole starship could be compromised. . . .

 

They had been taken unawares. A cloaked vessel versus cloaked vessels, with away team in the balance. There was little time for thought, for planning, for consideration of anything but the gut instinct to act. The hundreds of people on the ship had fulfilled their functions to the best of their abilities, hoping that their vital role did not cause the ship’s operations to fall apart.

 

“Every program becomes obsolete eventually. But there is always code leftover that may be salvaged for future use.”

 

Yet fall apart they did, as did Excalibur. Rendered obsolete with the deadening thunder of Romulan disruptor barrages, the beautiful vessel had been reduced to a sliver of its former self. Left without a ship to their name, the crew of Excalibur and Tandaris were bereft of any solace. They did not even know if their sacrifice had ensured the away team’s survival. So many variables . . . not enough leftovers and loose ends to utilise.

 

“Faster, Admiran, faster! You’ll never catch up to the virus if you isolate each buffer individually! Use your brain!”

 

Carlile had enjoyed inflicting cruel and unusual punishments on his class. One particular favourite had been competitions modelled after real situations on a starship, be it a ship-wide computer failure or a corrupted segment fault in the computer core. Carlile was as passionate about such things as a captain was about their vessel.

 

And that was the funny thing about it. You had to go faster. Life careened out of control as you made more choices, but the only choice you didn’t have was to go faster. You couldn’t slow down, even if you wanted.

 

So you took risks. A wager here, a gamble there. It all evened out to maintain the balance, but from your perspective, each success was an ecstatic reason for celebration and each failure something to be remembered until you tried again. Every risk was big and small, each one carried the same degree of danger, because your life was out of control. Everyone’s is.

 

“Congratulations, Ensign Admiran. I knew you could do it if you focussed. So, what do you intend to do now?”

 

What did Tandaris intend to do now? What did the crew intend to do now? Separated from their starship, assigned to a new one, Tandaris realized that they were still the Excalibur crew. Perhaps they had been reassigned to the Morningstar, but Tandaris knew that as long as they were together at least, they would still think of themselves at the Excalibur’s.

 

“There is a time and a place to violate the laws of physics, Ensign Admiran. Just be sure that when the opportunity arises you don’t miss it.”

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